$~~~~$When Dr. David Spiegel emerged from a three-hour shoulder surgery in 1972, he didn’t use any pain medication to recover. Instead, he hypnotized himself. It worked—to the surprise of everyone but Spiegel himself, who has studied hypnosis for 45 years.
$~~~~$Hypnosis is often misunderstood as a sleep-like state in which a person is put to sleep and does whatever he is asked to do. But according to Dr. Spiegel, it is a state of highly focused attention and intense concentration. Being hypnotized, you tune out most of the stimuli around you. You focus intently on the subject at hand, to the near exclusion of any other thought. This trance-like state can be an effective tool to control pain, ease anxiety, and deal with stress.
$~~~~$Not all people, however, are equally hypnotizable. In a recent study, Dr. Spiegel and his colleagues found that people who are easily hypnotized tend to be more trusting of others, more intuitive, and more likely to get caught up in a good movie. The research team compared people who were highly hypnotizable with those low in hypnotizability. Both groups were given fMRI scans during several different conditions: at rest, while recalling a memory, and during two sessions of hypnotism. The researchers saw some interesting changes in the brain during hypnosis—but only in the highly hypnotizable group. Specifically, there was a drop in activity in the part of the brain which usually fires up when there is something to worry about.
$~~~~$This helps explain how hypnosis can have powerful effects, including reducing stress, anxiety, pain, and self-consciousness. Spiegel hopes that the practice can be used to replace painkillers. His own previous research has shown that when people in pain were taught self-hypnosis, they needed half the pain medication and suffered half the pain of those who were only given access to painkillers. However, more needs to be learned about hypnosis in order to harness its potential effects.