What is hypnotherapy
Discover how clinical hypnotherapy with Tim Thornton can help you create lasting change from the inside out. Working directly with the subconscious mind, where real transformation begins.
How does hypnotherapy work?
Hypnotherapy is often easier to understand when you look at how it differs from traditional talk therapies. Approaches such as psychology, CBT, and counselling primarily work with the conscious mind. Hypnotherapy works at a deeper level, where long-held patterns, memories, and automatic responses sit.
By guiding you into a relaxed, focused state, hypnotherapy helps you move past the overthinking mind so you can work with the subconscious. This is where many habits, emotional patterns, and learned responses live, which is why change can feel more natural and steady once the subconscious is involved.
What to expect in your sessions
Your first session (around 90 minutes)
Your first appointment includes a conversation about your history, your goals, and the outcomes you’d like to reach.
Once you feel comfortable, you’ll move into the hypnotic process.
During follow-up sessions
Follow-up sessions begin with a brief check-in, then move directly into the hypnotherapy work.
You’ll be guided through a hypnotic induction designed to move past the conscious mind and connect with the subconscious, where habits, memories, and learned responses sit.
Suggestions offered during hypnosis help shift old patterns and create new responses aligned with your goals. Some clients remember the session clearly, while others recall only parts. This doesn’t affect the outcome; the subconscious processes all suggestions regardless.
After your session
Most clients describe feeling relaxed, clear, and energised.
Those attending a series of three or four sessions often move into even deeper states over time. These states can support the immune system, reduce cortisol and adrenaline, and contribute to long-term emotional stability.
Definition of Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is a form of psychological intervention in which a trained clinician uses hypnosis to facilitate therapeutic change by delivering targeted suggestions, imagery, or cognitive-behavioural procedures aimed at altering perception, emotion, thought, or behaviour within a receptive hypnotic state.
Hypnosis is a voluntary, absorbed, suggestible, dissociated mode of cognition produced by a social–cognitive context and maintained through focused attention and reduced evaluative processing.
Hypnotherapy involves...
Hypnotherapy is a form of psychological intervention in which a trained clinician uses hypnosis to facilitate therapeutic change by delivering targeted suggestions, imagery, or cognitive-behavioural procedures aimed at altering perception, emotion, thought, or behaviour within a receptive hypnotic state.
Hypnosis is a voluntary, absorbed, suggestible, dissociated mode of cognition produced by a social–cognitive context and maintained through focused attention and reduced evaluative processing.
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1. Induction of a Hypnotic State
The clinician guides the client into a focused, absorbed, and highly suggestible mental condition. -
2. Therapeutic Use of Suggestion
The practitioner delivers strategic, goal-oriented suggestions designed to modify maladaptive habits or behaviours, reduce symptoms such as pain or anxiety, change cognitive or emotional responses, and strengthen adaptive coping mechanisms. -
3. Voluntary Participation and Agency
The client remains capable of choice, able to accept or reject suggestions, and an active participant in the process. -
4. Clinically Oriented Goals
Hypnotherapy targets clinically meaningful outcomes such as symptom reduction, attitudinal change, emotional regulation, and trauma processing.
How to get the most from hypnotherapy
Most changes occur naturally. Some situations may take more time, but progress is common when clients are committed to their own outcomes.
From experience, clients who reach their goals often share four traits:
- They know what they want and what they don’t want
- They have an open mind
- They expect progress
- They’re willing to collaborate
The Hypnotic State
The hypnotic state is a cognitive condition characterised by increased responsiveness to suggestion, selective attention, and a reduced tendency for critical evaluation of internally generated or externally delivered information, while maintaining full capacity for voluntary awareness and memory unless altered explicitly by suggestion.
It involves:
- Narrowed, absorbed attention focused on a limited set of stimuli (internal or external).
- Reduced peripheral awareness, but not unconsciousness.
- The subject shows increased receptivity to suggestions involving changes in perception, such as altered sensory experiences.
- They may also experience changes in cognition, including effects like memory distortion.
- Additionally, they can exhibit changes in voluntary motor control, such as involuntary movements.
- Temporary suspension or relaxation of top-down evaluative processes (sometimes described as “dissociation of executive control”).
- The person can still think critically—but is less inclined to do so unless prompted.
- A functional dissociation between intentions and actions or between different streams of awareness.
- Hypnosis does not involve sleep, unconsciousness, or loss of control.
- The person may experience suggested effects as if they were happening to them, rather than being initiated by them.
- The subject retains awareness of their environment, the ability to choose whether to follow suggestions, and the capacity to terminate the state at will.
Technical Definition
To understand how hypnosis works, it helps to look at how the brain shifts between different states. There are five brain wave frequencies, each with its own rhythm and level of consciousness.
Beta wave, 14-40Hz
Normal waking consciousness. Linked with logic, alertness, reasoning, and also stress, fear and restlessness.
Alpha wave, 7.5-14 Hz
Present during deep relaxation: eyes closed, daydreaming, and shallow meditation. This is the threshold where conscious and subconscious functions overlap and intuitive understanding becomes more accessible.
The Earth’s natural resonance, known as the Schumann resonance, sits at 7.83 Hz.
Theta wave, 4-7.5Hz
Accessed during REM sleep, hypnosis, deeper meditation, and light sleep. This is the environment of the subconscious mind, ideal for visualisation, reprogramming, and creating new patterns while remaining aware of the surroundings.
Delta wave (0.5-4Hz)
The deepest sleep and slowest frequency. Linked with dreamless sleep, profound meditative states and systemic healing, regeneration, and recalibration.
Gamma waves (above 40Hz)
The fastest frequency. Associated with insight, high-level information processing, and the ability to perceive impressions beyond the immediate senses.
The hypnotic process
Step one
Shifting into a relaxed state
The hypnotic state begins with a natural change in brain waves. In normal waking life, we operate in the Beta range (14–40 Hz), which is linked with alertness, logic, and critical reasoning. Beta is useful, but it also sits alongside stress, anxiety, fear, and restlessness.
During hypnosis, the brain shifts into the Alpha range (7.5–14 Hz). Alpha waves appear during deep relaxation and are present in moments when the mind and body settle. This transition marks the start of the hypnotic experience.
Step two
Entering the Alpha trance state
Alpha is the core hypnotic trance state. It commonly appears when the eyes are closed, during light meditation, or while drifting into a daydream.
In this state, attention turns inward and the subconscious becomes more accessible. People often notice that intuition feels clearer and inner experiences gain more depth the closer they move toward 7.5 Hz. This is where the mind becomes more receptive to change.
Step three
Activating the parasympathetic response
As the trance deepens, the parasympathetic nervous system becomes active. Often referred to as the rest and digest mode, it helps conserve energy across the whole system.
Heart rate slows, endocrine glands increase activity, and the muscles in the gastrointestinal tract relax. In simple terms, this creates a comfortable, restorative experience that prepares the mind to work through long-standing patterns and supports the goals you want to achieve.
Step four
Crossing the Alpha–Theta border
Many clients naturally drift toward the Alpha–Theta border, where brain waves slow to around 7–8 Hz. Theta is the range linked with visualisation, mind programming, and creative thinking.
In this mental state, people can access imagination and deeper emotional material while still remaining aware of their surroundings.
It’s interesting to consider that the Earth’s atmospheric electromagnetic resonance sits at 7.83 Hz, which aligns closely with this state. Many people describe this range as feeling deeply centred or “in sync” with themselves.
Step five
Working with the subconscious mind
The therapeutic work of hypnosis happens in the subconscious rather than the conscious, waking mind.
Adults and children move in and out of light trance many times each day. Examples include drifting into a daydream or becoming absorbed in a beautiful view. These natural trance states help the body take a step back from the pressures of daily life: breathing slows, blood pressure drops, and tension releases.
During hypnosis, the usual conscious inhibitions soften. Neural pathways become more adaptable, which allows the brain to process emotional history or trauma that may be contributing to current issues.
Thoughts, sensations, and feelings that are harder to reach with conscious strategies (like CBT) can be accessed here. Once they’re acknowledged, old patterns can begin to shift.
Step six
Releasing old patterns and changing behaviour
Most people who seek hypnotherapy are dealing with experiences such as depression, anxiety, stress, sadness, guilt, shame or anger. These unprocessed emotions often shape behaviour and can show up as emotional eating, panic attacks, hair pulling, or patterns that affect relationships, careers or personal wellbeing.
Through hypnotherapy, these emotions can be acknowledged and dissolved. As they release, clients often notice feeling lighter, more grounded, and more self-assured.
The changes made in the subconscious naturally flow into daily life. The subconscious mind tends toward success, and once these shifts take place, it continues moving in that direction on its own.
Frequently asked questions
How many sessions will I need?
Most concerns respond well to four sessions, spaced weekly or fortnightly. This gives enough time to create momentum, explore underlying patterns, and allow the subconscious to recalibrate between sessions.
Some situations may take more time, especially if the issue has been present for many years or involves multiple contributing factors. You’re welcome to continue beyond four sessions if you feel there is more to uncover or integrate; many clients do.
Can I be hypnotised?
Most people can. In fact, about 80% of the population naturally slips into light or medium trance with ease. If you’ve ever daydreamed, become absorbed in a movie, missed your exit while driving or zoned out for a moment, you’ve already experienced a form of hypnosis.
The key is not “can I be hypnotised?” but “am I ready for change?”
Clients who are open-minded and willing to engage in the process usually enter hypnosis without difficulty.
Will I remember what happens during the session?
It varies. Some people remember everything. Others recall fragments. Some remember very little. All of these responses are normal.
What matters is that the subconscious hears all suggestions and makes changes even when the conscious mind cannot recall the details. Recall has no influence on effectiveness. This is one of the advantages of subconscious work.
Can I get stuck in hypnosis?
No. Hypnosis is a natural state of awareness that the mind enters many times a day. You cannot get stuck in it, lose control or remain “under”.
If the session ended abruptly, for example, due to a loud noise, you would simply return to full awareness in the same way you would wake from a daydream.
Is hypnosis safe?
Yes. Hypnosis works with natural brain states and has been used safely for decades. It does not override your personality, beliefs or values. It simply offers access to a quieter, more receptive state where the mind can re-evaluate old patterns.
Take your next step toward change today
If this approach feels aligned with what you need, you can take your next step at a pace that suits you. Change often begins with a single conversation. You can book online or arrange a short call to see if this approach feels right for you.