Short answer: yes. Hypnosis is a real, measurable change in how your brain processes information — and researchers have watched it happen in brain scanners.
What it isn’t: sleep, mind control, or anything you’ve seen on a Las Vegas stage. What it is: a natural state of focused attention where your mind becomes more open to new perspectives and patterns. You’ve already experienced something like it — that moment when you’re so absorbed in a conversation or a book that someone calls your name and you don’t hear them. Hypnotherapy takes that same focused state and puts it to work on something you actually want to change.
Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are not meant to diagnose or treat any disease — they’re tools for helping people make changes that willpower alone hasn’t been able to handle.
What the Science Says
In 2016, a Stanford psychiatrist named David Spiegel put people in an fMRI scanner and watched what happened when they entered hypnosis. Three things changed: the brain’s attention network activated, its self-monitoring quieted down, and the connection between what a person felt in their body and what they noticed in their mind got stronger. This wasn’t subjective — it showed up on the scan.
Since then, those same patterns have been confirmed across more than 84,000 sessions through the Reveri digital hypnosis platform — the largest dataset on hypnosis and brain function ever collected.
At the University of Washington, researcher Mark Jensen has spent decades studying how suggestion changes brain processing. His work shows that under hypnosis, the brain doesn’t just relax — it reorganizes how it handles information. Focused attention paired with the right suggestion can shift patterns that logic and effort couldn’t reach.
The American Psychological Association has an entire division dedicated to the research and practice of hypnosis — Division 30, the Society of Psychological Hypnosis. Their official definition describes hypnosis as “a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion.” In plain language: your mind focuses in, the noise fades out, and you become more receptive to ideas that serve your goals.
None of this means hypnosis is magic. It means it’s a well-studied tool — and like any tool, what matters is how it’s used.
What Hypnosis Isn’t
A few things worth clearing up, because what you see in Hollywood is different than what the science actually shows.
It’s not mind control. Most people expect something dramatic — a swinging pocket watch, a commanding voice, a complete loss of awareness. What they actually get is closer to a focused conversation where they happen to have their eyes closed. You hear everything. You remember everything. The most common thing clients say afterward is “that was way more normal than I expected.”
Not everyone responds the same way. Spiegel’s brain research shows that people with stronger connectivity between certain brain networks — specifically the executive and salience networks — tend to respond more easily. Some people go deep on their first session. Others take a few tries. Neither is better. Almost everyone can learn it — William has worked with more than 3,000 individuals since 2008, and fewer than two dozen couldn’t access a trance state at all.
Stage hypnosis is entertainment, not hypnotherapy. Comparing the two is like comparing professional wrestling to an actual athletic competition. One is a performance designed to get a reaction from an audience. The other is focused, private work between two people with a shared goal. They use some of the same underlying principles, but the resemblance ends there.
What People Use It For
People come in for a wide range of reasons. Here are the most common:
Worry and stress. The thoughts that won’t stop circling — the ones that follow you to bed, sit with you at breakfast, and make a twenty-minute commute feel like an interrogation. You know the worrying isn’t helping, but knowing that doesn’t make it stop. Hypnotherapy works with the part of your mind that’s running the loop.
Confidence and performance. You’ve prepared, you know the material, and then the moment arrives and something inside you locks up. Whether it’s a presentation, an athletic event, or just walking into a room, the gap between what you know you can do and what you actually do in the moment is where this work lives.
Smoking. Most people who want to quit already know every reason to stop. Knowledge isn’t the barrier — if it were, nobody with a medical degree would smoke. The habit runs deeper than logic, and that’s exactly the level where hypnotherapy works.
Weight and habits. Someone once told William that weight loss is nothing more than physics — burn more than you consume. That person was also 75 pounds overweight. Apparently the physics are simple, but the part of your mind that reaches for comfort food at 10 PM doesn’t do math.
Sleep. You know what to do — put the phone down, darken the room, close your eyes. And then your mind starts. Tomorrow’s meeting, last week’s argument, that thing you said in 2014. The problem isn’t that your body forgot how to sleep. It’s that your mind hasn’t learned when to quiet down.
Fears and difficult experiences. The fear that’s out of proportion to the situation. The memory that still has weight years later. The thing you avoid even though avoiding it costs you more than facing it would. These are patterns — and patterns can change.
What a Session Looks Like
Before shooting an arrow, you need to know where the target is. The first part of a session is a conversation — defining what you want and what success looks like. William is the hypnosis expert; you’re the expert on your life. Think of it as sitting side by side, looking down the same road, describing where you’ve been and where you want to go.
Once you’re looking at the same map, the hypnosis begins. There are four basic stages:
Settling in. William helps you focus your attention inward — usually with your eyes closed, though not always. There’s nothing to “do” except follow along. What it feels like depends on the person — the heaviness right before sleep, the stillness of being absorbed in a good book, sinking into a chair you didn’t realize was that comfortable, or the quiet focus of a long drive where your mind stops efforting. There’s no wrong version.
Focusing your attention. William guides your attention based on your goals — what you want to change. Most people stay aware of their surroundings and their thoughts. At the same time, your state changes in subtle and often pleasant ways. In hypnosis, your mind opens up to suggestions, allowing you to create the changes you want.
The work. You might picture a situation that usually runs the old pattern — and then notice something shift. A memory moves further away. A feeling that used to fill the whole room gets smaller. A voice that’s been loud for years drops to a murmur. William builds these around the specific thing you came in for, using targeted suggestions, imagery, and perspective shifts. No two sessions look the same because no two people bring in the same thing.
Coming back. William guides you back to full alertness — usually a slow count, giving your mind time to surface. Most people feel clear-headed and relaxed within a couple of minutes. Some notice a shift right away. Others feel it over the next few days, like a conversation that keeps working on you after it’s over.
Sessions run about 50 minutes. For questions about how many sessions your situation typically involves, or what techniques William uses, visit the Questions and Answers page.
Self-Hypnosis Techniques
One of the most powerful things about hypnosis is that you can learn to do it yourself. The techniques below are tools your hypnotherapist can teach you — and with practice, you can use them on your own whenever you want.
Before you begin any self-hypnosis session, set a clear intention. Know what you’re focusing on. A surgeon doesn’t walk into an operating room without knowing what the operation is — give your mind the same courtesy.
1. Eye Fixation
Pick a point above your natural line of sight — a spot on the ceiling, a thumbtack on the wall — and hold your gaze there. As your eyes tire (and they will), let them close naturally. This simple technique works because it gives your conscious mind a task while your focused attention settles in. Spiegel’s research at Stanford, validated across 84,000 sessions through the Reveri platform, shows that this shift in attention is where measurable brain changes begin.
2. Focused Breathing
Slow your breathing to about six breaths per minute — roughly five seconds in, five seconds out. This activates the vagus nerve, which shifts your nervous system from alert mode to a calmer state. A 2019 JBI systematic review confirmed that controlled breathing techniques produce measurable changes in both physiology and psychological state. The breathing isn’t the hypnosis — it’s the doorway.
3. Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Starting with your feet and working upward, deliberately tense each muscle group for a few seconds, then release. The contrast between tension and release teaches your body what “letting go” actually feels like — not as a concept, but as a physical sensation you can reproduce on command. Use this as an induction pathway: by the time you reach your shoulders, most people are ready for deeper work.
4. Body Scan
Move your attention slowly through your body — feet, legs, torso, arms, face — and notice what’s there. Not to fix anything. Just to look. Think of it like walking through a house you’ve lived in for years and actually seeing the rooms — the tight spot in your shoulders you’ve been carrying, the ease in your hands you didn’t know was there. This is the foundation of self-hypnosis: turning your attention inward on purpose.
5. Visualization and Guided Imagery
Picture a place where you feel completely at ease — somewhere real or imagined. Build it in detail: what do you see, hear, feel on your skin? The more vivid the image, the more your mind responds as though it’s real. This works because your brain processes a well-imagined scene using many of the same pathways it uses for actual experience. Use this as a platform — once you’re fully in the scene, your mind is in a receptive state for suggestion.
6. Countdown Deepening
Once you’re in a focused state through any of the methods above, count slowly from ten to one. With each number, allow yourself to go deeper — whatever “deeper” means to you. Elkins, in the Handbook of Medical and Psychological Hypnosis, describes countdown as one of the most reliable deepening methods precisely because it gives the mind a simple, measurable structure to follow. The countdown isn’t magic — it’s a frame that helps your mind let go in increments rather than all at once.
7. Self-Suggestion
With your mind focused and quiet, introduce a specific suggestion related to your intention. Keep it concrete and present-tense: “My breathing is slow and steady” or “I notice calm where tension used to be.” Jensen’s research on auto-suggestion shows that suggestions delivered during focused attention create more durable changes than the same words spoken in a normal waking state. The key is simplicity — one clear idea, repeated with conviction.
8. Sensory Alteration
Focus your attention on a specific part of your body — say, your right hand — and imagine it growing warmer, or heavier, or tingling. Stanford fMRI research shows that this kind of directed attention produces measurable changes in how the brain processes sensation. Here’s why that matters: if you can change how your hand feels using nothing but focused attention, you’ve just proved something to yourself that most people never discover — your mind has more direct influence over your body than you thought. That realization is the door to deeper work.
9. Posthypnotic Cues
While in a focused state, pair a simple physical gesture — pressing your thumb and forefinger together, placing your hand on your chest — with the internal state you’ve created. Practice this pairing across several sessions. Over time, the gesture itself becomes a shortcut: performing it can bring back the focused, calm state even outside formal self-hypnosis. This works through the same conditioning principles behind any learned association — the difference is that you’re building the association deliberately, with your own goals in mind.
Coming Back
When you’re ready to end a self-hypnosis session, count yourself back up from one to five. With each number, allow yourself to become more alert, more aware of the room around you. At five, open your eyes. Take a few seconds before standing — your body may be more relaxed than you realize. There’s no rush.
About Will
In 2005, William was dealing with daily headaches that nothing seemed to touch. When conventional approaches didn’t help, he started looking further — and found the work of Dr. Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist who’d spent decades demonstrating what focused attention could do. William tried hypnosis for himself. It changed his life. Not just the headaches — it opened a door to understanding how much influence the mind has over everyday experience, and how few people ever learn to use it.
That discovery became a career. Since 2008, he’s worked with more than 3,000 individuals across North and South America — over 20,000 one-on-one sessions. His training spans thousands of hours across hypnosis, Neuro Linguistic Programming, and mindfulness, certified through the American Hypnosis Association and the National Guild of Hypnotists. He’s a contributing author to Unlimited Human with roughly 40 published articles on the subject. He’s someone who has never stopped studying how people change — because he started by watching it happen to himself.
William is not a psychologist or licensed mental health provider. He works with everyday concerns — habits, stress, confidence, sleep, performance, and patterns that keep people stuck. For anything involving diagnosis or medication, he refers to the appropriate professionals. When licensed providers refer clients to him, he works alongside them within his scope.
If you’re currently working with a doctor or mental health provider, it’s a good idea to connect with them before starting — and William can help you do that.
Ready to Find Out?
If you’ve read this far, you’re past the “is it real” question. The next one is whether it’s right for you.
The easiest way to find out is a conversation — no commitment, no pressure. Book a free 15-minute consultation, describe what’s going on, and I’ll give you an honest answer about whether I can help.
