Sunday, 6 October 2013

Hypnosis - How Does "it" Work

By Harold C. Rehm


As a hypnotist and hypnotherapist I am regularly asked the question does hypnosis work? I have a series of simple hypnotic demonstrations I always use when people ask: making someone fall backwards just with the sound of my voice, preventing them from being able to lift up a light object, preventing someone from being able to move and making someone's face go numb. They are neat tricks that can be done in almost any environment and are a far cry from large scale demonstration of making people comply to more outrageous instructions.
[How To Hypnotize Someone]


There have been many scientific studies conducted to investigate the effectiveness of smoking hypnosis. The evidence is positive that it does help people quit smoking.In 2007, Science Daily published a study that determined that hospital patients who were given hypnosis sessions for quitting smoking were more likely to quit smoking than people who used other methods. Dr. Faysal Hasan, who conducted the study, said "hypnotherapy appears to be quite effective and a good modality to incorporate into a smoking cessation program after hospital discharge." The study included the use of self hypnosis tapes as part of the follow-on treatment.

You may know the saying, "As a man thinketh, so shall he be." or in modern language, "As one believes and thinks, so one will experience life." What you believe about the world and yourself determines the results you get.Mind-Body Connection.You can begin to understand how hypnosis works when you think of the mind-body connection. The subconscious mind interacts with the autonomic nervous system. Exactly how they do so is beyond the scope of this article. You can tell they do by the research and amazing results people like you and doctors talk about. The truth is there is no split. You are actually a body-mind, one thing.

How does the body and mind work together to achieve the remarkable effects we hear stories about? Just what magic occurs in our bodies and minds when we heal or accomplish seemingly miraculous feats? Scientists are still puzzling over these questions, yet they have shown that hypnosis, guided imagery, meditation/prayer and what we eat affects our immune systems, our resistance to cancer and our recovery from surgery. Other research shows how hypnosis activates the same brain centers that block our perception of pain. It is well known that hypnosis helps people change unwanted behaviors and establish new habits. How should we explain the placebo effect when inert ingredients and the power of suggestion cause recovery and cures? What about its opposite, the nocebo effect, when pessimistic expectations and pronouncements by professionals can result in ill health?

How Can Hypnosis Benefit Cancer Patients? Hypnotherapy helps with pain management and with reducing chemotherapy side effects.There have been many studies designed to address the use of hypnosis with cancer patients. Most of these studies have addressed pain management and reducing the adverse side effects of chemotherapy. The evidence is overwhelmingly positive.Does Hypnosis Work for Pain Management? Yes, hypnotherapy can significantly reduce pain.A review of 18 studies that investigated hypnotherapy for pain management found that it is effective in reducing pain. The review was published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis in 2000 and concluded by recommending broader application of hypnosis for pain management.

If 10 minutes later they think to themselves "well that did nothing, I'm going to go have a smoke" then they are as stubborn as the person who refuses to let a hypnotist have 'power' over them. If they go to the bus stop and have to wait 15 minutes for a bus where they start thinking "oh I use to smoke here... what am I supposed to do now?" then they really want to use smoking as a crutch in their lives - they smoke when they're bored, stressed, upset, etc., and that's not likely to stop now.

Suppose that the mind and body are one system, and that what happens in the mind has a corresponding result in the body and vice versa. We can easily notice that what happens with the body affects the mind when we consider that our experience of the world is conducted through the five senses of the body. Our emotions and thoughts can change when we experience pleasurable or painful sensations.

Now this is just my personal experience with people who have come to me for help. For this next section I'm going to look at articles and studies that have been conducted on the effectiveness of hypnosis. On the topic of smoking, there was a 2010 study(2010 Jan;52(3):177-81) looking at the effectiveness of previous hypnosis studies for the cessation of smoking. They strongly critiqued the claim of many hypnotherapists that hypnosis was the most effective method for quitting smoking. They did however conclude that hypnosis was just as effective as any number of methods smokers could use to quit.

If you are planning to hypnotize the rest of the world then your bubble has just popped. You can not hypnotize everyone in the world. The only people that can be hypnotized are those that are willing to be hypnotized. This means that you can not go out there and try hypnotizing everyone in your path.Does hypnosis work one hundred percent? Even when a subject wants to be hypnotized, there will be a lot of occurrences where people will not enter the trance state. Entering the trance state demands experience and practice. If you are going to be hypnotized then you better start practicing. Entering the trance state or that state of altered reality demands patience and practice. You may not reach it at the first attempt but sooner or later, you will eventually do so. Hypnosis does not work one hundred percent and it does not work on everyone on this planet. You'll need to know that before you end up making a fool out of yourself.




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