Hypnosis is a natural state of mind. It happens to us every day in our waking state. Its that feeling of being between awake and asleep, when we are just about to fall asleep and our mind drifts off into thought, that is hypnosis. When we wake up and we lie there thinking, we are oblivious to what is going on around us. When we go on a car journey and we suddenly realise that we have driven 5 miles without taking in the journey atall and we wonder how we got there. These are all light states of hypnosis. It feels the same when a Therapist guides us into a deeply relaxed state. We just feel at ease and relaxed and calm. We are not asleep, just relaxed and able to open our eyes whenever we want to do so. There are no feelings of being out of contol at anytime. You are awake and aware at all times.

The Therapist is able to guide us into hypnosis by using relaxing words whilst we sit comfortablely. In this deeply relaxed state of mind we are able to be more focused and the Therapist can access the subconscious mind and change harmful thought patterns and behaviours and give suggestions to begin new thought patterns. The subconscious mind accepts the suggestions and creates changes to the mind or body in order to achieve the suggestions given. When in hypnosis the subconscious mind is 88% more alert and aware than when in a conscious state.

The subconscious mind is there to protect us from danger and it does so in many ways but it is also unable to tell the difference between good and bad experiences so it takes them all in and decides which ones to keep. Unfortunately it does make the wrong choices a lot of the time. This is why many of our problems stem from childhood. When we are very young our subconscious mind takes things in that we experience or see, hear or feel. This doesn't mean that they go into our mind as they really are, as a child we may see things totally different to an adult. Lets take the fear of spiders as an example. A three year old child playing on the floor has a spider climb on her leg, her mother screams and brushes it off and picks her up. This child will then see spiders as a terrible danger. Throughout her life she will be afraid of spiders because her subconscious mind tells her they are to be feared. but if you ask her as an adult where that fear started, she most likely wouldn't be able to tell you, she wont remember. This is the same for many things that we experience. Thoughts can become jumbled and mixed up and lead to negative thinking. Hypnosis with Hypnotherapy reprograms the subconscious mind. The Therapist will be able to bypass the conscious mind to talk to the subconscious mind.

So you see using hypnosis and hypnotherapy to change patterns of behaviour for the better is easy because not only is it a natural state of mind to be in but you allow these changes to happen because you want it to work and you believe that it will and it will.