Brain Software Podcast #44: Be strong and take control of your own life.

Chris: [laughs] Welcome fellow storm riders, you are officially a rider on the hypnotic storm. This is Chris Thompson and welcome to session number 44 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. He loves cold weather. He loves raw oysters and thinks Boswell’s Life of Johnson is the best play ever written.

Mike: Yes Chris, I do. Johnson was one of my absolute favorites. I paid homage to him by going to his house in London, went and drank at the pub where he used to drink and Samuel Johnson was the greatest conversationalist in history and one of Britain’s most brilliant heroes. So, yes I love that biography. If you haven’t read it, you need to. So what are we going to do today? What are we looking at?

Chris: Well, I mean where do you want to start here? It’s the holiday season.

Mike: Let me tell you… it’s the holiday season. I’m not going to sing. Let me tell you exactly where we’re going to start. I have not mentioned this to you other than to say that there was something I read. I read an article the other day that my wife brought to my attention on lying.

Chris: Oh the famous article you told me you were going to bring up on one of our podcasts.

Mike: You don’t know what it’s about, that’s right. Chris: And I don’t know what it’s about. Okay, go.

Mike: This article was quite in-depth and somebody had asked the blogger or whoever it was what she thought of people who gave advice without being asked for unsolicited advice and you know a lot of people don’t like it. They don’t want to be given advice because a lot of people – here it is – a challenge to their own sanity or a challenge to their own intelligence. You think you’re better than me. You’re giving me… well we’ve run through that ad nauseam lately. I mean people I’ve been involved with not in the podcast. Anyway, this article talked about this in some length and the conclusion was why you should never give unsolicited advice and it went on and on and on and jus basically said never, ever give unasked for advice to anyone for any reason.

Chris: Ohhhh [laughs]

Mike: [laughs] my wife. What did I say? Thought you got off the scale of that sound. I said to my wife, so you have this person giving us advice unsolicited.

Chris: [unclear 2:03]

Mike: and we should never give advice. I can once self [unclear 2:07] device falls apart. It’s a crazy as the post modernism say you can’t tell what any book means, they write entire books on it and expect you to understand what their books mean and we’re running toward again with this. Do not give advice ever under any circumstances. I said was it like your advice to us?

Chris: Like take it to that extreme of don’t ever do it under any circumstances including this article that I’m writing.

Mike: No I didn’t say that. Yeah, absolutely.

Chris: Okay I see you’re looking for my reaction but I [unclear 2:36] Mike: You were no, so you got it. Chris: I totally got it.

Mike: Here’s another one Chris. Another linguistic thing that we have discussed ad nauseam in this awesome podcast, I ran into a good friend ours, Paul, the other night. There was a candlelight service at our Presbyterian church. We all sang Christmas carols. It was awesome and the brilliant American pianist, George Bowerman, was there playing [unclear 2:59]. Just wonderful things. Anyway, so Paul now started talking afterwards and I explained to him this thing we just gone through with some family members who will not be named and basically how annoying they had been and it was absolutely impossible to deal with them based on the situation at hand. So I explained all this and said, well, they’ve driven us nuts. I’m ready to cut them out of my life or neck crank them, whatever it is.

Chris: Whatever it takes.

Mike: Whatever it takes. And Paul turns to me completely seriously Chris and he says, it is what it is.

Chris: Oh tautology.

Mike: I thought he was trying to push my buttons until I realized, he doesn’t listen to podcast and I said what? He said, it is what it is. I said, Paul that’s a tautology. You have said nothing. Everything is what it is. Everything isn’t what it isn’t. You’ve given me no content. I said what are you doing saying that? Well basically it means you’ve got accept just everything. I said, so we now have this trite tautology that if you Google it, you’ll find out it came into the world to the business community and it teaches people to be passive idiots to roll over and die and I just do not go along with this at all. Someone says to me it is what it is, I’m ready to strangle them. It is what it is until I change it.

Chris: [laughs] I don’t know why this reminds me of the time we were at the pub after jujitsu class and Adam got his bill before he even got his food. You said, oh just stop complaining Adam. Just pay the bill. Just pay the bill! [laughs]

Mike: He’s got a bill and his food hasn’t even arrived yet. The service was so slow because waitresses were sick. I said just pay it. Don’t cause any fuss. It’s the same thing. It’s the mindset. Be a passive moron, roll over, do what you’re told. No guys, you won’t get that from us. We say fight back. Don’t let people dominate you and control you and give you garbage.

Chris: So let’s make sure people who are listening to this and haven’t heard prior podcasts where we’ve talked about tautological phrases so they understand what it means.

Mike: The tautology, it gives you no information.

Chris: Circular reference.

Mike: Not even. There is no information. It’s like saying, all lawyers are lawyers.

Chris: Right, yeah.

Mike: There’s no information in it at all. When you say it is what it is, basically the person is saying roll over and die because there’s nothing you can do about it. Well it stops people resisting oppression and all sorts of things and I’m opposed to this with every part of my being.

Chris: It’s almost like the ultimate yes set for idiots. It is what it is.

Mike: I love that.

Chris: I just came up with that right now.

Mike: The ultimate yes set for idiots available on this podcast only.

Chris: It is what it is. I mean you can’t say no to that because of course, it’s true. It’s self referencing.

Mike: Anyway, it drives me insane and I heard it yet again so oh if one more person mentions it, it’s going to drive me nuts. Here’s the other one I keep hearing Chris. People talk about the fifty shades of grey. Oh read fifty shades of grey. I read all four volumes. However many this woman…

Chris: Is it 200 shades…

Mike: Yeah we’re somewhere like billions of shades of grey and I said that’s crap. It’s not literature. Why would you waste your finite time on it and the response from a guy was well, have you read it? Meaning if you haven’t read it, you can’t have an opinion. I said no, but I read entire sections of it online and it sounds like it was written by a 14-year-old girl. It’s just absolutely pathetic. It isn’t what it isn’t. It is what it is. Fifty shades of Grey. I’m done with the whole matter. Come on, let’s get some hypnosis content.

Chris: Okay let’s talk about context free humor. I almost said content free humor which wouldn’t be very funny. Context free humor, this has been main staple for you.

Mike: Yeah it’s been staple for me. It’s been a hallmark of my existence is to throw out humor without a context and watch the person basically deal  with the PGO spike and try to deal with it. I’ve done this my whole like and I…

Chris: [unclear 6:42] Mike: Definitely trying to find meaning. I find it hilarious. Chris: Okay so let’s bring up the context of this particular reference. So, this morning…

Mike: Don’t tell me the Branson protocol?

Chris: No not the Branson protocol. We’ll get to that because it’s important that you perform the Branson protocol exactly as written.

Mike: Exactly as written, yeah.

Chris: We were getting some water to record videos this morning. All you asked me is, “Can I grab a glass of water before we start recording videos?” And I said, “Yeah. I want some Berkey water.” Berkey which is a type of filter. I’ve got the Berkey water here ready for you and he said to me, “Did you just say turkey water?”

Mike: And you said, “No.”

Chris: No, I said Berkey water and it fired a memory for you.

Mike: It fired a memory for me which is as a kid hanging out with my best friend in grade six, Brian McDell who I’ve known for 50 years now, just an excellent guy. Well his kid brother, not Glog, Kenny the other one. Kenny hated turkey. He convinced himself he hated turkey but he loved chicken. So the only way they could get him to eat turkey was to tell him it was a big chicken and playing on his anchored state with turkey as being bad. He was drinking a glass of water one day in their kitchen and I said, “Do you know what kind of water that is?” And he said, “No.” I said, “It’s turkey water.” He said, “No, it isn’t.” I said, “That is turkey water.” He wouldn’t drink it anymore. He wouldn’t drink it anymore. I always found the phrase turkey water so hilarious. Eventually it became rooster water and I said to my niece, “Do you know what rooster water is?” And she was a little girl and she said, “Water that a rooster put his stinky yellow feet in.” and I said, “That’s right.” So I don’t know, if you swing together things that have no connection and throw them at someone and let them try to deal with it, it’s quite funny which brought us to the Branson protocol.

Chris: Right. It all has to do with delivering a message. Whatever the message is but total congruence at expecting…. Is it a false expectation? You know they’re trying to understand it.

Mike: Right. It’s an implied expectation.

Chris: It’s a weird thing.

Mike: That they’ll know what you mean and that they’ll follow through what you’re asking.

Chris: You’re almost faking the expectation  but so congruently, you’re going to expect that they will get that they’re supposed to be meaning to what you’re about to say.

Mike: And you’re supposed to be doing something as a result and what Chris is referring to is in the most recent architecture of hypnosis course. We had been doing four days of training and they were used to working with me. I met a really good group. I mean we’ve had a lot of great groups but the last one was just solid and they learned so fast and a lot of them are online storm riders now but what was funny about it was I said to the group, “We’ve done a number of exercises” and I said, “Okay, now I want you to run the Branson protocol. Break into groups of two, actually make it three. One of you watches the protocol being run. Make sure the person who’s the most highly trained in the group and is most familiar with it runs it and the rest of you just [unclear 9:29] one way around only and we’ll find out right away in about 10 minutes time what kind of results you’ve got” and they were looking at me with blank expressions. I said, “Any questions?” And…

Chris: All of a sudden, hands started to go up at that point.

Mike: What are we supposed to do? Well, there is no Branson protocol. It’s just a stupid thing to say but said congruently enough, they all thought at the same time they missed something. They haven’t been paying attention.

Chris: Remember amnesia? Mike: Remember amnesia. Press at the blots. That’s right.

Chris: That was funny. So yeah, that comes back to the press of the blots which I think we’ve talked about in most podcasts at some point.

Mike: Yeah it probably ad nauseam yeah.

Chris: So if you haven’t heard what pressing the blots is all about?

Mike: Just say it’s fundamental to the Branson protocol.

Chris: Absolutely. That’s for you Justin.

Mike: That was a good training and one of the things that happened hypnotically was one young woman in the class wanted to experience synesthesia because I explained to her I see music. I’ve seen music my entire life.

Chris: And you thought that was normal.

Mike: I thought it was normal as a kid and when I discussed this with the overlapping of senses with Stephan Moccio, the brilliant Canadian pianist who wrote the Olympic theme last Olympics in Vancouver, the winter once. Also, wrote Miley Cyrus’s wrecking ball. A friend of mine, a great guy and I interviewed him a few years back and asked him if he saw music and he said, oh God, yes! And we got into a tremendous discussion. The synesthesia of the overlapping sentences.

Chris: Sentences?

Mike: Overlapping senses where the sentence he gave me was about synesthesia.

Chris: [laughs] that was funny.

Mike: And the overlapping sense of how if we took the senses of the entire thing, we will discover that the senses were overlapping and one could see music. Anyway…

Chris: And then you can talk about it in sentences.

Mike: In sentences with your senses. Well, on woman in the class wanted to experience this so I tranced her out with what is known as a braid induction and we have it on video of her face when she sees music for the first time. It’s absolutely priceless.

Chris: It was. Now, let’s talk about a little bit in detail for those who aren’t familiar because this was a new term for me.  So synesthesia. Did I even say it…

Mike: There’s an H in it.

Chris: Synesthesia.

Mike: Synesthesia, yeah. Chris: This is the idea of… Mike: Overlap of senses.

Chris: Overlap of sense. So in this particular instance, the idea was can we have someone, not only hear music auditory but see it as if it’s some kind of tri-dimensional pattern whatever it is, like a light show like you can hear a storm. You hear it and you can see the lightning.

Mike: Okay yeah I’ll accept it.

Chris: Just making that up. There you go.

Mike: It’s a bit of a nebulous connection.

Chris: And so you have this conversation with her about it and she said wow, I’d really like to be able to do that and so you use her as a demo subject and installed this capability in her.

Mike: Yes!

Chris: And it was actually the coolest demo I’ve ever seen because…

Mike: The congruence of her response. So first of all, she’s in a somnambulistic trance. Her face is absolutely expressionless and I get her to open her eyes. I’ll look around at the group and drop back into trance and you can see, she is absolutely gone and then, I put the two senses, the visual on one hand and the auditory sense on the other hand and let her hands move together only as quickly as her unconscious mind develop neuropathways between the two senses to enable her to be able to be able to enable to be able… it’s redundancy off the scale but to enable to see music and was astounding result but the best part Chris is she still got the ability.

Chris: Oh yeah and the response on her face. The look on her face when her hands touched and then you used your iPhone at the time to play a song.

Mike: iPhone 5.

Chris: through your Bluetooth Geneva speaker phone.

Mike: Yes I did.

Chris: and Holy crap! Can I say it on here?

Mike: Sure, you probably just did. We’ll edit it out.

Chris: But he responds when she first heard the music and started obviously seeing it at the same time.

Mike: Instantly.

Chris: Every single person in the class came up to me after and said are we going to get a copy of that video because I want to see the expression on her face.

Mike: That was just unbelievable. It was angelic like she had this look of childlike wonder of a kid that sees a snowfall for the first time or Disney World for the first time. It was absolutely magical and I’m so glad we caught it on video and the music I used was actually Philipp Glass, solo piano and he was playing the theme from the movie, The Hours, and it’s very simple piano music but then I quickly ductailed it into two other themes. I could’ve put on slipknot or something but I don’t know how she would’ve seen that.

Chris: It was incredible. Anyway, I’m not even sure why you even brought that up.

Mike: It’s the power of hypnosis. We talked about hat particular training.

Chris: I brought it up.

Mike: The Branson Protocol and I said another interesting thing that happened on that training was this.

Chris: Exactly. And in my mind, this is a demonstration of all kinds of things that you can do to create generative changing right?

Mike: Absolutely.

Chris: We were actually talking about this just over lunch today the two types of change you can help people make or either remedial change.

Mike: Where you’re fixing something that’s wrong.

Chris: Or generative change.

Mike: We’re creating something new.

Chris: And in this case, it was generative change.

Mike: Purely generative.

Chris: A lot more fun in many cases to help people get better at stuff they’re already good at.

Mike: Yes absolutely it is.  That’s what I like working with because you can do it on Skype really well if you’re helping people develop new abilities. I do that on Skype all the time because then I could work with things like mindscape and so on and I’m not trying to fix a deep trauma or whatever that might then [unclear 15:00] react or have a bad effect.

Chris: Right and if you ever do run into a problem with this, all you need to do is run the Branson protocol completely.

Mike: Completely impressive to lots and everybody’s quite happy.

Chris: Absolutely. So Branson protocol.

Mike: What’s next on the agenda here?

Chris: Let’s talk about dealing with learning languages. We have a question from Stephen that came in by email and he wants to know if you can use hypnosis to learn new languages faster.

Mike: Oh of course you can. First of all, the entire sleek learning idea has been largely discredited so far as you can put earphones on and listen to language all night that you won’t be able to speak in any better or learn it any better for that matter.

Chris: No, like that Simpson’s episode.

Mike: I didn’t see it Chris so we’ll let that one go but I will be asking you as soon as this is over.

Chris: Right.

Mike: The interesting thing about it though is hypnosis will facilitate rapid learning acquisition and the circuitry is thee for all of us. Noam Chomsky spoke of the language matrix that we all have. There’s no reason without a preformed DNA encoded matrix that we could learn language rapidly as we do. Babies, children – they pick it so fast. It’s crazy and I was very blessed Chris because I studied with Barry Farber years ago. Barry Farber at that time spoke 15 languages and he’s been… No, 26 languages and he’s been acquiring a language a year ever since and people in class would say, who speaks the language? And someone would start talking and they’d start talking back and forth and joking and laughing and he’d say, “Oh we’re speaking Turkish, something else.” And someone else would talk or speak in Mandarin, Japanese, French, Chinese, German and all these different languages. It was astounding. All language acquisition is state specific. So if you are in an empowering resourceful state, it will make your language learning faster and faster. Barry Farber doesn’t teach languages but he teaches how to acquire languages quickly and you basically come at it from numerous angles. You splash cards, listen to the language on the radio, read newspapers in websites, everything. Just saturation which works really well. In fact, saturation will get you a lot of skills a number of years ago, I saturated my brain with blues scales. I would sing to blues guitar over and over. I had it playing all the time. I was unconsciously taking in the blues scale over and over and over. Meanwhile, I built in the physicality of learning how to play this scale using all my fingers very quickly on my Stratocaster at that time and then through the saturation and the physicality, I was able to suddenly start playing blues really well and it got to the point that I could play along in the blues song and heather would be upstairs not able to tell which was me and which was Eric Clapton because the saturation and the physicality, the two together gave the result. With language, it’s not the same physicality unless you’re trying to get your voice around peculiar syllables like the Hanukkah or whatever but the saturation is really key. Overwhelming saturation helps you learn it much quicker and you can do even better if you deliberately put yourself in a high performance state first.

Chris: Okay so that was going to be where I jump the question next. If you want to use hypnosis to learn a language or multiples languages, what’s the protocol? Get yourself into a high performance state which doesn’t even need to use formal hypnosis. You can just do Grinder’s model of start with breathing and moving and all of that. Mike: Yup, change the breathing, change the physiology, move around, breathe deeply, shift your body, relax, get into a powerful state, then the language acquisition is quicker but if you want to use straight hypnosis, you can do it through direct suggestion either, self-hypnosis or have someone else put you into trance and have them give you the suggestions that you’re going to learn French or whatever it is. Quicker you’ll remember the material and meanwhile, they’re attacking the suggestion from every conceivable angle. Not just saying you’re learning French, you’re learning French with the older methods.

Chris: Hey, I have a total side note. This isn’t even in my notes for my podcast but speaking of learning languages.

Mike: And we are.

Chris: Think about this, so I speak a little bit of French. I’ll say I’m conversationally French. I can speak conversational but I…

Mike: [unclear 19:17]

Chris: Oui. [unclear 19:19] so I can get by fine. I could probably order a drink at a bar. Mike: You can certainly order a drink in the bar.

Chris: I could tell a cabbie where would it go.

Mike: Tell a cabbie where to go.

Chris: But I do not have the fluency. I was thinking about it. if somebody was learning this and they were learning how to generate those Ericksonian language patterns and in hypnosis, we tend to talk slowly.

Mike: That’s right.

Chris: And go slow and the beautiful thing is it gives you a lot of time to think about, what you’re going to say next.

Mike: That’s right.

Chris: And so, if I wanted to practice speaking French. Mike: I mean really practice.

Chris: Wouldn’t it be useful to switch a [unclear 20:05] and just speak free and have lots of times to think about what I was going to say and just speak Ericksonian hypnosis in the French language.

Mike: [unclear 20:19].

Chris: Do you think that would have any benefit to learning how to speak French?

Mike: Absolutely. Across the circuitry you know, from one thing you do something else. Mapping across is one of the greatest skill of all. Recognizing that the skill one has for something like stamp collecting can also be mapped across into something entirely different. It’s a bizarre thing of the human brain.

Chris: Something I’ll have to try because one of my…

Mike: Don’t you dare try it.

Chris: So I mean experiment with.

Mike: Make it happen.

Chris: When I say try there, for everybody listening, I mean experiment with.

Mike: We’ll edit that out.

Chris: I don’t think at this point in time, my skill in French is good enough to generate all the linkages.

Mike: Nada. It’s juncture.

Chris: But that would be cool to learn enough about French to do that then my French I believe would get very, very good.

Mike: Good.

Chris: So anyway, something I’m going to fool around with and experiment with.

Mike: See what kind of results you get. Report back to us.

Chris: Let’s talk about the next thing which we had a question come in about using hypnosis to deal with cancer and I think this is probably useful from both a self-hypnosis angle and the traditional hypnosis angle. If somebody is dealing with cancer, obviously the main thing to deal with here is their immune system and their state of mind.

Mike: Well, there’s a lot of things Chris. There’s the immune system because the immune system is necessary to fight the cancer. So one of the old methods is seeing sharks have dealt with a number of cancer patients. Sharks attacking or devouring the tumor.

Chris: It’s imagery.

Mike: The difference is if you do it within the constraints of a formal trance can be more powerful. I met a teacher at a school years ago overcoming his cancer and getting good results. He imagined Doberman pinchers attacking the cancer and ripping it apart.

Chris: Oh wow.

Mike: Because the Doberman doesn’t lock his jaws. It rips and tears and that’s what he was visualizing. That could be useful and again, when done within a hypnotic trance, it’s more powerful but it’s also useful not just in a supportive immune system. Remember I told you the study that was done in England where they had a number of little preschool kids watching a punching Judy puppet show and the punching Judy hand puppets were attacked by this nasty things that tried to kill them and then this amorphous white blobs and these crystalline things attacked the nasty things and drove them out, wiped them out and swallowed them and so on and then within 10 minutes, the kids with saliva swabs administered by doctors indicated increased macrophage and antibody production. The metaphor of a punching puppet show is increasing their immune response which is amazing. So obviously, if someone is dealing with cancer which is not really in my view at least a specific disease, the cancer is not the tumor in my opinion. The cancer is a catastrophic failure of the immune system because you’re body is killing cancer cells every day. It’s just sometimes it stops or doesn’t do a very thorough job. It’s not just the dealing with the immune system. Another one of the keys here is someone who is dealing with the side effects of chemotherapy let’s say or radiation will benefit greatly from hypnosis because it helps stave off some of the exhaustion, even the nausea that’s [unclear 23:29].

Chris: You can think of it as generative change.

Mike: Generative change. You’re generating more health.

Chris: Right. generative change in terms of recovering faster, treat it almost the same as you’re treating an athlete regularly.

Mike: Increase recovery speed. Yeah there’s so many ways you can approach this and even just the mindset. Keeping someone in a positive mindset so they don’t get depressed or whatever which is often very necessary in cases like this. So yes, cancer patients can be helped by hypnosis as can patients in almost every other illness.

Chris: Then of course, there’s also the aspect of pain control because if somebody is dealing with..

Mike: Training pain down. Yup whether it’s postoperative or actual tumor or whatever you got.

Chris: Okay so I hope that helps answer the question for Joan who had sent that one in. Let’s move on to Neil in Australia. I love [laughs].

Mike: Oh I remember this one.

Chris: Neil is in our online academy and it’s nit what he wrote because he said, employees are getting sick of me talking about hypnosis but I don’t care because I’m the boss.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Chris: That’s fantastic. Anyway, Neil had asked in an email why has the medical community seemingly not taken to hypnosis? You’ve got Erickson. You’ve got Elman. You’ve got all these wonderful guys who’ve done amazing work with hypnosis. Why does the medical not make greater use of it? Mike: Oh let me answer hat for you Chris. Well, hypnosis is almost pushed out by the Freudians and psychoanalysis around the beginning of the 20^th century. World war I intervened, had all these suddenly traumatized American, Canadian, French, German, Austrian, East-Indian, Australian soldiers who were traumatized, had post traumatic stress disorders couldn’t possibly be put through 300 hours of psychoanalysis so they took hypnosis off, detraumatized them and quickly back on the shelf again and then World War II intervened and they had a lot of traumatize soldiers again, took hypnosis off the shelf then it was recognized as a legitimate medical modality by the American medical association and then the Canadian one followed shortly after because I love to say when the US sneezes, Canada catches pneumonia. We get whatever’s coming around and it was recognized as  a medical modality but around the same time and a few decades before, there was a problem. There was something occurring within north American medicine which was the traditional medical schools were wiping out the homeopathic hospitals that were quite extensive in the early days. They took to heart the whole maximum  which first of all, didn’t do any harm. Homeopathic medicines don’t produce negative effects. Now remember, drugs don’t produce side effects. They only produce effects.

Chris: [laughs] effects and the ones that we don’t want, we call them side effects.

Mike: The medical schools in my opinion were being supported by huge donations from the drug companies and with the discovery of penicillin from a mold, it was believed at that time that every problem now had a medicine for it. it was oh here we have a medicine that’ll cure gonorrhea, syphilis and all strep throat, all these things really quickly and they threw penicillin and all kinds of things and began looking for a medicine as the solution for each and every problem and consequently, some of the deeper effects that could be brought about by hypnosis and other therapies at that time were laid aside. So it led to what we had in modern day and it’s purely my opinion but I think it’s unfortunate. Everything now requires medication. You throw a medicine at everything. Anything we’ve lost, touched with a lot of the deeper therapies that actually address causes instead of treating symptoms..

Chris: Let’s just examine THIS A little more. No disrespect to traditional western doctors listening etc. obviously but if you were in medical school, how much time do you think you spend learning about things like nutrition? How about mental state management because well, if you’re depressed, there’s antidepressants right? What about actually exercising and eating healthier and…

Mike: What about personal choice and manage their states better?

Chris: Breathing and all of these things right? you will practically never find a doctor who will unless they’re trained outside traditional medical environment.

Mike: Right allopathic medicine.

Chris: Teach you. Oh yeah, well all you need to do is breathe more.

Mike: Or you might find that practicing yoga is helpful for your anxiety instead of being given a drug and it’s unfortunate because it turns people into the receptacles of pharmaceuticals and increasingly, complex pharmaceutical blends because people are taking drugs for the side effects of other drugs…Purely my opinion.

Chris: And I think the business around pharmacology is…

Mike: You think there’s money in that? [laughs]

Chris: Responsive to this whole environment that it will, okay if I’m not feeling well, what pill can I take? That’s why they have this drug discovery protocol going on. They all just make stuff together and do tests with it and find out what it does. This seems to work really well on a particular [unclear 28:43] selling this pill now.

Mike: It’s really unfortunate. I have to go and find the actual name but this is going to sound like a joke. This is how crazy some of the stuff gets. Do you know the civil war cured a disease? The civil war cured a psychiatric disorder if you look at this historically. I’ve got to find the name of the disorder. My fingertips and I apologize for that. The disorder was the desire of black slaves to be free. It was labeled a psychiatric disorder that they would want to be free from the white slave owner and it’s insane and all of a sudden, that was removed from the DSM because it was no longer a disorder. I mean it’s mind blogging to me the stuff that people believe. You are your own best judge of what you should be doing for your health and I think there’s a place for modern medicine, there’s a place for pharmaceuticals and I think there’s also a place for a lot of the other therapies like hypnosis, EFT and a lot of other cool things.

Chris: So in a sense mike, are you telling us that you can either take control of your own situation and you can find the appropriate method of solving your problem or you can just say  well, it is what it is.

Mike: Thank you. Okay, that brings us to today’s empowering question that is this. The empowering question for today and as usual, I’m going to say it. “What part or aspects of your life have you given control of to other people? What part or aspects of your life have you given control of to other people? And what are you going to do about it now?”

Chris: Awesome question. Now you have a closing metaphor for us.

Mike: I do Chris. The closing metaphor is the story of my uncle Ken Mayo. Ken Mayo wasn’t a real uncle. He was like my uncle, Tom McKiernan. He was a courtesy uncle. A courtesy uncle is a close family friend who we call uncle and I am that to a number of people’s kids. I’m Uncle Mike. Well, Ken Mayo was an interesting man. He was the left [unclear 30:53] in the British army but he was the left [unclear 30:56] in a Gurkha patrol in the Second World War. Now the Gurkhas are Britain’s favorite mercenaries. In fact, all sorts of nations that hired mercenary soldiers over the years including probably one of the most noteworthy which is the French foreign legion called the foreign legion because they’re all foreigners. They’re not French. They’re Canadian, American, South African, Australian, etc. well Britain has hired the Gurkhas for a couple of hundred years. the Gurkhas are from Nepal and I have a vested interest in this because I had a couple of foster kids in Nepal for awhile that we were supporting until they got old enough to manage with their family and not far from Katmandu. Anyway, Nepal produced the Gurkhas who are I think their average height is about 5’4”, 5’5”. They’re mountain people, they have enormous lung capacity and they’re absolutely fearless and their motto is never complain, never explain and Britain has hired them for generations as their foremost mercenaries because they can do seeming miracles. Well Gurkhas are known to carry a very specific knife known as a Khukuri. A Khukuri has a nasty curve blade goes to a sharp point and it’s curved towards the point points toward your adversary rather than a curve pointing back towards yourself. The Khukuri is never drawn from its scabbard without drawing blood. So if you ask to see a Gurkha’s Khukuri that he keeps razor sharp, he removes it from his scabbard, cuts his finger and then hands it to you. it always draw blood. And so, my uncle Ken was running a Gurkha patrol in the Second World War and the Gurkhas who are noteworthy in so far as they are allowed to choose their own officer from the British army. They can decide who they don’t want. It must be they respect and the officer has to speak Gurkhali which is their language and Ken did. Well one night, they ran a patrol and he awoke about 3 am. It set sentries around their camp. There’s maybe a dozen of them, small platoon and he awoke in the night to discover in the jungle, he was alone. Every single one of them had left in the night without warning in the dark. And he sat up waiting, listening for every sound in case they’ve been ambushed or what had occurred. Hours later at the first hind of dawn, the patrol came marching into camp and they had around their necks on strings human ears because when they killed an enemy, they cut his ears off and wore it around their neck. They were so fearsome and so terrified that when they arrived in Argentina or against the Argentinean soldiers in the Falklands where in 1981, just the news that the Gurkhas had arrived oust an immediate surrender. Fearsome, fearless soldiers and Ken asked them, “Where did you go?” Well, they heard from a tribesmen that someone thought his cousin said he’d seen two enemy soldiers in another village 12 miles away a few days ago and they’d gone on foot in the night and found this guy and I still keep in my sunroom in a case a Gurkha Khukuri just in case.

Chris: Thanks everybody for listening. This has been Brain Software with Mike Mandel podcast session number 44. I’m Chris Thompson. Hope you enjoyed the show. Head on over to iTunes and leave a rating, leave a review, we’d love to get your hopefully 5-star review.

Mike: We want you to know that in May of 2014, we’ll be running the next Architecture of Hypnosis course in Toronto. We’re only running two a year; one in May and one in November. We just don’t have time with everything else. If you want to come and study with me for five days in Toronto and change your life whether you’re a brand new hypnotist or a trainer from some other system, I’ll get you to the next level. Chris and I will get you there so check online, find out because it is going to fill up.

Chris: Hopefully that will please all of the people – many, many of you who have emailed asking when the next five-day course is. So it’s going to be in May 2014. We’ll nail down the dates. So that said, what you need to do now is head on over to our website mikemandelhypnosis.com, you’re going to find an opt in email list that you can join. You can get mike’s free eBook “Brain Software”, life changing stuff that he charges thousands of dollars to teach to corporations live and all kinds of videos, Q & A about hypnosis and of course…

Mike: we are here for you.

Chris: yeah of course, we are here for you. We will send you emails updating you on podcasts and all kinds of other tools.

Mike: Trainings, all kinds of things you can come and learn.

Chris: We don’t spam you. So head on over to mikemandelhypnosis.com and join our list. Make sure you are of the storm rider community.

Mike: Talk to you on 45. That’s right.