“What Is Hypnosis?” Describe the Psychological and Physical Aspects of Hypnosis and Discuss the Role of Relaxation in Hypnotherapy.

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“What is Hypnosis?” Describe the psychological and physical aspects of hypnosis and discuss the role of relaxation in Hypnotherapy. (2121 words) In order to understand what hypnosis is I will start at the beginning, looking at the history of hypnosis and the different ideas and developments since the early 1700’s to present day. Including Franz Anton Mesmer who became known as the Grandfather of hypnosis. Having looked at the history of hypnosis, I will go onto look at the psychological and physical aspects of hypnotherapy and the different brain waves that occur during hypnosis that indicate the level of hypnosis the patient is under and their state of mind. Then I will look at the place of relaxation in hypnotherapy today and why it is important and discuss a vehicle to travel to this mental state, with progressive muscle relaxation. What is Hypnosis? People generally regard hypnosis as an altered state of awareness, from everyday waking and consciousness. They usually think of it involving a hypnotist who invokes a trance like state in which the subject is susceptible to suggestion, which can be used to help people or to entertain, as in stage hypnosis. However contrary to common belief, a hypnotic state is not a deep sleep like trance and the same state actually occurs regularly in everyday life. It occurs when we are day dreaming or when we do a task we are very familiar with and can do without having to think deeply about it, so can be doing one thing, while thinking of another. Hypnosis goes a long way back in our history, although in different forms – trance like states have been used as far back as the ancient Egyptians and also for thousands of years by the Australian Aborigines. The first notion of hypnosis, as we know it, came from Franz Anton Mesmer (1733-1815) who in 1766 wrote a dissertation on the influence of the planets on the human
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