How Hypnotherapy Works
Your mind is made up of two facets: the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.
Your conscious, or reasoning mind, functions on logic, analysis, reason, will power, and makes decisions.
Your subconscious, or creative mind, functions on emotion, memory, beliefs, and dreams, and runs our bodily functions. It also has stored every experience you have ever had from your beginning, along with all the emotion felt at the time — whether the experience was perceived as positive (good) or negative (bad).
As you continue along, your conscious mind constantly assesses situations and ideas presented to you. However, when accepting an idea or deciding that something is true, the conscious mind checks with the information stored in the subconscious mind. Every decision is highly influenced by the positive and negative ideas and beliefs held in your subconscious mind from past experiences — bearing in mind these are based on your perception of the situation at the time, not on reality or fact.
Hypnotherapy helps you access these memories and correct any misconceptions held in your subconscious mind. It allows you to relax the analytical, conscious mind and, by focusing your concentration, gain access to your creative or subconscious level of awareness — helping you better understand feelings that have been holding you back or making you feel stuck.
How do you know it's working? Some people come in to quit smoking, and within a couple of sessions their cravings are under control — a clear indication of progress. For others, change is more subtle and incremental: you begin to make choices that are different, more positive, and more beneficial than those made in the past. You begin to feel and see the benefits, which is clearly progress.
You possess the inner resources and strength to heal yourself, and the hypnotherapist is there to guide you. In the clinical world, hypnosis has been used to help people quit smoking, overcome phobias, and control pain.