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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 373. Learning Intuitive Hypnosis with Marion Spurgeon and Stephanie Connell. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Linett, that there’s a story that comes to mind before I officially introduce this week’s episode, and it’s a story about the now classic book hypnotherapy.
By Dave Alman and the fact that the book really didn’t begin to take shape until the very end of Dave Almond’s Life, and there’s an interesting reason as to why that was. It helps to understand what the real nature of what the Dave Alman Medical Hypnosis course was, which briefly for those of you that this book and this man’s name are new to it begins with a vaudeville entertain.
A person who was doing stage hypnosis, where two doctors were basically knocking on his door and insisting that he teach them medical hypnosis, he rightfully responded. I don’t know what that is. And they said, We know yet, We’ve seen you demonstrate a rapid form of hypnosis. We think that’s appropriate for what we want to do with medical hypnosis.
And the rest now is part of the history as to why many of us are actually here today. So the nature of the Dave Alman Medical Hypnosis course though was that it wasn’t just Dave, Mr. Elman at the front of the room lecturing and teaching, though clearly he was lecturing and teaching. It was instead a collaborative process.
where the doctors, the nurses, the surgical staff would go off over the course of the next week or so and practice the various methods and then come back and share their findings. And it’s through this collaborative art form that what we now know is the content of this book, Hypnotherapy by Dave Elman.
What we have now are the final refinements, though, if this process had continued, if Dave had lived, uh, far beyond his already, uh, long life, I’m sure it would’ve continued to expand and shift and morph into new things even from there. And, and the reason I tell you this story, which you may have already figured out, is that something interesting happens when we look.
Any process that has, let’s say, a creative, if not slightly artistic journey to it becoming collaborative. And it’s how, from my theater career, you know, there are times that I was the stage manager, which was my former job, uh, of the same show. In different theaters with different casts, with different directors and how so often they would find a new way to present familiar material.
And I felt the need to kinda share that because there’s this amazing renaissance that’s occurring in our industry, uh, which yes, I might be a part of, of many others. Clearly as the shape of the episode you’re about to listen to of people entering into these co-production style relationships, that it’s not so much the.
Audience of all the students pointing up at one person, it’s this more welcoming into a community and an onboarding style of training where part of my brief history here was that at one point teaching events, whether one day or over the course of several days with folks, whether they were. Karen Hand or Sean Michael Andrews or Dan Candel or, uh, things I do now with Richard Non Guard.
So it kind of opened up a dialogue when I saw that, uh, two people that are friends that have both been on this program, uh, a couple of times over the years. Of Marion Spurgeon, as well as Stephanie Conk sort of teaming up together, both of them I C B C H, hypnosis instructors and really starting to notice the momentum that they were generating in terms of how they’re sharing their own unique styles of hypnosis, their own common approach to what they.
As well as really looking at how do we help better prepare someone to dive into this industry? And yes, get out there and start serving clients. So I’d kind of encourage you to really listen through this episode while in one part, yes, they have an event that’s coming up, which will link to over at the show notes.
This is episode number 373 of this series, so head over to work smart hypnosis.com. Forward slash 3 73. That’s where you can find the links and any other references that we make throughout this. Uh, really great conversation though. Some key takeaways would be of, we’ll start with the almost click bait, uh, story that kicks off this episode.
How getting kicked out of a hypnosis training led to a successful hypnosis career. If that doesn’t have you listening for more, I don’t know what will, how the experience of agreeing to do a stage hypnosis program, even though she had absolutely zero experience doing stage hypnosis. Really helped to improve the rest of her hypnotherapeutic techniques.
Uh, the sort of balance between how we model the world of the client as to whether there is no woo woo or significant amounts of woo woo. And really as, again, as much as this, uh, conversation, you know, is gonna be referencing an upcoming training event, it really helps you kind of go inside the mind of two people that are working professionals and get an understanding as to.
What really drives their thinking, how we can look at things as being either a model or the only model and really that of working intuitively with our clients. Because that sort of expert level really comes into the customization based on the person that’s in front of you. So there’s some amazing takeaways in this chat.
I’d encourage you to check out the resources that are attached to this episode [email protected] slash 3 7 3. And while you’re there too, on the web, might as well head over to Hypnotic Business Systems. Dot com, Both Stephanie Marion, members of this program and community, and it’s where if you want to get out there and really start to work with clients, you can go out there and try to figure it out on your own.
You can try to reinvent the wheel. You could make a lot of the mistakes that we all did early on or get there faster and easier and model what actually has been proven to. Not just here in the US as the three of us are, yet we’ve got people in this community. Now there’s more than a thousand members worldwide, whether it’s Canada, whether it’s Brazil, the uk, the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and all these different areas of the world.
Whether you wanna see clients in person, whether you wanna do it online, whether you wanna do both. Um, whether you want to create digital products or do all your sessions one to one or do group sessions. See, here’s the thing, Hypnotic business systems. Is now more than 250 hours of training and 24 neatly designed individual business modules, of which that if you’re brand new to all of this, you know, watch in an order, it’s published in a specific sequence, or if you’re already out there working professionally, but you know, it’s time to level things up.
Well, in that situation, every individual module stands on its own. And then you can play the Choose Your Own Adventure game. So one of the biggest things that, uh, we find is that if you’re already out there, this is a smaller segment of those of you listening. If you’re already out there and business is booming and you’ve gotta do something to better scale the business, realize that we don’t always have to do free strategy sessions.
You know, free consults. I actually have been charging for a strategy call, a basically a consult for now going on three years, and not a fit for everybody. It’s a matter of where you are in the shape of your career as the hypnotist if you’re not yet fully booking yourself. I maybe hold off on this one.
There’s other. Strategies in the program for that. Yet, I gotta say, this is something we published about two or three years ago. It’s a program we keep adding to, and this has suddenly become like the biggest thing that has become that turning point for so many people to really begin to scale their business and basically think about this, what would be different in the shape of your client attraction systems if you were only ever selling to people who had already bought from you?
That’s. That’s a lovely little dynamic shift that we’ve had several people now triple their income from the previous year, specifically with the strategy. And you get access to the webinar that I actually use. You could model the exact transcript and even so showing you the slide deck. And so the program used to be, tell you what to do and then hypnotic business systems became show you how to do it.
And then nowadays a lot of the content is, here’s my. Start using my stuff to get out there faster. So basically for the right strategies implemented properly, you could earn back your entire investment on this program and just a client or two by using the right strategies at the right time. So do this.
Head over to hypnotic business systems.com and watch the video at the top of the page to see a full tour and two pathways of your choosing. Option one is reinvent the wheel, Do it all on your. Option two is let me be there virtually with you to guide you and show you the stuff that actually is gonna put clients on your calendar.
On top of that, we’ve got a thriving community with people actively engaging every day, getting their questions answered, getting specific feedback, and yes, indeed making it rain. Boom, we just went there. All right, so here we go. This is session number 373 Learning Intuitive Hypnosis. With Marion Spurgeon and Stephanie Conk.
So I’m here once again with repeat guests of Marion Spurgeon, as well as Stephanie Conkle. And uh, I have to kick off this episode the proper way, uh, which is that, uh, Marion, you did get kicked outta your first hypnosis training, right? Yes, I got totally kicked out of my first sickness training. Um, And it was such a sad thing, so I was having a really good time.
Um, but basically, um, I was in this class full of all, mostly women, 20 women, and it was a, the second to last class that we were going to have. So we’d already taken the exit exam and I’d already taken most of it. I probably took enough to qualify to certify, but, um, the teacher. Chose the second to last class to share some really inappropriate sexual stuff about one of the classmates.
And everyone in the whole training was just kind of entranced and no one said anything. And I get a headache and I left. And, um, . And so after that I, I just sent him this email. I was just like, Man, I, I did not pay for that. I did not, whatever. That was just like so bad. And he just, he told me not to come back.
He sent me my certificate and he told me not to come back. And that. It was hard. That was a hard experience for me to go through, but it also gave me a very strong motivation that I wanted to offer something better than that to the hypnosis community. What’s really admirable inside of that was I’d say the ability to reach out.
And actually, you know, engage in the conversation around it. Uh, that from, you know, management background, there’s the unfortunate pattern of, I’m just gonna ignore that. Let me just move forward. Um, it does make me quote someone I heard, I forget where this was and I believe it actually is a. Paraphrase of a John CLE from Monty Python, uh, line, which was that this is a fantastic organization.
The organization as a whole is great. Doesn’t mean there’s a few people I wouldn’t trust to sit the proper way on a toilet. Yet again, as a whole, this is a great place to . There’s the preference we should have in the first two minutes, but I’m sure you know, the, the lesson of what not to do is also just as important of a lesson of what to.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that there’s a lot of , you know, we’re always learning something, whether it’s in a positive or negative example, but yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So then, uh, Stephanie, welcome here as well. Thank you. Thanks for having us on, Jason. Yeah. And part of this conversation was in one part just kind of opening up a dialogue that, um, the two of you and I’ve been chatting a bit, that, uh, it’s interesting that as we.
Also offer certification and various training events, How sometimes it’s someone who’s brand new, who’s coming in, but also people that are coming in from, from, from different angles. So Stephanie had kind of start this dialogue here with you, and I’m sure we’ll just kind of riff off of this for the next 45 minutes.
Uh, I, I would ask you from a bigger picture perspective, first. Would you say there’s things that you used to believe as the hypnotist that now are completely different? Well, let me just sort of back up and say that when I first started off as a hypnotist, you know, I had the imposter syndrome and uh, I was very nervous and I’m actually a more of an introverted person.
In fact, I have a. Minor in theater performance to help me actually get up on stage and break outta my shell and become a more gregarious person. But I had to sort of put myself into character to do that. So when I first started, I, you know, I sort of got into the character of the hypnotist, like I’m just, I’m just play acting, being a hypno test.
Right. And. So I just did the things that I thought a hypnotist was supposed to do and, and from what I’ve learned through reading a lot of books and then, then later on through certification training, it took me a while to really break out of, okay, this is not what a hypnotist does. What a hypnotist. Or a good hypnotherapist does is really have empathy for their client and really try to, you know, enter into their world.
Um, Utilization is a big thing for me now where I just utilize whatever the client brings to the session and we sort of go from there. I don’t feel like I have to follow this, this formula, um, per se and have to go off a script anymore. Although I will say that that was beneficial early on in my training to have those scripts.
And I think most of us, we do start off by learning. You know, with scripts, um, but scripts are like training wheels and eventually you have to take them off and, and learn how to write on your own. And when I first started , um, in my practice and I was reading scripts to people, I didn’t want them to even know that I was reading from a script.
So I would wait for their eyes to close, and then I would turn the pages very slowly and all of my pages had, um, like cover protectors on them so that you couldn’t hear the rattle of the pages as I was turning. Now I’m happy to say that I don’t have to do that anymore. Yeah. . Although it, it’s, it’s an interesting dialogue because there’s this very popular, you know, sort of phrase that these things are bad.
Uh, which I think this might actually be a quote of something. I’ve heard Richard, non guards say that the people who really attack the whole script mentality, or either one of three things, One not actually seeing clients. So it’s just armchair philosophy and they’re repeating the thing that everyone else says cuz it sounds good.
Uh, two, they really are. And, uh, they’re just hiding behind the popular phrase or three. They’ve done it enough that they kind of fall into, let’s say, I wanna call them more pattern routines. So it’s not that it’s somewhere written down and it’s scripted and they’re reading it. Yet, I think back to like Bob Burns, who you know, as he put it, he goes, the opening three minutes of getting into the swan are the same words every single time.
Absolutely. Watching Anthony Gayley do the finger magnets. And I’m standing in the back of the room with this guy named Gabriel who’d been watching Anthony’s videos on YouTube for years. And as soon as Anthony started the finger. Gabriel’s in the back of the room saying the exact words as he is . Yeah, that’s awesome.
And I’m not gonna also drop, um, standing next to Chris Thompson, uh, at hypno thoughts while Mike Mandela is teaching and Chris is muttering some of the same lines. . No, absolutely. We’ve got like little, um, strings of patter. I think that that was one of the most, um, beneficial things that I got from taking, uh, Stephanie Conk.
PSP training was that she’s got these little things, I mean it’s like an outline and then there’s like little script for different parts of the session, but then you have these open spaces where you get to work off of what your client is bringing to the session. So then that’d be a good question to kind of chat about here.
What are some of the ways you kind look at how hypnosis is not only done, but also taught? To really create that confidence in terms of diving in. Yeah. Um, I think that one of the exciting things about teaching hypnosis right now is that we have the technology to offer training in a really, um, different way than even our predecessors had.
I mean, I know that you are already doing a lot of, uh, online training too, but the way that we’re setting, um, the way that we have the ability to set this up now is where we have. Videos that explain concepts in a really detailed way, but then we could also allow our students to self-select what it is that they haven’t yet had the opportunity to learn, rather than forcing everyone to sit through, uh, something that they may or may not know.
And, and this is just. My bias because, um, as you know, Jason, I have a hard time sitting through things and I don’t wanna sit through something that I am not actively curious about or actively engaged in. And so we’re able to kind of create this, choose your own adventure style training for our students while also, um, making sure that everyone is on the same page through quizzes and also through meeting in line together at the same time.
Yeah. And that, that nature of teaming up, that is part of why I wanted to have you both on here of some really cool things happen as people kind of join into these partnerships and often teach together that over the years, you know, I’ve done. Projects with, um, you know, whether it’s a one day thing or a multiple day thing that, uh, there’s a really cool benefit of kind of sharing that, that stage.
What was, I gotta hear the story. What was some of the thought process to kind of team up together? Well, we have the same values. Um, in fact, when Marion first took my PSP training, um, I thought she was, I thought she had already been a hypnotherapist. At least five years, maybe 10 years, because it was six months.
It was because she had vast knowledge and I actually don’t, you know, I actually stress that, um, people have. At least two years of hypnotherapy under their belt before they take my PSP training. . I don’t know how Marion slipped under the wire, but, um, , But she did. And um, at some point I asked her, So you’re saying the story about being kicked out of a training wasn’t yours.
Got it. Okay. Yeah. Was it mine? That would’ve been really awkward. The rest of this chat. , I was blown away with how much Marion already knew. Only having been a hypnotherapist for six months. Um, she was at the level that I was at after five or six years of doing full-time hypnotherapy. So I was really blown away by that.
Um, and, uh, I, I think we just, we just kind of hit it off and, and realized that we really. Embrace the same values of, of actually how we run our sessions and, and how we think of hypnosis. Um, and I guess we are just having a conversation saying like, Hey, you know, oh, oh, so , I guess we were both had signed up to be I C B C H trainers, right?
And we are both kind of just like texting each other, talking about, you know, how should we go about starting our, you know, Each individual, um, program. And at some point Marianne was like, Hey, why don’t you wanna just do this together? ? It was like, Yes, that’s brilliant. I would love to do this together.
Really. And I love it because we motivate each other and I think we fill in the gaps for each other. Um, so wherever, you know, she’s knowledgeable about. Things that I, I’m, I may have a cursory knowledge of, but she has in depth knowledge and, um, and maybe vice versa for her, I don’t know. But also, uh, you know, she can be working on things when I have to be tending to my children.
And, uh, when she’s over working, I could be like, Go take a break. Like, don’t even work today. Just go take time or something. So I think we balance each other out in that way. Well, I think one of the biggest things is I go back to a quote, That, uh, apparently I was referencing the wrong person. I thought it was Michael Elner who was saying, Learn from people who disagree with each other.
Uh, who I heard him say that yet. It was actually him quoting Scott Sandlin, to which I kind of adjusted that over time to be learn from people who achieved the same results, but just have different ways of getting there. Mm-hmm. and that, that’s one of those strengths that, you know, for the new practitioner, it’s the, it’s the confidence, it’s the creativity.
It’s the flexibility that really needs to be there. in order them for them to feel comfortable diving in. And, uh, I, I desperately need to censor the rest of the story. I’m realizing of two people that I’d consider early mentors in what I would do, and they were wonderfully kind, caring people and could talk absolute smack about the other, behind the others’ back, um, which you would’ve never expected.
And it’s why I’m not saying the names. Good luck guessing, and to find out. At the core of it, though, they were extremely good friends and it was out of respect, this kind of playful jabbing, um, with each other was there. The way that is, like Richard non guard and I do a number of events together and I’ve purposefully leaned into our Oscar and Felix Odd couple dynamic at times, but it, it’s the ability that for the student suddenly now, It’s not, this is the one way to do it.
I like that is what makes me more comfortable. I realized energetically, uh, offering what I have to say because I want people to know that there’s different ways to look at things, and I want people to also know it’s not just me. And for me as a relatively newer hypnotist and Stephanie, there’s also kind of a built in reality check.
Sometimes I’m just like, eh, is this just me or is this what , what do you think about this? And, and also I think that, um, another really positive benefit about working with Stephanie is that, um, she’s able to kind of watch my videos and tell me, uh, stop editing. This is really good, you know, to give her honest feedback.
there’s a couple of things you both kind of brought up here that I wanna go back to, uh, just to make sure we’ve got these clear that, um, first of all, Stephanie, were on the show a number of years ago. Uh, could you give like an overview? You’ve said PSP a number of times. There’s still a few people that are still scratching their heads going, What’s that?
Can you kinda give us an overview? Absolutely. So that’s abbreviate an abbreviation for the Profound Somnambulism Protocol, and it’s a protocol that I developed, um, which allows the hypnotist to have direct voice communication with a subconscious meaning that, Um, the client’s conscious mind is completely out of the way, usually sleeping or dreaming.
And the subconscious will be able to talk to you just like how the subconscious can talk to you with idiomotor responses, but this is even a little better than that, or really kind of a lot better than that because the subconscious is speaking to you through the client’s voice box and third person talking about the client.
So you can have this back and forth conversation with the subconscious mind, um, without the conscious mind interfering. And really get, um, you. Better answers and better resolutions because you can actually have a dialogue. So, um, and one of the reasons why I was interested in taking that training, besides the fact that it was marketed as an advanced training and I wanted more than what I had gotten already, um, was because I had sort of stumbled across that place in hypnosis.
On my own doing something else and it startled me and I was curious about what that was. Um, and so Stephanie’s protocol is kind of a, a reliable way to get there. Yeah. Which is a training that I’ve gone through myself. And you use elements of ab. Absolutely. Is there a story that comes to mind from either of you in terms.
How working in that deep interactive style, and I did put in my notes to not call it Conco Bism as I tried to . We call it PSP is a much better name, , but I believe I do own con con bism.com And also define you for that one, huh? Yeah, we’ll come back to that later. Uh, no. Is there a story that comes to mind of working in.
Interactive style that kind of illustrates what the experience is. Yeah, so there’s like so many wonderful things that can happen in this state, right. You get spontaneous healing where, um, the subconscious can heal the client just very quickly, um, and right there in your chair and you can test for it. Um, also if there is a secondary gain, you’ll know exactly what the secondary gain is, and then you can sort of do a negotiation with a subconscious and say, well, Since they’re getting X benefit from this, um, if we were to give them a different benefit that wouldn’t sabotage their health or their mental wellbeing, you know, would you agree to?
Whatever, release the block or whatever it is that they’re seeing you for, and so you can sort of negotiate with the subconscious and get results that way. Um, you can also call in, uh, hire the higher self and what, whether or not you think that this is a part of. Some spiritual thing like the soul or whether this is a brain based thing, like an ego state.
Um, when you call in like the higher aspects of the client, then they can get a broader perspective of what is happening in their life and that just leads to a better acceptance of what’s happening and just like a quicker result for them. What’s really cool about that is if I have a client who has done hypnosis before and is then reaching out.
My, my standard question is not to go, you know, you’d wanna find out what they did, you know, if, if they were successful with someone else and now just for whatever reason they’re now working with you. It, it’s always good to find out what have you done before and model that to the best of your abilities, cuz you already see what’s, you know, gonna be applicable for that person and Absolutely.
And the opposite too. Oh, it didn’t work. Well, you know what? Let’s, let’s do this though. And I’m looking at my clock right now. It’s like two minutes after the hour. And not that I’m tracking time, but let’s only take like the next three or four minutes to talk about that previous session because if we make this entire thing about what someone else might have done wrong, that’s not gonna serve any of us.
And honestly, if you were in front of me and you said the same things to me, I might have done the same thing they did. Uh, but I’ll ask a few questions and most often, I can know exactly what needs to be done differently, and it’s kind of illustrated by what you just said there, that to bring in a more, I wanna say just interactive process.
Absolutely. When something’s not going right. Your best strategy, and this sounds silly out loud, bring your client back into the work. Mm-hmm. , rather than assume they’ve turned into a sponge and they’re absorbing everything you say. And that’s what we’re really focusing in on with our, with mine and Marion’s training is utilization and what is going to work best for the client, not what we think is gonna work best, but.
Sort of taking cues from their own subconscious, which you can even do in a waking state. You don’t have to be in, you don’t have to put them in deep trans hypnosis. Yeah. I think that what we’re really focusing on in our certification training is offering an array of tools. Um, one of, I, I have been delving a lot into Michael ACO books lately, and he had a great quote, quote that, uh, about how, you know, there’s so many models that we can use.
And none of them are complete. We’re always just using them as a map, not the territory. And so what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to offer models. I struggled about whether we should teach the Aarons depth scale because I’m not really sure that I believe in it, but I still want people to know what that is, and they can decide for themselves whether it’s useful or not.
I mean, like it’s kind of the same way that I treat past life aggressions too. It’s like, I don’t know if I believe in it or not, but I want people to know what that is and how to do. Because, um, people find value in that process. And so I don’t want to limit what my students can learn by what I think is real or not.
Like who am I to say what is real? I’m just going to offer them like, here is kind of the landscape and here is what you can do with that, and you can decide based on you and your client what is best to do. Now that’s a question that I think is only. Popped up, I think, and this is now episode number 373.
So we’ve been doing this thing a while, . That’s something that’s only popped up a couple of times, which is. , How do you teach a structure so you can break the structure? Yeah, it’s interesting cause I had someone previously say, Oh, there’s no point in even teaching it. And I haven’t, I don’t think so. I think that there’s a value in teaching it, even if you don’t, like I, I think that we should teach our students to question, and I think that we should ever.
The model so that they can test it out for themselves and see what they think. What I don’t want is I don’t want people parroting things that we teach them or adhering to them so tightly that they are not paying attention to what their client is actually doing. I flash back to, it was a marketing convention, and I’m sitting there with two people and they turn to me.
I’m like, No, you, you two. Keep going. I’m just gonna keep listening. Uh, there’s no resolution to this, but I think it’s amazing, and it was one that was born into an extremely religious family and then moved towards the direction of atheist. The other one was born into an atheist family and then moved toward religion, and their discussion was they both had families with kids on the way, and it was the, the greatest decision of my life was being able to make the choice of my own.
So like they’re both in the sort of block, uh, and this could be the entire episode, so let’s move on from this . But they’re both in that block of do we facilitate that reasoning for our child or do we let them go the same route we did or what? And I’m like, Ah, good luck, . No, but it’s that, you know, sometimes we can say this is a model.
yet it’s not the only model. Right. And I think there’s an importance to developing your own intuition as well, when, especially when you’re conducting sessions, being able to tap into your very own subconscious and let your subconscious run the session. However that, however it goes, just trusting in that process.
Yeah. So let’s, let’s come back to that in a moment because I had to go back to psp, yet you’ve both, I believe now artfully. We align with the same values. What up with that? All right, so some of the stuff that we value, I think are, um, having our client generate their own change. I mean, I, I think that I, when I say that, I don’t know, I think that there’s a popular perception that hypnotists are, or just gonna like, slap a band-aid on it or impose our idea of what a solution looks like.
Now, most hea therapists that I know do not work that way, but, Yeah, We, we believe in, in client-centered change. Yeah. And I, and I just think, um, we have similar personalities too, which helps us, I mean, I think different enough where we’re not like annoyed by each other , but, but close enough where we can, we can work.
And I totally understand. Like if she has an idea and she wants to take it in a certain direction and she’s sort of muddling through it and just sort of like, uh, she sort of, uh, like her style is sort of to ramble, and I say this lovingly, but to ramble in a way until she sort of figures it out on her own.
And I kind of like give her that space to ramble about it until she figures it out. And cuz I think that like Maryanne, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, cuz I, I think that. You’re not really asking me for the solution, but you’re just sort of talking it out and then it sort of like comes to you and then I’ll ratify it with Yeah, that’s a great idea.
Mm-hmm. . . Um, but I don’t really think you have many, you know, bad ideas, but if there’s something that I feel like is not helpful, you know, of course I’ll say, Oh, well, you know, that’s a great idea, but it’s not helpful. You know, this module is about or whatever, but, um, but I think that we work really well that way.
And I’ve tried actually, uh, working with other people and, and I just did, We didn’t have that same rapport that Mary and I have. Like I think we can just, you know, we’re more like sisters . We can just talk to each other like very comfortably and. and be on the same page, um, no matter where we are in our day or in our feelings.
Cuz we, both of us go through a lot of feelings every day, . So we’re very supportive of that. And you know, sometimes it’s like one of us is like, okay, let’s just, you know, let’s just kick our ass into gear now. Mm-hmm. . And sometimes it’s like, okay, let’s just take a break and pause and, and do what we do, do the self care that we need.
And I think we’re like really good at balancing that out in each. Well, I, I share, There’s something that I’ve noticed both of you do over the years that I’ve, I’ve known you to, which is that, you know, it’s giving credit where it’s due. It’s talking about where you learn things, which I, I think. Stephanie, I’d love to ask you some things about stage hypnosis, cuz you brought that up before we, uh, jumped on here.
And I think that’s a really interesting, uh, thing to share with this audience. Yet it it’s the ability that it’s giving credit where it’s due. Yet it, it’s just the same reason why there’s people who would take a class and it’s the first thing they’re doing versus they see that someone else has a very specific skill set and maybe they’re already seeing clients, maybe they’re already working professionally as a hypnotist.
They just want more things in the toolkit and they can come in at, at different levels. Um, there, there’s a funny piece of feedback one time that I got, which was that, uh, you did a nice job of kind of laying a foundation of what else we should look at. And I think somewhere in my training is the sentence that, yeah, here’s this induction that people say, Oh, that’s basic.
I don’t use that anymore. It’s not that good. Other stuff is better yet. Right there inside of profound Somnambulism from Stephanie Conk, she says At one point I just do a Dr. Flower’s induction because it just works. Yeah, . He did it Simple. and people heard me say that, and I think they then followed and went into your program , and it leads into this nice sort of not just training, but also onboarding into the rest of the entire industry.
Because then we’re learning from, you know, who the people we learn from as well, and it’s helping to really understand that lineage just to where things came from. Oh, and we actually do cover a lot of that in the training. Like we go into who came up with what and how we use it now. And I actually have a theory about what is advanced hypnosis anyway.
And my definition of advanced hypnosis is taking the basics and knowing them well enough to apply them to whatever it is in front of you. And I think that that is it, it sounds like understated when you say it that way, but, uh, like, I wanna say, 99% of the problems are not, like if you’re presented with them as a, a working hypnotist is a question of whether you know how to apply what you already know to that situation.
That’s a really cool way of looking at it, that. Yeah, I, I go back to so many chats here that have been, you know, what are the updates on this? Well, I’m basically doing the same thing. I’m just doing it better now. Yeah. And it’s not so much about the new technique, the new thing that everyone’s excited in the industry about.
It’s instead, Getting back to the core skills and understanding how to better customize. And I wanna say that that is a huge strength of Stephanie’s protocol, is that I think that it actually forces people to learn the basics really well. Well, thank you. Um, and I wanted to interject real, real quick.
Another reason why I think Mary and I get along so well is that we’re both. Like pretty big into woo woo , and yet we are both, Did we really take 29 minutes to get there? I mean, we’re both, we’re both evidence based, right? We do believe in evidence based hypnosis and brain based hypnosis, but we’re also very woohoo, very spiritual too.
And so we can like really share that side with each other and not feel judged. And anybody who’s coming into our courses who have more of a spiritual belief like we will embrace. Yeah, I think that, um, what one are the ways that I think about my spirituality, cuz I’m also like constantly skeptic too is, is just embracing that flexible world view.
Like when I, when I think about astrology, I don’t think about it like a religious doctrine or anything like that. I don’t even think it as a belief system. I think about it as a lens, like almost like a kaleidoscope where you can look at something from a different perspective and it. Um, contributes to your thought process in that way.
It’s like how I think about like most loose stuff, right? Sort of like a pendulum as well. It’s like, well, the pendulum is given me answers for my subconscious. I, I don’t know if it’s necessarily some spiritual thing happening, but I know that it is something very profound that I need to pay attention to.
Yeah. Well, can you chat a bit further? I mean, I’m love to hear this from both of you about that sort of balance between. What level of, Is it just woo or is it woo woo or woo woo? Not, not in terms of, you know, your model of the world and what you’re bringing into it, but instead how you kind of figure out what the client’s worldview would be.
And then how do you blend that in? Well, I asked them what their, It’s always, it’s one of the very few questions on my intake. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , it starts with the intake form and I say, I want to respect your beliefs. Um, so I’m. Or how did I phrase that? Like, I am asking this question because I, I respect your belief system, so please check one.
And then they have a list of , atheist, agnostic, non theist or religious or spiritual and religious or spiritual, but not necessarily religious. So they can just check the box that. They feel like fits them. And then, um, during the assessment phase, I’ll ask them to expound more on that. And I had a client recently that, um, I asked him if he had a belief in, in God and he said, yes, he’s a, a very passionate Christian and.
Um, I, I just went with that in, in his session for releasing trauma. I just assumed to invite the Holy Spirit to help him to shift that for him. And he had this really profound experience and I remember on the exit survey he said, I really appreciate your belief in God. And that made me check it a little bit because he was assuming that that was my belief.
But that actually was just me reflecting his belief back to. In the way that we’d already mutually agreed upon though, I’d imagine are, are you doing anything in the shape of the work that you do? And this kind of gets more into the business side to bring in clients of that specific style. Yeah. You know what, I, I, I personally don’t, I, I, other people may feel differently, but I don’t because, um, I have had situations that really challenged my patients for that sort of thing.
I, I don’t like it when people come in almost wanting hypnosis for the experience more than the result, and I don’t want people coming in that have unrealistic expectations about what the result can be. I’ve had people coming with terminal cancer thinking that maybe if they have a past life regression that will fix it, and that makes me extremely uncomfortable.
Well, I think that fits into the same category of the client going, I have this habit I want you to do fill in the blank program. Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, I need to be regressed to figure out this. I need to have, I had someone a while ago, which this is years now. Um, I need to do the Simpson Protocol to do X.
I’m like, there’s a story here, . Um, which that posed to be a fit there. So it was all good. Uh, yet, kind of inside of what you said is, you know, Still being open to letting you direct the process? Yeah, yeah. I, I do advertise for it a little bit on my website, but most of those clients are word of mouth clients because, you know, I work out of Holly Springs, Georgia , so I don’t wanna scare all of the locals away, um, because hypnosis is already kind of woo woo.
I will say that like sometimes it’s funny that the people that are the most uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus showing up in a kind of realistic way in someone’s mind are the Christians, because that means that it’s not their pastor’s idea of Jesus. It’s your idea of Jesus, and that’s somehow threatening.
Um, and also I, I just, um, yeah, I, I, I think. The spirituality aspect is a really cool aspect of what we do, and I also just prefer to let it emerge organically rather than saying that this is like the way that I frame what I do. Yeah, absolutely. Ditto. Well, that, that kind of goes into something that, uh, From the podcast hosting me, I’m gonna do something I normally don’t do, which is that I’ll ask you the question and then I’m gonna instead direct Stephanie to tell the stage hypnosis story, which really means the two of you will have a few moments in the back of your mind to come up with a better answer than if I really put you on the spot
So, um, Act surprised when I ask it the second time. Okay. Uh, which would be, you know, out of anything we would ever offer. Um, and, and this might even be the same answer, if it’s the client, as it would be the student, or even someone buying a digital program, that it tends to kind of be that worldview of, you know, what’s the big promise?
that you’re offering to people and like part of mine is that, well, it’s a process based in evidence based hypnosis, yet utilizing hypnotic phenomenon because your client is feeling their problem. Mm-hmm. , therefore they need a hypnotic experience where they can feel the change actually occurring. So we get the instant gratification that something’s working.
Right. Uh, which, take note, that took me eight years to figure out, Oh, that’s what I do. um, . So, we’ll, we’ll come back to this sort of topic of what’s the big promise, what’s the big deliverable? And th this is a lesson that was drilled into me over the last couple of years of sitting down with people at events outside of our industry.
Here’s a good friend that I had to say, I’ve known you for a year now, I don’t know what you do . And to understand what that big promise, what’s that deliverable at the end? We, we’ll come back to that so your, uh, subconscious can brainstorm over the next few moments. Sounds good. Uh, Stephanie, you had a story though that I wanted to have you share about stage hypnosis.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and also I wanna preface this by saying that, um, I know that. There are some hypnotherapist who don’t give credence at all to the stage hypnotist or stage hypnosis. In my experience, um, cuz I started off in the more clinical setting, but in my experience when I started, actually when I did my first quote unquote stage hypnosis show, and I put quotes around it because, uh, you’ll, you’ll hear white in just a moment,
Um, that is, I think that’s the moment where I really felt like I’m a hypnotist now and I totally understood. I wouldn’t say all of hypnosis, but I understood some of the main structures of hypnosis of what made it work and, and why it didn’t work when it didn’t work. Um, so basically what happened was, um, I was on Facebook and I got in.
an old acquaintance from high school contacted me cuz he saw that I was a hypnotist and he was going to be in the area with his karaoke company, right at a local tavern. And he asked if I would come and just do a little hypnosis show in the back of this bar, right. And I thought, Okay, sure, why not? But I said, You know, I’m really a clinical, I’m not a therapist.
I’m not really a stage hypnotist, but yeah, I’ll do it just for fun or whatever. I didn’t get paid for this . Um, and I sort of wanted to know if I could do it. I think I was trying to push myself to do it. So basically , what, what I did was I quickly ordered Orman McGill’s Encyclopedia. Stage hypnotism and I ordered Richard non guards and John Ser bones speed trance videos, and I just studied how to do street hypnosis.
You know, the speed trance, and. You know, went through that encyclopedia to learn as much as I could. Then on the night of the show, I was like, Okay, I’m just going to pretend like I’m the hypnotist. I’m an actress pretending to be a hypnotist. That’s how I framed it in my mind. Okay. And um, I. And my friend’s girlfriend was sort of going to be like the stooge
And so I whisper to her. I was like, Just do everything. I say case, right? Cause it’s like, we’ll just get these people a show. I wasn’t even really thinking I’m doing real hypnosis, right? I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna mimic hypnosis. So I start doing the stage show and what happens is that people in the audience, Are actually becoming hypnotized.
The people who weren’t STIs, were becoming hypnotized in the audience. And then after the show, uh, a whole bunch of people gathered around me in a circle and I was just one after another, just dropping them and just doing this street hypnosis like phenomenon on them. I’m getting them stuck to their chair, stuck to the wall, or like their pants feel like they’re on fire or whatever it was.
Right. And I, I was like on fire. What I observed was the people in the audience watching this, they had the belief system that what I was doing was real and that activated something for them. And so it set the expectation that they could be hypnotized cuz the, they were like pretty much, you know, they all knew each other.
This tavern, they were kind of all friends and everyone was getting hypnotized. And I’m thinking to myself, Holy mm f . I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. I’m doing it acting confident, still pretending like I’m the hypnotist, but now people are really becoming hypnotized, and that helped me so much in my clinical practice because now I knew the importance of setting expectations.
What’s really cool about that is, you know, or we get that proof right away that, oh, this is working, and the whole setting of expectations and. Yeah, it, it, we just need a couple of those moments early on. Uh, I, you reminded me of someone in a training I did that. I forget the school of thought that does this, that the hypnosis is done laying on a massage table.
So then as I’m talking through an instant induction, Uh, oh. I would never do that. I, I would never do that. That’s not appropriate. I will, I’m gonna set this one out. And then the structure of that event was like every other week, every other weekend, and it’s two weeks later and she’s there, walks in with a big smile.
I just drop my mom. Nice. You have a full time hypnotist now. Now also . Well, as promised, let’s kind of go back. How would you kind of define. And it may be different for the two of you. Uh, and, and it’s probably similar, whether it’s the client, whether it’s the sharing, what you do with the clients, how, how would you kind of define what that big promise that you deliver is?
I think that one of the things that we’re sharing is we’re showing people what they already know and. Showing them how to do that better on what to make of that and how to use what they already know in order to get where they already have identified that they want to get. And um, I think that a secondary thing is that, uh, we, we both share the value of consent and agency.
And so we foster that in our relationship with our, each other, our clients, our students, our colleagues, and that is the value that we’re promoting, whether we’re working with clients or teaching students. Nice. Stephanie think to add to that, so for me, that’s all about the person being able to understand that they have a more intelligent.
Side to them, right? They’re subconscious to understand that, um, they have this beautiful subconscious mind that is willing to work with them and is willing to help them and to change them, and it’s not as hard as they think it might be. And, And that’s what I try to teach to. In fact, that’s the, the book that I’m reading right now, , that I’m writing right now, not reading, um, called The Ultimate Power Within.
And it’s how to ask your subconscious for answers help and healing, cuz you can do this with self hypnosis as well. But the benefit of hypnosis is really getting in touch with your subconscious, this really powerful in intelligence wise side of yourself that really can make the changes happen for you.
Quickly and effortlessly. Nice. Well, we’re coming up on time here and I do know just based on timing, uh, this episode is releasing on May 12th, and I believe the training you’re doing together actually kicks off a week from the release date of this, though I’m sure there’s gonna be more. Uh, down the pathway in the future as well.
Uh, what’s the best way that people can get in contact? How can they learn more? If they just go to members dot marion virgin.com, they’ll find the, the page that has all the info. Cool. And this is show episode number 373, so you can go to work smart hypnosis.com/ 3 73. That’ll have all the links and, uh, references we made throughout this episode.
Uh, though, for instance, gratification, could you spell that for every. Members dot m a r i a n s p u r g e o n.com. There you go. And, uh, huge burst of confidence. For the listeners that we didn’t spell members or com , I was worried as soon as I asked you to do that, which we link over to the show notes, uh, for that to go check out more.
It’s been awesome having you. Back on here again. Thank you so much, Jason. We really appreciate this. Yeah, thank you so much,
Jason. Linett here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, leaving your reviews online and sharing this in your ongoing dialogue of the profession. You can head over to work smart hypnosis.com/. 3 73. That’s where the show notes will live for this episode. So you can see exactly how to link up with both Marion, as well as Stephanie.
And then while you’re there too, check out hypnotic business systems.com. Learn the exact strategies that have actually helped to scale a hypnosis business year after year. Not just in my business, but also for many people in this industry. You might already know year after year as well. Get the help you need.
Model what works, get the support of a thriving c. Check it out, hypnotic business systems.com. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.
