“A natural, yet altered, state of mind where communication and responsiveness with the subconscious mind is present, where the critical factor has been bypassed and selective thinking has been established.” Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy, IIH
Hypnosis is a natural state of mind in which your attention becomes more focused and your mind enters a different way of perceiving and responding. You remain conscious, you can hear what is being said, and you remain free to choose what you say, do, and accept throughout the session.
Communication with the subconscious mind gives you access to thoughts, emotions, memories, beliefs, associations, and inner decisions that are not always easy to reach through ordinary conscious thinking. This subconscious content can continue influencing the way you feel, react, choose, and live, even when consciously you would like something to shift.
The critical factor is the part of the conscious mind that continually questions, compares, analyzes, evaluates, and determines whether something agrees with what you already believe to be true. During hypnosis, this function does not disappear. It becomes less dominant, creating greater access to ideas, feelings, memories, and meanings that might otherwise be quickly questioned or rejected.
Selective thinking refers to the way your attention becomes centered on what you are choosing to explore. Instead of moving constantly among many thoughts, you can stay focused on a particular idea, emotion, memory, belief, image, or possibility.
This does not require accepting everything that is said to you. Your choices remain yours. You can give greater consideration to something you are willing to explore without an old belief immediately dismissing the possibility that life could move in another direction.
From there, you can explore what has been influencing you, reconsider meanings formed in the past, and discover another way of seeing what once seemed fixed. This is where greater freedom to choose again can begin.