Well at least you share an interest in hypnosis and auto-hypnosis which is rare these days so kudos on that cause I also think they are pretty cool.
I know a good hypnotist very well, as well as one of his apprentices who is a good friend of mine, and one thing they would both echo is that hypnosis is on a spectrum and you do not necessarily notice that you've "gone into trance."
Like, I've always wanted it to happen like it does in the movies where you just totally enter another world where anything is possible and then suddenly snap out of it, but that's not always how it is.
My hypnotist told me that for SOME people it is, but that for many people they never experience it like that at all, and that it also is not necessary to feel that way in order for the hypnosis to do something for you.
I think he and my friend would tell you that you have probably been "in trance" many times in your life without even knowing it.
For example, I told my hypnotist this and he confirmed it was a "trance state": I always wear the same pair of shorts when I work out (actually I have several pairs of the same shorts) and so I started to notice one day that whenever I was unmotivated to work out and then put on the shorts suddenly I'd feel a little more motivated. That is a trance state. Your mind associates the shorts with the exercise and how the exercise makes you feel, so they are linked internally.
Or if you wear a certain kind of clothes at work but nowhere else, you may suddenly feel "professional" when you put them on, and start conducting yourself in a different way, and that's also a trance state.
Anyways, I think both my hypnotist and my friend would say that drugs are not necessarily advised or necessary for this kind of thing, but I've been under the influence of both Kratom and Fluro-Phenibut while my friend tried to hypnotize me, and the F-Phenibut made me more empathetic and feel good, because it has some empathogenic qualities.
I would not necessarily say it put me further "into trance" though, and I would not recommend it in general as it's a research chemical and who knows what dangers it has. I'm actually on it right now LOL. It's probably not the world's most dangerous thing to take a couple times a month which is how often I use it, but who knows, I mean it's certainly very addictive, as is regular Phenibut, but I'm sure you don't need any lectures about drug safety.
The point is, hypnosis is a strange and subtle thing.
Associations of various kinds qualify as "hypnotic states", so does music and the mood it puts you in, all kinds of things can be correlated with "hypnotic trance".
My hypnotist told me there are generally 2 schools of hypnosis: the old school one that is what you see in the movies like "you are getting very sleepy" kind of stuff lol, and another newer form, and my hypnotist is of the newer school.
I'd like to try the old school form as well some time, and my hypnotist told me that if I want he could get his friend to give me a session sometime.
Another very important thing to realize, perhaps THE single most important thing that my hypnotist told me is this: hypnosis is a PRACTICE like anything else, like meditation, sports, music, etc, and the more you practice the better you will get at it.
I should follow my own advice, because I have an MP3 of my hypnotist talking me into trance on my IPod that he told me to listen to for 10 minutes every day as part of my practice, and I haven't listened to it in months lol, and I need to get back to it, but if you've ever meditated (and you sound like the sort who would), you'd know that that is also a practice, where you need to do it daily to get the benefits, so I would recommend you have a hypnotist show you various methods of auto-hypnosis and that you practice them daily whether or not you think you are getting any benefit from them. He also told me to always do it at the same time everyday, preferably before bed or right after waking up.
Have you ever had an association?
Like, for example: if my refrigerator door is open for too long it makes a dinging sound to let me know I need to close it. So sometimes if I leave a cabinet door open I'll start to think it's going to ding because it reminds me of the fridge.
That is hypnosis. It's the classical behaviorist example like "Pavlov's Dog".
So if you can form certain associations linking certain things with positive states of mind (it could literally be anything), then that is a start. If there's a certain place that relaxes you, think about it while you do your auto-hypnotis practice.
Actually, that is my auto-hypnosis routine: To imagine I am walking down a flight of stairs, counting the steps as I go (this is a very common them for hypnotic suggestion) and when I get to the bottom I am in my backyard, and I imagine exactly how it looks there, how it feels, the sounds and smells etc, then walk back up the stair to re-enter reality.
The thing is: auto-hypnosis is nothing other than using your imagination, it's just that it's GUIDED imagination. It's no different than day dreaming other than that it is purposeful day dreaming rather than just spacing out. If you want it to be more than that, then you may be dissapointed, but I would agree that psychedelics could possibly help with this.
In short: if you've ever had that kind of association, you were in trance, you just didn't know it. Like if a certain song reminds you of getting high, and when you hear it it makes you think of that, or anything else, you were also in trance.
If you want to benefit from it, you need to get a hypnotist's suggestion on how to practice auto-hypnosis and do it daily. If you work on it, eventually you'll see SOME kind of benefit, but it's probably not going to be the kind of magic you are expecting.
