As a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist based in Atlanta, I help clients with a wide variety of issues through hypnosis. Employing this technique, I can help retrain the brain to function in more beneficial ways.

Sometimes, however, people who are interested in pursuing hypnotherapy to make life changes question if they could really be hypnotized. But the truth is that the hypnotic state is something we drift in and out of all the time.

What that means is that anytime you daydream or meditate, or get deeply engrossed in a movie or a creative project, you’re shifting into a hypnotic-like state. This also happens when you get wrapped up in your emotions or perform some habitual ritual without really thinking about it.

At these times, we’re shifting from our conscious mind (a beta state) to our subconscious mind (the alpha state, which is the same as that accessed by hypnosis). The two other states are theta (dreaming) and delta (deep sleep).

During our waking hours, we’re constantly shifting between the beta and alpha states. For example, the transition to alpha often happens when we drive. You might arrive home and realize you remember nothing about the last five miles. You were simply on autopilot.

Already Hypnotized Half Your Life

Because you easily spend at least 50 percent of your day in this alpha state, the truth is that you’ve already spent at least half your life in what equates to a hypnotic state.

The definition of the hypnotic state is a heightened and/or focused state of suggestibility. This state allows for easy access to the subconscious mind, where reside many habits, feelings and beliefs we might like to change about ourselves.

The question is not whether you can be hypnotized. It’s whether you’re willing to be re-hypnotized to correct a lot of bad programming that’s been stored for too long in your subconscious mind. Anyone can benefit from hypnosis as long as they have the ability and willingness to learn.

Contrary to depictions you might have seen in a movie or stage show, you are not blacked out or asleep during a hypnosis session. You are aware of everything that is happening and cannot be made to do anything against your will.

For example, after I was hypnotized for smoking cessation in 1997, I remembered all the key points of the session, during which the hypnotherapist got me deeply relaxed through breathing and visualization, and led me to examine my history of exposure to cigarettes and to imagine a life free of them. What I didn’t recall word-for-word I could easily revisit, because she’d given me a recording of the session for continued reinforcement.

With no previous exposure to this healing art, I hadn’t even been sure I’d been hypnotized. But I recognized that something had profoundly shifted within me as I easily left behind the self-destructive lifestyle of a smoker.

Personal Empowerment

Essentially, all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis, because it requires your intention to be hypnotized and your active participation. During sessions, you’re guided by the hypnotherapist to retrain your mind through affirmations and sometimes an adult reexamination of past situations that left a negative imprint. Your mind is guided to accept only those suggestions that resonate as right for you.

Many issues can be addressed through hypnosis. Just a sampling include:

• Building self confidence
• Enhancing creativity
• Becoming a non-smoker
• Losing weight
• Overcoming anxiety
• Improving communication ability
• Heightening attention and focus
• Conquering obsessive-compulsive disorders
• Improving sales performance
• Releasing addictions
• Freedom from phobias
• Planning/acting instead of procrastinating
• Overcoming test anxiety
• Recovering past-life memories
• Enhancing intimacy

Based in Atlanta, I have had extensive experience and success working with hypnotherapy clients on numerous issues since completing my training as a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist in mid-2008. Through multiple levels of training, I was taught by esteemed instructor and hypnotherapist Jane Ann Covington of Hypnosis Institute International.

I was motivated to learn hypnotherapy by own experience quitting smoking through hypnotherapy and success with self-hypnosis. Since starting Wellspring Reiki in 2002, I’d also come to recognize that the power of the mind plays a huge role in the state of my clients’ energy. The body truly reflects the mind.

As a Reiki Master Practitioner, I’d regularly recommend resources on the power of positive thinking such as Louise Hay’s wonderful book You Can Heal Your Life, but I came to realize that many clients needed more direction to help heal themselves.

While Reiki can be very beneficial in restoring a sense of energetic balance and clearing blockages that impede the flow of life force through the body, much of that work can be undone over time if clients persist in the same thinking patterns. Now, I often combine energywork with hypnosis to get clients where they want to go as quickly as possible.

How Our Mind Works

Shifting our thinking is crucial to changing our lives. Did you know that we have about 300,000 thoughts a day? Well, about 95 percent of these thoughts (about ourselves, others, and the world) are the same as the ones we had yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. Then, we wonder why our lives don’t change.

You’ve probably heard the old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Thanks to hypnotherapy, you can begin to learn some new options.

A lot of repetitive self talk – such as “I never start what I finish” or “Nobody cares what I have to say” – can seep deeply into your subconscious mind, becoming your reality over time. While the subconscious mind is very powerful (about 90 percent of your overall brain power), it’s also very vulnerable. It’s like a two-year-old in that it doesn’t understand right from wrong, good from bad, or reality from fiction.

Therefore, through the course of your life, you’ve probably absorbed a lot of incorrect, unbeneficial beliefs about yourself, the world, and your place in it. We’ve all been programmed by our childhoods, society, and environment.

The good news, though, is that through hypnotherapy, you can begin to download healthy new programming into your subconscious, replacing a lot of the old, buggy software you’ve been running on for too long now.

Changing Old Patterns

Even if your conscious mind knows better and wants to make a shift, it can still be overridden by the old patterns that run like a tape loop in the subconscious. Therefore, giving yourself an affirmation like “I feel growing confidence about running my financial affairs” is more effective if it directly accesses the subconscious.

Through hypnosis you can bypass the critical factor of the conscious mind (which might throw up some argument), getting straight to the subconscious with a deep, lasting impression of such an affirmation.

The adult-like conscious mind (10 percent of our brain power) is logical and analytical, focused on thinking, decision-making, and word choice. However, the subconscious is the home of our autonomic nervous system (all the body functions that run without conscious thought) as well as the space for our memories, creativity, habits/reactions, and emotions/feelings.

Emotional connections can trigger mental and behavioral responses, so accessing the subconscious is important in order to effectively change those reactions.

Because our subconscious mind is such a vulnerable two-year-old, we’re literally hypnotizing ourselves all the time. So next time you catch yourself engaging in negative self talk, remind yourself, “If I wouldn’t say this to a two-year-old, I don’t deserve to say it to myself.” Stop abusing the inner child inside your subconscious.

Instead, starting making changes today!

Make an appointment or schedule a free 20-minute consultation by contacting me at 404-444-6924 or brad@wellspringreiki.com.

PLEASE NOTE: Hypnotherapy is intended as short-term therapy, so that you don't have to keep coming back forever. Many issues can be helped in one to three sessions, but some might require more, depending on the severity. The initial two-hour session, including intake interview, is $100. Subsequent 1.5 hour visits are $80 each. They often include a limited amount of Reiki. You leave most sessions with a recording to help you reinforce the messaging on your own in a relaxed state.