Many people wonder if susceptibility to hypnosis is something you grow out of as you get older. They can accept that children, with their playful habits and naive approach to life, could be easily hypnotized but doubt that adult hypnosis really works. After all, they are better educated, more practical and, yes, skeptical.
Well, even the most analytical of skeptics should be reassured by the myriad scientific studies that prove children are no more susceptible to hypnosis than adults. And, significantly, personality traits like imagination don’t have anything to do with the effectiveness of adult hypnosis. But the critics are right in one regard. Not everyone can be hypnotized.
The Stanford Hypnotic Standardization Scales measure susceptibility to hypnosis from 0 (does not respond to hypnosis at all) to 12 (responds to all hypnotic suggestions). Most of us fall between five and seven. Only five percent of the population registers a 0.
What is really interesting about the Stanford Scales is the discovery that your ranking is as stable as your IQ. It reflects your susceptibility to hypnosis regardless of age. Once a five, always a five no matter how much education or world experience you gain.
Scientists are unable to explain the neurological mechanisms underlying hypnosis. We do not yet have the knowledge we need to decode the subconscious and get to a comprehensive explanation. However, studies have proven that hypnosis is a different state from normal consciousness. In both childhood and adult hypnosis, we enter a highly attentive and highly receptive state. Under hypnosis, our conscious mind stops chattering and our subconscious is more open to suggestion than usual.
What Are Some of the Uses of Adult Hypnosis?
* When you are trying to lose weight hypnosis can be beneficial by increasing your self-esteem, altering ones subconscious views and attitudes on food and promoting new healthier habits. It should be used along with a proper diet as well as increased physical activity and exercise.
* Hypnotherapy is also a great tool in quitting smoking. As an example, neuro-linguistic re-programming can be utilized to remove the association many have with coffee and cigarettes. This way you will be able to stop the urge to have a smoke with your coffee. Also it is highly effective in alleviating the anxiety associated with nicotine withdrawals.
* Hypnosis is now being seen as a very effective tool for pain control in people of all ages. When used for controlling ones pain hypnosis can lower the for pain drugs, lessening the dangers from dangerous drug side-effects and interactions.
* The reduction of pre-operative stress and anxiety has been shown to play a vital part in the success of major and minor surgerical procedures and hypnotherapists have had much success here. Hypnosis is now often being utilized to allay the patients fears and anxieties in the time leading up to the day of the procedure and also just before the operation hypnosis is used to put the patient in a more relaxed state.
* Today, many pregnant women are turning to hypnotism to help in controlling their morning sickness as well as to help to the fears and anxiousness they may be feeling about labour and delivery. A form of self-hypnosis can also be used to help in relaxing between contractions.
Psychologists, medical doctors, midwives and scientists among others are embracing adult hypnosis for a wide range of physical and psychological concerns. If the only thing stopping you is a fear that it won’t work, the best thing you could do is test it out. You won’t know until you try it.