Hypnosis an extension of everyday life

As the afternoon made its way into the evening observing the world around me an idyllic spit of sand curves gently into turquoise water on an island in the far south of Thailand, laid-back atmosphere with many delightful tropical coves, fine white sand and stunning views, edged by lush greenery, have a natural charm, with lapping waves and aquarium-clear waters. The beautiful sunset had caught my attention and the attention of the people around me. I sensed almost or complete absorption in that experience of the sun setting for a brief moment.

You can look at any experience with some/any intensity and see hypnotic qualities in the person who’s experiencing that: someone’s who is observing a beautiful sunrise, or sunset ,someone who is absorbed watching a film, someone who is walking or relaxing listening to music on their I pod or mp3, someone who is ecstatic, someone who is petrified, someone one who is driving to a familiar destination, someone who is participating and absorbed  in a game of tennis, football, golf or any sport for that matter. We can observe and see the way that those – almost complete absorption in that experience and a (almost) total disconnection from anything else around.

So, we can make a link between experience in our everyday life and the experience in hypnosis. And, by making that link and exploring as we are continuing to do…the way of generating an experience of wonder, of love, of joy, of happiness, of fear, of security or of anything you might choose to do so, then we can start to (with the use of hypnosis and the experience and the learning of it) find ways of actually creating experiences that are useful and connecting people with helpful, beneficial experiences.

Because hypnosis is an extension of everyday life, an extension of what Dr Milton H. Erickson psychiatrist who specialized in medical hypnosis and family therapy called a “common, everyday trance”, we can see some of the hypnotic behaviours that we’re starting to become familiar with. If you observe you’ll notice and become aware of them when you are out and about outside, on public transport, jogging in the park, walking  along the  beach, in many different places.

And, one of the primary hypnotic experiences that we can begin to look at is that of dissociation or disconnection. And, you don’t need to look very far or notice with any great effort to start to find the experience that we can all have (we can notice in other people)  disconnection. Have you ever noticed someone look out of a window in a car, in a classroom or in a house, or any room and start to daydream, and wander off.  Or possibly someone could be involved in a task or activity and become almost completely, or actually totally unaware that they are wearing glasses, have a pen in their hand, are holding a mobile phone, changing gears in a car, or sitting in a lesson and become unaware they have their feet against the floor, back against the chair, or hands on the table.

And so, with any experience that we are going to identify as a hypnotic experience, we can find a link with every day life, everyday phenomena… everyday experience.

Now, I want to emphasise this linking of everyday experience with hypnotic experience because when we can link “everydayness” with hypnosis, then it takes away from the weirdness of hypnosis, makes it more accessible, more realistic, more understandable ,more useful, more translatable, dispelling the myths of hypnosis.

Now, some of the experiences that people report spontaneously without any direction from us (without any attempted influence from us) – that people will sometimes, after a session, say: “Oh, I felt like I wasn’t here" or " I felt like I was somewhere else” or will say, “Ah, that time went so quickly. It only felt like a few minutes” and it was perhaps 40 or 50 minutes, maybe one hour. Have you ever been waiting for a bus on a freezing cold day, and you have two minutes to wait for the bus to arrive and it feels like an hour. Or on another occasion you are waiting for a bus for an hour, completely absorbed in a conversation with someone you are attracted and enjoy being with to and it feels like 2 minutes.

We can ask someone to become involved in a memory. Sometimes in the memory or sometimes in working with people (even without us inviting them to remember something), memories will come into their awareness or some future hopes, goals, aspirations will become something that they start to notice. People will report at the end of a session that they can’t remember some of what was said, some of what they thought, some of what they experienced. And, I think there's a very close link between that and when time goes quickly.

Also, it’s easy to notice times in our everyday life where we’re unaware of sensations in our arms, neck, feet (wearing a watch, glasses, jumper, t-shirt and so on and so forth) or sometimes being aware of sensations, like going for a walk and stepping the wrong way, slightly turning our ankle  and you think, “Ah, that’s fine. I’m not going to be concerned  about it”. 

Now, all these everyday experiences are experiences that we are more or less familiar with, and if we take any of them, then there is the possibility of not only recognising and connecting these everyday experiences with the possibility of employing them and extending them hypnotically, but also if we are wanting to actually create such a hypnotic experience for someone, we’ve got an everyday, common, familiar place to start with to connect that experience from.