What is hypnotic trance?
Hypnosis can be described as a tool that can be used to facilitate a state of trance. To facilitate and not to impose, because people are not new to altered states of consciousness or trances : they experience them on a daily basis without even noticing. For example, when driving a car and not remembering the journey, or when during a long, boring meeting where the mind drifts away, or any other situation where the attention goes involuntarily out of focus from the present environment.
Hypnosis is not different to those naturally occurring states. It is, in fact, a state of heightened awareness. You will never loose control, say or do anything which you do not want to . Hypnotised people can get out of trance when they whish, there are no associated dangers.
On the other hand, behaviours such as phobic responses or panic attacks are considered to be states of trance out of control, which can be solved through hypnosis. |
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Example of PET (positron emission tomography) scan of human brain.
PET scans indicate the degree of metabolic activity in different parts of the brain. Red indicates the most intense activity and blue the least.
Some studies (e.g. Szechtman H., 1998) show that, while subjects were under hypnosis, a hallucinated voice activated the same region of the brain as it was while subjects were actually hearing the stimulus. That area wasn't active while they were imagining that they heard the stimulus. Hypnosis made this area of the brain (right anterior cingulate cortex) to register the hallucinated voice as real. This finding would object that hypnosis is simply a matter of having a vivid imagination.
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