Jonathan Chase Theatre Hypnotist blog

Anything. Name a human emotional or even physical condition and chances are that someone somewhere has used hypnosis to alleviate or change it. Stress, the effects of trauma, both physical and emotional pain such as in childbirth, motivation, memory, breast and penis enlargement, health control and even time travel in the form of past life regression - are just a few that spring to mind. Even if hypnosis can't totally eradicate something it can and does go a long way in changing attitude and perception so that the bodies healing process can act with less interruption

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.

Is a scalpel dangerous in the hands of a surgeon? Hopefully no, because they recognize and understand what it is they are holding and take responsibility for its use. Hypnosis is no different. The state is not of itself harmful. That is just being hypnotised will not harm you, but to be hypnotised requires a hypnotist and with that comes responsibility. To declare that we can eradicate a phobia for instance and not use the exact same process to cause one would be very irresponsible, and just a little stupid. So the answer in truth is that hypnosis is no more dangerous than the person using it.

You are. Everyone uses Hypnosis and everyone becomes a Hypnotic subject at some time in their life. Parents, teachers and significant others all instill subconscious belief patterns either by direct subconscious communication or by repetition but always bypassing the critical logical conscious and delivering suggestion direct to the psyche. Everyone learns using this process. However some people have developed their expertise and enhanced their understanding of such communication skills to a point where they can deliberately and systematically use suggestions to produce specific effects in other human beings. These people are Hypnotists.

Very simply. No I don't mean that your mind is simple but the way hypnosis works is. It's direct communication with the illogical subconscious mind or more accurately the psyche, the seat of our desires, dreams, imagination, emotions, while bypassing the bit of us that we actually think we control - our logical conscious. When we communicate with the psyche, we can change the way it patterns the reality we live in. So a 'bad' pattern can become good as easily as those bad patterns formed in the first place. Once the pattern is changed the unwanted behaviour stops. Or a much better and more desirable behaviour begins.

Yes. But not at all like the usual explanations you are likely to read elsewhere. Hypnosis happens 'naturally' when we are in a state where logic goes flying through the window. Those times when afterwards you find yourself thinking 'Why did I say that?' and 'What the hell was I thinking of?' Such times are usually emotive, when you are scared, angry, or even head over heels in love or when we are children until our conscious logical mind is mature. These are times when our psyche is in control of things and can be influenced directly. These are the times when inappropriate patterns are formed such as phobias and inappropriate habits. Comparing day dreaming or the dissociation we experience when driving a familiar route to hypnosis, or when becoming immersed in a book or TV show, is like comparing my back yard with a smattering of snow in February to the Antarctic. Yes they may look similar but ...

To hopefully clarify a term that has come to describe an ever more complex and cumbersome tool of the psychotherapist.... Hypnosis is the art of producing changes in our mental patterning by the use of a sometimes deliberate act of communication and influence of the human emotional and belief patterning system achieved by reducing and / or redirecting the attention of the logical conscious process so that the psyche [subconscious] becomes directly contactable. Originally hypnosis was about the creation and delivery of SUGGESTION and it is impossible to hypnotise without suggestion. So much so that hypnosis and suggestion are much the same thing. That is they are the process of inducing a sensation, action or belief in a receptive person without direct persuasion and without giving rise to reflection or consideration in the mind of the recipient. In other words the suggestion is just accepted without thought. Hypnosis is not therefore relaxation, that is just the acceptance of the sugge...

As well as being able to hit top form on a consistent basis and maintain focus and energy, one of the most important assets for a sports performer is how long it takes to rest and recuperate between performances or even between exertions during a game or event. That is the time to get your physical and mental breath back. There is no doubt that attitude and emotional state plays a huge part in this process, just as it does with performance itself. With illness or injury and there are no doctors left who would not agree that a positively oriented person will heal far more quickly than someone who is stressed or worried. Hypnosis as a tool for attitude readjustment and emotional alignment is second to none. Concentration as well as directed enjoyment - that's getting the adrenaline and serotonin rushes so that we experience the emotional reward for effort - are easily achieved in minutes using suggestion. Using hypnosis focus relaxation helps the natural healing process to work bett...

Of course when you become hypnotised you don't actually Go anywhere. I've induced thousands of people and every last one of them stayed exactly where I put them initially, in fact more so thankfully. It would be bloody inconvenient to have to follow them around the block while I gave them suggestions. So they don't go, they become, and they more often than not do that in 60 seconds - or less. Nothing, not even light, is as fast as the speed of thought. It only takes a nano-second to think you are hypnotised and it's only because we use language to induce that thought that it takes any time at all to go from one mental state to another. Hypnosis is possibly closer to a mood than any other mental state - I think it is an induced mood - and we all know how fast they can change. The truth is that with hypnosis being about focus the hypnotee is so focused that they usually stop moving, twitching and fidgeting. Their focus becomes totally fixated on their inner reality a...

Hypnosis has in many peoples mind's a bad image. Not just because it is used on stage to demonstrate how fantastic imagination can become without the constraints of self image and socially imposed limiting beliefs. A lot of the arts darker image comes from the reports of some people who, having experienced induced trance states, have been left with what I call an hypnotic hangover. Terminating the state and the session in such a way as to do anything less than promote a feeling of wellness, or even euphoria, is in my opinion nothing short irresponsible. It's okay for an actor playing a hypnotist to say, "One two three you're back in the room!", but a hypnotist should take a bit more time and care.

As a Hypnotist mind coach lots of people expect me to tell them to ‘ visualise’ stuff. Especially their goals. The problem is that while most people can believe they are ‘seeing’ something with their minds eye, the reality is they are not. At least not seeing in a visual physical sense. If you are one of those who think they can’t visualise then you are. There’s a saying that the mind ‘sees’ not the eyes. This is wrong. The mind interprets but the eyes see, the mind patterns the senses from what the physical information organs gather. To illustrate the point don't try this at home. If you are deranged and are determined to discover if your mind can see try closing your eyes in your living room after opening the hall door and making sure that there are no obstructions between you and the opening. Now close your eyes and spin around in either an anti or clockwise direction. Pick only one direction otherwise you could sprain something. Then, just before you fall over or paint the f...