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Imagine building a more successful hypnosis business just in the next 10 days. To learn how, please visit work smart hypnosis.com and take the 10 day Hypnosis Business challenge. Yours free today. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success.
Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Welcome back. It’s Jason Lynette here with the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 15 with James Hazelrigg. Really excited to share this interview with you today, though I’m pretty certain so far for every interview. Premiered here. I’ve used the phrase, I’m pretty excited.
Uh, I guess I’m just excited to share all of this with you. Let me actually take a step back for a moment and tell you a little bit more about the motive I have behind this series, throughout this podcast. The people that I’m specifically reaching out to the. I’m looking for those people that are doing things that are kind of off the beaten path of what most of us expect in hypnosis.
You know, so back to the session with Roy Hunter. Um, the spiritual applications of parts therapy. Taking the work that he was doing and going beyond it back to a ne Simpson, taking the esda state and bypassing that commonly held belief that it’s this non interactive state and through her work making.
Interactive. The next session coming up after this one includes as one of the people on it. Joan Goulding, the work that she’s done with Sleep Talk. So specifically reaching out to people who are doing things that are kind of just different. You know, it’s wonderful to be in session and help our clients make the changes that a lot of us are just so used to seeing this one quit smoking, which is.
Fantastic. You’ve saved their life. This one is losing weight. They’re taking back control of their health and all these amazing benefits. Specifically with James, his background growing up in a family where storytelling was very important, and then the discovery as he began to learn more and more about hypnosis, just how important the storytelling aspect was.
You look at all the examples of Milton Erickson and the session you could. and he’s telling a story. Yet through that story, it’s that filter in which he’s speaking through to then begin to layer in some strongly embedded suggestions for change, for improvement, for healing and growth. So that’s specifically why he reached out to James.
He’s got a great CD that came out. I’m gonna mention a couple of resources. I’m actually gonna make it all a little easier on you. All the resources that I’m gonna reference, you can find them on the. Work Smart hypnosis.com and I’ll make a redirect. It’s, it’s gonna be work smart hypnosis.com/fifteen. Uh oh.
Just a quick side note, I’ve been using a plugin inside of WordPress, which is really, really easy to use, and it’s free. It’s called Pretty. Link and it actually sets up a little application box right there on your, um, on your dashboard that you plug in the target url. You plug in the shortened version of it and it makes it something really direct.
So rather than playing with the, uh, tiny URL and all those ones out there that maybe grabbing some private data, this is a way of sending somebody to a link on your site specifically that’s on your. So really it’s work smart hypnosis.com/session 15, James Hazelrigg, whatever end up tiling this session, but I’ll just make it work smart hypnosis.com/fifteen.
Um, all the websites on the website’s gonna reference here, you can find on there, uh, specifically to, uh, he’s put out a great cd, trunk to tail hypnotic stories of growth and wisdom, Oh, sorry. Hypnotic stories of wisdom and. Sorry, James, out of order, , that’s [email protected]. Again, you’ll find that over on my site.
Oh, a quick thank you too. I just officially, I actually created the page a couple of weeks ago, but just put it out there. As of this week, um, the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast page on Facebook, and already in the first, well less than 48 hours, it’s received about 350 likes and, uh, still quickly growing as well.
So thank you to all of those who have visited that. Um, hey, why not use the surface again? Work Smart hypnosis.com/facebook. That’ll take you right over there. Do me a favor, go there like the page. In addition to the updates of the podcast, you’ll also be seeing some other resources that I’m gonna be putting out in the next couple of weeks and months as well.
A lot of you might already know of James Hazelrigg thanks to a website that he’s been running for quite some time now. Real hypnosis reviews.blogspot.com and it’s all about reviews of various products, trainings, and different things that are out there. And there’s a lot of great information there too.
Definitely worth checking out. Uh, James is down in Austin, Texas, so his website’s really easy to find. Hypnosis austin.com and, uh, check that out. Definitely. Uh, I’d actually give a quick plug again for the CD that he’s put out there, Trunk to Tell Hypnotic Stories of Wisdom and Growth. Specifically, I can tell you right now that that CD is in the.
In my car right now. I just listened to it for the second time. I think it’s fabulous. Uh, I think it’s interesting. Even just listen and play the game of what types of clients would this process benefit? What types of people would this story benefit? What are the different directions? You’ll hear the point of view that James and I both share the anecdote in this conversation of oftentimes in a session, playing the game of how do we let the story develop further based on the reporting issue of the client.
This was recorded at Hypno. Thoughts Live. Uh, check this out again. This was actually recorded, uh, at the table. James was manning with his, uh, information there as well. Here we go. Session number 15, James Hazel. R.
You’re doing hypnosis and prisons? Um, yes. Technically in a county jail. Uh, the Travis County Correctional Complex, and I’ve been invited there to teach a class that we call Mental Freedom. And when, when I initially sort of sold the jail on the idea, we said it’s meditation, vi visualization, self hypnosis and some other things.
Um, and we’ve just, you know, slowly kind of emphasized the hypnosis a little bit more as we went along. And it’s, uh, it’s incredibly fun. I’m working. A group of recovering addicts. I’m also working with a group of veterans and a group of 18 to 22 year olds who have nothing in common except that they’re 18 to 22.
And they’re crazy cuz they’re 18 to 22 years old and they’re in jail. Got it. So mostly in that workshop format, not quite like the one-on-one session. Yeah. Not a one-on-one. It’s a class. Um, they, they come in for, uh, one hour a week for four weeks. And then we cycle out to a new group, although there are some who sort of get to stick around as helpers and emeritus participants.
Um, yeah. Got it. So we’re here with James Hazel R and you’re out of where? Exactly. Remind me. Um, I’m out of my mind. No, uh, well, I am Austin, Texas is where my practice is and that’s where, um, that particular jail is. Got it. Got it. And just share with us a little bit in terms of your journey, how it is you first got into hypnosis.
Well, I got into hypnosis by child. Because my mother used hypnosis to control the pain of childbirth. Um, and so I grew up with that story because my mother told that story every time one of us had a birthday. So I heard it four times a year as I was growing up cuz I’m the fourth of four children and she used it for all of us.
You know, people sometimes ask me, How long does a postop not at trigger last? Well my mom’s lasted for over nine years cuz that’s the distance between my brother where she learned it and me. Um, so I got into hypnosis though really kind of sideways. I was interested in, in, uh, trance states. I was interested in how the mind.
Affects, um, the body. And I, I had depression that I needed to overcome, and I knew that drugs weren’t gonna do it. So I, I pursued positive thinking and methods that would help there. I also, and I didn’t know I was training for hypnosis then, but I got a master’s degree in English, so I learned all about metaphor and identity and things like that.
And I, uh, for the fun of it, did an awful lot of storytelling around campfire. And I didn’t know until later that I was doing group hypnosis. When I was doing storytelling. And I’d love to ask this then. How has that storytelling experience, Well, let me ask you this, From this perspective, you’re going through hypnosis training.
You’re learning more information. Did you have those moments of, Oh wow, I’m already doing this? Oh, yes, definitely, definitely over and over with a lot of different things. Um, but definitely with storytelling. When, when I thought, Oh yeah, sure, you, you stand up, you engage their imagination and you lead them on an imaginary journey.
And even when I was storytelling, I would shoot for, um, phenomena. I didn’t call it that. But I would say, okay, it’s a sunny afternoon in Texas in the summer. I wonder if I can make these people shiver and I wonder if I can make them shiver one time by talking about cool things and another time by talking about creepy things.
Um, so I was eliciting phenomena even before I knew what that meant. Yeah, yeah. And there’s some work you’ve been doing recently to bring a little bit more of the storytelling into the hypnosis community. Could you share with us a little bit more about. Absolutely. Well, you know, I’m of course fascinated by Milton Erickson and the way that he used nested Loops, and that’s not something I had really previously played with.
So I decided it was actually a final project for the Hypnosis Practitioner Training Institute. Um, back I graduated in 2012 with them. Uh, I said, I want to create just a Mondo nested loop story with like 14 loops. So I set up a chart and then I set out a recorder. And I recorded myself telling this lengthy story that’s become known as the Elephant Stories.
And um, it was so much fun that they asked me to do it at graduation. So I got up and did it there and it was so much fun. I said, Whoa, I think I’ll do it at, uh, hypno thoughts. Live back in, uh, well last year, 2013. Right. And. People talked about it so much, I decided to come back and I went ahead and made a recording, a CD of about 72 minutes of theoretically five stories, but it’s more like 25 stories because of all the loops and combinations.
Yeah, and we were previously talking about how that structure of storytelling, it’s that ericsonian model that we can begin to talk creatively. About the issue through the story. This is a conversation I tend to hear from a lot of people about, do we take that opportunity and begin to unpack the metaphor for the client or just let it sit as is?
And that’s a question I like to ask just in terms of. What’s your approach, although I’m sure it may often vary depending on the client too. Well, you, you took the words right outta my mouth. It really depends on the situation and the client and how you want to work it. And um, could you share perhaps a recent example of a time that you did choose to unpack?
And perhaps a time where you choose to just let it sit as it is. Oh gosh. Wow. Not to put you on the spot, but tell me right now, specific example. Well, um, Right. Uh huh. Wow. That, that is a great one. Well, there’s, there’s a particular sort of story set that I use with my guys at the jail, and it’s about two monks.
And usually, you know, I explain that the mon. Are, uh, guys who have, They’ve taken vows, vows of poverty, meaning that they don’t own anything that’s theirs. They’ve taken vows of chastity, which means they don’t interact with women, They don’t have sex, and they’ve taken vows of obedience and they all wear the same thing and they live in little cells.
Um, and they don’t really get out much unless they’re ordered to go there, cuz they have to follow the orders of the abbot. Now sometimes I will. Does this sound familiar? And look around at my guys all wearing the gray and black bars with matching CROs, right? And, and I’ll make that explicit, but other times I’ll just kinda leave it right there and go into the story, um, about all of that.
And I’ll also slide in little suggestions, little ideas. There’s a point where they cross a river and I say, you know, there were a lot of fish in the river. You know, the fish we’re just swimming around unaware of that water, the way that we swim around in our thoughts, completely unaware of our thoughts.
And so, and then I just move on to something else. So, yeah, I, I kind of play it by ear and how I’m feeling that day. Sometimes I’ll unpack it, sometimes I won’t. Yeah. And I’m curious to find out, do you, I, is the goal often would you say to look for stories or to create stories or to fit the stories into the context that the metaphors will then apply?
Yes. . Yeah. I mean, I, I, I collect stories and I keep most of the collection up in my head. Um, but I’m, I’m also looking for times when I can craft, uh, a metaphor for a client. Um, And what was the other option? Oh, creating stories right there, which I, what guess is crafting the metaphor for the client. Um, I’ll also do things like using illusion to a well known story.
I had a, a client, um, who was very concerned because, um, the next day she was going to be getting the results of a biopsy and she was worried that she might have cancer. And she, she’s a very holistic person. She was very determined she was not gonna do chemo or radi. She knew she could handle it. She knew she could take it, but she was worried she was gonna walk in and talk to the top oncologist in the city, and she’s afraid he was gonna look at her.
And with that power and authority say, you must have chemo. So I, I crafted our session around references to the Wizard of Oz, which I knew that she loved. And of course, you know, there’s a man behind the curtain, the great and terrible aws Wow. And that just made the doctor hilarious to her. So it was a really fun way.
Um, now because of the Wizard of Oz, I ended up pulling a story from my own life, and that’s the, when I was about four years old, the Wizard of Oz was coming on tv and of course I’d never seen it. That was back before DVRs and VCRs and all of that. Great. So, um, it was a weekend, so my parents invited over another family and they had kids roughly the same age as, as my siblings.
Of course, I was the youngest. So all the older kids kept saying, Now James, we don’t want you to be scared. What you see on TV is not real, right? Cause maybe they remembered having been scared from something that really wasn’t all that scary, like you might think. And so, I, it’s not every day you see flying monkeys, so well, well, maybe not you, , right?
I live in. Now. Um, but it, but it was, uh, I, I thought it was a lot of concern that they didn’t want me to be scared of something that’s really rather harmless. You know, the way that sometimes a part of us will get scared of something that’s actually quite harmless and not powerful. So we sit down to, to watch it and our dads are out barbecuing some steaks and our moms are, you know, making the salad in the kitchen.
And this was in Missouri. and a tornado watch alert comes across the bottom of the screen , and they’re all going, Oh, well that’s real. But the tornado in the, in the movie is, and then it turned into a tornado warning and my dad’s had to, you know, my dad and the other dad had to grab the steaks and the salads and everything and take us all down into the basement to hide out from the tornado that I had just seen.
And everybody told me wasn’t real on the tv. And it like came into my life and it took me a long time to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. And to realize that I don’t have to be scared anymore of even something that seems so great and terrible. So it was, it was really fun to, to weave back and forth between the story and the story about my life.
And I had no plan for what it was gonna be. Right. And yeah. And it’s that benefit of often even looking outside of the hypnosis industry, even just looking into our own experiences, is that story. There’s a bit of a metaphor, that story that I’ll tell sometimes that I’ll briefly summarize, which would be, I used to work in the theatrical environments.
I was in stage management, and it turns out the best way to offend an actor is they come off the stage and you say, Wow, how do you learn all those lines? , you’ve reduced a pouring out of their soul on stage into a memory stunt of memorizing a bunch of. Right, And the story can progress further in terms of the actors sitting around the tables, understanding the lines.
And here’s the scenario of the actor forgetting the words and the final rehearsals. The amateur director will say, What’s wrong with you? Haven’t you been studying? Why can’t you remember those words? But the professional director knows to ask, What’s your character saying? And without fail as if he’s psychic, the actor doesn’t know what the actor’s trying to, The director doesn’t know what the actor’s trying to express in that.
Right. So from life experience, here’s an example of, well, where can we use that memory improvement test anxieties. Yeah. Anytime where we need to attach Meaning it’s the, why is it that most of us don’t remember names? Yeah. We weren’t listening in the first place. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, people, since I’ve been kind of teaching storytelling and I did a, a.
Day long storytelling workshop with Richard non guard, and now I’ve got, you know, my storytelling CDs and I taught some. Here. People always say, Well, where do you find stories? And I’m like, Everywhere they are. Everywhere around you. You know, our identities are stories and so you just sort of develop an awareness for them.
And it was funny too, what you said about looking outside of hypnosis and your own personal experience. Um, a while back on hypno thoughts, they were saying, Well, what requirement should we. To make a hypnotist a great hypnotist. And I said, Well, obviously you should have a master’s degree in English like I do, because I don’t think I could do hypnosis if I hadn’t done that because I draw so much on what I learned.
But everyone draws on that special thing to create their art as a hypnotist and, and that’s just one of the cool things. James, thanks so much for your time. You bet. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com. Please visit the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, listing on iTunes and share your positive feedback.
