FACT: Hypnosis is a wonderful motivational tool. If someone has a shred of intent, skill or desire, you can multiply that thousands of times.

FACT: People assume because of what they see on stage, read in the popular press and hear second hand; that when you are hypnotised, you wont be aware of anything, that you won’t think anything, see anything, hear anything, smell anything, taste anything or feel anything. If you ever feel like that….. it means you are probably dead, not hypnotised!

FACT: You have already been hypnotised countless times in your life, so have all your friends, family, indeed everyone in the world. It is just so very different from what you expect (i.e. feeling dead ) that you don’t notice it as such. For example ever remember the exact moment at which you fall asleep at night? No! Exactly, that’s because at the moment you fall asleep, you are deeply hypnotised. Similarly, you are driving along on a long journey and suddenly realise you have lost half a dozen motorway junctions or cant remember the last three roundabouts you came across… it’s a form of deep trance called hypno-amnesia. Some people can do it by losing themselves in a good book or a magazine… someone speaks to them or the doorbell rings and they don’t hear it because they are so engrossed in what they are reading. Some people call that selective deafness but it is actually a form of hypnotic trance. And perhaps the best example of all…. How many times in your life have you scratched, bruised or injured yourself in some way, then got home or to work and thought, how on earth did I do that, I don’t remember doing that? That’s the deepest form of trance there is! Way deeper than anything we use on stage!! It’s exactly the same thing I would do if asked to work with a dental patient who can’t have a conventional anaesthetic! The only difference in that scenario would be that I would help the patient to produce the effect on demand and prolong it whilst they had a tooth extracted or a root canal or whatever the procedure may be. But the fact remains YOU have experienced the EXACT same phenomenon in normal everyday life… begin to see?

FACT: Anytime there is direct communication with your unconscious mind, without the simultaneous interference of the conscious mind, then that IS hypnotic!

FACT: The bit that causes all the confusion and hype is this… people assume because of what they see on stage and hear second hand, that when you are hypnotised, properly, that you are going to feel “dead” or at least asleep or at least like a zombie with no free will of your own…. But if I was to say to you… last time you were driving along on a long journey and suddenly realised you had lost half a dozen junctions or couldn’t remember the last three roundabouts you came over… during the bit that you lost, what did it feel like to be in a deep trance? Last time you bruised or scratched or injured yourself in some way and didn’t notice it at the time, at the moment you sustained the injury and didn’t feel it… what was it like to be deeply hypnotised? Exactly! That’s the point! People assume that they are going to feel dead or asleep or like a zombie but what you actually feel like when you are hypnotised is….. absolutely nothing at all! This is simply because, when you are entranced, you’re not aware of it! That’s the paradox  

That is why, if you ever go to a stage show or see one on television, you will notice that we always get one or two of the stars of the show up on stage at the end and interview them, and they seem genuinely confused? Oh trust me, they are genuinely confused! You see in their mind if it had “worked” then clearly they would have felt dead or asleep or like a zombie… but that never happened and so it didn’t work… “but they can kind of remember kissing that mop, but she looked really beautiful at the time and why is everyone laughing at me?” It’s all very confusing… but of course it was never explained to them as it just has been to you and so of course they had no idea what to expect

FACT: When we are small children, three, four, maybe five years of age, we all have the most amazing ability to play pretend and use our imagination in the way it was originally intended to be used; to the point where you can actually experience it as reality. That’s why so many small children of that age have imaginary friends, they are very real to them, we have just forgotten how to see them! It’s also why when I was five years old, I could be in the back garden with the ball at my feet and I really WAS scoring the winning goal at Wembley. Or the little girl next door could be there with her dolly and bandages, and just for a while she really was a real nurse and dolly was a real patient. Get the sense of a time when you could get lost in play like that as a child? That’s all a hypnotist does on stage, we just put people back in touch with a time, when they could play pretend, to the point where they can actually experience it, as reality, just for a while.

FACT: Stage hypnosis targets imagination, hypnotherapy targets self image, behaviours and habits, which are in a different part of the psyche.

FACT: It is impossible to do any harm with hypnosis, like a one-way mirror, it only works in one direction.

FACT: It is impossible to get “stuck” in a trance. Left in a hypnotic trance, one would merely move into a normal sleep from which they would awake refreshed after a very short time.

FACT: Hypnotic trance is both relaxing and refreshing as well as therapuetic.

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