Q. How does hypnosis work? I am not a very imaginative person. Can I still be hypnotized?

A. Probably. Studies have found that there is no correlation between having an active imagination and being easy to hypnotize. Scientists have also found that there is no single personality type that is best suited to hypnosis. How does hypnosis work then? The neurological mechanisms are still unknown although the phenomenon is well documented.

Q. How does hypnosis work? Are some people easier to hypnotize than others?

A. Absolutely. Studies have proven that there are people who are more or less susceptible to hypnosis. The Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales measure people from 0 (cannot be hypnotized) to 12 (respond to all hypnotic suggestions). How does hypnosis work? Most of us fall in the middle range between five and seven. Only five percent of the population scores a 0. Interestingly, this rating doesn’t change over time. It is as consistent as your IQ score.

Q. How does hypnosis work? Will I be put to sleep?

A. Contrary to the depiction of hypnosis in Hollywood movies, being hypnotized doesn’t induce sleep. Instead, you enter into a hyper-attentive and hyper-responsive state. How does hypnosis work? The key is to enter into a state of “flow”, where you feel mentally relaxed and absorbed. You should feel as if it takes no effort to make a decision or act in any way. It’s interesting to note that your body doesn’t have to be physically relaxed in order for hypnosis to work. Hypnosis can be attained just as easily when vigorously riding a bicycle, for example, as long as one is in flow.

Q. How does hypnosis work? What happens to my mind when I’m hypnotized?

A. Despite a wealth of research, scientists still don’t know what neurological mechanisms bring about a state of hypnosis. We need to further develop our understanding of the unconscious mind in order to arrive at any conclusions. But what we do know is that there are genuine neurological changes during hypnosis; the state is different from normal consciousness. How does hypnosis work? It seems to change your perception of sensory experiences. For example, it modifies the way your brain interprets and processes information. It may also modulate activity in the anterior cingulated cortex—the part of the brain that regulates what to pay attention to, what to ignore and how much emotional significance to assign to sensations among other variables. This could be why hypnosis is so effective for pain management.

Q. How does hypnosis work? Will I give up control?

A. No. You will still hold the power to resist or control what happens while under hypnosis. How does hypnosis work? Hypnosis calms our conscious mind and brings our subconscious to the fore, at a time when it is open to suggestion. This openness, however, doesn’t imply a loss of free will or moral judgment. Instead, scientists have found that people frequently become highly effective problem solvers while under hypnosis.

If you suffer from acute or chronic pain, give these free self hypnosis tips a try. Studies conducted by Harvard Medical School and the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis among others have shown that hypnosis can be used successfully for pain management.

How does it work? At the most basic level, these free self hypnosis tips will teach you how to attain a hypnotic state, which will enable you to control the experience of pain in your body.

A qualified hypnotherapist can guide you through this process and teach you three different strategies for managing pain.

1. Physical relaxation: both chronic and acute pain will tense your muscles, which then exacerbates the pain. Through free self hypnosis tips, you can relax the muscles and reduce the experience of pain.

2. Sensory alteration: in this approach, hypnosis is used to change your cognitive perception of pain. During the hyper-attentive trance stage, your conscious mind relinquishes control to your subconscious, which leads you to be highly imaginative and open to suggestion.

If your hand suffered from intense, burning pain, a hypnotherapist could persuade you that there was a cool, running stream nearby. He or she could advise you to place your hand in the stream. Soon, your senses would focus on the numbness caused by the frigid water. It would have filtered out thoughts of the physical pain.

3. Distraction: Finally, under using free self hypnosis techniques you could instruct yourself to focus on another part of the body. Once your mind stopped dwelling on the pain in your hand, it would subside.

This phenomenon has been well-studied. Elvira Laing, MD, from Harvard Medical School, studied 240 patients who were preparing for an invasive interventional radiology procedure, which involved planting micro-cameras in their arteries.

All of the patients were given pain medications. One group also learned free self hypnosis techniques for pain management. One group was assigned a nurse. The final group received routine care.

Surprisingly, the group that practiced self hypnosis fared much better than the others. In addition to using less medication and reporting lower levels of anxiety, their procedures were, on average, 17 minute shorter than the others.

How can you use these free self hypnosis tips to manage your chronic pain? Perform this simple exercise two to three times every one to three hours until it disappears. Repeat any time the pain worsens.

* Sit in a dim room free from distraction.
* Look up. Close your eyes.
* Breathe deeply. Focus on your breath.
* Let your body float. Feel it float. Imagine you are floating in the air.
* When it is time to end your hypnosis section, gently return your focus back the the room.

If you wish to practice a longer hypnosis section, try this free self hypnosis exercise:

* Perform the Jacobsen Progressive Relaxation procedure. To do this, sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Find an environment with few distractions. Slowly, tense each major muscle group. Hold it for a few seconds. Then, relax. Begin with your feet and progress all the way to the top of your head.

* Begin counting down from 100. With each number, fall more deeply into a trance. As distracting thoughts arise, brush them aside. (This will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried meditation.) As you practice more frequently, you can try counting for a lower number like 20 to see what works best for you.

* Prior to beginning the session, you should develop a short, powerful statement or image.For example, picture yourself in peak physical fitness, climbing a mountain or running without pain.

* Although it may be tempting to do so, don’t fall asleep or leap right up from your session. Set a clear boundary between hypnosis and the next activity. Tell yourself that you will be fully alert on a count of three.

Many people wonder if susceptibility to hypnosis is something you grow out of as you get older. They can accept that children, with their playful habits and naive approach to life, could be easily hypnotized but doubt that adult hypnosis really works. After all, they are better educated, more practical and, yes, skeptical.

Well, even the most analytical of skeptics should be reassured by the myriad scientific studies that prove children are no more susceptible to hypnosis than adults. And, significantly, personality traits like imagination don’t have anything to do with the effectiveness of adult hypnosis. But the critics are right in one regard. Not everyone can be hypnotized.

The Stanford Hypnotic Standardization Scales measure susceptibility to hypnosis from 0 (does not respond to hypnosis at all) to 12 (responds to all hypnotic suggestions). Most of us fall between five and seven. Only five percent of the population registers a 0.

What is really interesting about the Stanford Scales is the discovery that your ranking is as stable as your IQ. It reflects your susceptibility to hypnosis regardless of age. Once a five, always a five no matter how much education or world experience you gain.

Scientists are unable to explain the neurological mechanisms underlying hypnosis. We do not yet have the knowledge we need to decode the subconscious and get to a comprehensive explanation. However, studies have proven that hypnosis is a different state from normal consciousness. In both childhood and adult hypnosis, we enter a highly attentive and highly receptive state. Under hypnosis, our conscious mind stops chattering and our subconscious is more open to suggestion than usual.

What Are Some of the Uses of Adult Hypnosis?

* When you are trying to lose weight hypnosis can be beneficial by increasing your self-esteem, altering ones subconscious views and attitudes on food and promoting new healthier habits. It should be used along with a proper diet as well as increased physical activity and exercise.

* Hypnotherapy is also a great tool in quitting smoking. As an example, neuro-linguistic re-programming can be utilized to remove the association many have with coffee and cigarettes. This way you will be able to stop the urge to have a smoke with your coffee. Also it is highly effective in alleviating the anxiety associated with nicotine withdrawals.

* Hypnosis is now being seen as a very effective tool for pain control in people of all ages. When used for controlling ones pain hypnosis can lower the for pain drugs, lessening the dangers from dangerous drug side-effects and interactions.

* The reduction of pre-operative stress and anxiety has been shown to play a vital part in the success of major and minor surgerical procedures and hypnotherapists have had much success here. Hypnosis is now often being utilized to allay the patients fears and anxieties in the time leading up to the day of the procedure and also just before the operation hypnosis is used to put the patient in a more relaxed state.

* Today, many pregnant women are turning to hypnotism to help in controlling their morning sickness as well as to help to the fears and anxiousness they may be feeling about labour and delivery. A form of self-hypnosis can also be used to help in relaxing between contractions.

Psychologists, medical doctors, midwives and scientists among others are embracing adult hypnosis for a wide range of physical and psychological concerns. If the only thing stopping you is a fear that it won’t work, the best thing you could do is test it out. You won’t know until you try it.

The history of hypnosis is long and varied, evolving from ancient Vedic sleep temples to Freudian psychotherapy and finally modern neurology. Today, hypnosis is defined as a set of techniques that induce a special brain state: one in which your perceptions, memories and behaviors are easily influenced by suggestion. The history of hypnosis, however, spans a much wider array of ideas and practices.

Ancient Spiritual Practices

The history of hypnosis may have begun thousands of years ago in ancient Greek, Egyptian, Indian and tribal spiritual practices. Rituals throughout the world use techniques reminiscent of hypnotic induction—rhythmic, repetitious sounds and movements and a fixed focus of attention—to bring about altered states of consciousness.

Many of these traditions, unlike modern hypnosis, were closely connected to sleep, dream interpretation, divination and the actions of gods. But, like all techniques throughout the history of hypnosis, they were also thought to bring about emotional and spiritual healing.

In ancient Egypt “falling of the heart”, “kneeling of the mind” and other depressed states were treated by “incubation” or sleep therapy in sacred temples. In ancient Greece a night spent sleeping in the temple of Asklepios, the god of healing, was thought to cure illness. Ancient India also had sacred sleep temples where priestly suggestions could induce different categories of sleep called Sleep-Waking, Dream-Sleep and Ecstasy-Sleep. Other spiritual practices such as Buddhist walking meditation, yoga and Qi Gong use slow repetitive movements and fixed attention to change the practitioners’ state of mind and body.

From Mesmerism to Psychotherapy and Neuro-Lingistic Programming

Although many people view hypnosis as a form of entertainment, for the majority of practitioners today hypnosis remains a powerful means of addressing emotional and psychological issues. Whether we are working through grief or attempting to lose weight, the history of hypnosis can show us how to reach our goals.

The history of hypnosis as we know it begins with the Enlightenment of the 18th century, when natural philosophers and scientists were experimenting with natural forces like electro-magnetism. At this time, Frank Anton Mesmer, the father of mesmerism, proposed that all living matter was animated by a magnetic fluid. In order to cure disease he set about to restore the proper balance of this fluid or ether using magnets.

The history of hypnosis advanced quite by accident when one of Mesmer’s followers unintentionally produced the sleeping state that we associated with hypnosis during an experiment. He was surprised to find that the subject could think and speak more intelligently in this state than when he was fully awake.

This somnambulist state was later purposefully aroused by a monk named Abbe Faria, who changed the course of the history of hypnosis by claiming that the ability to go into a trance rests within the patient. It is not caused by the hypnotist’s use of magnets.

The term “hypnosis”—in reference to the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos—first entered our vocabulary in the late 18th century. Around the same time, two Frenchman—August Ambroise Liebault and Hypolite Bernheim—became the first scholars to define hypnosis as a normal phenomenon. They also isolated expectation as the most critical variable in successfully inducing the somnambulist state.

In France, Emile Coue brought the history of hypnosis closer to its modern association with psychotherapy by introducing the concept of auto-suggestion, claiming that he could teach people to bring about their own self-healing.

Although Freud flirted with hypnosis, he later abandoned its practice. The individual who is most credited with incorporating hypnosis into clinical practice is Dr. Milton H. Erickson, an accomplished psychotherapist who pioneered the use of indirect hypnosis along with metaphor, surprise, confusion and humor to the benefit of his patients. The history of hypnosis continued to advance modern science as Ericksonian hypnosis was used to inform the contemporary field of neuro-linguistic programming.