The human mind can be divided into two sections; the conscious mind, which is the area of the mind that we interact with, and the subconscious (or unconscious) mind, the area of the mind that stores everything we have ever experienced including thoughts and feelings. The subconscious mind controls our heartbeat and blood pressure, our immune system, and our bodies on the cellular level. The subconscious mind guides us through life, based on our history and controls how we think, feel, and behave. Though we make conscious decisions, our subconscious allows or prevents us from following through with those decisions.
While the conscious mind constantly handles a select number of internal processes, in any given moment the subconscious mind is dealing with millions of informational processes. Like an old time switch board operator, the subconscious transfers information from certain processes to the conscious mind for you to be aware of. All other information is parsed and stored in the enormous database that is the subconscious.
There are many theories regarding how hypnosis works, and while they vary widely, the one common denominator is that hypnosis works through a direct connection with the subconscious. By reprogramming how the subconscious uses a particular bit of information, hypnosis can create significant change. Take for instance the habit of smoking. Though everyone knows smoking is very bad for your health and that no good can come from the habit, stopping smoking is exceedingly difficult. For some people, quitting the habit is so difficult that they continue even after developing a smoking related illness like emphysema or cancer. Stopping smoking is so difficult because over the years we have programmed our subconscious to believe that when we are stressed, angry, bored, hungry, or sad, smoking helps.
Hypnosis allows a trained hypnotist to access the subconscious and retrain it to understand that smoking does not help in any situation, and is not a necessary component to our lives or our well-being. To help break the habit of smoking, the actual hand-to-mouth habit, hypnosis enables your hypnotist to teach the subconscious that your well-being would be enhanced if you would engage in some positive activity that you enjoy, like exercise, biking, or painting, etc., when you feel the negative emotions that used to make you light up. Once the subconscious understands these ‘truths’ it no longer influences you to smoke, and instead motivates you to do your positive activity.
Hypnosis can also be used to change how the subconscious deals with physical issues, such as pain, skin conditions, or weight loss. By reprogramming how your subconscious interprets pain, deals with stress and anxiety, or how it perceives food, hypnosis can be the foundation for significant change and an enhanced sense of well-being.
To sum it all up, hypnosis works by reshaping how our mind perceives what’s real and true and how it influences us to behave and think in the ways that we do. Because the subconscious is where the root of the majority of our problems stems from, it only makes sense that it would also be the foundation of most of our solutions.