How to Hypnotize Someone...Does it really work?

www.wikihow.com...

An easy guide on how to Hypnotize someone, it seems we are all able to go into a trance state, just hypnotist are the guides to that state.

Its risen to the stage that its used in breaking habits, finding solutions to deep seeded problems, regressing, all don't necessary work, but its as common as going to the dentist these days, but does it really put that person in a state where you can tell them, "act like a chicken" etc.
And the person relates the experience as doing what he was told, and only feeling embarrassed once out of the trance, can the above link really give someone that power over the mind.

Here is a link to group hypnotism as i was describing, or are they just actors??

www.youtube.com...

They are told they are body builders.....


Oh and obviously, if anyone has been hypnotised and can describe the experience, humorous or for medical reasons etc, please share your thoughts...

One of the warnings from the first link is funny but probably quite serious.

Remember to remove awkward suggestions (such as having the subject imagine he is a chicken) before awakening him or her.

[edit on 15-12-2006 by Denied]

Anyone have an interest in this subject?
Been Hypnotized themselves, or have an opinion on it?

Hi Denied.

I went to a hypnotist to try and stop smoking. It soon became apparent that, unlike most people, even when I was in a deep trance I was aware of what the hypnotist was doing, and questioned him about it when I came out of trance, so he suggested I learn more about hypnosis.

He taught me self-hypnosis and also how to hypnotise others. Self-hypnosis is a fantastic skill and can be used in almost any situation to calm oneself and relax. Just make sure you know how to bring yourself out of a trance - otherwise you can find yourself stuck in a trance for 6-8 hours!

Hypnotising others is something that takes several years of training. You have to be very very careful what you say or you can cause people some very terrible problems. I am able to put someone into a deep trance, but I don't do it because I don't feel I have the necessary skill.

I do however use hypnotism to a degree if someone is hurt or distressed. I just talk to them and relax them to relieve pain, and even if someone is very confused its possible to take them down just enough that they are able to work out their own solution without putting any suggestions in their mind.

And did it stop me smoking?

No. But then if I had really wanted to stop at that time I wouldn't have needed a hypnotist, I would have just quit.

Fascinating.
So the idea of being completely under the instruction of the hypnotist is false?

I think it's a crock.
I was hypnotised years ago by two different psychologists. I had gotten hurt badly coming out of a relationship and needed some help in trying to bury the past.
It didn't work. It was actually quite laughable in retrospect. I remember thinking, "I can't believe I'm actually sitting through this. This is ridiculous." It didn't put me into a trance or help me with any of my problems. I just went along with it so I didn't embarrass the doctors (it was their idea).
I don't believe in it.....I think it's a load of bull. Either that or I'm just one of those people who cannot be hypnotised.

Well, yes and no.

Some people are difficult to hypnotise, so you would probably only achieve a light trance in which they would have some resistance to what you were telling them.

Ten percent of the population are known as "deep trance subjects", which means that they are easily hypnotised and will go into a very deep trance.

When you watch a stage show such as the one in your link, the warm up guy will have gone out on stage and performed some very simple routines that would have shown very clearly who the deep trance subjects were. So when the hypnotist gets out there, he knows exactly who to pick to come up on stage.

I've seen magicians and the like use hypnosis in there shows and pass it off as magic.

With hypnotism, even with a deep trance subject, you can't get someone to do something that goes against their conscience. However if you gave a Jewish person a bacon sandwich and told them it was a cheese sandwich, they would eat it. So an unscrupulous hypnotist can get away with a lot.

My husband is a deep trance subject which makes him quite vulnerable to suggestion from a lot of people in particular salesmen. I taught him self hypnosis and the mechanics of it to help him learn a little resistance.

The only time I ever really played around with it was one night with my husband when I put him into a deep trance, then told him it was very warm in the room and he had to do whatever he needed to make himself comfortable. So he took off his clothes and threw them in a corner. I brought him round gently, and he was laying on the floor very chilled and relaxed when he suddenly realised he was naked. He jumped up in a panic and ran around trying to find some clothes, until I pointed him to the corner where he threw them! You really do have to be very careful with this!

Cheers

He jumped up in a panic and ran around trying to find some clothes, until I pointed him to the corner where he threw them! You really do have to be very careful with this!

So in that case he was under your spell so to speak.
Unlike the poster above you, your husband really did "go under" ??

Yeah, I've seen it work, though it seems to only work on certain personality types. It doesn't work on me for instance. Then again, advertising doesn't really work with me that much either. I guess my anti-commercial upbringing gave me some sort of immunity. Good.

Hey folks!

I've taken 5 Years of Psychology. Hypnosis is real, but it's NOT what people think it is. What we're talking about is a concept called Subliminal Suggestion!

You can't actually control someone with hypnosis like you see in movies and cartoons. What you do is help the person relax into a semi-consious state 1/2 way between being awake and asleep. At that point they can hear and take in information and also access their subconsious. At that point, you can often manipulate people to a limited degree because they aren't really thinking about what you are telling them. However, you can NOT use it to get someone to say or do something they are oppose to!

Tim

Originally posted by Ghost01
However, you can NOT use it to get someone to say or do something they are oppose to!

Tim

So what about those group hypnotism stage shows?
Surely they do not want to do those embarrassing things they get them to do?

Originally posted by Denied
So what about those group hypnotism stage shows?
Surely they do not want to do those embarrassing things they get them to do?

This stuff is an Act! What you are talking about is usually part of a magic show. What you are seeing is actually something called Group Mentality. This is something psychologist have been exploring for years. When placed in a large group, most people will fallow the collective will of the group without really thinking about it.

Remember, Magic is the art of creating Illusions

Tim

Interesting to see so many misconceptions about the state that we call hypnosis.

It's not necessarily a good thing to be unhypnotizable, regardless of how you feel about it. The ability to be hypnotized "deeply" is a sign of a particularly good imagination, and a higher level of intelligence. It's not a sign of weak mindedness or something to be particularly proud of. Anyway, most people, even those who are unhypnotizable (those with a low IQ or some other mental aberration) do go in and out of the hypnotic state rather frequently.

The hypnogogic state, if you will, is a state that the average person goes into and out of, oh probably, a thousand times a day. It's simply an "altered" or directed state of focused concentration. Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist and probably one of the greatest, most effective, clinical hypnotists to ever live used a method of misdirection and constant changing of the focus of the client's conscious to achieve the altered radical and relaxed state that we often associate with hypnosis. Dr. Erickson had been a victim of polio, and several other diseases in his youth. He did not use the techniques that are so often associated with "stage" hypnosis. As a matter of fact, his voice was almost as irritating as his methods, both of which, worked exceedingly well.

Hypnosis does not depend on dim lights, soft music, whirligigs, candles or other paraphernalia to be effective. As I said, you go into and out of the state a bunch of times a day. It's simply an altered level of consciousness, like driving somewhere and not remembering how you got there, or when someone is talking to you while you are reading, watching TV, of some such, and you don't hear a word. It is very easy to take someone who has that level of focus into, what most hypnotist call, a "deep" trance state.

Insofar as doing things against your will under hypnosis ... Well, yes ... and ... no. For further insight I would suggest that, if you are truly interested, you read the rather dry, yet greatly enlightening books on clinical hypnosis and its capabilities, by a man named Dr. William S. Kroger. But only if you are truly interested, as they are quite clinical, quite dry, quite detailed and quite expensive. Doctor Kroger did extensive work in hypnosis for the military and the US Government with some curious, yet very interesting outcomes.

Regarding simply sitting there and saying, "I'm not hypnotized and this is rubbish"... The hypnotist that did it was obviously not sure enough or possibly was "too" sure of him/herself. A good technical hypnotist or clinician will always leave the client with something that indicates that something about them was altered. Most often, but there are others, a time compression or expansion demo will do nicely. Some others are a direct post-hypnotic suggestion to do something inappropriately silly, like take off your shoes and put them on the other feet; something in the way of a negative suggestion, such as, you won't be able to see your watch for five minutes after you are brought out of the state. Those types of things are relatively easy to do and can be assuring to the client that something "different" has happened.

Clinical hypnosis does not always work in the standard therapeutic modality such as is used by standard hypnosis clinics, or some therapists (psychologists and the like) who do not consider it a primary tool and use it often enough to be totally familiar with all the ins and outs, and it's capabilities. Here- I would suggest you read material by Drs. Erickson, and Kroger for further illumination. And just as an aside on that subject, Freud was known to have studied therapeutic hypnosis in France, but was unable to achieve the levels of therapy he wanted, and so ... He invented his associational therapy modalities... Was he simply an inept clinical hypnotist? MMmmmm... Could be.

So meditation is a form of self hypnosis?
I do know people who have used meditative techniques to help them deal with difficult situtions and even to help them cope with quitting smoking. But I looked at that as more a calmative effect that any kind of auto-suggestion.

Does anyone have any info on how brain waves are affected by hypnosis? Is it similar to brain activity during sleep? I am particuarly interested in claims of past life memories, could these be dreams if the subconscious is active during hypnosis?

Originally posted by ilandrah
So meditation is a form of self hypnosis?
I do know people who have used meditative techniques to help them deal with difficult situtions and even to help them cope with quitting smoking. But I looked at that as more a calmative effect that any kind of auto-suggestion.

Does anyone have any info on how brain waves are affected by hypnosis? Is it similar to brain activity during sleep? I am particuarly interested in claims of past life memories, could these be dreams if the subconscious is active during hypnosis?

I kept the whole quote to address all the points. Meditation, by definition, a controlled, altered state of mental focus, pretty much falls under the purview of a hypnotic state. Don't try to over-dramatize the mental states that a person can achieve. All it takes is an awareness of what the capabilities of the human mind are, and a keen interest in delving into and using them.

We tend to limit ourselves with labels, in this example, meditation. Most folks, when you say the word, meditation, see a bald headed fellow in saffron robes sitting in a lotus position, arms across his knees, eyes closed, constantly chanting, "Ooooommmmm" or some such. That, simply, is a method for achieving a directed, altered, focused state of concentration. I, personally, know people who use this state and direct it for desired outcomes, but not always using the meditation paradigm I described above.

The brainwave activity is totally different from natural sleep. That is one of the really common mis-perceptions of hypnosis. It has nothing to do with sleep as I understand it. (And I do love to sleep).... The general hypnotist model that most everyone, who is a hypnotist uses, includes lots of allusions to sleep, relaxation, and such, because, generally, that is the simplest set of reference that most people can easily understand. However, as I mentioned earlier, Dr. Milton Erickson, did standard hypnotic induction without referring to sleep directly, and his use of relaxation verbs, adjectives, and so on, was usually directly tied to observed client behavior or perceived modalities.

As a matter of fact, hooked up to an eeg machine, a person being monitored while in the hypnotic state, puts off the same wave patterns as a person, who is truly in the midst of making love. All the more reason to be in the state.

Regarding past life regression. I have used that modality a number of times for therapeutic outcomes. I have also, on a couple of occasions, used it in investigation with verifiable facts being found. However, that, in and of itself, does not cause me to believe that a person who is the subject, really lived before... There are far too many other variables that come into play, from a clinical standpoint, to stand here and say that if you found through hypnosis that you had a previous life as a slave in Rome, that it actually occurred that way.

As a side note, someone mentioned above that only 10% of people can go into a truly deep state. First of all, the depth of the state of the trance (for want of a better word) is immaterial. Most all phenomena that can be induced in a supposed deep state are imminently demonstrable in a "light" state. Secondly, that 10% saw has been around for years. Someone said it, authoritatively, and everyone else in the wonderful world of hypnosis has been saying it for generations. In fact, if a person is able to be induced to hypnosis, at all, then she/he can be taken directly to any stage that is demonstrable. There are only two sets of limitations in hypnosis, those of the hypnotist, and those of the hypnotized. The rest if flummery, and filler for people who are paying for a class, or buying a book.

Hope this helps a bit. Please feel free to ask more if you wish, or you can certainly feel free to u2u me.

Dan

Sure hypnotism works...
The mass of society is hypnotized by something.

Consider this, we are, for the most part, what are milieu is.
And thats not bad, but our milieu is heavily influenced by media...
Notice how Bono of U2 was "knighted", and all the entertainers are knighted by the Queen.

This is actually powerful, and not some weak thing as some think.
They are truly knights, without swords, but they work for the queen to help keep society within a certain thought process and pattern. In a sense, they are more dangerous than knights with swords, as some of them seem to fight the establishment that they actually work for...keeping checks through duality...(not that duality is bad...but some will get the point.)

so yes, you can, and probably are hypntoized if you cant make your own free choices...

Peace

dAlen

Hypnosis huh ?? funny thing hypnosis.........some fall for it so fast while others can take awhile to hypnotize.......as for me it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to hypnotize me ever !! I have had many attempts by others to hypnotize me and all have failed miserably !! My guess is that there are those whom it cannot be done to......which would include me.


Anyone else out there who cannot be hypnotized ??

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas as to why I cannot be hypnotized ??

I am curious as to why I am like that.....

.
In response to the OPs request that people share their experience of hypnosis:

Several years ago I attended an hypnotist who worked from home. He was American, in his senior years. We chatted for several minutes after my arrival and he told me he'd worked for NASA during the late 60s and through the 70s. He said he'd known Velikovsky and also the man who wrote 'Someone is on Our Moon'.

I noticed a large crucifix on the wall above his desk. He said it provided reassurance for certain clients/patients. He was an interesting and seemingly intelligent person.

On the wall facing the couch was an old-fashioned appearing 'hypnotic' spiral device, fitted, from what I could see, to a room-fan mechanism. I asked if he believed this was a necessary element to hypnosis or basically a 'prop' as some people may believe was necessary? He smiled and said it was the latter; some people base their belief in hypnosis on movies, books, etc. (I enjoyed the spiral device. I like spinning-tops, too.)

The hypnotist asked me to settle comfortably. When I'd done so, he asked me to tell him the time. I looked at my watch and told him the time. He asked me to remember it.

Then, he began intoning verbal suggestions such as I was feeling relaxed; my eyelids were becoming very heavy, very heavy, so heavy I needed to close them. And so on. At some point during this period he asked me to raise my arm and then suggested it was becoming very heavy, very heavy, so heavy I simply could not hold it up any longer. Etc. Simple stuff.

Seemingly moments later, I became dimly aware of his voice, after which I opened my eyes. I looked towards him and said: ' Is that it?' He nodded.

We spoke for a moment or so, during which I commented to the effect that the hypnotic procedure was a brief one. Which led to his asking me how long I believed it had been since he'd asked me to tell him the time.

I said that at a guess, I would estimate it to be no more than 3 to 5 minutes ago.

The hypnotist asked me if I remembered what time I'd given him when he'd asked. I said: " It was 3.15 ".

He asked: " And what time is it now? "

I checked my watch again, expecting to discover it was 3.25 at most.

To my surprise, I instead discovered it was 4.20. I had been 'under' for slightly more than one hour ! I was stunned.

When I asked the hypnotist if this was the usual time taken for the procedure, he said not often. He said I had 'gone very deep'. I should add that he took my pulse rate both prior and after the hypnotic induction and said he had done so throughout.

The hypnotist in question wrote a weekly column in the local newspaper, featuring a different case (names withheld) in each edition. His services were used quite often by local doctors and dentists. Based on this and on the contents of his column, I had formed the impression that he was an ethical person. I feel the trust I had in him played considerable role in my experience.

Prior to my departure, we chatted for a few minutes and he briefly indulged my curiosity. He said that despite sensationalistic reports of reincarnation, he remained unconvinced. He told me that several months earlier, he'd been summoned by several psychiatrists who believed they'd discovered an authentic case of 'past life'. The hypnotists travelled to the city as requested and was introduced to a man who was believed to be the reincarnation of an English sailor from the late 1700s. The hypnotist told me the man was hypnotically regressed, at which point he began thrashing around in apparent agony. When asked to describe his surroundings, the man -- speaking in English dialect complete with 'sailor' terms and language of the 1700s era --- began graphically describing a hand-to-hand battle with sailors from a French warship.

The man screamed in agony and said his leg had been slashed by a cutlass. He described the canon-fire and slaughter all around him, etc. The psychiatrists, according to the hypnotist, were utterly convinced the man was re-living dramatic events of his previous life as a sailor. They were very excited. The hypnotist however, remained unconvinced. He brought the man out of the trance and made an appointment for the following week.

The following week, the hypnotist again hypnotically-regressed the man and once more, the man began describing dramatic details of his life as a sailor several hundred years earlier. Once again, the psychiatrists were utterly convinced and again recorded what they felt was a genuine case of reincarnation. The hypnotist said that after suggesting to the man that he return to an early, calmer period of his life as a sailor, he placed a length of rope in the man's hands and suggested he perform a series of knots with it, whilst still in his previous life as a sailor.

The man was unable to perform any knot that should have been second-nature for even a basic seaman of any era.

The gathered psychiatrists accepted that the man before them was not a genuine case of reincarnation, although he had not necessarily been faking his performance; very possibly he had absorbed sailors vocabulary and dialect, details of battles, etc. from movies, books, tv, etc. and these had emerged while he was hypnotised.

The hypnotist told me there was however, one case of seeming reincarnation which (as far as he was aware) had not been debunked. This concerned the movie-actor Glenn Ford, who apparently began speaking in an unknown language whilst hypnotised. After many months (possibly years) it was revealed that Ford had been speaking in a dead/extinct French dialect from hundreds of years earlier in a small, specific region in France. A language scholar had finally identified it. Ford was apparently very disturbed by this information.

Finally, no other therapist/hypnotist has been able to successfully hypnotise me. I feel they lacked training or technique.

A Time Line therapist however, produced in me some very interesting experiences, though I was awake, open-eyed and seated upright at the time. I remain quite fascinated by the Time Line technique and would recommend it for those nervous about undergoing standard hypnosis.

wow Dock6, interesting stuff

As for the question, can it actually work ? I believe so, yes.

I too went to stop smoking, and it worked... for 2 months, until I left my home city and country and flew back to Japan. Then I regressed
I am very uncomfortable in Japan and believe that has alot to do with it. I truly believe if I had stayed home, surrounded by what I am used to and know I would have been successful.

I also agree that being hypnotized cannot make one do something they are opposed to. But I was SO ready to quit smoking and felt great, until I left and came back here.

My sister, who went along with me and was also hypnotized to quit smoking, and who is still living life as she was at the time, has not picked up a cigarette since.

This has led me to wonder if circumstances such as this have a any affect on the success rate in each individual ? Anybody have any views on this ?




[edit on 28-12-2006 by ImJaded]

So in some sense you "were under" his hypnotic spell, or you had created it yourself.
Either way, it worked!?

Unless its something you have been through i don't think anyone can say its BS?

Anymore ATS'ers been successfully Hypnotised?

sigung86, an interesting theory.

As a matter of fact, hooked up to an eeg machine, a person being monitored while in the hypnotic state, puts off the same wave patterns as a person, who is truly in the midst of making love. All the more reason to be in the state.

Have you a source/link for this? did you mean ECG?
It would raise more questions than answers.

[edit on 28-12-2006 by Denied]

I saw a hypnotist years ago, I only had one session because I kept giggling throughout. I think it was probably nerves on my part but I felt quite awake and did not experience any change or time lapse.

I am quite a shy person when in group situations and public speaking is a real nightmare. My nerves take over and I can not think straight.
I have some presentations coming up so I bought a CD that aims to build confidence.
I had little faith but surprisingly after listening a couple of times I would fall asleep yet wake up at the precise moment the recording told me to wake.
I dont yet know if my confidence has improved, I have a presentation mid-January. Think it's time to do some more listening.
Depending how my presentation goes I will know how well it has worked or not!