Introduction to Hypnosis and Its Potential
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These skills are available to anybody that wants to explore them. It's something that's very human to be able to make these changes it's very human to have the initial problem it's very human to change it and let it morph into something else something that you're actually directing like a directed change.
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You want to transform yourself and improve your life. You long to help people. You wish to become healthier, happier, and more successful.
Hypnosis for Managing Anger
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This show is your opportunity to learn how to use hypnosis to make your life better. Each week, hypnotist Robbie Spear Miller interviews people who have already changed their lives in amazing ways with hypnosis.
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These models can help you discover your path to making the most of your life. If you want to learn how hypnosis can help you reach your goals, this show is for you. Hello, I'm Robbie Spear-Miller, your host for the Hypnosis Show podcast, and today we are going to explore how you can use hypnosis to manage anger. Many people struggle with how anger affects their relationship, success, and self-worth.
Guest Introduction: Josh Kearney
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In this episode, you will learn ideas for moving through anger and other emotions skillfully, ways to choose your level of emotional intensity so that it fits your real life outcome, and how learning how self-acceptance can help you surrender out of anger. Josh Kearney will be joining us. He has dedicated most of his life to helping people improve their own lives.
Understanding Anger and Its Roots
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He is a veteran discharged honorably from the United States Marine Corps.
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And he has been the owner of three hypnosis clinics and is currently the director of power and light hypnosis in Kansas city Missouri. Josh is also a master hypnotist society trainer. Welcome Josh. Thank you for having me, Robbie. I'm honored. I'm glad to be one of your guests.
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That's great to have you here. So start by sharing with us what your personal experience has been in terms of having maybe some extreme reactions to life or challenges with anger and how hypnosis has helped you grow through that.
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So, this just popped into my mind. I can't wait to share about anger and how it has kind of a double-edged sword. Most people would think that it's just a negative emotion, but it actually is an indicator for many things that's happening in the moment with somebody when they're in front of you. And it actually should be celebrated, and for that reason only, right?
Anger in Military and Civilian Life
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So before we go on, I was thinking about this in the car on the way over to the office today.
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I really want to approach something that I hear a lot, the flip side coin of what I'm going to say today, the flip side of the coin, right? So in extreme or certain circumstances when it's appropriate and it's rare, you can use negative emotion to push people into a new strategy.
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If that's the only viable solution you can find in the moment right and you know we're under certain time constraints sometimes. So it can be rarely used to push people to motivate them into a strategy that's new a new behavior right generally speaking you don't want to be running away from anything and into something else because you know how that ends right.
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But if it's necessary and somebody's in an extreme circumstance, you want to be as flexible as possible. Now, that being said, I kind of want to move that portion of everything to the side so we don't need to discuss it anymore and have people focus on something that's really important here in the fact that you don't really need anger, but it is something that you've been trained to do. So the way I was taught when I first entered the industry was that anger is a preemptive strike against fear.
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And that's why it's such a good indicator of the negative spots that people can be in in the moment. So from our standpoint, where we sit and we're dealing with somebody who's going through something that they want to change or they have a goal that they want to achieve, right? They have a plan of where they want to be. They want to get out of a certain type of pain. When they show us anger, it's actually a good thing because then we know what track we're on. We have an idea, we have like a thermometer. We know what's going on in front of us. That's the way I see it, right?
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But frankly, living with anger is really destructive as a long-term solution to anything.
Anger as a Defense Mechanism
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And in 1996, the American Medical Association did the study on negative emotions and how they affect physical health. And what they really were focused on was depression and guilt. They also ran through fear and anger and
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There's a whole chart now that's available to us on how those things can affect the physical body. So it's true that it's not only harming you emotionally, but anger can harm people physically as well. Now, my personal experience with anger is pretty vast because being in the military, being in the Marine Corps,
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It was almost as if motivation came right after irritation. So if somebody who was a had a superior rank or standing to you showed that they were irritated with you, it would give you a sense of urgency to move forward into something, right? So you're programmed to do that over and over and over again. And when you're in a more common civilian life or in a life that's, you know, we're actually the things we do are very technical and fragile at some levels, right? And that's just not appropriate. I mean, again, it's like break glass in case of emergency stuff.
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So I found in myself my own life that that was too easy to access. Whether I was dealing with and I coach basketball for years, young men or young women or my own children or or people that were just in my charge or people that I came across just during the course of the day, it really wasn't getting the response that you wanted to get. It's almost like.
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a quick fix that doesn't fix anything, right?
Transforming Anger Through Hypnosis
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It's just a simple response that kind of changes the temperature of the room, usually for the negative, right? And of course, you know, you wanna find new and flexible ways to do that, but it also is a very good indicator that somebody's scared of something. That's the way I see anger. That's the way I approach anger.
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All right, so there's some interesting points here because one is that let's say somebody wasn't even prone to anger and then they went into the military. It sounds like they trained you into having that response to anger. And so you have this hypnotic trance that was developed with this reinforcement over time that it can become a habit.
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So with their intensity, the intensity of whoever was giving the orders, they were sparking fear in the person, but it might not have been their own baggage that was causing the fear. It was just a behavioral thing that they were using as a technique. Is that? I would agree. 100%. Yeah.
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Yeah, and then we have the people who maybe somebody grew up in a family where there was a lot of anger or they didn't feel free to express themselves. And so sometimes it can bubble over like a dam that builds and builds and builds and then it bursts open. And so in terms of family of origin or the way that we have dealt with emotion, sometimes people might be responding that way as well. And it seems normal because
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You some people might have had that experience as a regular part of life for a way to motivate themselves or a way to protect themselves I would agree And when you talk about family of origin, which is so important in the way that things are dictated I can imagine that as well in many different circumstances and people pop into my mind that I've worked with closely and many different capacities that you can if you go back and review it you can notice where those things are where
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prominent, I guess, where those things made sense to other people in the moment, where they just naturally went into that response.
Self-Care's Role in Emotional Management
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And you can actually notice
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in those moments you review, you can actually change your response to what you would do now in that sense. So it's kind of cool. That's all I have to say. It's kind of cool. So it is, though. There's a lot of currency in certain areas, right, in certain families. There's a lot of currency in that kind of negative emotion, meaning something special. Like, this means extra special because I'm super PO'd, right? This must be super important. And just those two things should never shake hands. They should never be acquainted with each other.
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Yeah, so you learned how to change that response for yourself. So give some examples of where that's different for you now, where maybe in the past you had this really angry or intense response and now you have another choice. So it was easier to not show it and still feel it at first.
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So I wouldn't outwardly get angry at people, I wouldn't overtly get angry at people, right? And it would build up, but again, if you have the regiment that we preach, if people take time for themselves and do physical activities, it's very easy to manage emotions when you're physically, every day, paying attention to yourself. And whatever that means, I happen to go to the gym, right? So that helped, but I knew consciously it wasn't appropriate in the moments that it would happen, me personally,
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And so it kind of went to something else, and maybe I would intellectualize my way out of it at first. Maybe I would just let it pass right through me after.
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The work really had to go in at a deeper level when I wasn't getting angry at myself, right? So when I thought that maybe I let somebody down or didn't pull my weight enough, right? So I'm very adamant of making sure that I get my role done for the most part, for the most part, I mean, in many different areas, and it can pop up at any time.
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letting that pass through you when you're actually pointing it at yourself, I think is the evolution of letting go of anger. I mean, that's where you realize you can relax and you can plan ahead and make it a schedule to plan ahead. And when you do that and you have all these different things working for what you want, then the negative emotion really, it looks more and more absurd the more often it comes around, right? It looks absurd because it's not handling
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the weight of your behavior. It's not finding a way to your goal the way that it used to. So instead of it, instead of thinking it's happening to you, you see, oh, I have a choice here. So it brings to mind, we have lots of weight loss clients who get angry at themselves for eating junk food or eating too much, for example.
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And they'll do it. And then afterwards, they'll be really upset with themselves. And that bad feeling will make them want to actually do it more, right? They'll say, oh, well, I already messed up. Why bother? And they give up, or they end up in complacency, which is a form of anger itself.
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Right? They're punishing themselves for that or giving up. And that would be sort of an explicit behavior that we can notice in a lot of people, but I bet you've had the experience and lots of other people about the experience of doing this in other ways.
Behavioral Change and Hypnosis
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So, um, but when you hit the nail right on the head, you know, that that's like the reward cancellation that people go through. And I think is the most common thing that I see in the clinic, in our clinics right now. Of course that changes in waves, you know, kind of just meanders one way or the other, but right now, you know, it's something I even call out early so they can understand what it feels like. And I'll even walk them through the paces of it so they can realize it's okay to, you know, go to someone's birthday party, run into that aunt that was so mean to them when they were a kid. And all of a sudden,
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They just lose their bearings for fifteen or twenty minutes and eat something that they wouldn't. I mean, I'm making a weird example. I don't have an ant personally that ever, you know, I just thought of that. It just came to my mind. But anything in the situation, especially when they're around family, around people that are used to the way they were when they weren't in control of themselves or weren't goal oriented, the cancellation, though, is a real pain. That's a bear.
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And that's what i mean that's what we're speaking about is the cancellation of thinking that maybe you know i can give myself this i can give myself this much rope and then just no matter what it is it could be an extra glass or a cup of coffee. I mean there's no real rational reason why people do it. And then all of a sudden they're on themselves and they're feeling bad and. Make sure they let us know some people let us know as soon as i come back in the clinic right.
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I was great for six days and there was two hours on Sunday where I was out of control. Like, but how about all those other hours you were away from us? You seem like you're doing it now right on the head.
00:12:24
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And what do you learn from the time you were out of control so that next time you can do it a different way? This is a really important part of us as well. Yeah. Cause that's the, we're getting people out of a shame blame guilt mode and into a learning mode so that they actually have a choice. You know, Josh, one thing I've personally found, I know before I discovered hypnosis and NLP, there were many things going on in my life that I,
00:12:51
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I did want to change. And I would get really angry at myself because I knew I wanted to change them and I could see what I was doing. That wasn't what I wanted. But I would keep doing it over and over and over. And I remember writing my journal and saying, I should do this and I should do that. And why can't I be like this other person? And it was really through these skills of hypnosis and NLP and the experience of it that I discovered
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how I could actually change that, because a lot of people are trying to lecture themselves out of it, or think it through, or some version of that. They believe that that's what's going to fix that. And out of control, the sense that they're not dictating the way their mind is going, they will go to the thing that they know the best, or what they're used to when they're a kid. They'll go back to the old behaviors that they were trained or hypnotized into before they realized they were being hypnotized every day, before they came to see us.
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Yeah, and that's especially true when people are in situations that maybe they weren't as resourceful
Journey to Self-Awareness with Hypnosis
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that day. Maybe they're exhausted. Maybe there's something emotional going on in their life. So when we're less resourceful, we're more likely to go back to the old way.
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I would agree. I was on a sailboat one day. What's really cool about the sailboat experience is that it's beautiful outside, right? He already expects because of the weather being different than you're used to. I mean, you got anything you could want to keep your blood sugar up, right? I mean, plenty of water. Everything that you need is there. Of course, there's no escape, right? So you actually have what you want to change there. And it's on a boat and the boat is moving through water that you can't jump into, right to escape. So you have to face the problem head on.
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So he was talking to me and he was being very candid. I was on the boat with Dr. Burke.
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He told me about intensity, right? And so, you know, I was used to getting results, me personally, and I know other people like this, especially other men my age in this generation, that would just ramp the intensity all the way up to 100 right away, and just like push, push, push, push, push, and get whatever you want. And of course, there's all kinds of collateral damage, right? You're exhausted, right? You don't know what you've run over to get there. And
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talking about being more delicate with our energy. And Scott McFall taught me how to be more delicate and kind of crank that dial down to about between 60 and 70%. So everything isn't like you're not in a foxhole, right? You're not getting shot at. And that's what the intensity is like at 100. So when you just wanna get something done in your focus, you can just bring that intensity down, which intensity and anger are very closely related if you go too far one way or the other. And drop it down to 60 to 70% and then,
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and then watch as you get your goal in a reasonable amount of time while being mindful of what's happening in the other circumstances. That's one of the great things that I learned on that trip last April on the sailboat.
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So it's not all or nothing that you can use some of the energy of it, but have it just at the right spot to get things done. And be able to adjust it even if you want to be finer with it, if you want to do 62% or 71%, just knowing that you can have access to that. And you don't have to just full blast, run over everything to get what you want and be, as people would say, a bull in a China shop, which is something I have resorted to in the past. I don't know if you're aware of that or not.
00:16:16
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One thing I've found personally if I were to talk about my own experience with anger is that sometimes things get to a point where I tend to want to smooth things over just in terms of my personality.
Processing Emotions Constructively
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But sometimes things get to a point where I can't anymore and it may come out as anger because I've smoothed it over for so long. But there's something important in that experience that I need to pay attention to.
00:16:42
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And so if I were to just get mad at myself for getting angry and ignore the point of it, that wouldn't help, right? And so one thing that I've learned how to do is kind of listen to myself earlier, like tune in to what I really want or be able to communicate about that better so that the dam doesn't need to build up and up and up and up and up.
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And so it helps a lot to just be aware of what it is that you want to need and have those communication skills so that it doesn't become a huge problem.
00:17:20
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So I think that's an important point. And that's, you know, when you're comfortable with the detail, you're talking about some very delicate things for some people, right? And other people that might be even natural and there's all people in between, but having that ability to slip into that delicate detail and be able to make adjustments as you're talking about, I think is incredibly important. And I also want to make the point that it's something that's available. These skills are available to anybody that wants to explore them.
00:17:46
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It's something that's very human to be able to make these changes. It's very human to have the initial problem, and it's very human to change it and let it morph into something else. It's something that you're actually directing. It's like a directed change. Also, with anger, remember it's a very important part of the
00:18:05
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bell curve of grief. I don't know how I lost that there for a second. But so if it does serve that purpose, it's an important feeling to have, because then you know, you're going through the evolution, the evolution of that bell curve. And if you can follow it all the way through, and you're not afraid to cry at the end of it, which is what people are supposed to do, right, and you walk into acceptance, then you do want that anger as a function of that bell curve. But again, you know, as we've been taught, as I've been taught to people tend to bounce into it,
00:18:33
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enjoy the feeling and just recycle the anger. And that's no good. That's no good. Right. So you could feel it without fixating on it or you can feel it and maybe process it through physical activity or through hypnosis skills and experiences instead of having to lash out. Yes. Right. The feeling or doesn't mean necessarily that you have to express that at the person or the situation or that it has to build and build and build.
00:19:03
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It's being able to interact with it in a useful way.
Supportive Hypnosis Communities
00:19:08
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Good stuff. You're very easy to talk to. I don't know if you're going to erase this, but your voice is incredible. Oh, thank you. I mean, for real.
00:19:19
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One of the books that's part of our curriculum at Master Hypnotist Society is by Dr. Edgar Barnett, who happens to be from Kingston, Ontario, Canada, one of the rare Canadians. And he talks about crime of anger, which happens when, as a child, it wasn't okay to get angry, and then you get angry, you feel like it's a crime, and so that's when people tend to bottle it up. And what is much healthier is to be able to move through it and to let it flow.
00:19:48
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And I think that that's an important way to look at it. I find I found that very helpful. That's a great way. Yeah. So. You know, I just had this thought, I don't know if this fits in or not, but I mean.
00:20:05
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So I'm just thinking that what's also very helpful is surrounding yourself with like-minded people to what your common goals are and what your expectations are, and having people comfortable with being able to go through the things they need to go through. That sounded cryptic, so I'm gonna try that again. So if you surround yourself with people that are all of a common mind, a common goal, or a relatively common goal, so you can have
00:20:32
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You can go through these things and you can go through this emotional distress and walk through it and let it pass through you in their midst and there won't be any expected recourse. I don't know why that popped into my mind, but it just did. So I'm thinking also now I'm placing in different things. You can look at the families, right? And families are always a little bit crazy and that's not a big deal, right? And you can also look like when we work in small and larger groups together in the MHS,
00:20:56
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You know, we've had different crowds many times, right? And I remember that when I think when I first worked with you, the first time I met you was in 2015 in Cape Coral. We had a big group of PS when I met Dan the first time to Dr. Burrow. Yeah. And then
00:21:12
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In 2017, we were at Disney Hotel and we had both trainers, master trainers, and then we had brand new students. Scott had them all in the same room. Those are the situations that I'm thinking of and how we could even accept people going through those things and even assist in any way that we can.
00:21:32
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And then how comfortable it can be to go through the anger or go through the grief or go through the sadness. I'm sure we've both seen people go through sadness in seminars before, especially you. I mean, you have these big seminars every month, you know what I mean? I'm sure you have to go through this all the time. And when they're comfortable doing that, how much faster and how much more powerful, let's say, the learning experiences when those things are on the table, those things are acceptable. It's acceptable to go through the things you need to go through.
00:21:59
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And that just came in my mind i don't know if you want that or not well i think that's a great point cuz it's this culture of acceptance that you can you can't have that happen right you might act out or go through different emotions or do something that maybe isn't the most desirable thing to do any.
00:22:17
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in general people have experiences with that are either embarrassing or they get abandoned by people or shunned or right that would be a typical experience whether it's in the family or in society in general or the workplace or with friends and and one of the wonderful and beautiful things about what we do is we create a culture that allows people to move through that so they can get to another place
00:22:41
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because the reaction of the people around you can have an impact on you staying stuck if you agree with that or you take it in. And so this value of loving people and then helping them change their behavior is a really healing thing about what we do. It makes for a fantastic culture, too, as you said. Yeah. Culture of acceptance is pretty neat. I'm going to write that down.
Connecting with Josh Kearney
00:23:12
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So Josh, share with people how they can reach you if they would like help or more information about what you do. Oh, excellent. So you can find us at destinyhypnosis, destinyhypnosis.com, destinyhypnosis on Instagram. We have two Twitter handles, destinyhypnosis and New York hypnosis. And of course, on Facebook, you can find us on Facebook at alternative hypnosis and power and light hypnosis.
00:23:42
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So yeah, and when people reach out, they reach out by email, they call, they also direct message us, and I get right back to
Podcast Conclusion and Future Resources
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them. So I've had lots of cool conversations with people that I never would have met if it wasn't for our group, the MHS, the Master Hypnosis Society, and our presence on the internet, all of our presences on the internet, starting to grow every day. Awesome.
00:24:05
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Join us next time to learn suggestions for helping our biochemistry, body, emotions and subconscious get in sync to become healthier, happier and more successful. You can find out more about how hypnosis training can help you at HypnosisTrainingCanada.com
00:24:23
Speaker
You will find fantastic learning resources and free giveaways here. You can also book a free admissions consultation to see if hypnosis training is right for you. Remember to click the button to subscribe, share the podcast with a friend, and we would love for you to leave us a review so you can help others benefit from the podcast too. Until next time.
00:24:45
Speaker
You've been listening to The Hypnosis Show with Robbie Spear Miller. Tune in next time to learn more about how you can change your life with hypnosis. And if you are interested in learning more about training opportunities, go to hypnosistrainingcanada.com and schedule a free consultation.