Category: Hypnosis

This is the time of year where people say “where is the year going?” Time speeds up as you get older (or so it seems). When you’re young, months last eternities. But this year has already had two of them. It’s a double blow when the days feel long and the years feel short. Where

Want to see the power of your unconscious in action? There’s a TED Talk that you should watch. It’s a subtle point, buried by the main message. But the lesson – if you hear it – describes how to take away a lot of pain. Not every pain for every person. A lot of emotional

Earlier I claimed that you can accidentally hypnotise someone, to the point where overhearing someone hypnotise someone else can hypnotise you. One of the reasons is that everything is hypnotic. Our brains enter trance states all of the time, so a normal conversation has good odds of hypnotising you. A hypnotist, then, is someone who

Last post, we explored a question: if A hypnotises B and C overhears, will C be hypnotised too? In answering that, we learned a lot about the underlying principles of hypnosis. But there’s another principle that we haven’t explored – one that also transforms the original question beyond recognition. This new principle? Everything is hypnotic.

I get this question a lot. Recently someone asked me: if A hypnotises B and C overhears, will C be hypnotised too? The short answer is ‘yes’. The long answer grapples with what, really, hypnosis is. But before I get into that, you can accidentally hypnotise someone. In fact, you’ve probably done it recently. Yes,

The debate is as old as the song itself. This classic by Madonna is about religion. No, wait, it’s really about sex. Actually, it’s about a hypnotic induction. … Really…? Hypnosis? Oh, yes. Listen to the verses – really listen to them – and you’ll hear someone describing a hypnotic trance.

Hypnosis is polarising. Broadly speaking, there are three reactions when someone mentions hypnosis: It’s weird, evil mind control, It’s as useful as astrology – fake, mystical nonsense, It’s a fascinating piece of mental technology. All are common. Only the last is accurate. Imagine if antibiotics had the same reputation: “It’s all in the name: they

There are a lot of misconceptions about hypnosis. But in my experience, people are eager to learn more about hypnosis. After all, it’s interesting, it’s useful… and the mind is a very strange thing. These are some of the questions I get. If you have a question that I haven’t answered, please get in touch. Is

You’ve probably heard the term ‘trance state’ before. Especially if you’re familiar with hypnosis. A question you might ask is: what is the trance state? Hypnosis activates the trance state. It’s a way the brain likes to operate sometimes. In this state, you think more creatively and are open to new ideas. You are more