Hypnosis Myths 3 and 4

“Hypnosis Myths 3 and 4”

by James Hazlerig, MA, Certified Hypnosis Practitioner

HypnoMyth #3: Violating Your Morals

In bad movies, people who are hypnotized become zombies, ready to do anything their evil master says, even if it’s something terrible, like punching a puppy.

As it turns out, hypnosis is not like what you saw on TV. If you have strong morals, no one can make you violate them, with or without hypnosis.

However, if someone’s morals are not strong, science has shown that all it takes is a little peer pressure or influence from an authority figure to get people to go against what they think is right.

A hypnotist was once working with a client who had stopped smoking years before. The client had sworn to never touch another lighter or cigarette. In a hypnosis session, the hypnotist said, “Now imagine that you are reaching into your pocket and taking out a lighter that can burn away the stress in your life.”

The client refused—even though he knew it was an imaginary lighter, which just goes to show that you can’t make someone break their morals, even with hypnosis.

HypnoMyth 4: Some People Can’t Be Hypnotized

Professors at Stanford have done a lot of experiments to measure how well different people respond to hypnosis, and they’ve declared that some people can’t be hypnotized.

The problem is that, in order to do a good experiment, they have to make things as much the same for everyone as possible. That means using only one method of hypnosis, when there are literally infinite ways to induce hypnosis.

So all they really measure is how well people respond to their one method. That’s kind of like serving a hundred people luke-warm tuna casserole, recording that twenty of them won’t eat it, and then announcing that twenty percent of all people are “not susceptible to food!”

The announcement should have been, “Even under the worst conditions, eighty percent of the population responds easily to hypnosis.”

When you go to a trained hypnosis practitioner, you get an experience that caters to you, so that you can experience exactly the hypnosis you need.