Non Medical Pain Management with Hypnosis
Valleywide Hypnosis has a unique approach for working with clients with recurring non medical, acute and chronic pain and discomfort reduction. By using proven Hypnosis techniques, guided imagery, and NLP, Hypnosis has been proven to alleviate acute pain perception, or pain that is caused by lingering thoughts of a past injury, or secondary pain association.
What is acute and chronic Pain?
Usually pain stops without treatment or responds to simple measures such as resting or taking an analgesic, and it is then called ‘acute' pain. But it may also become intractable and develop into a condition called chronic pain, in which pain is no longer considered a symptom but an illness by itself. The study of pain has in recent years attracted many different fields such as pharmacology, neurobiology, nursing sciences, dentistry, physiotherapy, and psychology.
Pain is part of the body's defense system, triggering a reflex reaction to retract from a painful stimulus, and helps adjust behavior to increase avoidance of that particular harmful situation in the future. Given its significance, physical pain is also linked to various cultural, religious, philosophical, or social issues.
Pain may also be result from a number of non-medical or non-physical causes. Sometimes a person feeling the weight of intolerable guilt from a real or imagined experience will inflict pain on oneself to get rid of the guilt or avoid punishment from a higher authority.
Hypnosis Studies
A study by teams of researchers at the Universities of Liège in Belgium and Copenhagen, Denmark, has now demonstrated that hypnosis can offer significant reduction in pain awareness without any effect on non-painful aspects of the subject's perception. Hypnosis is most effective in altering perception of acute pain, experts reported at the 17th Meeting of the European Neurological Society from June 16 to 20 in Rhodos (Greece).
Although it is not completely understood why Hypnosis can help sin alleviating non medical acute pain, researchers have shown through brain scans that it directly affects which processes the emotional content of a Painful Stimulus.
Hypnotherapy works for chest pain
What Happens to Pain response in Hypnosis
Hypnosis reduces Pain Perception
How Hypnosis Helps Alleviate non medical acute pain
Studies have shown that non medical acute and chronic pain are extremely hard to treat medically without medication (and the risk of addiction form habits). Hypnosis works with the subconscious mind to dull or reduce the pain perception response that your brain is falsely communicating.
Although pain can continue to be registered in what is known as the primary somatosensory cortex, which is the main sensory receptive area for the sense of touch in the brain, Hypnosis allows you to bypass that area of the mind to maintain a pain free state of mind. It is extremely important to exhaust all possible causes of pain before seeing a Hypnotherapist, as Hypnosis may conceal a more serious condition that is a result of your chronic or acute pain. Physician referral is required to treat all acute or chronic pain management clients.
Valleywide Hypnosis Approach to Pain Management
Valleywide Hypnosis uses an induction based hypnotic approach to personalize to the client and induce the deepest level of Hypnosis Possible. Pain management has been shown to be more affective while the client is under Hypnosis at the deepest levels they can achieve. Everyone's hypnotic depth differs and therefore we cannot generalize on what your level of suggestibility and hypnotic depth will be until tested.
The use of guided imagery is practiced once the hypnotic induction has taken place. Guided imagery is the visualization through the subconscious mind that allows you to see yourself as pain free, or in a pain free state, which is extremely affective when dealing with acute or chronic non-medical pain management.
Your pain perception will be tested at the time of your appointment and suggestions will be added to allow the subconscious to let go, or alleviate the idea of pain. The subconscious mind controls the autonomic nervous system , or the control system that maintains homeostasis in the body, this control system can cause pain, but also alleviate the pain response. Hypnotic suggestion can alter the control system and switch off the pain receptors that are causing your non medical acute and chronic pain.
A full interview regarding your pain history will be conducted to assess your situation, and a medical referral is needed at time of appointment, because pain is a response in the body that something is wrong.
Additional Pain Management Techniques that may be used
Pain displacement or Pain Transference: the pain can be moved from its site to an insignificant place in the body like an earlobe where it can be modified and reduced.
Glove anesthesia: one of the hands is made numb and then that numbness is applied to the painful site as it leaves the hand. The numbness may be induced by the suggestion that the hand is submerged in a bucket of ice water or injected with lidocaine or novocaine. This is particularly useful for dental work.
Ideomotor exploration & turning pain off at unconscious level: the source of the pain can be discovered with questions to be answered by ideomotor signals (the movement of a finger perhaps). Then an "on/off" switch can be imagined which when moved to the "off" position in hypnosis turns off the pain.
The inner advisor: The client imagines an inner advisor who will modify or release the pain.
The Protective Shield: Here, the client imagines a protective force around the body shielding the body from pain and/or unpleasant feelings.
Time and body dissociation: Escape to the enjoyment of a pleasant past event while healthy and pain free and/or escape to a peaceful place.
If you are under medical care, and you and your physician decide that you would like to use Hypnosis for Pain Management, please have your physician fill out the below form prior to your appointment.
Medical Referral Form Here
