Posts Tagged ‘conscious mind’

29
Sep

How Hypnosis Works on the Unconscious Mind

   Posted by: admin    in conversational Hypnosis

We’ve all heard of hypnosis but what exactly is it and what does it do?

Most people are aware that those under hypnosis are in some kind of trance-like state but do you know that we all slip into this hypnotic trance several times a day!

You don’t believe me? Okay. Have you ever been sitting at work then suddenly realise that you have been reading the same word for the last 5 minutes? You aren’t quite sure what happened, you just “zoned out”. This is just like a hypnotic trance, in fact this is a hypnotic trance.

I’d like you to try and remember the last time this happened to you. Do you remember the background noise? I’m betting that it just melted away, or it sounded like you were underwater?

You see the hypnotic trance isn’t like being asleep as most people think. It’s the exact opposite in fact. It’s a heightened state of awareness. What happens is that you become so focused on one particular thing that your conscious mind just can’t cope with everything.

The brain is made up of two parts that work side by side. The part that we are most aware of is your conscious mind This part of your brain deals with all the everyday stuff like logic, reasoning and understanding. The second part is the unconscious or sub- conscious mind This part deals with all the primal stuff like breathing and memories.

As you grow up you have more and more information to deal with. When your conscious mind has made the same decision several times it begins to seep through to your unconscious mind. Eventually your sub- conscious mind begins to control things like instincts and personality. After a while all your moral decisions are made by your unconscious mind.

The two parts of your brain start to take on distinct roles. Your conscious mind becomes the adult and deals with all the serious decisions and rationalising. While your unconscious mind which is used less but has a longer memory becomes childlike and deals with imagination and dreams.

Your conscious mind works on a million different things at once. When you drift into this hyper-aware state your conscious mind goes into over-load and to cope he drafts in his buddy, the unpredictable unconscious mind.

Now this is the interesting bit. Since the conscious mind likes to take control all the time the unconscious mind is still a bit naive to the ways of the world. The unconscious mind believes everything it hears. It hasn’t had the chance to become cynical like the conscious mind Good hypnotists can take advantage of this opening. They can use the unconscious mind gullibility to re-write some of the brain’s basic programing.

When the conscious mind is distracted by your hyper-aware state a hypnotist can go in and talk directly to the unconsciousness. They can convince the mind that phobia’s are less scary, they can increase confidence, or lower inhibitions. Anything the unconscious mind can imagine it can be encouraged to create.

Now just because the unconsciousness is easily suggestible doesn’t make it an idiot. Even this part of the brain isn’t going to think that it’s a good idea to try and fly from the top of a skyscraper. The survival instinct kicks in. It’s the same when you suggest something that is against the person’s moral code. The unconscious mind thinks, “Wait a minute, I’m out of my depth here.” and calls the conscious mind back in to deal with it. Which usually results in the person quickly coming out of their trance.

Your suggestions need to be practical and obtainable. It may even take a few attempts to over write the years of programing that you already have in place but it’s much easier then dealing with the conscious mind directly. You will find much less resistance when you get the sub-consciousness

For more information about hypnosis visit my website on Conversational Hypnosis.

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12
Aug

Hypnosis, Habits and the Unconscious Mind.

   Posted by: Brenda    in Hypnosis, Uncategorized, conversational Hypnosis

All of us pick up bad habits. Things that we do that we wish that we didn’t. Some people smoke, others over eat, a large majority of us drink more than we’d like or gamble too much. We all have at least one thing in our life that we wish we didn’t do. So why don’t we just stop doing these things. If we dislike these habits so much why do we continue?

I’ve spoken before about how the mind is split into two parts, the conscious mind and the unconscious or sub-conscious mind. If you’d haven’t read the article I wrote about hypnosis and the subconscious mind I suggest you take a look at that now. In that article I explained how the conscious mind takes care of all the day to day things while the subconscious mind handles everything else.

When you do something repeatedly it becomes what we call a habit. Lets take smoking as an example. When you have your first cigarette it’s just something to pass the time, or maybe it’s a novelty, something that you haven’t tried before. Then you might have a second cigarette, maybe you had it at the same time as the first one, or perhaps you were in the same place, or with the same people. At this point your smoking hasn’t become a habit yet but your conscious mind is already starting to work. It’s remembering that it has done this before. It’s making connections between the situation that you are in now and the situation that you were in before.

At this point a lot of thoughts and emotions come into play. Are you having fun at the same time as you have a cigarette. Are you enjoying a good conversation? If you are then the brain records these feelings with what you are doing. If you are not having a good time your brain will record this too.

Ok so now you have reached the point where you have a couple of experiences with the cigarette but you can still stop anytime you want. You don’t though, you keep smoking. After a while your conscious mind begins to see a pattern. Your mind knows that at the same time everyday you light a cigarette. Your conscious mind learns and stores this information. This is where the phrase “learned behaviour” comes from.

Your conscious mind has a very specific job description. It works on the day to day stuff, and handles all the mathematical type stuff like rationalisation and analysis. So after a while of doing the same thing over and over again the conscious mind has a quiet work with the unconscious mind. He tells the unconscious mind that he has the same job to do over and over again and doesn’t really have the time to do it. Any chance of some help from the unconscious mind department?

Ever helpful and with unlimited time and resources the subconscious mind is glad to take it off the unconscious mind’s hands. To be honest though the unconscious mind is a touch on the lazy side. He sits in the back office of your brain surrounded by archives and memories. He likes to have his feet up and not over exert himself too much. So he gets this new task sent through to the back office and the unconscious mind thinks “ok how can I make this job easy on myself?” He makes a little autopilot. He has all the information from the conscious mind about when you smoke, how often you do it, how you feel when you smoke. So he records all this information and whenever the right conditions are met your smoking auto pilot kicks in and you light up another cigarette.

It’s at this point that you stop becoming aware that you wanted a cigarette. You just lighted one because you always do at this time. As soon as that autopilot kicks in your smoking changes from something you can control into a habit.

As any of you who have tried to quit smoking knows it’s a lot easier to create a habit than it is to break a habit. That’s because it’s really easy to transfer tasks to the unconscious mind. All you have to do is repeat the action for a few weeks. Sometimes not even that long. Once it’s in the dusty, dark, unorganised back office it can be difficult to get that information back out.

You can focus all your conscious effort on breaking a habit. You can use every ounce of willpower in your conscious mind and still not break through your addiction. That’s because you are now using the wrong part of your mind. Your conscious mind isn’t in charge of your smoking habit any more.

You can use your conscious mind to say no when your unconscious mind tries to kick in your smoking autopilot. This uses willpower which your conscious mind is in charge off. Like the first time round when you refuse your first cigarette your conscious mind records your feelings at the time. If you are trying to break a habit what happens is your conscious mind records your feelings of denial, guilt, and craving. Since these are mostly negative feelings your brain decides that you don’t really like doing these things, and probably won’t want to do this again. The next time you try to stop your smoking auto pilot your conscious mind chimes in and says well you didn’t really like doing that the last time. I’m going to support the subconscious mind this time, I’m not going to give you as much willpower because you obviously don’t have a clue what is good for you. Then each subsequent time you try to not smoke you get a little less willpower.

So all of you who have tried to quit smoking and have failed in the past now know what is going on. It’s not that you are weak minded, in fact it’s because your so strong minded and your conscious mind is just a stubborn old goat that won’t listen to you. So how do you beat habits? Well you go straight to the source. You have a quiet word with the sub-conscious mind, and the best way to do that is with hypnosis.

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