What is hypnosis? A state you've already been in.

The definition I work from comes from the hypnotist Dave Elman: "The bypassing of the critical factor of the conscious mind and the establishment of acceptable selective thinking." It's an accurate and useful definition, and it makes sense in two parts: getting past the critical factor (which I call critical awareness), and putting in new thinking that you've agreed to. The questions below walk through both.

The state itself is one you already know. You can watch a good movie, knowing they're just actors, and still get caught up in the characters' lives as though they were real. You may even cry real tears. You can wake up from a dream and enjoy it even though you know it didn't happen. And when you feel an emotion or repeat a habit you don't want, and there you are doing it anyway, that's the same state working against you. My job is to show you how to use it better.

It's the part of your mind that runs things automatically: your habits, your reactions, and the feeling that shows up before you've had a chance to think. It learns from repetition. Anything that happens again and again gets stored as a program, so next time it runs without asking you. It never checks whether the program is good for you. That's why a habit can start to feel like "just the way I am," and why knowing better doesn't make it stop.

The conscious mind is the part you think with. It weighs your options and decides what you want. Part of it is critical awareness, and it's like a mental guard that keeps you safe. Your guard is cynical, highly defensive, and only accepts incoming information that already feels true. It feels threatened by change, and it's the reason you've struggled to create change until now. If you tell yourself "I'm calm in a crowd" when your experience says otherwise, the guard turns it away at the door.

When you drive a route you know well, your subconscious handles the steering and braking while your conscious mind thinks about dinner or a phone call. Most of the time that arrangement serves you well. But it also means that when you decide to change something, the decision happens in your conscious mind, while the habit lives in your subconscious and keeps running the old program. That's why willpower wears out. You're asking the thinking part of your mind to overrule the automatic part, all day, every day.

Now, imagine that you could walk right past the guard and create new habits and beliefs right in your subconscious. That's what we do with hypnosis, and it's where "the establishment of acceptable selective thinking" comes in. While in hypnosis, you're in a more receptive state, open to positive suggestions. The guard steps aside, and we put in only the changes you've asked for. That's what the word "acceptable" in the definition refers to: we agree on those changes together before the hypnosis starts.

Contrary to movie stereotypes and stage shows, no one can introduce unwanted thoughts or behaviors into your subconscious mind with clinical hypnosis.