Hypnosis

Now listen to my voice.  You're eyes are getting heavy.  You're going to fall asleep in 3... 2... 1... When you wake up... you will read my blog.  See, hypnosis does work!  Well considering you can't hear my voice hypnosis is probably impossible through a blog.  But does real hypnosis actually work?

My first encounter with hypnosis was at my friend's prom.  In the auditorium of their high school, a hypnotist managed to hypnotize the whole prom commitee.  It was quite entertaining.  The hypnotist made them do several things; ranging from singing and dancing to crying and acting.  The audience seemed to be skeptic at first.  Was the prom committee coaxed into providing an interested show? Or was this real hypnosis at work?  Well the hypnotist surprised us all by picking random people form the crowd several times and performing the same hypnotic procedure.  It worked every time.  

Penn State seems to be curious about this phenomenon also.  In research done here at the university, researchers wonder if hypnosis can actually be considered a successful psychological treatment.  An example of a possible situation to use hypnosis could be abuse therapy:  

“We have done a variety of EEG studies, one of which suggests that hypnosis removes the emotional experience of pain while allowing the sensory sensation to remain.  Thus, you notice you were touched but not that it hurt.”

If possible, this method of hypnosis could lift a burden off of someone's shoulders.  Abuse may haunt a person for life, but what if this method could alleviate the traumatic pain a little?

Penn State explains that we are hypnotized every day; whether it's a good book or an interesting movie, our attention is completely engrossed into an outside stimuli.  This is what hypnosis attentions to do: distract the mind.  But this distraction doesn't mean that the mind is gone during this state.  Penn State studies show that the brain is quite active and is successful when attempting to complete task while hypnotized.  While some people believe that this idea of hypnosis is ridiculous, Penn State seems to think that it's worth a shot.