People sometimes wonder whether they can be hypnotized. Incredible, but true – there are professional hypnotists and hypnotherapists today who still seem to believe that only certain percentage of people can be hypnotized, and that is what they are teaching through their books, courses, websites and seminars. The origin of these misconceptions may be traced to several hypnotizability scales. Two of the more popular are Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales (created in 1959) and Harvard Group Scales (created in 1962). Based on the tests performed, the researchers involved in creation of these hypnotizability scales have concluded that 5% of people cannot be hypnotized and that only about 10% can experience deep trance phenomena like auditory and visual hallucinations, and the ability to remain deeply in hypnosis with eyes open.
If you are unfamiliar with hypnotic phenomena, visual hallucinations can be “positive hallucinations” – if you happen to see something that doesn’t belong to consensus reality; or “negative hallucination” – if you don’t see something which may be right in front of you. And it’s good to...