History of Hypnosis - Does It Really Work?
Hypnosis often conjures a vision of a large audience, and someone on stage quacking like a duck, or doing other semi-embarrassing things they would normally never do in public. While this viewpoint is amusing, it’s also rather far from the truth of actual QHHT®/ BQH hypnosis. You can easily read a detailed history of hypnosis on many websites such as Wikipedia, so only the highlights are given here.
The word ”hypnotism” was first coined in 1841 by Scottish surgeon James Braid, and the word hypnosis was created sometime in the 1880s. Both words referred specifically to the state of the subject, as opposed to the mesmerists who focused on the state of the practitioner. Braid defined hypnotism as “a state of mental concentration that often leads to a form of progressive relaxation”.
Western medicine became increasingly interested in hypnosis in the 19th century, and effective experiments such as operating on a patient while under hypnosis (rather than anesthesia) were conducted. Hypnosis was often used during the American Civil War by field doctors with great success, but was eventually replaced by chemical anesthetics as they became available – mainly because administering drugs was much faster and it was quicker to induce the desired effect.
During the mid-1800s France, Germany, and Switzerland were conducting numerous experiments, and in 1892 the British Medical Association unanimously endorsed the therapeutic use of hypnosis. The 20thcentury saw the use of hypnosis to treat the neuroses that emerged from World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. During this time, hypnosis techniques were merged with psychiatry and were particularly useful in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In 1958 the American Medical Association approved the medical uses of hypnotism, and encouraged further research. Two years later, the American Psychological Association endorsed hypnosis as a branch of psychology.
Fast-forward to Dr. Brian Weiss, a psychiatrist and Head of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. In 1980 he had a patient who started to discuss past-life experiences while under hypnosis, and while Dr. Weiss did not believe in reincarnation at the time, he was able to confirm elements of this patient’s stories through examination of public records. This led him to become convinced of the survival of some element of the personality after physical death, and he now advocates hypnotic regression as therapy to relieve many ailments and phobias that appear to be rooted in past-life experiences. You can read more about Dr. Weiss and his hypnosis technique here.
In 1968 Dolores Cannon was first introduced to hypnosis while helping her husband, who practiced hypnotic techniques to help people with habits such as smoking. Much like Dr. Weiss, one of their patients started talking about a past life so they “went with the flow” of the session and explored more to see what they could discover. The story of this patient is told in the first book Dolores wrote, Five Lives Remembered. It was during the process of conducting thousands of hypnosis sessions that Dolores pioneered the Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT®). She talked a great deal about the subconscious mind, or “the SC”, which is what is contacted for information and healing during a hypnosis session. Dolores wrote many books before her death in 2014, and you can read more information about her here.
Candace Craw-Goldman worked closely with Dolores Cannon for a number of years, and after Dolores passed away she eventually founded Beyond Quantum Healing (BQH), a method whose ideas began with QHHT® but also encompasses more flexibility and creativity. Candace describes BQH as being more“focused on energy, intuition, intention and heart, over mechanics, procedures, and strict rules”. You can read more about Candace and BQH here.
Many people come to hypnosis for a large variety of reasons, but as this history documents, numerous issues and concerns can be addressed successfully using a variety of hypnosis techniques.
Welcome to your best life!