Thursday, March 10, 2011

Chronic Pain Relief Using Hypnotherapy

Chronic pain is one of the greatest challenges facing health care professionals. Traditional physicians are taught to use drugs to help alleviate the symptoms, but become frustrated when the drugs have unacceptable side effects which prevent the patient from performing their normal daily routines let alone following a useful occupation. Non-traditional healers use of various forms of energy medicine such as acupuncture, Reiki, Chinese herbs, and various natural biologics are also frustrated at the difficulty in finding the appropriate combination of therapies that have lasting effect on controlling the level of pain. An understanding of the way in which we become aware of bodily sensations allows the hypnotherapist a unique opportunity to prevent the pain sensations from reaching conscious awareness.

Chronic pain is by definition a sensation that provides the sufferer with no useful information. Acute pain acts to warn that there is something causing damage to the body, and gives the recipient the opportunity to take action to stop the damage, or at least get some medical attention to deal with the damage. Chronic pain is rather like a memory that won't go away. The damage has been done, the sufferer is aware usually of the cause for the pain, or has found that there are no available therapies to deal with the source of the pain, so they continue suffering.

All bodily symptoms reach the part of the brain responsible for conscious awareness by passing through a structure called the Reticular Activating System. This system behaves rather like a railroad switching system in which the operator moves rolling stock onto various rails, some of which allow the train to continue on to its destination, and others are diverted to shorter routes and are kept there awaiting loading or unloading.

Under hypnosis, the unconscious part responsible for controlling the reticular activating system is instructed to shut down or block the passage of chronic pain signals from reaching consciousness, thereby alleviating the sufferer from experiencing the chronic pain.

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