How Hypnotherapy Helps

By Terry Bienkowski

Lavonne used to doze off in the middle of conversations. These days she sleeps soundly at night and stays alert throughout the day. Robert struggled to quit smoking for years, routinely smoking two to three packs a day. Today, he is a comfortable non-smoker. Linda was plagued with being overweight all of her life. She was so stressed she would grind her teeth at night. Now she’s lost 60 pounds, given her teeth a rest, and is better able to deal with things.

How were all of these people able to make such profound changes in their lives? Through the use of hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis may be defined as a heightened state of awareness. Hypnosis works because it bypasses the beliefs from previous programming. Under the influence of hypnosis, brain wave frequencies slow down as the individual relaxes, so that new information can move into the subconscious. We wake to better understanding of who we really are and can be in our highest human state.

An estimated 12 percent of the human mind is conscious while 88 percent operates below the surface as the subconscious. The subconscious realm is home to all our belief systems and conditioned responses. Whatever we feed it, it takes as fact. The subconscious mind can’t distinguish reality from fantasy, and it moves in only two directions-towards pleasure and away from pain.

Hypnotherapy serves as a way to alter, amend and replace fixed ideas and beliefs. Using guided imagery, or creative visualization, hypnotherapy allows the mind to move into the state where the subconscious resides. It’s similar to the place we go when we’re deep in meditation, prayer and watching a sunset.

When we drive past our highway exit while returning home or find ourselves "reading" pages and taking none of it in, we might call it daydreaming. Actually it is a parallel state of hypnosis, a natural state we dwell in for about 10 out of every 90 minutes.

To understand this better, let’s say an individual decides to start a new diet. That choice was made in the conscious mind. The subconscious reacts by saying "Don’t do this! This is painful!" It works hard to remind pleasurable fattening food is and in the many reasons we mustn’t deprive ourself.

Now we must convince our storming subconscious that a healthy, vibrant body is a much more pleasurable experience than overeating. Here’s where hypnotherapy comes in. A hypnotherapy session will introduce imagery and language that tells the subconscious that eating well and exercising is the new belief structure and that it is safe and beneficial.

The same method applies to smoking. Our intent is to convince the subconscious that we are a comfortable non-smoker and the only thing we will replace smoking with is good health. In reality, people don’t gain weight because they quit smoking. They put on pounds because their subconscious mind is trying to find a replacement in food. Again, hypnotherapy introduces new language and paradigms to our subconscious, reassuring it that smoking is no longer a core belief and excessive eating is not a replacement.

Most people have a stereotypical image of hypnotherapy, of an old man in a three-piece suit waving a pocket watch in front of our eyes intoning, "You are sleepy…very sleepy." On the contrary, today’s hypnotherapy practitioners use a range of techniques to move clients into a relaxed state in order to access their subconscious. Safe and comfortable surroundings free thought to follow the powerful suggestions that we can achieve our goals and desires.

All of are called on to rise above tragedies in our life and overcome self-defeating behavior patterns. In my work with clients, I’ve seen how through the power of the mind we can each achieve and become anything we really want to be.

Originally published in Natural Awakenings West Michigan October 2006 Environment issue.