YOU ARE FEELING VERY...HEALTHY

Forget the swinging pocket watches, scientists are now praising hypnotherapy as a powerful tool to fight mental and physical pain. Count back from five and we'll begin...

- by DAVID ROBSON

I'm sitting with my back straight, my eyes closed and my iPad resting on my lap.

“Let one hand float up in the air as if it were a balloon,” a soothing voice tells me from the speakers, and I do as it commands. Soon I feel as if my whole body is weightless.

Next, I have to visualise the goal that I want to achieve – I choose the writing of this article. Over the next few minutes, I'm instructed to picture the elements of the creative challenge as if they’re puzzle pieces slotting together. “Think just about the problem and not its implications or consequences.”

A while later, the voice tells me to count from three to one, open my eyes and lower my arm. My hypnosis session is over.

I tried this exercise to silence the inner critic that typically plagues my mind as I work, creating anxiety and stress. It’s just one of many options offered by Reveri (reveri.com), an app designed by Dr David Spiegel, a psychiatrist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Over the past two decades, increasing evidence has shown that hypnosis can ease pain, anxiety and insomnia with effects that are often comparable to standard medicinal treatments. Contrary to its mystical image, scientists like Spiegel argue that hypnosis arises from well-accepted neurological and psychological mechanisms. It’s perhaps better seen as a mindset that can be learned.

“When I hypnotise someone, I’m just showing them how to use their own ability,” Spiegel says. And with a few simple instructions, you could begin to acquire those skills too.

If the idea of hypnosis makes you feel uneasy, you're not alone. The practice is surrounded by myth and mysticism, including the popular trope that a person can fall into a trance and relinquish their free will.