(Headline) Alexa, Hypnotize Me
Dec. 28, 2020 12:22 pm ET
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Reveri Health, one of a new generation of hypnosis programs and apps that make the practice easily accessible at home, then required her to take part in interactive, self-hypnosis sessions at home for a month. After two of the digital sessions, she was shocked to discover that she no longer felt like smoking. “The craving was really gone,” she says. “I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make sense.”
She hasn’t had a cigarette since. “This hypnosis is some crazy-ass voodoo,” she says. “And I mean that in a good way.”
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Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors have started to take notice, creating new apps that aim to popularize hypnosis in a similar way to meditation, which until recently was also considered fringe. A safer alternative to medications like opioids, hypnosis can be a helpful tool for combating the stress and anxiety caused by the pandemic, doctors and researchers say, especially as it can be done successfully via recording or over Zoom. But while many people are in need of stress relief right now, hypnosis still has a strong stigma that often prevents them from trying it.
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Reveri Health, which is free and can be accessed through Amazon Alexa, launched in August and has about 2,200 users, Dr. Spiegel says. Mindset Health, a hypnotherapy startup, received $1.1 million in venture funding a year ago, says Alex Naoumidis, its co-founder and CEO. The company’s two hypnosis apps, Mindset and Nerva, have a total of roughly 6,200 paying users, Mr. Naoumidis says.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/alexa-hypnotize-me-11609176156