Are you looking for pain relief? Ever thought about hypnosis?
Scientists are starting to catch on to how hypnosis can help! They have done this by using brain imaging machines scientists. Enabling them to see those regions of the brain that were most active and dormant while patients were hypnotised. Therefore being able to pinpoint what course of action to take to provide pain relief.
It’s the Brain that Creates the Pain
They found there were 3 main regions of the brain it influenced.
- The dorsal anterior cingulated cortex. This part of the brain helps you to decide what to worry about and what to ignore. So by reducing activity in this part of your brain, you suspend judgment and really become present in what you are doing.
- The second change appeared in the part of the brain that allows us to separate thoughts in our heads, from the feelings in our bodies. What this means is if you see something stressful, you can not the same time you have the capability to be relaxed in your body. So you can better control how your body responds to your thoughts.
- The third part impacts our self consciousness. So when hypnotised we are less self conscious, enabling us to look at a problem in a different way. This disassociation between action and reflection is helpful as it look differently at our thinking.
This study illustrates hypnosis can become an alternative to other methods of pain relief.
Additionally, the research shows the brain is not a passive recipient of the information it receives from sensors in the skin, muscles, and bones. The brain actively processes the information it receives to create everything that we experience. Including our sense of pain and how much pain bothers us.
What’s interesting about this research it shows that hypnotic suggestions without actual physical harm can create pain sensations. And the brain behaves comparably when it feels “hypnotic pain” to how it behaves in response to actual physical pain.
In both cases the pain is real, because it is the brain that creates pain.
If the Brain Can Create the Sensation of Pain, It Can Create Pain Relief
So if the brain can create the sensation of pain with hypnosis, the brain can create the sensation of comfort and relaxation with hypnosis. In short, hypnosis has clear and measurable biological effects on activity in the areas of the brain that create the experience of pain.
In the past, clinicians who used hypnosis to help people with chronic pain tended to give just one or two hypnotic suggestions for pain relief. They mostly might suggest a decrease in pain intensity.
But we now understand hypnosis can affect activity in all of the areas of the brain and body which influences pain. Not just areas involved in the processing of how the pain feels. Hypnosis can also decrease;
- activity at the site of any ongoing physical damage
- how much pain information is allowed into the spinal cord and then up into your brain,
- your understanding and decision about how much the pain bothers you,
- your processes about how intense the pain feels to you,
- and the thoughts you have about pain, and
- whether or not you decide to cope with the pain
So this means it is possible to change your discomfort by changing the activity in the different parts of the brain with hypnosis. And the practitioner after consultation can design a particular session for you on the basis of your responses and therefore experiencing less pain and fatigue.
For the research side //med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/07/study-identifies-brain-areas-altered-during-hypnotic-trances.html
If you are suffering and want to find out how you can use hypnosis then get in touch today.