What are Hypnosis and NLP?

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a state of increased awareness that bypasses doubt, engages selective attention, and focuses the power of imagination.

Hypnosis is not sleep. In the state of hypnosis, the client is always aware and in control of their body and their thoughts. They hear everything and can respond to anything as they see fit. Clients emerge very relaxed and refreshed and with a full memory of all that has taken place.

Hypnosis is not Medical or Psychiatric treatment. Prescriptions and Psychotherapy are traditional methods for helping sick people with illnesses. Hypnotherapy is a method for helping normal people manage, control and improve their habits, feelings, abilities, and beliefs.

Hypnosis does not involve surrendering control to the Hypnotherapist. The hypnotic state is at all times in the control of the client, who is only being coached by the Hypnotherapist. A hypnotized person will not violate their ethics, morals, or religious convictions. Given a suggestion to do so, a hypnotized person will usually just exit hypnosis.

Anyone can be hypnotized - unless they have brain damage or are severely retarded - although some people build hypnotic skills faster than others. The more intelligent a person is the better they usually are at hypnosis. Many highly imaginative and creative people use some type of hypnotic state as part of their creative process. Top-flight athletes often employ hypnosis in training or even during play. Many use hypnotist-coaches to assist them in developing these skills, although some employ hypnosis without coaching.

Hypnosis works by relaxing the conscious, task-oriented part of the mind and allowing direct communication with the part of the mind that runs habits, skills, feelings, and beliefs - anything experienced as "automatic" or habitual. It is a focused awareness that everybody has experienced many times - such as in reading a book; watching a movie; or even driving a car. (Have you ever arrived at your destination with little recollection of the drive?)

In the state of hypnosis, the powerful resources of memory and imagination become fully available. The creativity and relaxing reverie of a daydream are combined with the rapt attention of a child at play, allowing the client full access to resources, skills, and solutions they hadn’t realized they have.

Hypnosis is not occult. It does not rely upon any occult or supernatural resources. Hypnosis is not used to acquire occult powers. It is a natural state that relies solely on the ability to pay attention and to be imaginative - gifts given to every human by their creator.

Hypnosis can help regulate and manage habits, skills, beliefs – and bodily processes. You easily experience a taste of hypnotic influence as you read the next paragraph:

When you imagine a slice of lemon - with juice dripping and plump, bursting pieces of juicy yellow pulp, how does your mouth feel? How much can you imagine bringing that slice slowly up to your mouth, watching it come closer and closer - until it disappears beneath your nose and onto your tongue? Imagine the feeling of the plump, smooth, bumpy, tangy pulp on your tongue and the wetness of the slice against your lips Now how much mouth watering now?

That's hypnosis!

If your mouth waters at the thought of a lemon – or some favorite food – or if you can imagine a pink-and-yellow-striped elephant – then are able to use hypnotic coaching. In this kind of coaching, we do with the mind what a martial-arts instructor teaches with the body. Whith the coach's help, you can achieve new levels of skill, control, and achievement with your mind.


What are the Religious Implications?

Hypnosis is nothing more than a skillful use of the creativity and imagination that has been given to every person. Children do it naturally when they play, rapt in imagination. We all do it whenever we daydream or engage in absorbed creativity. It's happening all the time, quite naturally.

Proverbs, chapter 23, verse 7: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..."

When a person thinks "in their heart" - with deep contemplation, imagining who they are or will become - This is actually a form of self-hypnosis that may be quite helpful, and is often encouraged.

Religious leaders the world over employ hypnosis when they give a sermon - offering deeply absorbing parables, and inspiring our imagination of distant times, places and realities - from which we may gain inspiration, learning, comfort, and beliefs to improve our lives.

Private Hypnotherapy sessions are different from the things above only in that they are under the careful guidance of a practitioner specially trained to help people use hypnosis for making specific changes in their habits, skills, feelings, and beliefs.

As people were given life, they were also given the natural abilities of language and of concentration.

Before children are taught to speak a specific language, the sounds they make are not yet coherent. However, with both coaching and practice, people learn to use the gift of language well, occasionally reciting beautiful poetry.

Before people are taught how to concentrate in specific ways, they may suffer needlessly from pain or from frustrations in controlling their own bodies, feelings, and habits. However, with coaching and practice, people can learn to use the gift of concentration to become more comfortable, highly functioning human beings enjoying better control of their bodies, feelings, and habits.

Hypnosis does not replace effort - It directs, focuses, and enhances it!

Check out these statistics on recovery rates revealed by a survey of psychotherapy literature by Alfred A. Barrios, Ph.D..


What is NLP Coaching?

NLP stands for "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" - a study of the relationship between neurology, linguistics, and patterns of behavior.

Early NLP was based in part on the works of family therapist Virginia Satir, Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, and physician/hypnotist Milton Erickson and has since evolved into an innovative technology for quickly achieving powerful remedial and generative changes.

NLP is a methodology based on the idea that behavior and experience have structure that can be learned, taught, and changed to achieve specific results. These changes are achieved by organizing the ways that meanings are given to experiences as they are processed through the senses and within the mind.

This science can help the client to easily change behaviors, habits, feelings, experiences, and beliefs. NLP is about building a wider variety of choices in the ways that a person can experience and respond to the world around them - and within themselves.

As you think about some chore, say each of the following sentences aloud, filling in the blank with the chore you're thinking about. While you read each sentence, notice how your feelings about the chore will change:


As you realize how differently you can feel about that chore by changing just a few words you may wonder how really important selecting language carefully - both in communication with others and in our self-talk can be. This is part of NLP.

Artful application of NLP Coaching influences motivation, behavior, beliefs, feelings, and experience of life. NLP techniques are powerful enough to permanently erase a troublesome fear in as little as ten minutes!