WEBVTT - Ep135: What does neuroscience mean by hypnosis? with David Spiegel 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:09.240 What exactly is hypnosis? We've all heard about the circusy 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:11.920 versions of it, but is there something about hypnosis that 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:15.880 is real and that can be studied and leveraged by 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:22.200 psychiatrists and neuroscientists. Can attention and expectation change what we 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.400 feel like pain or anxiety? And how does that work? 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.800 What do suggestible states reveal about the brain's typical pathways 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:34.080 and what happens when we're knocked off of those, and 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:38.879 how does hypnosis compare to meditation or flow states or 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:42.040 psychedelic drugs. Today, join me as we talk with doctor 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.040 David Spiegel, Stanford psychiatrist and one of the world's experts 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:52.720 in hypnosis. Welcome to Innercosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.040 a neuroscientist and author at Stanford, and in these episodes 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.560 we sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.520 how how we see the world, the outside world and 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:20.040 also the inside world. Okay, so first I'm going to 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.880 point out one of my central sources of amazement that 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.600 surfaces and all these episodes, the fact that inside each 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:31.480 of us there's an entire universe of eighty six billion neurons, 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.800 never seeing the light of day, pulsing in the dark, 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:38.840 and these are somehow weaving together your world, and in 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:41.320 ways we don't yet fully understand, we get all this 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:46.720 private subjective experience out of this, like color which doesn't 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.400 actually exist in the outside world, or pain, which is 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:53.120 just signaling along nerves, just like all the rest of 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.920 the signaling running around in your nerves, but somehow you 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:59.720 have the impression that it hurts. And somehow all the 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.480 act activities zooming around on all these little cables equals 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:09.240 your mind. Your thoughts are nothing but this electrochemical activity. 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.880 And we know this because if you ingest particular molecules, 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:17.080 that changes your thoughts, like if you consume alcohol or drugs, 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:19.240 or if you bunk your head on the cabinet, you 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.680 might lose consciousness and not have any thoughts for some minutes. 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:25.880 And when someone gets a neurodegenerative disorder, many of their 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:30.359 neurons die and that changes their thoughts. Same with tumors 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.000 or strokes or dozens of other things that we see 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.639 in the clinics every day. And that's how we know that. 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.079 You are your biology. 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:44.400 But the question is our thoughts the end consequence of 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.960 the activity, or do they somehow feedback in such a 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:51.440 way that they influence the activity. Now this is an 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:55.200 open question in neuroscience, but we do know that somehow 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.600 a change in expectation can reshape what we feel in 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:03.200 our own bodies, are pain or anxieties, our sense of self. 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.639 We get glimpses of this with let's say placebos. These 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:09.320 are things that should have no medical effect, but they 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:13.040 often have clinically significant effects on people. And what's weird 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.480 is that sometimes these work even when people know they 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:20.400 are placebos. And then you've got practices like meditation that 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:24.200 can alter attention and emotion and make subtle changes to 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.200 the structure of the brain over time. But there's one 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.760 laboratory of the mind where these questions become especially vivid, 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:34.600 where you can watch how a change and attention changes 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.560 the brain, and that laboratory is hypnosis. Now, let me 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:41.280 be crystal clear about something. I'm not talking about hypnosis 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:45.200 of the stage show stereotype. I'm not talking about mind 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:50.760 control or swinging watches. Instead. To psychiatrists, they're talking about 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:53.680 something when they use the term hypnosis, but it looks 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:59.040 more like a rearrangement of attention. The world narrows inner 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:03.360 experience becomes more vivid. External suggestions begin to feel more 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:07.640 like internal ideas, and a person can dissociate slightly from 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:11.200 their normal neural pathways. Think about it like this. If 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.000 you look at any ski mountain, there are only a 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:17.200 few runs going down the mountain, But in theory you 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.200 could ski down the mountain in lots of ways. You 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.720 don't have to stay right on those established runs. And 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.880 in our own brains we get these runs established in them, 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.040 and the question is how do we ever get off 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:35.400 our own beaten path? So my guest today has spent 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.479 his career at this frontier. David Spiegel is a psychiatrist, 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.479 a leading researcher on hypnosis in the brain at Stanford, 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.800 and a clinician who has leveraged these methods to help 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:50.120 lots of people manage pain, anxiety, trauma, illness, and the 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.760 breaking of habits. Through his work, we get a window 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.839 into how flexible our perceptions and physiology can be. So 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:06.800 let's step with David Spiegel in to the inner cosmos. So, David, 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.280 often when people think about hypnosis, they think about, you know, 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:12.920 a state fair, magic show or something like that, And 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:17.080 that's not what you do. Tell us how you define 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:19.919 hypnosis scientifically. 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:24.719 David, hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention. It's 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:26.599 like getting so caught up in a good movie that 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.360 you forget you're watching the movie. You enter the imagined world. 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.760 And to achieve that state of focus, you have to 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.240 do to other things. You have to dissociate, put outside 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.280 of conscious awareness, things that would ordinarily be in consciousness. 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.360 We're not aware of how much information our brains, as 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.360 you know better than anyone, is processing at any one time. 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:48.680 Right now. To listen to me, for example, you have 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.599 to ignore sensations in your body touching these very nice 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.400 chairs here. Hopefully you weren't aware of that until I 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.600 mentioned it. If you were, we could stop. Now you're 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:03.719 already born. So absorption, highly focused attention, dissociation, and the 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.680 other used to be called suggestibility. It's what scares people 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.640 about hypnosis. You know, the you know, the football coach 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:12.920 being made to dance like a ballerina in front of 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.000 an audience and all that. I don't like making fun 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:20.800 of people anyway, but it's different. It's cognitive flexibility. It 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:23.480 allows you to let go of presumptions of who you are, 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.160 what you are, what you can do. So the football 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:27.800 coach is not thinking of what he's going to get 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:30.360 in the locker room when he goes back after the performance, 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.120 but it allows him to do something different, to try 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:37.080 out being different. And as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, I 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.400 love seeing people who are willing to try out being 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.440 different and who are surprised by themselves say my god, 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:45.120 I didn't think I could do that, and I did. 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.240 That's a great template for change. 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.920 What is the difference between a hypnotic state and let's 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:56.800 say meditation, a flow state, or an dissociative state. 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:00.719 Well, it is a kind of dissociative state. To focus 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:04.040 so intently, you have to put outside of conscious awareness 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:07.160 things that might ordinarily be in consciousness. And people who 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:12.040 have a dissociative disorder are usually highly hypnotizable, so they 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.840 go intensely. People with associative identity disorder, when they're being 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.680 one of their altars, they're not being all the other 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.960 parts of themselves, and it's a kind of firm boundary 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.119 between these different parts of themselves. Now, that's a mental 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:29.800 disorder usually associated with trauma. But hypnosis is a much 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:36.200 milder state of focused attention that is enabled by dissociation. 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:38.920 Okay, and how about a flow state or a meditative state. 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.040 So the flow state is kind of like the highly 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:43.880 focused attention. 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:46.600 And by the way, give an example of a flow. 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.280 Slow state is just getting so lost in an activity. 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:53.880 For example, that you're painting something. Let's say that you 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:56.560 realize you've missed an appointment with a friend, or you're 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:58.600 two hours late for dinner or something. You're just so 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:01.520 engaged in it. You check sent me Hi who wrote 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:03.720 the book Flow, and he used to call it an 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.080 autotellic state. It's one that is so enjoyable that you 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.240 would do it just to do it, regardless of what 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:12.080 the outcome of it is. And that's part of flow. 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:14.360 You're not doing it for a purpose. You're doing it 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:16.240 just to do it, to be in that state, to 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:17.360 be fully engaged. 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:18.960 What does autot mean. 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:24.080 Autotelic just means self rewardings. It's rewarding just for doing it, 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:27.000 not because it's going to get you somewhere into something. 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:29.520 Actors are like that, you know. The method in acting 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.480 is just you know, be that person. And when a 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:35.559 good actor does that and you say, hey, you were terrific, 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:38.599 that was a great performance, they say, what performance I 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.360 was just being that guy. You know, that's who I was. 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:45.600 So hypnosis is very similar to flow states in that 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.360 sense of being totally into it, being fully absorbed in it. 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:54.079 Now meditation there are similarities, but there are differences. Meditation 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:59.000 is more about being and hypnosis is more about doing so. 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:03.320 In meditation, there are three major components to meditation. There's 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.400 open presence, where you just let feelings and thoughts flow 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:08.480 through you. You don't try to judge them or use them. 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:11.320 You don't try to use it to solve a problem. 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.400 It's just it's to become a way of being where 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:16.920 you are more open to just whatever things are, let 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.120 them be. You do a body scan, which is a 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.600 little bit like hypnosis. You can become more connected with 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.320 things going on in your body or better control things 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.320 going on in your body, like pain, like the symptoms 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.120 of anxiety, for example. The third thing is compassion and 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.680 meditation where you try to have compassion for other people 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.000 compassion for yourself. And that's a good thing too, and 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:42.719 you can use hypnosis to enhance compassion. I can give 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.800 you some examples of that, but you don't use it 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:47.719 to solve a problem. I had a woman who was 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:50.040 a ten year meditator twice a day for ten years, 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.440 thirty minutes a day each time. And she said, but 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.079 I still have migrain headaches and they're driving me crazy 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.000 and I can't get rid of them. Would you help me? 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:03.400 So I hypnosis whether to imagine that she had a 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.720 cap full of ice on her head, and because people 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:10.559 with migraines often have vasodilitation in the scalp and they 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:16.520 feel hot and uncomfortable, and she imagined having this cap 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:17.959 of ice in her head. And she called me a 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:21.240 week later, as she said, doctor Spiegel, my migraines are gone. 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:24.440 Thank you, and thank you for freeing me to use 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:28.560 my intentionality. Wow, because you're not supposed to be intentional 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.760 in meditation, and you are intentional in hypnosis. 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.520 Oh, I see, I see. So vasodilation is where the 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:38.600 blood vessels are expand instead are contracted. But she was 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.520 able to use her intention to take control of the 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:43.240 diameter of her blood vessels as well. 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:46.520 I can't measure it, but I think it's probably the case. 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:50.839 There are situations where people you can see them if 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.400 they're concentrating on their hands being warm, you can see 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.120 them sort of flush on their hands. There was one 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.520 amazing study done a mass general years ago. They had 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.840 people in hypnosis. They instructed them. They had a bunch 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:07.160 of people who had body warts and they're unpleasant, but 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.520 there was word that you could use hypnosis to eliminate warts, 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:13.760 and they actually got people to eliminate warts on one 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:17.400 side of their body. Think about that. That's mind bending. 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.720 So but if you're thinking about the brain controlling the 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:23.679 nervous system, the nervous system is divided into branches, and 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:26.280 it occupies different parts of the body, and you can 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:29.960 imagine changes that may sometimes happen in the body. 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:35.920 What would curing warts look like? How does one intentionally 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:36.720 make that happen. 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:41.320 You instruct them to imagine that the warts are just 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:45.120 drying up and falling off, that they just disappear, and 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.800 for some people that actually happens. 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:53.560 How is hypnosis used in your practice, for example, for pain, 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:58.320 for anxiety, for trauma, for dealing with habits that people 0:11:58.360 --> 0:11:59.760 want to break. Give us a sense of. 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:03.360 How sure I'll be glad to do that. The way 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:08.360 we use it is to first first I test people's hypnotizability, 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:11.560 because people differ in their ability to experience hypnosis, and 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.640 that helps me structure the way I approach it with them. 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:18.120 If you're highly hypnotizable, which about twenty five percent of 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.880 the population is, you just tell them to do it 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.200 and they do it like the ward thing you can. 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:25.240 And I'll tell you what the approach is with each 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:27.880 of these kinds of problems. Mid range you kind of 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:29.760 negotiate with them more and they try it and they 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:33.000 reflect on it. And with low hypnotizables, it's more of 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.920 a cognitive activity where you think about approaching the problem 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.040 in a different way. So don't fight the pain, but 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:40.920 learn to filter the hurt out of the pain, don't 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.679 let it get you angry, figure that you can find 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:48.160 a way to master it. So for you know, we 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:50.480 start from the body up with hypnosis, and this is 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:54.280 different from cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, where you kind 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:56.479 of think your way through the steps to the problem. 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:01.640 With hypnosis, if somebody is stressed, what I do is say, 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.360 there's one part of this stressor that's bothering you that 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.760 you can do something about right away before you figure 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.320 out actually how to get rid of the stressor or 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.680 deal with the stressor. And that is the effect of 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:16.040 the stress on your body. So when you feel stressed. 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.679 What happens you know what happens to you, David when 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:20.119 you get stressed physically? 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:21.839 Yeah, I think my muscles start to hurt. 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:25.480 Your muscles hurt, they get tense, you start to sweat, 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:28.560 you fidget. But there's a kind of snowball effect where 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:30.440 you start to feel that and you think, oh my god, 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.600 this must be really bad because my body's reacting, and 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:35.760 so you get more anxious, and then your body reacts 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.760 and on it goes. So with hypnosis, you start with 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.400 the excellent control you have over your body, and hypnosis 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:46.160 better than normally. And so I say, look up close 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.040 your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine that you're 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.160 floating in a bath of lake, a hot tub, or 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.640 floating in space. And I teach them a breathing exercise 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:58.120 where you inhale through your nose, starting with your abdomen, 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:02.880 and then slowly exhale through your mouth. And if you 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:05.840 try that, you'll notice that very quickly your body. Do 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:07.839 you try it? Try it? Just inhale through your nose, 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:16.600 hold and then slowly exhale through your mouth. How's your 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:17.199 body feel? 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:17.800 Good? 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:19.680 Good? Good? It's a little different. 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:21.840 I don't think I was stressed before. But I'll try 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.040 that when I'm okay. But you're saying that I one 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:29.320 should be able to feel that difference. Right after how 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:31.440 many breaths. 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.800 Like three breaths, wow, is you start to feel it. 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:36.920 And so then you you with your eyes closed, you 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.600 imagine you're floating in a bath of lake, hot tubber, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:46.680 floating in space, and typically people feel less physiologically aroused. 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:49.400 And then you say, okay, so you've already done one 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:51.480 thing about the stressor, which is the effects that's not 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.320 on your body. Now, picture in your mind's eye, an 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.240 imaginary screen could be a movie screen, a TV screen, 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.640 or a piece of clear blue sky. And and then 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:03.640 divide the screen in half, and on the left side, 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.920 picture that stressor one thing that's stressing you. But with 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.320 the rule that you keep your body floating while you 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:13.280 do it, so you're beginning to separate this feedback between 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.520 the mind and the body about stress. And then once 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:18.960 you've been able to do that, I say, now picture 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:20.760 on the right side of the screen. Make that your 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.560 brainstorming screen. One thing you could do to deal with 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:26.240 the stressor It may not be the best thing or 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:28.240 the only thing, but something you could do about it, 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.920 and so typically people will picture something. You know, I'll 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:34.920 explain to my boss why I was late, or I'll 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:36.680 make sure the kids wear their seat belts when they 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.120 get in the car, whatever it is. And then say, 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.280 notice how you've been able to think more clearly about 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:44.240 how to deal with the stressor once you're able to 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:49.200 separate the stress from your physiological reaction. And we found, David, 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:54.720 in studies of tens of thousands, like sixty eight thousand 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.240 of our Reverie users our self hypnosis app that within 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.320 ten minutes they get a fifty eighty percent reduction in 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:05.760 their stress levels pre to post. And that's not bad 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:10.560 for a treatment that has no side effects, hasn't killed 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.320 anybody yet, and is fast faster than going to a 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.520 pharmacy and getting a drug, so they immediately get an 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.000 immediate reaction. So I help people deal with stress in 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.320 that way from the body up rather than from the 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:23.800 head down. 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:29.280 That's amazing. So if we're talking pain, anxiety, trauma, things 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:31.360 like this, does this apply to all of the equally or. 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:35.520 Different approvals with different approaches. So for pain, common and 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:39.880 terrible problem that is very terribly treated in this country. 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.600 You know, last year one hundred and eighteen thousand Americans 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:45.200 died of opioid overdoses in the United States. You know, 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:51.560 opioids kill people, and so I built Revery, our hypnosis 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.680 app in part to stop that, to get into people's 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:58.520 hands and minds and intervention that they can use to 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.920 really help themselves. And there's tons of evidence We've done 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:06.080 randomized control trials showing that hypnosis can control pain. And 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.359 the fact that you can reduce your pain with hypnosis 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:10.639 doesn't mean the pain is all in your head. It 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.119 means that the strain in pain lies mainly in the 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.800 brain that does signal. An input signal is painful or not, 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:20.399 depending on how your brain promulgates it and classifies it. 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:24.040 And you can teach your brain to treat pain differently. 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:27.199 My lovely wife Helen, had both of our children with 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:32.320 self hypnosis as the soul anesthetic in childbirth and Dan 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.880 the first one was ten pounds, so it was serious, 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.879 you know, And this shit. At one point in the 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:40.240 middle of my having rhibnitize, I had her floating in 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:44.680 Lake Tahoe. She said, David, you know I teach pharmacologey 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.000 at Stanford. Are there are drugs for this? And I 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:53.560 said keep floating, cool, tailing, and and Dan was born fine, 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:55.439 and I had no pain at all, you know it 0:17:55.480 --> 0:18:02.600 was so hypnosis really is a terrific treatment for pain. 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:06.000 And we have on our app four different approaches to it. 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:10.280 So one is just sensory alteration, filter the herd out 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:14.399 of the pain. Imagine whatever makes your body feel better. 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:17.640 And if you think about this, if you get pain 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:21.240 relief for whatever your problem is with an ice pack 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:25.120 or floating in a warm bath, that means that when 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:27.199 you are in one of those states, your brain is 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.760 in a certain state that interprets what's going on as 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.920 a comforting sensation overriding the pain. And there are pet 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.280 studies done at Maygill by per Rainville showing that if 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:42.040 you tell people to have the sensory alteration filter the 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.639 head out of the pain, you get reduced activity in 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.840 some metasensory cortex just where you would hope it would happen. 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.080 This is what is measuring the activity from your. 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.920 Body from your body in specific regions of the brain, 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.600 and as you feel the analgesia, you feel a reduction 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:03.080 in the in the cemetasensory cortex. I did an experiment 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.200 with a bunch of Stanford undergrads highly hypnotizable. We screened 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:09.000 them for that and I had we gave them shocks 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:13.199 to the forearm and they would report the pain, and 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:15.399 then I hypnotized them and said, you're a forearm is 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.000 an ice water cool tingling. They got the same shocks. 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:22.040 We were recording some metasensory event related potentials, and the 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.800 P one hundred disappeared the first tenth of a second. 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.520 The brain stopped the initial processing of the pain signal, 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:33.919 and the P two hundred and P three hundred, these. 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:33.760 Are EEG signals. 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.520 Collected EEG signals in response to a series of shocks 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:41.000 were half as big. So just telling them to do 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.399 that changed the way their brain transmitted the pain signal. 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:46.840 And I assume this wasn't just repetition suppression. 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:48.199 No. 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:51.320 No, We had a control group that wasn't hypnotized. Yeah, 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.320 and then they would get the same well they did 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.639 that group. They were their own control because when they 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.439 were not hypnotized and just feeling it, they got the 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:03.520 full sensation for the same period of time. They didn't 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:09.639 habituate to it a hypnosis, They just persistently and immediately 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.480 reduced the amplitude of the evoked response by overall fifty 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.480 percent starting with a tenth of the second. It wasn't 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:18.320 like it was rattling around the brain for a while. 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.680 It changed the settings for how you process those signals. 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.679 My colleague pr Rainville, when he studied activity in the 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:29.000 brain after a similar analgesic instruction, if instead of saying 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:31.600 filter the head out of the pain, your hands cold 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:33.919 and numb, he said it's there, but it won't bother you, 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.440 which is the way people on opioids sometimes respond, well, 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:40.880 I know there's a sensation there. And then he got 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.560 the same level of analgesia, but now the reduction was 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:47.720 in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, part of the salience 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:51.080 network that tells you whether something is a threat or not. 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.480 So you can change just the words you use in 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:57.840 hypnosis will change the part of the brain that reacts 0:20:57.880 --> 0:20:59.240 to the analgesic construction. 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:03.840 Using people who are highly hypnotizable, this actually sounds like 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:06.680 a great advantage for them, and let's say the case 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:10.080 of pain. What about people who are not so hypnotizable. 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:11.560 Does that mean they can't help themselves there? 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:15.840 What we find is that the results are less dramatic, 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:19.399 but they get results, okay, in part because we're teaching 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:24.120 them a cognitive strategy. We're saying, look, you know, I'll 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:27.160 give you an example. I had a very lovely woman 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:31.920 came to me the other day who has chronic pain 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:38.120 and who said that it really inhibits what she can do. 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:40.320 She also had kind of a tick from an old 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:43.280 neck injury that she'd had, and it was getting worse 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:45.680 and worse, and she got more and more angry about it, 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.680 and it was inhibiting her life and what she could do. 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:52.640 And she turned out to be three out of ten 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:58.920 instead of seven out of ten, less hypnotizable on our measure, 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:04.320 the hypnotic conduction profile. And I said, you know, pain 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.080 and this tick that you have are like the noisy 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:09.359 kid in the classroom. You know, you pay more attention 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:11.760 to it than it deserves. You have other sensations, other 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:13.800 things you could think about, but you open into that. 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:16.040 She said, well, I'm a teacher. I was a teacher. 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:18.440 I taught for twenty seven years. I loved teaching best 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.360 part of my life. And I said, well, what did 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:23.000 you do with a noisy kid, a kid who was disruptive? 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:26.679 She said, well, I was pretty good with them. Actually 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.280 she was rather strict, you know, but she said I 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.520 would take their hand at a time when teachers finally 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:34.920 were allowed to touch a student, and I would hold 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:37.199 their hand, and I say, I know you're upset, and 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:39.560