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SixFootMaster -> RE: HYPNOSIS AND BRAINWASHING (3/27/2008 8:23:13 PM)
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People vary in their susceptibility to hypnosis whether it is self hypnosis or guided hypnosis.
An important part to remember when you see the stage magician snap his fingers and put someone under only to have them cavorting around the stage like a trained iguanadon is that the mind doing the grunt work, the one producing the actual magic, is that of the person being hypnotized. They hypnotist simply puts that person into a state where they are open to suggestion, everything else you see is a product of the "patient".
In more detail, these suggestions insinuate themselves between your ratio and your ego. The ratio performs the duties of governance and the ego is the actor, the part that governs which actions are required to achieve a goal. As such, suggestions are incapable of changing your actual thoughts and attitudes. Conscious thoughts and feelings can be suspended/ignored through suggestion ("You will feel relaxed, calm, at peace with yourself and the world around you") but our underlying natures cannot be. Thus it is not possible to suggest to a person that they do something against their nature - this will usually break the trance as the mind rejects the suggestion.
Can you be hypnotized by tapes? Most definitely, but it is a lot harder than actually sitting through a session with a trained hypnotist. A live hypnotist can monitor everything about your state - breathing, muscular tension, movement of your eyes beneath your eyelids and so forth. They can also ask questions to verify the progress of the session, tweak the suggestions made and so forth, and thereby lead to a deeper trance and a more productive session over all. Key elements are breath control and relaxation, introversion (hence often you will be instructed to close your eyes). In fact there isn't a whole lot of difference between self-hypnotism and meditation.
If you're trying hypnosis for whatever reason, don't expect magic results, particularly not on the first or second session - these are generally devoted to establishing a smooth and easy path into a deeper state of relaxation, each session building on the previous till you are at a place where real work can be done.
Six.
P.S: It is very possible to brainwash someone using hypnosis - since false memories can be suggested, and the repetitive nature allows reinforcement of statements and suggestions until they "take". That said, even the deepest suggest can spontaneously be undone if the metabrain challenges it - since at no time is there confusion at that level over what is suggested and what is real. It is only the ratio, the concious mind and governance that is deceived.
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