Hypnosis
When you go into a trance, you
will
experience a change in awareness. Just as everybody is different in the way they experience life, so each person's way of experiencing trance is unique.'The Hypnotic World of Paul McKenna, Paul McKenna
L
et us firstly imagine that the totality of our consciousness is like a vast body of water eleven miles deep. In this analogy, our conscious awareness would span the surface of the water, and a little under a mile down. The other ten miles deep represents our unconscious minds.Alternatively, let us imagine that the totality of our 'consciousness' is like an orange. Our conscious minds can be compared to the skin, with its view of the surface and the external universe, and the inner orange represents our minds at the unconscious level, the totality of that which exists invisibly within us all.
In our 'normal' daily 'awake' state of awareness or consciousness, we are only aware of the surface of 'reality' that we perceive with our five senses and our conscious minds. However, we know that there exists within us all a non-physical reality, an auric field, which is both consciousness and energy and which appears to contain all the information regarding the individual soul and its form, and which simultaneously transcends both space and time as we know it.
Of course, we are generally oblivious and ignorant of all this memory and experience in our daily lives, concentrating as we do on our never-ending quest for survival. Nonetheless, this information exists within each of us at a universal and personal level whether we know it or not.
There may be times in each of our lives when this 'ultra-reality' breaks through to the conscious mind in flashes of insight, sudden
The Mystic Mind
awareness, a gut feeling, a vision or dream, but there are also many tried and tested methods of deliberately altering the mode of consciousness so that the individual can perceive this inner world, and thereby access both supernatural experience, data and information normally unavailable to the conscious mind.
How do we unlock the door and access the unconscious? Hypnosis appears to be one important key. Under hypnosis, we can remember details of events we aren't consciously aware of. Under hypnosis we can have operations, control pain and heal wounds. Under hypnosis we can go back in time to remember our childhood days, and even more remarkably, to remember past lives, as we shall see later in the chapter on reincarnation.
Although only recently introduced into modem Western psychological practice by Austrian physician Franz Mesmer, who believed that a power similar to magnetism existed in the human body, many ancient cultures displayed knowledge of trance induction as a healing medium. The ancient Chinese, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Persians, and the Romans all utilised this knowledge for spiritual and healing purposes. The Hindu Veda describes similar procedures which are over 3,000 years old and which resemble modem hypnotic techniques to a large degree.
How is the hypnotic trance state induced?
Firstly, let us dispel one myth. Anyone can be hypnotised.
In fact, we all at some time or another during the day pass into minor hypnotic trances. The simplest examples of when this can occur quite naturally are - when we are staring out of a window, driving down a long stretch of motorway, watching your favourite programme on TV, or simply being engrossed in something pleasant you enjoy doing.
Hopefully, as you read this book, you will also be absorbed enough to notice that you haven't noticed the normal sights and sounds that you would if you weren't focused on doing something else.
Quite simply, the greater the focus - the greater the attention - the greater and deeper the trance.
We all slip in minor hypnotic trances at regular intervals. Why does this happen?·
Thoughts, as you know for yourself, are normally in constant motion, jumping from one thing to the next - especially in our
Mind Over Matter
ultra busy modem world. At this level of consciousness, we are functioning on the Beta brain rhythm operating at a frequency between approximately 13-30 Hz.
By focusing the mind on just one thing at a time, especially if it is any way calming or relaxing, like listening to music or sitting quietly and listening to the water flowing in a river, or to the ebb and flow of the tide, our minds automatically start to switch frequencies. We start to drift into the relaxed Alpha rhythm operating on a frequency now between 8-1 3 Hz.
The Alpha rhythm is associated with meditation and relaxation.
Once we quieten the mind, and begin to relax, we begin to induce alpha waves. It is apparent from all the medical data on hypnotic trance induction, that in this state, the conscious mind can be by-passed, and in so doing, automatically access deeper levels of consciousness and reality.
Alpha wave brain rhythm is the key to the altered state. By using relatively simple repetitive words, sounds, or sugges tions, which tend to alter brain wave patterns the hypnotist can induce an altered state of consciousness in the recipient, which we call the hypnotic trance. By diverting the focus of mental attention from the left brain to the right brain, from conscious to uncon scious, the hypnotist, or hypnotherapist can assist the hypnotised person in accessing otherwise unavailable parts of memory and consciousness, thus overriding the restrictions and limitations of our conscious minds.
For instance, there is well-documented film footage of arachnophobics emerging after one hypnotherapy session tenderly holding a large hairy tarantula.
Now, that is truly amazing!
This technique of bypassing the normal conscious responses and tapping into a more powerful aspect of the psyche has been used successfully in all areas of medical and psychological health, and offers a wide range of potential in medical practice. It is only unfortunate that modem medicine does not place more value on these techniques that could prevent untold suffering and conserve vital, and often expense resources.
Bums victims, for example, are remarkably responsive to early hypnosis. Studies show that in a receptive hypnotic subject even
The Mystic Mind
the transferred suggestion that a hot object is placed on the skin will actually produce large painful blisters. This is despite the fact that there is no actual burn, no thermal stimulation. At the same time, suggest that the skin is cool to a burns victim, especially within the first two hours after the burn, and it will prevent the usual development of inflammation.
In all areas of medical practice, there are many applications for hypnosis. In dentistry, nursing, psychiatry, child-birthing, anaes thesia and surgery, hypnosis has, without a doubt, proved that we can transcend the limits of the conscious mind and access a far more powerful form of consciousness. There are also enormous benefits in self-hypnosis.
Bernadine Coady, 58, originally from the West Indies and the matron of a nursing home in Cambridgeshire, England, successfully completed a diploma course in self-hypnosis in 1994 from the British School of Hypnosis. Due for an operation in April 1999, she decided, for medical reasons, to use hypnosis instead of a general anaesthetic.
Unfortunately, on the date in question, her hypnotist failed to materialise. Undeterred, Bernadine decided to draw on her own skills and hypnotised herself. Before surgery she spent just three minutes quietly talking herself into an altered state of mind. She told herself she would feel no pain and that if she did, she would liken it to waves washing against a sea wall. Each time the pain happened, she visualised it ebbing away, like the tide. Bernadine had a successful operation anaesthetised only by the power of her own mind.
How does hypnosis work?
Once the conscious mind is sufficiently relaxed, the brain starts to produce alpha waves, which automatically induce dream or trance-like states whereby the unconscious can be accessed.
Once we access the unconscious, or right brain, we connect within ourselves to a wealth, an unlimited reservoir, of knowledge, memory and experience. If we are able to tap into the unconscious to such a degree, and bypass the confines of the conscious mind, what is it in fact that we are actually tapping into?
It is obvious thus far that we contain information and data at the unconscious level that we are absolutely unaware of at the
Mind Over Matter
conscious level, and are continually absorbing information of which the conscious mind has no apparent awareness.
To access this immense unconscious data bank of information, we have to switch-off the intellectual apparatus, the medium for conscious thought and perception - the left brain. We have to delude it, literally hypnotise it - lull it into a non-active phase. As soon as we have shut this door, as soon as we put the conscious mind to rest, to sleep, the other door - the door into the unconscious - opens.
However, that is not to say that under hypnosis, the individual is asleep - far from it. It is the conscious mind that 'goes to sleep' or becomes unconscious during this process, enabling the unconscious to be activated, and the hypnotic subject to access hitherto inaccessible data. The patient is fully aware of what is. happening, but on an altogether different level and different mental perspective.