BenGreenfield-Hypnosis.mp3

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And the topic of hypnosis has come up before on this show when we talked just a little bit in a previous episode about hypnosis and weight loss. But what I wanted to do was delve into this stuff a little bit more deeply, get into performance aspects and also just kind of talk a little bit more about how this kind of stuff can practically be used. I think a lot of people steer clear of it because they don't understand it. And so I want to delve into this today with my guest. My guest is Chris Guyer. Chris is an athlete and a coach and he teaches specifically sports hypnosis and peak performance based off of hypnosis. He basically teaches you how to, how to harness your mind to affect your performance. He's going to be able to explain that a lot better than I will. But he is a personal trainer and a hypnotherapist, which is a pretty unique combination. So I wanted to get kind of get him on to talk about what it is exactly that he does and how this whole concept can help you. So, Chris, thanks for coming on the call today.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Like I mentioned, that's a pretty unique combo being a personal trainer and a hypnotherapist. So how'd you.

As well. As well as a sports specific coach, I was also doing hockey training as an instructor as well as a ski instructor. And I was recognized there was a focus mental game to all this. And I had a nice little synergistic program happening where sports specific of their sport, fencing as well as skiing and hockey, and then imbalances that, you know, that can't get them stronger doing their sports. So you're in the gym, corrective exercise, what not post pre surgery whatnot, whatever needs to have happen and then following it up with the mind as a. With hypnosis as well.

Gotcha. So did you basically just just go off and, and kind of study this stuff because you, you got interested in it just organically, or did you kind of work with a hypnotherapist yourself and then decide it was something that you wanted to look into or how'd you, how'd you get into it?

So I had a client who was a, who was coming to me for hockey and they wanted a better slap shot. And this guy and I worked together for six sessions on the succession. He was able to put that puck anywhere on the net that he could. He chose on command and you know, basically on target. And he turns to me and says, you know, you have to come to my school. I said, really? So what's this all about? He says, well, I have, I have a hypnotherapy school. And I said, wow, that's pretty interesting. And at first I was very skeptical, you know, what is this all about? He told me all about his school and the first accredited college of hypnotherapy. And I went to, I went to the school and wound up becoming an honors graduate. And a couple years later I had my own certification course for sports performance and sports hypnosis. Cool.

So, yeah, so walk me through this. Basically, if I, if I were to come to you, what would you call the type of hypnosis that, that you would do?

It is, it's hetero hypnosis. I mean, I am guiding you as a, through this process. But recognize that all hypnosis is self hypnosis. I'm just the facilitator to help you get to the depths that we're looking for in the first session. And then we come up with a strategy that customizes it for you as to what you're coming in for or, you know, what you're looking to work on. And we take what are your affecting words and we drop them into your subconscious mind. Helping. What we're really trying to do is make congruent of what you want in your conscious mind, which is 12% of your mind. Working with the subconscious mind is where we hold all of our automation and our habits, if you will. We don't think about those things. We, they come on when they do because they're part of our triggers. And that's 88% of your mind. So we're talking about a bigger tool and that's why hypnosis can be such a rapid tool for change.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've read some interesting books on that. Like, I'm a tennis player as a hobby and so I've looked into like the Inner Game of Tennis and the Inner Game of Golf.

Sure, those are great books.

Yeah. I think the term for one of the better books I read on the subject was called Psycho Cybernetics.

I don't think I read that one.

Yeah, it was interesting. But in terms of just a couple examples, if I were to come in and meet with somebody to enhance my performance through hypnotherapy, do I just sit in a chair and you sit across from me? Or is it something that people can do over the phone? Or what's the situation? What kind of stuff do you say to somebody? To get them into the state that you need them to be in.

Well, one of the great things about working with athletes, not that I don't, I work with 150 other issues, 149 issues altogether. I mean, 150, but 149 of them are, you know, it's not sports related. So in my sports performance, we're, you know, we're working with an athlete more often than not. That athlete knows exactly when they're having a problem because they have been all their lives, you know, taking direction. You know, they're able to hear something and you know, go ahead and implement that into their training. You know, they've had coaches, you know, they've just been trained their entire lives more often than not. And they know, you know, when it, when it, when the issue is coming on or know that when they want to change something. More often than not, most come to me because there's a problem. They're not coming to me because they're at the top of their game. Right, right. So, you know, okay, look, I, I'm having a fear. I have a, you know, or a phobia. I can help them with that and understand the difference between a fear and a phobia. One has an event and that's a fear. And one once manifested in the mind, the phobia. So the fear that, okay, they were a child, sixth grade, they were running, they fell down and everybody laughed at them and they decided they were never going to run again. But yet now they have aspirations to be a runner or whatnot. They like to do that or, you know, they have to do it for their company, you know, that's having some sort of an event.

Right, right, right.

They come, they come to me, they say, you know, hey, you know, I'm having a problem. We look at it, find out where the actual issue since stem from. Okay, so did you have a problem? Is there an event? Yes, there is. Okay. This is our fear, you know, or not. If not, okay, this isn't. This is a phobia. There's a totally different process for both of these.

Gotcha.

If that helps.

Yeah. And then so you, so you're basically sitting them down and then like saying certain things to them to get them into. I don't even know what you call it. Is it like a trance state or, or a subconscious state or.

I personally don't like the whole idea of a trance state. Trans state to me is the zombie. Their hands are out, they don't know what they're doing. We Go into hypnosis every day. We, you know, the, the idea behind, you know, freeway or highway hypnosis. And it's absolutely. It's an environmental hypnosis. We're driving along. We know that it takes 45 minutes to get from point A to point B, but today it just seems to be five minutes. And where was I? And did I go through that red light or was that green?

Yeah, you know, been there.

Right. We all have. And that's just the state of hypnosis. And then. And, you know, reading the book and being totally involved and seeing the character, we put. Put our own visualization to it, you know, or the, you know, the going to the movie and we're scared or we're crying, you know, and we're involved. And that is the state. That's all the state of hypnosis. This is nothing to be fearful of. It's nothing to, you know, there's. Hypnosis is really in its infancy, if you will. I don't believe that this is something that, you know, this is something that's going to happen in the next 2015-20 years. You know, there are high schools now that have. That are getting on board with having a hypnotherapist for their team sports. But how many. You know, today's world is so competitive. You know, I see more and more test anxiety with, you know, young adults that are coming in or, you know, or police enforcement or college or lsat and whatever testing that's going on creates anxiety for people. You know, the competition's high. They all want to do better than the next guy. This is the edge in which they're looking for, because this is where the 88% comes involved.

Right, Right.

To have the automation, your. Your subconscious mind is where we hold all of our automation. So when you want to do better, but something triggers it, you need to have something that can root that out to have a different reaction. And that's what I call hypnosis, creating a different reaction.

So is hypnosis something that people are able to do to themselves, like after they've met with you? After an athlete has met with you, are they leaving a session, kind of knowing how to control their own subconscious before their event or their game or their race or whatever?

Right. So, like, we'll set up a complete package, you know, customized to that. That athlete as to. Okay. We're going to work in so many sessions, and usually by middle of my sessions to the ending portion of this process, I am teaching them self hypnosis along the way and they're involved in getting themselves to their event in a certain manner. We put it together for an athlete and maybe we're obviously finding out how far out this anxiety comes on. If it comes on two weeks before, if it's the last event that you know, maybe they started, they start getting anxiety right after the last event ends, you know, or maybe it's just, you know, that person knows that okay, as a golfer, I'm doing fine on my pitch, I'm doing or on my drive, I'm doing fine on my pitch. But as I walk up to the green I have negative self talk and they're, you know, what is that? That's just going to be a self fulfilling prophecy that you know, I'm going to miss this, I'm going to miss this, I'm going to miss this. And sure enough, what do they do? They miss it.

Gotcha.

So we put this process together. So yeah, they, that I will teach them self hypnosis along the way and they will as you know, as more often than not athletes have a lot of time, a lot of times they have a hurry up and wait situation. Baseball players for example, they're just, you know, there's, they're waiting for the next guy to go through and they may not even get there at bat but yet they're sitting there thinking the whole time and you know, they're putting themselves into a full state of anxiety they don't need to go into at all. We set them up as to, you know, where to go in their mind where, how to cut out the negative self talk or whatever it may be bugging them and create that different reaction so that they're in a better place and a better state. Whenever they actually do put the bat in the hand and able to trigger the relaxed state and be able to perform at their optimum.

What kind of things are they saying to themselves as they're walking up to the mound? I mean like in terms of that.

Exactly. That's part of the, that's, that's all part of the customization. So if I'm not reading a script, I mean I've been doing this for 20, I've been doing this 20 years and I've been certified for the last. I think it's eight or nine or something like that. So if as I, I'm not reading a script to them, I'm, I'm creating metaphors, visualizations, I'm creating their own certain story in which they are to read, you know, literally say back to themselves so if I'm going to read them a script, it may, that may start to talk about confidence when they need control. I don't need to talk about confidence when they really, really need control. Right. So I'm not, I'm not missing my, I'm missing the mark if I were to do so. So I'm, I'm taking once again their affecting words. What do they feel, what do they, how do they want to react, how do they want to, what do they want to be? What are they looking for? So if it's confidence, I'm going to make my own script for them that I customize towards them, if you will. It'd be a script, but I'm doing this as they tell it to me because I'm not just plugging in where they need it. I'm making their own customized process for them. That's the difference between reading a script or seeing a CD or hearing a cd, if you will. What first we have to understand is how we intake information and how we put it out into the world. And I test this, what is called suggestibility. And in this process this is literally the demystification of why does this work for some people and why doesn't not as the ages, through the ages have said, this only works for some people. It doesn't work for me. The facilitator wasn't talking the language in which they need to put them into a state of hypnosis. So when I test their suggestibility, I'm testing how they take in information. So if I were to ask you, Ben, first question, you know, just answer this as fast as you can. Do you have a name?

Yes.

Right. And the other person who would read the, they want the inference of that would say, yes, my name is Ben. So we take an information in a certain way and as I test this, how they need to be spoken to, is it very direct, directly? Do they take in information very directly or do they take it more on an inferred? And we have dominance and subdominance of this process. And I test that and I throw in what more may be needed as a dominant of a literal suggestion than the subdominant of an inferred suggestion. So that is the difference between listening to a ten dollar CD that doesn't know your suggestibility and coming to somebody who customizes the process for.

Okay, I got it. These are basically like customized scripts that you're giving yourself. So that when I head out to my tennis match, I've got a certain series of things that I'm saying to myself to get myself into that state that addresses my specific issues basically.

Exactly. It wouldn't even just be. It would be even beyond just words. It would be a whole process in which we may even have you start triggering you as to each and every. You know, I'll put an anchor into your. Grabbing the, the handle of the, of the tennis racket. As you grip the tennis racket, you're cinching up your control on your game.

Mm, I gotcha.

You see how that might work or confidence of your game. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw this in there. And they're in. The minute they pick their. They open up their bag, they're at the event, they grab their handle and sure enough, it's already on because I've already made the post hypnotic suggestion that they're already confident.

Nice. Nice. Yeah.

That's how real hypnosis and hypnotherapy can work. Not just buying a $10 CD. Now I do work with CDs you know, that I would make for, but it's going to be for them. It's not like I can have one. I can't just interchange the CD for, you know, Mary and Mark and throw it on to, you know, John whenever he's the next golfer that comes along. So, you know, this is for them. They listen to it if they wish to. I'm not a big, I'm not a big advocate of it, but if they wish it, fine. I believe that they haven't. I'll give them enough tools that they're going to be able to get through this. And I've always had great success with this.

So at the risk of getting super geeked out here like on a physio, sorry. I hope I'm not on a physiological level. What's going on when you are being hypnotized or very simply you're going to.

This is all. This is the deep state of relaxation. It's literally a conscious state of relaxation.

So it's like a brain thing.

Absolutely. Oh yeah. We're hidden different braves, brave waves as well as you go through this. I'm looking and I have my own process of. I'm looking for rapid eye movement of the eyes and cataleptic, hypnoidal and a somnambulistic state. They're all gonna have different eye movements. The body is gonna change. I'm watching all this as that as they go through, as the physiological changes go through. So I know what level they're at and I May bring them up and down as how deep I want them, how the message to go. Or keep them, you know, on the surface and keep them up and hear it as well. Dropping themselves into it as they say it to themselves at times as well.

So you can tell just by watching people's reaction as you're hypnotizing them, the different brain wave states that they're going into.

If you watch certain, like stage hypnosis, and I hate to talk about this because this is. The media changes what hypnosis really is today. If you have, you know, Jay Leno, you have who did the Born Identity. Jason Bourne, who was.

Yeah, Matt Damon.

Matt Damon. He's on there talking about quitting smoking. You got Oprah Winfrey talking about weight loss for when using hypnosis. You have Tiger woods and Wayne Gretzky and all this, right. And they're changing how hypnosis is seen. But do you have this stage hypnosis going on in Vegas and whatnot on tv? And people are watching these things and they think that they're going to be, you know, barking like a chicken and barking or barking like a dog and clucking like a chicken. And, you know, they come to me and they say, well, I do that. And I said, only if you want to, but, you know, we don't have to go there. So what this is, is that you can see what kind of person, as you get trained through this eye at what kind of state a person's in already. So when you watch these videos of code, what are some of these videos? People thinking of COVID hypnosis, Videos of walking up and somebody walking up to a person and saying, hey, just, you know, why don't you give me your wallet? The guy hands over his wallet is because he's already in this overwhelmed state. And somebody read him and he says, okay, here's my wallet. And this goes on more often than not. But yeah, it's all about trust issues. And, you know, if you're going to go to a reasonable person who's, you know, got their credentials behind them and you want to be somebody who has their testimonials and references and all that. So, you know, you're not just trusting a person who has 50 to 100 hours of time.

And that's what I was going to ask you, like, if I was, if I was going to have somebody. I mean, obviously, I'm talking, I'm, I'm talking to you right now. And you're, you're in California, aren't you?

Yes, I'M in Los Angeles.

Okay, so if somebody's in Los Angeles, they could go meet with you and, and get their, their custom script. But let's say I'm, I'm trying to find somebody in my area who can do this kind of thing. How do you know if, if somebody's good or if, if somebody kind of has the qualifications to be able to do something like create a custom script for you based on hypnosis for you to pull out and use right before a game or an event or something like that.

You're looking at the education, the level, is it accredited college that they went through, did they graduate through the entire program? I only say that because even at the school we're at here, we have Hypnosis Motivation Institute here in Tarzana, California is the first stage as you can become a hypnotist after I think it's 12 or 15 hours and somebody, you know, there's not a board that says, hey, you know, you, you're not licensed as a hypnotherapist. And they don't look oversee. And you can put up a sign and call yourself a hypnotherapist if you wish. But you're looking at what their, you know, what their credentials are, you know, what's, how far do they go through. They graduate the maximum of what their college offers. What specializations do they have? Do they have, you know, we have associations as a part of a union, you know, another part of the American Hypnosis Association. You know, I have insurance. That's a good sign because insurance will not take on somebody who hasn't, you know, gone through some school. So you're looking for, you know, obviously references as well. I mean, it's just like anything else though. There's good and bad doctors, there's good and bad lawyers, what not as you go through these, who really is the person that's right for you is the one that is the word of mouth and has a good reputation.

Okay, so this hypnosis Edu website that's got some certified hypnotherapists on it, right?

Well, everybody that's on that website is graduate of hmi.

Okay? So for people listening in and also just as a favor to you, Chris, for being on the show, what I'll do is I'll link just to your profile on that website and people in the LA area can go check yours out. And then if you're not in the LA area, you can always just surf around that site. So I wanted to ask you though, so I'M driving down.

I also wanted to tell you as well, I'm very excited. And as we spoke about this and about Skyping, I did get my new computer and I am up and Skyping. I didn't want to change it prior to this because I didn't want to mess anything up. What's going on between you and I. But I do have Skype sessions available as well as phone because you. It's all about words. So if somebody has a phone and then we can go ahead and do a speaker and we do that. We've done that in the past and have hypnosis sessions through that as well.

Nice. We should. We should do a hypnosis session because I can record on my end with Skype and we should do one and just.

That would be great. Yeah, we should have the first session. I could take you on a full journey. You'd have a great time. It's really. It's really a great place. We'd have to be careful. I mean, I hope no one listens while they're on their. Don't want to be listening to hypnosis while you're in the car.

That's a good. Because when you're hypnotizing me, somebody else could get hypnotized by listening to that.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm going to be.

But I'm writing a note to myself to get a hold of you after we finish recording and we can figure something out if people want to listen. Although I know a lot of people ride their bikes when they're listening in. So we'll have to be kind of careful. So I wanted to ask you this. I'm driving down the highway and I see these billboards for usually weight loss or cigarette smoking and using hypnosis to basically stop that. How can hypnosis help somebody to change a bad habit or to stop a bad habit in that way?

Okay, so we open up what's a filter in our mind called? It holds our inhibitions, which is the critical area of mind. And this is all based on John Kappas'. And this is all about the process in which HMI brought this all down from the founder. And that is the theory of mind, the 12% of the mind and the 88% of the subconscious. And there's a critical area of mind which is the filter. It holds certain information for a certain amount of time. It either allows information to go down in the subconscious mind and keep it, or it spits it out and we vent it. And we vent it in different ways. Either we don't remember it. Two, we vent it through dreams as a venting stage, as the third stage of dreams are a venting state. And as well as hypnosis as a natural venting state. Also we vent physically as well as we go through all of our exercises and whatnot.

Right, Right.

So what is happening is that we're going through this, we're opening up that, that, that critical area of mind which is putting them into a hyper suggestible state. Because how did we get that critical area of mind open is by triggering the fight and flight system. And we open up this critical area mind and it creates access to the subconscious mind. And now we're dropping in suggestions which are manifested from the affecting words from that person. Because what we're doing is that as I take those affecting words, your words, they're going to be stronger because they're yours and you're more suggestible to yourself than anybody else out there. But yes. Are we driving around and having suggestions all the time from the billboards and whatnot? Absolutely. Those are all suggestions. How do we change and how do we go about doing this is by helping to change.

When I was talking about the billboards, I was talking about advertisements for hypnotherapists who are doing this kind of stuff.

Right. So what's happening is that we're opening up that critical area mind. You're in a suggestible state. You're becoming suggestible to the, your own words. If the, if you're doing this correctly and you are changing, what are the triggers in which you are. That we wish to change. So if you're, you know, if your issues are eating habits, we have to figure out what is causing that. The beating habits in which we don't wish to have anymore. So triggers are. Every time I see my mother, I get upset, we have a fight, I go and eat. Okay. So we need to come up with a whole strategy for change. We can't tell the person. And weight loss can be very tricky because we can't tell the person, you just don't eat. Right. We all have to eat, so we can't just tell them this. We have to actually find different strategies for them to cope with and deal with the family and have a different reaction before we can ever get into possibly the eating habit altogether. It's not the eating that's the problem, it's the emotions behind it. Right. So how do we change those hypnosis? I have changed the knowns and the identifications and associations that we have by suggestions with this critical area, mind open, leading to a different change, different, different reaction.

Right, right. That all makes sense. Interesting. This stuff fascinates me. And I totally think that we should do a sample hypnosis session for people as long as they promise not to ride their bikes or go on a run while they're listening in. So, folks, I will contact Chris afterwards and we'll figure this out. But in the meantime, Chris, that was incredibly helpful. By the way, I should mention Chris is one of the guys I sent my encoder wristband to test and he's got a cool video where he shows. I believe you were looking at the pain reduction benefits of it, weren't you, Chris?

Well, I had, yes, absolutely. I had. My wife didn't give her any information. Had her tried the, had to try the bracelet. And I said, you know, just try this thing out. She had just been out of surgery. She was on pain meds and whatnot. And within, I think it was really 24, 48 hours. She didn't anymore. She didn't need any more pain pills. I mean, she didn't even have more ice. She was, it was, it was miraculous. It was, it was unbelievable. I was like, this is great because I didn't tell her anything. I didn't want her to be suggestible to anything because I understand how that all works.

Yeah.

So I, so I just gave it to her and said, here, try this thing. And sure enough, you know, without suggestion, it was, it was on and we were really excited. So that's where I really went to town with it because I started getting all my friends involved, all the CrossFit people that I'm involved with and all the coaches that, you know. And that was, that was such a great thing to do because the encoder, every, every athlete has something they want to work on or they have a, you know, they have something that they're, they wish to do better at. And I had, you know, coaches that are top notch athletes and they said I couldn't, I couldn't do this yesterday and today I can. So that's, that's a great testimonial. You know the great success stories there.

Yeah. And there actually are some cool videos. I'll link to them in the show notes. But basically we've got this CrossFit guy and the handstand, the change in his handstand walks that he's doing is pretty cool. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes for those of you who like that kind of stuff. I know there's some skeptics out there. But you know what? You just gotta. You gotta try it out. So anyways, just like hypnosis, you gotta try it out. Exactly what I was gonna say. You gotta try out this hypnotherapy thing, which I am going to do. So we'll get it recorded for you guys. And if you have questions, if you have comments, if you have feedback, if there's stuff I didn't ask Chris that you want the answers to, just leave your comments or your questions or your feedback in the show notes for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so thanks, Chris.

You're welcome. Thank you.