If you've experienced hypnosis and guided meditation before you will note how they often have similarities. Both use your imagination to take you on a journey. Hypnosis, because the purpose is to change your habitual ways of dealing with a situation, will try to get you in a more suggestive state before going on that journey so to have a greater effect.
Guided meditations, while not as impactful individually, can over time have some of the same effect as hypnosis. Using your imagination to achieve a more peaceful state of being can teach you how to achieve that same peaceful state more easily over time.