What is Hypnosis?

Probably the best definition ever given of what the hypnotic state actually is, was given by the late great Dr Milton Erickson, who described hypnosis or trance as "The loss of the multiplicity of the foci of attention"

What on earth does that mean?

When we are in the "normal" waking state, we have a multiplicity of awareness, a multiplicity of sensory perceptions. For example, you are a party, in a crowded room, full of people, its very noisy. Yet someone mentions your name across the other side of the room and you automatically look over - you have a multiplicity of the foci of attention!

In hypnosis, you lose some of that multiplicity, your attention becomes focused in a narrower band.

The amazing thing, which few people realize, is that THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME IN EVERYDAY LIFE!

For example when you were a child and were watching a really good television program in which you were engrossed, if mum or dad called you for tea, yet you really didn't hear them - you had lost the multiplicity of the foci of attention, you were in a light trance.

Another example, ever lost yourself in a good book or magazine article?

Or when you go to the cinema and watch a really good film, you forget the seat your sitting in, you lose awareness of the audience around you. The screen becomes your focus of attention, you become absorbed, engrossed, entranced!

Hopefully you have realized by now that you have already been in a light trance more times than you could possibly count and so has everyone else in the world. it is a perfectly naturally occurring phenomena, all a hypnotist does is harness that phenomena and deepen it and make it occur on demand as opposed to randomly in everyday life.