Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
For over two hundred years the technique of hypnosis has been used in medicine to treat a wide range of physical, psychological and emotional disorders. It has also long been recognised that hypnosis may successfully be combined with other approaches and techniques in counseling and psychotherapy. In 1997, the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) formally endorsed the new term, hypno-psychotherapy, as the branch of psychotherapy which uses hypnosis.

Hypnosis and the Mind
Hypno-psychotherapy recognises that there are many ways of looking at how the mind works. Some people , for instance, take the view that our thoughts and actions are mainly affected by the way we look at the world and how it treats us. Others believe that we are mostly driven by our ‘subconscious’ mind, which is taken to be the store of all our past experiences and emotions. Whatever theory of the mind is applied, hypnosis can be integrated with appropriate psychotherapeutic approaches to help bring about positive changes.

Helping bring about change
Hypnosis customarily creates a deeply relaxed state in which mental stress and bodily tension are reduced. In this relaxed state, the mind is usually more open to the process of change. As such, client and therapist can safely work together, using an agreed approach, to enhance mental, physical and emotional well-being.

Might hypnotherapy be able to help you? Click here to look at some of the problems that hypnotherapy can help with.

What is Hypnosis?
The word Hypnosis comes from Hypnos who was the Greek god of sleep. He was the twin brother of Death and the son of Night.  Hypnotic states have been used in healing since time immemorial, it’s only relatively recently that  the dynamics have been understood enough for it to become a therapy in its own right.
Hypnotic or trance states occur quite naturally and we all experience trance states to some extent during our day to day lives. One example would be when you’re sitting in front of the television and you realise that you’ve been drifting off into your own thoughts and haven’t really been following the program.
 Now, this state of mind can be very useful for us because our critical sensor - the part of the mind that is used to filter all the incoming messages and allow us to concentrate on tasks in day to day living, is somewhat relaxed. This allows us to accept beneficial suggestions at an unconscious level - suggestions that our critical sensor would normally reject out of hand.

Television advertising is so powerful because many of the messages slip through the critical sensor due to the trance like state often induced by the TV.

Being in this state of mind allows us to gain access to some of our inherent creative potential.
Our memories are stored in our unconscious minds - some people would say that we can still access memories of every experience we have ever had since the beginnings of our consciousness. Some of these memories are close to the surface of our conscious minds and some are buried deeply in our unconsciousness. (when they stop and think, many people can remember quite easily what the leg of a chair tastes like!)

The conscious mind forgets, it has to in order to make space for pressing issues, but the unconscious seems to store away memories and the related feelings - this means that all of us have a vast amount of knowledge and experience to draw upon. The hypnotic state allows us to access these almost infinite resources, and incredible work can be done with them.

A hypnotherapist is someone who works with the dynamics of this state of mind and can help the client to work from this place to make beneficial changes at an unconscious level. Changes at an unconscious level can then directly affect the clients feelings, thoughts and behaviors.