The therapist is able to suggest ideas, concepts and lifestyle adaptations to the patient, the seeds of which become firmly planted.

The pratice of promoting healing or positive development in any way is known as hypnotherapy. As such, hypnotherapy is a kind of psychotherapy. Hypnotherapy aims to re-programme patterns of behavior within the mind, enabling irrational fears, phobias, negative thoughts and suppressed emotions to be overcome. As the body is released from conscious control during the relaxed trance-like state of hypnosis, breathing becomes slower and deeper, the pulse rate drops and the metabolic rate falls.

Similar changes along nervous pathways and hormonal channels enables the sensation of pain to become less acute, and the awareness of unpleasent symptoms, such as nausea or indigestion, to be alleviated.

An ectract taken from Dr Hilary Jones Book. "Doctor, What's the Alternative". Hodders and Stoughton:London 1988