Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff. From how stuff works. Close your eyes,
Speaker 1: breathe in and out slowly. Picture yourself by the ocean.
Speaker 1: It's warm, you can hear the waves. You're completely at ease.
Speaker 1: When you hear the name Franz Mesmer, you'll disrobe and
Speaker 1: call nine one one. Now when I count backwards from three, YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: and tada. That's the Hollywood version of hypnosis. Luckily it's bunk.
Speaker 1: But what is hypnosis? Is it real? Hey? I'm Christian
Speaker 1: Sager and this is brain stuff And the short answer
Speaker 1: is yes, but maybe not the way you think. We've
Speaker 1: pondered hypnosis for centuries, but we still haven't fully explained it,
Speaker 1: because hypnosis is a small piece of a much larger
Speaker 1: puzzle how the mind works. Despite the mystery, we do
Speaker 1: know some stuff. Hypnosis is a trance state characterized by suggestibility, relaxation,
Speaker 1: and heightened imagination, like daydreaming. Think of losing yourself in
Speaker 1: a book or a movie. You're conscious, but you tune
Speaker 1: out stimuli, including your own worries and doubts. This happens
Speaker 1: more often than you might think. In fact, you've probably
Speaker 1: accidentally hypnotized yourself before you're highly suggestible when entranced, so
Speaker 1: when a hypnotist tells you to do something, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to do it. Hence the old cluck like a
Speaker 1: chicken bit that we've all heard of. Fear of embarrassment
Speaker 1: flies out the window, and not a sense of safety
Speaker 1: and morality. It's reassuring when you think about it. At
Speaker 1: least stage magicians are churning out temporary chickens instead of
Speaker 1: Manchurian candidates. Hypnosis is often described as a way to
Speaker 1: access the subconscious, the part of your mind that does
Speaker 1: the behind the scenes thinking. It's the unsung hero, solving problems,
Speaker 1: finding your stuff, giving out of the blue, Eureka moments,
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Psychiatrists think hypnosis partially subdues the conscious mind.
Speaker 1: They dig this idea because it jives with the other
Speaker 1: ideas of consciousness. If your conscious mind is inhibitive, the
Speaker 1: thing that hits the brakes while you're subconscious is the
Speaker 1: seat of imagination and impulse, then of course you become
Speaker 1: suggestible when the conscious part is on the cognitive back burner.
Speaker 1: The subconscious also regulates sensations and emotions, so if you're entranced,
Speaker 1: a hypnotist can trigger feelings and senses. It also stores memories,
Speaker 1: meaning hypnotized people can access lost memories, and also that
Speaker 1: it's possible to create false memories. We have some physiological
Speaker 1: evidence to back it up. E g. S show a
Speaker 1: boost in lower frequency waves during hypnosis. There's also decreased
Speaker 1: activity in the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortext the
Speaker 1: center of deduction and reasoning. This isn't conclusive of but
Speaker 1: it lends credence to the quote direct line to the
Speaker 1: subconscious thing. Skeptics have another explanation of this state, social pressure.
Speaker 1: The idea is that people can be convinced that they
Speaker 1: should act a certain way, and when they do, they think, oh,
Speaker 1: I must be in a trance, kind of a self
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy or a placebo effect, and this is just
Speaker 1: scratching the certainess. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and for more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com.