Transcript/excerpt of Connie Brannan answering a question: “What is Hypnosis” for webinar “Discover the Magic of Hypnosis.” broadcast June 30, 2015.

“Hi, Connie again! And now we’re going to have a brief conversation about what is hypnosis. We are assuming that you are a newcomer to this beautiful, magical, creative process called hypnosis. So, we’re going to take it from square one.

What is hypnosis? We have in our minds a conscious awareness. Awake. Aware. Living our life in the world. What we think. Logic. Reason. Evaluation. Focus. This is a conscious thing, we notice what’s around us. We notice what we can notice, and guess what? It’s a tiny, tiny bit of available information. We can only notice so much.

Hypnosis is an accessing of a different kind of consciousness, a resourceful, creative consciousness! Unconsciousness, which is also called subconscious. What it is: it’s everything else beyond that conscious awareness. You might notice one thing, two things, three things, in a moment. Your unconscious is taking in billions of pieces of information.

It is handling the processes of language. Translation. Understanding sound. The ability to speak and communicate. How to move your mouth. How to form words. Understanding. You don’t have to think about that. It has become automated, unconscious.

Unconscious mind stores your life experience in memory. It’s not a conscious memory, it’s an unconscious memory. It’s total recall. Holographic life experience. The definition of hypnosis: we get the conscious mind to step aside. Get out of our way! You’ve had your shot to solve this thing, now, step aside! When the conscious mind steps aside, it opens up a doorway into this creative, unconscious mind.

Here are some of the aspects of the conscious mind vs. the unconscious mind. Your conscious mind is analytical. Logical. Sequential. One thing at a time. Very, very limited in its focus. And it directs our day to day outcomes. Whereas, the unconscious mind is creative, unlimited and expansive. It is doing so many things, multi-functioning! It handles our feelings, our imagination. Our intuition. Our creativity. Our problem-solving ability.

And in addition to that, it’s running the body. Everything to do with the body and how it functions. Breathing and blood flow! So, now, I’m sitting here and I’m breathing. I wasn’t thinking about breathing a moment ago. And yet, it’s still happening. If I want to, I can consciously adjust my breathing. This is an example. I can breathe faster. I can breathe slower. I can breathe deeper. But if I forget all about it and stop directing it, guess what? I’m still breathing.

Unconscious mind handles digestion, and breathing, and blow flow, and healing and every process inside the body. Renewal of cells. All these things. These are unconscious processes handled by this fabulous, powerful unconscious mind. Gee! What a good thing to have on our side, huh? Talking to the unconscious mind about the things we want. That’s basically hypnosis.

You know, we talk about left brain, right brain. It’s really one mind, and it has different functions. My favorite, obviously, is your creative mind, your artistic mind. Some people say: “What’s more important, creativity or knowledge?” I believe creativity! As well as imagination. Maybe those words are synonymous.

Here’s an image and you can see:

Thinking, reason, linear, analytic logic. Science is on that left side there. Science, medicine, therapies that think “one size fits all,” one problem one solution. That’s not the kind of thinking that we use in hypnosis. Heck, no!

What we know in hypnosis to be true is that everyone is unique. And everybody has the ability, inside their unconscious mind to create a new world. The one they want! The one that’s joy-filled, and successful, and happy, and free, and fun, and all the things people want for themselves. It’s really accessible through this part of our mind.

So, what is hypnosis? There’s lots and lots of different definitions out there. The formal analytical one is: “It’s a bypassing of your critical factor, the conscious mind.” When you bypass, you push it aside, you go around it, you get in that door, you’re talking to the unconscious. That’s unconscious communication. That’s hypnosis!

My own definition: it’s a state of accelerated learning. Because, in this place in your mind you can make changes so fast. You can have new thoughts, new intuitions, new solutions to life’s dilemmas. And it happens at such an incredibly accelerated rate of speed. Unlike other therapies that might say to a person: “It will take months and months of hard work to make a change. Change is struggle. Change is horrendously difficult.” Well, that’s not what we believe in the world of hypnosis. We believe change is easy. And once you get into this state of mind, you have that accelerated learning available to you.

“What is hypnosis?” It’s a focused attention. It’s not sleep. Here we have an interesting word: monoideism. Focusing on a single idea. That is a good definition. However, that name itself just doesn’t sound sexy or anything. It never caught on.

We use the word “hypnosis,” Greek for “sleep.” That’s a huge myth, hypnosis is not sleep. Not in any way, shape, or form. It is a creative mind space.”

–© Copyright Connie Brannan, CHt. & Licensed Trainer of NLP® 2015

Stay tuned for more webinar excerpts, as well as future webinar and live training opportunities. The next offering of the school side of what we do: July 9-12, 2015. Four day hands-on, live hypnotherapy training. Details are here: http://www.seattlenlptraining.com

All the Best,
Connie