How I Hypnotized Myself to Learn 5 Languages

All right. Hello, Polyglot Conference Global. I'm honored to be here giving a talk. I'm Edmund Zheng, the American Hypnotist, as you can see right here. And this is officially a presentation about how I became a polyglot, the methods I use to speak English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Chinese. But most of all, it's kind of a testament to the possibility of the human mind, right? And the purpose of this presentation is to just show you guys how we can use our mind to learn languages at a much faster clip than the traditional methods that we're used to. And so I want to start this presentation with basically an idea that learning a language, we often think of it as Duolingo, we often think of it as courses, as all these things, these certifications And I have experienced learning languages in a lot of different facets, but the main component that really, when I look back, made me a hypnotist, made me a polyglot, made me all these things, is you have to add some sort of adventure in your life. And so just for some background about how I became a polyglot, so at the beginning of this year I wanted to get into the hypnotist world, and I decided to myself that I was going to fly to Brazil with zero Portuguese knowledge, learn Portuguese in 6-8 weeks, and then perform a live hypnosis show. Keep in mind, this is not something that I have experience with in English, right? Performing in front of an audience. I wanted to do it the hard way. I wanted to really, really go at it. And at the same time learn another language. And so what ensued was I arrived in Brazil, I celebrated New Year's there in 2026, which I highly do recommend. It's a beautiful time, 2 million people on the beach all wearing white, partying to celebrate the new year. But after that, I was thinking about how I could learn Portuguese. I was thinking about how I could learn this beautiful language. And of course, it's easy to think that because at the time I already spoke Spanish and French. And so part of me was like, yeah, it's just going to be really easy, right? But I noticed that without the adventure, without some sort of— because if I were to just talk to natives in the street, if I were to just have conversations, I wouldn't be able to have the same level of intensity that I was really dreaming for when I was like, I'm gonna go to Brazil, I'm gonna learn Portuguese, and I'm gonna perform a hypnosis show. And again, what ensued was what I would do is in Portuguese in Brazil, I would go up with a camera and a nice dress shirt. So I— and I'm Asian, so I look totally out of place for the beaches of Copacabana and the beaches of Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro. I would go up to these groups of Brazilians and ask if I could hypnotize them in Portuguese. And at first, it was really silly because it was me, this gringo, this random dude, just like going up and being like, "Hey, can I hypnotize you?" Oi, eu sou uma gringo. Posso te hipnotizar? Everyone was a little confronted at first with like, what is going on? But over time, more and more people started to say yes. As I got more confident in my approaches, and I Had less approach anxiety. And by the end, by the— by a couple weeks in time, I had a few of these like hypnosis routines lined up. And all goes to say, this is just because when you add this sense of adventure in it— because I would wake up every day in Rio de Janeiro, I lived in the favela at the time, and I would think, what is a way that I could really like just go out of my comfort zone today? And that was really it. It was just going up. It was a culmination of going up to these people on the beach, not knowing their language, and also admitting that I'm not an expert in Portuguese because that made them more likely to say yes, and then hypnotizing them. And I filmed it for my Instagram. And so that— I— that my main point here is really, really add the adventure language aspect in whatever you're doing. And I have this poster on the right because as I went on, I did my show in Brazil. I also decided, you know what, since I've done this in Portuguese, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to Argentina, a country I've never been to before, and I'm going to practice my rusty Spanish until I get to the point where I can perform a live hypnosis show in Spanish. Keep in mind, I've never done this in English before. I've never brought people up on stage and hypnotized them in English, right? And so part of my entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial muscles and my creativity muscles were really exercised by also, for example, creating this freaking poster, being like, you know what, I'm gonna go to this designer, I'm gonna have them do, do like a poster showing the American Hypnotist. And that's when I really thought about my brand as a human being and what I really stand for and how I really thought about language learning and hypnosis. And yeah, so just a little background and more. So I'm Edmund Zheng, the American Hypnotist. And before doing any of this, before doing any of these goals, I backpacked the world. So I've been to 56 countries. And in the— in those 56 countries, I learned a little bit of English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Mandarin. And I've hypnotized by this point, honestly, this might be outdated, more than 3,000, 4,000 people at this point. And it's been for various things. It's been for entertainment, but it's also been for therapy reasons, as well as the transformational aspect, which I'm very, very— and I'm honestly most proud of. And so yeah, you see on the right here this image of, uh, this comedy club in São Paulo. And the way I— it's funny just thinking back to it because I arrived there zero Portuguese, and then In a couple months after Carnival, we had a live show at São Paulo's most famous comedy club, My F Comedy Club. What I did is, uh, and this is again, this is about the adventure landscape that I really recommend you take on if you're going to learn another language, right? I arrived in São Paulo. This was after the beaches in Rio de Janeiro, and I made a commitment to myself. I was like, you know what, I'm going to go up to a bunch of comedy clubs in person and pitch myself. And remember, this is like back when Claude was becoming popular, when these AI tools were starting to become popular, right at the beginning of this year among the general public. So I was thinking like, oh, why don't I just use AI to draft all these emails and then do all this cold outreach? But you know what, I was like, nope, I'm just gonna go up. So what I did is, uh, one day, one cloudy day, I believe, in late January or early February, I went up to this comedy club in São Paulo. I was like, hey, can I talk to your manager? And I just remember how nervous I was. And the manager comes out, he's like, hey, what's up? I'm like, hey, like, I do shows internationally, I'm an international performer, and I would love to do a show at your comedy club. Now, unbeknownst to him, that was actually my first time pitching myself to any comedy club to do any sort of hypnosis show. ever in my life. Uh, but I just had the air of confidence because I had hypnotized myself before to have the identity to really act like this is just something I do all the time, right? Like, you know, this is like normal for me to like just go up to people in the comedy clubs and be like, hey, I'm an international performer. Like, this is what I do as a career. This is who I am. And so that was my whole idea for all of it. And now the 300 words and the conviction is what really matters, because at the end of the day, I figured out that to learn any language, you really only need 200 to 300 words. And I would say it's, you know, we talk about the basic conjugations and stuff. I would say it's 2/3 that and then 1/3 like actual slang. Like, for example, in Brazilian Portuguese, it's like Oi gente, tudo bem? Like these, you have these little— I would call them filler words— that once you know these words, once, once you are able to figure out how a culture speaks with each other, honestly, you could just know the basic conjugations and these filler words that you could quote unquote fool a lot of people into believing that you speak the language. But it's not really fooling because again, we're talking about the idea of self-efficacy, right? And ultimately the idea that you become what you think. And so if you fool yourself to believe you speak Portuguese, there is a— I think the easiest way to describe this is there is a subconscious rhythm that operates underneath any language. For example, I was meeting this Brazilian dude for lunch one time in early April. This was in Rio de Janeiro. And he had no idea who I was. He had no idea I was American. And I just go up to him and I have these two quote unquote filler words. E aí, mano? Tudo bem? And these aren't words that you would learn on Duolingo. These are not words that you would learn in a textbook, but they're essentially words that's like, hey, what's up? How is going, man? How's it going, man? The same could be true in French. For example, quoi de neuf? What's new? You wouldn't learn that in a textbook. You wouldn't really learn that in a YouTube video, but you only learn that once you've lived in Paris and you see people just talking with each other. And then once I started to adopt that, there's a light bulb that sticks in the natives' heads and they realize, oh shoot, this isn't just like some random foreigner, this is actually a native French person. And so what they'll do they will activate the subconscious brain muscles to start to talk with you in a native tone rather than switching to what they would talk to foreigners, which is much slower. And so as a result, you're basically training your brain to attach yourself to that native tone much, much faster. And so I highly recommend everyone really dig into these sort of native-sounding words, these slang words, verlan, whatever you want to call it. Because at the end of the day, you want to maximize the amount of time that it takes for a native speaker of the language you're trying to learn— you want to maximize the time it takes until they realize they can switch to English. Because that's the worst thing, right? It's always the worst thing when someone switches to English. And so the longer you can— I don't know if fool is the word, but demonstrate that you belong in the frequency of this language, the longer you can maximize, maximize that, that is how you supercharge your language learning, in my opinion. But 3 hypnotic principles I really want to leave you guys with is that the last and the first thought of your day is really important when learning a language. The second is that the uncomfortable pause is extremely important. And 3 is to just do hard things in another language instead of your native one. So make the, make the language your last thought at night and your first in the morning. I'll tell you an example. So I hypnotized myself to learn French in 6 weeks. And how did I do that? So 3 years ago, I was working an internship, uh, with a self-hypnosis startup actually. And what I did is I would work with them in French during the day. You know, I, I told them I want to work in French, I don't want you guys to switch to English at all. But I had a very strict night and morning routine. At nighttime, I would join the Discord. I don't know if you guys know Language Simp at all, the YouTube channel. He makes a lot of, uh, comedic content about language learning, and at the time I really loved his content and it was really funny. He had this huge Discord community This community was so essential to my French learning because I would hop on these Discord calls because he had like a channel if you wanted to learn French or Spanish or English, right? So I would late at night every night join the French channel, get on Discord with a bunch of— of not natives, just people who are learning French, and just shoot the shit with them for like an hour or 2. And I know it's like the most nerdy thing ever, but you're literally at the Polyglot Conference Global, so Screw it, we're all nerds learning languages together. But this really, really changed my brain structure because the thing is, I made it so this was the last thing I would do before I slept at night. And the thing, the way the subconscious brain works is in your life, I'm sure there's examples of when you have thought about a problem at nighttime and then you wake up in the morning and you have some sort of insight. towards how you're going to solve that problem. Maybe the problem is not completely solved, but you have an idea of how you're going to solve it. You have some sort of new angle of thinking about it. And that's how hypnosis works, right? Because as I explain to people all the time, we are always in our lives, we're always either awake or asleep, or we're in the middle. Hypnosis basically happens when you're in that middle state. And by definition, if you want to go from being awake to asleep, as you're laying in bed, you have to pass through that in-between theta middle state. And so that's what's really, really important. And so basically, by making French the last thing I would listen to at night, it made it impossible for me to think in English during that theta state. And so my brain overnight would work on these sort of French phrases. This was kind of crazy because it happened to the point where about a month into my internship, I was already dreaming in French. And then in the mornings, I would, as you guys are all very familiar with Anki, I would do my Anki decks. I would, I would train them while I was eating breakfast, while I was on the walk to go work. And the combination of these 2 activities really made it, especially in the morning, because in the morning when I use the Anki decks, what you're essentially telling your brain on a very subconscious level is Okay, I'm confident enough to start my day in this language, and therefore I can continue in the day in this language, right? Because again, night and morning, the most important states of your brain. If you look at any podcast about success, about entrepreneurship, they will all agree on this one principle. Another thing that is very, very important if you're going to learn any language, in my opinion, is that we don't talk enough about as polyglots is getting comfortable with the uncomfortable pause. What do I mean by that? It's by literally not switching to your native language. For example, if you're in a cafe ordering something and your mind is having that pause where you're still thinking about what to say, you got to learn to get used to it. You got to learn to really accept that as part of your journey on a very, very intuitive level. And this is something that only really gets trained, I believe, once you start noticing it. Once you start noticing your metacognition, aka your ability to figure out what you're thinking at every— any, any given time, you're gonna reach a point where you're like, huh, okay, I'm in an uncomfortable pause right now, and I'm not— I'm gonna stay here, you know. I'm gonna be okay with this. I'm not gonna switch to English. I'm not going to give up, right? The more reps you do with that when you're speaking your language out in the wild, I find has been incredibly useful because at the end of the day, whoever you're talking to, whoever native you're talking to, they are rooting for you. They really want you to succeed at your language learning journey, and they're just appreciative you're making that extra effort. So My second principle is I would say really get comfortable with those pauses. And then the third thing is, I talked about this earlier with the hypnosis shows, but again, do what's hard in your native language in that other language. Essentially what you're doing is you're in your brain, I believe you are shocking yourself, giving it a huge electric shock because For example, the picture on the right, right here depicted, that's me performing stand-up comedy in Spanish in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Now, when I signed up for this, I had never performed stand-up in my entire life, and to do it in Spanish was one of the most nerve-wracking things. And I remember I was just like going over my Anki decks, I was going over my Google Doc with my entire script Because stand-up, if any of you guys have done stand-up, it's like 90% scripted and timing and everything. But the principles of what I learned about the Spanish language and just the way it works, I learned so much by just doing this completely foreign thing to me, this stand-up comedy script in Spanish. And it turned out to be a massive, massive success. And to this day, it's kind of like a point of pride for me because I actually refuse to do any stand-up comedy show because now I can say forever that my— that I have only done stand-up comedy outside of my native language, which is English. And so I just highly recommend just find what's hard in your native language and then doing that in your target language. And also, I promise everyone you talk to about this is definitely going to be rooting for you. Now, to finish this off, what I would like to invite you guys to do, and this is totally, totally up to you if you want to join in, but I'm going to do a live hypnosis where I actually hypnotize you through the screen to imagine as if you can learn any other language. If you— to imagine as if you're stepping into this alter ego Where you have just— because again, as polyglots, we know the fear that comes with speaking. We know the fear that comes with being like, you know what, I'm not going to stick with English. I'm really going to make an effort to connect with this culture, to learn this language, because at the end of the day, that is what makes us incredibly human— our ability to go over the aisle And the ability to really see someone, right? And one of the best ways to see another human being is by speaking their native language, as we all know. But the fear is in the way, right? And we can talk about that forever. I'm sure we have— all have different strategies about how to get over that. But what I would like to offer right here, if you are willing, is a live hypnosis where I help you visualize this magical wardrobe in this way that you can just visualize your ability to learn other languages. So for anyone who is up for it, what I would like you to do is I would like you to just stare at this play button right here. And as the music starts to play, as you're staring at this pause button, I would like you to take a deep breath in. And whenever you're ready, just take a massive deep breath out. Just very, very relaxing. Continue to stare at that button, feeling every part of your body relaxing. Take another very relaxing deep breath in. And just take a really relaxing deep breath out. Wonderful, wonderful. Just relaxing into your chair wherever you're seeing this. And whenever you're ready, take one last really, really deep breath in. And just take a really massive deep breath out, feeling oh so relaxed, so, so relaxed, to the point where you can just let yourself start to relax your mind, your body. And as your mind starts to relax more, even more, your body will start to relax more, even more, the mind and your body becoming one, 100%, 200% relaxed. If you haven't yet, I invite you to just let your eyes feel heavier and heavier and heavier up until the moment where they can just close. Your eyelids completely shut, locked, locked to the point where even if you tried to open your eyes, it would be impossible. Just totally glued shut. And in this state, imagine as if you have entered an elevator, and the elevator takes you down even deeper. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. And the deeper you go, the better you feel, and the better you feel, the deeper you go. You can let every word I say take you even deeper and deeper and deeper into this experience. You can let every breath take you even deeper and deeper and deeper into this experience. That's right. You can let every sound you hear take you deeper and deeper and deeper. That's right. Relaxing your entire body from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. Really feeling it now. Really feeling every part of your body just oh so relaxed. And I want you to imagine that right now we're in a very, very magical part of your mind. This is a part of your mind that you actually access every night before you sleep, a part of your mind that you access From the moment you wake up, and this is your subconscious brain, and you understand that the most important mental work, the most important work you'll ever do on a mental level, is always done in this very level of your mind, right? Totally just wading into that feeling right now. And now I want you to imagine that there is a door in front of you. It is a glowing glowing door. And behind this door is an opportunity for you to just completely reshape how you view yourself when you speak another language. And so I want you to imagine you've turned that doorknob and you open the door and you walk into a beautiful, magical, grand wardrobe. You look around the wardrobe and you can see all different clothes. You can see any type of clothes that you want. It's all there. Any type of accessories you want to wear, it's all there. Imagine yourself with this sort of childlike glee of joy as you enter this wardrobe. You know, you start to look around and you see ways that you can combine outfits. You see these outfits that you've never seen before. You see your dream clothes. You see Parts of your dream self, your dream identity. And so I want you to practice yourself putting on your ideal outfit. And while you're putting on this ideal outfit, you're you feel so fulfilled on the inside. You're gleaming with joy. You're so happy right now. And for a second, I want you to look in the mirror. When you have your entire outfit assembled, just look yourself in the mirror and just feel how fulfilled you are, how happy you are. Look at yourself because you're having this sort of dual effect where you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you just feel so passionate. You feel the more you look at yourself in the mirror, the more confident you get, and the more confident you get, the better you pose in the mirror, which makes You look even more confident in the mirror, which makes you more confident on the inside. So it's this mirror effect, this feedback loop, right? And while you're in this state, I want you to imagine as if you had a screenshot ability in your vision, like an iPhone can screenshot, like a phone can screenshot. You have this ability to take it and just take a snap. of that moment, of you looking at the mirror, of you feeling fantastic, of you feeling like you're about to have the best day of your life, right, wearing this beautiful outfit. And I want you to imagine as if your brain, the computer that is your brain, you can save this photo, you can save the screenshot into the various screenshots folder of your brain that you can access at any given time. And now I want you to imagine as if your soul is being lifted from the magical wardrobe, lifted into the air all the way to the heavens. And you're now— you're looking down on yourself, and it's as if you're looking down and you can teleport yourself into a new reality. This reality being the next time that you are practicing speaking your target language. Imagine yourself making the right words, making the right mistakes even, and imagine yourself trying your absolute best. But I want you to imagine the next moment where you're in one of those uncomfortable pauses. Someone just asked you a question and you're figuring out how to conjugate this and you're, or you're figuring out that word. And your brain's having that sort of loading screen, right? But I want you to, in that moment, imagine right now that you're retrieving that screenshot in your vision. It's as if you can close your eyes and imagine that vision of yourself looking at yourself in the mirror, feeling absolutely confident, feeling absolutely amazing, feeling like you can do anything. And I want you to just remember that that outfit is what you can wear at any time on a mental level, because you understand on a deep level now That what really matters is your ability to tap into this screenshot. And it is from tapping into the screenshot that you will start to notice that anytime you enter these uncomfortable pauses, you are going to feel a sense of liberty, of gratitude that you're here learning another language. And that is going to propel you to become even more comfortable in these uncomfortable pauses, which will allow you to learn the language Faster, deeper, and on a more fulfilling level. And you can smile knowing this. You can be so proud of yourself knowing that you have this ability that is imbued in yourself from the rest— for the rest of your life. And you just realize that the only thing you really need to do from now is, again, anytime you're speaking with someone and you enter that uncomfortable pause, it's as if you can just close your eyes. And just go deep into that screenshot. Imagine that screenshot. And then as you open your eyes, you can speak as if you're wearing that magical outfit. I'm gonna count from 1 to 5. When I do reach 5, you're gonna come back totally, totally recharged, wide awake, and just ready to have a great rest of your Polyglot Conference Global, ready to soak in all the knowledge Of all the talks you're about to attend, really just feeling fulfilled and feeling grateful for having this opportunity, this unparalleled opportunity to be around a bunch of other polyglots who are on the same mission of advancing the laws of human connection, of advancing world peace through our ability to learn other languages. Nod your head when you're absolutely sure of that. 1. Slowly, slowly bring your awareness back to where we are in the room right now, feeling a surge of energy. In your fingertips, in your toes. 2, starting to feel absolutely amazing, feeling like you want to take a big, big, big stretch. 3, feeling your head washed through with cold spring water, eyes clear, nose clear, chest clear, stomach clear, and all levels of your life. 4, opening your eyes right now. And 5, totally, totally wide awake, fully alert, fully wide awake. Take a deep breath in, taking all the good positive energy, and Breathe out all the negative energy and stress, leaving you feel so good, so wonderful, like you can do absolutely anything you want in this life. If you've never gotten hypnotized, well, I applaud you for your first hypnosis. And if you have, welcome back to this beautiful, beautiful post-state. And so you realize that in this moment It's all you need. And this is why I'm so passionate about hypnosis to learn languages as a conduit to learn anything in your life. Because at the end of the day, us as language learners, we're almost on the same quest to connect the world. And by using hypnosis, we can do our part, learn more languages, connect with more people. And make the world a better place. So thank you very much for listening to my talk. I'm gonna put my face over here. So I am the American Hypnotist, and I will say, just as my, as my, uh, Instagram and my LinkedIn are right here— Zoom keeps tracking my camera, but it's okay— I just, I just want to say that part of the pride that I feel as the American Hypnotist is that in the US, we have so few polyglots, so few people who actually want to learn languages. And so especially if you, if you watching this are an American and you want to be a part of the movement of the group of people, the polyglots, that make speaking languages more popular in the US, please reach out because I think this is a uniquely American phenomenon where we don't have a lot of enthusiasm about language learning. And so I'm very, very proud to champion this idea that really the world is our oyster if we decide to learn other languages. So with all that being said, thank you for listening and watching my presentation. I really, really appreciate it. And I just hope you have a great rest of your conference. And as well, please reach out if you have any questions about hypnosis language learning, you want to do a collab, talk about hypnosis, anything related to these things, because I live personally for the intersection of hypnosis, language learning, and geopolitics. So I really, really appreciate it, and thank you very much.