Don Wood's Inspired Performance Program (TIPP) in Orlando uses a four-hour intensive session plus 30 days of audio brain retraining to treat addiction and mental health issues. The program claims an 80% success rate and costs nearly $7,500 per session, though it hasn't been reviewed by government agencies and Wood is a licensed Christian clinical counselor, not a state-licensed therapist.
Questions this video answers
One intense four-hour one-on-one session.
30 days of brain-retraining audio.
Orlando, Florida.
An 80% success rate (claim noted as anecdotal).
Nearly $7,500 for an in-person session.
Chapters
NBC's Yasmin Vesugin has more. Good morning. Good morning, guys. Good to see you. So anxiety and depression, they can be your body's reaction to past traumatic events. So what if you could resolve how your body responds to years of trauma in just a couple of hours? That is the idea behind the Inspired Performance Program. I traveled to Orlando to find out how it works. Across the U.S. mental health is a growing concern. More than one in five U.S. adults lives with a mental illness. Among those nearly 60 million Americans, only half receive help. Treatments range dramatically and many people are willing to try almost anything.
Like Michelle Sill, I went to several treatment facilities. But one thing I wasn't able to get rid of, triggers always had me going back to using again.
A heart drug and opioid addict for 17 years, Michelle says she hit rock bottom when she couldn't hold a job and lost custody of her daughter.
I had no control over my own life over anything anymore.
Then she heard about tip, which stands for the Inspired Performance Program.
I was like, well, at this point, I will take anything to get better.
TIPP is an experimental program based in Orlando, Florida, promising faster results than traditional therapies when dealing with anxiety, depression and trauma. Within one intense four hour session, followed by 30 days of brain retraining. Audios. Don Wood is Tip's creator.
And if you've had a traumatic event in your life, which most people have, you're in a very heightened state. So what I'm going to do with TIP is get you to take some of those high definition memories, get them to reprocess.
How do you disarm those traumatic memories?
If we can create that optimal mindset, the mind will actually do it all on its own.
To help some clients get into that optimal mindset, Wood uses tools like photoelectromagnetic field maps and even a sensory deprivation chamber. He says both can help slow your brain waves to relax the mind. But the main event, a four hour intensive one on one session. We asked Wood to demonstrate one technique on me.
Allow your eyes to close.
He asked me to think of a traumatic event in my past. I broke it up into 10 pictures.
Picture number eight. Picture number two. Picture number six.
As I repeated the images in my mind, he prompted me to break up the continuity.
Tell me if you notice it looking and feeling different as you're looking at it.
It's harder to put together.
That's it. So it's now taken out of that intensity, reformatting it for you.
Wood doesn't have a state issued license, but he is a licensed Christian clinical counselor. In a follow up interview, Wood told us he does not consider his program to be faith based.
I think the reason I don't lead with the Christian portion of it is because there's a stigma to it. If you're a Christian faith person, you're going to see, you want to see in the way it's presented. And if you're not, you're not going to be offended.
What contends tip has an 80% success rate. But all the evidence is anecdotal and tip hasn't been reviewed by any government agency.
When we think about a program like this that's promising to deliver results in such a short span of time, you have to be a little skeptical only because trauma is something that develops over time.
But experts like clinical psychologist Dr. Judy Ho say Wood's program may offer help in certain situations.
About 20 to 30% of people do not experience the kind of benefits that they want from efficacious treatment. So I believe that this type of program would be appropriate for someone like that.
The program is expensive with an in person session costing nearly $7,500. For Michelle, a participant in Wood study, the program was free. But Kim Ali did pay for tip. She says it was worth everything. I've invested money with quote unquote experts and I didn't get the results that I'm from Dr. Woods. As long as someone is not causing harm or trauma to me, I'm willing to invest. We spoke to four of Wood's clients. They said it didn't matter that Wood is not a state licensed therapist. They were ready for anything to help. Michelle went through TIP in 2018. She'll be six years sober in February.
When I look back and think about things now, they no longer affect me like they used to. Days of parenting can be hard, work can be hard, but that's just life. I've learned how to live life on life's terms and cope with things.
So we actually asked some of Wood's clients if they had tried other forms of therapy and help before, such as talk therapy, rehab, even medication. They all had. Yet nothing seemed to work like this program.
You asked a good question about the actual contraption because when you got in.
There, yeah, it gets you into this dream state. So that is the idea. You go in there for 30 minutes and you step spin in this theta chamber as they call it. But the whole idea is you want to get your brain into this dream state because that is when your brain is more malleable to be able to get reprogrammed with these traumatic events. Thank you so much. It was good for me, too, by the way. Exactly.
We do want to remind viewers at home right now, or if you're listening right now as well, if you or a loved one is struggling with mental health, do consult your doctor first. You stop seeking help from. You don't want to stop seeking help from a doctor or therapist or professional. Professional resources that are widely available. Talk to your doctor.
Yeah.
Great idea. All right. Well, coming up, they sometimes say laughter is the best medicine. Well, here's a guy with a doctorate, Josh Gad, live and student.
