Last modified: Thursday, September 20, 2007 1:49 PM EDT Local hypnotherapist speaks from personal experience BY REBECCA KEISTER / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF ATTLEBORO -- Ever drive somewhere, maybe the same route you've taken a hundred times before, arrive at your destination and not totally remember getting there? How about when you've become so engrossed watching a television program that someone had to snap their fingers to get your attention? Chances are you have, since most people go into these minor, harmless trances quite often. And, chances are what you didn't know was that during those little zone outs, you actually were hypnotized. "Everyone deals with hypnosis," said Suzanne Silva, a local resident and hypnotherapist. "I'm essentially the facilitator." Hypnotherapy, at least according to Silva and, by all accounts, every major medical association, isn't what a lot of people - those critical or skeptical of hypnotism - might think. It is not sitting in a black room, having a madcap voodoo man wave a golden watch in front you, cooing you to sleep until you're unable to control your actions. (Although people will, and do, Silva says, funny things under a trance, and she does have a crystal ball that swings from a gold string, but that's mostly for show and fun.) Long recognized by leading medical organizations - including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association - hypnotherapy is a form of therapy that uses hypnosis to help patients with a wide range of physical and mental problems, including weight loss, smoking, pain and trouble with sleeping. Injury prompts interest Silva became interested in the profession about four years ago, when substantial back pain from an injury left her using a walker to get around. "I was told by the medical community that's what I'd be doing for my life, and I'd be on narcotics," she said. "I have two children, and that's not what I want to do." A counselor she was seeing for treatment was beginning to use hypnotherapy, and asked Silva to give it a chance. The first time she went into a trance, it was deep enough to encourage her. "From there it just went forward," she said. "Now I'm working full-time and then some, and I have no back pain at all to speak of." She underwent training at South Shore Hypnosis in Hingham, learning from an instructor for the National Guild of Hypnosis, has attended the guild's conventions, taken courses in pain management, sports hypnosis, hypnooncology, and has become a diabetes emotional coach. Last year, she opened Attleboro Hypnosis Center on Robert Street, and is working to become a medical hypnotherapy specialist. As Silva can best explain it, hypnotherapy works like this: Clients are relaxed in an almost day-dreaming state through any number of ways, either with hand pressure points, through talking, and with music. The daydream state is deepened, until the client is at a point in their "trance" where they are open to suggestions, and the hypnotherapist then offers ways in which the client can change unwanted behavior, like smoking, or lessen physical ailments such as back pain. Within a few visits, depending on their problem, clients are "cured." "For me, I remember being so relaxed, and she (the hypnotherapist) did this hand thing, where my right hand became very cold and numb," Silva said. "I placed it against my back and the pain started to dissipate." Dr. David Spiegel, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stand University, told HealthDay Reporter that hypnotherapy is "a form of highly focused attention," that allows clients to take that attention and apply it to their ailments. The only way it can work, Silva cautions, is if you believe it will. People need to be, she said, open to the idea and have a positive attitude. No one, she said, can be truly hypnotized against their will. "You have to have the willingness," she said. "You're not going to do anything you don't want to; you're not going to stay in it forever. The depth depends on the person. And you can refuse the suggestions. You're in full control." Silva has treated smokers, who she says are non-smokers when they walk out of her office, people with weight problems, who are given suggestions on replacing bad eating habits, and even cancer patients. She had one client, a woman who was given six months to live and feared the side effects chemotherapy, whom she treated to handle the assumed stress of the cancer treatment better. "She's now at one a and a half years," Silva said. "All her hair has grown back, and it's curly now. She gets around very well, and they can't understand how she's done so well." "Pain is your brain telling you something is a problem, but you can turn that signal down or off," she said. "Your conscious mind remembers 15 percent of what you hear. Your subconscious remembers 100 percent." Rebecca keister can be reached at 508-236-0336 or rkeister@thesunchronicle.com.