Dr Gail Ironson, pHD, a leading mind-body medicine researcher and professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Miami runs the Positive Survivors Research Centre at the University. In her studies, she found that there were 2 interesting predictors of how fast HIV progressed. The first was their view of God,. Those who saw God as judgemental had a T cell decline more than twice the rate of those who don’t see God as judgemental.

The 2nd major factor Dr Ironson noted was the participant’s personal relationship with God. Her study found that patients who did not believe that God loved them lost helper Tcells three times faster than those who believed God loved them. She also found that those who felt a sense of peace also had lower levels of cortisol-the catabolic stress hormone.

The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations" is fundamental to the study of cognition,” according to Michael I. Posner, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of Oregan. In my experience, positive suggestion in hypnotherapy can help to introduce new possibilities and belief systems to expand our perceptions and potentials.

When our brain senses something, raw sensory data is carried to a part of our brain that creates a comprehensible, conscious impression, so the data is moving from the bottom to the top. A Harvard study showed that the number of nerve fibres carrying information down involved 10 times as many nerve fibres. What this feedback circuit means is that what people see, hear, feel and believe is top down processing.. What you see is not always what you get as what you see depends on the framework built by experience which interprets the raw information. “ Top-down processes override sensory, or bottom-up information, “said Dr. Stephen M. Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard

This top-down processing supports the ‘placebo effect’, positive talk therapy and meditation as the beliefs support the results. This brain structure also explains the success of hypnosis where positive suggestions overcome reality. (“This is your Brain Under Hypnosis,” Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times, November 22, 2005).