MINOR RANT ALERT!
O.K, so I’m the Hypnosis Without Trance guy, which means…
Many people keep telling me that I am wrong in asserting that hypnosis is not about a special state, and more about how a persons beliefs and everyday cognitive processes are engaged. And what is more, they say, they can prove it!
They tell me that research with fMRI equipment shows an alteration of neurological patterns (see http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20050627/what-hypnosis-does-to-brain), so therefore trance must the real mechanism behind hypnosis.
Excuse me?!?!
How does that logic work?
Well, apparently the fMRI shows an altered state, therefore hypnosis must be an altered state! Simple!
Hmmm….
Now I’ll admit that I haven’t done the research on this (no one will fund me), but I am willing to bet that if you hooked someone up to fMRI and gave them a donut to eat, the fMRI machine would record a shift in brain activity as they ate it, so by the same logic…
Donut eating is an altered state! That is what it is! That is what makes it work!
Donut eating is trance!
So as long as you deepen enough, they will be eating that donut.
I’m glad that has been cleared up and I can formally dismount my soapbox.
Stay Frosty
James
P.S. Please do feel free to post your comments on this, especially if you disagree!
P.P.S. If there are any hypnosis questions that you would like answered, or things that you would like to know more about, please either leave a comment or email me and I will endeavor to give you my take on it right here on the blog!
Hypnosis Without Trance 
Donut eating can create an altered state, especially if they are covered in sugar and you are diabetic!
LoL James
It certainly can! And so can hypnosis!
Which is why having good hypnosis skills is great for trancework!
See you at Phenomena | Change, if not before.
J
Looking forward to it immensly!
The way i see it is that there are various states. There is a state when you are in love, there is a state of when are happy and there is a state on how you are feeling now. A trance is a state but for hypnosis to work you dont necesarrily have to be in trance. Maybe to elicit some phenomina it is easyier to be in a one state then then the other but that does not mean that hypnosis is only trance. People are suggestible all the time wether they are into trance or not
There are a number of factors that must me considered for any of this to be (in)validated. First, when the fMRI is being done, how do we know if the person is actually in hypnosis, or merely in trance?
Second, a person’s state changes many, many times during the course of an average day. Trance often occurs during those transitions, while the subC is repositioning itself, so to speak.
Third, if a person can eat a donut (which your spell checker wants you to spell as doughnut) and not experience trance… that is a person I don’t want to know. 😉
Fourth, it is absolutely fact that hypnosis and trance are two different things. I have been doing hypnosis without trance for many years with people, but we always called it waking hypnosis. We just always found that the subject got a big kick out of mixing trance in with it. But that is my experience and YMMV. I think you have demonstrated that one can get just as big a kick without the trance. Good job!
Finally, I like the clear way you present your materials. Well done. I would love to work together with you on a project some time.
Best to you always,
Jeff S
Jeff – thank you!
I recently had the opportunity to check out your stuff and I liked it a lot – no fluff, plenty of precision and beautifully elegant!
We ought to have a chat sometime – are you on Skype?
All the very best
James
Hi James, I have tried to find you on Skype without success. I would love to chat sometime. My nic is i_hypnotize. If you get the chance and have the inclination, tap me there.
Jeff S
I would suspect that most people who eat donuts are indeed in a trance, a kind of altered state where they automatically eat without thinking of the consequences. A much better trance would be to notice the donuts and decide to make a healthier choice based on some picture of how they want to look and feel!
Hypnosis with or without trance, what’s the difference? If we define trance as an “altered state,” what state is the trance state altered from? Makes me want to posit a theory of trance-endental relativity…a state is altered only relative to some other state.
Even something like Flow (as defined by Mihaly C.) at first may be experienced as “altered” due to unfamiliarity but become habituated as one continues to practice whatever it is that is creating the Flow.
The word trance is nice for eliciting trance precisely because it is a vague term. My trance may be different from your trance, and I wouldn’t want to impose on you–whatever trance you’d like to experience that is right for you is the right one to choose.
Duff, I’m right with you on that!
The whole ‘Without Trance’ thing is more about stepping away from connotations than anything else.
Totally our ‘states’ are shifting all the time, and people’s states shift appropriately when they are experiencing hypnotic phenomena… but to suggest that we need to shift (or elicit and ‘deepen’) the state first is, to me, like saying that you have to formally shift your state (perform an induction) before eating a donut.
I do Hypnosis Without Trance to avoid the dead-ends that the ‘traditional’ trance model propagates, like ‘the phenomena didn’t take, I must deepen more. From the HWT model we would say ‘the phenomena didn’t take, we must better engage this persons beliefs and cognitive processes’.
I love the work of Stephen Wolinsky, and I do think that there could be useful definitions for the word ‘trance’ (and useful applications of those definitions). I also believe that there are other useful conceptualisations that may be more useful for the majority of ‘classic theory’ hypnotists at least for the time being!
The strongest advantage of a no-trance model is the clean break in thinking, and thus the stimulation of new thinking (which is something that we all need to grow).
All the very best
James
Your model fits my direct experience with myself and clients. I find that so-called depth of trance tends to come about as a result of the change taking place, not the other way around! In other words, once you hit upon some combination of things that finally gets through, then the client goes into trance.
Anyway, recently found your work and I like what I see so far. 🙂
Cheers,
~Duff
Thanks Duff!
I totally agree – when I do changework I just go straight for the process (whatever that may be with that client). And as long as I do my job right, their state will shift appropriately to do the work.
Cheers
James
I have tried numerous scripts and recordings for hypnosis. but none of them seem to work. Icant go into a trance. I have been hypnotised before so i know i can be hypnotised. PLeas ecould you give me a script or mp3 recording that will work.There must be script out there.
Hi Tanjit
The problem is that scripts don’t hypnotise… hypnotists hypnotise in partnership with the hypnotic subject. Hypnosis is a form of live, dynamic communication/interraction. The ‘magic’ is not in the script. I talk more about this on this video: https://hypnosiswithouttrance.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/hypnotherapy-without-trance/
My advice would be to find a good hypnotist to work with.
But I am also curious… why is it so important for you to be hypnotised or go into trance?
All the very best
James