Hypnotically Assisted Surgical Anesthesia: Hypnosis in The Operating Room
By David Quigley
Hypnosis has been used as an adjunct to surgical procedures for at least two hundred years. Its greatest use in its early years was for surgical anesthesia, because it was developed before the discovery of ether. It is still widely used for this purpose as an addition to or substitute for chemical anesthesia in many surgical procedures because it is completely non-toxic and shows excellent results for the hypnotizable subject. The greatest limit to its use in today’s surgery is the lack of education by hospital personnel in its use, and their resulting failure to recommend its use for patients. There are also too few hypnotherapists with specific training and experience in this field. This article is one among many being published today that is helping to bridge the gap in the knowledge of health care professionals and patients of this important subject.
For starters, few patients are aware of the broad range of benefits that hypnosis can provide for surgical patients, so I will begin by listing these benefits, followed by a discussion of a few of the ways hypnotherapists can achieve these benefits with their clients:
- Enhanced surgical anesthesia means much less toxic anesthetics in the client’s body, thus reduced mortality (complications of anesthesia are a major source of surgical mortality) and quicker recovery
- Reduced pre-operative anxiety
- Reduced blood flow to the area of the operation during the surgical procedure means less blood loss and quicker recovery
- Reduced postoperative pain
- Speeding up the post surgical healing process, including tissue and bone healing
- Reducing the chance of infection and other post-surgical complications
So how does a hypnotherapist help surgical patients accomplish these goals? First, the hypnotist needs to familiarize the patient with the hypnotic state, and induce trance several times, so the client can readily enter this altered state. While some people are much more hypnotizable than others, it is my experience that almost anyone can learn to experience the blissful state of relaxation that is hypnosis with sufficient practice. More important than the hypnotist’s training is the degree of trust and rapport that exists between hypnotist and client, and the therapist’s patience in helping the client reach a hypnotic state. If you are a surgical patient contemplating using a hypnotherapist, you should trust your FEELINGS about this person as well as asking about their training and experience. The best hypnotherapists are not necessarily physicians or nurses, most of whom have little training in this field. For a good practitioner, you can contact the National Guild of Hypnotists, or NGH.
We then need to use specific suggestions to help the client achieve this state in three arenas. First, they need to learn to access this state while lying in bed at night, when they will practice going through the surgical procedure. (“Now, every time you are lying in bed at night, you go deep into this state…”) Second, they will be trained to enter this state while entering the operating room and to remain in this state throughout the procedure. (“Now, when you lie on the gurney, and you feel its vibrations under your body, you automatically go deep…”) And thirdly, we prepare the client to access this state while lying in the recovery room and/or their own bedroom to activate the recovery suggestions. The way Alchemical hypnotherapists work with clients is to train them to use all of these processes every day in the quietness of their own beds. A hypnosis tape or CD custom made for the client can be very helpful here, as is our generic tape, The Inner Healer, available at http://alchemyinstitute.com/tapes.htm#Innerhealer Most of my clients are excited about being able to take personal responsibility for maximizing the results of their surgery, so are eager to do this homework, which is easy and relaxing.
The next important step is to help the client clear up the mental and emotional causes, in the subconscious mind, of the condition that requires surgery. This will do a great deal to prevent reoccurrence of this condition, as well as speed recovery. Addressing the underlying cause of the disease or injury is addressed in detail in my article, The Alchemy of Healing http://alchemyinstitute.com/explore.htm This can sometimes be done in one session, but for a chronic disease like cancer may require a number of sessions to clear. Regardless of the time involved, it is always worth it to prevent the heartbreak of symptoms returning, as they often do, within a few months or years of surgery.
Next, I need the most exact knowledge possible of the procedure to be followed in surgery. I have been quite pleased with the willingness of doctors in my practice to provide their patients with this detailed information. I use this data to help the client’s body to rehearse all of the steps of the operation in trance. This mental rehearsal includes the tissues of the body surrendering easily to the incision, closing blood vessels in the area of the incisions, and directing the nervous system to eliminate pain signals during the procedure thus reducing the need for chemical anesthesia. I also direct the body and subconscious mind of the client to relax and trust the skill of their physician. This is assuming of course that the patient has done their own research in finding a competent surgeon for this procedure. (Not just the cheapest your HMO can find!) I recommend a minimum of two sessions devoted to this mental rehearsal. During this rehearsal I also train the client’s subconscious mind to use the color healing and spiritual surgery methods outlined in Somatic Healing. http://alchemyinstitute.com/somatic.htm
One of my favorite techniques is to lead the client in hypnosis to their “inner healer”, an inner helper/guide specifically called upon to assist the hands of the surgeon in performing the operation, as well as assisting in pre-surgical processes like cutting off blood supply to a tumor, and such post-surgical tasks as eliminating scar tissue, preventing infection with a healing salve, and other tasks. One client whose body was rejecting her newly acquired kidney in spite of massive immunosuppressive drug therapy, found her inner healer spreading a soothing balm on the surface of her new kidney that signaled to her immune system, “This part is mine!” The results: her body stopped its rejection response, and she could stop taking the immunosuppressive drugs. She still has that kidney ten years later. This use of the inner healer is a unique feature of the Alchemical approach to surgery. This inner guide may be introduced as a “metaphor for the body’s own wisdom” to the skeptical client. The deeply religious client can call in Jesus or their favorite saint to perform this function. Either way, it works. See Nick Ardagh’s The Inner Healer http://alchemyinstitute.com/inner.htm for more details.
I then assist the client in post-surgical recovery. A detailed knowledge of how recovery is to progress is essential here. After having the patient picture themselves in the recovery room and their own bedroom post surgery, I give specific directions to the body. These include suggestions that your nerves, knowing that healing is proceeding beautifully, cut off all pain signals except those that are essential for the client’s recovery. For example, I suggest that if the client moves too suddenly in bed, disturbing the wound, a shooting pain will be felt at once. Otherwise the patient will experience remarkably little pain in the critical days after surgery. A reduction in pain medication also reduces the chances of mental impairment and physical dependency that are common with large doses of pain killing drugs. Also, I suggest that when the blood vessels in the area are restored they bring in a plentiful supply of blood borne nutrients to the area to speed healing. Various images can be used to help the client’s body heal more quickly, depending on the client’s needs, including the surgical opening being sewed together for a seamstress, or the garden of your post-operative stomach growing beautiful new green shoots for a gardener. Training the client to call upon the inner healer every night in bed to continue the healing process in a painless and easy way can also be helpful. For example, I suggest the inner healer can scrub the area of a cancer surgery every night to eliminate the loose cancers cells which might otherwise cause a return of tumors to that area or elsewhere in the body. In general, I avoid technical terms like “metastasizing” in favor of simple expressions like “scrub clean.” This is because the subconscious mind responds best to simple easily understood images.
A final cautionary note for all patients of surgery: under hypnotic anesthesia the patient is in a highly suggestible hypnotic state. Your surgical staff should all be aware or this and make sure their conversations over your body during surgery are of a positive outcome. If possible, having your hypnotist present for the operation to use suggestions during the actual operation is a plus. If not, make sure someone on staff monitors the words spoken to keep them positive. Many clients find it useful to play their hypnotic tape during surgery over headphones. This performs the task of further embedding positive imagery while eliminating the voices of the surgical team.
For more information about the work of Alchemical Hypnotherapy, see our website at http://www.Alchemyinstitute.com I recommend The Use of Hypnosis in Surgery and Anesthesiology by Lillian E. Fredericks for more detailed study of the subject.
