Bill Anapoell: Tackling the Moment with Clinical Precision

In this episode of AWAKEN with Ryan DeJonghe, Ryan welcomes Dr. Bill Anapoell, a medical doctor and clinical hypnotist who bridges the gap between traditional medicine and subconscious change. Dr. Anapoell shares his unique perspective on how he integrates hypnotic tools into his medical practice to help patients navigate complex health challenges and emotional blockages.

The conversation explores the concept of "tackling the moment," a philosophy centered on facing obstacles directly as the primary task at hand. Dr. Anapoell discusses his upcoming presentations at hypnosis conferences and his work on a new book, highlighting the importance of presence and decisiveness in the healing process. This episode provides a deep look at how a clinical background informs the use of hypnosis to handle life’s most difficult tasks with clarity and intent.

Key Takeaways & Meaningful Quotes

• "Tackle the moment. And what I mean by tackle the moment is take the moment in front of you. No matter what's facing at the time, the obstacle... the obstacle... is your task."
• "Being a doctor was more than just prescribing medicine; it was about understanding the human condition. Hypnosis allowed me to see the person behind the symptoms and work with their mind to improve their physical health."
• "In the hospital setting, things move fast. You have to be decisive. I found that the same level of focus and intent I use in the ER can be applied through hypnosis to help people clear lifelong emotional blockages in just a few moments."

Work with Ryan DeJonghe:

Ready to explore your own transformation through hypnosis?

Website: trancewell.help

Email: ryan@trancewell.help

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello, my friends, my family, those curious. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here to do another podcast. And today, and as usual, we have another great guest. He's going to be presenting that Hypnothots Live workshop. And he has a book Delby coming out. We'll be talking about that. Please welcome Dr. Bill Knapple.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Thank you. Appreciate it.

unknown 0:27

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Oh, it's such a pleasure, man. So what started first? Being a doctor or hypnosis?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Actually, hypnosis.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Okay, tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yes, I was, you know, my first introduction to hypnosis, I was 12 years old. My parents had a party at the house. And they had, uh, I guess now that I know in retrospect at the time, a hypnotist. And um I just remember everybody sitting around the family room, and he had everybody close their eyes and you know, take a deep breath and did an eye lock procedure. Um and I think I was the only one in the room whose eyes lock, really, really lock.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

I said to myself, like, like I just remember sitting there trying to open my eyes and saying, This is the coolest thing ever. So cool.

unknown 1:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

You know, life went on. Um, went to college, went to med school, went to residency, yeah. Uh, you know, got married, had a family, and I never I never forgot about that hypnosis, I never forgot about that experience. And when life kind of settled down, I said, you know, I want to go back and do it, I want to do this.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

And one thing led to another, and I took one class and another and another and another. And here I am.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

So now you're teaching the classes. And that's this.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Now I'm teaching the classes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Now now you're medical, you were in San Diego, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I'm in San Diego, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Okay. Have you ever heard of um I have this book next to me, Dr. Steve Beerman? I think he's in San Diego too. Yes. Do you ever like interact with him at all?

SPEAKER_00 2:01

I have not, you know, we we've we've spoken on the phone a couple of times. Um I actually on the phone with him. I've seen some patients in the ER. Um, I know that they were going back uh his direction, and he actually did some hypnosis work um where I went to medical school. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

That's cool. Like while you're going to medical school, he was doing some stuff.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

He um he did some work with the medical students teaching. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

So and you're you're a hospital, right? So you're internist, and then yeah, so that's cool. I love I work at the VA hospital and my favorites are the hospitalists. Um most of them. There's a couple I mean, yeah. It's it's it's like you're the mechanic, you know. Like I look at it in this scenario, like this metaphor pops in my head. Like, you know how the veterinarian has to take care of everything for every animal, right? They have to know their stuff inside and out. And I feel like that's what a hospitalist is. Like you have to know nephrology, you have to know cardiology. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Basically, if somebody hits the ER and they can't leave, you know, they come in for heart attack, stroke, seizure, whatever it is, and they can't leave the hospital, they gotta stay, and the ER doc says, look, I can't send you home, you gotta come in. Then they get on the phone and they call the hospitalist, and me or somebody in the team comes down and we bring that patient into the hospital and start doing the medical interventions, medical work up evaluation, um, sleuthing around and going from there.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

I love how you get a smile on your face because it it seems like this is just a joy in your life.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

It's a good thing. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

We're doing it for a while and it's still uh I'm still happy about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Now, how has hypnosis come into play in your work as a hospitalist?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Uh well, as I was learning hypnosis, I became interested in stage hypnosis. Because it's fun and it's exciting, and it's shows. Yeah. There are a lot of hypnotherapists and people in the hypnosis community who don't like stage hypnosists. Um, but I just keep my eyes open, keep my mind open, keep my ears open, and just why not learn and see as much as I can do and pick and choose kind of the Bruce Lee philosophy, you know, take take that which is useful for me and let the rest go. Yeah. And so I started learning stage hypnosis, started learning hypnotherapy uh hypnotherapy, um, and actually did stage hypnosis for a number of years, maybe 10 or 12 years actually.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Oh, damn. That's fun.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

I that's great. And I started, you know, bringing those techniques to the bedside so I would see patients back up. I see patients in pain all the time, whether I'm in the ER, whether I'm in the on the cancer ward, whether I have uh patients on palliative care, pe people just out of surgery. And so I'm I have people that are around me in pain all the time. And I know that pain is a um has its roots in a lot of areas, emotional, physical, um, and all pain is emotional and physical. And I know that hypnosis, for my studies in hypnosis, I know that the mind is very powerful in creating emotions and in resolving emotions and in creating emotions. And if we can, if the mind can think itself sick, you know, woe is me, I feel so sad, I'm depressed, got a lump in your throat. Um, everyone's been sad or upset or on the verge of crying when you feel that tightness of the lump in your throat. There's no lump in your throat. Okay, this is a feeling which is created by the emotions that are coming from your mind. So if the mind can create this illness, can create this sensation, can create this feeling of illness, sickness, then it can why can't it help with healing? Why can't it help with health? Yeah. So that's it's not new news, but it's just something that I learned along the way. And as I learned more about hypnosis, I realized how powerful that is. And seeing these people in pain uh with various illnesses, I decided why not use hypnosis here at the bedside. And so in that vein, I began hypnotizing patients with the permission, of course, um, both conversationally and with formal um trance. Uh but quick, easy, in and out, six, seven minutes at the bedside, and it was effective. Lo and behold, what do you know?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

And so I did it again, I did it again. I started, and I over time um I developed something that I called the homunculus protocol, and that's what I speak on um each summer, and the course that I teach, and I've adapted so that's for acute uh pain, and I have adapted it and I have a variation of it called the three-eye protocol, which is for chronic pain or five-eye protocol. Actually, I've expanded it. But uh so acute and chronic pain. But the point is that since pain is both physical and emotional, we can tackle it and it's created in the brain, all pain is created in the brain. Then I can approach it from the brain down rather than from the body up and help effect some sort of change.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

And it's now my theory, I'm definitely no doctor, but just my working theory is that the brain releases that cascade of hormones. So you're either releasing the cortisol or you're releasing the oxytocin, and that all those, and then it starts the whole flow of like how many hormones are in the body? There's like hundreds of them, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah, hundreds of things.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Like they're losing like Greek letters, and then they're like, oh, we ran out of letters, now we're going to start using numbers. It's like that's a hormone. It's a number and a letter. Is that possible?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I mean, I think I think you are you're you're hitting exact. I mean, this is a this isn't part of hypnosis and the mind-body connection is what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Um for those listening, there's a cat that joined us. What's the cat's name?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

This is Janet.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Janet, I always feel like the the woo-woo side of me. Hey Janet, the woo-woo side of me is like that's always a good sign when like I'm working with a client and then like a pet comes in, it's like the pet is like confirming this is working, like whatever you need, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

There you go. So okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

So you're talking about the hormones.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

So this is yeah, this is you're getting it at something which I find really fascinating, and it's and it's wrapped up in the mind-body connection. Um there's it when we have thoughts, thoughts um create changes in the body. If you there's a favorite saying, you know, if you imagine something in the mind, the body responds. Okay, we've all been home alone at night, we heard a noise, you're like, oh, what is that noise? And your heart starts to race, like, oh, something what's happening. And then when you realize it's the wind or the tree or the cat, for example, you're like, oh, okay, and you calm down, your heart rate comes down. What's really happening? Well, what's really happening is that your mind is playing a movie in your head. So you hear a noise. It's not the noise that got you amped up, it was this subconscious, instantaneous movie that began to play in your head that something's opening up a window downstairs, something's happening. And it's that movie, that imagination that began to run that begins to run wild, that then results in the release of chemicals, neurotransmitters, hormones in the body, which then lead to the effect of fight or flight. Yeah, you know, fight or flight is balancing with fight or flight, which is your sympathetic response, is balancing with with you know rest and digest of the parasympathetic response, which calms things down. And so there's absolutely absolutely mind-body connection, and we see this in lots of different areas. You know, a lot of people talk about um well, so many different uh examples of mind-body interaction. One I think is interesting. I just read some recent information on gray hair and stress. You know, we talk about that, but cortisol is one of those hormones that gets released during stress. Cortisol and the sympathetic nervous innervation inter uh innervation, which runs through the body and goes all the way down to the lowest levels, down to the cellular level. When cortisol is coursing through the body in the stress response, usually a chronic stress response, it's just chronic low-grade cortisol, it it goes all the way down to the to the liquid which surrounds each of our cells.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah. And yeah, preach, brother, preach.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

And it affects cellular function. So there are something called stem cells, which are near the hair follicles. So with that exposure to cortisol, the stem cells say, I'm out of here and they retreat.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

When they retreat, you need the the stem, the stem cells are needed to make pigment for the hair. So you get stress response, release of cortisol, bathe the area around the hair follicles and everywhere else that's going through your body. The stem cells back away and pull with it the ability to pigment the hair. As the hair continues to grow, it grows out gray.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

So we have true physiologic changes, whether it's a rapid heart rate from your imagination, or whether it's gray hair. Yeah. And there's studies on fertility and ovulation and sperm counts and all those things based on the same mechanism of uh chemical change in the body, hormonal change, the hormonal milieu, new which are kind of cells are marinating based on I like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

What was that word?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Hormonal milieu.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Milieu. Oh, I learned a new word today. The milieu. I'm writing that down. And I like what you're saying about the hair. And back to Dr. Beerman, he's talking about the studies of like what's that for the hair growth? Maloxyl or something?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And then so the placebo, the the group that was just running the inert oil in their hair grew their hair back just by the thought. And then the reverse, when they said to cancer patients, this treatment may cause hair loss, the placebo group lost hair.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I mean, there are so many amazing studies um looking at you know either weight gain, weight loss, the the I mean, they did a study, um so many I can think of. Uh they did studies uh even non-medical, but it was fun studies at universities with with beer drinking. And they had beer drinkers who drank beer and they knew that they were drinking beer, and then they had um people who drank root beer. And it was root beer doctored with alcohol, but you couldn't really taste the alcohol. And so the root beer drinkers were not aware that they were taking in alcohol.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

And that's funny. Both both groups felt a little drunk because I mean they're getting alcohol in their body, but the beer drinkers were like, yeah, really played it up, yeah. Right, yeah. And the root beer drinkers felt something off, but they weren't drunk, so to speak.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

So the blood levels, what was interesting, they both got the same amount of alcohol. They they doctored the drink, the root beer drink, to match so that the alcohol was the same content. So they were taking in the same content.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

So when they did the blood tests, when they drew blood on the two individual groups, the blood values in the in the beer drinkers were way higher, the alcohol, than it was in the people who started drinking root beer. So that's funny.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

The expect so everyone knows what to expect when you pound a beer, right? Right. Everyone knows what to expect. So their expectation was that they were going to be drunk. Their expectation. So their body was more permissive of absorption of alcohol.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

That's why I think Jesus was the greatest hypnotist of all time. He got a bunch of people to believe they're drinking wine. There you go. I'm just I'm looking at my tea now, you know, like, okay. And it's going back to you talking about the uh the cellular level. Okay, now I'm going to push my theory even more. Like we talked about the cascade effect of hormones. Now I'm saying, what about the mitochondria? I think they're at play here. It's almost like in hypnosis. Okay, now I'm going woo-woo here. It's like we're talking to the mitochondria through our imagination and focused attention. We're big, we're influencing the mitochondria directly.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

So I don't have an answer for that one. But I will say that uh I was just having this discussion recently. Um, there's a guy from Harvard by the name of Herbert Benson. Um, I think he wrote his original book back in the 70s, but he's now saying, now meaning probably in the last five, ten years or so, saying that he believes that you know hypnosis can affect cells or affect the DNA. Yes. Yes. So I can't speak with great intellect to that, but I can say that you know, based on what I just said previously, the brain causes a change, causes a release in epinephrine, orpinephrine, cortisol. It changes the environment in which the cells are living.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

The hormone amylo. Right. Hormonial myelum.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

M I L I E U. And um, as we remember from high school biology class, I mean, cells are semi-permeable membranes, right? And things move along concentration gradients from inside the cell to the outside of the cell.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

I don't know, because I didn't do the studies, I can't tell you, but yeah, I have to I do believe that cellular function is affected by the environment in which the cells are living, and that environment is affected upstream by the chemical mediators which are released by the body. And those chemical mediators in turn are released by functions of the brain. So, long story short, the brain does affect that cellular function, whether it's the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

I'll take that as a maybe. A maybe. Go for it. Like an epigenetic level, like we can upregulate and downregulate the gene expression.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

I think I would never count that out.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, I like that. I like that you're not I love that about you. You're not one of those doctors because I again I work at the VA and I talk to other doctors, and some of them look at me and me like, no. They're like one doctor in particular, he's the assistant or the associate chief of staff. You know, he's like, you know, the chief of staff, right? And he's like brilliant guy, brilliant scientist, brilliant doctor. And he's like, neuroplasticity is not real, it's just a buzzword. I'm like, come on, dude. I mean sure, we can't really show the neurons is reforming. Okay, I get that, but we know something's going on. Yeah, something's going on.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

I mean, you can tell them uh I mean, neuro I think neuroplasticity is a thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah, exactly. Um but unless it's in black and white and conclusive in medical literature.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Run run this by him, see the things of this.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Um, and I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just saying, I don't know. There's like once you start going down this rabbit hole in hypnosis, right? You start and you see things happen that you can't really otherwise explain.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

You know, it opens the mind a little bit more, and that's okay. Um it's kind of this is how I explain chronic pain to people. Some people get a bad rap for having chronic pain. Um, some people don't really believe that others have chronic pain or they're not, they can't see it, it's not something they can image, nothing they can see, nothing they the tests are negative. It doesn't seem real. But have you ever experienced your phone buzzing in your in your pocket and it's not buzzing? Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Or like phantom limb pain, like the people that have phantom limb pain.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

That's a little bit that's a little bit different. We can talk about it. Okay. This is you know, this is oh, my phone's buzzing. You reach out and you felt the buzz. I have the buzzer.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

I felt the buzz, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And that, you know, if if your body can feel something which isn't feel a buzz which isn't buzzing. Uh-huh. Can it feel a pain which you which isn't there, so to speak? Right. Of course. Of course it can. And how does that buzzing sensation get how does it develop at a very simplistic level? Simplistic level. My phone is always in my left front pocket. It buzzes all day long. It buzzes. I have built up a nerve circuit that runs from my left thigh up to my brain that says my phone is ringing, and it's done that thousands of times. I've got uh I've developed a pathway.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Chronic pain can be a sensation that doesn't exist, can be a miscommunicated signal. So, very rudimentary example. I'm walking around, my pants, you know, rub a little bit on my leg, on the hair of my leg, it fires something up. The nerve, sensory nerves from my leg open to my brain, they all plug into one particular area in your brain. And where I scratch my leg and where my pants rub my leg, where my phone is rubbing on my leg, are all coming in this from the same place. So a sensation or an input in that same area goes up and rings the bell, ding ding ding, saying that you're rubbing your leg or something's rubbing up against your leg, but it rings the bell, which is millimeters away from the phone buzzing area.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

And my brain senses a buzz. So I reach down, but there's no buzzing. It's a true, absolute vibratory sense. Because all the sensations are generated in the brain, brain. Nothing's generated in the periphery. Um, that's why my that's why my book is called The Pain Illusion.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah, I was about to ask about the pain your book, and I want to know like the secret sauce. So let's equating the phone buzzing to pain. I know you teach two-day courses at for for professionals at Hidden Thoughts Live, and you have the book and with all this data and great stuff in it, and you teach this on a regular basis, but I just want like the two-minute version of how do we dial down that illusionary pain.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, I mean, the two-minute version is this all pre all pain is in the brain. Period. Um, and pain is generated in the pain in the brain. We poke ourselves with a needle and we say, Oh, my hand hurts. But the pain isn't here. The pain is here. This, the input comes in here, runs up to the brain, and plugs into a receptor up here, and it says, pain is in your hand, hurts. It's generated here.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Okay, based on various factors we won't get into. So pain is in the brain. And if you don't believe that, if I take my head and chop it off, put it on the table next to me, okay, and then I poke myself with a needle, the impulse is gonna go up, but it's not gonna plug into anything. There's no there's no outlet for it to plug into.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

So I'm not gonna feel pain, kind of thing, right? In other words, analogy, okay?

SPEAKER_01 21:04

I'm glad you brought that up. Let's get we'll get to that in a second. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

All right, yeah, and then and so uh and the flip side of that is if I chop my arm off, chop my leg off, right? But I then I feel pain in my hand, a phantom pain, phantom leg pain, phantom arm pain. How is that happening? Because my brain knows where my body parts are, it knows that this hand is up, it knows that my leg's on the ground, it knows where my body is in position in space. And so, if all of a sudden a part of my body is missing, my brain is searching for it.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Where is that hand? Where is that hand? Where is that hand? And it's sending out signals. And it's keeping that hand sensation alive, it's sending signals back down the hand pathway, so you feel your hand. And then there are the mirror box experiments. I don't know if you're familiar with those, but yeah, yeah. Stabbing a rubber arm. Is that a different one? So Dr. Roma Chandra on UCSD had an amputation. Um, let's say I I'm I have I'm missing my right arm. Yeah, I put my hand into this box, my left hand into a box that has a mirror on it. And so my brain sees my good hand and the reflection, sees two hands. Yeah. And so what I'm visually putting into my brain is two hands. What my brain is processing is one hand, and the visual overrides it, and all of a sudden the phantom lune pain goes away because this top-down regulation changes the sensation that there's no hand there, that I don't have any pain. So, in a relatively short order of time, weeks or so, phantom pain can disappear by using the mirror box. Because the brain begins to relearn that there's two hands there because it can see it.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Interesting. So that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Brain pain comes from the brain, and that's how the homunculus protocol uh that's why it works, that's why I created it, and that's why hypnosis is so effective for pain management, because we work in the brain, we rewrite the story in the brain. And so I will just tell people, I'll give them a quick understanding of the anatomy of the brain, very simple about where things are in the brain. Yeah, they have pain, I have them close their eyes. The two-minute version is something called submodality manipulation. We manipulate how the characteristics we give to something. So I'll ask somebody, you know, many times pain is associated with a color. What color do you see? A leading question, so to speak. And usually it's red, but it can be whatever they want. It's red, sure, it's red. And they'll say, What part of your body is comfortable? You have to have a comfortable part of your body, your left knee, your right ear, your big toe, something. And they'll pick something. And usually, you know, I if they can't come up with anything, I'll say, What about your earlobe? Everyone's got comfortable earlobes, right? And assign a color of that. What color is that? Let's say they say it's yellow, and then I have them slowly drip that nice calm yellow color. This is in hypnosis mostly, let it mix in with the red, swirl it, mix it, move it, twist it. And what do you see now? And they'll tell me whatever they see, whatever they see is correct. Red and yellow don't necessarily have to be orange, they could be it could be purple, it could be green, it could be whatever, whatever they want. What you're doing is you're getting information from their subconscious mind. What they see, what they tell you, is what their subconscious mind is coming up with. Okay? And so it doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be correct scientifically, it just has to be. And that's that's your that's your portal into their subconscious mind. And whatever they tell you it is, it is. And if that red and that yellow come together and make green, mix it, swirl it, make it greener, does it feel better? Yes, mix it, make it even more green. What else can you add to make it more comfortable? And then I have them breathe in that color, breathe in that color, bring it up into their mind, into the area, the part of the brain, which I taught them previously, that affects the part of the body that hurts them. So, for example, the part of the body that affects the low back is right in the center here. So I'll have them in their mind, and I've shown them pictures of this before we go into the hypnosis session, and they breathe that green color up into their mind, up into their sinuses, up into their brain. I have them put it onto their the area of their back in their brain that represents the back, stay in that part of the brain, and they can see it and visualize it happening, and I'll tell you at that moment this sense of peace, this relaxation, this calmness comes over them. And people get relief. And I've been doing this for years.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

And I've done I've done this with so many patients, and I don't have to get 100% relief, I just have to make them better. Yeah. Um, I'm not trying for 100% relief. If I if I if I get 100%, great. Great test. Um, if I knock it down 50%, guess what? It's still a win. Um if I if I tell them, you know, what's your pain on a scale from one to ten, or what how you know, and they mark it as a four and I bring it down to a one? Excellent. If I bring it down to a three, they're better than they were when I got there.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

And I'm happy about it.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Now, why is it called the homunculus protocol versus the anapole protocol?

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Um homunculus uh is a fun word to say. Most people can't say it. Um and homunculus is the area of the brain. It's called the somatosensory cortex. It's the area of the brain um which uh in which all the sensory part of the body lies for all the various parts. So every part of your body is assigned a location in the brain, and the amount of real estate that each body part has in the brain determines how sensitive that body part is. So our elbow has a very small amount of real estate in the brain, the skin of this elbow here, versus the skin of your lips or your or your eyes. So if you rub your elbow right now, it'll feel a certain way. And then if you rub your eyes, you rub your lips, it's much more sensitive.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Okay, so is that why they call sexual organs the like the second brain? Because it takes up such a huge amount of my own.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

It doesn't actually take up a lot of places. It does. So yeah, so imagine you know if I have one cable coming from my elbow plugging into my brain, the certain area in my brain that corresponds to the elbow, it just needs a little bit of space. But if I have 50 cables coming from my lips, they need more outlets to plug into. They need more space to plug into. So the more space means that's uh a more sensitive part of the body. And the homunculus is just a strip of brain that has all the body parts lined up. If I took a loaf of bread and I cut a loaf of bread and I slid the slice of bread out, the white is the inner white brain matter.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Brown crust on the outside that lays right on the outside. The brown crust is the top layer of the brain that has all the body parts on it, the head, arms, ears, nose, so cool. And um yeah, and it's not necessarily in order.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

I mean the the face of bread up there with on my body. It's in the loaf. Oh so the loaf of bread like twists around my brain a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Imagine your brain is just a loaf of bread. Yeah, yeah. And I just slice a piece and take it out of the seven. The outer crust, the outer layer, one strip of that has all the body parts on it.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Oh, that's wild.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

And they mapped this out. They did this way back in the 50s and 60s, and they poked different body parts, and different body parts lit up in the brain so they could see exactly uh what part of the brain was involved.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

And some will the pain illusion, your book, have pictures for people like me?

SPEAKER_00 28:45

The yes, it will. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Okay, cool, cool. Yeah, I'm a former Marine. You're in San Diego, so you know Marines. I'm a former Marine, and I love my crayons. So I'm gonna break out my crayons and have a good time, learn about the brain. Uh okay, cool. So I like how you're talking about how the mouth, all those places, a lot of real state in the brain, and then it makes me think about dental, like hypnosis for dental. I don't know how that works. Like I get how you can lower a person's pain for a little bit, but then you like the thing I was talking about. This case where he had a day with a lady before she went into skull surgery. And then the surgeon's like, you can't go in the room with them. Now, me as a hypnotist, I'm like, well, it's my responsibility. I'm gonna go in, it's my words helping them, but no, no, no. It's like you teach the person and then you just let go and let the let the surgeon do his job. Right. I don't I don't have the confidence to do that. Like, how does that work? How can you get someone to be okay? Like they're in Hawaii drinking my ties while they're having skull surgery. Like, how how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, obviously the skilled hypnotist has to play a role, right? Yeah. Um the person undergoing the hypnosis is key, of course. Um you know, I I don't know what Scott did, but I understand the idea of post-hypnotic suggestion. When you give someone when someone is in hypnosis, give them a suggestion that they can then bring about a change after the session is over by bringing the fingers together, by saying a certain word, or by doing something, um, they can bring about that post-hypnotic suggestion. So, for example, I had a client, uh a patient in the hospital who had hip surgery, fractured her hip, went to the OR. I saw her the next day, and lots and lots of pain. Uh, the nurse had just left to get some uh percocet for her, and then we were just chatting for a little bit, and I brought up hypnosis. One thing led to another. I did a quick, you know, uh abridged homunculous protocol on her, and she was pain-free. I gave her a post-hypnotic suggestion. I rubbed the back of her hand, I had her rub the back of hand each and every time you feel your this sensation, bring about that sense of peace, calmness, relaxation, and tranquility, take the hurt out of the pain, let yourself feel, you know, XYZ, just words out and yeah, you got that pat her down.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Gave her the suggestion so that she could feel good. And she felt wonderful. The next day I went to go make rounds on her. Her husband was visiting, and she was having some discomfort, and uh she was waiting for some pain medication to arrive, arrive. And I said, Hey, do you remember what we talked about yesterday? Where you know you rub the back of your hand and it brings about, and she said, Oh, yes, yes, that's right, I forgot. And as she said, Well, that's right, I forgot, and she reached out and she just did this, and she just kind of closed her eyes and she just was just sitting like this, and just you know, and her husband looked and he was looking at me like, What's happening? What's happening? I said, Stop talking. And I explained to him what we had done the day before, and I said, Are you okay with this? Would you like me to emerge her and be I can give her some pain medicine? We'll be fine. He said, No, no, no, just leave leave her the way she is, she's fine, she's great. Yeah, yeah. And the nurse came in uh with a little cup for the medication, and the patient was just sitting there, eyes closed, just comfortable. Yeah, it was another half day, another 13 hours before she required any pain medication.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

So um, I don't know if that's the same as doing it for dental surgery, but you can prepare somebody, work with somebody, give them post-hypnotic suggestion that they can reenact for themselves, they can learn self-hypnosis, they can do this and bring themselves to a to a state where they are relaxed, where they feel what's going on, but the emotional content is taken out of it, and the hurt is taken out of the pain. Um I'm trying to think who says that. Somebody says take the hurt out of the pain. It might be uh Dr. David Spiegel, um uh Stanford psychologist, psychiatrist who um is in MD who does uh his devoted his life to hypnosis, and um his I believe it was his father who uh came up with the Spiegel eye roll. I think that those are those those are those are his words, take the hurt out of the pain.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

And I I want to go back a moment to you said you did some stage hypnosis. Yes, and I I love I love blending, like I think it was like James Tripp's book where he's talking about it'd be helpful to do both so you get into a perspective.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

I I think it's really helpful. I really think it's helpful. It's helpful for you learn different techniques in stage hypnosis than you do with hypnotherapy, and you present your hypnosis differently than you do with hypnotherapy. Um you also well, I I'll speak for myself. I also gained confidence as a hypnotist by doing uh stage shows. People on stage, you're I mean it's do or die. But the truth is hypnosis works. And night after night after night, uh 15, 20 people up on stage are getting hypnotized. So you get confident. Uh and that's you know, uh being congruent with your uh words uh is important. You can't walk up to somebody say, Oh, I'm gonna hypnotize meek and and and scared. If you walk up and say, I'm a hypnotist, I'm the hypnotist, this was gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Okay. Um, so I think stage hypnosis is great for all of those reasons. I also think it's great because you know, you know, from my experience, I took these stage hypnosis techniques and I brought them to the bedside. And instead of saying, Okay, close your eyes, take a deep breath, ten, nine, eight, seven, I just said, you know, imagine this, imagine that, close your eyes, your eyes are locked, they're stuck, and people I just move right into phenomenon, and then people have this intimate conversation with their subconscious mind, where as soon as they realize that their eyes are stuck, and or you do magnetic fingers, and we all understand magnetic fingers and then the physiology and the physics of magnetic fingers. Um, so not really suggestion, but more anatomy, but having them stick then becomes suggestion. Yeah, yeah. Transferring the sticking to the eyes and having the eyes lock becomes suggestion. So that's more stagey, and you can take that and move that right into clinical for quick onset. Um so that's that's how I like that.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Do you I think it's great? Do you find yourself kind of like channeling Mesmer when you're in the hospital sometimes?

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Well, not Mesmer, but I know that they've been they've called me Dr. Voodoo.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Dr. Voodoo, yeah. How does that work? Like you're a hospitalist, you're on the hospital team, and you're like, you know what? By the way, guys, I've been studying this thing called hypnosis. Like, I don't know about you, but yeah, especially working in the government hospital, it's like, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

It didn't go over so well at first. I was made fun of quite a bit. Yeah. Um, yeah. And uh I think there were some meetings, they had to have some actual uh meetings at the hospital. Can we is this allowed? Can we do this? They probably approved it, they said go for it. Um but you know, I was teased and people made fun of me. Yeah, but I will I will say that um some of the very same people who made fun of me subsequently um have asked me for hypnosis, and I have gone to the homes of a small handful of doctors to hypnotize them or their wives or their children um, you know, on the side, right? Or no one knows about it, out of the hospital in their homes.

unknown 37:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Um, so people are receptive, they're afraid to admit it, right? Uh but yeah. And I think I think because I had had been I had been at the hospital for 20 some odd years uh before I ventured down this pathway. I had a certain um people knew who I was.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Yeah, yeah, that credibility.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

I had some credibility, they just knew who I was, and um that I just wasn't some random guy coming in. And then I picked this up as a hobby, and then I was an entertainer and doing shows.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

And then when I brought it into the hospital, I had already had that background, so it was a little bit smoother of a transition.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Right. So Yeah, I got some work to do, brother, because I I work I work in a blind center and they know me as the jokester, right? I go in there and I show magic tricks, I play pranks, I say funny things, and they don't know whether I'm being serious or or not. You know, like most of the time I'm being serious in a joking way. Of course. Yeah, and then so my theory, all right, so there's that type of blindness, that's functional blindness, or they call it hysterical blindness, where the for those that are listening, watching, it's where the the eyes work. It's the brain through either trauma or TBI. The brain just says, nah, I don't want to see anymore. I've seen enough. Curtains closed, right? Yep. And I I know hypnosis would work for this, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:48

So I've uh I've had um I've had some patients with transient global amnesia, uh, which is an amnesia which oftentimes associated with stress. I've had patients with blindness um from very specific events, and after I didn't do hypnosis, but I did the kind of meta model and talking to the patient. And then maybe it was conversational hypnosis, if you want to say that. Um, and vision returned. And this is uh, you know, the person I'm thinking of in particular is a lady whose son was just shipped off to war. And she just shut down and came in, and you know, one of her things was blind, I mean just sudden blindness. Um actually had two patients, two different two different years with that both children who uh were uh shipped off to war. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

That's what you get in San Diego, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

Yeah. And um, you know, some of the things, and you probably have seen this if you work with that population, is they take uh, or maybe not, a mirror. You put a mirror in front of the eyes, and if you just move the mirror, they'll they'll they'll follow. It's a reflex. You have to. It's like you're hitting hit with a reflex hammer, your your leg jumps.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

You put a mirror in somebody in front of somebody who's quote unquote blind, and you tip the mirror and shift the image, and their their eyes will move because they're tracking movement.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

That only happens if you have vision.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

So that's a two-second thing you can do, and and you'll know if you did was where they would start to mirror us, you know, you build the rapport, and also where they can navigate obstacles. Um so what did you do, the meta model? How how did you proceed with that? I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

I mean, it was just chatting with the person. Yeah. Um and uh, you know, just peeling back the the unjust peeling, asking questions, you know, why they're here, what's going on, and just digging deeper, finding about family fanning about, you know, le led to her children, led to the war. It just it one thing led to another until it led down to, you know, why is that important to you? What does that mean? And how does that affect you? And why is that important to you? And and so tell me and and open that up for me a little bit more. And how is that significant? How come? And and so what does that kind of mean? And all of a sudden the tears started to flow and uh kind of washed away the blindness.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

I love that the the tears, that release of that stress just yeah, absolutely washed away the blindness. That's a great visualization, no pun intended. Yeah, oh that's cool, man. And then what was the other one you had that so you had the blindness, and then was the amnesia?

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Actually, I actually had um paralysis, weight down paralysis. It was a young girl who came in unable to walk and paralyzed from basically belly button down, had an MRI, didn't really see much. Maybe there was some inflammation, couldn't really tell. Called neurosurgery, um they they did lumbar punctures to look for flu. They thought maybe there was something called transverse myelitis, they wanted steroid injections, and I just, you know, once you're a hypnotist, you begin to think of things differently. So I did all the medical things, we got the neurosurgery, we had the MRI, we did the lumbar puncture, we did all those things. We ordered the steroids, which hadn't been given yet. And then I went out into the hallway and I I spoke to the girl's mother. And you know, what do you think about all this? And she just chatted and she said, you know, I don't know what the date was, you know, whatever today's date is April 3rd. She said, you know, uh two years ago on April 3rd, his father was in a car accident and uh, you know, got kind of kind of hemi-amputated or something from the waist down, um, died kind of thing. I said, Oh, interesting. Um, and so I kind of went back into the room and I was just chatting with the daughter and brought up her father, and you know, I honestly don't remember what I said. We talked about her father and yeah, what she meant to him, and this and one thing led to another, and you know, 10 minutes later she was moving her legs. Um I love that.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

I mean, I'm not laughing about her father because it's sad, but I love that there's the the body like is literally keeping the score. Like the body somewhere down there, they're like they have a calendar up and they're like, oh yeah, you don't remember it, but we do.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

We do, and here's what's gonna happen today.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Ready, ready.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

You're blind, you're not walking, you have you know, it's just yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Or the other thing, like my daughter had these um new neurogenetic non epileptic seizures. You know, I I take her to the ER and like she it looks like she's having a seizure, right? Um no, it's not epilepsy. Just and they're like, Well, it's drought, you know. Yeah, okay, but you know, feels drought. Like she's like, I feel okay. We're just watching a movie dinner, I don't feel drought. You know Breaks out in the a seizure.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

It's like something it's the body releases.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

I had a guy who was giving a lecture, brilliant guy, super smart guy, giving a lecture. And um, he showed up in my office. He wanted to be worked in. It was way, you know, back in the day when I had an office practice. And I worked him in. He says, I think I'm having a stroke. I said, Do you think you're having a stroke? Go to the emergency. No, no, I want to come see you. Showed up in my office and I was talking to the guy, and he didn't look like he had had a stroke. And my examination was fairly normal, except what he was describing was this amnesia, this lack of memory. And he said, I was up on stage and I was giving this huge presentation to this company and a thousand people in the audience. And I said, I just I didn't even know what I was saying by the middle of the lecture, but I got through it because I just I knew that I could just read my slides. So I just kept clicking the slide projector, and I was just reading the words on the slide. I didn't know what I was saying, I had no idea what was going on. I just but I knew I knew my lecture, if I just read the slides, I would get through it. So that's all I just clicked, click, click, and I read the slides, got through the lecture, everybody clapped. I didn't stick around for QA, I bolted, and I came here and I said, okay. So we chatted a little bit more, and sort of things started to make a little bit more sense to me. And I looked at him and I said, What what what's going on? Like, are you are you having any stress? And he just lost it. He says, You know, I got a phone call six this morning before I left for my lecture. He said, uh, both my boys are Navy SEALs. He says, I was a Navy SEAL. He said, both my boys are Navy SEALs, and I got a call. I got a call this morning from one and then the other independently. Hey dad, we're going on vacation. Not sure when we're gonna be back. Just want to call Sailor.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Yeah, yeah, I know what that vacation means.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

And he's like, Wow, I called my dad and told him I was going on vacation too, and I'm I'm off on a mission.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

And he he knew what his boys were going through. He knew who was happening.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Did he get stressed? Did he get nervous? Did his teeth chatter? No. He got up to the lecture and became amnestic. And he had something called TGA, total total uh global uh transient global amnesia.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Oh that's wild.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

And yeah, he wanted to not remember.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

Oh, so is there like a preventive measure? Like, so like obviously our bodies hold this stress from the past in this. Is there a way to like be like, it's okay, body? It's we're not in that moment anymore preventably.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

This is coming subconsciously and blossoms. It's when it blossoms, it's already too late because it's there.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Yeah, so can we just like put some fertilizer down in the subconscious and be like, you know, some weed killer? Like, okay, we don't need these things to blossom ever. So, okay, subconscious, it's cool. Whatever happened in the past, we're cool. Let's move on.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

I mean, I guess so if you're aware of the issue, you have to be aware of the issue to hypnosis to do the hypnosis session.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_00 47:18

The hypnotist has to know what to what story to uh write into your hard drive.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Right. There's that metaphor action, yeah. Like I love that's why I love clean language, is you're able to bring out what's in the person's subconscious and use that as a language to reprogram.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Now, what's possible with all this? Like you're you see your doctor, right? And then in my mind, I'm like, I want to chase miracles. So what are the limitations? Like, I I think theoretically, maybe we can, if we're our minds are strong enough, we can regrow a limb. You know, I don't know. That's never been done before that I know of. But you know, like um Joe Despenza, for instance. I don't know if you're familiar with him, like where he what these like shatter reverberate, and they say we're gonna do some fusion surgery, and you may never walk again. He's like, nah. And he just goes and like meditates for like 10 months, and then okay, guys, I'm fine. You know, like my spine has put itself back together.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

So my doctor mind kicks in at this point.

SPEAKER_01 48:24

Yeah, tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Yeah, like, no, no, no, no, I don't think so. So I think um, so I never say never. Yeah. So I'll I'll start with that. I never say never. Um, but I will put the brakes on a little bit, um, and I won't I won't go too far. I'll keep my myself open, but I personally won't go over a certain area. Now, that being said, I'm like, are you gonna regrow limbs? I can't see it. Uh we're we're limited within the physiology of our body, and I don't think our physiology has that ability. Right. Um, that being said, there's always the the notion in medicine um where what the percentages say is going to happen with a particular disease does not necessarily mean that's what's gonna happen with a particular patient with that disease.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

So yeah, like thinking Michael Elner and the AIDS population. Like he would go around, everyone at that time was saying, you have AIDS, you're gonna die. You have AIDS, you're gonna die. And he's like, wait, wait, wait. Surely not everyone dies. And he found a group of people that didn't die. And he's like, What happened with you guys? So why didn't you die when everyone's saying you're gonna die? That type of thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:41

Yeah, and everyone, you know, there are percentages thinking 92% of the people are gonna have this effect. Yeah, but eight eight eight percent of the people aren't. And you don't know how you individually are going to do when we do medicine. We're we base our decisions on probability, on percentages, um, because and that and that's how we do it. That's we've treated thousands and thousands and thousands of patients, and this is the percentage that respond a certain way. So those are the percentages we go by, but not everybody responds that way.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

So yes, things are possible that we would never expect.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

Right. Like the first thing that popped in my head was spontaneous cancer emission. You're like, oh well, that's interesting. I don't know how that happened, but that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 50:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

We can't promise that's gonna happen, but that'd be cool if it did.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Yeah, it'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 50:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

Um, yeah, the world of hypnosis would explode.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Yeah, yeah. You got guys out there selling that. But that's yeah, yeah. So let's talk just briefly. Thank you for your time here. This has been great. I love it. Um, I'm wondering. Well, I have two things circled here. The word bear trap, because you mentioned that before. But also because it's kind of like dancing with this woo-woo stuff. Like I look at some of these studies like with Reiki or healing hands type of thing. And there was a fascinating one where they did a mouse study. Because like there's that placebo effect if you like you put your hands on someone, and then that that subject could be the placebo. But then they did the mouse study, like where they put the cancer in the mice, and then they did a healing hands type of thing. And some of them like, how does that happen? How do some of those mice like so?

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Yeah, again, I mean it's it's similar to something we call regression to the mean, something um that's gonna happen anyway. Um so people will talk about rheumatoid arthritis. There was a study recently with rheumatoid arthritis, and um using placebo versus not, and watching a decrease in the blood values of inflammatory markers and then the improvement in the rheumatoid arthritis. Some people will say that's just what we call regression to the mean. That was the natural course of the disease that was gonna happen anyway, in that person.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

In that person.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

Well, my mind's wondering like, so some mice they had a control group, and those mice all died. And then then the ones we put their hands on, some mice didn't die. So they saw some did, yes. And then you could look at like the church, you could look at, you know, like even Jesus probably had a fail rate. Like he probably wasn't 100% what we see. Just like when you're doing stage, right? The videos you show are the what the glorious ones. You're not gonna show the people that flipped you off and walked off, you know. Right. Like so, but and then some of those mice, yeah. Obviously, some, like you said, to the means that natural progression, they died. Some didn't. So what's going on with those? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

I I think it's just um, you know, you get exposed to the flu, you get exposed to COVID, you get exposed to whatever. Some get it, some don't. I think it's that might just be the natural course of that uh of that disease in that population of mice. I mean, who knows?

SPEAKER_01 53:12

Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 53:13

I don't have an answer for you.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

Yeah, okay, so let's go back to the bear trap then. So we're talking about let's talk about the bear and pain. You're talking about, so I think it was Scott and Mike. They're doing they're talking about pain. And someone used to, I don't know if it was Elman or who, what walked around with a bear trap on their on their hand, like, look, I don't feel any pain. And then Michael Elner, he's like, I'm in New York, I can't really buy a bear trap, so I'm going to buy a rat trap. And he would go to the doctors and be like, hey, look, snap. This is how you don't feel pain. I don't know if that's and then of course they brought up the example of the movie and shows Jackass, where they like train themselves not to feel pain. Right. And then they just they look like they're suffering, but they're laughing.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Right. So is there a way like we can like almost put a bulletproof vest on ourselves to like not feel pain?

SPEAKER_00 54:13

I don't think we could. So using the rat trap as an example, I think when that thing snaps closed, the mouse trap, when it snaps closed, you're gonna feel it. Yeah. The issue is how to deal with it after it snaps. I think that's where hypnosis comes in. I don't think I've never done this. I mean, I hope I hope.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Anyone listening or watching, don't try this at home either.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

I hope you're gonna do something that teaches me this, but yeah, if you know, I don't think we can pre-hypnotize ourselves to be ready for the unexpected snap and not feel pain. Right. I think that's you can't institute it that way. Uh you can, once it snaps and you have pain, you can then, if you can gain control of yourself and do something that you pre-learned, reduce the intensity of that sensation.

SPEAKER_01 55:09

Right. The analogy that came to my head is like a roller coaster, like you're going up and you feel that in your gut already, that you're going to be a big drop. That's that slow chug, chug, chug, chug going up. You're like, oh, you don't know when the drop's gonna happen, but you know it's gonna happen. Right, right, right, right. And then you can probably work with your mind on what to do after the drop.

SPEAKER_00 55:27

Right. If you're right, if you're riding in an elevator and you don't know, and all of a sudden, boom, it just drops. Oh man. You don't have a chance.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

Well, you just gave the phobia guys a bunch of business with that. They're all saying, Thank you, Doctor. Yeah, I can do it. All right, cool. So, any last words about this cool book? Like, what do we expect to get out of the pain illusion?

SPEAKER_00 55:52

So, what you can get out of the pain illusion is an understanding of what is behind pain. The pain is a multifactorial uh experience, and it's derived from our past experiences, our present state of mind, and our belief as to where the future is taking us. That summarizes all the emotion that goes into the pain response. And we learn how to be in pain from those around us, and we learned our whole lives from those around us. And so we pain is more than just the physical um experience. There's wrapped up in emotion. Emotion that we've learned from others, our current emotional state that we're experiencing the pain in, whether we're depressed that day, sad that day, happy, optimistic, pessimistic, um, and where we think our life is going in the future. And all those things affect the pain response. And once we know that, then we can work on the uh emotional aspect to reduce pain. The second part of the book is uh that pain is in the brain, and all the things we just talked about, and the anatomy and the physiology of pain in the brain, and the mirror box experiments, and those other things, and how to color the brain in a certain fashion, how to manipulate and change our subconscious representation of pain is represented as a red ball, and by the end of the process it's a green square. While pain is not something we can touch, it's not tangible for us by making it an object and a color and a shape and a size and manipulating it, we're making the intangible tangible. We're giving people control over and we're giving them the ability to manipulate something which has manipulated them or is manipulating them. So we take the emotion, we tie it together with some submodality work, we bring it together and give and empower the person themselves to control their pain.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

That is so beautiful. And like just watching you, you're like, you say you're not a mesmerist, but you are. Your hands are like your hands for those listening are like a Tai Chi master. He's like circling this energy and then like moving it open like James Tripp does, like, you know, his hands were all over the place. And I love how you're like and color the brain. In my head, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm definitely going to be coloring the brain in this book. I have my crayons ready to go. All right. Good doctor, before we let you go, is there any final when I ask people, I say, what's one thing right now, if I ask, what's something you want the whole world to know?

SPEAKER_00 58:54

Tackle the moment. And what I mean by tackle the moment is take the moment in front of you. No matter you know what's facing at the time, the obstacle the obstacle is your task. The obstacle is the task. That's what needs to be handled. Um you know what's past is past, what's in the future is in the future. Just handle the moment and do what you can do with the moment in front of you at the time.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

Beautiful. It's like you're challenging Atticus himself. Beautiful, man. I love it. And thank you again, Doctor, for being here and for everyone listening. We have the links down below how you can get the book and how you can connect with the teaching. And thank you again so much.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

Hey, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.