What is Hypnosis?

Scientists and researchers have yet to come to agreement on what exactly hypnosis is. The simplest explanation is that when you are deeply relaxed and unworried, your subconsious mind, that part of your mind that is the center of your emotions and memories, is more willing to accept suggestions that are beneficial for you and agree with your nature. In doing so, they become a new "truth", replacing or augmenting what was previously a "truth" for you. In this way, old habits may be broken and replaced with better ones.

Dr. James Braid, a Scottish doctor, coined the name "hypnosis" in the late 19th century for Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. To Braid, someone in hypnosis looked like they were sleeping. Hypnosis isn't sleep. In sleep, the mind is involved in dream creation and a sleeping person is unresponsive to suggestions. In hypnosis, one is very relaxed and may look asleep, but can hear everything going on around them respond to a hypnotist's suggestions.

While hypnosis is not sleep, recent research indicates that in hypnosis, the rapid eye movement (REM) mechanism ,which is responsible for many of our sleep phenomenon, including dreaming, is activated. This would explain many of the interesting behaviors seen in stage hypnosis: rigid muscles, analgesia (no pain), amnesia, and belief in the reality suggested by the stage hypnotist. When we are asleep, we shut out the world, our muscles are inactive, our senses (including pain) are dulled, we believe what we are dreaming is real (sometimes waking in a sweat with heart pounding!) and in the morning we generally forget what we dreamed. The same research says the REM mechanism is active when we are learning and daydreaming. So, hypnosis is something very natural and normal that we are accessing for the specific purpose of creating positive change in our lives.