What is Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a state of awareness characterised by the mind’s deep relaxation and effortless ability to concentrate. It can be thought of as a bridge between the conscious and subconscious mind. Though we only have one mind, we have two parts to our mind: the conscious and the subconscious parts, often likened to an iceberg, where the tip of the iceberg, that which is above the water represents our conscious mind, and that which is underneath the water, the far greater part, is our subconscious.

The conscious mind can be understood as the logical, reasoning, analytical part of the mind. The conscious part of the mind is claimed by many experts to amount to approximately 10% of our thinking power. The subconscious part of the mind is understood to consist of the remaining 90% of our thinking power.
The subconscious does not think logically, is the storehouse of all our learning’s, memories, dreams and desires and is concerned with bringing about those deepest wishes, desires and expectations even if they are contrary to logic and our own well-being. The subconscious is also in control of all our everyday bodily functions, such as breathing, our immune system etc.

If our greatest need is for affection and the only time we experience affection is when we are unwell, we may become unwell in order to receive the affection we need. This may occur even though we don't like being sick. This process is known as 'secondary gain'.

The reason for this action of the subconscious is still under investigation by researchers, although the dominant theory is that the subconscious mind takes ‘photographs’ of our deepest desires and proceeds to achieve those desires without thought for the consequences.

It is interesting to note that the subconscious mind can not tell the difference between a wish and a fear. If a fear becomes dominant in our mind, and we are picturing that fear frequently, then the fear is perceived by the subconscious mind as a wish and the subconscious mind gets into action to attempt to provide us with that ‘wish’. This explains why most of us may end up facing the one thing we always feared we would eventually face.