Perpetual Change

Hypnosis

I bet I got everyone's attention with that title.

I went to a hypnosis conference last weekend in New Orleans (thank you kindly to my host, Jesse Gilley) put on by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (www.asch.net). It was fascinating. I am now trained to hypnotize. I hypnotized a few people at the conference. Anyone interested?

At the conference, amongst the shrinks and social workers, dentists and anesthesiologists, ob-gyn's and pediatricians, we learned about pain suppression and anxiety management. It served as a great cap to many skills and theories that we have discussed in classes this semester, but the most amazing thing (and there were many) was how apropos my analogy of the viscous subconscious was.

I would like to reframe it now in a new awareness. I think Freud had a long lasting effect on religating hypnotism to the sideline, (or sideshow, maybe; the ob-gyn trainer says that he wasn't very good at it), but he also instilled a concept of conscious and unconscious in our public consciousness, that I believe is faulty.

I do not think there is any such thing as consciousness. It is just the surface area of my thought jell-o. Sometimes stormy with white caps, and sometimes as serene as a still lake. Hypnosis allows us to dive deeper into the gel. I just don't understand why we maintain this idea of 'involuntary' actions of the unconscious, like reactions; I believe they are just actions deeper in the subconscious, but all voluntary, just as they are all self-driven (self-ish).

If ever you do decide to give hypnosis a shot, let me lay out some thoughts for you. This is all that hypnosis is, giving someone new thoughts to think about. It is a complex form of communication that makes the receivers comfortable with accepting the suggestions, but they always remain in control. Amnesia is unusual, and most often because you don't want to remember. Trance is common, even in our everyday life; it is only a focused attention. Anytime that you have ever 'zoned out' is when you have dived down into that subconsious leaving normal stimulus to flounder on the surface.

Ever driven your car somewhere, and not remembered what route you actually took, or if you locked your front door? You were diving into those bubbles somewhere below the surface, and nothing unusual on the surface made you divert your attention back to your consciousness

...but had there been a dog that ran out in front of the car, there you would be, fully aware of all that is going on around you.

That is re-awakening from a hypnotic trance.

posted by jjs @ 6:27 PM