What is Hypnosis ?

Hypnosis is:  A naturally occurring altered state of consciousness in which the critical faculty is bypassed (mind in the conscious mode) and acceptable selective thinking is established.

This simply means that the reasoning, evaluating, judging part of your mind (conscious) is bypassed.  While we wonder how this could possibly happen, we are subject to it all the time.  The advertising industry is dedicated to bypassing our critical judgment all the time in order to influence our buying behavior.

We suspend our critical judgment other times when an authority figure makes some sort of comment;  doctors, clergy, professors, and many more fall into this category.

Children suspend their critical judgment frequently in games of "let's pretend".  Actors do it in playing a part;  they have to suspend their critical faculty, and they ask the audience to suspend theirs to accept them as being someone else.

With the critical faculty bypassed, specific thoughts/suggestions can be lodged in the subconscious where they can propel the client toward a desired goal or change behavior in a positive, permanent way.  Any such suggestions must be acceptable to the client, of course.  They would have no effect otherwise.

This focus on a specific goal or behavior is done with laser-like precision and intensity in hypnosis.  It's a little like looking through a telescope from the wrong end.  You see just one tiny spec of the environment in focus though you may be aware of everything around it.