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So this boomstick. So I. Many times I’ll. I’ll just be in the middle of a session. I work on zoom, right? And then I’ll just stick it in my nose. I’ll go thinking I’m in my room by myself. And then. And then, you know, that didn’t look so good. But I always pre frame every. Every session with. Every single thing I do is intentional, even if I’m brushing my mustache. So then I’ll do that. Then they’ll say, why’d you do that? What do you want me to know? Or something. It. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. So there’s eight limbs to yoga. Most people only know about the physical limb, which is the third limb, which is called asana, which means pose. But you know, there’s pranayama, which is breath, and then there’s yama and niyama. Yama and niyama are the.
Is the ethical practice, and it’s based around inquiry and restraint. And so essentially it’s all based on looking inward and kind of taking responsibility and being present and not attaching. So I bring that into my sessions. And a big part of that is the concept of stira sukhum. And these are all. These are all Sanskrit words that are, you know, are unfortunate for, you know, a Westerner trying to latch onto. But sterasucum basically means stability and ease. And I’ll demonstrate that with. With a slinky, which I learned this from a yoga teacher talking about the nervous system. And she said, you know, you. If you’re stressed and you think of a slinky and it’s all compressed, and then you think you got to go from, you know, from. From nothing to everything.
And then you pull it apart and then it wobbles out like this. And, you know, if you pull it too far apart, you’ll actually bend it and you’ll break it. She said, you want to be in the middle, like a sink slinky. Then she goes like this, like a sexy slinky. But she didn’t have a slinky. She just used her hands and it was sitting there like this, going. I would. She completely mesmerized me. And I remembered that. And it’s essentially how I try to get my clients to abandon either or thinking. And. And then. So stirisuka means stability and ease. And it’s literally the middle way. And then people will say, like, why don’t want to settle for the middle? I don’t want to settle.
You know, I want to be all of it, right and then so I talk about, like, you just move the middle out and that there’s a place for everything. There’s a place for being completely compressed. There’s a place for being way out here like this. I said, but, you know, you can. You can go out like this, but you don’t have to live way out here. You know, you can always come in. If you give yourself that option, then at the very least, you’ll have more options than just two. And that’s become my thing. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, so it’s. It’s like when a. When a client lives in the shoulds, you know, I should handle that better. I should. And I noticed that before when I was a personal trainer.
So I would ask somebody, like, on a, you know, the first workout, which is essentially is like what we would call a discovery call. You know, they would. I would say, well, can you tell me a little bit about your diet? So I’ll know, you know, like, where. Where you’re starting. And then it’ll just be like, I know I should be eating more protein. I know I should stop carbs at 4. I know I should, and I should. And that’s just projecting, you know, an all or nothing. So the. The result is they just say, oh, screw it, I’m not going to do any of it. And. But the now, like, I work with salespeople a lot, and, you know, I help them get out of slumps or, you know, help them if they’re afraid to, you know, make their cold calls.
They’ll say something like, I want to love making cold calls. You know, I mean, okay, but how about if you’re just neutral about it, you know, I mean, and then sometimes. Jason, I’ll get. If they’re staying there. No, I want to love it. I’ll. I don’t. I listen to your podcasts all the time, and I’m about to ask, like, it’s okay to cuss, and I don’t remember anybody cussing. Okay, so this is actually kind of gross. I’ll say, oh, well, how do you feel about wiping your ass? Do you love wiping your ass? Tell me about how much you love wiping your ass. But what? No, I don’t love wiping. Well, then why do you do it? Why not just not do it? If you don’t, then they’ll see it like, oh, okay, I’m neutral about wiping my ass.
I could just be neutral about making my cold calls. So that’s. Yeah, we could. We could leave that. I apologize. That. Yeah, Exactly. Yeah. Yes, Yes. I, and I noticed, you know, it’s. I thought that. Well, that’s put a pin in it. Well, yeah, I thought that I was gonna teach like hypnotic language to yoga teachers because I was a yoga teacher going into hypnosis training and it turns out that the yoga teachers are already kind of hypnotic enough. But so many hypnotists are full of all or nothing, you know, and, and there is no. So like, if I’m at a conference, I’ll usually try to bring something like that, you know, to it. But the. But yeah, there’s just going to the bank’s a great example.
Not every, not every experience has to be like an experience that you want to tell your grandkids about, you know, so not every meal has to be like, oh, you know, chef’s kiss. Jason, someone’s. Someone’s knocking at my door. Can I send them away, please? I’m sorry. Time here we it. I’m sorry. Roofing people. Do you get a lot of that and. Oh, yeah. Do you get a lot of that in door to door people in Florida? I’m not selling, I’m just marketing. I’m just out advertising. I was a personal trainer from 06 to 23, and then in 2017 I, I started my yoga journey, as it said. And then in 2018 I became a yoga teacher. And then in 23 I can. I completed my 500 hour certification or training. Oh, sorry. Yoga, Yoga. My bad.
So, yeah, okay, 200 hour teacher and in 18, and then 500 hour teacher now in 22, 23 and. Oh, okay, sorry, that was 2019 and I, I’d always been, you know, fascinated by hypnosis as a personal trainer. I figured out quickly there was like zero correlation between body image and body composition. Like, absolutely none. Zero. And I mean, I can’t stress that enough. And so I would have people in front of me that look like, to me look like superheroes, you know, like these. It was, it was mostly mommies were my clients and they would have muscles, you know, and abs, and they thought that they were overweight. And I would say things like, you know, I can’t work you any harder. You need a hypnotist. You know, and because I thought you could just like, oh, I love myself now.
And you know, 30 seconds or however, because that’s what I saw on TV and I listened to a podcast and there was somebody talking about conversational hypnosis and Ericksonian hypnosis. And then I was like, wow, that sounds like sales. So my dad was a car dealer and he was a Cadillac, Golds and Toyota dealer. And then my first big job was selling cars after school. And so between the way he talked and the men that I worked with, which by the way, if you’re six, I was 16. You know, they talk about in Gen X like drinking out of the hose and things like that. So in 1986, being around, you know, grown men selling used, who are used car salesman is Nowhere for a 16 year old to be. That’s not, that was not responsible parenting.
But anyway, the way that they talked and just this, it’s just the closing questions are just essentially language patterns. And I was like, wow, I already know this. I already know. I’m already kind of doing it here and there. I need to find out, you know, why, you know, what I know. And so that’s when I started the hypnosis training. Sometimes, you know, they say you don’t know what you. What did they say? You don’t know what you don’t know. Yeah, but you also, you don’t know what you already know sometimes. Can you repeat the question on that? Are you saying like. From personal training? Okay, yeah, absolutely. So that’s a great question. That’s a really great question. Most, most personal trainers have no idea how fit they are.
They have no idea how fit and strong and mobile they are compared to the average person. So they will sometimes either be one end, they can be very down on themselves, like, oh, I’m just not cutting it. I’m just not fit enough. You know what I mean? Because they’re hanging around other trainers and fitness people who are act, who feel that way, you know about themselves or. They don’t know what the general public needs and they’ll work people too hard or they’ll think that they need something ultra creative and ultra cutting edge in order to be pleased with their trainer. And so I think that probably most hypnotists don’t understand how persuasive they are. And, and that the, the client doesn’t know about, you know, mind bending language or the, you know, the Elman induction and all these things.
And they just want the result. They just want to be hypnotized. Which is why I always preface my sessions with everything I do is intentional. Because I want them to know that everyone’s path to hypnosis is different. So not everybody is going to respond to direct suggestion and going down into a deep, lovely trance down a staircase and that type of thing. And sometimes it’s conversational and to just work and let them know everything is intentional. So I would tell my personal training clients, like, you know, well, essentially we’ll be doing pushing, pulling, and squatting and hinging and with some, you know, cardio sort of things. But sometimes it’ll kind of all blend together and you’ll wonder, like, is this pushing? Is this pulling or what? What’s. What’s this all about? It’s all for, you know, for. For what I see in the moment.
Either it’s like, what you’re responding to, or it’s. We have to pivot because the things we need are being used, you know, in the gym, you know, that type of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I love her. Mm. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. And. And held it a little harder. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Can I share a. Can I share a story of, like, learning that lesson Hard. The hard. I almost said hardily. Hardly the hard way. I actually. Yeah, I. I actually had a client who had done hypnobirthing, though she didn’t consider herself a hypnotist, but she had. She had done that for people a few times, and she. I. I think I was only maybe a year into it, if that. And. And I had already worked with her before. We had rapport. I had. I had the authority I needed because, you know, I had.
Everything was there. And she said, oh, I’ve got this going on. And, you know, and here’s. Here’s a script. I just want you to read this to me. I went. I don’t use scripts because, my gosh, you know, that was like a two hour session, maybe a little longer. Because, you know, I. That was before Zoom. I went. I went to her house and I left there. I mean, the. The result came out okay or to your satisfaction? I was just leaving and then my car thinking, why didn’t I just read her that script she gave me? You know, that we probably would have been done in like 10 or 15 minutes and then maybe we would, you know, chatted a while and then. How dumb. You know, like. And that was like. Like in sales. Yeah. And, you know, it. You wouldn’t. If.
If in sales, like, if someone comes in and says, I want this car, this model, this everything. In fact, it’s sitting right over there. That’s what I want. Like, you haven’t seen the X9144. And then they go show them the X9144. And then just, you just take the, you know, take the win or listen to your client. Yeah, you know, just listen. Yeah, that was a. Yeah. Oh, well, I, when I went through the 300 hour portion of my 500 hour yoga training, we got into trauma informed yoga. And so let me first explain what constitutes a trauma informed yoga practice. So if being a trauma informed yoga, well, having it running a trauma informed yoga class, it’s on the schedule as trauma informed yoga at like 4:00′. Clock.
So there’s a certain things that you avoid in order to trigger someone’s trauma response because people with, you know, PTSD and you know, that are, who are highly sensitive are going to come to that class because they feel safe. Right. And so if you hear, like, if you hear a door, a car door out in the parking lot, you’re, you know, you want to acknowledge it to the class. Like in the middle of like a sequence, you’re, you know, talking, you’ll say like, I hear a car door outside. You know, if their eyes are closed and I, I stand up, if I’m sitting down, you know, I’ll say, you might notice that my voice is coming from a different place. I stood up, you’ll hear me walk across the room. You know, that type of thing. There’s certain, yeah, yeah.
And, and then you avoid language like authority, authoritarian language, like do this, you know, you speak permissively. Consider the possibility of which is really cool because yoga language is in itself pretty hypnotic. You’ll avoid things like, you know, you’ll say take your feet apart. Like you wouldn’t say spread your legs. You know, that kind of thing. Certain things like, you know, I say them out loud and I think like, oh, of course you wouldn’t say that. So that’s what a trauma informed yoga class is. You know, you’re just on top of it. Right. Okay. So I started like noticing, I had already noticed the very first thing in my NLP practitioner training was when we got into Erickson and they were saying, and Erickson used to say that’s right.
And he kept, you know, and then they were teaching us to say that and, and use your hypnotic voice. And I’m like, I’m not going to say. That’s right. I’m not going to say, I’m not going to say that. I’m not gonna get all froaty and deep and. Because that’s creepy and I don’t know. You know what I mean? And that was A. I just. Yeah. Isn’t it? You know, and. Oh, so that was the first thing. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah. I, and then. Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing I, I really admire about you is your emphasis on hypnotic language. I just, I just love that. And, and so. Yeah.
And the other thing is like, you know, calling a client a subject or you know, sleep or, you know, I’m gonna drop you down into hypnosis, I’m gonna put you down. Or that’s just the standard, the class that the classical or the classic hypnos speak. You know, the terms and things like that, they’re super patriarchal and they just need to be updated if the person wants to. So my point is the. Yeah, exactly. And the, and it’s not for, you know, I think like I said put you down, I meant like put you under, but, you know, your unconscious. Yeah, Yeah. And so. Exactly. I probably shouldn’t have laughed at that. But like I’m looking at you and your face lit up when you said it and that you’re. I’m having a good time, so I’m, maybe I’m laughing at inappropriate things as well.
Yeah, Well, I wanted, I want people to be aware of it because like there’s other things that I think are a little problematic. Like, and this is even before I became trauma, a trauma informed yoga teacher. Like the, you know, the, Your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind. I’m like, I’m not going to say that. I’m not gonna, I’m a large guy. I’m not going to say that to someone smaller than me. It’s not nice, you know, and so I, you know, the, this is the thing. So you could have. This is why I want to bring awareness to it. I’m not, I’m not suggesting that because the first presentation I gave on this, there are so many questions about like, what about street hypnosis? What about, you know, and it probably, that kind of thing probably can’t be trauma informed.
It doesn’t have to be trauma informed. But if you’re in a session and they’re, you know, we look for ab reactions. Right. But sometimes, you know, you could just at any moment, rapport is gone. And then the person just, you know, you’ve lost them and you don’t understand why. And then, you know, and that happens. Right. And then many times the hypnotist might think like, well, they just weren’t ready. Maybe you Triggered a trauma response in them, you know, and so there’s. No. Right. Yeah. It. Mm. Oh, man. Oh, jesus. It. Yeah, Yeah, please. Oh, that’s okay. That’s a great question. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And the, Well, yeah, I, I, I’m, I, I just, I know this from sales, and I know it from, you know, from personal training.
But now I know why, you know, the, after the trauma training and we, we had lots of it from being foster parents. We were foster parents as well. But, you know, I know to not lose rapport. And now I know that, you know that sometimes you lose rapport if a person just automatically just doesn’t like you or it doesn’t have to be an extreme thing. It could just be that, like, oh, something happened, I lost them somehow. Like, were going great, and then we’re no longer going so great. And that could have easily been, you know, the saying the wrong thing that triggered something that, you know, imagine yourself going down a staircase. Oh, that’s where I used to hide from, you know, the babysitter who used to, you know what I’m saying?
And so the, I’m very aware and a little more sensitive, so I speak more permissively. And honestly, I think that is getting people transier a little faster than before. And the reason I think that, and I’d love your opinion, is like, in yoga, you know, you might say, instead of saying, like, you know, lay down, you would say, find your way to your back body, you know, and so if a person here is lay down, they’ve heard that a million times. But if you say, find your way to your back body, like, oh, my back body. Well, okay, well, that’s, yeah. And so they hear it differently and then they kind of, and then as I’m calibrating, I’m looking for those little moments of like, oh, you know, so I’m fluttering my eyes and oh, okay.
Like, where you can, you, you can tell something’s landed, you know, and then the, it. If, when you go from, like, you know, the first training I had was like, not re. It wasn’t script based. It was, it was reading an induction as a script. And then it was a Krasner method, which is there was this walkthrough script to put them to go into trance, and then the rest is, you know, conversational. But I just thought, I just have to have my. There again. Jay. It goes, it goes to circle, you know, it goes to sales, and it goes. Personal training is pay attention to the, to the person in front of you. Does that, does that make sense? I feel like I just, I took a lap or two. Many times. It’ll, I hate to answer with it depends, but if.
Usually I’ll say. Usually I’ll say something like. And I’ll say the same thing when, if I notice a positive reaction, you know, like, I was like, oh, what just happened? And I’ll try with something like that, but I won’t say like, what’s wrong? You know, or that is, are you mad? It’s usually like, oh, what. What was that? And then, because I’ll say that if they’re, if they go, like a positive thing, I’ll say, oh, what was that? But if I see them kind of shrink a little bit, I was like, oh, what’s. What was that? And then, and then I’ll see what, you know, what the. What the response is. Usually I really think it’s more of like a. It’s. It’s a, it’s a body language type of thing. You know, I’m projecting openness and safety.
So even if I, you know, inadvertently say the wrong thing, and we’ll all do that, no matter how much training we’ve had. You know, hopefully they’ll read that, okay, this is. I’m. I’m still in a safe place, and then maybe they’ll open up to me, you know, but, Oh, yeah, it. Now it’s improvised. Yeah. Yeah. And I would like to ask you more about acting in a second. I, If I. A big thing with people who’ve experienced trauma is they’re, you know, they want to be heard. They, they’re used to not being heard. So if, you know, if they do say something like, well, you know, you said something that, you know, upset me, or then I’ll say, okay, so I, I can see now why, you know, that would have upset you.
And that was, that was careless on my part and I, I apologize. And then, and then I’ll kind of read it from there. But it will. I mean, it’s a sincere apology. The, the one thing I’ll never do is like, say, oh, well, that’s part of it. I have to, I have to ruffle you up a little bit. I have to, you know, I won’t, you know, the. With, with trauma people, it’s different. You know, they’re. They’re used to, they’re Used to feeling unsafe. That’s essentially having their autonomy taken away. So I do everything I can to give that back to them in the moment. And if it, this has never happened to where I’ve had to like, you know, stop a session and you know, pick it up later.
But I, I would, I’ve had that happen in personal training, you know, where, you know, say, you know, this is, let’s just, let’s call this session a wash and it won’t count towards the, you know, the sessions you have and then we’ll pick it up tomorrow. Would that be okay? You know, that type of thing. But that one thing, I’ll never argue with them or I’ll never, you know, I’ll never try to make myself right. If that makes sense. Maybe. Yes. Battle. Never. Oh yeah, that’s still. Yeah. I just, so. I, I think that, you know, isn’t acting essentially like self hypnosis and like it. So if you, I guess what I want to know is like how much is acting and directing and things like that informed how you do the session? Oh. Yeah. Oh yeah. It, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fall off the stage. Oh, oh, Okay. What you said about. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I feel like, I feel as though that actors can do like anything. You know, they can be, they can become anybody they need to be in any moment if that, they understand that about, you know what I mean? Like they have that skill. They use it all the time. You can use it off the stage as well. I guess in yoga we say on the mat or off the mat. Yeah. Do you say not the most flexible? Oh. Yeah. My website is Matt Dickson d I c k s o n hypnosis.com and I am the hypnotic yogi on tick tock. What am I excited about? Oh, geez. But that’s quite a question. I, I did. This is gonna sound cringy.
I, I’m just, I’m excited to keep doing hypnosis and get better. I, I, I, I really enjoy it. I, I, I’m excited about going to conferences and I’m excited to talk about it. I love change work. I just love it.
