What actually is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a particularly relaxing state of mind, similar to daydreaming.
It is not sleep, mind control or anything other than a method of using your imagination to change unconscious niggles or processes.
Under one name or another Hypnosis has been with us for thousands of years, but was really only picked up by the Medical profession in the early 19th Century as a way of scientifically explaining why alternative therapies seemed to be having success.
At the time, rightly or wrongly, it was decided that patients undergoing alternative therapies such as acupuncture and “energy” healing were achieving success through the power of their own imagination, and many Doctors set out to de-bunk these alternative therapies by achieving the same success with Hypnotic Suggestion.
At the time Hypnosis was expected to be used as an anaesthetic and many Doctors began experimenting with it, in Europe and in Asia.
As the process of Hypnosis was really still in it’s infancy, it often took a long time to induce it in patients and the advent of chemical anaesthetics, which had almost instant anaesthetic qualities, put Hypnosis on the shelf for many years.
To the annoyance of many modern Hypnotherapists, the main reason that Hypnosis survived was it’s promotion on the stage.
Although this rarely contains very much Hypnosis, and for the most part of the show volunteers are well out of hypnosis and are usually playing along for fun, it still kept Hypnosis in the public’s imagination.
Genuine Hypnosis cannot make anyone do anything they do not want to do, you will still be wide awake and listening to everything your therapist will suggest, all Hypnosis can do is slow down the part of your mind that controls logic and allow the automatic functions of the mind to listen easier and learn new behaviours or attitudes.
Your session with your therapist is likely to be about an hour, in which there will be information gathering or counselling if necessary, followed by intervention work based around what you had been talking about.
There are numerous different techniques available to your therapist and all therapists on this register will be highly qualified and can utilise many tools, some may involve talking about the past, some may involve talking about the future and your therapist will likely be mixing different methods to obtain the best results, but will talk through the options with you and will only take you through therapy the way that YOU want it to be taken.
Hypnotherapy is a done WITH process not a done TO process.