This article was written by Lance Garland, a hypnotherapist with over 10 years’ experience treating a wide range of clinical issues.  The techniques used in his practice are influenced from training in Solutions-Oriented Ericksonian Hypnotherapy through NICABM and in traditional Authoritarian/Direct and Rapid-Induction Hypnotism from the National Guild of Hypnotists.

When hypnosis is performed for the purpose of counseling or medicine it is known as Hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy can speed-up the process of therapy and deepen the effectiveness of the treatment. A hypnotic trance creates an opportunity for us to access and integrate our natural, but often unrealized, abilities.  These innate and acquired resources allow us to heal our Body/Mind, transform our relationships, and even promote the evolution of our soul.  

 During a state of hypnosis, an individual can affect the involuntary and automatic process of their physical bodies, which opens up many possibilities to increase their mental and physical health. During hypnosis, humans can make permanent changes to negative emotional and relationship patterns, thought processes, and habits. A hypnotic trance can help someone ignore the perception of chronic pain.  It can also be used to accelerate learning of behaviors, to generate new creative alternatives, access memories of experiences that we have consciously forgotten, and improve performances in sporting events or in the arts.  We can even heal from the events of a major life trauma through the help of hypnosis.

Maybe you are wondering exactly what a state of hypnosis is.  Have you ever been “zoning-out” while driving a car, and then suddenly realized upon arriving at your destination that you did not remembering how you got there? Have you ever been watching a good movie so deeply that you forgot you were sitting in a theater, until someone coughed or spoke?  Has your mind ever been carried-away while exercising or listening to music? Have you ever experienced a deeply relaxing twilight state, being neither awake nor asleep, while resting on a couch? These common experiences, as well as states of hypnosis, are known as trance states.

It is common misperception that hypnosis is some sort of sleep.  An individual’s awareness becomes intensely focused on something in their internal or external environment when entering a hypnotic trance state.  And, scientist do measure a slowing down of human brainwave activity as a physical response to this process of gaining focused attention, but is certainly not a stage of sleep. During this process, sensory information in his or her environments that is unimportant at the time is simply ignored by their awareness.  A trance state becomes hypnosis when the conscious mind becomes progressively disengaged so that more direct communication is possible with centers of the unconscious mind.

The conscious mind, also known as the “social brain”, acts as CEO of the self by making executive analysis and decisions, doing this according to the way it interprets our sensory experience, and observes cultural norms all while being in a normal awaken state of consciousness.  In contrast, the unconscious mind is the storehouse of all of our sensory experiences and cognitive learning, the generator of all our emotions, as well as all of the autonomic/automatic physiological functions of our human body; such as heart rate, blood pressure, food digestion, immune system, muscular relaxation, the functioning of all our endocrine organs. It mostly reacts to the environment inside and outside the human mind/body based on instincts and leanings.  It is the sums total of your genetic endowments and your acquired knowledge, as well as the gateway to your soul.

Why is communication between the minds so important to the process of hypnosis? Many of our “problems” in life are caused from an incongruence or disintegration of our unconscious and conscious minds. The great pioneer of modern hypnotherapy Milton Erickson asserts that the main goal of hypnotherapy being to help one to deepen the rapport with their own unconscious mind. The main reasons for doing hypnotherapy are to gain greater agreement between the conscious and unconscious and greater integration and access to the resources of the unconscious. This communication helps grant us access to our own internal resources and to coordinate access to those resources for our greater creativity and balance.  This leads to problems solving, an expansion in consciousness, and a more harmonious order of the mind.  This allows for physical, mental, emotional and relational healing, and ultimately, personal transformation.

Hypnotherapists use many various methods to help induce a hypnotic trance in their subjects.  Yoga-like breathing techniques, visual imagery, muscular relaxation techniques, eye fixation, listening to rhythmic repetitive drumming or music are some commonly used procedures. Some hypnotherapists employ permissive approaches, like those of Milton Erickson, to facilitate hypnosis by allowing a patient’s unconscious mind to naturally create a hypnotic trance state.  Sometimes they prompt the subject to become highly focused on their bodily processes, reconnecting them with past trance-like experiences, or confuse/overload a subject’s conscious mind in order to facilitate a hypnotic trance. 

Hypnotic subjects report having many different types of physical and sensory experiences while in trance.  And types of those experiences sometimes depend on the depth of trance the subject is in at the time. In lighter states of hypnosis, subjects often report relaxed muscles and highly focused attention with lightness or heaviness in their limbs. In deeper states of hypnosis, an individual is capable of having complete numbness or anesthesia in parts of the body and can experience complete amnesia or forgetting of events and verbal interactions with the therapist.

For centuries hypnotherapy has been an interesting feature of Western psychology and medicine.  Hypnosis was prominently used in the psychotherapy practices of the forefathers of modern western psychology, such as Sigmund Freud and Jean-Martin Charcot, in treatment of the emotional and mental effects of psychological and physical trauma.  The American Medical Association approved hypnotherapy as a legitimate healing method in 1951, and it was widely used in the field of medicine and dentistry for decades in the United States for pain control and other issues related to surgery. Currently a number of different licensed professionals in the mental health and medical fields, such as psychiatrist, counselors, psychologists, social workers and nurse practitioners, that use hypnotherapy in their practices. In the future, hypnotherapy will hopefully lend us assistance in healing and transforming our souls by continuing to discover the potentials of the human Mind. Let hypnotherapy can heal your mind, body and relationships, and transform your life.