One of the many things that I find fascinating about hypnosis is the power of words. The same words spoken to someone in normal conversation take on an almost mystical power when they are spoken during a hypnotic trance.

When we are in our normal everyday, alert, aware, waking state we are in a state of defensiveness. There is a part of our mind that is constantly on the lookout for danger. This is nothing sinister - it's just healthy self-protectiveness. Now in the good old days, from an evolutionary point of view, there was constant danger. Those who weren't that alert didn't survive for very long and so if you buy into the idea of Natural Selection it makes sense to assume that the most frightened individuals were the ones who lived to pass on their genetic material.

Now there isn't really that much physical danger around in our day-to-day lives. Crossing the road is perhaps the biggest threat many of us experience in a normal day. So, given that a significant part of ourselves evolved to ensure we survive, and that this part doesn't have much to occupy it in the physical realm, and perhaps it gets a little bored, then maybe, just maybe, this boredom causes it to look for threat where there isn't any