FThat there is a part of your brain that goes about doing its thing without your conscious attention, like heart beating, giving you feelings about things, sad, happy, etc. Allows you to walk about, without having to concentrate on moving each leg individually etc. Great, so now that we agree there are both conscious and unconscious processes, lets continue.

One of the first key aspects to hypnosis is concentration.  If we are taking a leisurely walk through a park we may notice the sound of some birds, leaves on the ground, other people walking by, a dog playing, with a stick,  the pretty flowers around us, a butterfly on a flower. However, there is only so much incoming information we can handle at one time. So what has developed is the ability to concentrate on what is important to us to the exclusion of what is not important. So as we concentrate in on one thing, the less we notice the other things around us. We may find the butterfly  interesting and so we stop and concentrate on the colours of the butterfly,  and no longer notice the grass, people passing by etc. So one aspect of hypnosis is focusing in on one thought to the exclusion of all other thoughts.

To watch a fun demonstration of the above, watch the vido below, and count the number of passes the white team makes.

By focusing in one thing there is less to compare it against others. So if we concentrate on relaxation we no longer notice tension. If we focus in on the confident aspects of our personality we no longer notice the ‘weaker parts.

A second aspect of hypnosis is expectation. Expectation is that the body prepares itself for what will happen before it happens.  If a person says I am going to hit you, the body prepares to take the hit. Muscles tense, adrenalin gets released.  When you think about eating , even before you eat changes are occurring in your stomach, preparing for food. So the body and nervous system change before the event happens. And you can see from an evolutionary point of view this makes good sense. You want your body prepared and ready to run from the lion before it is actually is upon you. So the second part of hypnosis is what is expected to  happen, the body prepares for it to happen, and because it is then prepared, when the event occurs the body responds in the way it is prepared to respond . When people go up on a stage show a large part of why they act the way they do is because they have been told what will happen and so the mind and body prepares itself for it to happen and then it does.

Another part of hypnosis is imagination. When your eyes are closed your unconscious mind isn’t aware of the difference between what you imagine and reality. This is easy to understand because everyone has had a dream. If it is a nightmare you may wake up feeling scared, or flustered, sweating, or anxious. However what you dreamed wasn’t real, it was all ‘in your head’ and yet you reacted as if it were real. So anther part of hypnosis is using your imagination, to trick your subconious into believing a new reality about you and the way you act.

The more you learn about hypnosis the more intesting it becomes, and it then becomes exciting to think of the ways you can apply it to your life.

Hypnosis  can be traced back to the early day of religious practices and cultural sermons by different civilizations and cultures, and usually referred to as a trance. There is evidence that Egyptians, Greeks, Persians and Hindu’s all practiced trance like states.  The Egyptians were thought to have use hypnosis in the use of dream temples, and American Indians in the induction rituals of boys into manhood.  Priests or elders may have induced hypnotic states using rhythmical drumming and chanting and often the trance state was attributed to the possession of the person by demons, ghosts or spirits.

The 1600’s ushered in a time period where hypnotic inductions and beliefs were instilled upon people by healers such as Valintine Greatrakes (1628-1661) known as the Great Irish Stroker who believed himself to have been blessed with the divine gift of healing.  His nickname  was coined because with his hand he would gently stoke his patients body to cure the inflicted aliment.  Belief in himself and the belief of his patients in his healing abilities were all attributors to his phenomenal success. His healing abilities were thought to be the divine gift from god rather than a natural occurring human phenomenon.

In the 1700’s Western scientists began to take an interest in what was termed the trance state. Devils and gods were ruled out as a cause, but the alternative reasons were just as bizarre, with hypnotic induction attributed to metals, magnets and the transference of energies.

Dr. Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) formulated a method of rapidly inducing people into a trance state through the use of, magnets, hand movements and metal rods .   He attributed his ability to hypnotize people due to the stronger animal magnetism that resided inside himself over his subjects.

Mesmer accounts were soon to be discredited by the likes of Abe Faria, a Portuguese monk who put forth that a state of hypnosis was caused not by animal magnetism but by the intense concentration of the mind.  Abbe Faria thought the power of hypnotism worked by the cooperation of the patient and the use of suggestion.   Dr James Braid (1795-1860) from Scotland was the first to use the word hypnosis and put forward that hypnotism was induced by concentration.  He used bright shiny objects to focus the mind and sleep inducing words such as “sleep” to induce a hypnotic sleep. Dr Braid used hypnosis to perfrom hundreds of surgeries upon people, to diminish pain.

While the skills Dr James Braid developed may have been were tinkering on the brink of bringing a major advance to anesthesia in the medical world, penicillin also came about at the same time, and the use of hypnosis for pain control was sidelined.

As science has progressed so has our understanding of the hypnosis.  No longer do we believe that mystical spirits, magnets or unusual energies cause hypnosis, but that it is a natural state that can be induced by a hypnosis practitioner or by oneself with a little practise. And as the understanding of hypnosis increases so will its application in dealing with pain, self improvement and uses in a therapeutic environment.