Hypnosis, Meditation, and Mindfulness: The Power of Intent

 

As a hypnotist, I struggle to phrase what I do. Saying, ‘We’re going to do some hypnosis now’ doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, and ‘We’ll start with a nice hypnosis’ sounds awkward at best. Instead, I often find myself saying, ‘Let’s begin with a guided meditation.’ It sounds familiar, even comforting – but it’s not entirely accurate.

 

Although I’m still muddling through what the difference is, people seem to think there is one. I’ve struggled with this for a long time, in fact in 2020 I wrote a blog post comparing meditation and hypnosis. In this post, I said I view them as the same state of mind, but because we use them for different purposes, there are subtle differences. Last year at the UK Hypnosis Convention, I had the pleasure of meeting David Spiegel, chair of psychiatry at Stanford and researcher of the neurobiology of therapeutic hypnosis. I put the question to him, expecting something profound in return. I didn’t get the full answer I expected. Perhaps it wasn’t the time or space, but he simply said – it’s all down to intent. Hypnosis has intent at its core, whereas meditation doesn’t. That doesn’t make it clearer to me, does it you?

 

For the purposes of this article, I set out on a mission to see if anyone has completed any further research, unfortunately not. However, I found a mini review in Frontiers journal from 2022 with the title “Direct comparisons between hypnosis and meditation: A mini-review”. To cause a subtle feeling of hopelessness, the article opens with “Some findings seem to suggest that hypnosis and meditation are distinct phenomena, while others underline their similarities, but experiments that directly contrast them are still scarce and no consensus has been reached yet.”

 

 

The Difference Between Hypnosis and Meditation

 

For most people, a state of relaxation, with mental absorption and deep concentration, characterises both hypnosis and meditation. fMRI studies show the brain states are similar, with overlapping activation changes in frontal, salience, and default-mode networks. However, it is hard to compare the two due to the different techniques and tasks in each study. This leaves us at the same place as David Spiegel got us to – intent makes all the difference.

 

Meta-cognitive skills – you can use both hypnosis and meditation to develop your meta-cognitive skills. However, as the focus of some hypnotic techniques is on unconscious behaviour, it appears to decline meta-cognitive abilities.

 

Meta-cognition is the unique ability of humans to think about thinking, the awareness you have of your own thoughts. The three categories of meta-cognition are person, task and strategy.

 

Person is everything you believe about yourself, the difference between you and others (inter-individual differences), the differences within you depending on the time or situation (intra-individual differences) and the fundamental truths about thinking, understanding, remembering, and learning that apply to all people (universals of cognition).

 

Task is the understanding of how to manage a situation and how likely you are to succeed based on the information available to you at the time. Understanding that some cognitive undertakings are more demanding and difficult than others.

 

Finally, the strategy component is the awareness of what cognitive strategy will help you achieve your goal. The intention of some meditation styles is to have time without meta-cognition – moments without actively observing yourself, but simply having the experience. However, the aim of other meditation practices is to develop and train meta-cognition.

 

 

The Higher Order Thoughts Theory

 

The Higher Order Thoughts theory says we are conscious of something when we are aware of experiencing it. HOT cognitive control is how we manage our thoughts when we’re fully aware of them (good meta-cognitive ability). When we have an awareness of doing something without the awareness of why (an absence of meta-cognition), it is COLD control. Therapists in general want to help their clients develop their meta-cognitive ability. Sometimes hypnotherapists use COLD hypnotic control to make unconscious changes (basic cognition), which removes the need for meta-cognitive awareness. This can reduce the client’s sense of agency and enable an external locus of control.

 

I believe in the importance of an internal locus of control, and view meta-cognition as important and manage this on a client-by-client basis. I recently received a card from a client thanking me for the magical use of hypnosis to stop her biting her fingers. However, we’d been working together for a long time. Developing her introspection and meta-cognition, so this was a small bonus amid deeper issues. I will always try to help my clients explore the following questions;

 

• What are you not considering right now?
• How do you usually respond in a situation like this, and could you change something?
• What further information would help you make this decision?
• How do you know what you think you know right now? Can you be truly certain about this?

 

The use of hypnosis to bypass meta-cognition is beneficial when using it for self-exploration. Meta-cognition can cause us to worry about what we’re saying, to feel embarrassed and irrelevant. To bypass this makes hypnotherapy a quicker and more effective modality than other talking therapies.

 

 

Phenomenology – There is no formal definition of hypnosis, but most attempts include strong focused attention, a reduction in peripheral awareness, and an increase in responsiveness to suggestion. A hypnotist often induces hypnosis, but some people say all hypnosis is self-hypnosis, with the hypnotist acting as a guide. Most people believe in the learned skill of self-hypnosis as an independent activity. Spiegel and co. believe in three main components of the hypnotic state;

 

Dissociation – the divide in consciousness when someone follows the instructions of the hypnotist with awareness of the lack of conscious intent. This contrasts to meditation, where the focus is on increasing and integrating presence into the experience.

 

Absorption – is the focus of attention that engages all the mental resources of the person.

 

Suggestibility – is the following of suggestions offered during the experience.

 

Meditation, on the other hand, includes different contemplative practices. These practices aim to cultivate specific qualities and states of consciousness. There are three general categories of meditation.

 

The first type of meditation focuses the attention on a specific target (e.g., bodily sensations related to breathing). The purpose of this is to prevent continual distraction by external stimuli or wandering thoughts. This category includes mantra meditation, with the repetition of a sound, word or phrase to calm and focus the mind.

 

The second category includes mindfulness meditation and similar. The purpose is to observe the things that come to mind. Thoughts, sensations and images in the present moment, with a detached and non-judgmental mindset to develop meta-cognition.

 

The third broad category of meditation is to deconstruct the ego with the aim of reaching egolessness – transcendence / anatta / nirvana etc. The ego is the part of the mind that focuses on self-preservation, identity and differentiation from others. Being egoless means greater openness, acceptance and unity with the world, with more connection to others free from judgment.

 

Methodology – As previously mentioned, self-hypnosis is a thing, as is guided meditation. However, most hypnosis has a hypnotic induction performed by a hypnotist, and most meditation is an independent practice. When exploring the effects of meditation and hypnosis separately, they use experienced / novice meditators as the variable in meditation research, and high and low hypnotisable individuals in hypnosis research.

 

 

In Conclusion

 

I’m still not sure where we stand, but I see how David Spiegel’s answer – it’s all about intent – goes some way to explain the difference. I think I might take it a little further and say, it’s about what you want to achieve and how you think you’ll achieve it. The same techniques can lead to different outcomes, depending on how we use them and what you intend to achieve. Whereas different techniques can lead to the same outcome. The most empowering thing to take from this is how powerful the human mind is. With intention, whether you call it hypnosis or meditation, we can guide ourselves toward transformation, self-awareness, or simply a peaceful state of being.

References

Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34, 906–911. Flavell (1979).pdf

Lynn, Steven & Laurence, J.-R & Kirsch, Irving. (2015). Hypnosis, Suggestion, and Suggestibility: An Integrative Model. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. 57. 314-329. 10.1080/00029157.2014.976783.

Miller, S. H., Allen, J. J. B., & McGrath, C. M. (2022). Direct comparisons between hypnosis and meditation: A mini-review. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 958185. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.958185

 

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