Introduction
First, I want to propose to you that all hypnosis is
fundamentally self hypnosis. This idea is not new from me,
for one of the real pioneers of modern hypnosis, Dr. Milton
Ericcson made this statement many years ago. The fact is,
hypnosis is based on suggestibility and you must be willing
to accept the suggestions or their is no so-called trance
state to follow. Now, that is not to say that gifted hypnotists
are not able to disarm defenses one might have, but it is to
say that You are the key to a successful hypnotic session.
The coarse fear of hypnosis, that someone else has
control over you, has no place in a self-hypnosis session,
for you are both the hypnotist and the subject--and just to be
clear, the fear is mislaid and false to fact.
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Subjects choosing to taste hypnosis swiftly learn that
hypnosis is a natural state that can be objectified by brain
wave activity. This extra brain wave state known as alpha
and theta (we'll look at those more closely later in this text)
is not only a marvelous state for mind training, deep
relaxation, accelerated learning opportunities and so forth,
but a state that most move straight through any times each day.
All of this and more is covered in these programs, so let's
get into some leading matters that are not discussed
there.
Self Hypnosis to health Belief
Not long ago I was making ready a literature report of hypnosis.
One of the texts I used is written by two scholars with
impeccable credentials. The book is called "Hypnosis, Will
and Memory" (Laurence and Campbell, 1988). It is
essentially a psycho-legal history of hypnosis. Repeatedly
the text cites a time when hypnosis was believed to be
either of the devil or pure unmitigated fakery. Finally, the
scientific community investigated hypnosis. Scientists who
doubted hypnosis used a test to rule true hypnosis
from fakery. The test was largely based on body levitation
evidence. In other words, it was assumed as a corollary of
direct observation that a subject truly in hypnosis could and
would levitate!
Now skeptics tested for fakery and often reported looking
hidden wires and ropes and pulleys. However, these same
skeptics reported true unfaked levitation on many
occasions. Not only did they record it, the evidence was
sometimes offered in the courts. Okay, levitation was not
such an unnatural act until the laws of Newton became
popularly known. Suddenly, every person knew that the human
body was heavier than air and could not float. Levitation
suddenly disappeared from the scene and the literature.
Prior to that, levitation was often witnessed by the most
reliable of even the skeptics in instances of hypnosis,
spiritual enlightenment and so-called demonic possession.
Indeed, levitation was one of the criteria for determining the
guilt or innocence of a witch.
It would appear that belief, personel and collective, directly
influences the physical world. Physicists have often reported
the role of the "observer" in influencing the outcome of
physical estimation and observation. Indeed, many
physicists believe that consciousness interacts with matter.
A recent study employed some sophisticated statistical
measurements to rate the mind's interaction with
matter. The data clearly recommend an data change
between mind and matter.
Belief in ourselves, abilities, powers, and the affect over
our own lives and the world nearby us, is at the crux of what
each and every one of us experiences in life. Confidence as a matter of fact
may define and delimit our every experience. Eroding Confidence
is doubt. Self doubt is the most personally damaging Confidence
we can hold.
Monkey Conditioning--Behaviorism
Regaining our potential self-confidence, self-belief,
self-respect, and self power is relatively easy, if we're willing
to make the permissible choices. The difficulty is in the choices.
Humans can behave very much like the conditioned animal.
It is for this think that Classical Behaviorism gained such
popularity in psychological schools of thought. Behaviorism
essentially argues that the human health is entirely a
product of nature/nurture and is conditioned to believe,
behave and otherwise execute life. There is no such thing
as a higher principle or a need for self-actualization. The
human is but a shabby animal with higher cerebral
processing mechanisms than other animals. It behaves in
habitual patterns and treatment consists chiefly of changing
the patterns. The assertion seems simple, turn behavior
and you turn the person. This assertion has some very
pragmatic applications and we'll use it as we develop with
the material at hand. However, just so there is no ambiguity,
the fundamental hypothesis which asserts no higher principle
is as false a concept as any one will ever encounter! In fact, it
is my concept that only one with true cognitive dissonance
and/or absolute ignorance of the world nearby us would
hold such a view.
Altered States Of Consciousness
For some, an altered state of consciousness is a taboo. It
portends to "mess" with the mind. The mind is not to be
messed with. I have all the time found this assertion naive for
the think that every human being experiences varied
states of altered consciousness daily. When the typical
person turns on the television, an altered state generally
ensues. Indeed, children come to be conditioned to enter an
altered state within minutes after beginning to view Tv.
Studies have demonstrated that even when children are
hooked up to brain wave monitoring devices such as electro
encephalographic feedback and given big recompense
motivation to remain in fully alert states of consciousness,
that in under five minutes they will fail to avow ordinary
wakeful consciousness. The child will slip into what is
commonly termed alpha consciousness (more on this in a
moment). When a someone day dreams, falls into a light
sleep or state of reverie, slowly wakes from a deep sleep, or
fixates on roughly anything, they are roughly all the time in an
altered state of consciousness. So what is an altered state
of consciousness?
Typically, consciousness is divided into four categories.
Normal consciousness is called "beta," lightly modified
consciousness "alpha," deep sleep "theta," and comatose
states "delta." States of consciousness are concept of in
terms of brain wave rates (cycles per second). Beta
consciousness is normally 15 to 30 cycles per second,
alpha is 8 to 14 cycles per second, theta is 4 to 8 cycles per
second and delta is less than 4. Now let's translate this
schema into something meaningful covering the realm of
definition.
Beta
In general ordinary wakeful states of consciousness, the
mind operates from its most principal platform. It permanently
judges input from self (inner talk) and others. It evaluates
and reacts. Indeed, it chiefly reacts. For even when one
believes they are evaluating, more often than not, the
evaluation is placed before it begins. The Confidence principles of
the unconscious not only places a lens straight through which all
matters will be disputed, but it also hides behind a
protective veil the data that may give rise to mistaken
decisions. That is, the unconscious mind while general
wakeful states is operating as a software schedule feeding
the flow of daily life straight through a mosaic of interpretations
that are written chiefly upon avoidance and attraction
principles (experienced and imagined). Therefore, when the
conscious mind says something like, "I can do this. I'm
good adequate to excel and succeed," the unconscious
(subconscious if you prefer) sends some inner talk
message like, "Really, good adequate for what? How about
Do you remember?" etc.
Now, maybe the think the unconscious sends the
negative message is due to some fear from the past, or
some fear projected straight through imagination. Possibly the
negative feedback is due to negative input from peers,
parents, and so forth. It is also potential that the negative is
due to some deep sense of unworthiness that is the corollary
of a need to punish oneself. It could also be the corollary of
some deep Confidence that conflicts with our desire, such as the
desire to come to be successful and an inner Confidence that sorts
along a line of logic that goes something like this, "If I want
to be saved in Heaven, I must sell out here and now.
Further, money is the source of all evil." There could also be
a myriad of other reasons and a virtual labrynth of
entanglement in the middle of them all. The fact is, in ordinary beta
consciousness very small new data can as a matter of fact get in.
Now, "very little" in this reference is by comparison to alpha
consciousness. In fact, just as an aside before going
further, the methods of Superlearning and Suggestopedia
(Ostrander) clearly demonstrate the advantage of learning
school room data such as language, math, science,
and so forth, in alpha consciousness states.
Alpha
Alpha consciousness is the state most refer to as the
primary state experienced in hypnosis. Hypnosis has been
viewed from many perspectives and historically has held
more than one definition. However, the agreed upon
definition today is a heightened state of suggestibility. This
heightened state of suggestibility is just what the title
implies. In alpha consciousness one is particularly prone to
the acceptance of skillful suggestion. The nature of
suggestion depends on who is suggesting. A
hypnotherapist will make wholesome and confident suggestions
while a sales someone trained in the art of hypnotic selling
may give personally self-serving suggestions (Moine,
Lloyd). The power of advice and the psychology of
compliance, mentioned in added information in the next chapter,
are used every day in mass marketing strategies to sell
everything from illness to religion (Taylor).
When one is in an alpha state, whether plainly or
artificially induced, their inner talk tends to slow down and
become image oriented and/or guided as opposed to
constantly self-initiated, albeit often unconsciously. Since
we live in a modern community we are exposed to a range of
stimuli that our forefathers never knew. Let me contribute a
couple of examples.
Much of the television, radio and print media programming
of today dwells on violence, sex and so-called taboo issues.
The word is sensationalism. The more sensational, the
better the reviews, the more money, the larger the audience
and so on. Rather systematically over the past twenty to
thirty years, the threshold of arousal has increased in the
population, forcing an ever expanding thrust into areas of an
explicit nature in order to avow the sensational.
Consequently, our inner talk, our fantasies, our very ideation
has been influenced. This new tolerance for vengeance,
anger, fear, violence, sexuality and so forth has tilted our
society. Values have diminished to the point that we have
younger generations without the proverbial "clue" as to what
life is about. The world is for living and taking and
minimizing pain while maximizing pleasure. Twelve-year-old
children walk into school and gun down their teachers and
school mates. Drugs, child prostitution, gang violence,
drive-by shootings, and so forth are the chief worries of
parents today. How did our community degenerate to this point?
Many psychologists and psychiatrists, sociologists and
anthropologists, and for that matter, political scientists, have
made vociferous outcries asserting the neurotic nature of
our times and are lining up in an effort to end the media
management of arousal thresholds and value orientation.
Television has probably the single largest impact on citizen
today. It guides our purchases, the data most have
about their world or any single issue/event, merchandises
everything from wearing apparel, hair style, fashion in
general to wholesaling the coarse cold. "It's the flu
season and it's arrival to your town! every person will get it!
You can relax and baby yourself, pamper your whims and
take some needed time off, maybe even cement your
relationships, if you have Xyz on hand." How much
sickness do you think is vended in the same way attitudes
and beliefs are sold straight through our media?
Some of you may want to say, "Taylor, you're nuts. Television
doesn't make whatever sick. You don't get the flu from a Tv!"
Fair enough. Let's look a small deeper. When a someone is in a
state of alpha, such as hypnosis, the science and literature
show us clearly, without doubt, that the body can be
suggested to health or illness. A hypnotist can propose a
burn, place an ice cube on the arm, and a blister will roughly
immediately appear. As a practicing hypnotherapist, I
personally witnessed phenomena that illustrates the mind's
control over the body to the degree that suggesting a easy
runny nose is, as Sherlock would say, "Elementary!" But in
order to tie this suggestibility of alpha states in to the
problems posed by television viewing, we should also take
a look at someone else area of scientific enquiry that may surprise
you.
Studies have shown that the average personel will enter
alpha brain wave states within four minutes of being
engaged by television (Taylor). If you think about it, this
should not come as any surprise. How many times have
each of us seen someone, or been that someone, who
appeared so engrossed in television that it required yelling
at the someone to get their attention?
Okay, alpha consciousness and "cold season," I ask you
again, how much illness do you think is sold in order to
create the store that sells the cure?
It should be confident that the state of alpha consciousness
is not only natural but can be a useful time to put confident
information into our bio computing brain/mind. The
essential use of alpha can also whether be a matter of selection
or a matter of habituation. Recently I saw a sign in the
supermarket selling the publication: Tv Guide. The sign
underneath the current issue said, "Check Out." A photograph of
a television with the initials Tv within it was all that
accompanied the sign. How many times have you heard or
used the phrase, "I'll watch television and check out"?
Check out, vacuum the mind, and so on; these are the
terms we all plainly think of when we think of Tv. Turn our
minds over, let go of our concerns, ohhttp://www.innertalk.com and try the free
hypnosis session. observe for yourself in more information some
of the powers and practical applications of altered states of
consciousness but for the purposes of this introduction, the
following is intended to serve as groundwork only.
Theta
Theta consciousness is often linked with deep sleep
and very deep levels of hypnosis or meditation. It is
generally believed that the so-called super human feats of
the many spiritual masters, such as those reported eating
hot coals, controlling body functions, and so forth, are
achieved while in theta consciousness. Indeed, mystics
tend to teach that as the brain wave patterns slow, the
vibration of the body alters. By assertedly changing the
vibration of the body, many things concept to be impossible
become possible. The rate of vibration is seen analogically
as light vibrating at a rate much faster than
glass, therefore it passes straight through the glass. A stone,
however, vibrates much slower than glass, consequently
preventing it from passing straight through without breaking the
glass. Thus, there is an arguable inverse proportion to brain
wave performance and body vibration. As the brain wave performance
slows, the body vibration rate is said to increase.
Delta
Delta consciousness is generally concept of as comatose.
For years this state of consciousness was believed to be so
turned in on itself that covering stimuli went totally unnoticed,
perhaps even unrecognized at any level of registration.
However, the work of Oliver Sacks showed the world that
even in this state of consciousness, there is awareness. In
his work with patients (see his book Awakenings), he used
massive doses of dopamine, and as a matter of fact awakened (at
least for a short time) most of the patients. Stranger than
fiction, these patients reported their varied records and
sensitivities to the history of their treatment, the hospital
protocol, their environment and so forth.
This has just been a short introduction to hypnosis. The
bottom line is one that you may want to check out for
yourself. My suggestion, try it. If you still want to know more
first, then you will want to read the story in the July 2001
issue of Scientific America. The record shatters many
common myths along with those that effort to debunk
hypnosis as whether fakery, pleasing the hypnotist or
imagination. The hypnotic subject experiences a state of
consciousness that is independent from so-called ordinary
consciousness. It is not about yielding or imagination,
nor is it about placebo responsiveness, low brain or
the weak minded. Hypnosis is a safe state where many
wonderful insights and healings can and do take place.
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