Originally Posted by soulvids
How does this method of reaching Alpha compare to traditional meditation? Are there any pros & cons to speak of?
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I think you'll find Alpha is Alpha is Alpha. Lots of different activities invoke higher production of Alpha waves. What differentiates between states of Alpha is just the activity you're engaged in at the time, be it hypnosis, meditation, creative visualization, daydreaming, relaxing, or whatever. If you took a group of people and had each of them engage in one of these activities and then measured them all with an EEG they would all show heightened patterns of Alpha waves even though they were each performing a different activity.
The difference between the state of hypnosis and the state of meditation is very similar to the difference between concentration and meditation. In fact I think you could make a good argument that hypnosis is really a very specialized form of concentration. Often you'll hear the terms meditation and concentration used synonymously, but they are not the same thing. But concentration
may lead to meditation if that's your purpose. I think hypnosis could also be used as a gateway into meditation if used properly.
The difference between concentration/hypnosis and meditation is really more about expansive versus contractive awareness. Many hypnotic induction techniques encourage the subject to shrink their focus down to just one thing such as the hypnotist's voice or watching a small spot on a wall so that all other points of awareness are temporarily pushed out of awareness. In most hypnosis there is initially an increase in Beta brainwaves as the subject engages their thinking mind to start blocking out things. As they physically relax into the experience of concentration the Alpha waves begin to arise.
When you enter into hypnosis much of the racing mind gets pushed out of awareness leaving you with far less mental chatter than usual. Superficially, you might think that sounds just like meditation, and in a way it is, and in another way it isn't. In meditation we transcend racing thoughts whereas in rigid concentration or hypnosis we repress them. The result is less thinking, but the mechanisms work on opposite principles.
Sometimes people who attack the practice of meditation will make an analogy with animals. "Look at a cat," they'll say, "the cat doesn't have racing thoughts. Is THAT what you want to do to yourself? Become like an unthinking cat?"
It's an unfair comparison. An animal doesn't have racing thoughts because the physical mechanisms of its brain have not developed so as to be capable of having them. Who knows what the more subtle, non-physical essence of the cat is capable of, but at least for as long as that cat is locked inside this particular mortal shell that shell has a very profound regulating effect on the cat's ability to engage in what we would recognize as cognitive functions. The cat doesn't engage in complex thought because the cat's brain
can't engage in complex thought.
That is a very different circumstance than a human who is not physically limited down to minimal thought, but who, instead, has full capability yet transcends the habit of excessive and unnecessary thought. It's a matter of lack of capability versus transcendence. Both result in less mental chatter, but they are very different things.
There is similarity between this and the difference between the suppression of thought produced by deep concentration/hypnosis and the transcendence of thought that arises in meditation. Both will produce Alpha waves. Both will result in less mental chatter. But of the two, only meditation opens us outwards and leads towards expanded awareness.
Personally, I think there are some people who could benefit from using hypnosis as a bridge into meditation, particularly those who have great difficulty experiencing any silence at all in meditation. Once they get into that concentrative state where thought has been largely pushed aside by the object of the concentration, then they might be better able to let go of that rigid concentration and allow themselves to relax into the silence that is there.
This is actually how most common mantra meditation techniques work. Often the instructions given when learning a mantra technique make it clear that the goal is to avoid having thoughts by constantly bringing the focus back to the mantra itself. That's using a mantra in exactly the same way a hypnotist uses an object of concentration. What is often not explained very clearly is that when using a mantra for meditation at some point that mantra will have stilled the mind at which time you stop repeating the mantra and just allow yourself to rest in that silence.
All too often we get so focused on repeating the mantra that even when silence arises we doggedly keep repeating the mantra because we think those repetitions ARE meditation. They're not. They're just the tool that gets us to the silence of meditation. Like any other tool, once it's done its job you drop it. You wouldn't keep pounding with a hammer on the head of a nail that was already driven fully into the wood. Just so, the goal of meditation is to reach a quiet, still point of expanded awareness. Once you're there you let the mantra go unless/until you find you're disturbed from the quiet. Only then would you pick the mantra back up and begin repeating it once more.
One of the great things about the particular mantra technique Michael teaches is that it employs relaxed mantra repetition, not the rigid kind. The mantra comes and goes, ebbs and flows. This is the same basic technique as that taught by the TM group, and many studies have demonstrated this relaxed mantra actually produces more Alpha brainwaves than its more rigid cousins.
But I think you could use hypnosis as almost a kind of mantra meditation technique if you understand that at some point you have to divest yourself of the object of concentration and relax into the stillness.
Sorry this got so long and winding but I think a lot of people sometimes wonder about what the difference is between hypnosis and meditation and between concentration and meditation. This is my take.
