This is 1 of the 10 topics from Richard van der Linde's – Bukuru founder – research into superhuman skills.The main source to be credited is www.dmtquest.com. At the bottom of the page is a link to the other topics.

Summary:

I was surprised to learn about the possibility of (local) anesthesia or entire sedation for medical treatments through hypnosis.

In 2013, the Journal of Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery published a study in which 24 volunteers had two wisdom teeth removed. In each patient, one tooth would be removed using hypnosis as a means of pain prevention, while the other tooth would be removed under local anesthesia. The result of this study is quite startling: Of the subjects who underwent hypnosis, only two (8.3%) reported pain, whereas in the local anesthetic group, eight subjects (33.3%) reported pain.

A group of Italian researchers used hypnosis on a 42-year-old woman who presented with a skin tumor in the right thigh. To directly quote from the abstract of their medical report: “A female patient with multiple chemical sensitivity and previous anaphylactoid reactions to local anaesthetics was admitted for removal of a thigh skin tumour under hypnosis as sole anaesthesia. The hypnotic protocol included hypnotic focused analgesia and a pre-operative pain threshold test. After inducing hypnosis, a wide excision was performed, preserving the deep fascia, and the tumour was removed; the patient’s heart rate and blood pressure did not increase during the procedure. When the patient was de-hypnotised, she reported no pain and was discharged immediately.”

These examples might seem quite extraordinary, but digging through the literature, one might find that the use of hypnosis and hypnotic states in the realm of analgesia (pain relief) has been around for centuries. This only changed mid-20th-century with the advent of drug-based analgesics such as chloroform.

Apparently, the setting of our mind affects the level of pain we experience from stimulus. There are many examples of dental treatments, for example tooth extractions, being performed with hypnosis as the only modality to manage pain, but it's also used for small surgical procedures in other areas of the body, such as the thyroid. It works both through hypnosis and self-hypnosis, though the latter requires more skill and practice.

It seems to have many benefits over chemical anesthesia but it's less quantifiable and takes more preparation time. However, it's fascinating that the possibility exists and that most people (including me) never heard of it. Especially if you consider that it has benefits such as reduced incidence of side effects, less blood loss, less postoperative pain and less risk from dehydration compared to chemical anesthetics.

This certainly is a topic where you could experiment for yourself. A crucial factor seems hypnotizability. According to a 2004 study, this correlates highly with the size of one’s corpus callosum – the connective tissue between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. With meditation known as a factor to increase the corpus callosum, this would be a way to go in developing your own abilities to manage pain perception. A faster approach would be to book a session with a hypnotherapist, such as Sharon Waxkirsh, who has posted several videos on Youtube where she induces hypno analgesia.

Here's what I found about what might explain the mechanism by which we can alter our mental state in order to alter our pain perception. Again, with www.dmtquest.com as one of the main sources of inspiration.

Possible theories

Several brain regions are associated with the subjective perception of pain. The precise, measurable physiological mechanisms of what happens in the brain and body during hypnosis and pain perception have yet to be fully deciphered, but research in this area has already uncovered quite a bit.

For instance, in a Stanford Medicine article titled “How hypnosis can alter the brain's perception of pain,” the author Nina Bai shares, “Using functional MRI, we've found that, during hypnosis, a part of the brain called the salience network is less active. It includes the anterior cingulate cortex—the part of the brain that fires off if, for example, you hear a noise you think could be a gunshot. Cancer patients experience a new pain and they think, ‘Oh my God, the cancer is spreading,’ even if it's not. By turning down activity in the salience network through hypnosis, they're less likely to trigger the alarm button.” Okay, but how exactly does a hypnotherapist go about lowering activity in the salience network? Nina illuminates this too: “A cancer patient may be taught to imagine floating comfortably in a warm bath, applying a warm compress to the pain, or they could think of other imagery to filter the hurt out of the pain. While acknowledging that the pain is there, they can create distance between themselves and the discomfort of the sensation.”

A crucial factor that determines the effectiveness of hypnosedation, that is, the impact of hypnosis on pain perception, is the degree to which one allows oneself to be hypnotized. A 2004 study published in the journal Pain outlines the differences of pain perception between waking and hypnotized volunteers thus: “High hypnotizables, compared to medium and low ones, experienced significant pain and distress reductions for focused analgesia (visualization) during hypnosis and, to a greater extent, during post-hypnosis condition.” According to a group of Italian researchers, “About 75% of people are susceptible to hypnotic conditioning,” and “children in particular are very sensitive,” which makes them excellent candidates for hypnosedation.

A group of UK researchers have shone some light on the subjective experience of pain. In their 2002 study, they measured the neural responses (EEG) of 33 subjects during the 40–540 ms period following phasic electrical stimulations to the right hand, under control and hypnosis conditions. The authors found that increased activity over prefrontal scalp sites was related to the subjective experience of pain, and their results further show that hypnosis involves the dissociation of prefrontal cortex from other neural functions.

These results align with the findings of Dr. Becker from two decades earlier. Becker describes in his book The Body Electric: "One of the most exciting results of my collaboration with Dr. Friedman was proof that one’s state of waking consciousness could change the perception of pain. Friedman, who already used hypnosis to control chronic pain in his patients, gave several of his best subjects hypnotic suggestions of arm numbness deep enough that they couldn’t feel the prick of a needle. In each case, I found that the frontal negative potential of the head became less negative, often reaching zero, as the client attained deep trance. The reading changed in the same direction as in anesthesia, only not as far. Then, when the suggestion for pain control was given, the arm potential reversed just as it had in response to procaine. Conversely, when a control subject was asked in normal waking consciousness to concentrate forcefully on one arm, its sensitivity to pain increased, and the hand potential became more negative. We found we could use this difference to determine whether a person was really hypnotized or just cooperating."

This might clarify the role of the hypnotherapist: slowing down the patient's brainwave frequency to ranges where a significantly lowered pain perception can be obtained through visualization.

Conclusion

We seem to be able to manage our pain perception very well. With some training, we don't even need a therapist for this purpose. Interestingly, the qualities required for being effective in this area coincide with some of the qualities that unlock other supernatural abilities, as you can read in the other articles.