When you think of Hypnosis what comes to your mind? Do you think of a performer on stage making people act like animals in front of their friends and family? Or maybe you think of it as some form of mind control where people can persuade you to take unwilling actions. These are some of the common stigmas of Hypnosis. Some people are scared if it, others are intrigued… you may be both. At least, I was when I first started learning about it. However, what I learned when I started to research all of the benefits is that it’s not scary at all. It’s not some sort of witchcraft or pseudoscience or mind control… It’s actually it’s a very simple and practical process.
What is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is a trance-like state that is induced with the intention of replacing limiting patterns of behavior and belief with behaviors and beliefs that empower you and move you towards your goals and desires. In this process you gain access to the subconscious mind – the part of the brain that makes up around 95% of your brain power and stores all
of your beliefs and values. The subconscious mind is the mechanism within us that allows us to make sense of the world and to build our personal story of ourselves and our lives. When we gain control of the subconscious mind, we gain the power to create better realities and become better versions of ourselves.
The power of belief
Before we get into the practical process of how Hypnosis works, first lets explore WHY it works. We’ll start with this concept – Belief creates reality. Maybe you already know this, maybe you think it’s crazy but there is actual science that proves it now. Lets look at the Placebo Effect, a concept that is typically used in the medical field. A placebo is anything that appears to be a “real” medical treatment, but isn’t, according to WebMD. Here’s how it works: researchers take two groups of patients and gives one group a placebo without their knowledge (usually sugar pills) and gives the other group the real medication. Here’s the crazy part: people in the placebo sample will often experience measurable benefits, even though it should have no effect on them at all. Take this study for example…
“‘The Powerful Placebo’ (Pubmed)…showed that across over a dozen clinical trials involving over a thousand people, 35% of patients being treated for an illness with a placebo (usually a sugar pill) instead of an actual medication designed to treat their illness actually felt better and showed measurable signs of improvement.”
The Placebo effect illustrates the power and influence that beliefs have over our bodies. In addition, Quantum physics states that everything is made up of energy. Your body is made up of the same energy that makes up everything else in the Universe. At our very core, we are all just one big field of energy vibrating at different octaves! Pretty trippy right? So what do you do with this information? Well, The Law of Attraction states that the energy you put out into the Universe in the form of thoughts, feelings and beliefs, determines the energy of you get back. Like attracts like. Love attracts love. Feelings of wealth and abundance attract the reality of wealth and abundance. This is how you create a new reality by reshaping your thoughts and beliefs. These patterns of belief and feeling are stored in the subconscious, which can be accessed very simply through the process of Hypnosis. Okay, enough of the esoteric stuff, let’s look at the science behind it now.
How does it work?
In the most common form of Hypnosis, the intention is to get the brain into Alpha state. In deeper forms of Hypnosis we bring the brain into Theta state. There are five Brainwave States: Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and Theta. For more information about each state, check out the graph below.
Image by Muse.
