Hypnosis!
by Michael McGrath
"You are getting sleepy" is a phrase that is now synonymous with self hypnosis. It conjures up images of a white bearded man with an Austrian accent waving a pendulum or, perhaps, an image of a studio audience strutting around a stage ‘clucking’ in the total belief that they are chickens. Both of these conceptions about hypnosis give the impression that it can be used to totally control your mind and make you do things you may regret. This is not true! There is no one who can hypnotize you or use it to control your thoughts or actions against your will. You must give your permission and surrender to the process during hypnosis because all hypnosis is self hypnosis.
How hypnosis works is still a bit of a mystery as research into the human mind is still in its relative infancy. In the large scale of medical science the workings of the human mind have only been investigated relatively recently. However, scientific research has uncovered many amazing things about the mind not least of which is that your mental processes, thoughts and beliefs are connected and effected by your emotional experiences which in turn affect the your health and quality of life experiences.
A huge percentage of the medical establishment now admit that 90% of illness begins in the mind and that our emotions and mental processes have a huge affect on our bodies.
This is due mainly to that fact that the human brain is the center and focal point of an extremely complex nervous system. It is itself made up of a huge intertwining combination of sophisticated neural networks. There are also networks of cells and nerves which are weaved through the body and which are in direct contact, via electrical signals, to the brain. Theses electrical signals travel along huge internal highways at incredibly high speeds and even jump across gaps between cells. They are used by the brain to receive or send information and instructions.
The mind has two parts which are most commonly known as the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is responsible for organizing and filtering our outer experiences. It is the decision maker and has the ability to make choices. It is the filter with which we experience reality. However, many of our decisions are made unconsciously without any real thought or consideration and come from patterns stored in the subconscious mind.
The subconscious is very an extremely powerful mechanism that we still don’t know everything about. The closest analogy we have is to that of a computer system. It serves as a memory bank which can store an immeasurable amount of data. In certain parts of the brain everything we have ever experienced is stored by inter connected nerve cells which make up networks. When similar situations occur in our lives these networks and cells are activated to feed back our memory patterns to the conscious mind, taking the form of thoughts and feelings. Nothing in this vast data bank is ever erased but it can be altered if the subconscious mind is given the correct command.
The subconscious mind also controls and fully regulates the internal functions of the body such as blood circulation, breathing, metabolic rate, digestion and the thousand of other functions we take for granted. Hypnosis has been shown to be a highly effective tool for manipulating these programs running in the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind also regulates our emotions. It is well known and accepted in the medical professions that the emotions have a direct affect on self-image, self-confidence, and the strength and meaning we place on our desires and needs. These emotions have a dramatic affect on all areas of our lives because they tend to affect our behaviour. The great majority of behavioural issues are directly caused by emotional thinking and almost every decision we make is a direct result of our emotions and feelings about a subject or situation.
Hypnosis is used to release these stored emotions, connect new emotions to memories or create new emotional responses to situations.
The subconscious mind is also the seat of the Imagination. Although many people believe they have no imagination this is in fact erroneous. Everyone has very strong imaginative faculties we just use our imagination in different ways.
Some ways hypnosis can change your life:
