Jonathan Chase Theatre Hypnotist blog

Hypnotherapy describes, at least it should, hypnosis being used to dislodge ills. This constricts people using the title to look at just about everything as illness. I prefer the term hypnotist as this has no such limitations. More and more however hypnotherapy describes psychotherapy and psycho-analysis that sometimes doesn't even use hypnosis but the prefix looks good on the letterhead. Such therapists tend to use guided relaxation and visualisation of one sort or another, which often works perfectly well, but doesn't always lead to real hypnosis. These 'relaxation' techniques are not as rapid nor as intense an experience and people have often reported their disillusion that nothing really happened.

Errrrrrm, it's hypnosis demonstrated on stage as entertainingly as possible. The phrase 'dumb question' springs to mind. Hypnosis is hypnosis, stage is just a place. We don't say office hypnosis or living room hypnosis or swimming pool hypnosis. Stage hypnosis is usually most peoples first contact with the possibilities that our psyche gives us. Done well it releases restricted imaginative talents and allows the experience of altered realities in a safe and controlled place.

Against your will would mean against your deliberation. In that case yes, you can. A hypnotist has to be able to change your 'will'. If not your behaviour would not change. You can be hypnotised without your knowledge and consent which is what I think this question really means. That happens all the time. If it didn't you wouldn't have any beliefs or desires or emotional responses and you wouldn't need a hypnotist or some other form of help to get rid of the unwanted stuff. You can not be hypnotised against your disinterest or in most cases against your disbelief. Fortunately even the sceptic 'believes' in hypnosis, they just don't know it consciously.

No. At least not in the same way or as intensely as can a hypnotist. Although repetition of self suggestion can and does work over time, and relaxing deliberately is nice this is not the same as hypnosis. As hypnosis requires your conscious to be by passed then it should be obvious that this is not happening if you are directing your hypnosis using you conscious. And if you didn't use the conscious then the psyche is just left to it's own devices without any direction, so probably nothing would happen. Listening to recordings is also not self hypnosis, the hypnotist is directing things, not your conscious.

In accepted understanding the word describes a profound change in both psychological attention and physiological condition. In plainer language your conscious drifts off somewhere and certain predictable and observable changes happen to your body. Often, although by no means always, including relaxation. The thing to remember is that this is an induced state brought on as a reaction to suggestion. So trance is not hypnosis, just a symptom of it. One thing is certain, Hypnotically induced 'trance' has no real comparison in our experience other than when we are experiencing times of overwhelming emotion. Hypnotic trance certainly has nothing to do with the distraction experienced in daydreaming, the amnesia after traveling a familiar route or the disassociation we feel when getting lost in a good book. Hypnotic trance certainly has nothing to do with the distraction experienced in daydreaming, the amnesia after traveling a familiar route or the disassociation we feel when getting...

Of course you can, if the hypnotist tells you to. If you can do that without direction then you are not hypnotised. The fact is that this myth - which has grown from unsuccessful hypnosis replacing the real thing - wouldn't have been much use to the early hypnotists like James Braid who performed several thousand operations using hypnosis as the anaesthetic. Just imagine someone being able to walk away half way through an appendectomy. Messy.