What Exactly is Hypnosis Anyway?

Like many others, my knowledge of hypnosis was limited to what I had seen in movies or at those entertaining stage shows where the hypnotist gets people to act like animals. But after learning more about it, my perspective shifted drastically.

I can't pinpoint exactly when I first became aware of hypnosis as a 'real' modality of change. However, during my recent years of study, I was introduced to its true potential and witnessed how it can effectively aid in overcoming the obstacles we encounter daily.

Hypnosis is "…a shift in attention, during which you are not as aware of things around you," explains David Spiegel, M.D., medical director of the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine in Palo Alto, California. Instead, we become more aware of what is inside of us.

Hypnosis is a perfectly natural state that we all go in and out of many times throughout our day. Whenever you "zone out" or become hyper-focused on a particular task, you are essentially in a state of hypnosis. When you go into a movie theater, sit down, and become engrossed in the movie on the screen while sitting in the dark, with surround sound, you enter into a state of hypnosis. If you have ever driven home from work and don't remember exactly how you got there, you were in a type of hypnosis.

While in hypnosis, our brain waves slow down, and we have more access to our subconscious mind. Depending on the research, our subconscious mind makes up between approximately 88% and 95% of our brain space. Either way that is a lot of space! This means that we may not be aware of the motivation behind a lot of what we do.

The sort of 'messages' that live in our subconscious minds determines much of how we interact with the world around us. Many of these messages were developed while we were young, between 0 and 8-10 years of age. Some of these messages may be healthy and positive, while others may be unhealthy and negative. Some serve us well, while others harm our health and well-being.

Hypnosis helps us access our subconscious mind so we can change the messages (knowns) in our subconscious. We can change negatives to positives so they will better serve us in our current life. For instance, when we were young or at some other time in our life, we may have learned or made the connection that chocolate cake = feeling good (positive association). As we age, we discover chocolate cake may be unhealthy (negative association). So we, in our conscious logical mind (which makes up 12% to 5% of our brain space), decided we would not eat chocolate cake anymore and would replace it with healthier foods.

These two messages conflict with each other, and the sub-conscious mind will usually when the fight. This is why sometimes, even with all our efforts, changing a habit just doesn't work.

Hypnosis allows us to bypass the critical mind, which acts as a filter between the conscious and subconscious minds, and change the messages in the subconscious mind so we can make the changes we desire in our lives.

The act of bypassing the critical mind is what enables hypnosis to facilitate faster change compared to some other therapeutic methods.