Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984. He has published more than 250 articles, many chapters and reviews and edited 13 books. He has been a member of the Mind and Life Institute's Board of Directors since 1991. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research including a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Award, a MERIT Award from NIMH, an Established Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders (NARSAD), a Distinguished Investigator Award from NARSAD, the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society, and the Hilldale Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was the Founding Co-Editor of the new American Psychological Association journal EMOTION and is Past-President of the Society for Research in Psychopathology and of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. He was the year 2000 recipient of the most distinguished award for science given by the American Psychological Association –the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. In 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2004 he was elected to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006. In 2006 he was also awarded the first Mani Bhaumik Award by UCLA for advancing the understanding of the brain and conscious mind in healing. Madison Magazine named him Person of the Year in 2007.

Full Title: Impact of a lecture about empirical bases of hypnosis on beliefs and attitudes toward hypnosis among Cuban health professionals.

The aim of this study was to examine whether a lecture on hypnosis can modify attitudes and misconceptions about hypnosis. The sample consisted of 97 health professionals from institutions in Havana City, Cuba. Group 1 consisted of 46 participants who received a lecture on hypnosis. Group 2 consisted of 51 participants who received a lecture about urology. and Beliefs toward Hypnosis-Therapist was applied before and after the lecture. Results indicated that there were significant differences between the groups: Group 1 showed more positive attitudes toward hypnosis. However, both groups showed similar misconceptions about hypnosis and memory, which changed significantly in Group 1 after receiving the lecture about hypnosis but not in Group 2. Therefore, the lecture about hypnosis had a significant impact in correcting participants' misconceptions about memory and hypnosis.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2010 Oct;58(4):476-96. Martin M, Capafons A, Espejo B, Mendoza ME, Guerra M, Enriquez Santos JA, Diaz-Puron S, Guirado IG, Castilla CD. University of Havana, Cuba.

Three studies investigated whether self-affirmation can proceed without awareness, whether people are aware of the influence of experimental self-affirmations, and whether such awareness facilitates or undermines the self-affirmation process. The authors found that self-affirmation effects could proceed without awareness, as implicit self-affirming primes (utilizing sentence-unscrambling procedures) produced standard self-affirmation effects (Studies 1 and 3). People were generally unaware of self-affirmation's influence, and self-reported awareness was associated with decreased impact of the affirmation (Studies 1 and 2). Finally, affirmation effects were attenuated when people learned that self-affirmation was designed to boost self-esteem (Study 2) or told of a potential link between self-affirmation and evaluations of threatening information (Study 3). Together, these studies suggest not only that affirmation processes can proceed without awareness but also that increased awareness of the affirmation may diminish its impact.

J Pers Soc Psychol. 2009 Nov;97(5):745-64. Sherman DK, Cohen GL, Nelson LD, Nussbaum AD, Bunyan DP, Garcia J. Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA. david.sherman@psych.ucsb.edu

by Brian Green, CCHT

There is a question on my intake form, "Do you have any residual pain from work, automobile, or surgery related injuries." This can lead me to aspects of pain and healing I have encountered, but not seen mentioned in the general hypnosis literature. That blocked unfelt emotions, created at the time of a physical trauma, may remain locked in, preventing full physiological healing. And unexpressed feelings of physical hurt may produce a similar result. Some medical research studies show that persons who do not take pain medications heal faster. It figures. For those clients who can use hypnotic processes well, a simple resolution can be obtained with regressive and other techniques.

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Franz Anton Mesmer's 1766 thesis on the influence of the planets on the human body, in which he first publicly presented his account of the harmonic forces at work in the microcosm, was substantially copied from the London physician Richard Mead's early eighteenth century tract on solar and lunar effects on the body. The relation between the two texts poses intriguing problems for the historiography of medical astrology: Mesmer's use of Mead has been taken as a sign of the Vienna physician's enlightened modernity while Mead's use of astro-meteorology has been seen as evidence of the survival of antiquated astral medicine in the eighteenth century. Two aspects of this problem are discussed. First, French critics of mesmerism in the 1780s found precedents for animal magnetism in the work of Paracelsus, Fludd and other early modern writers; in so doing, they began to develop a sophisticated history for astrology and astro-meteorology. Second, the close relations between astro-meteorology and Mead's project illustrate how the environmental medical programmes emerged. The making of a history for astrology accompanied the construction of various models of the relation between occult knowledge and its contexts in the enlightenment.

Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2010 Jun;41(2):158-68. Schaffer S. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3RH, UK. sjs16@cam.ac.uk

Full Title: A randomised controlled single-blind trial of the effects of Reiki and positive imagery on well-being and salivary cortisol.

The study investigated whether participants who received Reiki would show greater health and well-being benefits than a group who received no Reiki. A method of blinding participants to Reiki was also tested, where non-contact Reiki or No-Reiki with random assignment was given to 35 healthy psychology undergraduates whose attention was absorbed in one of three tasks involving self-hypnosis/relaxation. Participants experienced ten 20-min intervention sessions over a period of two and a half to 12 weeks. Reiki was directed by the experimenter who sat behind the participants as they were absorbed in the tasks. Self-report measures of illness symptoms, mood and sleep were assessed pre-post-intervention as was salivary cortisol. While the Reiki group had a tendency towards a reduction in illness symptoms, a substantive increase was seen in the No-Reiki. The Reiki group also had a near-significant comparative reduction in stress, although they also had significantly higher baseline illness symptoms and stress scores. The Reiki blinding was successful - the groups did not differ statistically in their beliefs regarding group membership. The results are suggestive that the Reiki buffered the substantive decline in health in the course of the academic year seen in the No-Reiki group.

Brain Res Bull. 2010 Jan 15;81(1):66-72. Bowden D, Goddard L, Gruzelier J. Psychology Department, Goldsmiths, University of London, ITC Building, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom. deborahebowden@hotmail.co.uk

Alternative medicine remains alternative because it poses serious challenges to the mainstream biomedical paradigm of mechanical reductionism and because it requires a new framework. This paper explores some of the hypotheses and challenges of energy medicine including healer interventions, electromagnetic therapies, and homeopathy. Together with new findings from the bioelectromagnetic field, they spell out the rudiments of a new paradigm for biology and medicine based on information. Information embraces the complex network of relations in the matter and energy transactions of living systems. It offers a unified view of energy medicine modalities as well as a fresh perspective for biology and medicine and new questions for further research.

Altern Ther Health Med. 1995 Mar;1(1):34-9. Rubik B. Center for Frontier Sciences, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa., USA.

Georgia Foster is from Melbourne, Australia. She has lived in London since 1994 where she qualified with distinction as a clinical hypnotherapist with the London College of Clinical Hypnosis. She then went on to lecture on the subject of hypnotherapy - training students all over the United Kingdom for a further 2 years.

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Allan Snyder is recognised for groundbreaking discoveries covering the fields of visual neurobiology, communications, optical physics and the mind sciences.

Dr Snyder received the world's "foremost prize in communication and information technology", the Marconi International Prize, in New York city in December 2001.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and the recipient of its 2001 Clifford Paterson Prize for "contributions which benefit mankind."

He is the director of the Centre for the Mind of the University of Sydney (Australia)

This study compared the efficacy of conventional treatments for dentin hypersensitivity (DHS) and hypnotherapy. During a 1-month period at an urban practice in a service area of approximately 22,000 inhabitants, all patients were examined. A total of 102 individuals were included in the evaluation. Values of 186 teeth were analyzed. The comparison of the different treatment methods (desensitizer, fluoridation, and hypnotherapy) did not show significant differences in success rates. However, a noticeable difference was observed in terms of onset and duration of effect. For both desensitizer and hypnotherapy treatments, onset of effect was very rapid. Compared to the other methods studied, hypnotherapy effects had the longest duration. In conclusion, hypnotherapy was as effective as other methods in the treatment of DHS.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2010 Oct;58(4):457-75. Eitner S, Bittner C, Wichmann M, Nickenig HJ, Sokol B. Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen Nuremberg, Germany.

Biofeedback with or without combined autogenic training is known to be effective for the treatment of migraine. This study aimed to examine the effect of biofeedback treatment on headache activity, anxiety, and depression in Korean female patients with migraine headache. Patients were randomized into the treatment group (n=17) and monitoring group (n=15). Mood states including anxiety and depression, and psychophysiological variables such as mean skin temperature of the patients were compared with those of the normal controls (n=21). We found greater treatment response rate (defined as > or =50% reduction in headache index) in patients with biofeedback-assisted autogenic training than in monitoring group. The scores on the anxiety and depression scales in the patients receiving biofeedback-assisted autogenic training decreased after the biofeedback treatment. Moreover, the decrease in their anxiety levels was significantly related to the treatment outcome. This result suggests that the biofeedback-assisted autogenic training is effective for the treatment of migraine and its therapeutic effect is closely related to the improvement of the anxiety level.

J Korean Med Sci. 2009 Oct;24(5):936-40. Kang EH, Park JE, Chung CS, Yu BH. Department of Psychiatry, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

Massage, hypnotherapy, and many other forms of alternative healing enhances creativity. There are no ifs, and, or buts about it. The relaxation that occurs stimulates inspiration, because a relaxed mind in a relaxed body are more receptive to the impulses of creativity than their tense counterparts. Is there any surprise that so many of the world's great scientific insights and artistic conceptions occur in a restful state rather than a restless one? The famed "a ha" experience of eureka that can make you laugh in delightful "ha-ha," happens when you're most relaxed, not when you're most worried or irritable. While receiving an Indonesian massage on a luxury yacht off the coast of Thailand (I know...that sounds good to me while I read it, too, even a year after the fact), I gained inspiration for this column, as well as for one on tuning in to what your healing clients experience from your treatments. During other massages and coaching sessions that I've received in the past, I've gained ideas for other columns, for new workshops that I would eventually give, and for new books and mini-books that I would write.

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