I have been in seminar for almost a week. I have been studying hypnotherapy under Mr. Igor Ledochowski (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Ledochowski).
I have a trance hangover from being in and out of trance so many times. I have fallen behind maintaining the forums or for that matter the wiki. Your patience is appreciated while I catch up.
A "trance" is "an altered state of awareness". There seem to be a number of different kinds, but they are not well-defined.
Contrary to popular belief, you can't really "hypnotize" someone else; you can only hypnotize yourself. What a hypnotist does, is he gives the subject instructions to do it to him/herself. It can be done overtly by telling the subject exactly what to do, and furthermore, by getting the subject's cooperation and consent, or covertly, through hypnotic suggestions.
There are many types of hypnotic suggestions; the ones that will lure someone into a trance, are those that first fix someone's attention (that's where the swinging pocket-watch comes in--but you can do it many different ways), and then to have the subject relax.
That's about it.
That leaves them in a state in which the subject's attention is focused on his or her own thoughts (or on the hypnotists' voice), and paying less attention to all other sensory input. The subject is still conscious; they are not asleep, but their attention is significantly narrowed.
It is worth noting: contrary to rumors spread by certain sects, hypnosis is not satanic. Hypnotic states are quite common and natural; what is uncommon and unnatural is maintaining them for so long, and figuring out how to intentionally utilize them. It is, by the way, essentially identical to meditation. Meditation is what it's called in religious contexts, and in that case it is self-directed.
Some people think that someone is getting inside your mind and making you think or do things against your will. For that reason, psychotics (people whose grasp of reality is tenuous) often either fear it or, paradoxically, become addicted to it.
It is not a persistent state. The subject has to either keep him/herself in it, or the hypnotist has to keep providing hypnotic suggestions, or the subject will pop out of it (it's not like in movies, where the subject somnobulates out of the evil doctor's office and goes and murders people as ordered to). The odd part is that as long as it does persist, the subject is significantly more open to suggestions, than in a normal waking state. However, (s)he can't be forced to do something that (s)he would not be willing to do. It turns out that there are a great many things that you could be talked into, if you weren't skeptical. Not unwilling, just skeptical. For example, you would probably be willing to do a great many things if there were a reward attached to them--but you are probably wisely skeptical of the reward.
Under hypnosis, you are less skeptical. Oh, by the way, television and cinema are extremely hypnotic (is your attention fixated? do you relax in front of the television?).
Beware!
Hypnosis is useful for training certain parts of the mind-brain. This is tricky to explain, so I won't go into much depth. I'll just give a few examples:
Whenever you try to do something complicated, you are doing it with a part of the mind-brain that you are not conscious of. A lot of teachers don't seem to understand this. Consider playing the piano...let's say, Rachmanninov's 3rd piano concerto. You could never think "which keys do I press next? Where does my hand go?" fast enough to keep up with the music. Consider dancing. If you tried to remain conscious of where your feet go, you would tumble over. For lack of a better word and concept, we call this the "unconscious".
The unconscious does a lot of your work for you. Effortlessly. You don't have to think about it. It also learns and retains fairly effortlessly. That's one of the reasons it's useful to control the process.
It has a lot of practical applications, that are rarely ever used, because so few people (relatively) know how to do it, or how to do it well, or how to utilize for all the applications it can be used for.
I'm going to go to bed now and sleep it off.
