Throughout history there have been people who seemed to have a mystical or magical power to control the minds and/or bodies of other people. Both in religious ceremonies and in therapeutic and surgical procedures, various forms of trance or mind altering rituals have been experimented with and used for relaxation, behavioral change, and healing and curative purposes. The ancient Egyptians used “sleep temples” as early as 1000 B.C. where they would induce a sleep-like state and offer curative suggestions for healing. For centuries every custure has had some variation of the “suggestion-sleep and cure” concept.

In the late 1700’s, Mesmer’s concept of “animal magnetism”, later called “Mesmerism”, caught the attention of the French nobility. Later, James Braid studied Mesmer’s work and introduced the term “hypnosis” for the first time. The word was derived from the Greek word hypnos, which means sleep. By the time Braid realized this description was misleading, the name had already “stuck”!

The concepts of auto-suggestion and using hypnosis for anesthesia and healing were further developed in the years that followed, and during World War II and the Korean War, hypnosis was used for pain control in the battlefield and also to aid the mentally handicapped. By the 1950’s, the medical applications of hypnosis were being recognized, and in 1955 the British Medical Association became the first organization to formally approve the use of hypnosis in medical schools. Then, in 1958, the American Medical Association approved the therapeutic use of the hypnosis modality. A shift is happening in medicine today, with doctors giving patients more responsibility and information, and patients are seeking out alternative means of therapy and wanting to participate more in their own healing process. Hypnosis is being used with much more frequency and many insurance companies now list “hypnosis” as a viable therapy for various disorders. There is a growing number of medical professionals who are using some form of hypnosis in their practice.

Today, hypnosis is widely accepted and used for pain management, anesthesia, stress reduction, improving immune function, and behavior change. It has proven to be especially effective in helping motivated people to quit smoking, lose weight, improve memory and learning skills, get rid of unwanted habits, and is widely used by athelets in all fields to improve performance and concentration, and to speed recovery from injuries. The National Institutes of Health recently suggested meditation and hypnosis as effective alternative treatments for insomnia and chronic pain, such as lower back pain, arthritis and headaches. They found hypnosis to be effective for treating AIDS and cancer-related pain and tension headaches in patients who had little or no success with current treatments based on drugs and surgery. The Mayo Clinic reported in May, 2003, on a Journal of the American Medical Association study that involved 222 women 55 and older with urge incontinence. “Mayo Clinic doctors say that the study results are promising in showing that behavior therapy may significantly help women with urge incontinence.”