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Hypnosis and Meditation - What’s The Difference?

Hypnosis is a sleeplike state of focused awareness. What that means is we are not asleep or awake but we are on the verge of falling asleep and waking up. When in this trance people are open to new and creative ways of looking at the world because old psychological defenses can be bypassed. Milton Erickson for example used confusion, in which he said things that seemed illogical and yet they conveyed a truth. When the people heard these things they could not get anxious because anxiety and relaxation are exclusive psychological states. The sympathetic nervous system controls arousal and anxiety and the parasympathetic nervous system controls relaxation, and only one system can be in control at one time. So when deeply relaxed patients heard Erickson saying these things, they just accepted them.
To experience a deep trance you require a hypnotist because your own conscious process can not function when so deeply relaxed. You can however, induce a lighter trance by yourself called self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis can be induced by listening to relaxation tapes, talking to yourself, meditation, and by creating your own virtual imagery. Everyone has probably been in a hypnotic state without realizing it, when you are into a good book or movie where you forget what is going on around you. This is called a dissociative, trance like state.
Hypnosis also reduces pain and there is a negative hypnosis where if someone tells you, “you can’t do that.” You will most likely accept that statement, you will believe you can’t do it and you will fail.
Meditation is an altered state characterized by tranquility and peacefulness. Meditation is also most likely self induced. Neuroscientists have found that meditators shift their brain activity to different areas of the cortex. Brain waves in the stress-prone right frontal cortex shift to the calmer left frontal cortex. This helps decrease stress,...