Pain & Body
Hypnosis for pain relief
The old hypnotic skills for turning sensation down.
Pain Relief is a session that teaches you how to turn a dial and move a coolness through the body.
It spends its time on concrete imagery you can actually use, like a glove or a distance, rather than just asking you to relax. This is about finding the levers that are already there.
Living with a constant ache means your whole day is arranged around managing it and waiting for the next break.
The sensation becomes the loudest thing in the room, taking up all the space in your mind until you are tired of your own nervous system. You do not need more willpower; you need a way to reach the volume control.
What’s in it
A set of levers you can actually reach - a dial that turns, a coolness you can move, a distance you can put between you and a sensation.
Why do it
Pain is a signal the mind edits constantly without being asked, and this is that editing done on purpose instead of by accident.
- Theme
- Pain & Body
- Delivery styles
- 3
- Lengths
- Quick ~10mStandard ~20mDeep ~45m
- Ends
- Calm and present
- Stages
- 4
- On this shelf
- 18 sessions
Timeline: Start to Finish
The middle section builds a specific tool for you to reach for. This block spends its time installing a dial or a distance that you can use whenever the sensation gets too loud.
3 of the 4 stages are named techniques with a published origin, credited under each.
-
InductionStage 16 min
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A classic head-to-toe relaxation. Tense and release, or simply soften, each muscle group in sequence.
After Edmund Jacobson PMR (1929); Dave Elman Hypnotherapy · what progressive muscle relaxation is
-
DeepenerStage 23 min
Staircase Descent
Visualized stairs descending into a deeper level of trance. Each step takes you down.
After Ledochowski, Deep Trance Training Manual
-
Suggestion ScriptStage 310 min
Pain Relief — Balanced
-
AwakeningStage 42 min
Calm Alert Awakening
Awake and present, but calm rather than energized. Good for evening or pre-meeting use.
After Yapko, Trancework
Three ways to say it
The same goal, written three ways. You pick the one that sounds like something you would believe — and you can hear a different one tomorrow without rebuilding anything.
Balanced
The old hypnotic skills for turning sensation down. The default.
Future self
Meet the version of you who is someone with a hand on the dial.
New identity
Step into being someone with a hand on the dial, starting now.
Where it sits
Discomfort, tension and the parts of the body that will not let go.
Before you press play
- This one asks for a bit of care. In the app it opens with a consent step before anything plays.
- Not the right session right now if any of these are live for you: never for undiagnosed or new pain - see a doctor first; not a substitute for medical care or medication; stop if any sensation worsens.
Hypnosis is not for everyone. If you have epilepsy, a psychotic illness, or you are under psychiatric care, talk to your clinician before using this — here or anywhere.
Why this works — and what the research actually says
Group-level, not session-level: no study has tested this exact session, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every source below was opened and read on 2026-08-25 before it was quoted.
Why do it as hypnosis?
The mind is already editing signals all day long, filtering out background noise and the feeling of clothes against the skin.
This session uses that same mechanism on purpose, giving you specific images like a dial or a cool stream to hold.
It does not argue with the signal or ask it to leave; it simply offers the mind something else to do with the input.
Pain: strong for the sharp kind, weak for the long kind
A 2025 review split pain in two, and got a different answer for each.
For acute pain — a procedure, an operation, an injury — hypnosis made a real, measurable difference, and those patients also needed fewer opioids.
For long-running chronic pain, the same review found no significant effect at all.
- Acute pain: a medium, significant effect across 6 trials and 888 people
- Those patients also used significantly fewer opioids
- Chronic pain: 6 trials, 595 people, no significant effect
Worth knowing: The authors name their own weaknesses. The small number of articles available limited the analysis, and two different pain scales were pooled.
A wide variety of hypnosis methods were used, and the lack of double blinding may affect trial quality. They also note high heterogeneity and small sample sizes in most studies.
The exact wording and figures
For acute pain, 6 randomised controlled trials and 888 participants showed a medium, statistically significant effect (Hedges' g = 0.54, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.90, p = 0.0024).
Opioid consumption was also 1.5 SD lower in the hypnosis group (95% CI 0.12 to 2.88, p = 0.03).
For chronic pain, across 6 trials and 595 participants, the effect was not statistically significant (Hedges' g = 0.07, 95% CI -0.14 to 0.27, p = 0.518).
A systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Yerzhan A, Ayazbekova A, Lavage DR, Chelly JE (2025). The Use of Medical Hypnosis to Prevent and Treat Acute and Chronic Pain. Journal of Clinical Medicine.
open access (CC BY 4.0)
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