Did you know that ancient India, Greece, and Egypt all used something called Sleep Temples?  These were possibly like hospitals, or treatment centers.  Patients would be induced into sleep so that they would dream.  The course of treatment was decided by the content of their dreams which -it was thought -would help to explain the nature of their illness.  Of course,  we’ll never know  whether or not their sleep was hypnosis, or sleep.  Nowdays, we know that the two are not the same.

The word Hypnosis comes from the Greek word for sleep - hypnos.  In Greek mythology, Hypnos was the god of sleep.  So the name Hypnosis stuck, and it is the word we use, unfortunately, to discribe a state of mind that is the opposite of sleep.