I got a great question sent to me by email from a recent customer of Mike’s hypnosis CDs. I thought I’d answer it here because it is a really common question.
Is it okay if your mind wanders during the hypnosis part? I listened to it today and I felt my mind drifting onto other things. Does concentrating really hard on just following everything said in hypnosis increase its effects? I would think so, but it was mentioned in the CD that ‘zoning out’ is okay because your unconscious mind is still following the CD. I just wanted to find out what someone else’s experience is like.
I have had this question from people at least 10 times over the last year. So for those of you wondering, it is probably the most common question.
It is totally normal for your mind to wander during hypnosis. During the induction (this is the term for the process of getting into trance), your mind is focussed and you are following the instructions or comments of the hypnotist in a consious manner. But what you may not realize is that Ericksonian hypnosis is designed to overload your conscious mind. You see, you can only keep track of 7 plus or minus 2 “chunks” of information at any one time. For some people it is 5, for some it is 9. Beyond this, you can’t keep them in your conscious attention. Hypnotists use this to guide you into trance (if you want to learn more, check out the side links on how to learn hypnosis). As you begin to enter trance, you will feel like you are spacing out, or zoning out. It’s completely normal.
Your unconscious mind can keep track of your breathing, your body temperature, your blood’s pH level, liver enzymes, and literally millions of other body functions. Keeping track of a few words is child’s play for the unconscious mind.
So what does hypnosis feel like? For me it’s a complex feeling. I tend to feel heavy in the head, but light in the core of my body. For other people it will be different, but you’ll get to know exactly what that particular feeling is like, and you’ll learn to calibrate to that feeling so you know immediately when you are in trance. This will help you get there even faster in the future. It’s awesome.
One last comment: if you think you’ve fallen asleep while listening to Mike’s CDs, you probably did not actually fall asleep. You can tell because when the CD track is over, you tend to “wake up” immediately. If you were truly asleep, you would not wake up at the end. You’d stay asleep. This should be an excellent indication to you that you were in fact in a deep hypnotic state.
Enjoy your trance!
