Kevan Owen Hypnotherapy

Here are my musings on what hypnosis is, what it is not, and what it can be used for.

I wonder what image comes to mind for you when you hear the word hypnosis? Perhaps you picture a Victorian gentleman in a three piece suit with a swinging watch. Or a stage hypnotist making people do silly things: clucking like a chicken or dancing with a broomstick. Or maybe a svengali like figure with staring eyes exerting some sinister power over people. You “vill do as I command! “ And the poor helpless victim becoming zombyfied: “Yes master!”

I use hypnosis in the context of therapy. It’s the vehicle through which I help people make positive changes in their life, for example to stop smoking, to lose weight or to be more confident. In this context its a million miles from the popular conception of hypnosis as portrayed in Hollywood B movies.

The word hypnosis is usually used to describe a particular situation in which one person, the hypnotist, is in some way influencing another person, the subject, in a way that produces changes to the way that second person preserves their reality. Unlike the Hollywood image however it isn’t magic or voodoo. Rather it’s a way of making use of a natural ability that we all posses: the ability to focus our attention in a particular way and make use of our creative imagination. Rather than controlling another person’s mind, the hypnotherapist is simply invoking a natural ability that the person already possesses.

Hypnosis has been studied extensively in the science lab, and there have been two theories about what is going on in the mind during hypnosis. One theory maintains that hypnosis happens in what might be called an altered state of consciousness, known in popular language as a hypnotic trance and the hypnotist invokes this trance state in the subject. The other school of thought says no, it isn’t a distinct and unique state of mind; it’s simply a matter of social compliance. In other words when someone is in a situation where they are expected to behave in a particular way they comply with that expectation. This is what often happens in stage hypnosis where the hypnotist uses a variety of psychological tricks to influence how the subject thinks and behaves. A stage hypnotist will also very carefully selects those members of his audience who he knows are going to be compliant, and who are going to “perform”, and it is a kind of performance in this context. So we have these two ideas which have been called the state theory and the non-state theory.

My own view is that there is some truth in both ideas, but neither one offers a full explanation. Hypnotists are skilled in using the power of suggestion and in exerting subtle influence. But in order for them to do that, the other person needs to be in a very receptive state and the word trance is very descriptive of that state. But this isn’t something that is confined to the context of a formal hypnotic induction. It is something that happens in everyday life.

Have you noticed that whenever you watch an exciting film for example and get caught up in the action, you can temporarily lose awareness of your immediate surroundings? Or when you are reading a gripping novel and you become absorbed in the narrative, you might find that you can get lost in this rich world of the imagination. Or if you drive, and you are driving a car on a route that you know well, sometimes your conscious mind can drift off somewhere and your subconscious learning takes over to drive the car safely. I know that I have had the experience of arriving at my destination with almost no memory of how on earth I got there, let alone how I negotiated all those junctions and traffic lights.

So in a sense we are going in and out of natural trance states all the time. Whenever we learn something new we are in a kind of trance state. When we fall in love we are trance. When we are playing sport or absorbed in listening to music we are in trance. The deepest trance that we ever experience is when we enter the dreaming phase of the sleep cycle. This happens in what is known as REM sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep, when the eyes are darting back and forth behind the closed eyelids. The body is cataleptic but the mind is totally immersed in that rich metaphorical world of the dream, which seems very real at the time. It is my belief that hypnosis taps into this dream state, this natural ability we have to temporarily suspend our critical thinking mind and go with the dream. In hypnotherapy the client is not asleep; rather they are in that half way state between being fully awake and fully asleep– a nice dreamy floating feeling of inner absorption.

In this hypnotic trance state people are able to alter their perceptions of the world around them. This can extend of the area of pain control. There have been many examples of people having surgical operations with hypnosis as the only form of anaesthetic. In hypnosis subjects can be made to alter their blood pressure, stimulate their immune system and other well documented things. It stands to reason that any phenomena that hypnosis can invoke in a person must be already present as a latent ability.

It has been said that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. We all have the capacity to do this. To focus our attention in a particular way. The hypnotist is simply a guide, pointing their subject in a particular direction, invoking that latent ability, that potential. So hypnotherapy isn’t mind control. The hypnotherapist doesn’t control the other persons mind. Rather, it’s a meeting of minds; two minds working on a common aim. This is why hypnosis is such an effective therapeutic tool. In this state of inner absorption we can learn to un-pick unhelpful habit patterns and to mentally rehearse the achievement of our goals through guided imagery.

There are many different types of hypnotherapy. There is the traditional old-school type of hypnotherapy which is based largely on direct suggestion, where the hypnotist gives his subject commands: “you are getting very sleepy...you are going deeper and deeper... you are feeling confident”. Then there is a much more sophisticated approach which uses subtle psychological principles and advanced language patterns to skilfully bypass the critical faculty. This is the style pioneered by the American psychiatrist Milton Erickson who was a skilful observer of people and a pioneer in the use of the indirect approach. He also tailored his approach to the unique individual that he was working with and he would utilise their individual traits and their particular resources in the way he constructed the hypnotic induction and the hypnotherapy.

Some schools of hypnotherapy attempt to regress a person back to the original source of their particular difficulty. Other schools are much more future focused and solution-oriented, helping the person to visualise their preferred future. Modern clinical hypnotherapy has incorporated many ideas from psychotherapy and psychology. My own training and practice is based on a new school of thought known as the Human Givens Approach, which is all about the givens of human nature: what we are as human beings, what we need to be well and to be fulfilled and what strengths & resources we can draw upon to get those needs met.

To me hypnosis is a purely natural process, a way of becoming absorbed and entranced in a rich world of creative imagination.