9 November 2019 | New Scientist | 35It is a state you are likely to have experienced
before – when you have been so absorbed in an
activity that you don’t notice anything around
you or the passage of time.
We also now know that the success of
famous illusionists getting people to do weird
and wonderful things on stage has more to
do with peer pressure than it does with being
hypnotised (see “Smoke and mirrors”, page 36).
When it comes to how to actually hypnotise
someone, there is no standard method.
A common approach starts with thinking of a
calming image, before imagining yourself
in a peaceful setting that stimulates all your
senses, followed by a deepening procedure and
affirmations that help you achieve your goal. It
can be induced by another party or by yourself
(see “How to hypnotise yourself ”, page 37).
As we’ll see, there are good reasons to keep
calling the process “hypnosis”, but its fuzzy
definition and controversial history have made
it difficult to figure out what works and what
doesn’t. Its classification as “complementary”
rather than mainstream therapy by the UK’s
National Health Service (NHS) hasn’t helped
either, says Jane Boissière from the British
Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis,
because it makes obtaining funding for trials,
training or setting up relevant services in the
NHS “virtually impossible”.
In spite of this, the UK’s National Institute for
Health and Care Excellence does recommend
hypnosis for one condition: irritable bowel
syndrome. IBS causes painful cramps, bloating,
diarrhoea and constipation. The cause isn’t
known and there is no cure, but some drugs
and diet changes can ease symptoms.Look into my eyes
Hypnosis is entering mainstream medicine and appears
to be helping with everything from anxiety to chronic
pain. Is it time to take it seriously, asks Helen Thomson
H
ONESTLY, I wondered whether I was
actually in labour, because surely it
was meant to be more painful than
this.” That’s Shona, describing the recent birth
of her daughter. Her secret? Hypnosis. During
pregnancy, she learned how to hypnotise
herself into a state of mind that allowed her
to minimise the pain of labour and, in her
own words, “quite enjoy the whole thing”.
The word hypnosis may call to mind a
swinging watch or an entertainer getting
people to believe they are naked on stage for
an audience’s amusement. Its history is one
of sorcery and magic, tales of the occult and
exploitative charlatans. Practitioners are rarely
doctors or counsellors, clinical trials struggle
to get funded and there is still no regulatory
authority that monitors the practice.
Yet despite these issues, people are turning
to the technique to help with everything from
labour to hot flushes, anxiety and chronic pain,
and a growing body of research is starting to
confirm its benefits. We are also beginning to
get a handle on how it actually works and what
happens in the brain during hypnosis.
The result is that how we define hypnosis is
changing, and its use in mainstream medicine
is increasing. The UK’s Royal College of
Midwives now accredits hypnobirthing
courses and funds training in the technique.
Some anaesthetists now include hypnosis in
their toolkit, and it is even being touted as a
solution for the opioid addiction crisis.
Hypnosis is certainly no cure-all, but learning
what works, why it works and how to do it
ourselves may help us harness the power of the
mind for some of life’s toughest battles.Hypnosis has a long history in medicine.
The earliest recorded use dates to 1550 BC,
but it took off in the 18th century when
German physician Franz Mesmer decided that
the planets’ physical influence on people could
be manipulated using magnets to cause a
trance and treat disease. Mesmer was later
denounced as a fraud and hustler, but the idea
of changing people’s behaviour through trance
persisted, and gained more credibility in the
19th century when the Scottish surgeon James
Braid began to investigate what physiology
might underlie this strange phenomenon.
Today, hypnosis is used for a vast range of
conditions. But even as its use has become
more common, its reach within medicine has
been limited. In part that is because few can
agree on what exactly hypnosis is. Cobbling
together opinions from several researchers,
a hypnotic “trance” could be described as a
state of focused attention, concentration and
inner absorption, accompanied by a loss of
awareness of the other things around you.>“
“ You’ve probably
been in a trance,
when you were
so absorbed you
didn’t notice the
passage of time”