I’m 33 pages into a new book titled “The Foundations and Practice of Lay Hypnotherapy,” and I’ve reached this horrible realization that I’ve been lying to people.

You see, the “hypno” in hypnotherapy is taken from the Greek god of sleep and dreams, Hypnos. In the transition from waking to sleep, there’s a brief window where the conscious and subconscious minds meet. Most hypnotherapists seek to put people into that state so that they can sneak messages into the subconscious. They slow the brain down (to about 12 Hz) and put the conscious mind into idle.

I don’t do that.

There’s another state that joins the conscious and subconscious minds, the state known to religious devotionals and master meditators. It’s the gamma state that runs from 30 to 100 Hz (3-8 times faster than the sleep state). In that state, both the conscious and subconscious are fully active.

All through hypnotherapy college, I made changes to the scripts to suggest that the goal of hypnotherapy was to facilitate a conversation between the conscious and subconscious minds. The effect, I am beginning to realize, is to raise people temporarily into the gamma state.

Perhaps it was intuition of this that moved me to name my practice “Hypnosis Rising.” I’m using the formal methods of hypnosis, but lifting people up into a state of greater clarity, rather than pushing them down toward sleep.

The Greeks anticipated that one day people would attain a state of clarity that would enable us to sideline our gods. They believed that state would be demonstrated by a personality they termed “hristos” or “anointed one.” In recognition of the experience that I offer people, I think that truth in advertising demands that I use “hristotherapy” to describe what I do.