When colleagues find dentist Graham Temple flat out in his own dental chair, eyes closed and dead to the world – they don't worry.

They know Graham hasn't had a funny turn and isn't even having a catnap.

He is in fact hypnotising himself – something the 55-year-old does several times a day.

Graham, of the Temple Practice in Chapel Allerton, Leeds, is so passionate about hypnosis he has used it on patients while pulling out teeth, used it to cure his own fear of heights and enclosed spaces and used it to cure clients of phobias. He also teaches it to other dentists.

His interest began when he saw a stage hypnotist and then spotted a book about how to be a hypnotist.

Graham tried it out and was so successful he accidentally hypnotised his own two children.

He said: "I read the instructions out loud while my children were playing on the floor. The next thing I knew I'd hypnotised them. Children can be very susceptible to hypnotism.

"After that I thought I was a brilliant hypnotist and would use it on friends and family – but eventually someone took me to one side and suggested that if I was going to use this technique I should really do it therapeutically. Hypnosis is easy it's what you do with it that counts."

So Graham joined the Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis and began training properly, and eventually started to use hypnosis in the surgery. Since then, his patients have had fillings carried out under hypnosis and some have even had teeth extracted.

He said: "Extractions are quite rare but I have done many fillings under hypnosis.

"If someone was refusing anaesthetic because of a needle phobia though, I would be more interested in using hypnosis to get them over the needle phobia, that would be more useful to them."

In his practice Graham, who has been a dentist for more than 30 years, will also use hypnosis to help with issues other than pain relief, such as to help patients stop grinding their teeth or even to stop bleeding.

He also helps clients with phobias outside of dentistry and those with habit disorders like thumbsucking

Graham said: "Hypnosis is not actually something you do to other people, it is something you do to yourself by following other people's suggestions.

"There is a difference between stage hypnosis and hypnosis in a clinical setting because the aim of the stage version is to please the audience and the aim of ethical hypnosis is to make people feel better.

"It is very hard to do harm by hypnotising someone, though you might not be using to it actually help them. People differ in their ability to accept hypnosis."

Graham hypnotises himself two or three times a day, beginning with a session first thing in the morning and has tried sky diving, bungee jumping and potholing, despite his fears of heights and enclosed spaces.

"I would have run screaming from the suggestion of doing any of that before I discovered hypnosis."

His wife Gill also gave birth to their two younger children, now teenagers, under hypnosis.

"We had sessions throughout her pregnancy and then on the night before she was due to be induced we did some hypnosis to establish communication between her and the baby.

"Within a couple of hours she went into labour and didn't need either to be induced or to be given pain relief."


A phobic aged four phobiastarted aged 4 aatarted aged four


Case study

James Warne, 41, a married father of three who works as brand manager for car dealership Richard Alexander Seat in Huddersfield, is a patient of Graham's.

He was cured of a needle phobia which used to leave him nauseous, fainting and sweating after being regressed to the age of four under hypnosis.

He said: "Half of it was fear of the needle and half was fear of the way I knew I would react to the needle.

"It got to the point where I knew I had to do something about it."

James had sessions of hypnosis to make sure it worked for him and was then taken back to the age of four.

He said: "A nurse had come out to the village where I lived to do booster injections.

"My mum was also a nurse and I was sitting in the van where it was happening while they talked and the visiting nurse gave injections.

Shoes

"Under hypnosis I could see myself even down to the shoes I was wearing, and I could smell the smell of the van.

"I watched all these children being injected and I became frightened so when it was my turn I passed out.

"That feeling of fear had stayed with me. It was as if a switch in my brain was still set to when I was a child and it had to be set to the older me.

"Graham talked to me under hypnosis about how it was just a small amount of pain and nothing to upset an adult.

"Being hypnotised was a strange feeling. I felt like I wasn't hypnotised but then if Graham gave me an instruction, to move my hand for example, I would do it involuntarily. I always felt like I could get out of it if I wanted to, though."

"I still don't like needles but I don't go into warp factor when I see one now."


Steps to numbness

Graham often uses the following technique for his dental patients, once they are hypnotised.

He asks them to imagine they have placed their hand in a bucket of ice until the hand goes numb.

Once the patient feels ready, the hand is tested by being pinched or having a needle inserted into it to make sure it really is numb.

The patient is then asked to touch the relevant part of their face, to transfer the numbness to that area

Graham then carries out the dental work as if the patient had been anaesthetised.