Brain Software Podcast 30: Dealing with Pain and other Fun Hypnosis Conversation

Brain Software hypnosis podcastHere it is! The 30th episode of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. I can hardly believe we’ve already published 30 episodes. It keeps getting better and better. Here are the show notes.

  • We talk about the incredible training weekend we had for MINDSCAPING students in February. It was a huge success and we’ll definitely be working towards getting the material online (after we launch online hypnosis training, which is our top priority).
  • Pain and discomfort – we spent quite a bit of time on this subject. Chris finally started reading “Hypnotherapy” by Dave Elman (a book Mandel highly recommends). Mike points out that you must always get permission from the subject’s doctor before working on pain. That said, Mike has never had a doctor refuse the request. Doctors are more than willing to have a hypnotherapist help deal with a problem that they are, themselves, often unable to deal with.
  • How do you deal with pain? You can use a shift in language, for example shifting the instance of pain to the past tense. Or you can change the meaning by using words like “that discomfort” rather than “pain”. But avoid painted words such as pain, agony, etc. Refer to pain as a discomfort, or a pressure, or something more neutral.
  • We discuss the “control panel” method for dealing with pain. This is a direct technique and does not involve flowery vague conversational Ericksonian language patterns. You don’t need that when you have a deep trance in a subject. You can go after the discomfort directly by having them access a control panel in their mind and “turn down” the discomfort to an appropriate level. Mike points out that if you have the subject physically reach out and turn a knob or move an imaginary slider, it has a profound effect. Get the subject involved.
  • Yet another method to deal with pain is to change systems. Pain is kinaesthetic (feeling). If you change it to the visual sense by having the person imagine it’s a color instead of a feeling, what colour would it be? Then have the subject change the color to something they’d like better. Mike points out some examples of colors are naturally more pleasing. Then change the color back into the kinesthetic system and notice how it feels.
  • Mike also discusses using distraction as a method for dealing with pain. If Mike was at an AC/DC concert with a broken ankle, he surely wouldn’t feel any pain while watching Angus on his guitar!
  • Yet another method for dealing with pain is dissociation. If you don’t know what this means listen to the podcast. It’s a critical skill for all hypnotists and NLP practitioners to use.
  • What about people who can’t visualize? We had a really great example of this situation in the MINDSCAPING class in February. One of our students approached Mike during the morning break. He said to Mike, “I can’t visualize”. Mike said the magic sentence to him and of course, the guy started to visualize without realizing it. As soon as Mike pointed out to him that he was visualizing, his belief imploded.
  • Did you know that once you have a resource it’s impossible to remember what it felt like to not have the resource? Mike Mandel explains this beautifully.
  • Glove anasthesia as an inroad to dealing with emotional pain: This is a really interesting discussion about how you can use pain control techniques to shift physical pain control into emotional pain control.
  • Mike discusses hypnosis in a chair versus lying down on a mat. This comes from a listener’s question and brought forth some great discussion.

CORRECTION: When we recorded this podcast the April hypnosis class was sold out. We had one student cancel due to out of country travel so there is officially one spot left as of today. Register hereRegister here

Closing metaphor: The totally insane story of open heart surgery in Fiji (that never happened). Why are so many hypnotists so darn weird?

Please leave a rating for this podcast in iTunes!  Go leave a rating in iTunes, and send in your questions by emailing questions (at) MikeMandelHypnosis (dot) com.

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