So you tried meditation and it didn’t seem to work for you? Maybe you’re not the type to commit to meditating every day for the rest of your life? You may be able to achieve the same goals with hypnosis. As a mindfulness meditation instructor and a hypnotherapist, I often get questions about which is more effective for addressing personal life issues.
Frankly, some people are just not cut out for meditation. It can take a significant commitment and patience. A meditation practice takes time and devotion to achieve those long-term benefits of stress relief and improved health. If this seems like more than you can successfully commit to there is hope: hypnosis is a powerful alternative. Hypnosis focuses on relaxing the subconscious mind and can produce positive results in a single session, while the benefits of meditation come more slowly over a lifetime of practice. Put another way, meditation allows your nervous system to relax deeply and hypnosis provides that deep relaxation for your nervous system with the added benefits from direct suggestions.
Both hypnosis and meditation support changes in a number of conditions such as stress, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. What is different about hypnosis is the targeted results. Hypnosis, like meditation, is used by professional athletes to help with focused performance. Hypnosis is also used to eliminate phobias (such as challenges with public speaking or driving), to help clients stop smoking, lose weight or assist with grieving. Many of my clients see results in two or three sessions because we can focus in on the subconscious root cause of an issue and address it directly.
Many of my clients have tried mindfulness meditation to address their anxiety issues without the success they were hoping for. While the goal of meditation is to quiet the mind, in hypnosis I help you focus your thoughts on what you would like to change and then help your deep mind transformation what’s stopping you achieving that change. I have seen the hypnosis change lives by assisting clients to let go of old patterns of thought that are no longer serving them.
Not terribly surprising, I have worked with clients who were looking for help with the stuff that was getting in the way of their meditation practice. The overactive
“monkey brain” that can be so challenging in meditation can be addressed with the help of hypnosis. Relaxing deeply, focusing or even being more comfortable sitting still for longer periods are all things that hypnosis can help with. Some of the most successful clients I have worked with have employed both mindfulness meditation and targeted hypnosis to bring more calm and serenity into their life while removing major challenges.
If you’ve been considering mindfulness meditation to bring about change in your life, think also about using hypnosis to address challenges directly or even to strengthen your meditation practice.
