I am excited today to share with you a YouTube clip that documents the effectiveness of hypnosis for medical anesthesia. It is just a 2 minute clip, but it is from ABC News with Diane Sawyer so it should carry a lot of prestige with the public. Watch it here or at the end of this post.
At the same time, I am concerned that vested interests in the medical community, especially anesthesiologists, will be against the spread of this knowledge, or will try to make it legal only for doctors to practice hypnosis in this way. Of course you need the doctor to do the surgery, but not the hypnotic anesthesia.
The healing power of our mind is our very own healing power – and we have a right to learn the simple yet profound means to access it. To be able to do surgery under hypnosis understandably raises doubts and fears. The inclination is to think that such a use of hypnosis must be complex and require years of training.
Not true! Medical hypnosis for anesthesia is actually very simple.
All that is needed for someone to experience hypnotic anesthesia is trust, rapport, motivation, and openness to suggestion (which follows from the first 3), and knowing what to suggest and how to suggest it. With these relationship dynamics present, and the easy to learn way to phrase suggestions, anyone can hypnotize anyone else to access and activate their own healing power.
I personally know a number of laypeople who hypnotized a loved one (the relationship contained the required trust, rapport, and openness) for pain and surgery. One was a student of mine who, after the first weekend of class, hypnotized her husband to have a pain-free dental surgery with little bleeding or swelling and rapid, pain-free healing. In this case the husband knew he was being hypnotized. And he trusted his wife.
In another situation the person did not know they were being hypnotized. They were having a casual conversation with their best friend, who was a graduate of my course. This person was about to have a liver biopsy, which is known to be a very painful procedure. Her friend just started to give her suggestions in a playful, loving, and reassuring way about how nice it would be if… “you felt delight at little things moment by moment,” and “appreciated the goodwill of the doctors” and “you told your body to be pain free during the procedure and your body happily agreed). This person did not think they were experiencing hypnosis – they were simply accepting welcome reassurance from a friend.
Afterwards, this person reported with great surprise how delightful and pain free the procedure, and, in fact the whole day, had been. About six months later the procedure was needed again. But this time this person forgot about their prior experience and didn’t talk with the friend for reassurance. And sadly, the procedure in this case was very painful, just as it is reputed to be. It is tragic to hear of such unnecessary suffering.
Now that you have read this post, what is your inner response? Does it feel real that such abilities are available to you? You can begin to experiment and train yourself to master pain with some of my hypnosis recordings such as Quick Pain Relief or Deep Relaxation: Spontaneous Healing.
Still don’t believe it’s possible? Watch or listen to this video of the ABC News coverage on medical hypnosis.
Good luck!