subject: Conversational Hypnosis Is Acceptable In The Medical Field [print this page] Hypnosis in medicine? It was always thought that never the twain shall meet, since traditional doctors always thought of hypnosis as the highest form of quackery and never a legitimate form of treatment. But with the acceptance of conversational hypnosis in legitimate medicine thanks to Doctor Milton H. Erickson's efforts to make the treatment credible to the rest of the world, it is quackery no longer.
Conversational, or covert hypnosis is one that appeals to the person's subconscious mind and allows it to take charge by using choice phrases and body language to input a certain preference or outcome in their mind. It's done without need of a hypnotic trance, repetitive prompts, or any gadgetry.
You already know that your mind is divided into two hemispheres - the conscious and the subconscious. While the conscious mind is what rationalizes moods, emotions, and decisions, invariably telling you what you can't and shouldn't do, it becomes a critic, even a censor if you will, and limits you in more ways than you think is possible.
Your subconscious mind knows none of these boundaries, however. In fact the subconscious mind's power is so great that is had been documented as healing diseases, with one case concerning the cured cancer of a little boy that he imagined "siccing the bad cells with the proton torpedoes from Luke Skywalker's TIE fighter." The little boy's cancer went into remission, with a minimum of medications and a therapist's orders to meditate on that scene everyday.
The everyday results, though, are not always that spectacular, and are normally used for the treatment of insomnia, addictions, pain management, and other such medical problems. In Eastern medicine, it's gone so far as to be used in place of anesthetics, anti-infection medicines, and other such spectacular treatments.
For example, in the control of pain, the therapist can actually help the patient's mind be programmed not to feel the pain, instead to close it off in a box that is stored somewhere in his brain. As fantastic as it may sound, it has been proven to work, especially in places where there are limited medications available, such as third-world or war-torn countries.
In fact, there are alternative hospitals that are now routinely using these hypnotic suggestions in place of anesthesia required during and after surgery, as pain relief for minor surgery, trauma, muscular pains, and even migraines. Some claim to even use it to cure the pain of heartache, a study that still remains unproven but is enthusiastically promoted.
