The Many Scientifically Proven Benefits of Meditation and Self-Hypnosis
Phillip J. Watt, Contributor
Waking Times
Meditation has been extensively studied for its benefits in helping people overcome mental health and behavioural issues, as well as grow in various ways.
As indicated in this ‘Psychology Today’ article, these robust studies have shown that: – It Boosts Your HEALTH – It Boosts Your HAPPINESS – It Boosts Your SOCIAL LIFE – It Boosts Your Self-Control – It Changes Your BRAIN (for the better) – It Improves Your Productivity – It Makes You WISE(R).
You can also read here and here to further explore these scientific results.
Meditation is self-hypnosis. Or better put, self-hypnosis is a type of meditation. Instead of switching off the egoic light like in some meditation techniques, it uses the ego to navigate through the subconscious infrastructure to rewire the neurological pathways and redesign the conceptual apparatus.
That’s why hypnotherapy is so successful in rapidly facilitating change. With your full attention and focus, you will relax into a light, medium or deep trance. In fact, it’s an altered state that all of us enter every single day, such as daydreaming or relaxing in front of the TV.
Hypnotherapy uses that trance state to facilitate healing and growth.
It is scientifically and clinically proven to help with so many challenges in life. It is also more successful than traditional therapies, such as psychotherapy and counselling, because it works with both the conscious and subconscious mind.
It is highly effective for weight loss, pain relief, curing migraines, quitting smoking, and overcoming anxiety, depression, grief, stress, sexual functions, insomnia, fertility problems, IBS and phobias, as well as many other mental and physical issues.
The ironic thing is that hypnosis is a trance state we all go into and out of each day. Daydreaming, reading a book intensely, lost in the TV, driving without paying conscious attention to the road; they’re all examples of trances.
It’s exactly why advertising works so well, because when we’re relaxed in front of the TV the message slips straight past the critical faculty of the conscious mind and directly into the subconscious.
In that light, every single one of us CAN be hypnotised to some degree. We can also learn to go into deeper states too. Therefore, it is NOT a trophy to have ‘too stronger mind for hypnosis’.
Why? Because trance states can be extremely potent for reorganising the mind according to our wishes.
And remember, the science and medical research is clear; meditation, hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis and other focus based states are phenomenally good at changing our neurology and other physiology.
Therefore, it’s powerful for changing our psychology and emotions too.
And I’ve never met anybody who didn’t want to make their life better as soon as possible, especially by simply relaxing themselves.
There’s a lot of misconceptions about hypnosis though. A silly myth is that the hypnotist controls the subjects mind. How it actually works is that a collaboration between the hypnotherapist and the client creates shifts in both conscious and subconscious behaviour.
They don’t lose their sovereignty.
It’s simply using hypnotic language to distract their conscious mind to embed the desires they have as suggestions into their subconscious.
It’s like entering code into their subconscious programming.
A lot of time they’ll have some level of conscious awareness. They might drift in and out of that awareness according to the different depths of trance they’re in, yet because they’ve already approved the hypnotherapist to speak to their subconscious it will be listening no matter how ‘conscious’ they are of the trance experience.
When you work with a hypnotherapist, there is a mental contract. You ask them to help with whatever it is, and they’ll do that by dealing directly with it, as well as indirectly. That might mean you need to deal with related issues, face repressed memories or something to that effect, but they don’t need to necessarily know and neither do you either sometimes.
That’s called content-free therapy.
The point is, however, that outside of the mandate you’re seeing them for, it’s your business. That’s the control you always have.
So when you see somebody clucking like a chicken or some other silly behaviour in ‘stage hypnosis’, they’re not being mind-controlled at all. They are individuals who are really susceptible to deep trances and on both conscious and unconscious levels they WANT to entertain the audience.
Clucking like a chicken is still within their ‘value structure’, so they do it.
So regardless if you need help from a hypnotherapist to get the ball rolling, you can practice meditation and self-hypnosis techniques to change your life in whatever ways you wish.
It is a powerful tool, and you should capitalise on it. Put simply, think of self-hypnosis as like eating, drinking and sleeping; it is an essential part of what you need to do for yourself every, single day.
The following video is a presentation at the Illuminate Conference called ‘Self-hypnosis and the Soul’.
About the Author
Phillip J. Watt is a hypnotherapist, author and presenter who lives on the Mid North Coast of NSW Australia. His first book, ‘The Simulation‘, is a daring exposé of the human experience in the 21st Century. His written and film work has reached into the millions of people and deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook, listen to his ‘Mad Magic’ Podcast on SoundCloud or Itunes, watch his video interviews at his YouTube Channel and visit his websites Pushing the Tipping Point or Heal by Hypnosis to book a hypnotherapy session.
This article (The Many Scientifically Proven Benefits of Meditation and Self-Hypnosis) was originally created by Phillip J. Watt and is re-posted here with permission.