What is Hypnosis?

The dictionary defines hypnosis as: an artificially induced trance state resembling sleep, characterized by heightened susceptibility to suggestion. That may be the stage version of hypnosis however, it's not the hypnotheraputic version! Hypnosis is the process of transitioning from one thought to another. From one state of mind, to another. I guess that's not as sexy as the dictionary definition but, it is more realistic.

Hypnosis is composed basically of three components:

1. The person being hypnotized,
2. The suggestion,
3. And, the conduit.

The person being hypnotized can be yourself or someone else or a whole crowd of people. The suggestion, is a whole study in itself. And we'll expand on that over a multitude of blogs. And finally, the conduit is the method of delivery of the suggestion. Again, another whole study in itself!

Let's start with the person being hypnotized. Each person has their own private biological computer called their brain. They also have a wonderful set of senses. The five senses are known as the VAKOG. Or, Visual, audible, kinesthetic, olfactory and gastric. Each of these senses communicate with the brain it their own language. The brain takes the messages the senses send it, and translates the messages with the appropriate algorithm; that the conscious mind can understand.
From the hypnotheraputic standpoint, the brain/mind is broken down into several components. The conscious mind, conscious filter and the subconscious mind

The conscious mind processes the waking and sleeping world from three standpoints:

1. The Somatic - Doer,
2. The Cognitive - Witness,
3. Awareness - neither doer or witness.

It processes about 10 to 20 bytes of information per second which is about a thought or two worth of information.

The conscious filter is just as it sounds. It filters the world's flood of sensory information so that we don't become overloaded with information as we did as babies. It generalizes, deletes and distorts information into only the most immediate information that we need to interact at the moment.
The subconscious, which I also call the Super Being:

* Never sleeps,
* Experiences the full force of the messages coming in from the senses,
* Supports and controls all functions of the mind and body,
* And cannot lie or deceive.

That last item, is the basis of a multitude of problems between the conscious mind and the subconscious. And the items I just described are only a few of the Super Being's talents! The Super Being also processes about 2,000,000 bytes of information per second as well!

I'm not trying to under sell the conscious mind which is also broken down into a government of it's own. There is the Primal Mind component which issues 8 basic urges: sleep, sex, fight, flee, power, fame, wealth, hunger. The Emotional Mind, which filters each and every thought via the 7 basic emotions: acceptance, control, security, inclusion, interaction, sympathy and empathy. And the Intellect, which bifurcates thought/messages into synchrones and asynchrones patterns.

So, how do all these components produce what we call hypnotic state? All of us continually transition from one thought to another! Why is that hypnosis?

Well, when that train of thought starts to loop and become fixated. And the mind becomes open to suggestion. As the mind becomes more entrained on a fixated thought. The person fixated allows the conscious filter to move out of the way and thereby opens a more direct path to the subconscious mind. As the conscious filter moves more and more out of the way, it also retains less and less memory of the events taking place!

A light hypnotic state equivalent to being road zoned and missing your turn. This state is known as the Hypnodial State. The mind loses about 20% of the events and doesn't remember them in this state. A more intense fixation, say, about the level of seeing the love of your life and being blown away, you lose about 60% of what's going on around you.
Now, in deep trance. Or being totally absorbed in true meditation, you lose about 80%.

Now, the logical question should be, how does one get themselves or another into this hypnotic state? I'll answer that in the next blog! Tune in next time as the old radio announcer use to say!

Thank you for your time,

Mike Addison M.Ht., M.AHt.
AnodynicHypnosis@gmail.com