in society, one that I've been honored to talk about at colleges and universities. It has connotations of entertainment, faith healing, and CIA mind control experiments, and yet there is clinical research to validate its use for a wide variety of applications including but not limited to pain control, anxiety, smoking cessation, IBS, and PTSD. I never get tired of talking about hypnosis, because it resists definition even as we try to define it and study it for the purposes of negotiating reality in an ethical, informed-consent kind of way. 

Is it science? (Well yes, it's scientifically validated for many things, and there's surely a perfectly scientific explanation to be found for whatever we don't yet understand.) Is it woo? (Sometimes, depending!) Is it a placebo? (Partly, but not entirely.) If our imagination can have very real effects on our health, what does real even mean? (Good question!) Do I need to believe in hypnosis for it to work? (No.) 

Is it defined by hypnotic phenomena, like watering eyes, or slowing of response, memory effects, time distortion, or catalepsy? 

Although these are aspects of hypnotic experience, I don't use them to define hypnosis, because to me hypnosis is not a binary state (either you are or you aren't), but rather a vehicle for navigating states of mind. Hypnotic trance isn't what causes change, it is what creates an environment of resourceful receptivity that facilitates change. That's an important distinction.  If trance itself were a panacea, social media scrolling would heal the world. 

The subconscious, or the creative, metaphorical, non-linear, hyper-literal, story-loving, intuitive part of ourselves is always listening, no trance required. But as we mature from kids to adults, we learn to experience the world through filters. This is really useful, because it allows us to have more agency around how we experience our identity, and how we are influenced by others.  (And incidentally this is why I rarely feel the need to use formal inductions with kids -- they're in the magical space 24/7.) 

If we define magic as our everyday, innate, ordinary and also completely extraordinary ability to shape our personal and interpersonal reality by the way that we direct our attention than yes, hypnosis is magic. Notice how that simple shift in perspective opens up possibilities that you hadn't even begun to consider yet. 

I'm a Certified Instructor through the International Certification Board of Clinical Hypnotherapists, and I abide by its code of ethics.