Hypnosis to learn hypnosis

Patelk314 wrote: My expert suggestion to you is, get some real, live training. You can't learn this stuff from YouTube videos.

Patelk, you stated you have 8 years experience in NLP. You assume that is somehow a significant amount of time. You make assumptions about my beliefs and my understanding of various fields of knowledge.

Based on what you have written, maybe you should consider getting some real training. Maybe get some training in areas outside of NLP to broaden your view. The fact you even started this thread is a clear indication you are still an amateur, not the expert. An expert would not have such a question, because an expert understands the limitations of their field.

I believe jiimyh summed it up nicely. Reread his post and learn something.

Are there any people who earned their place in history by telling others that what they are trying is not possible.

I'm going to do the smart thing and cancel my membership to this forum.

Good luck.

Patelk314 wrote:Are there any people who earned their place in history by telling others that what they are trying is not possible.

I'm going to do the smart thing and cancel my membership to this forum.

Good luck.

It is not about telling you that gold cannot be made from carrots. You asked if there is any way. The current evidence is a resounding no. If you want to find a way, then stop bashing other people and start learning about all the previous research that has been conducted. It is called a "literature review".

For hypnosis, most of what you will find is from the 60's through the early 80's. There is still some good current research, but a lot less. Start there, conduct your literature review, get funded, design your experiment and find your place in history....oh, that's right...doing all of that is not the easy button, it takes work.

PS. No one earned their place in history by using easy buttons.

Good luck.

Oh, I agree that hypnotism has limits. But where's your proof that hypnotism does not help with learning? Everything I've read suggests that hypnotism is of great benefit.

I'm reading from a document entitled "THE UTILIZATION OF WAKING HYPNOSIS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF READING AND COMPREHENSION SKILLS". I think you'll be able to find it on google if you're interested.

Scarf and Zamansky (16) used hypnosis to reduce the time required to identify a word exposed tachistoscopically. In this experiment, the word recognition thresholds of 24 college students were lowered, through hypnotic suggestion, by an average of ten per cent.

Two experimentors in this field measured the effects of hypnosis on the reading ability of ten college students. In the experiment, 20 five-letter words were flashed on a screen at low levels of illumination. Measurements were made of the candle power needed to recognize each word as it was flashed on and off. In the hypnotic state, the subjects scored the greatest recognition improvement of those words which had previously required the most illumination.

With 21 high school students, Eisele and Higgins (17) have reported favorable results with the use of hypnosis for calming examination anxiety, for improving study habits, and for increasing concentration. Ambrose (18) has successfully used hypnosis with children exhibiting learning difficulties.

Krippner (19) reports excellent results in his work with students in improving study habits, removing test anxiety and improving motivation and interest.

Salzberg (20) reports, "It was found that both hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestion led to better performance whereas waking suggestion led to poorer performance." Hypnotic and post-hypnotic subjects tended to improve more as tasks became more complex "such as counting, abstraction and memory."

Fowler (21) found that more than a year and a half after his experiments with several classes of students, many of the subjects were coming into his office and informing him that they were able to concentrate deeper and longer, remember more, read faster, and generally continue to enjoy the benefits they believed were theirs as a result of his hypnotic suggestions and the remediation in reading. They were quite definite in their beliefs.

A series of experiments was conducted in which the subjects were tested twice in the waking state and twice in the hypnotic state on a great variety of performances in which speed of reading and comprehension were included. Students were given definite hypnotic suggestions of ease, confidence, motivation, and increased ability. Many of the differences proved significant! A 32 per cent increase in speed of tapping and 43 percent decrease in fatigue; a 20 percent increase in aimed dotting; 22 per cent time saved in cancellation of letter. Subjects made 5 times as many errors in waking state; subjects were more than twice as efficient in the post hypnotic state. A 30 per cent increase in the drawer finding test, and an increase of 23 per cent in digit span was evident. In memorization there was a 47 per cent improvement in meaningful symbols.

I think the study you listed is interesting, very interesting. It is a great example of how science works....slowly, but progress is made. The study of hypnosis was very popular in the 60's. The article you cited is from 1969.

The article lists many claims of the benefits of hypnosis, many paths. What has happened since 1969 until 2016? More experiments were conducted. Some of the paths died off, proven not to stand up to further scrutiny while others showed promise.

For instance, I would agree hypnosis has demonstrated to be effective in reducing anxiety and pain mitigation. Learning faster, not so much. Any benefits reported in studies in the 60's have since been shown to have little validity, unable to be replicated and generalizable. Hence, school systems, the military and the corporate world may offer hypnosis as a part of clinical treatments (health), but they don't use it to teach students/employees faster (education).


Science is not pure. There is a lot of pressure to find things in support of the current political view. Hypnosis was popular, so you had observer effects. Researchers found what they baked into their designs. You know what else was thought scientifically accurate in 1969? That blacks were genetically inferior to whites. That their IQ was inherently lower. You still believe that, or might not all of the research from 1969 be valid?

http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/class ... 600002.pdf

I'm also not saying that today's research is any less political than in 1969. Given political correctness on steroids, the research community may be even worse. I attend a conference each year where the findings of studies are obviously motivated by the times in which we find ourselves. The researchers are human, they want to be published, they want to be relevant just as the researchers did in 1969.

As it relates to hypnosis, certain paths have thus far proven beneficial as I noted above related to medical treatments. Other paths that have proven thus far not to be effective still seem to have a mystical hold over many who want to believe they are true. As seen by our amateur NLP practitioner, they believe there is money to be made if they can be the one to crack the secret code. It is the alchemist, searching for the easy button to manufacture gold.

So where are these post-60s studies that show that hypnotism does not help with learning? Because I googled and I couldn't find any. I asked you for them, and you have yet to give me any.

The only thing close to what you're talking about that I can think of is sleep learning being disproven -- but we already knew that before the 60s, and sleep learning is not hypnotism.

Here you go saladinsmith. You should enjoy the following article as it is a refutation of two studies that demonstrated hypnosis was counterproductive in learning.

The reasons I chose this article, are

-1- because it is pro hypnosis and controversial, making it IMO a fun read and;

-2- maybe our inexperienced NLP amateur that wants to find the secret sauce so he can make money, might learn how to conduct a literature review. Many people make the mistake of going to the beginning and working forward. Instead, you find the latest research and work backwards. Unfortunately there is no easy button in conducting a literature review.

This article includes an absolutely fantastic reference to Dale's work in 1972 where he claims 9 or so reasons for the use of hypnosis in education. He gives 4 absolutely hilarious personal opinions as to why schools would not use hypnosis. Hospitals? Sure, they use it, but educators see it as witchcraft as dangerous magic, lol.

I appreciate Dale's efforts and some of his claims have proven to have some merit. I guess if you throw enough spaghetti at a wall, some will stick.

Anyway, the article complains about the methods used by those researchers that demonstrated hypnosis was ineffective. That, of course, is one of two options any researcher has available. Either conduct your own study or attack your opponents study. Politics as usual in 2014.

If you go to the references, you will find all sorts of articles in support of hypnosis. But, pull up the two studies that demonstrated hypnosis was ineffective and go to their references. What do you think you will find? All those articles that you are not finding in your Google search. Researchers place articles in the reference section that supports their view.

http://www.qllab.org/Publications/Hypno ... is2014.pdf

I hope you enjoy and appreciate that there is still a movement to find useful application for hypnosis in education. It is not that the effort is dead, rather findings to date have been less than fruitful. Effect sizes (if/when reported) are just not big enough to make the use of hypnosis a practical intervention, it is not because it is believed to be witchcraft or magic. There are other educational interventions proven more effective such as chunking or scaffolding, etc.

The OP wants an "easy button" and sees hypnosis as the easy way out. He doesn't want to use scaffolding, chunking or other learning strategies as that is work, it is effort. As the OP put it, he must practice, practice, practice. He also doesn't want to put in the effort to learn, rather go into a forum and have people give him the answer he wants to hear.

As I stated, hypnosis has value. I don't really care if it is suggestibility or placebo termed semantically as hypnosis, there is undoubtedly positive benefits that a person can derive from the practice. Reduction of test anxiety for instance.

So you're saying that as recently as the 90s and 00s, there have been studies showing that hypnosis is beneficial in learning and education, but there are studies saying that it's not as well. Considering what a wide range of techniques are being tested, I don't think that's reason to dismiss hypnosis in education completely, as you seem to want to do.

It also seems to be that Patelk314 isn't trying to avoid all work. On the contrary, it seems like he's put quite a lot of work into learning, and is just looking for a way to learn faster. Which is what many of these hypnosis studies promise.

saladinsmith wrote: I don't think that's reason to dismiss hypnosis in education completely, as you seem to want to do.

Your personal opinion is inconsistent with my actual behavior. I just posted a link that shows current research in the field.

just looking for a way to learn faster. Which is what many of these hypnosis studies promise.

Promising? You mean that is what they want to find? The studies are demonstrating that hypnosis has at best moderate effect sizes in very specific areas such as reduced anxiety, whereas other strategies, other techniques are demonstrating larger effect sizes. I don't know how you read the article and find that hypnosis is showing promise for learning faster.

Once again, I'm not saying hypnosis doesn't have value, or even any value in education, but learning faster is not included thus far.

It also seems to be that Patelk314 isn't trying to avoid all work. On the contrary, it seems like he's put quite a lot of work into learning,

I guess we have different perceptions of what it means to put in quite a lot of work. I don't see coming into a forum and dismissing opinions you don't agree with as effort. You and I have put in more effort discussing and going back and forth than Patelk314. If you mean because he mentioned 8 years of NLP, that too I do not see as much effort. But, I do understand that it is a relative, subjective perception.

Here's my thoughts on using hypnosis to learn hypnosis.

If we try and divide-and-conquer the subject of learning a little, you sometimes see the concept of top-down vs. bottom-up learning in some shape. Top-down builds up an abstract/theoretical structure and then you apply that structure to real life. Bottom-up sees you just bumbling your way through and you build up an understanding along the way. In practice, rarely do you see one completely without the other, but I find the distinction helpful to make sense of how learning "works".

(In both directions, concrete trials are necessary to help you build up a mental model of what to do when. This model is often highly intuitive, especially if you focus more on a bottom-up approach: you know what to do but not why you do it that way. Intuition is refined through trials.)

The success of top-down approaches hinges on the appropriateness of the theoretical framework, and your ability to analyze practical cases in terms of that framework. The success of bottom-up approaches hinges on getting a good variety of learning instances and good feedback (trivially, if you never know the effect of your attempt, there is simply no way to learn anything from it unless you've already good a model or framework, and even then it's arguable).

Both approaches in isolation have their failings: with top-down, if your framework is incomplete you'll never find a way to fix/improve it because the only thing that tells you what to do is the framework. With bottom-up, if you don't get the results you want it will be hard to tell why (or, specifically, what you could have done differently).

Now, assuming you want to do less "work", what does that mean for our two lenses through which we're viewing learning?

The limiting factor in your mind for top-down learning is your ability to frame a situation in terms of the framework, and quickly selecting the right action according to the framework.
The limiting factor in your mind for bottom-up learning is selecting an action without getting distracted by analysis... which is useless, prone to going off on wild tangents or getting stuck in analysis paralysis, in the absence of a solid framework.

Both of these, of course, are influenced by your mental state, which in turn can be influenced by hypnosis. More importantly, though, anything that kicks up your analytical thinking where it's not doing any good will throw a wrench in the works. Ideally for learning you want a flow-like state (which is achievable whenever you're faced with the right level of challenge, given your current skills). You can use as much hypnosis as you like but if you don't challenge yourself you won't learn, and if you challenge yourself with too much at once there's a pretty high chance you'll either become overwhelmed or not get any meaningful results or learn the wrong things.

If only there was a way for someone to build up a good path to take to learn something, let's call that a curriculum, and then share it with others... that surely would be worth a ton more than just some generic hypnosis script, right?

jargan wrote:Both of these, of course, are influenced by your mental state, which in turn can be influenced by hypnosis. More importantly, though, anything that kicks up your analytical thinking where it's not doing any good will throw a wrench in the works. Ideally for learning you want a flow-like state (which is achievable whenever you're faced with the right level of challenge, given your current skills). You can use as much hypnosis as you like but if you don't challenge yourself you won't learn, and if you challenge yourself with too much at once there's a pretty high chance you'll either become overwhelmed or not get any meaningful results or learn the wrong things.

A good observation. Education researchers have pointed to this exact paradox. A current approach in instructional design to try and find a good balance is called "scaffolding". Too low a level and the student is not challenged, is bored and is not learning anything new. Too high a level and the student doesn't understand, is frustrated and also not learning.

This makes developing a learning method that hits the sweet spot highly individualized. In a class of 30 students there is variation. And trying to customize for each student is an ongoing process, regardless if it is top down or bottom up.

For instance, say I struggled to learn addition/subtraction, but algebra was easy, and then geometry was more difficult. To keep me in "the zone" where learning just flows is no easy task.

Another great example, say you want to read a book faster. The main challenge is that we don't all have the same vocabulary and books are not written at the same level page to page, chapter to chapter. You might try to flow, but as soon as you encounter a passage written with a few words with which you are unfamiliar or a concept that you don't grasp, you will exit the flow state as you must deliberately focus on trying to gain understanding.

Yeah, this doesn't really apply to reading books, and generally I was mostly talking about primarily self-directed study. Group education is a big challenge and the approaches currently practiced seem to lose either the "good" students or the "bad" ones.

And, well, flow-like states are difficult to maintain whenever you first get into something, unless you've got an exceptional teacher/mentor or are uncommonly good at learning. That doesn't mean trying to get rid of any impediments won't help.