Altered States of ConsciousnessIn ancient times, Indian philosophers identified four classes of human consciousness: ordinary (waking), dreamless sleep, dreaming sleep and altered states of consciousness. Modern psychologists generally remain in agreement with this classification, but have made their own adjustments, identifying three main states of consciousness: active wakefulness, sleep and altered states of consciousness (ASC). In the scientific literature, altered states of consciousness are defined as “a mental state caused by one or another physiological , a psychological or pharmacological agent, subjectively described by the individual in terms of internal experience and, upon objective observation of it, characterized as a disconnection from a certain norm of mental functioning” (Goodman F.D.). Simply put, a person in a state of altered consciousness behaves differently than usually, and perceives himself and the world around him differently. This state of consciousness is familiar to many; it is achieved through meditation, hypnosis, trance and other practices, and can also arise spontaneously, without special efforts on the part of a person (for example, in a situation of stress or shock). Different researchers put different content into the concept of ASC. For example, Professor Kozlov V.V. along with an altered state of consciousness, describes an expanded state of consciousness (ESC). This is a qualitatively special psychological and psychophysiological state, characterized as the release of the reserve capabilities of the human psyche, which becomes possible with complete relaxation and decreased control, which, in turn, gives a person an expanded ability to control the nervous system and gain access to unconscious information. Breslav G.E. ., like many other researchers, ASC refers to trance states - states of complete detachment from the flow of events occurring in the outside world. In this state of consciousness, intensive work of the human psyche occurs, as a result of which associations and emotions from deep areas of the unconscious become available to a person. A number of signs of an altered state of consciousness are identified: 1. Change in thinking. The archaic manner of thinking becomes the leading one, and there is a blurring between cause and effect. This state most fully reveals the meaning of the phrase “here and now.”2. The sense of the passage of time and the chronology of events changes, disorientation in time and its flow occurs (slowing down, stopping or accelerating)3. Losing control. Conscious control over events decreases. Some experience this as helplessness, others experience unity with “cosmic consciousness.”4. Changes in the emotional sphere. In this case, there is either a complete absence of emotional manifestations (detachment), or the emergence of pronounced emotional states of fear or ecstasy.5. Changing body perception. Among the main psychosensory phenomena, the most common are disturbances in the body diagram, depersonalization (loss of a sense of self), optic-vestibular disorders and the disappearance of the sense of boundaries between oneself and the world. Additional signs include: distortion of the perception of the external world, changes in the meaning and meaning of reality events (the appearance of insight , the so-called “moment of truth”), a feeling of inexpressibility, when it is impossible to describe one’s condition in words, a feeling of rebirth (“new birth”) and hypersuggestibility - increased susceptibility to the influence of another person. Pavlov I.P. considered hypnosis to be a physiologically natural process, in the period of an intermediate state between sleep and wakefulness, when inhibition processes occur in the nervous system and cerebral cortex, but while maintaining control, like partial sleep. The main component of the hypnotic effect is rapport - the connection between the patient and the hypnotherapist, carried out through sentinel zones of the cerebral cortex that support the receptivity of the auditory analyzer. Words are perceived as hypnotic suggestion -