I think it's weird....I never would!!

I think the idea of a person having "control" over you is what is not right ... we shouldn't be exercising such dominion over each other.

Also, God never take us into trances or experiences that we will not remember or have no control over existing so why allow a human to do that to us? that to me is sketch so I won't do it.

Hypnosis: Christians aren't to engage in this because is suspends our free will. Maybe it could give evil spirits a way to persecute us. It could be give them a toe hold.

From a mental health perspective, in its worst case scenario could lead to sexual abuse by an unethical  'therapist'.

When someone is hypnotized for the first time, it doesn't involve all of their free will. People can be bullied into this.  If a someone is hypnotized once then all it would take for them to be re-hypnotized is for the hypnotist to have implanted a code word, ________,any word at all. Fill in the blank. The person would then snap back into a hypnotized state upon hearing the word. This is called a post hypnotic suggestion.

The hypnotist can implant false memories, even amnesia to cover up any wrong doing. He can introduce aversion to things, people. It can become a form of brainwashing.

MY ADVICE: Don't do it!!! If your therapist even brings up the subject--RUN AWAY QUICK!!

hypnosis is as faith-based as Christianity is.  it only works if you believe in it.

I don't think hypnosis is a bad thing or anything that goes against Christianity, although when I was younger, I also heard that hypnosis was wrong, whatever reasons that came with it. I think hypnosis helps to clear one's mind, works like yoga/meditation. I used to have troubles sleeping, and then I found some useful hypnosis methods online that helped me to get better sleeps. I don't see how it has anything to do with "opening the mind gaps and letting the demons to get in."

I played around with hypnotism when I was in Highschool, I actually figured out how to hypnotize people against their will. Mind you it took some determination. It is possible. So don't give me that stuff about letting people have control. I am pretty sure I screwed up one of my friends pretty bad (psychologically)
I have been through, and done a fair bit of deliverance ministry and hypnosis seems to come up as related to witchcraft.
All I can say is do your research. (not just wikipedia) look at the people involved in bringing it into the mainstream. Look at what they were into. I am sure if you do your research you will find it's true source. (Try James Braid, New Thought, Theosophy, that should more than get you started.) In the end it really does come down to spiritual discernment, something that I believe is quite scarce in "christianity" these days.

The general acceptance of how evil and dangerous hypnosis is kind of shocks me. It's basically pseudo-science, it might work in some limited situations but the sucess of it might be just a placebo effect. And who really cares the background it came from? It's like calling acupuncture evil because it comes from a "heathen" background. Does that mean everyone should be going out and trying hypnosis and acupuncture? More than likely it is a waste of money, but who knows it might help you (or it just might be you helping yourself).

And as for people worried about hypnosis letting people create false memories, tamper around with what we remember or don't remember, and "discover" repressed memories.....take a psychology class. Memory is highly suspect as is, everyone creates false memories in some fashion or another (some can create very vivid false memories without even being aware of doing so). And as for repressed memories....the existence of such memories itself is controversial, many psychologists people that they are false memories created by the power of suggestion (and no that doesn't have to be hypnosis. Talking to a counselor about the possiblity of you being molested as a child might make you recall that uncle of yours whose dead now but you really hated, confuse all that negative emotion you felt towards him, combine it with other memories from your childhood that either happened to you or happened to people you know, and walah! You now have a memory of an abusive uncle. Not that everyone does this, but it does happen.

To cite an example from a interesting book on the topic of how the mind works (Mistakes were Made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson) one of the authors talks about how as an adult she has this great memory of her father always reading one of her favorite childhood books to her....well that is until as an adult she randomly found out the year that same book was published and it was only published after her dad had passed away. She guessed that she had associated some of the qualities that she loved the book for as some of the traits exemplified by her father, and thus the brain had managed to group the two together. This is someone who is an expert on the subject and yet even she can't avoid the unreliability of memories.

Basically this was just a long rant, but the point I was trying to get across....stop trying to give stuff like this more credit then its due. Our minds are what are incredibly complex and powerful, not a pseudo-science procedure like hypnosis.

@andrepose@xanga - 

"As far as voodoo dolls and ouija boards the
bible specifically teaches against these kinds of things in the old
testament because they were gateways to the spiritual realms."

Hrmmm what version are you reading out of? Maybe you did not mean specifically, or maybe I'm just flat out wrong, but I do not recall a specific reference to voodoo dolls or oiuja boards anywhere in the Bible, ot or nt. Not that I'm trying to make the arguement these are perfectly fine thing for christians to engage in, but my arguement was that these things do not have supernatural powers within themselves.

"I will guarantee to you that there is a spiritual realm and dealing with it outside of Christ Jesus is incredibly dangerous."

I never meant to try to make the point of my comment that there was 0% chance of a spiritual realm, merely that thinking hypnosis is equivalent to mind control, oiuja boards invoke spirits of the dead, and vodoo dolls work, etc is somewhat silly for both christians and non-christians to believe. Belief in demons is certainly not silly for christians to believe in, but in that case do you think you were channeling demons when you "hypnotized" your friends? Because if you were tapping into the spiritual realm (because in the physical one, "force hypnotizing" someone is not really possible), unless you believe it was God granting you the power, it was Satan or demonic forces. You never stated you think you channeled demons in high school, so I assumed you thought you had this "power" on your own (which, going by the rules of the physical world, is ridiculous).

"Step off the beaten path, the world is a whole lot different than our media/educational indoctrination would have us believe."

I generally don't watch the news and a good portion of my eduaction is self-taught, but please enlighten me to the difference.