Lifestyle Choices

Hypnotism and meditation are methods of focusing the mindso strongly on a bodily sensation, a visual object, a sound or a thought, that all other thoughts and worries temporarily “disappear”. In this state, you are more freely available and sensitive to a suggestion from another, a suggestion from yourself, your inner feelings, imagination and spirit.Such a “trance” state is associated with specific patterns of brain waves measured on an electroencephalogram, a machine which records electrical impulses from the scalp. Ten cycles per second (alpha waves) increase sensitivity without dampening reasoning power. This occurs in day-dreaming and in light hypnosis. Five cycles per second (theta waves) increase receptivity more, but block reasoning power. These waves occur in deeper hypnosis.

There are an enormous number of methods of achieving these states, which have been practiced for thousands of years. In hypnosis you may be asked to concentrate your vision on an object, as the suggestion is made to you that your eyelids are getting heavier. If you choose not to fight this suggestion, you can sink into a relaxed but sensitive state. Another method is to focus on body relaxation, feeling your body getting heavier and more relaxed from your feet upwards. In light hypnosis, which is a more useful state for psychotherapy, you do not lose your reasoning power or your sense of discrimination. Exactly the same methods can be used on your own, in self-hypnosis, which is in many ways similar to meditation.

Whatever the method of induction, the trance state can be useful for the following:

In psychotherapy, memories may become available and conscious. You are often able to remember back long before any previous conscious memory. You may touch previously repressed inner feelings.

• It is a powerful form of relaxation.
• It can help to reconnect you to a deeper sense of your spirit or life force.
• It can release your imagination. This facet can be used as a tool to tap the body’s own healing power. It is well known that trained yogis can direct parts of their body that medicine used to believe to be completely automatic. In these matters, the imagination must take ascendancy over the will. You cannot will yourself to salivate, but you can imagine your favourite food. Imagination is used in techniques of “visualization”, in which you imagine your defences attacking your disease while you are in a relaxed or trance state. In a similar way, you can imagine yourself in a more positive state, and you can make the positive suggestion to yourself that tomorrow morning you will wake up feeling better.

Precautions Hypnosis is generally safe. However, it is not useful for deeper states of depression. It sometimes seems to encourage passivity, even in grey depression. Sometimes trance states are used to escape from worldly reality. It depends on your intention. Removal of symptoms by suggestion may be superficial, though not necessarily so.

For these reasons, trance states as used in the psychotherapy of depression can be most useful for those with loss of sparkle, who have a good sense of reality and who are searching for finer inner resources and spirit.

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