What is Hypnosis and how does it work?

What is hypnosis?

Hypnosis is heightened state of awareness and relaxation, induced by suggestion. It is where you quiet the conscious mind to such a degree, that the hypnotist can communicate directly with the subconscious mind. Another description could be a trance-like state. Your brain will go in and out of trance periodically throughout the day. For example, when you catch yourself staring off into space or you veg-out in front of the TV.

Some common stereotypes of hypnosis are the unfortunate ‘victim’ who clucks around the stage, like a chicken or where a Victorian fiend dangles an old-fashioned watch in front of a damsel until she falls asleep. I hope that this post will dispel these myths.

The Word Hypnosis

The word Hypnosis comes from the Greek god Hypnos. Hypnos was the god of sleep who lived in a cave with his brother Thanatos, the God of death. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Hypnosis is not sleeping and you certainly won’t die. You are actually in a heightened sense of awareness. Your senses are acute; you can actually hear a lot more than normal for instance.

The first part of the job of a Hypnotist is to induce this trance like state of hypnosis. This is actually a simple process once you learn how to do it.
When you think about visiting a hypnotherapist for say, smoking cessation, a very small part of the process is actually inducing hypnosis, otherwise known as the Induction. A vast amount of skills, care and time, however, are required to deliver the actual therapy.

There are many types of therapy; Suggestion is the most common type. The suggestion can be negative and positive, so the therapist needs to exercise great skill and knowledge to get this part right. This is so that the therapy takes hold and the client gains the benefits.

Suggestion Therapy

To varying degrees, people are all open to receiving suggestions. We are often swayed by peoples’ opinions. These suggestions can also change our beliefs and therefore the results we get in our lives. Suggestion therapy is therefore one of the first things your hypnotherapist will learn, because they can affect real change in you, if they do it right.

The important thing to remember when using suggestion as therapy is that we do not use the unwanted feeling or condition. We always use the opposite positive suggestion. This is because of how the mind works. For instance “You will stop smoking” becomes “You will now return to being a non-smoker”.
When we hear language, the words are processed by our subconscious minds and associations are made, so that we can make sense of them. Properly formulated suggestions can therefore be accepted by the subconscious as fact and then become reality.

Direct and Indirect Suggestions

Suggestions can be either direct or indirect and both types are useful tools in the hypnotherapist’s armoury.

Direct Suggestions

Direct suggestions or commands like “You will now return to being a non-smoker”, are used on analytical types of people. They are to the point, abrupt and without any ambiguity. In a way, they are clear instructions for people. These are very useful for people who are used to taking orders or people in hierarchical working environments.
These would be used with armed service personnel or the emergency services.

Indirect Suggestions

Indirect suggestions can be used for creative types of people. These types of suggestions ‘go round the houses’. The therapist would ask politely for someone to do something. They are true suggestions.
These would be good for artists, dancers and designers.
An example of an indirect suggestion would be “…and you might find that you begin to enjoy the process of becoming your ideal size and shape…”.
If someone is not an obvious creative or analytical type, a good therapist would throw in a mixture of direct and indirect suggestions.

Contingent Suggestions

Contingent suggestions are those that involve the client’s current routines. For instance, let’s suppose you suffer from insomnia and you want to be able to drift off to sleep at a reasonable time. A contingent suggestion would use your current bedtime routine. For instance, the therapist might say, “As the music to News at Ten comes on the TV, you will find… then as you climb the stairs, you will become more relaxed and each step you take up the stairs you will feel more relaxed.”

The idea here is that you are making the situation safe and familiar to the subconscious mind and the amygdala, which don’t like change or threats. You are simply suggesting that the client feels a different way, when a familiar thing happens.

Embedded Suggestions

Embedded suggestions are commands can be used to prevent rejection of the suggestions.
Here the therapist would would give you lots of simple, true suggestions or truisms that the cannot reject. They would also add one embedded suggestion that they want you to take. For example:
“…you are feeling relaxed”
“… now you can relax ten times deeper…”
“…you can focus on the sound of my voice…”
EMBEDDED SUGGESTION – “…YOU WILL NOW RETURN TO BEING A NON SMOKER…”
“… now you are even more relaxed…”
“…the more you relax, the more your breathing slows down…”
“…you may feel the need to swallow, that’s ok…”

Post Hypnotic Suggestions

Post Hypnotic Suggestions are suggestions, which would be given during hypnosis, which your would carry out later.
To formulate Post Hypnotic Suggestions, they would use the formula – Stimulus X will result in Response Y. for example:
“… and when you hear the music you will…”
“…each and every time you have these unwanted feelings (X you will immediately take a deep breath. As you breath out your whole body will relax (Y).”

Trance

Once your are in trance, your conscious mind will not question any suggestions. The purpose of inducing trance is to bypass the preconscious part of the mind. This is the critical reasoning part of the mind that filters all the incoming sensory information. It will reject anything it deems a threat or is irrelevant.

Trance state allows the therapist to ‘bribe the guards’ so to speak. This will allow the suggestion to enter the subconscious. This is where all the skill and training of the therapist comes in to play. I could teach you to hypnotise someone in a few hours, however the process of therapy takes proper training and much practise to get right.

The Myths

One myth is that the hypnotist can make you do something that you wouldn’t normally do. This is preposterous. Your subconscious mind is powerful and will always protect you. So even though the suggestion bypasses the critical mind, the subconscious can still reject it.
Myth number two is that you can be hypnotised against your will. Again, this is nonsense. If the critical mind is still active, it could reject every single suggestion made. Trust is the key here. The client must trust the therapist or there will be no trance induction.

That said, be careful with this notion; you can be lulled into a state of trance just by watching the TV. You are then open to suggestion. Adverts are a prime example. In a later chapter, I will go into the tricks that advertisers use to ‘hypnotise you’ into buying their products.
Therapy won’t work unless you want it to. As I said before, you will resist any induction and suggestions if you don’t want to be there. This is often the case when a well-meaning relative cajoles someone into visiting the hypnotherapist to give up smoking, for instance.

The best patients are those who want to be there. The therapist can then use her skill to facilitate the changes in the client.
Remember that all hypnosis IS Self-hypnosis. The successful therapist is one who is adept at guiding the client to make the changes themselves. Self hypnosis is the subject of the next chapter.
If you think that hypnotherapy can help you, get in contact, I would be glad to help.

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How Advertisers Hypnotise you into Buying

Have you ever bought something and then later wondered why you bought it. Or are you trying to lose weight but you just can’t stop yourself from eating that calorie dense food, even though you know you shouldn’t? Do the Advertisers Hypnotise you into Buying the item or eat the food? Does that sound too far-fetched? Well I am here to tell you today, that no, it isn’t far-fetched and yes you have been hypnotised.

Here I will show you how advertisers use the techniques of the hypnotist to make you buy what you don’t want or need. I have two decades of sales experience, I am a qualified Hypnotherapist, and I can tell you that what I see from the advertisers shocks me.
Most importantly at the end of this post, I will show you what you can do about it to protect yourself.
Firstly, I will show you the exact process used to hypnotise someone and how the advertisers apply this to getting you to do what they want.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

The steps to hypnotise someone

To hypnotise someone, firstly it takes experience and training to gain peoples trust. You can’t be hypnotised against your will. You can reject the process. However, what if you don’t know you are being hypnotised?
Before I can explain how advertisers can hypnotise you, I first need to tell you the process of becoming hypnotised.

Trust

Trust is of paramount importance. If you do not trust the hypnotist, you will simply reject them and any of their suggestions. This is why they will use rapport skills to try to gain your trust. Simply put, people like people who are like themselves. The trained hypnotist will spend, usually the whole of the first session (in therapy) gaining your trust.

Induce trance

Once the hypnotist has gained your trust, they will the go-ahead and induce trance. The trance state is where you are most suggestible. This is why they need to get you in this state. Your preconscious mind and its critical faculty are side-lined, so that the hypnotist’s suggestions will go straight to your subconscious mind.

There are many types of induction

First the hypnotist will make sure you are relaxed. They will ask you to release any tension in your body.
The hypnotist will highlight something visual to stimulate your senses. Then they will ask you to close your eyes and imagine seeing the same visual stimuli. This is very hypnotic as it forces your consciousness inwards. Again you are giving your permission to do this. You can also do this with sound. You hear something and then they say ‘Listen to that sound I wonder what it is?’. Again this induces trance.

Deepeners

After inducing the trance state, the hypnotist will use deepeners. These are designed to deepen the trance state. You could be asked to imagine going down some stairs, or down a lift. It might also be counting down numbers. They might use hypnotic music and brain entrainment devices like Binaural Beats to induce a deeper trance.
The language a Hypnotist uses is very important here. They will deepen your trance state further by saying things like “that’s right…” “ Imagine…”, they may use hypnotic language. Some of this language is designed to be vague and metaphoric as opposed to specific . This again deepens the trance state.

Suggestion

Finally, when the hypnotist is confident that you are in a state of trance they are then ready to deliver the therapy, often in the form of suggestion. These are usually commands that the subconscious will obey, because the conscious and preconscious critical thinking parts of the mind are distracted or sidelined.

How the advertisers use these hypnotic techniques

Watch most of the slick adverts and they will follow the same formula that the hypnotist uses.

Trance induction and deepeners

Firstly, you are already relaxed, usually if you are watching TV as you recline in your sofa.
You will watch a stylised version of the product and then be asked to imagine owning and using it. You go inside your mind to imagine yourself in the picture. Very hypnotic, just like the hypnotist does.

There is deliberately vague language like “Because you’re worth it”. “The one that you want”. This nonsense is very ambiguous and very hypnotic.
The music is also designed to induce trance and to be an auditory anchor. I explain what anchors are in a later post. What this means is that you will associate the good feelings, induced by the music, with the product. Whenever you hear the music again, you will subconsciously desire the product. Combine this the with rich visual stimuli of beautiful young people and it is a potently hypnotic vehicle to get you to buy.

There are also some other extremely subtle tricks, where the camera pans in to the image or logo. It has a trance inducing effect of drawing you in.
Marketers and advertisers are becoming adept at brain entrainment techniques. The pace of the editing cuts has a metronome-like effect, where each camera cut or sequence changes at regular intervals. It is the same way that a ticking clock is hypnotic, only this is visual.

Then we come to the suggestion part

This is usually traditional upfront marketing where the advertisers sell the benefits of the product.
There is also usually a call to action, like a ‘buy now while stocks last’ request.

Trust and rapport

You might notice that although the hypnotist starts with trust, I didn’t start with this to explain how advertisers use it. This is because advertisers have struggled with ways to gain your trust and rapport. To remind you again, you cannot be hypnotised or put in trance against your will. You must give your permission to give your self-determining power away.
Advertisers therefore try to gain your trust in many ways.

Branding

Brands are extremely important to the marketer, because of the familiarity and trust they engender. After all you invite them into your homes already.

Celebrity

Ever wondered why a snooker player might advertise double glazing? Or a retired news reader sells us life insurance? It’s because you trust the celebrity already. Therefore this trust is transferred to the product and you are more likely to buy.

Product placement

This is where a product is used by the characters in soap operas and Hollywood films. Beware of this. You might think that this is innocent enough, but your subconscious doesn’t know this. Bond wears an Omega, therefore I need one, but McQueen wears a Rolex. Aahh, I need both. At least with adverts you know you are being sold to.

What can you do about it?

The most important key to all this is your awareness. I started by saying that you can’t be hypnotised against your will, however you can be hypnotised, if you don’t realise that you are being hypnotised.

So here’s the trick. Be aware whenever you watch TV, especially soaps and films with product placement. Just mentally wake yourself from your relaxed stated. See the adverts for what they are. Mentally note that this is an advert and say to yourself “I reject this brainwashing”. When you watch a film or Soap, notice the product placements and smile to yourself.

One final word on the media: TV, Radio, Podcasts, the Internet, Social Media etc. The media’s business is not to inform you or entertain you. The media’s business is to influence you to make buying decisions or vote a certain way. They use information and entertainment as the conduit to do this and they will play a long game. Always be aware of this.

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There are three secret laws of suggestion that I will reveal, which hypnotists learn, so that they can get people to change. If you learn and use these three simple laws, you can affect any change in your life. You will certainly be able to change it from positive to negative.

The Law of Concentrated Attention

The first law is the law of concentrated attention. What this law states is that whatever you concentrate your attention on will increase or become real. It is a law, which philosophers have known about for millennia. It is behind the epithet in the bible “As a man thinketh, so he is”.
This law is also behind the phenomenon of the Law of attraction. I have written extensively about this in a book on the Law of Attraction. It works in both positive and negative ways . If you concentrate on the negative aspects of your life, this will tend to increase. Remove as many negative influences from your life as you can, this will help you get your mind off the negative. This will begin to stem the negative thoughts you have.
Use the power of Gratitude to start to focus your mind on the positive. This is how you can use the Law of Concentrated Attention in a positive way. Fill your mind with as much positive stuff as you can and your mind will tend to become positive. Your mind will then notice more positive things in your life and tend to ignore the negative.
If you persist with this, quite soon your life will turn from negative to positive.

The Law of Dominant Effect

The second law, that you can use to your advantage is the Law of Dominant Effect. What this law states is that if a suggestion is linked to an emotion, this will override any other suggestion in your mind at the same time.
This often happens in life, when say a person has poor health habits. Perhaps they might smoke, overeat and drink too much. Life goes along pretty much ok. This person knows that their lifestyle is bad, but things are ok for now. Then something happens that puts the fear of God up them. Perhaps they are diagnosed with cancer, or they have a heart attack, but survive. The negative emotion linked to the doctor’s suggestions are such that they will actually listen to the suggestion now, whereas before they didn’t. This also how people turn their lives around after near death experiences or the death of a loved one. The emotions are enough to get them to change.

How to Use the Law of Dominant Effect

How can we use this law to change your life from negative to positive? By attaching as much positive emotions to the positive thoughts as possible. Affirmations and visualisation are a great start, but if you can get into feeling great about yourself, then this will have a massive effect. Here are some easy tips you can use straight away which will have an immediate effect:
Listen to uplifting, upbeat music especially in the morning when you read your goals to yourself.
Read the biographies of positive successful people, especially rags to riches stories. Stories are so powerful because we resonate emotionally with other human beings.
Instead of watching pap on TV, look for uplifting videos on YouTube – search google for uplifting Mind Movies. Here you have great music, pictures and positive messages.
Many of the detractors to the positive mental attitude movement, will say that this is transitory and temporary. Yes, you will feel good for a while but the effects wear off. Whilst this might be true, I would argue that you are creating new neuro-pathways that are linking feeling good, with positive messages. This in effect creates the habit of feeling positive, but just like any other habit, it does take time and persistence.
In the end, the results will become permanent. You will have over-ridden all the negative habitual thoughts with positive one.

The Law of Reverse Effort

“I’m gonna’ catch that horse if I can” – Chestnut Mare – The Byrds

This law really is the universe at its cruelest. It states that if you doubt your abilities, but you try hard anyway, the less you will be able to do it. To put it another way, the more you chase your goals in desperation, the more they will seem further away. Of course, it’s a psychological trick, it’s like when they say a watched kettle never boils, or time flies when you are having fun. When you are so attached to the outcome, the more it seems impossible. It’s just like that Chestnut Mare in The Byrds song. The more you chase her the faster she runs away.
How can you turn this to your advantage? Firstly whatever your goal is, fall in love with the process of achieving it so much, that you almost don’t care what the outcome is, because you are enjoying the work, so much. Think of anything in your life that you absolutely love to do just because of the passion and love for it. This is the intrinsic motivation it gives you. I don’t know anything about you, but in know that whatever this thing that you get lost in, that you excel at, I’m betting that it is no effort for you. Even obstacles and snags are overcome, perhaps you enjoy the challenges of overcoming them.
Whatever you are striving for, let it go. Fall in love with the process. Make the work your passion. Do what you love to do. As you pour your life into this work and become a part of it, rather than the goal, you will soon be amazed when the Chestnut Mare comes sidling up to you.

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