Take it from the experts
Cleveland Clinic
"You might have an image in your mind of how hypnosis works from TV or a movie. In real life, there are no magicians waving watches in front of your eyes to put you under their spell. Instead, your hypnotherapist will guide you through a series of exercises and meditations that help you relax and focus your mind. "
"Hypnotherapy is safe when you work with a trained, certified therapist. Hypnosis isn’t mind control or brainwashing. And your hypnotherapist isn’t tricking your body or brain into changing. Any changes in your health or habits will come from you choosing to make them.
There’s always a chance hypnosis doesn’t help you. Be honest with yourself and your therapist. Your therapist wants to help you accomplish your goals. They won’t be offended if you find that hypnosis isn’t working well for you."
Mayo Clinic
"Hypnosis may help with pain due to burns, cancer, childbirth, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, jaw problems, dental procedures and headaches.
" Hypnosis may ease hot flashes caused by menopause. "
" Hypnosis has been used to ease side effects from chemotherapy and radiation treatment. "
"Before you begin, your health care provider explains the process of hypnosis and reviews your treatment goals. Then the provider typically begins by talking in a gentle, soothing tone, describing images that create a sense of relaxation, security and well-being.
When you're relaxed and calm, your health care provider suggests ways for you to achieve your goals. That may include, for example, ways to ease pain or reduce cravings to smoke. The provider also may help you visualize vivid, meaningful mental images of yourself accomplishing your goals."
National Library of Medicine
"Hypnosis could be seen as a meditative state, which one can learn to access consciously and deliberately, for a therapeutic purpose. Suggestions are then given either verbally or using imagery, directed at the desired outcome. This might be to allay anxiety by accessing calmness and relaxation, help manage side effects of medications, or help ease pain or other symptoms. Depending on the suggestions given, hypnosis is usually a relaxing experience, which can be very useful with a patient who is tense or anxious. However, the main usefulness of the hypnotic state is the increased effectiveness of suggestion and access to mind/body links or unconscious processing. Hypnosis can not only be used to reduce emotional distress but also may have a direct effect on the patient’s experience of pain. "
"Hypnotic states have been used for healing since humankind has existed, but because hypnosis can be misused for so-called entertainment and has been portrayed in the media as something mysterious and magical, supposedly out of the hypnotic subject’s control, it has been viewed with distrust and skepticism by many health professionals. However, recent advances in neuroscience have enabled us to begin to understand what might be happening when someone enters a hypnotic state,3–8 and evidence is building for the use of hypnosis as a useful tool to help patients and health professionals manage a variety of conditions, especially anxiety and pain. "