EP18 – What’s the Difference Between Hypnosis and Meditation? – Part 1

Illuminated Mind is your podcast for exploring some of the deeper ideas about what it means to be human in today’s complex world. We cover topics from psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and hypnotherapy to find answers to life’s most interesting questions. Enjoy this episode!

Corey Benschop  00:00

What’s up, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really hope you’re having an amazing day today. We’re gonna dive into a really cool episode, I think you’re gonna enjoy this one. Today we are talking about the differences and similarities between meditation and hypnosis. If you are a meditator yourself, if you practice meditation on a regular basis, then you already know that meditation really involves this deep level of relaxation, and peace and just mindfulness. And we carry a lot of this over into hypnosis as well, especially when we are facilitating sessions for our clients. And we’re helping them get into deeper levels of relaxation, and thus, deeper levels of hypnosis. But there’s some key differences between these two different practices. And today, we’re going to take a look at some of what those differences are. We’ll also, like I said, take a look at some of the similarities and where these two sort of ideas kind of overlap each other. Now, we are going to dive into a past conscious community Class A recording that Matthew Brownstein has created, where he was teaching, and going really deep on these ideas of meditation and hypnosis, and again, what’s different and similar about the two. Now just a couple of things, you know, to make sure that you’re listening for Matthew’s going to talk about the different brainwaves and different mind states, if you will, that are associated with each of these practices of meditation and hypnosis. And then he’s also going to really dive into some interesting perspectives. Because if you don’t know, Matthew is a religious scholar, and has spent most of his adult life studying, you know, all the different world’s religions. And he’s just got such a cool perspective when it comes to looking at these different practices of hypnosis, and meditation, as well as many other things, but understanding them from different perspectives based on you know, what he studied about different religions. So again, this is going to be super fascinating and interesting for you, I really think you’re going to learn a lot in this episode. This is going to be part one of a two part series, because these classes, they go a little long as you know, and I want to condense this into two different episodes for you. So this is part one. I hope you enjoy it. I’m back for next week for part two. So let’s go ahead and jump in.

 

Corey Benschop  02:25

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Corey Benschop  03:50

Welcome back to Illuminated Mind. I’m your host Corey Benschop, and this is your podcast for exploring some of the deeper ideas about what it means to be human in today’s complex world. We cover topics from psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and hypnotherapy to find answers to life’s most interesting questions. Enjoy this episode!

 

Matthew Brownstein  04:16

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Monday night class at the Institute of interpersonal hypnotherapy online. And tonight’s topic is is there a difference between hypnosis and meditation when Dr. Kay got it started, so let’s jump right in on the theme. That case it both hypnosis and meditation involve an altered state of consciousness. There’s a skills training, perhaps we’ll go into the difference between a hypnosis meditation and then what can a hypnotherapist do, using this altered state of consciousness or these altered states if we’re considering that they’re different. Tonight’s graphic about is there a difference between hypnosis and meditation? And then this is just sitting there On our schools website, if anybody’s interested in moving through the training, if you haven’t started yet, then we offer the first four and a half hours at no charge. And you can find links like that on our websites Institute of hypnotherapy, calm or old site tfih.com. In the bottom right of the meeting room, you’ll see our next start date of September 25. And let me welcome everybody who just joined in We have with us tonight. Once again, the topic is hypnosis and meditation. Is there a difference? And Dr. Kay got it started with some terms. So before class, I broke out two notepads that you’ll see below me on the screen, drawn a mobile device and may be a little harder to see. But hopefully you’re seeing what we’re doing here. Let’s basically define our terms. And then we’ll start talking about the differences, the similarities, where there’s overlap, where there’s not, it really depends on how, again, you define the terms. And then certainly, how does hypnotherapy play a role in this? Why would we want to say we’re doing hypnosis, rather than just meditation? or How come sometimes somebody will come into a hypnotherapist and say, you know, why don’t I just spend that money? That was just meditation. And that can happen if you’re not getting good training for if you’re not utilizing all of your training, you can definitely have a client walk away and say, you know, I didn’t feel like I was hypnotized. I feel like I was doing meditation was I really am a hypnotic state. And then why is it so important? And I would say it actually does. So let’s get some of what Dr. k Rhodes and once again, if you could join me in welcoming, feel free to share your own thoughts about this. So hypnosis, Dr. k mentioned an altered state, the person want to say is that it’s a natural state. Now, what do I mean by that? Basically, we’re implying that it’s not drug induced. So there are definitely altered states. And we’ll use that word in just a moment where you can get into some really awesome altered states using drugs using chemicals. Yet, that’s what we do in the field of hypnosis. If you were doing that, in a that’s a psychiatric setting, that’s called narco hypnosis. And then of course, there’s all different sorts of altered states using chemicals or plant medicines. Yet, the theme here is definitely saying it’s a natural state, meaning that dragon do so I’m going to say, for meditation, basically, they’re both natural states in this model. Now logen Welcome. Hello, Christine. And again, Mubarak is an Indian, natural, we also say about hypnosis, that’s an altered state. If you’ve ever seen somebody paying a stage hypnosis demonstration, or any type of clinical professional type of setting, they don’t appear to be in their normal regular waking consciousness. And if you were to measure the brainwaves, we would say that’s true. Their beta, regular waking consciousness has been altered into more alpha activity, where that’s basically like a day dreaming type of non sleep, you’re still awake, but you’re somewhat altered, you’re not in your normal, regular waking consciousness. Just like when you’re waking up in the morning, you kind of half awake half asleep, or you’re falling asleep at night, you’re kind of half awake, half asleep, the dream imagery comes in a little bit. I’m not sure if full blown dreaming, alright, but things can start to get pleasant and interesting. When that half awake half asleep hypnagogic state, you could certainly say how we define meditation is it’s altered. Now, is it exactly the same altered? Not necessarily. But when somebody goes and we can say sits down in meditation, they’re working to do something different with their consciousness. Or you could say with their state of mind, we could definitely define those terms and say, they’re not necessarily the same consciousness and in the state of mind, so consciousness and mind, but generally, I’m going to say For starters, there’s overlap that the way we’re going to define these two things is we have a natural yet altered state, you can move into alpha activity, as I mentioned, you can move down into theta activity there. If you were asleep, you were basically having dreams yet in altered states, natural yet altered states. We can have theta brainwave activity, and yet still be conscious, which is quite interesting, because then things become very amplified. internally. One thing we can notice about both states, again, depending on how we define the terms is there is and I’ll put this on both columns for you. There’s a refocusing of attention. And this would be worth spending a moment on and say, well, they’re both kind of doing this Same thing. Again, it’s semantics so you know what word you use for what thing. So by the time we’re done here with FM define their terms. In hypnosis, you can think of the really cliched old classical model of look at the pendulum, look at my pocket watch and you’re getting sleepy. What they’re asking you to do. If I say look into my high or focus in my hand, you’re taking your attention, you’re narrowing it, and to one point, we call that fixation with hypnosis, and the hypnotist or in self hypnosis, let’s just say the hypno chemistry hypnotherapist is guiding you to place your attention somewhere, you can do that in the self hypnotic model as well. There’s also in hypnosis, usually, but not always, a refocusing of attention inwards. So he said, okay, eventually, we let you close your eyes down. And then we might take you on. So the inner journey that could be guided imagery, you might hear therapeutic stories, and Eric’s more of an ericksonian approach, which is not only therapeutic storytelling, but that within can happen in that context, you can be doing hypnotic regressions to childhood, if you’re looking at past lives. The point is, though, whatever you’re doing internally, you are internally focused. So if you can imagine your consciousness being kind of like a flashlight, shining out onto the world, when we do hypnosis, not in every style, but you know, we need to have a simple way of discussing and tonight, we narrow the field of your attention, and we say focus my focus on the pendulum. And then eventually, your eyes closed down, and you turn your attention inwards. So now we’re in the field of attention, turning inwards. Now, let’s talk a little bit about meditation. I usually define meditation, based on where you place your attention. It’s one of the best definitions I’ve ever come across. Not even sure where I heard it is pretty much as payment is my own, that somehow I realized, when I meditate, I placed my attention on something that can be the candle flame, that might be on the back of my forehead. That could be in my breathing, it could be in a mantra, but no matter what I’m doing, I’m placing my attention on something. And basically, if you said meditation involves a refocusing of attention, it would be a similar thing. If we said they’re self hypnosis, where you place your attention on, let’s say, a spot on the ceiling. And if we say they’re in meditation, is a refocusing of attention. So it’s basically you’re empowered in both models to place your attention somewhere. Now with hypnosis, we usually have some sense of you taking suggestions, either giving them yourself, but again, we’ll talk about what’s called a hetero hypnosis model, which basically means someone else is hypnotizing you rather than you hypnotizing yourself. So in the model, and we can say all hypnosis is self hypnosis yet in the model that there’s a hypnotist or hypnotherapist who put you into the hypnotic state. There’s another concept of responsiveness. And it’s a very important word to suggestion.

 

13:27

Now, we would say someone is not responding hypnosis, if they’re not responding to the suggestion. Yeah, if I said, Okay, let your eyes closed down, turn within minutes, the real simple Imagine you’re on the beach, and then you start relaxing your body from your toes to your head. Now, let’s say the person is responding to those simple suggestions, then technically, we’re still doing hypnosis, but your client will most likely walk away and say, how is that different from what my yoga teacher does at the end of your class? Right after we do all the body postures, my yoga teacher asked me lie down on the floor and Shiva, Austin, and they guide me and say, imagine you’re in a beautiful meadow and the sun is relaxing your body, that it would be very fundamentals level of hypnosis. However, there are suggestions being given. And ideally, you as the participant are responding to the suggestions. Is that happening in meditation? Technically, in most situations, not so good. You really depends on where you meditate, who you learn meditation from, but while you’re learning meditation from someone, they might be giving you suggestions of what to do, generally. in meditation, for instance, I practice them for the majority of my adult life. So zozen or sittings that, not really necessarily called the meditation But we say walking Zen sittings and getting Zen Every moment is that the primary practice is to sit down on a formal meditation cushion. And the meditation that has affluent is awkward time, and you assume a certain body position. There definitely that model would be different body positions. Usually, for hypnosis, we put our clients in a recliner, and they’re extremely relaxed. When you practice zen meditation, it’s really not a very relaxing thing at all. You can have a profound state of inner peace, but usually you’re sitting with a straight spine in, in Zen Meditation almost all the time, wherever you would learn this, you’re taught to meditate with your eyes open. Yet there is a concept of narrowing your attention. Usually you’re focusing below your navel and basic Zen meditation or even advanced meditation. And there is a narrowing of the field of your attention towards either counting everything, or just watching your breathing. Or in the rinzai School exam, you’re actually working on what’s called a co op, or an inner riddle. But basically, it’s a very self engaged practice, even if you’re doing with others, even if you have a teacher who told you what to do. In the end, you’re the one who’s doing it. So if you were saying, self hypnosis, you’re the one doing it, then you might think not that much different from meditation, but what happens in meditation, and almost any tradition you look at, there’s no refocusing of attention. There’s a developing of concentrated power. So we’ll be in yogic philosophy that’s called sun yom if you’re practicing a yogic style of meditation. And again, Zen is called jury Japanese term, basically, for taking all of your attention and upholding it on one point. And again, it’s not the only way to meditate. Yeah, if we said meditation can be defined as placing your attention somewhere. And every time the mind wanders every time your consciousness your mind goes off somewhere else. Again, I’m using those words interchangeably right now. You bring it back to whatever the object of consciousness is. It’s not that in hypnosis, or meditation, we’re not supposed to have thoughts. In studying meditation, we know when the thoughts go off, and they’re thinking about something else. We’re simply compassionately asked to come back to the present moment. And if it’s to be watching the breath, your eyes, well, I wasn’t watching the breath. I was wondering what dessert I’m going to have after class tonight. I was very well it’s gonna do after the meditation. Yes, in regular, let’s say just the simplest form of meditation practice, I would notice I had that thought I would let it go, I would come back to my object of meditation. And I’m really, and we’ll talk about it more tonight developing this concentrated power, which will take me into deeper meditative States than most hypnotherapy clients never achieved. And that’s one of the important differences between hypnosis and meditation. Meditation, if you define it is a daily practice, where you’re not just relaxing, then sometimes even relaxing so much, that you’re barely even aware of what’s going on. We talked about that phenomenon Just a moment. With meditation, you’re actually working you become more aware. However, in the similarities departments we have with hypnosis, something called hyper that acuity. You’re actually more aware when you hypnotize now less aware, and there’s a misunderstanding there, the general public, you would see somebody hypnotized at San stage, and you ever think that person is less aware, the person is actually in an expanded state of awareness. However, as we mentioned before, the intention is refocus. It’s usually turned within, and it’s primarily on the hypnotherapist on the hypnotist or hypnotherapist. I would also say with meditation, we also have hyper acuity, we have a state where you’re more aware, rather less aware. So if you ever been around a Zen monk, that person is very conscious, usually very pleasant, usually very peaceful, calm confidence about them. They’re aware, right? You know how some people you meet somebody who might be in the category. There’s not a diagnostic or judgmental term, somebody who’s kind of crazy. They’re off their rocker. They’re not fully there. Yet, the Zen master presidents would be fully they’re fully present. Now in hypnosis, if the client finds his or her mind wandering, that person will know My session is not as effective as it could have been. I should have been paying attention to my hypnotherapist, but I was similar, I should have been using my recording and listening to my hypnosis session, but my mind was distracted and all over the place. Again, not a participant does not necessarily develop the discipline that a meditator, a meditator would. So one point we could definitely put under developing concentrated power is not about a favorite word is the word discipline. In Sanskrit, there’s a term called sadhana, which means spiritual practice, or often translated as spiritual discipline. When your clients come in, you don’t tell them time for discipline, right? I’m gonna discipline you to use your hypnotic recording. We don’t create change with hypnosis or hypnotherapy, through intense concentrated power and a disciplined daily practice, although we do tell our clients and there’s a similarity here, to use your hypnotic program recording on a daily basis. So repetition in both models. Without repetition, we tend to not have as good hypnotic response, I put you in hypnosis, as well define it fully tonight. And then I basically tell you, once you are now losing weight and feeling great, you’re not necessarily going to find the pounds dropping off. With repetition of that suggestion, we have a much higher probability of the subconscious, which is a key concept in hypnosis, the subconscious, taking the response, and using positive change in your life. in meditation, you can develop this intense, concentrated power and still remain obese, but it wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with behavioral change. However, as we go deeper into the topic tonight, with both states, or both fields, if not therapy, and the field of meditation, whatever we’ll call them together, so many traditions, you could certainly through meditation, develop much more inner peace, much more inner calm, much more self discipline, much more awareness to not react to your emotional self. And therefore, when you think you’re gonna emotionally operate, you just don’t do it, where the concentrated power or discipline says, You know, I decided to get on my bicycle, and I had to go for a bike ride, even though I don’t want to, I now have the discipline to do so. So there’s even some overlap. If we were to say that bolt states can induce positive change, I think we would all say, of course, right after 5000 years plus that people have been meditating. And then however long we say Hypnosis is a formal state. The word really wasn’t coined until the mid 1800s. So how long is hypnosis been around? It’s really, again, how we define the term. Technically, that altered state has been around for as long as meditation has been around. But there’s something that happens is we start looking at hypnosis and hypnotherapy versus what happened with meditation, I would say at a certain point, all these similarities are going to branch off in very different directions in how the hypnotherapist versus how the meditator is using the state. We can even talk tonight about how deep Can you go on hypnosis versus how deep Can you go on meditation. And that’s where we’re going to see a significant difference because no matter how good your hypnotherapy training, so maybe this school is an SQL I do teach you about the deepest meditative states. But in the deepest hypnotic states, I would say where hypnosis and meditation can continue. And that’s a bit of thing to understand that there are much deeper states to be accessed through meditation. And again, it depends on how you define the terms which we’re doing. So that can be repetition about most let’s go back to hypnosis for a moment. With hypnosis, we have responsiveness to suggestion. Now responsiveness from it can’t just be from our conscious mind, then meditation is a very conscious practice. I choose to sit in the meditation cushion. I choose to breathe and choose to breathe out, which is to relax my shoulders, they got a little bit tense, no relax, and again, very conscious. In hypnosis, we have something called the dual nature of the month.

 

24:31

This means that the conscious mind and the subconscious are both present simultaneously. Now, when we say the subconscious is not present in meditation, it’s absolutely present in meditation. It’s always that your subconscious is hearing every single word that’s occurring right now. You would hear me if you were in meditation, it would hear me if you were in hypnosis. Again, we don’t really see a huge difference yet in the state. Although there’s a theme of concentrated power and meditation, that’s worth acknowledging, but the subconscious is still there, and can even still be responding to it the meditators doing what the meditators being told. The major theme in hypnosis is whether it’s through auto suggestion, self hypnosis, self given suggestion, or hetero hypnosis, hypnotherapy or hypnosis where the hypnotist is telling you what to do. They’re not telling your conscious mind what to do. So if you’re, let’s say, meditation teacher says go and sit on the cushion for an hour and focus in your breathing. That’s a very conscious discussion, conscious decision. You sit down and you mindfully focus in your breath. In hypnosis, we’re quite concerned with this other part of the mind called the subconscious. So basically, responsiveness to suggestion, we could say, subconscious responsiveness to suggestion. And that’s based on the dual nature of the mind that we acknowledge in the hypnotherapy model, we have a conscious and a subconscious. In the eastern traditions, this is basically unheard of, if you were to ask a Tibetan monk and say, so what do you guys do with the subconscious mind? I was like, What do you mean? subconscious mind, there’s only one mind. There’s not these two different minds. There’s one line that can even be with a capital M, that there’s one mind. So there’s a distinction depending on what tradition you pull from. Now, if it’s a more modern version of meditation, you might find in the kabbalistic tradition of Jewish mysticism, so you could say Jewish meditation, going way back when you’re not going to hear the word subconscious. But if you study the more modern literature, you may certainly hear themes about a young gain archetypes, and were the conscious of the concept of an unconscious mind has absolutely crept into the literature. Let’s define that term for a moment, unconscious and subconscious. I don’t get our school use the term unconscious mind because I do not believe that your subconscious mind is upon unconscious. The concept of subconscious means it’s below your conscious awareness. You’re not necessarily aware of this part of you, but it’s there. It is not unconscious, you’re just not conscious of it. in meditation, can we become aware of subconscious processes? Absolutely. Because of meditators mind is defined below can become very one pointed, and they can take that concentrated power and place it anywhere they want, they can place it on their significant other on their children on a candle playing on the voice of the hypnotist, on their own inner reality. That’s something that gets developed in a solid meditation practice, again, depending on what style you’re talking about. But pretty much across the board, there’s some theme of concentrating one’s awareness. That’s an amazing power that’s not only beneficial in so many ways, it’s very beneficial, as we’ll see soon, in altered states, because there’ll be a point in deep hypnosis or deep meditation that you might fall asleep, and neither state asleep. Both states, we have hyper acuity, more awareness. And of course, we’re gonna come back to this responsiveness to suggestion idea. Yet at some points, no matter how deep, I take you into hypnosis, there’s a very good chance you’re going to get so relaxed, you fall asleep. Now notice how below in these words, I don’t have the word relaxation. There’s nothing in classical hypnotic literature that requires that you’re relaxed, that have what we need to really define hypnosis. So is this person. Yeah, how do we know not because they’re so relaxed, and meditation, you would not say someone’s achieved a really true meditative state, because now they’re relaxed. It’s not how it would be measured. So actually understanding how to measure the state, which we definitely cover in our hypnotherapy training here we’ve talked more about tonight, perhaps, because it deals with responsiveness to suggestion. I know I’m getting communication with this subconscious mind. Because my client will be on my let’s say, stage hypnosis, we’ll call that a participant would be taking my suggestions, and the subconscious will be responding to it. So let’s look at that for a moment in the column below for hypnosis, the things we see in hypnosis and I’m gonna write this hypnotic phenomenon. There are ways of measuring hypnosis as I alluded to, that help us to see as a professional Okay, my client is now in a hypnotic state and why Would that be so important because I need good responsiveness to suggestion so they can reach their goals. If I say to my clients, okay, you’re now the player actually paralyzed after lunch. Okay, you’re now a nonsmoker. Have a nice day. No, no, it wouldn’t be enough. The person needs to be in the class book, if not happy model convinced. I’m really in a hypnotic state. That happens to a number of ways of measuring hypnosis that we usually do not explore with medication. And so those things examples of those would be catalepsy, and I’ll give you a few more examples to explain that catalepsy is the inability to use a certain muscle or muscle group. So in hip in meditation, I know I can very consciously keyword consciously, open or close my eyes whenever I want to. There’s no sense of someone else telling me what to do. my subconscious is not overriding my conscious minds ability to do something. When we induce a certain type of catalepsy into hypnosis, the conscious mind won’t try to use their muscle group, but it will fail intuitive nurses, they won’t be able to see examples of that start usually with the high catalepsy, we tell our clients or the stage hypnotic participant, you cannot open your eyes, we give proper language patterns. But basically you cannot open your eyes. The conscious mind of that person tries to open their eyes. And then they say, wow, I couldn’t do it. I actually couldn’t override the part of me that had engaged that took that suggestion.

 

31:49

That would show us what we call light hypnosis. Usually when we get a good solid catalepsy, somebody really can open their eyes. They’re really trying it’s a legitimate response. We would say yes, during hypnosis, there. Unlike hypnosis, when we go to larger muscle groups, like you cannot bend your arm, then usually there we’re seeing are probably around medium hypnosis, we got a larger muscle group on the arm is truly locked down the conscious mind is trying to bend it, and it’s not bending. Can the person override the suggestions? If they really put forth their will and say, You know what, I’m not going to take these suggestions. Anyone? Absolutely they could. Because you’re never under someone’s power in hypnosis. You never give away the power of your will. Yet somebody who’s responding well to hypnosis on a subconscious level has taken this suggestion. And they’re kind of so dual nature of the mind. The conscious mind is good. And I really should be able to bend this arm, but I can’t do it. That’s not fake. You can do that with the inability to get out of a chair. So you’re now glued to the chair, your body is extremely heavy. any effort to get up will cause you to be stuck more in the chair. You are absolutely people who try to get a chair to the best of their ability mean they’ll be pushing on the armrest and they cannot get up. That is basically what we would call at least half body catalepsy. Then there’s full body catalepsy, the inability to move the body at all or fullbody catalepsy the sense of rigidity where we can suspend a person between two chairs. There’s a real phenomena that you cannot do through just your conscious mind. Now you might say well, Yogi’s have learned how to do that kind of stuff. Absolutely mind. So in different meditative traditions. In Tibetan Buddhism, you hear about phenomenon, I think it’s called subo. Maybe I haven’t heard in a while I’m pronouncing it wrong. It’s an ability to warm the body internally to wear these yoke. Maybe you’ve heard about these guys, these Tibetan monks will go up into the mountains in the Himalayas, they’ll wrap themselves in just a sheet lie down in the snow and literally they’ll just be melting snow with their bodies staying up there for hours or days. Or you hear about Yogi’s being buried alive and then taken out. So we’re talking about significant altered states, the ability to control aspects of your body that you may not be able to otherwise. And at that point, we say, hypnotic phenomena. They’re definitely incredibly interesting types of phenomena that also occur in the meditative or you could say spiritual traditions, traditions and spiritual practices. Besides catalepsy, though what we ask which usually you don’t see in most hypnosis, right, you don’t go to a mindfulness meditation class and find out that you can’t bend your arm, right around your hand is stuck to a wall. There is a level of responsiveness that occurs in hypnosis, usually, to start asking for in meditation. What else can we learn about in hypnotic phenomena? We have amnesia with hypnotic phenomena. We have you What we just call them there’s different types and levels but post hypnotic amnesia. We can measure depth of hypnosis by the type of amnesia we can occur make occur. If we cause you to forget an entire series of numbers, usually that’s 100 down to zero. And then I say, Okay, how many stars are on the American flat? You wouldn’t be able to answer. If he had true series amnesia, that number just would not be available in your mind. However, usually, when that phenomenon occurs in nurses, honestly, it’s occurring because the mind is your soul relax, the person doesn’t want to think of any numbers. But once we get them around that states, most of you have been through our training will understand more about how many numeric amnesia don’t usually represent a deep hypnotic state, especially according to a major pioneer in our field development.

 

35:52

Beyond that type of amnesia, and you can even call catalepsy and amnesia, I forgot how to open that I forgot how to bend my arm. I think it’s a leap, where they tried to say the amnesia scale and the catalepsy scale are similar. They’re actually not you can have great catalepsy and not be able to get amnesia. They’re not always on the same level, we’re talking about another phenomenon that occurs in hypnosis, and why you might be able to get one you might not be able to get the other. When we talk about amnesia, we can also have specific number or letter specific types of amnesia. You forget your name, you forget a letter, you forget a number, it can be quite funny. So those of you who’ve been through our training have certainly seen at least me if not maybe a video yield point where we make the number five go away. So the client, participant cannot access the number of five no matter how hard they consciously try again, they’re unconscious, they’re consciously trying, or they can’t find remember that number 1234. And there’s always that funny luck.

 

36:58

Six, counting 789 10. And there’s a sincere sense of a person being really puzzle, they know they should have 10 fingers, but they’re bound to say 11 because that’s the next logical number. And usually, that’s what happens. And then it’s funny. What is there a purpose of that in hypnotherapy? You could say yes, that if you know somebody is not responsive, they’ll probably be responsive to other phenomena. The other one that might come back combination is that the other one is anesthesia. With hypnosis, we can measure depth, the transfer the ability, and the word trance is actually worth being paid perhaps without word altered. And let me not go to off track with that. When somebody is in an altered state of hypnosis, also known as Trent, they can control to some degree but not always, on the same level catalepsy, they can make certain parts of their body so rigid, the subconscious does it. But our conscious mind can’t at that moment override. Or we can cause amnesia to different degrees and say, okay, to the degree of amnesia we’ve just achieved, that person is highly responsive to hypnotic suggestion for anesthesia, where we say, Your hand is now completely numb, and transferred to your job. And now go get a dental surgery. And they can, it’s been done. Now, there’s definitely documented cases for sure. It’s actually not such an unheard of phenomenon at all, that somebody can undergo major operations, including amputations and surgeries here and childbirth, using hypnosis, you usually don’t hear about that in meditation. So that’s an incredible benefit of the hypnotic state, we can tell the subconscious mind to do certain things. Let me come back to amnesia for just a moment to help you also understand the difference. There is a time in hypnosis, where the conscious mind is so dissociated, and that’s worthy of another bullet points, we bypass the critical factor the conscious mind. So basically, when what we’re saying is the conscious mind is not getting in the way there’s no critical analytical reasoning mind. getting in the way of suggestions, the suggestions are being taken with an uncritical acceptance. The concept of a critical factor is basically a part that could reject suggestions, but the deeper you on hypnosis, according to a lot of these different scales, the more responsive the subconscious will be to suggestion and that’s where we can really help people to reach their goals with amnesia. When we have you deep enough in the model that that conscious mind is off to the side, sometimes the word is dissociated. Other times just relax. Other times we say bypass, but that part of the mind is not engaged in the process anymore. That response is happening from the subconscious mind then The type of amnesia we could get can be temporary amnesia for the entire session. So when somebody comes out of hypnosis they might not ever remember this session. Or we can tell them they don’t remember the session. And for a period of time, that will be completely done. In the deepest level of hypnosis, one of the truest ways of measuring like the deepest way of measuring hypnosis is permanent amnesia for the entire session. It’s a very rare percentage of the population. And we don’t use it much in clinical practice, but more hardly at all. But you can have mostly in demonstration purposes, and even then I don’t like to make somebody not be able to remember what happened, I always give them the memory back. So in professional hypnotherapy, and hypnotherapy school, we never give you full amnesia of an experience. But that could happen for sure. And there’s definitely examples that you can watch where somebody is, you know, you’ve heard about someone was hypnotized. And they never gave you the suggestion that you’d remember the entire experience. Again, it’s a small percentage of the population, my guess would be 5% or less, could have that type of response, usually about 10% of the population can go into deep hypnotic states and get some of this phenomena. But if you’re working with a group of 100, people on a stage hypnosis demonstration, you’d be finding that one person that can get pretty much all of this phenomenon, it’s a smaller percentage. So it doesn’t mean that just because we have these abilities that everyone can always tap into them. Just like when we talk about the meditation in a moment, once we get there, we’ll talk about states of consciousness that most people can’t access, if you had to do a percentage of how many people go to the deepest meditative states, on the bell curve, it’s going to be less than 10%, as well, but they can learn to go there. Can you learn to become more hypnotizable? Absolutely. So both states similarities, you get better with both through repetition and practice. Absolutely. And so there’s amazing phenomena that could occur in hypnosis. And another one, which you don’t always see much with normal meditation, chemical and do is plant based meditations, if you want to call it that you might have some of this, but we cannot hallucinations, in hypnosis, and actually, in the practice of Zen, you have something called macchio, which means in Japanese, the best translation I know of is devil vision. And it’s actually when you’re sitting in meditation, and all this imagery, Gods goddesses, or just other stuff is appearing before your consciousness, the meditator is always told, forget about it. It’s not important. It’s just your subconscious releasing our typical images, you know, let it go. It’s not the goal. So even though you’re having all this cool experiences, they say, if you need to boot on the road kill him. Why do they say that is in practice, because even if an image of the Buddha appear before you, it’s really no better than others ination, it’s going to go away, and you’re gonna be telling your friends, I sell Buddhist meditation, but anybody who really understands would say, it’s not boot up, that was an image that came up from yours. And I’d say subconscious mind, that went away was a temporary experience, which is now this in the realm of memory. Anything that’s in the realm of memory cannot be the goal of a meditator, because you don’t want something in the past. That’s staying with you with your meditation practice. So again, there’s more to talk about in meditation. So with hypnosis, we can have hallucinations when Chicago positive and negative, those are not judgmental terms. In hypnosis, we can cause a positive hallucination, which means we add something to your experience, it’s not really there. So it’s in a moment, you’ll open your eyes. And when you do, you’d like to see a blue marble on the table, you open your eyes, or we could be really mean and say something like there’s a mouse or a snake on the floor. And if the person was really uncritically accepting our suggestions, they would open their eyes, they could literally see that and possibly have a major fear response. Or, like I like to do with the blue marble thing. You open your eyes and say, okay, what’s on the table? Yeah, there’s a blue marble. You sure, of course, there’s a blue marble. They’re literally seeing it there you go and have them pick it up and go pick it up, you say squeeze your fingers together, they won’t be able to do it. You have literally altered their state of consciousness that much. It’s a very small percentage of the population that you would work to get that and you don’t have to get that for good, good therapy. Most of the advanced really deep, really interesting hypnotic phenomena are not required at all for good hypnotherapy. Those are I would say are the form major things that we can test for how can a negative hallucination that is when we take something away from your experience, that you open your eyes and you can see something that’s actually that. So a good example is on a clock, we remove the big hat and we know again, your mind we say when you open your eyes, your eyes

 

Matthew Brownstein  45:00

Glad to see the small hand in the clock. No matter how hard you like you won’t be able to see the big cat. It’s just up to anyone. Okay, open eyes and you look and we say What time is it like five something. And you literally in that level of reporting awareness, you might say in your conscious level of awareness, you can see what’s there. Now you don’t really hear about any of this type of stuff. When you talk about meditation. Again, the paths really branch in different directions at some point. So one just give you one other term to define hypnosis must spend more time as well and meditation and hypnosis we have give you a kind of a sentence now a natural, yet altered state of mind with a high degree of reward a degree of responsiveness from the subconscious mind, where the critical mind or the critical factor or the conscious mind has been bypassed. And where selective thinking has been established now would be a very complete, now explain it. Now it’d be a very complete definition of hypnosis. 

 

Corey Benschop  46:05

All right, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Illuminated Mind podcast. If you haven’t done so already, make sure you subscribe to our podcast because we release a new episode every week. And also please leave us a rating and review on iTunes. It helps us get found by more listeners just like you. Plus, we’d love to see your feedback! Let us know if there are any topics or ideas that you’d like us to cover on this show. Finally, if you’re interested in pursuing hypnotherapy as a career for yourself, make sure you head over to our website https://www.instituteofhypnotherapy.com. We’ve got a lot of free resources, our blog, and conscious community classes there that you can check out, and every couple of months we’re starting a new certification course as well. So check out all of that at our website https://www.instituteofhypnotherapy.com. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, choose happiness my friends!