What are the stages of hypnosis? Hypnosis happens naturally to everybody throughout the day - we call it day dreaming, reminiscing, or being fully associated in the moment. The way hypnosis works has been...
The way hypnosis works has been a mystery for several hundred years. But what we are clear about is that hypnosis happens in stages. Larry Volz is a former magician who took up hypnosis 15 years ago. He is the executive director for the American Hypnosis Clinic and has held this position for almost four years now. Volz describes the stages of hypnosis.
"Hypnosis happens naturally to everybody throughout the day - we call it day dreaming, reminiscing, or being fully associated in the moment," Volz said. "An uptime trance is when you are hyperaware of your surroundings and your senses. Like when you are at the beach and just enjoying the feeling of the sun, the visual of the light on the water, and you are not thinking about anything else. Your mind slows down and you are completely immersed in your thought and that is a type of hypnosis."
"Downtime trances are when you go really deeply inside a thought like when you are daydreaming or imagining something so vividly that you forget the outside world," he added. "The third type of trance is regression, which is also a kind of inward downtime trance. The distinction is that you are caught up in memories and again you lose track of the world around you. This occurs as a natural kind of regression."
"Hypnosis itself is basically just going deeper into these states," Volz said. "You can take someone so deep into regression that the memory seems real and you can sometime recover incredible details. In some states, we use this kind of hypnosis to help witnesses remember details like license plate numbers from the scene of a crime and that kind of thing."
"Hypnosis can help you increase all these experiences," he continued. "The most common type of hypnosis uses a downtime trance so that anxiety melts away. It's the most relaxing experience you can ever have. You become relaxed and the subconscious mind becomes open to suggestion. As long as the suggestion meets the client's needs completely and those suggestions are accepted fully then they become a part of that person's life."
"The depth of a trance can be measured physiologically," Volz said. "Hypnosis is something that you can measure with an EEG, you can actually look at changes in brain wave patterns and actually see the depth of trance that way. Instead of seeing more alpha waves you will see more data brain waves, so that is one empirical way of measuring the depth of a trance. A more subjective way of measuring trance would be to look at a person's response to suggestions. In a light depth of trance a person will be very relaxed but still aware of the room around them and still prone to limiting beliefs. As you go deeper you can induce things like amnesia or even hallucinating. As long as the suggestions don't conflict with a client's subconscious protection mechanisms or ethics then those suggestions will be very powerful for someone in a deeper state of hypnosis. It is in the very deepest stages of hypnosis that you can achieve complete anesthesia against pain."
"It's important to note that the depth of trance is not really important for personal change work," he said. "A lot of times even a light trance is absolutely fine as long as the suggestions are the right ones for that person. With smoking, for instance, the right suggestions work beautifully even in a light trance. Sometimes depth helps, but usually the right suggestion matters more."
