A second trance at life

Sometimes new clients will ask if they can be hypnotised, or suspect that they cannot be. It is a common misunderstanding. Here is a simple way to tell if you can go into hypnosis. Answer the following questions honestly.

Have you got any problems? Is there anything that upsets you? If your answer is yes, then you can probably go into hypnosis and already do.

Problems are not problems with the world. If the white van that cut you up and 'made' you furious, had done the same thing moments after you discovered you had won the lottery, you would have felt differently about it. So it's not the van on its own.

We are constantly moving in and out of different thought and feeling states all day long. Hypnosis is deliberately working with those thought and feeling states, rather than just living out from them unconsciously. That is what we normally do and that is just fine because we have consciousness and the function of consciousness is to bring our experience to life and make it feel real.

Hypnosis is taking a step back from that dreamlike absorption. Ironically, given most people's misconception of hypnosis, 'trance' is about being more awake and more purposefully working with our own thought and feeling states in order to change the default settings.

Hypnosis gives you a second trance at life. It is a skillset that you can learn rather than some magical bolt of lightening that you get zapped with. And that is good, isn't it? That puts you in charge, rather than being the passive recipient of the 'therapist'.

The extent to which you can be in charge of your own experience is one of the most important things to be learned from hypnosis. It is something you take with you after the treatment sessions have finished, and that will stay with you for life.

All you have to do is take a trance!