STRESS

A growing body of research supports the effectiveness of hypnotherapy in managing stress. Studies have shown that hypnotherapy can significantly reduce stress levels, not just in the psychological sense but also by influencing physiological markers of stress.

For instance, cortisol levels, a primary stress hormone, have been observed to decrease following hypnotherapy sessions. Furthermore, hypnotherapy has been linked to improvements in the autonomic nervous system’s regulation, enhancing the body’s relaxation response over the fight-or-flight reaction typically induced by stress. In this sense hypnosis works directly on your body and its responses to relieve stress on a very primary physical level.

Beside the direct effect that hypnosis has on your physical experience of stress, which is often a lot faster than most other approaches, hypnotherapy can also enable your to reframe your relationship to the sources of stress within your life, resulting in long lasting stronger skills to ease stress. 

How can hypnosis do that?  

Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness, which naturally allows the mind to attend to a task without distractions, and without constantly referring back to what you think you are capable or incapable of doing. By stimulating and inhibiting specific brain structures, hypnosis allows a significant increase in cognitive flexibility, the capacity to access new points of view and suspend judgement so that you can learn new strategies and reframe experiences effectively. This coupled with an intense sustained absorption (which is independent on how good you are at focusing in a normal waking state) means you can be fully attending to the issue rather than feel pulled in a thousand different directions. 

Additionally during hypnosis we experience a positive form of dissociation, which means we become more detached from recurrent worries and issues that are usually present in our minds and feel overwhelming and unmanageable. By becoming less deeply involved with these, we experience a novel way to see through problems,  find solutions and new strategies, effectively allowing for cognitive restructuring. 

And lastly, as I already mentioned, the direct impact of hypnosis on the body and on our physiology is to increase physiological regulation, release stress, soften muscle tension, slow down breath and heartbeat and bring the body into the relaxation response which is the direct opposite of the famous fight and flight response. 

#### Benefits Beyond Stress Reduction

Beyond its direct impact on stress, hypnotherapy offers several ancillary benefits, including improved sleep patterns, enhanced concentration, and better overall emotional well-being. These improvements can contribute to a virtuous cycle, where decreased stress levels lead to better health outcomes, which in turn further reduce stress.