Rajni Vyas, Radha Mohan, & Bhaskar Vyas — Vadodara.

Recently, modern medicine has undergone a major paradigm shift from the Cartesian mechanistic view of the body as separate from the mind.. A step ahead, the duality between body and mind has effaced: the concept of a single entity, body-mind, is fast emerging. The molecular biological basis of emotions has been deciphered and subsequently, the conceptual division between the sciences of physiology, psychology, neuroscience, immunology and endocrinology has come to be a historical artifact. Thoughts have been equated with floating particles in the bloodstream and there is a conceptual shift as to how the information is transmitted noncontiguously by information substances. This would mean that for most thoughts and particularly for thoughts with emotional content, there is a corresponding physiological state that is encoded as memory by the entire body. Today, guided by the spirit of scientific inquiry and experimentation, we have made great leaps in the understanding of altered states of consciousness and its applications to psychotherapy that extends beyond the mere psychological domain. A single currency, as body-mind has already emerged and the recent understanding of molecular biological events including the modalities of gene expression has brought about the role of hypnosis in sharp focus. Based on these scientific advances, the presentation makes a strong case for the inclusion of hypnotherapy in the curricula of psychology.