Namaste,

Years back, in my first year as a medical student, I came across an intern who had learnt hypnosis. He would come over to our room and hypnotize us. He wanted people to practice on and my room partner and I were junior most in a medical hierarchy and so we had no choice but to be willing participants. My room partner, as luck would have it, was a subject who could easily be hypnotized and that was all the more reason for this intern to keep visiting our room.

During one of those sessions, and this was somewhere in 1976, he made my room partner to lie down on three stools, one below his feet, one below his head and the third below his buttocks. And he hypnotized him. And suggested to him that his body has become as stiff as an iron rod. He then removed the stool from below his buttocks.

I was so amazed at what I saw. Here was this well-built 84 Kg individual who was lying on two stools – one below his head and the other below his feet, believing he was as stiff as an iron rod, and his body was just that – an iron rod!

It made me think – if a person could be made to believe that he is something that he is not, then the same way he could be made to believe that he does not have something that he has. Pain for instance. If he has pain, then he can be made to believe he does not have it.

That got me interested in Hypnosis.

But the hectic schedules of medical education got into me, and time just flew and hypnosis remained a fond memory.

After my medical education, I took up jobs, first with a Government organization, then with a private organization, and I finally quit to start my own practice, on the outskirts of Mumbai.

After about 25 years of a typical clinical practice, I got an email, informing me about a workshop on hypnosis. I had no idea how that mail came to me, spam or a message from a higher source, call it whatever you like, but it did bring back to my active memory the older fascination of hypnosis.

Seven years back, I followed that lead and learnt hypnosis. Practised it. And then went on to teach it.

It’s been a wonderful and very satisfying experience. Dealing with the thought that triggers it all, be it just a minor disturbance or a major illness…there is always a thought behind it. Hypnotherapy made me see the power a thought can have over us…and made me realize how powerful our mind is, how capable the mind is to heal us, to lead us to a safer journey…towards our destination. God Bless.

-Dr Rupinder Singh Sodhi, Dr Sodhi’s Enhancers