The word "hypnosis" comes from the Greek word "hypnos," which means sleep. The term was coined by the Scottish surgeon James Braid in the 1840s. Braid initially used the term "neuro-hypnotism" to describe the state of focused attention and heightened suggestibility that he observed, but he later shortened it to "hypnosis." Despite its etymology, hypnosis is not a state of sleep but rather a state of heightened focus and relaxation.

Hypnosis is a powerful tool for accessing the subconscious mind and can be used for various therapeutic and personal development purposes. Unfortunately, it is often misunderstood, as you might think that someone can control your mind that you might lose control over your actions and decisions that can change your behavior drastically, and so on. It is not like this because you always remain aware and can refuse suggestions that don’t align with your values. 

A hypnosis state is a relaxation a ‘partial sleep’ that is produced by another person where the subject can receive stimuli that might alter the conscious mind, where simple suggestions and words might help the subconscious state of the person. 

Hypnosis helps you to reach a state where you are the most receptive and therefore when you are between Alpha and Theta waves right in those mental brain states is when you can reprogram your mind, where you can address specific issues such as breaking a habit, reducing pain, or enhancing performance.

In this state, your body can rejuvenate by liberating blockages of energy and you are more receptive to suggestions such as positive affirmations, or subliminal messages, because in this brain state whatever information you absorb is believed as true. 

The benefits of hypnosis are various from managing pain, reducing anxiety, and treating depression, and phobia, to post/post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It also helps behavior change like quitting smoking, losing weight and overcoming insomnia. It can be used for performance enhancement such as artists, athletes or professionals to improve focus, confidence and performance. It can also induce a deep state of relaxation, helping individuals’ well-being. 

How to practice Self-Hypnosis

Find a quiet place where you are not disturbed, and define a clear goal of what you want to achieve; such as reducing stress, overcoming a habit or a fear. Let's start to take deep breaths and enter into a meditative state,  doing a full body scan will help in relaxing every single part of the body, starting from the forehead to the eyes, the jaw, the shoulder, the chest and so on, until arriving at the feet.

Now start to relax the mind taking deep breaths, visualize a serene place such as a relaxing beach or garden and try to see every detail of this place and start to feel more and more relaxed. Once you know you are in a deep trace and fully relaxed start a countdown method, from 10 to 1 suggesting to yourself that with each number you are becoming more and more relaxed. Once you arrive at 1 you are fully in a trance this is the moment to actualise the suggestions, you can create a mind movie on the goal that you want to reach, such as stopping smoking you might imagine yourself in a situation where people offer you a cigarette but you refuse saying that you are a non-smoker, or that when you have craving you in actually feel relaxed by them. Another tool is to repeat some affirmation in your mind, words with images is better, be simply clean and use them as ‘I am’ and at the present moment. ‘I am relaxed, I am stronger and so forth. You can images visualize and imagine that you support your suggestion. Repeat this exercise a number of times the more you do it the deeper will be affirmed in your subconscious mind.

You can also attach an ‘Anchor’ (Click the link to learn more) such as touching your thumb and forefinger together that you can use outside of the hypnotic state to trigger your hypnotic goals, such as relaxation and positive feelings. Once finished, gradually return to the waking state, start to count up from 1 to 10 and with each number become more and more alert and awake, finish the self-hypnosis by repeating some positive affirmation.