Session #384: Michael Goldblatt on Medical Hypnosis

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 384. Michael Goldblatt on Medical hypnosis. 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. This is one of those conversations that I guarantee you’re gonna wanna listen to more than once.

Michael Goldblatt is from Adelaide over in Australia, and it’s his background inside of anesthesiology as well as working as a hypnotist. You’re gonna hear insight after insight in terms of how hypnosis can blend wonderfully into the medical model, how it works as its own standalone. Process of helping people to produce change and some really powerful insights about how we talk about, and even how we do hypnosis that makes it extremely accessible to the general public.

And one of the bigger takeaways of this chat is how people often hold onto their own preconceived notion. People hold onto their own sort of black and white perception, and it’s by way of a few chance encounters, including one that Michael himself had when he. Five years old. I will let that story stand on its own as you listen to this conversation.

Yet it’s how a few chance encount. Really helped to open up incredible opportunities to let go of fears, to release anxieties, to change their habits. And I would highlight a big part of this conversation with Michael is on one side about creating your own reality. So he’s someone who brought the educational world to him by hosting his own training events and then eventually opening up the Glow Hypnosis Clinic, which we’ll link to in the show notes over.

Work Smart hypnosis.com/ 3 84, but also also looking at how this way of describing hypnosis to the general public that the expectation you would have of the intersections between hypnosis and anesthesia are not always the connections that you would. Sometimes it is that preoperative fear. Sometimes it is that postoperative trauma or anxiety or concern.

And how really it helps to demonstrate there’s so many different places that hypnosis and hypnotherapy can be beneficial to the general public. And it’s not always the linear respect. And I share a silly anecdote about a client who. Wanted me to hypnotize them for a specific medical belief, to which clearly when you hear the story, there was a much more direct route, which I’m bringing it up here in the preamble before the episode, because yes, we did work together and then the fear was gone.

And it was a much more direct route than the weird pocket story you’re about to hear a little bit later. So I would highly encourage you, Michael Goldblatt is one of those people to follow in this industry who’s out there creating waves, really helping to inform the general public as well as the medical community.

And you’re gonna hear the power of leading with education, seeking to inform the public. And again, I’ve always gotta find a way to quote the now classic line from Steve Martin to just become so good they can’t ignore you. So head over to the show notes [email protected] slash. 3 84. That’s where you can find the many different references that Michael and I made during this conversation.

You can see some of the recent media appearances that he’s done, as well as links to the clinic, as well as how to connect with Michael directly. And while you’re there, I would encourage you check out hypnotic workers.com. This is the All Access Digital Pass to my Hypnosis training library. And. Quick thank you to Michael who brought it up actually in this conversation about the ability to go back and review different strategies, different tactics, and even if you’ve heard of the hypnotic workers program before, uh, by the time you listen to this episode, I would say head over to hypnotic workers.com.

and actually listen to the video that’s now on that page because it’s not just the techniques for change. It’s not just the methods that you won’t find anywhere else, though there are methods you won’t find anywhere else. It’s really unpacking the how and the why of the techniques that we use as hypnotists, so that everything you could possibly do in your hypnotic toolbox now becomes a universal strategy for change.

And more importantly, you understand how it works and why it works, which makes you even more empowered to then modify it for the person who is specifically in front of you with your, their unique set of goals. And this is not the game of recurring membership. Instead, it’s either a. Single payment, or it’s a brief installment plan for lifetime access.

I did not look before recording to see that. I believe Michael joined us like several years ago. And just whatever updates we put into the program, everyone then gets access to. So simply put head over to hypnotic workers.com, watch the video at the top of the page, and then scroll down to then join us inside.

We’ve also got a thriving c. That’s there to support you. And with that, let’s dive directly into this week’s episode. I’ve been waiting to have this conversation for quite some time, and it was better than I expected. Here we go. Session number 384. Michael Goldblatt on medical hypnosis.

Well, my first introduction was in fact, probably as five years old when I bought one of the, um, from the back of the comic magazines. He used to have to buy little gimmicks and I could buy the $5 Hypnotize, anybody glasses. Nice. So I bought the $5 and they used to have X-ray vision glasses as well, but I bought the $5 hypnotize, anybody glasses and was very disappointed when they didn’t seem to work and nobody became hypnotized.

And I think that set my belief up that. That I didn’t really believe in hypnosis. It didn’t work. And so later on there was a survey sent out by the anesthetists, and one of the questions was, What do anesthetists think of hypnosis for pre-operative surgical work? Pain management, post-operative surgical?

And they take great joy in showing my front page of that survey, which said, Time wasting public hospital crap

So when my wife told me that she had, um, Organized for my daughter who was suffering from severe anxiety to see a hypnotist. Of course, you can imagine my thought process on the whole thing, and then my wife couldn’t go, so I ended up taking my daughter snarling and muttering under my breath the whole time until I saw arm levitation.

And afterwards, when my daughter told me that she certainly was not moving her arm, it was just happening, It was a thing that was happening to her. Then I became very, very curious. Yeah. So then, and that then led on to thinking that I needed to know more about this, um, that maybe I was wrong, maybe there was something in hypnosis.

And so, Right. An an important question here is the arm was levitating the person doing the hypnosis, were they wearing the glasses? They were not wearing the glasses. Wow. They like, they were just having a very normal conversation with a 13 year old Yeah. Child. So then what, how would you describe how that thought process was beginning to change in that moment where here’s this thing that was happening, you’re hearing the feedback that I wasn’t doing, that it was happening on, its.

How, how can you kind of internalize where that belief structure was then shifting? Yeah, that, that’s a very difficult thing for me to have got my head around. I’d always been a relatively black and white thinker, and as I’d said, what I’d thought of hypnosis beforehand and now suddenly it was a little bit like, There was a book written by a man who was a magician, who was doing a PhD in the Science of Magic.

And he said that magic is very interesting and it does very interesting things to people’s brains because you know that what you’ve seen can’t happen except you’ve just seen it, right? Yeah. And so I think that was happening in my brain. I sort of, I am a very curious and um, and very, I, I guess I get caught up in the wonder of things, and so I am watching that happen and then talking with my daughter afterwards about that and getting her experience, and I really, she couldn’t really explain it beyond something was happening.

Her arm was just lifting all by itself. So then from that experience, what was that? What was that next step for you? The next step for me was I’m thinking, All right, well, I need to now learn. Perhaps rather than just mouth off about it, I need to actually go and learn what hypnosis is, how hypnosis works.

So I enrolled in a diploma of clinical hypnosis and psychotherapy, um, and did a seven day. Week long intensive course, and of course volunteered to be the first person to be hypnotized by the person running the course. And I remember my first experience of epilepsy. I eye epilepsy. I actually did the Elman induction and that, which is really now a compliance test.

In fact, that first experience of not being able to open my eyes when I really believed I was trying to, That was the moment. Yeah. At that moment, I couldn’t understand it. I, I, I didn’t get what was happening, but now I had to know. Yeah. Yeah. So then, and, and kind of rewind us back, like what was the pathway of life up until that point?

Like what was the kind of work you were doing? What was the main focus? Yep. So at, at that point I was, um, I had completed my anesthetic training, so I was a specialist anesthetist or an anesthesiologist. And we had, um, I was working a lot in hospitals, doing a lot of elective, um, and emergency anesthesia as well as aeromedical retrievals.

So it really was a very scientific, very focused. Position and not a lot of room for for gray thought. So this was something completely different to me. So then, was it a slow process to then begin to, let’s say, integrate hypnosis? Into the work that you were doing or what was that next step after that?

Very, after I’d finished that first diploma, I, I, I then became very interested in what I could do with it, and I wasn’t really using it in that work at that time, but I was interested in perhaps doing it faster than other hypnosis practices that I’d seen. And that is when I reached out, it turned out to Sean, Michael Andrew.

Yep. And because I was interested in training with him, brought him out to Australia to run a training course in Adelaide, purely for my own selfish, um, interest. And we had a one. I hear you. We had a wonderful time with Sean and I became really almost, I, I think my wife describes me as a hyp ahol. But what I, what I thought at that point was I, I almost, because again, I like thinking in very black and white, very black and white ways.

I saw that there was hypnosis and I just wondered who the best hypnotists would be. And I saw therapy as almost two separate arms of this thing. Yeah. Break that. Break that down. Cause I love that as an insight because there’s often, you know, here in the States there’s a whole conversation around hypnosis versus hypnotherapy, and the real answer to that conversation is, at least over here, more to do with the word.

Therapy is different states have different regulations and different rules, and then I’m the one who’s popping up and going, Yeah, but here’s where people are actually typing into Google to find you. Yet, yet still almost behind the scenes we get into this conversation of, Okay, well we can describe the actual.

Producing the process as hypnosis, but then the process to affect changes, hypnotherapy. H how would you draw that? That line? I would, I would draw it very much that that same way, and I think what became very clear to me was I looked for people who I felt would be the best hypnotists. And then I looked for people who would be the best therapists, and I almost went and learned different therapies and I learned hypnosis from different people and then put them together.

Yeah. And I would still, uh, you know, I’m not quite sure when I, I read books and articles where they say that, you know, stage hypnosis is very different to therapeutic hypnosis. And I’m thinking, well, the hypnosis is hypnosis. , if that makes sense. Yeah, that does. How would you respond to that then? Cause that, that’s a theme that pops up, I’d say extremely frequently on this program as to how we talk about someone’s maybe seeing the show and you know, that might be, as much as this is the conversation that I saw in a group the other day, it’s like, Oh, that’s not what it is.

I’m like, Yeah, but it’s still the reason that the person then became aware of what hypnosis was. And they still were able to make the connection to go, Can you help me with fill of the blank issue? Yep. Um, I, I, I have a hesitation when it’s an instructor in our field who goes, That’s horrible. I’m like, that’s again, how one many of our clients first become aware of it.

And two, some of the modern, you know, in recent gurus and godfathers of the industry, that’s a big part of their background. And if it weren’t for that, many of us wouldn’t be here. What’s your take on that in terms of how you explain that, how you define that, how you separate that? I, I, I’m always intrigued when I hear the medical people here.

Um, Being disparaging of stage hypnosis shows. And even in the courses now that I’m involved in teaching, um, with the medical people, they start by talking about how, you know, the stage hypnosis, uh, embarrasses people, how the stage hypnosis is not a good use of a, a psychological tool. And I sit there and I’m thinking, well, every client that comes to my office, Has in some way, knows something about stage hypnosis and they’re not frightened of it.

They’ve seen it and they’ve seen the power of imagination and believing what you’re imagining. And they’ve already made the connection in fact that if I could do this or see this on stage, then this must be a very powerful tool. And yeah, you know, we are very lucky, um, as a medical practitioner, we have a prestige suggest.

already. So when people come to see us, you know, we get the standard, Are you gonna make me clock like a chicken? Are you gonna make me run around the room and do crazy things? And again, I I will say to them that if that’s what they would like to experience and that they’re happy to do that, then I’m very happy to facilitate it for them.

Can, can you break that down? Cause that’s, that’s a concept that people. Who are, let’s say, seasoned in this world already clearly understand, but this whole prestig suggestion element, can you explain that at least from your terms? I, I think what we find is we have a number of people who find us just on the web, um, and they come in and they say, because hypnosis and hypnotherapy in Australia is unregulate.

As such, so, which as it is in most developed nations, it turns out. Yeah. So I think people feel that there is, um, a sense of, and particularly if they’re coming in with, with serious issues for change, they, uh, and, and we see a number of soldiers and we see a number of people who’ve survived sexual assault.

They feel safe coming to a place where it. There’s medical practitioners where there’s a psychologist, where there’s a, a nurse, and I think that makes them feel safe. And that is around that prestige suggestion of, you know, doctors are trustworthy, medical practitioners are trustworthy, but they don’t know who these other people are.

And the other people could be just as good. If not, you know, they may even be better. I don’t know. They feel safe. And I think as we all know, that the therapeutic alliance between the hypnotist. And the client is a very important part of the outcome. So then kinda walk through what your world is these days in terms of who the people are that you’re working with, how it, how it blends into this medical model.

Kind of walk us through some of that. Currently I work halftime in private anesthetics, halftime in public anesthetics and halftime at the hypnosis practice. So, I get a lot of referrals from medical practitioners now. We get a lot of referrals from, we’re beginning to get a lot of referrals from psychologists, so we find that interesting.

Of course, being an anesthetist, I get a, a lot of, a lot of clients who come, who’ve either found us on the web or have had word of mouth referral for. Issues related to perioperative anxiety, postoperative pain management, chronic pain management, as well as patients with um, post traumatic stress. So we see a lot of first responders and we also now are working a lot with people sitting there, Specialist medical exams.

So a lot of our work has in fact come from word of mouth referrals. You just hit on something that I think is a worthwhile chat here, which is that as much as your background is in the anesthesiology world, you mentioned that here’s the work that you’re doing specifically on the perioperative operative anxiety.

So kind of bring us like actually into the world of the things that you’re working on then, like how often. How often would it be that you’re, you’re doing something that would be, I mean, going back a hundred plus years to here’s folks like, um, you know, James Brady, people like, um, Dale, who were actually doing surgeries without any sort of chemical anesthesia, which some would hold onto as being the expectation yet it sounds.

A lot of what you’re doing is, let’s say it’s an adjunct, the hypnosis is an adjunct to the anesthesiology. Yeah. And I think that’s been something that’s become very important to me. I. When I look at certainly the medical profession and their response to hypnosis, there’s a number of reasons that I think that they struggle with it.

And one of them is that there is this lack of what we would call level one evidence for hypnosis. And I think it’s a very difficult thing to get that evidence because I don’t think you can just have a standardized process. The medical people also look at, I, I think the hypnotists have, I think we have a, a, a bit of blame in this, in that I don’t know that our follow up, I don’t know that our database of results is as good as it could be.

And so I think we come down to a lot of anecdotal stories about, Oh yes, I’ve done this, I’ve fixed that. I’ve, So the medical people treat it with a little bit. Suspicion. But what we are finding now is that because we are prepared to follow up and because if I’m working with patients perioperatively, I’m there and I am following up that that does make things, um, a little easier for us to actually collect data as well.

I forget who I heard this anecdote from that it was. . You know, and this is something that I had seen many years, many, many times over the years, where someone would call up and they would reach out to me and it was the, um, you know, I’m afraid of the anesthesia. Could you hypnotize me so I can go through this procedure without anesthesia?

And I’m trying to think it was Roy Hunter or Michael Elner or someone in that similar world and the line was, Yes, I probably could yet, I can’t guarantee your doctor will let me be a part of it. Yeah. And the follow up question is what’s the concern? Is there an actual. You know, let’s say allergy to the anesthesia.

Anesthesia, is it just a fear of the procedure? What is it? Um, and this makes me now sidebar to the story of the man who called me up and the first question was, You’re not a doctor, right? Like, No, Why do you ask? Okay, Cuz I’m doing something that might be a little illegal and I probably safe to tell you, I’m like, Oh, buckle up.

This is about to get good. And it’s the story that the neighbor had acri, uh, prescription to Xanax. Yep. And quote, I don’t even have to take it. But if I have it in my pocket, it feels like my safety net. And I don’t have a fear of public speaking, but sometimes I forget to borrow one from my neighbor.

Could you hypnotize me to believe I always have one in my pocket? . I’m like, You know, I think I could, but it seems like there’s a more direct route here. How about we just help you release that fear, Let go. And the the ultimate response was, Oh, you can do that. I. Seems like a much more direct route than convincing you that your pocket has a pill or thetic tac in your pocket is the pill.

Um, but it’s that the general public doesn’t quite connect the dots that you know, the whole, again, the perioperative time, the stuff that happens. Around the procedure is where the work, so I, Is there a specific place where the majority of your work is, let’s say now focused? No, I really, I, I do work the perioperative stuff at both the clinic and in quite often just in the holding bay before people come into the theater.

And the advantage there is any work that you do there, no one has a chance to. before I wheel them into the theater and, Oh, can you explain that? That is huge. Can you explain that further? I think one of the, the issues that people see is, and as you would be very aware of, even if you’re able to release a fear or teach somebody to let go of a phobia over a period of time, some of them will talk themselves back.

Yeah. And by doing this work in the holding bay, the, there’s this great opportunity that in fact, the only people they talk to, I put a distraction filter in, in the holding bay, telling them that we’re gonna move into theater. There’ll be a lot of activity there. Let that just matter less and less as you continue to focus on my voice and my words.

And as we walk into theater, their eyes are closing and they are just in their own, in their own minds. As we get into the theater, and you know, I’ve done, uh, a young girl had a, when I said to her that she was going to have a small, small cannula put in, She completely lost her mind over that with her severe needle phobia.

So I’ve did a very quick Elman induction, a very quick sort of fast phobia, fast fear release type technique. Took her into the theater and the first. Drug that we gave her, she had a severe allergic reaction to. Oh. And so we had this one little tiny drip in that ended up being three big needles and, um, a needle in an archery checking a blood pressure in icu in the intensive care unit on an adrenaline infusion for six hours, but then had to be woken up and was completely calm and relaxed about the.

Thing then came to the major public hospital that I work at to have her allergy testing, which involves a large number of, um, skin prick tests. Yeah. And again, her mo mother was concerned given her needle phobia, but she in fact just sat there and just breathed away through it without any issue at all.

And then even had to have further more extensive testing. So I. She was very suggestible as people are when they’re frightened. And if you can just, and I mean, I really think that a lot of the doctors and, um, practitioners that we work with work very much as accidental hypnotists. is the term that I kind of describe to them because they give suggestions at a time when people are very, very, To those suggestions.

Yes. Well, I appreciate what you said though about that’s a time where you can work without the distraction because one part of it is you’re there as the anesthesia is being administered. Which there’s this transition that’s occurring where your voice is probably one of the last ones that they’re, Yeah.

Here come the air quotes. Can you hear them officially hearing, uh, as then now they’re into the actual operative work and they’re quote out at that point. Um, I, I’d be curious to ask you, and yes, there’s anecdotes, yes, there’s things that are interesting reads in some of the classic books. Any thoughts on.

If the person is still responsive to suggestion even when they’re under anesthesia. Yeah. There’s certainly been a lot of concern and or a lot of talk about that. One of the interesting studies was that they looked at, um, list and I know you love listing patents. Yes. Um, giving a list of words and then once the patient got to recovery, seeing how many of those words that the patient would remember, and it was a very, very small number.

unless you used words that really had a very powerful emotive association like cancer dying, as opposed to if you used a word like orange and tomato. Very small recall of those, but there was recall of those of those. Bigger, you know, the powerful emotive words. Yes. So there’s obviously some processing occurring and I think it obviously depends on the depth of anesthesia and perhaps that’s related to the, the magnitude of the surgery that’s going on.

But again, we do see patients postoperatively who have. Post traumatic stress. They, they have flashbacks, they have intrusive thoughts. They’re hyper vigilant and there is suggestion that these are people who have been at some level aware of things that are going on during a, during a surgical procedure.

So has that, has that a adapted anything as a understanding then? Is there any sort of training that’s now. To language to use during procedure language to not use. Yeah. No, no. And again, I think that is something that is infiltrating into the practice here where we’re now being much more cautious about the language, you know, for, And even simple things like I, I would never talk to a patient about waking up and maybe if you feel sick, we can give you something in recovery.

I’ll talk about at the end of the operation, when it’s over, you’re going to wake. And you’re gonna feel hungry and you’re gonna feel comfortable. It’s very hard to feel hungry and nauseous at the same time. Yes. So the suggestions are that I’m gonna give you medication during the procedure that’ll ensure that when you wake up, you will feel very hungry.

Now they’re already going to sleep feeling hungry. Right. They’re fasted. So I’m pacing that and then leading with what the ongoing suggestion. Will be that you know, that I will give you medication and assure you wake up comfortable. And one of the things we are looking at is we do a lot of pain scoring in recovery, as we call it, where, you know, on a scale of zero to 10, zero you’ve got no pain.

10 as it’s the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. We’re just wondering whether, if we just change those words to comfort, they’re gonna give you a comfort score. Zero is you’re not very comfortable. And I could give you something that would make you feel much more comfortable. And 10, as you’re comfortable as you could ever imagine.

Rather than even suggesting pains because we do, you know, I think we’re bad at that. We suggest pain, we suggest nausea. So one of the things that has come out of the work that we’ve been doing is just being a lot more careful with the language in that medical kind of setup for procedures. The other thing is there’s a book, and I’ve just had a mental blank on the name.

I think the author was Judith pr. I think it’s called, The Worst is Over. Yes. Where they looked at the words that paramedics were using when they, or first responders were using when they arrived at AT scenes. And again, I’ll often use those words at the end as they, as they take the breathing tube from a patient as they just first regain consciousness without critical thinking.

They’re just regaining consciousness. I’ll tell ’em that the worst is now. That they’re safe, they can go to recovery and they can focus on healing. They can focus on being comfortable, They can focus on feeling well. You know, just little things like that, that, uh, it’s interesting. We have a lot of medical students work with us in the public hospitals and they all comment on, you know, firstly the reduced amount of anesthetic agent that the people that I work with seem to need.

Yeah. As well as, How gentle the wake up seems to be. I wanna come back to that in a moment. Cause I think those are, those, those two points that you just shared are the ones that are the Oh, wow. Kind of response though. What would you say, and, and I’ll give an example of this, what would you say is the balance though around, you know, suggesting more positive feelings, suggesting more positive expectations versus.

Still giving a preview as to what may be going on. And I, I’d give two quick, you know, anecdotes personally as an example to kind of bridge this chat, which is that here’s my father who had recently gone in for a heart valve replacement and the description from the doctor was, Well, it’s a pretty straightforward procedure and there’s a small chance though that once we get in there, we might have to do other things.

If it’s the way that we expected to go, you’ll know within a few hours that it was fine. And then, you know, the worst recovery will be how we got the heart valve, the place. Um, or if we get in there and see, we can’t do it. We will have to crack open. And do a much more intensive procedure. And the description was then basically, you’re not going to be yourself for a week or two, and it’s gonna be a slow recovery, but then every week will be better after that.

And I’ve, I’ve repeated that to people in our hypnosis world. Then what? That’s a negative suggestion. I’m like, well, at least it’s, can I say honest? And the opposite would be this procedure I recently did. Yep. Where I almost wish they’d given me a little bit more. Let’s say descriptive. I don’t wanna say warning, but warning still seems to be the best word.

Cuz the first week after my procedure, I’m in my head thinking every bit of discomfort. See how I made the modification already? Yeah. Every bit of discomfort was me going, Oh my God, I’m ripping the stitches. Yeah. And I brought that up to the doctor and he just laughed in my face in a very professional way going, Ha yeah, you can’t rip what I did.

Uh, that’s, that’s nerve pain. That’s gonna go away in a week or. It’s like if I had known it was nerve pain and not ripping of stitches, I would’ve slept better. Yeah, it would’ve slept better. . I mean, I think, uh, I kind of use the example if I walk into a, a dentist office cuz I had an extreme dental phobia and I’m a man that’s had awake brain surgery, but could not go to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned because of a experience that I had when I was, and it makes no sense to.

And I was lucky, I was, uh, doing one of Melissa Tears’ courses and she was looking for someone with an extreme phobia. So I put my hand up and within a few minutes it was, you know, it was gone. But I, I think, It is important that people are told what is going to happen, but it can be framed in a way that is positive.

You know, if one in a thousand people have an extreme allergic reaction, that means 999 out of that thousand aren’t gonna have a problem. Well, you mentioned earlier, you know, listing pattern. Yeah. And it’s where we can give the list of here’s the things that might occur, but even if it is the negative, it turns into.

Yeah. And even if this happens, here’s what you do in response to it, that then makes it Okay. Exactly. And everybo. Yeah. You know, I mean, I’ll often introduce myself to patients and my first words are my, my job. And I think most people know what an anesthesiologist’s job is, and that is to move the light for the surgeon and change the music and do all of that

What our job is, if I was meeting you for the first time before I give you, is to keep you safe. And just those words significantly change a patient’s experience and you can watch their nonverbal sort of communication as they just sort of let their shoulders sink down and just begin. Relax and unwind it a little bit, knowing that somebody is there specifically to look after them and make sure that they’re safe, and that has been something that has beginning to filter through to a lot of the people that I work with.

Just those words as an introduction. Yeah. So then talk a bit about the reduction of the use of anesthesia as a result of hypnosis. One of the, you know, I, I’ve actually fortunately only had two very minor procedures in my, my whole life, but one of the things that we see a lot is as the patients lying on the bed of the drip is in and the IV fluids running, and we start giving the anesthetic.

One of the anesthetic agents that we use can burn a little bit in people’s veins, particularly if it’s in a small vein, and you’ll often hear a very well meaning trainee, or a very well meaning nurse, or a very well meaning anesthetist. Make a comment about, as we inject this, this is really gonna burn.

this stings. And if you change that to, you’ll feel something, you’ll feel the anesthetic agent in your arm. Cause I don’t know whether it’s gonna burn or feel cold or sting or not feel anything. You’ll feel the anesthetic agent in your arm and anything you feel is a sign that it’s the powerful anesthetic agent is working and you can just let your eyes close.

And drift off thinking about, you know, something pleasant. But we also have very well meeting trainees and anesthetists and, and nurses who will say, Keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes open as long as you can. Now, I don’t want people to keep their eyes open. , right? I want people to close their eyes and go to sleep.

So I’m telling people to fix their eyes on a point up on the ceiling as they’re looking up and as they stare at that point, as it moves out of focus, they may just find it easier just to close their eyes and start to think about something pleasant. I know when they’re. I’ve got monitoring their heart rate, I’m monitoring their blood pressure.

Often I’ve got a, um, an EEG on their Farid, so I’m actually seeing what their brain is doing. So I know when they’re asleep and I think a lot of the time we give an enormous amount of anesthetic drug perhaps over what we actually need to, just to be sure. But I’m not asking them to fight it. I’m not asking them to keep their eyes open as long as they can.

I want them to close their. . And so what we found is that as we are doing that, and again it’s anecdotal, but she really noticed that I’ve probably got dropped my dose of anesthetic drug by about a third. Hmm. Yeah. Which is actually from a physiological point of view, very, very good for patients. I look at that example and.

It it, that’s a thing that my opinion changed on over the years, and here’s the correlation to the person who’s not in the medical world and strictly working as hypnotist, where early on I began with stage hypnosis and since removed myself from it in recent years, yet in the early days. You know, here would be the purest mindset, which would be that you want to keep the only people up there that are absolutely hypnotized and remembering in some way that yes, in that environment you’re there for entertainment.

And still though, I don’t want people up there that are just playing along yet there, there’s a few experiences over the years where here’s the person who said that was so odd because at the beginning, Like I knew I wasn’t hypnotized, which is usually the cue that Yeah, they were . Yeah. Oh, really? Really? I knew I wasn’t, I was just playing along.

And then here came this transition where it just then quote took over or working with clients in the office and. I could see that they were doing something that was their perception of what they were supposed to do, not necessarily the instructions I was giving them. They were kind of running their own process and yet still there was this pivot where let, let’s sort of frame these two examples.

The self suggestion as to this is what a hypnotist, hypnotized person does, then. Hypnosis and my real opinion now is, Oh, cool. Then they got two hypnotists for the price of one, uh, , which is out of the expectation as to. Should be occurring, that becomes a self suggestion that amplifies whatever the hypnotist is also doing at the same time.

And I think as you, as we all know that, you know, if you are giving yourself the suggestion, and I think I was just looking through your regression stuff, um, over the last few weeks, and I think one of the comments you make that I think is just, Oh, you. Without blowing smoke. Pure genius. When you point out that mm-hmm , no matter how good a hypnotist you are, whether you write the best scripts in the world, this is where you are going back and revisiting a scene before the actual event and tell that younger you exactly what she needs or he needs to hear to go through that event without it having an effect on you for the forever.

Where you are getting them to give themselves the suggestion that they need. And I think that’s a great example of, you know, if they’re giving themselves a suggestion, that’s the powerful tool. Well, it, it’s again, back to where the focus is centered, where the spotlight metaphorically is shining. And it’s kind of the same conversation of asking yourself, why do you think the process is actually working?

And part of it is, and I love the insight you gave there. The numbers don’t lie. You can look at the monitors and go, Yep, they’re where they need to be. And then based on the math, they didn’t need the quote full dosage of the anesthesia or because we’ve now framed this moment, let’s say in the example you just shared on regression.

That, you know, my take on that is here’s the short version of that. Now look in some way, they’re the one who talked themselves into the issue consciously or unconsciously, which means let’s give them the opportunity to now talk themselves out of it. Yeah, I love that. And, and you know, we have a lot of the, the medical people here doing hypnosis tend to be very, Engrossed in the ericsonian style of hypnosis.

But I’m thinking if you are giving yourself a suggestion, you’re not giving yourself the suggestion in the Ericsonian style. You’re giving yourself the suggestion of this is gonna hurt. I’m terrified of going to the dentist. It’s a very direct style. Yes. So, you know, to, to shift that suggestion. So they’re giving themselves a direct suggestion in a different.

I think is a really, you know, powerful, powerful tool. Which by the way, you did confirm for me, uh, suspicion a little while ago, which was that the, uh, hypnotize anybody glasses also did give you a psychic skill because, uh, I had just written down what style of hypnosis to talk to the medical community about, and you hit it right away before I could ask it.

So those classes are really, really working out well for you. Yeah, exactly. No, I, I, I’d say it’s that over the years, I’d say this is neither good or bad thing. It’s just a thing. I’ve heard some say I work in an ericsonian style because that’s what the doctors will respond to, or I work in an elmanian style because that’s what, in this division of the two camps, division of even multiple worlds.

Is there a specific way, Let, let’s put it in this context. You’re about to give a presentation. You’re about to speak to a doctor. And it’s the introduction of hypnosis. Is there a, is there a specific school of thought that you’re more aligning with? Is it a specific definition that you found as the best workable example for them?

The, the things I particularly hang my, my hat on, uh, that I almost argue that, you know, we all create our own reality, our own version of what we’re experiencing. And I would argue that, That is, we are all hypnotizing ourselves the whole time. We just don’t call it hypnosis. We’re all focusing on something.

We’re all telling ourselves stories. We’re all using our imagination. You know, I get on an airplane, I love flying. The person sitting next to me is gripping the seat in case the wings fall off. But objectively, we’re in the same. Objectively, we’re on the same plane. I’m hypnotized to think this is a great experience.

She’s hypnotized to believe it’s a terrible experience. So that is how I start a lot of the, because I think everyone understands that. They all know that some people go to the dentist and they hate it. Some people go to the dentist and they don’t mind it. Some people, we put a little cannula in a small drip, wouldn’t even flee other people.

We even talk about a cannula and they become. Hysterical. So I think they, the medical people understand that they’ve all seen that they, they get that, that we are creating our own experience. And I, I would say that in fact that is a hypnotic phenomena. I try to frame a lot of what I do as some kind of hypnotic phenomena.

I really appreciate that, you know, description based upon, well here’s things that you’re already doing that already affect this. You brought up Sean, Michael Andrews a little while ago, and, uh, one of my, this is gonna sound cynical or wonderfully, uh, sadistic, somewhere, somewhere in the, in the journey of the two.

No, but there’s a thing that he does, and I forget the specific example, so I’ll make up my own as to. Um, he’ll describe some recent injury and just observe the crowd and like, oh, it’s like the other day I had this, uh, you know, hang now that looked like it was about to fall off. So I just kind of reached over and I tried to pull at it and as I pulled at it though, I could feel it ripping out the skin.

And then I saw the blood and he’s watching the crowd. He goes, He starts to point at the people who are cringing. Some nebulous. Some nebulous, some people I want, Yeah. Right. Which it’s the responsiveness to it, which, you know, what is trance? It’s responding to something strongly imagined that isn’t really there.

Yeah. And it’s running that into, it’s, what’s the more clinical sounding definition when the internal representation carries more value than the external representation, external reality. And yeah, the internal story is overriding it. It’s like, yeah, you’re already doing it. And that’s, And I think that normalizes it for everybody.

Yeah. And I, I think that’s important. It takes away that, that magical mis and without, and again, I refer a lot when I’m teaching to your all positive kind of pre-talk principle. I’m not making it something that it’s not, I’m telling you this is something you are doing all the time and. We’ve just got to shift what you’re telling yourself or shift what you are focusing on or shift what you’re imagining to be more helpful.

Yeah. Yeah. So then I, something you had mentioned earlier, I forget if this was before we were recording or something that’s already popped up. Um, and it’s something that you and I have in common, which is that, uh, you know, create our own worlds. Uh, you were bringing Yeah. Instructors over to where you are in Adelaide, you’re, you know, creating the learning world.

I’d love to hear a bit of an update on the hypnosis. That you’re right. So we’ve got a, a hypnosis clinic. This was a vision that I’d had for, um, quite a time of creating a clinic where I could collect pe or collect people where I could have people working who had perhaps particular interests or particular skills, and a clinic that would work.

As a really in the client’s best interest. So if a patient presented to one practitioner, we wouldn’t be like Seagul fighting over a last chip if we felt that another practitioner would be, would be more suited to them, that we’d be very happy to refer within the clinic. And that’s what we’ve done. Now we’ve just put on our seventh practitioner, um, we have two gps, a medical oncologist.

A nurse, a psychologist, a psychotherapist, and myself as an ansis. So we are slowly building a, a core group of people. And again, we’ve been, we’ve been lucky. Adelaide’s a relatively small city of just over a million people, but we’ve had fairly favorable kind of media coverage. And one of the patients that I saw had an extreme needle phobia, and that was resolved very, very quickly.

And she happened to be a social media influence. I didn’t even, I, I had no real concept of how important social media was, but she had something like 140 or 150,000 followers, and that was 18 months ago. And we still see people. Who saw us on her social media? Instagram. Yeah. Account. So we see a wide range of people now.

We’ve got the medical oncologist. She’ll see a lot of, you know, I mean anxiety, as you would know, is a almost bread and butter now for hypnosis practitioners. We direct one of the, one of the practitioners, uh, partner is EMDR qualified. So she’ll see a lot of that severe trauma that is suitable for emdr.

We have a psychotherapist who works with, um, relationships and anxiety and phobias. We’ve got, um, a nurse who’s extremely good with ibs and. Fertility. So we’ve really beginning to cover a big range of patients and their presentations. So then is that the, the shape of this, is it a, let’s say, collective?

Where here are these people who are there in a specific association? And then it’s all dispersed out is an actual office with a physical location. Like what’s the actual shape of this? It’s, it is an office with three consulting rooms. Beautiful. Yeah. And everybody works there as an independent practitioner, but under our brand name.

So that then allows us to advertise, do the publicity, you know, And again, we have now been invited to do talks at the ground rounds and the big hospitals in Adelaide, which is fantastic. That’s outstanding. From, Yeah, from our, So we’re slowly getting. And the medical people started with, you know, Dear Dr.

Razel Dazzle, I’d like to send Mr. So and So to you. Now we get, Dear Mark, is there any opportunity that you could see Mr. Soandso before his bypass graft to help him stop smoking? Yeah, I think that’s the point. I wanted to wrap this up on here too, which is, You know, my, my take on what you’ve done is to first of all talk about hypnosis in a way that the general public can understand it, To basically focus on doing exceptional work that then speaks for itself without making my marketing 1 0 1.

Uh, you can’t get busted on claims you never made . Yeah, yeah. Uh, but by basically talking about how the process then fits in. And really just, let’s say a real world approach to how we, uh, bring it to the world. If you had to kind of give some advice to. Hypnotist around the world, whether it’s, and I’m sure this is going to apply, whether they want to talk to the medical model, which is your expertise, or whether they wanna bring it more to the general public.

Like what would be your go to pieces of advice of, you know, changing that dialogue that, as you said, from skeptic to zealot . Yeah. She. To, to help people see. I would argue the same part of the brain that could make someone so against something is probably the same part of the brain that could make them into a raving fan of it.

Yeah, and I think you’re right. I think passion is, you know, and it can be again, passionate in a very helpful way. I resisted so much earlier to drop the reference towards, what was it, 1979, the people in the streets protesting Monte Python, life of Brian. The majority of them had not even seen the movie exactly.

And it’s amazing how I’ve had this anti stage hypnosis argument, or let’s say heated conversation with people who have discussion Yes. Who have, uh, never even seen a show. Yeah. . And that does intrigue me, and I love stage hypnosis. I find it very entertaining. I find it just fascinating that people can, I, I, you know, I trained with, um, again, when I was looking for work, looking for the best hypnotist, I went and trained with Mark Sard.

In, in, in Vegas. Um, again, because I thought that I could learn so much, and I, so my, my big take home message would be just be, be really open. Learn from everybody that you possibly can, and then take the best bits from each of them and create your own, create your own brand. Well, this has been outstanding and I know you and I have played with time zones for quite a while in terms of finding a time to have you on, and this has been phenomenal with tons of takeaways.

I’d encourage everyone listen to this one once again as well, which this is episode number 384, so I just give a quick link to work smart hypnosis.com/ 3 84. That’s where you can find all the show notes from this episode, Some of the references that we’ve made. Michael, where’s the, what’s the best way that people can get in contact with you?

I think through our website, which is glow glo hypnosis.com.au. Excellent. We’ll link it there in the show notes, and I found some of those articles, which you’ve been doing a phenomenal job of helping to. Advance this profession and some really great interviews that I found that will put into the show notes there as well.

So thank you for the work that you’re doing. Um, it’s why I keep saying the more we’re all successful, the more we’re all successful. Here’s the person who let’s go of the fear and then they’re out there talking about what’s been achieved and that then has that appropriate butterfly effect where even someone 3000 miles away, Suddenly then realizes, Oh wait, I don’t have to have this fear of public speaking.

Oh wait, I can quit smoking. And it’s these stories of more people whose lives are impacted by hypnosis that help to make that happen. Before we wrap this up, any final thoughts for the listeners out there? I just would like to thank you for the opportunity to, to speak about the medical aspects of, of the hypnosis that we are.

I think it’s an important thing and it does seem to be this division that we’d really like to see close.

Jason led out here once again, and as always, thank you so much for sharing your feedback. Easiest way to do that, for those of you that are Facebook users, head over to Work Smart Hypnosis dot. Forward slash Facebook. That’s where you can leave a review specifically for the Work Smart Hypnosis Training Company, and I send a huge thank you to those of you who have already done that, whether it’s an insight from a specific podcast episode, or any of the training programs that we offer.

You can check out the show notes for this week’s episode at Work Smart Hypnosis dot. Forward slash 3 84, that’s where you can find exactly how to connect with Michael. And again, check out the new [email protected]. Learn the how and the why of the techniques to create your own brand of confident, creative, and flexible hypnosis.

In a style of phenomenal change where your client can feel the hypnotic transformation taking place, check it out and join us [email protected]. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.