Glenn Harrold has 25 years of experience as a clinical hypnotherapist, helping people change their lives through mind work. In our talk, we discussed the role of meditation in our wellbeing, and how hypnotherapy can help us improve every aspect of life.
Whether you want to gain self-confidence, build a successful business, or nurture loving relationships, in our new article you’ll learn how to achieve all your goals and live happier by working on your mind.
Hypnotherapy vs. meditation
Hypnotherapy is a certain type of hypnosis that uses a gentle induction to guide people into a relaxed state of trance. In that state, you are much more open to taking on positive suggestions that can help you deal with deep-rooted issues, heal traumas, and improve wellbeing.
In hypnotherapy, your attention is focused on 1 particular goal – for example, on clearing some specific negative programming from your past.
Meditation is more like an awareness-development journey. With meditation, your goal is to practice mindfulness, train your attention, and build awareness of your thoughts, emotions, and the world around you.
Both practices have the common goal though – to improve your psychological and physical wellbeing and lead you to a happier life.
Hypnotherapy helps remove trauma, pain, and negative programming
All negativity is learned. We come to this world having a clean slate, with no fears or negativity. If you put a baby near a tiger, the baby wouldn’t know to be frightened of it, but with time, we learn to be afraid of things around us.
All the trauma that we go through and issues from our younger life build up. As do all negative conclusions and connections that we make in our mind. Hypnotherapy targets our trauma and negative programming and systematically removes it, helping us quit smoking, get rid of food cravings, change the attitude towards commitment, and achieve other major changes.
It can also help with pain relief. Pain is a signal in your central nervous system that tells you something is wrong in your body. While you don’t want to remove the pain completely and treat the cause instead, you can still reduce the strength of that signal to a more bearable level.
For example, hypnotherapy is often used for relieving the pain during childbirth. It helps the mother stay calmer and happier, thus benefitting the baby’s wellbeing too.
The common myth is that you need to go in a deep trance for hypnotherapy to work. In reality, not all people can achieve deep trance in the first place, while light trance (which is essentially a state of deep relaxation) can be achieved by practically anyone and be just as effective.
Visualization shapes your reality
You create your reality with your mind, and it’s amazing what you can achieve by using a form of self-hypnosis called visualization.
For example, one research demonstrated that athletes who visualized themselves performing lifts, achieved a significantly higher increase in strength, compering to those athletes who did not practice positive visualization. And this works for any aspect of life.
If you want to make a great impression on a business meeting, shine as a speaker at a conference, or perform at your best capacity during a sports match, visualize yourself doing so several times beforehand.
To make visualization work, you should create a crystal-clear image of what you want to achieve in your mind. When you are trying to lose weight and get fit, visualize your ideal weight and appearance. Before your conference, visualize yourself shining on stage and giving a perfect speech with the best energy. Visualize your ideal life while you are going towards it.
This works because your unconscious mind can’t really tell reality from imagination. When you’re using this self-hypnosis technique, you start walking towards your visualized reality unconsciously. And you will be ready to succeed when the actual, real situation happens.
Meditation makes your mind happier and healthier
It’s easy to become overwhelmed with stress and anxiety with all that turmoil and chaos happening in the world. People feel uncertain and fearful, which makes it especially important to know how to set your mind at peace – and daily meditation is the perfect way to do that.
When you are meditating, you come out of the conscious mind – the “monkey mind” that creates fear and anxiety. You drop out of it and go into the state of self-hypnosis, a much more relaxed space, giving your mind a chance to recover.
You also connect to your creativity at those moments. During meditation, your creative, unconscious mind activates, opening its recourses to you.
Place and time for meditation are not so important, just do it whenever you need it. You can meditate in your bed in the morning for a positive start of the day, in your office to recharge during lunch time, or just before bed to let go of your worries and sleep better.
Just sit or lie in a comfortable position in some quiet place, switching off all your thoughts about your day, problems, and plans. Breathe slowly and deeply and allow yourself to drop into that meditative state.
You will recharge your mental resources, calm your mind, and start thinking clearly. Even if you do it for 10 minutes a day, there’s a massive benefit to it, so make sure to include it in your daily routine.
