Quiet for a Racing Mind

Just as the audience settles into their seats for my Hypnotic Experience show I dive into the pre-talk.   It’s during this 20 minute chat I use humor and entertaining anecdotes to clear up misconceptions about hypnosis and set expectations for the show.

I’ll ask the audience to accept for a moment that we all have two minds – conscious and sub-conscious.  Our conscious mind is our area of rationale thinking and, while important to how we survive and thrive each day, it often gets us in to trouble.

Have you ever arrived at home exhausted after a long day at work?  You may feel like you’ve run a marathon, even though you have been planted at a desk.

That’s because our conscious mind requires a tremendous amount of energy to function.  A hypnotic induction helps a person step outside of the conscious mind, and get to a place of focus, quiet and relaxation.

That outcome intrigued a woman I recently met with individually after she attended one of my shows about hypnosis for exceptional living.

When I arrived at her home, it was obvious that her mind was racing.  In short order, she talked about an important graduate school project she has in the works.   She mentioned a grant application she’s developing.  And then rattled off several conflicts these deliverables had created in her relationships with co-workers and classmates.

Could hypnosis help quiet her mind?

In this particular case…no.  I walked her through several relaxation exercises and soothing visualizations, using my “go to” scenarios such as lying on a raft on the perfect pool and floating in the cloud.

Although she gave it a sincere try, she simply could not step outside of her conscious mind.  Little things like me saying her name as part of my soothing dialogue jolted her out of trance.

Plus, she changed up the visualizations to better suit her interests.  For instance, rather than lying on a raft on the pool, she placed herself in the water.

Of course, this action required attention from her conscious mind.

The take-away for me is that a person must absolutely be in the right state of focus and creativity to reap the full positive outcomes of visualization.  It confirms that it truly is self-hypnosis.

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Our time together did prove to be well spent.  The woman sent me a text message a few days later that read, “BTW, I think it did help afterwards.”

The subconscious mind holds much of our creativity and power of visualization.  Photo source: Aisha's Scrapyard.