Hypnosis in it’s various styles
When talking about hypnosis, we’re talking about an altered state of consciousness. There are many ways one can achieve an altered state of consciousness and can include: meditation, taking substances, praying, or hypnosis. It even occurs naturally throughout the day when the brain takes a little break and sleeping is the most well known altered state of consciousness.
So, hypnosis has to be distinct from your normal state of consciousness that can be described as your everyday self.
There are many different techniques in hypnosis, and here is a partial list :
- Classic hypnosis (well use in hospital for analgesia and anesthesia)
- Ericksonian hypnosis (mostly used in North America)
- New hypnosis (mostly used in Europe but still refers as Ericksonian hypnosis despite the differences)
- Humanist Hypnosis (created in 2000 in France by Olivier Lockert and Patricia d’Angeli)
Two types of hypnotic trance : dissociate, or associate.
A simplified drawing of your mind would be to consider your ego (1) and your subconscious like 2 balls communicating with each other.
In everyday life they barely touch. Just enough for someone to be functional and periodically in the day they split apart, allowing the brain to rest.
(1) What constitutes your personality and your everyday self. It allows you to be counscient and make decision in your life ! In Humanist Therapy we want to help grow and raise this part of yourself to become more conscious.
You may already have experienced hypnosis without knowing !
- Have you ever been so caught up in a movie that you didn’t hear someone ask you a question ?
- Have you found yourself parking your car in front of your workplace with no recollection of the drive ?
- Have you ever sat daydreaming in a classroom looking at your teacher but mentally not there anymore ?
All thoses experiences are related to dissociation of your mind happening naturally.
Dissociate type of hypnosis uses communication techniques to disrupt the regular alternation of those moments when the brain switches from altered state of mind to normal state of mind. It will induce a splitting phenomena that we can also experience naturally.
It is like helping the client to find this balance and sustain it longer then usual. But without the therapist’s help it usually last for 15 min. After 15 min, the natural rhythmic state of our body starts to take its rights back again or the person falls asleep and will wake up later if they are very tired.
You will always come out from a trance by yourself, but to speed up the process, the practitioner may help you with a talk pattern to “wake you up” and restore the natural alternance quicker.
Humanist Hypnosis specifics
I specialize the second technique where we stimulate those 2 balls to get closer together, and even fuse! We refer to it as a heightened state of consciousness. It allows the person to remain completely in command and let their own subconscious talk to them directly while in a hypnotic state. Therefore it cannot be said the subconscious is still “un”-conscious ! So it is referred as Automaton (Leibniz definition 1686) because you are conscious of it but at the same time this deeper part of your mind is just like a robot running an automatic program, and now we get to interface with that program through this state
To induce this state of consciousness, the therapist will use a talking pattern called “opening induction” in order to enable the person to feel connected to the world and trick their brain to be confused about the border between reality and imagination.
That’s how the protocols can have a direct healing effect !Where dissociate induction technique operates more with a relaxation feeling, opening induction technique is more activating and will feel like a mind workout ! The person is prompted to remain in charge of their own mind, and stay connected to both the trance and the “real” world as the session goes on.
| Note : Hypnosis may be conterindicated for poeple with psychosis. Alway refer to your psychiatrist before starting a hypnosis therapy even if they are associated type. |
A philosophy to answer fondamental questions
Behind the technics, Humanist Hypnosis is a life philosophy ! Read more about it clicking on the link below :
http://www.hypnose-humaniste.com/en/lhypnose-humaniste-en-quelques-mots/
I include this information so that you are able to see the philosophy that influences me, but I want to be clear that I will always adapt to you and your beliefs system in my techniques and practice. Good advice will be to run away if any “therapist” is trying to convert you. I will always welcome any religion, and respect all spiritual beliefs. If you are helped with angels or your past life during our session I will be honored to be a witness of their intervention.
Only one thing matter : for you to feel better after our session.
Work with symbols
As the person stays in charge during the session it allows direct communication with their subconscious and the client is able to interact with it. Sounds simple ? Well… there is an important thing to know. You’re subconscious doesn’t speak the same language !
It will use symbols to communicate with you. It’s exactly the same language used in your dreams. At first it may not make a lot of sense but as an obvious emotional connection will appear alongside the symbol you will feel an urge to do something about it.
Why does our subconscious communicate to us in this way ?
That’s the only way for very sensitive information about you to pass over your self-censorship ! It may represent faces of your personalities you’re not comfortable with or demonstrate the impact left by an event in your deeper mind. Facing symbols is a lot less confronting then having to remember hurtful events or to see how far from moral or contradictory your true desires are.
Healing the symbol linked to emotional distress unlocks the resources you as an individual have access to so that you’re able to achieve the changes you want to see in your life.
Exemple :
A 26 year old girl came for weight management. She is already in great shape but wants to lose weight. During her hypnosis session, she calls back to her the feeling of “being ugly” she suffers from. As she does, she describes feeling suddenly hot and dry. I help her to give more consistency to her experience and finally she realizes being in a desert under the burning sun with an empty lake is in front of her, as if all the water evaporated.
I ask her if she knows where the water should be coming from, or where it went. Quickly she locates a hole on the ground and explains to me it should be a spring feeding the lake. But it is dry too. She decided to enter the hole to understand what is obstructing it and found… a wall of shit (literally). She is outraged by her findings and gets rid of it, but still no water. She keeps exploring and finds more walls she cleans up until she finally reaches… the sea !
I ask her to describe this to me and she feels sad to see this water also contaminated with excrement… I ask her if she wants to let this water get back to the lake as is, and she decides to block the entrance for the moment. Exploring the sea, she finally finds the place where all the dump comes from and cleans it very thoroughly. She ends up unlocking the hole and let the sea water make its way back to the lake. There she finds it has turned into a pond full of life and the desert around is turning into a green place, where flowers spontaneously flourished. The person feels relieved and filled up with a new energy !
| What about trauma ? Humanist Hypnosis is a really protective approach, as the subconscious naturally refers to symbols in order to communicate.It allows the person to remain in charge throughout the duration of the session, which further protects the individual as they’re allowed to stay in control themselves and decide what they are comfortable investigating. No Flash Back All the facts, and all the events will be camouflaged under symbols chosen by me or spontaneously offered by subconscious. You don’t have to revisit those moments of your life, which further protects you and your mind from activation as we navigate this space together, led my you and your timing. If you have no memory of the event If there’s a memory loss, it will still be possible to access a symbolic representation of how this event impacts your Automaton. After the session, you may experience odd dreams or have sudden intuition about facts that may have happened. Sometimes after healing, now that you find the ressources to be strong against what happened, your subconscious allows you to access part of the information again. It will then help you close the book or it will open a new chapter in your life to feel open to the world and completely peaceful. |
Differences between active imagination and hypnotic trance
When you reach a trance state through the associative way, a subtle shift occurs in the way your imagination works, differentiating it from simple “active imagination” therapy. Without the trance, your brain canno’t be tricked to think that everything happening in imagination were happening as if it were reality. So “active imagination” therapy use other ways for healing.
If you found a troll ripping a forest apart in your trance, and you choose to grow and crush it into your hand, it doesn’t come from nowhere and that information through what you’re seeing is trying to communicate something to you, and I am here to help facilitate that communication.
Differences beween mindfullness meditation and humanist hypnosis
Mindfullness is not a therapy
Jon Kabat-Zinn is the developer and founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). According to his website, “From its beginning in 1979, MBSR was envisaged as a public health project rather than a therapy.” So instead, it is a way to behave in life, describe as an ethical stance.
Learn more about his work : https://jonkabat-zinn.com
Dissociation
On a second hand, it appears that the mindfulness exprience supports poeple to observe their own thinking and emotion, and to pay attention to them. Doing so, it automatically split the person from those emotions and therefor create dissociation. At the opposite Humanist hypnosis want to help the person to see the person becoming one with themself.