Well, that depends on who you ask, who you ignore and how you carry out your research.
It is not even possible to rely on something as concrete as brain-waves to help us answer the question. Brain-waves have to measure something in particular. So, we first have to decide what it is we want to measure (for example, relaxation). Yet, those from a competing school of hypnosis might suggest that all we are measuring is relaxation itself.
If hypnosis exists in correlation with other effects – be that relaxation, conditioned responses or the REM state – how can we ever really know that we are measuring hypnosis and not one of its correlates?
There are a number of “hypnotic scales” that have been offered throughout the years, to test how hypnotised – or how hypnotisable – someone may be. Yet, these tests invariably fall at the very same hurdle. Until we have first decided what it actually means to be hypnotised – which depends on an agreed definition of hypnosis itself – how are we sure we are measuring the effects of hypnosis?
Additionally, this says nothing of the skill or delivery of the operators conducting the tests.
We do not aim to answer the question, “What is hypnosis?” in a universal, binding or scientific sense. For, it seems to us increasingly unlikely that such a question could ever be conclusively answered.
After all, the question, “What is hypnosis?” means different things to different people. To the researcher, it often means, “What is happening within the physical structure of the brain?” To the hypnotist it may mean, “What is it I am aiming to do to people?” However, to the client it usually means something more like, “What will happen? What will you do and why – and what will it feel like?” And those are the questions that I believe we should be focusing on.
So, our understanding of hypnosis unashamedly speaks about what it is that will be experienced by the hypnotee. As I present it, hypnosis is not something you do to another person, or a thing that they go into. Hypnosis is an experience you share with someone.
To use our full definition, hypnosis is:
An imagination-fuelled, creatively engaged, shift in a person’s perception of the world & their relationship to it.
In other words, it is helping someone imagine (and engage with) a new reality. Essentially, what we are dealing with is a ‘reframe.’ However, it is reframing things so effectively that the client engages with it thoroughly and creates an altered perception and experience of reality.
This is a thoroughly experiential model.
