Welcome to my hypnotherapy blog. Please feel free to post questions or feel free to share anything in the message sections.



As a Zen practitioner, my hypnotherapy practice is Zen based and most of what I do with clients supports them to become self-dependent and not therapy dependent. I do this by introducing people to meditation - which is more or less identical to self-hypnosis. In fact, experiments with meditators in the East has proven time and time again, that the way that their brain-waves behave in their meditation is exactly the same as that of a person in a state of hypnosis.



So what is hypnosis?



Many people equate the state of hypnosis with sleep, but it has nothing to do with sleep. A hypnotized subject is not asleep, or dreaming or on “cloud nine”. He/she is simply in a state of mental calmness and experiences a heightened state of awareness, rather than a lower state, as he/she would if he/she were asleep. So when we hear in the old movies of hypnotists saying to their subjects, "Go deep into sleep!" Nothing is really further from the truth. A hypnotised subject is wide awake.



Some (rare) Exceptions to the Rule.



A deep-trance subject - of which only around 4% of people are, may well believe he/she is asleep simply because the hypnotist has suggested to them that this is so. In fact they are awake yet convinced they are asleep, and it is because they are awake that they will carry out suggestions given to them by the hypnotist. However, in my practice, in the field of stress-management and self-development, deep trances, whilst they do occur at times are never exploited and the subject is always instructed to remember everything during the session.



I have induced hypnosis in clients for over 30 years and never once has anybody not known what has happened to them, in fact, some of the less-sensitive clients have not even thought they were hypnotized, but the results of the session have invariably proved otherwise. However, hypnosis is not used to brainwash or control the client in any way. Whilst I wouldn’t say that this is impossible, it would be extremely difficult, as a hypnotized client subject cannot be made to do anything against his will.



I would say that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis and what can be achieved with a hypnotherapist, can be achieved without a hypnotherapist. A hypnotherapist only acts as a guide, who instructs his subject how to use his mind and imagination to enter the trance like state to get the desired changes he/she wants in his/her life. Whilst it may take a little practice, the state of hypnosis can be achieved alone, and is no different to a meditative trance. It can also be achieved by the use of recordings on CD or MP3, but with most people it takes a little discpline and practice.



Another fear that some people have is that they will not be able to “wake up” from a hypnotic trance. But this is not true. The very worst thing that would happen is that the subject would be so relaxed in hypnosis that he/she would drift off into a normal sleep and wake up naturally later on, no different to what he/she would experience when waking after a good night’s sleep.



To learn more about meditation, please click to follow this link, and if you have questions or comments, please feel free to leave them here.



See also my Spiritual Consciousness Blog