Since my wedding and honeymoon, I have struggled to keep up to date with my favourite TV shows… However, the beauty of Sky Plus meant that I was able to catch up with Lost and Heroes.

I did lose my enthusiasm with the first half of this series of Heroes, but it came good again in recent weeks as Peter Petrelli got his memory of his powers back! Yay! Now the reason I mention this today is because the way he regained his strength and ability was by healing himself, as instructed by a fellow hero — Adam Arnold.

What I love about Heroes is that it often serves as a powerful metaphor for personal development… That is, we have tremendous abilities and powers within ourselves that often lay dormant until we learn how to use them. Hypnosis is a tool that can help with that and I want to give you an incredible illustration of that today….

This is a hypnosis article from the Times recently:

Hypnosis is best known as a means of inducing stage-show volunteers to act the fool but is also employed by some doctors and dentists. Its most startling medical use is in replacing general anaesthetics during surgery.

This technique, known as hypno-anaesthesia, has been practised for more than 150 years, according to the British Medical Journal. Only a handful of such operations take place in the UK but it is more widely used overseas. Sometimes in conjunction with a mild sedative or a local painkiller (see graphic), it induces a trance-like state in the patient and keeps their mind occupied. The advantages include reduced bleeding and a reduced risk of adverse reaction to anaesthetic.

Professor David Hatch of the Royal College of Anaesthetists says that while general anaesthesia is of little danger to most patients, some people, such as smokers and those with heart conditions or diabetes, have a higher risk of side effects. For them, hypnosis may be a solution. “It is not suitable for all patients but it has a valuable part to play and most anaesthetists would not be opposed. The fewer drugs you can use, the better,” Hatch says.

Hypno-anaesthesia has other advantages. Hypnosis patients do not need an artificial respirator and can often cooperate with the surgeon. During eyelid surgery, the doctor can check eyelid positioning before making final adjustments, for example. Some studies indicate that hypno-anaesthesia patients recover from surgery more quickly than other patients.

If no drugs are used, patients need to have had several hypnotherapy or home self-hypnosis sessions before surgery (see Kit Bag) to acquire the ability to enter a deep trance. Whether hypnosis is an objective physiological phenomenon is debatable, but scientists have used brain imaging to show how its techniques can reduce the perception of pain.

The point I wanted to make was that this ability to alter our perception of pain is becoming increasingly better documented as you will have read several times in this very blog… This ability exists within each and every one of us. We just need to learn how to do it. I wonder what else exists within us a potential or an unformed belief?

So many people do not even consider exploring their own potential, do they? Hypnosis and self-hypnosis are just a couple of ways of learning more about what you are capable of, there are many other ways.

My only issue with this article today is that they do not mention the greatest ever book on self-hypnosis 😉

Have a great day.