Many years ago, one of the Surgeon Generals in the USA, who used Hypnosis in his practice, was asked at a press conference to define Hypnosis. His response was something like, “Well, it’s something, it’s everything and it’s nothing!”
I have to agree. It is all of those things. I could attempt to expand on that but I would probably spend hundreds of words not making it much clearer than that.
However, I would like to say this. I have taught thousands of people Self-Hypnosis and relaxation exercises. Conversing with them days months or years later, I will often ask them if they still practise. The responses are many and varied. Sometimes, they will say yes, I still do my Self-Hypnosis, the way you taught me. Some will say yes, I practise my relaxation exercises. Some will say, I practise my meditation. Some will call it mindfulness. Whatever they say, I say fantastic, keep doing it.
It doesn’t matter what you call it, so long as you do it.
The thing is, the label is not important, the practise is. Trends and labels may change but thousands of years ago, for thousands of years, Egyptian priests had “dream temples” where the ill would go and the priests would chant and do rituals with them with the aim of healing or improving the life of the sufferer. You could call that Hypnosis, they didn’t, but you could.
Hypnosis is just a word, admittedly not a very good one to describe a natural state we all pass through to a greater or lesser degree, every day. Hypnos was an ancient Greek god of sleep. The Greeks had similar sleep temples by the way. Hypnos-is simply means sleep-like. Hypnosis is a surprisingly easy technique that we can use to take advantage of natural abilities we all possess.
There are many different states and levels of hypnosis and I am just touching on some of those here. There are very passive states and quite active states, light states and very deep states. Let us talk about a more passive state today.
When working with a client in hypnosis, I give them suggestions or ideas about how to handle various situations differently. One state of Hypnosis is similar to how it feels after you have just awoken from a good nights sleep. You are lying in bed, half awake, half asleep, nice and cosy, you can hear things going on around you, but you just can’t be bothered doing anything. The way I like to describe the feeling of the state of Hypnosis is something like that. In that relaxed state, the suggestions I give are recalled more easily than if I were to just say them while they were in an ordinary waking state. So for example, let us say my client is someone who bites their nails. Once they are relaxed and comfortable, I might give them the suggestion, that from now on, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing, if they start to move their fingers up to their mouth, they will immediately realise what they are doing and put their hand back down without doing any damage to their nails or fingers. There is more to creating a successful suggestion than that, but that is the gist of the process. The key here is drawing their awareness to a fundamentally unnoticed habit. Most nail-biters don’t even realise they are nibbling until, they have already ruined their nails. These suggestions are reinforced with others relating to self-esteem and confidence, as well as their personal relaxation/self-hypnosis practises after the session.
I remember several years ago, I had a client contact me who had come to quit smoking over 20 years prior. When she rang, I was worried that she might have started smoking again, but no, she wanted to work on something else. During our conversation, I asked her if she still practised her self-hypnosis relaxation exercises. She assured me she did it exactly the way I had taught her. I asked her to tell me what she did. Her description of her practise was nothing like anything I had ever taught anyone. I said to her, “That’s great keep doing it.” Why didn’t I correct her? It doesn’t matter to me how she deals with stress, it doesn’t matter what her relaxation exercises are, as long as it works for her and isn’t going to affect anyone else negatively. When she came to work on the new issue, I ensured that I reinforced her version of the relaxation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Your mindset is just that, Your mindset.
Here is a brief audio relaxation exercise you can listen to. It is based on the simple exercise in my first article which you can refer to in the second link.
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William Bulllock has been a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Stress Management Consultant in Australia for over thirty years. His father and two of his siblings were also Hypnotherapists. He is the Past President of the Professional Clinical Hypnotherapists of Australia and a photomedia artist. William is available for consultation via his website.
Images in this article are by William.