THE SAN FRANCISCO HYPNOTHERAPY CENTER

Located in San Francisco’s historic Flood Building at 870 Market Street

Effective, Safe & Affordable Healthcare

Hypnotherapy is one of the world’s oldest methods for improving and maintaining physical health and emotional well-being. Archaeological evidence proves that hypnosis was commonly used by health practitioners thousands of years ago in Ancient Egypt.

Hypnosis is as old as the pyramids and every bit as enduring and reliable, too. While it’s nothing more than a  product of the imagination—your imagination—its effects are very real.

It’s powerful, effective, and completely safe because it comes from your own mind.

Commonly perceived as a type of sleep or a method for controlling others, hypnosis is thought of by many as some kind of magic act or side-show, little more than cheap entertainment based on deception and trickery. How unfortunate that such an important and valuable resource continues to be so misunderstood and, sadly, largely ignored.

The Truth Is Far More Fascinating

For just a moment, forget what you think you know about hypnosis. For one thing, it’s not about going to sleep, controlling someone else, or giving up control.

Hypnosis is merely a state of mind, nothing more. It all happens in your own head—a place only you can access. No one ever hypnotizes anyone else. That would be like saying “Now I’m going to make you dream.”

You can make someone more comfortable, play soothing music, and even help them to relax, but you cannot force someone else to dream.

The same is true for hypnosis. No one has ever hypnotized anyone else. It’s just not possible. If you want to experience hypnosis, you have to do it yourself. That’s not the same as doing it alone, however. You can learn how do it alone, but it’s so much easier when you have help.

And, yes, anyone—including you—can do it.

Hypnosis is a natural process—a state of mind we all experience every day, usually without ever realizing it. Can’t remember being in a trance?

Sometimes we’re so focused on something that we don’t notice things we normally wouldn't miss. For instance, if you’ve ever noticed a cut or a bruise on your leg or an arm after a day in the garden or working on your latest home improvement project and you can’t remember how it happened, your trance was so deep that it prevented you from feeling any pain.

When hypnosis is used for making positive changes, achieving better physical health and emotional well-being, or enabling self-improvement and personal growth, it becomes hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis lets you participate actively in the ongoing communication between your mind and your body. That’s why it’s so effective for certain medical conditions like high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, migraines, and IBS. These physical conditions are caused by a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system—the unconscious part of the brain that controls your heartbeat, regulates your body temperature, and decides which muscles to move when you walk.

The Things You Can Do With Your Mind

You may already be aware that hypnosis enables control over what your five senses report. Controlling the perception of pain is a good example. Lesser known uses for hypnosis include its application as a way to  manage the effects of and, in some cases, actually reverse the course of a certain type of medical condition.

By using hypnosis to communicate with the Unconscious Mind, you can actually eliminate the dysfunction that’s causing the problem. You can also use it for symptomatic relief, minimizing the perceived effects of an adverse condition so that it no longer bothers you or gets in your way.

The Medical Hypnotherapy programs use symptom-specific suggestion to activate the body’s natural healing mechanisms. At the same time, positive reframing and guided imagery combine to form a coordinated mind-body response, while posthypnotic reinforcement facilitates compliance.

Sometimes just knowing that another option is available can give you the advantage you need to beat the odds. It’s an option that has seen dramatic results, and in some cases, has even been life-saving.

A “no more diets” approach to weight release and a smoking cessation program with a better success rate than prescription drugs are just two of several health-related programs. See Non-Medical Uses for information on programs for other kinds of goals.