Hypnotherapy has been around for a very long time, although some believe that its current high standing in medical circles as a true scientific field, has only really been achieved in recent times.
Hypnosis itself can be traced back to the magical lands of India, Persia and Mesopotamia. Practitioners usually used it on themselves, and usually without mysterious window-dressing. Whereas hypnotism was introduced to popular culture by Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). Mesmer was a sort-of-scientist, in a field which was the alchemy of his day, that of magnetism and electricity.
In 1842, English eye scientist James Braid gave it the name ‘hypnosis’, from a Greek word for ‘sleep’. Jean Charcot brought it to modern investigative scientific study, and Yale professor Clark Hull’s work in the 1930s did much to develop a scientific understanding of it.
That’s the general timeline and history lesson of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. However, its real power and success comes from the area in which it operates: deep inside one’s mind.
The mind is the store of all of our memories, fears, hopes, ambitions, limitations, phobias and stored responses. And this store is what leads to our behaviours, our patterns, our thought processes, our decisions and our reactions.
That’s why performing specific scientific processes on the mind itself, is what can lead to the most remarkable changes on the outside. How we act and react; how we think and believe; how we behave or misbehave; what drives us and what repels us; what excites us and what scares us.
With the understanding of the mind’s main operations and correlations, a hypnotherapist can probe the issue of a patient and begin to reverse engineer it from its effect back to its cause. That’s why the hypnotherapist doesn’t have to be an expert in the area of the effect itself (e.g. smoking, eating disorders, confidence, flying, anxiety, etc.) but rather being the expert on the cause is what helps.
The inner workings of our brain – the environmental and psychological programming that dictates our belief structures and automated responses – is what drives every external behaviour. That’s why the key is inside; that’s where the hypnotherapist looks to unlock the door of the issue. Whether an addiction (to a substance, alcohol, smoking); whether an eating disorder (too much or too little); whether a fear (public speaking; flying) – the key is always in our thinking and programming.
Various techniques can be called upon to get at the core of the issue, such as NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), cognitive dissidence, meditation, regression and counselling. All giving an insight into that internal programming. Once fully reverse engineered, the practitioner can then build up a new profile from the ground up. Limiting beliefs can be removed; thought processes can be rewired; empowering affirmations can be installed; reactions converted into positive responses. The key unlocks the door; the leg of the table (the cause) taken away to topple the table (the effect).
When looking for a hypnotherapist, always employ the normal due dilligence checks you would do for any other service, such as a doctor, lawyer or accountant. Check references and qualifications, act on testimonials. Once personally and professionally verified, the actual process of hypnosis and hypnotherapy can then be undertaken with peace of mind. Safe, relaxing, powerful, reliable and highly effective treatments can suddenly or gradually remove some of the most challenging areas of your life.
Hypnotherapy is powerful and it works.
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