Three. The setting itself is usually quiet and four. The meditator has expectations of deep relaxation and states of peace. West also did some other research in nineteen eighty looking at meditation in the EEG. He concluded that on the basis of EEG responses to meditation, it may be possible to identify individuals most likely to derive therapeutic benefit from continued meditation and the EEG could perhaps become a reliable psychophysiological measure of both the response to meditation and the effectiveness of meditation in producing relaxation over time.
Anyway, I don’t want to spend any longer on the general aspects of it, the similarities and dissimilarities between the two modalities. These are actually just for discussion because I just sort of put them together as I was going through. So it seemed that there were some quite dissimilar aspects to hypnosis and meditation. With the method of absorption, with hypnosis via the intellectual and discursive thinking process, it occurred to me that that might be more of an active process, whereas the meditation by non conceptual receptivity, a sort of passive, more of a passive process. And the thing it brings up in my mind is how can those both come from a different angle and perhaps be reaching a similar point of absorption anyway in another state?
What’s called a trance state or a state which is not our normal waking state. Does anyone have any? But, anyway, it’s it seems to me that there are a lot a lot of similarities. In terms of the psychological similarities, ability to ignore external stimuli, the concentrated and selective attention upon an object, both seeking to control and reduce stimuli input, a lot of repetition. Both of them have the potential to produce what’s called a trance-like state.
In other words, an oblivion to the outward reality as it is. Both use mental imagery and use of active imagination, use of suggestion and a high motivational state, a believing attitude and the placing of oneself under the influence of symbols or experiences producing an effect on the body emotion’s state of mind. In the similarities with the auto hedonists, that self manipulation or internal manipulation was more looking at using the knowledge or the understanding of how symbols can create feeling states. So in auto-hypnosis being very much aware of what particular trigger thoughts or symbols would produce a corresponding physiological state is used. Whereas in meditation it’s looking more at acquiring an ability to control inner states of mind by creating its own mental states.
So actually working directly with mental states rather than symbolically, which appears to be what happens with auto-hypnosis. My query is whether both modalities require frequent practice to be successful at achieving the desired altered state. And there’s some that’s some question because there’s some indication that least a small amount of effect can be had in naive students who have not done any meditation before who can get some effect. I’m not sure about in terms of hypnosis. I don’t know about effect, but trance you can go, you can get it quite quickly.
Which I Improve over time. Oh, no. Hetero-hypnosis. Yeah. Improve over time, but if you if you’re susceptible, you’ll go quickly.
Well, what I did was went through the Hauri classification of sleep disorders and tried to look at what particular disorders, once they’re diagnosed or classified, might respond to either hedonists or meditation. In terms of the primary sleep disorders, there has been some work done on treating narcolepsy with hypnotherapy, but I actually couldn’t get my hands on that. I tried and tried it. It was done in nineteen eighty and reported in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. But there are some studies that have an effect on two out of four of the symptoms of narcolepsy.
Cataplexy and sleep paralysis have been directly worked with in terms of hypnotherapy, particularly when there have been isolated symptoms. I’m not sure what work’s been done on looking at narcolepsy as a tetrad rather than the specific relief of specific isolated symptoms. In terms of the apneas, it looks to me that the only assistance that hypnotherapy or meditation could give in that area would be to perhaps relieve the accompanying medical problems of hypertension and high blood pressure which often happen in the apneas. A lot of work has been done with insomnia quite a lot of the work doesn’t specify whether it’s primary insomnia or secondary. Nocturnal Myoclonus, the restless leg syndrome also has had well it depends.
You see it can be approached from so many different angles in terms of deep muscle relaxation, a meditation exercise program, that sort of thing has been shown to be effective with restless leg syndrome. And I would presume that in terms of nocturnal myoclonus it would be effective too. Non restorative sleep, Pseudo insomnia and REM interruption insomnia, I thought that there’s some possibility that these treatment modalities could be effective in terms of relaxing and bringing the parasympathetic parasympathetic nervous system into dominance. In terms of secondary sleep disorders, with medical problems, it seems that particular disorders and dysfunctions needed to be treated organically or with medication. In Harris’ classification, he put excessive stimulants and hypnotics under the medical label and I think that that is one area where there’s a sleep disorder secondary to excessive stimulants or hypnotics would be effective to try either of these techniques.
Psychiatric problems also I’m not sure that there’s enough probability of any huge assistance, particularly when some of the reading that I did indicated that, particularly in hypnotherapy there would be a refusal to hypnotise someone who is psychiatrically disturbed in terms of psychosis anyway because of the disordered state of perhaps their mental functioning anyway. The delicate balance of their perception of reality and the way they are functioning could be disturbed even further. That’s thought. But in terms of neurotic problems and the sort of active obsessive worrying fantasies, sleep onset insomnia. It seems that hedonists or meditation could be effective or in some disturbances which are more heavy, then the psychiatric problem would need to be treated first and then perhaps self-hypnosis could be used as something for the person to continue with.
Then in terms of behavioural problems, sleep disorder secondary to behavioural problems, I thought that conditioned insomnia, internal arousal and self image and sleep phobias as well as chronic stress states could be perhaps looked at treating. I think our studies are on that. Well, I’ll go on to the studies just in minute. Actually, no, not on those. Those future investigation?
Yes, those ones I didn’t come across any studies. I came across a study of iatrogenic insomnia, so insomnia produced by hypnotic drugs or stimulants, but none of these other behavioural ones. The parasomnias I thought also somnambulism and enuresis. There’s been work done on both those areas, I think, that shows that it can be effective. Well, I actually was going to go through some of the studies in terms of hedonists and in terms of meditation and look at some of the comparisons between hypnotic and meditative states, but I don’t know at this time.
Well, you see, I think it’s very difficult to draw a conclusion from studies that can generalise because I think that there are other factors which are brought in by perhaps individual differences and so on which make a person successful at using meditation or perhaps auto-hypnosis as a treatment. I think that hypnotherapy, using a therapist, probably there are a lot of possibilities of using that to go more deeply and produce change where there’s not such an amount of volitional and active work to be done by the person themselves. That one that you gave us shows fairly clear favorable results, isn’t it? Insomnia and Yeah, yeah, which shows that auto-hypnosis reduces sleep latency. But you see, I don’t know, I just have a problem with trying to generalise from one or two particular research studies.
Because I think that there are other dimensions. It’s all interrelated. Shall I not go into that? I was going to sort of summarise a few of the different studies. Basically, disorder that will be relieved or alleviated by relaxation of the arousal response is going to respond to either hypnotherapy or auto hedonists or meditation.
Generally speaking, perhaps not so useful for medically based problems and psychiatrically based problems. Looking at what we’ve got, I saw an interactive feedback system happening between the mind and the body and that it’s possible to approach either alleviating or actually eliminating a disorder from either perspective or direction and the one interacting and affecting the other, either through physical or through mental aspect. Wanted to look at or talk about what might be the indicators for differential choice between meditation and hedonists if we had someone come in and looked like they had a disorder which could be treated by hypnosis or meditation? How is there is there any way of differentiating which one we we would refer them to or recommend? Anyone got any ideas?
How much of a soft starter the person is? Because if they’re not if you can’t keep up the practice, then you may as well try and go to a hypnotist, a hypnotherapist who can prompt you to do it each time. With post hypnotic suggestion, you mean? Yeah. Well, the alternative is the discipline of practicing self-hypnosis or meditation every every day.
Mhmm. And you weren’t inclined to do that. So how how willing then would be to believe that this would happen Yeah. To be the safest name. Seems to me that that that’s an incredibly large factor, The motivation particularly.
If the person’s not really motivated to try and use that and work with that and see it as a self regulating treatment, then can’t see how it would really be useful. I think there are going to be individual differences. Some people may wish to work through from the physical or physiological aspect and some people may wish to work through primarily mental relaxation and produce physiological relaxation that way, whereas others may wish to be more body oriented and wish to work that way. Ability, preference, motivation, perhaps also in terms of hypnotherapy relationship with the therapist or whether or not they are going to be influenced by the therapist that they’re seeing and to have an attitude of believing in whatever it is the therapist is suggesting that they should do. I thought also the element of whether or not there’s a lot of cognitive stuff going around which is preventing any movement in terms of eliminating the symptoms of the disorder, particularly insomnia, then perhaps attacking it with primarily a mental approach, a mental relaxation approach, might be more effective, I don’t know.
I think that there’s a lot of correlations that can be made between these two particular treatments and other possible non drug treatments. I think that for us to be able to discuss each of those and try and look differentially at how we would actually work at Using interactions. Yeah, and getting to Because I’m sure that a lot of the disorders could be approached from a number of different angles and be ameliorated that way at least. Combined therapy. Yes.
In terms of studies, there were actually very few in looking at meditation and auto-hypnosis in terms of a number of the disorders that I’ve just been through. I think that it would be really helpful if there was some more research done in relating those particular disorders to either auto-hypnosis or meditative treatment. I also thought it would be interesting to have some further studies done in differentiating between different types of meditative techniques Because the word meditation seems to cover just such a plethora of different dimensions that it’s really very difficult to say, Well, meditation as such will do such and such. It depends on what techniques are used. But basically hypnosis and meditation seem to be utilising the same aspects of mental activity and attention and all these sorts of things as their underlying basis.
I think I better stop. I stop. Yeah. In fact, I think it would be worthwhile having a joint discussion between those when you’ve given your paper to have a roundtable discussion about each of the different approaches. And maybe we could even look at taking one particular disorder one by one and each of us who have given a paper on a particular area can then say what we think that it would give or how that would affect that person.
You know, make up a pretend person with certain symptoms. I don’t know how else to do it because I think that it’s really important for us to get an idea of the different kinds of effects of the different approaches. I really felt that in trying to come to grips with these two possible treatment modalities anyway.