Meditation & Hypnosis
By Debi Livingston, BCH, CI

Meditation and hypnosis are often seen as one and the same. The truth is, they are not. Let me explain why.
Meditation is an emptying out process. It’s a time to quiet the mind and still the thoughts that run through your head all day long. To properly meditate, you need to stop thinking. However, this isn’t as easy as that may sound.
When I first started meditating, my mind was going something like this: “Okay, I’m going to sit here for thirty minutes and not think. Okay, now I’m thinking about how I’m not suppose to be thinking. Right, now I’m thinking about what to eat for dinner and that cute little dress I saw in the store window the other day.”
Sound familiar? Once we’re caught up in the thought stream of the world, it’s hard to unhook. The thought stream is from the analytical part of our mind, the conscious mind. Here’s a picture to describe what I mean.
Have you ever gone to the Monterey Aquarium? There is a large, cylinder tank filled with thousands of anchovies, all swimming in one direction, around and around and around. This is like the thought stream. You can get caught up in a thought and be stuck in that stream for a long time. Take a big step back into the center of your head, out of the thought stream, and it’s like being outside the tank, looking in. You have become the observer, not getting caught up in all that thinking.
Why meditate? Science has proven that meditation helps lower blood pressure, release stress and gives you an overall feeling of peace and well being. Even with all the high stress and tension people experience in their fast paced daily lives, meditation helps to slow things down and puts life in a different perspective. The problems are still there, but now there is a different way to handle the situations.
Spiritually, we meditate to re-connect ourselves to our Source. Whatever name label you have for “God”, meditation is a time of quiet inner-reflection, to become united with the God of your heart. Prayer is when you talk to God, meditation is when you get quiet and allow God to talk to you. It’s difficult to hear with all that babble going on!
If meditation is an emptying out process, what are we releasing? The thoughts that have you believing there is something wrong with you. The thinking you entertain that says you are not already connected with God, or that you have to be good and perfect to be accepted by your Creator. In short - the hypnotic state you’ve been in that has you believing you are not okay, just the way you are.
Hypnosis is a natural state of mind we go into everyday. Getting caught up in a good book or movie, studying for an exam and losing track of time are simple examples of being in hypnosis. To go into hypnosis and enter into the subconscious mind, you must by-pass the critical factor of the conscious mind - the thought stream!
This can be done quickly, easily and effectively. One does not need to be relaxed to go into trance, relaxation is a by-product of having been in hypnosis. Why? Because you have relaxed the body and mind together, which allows the nervous system to flush out all the pent-up stress and tensions. This is why one hour of hypnosis is equal to eight hours of sleep; the mind is guided into slowing down the brainwaves, simply by following the instructions given by the facilitator. When the mind relaxes, it is able to let go.
Why isn’t hypnosis the same as meditation?
When you are being guided through a creative visualization session by someone, it may be called meditation, but you are establishing selective thinking based upon what the person is saying.
Spiritually, we are in hypnosis all the time. People are “asleep” to who they are as a spirit, living in a body. They are in a trance state of believing to be the body/personality, with all the issues and problems causing the stress and tensions.
Hypnosis is a wonderful, powerful tool to locate the reasons as to why you are stuck believing certain things, such as those mentioned above. Once you find the source of the problem, you can let it go! Once you let it go, your mind has been emptied out from that quality of thinking.
This is why hypnosis is a great way to enhance meditation. You can use the scientific approach of hypnosis to enter into your subconscious mind. Once in trance, you can release the old thinking patterns. Once you’ve done that and your mind is clear, you can move into a quiet state of meditation. You’ve reconnected with yourself as spirit. I see this in people all the time; they’ve been guided through a trance/hypnosis session and when it’s over, they are incredibly quiet - no thoughts, just peace and quiet.
That’s the meditative state. The door to get there? Trance. It’s the fastest way to hop out of the thought stream. But trance will not take you through that door. As my teacher told me, trance will show you why things are the way they are, and how things can be if you choose to alter your thinking.
Once you’ve done that, now meditate. This is the only way to awaken to your higher good, and all healing is awakening to who we are, isn’t it? Yes it is!