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How does Hypnosis work?

During hypnosis, our mind's critical faculty is bypassed which makes us more receptive to any suggestions and allows us to accept them more freely. For example, if I were to tell you now that you are a calm, confident and sparkling speaker who could easily do a surprise presentation to 200 people tonight, you may be forgiven for being somewhat skeptical, unless of course you do public speaking for a living! This is because your critical faculty responds to my suggestion with thoughts like "But I am terrified of standing in front of a group!" or "Remember your show and tell session that went so horribly wrong in grade school?".

If I were to hypnotize you and tell you the same thing, adding some post hypnotic suggestions, it would be a different story however.  Under hypnosis, the critical faculty is not allowed to make any input and your subconscious mind accepts the suggestion that you are fully capable of making the presentation successfully. As a result, any anxiety or reservations that you would normally experience when faced with such a challenge, is eliminated which exponentially increases your chance of success.

It is exactly this phenomenon which makes hypnosis such a powerful tool for positive personal change. It allows us to change our personal beliefs, especially those self limiting ones that make us feel that we are not good enough to achieve our goals or become successful. When we change our beliefs about ourselves at such a basic level, it enables us to do so much more than we thought possible. Instead of that inner voice telling us that we would never be able to manage that or be able to play such a complicated musical instrument, our subconscious simply accepts the fact that we have the ability and skills we need to achieve whatever we set out to do. This makes our task so much easier as we don't first have to overcome all our self doubt and can simply get on with the task on hand.

Entering the hypnotic state is achieved by attaining both physical and mental relaxation, this former often acting as a precursor to the latter. As we become aware of our bodies and physical sensations of muscles relaxing and deep breathing, we can easily lead our minds into a calm and quite mental space in which we can focus clearly and easily.

Hypnosis is a basic and structured process which is easy to follow once you become familiar with it. After determining your level of suggestibility, an induction is performed. This is followed by one or more deepening techniques before post hypnotic suggestions are offered to the subconscious to encourage behavior or belief modification. The final stage is the awakening during which the subject is brought back to the normal level of awareness.

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