Have you ever noticed how you sometimes have trouble remembering something and the harder you try to remember it the more difficult it becomes? Then later that day, when you’d forgotten about trying to remember, the name, answer or information you wanted just popped into your head?

The information was there the whole of the time of course but you were experiencing what Emile Coue called the “Law of Reversed Effect”.

And of course we all know how the mind can wander when we are feeling relaxed and all sorts of memories can flow up into conscious awareness. This will happen even more easily using hypnosis.

How memory works

The latest thinking on how memory works is that there is a three stage process:

Accepting – a memory into your memory system and filing it away safely.
Storage Keeping it safe and in a place where it can be found easily when wanted.
Retrieval Finding the memory again and bringing it back into conscious awareness.

Types of memory store

There are thought to be two of memory store:

Short term or working memory
Long-term or permanent (we hope) memory

And maybe two types of memory, ‘Explicit’ (which country do you live in?) and ‘Implicit’ (How do you tie a shoe lace?).

So, using hypnosis to improve your memory makes sense. In fact, many accelerated learning programs such as speed reading and photo-reading actually use a state of altered consciousness similar to hypnosis. They won’t call it hypnosis but instead they may talk about

Alpha and Theta states

So, hypnosis can provide a lot of help with improving memory because it can help to overcome some of the problems associated with poor memory such as:

Good perception of the object or thought you want to remember in the first place;

Having a good route and system of storage so you can find that memory again really easily and quickly when you want or need to;

A system of linking one memory to others that may be in the same catagorie or group (very useful for exams and tests).

. However, once in a hypnotic state of mind there are some really excellent memory techniques that can be learned, or as a hypnotherapist may say “installed”. You will learn to use them far more quickly if the initial understanding is gained at both conscious and subconscious levels as in clinical hypnotherapy.