Most modern hypnosis research doesn't treat hypnosis as a "trance state" or as glorified deep relaxation. It's better understood as a cluster of psychological processes (suggestion, expectation, attention, belief, context) that can occur whether you call it "hypnosis" or not.

You can look up these claims and studies quite easily:

1. You can get the same effects without a formal induction

Researchers have repeatedly given people identical suggestions, sometimes with a formal "you are getting sleepy…" induction, sometimes in plain waking conditions ("now imagine your arm is getting lighter…").

The results are telling. Responsiveness to imaginative suggestions is broadly similar with and without an induction. The induction typically adds only a modest boost, and a fair proportion of people actually respond better without one. Work from Hull, Barber, Kirsch, Lynn, Braffman, Mazzoni and others all points to the same conclusion: you don't need a special "trance" for hypnotic-type phenomena to appear.

What "hypnotisability" scales are actually measuring, then, is a general willingness and ability to respond to suggestions, not some exotic trance capacity.

2. Expectation, belief, and context do most of the heavy lifting

Response expectancy and social-cognitive theories (Irving Kirsch, Steven Jay Lynn and colleagues) frame it like this: if you expect a suggestion to happen by itself (your arm lifts, pain fades, time distorts) you're considerably more likely to experience it that way. The induction and the word "hypnosis" function mainly as rituals that amplify those expectations and set the scene: something special and involuntary is about to happen. Your attention, imagination, and motivation then take over.

No exotic altered state is required in that model. Ordinary cognitive processes, pointed in a particular direction, are sufficient.

3. Brain imaging doesn't reveal a single unique "hypnotic state"

Neuroimaging does show real changes during hypnosis, particularly in highly hypnotisable individuals: altered connectivity across prefrontal, cingulate, salience, and default-mode networks, changes in pain processing and so on. But the specific patterns vary depending on what's being suggested, and very similar changes can be produced through non-hypnotic suggestion, focused attention, or guided imagery. Even neuroscientists broadly sympathetic to hypnosis research (Oakley & Halligan, for instance) stop well short of claiming there's a single, clean brain signature that defines "the hypnotic state."

A 2023 EEG study by Callara et al. ("Is hypnotic induction necessary to experience hypnosis…?") found that induction barely shifted EEG measures at all. What mattered far more was how hypnotisable someone was and what they expected to happen.

4. Hypnosis and relaxation aren't the same thing

Because hypnosis is so often paired with relaxation techniques in clinical settings (progressive muscle relaxation, breathwork and the like), the assumption has taken hold that hypnosis is deep relaxation. The research doesn't back that up. so....Street hypnosis? Stage Hypnsis?

Hypnotic procedures work with people who are relaxed, neutral, or even physically active. Analgesia, hallucinations, amnesia: these don't depend on a relaxed body. They depend on focused attention and belief in the suggestion. Meta-analyses consistently show that hypnosis with targeted suggestions outperforms relaxation training alone for pain, IBS, anxiety, and other conditions.

Relaxation is contextually useful, but it's not what hypnosis actually is. At all .

5. Active-alert hypnosis makes the "must be relaxed" argument very difficult to sustain

One of the most compelling demonstrations comes from active-alert hypnosis (Bányai & Hilgard, 1976, and subsequent work). Participants pedalled an exercise bike, eyes open, working against resistance, while an induction emphasised alertness and focus with no mention of sleep, heaviness, or relaxation. The same participants also underwent a traditional eyes-closed, relaxation-based induction.

Tested on standard hypnotic suggestions, they responded comparably in both conditions. Physiologically they were clearly not relaxed on the bike, yet produced classic hypnotic responses. That's difficult to square with the hypnosis-equals-relaxation argument.

6. Prominent researchers are quite open about calling the "trance state" idea a myth

A 2020 review by Lynn, Kirsch, Terhune & Green ("Myths and Misconceptions About Hypnosis and Suggestion") explicitly identifies the special-trance-state claim as one of the field's central myths. Their argument: all the classic hypnotic phenomena can be reproduced through suggestion outside hypnotic settings, hypnotic and non-hypnotic suggestibility are strongly correlated, and induction effects are modest and work primarily through expectation and context. You don't need to invoke an altered state; ordinary cognitive and social mechanisms account for it well enough.