Hypnosis

At they after party of my senior prom, the organizers had hired a hypnotist. We all could participate in this "test" to see how "able" we were to get hypnotized that night. The test was to clasp our hand above our heads while the hypnotist said some relaxing words. Well before all of this, a friend next to me had told me that in order to get hypnotized, you have to be able to focus just on being hypnotized and nothing else. I thought this would be impossible for me, as I always have a billion thoughts running through my head constantly. But, I was able to focus and passed the test. When the hypnotist brought a group of about 10 of us to the front of the room, I was getting pretty nervous, because I was afraid I would do something embarrassing in front of my entire class. But as the hypnotist brought us into a state of hypnosis, I was relaxed and trust me, I was in a deep hypnosis state. The group of us participated in a fake eating contest, thought we were jello, and talked on our shoes like they were a phone, among a lot of other crazy things.

When we were "awoken" it was the weirdest feeling. I had remembered everything I did, but thought to myself, "what the heck was I doing"? I knew I had complete control over my body, but at the same time, I felt like I had no control over what I was doing. It was almost like everything that thy hypnotist told me to do, I did it, and there was no other option not to listen to him. But, if he were to tell me to do something completely inappropriate, I am fully confident that I wouldn't have, that I knew the social limits. Hypnosis was the weirdest thing that I have experienced, and it is really something you don't quite understand until it happens to you. It felt like my mind was separated from my body.

I still ask myself today what the heck was going on in my brain during that 20 or so minutes. It makes me question, and perhaps very confused, on how Descartes would view hypnotism. Why did my entire body feel like it had no bones in it when we were acting like jello?  Why did I use my shoe and talk on it like it was no big deal? My mind was controlling everything that my body did. But, it did this in a way without thinking about it. It was almost like actions without thought. But I knew where to draw the line if something was inappropriate, and that is what confuses me.

I think that ethics played a large role in determining what I could do vs. what I couldn't do. My brain automatically passed something through to my actions if I subconsciously knew it was okay, but my brain would have caught something it knew wasn't right. Being hypnotized opened up a part of my brain for a bit that I never knew existed, and hasn't been touched since. Today, as hypnosis is being used more and more for a more holistic treatment of various diseases isolates this area into almost brainwashing yourself to believe something. The scary thing is, it has actually been shown to work. Hypnosis shows that the mind can control the body if you let it. Hypnosis will make you believe anything is possible, and your body will listen to what the brain is saying. I haven't done much research on how hypnosis works, but it never ceases to amaze me what we can subconsciously be capable of.