In this HypnoBiz Show interview, host Selena Valentine talks with therapist and author Christoffel Sneijders about his Three Brains Theory, which expands the classic "head‑brain, reptilian‑brain, limbic‑brain" model to include a heart brain (≈90,000 cells) and a gut brain (≈500 million cells). Christoffel explains that the gut brain is the primary, safety‑monitoring system; the heart brain governs connection and compassion; the head (neocortex) provides logical analysis. He argues that most conventional therapy focuses only on the head, limiting success to about 30 %, because trauma and emotions are stored somatically. By learning to recognize which brain dominates a person’s behavior, therapists and individuals can improve communication, relationships, and personal growth. He shares concrete characteristics of each brain (e.g., gut‑brain people avoid apologies and lie to protect themselves, heart‑brain people prioritize connection, head‑brain people act like an analytical spreadsheet), and gives real‑world examples such as a marital crisis where recognizing gut‑brain patterns led to an insight in minutes. Christoffel describes how his research, intuition, and background in Reiki and Haptonomie led him to write the self‑help book How Men and Women Fit: Finally Understand Your Partner with the Three Brains Theory, which offers self‑assessment tools and communication guidelines. He emphasizes his passion for spreading this knowledge to create a more heart‑driven world, citing the upcoming HypnoBiz Europe conference in Amsterdam as a platform for global collaboration. The interview blends theory, personal anecdotes, and promotional information, aiming to give listeners an "aha" moment about the three brains and their impact on therapy and everyday relationships.
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Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining me today for another episode of the HypnoBiz Show. I'm your host Selena D. Valentine, and my special guest today is my HypnoBiz Europe partner Christoffel Sneijders.
Hey, good morning or good evening, wherever you're watching. Have a beautiful day.
And you specialize in the 3 brain theories. So can you just tell people what that is and how did you get so Why are you so passionate about this?
Yeah, but the 2 beautiful questions. What is it? Now everybody knows we have 3 brains, and when you ask people, say, yes, we have 3 here, the neocortex, human brain, reptilian brain, and the limbic brain. And although that's true, it's totally wrong because we have a heart brain, 90,000 brain cells, and a gut brain, 500 million brain cells. And why is that so freaking important? Because as a therapist, as we are, Psychologists only have 15 to whatever kind of research do 30% of success rate because they all stay in the head. If you go to Peter Levine, who's the somatic expert in this world, you will see every trauma is stored in the body. It's when we have a broken heart, where do we feel it? In our heart. Your gut instinct is there, and actually it's really true. So when I started I saw once Robert Dilts, and he spoke about the somatic body 10 years ago. I thought, that's interesting. How does it work? And from that, I started to work with clients and students. Well, what does it really mean? And I became aware that there is, based on the polyvagal theory and other kinds of theories, there is a connection. Actually, your gut brain is your first brain and the most important brain. If you don't feel safe, this part is shut off and all the logic disappears. You can see there's some precedence how they act. If it's now, and all around the world, I'm not talking about yours, but also from Middle East and those kind of things. They have such a big ego. Ego is stored in the gut that they don't think anymore. When you work as a therapist, it means you can talk whatever you want, but if somebody does not feel safe, it will not happen. So the last 5 years, I was really focused on networking with people. And I became aware you can make massive changes in people, really massive, that it's something like, what? When you really connect with the heart brain or the gut brain. And it has some special techniques and it is just amazing. And maybe, you know, I wrote a book about it and that's more the popular form, how we as men and females connect, but also with your partner, but with your friends, with your family, with your colleagues. Because if you ask somebody, How good do you have the relationship, or do you understand your close ones? Score from 1 to 10. Almost nobody says 9 or 10 on the whole scale. And it's amazing. We're born and we're educated by our parents to communicate and be part of a family. And after, in my case, a little bit more years, we still are not able to really connect.
Mm-hmm.
And that's really because we forget that then we sometimes communicate from this part. And I really spent the last 2 years, really the last 2 years, from all the research. How can I give a simple guide to become aware how people act and don't act, and what you can do about it? And if you read that, it's almost a therapy book. Also not. I call it self-help. It's a book that really, I think every therapist and every human should read because also it it shows how we can educate people different. To become more heart people. Heart is connection. You have one big heart, Celine. I know that you're an amazing person, but that's how we connect with people. But we teach kids to be more competitive, and competitive means gut brain. And if you're competitive, it's about me. We teach kids from younger, early age, it's about me, competition. You're better than somebody else.
And that's the gut brain and not the, the head brain?
No, the heart brain. The head brain is just logic. The head brain is just one big database. It's like your hard drive on your computer.
Okay.
Your heart's about connection. And when you play together as kids, you create a heart brain. When you cuddle somebody, it's heart brain. But we communicate, we learn people to be better than somebody else. And that's good for success, but it is success for me. And the thing is, how can we connect that? And if you read about that, it's just amazing. And I can talk hours about it. I will not do that. But the main important thing is if you know how those 3 brains work and how they actually decide, have a hierarchy in decisions, therapy becomes easy. This one is special for you, Celine.
Oh yeah. And sign it. Don't give that away.
No, no, I will sign it for you. And by the way, why I love the colors, Because it's the opposite. When we think about purple, it's always about softness and sweetness for females. And this is more a rational thing. So that's why I designed it like this. But this one is yours, Celine, with the signature and with a little kiss and a hug. So you can show it always.
Thank you. I think it's so important. I think a lot of people may not know the different brains, you know, in their body. So I'm sure this will be a new concept for them, but once they learn it and understand it, it'll almost be like an aha moment. Like, Of course that makes sense. It's like we just have to educate the people on the different brains in the body.
Yeah. Now yesterday, as an example, I was texting with a lady who has a marriage and her marriage is something falling down. And I just said, okay, uh, this, this, this, this, is this happening? And she said, yes. I said, now those are all 4 signs of, say, gut-brain person who has somewhere like a twitched gut brain. So it's useless as long as she's doing this to change.
Mm-hmm.
And she had something like, but it all makes sense what you said. I said, yes, thank you so much. Only took me 5 years of research in that part. Now, but she had something like really an aha moment from actually whatever I do is useful because she's a huge heart person. She just likes to have a beautiful, sweet connection. So the harder he hits emotionally, the sweeter she becomes. It's a heart brain versus gut brain.
Hmm.
So the gut brain hits, the heart brain starts to please even more. And she starts pleasing and pleasing and pleasing. And the more she pleases, the more he thinks, yes, please be more pleased with more hitting helps. And it's just a totally disruptive relationship. And when I pointed it out based on that examples, she said something like, okay, makes sense. I know what I'm, what I'm going to do. Now, I will not say what she's going to do, but we both know that she said, I'm actually calling somebody that's called a lawyer to make an end of this because it doesn't make sense anymore. And it only took 1 hour to really get her insight, to get her realizing she was barking up the wrong tree. So it was a mission impossible.
Hmm. So Can, when reading the book, can you, are you able to identify which, because you know how some people are more dominant in one brain than the other. Yeah. Will you be able to identify which one you are and kind of understand yourself and your modalities?
Absolutely. Uh, uh, uh, there are examples in the book about what kind of communication they do. So you can write a communication. One of the beautiful things of a gut brain, there are 2 main things they do. They never say sorry, and they love to lie. Why don't they say sorry? Because that means they would take responsibility for their actions. It would make them vulnerable. So they don't say sorry. They lie. And why do they lie? Because that's protecting of themselves. So they like to twist and turn so they stay safe. Now, there are 2 main things you can really become aware. That's a gut-brain action. That's never a heart-brain action. Because lying hurts somebody else and heart brain will never do that. A gut brain does that because it doesn't care about somebody else, cares about him.
So that's a characteristic of a gut brain that almost also sounds like a narcissist.
Yes. Yeah. But the narcissist is actually, I call a gut brain a seagull. Did you ever see a seagull on the beach? So you're on the beach, a seagull catches something and all the other seagulls are running behind it or flying behind it to steal it. It's only about them. You know, the movie Nemo, When Nemo flies away in the pelican's beak and all those seagulls go behind it. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. That's a gut brain. It's only mine. Extremely narcissistic because it's about them. They don't think about others because there's a need for survival.
Okay. So that's the characteristic. Give us one characteristic of the heart brain and then also a characteristic of the head brain, just so we can kind of understand the 3 different types.
Absolutely. The heart brain is about compassion, about connection. So the heart brains will do its best to understand the other person and keep the connection alive. So it will not hit or whatever, but it will connect. So it will even put him or herself down to keep the connection alive. And so we call that in therapy sometimes order-directed. So it directs on the order and helps to please. A beautiful example, of course, is a mom who takes care of their kids or Céline who takes care of a dog. A heart brain, because they care of it, although sometimes you don't like it. That's characteristic of the heart brain. So heart brain could say no to themselves to please the other. And the head brain is, uh, I would say if you like to see the perfect head brain, you look at the Big Bang at Sheldon. They rationalize everything. So they would say, oh, it doesn't make sense. So the, the, the head doesn't have any emotions. And the emotions are the same in the limbic brain, but actually in the heart brain and in the gut brain, because both of them Also create hormones. That's not only the limbic brain that creates hormones and neurotransmitters, also the heart brain and the gut brain does it. The head brain, our neocortex, doesn't do anything. It doesn't feel. Because if you have an operation in your head, they don't have to put anesthetic in there because you don't feel anything in there.
Yeah.
It's just rational. It just is almost like a walking Excel sheet. Does it fit? Doesn't it fit? So if it does not understand what's happening, it does not go on. So it has— yes, sorry.
So the head brain is more like an analytical brain?
Yeah. Yes, it is. Because this database has only one big function. It is from based on all the experiences of the past, predict the future. Because all we can say, we evolved, but we're still animals. The only thing we like to do is survival. And our head brain is installed like that to give us information. What did we do yesterday? How can we do it better tomorrow? That's why we have issues. If we would not think about yesterday, we would not get depressed. If we would not think about tomorrow, we would not get anxious. So anxiousness and depression comes partly from here because it doesn't make sense.
Oh, so people that are anxious or depressed or thinking about the past. Those are more head brain people.
Uh, no, they're not head brain people, but the head brain is actually activated, but the heart brain does make sense of it.
So I mean, well, maybe they're— are they more like head brain dominated?
They're more head. Now, if they're really head brain dominated, they don't care about the past and the future so hard because they don't feel it.
Okay.
If you look at the A pilot who's extremely head-brain, or surgeon, they don't feel. Those pilots, even if they go down on their plane, they still think procedure A, B, C, D, E, F, while probably you and me would start screaming, oh, we're going down.
I don't even like that analogy. Don't even talk about that. That's tragic.
But the head-brain doesn't feel, just follows all the procedure steps. And that's how you survive. A heart brain would start screaming from what's happening, and the gut brain probably would— I don't know what they would do when we're going down— probably jump out of the plane and leave the whole plane behind them.
Don't say that. Let's get off of this topic. Okay, I plan on traveling a lot in the upcoming future, and I don't want to think about that. By the way, Anne-Marie Potmeer says hi. She's watching from the Netherlands. And she's a heart brain. Do you see what she wrote in Dutch? Can you understand that?
Uh, no, I didn't see the, the messages.
It says, Christoffel, what is de titel van de boek? I'm imagining—
What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what's the title of the book in Dutch? And the title of the book is How Men and Women Fit: Finally Understand Your Partner with the Three Brains Theory. And, uh, to, to say one commercial is available on Amazon, Barnes Noble, iBooks, and oh, everybody else, everywhere else.
That was great. That's my first time attempting Dutch. How did I do?
You did it quite good. Your pronunciation is good, but you saw your whole face. But I don't know what I'm saying, but probably it's it's good.
Before I gotta answer that, I'm going to have to learn a few words from you just so I can get around a little bit and try to you know in with the locals. Yes.
The most important thing is goedemorgen. That's good morning. But Dutch and English have somewhere sometimes a lot of similarities if you think about it. So it's easier. Yeah.
She also said dank, dank je wel.
That means thank you. Dank u wel. Yes.
Dank u wel. See, I'm learning. So that's great. How did you decide to make this your niche?
How did I make— that's a good question because what I came aware of Dat ik heb sommige, wanneer je werkt met mensen en waarschijnlijk je weet het, als je ook een therapeut bent, dat soms je kan voelen mensen. Ik heb Reiki, Haptonomie, dat is voor Anne-Brie, ze weet het, Haptonomie is een Duits ding over voelen. En ik kwam erbij, ik heb sommige, je kunt zeggen, de gift, ik kan het voelen. Dus meestal weet ik, voordat ik weet iets. Dus als ik met een cliënt werk, denk ik, hé, ik voel iets. Wat gebeurt er? De cliënt zegt, oh, ik voel hetzelfde. So I came aware I have some of that gift and it's okay, whatever it is, you have to do something with it. So I started to work with it. And if you think about head, heart, gut, and I'm this weekend, I'm going to do a workshop about it connected with the 6 skills of Ericksonian therapy. It makes so much sense to connect because as a therapist or as a coach, or as a, you have that intuition. How do you know what you're going to do? And if you really can, if you really open those gates, you can really connect with people because we're all energy, so you can connect. And why do I make it my niche? Because I think if we know this, this world becomes freaking amazing, beautiful. Like John Lennon was singing about it 30 years ago, Imagine.
Yeah.
If we really would educate people to become more heart brain, we would not have wars anymore.
So true.
War is all because why, why would we beat up each other? Why would we bullying on school? We boast as a therapist how deep the scars are if somebody is bullied in school because you're too tall, too ugly, too fat, too whatever. And it is horrendous what we do to each other as kids based on our education and based on what's accepted.
Yeah.
And it starts, of course, as parents. But if we could change that for a little bit better world, I say, that's my big passion. I have 3 kids in Holland. I would really love that when we leave this world, we leave this world a little bit more beautiful than when we entered. That's my really big passion. So for me, as I said once, this book, I love that it sells just as much as Mars and Venus, because this actually demystifying that we are different, we are the same.
Mm-hmm.
That's 15 million copies. And why? Not because I love to sell so many copies, but to really start understanding really at the sake, make love like war. Really, let's really connect with our hearts.
No more war, like you said. Make love instead.
Yes, absolutely. So that's really my big passion, and that's why it's also— it's a niche, but it is the biggest niche you can ever have because it's all about us. And when you work with people about it— why do we do this conference? Not because we like to become really rich from it, because it's a massive amount of work. And we don't get massively rich about it. No, we do it because it's our passion. It's our love to share that knowledge we have. And we put so much effort in it. You're at 10 o'clock in the evening. Why is that? Because of the passion to share this.
See, you understand me.
So that's what we love to do. So we have a passion, and that's not about whatever. We like to share and to connect people with each other so they can learn from each other. And that's something else as keeping your knowledge with you so you become special. I love to share it so people become better.
Wow. I swear I must be heart brain because I'm resonating with all of this.
Yes, you, you are, Selena. That's why we work together. Because I also have one of those beautiful heart brains. Uh, I also have a gut brain that came aware and, and, and a head. But that's why we love, that's why we love to work together because we understand each other and we have a passion.
It's so true. We're great partners, I must say.
Yes.
So for everyone that's watching, uh, if you want to see, uh, Christoffel's— learn about the 3 brain theories, you want to visit us in Europe, go to hypnobizeurope.com. It's the first conference of its kind in Amsterdam with presenters from 13 countries, over 50 presenters in the beautiful Amsterdam with all the canals and the Van Gogh Museum.
