Hypnosis is that easy to learn?
I often get asked if hypnosis is easy to learn, and I always give the same answer. Most people don't even know exactly what hypnosis is so it is often much more important to get that clear first. Because how can you start learning something when you don't even know exactly what to start learning.
Learning hypnosis is quite easy
First, let's start at the beginning. Hypnosis comes from the word "hypnos" meaning sleep, and that's where the first wrong idea about hypnosis immediately creeps in. In fact, hypnosis is not sleep, but many people think it is.
Because they think:
- That they are completely away
- That they have no control
- That they can't just get out
The above ideas come from a wrong idea which has become imprinted as hypnosis you might say. The word has misled you. It is not sleep, you are not "gone," you do not lose control and you can always get out if you would like because you have control.
This is hard for many people to believe. These see the hypnotist with eyes that compel, snapping his fingers and turning the person on stage into a rag doll with which he can do whatever he wants. It seems that way, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Is that person really in the power of the hypnotist? Is he really doing all those things against his will? Does the hypnotist have special powers or gifts?
Well ... people want to believe that and the hypnotist goes along with that expectation....
History of hypnosis
Hypnosis has existed since James Braid launched the term to break away from Mesmerism. After all, Franz Anton Mesmer had been exposed as a charlatan and Braid preferred not to be associated with him.
Now it turns out that Mesmer did have some interesting ideas that worked well and hence we also offer the mesmerism training now.
Two movements emerged from mesmerism, hypnosis and spiritualism. The first current is interesting to me, but as you can see it also says spiritualism. Many people also often have the idea that hypnosis is just that, a form of spiritism.
With hypnosis, you are not talking to angels or guides, you are not doing paranormal work, nor does it have much to do with spirituality. It goes more towards science than spirituality. Also, many people still think otherwise.
This is because spiritualism and hypnosis both stemmed from mesmerism, so there is a common denominator. Mesmerism you could say is the vehicle and hypnosis and spiritualism are different vehicles. One is a bicycle and the other the car and you know that differs quite a bit.
Hypnosis of the past century
From 1900 to 2000, many myths have crept in such as:
- The hypnotist has the power and can make me do whatever I want
- I start doing weird things against my will
Ideas like this have come about thanks to show hypnosis. Too bad, of course, and that's why you can't take show hypnosis training with us. We don't want people to get the wrong idea about hypnosis and therefore only give trainings that are professionally designed and last a little longer so that trainees know exactly what they are doing and what it is.
However, when you are a hypnotherapist in addition to being a show hypnotist, you can educate people during a show as some hypnotists do and I certainly applaud that. I myself do the same but then a show is the vehicle to properly educate people about what hypnosis is now. And not purely for entertainment because that gives the wrong idea.
In the last century, a number of names have been very important to hypnosis and hypnotherapy. They were Milton Erickson and Dave Elman. Hence, their techniques are also both found in our hypnosis training programs. After all, that belongs in a thorough education.
Erickson and Elman
Erickson and Elman disagreed , to say the least, which is what makes it so interesting now. Erickson believed that you should let the client decide how, when and how deep to go into hypnosis. On the contrary, Elman said that the client should follow exactly the instructions from him and then the client will go into deep hypnosis just fine within 5 minutes.
Both are right. What you encounter in practice is that some people need to make up their own minds and some people need you to give clear and direct instructions because they like it. There are two types of people namely.
When you only master 1 method it becomes very difficult to work with that other group of people who need something different.
So is hypnosis easy?
If you make it very simple then you can create hypnosis in 1 step. Only then is it good to know what hypnosis is. You now know what it is not, but what is it.
When you go into a different state of consciousness that is already a form of hypnosis. So you have that very often. When your imagination is activated you go into hypnosis.
So if you were to ask yourself the question, "What would it be like if my hand got lighter right now? And you ask yourself that really really well then your hand gets lighter and you go into hypnosis....
Just do it and when it starts to work, what more can you delude yourself ;-)