58 - Aidan Beshoff: Below the Surface of the Mind

I sit down with Aidan Beshoff, a qualified hypnotist, certified practitioner of clinical hypnotherapy, past life regression, QHHT, and ceremonial magick, and the founder of Higher Self Hypnosis. For the past five years, Aidan has helped others overcome deep subconscious patterns through an unconventional path that bridges ancient wisdom and modern science.

Our conversation begins with Aidan's own story — hitting a breaking point during COVID after years of anxiety and depression, and discovering meditation as a gateway into the subconscious mind. He describes the subconscious as a dimension of ourselves that extends beyond what we can directly perceive, using the iceberg model and a VR simulation analogy to illustrate the relationship between conscious awareness and the deeper layers beneath it. We discuss why the subconscious is so difficult to study empirically, and why that difficulty has kept practices like hypnosis in the same category as witchcraft until relatively recently.

We then turn to the mechanics of hypnosis itself — what differentiates it from meditation, how it employs imagery, symbolism, and emotion to bypass the conscious mind's filtering layer, and why suggestibility and agreeability are such critical factors in whether hypnosis works for a given person. Aidan walks through the surprising efficacy data: a 70-80% success rate for chronic pain versus only 40-45% for addiction, and explains why — with addiction, part of you still does not want to change, whereas with pain, all systems are on board except the one that isn't.

The conversation goes into deeper territory as we explore past life regression. Aidan argues you don't need to believe in reincarnation for the practice to be useful — the subconscious is essentially painting a movie you can extract wisdom from, drawing from what he describes as a collective source. He shares that people with narrow belief systems tend to regress to childhood, while those with broader frameworks have reported experiences on different planets or as pure energy. The point, he insists, is never who you were but why you had that experience.

We close with Aidan's personal motivation — a childhood obsession with fantasy and magic that was stripped away during adolescence, and how engaging with these practices remystified his life. He describes ceremonial magick as "a cross-section between art and math," and likens these practices to becoming a better surfer: they don't take away the waves, but they make you better at riding them.

 

Aidan on Instagram: @hi.subconscious | @higherselfhypno

 

 

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