Hypnosis for awareness and change
Hypnosis, you stay in it if you look for the answer outside yourself. You get out when you find the answer within yourself. Everyone is in hypnosis. You may be thinking right now that that's not possible at all. Are you reading that everyone is in hypnosis, unbelievable
But when it comes to the definition of hypnosis, a lot of people have some really, really strange ideas about it. You might too, if you’re reading this blog. Maybe you’re thinking, “Doesn’t that mean you’re completely out of it? Doesn’t that mean you lose all your consciousness? Doesn’t that mean you’re at the mercy of the hypnotist, or all sorts of crazy things like that?”
What people think is just not true.
If we are just going to approach it very scientifically, in other words: How does this work in the brain? Then we see that children from 0 to 7 are in the state of hypnosis. If we compare brain scans of people who are in deep hypnosis with those of children, they are similar.
So that means everyone has been in hypnosis at some point anyway. Now you're thinking, but didn't you say everyone is hypnosis?
First, let it dawn on you that you were in hypnosis as a child anyway. Whether you believe it exists or not. Whether you say you can't be in hypnosis, that is so not true. Because you have been able to do it once and when you have been able to do something you can always do it.
So the whole thing of believing or not believing is really not even relevant.
Brain activity and hypnosis
The brain activity, brain waves of children, are identical to those of people in hypnosis.
There are a number of types of brain waves.
Gamma waves, then you are very focused.
Betá waves, then you're a little busy, it's a little hyperactive. That's where many people spend most of their time. 93% of the time you're in that betá wave.
Alpha waves, then you are relaxed. This is part of meditation, relaxing, musing nice and relaxed. Most people are not often in this, but of course there are exceptions.
Then you have the theta waves. This is an even lower brain activity than the Alpha waves. This is about what you can imagine, your imagination. That's also where you get the insights from. Just before you fall asleep, or just before you wake up. It's also the dream state, then you can get those insights or when you're just lying on the couch or something. It's also the state of hypnosis[1].
The delta is even lower brain activity there are mostly babies in there, or if you are sleeping very deeply.
What you unconsciously learn in childhood
Children are in theta; deep hypnosis is theta. In that state, you’re completely open to suggestions. You simply take in everything you see, hear, smell, feel, or taste, and you make sense of it. And from the ageof 8 onward, you’ve been doing that all the time—until now.
Now you may be thinking, Yes, but I learned a bit more after that. Happy and true, but learning afterward was harder.
Maybe you still remember your first driving lesson. It involved a lot of repetition—repeat, repeat, repeat, and repeat—until you got it right, and that’s still how you do it today. You learn through repetition, and you have to put in quite a bit of effort. As a child, you learn more effortlessly because you’re in that theta state.
You then have no critical thinking, of course even with repetition, but it is unconsciously stored better.
Think about talking, walking, reading, eating, anything you do unconsciously automatically now.
But they also offer programs such as: “I’m not good enough, ” “I’m worthless, ” and “I never do anything right.” Programs addressing “people-pleasing ” or “aggression” as a way to get things done—and you’re still doing that.
Go ahead and unlearn that.
And then if you spend 93% of the time doing those unconscious programs, what you've unconsciously learned. 93% of the time predictably engaged, according to studies. Then 93% of the time we're sitting around doing what we used to be taught. How we used to be hypnotized.
Not everything, of course. But between 0-8 years, your parents and environment passed on everything. School even more and then adolescence, even more. So you're still in that hypnosis.
So who are you? That's kind of interesting, who are you when you are yourself?
So the statement everyone is in hypnosis is actually accurate. Who is out of hypnosis? Now if you think you have always done your own thing. Never looked to the masses. You are separate from the system, but then what is the system and the mass. Your idea about that and that you are separate from it is also a form of hypnosis.
No matter which way you go, you always end up in some kind of hypnosis. And that's fine. For example, I live differently now than I did in my previous hypnosis of addicted construction worker. I'm happily out of that and now I'm in a hypnosis that works for me.
It's all fairly doable.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/852967-iedereen-is-in-hypnose
Unlearning unconscious programs
At some point you may notice that certain strategies you have in place to achieve goals in life are not helping. For example, if you have unconsciously learned that aggression helps and you still lose all your friends and life partners as a result, that is surely a sign that you have an unhelpful unconscious program.
Just as I had the epiphany that my addicted builder hypnosis was not helping me move forward in my life, you too can realize that what you are doing now is just not really helping. This realization alone is enough because it means you want to change too.
But how do you go about unlearning those unconscious programs.
As mentioned above, children learn very quickly in the theta state, and so you achieve that state with hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can therefore help you very quickly add information to an unconscious program that allows you to transform it and interpret it in a different way.
This can transform your entire subconscious habits or programming, allowing you to easily change your behavior. For example, you might become more peaceful in situations where you would normally have resorted to aggression. You might become brave instead of fearful.
So you very quickly change your "normal" behavior to new "normal" behavior. You create your new hypnotic state in which you live a life where you do move forward.
Hypnosis helps on a variety of levels
Hypnosis can offer a solution to all kinds of problems. For example, it is used to overcome addictions (for which I am still grateful every day), to lose weight, to quit smoking, to treat alcoholism, to reduce pain, to treat warts, and even to manage asthma[2].
Many of these kinds of problems are related to subconscious programs. Addictions are usually a program that tries to numb your pain. Emotions also often play a major role in weight loss, and food, for example, can be used to suppress negative emotions.
You may have seen how your parents dealt with negative emotions and because you learned everything quickly, this was like a "lesson" on how to deal with them.
One hypnosis technique that helps change these kinds of “lessons” from childhood is regression. This technique receives a great deal of attention in the training program at the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands. With this technique, you go back to the very first moment when you believed that a certain problematic habit was the “solution” to achieving something in your life.
Then, with the help of the hypnotist, you revisit this moment. Because in the meantime you have indeed learned new things, but they have not necessarily been added to your unconscious program. You are going to do just that now. You are going to empathize with the people around you at that moment and why they did what they did. You are going to think of how they could have reacted as well, maybe even how you could have reacted. You might even place your adult self in the situation to change the whole thing.
You do this with your imagination. Because for your brain and for changing that lesson, it doesn't matter at all. You don't have to repeat new behavior in "real" life first in the theta state to change it in the long run. No, you change the information from the lesson.
With this, you change your beliefs and this can then very quickly influence your behavior to the point where you no longer do addiction. Stop eating too much unhealthy food, stop smoking and tackle other problems differently than usual.
Would you like to know what it’s like to be under hypnosis—even without undergoing therapy—and how you can put people into a hypnotic state? Then come to a hypnosis workshop. The workshops are held in Wormerveer and Zwolle.
Would you like to learn more about what hypnosis can do and how you can help people feel better through hypnosis? Then come to a seminar.
Would you like to get started right away and learn more about techniques for changing subconscious programs? Then sign up for one of our courses. The courses are held in Wormerveer, Zwolle, and online.
[1] http://jurnal.unpad.ac.id/jiif/article/view/20620
[2] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1982-12762-001