A new study sheds light on cognitive mechanisms linked to hypnosis
by Eric W. Dolan on May 30, 2021, in Cognitive Science
New research provides evidence that the tendency to respond to hypnosis is linked to cognitive flexibility. The findings, recently published in Scientific Reports, indicate that people with higher levels of hypnotizability tend to be better at shifting between different mental sets.
Despite a growing interest in the clinical potential of hypnosis, little is known about its neuro-cognitive underpinnings. The new study authors were interested in how hypnotizability was related to executive functions and information processing.
“Throughout both my research and clinical work, I am particularly interested in understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie therapeutic processes. Put differently; I work to investigate how, neuro-cognitively, interventions lead to improvement in symptoms,” explained study author Afik Faerman (@AfikFaerman), a PhD candidate at Palo Alto University.
“To do that, we need to explore how both the symptoms and the interventions manifest in the brain. Hypnosis is a good model of such interventions because it serves as a great non-pharmacological alternative to several psychological and medical symptoms; however, it seems not everyone benefits equally from hypnosis. In my research with Dr David Spiegel at Stanford University, we are interested in understanding why some individuals benefit more than others, and what we can do to improve its effectiveness for those who benefit less.”
The researchers first had 545 prospective participants complete the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility. Of this initial sample, 72 participants were selected for having particularly high and particularly low scores on the test of hypnotizability.
The selected participants then completed two neuropsychological tests: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Trails Making Test. Both tests were used to assess a cognitive phenomenon known as perseveration, meaning the tendency to apply previously learned (but incorrect) logical rules after being presented with new (correct) rules.
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“We found an association between people’s ability to respond to suggestions in hypnosis (i.e., hypnotizability or hypnotic suggestibility) and how easy it is for them to shift between different cognitive sets (less perseveration). “This provides behavioral evidence for a potential shared mechanism between hypnotizability and executive functions,” Faerman told PsyPost.
“Practically, the more hypnotizable one is, the easier it was for them to drop an old rule system and transition to a new rule system. While there is a need for further evidence to substantiate this, some might interpret our findings as increased cognitive flexibility.”
The researchers also predicted that hypnotizability would be associated with faster performance on simple attention tasks and slower performance on more complex cognitive tasks. However, the results from the neuropsychological tests showed no evidence of this.
“There is no consensus in the literature yet about the neuro-cognitive mechanisms of hypnotizability, and there is still much to be done to understand them better. It is also possible that high hypnotizability and low hypnotizability are distinct in more aspects than just hypnotizability. Our sample was not appropriate to test that. Future research should recruit balanced representations of the high, medium, and low hypnotizable participants,” Faerman said.
Previous research has used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify several brain regions with altered activity and connectivity during the hypnotic state. In particular, scientists observed a decrease in activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate, an increase in connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula, and reduced connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex default mode network.
But there is still much to learn about the brain mechanisms underlying hypnosis.
“Coupling behavioural performance with neuro-imaging can shed more light on the neuro-cognitive mechanism at play in hypnotizability. When we have targets for neural mechanisms, we can try to modulate them to improve the effects of hypnosis,” Faerman said.
“In fact, we recently succeeded in doing that; we temporarily increased hypnotizability by using non-invasive brain stimulation of a neuro-cognitive mechanism we identified using neuro-imaging. The behavioural results of the current study support our choice of the neural target. The manuscript describing how we modulated hypnotizability is currently being finalized and will be submitted soon.”
“We are currently working to make hypnosis more accessible and affordable to as many individuals as we can,” Faerman added. “We are doing this by running a pilot study on the ability to use smartphone-based hypnosis, and we see really encouraging results so far! If anyone is interested in learning more about what hypnosis is and feels like, they can download the app (“Reveri”) at the App Store or Google Play or go to www.Reveri.com to have a no-cost interactive digital hypnosis experience. To participate in our study, please reach out to us at: OnlineHypnosisStudy@stanford.edu.”
The study, “Shared cognitive mechanisms of hypnotizability with executive functioning and information salience“, was published March 11, 2021.
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A Hypnotist's Favorite Meditation For Calming The Mind Before Bed
It takes people anywhere from five to 20 minutes to fall asleep—but if you're dealing with a restless mind before bed, a 20-minute wind-down can sound like a pipe dream.
From breathwork to journaling, there are plenty of accessible tools that can help your mind calm down before bed, hypnosis included. Here is a favorite pre-bed routine self-hypnosis meditation to try before bed and only takes a few minutes to complete.
Ready, set, snooze:
• Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and hold your hand to your heart if you like.
• Review your day in your mind's eye. Pick three things you can thank yourself for from that day (i.e., going to work, calling a friend in need, completing that big project) and imagine in your mind's eye that you thank yourself and you receive appreciation from yourself.
• Make three well wishes for three different people in your life and imagine them receiving the positive energy.
• Make three wishes for yourself. They can either be geared toward the day ahead or be more general.
Why it works.
In just a few simple steps, this meditation primes your mind and attention to track the positive progress in your life. It also reinforces abundance, appreciation, and compassion—and there's even some research to shows that gratitude is associated with greater self-reported sleep quality and sleep duration.
Before you go to sleep, the mind is very receptive. It's an ideal time to plant positive seeds of suggestion that help to form new neural pathways and supportive associations. This counteracts the brain's negativity bias and, over time, can increase self-worth and resilience.
The next time you're struggling to doze off, give this self-hypnosis routine a try. The nighttime hours are the perfect time to practice positive thinking so you can get to sleep and wake up feeling rested.
Hypnotherapy is excellent for breaking old patterns and encouraging healthy brain function.
13 May 2021
By Leah Larwood
Good sleep is essential for both our bodies and mind. However, sometimes life throws sleep curve balls our way, and when this happens, it can feel as though we’ve forgotten how to do one of the most natural things in the world.
Luckily, we all know how to fall asleep deep down; it’s a natural process; it’s just sometimes we need a little help to get back on track. Hypnotherapy is one helpful way to make sleep easier. It’s basically a helping hand for good sleep. It can often take you into what feels like a deep sleep meditation, and it’s super relaxing.
Hazel Gale is the resident Cognitive Hypnotherapist for Clementine app, a women’s hypnotherapy app with a mission to reduce stress, build confidence and improve the sleep of millions of women. She said, “My first ever experience of hypnotherapy was with a session designed for sleep some fifteen years ago. At that time, I was competing as a boxer. Racing thoughts about upcoming contests could keep me awake for hours, making quality sleep (the one thing I wanted more than anything else) really hard to come by. That is until I started listening to hypnotherapy recordings the last thing at night. The sessions I used back then were straightforward; they taught me how to relax my body and calm my mind. But the change this made to my wellness and performance was no small thing.”
“The Deep Sleep sessions we’re producing at the app help women to make a similar difference to their lives. But our aim is much bigger than simply getting people to sleep; we want them to feel calmer, more confident, and capable during the waking hours of the day, too. So, in addition to guidance for letting go of stress and tension, we also weave positive hypnotic suggestions into the recordings. These come in many forms, such as snippets of helpful stories, creative visualizations, and intriguing questions, which help you to rewire your unconscious mind for a healthier, more self-affirming perspective on life.”
Hypnosis is a natural state we all experience throughout the course of the day; it’s when we’re in a relaxed state, which is when our mind is more open and receptive to change. So hypnotherapy is really just a fancy term for changing our mindset during a relaxed state. It’s about being taken into a deep-enough hypnotic state of relaxation, with the help of an in-person therapist or a recorded session, who then passes on helpful messages to your subconscious mind that will affect positive change.
You see, the subconscious mind likes to please us, and it is there to help us, so if you can connect with it, which is easier than you might think, you are sitting on a goldmine of opportunity, just waiting to be untapped. Here are just a few reasons why using hypnotherapy to improve your sleep is such an effective approach.
Here are 7 other reasons why hypnotherapy can help with your sleep:
#1 Hypnotherapy reteaches us to relax: One of the most important ingredients for falling asleep and staying asleep is to have a relaxed body and a relaxed mind. Hypnotherapy is like a guided meditation, and the process involves being taken into a relaxed state. Perfect for easing into sleep! Plus, getting your mind and body into a relaxed state and feeling supported is an effective way to achieve a better sleep-wake cycle.
Hypnotherapy helps with sleep by interrupting the disturbing mental chatter that often occurs when we try to sleep. Through listening to a recording, you're listening to another conversation, meaning that you're not allowing your mind to go off on those disruptive spirals.
#2 There’s always a bonus: A good sleep hypnotherapist will also weave in other helpful suggestions that help you overcome some of the possible related causes of your sleep issues such as stress, anxiety, or confidence. So a hypnotherapy session for sleep can achieve more than one goal! It can leave you feeling calmer during the waking hours too.
#3 Promotes better sleep hygiene: Understanding what makes a good bedtime routine is an important factor in falling asleep and maintaining a healthy mind and body in general. Sleep hypnosis is great for getting a good night's sleep and increasing sleep quality and can also help to promote good sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene includes your sleeping environment and habits, and it can pave the way for higher-quality sleep and just better general health. Sleep hypnotherapy encourages and reinforces these good habits.
#4 It’s a pattern breaker: Hypnotherapy is excellent for breaking old patterns and encouraging healthy brain function. While we sleep, our brain strengthens our memories and reorganizes them. Sleep also impacts our ability to use language, sustain attention, understand what we are reading, and summarize what we are hearing. If we don’t get enough good sleep, it can impact our day-to-day performance, relationships, and mood. Hypnotherapy can help us break patterns of poor sleep and replace them with better patterns, making sleep more natural.
#5 Repetition can reinforce behavior: For some more than others, hypnotherapy can be beneficial. The great thing about using a hypnotherapy recording or hypnotherapy app is that you can re-listen to your session again and again before bed. That repetition can really reinforce the behavior. Over a relatively short time, this allows you to build up a better sleep routine, which has been proven to work and make a massive difference to overall health.
#6 Encourages me-time: Listening to hypnotherapy for a sleep session before bed offers a little pocket of time that’s all yours. It’s your time to pop your headphones on or stream your session via your bedside table while you luxuriate in this time set aside for you. It’s like having someone scoop you up and cradle you—your very own bedside therapist.
#7 It’s a breeze: Unlike approaches such as mindfulness, hypnotherapy for sleep is something you can see results in quickly, and it’s straightforward to do. In fact, you don’t need to do anything; you can lie back and allow yourself to be guided through the process. And don’t worry if you fall asleep during hypnosis; many experts agree that the hypnotic suggestions will still work, and well, let’s face it, if you’ve fallen asleep during a sleep session at bedtime, then it’s worked wonders.
Plus, if you start to fall asleep during a recording, you don't give yourself a chance to get panicked and go into fight or flight mode, which would stop you from sleeping. The relaxation elements of the session also mean that you are more likely to have improved quality of sleep by becoming more relaxed before you sleep, thus encouraging deeper sleep.
About Clementine
Clementine app’s sleep sessions use various relaxation tools, such as progressive relaxation, guided visualization, guided breathing, and hypnotic suggestions for calming the body and mind. https://clementineapp.com/
2021 - April 21st
A Texas State Bill that would prevent using hypnosis in criminal investigations sails through Texas Senate.
The legislation gained steam after The Dallas Morning News published a series exposing how Texas law enforcement officers continued to rely on the controversial investigative tool.
Texas State Senator Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa (D-McAllen) meets with colleagues on the second day of the 87th Texas legislature on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021, at the Texas State Capitol, in Austin, Texas. Hinojosa has authored a bill that would prohibit any statements made by crime victims or witnesses during a hypnosis session from being used in a criminal court.
Updated Wednesday, April 21, 2021, at 9:55 a.m. with more information about Texas Speaker Dade Phelan’s criminal justice priorities.
AUSTIN — The Texas Senate passed a bill Tuesday aimed at cracking down on the use of hypnosis in criminal cases.
Senate Bill 281 by Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, passed the chamber unanimously. It now heads to the Texas House for further debate. It’s the first time this legislation has gotten traction in Texas. The bill would prohibit any statements made by crime victims or witnesses during a hypnosis session from being used in a criminal court.
The passage came the day before Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan included his chamber’s version of the hypnosis legislation among his criminal justice priorities.
“Meaningful criminal justice reform demands bold and innovative ideas, and the time for action is now,” Phelan, R-Beaumont, said in a statement Wednesday. “After years of over-incarceration, we now realize that a compassionate, common-sense approach to criminal justice can keep Texans safe, save lives, and save money.”
While Hinojosa has authored the bill before, the legislation gained renewed attention this year after The Dallas Morning News published a series exposing how police in Texas uses hypnosis to investigate crimes, despite scientific evidence that it can distort memory and lead to wrongful convictions.
After The News’ series, the Texas Department of Public Safety ended its 40-year hypnosis program and said it would shift to “more advanced interview and interrogation techniques that yield better results.”
In addition to making statements elicited under hypnosis inadmissible in court, Hinojosa said his bill would also ban any suspects' identifications made solely after a hypnosis session. However, it’s not clear whether the wording in the bill would achieve Hinojosa’s intent.
During an exchange between Hinojosa and Sen. Joan Huffman, he said statements made after hypnosis was, in fact, admissible.
“Any statements made before the actual hypnotic — hypnosis session are admissible, correct?” Huffman, R-Houston, asked.
“They are,” Hinojosa answered.
“And any statements made after it has concluded are admissible. Is that correct?” Huffman added.
“They’re admissible. That’s correct,” Hinojosa responded.
Huffman, a former prosecutor, and judge, also successfully amended the bill Tuesday to add that corroborating evidence investigators derived from those statements could be used against the accused while statements made under hypnosis would be inadmissible in court.
This means a victim who gave police new details about the crime while in a trancelike state would not be able to take the stand and testify about those statements. Still, the police could pursue leads based on that information, such as seeking out physical evidence like DNA or weapons.
Despite the many changes to his bill, Hinojosa said it is an important step toward cracking down on a problematic investigative practice.
“In the past, Texas has been a leader in reforming junk science. But lately, we’ve stalled on our progress,” Hinojosa said after the vote. With the passage of this bill, he said, we’re “picking up steam” again.
DEPOSITS - How I treat them during Covid
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“Which” Doctor Rapid Induction
This is a variation of the handshake interrupt induction relying more on confusion than shock. The subject is left to assign meaning to the question of ‘which’ is the dominant hand (thereby creating the pattern interrupt). In actuality, there is no difference whatsoever as far as you’re concerned.
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Ask “Are you right or left handed?”
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Whatever they say, ask “Good, may I borrow that arm?” (Pointing to their right hand)
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Bring their hand up about front 18 inches in front of their face while simultaneously pointing at their hand with your right hand.
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Say, “Look at your hand… notice the lines on it… and focus in on one spot. As that hand moves closer to your face, your eyes will begin to change focus… and you can become aware of your eyes… notice how that causes your breathing to shift… and now just close those eyes and… SLEEP! (Snap fingers)
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(Begin deepening immediately)
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The Hypnotic Stare – Arm Pull Induction
The hypnotic stare is powerful, and produces tangible results when used with most people. It triggers an “alpha–type” relationship and slight trance state with the subject, in most cases, causing them to be more easily persuaded and/or directed by you.
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Stand toe-to-toe with your subject.
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Tell them, “I’m about to hypnotize you deeper and faster than you’ve ever experienced before. Put your left hand on my shoulder.”
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Have them put their left hand on your shoulder, as you put your left hand on theirs and take their right hand in a handshake grip.
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Tell them, “In a moment, when I say ‘sleep,’ you will relax, fall into my chest and go deep into trance, staying firmly and solidly on your feet. Look directly into my eyes. Do not remove your eyes from mine.”
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Begin to stare at the point between and slightly above the eyes, focusing your gaze about 1 foot behind their head, as if you’re looking through them. Begin putting yourself into trance.
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After several seconds of the hypnotic stare, you’ll notice their gaze shifts and they ‘go inside.’ When you see that, pull their right hand gently but firmly and say, “SLEEP!”
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Cradle them against your chest, saying, “Staying firmly upon your feet, just drifting deeper and deeper down now.”
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Continue deepening
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NOTES: http://HypnosisBootCamp.info
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One copy of Ormond McGill's New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnosis Available for $60 (Full retail is $69.95)
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