All actions and reactions are motivated by one of two emotions — Fear or Love. The actions that we take based on Fear create discord, disharmony, and, potentially, disease. When we find ourselves repeating fear-based actions it's wise to look for help. Hypnotherapy is a way to delve into the root causes of fear, and reprogram the mind at a subconscious and sometimes even unconscious level.

When we start working to understand, heal, re-pattern, and re-frame our actions, we need to understand that our minds are multi-faceted. The conscious mind analyzes, and uses logic and objectivity. It understands and makes choices based on experience.

The subconscious mind, however, holds our feelings, emotions, memories, and imagination. It chooses responses based on subjective experience. Most of the time, the subconscious mind makes choices either to protect us or to punish us. Protection stems from fear, and punishment from guilt—emotions we learn at a very early age. The practice of Hypnotherapy allows us to create shifts in our beliefs about the world that are sometimes impossible to consciously perceive. Often decided upon in infancy or early childhood, we act and respond throughout our lives in ways we often don't understand. They are truly unconscious.

Analytical hypnosis is one type of hypnotherapy that has us revisit the core events in our lives that have shaped our behavior. To do this, the subconscious mind must agree to reveal to the conscious minds what those situations were, and how they made us feel. But what happens when parts of the mind (or personality) are in conflict with one another? We know how that feels: we see ourselves doing or saying things that we no longer logically agree with, but can't seem to find the "self-control" to change them.

Reframing is the concept that each of us possesses the resources for any change that we might want to create; this belief is coupled with the idea that any behavior, no matter how negative or self-damaging, has a positive context. By using the unconscious mind, we can change the unwanted behavior or belief to become one that is positive for our whole Self, rather than just a part of our Self.

Hypnotherapy creates change in habits, behavior patterns, and emotional responses through hypnosis. Hypnosis is, according to Webster, "a repressed state of mental functioning in which ideas are accepted by suggestion rather than logical evaluation." A guided relaxation begins each session, so that conscious thought is quieted and memories, feelings, and visions of the unconscious mind can surface. For some therapy sessions, such as past life regressions and habit modification, relaxation must be deep. However, analytical hypnosis and reframing can be done in a rather light state of relaxation.

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis, and the power is in your own mind. As the hypnotherapist, I am merely the guide. Perhaps you are now ready to look within for the answers to your questions. They are all there, waiting for you.

June 2003