The Mind Body Connection
Many healers have long believed that body,
thoughts and emotions can influence one
another. Therefore it is possible to
influence a physical sickness by working on
and realizing particular emotions and by
changing thoughts and behavioral patters.
The Romans said "men sana in corpore sano",
healthy mind in healthy body. This saying
seems to confirm that for many centuries it
has been believed that physical and
emotional well being had an effect on one
another. To put this in perspective, one
only has to consider how our health declines
after periods of stress or as a consequence
of radical events. The division between body
and mind in medicine is something that only
took place around 1750, with the scientific
developments from Newton. Since then the
mind and spirit have been considered to be
under the jurisdiction of the church and the
body under the jurisdiction of science. This
is also the reason why non-Western kinds of
medicine see the human being as whole
consisting of body, mind and soul. Traumatic
experiences are not only stored on an
emotional level but also on the physical
level. The emotional charge of the different
traumas can influence our immune system and
health conditions. Through processing old
traumas and the emotional charges that are
connected to a certain sickness it is
possible to find resources inside of us that
could help us start the healing process.
Hypnotic Pioneers
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), an
Austrian physician, is widely acknowledged
as the 'Father of Hypnosis'. He believed
that there was a quasi-magnetic fluid in the
very air we breathe and that the bodys'
nerves somehow absorbed this fluid. As a
doctor, his main concern was how to
effectively treat his patients, and he
considered disease to be caused via a
blockage of the circulation of this magnetic
fluid in the blood and the nervous system.
Curing disease would, in his view, involve
correcting the circulation of this liquid.
Initially, he used a magnet, and later his
hand, which was passed over the diseased
body in an attempt to unblock the magnetic
flow. The hand (and later the eyes) was
believed to unblock the fluid by increasing
its amount and flow as his hand passed over
the affected area. The term 'animal
magnetism' was born, and the procedure
referred to as Mesmerism.
The Marquis de Puysegur (1751-1825), a pupil
of Mesmers, used 'animal magnetism' on a
young peasant who entered into a state of
sleep while still being able to communicate
with Puysegur and respond to his
suggestions. When the peasant 'awoke' he
could remember nothing of what had occurred.
Puysegur thought that the will of the person
and the operators' actions were important
factors in the success or failure of the
'magnetism', in other words psychological
influences were extremely important in the
whole process.
John Elliotson (1791-1868), an
English physician holding a chair at
University College London was disbarred from
the medical profession as a direct result of
his demonstrations of animal magnetism,
while James Esdaile, a surgeon was operating
on his patients using 'mesmeric sleep' as
his anesthetic of choice in the 1840s. The
medical profession was therefore divided on
its opinion of the usefulness of mesmerism.
It wasn't until 1843 that the terms
'hypnotism' and 'hypnosis' were coined by
James Braid (1795-1860), a Scottish
surgeon working in Manchester. He found that
some experimental subjects could go into a
trance if they simply fixated their eyes on
a bright object, like a silver watch. He
believed that some sort of
neurophysiological process was involved and
that hypnosis was very useful in disorders
where no organic origin to the problem could
be identified (e.g. headaches, skin problems
etc.) He showed that a single stimulus (e.g.
a word or an object) was enough to
re-hypnotize his subjects. No-one knew how
the process of hypnosis 'worked', though
there were several theories put forward:
1. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), a
leading neurologist of his day and head of
the neurological clinic at the famous
Saltpetiere in Paris, used hypnosis to treat
hysterics. He concluded that hypnosis was an
induced seizure when his hysteric patients
showed epileptic-like symptoms when they
were in a trance.
2. Hippolyte Bernheim (1837-1919), a
professor of medicine at the University of
Nancy regarded hypnosis as a special form of
sleeping where the subject's attention is
focused upon the suggestions made by the
hypnotist. He therefore emphasized the
psychological nature of the process of
hypnosis.
3. By the 1920s, hypnosis became the focus
of experimental investigation by
psychologists like Clark L. Hull
(1884-1952), who demystified hypnosis saying
that it was essentially a normal part of
human nature (1933). The important factor
was the subject's imagination - some people
were more responsive or suggestible' than
others to hypnosis.
Conclusion
Support for the teaching of the therapeutic
use of hypnosis in medicine finally came in
1955 from the British Medical Association,
who was closely followed in 1958 by the
American Medical Association. Today, an
International Society of Hypnosis
coordinates and assesses standards and
practices of professional hypnotists across
the world. Hypnosis is currently used in
dentistry, medicine and psychology and has
proved helpful if used alongside more
conventional treatments and therapies.
It has received a 'bad press' of late,
mainly due to the unscrupulous practices of
some stage hypnotists, but its professional
use in treating both physical and mental
disorders continues to thrive. Now it is
generally seen as a form of 'relaxation',
and it is possible to teach individuals how
to hypnotize themselves (via progressive
relaxation techniques). It is widely used in
the treatment of addictions (e.g. in aiding
smoking cessation), but should always be
conducted by a professional in a controlled
setting.
Misuse of hypnosis can have dire
consequences, and may be especially harmful
in the treatment of people who were sexually
abused as children (as is the case in False
Memory Syndrome). Care should always be
taken when hypnosis is to be employed and
patients should be 'brought out' of the
hypnotic trance before they leave the
clinic. Historically, the use of 'trances'
is much older than Mesmers' findings but it
was the Austrian physician who first brought
the process to the attention of the medical
community. |
