Treatment of warts by suggestion was known to many Arab tribes. Special “notches” were made on the branch in an amount equal to the number of warts in the patient, and then it was suggested that the warts would disappear as soon as the branch dried up. Indeed, as soon as the branch dried up, the warts disappeared without a trace.
Doctors have long noticed that it is enough to turn the process of receiving patients into a complex ritual, as the word immediately acquires magical power. Irrational psychotherapy is used when a patient comes to the healer with a preset and it is necessary to overcome it so as not to interfere. The robbers, bumping into the watchman, just give him a kick in the head so that he gets off. So here. Irrational actions, impressing, temporarily block the consciousness, allowing the healer to place a self-suggested thought under the lamps of the surgical table…
The first to bring hypnosis from the gypsy level was Ivan, ours, Pavlov. His experiments on dogs made it possible to create the doctrine of conditioned reflexes, which today is the foundation of rational psychotherapy. In particular, I.P. Pavlov (and later M.K. Petrova) induced experimental eczemas in animals (with peeling, alopecia, exudative, weeping, dry with itching, etc.), considering the affected areas of the skin as a «projection of a known part of the brain.» They experimentally proved that the peripheral nervous system, as well as the cerebral cortex, can equally act as the cause of even such painful processes as, for example, skin inflammation. As proof of this theory, the well-known hypnotherapists P.P. Podyapolsky and V.N. Fine caused on the human skin suggested burns, bruises, frostbite.
Particularly interesting is the experiment of P.P. Podyapolsky, when he once plunged a peasant into hypnosis by placing a piece of newsprint moistened with water on his back, with the suggestion that it was a “mustard plaster”. Seven minutes later, when the paper was removed from the back of the subject, the doctor, to his disappointment, did not see the slightest redness. Upon questioning, it turned out that the peasant, having lived to the age of 68, does not know what a “mustard plaster” is and how it is used. Three years passed, and P.P. Podyapolsky met this man again. It turned out that during this time he suffered pneumonia twice, and he was treated, including with mustard plasters, which were placed both on his chest and on his back. The experiment was repeated. This time, a bright erythema appeared on the subject’s skin, as if from a real mustard plaster.
Thus, the conditioned reflex mechanism of suggested skin lesions was proved. “The word, thanks to the entire previous life of an adult, is associated with all external and internal stimuli, … and therefore can cause all those actions, reactions of the body that cause those irritations” (IP Pavlov). The famous dermatologist A.I. Kartamyshev gives a whole list of suggestive skin diseases: eczema, psoriasis, urticaria, alopecia areata, lichen simplex, pruritus, pemphigus, skin gangrene, nail changes, warts.
And yet, skin diseases are only part of the ailments that are of an allergic nature (psychosomatics of allergies). Here we can add such symptoms as rapid breathing, high blood pressure, spasms, convulsions, an increase in blood sugar, etc. In this sense, the work of the Samara professor Yu.P. Frolov (1949), who recorded the successful use of «hypnosuggestive therapy» in relation to bronchial asthma. The scientist considered this disease «a typical example of an established pathological conditioned reflex.»
What kind of reflex are we talking about?
Frolov explained it this way: “two foci of excitation that occur simultaneously both in the cerebral cortex and in the center of regulation of bronchial tone coincide with each other in time.” According to the Pavlovian doctrine of conditioned reflexes, a temporary connection is formed between such centers of excitation. For example, the bright smell of raspberries, which coincidentally coincided with a coughing fit, can become an association of an unhealthy state of the bronchus — an «anchor» as psychologists say. If this happens, then the person, having barely caught the characteristic aroma, will burst into coughing. Over time, “playing sick bronchi” will develop into a real pathology, since the body will sooner or later master the new semantic reality, adapting physically to it. Doctors, examining these changes, will identify bronchial asthma. Yu.P. Frolov defines this diagnosis in this way: «a typical conditioned interoceptive reflex, fixing once established relationships in the cerebral cortex.»
Alas, all diseases are from the nerves! The demonstrated example of how a sign forms an object (not vice versa!), allows us to assume that any disease that has a reliable clinical etiology has at its core some product of neuro-brain activity. Let us recall the method of neuro-cerebral influence on human physics, the popularly known “Porfiry Ivanov method”. A person has a temperature, and he is in prou.e., and from where he gets out completely healthy. If a disease is an impression that has sprouted (for example, according to the allergic principle), then it can be erased due to another, stronger impression. Such an impression for every normal person is the fear of an ice hole in combination with a thermal burn from the “bathing” itself. Here you will forget your own mother, not only the flu. Approximately according to the same scheme, stuttering disappears after a fright, and during the fighting, all “civilian” diseases such as colds or rheumatism disappear from soldiers. Talk about turning on the immune system at full capacity, of course, has the right to life, but they are only a fragment of the overall picture. After all, an emotional shock that stimulates the body’s defenses is, in fact, an assessment or even an attitude towards what is happening on the part of the brain. «Walruses», for example, receiving the same thermal burn and seeing the same wormwood, are in an even frame of mind, because the consciousness of these people does not find anything special in what is happening.
The physical impact on our mortal flesh in itself does not mean anything — the reaction of the body at the cellular level is formed in the head. If consciousness reports to you that this is “horror”, then you begin to rush about and experience pain, and the skin is damaged (for example, during a fire). And vice versa, under the same circumstances, your consciousness can give the situation the opposite assessment, and then you, like that nestinar, will calmly walk around the red coals with your bare feet and not feel anything at the same time. Thus, pain, like other feelings, is not a signal to the brain from suffering flesh, but, on the contrary, a command to a given part of the body, coming from the head. So the conclusion we have with you will be frightening: the fun and suffering of a person does not depend on the physical impact from the outside on his body and his organs!
One more step, and we will be ready to ask ourselves the question of the nature of the imaginary being that we observe, but in this article we will not take this step. We have another task. We want to understand how to heal the flesh using external influence, not physical, but hypnotic. We have established that the brain controls all clinical processes, including healing and recovery. The whole problem boils down to the issue of «buttons». Where is it located so that you and I can turn on the unused possibilities of our gray matter?
There is an answer to this question. It lies in the human states that we call exaltation: rage, falling in love, jubilation, sorrow, horror. God forbid, if one of these emotional dragons singes a child under four years old — consider that for the rest of his life he is guaranteed a nervous breakdown. So moms and dads, before the onset of conscious age, do not allow strong emotional outbursts in the reactions of your children — 90 percent of my patients suffered mental trauma at this tender age.
The other thing is adults. For a person with an established psyche, the state of exaltation, or, in other words, the state of hypnotic trance, is that “button”, pressing which opens access to the capabilities of the brain. And there we are interested, first of all, in the conditioned reflexes of a person. After all, among them there are those that we do not need. In the language of medicine, they are called psychosomatic diseases. They can be turned on and off. During a hypnotherapy session on one of the patient’s early memory levels (up to 16 years old), I discovered a psychotrauma that triggered an already obsolete conditioned reflex in the form of a skin disease. By activating this memory under hypnosis, I was able to verify that the redness on the skin of the hand appeared in full accordance with the psoriasis clinic, and when I erased the painful memory, the redness on the skin also disappeared, as if it had not been there.
I.P. Pavlov wrote: “suggestion is the most simplified, most typical conditioned reflex of a person,” as if addressing us, unbelieving Thomases, who are inclined to look for the devil knows what in hypnosis, but not the great gift of self-improvement. For three hundred years, scientists around the world have been looking for traces of danger to a person in hypnosis, as a result, in Europe and the USA, hypnotherapy is officially instituted as a method of medical care. For comparison: psychoanalysis, despite its wild popularity, remains an activity that has nothing to do with medicine.
Hypnotic trance is our healthiest and most natural state. We don’t even suspect that we are in it several times a day, when, for example, we think about something, read or simply wonder, admire, get angry, rejoice, fear… hypnosis! Why? Because all the mentioned states are united by one feature: a person at this moment is detached from everything. He is emotionally focused on one thing. Those to whom such concentration is given better than others become the arbiters of destinies. Napoleon, Beethoven, Einstein, Suvorov, like all other great people, were able to completely “turn off”. Contemporary memoirs describe them as absent-minded, bizarre, or even ill-mannered, but we hypnotherapists know they earned their reputation for being able to instantly go into a trance in order to mobilize their resources for a specific intellectual task. And the deeper the trance, the more ingenious the solution. From the outside, this looks like inappropriate, and sometimes even offensive behavior, but in fact it is a manifestation of high human nature. In this regard, I suggest that teachers, parents, and at the same time the new Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, recall what attracts the attention of a classic loser? Is it not soaring in the clouds? Is it not for such students in modern Russian schools that sump classes with a simplified education program are organized?
Yes, God did not give everyone a «button», so for the majority, that is, for people who are harmonious and sociable, there are hypnotherapists. In debunking the myths surrounding this profession, I will say that hypnotherapy is most appropriately compared to childbirth. After all, the hypnotherapist only helps the patient to “give birth”, that is, to realize the ability inherent in him. Another thing is that this ability is unevenly distributed among people. In someone it can be easily developed, such people master self-hypnosis (contact me), but most require the usual mode of editing their own personality in order to carry out the procedure of getting rid of a consuming passion or obsession under the guidance of an experienced midwife. As a rule, we are talking about one or more «phobias» (irrational fears), as well as completely bodily diseases (see above), resulting from an emotional shock. The elimination of such disorders requires from two to five sessions, each of which takes three to four hours. So it is not at all necessary to be Napoleon to take advantage of what made him great — it is enough to turn to me or my colleagues. True, in order to come to the conclusion that you need it, you must also be able to concentrate. Well, don’t let me down…
references
- Site of psychologist, hypnotherapist Gennady Ivanov
- Psychosomatics of allergy: causes of development and methods of treatment of the disease
- Hypnosis
- Video: «Treatment» of psoriasis in hypnosis: first call, then remove
- Video: Hypnosis: a review of the treatment of spots on the body & fear of dating