What Is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis has been recorded as early as the time of the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks. It was known to Hippocrates, who has been called the 'father' of medicine. In fact, hypnosis is named after the Greek word hypnos meaning 'sleep'. But hypnosis does not induce sleep as we understand it when we go to bed at night.

The best way to think of hypnosis is as a state of deep relaxation and focus. The conscious mind becomes detached from everyday worries. This state is known as Trance.

Hypnotic trance is a natural and normal state of mind. The ability to go into hypnosis naturally is part of human behaviour. Daydreaming is a type of hypnotic trance. And if you are a car driver, how often have you arrived at your destination without conscious memory of the journey you have just taken? We often refer to this as being on 'automatic pilot'. We have actually been in a trance state. But we snap out of it and react immediately should anything untoward happen.

Clinical Hypnotherapy

So how does clinical hypnotherapy work?

To answer that question we first have to think about the human mind.

It is accepted that the human mind is made up of many layers. For simplicity

we can think of it as the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.