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Page 202
of research by inspired investigators.
Hypnosis is described as a psychological state of an individual wherein functioning is at a level of awareness that differs from the ordinary state of consciousness. A hypnotized person's receptiveness and responsiveness to both positive and negative suggestion is heightened. The subject also gives as much significance to inner perceptions as they generally would to external reality. 15 It is well-known today that hypnotists are even able to cause functional blindness, deafness, and paralysis in hypnotized people.16 Although Mesmer was able to cure many of these same afflictions in his patients, he was unaware of the potential negative aspects of hypnosis, the phenomenon of post-hypnotic suggestion, or of self-hypnosis.
We now recognize the potential danger of persons suffering adverse post-hypnotic reactions. For example, doctors have come to realize that pessimistic forecasts can have injurious effects on some patients. We are confident that a doctor's announcement that a patient has only a few months left to live, and that he should "put his affairs in order," might be as likely to cause the death of a suggestible patient as is the disease he is supposed to be suffering from.
Positive aspects of hypnosis have been effective in the removal of warts (which are actually small tumors) and for self-modification of blood flow, inflammation, burns, skin and musculoskeletal disorders, and asthma. This self-regulation of blood flow has allowed countless migraine sufferers to take personal charge of their disease. Hypnosis can also produce changes in a person's body temperature, enzyme secretion, learning ability, memory, and athletic performance.17 It reveals potentialities within us that are ordinarily unavailable in our day-to-day lives. It's like finding a tool kit that we didn't even know we owned, and opening it to discover all kinds of tools within it that we unfortunately have no idea how to use.
A successful relationship between a healer and patient is very similar to that of the relationship between a hypnotist and his or her subject: Both patients of healers and hypnotic subjects must be willing, cooperative, and trusting. They must be relaxed, and believe that they can be healed (or hypnotized), and that the healer or hypnotist is competent and trustworthy.

 
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