What Hypnosis Is And Isn't

by Peter Saks on Octobe 24, 2009

Before we will start to talk about what hypnosis is, I feel obliged to discuss what it isn't. You can find a lot of false assumptions about trance and hypnosis itself, allover the place.

The most common one is that state of hypnosis is similar to sleeping. It seems logical for people to assume this, as person within hypnosis looks very much alike someone asleep.

Describing what hypnosis is, is a very difficult thing, as nobody is fully aware of what is happening inside the brain of hypnotized person. What we know for sure though is the fact that in trance we become very suggestible.

In order to achieve deep levels of trance, we need to disengage most of the senses subject of hypnosis has. First comes vision, by using suggestions like "your eyelids are getting heavier and heavier" and monotonous sounds and actions, your eyes close without your participation. During process of progressive relaxation, some people can lose awareness of their whole body, while accessing deeper trance states.

Although you are losing your senses one by one, you manage to maintain one of them, hearing. Against a common misconception, you are able to hear everything that is happening around you, even in the deepest trance. What more, the deeper you go, the more your hearing sharpens, so in hypnosis you hear more than when you are conscious.

Hypnosis would lose all of its effectiveness, if you wouldn't be able to hear suggestions of hypnotist. However, this fact leads to disbelief of many people in powers of hypnosis. It is beyond them to understand that despite that, they were able to hear every sound around them, they were under the influence of hypnosis.

That is mostly caused by the belief that hypnosis is like sleeping that, as you should be aware of by now, is false...