You’ve probably had this experience many times…..
You get in the car and drive to work. During the journey, your mind is focused on an upcoming holiday, or what to buy your partner for their birthday, or where to go for dinner on Saturday etc. You arrive at work but can’t recall anything of the journey. Why is that?
Because you were in a trance.
Everyday Trance
This kind of everyday trance is often referred to as a daydream. When we engage in an everyday trance we either imagine possible future scenarios or recall memories. While ‘inside our heads’ we experience short-term detachment from our immediate surroundings, and our awareness of what’s happening in the external environment is blurred.
It’s estimated that we spend at least 95% of the day in one trance or another - the watching a movie trance, the reading a book trance, the glued to Facebook trance, the worrying about the presentation you have to give trance; the visit to the dentist trance … . The list of possible trances we can, and do, experience is infinite.
Why do we spend so much of the day in trance?
Because trance is our natural leaning state. We have to focus on a particular idea or thought to absorb the information. We learn best when environmental distractions are minimised or eliminated, so our brain makes the world around us disappear from our conscious awareness while we are engaged in trance. However, it keeps a subconscious eye on what’s happening in the environment. In our driving example, our mind would have alerted us to the red lights we encountered along the route, and we would have popped out of our trance in order to slow down and stop at the traffic lights. Then, once we were moving again we would experience another trance.
So trance is a natural ability that we all engage in automatically each and every day. Most everyday trances are uncontrolled in that they happen subconsciously and we don’t make a conscious decision about what the subject of the trance is, it just happens automatically.
Hypnosis
When we intentionally choose to experience a trance, with a specific goal in mind, then the trance has a special name - ‘hypnosis’.
Hypnosis is like a natural everyday trance on steroids. It enables us to learn and to change more quickly and easily. It enables us to accept new ideas and concepts that we might otherwise reject if that ideas were presented to us during conscious awareness or in an everyday trance. So when experiencing hypnosis the smoker is more likely to accept the idea that they no longer smoke. The person who is irrationally afraid of insects accepts that insects are not dangerous and reacts dispassionately when they next encounter an insect.
The goals that people set to achieve with the help of hypnosis are many and varied, and include: breaking a habit, losing weight, building self-esteem, gaining confidence, overcoming a specific fear, reducing stress.
You have to want to experience hypnosis
A statement I hear a lot is: “I went to a hypnotist once, but he/she couldn’t hypnotise me.”
Because trance is natural and we engage in it everyday everyone can experience hypnosis. What stops people is the fact that for some reason they don’t want to. Very often the obstacle is fear, and particularly the fear of handing over control of their mind to the hypnotist. The person has perhaps seen a stage hypnosis show and doesn’t want to risk the hypnotist making them do something silly like cluck like a chicken or dance like Elvis. The fact is the people up on stage in a hypnosis show, have chosen to experience hypnosis with the goal of performing and acting silly. That’s why they bought their ticket, put their hand up when the hypnotist asked for volunteers and went on stage. Nobody forced them too. They wanted to experience hypnosis and perform.
Adopting a Hypnosis Mind-set
So in order to experience hypnosis you need to adopt a particular attitude – what I call a ‘hypnosis mind-set’. The key elements of this mind-set are that you …
- Want
- Expect; and
- Allow yourself
…. to experience hypnosis
Suspending Disbelief
A key reason why hypnosis facilitates effective, fast change is that during the experience, we allow ourselves to suspend disbelief. The ability to suspend belief is something we do naturally and automatically. For example, if we didn’t choose to suspend disbelief we wouldn’t enjoy films, TV programmes, books etc. When watching a film the voice inside our head would be constantly reminding us that what we’re experiencing isn’t real, it’s just a moving picture, projected onto a screen, the characters are fictional, played by actors etc. That’s all true, but to experience the story, to laugh, cry, and jump in our seats, we must temporarily accept that what we’re experiencing is real - we must suspend disbelief.
100% Natural
So there’s nothing magical about hypnosis. When you experience hypnosis you are utilising a set of natural, innate abilities – to daydream, to imagine and to suspend disbelief.
If you’re looking for a natural, safe, effective, way to create long lasting personal change then hypnosis could be the solution you have been looking for.
What Next?
If you’d like to explore how I can help you experience hypnosis for the purpose of achieving a goal or overcoming a problem, call me on 021 056 8389, email tony@tycoaching.nz or use the Book Now button below to schedule a complimentary half hour coaching consultation.
REMEMBER - "When you change your mind you change your life."
Go well
Tony
Tony helps individuals to harness the power of their mind to achieve success and well-being in life, work and business. Tony's particular area of expertise lies in helping people to 'change their minds' so they overcome limiting beliefs and unhelpful habits and gain freedom from worry, anxiety and stress. Tony’s solution focused approach to coaching uses a range of techniques drawn from the fields of co-active coaching, hypnosis, positive psychology and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
