Does It Work?
Does Hypnosis Work? The Newest and Largest Review Says Less Than I Was Taught
I have been doing this for fourteen years and I sell these recordings. In February the largest review ever run on hypnosis for pain landed, and it found no advantage over lying down and relaxing. This page is me reading it in public.
The short answer, before the detail.For some things, sometimes, a bit better than nothing — and usually no better than the cheaper, duller thing you could do instead. Hypnosis has never been shown to beat relaxation for pain. It has never been shown to help anyone stop smoking. Its best result is in irritable bowel syndrome, and even there the recording loses to a real therapist.
If you came here to be told it works, I cannot do that honestly, and a page that told you so would be worth nothing to you.
Written by Ernest McLeodClinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. About Ernest →
I earn a commission when someone buys a session through this site. That is exactly why this page exists in the form it does. Read it and then decide whether I have earned the sale.
What does the best evidence on hypnosis actually say?
Pain was always the strong suit. If you trained in hypnosis any time in the last thirty years, pain is where you were told the evidence lived. So the right place to start is the biggest look anyone has taken at it.
Yim and Derbyshire screened 17,525 records and pooled 106 studies in the European Journal of Pain in 2026. Against doing nothing at all, hypnosis produced a standardised effect of −0.33 across 57 studies and 4,572 people. Small, but real.
Then they compared it against things that are not nothing. Against plain relaxation, −0.13. Against simply teaching someone about their pain, −0.17. Against CBT, −0.32. It did not beat a single one of them.
Read that twice, because the industry has not. The figure my profession still quotes is Milling’s 2021 meta-analysis at d = 0.60. That number is not fraudulent. It is just no longer the middle of the evidence — it is the optimistic edge of it, and the field has moved underneath it.
What “no better than relaxation” does and does not mean.It does not mean nothing happened. People in those trials did feel better. It means the hypnosis part — the induction, the suggestion, the thing you are being charged for — has not been shown to add anything on top of lying still with your eyes shut.
That is a real finding and it should change what anyone is willing to claim. It should not be read as “hypnosis is fake”. Those are different sentences.
Where is the evidence least bad?
Irritable bowel syndrome, and it is not close. Gut-directed hypnotherapy is the one application with a protocol, a mechanism people can argue about seriously, and gastroenterology departments that use it. If you only ever believe one claim made for hypnosis, make it that one.
But hold on to what is being claimed. The evidence there is for a structured four-to-six week course delivered by a clinician. It is not evidence for a single recording, and anyone selling you a single recording on the strength of it — including me, if I were careless — is borrowing credibility that does not transfer.
Does a recording work as well as a hypnotherapist?
No, and this is the question that matters most on a site that sells recordings.
Twice now somebody has put the two head to head. In 2000, Forbes and colleagues randomised 52 people with treatment-resistant IBS to six sessions with a hypnotherapist or to a tape. By intention to treat, 76 per cent improved with the therapist and 59 per cent with the tape. The difference was not statistically significant, and a blinded assessor rated 52 per cent improved in each group. Their conclusion is worth having in full: the tape was “probably inferior” but its “ease and economy” made it worth recommending as a second-line option.
Then in 2026, in Gut, Snijkers and colleagues ran 230 people across three arms: a therapist in the room, a self-guided app, or psychoeducation. Abdominal pain response came out at 48 per cent for the therapist, 33 per cent for the app, 22 per cent for psychoeducation. The app beat doing nothing much. It failed its non-inferiority test against the therapist outright.
So the honest position on everything I sell: a recording is the cheap version, it is probably weaker than a person, and the two studies that actually checked both found it came out lower. If you can afford a practitioner and you have a specific problem, see one. That advice costs me money and I am giving it anyway.
Who paid for the study is doing a lot of work
Here are two real randomised trials of app-delivered gut hypnotherapy, both with more than 200 people, both published in serious journals, neither of them fraudulent.
- Anderson and colleagues, American Journal of Gastroenterology, 2025. 244 people. The app beat the control 81 per cent to 63 per cent. Funded by Mindset Health Pty Ltd — the company that sells the app — and one of the authors developed it. The comparator was the same programme with the hypnotherapy taken out.
- Snijkers and colleagues, Gut, 2026. 230 people. The app lost to a human therapist, 33 per cent to 48 per cent, and failed non-inferiority. Funded by ZonMw, the Dutch government’s health research body. No industry money. The comparator was a real clinician.
Same technology, opposite headline. The difference is what you compare it against and who signed the cheque. You now know more about reading health claims than most of the people writing them.
How a number gets from a study to an advertisement
My favourite example, because it is so clean. A 2023 retrospective evaluation of an IBS hypnotherapy app reported that 64 per cent of users responded. True, as written.
Follow the denominator. 2,843 people started the free sessions. 1,428 bought the programme. 253 finished all 42 sessions. Outcome data existed for 190. The 64 per cent is 64 per cent of those 190 — about seven per cent of everyone who started. The authors were straight about it; their conclusion opens with the words “adherence… was low”. The number went out into the world without its denominator anyway.
Whenever you see a percentage on a page selling you something, ask what it is a percentage of. It is the single most useful question in this entire field.
Start with the question you actually came with
Five questions bring almost everyone here. Each has its own page, because each has a different answer and squashing them together would let the good news cover for the bad.
| If you are asking… | Read | The short answer |
|---|---|---|
| “Will hypnosis help me lose weight?” | Hypnosis for weight loss | The best trial ran a year and missed its primary outcome. Not a weight-loss treatment. |
| “Will it get me off cigarettes?” | Hypnosis for quitting smoking | No. The RACGP files it under ineffective. Ring 13 7848 instead, free. |
| “What will a hypnotherapist charge me?” | What hypnotherapy costs in Australia | $150–$280 a session, no Medicare, and anyone may legally call themselves one. |
| “Can I get this without paying?” | What is genuinely free | Yes. A British professional body gives away fourteen recordings, no signup. |
| “Is an app better than a download?” | Do hypnosis apps work? | One has real trials behind it. It also costs A$249 a year. |
| “Is hypnosis even real?” | Is hypnosis real? | Yes: responses to suggestion are real and measurable, and you stay in control. How best to explain it is still debated. |
| “Can it stop me drinking?” | Hypnosis for alcohol | Recordings can support cutting back, not dependence. If you drink heavily every day, see a GP before you stop. |
| “Will it stop the gambling?” | Hypnosis for gambling | A recording can be one part of a plan. Start with the free helpline, 1800 858 858, any hour. |
So why do I still sell these?
Because “no better than relaxation” is not the same as “no good”, and because of what the alternative actually is for most people who land here.
A session is US$18.95 with ninety days to get your money back. A hypnotherapist in Australia is $150 to $280 an hour with no Medicare rebate. A psychologist is around $245 with about $100 back, ten times a year. For somebody at one in the morning who is not going to book anything, a recording that is at least as good as structured relaxation, that they will actually press play on, is a reasonable thing to own.
What I will not do is tell you it is a treatment. It is a self-help recording with a modest and contested evidence base, sold by someone who would rather you knew that before you paid than after.
And if the honest answer for you is the free ones, they are on this site too, with nothing for me in it.
Is hypnosis safe?
Bollinger went through the adverse events recorded in hypnosis clinical trials in 2018 and found serious adverse events attributable to hypnosis at zero per cent, and other adverse events at 0.47 per cent. Reassuring, and there is a catch the author names himself: those trials used hypnosis for medical conditions and procedures, not for psychiatric ones. He says future work needs to assess harms “especially when tested in samples with mental health disorders”.
Which is to say the safety evidence is weakest exactly where the caution lists point. Victoria’s Better Health Channel says to avoid hypnosis if you have severe depression, psychosis, a drug or alcohol problem, or chronic pain a doctor has not yet investigated. That last one matters more than people think: pain that has not been diagnosed should be diagnosed, not relaxed.
And the plain one. Never listen at the wheel, or anywhere else that needs your attention.
Common questions
Does hypnotherapy work?
For some conditions it performs slightly better than no treatment, and in the largest review to date — Yim and Derbyshire 2026, 106 studies in the European Journal of Pain — it did not perform better than relaxation, pain education or CBT for pain. Its strongest application is irritable bowel syndrome. There is no good evidence it helps people stop smoking.
Is hypnotherapy real, or is it a placebo?
The responses to hypnosis are real and measurable; that is not seriously disputed. Whether it is a distinct state of mind is still argued among researchers, and so is whether it adds anything beyond the relaxation and expectation that come with it. For pain, the 2026 evidence says it does not add a detectable amount. That is a finding about the technique, not an accusation of fakery.
What is hypnotherapy?
Guided attention. A practitioner or a recording walks you into a focused, relaxed state and then offers suggestions aimed at a specific problem. You stay aware and in control throughout; it is much closer to a guided meditation than to anything you have seen on a stage.
Do hypnosis recordings work as well as seeing a hypnotherapist?
Probably not. Both studies that compared them directly found the recording came out lower — Forbes 2000 in IBS, and Snijkers 2026 in Gut, where a self-guided app reached 33 per cent response against 48 per cent for an in-person therapist and failed its non-inferiority test. Recordings are the cheaper, weaker version, and their honest appeal is cost and access.
Why does this site sell hypnosis audio if the evidence is this thin?
Because at US$18.95 with a ninety-day refund it is a low-stakes thing to try, and because for many people the realistic alternative is nothing rather than a $250 appointment. I sell them as self-help recordings with a modest evidence base, not as treatment, and I say so on every page.
Does hypnosis work for everyone?
No. Responsiveness to hypnotic suggestion varies a lot between people and is reasonably stable within a person, which is one reason trial results scatter so widely. Better Health Channel puts it plainly: hypnosis does not work for everyone.
Free and confidential, open now. Tap to call.
Where these numbers come from
- Yim TH, Derbyshire SWG. A systematic review of hypnosis for clinical pain relief. Eur J Pain. 2026;30(8):e70369. doi:10.1002/ejp.70369
- Milling LS, Valentine KE, LoStimolo LM, et al. Hypnosis and the alleviation of clinical pain: a comprehensive meta-analysis. Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2021;69(3):297-322. doi:10.1080/00207144.2021.1920330
- Forbes A, MacAuley S, Chiotakakou-Faliakou E. Hypnotherapy and therapeutic audiotape: effective in previously unsuccessfully treated irritable bowel syndrome? Int J Colorectal Dis. 2000;15(5-6):328-34. doi:10.1007/s003840000248
- Snijkers JTW, Bosman MHMA, Winkens B, et al. In-person therapist-delivered hypnotherapy versus smartphone-based self-guided hypnotherapy in IBS: a multicentre three-armed randomised controlled trial. Gut. 2026 Jul 25:gutjnl-2026-338385. Online ahead of print. doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2026-338385
- Anderson EJ, Peters SL, Gibson PR, et al. Comparison of digitally delivered gut-directed hypnotherapy program with an active control for irritable bowel syndrome. Am J Gastroenterol. 2025;120(2):440-448. doi:10.14309/ajg.0000000000002921
- Peters SL, Gibson PR, Halmos EP. Smartphone app-delivered gut-directed hypnotherapy improves symptoms of self-reported irritable bowel syndrome: a retrospective evaluation. Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2023;35(4):e14533. doi:10.1111/nmo.14533
- The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. Supporting smoking cessation: a guide for health professionals. 2nd ed. East Melbourne, Vic: RACGP; 2019 (updated 2021). racgp.org.au
- Quit. Ways to get in touch – Quitline support [Internet]. Melbourne: Quit (Cancer Council Victoria); [cited 2026 Sep 24]. quit.org.au
- British Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis. Free audio downloads [Internet]. BSCAH; [cited 2026 Sep 24]. bscah.co.uk
- Bollinger JW. The rate of adverse events related to hypnosis during clinical trials. Am J Clin Hypn. 2018;60(4):357-366. doi:10.1080/00029157.2017.1315927
- Better Health Channel (Victorian Government). Hypnosis [Internet]. Melbourne: Victorian Government; [cited 2026 Sep 24]. betterhealth.vic.gov.au
I will always show you where a number came from. It is a low bar. It is remarkable how few clear it.
Related
- AnxietySix sessions, and what the trials on anxiety actually support.
- SleepWhere a recording is closest to a fair bet, and why.
- All 56 sessionsThe whole catalogue, with prices and running times.
- Where it holds up: pain142 trials and 9,238 patients. The strongest ground hypnosis has.
- Where it holds up: IBSThe only use national guidelines name by name, and how far that stretches.
- Where it holds up: before surgeryLess anxiety, and post-operative nausea at less than half.
If one page on this site makes you spend less money than you arrived intending to, I would rather it were this one.
These are self-help audio sessions, not medical treatment, a diagnosis, or a substitute for professional care. No therapeutic outcome is claimed for any session sold on this site. Hypnosis is not a treatment for any condition described here. Chronic pain should be investigated by a doctor before it is managed with anything. Better Health Channel advises avoiding hypnosis with severe depression, psychosis, or a drug or alcohol problem. Never listen while driving or operating machinery, and do not stop prescribed medication without your doctor’s approval.