Speaker 1: Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention. Have you
Speaker 1: ever gotten so caught up in a good movie that
Speaker 1: you kind of forget you're watching a movie? Absolutely, you
Speaker 1: become part of the movie instead of part of the audience.
Speaker 2: World renowned psychiatrist expert on self hypnosis, doctor David.
Speaker 1: Spiegel, How do we change ourselves? Deal with the aspect
Speaker 1: of the threat and you can control it? Wow, your
Speaker 1: boss may have said something awful to you, but your
Speaker 1: body doesn't have to react that way.
Speaker 2: Is it possible to control others with hypnosis?
Speaker 1: The number one health and well in the.
Speaker 3: Podcast Jay Shet, Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose,
Speaker 3: the place you come to become the happier, healthier and
Speaker 3: more healed.
Speaker 2: You know that I love sitting down with thought leaders
Speaker 2: and experts who introduce us to new modalities and ideas
Speaker 2: and insights that can improve our daily lives. Today's guest
Speaker 2: is someone I've been really excited to talk to. I'm
Speaker 2: speaking to doctor David Spiegel, who's a Wilson Professor and
Speaker 2: Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, director of the
Speaker 2: Center on Stress and Health, and medical director of the
Speaker 2: Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Speaker 2: Doctor David Spiegel is the founder of Reverie, the world's
Speaker 2: first interactive self hypnosis app. You can download it as
Speaker 2: soon as you want to while you're listening to this conversation.
Speaker 2: Doctor Spiegel has more than forty five years of clinical
Speaker 2: and research expertise, has published thirteen books, four hundred and
Speaker 2: four scientific journal articles, and his work has been supported
Speaker 2: by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute,
Speaker 2: and so many more. Please welcome to On Purpose, doctor
Speaker 2: David Spiegel. David, it's great to have you here. Thank
Speaker 2: you for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Jay. I'm delighted to be here
Speaker 1: talking with you.
Speaker 2: I'm so fascinated by your work and I'm so excited
Speaker 2: I get to bring it to my community and audience.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to start off because I really want
Speaker 2: to take the audience on a journey today to really understand.
Speaker 2: I think hypnotherapy and hypnosis are words and ideas and
Speaker 2: things that we've heard about for a long period of time,
Speaker 2: but we have a very limited understanding of what it
Speaker 2: actually is. So I'd love to start with what is
Speaker 2: hypnosis and what are some of the misconceptions about it.
Speaker 1: Hypnosis is, oddly enough, the oldest Western conception of a psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: the first time a talking interaction was thought to have
Speaker 1: therapeutic benefit. And I think there's much overlap some of
Speaker 1: the things you do and think like a monk, you know,
Speaker 1: focusing on visualization, on controlling or breathing, on visualizing things
Speaker 1: that can be ways of being different. And hypnosis is
Speaker 1: a state of highly focused attention. It's like getting Have
Speaker 1: you ever gotten so caught up in a good movie
Speaker 1: that you kind of forget you're watching a movie? Absolutely
Speaker 1: so you become part of the movie instead of part
Speaker 1: of the audience. Now, what you're doing when you're doing
Speaker 1: that is using for consciousness what a telephoto lens does
Speaker 1: for a camera. You see what you see with great detail,
Speaker 1: but you're less aware of the context. You dissociate other
Speaker 1: things you would ordinarily be aware of. Our brains are
Speaker 1: processing thousands of things all the time, what's going on
Speaker 1: in the body, noises, potential threats, all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: But in hypnosis you narrow the range of focus. And
Speaker 1: for example, right now you're having sensations in your body
Speaker 1: touching these nice chairs, but hopefully you weren't even aware
Speaker 1: of that. If you're ware, we could stop the interview
Speaker 1: right now. So we all do that. We can put
Speaker 1: out of awareness things that would ordinarily be inawares and
Speaker 1: hypnosis you focus intently, you dissociate, and the third thing
Speaker 1: you do is you disconnect from your ordinary ways of
Speaker 1: being and thinking. And this is where I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of similarity between meditation, mindfulness and what you
Speaker 1: do in hypnosis, which is you kind of get over yourself,
Speaker 1: but in a somewhat different way. You suspend your view
Speaker 1: of yourself and you try out being different. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing that scares a lot of people is that many
Speaker 1: people have been to one of these awful stage shows,
Speaker 1: you know, where they've seen the football coach dance like
Speaker 1: a ball arena. And I don't like making fun of people.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, there is a point, and
Speaker 1: the point is for us to change. And that's what
Speaker 1: your life's work is about now, is how do we
Speaker 1: change ourselves? How do we not get trapped in sort
Speaker 1: of wrote desires or I love that there was a
Speaker 1: quote you had about how life is too short to
Speaker 1: spend your time living somebody else's life, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think what you can do in hypnosis, in narrowing
Speaker 1: your focus of attention in dissociating is suspend your usual
Speaker 1: view feeling about what you're like and try out being different.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I believe those Steve jobs Is said.
Speaker 1: That, Yes, such Steve Jobs, such a.
Speaker 2: Powerful message, and I really appreciate the way you're explaining
Speaker 2: hypnosis and hypnotherapy. I find that what would you say
Speaker 2: are the common uses or because I think again, like
Speaker 2: you said, you've seen something on stage, or you've seen
Speaker 2: it in a movie, and it's used to often manipulate someone,
Speaker 2: or it's used to extract information, it's used for some
Speaker 2: sort of heist right in the movie or entertainment world.
Speaker 2: How would you find hypnosis or hypnotherapy being useful as individuals?
Speaker 2: Where does it become something that any one of us
Speaker 2: can access, use, utilize a need.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is that hypnosis is really a naturally
Speaker 1: occurring ability that people have to varying degrees, but it's
Speaker 1: something that we just don't tap. And all hypnosis is
Speaker 1: really self hypnosis. So just like you try to teach people,
Speaker 1: you do teach people how to meditate, how to be
Speaker 1: mindful of what they're doing, you're helping them discover a
Speaker 1: capacity within themselves that they can use. Hypnosis is very
Speaker 1: similar in that sense that most people have some ability
Speaker 1: to narrow their focus, and it's not a loss of control,
Speaker 1: it's a gain of control. You're learning that you can
Speaker 1: filter heart out of pain, that you can get to
Speaker 1: sleep better, that you can manage stress in a way
Speaker 1: that doesn't keep it proliferating, but teaches you to control it.
Speaker 1: I saw a man yesterday who a brilliant professor, who
Speaker 1: had radiation to his nose because he had a tumor
Speaker 1: there that needed to be treated, and he had terrible
Speaker 1: sensitivity in his noses, in his mouth, and he tried everything.
Speaker 1: He tried like seven different ways to neutralize the nerve signals.
Speaker 1: He took medications, he did all. It didn't work, and
Speaker 1: he was getting more and more frustrated because his life
Speaker 1: was his words and he was a tea and couldn't
Speaker 1: stand the thought of not being able to do that
Speaker 1: because he was so frustrated by it. And he found
Speaker 1: with a few minutes of learning self hypnosis that he
Speaker 1: could reduce the interference by fifty percent. He was amazed.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, my hand is feeling light and
Speaker 1: I feel some waves going through it, and I had
Speaker 1: him touch his face and kind of spread those waves,
Speaker 1: and he felt different right away. He was amazed. His
Speaker 1: wife was sitting and watching and she said, I'm not surprised,
Speaker 1: but it is a way of altering the way we
Speaker 1: manage our focus of attention, our processing of sensory input,
Speaker 1: and so literally we can filter the heart out of
Speaker 1: the pain. We can manage stress better by focusing from
Speaker 1: on the body up rather than the head down. You know,
Speaker 1: we often think, well, if I just figure out what's
Speaker 1: stressing me, and you know, decide is not a portin,
Speaker 1: or figure out a better way to do it, I
Speaker 1: won't be stressed. But what happens with stress is usually
Speaker 1: it's from the up that you see something that threatens you.
Speaker 1: We're pretty pathetic physical creatures. We don't run that fast,
Speaker 1: we don't smell that well, we don't hear that well,
Speaker 1: and so normally we have to re evolved because we
Speaker 1: treated most stressors as physical threats and you better get
Speaker 1: your heart rate up, in your blood pressure up, be
Speaker 1: ready to fight or flee. But most of the stresses
Speaker 1: we have now are not life threats. So if you
Speaker 1: respond physically your body's telling your brain, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is really terrible, and the brain thinks, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this really I feel bad. This must be really bad,
Speaker 1: and it's like a snowball rolling downhill. And with hypnosis,
Speaker 1: you can deal with the aspect of the threat that
Speaker 1: actually makes you most worried about it, and you can
Speaker 1: control it. You can say, well, your boss may have
Speaker 1: said something awful to you, but your body doesn't have
Speaker 1: to react that way. So imagine you're floating in a bath,
Speaker 1: the lake tubb or floating in space, and then picture
Speaker 1: on an imaginary screen your boss on one side and
Speaker 1: what you might say or do on the other in
Speaker 1: the context of feeling physically more comfortable. So hypnosis is
Speaker 1: a way of, in a very focused way, controlling mind
Speaker 1: and body interactions in a way that helps you handle
Speaker 1: them better.
Speaker 2: And can you look us through, David, the neurobiology what's
Speaker 2: happening to our brain in this period? Because I think again,
Speaker 2: often people have looked at some of these modalities as
Speaker 2: being wo wo or being slightly alternative, et cetera. But
Speaker 2: what's actually happening from a neuroscience perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I've lived with it for a long time
Speaker 1: But we've spent a decade studying what's going on in
Speaker 1: the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging with people who
Speaker 1: are high and low and hypnotizability in and out of
Speaker 1: hypnotic states, and we find three things happen in the
Speaker 1: brain when you go into hypnosis. The first is you
Speaker 1: turn down activity in the anterior cingulate cortext that's part
Speaker 1: of what we call the same alience network. It's a
Speaker 1: pattern matching region of the brain that says there's something
Speaker 1: different going on here. Maybe you better look out. So
Speaker 1: you hear a loud noise and you think, is it
Speaker 1: a threat? What is it? That's the salience network firing off,
Speaker 1: saying there may be trouble here, you're better attend to it.
Speaker 1: You turn down activity in that part of the brain.
Speaker 1: The singulate cortex is like an inverted sea right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the brain, and the front part of
Speaker 1: it is the salience network. We found that the more
Speaker 1: hypnotized people felt, the less activity there was in that
Speaker 1: part of the brain, So you're turning off the home
Speaker 1: alarm system and just letting yourself experience what you experience.
Speaker 1: We find actually that the more hypnotizable people are the
Speaker 1: more of an inhibitory neurotransmitter, gamma aminobuteric acid they have
Speaker 1: in the anterior cingulate. So it's the drug that benzodiazepines,
Speaker 1: anti anxiety drugs actually stimulate GABBA receptors, and so that's
Speaker 1: how we can control ourselves. We can reduce anxiety, but
Speaker 1: you don't need a drug to do it. You can
Speaker 1: do it yourself. The second thing that happens is we
Speaker 1: have more functional connectivity between the dorsalateral prefrontal cortex on
Speaker 1: the left and a part of the rank called the insuli.
Speaker 1: It's Latin for island, and it's a little island of
Speaker 1: tissue in the middle of the front part of the
Speaker 1: brain that is a mind body conduit. So when you're
Speaker 1: when that connection is happening, you have more ability to
Speaker 1: control what's happening in your body, to control heart rate
Speaker 1: and blood pressure, your level of arousal, to control of
Speaker 1: the functioning of the gastrointestinal system. We found that highly
Speaker 1: hypnotizable people given a hypnotic construction to imagine imaginary meal
Speaker 1: actually increase their gastric acid secretion by eighty nine percent.
Speaker 1: We had one subject who was taking a gastronomictory of
Speaker 1: the Bay Area, and after about a half an hour
Speaker 1: of she said, let's stop. I'm full, you know, just
Speaker 1: eating imaginary food. And when they do the opposite, when
Speaker 1: they relax but think of anything butt food or drink,
Speaker 1: we got a thirty nine percent decreasing gastric acid. So
Speaker 1: the brain has an amazing ability to control what's going
Speaker 1: on in the body. That's this prefrontal cortex to insul
Speaker 1: a connection and also to be more aware of what's
Speaker 1: going on in the body. We call that interroception, so
Speaker 1: you enhance your regulation of the body and perception of it.
Speaker 1: The third one, and I think this might be especial
Speaker 1: interest to you, Jay, in view of your interest of
Speaker 1: how we get trapped in notions of ourselves and try
Speaker 1: to be something we're not and don't focus on the
Speaker 1: fundamental things. You get inverse connectivity between the prefrontal cortex
Speaker 1: and the posterior singular cortext that's a part of the
Speaker 1: brain that we call the default mode network where you
Speaker 1: contemplate who you are what you are instead of what
Speaker 1: you're doing. When you're not working or doing anything, you're
Speaker 1: just reflecting. And it's the part of the brain that
Speaker 1: is the closest probably to what we call the superego
Speaker 1: and analytic terms, where you're looking at yourself and saying,
Speaker 1: who am I, who should I be? What do I
Speaker 1: want to be? And so you're to the extent you're
Speaker 1: engaged in the hypnotic task, you're suppressing activity there. And
Speaker 1: that's the football coach dancing like a ballerina. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I'll just try it anyway and see
Speaker 1: what it's like. Now, that's silly, but if you want
Speaker 1: people to change, it's a great opportunity to say, you
Speaker 1: know what, just try it. See what it feels like
Speaker 1: to be different. Can you be in the same situation
Speaker 1: and react to it differently, not struggle against it, not
Speaker 1: fight it, see what you can learn from it. And
Speaker 1: so that and that's a part of the brain where
Speaker 1: activity is suppressed. In experienced meditators too. The mindfulness tends
Speaker 1: to inhibit activity in this posterior singula default mode area,
Speaker 1: or I call it the my fault mode network. You know,
Speaker 1: it's when you're reflecting on what's wrong with you. And
Speaker 1: so it's a part of the brain that is also
Speaker 1: affected by psychedelic drugs that this sort of dissolution of
Speaker 1: the self comes but through disorganization of activity in the
Speaker 1: posterior singulate cortex. There's a new paper in Nature out
Speaker 1: with some leading neuroscientists who took psychedelics and scanned their
Speaker 1: brains eighteen times over a couple of weeks and found
Speaker 1: disorganization in that region of the brain. So it's a
Speaker 1: center for change because you can inhibit your usual views
Speaker 1: of who you are, and that's something that hypnosis helps
Speaker 1: you to do.
Speaker 2: Is it possible to control others with hypnosis and hypnotherapy?
Speaker 1: Well, jay I I would say yes and no. I
Speaker 1: mean we're social creatures. We're susceptible of social influence. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you pay any if you engage in
Speaker 1: the painful act of paying any attention to recent American politics,
Speaker 1: you'll see that people are influenced by all kinds of
Speaker 1: things and believe all kinds of things that just flat
Speaker 1: out aren't true. And it is the case that people
Speaker 1: in hypnosis, since they're more focused, are more likely to
Speaker 1: suspend their usual evaluation and judgment of things and see
Speaker 1: what it would be like if this were true instead
Speaker 1: of that. And there are people who have been and
Speaker 1: can be influenced to some extent. But you know what,
Speaker 1: people who are highly hypnotizable do that without ever having
Speaker 1: been formally hypnotized. They'll tell you. I just you know,
Speaker 1: the highly hypnotizable people tend to be very sensitive to
Speaker 1: other people. They pick up their emotional cues very well,
Speaker 1: and they respond often easily, putting somebody else's priorities above
Speaker 1: their own. So does that mean you're more easily influenced. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: But frankly, I think you're better protected if you understand
Speaker 1: more about your tendency to do that, and you can
Speaker 1: defend yourself more. So. Hypnosis is a way of being
Speaker 1: influenced by other people but also being influenced by your
Speaker 1: own desires and wishes. So I would say it's there,
Speaker 1: take full advantage of it.
Speaker 2: How does one know if they're hypnotizable? Because I believe
Speaker 2: that most people would feel like, oh, I would never
Speaker 2: work on me, and I don't think it would work
Speaker 2: on me like they do with meditation as well. People
Speaker 2: always think, oh, that won't work for me. My mind
Speaker 2: is everywhere. How does someone know if they can be hypnotized? Well?
Speaker 1: On the Reverie app, we have a six minute hypnotizability
Speaker 1: test it's a standard test. I've used it with about
Speaker 1: seven thousand patients and research subjects in my career. It
Speaker 1: just it can be done very quickly. You give a
Speaker 1: series of hypnotic instructions and see how the person can
Speaker 1: respond to them. And if you'd like, Jay, I can
Speaker 1: test your hypnotizability right now.
Speaker 2: I think we should do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah you are. I bet your listeners are placing bets
Speaker 1: just admatizable.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: So get as comfortable as you can. Put one arm
Speaker 1: on either side of the chair, and please look up
Speaker 1: now to the top of your head, all the way up,
Speaker 1: eye as you can, pass your eyebrows all the way up,
Speaker 1: way way up. Good, And as you keep looking up,
Speaker 1: slowly close your eyes. All right now, let your eyes relax,
Speaker 1: but keep them closed. Take a deep breath in nice
Speaker 1: slow exhale through your mouth. Let your eyes relax, but
Speaker 1: keep them closed, and let your body float. Just imagine
Speaker 1: you're floating somewhere safe and comfortable, like a bath, a lake,
Speaker 1: a hot tub, floating in space. And while your body's floating,
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you to take your right hand
Speaker 1: and stroke the back of your left middle finger. So
Speaker 1: let your right hand float over and stroke the back
Speaker 1: of your left middle fing and stroke backward towards your wrist.
Speaker 1: Now and up your forearm to your elbow. And as
Speaker 1: you do that, you'll feel a sense of tingling and
Speaker 1: numbness and lightness. And now put your right hand back
Speaker 1: down and let your left hand float up in the
Speaker 1: air like a balloon. Let it float up to a
Speaker 1: comfortable upright position. You can leave it straight up in
Speaker 1: the air as it is, or you can rest your
Speaker 1: elbow on the arm of the chair. Whatever feels better
Speaker 1: to you. And I'm going to give you this instruction.
Speaker 1: Your hand will remain light and in this upright position
Speaker 1: even after I give you the signal for your eyes
Speaker 1: to open. Later, when I ask you to pull your
Speaker 1: left hand back down to the arm of the chair
Speaker 1: and then let go, your left hand will float right
Speaker 1: back up to the upright position. You'll find something pleasant
Speaker 1: and amusing about this sensation. After that, when I ask
Speaker 1: you to touch your elbow, your usual sensation and control
Speaker 1: will return. Each time you go into this state of concentration,
Speaker 1: you'll find it easier and easier to do, and you
Speaker 1: can use it to help you concentrate on what's important
Speaker 1: to you. Right now, we'll come out of this state
Speaker 1: of concentration together by counting backwards from three to one.
Speaker 1: On three, you'll get ready. On two with your eye
Speaker 1: that's closed, roll up your eyes and one let your
Speaker 1: eyes open. Ready, three, two, one? Right now stand in
Speaker 1: this position. Please and describe what physical sensations you're aware
Speaker 1: of now in your left hand and arm. There's a
Speaker 1: tingling in my fingers, tingling? Is it comfortable?
Speaker 2: Comfortable?
Speaker 1: Very comfortable. Does your left hand feel as if it's
Speaker 1: not as much a part of your body as your
Speaker 1: right hand? Agreed, it's lighter, it's lighter. Okay. Does that
Speaker 1: surprise you at all?
Speaker 2: It's interesting to perceive the sensation.
Speaker 1: The sense it, Yeah, to be aware of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's interesting for sure. It's curious. Okay. Now please take
Speaker 1: your right hand, pull your left hand back down to
Speaker 1: the arm of the chair, and then let go. Now,
Speaker 1: your left hand just popped up. Can you describe what
Speaker 1: that felt like?
Speaker 2: It felt like a pull, almost like that I that
Speaker 2: I had to lift it up, That you had to
Speaker 2: lift it up. Yeah, that it felt like I should
Speaker 2: It felt right to do it.
Speaker 1: It felt right good? Yeah? Is that surprising to you
Speaker 1: that is very.
Speaker 2: Surprising to me.
Speaker 1: All right, I can feel it. It was a physical sensationhip,
Speaker 1: it was physical.
Speaker 2: It was physical. It wasn't mental, because I know you'd
Speaker 2: said that in the instructions, and I could hear that,
Speaker 2: I could feel it in my brain, so I guess
Speaker 2: there's something better. But it felt physically.
Speaker 1: It felt like it felt like a force, a physical force.
Speaker 1: By way of comparison, please raise your right hand, put
Speaker 1: that one down. Any difference in sensation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no feeling of there being any other this
Speaker 2: and my left hand almost feels like there's puppet strings attached,
Speaker 2: puppet strings, whereas here I don't feel they're They're like,
Speaker 2: I feel like I can do what I want with this,
Speaker 2: whereas this hand feels very like.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm here to tell you folks, there are no puppets.
Speaker 2: But in that in that sensation of the idea that
Speaker 2: in the sense I don't know how to describe that,
Speaker 2: it's this hand feels fully under my control, whereas this
Speaker 2: hand feels like there's a sense of I'm trying to
Speaker 2: I want to nail the expression. It's this hand I
Speaker 2: can do whatever I want with it right now. Is
Speaker 2: this hand feels like that's where it's meant to be.
Speaker 1: That's where it's meant to be, so you clearly have
Speaker 1: more control over your right right all right, now, please
Speaker 1: take your right hand, touch your left elbow, and then
Speaker 1: let go.
Speaker 2: Let go like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I see that your left hand went back down.
Speaker 1: Can you describe what that feels like?
Speaker 2: There's still a sensation in my forearm that makes me
Speaker 2: want to lift it slightly for some comfort. But when
Speaker 2: I put it down fully, it's slowly getting more acclimatized
Speaker 2: to matching with the right but it's not there yet.
Speaker 1: There yet, Okay, some sensation there, so it feels the
Speaker 1: sensation is different, but the control is now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could like still want to lift it a
Speaker 2: little bit. There's still that feeling of wanting to lift it.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, touch your left elbow again with your
Speaker 1: right hand open now, shake both hands and tell me
Speaker 1: when the control becomes the same. Slowly getting there, getting there? Okay.
Speaker 1: Did I do or say anything that would indicate there'd
Speaker 1: be a change in sensation or control in your left
Speaker 1: hand and arm?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Did I say anything to you about your elbow or
Speaker 1: touching your elbow?
Speaker 2: I believe.
Speaker 1: So, yes, yeah, do you remember what I said?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You said when I would touch my elbow that
Speaker 2: would return back.
Speaker 1: You didn't, and you did touch your elbow. Okay. Did
Speaker 1: you have a sense of floating lightness or buoyancy in
Speaker 1: your left hand and arm during Did you have that
Speaker 1: sense in any other part of your body? I don't
Speaker 1: think in chest. Okay, so your score is seven out
Speaker 1: of ten. You're quite hymnatizable, which is shocking to me.
Speaker 2: It is really, I just I just never thought I
Speaker 2: had this really strange thing happened that when you were talking.
Speaker 2: And I know we haven't even got into it yet,
Speaker 2: but when you asked me to roll my head, I
Speaker 2: think I find myself often to be non hypnotiza were
Speaker 2: just because I don't know. I guess I've never opened
Speaker 2: myself up to it. But I felt this when you
Speaker 2: were kind of about to calt me down. I felt
Speaker 2: like my head is getting heavier and lowering, and I
Speaker 2: felt like I was like I could. I was aware
Speaker 2: that I was sinking, but I was like, why am
Speaker 2: I sinking? Like what's going on? And so it's always
Speaker 2: like my head was straight back because you asked me
Speaker 2: to be comfortable as if I was floating. So when
Speaker 2: you said that, I kind of leaned back and I
Speaker 2: felt like I was floating in a lake, as you said.
Speaker 2: But then when you said, like, we're going to bring
Speaker 2: back ourselves conscious and my head started to do this
Speaker 2: and it was such a natural heaviness that brought my
Speaker 2: head down. But there was a part of me that
Speaker 2: was going, why are we doing this right now? Why
Speaker 2: am I dropping my head? But I am dropping my head.
Speaker 1: So your head was drooping forward, it was leaning was.
Speaker 2: Leaning forward, but you didn't ask me to do that,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know why I was doing it, but
Speaker 2: it felt natural to kind of feel like I was
Speaker 2: sinking in.
Speaker 1: Yes, sinking into it. So you were elaborating upon the
Speaker 1: image that you were feeling, and that's you know, hypnosis
Speaker 1: is about very rapidly doing things, changing the way your
Speaker 1: body feels. You have with all of your experience in mindfulness.
Speaker 1: This is something different for you. How would you say
Speaker 1: it's different from where the state to get into mindfulness?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I would say that the state
Speaker 2: of sinking and being in that state of awake and
Speaker 2: alert but also resting is something I feel certain mindfulness
Speaker 2: practices can allow us to create that STUF eight. I've
Speaker 2: never created it through physical movement. It's always created through
Speaker 2: being present or still or bringing my awareness to a
Speaker 2: particular object or my breath or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: But I've never really felt it physically. It's probably the
Speaker 2: best way I could define the difference. I felt like
Speaker 2: I'm floating while meditating, or I felt a lightness in
Speaker 2: my entire body, but not in a specific hand or
Speaker 2: a specific part of my body I see.
Speaker 1: So it's more slipping into the state but not using
Speaker 1: it right away to see if you can produce a
Speaker 1: change correct and frankly, when I use hypnosis with subjects,
Speaker 1: and I use this test with every person I use
Speaker 1: hypnosis with because it's a way for them to discover
Speaker 1: what the experience is like and how they feel it
Speaker 1: and to observe it, know, to see, don't take my
Speaker 1: word for it, try it out and see what it
Speaker 1: feels like, and for me to be able to evaluate
Speaker 1: in what way to work with them. Because some people
Speaker 1: can do something like what you did, some less not
Speaker 1: at all, not that many, but some people not at all.
Speaker 1: But it becomes a kind of immediate object lesson and
Speaker 1: how much more control we have over our body and
Speaker 1: how we react to that than we usually give ourselves
Speaker 1: credit for.
Speaker 2: What about the cynical mind that says, And that's what
Speaker 2: I'm so glad I'm talking to you about this, because
Speaker 2: you know years of research Stanford Medicine. It's the cynical
Speaker 2: mind that I avoided having in this experience, because I
Speaker 2: generally consider myself someone who wants to be open to
Speaker 2: experience and curious and open to letting things in to
Speaker 2: figure it out and see how useful it may be.
Speaker 2: But the cynical mind that says, well, of course Jay
Speaker 2: lifted his hand because David had said that he would
Speaker 2: lift his hand when he put it back down. But
Speaker 2: to me, I can genuinely say that, yes, there was
Speaker 2: an instruction in the brain, but there was also a
Speaker 2: feeling that was there. And so both those things and
Speaker 2: my cynical self. If I was trying to be annoying,
Speaker 2: which I would never want to in a you know,
Speaker 2: I've invited you to be my guest to my show,
Speaker 2: but the cynical, skeptical part of me would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to hold my hand down just to
Speaker 2: make a point. But I wanted to go with how
Speaker 2: I was actually feeling and intuitively feeling. So the cynical
Speaker 2: person that says, well, it's a placebo effect or it's
Speaker 2: something that David told you to do and that's why
Speaker 2: you did it. How do you process that kind of
Speaker 2: response or reaction that often I imagine arises.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I frankly think the best answer is
Speaker 1: you are highly experienced in mindfulness, in trying out different
Speaker 1: ways of being. And yet for you, and you're telling
Speaker 1: and look, I'm a guest on your show, this is
Speaker 1: your show. It would be fine for you to just say,
Speaker 1: you know, sorry, doc nice try I don't feel it,
Speaker 1: and I think you would be honest with your audience
Speaker 1: in doing that. I would, yes, But you had the experience.
Speaker 1: You know, years ago. I don't know if you remember this,
Speaker 1: but there was a guy named Phil Donahue who had
Speaker 1: a very popular daytime show and he invited me as
Speaker 1: a guest. Was at a time when it was thought
Speaker 1: to be dangerous to hypnotize someone in public. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: do that, other people might get hypnotized. So this woman
Speaker 1: I had hypnotized before the show began, and I had
Speaker 1: her arm up in the air like this. The show
Speaker 1: opens and I pull the hand down and it pops
Speaker 1: back up the way yours did. And the camera comes
Speaker 1: in closer, and Donna Hue says, look, this is just
Speaker 1: some doctor. I'm Phil Donahue. Keep your hand down, and
Speaker 1: he pulls her hand down and it pops right back
Speaker 1: up in the air, and she says, I'm starting to
Speaker 1: feel like a slot machine, you know. So the fun
Speaker 1: thing about it is is that if it's the real deal,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like you were saying, oh, I'll just keep
Speaker 1: my hand down. Your hand wanted to go up right.
Speaker 1: And that ability to quickly rearrange your mind body relationship
Speaker 1: is part of what's so interesting about hypnosis. And you
Speaker 1: experienced it, so you know. People can fight it if
Speaker 1: they want, or they can misrepresent what their experience is,
Speaker 1: but you didn't. You had the experience and that element
Speaker 1: of surprise that where people can see, damn, I look
Speaker 1: look what's happening in my body. Look what I can
Speaker 1: do this quickly? That's our world. I'm already starting therapy there,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm showing people that they have more
Speaker 1: of an ability to control their body than they like
Speaker 1: to think, or than they usually think, and that's a
Speaker 1: tremendous opportunity.
Speaker 2: Right, even though you're the one giving the instruction, you
Speaker 2: feel that that's showing that I have the power to
Speaker 2: control my body.
Speaker 1: That's a very important point, chat because it's I'm not
Speaker 1: taking control. And you may have did you feel like
Speaker 1: I was taking No? No, no, I thought. I'm a teacher.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm teaching you how to identify and utilize
Speaker 1: the abilities you have the way you do when you
Speaker 1: teach people how to use mindfulness, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: implanting mindfulness in them, You're showing them. Look, you know
Speaker 1: you're you've narrowed your view of who you are and
Speaker 1: what you are, and I'm going to help you expand it.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to show you the beauty and everyday
Speaker 1: experience and how you can reassess what's important to you
Speaker 1: in life. And people can be open to that and
Speaker 1: learned from it or not. But you're teaching them how
Speaker 1: to explore capacities they have that they may not have
Speaker 1: known about. And that's what I'm doing with hypnosis. I'm
Speaker 1: teaching them how to utilize their own ability. You know,
Speaker 1: our major evolutionary advantage as humans is our brain. This
Speaker 1: three pound object on the top of our shoulders. It
Speaker 1: doesn't come with a user's manual. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things our brains can do, and that's
Speaker 1: what you do teaching people mindfulness that you can use
Speaker 1: your brain in ways you hadn't thought of, and if
Speaker 1: they didn't have the basic ability to do it, it wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: And the same is true. That's what I'm doing with hypnosis.
Speaker 1: I'm not projecting anything onto someone. I'm teaching them how
Speaker 1: to use what they already know. When automobiles were invented
Speaker 1: some hundred and some years ago, there were a bunch
Speaker 1: of state laws against windshield wipers. Why because remember the
Speaker 1: oldest image of somebody inducing hypnosis was the dangling watch,
Speaker 1: you know, and it doesn't work very well with electronic
Speaker 1: watches now, But they thought people would be waving their
Speaker 1: eyes back and forth with the windshield wipers and going
Speaker 1: into hypnotic states when they were driving. It doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But so it's an ability that people have and we
Speaker 1: just teach them how to use it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's brilliant. Hey, I'm Jay Shatty and I wanted
Speaker 2: to invite you to a brand new interactive no charge
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Speaker 2: Over the years, I've worked with thousands of people across
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Speaker 2: not just lived, but truly loved. See you there. How
Speaker 2: can hypnotherapy affect our memory? How does it work with memory?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a that's a fairly controversial area, hypnosis. It
Speaker 1: can be a powerful thing. It can help people relive
Speaker 1: events and with not just remember, but relive them with
Speaker 1: the same kind of emotion, sort of like a flashback
Speaker 1: in PTSD, but under control, and then help people come
Speaker 1: to a new understanding of what happened. Now, does it
Speaker 1: mean that the hypnotic what we call age aggression, is
Speaker 1: an absolute, totally accurate recollection of what happened? Though? But
Speaker 1: then none of our recollections are, you know, they're a
Speaker 1: combination of what we experienced and put down in memory stores,
Speaker 1: and what we interpret and what we've learned later. But
Speaker 1: it can help people in a controlled way to get
Speaker 1: back to relive and remember things that they previously might
Speaker 1: not have been able to remember, in part because the
Speaker 1: emotions are so painful and difficult that one way to
Speaker 1: protect yourself is to just keep it dissociated, just put
Speaker 1: it away somewhere and not think about it. And hypnosis
Speaker 1: can be a way of cutting through that and helping
Speaker 1: people come to terms with situations that they previously hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about or didn't want to think about. So what
Speaker 1: I tell my patients and what is the case, is
Speaker 1: that hypnosis is no true serum. It's not like your
Speaker 1: memory is a tape recorder and you just rewind the
Speaker 1: tape and look at it. But it can be a
Speaker 1: way of dealing with the emotional implications of things you're
Speaker 1: remembering and get a better look at what happened. And
Speaker 1: one example, I don't know if you remember this, but
Speaker 1: not far from here, there's a town called chow Chilla
Speaker 1: where a school bus full of children was hijacked by
Speaker 1: two idiots who literally buried the bus underground in some
Speaker 1: an old mining pit, And they finally found the bus
Speaker 1: and really freed the kids, and the bus driver couldn't
Speaker 1: remember much about the guys who overtook the bus. So
Speaker 1: he was hypnotized, and he of course was traumatized too,
Speaker 1: and he had to help keep these kids alive in
Speaker 1: a terrible circumstance. And he recalled seeing this car overtaking
Speaker 1: the bus, and he remembered in hypnosis all of the
Speaker 1: numbers and letters of the license plate correctly. He got
Speaker 1: the order wrong, but he remembered it all, and that
Speaker 1: led to the arresting conviction of the two guys who
Speaker 1: did it. There are times when, yes, you can add
Speaker 1: new information that is accurate. It doesn't mean it's always accurate,
Speaker 1: but it's additional and often useful information.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's so fascinating that sometimes our conscious memory
Speaker 2: doesn't hold onto these I expect with the subconscious calm
Speaker 2: And so is it that you're able to also relieve
Speaker 2: past stress and anxiety and to overwhelm Is it by
Speaker 2: reframing the narrative in hypnosis or hypnotherapy that would do?
Speaker 2: Is that the work that's doing? Could you give some examples? Y, Yes.
Speaker 1: That's very important. So there's a woman I saw who
Speaker 1: suffered an attempted rape as she was coming home just
Speaker 1: at dusk with her arms full of groceries, and this
Speaker 1: guy jumped her and she starts fighting with him. Eventually
Speaker 1: she fought him off. Actually he was trying to get
Speaker 1: her upstairs into her apartment, and the police came. She
Speaker 1: hadn't actually been raped. They thought, no big deal. She
Speaker 1: then had a full out seizure. She's had a basel
Speaker 1: or skull fracture from the fighting with this guy. So
Speaker 1: it was a terrifying, horrible thing. And she wanted initially
Speaker 1: to just remember more about what the guy looked like,
Speaker 1: and she couldn't remember much. It was getting dark, so
Speaker 1: I said, all right, here's how we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: We're going to take you back to this time. But
Speaker 1: your body is floating in a bath. You're safe and comfortable,
Speaker 1: and whatever you see or remember, nothing has happened to
Speaker 1: your body is now safe and comfortable. So I was
Speaker 1: reassuring her. And very often, when understandably, when people remember
Speaker 1: an event like that, they start reacting physically as though
Speaker 1: what were happening, And that's that feedback cycle of physical
Speaker 1: and mental hyper arousal that is very uncomfortable. So remind
Speaker 1: yourself at all times you're safe and comfortable. But I
Speaker 1: want you to picture him and she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I really it was getting dark. I really can't see
Speaker 1: much more about his face than I recall, she said,
Speaker 1: but I see something else. If he gets me upstairs,
Speaker 1: he's not just going to rate me. He's going to
Speaker 1: kill me. And so you might say, well, thank you,
Speaker 1: doctor Spiegel. You've now made her feel even worse than
Speaker 1: she did before. It was a more horrible experience than
Speaker 1: even she had imagined. And I said, well, you're looking
Speaker 1: at this on a split screen. Picture him on one
Speaker 1: side and what you see about him on the other side.
Speaker 1: I want you to picture something else. What did you
Speaker 1: do to protect yourself? And I have yet to meet
Speaker 1: a trauma victim that doesn't engage in some creative strategy
Speaker 1: to protect themselves. And she said, you know, he's surprised
Speaker 1: that I'm fighting that hard. He didn't think I would.
Speaker 1: And she'd been feeling very guilty that she got herself
Speaker 1: as badly injured as she was, And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: you saved your life. You know, think about what you did.
Speaker 1: You know, you just jumped and you defended yourself, and
Speaker 1: you saved your life. So she came away from that,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, seeing things that you might say,
Speaker 1: are even more upsetting than what she was already living with.
Speaker 1: But recognizing that she had done something to save her
Speaker 1: life and that changed her reaction to the whole event.
Speaker 1: You know, she saw it as something that was an
Speaker 1: attribute and aspect of herself that she hadn't recognized. And
Speaker 1: there's I don't remember the name, but there's a Japanese
Speaker 1: custom that when some very beautiful precious vase breaks when
Speaker 1: somebody drops it or something, when they glue it back together,
Speaker 1: they don't use glue, they use gold and they're there
Speaker 1: is what they're saying is it will now be even
Speaker 1: more beautiful than it was. And in a sense, she
Speaker 1: it was a terrible thing, but it was also she
Speaker 1: learned something wonderful about herself. And that's so you can
Speaker 1: help people relive an event in a very controlled way
Speaker 1: and at the same time learn something that helps you
Speaker 1: cope with it a lot better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it's known as kintsugi.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yes, they use that gold powder and things like that,
Speaker 2: and that you get these gold veins, yes, in the vases.
Speaker 2: That is so beautiful. And thank you for showing that
Speaker 2: extreme example, because I think it's It's so interesting because
Speaker 2: you could do that as a theoretical activity, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't it doesn't work like that. You know, you could
Speaker 2: say like what did you learn from this? Or how
Speaker 2: did you react? And sometimes it can be so painful
Speaker 2: to reflect on it in such a technical theoretical way.
Speaker 2: That's right, and being able to see yourself fighting and
Speaker 2: being brave and being courageous and how it affects. How
Speaker 2: does then that work with self hypnotherapy, like when you
Speaker 2: talk about your app revery, how does that work? Because
Speaker 2: you're not physically there to guide people? How do them
Speaker 2: people allow themselves to practice it on their own in
Speaker 2: a safe way, in a safe environment, in a way
Speaker 2: that it can.
Speaker 1: Help well in many circumstances. Jay, it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy, that is. You know, there was a reporter
Speaker 1: for the Times of London who started using Reverie. She
Speaker 1: had metastatic breast cancer and she was dealing with that
Speaker 1: very openly with her readers and talking about that, and
Speaker 1: she tried wherever she was having trouble sleeping, you know,
Speaker 1: she just couldn't stay asleep and would wake up anxious
Speaker 1: and with some discomfort. She said about after about five
Speaker 1: days she would just listen to my malifluous voice every night.
Speaker 1: And you know, I used to worry that the app
Speaker 1: wouldn't be nearly as good as being in the office
Speaker 1: with me, But then I thought, you know, if you
Speaker 1: wake up at three in the morning, you probably don't
Speaker 1: want me in your bedroom teaching how to go back
Speaker 1: to sleep. But you've got me there on the app,
Speaker 1: and it's interactive. So I asked, how are you responding?
Speaker 1: And depending on what you tell the app, you get
Speaker 1: a different instruction, so it is as much like being
Speaker 1: with me as possible. And she said, I woke up
Speaker 1: one morning after about five days of this. Rosamond Dean
Speaker 1: is her name. She's a lovely person and grave reporter,
Speaker 1: and she said, I looked at the clock sort of
Speaker 1: out of the corner of my eye, and I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's seven or nine am. It's the
Speaker 1: first time I've slept through the night in a year.
Speaker 1: And so people can learn to incorporate it into their
Speaker 1: own practices. Now, I would say that people dealing with
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress disorder and these severe things probably would
Speaker 1: benefit more from having a trained therapist helping them to
Speaker 1: do it. But once you sort of set them on
Speaker 1: that path, they can revisit it having learned what the
Speaker 1: experience is like, and they can help them. But more
Speaker 1: commonly we use it for more common problems for distress, insomnia, pain, focus,
Speaker 1: things that are widely disseminated, mental problems that we don't
Speaker 1: have nearly enough resources to help people with. So Reverie
Speaker 1: is a great way to say, try it for yourself
Speaker 1: and see what it feels like. And if you need
Speaker 1: the help of a professional along with it, by all means.
Speaker 2: When you're working directly with the professional, how long have
Speaker 2: you seen it take for results to start forming? In reality?
Speaker 2: So if someone struggling with sleep and insomnia, how long
Speaker 2: does it take the average person to get back to
Speaker 2: a sense of well?
Speaker 1: I can tell you I have the most data jay
Speaker 1: from Reverie. We have people rate their level of stress
Speaker 1: or their level of pain pre to post within ten
Speaker 1: minutes the beginning of the interactive session to the end,
Speaker 1: and we find that four out of five of them
Speaker 1: report improvement of about one and a half to two
Speaker 1: points on a ten point scale within ten minutes and
Speaker 1: reductions in pain, stress management, improving focus is so eighty
Speaker 1: or ninety percent report improvement and so the great thing
Speaker 1: about this is you know right away whether you're going
Speaker 1: to feel better. I had one woman who was pregnant
Speaker 1: and had terrible lower back disease, and they couldn't give
Speaker 1: her opioids, thank god, because she was pregnant, and they
Speaker 1: implanted a nerve stimulator didn't work, and her pain was
Speaker 1: seven out of ten and the bigger the baby got.
Speaker 1: Of course, the worst the pain was because it was
Speaker 1: pulling more on her spine. And so I had her
Speaker 1: imagine she was doing something that gives her relief, which
Speaker 1: is taking a nice warm bath. And if you think
Speaker 1: about it, so she has the opportunity to put her
Speaker 1: brain into the state it is in when she's got
Speaker 1: the pain, but she's an a warm bath, and our
Speaker 1: brain can recall that and see, well, okay, the pain
Speaker 1: signals are still there, but I can also imagine them
Speaker 1: being interfered with by this comfort that comes with a warmth.
Speaker 1: So she did, and she said the pain was down
Speaker 1: from seven out of ten to three. But she looked angry,
Speaker 1: and I said, what are you angry about? She said,
Speaker 1: why in the hell are you the last doctor I
Speaker 1: got sent to instead of the first. It doesn't seem real.
Speaker 1: If there is an incision, ingestion, or injection, you're not
Speaker 1: doing anything real. I'm a doctor, I use medications, I
Speaker 1: do a lot of other treatment techniques. But our brains
Speaker 1: are powerful things, and if we learn to use the better,
Speaker 1: we can be a lot more comfortable and unlike opioids,
Speaker 1: which killed eighty eight thousand Americans last year alone, the
Speaker 1: worst thing it happens with hypnosis is it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So we're finding from people using Reverie, and this is
Speaker 1: thousands of people. We have one study with stress reduction,
Speaker 1: thirty three thousand people get an average reduction of one
Speaker 1: and a half points in ten minutes just using the app.
Speaker 1: So it's worth to try.
Speaker 2: What's the most extreme case or unique case where you've
Speaker 2: used typnotherapy that you remember that you think would be
Speaker 2: really powerful for the audience.
Speaker 1: To hear about. I worked with a Vietnam veteran who
Speaker 1: had been He had just kind of gone berserk in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and nobody knew quite knew why. But he hijacked an
Speaker 1: ambulance and went out into the jungle and started shooting
Speaker 1: at people he thought were Viatkan and he wound up
Speaker 1: being hospitalized in a statemental hospital for a year because
Speaker 1: he was picked up in a drug bust. He was
Speaker 1: using taking psychedelics and a social worker interviewed him and said,
Speaker 1: he doesn't look like our typical chronic patient in a
Speaker 1: statemental hospital. And so I got to see him, and
Speaker 1: he was very hypnotizable, and I said, I'd like to
Speaker 1: relive with you what happened before this event. So we
Speaker 1: went back and he was extremely hypnotizable. He was even
Speaker 1: higher score than you, Jay, and he relived the Tet
Speaker 1: offensive in Vietnam. And he comes back to the hospital
Speaker 1: we worked. He was a cook in the army. He was,
Speaker 1: you know, long standing, highly regarded cook in the army.
Speaker 1: And he comes upon the body of a little boy.
Speaker 1: He called him Shytown because he gave him Chicago, who
Speaker 1: he had informally adopted. The boy was an orphan. He
Speaker 1: was badly wounded in a bombing and had burns and
Speaker 1: walked with a crutch, and he just became his dad.
Speaker 1: And they hung out together and slept together, and he
Speaker 1: started crying. He's looking at the boy's body there. He's saying,
Speaker 1: they ain't got to kill kids. You know, we got
Speaker 1: the Geneva Convention they can't do this. They can't bomb hospitals,
Speaker 1: they can't kill kids. And he just takes off Commandeers's
Speaker 1: ambulance and starts yelling at vietname. He's hyri Ta truck.
Speaker 1: You know, he's angry at these people and shooting at them.
Speaker 1: And I said, all right, I want to remember now
Speaker 1: one happier time you had with Shytown and instantly, and see,
Speaker 1: the nice thing about hypnosis is the control you have
Speaker 1: that he's one minute grieving and angry at himself for
Speaker 1: not having somehow known he could, you know, thinking he
Speaker 1: could have saved the boy. And I said, picture one
Speaker 1: time you were happy with him, And a smile comes
Speaker 1: on his face and he says, you remember your birthday party.
Speaker 1: You know, the doughnut Dollies gave us some food for
Speaker 1: this party. And my sister Josie sent an electric train
Speaker 1: set from Chicago. The joke was it was from the
Speaker 1: Spiegel Brothers company either, you know, what are the odds?
Speaker 1: And he said, you ain't never seen an electric train before,
Speaker 1: and they were, you know, just he was suddenly happy.
Speaker 1: And I said, all right, I want you to remember
Speaker 1: two things. On one side of the screen. I want
Speaker 1: you to picture shy Town's grave, and he as he
Speaker 1: looked at it, he held out his hand and said, ashes
Speaker 1: to ashes, dust to dust, I guess and I said,
Speaker 1: on the other side, I want you to picture that
Speaker 1: time when you were really happy with him. And I
Speaker 1: do this in helping people grief using hypnosis, I said,
Speaker 1: because you're facing and dealing with the grief and the loss,
Speaker 1: but you're also remembering something different about it. That the
Speaker 1: reason it's so painful is how much joy you had together.
Speaker 1: So I want you to remember both the loss and
Speaker 1: you're having to bury shy Town. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I want you to picture those times you were happy
Speaker 1: with him, because that's still true, you still have the
Speaker 1: joy that you shared together. He then I said, all right,
Speaker 1: so let's come out of the hypnosis now, and he,
Speaker 1: you know, he had tears down his cheeks. He was
Speaker 1: really upset, and I said, what do you remember? And
Speaker 1: he looked a little puzzled and dazed, and he said,
Speaker 1: I remember a grave and a cake. Wow, that was it.
Speaker 1: That was all he remembered. And he practiced this exercise.
Speaker 1: He was in the ward of the hospital doing the
Speaker 1: self hypnosis. After that, grieving the boy you know, he
Speaker 1: told me later, he said he knew he was going
Speaker 1: to die. He was crippled the at arthritis. He didn't
Speaker 1: think he was going to survive the war. And I said,
Speaker 1: and you gave he did die, but you gave him
Speaker 1: a period of happiness and feeling loved before he died,
Speaker 1: and that's not going to go away. And he had
Speaker 1: one going to rehospitalization when one of his brothers, who
Speaker 1: was a Chicago police officer, was killed in a line
Speaker 1: of duty, and we had to kind of piece him
Speaker 1: back together and help him grieve that loss. But he
Speaker 1: went on to teach adolescent boys how to do long
Speaker 1: distance cycling and he was, you know, he was out
Speaker 1: of the hospital, nomads and he was he was doing fine.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's an experience I will I will
Speaker 1: not forget. And it shows you how the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about hypnosis is how much you know, people think you're
Speaker 1: losing control. You watch this guy doing this, and I was,
Speaker 1: I was reassuring myself. I was holding onto his arm
Speaker 1: while I was doing this. But I was struck by
Speaker 1: how much control we both had over the mental these
Speaker 1: extreme emotional states he was in and shifting from one
Speaker 1: to another, despite how intense they were. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the really cool things about hypnosis is that you
Speaker 1: can be very intense with intense emotions but help people
Speaker 1: feel themselves as different people. So he was dissociated in
Speaker 1: the sense that he was two different guys. He was,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, terribly upset and angry about the loss,
Speaker 1: and angry at himself for somehow not having been able
Speaker 1: to prevent this in the middle of a war. But
Speaker 1: at the same time he could be the loving guy
Speaker 1: who grieved this boy and who recognized the gift they
Speaker 1: had given to one another in forming the relationship that
Speaker 1: they formed. So the capacity to focus intently to control
Speaker 1: what's going on in mind and body, but also to
Speaker 1: be comfortable with the idea that you can be two
Speaker 1: different people in the sense that you can be this
Speaker 1: horribly angry, furious guy at himself and everyone else about
Speaker 1: what happened, and at the same time this warm, loving
Speaker 1: parent to this poor little kid is something that is
Speaker 1: a real strength of hypnosis.
Speaker 2: What I mean, thank you for sharing that story is
Speaker 2: super fascinating. I hope there's some way we can read
Speaker 2: and learn about all of these Yes, please let us
Speaker 2: know where, well where the audience can go to learn more.
Speaker 2: But what makes someone unhypnotizable? And when someone isn't open
Speaker 2: to it and it doesn't work on them, what do
Speaker 2: they do about it? Can they develop the ability to
Speaker 2: become more hypnotizable? What can they do to open themselves
Speaker 2: up to if they feel it's a modality that could
Speaker 2: help them.
Speaker 1: Well, Jay, there's good news and bed news about this.
Speaker 1: The good news is that most children are in trans
Speaker 1: states most of the time. You know, all eight year olds,
Speaker 1: you know they're out playing, You call them at for dinner,
Speaker 1: they don't hear you. They're doing anything. Work and play
Speaker 1: is all the same thing for kids. They live in
Speaker 1: their imagination, so they live hypnotic like experiences all the time,
Speaker 1: and they can change all the time and be different
Speaker 1: and play it being different. And so it's one of
Speaker 1: the wonderful things about you to it is that you're
Speaker 1: in a more of a hypnotic consciousness state more of
Speaker 1: the time. But as we go through adolescence, we go
Speaker 1: through what the famous psychologists PHA called formal consciousness, in
Speaker 1: which you evaluate more and experiencing is less a part
Speaker 1: of that. So you learn to try to be more
Speaker 1: logical and analyze more and just let yourself feel things less.
Speaker 1: So some people lose some of that hypnotic ability when
Speaker 1: they acquire these formal operations, and they are about twenty
Speaker 1: percent of the population who by the time they're twenty one,
Speaker 1: just are not very hypnotizable. They're very logical. In Reverie,
Speaker 1: where we have the hypnotizability test, we call them the researchers.
Speaker 1: They want to examine and evaluate everything. At the other extreme,
Speaker 1: some people retain extremely high hypnotizability, and we call them
Speaker 1: the poets. They just get to it. They just absorb
Speaker 1: themselves in anything. I had one guy recently who gets
Speaker 1: he loved getting lost in movies. You know, he just
Speaker 1: enters another world. He becomes an actor in the movie
Speaker 1: and part of it. And he decided he loved it
Speaker 1: so much that he went to film school to learn
Speaker 1: how to make movies. And he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: it was spoiling my experience of movies because I started thinking, well,
Speaker 1: why did they put the camera over here and the
Speaker 1: lightings and right in all this? And he said, so
Speaker 1: I quit film school, Chris, I was losing that ability.
Speaker 1: About sixty percent of the adult population are they're moderately hypnotizable.
Speaker 1: They haven't experienced, then they step back and reflect on it,
Speaker 1: and then they try it again. Most of them can
Speaker 1: benefit to some extent from Reverie from other hypnotic techniques,
Speaker 1: because even if you're not in it all the time,
Speaker 1: if you can dip into it and have the experience,
Speaker 1: you can change. And part of what we offer with
Speaker 1: Reverie is not just hypnosis, but the way we use hypnosis.
Speaker 1: And I think there's some of this and you know,
Speaker 1: thinking like a monk where you talk about you know
Speaker 1: the value of positivity, of having a finding a positive
Speaker 1: aspect of even the most menial things that you have
Speaker 1: to do. And with hypnosis, we try to use it
Speaker 1: in a way that you focus on what you're for.
Speaker 1: So when people want to stop smoking, I don't say, oh,
Speaker 1: cigarettes smell terrible. You know, they're awful things to do.
Speaker 1: Look at what you're doing to your buddy. I say,
Speaker 1: have them recite this to yourself. For my body, smoking's
Speaker 1: a poison. I need my body to live. I owe
Speaker 1: my body respect and protection. So you're being a better
Speaker 1: parent to your own body. You'd never put, you know,
Speaker 1: tar and nicotine laden smoke into your baby's lungs or
Speaker 1: your pets lungs. Why would you do it to your
Speaker 1: own body? It depends on you. So you people can
Speaker 1: get with that approach to the problem, even if they're
Speaker 1: not that hypnotizable, focusing on what you're for, So can
Speaker 1: you change it? It's remarkably stable trait. Jay I didn't,
Speaker 1: but colleagues of mine at Stanford did a twenty five
Speaker 1: year follow up on former students who in psych one
Speaker 1: had had their hypntizability measured, and they blindly retested them
Speaker 1: twenty five years later. The test retest reliability zero point seven.
Speaker 1: Now that's as reliable as IQ it was over that interval,
Speaker 1: and so it's an extremely stable trait there are We
Speaker 1: just published a paper recently in which we used a
Speaker 1: technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which you apply magnetic
Speaker 1: activity to the surface of the skull and if you
Speaker 1: line it up in the right place, you can connect
Speaker 1: between the prefrontal cortext to deeper components of the brain
Speaker 1: like the dorsal anterior cingulate, And we found that we
Speaker 1: could transiently increase hypnatizability a bit, and we're hoping that
Speaker 1: we can expand upon that and maybe find ways to
Speaker 1: increase hypnotizability, But I'd say for most people, just make
Speaker 1: good use of what you've got. The odds are that
Speaker 1: you will be able to benefit. And we're struck by
Speaker 1: the fact that at least four out of five people
Speaker 1: who use Reverie feel immediate improvement. And that's a whole
Speaker 1: It is correlated with their hypnotizability. We looked at that
Speaker 1: the more hypnotizable ones were more likely to respond, but
Speaker 1: most people responded to some extent anyway.
Speaker 2: David, is anything I didn't ask you that you really
Speaker 2: feel is on your heart in mind that you want
Speaker 2: to show and that's intuitively something you'd like to show.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, I certainly, you know. I want to
Speaker 1: kind of banish the fear that people have about hypnosis
Speaker 1: and the misunderstanding. You know, we're sort of remember Rodney Dangerfield.
Speaker 1: You know, he was the comedian who said I don't
Speaker 1: get no respect, and he said they asked me to
Speaker 1: leave a bar so they could start happy hour. You know,
Speaker 1: it's people don't see hypnosis as the tool that it is,
Speaker 1: and they see it as some weird thing that you know,
Speaker 1: people do on stage or something. It's an aspect of
Speaker 1: our brains that allows us to take control of things.
Speaker 1: It's not losing control, it's gaining control that you can
Speaker 1: modulate pain, you can control your sense of relaxation so
Speaker 1: you can get to sleep or get back to sleep.
Speaker 1: You can focus intently on your work. There are athletes
Speaker 1: who use it, you know. Tiger Woods is one well
Speaker 1: known example of an athlete who Adele the singer, uses
Speaker 1: it to sing. It can really help people focus their
Speaker 1: attention and get in a better relationship with their own bodies,
Speaker 1: control what's going on in their bodies, and react better
Speaker 1: to their bodies. There's so much possibility that people can
Speaker 1: have from learning to identify it and use it. That
Speaker 1: That's why I build Reverie is a kind of legacy project.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to do this forever.
Speaker 1: I love helping the people I have helped and still help,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to be out there and available
Speaker 1: for people to use it for themselves and just explore it.
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity for people to make better use of
Speaker 1: their brains and their bodies.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 2: And we end every episode of On Purpose with a
Speaker 2: final five. These have to be answered in one word
Speaker 2: to one sentence, Doctor David Spiegel. These are your fast five.
Speaker 2: Your final five. Question number one is what is the
Speaker 2: best advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: I would say the best advice came from reading Kirker
Speaker 1: Guard Fear and Trembling, which is that what we are
Speaker 1: is about relationships and relating to ourselves that don't get
Speaker 1: stuck in any one image of who you are, which
Speaker 1: is not so different from what you write about with
Speaker 1: mindful illness.
Speaker 2: Second, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: Don't think about purple elephants.
Speaker 2: Question number three, which you can expand on, is how
Speaker 2: do we get over our fear of revisiting the past
Speaker 2: technotherapy opening up to new modalities that we you know,
Speaker 2: that aren't as familiar even you know, we're almost not
Speaker 2: scared to put a pill in our body or injection
Speaker 2: as you said, or sometimes have a surgery, but these
Speaker 2: things feel scarier.
Speaker 1: Well, try it, you'll like it, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that's the nice thing about it. You know. The biggest
Speaker 1: risk is it might not work. There are no side effects.
Speaker 1: You know. Opioids killed eighty eight thousand Americans last year.
Speaker 1: Hypnosis has not succeeded yet in killing anybody. Let's see
Speaker 1: see so I think try it. You know, we tend
Speaker 1: our culture is so overprocessed. You know, it's all you know,
Speaker 1: big companies, things processing and a lot of times what
Speaker 1: we do with our food and our medications and other
Speaker 1: things make us worse rather than better. So this is
Speaker 1: a do it yourself approach with some training, and that's
Speaker 1: what I want people to do.
Speaker 2: Amazing. And the question number four, how would you define
Speaker 2: your current purpose?
Speaker 1: My current purpose is helping people help themselves. That's what
Speaker 1: I want to do, and that's why I say all
Speaker 1: hypnosis help hypnosis. I'm not a magician. I'm not doing
Speaker 1: anything to you, and my purpose is to just spread
Speaker 1: it as widely as we can, as quick as we can. Amazing.
Speaker 2: And fifth and final question, if you could create one
Speaker 2: law that everyone in the world had to follow, what
Speaker 2: would it be.
Speaker 1: It would be that a Supreme Court judge could last
Speaker 1: no longer than fifteen years. We need the rule of
Speaker 1: law and we're losing it absolutely.
Speaker 2: Doctor David Spieagle, thank you so much for joining. I
Speaker 2: hope that our audience will practice along with me, join
Speaker 2: Reverie and continue to connect with Dr David Spiegel's work.
Speaker 2: Such a joy and honor to be with you today
Speaker 2: and so grateful for you making the trip over, and
Speaker 2: I look forward to reconnecting very soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I hope so, and I so admire what
Speaker 1: you're doing and helping people discover what they can do
Speaker 1: for themselves within themselves. Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with
Speaker 2: Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma and how to
Speaker 2: heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
Speaker 1: Everything in nature goes only where it's vulnerable. So a
Speaker 1: tree doesn't go over it's hard and thif does it.
Speaker 1: It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.