Predominantly it is believed that hypnosis is a way to access a person’s subconscious mind directly. But what you forget, is that always (and mind it always) in doing your daily things or otherwise, your conscious mind works hand-in-hand with your subconscious mind.
Be forgetting your car keys, or writing a letter, you are working with conscious and subconscious mind in sync. Your subconscious mind accesses the vast reservoir of information in your conscious mind that lets you solve problems, construct sentences or locate your keys. It puts together plans and ideas and runs them by your conscious mind.
Hence, there are areas in the brain that become attentive during hypnosis. Precuneus is that part of the brain that remains awake and highly attentive during a hypnosis session. This area helps us to visualize whatever the hypnotist is telling us.
The unconscious accepts things more easily. Hypnotist achieves communication with the subconscious or unconscious mind by bypassing the conscious mind by hypnotizing the patient and given instructions that are readable to the subconscious mind i.e. Metaphors, Examples, and Patterns.
The hypnotist will direct the brain either to recall something or to forget something. This can be undone only when the hypnotist orders the patient for cancellation of the instructions given.
When a hypnotherapy is conducted on past life regression the patient would be put into deep hypnosis and asked to imagine situations, then they would be asked to recollect where they are, what are they doing, what is it that is troubling them, how it happened. In this case, many sessions would be required because putting too much stress on the brain could actually affect the person.
In cases like hypnotherapy for quitting smoking, weight loss, studies and another regular day to day problems; the brain would be instructed by the hypnotist on how to react to a particular situation and how to deal with life in a different manner which would be productive to the patient.
In-short hypnotherapy can control your brain just the way a creator controls their robot. It can be used for productive as well as non-productive tasks. Hence, be assured that the hypnotist you plan to visit is a certified one and have someone to go along with you.