Waking Hypnosis for Alleviating Pain and Promoting Healing

by Tim Brunson PhD

Can you rapidly stop bleeding or eliminate pain using only the sound of your voice? If not, continue reading.

The use of Waking Hypnosis must be included as a required skill for all medical and dental practitioners. The National Institutes of Health public access database of hypnosis-related research is quiet clear that hypnosis is indicated for the treatment of acute and chronic pain and for accelerating healing. Therefore, physicians and dentists need practical and rapid hypnosis methods. However, since 1958 when the American Medical Association approved hypnosis as part of treatment plans, popular techniques have too often consisted of lengthy, cost-prohibitive methods. Seemingly the only solution was to employ the services of a competently trained hypnotherapist or to entirely forego this wonderful alternative. In contrast, Waking Hypnosis is a powerful and natural technique, which almost always gets the same results as other hypnosis protocols, but within seconds or minutes. When used by the non-hypnotherapist clinician, it can be a valuable tool that will enhance their healing abilities.

Over 11,000 research articles indexed by the NIH have consistently demonstrated the efficacy of hypnosis in a clinical setting. While the preponderance of articles discuss its use in the treatment of pain (e.g., acute, chronic, cancer, dental, OB/GYN, etc), applications for anxiety (e.g., treatment anxiety, pre and post surgical) are also indicated. Additionally, there are some very interesting studies showing the acceleration of wound healing and the elimination of dermatological disorders when hypnosis is used. I have found that these same techniques can be used in such a simple process as reducing non-arterial bleeding. (This is great for emergency situations.) While some ill-informed professionals often use the phrase "it's all in their mind", I have found that respecting the mind/body relationship is a vital part of the healing process.

The problem with normal hypnosis techniques, to include lengthy guided imagery, is that they often are not appropriate for clinical settings. Either the patient needs quick relief or the overhead-related constraints prohibit the additional time that it takes to create a hypnotic trance and then to do the appropriate therapy prior to a procedure being performed. This is where Waking Hypnosis comes in.

Normally, just about every benefit of hypnosis can be achieved extremely quickly by a professional trained to use Waking Hypnosis. The patient does not even need to know that the technique is being used to get maximum benefit. Waking Hypnosis can be so elegantly woven into the normal treatment patter that the patient will get the benefits with absolutely no awareness of anything but the results. This technique is rapid, effective and ethical.

I have used this many times in both clinical and speaking careers. For instance, twice I have demonstrated this technique to convince very large audiences that they could not open their hands or get out of their chairs. Using this as a convincer after a presentation on mind/body health, even the most cynical member of the group sheds their doubt as to the power of the human mind to control the body.

Waking Hypnosis was briefly popularized in the 1950's by David Elman, a contemporary and critic of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., the psychiatrist who convinced the AMA to approve the use of hypnosis in medicine. After World War II Elman was approached by a group of New Jersey physicians who were curious about the medical applications of hypnosis. This eventually led to his training of thousands of medical and dental professionals.

Waking Hypnosis is only one of the many skills that Elman taught health care professionals. Having studied and applied his techniques for almost two decades, I am currently authoring a distance learning course, which our Institute will be offering starting August 11. While the focus will be on medical and dental applications, the psychological implications will also be covered. This course will also expand the horizons of psychology, hypnotherapy, and other integrative health care professionals who have limited their practices to only guided imagery or the elegant techniques taught by the followers of Dr. Erickson. As the few Elman courses available are normally limited in scope, I will go way "beyond the basics" showing our students a myriad of applications and techniques. The intention is to vastly improve the abilities of healing professionals by educating them in an adjunct skill which can easily be incorporated into any practice.

You can get more information and enroll by visiting: Courses.HypnosisResearchInstitute.org.

The International Hypnosis Research Institute is a member supported project involving integrative health care specialists from around the world. We provide information and educational resources to clinicians. Dr. Brunson is the author of over 150 self-help and clinical CD's and MP3's.