Hypnosis a part of Mainstream Medicine. Last fall, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation sponsored a presentation on hypnosis, intended for doctors and others in medicine, so that they would better understand when hypnosis might help patients. Last year, the Harvard Mental Health Letter devoted a two-part report on hypnosis and Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter reported on findings that hypnosis may provide relief from chronic indigestion.

Howard Hall, another expert who participated in the clinic’s program, has studied the effect of hypnosis on children at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. He reported successful results helping children overcome pain, anxiety, headaches, bed wetting and coughing spells, with lasting results.

Hypnoanalyst and Hypnosis Counselor, Robert Egby, tells us that, “The American Medical Association approved hypnosis as an effective treatment mode in 1958.”

Egby has successfully treated chronic pain in patients with a process called “Glove Anesthesia” using only hypnosis for over 12 years. Robert also wrote that, “The Cancer Control Clinic in Vancouver, British Columbia has had a hypnotist on staff for at least ten years. The National Guild of Hypnotists has a number of members working as hypnotists in American hospitals.” See www.robert-egby.com/

Gary Schwartz Survival Experiments. An article in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, by Sarah Stanton, detailed the seven years of afterlife experiments conducted by Dr. Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona. Schwartz is also conducting experiments to try and learn more about what the afterlife is like. “Where are you and what do you see?” are included in a series of thirty questions that mediums are asking the deceased. Schwartz says that these experiments are producing some extremely interesting data but that it is too early to be able to draw any conclusions.

Schwartz says that it is difficult for many to believe that consciousness survives death and that mediums can talk to the dead. He says that he has something called ‘PESD’ or Pose-Education Stress Disorder. “I was taught throughout school that this stuff is impossible and I think a lot of other people were too. But how much data do you have to see before you accept a new vision?”

From: http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/97/102/01_3.html 

Definitions that will be helpful with the next article: Ganzfeld : the name of a technique in parapsychology that is used in the investigation of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). A subject normally wears halved table tennis balls over the eyes while listening to a hissing sound (white noise) through headphones. The experiment is conducted in this way in order to help the subject experience the absence of patterned stimulation, a condition that is useful in the study of ESP.

General Extra Sensor Perception (GESP): a term that refers to a form of ESP that, when it occurs, is particularly unclear as to whether or not the results were due to clairvoyance, precognition, retrocognition or telepathy.

Papers Presented at SPR 27^th International Conference. The January 2004 Paranormal Review reported on some interesting papers presented at the SPR’s 27^th International Conference. Simon Sherwood, of the research team at the University College Northampton (UCN), presented a methodology for investigating the role of the sender in the Ganzfeld. Results suggested that the expectancy of the receiver that a sender is ‘sending’ is more important than the actual presence of the sender.

Adrian Parker’s work has attempted to improve GESP ability across repeat performances. Clear evidence of psi was found in his experiments although performance over trials did not improve. One interesting discovery was that when participants did not perform more than one trial per day they had a higher hit rate.

John Harvey presented a paper on psychic photography historically and detailed novel ways in which the authenticity of ghost photographs could be verified.

Erlendur Haraldsson reported on a Lebanese community where children reporting a past life were not uncommon. Her presentation provided some compelling evidence for past life memory.

Montague Keen presented a fascinating case in which a medium had received information from a murder victim that contained such precise details that investigating officers initially considered her a suspect in the murder. They used her leads to identify a suspect but did not have enough evidence to convict. The suspect was finally convicted eighteen years later with the advent of DNA analysis.

Yung-Jong Shiah from Taiwan is conducting research at Edinburgh and hopes to train children “to hone their cutaneous acuity skills for touch reading.” Results have been so impressive that delegates were questioning their own sight-reading abilities.

From: “Review of the Society for Psychical Research 27^th International Conference” by David Luke in the January 2004 Paranormal Review Issue 29

A Millionaire’s Last Vocation. Ninety year old Millionaire Sir John Templeton says, “No human being has yet even understood one percent of what can be learned about spiritual matters.” The John Templeton Foundation spends 16 to 30 million dollars a year funding studies on spiritual matters. The foundation funds projects from cosmology to faith healing. The grants often support scientists who have no other source of funding.

From: “A Millionaires Last Vocation” by Debra Rosenberg, Newsweek November 10, 2003.