adolph@ssc-vax.UUCP (Mark Adolph) (12/08/84)
*** YOUR MESSAGE *** /* First, a semantic pet peeve. Hypnotism is like protestantism or taoism: a belief. We are discussing HYPNOSIS here. (Same with `quote' vs `quotation') */ This may be relevant, and it may not. I am very undecided on the validity of hypnosis. It was no problem denying that it was real before, but since being the subject of hypnosis, I'm not so sure. Before you get excited, let me tell you that this occured in my doctor's office, and not onstage. My doctor is a member of the American Association of Clinical Hypnotists (or something along those lines). He had me sit on the edge of the examining table and he just talked to me. His aim was to demonstrate that he could relieve some anxiety that I had within me. I didn't have to specify to him which one I was banishing; I only had to know myself. What happened? Nothing specatacular. Well, almost nothing. You see, he told me that I would give him the answers to the yes/no questions that he asked me via finger movement, something like "index is yes, middle is no". My hand was resting on my thigh as I sat on the examining table. As far as I can tell, I *never* moved a finger voluntarily, and I didn't feel my fingers moving. The fact remains, however, that he would ask me a question, and within a few seconds, he would have the answer. The other amazing thing was that afterward, he asked me how long I had been sitting there quietly. I responded that I had been there no more than 10 minutes. He showed me his watch: I had been there for 45 minutes! I repeat, that as far as I can tell, I remember the whole thing and was awake and concious (and waiting for him to really get going :-)) throughout. I believe, however, that this was more of a light demo than a serious session of hypnosis. You may draw your own conclusions. -- Mark A. ...uw-beaver!ssc-vax!adolph "Computers are like preppies: they just boil around in their own way and you have to do things their way or they blow you off." "Everything that was different was a different thing..."
dave@rocksvax.UUCP (12/12/84)
At RIT I took a psycholgy course entitled "Altered States of
Consciousness". As part of the course we studied and
performed a number of altered states experiements, non-drug induced.
Hypnosis as we were taught is just a name for a normal psychological
condition. It turned out that people generally experience this
altered state of consciousness, one notable one being TV. There
was a kind of a check list you could go through to see if you had
experienced one of these altered states, and one of them was
time distortion, much as the parent article described. The distortion works
both ways, shorted or lengthened. For those interested some other
factors of experiences to determine if you had an altered state are:
length distortion, an inability to explain to others what you experienced,
and some ability to view yourself in the experience.
The explaination of the parent article to having the experience feel like
nothing is consistant with my experiences. As we were taught your left
mind (logical, rules..) runs at a constant level dominating the
right mind(feelings, etc). This is normally a good thing because it
keeps you from wandering into a car or something. Hypnosis is a technique
that can allow your right mind to become dominate over your left or at
least more active than normal. That is why you always hear that you
could never do something under hypnosis that you wouldn't normally
do.
Chanting and many eastern religions use a lot of hypnotic techniques
as part of their rituals. Sorry this got a bit long, but I expect
it would be of general interest to people.
Dave
arpa: Sewhuk.HENR@Xerox.ARPA
uucp: {allegra,rochester,sunybcs}!rocksvax!dave