What is Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is a safe, relaxing form of therapy which has no side effects. It is quick and effective in resolving issues of anxiety, troubling symptoms and types of behaviour that you may want to change. In addition to resolving your specific issues it has a general life-enhancing effect, leaving you feeling much better about yourself and your future than before.
The word hypnotherapy is a combination of two words, "hypnosis" and "therapy". I will say a bit about each of them:
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is not what it is usually thought to be. You do not lose consciousness, go into a deep trance or lose control of your mind and body. You are aware of what is happening during the therapy sessions and can hear everything that the therapist is saying. It is a very pleasant and relaxing experience.
Many people think that when you are hypnotised you drift off to a different plane of existence and are suspended in some kind of mental limbo from which you eventually emerge and can't remember anything that has happened.
The truth is quite a bit different from that. The state of hypnosis is a perfectly natural one which we all experience in our everyday lives. If you have ever driven your car or otherwise travelled somewhere, along a route that you often take, and arrived at your destination thinking "How did I get here?" because you have no conscious recall of the journey, then you have experienced that state of mind that we call hypnosis.
What has happened is that your subconscious mind has taken over the routine actions (and it is perfectly capable of doing so) while your conscious mind is distracted by other matters. A similar state occurs when you are half asleep and half awake. It is that detached feeling of being aware of yourself and your surroundings but not actively engaged in the process of living.
Hypnosis is not an easy thing to define, but it has been described as "A state of relaxation and concentration, at one with a state of heightened awareness, induced by suggestion".
That your awareness, in hypnosis, is actually enhanced, may surprise you.
The concentration and relaxation part of it is akin to the process of you reading a book or a newspaper. Your body is relaxed, your mind is concentrated. It is a perfectly natural state of affairs.
The process of induction into hypnosis, at the beginning of a therapy session, when carried out by a competent, ethical therapist, has nothing to do with swinging a watch in front of your face, making strange passes in the air with the hands, gazing intently into your eyes or taking over control of your mind or your behaviour. Those things are neither desirable nor necessary.
It is more a case of the therapist encouraging you to relax and to play your part in the therapeutic process. At every point you have a choice; you are not being controlled.
Hypnosis is a tool which, in skilled hands, can speed up the process and increase the effectiveness of therapy.
Therapy
The need for therapy may be described as a person's desire to change their behaviour in some way. Either they want to be able to do something that they have not been able to do, or they want to stop doing something that they have been doing and is causing them a problem. Also, it is often the case that physical symptoms result from such difficulties.
Another way to describe the need is the desire to deal with something that is within yourself but outside your own control.
Two types of therapy are used in this practice - Suggestion Therapy (sometimes called Clinical Hypnotherapy) and Pure Hypnoanalysis.
Suggestion Therapy, usually delivered in one or two sessions, is used to deal with specific problems such as exam nerves, driving tests, fear of flying, stopping smoking, controlling your weight, and similar difficulties. The objective is to gain control of and to cope with these situations.
Pure Hypnoanalysis is concerned, over a series of sessions, usually between six and ten, with getting down to the causes of psychological problems and thereby securing a significant and permanent relief of symptoms. This usually has a very positive and life-enhancing effect on the client, as you will see if you visit the IAPH (International Association of Pure Hypnoanalysts) website - www.iaph.org - and look at some of the videos and testimonials provided by clients.
In recent years the term hypnoanalysis had begun to lose its specific meaning because it was being applied to a range of therapeutic approaches, including some which were less effective than the pure analytical approach. Analysis was sometimes mixed with other therapies, resulting in a dilution of the process and having an unfavourable effect on the results. It was for this reason - to emphasise the integrity and uniqueness of our approach - that the word pure was added to the description of our therapy and the name of our organisation was changed to the International Association of Pure Hypnoanalysts.
Pure Hypnoanalysis is practiced only by members of the IAPH.
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