Brain Software Podcast 42: What are the Limits of Hypnosis?

Brain Software hypnosis podcastWelcome to Episode 42 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. This podcast has to win a prize for the most loud and irrelevant introduction EVER.

Here are the show notes for this episode:

  • We discuss the “as if” frame and how you can apply it to your life. When you behave as though you already have the result you’re looking for, things get incredibly awesome.
  • We address a question from a listener who’s interested in using hypnosis to lengthen a bone. Is this even possible? It’s a fascinating question without a doubt.
  • Mike often talks about treating most subjects in a single session. So when should you use more than one session? Hear what Mike has to say about it.
  • Erik sent us in a fun story about using something similar to the “word salad” Erickson used in Bandler and Grinder’s book “Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson”. In Erik’s case, he used this same idea to build rapport with his young son who would mumble-speak (for lack of a better term). What a great story!
  • Chris handles a question from Mike about how to deal with a four year old child who has suddenly become an authority on everything.
  • It’s the final week to register for the Architecture of Hypnosis live class with Mike. If you can’t make it to this class, there is a TON of incredible content (plus hours and hours of bonus material) available in the online hypnosis course.
  • Next up – we handle a question from Ron about how to tell if a hypnosis subject is sleeping or in trance. This is actually a pretty common question, so you’ll probably enjoy the discussion around it.
  • Mike reveals a really great Meta Model question you can use to help people make changes. You’ll love this one!

 Empowering Question: What is your greatest talent or skill, and how are you going to use it for the benefit of others? What is your greatest weakness and how will you minimize its effect on your life.

Closing metaphor: The story of Dale and his basement apartment.

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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Raw Transcript

Mike: One, two… a one, two, three, four. [Music plays] You’re in the right place

Chris: Yes you are.

Chris and Mike: It’s the Chris and Jeff show. It’s the Chris and Jeff show. Not the Jeff and Chris show. It’s the Chris and Jeff show. More like awesome show, the Chris and Jeff show.

Chris: Just kidding! [laughs]

Mike: Scare you?  You think we took this really seriously?.

Chris: [laughs] Welcome fellow storm riders, you are officially a rider on the hypnotic storm. This is Chris Thompson and welcome to session number 42 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. He wears steel toed Bluntstone boots, has recently started taking ukulele lessons and believes that the Argentineans are the world’s finest ACDC fans.

Mike: Yes they are.

Chris: yes and we’re here.

Mike: Thank you Chris. I’ll just put down the ukulele, the thinking man’s violin. I am back.

Chris: I think that wins the award for the loudest podcast intro of all 42 podcasts that we’ve done.

Mike: I think that wins the award of the least important, the least significant and the biggest waste of time so let’s move on.

Chris: Now, it’s just fun to do hilariously stupid things.

Mike: Well, I often do things purely for my own amusement.

Chris: All right so let’s remind everybody of the important lesson in Mike Mandel’s life is I prefer life to be…

Chris and Mike: Effortless, enjoyable and…

Mike: Vaguely annoying to other people.

Chris: Vaguely, that’s the word. Not mildly.

Mike:  I think we fulfilled all three criteria with that beginning. So Chris, we are riders on the hypnotic storm. There’s a hypnotic storm raging worldwide because we have caused it. We are wiping out ludicrous scripts, inefficient teaching, poor hypnotists. We are raising the bar ridiculously high so that even we can barely reach it.

Chris: and I have to say I love getting emails from everybody who is a student of the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy where they send us in their emails telling us about their awesome successes, their questions and we’ve been answering them on the webinars that we’ve been doing. Not a commercial. Anyway, let’s get on to some….

Mike: No let’s just say we have now students in Norway, all over the US, Mexico, Canada, Austria, the UK, France, United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Luxemburg, Turkey, Australia, Taiwan, Switzerland, Bahrain, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Indonesia and Puerto Rico. All people studying with us online.

Chris: That’s awesome. You’re reading the text I sent you from earlier this week when I counted up all the countries.

Mike: What have we got today?

Chris: Okay I want to start with the “as if frame” because you had an interesting conversation yesterday with me mike about using the as if frame for fitness goals.

Mike: Oh that’s right.

Chris: So now don’t just jump into it. Explain for everyone what the as if frame is, how they can use it and then explain how you’re applying it to your own life in this case.

Mike: I stand chided obviously. I’ve all to do just that but apparently doing just that needed to be interrupted so I can learn to just do that.

Chris: Hold on. Hold on. [laughs]

Mike: The as if frame basically is a really cool technique where you behave as though something has already happened or you already have the resource in question.

Now the example I give is I worked with a woman a number of years ago… older lady, her husband had died – actually her second husband. She was in a deep depression and I worked with her and in the session basically said, “Okay, it’s two years from now. Act as if it’s two years from now. You have a social group. You’re having fun again, you’re functioning again” because even after the death of a spouse, most people and again most remember this only 51% although in this case, I think it’s about 80% begin functioning well after a couple of years. I’m not saying you ever get over the loss completely but she was still struggling so I put a target as two years down the road and said, “As if you’re already there, you’ve got a social group, you’ve got friends, you’re physically fit, you’re doing all these cool things, how did you do it?” And she said, “I don’t know how I would. “I said, “No, no. you’re there already. How did you do it? Act as if you’re already there. Just make it up.” She said, “Well I went to the public library and got involved in a reading club” and I said, “right, what else?” And I started writing these down. “Oh I joined the local YMCA again and began swimming and exercise again because I used to love that.” “Okay what else?” “Well then I got into a dance class and I started playing bridge with some friends of mine and then we wound up going on vacation together” and she just went through all the stuff up on the top of her head and I handed her the sheet of paper and said, there you just designed your next two years and she followed it up by acting as if she already had the resources.

Now you can borrow resources from other people by acting as if you already have them. How would you stand if you felt powerful? How would you walk? How would you move? What would your thoughts be? And so, knowing about the as if frame for years and years, this example came up because I said to Chris, whenever I get overworked, again I’m telling you do what I say, not what I do. Whenever I get overworked, I tend to eat badly. I eat a lot of wheat, I eat a lot of cheese, all the inflaming inflammatory foods that are exhausting for me and I get blood sugar all over the map. It’s just bad for me and I eat too late at night and I wind up putting on about 20 pounds and then I smarten up, I recognize the pattern, I go to threshold and drop the weight and eat better and exercise again and then I’m okay again. Well I reach that point because as you know I’ve been on the road doing a lot of … I think … eight forensic lectures at different universities and colleges and consequently, I’m eating pizza late at night because nothing else is available up in Thunder bay, Ontario for Laurentian University. All these things set me back and I thought, “man when I eat properly lot of live food, good protein sources, cut down the starch, eat the healthy fats like coconut oil and so on, I feel fantastic.” As soon as I add the exercise, I feel great and about seven days into it, I always say to my wife, I’ve got to remember in the future how awesome I feel when I eat right and exercise. I always forget that and then tend to frame it as “oh it’s going to be a drudgery to do this.” Well this time I remembered. So yesterday, I decided that was the start date. I got up, ate lots of greens, high quality proteins, no junk, no garbage, didn’t eat late at night, lots of alkaline water, did my comeback conditioning.

Chris: I thought you almost said lots of alcohol. [laughs]

Mike: No, not that. Not at all. Lots of exercise, the right kind, and I determined to use the as if frame. So I I started acting as if I’ve already been doing it for two weeks and I went to the mall and was walking through the mall and picking up the stuff in my post office box because I don’t let people send things to my house because I’m so severely private that if you try to get in, I’ll probably shoot you or something. Well I would if I had a gun …but so I’m at the mall which distances me from the world for awhile. I walked around the mall and I realized, I did feel great. I felt energized, I felt fit just by adapting the as if frame really, really congruently. And so, I’m feeling great now instead of “Oh I’m tired, I’ve just started a workout program.”

Chris: You know yeah, you could adopt the as-if frame if you have never been on a good workout or diet program in your life. Just act as if you’ve already been on it for a solid month. Pass that difficult sticking point right of getting it to be a habit and then continue it.

Mike: Of course and then if you say I’ve had difficulty doing that, it wouldn’t work in my case then just apply the as-if frame. Act as if you’re applying the as-if frame.

Chris: [laughs] That’s right.

Mike: [coughs] Although the bad thing is I’ve been fighting this stupid cold for over two weeks. It’s that deep down in the sinus one that so many people have had.

Chris: You know when we talk about this yesterday about applying it to fitness and you explained to me, “Look I want to talk about this in the podcast, the as-if frame.” It made so much sense. I mean you’ve been bouncing off of threshold for probably the last six months.

Mike: Yeah. I’m totally aware of that.

Chris: Yeah because it’s not important enough now and suddenly it has become and the same thing happened to me. I’m so glad you brought that up because had been letting my own fitness regimen slack off since the end of summer.

Mike: It needs to be said. I jokingly call Chris the fittest man in the world. He’s the fittest guy I know without any question and he’s sort of my role model in that area although trying to model his fitness at age 60 is somewhat of a mistake but the thing is though Chris if I don’t maintain the as-if frame and keep going with it, then jiu jitsu class has become really, really difficult and I get injuries. So anyway guys, the bottom line is if there’s something you want to do, if you want to be a good speaker, if you want to be you know whatever it is, act as if you’re already there. We have that great belief of jumping at the top and figure it out when you get there.

Chris: All right let’s move on to something we promised we would discuss and well, me, I’m the organizational guy here and I let this one slip. Noah had sent us in a question in July and we meant to include it at least two podcasts ago. Thank you for sending us in a reminder, Noah, to address this so we’re going to address it. the question came in about using hypnosis for bone lengthening.

Mike:  Yeah, making actual physiological shifts with it.

Chris: Right so my understanding of the situation is that Noah has one bone on I can’t remember. It was an arm I believe.

Mike: I thought it was a leg. I thought it was the femur.

Chris: Sorry you  might be right.

Mike: It doesn’t matter.  The principle is the same.

Chris: Well it doesn’t matter and I apologize for not remembering the detail but there’s one major bone that was a little bit shorter than another and he wanted to know if it’s possible to use hypnosis for bone lengthening. Now, the reason that he’s interested in hypnosis in the first place stems from what he described as a nearly life threatening insomnia condition where a hypnotherapist he saw essentially brought him to normal sleep or what he called almost perfectly normal sleep in one session and I want to come back to that in a minute because the whole idea of doing stuff and doing your best work and getting clients fixed right away is something that Mike teaches to every hypnosis student. That said, insomnia is a very classic case where we know hypnosis works.  Not so much information out there on things like bone lengthening.

Mike: Right where you’re trying to make physical shifts in the body. Now we know at least I believe that we don’t know it but I believe that the unconscious mind has a blueprint for perfect health and it has to the implication that it does because how do we know how to get well? I mean if you get the flu, you don’t know consciously to produce x type of antibodies and macrophages and everything and envelop the virus and so you don’t have a clue about that but the body does it automatically. It expels the toxins and all of these different things and makes the necessary requisite adjustments you begin to get better again.  I believe the unconscious mind has a blueprint for perfect health. The question is how far can we go with that? I know there had been Russian experiments in the 50s and 60s with bone lengthening through low voltage electrical current delivered over a period of time but that again is outside the parameters of what we’re discussing. The bottom line here Noah is we don’t know, we really don’t. We don’t know what the limits are of what we can do with this. Now, you can certainly remove a secondary molar and tell the bleeding to stop when the blood reaches the top of the tooth socket and form a clot and it’ll happen. The platelets will aggregate and a clot will form in direct response to the instruction given in trance. So who would’ve thought that until it was somebody initially gave it a shot. Who would’ve known that you can make warts dry up and fall off in response to suggestion? What we know all sorts of things now that we didn’t know then so maybe this is something that needs to be checked out and something that needs to be attempted. The worst that will happen is that nothing will happen but on the other hand, what if overtime the brain is able to make that sort of adjustment? So we actually get that kind of growth in bone tissue.

Chris: So for Noah and anyone in the other end of the equation i.e. hypnotherapist listening. When a subject comes to you and wants help with something like this and you don’t know what the answer is, what do you say?

Mike: Well throw your best work at it and see what happens.

Chris: Okay so basically as a hypnotherapist.

Mike: You’re not going to do any harm.

Chris: As a hypnotherapist, you’re charging for your time. You do your absolute best work and if nothing happens, then it’s better than not trying at all.

Mike: Well you wasted your time and money but at least you know you found something that doesn’t work.

Chris: Well I certainly wouldn’t want to go and see a hypnotherapist for a year and keep paying for for weekly sessions. I mean not going to happen right?

Mike: that starts to sound like psychoanalysis or something. We just keep going back and hope you actually work it out.

Chris: What I would like to see happen is go to a hypnotherapist who’s willing to help you out with this and then use self-hypnosis and regularly practice self-hypnosis for the purpose of having your unconscious mind unlock the potential to grow that bone to its normal adult length. See what happens. That way at least you only pay for one session.

Mike: One initial session and take over the work yourself.

Chris: Yeah you learn how to go into hypnotic trance yourself. You give yourself the direction and you don’t have to pay for that which is something anyone can do.

Mike: And again there are considerations here, Chris, too as to the age of the person. There’s certain things. You know what it sounds macaw but I say many times you take all the vitamins and everything you want and all the medicines that you want and get Botox and all these things but the death rate is still one per person no matter what we do.

Chris: Yes absolutely true. I’m just going to pull up the email here from him because I remember I think he gave us his age and it wasn’t that old.

Mike: Yeah so the bottom line is he’s not going to know unless he gives it a shot.

Chris: Right. I don’t… hold on. Okay we’ll move on because I don’t see any more information on this particular thing. Okay anyway well handled. At least we handled it. Noah, I hope you appreciate that. I hope that is helpful to you in some way even though we can’t be sure. I want o talk about the insomnia aspect though because so he did mention that he had gone through a real issue with insomnia and within one session, he went from having what he described as nearly life-threatening insomnia to almost normal sleep.

Mike: People would say I’m sure, Chris, how can insomnia be life-threatening? Many ways. It was a man at my cottage because he was getting narcolepsy as a result fall asleep driving. You’ve got to be really careful. What I would suggest with that, Noah, is find the hypnotherapist who got you the great result in the first place and give it a shot with him or her.

Chris: That was the hypnotherapist that was hesitant to apply the skills towards bone lengthening.

Mike: Yeah tell him I said it’s okay.

Chris: Yeah exactly but the idea here is one session right? so in what circumstances should it take more than one session and in what circumstances should a hypnotist really target a one step solution.

Mike: Well we have to look at this purely in terms of hypnosis, trance, whatever you want to call it is a learning state and in something like controlling anxiety, that’s going to take learning. It’s going to take time. Sorry Chris I’ve got this stupid cough. We’ll edit this out.

Chris: I’ll pretend I’m going to edit it out.

Mike: That one we really will edit out. So something like anxiety. Someone learning to deal with anxiety… That might be several sessions because it’s an ongoing niggling annoying thing that often results in a continuous adrenaline trickle in the bloodstream. So there are things that can take time. chronic pain from things like cancer, fibromyalgia that’s not dealt with. Looking at the emotional causes of it can cause repeated sessions because you’re going to need them to control it but generally speaking you should be able to make a significant shift in the first session for this simple reason. In the first session, throw all your best tools and your best work at it. what are you going to do if you have to have them back for the second session, your second best stuff if your first best stuff isn’t going to work.

Chris: And so I can remember situations where you’ve talked about doing more than one session but only because you were attacking a problem from a different angle. For example, the cancer patient with the blocked hepatic duct and itchiness.

Mike: Right causing the itch to move to the bed and then her daughter’s bed and so on.

Chris: Right whereas first turning down the itch, dialing it down did not work.

Mike: And yes but moving it did so yes, in a case like that and also there’s always exceptions folks. There really are but you have some general principles to work by not scripts, not rules – principles and you’ve got to know what they are in order to break them and it’s a weird thing Chris. Another case that’s an obvious one for continued intervention at least for four sessions is weigh management because you’re not going to work with someone in one session and all of a sudden their weight all drops away and they’re 125 pounds or whatever they want to be. You have to work on metabolic weight and belief systems and self esteem issues and cravings whatever and that will get a momentum going that they can then reinforce with self-hypnosis or just by being happy that it’s working.

Chris: Absolutely. You know what? That makes me think of we’ve got an email from one of our online students, Harris, and he loved the discussion in the last podcast about hypnosis sessions that people will sell as gold or silver or bronze.

Mike: I remember you spend around 15 minutes on that.

Chris: [laughs] I know I spent way too long.

Mike: I’m sort of cringing that you’re bringing it up again.

Chris: But here’s the reason. He emailed and he said you know that reminds me that I bought some recordings prior to discovering Mike.

Mike: I saw that today.

Chris: And I bought some recordings from him. I won’t name the hypnotist.

Mike: And he deleted them.

Chris: Did the guy delete them from his…

Mike: Harris deleted them.

Chris: Oh he deleted them. Yeah he deleted the recording. Sorry, I thought you meant the hypnotist selling them. He doesn’t sell them anymore. I’ve been called to task or something but this hypnotist would sell bronze, and silver, and gold and maybe even platinum. I can’t remember. I remember seeing this and thinking this is totally bizarre. Why would you sell a recording that has a platinum quality and a bronze quality and what’s the difference? The difference is like it includes NLP future pacing for a platinum version. Things like that. Why would you purposefully leave out quality aspects of your work?

Mike: This is a real source sore spot with you isn’t it Chris? I can feel you bringing it up again on the next podcast.

Chris: Yes, I’m sure I will.

Mike: But if you don’t, ill remind you and just see what I get you to it.

Chris: But I brought it up because you’ve got to do your best work and here’s an example of somebody using quality scales as a marketing tool very ineffectively and it’s like I said in the last podcast, would you go to a dentist that offered you bronze package and a silver package and a gold package.

Mike: With 50% as much anesthetic yeah.

Chris: Exactly [laughs].

Mike: And in the lead package, they give you none.

Chris: So I really like that Harris sent us in that email. Really a good example right?

Mike: He’s a smart, smart guy. I’ve talked to him.

Chris: That’s awesome. Okay let’s talk about who sent us in the email on the word salad again now?

Mike: Oh was that new Eric, one of the Erics? 

Chris: Eric, yes it was Eric. Thank you. I have it written down here. Foolish me! So Eric sent us in a really great story about word salad. Basically he had done some reading and it was “Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques” of Milton H. Erickson. I believe volume I and because we have talked about some book recommendations on the last podcast and it inspired him to go on and buy.

Mike: And we in the know shortened it to “Patterns I” and “Patterns II”.

Chris: Patterns I and Patterns II but to those of you who are looking at it for the first time, “Patterns of the Hypnotic Technique” of Milton H. Erickson.

Mike: MD and Chris, do you want to just explain what word salad is?

Chris: Yes there’s a really interesting story in that book about Erickson dealing with a schizophrenic patient and the schizophrenic patient was just in one particular case. The patient would speak in word salad. So he would speak in utter nonsense. This is something that Mike is very good at modeling. It’s hilarious to watch him do that and he would speak in word salad and go on and on for long periods of time but what Erickson discovered was there were actually some pieces through transcribing the whole of this recording and transcribing it. They would notice there were some coherent bits of content disguised with layers and layers of word salad and Erickson actually broke into this schizophrenic patient’s model of the world, entered his model of the world by just modeling it. So he would sit beside the guy, he would listen to his word salad and if it went on for two minutes, he would respond for two minutes.

Mike: Chris, the level of auditory acuity for Erickson to be able to pick this up would be incredible.

Chris: So he would mirror and match the guy. So the guy would speak for two minutes, he would word salad back for two minutes. The guy would go on for 15, he would go on for 15 and after a certain amount of time, the – I can’t remember what the patient did exactly but I think it was something like he turned to Erickson and said, “Thank goodness somebody here speaks normally.”

Mike: Yeah or somebody figures out what’s going on.

Chris: Yeah he just boom! Cracked him right out of it. So Eric sent us in this wonderful story where he has I think he said 5-year-old or maybe 4-year-old son.

Mike: A young kid…

Chris: Who would do something quite similar? Instead of word salad though, it was more like a word mumbling, talking with your mouth closed and just sort of go [demonstrating].

Mike: The kid would talk but keeping the lips closed. He’s talking inside his mouth.

Chris: Right and knowing that you cannot deal with children using logic and in fact in any emotionally charged situation, you cannot deal with the other person through logic alone. Eric decided to just enter his child’s model of the world by modeling that same method of speaking so his son would speak and he would speak back that same way and they exchanged back and forth a bit. I think it went something like that and then his son said to him, “Dad! Talk normally.”

Mike: He kept talking to the kid the same way and finally, the kid just reverted to normal speech. Chris, this is really interesting because this is very much your field more than mine. Chris has his amazing http://talkingtotoddlers.com program.

Chris: dot com.

Mike: He’s a specialist as he’s a parent and an NLP practitioner and hypnotist and an engineer and an MBA and a jujitsu master – all these things. Chris is a specialist.

Chris: Jiu Jitsu master now … that’s good.

Mike: Well okay I was giving a bit of this. He’s pretty good at it. he’s giving all the methodologies on how to deal with kids so I want to ask you one now that came up with someone I know – we’re not going to be using names – but her young daughter who I think is about four is going through a phase now where she is an authority on everything and she will not be corrected. For example, she said to her mom, “Off. Off is spelled o-o-f.” and the mom said, “No, no. off is spelled o-f-f.” Yeah isn’t that so and so? 

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: Yeah. And she said, “No, o-o-f.” and the kid gets madder and madder but the mom gets into it with her and says, “I’m in my 40s. I have a dictionary. I can look it up. I’ve lived longer than you and it’s o-f-f.” “No, it’s o-o-f.” and the kid will not back down on it and it’s causing tension.

Chris: 4-year-old?

Mike: About four yeah. So what advice would you give here Chris?

Chris: Oh this is so funny.

Mike: Not for them.

Chris: No it’s funny for me to listen to it because I can remember not that long ago when my youngest was that age. You cannot argue with a four-year-old with logic basically ever. So the first mistake is in attacking this problem as if it’s a problem because it really isn’t a problem. The second mistake is in dealing with it logically rather than emotionally. So if I had a child doing the same thing to me and saying, “Oh daddy, off is spelled o-o-f,” and I would just say something along the lines of, “Well, that’s one way you can spell it if you want to.” I would just let them control the situation. You can spell it however way you want and then I would sidetrack the conversation elsewhere. I would first of all not deal with this in any manner that required solving. This is a 4-year-old who’s spelling a word wrong.

Mike: Good thing she’s spelling at all.

Chris: Exactly. That was my next comment. I would want to reinforce in my own mind. Hey, this is great! My child is interested in spelling as opposed to no interest in school type of work whatsoever which would be worse. So you have a child interested so frame it in your mind that way and then don’t correct it. Let’s say you make the mistake of engaging logically and saying, “Hey that’s not how you spell it. It’s spelled o-f-f. I can show you a dictionary.” “No! It’s o-o-f.” You say, “Sure you can spell it that way. That’s wonderful and you know what? Spelling is a fun thing to do isn’t it? and I remember when I was learning to spell, sometimes I would make mistakes and sometimes I would get words right but anyway, anytime you ever want to know how to spell a word and you’re not sure, you can come and ask me and I’d be happy to help you and you can spell words however you want.”

Mike: So you’re not contesting it as right or wrong. You’re acknowledging the fact that she is spelling. I mean this isn’t a 14-year-old kid.

Chris: No.

Mike: Kids want to be right. I remember being quite young and my father who is an engineer like you taught me to say a rainbow is a refraction of the sun’s light and I remember a couple of dear old ladies correcting me you mean reflection. No! It’s refraction. I’m furious.

Chris: For those of you who haven’t studied physics may not.

Mike: I’m over the trauma.

Chris: appreciate the annoyance that that would cause an engineer. Reflection though… I’m sorry, that’s what you get from a mirror. When was the last time that a mirror created a rainbow?

Mike: When was the last time a mirror created a rainbow? Good one!

Chris: I can see a rainbow through a mirror though!

Mike: So where are we going here?

Chris: Where do you want to go next? Let’s talk about. Well let’s quickly mention the Architecture of Hypnosis course.

Mike: All these emails, that’s amazing.

Chris: Before we go any further, Architecture of Hypnosis – five day live training with Mike Mandel.

Mike: And Chris Thompson.

Chris: Yeah, I’ll be there too. Why not, sure. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a Saturday, Sunday followed by a Friday-Saturday-Sunday. Four days off in the middle which is really awesome to absorb the material from the first weekend. November 23, 24 followed by 29, 30 and December 1st.

Mike: And some are coming in from out of town, out of country. In the past we’ve had Czech republic, Holland, Ireland, and we’re having US coming in again which is great because you have four days to explore this absolutely awesome first rate city.

Chris: We will be holding fewer live trainings going forward. We cannot continue at the pace of I think almost four of them last year. It’s our fourth one in…

Mike: We’re going to fit in the MINDSCAPING and everything too. If you want more information, send us an email or check it out.

Chris: https://Mikemandelhypnosis.com/class and that’s how you can find out more and register.

Mike: What if they want to do the online training instead?

Chris: Well if you want to do the online training which is turning out to be so amazing. https://MikeMandelHypnosis.com/academy. It is $47/month and there’s a ton of bonus material. This is the one thing. in  fact, I was just thinking this morning I’ve got to go in and refresh our sales letter because I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job to communicate exactly how much content is actually available in the very first month because as soon as you sign up, not only do you get lesson one of the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy but you get all of the webinars that we’ve conducted, all of the open frame sessions of which there are now I think four or five.

Mike: Right.

Chris: So that’s hours of content to enjoy plus…

Mike: This is exclusive to the students. This isn’t anywhere else on the web.

Chris: Right plus there’s all the other bonus material that we’ve included so some of Hugh Comerfords’s NLP training that he’s throwing in which is excellent.

Mike: And get direct feed of all of our stuff, all of our products.

Chris: You get your brain software e-book right off the bat too.

Mike: Right, you get my course on creativity, my intensive 1-hour training on creativity which includes the PRICE system which I you know corporations pay me a fortune to teach.

Chris: And they also get – I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but you get the video where Mike teaches to – I won’t name the organization but you taught an organization in California how to get anything you want by just using two simple techniques.

Mike: And did you see the responses?

Chris: Oh people flipping out over this.

Mike: Anyway, it’s great stuff guys. Check it out online.

Chris: Yeah so anyway, the key point I wanted to mention is we are so confident that you will love this material and it is for more than learning hypnosis that when you sign up for the $47/month rate, anytime in the first month if you say hey, I don’t like this. We’ll give you a full refund, guess what? Has never happened yet and that’s how confident we are and you’ll get all of that stuff available to you in month number one.

Mike: Well there you go.

Chris: There’s your somewhat short commercial. Let’s move back to the topic of hypnosis so here’s a question that Ron sent it a little while ago. How do you know if someone is asleep during hypnosis? What if the person is snoring or snores?

Mike: If they’re snoring, they’re not in a hypnotic state. You don’t snore during hypnosis.

Chris: No. what if it’s not consistent you know with every snoring but just a snore noise that happens to…

Mike: Well he might be bouncing off a sleep state if they’re so relaxed. Yeah. 

Chris: Yeah that’s what I’m wondering.

Mike: But generally speaking, that’s why I don’t recommend you having people lie down.

Chris: Exactly.

Mike: I mean some people are recommending you practically put them on a bed. You know you get to lie down on a pillow and a nice…

Chris: You give them a teddy bear.

Mike: I look down over them. Well teddy bears are okay. It fires great anchors but putting a blanket over them, you’re setting it up for them to sleep for crying out loud.

Chris: Give them a teddy bear and a blanket and put on a lullaby.

Mike: Oh send them to Hawaii while you’re at it you know they can lie on a beach.

Chris: We don’t mean to make fun of it honestly.

Mike: This is not a good idea. You don’t want falling asleep.

Chris: You really don’t need your subjects lying down. You don’t need them in one of those lazy boy chairs, a recliner, that’s too much risk of falling asleep. So instead, let’s say you’re working with a subject and they’re sitting back in a normal-ish kind of chair like you want to use a comfortable chair of some sort but you don’t want them totally reclining and falling asleep. If you do hear any kind of noises coming from the throat that sound like a snore and you think the subject might be asleep, Mike, might it make sense to give them a direction to move and see if they respond?

Mike: Yeah sure, test your work.

Chris: How do you know if they’re asleep? Ask them to notice which one of their hands is going to start lifting.

Mike: And if you can hear me fine and able to respond, nod your head now.

Chris: I guess that’s a little easier. Why go for the …

Mike: You shake them saying are you asleep? I’m sure they won’t be at that moment. Don’t do that.

Chris:  so test your work is the bottom line. All right, here’s one that I wrote down a little while ago and we never used…

Mike: You mean you made it up?

Chris: Different podcast, we wrote this down. [laughs] reality and truth mike. Do they matter? Language police. Do they matter? How do they apply?

Mike: For instance, you’ve got to meet the subject’s model of the world. You have to enter that model because the Mandel model of therapy – we’ll edit that out – basically says that they are in a labyrinth and we have to remove them from it and the only way we can remove them is to enter it with them. In order to enter the labyrinth, you have to enter their model of the world. So if I’m working with someone who believes in past lives and reincarnation which is something I don’t particularly hold to myself, if you do, that’s fine with me. I’m not going to attempt to talk you out of that belief if it serves your purpose.

Chris: I was thinking you were going to bring up that because we’ve talked about that before. Both of us are not big fans of the whole past life thing however, if a client thinks that’s going to be the key to solving their problem, wonderful!

Mike: Let them go with it. Sure. If I’m doing some sort of therapy where they’re looking through their past and all of a sudden oh you know they’re always someone famous. You know Napoleon or Caesar or something. Nobody says, “Oh this idiot who cleans chimneys.” Everyone is someone famous, someone important but the bottom line is if that’s the model of the world of the client, I’ll go with it. I mean I absolutely will. Chris, you’re deleting and looking at things online.

Chris: Oh I’m just keeping track of the topics we’ve actually discussed because I’m…

Mike: So we’re not looking for truth in a session. We’re looking for transformation and in order to transform the person, I’m going to have to help them transform. I’m going to have to enter their model of the world and work within that.

Chris: So to take it to a completely absurd extreme, if you had a client that still believed the world was flat, then you would not attempt to educate them.

Mike: But there might be times I might be using the metamodel to challenge their beliefs and enrich their map of the world. Like how does that belief serve you? What does that give you? What does that take away from you? What does it enable you to do? What does it enable you to not do? That’s a classic question in therapy by the way.

Chris: That’s a different…

Mike: What does this problem enable you to not to do?

Chris: In other words procrastinate.

Mike: It might be I’m sick. I get migraines all the time. What are you able to not do because of this? Well I’m able to not have to go to work every day you know.

Chris: It’s not a confrontational style. It’s not a No! The world is round. It’s how does that belief serve you or yeah, what does that belief allow you to do or not do? Those are inquisitive questions which is redundance.

Mike: Yeah, redundance.

Chris: Redundancy from the department of redundancy.

Mike: Beautifully redundantly redundant.

Chris: I heard it in a conference call. I’ll just mention this. I was listening to a cordially financial conference call because I love doing that for public companies that I think are interesting to follow and I heard a CEO say very, very unique and I thought immediately.

Mike: No! oh.

Chris: You actually know who it was. It was Tim Cook of Apple.

Mike: Oh Tim I hate to say this buddy but I think (your language) should be shot. I’m not recommending anyone do that. Your language should be shot, shot full of holes. That’s just terrible, very, very unique. Absolutely inexcusable for a man of your position.

Chris: It is a common mistake.

Mike: So are all kinds of things Chris.

Chris: So let’s correct people because I love learning these little things because I used to qualify the word unique as well. I used to say oh this is sort of unique. This is quite unique.

Mike: Why does precision language matter to us? Because language is our primary tool as hypnotists and the more precise we can be, the greater degree of precision, the greater and more powerful choices we can present to people and enable them to make amazing changes. If we just sit there and we’re going to like work with that you know this kind of unique different things and that, we’re all yeah. It’s ridiculous. The dumbing of language, the dumbing down of people.

Chris: And we in no way wish violence upon any CEO.

Mike: No I said his language should be shot full of holes. We must repent for that.

Chris: We love Apple. They’re awesome. Apple’s awesome.

Mike: Apple’s awesome. I got my iPhone 5 right here because it’s awesome.

Chris: Yes and we’re recording this on a Mac. All right, we are well into our half an hour target for these podcasts, beyond it I should say. so we are going to wrap it up with empowering question, metaphor, wacky ending – all that stuff.

Mike: Why did you telegraph the wacky ending?

Chris: Oh there’s always a wacky ending. I’m sorry; I didn’t say the title of it.

Mike: That’s true.

Chris: I don’t even know what it’s going to be.

Mike: No you don’t.

Chris: See this is the fun part for me folks. I have no idea what craziness this guy’s going to throw at it. All I know is I’m going to laugh.

Mike: Fair enough.

Chris: I’m going to stop there.

Mike: Here’s your empowering question and I want this to sink in. we’re changing the order around a bit based on an email we got. I think it’s a good idea. We’re going to give this a moment to sink in with you. Your empowering question today is in two parts. It’s actually two questions so listen carefully, absorb this and let it resonate with you. I’ll say it twice, each one twice. What is your greatest talent or skill and how will you use it for the benefit of others? What is your greatest talent or skill and how will you use it for the benefit of others? And what is your greatest weakness and how will you minimize its effect on your life? What is your greatest weakness and how will you minimize its effect on your life?

Chris: Whoa those are deep. All right take a moment…

Mike: That should resonate.

Chris: Let those resonate for a moment and…

Mike: Well let me give you a metaphor Chris. A number of years ago about 15 or 16 years ago, there as a young man and his name was Dale. Dale was a fun kind of guy. He was in Enneagram 7 which meant life had to be fun and easy going. He was a very happy go lucky guy. He just made everything enjoyable. He was a laugh a minute and throughout his childhood, he was in and out of the hospital all the time because of crazy injuries. He was the kind of kid who’d be sitting in the bathtub and bite the chain of the plug where it hung from the tub, got it caught in his teeth, had to go to the emergency ward with this chain hanging from his mouth, holding this plug in his hand. Many, many things. He got subject to convulsions. He had a lot of difficulties over the years. there was a toy that was sold that was extremely dangerous and this will be before your time believe it or not, it was a target that you throw Styrofoam snowballs at and the target had inch and a half long plastic spikes sticking out of it and Dale’s brother got this for Christmas and Dale wanted it and he put it beside the bed and climbed into bed and rolled out of bed and sat on it, had 23 holes in his hindquarters. He was an interesting kid with a lot of problems as a kid, always health derived or all these health problems.

As he grew to adulthood, he reached his 35th birthday. It was actually the eve of his 35th birthday. He’d been divorced over the years and hung out with his friends and he worked at a large hardware store and helped people out. He was well liked because he was a laugh a minute, just the nice guy, a fun guy. Well the evening of his birthday, 35th birthday, he had a bunch of friends over and he was living at a basement apartment at the time and over the evening, everybody laughed and they were drinking and having fun and so on and one friend stayed behind and they got hungry because it was late. They decided to make something to eat and they put some soup or a pot of stew out of a can on the stove and both of them fell asleep and they woke up to a raging kitchen fire. The kitchen blocked the way out down the hallway of the basement apartment and they attempted to climb out the windows but the landlord had put bars across them with no padlock, with no release on the inside. They called 911 and 911 screwed up and sent a fire department from the other side of the city. It took them nearly an hour to get there and Dale and his friend were taken out as charred remains in two body bags and the whole problem of how 911 screwed up and sent the wrong fire department has been sealed and the woman never found out why her son was not rescued in time and Dale was my cousin and I gave the eulogy at his funeral in hypnotic language.

Chris: This has been podcast episode 42 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. I’m Chris Thompson. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and many, many more to come. Please head on over tour website at mikemandelhypnosis.com. make sure you join our email list and we will send you all kinds of awesome stuff and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please head on over to iTunes and leave a rating and write a review for the show. We really appreciate you helping us get the word out. If you’re interested in studying hypnosis, either online or in person, you can visit mikemandelhypnosis.com/academy or mikemandelhypnosis.com/class for the live class and there’s all kinds of awesome stuff waiting for you on the other side of that.

Mike: Come study with us, you’re going to love it.

Chris: See you next time.