Hypnosis - What is Hypnotism

The image of the man dangling the watch back and forth before the patient's eyes and saying "You are getting sleepy... You are getting sleepy... You are getting sleepy" 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 hypnotism is accepted in the entertainment industry, the scientific community generally snubs such practices. Nevertheless, recent therapeutic trends suggest that the power of the mind cannot be discounted.

Austrian physician Franz Mesmer is sometimes called the father of modern hypnotism, and in the late 1700s, he proposed that it was a mystical force called animal magnetism that flowed from the hypnotist to the patient.

Hypnotists James Braid and Hippolyte Bernheim argued that mesmerism is something far different from hypnosis and that their work centered on the idea of passing a direct suggestion, while simultaneously encouraging deep relaxation, occasionally under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

However, modern Ericksonian hypnosis, popularized by Milton Erickson in the sixties, purports that indirect suggestions have a greater influence over the mind.

While there is much dissension over who is right, the hypnosis techniques are practiced in centers, clinics and living rooms around America to help folks mentally and physically.

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."

So, if being hypnotized can change the way the brain works, can it change our habitual behavior? Can we use hypnotherapy training to lose weight? While not all studies have been conclusive, there are some signs that a hypnotic suggestion for weight loss really works.

In a 1985 study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, two groups underwent a nine-week weight management program and the hypnotized group continued to lose weight two years later, while the non-hypnosis group showed no future benefits.

In another study of sixty women, the thirty hypnotized women lost an average of seventeen pounds, while the control group only lost an average of half a pound (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1986). In 1996, it was discovered that adding weight loss hypnosis to a weight loss plan increased weight loss by 97% and increased post-treatment effectiveness by more than 146%!

Hypnosis center therapists use a number of different hypnotic techniques to help their patients. For example, age regression and revivification can help sufferers of mental disorders who need to connect with repressed past memories to regain something.

Folks suffering from insomnia, anxiety or anger disorders will benefit from guided imagery hypnosis sessions instead.

Hypnoanalysis, pioneered by Sigmund Freud, has patients recall moments from the past to confront them and release pent-up emotions. Folks may benefit from direct suggestion and repetition tactics or from confusion and indirect suggestion. Different techniques of hypnosis work for different folks, so it is good that therapists are familiar with more than one technique.