Hypnosis is a natural state of consciousness like the waking and sleeping states. It is a state of deep relaxation in which the conscious mind is distracted, producing heightened suggestibility and increased unconscious awareness, allowing access to the unconscious mind through power of imagination and pretense. It produces the ability to experience internal thoughts and images as real. It is important to note that under hypnosis suggestibility is increased only so long as the suggestion is congruent with the subject’s conscious mind. Thus if a suggestion is made that would go against the morality of the subject’s conscious mind the person would reject that suggestion and rapport between the operator (hypnotist) and subject would be broken. Thus the subject would immediately return to normal beta/waking state of consciousness.

A professor of psychology used to demonstrate this in his first lecture in hypnosis. He would hypnotize one of the female students and then ask her to strip. Of course she would immediately return to normal waking state of consciousness and open her eyes and smile and say no thank you or slap him if she was uptight. But this one year the student started actually take her clothes off. First came off the sweater and much to the chagrin of the male students the red faced professor woke the student up and stopped her from stripping. When they did further inquiry into the student they discovered that she was putting herself through school by being a stripper and hence it was not against her morality to take her clothes off in front of many spectators.

Hypnosis is used to allow greater conscious/unconscious communication. When I use the term conscious mind I mean whatever you are aware of at this moment. By unconscious mind I mean, whatever you are not. Thus please think of your right foot. Now think of the big toe on your right foot….

My guess is that a few seconds ago you were not aware of your right foot big toe and now you are conscious of it. We believe that at any moment we can be aware (conscious) of about seven bits (chunks) of information. This is called the magic number seven plus or minus two by . Thus try to remember this phone number (8256325890) as a series of ten digits. It is extremely difficult. But if you make it into three chunks (825-632-5890) it is easy to remember.

The point I’m making here is that most of the events going on in our lives we are not consciously aware of. To put it another way our minds are like icebergs and most of the mind is the unconscious mind. When we are born, the conscious ego (the I) does not yet exist. The ego develops from the sea of the unconscious and separates from it by approximately the age of two. It is at this time (the terrible twos) that the child learns those magic words such as I, me, my and most importantly the word no.

As the ego develops more and more autonomy from its unconscious source it imagines that it is in charge and by about the age of eight a wall develops between the conscious mind and the unconscious. In hypnosis we call this “The Critical Factor.” This wall stops suggestions from being easily accepted by the unconscious mind.

The fact is that whenever the conscious mind wants one thing (say reducing your weight) and the unconscious want another (say eating that yummy piece of chocolate) guess who wins. If your will power (the tool of the conscious mind) wins good luck to you. However, in most of us the imagination (the unconscious mind wins).

This is where hypnosis comes in. Hypnosis, makes the critical factor permeable and allows suggestions to be made to the unconscious mind. Thus in truth if you receive the right suggestions hypnosis puts you in more control than less but I’ll write about that later on in this series.

I’ll use the two terms the hypnotic state and trance to mean the same thing. used to demonstrate this in his first lecture in hypnosis. He would hypnotize one of the female students and then ask her to strip. Of course she would immediately return to normal waking state of consciousness and open her eyes and smile and say no thank you or slap him if she was uptight. But this one year the student started actually take her clothes off. First came off the sweater and much to the chagrin of the male students the red faced professor woke the student up and stopped her from stripping. When they did further inquiry into the student they discovered that she was putting herself through school by being a stripper and hence it was not against her morality to take her clothes off in front of many spectators.

Hypnosis is used to allow greater conscious/unconscious communication. When I use the term conscious mind I mean whatever you are aware of at this moment. By unconscious mind I mean, whatever you are not. Thus please think of your right foot. Now think of the big toe on your right foot….

My guess is that a few seconds ago you were not aware of your right foot big toe and now you are conscious of it. We believe that at any moment we can be aware (conscious) of about seven bits (chunks) of information. This is called the magic number seven plus or minus two by . Thus try to remember this phone number (8256325890) as a series of ten digits. It is extremely difficult. But if you make it into three chunks (825-632-5890) it is easy to remember.

The point I’m making here is that most of the events going on in our lives we are not consciously aware of. To put it another way our minds are like icebergs and most of the mind is the unconscious mind. When we are born, the conscious ego (the I) does not yet exist. The ego develops from the sea of the unconscious and separates from it by approximately the age of two. It is at this time (the terrible twos) that the child learns those magic words such as I, me, my and most importantly the word no.

As the ego develops more and more autonomy from its unconscious source it imagines that it is in charge and by about the age of eight a wall develops between the conscious mind and the unconscious. In hypnosis we call this “The Critical Factor.” This wall stops suggestions from being easily accepted by the unconscious mind.

The fact is that whenever the conscious mind wants one thing (say reducing your weight) and the unconscious want another (say eating that yummy piece of chocolate) guess who wins. If your will power (the tool of the conscious mind) wins good luck to you. However, in most of us the imagination (the unconscious mind wins).

This is where hypnosis comes in. Hypnosis, makes the critical factor permeable and allows suggestions to be made to the unconscious mind. Thus in truth if you receive the right suggestions hypnosis puts you in more control than less but I’ll write about that later on in this series.

I’ll use the two terms the hypnotic state and trance to mean the same thing.