Conscious vs Unconscious

Conscious & Unconscious
The predominant school of thought on hypnosis is that it is a way to access a person's unconscious mind directly. Normally, you are only aware of the thought processes in your conscious mind. You consciously think over the problems that are right in front of you, consciously choose words as you speak, consciously try to remember where you left your keys.
But in doing all these things, your conscious mind is working hand-in-hand with your unconscious mind, the unconscious part of your mind that does your "behind the scenes" thinking. Your unconscious mind accesses the vast reservoir of information that lets you solve problems, construct sentences or locate your keys. It puts together plans and ideas and runs them by your conscious mind. When a new idea comes to you out of the blue, it's because you already thought through the process unconsciously.
The unconscious regulates your bodily sensations, such as taste, touch and sight, as well as your emotional feelings. Your unconscious also takes care of all the stuff you do automatically. You don't actively work through the steps of breathing minute to minute -- your unconscious mind does that. It also stores your patterns of behavior. When you consciously pick up a ball to throw it, it is your unconscious that remembers how you have learned to throw and chooses whether you throw it overhead or under hand.
When you're awake, your conscious mind works to evaluate a lot of these thoughts, make decisions and put certain ideas into action. It also processes new information and relays it to the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is the main inhibitive component in your makeup -- it's in charge of putting on the brakes -- while the unconscious mind is the seat of imagination and impulse. But when you're asleep, the conscious mind gets out of the way, and your unconscious has free reign.
When your unconscious mind is in control, you feel much freer and may be more creative. Your conscious mind doesn't have to filter through everything
Psychiatrists theorize that the deep relaxation and focusing exercises of hypnotism work to calm and subdue the conscious mind so that it takes a less active role in your thinking process. In this state, you're still aware of what's going on, but your conscious mind takes a backseat to your unconscious mind. Effectively, this allows you and the hypnotist to work directly with the unconscious. This is analogous to turning off the electricity in a home or building in order to access the wiring. If the electricity is not turned off, a shock will prevent accessing any wires. The mind works the same way.
It's as if hypnotism process pops open a control panel inside your brain. You react automatically to these impulses and suggestions, just as you would to your own thoughts. Of course, your unconscious mind does have a conscience, a survival instinct and its own ideas, so there are a lot of things it won't agree to.
Additionally, the unconscious is the storehouse for all your memories. While under hypnosis, subjects may be able to access past events that they have completely forgotten. Psychiatrists may use hypnotism to bring up these memories so that a related personal problem can finally be resolved. Since the subject's mind is in such a suggestible state, it is also possible to create false memories. For this reason, psychiatrists must be extremely careful when exploring a hypnotic subject's past.