As I was writing about Hypnosis Humble Beginnings in my last blog, it dawned on me that the 1700’s are the Western Worlds' humble beginnings in hypnosis. Hypnosis has actually been used in indigenous cultures around the world for a long, long time. Shamans and medicine people or natural healers have used and still use drums, rattles, music, dance, words/stories and sacred plant medicines to achieve the hypnotic or trance state. I must add here that the indigenous roots of western cultures were systematically destroyed during the dark or middles ages in Europe. A time that lasted over 300 hundred! years; from approximately 1250-1550’s.
Hypnosis is a modern name for the trance state, which is achieved thru the hypnotists’ voice and words, instead of drums, rattles and dance.
What is a Trance State? It is a natural state of consciousness or awareness. It happens to every human two or more times each day; upon waking from a deep sleep and falling asleep, is when we naturally move from one state of awareness to another. The trance state can also be reached naturally when driving a car, night/daydreaming or in using our imagination.
In hypnosis we enter the trance state consciously by relaxing our body and mind so that this deeper state of awareness can be accessed. Now, why would we want to access this deeper state of awareness?
The Iceberg Metaphor
According to information that has been gathered by Carl Jung, Freud and others in their consciousness explorations, the human psyche can be compared to an iceberg. As an iceberg sits in the water the smallest part of it rises above the water line. This can be compared to our everyday egoic conscious mind. Which I might add, is very important for learning, making decisions and judgments and for navigating our world.
Under the water the largest and most powerful part of the iceberg exists, unseen by the human eye, much like the deeper layers of our awareness. What are these deeper layers? First is the sub or unconscious. This part of us is the recorder of information; of our personal experiences and memories (good and bad). Our conscious mind can only hold 5-7 bits of information at any time, so the rest falls into our unconscious to either be called up consciously (as in hypnosis or trance) or rising spontaneously thru dreams, visions or memories.
The unconscious also handles the responsibility of keeping the various systems of the body running well. The unconscious controls the heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, the endocrine, respiratory and nervous systems, naming just a few of its’ natural, automatic duties.
There are two main parts of the unconscious; the sub and the collective unconscious. The sub conscious is concerned mainly with the functioning and recording of our personal experiences and the collective unconscious has the job of recording of experiences down thru time of all humanity!
The unconscious also contains our awareness and experience of the Transpersonal Realm. What is the Transpersonal Realm you ask? The TR is the storehouse of information before human form. It is the place of our galactic or planetary history. We can access and receive information from this energetic state that gives Life to you, me and the World!
Next time we will talk about why accessing these deeper states of awareness, is good for the health of the body and mind thru hypnosis.
