Hypnosis, trance, or deep relaxation therapy as some would call it is as old as mankind itself. The Egyptians, Greeks, Persians and Hindus used hypnosis thousands of years ago for therapeutic and religious purposes. Each of these societies had places called sleep temples where patients were helped to relax and experience restoration by the use of curative suggestions repeated often and repetitively by the priests while they slept. Hypnosis was used as an early anesthetic by many medical practitioners throughout the early development of surgical technique.

The development of the understanding of hypnosis is filled with charlatans, mystics, those seeking personal power and financial gain as well as serious scientific practitioners. Unfortunately not much has changed in the last 3000 years! To present you with a serious and in depth history of hypnosis would take up at least 200 pages, so what I've endeavored to do is hit the highlights. Events and people that I think have had a profound effect in the development of what we understand now to be a natural occurring state, that when properly directed can be an extremely powerful tool for self-improvement.

• Marquis de Puysegur (1781-1825) accidentally discovered what is referred to today as the hypnotic state. The Marquis was a French military man and a follower of Anton Mesmer.
  
  
• John Elliotson (1791-1868) was a professor of surgery at University College in London and the inventor of the stethoscope. He was the first Western physician of record to use hypnosis and the treatment of nervous disorders and as an anesthetic for surgery. Because of his popularity as a surgeon who could produce painless surgeries in an era where surgery was usually performed by the subject being held down and often times resembled a torture session, he was condemned by the British medical Journal Lancet. As a result he re-signed from University College Hospital.
  
  
• James Esdaile (1808-1859) in 1842 while serving as a Scottish surgeon in charge of the special hospital in Calcutta and having read a book produced by John Elliotson began using hypnosis as a means of anesthetic to control surgical pains. He performed more than a thousand operations using only hypnosis as the sole surgical anesthetic. This was prior to the discovery of any chemical anesthetic more than 300 of these operations were major surgical procedures including 19 amputations. To his own amazement the mortality rate in his surgery dropped from 50% to 5%. Upon his return to England the laws tried by the British medical Association for charlatanism and lost his license. One of the main prosecutors in this trial argued that God intended people to suffer, and that pain should be borne by Christian fortitude.
  
  
• James Braid (1795-1860) a Scottish physician and surgeon practicing medicine in Manchester should be called the father of modern hypnosis. It was he who coined the term hypnotism derived from the Greek word hypnosis, meaning sleep. Through Dr. Braids research he concluded that the state of hypnosis was both physiological and psychological. But he also concluded that hypnosis was not sleep but rather another physical state.
  
  
• Ambroise Auguste Liebeault (1823-1904) a French physician and Hippolyte Berbheim (1837-1919) a neurologist formed a school in Nancy, France the Nancy school of thought which emphasize hypnosis as being a psychological phenomenon. This school emphasized suggestion and suggestibility is a naturally occurring psychological aspect of hypnosis and the mind. Over 12,000 patients were treated at the school for psychological and organic illness. During the time the school was in operation they had many famous students including Sigmund Freud. Although Freud later became the father of psychoanalysis as a hypnotist he showed little ability. He often complained he could not get his subjects to sufficient depth to produce the kind of results his contemporaries were doing regularly. This may account in later life for his dismissal of hypnosis is a valid treatment modality.

The American Medical Association in 1958 endorsed the use of hypnosis as a valid therapeutic tool. Mostly in response to hypnosis being successfully used to treat battle fatigue, hysterical blindness, pain, and many other battle injuries both physical and psychological that were sustained by our troops in World War II. The evolution of the understanding of the hypnotic state is rich with examples of discovery, misunderstanding, error, and in some cases charlatanism. But what we have gained from this discovery process over the last several thousand years is a better and clearer understanding of what hypnosis is and how it can be used to affect the human condition. Each and every one of us on a daily basis enters into a state of hypnosis several times. Just before you fall to sleep, just before you wake up, at moments of deep concentration, or great relaxation. Have you ever read a book and been so deeply engrossed in it that you seem to be oblivious to your surroundings or to the happenings about you, hypnosis. If you have ever driven home from work and not remembered the drive but you arrive safely, hypnosis. The state just prior to waking up in that kind of dreamy state, hypnosis. Daydreaming, hypnosis. When you enter into a deep state of hypnosis your alpha brain waves dramatically increase. Hundreds and thousands of clinical tests have been done surrounding the subject of hypnosis and its effects. While under hypnosis high blood pressure drops, heart rates lower, brainwave activity increases, breathing is deepened and regular. There has never been a study that found hypnosis damaging in any way.