What Does Hypnosis Really Feel Like?

If you've ever wondered if hypnosis will feel like an out-of-body experience, you are not alone. Popular culture has painted a variety of vivid and often misleading pictures of what it's like to be hypnotized. From clucking like a chicken at the snap of a finger to the unsettling portrayals in movies, it's no wonder people might be hesitant to explore this therapeutic practice. 

Join board-certified hypnotist Nicole Hernandez as she unpacks what hypnotherapy actually feels like and debunks some of the myths surrounding it.

Want to learn more about sessions at the Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, visit, www.thetravelinghypnotist.com/four-seasons-hotel-ny-downtown

Hi Friend! If you loved this week's episode, I’d be thrilled if you could do these three quick things:✨

1. Subscribe - Hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
2. Rate and Review - Give us a rating and drop a comment about your favorite episode so far!
3. Tag and Share - Snap a pic while listening and tag me @thetravelinghypnotist on your IG stories—don’t forget to share it!

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational and inspirational purposes only. It's not a replacement for professional mental health care. If you're facing any psychological or medical issues, please seek help from a qualified healthcare professional.

Thanks for supporting the show! 🌟

Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring the Feeling of Hypnosis
• 5:42 Understanding the Therapeutic Power of Hypnotherapy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

If you've ever wondered if hypnosis will feel like an out-of-body experience, you are not alone. So in today's episode, we're going to discuss what is being hypnotized actually feel like. Welcome to the Traveling Hypnotist Podcast, the ultimate destination to elevate your life through the power of travel, modern hypnosis, neuroscience and time-tested wellness practices. I'm Nicole Hernandez, the Traveling Hypnotist, and, as a board-certified hypnotist, creator of the TTH Method and wellness expert for the Four Seasons Hotel, new York downtown, I'm here to guide you on a transformative journey. This podcast features travel-inspired hypnosis, real client sessions, belief-shifting travel stories and interviews with experts who are shaping the world of conscious living. All right, it's time to journey within and go beyond. Welcome to the Traveling Hypnotist podcast. I'm your host, nicole Hernandez, and today we're just going to discuss a topic that often comes up for people that are new to hypnotherapy or new to clinical hypnosis, and they have watched so many movies and seen stage hypnosis that they have a very old idea of what hypnotherapy actually feels like. Now a lot of people think of hypnosis and imagine a hypnotist waving a pocket watch in front of someone's eyes and suddenly that person begins to cluck like a chicken, or they begin saying things that they just don't recall later, or perhaps they completely fall over in a state of sleep. Maybe you've watched movies like Get Out and you probably remember that scene where the woman is stirring her tea and all of a sudden the main character finds himself moving into this otherworldly state, completely losing control of his mind and his whereabouts, and then throughout the movie we're not quite sure whether he's just having a bad dream or what's exactly happening. And I get it. If we've only seen these two directions of hypnosis, then how would we ever come up with the idea that it could actually be helpful for us and that there might be any science behind hypnotherapy? These are the things I thought as well, and I was so dismissive of hypnotherapy especially being someone who has an education in both psychology and graduate work in integrative communications and when I heard about it I completely dismissed it, and it wasn't until I had to really address some anxiety that was just taking me down from a health perspective that I even considered it. But hypnotherapy has become one of the things that has really been life-shifting for me. It's changed so many things for me and I want to be able to educate those who it can also be helpful for, and it's the reason I do the work that I do now.

Speaker 1: 3:29

So let's talk about what hypnosis actually is as we get into this. Hypnosis is a state of focused awareness that allows you to detach from your immediate environment and become absorbed in a state of calm, alertness and I want you to remember that phrase, calm alertness because that's what I really want you to think about as you think about hypnotherapy. And let me give you an example, because a lot of people don't realize that they actually are in this trance state or hypnotic state during a day-to-day, during the week. You know you might move through it even without knowing it, and maybe you're just on a straight highway, or maybe you're headed to your home and you know exactly how to get there, and a great song comes on, maybe something from your college days or from high school or something that, just a song that makes you feel good, and we all have those songs. And all of a sudden your mind goes off as if it was just traveling and focusing on this, these scenes and this time, and you can feel all those feelings again and you move into this state of of happiness, you move into this state of reliving or reintegrating all those feelings into your body, and it all just started with a song, and as you are listening to this, all of a sudden you find yourself where you need to be even faster, and so there's an element of time distortion that happens within the process, within the process, and so hypnosis is very much like this, because you are calm, you're in a state of alert awareness, so you are aware of what's happening, and yet our minds can move into different scenes and we can begin to look at things differently or reintegrate a state of being that made us feel good in a resourceful way during a session.

Speaker 1: 5:42

Now, what's also important here is that we are less critical in this trance or hypnotic state, and therefore we're open to suggestion, and that's a good thing, because when we think about being less critical, it's not that we aren't using our intelligence. It's more that we all filter out information based on beliefs or a certain point of view that we have already established, and so you might be moving through the world and actually receiving information that could be helpful to you about the way things are, and you are deleting it. And when we're open to new information now, our brain can process it and we can change the old way that we looked at the world. Essentially we can upgrade our perception of the world and how we fit into it, and that's really important how we fit into it and that's really important Now in this therapeutic process. In hypnotherapy we are utilizing language and visualization and the suggestion of sensations to direct the nervous system towards a better outcome, like again changing those old narratives about yourself or reducing anxiety and stress and pain.

Speaker 1: 7:02

And essentially, what's the most important piece to take away from understanding hypnotherapy and what we can and our ability to conduct some of the studies through brain imaging, we know now that hypnotherapy accelerates neuroplasticity and that is the ability of the neural networks in the brain to change through reorganization and growth. So typically, whenever you learn something during the day, that information isn't consolidated, it doesn't change, it doesn't reorganize until you actually go to sleep. But with hypnotherapy we are in that state of calm, alertness and in that state you're actually supporting the neuroplasticity change within the hypnotherapy process and that's why people come out of sessions and things happen for them so quickly. It's like speeding up the therapeutic process because now you're not waiting during the day to have that nighttime sleep to actually consolidate that change. All right, so let's move on and talk a little bit about how hypnotherapy can actually feel, and the first way it can feel is calming. So we talked about that earlier that it can be a calming and alert state, and that's really one of the top additional benefits of hypnotherapy is that it's scientifically proven to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. So what does that mean? It means it's just a fancy way of saying your body's natural ability to rest, digest, heal and restore.

Speaker 1: 8:48

Now hypnotherapy can also feel conversational, which might be surprising to you. You don't actually have to be lying down or to have your eyes closed, and this is one of the things that I utilize within my TTH method sessions. That's my own process for hypnotherapy is that we combine that focus attention with self-inquiry, and so a lot of the times I'll have my clients before I lie them down and actually move them into a deep trance. We're actually already starting the process from the beginning. They're just not fully aware of it, but that process of me speaking to them and having conversations might feel like slightly like they're daydreaming while they're awake and they're aware of what's happening. They're having the conversation, but we're using a lot of metaphors and symbolic language to help to unpack concepts and to reframe unsupportive beliefs, and so it can feel just like having a conversation.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Now, another way hypnosis can feel, or hypnotherapy can feel, is like meditation or yoga nidra, and essentially, when someone is very new to me and they've never had any experience before other than movies and stage hypnosis, I'll ask them if they've ever experienced a yoga class. At the end of yoga there is shavasana, where you're lying down and you're essentially receiving your work, or maybe your yoga instructor is moving you through a visualization or just some time to reflect and to do some deep breathing. Now, I used to teach yoga for a while and it was probably a decade ago and it was interesting that once I started to study hypnosis that I realized that a lot of what I was already doing in my visualization was very akin to hypnotherapy, so they all can really nicely fit together. I fall asleep so easily now, but with yoga nidra you're lying there, your eyes are closed, you're in a state of calm and you're being directed towards different visions and essentially allowing yourself to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. But essentially that's how it can feel like meditation or yoga nidra for a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Now it can also feel like a reduction in pain and tightness in your body. So often within a hypnotherapy session I'm asking clients to notice the sensations within their bodies, and this is really important, especially for people that are very much go-getters, that are busy busy all the time and they don't stop and they don't notice their bodies and so, unconsciously, they're tightening and tensing in the stomach and their shoulders and their back and they don't realize it until they're actually in pain. So when we shift the focus from all the ideas and all the things we need to do back to our body and our breath and we bring that awareness into the current moment, it's helpful for those of you that tend to ruminate or to worry and you're naturally being guided into this calm state and we can use suggestion to help you to release the tightness. So I might say something like go ahead and notice in your body where things feel good and easy and light and notice other places in your body that feel tense and tight, places in your body that feel tense and tight. And as you take a nice deep breath into your body, now begin to bring that breath to those places where it feels tight and allow that breath to begin to release those muscles and allow them to become easier and lighter, getting a sense of ease and calmness in your body. Now, as we went through that, you might have began to notice that your own muscles begin to relax and your whole body begins to relax. And it's really important for people that experience a lot of pain. And there are people that focus hypnotherapy just on pain relief, where maybe you have a chronic pain you've experienced your entire life or for a long time and you can utilize suggestion, learn how to utilize suggestion to alleviate that pain or to reduce the pain.

Speaker 1: 13:37

I should say I think what's important for you to understand is that hypnotherapy can feel very different based on the individual. So for some of my clients I think of one client specifically who I've worked with over the last few years and she's I just really am so excited for the many ways that she's changed her life. But whenever I work with her, she has a sense of warmth throughout her body, and so that's almost a signal to her that things are changing. When she feels that warmth, things are changing inside of her body, inside of her mind, that she is perceiving the world differently. Now some different clients might feel nothing. They might also feel a sense of lightness or kind of an ease in their body, and it's just going to be different for each person.

Speaker 1: 14:29

I remember having a session with someone at the Four Seasons and they had a sense of floating when they were in their session. Now, I hadn't suggested that they have a sense of floating, but it was just something that I think they had seen in a movie or had seen in a show, and so they had suggested that to themselves, which was interesting. So that really wraps it up for today, and I hope that today's episode was educational for you and that you're taking away something here that can help you understand hypnotherapy even better. And so if you're already someone who is seeing me and you're doing sessions and maybe this helps you even appreciate the process even more, or maybe you know somebody who could benefit from hypnotherapy but they have been a little reluctant to try it Maybe this is a great episode for you to share with them so they can understand the science and the research that we now have available to help us understand what really happens during the hypnotherapy process.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Now, if you are personally interested in moving through a one-on-one session with me, know that they're available both online and at the spa at the Four Seasons Hotel, new York downtown. If you have questions about what hypnosis can help you with, then I would invite you to just check out the link in the show notes and you can schedule a free discovery call with me. And if you don't see that for some reason, then you can always just go to thetravelinghypnotistcom. All right, well, thank you again for joining me. If you appreciated this episode, please leave a little review and let me know what you took away, or let me know what you'd like to hear about next. I love hearing from you, so please feel free to leave a comment, reach out whatever works for you and until next time, just remember that when you journey within, you can go beyond. Thank you,