Hypnosis
Hypnosis has been around for thousands of years and has helped millions of people around the world to let go of their problems or help them achieve their goals. The client is in control during hypnosis and knows what is going on.
When you hear the word hypnosis, you may picture the mysterious hypnotist figure popularized in movies, comic books and television. This ominous man waves a pocket watch back and forth, guiding his subject into a semi-sleep, zombie-like state. Once hypnotized, the subject is compelled to obey, no matter how strange or immoral the request. Muttering "Yes, master," the subject does the hypnotist's evil bidding.
This popular representation bears little resemblance to actual hypnotism, of course. In fact, modern understanding of hypnosis contradicts this conception on several key points. Subjects in a hypnotic trance are not slaves to their "masters" -- they have absolute free will. And they're not really in a semi-sleep state -- they're actually hyperattentive.
Our understanding of hypnosis has advanced a great deal in the past century.
Hypnosis has been defined as "...a special psychological state with certain physiological attributes, resembling sleep only superficially and marked by a functioning of the individual at a level of awareness other than the ordinary conscious state.
Persons under hypnosis are said to have heightened focus and concentration with the ability to concentrate intensely on a specific thought or memory, while blocking out sources of distraction. Hypnosis is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction involving a series of preliminary instructions and suggestions.
The hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be self-administered ("self-suggestion" or "autosuggestion"). The use of hypnotism for therapeutic purposes is referred to as "hypnotherapy", while its use as a form of entertainment for an audience is known as "stage hypnosis"
A person under hypnosis experiences heightened suggestibility and focus accompanied by a sense of tranquility.
It could be said that hypnotic suggestion is explicitly intended to make use of the placebo effect.
hypnotism as a state of mental concentration that often leads to a form of progressive relaxation.
Contemporary hypnotism uses a variety of suggestion forms including direct verbal suggestions, "indirect" verbal suggestions such as requests or insinuations, metaphors and other rhetorical figures of speech, and non-verbal suggestion in the form of mental imagery, voice tonality, and physical manipulation. A distinction is commonly made between suggestions delivered "permissively" and those delivered in a more "authoritarian" manner. Harvard hypnotherapist Deirdre Barrett writes that most modern research suggestions are designed to bring about immediate responses, whereas hypno-therapeutic suggestions are usually post-hypnotic ones that are intended to trigger responses affecting behavior for periods ranging from days to a lifetime in duration. The hypnotherapeutic ones are often repeated in multiple sessions before they achieve peak effectiveness.
The conscious and the unconscious mind
Some hypnotists view suggestion as a form of communication that is directed primarily to the subject's conscious mind, whereas others view it as a means of communicating with the "unconscious" or "subconscious" mind. These concepts were introduced into hypnotism at the end of the 19th century by Sigmund Freud and Pierre Janet. Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory describes conscious thoughts as being at the surface of the mind and unconscious processes as being deeper in the mind.
close examination of everyday experience that under certain circumstances the mere idea of a muscular movement could be sufficient to produce a reflexive, or automatic, contraction or movement of the muscles involved, albeit in a very small degree.
the observation that a wide variety of bodily responses besides muscular movement can be thus affected, for example, the idea of sucking a lemon can automatically stimulate salivation, a secretory response.
hypnotism operates by concentrating attention on a single idea in order to amplify the ideo-dynamic reflex response.
The Stanford, Harvard, HIP, and most other susceptibility scales convert numbers into an assessment of a person's susceptibility as 'high', 'medium', or 'low'. Approximately 80% of the population are medium, 10% are high and 10% are low. There is some controversy as to whether this is distributed on a “normal” bell-shaped curve or whether it is bi-modal with a small “blip” of people at the high end. Hypnotizability Scores are highly stable over a person’s lifetime. Research by Deidre Barrett has found that there are two distinct types of highly susceptible subjects, which she terms fantasizers and dissociaters.
1. Fantasizers score high on absorption scales, find it easy to block out real-world stimuli without hypnosis, spend much time daydreaming, report imaginary companions as a child and grew up with parents who encouraged imaginary play.
2. Dis-associaters often have a history of childhood abuse or other trauma, learned to escape into numbness, and to forget unpleasant events. Their association to “daydreaming” was often going blank rather than creating vividly recalled fantasies.
Both score equally high on formal scales of hypnotic susceptibility.
Individuals with dis-associative identity disorders have the highest hypnotize-ability of any clinical group, followed by those with post traumatic stress disorder PTSD.
Transcendental/metaphysical phenomena patients can throw themselves into the nervous sleep causing them to maintain a steady fixed gaze at any point, concentrating their whole mental energies on the idea of the object looked at; or that the same may arise by the patient looking at the point of his own finger, or as the Magi of Persia and Yogi of India have practiced for the last 2,400 years, for religious purposes, throwing themselves into their ecstatic trances by each maintaining a steady fixed gaze at the tip of his own nose; it is obvious that there is no need for an exoteric influence to produce the phenomena of Hypnotism. The great object in all these processes is to induce a habit of abstraction or concentration of attention, in which the subject is entirely absorbed with one idea, or train of ideas, whilst he is unconscious of, or indifferently conscious to, every other object, purpose, or action.
Hypnotherapy is a use of hypnosis in psychotherapy. It is used by licensed physicians, psychologists, and others. Physicians and psychiatrists may use hypnosis to treat depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sleep disorders, compulsive gaming, and post traumatic stress, while certified hypnotherapists who are not physicians or psychologists often treat smoking and weight management.
Modern hypnotherapy has been used in a variety of forms with varying success, such as:
- Cognitive-behavioral hypnotherapy, or clinical hypnosis combined with elements of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
- Age Regression Hypnotherapy (or "hypno-analysis")
- Ericksonian Hypnotherapy.
- Fears and phobias
- Addictions
- Habit control
- Pain management
- Psychological therapy
- Relaxation
- Skin disease
- Soothing anxious surgical patients
- Sports performance
- Weight loss
A hypnotic trance is not therapeutic in and of itself, but specific suggestions and images fed to clients in a trance can profoundly alter their behavior. As they rehearse the new ways they want to think and feel, they lay the groundwork for changes in their future actions
Self-hypnosis happens when a person hypnotises oneself, commonly involving the use of autosuggestion. The technique is often used to increase motivation for a diet, quit smoking, or reduce stress. People who practice self-hypnosis sometimes require assistance; some people use devices known as mind machines to assist in the process, whereas others use hypnotic recordings.
Self-hypnosis is also claimed to help with stage fright, relaxation, and physical well-being.
Here are some methods of self-hypnosis:
1. Suggestive (Persuasion and Influence state):
This is the type of hypnosis that the person feels heavier inside! The person hears the voice outside and feels to be awake! In this state, the person is very suggestible to any command, and might be influenced by any persuasion expert easily!
2. Catalepsy (Muscular Rigidity):
This is the type that the person feels more heavy inside and if stays still in that situation for a long time, he/she will feel tension and dryness inside the body. The person can be hypnotized so much that the body of the person stays still and stiff as a rock, in which if the body literally lies in the middle of two chairs, in a way that if the neck of the person is on one chair and the his/her legs are on another chair, the person can stay stiff without falling down, literally! In this state, the muscles of the person will get heavy and rigid!
3. Somnambulism (Drowning state):
This is the type where conscious mind of the person is off, meaning that it is totally on subconscious level! If you literally pin a needle into the person’s body, he/she may not feel any pain! This is where the hidden powers of mind can be unleashed, and you can program yourself the way you really want! In this state the person is about to drown and fall into to sleep, and may even feel like day-dreaming!
4. Lethargy (Fake Death):
This is the type where the body of the person gets completely heavy as if the person is dead! To be more precise, the body will go to paralysis state in which you may feel like you are unable to move your body as if your body is dead, but do not worry, it is natural and you should stay calm and relax, and come back to the normal state slowly! In the extreme case of this type, even the color of the face of that person will also change like a dead person, and he/she can do projection which will take his/her energy body to the environment around as if the soul and spirit is separated. This is actually and more precisely called astral projection where the astral body of the person, which is connected with a silver cord to the third-eye of the person that can leave the body and go to astral planes and access almost any time-space in the universe! The astral body can float around the room, or any environment the person aims for, such as going through walls and meeting people and places. Basically there is no time or space limitation in that state. After you have returned to your body from astral projection, you can probably remember everything you have done in your projection, depending on how consciously you have projected yourself, and your memory skills for remembering your conscious dreams! Not everyone can remember their experience, and may even feel like they were just dreaming and it was not for the real!