subject: Interesting Facts About Hypnotherapy [print this page] The word hypnosis is derived from the Greek term hypnos, which means, to sleep. Hypnotherapists utilize exercises that results in deep relaxation and achieving an altered state of consciousness otherwise known as going into a trance. Usually, a person who is in a deep and completely focused state becomes very responsive to an image or idea, but this does not necessarily mean that this person's free will and mind is being controlled by the hypnotist. What's more, a hypnotist can actually coach people into achieving their own individual state of awareness. Through this, a person can dictate their psychological responses and even bodily functions.
History of Hypnosis
Since time immemorial, ancient peoples and shamans have gone into trances during their religious ceremonies and rituals. However, hypnosis as we have come to understand it today was first related to the works of an Austrian doctor, Franz Anton Mesmer. During the 1700s, Mesmer was convinced that illnesses and disorders were the result of magnetic fluids found in the human body that have gotten into an imbalance. Mesmer used hypnotic techniques and magnets to treat people. Of course during this time the medical and scientific communities were not convinced. Mesmer's work was named as fraud, and the techniques he used were labelled unscientific.
Hypnotherapy became popular in the mid-1900s because of Milton H. Erickson. He was a successful psychiatrist who utilized hypnosis for his practice. In 1958, American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association acknowledged hypnotherapy as genuine medical procedure. In 1995, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommended that hypnotherapy is a valid treatment for conditions such as chronic pain. Hypnotherapy is also effective in treating substance addiction and anxiety.
When something occurs to a person, he or she recalls it and learns a specific behaviour which responds to what has occurred. Each time a similar occurrence takes place, that person's emotional and physical reactions linked to the memory of the occurrence are repeated. Sometimes, these reactions are considered unhealthy. In some types of hypnotherapy, a hypnotist guides a person to recall the occurrence that resulted in the original reaction. Then the hypnotist separates the learned behaviour from the memory, and substitutes new and healthier learned behaviours with the unhealthy ones.
Under hypnosis, the body is in a relaxed state and the thoughts get more deeply focused. Similar to other existing relaxation techniques and methods, hypnosis effectively lowers heart rates and blood pressures, and alters specific types of brain-wave activity. When a person is in a relaxed state, he or she is physically at ease, but fully alert mentally and thus, responds highly to suggestion. If a person wants to quit smoking for instance, the hypnotherapist uses suggestions to persuade that person that he or she will hate the taste and smell of cigarettes very soon. Some people are more responsive to hypnotic suggestion compared to others.
How Many Sessions Are Needed?
Each hypnotic session lasts for more or less an hour, and people usually see and feel the results after just one session. The patient and the hypnotist both evaluate and monitor the patient's progress. Children aged nine to twelve are easier to hypnotize and may respond to a first or second session.
