subject: Clearing Up Popular Hypnosis Misconceptions [print this page] Television shows often portray an inaccurate picture about hypnotists and hypnotherapy. Typically hypnotists are described in a bad light and they are shown hypnotizing their victims into performing deeds that are against the law, or not moral in nature.
Hypnotized people are quite often described as zombies. This is an improper reflection of the powers of hypnotism, and in contrast to the way films represent a hypnotized person being in control of the hypnotist, a hypnotized person in the real world is conscious, attentive, and without doubt in charge of their will.
Hypnosis can be defined as the ability to manipulate one's subconscious mind. Researchers are still trying to work out the specific events that take place in the brain when a person is hypnotized, plus the reasons as to why an individual gets hypnotized.
The clinical explanations are still missing, but one can always get to see what a person who is put under hypnosis does, and the way he or she reacts. The exact reasons as to why the hypnotized person does what he does offers no medical explanation.
Psychiatrists possess a general knowledge of hypnosis nature, along with an obscure theory of its working. Hypnosis is viewed as a state experienced by the hypnotized person, whereby the individual becomes prone to suggestibility, experiences intensive relaxation, and has his or her creative imagination highly ignited.
A hypnotized person is actually wide awake during the period of being in the state of hypnosis. A better description for this, is a mentality that every individual experiences every day, for example while reading a book, or driving a car, or watching television, etc.
In all of the above mentioned instances the person is in a conscious state of mind, but gets irresponsive to every other stimulus the individual is flooded with. The individual is so intensely focused on the current action that any different idea is negated.
People who find themselves hypnotized feel perfectly relaxed and forget their inhibitions. This is basically the identical mental state you'd be in while you are watching a movie. When watching a movie, it holds your undivided focus, and all of your problems are momentarily ignored. When the movie has your undivided attention, you enter the mental state of suggestibility, and this particular mental state makes you prone to certain ideas, or plots described in the films.
Similarly, hypnotists often use the suggestible nature of these subjects under hypnosis to provoke humor. Subjects will forget their inhibitions and play antics which they otherwise would not have dared to execute.
Such shows designed by hypnotists are very engaging because of this. There are numerous methods that a hypnotist could make use of to hypnotize their subject. Amongst the most common tactics hypnotists use is the eye fixation method and the progressive relaxation technique.
In the first method, the hypnotist forces the person to pay attention to an object in a really intense way, and supplements the subject's focus with discussion which puts the individual right into a state of extreme relaxation.
In the second approach the hypnotist converses with the subject using a peaceful and slow-moving voice hence causing the person to focus, loosen up, and be fully hypnotized.
The outcome of hypnosis process is based on the will of the individual. So, the process of hypnotizing someone may be finished in minutes or it can go beyond thirty minutes or even more.
