I’ve got a solid streak of cynicism, but the idea of being hypnotized to improve my life? That was too intriguing to ignore.

It made me nervous, putting my free will into some stranger’s hands. But I was only in Los Angeles for a short visit, and this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Shaking off my jitters, I phoned the Hypnosis Motivation Institute, whose sign on Highway 101 had intrigued me since I was little.

An actual hypnotist answered the phone, and she agreed to see me on Wednesday. I was going to be granted one wish! The week before my appointment, I reached out to people who’d undergone hypnotherapy.

A 53-year-old executive who was embarrassed by his nail-biting habit had one session and never bit his nails again. A man who woke up every 20 minutes began sleeping through the night after one session. A family friend was hypnotized to find sweets unappealing, and it worked for over a year.

My mother, who grew up during the Great Depression, had been taught to finish everything on her plate. She struggled with her weight until she was hypnotized to stop eating when she felt full. Decades later, she’s still leaving uneaten French fries on her plate, something I’ve never been able to do.

I fretted all week, trying to decide what I most wanted to get from a hypnosis session. Could I be hypnotized to cast off the anxiety that pervades my dreams? To never lose my temper again? I saw a Hypnotic Gastric Band CD in the bookstore — how about that? Easy reduction with none of the danger of surgery and no need for a lifelong, self-control-draining diet.

I did a little research on the possibilities. The Hypnosis Motivation Institute website listed 145 problems that hypnotherapy can help with, from A (addictions) to W (worry and writer’s block). A lot of them were tempting. And sure enough, overeating was on the list.

My extra weight was uncomfortable and unhealthy. My problem wasn’t that I needed to clean my plate, though — my mother didn’t make the same mistake her mother did. I needed to refrain from eating when I wasn’t hungry.

I was looking forward to being hypnotized, but I was also nervous. Who knew what a hypnotist might suggest while I was under her control?

The Hypnosis Institute’s waiting room was pleasantly drab. Its gray carpeting, plush couches, and busy receptionist reminded me of a doctor’s office. The television in the corner was tuned to the 24-hour hypnosis channel.

It was quietly elegant, with an emphasis on the quiet. Signs all over warned, “This is a noise-sensitive area. No cellphone usage is allowed.” The signs went well with the white noise machines outside each of the 11 offices.

“Those are to make sure that every client has complete confidentiality,” my hypnotist, Justine Wright, told me. “Some people have to bare their innermost secrets to get to the root of what’s bothering them.”

I wasn’t worried about being overheard, but I still had misgivings about being put into a trance. Justine patiently addressed all my concerns about hypnosis.

First, she explained how hypnotherapy works. “Your conscious mind is what you think of as ‘you,’ ” she says. “It’s the captain of your ship, the part that stands on the deck and gives orders. But only about ten percent of your brain is conscious. The rest of your brain is like the ship’s engine room, where all the orders are carried out. The subconscious, the part of your brain that deals with recent memories, takes up about half of your brain, and the rest is the unconscious, the place you store all your memories and experiences. We can’t access those regions, but they influence our behavior and beliefs.”

A baby hasn’t developed a conscious mind, she explains. A baby uses her subconscious and unconscious to make sense of the world — to identify food and discover that crying gets attention. She’s forming the habits, beliefs, and emotions that help her survive. The parts of the brain that aren’t conscious learn what works and stick to it, figuring that if something worked in the past, it will help in the future. Sometimes, that belief is misguided, since some behaviors that serve a child well don’t work as well for an adult.

Justine tells me that the unconscious mind, which relies on experience instead of analysis, handles about two million bits of information every second. The conscious mind can only handle about seven. So the reality I’m aware of is brought to my conscious attention by the unconscious, which chooses the seven bits it considers most important.

It’s like a Reader’s Digest abridged version of what’s really going on. My subconscious is the editor who decides what my conscious mind “reads.” So even though my deep-seated beliefs and experiences color the reality that my conscious mind grapples with, I can’t evaluate the accuracy of those beliefs, because I’m not aware that I have them.

The conscious mind is logical. If someone told me, “You should stop eating so much — it’s unhealthy,” I’d come up with excuses for why I do or tell them it’s none of their business. To accept the need to stop eating too much, I have to get the part of my brain that mostly controls my behavior to cooperate. But it’s holding onto what I learned as a baby — that eating comforts me when I’m stressed and entertains me when I’m bored. Every time I eat for comfort or entertainment, I reinforce that belief.

Hypnosis bypasses the conscious and opens the door to the unconscious. Once it’s open, my unconscious can be reprogrammed. I can learn better ways to deal with stress and boredom and update my relationship with food, so I eat only to satisfy hunger, not to soothe or amuse myself.

Together, we decide what Justine will tell me while I’m in a trance. “I could help you stop overeating by suggesting better ways to deal with whatever triggers you to pick up a chocolate bar. Or that you’ll feel ill when you eat too much,” Justine says. “Or I can help you figure out why you overeat. Sometimes, you have to find the root of the problem before you can fix it.”

Hypnotherapy lets us address the emotional beliefs that have run amok. “Would you like to be hypnotized to stop eating for recreation?” she asks.

I consider. I hate to think of all the chocolate I’ll be giving up.

“I can suggest that when you’re stressed or bored, you don’t want to eat — you want to go for a walk instead, breathe deeply of the fresh air and enjoy the scenery. Or, that food won’t tempt you unless you’re hungry. But you’re going to have to want to accept these suggestions more than you want a quick and easy stress reliever.”

I mull that over. Do I want to change, or are we both wasting our time?

Seeing my hesitation, Justine tells me, “Hypnosis isn’t magic, and it can’t override your free will. Even if I hypnotize you, you’ll still have to do your homework.” I’m a little disappointed. I’d have liked to have the matter out of my hands.

After a moment, Justine continues. “I can’t do anything if you don’t really want help. It’s up to you. How much do you want to change?”

I decide enough is enough. It’s time to take control of my eating habits.

“With your agreement, I’m going to suggest that food is unappetizing when you’re not hungry. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” I decide. “Yes, it is.”

“Now I’m going to put you into a trance, so I can make a suggestion directly to your subconscious,” Justine says. She speaks slowly, softly and clearly. “Study your arm, from fingertips to elbow. When you’ve got a clear picture of it in your mind, close your eyes.”

When my eyes close, she continues. “Feel your nose and throat getting dry. You have to swallow.” After I swallow, she says, “Now you feel your eyes or eyelids fluttering. Nod when yes.” I do.

“Breathe deeply. Feel your heartrate slow. Nod when yes.”

I nod again, but then I get a little spooked. A little too loudly, I say, “I’m getting a bit nervous. I’ve never been in a trance before.”

“Have you ever driven for an hour and when you got home, you couldn’t remember anything about the drive?” she asks.

“Well, sure,” I answer. “This is Los Angeles, the birthplace of traffic jams. It takes an hour to get anywhere, and that gives me loads of time to daydream.”

“When you’ve shifted your focus away from the conscious world and focused on your thoughts, instead — when you were either very relaxed or very focused — you were in a trance,” Justine says. “It happens when you’re totally engrossed in a book, or ‘in the flow’ during a jog or when you’re writing.

“There isn’t some outside force making you do it. It’s just you, letting your mind slip into a different state of awareness. You’re filtering out distractions, so much so that other people might find it hard to get your attention. They might even complain, ‘When you get involved in a book, you don’t notice anything else. It’s like you’re in a trance!’

“When you do go into a trance, both of us will be able to communicate with your unconscious mind, and that’s when you’ll be able to change deep-seated habits and replace them with better ones.” She explains that going into a trance just shuts off the conscious mind. Instead of letting the conscious mind analyze what’s being said, the unconscious mind will be able to accept suggestions without resistance. “The only difference between hypnosis and everyday trance states is that in a hypnotic trance, you can accomplish the goal you’ve set for yourself,” she says.

“But how do I know you’re only going to make suggestions that are good for me?” This is the crux of my worries. “How do I know you’re not going to suggest that I write you a check for a thousand dollars?”

Justine explains that hypnosis isn’t mind control. “You can resist my suggestions. If you’re in the hypnotic state and you’d like to come around, say, ‘I’d like to come around.’ It’ll be completely within your control. A hypnotherapist doesn’t — and wouldn’t want to — control your mind. I’m only going to control the trance state, so you can accomplish your goal.”

“What about the hypnotists who get people to flap their arms and crow like roosters?” I ask.

“Volunteers in a stage show agree to be hypnotized to do silly things,” she says. She assures me that I’ll be in control of all my thoughts and actions, even when I’m in a trance. No one will be able to force me to do something against my will.

“While hypnosis harnesses the power of suggestion, so does advertising,” she adds. “When we think of a nice watch, we think ‘Rolex,’ because we’ve seen their ads, but that doesn’t mean we all run out and buy a Rolex.”

Mollified, I decide to go ahead with the hypnosis. I’m glad I broke out of a half-entranced state. It makes me feel more confident that I’ll have control even when I’m more entranced.

We go back to what we were doing. When I nod to indicate that my heartrate has slowed, she gently touches my wrist, so that it feels like she’s tying a string around it. “Feel me tying a BIG helium balloon to your wrist,” she says, soft and slow. “Feel it starting to pull your arm up. Let your arm go with it. Now begin to feel a magnetic pull between your arm and your face. When you touch your face, you will be open to suggestion.”

When my arm floats to my forehead, I flash a huge smile. This is fun, in a weird way! Mom told me she felt ecstatic when she left the hypnosis center after her session, but I couldn’t imagine why. Now I think I’m getting it.

I move to a more comfortable chair for the hypnotic suggestion. Even though I’m deep in a trance, I hear her words. I think about asking to end the session, just to make sure I can, but I don’t want to. I’ve never been so deeply relaxed. It’s wonderful.

Justine plants her post-hypnotic suggestion. In a low, clear tone, she says, “When you come out of your trance, every time you think about eating, you’ll ask yourself, ‘Am I hungry?’ If you’re not, the thought of eating will make you queasy. You’ll enjoy being in control of your body. Every morning, when you wake up, you’ll enjoy feeling slimmer and lighter.”

She repeats the suggestion several times and then says, “I’m going to close the door to your subconscious mind so that the suggestions stay. I’m going to count to five, and you’re going to come out of your trance a little more with each number.” (I didn’t expect to be able to remember so much of what went on while I was hypnotized, but it was an unforgettable experience.)

“Your eyelids may feel rather heavy, almost glued together,” she says, in a more conversational tone of voice. “You may find that your eyes won’t open until your unconscious gives you a clear sense of the wonderful changes you can expect.

“One. You’re beginning to come back.

“Two. Feeling more awake.

“Three. More and more awake.

“Four. Breathe in. You’re feeling wonderful about gaining control of your body.”

“Five. Open your eyes.” Then she repeats it, a little louder, “Open your eyes.” Then a third time, a little louder still. My eyes open to a squint — I don’t really want to come around.

“Now we’re closing the door to your subconscious, so the suggestions stay there,” Justine says. “Which gym will you join to help you with the weight loss?” Later, when I ask her why she brought that up, she told me that people want to slip back into their trance, because it’s so pleasant. Asking a question for the conscious mind to latch onto pushes them back to reality.

“I thought hypnotists say, ‘You won’t remember this’ when they wake their subject up?” I ask.

Justine tells me that’s for psychologists and psychiatrists, if they’ve brought forth repressed traumas that their patient isn’t ready to confront yet. A hypnotherapist wants her client to be aware so he can get the most from his session.

Did it work?

There have only been six weeks between my hypnosis session and this writing, and so far, it’s definitely working. I threw out the bathroom scale years ago — I was sure it was broken — but my clothes fit better and food only looks appealing when I’m hungry.

Justine told me it will only work as long as I want it to. But I figure that even if I need a booster session in a year, I’ll easily be able to pay for it with all the money I’ve saved on chocolate.

The Answer to Your Chronic Pain or Anxiety?

“The oldest adage of medicine is that our job is to cure rarely, relieve often, and comfort always,” says Dr. David Spiegel, Medical Director of Stanford University’s Center for Integrative Medicine. “As medicine became scientific we changed our job description, so our job is to cure always, relieve suffering if you have the time, and let someone else do the comforting, and I think that was a big mistake. We need help to live well with illness.”

In Dr. Spiegel’s experience, hypnosis is how he helps people live well with illness. In a video interview made available on Stanford University’s news site, he describes his first experience using hypnosis to make a patient more comfortable:

“…I walked into a room with an asthma patient who couldn’t breathe. I’d just taken a hypnosis class at Massachusetts General and I said, ‘You want to learn a breathing exercise?’ She nodded and within five minutes she was breathing much better. I figured anything that could help a patient that much that much had to be worth looking into. And I kept finding examples where I could make a big difference using hypnosis to help patients control their pain, control their anxiety, and manage some of their symptoms better.”

The best evidence for hypnosis’s effect is in improving pain and anxiety. In fact, hypnosis may be more effective than other sorts of pain relief, according to some meta-analyses. Hypnosis is proven to help with chronic headaches and migraines, and it lowers anxiety and blood pressure in patients before surgery, shortening hospital stays.

Patients who received hypnosis reported less post-surgical pain, nausea, fatigue, and discomfort. Hospitals like it too — hypnosis saved them $772 per patient, mainly due to reduced surgical time and lower demand for painkillers.

“Hypnosis helps patients to reduce their distress and have positive expectations about the outcomes of surgery,” says Dr. Guy Montgomery, director of the Integrative Behavioral Medicine Program at Mount Sinai’s School of Medicine. “I don’t think there is any magic or mind control.”

The jury is still out on hypnobirthing, but it seems logical that it would work. The anxiety of labor creates stress hormones that increase pain and divert blood flow from the uterus, prolonging labor. Hypnobirthing brings different hormones into play, ones that relax the muscles and make labor more comfortable.

Support for hypnosis is strong enough that the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the British Psychological Society are all on board. They’ve each approved hypnosis as a therapy that’s beneficial in the management and treatment of a wide range of conditions and problems.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 611)