Understand What Is Meant by Hypnosis

Journl entry - unit 1                                                        

Understand what is meant by Hypnosis

Criteria 1.1 - Hypnosis is an altered state of mind brought on by a range of techniques, starting with relaxation (PMR), followed by the deepener, then the therapeutic suggestion and finally the reorientation.  Although hypnosis is Greek for sleep it is not an accurate description as a person in a hypnotic state is not asleep.  There are many varied ideas and understandings of what hypnosis is and throughout history descriptions vary.

Criteria 1.2 &1.3 - When undergoing hypnosis there are psychological and physical aspects that I as the therapist must be aware of.  The physical signs that could occur during hypnosis are…. Mouth falling open/ajar, deepening of the breathing, flushing of the face, paling of the face, eyes closing, eyelids fluttering, a tear falling, facial muscles relaxing, the body muscles relaxing - legs parting, arms flopping etc., limbs twitching/feeling heavy, limbs tingling.  As a hypnotherapist I must also be aware that in some cases there may be no physical reaction at all.

Psychologically when undergoing hypnosis there are changes to the client’s brain wave patterns.  As the hypnotherapist I am looking to go from beta waves to Theta waves when hypnotising the client, this is in order to guide the client to their subconscious mind.

Bets Waves – 15 – 40 cycles per second -  an engaged and focused mind – a person engaged in active conversation is in beta and a person in a debate would be in high beta.

Alpha Waves – 9 – 14 cycles per second – a relaxed state of wellbeing, daydreaming, creativity, productive problem solving, light hypnosis and guided meditation.

Theta Waves – 4 – 8 cycles per second – deeply relaxed, dreaming, serene calmness, related to a person’s subconscious state of mind where our thoughts and behaviour patterns are held along with our past experiences.  An example of Theta wave -: driving to work on your usual well driven route and when arriving at your destination realising that you do not remember the journey there, you would have been in theta rhythm and then gone into Beta in order to arrive safely.

Delta Waves – 1 – 4 cycles per second – a state of detached awareness and sleep, no other waves present.

Criteria 1.4 - Relaxation is an important part of hypnotherapy as it focuses the mind of the person and the 400 voluntary muscles in the body.  Muscles are either contracting or not (tense or not), if muscles are tense then we are not relaxed, being to tense can lead to physical illness such as high blood pressure, fatigue, headaches and ulcers, it can also lead to difficulty in concentration and an emotional state of mind.

Dr Edmond Jacobson in 1929 noticed a lot of his patients struggled with tense muscles, he went on to discover that many did not realise they were tense and were used to the feeling, by helping his clients to relax their muscles they could lessen the symptoms, he did this by developing the PMR technique where a client consciously tensed their muscles then relaxed them and by doing this the muscles stayed in a relaxed state.  Modern PMR’s do not use this tense/relax technique but now use the suggestion method, suggesting that each group of muscles relax in varying ways but still end with the same result as the tense/relax method.

The following is what I consider important for my own learning methods and to help me understand what I have learned so far in regards to hypnosis, the physical and psychological aspect of hypnosis and relaxation in hypnosis from our lesson, the reading material and my own research and practice….

Criteria 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 & 1.4 - Hypnosis dates back thousands of years in some form and in recent years has many great names associated with the development of hypnosis such as Mesmer (18th century) Braid (19th Century), Cove, Charcot, Freud, Jacobson to name but a few.  

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