On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Dr. David Spiegel: 10-MINUTE Hypnosis Hack to Rewire Your Brain & Reduce Stress 80% Faster
Mon, 04 Nov 2024
How do you usually handle stress? Have you tried hypnosis for stress? Today, Jay with Dr. David Spiegel, a leading expert in psychiatry and behavioral sciences, to explore the transformative power of hypnotherapy. Dr. Spiegel, with over 45 years of experience in clinical and research fields, shares profound insights into the science behind hypnosis, dispelling myths and misconceptions. He explains how hypnosis is a natural, self-directed process that allows individuals to tap into heightened focus, manage pain, reduce stress, and address deep-seated traumas. The conversation begins with Dr. Spiegel explaining the foundations of hypnosis, highlighting its ability to narrow one’s focus, similar to a telephoto lens, and create a dissociative state where one can temporarily suspend self-limiting beliefs. This unique focus enables users to challenge habitual thoughts and reframe experiences. Dr. Spiegel shares real-life success stories, such as a war veteran who found peace with traumatic memories and individuals overcoming chronic pain and stress using hypnosis. In this interview, you'll learn: How to Sleep Better Using Hypnosis How to Improve Focus by Narrowing Attention How to Process Trauma Safely with Hypnosis How to Use Visualization to Relieve Stress How to Focus Your Attention Deeply How to Filter Out Pain with Hypnosis By learning how to access a focused, relaxed state, you can reshape your response to pain, manage stress more effectively, and explore emotions or memories that might otherwise feel overwhelming. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 02:17 What is Hypnosis 05:08 How Beneficial Hypnosis is For You? 09:14 What Happens to Your Brain During Hypnosis 14:40 Can You Control Other People with Hypnosis? 16:13 Is It Possible to Hypnotize Anyone? 26:14 You’re Still in Control of Your Body 31:28 How Can Hypnotherapy After Memory Recall? 38:29 Guided Hypnotherapy at Home is Possible 40:59 Let Your Brain Heal Your Body 43:34 The Worst Mental Case Under Hypnosis 50:26 We Lose the Hypnotic Ability as We Age 55:39 How Hypnosis Can Help You Focus More 57:38 David on Final Five Episode Resources: Reveri | YouTube Reveri | Instagram Reveri | Facebook Reveri | LinkedIn Reveri | WebsiteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is hypnosis?
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That's a great question. I would say that the state of sinking and being in that state of awake and alert, but also resting is something... I feel certain mindfulness practices can allow us to create that state. I've never created it through physical movement. It's always created through being present or still or bringing my awareness to a particular object or my breath or whatever it may be.
But I've never really felt it physically is probably the best way I could define the difference. I felt like I'm floating while meditating or I felt a lightness in my entire body, but not in a specific way. or a specific part of my body.
I see, so it's more slipping into the state but not using it right away to see if you can produce a change. Correct. And frankly, when I use hypnosis with subjects, and I use this test with every person I use hypnosis with, because it's a way for them to discover what the experience is like and how they feel and to observe it. Don't take my word for it. Try it out and see what it feels like.
And for me to be able to evaluate in what way to work with them, because some people can do something like what you did, some less, some not at all, not that many, but some people not at all. But it becomes a kind of immediate object lesson lesson and how much more control we have over our body and how we react to that than we usually give ourselves credit for.
What about the cynical mind that says,
that's i'm so glad i'm talking to you about this because you know years of research stanford medicine it's the cynical mind that i avoided having in this experience because i generally consider myself someone who wants to be open to experience and curious and open to letting things in to figure it out and see how useful it may be but the cynical mind that says well of course jay lifted his hand because
David had said that he would lift his hand when he put it back down. But to me, I can genuinely say that, yes, there was an instruction in the brain, but there was also a feeling that was there.
And so both those things, and my cynical self, if I was trying to be annoying, which I would never want to in a, you know, I've invited you to be my guest on my show, but the cynical, skeptical part of me would have been like, oh, I'm just going to hold my hand down just to make a point. But I wanted to go with how I was actually feeling and intuitively feeling.
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Chapter 6: What are common misconceptions about hypnosis?
And they can change all the time and be different and play at being different. And so it's one of the wonderful things about childhood is that you're in a more of a hypnotic consciousness state more of the time. But as we go through adolescence, we go through what the famous psychologist Piaget called formal consciousness in which you evaluate more and experiencing is less a part of that.
So you learn to... Try to be more logical and analyze more and just let yourself feel things less. So some people lose some of that hypnotic ability when they acquire these formal operations. And there are about 20% of the population who, by the time they're 21, just are not very hypnotizable. They're very logical. And in Reverie, where we have the hypnotizability test,
We call them the researchers. They want to examine and evaluate everything. At the other extreme, some people retain extremely high hypnotizability, and we call them the poets. They just get into it. They just absorb themselves in anything. I had one guy recently who gets, he loved getting lost in movies. You know, he just enters another world. He becomes an actor in the movie and part of it.
And he decided he loved it so much that he went to film school to learn how to make movies. And he said, you know what? It was spoiling my experience of movies because I started thinking, well, why did they put the camera over here and the lighting isn't right and all this? And he said, so I quit film school because I was losing that ability.
About 60% of the adult population, they're moderately hypnotized. Well, they haven't experienced and they step back and reflect on it and then they try it again. Most of them can benefit to some extent from Reverie, from other hypnotic techniques, because even if you're not in it all the time, if you can dip into it and have the experience, you can change.
And part of what we offer with Reverie is not just hypnosis, but the way we use hypnosis. And I think there's some of this in thinking like a monk where you talk about the value of positivity, of finding a positive aspect of even the most menial things that you have to do. And with hypnosis, we try to use it in a way that you focus on what you're for.
So when people want to stop smoking, I don't say, oh, cigarettes smell terrible. You know, they're awful things to do. Look at what you're doing to your body. I say, have them recite this to yourself. For my body, smoking is a poison. I need my body to live. I owe my body respect and protection. So you're being a better parent to your own body.
You'd never put tar and nicotine-laden smoke into your baby's lungs or your pet's lungs. Why would you do it to your own body? It depends on you. So people can get with that approach to the problem even if they're not that hypnotizable, focusing on what you're for. So can you change it? It's a remarkably stable trait, Jay. I didn't, but colleagues of mine at Stanford,
did a 25-year follow-up on former students who in Psych 1 had had their hypnotizability measured, and they blindly retested them 25 years later. The test-retest reliability was 0.7. Now, that's as reliable as IQ is over that interval. And so it's an extremely stable trait.
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