When I use the words ‘hypnosis’ or ‘hypnotherapy’, people often have the idea that someone else can take over your consciousness and make you do all sorts of things without your consent …………. NONSENSE!

Until recently, hypnosis belonged to the domain of faith healers and quacks and even traditionally trained doctors had to know nothing about it.

Professor Ap Dijksterhuis, in particular, has spent many years as a researcher focusing on the role of the unconscious and intuitive processes, and has written many publications and books about this.

And now there are many medical studies that can fully explain the functioning of hypnotherapy neuroscientifically. In the field of medical applications, Professor Marc Benninga, pediatrician at the AMC (research into the effect of hypnosis in children) and Arine Vlieger’s research into the effectiveness of hypnotherapy for chronic complaints, have made a major contribution to ensuring that that hypnotherapy became more widely known.

Due to all this scientific research into the unconscious, the treatment of patients with hypnosis is now daily practice in dozens of Dutch hospitals, especially in the case of chronic, persistent and/or unexplained complaints.