When David Spiegel was told to treat his next patient, he didn't need to ask which room the patient was in, because he had heard the patient gasp across the hall. Spiegel walked into the ward and saw a -year-old red-haired girl sitting upright on the bed. She had an asthma attack, her fists were clenched, and she was gasping for breath. The mother cried beside her. This is the girl's third time in as many months that she has been hospitalized with an asthma attack. It happened in , when Spiegel was a rotating medical intern at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts. His medical internship also included a course in clinical hypnotherapy.

The young asthma patient's medical team had given her epinephrine injections to dilate her airway. After two injections, the girl's asthma has not subsided. Spiegel was helpless, so he asked the girl, "Would you like to learn to breathe banner design deeply?" The girl nodded in agreement, and became Spiegel's first patient to use hypnotherapy. According to the curriculum, once the girl is in a hypnotic trance, Spiegel is ready to give the girl a verbal suggestion (the "active ingredient" of hypnotherapy), usually a carefully crafted speech that can make the patient appear uncomfortable. own reaction. But as the girl sat on the bed, calmly and intently preparing for hypnosis, Spiegel didn't know what verbal cues to make. Because his hypnotherapy training class did not teach how to hypnotize an asthmatic patient. Spiegel recalled to me how he dealt with this patient, "So I thought of a statement.

I said to her, 'Every breath you take is deeper and easier.'" Spiegel's off-the-cuff remarks worked. Within five minutes, the girl's asthma stopped, she lay down, and her breathing became easy. Her mother also stopped crying. For the doctor Spiegel and the girl with asthma, this hypnotherapy session had a huge impact on their later life plans. The girl grew up to become a respiratory therapist, while Spiegel embarked on a career in clinical hypnotherapy. Over the next years, Spiegel established the Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University, which he estimates treats more than patients using hypnotherapy.