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TRANSCRIPT OF PAIN CONTROL PROCESSES

With Dr. Richard Nongard and Dr. Ziad Sawi
Copyright 2016 Dr. Richard Nongard
www.SubliminalScience.com

pain-transcript

Now I’m going to go through a script that we’re going to focus on the idea of dissociate and

we’re going to do it by changing our perceptual position and perceptual position has to do with

first, second and third perceptual position. First is you as you, second is you outside of you

watching you, and the third is actually more removed, it’s you watching you watch you. The

reason why perceptual position is important is because when we’re in the middle of something it
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feels often overwhelming but if we get some distance and space between us and an event or us

and an experience, we can create some comfort or at least decrease the severity and the intensity

of the trauma or the pain and the difficulty, so this might be used as a strategy for emotional

trauma resolution, it may be used a strategy for just about anything. We can also use this with

pain and pain control.

Many people who are familiar with NLP are familiar with the movie theater script. We sort of

did an adaptation of that with the idea of the TV and you can take a view being you in the show

as a position number 1 and position number 2, you in the audience watching you on the screen,

or the third perceptual position, you outside of you in the back projection room watching you

watch you. There are a lot of different ways that we can go about using perceptual position in an

NLP training course, often shares with people the ideas and the strategies for using perceptual

position at a deep level but I’m going to go through a shorter hypnotic script here again, simply

focusing on that shoulder pain that you’ve experienced, that you used to experience and we’ve

done enough exercises right now, she’s like: What shoulder pain?

- I know. I can usually feel my arms relaxing, like I usually grip because I try to control it,

I guess. I don’t know, I’m starting to float around.

Exactly, that’s also fractionation. You do enough short hypnosis sessions back to back, you just

stay in that state of hypnosis. We just finished the HypnoThoughts conference too so we’ve been

for a week now in that hypnotic state. Go ahead and close your eyes now and with your eyes

closed now breathe in, breathe out. Bring yourself to that resource state that we call hypnosis
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and in this state, in this place become aware of you as you-you in this chair. Pay attention to the

breath as you breathe in and out and to the muscles in your body. There are over 200 little

muscles in the face, the eyelids, the eyebrow, you can unclench the jaw and you can let the brow

relax.

As you breathe in and breathe out relax each muscle of the body and with each breath bring

yourself to a deeper state of relaxation but be mindful of you in this chair in this place right here

and right now. Now imagine that we hadn’t done the previous 4 exercises and that you still

experience pain in the shoulder. You could practice in this first perceptual position your view

simply breathing in, breathing out and with each breath bringing in comfort and exhaling

discomfort, bringing in comfort and exhaling discomfort. As you inhale comfort and exhale

discomfort do you notice in your body and in your shoulder in particular the experience of

amplifying comfort?

- Yes.

But imagine now removing yourself one step further from that pain you used to experience in the

shoulder by imagining you floating outside of you, essentially another you in a chair across the

room watching you and imagine you’re at the chair across the room watching you right now in

this chair. If you were here in my room you would see that there are actually two chairs identical

to this one in this room and there’s another one across from where Joanie is sitting, so imagine

another you is in that chair watching you.

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As you watch you inhaling comfort and exhaling discomfort, inhaling comfort and exhaling

discomfort, the other you in the chair across the room, as it sees all of you, not just the shoulder

but you from head to toe, from arm to arm, front to back, does it see someone comfortable?

- Yes.

Someone pain free.

- I see someone breathing deeply and relaxing, see the shoulder letting go.

Seeing yourself letting go and relaxing completely. Now imagine there’s another you floating up

outside of this building that we’re in, high above the roof, another you with x-ray vision, perhaps

sitting in a Ikea chair on a cloud floating by, seeing you watching you in this chair from this

distant position. Are you able to sense comfort?

- Yes.

And peace with the entire scene and situation.

- Yes.

And continue to see that you let that single white puffy cloud ferry you further and further, a puff

into the distance, eventually disappearing into the horizon taking with it anything known or
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unknown keeping you from feeling comfort at every level, in every place in your life, in your

body, in your relationships, finances and even in the [Inaudible 0.07.02] around you and now

when I count to 3 open your eyes, feeling fantastic and ready for the rest of the night. 1, taking in

a breath, letting that breath fill your lungs with oxygen. 2, taking another deep breath, feeling

refreshed and invigorated and 3, open the eyes feeling fantastic, ready for the rest of the day.

- I feel fantastic.

Feel fantastic now.

- Now, what is really amazing, felt like I went up into the sky or something.

Sure, these are five techniques I’ve done very shortly. We could do a 30 minute demonstration or

an hour long demonstration of each one and really expand on the imagery, the sensations, the

feelings but all in all these five techniques, do you see A, how they benefitted you and B, how

they can benefit the clients that you work with?

- Absolutely, especially given that the clients that I work with have a lot of the same issues,

even more so, back problems.

Sure and we focused on your shoulder because you’d mentioned to me earlier some shoulder

pain and this had been a recurring problem for you. Can you see how all five of these you could

utilize in self-hypnosis with any of your painful experiences, maybe even painful emotional
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experiences or difficult relationships or really, in any area of life?

- I think that would be fairly easy now, after experiencing [it? 0.08.38] it seems easy to do.

I would love to be up on the clouds letting a lot of different stuff go.

A lot of clouds and we’ve actually just shopped at Ikea earlier. It was the first time you’d

actually been to Ikea?

- Yes, my first time, I’m so happy.

I live next door to Ikea so I like to take people over there for Swedish meatballs and to look at

all the stuff there and they have a great feeling in Ikea and so having a great feeling with a great

imagery, do you remember the shoulder pain we talked about?

- No, I’ve had a pretty good day.

All right, thank you very much for participating in this video series. We’re going to continue on

with the rest of the techniques videos but Joanie, thank you very much.

- Thank you so much.

Joanie’s website, by the way, is an awesome new website, what’s your URL?
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- aim-for-success.com

Now, in this video I’m going to share with you some techniques for using sub modalities to

change our client’s experience with their pain. We can do this awake or conversational hypnosis,

I often do it sometimes as part of my pre talk or sometimes after I do a hypnosis session if a

client expresses any continued attachment to the issues that were addressed during the session

but I’m going to go ahead and do this with Joanie with her eyes closed and I’m going to ask you

to go ahead and simply close your eyes down right now, bring yourself to that resource state that

we call hypnosis and of course I’ve done a couple of inductions here and Joanie as a hypnotist is

very familiar with hypnosis, so you just bring yourself to that resource state that we call

hypnosis.

You mentioned a while ago the pain you had and you described it as a burning sensation, how

else would you describe that pain you were experiencing in your shoulder?

- It feels like someone’s twisting it back and forth and just burning, shooting up into my

shoulder.

So burning, shooting back and forth and what color is that pain, what color would you associate

with it?

- Orange.
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Orange okay, and is there an auditory quality to it, in other words are you screaming with that

pain if only on the inside or is it silent but deadly?

- Feel like I’m screaming on the inside, it hurts.

And is that pain, if it were another person, would it be somebody close or would it be somebody

far?

- Somebody far.

And just for those of you who are watching the video, these are all options she has and

experiences she’s created without deviating at this moment while she continues to relax,

enjoying a state of hypnosis, 3, 2, 1, 0. You who are viewing this video can recognize that a

client can conceptualize these things in really almost any way.

Now Joanie, as you continue to relax in that chair imagine that the TV across the room has come

on. Across from us in this room is a TV on the other side of the room and that TV has your pain

on the main channel. Can you see that TV show as your pain on that main channel?

- Yes.

It’s still orange, it’s far, there’s movement in that TV show back and forth, sharp, shoot, what if I

adjust the TV, the hue, the knob that controls the color on the TV and move it to black and white.
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Does that change your experience about pain at all, the way you think about it?

- Yes.

From orange to grey to black to white, what happens to your pain when I change the hue of the

pain?

- It gets better. The burning stops.

The burning stops, okay. In fact you could even imagine on this TV I’m pouring a bucket of water

on the burning, on the pain.

- That would feel wonderful.

I even can turn the volume down so the screaming becomes something you cannot hear or

[Inaudible 0.14.04] I can move a spot from the far wall or back in a place where you create

awareness in your mind and the pain that we projected onto the TV screen, we’ve now removed

the color, we’ve removed the sound, in fact we’ve frozen the image so it doesn’t move back and

forth anymore in its black and white state, and from that image, from that TV as if you’re sucking

it into your mind, the part of the mind where awareness is created and replaces your previous

experiences with pain with the new associations that you’ve just created. In NLP we do

something called a [Inaudible 0.14.49] check, we find out whether or not this is really beneficial

to you, because we don’t want you to be injured later by ignoring pain. Is this new experience of
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pain something that’s beneficial to you?

- Yes.

Because that old pain was not helpful to you, was it?

- No, it’s uncomfortable and scary.

Letting go of that right now, letting it simply disappear, melt away through your back, through

your thighs, through your shins, through your feet and disappearing into the core of the earth

would feel pretty good, wouldn’t it?

- Yes.

And now a little while ago we were talking about that shoulder pain that you used to experience,

check your shoulder now, become aware of your shoulder and tell me what does the shoulder

feel like right now?

- It’s loose and fine and comfortable, not hot, feels cool because you poured water on it.

Now open your eyes, take a deep breath, stretch out your arms, feel fantastic. I had gone through

a brief process of changing the sub modalities of the experience of the qualities of a pain; feel

pretty good, doesn’t it?

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- Yes because it’s always tight.

It’s always tight and it’s not now?

- No, it’s always tight so always burning and I’m always aware of the pain.

But right now you’ve become unaware of the pain and aware of the -

- Coolness and it’s just relaxed and loose.

Fantastic and thanks for demonstrating that process with us as well. You see how this can have a

profound impact on clients so you can do this either in the traditional trance state with the eyes

closed or even as part of a conversational experience pre or post hypnotic session.

In this fourth video we’re going to create hypnotic analgesia, we’re going to block pain and

we’re going to block pain by creating an awareness of no pain, in other words the sensation of no

sensation and we’re going to combine this with the ability to actually move our awareness to

anywhere that we would like to and so begin by simply picking a hand, pick one, pick any hand.

Okay, that’s the hand you picked. Okay, set that one over here.

- It’s my right hand.

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Take your other hand, take your index finger and just tap it right there, do it a couple of times.

Okay, that’s the spot we’re going to focus on so go ahead and close your eyes now. We can do a

lengthy induction if we wanted to but you’re really good at hypnosis so simply bring yourself to

that resource state of hypnosis and you picked the right hand knowing that was the right choice

for you, rather than the left hand for this experience, and either way would be fine but with that

left hand with the index finger just touch that spot on the back of the right hand. Go ahead and

touch that index finger to that spot on the right hand, just tap on it a couple of times just like you

did a moment ago and let that left hand rest over there on the armrest again.

Become aware of that spot that you tapped with the index finger, tap, tap, tap. What’s interesting

to know about that spot you tapped is that where you tapped, the size of a fingertip, you now

have the sensation of no sensation, don’t you, in that spot?

- Yes.

There is no pain, it was just a tap but even though it was just a tap it really left no feeling, did it?

Maybe you can feel the rest of the hand; you can feel it, can’t you? The fingers and the thumb

and the wrist, the back of the hand but [Inaudible 0.19.24] that place that you tapped, that spot

that you touched has the sensation of no sensation and it’s really amazing to know that we can

create an awareness of nothingness as simply as tapping yourself on the back of the hand. What’s

even more amazing though, is that that spot the size of a fingertip on the back of the hand you

can let expand to the size of a quarter of the back of your hand. Go ahead and on the back of

your hand just become aware of the sensation of no sensation in that spot the size of a quarter on
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the back of your hand.

In fact, you can even expand that awareness of the sensation of no sensation from the size of a

quarter to the entire back of your hand and notice your fingers, you can feel the fingers, notice

the wrist, you can feel the wrist. In fact you can feel the face of your hand but the back of the

hand the sensation of no sensation and that feels wonderful to feel nothing, doesn’t it?

- Yes.

Neither pain nor comfort, just the absence of feeling which is really the awareness of analgesia,

the blockage of pain. In fact, in this case even the blockage of comfort, completely neutral,

absolute nothingness on the back of the hand and what’s amazing is that the mind has the

incredible ability to expand that awareness, the sensation of no sensation into the fingertips. First

the pinky, then the ring finger and the pointer and the thumb and even the middle finger too. You

can expand that sensation of no sensation in the face of the hand, the palm against that leather

and even the wrist, almost as if you’re wearing a glove made of anesthesia, pretty easy to create

that sensation of no sensation, isn’t it?

- Yes.

In fact, you can even imagine that you’ve tied off that glove of anesthesia and that hand is simply

a hand, neither pain nor comfort, just a nothingness, the sensation of no sensation and it feels

remarkable, doesn’t it?

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- Yes.

Now, earlier we were talking about the pain in the shoulder. I don’t know if you want to transfer

the sensation of no sensation quickly or if you want to transfer it slowly to that place but lift your

hand and touch it to where you felt that pain in the past. You can move your hand quickly and

eliminate the pain in the shoulder by transferring that anesthesia to the shoulder quickly or you

can move it slowly, allowing yourself all of the time you need to make the decision to create the

sensation of no sensation on your shoulder, either way is fine but begin lifting that hand.

Lift that hand with that anesthetic glove, that sensation of no sensation, lift that hand a bit higher

and move it towards the shoulder when you’re ready, touching the shoulder and letting that

sensation of no sensation transfer completely as if you’re unwrapping the glove from the hand

and wrapping your glove around the shoulder, moving your hand back to the armrest of the chair

notice when you move the hand back to the armrest of the chair that the feeling of feelings in the

hand have returned to normal but the sensation of no sensation has been transferred to the

shoulder. Pretty incredible, isn’t it?

- It’s incredible.

It’s pretty nice and a great thing about this exercise is that it’s not me who eliminated your pain

but rather you with your own internal resource states who created and awareness of no awareness

first in a spot the size of a fingertip, then to a larger spot, then to a spot the size of your entire
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hand and then transferred it to that place that in the past had caused so much distress and the

good news here is that I used language that put it exactly where it belonged - in the past, so now

take a breath, ready to take your newfound ability to create that sensation of no sensation and

apply it anywhere in life that is meaningful and important to you. Open your eyes when I count

to 3 feeling fantastic and ready for the rest of the day, 1, 2, 3. Wow, feels pretty good.

- Feels really good.

Now, after I turned the camera off after the last exercise and before I turned it onto this exercise

you said to me that was pretty cool. Was this pretty cool too?

- That was very cool, I’ve never experienced anything like that.

Right, what’s great about it though, is that you created the experience and so it’s yours any time

in the next day or week or month that is useful to you. Now, you work with swimmers and

athletes, you do peak performance coaching and hypnosis.

- Yes.

Are there sports injuries that you think applications of this might be helpful?

- Most definitely, a lot of shoulder injuries.

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And so using these techniques and strategies, whether it’s old people with arthritis and geriatric

populations, people like me who may have had injuries, you know, they say, how come my feet

were so screwed up? My doctor’s best guess, they don’t really know was that I probably had a

soccer injury when I was 12 or 13 and just over the years kicking the ball or whatever I was

doing became an issue but using these strategies with athletes –

- Yes, that would be amazing.

Can really help, probably can help endurance, comfort, what if an athlete didn’t have fear of pain

impeding their performance, what would their performance be like?

- Much better because they talk about how they worry that they’re going to tighten up and

get an injury and the longer and more they swim, the more [Inaudible 0.27.00] they

worry about. They think about injury, they think about overuse.

Well, thank you again for this demonstration, I appreciate it.

- Thank you.

And again I’ve provided a PDF transcript of all of these so that you can use those and adopt them

to the clients who you work with.

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Hello and welcome. I’m Doctor Richard Nongard with subliminalscience.com and I’m very

excited that you’re participating in this course on hypnotic pain control techniques. This is

actually a rich course full of a lot of content and a lot of ideas. There are at the beginning of

course these 8 videos and these 8 videos are videos where I’m going to be demonstrating

hypnotic techniques that are useful with pain control clients. I’ll talk a little bit about the

technique and then I’ll get though a demonstration of the technique, either with a person here

with me or on camera with you so that you can experience the processes as well.

I’m going to be using a hypnotist colleague from Florida, her name is Joanie [Nagy?] and she’s

going to be the hypnotee during many of these videos and what you’re going to receive in

addition of these videos, which of course you can view over again, you can even download these

videos for offline viewing but you’re also going to receive a PDF transcript of each one of these

short sessions.

The reason why I provide this transcript to you is so that you’ll actually have a word for word

script, a printable script, if you will, of the processes that I guide Joanie through so that you can

use these and adapt them with your very own clients. Now, this is a resource series that is really

rich in content, the last of these 8 videos has my colleague, doctor [inaudible 0.28.45] who is a

pain control specialist and licensed anesthesiologist and he’s going to be answering some

questions about what is pain. If you are an experienced clinician working with pain control

clients on a regular basis watching these videos first is certainly an okay idea.

That last video with Doctor [Suri?] though, is probably a great starting point if you’re just getting
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into the whole subject of pain control hypnosis and work with people because I think having an

understanding of that is important and of course on September 11th I’ll be doing an hour and a

half live webcast which you are certainly invited to be a part of by registering for this course

with doctor [Zihad Suri?] and we’ll be answering questions about the techniques that I’ve

utilized and about what he shares with us in that video and you are also going to be able to ask

him questions about how can you as a hypnotist generate referrals from a pain control specialist

like Doctor [Suri?].

I know that many hypnotists are very interested in creating a thriving business and getting

medical referrals for pain control hypnosis. Doctor [Suri?] is going to answer the question of

who do they refer to and how do they go about choosing who they make those referrals to and

he’s going to share with you some ideas or strategies so that you can actually market and get

medical referrals from licensed physicians just like Doctor [Suri?] in your own area, so this

program is very rich in content and of course if you aren’t able to make the September 11th

webcast with Doctor [Suri?], have no fear because the entire event will be recorded and the

entire event will be downloadable as well.

The other thing I want to point out is at any time as you’re going through these course materials,

whether you’re viewing this as a live event or if you’ve purchased this after the fact and are

accessing the archives you can still ask questions. You can ask questions during our live webcast

by typing in the chat box that we’re going to provide on the webpage but you can also ask us

questions at any time in our forum at icbchgroup.com, that actually takes you to our Facebook

group to over 4 500 hypnotists, NLP practitioner members of that forum and I visit there every
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single day and I will certainly answer questions, get the feedback from many other people as

well. I’ve added Doctor [Suri?] to the forum so that he has the ability to answer some questions

as well. Some of you may remember he’s taught some of the classes with me in the past, he’s a

great speaker, a talented person so I’m looking forward to his contribution to this course material

as well.

In this first video though, I’m going to take a couple of minutes and I’m going to share with you

a hypnotist perspective on pain and a hypnotist perspective on pain control and I’m going to go

back to the roots of medical hypnotherapy and discuss with you Milton Erickson’s definition of

pain and Milton Erickson’s solutions for hypnotic pain control. Here is the definition of pain that

Milton Erickson authored in his books. Pain is complex, it’s a construct composed of past

remembered pain and present pain experienced and of anticipated pain of the future. The

immediate stimuli are only a central third of the entire experience, nothing so much intensifies

pain as the fear that it will be there tomorrow. Conversely, the realization that present pain is a

single event which will come definitely to a pleasant ending serves to diminish pain greatly.

This is really, I think, a great definition of pain. We often have pain coupled with anxiety: Is this

going to persist, is it ever going to leave, am I ever going to feel better and of course we also

have what Milton Erickson alludes to, remembered pain. Our current pain experience is often a

process of the pain levels we felt before and what our experience was before and chances are

pretty good if you’re watching this video you are of an age where you’ve had a chance to

experience a lot of pain in life before. This could apply certainly to emotional pain or actually

focusing on the subject of physical pain and so when we have a painful experience today, the
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first way that our mind tries to make sense out of it is to look at our previous experiences and so

we bring into our current pain processes or current pain interpretations the experiences of

yesterday.

Some of you know I’ve struggled with chronic pain over the years; I’ve had multiple surgeries

on my feet to deal with arthritis and arthritic pain. By the way, somebody once said to me: If

you’re such a great hypnotist, Richard, how come you have arthritic pain? My answer to them is

real simple: If I wasn’t a great hypnotist I would have been in a wheelchair a long time ago. In

fact, now I’m getting around not only pretty good, exercising every single day but the rack full of

canes is actually sitting over in the corner by my door as a decorative item, rather than something

I use any longer to get around.

Our first lesson here, I guess, is that solutions for clients are going to come at different levels

with different painful experiences at different times in their life but when we experience pain we

look back and we interpret our current pain experience often in light of where we’ve been before

and as many people get a little bit older and they begin to experience pain or even have a trauma

or a new painful experience or a new awareness of pain they project out into the future: Is this

the beginning of the end, is this the point where my hip goes or some other part of my body is

going to become unstable and I’m not going to be able to function anymore? That anticipatory

anxiety can certainly exacerbate our client’s current pain experience.

Milton Erickson’s definition of it’s complex, it’s pain is not some thing, pain is a construct

composed of past remembered pain, present stimuli and anticipated pain of the future and in all
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of my nursing continuing education - I’ve been to a lot of nursing continuing education classes

although I’m not a nurse I love to read the nursing journals because nurses often seem to have a

tremendous level of depth to the solutions that their journals discuss. When I look at psychology

journals on pain or I look at medical journals from the pain academies and the pain fellowships

like Doctor [Suri?] is a part of I never see a definition that really encompasses not only the

present but the past and the future and of course as a hypnotist you can begin to sense already

there are hypnotic solutions we can use.

We can use regression as a technique to reframe pain, we use mindfulness as a strategy to help

our clients be fully in the present despite the pain and we can help our clients future pains or

even use timeline therapy and other hypnotic techniques to help us deal with our future

orientation or perceptual position as it relates directly to pain. I’m going to let Doctor [Suri?]

address the physical experience of pain in greater detail in my video interview with him but I

want to share with you a simple conceptualization of the physical side of pain.

The very first part of the pain process is that nerve cells, whether it’s in the skin or bones or the

muscles or other parts of the body, receive a stimulus of some type. A painful stimulus that is

from a physical level strong enough to cause damage, so the first step in the physical process is a

stimuli or one type or another that is literally strong enough to cause damage to the body and

these nerve cells in our fingertips, our skin, our muscles, our bones, the composition of our body

literally yelp out, they respond, those nerve endings, by sending a signal.

What’s interesting about the signal that’s sent through the spinal cord and to the brain is that
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sometimes in chronic pain those damaged cells literally misfire, they make a mistake and they

produce pain messages even after the danger or the physical stimuli no longer exists and this is

where we begin to develop chronic pain and as a hypnotist who’s dealt with the emotional

aspects of caring for clients you can see how emotions certainly have a direct relationship into

whether or not that anticipatory experience may be exacerbated by any type of misfiring in the

damage cell that might send a chronic pain signal to the body.

What happens, what they get is an acute situation of pain that’s happening right now or whether

it’s a chronic condition where the danger is gone, is these messages literally go through the

spinal cord into the brain. I was talking to Doctor [Suri?] about the work that he does and he

primarily does injections into the spinal cord to alleviate people’s pain even when the pain is in

other parts in the body and that’s because these pain messages travel through the spinal cord and

up to the brain. It’s interesting to note that sometimes people feel no pain, even when there’s a

pain signal being sent.

As a hypnotist you can begin to see how we might be able to use pleasure to really short circuit

these pain messages at one level or another. Endorphins are of course a chemical in the body that

literally can block the message of pain during a crisis situation or an acute situation. Have you

ever been in a traumatic car accident or experienced some other type of traumatic pain where

there was some other task to do, for example maybe you and a child were injured at the same

time and you had to take care of that child in order to make sure that the kid was okay and only

later did you begin to feel the pain?

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In fact I was in a car accident; many of you know Alex from some of my other videos. He’s my

youngest son, he’s now coming up on 21 but when he was 5 months old we were in a really

serious car accident. He actually have a fractured skull, his car seat was flipped over, I flagged

another motorist down, said I wasn’t going to wait for an ambulance, we weren’t too far from the

hospital and I feel bad for yelling at her because I made her drive as quick as she could and got

to the emergency room and ran inside and Alex stayed in ICU for a couple of days.

Because it was a car accident and I left the scene with Alex the police officer came up a couple

of hours later to interview me about the accident and he said to me as he’s taking notes: And

when did you become aware of the truck, and I looked at him and I said: What truck, you’ve got

the wrong accident. I was hit by a Chevy Corsa car and he said: No, I’m talking about your

accident; you were hit by a semi. I said: I was not hit by a semi, I got hit by a Corsa car, you’ve

got the wrong car accident. Go find the people you’re looking for. He just grabbed me by the

shoulder, he said: No, that was your accident; you got hit by the Corsa car, that pushed you into

the oncoming traffic, that’s when you got smashed by the semi. I thought to myself: Wow, I did

not even know that there was a semi involved in this car accident, no wonder we were smooshed.

What’s interesting about that is that I got Alex through the emergency room and up into ICU and

they had all the little tubes all over him, he was only about 5 or 6 months old and he was doing

well but it’s pretty scary, of course, as a parent and I actually had a training in Fort Worth about

two days later and so fortunately by the time I had to go to Fort Worth - as a self-employed

person with young children I needed to go to that event, by the time I got to Fort Worth I had

been in the hospital for two days and still had not even taken a shower.
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I remember when I got to my hotel, the Ramada Inn in Fort Worth, Texas and two days had gone

by and it’d been a really difficult two days but Alex was now of course okay or I wouldn’t have

left and so I got undressed and that was the first time I’d actually taken off my shirt after

probably two and a half, three days. That’s when I realized all my ribs were black and blue,

that’s when I realized how much pain I was actually in from that car accident. Endorphins, crisis,

acute situations literally can block pain. Now, there’s something else that can block pain in

addition to endorphins. Pleasure can also block pain.

The way that we experience things and this is not an erotic hypnosis course and this is not a book

review of 50 Shades of Grey and this is not a BDSM course but it’s always struck me as rather

interesting that there are people who use sensual pleasure as a way to block out things that would

be clearly painful to me, so there are ways that we can actually modulate either unintended, the

example of crisis or trauma having to care for somebody else, preoccupation with the chores, or a

deliberate attempt to change, reframe our meaning and extent of pain. I think that 50 Shades of

Gray example, without getting into anything beyond the PG description here gives you plenty of

thought to think about as we recognize that the literal physical process of pain is still something

we have the ability to impact with hypnosis.

Milton Erickson gives us some ways that as a physician he used hypnosis to deal with pain. I’ve

listed these out, in fact there’s a transcript of this class as well, the entire lecture that goes before

the demonstrations so I actually have these and don’t have to take any notes but the first

technique that Erickson used was direct suggestion. Erickson is well known as an indirect
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hypnosis but the reality is if you watch any Milton Erickson videos he certainly used direct

hypnosis almost as often as he used story or metaphor or other indirect suggestions.

The second way or the second technique that we’re going to talk about or use, and by the way

there are 11 things outlined here, I’m going to combine them because I think some of them

overlap into a series of 8 videos, but we can indirectly suggest that the client’s pain will literally

disappear. Think for a minute of the Elman hypnosis induction where the numbers disappear

from our mind and if something as concrete as numbers can disappear from our mind, the reality

is that we can have pain disappear from our mind and so one of the ways that Erickson did this

was, he actually was talking to a client about pain and he started talking about plants saying,

there’s a quote from Milton Erickson: You know Joel, a plant is a wonderful thing, it’s so nice,

so pleasing just to be able to think about plants as if it were a man. Would such a plant have nice

feelings and a sense of comfort?

It’s an indirect suggestion that man can feel what a plant might feel; it’s actually a little bizarre.

In my conscious mind, my intellectual mind, in my cognitive thought it really doesn’t make

much sense but Erickson’s client responded from it. Amnesia is a hypnotic phenomenon. There

is a great book by John Edgette and I think that every hypnotist should get it. It’s called the

Handbook of Hypnotic Phenomena and John Edgette actually lists out the various hypnotic

phenomena’s that occur in the resource state we call hypnosis and amnesia is certainly one of

them and being able to induce amnesia related to a prior pain experience can be a valuable

technique for some clients who experience pain and Erickson used that as a strategy as well.
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One of the other hypnotic phenomenon is analgesia. The idea behind analgesia, I don’t know if

you’ve ever seen Aspirin, it says it’s an analgesic. In hypnosis it’s a phenomenon that creates the

inability to feel pain, literally pain being blocked, the loss of the ability to feel pain while

experiencing consciousness and so analgesia is a way of using hypnotic phenomena to decrease a

client’s pain. What Erickson did was he would create an experience of analgesia in the one place

of the body and when the client was able to do that, then move or touch or associate that part of

the body where analgesia was created into another part of the body where pain is experienced

and you’ll see me demonstrate that process here with Joanie in a little bit.

Another Erickson idea was having a person imagine that they are outside of them self, observing

them self so a dissociation is another hypnotic phenomenon from that pain. Erickson also used

the technique of altering sensation of pain into something else, whether it was warmth or an itch

or a thing of autogenic training, coolness or heaviness or any other sensation that a person might

experience. Erickson also used the strategy and the technique of displacing pain from one part of

the body into another part of the body, essentially showing the person that they have the ability

to move the pain around their body and if you have the ability to move the pain around the body,

what do you also have the ability to do? To release the pain, let it go. Borrowing one of John

Cerbone’s scripts here: Through the soles of the feet into the floor and all the way into the core

of the earth, releasing it now and forever more.

These are all techniques that Milton Erickson used and in the demonstration that I’m going to do

I’m going to build on these as well. Erickson also talked about having a person suggest that the

pain could reduce itself, giving power to the pain and that’s really pretty interesting. Rather than
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me trying to control the pain, give the power to the pain, let the pain try to control itself. One of

the other hypnotic phenomena that we talk about is time distortion hypnosis.

Most people are familiar with time distortion from the perspective or the idea that if we do a

hypnosis session for 45 minutes it feels like 5 minutes to the client but one of the things that we

can do is literally have a client who’s complaining of a long period of time experiencing pain

interpret that from a time distortion perspective as if it’s a very short period of time. These are all

methods of hypnotic pain control that Milton Erickson utilized and you’re going to see in my

demonstrations with Joanie that these are all ideas that you can use with your clients as well.

I would like for you to walk up, Joanie [Nagy?] and Joanie, thank you for participating in this

class, I really appreciate it.

- Absolutely.

Joanie, for those of you who have not had a chance to meet her, is a professional hypnotist, she’s

licensed mental health counselor on the state of Florida and she uses hypnosis as a way to help

people achieve not only peak performance but to help people at the Olympic level, specifically

swimmers, go for the Gold so she’s an experienced clinician and an experienced hypnotist and

I’m going to go through some processes with her. Those of you who’ve seen my training videos

where I go through the traditional processes of hypnosis, the complete induction, the complete

deepener, a complete set of suggestions, and awakening and you’ve watched me do that in my

office you’ll notice a couple of things.

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One, we’re not using the headphones today which I almost always use. Two, I’m actually sitting

much closer to the client than I normally would and the reason why is because I’m of course

producing this video and one of the other things about this is Joanie is an experienced hypnotist

and an experienced clinician and so there’s really no need for me to do lengthy inductions to

move to that resource state. What I want you to be able to focus on in these videos is the specific

strategy or technique applied to pain control that’s going to be useful.

However, for this first demonstration I am going to use a traditional induction and the reason

why I’m going to do that is simple. I’m going to tie the induction directly to direct suggestion.

When I do direct suggestion with clients like Milton Erickson did, what one discovery is that

when we can associate it to something else, then it makes a great deal of sense, so I’m going to

give Joanie the direct suggestion that the pain that she’s experienced is something she can focus

on in a different way. She can move her attention to something else. We’re not even going to try

to get rid of the pain, what we’re going to do instead is we’re going to shift her attention to

where she’s experiencing comfort as well and this is really strategy number one.

In fact when my stepfather was in the hospital not too long ago I went into the hospital room to

visit him and up on the board was, I think it’s called the Wong Pain Faces Scale and there are

unhappy frown face and a less frowny face and an average looking face and a little bit of a smile

and then a big smile face and the question is how much pain are you in? If you ask a patient in a

hospital: How much pain are you in, I guarantee you they’re going to find a lot of pain to be in

but nurses and doctors or hospital personnel never ask but I think it’s a really important question,
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which is how much comfort are you in?

I’m going to use a induction that teaches our client that they can shift their attention to anything

they want to and then I’m going to give Joanie the direct suggestion that she can shift her

attention to places in the body where she’s experiencing comfort and the reason why I’m going

to do this is real simple. It’s a whole lot easier to take what’s right and use that as a resource for

solving a problem than it is to actually fix what’s wrong. As a matter of fact I might not be able

to decrease the pain, it may be caused by, let’s say a broken bone or something else and there

really is real risk to those nerve cells and those tissues at that particular moment but what I can

do is I can increase the person’s comfort level or awareness of comfort somewhere else.

This, by the way really dovetails into the whole idea of mindfulness. Thich Nhat Hanh gave a

lecture where he came out before the room of psychotherapists and he said: I’m grateful today

for my non-toothache. His point was real simple, when we’re in pain, when we have a toothache

we pay attention to that or we don’t pay attention to what’s right and by using what’s right to

compensate for what’s wrong we can decrease the experience of pain for the client that we’re

working with.

Joanie, before we were talking you mentioned that you have some chronic pain in your shoulder.

Tell me a little bit about that pain.

- I get a burning sensation in the top of my shoulder or right here at the top of my arm and

it radiates back towards the traps and I was worried at one point that I was having a
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heart attack.

And that burning sensation, a pain across here and thought you were having a heart attack, glad

you weren’t having a heart attack, so you could say if you were Thich Nhat Hanh: I’m thankful

for my non-heart attack today.

- Correct.

Awesome and so we can always reframe all our experiences. I’m going to start off by doing a

basic hypnosis induction where I can do a lengthy induction here but I want you to pick a point

over here on the far wall and bring all of your attention to it. It could be a shadow on the wall or

a flick of page or the corner of a light switch or even that air-conditioning unit over there,

anywhere you want to, just bring all of your attention to that one spot.

Essentially stare at a spot and as you focus your attention on that spot you notice when you

fixate your gaze for a long enough period of time it actually causes the eyes to get a little bit

tighter. Keep your eyes open though and really stare at that spot, that place on the far wall and

when you do you’ll notice that it becomes perhaps brighter and sharper and crisper and clearer

and everything else around it becomes hazy or for some people the spot becomes more difficult

to see and maybe appears and disappears while everything else around it becomes sharp and

crisp and clear. For other people there’s no change in what they actually see but by focusing

your attention on a spot for a period of time you’ll probably notice that the eyes become a bit

tired.
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In fact so tired from staring that if you close your eyes down now, go ahead and close your eyes

down now, it feels really go to close the eyes. Remember something though, that even with the

eyes closed it’s almost as if you have x-ray vision, you can still bring your attention and focus on

that spot on the far wall, pretty cool isn’t it?

- Yes.

Now there’s an imaginary spot halfway between here and the far wall and bring your attention

to that imaginary spot, essentially move the spot to the halfway point, halfway between you and

that wall. Are you able to see it?

- I see it.

And your eyes are closed and yet you’re still able to see it, pretty cool isn’t it, pretty cool, isn’t

it?

- Very cool.

It’s one of the awesome things about hypnosis; we get to experience things in a completely new

way. Now imagine that spot has moved all the way in front of your closed eyes, focus on that spot

that you’ve moved to that point directly in front of your closed eyes and can you see that spot in

front of your eyes?

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- I can.

Awesome, now take a breath, breathe in, breathe out and bring that spot inside of the mind, that

part of the mind where awareness is created, become aware of that place or that spot within your

own mind, continue to breathe in and breathe out and with each breath allow yourself to double

the experience of relaxation. With each number and each breath relax a little bit more, 5, 4, 3, 2,

feel pretty good doesn’t it?

- Yes.

All the way down to that resource state that we call hypnosis, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 and in this resource

state that we call hypnosis just thinking of your ability to move your awareness from a point on

the far wall to a place halfway between you and the wall and even to a place directly in front of

you and even to a place deep within the mind, you have the ability to pay attention to anything

you want to, even something as pointless as a point over on the far wall.

In the past you’ve been aware of the discomfort in the shoulder, at one point even wondering if

perhaps you were having a heart attack and so right now as you become aware of that part of

the mind where awareness is created, become aware of other places in the body where you feel

comfortable, relaxing in that recliner, is it your hands as they rest on the leather armrest of that

chair or is it your feet as they rest from the end of the day on the footrest and the floor or is it

your back as you sink into the recline of that chair or maybe even your neck as it relaxes without
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having to support your head as it does throughout the day because of the support of this chair?

Feels pretty good to become aware of the places in your body where you feel comfort, isn’t it?

- Yes.

Pay attention to those places in your body where you feel a sense of comfort or contentment or

safety, pleasure. Allow yourself to deeply relax. Just as you could have chosen any point on the

far wall to focus your attention on what feels good today, essentially Joanie is not having a heart

attack, just relax. I’ll give you another moment or so in trance state, in hypnosis, in this resource

state we call hypnosis to not only become aware of those places where you feel comfort but to

amplify that sensation of comfort.

Becoming more comfortable in those places, becoming more relaxed in those places, feeling

even better in those places and now feeling better from head to toe, from arm to arm, from front

to back and anywhere, everywhere within the body and so when I count to three open the eyes

feeling refreshed from this experience and ready for the rest of the day. Of course one of the

great things about hypnosis so we can even change our mind and how we’ll end the session.

Joanie, I want you to become aware of that place in your mind where awareness is created,

where that spot was brought to at the end of our induction and now bringing that spot back

outside of your mind to that point directly in front of your eyes, are you able to see it there in

front of your eyes?

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- Yes.

And now move your attention to that point halfway there between you and the far wall,

continuing to keep the eyes closed being aware of that point halfway between you and the far

wall, do you see it there?

- I see it there.

And you can even see the far wall which is where you can now move in your mind that spot to all

the way back to where we started. Now open your eyes, fixating your gaze in that place on the

far wall. Having learnt something new from this experience you have the ability to shift and

move your awareness from any place and any point at any time. You’ve done fantastic.

- Thank you, that was awesome.

And by the way 1, 2, 3, take a breath, feel good.

- Feel good.

And some of you who are viewing this video you probably followed along with the process as

well but if you’re viewing you can always ask me questions about that process but what was that

process like for you, what was the experience of that in the context of pain?
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- It was great. I felt like my feet were in slippers or something and then my hands were

really tense when we started and that felt [Inaudible 1.02.30] I just didn’t feel it pressing

into the couch and then I didn’t feel anything in the shoulders which is really unusual

because even when I try to lay back in the chair normally I just feel a lot of tension, just

pressing.

Well you did great, thank you very much.

- Thank you.

In this video with Joanie I’m going to share with you a strategy for hypnotic amnesia as it relates

directly to pain control. Now, Joanie you’ve talked to me a little bit about in the preceding videos

of shoulder pain you’ve experiencef and I also asked if you’re familiar with Doctor Flower’s

induction and you said yes.

- Yes, I’ve used it.

Kind of liked it. The Doctor Flowers induction has actually long been one of my favorite

inductions and the reason why is it combines really two things. It combines the idea of hypnotic

amnesia with the simple number count and actually a couple of fractionations. It uses a number

of different things and for years there’s a number of YouTube videos that have been

demonstrating the Doctor Flowers induction in complete detail. They’re one of my more popular

videos over the years. I read a book recently called Expert Scripts for the Hypnotist and the
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Doctor Flowers induction script is in there. I’ve actually printed out part of it from my book and

the reason why I’ve done that is simple.

Whenever I have the chance to teach you something else as sort of a bonus in a video I always

like to do that and I have no problem bringing scripts into my hypnosis sessions with clients.

What I tell my clients is real simple: You may hear me reading from my notes or even from a

book or going through some papers and the reason why is during our session I want to make sure

I cover everything that’s important to you, is that okay?

- Yes, absolutely.

So now if I happen to use a book as a resource or I happen to use my notes as a resource it’s

normal for the client. Something I do want to point out of course, rarely would I ever simply read

a script to a client. Our pacing is not going to be correct, we won’t be in rapport with them if we

do that but if you have a script whether it’s a script for pain control or a script for an induction

and you’re very familiar with it – I would say I’m very familiar with this, I wrote a book on it,

made a number of videos on it so I can pace myself with the client but if I have 7 or 8 or 10

clients in a day I can make sure that I actually cover everything that’s important to the client.

I’m actually going to use the script from my book, Expert Scripts for the Hypnotist, the Doctor

Flowers induction that you’re familiar with and we’re going to tie this into some suggestions for

hypnotic amnesia. A lot of people think that to forget something, that’s really powerful, how you

would create hypnotic amnesia, but we can do it in a number of ways. Direct suggestion in the
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Elman induction the numbers will become so unimportant that as you got backwards from 100,

98, 97, 96, 95 there will come a point where you simply lose the numbers and can no longer

remember them and it will be at that point that you notice you’ve drifted in to a deep trance state.

The Elman induction, one of the most popular hypnosis inductions, actually uses hypnotic

amnesia as a way of inducing hypnosis right away at the very beginning. I’ve seen a lot of stage

hypnosis shows and one of the things that’s interesting to me is when a stage hypnotist comes

out and tells a person that: You’ve forgotten your name, you cannot remember your name.

There’s a Las Vegas hypnotist who does a great bit with this, he tells them not only they cannot

remember their name but they can only remember their name when they sing the Happy Birthday

song. Happy birthday to you and I can get to the name part. It’s one of Anthony Cools’ bits in

Las Vegas, he’s built a very successful stage hypnosis show demonstrating the power of

hypnotic phenomena and that’s really one of the stronger bits in the show. I think he usually does

it at the beginning of the show.

Hypnotic amnesia may sound like something difficult, direct suggestion often facilitates

amnesia. We can also associate a different experience of amnesia, forgetting something, into

what we want our client to forget and so I want my client to forget about their shoulder pain. I

might ask them about other things they forgot or even if they’ve ever forgotten this pain before

and one of my favorite scripts - I don’t really know where it has come from, I’ve heard it from so

many people over the years - but the suggestion that you’ll forget to remember that pain and if

you don’t forget to remember it you’ll remember to forget it. That brings an element of

confusion into this.

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Once you start with the Doctor Flowers induction here the Doctor Flowers induction is a great

induction because it really combines a lot of these things that are truly useful. You’ll always be

able to hear my voice and as you know of course hypnosis isn’t a state of unconsciousness or

unawareness, in fact sometimes it’s actually a state of hyper awareness, maybe not even of the

words that I’m using, maybe they won’t be that important to you but the experiences you’re

creating, so are you ready to begin?

- I’m ready.

By the way, there’s our hypnotic consent and that we’re always looking for, so I will count

backwards from 20 to 1 and with each number, close your eyes but between the numbers open

your eyes. For example if I said 20 close your eyes, open your eyes, 19 close your eyes, open

your eyes, 18 , got it? You’re doing great, you’ve done a great job.

- Thank you.

So let’s go ahead and begin, simply 20 close the eyes, open,19 close open, 18 close, open 17

close, open. Notice while we’re doing this you really become engaged in this process, really

pushing aside any distractions, 16, 14, 13 and notice that your body has become relaxed, your

mind has become absorbed and it’s harder to open the eyes between the numbers, 14, 13, 12 and

it becomes a point where it’s just preferable to keep the eyes closed. It’s almost as if you can’t

open them anymore, 12, 13, 11, 10. Of course you can hear my voice, very relaxed, never asleep
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but deeply relaxed, 8, 7, 6, abandoning the idea of opening the eyes again and letting any stress

simply completely disappear, accessing that part of the mind where creativity, intuition and even

thought is formed, all the way down, down, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of forgetting something before, something that

you thought you wouldn’t ever forget like your car keys or your shoes or even to eat lunch during

the day and if you’re like many of the people who I talk to on a regular basis, my friends, my

colleagues, my clients, even myself one time or another you can think of a time that you did

forget something that you thought you would never forget.

In the past you’ve experienced that pain in the shoulder but from this point forward, just like you

forgot your car keys in the morning you’ll forget to experience pain in the morning. Just like you

might have forgotten to eat lunch or buy something you needed for dinner, you’ll forget it

meantime and even in the evening that you forgot about that pain in the morning. You wake up

the next day; you discover in your awake state that you went a whole day without remembering

your pain.

Over the next day and over the next week and over the next month or two, in each and every way,

each and every way you’ll find yourself getting better and better. The good news here is that

there will come a point where it becomes so natural to forget about the pain that it will be as if

you have remembered to forget the pain or forgotten to remember the pain and you look back,

maybe somebody will mention it to you: How’s your pain doing? And it will catch you off guard

for a moment as you wonder: What pain? Looking back and realizing that it’s been a long time
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since you ever had that experience that was so distressing to you in your shoulder.

I know this resource state of hypnosis feels wonderful but because this is only a demonstration

it’s time to [inaudible 1.13.36] so when I count to 3 take in a breath, feel fantastic, open the eyes

and be ready for the rest of the day, 1, taking in a breath, 2 stretching out the muscles that need

to be stretched, recognizing that you have the ability, even though this was just a short

demonstration, to use this as a strategy in any way that’s important to you in the future and 3,

opening the eyes, feeling fantastic.

Now again a short process for a demo purpose but I wish I had a before and after picture because

you look fantastic, you look really relaxed.

- Thank you, I feel refreshed, I feel better. I was so tired and uncomfortable in the day with

the computer.

You know, it’s almost paradoxical how 5 minutes of hypnosis feels like you’ve taken a five hour

nap and helps us feel refreshed rather than more tired.

- Was that 5 minutes?

I don’t know, probably.

- I don’t either.
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We don’t time this, it was7 hours.

- Great, I don’t have to worry about sleep tonight.

Well, that’s our video number two demonstration. Again I’ll provide a transcript of this so you

can adapt the script that I use in any way that’s useful to you.

audio-2-pain

In this video I’m joined by Doctor [Suri?] and I’m really looking forward to Doctor [Suri?]

spending some time with us, next Sunday night we’re going to do a live presentation in our

online classroom and you’re going to address an issue a lot of people have questions about which

is: How can I actually get referrals from physicians, people like you. Why would you refer to a

hypnotist and how can I get those referrals so I’m looking forward to that, some of the questions

that people are going to be asking but since you stopped by today I wanted to spend a little bit of

time just talking about pain.

You were sharing with me before I turned the camera on just sort of some ideas about pain. What

were some of those ideas that you were sharing?

Well, the fact of the matter is there’s a lot of ways to treat pain. There’s certainly a long history

of traditional pain management and invasive and noninvasive procedures and medication and
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things like that. I’m not against any of those. I’m not saying they’re really bad or really good,

I’m just saying there’s just a lot of patients who’ve tried those things and for some of them they

just don’t work. For others they work fine, great, for others not so much and so what I did with

you for that, I started thinking about lots of other ways to treat pain. It’s such a big part of our

practice, I’m anesthesiologist, I’m dealing with pain all the time, acute pain, chronic pain, I’ve

been dealing with it for a long time and what’s the best way to deal with it.

The other issue that I wanted to mention was that for a lot of patients pain and going to a pain

specialist represents a total loss of control. You’re at their mercy for your prescription for DEA

controlled pain medications, you’re at their mercy for when they put you on the schedules to do

the procedure you need. You are totally at somebody else’s mercy and what a lot of patients need

is: How can I get control of my life, what can I do to control my own pain because sometimes

nobody is available to do it for me.

Sure, as a hypnotist when you’re working with a client helping them to practice hypnotic pain

control methods, do you find that the patients are surprised that you’re sort of giving them

homework or teaching them a skill that empowers them?

The thing you have to remember about a lot of patients is they seem to want instant results. Well,

a pill is kind of instant, a steroid injection can be instant and that’s kind of what they’re going to

gravitate towards but the fact of the matter is they need to take control of their own health and

the fact of the matter is hypnosis is the way to do it.

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I want to ask you about progressive muscle relaxation because you were actually just dictating a

little while ago and you’re actually onto a great process of just a traditional progressive muscle

relaxation and as you know, in the world of hypnosis I use progressive muscle relaxation

induction very often with my clients. In fact, I go back to Jacobson’s original protocol, 16

different muscle groups, the difference between tension and relaxation and I find that clients

really benefit from that. Now there’s a book that Herbert Benson wrote in the 1970’s, Harvard

psychiatrist called the Relaxation Response where he put all the research together showing the

value of relaxation. When you work with patients do you see that really, the simplest of all

techniques actually is a very valuable skill for people to learn?

Very true. One thing I like to tell patients and this is very important, is that people approach

hypnosis as if it’s some sort of magic, that it’s something that they do on TV or something. What

they really need to understand is that there is a legitimate physiological basis to hypnosis. Now,

medical science does not know exactly what it is, I can’t tell you which neurotransmitter is

released more or less when you’re relaxed versus when you’re stressed, what catecholamine,

which stress hormone is released but they’re definitely there and sooner or later medical science

is going to know each and every one of them.

In the meantime though, we do know being stressed out causes heart attacks, being stressed out

causes muscle breakdown, causes muscle spasm. Well, why not do the anti-stress stuff, why not

actually use your mind to make yourself healthy rather than what most people do, having the

problems in their mind making things worse.

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Sure enough, can we create a scenario and imagine that I’m your patient and then maybe have a

procedure next week or maybe I’m restricted on what drugs I can fill this week or whatever the

limitation is and I’m telling you I’m in pain and I need some sort of solution. How would you

guide me into using relaxation techniques as a technique for really alleviating my pain, would

you go through that process with me, sort of guide me through a relaxation experience?

One of my favorite techniques is one of contrast. I’d like people to think, first of all, what it feels

like to be totally stressed out, to be upset, to be annoyed. Think of something really unpleasant

for a second, your bosses yelling at you, your wife or your husband is nagging you, something

really annoying. See how your muscles feel when you’re thinking about that, look what your

facial expression is doing. You’re looking like you might snarling, people who are looking at you

might think: What are you mad about, Richard relax. Your muscles might be all tense. Well,

that’s going on all over your body.

I can kind of feel it from head to toe because it’s really easy for me to think of what I’m not

happy about.

Exactly. Now, why not try to reverse that, why not think about something that actually makes you

feel happy? The first time you met somebody you love, a wonderful beach, whatever it is think

about that and let that guide you.

Now when you are working with clients and you have them create this contrast, do you have

them actually create a magnification of that?

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There’s all sorts of things you can do, you take the - obviously I’m talking to a hypnotist here so

they’re well aware of what’s your importance of breathing ,the importance of external stimuli

and how to close them out and how to close your eyes and how to think about happy thoughts. It

has an effect on your body, it really does.

It’s almost like you’re giving people a remote control for a TV and you’re having them look at

one channel and finding a channel they don’t want you can then sort of giving them the

suggestion that they could zap the remote and change the channel.

It really is that simple.

Now when you share these techniques with clients what’s the outcome for them, do any of them

say that’s too simple or do you find that clients really are open to following the suggestion of

who they perceive as an expert?

Clients need to know one thing. I don’t really have a magic bullet; I can’t snap my fingers and

take their problem away. They need to develop techniques that work for them and like everything

else its practice. It’s like somebody said: Well, I went to the gym yesterday and I lifted weights

and I’m no stronger today than I was yesterday or: I went jogging yesterday, I’m in no better

shape than I was a day before. Well, you kind of know when you work out you exercise your

muscles and eventually it will get stronger. You work your heart eventually you’re going to have

better endurance. You use your brain, eventually your brain’s going to become acclimated to
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controlling your body, to meditation.

Absolutely and that will result in a decrease in a decrease in pain?

Yes.

Well, thanks for sharing these techniques. I’m really looking forward to our class on Sunday

night. I know a lot of people are going to have questions, both on the kind of business side of

things as well as some of these technique videos that we’ve been sharing.

I look forward to sharing it with our people.

It’s interesting to me that one of the people who’s a more prominent name in the world of

mindfulness based cognitive therapy is Jon Kabat-Zinn and Jon Kabat-Zinn actually began in the

pain control center in the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine and he began to teach

people really sort of a meditation technique called mindfulness as a strategy for helping people to

decrease pain and mindfulness is really all about just being present in this moment. My favorite

quote is from the great master Oogway and the great master Oogway said of course: Yesterday is

history, tomorrow is a mystery, all we have is the present and that’s why it’s a gift.

I believe you spend time training your clients in mindfulness meditation techniques, I do the

same thing, I know the many oncology programs when dealing with surgical pain and cancer

pain and all the pain from both an emotional and physical perspective and oncologists actually
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go through a model 8 week program of training clients in mindfulness. Would you guide us and

me through just a real simple process of mindfulness and one of the things I love about that is

that it doesn’t take 10 or 20 minutes. It is a hypnotic process but it’s a fairly simple process that I

think really can help clients with [Inaudible 0.09.09] some people say: I don’t want to listen to a

30 minute hypnosis session every day but they can do a 1 minute mindfulness exercise three

times a day.

Sure, all right well let’s get started then. First I want you to focus on something that makes you

happy. I don’t really care what it is, could be anything, get a nice woman, you’re at the beach,

you’re at the hotel doing whatever it is you like to do but then you focus on your breathing. Just

take a natural breath. Every breath you’re taking is bringing in good oxygen, it’s fuelling your

body, it’s healing yourself. It’s very key to understand that like everything you’re doing, you’re

doing to make yourself better. Then close your eyes like you’re closing them right now and just

picture anything you want to picture, I don’t really care what it is, pretty woman from a

magazine, picture of a mountain skiing downhill if you like to ski and just focus on that.

What happened yesterday is gone, nothing you can do about it. What’s going to happen

tomorrow is in God’s hands or in the hands of fate or however you want to look at it. What you

have control over is right now, control it, own it, make it yours, make it work for you. As you

think about that, think about what you’re doing right now and how what you’re doing right now

is going to help you in whatever you need to do later. You are in control of yourself, you can

solve your own problems. You can do what you need to do and if you do that every time you have

an issue you don’t need anybody to do it for you, you can do it yourself. Now, how did that feel?
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It felt really pretty cool. In fact, I really like your style, you put it all on me to take control but

one of the things I realized is that I have control and we talk about our own personal lives, I’ve

had a lot going on in life over the last couple of months. It felt really good to have somebody

who I know and trust simply say to me: Take control over those things because some of life’s

situation changes have even felt a little powerless.

That’s the whole thing, people feel overwhelmed, I feel overwhelmed and there’s nothing

magical about me. I’ve had issues, I’ve had problems, there are times where you just want to

crawl into your little hole, be a little turtle and just forget about everything. You need to take a

breath, you need to think through, you need to figure it out and while you’re doing that you need

to keep yourself healthy and meditation does that.

Sure and that’s always really almost Milton Erickson’s idea also, that we have within us the

resources to solve any problem but the subconscious mind intuitively knows what it needs to do

to tackle any situation even when the conscious mind feels powerless.

Exactly.

Well, thanks for sharing that technique and again we look forward to visiting with you more on

Sunday night if you’re not going to attend live Sunday night you can always ask us questions

afterwards at our forum at icbchgroup.com and the replay will be available to anyone who misses

the – for time zones or other reasons – the actual live webcast but Zihad and I both look forward
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to answer any questions you might have so thank you, Doctor [Suri?], I appreciate you stopping

by today.

Great to be here, thanks Richard.