Traditional hypnosis involves making simple, direct suggestions to the unconscious mind. This technique is typically most effective for people who are inclined to follow orders and don’t question them. Conversely, it won’t be as effective with those who are more critical in nature, and think about things more analytically.

Dr. Wilson Erickson came up with another form of hypnosis in the 1960s, appropriately named Ericksonian hypnosis. It dispenses with formal hypnotic instructions and instead relies on the use of stories to indirectly present ideas to the unconscious mind. These stories, or metaphors, come in two varieties: isomorphic and embedded. Isomorphic metaphors involve a story with a moral that directly relates to the issue being addressed by the therapy. The embedded metaphor tells a tale that amuses the conscious mind, but it also has concealed implications that are meant for the subconscious.

Ericksonian hypnosis also utilizes an approach known as “Process Instructions”. This method encourages the unconscious mind to remember a similar event in the past and apply it to the current situation.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) doesn’t rely on suggestions as do other forms of hypnosis. NLP uses thought patterns that are contributing to a problem and redirecting them towards eliminating the problem. A popular NLP method is called anchoring, and is comprised of bringing up memories from the past that are positive in nature and relating them to current issues. As you’re bringing forth these upbeat memories, you employ a specific gesture, such as pressing two of your fingers together. Subsequently, whenever this move is performed, it becomes an anchor or touchstone for those feelings that can then be applied to vexing problems.

The Flash is another common NLP technique. This seeks to switch things around in the unconscious. The result is that the brain can be retrained to view circumstances that used to bring on stress with a relaxed attitude instead.

Modifying conditioned responses is another thing the Flash is good at. For example, a smoker typically smokes when he or she is reading the newspaper. Unconsciously, the smoker pairs the two behaviors together so that each time they start to read their daily newspaper, they get a yen for a cigarette. The Flash technique aims to disassociate these two behaviors from one another so that reaching for the newspaper does NOT automatically trigger a desire for a cigarette.

Both Ericksonian hypnosis and NLP hypnosis have a lot of critics in the scientific community. A number of specialists refuse to acknowledge that Dr. Erickson’s method is even a form of hypnosis, since it bears little resemblance to conventional hypnosis. With regard to NLP, there isn’t enough empirical evidence that it works to make it widely accepted. Nonetheless, it is becoming a very popular technique among private psychotherapists and has also had a huge influence on the management training and life coaching industries.

When used properly, self hypnosis techniques can help you overcome your most destructive habits, like overeating and smoking. Hypnosis can also help you improve your self esteem and make you feel more in charge of your life. How does it work? Find out more at Learn Hypnosis.

Hypnosis techniques

Rave goers have known for years that the powerful combination of loud music and drugs could put someone into a state of trance, where the setting drifts into the background and a feeling of overwhelming connection and love comes to the foreground. In the sixties and seventies, it was new age music that created this hypnosis meditation. Before that, shamans mesmerized themselves around the fire to the sound of drumbeats. Techno trance therapy has been taught in various workshops from London to California but is primarily a form of self-hypnosis that people teach themselves.

The best way to learn hypnosis is to attend a nightclub or rave event where techno trance is being played. There are local sites focusing on these parties but www.grooveallnight.com lists some of the big name DJs coming to the major US cities. Large trance music festivals in America include: Burning Man (Black Rock Desert, Nevada), The Winter Music Conference (Miami), Love Fest (San Francisco), USC (Seattle), The Global Dance Festival (Colorado) and the Coachella Music Festival (Indio, California). While anyone can turn off the lights, turn on the stereo and dance at home, the feeling of being in a large room with laser lights, hundreds of other individuals, with professional sound quality is an entirely different experience.

When one enters a techno trance, they feel a lightness of body, perhaps even a numbness or disassociation, where the mind and body feel detached, as though a person is watching him or herself move. Blinking slows down, there is a distortion of movement, space and time, and the senses become more vivid. Another common occurrence is catalepsy, a condition where the muscles contract and remain soft, rather than rigid. The body’s natural endorphins and pain relievers flow freely, allowing dancers to continue moving for hours on end. While listening to trance music, people often report feeling that they are less inhibited and more able to talk about their emotions. Often a deep sense of interconnectedness takes hold and the dancer begins to feel a bond with those around him or her. It is almost as if these dancers are in another time and place, where rules do not apply and the outside world has ceased to exist.

Techno trance music is a large component of the transcendental experience, but drugs have gone almost hand-in-hand with these hypnosis techniques. On one hand, it is entirely possible to produce the feelings of euphoria simply through dance expression, similar to the classic “runner’s high.” However, few experiences can compare to the combination of certain drugs and progressive trance music. The most common drugs used to induce a hypnotic state include hallucinogens like acid and mushrooms, designer drugs like ecstasy and methamphetamine, dissociative drugs like ketamine and PCP. In his book “The Doors of Perception,” author Aldous Huxley explored the mind-drug-spiritual connection, writing, “The direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact… I was this fact; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this fact occupied the place where I had been.” For him, the state of trance was a spiritual experience, as is the case for many techno trance fans around the world, drugs or not.

Hypnosis techniques

The term “hypnosis” stems from the Greek word “hypnos,” meaning “sleep.” Hypnotherapy employs a number of techniques that create a feeling of deep relaxation in patients, which then leads to an altered state of consciousness known as a trance. Therapists use hypnosis techniques to open a gateway into the mind, where they can actually influence people on how to change their embedded behaviors. While it has not been proven beyond reasonable doubt, a number of patients have reported the use of hypnosis sessions to quit smoking, lose weight, overcome obstacles in their marriage and find a sense of empowerment.

In a hypnotherapy session, the patient’s body relaxes, blood pressure decreases, heart rate decreases, oxygenation of the blood increases and brain wave activity may be altered. By contrast, the mind becomes more attentive, more focused and more awake. While patients are in this deep concentration, they are more in touch with their emotional side, the left and right brain hemispheres are communicating better, mental gatekeepers open up and they are highly responsive to suggestion. A patient may be given a list of reasons to stop smoking or convinced to eat smaller portions. Perhaps a series of coping mechanisms can be directed into the subconscious realm to help a person calm down and overcome anxiety, anger disorders, stress or depression.

Hypnosis therapy is used to treat a wide host of ailments from mental to physical. Most recently, researchers discovered that the mind plays an important role in pain management, particularly with cancer patients or those undergoing surgery. Studies show that hypnosis meditation can lessen one’s need for medication and shorten recovery time. Thinking negative thoughts can lead to stress, which has powerful ramifications on the body.

It can disrupt a woman’s menstrual cycle, create a cold sore, make a person ill with a cold, disrupt sleep patterns, generate ulcers, facilitate hair loss, exacerbate psoriasis, lead to heart disease and contribute to obesity. Today, hypnosis sessions are used in treating obesity, asthma, anxiety, pain, sleep walking, thumb sucking, nail biting, smoking, inflammatory bowel disease, insomnia, addiction, warts, bedwetting, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, psoriasis, acne, migraines, stress, tinnitus, cancer pain, obesity, anorexia, bulimia, indigestion, phobias, depression and the pain of childbirth.

For hypnotherapy training, most people obtain a doctorate degree in medicine or psychology. Others receive a master’s in social work, psychology or therapy and have at least 20 hours of ASCH-approved hypnotherapy training. Six to eight week courses provide licenses to mental health professionals as well. To find a professional who practices hypnotherapy, one can look at a number of websites, including: The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis at www.asch.net, The Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis at www.sceh.us/index.htm or The American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists at www.aaph.org.

Ericksonian hypnosis

Breathing coaches, yoga instructors and doctors are nothing new to pregnant women. However, many mothers-to-be are now adding a hypnotherapist to their pre-natal planning. Hypnosis sessions aid in conditioning the mind to deal with stress and pain management better to ensure a more positive labor experience. “Hypnobirthing” founder Marie F. Mongan explains, “We will help you prepare for the birth your plan and want for yourselves and your baby, rather than the birth that someone else directs. We will help you look forward to your pregnancy and birthing with joy and love, rather than fear and anxiety.”

Pregnant women may need to find a hypnotherapist to help assist with the painful birthing process. Sure, everyone knows how to breathe, yet in times of great peril or pain, these psycho-somatic techniques can quickly be forgotten, leaving many women gasping for air or hyperventilating. Lamaze Breathing Techniques conjure up images of husband and wife in a yoga classroom setting, with the wife practicing healthy breathing patterns and the husband supportively going along with it. Similarly, one of the most common hypnosis techniques used to induce people into a state of trance is, in fact, relaxation breathing. Therefore, it makes sense that women would adopt some hypnotherapy training methods to help them relax through deep breaths of fresh air.

In addition to breathing, a pregnancy hypnotherapist can help the woman center on her physiological processes to aid in the birth process and find a sense of inner peace. Often times, maternal anxiety can cramp up the muscles, making the birth more difficult and painful. By relaxing and fixating on deeply embedded positive imagery, a woman will ease the baby out. It is believed that stored images and sensations with emotional attachments can actually trigger the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which naturally relieves pain and diminishing anxiety. Thus, the hypnosis techniques that have been practiced will come back during labor and assist the mother in having a smoother childbirth.

To find a hypnotherapist specializing in hypnobirthing, one can go to www.hypnobirthing.com/findaprac.htm to search for practitioners by state or even by country. Another good site to check out is www.natboard.com, which lists licensed, certified hypnotherapists of all types, including those for childbirth. Women may also choose to buy a hypnosis CD to guide them in the comfort of their own home. At www.gentlebirth.org, there are a number of resources to read up on hypnobirthing. The “Hypnobabies Home Study Course” (www.hypnobabies.com) for $139.99 is also highly recommended for mothers who cannot afford $400 for a course.

Hypnosis techniques

“You are getting sleepy… You are getting sleepy… You are getting sleepy.” The image of the man dangling the watch back and forth before the patient’s eyes is ingrained into our brains as the primary mode of hypnotizing someone. Once a person “goes under,” the hypnotist can get the unconscious to say or do just about anything on command. While hypnosis is accepted in the entertainment industry, the scientific community generally snubs such practices. Yet recent therapeutic trends suggest that the power of the mind cannot be discounted.

In 2000, Harvard researchers sought an answer to the question: Does being hypnotized change the brain? In their study, they asked a group of men to hold a brick out in front of them as long as they could, which was five minutes for most fully conscious subjects. However, under hypnotic suggestion, they held the brick out for fifteen to twenty minutes. Next, subjects were hypnotized and placed in an MRI scanner. A computer screen showed them patterns of yellow, red, blue and green rectangles and recorded their brain activity.

Then they were shown the same rectangles in shades of gray and were asked to imagine the colors. When they were not hypnotized, both activities showed brain activity on the right side only, but when they were hypnotized both the left and the right hemispheres responded. “What we have shown for the first time,” lead researcher Stephen Kosslyn concluded, “is that hypnosis changes conscious experience in a way not possible when we are not under hypnosis.”

In another study conducted in 2004, researchers at the University of Iowa, the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and Technical University of Aachen, Germany, measured blood flow in the brain under clinical hypnosis. They asked participants to touch a hot surface and report pain on a scale from 0-10. Next, under hypnotic suggestion, all subjects reported reduced pain (3/10) at previously 8/10 temperature levels. Additionally, assistant professor Sebastian Schulz-Stubner M.D. reported, “The major finding from our study, which used MRI for the first time to investigate brain activity under hypnosis for pain suppression, is that we see reduced activity in areas of the pain network and increased activity in other areas of the brain under hypnosis.”

Another use for clinical hypnosis is smoking cessation. In 2007, North Shore Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital ran a study regarding the effectiveness of stop smoking hypnotherapy, versus those who quit cold turkey, those who received nicotine replacement therapy or those who received nicotine replacement therapy and hypnotherapy combined. Just over six months later, researchers found that 50% of those treated with hypnotherapy alone were nonsmokers and 50% of those treated with NRT/hypnotherapy had quit fully, compared to 25% in the “cold turkey” control group and 15.78% in the nicotine replacement therapy only group.

Discover more about how to hypnotize someone here.

Patients undergoing hypnotherapy or stage hypnosis move from their normal waking state to a stage of deep relaxation, where they breathe deeper, their body feels heavier and their mind starts to become more absorbed. Next in the state of trance, the subject will feel deeply engaged in the words or pictures the therapist shows and there is disassociation from critical thoughts. The patient is then open to suggestion and will react and comply with the hypnotherapists suggestions. Following the experience, patients often report feeling euphoric and like they had just had the best night of sleep ever, even though the session only lasted a few minutes.

Both physical and mental maladies can be treated with Hypnosis Hypnotherapy sessions. The mind can play a vital part in pain management, particularly in patients with serious illnesses or those undergoing surgery and studies have shown that hypnosis meditation can reduce a patients medication requirements in addition to shortening recovery time. Negative thoughts can lead to stress, which in turn can have effects on the body. Complaints such as colds, interrupted sleep, stomach ulcers, outbreaks of psoriasis, disrupted menstrual cycles in women, hair loss and cold sores can all result from stress stimulated by negative thinking. Hypnosis sessions are used to address all manner of health related problems including asthma, anxiety, the pain of childbirth, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, sleep disorders such as bedwetting, sleep walking and insomnia, thumb sucking, nail biting, smoking, inflammatory bowel disease, fibromyalgia, spastic colon, eczema, psoriasis, acne, migraines, stress, tinnitus, cancer pain, indigestion, phobias, depression and obesity.

The trouble with hypnotherapy is that not everybody is receptive to hypnotic suggestion. The subject must be an broad-minded, willing participant who pledges to remain attentive, set aside skepticism and go along with what the therapist is saying. A common misconception is that hypnotists can mesmerize someone, plant suggestions and cause the person to act against their free will. The procedure itself is mysterious, although there must be a certain level of agreeableness before healing can come about.