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Hypnotherapy is communication with the unconscious part of the mind in order
to bring about improvement and healing in a person's life. The conscious mind is five to nine items of information that a person is aware of at any
given moment. Everything else within a person exists at an unconscious level. This includes a person's memories, beliefs, habits, values,
representations of the future and imagination. It includes internal bodily
functions occurring outside of conscious awareness, including heartbeat, pulse and blood circulation, the digestion of food, the
replacement of cells and the immune system. All these functions are co-ordinated, but they take
place outside of our conscious awareness. The totality of these functions is
known as "the unconscious mind".
What is unconscious learning?
As a person goes through life, he or she learns things first at a conscious
level, then at an unconscious level. When a child learns to walk, the whole
process of putting one foot in front of the other and staying balanced while
moving forward involves conscious awareness and a continuous correction of,
and compensation for, mistakes such as losing balance and tumbling down. Soon, however, the child can walk without even thinking about it at a
conscious level, because the unconscious mind has taken over the process of
walking. When a person learns to drive, the conscious mind focuses on all the different aspects of driving: clutch control, braking, accelerating,
signalling, changing gear, turns, reversing, parking and so on. The more the
person practises, the easier it becomes. The knowledge is transferred from
conscious awareness to the unconscious, so that the person can drive without
consciously thinking about it, while his or her conscious attention may be
focused on listening to the radio or talking to a passenger.
While this process of unconscious learning can have beneficial results, such
as the examples of walking and driving, it can also lead to difficulties. We
can learn a habit in a specific context where it works for us, but that same
habit becomes a problem later in life, in a different context. Every problem
was once a solution. A teenager might start to smoke because he or she regards smoking as the best available way to achieve the positive values of
status, recognition and belonging among other young people. Thus the smoking
habit starts as a "solution". So the young person forces his or her body to
accept the habit of smoking, learning to be a smoker at an unconscious level. Later, in adult life, the person becomes aware of the health risks
and financial costs of smoking, and so recognises it as a "problem". The task of hypnotherapy is to communicate effectively with the unconscious mind
to find a new and more useful way to achieve those positive values than through the habit of smoking. As the unconscious mind learns, through
hypnosis, to develop a more useful way of achieving those values, the smoking habit disappears. The same principles apply to other unwanted habits
such as over-eating, stress and depression.
What happens during hypnosis?
A person experiences hypnosis in the form of a "trance state", in which the
conscious mind shifts its attention towards inner resources. In a trance, the person's breathing slows, the muscles relax, and the person feels a
certain detachment from immediate surroundings and loses track of time. Throughout a person's life, he or she has developed a vast treasure trove of
resources in the form of memories and experiences which are stored at an unconscious level. During trance, the unconscious mind searches through this
treasure trove for the resources which will enable the person to develop a
more useful way of achieving the positive intention than the problem behaviour that he or she has been experiencing.
What is self-hypnosis?
It is possible to enter a trance state either by being hypnotised by a hypnotherapist ("hetero-hypnosis"), or spontaneously, as when hearing a
piece of music which "brings back memories" of people and places which one
has not consciously thought of for a long time. Also, it is easy to learn self-hypnosis, which enables a person to enter a trance state at will
through breathing and focusing. During self-hypnosis, the person can use techniques such as visualisation, affirmation and rehearsal in order to
learn more useful habits at an unconscious level than those he or she has hitherto experienced.
Why use self-hypnosis CDs?
These self-hypnosis CDs are based on David Botsford's ten years of experience in helping people find solutions in one-to-one hypnotherapy
sessions. They contain factual information the person needs to know, plus self-hypnosis exercises using proven, effective approaches which enable
listeners to achieve their goals. Each CD set represent a complete solution
in a box.
What is the purpose of the Baroque music on these CDs?
Baroque music corresponds closely to the healthy functioning of mind and body. It produces alpha waves within the brain, which are
associated with a relaxed, meditative, learning state. The healthy human heartbeat is 72 beats per minute, the same as that of Baroque music. It is
known that there are parts of the brain that can be accessed only by music.
Human beings respond to the sounds in their environment. For these reasons,
the use of Baroque music, performed by an orchestra and two organ soloists,
in combination with hypnosis, enhances the effectiveness of the CDs.
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