Noesitherapy is a mysterious pain-control technique invented by Spanish surgeon Dr Juan Angel Escudero. It is about your mind having control over your body (noesitherapy can roughly be translated from the Greek as 'mind healing') and was featured in the UK on a BBC programme called Your Life in Their Hands in 1991.

Television Coverage

In the programme, Dr Escudero showed a sceptical reporter that he was able to anaesthetise specific parts of the body. He asked the reporter to roll up his sleeve on his left arm. He then told the reporter to repeat that his arm was anaesthetised, which the reporter did. The doctor pinched the skin on the back of the reporters arm and asked if he felt any pain. The answer was a slightly puzzled 'No'. Dr Escudero then took a needle and passed it through the pinched skin asking as he did it if the reporter felt any pain. The answer was an incredulous 'No!' Dr Escudero went on to pull the needle up and away from the arm making the skin stretch dramatically and the reporter continued to say that he felt no pain.

Surgical Procedures

Later in the programme, we witnessed a patient of Dr Escudero's undergoing bone surgery on her leg. The doctor asked her from time to time to show him that she had plenty of saliva in her mouth - which she was happy to do. He continued with the hammer-and-chisel operation on her leg without her showing any discomfort.

British Doctors Puzzled - But Not by Pain Relief

In the programme, a team of British doctors went out to visit Dr Escudero and said that they had come across hypnotherapy in pain relief and even though they weren't sure how his method worked, they were not overly surprised by it. However, they were surprised when they checked patients' records and found that they had only a fraction of the infections that they would expect in patients having had this level of surgery.

Another of Dr Escudero's patients in the programme had his varicose veins removed while fully conscious. At the end of the operation he jumped off the operating table and walked out of the operating theatre with no pain at all.

Asthma Treatment

In the programme, Dr Escudero was also shown working with patients with ailments not requiring surgery. He managed to help a young boy to overcome the worst of the effects of his asthma using the noesitherapy technique, which includes keeping liquid saliva in your mouth.

Second British TV Crew

Some years later, presenter Carol Vorderman went with a TV crew to film Dr Escudero in action. There is a photograph of one of his patients, going through a surgical procedure on her groin, sitting up and taking a photograph of Ms Vorderman and the film crew in the middle of the surgery. The patient had received no anaesthetic other than Dr Escudero's instructions - including the advice to keep liquid saliva in her mouth.

Hypnosis?

Noesitherapy is often linked to hypnosis on websites and training videos, and people who practise hypnosis may find it useful to learn this technique. Dr Escudero has taught this method to people working in parts of the world where there was little hope of finding an anaesthetist, or where pain-killing drugs would be hard to find or too expensive.

What makes noesitherapy seem unlike hypnosis is that practitioners can use intermediaries. In one example, a child translated the words spoken by the practitioner to his parent, who did not speak English; the result was equally as good.

One Explanation

In the 'fight or flight' response to a situation, the human body closes down support to all but the most essential organs. This causes the mouth to dry out and for saliva to stop being produced. This is a time when our subconscious is least open to suggestion. The alternative vagal¹ state is when we are relaxed and the mind's subconscious is at its most receptive. It is this vagal state that Dr Escudero and other proponents of his therapy want their patients to be in for the psychological anaesthesia to take place.