Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness where the subconscious level of the mind is in a state of hyper suggestibility. This altered state of consciousness can be manipulated to bring about immensely beneficial lifestyle changes. During a session, you will be guided to a highly relaxed state of mind. This includes closing the eyes, deep breathing, practicing awareness, and becoming present. It involves guided imagery with dream-like visualizations. Once you've reached hypnosis, we are able to bypass your conscious mind and make targeted suggestions to your subconscious mind. This is important because it is within your subconscious mind that your memories, beliefs and emotions reside. Your conscious mind is the part of your mind that is responsible for logic, reasoning and controls all the actions that you do intentionally. It is our immediate interface with our environment. It is fed by incoming information delivered by our five senses and coupled with responses from the subconscious mind. The conscious mind wants to maintain peace and inner harmony within so therefore it actively avoids anything that may cause inner conflict with our beliefs. The conscious mind may go so far as to edit or alter incoming information, so it sits well with our current feelings. Imagine it this way - the conscious mind often asks the subconscious mind, "how do we feel about this?" Most of the time, the subconscious is helpful and intuitive. But the subconscious can also hold a lot of negative, unhealthy beliefs, feelings, and emotions, influenced by past experiences. Many times, these feelings no longer serve us. Perhaps they were experiences we had as children. As an adult, we should be able to recognize that certain feelings or beliefs are no longer valid. However, these feelings are so deeply rooted in our subconscious that simple, conscious, and rational thinking isn’t enough to modify behavior, no matter how hard we wish it to be so. How we respond to stress, for example, is controlled almost entirely and automatically by the subconscious. If a certain event drives you to be anxious, nervous, angry, or frustrated, that's probably your subconscious mind telling you to feel that way. It's a defense mechanism. Subconscious mind says, "Whoa, wait up. Last time something like this happened, it didn't go so well. Let's be wary." Thus, the subconscious may trigger warning signs such as nausea, lightheadedness, sweating, rapid breathing, increased heart rate, shaking, phobic avoidance.
To explain further, let’s say you had a negative experience with something - say classmates laughed or made fun of you while presenting an oral book report in fourth grade and this was traumatic for you. Your subconscious mind learned to induce fear, panic, and anxiety to protect you from having to endure another similar experience in the future. Over time, these feelings become more imbedded in your mind to the point that they become irrational and perhaps debilitating (i.e., fear of public speaking). Hypnosis empowers you to examine and release these subconscious beliefs. Therein lies the benefit of hypnosis. You can actually build new neural pathways and alter existing ones in order to learn new information, adapt to new experiences, and create new memories. Essentially, you can break bad habits, eliminate negative self-talk, and let go of limiting beliefs that no longer serve you while experiencing the peaceful, yet powerful state of hypnosis.