How I Found Hypnosis

The first time I heard of hypnosis was in a tv show.

An unsuspecting guy was made to ‘sleep’ and stay glued to the spot, unable to move till the hypnotist let him. To my 11 year old brain, this was a cool magic show.

Many years later, I came across the term hypnosis in a medical text.

Just one word right there at the bottom of the page, in an article on pain. It didn’t  fit into the magic show image I had in my mind.

So I began digging. I read about the potential use of hypnosis for pain relief- both in chronic pain and for surgeries. But, it still seemed like a cool theoretical option that wouldn't make a dent in the real world.

Hypnosis found me again during my residency in dermatology. This time it came up in the treatment of viral warts. Curiouser and curioser, I looked it up and realised that hypnosis had been used successfully for management of quite a few dermatological diseases.

Now I was convinced that it worked. Yet I believed that hypnosis could only be used by some ‘special’ people. Also, diving deep into something that far removed from traditional medicine unnerved me. So I filed it away somewhere in the back of my mind and went on with my life.

Then last year, I became pregnant. And like any anxious mom-to-be, diligently took to reading up on labour. A word, hypnobirthing, leaped out of the page as I was skimming through an article.

The idea that hypnosis can be used for labour analgesia seemed logical. A good part of pain comes from our resistance and the dread we associate with it. But my 'logical' brain started objecting. It came up with many excuses for why some simple mind hack wouldn’t work for something as famously painful as labour. And of course, the screaming ladies in all the movies didn’t help.

But ultimately, it was my labour room intern memories back from med school, that led me back to hypnosis. I’d seen many patients screaming. But once I began thinking about it, not all did that.

Some women remained unexpectedly calm and had great presence of mind throughout the process. Back then I’d explained it away as ‘different people having different pain thresholds’. But now I suspected that there was more to it. Perhaps relaxation and the right attitude could make a real world difference.

The premise was scientifically solid all right. But the hard part was reworking years of conditioning and sticking to a regular practice of self hypnosis. I had a difficult pregnancy and very little RAM leftover for anything beyond throwing up all the time. But I researched and practiced hypnosis whenever I could. When our day came, I was able to use those techniques pretty well. I was comfortable till about an hour before delivery. The rest was hard, but way better than what I’d seen with many patients.

It was enough to get me hooked. I wanted more of this. Soon after, I joined a training program and started exploring this fascinating treatment option.

With an year long immersive training in clinical hypnosis, what started as a curiosity and evolved as a handy hack, opened up into a world of possibilities. What I learned, set my heart on fire.

I experimented with different sytles and nuances of hypnosis, enjoyed it to bits and slowly expanded my repertoire of tools to connect with the embodied unconscious.

Now, the unconscious, is one of my consuming passions and the bulk of my writing on my personal website revolves around the unconscious.

Over hear, I talk about clinical hypnosis and its applications in healing : )