The Hypnosis Process Defined

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The Hypnosis Process Defined

© Ted Hommel, 2003, self-hypnosis added 6/15/03, grammar fix 7/5/03.

Partial or whole copy permission is granted when credit is given.

Hypnosis is an intentional, prearranged conditioned response of the

subconscious mind.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “process†to mean a series

of

actions, operations, or motions involved in the accomplishment of an end.

Hypnosis is a process.

The “mind†is a process of the brain, just as “driving†is a process of

an

automobile. We can touch, feel, or see an automobile, but we can’t touch

driving; we can touch, feel, or see a brain, but we can’t touch a mind.

The brain has many processes that interact with each other. The brain’s

mind process has two lesser processes of interest when describing hypnosis.

One

process is an ability to analyze and the other to react.

The mind’s analytical process is called “conscious†and the mind’s

reactive process is called “subconscious.†The conscious and subconscious

mind’s

processing activities frequently are given terms to assist in describing a

specific use. An example of one conscious process use is “thinking.†One

subconscious process is called “being grumpy.â€

The conscious and subconscious have unique characteristics that identify

which mind process is being observed.

The conscious is slow and deliberate, and the subconscious is fast and

reactive. An individual has control of a conscious activity as it proceeds.

The

subconscious activity is reactive and there is no control unless it is halted

during the reacting either by a conscious mind order, by the body meeting a

physical barrier, or by another subconscious activity that blocks it (like

when a parent’s yelling, “Stop it!†startles a child.).

The slow conscious process is constantly modified by internal or external

information or stimulus. But once a subconscious process is activated, there

is no change, although it may be halted as just mentioned. Once halted, the

sequence of a subconscious process may be immediately modified.

The human body’s sole purpose until death is to keep living and reproducing.

The conscious and subconscious exist only to keep the body living and

reproducing safely. Any other activity is strictly optional, but even fun is a

factor in meeting the requirement of keeping a body healthy and living. The

body’s biological mandate for reproduction is not an excuse to overpopulate

the

world because the conscious mind can determine that overpopulation will not

provide the body safe living.

The conscious mind evaluates true and false to every event or thought. Then

based on that evaluation, it sends stimulus (messages) to other parts of the

brain. Input to the conscious can be internal as in, “This is a case of

true hunger,†or external as in, “This current eye image is my dinner, and

so

it is okay to eat.â€

When the subconscious mind receives input, it immediately provides a learned

response. An internal activity that signals, “Ear senses a change of

position occurring,†may make the subconscious respond with, “Move arms and

legs

like this learned response to prevent a fall!†An external stimulus of:

“Ear

hears a singing buzz that now stopped as left arm has a light sensation on

it!†may cause the subconscious to respond with a learned action of, “Slap

mosquito on left arm, using right hand!†Healthy subconscious reactions

after

infancy seem to be learned after gaining permission of the conscious mind.

The subconscious reacts without evaluation. Once the conscious mind

approves the safety of verbal hypnosis suggestions, those activities are

learned and

attempted as a subconscious reaction. Mental illness, too, comes from the

subconscious, except when other chemicals or electrical impulses mimic those

of the subconscious mind. Mental illness is a social term for non-standard

subconscious reactions. Hypnosis may create the same non-standard reactions,

but it is not considered an illness because it is pre-evaluated and approved

by the conscious mind as safe or not harmful.

Both conscious and subconscious mind processes are always active. Both are

sending appropriate messages to the rest of the brain. I can consciously

plan dinner while my subconscious controls my balance by moving my arms and

legs

as I walk; and it uses my vision to watch for dangers and to guide me along

a predetermined passage. Mental illness or hypnosis can modify this

activity.

As I think about dinner, I step into a street crosswalk. My vision

registers a truck speeding toward me at 60-miles-per-hour. Using a childhood

re-enforced learned pattern for bodily safety, the subconscious mind knows,

“Large

object rapidly approaching, activate appropriate muscles and balance to get

out of the way by reversing walking direction!†The speed of the

subconscious

reaction is immediate. Had only my conscious mind been active, the process

would have been, “Truck appears headed at me. Stop current thoughts of

dinner. Estimate speed by observing change of background and foreground

imagery;

approximately sixty-miles-per-hour or 88 feet per second. Initial distance

150 feet and decreasing. Impact time under two seconds; Curb is behind me.

Should step backwards….â€

Mental illnesses, nightmares, or hypnosis hallucinations can cause the same

scene and reactions without a truck or real street. Nightmares occur as bits

of information leaking from the mind’s memory-storage process stimulate the

slow functioning sleepy conscious and subconscious mind, and like any other

dream, the slowed conscious mind tries to make sense of it and the sleepy

subconscious tries to react to it.

When prior training for the subconscious does not exist, the conscious mind

determines if something is worth learning, and if so, what is the safe

step-by-step process to learn a reaction? Any learned process is stored as a

subconscious reaction. Children initially learn about traffic with a spank.

The

conscious allows the subconscious to learn: “step into traffic and unwanted

pain results, so avoid the pain, jump back onto the curb.†An identical

subconscious learned behavior can exist as a phobia or obsessive-compulsive

behavior. These illnesses can be removed with the assistance of a qualified

hypnotherapist.

A simple lesson is learned as quickly as the instant of a spank and a parent

saying, “Stay out of traffic!†Hypnosis can also send an instant message,

including this one, to have a simple lesson learned by the subconscious.

More complex or multiple step lessons take more time in training the

subconscious. An example of non-hypnosis complex training for the subconscious

is

how to learn a new dance to music. In hypnosis a more complex training is how

to hold a conversation with a hallucinated image while within a hallucinated

room of people. The process is the same, have an idea of what is wanted,

learn the components of the process, practice each step, then chain the steps

together.

The subconscious mind when learning to dance has other parallels to

hypnosis. By learning simple dance activities first, the speed of learning the

more

complex dances that follow become easier and more rapid. For hypnosis,

someone actively participating in meditation or prayer will find hypnosis

easier;

both are conditioning the subconscious mind to learn feelings or activities

from suggestions by the conscious mind.

Hypnosis is a form of paying attention or vis-à-vis, paying attention is a

form of hypnosis. By focusing one’s attention on whatever has been

determined, allowed, or considered to be true by one's conscious mind, there

will be

hypnosis training of the subconscious.

A person in the process of hypnosis training or instructing their

subconscious may often appear similar to being asleep. But so does someone in

deep

thought about planning dinner, or involved in a complex mathematical

calculation. Intense focus of attention or thought often makes someone appear

as if

being asleep because other physical activities are inactive.

Hypnosis works best when the body and mind are well rested. Glycogen

(gli-co-jen) is the complex carbohydrate that provides short-term energy

storage

for the brain and muscle. Just as gasoline fuels most automobiles to allow the

process of driving, glycogen fuels the brain’s processes including the mind.

While the use of glycogen is for short-term energy, the accumulation of the

glycogen is slow.

The brain is surrounded by what is termed the body-brain barrier. Imagine

this barrier like a brain inside a child’s balloon. When a child’s balloon

is filled with helium gas, the helium molecules slowly pass through that

balloon-barrier and in time, the balloon sinks from floating in air. The

body-brain barrier is the same. Glycogen is a big molecule and leaks slowly

through

the body-brain barrier and into the brain. When a person is physically

awake, the brain uses more glycogen than can pass through the body-brain

barrier.

When the body naturally sleeps, the brain begins using less glycogen than

passes through the body-brain barrier. This makes the brain the same as if it

had a rechargeable battery based on glycogen.

The body-brain barrier exists to stop large molecules, such as viruses, from

getting into the brain. If such large molecules do get into the brain, that

brain’s body may die. The body-brain barrier’s success is why you rarely

hear of anyone getting “a brain cold†or anyone having a sick brain. When

someone does have a sick brain with illnesses such as encephalitis, death is

likely.

The mind must have glycogen to operate, but then so must the rest of the

brain. The mind is not critical to a body’s minute-by-minute survival, so as

one

’s glycogen supply decreases so will the mind’s processes. The brain must

first have glycogen to power the monitoring oxygen in the blood, heartbeat,

blood pressure, digestion, or any other brain-related life processes before

allowing the mind to function.

When the brain’s glycogen supply is limited due to lack of sleep, or due to

fighting an illness, or excessively stress, or intense thinking, or even

excess physical activity, the mind process is turned down or almost turned off.

We know that recession process as natural sleep.

The natural sleep process is the shutting down of the mind due to lack of

glycogen. It is not an off-or-on situation, but one similar to a light dimmer.

The sequence of shutdown has the conscious mind shutdown more rapidly than

the subconscious mind. This sequence is a matter of a body’s survival.

There is more of a likelihood of a body’s survival from an immediate danger

by

having a subconscious reaction instead of a conscious analysis. The process is

easy to observe. Have a parent get little sleep and you will observe the

parent reacting to, not analyzing, a child’s misbehavior. Note that those

with

physical illnesses will sleep frequently because the brain needs almost all

the glycogen for physical survival.

During physical sleep, many brain glycogen uses are reduced to a minimum;

others like eyesight are turned off. The conscious and subconscious are active

enough for the process of turning a sleeping body, for awaking in case of

emergency, and for memory-storage operations.

Physical sleep is not the same as hypnosis, even if hypnosis is used to

simulate sleep. Hypnosis is a form of a mind focusing attention on a suggested

task, not sleep. If hypnosis is consistently used to replace sleep, there is

a real and proven danger to cause permanent body damage or death by denying

or disrupting the use of glycogen needed for other functions. Severe dangers

include changes in blood chemistry that result in stroke, heart attacks, and

seizures. Even if caught before death, the damage to regulation of blood

chemistry is usually permanent. Less dramatic sleep problems include abrupt,

unsocial words and actions of the subconscious mind reacting without analysis

because of a slower conscious mind. This can make a person dangerous when

driving, not unlike someone under the influence of alcohol. One of the first

signs of the subconscious dominating due to lack of sleep is the periodic

appearance of an angry personality.

Since hypnosis is an intentional, prearranged conditioned response of the

subconscious mind, it means that any method of training or conditioning will

work. If the instant of one spank to a child with the word, “No!†makes

the

subconscious learn a response of safety, hypnosis will do an equivalent to an

adult. A stage hypnotist yanks the arm of a subject with the word,

“Sleep!â€

and the subject allows the conscious mind’s preconceived notion of “

hypnotic sleep†to permit stage tricks by the subconscious mind; provided

safety is

not an issue for the conscious mind. Safety is defined as physical safety,

emotional safety, social safety, and any other personal measures for the

hypnosis-subject’s individual comfort.

In hypnosis there is a hypnotist-subject mutual understanding of a few

terms: “Sleep†means close your eyes and pay attention. “Deeper,â€

means pay

closer attention to what is being said while ignoring other things so to make

them of lesser interest. “Trance,†is the state of paying attention to

suggestions. “Awake,†means ending the trance. Hypnosis occurs when the

conscious mind gives approval to accept suggestions as true.

Hypnosis’s intentional, prearranged conditioned response of the subconscious

mind need not be from a dramatic physical action like a spank. Attention is

as simple as saying; “Every blink of your eyes will make you more

[hypnotically] sleepy.†If the conscious mind agrees this is safe, then the

subconscious will learn a response from the suggestions provided, and will give

the

brain messages to perform hypnosis-induced responses, even if the world reality

to the instructions are false.

As with the example of learning to dance, the subconscious needs experience

to learn more complex actions rapidly, or to increase response speed in

general. Prior experiences with relaxation techniques, religious activities,

or

artistic visualizations are good training to assist the subconscious to

rapidly accomplish complex hypnosis activities.

There is only one mind. Pseudo-medical procedures such as acupuncture or

yoga are actually the same mental processes as hypnosis. The subconscious does

change blood flow as shown by the heat of embarrassment that only covers

exposed areas of the skin, or hormone flow as shown by the increase of

adrenaline in fright. But, just as there are dangers involved in bypassing

natural

sleep with hypnosis, there are substantial dangers in bypassing medical

knowledge or measurements. Therapy or medical hypnosis done to another person

without proper state certification, or proper medical or psychological

oversight

is illegal in most countries. Therapy or medical self-hypnosis to one’s self

without professional mentoring is foolish at best and fatal at worst. If

hypnosis is used to mask a serious problem, once that masked problem consumes

internal resources, no therapy or treatment may work.

There is no magic: Hypnosis is an intentional, prearranged conditioned

response of the subconscious mind.

Self-hypnosis and hetero-hypnosis (hypnotist and subject) are the same mind

process. Dancing, prayer, acupuncture, practicing basketball shots, and

self-hypnosis use the same conscious-subconscious process.

The difference between self-hypnosis and hetero-hypnosis is that for

self-hypnosis the subconscious must learn and understand the desired trance

sequence

in advance. Hetero-hypnosis is easier for you as a subject because hypnosis

begins as quickly as your conscious agrees to allow outside suggestions for

learning or activities. While their format varies, repetitively trained

shooting of basketballs into a hoop is self-hypnosis and the external

suggestions

by acupuncture activities are hetero-hypnosis.

Self-hypnosis has flexibility and self-independence. Once your mind becomes

familiar with being in self-hypnosis, suggestions are initiated so quickly

they seem automatic. Self-hypnosis suggestions may put one learned activity

to follow another, as in, “Relax body then hear favorite music.†You also

may have one self-hypnosis activity followed with a brief conscious thought,

and then proceed with more self-hypnosis. A midpoint conscious thought may

be: “Now that I’m relaxed, I want to hear peaceful music.â€

There is only one mind, so all mind activities, hypnosis or not, follow the

same process. The conscious process always slowly analyzes as it examines

what is happening; the subconscious always rapidly reacts to prearranged

learning. Prove it. Try this next time you dance, a subconscious learned

activity: change to your conscious process this way: begin to analyze how you

balance

as you change foot positions. Your dancing will either stop or become

inefficient. The same is true for hypnosis: if you begin to analyze your

hypnosis

activity, hypnosis will either slow or stop.

From the instant you choose to begin, to the time you end the activity, if

you consciously monitor your hypnosis, the hypnosis will stop. By the word:

monitor, I mean to analyze, as opposed to being aware. Hypnosis halts because

your subconscious waits for a signal that the conscious analysis has ended;

and, the conscious waits for the subconscious to begin before ending

analysis. To choose your action: you must either stop analyzing (“let goâ€)

or

accept you need to think. It is one or the other.

Finally, for most people, it is easier to have someone assist in learning

hypnosis. Once you are comfortable with the feeling of hetero-hypnosis, a

hypnotist may suggest that you will activate each hypnosis activity yourself,

learning one activity at a time. This trains your mind to know when not to

analyze, and allows your subconscious to do each hypnosis activity when you

choose. The result: you can enjoy these hypnosis activities as self-hypnosis.

If

you practice, quickly, your self-hypnosis will require as little forethought

as your choice to stand up and walk, also subconscious activities. With

this familiarity of hypnosis, you can begin to create your own personal

hypnosis

activities that are known only to you.