Explore every episode of the podcast Below The Surface: Hypnotherapy For Endometriosis and Adenomyosis

Glove anaesthesia is one of the oldest hypnotic techniques. James Esdaile used it for surgical anaesthesia in the 1840s and 50s in Calcutta — performing hundreds of operations under hypnotic anaesthesia alone, before chemical anaesthesia was widely available. Milton Erickson refined the technique for chronic pain management in the mid-twentieth century. Mark Jensen incorporates it as a core technique in his Hypnosis for Chronic Pain Management protocol.

The mechanism is distinct from the dial. The dial works on central amplification — turning down the volume of the pain signal in the brain. Glove anaesthesia works on local perception — the area itself becomes less sensitive through the suggestion of anaesthesia transferred from the hand. Some listeners respond more strongly to one technique than the other

This is the recording for anger and grief. The anger of being dismissed for years. The grief of the years that pain has taken. The grief of fertility, for some of you. The anger that nothing was named soon enough.

This is a different kind of episode. We are not going to try to make the anger smaller. We are not going to reframe it into something more comfortable. Some things are just unjust. The medical system's seven-to-ten-year average for diagnosing endometriosis is one of them. Your anger is correct.

The technique you are going to learn tonight is called the safe place. It is one of Jensen's core techniques — pleasant-place imagery, used here for emotional pain rather than physical pain.

This is the recording for anxiety. Specifically, the anxiety that lives inside chronic pain. The constant body scanning. The watching for the next twinge. The bracing for the next flare. The way the mind cannot rest because it is always one step ahead of the body.

When your body has hurt you for years, of course your mind learns to scan it. Of course the nervous system is on high alert. This is not anxiety in the abstract. This is post-traumatic vigilance, and it makes complete sense.

The technique you are going to learn tonight is called numbing. It is one of Jensen's core techniques. Normally numbing is used for unpleasant physical sensation — but here we are using it for the unpleasant somatic sensation of being on alert. The watchful body, the pricking awareness, the buzzing readiness — all of it being numbed. Soft, warm, calm, anaesthetic-like quiet, settling over the body.

This is the recording for fatigue. The bone-deep tiredness of chronic illness. The fatigue that does not lift after sleep, that feels like the body is running on a battery that won't fully charge.

This is different from ordinary tiredness. The fatigue of endometriosis and adenomyosis is the inflammatory tax — the body using energy to manage chronic inflammation, chronic pain, an immune system that is not behaving the way it should. There is real biological work being done. You are not lazy. You are not weak.

The technique you are going to learn tonight is called deep relaxation. In Jensen's protocol, deep relaxation is sometimes the induction, and sometimes — as tonight — it is the entire treatment. For inflammatory fatigue, the rest is the medicine. Resting deeply is the most productive thing the body can do for the inflammation.

This is the recording for the belly. The visceral pain. The pressure. The bloating that some of you call endo belly. The way the abdomen swells until clothes don't fit, until you look pregnant by evening even though you ate the same as yesterday.

What is happening in your belly is not laziness or eating wrong. It is inflammation. The gut and the pelvic organs share nerve pathways. When one is inflamed, the other reacts. This is a real, well-documented mechanism called visceral hypersensitivity.

The technique you are going to learn tonight is called cooling. It is one of Jensen's core techniques for hot, inflamed, irritated sensation. We are going to imagine cool blue water settling into the belly — slowly, gently, completely. The cool dispersing the heat. The inflammation calming. The visceral system quietening.

Period pain that stops you functioning is not just bad periods. It has never been just bad periods. Your body is doing something real.

The technique you are going to learn tonight is called sensory substitution. It is one of the core techniques in Jensen's clinical hypnosis protocol. We are not going to try to silence the cramping. We are going to imagine, in the same place, a different sensation — a gentle, warm, rhythmic pulsing. The brain learns to perceive that area differently. The cramping recedes; the pulsing comes forward

This is the recording for a pelvic pain flare. Use this when the pain is loud — the sharp, drawing, deep-down ache of an endo or adeno flare.

The technique you are going to learn tonight is called the pain dial. It is drawn from the protocol developed by Mark Jensen at the University of Washington for the clinical hypnotic treatment of chronic pain. The dial gives the brain something to do with the pain signal — turn it down. Not silence it. Turn it down. The signal is real. The volume is yours.

Welcome to Below the Surface — a hypnotherapy series for women living with endometriosis and adenomyosis. If you've found your way here, you've probably been carrying pain for a long time. Maybe it took years to get a diagnosis. Maybe you still don't have one. Maybe you've been told it was anxiety, or stress, or just bad periods. This series exists because the gap between what these conditions do to a body and what the medical system has time to address is huge — and hypnotherapy is one of the most evidence-based, underused tools for closing it.