Pain Management and Rapid Recovery after Surgery,
 Stress and Disease
(Psychoneuroimmunology [PNI]

It has been shown in studies in America in Cardiac Units that individuals that have been hypnotically prepared for By-Pass and other major surgery recover faster, need less painkilling drugs and go home earlier.

Closer to home, in the BBC series 'Alternative Therapies' with Professor Kathy Sykes, a woman was filmed (and this was later broadcast in quite a bit of gruesome detail) having two upper front teeth removed, her jaw drilled, metal pegs being screwed in and then crowns fitted - purely under hypnosis.

Pain is only perceived at the brain to be uncomfortable, at the site of a cut it is just a nerve stimulation.

Preparing for surgery, whether dental or medical can either rest on increasing the sense of comfort and ease (therefore reducing the perception of discomfort as you cannot hold two opposing beliefs in your mind at the same time), the induction of hypnotic analgesia (numbing the area to be worked on prior to any local anaesthetic) or the use of Accelerated Information Processing techniques to reduce anxiety followed by a metaphor to create an expectation of rapid healing and reinforce quite naturally a lack of discomfort after the procedure.

This latter approach is called Psycho-Neuro-Immunology, or PNI (since psychologists started to study it), and is better known as Mind-Body healing. The way in which it works is that if our subconscious mind believes that it will naturally and comfortably aid healing, then it will. If our expectation is that whilst we rest our body's system will naturally go 'into overdrive' then we create a self-fulfilling prophecy that they will.

By the same token if we believe that healing will take a lot of time and that the first few weeks after surgery will be very uncomfortable then they will be. This is based on what is known as Orr's Law of 'What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves'. That is to say if our model of the world we live in is set on a certain belief, a 'truth', we have to prove that the truth, as we believe it to be, is actually true.

I am situated in Curbridge which is convenient for Botley and Whiteley and being at the Heart of South Hampshire less than half an hour from both Southampton and Portsmouth I also practice in Weybridge, Surrey.

For an appointment please call Duncan  on 01489 787312 or email via the enquiry form.