Hypnotherapy is the therapy of “imaginative suggestion”, of words that are used to stimulate the conscious imagination profoundly enough to bring about genuine therapeutic change. Hypnotherapy involves using a combination of techniques designed to minimize distractions, enhance concentration, and strengthen responsiveness to suggestions to alter an individual’s behavior, thoughts, feelings, or physiological state. Using the power of suggestion, you can bring about positive change. In-office hypnotherapy sessions, combined with self-guided hypnotherapy techniques at home, helps to change thinking patterns, which will help you live a healthier life. It will train the conscious mind to relax to a trance-like state, and subsequently brining the subconscious mind into a heightened state of awareness that is more open to the hypnotherapist’s positive suggestions. In this state of narrowed focus and relaxation, a person’s body muscles relax, their breath slows, and their heart rate decreases. The use of hypnotherapy to reduce pain is based on the theory that the mind and body are heavily connected.
Hypnotherapy is regarded as potentially effective in treating a variety of ailments, particularly phobias, addictions, and problematic habits. Hypnosis may also be used to help patients cope with stress, smoking cessations, and chronic pain, and some women even opt to use hypnosis to manage the pain of childbirth. In patients with trauma-related conditions such as posttraumatic stress (PTSD), therapists may attempt to talk to clients about their traumatic memories under hypnosis.
Robertson, Donald J.. The Practice of Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy : A Manual for Evidence-Based Clinical Hypnosis, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/berkeley-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075449.