When people hear the word “hypnosis,” a few things usually come to mind.
Somebody on stage clucking like a chicken.
Somebody taking advantage of somebody.
Losing weight, or quitting smoking.
But what if you found out that you are ALWAYS hypnotized, to some extent?
What if you found that being under a state of hypnosis is the natural order of things?
After all, what is hypnosis anyway? Some say it’s a relaxed, focused state where you are paying attention to certain things at the exclusion of all others.
Some believe that you can’t be hypnotized unless you are relaxed.
Suppose you walk into a strange room in somebody’s house. You see a rubber snake on the floor. You jump back in utter shock, and drop the cup of coffee on the floor.
Are you relaxed? Not likely.
Are you hypnotized? Maybe. How? Let’s see.
Let’s say you’re put in a trance (assuming that they do indeed exit) and the hypnotist (assuming that these guys are actually doing things besides swinging watches in front of us) give us something like a “post hypnotic suggestion,” so that every time we hear a bell ring, we’ll suddenly hop on our left foot and scream “applesauce!”
Later on, when you are walking around and you hear the bell, you start hopping on your foot and you scream “applesauce!”
When did the hypnosis end? Was it over when you woke up, and then you went right back into it when the bell rang?
Or was the hypnosis going on the entire time?
How about a boy or a girl you had a crush on when you were younger. If you see somebody today that reminds you of them, and you unconsciously feel those feelings that you felt back then, are you suddenly hypnotized, or were you hypnotized all along?
If so, who’s doing the hypnotizing?
One theory is that we are always hypnotized, and when some hypnotist asks us to sit back on a couch, he’s just making suggestions that we are actually using on ourselves.
When you go to McDonalds for dinner, who’s feeding you? McDonald’s? The high school kid who works behind the counter? You? Whoever worked for the money you’re using to buy the food with? The owner of the company that paid the money that you’re using to buy the food with?
Some say the whole reason to study NLP and hypnosis is not so we can hypnotize others, or hypnotize ourselves, but to simply recognize the trances that we’re already in.
That way, we can keep the good ones, that make us feel better about ourselves and our potential for getting more good stuff out in the world, and get rid of the bad ones, that make us feel limited and victimized by the world.
What do you think?