Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Can Hypnosis REALLY Change Your Life? Answers from Dr. David Spiegel

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Does hypnosis really work? That word has become a bit taboo in scientific circles. It brings to mind magicians, black and white spinning spirals, and traveling sideshows and cheap tricks. “You are getting very sleepy” does not have a strong scientific foundation.Or… does it? In truth and practice, hypnosis can be so much more.That’s why I’m thrilled to share this conversation with Dr. David Spiegel, professor of Psychiatry at the Stanford School of Medicine and researcher in psycho-oncology and the neurobiology of therapeutic hypnosis.Dr. Spiegel is a pioneer in the research on hypnosis. His work over the past several decades is foundational - helping patients overcome deep-seated trauma, work through fears and anxieties, build new habits, break existing ones, and even guide cancer patients through the pain of treatment and recovery using hypnosis.Now, this isn’t the hypnosis that you see on daytime television, with swinging pocket watches and heavy eyelids. It’s a science of the mind-body connection, and a way of looking at how the subconscious can be trained to influence, guide, and heal our bodies.We’ll also talk about how all of this doesn’t require a physician or therapist or even a hypnotist, but is available to everyone with Dr. Spiegel’s game-changing app, Reveri.I hope this conversation opens your mind to a new tool that just might be able to change your life._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention. One of the things that happens in hypnosis is you put aside your ordinary assumptions

of who you are and what you can do. Hypnosis is highly effective and you don't get addicted to it. you are and what you can do. Hypnosis is highly effective and you don't get addicted to it. Be prepared to meet your better self. David, I'm an astute learner. I saw you try to hypnotize me. I already felt it. Okay. Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. Now, we talk a lot here about the power of mental imagery. It is one of the foundational and fundamental tools that I use when working with individuals and teams and organizations. The idea is that you use all five of your senses to imagine and thereby unlock what

might be possible for you. It turns out that's a close cousin to hypnosis, which is the topic of today's conversation. That word has become a bit taboo in scientific circles. It brings to mind magicians and black and white spinning spirals and traveling sideshows and cheap tricks. You're getting very sleepy. It does not have a strong scientific foundation, or does it? In truth and practice, hypnosis can be so much more. That's why I am thrilled to have a conversation with Dr. David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry at the Stanford School of Medicine and researcher in psycho-oncology

and the neurobiology of therapeutic hypnosis. Dr. Spiegel is a pioneer in the research on hypnosis. I do not say that lightly. His work over the past several decades is foundational in helping patients overcome deep-seated trauma, work through fears and anxieties, build new habits, break existing ones, and even guide cancer patients through the pain of treatment and recovery. Now, this isn't the hypnosis

that you see on daytime television with swinging pocket watches and heavy eyelids. That's not what this is. It's the science of the mind-body connection and a way of looking at how the non-conscious can be trained to influence, guide, and heal our bodies. We'll also talk about how all of this does not require a physician or therapist or even a hypnotist, but through Dr. Spiegel's game-changing app Reverie, it can be available to all of us. So with that, let's dive right into this mesmerizing conversation with Dr. David Spiegel.

Dr. Spiegel, I am so happy to sit down with you. Your body of work in psychiatry and behavioral sciences, it's substantial, and I'm really excited to dive in. But before we do that, let's just start with a simple, how are you? I'm fine, Michael, and I'm very glad to be here with you. Good. So sometimes fine means a lot of things. So what does fine mean to you? Yeah. Fine means to me ignoring most of what's going on in the world right now and doing

something about the things I can. So that's why if it sounds, it was a perceptive comment, if it sounds guarded, it's because it is. Yeah, that's cool. And that probably is a first principle in your life is to try to gate out some of the noise and get down into the signal of the controllables for you. Yes, that's right. And there are better and worse ways of doing that. There are better and worse ways. Yeah. Yeah, there are better better um yeah so one of yours is sounds like it's work and focusing on like your research and your programs and um is that a fair statement you're right victor frankl the philosopher and and holocaust survivor said one can endure almost any what if one has a why and um finding building meaning in life uh and helping other people is for me a big part of the why and that's what i'm trying to do and i'm enjoying

doing it is that okay that is um a big question to how you're a big answer to how you're doing is i'm committed to helping people find their meaning and then um do you do you find that yours has shifted over time your purpose your sense of meaning in life or is it something that's been relatively stable well i would say it's that's an interesting question i would say it's been pretty consistent. I mean, you know, I'm the child of two doctors. I wanted to be a doctor. I am a doctor. I love doing it. I love helping people and still the best parts of my week are when I work with a patient and help them deal with something that they were having trouble dealing with. At the same time, as you get on in life, you begin to recognize your finitude. And my goal now, and I'm devoting a whole lot of time and energy to it, is making what I've learned available to able to work with in the course of my career, but hundreds of thousands or hopefully millions of people who can learn to use what we've developed and other

colleagues have developed too, to live better. And so my goal has shifted in the sense that I've sort of moved in the direction of creating a handoff that I hope will last. As one of our colleagues who's no longer with us, Eric Erickson, developmental psychologist, shared with us that it's kind of in that seventh and eighth stage of human development where that sense of generativity is like, how am I making the next generation better? It really is apparent. And so is that something that feels like it's been on time for you or were you there earlier? I think I did. I mean, I'm an academic psychiatrist. So a big part of my time was in doing research and writing papers and writing books. I've written 13 books

and 425 papers and 175 chapters. So I've been busy throughout doing what you need to do as an academic physician, but passing it on to teaching people, training young doctors. So it's always been there. It's always been part of what I wanted to do. But I think you're right that the shift at this time in my life has been more in the handoff direction so let's do before we dive into hypnosis which is um hopefully is the focus the app the applied focus of our conversation um but you have such a big body of work i don't want to i don't want to kind of box us in in any way but i love

your position and what you're doing in the hypnosis field. And let's talk about all the kind of woo-woo kind of stuff that you're pushing up against. But before we dive into it, just for clarity, when you talk about meaning, purpose, and goals, can you talk about, can you just pull those apart for the listener who says, gosh, I don't know. I don't know what my meaning is or my purpose. It feels like it's got to be so big. And can you just pull those three words apart in the way that you're living them as a good example for a listener? Well, I think of them in a sort of temporal sequence, Michael, that purpose is kind of future oriented. You know, it's where I hope to get to at the end of the day,

what's it going to look like? Meaning is sort of the intrinsic value of what you're doing. And a big part of what I try to do in helping people develop and achieve their goals, the, you know, the more concrete version of what you're planning to do. It's that the process has to be part of the outcome. That you have to enjoy doing it while you're doing it. You have to not just force yourself, but want to fully engage mentally and emotionally and physically to being what you want to become. There's a book called Zen and the Art of Archery.

And the point of the book is that most archers focus too much on the target. What really counts is your relationship with the bow and arrow, and then you will hit the target. So very often, I think people who are driven focus too much on the goal and not enough on the meaning and the feeling of doing what it is that you're doing. And so for me, I've always loved what I was doing. And I remember early in my career, when, you know, grants were getting turned down and papers were getting rejected. And I began to wonder, you know, am I doing the right thing? I used to think, you know, am I doing the right thing?

I used to think, you know, I'm spending half my day helping people, treating patients and the other stuff is disappointing. But even if nothing happens, even if I don't get tenure, even if I'm not promoted, I'm getting to spend most of every day doing what I love doing anyway. So I win no matter what happens. And that helped me. The other thing that helped me in that tough early period was an article in the New York Times Magazine about the National Hockey League. And the statistic in it that cheered me up was that there are no rookies in the NHL that have any of their front teeth left after the first season of play. And I thought, I get it.

People are not going to strew rose petals in your path. They will pick apart your papers and pick apart your research grants and everything. And that's just the name of the game and you got to learn from it and move on. And so I had much more of a sense of humor about the difficulties in the process. And I worked out okay. I'm still here doing it and i love doing it very cool and when you so there's a there's a lot in what you just said there's this is there's a master class in in like the animation of being the person that you want

to become and that is not an easy thing to get your arms around unless you've been grokking with that for a long time. So for, for the listener, who's like, wait, hold on. That all sounds great, but I'm tired. And you you're living your best life. Like this is what you always wanted to do, doc. Like, what about, what about me about me what about somebody like i don't want to throw bags at the airport this is i'm thinking of my father-in-law um he was a um an immigrant and came to this country with 20 in his pocket and he's like that's not what i wanted to do but it served me well to be able to do like have the family i wanted so he's like got this great piece about how he has organized his life.

By the way, he's one of the smartest people I know. It's outrageous. And all that being said, how do you speak to the folks that say, good for you, glad that you are living your best self, but what about me? I'm throwing bags. I'm a grocery clerk. I'm da, da, da, da. This is not what I'm meant to do. I'm meant for more.

Well, I'd say two things. First of all, you've got to contextualize what you're doing at the time that you're doing it. And it isn't like you just kind of gave up on any ambition in life and wound up throwing bags. It's that you made a big move to get to a different country and get established here. So part of what you're doing is not just throwing bags, but throwing yourself and your family into a new environment that you have reason to think will be a whole lot better. So contextualize what you're doing. If you were still in the country you came from and didn't like living there and had a terrific job, that probably would not have been a great situation. So get the context and give yourself credit for what you're doing and the reasons you're

doing it. But the other thing is, I tell people that in athletics, your opponent is your coach and they're telling you what you need to know and what you need to do to get better. So somebody said that if you run into an obstacle on the road, think of it as a signpost, you know, that it's telling you where you need to go and what you need to do. And if you're unhappy now, despite the fact that you're doing something that has meaning in the broader context of your life, you know, take that seriously and figure a way around it. Figure out what you need to do. So life is not full of just comfort for sure.

So learn from the discomforts and make mid-course corrections when you can. I love that. And would you support an axiom of mine, which is there are no hacks, shortcuts, there are no seven steps or secrets to being and living the good life. Would you support that? Okay, good. I'm teasing. I agree with you. It's doable, but it's not a hack. It's not easy. Yeah.

And where do you point people to as a starting place to live the good life, whatever that means to them? Well, I think figure out the things that really do enrich your life and the life of others. We're social creatures. And so, you know, this idea that just self-perfection is a goal in and of itself doesn't impress me very much at all. And so, what are you doing to help other people? How are you open to and receiving help from other people? How are you building networks of care and support? You know, there was a study done by George Valiant done at Harvard, looking at a class of Harvard people that they followed throughout their lives. And the things that were associated with not just better mental, but better physical health, were meaningful, deep, loving, caring relationships

with other people. Developing, you know, taking care of your body but through, you know, sort of things like exercise and, you know, physical activity one kind or another and mental activity that was challenging and interesting. So sort of living the good life turned out to mean living a better life and a longer life as well. So I think if you're getting some of that every day, count yourself lucky and keep doing it. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of,

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David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I- Dr. Waldinger on. Oh yeah. And yeah. And so referencing the, you know, the, the good life study and the Harvard, I think it's now 80 plus years. Yeah. Definitely a wealth of knowledge. I mean, he just was able to take he and his colleagues, but you know, in the, in the relationship I had with him, making the very complicated simple, which was a mark of definitely a mark of wisdom, which I really appreciated him. And yeah. Okay. So, all right. So let's start with the process of hypnosis. Right. And before we dive in, can you just define hypnosis? And I just want to set the stage on that word because it carries a lot of baggage for folks.

And, you know, I mean, you imagine somebody swinging a clock in front of you telling you that either you're going to walk through a wall or cluck like a chicken. Digital watches, you know, it just. Yeah, good. Okay, good. So what's the definition of hypnosis? Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention. It's like looking through the telephoto lens of a camera. What you see, you see with great detail, but you're less aware of the context.

It's been called believed in imagination. So it's similar. Have you ever had the experience, Michael, of getting so caught up in a good movie that you forget you're watching a movie and you enter the imagined world? That's what hypnosis is like. Highly focused attention. That's part one. Part two is dissociation. To do that, you have to put outside of conscious awareness things that ordinarily would be in consciousness. So right now, for example, you're so fascinated by what i'm saying that you're hopefully unaware of sensations in your body touching the chair you're sitting in and if you if you are aware of them we

can just stop the interview now but we do it all the time we there's information there and now that i mention it you can feel it right but you just weren't thinking about it so in order to engage intensely in a task, your brain has to decide that all the other information, what happened this morning, what you had for breakfast, how your body's feeling, what you're going to do in the next two hours is not in consciousness. You have to focus. And you do that more intently with hypnosis. You put things that ordinarily might be in consciousness, like pain, for example, outside of consciousness. You can do that. The third is the thing that scares people the most, Michael, and that's the suggestibility, the idea that you can make somebody do anything that you

want. The stage hypnotists who have the football coach dancing like a ballerina in front of 500 people and making a fool of himself. I don't like that, but there's a lesson in it. And the lesson is, you can try out being different. I'm calling it cognitive flexibility. And one of the things that happens in hypnosis is you put aside your ordinary assumptions of who you are and what you can do. I had a new patient yesterday who said that, I can't believe this is a woman who's been anxious. She's, she has claustrophobia. She's been, had obsessive concerns about contamination and checking things and all that throughout her life. And she has to have a PET scan and was, and was afraid of getting into the PET scan. And by the time I had her, she imagined in hypnosis that she was floating on the Dead Sea in Israel

and feeling very light and buoyant. And I had her picture the scanner as something that would help her with her body and help find out what her body needed because there was concern about cancer. And to remember the closest person in her life is her sister, her older sister, who comforts her through all kinds of misery. She lives in New York, but they're on the phone every day. And I said, imagine your sister is there comforting you and helping you do what you need to do to help your body and she came out of it and she said I feel like a different person I mean this is a woman

who had to wait in the hospital her she had a relative in the hospital for half an hour for someone else to go in the elevator with her because she was so afraid of being alone in a in a closed space. And she said, I feel like I'm a different person. Not I understand why I'm anxious. There were reasons and all that. I feel different. And so people in hypnosis can just let go of their usual preconceptions of who they are and what they are and what they can do and what they can't do and try out being different. And that's what hypnosis is about. Focused attention, dissociation, and this cognitive flexibility. Dissociation is the, do that one more time. So

that's the attention bit that we're driving attention to the present moment. The disassociation, do that one more time. Dissociation, where in order to do that, to focus intently, you are building up the boundaries between what you're paying attention to and what you just don't want to bother with now. Oh, interesting. Okay. And so, I mean, it happens to people in traumatic situations where they just don't think, or they may be injured and they don't notice the pain or they just don't think about what might happen. I had a patient who was in the World Trade Center in the attack. And she said, I was just getting down the stairs, putting one foot in front of the other. And I told myself, if I just get to the ground floor, I'll be okay. She gets to the ground floor, the other tower collapsed and it

blew her through a plate glass window on the ground floor. And for years, she was angry at herself for deceiving herself. That was, I said, you saved your life. You know, you focused on what you needed to know to get out of there alive, and you did. Congratulations. And so dissociation can be very extreme at times, but it allows you to focus intently on what you need to focus on. Now, hypnosis can happen in much less traumatic situations than that. But it's the same pairing of intensity of focus with putting outside of conscious awareness things that would ordinarily be in consciousness. Yeah, those two in my mind are still collapsing, attention and dissociation. They're still collapsing on each other and let me see if you can clarify a little bit more because if i am deeply focused on a task

at hand by definition i'm gating out the non-relevant right experiences or tasks or to use your language i'm not conscious of the other um non-re elements. And so where am I missing the trick here? Maybe part of it, Michael, is that there can still be processing of that other information. So there are noises going on outside that could mean you have to do something but might not. And the brain does a lot of complex things in parallel. It doesn't all have to be at the focus of attention. But what you're basically saying is I'm delegating that other perception to a part of my brain that may just be keeping an eye on what's happening, but I don't need to think about it. Got it. Okay.

So that's what's going on. disappears, but you're just sort of delegating that to a subordinate component of your brain to worry about it so you can focus all your attention on this one thing. So this is, okay, so psychologist to psychiatrist, just for a minute here, is that when people experience trauma, one of the things that they can do as a survival mechanism is dissociate. And you're saying that we are purposely dissociating. We are purposely creating that barrier between what matters and what doesn't matter so that you can explore more. Oh, I just got it. So there's a collapsing in sometimes, like a tightening, a tightening or restriction that happens when we get close to an environment that was similar to the original insult or the original trauma. Right. And so

what you're, maybe what you're doing in imagination, if I'm taking some liberties here is with hypnosis, you're expanding that space so that you can try on different parts so that you can bring different parts forward you can you either through suggestibility or cognitive cognitive flexibility you can invoke your imagination to create um different experiences than what you might not normally have how close am i here in in trauma the environment to some extent is dictating that that you know the environment which is threatening or damaging or hurting you is telling you, you better pay attention to this because otherwise you're not going to survive. But with hypnosis, you can just choose and do it for fun,

like watching a movie or getting into a concert, concentrating on a piece of work that you're doing. You get into writing something and the pieces of the puzzle start to come together and you're just enjoying that narrowed focus on solving this problem, presenting this idea in this way. And it's a choice, it's not imposed on you. But the process is similar in that there's a lot of other stuff that's going on, but you just don't want to let your attentional processes be distracted by that. You want to focus intently and that's what you do in hypnosis. And David, I'm an astute

learner. I saw you try to hypnotize me. I already felt it. Okay. The timing wasn't right, you know, but I saw you, I saw you work and it was really good. So suggestibility. So there's self-hypnosis, there's environmental-cued hypnosis, and then can differentiate a mindfulness experience, like a meditation practice, mental imagery. So the visualization, I don't use the word visualization because mental imagery has so much more than just one sense, a visual sense. So mental imagery, seeing yourself being some version of yourself later and um and hypnosis so can you create some overlap slash maybe some separation between those two in your mind yeah or those three uh sure um the so you have mental imagery uh the guided imagery and hypnosis i i would well or in mindfulness

now mindfulness i'm often asked about this um mindfulness is eastern so with mindfulness you're you're altering your consciousness you're trying to experience things non-judgmentally just you know if you have a feeling, let it flow through you like a storm passing by. And you're trying to actually reduce your intentionality to get over yourself and just let things be. But you're not trying to solve a problem. You're just trying to be different and let things happen. Don't judge them. Don't try to constrain them. Just be. You do a body scan. You kind of look, you try to experience how different parts of your body are feeling and you try to cultivate compassion, which is a good thing to do. So it's open presence,

body scanning and compassion. They're all good. And it is a change in consciousness, but by design, it's not meant to solve a problem. It's just meant to be different. Hypnosis is Western. We always do things for a reason. And the idea of using hypnosis is to develop a natural ability you have to the extent that you have it and use it to solve a problem. Use it to stop smoking. Use it to get to sleep. Use it to focus your attention and plan more clearly what you want to do and then go ahead and do it. Use it to reduce pain. So it's there for a purpose. And in that sense, it is intentional. I had a woman who used reverie, uh, let me know that, uh, she'd been a meditator for 10 years, half an hour, twice a day for 10 years. That's what meditation teachers recommended. She did it, but she had migraine headaches and

they were driving her nuts. And we taught herself hypnosis. Imagine she had an ice cap on her head, filtered, feel the cool, tingly numbness, filter the hurt out of the pain. Imagine she had an ice cap on her head, feel the cool, tingling numbness, filter the hurt out of the pain. And she said, my migraine is finally gone. She said, thank you for allowing me to use my intentionality. So there was no proscription on using it for a purpose. So hypnosis is focused and purposeful and meditation by design is unfocused and not intentional. It's just experience it. And there are different things happening in the brain related, but different that I can talk about. So hypnosis, and one other thing I'd formulate a bit differently from what you said, Michael, is that I think I know that all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis.

It's not something you do to somebody. What I do, and the reason that Reverie works, is that I'm helping people identify and tap into whatever level of hypnotic ability they have and use it. That's why I don't have to be there. What I do need to do is use what I know to help people discover this and use it within themselves. And so if people, there are people that I can't hypnotize because they're not hypnotizable.

And there are people where I just start talking and they're off into their usual trance-like experiences, and that's fine. That's what people have the ability to do, some people. I just start talking and they're off into their usual trance-like experiences. And that's fine. That's what people have the ability to do, some people. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters.

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creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Grey is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGrey.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 I really appreciate your language that it's available to everybody. There's some level of hypnotized ability, I think was the word you used. But not everybody wants to be, or maybe I'll use the word can be, but I think it's a want. Can be. No, that's true. That's true. Is it a can? It's not a want? It's a can. That's right. A lot of people pay a lot of money to come see me. They're highly motivated.

They got a problem. And there are some who are just not hypnotizable. They're highly motivated. They just don't have that ability. Some people don't. And is that because of the inability to let go and trust? No, it usually is not, actually. And I've had some people who are very skeptical and say this hypnosis is a bunch of nonsense.

And their hand is up in the air, and they're looking at it and saying, what the hell is going on here? You know, why? In fact, there's a great YouTube video. When I was on Andrew Huberman's podcast, we did a little 10-minute take where I measured his hypnotizability. And here's Andrew, this big, tough, bearded, bright, brilliant guy

who is sympathetic to hypnosis. But he said, I don't think I'm very hypnotizable. He had a tough life. He told you about his life growing up and skateboarding and all that stuff. And there he is looking at his hand saying, what is going on here? That sense of surprise is a wonderful thing. And it goes along with hypnosis. Because you're in a different mental state, you're experiencing things as for the non-ordinariness that they really have, that you didn't think your hand would sort of have a mind of its own and be able to do that.

That's the dissociation. That's that unconscious mental process going on that you can observe, but you don't feel like you're controlling. So people have that to varying degrees, and some are surprised that they have it, and others are surprised that they don't. But it does vary it's a hypnotized ability in adult life is as stable as iq it's a very stable trait yeah i i've

been um i've gone through some hypnosis training myself and um i've been hypnotized a handful of times and I, this is where the blurred line between performance imagery and hypnosis is like people that like, I'll, I'll walk them through a performance imagery session. And it, sometimes at the end, they'll say, was it, was I, did you just hypnotize me? I go, I don't know. Like I was just guiding you through an experience. And so that's like earnestly, I'm not quite sure the difference between the two. And I'd love for you to pull those apart. And just to be concrete performance imagery is like

the way we use it in athletics or in even in business and any performing part of one's job or lifestyle is to see you, you bring your, a dimensional part of yourself forward to be able to meet the challenge, whatever that challenge is. So you're bringing your best parts of you forward to meet a unique challenge and you see it over and over again and you can play with it. And sometimes it feels like a beautiful movie that you're lost in.

And other times you're, you're volitionally rewinding, seeing from different angles, you know, like working a problem, which is not necessarily a hypnotic experience. But I think the other one, when this is beautiful movie that's unfolding and you're just lost in your imagination and it's as if everything was working the way you would hope it would. That feels like they've dropped into hypnosis, a hypnotic state. Yes. I think you're probably a better hypnotist than you realize, Michael, because there are three things in what you described in performance imagery

that sound a lot like hypnosis to me. The first is you're focusing on this one particular issue and way of being. Here's what you're trying to do. So you're saying narrow your focus to just accomplishing this particular thing. Secondly, you're saying you want to call up a part of yourself that is likely to be good at doing this. So you're in essence instructing them to to dissociate the rest of themselves to just say, don't pay attention to how I screwed up the last five times I did this. Find the part of you that succeeded or that did something like that. Well, so you're telling them focus on this part, let the other parts go. You're not saying they don't exist. You're just saying, put them aside.

That's a kind of association. And the third thing you're saying saying put them aside that's a kind of association and the third thing you're saying is be different that's the cognitive flexibility you're saying you know what i know you failed at this the last 14 times you tried however that doesn't mean you can't do it so try out being the kind of person who is good at this who can find a way to do it well and that's the cognitive flexibility you can be a different person than you're used to expecting that you are. Yeah, so Carl Rogers sounds like he's infused in both of our work. You know, the Virgerian unconditional positive regard for another person. It's already in there.

Yes, I think that's right. You're sort of saying, you know, be prepared to meet your better self. That's it and the fact that you've tried you failed the last 14 times doesn't mean that on the 15th you can't do it david i've got this one um set of like you might call it um like a script or prompts or cues or i don't know what your technical term is for like, uh, in, in vocation, in vocation. No. What's the word that, uh, you would use? Let me just describe it for a minute. And then you'll, you'll coach me is that, um, there's, I create this, this place, uh, two things I think you'll find interesting. One is that

we'll create a unique space for creativity, which is like the safe, amazing kind of your spot, your work shed for creativity. And there's an inside place and an outside place. And if we go to the outside place, it's whatever you want it to be, whatever environment you would like it to be. And then I have this idea about a kite and like, maybe it's, I'll use this example, all the shit that you've been carrying around, you know, like maybe I don't use that kind of alarming of a word, but everything you've been carrying around that feels like it's weighing you down is in the kite. And then I'll just have them run with the kite and it starts to lift.

And I think you'll appreciate this. They can feel the wind underneath that at all this. And then bang, it crashes down. And most people are like, oh, and then they go and then they, they mend it and they take another shot at it. And it's this, like when people come through that part, they're like, I did it. Like, and this is not the performance imagery, but like, I, I, I stood against the wind again. And what are those, what do you call those types of prompts or invitations? You know, I would say you're encouraging people to acknowledge the things that are weighing them

down or holding them back. But you're saying that you can probably find a way to get a lift anyway and to bring it along if you have to, but still get to where you want to go. So I think you're giving them a kind of realistic positive instruction. Don't assume that because you failed with this in the past, because there's some part of you that is dragging you down, you can't ultimately move ahead. So I think you're giving them this kind of positive instruction and way of processing the part of themselves that has been holding them back. What are you pushing up against? You've got good research on hypnosis. And is it the public opinion of what it is is like what why is there

why is there tension in in the industry of the word around hypnosis i wish i knew you know i when i started out my career michael i thought you know it was sort of build it and they will come kind of thing you, do enough research and prove randomized clinical trials and, and understand what's happening in the brain. Um, when you go into a state of hypnosis, you know, we showed that you turned down activity in this aliens network and you increase connectivity with the insula, the mind body pathway and from the prefrontal cortex. And you disconnect, as I've mentioned before, from the default mode network, the part of your brain that tells you who you are and who you aren't and what people

think of you. I thought we did that, you know, it's our time has come, you know, but it hadn't. Hypnosis is the oldest Western conception of a psychotherapy. The first time a talking interaction was thought to have benefit. And yet it's been repeatedly rejected. And, you know, King Louis in France investigated Mesmer, who introduced the idea and decided that what he then called animal magnetism was nothing but heated imagination, which is probably true. It's not a bad, but that was not considered good at the time. I realized a couple of things, Michael. One is that the brain don't get no respect, that we think the real things are the physical ones. In medicine, incision, ingestion, or injection, you've got to do a procedure. If you've got pain, fix the body part.

The brain is connected to every part of the body it's our major evolutionary advantage this three pound organ at the top of our shoulders but we it doesn't get respect we don't think the brain can just help us fix things or process sensations differently or help us get to sleep or help us do things that protect our body, like stopping smoking and vaping. But that's what we teach people to do in reverie. And I decided in business lingo, Michael, to go D to C, direct to consumer, because people kind of get it sometimes faster than professionals do. And it's not that doctors are hostile to it. They just think, as you're saying, it's kind of weird and, and strange. And, um, I've been teaching doctors to do it my entire career. I still do. Uh, and that's good, but I realized that there's a whole lot that people can do for themselves. And, you know, the other thing is there's no, there's no mediating industry to make money

out of hypnosis. You know, uh, think about this. Um, in the last year, the center for disease control estimated that 88,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses, people being talked into taking Oxycontin being, I was told as a medical student that people who are not street junkies going for heroin, but who have real pain, don't get addicted to opioids. The opposite is actually true. That was drug company propaganda. The opposite is true. You get hyper responses when you withdraw from opioids. The pain sensitivity is worse because you've been on opioids. So they get trapped. They can't get off because their pain problem, whatever it was, gets worse. Hyperalgesia. And billions and billions of dollars are made. Now,

I'm a doctor. I prescribe meds. I'm not anti-medication. But it's for what purpose, for how long. And for two serious chronic problems that hypnosis helps with, and you can get help with it on reverie, anxiety and insomnia and pain, three problems. Hypnosis is highly effective and you don't get addicted to it. Whereas you do habituate to benzodiazepines and you get addicted to opioids. So I'm thinking I got to do something while I can to help people help themselves and bypass big pharma over it. We published a paper, Michael, in The Lancet, which is a leading British medical journal, randomized clinical trial, 241 patients having arterial cutdowns for chemoembolization of tumors

in the liver or renal artery stenosis to fix that. It takes about two, two and a half hours. It's painful. You don't use general anesthesia for it. And one group got the standard care. Press a button and you'll get opioids in your bloodstream. The second is that plus the control for just emotional support. So we had a friendly nurse. The third was hypnosis. And at the end of about two hours, the average pain ratings in the standard care group

were six out of 10. The friendly nurse was four out of 10. And the hypnosis group, the pain levels were one out of 10. And the hypnosis group was using half as much medication, half as much ingested opioids. We looked at their anxiety levels, six out of 10 standard care, four out of 10 with the nurse, zero in the hypnosis group. And I thought they were dead or something. I mean, they were just mellow as could be. Their procedures got done 17 minutes faster than the other group, and they had fewer medical complications. Now, if I had a drug that did that and published it as a randomized trial in the Lancet, every hospital in the country would now be using it. But are they? No. And so I took that as a message that,

you know, you can be a good boy. You can be a Boy Scout. You can do all the things you need to do. And I wanted to do it. I'm glad we did it. But that's not going to change the way people practice. And I thought the new technology that's really making a difference is, you know, apps and people, everybody has a smartphone and everybody has, therefore has me with him. You know, I used to worry, Michael, that we taught people to do self-hypnosis, uh, using a reverie to go to sleep or get back to sleep. You know, they get their body floating safe and comfortable, project their thoughts onto an imaginary screen do some exhale focused respiratory practices and they do fine and i thought you know is this as good as what i would teach them in my office and then i thought you know what if it's three in the morning and you wake up and you want some

self-hypnosis you probably don't want me in your bedroom telling you how to do it. And so in some ways, the Reverie app is better than what I can do in my office. And so that's why I'm devoting myself to helping people use Reverie to deal with these very serious but manageable problems without endangering themselves. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines

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products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Let's go back to opioids for just a minute and then let's hit sleep. And, um, you know, so pain's a real deal for so many. So sleep. And my wife came across your article in Lancet, um, I guess 15, 16 years ago now. And she was, she became hypnotized prior to childbirth because she did not want, she saw your research and she was like, this stands up. And I was like, really? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is my industry. Like, but really? Like, are you, I was so blown away by the commitment she had to not have opiates on board during childbirth.

That's how she wanted to do it. And I just couldn't believe it. Fully, Doc was on board with it. And she ended up having a C-section because he didn't turn. Our son didn't turn. So it was like, yeah, so it was like it was going to be breached and so she was one thousand percent if there's such a number committed to um to the hypnosis that she was trained on to go through childbirth um without opioids without any drugs without a block nothing i was like dang like i just had a whole new level of respect for that you know and so uh you've seen

that plenty of times i i would imagine well my wife gave birth to both of our children with hypnosis as a sole anesthetic and uh somewhere our son our first son who is now six foot four was a 10 pound baby so the first baby that's that's a big deal. And she's a brilliant woman, a stem cell biologist. She said, I want to be in control of the process. And you know, part of what you said about your wife, you have a new level of respect. She had a new level of respect for herself because she was going to master and be in control and not just be an object that this is done to and i remember my wife telling me somewhere in the middle of the 10-hour labor david you know i i teach pharmacology there are drugs for this and i said you're floating in lake

tahoe cool tingling and numb and oh wait so you were guiding her during oh yeah yeah oh god i was there i was there the whole time yeah what a gift and i could i could see like i could see her looking over to you like you know are you sure this is gonna work yeah right like yeah that'd be a problem and i said like helen i have no pain at all it's fine you know not funny david not funny and our daughter you know four hour labor she had at breakfast she said i think i know what's happening and i took her to the hospital we had lunch together at one o'clock and she was fine you know so it's uh yeah so it's there like it you know it holds up and i've got great respect for anybody that can face whether it's uh a childbirth, you know, drug free.

And I don't want to sound like there's some sort of soapbox that I'm standing on that it's better than, but it was right for. You know, it sounds like your wife and my wife. And people that are carrying around incredible pain when they say, okay, I'm going to give this a go. And they give into it and they go for it. And they come on the other side like, oh, I feel different. I just feel different. So how does it actually happen? So hypnosis meaning sleep, right?

Hypno. Yeah, hypno. You're right. It's the common root, but it's incorrect. You're not asleep. You're not going to sleep. You know, that's the old language. You're not asleep. You're not going to sleep. That's the old language. You're really waking up.

You're saying, I can be different, and I'm going to be different. And you don't go to sleep with hypnosis. David, you just let it go. Yeah. You just revealed the hippie, and you're right there. I'm going to wake up. I'm going to drop in, tune in, wake up. Okay, good. Drop out. Drop in. Drop in. I'm going to drop in, tune in, wake up. Okay, good.

Drop out. Drop in. Drop in. Yeah. Drop in. Okay, so it's a waking up. I thought it was maybe putting, you know, that term was ahead of its time from a brain structure standpoint. But I thought maybe you were putting to sleep your, okay, why am I blanking on it?

Your critical faculty, maybe your judgmental. Yeah, what's the center of the brain? I'm just totally spacing on it, that the self-referencing part of the brain. Oh, the default mode network, yes. Yeah, I thought maybe you were just putting that to sleep. You are. The more you're active in hypnosis,

the less active the default mode network is. So you're shutting that down. Same in mindfulness. Yeah, it's a little different but you're right experienced meditators also turn down activity in the default mode network that's right same with deep focus like if you're on the edge of a cliff and you're holding in by your fingernails like the default mode network is not saying do you think i'm okay you know do i look okay yeah that's right my finger's gonna you know hang on to the the rock yeah absolutely you're you're this is not the time for reflective self

evaluation it's the time yeah just do it and be it and see what happens that's right do it and be yeah so i we think with elite athletes that default mode network when they're in flow state or they're in the zone or even then performing at a really high level that part kind of goes to sleep you know it just doesn't really of course but i'll give you an example the stanford women's swim team is fantastic i mean they are really good but some years ago the coach noticed that the women were swimming slower in meets than they were in practice and he's thinking what the hell is that about? You know, normally you think you're all aroused and, you know, you're at your best and all this.

So we did a group hypnosis exercise. And what I taught them to do was to focus on just swimming in your mind, swimming your best swim, your best race. Only focus on your relationship with your body, swimming your best swim, your best race, only focus on your relationship with your body, how it feels, what, how you're helping your body do what it wants to do and do it better. And by inference, I was saying to hell with whoever's swimming in the lane next to you. That's not your problem. Swimming is not a contact sport. So what matters is how you relate to your body. And what they were doing was distracting themselves from that by focusing on what the girl in the next lane was doing.

And they did better when they were just focusing intently on their own relationship to their body and their own performance and doing that as well as they could. That's an example of what you can do. Brilliant. And how do you separate that out between performance imagery and hypnosis? Like what is the, where's the porousness in between those two? Well, I would say if you're, if you're pretty hypnotizable and you're getting performance imagery instructions, you're probably in a hypnotic like state. You know, I wouldn't know

how to keep them out of it. You know, you're focusing intently, you're probably in a hypnotic like state. You know, I wouldn't know how to keep them out of it. You know, you're focusing intently, you're relating intently with your body, you're dissociating your worries and concerns about how well you're going to do. You're just focusing on how you and your body relate and do what it needs to do. I mean, you know, that's what Tiger Woods did. You know, he trained using hypnosis and he was focusing on his relationship to the club and the, and, and the way he had to manage his body to do the best he could. And one of the things that you always noticed about him was his sort of glacial calm. You know, it didn't matter how much pressure he was under. He'd have this sort of half smile on his face as

he's walking around the green and just be into what he was doing and not letting all the other hoo-ha going on around him distract him that is a hypnotic like state in his case he was trained using that you know so um uh it it's i don't know where i would draw the line between those things you You know, Michael Jordan did the same thing with basketball, you know. It's this intense relationship with your own body and ability to avoid distractions, including some other six-foot-eight guy trying to get in your face, you know. Let me just add, see if you vibe with this, but I think I've got the bead here that I'd love to hear your take on it. But maybe because of the branding issue in the 70s, 80s around hypnosis, that the emergence of sports psychology, part of that discipline was to study the best and understand how they work. Traditional psychology would study disorder,

dysfunction, to try to understand and clump together some symptoms. I'm classically trained with an emphasis in sport and performance. So it's a different population that we're studying to try to understand what are best practices, how do they organize their inner life? And athletes would tend to say, oh yeah, I can see it and feel it before it actually happens. Well, how do you do that? Well, I close my eyes and da, da, da. And so I think that the industry grabbed like, oh, imagery instead of hypnosis because of

the branding thing. And I'm wondering, it sounds like it probably is very, I've always wondered where does one begin and end? It sounds like you're in the same space. And I think maybe the through line of differentiation is that athletes wouldn't come back from like a best ever performance. Okay. Like a flow state type of experience and say, I was hypnotized. I was in a hypnotic state. And they maybe would use hypnosis slash imagery. Again, we're playing with the language there. And then it would set them up to do well later, but they wouldn't report that when I played the back nine holes, I was completely hypnotized.

They would say I was my best. Of course, the narcissism leaks out somewhere in there. I was my best. I was in full control. This was not some practice that a doc taught me. I was in it. And then instead of calling it, I was in a hypnotic state, I was in it. And then instead of calling it I was in a hypnotic state, I was in a flow state. I think we're on to something. At least I feel like I'm on to something. But you're the standing professional here with hypnosis. I think you're absolutely right.

We're sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of psychotherapists. We don't get no respect. He said they asked him to leave a bar so they could start happy hour you know it's it's it's one one of those things where i think your description is very apt that when great people do terrific things they don't want to say well some guy hypnotized me into it you know i just found the path and did it that's right my perspective, it's the same phenomenon that they're focused intently. They're dissociating things that would distract them and they're being their best self. They're saying, I'm not going to be that anxious kid who wondered if I could make it. I'm going to be the guy who

can really crush this, you know, and I'm just going to do it. I wouldn't know as someone with a lot of experience in hypnosis, Michael, how to take someone in this kind of situation you're talking about and make sure they weren't hypnotized. In fact, it would be a disservice if I could do it, I wouldn't try. But they're mobilizing their hypnotic ability, only they're not calling it that and they don't need any guy dangling a watch in front of their nose. But it, it is the same phenomenon. The, the Sochi Olympics are a good example. You know, bastard Putin insisted that they have the Olympics there, even

though there was virtually no snow and, um, they could only do one practice room. So I have a picture of Bode Miller standing at the top of the run. And what he did was he went there. And in his mind, he made every turn on the run. Exactly what his body was doing. And he and the team did incredibly well. Just doing this mental rehearsal. They didn't call it hypnosis.

I call it hypnosis. It's the same phenomenon. Yeah, so we're probably talking about the same exact thing. However, I think like the difference is I've always seen it as a preparatory process for ideal readiness. Those words matter. Preparation readiness, right? Like it's a preparatory process for ideal readiness. And the research on imagery does not cross over to the research on hypnosis. So there's lots of research on performance imagery.

So I think the difference is that you and I might wonder, not you alone, you and I might wonder if they were doing mental imagery at the starting gate or when they were doing their kind of first, their only pass they get to see at it, if they're doing it there, that they entered a hypnotic state. I'm suggesting that if you do it on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whatever, and the following week you're going to perform, that that bulk of mindset, mental skills, training, call it performance imagery, call it hypnosis, whatever you want, that, that, that prepares and readies one, readies oneself to be their very best as opposed to they entered a hypnotic state. Yeah, I think so. And I think most people, I mean, you know, you get a good actor who, who just inhabits a role, you know, who's just kills it, you know, just does it.

And you say, you were great. And they say, what did I do? You know, I just, I was that person. That's a hypnotic state. You know, they're just dissociating who they really are turning down their self-evaluation and just being it. And, and so I think you're right in the preparation and you're also right about imagery that is the ability to literally have visual imagery, for example, is not correlated with hypnotizability, but people who can use imagery to be different, to be a different person and just function at a level that they never thought they

could because they have put outside of conscious awareness, all the obstacles and mistakes and other things that make them doubt what they can do turn out to be hypnotizable and I think utilize that hypnotic ability even if they never call it that and and so I wouldn't know how to make it not be something hypnotic like in someone's hypnotic ability. So we've talked about pain control. We've talked about performance being the ideal self that you want to be later. And we haven't talked about sleep enough. So is your app a great solution for quality sleep? You know, the great thing thing it's great in two ways michael number one it works and number two if it doesn't work no harm no foul you know it costs you how do we how do we know it works that's a big statement well i'll tell you actually we have some it's the most used part of our of the reverie app so there must be a reason for it. And, you know, we do for the stress management,

which is very effective, you know, four out of five people find within 12 minutes that they feel significantly less stress as they do less pain. We were trying to get the pre-post evaluations on the app for sleep and we were getting very little. So we reached out to some people and said, how come, you know, what's going on? You said that you reduced your sleep. They said, we didn't want to tell you how sleepy we were. We just wanted to go to sleep. So the sleep that we, we got the pre-rating of how sleepy they felt, but not the post because they were sleeping. Um, so it works, it works very well. They can just disconnect their cognitive arousal from their physiological arousal. So you're quieting the mental activity and helping the physical body be more relaxed.

Yeah, but in inverse order, Michael. Body first. Yeah, of course. With stress, body first. We do it from the body up. It's not figuring out why you're anxious or that you're anxious. It's saying, there's one thing I can do about either arousing thoughts at night or stress during the day. I can't immediately do anything about the stressor or the fact that my boss yelled at me earlier in the day that upset me. But what I can do is control my body's

reaction to it. So we teach people to imagine in hypnosis that they're floating in a bath, a lake, a hot tub, or floating in space. Get your body comfortable. Go somewhere you'd rather be. Go to a beach somewhere. Climb a mountain. Go to a mountain meadow. Just be there and let your body acclimate

to the imagery that you have. And then picture one thing that's bothering you with a rule that no matter what you see on the screen, you keep your body floating and comfortable. And then on the other side of the screen, picture one thing you could do about it. Brainstorm a solution. It doesn't have to be the best or the only one, just something you can do. And just having a plan for dealing with it can sometimes lower your stress level and help you get to sleep. And so it's fairly straightforward, but it's body first.

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so if you don't see results, they'll refund you. No questions. I love that. They have real confidence in their product. And because you're a member of the Finding Mastery community, right now they're offering our listeners huge savings on the iRestore Elite. When you use the code FindingMastery at iRestore.com slash FindingMastery. Again, that code is FindingMastery at iRestore.com slash Finding Mastery for exclusive savings. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Lisa. Sleep is one of the foundational pillars of high performance. There's no arguing that. And when we have great sleep consistently and deeply, we give ourselves the best chance to operate at our best physically, cognitively, emotionally, sleep affects it all. That's why

I care about the environment that I sleep in so much. And of course, a great mattress, it matters. One of our teammates here at Finding Mastery has been sleeping on a Lisa mattress for over a year now, and it's made a noticeable difference. They specifically chose one from their chill collection because they sleep hot, something I know many of us can relate to, myself included. What are they reporting back? Fewer wake-ups, deeper rest, and feeling more recovered when they jump into their work here at Finding Mastery. Lisa has several models to choose from. So whether you're a side sleeper, a stomach sleeper, or somewhere in between, there's a fit designed specifically for you. And what I appreciate most

is their purpose. They've donated over 41,000 mattresses to people in need. I love that. So right now you can get 25% off all mattresses at lisa.com plus an extra $50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's lisa.com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. How does somebody know if they're hypnotizable? Well, we have a test down where it takes five minutes. We do a structured hypnotic induction, your hand floating up in the air. We measure how they respond, how much reinforcement they need to get the hand up. Does it float up by itself? Do you have to help it? Did they have a sense of involuntariness that it felt like the hand just

wanted to do it? I wasn't making it do it. Did they have a sense of floating lightness or buoyancy? So we score that on a zero to 10 scale and we give people a classification of three types. About 20% at the upper end, we call the poets. They're in it. They just feel it. Extreme responsiveness. About 60% have an experience, but then they wonder, was that real? Did I really do this? What is it like? We call them the diplomat. They're experiencing it, but evaluating it at the same time. Or you can wind up being a researcher, somebody who's interested in it, but critical of it, judges it, and doesn't really get into it that much. And so people can learn what their hypnotize ability is in five or six minutes and then decide how to proceed from there. So most people are

at least somewhat and some very hypnotizable, even the low hypnotizable people, um, can learn the strategy we use because part of, you know, one of the things we experienced, people with experience with hypnosis know is that the worst thing you can tell someone is don't think about purple elephants. You know, what are you going to think about? Instead, we try to find a way they can focus on what they're for. So part of that is your wife's sense of victory, even though she ultimately had to have a C-section, in saying, I'm not going to be an absentee landlord here. I'm going to participate as fully as I can. And that's what my wife did too. So they can restructure what is a physical and

emotional challenge into an opportunity to feel good about themselves. There's a way I'm going to go at this in which I feel better because I'm participating as fully as I can. So they're restructuring this difficult, stressful experience in a way that they can enhance their own feeling about themselves and feel good about it. In the same way, Michael, when we teach people to stop smoking, it isn't, you know, oh, I'll reduce the urge to smoke and the nicotine, all that. No, we don't even discuss that. What we say is there are three things I want you to remember in hypnosis. One, for my body, smoking is a poison. Two, I need my body to live. And three, I owe my body respect and protection. Think of being a parent

to your own body. If your body was a baby or a child, would you put tar and nicotine smoke in its lungs? Hell no. And it wouldn't matter how much of an urge you had. The urge is not the issue. We all have urges we don't act on. The issue is respecting and protecting your body. And we get one out of five people to stop smoking doing that, which is, I wish it were more, but it's as good as you get with vena Cleaner Bupropion or Nicorette.

And so using your brain better is a powerful way to change your behavior. And you're turning down the part of your brain that says, I can't do this. I've never been able to do it. I've tried 50 times. It didn't work. All that. You can just shut that down and try being different and see what it feels like to be a good parent to your own body.

Do you have anything that any, any story that stands out that you are after doing this for 40 years, that you're still in awe of like a unique case or an experience where you say this, this, this changed me too I had a woman who had been sexually assaulted as a child and was depressed throughout her life and she you know got through life okay but not very well and she was chronically depressed, was on meds, wasn't helping that much and she had been raped by a landlord when she was 12 years old and kind of never got over it. Her family was afraid to prosecute and she kind of got through life. She retired early, um, and came to see me.

And I figured that that had something to do with her ongoing depression. And, uh, and this really did change me. So I said to her, I want you to picture yourself as if you were your own mother and picture yourself as the 12 year old girl you were just after you've been raped by this bastard. And I said, I want to, and she starts to cry and I asked her, um, um, tell me one thing as you're looking at her, was this her fault? Did she deserve this? And she started crying harder and she said, I'm stroking her hair. I'm stroking her hair. And, um, she came out of the hypnosis and she looked shaken. She was still crying. And she called me about a week later

and said, Dr. Spiegel, my psychiatrist wants to know what you did to me because I'm not depressed anymore. And she said, my friends don't recognize me. So, and that did change me. I just, you know, the fact, it wasn't just me and her deciding she was better, but everybody around her said, you're different. And it doesn't always work that powerfully, but I've had that things like that happen again, where people say, I feel different. Like that lady I mentioned with the claustrophobia, she didn't just say my symptom seems better. She said, I feel different. I feel like I'm a different person. I didn't think I could be. And when things like that happen, you just, you know, it changes you. I love doing it, you know.

My wife can't wait for the dinner table conversation about my patient du jour, you know. Yeah, no kidding. It doesn't always work like that, but enough that it really does. And I do think it's why I want people to be able to use this to help themselves because it can make a big difference in a hurry. Thank you for sharing that. And you're a disruptor. You could have gone the normal traditional path, but you said, no, there's something here. And then I hear you and you're so mellow. I wonder if you were always mellow or the 40 years of hypnotizing people has created this very mellow way about you.

So I usually don't put together the disruptive nature and that internal fire to go after something with the that this very calm mellow approach to life so how have you squared those two that's an interesting I thank you for that observation I you know I I mean the image I have is there is some there's some child's story about how the Sun and the wind were fighting about which one was stronger. And there was this, they saw this woman walking along with a cape and they said, we'll decide who's stronger, which one of us can get the cape off faster. And the wind drives first and the harder it blows, the more she clutches the cape. And then the son comes out, says my turn and she smiles and takes the cape off. And I guess my feeling is that I invite people

to change. I don't try and force them to, and I don't, and I sometimes medicate them, but I often, if I think other things will work better, I do that. I think my feeling is that the way to help people change is to make it, to provide immediate positive reinforcement, to help people feel better just about trying and about the way they're doing it. And if they succeed, great. And if they don't, they know they tried. But I'm not trying to force them into anything.

I'm trying to invite them. And so the process itself, uh, is enjoyable and interesting to people. And that's the way I get people to cooperate with me. And, you know, I, I feel that way with the other people who have made my life difficult sometimes, you know, reviewers of papers and grants and stuff. And I hear things I don't particularly want to hear sometimes, but the idea is to try and see things from their point of view and at least provide them with an opportunity to do the right thing, uh, by making things clear. So, uh, you know,

the, this sort of implicit respect that you can show people pays dividends. They feel it and they respond to it. And that's what I try to do in treating people and working with people too. I know that you reverie and your approach is typically for one-on-one meaning, you know, you with one person or the app with one person. Have you done any hypnotic work with a team, like a small business team of 12 people or something, and at one setting, helping them unlock or become more of themselves that they'd like to be? Well, yeah, just yesterday, actually,

we invited some terrific physical therapists to come, and we did a group session of hypnosis. We're trying to interest them. And they were saying, they were all saying, you know, yeah, sure, we do physical therapy, but that involves the brain. And sometimes I just play a meditation tape or something to get them in a frame of mind where they can accept their limitations, not see the problem as all or none, but more or less,

and feel good about themselves for managing it better. And they enjoyed it. And they said, we're going to use Reverie with the people we work with now. And one woman talked about how she had to have some serious dental work because she had TMJ and she's allergic to Novocaine. And she used, she learned hypnosis and got through it just fine. It was proud about it. And that issue of, you know, people who say, you know, my life is ruined if I don't,

if the pain doesn't stop completely, you know, I, you know, I can't accept it. I can't live with it. And they learned that they're making it worse by fighting it. And if you can instead view it as something that you can, uh, encounter and manage, um, you feel good, not just because the pain's better, but because you feel better about yourself. And so we were working with them and they were, they were surprising themselves. So that's one example. I've used it also, Michael, with women with metastatic breast cancer,

I ran support groups for women who were dealing with their anger, fear, and sadness, coping better, uh, learning to admire another women, what they admired in them, in them that they could see it in someone else better than in themselves, give advice to one another, help one another feel good about that. And we taught them self-hypnosis for pain control. And as a group, it was a randomized clinical trial. By the end of a year, the treatment group had half the pain the control group did on the same and very low amounts of medication. So it can be used in a group setting too to help people deal with very difficult problems.

And of course, swimming that you mentioned. Yes. Which is fun. Yeah. Doc, what a fun conversation. Thank you for your depth of wisdom and insight and being able to talk both brain structure and very applied nature and share some stories. And I just want to say thank you. Well, you're welcome. Thank you for the interview.

It was very thoughtful, caused me to reflect and very enjoyable interview, Michael. So thank you. Awesome. We're going to, it's my joy. Thank you. And we are absolutely going to support Reverie. We'll have all of the right links. And for shorthand right now, what is the best place you would like people to go to? You can go on the web to www.revery.com, get a lot of information about it, and figure out how to download and use it.

That's a great way to access it. The other two things are if you have an iOS phone, go to the app store. If you have an Android, go to Google play and you can download the app from there as well. Dr. Spiegel, thank you for being a disruptor. It's my pleasure. I'm honored with the title. Thank you. Thank you for being a disruptor too. That's great. Amen to that. Okay. All the best to you. Thank you. You too, Michael. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving Michael. Bye-bye. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.

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