Written by: Krystal Thompson, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise
Many of us have seen videos of stage hypnosis where volunteers end up clucking like chickens. But to simplify the power of hypnosis to that and nothing more would be like judging the entirety of a national forest by a single tree within it.
Hypnosis is simply an advanced state of relaxation, and one that we experience regularly. You know that sort of trance-like state you sometimes fall into during repetitive activities such as driving or doing the dishes? Those are hypnotic states. Familiar, right?
Hypnotherapy is working with a trained practitioner to use that state as a path to the subconscious mind, and to make specific changes on that level.
Conscious Vs. Subconscious
I’m sure you’ve heard of the conscious and subconscious minds, but what are they really? How do they interact, and how do they affect our day-to-day lives?
I’d like you to imagine your mind like an elevator with ten floors. The 10th floor is where we live our conscious, day-to-day lives. This is where we experience the physical world: other people, our careers, our thoughts, our bodies, etc. Because it’s all most of us know to consider, we tend to think that this single floor - the conscious experience - is the extent to which we have access. But your subconscious mind, floors 1-9, dictates what that conscious experience actually is. What’s manifesting on the conscious level is an indication of what’s present at the subconscious level.
Your subconscious mind is a program; you can imagine it like a Google Doc. Everything in the Google Doc is a reflection of the environment you grew up in: your family, your peers, your community, your culture, and all of the beliefs and expectations that exist within those. As young people, we build our map of the world as it is shown to us, and the subconscious mind encodes it as a replicable program. You can print from a Google Doc countless times, right? Your subconscious mind is the same way: it will run the same program until it’s altered.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but if, for example, you grew up in an environment (poverty) that doesn’t match the one you want to cultivate for yourself as an adult (abundance), you may have some subconscious shifts to make.
If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner, are you experiencing the level of success you want? Are you consistently hitting the goals you set for yourself? Do you see your work making a difference in the world? Do you feel like you’re living your purpose?
If not, this could be an indication that your subconscious mind is running programs that no longer serve you, such as fear, doubt, limitations, or scarcity.
How Hypnotherapy Works
Again, hypnosis is an advanced state of relaxation. As the physical body relaxes and we settle into the parasympathetic (resting) nervous system, the doors to the subconscious mind ease open, and we are presented with a pathway to make lasting changes.
Hypnotherapy is specific suggestions and reframes given directly to the subconscious mind. Returning to our previous metaphor, hypnotherapy is an active process of editing the subconscious “Google Doc.” This process literally creates new neural pathways (changes your brain), directly affecting the way you show up and behave in your life.
How This Affects Your Success
If you’re an entrepreneur or the head of any team, your mindset directly affects everyone and everything under you. If you’re a Creative Entrepreneur, for example, but you grew up in an environment where artistic pursuits were belittled (“You’ll never make any money as an artist,” “You should do something more stable,” “You’ll never make it,” etc). Those programs are still at play in your subconscious mind and will affect how successful you allow yourself to be.
Because some subconscious part of you expects to struggle (based on all of the direct and indirect suggestions you were given throughout your life), you will consciously create situations to match the program. We all know this process, we just tend to call it by a different name: self-sabotage.
So, Can Hypnotherapy Help Your Business?
Absolutely. Hypnotherapy can help in any area of your life where there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be.
How to start? Take inventory. Get clear about what you want and what you’re working toward, and be honest with yourself about what isn’t working yet. Reflect on how you can show up and behave differently: how much of the action you’re taking is aligned with old fear or scarcity-based programming? How can you empower yourself to make your first shift right here in this moment?
You can connect with Krystal and learn more about starting your own journey by visiting her website and connecting with her on Facebook and Instagram
Krystal Thompson, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Krystal Thompson is a Los Angeles-based Self Worth + Success Coach for heart-centered people with big dreams. Her approach is a unique blend of conscious mindset work, subconscious reprogramming, energy healing, and inspired action coaching. Everything she teaches is a process she has been through in her own transformation, and is done with one goal in mind: to elevate the collective by reigniting the individual. By uncovering what’s kept them stuck, she helps her community tap into the clarity, confidence, and self-empowerment to build the life they want, not the one they think they have to settle for.
