HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS

• Hypnosis had a false start in the 18th century when a German physician, Dr. Franz Mesmer, devised a miraculous cure for people suffering all manner of unexplained medical problems. Dr. James Braid, an English ophthalmologist who in 1842 coined the word hypnosis after the Greek word for sleep. Braid reportedly put people into trances by staring at them intently, but he did not have a clue as to how it worked. In this vacuum, hypnosis was adopted by spiritualists and stage magicians who used dangling gold watches to induce hypnotic states in volunteers from the audience, and make them dance, sing or pretend to be someone else, only to awaken at a hand clap and laughter from the crowd. This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis In medical hands, hypnosis was no laughing matter. In the 19th century, physicians in India successfully used hypnosis as anesthesia, even for limb amputations. Even with little understanding of how it works, hypnosis has been used in medicine since the 1950's to treat pain and, more recently, as a treatment for anxiety, depression, trauma, irritable bowel syndrome and eating disorders.

  According to the New York Times: The top-down structure explains a lot. If the construction of reality has so much top-down processing, that would make sense of the powers of placebos (a sugar pill will make you feel better), nocebos (a witch doctor will make you ill), talk therapy and meditation. If the top is convinced, the bottom level of data will be overruled. It is an undeniable fact that everyone can have some certain problem. However, different people try different ways to deal with their problems. But, to help different types of people, there are alternative medicines and therapies which can be used to get better results. The best thing about these therapies is that they can be used along with taking other medications. Hypnosis is such a way of dealing with different problems and disorders.

Craig Townsend is Director of It's Mind over Matter and has worked in the area of mental training and personal development over the past 20 years.
He possesses a Diploma in Clinical Hypnotherapy and for 20 years has researched and experimented with various methods of tapping the mind's potential.

His programs utilize a powerful blend of mental training techniques, combining the subjects of hypnosis, auto and hetero-suggestion, deep relaxation, personal development, meditation, visualization, NLP, the Silva Method, motivation, positive thinking, mind/body medicine, Zen and other eastern philosophies to create highly effective mental training programs which have brought impressive results.