Michael McGrath asked:

a great misconception about hypnosis. A vast amount of people still believe that its main use is for stage hypnotism and they relegate it to the realms of entertainment. This is a large mistake. Self hypnosis is an extremely powerful psychological tool for personal growth. Hypnosis is used in clinical situations daily throughout the world and has a very high success rate. The use of self hypnosis as a method for creating major life changes is also growing exponentially. This is because it works!

The say of self hypnosis isn’t new, strange or even artificial. It is totally natural. While in a state of self hypnosis you don’t lose consciousness nor awareness. It is more like having a daydream or being detached from what’s happening. It feels like you’re merely observing the whole thing rather than experiencing it.

While under the influence of self hypnosis you’re highly suggestible. It is thought that about 1 in every 5 people are so suggestible that they’ll totally immerse themselves in the experience and these are the very entertaining subjects of stage hypnotism. However, everyone is suggestible to some degree while under the influence of self hypnosis even more so than during a hypnotic show because you’ve chosen to enter the trance desiring to enter a suggestible state.

Self hypnosis induces a very deep say of relaxation unlike anything else due to its ability to make you detach from your problems, the world and a certain degree of responsibility. For this reason it is popularly used to reduce pain, remove stress as an aesthetic during surgery.

The mechanism of self hypnosis is not known even after many years of research but its effectiveness is very well known. Just why self hypnosis is so powerful, or why it works at all, is unknown. However, it does appear to induce a form of dissociation and allow direct communications with unconscious parts of the mind. This gives easy access to past memories and their emotional ties and also allows for the discovery of unconscious desires, fears and beliefs.

The conscious mind, with its faculty for reasoning and questioning, is bypassed during self hypnosis and this allows any suggestions to be implanted.

This is the very reason self hypnosis has become so popular in the self improvement movement. By first discovering and then disassociating from any negative beliefs or thought patterns, any goal, success vision or belief can be implanted directly into the subconscious mind. As the conscious mind is subdued during the self hypnosis sessions any recommendations given are accepted without any critical analysis and thus passed on directly to the subconscious mind. The subconscious part of the mind has no reasoning faculties, this is the domain of the conscious mind. It therefore accepts, without question or hestitation, whatever is feed to it.

This is one reason that some people believe hypnosis is dangerous if you used for selfish means. While I feel that any moral or value system cannot be tampered with using hypnosis these people do make some valid points. Poorly chosen post hypnotic recommendations can sometimes cause more harm than good and it has been claimed that some hypnotists deliberately plant messages for their own aims.

However, with self hypnosis it is you who selected which hypnotic method you use and which suggestions you want to incorporate into your session.

This is also tru of pre-made self hypnosis sessions on CD or MP3. Reputable hypnotists that use the very best self hypnosis techniques should be carefully chosen. This is why I would advise you to always check out a site that tests hypnosis products or to do some ground-work yourself.

With the correct session there’s much that you can improve in your life through the use of self hypnosis. You can even learn techniques to induce your own self hypnotic say. However, you always gain a deeper trance say when you’re hypnotized by either a professional hypnotherapist or by using a good self hypnosis recording.

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