What Is Hypnosis? It's a State of Accelerated Learning

What is hypnosis? The formal definition is: "It's a bypassing of our critical factor, the conscious mind." When we bypass it, we walk in an open door, and we're communicating directly to the accommodating, helpful unconscious mind, the part of us that defines and determines our behaviors and routines. Hypnosis is unconscious communication.

What else is it? Hypnosis is a state of focused attention. Here we have an interesting word that was proposed at one time instead of "hypnosis": "Monoideism." Focusing on a single idea. That is a good definition. However, that name itself just doesn't sound sexy or appealing. It never caught on.

We use the word "hypnosis," Greek for "sleep." That's a huge myth, by the way. Hypnosis is not sleep. Again, it is a creative mind space." Hypnosis is an altered state of mind, removed from conscious awareness.

And what is conscious awareness? It's awake, and 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 it's really a tiny, tiny bit of available information. We can only notice so much.

In hypnosis we access a different kind of consciousness, a resourceful, creative consciousness! Unconsciousness, which is also called subconscious. It's everything else beyond that conscious awareness. We might notice one thing, two things, three things, in a moment. Our unconscious is taking in billions of pieces of information.

Here are some of the aspects of the conscious mind vs. the unconscious mind. The 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.

The unconscious mind is absolutely a master of multi-tasking! It is handling the processes of our bodies. Language. Translation. Understanding sound. The ability to speak and communicate. How to move our mouths. How to form words. Understanding. We don't have to think about that. It has become automated, and unconscious.

It is storing our life experience in memory. It's not a conscious memory, it's an unconscious memory. It's total recall. Holographic life experience.

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. If I want to, I can consciously adjust my breathing. I can breathe faster. I can breathe slower. I can breathe deeper. But if I forget all about it and stop directing it, I'm still breathing.

The unconscious mind handles breathing, digestion, blood flow, healing, and every process inside the body. Renewal of cells. All these things. These are unconscious processes handled by this fabulous, powerful unconscious mind. What is hypnosis? Talking to the unconscious mind about the things we want.

We talk about left brain, right brain. It's really one mind, and it has different functions. My favorite aspect, obviously, is the creative mind, the artistic mind. Some people say: "What's more important, creativity or knowledge?" I believe creativity! As well as imagination. Maybe those words are synonymous.

Thinking, reason, linear, analytic logic. Science, medicine, therapies that think "one size fits all," one problem one solution. That's not the kind of thinking that we use in hypnotherapy. Not at all! What we know in hypnotherapy 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 in a state of awareness called hypnosis..

My own definition: hypnosis is a state of accelerated learning. In this place in our minds we can make changes so fast. We 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 we get into this state of mind, we have that accelerated learning available to us.