Session #40: Larry Elman and the Dave Elman Legacy

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 40, Larry Elman and the Dave Elman legacy. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette. Your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business to. Sets. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Welcome back. It’s Jason Lynette here with the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and very excited to share with you this conversation I just had with Larry Elman.

Many of you are familiar with his father’s work by way of the little green Bible of our profession, Hypnotherapy. By Dave Elman. It’s an amazing experience where, again, the non-medical hypnotist was the one who came in and in many ways pioneered how it is. We all approach and talk about hypnosis to this day in a process oriented approach.

All about the client centered approach, responding to the client, giving the client the process they need, as opposed to, that’s just what I always. and it’s really exciting to have Larry on this program because he and his wife Cheryl, have again been traveling the entire world carrying on that Dave Elman legacy, this process based approach and more specifically getting the, not just the how, but also the why behind so many techniques that most of us make use of in this profess.

Also really excited to share with you that coming up Saturday, July 18 to Sunday, July 26, here in the Alexandria of Virginia area, myself, Cheryl and Larry Elman are gonna be presenting a very special training course that we’re calling the Master Hypnotist course. Whether you’re brand new to hypnosis or.

Already a seasoned professional or perhaps you’ve already got some training and you don’t yet know where to jump in. This is gonna be an excellent opportunity to learn from three award-winning instructors and just really refocus and refine what you do or jump in with some of the greatest information out there.

You can learn a more about that course by visiting online Master Hypnotist course. Dot com. We’ll put links to that over in the show notes. Here we go. Session number 40, Larry Elman and the Dave Elman legacy.

I did not know, in fact, goes to the family, didn’t know, uh, that dad had been a hypnotist in vaudeville. We knew he’d been in vaudeville, but we didn’t know the. So let me back up a little bit so you have some, some idea of my father’s idiosyncrasies. To understand my father, you have to realize that he was raised in Fargo, North Dakota, and although it was in the early 19 hundreds, which most people think is after the frontier, he remembered seeing covered wagons drawn by horses going through Fargo on their way to the unsettled portions of the Great Plain.

He also saw Indians in costume coming in off the reservation and he, uh, he was not physically present, but it was, you know, a block over when there was an old Western style gunfight in the middle of Fargo. So you think of a person that is living on the frontier. Now, the reason this is important in understanding my father’s views and therefore how I grew up, is that if you’re in that situation and your mother is a widow, You leave school early and go get a job and you spend the rest of your life in awe of and possibly an envy of those who got a higher education or graduated high school cuz he didn’t graduate high school.

So he was always somewhat hesitant in the presence of somebody who he felt was better educat. From my point of view, this is almost laughable because he was one of the most educated people I knew in my entire life, and given the various things I’ve been involved in, in the way of research, I’ve met some awfully.

Highly educated and very intelligent people. How did dad get educated? Having left high school before he graduated? He could sit down in our armchair, pick up a 500 page book, read a cover to cover before going to bed and be able to take an exam on up the next day. But he also, this was not a photographic memory, this was absorbing it.

He would also note any contradictions it had in it, and if it had a serious contradiction, he’d go pick up another. and he’d eventually compare three or four of them and reach a conclusion. So self-educated in this case was very professionally educated. I remember one day I came home from school, it was still elementary school, I think, and I proceeded to regale my father at dinner with a, uh, a description of something from the Revolutionary War that we’d been taught that day in.

and my father became rather agitated and told me how this was a good example of improper education on the part of the local authorities. And I said, Why? And he pointed me at the bookcase and said this, in this book you’re to read it. When you get done with that, you’re to pick up whatever other books are necessary for you to figure it out.

And then we’ll have a discussion on it. Uh, and then three days later or whatever it was, and I proceeded to study that particular piece of the Revolut. And found out dad was right, the teacher was wrong and most history books were wrong. So that was the atmosphere in our family. That was how dad operated and what it was like to grow up with him, which then leads to the experience as a young child attending the hypnosis classes.

Right. Pretty much I asked him, uh, when he first started teaching hypnosis to teach me. I think I told you this once before, over dinner. And his reply was to send me to the bookcase and have me read cover to cover a fairly large book. When I got done with that, he sent me back to read a couple of chapters of second one.

I think I read pieces of five books. And I finally asked him, Why am I reading so many books before I even start the course? And he said, I have physicians and dentists in that room who are college graduates and graduates of medical schools. I will not have you So uneducated that you embarrass me, . And I think this is a, a good view of my father’s attitude on knowledge.

And I know for a fact that the result was that when he first started teaching doctors, he was rather hesitant cuz he knew they had more education than he did, but he also knew his subject. So he stuck with his subject and then he’d go back to the doctors out of the first class or two and ask them what they were using hypnosis for, how it worked, and what did they find out from their patients.

And he would combine this with what he already knew of hypnosis. And by the next class he would have additional medical items in there based upon actual field test. And then in the middle of all of this, he bought a very thick medical dictionary and read it just about cover to cover so that he would make sure that his, uh, nomenclature was correct around the doctors.

And he carried that with him to every class. I have a medical dictionary that came out of his library. I think it was the second one. It may have been the original, but it is one that I know from seeing it. He carried every class. So it was that sort of an environment that I was reared in and trained in.

So I think one of the more fascinating parts of all this is that here’s a man whose history in hypnosis had basically disappeared for quite some time. And could you tell that story of hosting Hobby Lobby, where then basically the truth came out? Oh, of course. When Vaudeville failed, which is roughly in, uh, the late teens or early 1920s, dad found himself out of work and in New York, And in New York at that time, hypnosis had a very bad reputation and so he didn’t dare try to earn a living as a hypnotist to give you an idea of its bad reputation in his library.

I have books that he bought at, used bookstores in that general timeframe, and the sales slip is in the. And there’s now one book. There’s several, and it turns out hypnosis books in the period 1920 to about 1945 could only be bought and used bookstores in the witchcraft section . So that’ll give you an idea of why dad decided to go into something else at that point.

Yeah, good reason. And, uh, so he became first a songwriter, then a standup comic, then a musician, but then he worked himself into radio, eventually becoming a, uh, nationwide radio star. And I attended a number of the radio broadcasts. and, uh, several times on the radio he had hypnotist hobbyist song. He had one on who hypnotized people in the, uh, in the theater while uh, he was flying, uh, circling the Empire State Building.

And he had various other, you know, odd combinations of events. I don’t remember what particular oddity brought this guy on, but I’m sitting there and this guy proceeds to mess. His act gets a small percentage induced. They’re not necessarily taking suggestions. It’s a total disaster as a, as a stage show would go and sitting in the audience.

I’m rather upset by this because I know that if it goes badly enough, it can affect whether or not the contract for the show gets renewed. In effect, I’m looking at whether or not I’m going to eat next week. Mm-hmm. , I have a certain amount of uptightness, and finally my father steps forward and says, I don’t remember the guy’s name.

I’ll insert a name. Mr. Jones, you’ve done so well that I believe these subjects will take instructions even for me. And the heist is well aware that he’s in in trouble and he says, The next voice you hear will be Dave Ellens. You do whatever he says. And he goes running off the stage , at which point my father launches into an old time rodville act.

I didn’t realize that that’s what it was then, but I’ve seen enough since to know it was a stage hip it a Smallville act, and it went smoothly. And at one point during the act, he had, uh, the, um, stage hand bring out a, uh, a whole bucket full of lemons. And he proceeded to go down the, uh, subjects asking them what their favorite fruit was and whatever it was, a peach, a pair, an apple, a banana.

He then handed the guy an apple, excuse me, lemon, and said, This is an apple, or whatever it was, and had them all start eating. And they’re all munching away and suddenly, uh, dad brings them out. They see the lemon, and they throw the lemon away. The audience was bathed in lemon juice, . It was very amusing. So this sort of recovered the show.

We’re leaving the theater. We get into our car to drive home. I’m in the backseat. My mother puts her hands on, her hips, turns to my father with. Very odd expression and says, so Dave, and how is it that you know more about hypnosis than the hypnotist? And that’s the first point at which my mother knew anything about what dad had done in vaudeville.

That’s fantastic. So then, what was that series of events that then had to occur to transition from basically vaudeville heist to then entertainer all around, and then eventually being there and being that non-medical practitioner, being that one non-medical person in the room, teaching the doctors, teaching the nurses, and these hypnotic technique.

Well, basically, Dad gave a number of hypnosis shows after that, most of them being charity items. I remember going to a fundraiser for, I don’t know, Red Cross or United Way or something like that. I remember going to an Eagle Scout ceremony, but basically that’s the sort of show he was giving.

Occasionally a commercial one, but not very often. And one night a group of about a half a dozen doctors approached him and all of them had taken courses in hypnosis and been unable to use it in their practice. And their description of why they were talking to my father involved basically three points.

The first point was that what they had been taught of hypnosis involved inductions that took 20 minutes or whatever. Which doesn’t fit in the, uh, patient schedule of a doctor’s office, whereas they’d seen my father do inductions and under three minutes on the stage and in fact some down in the number of seconds area.

And, uh, they said that’s useful. They said The second thing was that hypnosis, as they were taught, it was hit and miss. You might get 60% of your, uh, of your subjects in. You might. . And yet here they were observing shows in which dad was hitting in the high nineties. And last but not least, they saw that the suggestions he was giving would last.

And they said this combination of those three particular things were central to being able to use hypnosis for medical purposes. Would he give a course? and his immediate reply was, I’m a hypnotist, not a doctor. You people are so much better educated than I that it’s, I feel I don’t want to do this. And they kept begging him.

And finally he gave his first class in it, and it was under the auspices of the local medical society. Uh, by about the third class, the National Medical Association had heard of this heresy and ordered the local chapter to cease and desist. At which point the classes became basically my father’s, but by that time, word of mouth had spread to the point where the classes were always oversubscribed,

So he was often doing, as I think I mentioned, he was very hesitant because of his lack of education. But then with, with what he set up for, what amount of field tests and feedback from his student, He rapidly expanded into being able to handle any of the medical questions that came up, but he would always insist, I’m teaching hypnosis.

Any actual medical procedure will be done by a doctor, not by me, and it will match medical requirements, ethics and standards, period. And he stuck with that always. Well, I think one of the most fascinating parts of all of this, that again, it was the outside perspective. It was someone coming in from outside of their community and who had already solved an issue that they knew they had in terms of the efficiency of the process, and more specifically just simply that word process of bringing a process based approach to it.

Understanding why it is we use, what techniques when we use them, and if this thing is occurring, use. Approach to it that, again, that outside perspective, which is why, and you know, we often would say this just in terms of historical note, that many hypnosis training nowadays, I just had a psychologist sign up for an upcoming class.

I just had a MD sign up for an upcoming class. And it’s from that outside perspective to approach it from a different place. It’s really how that position of the non-medical hypnotist really helped to pioneer this entire modern profess. I think you’re right. That’s been my experience in, uh, seeing my father’s work and then in discussing with, uh, with our colleagues at various, uh, conventions and conferences.

Uh, the thing is that what a, what a hypnotist has to do in this situation is make sure, first of all, that he does not intrude upon or insult the other person’s profession. You can’t be a no at all, and you have to be willing to. , this is what I know and can do. How you then combine it with your own skills is something we’ll have to work on together, or you will have to decide if you’re respectful of the other person’s profession.

They are likely to be more open minded. If you come in like gangbusters and you’re gonna tell them how to run the world, you will get nowhere. They’ll hunker down and ignore you or get rid of. , which at its core was a part of those original classes too, that there was this interactive nature, this almost workshop format to it where the doctors would then go off and make use of these techniques and then come back and report their findings.

Yes. And this is one of the reasons that, and, uh, I guess economics and family situation also entered into it, but it was one of the major reasons why my father’s setup was to teach in a different city each. and give the lessons once a week. This pretty much forced the physician to actually practice during the time in between classes so that unlike a, uh, a current certification course where you could only practice on your fellow because it’s so many days straight, and that’s the only people in the room.

The physicians in my father’s course were able to practice on a diverse set of people before the next lesson. Now what I just said about the current certification courses, that’s frequently driven by such things as economics, when people can get off from work, a whole bunch of things you have no control over.

So I’m not throwing stones at anybody, but if I had my choice, I would follow a procedure similar to my father’s and make sure. All of the students actually did practice on, uh, other than their classmates on what I call real live subjects. Right, Right. So then let’s fast forward the story. And you grew up in this family where hypnosis then became very present.

Kind of give us your story from that point forward. Okay. Basically, I, dad caught me one day and said, You’re not doing your homework. And I said, and he said, Yes, the assignment for this week is to X number of inductions using Y procedures, and you haven’t done that. And I said, Well, dad, all the doctors have, you know, a flow of, of, um, patients through their office, so they’re getting pigs available and I don’t.

So my father said, Well, you can even use my old, uh, vaudeville title. You are now the world’s youngest and fastest hip theist. Get out and do stage. I have claimed for many years since. But in addition to that title, I probably have the title of the World’s Worst Stage Hypnotist, . I’ve relinquished that title.

We finally went to a stage IP show where somebody did worse that I ever could do . No names. No names, , but I, I did poorly, but I did do stage hypnosis starting in junior high, high school, and uh, and college. I found out in college, I found this out basically 50 years later when one of my college classmates remarked on how well the hypnosis I did on him had helped him get through, uh, mit.

And I was shocked by this cause I didn’t remember doing that much clinical, but apparently I did. Anyway, I left for the Air Force and in the Air Force I was informed rather pointedly that. Two star General commanding. Our base believed all hypnotists were tools of the devil. So this meant don’t do hypnosis.

And then I was pretty soon found out that if you had high security clearances, whether in the military or in the defense industry, That same rule usually applied. That rule is kind of decreased over the years, but it still hasn’t gone away. There was a big debate on Facebook earlier this month on just how much military security clearances inhibit people from consulting heist.

The answer, is it still. But not to the extent that I saw. So I basically was an observer for quite a number of years rather than a participant. And then, um, Don Patterson, also known as Sean. Michael Andrews asked to interview me about dad and uh, dad’s teachings. And as a result of that interview, I ended up talking on hypnosis.

And the next thing we knew, We were back to doing it, and what amazed me coming in after being an observer for so many years was the extent to which what dad drilled into me was still valid, and the extent to which I knew more of why you do things than many of my colleagues, so that I could teach it from a, uh, why do you do this rather than just follow my lead.

And I think that’s important because if you approach hypnosis from I know why I’m doing this, then you can adjust what you’re doing to match the client. Because every client you get is an individual and needs individualized procedure. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.

Hey, it’s Jason Lynette here, and I’d like to personally invite you to a one of a kind training experience that’s gonna be coming up later this year, Saturday, July. Teen to Sunday, July 26 here in the Alexandria, Virginia area. Myself, along with Larry and Cheryl Elman are gonna be presenting what we’re calling the Master hypnotist course.

It’s a course to make you competent and confident in your skills as a hypnotist. So whether you’re brand new to this profession, Already well trained, or perhaps even already a seasoned pro. We know that this is a course that will benefit you as you learn new skills to jump in and get results. Learn more [email protected].