Unblocking the Body Through The Mind
Overcome Physical Blockages Caused by Grief, Anger, and Anxiety to Manifest Balance, Healing, and Positive Attraction
The moment Hypnosis comes up, we conjure images of a magician making a person act like a monkey on a stage. Despite all the parlor theatrics you have seen in stage performance and cinema, Hypnosis originates from science of Psychology. Outside of skepticism arising stage hypnosis, hypnosis is the primary technique behind hypnotherapy – a practice psychologists use to resolve deep rooted traumas and make your brain believe things that don’t exist.
As fascinating as the effects of hypnosis, science has chosen to study hypnosis as little as possible because the “mainstream” scientists think if they dedicate their lives to the pursuit of this knowledge, they will be discredited by the scientific community. Yet they cannot deny it because the little research that is done in the field, indicates real effects in the parts of the brain while a subject is hypnotized.
What is Hypnosis?
Science defines hypnosis as a sort of “altered” state of mind where a person goes into a phase of high concentration. This high concentration is induced by some triggers called Hypnotic Suggestions. These suggestions bring down the critical thinking barrier of a person. To tell a person that he is now an ape, you will have to get beyond the faculties of reasoning. Hypnotic suggestions involve building a rapport and getting the person at ease, so that he is more receptive to your suggestions. Science still hasn’t figured out exactly what happens when this hyper-concentrated trance like state is induced. But when the brain is in this state it is capable of having significant effects on the body.
Scientific experiments have been done in which a person in hypnotic state has been made to see things in black and white. And the MRI scans of the brain at that time show that the brain switched off its color perception, thereby making the subject see things in black and white. In another experiment, a person’s hand immersed in icy water without letting him know. He was hypnotized and told that his hand was numb and he did not feel the pain at all.
The Power of the Mind
This is what the also observed in science as the Placebo effect. It has been shown in research that when patients are given a sugar pill which has no medicinal quality, without telling them, a lot of patients observe benefits and recover with the dummy pill.
What happens?
Psychologists and neuroscientists say it is the brain which has a higher capability. But if you look again in the case of the study involving, the brain was itself affected when a suggestion was given. The brain was a puppet acting upon the suggestion of the hypnotist. If the brain was itself hypnotized then what had the hypnotist tapped into? This study evidences the role of mind in making in controlling the brain and the body.
The placebo effect is another strong testament to the power of the mind. The mind is convinced that the pill is good for the body, and the effects on the body start showing. The placebo effect evidences even more strongly the mind-body connection. The placebo effect is the strongest evidence of the power of belief. That the mind manifests what it believes. Scientists would not dare say it because their community would outcast them. But you have no such pressures, do you?
The high concentration hypnotic state which is described in hypnosis is what is known in yogic philosophies as Dhyana. Dhyana is a concentrated state of mind which is achieved by meditation and once achieved it aligns the mind with the body and even the outside world. Since psychology fails to define mind, it chooses to undermine it. But if you look around you, the evidence of the mind is all around you.
I often say that science is just a skeptic’s route to enlightenment. The principles of energy and consciousness are universal. However, since science has been imposed with the burden to test and prove everything, it takes time. This is the only reason that the scientific understanding lags when it comes to the power of the mind. Science can define brain; it cannot define mind. Science can define sight; it cannot define vision. Same goes for all the other intangibles, like intuition, belief, perception, energy. Ask the best of the scientists out there to define energy. The most propagated definition of it is ‘Energy is the capability to do work.’ For a discipline which likes to be exact and scientific about everything, they surely are unable to define energy. The ability to do work is a property of energy. That we can use energy to get work done. But ask a scientist, what is it? Science will eventually get there though not in one lifetime. But one lifetime is all you have. So, BELIEVE.
Dhyana or Hypnosis?
The practice of Dhyana is found in the Yogasutras of Patanjali, an ancient sage who discovered the eight-limbed path to Kundalini awakening. Dhyana is the seventh limb of the process and is an elevated state of meditation. Through hypnosis, the brain’s concentrative power is tapped by breaking the skepticism barrier. The senses however remain active and the person is known to be fully awake, just in a state where he has handed his will over to the hypnotist. In meditation, the beginning senses are awake and the yogi uses concentration of his brain to let go of thoughts and focus on a specific thing. Dhyana however, transcends this barrier and the senses no longer remain a part of the yogi’s barrier. It is the ultimate state where the mind has dominance over all matter. Dhyana is achieved in a later state kundalini when the practitioner has mastered meditation and his five senses.
As opposed to hypnotism, where another person controls you and channels your hidden energies, dhyana allows you complete control of yourself. Calling it self-hypnosis would be reductive. However, you can use hypnotic techniques to remove the thought distractions or habits which hinder the path of your yogic journey to chakra unblocking. On the journey to enlightenment, it doesn’t matter what vehicle you took but that you decided to travel the path.