Should a Christian Ever Get Involved With Hypnosis?

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnos was the Greek god of sleep and his name gives us the words 'hypnosis' (a particular mental state) 'hypnotism' and 'hypnotherapy' (related processes). It also gives us the familiar pharmacological term 'hypnotic' for a drug used to induce sleep.

History

Activities we would probably call hypnotism have been described for at least 3,000 years. The Ebers Papyrus describes Egyptian soothsayers using hypnosis, and 'the Hindu fakirs, the Persian magi, the Indian yogi and the Greek oracles also used similar methods under different names'.

However, it was the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) who drew most attention to the phenomenon, and this led to another name for hypnotism - 'mesmerism'. As psychology was studied more at the turn of this century, interest increased, and some psychological casualties from the First World War were treated with hypnosis.

From the early 1980s onwards there has been more interest still, associated with the rise of alternative medicine.

Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, awareness or perception. Hypnosis is a state in which the person’s conscious and subconscious mind is focused and receptive to suggestion. Hypnosis is not magic!

However, there is a similarity between hypnosis and magic in clinical practice even if the clinician does not do formal hypnosis. Many clinicians use indirect hypnotic techniques without really being aware of what they are doing.

So much of what happens during hypnosis and magic has to do with communication and semantics. Have you ever found yourself saying things to your patients like, “And you begin to wonder when…”, “And you will be surprised at…”, “And I’d like to have you discover…”, “You already know how to…” “Have you begun to notice that yet?” “I wonder if you’ve ever noticed…” “And would you be willing to experience…” “It may be that you’ll enjoy…” and finally “In an interesting way, you’ll discover….” As comparisons are made, think about your practice and your patients.

The Power Of Suggestion

In many ways, we are simply talking about the power of suggestion. What we say and how we say it has a direct impact on the subconscious. We give positive feedback to our patients and this is a form of suggestion just as the magician says, “Magicians have rabbits and when I pull one out of the air this will be the best rabbit you have ever seen.” The real skill in hypnosis is learning how to utilize appropriate suggestion consistent with the patients’ motivations and goals.

Art of Misdirection And Distraction

Remember that the subconscious is very powerful. In therapy, we have patients think of 10 point scales for pain, anxiety etc. We use a variety of techniques to alter their thinking, change their behavior or further explore what past subconscious areas need to be explored.

In both therapy and magic we utilize paradox and many indirect suggestions. Paradox, storytelling with lots of indirect suggestions are essential to effectively using hypnosis.

Characteristics of Hypnotic Speakers

Within the field of hypnotism some claim to teach hypnotic speech techniques that bestow the power to influence and control others secretly. These methods of indirect suggestion, sometimes referred to as covert hypnosis, aim to influence a person’s unconscious without their knowing. A few forms of indirect suggestion are:

Embedded command: This is a technique of placing a command (“Feel more relaxed.”) into a larger sentence or phrase (ex: “You may feel more relaxed if you change positions.”).

Analog marking: This is the process of using verbal cues (ex: pausing or altering intonation) or physical gestures (ex: facial expressions or body language) to mark certain words. In the example above, the embedded command “feel more relaxed” would be marked. The basic idea of analog marking is that the unconscious notices and is influenced by the words that are marked.

Implication: “I wonder how deeply this article will influence you.” The implication is that the article will influence you to at least some extent, and potentially deeply. There is also an embedded command in this example: “…this article will influence you.”

Implied directive: “As soon as you get comfortable you will take a few deep breaths.” The implied directive has three parts: 1) A time-binding introduction (“As soon as…”); 2) the implied suggestion (“…you get comfortable…”); and 3) a behavioral response (“…you will take a few deep breaths.”).

Bind: A bind is when two choices are stated, both of which satisfy the outcome. For example: “Would you rather enter hypnosis rapidly or gradually?” In this case, either choice assumes that the subject will enter hypnosis. Binds can be classified further into many subtypes.

Other techniques of indirect suggestion include confusion, shock, questioning, and use of analogies, puns, and metaphors.

Many of these methods of indirect suggestion were developed from the work of the psychologist Milton Erickson (1901-1980). Erickson believed that normal conversation could influence the unconscious, regardless of whether the subject experienced hypnotic trance. Suggestion that has an effect without the presence of hypnosis is known sometimes as waking suggestion. Neurolinguistic programming (NLP), created in the 1970s, is an attempt to classify the natural language patterns used in Erickson's own recorded therapeutic sessions. Empirical validation of NLP’s effectiveness is controversial, however scientific evidence does support the idea that people respond to suggestion without the presence of hypnosis.

Indirect suggestion does have some effect, but one cannot influence others significantly simply by employing these techniques. The “hypnotic effect” of hypnotist or a powerful speaker is not solely, or even primarily, due to any verbal techniques they may employ, but because of their whole personalities. Before the advent of clinical (i.e., Ericksonian) hypnosis, it was long recognized that the influence of a hypnotist resides within certain personal qualities, which may be natural or developed over time. These characteristics are the basis of hypnotic influence in traditional hypnotism, both in stage hypnotism and hypnotherapy, and can increase one’s influence in practically any field of endeavor, especially in speaking, presentation, and performance:

Confidence
Confidence is the most important quality for a hypnotist. A hypnotist must have absolute confidence that his suggestions will have the desired effect. His certainty gives the words force. Likewise, a speaker must have total confidence that his message will be received positively by his audience.

Success
Authentic confidence comes from success, which is the result of hard work. You can “fake it ‘til you make it” for a while, but people can detect false confidence. Eventually a person who does not obtain actual successes will lose confidence in himself as well as the confidence of others. 

Willfulness
Thoughts have power, psychologically and metaphysically. Psychologically, the sincere will and intent of the hypnotist or speaker produce subtleties in his verbal and nonverbal communication, which may be perceived by the listener's unconscious. Thoughts have the power to affect outcomes. The focused and concentrated will of a hypnotist or speaker gives life to his words.

Decisiveness
The direct suggestions of a hypnotist are often sharp and decisive. An effective hypnotist or speaker does not hesitate in his statements.

Fearlessness
Hypnosis is not always a predictable experience. A hypnotist or speaker must be prepared for any response from his subject(s) or audience. He should not be timid or fearful.

Concentration
A good hypnotist or speaker must concentrate entirely on the idea being expressed and avoid being distracted by other thoughts, such as wondering how he is being received or whether he will be successful. Also, he must be persistent and adhere to a course of action, despite any difficulties or distractions that might arise from the subject(s), audience, or environment.

Self-Possession
A person who would direct others must have command of himself first. Hypnotists and speakers cannot lose control and react negatively to difficult circumstances. They must be in charge of their responses at all times.

Vision
Using verbal suggestions to create mental imagery, a hypnotist must be able to create a vivid picture of the desired outcome. Successful speakers also are often skilled at describing their ideas with compelling imagery.

Rapport
The hypnotic subject must feel a kinship with the hypnotist. The hypnotist and subject must be en rapport. Some believe that this is more essential to hypnosis than depth of trance. Likewise, for a speaker to be effective the audience must feel that they can relate to him. They must like the speaker and want to succeed with him. Also, the hypnotist or speaker must be sensitive enough to perceive the subtleties and nuances of unconscious communication and empathize with their subject's or audience's perspective. Anyone seeking to influence others should develop their sense of empathy.

Health
A good hypnotist or powerful speaker should be of good physical, mental, and emotional health. Ailments can diminish one’s power to think and concentrate. Also, a person who appears vital and healthy exerts a stronger influence than someone who does not.

Summary
There are no short cuts to “hypnotic power.” Indirect suggestion plays an important role in clinical hypnosis and hypnotherapy, but when it comes to influencing others nothing can match the force of these authentic personal qualities. Anyone who wants to increase their power in speaking, leadership, or performance should pay attention to these areas: confidence, success, willfulness, decisiveness, fearlessness, concentration, self-possession, vision, rapport, and health. The key to real hypnotic power is self-improvement.

                               --https://johnmongiovi.com/blog/2016/01/17/hypnotic-speaking

Vocal and Linguistic Techniques That Hypnotists Employ

The following are various vocal and linguistic techniques that hypnotists employ to achieve trance and suggestibility in their subjects:

1.     Variation of pitch

2.     Variation of linguistic tempo and meter

3.     Variation of linguistic meter

4.     Vocal inflections

5.     Rhythmic repetitive ostinato pattern in voice

6.     Lower pitch

7.     Repetitive vocal cadence

8.     Stable timbral pattern

9.     Vocal resonance

10.  Controlled tempo patterns

11.  Syntactical nuance

12.  Poetic linguistic variance

13.  Iambic pentameter or songlike phoneme and diphthong variance

14.  Assertive vocal infection

15.  Occasional use of monotone vocal infection

16.  Use of commands. orders, and demands of the subject

17.  Variation between the crescendo of vocal energy and diminishing energy vocal energy

18.  Augmentation of pitch

19.  Diminishing of tonal volume followed by the crescendo tonal volume

20. Creative narrative style, including complex syntactical patterns and thematic arcs

21.  Authoritative tonal resonance

22. Compassionate and sympathetic tonal resonance

23. Speaking with perfect clarity and enunciation

Hypnosis is Problematic For a Christian For Many Reasons

1) The fruit of the Spirit is self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). As we follow the Spirit’s lead, He will give us the power to better control our own selves. Hypnosis involves the transfer of control away from ourselves to another person. It includes the surrender of one’s will to another, and this is never safe in that regardless of how pure the hypnotist’s intentions may be, they are not the direct word of The Lord coming from The Bible, and therefore, they are intended to amend behavior to the will of the hypnotist, rather than The Word. The Lord requires vigilance, sobriety, and conscious examination of one’s life in the context of the moral guidelines of The Bible. The hypnotic trance circumvents this God ordained relationship between The Bible and the subject by seducing the subject to engage in the natural subconscious substrate of emotions and instances,. And as The Bible teaches, the emotions and instincts of the Natural Man are anchored in selfishness, lust, and sin.

2) We are to yield ourselves—body, soul, and spirit—to God. Romans 6:12-13 gives us the formula for overcoming sin: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.” It’s about control—as Christians, we can let sin control us, or we can let God control us. (See also Romans 6:16-23; 1 Corinthians 6:9-12; and James 4:6-7.) The scriptural formula leaves no room for hypnosis (yielding ourselves to a fellow human being).

3) Hypnosis leads to an altered state of consciousness in which the mind is very susceptible to outside suggestion. That susceptibility is what the hypnotist needs in order to modify the behavior of his subject. However, the word susceptible should concern us. Scripture says to be watchful and “self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The hypnotist is not the only one who wants to modify our behavior; Satan also wants to do some modifying, and we should be wary of giving him any opportunity to make his suggestions under the spell of trancelike suggestibility.
4) Hypnotism is often promoted as a simple way of “refocusing” ourselves and finding the answer within us. As believers in Christ, our focus is to be on our Savior, not on ourselves or anything else (Hebrews 12:2). We know that the answers do not lie within us (Romans 7:18); the solution we need is found in Christ (Romans 8:2). How many people have claimed that they have discovered some divine truth within themselves only to discover that they were entertaining some occult doctrine that can be traced back to ancient Babylon? Often enough, someone under a trance will come out of it prepared to commit storage and decohered acts that they have no deep understanding of. With hypnotic suggestions, you are at the mercy of the natural, Man…the man driven by subconscious urges and instincts, which may or may not lead to anything good or moral.

5) Many of the techniques used in hypnosis are shared by mystical, philosophical, and religious systems, including the occult. The “father of hypnotism,” Franz Anton Mesmer—from whose name we get the word mesmerize—was himself a practitioner of the occult. His method of inducing a trance was very similar to the way a medium conducts a séance. Hypnotism, along with yoga and Transcendental Meditation, has always been linked to spiritual darkness. The newfound respectability of these practices has not changed their underlying nature.

6) Ultimately, the Christian uses his critical faculties to address various issues in his life in relationship with The Lord. Hypnotism, however, through trance, suggestibility, and an appeal to the human subconscious and instincts, circumvents this relationship between Man and The Lord, which traditionally is mediated by The Bible, and supplants it with a secondary platform of hypotonic suggestibility, which results in merely embedding the subject even deeper inside the will power of another human being via trance suggestibility. Whatever benefits that may appear to result from such “therapy” are rooted in the surrender of the Godly conscious faculties of critical thinking and reason, and therefore, are entirely ungodly.

7) Do the ends justify the means? Can good come of occult practices? The Christian answer is “No”. Though evidential healing and well-being may appear to come from “hypnotherapy”, what really occurs is the opening of one’s mind to suggestibly and unthinking possession. Hypnosis was an ancient Babylonian occult art mastered by occultist thousands of years ago. It is nothing new. It does not bring one to conscious acceptance of one’s sinful nature since it is, by definition, a subconscious trance state. The conscious acceptance of sin and need of Salvation of Christ for Redemption requires conscious and deliberate choice, and no amount of subconscious mentalism or emotionalism can achieve that level of critical mental power, again, by the definition of Hypnotism.

8) Twentieth century psychology has learnt more and more about the subconscious or unconscious mind (and hypnosis appears to have played a significant part in that understanding). Much psychopathology has been put down to repressions - the 'burying' of memories too painful to contemplate consciously. Hypnosis has been used to uncover such repressions so that the information can be used therapeutically. Sometimes, and more controversially, patients have been 'regressed' to earlier points in their histories - including to birth and before. By the time this process becomes 'past life therapy' (regressing patients back to the personalities they were in previous reincarnations) Christians will have detected the lie. The Bible rules out reincarnation when we are told 'man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment'.

9) But, does therapeutic and psychological transformation equal Salvation? Again “No”. What the Secular Humanist hypnotherapist fails to recognize about the Christian is that to heal their psychological state, their paralysis, or neurosis does to advance them any closer on the road towards salvation and Eternal Life. As such, it is worthless in the context of Christian Salvation and The Atonement of Sins. Temporary relief from maladies, at the cost disregarding the role of Christ in Salvation, in the Christian vernacular, is both Satanic and useless. All such secular attempts towards healing accomplish is to provide temporary relief from the human condition.

10) There is, of course, nothing, per se, wrong with feeling better, but what if you are not supposed to feel better because you relationship with The Lord is great disrepair? To illustrate, what if you are a serial killer and a hypnotist convinces you that you are good person, that you should feel no guilt for your actions, and you should just go on with your life and try to be a better person? Is your problem healed? Afterall, you feel better, right? The hypnotist has healed you of your depression, at least, right?  Of course not. You still must confront The Lord with your sins, not trance them away with psychobabble hypno-psychiatry.

Assuming Hypnotism Falls Under Some Category of Magic: Christian Views on Magic

Christian Views on Magic

Christian views on magic vary widely among denominations and among individuals. Many Christians actively condemn magic as satanic, holding that it opens the way for demonic possession. Some Christians simply view it as entertainment. Conversely, some branches of esoteric Christianity actively engage in magical practices.

Biblical References

There are several references to witchcraft in the Bible that strongly condemn such practices. For example, Deuteronomy 18:11-12 condemns anyone who "casts spells, or who is a medium or Spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you", and Exodus 22:18 states "Do not allow a sorceress to live" (or in the King James Bible "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"). It has also been suggested that the word "witch" (Heb. מְכַשֵּׁפָ֖ה məḵaššêp̄āh) might be a mistranslation of "poisoner."

Others point to a primitive idealist belief in a relation between bewitching and coveting, reflected in the occasional translation of the Tenth Commandment as 'Thou shalt not bewitch'. This may suggest that the prohibition related specifically to sorcery or the casting of spells to unnaturally possess something.

Some adherents of near-east religions acted as mediums, channeling messages from the dead or from a familiar spirit. The Bible sometimes is translated as referring to "necromancer" and "necromancy" (Deuteronomy 18:11). However, some lexicographers, including James Strong and Spiros Zodhiates, disagree. These scholars say that the Hebrew word kashaph (כשפ), used in Exodus 22:18 and 5 other places in the Tanakh comes from a root meaning "to whisper". Strong therefore concludes that the word means "to whisper a spell, i.e., to incant or practice magic". The Contemporary English Version translates Deuteronomy 18:11 as referring to "any kind of magic".

At the very least, older biblical prohibitions included those against 'sorcery' to obtain something unnaturally; 'necromancy' as the practice of magic or divination through demons or the dead; and any forms of malevolent 'bewitchery'.

Early Christianity

The Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Galatians includes sorcery in a list of "works of the flesh". This disapproval is echoed in the Didache, a very early book of church discipline which dates from the mid-late first century.

Medieval Views

During the Early Middle Ages, the Christian Churches did not conduct witch trials. The Germanic Council of Paderborn in 785 explicitly outlawed the very belief in witches, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne later confirmed the law. Among Orthodox Eastern Christians concentrated in the Byzantine Empire, belief in witchcraft was widely regarded as deisidaimonia—superstition—and by the 9th and 10th centuries in the Latin Christian West, belief in witchcraft had begun to be seen as heresy.

Christian perspectives began to change with the influential writings of the mystic poet Dante Alighieri and scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas, both of whom believed in astrology, whilst condemning sorcery as moral perversion. Dante also condemned then-current forms of alchemy and divination, whilst Aquinas had a more nuanced and sympathetic view.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period (post-Reformation), belief in witchcraft became more popular and witches were seen as directly in league with the Devil. This marked the beginning of a period of witch hunts among early Protestants which lasted about 200 years, and in some countries, particularly in North-Western Europe, tens of thousands of people were accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death.

The Inquisition within the Roman Catholic Church had conducted trials against supposed witches in the 13th century, but these trials were to punish heresy, of which belief in witchcraft was merely one variety. Inquisitorial courts only became systematically involved in the witch-hunt during the 15th century: in the case of the Madonna Oriente, the Inquisition of Milan was not sure what to do with two women who in 1384 and in 1390 confessed to have participated in a type of white magic.

Not all Inquisitorial courts acknowledged witchcraft. For example, in 1610 as the result of a witch-hunting craze the Suprema (the ruling council of the Spanish Inquisition) gave everybody an Edict of Grace (during which confessing witches were not to be punished) and put the only dissenting inquisitor, Alonso de Salazar Frías, in charge of the subsequent investigation. The results of Salazar's investigation was that the Spanish Inquisition did not bother witches ever again though they still went after heretics and Crypto-Jews.

Syncretic Religions Involving Christianity and Magic

From the Middle Ages, many Hermeticists combined Christianity with occult practices (mostly alchemy). These Christo-pagan perspectives have a long history in the Middle East and Europe, from the Neo-Platonists and Templars right through to Mirandola in the 15th century, but also through freemasonry to the early Rosicrucian Golden Dawn of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Another notable example of syncretism is Santeria, a syncretic hybrid of African animism and Christianity. There are also those who practice from a combination of Neopagan/Wiccan and Christian perspectives, as for example in Christian Wicca or in some Gaian 'Goddess' communities. Other modern syncretic traditions include Mesoamerican folk healing traditions, such as the Curanderismo practices found in Mexico, and Andean folk healing traditions of Peru and Bolivia.