What comes to mind when you think about Hypnosis? Is it Little Britain’s character ‘look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes’ or a stage act where a hypnotist has people running around like crazy chickens? Sadly, this is sometimes the only exposure a lot of people have had to what they think is Hypnosis.
When I first started to learn about hypnosis it blew my mind. To really understand how hypnotherapy can help, you first need to understand the way the brains work.
In a nutshell, there are two parts to our mind - the conscious and subconscious. The conscious is the one reading this article, taking note of the content, always evaluating and analysing what is going on around us.
Running constantly in the background is the subconscious mind which influences everything we do and creates our reality. The subconscious mind holds many different thoughts, feelings, emotions, beliefs and resources that we are not paying attention to. It houses:
· our emotions
· our memory bank for all our past experiences
· it is where our imagination and habits sit
· most importantly it contains our fundamental beliefs about our world
· [As an aside, it also controls and regulates the involuntary functions of our bodies but that is a whole other blog on how hypnotherapy can help with the immune system.]
It’s no good telling the conscious part of our brain that we need to be believe in ourselves in order to get that promotion – the conscious brain will analyse that request, will delve down into the subconscious to bring up all the reasons why we don’t believe in ourselves so we don’t make any progress. In order to make changes, we need to bypass the thinking part of our brain and deal directly with the part which is driving our behaviour.
This is what we do in hypnosis. By going into a very relaxed state, the mind is very receptive to new ideas and open to suggestions which encourage more sensible, balanced or helpful attitudes. We use the power of your imagination (the brain can’t tell the difference between something which is real or imagined – so let’s use that), metaphors, visualisations, direct or indirect suggestions to achieve the outcome you are looking for.
All changes to behaviour or motivation take place at that subconscious level which is why a bespoke hypnotherapy recording can be so beneficial.
There is so much to say on this topic – please take a look at the Q&A on the Hypnosis page or drop me an email if you would like more information – kirsty@footprint-coaching.com.