The Mind, Beliefs, and Healing

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I’m a medical doctor and acupuncturist who has always been fascinated with the role of belief and the mind in stimulating or hindering healing.

I once saw a young medical student who wanted to know if hypnosis would help cure the dozens of warts he had developed on his hands. I told him it might, and taught him how to create a self-hypnotic state and visualize the warts disappearing. He was skeptical about the approach, used the self-hypnosis very rarely and continued to have warts. About a year later he asked if he could spend some time with me in my office, observing my practice. I agreed, with one stipulation – that he do some research for me in the medical library. He agreed, and I asked him to get me all the scientific papers he could find on healing warts with hypnosis and suggestion. Two weeks later he came to the office with a stack of articles three inches thick, most of them reporting positive results. He somewhat sheepishly told me that he had reviewed the articles and was surprised that there was real scientific evidence behind what I had taught him. He also reported that over 50% of his warts had disappeared after reading the articles.

Belief is a powerful factor in healing. People frequently heal when they believe they have received a healing treatment, whether the treatment has any objective effects or not. When people heal from rituals and prayer, we call it faith healing, and when people heal in response to fake medications or procedures, we call it "placebo effect". In both instances, it works through the power of belief, which then triggers physiologic responses.