What is Hypnotherapy?

Hypnosis has been practised for thousands of years; it is probably one of the oldest complementary therapies around. It is also a natural state that we have all experienced in our daily lives almost without noticing. How often have you driven along a familiar road and then asked yourself, at your destination, “How did I get here? I don’t remember driving along the route!” You seemed to have tuned into your own internal world, and yet you would have been perfectly alert to deal with any situation which demanded your immediate attention. That’s a kind of hypnosis, and it’s not that different from when you enter a trance state in a hypnotherapy session, whether guided by a hypnotherapist, or using self-hypnosis.

How does Hypnotherapy work?

Hypnotherapy is a pleasant, gentle and non-invasive way for you to succeed with a particular challenge which you haven’t resolved by will-power and determination alone. Hypnotherapy works because you are dealing with your problem by acknowledging the power of your sub-conscious, and inviting its co-operation in working with you. So often our sub-conscious minds will undermine our conscious efforts because they have a logic of their own; for instance, if you were brought up to clean your plate because food was not plentiful, then there might be a deep conditioning to eat all you can. Our subconscious may need gently informing that our health is better served now by losing some pounds!

And the way to access that part of our awareness is through hypnosis. Please don’t confuse stage hypnotism, whose intention is just to entertain, with hypnotherapy, whose purpose is to allow us to connect to our deeper resources, to enable us to live fully the life we most dearly want. With hypnosis, you remain in control – the hypnotherapist can’t make you do anything you do not want to do. Through profound relaxation, you will experience an altered state of consciousness, an alertness to what drives you, with your chattering conscious mind temporarily muted.

How can Hypnotherapy help me?

Hypnotherapy releases the potential in us to alter how we react to stress, to achieve goals, to reframe past experiences beneficially, to rid ourselves of fears and phobias, to change habits which have dominated us, to control pain in diagnosed conditions, to improve confidence and motivation – fundamentally, hypnosis empowers us to inhabit the lives we desire. And that, in the end, is the main condition for hypnotherapy to work – you have really got to want to do it! It’s your call.