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00:00:01
#4- John McGrail
8 Plays4 years ago
A conversation with John McGrail, PhD, a clinical hypnotherapist, self improvement expert and spirituality teacher based in Los Angeles. The author of The Synthesis Effect: Your Direct Path to Personal Power and Transformation.
Website: https://jimboparis.com/
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Youtube: Jimbo Paris Show #4 - John McGrail - YouTube
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi, I'm Jimbo Parris and you are listening to the Jimbo Parris Show. So can you first start by giving us a brief summary about who you are and what you do basically? Sure. My name is Dr. John McGrail. I'm a clinical hypnotherapist and personal empowerment specialist.
Hypnotherapy and Mind Balance
00:00:28
Speaker
And essentially what I do is help people in some area of their life who want to make a change.
00:00:34
Speaker
Whatever that may be, it could be getting over some emotional pattern, behavioral pattern, fear, phobia, it could be a physical issue, and they're stuck. And I use hypnotherapy and a variety of other tools that I call my synthesis process to help them get unstuck.
00:00:50
Speaker
and get their lives working the way they want them to, rather than the way they thought they were stuck with. Because most of the time, when we're in that sort of a situation, we think, well, that's as good as it gets. That's the way it is. And it doesn't have to be the way it is. So I help people change that. Okay, so can you elaborate a little bit more on the synthesis process?
00:01:12
Speaker
Sure. It's a process that I developed during my doctoral studies. I was doing research for my dissertation. And at the time, I was practicing hypnotherapy. And I started incorporating other techniques, some of them as old as civilization, shamanic techniques, meditations, spiritual models. And I also started leveraging some of the cutting edge discoveries about human behavior and the way we have evolved.
00:01:40
Speaker
and developed a series of models and metaphorical tools that help people understand very quickly how and why they got stuck and how and why the tools we use can help them. And what happened over synthesis because it uses both the conscious logical mind, the part of the mind we're used to using to make decisions and choices,
00:02:02
Speaker
And the much more powerful subconscious mind, which is what's controlling the show most of the time, we use these tools and techniques to get the two parts of the mind working together. And that ends the conflict and the resistance to change. And for most of my clients over the years, it increased the efficiency by about 50%. So how do you get the conscious and subconscious mind to work together?
00:02:28
Speaker
Well, you have to understand, and most people realize that we have two parts of the mind. What a lot of people don't realize is that the conscious part of the mind is only about 10% of the human mind. Most of our mind, about 90%, is operating unconsciously or automatically.
Reprogramming the Subconscious Mind
00:02:44
Speaker
And there's sort of a threshold, if you will. There's an interaction between the two parts of the mind all the time. But what you have to understand is that the subconscious mind is like a three-year-old child. It never gets more sophisticated than that. It doesn't understand the difference between good or bad or happy or sad. All it knows is I got a positive input or I got a negative input. That's how human beings have learned to evaluate our experience.
00:03:08
Speaker
And the other thing is that, metaphorically, it operates a lot like a computer. And so, as you know, as we all know, once a computer is programmed, it will play its programs over and over and over again. And if we wanted to do something differently, we have to reprogram it.
00:03:25
Speaker
So what often happens is we get into one of these situations. Let's just use something simple where you want to lose 10 or 15 pounds and you've been trying, you go on diets, you try exercise, you try all these things, and you always end up right back where you started from. You can't make that change. You can't make it stick. You want to, you know it would be good for you, but your subconscious computer is playing that program. I'm overweight. I'm overweight. We can't stay on this program. We have to go binge eat or whatever it is because we're emotionally upset.
00:03:54
Speaker
And so you have 10% of the mind that wants something, pulling, if you will, like a tug of war against the 90% of the mind that's programmed for what we don't want and plays it automatically. What we have to do is get the two parts of the mind working together. So with hypnotherapy and the other tools, we essentially unlearn the patterns that we don't want and then reteach this little three-year-old child the ones we do. It's like teaching a little kid, two plus two is five. Don't you ever forget it. Two plus two is five, okay?
00:04:23
Speaker
Okay, whatever you say. He doesn't or she doesn't know any better. And then we say, you know what, you learn 2 plus 2 is 5 and I know you think that's the truth and I know you think that's reality, but you've got some bad programming. So I want you to unlearn that and learn 2 plus 2 is 4. What do you say? Because we're dealing with a very innocent child in the subconscious,
00:04:43
Speaker
he or she says okay for whatever you say that's that's essentially metaphorically how it works and hypnosis in the other tools are used are very powerful tools for facilitating these changes because it creates a very open receptive state of mind that makes the mind open to new ideas to changes souls you can't mention something very interesting about
00:05:05
Speaker
What you do, but how do you apply this to specific clients?
Personalized Therapy and Client Experiences
00:05:09
Speaker
Well the beauty of it is that the tools and the models are are usable across human behavior
00:05:17
Speaker
And you know, I've been in practice now for almost 20 years and a lot of it is science, which I can teach anybody. And there's an art to it. Working with thousands and thousands of people over the years, I've developed a pretty good sensitivity to sort of the general patterns I see, but also I have
00:05:35
Speaker
develop the ability to really, really connect with people on an individual basis. And so the first place we start is to find out how, well, first of all, what do you want to change? What's going on in your life? What is it that you want different? I want more self-esteem. I want to make more money. I want better relationships. I want to quit smoking. I want to lose weight. I don't want to bite my nails anymore. I want to be able to get on the freeway and drive or get on an airplane and go see my grandmother. I'm terrified to fly. It doesn't matter what it is. And of course, in this day and age with what we're going through,
00:06:03
Speaker
Everybody is stressed at some level more than usual, and sometimes a lot more than usual, and there's an enormous amount of anxiety going on in this country for good reasons. So whatever it is, I take the time to understand how and why they got that way, and then I help them understand how and why they got that way, how the mind works, this little computer that's running the show that doesn't know any better,
00:06:26
Speaker
And then we start using the tools. And what I found early on is when you create understanding, you know, there's that old saying, Jimbo, knowledge is power. When you help someone understand that there's nothing wrong with them, because when we have an issue, we think we're the only ones that have it. And there's something wrong with us. There's got to be something wrong with me. I hear that all the time. There's nothing wrong with you. You just learned a pattern.
00:06:48
Speaker
that you had no idea was going to stick and now it's messing up your life. You're normal. It happens to everybody. We all have stuff. So once we create that understanding, the light bulb goes off and they say, well, hey, if that's how it happened, maybe I can change it. And then of course we apply the tools. That's the art of it. And you know, some of it you can teach and some of it you can't.
00:07:11
Speaker
And most people, if they're dedicated and they really want to make a change, change quickly and profoundly. It's really amazing to see someone transform their lives, which is why I do what I do. It's very satisfying.
00:07:24
Speaker
That's a bit of a story, and I'll try to make it as short as possible. But I started messing around with hypnosis probably 35 years ago when I was in the military. I was a young pilot for the Coast Guard, and it was a very stressful job, as you might imagine. And I found this little book in a bookstore, and it was called Hypnosibernetics. So I found this little book in a bookstore called Hypnosibernetics, and it was essentially a book that taught you self-hypnosis. And I started using it.
00:07:54
Speaker
on myself to help with my stress levels and to help concentrate better. And I found that it was really, really effective. And that sort of opened up an interest in the mind-body connection. Fast forward to about 25 years later, I was in a crossroads of my life and wanted to make a change and was stuck just the way I was describing. And I worked with a hypnotherapist who was brilliant and helped me literally turn my life around.
00:08:22
Speaker
Fast forward another 10 years. I'm in a crossroads of my career. I was a senior VP for a media production company out here in Los Angeles, and the dot-com crash happened for those people who remember 2001. And the company essentially got bought by a company that was about to go out of business, so I found myself essentially unemployed. What am I going to do?
00:08:43
Speaker
I'm forty-something years old. I could dust off my resume and go back into TV, which is where I came from for this job, or maybe look at some other possibilities. And, excuse me, I started thinking about all the things I had ever done. Coast Guard pilot, airline pilot, producer, director. I owned my own production company on the East Coast for a while. And I realized that in all the jobs I ever had, I always ended up being an instructor and enjoying
00:09:13
Speaker
training and mentoring and coaching my employees and my staff. That was always the fun of my job. So I started looking for ways I could do that. I looked at med school, I looked at traditional psychology, I looked at divinity school. Really every possibility I could think of that would allow me to use this passion to help people. And I remembered my hypnotherapist and I started doing research on the training.
00:09:39
Speaker
and realize that of all the different disciplines that might be satisfying for me, this would be the one that would allow me to get into business quickly. And also it tapped into this really profound interest I had about spirituality and the mind-body connection and native philosophies. And so it all just kind of came together, 35 years of professional experience, my natural desires,
00:10:04
Speaker
I went and got my certification, it only took a year, so I didn't have to stay unemployed that long, and then later on I got my PhD. But that's essentially how it started. It was like all the things I ever did came together at the right time, and I like to say I haven't worked a day since, which is almost 20 years now. Okay, so another thing is, was it ever tough trying to synthesize
Integrating Science and Spirituality in Therapy
00:10:26
Speaker
the spiritual side of your mind to the more textbook-oriented, practical knowledge-based side?
00:10:35
Speaker
In the beginning, that's a great question. In the beginning it was because I was a classically trained scientist. I was a biology, physiology, anatomy major in my undergraduate work with a minor in psychology. So I was very ingrained with Western culture. I'll believe it when I see it and show me and prove it. And if you can't prove it, it's not science.
00:11:01
Speaker
the fact that i just had this natural curiosity about the spiritual world and that's all the only way i can describe it i was a little afraid of it i didn't quite understand it i knew that spirit and religion were two completely different things but there was this other side of existence that that was fascinating to me
00:11:17
Speaker
And I just gradually started dipping my toes in the water, the waters of learning spiritual practices and particularly with native philosophies. And it didn't take very long to realize that the two work beautifully together.
00:11:33
Speaker
Once that happened, I just dove in head first because I realized that if you don't nurture the spiritual side of our existence, we are spiritual beings. Whether we like it or not, it's got nothing to do with religion. There are 2300 religions on earth. There are
00:11:50
Speaker
There is only one species of people. We are all the same and we are all spiritual beings. We may practice different religions, but it's got nothing to do with it. It's also the most important and the major part of our being is this essence, what makes us these living, intelligent creatures. Spirit.
00:12:06
Speaker
And we've proven it to exist. So the science is coming around to proving what the native peoples have known for thousands of years. And for me, once I really dove into it, it was just as natural as breathing. And it really has guided my life for the last 25 years. So working with clients,
00:12:30
Speaker
What type of clients do you generally have to work with most of the time? What's a common issue? What's a common theme that you notice in most of your clients? It sort of became a niche. Well, I don't really have a niche. My youngest client is seven, and my oldest, I just started working with a 93-year-old lady a couple of weeks ago. I was 85 now. My oldest is 93. And I do work across the behavioral spectrum. That's the beauty of these tools.
00:12:57
Speaker
is that they can be applied to virtually any issue. However, if you were to ask me if there's one prevalent issue these days, as I mentioned a little bit ago, it is chronic stress and anxiety. We are an anxious culture and we were before COVID. This is not, it's gotten worse over the last year, but I would say for the last five or six years, the vast majority of people I work with, kids,
00:13:22
Speaker
teenagers, young adults, mature adults, doesn't matter. Stress and anxiety is probably the number one thing because our society and our culture is so energetically imbalanced. We are so consumed with doing and acquiring and achieving and the physical world and we in Western culture have basically neglected the spiritual side of life for so long. When you get that energetically imbalanced, it causes this.
00:13:51
Speaker
So that's probably the number one thing I deal with. I've become an expert at it just because I've dealt with it so much. But anxiety is about feeling out of control. And what we do with the synthesis process in hypnotherapy is help my clients, young and old alike, regain that sense of control over themselves and reestablish that energetic balance. And once that happens, then they can cope with anything, even this craziness we're dealing with today.
Understanding Hypnosis and Therapy Process
00:14:17
Speaker
So I'm interested to know how is this therapy process done? Do you have to ask your client to buy certain instruments or do you just kind of put them through like, I don't know, a session or an exercise? How does that work? Well,
00:14:32
Speaker
There are no instruments that need to be purchased. I ask for an open mind. You can be as skeptical as you want. I ask for a sincere desire to make the change and it's got to be for yourself, not because someone else wants you to do it. You have to be willing to commit to yourself and do the work because it is a process.
00:14:50
Speaker
And then the rest is really about guiding the client through this process. As I said before, creating understanding. That's number one. Explaining how it works. Explaining why we get the way we do. How we get stuck.
00:15:06
Speaker
And as I said again, everybody, I don't care who you are at some time or another, maybe many times in your life, have issues that we just can't solve on our own. And we have this stigma in our culture about getting help for emotional issues or behavioral issues. If you have a toothache, you go to the dentist, no big deal. If your car gets banged up, you take it into the mechanic. You don't fix your own car. But God forbid, if you have an emotional issue, a behavioral issue, a habit, or something holding you back, oh, you're supposed to suck it up and get through it because there's something wrong with me.
00:15:36
Speaker
So we create that understanding and then gently show them how powerful their mind really is, because all of these techniques, hypnosis and all the other tools and techniques, simply use the way the mind works to help it get out of its own way. It is completely natural, it is completely safe, but it happens to be very, very powerful. Hypnosis, which is one of the primary tools I use obviously,
00:16:02
Speaker
has been in use for 7,000 years as a healing tool since the dawn of civilization. So if something's been around for 7,000 years, there's got to be a reason for it. And the reason is that it works really well if you know what you're doing and if the client really wants to do the work.
00:16:17
Speaker
And to answer the last part of your question, it is a number of sessions. Everybody responds differently because every mind is different. But usually with my clients at least, and I can't speak for other people, three to six sessions is sort of an average ballpark for the run of the mill issues that I deal with. Some people need more or want more. Some people need less. Everybody gets a personalized course of treatment because every mind is different and everybody responds at their own pace.
00:16:48
Speaker
Okay, so I see you mentioning hypnosis quite a bit. And hypnosis was a thing used in the past that he said before. So is it normal for you to put people in a hypnotic state most of the time? And was this actually done previously in the past as well?
00:17:06
Speaker
As I said, hypnosis has been in use for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptian culture built temples that they called sleep temples, where people would go and be induced into trance. What a lot of people don't understand is that hypnosis in and of itself is a natural state of consciousness. We all do it every day, whether we know it or not.
00:17:24
Speaker
Anytime you watch a good movie or a TV show and you have an emotional experience, whatever it is, whether it's laughter or tears or sadness or joy, you're feeling real feelings, but you're watching something that's a complete illusion. A good movie or a good TV show or even a good book puts you in that state of consciousness. It's a trance. You're focused on one thing. All the other distractions go away. Notice when you're in a movie theater especially.
00:17:52
Speaker
You don't notice the other people, you don't notice anything. You're in a dark room, you're focused on the screen, and you go into this state. You're awake, you're aware, but everything disappears except that experience. And then your mind, your subconscious mind, which is only three years old, feels real feelings, even though it's watching something that's a complete illusion.
00:18:12
Speaker
also we are in a very open suggestible state of mind when we when we're in that state of consciousness we want to enjoy the movie now if you go to a bad movie and you sit there and say oh my god this sucks why did i spend all this money on this crappy film you don't go into hypnosis so that part of your mind that says no no no this isn't real doesn't go away it doesn't shut down and you don't have that emotional experience
00:18:39
Speaker
Reading a good book, daydreaming, watch a movie or TV, getting zoned out on the freeway and forgetting where your exit is, or getting where you were driving and you can't remember how you got there, you've been in hypnosis already. It's a natural state of consciousness. When we use it as a therapeutic tool, we ask the mind to enter that state of consciousness on purpose. We guide it into that state of consciousness. That's my job.
00:19:02
Speaker
all the client has to do is let it happen because they do it every day anyway and we bring it to a more profound level if you will of what we call depth in other words very very focused very quiet and the mind gets very open to new possibilities and then we
00:19:17
Speaker
give the subconscious mind those new possibilities through a variety of techniques, direct suggestion, just saying, OK, you're not going to want to smoke anymore. That works for some people. Or we may do it through image or metaphor. You know, you see a cloud of smoke and it makes you sick. It all depends on the person. That's the art of it. But when the mind is in that state,
00:19:39
Speaker
of what we call suggestibility. It's open to new possibilities, and that's how the tool works. I also need to say, and I'm sure people are out there wondering, we cannot make anybody do, think, say, or feel anything they do not want to. Everybody's always afraid you're going to take me over. You're going to make me cluck like a chicken or quack like a duck. First of all, if I could make people do what I want them to do, I would do it.
00:20:02
Speaker
I would create an army of minions to go out and solve all the world's problems. It doesn't work that way. I can't make you do anything you don't want to do. I can only help you create and achieve what you want. But it is a very powerful tool to make that happen. It's really important though that people realize that they're always in control. No one can make them do anything or think or say or feel.
00:20:26
Speaker
So I think, you know, when people think of the first thing they think of is perhaps a performance. I understand that you're definitely different from those types of people, but could you kind of elaborate on how you are different? Oh, absolutely. You know.
00:20:44
Speaker
start with this fact, hypnosis is simply a state of mind. Everybody experiences it every day. When you're in that state of mind, you become suggestible to possibilities. A stage hypnotist, the first thing they do when you go to a stage show, and they say, okay, who wants to come up and play? Who wants to be part of the fun? And a bunch of hands go up in the audience.
00:21:07
Speaker
of those people who raise their hands now remember who wants to come so they want to be in the show that's number one then the hypnotist brings them up and does some testing to see how suggestible they are because there is a certain
00:21:22
Speaker
percentage of the population that has the ability of going into a very deep state of hypnosis very quickly not everybody can do that but in that group of volunteers the hypnotist knows there'll be enough of them that can some goats get sent back to their seats some get stay on stage and after a few rounds they have the dozen or so people by the time that that part is over those folks are already in hypnosis they don't even know it yet so when the hypnotist says sleep
00:21:49
Speaker
They go right into a nice deep trance. And then they happily do all those zany things because they want to be in the show. Now, I use the very same state of consciousness to help people create changes in their life. I don't make people quack like chickens or quack like ducks or quack like chickens. You have an issue. You're stuck in that issue. You want to change that.
00:22:15
Speaker
And this same state of consciousness will help you do that. It takes reinforcement. It's not one and done. There are going to be a number of sessions. I give you exercises to do to reinforce the new patterns. But if you commit,
00:22:30
Speaker
in a very short period of time, compared to how long you've been suffering, your life will be vastly different. So it's the same state of consciousness. It's like a hammer. You can use a hammer to bang in a nail, or you can use a hammer to hit somebody on the head. It's just a tool. What you do with it is the difference, but it's just a tool. Now, there's also a lot of books out there that provide things called self-hypnosis, where you can actually hypnotize yourself.
Self-Hypnosis and Hypnosis Techniques
00:23:01
Speaker
That's correct. Do you also distribute things like self-hypnosis because you know you're a busy man.
00:23:12
Speaker
Most of the work I do is with individual clients and I have a corporate side of my business where companies hire me to come in and do motivational seminars and keynotes and talk about performance improvement, help their sales people get motivated and their customer service people. I have a whole course that teaches people how to communicate at a subconscious level so that your prospects and clients actually feel compelled to do business with you. It's very powerful.
00:23:41
Speaker
But part of the process of doing hypnotherapy with clients is teaching them some basic techniques for self-hypnosis so they can reinforce the new behaviors. I also sell a variety of products on my websites for weight loss, for quitting smoking, for general well-being, and for sleeping issues because there are a lot of people that have trouble sleeping. So they can download these programs.
00:24:06
Speaker
and then take themselves through the program. It's very much based on the same techniques I use in the clinic, but I sort of generalized it so it's more generic, and it works very, very well. So yeah, people can learn to hypnotize themselves. There's an old saying in the business that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis,
00:24:27
Speaker
you have to allow yourself to enter that state of consciousness. I can guide you there, or you can learn to do it yourself. It's easier when someone guides you there because you don't have to play both roles. You're not the client and the hypnotist at the same time. That takes a little practice, but it's very doable.
00:24:46
Speaker
Now, there are going to be some people here that would like to actually use hypnosis to improve the quality of their life. How is hypnosis useful or more useful in fact than affirmations? Or maybe how is hypnosis helpful for developing habits a lot faster? Could you kind of elaborate on that?
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, and it goes back to the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. You know, when you do affirmations, which are very powerful, and they are part of the synthesis process, I have people doing affirmations. But you have to remember, when you're saying an affirmation like, I am calm and focused in front of groups, I speak with ease and eloquence every single day, well, that's great. But you're just saying that at a conscious level.
00:25:30
Speaker
When we use hypnosis, combined with that, we're tying in the much more powerful subconscious mind. And when that happens, again, if you think of a tug of war,
00:25:44
Speaker
10% of the mind is conscious, 90% of the mind is subconscious. If you have a subconscious program that is holding you back, it's awful hard for 10 guys on that rope to pull 90 guys into the mud or to win the war. But when you get the 90 guys on your side and everybody's moving in the same direction, it becomes very, very easy. So that's why hypnotherapy and these other techniques can be so powerful for helping implement these changes.
00:26:12
Speaker
because we get both parts of the mind working together. There's no more conflict. You can say affirmations until the cows come home, but if it's just at a conscious level and you're not addressing the underlying programming,
00:26:25
Speaker
you know it's going to be a much longer row to hoe and you may or may not be successful but when you get that subconscious mind on your side you get that three-year-old computer reprogramming itself for the patterns you want then suddenly you're standing in front of that group of people speaking eloquently and with ease and you really are because that's how you feel you're not just saying it you're feeling it so what's the specific experience with a client that hits you the most
00:26:56
Speaker
well i would say two parts of it in the beginning when uh... they come in and they feel broken and they feel like there's something wrong with them that their uh... that their deficient and they understand very early on and usually in the first session that that is not the case and that there is not just hope but that there is a way to get out of whatever it is that's holding them back
00:27:23
Speaker
let's just take anxiety and that they can learn to get in the car and drive on the freeway without anxiety or get on the plane or whatever it is anxiety hangs its head on many different issues in life but it's all the same thing that is a very gratifying moment when i see the light bulb go off they think all maybe there is hope for me maybe there is something and then of course at the end
00:27:45
Speaker
when we're finished and they feel fantastic and their life is working great and they feel powerful and motivated and it's like wow this is a new day and it usually only takes a few weeks that is a very gratifying moment and in between it's fun because that's the work of it but if you ask for the moment it's the beginning when I see them and help convince them that there's hope
00:28:09
Speaker
Um, more than hope. And then at the end when it's done and it's happened so quickly, if anybody looks me up on Yelp, Dr. John McGrail, hypnotherapy, you'll see clients write reviews and they say, you know, I went to traditional therapy for years and years and years. And in a few weeks, everything changed. Uh, now that's not the case for everybody. And I'm not saying traditional therapy isn't very effective, but this can be an incredibly effective and powerful methodology for changing your life quickly and profoundly.
00:28:37
Speaker
And a question that's been beaming in my head for a while now too. Now, I can't do this before. Certain people are a lot harder to hypnotize, but how would you actually deal with a person like that? It must be a lot harder.
00:28:52
Speaker
Well, everybody has a certain level of natural suggestibility. That's the term that's used. How easy is it for you to go into this state of consciousness to enter what we call trance, or we call it hypnotic sleep, although you're never asleep. It's just easier to say deep sleep than it is to say completely focused and totally relaxed. When you have to say that several hundred times a day, deep sleep's easier.
00:29:18
Speaker
We can test for that suggestibility so we can get a feeling before we even start where the person is on a scale. Is it gonna be more difficult for them? And it's not necessarily difficult, but how do you do it? There are different ways of inducing hypnosis. And once you understand where a person is, then there are techniques, very gentle, that work better. And it just takes,
00:29:46
Speaker
experience it takes training and as I said there's a science and an art to this and I think after nearly 20 years
00:29:54
Speaker
i probably rely more on the art than science now i just have an intuitive knowing when i'm working with someone how best to get them there how best to guide them there because it is very much that it's like a a tourist they're the tourist i'm the tour guide they come in to take the tour i take them on the best tour possible if they don't want to take the tour nothing's gonna happen i wouldn't say difficult
00:30:21
Speaker
to hypnotize, I would say different. And once you understand sort of the nature of where people are, there's kind of a scale, and you can then learn techniques that will help you with those folks that need a different approach, may need a more subtle approach, may need a more indirect approach rather than a direct approach. And that's, you know, as I said, it's a question of training, competence, science, and art.
00:30:50
Speaker
kind of elaborate more on the journey to getting a PhD. What was it like kind of going through that whole entire process? It must have been very difficult. Well, I wouldn't say difficult. It was certainly challenging in terms of time because I wasn't full time practice and it was very difficult to find a program in the day. And this is many years ago now. There weren't
00:31:13
Speaker
There were only a couple of PhD programs in hypnotherapy at the time. And I did a lot of research to try to find a good one, because there are these schools out there. You can be a certified hypnotherapist in three days. I mean, if you look, you'll find them. And they're BS, but they're there.
00:31:31
Speaker
And there were some programs that said you can be a doctor of hypnotherapy. And when I looked at them, there was really nothing going on. Diploma mills, I think they call them. But I finally found a program that I thought had some meat to it. And I talked to the chairman of the curriculum. And it was online.
00:31:52
Speaker
And it was not a diploma mill. It took me three and a half years of research and study, reading a lot, a lot of books and writing a lot, a lot of research papers and then a dissertation, a full blown dissertation. So I did it, you know, while I was working full time. So it wasn't hard. It was fascinating because I wanted to learn more and I learned an enormous amount. I developed the synthesis process through all that research.
00:32:17
Speaker
So it was very gratifying and I enjoyed it. It was just, it was challenging in terms of time to be reading all these books and papers and research briefs and then writing papers while I'm dealing with a full-time clientele. But it, you know, worth every minute of it because it really changed the arc of my career and it helped me develop synthesis, which I got a book published about and which works really, really well. So now the transition out to the business stage.
00:32:48
Speaker
Entrepreneurship has always been well known for being a little bit on the shaky side. How is it like trying to make your skills now into a profitable business?
Business of Hypnotherapy and Challenges
00:33:00
Speaker
Well, as you said, it is like any business and it's interesting because many of the people that I went to school with never ended up
00:33:09
Speaker
actually doing it because they love the work and they love working with the clients, but they weren't able or willing or both to do the business side of it. And so when I first started, it was marketing, advertising, doing free presentations. There's a chain of grocery stores called Whole Foods. I'm sure most people have heard of it. It's nationwide now. But Whole Foods in LA used to have this program where people like me
00:33:38
Speaker
In the evening, they would have a room up above the store where you could go and do a free presentation. And so I would do free presentations, sometimes to as few as three people. This is our presentation. This is hypnotherapy. This is how it works. This is what I do.
00:33:54
Speaker
I would advertise, I did job fairs and health fairs and just put myself out there and did the grunt work, built a website, all the stuff that you have to do to run any business.
00:34:10
Speaker
And if you're willing to do that, and unfortunately I had business background, so I knew how to do it and I was willing to do it, and you gradually build up your clientele. And then if you're any good, you have happy clients. Happy clients refer their friends and their families. And so it builds and builds and builds, and that's how I did it. So what was probably the hardest obstacle you had to deal with when reaching your goals?
00:34:40
Speaker
Well, I would say the hardest obstacle is the fact that, one, we have this stigma about mental health in our country, in our culture, not just the United States, but in Western culture. There's a stigma about getting help for emotional issues. It's starting to ease a little bit. More and more people are warming to the concept of therapy. But there is that resistance, because people are either afraid or think that they're supposed to just suck it up and get through it on their own.
00:35:07
Speaker
So you have to get by that. And I had to get by the natural resistance and the myths and misconceptions about hypnotherapy because I think that they're going to lose control, that we're going to take over their mind and all that nonsense because they see stage shows and they think, oh, those folks are definitely out of their mind.
00:35:26
Speaker
So you have to get by the resistance and the mythology around hypnosis as a therapeutic tool. And that still exists. It's becoming more and more mainstream. It's becoming more and more popular because people are realizing that it's so effective. But those are two of probably the biggest challenges. And then, of course, just doing the business side of the business while you're practicing and doing the fun side, which is helping people improve their lives. Those were the biggest challenges. Both of them still exist. I still face that resistance every day and I still
00:35:53
Speaker
Get out there, I do shows like this now, and of course, I have a pretty good presence now online. I'm pretty well known in the industry and around the country and even around the world. I've got clients all over the world now. But there is still that misconception and resistance that people have that you deal with it every day. That's why I do shows like this, to help people understand that you don't have to live this life the way you think you do. You don't have to stay stuck. There is help, and it's very powerful help.
00:36:22
Speaker
So there's a lot of people obviously that have misconceptions, but what about those people that actually just have a genuine fear of hypnosis in general? Well, some of them I may never reach and some of them
00:36:36
Speaker
If I get a chance to really show them how it works and they realize how natural, how simple, how wonderfully relaxing it feels, I mean when you come out of 20 minutes of deep hypnosis it's like you just had a nice nap and you feel so wonderful. And some of them I simply will never see because they just won't
00:36:58
Speaker
open their minds up enough to even try it and i feel for those folks but you know there's no silver bullet there's no one technique there's no one medication there's no one anything that works for everybody this works for an awful lot of people because even though they may be afraid of hypnosis they're in hypnosis several times a day whether they know it or not once they realize that all really that's it
00:37:22
Speaker
then they maybe open up and they'll give it a chance. And then once they give it a chance, most people do really, really well. Is it a hundred percent? No, but is it very, very high success rate? Yeah. At least with my clients. Who do you think your ideal client is? My ideal client is someone who has an issue that they can't fix on their own, which is almost everybody at some point. We call them the worried well of the world.
00:37:48
Speaker
They don't have any organic brain damage. There's no, you know, agnose mental illness like schizophrenia or something like that because hypnosis doesn't work with some of these conditions. They're sick and tired of feeling this way. They have some glimmering that there could be a better way and they want to make a change and they're willing to do the work. They realize that there's no magic. I can't tap them on the head with a magic wand and make it all go away.
00:38:17
Speaker
And they're open. So they're hungry for change, and they're open to try something new. And that's the ideal client. And as I said, my youngest clients or kids younger than seven, it's pretty hard to get them to concentrate long enough. But seven or eight years old is usually the threshold for children. And they do very, very well because their minds are still so open and flexible. Up to and through this, now my oldest client is a lovely, lovely lady of 93.
00:38:48
Speaker
from all walks of life, all professions, all socioeconomic backgrounds. But it's folks that want it, they're open to try it, and they let themselves have the experience.
Client Traits and Hypnotherapy Suitability
00:39:02
Speaker
So what would be a client that wouldn't be a good match? A client that was closed-minded, that was resistant, or that
00:39:15
Speaker
doesn't believe that the mind controls our reality. Whether we like it or not, our reality is something that we create. It doesn't feel that way, which is why so many people have trouble. It feels like life is happening to us, but that's not the case. Our mind is what controls how we perceive the world. Our experiences are processed through our mind.
00:39:41
Speaker
The people who are convinced that it's got nothing to do with that, that they're victims, that life is happening to them are not going to be good clients because they don't realize that they're creating the pain in their lives, whether they know it or not, they are.
00:39:55
Speaker
Those are the ones that probably will never give it a try because they just think that's the way it is and oh well, okay, that's your choice. But when you realize that we are responsible and they wanna take that responsibility, hey, my happiness is my job. It's not somebody else's job to make me happy, it's my job to make me happy. It's my job to create abundance. It's my job to feel good about who I relate to and what I do for a living.
00:40:22
Speaker
It's not somebody else's job. I'm responsible for my life. Those are the folks I want to see. So what are your future plans for both yourself and your business, of course?
00:40:36
Speaker
Well, before COVID, I was really expanding my corporate business and my public speaking business. I had three keynote addresses scheduled when the shutdown happened last March, and that all went away. So I also had a TV show in development, which we were calling Off the Rails with Dr. McGrail, which was gonna be sort of a combination talk show infotainment
00:41:03
Speaker
and reality, where we would show real people going through the process, the synthesis process, doing hypnotherapy, and show how powerful the results were. And also talk about these different tools and techniques so we could educate people and let them realize that they have so much more power over their lives than they thought. So that was in development. I was also on the panel of another talk show that was in development that unfortunately all of that disappeared.
00:41:32
Speaker
when COVID started because everything got shut down. So ideally, when we get back to whatever normal is and we can meet in groups again, I have taught some of my classes online. I have some corporate clients who have hired me to work with their sales and customer service peoples via Zoom. And the beauty of it is I can talk to a thousand people at one time all over the world. All we got to do is figure out the time zones.
00:41:57
Speaker
But I would hope very much to get my public speaking business back on track because I really love it. I enjoy it. I can reach more people and help them know that the potential for living a powerful life is in there. It's in their hands. The help that they need is there.
00:42:13
Speaker
I can help businesses do better, bottom line, because I've got all the business experience. I know sales. I can help sales people and customer service people learn how to do a better job and sell more and increase profitability and serve their clients. I really want to get that back on track. I hope, and who knows, because the TV and film industry is so fickle, that once things settle down, we can return to those two shows, mine and the other one that I was going to be on the panel for.
00:42:43
Speaker
which was going to be a really cool talk show, discussing the issues that were going on in everyday life with people and a panel of different experts giving their opinions and their viewpoints. It was really, really fun. We did a pilot. We loved it. We had a great time. Everybody loved it. And then, you know, it all just went away. So I would really like to get that part of my business back on track and growing.
00:43:05
Speaker
traveling around, doing seminars, doing workshops, to large groups of people so that I can reach more people and help this transformation that is starting to happen in our culture where people are starting to realize that we can marry science and spirituality together. And when you do that, when you create that energetic balance,
00:43:27
Speaker
life is just so much better. So I want to reach as many people as I can to help them understand that you can have an incredibly powerful, abundant, joyful life if you just get the right help and you use the right tools. That's the part that I really want to focus on. My clinical practice is pretty much in place.
00:43:45
Speaker
I rely almost completely on referrals now. I've worked with thousands of people over the years. They send me their friends, their family, and so that's sort of just, you know, I still enjoy it, I'll still do it, but I would probably do a little bit less of the individual work and more of the group work once things get back to whatever we consider normal.
Public Speaking and Digital Engagement
00:44:07
Speaker
So I noticed you mentioned public speaking quite a bit. I think public speaking may be a very lost skill now. Do you think public speaking is the best outlet to really connect to people? Well,
00:44:24
Speaker
It's really interesting because people are getting more and more used to working online in a format like this. I'm doing all my sessions on Zoom, what few corporate outings are there now, and by the way, if there are any businesses out there that want to talk to me about those kinds of trainings, I'd be delighted to do it because I have developed these courses for Zoom.
00:44:46
Speaker
But if you think about what happens when a group of folks goes to church on Sunday and you have a really inspirational pastor and they listen to the homily and the sermon and they go out inspired, and if they do it enough, they may actually
00:45:02
Speaker
change their lives. So I think that personal contact, regardless of how good the online format gets, I think that personal contact when you're there and you're communicating, there's so much of the communication model that is lost when you're in a two-dimensional medium like we are. Like if you and I were in the same room now, it would be a different dynamic. We're having a great conversation and you're asking me great questions, but
00:45:26
Speaker
In the communication model, a big part of interpersonal communication is physiology, body language. And most of that is subconsciously controlled, and it's very, very subtle and nuanced. When you're together in a room, you get those signals. It's instinctive. Most people don't even realize it's happening. But when you're on a platform like this, you lose a lot of that. So yes, I do think
00:45:54
Speaker
that in person.
00:45:57
Speaker
can reach a lot of people. At the same time, I also know that when I've done some TV shows and I know that millions of people are watching at the same time. So that's a way to reach millions of people at the same time. Is it better? I don't know. For this kind of thing, I sometimes think that if I can speak to 200 people in person, it will have maybe more of an effect than if I speak to a million people on a talk show.
00:46:25
Speaker
both in terms of the fact that I'll have more time, I can be more thorough, I can answer questions, I can see how the audience is responding and adjust my presentation to get them engaged. That's stuff that you can't do on a Zoom call. The first time I taught this sales course,
00:46:44
Speaker
was to a bank in California hired me to train their sales and customer service people on how to do online calls, sales calls, and customer service calls. And one of the first things I realized is that I couldn't see anybody because they had so many people that couldn't do the video feed. So I could not see anybody. All I could see is the little green light on my computer.
00:47:05
Speaker
And so for that hour seminar, I just talked to the little green light. I had no idea how it was being received. I had no idea if people were engaged. I had no idea if anybody had questions. It was just impossible. So it's very challenging to teach a course this way to a large group for that reason, if you can't see them and interact in real time.
00:47:29
Speaker
Now, the technology's come a long way in just this short period of a year, so it's much better than it was. But I don't think you can really replace that in-person, that contact, completely. I think it really is very valuable for something like this, especially. So let's kind of go back to your book now. What is the purpose of this book that
Self-Empowerment and Synthesis Process
00:47:50
Speaker
you've created? Is it more to act as a supplement or to add on to what you're already teaching?
00:47:58
Speaker
Well, it was designed and written to help any individual actually learn how to do the synthesis process on their own. It was designed and written to, if you've got an issue and you go through this process, and what I do basically with each chapter is I introduce new concepts and new techniques,
00:48:19
Speaker
At the end of each chapter, there are what I call action items, homework assignments. And so it was written to educate. It was written to entertain. It's very light in its tone. There's a lot of humor, wherever I could put it in. There are a lot of stories.
00:48:36
Speaker
From real people client stories you know these are real people just like you just like me that went through this process and this is what happened to them so you can so the reader can say hey if she can do it maybe i can do it and at the same time while all that's going on.
00:48:52
Speaker
education and creating hope, I also teach them how to do the work. Now, again, it's meant to be a standalone. Ideally, you could read the book, and if you did it in the way it's set up, and it's not like, okay, just sit down for two hours and read this book. In the very beginning of the book, I say, look, this book is meant to be taken in little chunks. Take it a chapter at a time, a concept at a time. Do the homework, because the homework builds. By the time we're at the end, you will be doing the synthesis process.
00:49:22
Speaker
That's what it's meant to do. Is it completely successful for everybody? Of course not. However, I do also find that clients that I'm working with in person very often will read the book, and that really enhances their experience because there's just so much more stuff. So yes, it is a supplement, but that's not what it was designed to do. It was designed to help someone empower their lives.
00:49:48
Speaker
learning this process which works really well is very simple and can be very easy if you let it. So perhaps the most optimal way of maximizing what you could do for your client is if the client talked with you and while at the same time he read the book in his own time. Yeah ideally and I have a seminar which is
00:50:13
Speaker
probably two half days or maybe one day, a weekend seminar called, Experiencing the Synthesis Effect, where I will, hopefully with a room full of people, take them through not the book, but the process, using the book as a guide, because the way the book was set up really does build upon itself. And I worked really, really long and hard to get it
00:50:38
Speaker
into a format where it made sense and the sequence made sense the one thing that when i'm working with an audience or a single client is it's a three-dimensional environment so i can bring in things three-dimensionally in a book you have to go in a straight line you can't do it three-dimensionally and that was a bit of a challenge at first to figure out how to do that it took quite a long time to do it uh... i call it chicken and eggness you know here's the chicken here's the egg which comes first
00:51:07
Speaker
I did finally address that in the book, but it's easier to do that chicken and eggness when you're with people because you can do it in three dimensions and not in a line. It still works very, very well though. The reviews of the book have been, you know, I'm gratified to say, incredible. So do you have any final remarks to say to the audience or just in general?
00:51:31
Speaker
I do and thank you for that opportunity and also thank you for some really great insightful questions. The one thing I like to leave every audience with is this knowledge.
00:51:43
Speaker
Everybody, every single person in the world at some time or another is going to have something in their lives that's holding them back that they're not going to be able to overcome on their own. It is normal. It happens to everybody. That's number one. Number two, everybody, and I do mean this, everybody has within them everything they need to overcome whatever challenges they're facing.
00:52:07
Speaker
You will probably need a little assistance because of the way the human mind works. It's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with you. We are inherently resistant to change. Even when the change we know we want will be good for us. We are human beings. It is in our DNA to resist change. But if you get the right help, you can overcome anything and you can create the life of your dreams. Everybody has the ability of doing that.
00:52:34
Speaker
And so I want you to know that. If you leave with that one thing and then start looking for the help, and by the way, if anybody wants to reach out to me, I'm always happy to lend them guidance in that search. It doesn't have to be me that they work with, but I help them. And in the book, I also have a section where helping people find the help they need once they decide they want to take charge of their lives and change whatever it is. So everybody has problems.
00:52:59
Speaker
Everybody has the ability to get over those problems. It's probably going to take a little assistance, but you can do it quickly and profoundly. That's my final thought, and I thank you for the opportunity to say that. Thanks again, John. Really appreciate having you on the show. Well, Jimbo, it's been a pleasure, and I think you're doing a great service by giving people a chance to get this kind of information.
00:53:26
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Jimbo Parish Show.