Way off topic: Hypnosis

Responding to the request from @cynd11 in th WJL’s Production Machine Projects Thread [quote=“cynd11, post:49, topic:8550, full:true”]
I’d love to know more about it. Especially for my mom who suffers a lot from upper back pain. It is frequently stress related so I’m thinking hypnosis might help her. Would you create a new topic?
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I’m positive it would help her at least reduce the pain, if not eliminate it entirely, as well as help with stress relief. Hypnosis is really effective with pain, because the signals are all interpreted by the brain rather than the area that seems to be causing pain, which is where we are able to make the greatest changes through hypnosis. I’ve even seen it used to perform surgery without anesthesia, with the patient so comfortable that she was singing and laughing. Back pain in particular is interesting, in that there are often emotion roots to it that once dealt with, clear the problem up completely.

The one caveat I need to add is that you want to be sure to run any pain relief issue past a doctor first, because you don’t want to remove pain that is acting to protect you, for example you wouldn’t take the pain out of a broken foot and then keep walking on it before it’s healed.

If you feel comfortable sharing her location, I’d be happy to to ask my network for a local recommendation for her.

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Yes, she has had this problem for more than 40 years and nobody seems to be able to help much.

She is in the St. Louis area.

Thanks!

I had warts for years in middle school and high school on my thumbs and fingers. They were not nice. First year in college I went to the friendly neighborhood psychologist. He was Freudian to the max. Still used the Szondi test. We used to tease him that he was just showing his family album. Anyway, he did the hypnotism and then showed me some self-hypnosis techniques. three months later they were all gone. The carpenter I worked with swears it was the turpentine and mineral spirits and kerosene I used to clean my hands after painting. I think it was the stress reduction from the hypnosis.

Many years later I started working with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness programs which he developed for pain management. Very much the same experience of putting consciousness and bodily sensations in tune with each other. Game changer for my stress management.

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Yeah, this stuff is so fascinating. You can usually get a wart to go away in a couple days if you go after it directly, and you can actually remove a wart on one hand while leaving one on the other hand untouched, but so far nobody I know of can get a mole to budge at all. One of my teachers has a theory that your mind is restricting the blood flow to the specific wart you are treating, which would obviously not work on moles since they’re external. If your warts were caused by stress, it makes sense to me that they would go away more slowly as you were addressing the underlying system rather than the warts themselves (my assumption from what you wrote, though it’s not clear).

As for stress relief, it’s pretty cool how many other problems seem to clear up once you go after that piece, it’s changed my life in a lot of ways too. I’m glad you found something that works well for you in that regard. :slight_smile:

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So I’m not the only one?! I had a horrible wart when I was in grade school or middle school. I forget which. It annoyed the hell out of me. Was there for months! We tried all medicines, spoke to doctors. Nothing worked. No kidding, I took a blade and cut it out of my finger… it grew right back. Then, one day, I decided I was going to will it away. So that night, I concentrated on it. Mentally that’s all I thought about as I went to sleep. I imagined it disappearing. I kid you not… THE NEXT MORNING it was noticeably smaller! So I did it again the next night. And the next. Within a couple of days, it was shrunk down to nearly nothing. A couple more days and there wasn’t even a mark where the wart had been.

If I didn’t experience it for myself, I don’t think I’d believe me either. So it’s okay. :wink:
But since then I’ll never underestimate the real power of the human mind and its ability to affect real change in the real world.

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That’s my bet.

Similar thing happens with Tai Chi :slight_smile:

We (Americans especially) tend to internalize a lot of stress that manifests itself in various ailments. Almost any regimen that focuses on stress reduction, relaxation and centering yourself in the now (vs. worrying about the future - or worse agonizing over the past) will do almost everyone a world of good.

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LOL, i know a good Zen Monk if anyone wants to learn some useful meditation techniques!

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I had a wart on my finger when I was a kid. I ripped it out with a pair of snipe nosed pliers. Grabbed it and twisted. It never dared come back.

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just want to chime in - both hypnosis and mindfulness training have helped me a lot wrt pain management. There are some good self-hypnosis recordings from a company called “People Building”, though a professional in-person is best.

and this bears repeating/emphasizing:

my 2 cents wrt pain:
There is the objective, physical reality of tissue damage. [insert medical interventions here]
There is the brain’s perception of tissue damage [insert hypnosis here] - that perception is “pain”.
There is the story we tell ourselves about our brain’s perception [insert meditation and Cognitive-Behavioral reframing skills here] - that story is “suffering”.

Biofeedback can also be very helpful with pain related to muscle tension.

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Warts are one of the few physical conditions that are proven to be completely curable in many cases by visualization (i.e. will) alone.

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I’ll support that to anybody who asks! :slight_smile:

works for me. i think about my colds going away, and it just 7 - 14 days, wouldn’t you know it!

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I found some names for you, sent via PM.