When you hear "hypnosis" you might think of the traditional form of hypnosis where the powerful, authoritative hypnosis implants suggestions in his subject, such as, "you are getting sleeeepy. Your eyelids are growing heavier and heavier. "You will quit smoking," and so on.

But really, hypnotic trance exists in many different forms every day. Sometimes it is recognized and utilized (hypnotherapy rituals, or dance, for example), but most of the time it goes unnoticed (daydreaming, people's behavior on elevators, or irrational fears. to name a few). In fact, as a practicing hypnotherapist, I believe that people live most of the lives in one trance or another and my job is generally not to hypnotize them, but to de-hypnotize them. The true hypnotists in life are teachers, religious leaders, and even advertisers. The most powerful hypnosis in anyone’s life, are that individual’s, parents.

I’ll elaborate on that point in a moment. But allow me to say a few words about hypnosis, since there are many forms of hypnosis, and even more misconceptions about hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy is simply the usage of trance for therapeutic purposes. Traditional hypnotherapy uses commanding language as in the above example, called direct suggestion. This method sometimes works, but not for everybody. Some people resist these suggestions, perhaps because they resent authority figures, and they are sometimes labeled as "resistant", or worse, "unhypnotizable," by traditional hypnotherapists.

But not all hypnotherapists believe in direct suggestions. In fact, Ericksonian hypnotherapy uses more what is called indirect suggestions. Indirect suggestions are much harder to resist because they are often not even recognized as suggestions by the conscious mind, since they usually disguise themselves as stories or metaphors. An example of an indirect suggestion: "Perhaps your eyes will grow tired as you listen to this story, and you will want to close them, because people can, you know, experience a pleasant, deepening sense of comfort as they allow their eyes to close, a they relax deeply." This would all be said in such a way as to mark out key words and phrases by subtle shifts in the tone of voice. The person’s unconscious awareness thus responds to these "embedded commands."

Think about the following scenario. A child of say four or five years of age is carefully carrying a full glass of milk to the table. The amateur parent of the child warns in a stern voice, "don't drop that!" The child looks up at the parent, stumbles a bit, drops the glass and spills milk everywhere. The now angry parent yells, "I told you not to drop that! You’re so clumsy. You’ll never learn!"

As unintentional as It may be, this scenario, is an example of hypnosis, complete with induction, suggestion, and post hypnotic suggestion. The powerful authoritative voice (the parent), having created and utilized through indirect suggestion ("don't drop that"), an altered state (trance), has issued a direct post-hypnotic suggestion ("You’re so clumsy. You’ll never learn"). "Post-hypnotic because, if the child accepts the suggestion (and children often do), he or she will always see him/herself as clumsy. This post-hypnotic suggestion by the parent may well adhere to the directive in the future, sabotaging the child’s success.

We would do well to realize that in a sense we are all hypnotists, and that if we are parents we have very suggestible subjects in our care on whom our language may have great effects. We must learn to give our children positive suggestions.

Let’s explore how the parent could have handled the situation more scrupulously: First of all there is the confusing directive, "don’t drop that." Why Is that confusing? Because the human brain does not know how to compute negations. Let me illustrate by having you try a little experiment: For the next fifteen seconds do not think about your breathing. Don't think about whether you are breathing up high in your chest or down low in your abdomen, or whether you are taking deep or shallow breaths. Just don't think about it at all.