Maybe you saw it in cartoons as a kid or at a show in Vegas. You might think at best, it’s something entertaining; at worst, it’s something akin to witchcraft — but hypnosis certainly isn’t anything with practical health benefits, right?

Wrong, according to a growing number of people who have sought it out as an alternative to mainstream medicine and even according to some mainstream medical professionals. Among the organizations that support hypnosis as a legitimate form of treatment is the Mayo Clinic, which cites it as an effective way to address health conditions ranging from managing pain from chronic illnesses to easing the symptoms of asthma to kicking bad habits such as smoking.

“A lot of people are beginning to look for alternative treatments,” says Kim Frederick, a clinical hypnotherapist at Body Business Massage & Wellness, 3408 Ashland Ave. in St. Joseph. “Some people have seen my (hypnosis) stage shows and gone, ‘If people are going to do this crazy stuff (when hypnotized), maybe it really does have the power to help me.’”

The “crazy stuff” — such as dancing or acting like an animal — that people do in settings in which hypnosis is used to entertain is very different than the outcome of hypnosis used for medical purposes, but the methods used to achieve them are similar. Hypnotherapists typically use repetitive speech and soothing tones to induce a deeply relaxed, trance-like state in which the barrier — called the critical factor — between the part of the mind that is logical (or conscious) and the part that holds emotions and memories (the subconscious) is opened.

A person can never be hypnotized against his will, Ms. Frederick says, and even under hypnosis, he can’t be made to do anything that he wouldn’t do otherwise. What he can do is access his subconscious and, from there, deal with a variety of physical or emotional problems.

In her own life, Ms. Frederick experienced healing through hypnosis while attending the Hypnotherapy Academy of America in Santa Fe, N.M., in 2006. There, she underwent hypnosis to deal with a trauma she experienced as a child. Although she’d worked through this on a conscious level already, she says certain emotional and physical problems she’d had off and on for years weren’t healed until she could return and deal with the trauma as she’d actually experienced it when she was 6.

“A lot of physical problems have emotional points of origin,” Ms. Frederick says. “People will call me and say ‘My headache’s gone, and I haven’t had another since I saw you last.’”

This was the experience of Zoann Jackson, a home health and hospice nurse with Frederick Medical Center in Chillicothe, Mo. Ms. Jackson first went to Ms. Frederick due to depression, stress and headaches she was experiencing, and after four or five sessions, she says she’s seen considerable improvement in all those areas.

“I didn’t really want to take any more pills,” she says. “I just decided to try another way, and it’s helped a lot.”

But this isn’t to say that hypnosis can treat physical problems only when they’re tied to emotion. Studies have shown that people often heal faster when they have a positive mindset, Ms. Frederick says, and hypnosis can help with this by putting positive images of healing into the subconscious mind. In addition, it’s been proven to help manage pain by taking people to a place in their minds where they’re just not aware of it.

Witnessing this is what first fueled Victor Young’s interest in hypnosis. Mr. Young, who is licensed as a hypnotherapist and also works as an account executive at the News-Press, saw hypnosis greatly lessen the pain his father experienced due to stage-five cancer that had caused tumors in his brain.

“The hypnotherapist was just talking to him, but over 45 minutes to an hour, I could see him change,” Mr. Young says. “It took away his pain, and he actually regained a good portion of his speech and was less irritable.”

A couple of years later, Mr. Young again saw hypnosis’ power to take away pain when, as a student at the Hypnosis Motivational Institute in Tarzana, Calif., he used it to help a woman give birth naturally. In the delivery room, he says, there were times when she seemed a little uncomfortable, but she never screamed or did anything else to indicate she was in great pain.

Similarly, hypnosis can be used during certain medical and dental procedures rather than anesthesia. Although this might seem unbelievable to someone who’s never experienced it, Mr. Young says the trance-like state hypnosis causes is similar to what happens when you’re driving a very familiar road and realize after a period of time that you’ve “zoned out” and haven’t consciously experienced the past few minutes.

“The human mind is far more powerful than we can possibly understand,” he says. “I think we’re a really medicated society, and hypnosis is a good alternative to that.”

Lifestyles reporter Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.