Explain the State of Hypnosis Chrysalis Module 1

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1.1 Explain the state of hypnosis My understanding is that hypnosis represents an altered state of consciousness, which could also be described as a different state of awareness. I believe that this altered state allows the hypnotherapist to communicate with the subconscious mind. I found out that the earliest evidence of hypnosis was found among shamans, who were also referred to as ‘witch doctors’, ‘medicine men’, and ‘healers’. The Hindus of ancient India used to take their sick to ‘sleep temples’ to be cured by hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotic-like inductions were used to place the individual in a sleep-like state. From researching on the internet, I found that The British Medical Association has called hypnosis ‘a temporary condition of altered attention in the subject that may be induced by another person’. (Compton’s Medical Encyclopaedia). The British Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis states ‘in therapy, hypnosis usually involves the person experiencing a sense of deep relaxation with their attention narrowed down, and focused on appropriate suggestions made by the therapist.’ A definition I found in the dictionary states that hypnosis is ‘an artificially induced trance state resembling sleep, characterised by heightened susceptibility to suggestion.’ I know that most of our brain’s activities occur unconsciously. Our brain would be exhausted if it had to remember to breathe every time the body needs oxygen. I read that Sigmund Freud was one of the first people to raise the idea of the subconscious. He called this mind the ‘id’ - an idea that hypnosis places the unconscious mind at an otherwise unreachable level. It opens up the subconscious mind to the suggestion by the hypnotherapist. I believe that these suggestions can help people make positive changes within themselves. The subject is always in control, a hypnotherapist merely

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