Why hypnosis and hypnotherapy can be beneficial

Hypnosis is one of the easiest ways to help you overcome problems or achieve success. Several studies show hypnosis can help you lose weight, give up smoking, achieve other goals and suffer less pain.

To sceptics, hypnosis is mumbo-jumbo, but scientific evidence now shows that hypnosis and self-hypnosis can help people to overcome problems. It can help people:

• Stop over-eating and reduce weight

• Stop smoking

• Reduce excessive drinking

• Stop gambling

See a list of ways in which hypnosis can help here.

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Hypnosis has been used to treat diseases for more than 50 years. In fact, the British Medical Association approved the use of hypnotherapy in 1955, and the American Medical Association gave its approval in 1958. These are two conservative heavyweights.

If hypnotherapy or hypnosis can help cure disease, you can be sure it will help you overcome all sorts of problems, cutting through mental blocks at work or play. Hypnosis is not just a way of overcoming bad habits and addictions, though. It is also the secret way in which some very successful business executives and sportsmen and women get ahead in their chosen field.

Recognised in many fields

Nowadays, hypnosis is being recognised as a method not just of helping people overcome problems, but also of helping people make progress in their lives to:

• Improve performance in business

• Excel at sport

• Overcome bad habits or addictions

• Help overcome illness.

Recent reports by the media support this view. Here are a few recent comments.

• CBS News says: "Hypnosis is very effective."

• The Wall Street Journal reports: "Numerous scientific studies have emerged in recent years showing that the hypnotized mind can exert a real and powerful effect on the body."

• Newsweek writes: "The easiest way to break bad habits is through hypnosis."

Now, you should not rely on the media for your opinions, but these show how opinion is changing. These just support the results of many scientific tests.

You must want to improve

To make use of hypnosis, either with a therapist, or by using self-hypnosis, you must want to end these problems.. During your normal mental state you may not be prepared to take the trouble needed to overcome the addiction – and may not admit it is an addiction – but if you ever think “I want to stop smoking” or drinking, etc, then there is a good chance that hypnosis will help.

How does it do so? Hypnotism – that is the act of being hypnotised – has been shown to alter the mental state. Different electrical signals are produced, and this has also been show with magnetic resonance imaging. However, it is not know exactly what occurs.

All that is known is that the state appears to be closer to sleeping with one exception – you remain completely alert. There are various theories. For example, it is known that there are two aspects of the brain: conscious and sub-conscious.

The conscious is used to work things out logically, and to take decisions about what to do next. The sub-conscious keeps us breathing, keeps our heart beating regularly, and sends out signals to our body to carry out all the routine operations needed to keep us alive.

Use the sub-conscious

But it is more than that: the sub-conscious also stores memories and information, and has ready access to these things – even when we have forgotten them. In some cases, the events just happened a long time ago, or were insignificant. In others, they were so uncomfortable that we don’t allow our conscious mind to remember them.

Theses forgotten memories can also result in repression, so that we don’t achieve what we want, or may make us do things we don’t really want to. The hypnotic state can make your subconscious see things differently, and overcome problems.

Different approaches for different problems

What happens with hypnosis? It depends whether your goal is to achieve success, or to overcome a problem like smoking - incidentally I know two people who thought they would never stop smoking, but did so easily with hypnosis.

Some hypnotherapists induce a feeling of nausea that is associated with smoking or overeating, so that the next time we get a cigarette out, we don’t feel good. Another approach is to help the person have more determination to stop smoking.Increased determination also helps us achieve our goals – goals that we thought were completely out of reach.

Personal problems such as phobias can be overcome with hypnosis, and pain in illness can be reduced – this has been demonstrated in various studies including one involving 80 children suffering from cancer. Overcoming the pain of childbirth is another example.

A group of people who suffered from hay-fever in Switzerland also found reduced symptoms following hypnosis. Half the group were treated this way in the first season, and compared with the others, and the other half of the group were treated prior to the second season. Afterwards, they reported that they needed less medication than before being hypnotised.

EEGs (electro-encephalographs) showed that the right-brain was more active and the left-brain less active during hypnosis. The left-brain is associated with analysis and criticism and the right-brain with creativity.

This is but one of many examples of the benefits of hypnosis that you will find in the pages here. If you want to improve performance, overcome a problem or bad habit or even addiction, then please look through the information here for an answer. You will find a list of ways hypnosis can help here.

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