So I was hypnotized yesterday....

for this first time EVER!  it was very cool....I didn't think it would 'work' but it sort of did.  He made me take off my head scarf and show my bald head to everyone- just kidding!  that would be weird!  It did take me a while to stop questionining it, and to turn off that little voice that kept asking me if I was really thinking it would work. 

The session I went to was at the Wellness house in Hinsdale- it's a cancer support center that offers support groups, exercise, education, stress management, and similar.  A very cool place- the house was donated and it's AMAZING!  It was a group session with 25 people, all wearing headphones during the hypnosis part, and it was pretty crazy how relaxing and unique this experience was.  A lot of the people there go to this group session regularly and some see this doctor 1:1 as well. 

here is the description of the session from the Wellness House...

Wellness Through Deep Hypnosis

Dr. Scot Giles, a renowned hypnotherapist, guides the participants through a self-hypnosis experience developed to help release pain and facilitate healing. The group gathers in the Great Room and sharing of ones cancer journey is encouraged. Following the introductions the participants utilize headphones provided by Dr. Giles in order to benefit from a one on one hypnosis experience which is channeled through each headphone as Dr. Giles speaks into a recording system.

and then of course my description and take on the experience........ 

Dr Giles explained that what most people think of when they hear medical hypnosis is for psycotherapy, however that is not what he focuses on in his practice. Instead he focuses on hypnosis to alleviate physical pain and symptoms associated with conditions patients are dealing with.  He used the example of the case of multiple personalities to explain how this works. There  have been many studies on patients that have mulitiple personalities, and often times the different personalities have different physical issues.  so one man may be healthy as one of his personalities, but may have a liver issue in another personality.  In this case the doctors running the study would test liver function when he was in his different personalities, and had evidence that the liver functioned differently when depending on who he was that day.  The subconscience of these different personalities was actually able to impact the physical reality in this person's body.  The point being that your mental state and attitiude can influence how your body responds to different conditions you have.  For cancer patients this is huge. There are tons of studies that attitude makes all the difference in treatment, so I am willing to give this a try... and am hoping my subconscious is as optimistic about my full recovery as I am  (yep...now I sound NUTS!!!!)

As it turns out, there was an article in the NY Times on this last Friday if you are interested (and I think it explains it better than I ever could...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/health/16patient.html

It was a pretty cool experience.... and while I can't say for sure I was 'hypnotized', I can say I was in a very deep state of relaxation and was arguing with mysefl in my head as he was counting from 1 to 10 to bring us out of it, as I didn't want to come out of it but had to ... very bizzare...very cool.... I am going again next month to do it again!  I'll let you know how this all plays out....