Hypnotherapy uses hypnotic techniques to bring about beneficial changes. Utilizing states of deep relaxation, the therapist assists in uncovering and exploring memories, emotions and past events which may affect a person's conscious mind and activating the client's inner resources in order to achieve the desired goals. It is used to treat numerous medical and psychological problems. Hypnotic techniques are useful to stop smoking, overcome alcohol and substance abuse, treating stress, sleep disorders and mental health problems such as anxiety, fear, phobias and depression.

In Hypnotherapy, a deep state of relaxation is achieved through focused attention. While in this trance-like state, the unconscious mind is highly receptive to new perspectives and ideas. The use of imagery and positive suggestions at this time can help a client imagine and actually experience herself in the future, as she desires to be. This makes the changes she wants in her life happen much faster and with less resistance, as a result of the hypnosis experience.

Hypnosis is a totally natural state of mind. When under hypnosis you will feel very relaxed, just like that wonderful feeling when you are tired lying in your bed and you are so overcome with comfort that you wish the moment could last forever. Through simple hypnotic, relaxation techniques you can easily attain this state at which time it becomes easy, with the help of a trained hypnotherapist, to visualise yourself becoming healthier, happier, more confident, a non-smoker. Whatever it is that you want to be!

Hypnotherapy, or self-hypnosis once you've learnt to use the tools for yourself, can be a very effective tool for asking the right kind of 'internal' questions. For instance, have a think about the following:

1. What do you want your life to be like in a year's time? Make your answer as compelling as possible - what do you really want it to be like?

2. What changes will you need to make for this to happen? Don't just think logically. What changes will you have to make in the WAY that you think?

3. Could anything negative happen if you do make these changes? In other words, how much do you really want it?

What Does Hypnotherapy Involve?

Achieving altered states of consciousness can be dated back thousands of years to early cultures where chanting and dancing were used as healing rituals. Healing through the hypnotic state can even be traced back as far as the Druids who referred to the altered state as "magic sleep". However, it was not until the mid 19th Century that the current methods of capturing a patients' total concentration through eye contact and verbal suggestion were established. Even then several schools of thought were developed and when Freud decided not to use hypnosis in his field of psychoanalysis it was many years before hypnosis as a tool for healing was again taken seriously. In 1955 the British Medical Association finally approved hypnosis as a valuable technique in the world of healing