Hypnotherapy and Mindfulness

What is it that we’re hoping to achieve through approaches such as hypnotherapy?  Surely the answer is change, we want things to be different than they currently are, we want to feel less pain, to be more positive, happier, to lose weight, whatever our individual goal might be.  And another interesting question might be, “So what happens when we experience a session of hypnotherapy”?

It’s what happens during hypnosis that has the potential to establish new associations, new awareness and new skills as well as connecting you with your own personal resources.  To put it very simply we can experience ourselves differently and every time we do so our brains receive a message that something has changed.

This message of change then becomes the catalyst for a cascade of new neurochemical and electromagnetic signals to and from the brain and the nervous system that produces changes in how we think, how we feel and how we behave. Mindfulness is also a strategy for change and in my experience, combining a Mindfulness approach with the focus of attention achievable through hypnosis can be very effective.

And for those who are willing to continue the practice outside of the therapy session the results are even more beneficial.  Research has shown that change is likely to be greater in those therapies that employ home based practices such as self-hypnosis or mindfulness than in those that do not (Burns & Spangler, 2000; Detweiler-Bedell & Whisman, 2005) in Mindfulness and Hypnosis (Michael D. Yapko, 2011).