Your normal state of alertness is the one that lets you think properly and function well day to day. It helps you pick up a wealth of information about your surrounding environment, the actions to take, the tasks to carry out. In fact, the normal state of alertness focuses your attention on many elements at once.

Alongside this state of alertness, you also experience the altered state of consciousness every day without even realizing it. Indeed, when the intensity of the stimuli around you decreases, your brain runs short on information. It then starts gathering it from the images in your unconscious. That’s what happens when you daydream about your vacation during a dull lecture or during a subway ride.

The altered state of consciousness regularly occurs when you focus on:

A specific task such as reading a book, doing a creative activity (drawing, painting, building a model, etc.)

Doing a repetitive task (folding clothes, washing dishes, tidying up, etc.)

A monotonous, understimulating activity (waiting in line, watching a boring show, etc.) Other relaxing activities, like walking in nature, singing, listening to music, or even, for some, driving, also carry you into this state of relaxation that can sometimes make you lose track of time.

What happens then? Little by little, you forget the outside reality to enter an inner reality. It’s a bit as if the stimulation around you were no longer enough to keep you entertained. So you go looking for ideas, deep inside yourself, to occupy your mind.

The techniques of the Méthode Dolfino® let you set out deliberately on an adventure into your own universe, to observe it and improve it. This is made possible through the induction of an altered state of consciousness. This state is also called a “trance” (a transport, a passage from one state to another). To bring on this state, you need to perform an induction. This is the mechanism through which entry into an altered state of consciousness happens. It’s a bit like the corridor you cross before reaching the door to the unconscious.

After the guidance, you’ll return to your normal state of alertness. Your unconscious, though, will come back transformed, because it will have understood that it can express itself and feel much better. Your unconscious then becomes your ally, and communication happens more easily.

As you experience the Méthode Dolfino®, it becomes easier and easier to let your unconscious express itself, for your greater good.

So, once back in your normal state of alertness, it will be easier to let the full potential of your inner reality come through.

By experiencing the trance state through the techniques of the Méthode Dolfino®, you’ll get astonishing results.

Why does this work so well? Despite a good deal of research, this remains hard to explain scientifically. Still, over the past two decades, some studies4 have proven that the hypnotic state does indeed change how the brain functions and generates real changes. This state is variable. Indeed, just as you can be more or less focused, or sleep more or less deeply, there are also different levels of trance.

Example: you’re reading a gripping detective novel. You’re then in a light trance. You’re in a state of great receptiveness, with all your senses alert. Mental images come rushing in and you get swept up in the story. You feel fully in command of your faculties. This is a state favorable to the emergence of creative ideas.

At this point, affirmative hypnotic suggestions are very well received and become powerful tools for change.

A little deeper lies the medium trance. Here, you find yourself in a state of dissociation. Your unconscious dimension takes over from your usual state of alertness. Your mental dimension — the one that reasons, analyzes, and criticizes — tends to slow its functions. During a medium trance, you hear everything, but you do not reflect on it.

This is the trance level most conducive to the techniques of the Méthode Dolfino®.

As for deep trance, it is not used in the Méthode Dolfino®. In this state, conscious mental activity is almost nonexistent and the body is limp and without tone. This type of trance is increasingly used in surgery to considerably reduce doses of anesthetics.

4 Maquet, P. et al., Biological Psychiatry, 1999, 45, p.327.

No matter how good the technique or the guidance, there are essential foundations that must be respected. Anyone wishing to see changes take place in their life must be deeply motivated, and the desired changes must align with that person’s values — otherwise, even the best tools will have no effect.

It is therefore impossible to push someone into doing something that goes against their values by using the techniques of the Méthode Dolfino®.

As a guide of the Méthode Dolfino®, you only guide — you show the way. Indeed, the depth of the trance is invariably chosen by the guided person’s unconscious, according to their goal. You can adjust your inductions to help them go more or less deeply into their inner world, but you cannot force them.

Moreover, this altered state of consciousness reveals itself through certain physical signs, known as trance signs, whose enumeration in the “Stanford hypnotic susceptibility scale” has been considered a reference since 1965⁵. This scale measures the reactivity of subjects in a trance state within the context of hypnotic induction.

There is also another reference scale, that of Davis & Husband, developed in 1931.

Level 5: Simple post-hypnotic suggestion (fingers stuck together)

Level 7: More complex post-hypnotic suggestion (hands moving together)

Level 10: Ocular catalepsy (inability to move the eyeballs)

Level 11: Complex post-hypnotic suggestions (for example, changing chairs)

5 free translation – for more information: http://sciencepole.com/hypnotic-susceptibility/ or http://www.comment-hypnotiser.com/science-et-hypnose/

To maximize the effectiveness of the guidance techniques of the Méthode Dolfino®, trance signs from levels 4 to 7 are sought for the first experiences. Then, levels 6 to 10 are targeted once the guided person is more familiar with the process of descending into their inner world.

Other research, including that of H. Szechtman’s team6 at the University of Waterloo, looks into perceptual illusions. That of S. Kosslyn’s team at Harvard, meanwhile, deals with the modulation of color perception under hypnosis7. All of these studies seem to demonstrate the presence of a distinct state of consciousness when an individual is under hypnosis.

In 2003, work carried out by P. Rainville’s team of researchers8 confirmed that the subjective changes linked to hypnosis are accompanied by changes in neural activity.

In fact, it appears that the brain under hypnosis generates more alpha brain waves, electrical waves emitted by the brain and measurable by electroencephalogram. Alpha waves are mainly characterized by a state of physical and mental relaxation. This state fosters better access to creative potential while facilitating problem solving, balancing emotions, stimulating memory, and supporting learning.

Much more recently, in 2016, a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex9 made it possible to identify the areas of the brain that are activated, deactivated, and connected to one another during the trance state.

The researchers observed three major changes in brain function there:

Neuron activity increases in an area involved in concentrating on solving a problem. D. Spiegel, one of the study’s authors, notes that this “explains why a hypnotized person is so absorbed that they no longer care about anything else.”

To allow the brain to better sense what is happening in the body, neural exchanges are more intense between two of the regions that manage cognitive flexibility and self-awareness (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula).

On the other hand, the connectivity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with other brain networks seems to be reduced, which could explain why action and awareness become dissociated when an individual is under hypnosis. “Thanks to this, patients can look at things differently, think and understand differently. What happened with someone doesn’t change, but the perception one has of that person does.” (A. Guillot, the study’s author)

6 Szechtman, H. et al., PNAS, 1998, 95, p.1956.7 Kosslyn, S.M. et al., American Journal Psychiatry, 2000. 157, p.1279.8 Barili, D. Forum Editions, January 27, 2003, Volume 27, number 18.9 http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/07/study-identifies-brain-areas-altered-during-hypnotic-trances.html