While definitions can vary, the American Psychological Association describes hypnosis as a cooperative interaction in which the participant responds to the suggestions of the hypnotist.

Science has yet to explain how hypnosis actually happens even though it has been practiced for over two hundred years. Hypnosis will probably never be completely understood until science can discover how the human mind really works. However, psychiatrists do understand the characteristics of hypnosis and have come up with a model for how it works.

A hypnotic trance is not therapeutic in and of itself, but specific suggestions and images fed to clients in a trance can profoundly alter their behavior and safely accomplish their goals to become a vital, focused, and more serene person. Feelings of enhanced energy, calm, and optimism will suffuse your whole life. That’s called the winning attitude.

Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination." It is a mental state (according to "state theory") or imaginative role-enactment (according to "non-state theory")

psychiatrists do understand the characteristics of hypnosis and have come up with a model for how it works.

Hypnotherapy is an excellent resource for resolving stress and regaining a sense of balance. The seeds of our feelings of powerlessness are often sown in our early years when we indeed were, for all intents and purposes, powerless.