Hypnotherapy: How does it work?

It is difficult isn’t it, to understand how listening to words, descriptive imagery, ambient music and suggestions can make your body function differently, and how they can lift your mood, perceptions, outlook and bring better understanding.

Examples of mind and body connection

Let me give you a simple example of the mind-body connection.  Imagine you are listening to a joke, and the punch line makes you smile or laugh. As you were listening to the joke being told, your mind was creating chemical releases, electrical impulses, thoughts, feelings and emotions, then the punch line to the joke came and you laughed. The punch line effectively brought a rapid change of thought, created the internal response and you laughed. And the great thing is; you didn’t have to consciously do anything at all.

Let’s take another simple example. You see someone you are attracted to, or think of someone you love perhaps and immediately your mood lifts, your heart leaps, you feel joyous and secure along with many other pleasant emotions. Again the mind-body connection happened on a subconscious level and you felt all those lovely feelings of being in love. Again you didn’t have to do anything.

Another example (and this one is useful for those with Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Imagine you are asked to stand up and do a quick presentation to a group of 50 people and this is not a usual part of your everyday life, you may feel your stomach churn (often described as butterflies in the stomach) and that is a direct result of a thought, and it doesn’t matter if the presentation is a week or a month away, the thoughts will create a physical response too, and they may even get more intense as the day of the presentation gets closer.

Here is one last example for you to consider. Imagine you have in front of you a lemon and a knife, and simply think about holding the lemon, and safely cutting it in two, as you cut the lemon, the juice spills out, and the tangy smell of the lemon juice is noticed.  Many readers will notice saliva being produced in their mouths, simply by reading the words. For others it may take a little more time and a little more description, but in time they would find the same thing happened. This physical response is simply due to the thoughts created when you read about the lemon and cutting it.
These are just some simple examples of the mind-body connection.

So let’s take it a step further. 

You know now that each thought creates a physical response. So between the thought and the physical response something has to happen. (There are also emotional responses too, but we are keeping it simple for this exercise). And these responses happen inside you, in your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and your physical being.
Imagine this response like a flow of dominos, you have the thought, the dominos begin to fall, and the physical / emotional response is complete when the last domino falls.

If you stop the flow of the dominos, (thoughts and emotions) by taking one out, so the ones in front keep standing, or even better, add a few dominos in (new positive thoughts, suggestions and ideas) and the flow of the dominos is changed each time, so too is the physical or emotional response changed and improved.

A great many people routinely and unconsciously have learned a method of managed thinking that results in negative thoughts which comes to mind much more readily and easily than positive thinking. 
This is a learned response, and the wonderful thing is, if you have learned one thing, you can learn to do something else. You simply need to replace it for something better.

Our hypnotherapy programs are developed and produced by Michael Mahoney a leading UK clinical hypnotherapist in the field of Gastroenterology, though his 23 years of experience encompass a wide variety of health and emotional conditions. His work through the IBS Audio Program 100® is used in over 40 countries.

The sessions are developed specifically for the condition mentioned on the program titles.  We do not stock or use anyone else’s work, simply because we know our own work best, we know how it was developed, the time and effort that has been put into the development,  testing,  trialling and honing it to its best possible level; even our OPSIM listening schedules are carefully calculated for maximum effect.

The simple examples above give an insight into what happens on a subconscious level. The process of course is much more complicated than explained above. But do we really need to know how it works?

Do we all understand how a car engine moves, or how an aeroplane takes off? Or how a ship floats?  Most of us don’t.  We simply trust that the car will drive and the aeroplane will fly and the ship will float   even though we may not fully understand the details of the technical aspects. We trust that whatever happens, will happen.