the characteristics underlying trance states (altered
states of consciousness) exist elsewhere. Thus while
the settings and situations will not always produce a
trance state, the danger is nonetheless there.
Regressive Therapy and Inner Healing
Therapists who attempt to help clients remember
events and feelings from their childhood often use
hypnotic techniques that actually move clients into a
trance state. They may deny using hypnosis, but guided
imagery and other techniques used in leading a person
back into the past are hypnotic induction devices. As
quoted earlier, Michael Yapko, author of Trancework,
says:
Many times therapists aren’t even aware that
they’re doing hypnosis. They’re doing what they
call guided imagery or guided meditation, which
are all very mainstream hypnotic techniques.1
The suggestions, the emotions, and the focus on feelings
in the past rarely produce true memories. In various
forms of regressive therapy the therapist attempts
to convince the client that present problems are from
past hurtful events and then proceeds to help the client
remember and re-experience hurtful events in the past.
However, rather than positive change, many false
memories are produced.
Some writers, such as Campbell Perry, indicate that
such techniques as the eliciting of memories,
relaxation, and regression work are often disguised
forms of hypnosis. In introducing his paper
on controversies regarding the False Memory Syndrome
(FMS), Perry describes some of the procedures
that:
. . . appear to be strongly linked with the
development of a subjectively convincing memory
that a person (usually a woman) was sexually
abused during childhood by (usually) her father,
that the putative memory has been repressed, only
to seemingly resurface during the course of
“recovered memory” therapy. Special emphasis is
placed upon the role of “disguised” hypnosis in
eliciting such memories—that is, upon procedures
that are characterized by such terms as guided
imagery, “relaxation,” dream analysis, regression
work and sodium amytal represented as “truth
serum.” All of these appear to tap into the
mechanisms thought to underly the experience of
hypnosis.2
116 Hypnosis
The leading questions, direct guidance, and voice
intonation are enough to serve as an induction into
the trance state for many individuals. Mark
Pendergrast says:
The “guided imagery” exercises that trauma
therapists employ to gain access to buried memories
can be enormously convincing, whether we
choose to call the process hypnosis or not. When
someone is relaxed, willing to suspend critical
judgment, engage in fantasy, and place ultimate
faith in an authority figure using ritualistic methods,
deceptive scenes from the past can easily be
induced.3
Various forms of regressive psychotherapy and inner
healing with the use of visualization, guided imagery,
powerful suggestion, and intense concentration can
very easily result in inducing a hypnotic state in which
the person experiences so-called memories as if they
are presently occurring. There are numerous problems
with inner healing, some of which we discuss in our
book TheoPhostic Counseling: Divine Revelation or
PsychoHeresy? Many of the techniques used to rouse
the imagination and intensify the feelings encourage
the hypnotic state through intense suggestion. Regressive
therapy and inner healing have the same possibilities
and dangers as discussed in the previous
chapters on hypnosis.
Those who practice and promote regressive therapy
and inner healing believe that the source of problems
and therefore the necessary location of healing is
within the unconscious or subconscious. Many inner
healers, following the influence of Agnes Sanford,
Hypnosis in Unexpected Places 117
attempt to bring Jesus into the person’s unconscious
for healing. In her book The Healing Gifts of the Spirit,
Sanford says, “The Lord will walk back with you into
the memories of the past so they will be healed.”4
Medical doctor Jane Gumprecht, in her book Abusing
Memory: The Healing Theology of Agnes Sanford, outlines
the seven steps of Sanford’s method, which could
easily lead a person into an altered state of consciousness
through emptying the mind, following the voice
of the inner healer, and visualizing according to
suggestion:
1. Jesus enters the collective unconscious to
redeem memories. She explained that healing of
memories is redemption for which Jesus entered
into the “collective unconscious”; humans are
bound by time so Jesus is our “Time Traveler”;
“the Lord will walk back with you into the memories
of the past so that they will be healed.”
2. Know the patient’s childhood. She inquired
about their childhood. . . .
3. Wait for them to get over fears and embarrassments.
Knowing that they were “holding something
back out of fear or embarrassment,” she
waited for the rest to come forth.
4. Clear the mind. She had the patient relax,
meditate (empty the mind) as she did with her
prayer of faith. She laid hands on them to “transfer
the love of Christ into them.”
5. See Jesus interacting with their inner child.
She prayed and had the patient use their creative
imagination to visualize Jesus taking them back
through time to the scene during their childhood
118 Hypnosis
when they were hurt and felt unloved, relive the
emotions involved.
6. Pray for healing, even for times before birth.
She prayed for the Lord to “go back through all
the rooms of this memory-house . . . see if there be
any dirty and broken things . . . take them
completely away . . . go back even to the nursery
in this memory house . . . back to the hour of birth
. . . even before birth if the soul was shadowed by
this human life and was darkened by the fears
and sorrows of the human parents.”
7. See yourself as God meant you to be. “Power
of visioning; in the healing of memories one must
firmly hold in the imagination the picture of this
person as God meant him to be, seeing through
the human aberrations and perversions . . . and
turn in the imagination the dark and awful shadows
of his nature into shining virtues and sources
of power. This is redemption.”5
Gumprecht further reveals Sanford’s use of doublebind
and suggestion:
Not only did [Sanford] ask leading questions of
those who admit to an unhappy childhood; she
planted the seed of suggestion and doubt in the
mind of those who had a happy childhood. I have
found that those who have written books on Healing
of Memories (David Seamands) and Transformation
of the Inner Man (John and Paula
Sandford) do the same thing—working hard
through suggestion until the patient finally
dredged up some hurt from his past.6
Hypnosis in Unexpected Places 119
While undergoing this practice called inner healing,
some may possibly avoid moving into a hypnotic
trance. Others, especially those who are most vulnerable
to hypnotic suggestion, will easily drift into a
trance.
Large Group Awareness Training
The Forum (formerly est), Life Spring, and
Momentus are the names of some of the more wellknown
large-group training seminars that promise lifetransforming
results. Using many of the ideas and techniques
of the encounter movement, such group sessions
attempt to alter participants’ present way of thinking
(mind set, world view, personal faith, etc.) through
intense personal and group experiences. Some have
marathon meetings that last numerous hours and take
advantage of fatigue working together with much
repetition, group pressure and various psychological
techniques, some of which attack personal belief systems
and cause mental confusion.
The confusion technique, which is also a hypnotic
device, may be used to disorient the subject to make
him more responsive to cues. Michael Yapko says:
In the confusion technique, you give a person more
information than they could possibly keep up with,
you get them to question everything, you make
them feel uncertain as a way of building up their
motivation to attain certainty.7
While hypnosis may not be intended or admitted in
such large group training sessions, the possibility is
very strong for participants to experience hypnotic
120 Hypnosis
suggestion, dissociation, and impaired personal judgment.
Music
Music, including Christian music, comes in a variety
of forms and beats. In his book The Way of the
Shaman, Michael Harner, who is a shaman, describes
the Shamanic State of Consciousness (SSC). He also
delineates the shamanic journey of a shaman in a SSC.
He explains how a companion can assist the shaman
in his SSC journey by providing specific drum beats.
He says:
Now instruct your companion to start beating the
drum in a strong, monotonous, unvarying, and
rapid beat. There should be no contrast in intensity
of the drum beats or in the intervals between
them. A drumming tempo of about 205 to 220 beats
per minute is usually effective for this journey.8
We are not saying that such a shamanic beat will transport
one into a SSC and prepare the individual for a
shamanic journey, but it certainly can. Neither are we
saying that Christian music will transport one into a
trance, but it may with certain susceptible people.
Repetitive sounds and words can also induce an
altered state of consciousness. Hindus, for instance, use
the concept of OM in working spiritually with
consciousness. In his book The Secret Power of Music,
David Tame says:
In this spiritual endeavour the concept of OM, as
the earthly sound which mirrors the Sound of the
One Tone, is paramount. Intoning the OM, in
Hypnosis in Unexpected Places 121
combination with certain mental and spiritual disciplines,
is of prime importance in raja yoga. In
some meditation techniques the OM is not actually
uttered at all, but simply imagined with the
inner ear, consequently attuning the soul directly
with the Soundless Sound.9
Tame further describes how music is used to assist
in bringing the mind to a “point of concentration”:
Music even aids, it is believed, in the raising of
the “vibration” or spiritual frequency of the body
itself, beginning the process of the transformation
of matter into spirit, and consequently returning
matter to its original state. Thus, as all is OM, the
OM as music calls to the OM as manifested in the
soul of man, to draw it back to the Source of the
OM itself.10
This certainly sounds familiar to descriptions of deep
hypnosis.
Most music will not elicit an altered state of
consciousness. However, one should be aware that
rhythm and tone can indeed be used to induce a trance.
Church Services
In addition to the music, a pastor or church leader
may inadvertently and naively use hypnotic inductive
techniques as he sets the mood, prays, or speaks. Those
who may be especially susceptible to these hypnotic
devices may indeed go into a trance, especially in healing
services in which people are led into a kind of mystical
expectation, in which thinking is set aside and a
mystical, waiting attitude is encouraged. A variety of
122 Hypnosis
factors work together to produce this possibility: type
of music, a leader’s prestige or charisma, expectations
for healing or miracles, peer pressure, suggestions
made by the leader and the suggestibility of the audience.
While each of these may work alone to lead
persons into a trance state, collectively they almost
guarantee an altered state of consciousness for some
who are in attendance.
While some of the activity in the so-called revivals
where people swoon to the floor, jerk around, and bark
like dogs may be due to intentional participation, much
may be due to hypnosis. We do NOT agree with the
following statement, which was quoted earlier:
Hypnotic trance occurs regularly in all Christian
congregations. Those who most condemn it as
diabolical are the very ones who tend to induce
hypnotic trance most often—unaware that they
are doing so.11
However, we are concerned about Christian meetings
that encourage mindless emotionality and spiritual
activities that could result in hypnotic trance induced
behavior.
We are also concerned when the evangelist or
preacher becomes the focus of attention in the same
way as the hypnotist. There’s a strong possibility of
trance induction having taken place when people fall
over backwards when touched by certain healers.
Whenever repetition to the point of hypnotic actions
or words or songs is used, a trance state may be
induced. Techniques appealing to emotion, imagination,
and visualization over the intellect and active
volition are often hypnotic induction devices. Any use
Hypnosis in Unexpected Places 123
of hypnotic techniques in worship is potentially dangerous
to the faith of those in attendance.
Prayer and Meditation
Certain forms of prayer and meditation in which
the individual is passive in a similar way as in the
above description can lead to hypnotic trance. As mentioned
earlier, yoga and similar forms of meditation
are means of being hypnotized. Transcendental Meditation
with its repetition of a single word or phrase
can result in an altered state of consciousness, as in
the repetition of OM.
One article reporting on brain electrical activity
during prayer and during Transcendental Meditation
states:
It would appear that the individual’s state of
consciousness during prayer is quite different from
that reported to occur during Transcendental
Meditation.12
In contrast to meditation, the prayers recorded in
Scripture are active. The mind is active as in conversation.
Prayer is indeed conversation in which the
person prays according to his knowledge of God, which
he has learned through God’s part of the conversation:
the Bible, the living Word of God. There is active dialog
in biblical prayer in that as a person prays, the
Holy Spirit may bring to mind truths and promises
from God’s Word. However, when a person attempts to
move into a mystical, passive mental state in prayer,
he may indeed move into a hypnotic trance. The closer
he stays to the Word of God in prayer and the less he
aims for a feeling state, the more biblical the prayer
124 Hypnosis
and the less the possibility for moving into a hypnotic
trance.
Medical Offices
While not all biofeedback activities will induce a
trance state, many can. The following are common selftalk
sentences used in one biofeedback activity:
My whole body feels relaxed and my mind is quiet.
I release my attention from the outside world.
I feel serene and still.
I can gently visualize, imagine and experience
myself as relaxed and still.
I feel inward quietness.
I am at peace.
This is similar to medical doctor Herbert Benson’s
Relaxation Response, which has been described as:
. . . the ability of the body to enter into a scientifically
defined state characterized by an overall
reduction of the speed of the body’s metabolism,
lowered blood pressure, decreased rate of breathing,
lowered heart rate, and more prominent,
slower brain waves.13
Benson says:
There are several basic steps required to elicit
the Relaxation Response.
Step 1: Pick a focus word or short phrase that’s
firmly rooted in your personal belief system.
For example, a Christian person might
choose the opening words of Psalm 23, “The
Hypnosis in Unexpected Places 125
Lord is my shepherd”; a Jewish person, “Shalom”;
a nonreligious individual a neutral
word like “one” or “peace.”
Step 2: Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
Step 3: Close your eyes.
Step 4: Relax your muscles.
Step 5: Breathe slowly and naturally, and as
you do, repeat your focus word or phrase as
you exhale.
Step 6: Assume a passive attitude. . . .
Step 7: Continue for ten to twenty minutes.
Step 8: Practice the technique once or twice
daily.14
Not everyone will go into a hypnotic state through
Benson’s Relaxation Response, but some surely will.
Self-Help Tapes
Ads for self-help tapes abound. Some of them promise
the listener that if he listens to these tapes he will
be able to stop smoking, or lose weight, or gain selfmastery.
Such tapes guide the listener through certain
relaxation exercises and into a receptive state of mind
to receive soothing suggestions. The idea is that these
suggestions will bypass the conscious mind and reach
a subconscious or unconscious mind. Here again the
idea is that the real motivating power resides below
the surface of consciousness. And here again is another
opportunity to empty the mind and open it up to
demonic influence.
Unidentified Unexpected Places
In today’s landscape of promises for self-fulfillment,
self-mastery, personal well-being, and quick fixes for
126 Hypnosis
problems of living, one could easily find oneself in an
environment conducive to hypnosis. You may recognize
some of the inductive techniques being used innocently
or purposefully and therefore be forewarned.
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