Hypnosis, Day Dreams and Sleep

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Question

How is hypnosis different from the sleeping state?

and what is the relation between the two?

Attempting hypnosis, I once went into a state which is similar to dreaming in which my mind wanders rapidly without the guidance of my consciousness. I was wondering whether I was simply drifting off into sleep or whether I was actually in an effective state of hypnosis.

Surfing the web, I also discovered that many of the inductions for hypnosis are similar to those used for meditation and am wondering also how those differ as well.

My Answer:

Hi George

Day dreaming is day dreaming and hypnosis is hypnosis. I'm afraid anyone who thinks they are both the same doesn't have any idea what at least one of them is.

You cannot hypnotise yourself. I know 'self-hypnosis' is a well known phrase but so is 'snake oil'. And I say that as a clinical hypnotist with nearly two decades experience who works both privately and also for the National Health Service here in the UK.

You see, I can hypnotise you and make you for get your name, but I cannot hypnotise me and make me forget my name. And if I, having done some 17,000 hypnotic inductions, cannot do self-hypnosis, who can?

By and large, the people who peddle 'self-hypnosis' are peddling 'self-relaxation' and it looks like that is what you experienced. It's called the hypnogogic state and it's something we all pass through more or less as we shift from being awake to being asleep. It has nothing to do with hypnotism or hypnosis.

As for the difference between hypnosis and sleep, well, I hope you really want to know :)

If you think of consciousness as a spectrum from being fully awake and alert to being fast asleep, then relaxation is something one passes through on the way. The passage is characterised by a reduction in three elements of awareness; ‘vigilance’, ‘selectivity,’ and ‘responsivity’. As a person becomes increasingly drowsy they stop anticipating expected stimuli, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to attend to specific, actual stimuli, and stimuli have to be very much stronger to elicit a response. Deep relaxation is, therefore, characterised by diminished alertness, a lack of specific attention, and inhibited responsiveness. (I’m not making this up. Donald Lindsey calls it the ‘activation continuum’.)

How many hypnotists ask that their hypnotee ‘concentrate on the sound of my voice’, demanding constant vigilance. How many times have we read that hypnosis is a state of heightened concentration on a single point, or ‘a mind locked around a single idea’. That is, a state of heightened selectivity. And how often do we use hypnosis to produce instant responses, even if only as tests? Every day.

So whilst relaxation is a state of reduced vigilance, selectivity and responsivity, hypnosis is the exact opposite; a state of increased vigilance, selectivity and responsivity.

On the other hand, stress (or, more accurately, an exaggerated and inappropriate expression of the stress response) is the result of innervation of the parasympathetic nervous system from the limbic structures in response to a perceived (real or imaginary, acute or chronic) threat. Reducing that stress (by inhibiting the response or diminishing the stimuli) doesn’t necessarily mean having to make the subject drowsy. That’s one way of doing it, but not the only way. There are plenty of cool, wide awake people going about their lives.

I suspect inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system is conducive to hypnosis, and may well be manifested in a reduction of physical tension. Any relaxation, however, that diminishes selectivity and responsiveness would appear to be, by definition, counter-productive to hypnosis.

I doubt either inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system or relaxation of the muscular-skeletal system results in hypnosis, though either or both may or may not be contemporaneous with hypnosis.

Let's stick with the simplest characteristic shared by sleep and hypnosis; responsivity.

The organism runs a default state of responsivity (from the reptilian/inner/unc~ brain/mind) which fluctuates up and down the arousal continuum from next to nothing while fast asleep during the night, to full on while wide awake during the day.

When the organism wishes to vary from the norm, it will do so by changing postsynaptic currents. If you want to wake up and get with it at three in the morning, your alarm clock will trigger an increase in the Excitatory Post Synaptic Currents (EPSCs) sparking all sorts of processes, including responsivity, so that they overcome the default Inhibitory Post Synaptic Currents (IPSCs) and reach the axon threshold. Similarly, if there's nothing much doing at 14:00 and you decide to take advantage of some restorative, protein-building down-time, you'll increase the balance of IPSCs over EPSCs for the same variety of processes, including responsivity, and have a nap.

There is no natural continuum for hypnosis as far as I know. It is brought about deliberately, and is characterised by refined responsivity; that is an absence of responsivity to normally perceived stimuli and a heightened responsivity to the stimulus which is the hypnotist. That refinement is brought about by the different levels of EPSCs and IPSCs in various component systems of sleep and hypnosis.

The responsivity/selectivity/vigilance elements of the arousal continuum are not original thought on my part. They are taught components in the study of neuroscience, as are postsynaptic currents.

Hypnosis and day dreaming are neurologically different, having distinct characteristics in terms of responsivity, selectivity and vigilance. Day dreaming inhabits a specific location on the arousal continuum. Hypnosis is possible over a wide (and some would argue, the entire) span of the arousal continuum. You cannot be day-dreaming and fully alert, or fully asleep at the same time. You can be hypnotized and fully alert, or drowsy, or day dreaming. Day-dreaming is a degree of arousal. Hypnosis is not.

I'm sorry if that's more than you wanted to know.

Best wishes

Barry Thain
Clinical Hypnotist

Source(s):

http://www.mindsci-clinic.com
http://www.downloadtherapy.com
http://www.youtube.com/downloadtherapy