Q. Is there anybody who should not be hypnotised?
A. To a large extent, it depends on the sort of therapy being employed. Some say that anybody suffering from epilepsy should never be hypnotised, but I have never heard of an epileptic fit being triggered by hypnosis. Where psychotic individuals are concerned, care needs to be exercised and regression/analytical therapy should most definitley not be employed. (See the paper about psychosis elsewhere on this site - click here to go there now) This type of therapy is also best avoided with pregnant women. I also will not use regression or analysis with heart attack/stroke victims.

Q. How does it work?
A. Although there has been much speculation and theory over the years, all that is truly known about the phenomenon of hypnosis is that it allows the conscious critical faculty to be bypassed, allowing a 'gateway' to the subconscious mind.

Q. What is hypnosis anyway?
A. The answer is very similar to the above question. Some people believe it is nothing more than 'social compliance' (doing what you believe you should be doing) while others insist that it is a state of altered consciousness. There is no scientifically measurable change in brain wave patterns during hypnosis, as compared with normal consciousness. An individual in the hypnotised state usually feels very relaxed, but this is not necessarily the case. They will often feel as they are half asleep and at the moment they open their eyes at the end of a session there is sometimes an awareness, for a spilt second, that 'something' had been different.

Q. What does it feel like to be hypnotised?
A. Actually, it doesn't. For the vast majority of people there is actually no such thing as a 'hypnotised feeling' - the vast majority of people would insist afterwards that they had not 'gone under'. After a few sessions, though, most people start to become aware of how the state feels to them. It may be that they feel excessively heavy or light. Their arms and legs may feel rigid, as if they have been moved into a different position, or even absent. They can sometimes feel other strange phenomena, too - sensations of floating, whirling and/or spinning are not unusual, or of some part of the body being distorted in some way (I always refer to this as Hypno-morphing) or as if they have become very small/big. I always feel as if my hands are encased in concrete gloves - my signal that I am in self hypnosis. Most people suffer some form of time distortion, usually in the ratio of around 2.5:1, so that after the session there is a feeling that it was much shorter than it actually was. Typically, a 50 minute session would feel like 20 minutes.

Q. How can you tell if somebody is hypnotised?
A. There are several external signs, though few people show all of them. Some of the most noticeable are: A facial flush, total immobility and relaxation, rapid eye movement, eyelid flicker, enhanced salivation (causing frequent swallowing), slowed respiration, drooping lower jaw.

Q. Can you make anybody do things they don't want to?
A. In my opinion, definitely not, but there is considerable conjecture about this. It is often said that hypnosis cannot breach the moral code, though there are therapists and hypnotists who claim otherwise - but of course, we cannot truly know what another person's moral code/values consists of. People will frequently do things they would not normally do, though this does not mean it is something they do not want to do; hypnosis lowers inhibition, so it could be just something that that individual was too inhibited to do in the normal way, even though he/she was not averse to it. See my essay elsewhere on this site on Hypnotic Effects - click here to go there now.

Q. Can it be used to control people?
A. See above answer.

Q. Can you get 'stuck' in hypnosis?
A. No, you definitely cannot! If you were hypnotised and the hypnotist just walked away and left you, you would simply bring yourself out of the state whenever you wanted to.

Q. Is it dangerous in any way?
A. Not at all, in the hands of a properly trained individual. There are some circumstances that would be undesirable with a non-trained or poorly-trained operator, but nothing serious could happen, in any case.

Q. How does hypnotherapy differ from stage hypnosis?
A. The hypnosis is the same, though many believe it is not. But it is the 'therapy' part that is different - the stage hypnotist is out to entertain others. The hypnotherapist is out to make somebody's life more enjoyable to live. See my essay Hypnotic Effects for more information. Click here to go there now.

Q. What's the difference between hypnotherapy and psychotherapy?
A. Usually, psychotherapy makes changes to the subconscious by using the understanding and imagery of the conscious mind. Hypnotherapy attempts to bypass the conscious mind to a large extent, working directly with the subconscious. For this reason, hypnotherapy is often quicker than psychotherapy. But it's 'horses for courses' - there are some clients who will respond better to psychotherapy and for them, this would probably be a better form of treatment. Usually, these individuals are very analytical and guarded.

Q. How long does a cure produced by hypnosis actually last?
A. It depends on how much subconscious change was brought about in the first place. If a change has been made to a flawed fundamental belief system, then the cure will be permanent and last for a life-time. If only superficial changes have been made, then it might be only a few days or weeks. This is why direct suggestion therapy sometimes fails miserably. The best therapy is where the/an underlying cause has been resolved before any suggestion work is carried out at all.

Q. What is 'direct suggestion' therapy?
A. The therapist simply tells the client, in the state of hypnosis, that whatever it is they want to do they will now be able to. Or whatever it is that they want to stop doing, they now can. It can be effective with simple problems like smoking, nail-biting, confidence for an exam/test, etc. But generally, it is best to tackle the underlying cause of the difficulty first.

Q. Is it successful with real phobias?
A. Usually immensely so, if the right sort of therapy is employed.

Q. Does it always work?
A. No, no more than any other form of medicine, complimentary OR orthodox does. A responsible therapist will soon detect when it is not going to and discharge that client so that they may seek the help they need elsewhere. Another hypnotherapist might produce the desired result where the first one could not, because of the different client/therapist 'mix'.

Q. How long does it take to produce a result?
A. It depends on far too many factors to make a bald statement about this. It can be as few as one session for a simple problem, to as many as... well, that depends on the ethics and skills of the therapist involved. A responsible, properly trained, therapist will not keep a client in therapy longer than necessary.

Q. Do you really go into a trance? If so, how deep? Are you in any way unconscious?
A. I don't actually like the word 'trance', because it is easily misunderstood; it is in common use, however, and a hypnotised individual is, technically, in a trance. But you are not aware of this trance state, any more than you are aware of it when you intently watch something on TV or immerse yourself in a book or newspaper to the point where you don't hear someone calling you.

These are both trance states in which you are aware of the object of interest only, and it is almost identical to the hypnotic 'trance'. It is MOST DEFINITELY NOT the trance you see on films and TV sometimes where somebody is staring glassy-eyed with no idea of where they are or what they are doing. The depth of trance varies from one individual to another and it is often considered to be relatively unimportant from a therapy point of view. You are not unconscious in any way - unless you go to sleep, which is not unknown! Then, you would simply awake when asked to by the therapist.

Q. Can somebody's mind be too strong?
A. No. The stronger the mind the better the ability to focus and concentrate, which makes the hypnotised state easier to achieve. The statement 'My mind is too strong to be hypnotised' is usually based on fear and the individuals who say this are often the best subjects of all! It is not difficult to resist being hypnotised and needs no specific strength of mind at all. It is getting into hypnosis that takes the mental work!

Q. Can anybody learn to be a hypnotist, or is it a 'gift'?
A. Forget those stories or articles where it is stated that somebody has the 'gift' of hypnosis! It takes hardly any time at all for anybody to learn how to hypnotise another, though some people are better at it than others, just as in any other skill. It is learning what to do with someone once they are hypnotised that takes the time and training; learning how to deal with different personality types, learning how to discover what really ails an individual (sometimes different entirely to what they say or believe is their problem), learning how to decide on the right sort of therapy, and learning how to terminate therapy responsibly when it becomes obvious that in any one case it is not going to produce the desired result.

Q. Can you learn it from books?
A. Yes - but you need and must have professional instruction if you intend to become a professional hypnotherapist. Anybody starting to work on members of the public without proper training is, in my opinion: stupid, arrogant, uncaring, unrealistic, scurrilous, a shyster, a con-man (or woman)... add as many negative/deprecatory/insulting adjectives as you like.

Q. Where can I find out more?
A. There is much information available on this site and throughout the Internet. A search on any search engine with the key words hypnosis, hypnotherapy, hypnotism, etc. will give you enough reading material to keep you busy for weeks. Much of it, however, is of poor quality; the links on this site point to some useful pages.

Q. I've heard about bio-feedback meters. What are they are and what do they do?
A. A bio-feedback meter is a way of keeping an eye on the internal states of an individual - anxiety, for instance - that we may not otherwise be aware of. The modern bio-feedback meters have an electronic display and operate via lightweight electrodes connected to two adjacent finger tips. There is little or no awareness of these after a few minutes. You can use it on self, to measure your own ability to relax, or on a client to monitor their levels of relaxation during the hypnotic induction, as well as their stress levels during regression work. These meters work on the same principle as a lie detector, by measuring the activity of the central nervous system. I use one almost all the time.

Q. What is an 'induction', and what is a 'deepener'?
A. An induction is just a passage of text spoken to the client. Most of the time, a slow soothing tone will be used, but there are other occasions when a more dynamic style may be more suitable. A deepener is more like a story designed to focus the hypnotised individual's attention to get him/her into a deeper state of hypnosis. Hence the name.

Q. Can you hypnotise someone without them knowing it?
A. You can, if you have the skills to do so. The use of 'hypnotic language patterns' and pacing and leading body language will do it. But you still could not get that person to do anything with hypnosis that they would not do without it. Hypnosis merely overcomes inhibition and the 'conscious critical faculty' - the part of our thought processes which tends to limit our behaviour or belief system.

Q. What ethical, legal and moral issues are involved in the use of hypnosis?
A. From a professional point of view, hypnosis should be used ONLY for the benefit of patients and clients - and not for any other reason at all. That pretty much sums up the basis of most Codes of Ethics. From a personal viewpoint, though, it is only your own moral code that you would have to follow; so you could use hypnosis to enhance your sexual experiences, as long as you did not feel your were cheating in some way. You would be unlikely to persuade somebody to have sex with you if they were not already willing to do so, though. The legal position is less clear, since it varies from Country to Country and State to State.

Q. Is it worthwhile using 'props' to aid the hypnotic process?
A. If you want to. Background music helps, sometimes, and some therapists like to use a rotating 'hypno-spiral' or other focussing device, such as a strobe light(s) - but these can trigger epileptic fits in those who are susceptible. Bio-feedback (see above) is useful.

Q. What exactly is 'Past Life Regression'?
A. Theoretically, a look back to a lifetime experienced earlier in history - this can be thousands of years earlier, or maybe only a short while back, just before the current life span began. It is claimed that there is a therapeutic value in such experiences, in that they may account for certain psychological difficulties in current life. Numerous attempts have been made to prove the validity of various PLRs, but this has never been achieved - there has always been the possibility of the experience being nothing more than the recall of a long-forgotten memory from childhood in THIS life. Many experimenters are at pains to point out that they DO NOT CLAIM that a PLR is evidence of a previous existence for the individual concerned, only an awareness of a set of circumstances that occurred before that individual was born.

Q. Can hypnosis be used to create/trigger dreams?
A. Sometimes, though this tends to be somewhat unreliable. There has been much experiment with the use of hypnosis to create 'lucid dream states' (in which the dreamer KNOWS s/he is dreaming) but there has been no conclusive evidence that it works.

Q. How do I go about becoming a hypnotherapist/hypnotist?
A. Get some professional training. Probably the easiest way to find the best training school near you is to contact a few local hypnotherapists/stage hypnotists (whichever you are interested in) and ask them where they did their initial training. Yellow Pages will have several listed. My own: school site is as good a place as any to see what a professional school should offer. There is more information here: information page.