More Complementary Health Articles
Your Mind and Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy, a method of using hypnosis as a therapeutic process, thought to date back thousands of years to ancient India for cures using yoga nidra or temple sleep and continues thru to today into complementary and alternative medicine.
Despite its portrayal in stage performances, movies and literature, studies show hypnosis has no connection to sleep, it is more the result of motivation, suggestion and a direct connection to the mind as confirmed by the relatively new field of neuroscience.
Hypnotherapy can be useful for unwanted habits or learned behaviors, found significantly in smoking, alcohol use disorder, weight management, stress, insomnia, self confidence, anxiety, and a wide variety of phobias such as fear of flying.
A first hypnotherapy session involves a discussion with the client to determine the changes they seek, and a very simple explanation of the mind-body connection, then the hypnosis, comparable to a deeply relaxing guided meditation.
Simply, we are all one body, one brain, and one mind. The brain has two parts, right and left connected together and can each function the same but the function is prioritized by the mind. The mind also has two parts, the unconscious, associated with the right side of the brain, and the conscious to the left side.
Mind runs the body. The brain gets sensory information at a rate of about eleven million bits a second, processed by the unconscious and about sixteen to fifty bits per second that are processed by the conscious mind.
The unconscious never sleeps, it breathes for us; it’s your heartbeat, and survival systems. It learns everything, and takes it over so you don’t have to think about it. It’s all your habits. A few words associated with its function are: feelings, emotions, imagery, imagination, and intuition.
The conscious mind can focus on about seven things at a time for almost fifteen seconds between a constant flow of thoughts of past and future. Its functional vocabulary is: analysis, reasoning, judgment, and decisions.
The conscious mind tells the unconscious mind what to do, takes it over and does it for you so you don’t have to think about it.
The fact that the client made a conscious, logical, reasoned decision to change an unwanted behavior the unconscious mind, responsible for your survival would make that change, from suggestions given during deep relaxation while the conscious mind drifts in and out.
