Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Teaching Hypnotherapist Podcast, and this one is called Hypnotherapy and Neuroscience. What?
[00:00:09] Yeah, for sure. Okay, let's get started. I think you're gonna love this one, because this episode is all about expanding the recognition that the work that we do belongs inside the modern conversation about the brain, the body, and how people adapt and. And change as they move through life. Now, as hypnotherapists, we work with attention, with memory, with sensory awareness, with emotion, body sensation, prediction, projection, and imagination.
[00:00:41] But how do these things actually work when we use hypnosis? Well, neuroscience is now giving us a language to understand how we do what we do. The trouble is, the language of neuroscience can be complicated. So today, I want to give us a way to use the language that's easy to remember and even easier to feel fond of and proud of. So, here I have a lamp. It's in the shape of a head. And I want you to imagine that this is your client's head.
[00:01:14] Now, deep inside the brain, there's a little security team. Each member has a job and a location and a personality. Now, obviously, there aren't little people running around inside your client's skull, but I think you'll find that this is a useful way to understand the systems that shift when a client settles into hypnosis. And once you've met them, you'll start spotting the team in every single session. Now, why does it matter?
[00:01:47] Well, hypnosis is often described as the bypass of the critical factor of the subconscious mind.
[00:01:56] Great. Yes, but an old idea, one of flicking the switch from one state into another. It was useful, but now, in today's terminology, it's a bit vague, and it really won't land with a more informed audience. We have younger cohorts of clients and students, and these people are listening to podcasts on trauma, on attachment, on somatic awareness.
[00:02:25] So today is about upgrading how we use our language so it's more resonant with what the neuroscience research is actually saying.
[00:02:35] In neuroscience terms, hypnosis is not one switch, but flipped. It is more akin to a shift across a whole range of different systems in the brain. And I'm hoping today that you'll be able to see how the whole team actually work together. So let me introduce you to some of them. Well, we got Thomas Thalmos. He narrows the spotlight, and he turns it inwards. We've got Sally Salience, who stops blaring the alarm at everything. We've got Derek Dack, the doorman, who stops Slamming the door on every new idea. We've got Ursula Insula, the body messenger. It's great when she comes online. And then we've got Damon dmn. He's the old storyteller. And when he loosens his grip on the old script, everything changes. And then we've got Corrie Cortex. Now Corrie, she is, is the one who starts rehearsing a happy ever after on the cinema screen rather than showing yet another old disaster movie. So that's where we're going today. And we're going to use this headlamp as if we're walking through the brain of one of your clients who have just closed their eyes in your chair. And as we go, I'll introduce you to the team one by one. So first of all, we are going to meet Thomas Thalmas. Now, Thomas Thalmus is located here at the front and the top, but deep inside your brain. Deep inside your brain. And his job is to point the spotlight at whatever needs attention.
[00:04:22] Now, his personality, focused, selective. But Thomas, Thomas is easily distracted until we give him something to aim his spotlight on.
[00:04:37] Now, you know Thomas Thalmas very well, even if you haven't had a name for him.
[00:04:44] Thomas Thalmas is evident when a client sits down and when their attention is scattered and all over the place.
[00:04:54] So Thomas is swinging the spotlight everywhere at once.
[00:04:58] Where your client parked. Whether hypnosis will even work. The email that they haven't sent. The work problem that is still running in the background of their mind, their bodies in the chair.
[00:05:12] But Thomas Thalmus has a spotlight pointed everywhere except in the room inside. And then you begin.
[00:05:23] You use your voice to take Thomas Thalmus gently by the elbow and give the spotlight somewhere simple to land.
[00:05:35] Maybe the breath, maybe feet on the floor, maybe the weight of your body in the chair. And your voice orientates him.
[00:05:47] Slowly, Thomas brings the beam in from the outside world into what is happening inside.
[00:05:57] And your voice, that's the guide.
[00:06:00] It is the regulator of attention.
[00:06:03] Your tone signals safety to the nervous system. Your timing slows their breath. And your words help Thomas. Thomas to decide on what matters. Now, this isn't preparation for hypnosis. This is orientation. And guess what? You're remarkably good at it. Okay, next, I want to introduce you to Sally Salience. Now, Sally, she runs the alarm. So where is she located?
[00:06:37] So she's up here on the mid lamp.
[00:06:40] She's up here in the midline area.
[00:06:43] But then she controls a whole network all around here.
[00:06:49] So Sally's job. Well, Sally's job is salience. Now, what does salience mean? It means importance.
[00:06:58] Now, she's not just one small area, she's a whole network, including the anterior cingulate and other regions. And she decides what should matter. Right now, her personality is alert and protective. And if I'm honest, she's a little bit jumpy. She'd rather sound the alarm ten times for nothing rather than miss the one thing that counts. That's her job. Salience. Sally Salience. Now, for many anxious clients, Sally Salience has been working double shifts for years.
[00:07:39] A flutter in the chest becomes danger. Silence after a text becomes rejection. A look on someone's face becomes evidence something's wrong. An ordinary room can feel unsafe because Sally has learned to scan it for danger, to scan it for threat.
[00:07:59] Now, every anxious client teaches us something about salience.
[00:08:05] Their Sally Salience has become brilliant at spotting danger. Too brilliant.
[00:08:12] And in hypnosis, Thomas Thalamus narrows the spotlight and the outside world recedes. And Sally Salience can finally stop treating every scrap of information as equally important.
[00:08:30] The nervous system is still aware. The client is still present, but Sally is no longer yanking them in every direction at once.
[00:08:41] Okay, next we have Derek Dack, the doorman. Okay, so he's located above the bridge of the nose towards the front midline.
[00:08:53] So in. Deep in here. Deep in here. Now, Derek Dack has a job and his job is checking.
[00:09:02] Now, Dak is the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, part of Sally Salience's wider salience importance network. So the two of them, they work very closely. Now, Derek Dack, his personality is cautious, protective, and on a bad day, quite frankly, he's very suspicious. Derek Dack is the doorman. And he stands at the threshold. Threshold asking is this safe?
[00:09:33] Does this fit?
[00:09:35] Could this be wrong? Haven't we believed in something like this before only to have ended up disappointed? Okay, so this is where the old hypnotherapy phrase, the reduction of the critical factor, suddenly becomes easy to picture. Derek Dack is very useful. We don't want our doorman to go Critical thinking matters. Choice matters. Agency matters. A good hypnotherapist never tries to slip past Derek Dak, the doorman, even if he's not looking, even if he is asleep. We're not trying to sneak past anyone's consent.
[00:10:17] But in anxiety, trauma, habit, or deep emotions like shame, the dorsal anterior cingulate, the doorman, Derek Dack becomes over vigilant.
[00:10:31] He doesn't just keep danger out, he starts to keep new learning out. Also So a suggestion can arrive at the door and Derek Dack the doorman blocks it before your client has even had a chance to feel it.
[00:10:52] Derek Dack comes in with, that won't work. That's not me. I tried it before. What if this goes wrong now? In hypnosis, Derek Dack never leaves his post. He simply becomes less jumpy. Clients, of course they're still conscious. You know that. They can still choose, they can still reject a suggestion that doesn't fit.
[00:11:19] But the constant checking begins to soften.
[00:11:23] Derek Dac the doorman stops arguing with every sentence before it's got a chance to be tested.
[00:11:33] The door hasn't been forced, it's just become open enough, safe enough for it to allow some new information in.
[00:11:48] So this helps to make sense of why ordinary positive thinking so often fails. So your client tries to picture themselves calm, but Sally Salience answers with old evidence, while Derek Dac the doorman blocks it at the door.
[00:12:11] But in hypnosis, when Thomas Thomas has gathered the spotlight and Sally's Salience has settled and Derek Dac has lowered his guard, that same suggestion has a real chance of being received.
[00:12:30] Because now there is space to rehearse a different outcome.
[00:12:37] Alright, so the next person that we want to meet is Ursula Insula. So she is the body messenger. All right, so she is over here, to the side, behind, slightly above the ear, deep inside your client's brain.
[00:12:56] Now, Ursula Insula's job is interoception. Think of it as interruption, interception. Okay? Intero means inside, sensing the body from the inside, ception, like perception. Okay, so she lives in the insula. It is tucked deep into the side of the brain. Her personality is honest, sensitive and deeply physical.
[00:13:26] Ursula Insula doesn't speak in polished sentences.
[00:13:31] She speaks in breath, in heartbeat, in heat, in tightness, in heaviness, in nausea, in pressure, in softness, in release.
[00:13:46] This is where so many hypnotherapists are more sophisticated than they realize.
[00:13:53] Because we listen to a client's words, but we're also listening to the Ursula and Insula. We are listening to the ancient body language. And we see that play out perhaps in the jaw, the breath, the hands, the shoulders, the stillness, the stiffness, or whatever your client is saying non verbally. We also notice it when a client says something like, I'm fine, but Ursula Insula is silently telling another story.
[00:14:31] Now, I'm sure you've heard it before from some of your clients where they say something like, I know I should be fine, but I don't feel fine.
[00:14:41] That Sentence tells you exactly where the split is between the thinking mind and between Ursula Insula. The thinking mind knows that it's safe to. But Ursula Insula tightens the chest, speeds up the heartbeat. The thinking mind knows the relationship is over, but Ursula Insula drops the stomach when that person's name appears on the phone. The thinking mind knows the cigarette is harmful, but Ursula sends the hand reaching for it anyway. Now, hypnosis is powerful precisely because it speaks to both the part that knows and the part that reacts.
[00:15:34] When you invite a client to notice their feet on the floor, you're not just settling them, you're opening a communication, a direct line to Ursula and Insula, the body messenger. When you invite your client to soften their breath or their shoulders to release, what you are doing is you are sending a message through Ursula Insula and you are helping to build a new relationship between intention, sensation and Ursula Insula starts to carry different information.
[00:16:24] The jaw releases, the breath softens and lengthens, the feet grow heavier. And Ursula begins to test what safety actually feels like.
[00:16:41] Suggestions move from being an idea into becoming an experience.
[00:16:51] Now, next we have got to meet Damon D M N the storyteller. So you will find Damon is here.
[00:17:03] The front top towards the back of the head.
[00:17:07] And Damon DMN's job is self story.
[00:17:13] Now, he runs along the default mode network DMN Daemon dmn. And this is a set of regions that are threaded along the midline of the brain.
[00:17:28] Now, Damon dmn, his personality is familiar, repetitive and terribly convincing.
[00:17:38] Damon DMN says this is who I am. This is what always happens to me. This is just how my life goes.
[00:17:49] So by the time a client reaches us, they're often wrestling not only with the problem but with the identity, the narrative that's grown up around it. Oh, I'm always anxious. I'm the one who always freezes. I'm the one who will never ever be free of this. Oh, this has been going on forever. This has always been the way. Now these aren't just passing thoughts.
[00:18:21] These are Damon's dmn, his default mode network. Default mode network.
[00:18:31] Well worn scripts.
[00:18:34] Scripts. Yes, well worn scripts. Organized patterns of memory, emotion, body responses and expectation.
[00:18:45] Now you can hear Damon DMN is in the room. When a client tells you the same story 10 different ways, here's what happened.
[00:19:00] Here's who I am because of it. And here's why it's going to happen again.
[00:19:07] Now, if you listen closely, you'll realize that these aren't memories. These are predictions.
[00:19:15] This always happens to me. I've always been like this. I'll never be able to change.
[00:19:25] Now, Hypnotherapy can loosen DMN's grip. It doesn't erase his script.
[00:19:34] It doesn't argue it away. Because you know, what happens to advice, you know, it just doesn't land. So we can't argue it away. We can't just erase it.
[00:19:45] But what hypnosis can do is it can give our clients an experience of themselves outside of his tight hold, his grip on the script.
[00:20:01] So we can get our clients to imagine that they're walking into a meeting and staying confident and steady.
[00:20:10] We can use hypnosis to get them to imagine that they're hearing criticism while they stay grounded on the floor.
[00:20:23] We can get them to rehearse saying no without their throat closing or without actually saying yes.
[00:20:35] Now, Damon, dmn, we're not here to attack him, but he does need to be interrupted kindly enough so that another version of the client's story can be rehearsed alongside what he's always said before.
[00:20:56] All right, finally, we get to meet Corrie Cortex.
[00:21:01] Now, she runs the cinema screen, and she's right here, the very back of the head, deep inside the brain.
[00:21:09] So Corrie's job is imagery and rehearsal.
[00:21:13] And she lives in the visual cortex at the back of the brain, as I said. And she's got wider networks joining in as our client imagines, feels, and rehearses her personality. It's vivid, creative, but surprisingly practical.
[00:21:33] Coricortex gives the brain a place to practice before life demands a new response.
[00:21:45] And this is where suggestion has been so badly misunderstood.
[00:21:51] In good hypnotherapy, suggestion is inner rehearsal, where it is directed. The client isn't being controlled. They're being guided to practice in a new set of responses in a state where the brain and body are more open and receptive to it. And Cory Cortex is the one who is running the rehearsal.
[00:22:22] So, as a skilled hypnotherapist, I know that you don't say, be calmer.
[00:22:29] We help Cory Cortex to build the scene, so we help our clients to imagine where they are standing.
[00:22:38] How do their feet feel, what happens to their shoulders when they realize that they can stay grounded and steady? What does their hands do instead of reaching for the old habit?
[00:22:54] The client is not pretending.
[00:22:57] Cori Cortex rehearsing.
[00:23:01] And this is where neuroplasticity walks into the room.
[00:23:07] Our brains, the brain of you, me and our clients, they all change through experience and repetition every time that Coricortex rehearses panic. The panic pathways grow more familiar every time she rehearses. Avoidance, avoidance becomes easier, but also the opposite is true. When Corey Cortex rehearses breathing through that initial wave of anxiety, staying in the room instead of running away, speaking one clear sentence, those pathways get a chance to strengthen good hypnotherapy.
[00:23:57] It's really quite simple.
[00:23:59] It works best when we focus on the next believable step.
[00:24:06] If we tell a client who's terrified of speaking in public that you are completely confident on stage, well then the whole team, every one of them, they're going to reject it. It's too much, it's too soon. It's we've gone too far too fast. It's not familiar to anything they've experienced before.
[00:24:30] Derek the doorman, he's going to block it. Sally Salience, she's going to ring that bell.
[00:24:37] Damien dmn, well, that doesn't fit his narrative.
[00:24:43] But if we help our clients to feel their feet and be grounded before they speak, to simply take a relaxed breath in and then just allow the sentence out and to notice the calmness in their voice, well, then they have every chance to stay in the room just long enough for Ursula Insula to feel that safety in the body and for Corie Cortex to actually have something she can use to start creating that happy ever after movie instead of the disaster movie. In Ordinary Waking life, that team can be overworked and out of step.
[00:25:38] Thomas Thalmus has the spotlight scattered.
[00:25:43] Sally Salience can have the alarm turned up.
[00:25:46] Derek Dack the doorman can be suspicious of everything.
[00:25:51] Ursula Insula can be carrying an old fear.
[00:25:57] Damon DMN is reciting the same identity in a loop. And Corey Cortex is replaying the same future, the same disaster on the internal screen. But in hypnosis, the team begins to work differently. They work together.
[00:26:18] Thomas Thalmus brings the spotlight home. Sally Salience lets the alarm settle. Derek Dack, the doorman, eases off the door. Or Sila Insula joins in the conversation. She brings the body into the conversation. Damon DMN loosens his grip on the old script and Corey Cortex rehearses a new role.
[00:26:46] So that's why hypnosis isn't sleep. The client isn't absent. They're absorbed.
[00:26:55] I love that word. They're not powerless, they're taking part.
[00:26:59] Their brain has simply entered into a state where the old security team is no longer running the show from fear.
[00:27:11] And there are brain scans that can show us what's changing now.
[00:27:19] Those Brain scans can't tell us how. How to sit with a client, how to help them in the chair on any particular day. This is where your skills remain essential.
[00:27:34] The science helps us to understand the map, the territory.
[00:27:40] But you, you know when to speak, when to pause, when to repeat, when to leave space, and when to trust that our client has taken in enough for one day.
[00:27:59] So for every hypnotherapist listening, here's the message.
[00:28:05] The work you do has got depth and intelligence.
[00:28:09] It belongs in the modern conversation about the brain, the body, and change.
[00:28:16] We are part of a proud profession that understands attention, imagination, nervous system responses and human connection in a remarkably sophisticated way.
[00:28:32] And we can speak about hypnotherapy without shrinking it down to relaxation scripts or stage show myths.
[00:28:41] We work with attention. We work with the body. We work with prediction, projection, memory, imagination, and the felt experience of change.
[00:28:52] This is skilled work, this is intelligent work.
[00:28:57] And it is some of the most sophisticated communications that one person can share with another.
[00:29:07] My name is Susan Wallace. I'm here to help you. Be the best, have the best, and give your best. Bye for.
