Self-Hypnosis for Self-Mastery with Emmett Miller MD [Episode 15]

The show you're about to hear is a recording from Dr. Miller's webinar series titled Life Meditations. He began this series in response to the pandemic, and his goal has been to provide wisdom, practical tools, and comfort to people during these stressful times. Watch the entire series at drmiller.com/lifemeditations. That's drmiller.com/lifemeditations. Hello everyone, this is Dr. Miller, and in 2 weeks, our regularly scheduled webinar. Um, it's going to be really fun. I'm going to share with you— I'm going to move into the more group setting, looking at the world as a whole, our culture as a whole, relationships, our connections with each other. You know, we are social creatures. We're here to be connected with each other. And our connections with each other are not very healthy. If you haven't looked at the newspapers yet, look and see who's the last person to be shot in the back by the police or by the militia or by the drug dealers or whatever. Take a look at the political scene and watch the disrespect with which our supposed leaders are treating each other. People doing all the things that you strove so hard to teach your kids when they were in kindergarten not to do, and yet we see it's being tossed around at the highest levels, and you're going, what is happening here? Well, there's answers to all that as to why it's happening, and there are things that we can do about it. And we live in a world where we've been trained, as I we'll touch on many times, we've been trained to be helpless, something called learned helplessness. I'll spend more time on that in the future. Part of this learned helplessness is to make us think that we don't have the power to do anything about what's happening to us, and that's not true at all. So my future webinars after next week will be focusing more Well, we'll talk about personal healing, but we'll talk about family healing, community healing, national healing, and global healing. So let's get on to our topic for today, self-hypnosis for self-mastery. And really, all we're going to get to do is an, is an introduction in today because That's all we're really going to have time to do is an introduction. Just to briefly review, um, my history has to do with my being, uh, kind of a misfit in the world for many different reasons and looking for answers because the answers that I knew I needed, I was not finding them as often as I would have liked to. What I did discover though is that there was such a thing as science and mathematics, and I loved them because, well, science is organized truth, and I was looking for the truth. Being a multiracial person, I found that white people had bizarre notions about Black people had bizarre notions about white people. Since I was able to cross and be in both cultures, it was fascinating. You couldn't convince a white person that their beliefs about Black people were wrong. I said, "But I have the experience now." And Black people, what they thought was true about honkies, they weren't willing to hear that not every honky was like that. So I kind of lost faith in, uh, in the cultures that I was in. I lost faith in my schooling when I reached the 5th grade before I found out about Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and the Holocaust. And I was furious that humanity had created machines and systematically went about trying to eliminate you know, an entire race of people, genocide. I said, "I can't trust them either, but I could trust my science." You know, water boils at 100 degrees centigrade here. If I go to your house, it's going to boil at 100 degrees centigrade too. If I go to the top of the mountain, it, well, would boil at 100 degrees, except you have to make an adjustment related to the air pressure. And, and then you again, you come up with the right answer. So science and mathematics, you know, gave truth. I went to medical school to learn how human beings operated, since I was here to try to fix the world of human beings in some way. And I discovered that there was a huge aspect of the healing process that was not being addressed, even though I went to one of the best Medical schools, graduated in 1967, and it was in the next 3 or 4 years I made some amazing discoveries. And one of the most amazing was that of medical hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and that amazing things had been discovered about hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and that it was very useful for helping people deal with symptoms, was amazingly useful for helping people quiet their emotions and to eliminate excess stress, to quiet anger, to stabilize personalities, to increase the enjoyment of life, relieving people of unwanted habit patterns and so forth. And this had been thoroughly documented scientifically through studies, scientists. So I want to look at a study done by reputable people. People that is peer-reviewed, and yes, this is real. But I just have gone through years of training and no one's even mentioned this modality to me. How can this be? At the time, I had a family or general medical practice in Carmel, California, and I had a colleague who was quite skilled in these techniques, and I learned from him, and my life path really became clear to me because I saw that the field of hypnosis was, was rich with ideas and possibilities, but they weren't integrated with our day-to-day practice. They hadn't been integrated with modern neuroscience. And so I set out to discover what I could. I found out that hypnosis, meditation, deep prayer, Christian Science, Autogenic Training, and many other disciplines all use the same basic tools. And those tools had to do with helping people shift their state of consciousness. And in every one of these disciplines, there was ample evidence that people had brought about extremely positive changes in their lives. So we talk a little bit about hypnosis first. And of course, back at that time, um, you know, now we hear, you know, a great deal about it, just some 50 years later. But then no one knew anything about it. No one, very few people knew about it. Very few people practiced it. It was thought to be some sort of weird woo-woo discipline, but, you know, that's changed a great deal now. We tend to think of hypnosis as people going into some sort of trance state, and we see a trance state as kind of like a zombie or somebody— of course you might have seen Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula saying, "Look into my eyes, swamibal, swamibal, swamibal, you are going deeper," and it was associated with stage performers who would have people cackle like chickens and so forth. But these are situations where people are sort of playing with something that is really valuable. Um, my definitions of hypnosis are quite different. Um, when I talk about the tools of hypnosis— hypnosis is a set of tools, it's a set of theories, and it's an approach. And what these tools will allow us to do is to shift among different states of consciousness. You know something about states of consciousness if you've ever taken psychedelics, if you've ever let yourself get high on marijuana, on cannabis. Then it's really clear and real dramatic, huh. This is a very different state of consciousness. When it wears off, "Ha! Now I'm back to my old self again." But there are states of consciousness that we go into all the time. For instance, sometimes you may be driving someplace, it may be something you've driven 100 times or 1,000 times, and you drive right past your exit. On the freeway. And pretty soon you're looking around, go, what? I don't remember that tree. Where did that building come from? And you go, oh, oh, wait a minute, see, I passed my stop. That's what they call highway hypnosis. How could you go past your stop? You don't always do it, but only sometimes, because your awareness was some other place and you really were not here experiencing this world. Sometimes you might find you wake up and the world is fantastic, it's beautiful, you're inexplicably, irrationally happy and in love with the world. And you go out and maybe first person you see, "Boy, I love the world and I love you," and if they respond that way, that state of mind might continue for a period of time, but then maybe you meet meet somebody who's really down in the dumps and say, well, you're sure happy, lucky for you, what about me? And run into Eeyore and pew, you find yourself going down. At other times you might find yourself being very amorous and sexually oriented and stimulated, aroused. And other times could be exactly the same kind of situation you know, had no interest at all. You know, other times you feel really bored with the world, other times you feel really interested. If part of what you do is creative, your art or your work, sometimes you're very creative, you can't stop creating, and at other times you just can't think of anything creative at all. Each one of them, we might call those moods. You might say I was in a different mood. You're in a different state of consciousness, and you don't know why you're in that state of consciousness. You usually didn't choose to put yourself there, and you don't know how to take yourself out of that state of consciousness. So the tools of hypnosis are tools that you can use, you can learn to shift your state of consciousness. In addition, you can learn to shift yourself into a place, a state of consciousness of relaxation, uh, and of peace, uh, and of self-empowerment. And with the tools of hypnosis or self-hypnosis— and by the way, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis— no one can hypnotize you. Just like actually nobody can make you angry and nobody can make you afraid. It's all in how you're reacting to the world. Now we're not taught that, and that's one of the reasons that we're so— we feel so helpless because we don't understand some really basic facts. And I'll try to talk a little bit about, you know, why the world has set us up to be in that predicament. Now hypnosis, let's say one common definition of hypnosis is suggestion during focused awareness. Most of the time our attention is, "Ooh, what's that noise out there?" "Oh, my hand is itching." Gee, I wonder what I want to make for breakfast, huh? Gosh, I wonder what Tom meant yesterday when he said so-and-so and so-and-so. I wonder what Charlie would have thought about that. I wonder whatever happened to Charlie. I wonder if he lives in the same place. You know, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. That's what your usual awareness is unless you are focused on something, such as when you're focused on doing something you love or a really interesting book or movie or relationship or lover whatever that might be, that's focused awareness. Well, in hypnosis, you are choosing to focus your awareness on something, and during that focused time, you have suggestions. That is, I— if I say, allow yourself to relax, I'm not ordering you to relax. If I say, let your eyelids close, it's not an order. It's a suggestion. So that everything that you say, let's say if you're a hypnotherapist, everything you say to a person is just an offer. Yeah, wouldn't it be nice to just kind of let your body sit back in a comfortable position and take a deep breath in and let it out and just feel that feeling of letting go? I'm not telling you to do it, I'm offering you that as an option. And if that seems reasonable. There's nothing wrong, there's nothing dangerous about what I'm offering you. And it's interesting because you're curious, since I'm telling you that if you're able to follow along with those suggestions or images that I offered to you, then you will experience changes in your state of awareness. And then during— and those are suggestions— and then while you're in that focused state of awareness, and you are open to receive. It's, um, you get past this constant question or this, the critical factor in your mind, and you're open to accept as true whatever is offered to you. And that's why you would not want someone to induce hypnosis if you didn't have a certain level of trust in them. But when it's self-hypnosis It's okay because it's you and you can trust yourself. Then you can begin to envision the healing process within your body. You can envision how you want your behaviors to change. Um, many different things that you can do once you've opened up in that way. Another definition of hypnosis is a state of heightened awareness and focused concentration that can be used to change and manipulate your perceptions, including, for instance, perception of pain, in that we can make pain go down, we can make pain get a lot worse if we wanted to. One of the ways I got myself to stop smoking some 30, 40 years ago was every time I would smoke and I would get a tickle in my throat, I would envision that tickle being a full-on cough, and I would find myself coughing and coughing, and I didn't like coughing, and so I stopped smoking because I trained myself to cough more. Stop smoking, of course, cough went away. And that state of focused concentration can also be used to access repressed material. We talk about that in some of our other presentations, and how to reprogram our behaviors. And by behaviors, I mean mental behaviors, thoughts, emotional behaviors, your feelings. Those are behaviors. They belong to you, like your thoughts. Nobody has a right to your thoughts or your emotions. You have the right to control them. The words that you speak are behaviors, and the actions that you take with your physical body, and all of those can be modified much more effectively using the tools of hypnosis. So let's, let's have an experience now. I've given you a little bit of a framework. Allow yourself, if you wish, to experience some relaxation and peace and a positive set of feelings Let your body be in a comfortable position so that you're not holding anything up. If you can sit really comfortably with your head balanced, then you can do that. If you want to, you can lie back because I want you doing no work at all so your body doesn't have to do any work so you don't have to pay any attention to it. Instead, focus your eyes on some point out in the distance in front of you. Keep your eyes focused on that point and become aware of the fact that there's no other place that you need to go right now. There's no other— nothing else that you need to be doing right now. There's no problem that you have to solve. And therefore, you can give yourself permission to come into this moment. and that point that you're looking at in the distance, slowly let your eyes roll upward until you're looking upward toward your forehead, and hold your eyes looking up at your forehead. And as you're doing that, let your eyelids slowly close while your eyes remain upward, looking upward. At your eyebrows. Let your eyelids fall closed. For some people this is easy. If it's difficult for you, then just let your eyelids close. Let your eyes be rolled upward behind your closed eyelids as though you're looking at the back of your forehead. When you're doing that, you're looking at your prefrontal cortex. You're actually telling your nervous system that you want to be attentive to what's going on in your prefrontal cortex. That's your brain's brain. That's the highest level of thinking. Relax your eyelids all the way down to the point they don't want to open at all. And when you have that feeling in your eyelids, test them. And as you test them, let that feeling of relaxation from your eyelids flow throughout the rest of your body. To your forehead and your scalp, through all the muscles of your face, down through your neck and your shoulders and your arms and your hands, down to your fingertips. As the relaxation reaches your fingertips, take a deep breath in, draw it from your fingertips up through your arms into the center of your chest, and as you let it out, let it be a feeling of releasing completely. Let the air breathe for you and feel your chest and back relaxing. And let that relaxation flow down through your abdomen, relaxing all your internal organs. Relaxation flowing down through your pelvis and your thighs, down through your knees and ankles and feet, all the way down. The tips of your toes, more and more relaxed with each breath. Good. And so we might refer to this as the first level of relaxation, or the first level of hypnosis. You might call it a kind of a light trance state. And anytime any unnecessary thoughts come along Imagine those unnecessary thoughts are like words written on the back of your forehead. Relax, letting every sound that you hear serve to relax you even more. Unnecessary thoughts written on a blackboard in your mind's eye. Remember the relaxation in your eyelids, and as you test your eyelids Send that relaxation flowing from your eyelids throughout your body, and at the same time, draw a wet eraser across your mental blackboard. Erase the unnecessary thought. Nothing that you have to do. Nothing that you have to respond to. Good. Now in a moment, I'm going to count from 1 to 5, and as I do, I want you to let yourself come back to being fully wide awake and aware of the space around you. And then in a little while, I'm going to ask you to come back into this state of relaxation, and you'll notice that you're able to do so much more rapidly than the first time. 1. Let yourself come back to being wide awake. 2, more and more relaxed, more and more comfortable. 3, 4, and wide awake. 5, letting your eyelids open and allowing yourself to be fully present. Good. And take a moment to notice how comfortable you feel. Now let me show you a couple of other things that you can do through the use of this kind of imagery. In other words, what is usually called in the field of hypnosis suggestion, I renamed it as imagery back in the 1970s because that's what it really is. If I suggest something to you, what I'm asking you to do is to create a concept in your mind image. Could be a visual image. It could be an auditory image. Like, I want you to think about the national anthem, okay? You could sing it out loud, but don't. But think it in your mind. You can think, you can imagine the words, and you can imagine hear it, hearing it, and you can hear the music. You can hear the melody in your mind. That's an auditory image. And then there's physical images within your body. It's like, maybe you can remember the first time that you had a really positive experience of being kissed. You remember who that was? The guy or the girl or the horse or the dog, I don't know. But Can you remember that? And can you remember that feeling of being hugged and kissed? Maybe you can remember it now, but certainly that night when you went home, you could close your eyes, you could feel it. Maybe telling your best friend about it, or you could feel it. Okay, that is imagery, that is suggestion. Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your hands and extend them in front of you, parallel to your shoulders and exactly the same height. And then I want you to close your eyes, leave your hands there. Now I want you to imagine that I have a brick and I am placing a brick on the back of your right hand. Picture that brick, sort of a reddish color, rough surface. Maybe it's a used brick and it has some fragments of mortar around the edge. Feel that heavy brick on the back of your right hand. Now I want you to imagine that I have a helium-filled balloon. There's a ribbon that comes down from that balloon and I'm tying it around the wrist of your left hand. Feel the ribbon around your wrist. Feel it pulling upward on your wrist. And now I'm going to place a sandbag on top of the brick on the back of your right hand, a heavy sandbag. Boom. Feel the weight of that sandbag pressing down on the brick and the rough surface of the brick pressing down on the back of your right hand. And now we're going to tie an even bigger balloon around the wrist of your left hand. Feel how light those balloons are making that hand, as if that right hand doesn't seem to have any weight at all. And now we're going to put a chain, like an old bicycle chain, on top of the sandbag, on the top of the brick, on the back of your right hand, pressing really heavy now. And a big helium-filled balloon around the wrist of your left hand. Feel it. And open your eyes and see if you can detect a difference between your two hands. Now you can let your arms rest again. That is the use of suggestion and imagery. The better you get at using imagery, the more effective that you can be at altering things in your body. Here's another one. Clasp your hands together like this. Extend your forefingers like that, nice tight grip, but your forefingers— with your forefingers extend straight out. Even though your hands are clasping. Look at the space between those two fingers, probably about a half inch to an inch. And now as you concentrate on that space between your fingers, you're going to find the fingers begin to attract each other as if they're two powerful magnets. Feel them pulling closer and closer together, and it's harder and harder to keep them apart. You can imagine someone wraps a couple of rubber bands around them, really pulls them together. Okay, see how your fingers came together? That's your use of your imagination. And I know of several companies hiring engineers, they would give them this test. If their fingers didn't come together, they wouldn't hire them because it meant that they were blocked off. From the use of their imagination. So your imagination is a very, very important aspect of making changes in yourself. It's a very important aspect of working with self-hypnosis. It's learning to use your imagination in that way. Imagination is the faculty or action of forming new images, ideas, or concepts of external objects which are not actually physically present to the senses. It's the ability of the mind to be creative, resourceful. Your imagination is the part of your mind that imagines things. Napoleon Hill famously, first comes thought, then organization, organization of that thought into ideas and plans, and then the transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is your imagination. Many hundreds of years ago, Paracelsus said the spirit is the master The imagination is the tool and the body is the plastic material. Think about that for a moment. Can you imagine there is a different way of thinking? And by thinking differently, you can upgrade the operating system of your mind. A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it bearing within him the image of a cathedral. How about that? Good. Okay, here's a couple more opportunities for you to train your imagination. Clasp your hands together again like that, squeeze them tightly, and imagine that super glue is oozing out of the pores of your skin and your hands are being tightly glued together. And super glue acts so quickly, your hands are glued tightly together, and even if you try to separate them, you'll feel how that glue keeps them stuck frozen in that place and resist they will resist being pulled apart. Try to pull your hands apart and feel how tightly they're stuck together. Good. And now imagine you're dipping your hands into a basin of warm water and that this kind of super glue immediately melts. Feel your hands melting and now separate them. You find they're still sticky. But they let go, okay? All right, so these are ways of training your imagination and ways of training yourself to accept, to accept suggestion, okay? So a little while ago, we went to that first level of hypnosis. Now we're going to go to the second level. Choose a point out in front of you to focus your eyes on. Become aware there's no other place you need to go, nothing else you need to do, no problem you have to solve. So important, because that gives you permission to allow your eyes to roll upward so you're looking upward toward eyebrows, and then relax your eyelids while doing your best to keep your eyes rolled up. And then after your eyes are fully closed, make sure your eyes are looking upward toward the back of your forehead, and imagine that you can see the word relax written on the back of your forehead. Relax, let go. Feel the muscles of your eyelids so relaxed it just won't open at all. And when you have that feeling in your eyelids Gently test them, and as you test them, let that feeling of relaxation flow throughout all the rest of your body. Notice how quickly it flows from your eyelids into your face and scalp, your neck and shoulders and arms, down to your fingertips. Take that deep breath in, draw the relaxation from your fingertips up into the center of your chest. As you let that breath out, releasing completely, and sink down into that little pause after you breathed out and before you breathe in again, Let each breath in relax your chest and your back, your abdomen, your pelvis, your thighs and your knees, your legs, your ankles and your feet, down to the very tips of your toes. Good. This is the first level of relaxation. Now let's go to the second level. To do that in a moment, I'm going to ask you to open your eyes and close them again. As your eyelids open and close, your relaxation will double over what you have now. Open your eyes and close them and let your relaxation double. See the word relax there on the back of your forehead. When you can feel that doubled relaxation in your eyelids, are relaxed all the way down to the point they just won't open, gently test them. And as you test them, let that doubled relaxation flow from your eyelids throughout all the rest of your body, all the way down to every cell of your being, right out through the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Good. Whenever any unnecessary thought comes along, picture that thought on the back of your forehead. Remember the relaxation in your eyelids. As you test your eyelids, imagine you're drawing an eraser across your mental blackboard, erasing the unnecessary thought and sending another wave of relaxation through your body. Gradually there are fewer and fewer thoughts. They're shorter and shorter before you erase them. There's more spaces between your thoughts. Allow yourself to sink deeply into the spaces between your thoughts, and you are coming more and more into the present moment. Appreciating the relaxation in this present moment. And imagine that you can travel through time to a very, very pleasant experience, an ideal moment from your past. Maybe you're on vacation, you're on vacation, you're doing something you love, you're winning a contest, climbing a mountain, enjoying a garden, smelling a rose. Flying in an airplane, skydiving, floating on a river. What's the most beautiful, relaxing scene? Maybe on a beach, a tropical beach, walking in the shallow water, feeling its warmth seep into your feet and your toes as you walk, looking about, and everything that you see and here in this beautiful place relaxes you even more. Good. And as you feel the really positive feelings in this place, notice where you feel them most strongly in your body. Focus your awareness on that part of your body. Take a deep breath in, and as you do, imagine that feeling grows even stronger. And as you let that breath out, breathe it from that part of your body out into all the rest of your being, into every cell of your body. And as you do, let one of the fingers on your hand— your right hand or your left hand— let that finger move as you feel that positive feeling. We're going to call that your yes finger. Imagine there's a little string tugging upward on one of your fingers that says, yes, this feels good. Feel it tugging on that finger. We'll call that your yes finger. This yes finger is associated with all the good feelings in your body. It's associated with this beautiful image And anywhere that you are, anywhere that you may be, whatever you might be doing, when you have a few moments to yourself, you can stop. Sit down or lie down just for a moment. Close your eyelids. Picture the word relax in the back of your forehead. As you relax your eyelids, send that relaxation flowing throughout the rest of your body. And then allow yourself to float back to this beautiful image, this special place. Feel your yes finger moving, and as you do, that feeling becomes even stronger. That yes finger is an anchor that takes you back to this place. And this is a place where you can guide your body to heal, from which you can guide your mind to heal, from which you can make amazing changes in yourself. But especially, this is a state of consciousness in which you can be in touch with the highest levels of your wisdom. In touch with your intellect, in touch with your spiritual center, your own spirit guides, and allow yourself to be open to what you need to hear from your spirit right now. You know what your goals are. You know why you wanted to enter this state. Now let your spirit tell you what you need to know. Words of guidance. Perhaps there's things that you need to let go of from your life, or to let go of from your thoughts that you really don't need to think about. The worries and concerns and anxieties, all a waste of time. If you're worried about the future, you feel anxiety. You feel anxiety and your mind's busy worrying about the future. If you're feeling guilt or shame, you're thinking about the past, disappointment. But the past is gone. It doesn't exist anymore, and you don't have to think about it. This is your mind. What thoughts about the past do you need to let go of? Put them on that screen in your mind and erase them. The future doesn't exist either, and therefore you don't need to think about it right now. You're safe and peaceful. Your body is relaxed. So now you can access your imagination and allow your imagination to be guided by the highest level of your wisdom. Allow it to be guided by your spirit, by the spirit that moves through all things, by a sacred being. Tap into that highest level. What do you need to know for the future? What to let go of? And what is it that you should be embracing? People, activities. Imagine you can look forward into the future and imagine that the wisest part of you guides you. What is it that you should be doing today? What would be wise for you to do tomorrow, this week? What guidance do you have for yourself in that choice that you need to be making. Open to see the highest level of guidance that you can allow yourself to be in touch with. The spirit within you. The wisdom within you. Picture yourself in the future looking and feeling wonderful. Because you are allowing yourself to be guided by a high level of your being. You're clearing away unnecessary thoughts, old patterns that no longer serve you, cleansing your body of tension and stress and inflammation. And inflammation is what comes from stress. And stress comes from conflicts in your mind. You need have no conflict right now. You're right where you need to be, and you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Erase any thoughts to the contrary and put yourself fully in that scene in the future and feel how wonderful it feels. To feel the power that you have. That's good. Remember, you can come back to this state whenever you need. Just realize that you want to induce a self-hypnotic state. Close your eyes, relax your eyelids, just go through the steps. And then, after you let go of what you need to let go of and envision what you need to in the future, form your future self-image and step into it, feel it, and count from 1 to 5, bring yourself back to being wide awake. 1, as if you've been asleep for a long, long time. 2, but you're coming back refreshed and clear. 3, Bringing back all the positive feelings. 4. In touch with your power, your wisdom, your spirit. Take a deep breath in. As you let it out, allow your eyelids to be open. 5. Take a moment to notice how comfortable you feel. Enjoy the colors and the shapes. Enjoy the world around you. Excellent. And let yourself move a little bit, stretch. Excellent. And now anytime you wish, you can allow yourself to come back and re-listen to this webinar and re-listen to that experience that we just went through, just to refresh your mind on how to do it. It's simple enough. But for now, I want to go on and talk a little bit about the brain, just a review for those who've been to the previous seminars. There are three parts to the higher part of your brain. The basal ganglia that you see orange in this picture, the reptilian complex, it's your, it's your reptilian brain. It's responsible for instinctual behaviors, aggression, dominance, territoriality, ritual displays, responsible for managing your blood pressure, your blood flow, speed of your breathing, and so forth. It's not conscious. You may be conscious of the fact that suddenly you're breathing fast, but you're not conscious of the part of the brain that's doing that. Then there's a middle part of the brain, which is the paleomammalian brain, the part that's in yellow here. It consists of the septum— oh, you're not seeing the picture. Hmm. I should be screen sharing, so you should be seeing a picture of the brain. If you're— does anyone else not see it? Does anyone see it? Okay. So this paleomammalian, it's the striatum, the amygdala, hypothalamus, the hippocampus, and it's responsible for motivation, emotion, in your life. And this is also the part, particularly the amygdala, that fires off when it thinks you're in a fight or flight situation. It's where stress comes from. And this is also part of your unconscious mind. This part of the mind is what we share with other mammals. It's called— that's why it's called the paleomammalian cortex. It's pretty much the same as it was 500,000 years ago. There's virtually the same as our common ancestor with the chimpanzee. And it is this part that we can make contact with because this part learns lots of patterns throughout our childhood. We're trained to look at the world in a certain way, and that way may not be helping us now, but we can't stop it because that part of the brain keeps operating. And finally, there's a neocortex, which is the new brain, and this is where we do all of our thinking and our association, language, abstract thinking, planning, perception. And finally, the frontal part of the brain, the frontal cortex or the prefrontal cortex, which is the brain of the brain, and this is our conscious mind. This is really where you do your planning. This is an— and it inhibits thoughts that you don't want to have and so forth. And so much of what we're doing in working with self-hypnosis is being able to affect the thoughts and the patterns of this subconscious mind here, the paleomammalian cortex, and to reprogram it using the guidance from the prefrontal cortex. This is Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize. For having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under, during times of uncertainty. And his work has come out in a book which has gotten very popular, pretty much a New York Times bestseller, Thinking Fast and Slow. And what he shows us is how we are controlled by the activity of the subconscious part of our mind, what he calls System 1. And it's that part where we have all of our bad habits, but it's also that part of our mind that is being controlled by our governments and by our corporations, where they program us to do things that we don't really want to do. And we talk a lot about this in our other seminars. But System 1, and again, it's associated with the subconscious, the unconscious, the paleomammalian cortex, the limbic system. It's fast. It makes its decisions really fast. Like, You know, let's say you're waiting at a stoplight and you're kind of daydreaming, maybe you close your eyes because you know it's a long light, and unbeknownst to you there's somebody that's selling gorilla masks and he's walking along the lines and he comes to your window and he sees that your eyes are closed and he knocks on the window and you open your eyes and there's gorilla masks there and you go, That's your System 1. It's unconscious. It's effortless. It's automatic without self-awareness or control. So that's our System 1. System 2, and this is the higher part of our mind, is slow. It doesn't happen like that. It takes a little bit of time to think. It deliberates on things. It's conscious. It takes an effort to do things. It requires awareness and it involves control. It's logical and it's skeptical. And that's the part that we need to learn how to put in control of our minds and our bodies and our lives and our nation and our planet. Hello! You see what a mess we're making out of this coronavirus, that COVID. I mean, I know I'm not the only one who's noticed this. It's just, as a doctor, it's like, blah, in your face. You know, if you go to, if you go to epidemic school or pandemic, take a course in epidemics and pandemics, within the first 2 weeks of that course, you will have learned all the right things to do to prevent exactly what we're seeing. 200,000 people have died. If we've done the right thing, we might have lost 1,000, maybe 2,000. Our mothers and our aunts and our uncles wouldn't be dying, and all of these wonderfully creative people that have died because of this infection, because we just haven't done the right thing. We're shooting from the hip rather than saying, here's how to go about it gradually, take your time, we need to learn more about it. In the meanwhile, let's wear our masks, let's socially distance ourselves, let's order some tests. You know, we should have had enough tests within the first month And then testing is what it's all about. And as soon as you have tests, then you can begin to relax, and people can begin to connect, maybe in twos and threes. But then you test, someone's got it, you isolate that person. So one by one, you find out where the virus is living. You take care of those people, and then, you know, then we're free. Lots of other countries have done that. Need I mention global warming? Can you say hurricane? Can you say fire? I mean, it's just the beginning. And we know exactly what to do about it. But our system is being run by this automatic part. And we need to shift over to System 2. There's this wonderful experiment where the experimental subject is told to sit in the office the experimenter will be in in a moment. And the experimenter comes in and he has in his hand some books and tests and pencils and things. He has a cup of coffee. So he asks the subject, "Would you hold my coffee for a moment until I set these things on the desk?" He sets them on the desk and 20 seconds later he takes the coffee back from the guy, from the subject. Then he has him, you know, fill out some stupid tests or whatever. The tests don't really mean anything. And he says, "Thank you very much for participating." study, and he walks out, and another guy comes in, and he thanks him and says, "Well, I'm wondering, you know, our experimenter, what kind of personality would you say that he had? Did he have a warm personality, or would you say he had a cold personality?" Well, if he was given a cup of hot coffee, he would reckon about 70% or 80% of the time he would say, oh, he had a warm personality. If it was iced coffee, he would have said, no, he had kind of a cool personality, kind of a, you know, maybe a cold personality. These are wonderful experiments that Dr. Kahneman was doing. Here's another one. The group of— they take judges one by one and they tell the judges, experienced judges, and we have this case and we want you to tell us what sentence you would give this person. It's a sentence of a woman who had been arrested for the third time for shoplifting. The first two times she got off with a warning. So now she needs to have a sentence. And so the judge is going to be given 15 minutes to just read over his, read over the information and then we'll make the choice. But they tell the judge, before we do that, this is just part of the experiment, would you shake these dice up in this cup and roll the dice? So the judge does that and he rolls the dice and then they write down the number that was, that the dice added up to and then they put the dice away and they don't say any more about the dice. What the judge doesn't realize is that the dice are loaded and that the dice come up either 3 or 11. Then the judge goes ahead and makes his determination. If the dice roll was 11, the average number of months of the sentence was 7 months. If the number of the dice was a 3, the average was 4 months. That's been repeated many times. And then they asked the judge, "Do you think that the dice had anything to do with the sentence you gave?" And the judge said, "Of course not!" But it did. People are— when people are given an exam, like a standardized exam, And the room in which the exam's given, hanging on the blackboard in the front of the room is this, a doctor's jacket with a stethoscope. And another group is done, but they don't have this hanging on the blackboard in front. No one says anything about it or anything, but their grades are on the average 5% higher if the doctor's garb is hanging in front of them. And it's not that it's a white jacket, because if they hang up a painter's jacket that has paint stains on it or whatnot, it does not affect the test that these people take. You read his book, you know, Thinking Fast and Slow. It's absolutely astounding. There's this wonderful study that was done in a particular office setting where they, you could come in and get coffee anytime you wanted to, but it was requested that you put 25 cents or 25 crown or quid or whatever they called it, because I think it was done in England, into the little piggy bank that you have there. But what they found out was that judging from the amount of coffee that was being consumed compared to the amount of money that was received, people weren't doing the right thing. But they did an experiment, and what they did was they hung a poster up on the wall kind of near the coffee cup and brewing setup. But they hang, would hang up two kinds of posters. And these are some examples of the posters. The posters would either have a picture where there was a person with eyes looking, or there were flowers. And then they would change the poster every week. Now on those weeks in which there were eyes, those are the dark dots, they collected so much more. It's from, and you, as you can see the numbers are 2 times, like they collected double to 3 or 4 times as much on those weeks when there were eyes. No one said anything about it, When they asked people if they had noticed the different posters, no, they hadn't. But if the posters had eyes, people were more honest. Isn't that amazing? It's like your subconscious mind thinks that you're being looked at and then you'll be caught. Okay, then tell me what this is. What is that? Well, if you said a circle with a piece missing, you're not exactly right. It's not a circle. It's never been a circle, and it's never going to be a circle. It's a curved line. Which of these two lines is the longest, the upper one or the lower one? It looks like the upper one, but it's not. But your subconscious mind is telling you that the upper one is longer. Okay, there are these, there are these several people here. Let me let you see them completely. And which of these guys is taller? Which is shorter? They're all the same. I cut out the small guy and moved him up, and you can see it's exactly the same size. But your subconscious mind is telling you otherwise. It is determining what you see, and sometimes it's distorting it. That's the point. Or take a look here. What do you see? You see an amorous couple, don't you? Children don't see that. Children see dolphins. And now you see dolphins. So I'm going to talk more in future sessions about Edward Bernays, who was Sigmund Freud's nephew, who really understood what Freud was trying to say. We have two minds. And those minds can be manipulated. In order to sell more ham for the Hormel Company, he sent out letters to 5,000 doctors saying, "Do you think it's a good idea to have a heavy breakfast in the morning so that you have energy all day?" 3,000 of the doctors said yes. Back in those days, um, people for breakfast would have, you know, a piece of toast, maybe a little cottage cheese, maybe a little fruit, a little bit of cereal. So what he did was he then sent out letters everywhere and put ads in papers that said, "3,000 doctors agree a heavy breakfast is better in the morning." And then there was a picture of, you guessed it, ham and eggs, bacon and eggs. And that's where we started believing that bacon and eggs is a normal breakfast. We didn't do it this This is back in the '30s, '20s and '30s. We didn't do it until he came along. The Lucky Strike Company wanted to get women to smoke so they could sell more. Women never smoked, particularly in public. It would be shameful. But Lucky Strike, wow, if we could hook women, we'd sell twice as many. So they hired Mr. Bernays, and what he did was he got several debutantes, several sophisticated high society ladies, and paid them or bribed them, whatever, to walk in the front of the Easter parade that year. And at a certain signal, they were going to all light up cigarettes. He wrote to the newspapers and he said, there's going to be a big event happening on the corner of Fifth Avenue and blah, blah, blah. And so all the reporters were there, and at the given signal, sure enough, all of the debutantes lit up their cigarettes that Bernays called freedom torches, because these women were now going to be free. There she is with her fancy dog. You can be free and sexy and sophisticated with your freedom torch. You know, you don't have to— there they go, lighting up their cigarettes. And that was it. Now it was okay for women to smoke. And he's made so, so many lung surgeons rich cutting out those lung tumors. And then he wrote a book entitled "Propaganda," because that's what it was, propaganda, what he called the executive arm of the invisible government. Wilson was against the war, but his friend had so much money invested in the First World War, J.P. Morgan, that if France and England lost, J.P. Morgan was going to lose billions, the equivalent of billions of dollars. So Wilson decided, "Okay, but how can I tell people it's okay to go to war?" And Bernays said, "Well, let's not call it going to war. Let's say we're bringing freedom to Europe, bringing democracy to Europe." And that's how they got us to go to the First World War. Yes, we were going to stamp out the Kaiser and bring freedom to Europe. And he went on, Bernays, to be an advisor to half a dozen different presidents. He wrote, and he thought propaganda was a good thing. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas are suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is the logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. He thought it was a good thing. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or consciousness, Let me size up this. Whether in politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. Isn't that amazing? And this is in the '30s. These are invisible rulers who control the destinies of men. It's not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes. All right. Take a look at this movie. It's called "The Century of the Self." It's free on YouTube. The Century of the Self. Incredible propaganda. Well, what do you know about propaganda? Who came along to study Bernays and apply his techniques beautifully? Göring. Joseph Goebbels. Propaganda works best when those being manipulated are confident that they're acting under their own Free will. Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average mind, but a matter for practitioners. It's not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. And so the Nazis used all that they learned from Bernays, and it worked beautifully. They got normally intelligent, wise, good Germans Austrians, some Dutch, French, etc., to really buy it, that this Jew was this evil creature that needed to be destroyed. And Bernays was So blown away by this that he changed the name from propaganda to public relations. Okay. So what I'm talking about— okay, and so that was one man. There's more, and I'll tell you about that because I'll have a special session on this. There are now hundreds of thousands of highly trained psychologists, they call attention engineers, being employed by the big corporations that are ruling the world, that are ruling the stock market, that are making the decisions, that are making the decisions as to who, um, who we have available to choose to run for office. It's all being controlled by highly trained people who are not doing it to serve us. They're doing it to sell us cigarettes, to sell us beauty products, to sell us on, "This is the fashion this year. This is the way your woman is supposed to look. She's supposed to be pencil thin." Oh no, now she's supposed to have a— I'm supposed to have a big butt, right? You know, it's the, the days of Cardi B and Beyoncé, you know, goodbye Twiggy, you know, Jennifer Lopez, you know, that's— if you don't look that way, oh, then you've got to get plastic surgery. So this is mass hypnosis. About Sigmund Freud later on. Sigmund Freud learned hypnosis, learned it from the Marquis de Passepartout, who had learned it from Mesmer. And Sigmund Freud used the techniques of hypnosis, but he altered it a little bit. So he had people lie on a couch and look away from him. He was a little embarrassed, I I don't know. But he discovered how to manipulate or what was going on with the subconscious mind. Bernays then, his nephew, learned how to use that subconscious to manipulate this, to manipulate us. That's what's going on. Turn on your radio, turn on your TV, listen to your commercials, We'll talk more about this later on. Read Dr. Kahneman's book, please. Read Mindfuck. Excuse me, but that's the title of the book. Mindf*ck, written by Philip Wiley. Philip Wiley was the guy behind Cambridge Analytica. The book will knock your socks off. How they flipped an election in the West Indies, they flipped one in Africa, and then they created Brexit. He tells how they do it in the book. And then he realized that what they were doing was immoral, and then he wrote the book. And— but it's incredible. W-Y-L-I-E-E, Philip Mindfuck. And then they're talking about how it's being used on us right now by the people who are controlling the internet. This is what this whole misinformation thing is. And oh, by the way, trusted origins. I've been promising you that we had something that's gonna allow us to find trustworthy information on the internet. So we're now in the alpha testing mode, and I will let you know when we're ready for beta test. And that's what we can do to bring you honest information, because you're being manipulated. Use the tools of self-hypnosis to set yourself free. From that programming and you decide what programming you want to guide your life. So that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here. I love, I love sharing this stuff. I look forward to seeing you all next week for Ask Dr. Miller. Until then, namaste, stay safe. If you enjoyed this video and found its information helpful, please like, comment, and and subscribe to Dr. Miller's YouTube channel. Doing this will help to get Dr. Miller's content to more and more people. If you'd like to watch the entire webinar series, you can do so at drmiller.com/lifemeditations. That's drmiller.com/lifemeditations. Be present, be kind, and be well.