What Is Hypnosis?
Defining Hypnosis
How long is a piece of string?
There are as many definitions of hypnosis as there are people who practice it, and we each have to find our own definition that suits our purposes. What do you think it is? What do you think it does? How do you think it works?
One of my teachers would say something like:
“Hypnosis is a collaborative act of the imagination in which the ideas suggested provoke responses which are experienced as happening automatically.”
I know it’s wordy. In simple terms this means:
We are going to work together, collaboratively, to create an experience - to make a change or solve a problem. We will both use our imagination to see, hear and feel into new possible experiences. By imagining certain things, we cause a response to arise from within us. This response is automatic, non-conscious, non-volitional. For example, by imagining your body relaxing, or suggesting that it will, it is likely (perhaps inevitable) that your muscles will actually loosen and relax in response to that imagined idea.
Clark Hull, a prominent American psychologist who extensively studied hypnosis in the early 20th century, said “hypnosis is a jewel in the crown of suggestion”, meaning it is suggestion itself that is at the heart of a hypnotic demonstration. There is no hypnosis without suggestion.
What Hypnosis Is Not
Sometimes, it’s easiest to define things apophatically - that means defining something by what it is not.
Hypnosis Is Not Sleep
Hypnosis is does not mean sleep, and you don’t have to be be asleep to respond to suggestion. Research by Clark L. Hull (Hypnosis and Suggestibility, 1933) showed that while hypnosis can enhance suggestibility, people remain responsive to suggestions even without it. Later studies, such as Kirsch and Braffman (2001), confirmed that the ability to respond to suggestions exists independently of hypnosis, though hypnosis may amplify this natural trait.
These findings highlight that suggestibility is a trait present in varying degrees across individuals, independent of hypnosis. Hypnosis may amplify this trait, but the capacity to respond to suggestion exists outside of the hypnotic context.
Hypnosis Is Not Losing Control
When hypnotized, your brain is still yours. You still have free will to move as you like, to do what you want or to think in your own way. Imagine you are in the driver’s seat of a car. You are in control. You choose where to go, how fast and when to stop or start. Now imagine a friend is in the passenger seat giving suggestions for shortcuts, scenic routes, and perhaps entirely new destinations you hadn’t considered. This is your hypnotist, working with you to change your experience as you like. It could be said hypnosis allows you more control by giving you insight into how your mind works, making you aware of the thoughts and that float through and giving you an opportunity to change them if you wish.
Hypnosis Is…
For me, hypnosis kind of everything. It is your current experience, your thoughts, feelings, the things you’re saying to yourself and imagining. In my own way, to do hypnosis would be to initiate a ritual of change, of transformation, of imagination. In that sense, with hypnosis, if you can imagine it, you can create it.
