Speaker 1: Now, really, really, now, really hello, and welcome to really
Speaker 1: know Really Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who are giving
Speaker 1: you a post hypnotic suggestion that everything in your life
Speaker 1: will feel better.
Speaker 2: If you subscribe to our show.
Speaker 3: Now. That may seem nuts because it is, but also
Speaker 3: hypnosis and post hypnotic suggestion are subjects that seem to
Speaker 3: invite both huge skepticism and equal fascination. We've all seen
Speaker 3: videos of stage hypnotists who pull random people out of
Speaker 3: their audience, hypnotize them in what seems like minutes or
Speaker 3: even seconds, and then suddenly have them clucking like chickens
Speaker 3: dancing like ballerinas.
Speaker 4: Well, Jason and Peter.
Speaker 3: Wanted to know if this is just a bunch of
Speaker 3: nice people playing along with the act, or if stage
Speaker 3: hypnosis is the real deal, really no really. To get
Speaker 3: that answer, we turned to doctor David Siegel, who is
Speaker 3: a pre eminent expert in hypnosis and one of the
Speaker 3: most successful and renowned hypnoti therapists. So close your eyes,
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 2: Getting sleepy, sleepy, But now wake up.
Speaker 4: Here's Jason and Peter.
Speaker 2: So here we are. We're back again. We're back.
Speaker 5: You know how I know you're in black sitting in
Speaker 5: a black chair. I see ahead, I see a floating head.
Speaker 5: It's like magic.
Speaker 2: You're like, you're like Copperfield over there.
Speaker 6: So today, yes, we're talking about hypnosis because you are
Speaker 6: just fascinated.
Speaker 5: Now I know, I know a little bit about hypnosis
Speaker 5: because I I I actually I will reveal later I'm
Speaker 5: not a stranger to it.
Speaker 2: On either side of the equation what that means.
Speaker 6: And by the way, thanks for the visual aid either
Speaker 6: side of your crazy.
Speaker 5: But this came about when I was watching I was
Speaker 5: in Vegas and I went to one of these, you know,
Speaker 5: stage hypnosis shows, and I'm going to okay, they spent
Speaker 5: five minutes. When I've when I've partaken, it takes some time.
Speaker 5: So five minutes, Yeah, you're sleep Uh if you're aware
Speaker 5: of everything, everything's fun and your chicken and people are chickens,
Speaker 5: And I go, okay.
Speaker 2: Is that real? So you and I got talking based.
Speaker 5: On our experience, where is really stage hypnosis real?
Speaker 6: I am so thrilled, thank you. But and then he
Speaker 6: gets to the bigger issue because our guest not only
Speaker 6: knows about hypnosis because of his background, but hypnotherapy, but
Speaker 6: how it can be used to help people with anxiety
Speaker 6: and cancer and smoking and checker you want to do
Speaker 6: about you like to.
Speaker 5: Back absolutely, So we will be speaking with doctor David Spiegel,
Speaker 5: who's a Wilson Professor, Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
Speaker 5: director of the Center of Stress and Health, and medical
Speaker 5: director of the Center for Integrated Medicine at Stanford University
Speaker 5: School of Medicine. He's a very big guy, more than
Speaker 5: forty years of research and experience in psycho It says
Speaker 5: psycho oncology.
Speaker 6: That's a thing right there. Well, I'm sure you use
Speaker 6: psycho health with cancer patients. Plus, I've seen a lot
Speaker 6: of his videos and I want to hopefully he'll do
Speaker 6: a little bit of self hypnosis today for anxiety because
Speaker 6: it's fast.
Speaker 2: It's fast.
Speaker 5: Say, if nothing else, this this impressed Maent. I'll give
Speaker 5: this one lest right. He's written books and he's on
Speaker 5: numerous panels, but he was invited to speak on hypnosis
Speaker 5: at the World Economic for Him in Davos pretty eighteen.
Speaker 2: And you know, what's what do they want to know about?
Speaker 2: You know, that's.
Speaker 5: That's a fascinating places into the picture.
Speaker 2: That's welcome. Doctor David Spiegel, welcome to really no, really.
Speaker 7: Sir, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: So stage stage magic. I know that's not your thing.
Speaker 6: You're necessarily saying magic, you will say state hypnosis.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because you're already poo pooing and lumping it in
Speaker 5: with me.
Speaker 6: I am, I am, and I guess that shows a
Speaker 6: bias that I don't believe it. Even though that show,
Speaker 6: even though you had me in Max Max Mavens show,
Speaker 6: I was on stage doing it, and it is a
Speaker 6: weird thing doing it because when you're on stage, you're
Speaker 6: a little disoriented. There's a bit of compliance because other
Speaker 6: people are doing it, so you kind of go along
Speaker 6: with it more than not. Okay, but what's your take,
Speaker 6: being an expert in the field about you see this
Speaker 6: where they can't lift their hands their chicken.
Speaker 5: Well, it's not say have you have you seen, either
Speaker 5: live or film a stage of Nosa's show.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've seen lots of recordings. I've never been able
Speaker 7: to stomach ponying up the money to actually pay to watch.
Speaker 2: It because I detected a take on it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there is a take on Well, now, the thing is,
Speaker 7: you know, it's kind of the phenomenon is real, but
Speaker 7: there's a certain amount of deception that goes on in
Speaker 7: the way these guys do it, and I just don't
Speaker 7: like using what I think is a wonderful and powerful
Speaker 7: phenomenon to make people look silly. But there is actually
Speaker 7: a message in it. So what they do that I'm
Speaker 7: sure happened in your show. They don't just grab the
Speaker 7: first three people and put them all through these things.
Speaker 7: What they do is get some people up, try a
Speaker 7: few things, ask most of them to sit down and
Speaker 7: keep on stage. The people who respond the most because
Speaker 7: they are a big different is in hypnotizability, and not
Speaker 7: everybody can do all that stuff. Not everybody will cluck
Speaker 7: like a chicken or the football coach and dance like
Speaker 7: a ballerina. So they've got a first filter out to
Speaker 7: get to the maybe twenty percent of the population sitting
Speaker 7: there who are very hypnotizable and then have them do
Speaker 7: those extreme things. And it is illustrating that there is
Speaker 7: this powerful phenomenon out there, that there are people who
Speaker 7: can do things with their brains and their bodies that
Speaker 7: we didn't think we could do. That's a very important
Speaker 7: lesson and something that I use every day in my office.
Speaker 7: But I don't like the way it's done. It's sort
Speaker 7: of like snake oil with medicines. You know, there are
Speaker 7: good uses of medicines, but snake oil isn't on the list.
Speaker 2: Is that real?
Speaker 6: When they say you can't put down your hands or
Speaker 6: do you think it is compliance or do you think
Speaker 6: it is a bit of they whisper in their ear like, hey,
Speaker 6: this is gonna be fun for the audience whatever. Or
Speaker 6: can you actually get somebody who's compliant.
Speaker 2: To do that?
Speaker 7: I just had somebody in my office did it an
Speaker 7: hour ago. So the answer is yes, it happens. Pull
Speaker 7: the hand down. You've given them an instruction that it
Speaker 7: feel like like a balloon and it floats right back
Speaker 7: up and you're they're surprised. They say, oh my goodness.
Speaker 7: So we have this kind of intense mind body connection.
Speaker 7: And actually, the biggest message I hope your listeners will
Speaker 7: take the heart is that when he shows the football
Speaker 7: coach dancing like a ballerina, he's showing that you can
Speaker 7: try out being different and see what it feels like
Speaker 7: in hypnosis, and I can tell you what's going on
Speaker 7: in their brains when they do it, because we've studied.
Speaker 7: But it is an opportunity to try out what it
Speaker 7: would be like if I were a different person, if
Speaker 7: I didn't react to pain with fear and anger, but
Speaker 7: rather taught my brain how to reprocess the pain, I
Speaker 7: could actually feel less pain and be less anxious if
Speaker 7: I thought, you go ahead.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to be because you had mentioned what
Speaker 5: is actually triggering in the brain when they do that.
Speaker 2: Is it a dopamine thing? Is it a what is.
Speaker 7: The actually more an inhibitory neurotransmitter dopamine, the feel good
Speaker 7: neurotransmitter is involved, but it's gamma amino butyric acid GABBA.
Speaker 7: It's the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, and it
Speaker 7: is it is the thing that is triggered by benzodiazepines,
Speaker 7: by anti anxiety medications and some of the sleeping meds,
Speaker 7: and it calms down, particularly activity in a part of
Speaker 7: the brain called the anterior singulate cortex. The singular cortex
Speaker 7: is to see on its ends in the middle of
Speaker 7: your brain, and the front part is what we call
Speaker 7: the salience network. It's the alarm system in the brain.
Speaker 2: So you hear a.
Speaker 7: Loud noise and oh my god, what was that? That's
Speaker 7: your salience network saying you better check this out. This
Speaker 7: could be a danger. We're pretty pathetic physical creatures. We
Speaker 7: don't run that well. We're not that strong. So if
Speaker 7: you didn't have an alarm system that warned you when
Speaker 7: there was trouble lurking around outside your cave, you could
Speaker 7: be in big trouble. That's what that system does.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 7: In our case, most of the dangers aren't physical. They're
Speaker 7: emotional or psychological. So what we do in hypnosis is
Speaker 7: just turned down activity. There you're less likely to be
Speaker 7: distracted and you're less likely to be bothered by apparent contradictions.
Speaker 7: So you know, my left hand really isn't any lighter
Speaker 7: than my right hand, but you know what, right now
Speaker 7: it feels that way, and you pull the hand down,
Speaker 7: and you know what, it just feels like it's going up. Now,
Speaker 7: that's surprising, it's strange. The brain can do that for
Speaker 7: many people. And you turn down that sort of critical
Speaker 7: part of your brain that says, ah no, that couldn't be,
Speaker 7: and you find out that it is. That you can
Speaker 7: be different, and that's a tremendous advantage.
Speaker 6: Can you make people get things against their will? Can
Speaker 6: you make me do something that I would not normally do,
Speaker 6: or I would find offensive or wrong.
Speaker 7: Well, I got you to record me on this. It's
Speaker 7: let me put it this way. You do to some
Speaker 7: extent suspend judgment, you don't entirely suspend judgment. So there's
Speaker 7: a famous story of Jean Martin Scharcot, a famous French
Speaker 7: neurologist who used to teach people about hypnosis in the
Speaker 7: eighteenth century. He taught Freud in the early nineteenth century
Speaker 7: how to how to use hypnosis, and the story was
Speaker 7: that they had a young woman patient who was very hypnotizable,
Speaker 7: and they had her to demonstrate that you could do
Speaker 7: anything with hypnosis. They had her imagined that her mother
Speaker 7: was in front of her, and she had an ax
Speaker 7: in her hand, and she was going to murder her mother.
Speaker 7: And so she starts screaming and yelling and swinging her arms,
Speaker 7: and the professor marches off, saying, see, I've proven it. Well,
Speaker 7: the trainees thought they'd try one other thing with her.
Speaker 7: She was still hypnotized. They said, well, you know, it's
Speaker 7: getting time for bed, and you're going to take off
Speaker 7: your clothes and go to bed, and she opened her eyes,
Speaker 7: told them to go to hell, and stomped out of
Speaker 7: the room so she could she knew the difference between
Speaker 7: play acting killing her imaginary mother and taking her real
Speaker 7: clothes off in front of a bunch of lascivious medical students. So, yes,
Speaker 7: people can you're reducing the threshold. You're saying, I'll do
Speaker 7: some strange things, but when it comes to something with
Speaker 7: serious consequences, in most circumstances, I think people won't do that.
Speaker 7: They turn it down, but they don't eliminate judgment.
Speaker 2: Okay, the other thing that I've seen.
Speaker 5: That seems so jit but I don't with my understanding
Speaker 5: of hypnosis and what it can do, I don't understand
Speaker 5: why this is a possibility.
Speaker 2: But I have seen.
Speaker 5: Things acts of physical strength that are greatly enhanced by
Speaker 5: people under that state. Why would what you're describing also
Speaker 5: enable somebody to access, you know, more more physical ability.
Speaker 7: Hypnosis involves three things. It involves intense focus of attention.
Speaker 7: It's like looking through a telephoto lens and a camera.
Speaker 7: What you see, you see with great detail. You put
Speaker 7: outside of conscious awareness things it would ordinarily be in consciousness.
Speaker 7: So right now, you guys are sitting in I'm sure
Speaker 7: wonderfully comfortable chairist there, but hopefully you aren't even aware
Speaker 7: of the sensations in your butts touching these chairs right right.
Speaker 7: If you were, we could just stop the interview now.
Speaker 7: And so you're doing something that involves a certain amount
Speaker 7: of physical experience in contact that you're just not aware of.
Speaker 7: You're putting an outside of consciousness, so you dissociate it.
Speaker 7: That's the second thing. And the third thing is you
Speaker 7: you inhibit the part of your brain that says you
Speaker 7: shouldn't be doing this, or people like you don't do
Speaker 7: things like this, or you know what your mother would
Speaker 7: think of you if you did. You turned down that
Speaker 7: that self evaluation. So in those circumstances, you can intensify
Speaker 7: your response. It's sort of like what you saw the
Speaker 7: Olympic athletes do that they focus very intently. Or think
Speaker 7: about Steph Curry, you know, with that final three pointer
Speaker 7: that won the game, with these two huge guys blocking him,
Speaker 7: and he's just all he's focused on is his connection
Speaker 7: with the ball, and he's done that so many times.
Speaker 7: I love watching him, and so the other stuff just disappeared.
Speaker 7: So he was able to do something that very few
Speaker 7: people could do because he's so skilled. By narrowing his
Speaker 7: focus of attention figuring out how to get back away
Speaker 7: from those guys and get the ball in the basket.
Speaker 7: That's that's hypnotic like statement.
Speaker 6: Can hypnosis help recall memories, forgotten memories, past memories accurately?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 7: Yes, to the extent that any memory recall is active.
Speaker 7: I mean, our brain records vast amounts of information, but
Speaker 7: it's not a you know, it's not a digital recorder.
Speaker 7: But that said, memory is mainly works by association, by context.
Speaker 7: So when you went back, if you went back to
Speaker 7: your grade school sometime years later, you know, you probably
Speaker 7: started remembering things if you hadn't thought of since you
Speaker 7: were in grade school, the asty kid in the next locker,
Speaker 7: or you know, whatever else it was. And so with hypnosis,
Speaker 7: you can intensify your focus, you can intensify your experience
Speaker 7: of not just thinking about it, but being there and
Speaker 7: trigger association and so. And there are times when people
Speaker 7: who have traumatic experiences can deal with the unpleasant emotions
Speaker 7: that come with it, calming themselves, reminding themselves that they're
Speaker 7: now safe, but allow their brains to reaccess experiences that
Speaker 7: were painful or difficult. So can that happen?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 7: Is it an absolute guarantee that the memory is completely accurate. No,
Speaker 7: but that's true for all memories that you know.
Speaker 2: What that reminds me of. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: ever saw this, Peter.
Speaker 5: There was a there was a fairly famous story in
Speaker 5: the in the UFO community, but it was done as
Speaker 5: a docu drama as well, about a couple named Betty
Speaker 5: and Barney Hill that could not account for They were
Speaker 5: on a road trip and they couldn't account for a
Speaker 5: period of their lives. They basically felt like they had
Speaker 5: a blackout experience and it was freaking them out, and
Speaker 5: they went to a therapist first of all, and then
Speaker 5: a hypnotherapist who under hypnosis regressed them back to this
Speaker 5: period that they couldn't count for, and individually, separately, they
Speaker 5: started to recall from their own perspective an alien abduction
Speaker 5: and what happened to them, and it became a very
Speaker 5: famous story in the UFO community.
Speaker 2: But my question always was.
Speaker 5: Would we be more correct to assume that they were
Speaker 5: recounting something they actually experienced or believed the experience, or
Speaker 5: did it open up a key to their imagination and
Speaker 5: their imaginations went off on a spin.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the answer is yes. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 7: entirely possible. I think it's likely that it opened a
Speaker 7: key to their imagination. And you know, you can have
Speaker 7: people in hypnosi vividly picture something, you know, like that
Speaker 7: young woman imagining murdering her mother that just didn't happen,
Speaker 7: but it's vivid. So with the narrow focus of attention,
Speaker 7: allows you, on the one hand, to intensely focus on
Speaker 7: the concept, on what you're doing and maybe therefore access
Speaker 7: real memories better. Or it can say, it can be
Speaker 7: an instruction to imagine things, and I do that with
Speaker 7: ignosis all the time. Picture yourself in a pleasant situation.
Speaker 7: Imagine you're floating in a band of like Debra floating
Speaker 7: in space, and they do it. My patient just an
Speaker 7: hour ago was saying, oh, yeah, you know, I'm floating
Speaker 7: in the Pacific Ocean outside near Hawaii. Guy with a
Speaker 7: lot of anxiety problems. But he was able instantly to
Speaker 7: so affiliate with this image of a place where he
Speaker 7: obviously was not. That his body felt better and his
Speaker 7: anxiety went from four to one. So it can go
Speaker 7: either way. It's no truth serum, but it can allow
Speaker 7: us to intensely focus.
Speaker 5: So turning to that idea of what you do for
Speaker 5: much of your professional life. What reasonably do people turn
Speaker 5: to hypnotherapists or hypnotherapy for?
Speaker 2: What is you know areas that are.
Speaker 5: Reasonable to expect some results and perhaps some that are ridiculous.
Speaker 7: Well, it's very reasonable to expect help with problems like
Speaker 7: stress management, because stress is a mind body interaction where
Speaker 7: you worry about something, you notice your body getting tense,
Speaker 7: and then you think, oh my god, this must be
Speaker 7: really bad. It's like a snowball rolling downhill. It just
Speaker 7: picks ups. Right, So you can use hypnosis to help
Speaker 7: people manage their physical stress. First, go to Hawaii and
Speaker 7: float in the ocean. And then I had him picture
Speaker 7: a problem that he's really struggling with in his work,
Speaker 7: and he was able doing that while keeping his body
Speaker 7: camp to picture a first step. I know the meeting,
Speaker 7: I know the people I need to convene to work
Speaker 7: on solving this problem. And he literally made himself feel
Speaker 7: better by keeping his body comfortable but also allowing his
Speaker 7: mind to stop panicking and focus on the next step
Speaker 7: to dealing with the problem. So that's the kind of
Speaker 7: thing you can do.
Speaker 5: And are you able to turn that into a therapy
Speaker 5: he can access without being in a session with you.
Speaker 5: Are you able to turn that into a therapy he
Speaker 5: can access without being in a session with you.
Speaker 7: Yes, indeed. And either people can just remember how to
Speaker 7: do it, or We've built an app called reverie r
Speaker 7: E V E ri I where you get to hear
Speaker 7: my malifluous voice anytime you want, and I give instructions
Speaker 7: about getting your body floating, and then I'll ask is
Speaker 7: your body floating now? And if they say yes, I
Speaker 7: go on to the next step of dealing with the problem.
Speaker 7: If not, I help them to intensify that. So it's
Speaker 7: a digital interactive app that helps people with problems like stress.
Speaker 7: With pain, we teach people to filter the hurt out
Speaker 7: of the pain. Imagine you're in a you know, if
Speaker 7: your if your back is really sore, or you at
Speaker 7: surgery or something. Imagine you're floating the lake. Cruel tingly
Speaker 7: enough filtered the hert out of the pain. And we
Speaker 7: have randomized clinical trials that prove that people taught self
Speaker 7: ignosis during medical procedures have significantly less pain and less
Speaker 7: anxiety and shorter precedure time because they're so comfortable. Then
Speaker 7: people who have standard care just pushing a button and
Speaker 7: getting opiates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this?
Speaker 6: Like okay, so is this like you're changing the client's
Speaker 6: expectations like the placebo effect, except with no deception.
Speaker 2: Is that what this is?
Speaker 7: It's it's that you're right, no deception, but it's more
Speaker 7: powerful than the placebo effect. There have been studies that
Speaker 7: compare the two, and the placebo effect. If you're not
Speaker 7: very hypnotizable, is like trying to experience hignosis. But if
Speaker 7: you're hypnotized, you can literally tolerate keeping your hand in
Speaker 7: cold water longer. If you're using hypnosis, you're imagining you've
Speaker 7: got a warm glove on your hand, it's filtering out
Speaker 7: the cold, and you will literally feel less discomfort and
Speaker 7: deal with the cold water temperature longer.
Speaker 6: All right, So this was a thing that happened to me.
Speaker 6: There was a point in my life where I thought
Speaker 6: it was going to be fired. Doesn't radio a long time.
Speaker 6: I was sure I was going to lose my job.
Speaker 6: And I was telling this guy who wasn't even that
Speaker 6: close a friend who I was walking with, and he said,
Speaker 6: you know something, you're firing yourself three four times a night.
Speaker 6: You may get fired at some point and you'll figure
Speaker 6: it out. But you're firing yourself every single night, and
Speaker 6: it resonated in such a strong way. How would hypnotherapy
Speaker 6: aid that if somebody's going through that to the story
Speaker 6: that they're telling themselves.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, hypnosis has been called believed in imagination.
Speaker 7: So it's not just that you're imagining, but you're not saying, oh,
Speaker 7: I'm sitting here imagining it. Your friend who who deserves
Speaker 7: a psychotherapist's license, what he did was helping you to
Speaker 7: put it in perspective. They say, yes, you're having these fears,
Speaker 7: you have that anxiety, but the way you're doing it
Speaker 7: makes it seem like it's actually happening, and that just
Speaker 7: amplifies your anxiety and you feel the physical tension and
Speaker 7: you think, oh my god, this must be serious, and
Speaker 7: on you go. So what what you can do with
Speaker 7: hypnosis is picture something that helps to correct the situation,
Speaker 7: or just you can detach yourself from it to the
Speaker 7: extent that you realize you're imagining it. It's not happening,
Speaker 7: but you're experiencing it as though it were happening, and
Speaker 7: that just makes you more and more anxious for real.
Speaker 6: Before before we go, would you mind. Could you do
Speaker 6: a little bit for people watching now who's never experienced that? Absolutely,
Speaker 6: take us, take us through a little bit of self power.
Speaker 5: Is by the way, the posted not suggestion of tuning
Speaker 5: in every Tuesday as new episodes drop of really it would.
Speaker 2: I'm getting sleeper. You can't raise your arms and drop right.
Speaker 2: So that's right. You just tore it up and made
Speaker 2: dirty something so beautiful.
Speaker 5: No, no, I took advantage of a beautiful opportunity to
Speaker 5: do what's for not what's advantage of?
Speaker 2: So proud of you?
Speaker 7: How this is the pod calling the kettle black. He
Speaker 7: starts off with stage ship notis in magic shows, and
Speaker 7: he's accusing you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly, All right, here we go.
Speaker 7: All right, get as comfortable as you can. On one,
Speaker 7: do one thing, look up all the way up as
Speaker 7: you can. On two, do two things. Slowly close your
Speaker 7: eyes and take a deep breath. And on three, do
Speaker 7: three things. Let the breath out, let your eyes relax,
Speaker 7: but keep them closed, and let your body float. And
Speaker 7: it's let your body float. Let one hand or the
Speaker 7: other float up in the air like a balloon. Rest
Speaker 7: in a comfortable, upright position. Each breath deeper and easier.
Speaker 7: And now imagine you're floating somewhere safe and comfortable, the lake,
Speaker 7: hot tub, or floating in space. And I want you
Speaker 7: to breathe in a special way and hail through your nose,
Speaker 7: starting with your belly. Stick out your belly, hold now,
Speaker 7: fill your chest completely, expand your chest, and then slowly
Speaker 7: exhale through your mouth. And again and hail through your nose,
Speaker 7: starting with your belly, Expand your chest, nice slow exhale
Speaker 7: through your mouth. So you're using your imagination to float,
Speaker 7: and you're helping your body breathe in a way that
Speaker 7: enhances your ability to relax. Each breath deeper and easier
Speaker 7: and nice slow exhale. Now, picture in your mind's eye
Speaker 7: an imaginary screen. It could be a movie screen, a
Speaker 7: TV screen, or of cool blue sky. And picture on
Speaker 7: it a place where you naturally feel comfortable, a lake,
Speaker 7: or floating in the ocean, or lying in a mountain meadow.
Speaker 7: And notice how you can help your mind and your
Speaker 7: body feel more comfortable. And if something is troubling you,
Speaker 7: divide the screen in half. On the left side, picture
Speaker 7: one thing that's bothering you, but with the rule that
Speaker 7: no matter what you see on the screen, your body
Speaker 7: is relaxed and comfortable, and notice how you can look
Speaker 7: at it more clearly, and then use the right side
Speaker 7: of the screen as your problem solving screen. Picture one
Speaker 7: thing you can do about the problem on the left.
Speaker 7: Notice how you can feel better by formulating a strategy.
Speaker 7: It's not the only one, may not be the best one,
Speaker 7: but it's a way of dealing with the problem. And now,
Speaker 7: if you're trying to get to sleep, get back to sleep.
Speaker 7: Keep your body floating, and just picture whatever it is
Speaker 7: you're thinking about on the screen. Put away from your
Speaker 7: body like you're watching a bad home movie, but just
Speaker 7: allow your body to feel floating, relaxed, and comfortable as
Speaker 7: you let these thoughts and feelings and images flow through you.
Speaker 7: One more nice deep breath in, starting with your belly
Speaker 7: and your chest, and now slowly exhale through your mouth.
Speaker 7: Now we'll come out of the state of if not
Speaker 7: a concentration, feeling relaxed afresh. On three, you'll look up
Speaker 7: two with your eyelids close, Roll up your eyes again.
Speaker 7: On one, let your eyes open, let your hand float
Speaker 7: back down, make a fist open, and that'll be the
Speaker 7: end of the exercise.
Speaker 2: Three two I learned a lot. At first, I have
Speaker 2: to ask you, how was that.
Speaker 6: It's hard for me to be still because I'm adhd whatever,
Speaker 6: but that was really helpful. It's almost like a gift.
Speaker 6: We go, I'm going to take a minute for myself
Speaker 6: and just cater to something which we don't know.
Speaker 5: Now, I'm going to reveal something that I teased at
Speaker 5: the beginning, which was I took a course in hypnosis
Speaker 5: about how to to to you know, an introductory course
Speaker 5: of how to help somebody go into a hypnotic state.
Speaker 5: And I remember being so impressed by it and learning
Speaker 5: a lot, and was actually able to.
Speaker 2: Do it for one or two people in a very
Speaker 2: light way.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, everybody in the class was
Speaker 5: also the participant, so you know, many times we were
Speaker 5: invited up to be the person put under and the
Speaker 5: guy teaching me when you're having a really hard time,
Speaker 5: aren't you? And I felt like I was never able
Speaker 5: to do it, and it wasn't because I was resistant.
Speaker 5: And doctors people, well, maybe you can actually confirm or
Speaker 5: deny some of this. What I have heard is that
Speaker 5: some of the best people subjects for you know, sort
Speaker 5: of demonstration hypnosis would be people like soldiers because they
Speaker 5: are used to having a physical response to an auditory
Speaker 5: command more or less. When when I was being given
Speaker 5: suggestions of how to relax and what to picture and
Speaker 5: what to do even now I'm going, hey, hey, that's
Speaker 5: a lot of stuff I'm not you know, my mind goes, well, wait,
Speaker 5: I just started doing this.
Speaker 2: Now you're asking me to do this. I wasn't ready
Speaker 2: to breathe, and.
Speaker 5: I'm having a dialogue in my head that I have
Speaker 5: a very hard time shutting off. So as a lot
Speaker 5: of people are giving over to the ideas and giving
Speaker 5: over to the sensations, my system actually can start to
Speaker 5: get a little more proclamped and frustrated because I'm going
Speaker 5: that's faster. Oh wow, I wasn't ready, and I'm my
Speaker 5: head is saying that internally, going.
Speaker 2: Oh I wasn't ready. I'm not ready yet. Oh I
Speaker 2: don't like that.
Speaker 5: Oh I did that, and it's so hard, and so
Speaker 5: now you haven't you know, we talk about sleep issues.
Speaker 2: That's how I have to go to bed to go
Speaker 2: shut up. Wow. So it's so interesting.
Speaker 5: This area is so interesting to me because I have
Speaker 5: participated from the other side.
Speaker 2: So, did you just have a hard time with this thing.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 5: I was smiling because I'm going I'm doing it again.
Speaker 5: I'm doing it again. He's going on until I'm going on.
Speaker 5: I'm still on three.
Speaker 6: So, doctor, and before you go the diagnosis for Jason,
Speaker 6: how does he somebody like that who possesses that pushback?
Speaker 2: How do you? How do you overcome that?
Speaker 7: There? Well, you don't overcome it, you work with it.
Speaker 7: There are differences in hypnotizability, So I'm guessing that Jason
Speaker 7: is not very hypnotizable. The fact that you can't turn
Speaker 7: off your critical judgment, even in situations where you might
Speaker 7: is more typical of people who are not very hypnotizable,
Speaker 7: and people who are, they just they go with the flow.
Speaker 7: They let themselves experience it, and later they may think, well,
Speaker 7: why did he do that? And it doesn't make any sense?
Speaker 2: Right, But.
Speaker 7: I suspect people differ in their hypnotizability. It's as stable
Speaker 7: a trait in adult life as I Q over a
Speaker 7: twenty five year interval. And I'm guessing you would score
Speaker 7: on the on the low side rather.
Speaker 2: Than have just that.
Speaker 5: Is you have that, they will write that on my toom.
Speaker 5: You scored on the low side, Doctor Spiegel.
Speaker 6: Thank you thank you forgetting his We know I now
Speaker 6: know how to what to point on his to him
Speaker 6: stone or the earn. Thank you for coming on. And
Speaker 6: by the way, you want to check out reverie dot.
Speaker 2: Com r E v E.
Speaker 6: I am down, I'm doing it.
Speaker 2: I'm doing it. Thanks for your time.
Speaker 7: I'm so glad. Thank you for having me on pleasure.
Speaker 5: Well, here's what we know is I would I would
Speaker 5: be dismissed from the stage.
Speaker 2: And it's funny. We know each other a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's funny.
Speaker 6: How this this podcast, as we've learned new stuff about
Speaker 6: each other.
Speaker 5: That didn't I just want to do this in as
Speaker 5: a high school summer course, and unfortunately I can't remember
Speaker 5: the gentleman's name who was teaching the course. I would
Speaker 5: accredit him, but it was fascinating and I have seen
Speaker 5: things like a student in the class was deeply under
Speaker 5: and at that point this man was able to stick
Speaker 5: pins in this guy's arm up and down his arm. Now,
Speaker 5: even given that heat burns up not down, the guy
Speaker 5: put a lit match in this guy's palm and allowed
Speaker 5: it to burn out and said, not only will you
Speaker 5: not feel anything, but there will be no burn. There
Speaker 5: will be no mark, there will be no nothing. And
Speaker 5: the guy and he's and he's seems as wide awake
Speaker 5: as you and I are. And he's looking at it
Speaker 5: and under hypnosis with a burning match of this, and
Speaker 5: he's going, oh my god, there's a there's a burning
Speaker 5: match in my I mean, he's fully aware, and yet
Speaker 5: he and even the freak of going, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I'm holding the match. Nothing of that happened. So I
Speaker 5: have seen and participated in how sort of astonishing this
Speaker 5: could be. But I was an impossible subject.
Speaker 2: And without rancor.
Speaker 5: The guy said to me, no, you are, you're the
Speaker 5: way your mind fires, This would be very challenging for you.
Speaker 2: My noise is totally inside.
Speaker 5: It's it's literally when he's going, on three, you'll do this,
Speaker 5: On two, you'll do this, and on one you'll do this.
Speaker 5: And I'm going to did he mean that was the three?
Speaker 5: Should I have been done it? Should I have done
Speaker 5: it already? It's I'm trying to process what's happening on
Speaker 5: the inside.
Speaker 2: And he's going split the screen.
Speaker 5: Side and on the right side see a solution, and
Speaker 5: on the right side, I see me killing the thing
Speaker 5: on So wait.
Speaker 6: A minute, So to be fair about it, to be
Speaker 6: fair about it. When my hands threw up in the air,
Speaker 6: the one, two, three, things not totally clear. He goes
Speaker 6: in on three and I'm going to set the three?
Speaker 6: Are we doing the three? Were going to this three?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, David, David still out. His hand never came down.
Speaker 2: The doctor never said put your hand, David, put your
Speaker 2: hand down.
Speaker 4: Can we get him back on?
Speaker 8: Because I cannot get this guy get his hand down.
Speaker 2: David.
Speaker 6: Stop, look at me, Look at me. Yeah, you're getting sleepy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you're getting sleepy. Sit on your hand.
Speaker 5: Your hand is going down. It's reaching for your wallet.
Speaker 5: Take your wallet.
Speaker 2: We do it different. There's nothing in there. There's nothing,
Speaker 2: all right, So tell us what did we miss? What happened?
Speaker 4: Well, this is my mouth hand.
Speaker 8: I should have done the bit of God's sake, for
Speaker 8: God's say, like.
Speaker 6: Hendrick, he's got to learn how to play with his
Speaker 6: left hand now, and by the way, and do and.
Speaker 2: Other stuff and other and other stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, David, Yeah, I just started up.
Speaker 8: You know, I was looking to see like you know,
Speaker 8: his hypnosis is the real thing, and blah blah blah
Speaker 8: and this stuff. And then I was looking into famous
Speaker 8: people who have actually used hypnosis for different things. Sure,
Speaker 8: Albert Einstein used a form of self hypnosis when he
Speaker 8: was sort of ruminating over the physics and all of that,
Speaker 8: and that has been attributed to some of the aspects
Speaker 8: of him coming up.
Speaker 7: With the theory of relativity.
Speaker 4: We also have other people like Julia.
Speaker 2: Roberts uh huh.
Speaker 8: She and her brother when they were younger were dealing
Speaker 8: with a stutter in speech issues. They both used apparently hypnosis.
Speaker 8: We also got Tiger Woods used it for the stroke,
Speaker 8: ohoh oh, Reese Witherspoon for anxiety and issues like that.
Speaker 4: Mary lou Retten was suffering.
Speaker 8: With apparently really bad foot pain when she, of course
Speaker 8: a famous gymnast in the Olympics to gold in the eighties.
Speaker 8: Mozart apparently wrote one of his famous operas Wild Hypnotized
Speaker 8: and and here's the thing, and now here's a question
Speaker 8: for you at the end to wrap me up. What
Speaker 8: do Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Ellen DeGeneres, Beta affleck or
Speaker 8: reflec Ashton, Kutcher, and Charlie's their own have in common.
Speaker 2: None of them listen to this podcast. They all like that.
Speaker 2: They're big fans of Seersucker.
Speaker 4: No, wow, these are interesting.
Speaker 8: I guess they have nothing to do with hypnosis, which
Speaker 8: maybe I don't know. They were all they all used
Speaker 8: hypnosis to quit smoking.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, now I'll tell you something. Here's what.
Speaker 5: There's another very famous group of people that you did
Speaker 5: not mention, who are alive only through the power of
Speaker 5: suggestion in the mind. In the Star Trek episode good
Speaker 5: Night Everybody, Actor of the Gun where the Star Trek
Speaker 5: crew is transported to a fake Okay correct, the fake
Speaker 5: Okay Corral. Uh, and they everything they experience there will
Speaker 5: have real life effects. But Spock, the true logician, has
Speaker 5: determined that it's all an illusion, a very believable illusion.
Speaker 5: And he said, the way to survive the gunfight that
Speaker 5: we inevitably will have it the Okay Corral is to know,
Speaker 5: beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the bullets.
Speaker 2: Are not real. They are illusions. And uh, I think shadow,
Speaker 2: says will Spock. That's easy for you. But if any
Speaker 2: of us have a shadow of a doubt, he goes,
Speaker 2: then you will die.
Speaker 5: And so he mind melts, which is really just hypnosis.
Speaker 5: It's just hypnosis. He mind melts them going they are shadows,
Speaker 5: they are not bul and the guy stand there and
Speaker 5: and Wyatt upen his gango bang bang bang bang bang,
Speaker 5: and they stand there and they're unaffected. And that's how
Speaker 5: they beat the Melchotians and make the Melchotians believe that
Speaker 5: humanity is a superior race, all through the power of hypnosis.
Speaker 2: Good night, everybody, And you.
Speaker 6: Know it had been great, right and then we got
Speaker 6: a run What would have been great if that was
Speaker 6: the final episode of Star Trek and didn't work.
Speaker 4: At one?
Speaker 2: Guy went one if.
Speaker 6: And we're done and we're out, Thank you everybody. David,
Speaker 6: Wait a minute, David, are you still in hypnosis or
Speaker 6: you have a question?
Speaker 2: So why you're hand up?
Speaker 8: And I have no questions. I'm still in hypnosis. I'm
Speaker 8: getting I'm getting the reverie app is all I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I gotta get the I gotta get the doctor back.
Speaker 2: Good luck with the hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as another episode, really no really comes to an end.
Speaker 3: I know you're wondering, has anyone ever claimed that they
Speaker 3: committed a crime because they were under the spell of hypnosis?
Speaker 3: Well I'll entrance you with that answer in a moment,
Speaker 3: but first let's thank our guest, doctor David Siegel. You
Speaker 3: can follow the doctor on his website Reverie dot com.
Speaker 4: That's our e V E R I.
Speaker 3: You can also follow him on Instagram where he is
Speaker 3: at Reverie or on x where he is at Reverie
Speaker 3: Underscore Health.
Speaker 4: Find all pertinent links in our show notes.
Speaker 3: Our Little Shell on Instagram, TikTok YouTube, and threads at
Speaker 3: Really No Really podcast And of course you can share
Speaker 3: your thoughts and feedback with us.
Speaker 4: Online at Reallynorelly dot com.
Speaker 3: If you have a really some amazing factor story that
Speaker 3: boggles your mind, share it with us and if.
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Speaker 4: Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts.
Speaker 3: Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe
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Speaker 3: release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday.
Speaker 3: So listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 3: Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And now the
Speaker 3: answer to the question, has anyone ever claimed that they
Speaker 3: committed a crime all hypnotized, Well you bet they've claimed it.
Speaker 3: In fact, a whole bunch of people have tried to
Speaker 3: use it as a get out of jail free card.
Speaker 3: Some of the most famous include In nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 3: a pale hard Drop of Denmark rob Debank and killed
Speaker 3: two employees. He claimed he had been hypnotized by a
Speaker 3: former cellmate. In fact, he said the whole plot was
Speaker 3: meant to finance a larger plan to form a new
Speaker 3: fascist party. The cellmate, Bjorn Nielsen, was ultimately convicted of
Speaker 3: manipulating Hardrump, making this a rare case where the hypnosis
Speaker 3: defense actually worked. In nineteen eighty one, Stephen Steinberg of
Speaker 3: Arizona was acquitted of the murder of his wife after
Speaker 3: claiming he had been sleepwalking during the trial. His lawyers
Speaker 3: suggested that hypnosis could have played a role in suppressing
Speaker 3: his conscious awareness of the act. The jury determined he
Speaker 3: was not ultimately in a conscious state when the crime
Speaker 3: went down, and Steinberg was.
Speaker 4: Acquitted as well.
Speaker 3: But this defense fails more often than not. For example,
Speaker 3: Albert de Salvo, the famed Boston strangler of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: tried to retract his confession, claiming he had been hypnotized
Speaker 3: to falsely take credit for the crime. DeSalvo had in
Speaker 3: fact been hypnotized to better recall memories of his own
Speaker 3: trauma and details of his multiple killings, but no evidence
Speaker 3: was ever found that hypnotists planted or altered memories.
Speaker 4: And DeSalvo was soundly found guilty.
Speaker 3: In short, folks, if you want to be in a
Speaker 3: hypnost just show and cluck like a hen.
Speaker 2: Go for it.
Speaker 4: We could always use the eggs. Just don't blame the
Speaker 4: guy if you cross legal lines afterward. Sevenali is unlikely
Speaker 4: to take the fall.
Speaker 3: Hilly No Really is the production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment.