People sometimes wonder if they can be hypnotized. Unbelievable but true - there are professional hypnotists and hypnotherapists today who seem to still believe that only a certain percentage of people can be hypnotized and teach this through their books, courses, websites, and seminars. The origin of these misconceptions can be traced to several scales of hypnotizability. Two of the most popular are the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales (created in 1959) and the Harvard Group Scales (created in 1962). Based on the tests conducted, the scientists involved in the creation of these hypnotizability scales concluded that 5% of people cannot be hypnotized and that only about 10% can experience deep trance phenomena such as auditory and visual hallucinations and the ability to remain deeply in hypnosis. With open eyes.
If you're not familiar with hypnotic phenomena, visual hallucinations can be "positive hallucinations" - if you happen to see something that doesn't belong in consensual reality; or "negative hallucinations" - when you can't see something that may be right in front of you. And it's good to remember that we often see what we expect. It works the same way with auditory hallucinations, which occur when what you are subjectively offer from consensual reality.
Now I want to ask you: Have you ever been looking for something, like your car keys, that were right in front of you, but you just couldn't see them? This is an example of a deep trance phenomenon called "negative hallucination". Of course, if you were looking for the keys, your eyes were most certainly open and, you were in a very deep trance by these hypnotizability scales. Did you feel like you were in a deep trance?
Or maybe you experienced someone calling your name, but it happened that you were so deeply immersed in other thoughts that you simply did not hear the person calling you. This often happens with children. They are so engrossed in playing "pretend games" that they lose awareness of the outside world for a while, or the outside world becomes part of their subjective reality. And that is hypnosis.
Let's look at a few more hypnotic phenomena:
Time Distortion - You experience time distortion when you subjectively experience the passage of time as if time is passing slower or faster than consensus time. In a way, because thinking up takes so much less time than doing it, you can accomplish more in your mind in less time than it would take to do an action physically. With your mind, you can be anywhere in an instant and with your mind, you can achieve anything in an instant.
We all have experienced when time seems to drag or fly. If you're just standing next to the pot waiting for the water to boil, or waiting in line at the bank or post office, time can seem to drag on almost forever. And when you are very busy or having fun, and you are immersed in something that you really don't want to end, it can seem to you that the time just flew away, and you wonder where it went?
Amnesia (forgetting something) is another hypnotic phenomenon. Have you ever done something or said something or someone said something to you, and you forget about it - even if the action happened just moments ago, in the middle of a conversation you were having? This naturally happens when you switch your attention to something unrelated immediately after taking an action. In no time, your mind will turn to some other topic, and you will forget what just happened.
When hypnotists want to create amnesia for what happened during a session using a conversational form of hypnosis, they use the same method that happens naturally. By the time you fully return to your normal consciousness, they will shift your attention to something else, and you will forget what just happened.
If you pay attention to experiences in your daily life, you will become aware of all sorts of naturally occurring hypnotic phenomena—even catalepsy. Catalepsy occurs when a part of the body acts as if it is frozen in space, rigid, usually in some unusual position, and for a while you are not even aware of that part of the body. Perhaps there was a time when you were so deeply engrossed in the contemplation of some thought that when you returned your attention to the outside world, you were surprised to find that perhaps your arm was floating in front of you, or merely placed in some position, perhaps raised towards your face and, you didn't even notice when it happened.
And maybe you had an experience where you went into another room looking for something, but on the way to the room, your thoughts shifted to something else, and when you got into the room, you couldn't remember what you were doing there? Now you may be beginning to realize that all these different hypnotic phenomena involve some form of mental distraction – your body may be doing one thing, simply programming your subconscious mind to take a certain action, and your mind may be thinking something else. If you are mentally elsewhere, of course, you are not aware of what is happening to your body and experience all sorts of hypnotic phenomena.
Analgesia and anesthesia are two other hypnotic phenomena. Maybe you've had a headache or experienced some other pain, and then something happened that absorbed your attention—maybe you had an interesting phone conversation or watched an interesting movie, maybe a comedy on TV—and for a while, you were completely pain-free. You were completely unaware of any sensations in your body – and your eyes were wide open the entire time.
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