Hypnosis is as old as the Hills.

Sometimes thought of as Parlour Tricks or an amusement, for many it has also always been a useful tool for bringing about personal change.

 

In the 1950's, hypnotherapy was first recognised as a 'legitimate' form of treatment by the American Medical Association (A.M.A) as a result of the testimony of Dr Milton Ericson, one of the greatest hypnotists of all time.

Since then, Hypnosis has been undergoing some very stringent scientific research and analysis.

There is now sufficient scientific data to prove that Hypnosis is effective in an almost limitless number of areas.

I've used hypnosis personally with clients for a number of conditions', including removing a phobia of needles, overcoming Anorexia, ending long term depression, setting life changing (and achieved) goals, and on myself to completely heal a 'medically unrecoverable injury'.

The scope of hypnosis, in my opinion, is limitless.

Please use this article to answer all and any questions you may have as to how exactly you personally can and will benefit from properly used hypnosis.

Hypnosis

In Europe and the Middle east in the middle ages, hynotistism was the same as witchcraft. Indeed that is still in many third world and orthodox communities today,

In the last 100 years in the Western World, Hypnotists have moved from being regarded as as charlatans through to stage entertainment and finally into main stream medicine.

So much so that today's hynotist could as easily be a university researcher as a psychologist, a physician, nurse or therapist. A hypnotist could be just as likely be found employed as a personal trainer at your local gym as in your local hospital in a psychiatric or trauma unit. Indeed, in Louisiana, a hynpnotist is permanently deployed in the emergency room. Hypnosis is also used by Law Enforcement Agencies in helping to retrieve greater detail from the memories of witnesses.

Today, hypnosis is being recognised more and more as a very powerful therapeutic tool. It is also known to be a very pleasant and calming experience, especially when using it to bring about changes in yourself.

Why Would I Want to Be Hypnotized?

Hypnosis, with your willing consent, can change your beliefs about yourself. 'From Zero to Hero', from smoker to ex-smoker, from shy to confident, from unfocused to focused - you get the idea.

Hypnosis can get round that part of you that resists making the changes you desire in your life.

Where willpower and determination may get you there in the end - if you persevere - Hynosis can take the effort away by making the change at a deeper level of your mind. This can simply make the porcess of change automatic.

Where you used to try and control your temper you now find yourself calm and detached, or instead of getting nervous about a big presentation you now get excited and focused.

Instead of thinking about exercise you actually do it, and enjoy doing it. Finding yourself remembering things you used to forget - birthdays, anniversarys, business meetings, names, places, facts.

How many areas of your life, right now, can you imagine benefiting from effortlessly replacing how you think you are with how you want to be? How many ways could your loved ones benefit?

Hypnosis Can Help You Have Better Health

For certain health, emotional and mental problems, Hypnosis is often the therapy of choice. This may be because it involves simply relaxing and talking/listening.

Amongst the benefits are that there is nothing inserted into you (non-invasive) and the only changes to your blood chemistry are self generated (No drugs and no side effcts).

Also, because of its nature, normally very few sessions are needed to bring about the desired change, making it also very economical (cheap) compared to the more traditional methods.

Hypnosis also can be used as much for prevention as for cure, we all know a stitch in time saves nine, now many Health-Maintenence and Managed Care organisations are using hypnosis as the first form of treatment, not the last.

Hynosis is seen by many as a 'mind/body' medicine, that is by the use of carefully structured comments and questions made by the Hypnotist whilst the client is in a state of Hypnosis (hypnotic suggestions), physical changes (healings) occur in the body.

These could be from your dentist, causing you to become insensitive to pain during Dental work, removing the need for anaesthetic drugs, or from your masseur, causing you to relax muscles completely, or from your 'therapist' causing you to start eating healthily or fall asleep more easily or wake up in better mood.

Probably the most common reasons I'm ask to help as a hypnotherapist are in connection with stopping smoking/overeating/excessive drinking and for gaining confidence/self esteem. For some of my collegues its nail-biting (for some reason I've yet to have a nail-bite as a client) and improved performance in specific sports.

Sports enhancement is now almost a field (sorry about the pun) in its own right. I doubt you will find many in the top of any sporting discipline who do not enhance their training with the help of a sports hypnotherist/coach.

To quote from Dr. Gerard Sunnen of the New York University School of Medicine, hynotherapy is "the most potent nonpharmacological relaxing agent known to science." In fact, he now prescribes Hynotherapy before he will prescribe tranquilisers!!

Clinical Hypnosis is used to alter specific thought patterns, to regulate your behaviour and to use your mind to control your body. It is fast moving from a very underutilised therapeutic tool to becoming a normal part of therapeutic intervention.
Hypnosis is often the treatment of choice for certain health and emotional problems because it is noninvasive (nothing gets inserted into your body), it is not a drug therefore no side effects), and it is relatively inexpensive because one or two sessions can usually do the trick.

Health-maintenance organizations and other managed-care groups are finally getting the idea that hypnosis should be the first treatment to try, not the last.

What Exactly Is Hypnosis, Anyway?

Thats a very good question with as many answers as researchers. It is agreed that when under hypnosis, suggestion seems to have far greater impact than under normal wakefulness.

It is agreed that it is often accompanied by changes in respiration, muscle tone, brain and blood chemistry.

It is usually associated with a state of deep relaxation, although states of extreme alertness and action are often also deeply hypnotic.

It is also almost universally agreed to be enjoyable.

As to what it is exactly, no one knows. It is however a subject of many scientific studies being carried out by scientists of many disciplines in many countries of the world.

So far, I can only tell you what it is not.

Hypnosis Is Not Psychotherapy

Hypnosis is a technique - it is not a therapy. Hypnotherapy is regarded by many as psychotherapy that uses hypnosis as part of its treatment. It uses hypnosis to uncover events from your past that may be influencing your present thoughts. Hypnosis is not hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis Is Not Relaxation

As stated above, being relaxed is not essential to being hynotised. Most clients, in my experience, prefer to become relaxed and comfortable during our sessions. Occassionally for me (and more frequently for my sports hypnotherapist collegues) a client will prefer to stay 'upbeat' throughout the session. In those cases the nature of the 'hypnotic suggestions' may remain the same, the style of delivery will be different, more about fun and excitement that about relaxing deeply .

 

Hypnosis Is Not Sleep

Many years ago hynosis was thought to be a form of wakeful sleep, indeed the word Hynosis comes from the Greek Hypnos meaning sleep.

In fact, though there are similarities, sleep and hypnosis are very different, as the chart below illustrates.

Sleep is the ending of conscious awareness of your surroundings - you drift off.

Hynosis is the concentrating of your awareness into a very specific area. This concentration can require the closing of your eyes, becoming very still and the ignoring of many external distractions. To the outside world you may appear to be asleep, but to yourself you are fully absorbed in the object of your focus.

Various forms of brain scans have been conducted of hypnotic subjects (people being hynotised). Positron Emmision Tomography (PET) scans for example, have shown some very specific patterns of brain activity occur when subjects are hypnotised.

The advent of the electroencephalograph (EEG Machine) has shown us that there is large amounts of electrical activity in the brain, Studies have shown that hynosis can have a dirct effect of that activity.

 

Hypnosis Is a Tool

Though we may not understand exactly HOW hynosis works, we do have a very good understanding of what it can do. Some say Hypnosis can be likened to a surgeon's scalpel. Used well it can perform the most amazing operations, used badly it can kill you.

I say I have NEVER heard of anyone being killed through hypnosis.

I also say that the effectiveness of any hypnotic intervention is only as good as the hypnotist. This is true as much for pre-recorded hypnotic sessions as it is for one-on-one or group sessions with a Hypnotist.

 

Can I Be Hypnotized?

Simple answer - YES.

As the world's greatest hynotherapist Milton Ericson said, he hypnotised everyone he ever met. Some took seconds, some took over 300 hours and some he was still working on.

Some are convinced they can't be hypnotised because they are a control freak or too stubborn of have too strong a mind.

The better question may be "Am I willing to trust the hypnotist?"

If you are then all the above reasons work to your advantage in giving you much deeper and more profound changes.

At the risk of upsetting you, I believe every adult has been hynotised at least once (and probably many, many more times) already.

Ever read a book and 'seen' the pictures described? Ever 'heard' the characters conversations in you head?

Ever been so absorbed (watching TV or reading or thinking) you didn't notice someone repeatedly attempting to gain your attention?

Ever driven somewhere familiar and had no memory of the actual drive?

Been doing a piece of work or playing a game for what seemed like 20 minutes only to find several hours had passed?

Looked up to find someone had arrived without you noticing?

If the answer to any of the above is 'Yes', you were totally absorbed in a world inside your head - and that is Hypnosis. Two common indications of being hypnotised are time distortion and intense concentration.

If you are avidly watching your favourite sport on the TV, you can easily lose track of time and mentally shut off external distractions - i.e. enter a state of hypnosis - whilst being energetic and active - leaping up to cheer etc.

In essence, hypnosis is when you narrow your awareness down to the exclusion of all else. When Hynotised, carefully worded suggestions can have a deep impact on your beliefs and behaviours. Sad to say this is played on by advertisers - and if you don't believe me - stop reading this right now and have look in your fridge/pantry - how many brand name products do you find? And how many unbranded/unadvertised products.

In the same way, if your hypnotists/hynotherapists voice is the object of your concentrated focus, the changes can be phenonenally beneficial and life altering.

A hynotists/hypnotherapist job has several parts, establishing a relationship with you where you now 'trust' the hypnotist enough to follow their instuctions. Assisting you in entering a state of intense yet effortless concentration, shaping and phrasing the appropriate 'hypnotic suggestions' and delivering them to you in way that best fits into your existing belief structure.

There is also covert or misdirection hypnosis, where someone else present, other than the actual client becomes hypnotised. This usually occurs because the other person is so absorbed in what's happening to the client they get 'drawn into' the narrow focus of concentration the hypnotist is creating with the client.

When my last child was being born, we had a home delivery. Present was the birthing assistant and a helper. Prior to the delivery I had done several hypnotic sessions with my wife where I had planted some 'post hypnotic suggestions' (a suggestion that on receiving a specific signal a specific course of action would follow) to the effect that she would take a deep calming breath, relax and dramatically lower her experience of pain.

When it became time to activate those suggestions I decided to enhance them with hypnotic voice tones and language. When I saw my wife had relaxed and was free from pain I turned round to find both the other women had dropped off into a deep trance and it was necessary for me to rouse them back into wakefulness.

You may have noticed that whenever Stage Hypnotists appear on out TV's, we are never shown the whole process of hypnotising the audience participants. This is partially as a result of an episode of a popular TV program shown many years ago.

The program concerned was Marcus Welby, M.D., starring Robert Young as the Doctor. The episode concerned had includd a scene where the good doctor had hypnotised a patient during her medical treatment. When the episode ended, the switchboard of NBC (the TV channel that showed the program) was inundated with calls from anxious viewers. "Help, My husband is stuck in a trance", "What should I do, my daughter is on the couch starring at the television screen?" where typical of the calls coming in from alarmed viewers. In fact, all the callers had to do was to gently nudge the person concerned and tell them to "wake up now" or "time to open your eyes" or any suggestion or comment to the effect of becoming alert now.

With hindsight, the simple inclusion in the episode of a suggestion from the Doctor to the Patient "time to wake up now" or similar, would have woken from trance all those easily influenced viewers.

It was only the mystique that used to surround Hypnotism that made the people call the TV station rather than just saying "Oi, wakey wakey"

 

If you don't want to take my word for it - and I suggest you don't - the simplest way to find out is to simply follow the links below to our extensive range of downloadable CD's and MP3's.

Remember, you react differently to different voices and speeds of speech. Some peoples voices will work more easily for you than others, so experiment.

Also, hypnosis is like anything else, the more you practise, the better you get. Some people hear their first hynotic tape and are almost instantly hypnotised, others can take several listening before they either allow themselves to become hypnotised or fully understand the instructions they are meant to follow.

The ability to be hypnotised/hypnotise yourself is an aptitude in and of itself. Some are born with an ability to enter trance quickly and easily, some need guidance before they learn how to enter trance for themselves.

Either way, the more you enter a trance state deliberately and for a specific purpose the easier and more powerful the changes you can bring about in your life.

There's only one way to find out, and that's to try.

Download one of our mp3 from our shop.