Does hypnosis really work? And how exactly does it work?

If you’re researching hypnosis and hypnotherapy to help you overcome a problem or addiction such as stop smoking or over eating, these two questions are probably on your mind.

Let’s begin with the short answer: Research suggests that hypnosis is a powerful tool for self-improvement. There are countless studies done on the effects of hypnosis and the results speak for themselves.  Hypnosis works!

Hypnotherapy works by empowering people to change and update subconscious beliefs. Through hypnosis, we can reframe and update old beliefs – such as with quitting smoking, for instance, your ‘old beliefs’ will tell you that it will be difficult and painful – and negative thinking such as this doesn’t support change.  But when we replace them with new, more helpful beliefs and attitudes, the problem begins to loosen up and your hypnotherapist can guide you to changing the behavior more rapidly than you can imagine now.

How Hypnosis Works to Reshape Our Beliefs?

Here’s a quick way to understand hypnotherapy: Hypnosis is a highly relaxed mental state, in which we bypass the critical mind. In other words, the mind is relaxed and ready to learn; so your mind becomes much more susceptible to suggestion and willing to adopt or entertain a new belief.  We all heard the saying, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat!” Which means, there is more than one way to achieve your goal.  But when you are overwhelmed or suffering from a problem, your subconscious has difficulty understanding and believing that there is another way.  Hypnosis removes that block and creates possibility.

In deeply relaxed hypnosis, we can override these automatic negative thoughts, and update your thinking with new suggestions. Hypnosis works by allowing us to alter our unconscious thought processes; creating empowered and beneficial thinking to help us achieve your specific desired goals.

Here’s an example: Suppose you want to use hypnosis for weight loss.

Your subconscious mind has many beliefs about losing weight. You might automatically think: Losing weight is impossible; that you don’t want to give up your favorite foods, or that you don’t have time for exercise. These unconscious thoughts – which are shaped by memories, experiences and expectations – ultimately drive our conscious actions, and we don’t even realize this is happening.

In short, your current subconscious thinking is setting you up to fail. And that’s true about many of our bad habits – negative self-talk, smoking, overeating – they’re all deeply rooted in unconscious thought and limiting beliefs.

Through hypnotherapy, we can begin to alter or reframe and update these negative beliefs. In turn, creating healthier beliefs and thinking that not only help you achieve your goal successfully but also develop empowered thinking that lasts!  And that might explain why the research strongly suggests hypnosis works for conditions like chronic pain, substance abuse and weight loss very effectively.

By training our minds to think differently about challenges and goals, we can eliminate the negative thoughts that so frequently lead to self-sabotage.  Think about it…when you have a problem such as wanting to stop smoking; how many times have you thought about it?  How many times per day? per week? and for how long?  Too much probably.  Hypnosis will help you to understand why these thoughts and actions were formed and then help you to replace them with the thoughts and behaviors that benefit you and eliminate the problem.

Simply stated, hypnosis empowers you to change your unconscious thoughts and allows you to reprogram your thinking and self talk to support you!  And that, my friends is how hypnotherapy works.

To learn more about hypnosis and how Master Hypnotherapist Brett Baughman can help you, schedule a free consultation today. 

We are excited to guide you to a healthier lifestyle.