Hypnosis can be described as focused attention combined with absorption. It’s a type of selective thinking, not sleep. You’re awake, alert and in control of your thoughts and reactions—able to hear, speak and move around. Everybody goes in and out of hypnosis naturally throughout the day without even noticing.
A common example of hypnosis is when you’re watching an exciting movie or attending a sporting event and you become engrossed in the action. Or when you have a pleasantly realistic daydream. Or when you’re doing something you truly enjoy and time seems to slip away. Another example is ‘highway hypnosis’, a state of mind in which you can drive long distances, responding to road events in the expected, safe and correct manner with no recollection of having consciously done so.
Hypnosis takes your attention away from external realities and toward inner thoughts, feelings and imagery. It can open the door to a wealth of unrecognized or underutilized potentials that lay just below the surface of your awareness. These subconscious resources can reveal something—a connection, an explanation, a possibility—that you didn’t see before or somehow lost track of. Soon, the solutions you’ve been looking for start to emerge from within.
Hypnosis helps you change certain behaviors, improves your responsiveness to helpful suggestions, alters your perceptions and boosts your motivation. A hypnotist is a coach who observes people for their strengths and helps them reconnect with those strengths. Results are rapid and long-lasting. Sometimes just one hypnosis session is all you’ll need to turn over a new page in your life.