The pain was unbelievable - I couldn't sleep because of it. It was so bad, it took over my life."

Pat Taylor describes how she suffered for years with sciatica, the painful condition caused by irritation of the main nerve into the leg, the sciatic nerve.

"It was at the bottom of my spine, between the fourth and fifth vertebrae, and ran down my right side," she says. "I had to lie on my stomach, and to get any sleep I would crouch on my hands and knees. I dreaded going to bed."

Pat, of Burley-in-Wharfedale, was prescribed medication by her doctor, but the drug made her sick. "It was so bad I ended up on a drip," she recalls.

This went on for three years until Pat's daughter, Jill, came across what she believed could be a possible remedy for her mum's condition.

Jill was attending sessions with a hypnotherapist and mentioned her mother's predicament. The therapist, expert practitioner Patricia Jackson, felt she might be able to help. Pat was sceptical but agreed to visit Patricia's Bingley practice.

"I did not think it would do any good, but I felt I had nothing to lose by trying," she says.

Patricia showed her new client how to carry out a tapping' procedure, following a route along her body.

"At my sessions she would ask me things like How is the pain today, on a scale of from one to ten?'. She gave me a video to take home, showing me how to do it myself."

Pat was asked how, if she had the chance, she would take away the pain she was feeling. The pensioner replied that she would squeeze a tube of gel to fill in the cracks.

"So, during my hypnotherapy, she gave me an actual tube and I pretended to do it," Pat adds. She was also asked to imagine going downstairs into a room and asking workmen to inject concrete into her back. "It seemed daft, but it was good fun."

Amazingly, Pat - a retired nursing home proprietor - began to feel less pain.

"I would watch the half-hour video at home and do the tapping, but I would never need to play it all the way through. I would just go off to sleep."

She was stunned when, after four sessions, her pain had disappeared.

"I found it hard to believe, but it had gone," says Pat, who has six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. "It has not vanished without trace; I know it is there because every now and again it gives me a little jiggle, but it is not a problem.

"It has given me a new lease of life. Before, I was so weary; now I feel invigorated."

Hypnotherapist Patricia says: "Pat told me how the pain had taken over her life. She felt she had reached the end of the line and was becoming very distressed.

"She described it as screaming pain' and showed me how she had pressed on the area so much that it had made an indentation in her leg.

"The area of treatment that helped her the most was where you get clients to imagine they are sitting on a camera on a voyage through their own body. The subconscious mind is very powerful and is in control.

"I then carried out glove anaesthesia', in which the client imagines that their hand is freezing cold. They then transfer the feeling to whatever part of their body is painful, and that part will go numb."

The subconscious mind, Patricia says, is the key. "The subconscious is very powerful, but not very bright. It believes what you tell it and takes things very literally.

"The problem lay between her fourth and fifth vertebrae, so I asked Pat to think about what she felt she should do to make things better. She said she would squeeze some gel between the vertebrae."

Patricia asked Pat to imagine that happening, to pretend to be squeezing the gel. "Initially, she was sceptical, but she is very pleased with the outcome," says the hypnotherapist, who treats phobias and eating disorders as well as helping people give up smoking.

She believes a great deal of pain can be brought on by stress. "You can hold tension without realising it. The beauty of hypnotherapy is that there are no side-effects, no drugs at all."

  • Patricia Jackson can be contacted on (01274) 510773 or at www.hypnotherapyhelps.org.