What is hypnosis? What is hypnotherapy?

Over the years I have been in practice, when I have suggested that a patient may want to explore hypnosis as part of their therapy, I have been met with a range of responses, many of which have their origin in misunderstandings about hypnosis that exist, perhaps in large part due to images presented in the media, and ‘stage hypnosis.’

What hypnosis is not…
Hypnosis is not magic.  Hypnosis is not a state where a hypnotist can “make you do something you don’t want to do.”  On the contrary…

What hypnosis is…

Hypnosis, used therapeutically, as in hypnotherapy, is a process wherein a person is guided into inner states of being that allow for access to deeper parts of themselves - parts that in our conscious, waking state, are often kept underground.  This is often thought of as our subconscious or unconscious mind.

There is an understanding that much of how we are in the world, our patterns of behavior, our likes and dislikes, the underlying reasons we may feel stuck or misaligned, have root causes in our subconscious mind.  

Through hypnotherapy, a patient is guided into a trance-like state (which can sometimes feel like being deep in meditation, or being “lost” in a great movie), where the physical body drops into deep relaxation, what is known as the “critical factor of the mind” is temporarily placed in the background, so that the deeper layers of mind come to center stage.  In this state, there is focused awareness (easier to “tune out” other things), heightened access to the unconscious and to the imaginal capacities of the mind, to metaphors, images, symbols, connections, archetypes, and stories.  This opens up a much greater state of suggestibility, where deeper impulses towards authenticity and healing may be suggested and reinforced. 

In hypnotherapy, contents from the unconscious may be lifted to awareness, which often in and of itself bring about healing understandings, and during the process, messages that have been determined by the patient, can be communicated to the unconscious.  For example, if someone is struggling with an addiction to sugar, and through the process it is revealed that the want for sugar is really a want for connection and sensory pleasure, then the patient may communicate with the unconscious, willing to find other ways to seek out and fulfill the longing for connection and sensory pleasure, and may explore in hypnosis, what that might be…. Having identified and made a commitment to experiment with this other form of fulfillment, the compulsion for sugar may simply dissolve.  That is one possible approach.  Another approach may be to simply have the patient imagine how they will feel, ultimately, when they are no longer held under the grip of the addiction, how energetic and grounded, how unhooked and free, and to see themselves in that state, noticing the details, accessing the feeling state of that place, over and over.  The process might involve identifying ‘replacement’ behaviors - e.g., noticing how a cup of herbal tea satiates the desire for a treat late at night, or how looking at apples replaces the feeling that was previously occupied by looking at cookies.  There are many ways to approach the process - including direct suggestions, and including a deeper dive into exploring the underlying causative factors, or what it may represent.  Typically some combination of these approaches is most effective.  This is just one example of how an issue might be addressed in hypnotherapy.  The possibilities are as vast and creative as our human minds are…..

The Buddhist teacher and clinical psychologist Tara Brach, Ph.D., has written extensively about what she calls a “trance of unworthiness” that many of us walk around life with.  There are many other “trances” that we walk around life with, that bring about tremendous suffering.  Anxiety is a powerful trance state!  It can be so gripping that it is the only thing you are focused on; it can determine what you do and don’t do in life — talk about a powerful unhelpful trance!  In hypnotherapy, on the other hand, we access these states of mind willingly, and with a therapeutic intention, part of which is to undo these unhelpful ‘trances’ and limited and limiting belief systems, and find what is underneath them, above them - what is beyond them.

Hypnosis can also be used very powerfully, medically, for:

• Reducing and transforming chronic and acute pain

• Supporting women before and during childbirth

• Opening up the mind to see greater possibilities beyond a medical diagnosis or physical sensation or limitation that may otherwise seem to box us in.

Hypnosis opens up a vast and expansive state of being, where possibilities far beyond the conscious mind’s reach, can be accessed….

The techniques used in hypnotherapy can range from the more classical and direct approach, facilitating the patient to enter into trance-like states, to the indirect hypnosis popularized by the late great Dr. Milton Erickson, who brilliantly incorporated hypnotic suggestions - in the form of metaphors, stories, jokes, use of body language - into conversation, in order to facilitate the healing process.