Meditation, Hypnosis, and the Conscious & Unconscious Mind

The popularity of hypnosis and meditation as a pathway to healing, relaxation and self improvement, is evident from the proliferation of reading material, both online and offline.  To some, the practices of meditation and hypnosis seem mysterious and ‘new age’, yet they are neither.

Meditation and hypnosis have been practiced for centuries. Some eastern religions consider meditation to be the pathway to enlightenment.

Meditation and hypnosis share a common goal – to quieten your conscious mind. They operate on the same principle – that quietening the conscious mind opens the door to the unconscious. During meditation you quieten your conscious mind to receive peace or enlightenment. Under hypnosis, you open the pathway to the unconscious (sometimes referred to as the subconscious) to alter your beliefs or retrieve repressed information.  Both hypnosis and meditation strive to improve our conscious lives by accessing the unconscious.

To understand how meditation and hypnosis work, it helps to understand your different levels of consciousness.  We all understand what our conscious mind is, but when we attempt to define the unconscious we get a little lost.

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