A word from Rick
I have spent more than twenty years in full time practice as a clinical hypnotherapist and I have been training hypnosis since 1996. During that time I have helped thousands of individuals afflicted with a vast array of physical and emotional challenges. Most have been able to move beyond their restricting belief systems and gain some benefit, but there are always a few exceptions.
There is endless speculation from all quarters regarding the causes of and cures for cancer, and there are even more therapies available to the afflicted, but there is no panacea or magic bullet. While billions of dollars are spent every year on research, cancer itself continues to spread throughout the world, striking randomly and leaving too much physical, mental, emotional and financial destruction in its wake.
There is a school of thought that all sickness, and cancer especially, results from emotional imbalances. In my opinion there must be an emotional and stress component to many diseases, but to state that all cancer is caused by an emotional conflict is foolish and incorrect, because many of the emotional associations to a disease take hold after a conscious awareness of it. Cancer is caused by many reasons and they are as different and individual as the many types of disease called cancer. The fundamental cause is largely unknown, but the reasons include environmental, genetic and emotional factors to varying degrees, or a combination of all three.
For most cancers the fact remains that there is no cure, and I would advise all seekers to steer a wide berth around any person who claims that all cancer is caused by the mind, or that they can cure cancer, if those claims cannot be backed up with valid and verifiable scientific evidence. I would also advise any person diagnosed with cancer to listen firstly to their oncologist and medical doctor. Common sense dictates that a healthy attitude, fresh food, clean water, some daily sunshine, exercise and good sleep is an idealistic pattern for all, whether presently healthy or not.
There are many derivatives of hypnosis facading behind snappy names and acronyms, which sometimes purport remarkable or instant remedies for all manner of ills. I propose that apparently miraculous cures often miraculously reverse into the non-permanence of wishful thinking. Just because an individual who has been sick may feel better, it does not mean that they are in fact well.
Why I undertook the trial
Firstly, I was having successes using hypnosis to alleviate the crippling effects in sufferers of chronic fatigue syndrome and non-insulin dependent diabetes. Then I did experimental work with Parkinson's disease which yielded significant results in the amelioration of symptoms. I stress that I insist any sick person I work with must remain under their doctor's care and stay on their prescribed medications.
The final reason was the numerous testimonials arriving in my inbox from people all over Australia reporting significant benefits from regular use of my Mind-Body Healing Program. All of the participants in the clinical study were required to use the program daily as an adjunct to their weekly in-person hypnosis sessions for the entire duration of the protocol.
Beyond my years as a therapist, I learned a lot from this study. I learned about excruciating physical and emotional pain. I learned about hope. I learned about fear. I learned about faith and the strength of the human spirit. But mostly I learned about respect. Not only for the sufferers who took part, but for every victim of cancer and their families, and for those people from all of the caring professions who work tirelessly to bring healing and comfort to the sufferers of cancer.
In my opinion this study has been a success beyond my expectations, and I believe beyond the expectations of the participants. I would like to thank them all, and to thank my colleague Nathan Elliott, a pharmacist also endowed with the knowledge and skills of hypnosis. Without Nathan's academic and professional expertise this trial would not have been possible. This was our trial, not mine alone. Thanks also to the medical doctors and oncologists who had the open-mindedness to approve their patients into the trial.
I do not believe that anything can cure most cancers, but I do believe that cancer is sometimes created from within, and that once a sufferer has a conscious awareness of the diagnosis then the mind plays a significant part in the experience and the outcome of the treatment.
Because there are now so many modalities that profess to be hypnosis but are actually only aspects of it, I strongly discourage any person from using hypnosis for curative purposes without first consulting their medical doctor. Also ensure that the hypnotherapist has adequate knowledge and training in the use of hypnosis, and experience with the specialist techniques required to work with pain management.
This trial and all my cancer work was and is undertaken using traditional hypnosis, not snappy named hybrids. It is far more involved than just relaxing someone and having them imagine an army of good soldiers hunting down cancer cells. It took me five years of experimental work to formulate the correct procedures and terminologies to get the results presented here.
