Hypnosis began because there was no anesthesia for doing medical procedures or surgery. Doctors discovered that by “distracting” or occupying the mind, they could lessen the patient’s discomfort during surgery. Hypnosis is still currently used during childbirth, dental procedures or surgeries when the patient does not want to use an anesthetic.

In 1779, Dr. Franz Mesmer discovered that the mind has power over the body. From his name MESMER comes the word mesmerize, which literally means to hypnotize or spellbind.

James Braid, a doctor in England, gave hypnosis its name from hypnos, the Greek God of Sleep in 1849. He is widely considered the “Father of Hypnosis” and original he thought that hypnosis was actual sleep brought on by eye fatigue and that’s why people think of hypnosis as looking at a watch or bright object back and forth in front of your eyes. When he realized that it wasn’t actually SLEEP, he tried to rename hypnosis, but it was too late, the name had already taken off and it stuck to this day.