What Is Hypnosis?
By Adam Eason, Fri Dec 9th
Before anyone experiences hypnosis and starts using it to makewonderful, beneficial changes in their life, this article isdesigned to perhaps to answer a few questions you may have andalso to dispel a few myths and misconceptions about hypnosis.
You know, I still meet people that believe that experiencinghypnosis is like being unconscious. I always reply, "What wouldbe the point of that? Spending money and time to be unconsciousin someone else's company?? If I wanted you to be unconscious wewould simply bash you over the head!" So it is important thatyou also know that hypnosis is not about being unconscious andthat you have the correct expectations about the hypnoticexperience that you are going to have, should you choose toinvest in one of our products or experience hypnosis foryourself with a hypnotist.
In order to understand hypnosis, it is important to understandand differentiate between our minds. By that I am referring toour conscious mind, where we are now and just below that levelof awareness is our unconscious mind (also known as thesubconscious mind, for the purpose of easy understanding theyare the same thing).
The conscious mind is where we usually spend most of our wakingtime, you know that internal dialogue we have that thinks "hmmm,what shoes shall I wear today" that is your conscious mind. Yourconscious mind basically does four things;
Firstly, your conscious mind analyses. What is that? Well thatis the part of us that looks at problems, analyses them andtries to create solutions to those problems. It is that part ofus that makes decisions all day every day "shall I open thedoor?", "Shall I have something to eat", even though they areautomatic behaviours, we make a conscious decision about whetheror not to do these things.
The second part of our conscious mind is our rationale, the partof us that, especially in western cultures, always has to know"Why" things happen and "Why" we behave in particular ways. Thiscan cause us so many problems as we give any problems more andmore credence and power. More conventional and traditionalmethods of counselling or psychotherapy are often very muchconcerned with looking at causes of our problems and it is myopinion that all this does is teaches us "why" they happen asopposed to giving us the skills required to changing unwantedhabits and behaviours. The more we think about "why" we dothings the more we seem to embed the unwanted behaviour into ourpsyches!
The third part of our conscious mind is will power, thatteeth-gritted determination that so many of us are proud todemonstrate. How many times have we used our will power alone tomake changes and found that our will power weakens and thatchange is temporary or non-existent.
The final part of our conscious mind is your short-term memory.By that I am referring to the things that you need to rememberto function on a day-to-day basis, so that when your phone ringsyou know to answer it rather than stare at it wondering it is,or ensuring that you cross the road without being run over.
That is the conscious part of your mind, it is logical, rationaland analytical, a bit like Mr Spock from the Start Trek seriesand as much as it pains me to say it, our conscious mind isfrequently wrong about things.
Your conscious mind is wherever you happen to be pointing it atany given time. I am sure you have been in a busy, noisyenvironment, such as a restaurant or a bar and have been engagedin a conversation with another individual, and all the soundsgoing on around you just seem to blend into the background. Thensomeone else ten metres away can punctuate their sentence withyour name and you pick it out as if it was being spoken to you.This illustrates that unconsciously, you are aware of many, manypieces of information every second of your life, sounds,colours, thoughts etc, yet your conscious mind allows you tofocus upon what is pertinent or relevant to you at that moment.
If you take that conscious awareness and point it inside ofyourself instead of outside into the world, you begin to becomeaware of your inner self, your unconscious self, which is thepart of you that we work with in hypnosis.
Your unconscious mind is tremendously powerful and automates asmuch behaviour as it possibly can so that we do not have tothink about it. For example, there was a time in your life whenyou had to be shown how to tie your shoelaces, and youconcentrated on doing this. I suspect that by this stage in yourlife you know how tie your shoelaces very well and you don'teven think about doing it, you just do it. I have a lonelyAuntie who as a boy, my mother would ask me to phone on a weeklybasis as she thought this would make her happy and I vividlyremember hearing her lighting up a cigarette and heavilyexhaling the smoke while on the phone, she didn't even thinkabout what she was doing, she just associated smoking with beingon the phone.
We are amazing learning machines and we learn behaviours andhabits and then our unconscious mind automates them and doesthem on auto pilot so that we do not have to think about doingthem.
Your unconscious mind has within it all your long-term memory.Just about every blade of grass that you have seen in yourentire lifetime is stored away in your long-term memory thatserves as an amazing storage centre. These memories affect us invarying ways, some more than others. Sometimes our ability toremember them is not as fluid as we need, as it is often notnecessary to have all our memory in the forefront of our minds.For example, right now you are unlikely to be thinking abouteverything that happened to you on your last birthday, however,me just mentioning it, you can dig into your unconscious,long-term memory and remember.
Another example is if you have ever seen a live stand up comedyshow. You watch the comedian and laugh (or not as the case maybe!) heartily as you listen to lots and lots of jokes. Then whenyou leave the venue, you can remember none of them, or one ortwo at best! Then, a week later, a friend that you were with cansay to you "do you remember such and such a joke from last weekscomedian" and you think "oh yeeeaaah!" as you bring thatinformation out from your long-term memory. You know that youknow the joke, it was just not at the forefront of yourconscious mind, it was tucked away in the deeper unconscious.
Your unconscious mind knows more about you than you consciouslythat you know. Sound confusing? Well, just think, you arecurrently breathing, your heart is beating (I do hope!) you aredigesting, your body is regulating its body temperature, it isdoing a range of wonderful things without you having toconsciously think about it. You are not sat around thinking "Ireally must remember to breathe". We are not machines, there isan intelligence within us that knows how to do these things, andit is that intelligence that we tap into with hypnosis.
Your unconscious
mind is where you get your gut feelings, yourinstincts and intuition that communicates with you sporadicallyfrom time to time. Like when sometimes, someone can be sayingall the right words to you, but you get a different feelingabout them.
Your unconscious mind is a bit like a computer. Throughout yourentire lifetime it has been programmed with all yourexperiences, relationships, interpretations of the world,influences and all this has culminated in your computerfunctioning with that programming. Hypnosis is simply a way ofaccessing that computer and updating that programming so that itbecomes instinctive and intuitive for you to make the changesthat please you.
Your unconscious mind is the seat of your emotions and whereyour behaviours exist and it is the part of you that we workwith in hypnosis. Hypnosis is a way of us stepping over yourconscious mind and accessing the unconscious mind to makepowerful and profound changes.
Now, I am sure that you have experienced natural trance statesmany times before, in fact I know it. For example, when you havebeen driving in a car and thought to yourself "ooh, how did Iget here?" or when you have been reading a book and you'veturned the page and thought "I have no idea what I have justread, I am going to have to read it all again". I can rememberbeing at school watching my history teacher teach me, yet mymind was a million miles away wishing I was doing somethingelse. All common experiences, daydream like states that we allexperience, many times a day. The only difference between thesenaturally occurring states and those that we use in therapeutichypnosis, is that with the hypnosis, you intend to enter thestate, you are in control of it and it is just like a slightlyamplified, deeper version of the state. That is it. Sometimes itis simply like sitting in a chair with your eyes closed, not themagical mystical or unusual experience that some people are ledto believe it is.
It is important here to know that you cannot be made to doanything that you don't want to do. Very important. I had a guythat a doctor referred to me, came to see me and said to me "mydoctor told me come and see you as I have emphysema and am goingto die of it unless I stop smoking". I said to him, well Ipresume you want to stop, he said "oh, no, I love smoking, it isone of few remaining pleasures." I had to send him away as Icannot make him do something that he does not want to. Can youimagine if I could do that!! Wow. I could go and see my bankmanager and make him give me million pounds without returningit! You never read about "Baddy hypnotists" making people robbanks or anything else absurd, because it cannot be done.
People usually then say to me "ok Adam, I hear and understandwhat you are saying and it all makes sense". However, I haveseen stage hypnosis and seen people dancing like chickens, areyou telling me that they want to do that?" I am saying thatthese people are not being made to do things that they don'twant to do.
When someone buys tickets to a stage hypnosis show, they arebeing permissive to the notion that they are going to seehypnosis for entertainment; they expect certain things tohappen. Secondly, when the stage hypnotist asks the audience"who wants to come on stage" the people that agree to do so orput their hands up are saying "yes, I want to be hypnotised",they are not being made to do anything they don't want to do.The stage hypnotist ensures that the individuals on the show arereceptive and follow a large number of compliance exercises andit begins to create the illusion that these people are doingthings that they don't want to do, when they are not. Thehypnosis can step over the inhibitions of the conscious mind, sothat the individuals behave with more openness, they just cannotbe made to do things they don't want to do.
Anyone can be hypnotised. I work with insomniacs, heroinaddicts, schizophrenics, people experiencing chemotherapy, theseare all people that are often convinced that they cannot relaxor cannot be hypnotised, and as long as they want to, they allcan and they all do.
All that is required is that you have an open mind, that youexpect it to work and have progressive, motivated thoughts aboutthe processes, follow the sessions and allow them to help youhelp yourself to make the changes you want and deserve.
Finally, at the beginning of the recorded hypnosis sessionsand/or individual NLP or hypnosis sessions with me (I cannotspeak for other therapists, we all do things differently)individually, you may be asked to do a number of differentthings with your mind and you can be forgiven for thinking,"well, he asked me to do this, and now something else, and nowanother thing, what exactly am I supposed to be listening to?"The simple answer is that you listen and follow as much or aslittle as you want to, remember that is your conscious mindthinking those thoughts and that is not the part of you that weare working with and making the change with. I am sure thatthere will also be times when you'll be thinking "hmmm... am Iin hypnosis, what am I supposed to be thinking or feeling."Again that is your conscious mind thinking that thought and doesnot matter what it is thinking. It can be attempting to followeverything that I am saying or just wandering off and thinkingabout whatever you like, just trust that your unconscious mindis absorbing all that you want it to.
There will be times in the sessions when you may be asked toimagine things. Imagining things does not have to meanvisualising. If I ask you to think of a favourite place, you canimagine what it would be like, you don't have to be seeing apicture perfect cinema version of it in your mind. You canimagine, sense, think, or just know it without seeing it orpicturing it in every detail. If I asked you to imagine thesound your feet make when you walk across gravel, you know thesound I am talking about and you can imagine it, but you are notnecessarily hearing it in your ears, you can imagine it. That isall you'll need.
So, hypnosis is not like being unconscious, it is almost likehaving heightened awareness, it requires you to want the change,have an open, positive mind, as best as you can, and allowwhatever happens to happen, without trying to grasp at what youthink should happen, just letting it happen.
I wish you all the very best with whichever hypnosis product, orwith any consultative sessions you are considering having withany qualified therapist or any training you plan to attend and Ijust know that having come this far, you really can do it, andmake the changes that you want to make with hypnosis.
About the author:Adam Eason is an author, consultant, trainer and motivationalspeaker in the fields of hypnosis, NLP, personal development andhuman potential. His website is filled with information,stimulating articles, resources and uniques products and can befound here; http://www.adam-eason.com More of Adams articles canbe found at his hypnosis, NLP and personal development blog:http://adam-eason.blogharbor.com/blog
Learn hypnosis by reviewing these other articles on hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis:
