Why Dubai's High-Performers Are Turning to Hypnosis

Dubai rewards a particular kind of person: ambitious, fast, relentlessly switched on. I have worked with many of them. Founders, executives, traders, people who built something from nothing in a city that moves at an unusual speed. And more and more of them find their way to hypnosis.

They usually arrive saying they cannot switch off, cannot sleep, feel wired and flat at the same time, or perform brilliantly at work and feel absent at home.

Here is what I tell them about what hypnosis can and cannot do, and what the evidence says.

The evidence, honestly stated

The most comprehensive overview to date, published in Frontiers in Psychology by Jenny Rosendahl and colleagues, reviewed 49 meta-analyses covering 261 primary studies on hypnosis for mental and physical health. Effects were medium or large in more than half the comparisons, with the strongest evidence for pain and medical procedures. The authors also noted that many of the reviews were of low methodological quality, so the field still needs better trials (Rosendahl et al., Frontiers in Psychology).

On sleep, a 2018 systematic review by Chamine, Atchley and Oken in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that more than half of the studies reported improved sleep outcomes with hypnosis, while calling for more rigorous research.

That is the honest state of play. Hypnosis is a credible, evidence-informed tool with real limits. Anyone promising it will turn you into a superhuman is overselling.

Why it suits high performers

Three features make hypnosis a particularly good fit for people who live in their heads.

It works with the narrator. High performers usually have an exceptional inner manager: planning, monitoring, evaluating. That faculty, largely run by the prefrontal cortex, is what made them successful. It is also what refuses to stop at night. Hypnosis is one of the few practices that gives that manager structured permission to step back, while still feeling purposeful enough for a goal-oriented mind to accept.

It is efficient. Many executives try meditation and quit, because sitting with an unguided mind feels like failure. A guided hypnotic session gives the mind a track to follow. Twenty minutes can produce a deeper state than an hour of struggling alone.

It targets specific patterns. Hypnosis is suggestion-driven, so it can be aimed: a pre-presentation anxiety response, a 3 a.m. waking habit, a compulsive phone check. Clear targets suit people who like clear outcomes.

What I see beneath the presenting problem

Here is the part the corporate wellness brochures leave out. Behind most cases of "I can't switch off" sits a relationship with control. The same capacity that runs a company can make it hard to receive: rest, care, pleasure, intimacy. Many high performers have a nervous system that only knows two settings, on and collapsed.

Hypnosis teaches a third setting: alert relaxation, where the body is at rest and the mind is quietly present. Once someone learns that state, it tends to spread into sleep, into relationships and into how they lead.

A starting practice

Tonight, lying in bed, breathe in for four and out for eight, ten times. Then count slowly backwards from 100, and between each number, say silently "deeper." When you lose your place, you are already where you were trying to go.

For private hypnosis, in person and online, see Sessions.

Related reading

• Power Dynamics as a Wellness Practice
• How Hypnosis Rewires Your Relationship with Money
• Can You Really Be Hypnotised? What the Science Says

Sources

• Rosendahl, J., et al. (2024). Meta-analytic evidence on the efficacy of hypnosis for mental and somatic health issues: a 20-year perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. Full text
• Chamine, I., Atchley, R., & Oken, B. S. (2018). Hypnosis intervention effects on sleep outcomes: a systematic review. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 14(2).