What is Hypnosis? Hypnosis is defined as a state of consciousness in which your logically analytical faculties are reduced sufficiently to allow deeper levels of your subconscious mind to be utilised for the benefit of your health. A hypnotic trance is a state of "focused concentration" in which you are neither fully awake nor fully asleep. Deeply relaxed people are open to suggestion, and can be desensitised to fears, phobias, or pain. Hypnotised subjects can be virtually oblivious of what is going on around them, yet are acutely aware of a narrow range of stimuli called to their attention by the therapist. Levels of consciousness range from states of alertness to sleep, with daydreaming, a moderate trance, and a deep trance lying in between. There are no rigid boundaries between the levels. For example, when you are alert, you will be running; when you are daydreaming you will be thinking about running; in a moderate trance you will imagine yourself running, in a deep trance you will physically feel yourself running; and when sleeping you will feel that, to all intents and purposes, you are participating in the race. This type of trance state is quite familiar to most people. You experience this state when you daydream or become so absorbed by a novel or film that you are totally unaware of other things going on around you. Hypnotic techniques are used subconsciously by many people in their everyday lives. Suggestion, distraction, relaxation, and visualisation are used routinely by doctors, salesmen, advertisement designers, and conjurors without their subjects ever being aware of it. Even mothers routinely use the hypnotic suggestion "I'll kiss it better" to ease a child's pain.