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Overcoming fears and phobias
Relieving stress and promoting health
Managing pain and other physical symptoms
Improving memory and study skills
Improving athletic performance
Facilitating childbirth
Stopping smoking
Changing habits of diet and exercise for weight control
What Hypnosis Is
Hypnosis is a focused state of mind where one learns to soften one’s connections to the external world and to enter more deeply into one’s own inner experience. We have all probably spontaneously experienced this state when we have become so absorbed in some experience, like reading a book, watching a movie or engaging in a favorite hobby, that we lost track of time, sensation, or external stimuli.
Most participants in hypnosis report a delightful state of relaxed attentiveness in which they are free to explore fully their own ideas, feelings, and learnings. With practice they can learn to utilize their experience to promote change and the achievement of specific goals.
What Hypnosis Is Not
Popular culture and the media’s fascination with hypnosis often have distorted the perception of what hypnosis is. Portrayals of hypnosis as mind control, satanic practice, or supernatural ability, while making for exciting plot lines, are far from the actual truth.
Hypnosis utilizes naturally occurring human abilities. Rather than mind control, it relies on the mutual cooperation of the hypnotist and the subject. No one can be forced into a trance or made to stay in a trance against their will. Nor can the hypnotist make someone do something they do not wish to do — either in trance or out. The job of the hypnotist is to cooperate and to facilitate trance experience so that the participant can achieve his or her desired goals. Control remains in the hands of the subject although the locus of this control shifts to the person’s unconscious mind.
