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Does Hypnosis Work?

It’s amazing how many people I meet, who ask 'Does Hypnosis Work?', and then with absolutely no experience of hypnosis - believe that either hypnosis doesn't work, or that it 'won’t work on them’.

I've always wondered why this is.

In most circumstances people are more open-minded, and I can’t think of a different area where people believe that they will have a response that is so different to the general public.

Now, while it is good to remain somewhere between skeptical and open minded until you have personal experience, it is puzzling to believe in something in a very specific way when you have absolutely nothing to go on.

I believe that this attitude is generally down to two reasons:

Firstly people are scared of hypnosis, simply because the view they have of hypnosis is based on what we see in the movies where the hypnotist has complete control over the subject - and that is scary. These people simply hope that the answer to the question 'Does hypnosis work?' is no.

And secondly, there are a lot of very questionable ‘therapies’ and ‘therapists’ out there, so it's human nature to bunch them all together and trust no one.

But back to the original question: Does Hypnosis work?

In the sense that hypnosis is a method of moving a client into a specific state of mind where they are much more amenable to your suggestions – then yes, hypnosis does work.

That doesn't mean that an individual therapist will be successful with resolving a specific issue such as weight loss or smoking, but then that isn't the fault of hypnosis.

I can't ski, but that doesn't mean that skiing isn't an efficient (if somewhat scary) way of covering a large distance is a short time.

Even if you're not interested in using hypnosis for personal change, a by-product of hypnosis is the experience of a very relaxed state of mind that you may not have experienced before and is an excellent way to expand your mental flexibility.

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