You are here Hypnosis
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a naturally occurring, trance-like state of mind. For example, commuting to work and arriving at your destination with no specific recollection of the journey. You have the route memorized. Your subconscious mind gets you there while your conscious mind focuses on a daydream, phone call, or wondering what you will have for dinner.
Although it is a naturally occurring phenomenon, it must be induced. It can be induced naturally, as when you are about to enter sleep. It can also be induced artificially, by a trained hypnotist.
To be artificially induced into a state of hypnosis, you must be a willing participant. While in the hypnotic state you tend to be more responsive to suggestion. However, you still have willpower and self-control.
To understand how this applies to hypnotherapy, it is helpful to understand more how your mind learns.
The Five Principles by which Ideas Become Fixed in the Subconscious Mind:
1. Repetition - The slow, hard way to convince the subconscious
2. Identification with a Group or Relative - If you are Irish, you may have a subconscious desire to show off your "Irish temper," which is merely an accepted idea because you are a member of that group. You may have been told "you are just like your father" often enough to accept some of his habits as your own. This is subconscious programming by identification.
3. Ideas Presented by an Authority Figure - An authority figure is anyone we consider to be smarter or more powerful than ourselves. Examples would include parents, older siblings, teachers, doctors, etc..
4. Intense Emotion - Emotion is to the mind as light is to the camera. It opens up the mind and allows the image or concept to become fixed. It can be any emotion that does this. Positive or negative.
5. Hypnosis - Hypnosis is a more reliable and less traumatic route to the subconscious. While hypnotized, you can allow new learning, and change old.
Rules of the Mind:
1. Every thought or idea causes a physical reaction - Your thoughts can effect all of the functions of your body. Worry thoughts trigger changes in the stomach that in time can lead to ulcers. Angry thoughts stimulate adrenal glands and increase adrenaline in the blood stream causing many body changes. Anxious and Fearful thoughts affect your heart rate. Emotions and feelings trigger hormones, neuropeptides and chemicals in your body.
2. What is expected tends to be realized - The brain and the nervous system respond only to mental images. It does not matter if the image is self-induced or what your eyes perceive in the external world. The mental image formed becomes the blueprint, and the subconscious mind uses every means at it's disposal to carry out the plan. Worrying is a form of programming a picture of what we don't want, but the subconscious mind acts to fulfill the pictured situation. Our physical health is largely dependant upon our mental expectancy. Physicians recognize that if a patient expects to remain sick, lame, paralyzed, helpless, even to die, the expected condition tends to be realized. Here, hypnosis or self-hypnosis can become the tool to remove negative attitudes and bring a hopeful positive expectancy. The expectancy of health, strength, and well-being, which then tends to be realized.
3. Imagination is more powerful than knowledge when dealing with your own mind or the mind of another - This is an important rule to remember when using hypnosis. Reason is easily overruled by imagination. This is why some persons blindly rush into some unreasonable act or situation. Violent crimes based upon jealousy are almost always caused by an overactive imagination. Most of us feel superior to those who lose their savings to confidence men, or blindly follow a demagogue. We can easily see that such people have allowed their imagination to overcome their own reason. We are often blind to our own superstitions, prejudices and unreasonable beliefs. Any idea, such as political and religious beliefs, accompanied by a strong emotion such as anger, hatred, love, can not be modified through the use of reason. In using hypnosis, we can form images in the subconscious mind, which is the "feeling mind", and can remove, alter, or amend the old ideas, if the client is willing.
4. Once and idea has been accepted by the subconscious mind, it remains until is replaced by another idea. The companion rule to this is, The longer the idea remains, the more opposition there is to replacing it with a new idea - Once an idea has been accepted, it tends to become a fixed habit of thinking. This is how habits of action are formed, both good and bad. First there is the thought and then the action. We have habits of thinking as well as habits of action, but the thought or idea always comes first. It becomes obvious that if we wish to change our actions, we must begin by changing our thoughts. We accept certain facts as true. For example, we accept as true that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West and we accept this even if the day is cloudy and we cannot see the sun. This is an instance of a correct fact conception which governs our actions under normal conditions. We have many thought habits which are not correct and yet are fixed in the mind. Some people believe that at critical times they must have a drink of alcohol or a tranquilizer to steady their nerves so that they can perform effectively. This is not correct, but the idea is there and it is a fixed habit of thought. There will be opposition to replacing it with a correct idea. Please note, we are speaking of fixed ideas, not just idle thoughts or passing fancies. We need to alter the fixed ideas or use them. No matter how fixed the idea may be or how long they have remained, they can be changed through hypnosis.
5. Each suggestion acted upon creates less opposition to successive suggestion - A mental habit is easier to follow the longer it lasts unbroken. Once a habit is formed it becomes easier to follow and more difficult to break. So, once a hypnotic suggestion has been accepted by your subconscious mind it becomes easier for additional suggestions to be accepted and acted upon. This is why, when you are using hypnosis (or self-hypnosis) it is suggested that you start with simple suggestions like a tingling sensation or a warm and pleasant feeling. Then these have been accepted, you can move on to more complicated suggestions.
6. An emotionally induced symptom tends to cause organic change if persisted in long enough - It has been acknowledged that more than 70% of human ailments are functional rather than organic. This means that the function of an organ or body part has been disturbed by the reactions of the nervous system to negative ideas held in the subconscious mind. This does not at all imply that every person that complains of an ailment is emotionally ill or neurotic. There are diseases caused by organic and inorganic outside influences. However, we are a mind in a body and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, if you continue to fear ill health, constantly talk about your "nervous stomach" or "tension headaches", in time, organic changes must occur.
7. When dealing with the subconscious mind and it's functions, the greater the conscious effort, the less the subconscious response - Stronger conscious effort to change an idea only creates stronger "conscious interference", blocking the subconscious from changing.
