In the movies, hypnosis is often portrayed as a control tactic — to get people to commit crimes or fall in love, for instance. Hypnotists are often also seen as wacky magicians who put people on stage and get them to neigh when they hear the word “horse.”

The way hypnosis is shown in the media may make it seem like it’s just for fun, but there’s more to hypnosis than its entertainment factor. In fact, hypnosis can benefit your health and well-being.

“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,” says Alison T. Grant, MD, physician at Penn Family and Internal Medicine Cherry Hill.

Hypnosis usually includes suggestions for relaxation, calmness, and overall well-being, which may last just during the session but can sometimes be reactivated later by the patient. Common approaches involve instructions to think about pleasant experiences or verbal cues to draw you into a trance-like state.

Hypnotherapy — which is the form of therapy that uses hypnosis as either a standalone or supplemental treatment — can benefit your health in a variety of ways.

Here are six common health issues hypnosis can help:
 
1. Trouble Sleeping, Insomnia, and Sleepwalking

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.

If you’re a sleepwalker, hypnosis can also train you to wake up when you feel your feet hit the floor and help you avoid sleepwalking escapades.

And if you just want to sleep a little better, hypnosis can help with that, too. Learning self-hypnosis techniques can increase the amount of time you sleep and the amount of time spent in deep sleep — the type of sleep you need to wake up feeling refreshed.

How it works: Verbal cues put you in a trance-like state, similar to how it feels when you’re so involved in a book or movie that you don’t notice what’s going on around you. After hypnosis — or even during — you’ll fall asleep.