What is Hypnosis?and What Hypnosis is NOT

What is Hypnosis?

For anyone concerned that this is a report designed to teach 

readers how to convince crowds of people to act like chickens or 

dance to an unheard song just with a carefully placed keyword -  

relax. While hypnosis is often paraded in that form with large 

crowds visiting celebrity hypnosis experts to see what wonders 

they can perform, the majority of hypnosis used is to aid people 

seeking a solution to a problem they cannot resolve easily with 

any other method. 

 

What Hypnosis is NOT 

 

Like many things that have become popularized by celebrity, 

there are a few misconceptions about self-hypnosis that are good to clear

up at the start. Before we look at what self hypnosis IS, let’s look at what it is NOT 

 

Self hypnosis doesn’t mean you are allowing someone to control 

your mind with a soundtrack. No one is able to control our 

minds. What it does do is help us solve our own problems and 

answer our own questions. Trust your own strength and power 

and know your mind isn’t going to let just anyone take over!  

 

Hypnosis isn’t sleeping. While you move in and out of a 

hypnotic state as you fall asleep or wake up, hypnosis is that 

time between wakefulness and sleeping. That lovely relaxed 

state that drifts you between conscious and unconscious thought. 

You may sometimes fall asleep during or after a meditation, but 

that is because you relax. Falling asleep during hypnosis often 

indicates the level of stress you are under - that you are having 

trouble relaxing on a long term basis, and the hypnosis-induced 

sleep is simply your body telling you that you are sleep-deprived 

and need to catch-up on sleep. Hypnosis doesn’t make the bad things go away. If you’ve been 

heavily hurt or abused it won’t make the memories go away. 

What it can do is rearrange your filing system a little. It can put 

those bad thought patterns and memories in a place where they 

don’t pop out every time you open your mind’s storage 

cupboard. Instead it parks it somewhere at the back of the 

highest shelf and puts the good thinking in the shelves within 

easy reach. It’s a little like the way your mother may have put 

the cookie jar at the top of the fridge when you were a kid - you 

just couldn’t get to it unless you put a pile of effort into it. The 

best thing about hypnosis is the cookie jar might have some 

mouldy old bread in it, but the hypnosis puts some sweet and 

tasty good feelings within easy reach. You are far more likely to 

access the good bits before any of that bad stuff comes flooding 

back. 

 

Hypnosis can’t make you do something you don’t want to. Your 

mind is far stronger than we give it credit for. We can’t be made 

to act or believe something we do not want to believe. This is 

also why some people may find self hypnosis doesn’t have the 

expected result they were planning on. Before you begin any 

self hypnosis course, think about whether the new thinking 

patterns you are working towards are actually what you want to believe and change. For instance, some people say they want to 

give up smoking, but because they love the social side of 

standing with other smokers, or the way it makes them more 

relaxed in social situations, they don’t really want to let it go. 

It’s important to find what it is you actually want to adapt, 

change and replace before you start for maximum effectiveness.