Comparisons are made regarding the effects of external Chinese qigong and hypnosis on simultaneous EEG recordings of senders and receivers. For a qigong master was practicing qigong, alpha waves appeared in the frontal region, which were synchronized to those in the occipital region. The phase difference (tau m) between occipital (O1) and frontal (Fp1) regions during qigong became smaller than that in the resting state. This effect was also observed on the subjects who received qi. When the beta topography of the qigong master showed a specific pattern, a similar pattern tended to appear in the subject's betawaves. In a double blind experiment which excluded the suggestive effects as much as possible, the tau m value of the subject became as small as the qigong master's. These synchronizing effects between both EEGs of the master and the subjects indicate the possibility of some information transfer from the master to his subject. During hypnosis carried out on subjects who had already established close rapport with the master, the results were quite different, in spite of the fact that oral hypnotic induction was not used in order to create conditions comparable to those during qigong. In contrast to qigong, synchronized patterns in the beta topography were not evident. Although the alpha waves spread on the frontal area of both hypnotist and subjects and the tau m value tended to become smaller, the changes were not so remarkable as for qigong. The value in the concentrating state, such as during mental calculation, was much smaller. So, the smaller tau m during hypnosis was considered an effect of concentration, not of synchronization to the EEG of the master. In the case of hypnosis, even though by means of non-verbal induction, the subjects induced the hypnotic state in themselves by imagining the inductive terms which had always been given by their master.

Characterization of the EEG in Qigong and Hypnosis