Alright, perhaps you guys can help clear something up. A friend of mine and I are arguing on wheather or not you can kill yourself well hypnotized by holding your breath. Supposedly when you are hypnotized, your subconscious is more attuned, etc and you can learn more stuff. What if the hypnotist told the person in trance to hold there breath, could they eventually suffocate themselves?

We've spent like an hour searching and haven't been able to locate any information saying yes or no as of yet.

lord, i suppose it depends on how closely the 'mind' and the organic body (aka muscle control) are interrelated?

Strange question, but interesting.

Wouldnt they just faint and in doing so break the trance and start breathing again?

why didn't yuri do this?

First, I think you need to clear something up. Is it impossible to hold your breath long enough to pass out? Or is it just impossible to kill yourself, since you start breathing once you faint?

You can hold your breath long enough to pass out, but once you pass out, you start breathing again.

The difference though between being unconscious and conscious but hypnotized is unconscious you can't control your body, versus hypnotized you can if you are told to.

No, because eventually you would pass out and then lose all voluntary motor control. Assuming hypnosis isn't just a whopping big pile of quackery it would primarily affect the higher brain functions. Breathing is controlled by the brainstem, a region which functions on its own no matter what you do. It controls breathing, heart rate among other things.

When you breath, the brainstem sends a neural signal to the respiratory muscles (diaphragm and intercostals) that tells them to contract, this pulls air into your lungs and you breathe. When you hold your breath, the brainstem is still sending out signals to the muscles, but you are overriding the signal and telling them not to contract, despite what the brainstem is saying. However, you can only do this in a conscious state.

When you are unconscious, you have no voluntary control over your muscles so the brainstem kicks in and you start to breathe.

Keep in mind you cannot gain full control of a person (namely, subconcience) with hypnotism. Psychitrist can only "suggest" what to do, for example, loose weight or stop smoking.

Oddly enough, it dosn't work most of the time.

Also, yes you do begin to breathe when you faint. When you faint, your mind go's through a "reboot" that jumpstarts everything over again. Learn this with Dim Mak, a martial art involving pressurepoints and acupuncture/acupressure. Man it hurt sometimes.

(I speak medically throughout this reply. I don't believe in hypnotism. If it exist, it's really, really misunderstood.)

Those are suggestions implanted into the subconscious mind. What you're thinking of are involuntary actions -- the brain stem, which controls things like breathing and the beating of the heart (of course, I may have the wrong part here -- brain anatomy was never my forte).

Yeah, telling me to lose weight or stop smoking and doing it consciously won't do much. It's just like telling me to do it awake. Hypnotism is suppsoed to reach the subconsious.

unless you stabbed it with an ice pick.... That should do it.

either that, or sustain a spinal injury in the top three vertebrae.

edit: I should have noted earlier that I am only using the cardiopulmonary system as an example. Brainstem controls a lot more things.

No. Complete severance of the spinal column between the levels of C1-T1 will only result in the loss of sympathetic innervation to the cardiopulmonary system since T1 is the level which the nerve supplying the cardioplumonary ganglionic plexus exits the spinal column. Parasympathetic innervation will be maintained since the vagus nerve leaves the medulla oblongata region directly and passes through the jugular foramina (located b/w the occipital and temporal bones) and therefore never enters the spinal column. This means that at least partial brainstem control is preserved despite 100% severance of the spinal cord, which itself is a rare occurence.

But thank you for the constructive ice pick comments.

I recall that one could subvert the brain stem if too much alcohol was digested. It slowly shuts down the brain, taking over the frontal lobes first, then moving back as consumption increases. Eventually, it shuts down the brain stem.

If by "subvert", you mean kill. Then yes, excess alcohol would "subvert" the brainstem, what with alcohol being a poison and all

I was using creative language. Be quiet.

That's my guess.

when i clicked on this thread i was about to say "shouldn't this be in the music forum"...

Please deffine all of these words.

ummmmmmmm.... diagram?

ok

C1-T1: cervical vertebrae 1 through to thoracic vertebrae 1
Sympathetic: division of the autonomic nervous system. Nerves in this branch usually release epinepherine (adrenaline)
Innervation: distribution of nerves
cardiopulmonary: heart and lungs
T1: thoracic vertebrae 1
ganglionic plexus: networked and interwoven collection of nerve cell bodies
Parasympathetic: other division of the autonomic nervous system. Nerves in this division usually release acetylcholine
vagus: cranial nerve #10
medulla oblongata: part of the brain stem
jugular foramina: hole between the occipital and temporal bones of your skull
occipital: bone at the back of the head
temporal: bone on the lower side of your head

For more information on any of these items, please consult Wikipedia. Study hard as there will be a test on Monday.

I wanted a new genre of trance called "Death Trance"

If you made up every word in that paragraph, I wouldn't know the difference.

I mean, I can piece together what the words mean by breaking it down, but I couldn't define it, nor tell you exactly where or what you are talkin about

Hypnosis is not exactly a 'trance' state, but a state of mind induced resulting into a very deep rapport between hypnotists and the hypnotized. You are just very easily persuaded to do what the hypnotist asks you to do.

A while ago there was a popular idea that hypnosis could be used to have someone else commit crimes, murder, etc, ... In reality though, the hypnotized will never do anything that is entirely against his will. He can never be persuaded to 'hold his own breath till he dies'. And actually, I don't think thats physiologically possible, as other guys may have pointed out.