Well, I was out in the virtual cold, barren wasteland for a few days and been unable to blog for a few days… Our new home has had issues getting our connection set up and so have my new offices… So I have sporadic access… Blimey, I am so reliant on having a good internet access!
Anyway, there has been lots going on and I have lots to catch up on in the coming days. So watch this space… Fascinating hypnosis discussion piqued my interest today:
This week I read (as I often do) a very interesting blog entry by Brian David Phillips, someone who continues to fly the flag globally for hypnosis and awareness of it and this particular hypnosis discussion really got me thinking…
Brian writes:
‘Recently, as always, there have been some discussions on various email lists I belong to about whether EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and the like is based upon hypnosis or suggestion or something else. Well, within the discussion, the position usually goes forth that pretty much anything is hypnosis and that we are hypnotized all the time without being aware of it via television commercials, politicians and the like.
While I agree that influence is all around us, personally, I prefer not to buy into the television or all influence should be considered hypnosis. By saying that commercials are hypnosis dilutes our ability to discuss hypnosis with any clear utility. I would strongly suggest, that while Hitler was very effective at social influence and he certainly used a number of what we might consider hypnotic operators within his propaganda machine, to characterize what he did merely as hypnosis or hypnosis merely as influence removes a great deal of utility from our ability to discuss “hypnosis” . . . personally (and this is a personal opinion so you are certainly free to disagree with me, and you will) I believe that not all bypass of the critical factor of the conscious mind should be considered hypnosis per se. However, we can certainly note the shared hypnotic operators that go into propaganda, commercials, and sales pitches or other forms of social influence.
If EVERYTHING or ALL INFLUENCE is considered hypnosis, then it makes it difficult to talk about Hypnosis as anything useful in and of itself or as a state or process that can be understood, quantified, and practiced beyond all that other stuff.‘
I am in some major agreeance with Brian here. Though you would not believe it to read my blog… Sometimes I do write about the hypnotic process in terms that I think help to articulate the understanding of hypnosis… So I might describe certain common elements of watching TV and being in ‘that kind of trance’ to help give people some understanding of hypnosis as a phenomenon and use it to educate in a way that is not simply showing hypnosis as a phenomenon that is used to make people do funny things…
You see, I like the idea of showing hypnosis to be a regular occurring phenomenon. And if it can be shown to be as frequent and commonly occurring as being influenced by TV ads, or being bewitched by Amy WHinehouse on stage, or feeling empassioned towards my football team or any other kind of loosely hypnotic experience, then I think that helps me to explain and newcomers to understand.
I agree that these types of likened experiences are not actually hypnosis, but they do have some common elements that can help our understanding and explanation… At least that is what I have found…
When people read my self-hypnosis book, they often ask me where I stand on the big debate “Is all hypnosis self-hypnosis” and that is usually stepped up to “well all the time we are awake, we are in some kind of trance then?” and although I tend to reply in the positive to that question… It is not trance or hypnosis as we truly recognise it professionally… It just helps to highlight degrees of receptivity or conscious awareness and so on…
Maybe I don’t give ‘people’ enough credit — Maybe they can actually think on more abstract terms, free from my real-life rudimentary examples? 😉
