Bernadine Coady insisted she wanted nothing other than hypnosis for the pain control. The operation involved drilling a hole into her knee and inserting a camera – otherwise known as keyhole surgery.

It’s not the first time Mrs Coady has done this. Ten years ago, she hypnotised herself before an operation on her foot where the surgeon had to saw into the bone. She said:

“I always thought that it was possible and I am proof that it is. I think it could be used for any operation – even heart surgery. If I ever need another operation, I won’t be using anaesthetics.”

Mrs Coady trained as a hypnotherapist with the British School of Hypnosis in 1994.

A spokesman for the hospital, where her surgeon was Ahmed Shair, said: “It’s the third time she has been operated on by Mr Shair in this way – the first two were for foot problems. She has known Mr Shair for a long time and she came with the express wishthat she wanted to be operated using self hypnosis. She has gone home looking very happy so I presume it was a success. Ms Coady is the only patient we’ve operated on in this way. If anyone else wanted to come along and have the procedure we would look at it on an individual basis.”

A representative from the National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) said:

“It is used often other countries, for example Belgium, as an alternative to anaesthetics and patients report that it is very successful, that they feel no pain during their operations.”

Although well known for his hypnosis and magic, his performance promises to be a mix of psychological illusion, mystery and comedy.  Some say his kind of hypnosis, using it for entertainment purpses, trivialises the work of hypnotherapists but I quite like it.  He doesn’t go for the whole ‘dance like a chicken’ daft stage hypnotism, it’s genuinely entertaining rather than just stupid and in a lot of ways, it raises the awareness of hypnosis.

The shows start on the 2nd May and continue to the 7th June.

The martial arts teacher broke 55 concrete blocks with his bare hands (!) in under 5 seconds.  Yes, that is not a mistype.

The previous record was 17.49 seconds.

He said: “I used to break things when I was a kid for fun with my friends and I would break things easily whereas my friends wouldn’t.

“People think it’s a lot easier to break blocks than it actually is – I make it look easy. I have hypnotherapy and picture breaking the slabs. I also feed off the energy of the crowd.”

His next target is to break the world record for the most concrete blocks broken in one stack – the current record is 31.

Many sports people use hypnotherapy and visualisation techniques to improve their performance.  Using hypnosis, visualisation can become much stronger and have a greater impact

This means that hypnotherapists should expect to see a substantial increase in the number of requests they receive for weight loss, obesity and eating disorder assistance.  As a hypnotherapist, weight loss is already one of my own key areas.

On hypnosis courses, weight loss can only be dealt with as a small part of the course and many courses do not have the time to focus on eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia.  This is why I believe that more institutions and training companies should be focusing on offering continuing professional development (CPD) courses.

The Contemporary College of Therapeutic Studies has decided to try a one day Obesity & Eating Disorders workshop because it’s the course they are asked for most.  Their first one will be on Saturday 12th July at Birkbeck College, London at the special price of just £100 plus VAT.

Catley wants to study sports psychology in particular, and is even learning to give performance talks – a huge part of promoting sports psychology. Catley is quoted as saying

“I plan to help many people become champion. It can be any sport, amateur or professional, whatever. I’d be qualified to help anyone. A mental advantage over an opponent can be a massive advantage, the difference between a winner and a champion.”

Catley first came across hypnotherapy when he saw the effect it had had on boxing champion Steve Collins, and he started to use it himself to prepare for the British Championship title. He believes that visualisation under hypnosis played a huge part in his success and his amazing comeback in 2006.

We wish Catley all the best from Hypnotherapy Info and look forward to seeing how he does in his new career as a hypnotherapist.

This one will be for hypnotherapists who can provide evidence of their work and study.  Not that I don’t think this is a great idea, in fact I do.  I just find it frustrating, as must many other hypnotherapists and members of the general public, when all these registers appear, each with different information and listings.

What we desperately need is a national UK register, which incorporates all the different types of information available – including of course the evidence-based information the UK College of Hypnosis is proposing.  To its credit, the register will include number of years experience in practice and level of qualification.  What it doesn’t say is whether the register will only be open to its own students.

The grades and code of practice are yet to be announced, but a provisional register is already online.

This is why a lot of self-hypnosis CD’s cannot work for everyone. For example, even something as generic as a stress or relaxation session may not work if the induction includes lots of water scenes or guided imagery and you happen to have a phobia of water. Had you visited a professional hypnotherapist, this would have been covered in the pre-talk and the therapist would know not to bring up the subject of water in a useless effort to encourage you to relax!

However, it seems that self-hypnosis CD’s are getting more and more specific and tailored. How’s this for specific – a hypnosis session not just tailored for losing weight and slimming, but one tailored for lesbians who are overweight and want to lose weight.

The CD was created by a hypnotherapist called Mar Robbart, based in San Diego, herself a lesbian who had issues with her weight before hypnosis.

The content reminds women that losing weight is part of your sexuality. As you lose weight, you feel better about yourself and more confident, your libido increases and everything becomes more pleasurable. Hence this CD needs to be different to Robbart’s other CD aimed at heterosexuals wanting to lose weight.

Apparently, studies have been done which show that lesbian women are indeed more likely to be obese or overweight than other women. The CD is available for just $23 and are available through Amazon.

The article tells the story of Jo Bisset, who gave birth to gorgeous baby Hector, sixteen days after her supposed ‘due date’.  She gave birth on her bathroom floor, using no methods of pain control other than self-hypnosis that she learnt from a local hypno-birthing hypnotherapist.  She says she gave birth ‘in joy’ in just 90 minutes but believes that modern society forces us to believe it will be painful and horrid and it is that perception that can create the reality.

Bisset believes that medical intervention can lead to a need for further medical intervention, such as if you are induced but are not ready, you may then require an emergency Caesarean or require an epidural because it’s too painful forcing yourself through a birth your body isn’t yet ready for and then you may end up having the baby delivered using forceps.

There are of course medical reasons for inducing babies and one of the reasons induction is quite routine in this country is because research suggests that in pregnancies of over 42 weeks there is a higher stillbirth rate.  In response to Jo’s fears, one obstetrician said that there is no evidence to suggest that an induction means a more painful birth or a higher likelihood of a caesarean either.

Catriona Brown is a former midwife who has now retrained as a hypnotherapist and she says in her interview that doctors need to become more aware of the power of the mind.  Unnecessary intervention causes anxiety and fear in women as they believe their body isn’t working as it should and their distress interferes with the bonding process with their newborn child.  You can read the full article on The Time website

Now, I don’t have children but I do believe in the whole ‘perception is reality’ mantra… but having said that, being a hypnotherapist, I have no doubt that if I ever fall pregnant, the pressure will be on me to have a hypno-birth.  Oo-er…

In order to correctly diagnose a seizure, it’s important to establish which parts of the brain are causing the seizure. In the past, this has often meant hooking the child up to various monitors and then asking them and their families to wait for days at a time in the hospital in the hope that the child will have a seizure. This is not only traumatic for the child but puts a lot of pressure on the family unit and takes up valuable hospital time. In addition, whilst in hospital, many children are away from the stress or other factors that bring on a seizure so for some, they are unable to have a seizure in this environment.

Children are notoriously easy to hypnotise because they’re still very imaginative and impressionable. Under hypnosis, doctors are able to induce a seizure simply by suggesting to the child that they are going through one of their episodes.

Descriptions of the seizures are not always sufficient for an accurate diagnosis. The brain activity seen during these sessions allows the doctors to tell whether the seizures are epileptic, hence requiring drugs, or non-epileptic, requiring psychological or neurological treatment.

Hypnotherapist Richard Shaw tested a trial of nine children and in eight of the nine cases was able to successfully induce a seizure, confirming that all of these eight were experiencing non-epileptic seizures, which was as initially suspected.

For these children who are experiencing non-epileptic seizures, Shaw is using psychotherapy and hypnotherapy to teach the children not only to recognise their stress factors but then to use self-hypnosis to be able to ‘turn off’ their reactions to prevent a seizure.

Shaw has found that parents and many people initially associate hypnosis with ‘black magic’ as do many Americans as we found in our earlier article, but once the reasons and benefits are explained, most are very accepting.

Read the complete article from Medical News Today

All member’s details will be updated on a monthly basis, according to the NCH. Once the hypnotherapist’s details are available on the website, they are then entitled to use the words ‘UKCHO Registered’ or ‘Registered with the UKCHO’ on their advertising or letterhead and business cards.

Each member does have their own membership number, which they need to find themselves on the UKCHO website and they can also publish this.

As I mentioned in an earlier article about the two national registers who are still fighting it out for the single title of the UK National Register, I still think it’s a shame that the UKCHO register displays only the name and registration number, and that members do not currently receive an official certificate or notification of their registration number.