In healthcare, hypnosis can be used as a psychological treatment to help you experience changes in sensations, perceptions, thoughts, or behaviors. It’s done in a clinical setting and performed by a trained, licensed healthcare professional, like a psychologist or a physician.

Hypnosis may be a helpful tool if you sleepwalk or struggle with falling and staying asleep. If you have insomnia, hypnosis can relax you enough to get you to sleep more easily.

Relaxation techniques — including hypnosis — can sometimes ease anxiety. Hypnosis tends to be more effective in people whose anxiety stems from a chronic health condition — such as heart disease — rather than from a generalized anxiety disorder.

Hypnosis can help with pain — like what’s experienced after surgery or from migraines or tension headaches. And it can help with chronic pain, too. People with pain related to conditions like arthritis, cancer, sickle cell disease, and fibromyalgia, — as well as people who have lower-back pain — may experience relief from hypnosis.