Hypnosis and the Brain

The brain is an associative machine, it creates patterns. For instance, the mere sight of a snake on a glossy magazine page can create a panic in those suffering from the fear of snakes. The panic bursts happens immediately after seeing the image. The brain associates the two dimensional representation of a snake with acute danger.

Hypnosis can help the person suffering from phobia to de-correlate the two. The image of a snake is inoffensive, a snake at a reasonable distance is inoffensive.

The name “hypnosis” comes from the Greek “hypnos” which means sleep. It was popularized by Scottish surgeon James Braid around 1841, and misrepresents the true nature of the phenomenon. Hypnosis helps you rewire your brain differently.

There are many representations of the brain. The brain is often divided in two: the right brain, the lobe in charge of music, imagination, holistic thinking, daydreaming and creativity; and the left brain, that deals with logic, numbers, language, ordered sequences, and mathematics. While this is a simplification, it illustrates how different parts of the brain carry on different tasks.

In hypnosis, we can access both lobes of our brain. A more accurate description of the brain refers to the primitive brain, the limbic brain and the executive center (prefrontal cortex). Another major simplified version of the brain architecture differentiates between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Your conscious mind through the critical factor filters the information it gathers through all senses and then passes it on. Hypnosis bypasses the critical factor and the positive suggestions that you accept can reach the subconscious mind.