What is hypnosis?

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According to 'The American Journal of Medicine':

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(Hypnosis is)“a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion.”

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Something akin to hypnosis (self-hypnosis, technically) would be the use of visualization by athletes. You’ve likely heard it spoken about before.

What you may not be aware of is that there's a strong link between the visual and kinesthetic (kinaesthetic = movement, feeling, touch) senses. They have a lot of influence on each other. Together, when someone is visualizing, those senses are helping in creating a blueprint for the brain and cerebellum, the cerebellum being especially involved in coordinating and monitoring movement.

Involving all of the senses in an experience makes it very vivid, which offers additional avenues to make changes, which makes the changes even more vivid or, 'real' to the mind.

Vivid memories tend to be the most intense and impactful. Imagine using that same vividness of the senses to change the perception of the past where it needs to change as well as discovering resources to help achieve goals for the future.

This is the reason visualization is touted as an effective means of preparation for athletes.

The key to it is that the focus is on having the mind create situations that facilitate achievement- visualizing what TO DO, not what not to do. This creates a powerful blueprint for the unconscious mind to improve the body's response to the challenges of sport.

Of course, sport is only one area where visualization can be of use. 

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In fact, we've all been in states that would qualify as hypnosis.

It's essentially any daydream where you're transported into your own imagined environment and what you experience therein. Any time your attention to the stimuli of the outside world is superseded by your own imaginings, that is the same as a very useful state of hypnosis (or, 'trance'). Being immersed in any movie or episode of a series creates heightened emotions and a focus of attention. One's attention is drawn to the screen and the experience it creates. The combination of visual and auditory cues are enough to generate feelings such as suspense, terror, and amusement, amongst many others.

 

Another of the more common ways people become acquainted with hypnosis is through seeing a stage hypnotist. A panel of people who volunteer to come up and be hypnotized will go through an induction (put into ‘trance’) and will be given suggestions, most commonly encouraging them to act in all sorts of amusing, comical ways, convinced that they are vividly experiencing what is being created for them through the power of suggestion. 

Now imagine repurposing that type of trance state to make personal ‘edits’ or ‘upgrades’ (or any term you like) that can have incredible power in assisting you in creating the change you desire in your life.

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If you could rewire the circuits of thought and action in ways that would not only refine how you operate in the world but also periodically surprise and delight you, how much better could you make your day to day living? How much more efficient would you be in achieving your goals? 

Following this train of thought to a more broad appreciation, what do you want more of? What do you want less of? What would you decide on as the best, most creative and interesting way to weave that change you want into your life? Where would you have the change that is happening become obvious first? Through which sense would you notice it first?

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Simply put, hypnosis is effective communication. 

The right information is gathered in advance by asking the right questions. This facilitates the process of inducing a trance as well as delivering suggestions that resonate with the individual, making the suggestions very attractive to the unconscious mind, which has incredible resources -not the least of which being creativity- to weave all the possible benefits of those suggestions into real thought and action.