The other night at the practice group we talked hypnosis - at a previous session (which I couldn’t attend due to vomiting family members), Dave Rose, a local hypnotherapist, came in a did some apparently excellent work with the guys. So they told me all about what they got up to whilst I was knee-high in baby sick.
Anyhow it got me thinking once again about hypnosis and what it is. There are of course many books on the subject - if you are interested in understanding a little more then I suggest reading Derren Brown’s “Trick of the mind”, as he covers his views in one of the chapters. The trouble is, no matter how much time people spend discussing or researching hypnosis, as it stands, it’s just opinion because we still don’t know enough about the way the brain and mind work (assuming that they are different). Sure they can talk about brain wave patterns, but that is still analysing the output of the brain, not the internal processes to any great extent.
So it’s interesting… what is hypnosis?
It amazes me how many people tell me that they aren’t hypnotisable… “I’m just not susceptible to things like that”. “Like that?” what other things are like hypnosis? Firstly in my experience the best hypnotic subjects are intelligent and creative, creativity itself is often sourced from altered states, so people who have high creativity, emotional intelligence and \ or vivid imaginations make great hypnotic subjects. And by subjects I mean that they are receptive to being shown how to hypnotise themselves…
I’ve done some hypnosis with people, I’ve not come across someone that i’ve tried to hypnotise but can’t and I wonder if that is because people have some expectation of being hypnotised when they ask me to help them.
A quick blast on the interweb gets this definition - “an artificially induced trance state resembling sleep, characterized by heightened susceptibility to suggestion.” Which gets me thinking “what is a trance?”. How about this?
1. a half-conscious state, seemingly between sleeping and waking, in which ability to function voluntarily may be suspended.
2. a dazed or bewildered condition.
3. a state of complete mental absorption or deep musing.
4. an unconscious, cataleptic, or hypnotic condition.
5. Spiritualism. a temporary state in which a medium, with suspension of personal consciousness, is controlled by an intelligence from without and used as a means of communication, as from the dead.
So hypnosis is being in a trance, and a trance is a hypnotic condition… hmmm its enough to make me trance just thinking about it. There is a theme there about consciousness, and I think this for me tells a lot of the story.
You can think of the mind as having a conscious part, and and unconscious part. The conscious mind is a relatively new addition to the human condition, some estimate that it is in the last 50-100,000 years that the conscious mind has evolved, being the product of the ability to communicate in such complex patterns. Have you noticed with young children that they often talk to themselves when doing new or complex tasks? As the task becomes easier through repetition, that self-talk goes inwards, and becomes unspoken, and gradually this evolves in to that little voice that helps us count, analyse things and criticise our mistakes. With the conscious mind comes a whole bunch of side-effects, like the ability to worry and take on new perspectives on situations.
Below the conscious mind, much like the unseen part of an iceberg, is the unconscious mind, which deals with memory, personality, controlling fundamental living processes such as breathing, temperature control and self-preservation. That burst of adrenaline that you get when you are surprised - that’s an unconscious response which means that your unconscious mind has full access to your senses. And the fact that you don’t have to think consciously about changing gear once you’ve been driving for a while means that your unconscious mind also has access to your motor controls!
Given that our conscious mind depends on the unconscious mind so much, it makes perfect sense that who we are and how we behave in any situation, consciously or otherwise, is rooted in our unconscious. And I think that for the most part, the conscious mind acts as a roadblock to that unconscious personality. And for the most part this is good. The unconscious mind relies on the conscious mind to filter out all of the noise that isn’t important so it can concentrate on the important things, like learning new skills, remembering the important stuff and not believing everything advertisers say about the importance of their products.
So I think hypnosis is actually a state where the conscious mind filter is taken “offline” to some extent to allow suggestions to be made to the programs running in the unconscious mind. This can therefore be used to correct unhelpful habits, kill phobias or correct the misinterpretation of memories that can result in personality or emotional issues. Oh and make you dance like a chicken (only if it doesn’t interfere with your core beliefs and values).
And hypnosis is a great state to be in… firstly because for many people their conscious mind is so busy it can’t detect the unconscious mind’s signals (such as “stop eating… i’m full!” or “I’ve found that memory for you… trust me this is what happened!” and others - you get the point), and secondly because we can access resources that we don’t have in our waking state of panic.
So hypnosis is really a skill… being able to manage your state of mind with increased flexibility in order to make better use of the potential you all have inside of you. It’s actually nothing to be scared of and if anything is something that you should aim to achieve.
I think that’s enough for now… if this article hasn’t sent you in to a trance then go see a hypnotherapist!
