Holly Stokes: The Miracle Code, Placebo Surgery, and What Else Is Possible

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Holly Stokes — international bestselling author, Master NLP Coach Trainer, National Guild Hypnosis Trainer, speaker, and the Brain Trainer herself — for a conversation that moves from autoimmune disease to placebo surgery to the Wright Brothers to Ryan laughing while his dentist drills out a tooth, and somehow all of it connects. Holly co-owns the Life Harmony Wellness Center and Training Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, has worked with thousands of clients over 20 years rewiring the brain out of old habits, fears, stress, and self-sabotage, and has been quoted in Shape Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and Active Times. She is presenting at HypnoThoughts Live on Intuitive Hypnosis Mastery.

Her origin story is dramatic in the best way. She was a professional whitewater rafting guide and wilderness backpacker for a decade — her actual job was camping — when she started noticing unexplained bruising and eventually received a diagnosis of an incurable autoimmune condition. The symptoms included an allergy to sunlight. For an outdoor girl who lived in sunshine, the diagnosis was devastating. Western Medicine's answer was: suppress your immune system and hope for better drugs. Holly's answer, pieced together over years of applying hypnosis, NLP, herbalism, and systems thinking to herself, was different. She is now medication-free, symptom-free, and back in the sun. Her book, The Miracle Code, is her practical account of how she got there.

The conversation builds a coherent argument from the ground up. Stress is not just a feeling — it's a biochemical event that floods the body with hormones that affect everything from pain response to immune function to sleep. Eighty percent of the stress most people experience comes from their own thinking, not from their circumstances. Trauma encodes not just the event but the meaning the mind assigns to it, and it's the meaning that keeps the stress response running long after the original event is over. Those meanings become identity-level beliefs — the I'm-nots, as Holly calls them — and those are the stickiest ones to shift because the unconscious mind argues for them the way it argues for anything it has claimed as self.

Then she gets into placebo surgery. A knee surgeon wanted to know which part of his procedure actually drove recovery, so he set up three groups: one group got the full procedure, one got part of it, and one got a sham surgery with an incision but no physical intervention. Followed up at two and five years, all three groups healed equally well. Holly's read on it: the doctor may not be the agent of healing so much as the permission structure for it. The body already knows how to heal a cut without a band-aid. The question is what else it's capable of when given the right conditions.

Ryan's dentist visit the day before the recording becomes a perfect live example. He went in expecting dread, shifted his mind deliberately, laughed through the drilling, and watched the bill drop from $1,100 to $500 to zero in three conversations. Holly just nods. That's the whole thesis.

She also walks through her change structure formula — the iceberg model of conscious versus unconscious mind, how to identify the brain tangles underneath any presenting symptom, and why Intuitive Hypnosis Mastery means not needing a specific script for every issue because the deeper structure of change is always the same. She closes with a centering technique she does with every anxiety client: tapping gently on the chest, and saying out loud, even though I feel this stress, I come back to my center now. Past tense version too, because the unconscious holds history.

Three quotes from Holly worth writing down:

"If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them."

"80% of the stress people experience every day actually comes from their own mind. Not their circumstances. Their thinking."

"What else is possible? That's the question. Whatever you're facing — are you open to something more? Are you open to the solution?"

Connect with Holly Stokes: Website: thebraintrainerllc.com Book, placebo effect documentaries, and free Keys to Self-Healing video: thebraintrainerllc.com/book Holly presents at HypnoThoughts Live on Intuitive Hypnosis Mastery — she also teaches NLP, hypnosis, and coaching skills through her training center in Salt Lake City

Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello, friends, family, a growing audience coming in to awaken with me. So thank you for the journey. And because of you, the listener, the viewer, because of you, we can bring on special guests. And today I have Holly Stokes, and I have something cool to read about Holly. Just tune into this. So she's an international best-selling author, a master NLP coach trainer, and National Guild hypnosis trainer, speaker, keeps a full-time practice in Salt Lake City, Utah. And over the last 20 years, she has worked with thousands of clients in rewiring the brain out of old habits, fears, stress, and self-sabotage. She has been quoted by Shake Magazine, Active Times, and Chicago Tribune. She appears on radio shows and local TV in Salt Lake City, where she keeps a full-time practice and co-owns the Life Harmony Wellness Center and Training Center. She loves teaching and training students in hypnosis, NLP, and coaching skills, bringing her a unique blend of experience and innovation. And all that, and I just discovered she has a book called The Miracle Code. We may talk about that. And she's presenting at Hypnothoughts Live, which is the world's largest hypnosis conference. So welcome, Holly. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Thank you. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, cool. So let's I mean, there's there's a full profile there. Uh, what is the latest things that's like floating your boat? What types of new findings in hypnosis or what are you seeing in your clients right now? What's like really moving you forward in this journey?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, well, I would say kind of what has come to the forefront in my practice is working with things that, you know, health and wellness type issues. So, you know, I mentioned I released my book in 2024, The Miracle Code, which shares my journey of overcoming an incurable autoimmune condition. That in utilizing hypnosis skills, NLP skills on myself, in helping my mind-body system release stress, change brain habits that were causing more stress. Of course, we know this whole mind-body connection, we know it's real, but we're not utilizing it enough. We're not paying attention to just how much our mind actually influences our body. And we see this directly through the stress response. You know, when we get stressed, it's some usually something we're thinking, we're imagining, we're worrying about something, but our body physically responds. It shoots epinephrine, cholesterol, these stress hormones that run through the body. Well, our hormones are actually messengers or communicators for everything that happens in the body. It regulates when we sleep, when we wake, what we pay attention to. So, because in our hormone system, there's many hormones. Um, I've heard different quotes somewhere between more than 100 to more than 150. Um, but these hormones are communicators, they're regulating everything and telling our body what to do. And when one system of hormones is high, it's causing others to be low. So, for instance, just stress, we tend to take it for granted, but we know stress actually increases the pain response. We know stress actually causes other symptoms to be worse. Like if you have health issues, stress makes it worse. Stress can trigger flare-ups. And there's our conscious stress, what we're dealing with through the regular day, but then there's also our unconscious stress. How much unconscious stress are we carrying? And these are those little triggers, worries running in the background of our mind. We're not really paying attention to them, but they're affecting our body, and our body is responding. And like every kind of health, wellness program should have some level of teaching the mind and body system to regulate, to let go of stress and rebalance itself, which it naturally tends to do that. But our culture is so brain-heavy, so intellectual heavy that we forget about our body. And I was the same way. Um, so I came from you know that background just push through, make yourself think I was this outdoor girl, and then wham, I got slammed with an autoimmune condition.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

And yeah, turned my world upside down. So it it's interesting. I like Peter Tilla has this great metaphor about the body, and that we're like vessels, and we can handle a certain amount of stress. Like a certain amount of stress is good for us, like maybe working out or whatever a little bit of stress is, and then, like you said, the unconscious things, like for instance, I'm in my basement next to my daughter's cat's cat litter. You know, it's unconsciously affecting that bucket of stress. And then once it overflows, like you said, the cascade of hormones, and then when we're talking, I I kind of want to start at the autoimmune disease part because that is correct me if I'm mistaken, that's where the body is attacking itself, its own tissue. Yeah, and then so so you're saying that we could talk to this subconscious to stop attacking its own tissue.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah. So I would wager that our what we understand about health and wellness is um a vastly underestimated in how much our mind actually affects our body, and how much, especially when we get into hypnosis, we start to recognize that the body is not wrong, it's just expressing something from your unconscious mind. So, because of the field hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, it really starts to open up new possibilities. And part of it is the thinking that's created the different systems that we operate from. So, Western medical, I love it, saved my life more than once. Um, but it's very limited in its approach. And it be it's because of it has it, it's called reductionist thinking when you keep breaking things down into smaller and smaller pieces. So, this like minute way of understanding like things at the cellular level and you know how uh things work biochemically, it has definitely uh given us deep, profound insight to you know how these cellular systems are operating. But at some level, it's lost the bigger picture. When you get into systems thinking, and this is this is part of my background as well. I came from herbalist uh background that says the body can heal itself if it has the right um tools, if it has the right nourishment, if it has the right uh, and I would say part of that is the right mental space. So now in research, you know, we've all been programmed to identify, okay, health that, you know, if something is, if you're feeling sick, you take some kind of pill that creates a biochemical reaction and then you feel better, you know, in one way or another. But what Western medical has been missing is this bigger awareness of systems, how all of these interrelated parts are working together. So if you go see a doctor for like a foot problem, you see a podiatrist, and they don't necessarily know things about digestion. But kind of back to some of the messaging from my herbalist classes, he says there are no fences in the body, everything is interrelated.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

And even now, with all of the research in neuroscience, we're seeing just how much our bodies are affected by our thoughts. We know happy thoughts create better health outcomes.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

They recover not only they recover better, like they're more disciplined, maybe with their physical therapy, that that optimism, that hope, actually creates neurotransmitter chemicals that helps the person stay positive and things line up within the body to right.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

So what happens? I I love that. And the question persists. So, what happens when the person and their perceived reality is just dark and not happy, right? And it's really coming in at him and it weighs heavy. And then what how do you tell that person, oh, just think happy thoughts? What's the process of getting happy thoughts into the middle of that dark? You're surrounded by your enemy's situation.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Well, I can definitely relate to that.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Um I think that's pretty human, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah, and my story is uh it's pretty dramatic. I was a whitewater rafting guide, professional backpacker for 10 years, outdoor girl. You know, my jobs were camping um in the wilderness. And then I started noticing bruises and went to the doctor and finally found that you know I was diagnosed with this autoimmune condition, which according to Western Medical says that there is no cure. Here's this pill, we're gonna suppress your immune system, and hopefully there will be better drugs down the line. So, in this uh diagnosis, I was an outdoor girl, loved nature, being in sunshine. Part of the symptoms was an allergy to sunlight. I was devastated. Not only did I not have the energy, I was breaking out in a rash from running, and I was devastated. This meant I had to change my career, my way of life, and it was like my world was crashing in. So when you talk about like this looming darkness and depression, yeah, how can we crawl out of that hole?

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Like, I I picture like the the ideal situation is like I don't know if you've seen Game of Thrones where it's it's the queen of dragons and just her whole world's on fire, and then she just gets up and walks out like she has become the queen of dragons, you know. Like I don't know, like you'd burst forth in a hero form almost. Like, does a hero burst forth or is it a quiet crawling out?

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Maybe a combination of both, but this brings to mind a quote that um I can't remember the citation, like who wrote it. Yeah, it says that if you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. And it's kind of the same. I think part of it is really noticing what is your mind telling yourself, what are you listening to within your own brain?

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Some of that is default scripting, you know, parents growing up, met Western medical. Um, but at some point we have to decide what we're gonna listen to, right? And here's another thing. This comes from Tony Robbins, he said it. Yeah, well, and it's also within the NLP training, but for any belief, any belief, I'm gonna get well, or I'm gonna not, you know, life is gonna go downhill from here, there is always evidence to support either belief. You have opposite beliefs, and there's evidence to support it. So the way of deconstructing a negative belief is you find evidence for the opposite. So, in my own kind of when life is crashing in, yeah, like wow, like my life is totally upside down. How I'm I was seeing myself like cloistered in my room in a dark room and never going outside or hiking, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:05

And where did you get the strength to overcome that? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Sometimes you just have to say, okay, what do you want? What do you want? And this is yeah, classic NLP. What are you fighting for? What are you what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on what you can't do, or are you willing to focus? Well, and it's about having that hope and that belief. And I expect that it's actually our ability to hope and to keep a possibility open for what we want instead, right? Then get cues our unconscious mind to start looking for those possibilities. And in doing that, this is goes a little bit into that manifestation.

SPEAKER_04 13:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

We keep that possibility open of what we want differently, our unconscious mind is primed to notice, but then also synchronicities can start to show up.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

And we may not know the path to health and recovery.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

I I laugh because you said the word synchronicity, and it's a synchronicity that I was legit like 20 minutes ago watching Joseph Campbell's telling me that synchron synchr how you say that word again?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

No, it's not synchronicity.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Yeah, the word it comes from the Sanskrit and it means Isle of Silk.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah, isn't that cool? Yeah. Okay, so sorry, so the synchronicities, yeah. It's like you're manifesting and the synchronicities. And I wonder what's the limit? Like you've already had the miracle where they the doctor said it's not curable, and then so your body just says, Okay, I'm done. I'm not attacking myself anymore. Is that what happened? It doesn't attack itself anymore.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

I I wish it was that easy. It kind of took me a long time to um understand the mind-body system interactions and what I can what I could leverage with using hypnosis NLP stuff internally to then get my mind and body system to work together in that heart, you know, harmonious way. So I took in writing the book, I took a pretty practical approach talking about stress, how stress creates physical biochemical changes in the body.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

And um, you know, and that also compounds over time. But then also, here's kind of the the thing that really made a big difference for me. Well, along the way, we also recognize that um allergies are the mental component.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah, I've heard about that. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

And in NLP, there is such a thing as retraining the brain out of allergies. Um, when I start when I was learning that and started to look at some of the symptoms that I was experiencing, I started recognizing it's also acting like an allergy. It's and how an allergy works is that it's an immune response. The immune system kind of flares up in response to a perceived threat that somehow is coding a food or a substance as a threat when it's not really a threat, but it's the body's response that creates the problem.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

This is very similar to what I figured out was going on with my immune system. It had some underlying like heightened threat response.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah. I'm even wondering about like this uh with affecting Lyme disease. You could probably can help with that as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

I would expect, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah. And it's interesting when you're talking about how the body perceives even something like food, for instance. Like at the body, if you look at hypothetically, hypothetically, yeah, if you look at a donut and say this is bad for me, you know, I know this is bad for me, gob gob, gob. And it's like putting the toxin in. And I wonder if you looked at a donut and like love and say, This nourishes me, if it would have a different effect, theoretically, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yes. Theoretically, and I think there is some truth to that. In fact, there's a really interesting study. Um, I think I have it on my blog on my website, one of my websites. But the study was they took two groups of housekeepers and said, okay, we're not gonna have them change anything. The only difference, we're gonna have one group watch a you know, informational video where they're learning about how many calories each of these tasks that they're doing as housekeepers are burning throughout the day. So one group went through and watched that, and then the other group, you know, just did everything as normal. Well, they followed up with them, I think it was two months and three months later. They found the group that had actually watched that understanding like, you know, all of this stuff that you're doing every day is work. Um the and identifying like as you're you know, spreading sheets or folding clothes, you're actually burning calories. They lost on an average, I think it was like one to two pounds without anything else.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Right. Just the thought of the perception of what they're doing is different. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Which starts to take us into conversation about the placebo effect, which is something I absolutely love.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Let's talk about it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

So the placebo effect, when I went through psychology courses in college, I was told like the placebo effect, oh, it's just a trick of the mind. Results are short-lived, they come back. Like your mind just just thinks it's glossing over symptoms, it just thinks it's doing better. So they say, so they say, right, but then you get into the placebo effect research and you see there's other things happening, right? In fact, I do have like a sign-in on my website. I have these two documentaries that were done by the BBC, and it talks specifically about the research. These are clinical trials, and they're all set all set up, you know, with according to scientific methods and everything. But it's fascinating. The one in particular that really blew my mind was a um osteosurgeon. Ah, the name will come to me, orthopedic surgeon.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

He had uh he's a knee surgeon, yeah, and he wanted to know which part of the surgery is actually most beneficial for his clients. There were two parts. One part is cutting the knee open and rinsing the knee of debris, and the second part was going in and kind of like um cleaning out any of the rough cartilage, so kind of cleaning out rough cartilage and then he'd sew people back up. So he goes to his um colleagues and says, Can we just compare, you know, Apple, you know, one group to the other group and see how well they do? She's like, Oh no. In order for it to be clinically uh viable as a research study, you have to have a placebo group. And the doctor's like, placebo surgery?

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah, okay. Oh man, no way.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

So they set up three groups. One group has process one, one has process two, and the third group is a placebo group, and no process, no physical intervention, but they went through the whole thing just the same. They got, you know, they went into the operating room, they got put under, right? They had an incision on the knee, so everything appeared as if that they had had a surgery. Guess which group actually um required best. No way, none of them, they were all the same as far as funny. So the placebo group, no physical intervention, healed just as well with just as good effects of recovery as the other two groups.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

They even followed these guys two years and five years.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Oh, I love there's a follow up.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Oh, yeah, is the same results from that. And this totally blew my mind.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

I like too the the ritual as the ritual in the placebo. Like, like, for instance, the other placebo one was when they Tested rogaine and the inert oil for the placebo group was just a rubbing into the scalp and believing that this might cause hair growth. And the placebo group actually grew hair not with any drugs. They just with their mind they grew hair. And then there's another placebo one where it was a cancer treatment, and the placebo was like, this may cause hair loss. And the people that in the placebo with no treatment, their hair fell out. That's crazy. And to think that it's orthopedic, too. I love the ritual. It's like the the magician in the white coat and stethoscope. You know, it's everyone's creating this play to help that person in their belief that something miraculous is going to happen. And it did because they didn't do anything.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Right. So this really begs the question: what is the true nature of healing? And if the placebo surgery was able, it's not just a trick of the mind, real healing is happening in that scenario where people can walk before the surgery and they could after, even two years and five years later.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

With zero actual surgical intervention, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah. And so we've kind of been um well, let's say we've been led to believe in this biochemical reductionist model that there's actually something else going on with our ability to heal. And this is one way to illustrate that is think about when you get cut. You have a little cut, you put like a band-aid on it. It's not the band-aid that actually heals the cut, it's that your um unconscious mind, if you will, your body has a natural innate intelligence that then cues the pieces of the skin across the cut to reach out and grow cells and to actually heal and repair. Our bodies are, you know, millennia of healing, repairing, adapting. We have those programs internally to heal. Um, part of what we're reacting to is our, you know, our illness can be seen as uh responses or reactions to things going on either in our environment or also within our own minds. Like I would say 80% of the amount of stress people experience every day actually comes from what their own minds are.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Right, right. I'm thinking, like, for instance, like myself as a trauma survivor. Yeah, a lot of trauma survivors out there, and the trauma occurs, and then afterwards it's me that's causing harm to myself because I didn't let it go. So I'm holding on to that, oh, this is defining me. And by doing that, I'm hurting myself. And once I let go of the meaning a little bit, then it's like I'm no longer hurting myself.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah, and it's the traumas are part of you know what I would call that unconscious stress response.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

And things can code for a trauma, even though as an adult, we would probably say, Oh, that's not traumatic. Like think of a five-year-old with a pack of crayons making pretty pictures on the white wall. And mom comes over and spanks him. People, the child's mind, their brain started, well, the there's kind of the initial shock. They're creative and they're making pretty pictures, but then they're getting um told they're bad for that. So it's kind of that initial shock, but then the other piece that goes along with it, and this is where we end up suffering, is that the mind makes up meanings. So it's not just that the event happened, it's that our mind creates meanings about it. What does this mean about me? What does this mean about the world around me? And then those meanings are actually part of the prison that keeps us locked in that stress response with the trauma.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

So, how do we let go of those meanings that we've held on to?

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Well, that would be your classic, you know, change work, belief system, yeah, transformational. Yeah, transformational work.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

What's for the people that are listening that might be holding on to a meaning. What's the first step of recognizing it's time to let go?

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Well, the first step, there's kind of a a couple things that come to mind with this. So the first step is really that self-awareness. We kind of get uh by default, we're just used to each of us is used to a certain amount of emotional baggage. Like, oh yeah, maybe we had some you know hard things in childhood, like or something, or even worse, some of those traumas. Um, so often it feels normal to us to be carrying around that emotional baggage. So, kind of the first part is like noticing our emotions. How are you feeling? Or if you're getting triggered, if you can notice what is it that's triggering you and what is the meaning attached, and that will give you the clue to what actually set up that whole sequence of stress events or stress response from that belief, especially um, you know, things happen, you're going through life. Somebody says something like, Oh, you don't match today. I'll just go with something ridiculous, you know. And then you're like, Oh, I don't look good enough, you know, and then your mind kind of doesn't spin out. So if you can pay attention to your triggers and instead of seeing them as wrong and bad, see them as clues. They're like red flags telling you, hey, there's something, there's something here of that emotional baggage that you can let go of.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

So, okay, that's a good example with okay, so I'm mismatched all the time. And yeah, people tell me, hey, hey, Ryan, you're mismatched. I'm like, okay, so how can I let that go in that moment before like because I it feels like I could go two thoughts. One, I could just go about my day, or two, I can hold on to that thought and just be drug along the river banks with that thought of, oh, I'm mismatched, I'm ugly, or whatever, you know. Like, so how can one just let go in that moment?

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Yeah, so um it goes to recognizing the belief systems that are creating that emotional response, right? So it's not just that people are saying you're mismatched, but it's typically that our story starts running that spiral. Oh, I'm not good enough, I'm not doing things right. I'm and that usually goes back to our past programming. So, you know, the messages that we didn't get from parents so that we got from teachers, and that's kind of those belief systems that are not um that are out of alignment with our core self are the ones that cause the most suffering.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

So, how do we find our our core self?

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Well, I would say that's a bigger conversation and probably well, I would say starts tapping into kind of that greater recognition of our expanded self, our spirit or our soul self. Um so at a practical level, starting to recognize those uh places where we get triggered as cues. Hey, this might not be reality, it's just an old thought that I was thinking. And if that thought is causing you pain or emotional discomfort, it's a cue to let it go, right? How do you let it go? There's some different processes. One is like if you think about our beliefs, they're just perspectives, it's somebody's opinion. And usually somebody's opinions are our beliefs are based in someone's opinion.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Oh, I'm not good enough, I'm not doing things right, I'm not uh important, I'm not significant, my wants and needs, you know. I yeah, everybody has some of these running in the background, you know.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

But if you can recognize them as somebody else's opinion and you can choose what you believe about you, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

That's hard though, because there's hard. Always those things are whispering in your ear saying, you know, like you're running late, you're going to get in trouble, you know, like, oh, look how they offended you. You know, like how do we stop that? When someone offends us, how do we be like, eh? You know, like I want to be bulletproof, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's recognizing like these beliefs are just somebody else's opinion. In fact, like what comes to mind too is the work of Byron Cady, that if a belief comes up, like, oh, I'm not good enough, then start questioning it. Well, how um, do I know this is true? No, it's just somebody's opinion. Is it true for everybody? Well, then it's not a real part of reality, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Like, so you know, beliefs about um well, kind of the the stickiest ones are I call them the I'm nots. I'm not lovable, I'm not valuable, I'm not worthy, not deserving, etc. Anything that relates to the core of who we are. And those are the ones that are most painful and the most sticky because our unconscious mind will argue for them because they're identity. So part of it, how do you build new identity? Well, we can change the self-talk, the negative self-talk that we've picked up. There's NLP hypnosis processes for that. Um, we can also feed our brain, and this goes back to you know talking about recovery. What are you focusing on? Are you focusing? I mean, we have options for people's opinions about the and the negative, and who are we gonna listen to?

SPEAKER_01 32:37

It's like which wolf are we feeding?

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that analogy. So, and I always tell my clients I recommend they have a 15-minute window of self-care. And it's not self-care like paint your toenails, it's emotional self-care. How are you feeling? What can you let go of? I have a recycle process that I take clients through that's really great at helping people offload baggage, but I also have it, it's like the 10-minute version is available on my YouTube channel. So that's like it just helps your brain unload that mental baggage and kind of reset. And that's part of it is just recognizing how to reset our system back to baseline, right? And there's a lot of stuff coming out about regulating your nervous system, which is a other words for the same thing, stress relief coming back to you, your baseline.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Grounding, yeah, earthing. Yeah. So, like, is so when a client sees you, do you give them some tools like, okay, this is a good grounding exercise, or this is a good centering exercise? So, do you have one that like it's real quick that you could share with the listeners? Like a good like centering exercise.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Um, yeah. Um, a couple things come to mind. Like, I usually teach uh EFT emotional freedom technique in the first session. Usually uh I get a lot of folks that come in for anxiety. As I mentioned, any kind of health issue, there's usually some anxiety component. Also, like habits and addictions, cravings, uh definitely have some kind of anxiety stress element. So EFT, if you remember, it's like tapping, you can tap on the different they use an acupuncture. And it's also the words you say. It's a good pattern interrupt, but we're also redirecting the mind to what we want it to do. So I like it because it acknowledges the emotion, even though I feel stress. And here's kind of my shortcut is just that.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Yeah, just right on for those just listening. She's tapping on her chest, like in her heart area, her heart uh chakra is that? The chakra chakra, or is this uh no? This is uh the heart chakra.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Yeah. And you're just tapping on your chest and it kind of rambles your rib cage a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 35:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Um, I think it goes back to an association. Most of us as babies, we were burped after eating, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

So I think it has like this interesting level of comfort to it.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

That's interesting. You know what? I just had a whole bunch of things come to me at once with this. Like it's um it's also like communicating to your heart, so you have that heart-brain coherence, like just telling it, I love you. And also like maybe like a Native American thing where Mother Gaia is telling you I'm here. Yeah, you know, just something like that. Yeah, I like that positive attention aspect and getting it back to the ritual.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Yeah. And the original, like the guy who created it, um, his phrasing was, even though I feel this anxiety, I totally and completely love and accept myself. Well, at first I started teaching that to my clients, and my anxiety clients would start spinning out. Yeah, I imagine the wording of that was like, I don't even know how to love myself. Why was I never taught? So I'm like, okay, let's just change the words.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

So if you do the tap, just gentle tapping on your chest, recognize, do the phrase that recognizes the emotion and redirects the mind. Even though I feel this stress, I come back to my center now. Even though I feel this stress, I come back to my center now. So here's a little bit more that I've added to it because I we recognize in hypnosis that the unconscious mind is not logical and rational. So a lot of what we're experiencing in the present moment isn't just about the present moment, it's about our whole history.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

So even though I feel anxiety or stress, I come back to center. Even though I felt anxiety or stress, I come back to center now.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Right. Because a lot of ways our current reality is mirroring what has been inside. And by centering ourselves, it's almost like we can make we can manifest things. And I imagine, would you say that the more you walk and you're centered, the more that you see these synchronous events happening?

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Um, yeah, part of it is uh getting yourself to recognize them. You know, are we going through the day like uh well it come that there's that quote from Einstein? You there's two ways to live. One is if nothing is a miracle, and the second is if everything is.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Are we looking for those synchronicities? Are we um open to the possibility of universe showing up for us or giving us those breadcrumb trail?

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Yeah, and my mind what I was picturing is it's like we're if we don't know what path we're on, the synchronicities are like little lights on the path, like this way, yeah, following the synchronicities, and that's just God saying, Yep, you're on the right path. This one is powered for you to walk on. Those little glimmers, yeah, those little glimmers, yeah. Yeah, cool. All right, so now that's incredible. I'm wondering, what are you talking about? Uh hypnothots.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Yes, my class I'll be teaching is intuitive hypnosis mastery. And so what we're looking is as practitioners, you know, typically when most of us learn hypnosis, we learn to read a script. Um, there are some fantastic scripts. I've developed some scripts that are specific for the verbiage and what I want those scripts to do for people, like changing self-talk or getting over the I'm nots not worthy, not deserving, helping people to update their identity level. And so there's some scripting that's specific, but sometimes people come in with things that are different that we haven't heard of before. And especially I'm on a few hypnosis forums and I'm hearing people say, Well, how do you work with insomnia? How do you work with this? And they're getting into the weeds of it, but they're missing the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that anything can come into your office. And if you use, um, I've kind of created a formula that simplifies the process to understanding what's going on at the unconscious level. But if you can apply this formula, you should be able to help people get traction with any issue. You don't have to have a specific script for it. And part of that, we're kind of often inspired. Um, if you've been in that flow of hypnosis where you're uh kind of tapped into what your client's goal is, but also tapped into that sense of inspiration or that space of possibility.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Bringing the clients into that, um you you do notice like the words just flow. You don't have to be specific. Yeah, it just flows, right? So there's kind of a couple different parts. One is if you know the change structure formula and you are also able to tap in and keep the client's goal or results or outcome, then you're able to kind of customize a session specifically to their issue, but also do it in a way that um can have a profound effect.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Okay, so you've waived this carrot in front of me. You said for formula, and the math nerd in me is like, formula, what formula? Are you going to like spill the beans here? Do we have to wait to get to Hitner thoughts to hear the formula? I want the formula.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Well, uh, we can I can give you kind of some bigger pieces of understanding. And you know, this really, I would say came to me from NLP. NLP, um, well, and we see this kind of structure with any client that we're working with. They've come in with a problem and they want to get out of the problem. So if you think about kind of the bigger structure is problem to solution. So, what is the problem? What is the solution that they want? Now, underneath the problem, here's a good example. Think of an iceberg. The top part above the water is what we see, what we're aware of. This is like our conscious mind, right? We we often use this as a I love teaching this model because clients kind of wrap their head around it.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

The top part is like 10%. Our conscious mind is thinks it's in charge, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

But it's the 90% of the iceberg under the surface that we don't see that is actually running that iceberg.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

And so if we look at like someone comes in with a problem, anxiety, anxiety is what they're experiencing at the conscious level, right? We understand what is that 90% of the mind running that's causing anxiety. Anxiety is the symptom. What is the mind actually doing?

SPEAKER_02 42:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Well, under the surface, you'll probably find a collection of uh call them brain tangles. Not that isn't technically.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Yeah, that's a good analogy. Like you're you got to untangle the hair a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Yeah. So it's kind of like the you for any problem, there's kind of this tangle of threads or these brain tangles that are kind of wired into each other. So one is this goes often along with anxiety. Now, this what's going on for each individual can be a little different from one person to another, but there are some common themes. So, for um example, someone coming in with anxiety, usually there's some element of worry where the mind is previewing a negative future. And it sounds like what if? What if this? What if that? And they're imagining bad stuff happening. Well, even though that bad stuff isn't happening, like getting a flat tire or you know missing someone's event, even though those negative things aren't happening, your body is physically responding to those thoughts by the stress response. Right?

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Okay, so how do we get out of that? So I'm thinking of the Christmas story. They're going somewhere, it's important, and then they get a flat tire, and then out Ralphie has a Big F bomb come out, right? And gets in all this trouble. So, how could we help Ralphie there? Because it feels like so real in the moment. I guess is there a way? Like, is there like a lucky rock or something we could carry to remind us that this is just silliness? We don't need to respond in anger.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Yeah, so I would say like this centering practices are really useful for that. And it's also, I think you mentioned the analogy, you know, um our stress is kind of like a boiling pot. That the more stress we have, it there it gets to be a point there's too much and it boils over. So part of that is if we're keeping our systems, you know, regulated, if we're regulating our nervous system, keeping our baseline. So one is just remembering, you know, tap on the chest, even though I feel this, I come back to center, and you're cueing your mind about where you want it to go. I come back to center right here, right now, I'm okay. Um, if you come back to that baseline, it's much easier to find solutions. What's going on in the scenario you just mentioned is that his kid is doing that freak out, right? And it's he's kind of getting lost in the freakout. Oh, you know, what if we are stranded here forever?

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Yeah, the spiral, and it's just it boils over and then it gets soap in the mouth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

But for any situation, if we come back to our personal clarity, our personal power, what can I do? Then we start being able to recognize possible solutions.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

And then we can yeah, uh, and then we can what? You're about to say something.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

And then we can pick our solution and move forward, you know, picking our options.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

I like how you're talking about practicing centering. It reminds me when I was in the Marine Corps, they said the more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in wartime. So we can, so we can, you know, the more you work out, the more you train, the less likely you're gonna, you know.

unknown 46:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

And so the idea too is like the more you center yourself, the more you work out centering yourself and taking care of this mind-body connection, that's the more you're sweating. So when the when the proverbial stuff hits the fan, you're bulletproof, and essentially, because you've been centering yourself and you're ready for the tire, the taxes, the whatever.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

Well, you keep your inner calm. And I think we can all relate to certain experiences where we have done the freak out, and when you're in freak out mode, you're not logical and rational, and you can't respond very well. But if you keep your calm, your center, you're actually open to intuition. You are better able to assess and to respond to what actually needs to happen.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Okay, so I don't want to take up too much of your time. I want to go back a little bit to these I'll call them miracles, you know, you you're slowing the body or sometimes stopping the body from attacking itself, an autoimmune disease. Something the doctor says can't be done, and we see it being done. And we see the placebo effect where people are recovering as if they had surgery. So where is where do the possibilities end? To the point of like, I believe I was born to walk on water. Yet someone told me I can't, and I believe that. Like, no matter what I could do and look at all the evidence, I just can't believe I could walk on water. So where's the line of what's possible on that?

SPEAKER_00 47:55

That's a great question. And yes, like where do we believe in limitation versus where do we not believe in limitation? And you know, part of that is if you believe whatever you believe is possible, that's kind of where you're going to put your energy and look for your solutions, right? So for instance, um, you know, the Wright brothers, if they didn't believe they could fly, so many people told them, Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

I'm laughing. I'm sorry, I'm laughing because it's another synchronicity. Because just today I was reading about the Wright brothers, how like they didn't like it was like their belief, right? The beliefs they didn't no one could fly and they believed they can fly. And it and even though it was just a short time in North Carolina, four years later they delivered an airplane that could go 125 miles, you know. So that once you break the belief of no, you can't fly, and now you can, then the limit has already been broken. You can just push it even more and more. Now we could fly, you know, faster than the speed of sound.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

Right. So it it is like if you have all you have to, you don't have to 100% believe, but just have that openness to possibility and the path will show up for you. If you have that, yeah, and we know that having hope and optimism with health actually improves your health outcomes and then recovery, right? So, kind of that foundational element is being open to the possibility. And you know, here's like as I work with people with you know illnesses or chronic pain, you don't have to believe that you can heal, because sometimes that just seems like too far a leap, right? Can you be open to feeling 10% better? If your body could feel um 15% better, would that be worth it to you? Would it make a difference in your life? And it's kind of like these little marks. If you could just be feeling better and better, and finding the actions that help you feel better and better, and finding the mental space that helps you feel better and better, well, then you're on this upward spiral.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

That makes sense about it's like a laddering effect. It goes back to manifestation. Like I manifested money the other day, and it wasn't like I didn't believe I can manifest a million dollars. Something in me said, if I found or that I was worthy of it, because if I found it, I would immediately turn it in. Like, no way, this is mine. I could just take this free and clear without guilt, you know. I don't believe that's possible. I believe I can find five bucks and rightfully take it as mine. And I did, you know. So, like, is that the secret sauce to manifesting whatever we want? Is a laddering effect of eh, maybe it might happen.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

I I think, yeah, that ladder effect is kind of a practical approach to that. Do things, you know, fall into our lives out of the blue sometimes. Um, but what I wrote about in my book, The Miracle Code, is kind of more of that ladder effect. And I took a practical approach, okay, stress relief, okay, changing just a few foods out of your diet. Could that make a difference? And when you find things that work, keep doing what's working, and that will take you to the next step and the next step. So, in my own process, it didn't come all at once, but in putting the steps together, finally I got to a place where the end result was possible. Like I'm medication free, symptom free, right? I can be out in the sun, no problem.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

That's what I was wondering because before you said you couldn't be out in the sun, so now you can be. So doctors are like, this is it, you're gonna have to be on the medicine. This is just gonna progressively get worse, they probably told you.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

Well, that's their only solution, is a biomedical solution. And because they have discounted the power of our mind, yeah. Um, that's not even part of their solution, right? But we know so much more research is coming up that it's really our whole system, and like I mentioned earlier, it kind of begs the question: what's the true nature of healing? Your body can heal a knee that you know, uh knee surgeon said they have to be replaced, but your body can your mind can help your body do it for you. Well, maybe the doctor is just the excuse or the permission to heal. What else is our mind capable of? I think we have this vast untapped resource. And actually, I I do have, if you go to my website, if you don't mind if I share this really quick.

SPEAKER_01 52:57

Yeah, and we'll include the link to your website in the description.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Yeah. So if you go to my website, the braintrainerlc.com forward slash book. I have a short video, talks about my book, but if you sign in there, it will give you those two links to the placebo effect documentary. As well as, well, there's two documentaries there, as well as like uh keys to self-healing kind of talks about how to start applying these things to your own system.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

Brilliant. Yeah, that sounds great. And that's where the one about the surgery is in that that documentary where you sign in, you can get the video. Cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

And there's also they talk about hypnosis and the pain response. Um, how yeah, how so much of our mind is actually influencing how the bodies are responding.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

And that's gonna have another serendipity there, the pain response. Because yes, uh yesterday I went to the dentist for pain, and you know, like, and I found it was interesting because almost like miracles started happening as I changed my mind. Like I usually go in in an anxious state and uh, oh, this is gonna be such, you know, and then I say, Well, what if I turn it the other way and said this could be like this? And as my mind followed those thoughts, like even the bill itself for the medical procedure, like the pain was gone. I was laughing while they were drilling, and pieces of my tooth were flying up in my face. I was laughing. I was like, ha ha ha ha. They're like, Are you okay? I was like, This is so funny. It's like how my mind could shift this experience. Yeah, and then they the literally the the billing lady came in and says, You know what, this is gonna be about $1,100, and then came back. You know what? This is gonna be $500. You know what? You don't have to pay for this. Wow, it was just weird how my mind shifted, and I was like, you know, there's a little there's stories there, but it's just incredible.

SPEAKER_03 54:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:55

All right, so thank you again for being here. I appreciate it so much.

SPEAKER_00 55:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 55:01

Do you have anything that you might want to share with the world that just in this moment that bubbles up for you? A thing that your heart wants to speak about.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

Um yeah, I would say that whatever you're going through in your in your life, um, whether it's a health issue or a challenge, it's really your mind, body, spirit puzzle box system. Like think of it as our challenges are here for us to overcome. And especially with health issues, we kind of get into this idea that we're helpless or that we're powerless. And there's so much more we can be accessing and exploring that is our inherent nature. Um, if we're just willing to be open to possibilities. So there's a great question that just is as simple as what else is possible? Okay, I don't like where I am, but what else is possible? Are you open to are you open to something more? Are you open to the solution?

SPEAKER_01 56:19

I love that. What else is possible? I'm writing it down. What else is possible? Question mark.

SPEAKER_03 56:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Always wondering what else? Holly Stokes, thank you so much for being here, the brain trainer. And we'll include the description the link to your website so people can log in, check out the book, hopefully purchase it. I know I'm going to get it, I'm going to read it, and then I'm going to watch those videos too. So it's really cool. Thank you again, Holly.