ࡱ> G bjbjَ -H] 4Ldfff!FF$  t77^^^^ndd^^dd-&dThe History Of Hypnosis I dont know about you, but the mere mention of the word history usually puts me into a deep trance! Here, though, is a short, action-packed account, picking out the people whose work influenced me the most and made significant contributions to the development of our understanding of hypnosis. The earliest references to hypnosis date back to ancient Egypt and Greece. Indeed, hypnos is the Greek word for sleep, although the actual state of hypnosis is very different from that of sleep. Both cultures had religious centres where people came for help with their problems. Hypnosis was used to induce dreams, which were then analysed to get to the root of the trouble. There are many references to trance and hypnosis in early writings. In 2600 BC the father of Chinese medicine,Wong Tai, wrote about techniques that involved incantations and passes of the hands. the Hindu Vedas written around 1500 BC mention hypnotic procedures. Trance-like states occur in many shamanistic, druidic, voodoo, yogic and religious practices. Hypnotic Pioneers The modern father of hypnosis was an Austrian physician, Franz Mesmer (1734 - 1815), from whose name the word mesmerism is derived. Though much maligned by the medical world of his day, Mesmer was nevertheless a brilliant man. He developed the theory of animal magnetism - the idea that diseases are the result of blockages in the flow of magnetic forces in the body. He believed he could store his animal magnetism in baths of iron filings and transfer it to patients with rods or by mesmeric passes. The mesmeric pass must surely go down in history as one of the most interesting, and undoubtedly the most long-winded, ways of putting someone into a trance. Mesmer would stand his subjects quite still while he swept his arms across their body, sometimes for hours on end. I suspect that this probably had the effect of boring patients into a trance, but it was certainly quite effective. Mesmer himself was very much a showman, conveying by his manner that something was going to happen to the patient. In itself this form of indirect suggestion was very powerful. Mesmer was also responsible for the popular image of the hypnotist as a man with magnetic eyes, a cape and goatee beard. His success fuelled jealousy among many of his colleagues and this eventually led to his public humiliation. looking back, it is quite incredible that hypnosis survived in these early years, because the medical world was so dead set against it. Another forward thinker was John Elliotson (1791 - 1868), a professor at London University, who is famous for introducing the stethoscope into England. He also tried to champion the use of mesmerism, but was forced to resign. He continued to give demonstrations of mesmerism in his own home to any interested parties, and this led to a steady increase in literature on the subject. The next real pioneer of hypnosis in Britain appeared in the mid-nineteenth century with James Braid (1795 - 1860). Primarily a Scottish eye doctor, he developed an interest in mesmerism quite by chance. One day, when he was late for an appointment, he found his patient in the waiting room staring into an old lamp, his eyes glazed. Fascinated, Braid gave the patient some commands, telling him to close his eyes and go to sleep. The patient complied and Braids interest grew. He discovered that getting a patient to fixate upon something was one of the most important components of putting them into a trance. The swinging watch, which many people associate with hypnosis, was popular in the early days as an object of fixation. Following his discovery that it was not necessary to go through all the palaver of mesmeric passes, Braid published a book in which he proposed that the phenomenon now be called hypnotism. Meanwhile, a British surgeon in India, James Esdaile (1808 - 59), recognised the enormous benefits of hypnotism for pain relief and performed hundreds of major operations using hypnotism as his only anaesthetic. When he returned to England he tried to convince the medical establishment of his findings, but they laughed at him and declared that pain was character-building (although they were biased in favour of the new chemical anaesthetics, which they could control and, of course, charge more money for). So hypnosis became, and remains to this day, an alternative form of medicine. The French were also taking an interest in the subject of hypnosis, and many breakthroughs were made by such men as Ambrose Libeault (1823 - 1904), J.M. Charcot (1825 - 93) and Charles Richet (1850 - 1935). The work of another Frenchman, Emile Cou (1857 - 1926), was very interesting. He moved away from conventional approaches and pioneered the use of auto-suggestion. He is most famous for the phrase, Day by day in every way I am getting better and better. His technique was one of affirmation and it has been championed in countless modern books. A man of enormous compassion, Cou believed that he did not heal people himself but merely facilitated their own self-healing. He understood the importance of the subjects participation in hypnosis, and was a forerunner of those modern practitioners who claim, There is no such thing as hypnosis, only self-hypnosis. Perhaps his most famous idea was that the imagination is always more powerful than the will. For example, if you ask someone to walk across a plank of wood on the floor, they can usually do it without wobbling. However, if you tell them to close their eyes and imagine the plank is suspended between two buildings hundreds of feet above the ground, they will start to sway. In a sense Cou also anticipated the placebo effect - treatment of no intrinsic value the power of which lies in suggestion: patients are told that they are being given a drug that will cure them. Recent research on placebos is quite startling. In some cases statistics indicate that placebos can work better that many of modern medicines most popular drugs. It seems that while drugs are not always necessary for recovery from illness belief in recovery is! Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) was also interested in hypnosis, initially using it extensively in his work. He eventually abandoned the practice - for several reasons, not least that he wasnt very good at it! He favoured psychoanalysis, which involves the patient lying on a couch and the analyst doing a lot of listening. He believed that the evolution of the self was a difficult process of working through stages of sexual development, with repressed memories of traumatic incidents the main cause of psychological problems. This is an interesting idea that has yet to be proved. Freuds early rejection of hypnosis delayed the development of hypnotherapy, turning the focus of psychology away from hypnosis and towards psychoanalysis. However, things picked up in 1930s in America with the publication of Clark Hulls book, Hypnosis and Suggestibility. In more recent times, the recognised leading authority on clinical hypnosis was Milton H. Erickson, MD (1901-80), a remarkable man and a highly effective psychotherapist. As a teenager he was stricken with polio and paralysed, but he remobilized himself. It was while paralysed that he had an unusual opportunity to observe people, and he noticed that what people said and what they did were often very different. He became fascinated by human psychology and devised countless innovative and creative ways to heal people. he healed through metaphor, surprise, confusion and humour, as well as hypnosis. A master of indirect hypnosis, he was able to put a person into a trance without even mentioning the word hypnosis. It is becoming more and more accepted that an understanding of hypnosis is essential for the efficient practice of every type of psychotherapy. Ericksons approach and its derivatives are without question the most effective techniques. Over the years hypnosis has gained ground and respectability within the medical profession. Although hypnosis and medicine are not the same, they are now acknowledged as being related, and it is only a matter of time before hypnosis becomes a mainstream practice, as acceptable to the general public as a visit to the dentist. Hypnosis In History I have run through the main pioneers in the exploration and study of hypnosis, but it is also interesting that many creative individuals have used a trance-like state to access their talents. Artists, writers,, poets and composers have induced a form of hypnotic trance to help them with their work. The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) would repeat his own name to himself again and again like a mantra, and by doing this would access a different state of consciousness in which whole poems came to him that he could then transcribe. Mozart (1756 - 91) apparently composed Cosi fan tutte, one of his most famous operas, while hypnotised, and Rachmaninov (1873-1943) reportedly composed one of his concertos following a post-hypnotic suggestion. When the University of Strasbourg gave classes in hypnosis, students included the poet and playwright Goethe (1749-1832) as well as another composer, Chopin (1810-49). Thomas Edison (1847-1931), Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Henry Ford (1863-1947), Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) all used trance-like states to help in the development of their ideas. Many of historys greatest innovators made documented use of some special level of consciousness. These days huge numbers of leading athletes, business people and artists in many different fields use similar approaches with great success. The Dalai Lama recently questioned our reasons for sending investigative teams into outer space and under the sea when the real undiscovered treasures of humanity lie within the realms of our minds, and I must say I have to agree with him! What Is Hypnosis? The Human Mind To understand what hypnosis is and how it works, you need too know something about your mind - in particular, what is meant by the conscious and unconscious minds. The human mind can be compared to an iceberg, with the visible tip being the conscious mind and the invisible mass or larger part of the mind, being the unconscious mind. The Conscious Mind When I talk about the conscious mind, I am referring to the little voice in your head, the one that right now is saying, Oh yes, that little voice! This is the mind you actively think with all day long. It can hold only a handful of ideas and thoughts at any one time - which is why, for example, many people memorise numbers in small chunks, 1943609315 being easier to remember as 194 (first chunk), 360 (second chunk), 9315 (third chunk), because on average the conscious mind can retain only between five and nine discrete units of information at any one time. The conscious mind is critical and analytical; it sorts out information by noticing differences. The Unconscious Mind The unconscious mind contains all your wisdom, memories and intelligence; it is your source of creativity. It regulates body-maintenance, and autonomic processes like breathing, blood circulation and tissue regeneration. The conscious mind cannot heal a cut or accelerate your heartbeat to the correct rate; the unconscious mind does. It is the seat of your emotions and directs nearly all of your behaviour. Everything that has ever happened to you and everything that you have ever imagined is stored as a multi-sensory recording in your unconscious mind and reveal details of incidents that happened many years before, all of which are filed away somewhere. The unconscious mind works by association, by looking at something and seeing the similarities with a past event. Of course, the words conscious and unconscious are only models for the way your mind works, but they are the best and easiest way to explain the complicated structure of the human brain. Consciousness is not fixed in either the conscious or the unconscious; it is a spectrum of awareness. My favourite metaphor for the conscious and unconscious minds is a darkened room with all sorts of objects littered about it (the unconscious) and a torch (the conscious) picking out details in the room, able to focus upon only a few things at any one time. Whatever the torch is shining upon will be brightly lit and visible, while the rest of the room is dark; although the rest of the room is still there, you cannot see it. In the same way, whatever your attention is focused on is uppermost in your consciousness and the rest of your memories and your wisdom are still there. In one sense our lives are run mainly by our unconscious minds. We are largely unaware of our autonomic processes and thinking, and yet every single second our unconscious mind receives two million messages of sensory awareness. It would be impossible to process all that information consciously, so the unconscious sorts it and presents you with a summary of what is taking place. For example, when you are at a party, your unconscious is monitoring all the conversations that are taking place around you. Then, if somebody over the other side of the room says your name, suddenly you hear it. The unconscious mind sorted that piece of information and brought it to your conscious attention. The unconscious can also delete information from our awareness. A friend of mine is a builder. At work he gets lots of little cuts on his hands but he doesnt notice them, because they would interfere with the job, so his unconscious keeps his attention on his work and literally anaesthetises any pain. The interaction between the conscious and unconscious minds is going on all the time, but how is it decided what information each individual should specifically focus upon? How is it sifted by the unconscious and presented to your conscious mind? The answer is programming. Inductive Reasoning This is using questions to reason. If you think about it your conscious mind, the voice in your head, is always evaluating - critically and analytically - by comparing and noticing. For example, if I were to say to you that you are feeling hotter, inductive reasoning would be to ask yourself Do I feel hotter? Do I have too many clothes on? Is there a fire in the room? You ask yourself questions that analyse the statement. Deductive Reasoning Deductive reasoning is different, If I say you are feeling hotter and you deductively reason, then you accept the premise to be true and you ask questions based upon that. For example you might say If its hot then maybe Id better open a window, or fan my face. Deductive reasoning is how your unconscious mind evaluates, by assuming what you believe is true and generalising. For example, as a child you learn how to open a door, then in future you generalise in your mind about all doors everywhere so that you can open them automatically, otherwise you would have to re-learn how to go in and out of a room each time you wanted to. So whenever you learn something new you store the program in your unconscious. However this generalising principle also applies to negative experiences, for example, this is how phobias are formed. One emotionally charged experience in an elevator, at the dentist or reading in front of the class can provide a negative generalisation that operates powerfully in the unconscious, so that whenever a similar event occurs in the future, the old feelings of discomfort that were felt at an early age are instantly brought back to over protect you. Everyone experience some negatively and emotionally charged events early in life that shape them later in adulthood. Having an intellectual understanding of these past experiences sometimes help, but not always. Using hypnosis we can communicate directly with the unconscious mind which holds our generalisations, our deepest beliefs about ourselves, and ask it to re-evaluate to find new, more empowering beliefs that help us more. Childhood Programming Everything that happened to you between the time you were born and about the age of six, particularly moments of intense emotion, builds the foundation of your thinking and your behaviour for the rest of your life. A childs mind is open, like a sponge, taking in all the stimuli in its environment. The mind absorbs everything it can in order to develop. Before the age of six a child doesnt know enough to be able to rely on its own judgement and reasoning; its critical faculty is undeveloped (a critical faculty is the ability to question, judge, analyse, criticise and, very importantly, compare). It is because children havent developed this critical faculty that they are so innocent and can believe in things like Father Christmas or fairies. It is also why so many people end up the same as their parents, programmed by chance events, opinions and the superstitions of those around them, who were in turn programmed in their own formative years. While the small child has not yet developed a critical faculty, in adults this faculty is partially or completely suspended when they are in a hypnotic trance. In a hypnotic trance you focus on just one thing, or on one thing at a time, rather than on several things at once, this leads to fascination and absorption - a very different state from our waking consciousness, when we are constantly comparing and criticising. Quite simply, hypnosis is a state that allows excellent communication with the unconscious mind. So when a stage hypnotist tells hypnotised subjects that they are ballet dancers and subjects begin leaping about the stage, the suggestion has gone straight into their unconscious mind. With their critical faculties suspended, subjects, although often baffled, have no means of arguing the suggestion. They cannot reason, You are just a hypnotist telling me to do this and I am not a ballet dancer; they cannot evaluate the suggestion, having nothing to compare it with, so they have to act as if it were true. They have lost access to any evidence to the contrary. Suggestions are the key to hypnosis. Charles Baudouin, a famous French hypnotist, defines suggestion as a proposed or imposed idea, image or concept from an operator accepted by the mind of a subject. Hypnosis evolved as a way of enhancing suggestibility, through language and psychological techniques. The human mind has been likened to a computer and, to continue the analogy, hypnosis is a way of reprogramming the computer. When the critical faculty is quietened during trance, new ideas may be put to a person which result in new patterns of behaviour. So what is this mystical thing called trance? Trance If you ask most people whether they have ever been in a trance they will answer No, but they will be wrong. Every single one of us enters naturally occurring trance states all day long - day-dreaming, being engrossed in a book or even while driving a car. The key to identifying trance states is in the fixation of attention, either internally or externally. Quite simply, trance is all about the focus of a persons attention. When a subject is hypnotised, this focus is highly concentrated by suggestion. Television, for example, promotes a trance state. When watching, you forget about the room around you - the carpet, curtains, the furniture; your focus is the television. Something scary happens on the screen and you sit forward, tense up and get a burst of adrenaline, Quite simply, you plug your experience into that little box and, while you are engrossed, it becomes your reality. Not all trance is detached and simple. Even a very sophisticated process can be performed in a trance. Have you ever driven for several miles and then not been able to remember that part of the journey? You are driving competently but suddenly, when somebody speaks or some thing catches your attention, you cannot remember what you were thinking about before. You were in a trance. Trance is often described as an altered state of consciousness, but altered from what? The way I see it, we are all perpetually moving from one kind of consciousness to another. Your state of mind when operating a computer, say, is simply different from what it is when you are in a lift, or in the bath, or in the middle of an intense conversation. So whats the difference between these natural trances that people go in and out all day long and a hypnotic trance? The difference is the hypnosis is a deliberately induced trance. Other deliberately created and utilised trances are commonly found in disciplines such as yoga and meditation, and also in newer areas such as creative visualisation and stress management. The context for hypnosis is most typically a therapy session or a stage show where the hypnotist alters the subjects awareness through language and psychological techniques. The hypnotist is the facilitator, the guide, elected by subjects for their journey through the realms of their consciousness. The name given to the most extreme state of hypnosis is somnambulism. Somnambulist subjects have access to all the hypnotic phenomena; they are in a psychologically limitless environment. Subject can regress to early childhood, transforming their manner and speech to those of a child, and can achieve all the traditional deep-trance phenomena that I will refer to in more detail later. In a hypnotic trance the conventional limitations of the beliefs which determine everyday life do not exist. There is complete flexibility in the recovery of memories from your personal history. You are able to recall moments of trauma and gain new insights about them. You can tap into moments of personal excellence and replicate them in the future (athletes use this approach to reach peak performance states, retriggering them at appropriate times). You can even go into the future, imagine skills and resources you would like to have and bring them back with you! So, thats what a trance is. Now what does it feel like? The Experience of Trance When you go into a trance, you will experience a change in awareness. Just as everybody is different in the way they experience life, so each persons way of experiencing trance is unique, and every trance may also be different. You could even say that there is no such thing as a trance state, only infinite altered states of consciousness. In many cases nave subjects do not actually believe that they have been hypnotised when they come out of a trance. This is often due to preconceptions about what a trance will be like and then surprise when the experience does not match expectations. While hypnotised you do not necessarily stop being aware or conscious of what is going on around you; you are actually in a heightened state of awareness. When peoples consciousness is altered, they automatically experience certain changes. although it would be very unusual for somebody to experience all of these, here are seven of the most common internal characteristics of a hypnotic trance state: 1. Fixation - You become fascinated by an object or a train of thought, an idea, images or even your own breathing, 2. Sensory Changes - Your sensory awareness alters: sounds may appear louder and crisper, or quieter; feelings may be stronger or more dulled; colours may appear brighter or more hazy. 3. Time Distortion - Your experience of time may change. It is common for an hour in a trance to seem like five minutes. 4. Effortlessness - Subjects often find ideas and images come and go without any effort on their part. 5. Trance Logic - Situations that could appear unusual or illogical in the waking state (existence of fantasy kingdoms, appearance of talking animals and historical figures) are more easily accepted and explored. 6. Differences In Time And Space - You can age and life-regress, or travel forward in time and space. You can even exist in two places at the same time. As in dreams, all events can be happening now - past, present and future occurring simultaneously. 7. Amnesia - It is very likely that you will be unable to remember all of what happened during your trance. In most cases your recall will be at best partial, and it may well also be unclear, disordered and without much detail. Thats how it feels when you are in a trance, but there are also certain sensory signals hypnotists can use to tell them that a subjects awareness is altering. Once again everyone is unique, but here are the most common external signals. 1. Muscular Changes - A trance state can be one of relaxation. Often muscles become limp and loose, or they might even twitch. It becomes more obvious, for example, if a subject is someone who normally has a fixed grin or scowl. The face becomes relaxed and in some cases the lower lip becomes bigger. Amazingly, there are over 180 muscles in the face that can be moved in isolation. A subject may begin to swallow more or less. The muscles may become tight and rigid as an individual goes into a trance during a state of excitement at, for example, a religious rally. 2. Eyes - Many subjects close their eyes when going into trance. Some subjects display REMs (rapid eye movements), which can be seen behind the eyelid; this indicates a shift in brain waves. When you are visualising internally with your eyes closed, the hypnotist will be able to see eyeball movements behind your eyelids. When subjects go into trance with their eyes open, the eyes often look glazed. There may be pupil dilation, and here the rule is simple: the more open an individual is, the more dilated their pupils will be. The eyes may roll upwards, beneath the eyelids. There may well be some de-focusing of the eyes when subjects are engaged in internal dialogue. The rate of blinking may also change. 3. Skin Colour - There are often slight skin colour changes around the face, due to redistribution of blood. As muscular tension is relaxed, blood can flow in the capillaries closer to the surface of the skin. 4. Breathing - There will almost always be a change in your breathing pattern as you go into a trance. Some people breathe faster, but the majority slow down their breathing as they relax. The depth can change from shallow to deep, and often when subjects are visualising they tend to breathe from their chest. 5. Peristalsis - Tension and stress arrest the digestion. As people relax the digestive system gets going again and I often hear the sound of peristalsis, or tummy rumbles, as my subjects go into a trance. 6. Literalism - Hypnotic subjects tend to think and speak more literally. For example, to demonstrate this point I once put my hand six inches from a hypnotised subjects face and asked what was in front of him. He replied, Nothing, but when I asked him what was in front of that he said, Your hand. Thats a literal answer! Different Schools of Thought Having given this very brief introduction to the human brain, what a trance is, what it can feel like and the various hypnotic phenomena somebody in a trance manifests, the next thing to consider is just what hypnosis is. Rather than simply present you with my opinion, though, Im going to outline a few different theories so that you can draw your own conclusions. Certain psychologists deny the existence of hypnosis altogether. They say that it is not a special state but a vestige of compliance behaviour, a culturally defined situation of influence. They argue that as subjects are merely obeying task-motivating instructions in the waking state, those who are hypnotised are just role-playing in context-dependent situations. They might behave like this for any number of reasons - because they are too embarrassed to do otherwise, because they want to please the hypnotist, because they actually believe in what they imagine or because they are playing the hypnotic role and must do what is expected of them. Psychologists like Sarbin compare hypnotised subjects to actors in that both lose themselves in a role to the exclusion of self-awareness. They also claim that there is no simple scientific, psychological measure that proves a hypnotic state exists, because all of the phenomena exhibited by hypnotised subjects can also be found in the waking state. However, the fact that we cannot scientifically measure something does not mean it doesnt exist. For the school of thought that sees consciousness as a spectrum, with no single threshold of trance and no unequivocal, clear-cut definition of waking consciousness, or measurable parameters, the same is true of hypnosis. Professor Ernest Hilgard of Stanford University has worked hard over the years to bring greater respect to the study of hypnosis. He believes that through the hypnotic trance a separate part of the mind is contacted. He calls this the hidden observer. The hypnotic induction supposedly enables subjects to cut themselves off from normal waking consciousness and contact this hidden observer or involuntary part of the mind. This can be done via automatic writing - a script produced involuntarily by, and in some instances without the conscious awareness of, the writer. You can also communicate with the unconscious mind through finger signals. In trance, you can ask your unconscious to choose a yes finger and move it, then do the same for a no finger. Next, just using questions to which the answer is Yes or No, you can communicate through this channel, bypassing the conscious intellect. Sigmund Freud studied and used hypnosis in his work and was probably the first proponent of the school of thought that said hypnosis allowed access to a separate, possibly more primitive, part of the mind. He compared the state of hypnosis with being in love: a person experiences the same compliance and absence of critical faculty; he saw the hypnotist as the beloved one and the relationship as an erotic tie. He also, however saw a persons ability to be hypnotised as a sign of their psychological well-being. Because of the sensory and awareness distortions reported by subjects which I described earlier, Martin Orne, a distinguished American psychologist, believes that hypnosis is a special state of consciousness. During his wide-ranging research, he became interested in what he calls trance logic; for example, the ability to see the same person in two places simultaneously. Orne first came across trance logic when he was trying to devise a test to differentiate between people genuinely in a trance and people simulating trance. He took each subject into a room and sat them down, placing a chair directly in front of them. Then he told them that the room was completely empty and asked them to walk across it. The simulators stood up, walked forward - and crashed into the chair! The people genuinely in a trance stood up and walked across the room, swerving to avoid the chair. When they were asked why they had swerved, they replied, To avoid the chair. When he then asked, How come you saw the chair when I told you the room was empty? they replied, What chair? Orne went round this illogical loop several times before deciding that such thinking was another hypnotic phenomenon: the ability of a hypnotic subject to hold simultaneously two contradictory beliefs, or to perceive simultaneously two incompatible perceptions. I had a fascinating example of this once at one of my live shows. I had hypnotised a subject so that she would hallucinate all the men in the audience naked. She was enjoying looking around, so I asked her if any particular man caught her fancy. Oh yes, she replied, grinning, that guy in the white shirt! She could see him naked and with his shirt on at the same time Another theory sees hypnosis as an occult practice, like astral projection, in which an individuals soul leaves his or her physical body. This idea is common in many cultures - think of the trances associated with so many different ancient magic and religious ceremonies. When spiritualist mediums channel, supposedly allowing another spirit to speak through them, they go into a trance to facilitate the process. One could argue from a hypnotic point of view that they are actually bringing out projections from their unconscious mind, in the same way that the hidden observer is contacted. Milton Erickson believed that the hypnotic state was just one of many naturally occurring states; it was integral to the individual and had nothing to do with role-playing. This line of argument sees hypnosis as a powerful psychological tool that allows a hypnotist to shape attention and ways of thinking by using a subjects own patterns of experience. Researchers have gone to enormous lengths to investigate hypnosis in ever greater detail. Although as yet no definitive theory has emerged that satisfies all investigators, at the same time there have never been so many competent practitioners of hypnosis. For many people, especially those who have benefited from it, this academic disagreement doesnt matter. You dont need to be a mechanic to know how to drive a car. The phenomenon called hypnosis is happening every day all around us and you dont need letters after your name to be able to use it safely and efficiently. Common Misconceptions If experts cannot agree about just what hypnosis is, no wonder misconceptions abound. Lets try and clear up a few now. Heres are some of the most popular misconceptions: 1. Hypnosis Can Cure Anything The truth is that hypnosis is not a blanket panacea. As is only to be expected, it doesnt always work for everything every single time. That said, though, I believe that it is undoubtedly the single most powerful and under-utilised resource in healthcare and personal development today. 2. Hypnosis is in some way anti-Christian or the work of the devil According to The New Catholic Encylopaedia, the Catholic church (the largest Christian organisation in the world) feels that Hypnotism is licit if used for licit purposes. Its interesting that while many Christian Scientists oppose hypnotism, the founder of their church, Mark Baker Eddy, became interested in spiritual healing after being cured of paralysis by a hypnotist. 3. Hypnosis is a Mysterious Magic Power Hypnosis is a series of established psychological techniques and language structures that anybody can learn. There is nothing supernatural or magic about it, and the fear that people have of hypnosis is simply the fear of the unknown. It is certainly true, though, that some of the beneficial effects could be described as magical. 4. Only weak-willed or unintelligent people can be hypnotised As far as I am concerned, absolutely everybody can go into a trance. Circumstances, time, willingness of the subject and the competence of the hypnotist are all variable factors, but people are going into naturally occurring trances all the time. 5. People who are hypnotised can be made to do anything, even acts that are against their will. Laboratory experiments have shown that a subject will comply only with suggestions that fit their moral and value systems. Of course, people can be persuaded or forced to do things that conflict with their normal values through lies and deceit, but you dont need a hypnotist for that. Hypnosis cannot make moral people behave immorally. Sadly, there are immoral people in the world who behave badly, but dont blame hypnosis. 6. A subject can enter a hypnotic trance and not wake up. This is impossible! Even in the most unlikely event of the hypnotist being called away or even dying during an induction, the subject would simply drift into normal sleep or immediately awake. 7. Hypnosis is dangerous! Only specially trained doctors should ever be allowed to hypnotise anyone. There has never been a death recorded specifically due to hypnosis. Doctors practice medicine; their expertise is in anatomy and physiology. Hypnotists practice hypnotism, which is essentially a skill of communication. I am, none the less, very pleased to see doctors finally accepting hypnosis as a valuable alternative therapy, dentists using it as an anaesthetic and psychiatrists using it instead of, or combined with, psycho-therapy. Certain countries have even stricter rules than Britain on hypnotherapy and in some legally you now need a license to put someone into a trance. It is amusing to think that when two people make love they induce altered states in one another. As Richard Bandler has asked, does this mean that all the married people in these countries are going to have to become licensed hypnotists? 8. Hypnosis will cause you to reveal hidden secrets. This is a fear commonly expressed by people who are worried about volunteering at my shows. They are afraid that while hypnotised they will say something they would normally not say. But hypnosis is not a truth drug, and it is actually just as easy to lie in a trance state as it is in a normal state. As I have said before, while hypnotised you know perfectly well what you are doing and saying, and will not do or say anything that contravenes your inner principles. 9. Only 30 per cent of the population can be hypnotised. One group of hypnotists devised the idea of hypnotizability scales. Having decided that certain kinds of behaviour were trance phenomena, they could then say that when someone exhibited such behaviour they were in a trance. They tried to hypnotise a number of people using the same induction each time and had a 30 per cent success rate. Rather than seeing this as a demonstration of the hypnotizability of the general population, I see it as a demonstration of the flexibility of the population to respond to rigid induction. I have enormous doubts about the whole notion of grading depths of trance by any sort of scale, my reason being that it is possible to find every single so-called trance phenomenon in the waking state. For example, forgetting somebodys name - thats amnesia, which is a deep-trance phenomenon. Have you ever looked at you finger to find a cut you had not noticed? Thats anaesthesia, another deep-trance phenomenon. Have you ever been looking for your car keys, only to find that they were in front of you all the time? Thats a negative hallucination - once again a deep-trance phenomenon. If I were to go into some of the incredible things that I have overheard people saying after just one of my shows, I could fill this book with mad theories. Hypnosis is one of those subjects that everyone thinks they are an expert on, whether they know anything about the subject or not. Extract from THE HYPNOTIC WORLD OF PAUL McKENNA published by Faber & Faber. Sourced from Diviniti Publishing Ltd A best selling high quality hypnosis cassette series from the UK includes many free scripts and Downloads from site. All Subjects covered. 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