I have been working as a hypnotherapist in my practice in Hemel Hempstead for several years, and still this interesting and bazaar therapy continues to fascinate me. Every session is uniquely unpredictable, and the subconscious of every individual I meet has the ability to amaze and surprise me. Hypnosis works by relaxing the filter which is your conscious mind, and when this is achieved suggestions for change and improvement can be given to the subconscious mind, the part responsible for generating and maintaining habits.

The subconscious is almost like a child, it takes things very literally, which is how famous hypnotherapists such as Milton Erickson, could tell his patients that when they opened their eyes, they would only see his hands. Indeed when the patient opened her eyes, she had deleted the rest of his body (negative hallucination, not seeing things that are there) so that his hand were floating in space on their own.

I was once seeing a patient for hypnotherapy who required some help with his organisational skills. One of the suggestions I gave him whilst he was in hypnosis was that his subconscious was now going to ensure he carried out all of the tasks he needed to each day, within what was reasonably possible. At which point, he sat up in his chair, opened his eyes, and gave me a thumbs up and a smile, before closing his eyes and relaxing again.

Another incident that took place in my hypnotherapy practice in Hemel Hempstead, was with a patient who told me she would very rarely give herself time to relax. I successfully induced a trance and gave some positive suggestions. When I came to terminate the trance, I counted from 5 up to 1, telling her that when I reached 1, her eyes would be open and she would be fully and completely wide awake. When I reached 1, her eyes did not open and she did not awaken. I tried again, and again. Then I remembered that she had said how she would rarely switch off and relax, could this be her subconscious taking the time it needs to recuperate, and refusing to terminate the trance? I next told her that if she did not open her eyes, I would never put her into a trance again. Her eyes opened immediately!

Whilst doing some training with my colleagues at our Hypnotherapy training school in Hemel Hempstead, I observed one Hypnotherapist, putting another into trance using a deepening technique called the cloud. This involves the hypnotherapist describing a relaxing, floating experience on a cloud to the patient. During the process, the patient suddenly flinched and opened her eyes. "I think I'd rolled off my cloud!" She said.

A common induction I use in my hypnotherapy practice in Hemel Hempstead is about the sun shining to relax the body, then the sun goes down and stars appear in the sky. The patient then visualises moving toward the stars and passing through the earths hemisphere. I used this process with one man who was very sceptical about how suggestible he would be to hypnotic suggestions. Upon awakening, he was very pleased to inform me that he had travelled through the earth's hemisphere on board the Starship Enterprise.