Avoid hypnotherapies
Your question:
I wanted to know if hypnotherapy is allowed in Islam. For example, to overcome negative thoughts by listening to guided tracks that encourage positive thinking, while using binaural brainwave music. In particular, there is a woman named Marisa Peer who is well known for using hypnotherapy to help people overcome limiting beliefs and thoughts that prevent them from becoming their best selves. Nothing she says appears to conflict with religious values, but she uses a particular type of brainwave music to induce a deep meditative state so that suggestions can help a person let go of whatever is holding them back.
My response:
The sanctity of human consciousness
In every religion-based culture, including Islam, a person’s consciousness is among the greatest gifts bestowed by the Creator. It is the locus of responsibility, freedom of action, experience, and the capacity to improve oneself and change direction by learning from experience.
In principle, it is wrong, and in most circumstances forbidden, either to surrender one’s consciousness to another person or to take away someone else’s consciousness. For this reason, intoxicants are forbidden in Islam. Likewise, activities that become addictive to the extent that people lose self-control and harm themselves, such as gambling, are also prohibited.
If, in circumstances that are not medically justified, someone either surrenders or takes control of another person’s consciousness, both parties become involved in wrongdoing, even if it does not amount to a legal crime.
Medical treatment and exceptional cases
There are, however, narrowly defined circumstances in which this is neither sinful nor unlawful. The clearest example is the treatment of extreme physical pain. A person may lose consciousness because of the pain itself, or therapists may induce unconsciousness in order to carry out necessary treatment. Anyone who has visited a dentist understands this and benefits from pain-free treatment.
By analogy, this principle extends to cases of physical illness, physical injury, and mental illness.
In cases of mental illness, however, it is important to distinguish between temporary and chronic conditions. A person may briefly lose the capacity for self-control. In such situations, it is normal to restrain them physically, without immediately resorting to medication that causes loss of consciousness.
When loss of self-control is recurrent, or when there is a real danger of self-harm or harm to others, then the use of medication may become both permissible and beneficial, just as sleep itself can be beneficial.
Diseases of the will
A very different matter is what might be called diseases of the will. Examples include people who say, “I try, but I cannot stop overeating, smoking, drinking, or constantly watching television.”
In such situations, transferring control of your consciousness to another person amounts to abandoning your responsibility before God. It is a grave risk. You cannot be certain that the other person will not harm you or weaken your own ability to help yourself.
For example, you may stop smoking through such methods, but it does not necessarily follow that you have acquired genuine self-discipline or self-control. On the contrary, there is a significant risk that one harmful habit will simply be replaced by another, perhaps even more damaging.
A better path to reform
If someone comes seeking help to overcome a weakness of the will, I suggest the following:
- Remind the person that Allah desires ease, not hardship, for His servants. True ease comes through self-discipline, never through self-indulgence.
- Allah has informed the believers that He has shown them the two paths. If they choose the wrong one, they will come to recognise it either through its consequences, through remorse, or through both.
- Allah has promised to accept sincere repentance and genuine efforts at reform. Repentance is a firm resolve not to continue upon a path that leads to regret. It always requires action, not merely feelings.
Once these principles have been understood, practical steps should be taken to help the person gradually overcome their weakness. They should be supported, protected from situations that encourage relapse, and occupied with beneficial alternatives.
In other words, we help them, step by step, to become busy with good actions until they gradually lose their attachment to harmful ones.
Patience rather than quick fixes
This is, self-evidently, a long and demanding process that requires sabr. It is the very opposite of the quick fix, the magic drug, the magic music, or the supposedly miraculous holy person.
In our age of instant gratification, instant coffee, fast food, cheap pleasure, and constant distractions, it is harder than ever not to be seduced by promises of effortless cures.
There are no magic cures. There are only tricks.
