By Karen Hastings, Edinburgh
Hypnotherapists utilize hypnosis in order to effect a positive change and help people unravel problems such as lack of confidence or insomnia. Hypnosis is an experience typified by feeling relaxed and as if all your senses are heightened. During hypnosis you may also have the experience of focused awareness. The state of mind induced during hypnosis occurs naturally and people fall in and out of this state, known as ‘trance' regularly in everyday life. It is perfectly natural and can include daydreaming, being absorbed in a film or book, re-living an event in your head or fantasizing. Trance states can be positive or negative depending on what it is you are attending to. If you find yourself re-living negative events from the past and have lost a few minutes of time whilst absorbed in this memory, you have most likely been in a negative trance state.
Hypnotherapy is based on the philosophy that trance states are an optimum time to work with an individual to bring about positive change. This is because, when a person is deeply relaxed, it is possible to access the unconscious part of the mind. Hypnotherapy is based on the philosophy that learning and behaviour changes occur at an unconscious level.
Categorising the mind into unconscious and conscious is just a conceptual model, a way of describing different aspects of the mind. The concept of unconscious and conscious mind is generally accepted in the western world. These different aspects of the mind are believed to have different functions. For example, the conscious mind is logical, rational, and sequential in thinking. It is also analytical, it uses words and numbers and stores short-term memories. The unconscious mind is intuitive, non-sequential in thinking, more creative, uses symbols and feelings and stores long-term memories.
If you imagine your mind as operating on a sliding scale, at one end, you have highly alert states, towards the other end, you have more relaxed states such as daydreaming and further towards the this end still, deep trance and finally sleep.
Often when people present with problems at Hypnotherapy Edinburgh, they have attempted to solve their problem through conscious effort and have struggled with this. For example, the insomniac, who finds that trying to consciously fall off to sleep, just seems to make things worse. At hypnotherapy Edinburgh, the hypnotherapist will use hypnotherapy to gain access to the unconscious mind. This type of therapy can be very useful for treating habits. For example, there are often unconscious issues associated with smoking that are best dealt with through hypnotherapy. Most people do not consciously decide to continue poisoning and damaging themselves through smoking on a day-to-day basis.
The conscious mind, although strong at logical thinking and the other functions mentioned, tends to be much more rigid in thinking. The unconscious mind is much more flexible and as it stores all your life's learnings, it is in the unconscious mind where habits are created and maintained. Through hypnotherapy Edinburgh, the hypnotherapist is able to make habit changes much easier and more naturally, by working with the unconscious mind.
Karen Hastings is a NHS experienced mental health occupational therapist, Master NLP practitioner and hypnotherapist. Karen uses hypnotherapy in Edinburgh, along with cognitive therapy approaches. For more information about Hypnotherapy, Edinburgh visit http://www.karenhastings.co.uk
Source:www.isnare.com |
