Today, we learned therapeutic self-hypnosis and the speaker told us about how she actually hypnotized herself before she underwent a surgery for an ulcer repair. She told herself that she would bleed less and feel no pain. And then she actually showed us the video of her surgery, without ANY anesthesia, and she was totally fine, talking during the surgery about how she could feel pressure in her abdomen, but no pain at all. She even helped the surgeons realize that they were tugging too hard on something INSIDE OF HER. HOW STRANGE. How can you tell yourself consciously or unconsciously to control an autonomic process of the body? How can you control bleeding or hemostasis? What in the world?!? I'm so confused. And if it's possible, then wouldn't that be incredibly helpful for patients who don't want to experience side-effects of anesthesia during surgeries?
And THEN she hypnotized us. I GOT HYPNOTIZED. WHAT?! It sounds so mystical and other-worldly, but the speaker basically told us that self-hypnosis just entails entering into a trance state. Like for example, when you're driving and then 20 mins later, you don't remember the exact specific details of how you got to that particular portion of the highway, but some part of you was still consciously in control, enough to successfully maneuver the car. Still don't get how hypnosis can induce clotting. Anyway, I can't fully wrap my head around it. I've always been somewhat of an alternative medicine skeptic, but maybe I've just become a product of the intensely scienci-fied (yeah I made that word up) academic environment that I've been exposed to. Either way, very interesting stuff.
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