The Power of Hypnosis for Wellness: 3 Key Concepts
If you’re reading this right now, you just might be ready to ditch your daily grind, break up with burnout, and create meaningful and lasting change using the power of your subconscious mind.
Hypnosis is backed by an enormous amount of scientific research and spiritual history, which can make learning about it overwhelming. What’s great is that you don’t need to know much about how it works in order to benefit from it, so be sure to check out my Beginner’s Guide to Hypnotherapy for a general introduction, or you can visit my website to learn more or book a session!
If you’re curious about introducing hypnosis into your wellness routine but want to learn more about it, this deep dive is for you.
It’ll guide you through the basic science behind hypnosis and what makes it the easiest and fastest way to unlock your full potential, including:
What hypnosis is versus what it isn’t and how it can work for you.
Brain wave states, what it means to achieve a “trance-like state,” and how they all relate to hypnotherapy.
The Sympathetic versus the Parasympathetic Nervous Systems, and how understanding and regulating them can help you live your best life.
Let’s dive in!
“Meditation with an Agenda:”
What is hypnosis and how does it work?
The myths vs. the origins:
A lot of us have grown up alongside an incorrect pop-culture portrayal of hypnosis without realizing it. Unfortunately, it includes a lot of nasty, vaudevillian imagery of wagging fingers, dangling watches, dramatic vocal instructions, and “victims” placed under a “spell,” humiliating themselves for the amusement of others.
Many hypnosis practitioners like myself spend a lot of time and energy dispelling those negative stereotypes for potential clients. But did you know that hypnosis is actually an ancient means of healing that’s been used for centuries? The real origins of hypnosis are fascinating and the modern scientific study of it is alive and thriving.
The basic practice of hypnosis can be traced back to many different ancient civilizations. Spiritual leaders, shamans, and healers explored different ways to induce and access altered states of consciousness as a means of physical or psychological healing. Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, for example, both had what they called “sleep temples” or “dream temples,” which were basically a kind of hospital. Priestesses would perform “psychic surgery” on patients, often in unlit chambers, and use drumming or chanting to facilitate healing or create a connection to higher realms.
I believe that these ancient traditions are actually precursors to the way nearly all holistic healing techniques work on the brain. Hypnosis can bring about healing in a very focused, direct, and goal-oriented way, as opposed to just vibing out at a guided meditation or sound bath, for example—which is still fun and healthy, just less focused. It’s also a secular practice, meaning you don’t need to subscribe to any kind of spiritualism or belief system to understand it or benefit from it.
The science behind hypnosis:
At its core, hypnosis is a collection of techniques used to access and influence the subconscious mind to promote healing and change. Your subconscious mind is basically everything your mind does that you aren’t paying attention to. On average, you can usually hold about seven things in your brain at once. So things like your digestion, heartbeat, and your memories of who you are and everything in your life, for example, make up about 95-98% of your brain. And it all happens without you even needing to try! Thank goodness, right?
My use of hypnosis focuses on attaining career-oriented goals and achieving success without the stress.
I help my clients tap into their subconscious in order to access the tools they need (and already have!) to bring about their ideal outcome. This could be a desire to show up to work with more confidence, attracting more dream clients, or sustaining a healthy diet or exercise routine. All of this is rooted in the concept of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and adapt throughout life. Hypnosis is how I assist my clients to navigate their personal journeys of change and adaptation.
To hypnotize someone simply means to bring someone into a trance-like state, or, a specific brain wave state in which suggestibility is heightened and neural pathways can be rewired. I’ll cover brain wave states more thoroughly in the next section. In a hypnosis session, you are guided to relax into that state, and then brought through different visualizations that help you to access more clarity, change automatic patterns, and shift your perceptions in ways that support your goals.
Waking Dreams: Healing by way of brain wave states
Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of brain wave states and why they’re so important for hypnotherapy.
Brain waves are the frequency of our neurons’ activity; their oscillations are measured in waves. It’s important to note that hypnosis utilizes the Alpha and Theta brain wave states, but we’ll discuss them all briefly for a more well-rounded understanding. But the Alpha-Theta state is the most important for hypnosis because it’s the place between being very awake and alert (Gamma or Beta) and deep sleep (Delta).
It’s also a state that we naturally fall into all the time.
Think about when you become very absorbed in a singular task and your mind starts to wander, like when you’re washing dishes or watching a movie. Keep that in mind as we move forward.
Gamma waves are linked to high-level information processing, when you’re at your peak mental agility. These enhance learning, concentration, problem-solving and support cognitive function and focus. A notch below Gamma waves are Beta waves, where your problem-solving and decision-making abilities are still pretty high; you are alert and focused, able to analyze, complete tasks, and concentrate. Alpha waves are a more relaxed level of alertness that facilitate stress reduction and creative thinking and problem solving.
Theta waves are up next, and are the pivotal trance-like state that hypnosis practitioners are aiming to achieve. The Theta State is one of deep relaxation, meditation, or very light sleep where memory consolidation and emotional processing happen. Theta waves enhance creativity, emotional connection, and intuitive problem-solving, making it the ideal state to dig into the subconscious and implement change. Remember the trance-like state we learned about earlier? This is where that happens.
And neuroplasticity? This is where that occurs as well.
The heightened suggestibility makes any manifesting or change work that happens during the Theta state easier to access while in the Alpha or Beta states. The habitual stories of why you’ve been stuck and unsuccessful drift away, and your mind opens to the answers that were waiting for you just underneath the surface. In the Alpha and Theta brainwave states, you can reprogram your mind’s automatic habits. Your neurons are primed to build new connections, which make new habits easier to adopt and sustain, which can ultimately change your life. This is pretty much hypnosis in a nutshell, and is the foundation of how all cognitive-behavioral change happens. ”
Last up are Delta waves, where deep, restorative sleep happens. Achieving proper sleep is essential for brain and body recovery. Delta waves facilitate physical and mental restoration and aid in memory reconsolidation and overall health and wellbeing. In fact a common use for hypnosis is to help improve sleep or even cure insomnia.
A hypnosis practioner’s job is to facilitate their client’s transition from the Beta state to the Theta state by using different techniques that vary by the client’s needs or the practitioner’s preference. In my sessions I like to teach self-hypnosis techniques to help you access these relaxing, restorative states easily. You can learn more about these in the courses and self-hypnosis audios available in the Vibrance Collective community.
How “Surviving” Can Get in the Way of Thriving:
The Sympathetic v. Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
First, let’s briefly address the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). This is the nervous system that operates our internal organs, smooth muscles, and glands. Basically—but most importantly—it’s the control system that unconsciously regulates bodily functions including our heart rate among many, many others. Our ANS should be spending most of its time hanging out in the parasympathetic division, but more often than not, it’s spending too much time in the sympathetic, and we’re about to explore why that’s a problem.
The Sympathetic nervous system is a protective mechanism that responds when we feel threatened, disgusted, or afraid, affecting the way we react to certain events or stimuli. Most of us recognize this as our “fight or flight (or freeze)” response. The stimulation of this system also affects us physiologically. Meanwhile, the Parasympathetic nervous system is commonly referred to as the “rest and digest” system, and where we should be living most of the time. Unfortunately, most of us are rarely there.
The Sympathetic Nervous System
Imagine you’re living hundreds, even thousands of years ago.
You’re in the African savanna and you see a lion hiding in the grass. You know that you’re in danger and your sympathetic nervous system is activated. Your pupils dilate, you’re ready, alert. Your blood begins to flow away from your digestive tract and into your muscles, so you can run. Your heart rate increases and you feel a knot in your stomach because you’re afraid, possibly panicking. All of these physical effects occur because your brain is trying to protect your body from the danger that it’s in; your brain is trying to help you survive.
Thankfully, very few of us today find ourselves in this exact situation. But there’s still bad news: while our environments may have evolved, our brains haven’t. The modern world has only given us more distractions and more stressors. When we’re in this perpetually threatened state, even our immune system depresses, causing all kinds of inflammation; think about how constant, heightened stress can result in stomach ulcers.
We’re still faced with all kinds of lions in the grass every day that stimulate our sympathetic nervous system, keeping us in a continuous state of survival mode. And this is not good for us.
The Parasympathetic Nervous System
Ahhh, the “rest and digest” state.
A magical place where we all know we should be, but one most of us struggle to find without a map. This is where and how hypnotherapy can benefit us in enormous ways. As a hypnosis practitioner, I am your guide on this journey, only instead of just handing you the map we draw it together. You can learn more about what it’s like to work with me specifically in my Beginner’s Guide to Hypnotherapy.
But typically, a hypnosis session with me would end with giving you self-hypnosis “homework.” Based on what we cover together during the session, I’ll leave you with a few practical tips and exercises that you can use to help keep your ANS safely settled and resting in the parasympathetic system as often as possible.
Are you ready to transform?
So many of us today are struggling to “have it all” and experience genuine fulfillment and peace. I’m here to tell you that having it all is not impossible—we just need the right tools to get us started.
Even the busiest, most badass go-getter out there needs to slow down before they spin out. Hypnosis is a versatile and effective tool for clearing away the cobwebs in your brain and illuminating your ideal path forward.
I’m Iris, and I’ve been where you are.
Like you, I hustled through years of intense workloads, racing deadlines, and constant pressure. That high-octane lifestyle took a toll, leaving me burned out, exhausted, and stuck in a cycle of endless hustle.
What finally worked? Learning how to integrate practical wellness techniques into my daily life to shift the sneaky subconscious patterns that were keeping me stuck.
With nearly a decade of experience in coaching, hypnotherapy, and spiritual healing practices, I’ve developed a unique, results-driven approach that blends deep inner work with practical tools. Together, we can go far beyond surface-level fixes and create tangible change that lasts.
Explore more of my website, rarefortune.co, to learn more about me, my hypnosis services, and my virtual and live events! You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
