Post – Hegel

English

Health care professionals are exposed to high levels of occupational stress, which can affect both their personal lives and their health. Some choose to engage in practices that provide access to non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSCs), such as meditation or hypnosis. Among these NOSCs, auto-induced cognitive trance (AICT) is a practice that has been recently introduced in France. This study explores how six health care practitioners who practice AICT perceive its effects on their well-being and their clinical practice. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed thematically. The results indicate that the practice of AICT may play a role in emotional regulation by strengthening awareness of one’s body and emotions. It also appears to contribute to processes of personal transformation. In the context of clinical practice, the findings suggest an increased receptivity to patients’ bodily and emotional experiences. Furthermore, for some participants, the practice of AICT fostered a more confident stance and a different mode of listening, giving greater space to intuition and potentially leading to changes in the therapeutic relationship. These preliminary observations highlight the need for further exploration of the mechanisms that may both support caregivers’ well-being and foster the therapeutic alliance, a key factor in therapeutic change.