Hypnosis and Spirituality as a Means to Health and Healing
Sometimes, people are reluctant to engage in hypnosis for religious or spiritual reasons. They may be concerned that hypnosis involves evil forces or is in some way counter to the will of the Divine. Acknowledging that I am not ordained as a spiritual leader in any faith tradition, I’d like to describe my view on this issue.
The “hypnotic state,” also called trance, is the same thing as the “flow state” or “being in the zone.” It is a normal mental state that almost everyone spontaneously enters and exits, although children tend to do it more easily than adults.
Even among adults, there is a spectrum of how easily people can enter it. Sometimes, people arrive at that state more readily through rhythmic movement, music, or the creation of visual art. Settings and activities that stimulate the parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) system also make it easier to access that state. Studies have shown that group singing is one such activity. It seems to me that most, if not all, faith traditions include at least some of these avenues.
In the office setting, we teach people streamlined techniques to elicit the trance state, not for spiritual purposes but for health and healing. Then, we offer the words to help people teach themselves how to change the activity of their own nervous system and thereby feel better. Sometimes, the teaching is very straightforward. Sometimes, the words and the images or associations they generate have to be “translated” by the mind into a form that the nonverbal parts of our brains can access.
But who is really doing the teaching? And who is doing the translation?
Regardless of spiritual orientation, we might call that part of the mind our “deepest, wisest self,” or “the unconscious,” or “the non-conscious.” Some believe that humans are made in the image of the Divine or that each person is born with a divine spark or a soul. For those people, perhaps that “wisest self” might be an aspect of the soul or an access point to a life-affirming Source that brings comfort, healing, and growth.
At most medical visits, God is not expressly invited into the exam room. I think that is often a mistake. A suffering person’s healing can be enhanced by recognizing and even expanding those apertures of connection. They may even find their soul strengthened by giving it a larger role in the day-to-day business of life outside the confines of formal prayer.
