What is hypnosis?

What is Hypnosis?    What is hypnotica?    About Nancy "Ace" Ava Miller, M.Ed., CHt    Lose Weight    Hypnosis and You   
Stop Smoking    Hypnosis in the Classroom

 
     Although most people have heard about hypnosis, many are not sure exactly what it is and what it can mean to them. There are many myths and misconceptions about its functions and effects. Simply put hypnosis is an altered state of awareness. It is a doorway state between the conscious and unconscious mind...
A definition from the Institute for Holistic Studies

**************************
  • As long as there has been human beings, there has been hypnosis. We use this commonly occurring, and natural state of mind, unknowingly, all the time. It is just natural for us. For example, if you have ever watched a television program or movie and become really absorbed into the program, you were probably in a trance. This trance is what caused you to not hear your mother calling you to dinner, until she raised her voice for the third time. (Advertisers understand this. They use television programs to induce a hypnotic trance and then provide you hypnotic suggestions, called commercials!)

  • Another common example of this naturally occurring state of mind is when you are driving down the road, with your mind focused on some other task (a day dream perhaps), and next thing you know, you have passed your next turn. That is called "highway hypnosis".

  • The U.S. government defines hypnosis as having two parts: (1) the bypass of the critical factor, and (2) the establishment of acceptable selective thinking.

  • This seems to be a useful and accurate definition of hypnosis. This "bypass of the critical factor" simply means the release of limiting beliefs. For example, the use of hypnosis for anesthesia has been accepted by the American Medical Association since 1958. It is well established to be a fact that hypnosis is useful for creating anesthesia. However, if you have the limiting belief that the mind cannot create a powerful anesthesia, you will be unable to do so. However, in hypnosis, this limiting belief can be bypassed, and hypnotic anesthesia can be quickly created. "The establishment of acceptable selective thinking," the second part of the definition, refers to the process of guiding someone into hypnosis by using a hypnotic induction. The establishment of selective thinking creates the mental environment or state of mind that enables you to reject limiting beliefs (that you picked up by living in our society), so that you can accept new more empowering ones.

  • The hypnotic state is an optimum state for making changes in your life because you can set aside limiting beliefs that may have been preventing you from moving toward a more healthy, and happy you.

  • So now you know that you can be hypnotized. You have done it literally thousands of times. You did it yourself when you were daydreaming and missed that turn (self-hypnosis), you have been hypnotized when you enjoyed a television program (being hypnotized by someone else), and you have followed hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestions when you preferred some brand name that you saw repeatedly on television (hypnotic compounding of suggestion).
Definition from the Banyan Hypnosis Center

**************************
    Hypnosis is a relaxing, naturally occurring state of mind which happens to us every day. Each time we read a captivating novel, float off in a daydream or see an engrossing movie we are in a natural state of hypnosis. 
Definition from Hypnosis Now!

**************************
Hypnosis is a process during which an individual, usually with the aid of another, allows himself/herself to become more suggestible. An individual can experience changes in sensations, perceptions, thoughts, or behavior. Hypnosis is generally established by an induction procedure. Although there are many different hypnotic inductions, they are based on imaginative involvement with focused attention and concentration.
People respond to hypnosis in different ways. Some describe their experience as an altered state of consciousness. Others describe hypnosis as a normal state of focused attention, in which they feel very calm and relaxed. Regardless of how and to what degree they respond, most people describe the experience as very pleasant. A person's ability to experience hypnotic suggestions can be inhibited by fears and concerns arising from some common misconceptions. Everyone has a conception of hypnosis. It probably comes from depictions of hypnosis in books, movies or on television.
People who have been hypnotized do not lose control over their behavior. They remain aware of who they are and where they are, and unless amnesia (the inability to recall past events, in this context the inability to recall what has occurred during the hypnotic session), has been specifically suggested, they usually remember what transpired during hypnosis, the only exception to this is what is called a somnambulist.  A somnambulist is an individual who has the ability to go very deeply into hypnosis. A somnambulist will have total amnesia.
Hypnosis makes it easier for people to experience suggestions, but it does not force them to have these experiences. Although scientists have different theories about the nature of hypnosis, all seem to agree that hypnotized people report changes in the way they feel, think, and behave, and that these changes are in response to suggestions. People vary in their degree of responsiveness to hypnotic suggestions, what is called their hypnotizability or hypnotic susceptibility, but most people can be hypnotized to some degree.
Hypnosis is a naturally occurring phenomenon. We go in and out of hypnosis constantly, while watching an interesting program on television, reading a book, driving a car, or day dreaming, just to name a few. People who appear to be low in hypnotizability often can improve their response to suggestions with training and practice. If an individual is unable to use all of their hypnotic  ability during a testing session, it might appear that (s)he is a poor subject, but with improved rapport, and allayed fears, (s)he is able to improve his/her ability.  Most clinical uses of hypnosis have been designed for the average individual, and a deep state of trance is not usually needed for most clinical treatment.
APMHA Board of Directors
American Psychotherapy & Medical Hypnosis Association
January 2000

**************************
    "Hypnotism" includes hypnotism, mesmerism and any similar act or process which produces or is intended to produce in any person any form of induced sleep or trance in which the susceptibility of the mind of that person to suggestion or direction is increased or intended to be increased but does not include hypnotism, mesmerism or any similar act or process which is self-induced.
The Hypnotism Act, 1952 From the Book of Statues

**************************
From the Book of Statues
    A temporary condition of altered attention in the subject which may be induced by another person and in which a variety of phenomena may appear spontaneously or in response to verbal or other stimuli. These phenomena include alterations in consciousness and memory, increased susceptibility to suggestion, and the production in the subject of responses and ideas unfamiliar to him in his usual state of mind. Further, phenomena such as anaesthesia, paralysis and rigidity of muscles, and vasomotor changes can be produced and removed in the hypnotic state.
BMA, 'Medical use of Hypnotism', 1955
    Hypnosis is a natural state of mind with special identifying characteristics:
1. An extraordinary quality of relaxation.
2. An emotionalized desire to satisfy the suggested behaviour: The person feels like doing what the hypnotist suggests, provided that what is suggested does not generate conflict with his belief system.
3. The organism becomes self-regulating and produces normalization of the central nervous system.
4. Heightened and selective sensitivity to stimuli perceived by the five senses and four basic perceptions.
5. Immediate softening of psychic defenses.
Gil Boyne, Transforming Therapy, 1985: 380-381
    [Hypnosis] is the ability to exclude the conscious mind, permitting the unconscious mind to be free from the conscious interference, allowing it to make changes in the genotype of the activity, the disease, the glands, the past conditioned reactions, the established neurological pathways and clairvoyant functions of the brain.  It is a normal physiological state.
Oren Douglas Boyce, The Power of Indirect Suggestion, 1999: 88
    To define hypnotism as induced sleep, is to give a too narrow meaning to the word, -to overlook the many phenomena which suggestion can bring about independently of sleep.  I define hypnotism as the induction of a peculiar psychical condition which increases the susceptibility to suggestion.  Often, it is true, the sleep that may be induced facilitates suggestion, but it is not the necessary preliminary.  It is suggestion that rules hypnotism.
Hippolyte Bernheim, Hypnosis & Suggestion in Psychotherapy, 1884: 15.
    The real origin and essence of the hypnotic condition is the induction of a habit of abstraction or mental concentration, in which, as in reverie or spontaneous abstraction, the powers of the mind are so much engrossed  with a single idea or train of thought, as, for the nonce, to render the individual unconscious of, or indifferently conscious to, all other ideas, impressions, or trains of thought.
James Braid, 1852: 53-54
    Hypnosis is a state of mind in which the critical faculty of the human is bypassed, and selective thinking established.
Dave Elman, Hypnotherapy, 1964: 26

**************************
The Dictionary of Occupational Titles
PUBLISHED BY
The United States Department of Labor

     Hypnotherapist induces hypnotic state in client to increase motivation or alter behavior or alter behavior pattern through hypnosis. Consults with client to determine the nature of problem. Prepares client to enter hypnotic states by explaining how hypnosis works and what client will experience. Tests subjects to determine degrees of physical and emotional suggestibility. Induces hypnotic techniques of hypnosis based on interpretation of tests results and analysis of client's problem. May train client in self-hypnosis conditioning.

 

Nancy "Ace" Ava Miller, M.Ed, CHt
(Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist), 
TM (Transcendental Meditation) Teacher:
(505) 260-0116

 
Home