Hi, Welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. My name is Jorge cham and you are getting sleepier and sleepier. You are going to listen to this episode all the way to the end because we are answering the question is hypnotism real? Does it really work like we see in the movies with a swinging pocket watch? And can you use it to get someone to do things without their knowledge. We're going to talk to two hypnotism experts who are going to step us through how it works
and what the most common misconceptions about it are. And then in the end, you're both going to hypnotize me. So focus on my voice, let yourself go and join me as we answer the question is hypnotism real?
Hey?
Everyone, Okay, today's episode has a gimmick, and that is that I ask two hypnotism experts to hypnotize me. We're going to see which one was able to do it. Now. The word hypnosis comes from Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, who in mythology is also the twin brother of death and the father of dreams. But what most people think when they hear the word hypnosis came from a German
doctor named Franz Mesmer in the late seventeen hundreds. Mesmer was a bit of a cult leader who claimed he could control a cosmic energy he called animal magnetism using simple magnets. He would enthrall audiences with demonstrations of curing people from things like headaches, stomach problems, and even paralysis and seizures. If you've heard the word mesmerizing, Franz Mesmer
is where it comes from. He would hold sessions where people would sit in a circle and hold bars of iron connected to a big tup of water that Mesmer claimed had this magnetic energy. Mesmer would then walk around talking to the participate, and after about an hour or so, some patients would feint, others would fall into a trance, and others would start to convolt or shake. Afterwards, the
patients would claim to be cured of their ailments. Mesmer became so famous the King of France, Louis the sixteenth, hired an elite team of investigators to find out if Mesmer was real or a fraud. The people he assembled
were like the avengers of signs at the time. They included Antoine de la Boissier, the father of modern chemistry, Joseph Ignaz Guillotine, who invented the guillotine, and it was led by none other than Ben Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, who at the time
was the US ambassador to France. The group was called and part of my French here Les Commissier Charge parla Roux de le xamin to Magnetism ANEMA, or the Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism, and they did what is considered
to be the first ever controlled clinical trial. They designed this series of experiments where they would put test subjects alone in a room or behind the curtain, and then they would tell the patient they were being magnetized when really they were not, or they would have one of Mesmer's men try to magnetize the patient without telling the patient.
This is what's now known as a blind study. As you might expect, Ben Franklin and the team of scientists found that there is no such thing as animal magnetism and that the effects people reported were mostly due to their imagination, the power of suggestion, and peer pressure. Okay, the first person I brought in to hypnotize me is
doctor anuche Zaheti. Doctor Zaheedi is a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Munster in Germany, and he has written several papers on the science of hypnosis. Before we got started, though, I was curious to know how he got interested in this subject. Here's what he said, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here.
You haven't hypnotized me. Now, I just want to make sure.
Not yet, not yet. I'm trying, but not yet.
First of all, what got you interested in the topic of hypnosis?
So I was trying to find the topic from my massive thesis. At the time. I was very skeptical about hypnosis. So, oh yeah, I wanted to prove that hypnosis is not going to work. And then I participated in some course program introducing me to hypnosis, and then went and saw that, oh it might be effective. And by the end of it, I was very much actually interested in surprised by things that I just saw by the power of mind. Led just say that I was hooked.
So you were a skeptic and then suddenly you believed in it. It sounds a little suspicious, sounds like maybe they hypnotized you.
They definitely ritized. In that program, I started to think about hypnosis based on stuff that I saw in public media right through TV series. You will just get hypnotized. You start to disclose all the sensitive information you had ever in your life, and then by the end of it, it's going to be very dangerous for you. But as we went through the whole course, it became more clear that I just got the whole concept wrong.
These days, according to doctors a heady, hypnotism is mostly seen as a form of therapy. Let's say you want to feel more confident in your life, or you want to get rid of some phobia or fear that you have, or let's say you want to lose weight or break a habit like smoking, then hypnosis might be for you. There are studies that have found that hypnotherapy can work as a way to help you change your behavior. Here's how doctors a heady defines hypnosis.
At the moment hypnosis, if you want to defind, it's a procedure that two people are some experimenter, the hypnotice, the clinician, whatever you want to call. The person will give another person the participants, some suggestions and participants will just listen to these suggestions. Imagine with the hypnotics and think about these suggestions, and through this process, the participant is going to have a perception that is semi different
from your normal perception. And this altered perception, altered cognition, would be very interesting for everyone. So it's an opportunity to change your frameworks in order to see things differently.
We'll get to how hypnosis works a little later. But another interesting application of hypnosis is in pain management. If you have chronic pain, or if you're going to go through a painful medical procedure, it might help to get hypnotized. And that's what God. The second expert I brought in to hypnotize me, doctor Dali Jaja, interested in hypnosis. Well, thank you doctor Jajah for joining us here today. Am I hypnotized right now? Have you already hypnotized me?
Everyone asked this question. Now you need to want to be hypnotized. What did to work?
Can you tell us who you are and what you do?
So?
I'm a pharmacy, hypnotherapist and researcher. I have an infel in the Faculty of Medicine from the University of Queensland and especially certificate in clinical research from the University of Madman. I have around seven publications about theories of hypnosis and misconceptions. I mainly focused on medical hypnosis for pain. For example, hypnosis has a potential benefits for children's procedureal pain and distress. Also the traumas that children go through can be prevented.
So what's the situation. There's a patient like a child, and they were going through some procedure and you would be there applying hypnosis to them.
Yeah. So for example, with someone having you to extraction, I did hypnosis. So the session started before the procedure, and when the procedure was being performed, the patient was already in a hypnotics state, in any laxed state, imagining pleasant scenes. And then when the proceed was over, the patient didn't have to go through the trauma the fear of being ather dentist. No anesthesia was used.
Wow, So hypnotism can be used to basically block out pain. I asked doctor Jajah, what are some of the other misconceptions people have about hypnotism? Now, you said there are a lot of definitions out there and a lot of misconceptions about hypnosis. What are some of the common misconceptions.
A common methace hyprocess is a sleep like state, and movies you see people undergoing hypnosis as if they're sleeping or an a state of somnambilism or reduced awareness, while in fact hypnosis is distinct from sleep, as hypnotized individuals remain aware of their surroundings and they can even leave
hypnosis at any time. And some misconceptions that hypnosis involves robot like automatic responding without being able to resist suggestions, while in truth, although it does involve a sense of involuntariness and a reduced sense of agency, individuals do not lose control under hypnosis, and they can resist suggestions that do not align with their inner inclination. Some people say
that in hypnosis you cannot remember what occurs. Spontaneous amnisia is exceptionally rare, and hypnotized individuals can remember everything that occurs during this session. And also, hypnosis sometimes is confused with other techniques like meditation or mindfulness, but in fact hypnosis is distinct from these. If you're seeing something under hypnosis, your brain acts differently than if you're just imagining something.
The visual areas would be activated as if you're really seeing the objects.
So a definition of hypnosis is still something even experts disagree on. The American Psychological Association, the main body of psychologists in the United States, has redefine what hypnosis is at least three times in the last few decades. They can't seem to agree on what it is. But from
our experts, this is the general picture. Hypnosis is a procedure where you sit down with a hypnotist and the hypnotism helps you enter a state of mind in which you might dissociate or tune out the rest of the world and be completely immersed, be more open to suggestions, and you might feel a loss of agency or control over your actions. Right when we come back, our two experts are you going to tell us how to get someone hypnotized, and then in the end we're going to
see which one was able to hypnotize me. So don't fall into a trance. Stay with us. We'll be right back with more science stuff. Hey, welcome back. Okay, we talked a little about what hypnosis is, and now we're going to talk about how to hypnotiz someone. We're going to do it by playing your clips from the two sessions where the experts try to hypnotize me. According to them, hypnosis is a four step process. Here's how Doctors AHEADI describes the first step. Okay, so you described it as
a process. What is that process.
First, you are going to have a long discussion with your clinician about the hypnosis itself creating some positive expectations in you and also with U seeing your negative expectations, you expect that some fun stuff are going to happen. So you expect that your hands or arms can be moved, your sense of agency over your behavior might be changed to your movements, and these things can happen to everyone, and that's okay.
So the first step in hypnotizing someone is a conversation that happens before the actual hypnosis, and this is where the hypnotism essentially primes you for what's about to happen. They make sure that you want this to work, that you have positive expectations, and they tell you that you might have some strange feet during the session, like you might feel like you're not in control of your movements
and that this is normal. But most important, the pre hypnosis talk is to get you to trust the hypnotist.
So the trust between two of us are going to be very important. So report is very important at any point in hypnosis, and your brain tells you that you should not trust me, the process going to stop.
It sort of sounds like you're trying to pre hypnotize the person to lean into the process, not to freak out, because if I have my guard up, if I'm skeptical, if I'm afraid of what's going to happen, then it definitely won't happen exactly. The second step in hypnotizing someone is to officially start the hypnosis, and this is where that famous swinging pocket watch comes in.
Then you start the next step, which is ghypnotic induction. Usually it's a ritual. You're trying through this ritual to start the initiation of the process.
Some sort of signals that says, all right, the process has now officially begun exactly.
For instance, they will ask you to close your eyes, and then you will think about your muscles and then you'll start to relax them one by one. Another one is eye fixation, so you would start to look at some specific place and then you try to keep your eyes open, and then at some point you have the tendency to close your eyes and you're going to get tired and the process starts.
That's sort of like the one you see on TV or in movies or in old movies where they would swing a watch, oh yeah something and say you're getting sleepy. That This is kind of the where that comes from.
Yeah. Yeah, the clock actually is a thing still hunting me every time. I'm just introducing how someone's governer the clock. Do you have a clock or not? Actually gets a very ineffective way.
Yeah, so hypnotherapists don't actually use the swing in pocket watch, but they do use other techniques to get you to relax so that your brain goes into a relaxed state, and this is where the hypnosis actually start. I'm now going to play for you the two sessions where our experts try to hypnotize me, and so your license hypnotherapist.
I am actually heart to part in the therapist. I don't actually practice as a clinician. I'm very much boring scientists. But it is not going to be that much difficult. It's a very actually simple thing. So yeah, definitely it's possible to hypnotize anyone as long as they are trusting you and they are okay with a situation. Okay, that's right, perfect, So let's just do something together. Let's just start with it. Close your eyes, and then we will try to first
relax your body together. Please see it comfortably on your chair. Try to imagine your body as it is, and then think about your body as a butt of water. Now it's empty, there is no water in it, and you can see through your body, so a transparent container. Now that we do want to now feel with some war warm water. It's warm, pleasant water, not too warm to make you uncomfortable, not too cold to make you uncomfortable, but warm enough to give you a pleasant sensation.
Okay, can you close your eyes when you're ready. Okay, Visualize a relaxing blue light above your face, a relaxing blue light that you're inhaling, moving all the way into your shace. Chill your shace, becoming more and more relaxed, and feel all the muscles of your face relaxing with every inhalation and with every exhalation. Allow all stress, all tensions on bluckages. To live your face, and now allow the eye to move into your neck to relax your neck.
So boose, that's repret that you take and feel all the blockages, all stress, all tensions needing your neck, allow the light to move into your shoulders. Relax your shoulders.
So both hypnosis sessions went on like this for several minutes. They had me focus on each part of my body and relaxing them one by one. It's not too different from what you might do in a yoga or meditation class, and the idea is to get your mind to a place where it's ready to take suggestions. These suggestions are
what makes hypnosis different from say, meditation or mindfulness. First, the hypnotists might start making suggestions that take you deeper and deeper into your own thoughts and imagination.
Focus your imagination, your awareness, and as this light finds you with awareness that enhanced focus, all the blockages to a deep process, distractions all on pleasant thoughts, They all evaporate and you're filled with night. How can you to be ready journey into your subconscious mind? Enjoy the place, and when you're ready to meet the place, say.
Okay, okay, now, taking with you all the joy, all the happiness of the safety of this place to stay with you throughout the session and beyond it.
I will come from three to one when I reach one, and you can imagine yourselves on top of stairs. States that in you to the gate of your subconscious mind three to one. See the stairs and see yourself going down the stairs. With every step you count the number backward, and you go downward, closer to the gate of your subconscious mind and deeper into his process. So starting from twenty, can you count out.
Lock twenty nineteen eighteen.
Ohing grossure and closer to the gate of your your subconscious mind seventeen.
Now when the hypnotist thinks you are fully immersed, some scientists believe this is an altered state of consciousness. An altered state of consciousness is just a different way for your mind to be. Normally, we are aware of what's around us, and we are constantly thinking about what we're going to do next. But several times a day we
all enter into different states of consciousness. For example, you've been listening to my voice for the last few minutes and paying attention, and you've probably tuned out the rest of the world. You've been a little zoned out. It's like when you're driving and suddenly you realize, oh, we're here. You don't remember actually driving the last ten miles or when you get into the zone when you're running or doing exercise, or when someone's watching TV and they look
like they're in a trance. These are all different states of consciousness. Here's how doctor Zaheti explains it.
At some point, you will get absorbed in your imagination so much that you get dissociated from the environments. So this concept is an altered state of consciousness. So you might also understand hypnosis and as an altered state of consciousness where instas hypnosis might the couple your cognitive control or change heat in a way, and because of that you might be able to experience hypnosis in this state.
The hypnotisms would then start the third step in the process, which is to give suggestions. And there are different suggestions hypnotists can give. For example, here is one called direct murder idea.
So just imagining this water, watching all your anxieties, all your stresses, and getting more and more comfortable. Now, whenever this anxiety and stress that you had previously are gone and you feel more relaxed, you can start imagining a couple of colorful balloons being tied to your fingers. Now, look at these balloons and different color that they have probably remember when we were kids, we were playing with
these balloons. We were having a lot of fun. Now imagine these balloons and as you are just seeing them more and more vividly, this positive experience that you had during your childhood is going to feel your hand. And then these positive experiences are going to make your fingers
and hand lighter and lighter. This might start with a tingling sensation, and then your fingers and your hand is going to feel lighter and lighter, and at any point when they are light enough that they want to start moving in the air, led them to move.
What doctor say Eddy is doing here is giving me what's called a direct motor idea. In this case, he's suggesting that I imagine balloons tied to my hands, and then visualize those balloons lifting my hands. And from a lot of people who go through this, their hands will actually move and they'll feel like their hands are moving on their own. Another type of suggestion is to access lost memories.
And now looking from to you see a door opening, going through the store, it takes you to a beautiful memory of your childhood. See yourself there. What do you.
See at the beach?
Okay, how all that?
Maybe twelve ten.
Okay, and what do you see in this case?
I see the stars, the water and the moon.
And how do you feel in this place?
I feel connected to the stars.
Allow your ener child to give your backsite that he's holding in that place that allows you to be more aware, focused on the present moment I connected to Nay. Allow the slide to fill you. And as the slide chains you or blockages that prevented you from enjoying the present, from being fully aware and mind chilling the present and from experiencing your connection to the stars and to mature, allow them all to evaporate. And when the slide chaines you and one to blockages, evaporate and say okay.
The last kind of suggestion that a hypnotist can give you is the clinical or therapy related suggestion. This is if you want to change something about your behavior, like if you want to cure a phobia or lose weight or quit smoking. For example, here's how doctor is a heady. We describe hypnotizing someone who wants to lose weight from eating too much chocolate.
So if you are very much into chocolate and then you feel hopeless when you see chocolate and you need to buy it. I can just create association for you during hypnosisself whenever you see chocolate, but now you think about the future when you didn't eat this chocolate versus the future that you ate this chocolate, and then this
mental practice is going to create that association. Next time you see the chocolate, you will have this couple of milliseconds to think about these two different futures, and that is enough for you to inhibit this response.
And here's how doctor Zahdi would hypnotize someone to cure their fear of spiders.
So if you have a phobia of a spider, let's just say you will just imagine the spider very far away from you. It will be very much threatening in the beginning, and then a couple of sessions later, or we will just bring this spider a little bit by a little bit closer to you to the point that you can imagine just touching the spider without getting too much anxious. And then at some point actually like this is going to be enough for you to lose your phobia.
And this is how doctor Jaja would hypnotize someone to help them stop smoking.
With smoking, it's more complex. You have to see what was associated with the habits, like some people usually like to smoke when they're having coffee or when they're having a drink, So you focus next time you're having coffee,
you will enjoy the coffee. Usually we emphasize on positive suggestions rather than negative one and instead of saying you will not have the urge to smoke, you could say you will feel like you want to have coffee alone without a cigarette, or you will feel repulse by cigret it and the person knows, for example, they shouldn't be smoking. But with hypnosis, it helps people by reinforcing not just
the will power, but reinforcing a positive response. And also when you replace the habit, you should create new habits. So you could encourage people to do more sport or create positive habits instead of the habit of smoking.
Okay, So the basic idea of hypnosis is to get the person deeply immerse in their own mind and to get them to use their imagination to create a reality in their head. And this reality can help them see things from a different perspective. It almost seems like you're creating a simulated reality for the subject, and it's safe because it's a simulation, but it gives you nevertheless, an experience that can change the way you think, just like any real experience can change the way you think.
Exactly. We very much actually believe that it's actually like a simulation of real word, that you can't actually go through it and without consequences, that you're usually just facing real word.
Okay, the next question you might have is does it all work? And where are experts able to hypnotize me? We'll get to that in our next segment, but first, here's the last step in the hypnosis process, which is to end the hypnosis session.
Enjoyed this beautifulfiling of calmness, of satisfaction, allowing these feelings to manifest more and more, being great for the past, the future, and the peasant. I would come from five to one, and when I reach one, you can open your eyes. But is your subconscious mind accepting for all the suggestions, willing to allow their manifestation in your lives?
Yes?
For is there.
Anything preventing you from being mindful, to relax and cultural adisponsive to any of the suggestions you have resist?
No?
Okay?
Three? Feeling the energy coming back to your body, energizing every part of you, fooling you with your from flowing energy plea allowing your awareness to come back to this place, to the chair sitting on to the sound of repos two, getting ready to open your eyes? When you open your eyes such and puble one when you're getting you can open.
Us all right, when we come back, we're going to find out if all of this really works. Stay with us. You're listening to science stuff. Welcome back? Okay? Does hypnotism work? And where are two experts able to hypnotize me? According to one study published in twenty ten, cognitive hypnotherapy is between six to eight percent better at reducing depression, anxiety,
and hopelessness than more traditional cognitive behavioral therapy. In a twenty eighteen review on obesity, psychologists found that people who use hypnotherapy lost more weight than ninety four percent of people who didn't use any therapy at all. And in twenty fourteen, doctors found that hypnotherapy could even reduce the effects of irritable bowel syndrome for some patients. Now did it work on me?
Uh?
Kind of my session with doctor Zaheti latt at about twenty minutes, and here was my reaction when he brought me back.
And I will count down from ten to one, and by each number, you're going to get more and more attentive, and you will remember the fists and the experience that you had with each of these numbers number ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four. Then reach number three, you can open your eyes and as soon as I say number one, you will come back to here and now completely four, three, two and one.
Okay, whoa, how are you? That was interesting? Well, it's a little bit because we are recording, and I think I was still aware of that. Yeah, isn't sure, but it really hit me. Like I think I was a little bit aware the whole time, but when you started the countdown and you said open your eyes, and I opened my eyes, I was like, whoa, I was somewhere else, yes, exactly. And then the part where you had me thinking about childhood and the balloons and the joy I felt. I
almost teared up. Yeh, yeah, like I had a very emotional, I kind of deepen my chest feeling of joy.
That's a very common thing. That's one of the reasons that you go actually could do to those experiences because they're so intense that you can easily just re experience them and they're very actually effective in helping you just feeling things.
And then here is my reaction to the longer forty minute hypnotism session with doctor Jajah.
Wow, I was very emotional. I was feeling a lot of emotion.
Yeah.
Some people see more images some people and feel more.
Well.
I think I have an active imagination. So I was definitely seeing and hearing and smelling even but at the core, I could feel myself fairly emotional, like I could feel my chest opening up. I think part of my brain was still thinking about the fact that we're recording this, but that part of my brain felt like I wasn't in control of my body. I don't even notice my jaw was open, and I could tell my jaw was open, but I couldn't close it.
Yeah, so you have the sense of involuntariness.
A little bit. Yeah, so you.
Are in control, but your sense of volonteariness is reduced and your sense of agency. You see things happen a bit by them self.
Yes, I felt it starting to happen. Yeah, so yeah, I definitely felt things. I think part of my brain was always aware of what was happening because we were recording the session, but part of my brain really did go somewhere else. I felt that association, and at some point I did feel that loss of agency or feeling like I was not in control of my movements. It
was quite an interesting mental experience. Okay, The last question I asked our experts was what makes someone more or less susceptible to being hypnotized, and they both agree that there are two skills some people have that make them better or worse at being hypnotized. Here's how doctor Zaheti puts it.
This is a study that we have conducted recently that showed to require different cognitive abilities to respond to different forms of suggestions. These different cognitive abilities are imagination.
Meaning some people are better than others at just imagining fake scenarios.
Some people are better than others exactly. The second one is these dissociative abilities dissociative tendencies.
Meaning my ability to just tune out of reality exactly. So if we have an active imagination and you're good at zoning or tuning out, then getting kept time is going to be easier for you. But our experts agree the most important factor in determining whether hypnosis works for you is your expectation and how much you want it to work on you. If you're very skeptical about it, or if you don't trust a person trying to hypnotize you, or if you don't really want it to work, then
it's not going to work for you. So is hypnotism real? It is, but it's a reality you make up yourself. Does that mean it's all a hoax or that you're fooling yourself? That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that hypnosis uses the power of your mind to help you change your own mind. In other words, it's all about you and giving yourself a mesmerizing experience. Thanks for joining us, See
you next time you've been listening to Science Stuff. Production of iHeartRadio written and produced by me or Hitcham, hedited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, an audio engineer and mixer Ksey Peckram, and you can follow me on social media. Just search for PhD Comics and the name
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