In this post, we’re going to continue exploring the effectiveness of hypnosis for weight loss by discussing the remarkable changes that occur to the mind under hypnosis.
In out previous post, we noted that in the normal waking state (see left hand side image), we have 3 parts to our mind: (a) conscious, (b) unconscious and (c) the critical faculty.
We noted that the conscious mind is responsible for all the things that we are normally conscious of. Automatic responses are under the control of the unconscious mind. The role of the critical faculty is whenever you get presented with a new idea, it help us either accept it or reject it based on how it aligns with our unconscious belief & values.
Under hypnosis, some fascinating changes happen to our minds – see right hand image above. Firstly, as we get more & more relaxed, our critical faculty takes a bit of holiday and is no longer active. This helps us become much more open and receptive to suggestions for change in both our beliefs & values as well as our habits.
As we continue to relax even further, the unconscious mind becomes much more prominent & thereby, more easily accessed. This allows the client and the therapist to work together to make 2 important changes to the unconscious mind under hypnosis.
Firstly, long standing, habitual automatic responses of the client can now be brought back under their full conscious control. This allows the client to much, much more easily change bad habits that they have maintained for long periods of time.
Secondly, adjustments are made to their protection mechanism so that the unconscious mind no longer sees any benefits in continuing the old unhelpful patterns of behaviours such as smoking, overeating, over drinking etc!
In fact, when I ask the clients in a session whether they see any benefit moving forward from continuing to smoke, overeat, over drink etc, they immediately respond – no way!!
This clearly illustrates that consciously, the client know what they should be doing, but struggle to do so. This is because the unconscious mind doesn’t agree that the client is better serve by changing their behaviour – generally from a protection point of view. Given it is the more powerful of the two, it generally always wins when a dispute occurs.
So the primary purpose of hypnosis is to help convince the unconscious mind that the old undesired patterns of behaviour are no longer useful or beneficial. Once this has been achieved, the old pattern of behaviour can be quickly changed and replaced with more desirable, healthier alternatives.
So hypnosis, like NLP, can be seen as a powerful tool to help us change undesirable patterns of behaviour quickly and easily. We can thereby reap the massive benefits of doing so in a much shorter time frame with much less effort. This thereby illustrates effectiveness of hypnosis for weight loss.
To your optimum health, well being & ideal weight!
Dr Ian Kaminskyj
Melbourne NLP Hypnosis Centre
1300 983 717
