Session #47: Richard Nongard and Evidence-Based Hypnosis

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 47, Richard Non Guard, an evidence based hypnosis. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, Your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business six. Sets. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Welcome back, and we’ve got an information packed session for you today to quote myself and various others.

Let’s drop the term training and simply refer to it as the serious dropping of knowledge bombs. And in the session here with Richard Non Guard, you’re gonna get exactly that. You’re gonna hear a point of view about hypnosis from both of us, really, that when you look at the structure of what we do, Really looking at the modeling process inside of nlp, you have this modeling of excellence as part of the history of hypnosis.

Whether it was the looking at, here’s a technique, now let’s do it in the hypnotic experience. Here’s the regression model, here’s the parts model, and let’s now. Pull that into hypnosis and expedite and make the process even more effective and efficient. And Richard’s a guide that if you’re not familiar with his work, that’s exactly what he does.

So pulling in themes of modern day trends and basing everything on the research that’s out there about what’s working and what’s getting results. So, Breaking some of the norms of what most of us are learning from some of the classic books and bringing in some of the more up to date thinking. So the research behind mindfulness acceptance and commitment therapy, the benefit of pulling in aspects of just this world around us that are outside of the hypnosis profession.

To go into that session with your client and have even more tools. I will point you over to work smart hypnosis.com specifically for the page listing all about this conversation with Richard specifically. There’s a lot of books that he lists, and I’m gonna put those all in there as show notes. These are fantastic books.

Check them out, as well as of course, some of the projects that, uh, Richard’s got going on as well. You can check ’em out [email protected]. Stage hypnosis training dot. Speed trance.com. But again, head over to work smart hypnosis.com. Find the show listing. Just search non guard N O N G A R D in the upward search bar, and that’ll take you to all of the references inside of this session.

A lot of information here. Check it out. This is session number 47, Richard, Non Guard and Evidence Based Hypnosis.

When I grew up, I wanted to be a magician, not a hypnotist or a clown, or even better, a magic clown. And, uh, the reason why is my dad, Firefighter and he was a clown for the fire department. And so I learned, well, I didn’t really learn magic from him when I was a little kid, but I learned to like magic. And then my parents got divorced when I was six and he moved off to South Texas and I never saw him again, but he left all his magic stuff behind and so I started playing with that.

So by the time I was 10, actually did my very first professional paid gig for 20 bucks. It was a kid’s birthday party. And so I started doing magic. Now people are like, what does this have to do with hypnosis? I actually worked all through high school at college doing magic and balloon animals at kids’ parties.

So I learned to speak, I learned the stage. I developed confidence and all of those things, Of course, a part of hypnosis and, uh, I wanted to become a professional magician. By now, I had studied magic with Eugene Burger, and I was actually his first magic student and a couple of other, you know, well known magicians at the.

And I still wanted to be a magician, but you know, my mom of course wanted me to have a real job and so I, uh, I ended up, you know, obviously with my master’s degree in counseling and becoming a psychotherapist, and that was where I learned clinical hypnosis or ericsonian hypnosis. I didn’t know the stage hypnosis existed, but I’d kind of given up on magic as I entered into adulthood.

And then one day while being a clinical hypnotist, I uh, went to a comedy club that just happened to have a stage hypnotist, and it was that night that I put. Two and two together and became a magician that uses people as props rather than tigers and boxes. And so, uh, I pursued stage hypnosis as well, which of course was, you know, a bad thing to do in the world of psychotherapy.

But it’s worked out pretty well for me because stage ship to just understand the power of hypnotic phenomena and licensed mental health professionals who are hypnotists, understand the depth to which we can actually use hypnosis. Is a healing modality. And so all of these things, I guess, has sort of been a lifelong pursuit of that, which is interesting or effective or fun and hypnosis is all of those things.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I’d share that that was kind of a similar entry point for me of, I had the interest in magic. I was paying for a lot of college the first couple of years by working, uh, you know, Bush Gardens Williamsburg and putting programs out there, and it was this quest of. Well, if I could really do this stuff, why would I carry the props?

If I could really read your mind, why would I stop and have you write it down and well look at it later? And eventually it was the hypnosis was creeping in of, Oh wait, this doesn’t require props. This is just legit and this is what’s happening. Yeah. You know, it was kind of interesting. I was lamenting to using burger at dinner one night, probably six or seven years ago that I wish I’d really pursued magic in adulthood.

And, uh, he looked at me as if I was crazy and said, Well, you’re doing that. Uh, of course, you know, that was the two and two obviously. Uh, I was, I was using the desire to help people get out of their difficult lives and enjoy a show when they come to Vegas or when they’re at a comedy club, or, you know, wherever they might be, where I might be performing.

Eugene always told me back in the eighties that his goal was to, uh, step off of an airplane with a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, a package of zigzag rolling paper and some thread, and to do an hour long magic show, collect his $5,000 and go home. Mm-hmm. and I realized that as a stage hypnotist, we actually need even less than that to entertain an audience, In fact, a large audience.

In fact, all I really need is a smartphone to store my music files. Nice. So let’s kind of bring that into the hypnotherapy side though, about the use of hypnotic phenomenon, the use of these magical moments. How important would you say that these moments are inside of that hypnotic experience for change?

Well, I think they’re essential. You know, everything that happens in hypnosis happens in real life. There isn’t anything that happens in hypnosis that only happens when somebody hypnotizes somebody else. So what that tells me is that tra all around us. Our job as a hypnotist really isn’t to hypnotize anyone.

It’s to know how to utilize. Naturally occurring trans phenomena in the case of clinical hypnosis to help a person heal, to empower them, to make behavioral changes, to have, you know what Carl Rogers might have called that aha experience. I think we can facilitate that easier in a hypnotic trans state.

And if stage hypnosis is the avenue, well then we’re gonna be using the trans phenomena because it’s interesting and people enjoy watching it, and it’s. And I became a much better clinical hypnotist when I learned the value of stage hypnosis and performing hypnotic phenomena. And I began to bring that back to my clinical sessions.

Not that I was having, you know, somebody, you know, dance like Britney Spears or do the Y M C A or, you know, imagine the person next to him smelled bad because of course in clinical hypnosis that would be. Unless that was their goal. Right, Right, right. Yeah. But I began to really use the ability to elicit, uh, hypnotic phenomena as a way of helping my pain control clients as a way of helping my anxiety clients.

Time distortion is a fantastic hypnotic phenomena to use for fear of flying. I used to be afraid to fly until I started to do what I ask my clients to do, and now I fly all the time, can’t keep me off an airplane. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, we can use hypnotic phenomen. Even positive and negative hallucination.

Something that the stage hypnosis is an expert at in our clinical sessions, and it’s helped a lot of clients. They come and if we do sort of traditional relaxo therapy that actually teaches a skill. People make fun of relaxo therapy as if that’s not real hypnosis. Well, it is real hypnosis. There’s lots of journal articles.

The show that if all we ever did was progressive muscle relaxation, our clients would get better because it’s a valuable skill to train and teach people. But my clients have an expectation, they want to feel hypnotized. And when I can utilize trans phenomena in my clinical sessions in addition to simply skill based hypnosis or you know, teaching or educational hypnosis like mindfulness or PMR or something else, well then my clients leave.

Wow. Experience. And uh, that serves as a convincer because in the office, if they had that wow experience at any level, they have a belief then. And the belief was, Wow, I experienced that. This is where the change took place. And of course, if you believe the change took place, you will act consistent with that.

And change will in fact have taken place. I mean, we talk so much about the power of a Prestig suggestion and it’s often something that pops up in a negative sense about this person said this one statement, and that’s stuck within this person who’s now in front of us as our client, whether it was a parent, whether it was a family member or whoever it may be.

But I kind of view the hypnotic experiences and he hit on that aha statement about it’s in that position to facilitate that aha experience, if anything, to facilitate that prestige suggestion, whether it comes from us as the practitioner. Or we’re guiding them to a place where they can create it for themselves, where that old model of the world just doesn’t work the way it did before.

Yeah. Let me give you an example of how I was actually thinking about applying that earlier today. I want to begin rerecording some of my older hypnosis MP3s and adding to my hypnosis MP3 library. I have a ton of them that over the years have sold on iTunes and Amazon and my own website else. And, uh, some of those, you know, styles change, voices change, music changes.

Maybe I’m just tired of some of them. And so I’ve decided I wanna rerecord some of them, and I’d like to make them a little bit longer because there’s the perception that the longer the session is, the more valuable it is. Now you and I know that that’s not true at all, but that’s the perception that somebody might have as a buyer.

And so I’ve really been thinking with how do I lengthen my script so that my MP3s are. And I thought to myself, there’s no additional value in me just talking for an extra five minutes or 10 minutes, and so I thought to myself, what I think I might do during my recorded sessions is actually give them a break from my voice and let that which is either known or unknown conscious or subconscious, their own creation of this experience, apply these learnings as simply the background music.

And so I thought, you know, I could do that for five minutes in a session. Basically, you know, leave the music going so they know that, you know, the session hasn’t stopped the conscious mind that might be paying attention, but at the same time, I’m not talking. And I thought, well, that might be powerful. And then I thought to myself, What would actually be better is if I said this, and now over the next three minutes, you’re no longer going to consciously hear my voice as you use this time, this place that you’ve created to reach a hypnotic state or create a hypnotic resource.

I’ve embedded the next three minutes or five minutes with subliminal suggestions, affirmations, to empower you to feel success. And so as you continue to relax, No longer consciously hearing my voice, but only subconsciously aware of the suggestions you can use this time in any way that’s meaningful to you, to release that which is either known or unknown, keeping you from success, and then go into five minutes of essentially silence, but with subliminal affirmations in there.

Now, why is. Related to what we’re just talking about. Again, it’s the client’s perception. Wow, this must be a really valuable time. There are embedded subliminal suggestions. Now I, I’m not really sure that this is gonna make this session any more effective than if we just had silence. But it’s the client’s perception that this is valuable, that actually makes it valuable.

And some people might say, but really aren’t you talking about the placebo effect? But as if I’ve always pointed out, the placebo effect is actually the most desirable effect. Mm-hmm. , we can produce the results, outside effects without, you know, hangovers, uh, diseases produced by medication or whatever else.

It actually is the most placebo effects, actually the most desirable of. There’s an ongoing component of some things you’ve referenced so far about bringing the research into it that there is a school of thought out there that would tell the modern hypnotist, there’s never a time for progressive muscle relaxation yet.

Here you are referencing research that actually points to the exact opposite. Which can be backed up some of the work that you’ve done, specifically of the contextual psychology of bringing, you know, as hypnotist, we are expert modelers. Sure. We’re pulling techniques from other modalities, and by doing them in hypnosis, we make them work better.

The, the athlete has been doing creative visualization. Basically forever. And now to do that in that hypnotic state, we can produce a stronger result. The the history of the various forms of parts therapy, the different parts models that are out there, that bypassing that critical part of the mind somehow allows that process to become much more efficient as a seed in most of the iterations of.

How, and I know the answer, but I want to hear you go off on this. How, how important is it would you say, for the hypnotist to work in that, let’s say that research based format of writing the waves of what we know is successful, rather than just working by assumption or anecdotal evidence. Sure. Well, there, there’s two answers to that.

And the answer number one is I always find it sort of amusing when HSIs on internet forums post, you know, I, I’m trying to find some research for hypnosis and cancer, or, you know, hypnosis and pain control, or hypnosis and fear of flying or, you know, hypnosis and, you know, uh, stop chasing cars. And I just can’t find any research that shows that hypnosis really works.

And, and the response back on Facebook is Google dot. Well, though it’s it’s scholar Google, Google Scholar, but you’ll still get there from Google . But here’s the problem that most hypnotists have. They’re typing into scholar.google.com. They’re typing in hypnosis cancer, or you know, hypnosis anxiety or hypnosis, You know, stop chasing cars or hypnosis, stop smoking.

They’re not typing in all of the other things that are hypnotic by nature. But not necessarily called hypnosis by the medical community. That would include progressive muscle relaxation. It would include autogenic training. It would include mindfulness based therapies and techniques. It would include creative visualization, which you just mentioned, and a number of other different techniques.

And so if I go to scholar.google.com and I type in progressive muscle relaxation, you know, heart disease, I’m gonna come up, bam. Tons of journal articles showing that there’s efficacy for this strategy, which you and I of course recognize as a classic hypnotic induction. And so we can really expand, I think our understanding of how effective hypnosis is when we recognize the hypnosis is just a big umbrella and a lot of things are underneath them.

Now, the. The flip side of that, or answer number two is I think it’s real important that hypnotists, we don’t need to become researchers in order to be effective hypnotist, but I do think we need to keep on top of the journals, we need to look at what’s effective and what isn’t effective. We need to begin to, I don’t even think we need to discard some of those methods that maybe traditional psychology says our less than effective, because there’s almost always somebody who respond.

To almost every approach. So even though, for example, a version therapy is not my favorite approach, and mainstream psychology has long, you know, discounted the long term value of aversion therapy approaches. I had a lady come in for hypnosis, for smoking cessation. Her son was actually my attorney. And he wanted his mom to quit smoking, so he paid for her session.

And you and I know that that doesn’t work real well with, uh, smokers. You know, people need to be invested in their own. But since he was my attorney referring his mother, I kind of thought I should see her. And she came in, she was 67, and basically she said, Yeah, you know, I, I don’t wanna quit smoking, but I wanna make my son happy.

He said You could help me. And he, he thinks you’re a great guy. So you know, I want you to, um, go ahead and do the session and we’ll see how it goes. And she just, Committed to this at all. And I was almost at that point where I was about ready to say to her, Come back when you’re ready. I was almost ready just to, to let her go.

And then she sort of said something under her breath. She said, You know, I guess the only way I would know I could really quit smoking is if I hated smokers. If I thought I was gonna turn green, if I smoked a cigarette. If I thought a cigarette. Take taste of like a, you know, monkeys, you know, Bun Hole and

So I, I said to her, and great, and now it’s time for our session. As you close your eyes and drift into a deep relaxation from this point forward, a cigarette will taste like a monkey’s butt. You know, you’ll turn green when you smell cigarette. I mean, I did a classic aversion therapy session with her, even though I can’t honestly remember ever doing that with any other client.

So I think we need to recognize that even though there are approaches, We don’t predominantly use or that have been discarded in favor of other methods, we can still, you know, have those in our quiver. But I really think that research based or evidence based approaches are necessary. And here’s why. I have a new client that coming in my office, I’ve never seen them before.

I’ve never met them before. I’ve probably never even talked to them before. Cuz Stephanie books all my appointments now they’ve come in for this first session, they expect a so, So I think that my first approach should be the approach, not that I favor or that I learned in my hypnosis training, but I think the first approach should be that which the evidence or the research shows is the most effective with the most people.

And current research into psychology shows that those are the therapeutic approaches that are associated with contextual psychology, mindfulness based training, uh, cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, approaches like acceptance and commitment therapy approaches like dialectical behavioral therapy.

And sometimes people say, well, Aren’t you encouraging hypnotist practice therapy without a license? And when I actually look at what they’re doing, they’re actually practicing hypnosis without certification and in a large number of cases, beautiful, because those methods are classic hypnotic methods of both induction.

Trans phenomena, time distortion, and all the things that we recognize as hypnosis. And so I encourage people to use the approaches that we see work best with most, and then begin to use the other approaches that maybe are our favorite modality or the one we were trained in, or whatever else, you know, sort of as we, as we make progress with them and adjust our suggestions in second, third, fourth, and fifth sessions.

Well, it’s that lesson of never deny, never ignore a really good hyp, not a. She gave you one right there in that moment. If I could do this, this would be so easy, right? I’ve got the story of a woman who came to me and she did exceptionally well, and there was a lot of weight to be lost. So we were seeing big numbers every single session as we’d meet together.

So then success is contagious. Her husband’s in front of me, and it doesn’t matter what pre-talk I give this guy, it’s always, But I heard every word you said and I get to smile and say, I know I told you. Well, I just thought you’d snap your fingers and say some magic words. And finally the uh, reality kicked in to go.

Okay, so it became probably one of the most authoritative sessions I ever did. I really pulled open on the, uh, tablet device. I hear here in the office, the original Heartland Ego strengthening text with all of the old language of these things I put into your unconscious mind and delivered it exactly as written.

And sure enough, the change was now in motion. So he had that hypnotic contract in place. And to deny that, to negate that by following the protocol of what we’d learned in a class by following the protocol of really what, to be fair, I’ve done with the other thousands of people. You gotta listen. You gotta hear that.

And I love the aspect though, of starting with, Let’s lean on the research, let’s lean on the evidence rather than, this is my favorite T. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there’s the place for almost every technique, but so many heists are technique dependent. Yeah. Don’t have the flexibility to go from a contextual here and now approach to regression or from regression to a contextual approach.

You know, that seems to be the big debate nowadays. Uh, but really una authoritarian approach versus a what would be associated. Ericsonian permissive approach, even though Ericsonian was, Ericsson was very much an authoritarian. He gets credit for being, you know, for permissive fatherly figure. And I think that, you know, people who’ve come after him, whether it’s writers like Zag or writers like Gilligan who are, you know, even Ernest Rossi, Coro books with him, who really sort of softened the language and the approach of Milton Erickson and, and their interpretation.

You know, I think we need the flexibility to really say, you know, our job is to help our. With what they present as a solution rather than what I believe the so, Should be for them, which is why I have to have a repertoire of approaches. So I always tell people, people say, Wait a minute, why are you recommending Jason’s training?

Well, because Jason’s different than me. I don’t wanna go to a hypnotist that only trained with me. I want to go to a hypnotist that’s trained with a lot of different people. With Roy Hunter, with Scott Sandlin. With Jason Lynn. With, uh, you know, Richard Ard with, uh, maybe with a stage shift to test, uh, you know, Kevin La Pine or or somebody else.

And you can really take all of the tools that they’ve learned and come up with unique solutions for the clients that they work with. Well, I’d share something that I learned from you early on was to look outside of the hypnosis profession for these methodologies to, to go beyond. I love the phrase though, of the best way to hide something sometimes is to publish it , but to go outside of it.

So let me ask you this. If you had to kind of rank the skills outside of the quote, formal hypnosis training that most of us are familiar with, whether it’s themes of mindfulness or anything of that nature, what would be those recommendations? To start to fold into that hypnotic process. Probably the number one book that I’m recommending right now is, uh, Flow by Mihi Sense of Mihi, I think I’m saying his name correctly.

He’s a Hungarian, uh, psychologist. I’m probably not pronouncing it correctly, but the book’s called Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and nowhere is the word hypnosis mentioned in the book, but I’d say. Researched book that is part of the positive psychology tradition. Some people probably recognize Martin Seligman, who was a former president of American Psychological Association.

He’s a professor at University of Pennsylvania and they run the Happiness Center and, uh, Mihi sense and MI high’s work in optimal experience is really sort of dovetails that approached positive psychology of Martin Sigman. So there are great hypnotic methods in the book flow, the psychology of optimal experience, but most hypnotists will never see it because.

Nowhere does it advertise to hypnotist or use the word hypnosis. My other favorite book is by Steven Hayes, and it’s actually a workbook for mental health clients, and the workbook is, uh, called Get Out of Your Mind and Get Into Your Life. Nowhere in the book the word hypnosis appear. If it does appear, it’s probably just in one sentence where Stephen Hay says, Now this is not hypnosis and uh,

What’s hilarious is that every page of the book is doable exercises for both self hypnosis as well as guiding somebody into hypnotic experiences. And so a lot of hypnotists, again, miss that book, but I think, you know, any hypnotist who reads that book is gonna leave with, you know, end the book with actual doable strategies that they can take to clients.

And then I think some other, you know, books out there that, again, never used the word hyp. 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green, you know? Gosh, what does that have to do with hypnosis? It has a lot to do with hypnosis when you actually read the book. And then there are techniques that we never seem to study, like autogenic training, which I learned from blue haired nurses when I was actually finishing my undergraduate degree and working as a psychiatric technician and an inpatient med surg hospital.

Wow. What a fantastic. Hypnotic method from the nursing profession that we can actually use in our hypnosis sessions. And I probably use with a vast majority of my hypnosis clients, Uh, then of course techniques like, you know, mindfulness based stress reduction, that would be sort of the word, John c Zen at University of Massachusetts, or even the religious text by.

You know, a variety of different traditions, whether it’s uh, you know, Judaic meditation or whether it’s Buddhist approaches, like those of tick not ha to solving everyday problems even when you’re not a Buddhist to those from a, a Christian or a faith based tradition and. People sometimes surprise when they hear me say that there are great hypnotic solutions there.

We have to realize psychology is just a hundred years old. And so before psychology as a academic discipline, there was theology for the previous 5,000 years and theology was the queen of the social sciences, not psychology. And so it’s no surprise to me that the world’s religions have found solutions, even if we.

Agree with the theology of how many angels dance on that of a pin to our everyday problems. And so we can often find great hypnotic interventions, methods in in some of those texts as well, which again is repeating that sequence of modeling processes from other modalities and. By doing it in hypnosis, we have that ability to perhaps make these methods even stronger.

Well, when I first learned about nlp, when I was taught was this, that NLP is really the art of modeling. Yeah. What we’re doing is we’re looking to an exem are somebody who’s doing something excellent. Bandler and Griner used, you know, Virginia Sater, Milton Erickson and German psychiatrist, um, Fred Pearls Pearl.

And they said, Why are the, Why is Erickson, why FBOs? Why is Virginia Tier, why are they exceptional therapists? And if we can isolate what they’re doing that’s so effective, can we then teach that to somebody else and now they can be effective also? And the answer to that was yes. I mean, that’s really what NLP is all about.

So many people think NLP is. You know, a specific modality or you know, a specific aspect of what was taught in the early classes. And we know, when I teach NLP classes, I, I try to make people like Mihi sense of Mihi or people like Steven Hayes or people like John Kein, our current exemplars and extract your create patterns that we can do that replicate their success with their clients.

Um, and, and, and really move NLP forward to not a limited set of ideas about what NLP is, but to see it as a broader application and develop new patterns. And, and I, I think that there’s a lot of power in looking at those who are successful. I mean, we see this in just about every area, whether it’s mentoring and business leader.

Whether it’s a sponsor in a 12 step program, whether it’s discipling in the church environment or whether it’s internship as we train new counselors and . And so, you know, looking for that which works and then modeling that which works and tweaking it to our own personality, I think is a great skillset that we should be.

And just a side note, I’ve been taking note of these books and we’re gonna put those in the show notes with this episode as well. So you can check those books out on Amazon too. I’d love to kind of wrap up on this, cuz again, I love the work of taking the evidence based research, bringing it in, modeling that success.

You know, basically advancing it rather than just repeating the same lessons over and over as the entire world around us. As advancing, we should be advancing as well. It’s a split question. Where do you see this profession going in the next, let’s say 20, 30 years? And where do you see yourself going in the next phase of things?

Well, I wrote a book last year titled Contextual Psychology. It really summarizes many of the approaches that and the other books that I’ve mentioned, and I really see hypnosis going in the direction of contextual psychology, which is why I wrote the book, hopefully maybe to jump start some ideas and to help people begin to.

See that hypnotic solutions come from a lot of disciplines other than simply hypnosis and replicating that which we’ve done before. I mean, for example, sitting on my desk right now, I’m actually holding in my hand is best practices of Dave Elman from the Dave Elman induction and, uh, great resource series.

I love it. Like I said, I’m literally holding the DVDs on my head. Yes. Uh, but so many people I know only. One approach or one set of skills. But I think it’s important to look even beyond hypnosis and the writings in the world of hypnosis and really begin to integrate some of these other things into the solutions that we offer.

And I currently see both psychology as well as hypnotherapy gravitating towards those things that are identified as contextual psychology. And the reason why is that the research is behind it. It shows that more often than not, these things are effective with more people that we apply ’em to than some other approaches, which doesn’t mean those other approaches aren’t valid or useful or beneficial.

It simply means what is my starting point going to be? And my starting point should always be that way. We should start with the broadest end of the funnel and then funnel down to the narrow part of the funnel. So I, I kind of see that the direction of psychology as well as hypnosis, the book title, contextual psychology, I don’t think I mentioned hypnosis too much, but again, it’s a hypnotic book from start to finish and I, I think that we’re gonna continue to see, you know, publications and universities and academics.

You’re really focusing on the ability of the mind to create significant changes, both from a even a biological perspective. This is what we see in cognitive neuroscience right now, as well as in, again, behavioral changes that we might see within certain psychiatric diagnoses, et cetera. And all of those things are applicable to our work as heist, even if we’re not treating mental health disorders or physical conditions.

And as a hypnotist, you know, although I am licensed as a therapist, I gave up seeing mentally ill clients in 2006, 2006, I said, I’m not gonna see any mentally ill clients anymore. I only wanna see people. Uh, who wanna see a hypnotist and, and it’s a different market. Uh, it’s a, a different group of individuals, and yet I can apply theology, psychology, even business and marketing ideas to helping my clients experience change.

I mean, that’s one thing we haven’t talked about. We haven’t talked about how can our study of business actually help our clients. Oh yeah. I think that part of helping clients in hypnosis is getting buy in. Well, that’s the art of closing the. So if a hypnotist were to read a book from a real estate agent on how to close a sale, they would probably become a better hypnotist, I’d say.

Absolutely. Yeah. The more that I look at anything, sales, anything I look at persuasion, anything I look at just running an effective business, the better of a hypnotist I become. And it’s not the side effect of just I’m seeing more people and getting more and more comfortable with it over the years. But I, I’d give an example.

I don’t think I told you this. We were traveling through, uh, Williamsburg area and we stopped by an outlet mall, and I’m outside. We’re traveling, so I’m outdoors with my oldest Claire and we’ve got our dog with us. So I’m with shopping time and I’m outside waiting in the heat, and there’s these people who are trying to get people to sign up for a sweepstakes to win a chance for a free cruise, lead generation marketing.

Let’s get them on a list market to these people the rest of their life. That’s the model, and it’s this moment where I’m kind of holding back slightly, playing the game of. Do I engage or no? Because I’d already politely said no thanks, and eventually it became, well, I got nothing else to do. You’re only asking digital questions.

You’re only asking things that are getting a yes or no response. And given the nature of what your business is, you’re getting a pre-program. No, before you finish your question. What if you were to ask something more of an analog nature, something that invites interaction, forces them to search inside of their own thoughts and actually now engage and build that rapport naturally.

There’s a fun exchange though, of the, Hey kid, we know what we’re doing, which I had to politely say, Well, there’s three of you and you haven’t signed up anybody in the hour. I’ve been standing here. Someone walks by and I just simply ask. Hey, where would you rather be than here? And I see a confused look and she just goes somewhere cooler.

And I go, Well, those people are giving away free cruises. Go talk to them. And she signs up right away. Sure. So you look at such a moment, you know, which of course I could have easily crashed and burned as they were before. It may have been a fluke, but the moment, and yes, I did mi, dropping a microphone.

But the moment though of we fall into that pre-program response, we fall into that automatic nature and so much of sales. Is getting past that automatic response. It’s a controversial statement, but some people would even go so far as to say, You want to get that first? No thank you outta the way, and then the process really begins.

But apply that to the number of times a person has tried to quit smoking the number of times they’ve had the idea to go on some sort of program to lose the weight, and they were already failing at it before they officially began. So how do we get rid of that old automatic programming? We’re, we’re talking about the same concept here, you know, and this is again, the NLP strategy of the Yes.

Set. Yes. That’s a great sales strategy you’ll see taught in just about any sales training program. Maybe they’ll give credit to nlp, maybe they won’t. But I don’t see enough of that being taught in hypnosis training programs because it’s viewed as up. Well, that’s sort of a Tony Robins business thing, not, not a, uh, Richard ARD therapy thing.

And, uh, well, it’s both. It’s still the foot in the door, no matter how you look at it. So what direction, uh, do you see yourself going? Cause I know that you’re, I love the fact that there’s a new project going on. You’ve got the NLP class coming up at Hypno Thoughts Live. Sure. What’s your next step? Well, something John Cerone and I have been working on, you know, we, uh, I, I think to some extent sort of revolutionized some approaches to stage hypnosis back in the early to mid two thousands.

And, uh, John and I have continued to perform together in a variety of different venues and corporate environments and conventions over the years. And so, uh, John and I actually have a new project, stage hypnosis training.com and we’ve rerecorded the original speed trans DVDs with modern technology and good video and proper lights and multiple cameras.

And so we’ve been producing some of that. And the reason why is because, again, clinical hypnotists can really learn, even if they’re not gonna be using a rapid, instant induction most of the time, by having flexibility and increasing their skill level. And of course, I’m one of the people who thinks that hypnosis went done correctly and respectfully is excellent, fun, awesome entertainment.

Uh, and so Serone and I are working on that project together, and that’s been a very time consuming project. And, and again, With the I C B C H certification programs and courses. We are actively, in part because of your suggestion, creating a membership site so people can have a low cost entry point into what I think is really some incredible training for me as well as from some others in the online environment.

You know, my, my background of course is education. Uh, been the executive director of Peachtree Professional Education since 1990. We’re one of the largest providers of mental health continuing education in the country. And so taking what I know from the field of education and applying it to hypnosis education, because hypnosis is my personal interest, is what I think I’ll probably continue to do for the rest of my days.

Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast. And work smart hypnosis.com. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette and I wanna thank you again for listening to this session. And just a quick thought, a simple question, Are you working in this hypnosis profession as much as you’d like? You know, it’s a hypnosis business.

The hypnosis is important, but just as important in my opinion, is the business. You heard Richard non guard, and I just referenced that now, and I’d like to point you to a valuable resource that I’ve put out there. Head over to Hypnosis Business Boot Camp. Dot com and you’ll learn all about the intensive training that I’ve put out there, which is really the roadmap behind how I built a six figure hypnosis business.

So the ins and outs of how I filled my office, how I built my websites. And even the really valuable information of how to duplicate yourself so you’re able to get even greater results with your clients, even greater results inside of your business, and be able to have that valuable time to relax as well.

Be sure to head over to that page and read some of the feedback. You’ll see some names on there of people you may recognize. One that’s may be very familiar. Guy and gentlemen I just interviewed is on there as well. I have to share the testimonial that Richard shared of my program that actually is not on the website.

Simply put, at one point he said to me, I knew your videos wouldn’t suck, and I’ll take that as a compliment. You’ll see it’s a different piece of feedback over on the hypnosis business boot camp.com page instead, but check that out. Lot of great information. Of course, the 30 day a hundred percent guarantee, though again, if you simply make use of a program such as this and just get one new.

You’re gonna be on track to even greater results. Work from a accepted model. Work from a proven model. Grow your hypnosis business. The more that we’re all successful, the more that we’re all successful. Thanks for listening.