Session #303: Avner Eisenberg on Hypnotic Breathing

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 303. Avner Eisenberg on hypnotic breathing. 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. Now I have to tell you that this week’s episode is capturing a conversation that I have been wanting to have.

For quite some time, and forgive me for getting a little bit personal first before introducing the Incredible yet also Rather Eccentric guest that I have this week on Work Smart Hypnosis. You. You’ll see where I’m going with this in a moment that I could remember. As a young kid, practically wearing out the VHS cassette tape of a specific movie, The Jewel of the Nile.

That was a movie that had Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, I believe it was, if I remember right, directed by Danny DeVito. And the title of the movie makes it sound like they’re on this adventure to go track down a jewel, a gemstone, a specific object. And this isn’t too much of a spoiler, but it turns out in the movie that the jewel of the Nile.

Was a man played by Ner Eisenberg, who’s the guest on the podcast this week. Now, fast forward because I, I’ll tell you, this was my version of bonding with my dad growing up, watching a lot of older comedy movies, whether it was the Marks Brothers, Buster Keaton, you know, Charlie Chaplin, and I’ve always had this fascination towards.

Comedy, and especially specificity in comedy. So like going back to Harpo Marks and the Marks Brothers, how just the ray of an eyebrow would have an audience laughing, even watching someone like Steve Martin in his standup comedy or. Now just the gesture. The movement is what created the comedy, the specificity, the subtlety of it.

So I had a hobby of doing magic. I worked backstage in professional theater for a number of years, and here came an opportunity where I would just go to see other performances at other theaters in the area. And suddenly, here is this performance. Called exceptions to Gravity with Avner, the eccentric, and it’s where I sat in the audience and here I was probably 15 years after I’d seen Juul of the Nile.

He walks out on stage and it was that moment of, It’s that guy. It’s that guy. And for the next hour and 15 minutes, . It was one part mime, one part clowning, and really it was its own thing. Thus ner the It’s eccentric. It was his own brand. And in the course of that performance, I will tell you this week’s episode is the very first guest that, at least to my knowledge, I have seen him balance a full sized ladder, fully extended on his.

Which I think may be a new requirement of podcast episodes. Anthony get. You’re coming up in a couple of weeks. Figure it out, buddy. So this performance where he’s on stage and it’s this welcoming in of an audience, it’s laughter and I, I’ll call this out, I saw his show with friends of mine who go, Oh, I hate mime, I hate clowns.

And just rolling in the. The entire performance. It was that good. And head over to the show [email protected]. Just go to work smart hypnosis.com/ 3 0 3. That’ll redirect over the show notes and we’ll put some of the clips of his performances in the show notes and the entire performance. Were at the end of it.

It concludes with two words. There’s a bit with a microphone, and at the end of the show, he just leans into the microphone and finally speaks after an hour and 15 minutes and says two words. Thank you. Huge applause. Standing ovation. Goodnight everybody. And I’ll tell you, so from the personal side, just I was drawn to it and thought it was so cool, and watching various movies over the years of that style where again, that physical comedy performance.

And then to find out as I got into hypnosis, . So did Ner. So I began to hear these rumblings that, Oh yeah, he also does hypnosis. Oh yeah, he, he trained at hypnosis and then eventually a little bit more personal. Here is watching how sometimes people download different things off of the Work Smart Hypnosis website.

People may join little, many programs, and sure enough, the guy who I’d been tracking was also now very clearly tracking me. I reached out and here was the premise that sets the stage for this entire conversation. A man who spent most of his career on stage in silence to now be doing hypnosis, which so much of it is about the verbal communication yet to hear how learning a handshake.

Interrupt induction changed one of the moments of physical comedy and clowning, and a bit of magic in his performance. How the awareness of how performers breathe or even don’t breathe is an incredible lesson about tracking. Either the presence or the lack of anxiety in their world. So it’s a natural through line that as much Asner teaches eccentric performing to other performers.

He also now works with other performers in the role as. A hypnotist, and you’re gonna hear some incredible thoughts here about the power of breathing, specifically how the breathing applies to rapport and really creating this moment of being present and in the experience. A little bit more about Avner, his Avner, The Eccentric Show was on Broadway in 19.

Four in 1985, he’s been in various productions, both Broadway and on regional theater. Everything from waiting for Gadot to various Shakespeare performances. His show exceptions to Gravity is one that begins as they’ll tell the story about doing a performance that, which, by the way, he’s done this all over the world.

I got to see him in Hampton, Virginia, yet recently. It toured through Spain and Paris and just incredible. Opportunities here. And again, you’re gonna see some of the show clips of that. I mentioned Jewel of the Nile, several other film appearances as well. And, and the resume of, for those who may know the specificity here of learning physical performance and mind from Jacque Lako, who’s, uh, major name in that world.

So the sort of blending of theatrical backgrounds coming together here in this fascinating conversation here and again. Into hypnosis and NLP and ericsonian hypnosis, and what’s that’s informing him as a performer, as a practitioner, can you hear the excitement? I’m so excited for you to get to meet Ner, as I’ve now got to meet him in this respect as well.

So head over the show notes. At work smart hypnosis.com or here’s the shortcut, work smart hypnosis.com/ 3 0 3. That’ll take you to the show notes to link over to his own website, some of the video clips as well. While you’re there, check out our upcoming work Smart Hypnosis Live. We’ve now Asner doing his trainings online too.

We’ve moved those trainings online as well. So wherever you are, Around the world. We’ve got options that are now a fit for those in the US options that are now a fit for those coming up in Europe. So, uh, check out the times that we’ve got coming up for that event. The next one kicks off in January, but let’s set the stage for this incredible performance as well as incredible practitioner.

Here we go, episode number 303, Ner Eisen. On hypnotic breathing. Well, this was had to be 35 or 40 years ago. I was teaching a workshop on animal movements at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, and the father of one of the students. Informed me that I was using Ericsonian language patterns, which I had had never heard of.

He called his daughter over, induced a very quick glove anesthesia, poked her with a safety pin, which was impressive to say the least. And he turned me onto the book Uncommon Therapy by Jay Haley. I read the book, and I think it was in that book, but it may have been another readings about Ericson I read about.

The handshake induction that he did, I believe it was in Mexico with he asked for, for a, uh, demonstration subject at a medical school, and they brought him someone who did not speak English and he didn’t speak Spanish, and he talks about inducing a profound trance just in the act of shaking hands. I started researching that and in my show, exceptions to gravity.

I have a couple of places where volunteers from the audience need to hold. Arms up and I started playing around with the handshake induction and like magic. All of a sudden, all of the fatigue went away. The rapport deepened so that they were having more fun. I was having more fun, and if we were having more fun, the audience was having more fun.

So that was my first introduction and. And I kept reading a lot about Erickson. Steven Gilligan did a weekend workshop in Boston. I live up in Maine, and I sort of talked my way into it and did a workshop with him, which was a little bit disastrous because before that I used to try out inductions on people.

But after I took the workshop, I felt like I knew too much to be just playing around with. And then I developed an idea. I had, first of all, I had shoulder surgery and couldn’t work for about six months, and I developed this idea that when I go to the theater and it really works. It is truly a hypnotic experience.

I ex. I have time distortion. I lose all awareness of my body. I sometimes dr. And when it doesn’t work, it’s like a trip to the dentist without noca. Mm. . And I had this six month period and I also discovered that almost every student has some level of stage fright of anxiety, anticipatory anxiety about performing.

So I wanted to take a course and I looked around, I. Found Ron Klein who’s in your neighborhood. Yeah. And, uh, oh, great. Well, I signed up for one of his workshops, went down for a five day training, pretty much got what I wanted. Now I, I, I knew that hypnotists get a chance every time. That’s what they do.

It’s their job. And when I talk to performers, they, they look at performing almost like a gambling game. You say, Well, how, how? How’s the show gonna be tonight? Well, I hope they like it. And I realized that all theater training stops at the proscenium. They, it’s all about what the actor does, what the actor feels, and doesn’t really look at what the audience is doing.

And what I discovered in, in hypnosis, the concept of rapport and started to develop techniques for basically inducing rapport in the first second that we’re on stage. And I was at Ron’s training. I pretty much got what I wanted and at the last day he said, Well, we’ve, we’ve covered all the material I’m going to, Demonstrating something called a visual kinesthetic dissociation.

I wanna demonstrate it. I’ll be teaching this in the next workshop. He said, This is good for treating trauma and posttraumatic stress as anyone got something like that that they can share with us that would like to be a demonstration subject. A woman said yes, and it turned out she was an inner city social.

And had a street person had thrown bleach in her face and she had severe posttraumatic stress, couldn’t go to work, had panic attacks, just getting in the car to drive to work. He said, Would you like to change that? She said, Yes. He said, Okay, on a, on a zero to 10 scale, where are you? She said, 15. And he did the, uh, VK dissociation and then he, for which took what?

15, 20 minutes. And then he did a quick session of eye movement integration. He said, How do you feel now? And she said, It doesn’t seem like a problem anymore. Yeah. He said, Well, so we can check our work. I want you to get that old feeling back. And, and she, she had just blanched when she first started. She got the funniest look on her face,

He said, What’s the matter? She said, It’s not there. I can’t get it back. It’s not there anymore. I was hooked. Yeah, I wanted to learn that. He said, Well, I’m not making a marketing plea, but I will be teaching that in the new workshop, in the next workshop. Who wants to sign up? Nice . So I did At the next workshop, she came in late.

The first day everything froze, All heads turned to her, and she looked at us and said, I’m fine. I go to work every day. . So I kept training for about five years and ended up certification as Ericsonian Hypnotherapist and a NLP Master practitioner, and then certified as a trainer in both of those. Yeah, Yeah, I love that.

And for those that are new to you, we met briefly, I think it was 2003 or 2004. When I saw your show and then eventually hear that you were getting involved with hypnosis, and from my background, working as a equity stage manager in a hobby of magic at one point, and it’s where just, just that connection, which there’s some key points I’d love to chat about.

The, the, the performance of yours, What was it called? Exceptions to gravity. Yes. Yeah. Could you give a little bit of a play by play of some of the things that happened in that show for those that are curious? Well, I, I, I play the janitor of the theater and I come on stage to give a quick last sweep before the audience comes in and discover that the audience is already there.

So I. Apologize, but I have a job to do. I need to sweep the stage and, and I think there’s a line in a thousand clowns. It’s when, when he’s late, he comes back and he apologizes. He says, That’s all anybody ever really wants in life is a good apology. So I start sweeping the stage and things happen. Things drop.

I look cross. An hour and a half later I sit down to a meal and they made a mistake in the kitchen and they’re nothing but paper napkins. You can see all this. I There are a ton of videos on YouTube. Yes. Just look, Uper The eccentric. What, what, what struck me about this was that it’s a performance that correct me.

It’s about an hour and a half in. In 15 minutes at this point. Yeah. So, but in the course of all of that, the entire performance is done. I won’t say it’s done in silence because the audience is laughing and having an incredible time, having seen the performance. And only at the end of it do you walk up to a microphone and say two words.

Thank you. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. . And a very funny thing happened. I was at Arena Stage in Washington. Yeah. And I, I came in one night and the uh, house manager said, Hi, I wanna introduce you. This is our sign language interpreter. And I said, Oh, interesting. And she said, Oh, right, . The interpreter got up. They had all the people that could use a sign language interpreter on one side of the audience.

She explained to them in sign that I wouldn’t be speaking and that she was going to sit down and enjoy the show with them. At the very end of the show, I came. And got a panicked look on my face, ran down into the house, grabbed her on the hand. We, she came on stage with me. I turned to her and did the ASL sign for thank you.

She turned to the audience and uttered the only words that were spoken in the evening. She said, Thank you. Wow, . So from that career of, you know, on stage mostly silent, this was the, the hook that I was, the reason that I reached out to you, not just as a fan of your work, but also. This premise that with hypnosis, so much of it comes into the specificity of movement.

You know, you mentioned that in terms of a handshake interrupt, but getting into the language patterns, I’m curious if you found any greater specificity to the languaging of it as a result of so much of your career being silent for the most part on. Yeah, absolutely. There’s one of the, uh, Milton model patterns is I wonder if, Yeah, and I think every, every time I ask the audience to do something that it comes with a physical version of, Gee, I wonder if, and the response is, is phenomenal.

I, I really tracked and I’ve developed a whole curriculum. Teaching a workshop called Eccentric Performing. I used to call it clowning, but clown has, has become my favorite four letter word, um, , and it kind of tracks with Bandler and grinders, the path they took in developing nlp. I knew after I had gotten into hypnosis, it started paying attention to, to breathing in particular, and particularly breathing as it relates to rapport.

That I was having this effect on audiences where there was a qualitative warmth in the audience, and I, I realized, uh, that audiences never remember what you did. They, they only remember that they liked you or not. And so the question I wanted to answer was, what? What am I doing? And I was able to analyze that in terms of the hypnosis and nlp and can I teach someone else to, to do it so that they can use those same principles using whatever skills they have that are unique to them.

And the, And the answer I think was yes, especially these days with the pandemic I’ve been teaching. To Zoom classes. I’ve had 20 people from 27 different countries in the last three or four months teaching Zoom classes in these things, what’s interesting is you go back to the phrase, I wonder if, and this is the rare piece of feedback, let’s say in a hypnosis certification training or any course where it, it’s odd that the ultimate feedback is that quote.

It sounds like you’re making it up as you. As opposed to , as opposed to, It sounds like you’re going through the five steps of this specific technique. It sounds as if you’re hitting the four bullet points of this specific method and, you know, I, I flash back to working with actors and, you know, the, the skill of the actor would often be, you know, kind of directly proportionate with their experience.

That you look at, here’s a production, and it’s the classic American play with the whole family. And clearly the actors playing the grandparents may be people who have been on stage for 60, 70 years of their life. And here’s the kids, which are played by teenagers who look young enough to play the kids.

And there’s some level of experience that might be there. And at the younger ages, it’s almost as if. Yes, it’d be great if they can act, but it’s also just as good if they can say the words and it doesn’t sound as if they memorized the words , that it, that it sounds genuine. And I, I flash back to what I remember of your performance that, as you said, I’m discovering there’s an audience there.

I’m discovering that there’s napkins instead of food and here’s a ladder, here’s an audience, and if I raise my arm, suddenly this half of the audience starts cheering and I wonder, I wonder if I raise the other arm. So, So I’m curious about your thoughts. I just used it right there. . I’m curious about how, you know, being in the moment with the client and listening to their.

How that, I wonder if kind of becomes really an overarching through line of the process as opposed to, again, just running them through a system of the process. Yeah. My training with Ron Klein WA didn’t use any scripts at all. Yeah. I was surprised later to find out that people had them, There was a lot of emphasis on therapeutic storytelling, on internalizing some of these language patterns and then listening to see.

They react. I see clients, I sort of specialize in performer related issues. My late wife also trained and was doing the same thing, and she, she came in one day and said, You know, it’s all about their mothers . Um, there’s a thing that I’ve developed, which is. Well tell the story very quickly. I, I watched for, for over 30 years, been teaching physical comedy and watching people do physical comedy numbers that just weren’t funny.

And I, I started asking them, cause I wondered what the, what the heck is going on here? And I realized the emotion that they were conveying was fear. And I think this is true of a beginning hypnotist as well. And if you have that fear and, and you wonder, well, what is it you’re afraid of? And I started asking them, What’s your basic emotional state before you go on stage?

Mm-hmm. . And the answer was, I hope it doesn’t suck. Yeah. And then I started asking them, Well, when you’re in the audience, what’s your basic emotional state? And the answer there was, I hope it doesn’t suck. So there we’ve got two groups of people, the audience and the performers, the client and the hypnotist, and they’re terrified of each other.

And I started wondering, Well, what is it you’re so afraid of? And I think what I’ve. Come to the conclusions that we’re terrified, both as practitioners, but also in life of not being interesting. Our fears performers is that they’re gonna get up and say, This is boring. I’m gonna leave. And when you’re worried about being interesting, You can’t be.

So the answer is, be interested, not interesting. Nice friend asked me, What do you do when they don’t laugh? I said, Oh, thank God I’ve got enough problems out there without people laughing at me. But I think that’s a, Those are good, good training points for, uh, hypnotherapist. Well, I, I think that piggybacks right off of the classic pattern of just simply saying that’s.

That, Yes, for, for anything that we’re doing for the very first time, for anything that’s going to be a new experience. The internal dialogue is, am I doing this right? So it’s the person who’s getting into a rental car. It’s the person who’s following a recipe. It’s the person, you know, figuring out which light switches turned things on in a hotel room and what exactly is supposed to be happening as they’re going through the hypnosis session.

So to have. Gratification of That’s right. And I, I forget where I heard this from, but the, the phrase was, you know, to find something, not romantic love, but to find something to love about each and every client, which where my mind took that was a very similar place to become so wonder, wonderfully fascinated with who they are.

And the, the theme of all the work that I do now is the theme of what’s great about them and how are we gonna use those strengths as to who they are and this place where the, the ultimate rapport is. Yes, from the breathing, yes, from the physicality, but to truly be interested in that other person and not just, you know, talking with them rather than just talking at them and to really be in the present that I, I flash to some of the greatest performances I’ve seen.

That at the end of it, you felt you really knew the performer that you had spent time with someone, and this is, this is just briefly one of the things that I think drew me to magic as a hobby, but also kind of pushed me away from it, that the performances where you felt, you really knew the performer at the end of it versus the stereotype of the back to the vaudeville box jumper, that it didn’t matter whether it was an audience or.

It didn’t matter whether people were watching the music played. They did the routine and they wheeled the prop off as opposed to really the connection. And it’s not just the words and the storytelling. It comes back again to, you know, I go back to that moment that you described of discovering there’s an audience there.

Well, you’re here. Let’s do so. Well see. There’s even, Or I should say that’s right. That’s right. . The goal in hypnosis and the, the goal in going on stage is exactly the same. It’s to establish rapport, and I’ve developed some very neat demonstrations where people, where you don’t go out and create rep rapport, you create a sort of a vacuum where they hop into rep rapport with.

And I’ve found that it’s adds valid on stage as it is in starting a hypnosis session because you, you discover the audience, but the first thing you say to them, and it’s said with a simple breath, which is based on our biology, on the evolution of our, of our biology. The message you say give to them is uncomfortable with you watching me.

So how does one go about doing that in your world? Well, it’s very, it’s very simple. The, the first thing you, you, you need to understand. See, breathing is a subconscious activity. We’re never aware of it until somebody makes us aware of it. And if you do a simple thing of turning your head to look at something and notice your breathing, you will notice that you involuntarily and automatically take a breath.

And when you look back where you were focused before, that breath is just released. If you even just pick your hand up from your lap in front of your face, you’ll find that same. Happening and what’s going on there is an entry into the beginning of the freeze fight or flight response, which is our basic interface with the world.

And it started when proto humors were wandering around Africa and we were basically prey animals. Our eyesight was not developed to be Swiss watchmakers. We. Our eyes scan and we are, and, and our nervous system is, is finally tuned to recognize little variations in patterns. What does this mean? That there are, the grass in Africa, on the on the belt is waist high and all barely moving in the breeze, and it’s exactly the same color as lots of little deer.

That would make a great meal for our tribe, but it’s also the same color as alliance’s coat. And when our nervous system sees something move the wrong way, it goes on to high alert, The breath goes in and we’re ready to fight or run away. If it’s a lion, we get the hell out of there if it’s a little dear.

And then I’ve, what I’ve added to that, and this is for people going on stage, freeze, fight, flight, or fidget. And that’s where you don’t release it and you’re worried about the next thing. Yeah. And your body just sits there and rocks back and forth. Shifts. Wait. If you watch so many Ted talks, the person does this little triangular dance through the whole talk.

They’re not going anywhere and they’re not walking to a place to accomplish something. And that’s the body saying, I don’t wanna be here. So it’s, it’s really a kind of a zen principle. Be be here in the moment. So just poking your head around the corner and seeing the audience puts you on high alert. In comedy, they say you could die out there.

Yeah, and if you immediately release it, you’re giving a very strong message to the audience and also to your client that says, I’m comfortable with you being. That’s one of those elements that, you know, when I think of seeing, whether it’s the comedian or the actor on stage or whatever kind of performance, or even back the days of doing theater management, you know, in DC you would do regional theater or you would do the corporate product release, or you’d do the political fundraiser, Which side?

Whoever was paying that week, Uh, and, and you would notice this level of comfort, this almost. Assumption that the rapport was already there. Not, not quite from an arrogant place, but it was this welcoming. I, I flashed to, and I’ll leave the names out here, but I flashed to a friend of mine who, it wasn’t a matter of who the politician was, she was anti all politicians.

But that was the job that week. And, and here’s the moment that she was spoken to by someone that I had heard her fume against, and she goes, I get it. At the moment they spoke, I was the only person in the room. How the hell did he do that? ? Yeah. Where it’s this, it’s this welcoming end. It’s this internal story of rapport, which goes above and beyond the move.

Like they move, use their words and it it, it starts with self to welcome someone into something. I, I wanna flip this the other way though, which is that here’s what we can do. In terms of our physicality, in terms of our breathing, in terms of our internal dialogue, what, what awareness have you found of watching, let’s say, the client and, and their movements?

And, you know, I, I, I’ve said something for years. I’d be curious to get your take on that. For the new hypnotist, this sounds like an esoteric statement to. You’ll be able to observe your client and be able to tell if they’re truly with you and going through the process. Mm-hmm. or if they’re passively observing it and, Well, when I’ve had a, when I’ve had a class where like half of the people are well seasoned and half are brand new.

The people who are experienced go. Yeah. . That, that, that’s an interesting thing to have to teach though. What, what’s your take on. Well, the certainly in my training and then was, was magnified in my practice. The, the, the first thing you you ask is what’s going on? And in general, they will start telling you about their problem.

And if you observed carefully, you will see their beamer, their behavioral manifestation of internal response. And you can calibrate that and you know, you know what their internal. State is later in the session when you’re creating an imaginary future where this problem no longer exists. If that behavior starts to come up again, you know that they’re collapsing back into their problem and they’re just creating a future that has cemented that problem in place.

And you can interrupt that pattern. And rather than thinking of rapport as something that you. Actively by projecting it. I see it as in a sense, creating a kind of a vacuum that invites them into rapport with you so that you can. Consciously and then ultimately unconsciously control their breathing in a sense of, of getting them to relax and go back to a, a neutral state where they’re not revivifying that problem.

So then let’s talk about, so, so most of your clients then, or people who are also in that performance world, how, how do you find this translates, let’s say, now that so much of the work is happening on. You know, I, I listened very with great interest when you did your series of 10 sessions of people who were working on Zoom and what everybody said, I, I was very skeptical.

I thought this can’t possibly work, and I was skeptical of teaching clowning on Zoom, and what every one of them said was, No, it’s exactly the same. In fact, in a lot of ways it’s. Their eyes are gonna be closed part of the time anyhow. It doesn’t really matter. , I started last May with a, with a practice, a zoom class for six people who were in LA went well and I’ve, I’ve had I think 150 students now, 12 at a time, and I’ve got three going this week.

And I think I mentioned from 27 different countries. There are an awful lot of advantages to it. I have a wonderful exercise. Where I live, I ask someone if they would take, and I have a, a cup that is brimming with sulfuric acid, and I ask them really just for the look to take it, and they reach over to take it, and I turn to the audience and say, Who’s holding their breath?

And the the, the faces are amazing. They go, I am, I didn’t realize it. And as I said, I’ve come to understand that breathing is, is a subconscious activity. So as the practitioner, we’re aware of the breathing, we have a, a really great leg up on understanding what’s going on, and the person takes this cup of acid and they hold it.

And it gets very uncomfortable for everybody. And then I turn to the audience, the other students, I say, he won’t let us breathe. . He won’t let us breathe. And I’ve watched so many performers who won’t let the audience breathe. They’re so worried about not being interesting that they’re racing to the next thing.

So the the next step is to say, okay, as soon as you have control of. Just let the air out. You don’t have to take a breath. You’ll already have it. And they go, Ah, and their whole body relaxes well in a hypnosis session. I know that by simply heightening my interest, it’s something that they’re saying and taking a breath and in holding it that they will, in rapport with me also do.

And if I hold it just a little longer than is comfortable and then ah, let it out. They will also, and they can feel the release of tension. And it’s a, a wonderful feeling, which I love that. For the reason that, again, it’s not, Just the strategy of the words, the phrasing, the patterns, the, the, the sequences.

It’s about holding that space with that person, giving that attention. But also, if we can, if we can facilitate that release of tension because that rapport is there, they’re gonna start to release that tension as well. And I, I think of this because oftentimes, There’s the dialogue around and, and yes, there’s a balance to what I’m about to mention that, oh, sometimes they come in and they just want to tell their story.

Well, there’s so much that we can do to start to facilitate change in that moment that the intake isn’t just quote the stuff we talk about so that we can get to the hypnosis that we know that’s right. The entire exp Thank you for that. The entire experience is. Hypnosis and about suggestion and how the way that we respond to a story, the way that we engage, the way that we listen, the way that we can just let something sit in silence.

Mm-hmm. can create a change too. Absolutely. I do a lot because I’m not a mental health professional, not a licensed, I’m a hypnotherapist, so I work a lot with people that have generalized anxiety. And stress related issues, and I teach them some breathing exercises. And then I, as I do an induction, I will very gently suggest that that breathing exercise is happening, and sometimes that’s all you need to do.

We’re, we’re in a sense of physical rapport, not just linguistic rapport. And I think the physical is much stronger and much more profound. I’d say the same absolutely conveys over to the online session that, to go into that session, I, I heard this dialogue. I don’t think this came up in the, in that episode of 10 series.

This was more in some of the Facebook groups that I heard a few people go, I feel more fatigued at the end of the day because I’m having to, you know, put on. I’m having to project more. I, I think to back to theater, how the gesture on stage may be rather big, but that’s what conveys it to the back row.

Mm-hmm. , the, the enunciation of the words may feel forced on the stage. But for the person in the back row, it’s crystal clear and it conveys as natural so that there’s almost this heightened level of the experience that I’ve found to the online session. That, again, gets to exactly what you’ve mentioned there of.

Sharing that space and I’ve often nicknamed the occasional false That’s right. to, to, to, that’s right. If we don’t actually have something, but by doing so, conveys that something did occur, and by doing so, it did occur. You know it’s interesting on Zoom, people look at the picture of the person instead of at their camera, so they’re never looking at you.

So something that you have to train yourself to do to work on Zoom is to look at the camera, and one trick to do that is organize the two windows. So that theirs is on top. I’m using the camera that’s in my laptop so that I can stare at the, I can look at the camera. So for them, I’m looking at them instead of looking off to the side or looking down, which often happens on these.

This is very important. To not just to establish, but to maintain rapport. That is huge. There’s an episode over on Hypnotic Language Hacks that I did with Robbie Samuels called No More Bad Zoom, and that’s, that’s a big thing we talked about that he’s, a lot of what he does is helping large organizations to organize.

Conferences to become even better on Zoom. That it’s not just everybody click the button and we’re connected. He’s training better engagement, he’s training better systems for anybody who wants to level up their game with online work. Go, go listen to that episode. We’ll link to it in the show notes. I, I, I enjoyed that.

And I have his list right here. Oh yeah. Nice . What’s, what’s, what’s great about that was, I think even before we turned on the recording that he and I, I was on his podcast about a year and a half ago, and I’d say that’s probably the one reason he stood out was I went, you know, Will will leave out names, but there are people who I’ve done webinars with over the years.

That to see the chat log after the event was a whole rant of how many times could I try to secretly type. Please look at the camera lens. You look insane. , , whi, which you’re exactly right, I minimize the, the screen as small as I possibly can to get that little compact compressed image so I can still see the screen right beneath that camera lens.

Right, So I, if they’re full screen, I’m having to scan the entire thing. I can see what I need if it’s maybe four or five inches wide beneath the camera lens. Because, and, and no, we don’t have to tell our client, I need you to look at the lens too, cuz they’re gonna look wherever they’re comfortable. But we want them to have that experience that they’ve been seen.

That I remember back to seeing your performance, one of my friends who was there goes, good size audience. He goes, I feel like he kept looking me in the eyes. That it wasn’t just this scan of the audience, you were genuinely connecting with people. Hmm. Well, it’s nice to hear . So then, looking at the nature of where you are now, so how is it most people are finding you as the hypnotist?

It’s really a word of mouth. I, I, I, I should make a website one of these days. I haven’t, I’ve been so busy with everything else that I, that I haven’t done it. So my professional website is near the eccentric.com, but that may put people off if they go there, but they can get a giggle if they look at the videos.

There’s also a pay a, a great bibliography of, of hypnosis and NLP books on the, on the site. I saw that there. Yes. That I, I love the nature that, you know, it’s where. For anything we do, you know, we are projecting out who that ideal audience is, and by doing so, it’s naturally deselecting the people who are not quite a fit.

So it’s not to say that we can’t be effective and flexible with these other categories, but for people to see here’s a person who’s been on stage and Broadway and film for all these years. This person understands that. And to see that as the connection, as the ultimate in marketing. I go back to Steve Martin just because, just be so good.

They can’t ignore you. . , this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me on here. It has been my pleasure. You’re very welcome. Thank you for inviting me. So for anyone out there looking to, let’s say, enhance rapport in the work that they do, or let’s even say add more specificity, any final thoughts for the listeners out there?

Everybody needs to breathe all the time, even when they’re on stage. Jason, let out here once again, and as always, thank you so much for continuing the conversation in our public Facebook community. Head over to the show [email protected]. Forward slash 3 0 3 to see a direct link to join over there and interact with myself.

Ner is a member over there too. And check out OERs links over on the Work Smart Hypnosis website as well as the video clips. And while you’re there too, check out Work Smart hypnosis live.com. That’s the home base for my in person trainings, which we’ve now moved in person and. Online interact in a hybrid format with lifetime access to hypnotic workers, where along the way, you’re interacting with other practitioners all around the world.

We’ve got another crew kicking off coming up in January, or if you’re listening after the fact, we’ve always got another event coming up soon. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you soon. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.