Hypnosis for Chronic Pain: What a New Neurology Trial Shows

Pain has two voices. One reports: here, this hot, this sharp. The other interprets: this is dangerous, this will never end, this is who I am now. Anyone who has lived with chronic pain knows the second voice can be louder than the first. That second voice is exactly where hypnosis for chronic pain does its work, and this spring a rigorous trial in one of medicine's most respected journals showed how much it can help.

A new trial in Neurology

In March 2026, Charles Bombardier, M. Elena Mendoza, Mark P. Jensen and colleagues at the University of Washington published a randomised controlled trial in Neurology. They recruited 127 adults living with spinal cord injury and moderate to severe chronic pain. Half received hypnotic cognitive therapy: six weekly one-hour sessions with a psychologist by phone or Zoom, plus daily self-hypnosis with recordings of those sessions. The other half continued their usual care.

Average pain dropped more in the hypnosis group at six weeks and dropped further by twelve weeks, after the sessions had ended. Depression also improved more in the hypnosis group. People whose worst pain was purely neuropathic, the burning, electric pain typical of nerve damage, showed the largest benefit at twelve weeks.

The numbers deserve honest framing. The average difference against usual care was modest: about half a point on a ten-point scale at six weeks and about 0.8 at twelve. The design was single-blind, the comparison group received usual care, with no active alternative, and the authors call for replication. Still, for a population that often runs out of options, an effect that grows after treatment ends is meaningful. Jensen told UW Medicine he sees it as a treatment people with chronic pain should be offered first.

Why suggestion reaches pain

The mechanism has been studied for decades. In a classic 1997 study in Science, Pierre Rainville and colleagues used hypnotic suggestion to change how unpleasant a painful heat stimulus felt while keeping its intensity the same. The change tracked activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region tied to the emotional weight of pain, while the primary somatosensory cortex stayed largely unchanged. Suggestion spoke to the second voice.

A 2019 meta-analysis by Thompson and colleagues in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews pooled 85 controlled experiments with 3,632 participants. With direct analgesic suggestions, highly suggestible people experienced clinically meaningful pain reduction of around 42 percent, and moderately suggestible people around 29 percent. One caveat matters: those were experiments using induced pain in healthy volunteers. That is why the UW trial, with real patients and real chronic pain, is such a valuable addition.

Bombardier put it well to a local newspaper: the tissue can often heal while the brain stays on high alert. Hypnosis gives the nervous system a direct, experiential message that it can stand down.

Pratyahara: an old map of the same territory

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describe a stage called pratyahara, usually translated as withdrawal of the senses. In sutra 2.54 the senses disengage from their objects and take on the inward nature of the mind; the classical commentary attributed to Vyasa compares this to bees following their queen. The tradition presents this as a skill: attention learns to rest somewhere other than the signal that is shouting.

I read pratyahara as phenomenology, a careful description of what practitioners report. It is no proof of anything mystical. What strikes me is how closely it matches the hypnotic experience of pain: the sensation remains available, and attention gains freedom to hold it lightly, at a distance, softened. The yogis described the destination. Modern trials are measuring the road.

A five-minute practice: the dial

This is a simple self-hypnosis exercise I teach. It complements medical care and replaces none of it.

1. Sit or lie comfortably. Breathe out slowly, a little longer than you breathe in, for ten breaths.
2. Let your eyes close and imagine descending a staircase of ten steps, counting down, feeling heavier with each step.
3. Picture a dial in front of you, numbered zero to ten, showing the current level of your discomfort. Notice its colour and texture.
4. With each exhale, see your hand turn the dial down by half a point. Take your time. Let the body follow the image without forcing anything.
5. Add one sentence of suggestion in your own words, for example: "My body is safe, and this sensation can soften."
6. Count back up from one to five and open your eyes.

Practise daily for two weeks. The UW protocol relied on daily home practice, and repetition is what turns a suggestion into a habit of the nervous system.

Hypnosis for chronic pain in practice

Hypnosis for chronic pain works best as part of a team: a doctor who has assessed the cause, a clear diagnosis, and a hypnotic practice that the person owns. If your pain is new, changing or unexplained, see a physician first. Hypnosis changes how the brain processes pain; it does nothing to the injury that may need treatment.

What moves me about this trial is its humility and its reach. Sessions by phone. Recordings at home. A skill people can keep after the study ends. This is the democratic promise of hypnosis: a technology made of attention and language, available to almost anyone.

For guided recordings you can practise with at home, explore the Hypnosis Library.

Related reading

• Self-Hypnosis for Stress: What Two New Studies Reveal
• Hypnosis Goes Clinical: Three Developments Reshaping the Field
• The Honest Placebo: Why Ritual Heals Even When You Know It's Symbolic

Sources

• Bombardier, C. H., Mendoza, M. E., Thomas, P. A., Barber, J. K., & Jensen, M. P. (2026). Hypnotic cognitive therapy for chronic pain in spinal cord injury: a randomized controlled trial. Neurology. doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000214836. Pain Research Forum summary
• UW Medicine Rehabilitation (2026). UW researchers find hypnosis-based therapy reduces pain after spinal cord injury
• The Spokesman-Review (2026, April 5). Hypnotism can curb chronic pain, University of Washington study finds
• Rainville, P., et al. (1997). Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex. Science, 277(5328), 968 to 971.
• Thompson, T., Terhune, D. B., Oram, C., et al. (2019). The effectiveness of hypnosis for pain relief: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 85 controlled experimental trials. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 99, 298 to 310. IASP record
• Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, 2.54 (pratyahara).