Hypnosis

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So I've been reading this book called "Hypnosis for Beginners" by William Hewitt (who is an actual doctor with a PhD and completely certified btw). At first I have to admit that the mere thought of being hypnotized scared the living hell out of me. Being the anxiety prone individual I am, I thought that something horrible would happen if I was to free my unconscious mind. So of course I had a panic attack (just a little one, that's been happening often), and did a couple of self hypnosis exercises. I somehow spent an hour doing that until I snapped out of it and went to sleep. And honestly I slept unusally soundly.

It's really weird. I don't kow if I was doing it right or not, but I was completely relaxed and at peace of mind. And it's wasn't like I was unconscious; I could still hear my brother snoring, the fish tank filter humming, the computer running. It was like daydreaming or meditating. I was aware of the world around me, but it didn't concern me because I was so deep in thought (or really, lack of thought).

And now, since the human brain has always been of interest to me, here is what I learned yesterday about it.

The brain is said to have four different wave lengths. There's beta, alpha, theta and delta. I am in beta range, as are you if you are reading this. This is basically your conscious mind. When you are daydreaming, meditating, under hynosis or dreaming then you are in alpha mode. If you dip a bit deeper into the subconscious mind, you go into theta mode. Deep meditation is usually in this area. Delta is complete unconsciousness.

The conscious mind is reason. Thining logically is it's job. If you just told someone "stop smoking now and forever", it probably would not respond.

The unconscious mind is, as the book tells it "an obediant slave... it responds to what it's told" (Hewitt 5). You know that old saying that you have to believe to succeed? Well it's true. Chuck Norris once said that if you think of failure, you subconscious mind will take your word for it and you very well may fail. In hypnosis, this is taken to advantage. If someone tells your subconscious mind not to smoke, it is much more effective.

Hope I don't sound like a quack. I just thought this was really cool.

I'd like to be hypnotized. It sounds relaxing and fun.

You bring up very interesting points. I always thought that hypnosis was under the direction of a psychologist, and was mainly for the purpose of taking orders that you would not have followed in your conscious state.

I'm a hypnotherapist as well as an Aspie (you don't need to be a Doctor, btw, but you do need serious training, and not a weekend course in "how to get your best mate into trance").

The subconscious mind works towards keeping us safe, and in homeostasis. Unfortunately for us, it works solely in the present, without judgement, and throws us solutions for problems that often don't work. This is how phobias develop, why we live in a deep state of anxiety for such a lot of the time, and why hypnosis is great, because it "talks" to the subconscious mind to get it to align more closely with our logical states.