Hypnosis, Meditation, and Relaxation for Pain

If you’re thinking about Trying These Methods To Reduce Your Pain, Whether Muscular, Gastrointestinal Or Any Other Painful Condition, You’ll Want To Know What To Expect And How Well They Work.

Hypnosis (Hypnotherapy)

If you’re picturing a stage act led by a man with a swinging watch who gets volunteers to walk like a chicken or bark like a dog, forget that. Clinical hypnosis is a real therapy in which you learn how to use the power of your mind to help you to resolve all kinds of serious conditions.
 
During hypnosis you become more open to specific suggestions and goals, such as lowering pain.
Research shows that medical hypnosis can help with both sudden (acute) and long-term (chronic) pain from cancer, burns and rheumatoid arthritis. It may also ease the anxiety some people feel before surgery.
Further studies continue to support the use of Hypnosis for pain management.
In chronic conditions like arthritis and fibromyalgia, studies show that more than 75% of people with arthritis and related diseases experience significant pain relief using hypnosis.


Practice Makes Perfect
 
Hypnotherapy isn’t a one-shot treatment. Hypnosis typically helps relieve pain in just 4 to 6 sessions. But some people benefit faster and others not at all. The goal is to teach you techniques that you can use on your own when pain strikes. 

When you are under hypnosis you focus on relaxation and letting go of distracting thoughts. This temporarily tunes out the conscious part of your mind, opening up your subconscious mind to the power of suggestion. At this point, you will receive suggestions to encourage pain relief.
So just as it is a given that under hypnosis you can chose to relax individual parts of the body at will, so you will also tune in to having the ability to turn off pain at will - just like turning off a light switch in your mind.

 
You will then receive post-hypnotic suggestions, allowing you to carry out this type of self - hypnosis after the end of your sessions.
Reducing the amount of stress in your life may help lower the frequency and severity of certain painful conditions. This is one reason why hypnotherapy continues to become a more and more recognised form of treatment for IBS.

Hypnotherapy interventions will often involve visualisations to help you decrease the intensity of the pain you feel. For example, IBS 'gut-directed hypnotherapy' involves using visualisations to calm the gut and digestive systems, a strategy for pain relief that can again be recreated at home under self - hypnosis.


Mindfulness Meditation

Molecular biologist and author Jon Kabat-Zinn was a pioneer in applying the Buddhist concept of mindfulness to Western medicine and secular society.

Ever since his Stress Reduction Clinic opened its doors in 1979, treating people with chronic back pain, victims of industrial accidents and cancer patients, Mindfulness has grown slowly and steadily in popularity. He cultivated within the minds of his patients the concept of - “the pain is not me”.
As a result, some of his patients found ways ‘to be in a different relationship with their pain’ while others felt it diminish.

Using meditations such as the BodyScan enables a sufferer, with practice, to calm the body and begin to let go of their pain.

Hypnotherapy and Mindfulness Meditation provides a dual approach to both coping with, and often significantly diminishing the symptomatic pain that might present as a result of a whole range of conditions.

It is always important to remember that IBS is a medical condition, and if you are suffering from this, or from any painful condition, you must always consult a doctor as a first course of action.