Fiona suggested I start a thread about hypnosis. After some thought as where to begin, I guess at the beginning would be a good place to start. It is my intention to help you understand what hypnosis is and how it can be used. I plan to update this thread on a regular basis until I run out of knowledge on the subject. So here goes.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask or PM me. The only silly question is the one not asked. Please relax and open your mind.

Hypnosis is not a magical power that comes out of your eyes. It is not magical at all. It is a psychological process. That means if you go through the right steps, if the mind goes through the right set of experiences, then every single human being will go into hypnosis. Some people will be easier to hypnotize than others. It has nothing to do with willpower. It has only to do with their ability to go through the process, the steps and recreate the conditions for hypnosis.

Hypnosis is actually a very natural phenomenon. People go into trance every day and do not even know it. In fact, it is a very healthy thing to do. That is because in these mini-trances, you allow your mind to absorb information or process stuff that has been going through your mind.

Maybe you have had the experience of staring off into space, thinking of nothing in particular. When someone ask you what you are thinking about? You literally have to say Nothing. You have no recollection of what you were thinking about. This is a kind of mini-trance experience.

At other times you can be so deeply aware of, or adsorbed in, your thoughts. Perhaps you are thinking of a future project or working on a problem. Maybe you are just engaged in daydreaming. You are so fixated on ideas that are running through your mind that you completely neglect the environment around you. Someone walks into the room and starts talking to you. You simply don’t notice because you are so absorbed in your own thoughts. This is another example of a hypnotic event.

Maybe you have read a book and been so absorbed by a character that time, maybe hours fly by and it feels like minutes. The same is true of movies. Surely you have had the experience of watching a movie and you begin to have an emotional experience.

Think about this, how can you have an emotional experience reading text in a book or watching flickering light on a screen? Your mind has had to suspend normal reality, enter the reality of the story then have an emotional reaction to it as if it were real on some level. Otherwise it would be meaningless to you. These are all examples of hypnosis happening every single day.

Stay tuned more to come.

GregD