What is Hypnotherapy?

 

Yes, I did text my favorite cousin, saying, “You’re getting veeerryy sleepy,” after telling her about my hypnotherapy study and practice. But our ideas of hypnosis from movies, sitcoms, and Vegas shows do more harm than good. Good for a laugh, but  nothing much to do with what hypnosis actually is and what it can do for you.

 

What you’ll experience in the hypnotherapist’s chair is completely safe, constructive, and positive. Though you’re open to suggestion in a hypnotic state, you cannot be controlled by someone else. You won’t become Dr. Caligari, or one of the inhabitants of Gilligan’s Island with confused identity. You will access your subconscious mind to create positive change for yourself.

 

Hypnosis is a shift in consciousness that enables you to tap into core thoughts, emotions, perceptions, beliefs — and with the guidance of a trained hypnotherapist — to change your thinking pattern to better manage issues affecting your health and 

well-being.  

 

You are hypnotized at least twice a day, and probably more often than that. When you are falling asleep and when you are first waking up, your subconscious mind is more accessible – your brain is in a theta state. When you’re watching television or a movie or when you’re deeply involved in something you’re reading, when you’re driving somewhere and find yourself on autopilot, when you’re relaxed and miss what someone has said to you, you are in a hypnotic state. 

 

It’s estimated that your subconscious accounts for 88 percent of your brain, and possibly more. Your conscious mind is about 12 percent, with a filter of your critical mind between your conscious and your subconscious. When in a state of hypnosis, you can break through the filter of your critical mind to use the power of your subconscious, bringing it into your conscious awareness, so that YOU have more control over your thoughts, habits, actions, feelings, and perceptions. 

 

Our subconscious stores everything that has ever happened to us, ever been said to us, ever been perceived as part of our experience. We’re storing everything in our subconscious – and that’s what often gets in the way of changes we want to make, changes we know we should make, to be more productive, or have more satisfying relationships, or to stop smoking, to lose weight, to lose habits and beliefs that we would consciously like to replace with something more constructive. 

 

For a free 15-minute telephone consultation, please call me at 580-922-5430. 

 

For more information, please look at the links below: 

 

An easy-to-read overview:

https://www.thehealthy.com/alternative-medicine/hypnotherapy-actually-works-try/

 

From Brain Sci., January 2022 - a survey of studies documenting brain activity under hypnosis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8773773/ (Published online 2022 Jan 13. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12010108)

From Parade Magazine, March 2022 - light, but thorough: https://parade.com/1138441/julia-savacool/hypnotherapy-benefits/