Like so many others, Moshe tried dieting, but it never worked. Before shidduchim, he put himself on a strict plan that lasted two weeks before collapsing under the weight of cravings and frustration. He gave up, resolved to try again and gave up once more. The cycle became familiar: hope, discipline, hunger and failure.
He eventually married a woman who also struggled with obesity, and he continued to eat. He was a loyal customer at Geula’s cholent eateries as early as Wednesday night. Life was good, even as the number on the scale continued to climb.
Until one routine medical checkup changed everything. After reviewing Moshe’s bloodwork and cardiac tests, the doctor looked at him gravely and said the words Moshe would never forget: “If you keep going like this, you won’t live to see your grandchildren’s weddings.”
From that moment on, Moshe tried every diet, weight-loss method and promise of transformation, but nothing could compete with a fully stocked refrigerator and a lifetime of habits wired deep into his brain. Slowly, despair set in.
And then, one day, Moshe found himself at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, lying on a gurney, fasting in preparation for a revolutionary gastric bypass surgery.
Dressed in a thin surgical gown, Moshe was wheeled into the operating theater. The lights overhead were blinding. He was connected to monitors measuring his heart rate and blood pressure. A needle pricked his arm. He felt warmth spread through his body. The voices around him softened. The world faded.
Maya Mizrahi guided him through the process, explaining every detail: how his stomach would be reduced, how his digestive tract would rerouted. She described the equipment, the incisions, the expected sensations.
But here’s the twist: Moshe never actually had surgery. The entire experience was part of a hypnotic program designed by Mizrahi, a medical psychologist and licensed hypnotherapist who created a revolutionary weight-loss approach. Through carefully guided suggestions, Moshe’s mind had been led to believe he had undergone gastric bypass surgery. And just like that, his body began responding as though it had—reduced cravings, early fullness and natural portion control, all triggered by the power of his own mind.
We spoke with Maya about this groundbreaking method.

A simulated Surgery
Obesity is a widespread condition in the Western world, often associated with serious diseases such as diabetes and heart conditions. A range of diets and medications are available to treat it. The most drastic solution, typically considered only as a last resort, is a complex and dangerous gastric bypass surgery. But even that tends to offer only short-term benefits, and after a few years, many patients find themselves needing to undergo it again, only by then, the procedure is much more complicated.
Now, however, a breakthrough new method has emerged: a simulated surgery, accompanied by a guided hypnotic process. Remarkably, despite being entirely imagined, this “virtual” operation has been found to be more effective in the long term than actual surgery. It helps patients change their eating habits and overcome compulsive overeating.
The simulated surgery is performed in a real operating room, using all the standard medical equipment and protocols. In a study conducted at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem in collaboration with the Hebrew University researchers found that within just three months, most participants who underwent the simulated procedure lost, on average, about ten percent of their body weight.
“Although I struggled with obesity,” says Chaim, a resident of Beit Shemesh who underwent the procedure, “I didn’t want to go through real surgery. I’m aware of the statistics on weight regain, and it’s a serious operation with significant risks.
“So when I heard about the simulated procedure, I was really intrigued. On the one hand, you get all the benefits of surgery, and on the other, there’s no risk. The hypnotic surgery feels very real. It truly feels like you’ve had surgery, which makes you follow all those strict post-op dietary instructions as if you actually had the procedure.”
Chaim lost 25 kilograms in about five months. “It didn’t feel like a struggle. Even now, eight months later, there are things that stuck with me from the hypnosis, habits I still follow, like preparing all my food in advance for the next day.”
“One of the major issues with obesity is the phenomenon of dissociation, where a person becomes disconnected from his conscious experience,” Maya explains. “People eat on autopilot and then suddenly realize they’ve gained weight. This actually stems from a disconnect between the mind and the body, or between emotion and logic during eating.
“The intervention we created helps the patient tune into his or her body, work on areas related to choice, control and impulse, and avoid overeating. The brain doesn’t distinguish between reality and imagination, and when we create a situation where the brain believes that the body has undergone surgery, it generates the positive effects of surgery. It triggers sensations like satiety, self-control, a sense of capability and a desire for change.
“What’s special is that within the hypnotic script we embed empowering and reinforcing messages about fullness, self-discipline and even motivation to exercise and plan meals. Hypnosis is not magic. It’s a tool that enables people to listen to their bodies and internal processes, both conscious and unconscious. Patients go through hypnosis sessions before and after the surgical procedure, and then they receive follow-up conversations and phone support, as well as nutritional instructions. In addition, they undergo blood tests that measure hormone levels responsible for hunger and satiety in order to track how the hypnosis is affecting those sensations.”
Mizrahi came up with the idea for the procedure after many years of work as a medical psychologist supporting patients dealing with obesity.
“Patients started coming back to me after undergoing bariatric surgery saying, ‘I wish I could do that surgery every two years.’ Studies show that within five years, some 40% to 70% of bariatric surgery patients regain their weight. So I said to myself, ‘Let’s try simulating a surgery and see what happens.’ It worked exceptionally well. These days, the doctors at Hadassah tell me, ‘We operate on the stomach. You operate on the mind.’”

From Africa to Jerusalem
Mizrahi’s mother’s family is originally from France and her father is Israeli. Because he served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat in several West African countries, the bulk of Maya’s childhood years were spent in Africa, with shorter stops in Canada and Belgium. After reaching adulthood, she returned to Israel and enrolled at the Hebrew University.
“I focused on clinical psychology,” she recalls, “which was the dominant field at the time. But then my best friend was in a serious car accident. She sustained a serious injury, was hospitalized for 18 months and needed long-term rehabilitation. One day, she was telling me about the medical psychologist who had supported her throughout her recovery. At first, I was skeptical. I said to her, ‘What do you mean? That’s not a real thing. There’s no such thing as medical psychology.’ When I later learned that not only does the specialty exist but that it’s very much needed, I realized that it was exactly the field I wanted to pursue. I wanted to help people dealing with medical issues, accidents and similar crises, and support them through those intense, difficult experiences.
“I went on to specialize in medical psychology at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. At the time the field was still in its infancy in Israel, and I was its very first intern at Hadassah. This meant that I was assigned many supervisors, as everyone wanted the opportunity to train me so they could become certified instructors in medical psychology themselves. I ended up paving the way for an entire generation of therapists in the field.”
The main difference between clinical and medical psychology, Mizrahi explains, lies in the patient population.
“In clinical psychology, you’re helping someone whose personality has been damaged; the goal is to heal the wounded psyche. But in medical psychology, you’re working with someone whose mind is healthy and whose personality structure is intact. These are mentally sound individuals who are physically suffering from serious illness or injury. The advantage is that we can bring about changes across both the individual’s condition and the broader connections between body and mind. In other words, we work collaboratively with someone who is physically ill to help him overcome these challenges.”
The most frequent question she is asked is whether psychological treatment can noticeably affect physical healing.
“Absolutely,” she replies. “I see a strong connection between psychological care and the body’s ability to recover from illness; the psychological treatment helps accelerate the physical healing. It’s a two-way relationship. Psychological stress has a harmful impact and can lead to physical illness, while mental well-being supports and hastens the body’s recovery.”
During her training and professional work in the mental health field, Maya specialized in hypnosis-assisted therapy, a discipline that has evolved over the years but was actually foundational in the development of modern psychology. Hypnosis helps individuals cope with pain—sometimes to the point of not feeling it at all—and it also supports various other psychological processes. Mizrahi witnessed the power of suggestion and the hypnotic process firsthand in ancient healing rituals common among African tribal communities.
“In Africa, this is quite widespread,” she says. “As a child, I witnessed rituals where people were brought into a hypnotic trance. Today, I understand that they were being guided into an altered state of consciousness. Within that therapeutic setting, they truly believed that the village chief could make something happen to them, that some change would occur. They believed that an external force was taking control and making the illness disappear.
“Of course, I believe that the power of hypnosis comes from within. What makes it effective is the fact that the patient surrenders to the process, believing he has the power to change. That causes him to enter a unique state of consciousness that affects him deeply. In both instances, it’s the brain doing the work. The shamanic ritual uses singing and music; I use an operating room and specific techniques. I guide the brain to focus and enter an altered state of awareness, after which I offer the mind something that can influence behavior.
“People think hypnosis somehow negates free will. It doesn’t; it can’t. Hypnosis is not some external force taking control of the person’s soul. On the contrary, it’s about offering the brain a chance to initiate inner change. It’s the person who chooses how to act. The tools I provide simply put him in a state where different choices become accessible.
“The power of hypnosis can be incredibly strong. I remember a case in Africa where blind individuals were led to believe they could see again. Of course, that only works if the blindness is psychosomatic, meaning not caused by an organic issue. In such cases, the hypnosis helped the brain reactivate the part that had been blocked. This is what happens in conversion disorder, when the body manifests physical symptoms with emotional origins. These can include paralysis, blindness and other symptoms that may disappear once the underlying emotional trigger is released.
“I had one patient who had conversion blindness in one eye. She was a doctor, and no physical treatment had helped. But during our sessions, it emerged that at age five she had witnessed a violent assault on her friend. They were in a park when a stranger came over and attacked her. She was frozen in fear and panic. She never told anyone, but she remembered it clearly. It wasn’t repressed; she had just never made the connection. But once we made that link and she understood on a subconscious level that her body was expressing her early trauma, her vision in that eye started to come back.”
Mizrahi has been practicing hypnosis since 2011 and received her official certification from the Ministry of Health in 2015. However, it wasn’t until 2019 that she began developing her unique intervention: hypnotic bariatric surgery.
“What we have learned is that the brain doesn’t always distinguish between reality and imagination,” she says. “If we can make the brain believe it’s in the operating room, we can recreate the physiological effects of surgery, such as a sense of fullness, lack of hunger and the physical sensation of a reduced stomach. During the virtual gastric procedure under hypnosis, the patient enters a unique state of consciousness. EEG tests show that the brain shifts into a sleep-like state, with activation of theta waves. At this stage, the brain’s cognitive and critical faculties ‘go to sleep,’ and the sensory and emotional areas become active.
“When the patient is in this deep, focused state, we introduce suggestions, instructions to the brain. For example, ‘When you wake up, your stomach will hold 60 ml (¼ cup). You will feel full and satisfied. The hunger hormone ghrelin will no longer be secreted.’ The result is that the brain initiates actual physiological changes in the body, similar to what happens in hypnosis for pain relief, where the experience of pain can be blocked even though the injured area continues to send signals.
“My kids laugh when I say, ‘I have surgery today,’” she adds with a smile. “I’m not really operating. But as far as the brain is concerned, I am.”
The intervention is structured as five sessions, during which two hypnosis exercises are recorded; the simulated surgery takes place midway through. After the virtual surgery, patients receive nutritional guidelines exactly as they would following a real operation: two days of fasting, a week of liquids and a month of soft foods.
“People often say, ‘Wait, isn’t this just a regular diet? I’ve already failed at those.’ But the whole point is that this procedure creates an anchor, a new psychological core that helps them regain self-control around food.”
Mizrahi reiterates that she is not the first to use hypnosis to treat obesity, but the addition of a realistic simulated surgical process extends the beneficial effects of the hypnotic treatment.
“The real innovation here isn’t the hypnotic bariatric concept itself. It already exists in the United States, and several books have been written about it. There are many therapists who offer hypnotic gastric reduction through visualization. What makes our method unique is the concrete sensory experience we add to the hypnosis. In our clinic, we have a room set up like a real operating room complete with monitors, medical equipment and surgical attire. The patients are dressed in a surgical cap and gown as well as special booties. We connect them to a beeping monitor, place an oxygen mask on them and attach an ‘IV’ to their arm without a needle. We are essentially performing a live theater scene together. That’s what makes it so much more effective.
“It doesn’t end with the ‘surgery,’ though. Patients are monitored for six months through a therapeutic process that includes both cognitive and behavioral components. Part of the work is teaching the patient how to observe and listen. Hypnosis creates the initial shift, but after that the connection continues and grows.”
Between 2019 and 2023, Mizrahi “operated” on approximately 70 patients in her private clinic. She saw that it worked, identified a pattern of success and decided to turn it into a formal scientific study.
The research, conducted in collaboration with the Hebrew University and the surgical department at Hadassah Hospital, was recently published. The interim results after three months are remarkable. Of the 41 patients who underwent the simulated procedure, 86% were in the process of losing weight, a success rate significantly higher than that of any weight-loss medication.

No Looking Back
“In the first session, I map out everything, the full psychological landscape,” she explains. “I examine traumas, strengths, successful coping mechanisms, internal resources—everything that shapes the person. I don’t use the classical psychoanalytic approach, where you delve deep into the past and directly into the psyche. Hypnosis can take you straight to a Pandora’s box of repressed conflicts, but over the years I’ve seen that this doesn’t always lead to resolution. True, some therapies help you gain insight, but they don’t always create real change because the symptom has often taken on a life of its own. Touching upon the past doesn’t necessarily solve the present. That’s why my approach focuses on the here and now, sometimes without looking back at all.
“We don’t always go deep, but if I later identify a destructive element in someone’s psyche—something clearly getting in the way—we’ll pause and consider. Maybe it relates to being a second-generation Holocaust survivor or to childhood trauma. Sometimes, just gaining that awareness is enough to move forward. You don’t need two years of psychotherapy to understand what in someone’s background made him vulnerable. You don’t need to unpack people’s relationship with their parents or early experiences unless it’s necessary, but if it is, we go there.”
In some cases, Mizrahi’s treatment for obesity revealed deeper emotional layers.
“One patient was a 50-year-old woman who was adopted at birth. In the hypnotic sessions, a tidal wave of feelings of rejection and longing rose to the surface. Once she was able to name and acknowledge these feelings, the blockage was released and she was able to move forward. Still, our method doesn’t focus on the roots of the issue, because the past often isn’t relevant anymore. We aim to treat the present, and what matters is the pattern that’s been created: behavior that is stuck on repeat. We work to reshape that behavior. The most powerful tool for change is inside us, in the brain. Hypnosis helps unlock this potential.”
Mizrahi rejects the idea that obesity is a personality trait, and she believes that the concept of “genetic predisposition” to being overweight is misunderstood.
“I don’t believe there’s any such thing as a ‘fat personality.’ The idea that obesity is an essential part of someone’s identity doesn’t make sense to me. How can something unhealthy be part of who we fundamentally are? I believe that people learn to think like someone who is overweight. It’s not inborn, it’s acquired. It’s true that people sometimes undergo bariatric surgery and then fall into depression, saying they’ve lost their identity. But that’s only labels and mental scripts we carry in our minds.
“Someone might have a genetic predisposition that makes him more likely to gain weight, but that’s not what causes obesity. You can have that tendency and still not become overweight. It’s the habits we acquire, the reactions we receive from others, and how our environment is structured around food. So many people have told me, ‘I remember my grandmother’s warm hugs and her delicious cookies,’ so now they crave cookies. Or they say, ‘I remember the angry look on my mother’s face when I didn’t finish the food on my plate,’ which taught the child to overeat. What we do is dismantle those old associations and learn—in the here and now, using all the tools at our disposal—how to create new habits.
“Every person is made up of many parts, different states of self. I work with CEOs who tell me, ‘I manage thousands of people, but when I stand in front of the refrigerator I’m like a little kid.’ The goal of any treatment, but especially when dealing with obesity, is to create integration between those various parts of the self.
“People who struggle with obesity already know everything. No professional can teach an overweight person something they don’t already know. What can help is learning how to listen to your body and its needs in a different way.”
Mizrahi’s method has possibilities as treatment in other areas as well, although it may not be suitable in certain cases.
“This process is also applicable to things like ADHD and even inflammatory diseases. It’s not a replacement for medical treatment, but it complements it. For example, it can help with Crohn’s disease by working on the stress component that exacerbates it.
“Any kind of hypnotic treatment is highly individual. Every hypnosis is really self-hypnosis. Each soul plays its own instruments; I’m just the conductor of the orchestra. Hypnotic surgery is simply a tool that helps someone look more deeply at himself. The goal is to turn the person into his own health agent. It works particularly well in cases where the obesity is primarily driven by behavioral habits. In such patients, six months after treatment we see a dramatic shift where they say things like, ‘I’m not hungry,’ or ‘I just don’t feel like eating.’
“However, when the obesity has a deeper psychological function—say, unconscious emotional protection in someone who experienced childhood trauma—hypnosis may encounter resistance. Even so, just uncovering that is a gift. It allows us to confront the internal blocks that have caused this person to suffer for decades. The resistance isn’t a failure; it’s an opportunity to encounter the real barriers that rendered the individual unable to gain control over the condition for years.
Hypnosis can be effective for most people, but some are naturally more resistant. Similarly, the length of time the effects last will vary with the individual.
“About 95% of the population can enter a hypnotic state,” she explains, “although not everyone reaches the same depth of trance. But I’ve learned that there is no direct correlation between the depth of trance and the success of the treatment.
“I once had a patient who was a psychologist herself. After our session, she told me it was a nice experience, but it was more like guided imagery; she didn’t really feel that she had entered a hypnotic state. Then that same evening she texted me, ‘I can’t eat more than a few bites.’ The brain had absorbed exactly what it needed even without a deep trance.
“I don’t claim that the effect is permanent, but I do believe it creates a real transformation. I once had a patient who weighed 170 kg (375 lb). She underwent a surgical procedure, went down to 118 kg (260 lb) and then bounced back up 142 kg (313 lb). Then she came to me, and with the help of hypnosis dropped to 96 kg (211 lb). But that’s not the part that impressed me. What impressed me was that three years after treatment she reached out and told me she had gained three kg (seven lb). This meant that the change was so ingrained in her and she was so fully aware of herself that she could notice even a small fluctuation. That’s a sign of genuine transformation. It wasn’t only about losing weight; it changed her entire relationship with her body.
“We had another interesting case. A patient who weighed 150 kg (330 lb) came back a month after the hypnotic surgery and shared something that had happened to her on a bus. In her mind, she truly believed she had lost weight, and she was surprised to realize that she still took up space. It was the first time she didn’t suppress the reality of her obesity, and it was the point at which she began to really let go of the weight.”
Mizrahi’s practice is not limited to patients seeking to lose weight.
“As a trauma specialist, I work with war victims. It started with a patient I was treating for obesity who was also a ZAKA volunteer. I told him, ‘If you or any fellow volunteer need therapy, come to me.’ Hypnosis is an incredible tool for trauma, but it has to be used by a therapist who specializes in it. Trauma means that the person freezes at the moment of the traumatic event and continues to experience it. Post-trauma isn’t just remembering, it’s feeling as though it’s happening again. In these cases, rather than take the person into the traumatic experience, we help them step out of it.
“For someone from the Gaza border communities who lived through October 7, the smells, the fear and the panic can all resurface. So with them, I use hypnosis to calm the nervous system and instill a sense of safety. We ‘turn down the volume’ on the sensory experience so the patient can remember it but not relive it.”
Mizrahi’s treatment is available to everyone in Israel—as long as their native language is Hebrew or French.
“The reason is that during hypnosis there can be no cognitive effort, meaning there must be no need to concentrate in order to translate. It has to happen naturally. The language must be fluent and effortless. But the plan is to eventually offer it in hospitals in the United States and Europe. I expect that will happen in the near future.”
Whether she is treating obesity or trauma, Maya Mizrahi is proving that the most powerful theater for change isn’t a hospital operating room but the human imagination. ●

The study is led by a multidisciplinary team that includes Dr. Tamar Elram, director of Hadassah Mount Scopus; Prof. Haggi Mazeh, head of the surgical department; and Dr. Ronit Greenbaum, senior bariatric surgeon. They are joined by Prof. Danny Ben-Zvi, head of the metabolism and diabetes research lab at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr. Eitan Abramowitz, psychiatrist and medical hypnosis specialist at the Hypno-Campus Institute