Hypnosis performance VS performance hypnosis

You’ve probably seen hypnosis performances on the TV, on the street or on the beach : an hypnotherapist makes a random person fall asleep, forget their own name, or believe they turned into their favorite celebrity, all at the snap of the fingers. The effects wear off as soon as the performance is over…

But hypnosis can also be used to deeply and permanently reprogram the subconscious, to help you reach your life goals : that’s what we call “performance hypnosis”.

Reading time : 4 minutes.

Hypnosis performances are impressive

Here’s an extract from the Late Late Show :

So how does this work exactly ?

First there is the “pre-frame”, defined as a “set of instructions meant to mold the person’s thought process about hypnosis before adressing it”. In a word, before actively inducing hypnosis, the hypnotherapist has to condition the person’s mind first :

• “Do you want to be hypnotized ? Yes, great”

• “Please join your feet together”

• “Let your arms loose along your body”
• Etc.

After this pre-framing, the hypnosis state can be induced. But it also contains different stages, from light to deep :

• From catalepsy : a state of sustained unresponsiveness in which a fixed body posture is maintained over a long period of time

• Through amnesia : the inability to recall, forgetting elements learned before or during hypnosis
• Till deep trance identification : the belief that one has become somebody else.

Obviously, the hypnotist can also use that state of “hyper-suggestibility” to induce a new belief in the receiver’s mind :

• “You are having the best day of your life”

• “You are now feeling extremely confident”

• “Everytime you would feel anxiety, you now feel thrilled instead”

These are obviously great additions to the “show” part : who wouldn’t want to better their life as fast as fingers snap ? The problem is… It’s unfortunately not that simple.

Why can’t you heal durably from hypnosis performance?

To answer this question, we first have to understand how the subconscious is structured. There are 3 things to be noted here :

1. According to science, “computing power” differences between the subconscious and the conscious are abysmal :

• Your conscious brain can process roughly 40 bits per second,
• While your subconscious can tackle from 10 million to 1 billion bits per second.

2. You have been accumulating knowledge, from the moment you were born (technically, even from your mothers’ womb). Gathering all this information is a survival trait : it is meant to help you cope with the dangers of life.

3. The earlier in your life you encounter the information,

• The more foundational it becomes,
• The deeper it sits in your subconscious,
• The harder it gets to dislodge it : that’s why it’s always more difficult to heal from a childhood trauma than one obtained in adulthood, “other things being equal” of course.

Now fusion #1 with #2 and #3, and you end up with an astronomical amount of subconscious information, a huge pool of beliefs and values deeply rooted within you, paving the way for your daily thoughts and behaviours.

So if you throw a new information into that pool, what might happen ?

Let’s imagine that you are a workaholic and you think it’s tipping the balance out of your life. During an hypnosis performance, you receive the following injunction :

“I spend less time at work and more time with my family”

So first of all, it comes from good intent, I grant you that… But it may have devastating consequences, because your subconscious will do its best to accomodate it with the rest of the existing subconscious information.

• If you already have the belief that your company cannot run without you, that you are indispensable for the well-being of the company… Your subconscious knows that you’re not going to willingly spend less time working. So it might make your body sick, or make you have an accident, so that you spend more time at home… With your family ! Needless to say that might jeopardize your company’s development and bring more “imbalance” in your life, in the end.
• If you have the Impostor Syndrome and you subconsciously believe that you don’t deserve your wife / husband / kids because they are much better than you, you will also run into trouble. Because now your subconscious received the order to make you spend more time with people that you don’t deserve (still from the subconscious’ perpective). You might end up spending more time with them, but nobody said it had to be quality time, right ? 😉 You might do everything you possibly can to upset your significant other (again, we are talking subconsciously, but the effects are very real indeed). And worst case scenario, if the situation becomes really unbearable, you might end up breaking up with your wife / husband, resulting in you spending more time at your brother’s / sister’s / parents’… Yes, they are “family” too so the subconscious would be totally complying with the initial request! As you can see, despite the initial good intent, bringing such a reckless statement into your subconscious would only trigger more “imbalance” in your life.

Trust me, these examples are not far fetched at all. I’ve seen much much much more wicked situations, in my personal life and in my clients’ 🙂 And it’s better to know it beforehand, than to experiment it in real life, so you can consider yourself lucky to have avoided such predicaments.

So remember the lesson to learn from all this : much akin to a Newton’s Pendulum, if you add a subconscious belief into the existing ones, it is very likely it will ipso facto move another one 😉

Hypnosis performances are impressive… But might end up bringing devastating consequences.

Performance Hypnosis is also impressive…

Because of the positive results it brings long term ! Much unlike Hypnosis Performance, Performance Hypnosis is all about bringing “ecological” changes : changes which fit well within your long-term life goals.

In a nutshell, Performance Hypnosis, in the way I practice it at least (I know it’s not the case with every hypnotherapist, sadly) helps you reach your objectives faster and better… Without destroying everything else on the way 😀

To know more about this type of hypnosis and how it can be beneficial to you, check out this article : Time-management + hypnosis = uh?

And let me know what you think in the comments below !

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