Podcast #56: Spunky, Beezer and the Context Free Humour Tag Team

Brain Software hypnosis podcastWelcome to Episode 56 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel and Chris Thompson! We’ve got a great episode for you … and we actually had to record this one twice! Yup, Our studio computer went haywire on us. But the second time was an improvement. And hey, We had fun recording it! If you want to learn hypnosis online make sure you check out the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy

Here are the show notes for this episode:

    • Mike just came off a two-day introduction to Ericksonian Hypnosis, which he teaches a couple of times per year for NLPWorks (the only NLP training in Canada we recommend, BTW). Mike explains the main difference beween this class and our 5-day full hypnosis training course.
    • Congratulations to Jessie T, the winner of our contest from Podcast #55. She even sent us the hilarious text message chain where she beautifully applied the context free humour that we challenged everyone to use.
    • Chris has just returned from a trip to San Diego to attend a marketing conference.  He explains how marketing can be done better when you consider courting / dating as a metaphor for sales.
    • We talk about hypnotic intersection and covert / conversational hypnosis. Chris talks about an example of applying this with a young woman who believed she had a case of stage fright.
    • We have some fun with a tutorial on what we call “Stacking Negatives”. It’s a hilarious way to confuse the heck out of someone by … well … stacking a bunch of negative statements on top of one another (along with some other clever tricks).  Check it out and enjoy!
    • Mike and our mutual friend Ryan also invented a new context-free humour tool, which we challenge you to get on camera and send to us. We call it the tag team technique, and you’ll need to listen to the podcast to capture the full enjoyment potential.
    • Mike talks about how subtle language can be with an explanation of using the word “only”.
    • Contest for this podcast: Apply either stacking negatives or tag team in a real situation and send us the evidence / story.  Winner claims a digital download of their choice for free.

Empowering Question: When it comes to your personal wellness, whether it be diet, activity or mental game … which is the most neglected area of your life and what are you going to put into action starting right now.

Closing Metaphor: Ravens in Northern Ontario.

Please leave a rating for the show in iTunes, and send in your questions by emailing questions (at) MikeMandelHypnosis (dot) com.

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Raw Transcript

Mike: [singing] Spunky, it’s the spunky and Beezer show. Hey kids. It’s the spunky and Beezer show. The only show where you’re spunky and you’re Beezer.

Chris: [laughs] I just can’t believe you did that for the intro, Mike. Okay, let’s do the real one. Welcome to session number 56 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel and I’m Chris Thompson. It’s been a long time since he’s done a podcast. He’s just completed two days of hypnosis training for NLP works and has written a new song to close up this podcast.

Mike: Better than Spunky and Beezer.

Chris: Please welcome the raider of the hypnotic ark, Mike Mandel.

Mike: [laughs] The hypnotic raider of the lost ark… I love it. It doesn’t make any sense. Yeees. Anyway, I’m back. Chris and I are back. It’s been a long break and we’re going to rocket through this. listen guys, I’m not making this up. We just recorded a killer podcast, podcast 56.

Chris: this one.

Mike: this one and the entire software had somehow screwed up. So we had lunch and we’re doing it again.

Chris: We’re redoing it, it’ll be even better.

Mike: So Chris, we had a podcast contest in number 56. Do you want to talk about that?

Chris: Yes. So in podcast number 55, Mike not 56. We had a contest. It was about our enjoyment of context free humor and we talked about this lavender mist and [unclear 1?23]. If you haven’t listened to it, listen to it.

Mike: If you haven’t listened to it until now, go right back to about podcast 4 or 5. That’s a good starting point. Start there until you catch up. This will make no sense.

Chris: Go back to the absolute beginning, the content. Even though Mike and I didn’t hit our groove until about 4 or 5 but content is golden. It will make up for the fact that our energy levels isn’t quite as good until 4 or 5. You’ll love it. go back to the beginning but anyway, if you’ve been with us all along, 54 or 55 podcasts in. I want you to just remember that we talked about that context free humor in podcast 55 and the contest was very simple. go out and use this on someone in a hilarious way and…

Mike: Making reference to the bag of Pykthos, the lavender bag, the…

Chris: Well there were a bunch, just go back to 55 if you want to hear it and read the show notes. They’re on the blog. Anyway, the winner of the podcast contest to get to the point here is Jessie Trotter. The contest was go out and use the context free humor and the price is whoever did the best job and some balance of the best job of using it and the soonest to submit then we would award you a free download from our website. Some sort of free download from your choice, anything from our website and Jessie who is the winner already is a member of the Hypnosis Academy. He already has everything so here’s the prize. Instead of us sending it to you, we want you to just email us the name of a friend or family member, somebody that you care about who you think would benefit from a particular product. Tell us which one do you want us to send them and we’ll send it to them because it’s obviously…

Mike: Excellent well the less said the better. Good work Jessie.

Chris: We will have another contest on this podcast.

Mike: Jessie’s line is a little bit better. Someone had sent a picture of a kid covered in spaghetti or something.

Chris: Oh yeah. Somebody had texted a picture of a baby covered in spaghetti and said haha, this seemed like a good idea at the time until they had to start cleaning it up.

Mike: And Jessie’s response was… Invoking the bag of Pykthos was I smell the scent of lavender fabulosa in your kitchen and I googled it. Fabulosa is a cleaning product that comes in lavender scent. That was beautiful. Of course the person at the other end was saying why?

Chris: If you have no idea what we’re talking about, you need to listen to podcast 55. Otherwise, congrats to Jessie. Hilarious… hilarious… we had a few other good entries as well but we don’t have time to mention them all so… you just finished a 2-day course Mike with Hugh Comerford at NLP Works. Often, the question comes in okay, what is the difference between a 2-day hypnosis class with Hugh’s organization that you teach for him, the introduction to Ericksonian hypnosis and it sounded weird. Let me just say that word properly. Hypnosis not anosis.

Mike: Alright nice. Well the bottom-line.

Chris: Versus the 5-day.

Mike: Well the 5-day is our own training that I wrote a number of years back. a couple of years back the Architecture of Hypnosis – the 2-day I do for Hugh Comerford’s group is the hypnosis module so it’s entirely Ericksonian and this is basically I’m going in as their hired gun, their hypnotic hired gun the way I was for Derek Ballmer in Canada. So I’m extracting some of the Ericksonian patterns from my 5-day course. We have an absolute blast with some tremendous students. A lot of east Indian students. They’re amazing.

Chris: Fantastic. Yeah so it’s a great class and maybe this is a good time to mention if you would like to get on the waiting list for any of the classes that we’re doing, but the waiting list especially for the 5-day Architecture of Hypnosis class is quite large. Head on over to the website Mikemandelhypnosis.com, fine the sales page where we talk about the live training, the live class for the hypnosis training and you’ll see a big red button that says get on the wait list. I recommend you do that even if you can’t make the sold out may class because I’m going to use.

Mike: Just get in line in case you want to take it. it may sold out I think the end of November. We’re opening the doors to another 5-day hypnosis training in June because…

Chris: We’re hoping to. we can’t clench that yet. We have to get the room and all that.

Mike: The next one will be November so you’ll have to wait until November if you don’t get in line.

Chris: Anyway the reason I mentioned the wait list is get on it because it’s time stamped every time you put an entry in, it’s time stamped and I’m treating that as the priority list for the next classes so even though you probably can’t get into the may class, get on the waiting list anyway because that’s you’re early bird ticket into the future classes.

Mike: You’re the ones who find out first. Next1

Chris: So what will we talk about… well..

Mike: Hey your voice is still a little bit rough and I know it’s tied into that San Diego trip you just took and the boat cruises.

Chris: Yes let’s talk about that. I had a lot of fun in San Diego last week not only because it’s –infinity here in Toronto but I was at a marketing conference, digital marketing conference and it was a lot of fun for me because it’s the first time I’ve ever gone to a digital marketing in general marketing conference. It was quite big with 3000 people in San Diego and it was great. Ill share with you folks. Mike, the most important metaphor that I took away is marketing and relationships it’s all the same thing so a good metaphor was courting dating, so here’s the idea. Imagine a woman and a man are about to go on their first date and the woman goes up the man and says oh let’s try that new Italian restaurant tonight and while we’re having dinner, why don’t we talk about the names we’re going to give to our first two children.

Mike: Right, right. too much of a shock.

Chris: Creepy right? Or imagine your first date with a woman, you show up and you pop the engagement ring on her. Creepy like this is boom. To connect this to marketing, if you’re marketing, if you’re in any kind of sales environment or just any relationship building, the last thing you want to do is when you first meet somebody is like pop a big question on them like you want to buy this stuff from me or do you want to get married. It’s the same kind of idea.

Mike: Too much of a jump.

Chris: You want to build rapport. You want to build a connection. You want people to understand what you want, get to know you, like you, trust you before you start pitching on a whole bunch of stuff and of course, this resonated with me because why do you think a couple of years ago I said to you hey we should start doing a podcast.

Mike: Right.

Chris: I knew it would be a great source of getting people acquainted. Acquainted, it sounded weird. Acquainted with the hypnosis world.

Mike: But it’s worth it because people feel like they got to know us a bit and find out what we’re all about and what kind of credibility we have.

Chris: And it’s a 2-way street. We get tons of emails from them and..

Mike: All over the world…and people come from all over the world to study in Toronto so this is very good Chris. It’s a good metaphor seeing it as a relationship.

Chris: In fact this morning I got an email from a woman Dianne in Ecuador. She’s an American living in Ecuador in a farm and she told me when are you guys recording another podcast because…

Mike: She told you?

Chris: She asked. She told me in her email that she listens to the podcasts out while she’s working in her farm which is really cool to know that there are people in countries like Ecuador.

Mike: Farming and listening to this right now. that way we back up for a second. Hello Dianne. Back it up because when you were there, you were telling me quite an interesting story that you were talking to when you were in this conference and you managed to intersect her hypnotically and influence her.

Chris: Yeah so a lot of times people ask us about clover hypnosis and conversational hypnosis. Lets just for clarification let us explain to people what we mean. I love your definition there Mike. Conversational hypnosis is pretty much any of the indirect stuff. The Ericksonian stuff where you’re just talking to people and they can be aware that you’re doing hypnosis with them which makes it conversational but one of [unclear 9?00] which makes it not prude I should say but if you’re doing conversational overhypnosis when they know you’re doing it and you can do overhypnosis which is generally conversational in nature so it doesn’t sound weird. You know you’re looking at someone covertly saying look into my eyes like it’s weird creepy so, ifyou do conversational hypnosis but you don’t tell the person that you’re doing it then its covert and that’s exactly what happens so I’m at this conference and of course it’s a marketing conference so there’s people like this woman was a copyrighter. Other people have programmers or other people sell different coaching products or whatever it is. There’s all kinds of people in all kinds of different businesses.

Mike: Yeah I met a thousand of them.

Chris: I met a gentleman who ran a knitting and crocheting business like teaching people how to knit and crochet online which is fantastic, very interesting. You’d not have guessed that when you looked at him.

Mike: Knitters and crocheters have a particular look.

Chris: He just didn’t look like you didn’t expect him to tell you oh yeah I teach English lessons online but anyway really cool stuff. So I’m sitting at a big round dinner table, about 10 people at the table on a little boat cruise VIP event. For those of you who don’t know VIP, it just means you paid a little more for your ticket about a bunch of us about 300people on this boat over dinner and a woman sits down beside me and usual question, what do you do? I told her I’m a hypnotist. Of course the look of fascination. I told her of course, you build your credibility in further. I run a hypnosis training business with my partner, Mike Mandel in Toronto. So fascination, lots of questions. To cut a long story short, she started to tell me about how she felt that she had lost her ability to do good quality public speaking and feel comfortable up there on stage so I started probing knowing I was likely to turn this into some sort of cover hypnosis.

Mike: Right, you’re looking for the opportunity.

Chris: Right so keep in mind I had built rapport first obviously and in doing so, I started using the metamodel that asks specific questions. So, the specific questions that I asked her in this case were how do you know that you were good at speaking when you were back in high school which she told me she used to be good at and I didn’t ask her in an accusatory way like you probably suck. How did you know? it was more like that’s…

Mike: You’re trying to find what are her this evidence criteria so she knows.

Chris: And I didn’t use that phrase because I think it’s a good phrase. So you were great public speaker, I’m curious how did you know at that time that you were good. what were your soarings? how did you know you were excellent in what you call them, – I wanted to get this into a kinesthetic state. I wanted to guide her to the course. So that way I could realize it looks as more effectively. So I asked her outright you know a lot of people when they are on stage, they get a certain feeling of empowerment. That certain feeling sometimes they feel it in their legs. Sometimes you feel it in your chest and you’re touching that upper chest area right below your throat. Yeah, yeah I got that feeling too. And I said where exactly did you feel it when you were speaking so powerfully in front of people on stage and you have that ability back then and she started telling me well yeah, it was more like just below half road in the upper chest. He said that’s right and it’s interesting to notice that just thinking about it now you can be aware that you feeling that sense even stronger than you were before, aren’t you?

Mike: Yes, yes I am Chris.

Chris: She said yeah, I do and I’m making this up. I don’t know what the exact works are.

Mike: But you’re basically getting her to elicit this kinesthetic state in pieces and the amazing thing is… well did she catch on to you?

Chris: Yes towards the end because she already asked me you know oh I guess we’re going to all have to be careful talking around you aren’t we? I said that’s right. but the process was done right then so what happened is I intersected her and I got her to elicit that state of that same empowerment that she felt, pointed out that she was feeling it then I locked eyes with her and I told her that everybody has access to these resources permanently once you have them, it wont go away and I used a metaphor about riding a bike and how you never forget. And so, I slowed down my pace, I looked directly into her eyes and I told her exactly what she needed to hear which was to reframe her understanding of not having lost the ability but just having to put it back on the shelf for a few years and now she can take it off the shelf again and use it.

Mike: And get to it even easier. She’s found the shefl where it is. Now it’s interesting how many counts Chris.

Chris:  And then the penny drops and so she sort of I’m shaking my head, you’re as if like you know being jarred out of experience and she went you’re doing it on me right now aren’t you?

Mike: And you said that’s right. [laughs] that’s fantastic on a lot of levels. First of all, the elegance with which you accomplished it after about 4 bottles of wine and the other thing is what we’re hearing here is this is verified by the work of Gordon Emerson in Australia and also Watkins and Watkins, a psychologist who did the work in ego state theory. So what they basically did was documented that these different personality fragments, they’re semi personalities within us are actually digital. They are burned in neural pathways from childhood with axons and dendrites all create different pathways that we can jump into. So if you point at yourself and say this is me, you’re pointing at an ego state. The one that is currently executive or in the captain Kirk chair running the enterprise at the moment. So when you talk to her and we use 5-15 ego states in a typical day although we may have hundreds of them and this is something that therapist run into a problem a lot. The person who phones to book the appointment because they want to quit smoking and had enough of it is not necessarily the same ego state that shows up in the office that’s telling you to quit. What Chris elegantly did was by eliciting the components of that particular ego state, he hauled it into the executive so that was the one that she was unaware of and gave her the means and the instructions to get there again. Now for all of you listening, if you have a meeting to go to, or there’s someone that you normally argue with at a family event, save yourself. Which ego state do I want in the executive? you’re not going to know which one it is probably but you can decide on the traits that you have. I want to have an ego state that is let’s say friendly but not a pushover. An ego state that is assertive but not aggressive. One that has access to all of my resources. One that is confident and put clear and by naming these states you will call to the executive the one that will most likely behave with all of these different components. So it’s a matter of learning to get the right state into the executive. Hypnosis is a great way of doing that. It even goes back years.

Chris: Absolutely. So that was really a fun experience. San Diego overall fantastic event. Did you want to now jump over to this little tutorial we talked about getting people this tutorial and something I call stacking negatives. I learned it from you.

Mike: Oh yeah, yeah.

Chris: It’s been our. So for those of you listening to this. we have had this in our hopper for awhile but we keep running out of time in the podcast and pushing it.

Mike: Not now.

Chris: So now we’ve got time, let’s do it.

Mike: Just so you know I’m working on 2 new laughs. I’ll be using them through the rest of the podcast. One is sort of explosive like [laughs]. I’m really enjoying that but what I’m not quite so sure is more like a hamster or a guinea pig sound that goes… you’ll be hearing them in alarming frequency.

Chris: All right fantastic but it’s okay because you admit it.

Mike: Now stacking negatives. Stacking negatives is for amusement.

Chris: Yes exactly. This is something that I suppose it’s not really content because there is a content to it when you’re sing it. Icontent. It’s got context. Out spying who this comes from. We love confusing language. Its screws people up and it’s just hilarious. I mean you wouldn’t want to use this in a super serious situation or somebody’s proposing to you.

Mike: Or you’re the head hostage negotiator and the kids…

Chris: He’s offering you a job or… not a good time to use it but if you just met…

Mike: It’s calling 911.

Chris: We do this a lot. Now this comes back to the reason I thought we should teach this and break it down step by step because one of the former students he was talking to at the time and I slipped into this language and he knows what it is so he said its amazing you can just pulley off so fluidly. How did you learn how to do it so well? I said I learned it from you then I thought how will I break this down as a process ifi had to teach it and I did so we’re going to talk about it now. so before we do Mike we should explain what is stacking negatives.

Mike: Right well basically anytime you introduce a negative it on a statement, you flip it and then it becomes the opposite meaning so the humor is if you take a simple steak and the way to practice it is if you take something like I will do the laundry. So how would you add one negative to i…

Chris: You will say I will not do the laundry or I won’t do the laundry.

Mike: Right now we have another one on top of that. I can’t say that I will not do the laundry but two negatives.

Chris: I’m not sure that I shouldn’t say that I won’t do the laundry.

Mike: now you’re adding uncertainty which is a different thing. that’s interesting.

Chris: Yeah actually good point. I’m not certain is a negative though but it’s a different kind of negative.

Mike: Well when you’re running it, you can’t say that you really don’t think it isn’t possible not to not go where you need to at this so I won’t say it.

Chris: So Mike are you going to do the laundry?

Mike: [laughs] no I’m not.

Chris: I’m not saying that I wasn’t sure.

Mike: I’m not saying that I’m not going to do it. it’s a very odd thing and when you start piling this on people, it’s a lot of fun to do. Just practice with it. get a phrase and start adding more and more and turning it into complex negatives that nobody has a clue how to deal with.

Chris: Are you not saying that people shouldn’t not implement this?

Mike: Is this not really true that you’re not saying that people shouldn’t implement this when they’re not going to apply all of the things they haven’t learned?

Chris: isn’t the real issue.. I love how you just… you know what you real… we got to explain this for people who haven’t been keeping up with all the podcast but how many podcast ago where we taught people isn’t the real issue trick which is so much fun.

Mike: Yeah somebody talking about something important to them and then you just hijack it. well isn’t the real issue here and you start talking about something.

Chris: Something that starts to relate to what they’re saying but further and further digresses to the topic.

Mike: So the guy’s got a new straw hat he’s wearing on the beach and he’s really proud of it and he’s showing it you and telling you how little he paid and you say isn’t the  real issue here that there’s people in the third world forced to work for 40 cents a day to make that kind of hat for layabouts like you so you can lie on a beach here and they don’t have real jobs. Now my question is what are you prepared to do about this today t improve their lauding life and it totally turns up from talking about their hat to their suddenly under a gun forced into a pressure situation.

Chris: So any of you who have been listening to our podcasts for awhile you can start to see the interconnecting abilities here. you can take that isn’t the real issue and now you can start stacking the negatives.

Mike: [laughs]

Chris: Wait until you master the techniques for this. stacking the negatives is something you really have to work on your own independently just to get that skill set right then you can…

Mike: I’m not saying that you can’t just figure it out and not do it immediately if you’re not paying attention to what we’re not saying.

Chris: But isn’t the real issue here not that you shouldn’t ignore all of this completely.

Mike: [laughs]

Chris: So let’s bring this down to closure on this.

Mike: I think we’re done with it. now look…

Chris: There’s a reason though I want to do this because we’re going to introduce contest for podcast 56?.

Mike: Oh I like it.

Chris: Which is if you implement stacking negatives or the next thing that we’re going to talk about which is called a tag team. If you implement one of these in a hilarious way, send us an email. Talk about what you did.

Mike: Or even better. In my view this is even better because people’s just going to send. We’ll only get floods of emails when we do this sort of contest.

Chris: Evidence.

Mike: We’re not interested in just receiving how many negatives you could put in a sentence. Forget the negative stack one.

Chris: We want the story on it.

Mike: Pick up yourself. We’d love the story but here’s what I want you to do. We’re going to show you how to do a tag team on people which is really funny. If you can get it on video and send it to us.

Chris: Oh yes.

Mike: If you had a friend doing this on someone in a bar or something without them knowing that would be fantastic. Youtube style video like punking somebody but this is really cool. Tag team is something like south African Johannesburg friend Ryan Cannonite and by accident fell in the car in a snowstorm. It’s basically this, when someone starts to talk about something, you’re resorting to context free humor again so they can’t get their head around it. what they don’t know, you’ve got a wingman who is in on what you’re about to do. That’s what tag team. Its really wingman. So, somebody Chris just tried it.

Chris: I tried to laugh but I miserably failed.

Mike: What happens is let’s say you’re having dinner and one guy doesn’t know that the two of you are going to do this on. He says something like he makes just some random comment about you know I’ve got to get new lawn planted. I’ve got so many weeds and that stupid lawn is crab grass everywhere and my wife is on my case and as soon as the weather changes, I’ve got to get out there and fill out the holes and get it all fixed up and then you immediately say something like…

Chris: I know what you mean and that is just like those new light bulbs that I took into… Mike’s just explained to me just so you know., this is brand new for me.

Mike: persons complained about their lawn and you say okay, I understand. I was at the supermarket today and they had this new kind of lawn light bulb that’s come up and it’s supposed to be very ecological. There’s no mercury in it. it’s exactly the same thing and when he looks startled and tries to get his head around this because he’s got a PGO spike fired in his brain, your wingman jumps in and says…

Chris: There’s no difference.

Mike: Yeah, there’s no difference at all. Its exactly the same thing.

Chris: Thank you for redeeming myself.

Mike: You both lean in and say  it really tight on the guy. There’s no… it’s exactly the same thing and he’s like what? this other guy is now suddenly agreeing with you instead of him so he’ll try to find his way out of it and say other things and you jump into another completely unrelated topic and the other guy says it’s the same thing and you say there is no difference.

Chris: there is no difference.

Mike: And you say it passionately like it’s something really important to you and so does your wingman and it really effs with people’s head in a huge way.

Chris: Okay now, take a moment while you’re listening. Just take a moment and think what is the difference between my first attempt at this where I got it wrong and the fine point, the littler difference that makes all the difference how Mike explained it. okay so now I’ll do the big reveal. So if you’ve noticed, I screwed up because I started by saying it’s just like and then I didn’t even know what I was going to say so I was looking at the lamp beside me and I made up a thing about light bulbs. It doesn’t matter how you connect it. you can connect it to…

Mike: Anything.

Chris: To the camera that you just bought or the stained glasses… you don’t immediately disclose that it’s like. you don’t want to say it’s like. that’s where I screwed up.

Mike: You want to draw him in into hearing oh he’s saying something else.

Chris: I wonder what’s coming.

Mike: That reminds me and you’re going what? and he says its exactly the same thing. and your buddy agrees yeah, there is no difference and you’re both really almost wound up about it intense and that really shocks people especially if you go through a second round.

Chris: So let’s do like one more example of this so people see the whole thing. I’ll do the delivery and then I’ll be your wing man so I’m going to play two roles. So I’m going to say Mike man, I just got this shipment from Amazon for that new lighting kit for the videos that we’re shooting and it was the crappiest quality. The soft box Velcro which was falling apart. It’s like nobody cares about quality anymore.

Mike: I know exactly what you’re talking about. When we went out last week, my wife and I went to a provincial park and I was looking at the sky and I said look at all the freaking cumulus clouds we get these days and they’re just fluffy and blowing across the sky and you get these big, big patches of blue and she’s standing there staring at it. you know, its exactly the same thing.

Chris: There’s no difference.

Mike: No difference at all.

Chris: [laughs] okay so, hopefully that’s a good example. I want to also point out that when you said yeah I know what you mean, that is not saying that’s like such and such. That’s agreement. That’s a rapport building state.

Mike: That’s right.

Chris: Just for the fine points at that.

Mike: I want to use the word only because…

Chris: Oh yeeeess.

Mike: You see I love lying which I find it fascinating and English of course is the most complex language in the world. Well at least the most filled with words you can say more things in English in more ways than you can saying any other language.

Chris: I like how you said filled.

Mike: I stayed on the word and the fs a little, from the f sound. The thing that’s intriguing about it is that’s why it’s the hardest line you should learn if you’re a non-native speaker but it’s things like the word only. You think of how much you can shift meaning in English with only one word and you hypnotists out there – budding young hypnotists, realize how by transition just your language a little bit you can make an amazing effect in someone else’s mind. You can cause something interesting so for example, only if I take a sentence like id punch Ozzy Osborne in the face okay? if I had the word only, it changes it. only I punch Ozzy Osborne in the face and you move only, I only punch Ozzy Osborne in the face. I punched only Ozzy Osborne in the face. I punched Ozzy Osborne only in the face. I punched Ozzy Osborne in the only face. I punched Ozzy Osborne in the face only. Now these are all different shades of meaning purely based on the position of one word.

Chris: Some of them imply certain things.

Mike: And we don’t even know how we process language Chris. Nobody knows how we generate it and nobody knows how we process it but it’s fun to mess with things.

Chris: It is fun so okay, let’s make sure we get the contest details clear. Going back to the tag team strategy which is get it on video if you can or even just audio or whatever. We won’t publish it unless we have permission but we want to get a good example of hilarious context free humor and it can be that or the stacking negatives preferably one you get on audio or video. Right and the one that we find the funniest at our sole discretion as judges will send you a free download.

Mike: Of your choice.

Chris: Anything from our website.

Mike: Of any product and if you work in the bag of Pykthos or the bagment of Edward the confessor, bonus points. We’ll give you two downloads.

Chris: That is –is there anything else you…

Mike: You’ve got an empowering question you want to give.

Chris: Yes let’s do the empowering question. we sometimes we throw these in the podcast but sometimes we don’t. today, we are. Here’s your empowering question for brain software podcast number 56. When it comes to your personal wellness whether it be diet, activity or your mental game; which is the most neglected area of your life and what are you going to put into action starting right now? I’ll say that again. When it comes to your personal wellness whether it be diet, activity or your mental game; which is the most neglected area of your life and what are you going to put into action starting right now?

Mike: Nice one Chris. Really good one.

Chris: I thought you were going to laugh.

Mike: No, not at the hills on that. [laughs] so great working on it. give a plug on the classes we have coming up.

Chris: Absolutely. All right so as we said earlier in the podcast, may Architecture of Hypnosis totally sold out, pretty big waiting list. Go to our website Mikemandelhypnosis.com, get on the waiting list. You’ll find it under the training tab. On it, you’ll find the architecture of hypnosis sales page. Big red button to get on the waiting list. That will be our cue because it will be time stamped your entry into the waiting list and you’ll be priority access for the future classes. We are likely going to add another class in June if we can make it fit.

Mike: And then after that you will have to wait for November.

Chris: Right because we’ve got to accommodate the very large waiting list. In addition to that, we plan on running Mindscaping in June and graphology in September.

Mike: each of which are 2-day courses. And we have people coming from all over the US and Canada for those. Please not guys, our courses sell out early. People get the word on the quality. We have people like Nico come in from Strasburg, France. He’s coming back for his third time. We’ve got people come in from Australia and Chris and I had to turn down offers – absolutely true – to go to brazil to do a training and Netherlands wanted me to go and teach Mindscaping. England wanted us to go to a 5-day Architecture of Hypnosis. We’ve had to say no to all of it because we have so much stuff here and we appreciate the offers but it’s the field of dreams thing. if you build it, they will come and the world is beating a path to Toronto which incidentally according to the economist, won the best city in the world award.

Chris: Very cool.

Mike: So come and find out why. It is awesome.

Chris: I suppose the fact that I’ve gotten a little bit smarter about building a waiting list has helped. It used to be that we would you know get the room dates booked, make the announcement and have something like 4 or 6 weeks to fill up the class and by that time, a lot of the people who want to come maybe they’ve made other plans or it’s a holiday or whatever. Now we’ve been taking waitlisted email entries and stuff from people so we’ve got quite a big cue so get on the list and you will enjoy the classes.

Mike: Come and study with us in Toronto hypnosis central. Let me get you the metaphor for today. Another true one is Milton Erickson said the best metaphors come from our own lives. About a month ago, I was in Sudbury, Ontario and I was doing a forensic graphology lecture at Cambrian college for the students and I was staying at the Comfort Inn and my favorite bird is the raven. They’re like totem bird. I absolutely love them. They fascinate me and there’s quite a lot of them in northern Ontario and I looked from the window of the Comfort Inn and saw a flock of ravens, maybe 12 or 15 of them arcing and swirling in the air about 100 to 150 metres from my window in the second floor and I kept watching them and  then in this cloud, they swirled around and I began doing surrogate EFT and some of you will know what I mean where you’re doing energetic tapping on your meridian points that affects something remotely like totally in the face of everything that is there.

Chris: It’s totally weird.

Mike: Totally weird but I had used to it to fix some problems with cats and apparently they use it to stop a barking dog a street away. So I gave this a shot and I just stared at the group with the tapping regimen and saying the word ravens just over and over ravens. I do the next tapping ravens and after one round, one enormous raven broke away from the flock and moved about 50 metres to the left and began circling by itself so thus encouraged, I continued to tap and stare at this one now saying ravens. God as my witness, this bird flew directly 100 metres to the Comfort Inn practically flew right at my window and about 5 or 6 feet away just pulled up through the air and flew over the hotel. Is it possible? Can I explain it? no.

Chris: Wow that’s our hypnosis word. Wow. All right thanks everybody for listening. This has been brain software podcast episode 56 with Mike Mandel and I’m Chris Thompson. We would love to get your feedback and have you head on over to the iTunes store. Leave a rating for this podcast. So far so food five star ratings but we want more reviews written as well so that we can share this podcast with the entire planet. More people in Ecuador and all over.

Mike: And we’ll keep putting them up here for free if you keep listening and come to Toronto to study with us.