HYPNOSIS DEFINED

Hypnosis, in the most general terms, is a heightened state of suggestibility. That’s what it is. Now there’s a normal state of suggestibility. People walk around in varying levels of suggestibility all the time. We’re more suggestible to professionals, with regard to the topic of their profession. We will just accept what they say, without rejecting it. If we’re in unique situations where we don’t know anything about it, we tend to be more suggestible to those who are in charge, and so on. So even in normal, waking consciousness, I don’t even like that word waking. In normal suggestibility, there’s varying levels of suggestibility, but hypnosis is a heightened state of suggestibility, where we purposely go from normal levels of suggestibility, to a heightened level of suggestibility.
Now, this is a really good definition, if we understand what suggestibility is. So, in order to define hypnosis, we need to define what suggestibility is, and what a heightened state of suggestibility is.
By the way, before I go on, what hypnosis is not; hypnosis is not sleep. We now understand that. We have some misnomers in the profession, and there are some techniques that are built around the concept of sleep. But we understand now that hypnosis is not sleep. If you use the word the sleep, it’s just shorthand. It’s just a signal that means, go deeply, relax with your eyes closed, as if you were asleep. But, we never want to confuse sleep with hypnosis, because hypnosis is a heightened state of suggestibility.
So what is suggestibility? How a person is able to accept suggestion, which varies according to one’s receptiveness at the time. So either you are receptive to suggestion, or non-receptive and reject suggestion. So at any time, in normal consciousness, we have varying levels of suggestibility. Then I go on to say, the greater the suggestibility that an individual is experiencing, the greater the effect that suggestions offered will effect that person’s perception of reality, including what she senses, such as, touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing.
So as we go from regular levels of suggestibility, which can have an effect on touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing, things can seem rougher if we believe they’re going to be rougher. We can think that smells are going to be stronger if we somehow expect them to be stronger, and so on.
But, in a heightened state of suggestibility, suggestions given by the hypnotist, can also affect habits, emotions, and behavior. In the highest levels of suggestibility, which would of course include hypnosis, and in these highest levels, they’re most commonly thought to be called somnambulistic levels of hypnosis, we can profoundly affect perceptions, including causing amnesia, anesthesia, and both positive and negative hallucinations.
So, there it is. That’s what I want you to think about when you think about hypnosis. If someone says, ‘What is hypnosis really?’ And you can just say, ‘Hypnosis is a heightened state of suggestibility.’ Human beings in the natural, normal, waking state are suggestible; but only so much, in the state of hypnosis, the varying degrees, depending on how deep they are in hypnosis, and particularly when we get into these profound levels of hypnosis, somnambulism, we can affect their beliefs, their habits, and emotions, which causes rapid change in people’s lives.