The conscious mind is the part of us that thinks, analyses, uses logic, figures things out, calculates etc.  The subconscious mind is the part of us that controls our automatic responses and habits and also controls our bodily functions.   For example, when you cough, what do you do?  Most people put their hand to their mouth.  Why is this?  It’s not because it’s to stop the spread of germs…..how often do we cough into our hand and then shake hands with someone or open a door etc.!  It’s because someone told us to do that over and over when we are young.  And, repetition is one of the main ways to get a behaviour into the subconscious mind.  We can also have a significant event with a very strong feeling, and the subconscious will associate that feeling with other factors.  For example, if when we were young, we saw our friend get hit by a red bus, we may develop a phobia about buses and never want to go on one again.  The subconscious may make the association of the strong feeling of fear and the red bus, or buses in general for example.

Hypnotherapy works by allowing the conscious mind to go into a nice state of relaxation, so that there is more access to the subconscious mind, where the reprogramming and suggestion can take place.  All suggestions given to the subconscious mind during a hypnotherapy session are for the client’s highest and greatest good, and the client is in control at all times.

Hypnotherapy sessions will also include Time-Line Therapy which is a process that allows the client to discover the root cause of a predominantly negative emotion and release it.  The sessions also use various Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques which work hand-in-hand with hypnosis to condition the subconscious mind with positive, empowering patterns of behaviour and thought.

Myths about Hypnotherapy

MYTH: You lose control... 
In fact because you are in a relaxed state, your mind is free of that 24 hour a day "chatter", therefore, you are in more control of your thoughts.

MYTH: Morals, Beliefs and Values are compromised... 
In a hypnotic trance you can not be made to do anything against your will.

MYTH: You Go To Sleep... 
In fact you will hear and remember everything that I say.

MYTH: A Hypnotherapist can make you do anything...
A Hypnotherapist can not make you do anything against your ethics, values, or beliefs.

MYTH: You will not come out of trance...
At most you will move into a natural sleep and wake up feeling energized and refreshed.

MYTH: Only mentally weak or sick people are hypnotizable...
In fact the opposite is true. The capacity to be hypnotized is a statement of relative mental health.

MYTH: Women are more hypnotizable than men...
In fact, the sexes are the same in their trance capacity.

MYTH: Symptom removal means a new symptom... 
In fact, this is not necessarily so. Any number of troubling symptoms, from skin rash to fear of animals, can be successfully treated with the help of hypnosis without the appearance of a substitute symptom. Many symptoms are actually psychological fossils: remnents of earlier emotional times that linger on as habits.

MYTH: Hypnosis is dangerous...
In fact, there is nothing dangerous about hypnosis by itself. If there were, we would certainly know it. We would have to tell ourselves not to slip into another state of consciousness, not to day dream, not to concentrate deeply, not to become totally absorbed in things of compelling interest.