About Hypnosis
WHAT IS HYPNOSIS?
- Purposeful focused attention
- Attainment of a heightened state of suggestibility
- Ability to bypass the critical factor
- Establishment of new acceptable selective thinking
- Resulting in a desired behavioral change
HYPNOSIS IS NOT…
- Sleep
- Mind control
- VooDoo
- Magic
- The hypnotist cannot make you do anything that you would not do when out of hypnosis
HOW THE MIND WORKS
Conscious Mind – Our point of focus. Can easily be refocused on the past and the imagined future. The client agrees to be hypnotized. He sits in the hypnosis chair and closes his eyes. The client focuses on the hypnotist’s voice and chooses to follow the hypnotist’s directions.
Unconscious Mind – Our body’s consciousness. While in hypnosis, the client’s unconscious mind responds to the hypnotist’s suggestions through the Autonomic Nervous System. “What the mind wants, the body will do.” The client enters a heightened state of suggestibility
Critical Factor – Operates as a filtering mechanism. It compares the client’s new information in the conscious mind to old perceptions held in the unconscious and subconscious. Hypnosis disables the critical factor.
Subconscious Mind – Our personality. It is our own never-ending personal library where our permanent memories are kept. Once new information is accepted into a client’s subconscious and unconscious mind, that new information replaces the old misperceptions and a desired behavioral change occurs.
WHO CAN BE HYPNOTIZED?
Anyone of normal intelligence, without significant mental illness, who can follow directions and who wants to be hypnotized, can be hypnotized.