What is Hypnosis
Phobias in Lincoln
What is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis employs a naturally occurring state of mind, and it may surprise many to learn that we often experience trance states during our lives, even several times during each day. Just drifting into ordinary sleep involves a kind of trance state. Typically, our mind becomes free of verbal thinking (using the left half of the brain) and enters a visual state (the right half of the brain) similar to that of deep sleep.
The experience of hypnosis is in many ways similar to the sleepy hypnogogic state; being neither asleep nor awake and prone to imagery and association, with a pleasant feeling of calmness and relaxation.
The hypnotic state occurs normally in everyone when certain physiological and psychological conditions are met. With the assistance of a properly skilled Hypnotherapist, it is possible to use this state to make deep and long lasting changes to thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
If your problem has an emotional, habitual or perhaps psychological origin then hypnotherapy is an excellent way to communicate with these parts of your mind.
Hypnosis is a different state of consciousness to the normal 'alert' state and you can easily enter it so that, for therapeutic purposes, beneficial instructions may be given directly to your receptive subconscious mind.
In hypnosis the tendency is for these suggestions to be accepted far less critically than in the normal awakening state, i.e. consciousness. A skilled Hypnotherapist may 'seed' constructive ideas which then change behaviour and attitudes at their source.
Thus, hypnosis is an effective way of making contact with our inner (subconscious) self, which is both a reservoir of unrecognised potential and knowledge, as well as being the unwitting source of many of our habits and problems.
CLINICAL HYPNOSIS
Clinical hypnotherapy means using hypnosis to treat a variety of medical and psychological conditions. It does not usually deal with problems that have an organic origin, but those that are due to emotional and psychological sources. It is estimated that 85% of people will readily respond to clinical hypnotherapy and it may even succeed where other, more conventional methods of treatment have been slow to produce the desired results.
When carried out by a professionally trained and skilled hypnotherapist, the benefits are usually long lasting and often permanent. It is completely natural and safe, with no harmful side effects.
CASE STUDY
In one text book example, the subject was a business man who had turned down successive promotions because they would have required him to travel by aeroplane. Eventually he decided to try hypnosis after seeing it work successfully for a phobia sufferer on a BBC television programme. Quite interestingly the causal event turned out to be an accident in his childhood, when he was playing on a garden shed roof with his older brother. They had begun some horseplay and together rolled off the roof and onto the ground. Neither brother was seriously hurt, however both would have been shocked. The first words his brother uttered were, "you'll go to prison for that now!"
Though this event was quickly forgiven and forgotten, years later the gentleman in question was in a real sense 'in prison', held under lock and key by an irrational fear of flying (or more accurately, a fear of falling). A skilled Hypnotherapist can be likened to a locksmith in situations like these and the man was soon released.
Originally all habits are intended to be useful. Many of the routine activities of our daily lives would become a nuisance if we had to consciously think them through each time we wanted to do them. Alas, this habit making force can turn against us, particularly when it comes to things like smoking and over-eating, but with hypnosis we can intervene and reprogram our unconscious minds with healthier requirements. The power of hypnosis is quite literally the power of habit and we all know how strong that can be.
