Hypnosis (originally known as Mesmerism) has many misconceptions and superstitious about it. Whenever it is used in a clinical application or for entertainment, it attracts attention. The result is commentary from two different groups. The first group is professionally knowledgeable about human behavior (psychologists, hypnotherapists, counseling therapists, and mental health care providers). The second group is composed of those who are ignorant and misled by the belief system of unknowing, misguided and superstitious people.

     From this example you can see that you have two minds: a conscious mind and a subconscious mind (sometimes called the unconscious mind). The conscious mind functions with the use of reason. Your subconscious mind does not always think logically. It sees whatever has been self-suggested or suggested by the therapist. While you were watching the movie, you entered an altered state of mind called hypnosis. The scene in the movie caused a temporary shut down of the conscious mind's logic. As you progressed more deeply into the movie's plot, your conscious mind slowly became oblivious of the fact that you were watching a movie. At that point, all the stimulus you were taking in from the movie bypassed the critical analysis of your conscious mind and went directly to your subconscious mind which then reacted to the sad scene as if it were real and you felt sad and you teared up.

     You now can see that the subconscious mind is capable of responding to suggestions (like those in a movie scene or those given by a hypnotist). It doesn't matter if the suggestions are true or false. The subconscious mind responds to acceptable suggestions as if they were real. This is how a woman can be hypnotized to deliver her baby without feeling pain, a hypnotized man can have a root canal without feeling pain, or a well-made movie can evoke emotions of sadness, excitement, anger or laughter from its viewer. Fortunately, one must freely participate in the movie or the hypnotic suggestion. Because of this fact, nobody can be hypnotized nor can their mind be placed into an altered state without their willing participation. Therefore, without the use of trickery, an individual cannot be hypnotized unknowingly.
                                          
Other facts about hypnosis:

Hypnosis causes neural activity to be excited within certain parts of your brain. This can be observed on devices that measure brain wave activity. Brain wave activity changes when the mind enters an altered state (hypnosis). This is just as natural as entering a dream state or being in a state of deep meditation.

• Hypnosis is amplification of one's imagination.
  
  
• Hypnosis is a state in which the conscious mind is experiencing an excess of information(overload) through one or more of the primary senses (hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste). This overload is caused by the narrowing of one's focus on one's own thoughts or an outside source such as the suggestive statements of another person. Example: When you are driving down the highway in deep thought on a given subject (your mind is being overloaded with your thoughts) and you miss a turnoff. You were, at the time you passed your turnoff, in a light state of hypnosis. You were so deeply andnarrowly focused on what you were thinking about, you became oblivious to the turnoff, and drove past it.
  
  
• Hypnosis is a process which the client or a hypnotist guides the client past the client'sconscious thinking which in turn causes direct accesses to the client's subconsciousmind. Once access to the subconscious mind is achieved (when one enters the hypnotic state), the subconscious mind can be given directions and suggestions by one's self or by a hypnotherapist. The suggestions presented may or may not be accepted. If they are accepted, they are acted upon by the hypnotized subject, and sometimes without conscious awareness. Generally speaking, the subconscious mind will not cause any change in one's behavior which it knows is a detriment to itself (meaning you), other people, things or property.
  
  
• Accessing the subconscious mind (the act of inducing a person into a hypnotic state) can be done using a variety of induction methods such as progressive relaxation, imaging, visualization, overloading the conscious mind, implied and indirect suggestion, fervent prayer, chanting, cult dancing and music.
  
  • Hypnosis, when used in hypnotherapy, is not a belief system. It doesn't matter whether you believe in it or not. It works for the vast majority of the human race.The use of clinical hypnosis to modify behavior is a science. It is a clearly understood phenomenon which is primarily used in clinical applications to modify behavior in order to eliminate specific disorders and undesirable habits. It is also used for entertainment such as hypnotist's stage shows. Hypnotic therapy is taught in most every major university which has a department of psychology. Hypnoanesthesia is used by many medical doctors (pain-free surgery without use of anesthesia). Dentists use hypnosis to eliminate fear of dentistry, to relax their patient and to eliminate pain caused by tooth filling, tooth extraction, and root canal procedures. They also use it to eliminate bruxism (grinding of teeth).
    
    
  • Many psychologists and other health care providers use hypnosis to help their client's achieve goals and to promote better mental health. Hypnosis, and its use in clinical therapy (hypnotic therapy), is endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association.
    
    
  • Almost everyone enters an altered state of mind (hypnosis) daily (even those who believe they cannot be hypnotized or that hypnosis is unnatural, weird, demonic or in some way anti-Christ). Whenever you are in deep thought, meditating, engaged in solemn prayer, spellbound by a movie, entranced in a television show or engrossed in a good book, you are in a light state of hypnosis. Anytime you respond to a suggestion, either directly, or indirectly, you are experiencing a light state of hypnosis. An example is when a comedian acts out bizarre behavior which makes you laugh. The comedian's suggestive comical behavior, and comments are exaggerated or simply not true, but they are funny, and you laugh. If you seriously and critically analyzed the comedian's bizarre antics, and comments, they would not be funny to you. Try this experiment: Watch a comedian or sitcom that normally makes you laugh. Remain serious and critically analyze everything the comedian is saying and doing (which keeps you functioning at your conscious mind's level and blocks access to your subconscious mind). You will not find the comedian or sitcom funny. Why? Your logical conscious mind is in a state of analysis. Whenever the conscious mind is in a state of analysis, it is impossible to access your subconscious mind and enter an altered state of mind. In other words, it's impossible to achieve the state of hypnosis while critically analyzing the process of being hypnotized.
    
    
  • The conscious mind has to be moved out of the way or in some manner diverted to allow access to the subconscious mind. Many methods have been devised to accomplish this. Any method which effectively bypasses the conscious mind and obtains access to the subconscious mind can broadly be defined as hypnosis. The most common methods used to bypass the conscious mind to allow access to the subconscious mind are:
    
    

• Progressive relaxation
  Confusion
  Overload
  Guided imagery (visualization)
  Biofeedback
  Prayer
  Meditation
  

• Hypnosis is not brain washing. The term brain washing is a colloquial term used by the military and intelligence agencies for the forceful extraction of secrets and intelligence data from individuals utilizing psychological and physiological methods. It is also used by intelligence agencies and cults to modify belief systems to accomplish a predefined behavior. Brain washing incorporates the use of prolonged, repetition of psychologically driven cult dogma and rituals, or the application of physical and psychological torture methods which produce prolonged, agonizing, controlled pain or discomfort to force behavior to change or a confession of information. Brain washing can also be accomplished with the use of drugs which inhibit the brain's ability to use logic and resistance which facilitates easier access to the conscious and subconscious minds from which intelligence data may be extracted.
  
  
• A hypnotized person will not reveal any personal information or secrets unless he/she wants to.
  
  
• A hypnotized person is capable of confabulation (making up stories, exaggerations and lies). A hypnotized person cannot be forced to tell the truth via hypnotic interrogation. This is why testimony derived from a hypnotized subject is not admissible as evidence in a court of law in the United States.
  
  
• Professional, clinical hypnotherapy has absolutely nothing to do with any religion, spiritualism, demons, satanism, witchcraft, Lucifer, or any other kind of evil icon. Anyone who tells you it does is ignorant of the science of hypnosis.
  
  
• Do not confuse hypnosis with the trance state which people appear to be in while performing a religious or cult ritual like voodoo dancing, screaming and chanting. When observing such phenomena, you are observing a state of hysteria.
  
  
• Some people, particularly those that are members of certain secular religious groups, and have no training in modern psychology, believe that accessing a person's mind using hypnotism exposes the subject's mind to demonic forces and like evil spirits. They believe one gives up their free agency and self-will to the control of these imaginary evil ghosts and beings. Such ignorant people cannot, in any understandable manner, substantiate their claim of a person being demonically possessed while in a state of hypnosis. Such people who claim demonic possession happens or is possible havebeliefs which are based purely on ignorance, fear, and superstition. Anyone who acts out as if possessed by some evil entity is in a state of self-induced hysteria.
  
  
• The only main stream religions which forbid the use of clinical hypnotherapy for their members are Christian Science and Seventh-Day Adventist. Other religions of which I am aware embrace modern, clinical hypnotherapy as a modality used for positive behavior modification, vocational, and avocational improvement.
  
  
• Some religions frown on stage hypnosis for entertainment purposes, but endorse hypnosis for therapy purposes.
  
  
• Technically, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. When a hypnotherapist is  hypnotizing you, it is actually you who are hypnotizing yourself with his guidance.You are puting yourself into a state of hypnosis acting on the suggestions of the hypnotherapist. If you gave yourself the same suggestions that a hypnotherapist would give to you, and acted them out, you would enter the same state of hypnosis.  When you hypnotize yourself, it is called auto-suggestion or self-hypnosis.
  
  
•  If you want to learn how to hypnotize yourself, you should complete the appropriate courses in self-hypnosis which are available from state certified schools and accredited universities. If you do not want to take the time to learn self-hypnosis, then you must rely on a professional hypnotherapist to  achieve a hypnotic state.
  
  
• The vast majority of the human race is hypnotizable. It is estimated that more than 90% of the world's population is hypnotizable.
  
  
• In my professional opinion, the only people who cannot be hypnotized are those that have the following disorders:
  
  
  • Mentally retarded, with a clinically diagnosed intelligence score indicating an intelligence range from moron down to an idiot.
    
    
  • Consistently resistant due to a belief system, antisocial behavioral disorder, or paranoia.
    
    
  • The complete inability to use imagination.
    
    
  • Certain severe, psychopathological disorders such as schizophrenia, acute anxiety which cause panic attacks, and certain severe personality disorders.
    

• People who are blind can be hypnotized.
  
  
• People who are hearing impaired or completely deaf can be hypnotized with use of visual signing.
  
  
• The more intelligent a person is, provided they are mentally stable, the more susceptible they are to hypnosis. Intelligent people enter into hypnosis quite easily.
  
  
• People who are in an altered state of mind (hypnosis)  are aware of what is going on. They remain conscious. All the primary and secondary autonomic body functions, and mental processes are fully functional, and in certain instances are amplified.
  
  
• A person in a state of hypnosis can hear, see, feel, taste and smell just as well as they do in an unhypnotized state.
  
  
• An altered state of mind (hypnosis) can be induced via a post hypnotic suggestion. For instance, a therapist may implant the suggestion into the client's mind that when he hears the word sleep (or any other key word suggested) the client will immediately return to a hypnotic trance, swiftly and deeply. Provided the client agrees to it, thereafter, every time the therapist says to the client, sleep, the client goes into a hypnotic trance. This is ideal for repeating therapy. It shortens the time necessary to induce the hypnotic state , and allows more time for therapeutic counseling.  A post hypnotic suggestion may also be structured to trigger an act or certain behavior by the client. For instance, a suggestion may be given to a client that every time he lifts off the ground while in an airplane, he immediately becomes deeply relaxed and has no fear of flight. The result is the client's fear of flying is countered via the post hypnotic suggestion.
  
       You now have facts regarding hypnosis which are substantiated with volumes of clinical data and hard scientific research. Hypnotherapy is safe when used by professional clinicians to benefit their clients. It works in a positive manner. It is the first choice of therapy used by thousands of health care professionals to assist their clients, change behavior, and to cause improvements in vocation, avocation, life style, physical and mental health.