What is Hypnosis?
People often wonder about what hypnosis is and, more importantly, how it can help them in achieving their goals whether they be weight loss, smoking cessation, pain management or whatever.
Hypnosis is a perfectly natural state that people can move in to and out of several times a day; in fact, whenever you find yourself existing between two different mental or emotional states you are in hypnosis. For instance, individuals who are dealing with chronic pain while simultaneously having to move through their day, working at their job, attending school, they are in hypnosis.
Similarly, people who are dealing with the pain of a relationship loss, whether through death or another reason and who continue to put on a brave face and “carry on,” are in hypnosis. And, children, existing at the same time in their imaginary world and this can be considered in hypnosis. That is why it is easy to place children in a trance state just by telling them a fanciful story.
So, when a hypnotherapist offers to assist you in entering a trance state, he or she is not asking you to “go” anywhere you haven’t been before but is instead just helping you to become more receptive to the positive suggestions they will be giving you.
Most importantly, the hypnotic relationship is based on an agreement between you and the hypnotist, an agreement that you will allow yourself to be placed into a trance state by them and that they will ensure that they will provide you with only positive, helpful suggestions thereby enabling you to bring about the changes you desire.
Cluck like a Chicken!
Perhaps you’ve been to a stage show of hypnosis where you’ve seen the hypnotist tell the person on stage to “cluck like a chicken” or “Quack like a duck!” and the person does and you think, I’m not going to let myself be hypnotized, no one’s going to get me to do that!
But, you see, the difference is that that’s a stage show and the agreement there is quite different, quite broad. The person who’s come up on stage knows that the hypnotist might get them to do some pretty outlandish things but they agree because they know that this is a stage show and that’s what I’m here to do.
But if you go into a hypnotherapist’s office, for instance, seeking their help with quitting smoking and they asked you to cluck like a chicken you wouldn’t do it because that’s not the agreement you have with the therapist. You’re there to stop smoking and any suggestions made by the hypnotherapist outside of those parameters won’t be acted upon by you. You just won’t do it. You won’t do anything while in hypnosis that you have not already agreed to going in and which may be against your best interest.
