The essence of hypnosis is not to see, which is what the producers of stage hypnosis might claim, but rather to change the pattern of the reader’s mental capability. This ability of guiding the attention inward and directing it to the sound of directed suggestions has the power to unlock various forms of human behavior and experience. The fundamental premise of hypnosis is that all humans generate an inward response to incoming stimuli.
This response is usually called a “sham” by psychologists, but it is more commonly known as an armloading or predisposition. When selected, this response helps us relax or even fall asleep. Yet, the response can be set up so that it gets to a point where it obliterates this sleep phenomenon: enter trance. The stages of trance states have been well- criticised as problematic by traditional scientific neurologists.
A trance state is a Seeking of intellectual or even emotional understanding. trance takes place with such qualities as a state of heightened perception, a state of awareness of bodily sensations, mental control over the process of experience, and a sense of emotional intimacy or closeness. The haze of rapid pulse, muscular changes, unusual head responses, and a heightened reflection in the “workings” of the eyes, have been described as characteristics of trance state. Often these phenomena are attributed to the experience of certain substances or a standard state of consciousness. However, modern physiological studies have shown persuasive evidences to show that the responses of the human brain and its nature to specific external triggers does not evolve as the result of chemical neurotransmitters. It results from such responses as changes of visual receptive field, changes in the electromagnetic field of the brain, changes in brain temperature, changes in brain blood flow, changes in auto-suggestive activities of left-hem Welts, change of memory, changes in autonomic functions, etc.
What happens in the brain during hypnosis? The tentative explanation of brain function ( Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Neuro-linguistic programmning (NLP), etc.) would suggest that during trance the direct responses of the brain to external stimuli in the form of autonomic responses, trance identification, memory relapsing, motor responses, etc are able to be directed by the subject. This explanation is supported by research studies.
In NLP, a person’s state of consciousness is considered to be the result of the combination of actions occurring within him. The subject is likened to a container that focuses the mind on the object of attention. And the object of focus is said to be the person’s body, which is constantly influencing his own body. The two are constantly interacting with each other. This is the fundamental idea of hypnosis and is supported by research studies.
The stimulus-response Complex
While the stimulus-response principle intended to underlie hypnosis may not be the main idea, it gives a couple of key features that is key to be remembered in our understanding of hypnosis. Firstly, the process of trance is somewhat similar to what happens in the production of sleep; the attention of the subject is focused on an external situation or activity. Secondly, the subject is passive – that is, the activity of subjects is not directed by the subject himself. For example, see the following traditional drawing/ cartoon of a child on a swing:
The child swings on a swing; the person swinging the swing swayed backwards & forwards. The child didn’t initiate swinging, but the force was initiated by the person swinging.
To understand hypnosis in the perspective of the rhetoric of Ericksonian hypnosis, repetition of particular words and cues is used to produce a trance state. This is believed to be the natural course of hypnotic phenomena. Thus, the somewhat unusual feature of trance is its ability to lead to a trance-like state.
