EP22 – What is Interpersonal Hypnotherapy? – Part 1

Illuminated Mind is your podcast for exploring some of the deeper ideas about what it means to be human in today’s complex world. We cover topics from psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and hypnotherapy to find answers to life’s most interesting questions. Enjoy this episode!

Corey Benschop  00:00

What’s up everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us this week. I really hope you’re having a nice day, and let’s make it a little bit nicer. Today we are diving into the specifics around interpersonal hypnotherapy and more specifically the “interpersonal” part of it you know, what is interpersonal hypnotherapy? Why do we call it interpersonal hypnotherapy? The idea of “interpersonal” really boils down to the connections and the people that we have in our lives. And this idea was something that came to Matthew, actually, I believe in meditation, when, you know, he started thinking about just the school and the training that he was providing and how he really wanted to bring the deeper aspect of healing and transformation through with this sort of proprietary brand of hypnotherapy training.

So our institute is called the Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy. It’s because Matthew really wanted to focus heavily on this idea of the different people, so to speak, that we all have inside of our mind. So what we’re really talking about here is the subconscious mind and how it can be broken down into multiple different parts, and these parts are always communicating with each other.

They really are creating the framework and the fabric of our perspective of how we internalise our life, our experience of life, and whether it’s a good life or a bad life. The different problems that we think we may face, or that we deal with on a regular basis, the behaviours that we have, whether they’re positive or negative behaviours, healthy or unhealthy behaviours. These all stem from the subconscious mind and the different relationships that we have with ourselves and these parts have with each other.

It’s sort of a weird concept. But the idea, you know, not to say that we have multiple personalities, but there are definitely multiple parts inside of our mind.

So Matthew is going to dive in and really explain this a lot better than what I’m doing right now, but really get to the granular level of what interpersonal hypnotherapy actually is, and what these different parts of our subconscious mind are, and why we’re all at war with ourselves internally, and we all create this internal conflict and suffering based on the relationships that these parts have with each other.

This is going to be a really interesting episode for you, this is going to be broken up into two parts. So this first part here is really actually going to focus more on some of the history of hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and where it all came from. It’s really fascinating stuff because you’re going to learn about how this all came to be. How hypnosis has transformed over the years and, and over the decades, and how different pioneers have added their own little touch.

And you know, I really want to believe that Matthew will go down in history as another pioneer moving this needle forward with hypnosis and hypnotherapy and his contributions to what he’s created. You’ll hear about the likes of Mesmer and Mesmerism, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Dave Elman, Gil Boyne. These are just some of the names of people that have really contributed a lot to this field of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. And then obviously now with what we are offering from the Institute, as well as through the association that Matthew has put together called the International Association of Interpersonal hypnotherapist or “IAIH” for short.

I really hope you enjoy this one, there’s a lot to uncover and unpack in this episode. And again, this is only part one so make sure you’re subscribed and that you get notifications because we’ll be releasing Part Two next week, which is another great episode. Anyways, without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump right into it.

 

Corey Benschop  03:55

Are you a hypnotist or hypnotherapist looking to grow your business online? Because in 2021, you really should be! Our sponsor today, HypnotherapySites, is a website design company that specializes in building websites specifically for hypnotherapists. Now, full transparency, this is my company. I’ve spent the last seven years in web design and marketing, and now as a practicing hypnotherapist myself, I know what it takes to get new clients contacting you through your website. We handle everything for you, from designing and building your site, setting up all the technical stuff, and even providing ongoing support afterward. It’s really never been easier for hypnotherapists to establish a professional online presence than this! And the important thing here is that you’ll be able to focus on the work that you do best, while we build you an effective website that converts visitors into paying clients 24-7, even while you sleep! For a limited time, I wanted to offer 20% OFF to all Illuminated Mind listeners. So you can just head over to https://hypnotherapysites.com/illuminated to get started today. That’s https://hypnotherapysites.com/illuminated. There’s never been a better time than right now to establish a professional presence for your business. So just go to https://hypnotherapysites.com/illuminated and get 20% OFF our normal rate.

 

Corey Benschop  05:20

Welcome back to Illuminated Mind. I’m your host Corey Benschop, and this is your podcast for exploring some of the deeper ideas about what it means to be human in today’s complex world. We cover topics from psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and hypnotherapy to find answers to life’s most interesting questions. Enjoy this episode!

 

Matthew Brownstein  05:43

Okay, welcome everyone. It is may 18 2020 are with here with me Matthew Brownstein, the founder of the Institute of interpersonal hypnotherapy. And tonight we are going to go in depth into what is interpersonal therapy. I was saying before we started just to go a little bit of time, that for some of you who are here tonight, this will be review anybody who has been through our training or who’s graduated or has a student or graduate, we’ll find some of this a little bit repetitive. I’ll try to get through that as quickly as possible. And then well three PowerPoints tonight one is about the school. One is about the association, more or less. And then one is about interpersonal hypnotherapy itself. There will be principles here tonight, that graduates will definitely appreciate knowing anybody who’s been through the training certainly will. So hang out with me if it’s a little bit repetitive. And I’ll be happy to take you through this at any point Feel free to use the chat pod say hello or most importantly ask ask questions if you have them, or just ask to go into specific topics. Just a very brief overview before I move through this PowerPoint, I started the these classes again no about less than two months ago haftar COVID-19 was clearly staying with us for a while. And it was a way to open up to connect to community again. So that’s a lot of what we’re gonna see here with interpersonal hypnotherapy, and a project that I launched last night. I’ll just mention it now maybe in the screenshare 100 later, you can go to the new website called online monastery calm. Last night I officially launched for this next round of dissemination of those teachings, what’s called the underhive meditation system. And it’s exciting to be putting that out there there were over 100 people in the room which was nice to see we actually didn’t realise we’d have that many people so they couldn’t get in the room. So this is a smaller group tonight. So feel free to ask questions. And with that said, let’s go through the topics. Alright, so what is interpersonal hypnotherapy? largely it’s about connections, right? If you think of the word interpersonal, it relates to the idea that were people and unfortunately during COVID a lot of hypnotherapy is having the shift to online and you know, we’re blessed that we have that. But you know, like, think about When’s the last time you get a hug a group of people. When we bring people into our school, it’s really beautiful to connect with students come in for enhanced practical hours or for annual conferences. We’re just going to have a client come in sit in your room, so we’re all adapting to this new world. Yet again, as I said, starting these Monday night classes again, and a huge part of why we do this school is because of people that might seem really obvious that hypnotherapy should relate person to person relationship. And I think that his his interpersonal, says a lot more about what’s happening once you start actually working with your client. You have in hypnotherapy what we call our conscious mind, of course, and we have the subconscious mind. And hypnotherapy still makes that division which is really valuable. What we find is that it’s not just about the relationship between you and your client. It’s your relationship between you and your clients, conscious mind, but also their subconscious mind. And once you get in there and you discover there’s all these people, if you will, living in the subconscious mind, it’s an entire I mean, this might not be a scientific statement. But I want to say it’s like there’s an entire other person in there. And the more you start looking around you notice it’s almost like there’s other people in there. We’re not talking about dissociative identity disorder used to be called multiple personality disorder. I’m just saying this different aspects of people’s psyche and in hypnosis will often in hypnotherapy, we’ll call those sub personalities or parts of the psyche, and these parts are often at war with each other, right? They’re in conflict. one parent wants to stop smoking, the other parent wants to keep smoking one really wants to lose weight, but the other actually wants to keep on the weight. One wants to get over depression, but one actually wants to be depressed. And it’s not always just a one on one conflict, you know, 50% here for different on there. You can have multiple parts in conflict with each other. So a big part of interpersonal hypnotherapy is really getting to the very root of what’s happening and then transforming it Beyond just hypnotic programming, there’s a very deep layer of working that we’ll get into tonight. Question is, where do we find the audio homework you gave us? Which one is that? I’ve searched that site. Oh, you’re talking about the outline monastery site. I’ll just say quickly because this is a recording for another topic, but the online monastery site, and if you’re doing that meditation system, just click on where it says I’m gonna have meditation, and start devouring the information there. Anybody who just heard about that, feel free to check it out. If you’re interested, just follow the instructions on that website. Okay, wonderful. Let’s, I’ll come back to that later if I’m not going to answer your question properly, since we have a different topic here, and connections. So I put in this slide for the idea that we are so much more than just bodies in interpersonal hypnotherapy. And let me actually say how that came about in the title, the name. I’ve been doing hypnotherapy since 1997. I opened our school in 2007. We grew into multiple states, we’ve done trainings all over the country now. And at some point, it was probably around 2012 or so I was in meditation and I was asking my inner guidance, wisdom, higher self spirit, whatever you might call that. I was saying what really is hypnotherapy? What’s the real essence of it? And I said, A must be transpersonal because they’re talking not even as if you’re talking to higher wisdom. And they said it must be trans person, right? The essence of it is to bring people to spirit. And that seemed like the right answer to it is an answer yet the voice though inner wisdom came back and said, it’s not just transpersonal it’s interpersonal. And that made me really think about what is that? What does that mean in spending more time meditating on it? hypnotherapy isn’t just about me bringing my clients through their issues and into light into peace into joy into their true self. It’s very much and you know, so that’s what it is. yet. The role of the hypnotherapist is extremely important in that right. I can’t bring someone there, if I’m not there myself. And that’s a lot of what one of our guests tonight was asking about our online monastery comm website, the Anaheim meditation system, that’s one way definitely not the only way to tap into the light and the love and the peace that you are. So a big part of interpersonal hypnotherapy is to be in that space. When you connect to a client then the interpersonal connection becomes very sacred. It’s one of the subtitles of this work is honouring the sacred and transformational relationships. And yet tonight we’ll explore really deep and I’m hesitant to use the word psychology because of we’re not psychologists, yet there’s just the mental component of what’s happening hypnotherapy so we’re calling that psychology there is a lot going on in there and a lot of traditional hypnotherapy doesn’t go as far as we’re gonna go tonight when I give you the explanation of what intrapersonal really means in the sense of your client and you and the place where you come together and what you have to do inside of your mind in their mind to come to a place of true healing so the model here is that all healing happens in relationship and therefore it honours just how work and they have not app is really it’s it there’s a lot more to help you to understand why we’re using the word interpersonal Okay, next, I wrote a book of course called interpersonal hypnotherapy. If you haven’t read it, especially if you’re a student at our school, I would highly recommend it. It’s short. It’s easy and most people find it very enjoyable. So there’s our title, honouring the sacred and transformational relationships. There is in case you don’t know some of our graduates obviously just don’t know that i doing it yet. There’s a cu course it’s available on this website and all of our websites you can find it interpersonal hypnotherapy, calm the AI age website. It’s a 22 hour continuing education course that takes you very deep into what interpersonal hypnotherapy really is. And it gives you a certification as an interpersonal hypnotherapist. That’s really for our graduates who have 500 hours already upstate licenced training, but it’s important for people to know that it’s available if they want to go really deep into this. So we’re going to go through a little bit of history to help you to understand hypnosis, hypnotherapy and interpersonal hypnotherapy again, for some of you this might be review, yet I hope you’ll enjoy a little journey into history. There was a man named Franz on Pan mesmer. He lived in the 18th century it started in Vienna eventually this image of seeing him probably was done. In Paris, a lot of the later half of his life was spent in Paris doing this work. mesmer was a physician and outside of his regular studies, he was studying with a father Maximilian hell or he’ll h e l. l. I’ve never heard it pronounced by a Viennese speaker. So Father, Maximilian, hell, and he was rubbing magnets over people’s bodies, and believing that the power in the magnet could rebalance the, you could say the energy flow of the body and bring it back healing mesmer started trying this, and he was actually getting good results. And this went on for quite a while is becoming more and more popular. Eventually, one day mesmer goes to do a treatment, but he realises he forgot his magnets. So he said, Well, I believe the animal magnetism as it’s called, or is it was called is inside of him. So he said, Maybe I’m going to use my hands and he started doing the magnetic passes over the person’s body. And talking, by the way, you know, it’s not initially done in silence. In fact, mizmor is very charismatic figure. So his presence and this is you know, if you’re thinking about what is intrapersonal hypnotherapy? Again, you have at the time, you might say mesmerist, but is the original mesmers mesmer are the hypnotherapist which that term didn’t exist yet. mesmer that mesmerist is healing the other person. And so it does honour if you really dissect what was happening on the day of mesmer. When he was doing these healings, it wasn’t just the patient, if when you use that term, sitting there with magnets, right, or rubbing magnets over their own body mesmer was there doing something. And eventually he learned, you know, I don’t even need the magnets and get the same exact results, which would include quite often the altered state of consciousness we now call hypnosis or trends, and getting new cell towers safe at abroad, valid healing results. So mizmor became quite famous to the point where he couldn’t handle his patient love it. And he started taking these big vats of water called a cat. So I’m not sure I pronounced that right, either filled with electric iron filings, and supposedly they were magnetising the wire, people would get together, they would hold the iron rods and the ropes that would come out of these things. They would call the hand and the supposedly the animal of magnetic current would flow through the group. People would cry, they would laugh, they would have catharsis someone pass out, and others would have no response at all. Yet, for whatever reason, like now we would say that’s largely psychosomatic healing was occurring. So now you say, Well, what is the role of the mesmerist in that, right, and obviously, he had to give the suggestion that something was happening. But the suggestion wasn’t just because he said it when he walked in the room, his reputation, especially when the parents had preceded him. And even Marie Antoinette and you know, all the way up to royalty, I’d known about him he was studied by Ben Franklin Joseph 18. And there was a lot of people, a lot of people heard about this guy, and wanting to know what he was doing. So his replication was actually a big part of what made him successful, right people’s expectation of what’s going on. So we in the hypnotherapy field, and studied mesmer a lot. And you know, I certainly have I’ve read everything I can about him saying, How did it work? Why did it work as most historians, you know, hypnotherapist in the field, and I believe it wasn’t because of what most were thought, a long story short with this, the scientific delegation medical there that contactors five scientists who studied mesmer, then the scientific side, we have nocturia, about Dr. Benjamin Franklin. And on the medical side, a famous name is Dr. Joseph key 18, the one who invented it. And they concluded mesmer is not healing through any magnetic fluid. And they were very reasonable at the time scientific test to say, according to them there, this theory of animal magnetism just doesn’t hold up. But something is working. And Ben Franklin concluded that with four words, the power belief, the power of imagination, the power of suggestion, and the power of imitation. And imitation is important because it means that the patients would come into the rooms, whether one on one with mess or on these big gatherings, and they would imitate what others would do. And so if others started laughing and crying, you might find the person next to them starts laughing, crying. If you’re in this field, it’s important to understand that the influence of the practitioner over a week, use the term client in this day and age to the practitioner over the client or what set up before they even walk into your office. If so, mesmer was not getting to the root cause of problems. He was in doing any real, what we might call analysis or any real transformation. It was really just based on this power of this animal magnetism. Or if you really think about what he set up and people’s expectations on what could happen this obviously huge history. So no five minute explanation does justice. Yeah, if you’re really understanding our field, you want to understand mesmer and I would encourage you to read up on him for sure, because mesmer was not well accepted and actually quite ridiculed. mesmerism fell out of popular favour. But in 1864 Dr. James braid who was using some of these techniques realised, you know, this stuff does work, we just have to make it more scientific and palpable for medical doctors and scientists, people who can actually use this to help to heal people. so brave concluded, you can get all of the same results that you get from this idea of animal magnetism just through the power of suggestion, and therefore he changed the whole name of mesmerism. To him there’s a more hypnosis based on the Greek goddess of sleep. It’s a bit misleading using the IDF hip knows the Greek god of sleep, because hypnosis is not sleep. And what’s important to understand about this phase of history is that grade Emily’s contemporaries didn’t understand about root cause of problems, they’re still working to treat symptoms. And to understand interpersonal hypnotherapy tonight, it’s really important to grasp the idea of are we treating symptoms or are we getting to root cause because once we’re at root cause, in interpersonal hypnotherapy, we’re seeing it different than most hypnotherapy trainings would acknowledge, which is I believe we’ve been able to evolve this over time. All right. During the time of the origins of all of this, there are two major schools in Paris, there are mental institutions one was in having taught this in a while, and one was in Nancy, France, the other I think was in Nice. Another way, there are two mental health institutions. And some of the names of the people who ran though became relatively famous Dr. Sharpe CO is one of them in any way cannot give this history lecture too much. The important points here are that Sigmund Freud actually started studying at these places. And Freud learned hypnosis, a lot of psychoanalytic theory is based on Freud’s conclusions. And as you know, I’m sure you’ve heard the, you know, General history of psychoanalysis that Freud was really the God of psychoanalysis. And if he said it for any analysis, we’re pretty well dogmatic about his conclusions. So Freud was using hypnosis yet, when you hear later on his conclusions, he wasn’t a big fan of it. And that’s really for a few reasons. One is that Freud was not have a good ability to build rapport, he couldn’t really connect with people. And we see that evidenced in the way you picture Friday analysis where the patient is lying down, kind of in the chase lounge, right on the recliner. And the analyst is sitting behind them, analysing them, not looking them in the eyes, not connecting with them, treating them like a patient, you know, as a doctor, and really just analysing the subconscious. But again, lack of rapport. So that was one issue with Freud about being able to really do hypnosis Well, he also concluded that the power of suggestion just doesn’t last, you can trust posthypnotic suggestion. So if you say to somebody, you’re now Oh, and by the way, this picture goes into a whole history of the way they treated women, and the idea of hysteria. But that’s not tonight’s topic. But it’s a fascinating part of the history. And thank God, we’ve come further and as far as understanding that Hypnosis is a model of equality. One, they used to use the terms in the olden days, like way back when probably you can before this during the times of the mesmer is that a more powerful soul had power over a week or so. And we do not acknowledge we don’t consider that being true at all in modern hypnotherapy. So what’s happening? Freud is talking about why hypnosis didn’t stick for him, he didn’t have good rapport. He actually and I believe this is true, I believe you use a lot of cocaine and they would rub it on their gums at the time. So he had really bad breath and teeth falling out. I mean, I try to remember from the history books, and give him really bad breath. So it’s hard to sit in front of someone either and talk Yeah, really what happened is, he started understanding analysis by regressing patients for the root cause. And the one thing you found which is, which is shocking to him was shocking to me when I got into this field, and I still see it, like frequently, I see clients now a little bit more during COVID times, just to be nice, and I’m still seeing it, you know, to this day, and what I’m saying is, Freud was regressing people, especially women to the cause of their problems, finding out they were sexually abused and his contemporaries, all these guys who are probably doing things they shouldn’t be doing. And it’s so prevalent that when I say that, I know they’ve been telling them or giving exact data, but for my experience of very large number of high percentage of clients have been sexually abused. It’s more prevalent than I think most people realise. And Freud discovered that he started sharing that and you know, we know a lot of Freudian theory is based on that and most issues have something to do with sexuality. And a lot of us to just deal with childhood sexual abuse, and nobody wants to hear that at the time. I don’t even know how much people want to hear still hear today. So for that major reason, he dismissed hypnosis and Getting back to the root cause is something valuable because nobody was gonna take that up at the time in that way. So he designed an analytical theory and basically just put hypnosis aside that put a big dent in our ability to actually use hypnosis to help people to heal. And also it’s important even though he was uncovering memories, they didn’t really know what to do with them at the time, they haven’t developed the techniques that we have now to heal the content that is brought to consciousness. So hold that thought as well about using regression to get to the root cause because again, mesmer and braid and those early founders were only using it to treat symptoms at least Freud was starting to look at root cause. Dave Elman is well known in our field, and Elman was a he called himself a light hit interested in considering that he wasn’t a doctor or a dentist, he wasn’t meaning contact a hypnotherapist. But he was a real enthusiast of using hypnosis and he started actually training dentists and doctors and anaesthetists, and he knew all about symptom relief and pain management who’s very good pioneering the bidding techniques, but he founded something called hypno analysis. And when you hear and our students get to some of the earlier recordings of Elman, you just hear someone who’s doing the best he can with what he’s got. But compared to what we have now it’s it’s actually kind of sad, but it’s good to know he was helping people for sure. It’s just again, it’s about in the 1950s or 60s, I believe. So what Elman did was it kind, he was a pioneer, like a lot of these people were talking about, he developed what’s called hypno analysis, and they would put people in hypnosis, regress them back to the root cause it when you hear him, and it was basically the idea that just knowing the cause of your problem was pretty much enough. Right? So I remember a case

 

Matthew Brownstein  26:52

Oh, I said there was a woman, I believe, maybe it was present, they had some type of presentation to marry grass, her. And she had, I believe it was like hay fever or some type of childhood sickness. And the child got very scared of having this kind of sickness. And some of those memories, the belief systems, the emotions remain, and it kept even though she is healed physically of the illness she had as a child, it kept physical conditions going in the regression, you hear him saying, you know, now that we know that this is what happened, right? You don’t have to have those feelings. Anyone don’t have to be sick anymore. And you know, and I’m not saying it didn’t work that work. Yet, there’s just so much more we would do now than just tell the client what we found the root cause now at least you know the root cause, and you can let it go. What’s misleading there is most people actually know the root cause of their problem when you come to a hypnotherapist to find out why you have the present day issues. You don’t necessarily find repressed memories that you didn’t know were in there, you quite often will make connections, like Ellen did. In that case, connections you didn’t know were there. Well, I didn’t realise my headaches came from this until it’s helpful. But what’s important to understand is knowing the cause of your problem does not heal your problem. Once we bring that to consciousness. We need to do something with it. And again, that’s where interpersonal hypnotherapy becomes a really powerful model. And again, it’s going to be different our approaches, then what you you might study in a lot of other places. You’re going my most significant mentor and hypnotherapy Gil, that’s a picture of Gil with hypnosis and I want to say Actually, I was very pleased one of our graduating classes gave me one of those statues as well. So someday I want to take the same picture. Gil was a real pioneer in our field. He was a hypnotist, he did a lot of stage hypnosis, and then it became quite a leader in the field of hypnotherapy itself. He was definitely into their aggression model. And yet the thing that it really brought to this was he had studied with Fritz perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, where you dialogue between key characters and this will come up a lot tonight you dialogue with key characters in regressions, right? Here’s the inner child, here’s mom. Let’s say mom hurt the child or didn’t help the child to feel better. And now they are talking it out. The Gestalt model is really powerful and to understand interpersonal hypnotherapy, we want to understand like assault is this don’t literally could be translated is oneness or that which is whole, not necessarily that which is coming together like uniting. But that which is already a whole example I like is water, excuse me being h2 Oh, you have to hydrogen that oxygen, you separate them, you don’t have water anymore, you put it together, you have water, water is in a readiness state of crystal. So when we’re looking at this subconscious, like I said earlier with a picture of all the people it’s not that there’s just a conscious mind you have a conscious and a subconscious. The subconscious is a mind it has thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions, imagination, belief systems, and there’s a lot of division in there. One part of the subconscious mind believe one thing about you like hey, you’re a good person and the other You might say you’re a bad person, the bad person believe is going to have emotions and behaviours. And the good person believe we have emotions and behaviours, that kind of conflict can be really destructive to a satisfactory life. So when we have the parts Gestalt are talking out, we can facilitate them coming into a place and that model, maybe just have teamwork, right? Where we’re going to agree a Joe was a good guy, and he can feel happy and he can have healthy behaviours. So give us a major pioneer of utilising Gestalt in regression and as far as I know, he was the first one to really do that. So kudos to Gil Thank you. Alright, so what do we know about all this? You have this slide the evolution of the root cause classical hypnotherapy. So what are we doing in most classical hypnosis, or hypnotherapy? In case you a lot of you don’t know let me define some of the terms of hypnosis we just refer to that natural, yet altered state of mind that we utilise and that definitely define it now. Scientists are hypnotism the word here on the screen scientific hypnotism. hypnotism really is just the scientific study of the hypnotic state. a hypnotist the way I would define it as someone who usually does not have a lot of training, usually not from a legitimate career school so they might have a weekend workshop I can you know, become a stage hypnotist after probably a weekend of studying this stuff really well. Some trainings are longer, maybe 100 200 hours, but you still have really minimal training compared to a true career professional. And then there’s someone who’s a hypnotherapist you can have that title and not be properly trained. Unfortunately, the law in any state really doesn’t cover that well. But I would say a really solid hypnotherapist does have 500 hours of training from a state licenced institution. So with classical hypnotherapy be doing when they’re working to help someone on the deepest level possible and not that we couldn’t just hypnotise them and give them suggestions or use other techniques, some of the deeper work would involve inducing the altered state known as hypnosis. Like I said, you could give just direct suggestions to feel better. So instead of getting to the root cause of let’s say, a headache, and by the way, all medical conditions do need a medical referral from a physician. Just as an FYI, we cover that in depth in our training. So we could just give direct suggestions that that feels better and we are you know, and or we could regress to the root cause of the problem, resolve the root cause and then give suggestions. Now the headache stays away. And of course, if you remove the cause and the effect, it’s going to be a lot better than just removing the effect. Alright, so in modern hypnotherapy, there’s scientific hypnotism. Not that we can’t believe in the animal magnetic force, also known as Reiki, or ci, or prana, or Shakti or Qi, or the Holy Spirit. Let’s just say it’s not in the field of scientific hypnotism, but I certainly believe there’s a place for that in our work. It’s just for to stay more mainstream and scientific, we kind of have to keep that a little bit on this side. But it’s not that you can’t bring that into a really solid hypnotherapy practice. All right, then we’re definitely regressing to the root cause. And anybody who’s well trained in this, again, some trainings are not they’re not all created equal, I can tell you that. There’s more acceptance by the mainstream and more and more each day, which is exciting to be in this field. And then we are very interested in this kind of work of finding what’s called the ISC, the initial sensitising event. That is where there’s an idea and it’s beneficial. We teach it in our school, yet interpersonal hypnotherapy goes further than this idea. The idea of an ISC is that there’s one root cause of your problem when it comes to hypnotherapist that pretend hypnosis to regress you and a memory will be right the consciousness and the memory becomes a thing we must focus on. Now depending on the level of training you need night when we looked at Dave Elman, you know, he didn’t really know Freud, they don’t really know what to do with these Monday with these memories. It’s not that they weren’t intelligent enough or willing, it’s just the techniques hadn’t been invented at the time. So there are certain techniques that get applied to is ease, depending on how well trained the hypnotherapist is, and the whole model of course is resolved the root cause and the effect will go away especially if we know how to deliver suggestions or other techniques to help ensure that the body or the behaviours or whatever it is we’re working to resolve follows.

 

Matthew Brownstein  34:25

I know so I’m just talking information so those who are here in attendance if you have any questions at any point, just go ahead and use the chat pod and I will be happy to take a pause and talk to you. But for now, I’m just going to keep going next So what makes interpersonal hypnotherapy unique. If you look at our logo for this isn’t the school’s logo This is the association logo and last night I gave a very in depth talk two and a half hours. On the unhide meditation system. The symbol in the very centre is called Anahata chakra. I won’t go too into that now but again, if you’re interested, check out on my monastery calm. The association logo has a triangle in the obviously right there. And it’s helpful to look at a triangle to understand this, you have two major motions, our movements is the word I used in this fight, you have a horizontal and a vertical, or horizontal is between you and another person. So if you’re a hypnotherapist is between me and my client. But if you take that outside of a professional relationship, and if you’re in just any relationship that’s between you and the other person, right, so if you’re in a significant other relationship, there’s you as the lover, your partner, hopefully is the beloved and the partner is a lover, and you are the beloved and you are meeting in a space of love and connection. If not therapy obviously is on a professional level. So we’re not talking about that kind of relationship. But it’s a very, I’m going to use the word indefinitely to qualify the word intimate relationship, not sexually intimate, that would be inappropriate, but what we’re talking about is a connection between you and your client, which is sacred. So when I say intimate, I really just mean sacred, not sexual, of course, not romantic. We’re very clear ethics about that. But what I’m implying is there is an openness of the heart of the hypnotherapist, and maybe a closed heart in the client, because the client is dealing with a lot of issues. And usually that means they’re suppressing emotions are closed down and blocked. It’s our job to help to open them to that because remember this slide when I was talking about transpersonal, and all the light coming out of the person claims to walk into the office, without understanding they only want their symptoms to be gone. But we understand we’re going to put them into in some ways a very vulnerable state of hypnosis, not necessary, vulnerable psychologically, because there’s no harm that comes from hypnosis, and I mean vulnerable that that person is trusting you when they close their eyes and relax that you’re not gonna steal their wallet or you don’t hurt them physically. They’re trusting you to close their eyes. And maybe the first time they’ve ever been to the office and they’re letting go of all defences, you’re just relaxing deeply into hypnosis, and trusting that we’re going to help them. So it’s so important in this model, that we train very ethical professional, very well educated hypnotherapist who are very skillful, who are measured in their core competencies, and really know how to help someone who were in that very vulnerable state in a very intimate setting. Because of COVID-19. A lot of hypnotherapy is happening online now. But the same principles still apply. There’s obviously ways unethical people can hurt others. And we’re working really hard actually, with the IHS. So some of that soon, very briefly, but you know, convention, there’s a code of ethics, there are core values. And I don’t think that should be taken for granted. But there’s a lot of people who do unscrupulous things. So we need high standards in this field for sure, especially with altered state work again, for the reasons I mentioned, and more. So the horizontal connection is between you and your client, and it honours how important you are in this equation. And that you know how to do your own inner work and heal yourself. And then you know how to bring the client to some of the highest states possible. The point of the triangle here, and this is not something everyone has to be leaving, but I find it extremely beneficial and most of our students are very open to this you might call that higher point type self, super conscious mind and hypnotherapy We not only acknowledge a conscious mind and a subconscious mind, there is something we call super conscious. It’s not a Freudian model of like the ego and super ego, it’s transcendent to all of that and has spiritual overtones. And to me hypnotherapy, the way we teach, it really can’t avoid the spirituality. For most of you probably glad to hear that I know I’m grateful that I have a profession where I can bring my spirituality into the mix. So the higher point there is the relationship between you maybe you’re thinking about Eric, here’s you at the bottom corner, and here’s the divine at the top. Now, it’s obviously an image on the screen, it doesn’t apply where the divine really is. So similar to this up there.

 

Matthew Brownstein  39:01

But that one reality, you can call that spirit or source a lot of people of course, are comfortable with the word God. Yet this model acknowledges a light that there is something called light there’s something called love and love is just a biochemical reaction. Right, those of you who acknowledge reality called spirit, acknowledge there’s this universal presence of peace, of love of joy, and wisdom and guidance. So this horizontal connection between you and your source gives you intuitive abilities. psychic abilities are guidance on what techniques to use. And a lot of what I like to train our students is how to meditate and how to tap into that. Once you discover how valuable that is to you. Then interpersonal hypnotherapy is not just to heal the clients issue the symptoms not just to get to the root cause of their issue, but to get them connected to that. Now you don’t preach it’s not dogmatic. It’s not a religion, but it is saying that once you clear their closed heart and all the blocks in there There’s all this light and love inside of them. And I can feel that as I talk, I close my eyes like, oh god, I

 

Matthew Brownstein  40:04

want everybody to feel that it’s like this beauty that moves their heart. And if you don’t have that, and as a hypnotherapist you want to feel inspired to bring someone to that, you’d help the best you could. But once your heart is opening, clear, and you know how much love can be in your beam, for no reason at all, there’s like, because that’s spirit, and it’s everywhere. When the client gets to that place, you just look in each other’s eyes. And when the session is done, and there’s just almost no words, it’s so beautiful. So part of the I believe the job of an interpersonal if not that, this is to help the client to connect, and have that connection to source as well. Again, not as a conversion to religion, but it’s a direct experience in hypnosis, that you move them through their pain, you say, Okay, now you feel and then we can use a simple technique to say in what would feel better, and while would feel better, next thing, you know, your client isn’t really happy, and they’re filled with self love, and then they’re filled with like real, incredible love and then exact well, divine love. And we call this a lot of you might know, it’s called the core state, courtesy of Kenny Ray and Dreyfus, who found it a great technique for transformation, one of the cofounders of NLP, and which is nice, because the history of hypnosis doesn’t have a whole lot of women. So you know, it’s nice to be able to give credit where credit is due. So she designed this technique can be used in different ways. But I’ve certainly integrated it into our schools training, where almost any session you want to be saying what would feel better, what would feel better, what would feel better, until the client can’t feel any better. And my experience of that is, that’s what’s at the top of the mountain here at the top of the triangle. When you and your client are connected with that the centre is basically the heart and the heart chakra is the hardest space of love. That is one of the most powerful experiences in a course in miracles. There’s a line so imagine the client comes in with a lot of anger, a lot of hatred really is what it comes down to in their heart and you heal that. Through these kind of ways, this techniques and ways of thinking, then, the quote is from A Course in Miracles, the holiest place on Earth, is where an ancient hatred has been transformed into our present love night in the cell, imagine your office or if you’re doing it online, but the relationship you between you and your client, the holiest place on Earth. Now imagine like being a hypnotherapist, and you’re helping another human being in your office, which is so beautiful online, which can also be beautiful. The Holy Place on Earth is where an ancient hatred has been transformed into a present love, the connection between you and your client is so valuable. And I don’t think that’s taught as much as it could be. And then of course, the idea that there is something higher but not necessarily above right, just all pervasive that we can tap into, we can help our clients to tap into. So that’s part of this idea of honouring the sacred and transformation or relationships. Definitely a lot of emphasis on meditation, inner guidance on the best sources I can pay to go to now is our new site, online, monastery calm. And the meditation system is something that’s been with me it’s part of my life, purpose, mission, the teach, and it’s been around since 1996, is when all those revelations started coming to me. So I’m just gonna say that. And then as far as inner guidance, our school has components that teach you about intuitive hypnotherapy, and there’s a whole cu course and psychic, intuitive work. When you’re really tapping in on that way, you’re getting guidance about what to say to the client, what techniques to use, what the client’s issue is, what they’re feeling before the client even tells you. And to be trained. And to function on that level is not only very rewarding and beautiful for you, but you see real miracles occur because you’re being guided by something much higher than your unconscious mind. Right? If all you have is your own intellect to help a claim, your unlimited if you have your emotional self, your heart, that’s great, but if your emotional self is damaged, not as great when you heal yourself more and more. Alright, it’s an ongoing process, your heart is open your heart is very much your subconscious mind when your heart is in a space of love. Now you have that resource to bring to the table, great training, great intellect and a very open, clear heart. And then you bring in the spiritual component. Now you really are empowered with the idea of miracles. And I’m not using that term, unconsciously, I literally mean miracles, shifts that occur in the mind that can absolutely make instantaneous change in the physical body. And that’s not debatable. It’s just a quest that it happens. It does happen. It’s just a question of how and why. And a lot of what we cover goes into that. All right, next, core values I won’t spend much time on this but like I said, it’s so important that good training covers that so these are some of the values of the ay ay ay ay hmm read them here, but I just want you to know they exist. They’re on our website and they come from you all values and life principles shall govern anything that we do. So that’s that list. Therefore you have text on our IH website, we have a very clear code of ethics that high Aih members are required to sign. And the good thing about that is not only does it hold our profession accountable, it protects you. So if you’ve signed that, and you’re following all the protocols when you’re in private practice, if you had some kind of issue or malpractice issue and the i h comes to your defence, we can say they sign the code of ethics and good standing with the school to have state licenced appointments that are using claim participation and disclosure of this client disclosure agreement. You know that everything you’re doing everything properly by the book, proper note taking, we actually have in the i h now, the need for HIPAA compliance, if you’re getting a referral from a licenced practitioner of the healing arm, so if you get a referral from a physician, then you’re technically now a business associate of a physician and you are bound by HIPAA law. We have a section on that on the interpersonal hypnotherapy comm website under advocacy and the tab in case you don’t know about that you might want to if you’re a graduate, alright, and law and legislative work, so we’ve done a lot of work to protect the profession. I won’t go into that tonight you can explore that on the interpersonal hypnotherapy comm website. We monitor state law to be sure we know what the laws are in all 50 US states and we work to protect hypnotherapy if it ever starts having an issue and that can occur on the city level, county level state level or federal level. There was a lot of progress made with Gil Blaine and some other leaders back in the 70s where hypnotherapy actually became a legitimate profession on the federal level. And then some of us not a lot of leaders in the field on the state level have worked really hard with the state especially with Department of Education’s to make this a legitimate career. And again, there aren’t a lot of schools that do that we’re still the only one that I know of who’s primarily out of Florida, but we have locations around the country now. But you know our licences healthy the Florida Department education. There’s a few schools around the country, but most schools are actually unlicensed, and actually therefore illegal, and really not helping our profession to grow. So interpersonal hypnotherapy is very high standards, including protecting it on the city and county level intuitive listening skills I mentioned. Alright, here’s a little bit more about interpersonal hypnotherapy. And the difference between what we call the is E and the is our ASR is an interpersonal hypnotherapy term. So it’s one of the major differences. And again, understanding this is really the extra 22 hours of training. And I’ll go into it tonight with the time that we have. So I want to hold anything back. You know, if you’re not trained in this, you obviously can’t early shouldn’t be trying to help people on these levels. But I’m not here to withhold information. So I’ll cover as much as I can tonight about how we as interpersonally hypnotherapist can I’m not saying all of our graduates do or have that I do in every single session. But how we can facilitate a process, which is so much more, I’m going to say glorious, then when I think a lot of hypnosis has been over a few centuries now. So a client comes in and we want to resolve their symptoms, or their behaviours, they want to resolve them, we want to resolve it for them. And we can sometimes help just in that level. If not a programming neuro linguistic programming, subliminal programming, visualisation work, we can do basic things to change that yet if you don’t get to the root cause obviously that stuff can come back and if you are good at and our graduates I know are good at modifying behaviours. If you have a client who has a very destructive behaviour and you do powerful enough techniques to say you’re not able to do that behaviour anymore, you know your subconscious you just can’t do it. You can’t grab a cigarette you can’t do that drug or alcohol whatever it is, if you didn’t heal the root cause that part who’s trying to find comfort is going to find something else. Here’s how it works internally you might notice this because you’re having a human experience when your heart feels bad you have negative emotion Do you notice how you turn your mind when you say you turn to your mind but notice how your conscious mind starts thinking about how to make this feel better? Right so sad What am I going to do to feel better now as soon as the mind comes up like so it’s like trying out different items of clothing

 

Matthew Brownstein  49:23

well we could do the alcohol thing now now that gives us a hangover listen to alcohol we could do that drug now can’t get that drug yeah it comes up with all these ideas we could kill that person No, no, that’s not a good idea. And by the way, anybody who is imprisoned or killed someone said no he killed him. The heart said Yeah, that’ll feel better and then they acted on that. So what we do is we try on ideas of what makes us feel good once the to link up and say, Oh, yeah, that’s good. Then we go hang out. I’m not good in their highest sense of the word but that’ll make us feel better. Then very unconscious. People will act on that. When you don’t let them act on that using hypnotic programming. You’re not allowed to drink Well, then the minds like okay, well, we’re clearly not allowed to do that. So what else can we do because we stopped all this pain inside. And as soon as I find that one solution, well, we can throw the bottle at our child and throw the bottle of vodka at their daughter, you know, people have done this kind of stuff. Obviously. That’s because this figured out what to do to make this feel better, they weren’t agreement and action occurred. By only stopping behaviour, you need to understand that inner part is not okay is going to find other ways to feel better. So in our work, it’s pretty much a requirement to get to the root cause of the problem. The root cause, as you can see, is rooted very much in emotions. The emotions are fueling all their conscious thinking. So the more you have mental chatter, your mind’s not at peace, it’s actually a reflection of your heart, right? If your heart’s not a piece, your conscious mind is going to talk a lot to this, this is calm and clear and open and then filled with love and peace back on, anything to say at all. like wow, it’s really why even here, you might get a little bored at first, Wow, it’s so much better. So you can have a quiet mind, a peaceful mind. But you have to clear what’s in your heart, you can be in control of all these negative behaviours, you don’t control them, you just you can resolve the root cause. So you know, most hypnotherapist understand emotion motivates behaviour, we also acknowledge and again, this is not necessarily novel, that beliefs cause emotions and cause symptoms or behaviours. So if you say, if you believe that you’re a bad person, and it makes you really sad and scared and insecure and angry, you’re gonna act out on those beliefs and emotions and will become symptoms in your body and behaviours. Then what causes all those beliefs and emotions, right, so we know hypnotherapist, Freud, guilbeault, and these people knew Dave Hellman events caused to the child’s beliefs and emotions which cause our symptoms and behaviours and most of our self esteem, which is pretty much rooted in the beliefs we hold about ourselves. Those come about now your self esteem is really well solidified by the age of three or four. And most of these beliefs when we explore them, and hypnotherapy are developing around the ages of four or five, six years old. Most of our regressions to childhood, we ask the inner child, how old are you and you hear I’m five years old, it’s very common. So the events are very early on. They’re very young child very young when this stuff is occurring. And now, in interpersonal hypnotherapy, we’re not just looking at the ISC, the initial sensitising event. We’re a honing in on the key relationship rooted at the cause of the client’s problem because let’s say your dad, most of you can really say your dad was a cause of your a lot of your problems. Right? He did something here lots of things right and say dad was alcoholic, he came home drunk almost every day. It’s not one of them with dad. But for most people, right? There’s only one that in interpersonal hypnotherapy, that just becomes a really obvious thing to focus on. To not keep chasing down events, thinking if I just find the root cause one event, I will heal all these problems. Once you realise there’s just a few really only a few core relationships and the subconscious, then you’re very empowered to collapse the whole card house again, most people are not thinking that way. In the mental health professions or the hypnotherapy professions. And I’m saying like everybody kind of knows you go to a memory, you’re probably going to deal with the relationship. But the emphasis on this is so strong that it changes almost everything we do. Like when I work with clients, I know because I practice interpersonal hypnotherapy, I have a very different approach in the way we talk about problems. And I’ll explain that in just a moment with the next bullet point. So relations become the real cause. So let’s say you have headaches, and let’s say they’re caused by suppressing anger, you held on to a lot of anger bottled up in the system, headaches caused by an emotion anger. Underneath that, we have the belief system. So let’s say you believe you’re powerless, trapped and helpless, and that’s causing you to be angry, and that’s causing your headaches, then well what’s causing you to feel like you’re trapped, powerless and helpless. That’s where their memories come in. We

 

Matthew Brownstein  54:11

go to the events we say, Ah, there was one event where somebody made you feel trapped powerless and helpless. And that’s again what a lot of hypnotherapy looks for the one of that and most people you know, kind of in they’re gonna say they’re a bit a thing, if I can just find the one thing that causes these problems, I’m going to be better so they go to hypnotherapist hoping we can regress you to the cause, find the one memory and clear it. The problem is when you have this alcoholic dad for your entire childhood who is verbally physically sexually abusive. It’s not just one memory. So once we get into the memory, the intention becomes on death. Now again, it might seem super obvious, but it’s not how most people practice and here’s what I said it can be really different. You don’t see the symptom of headache as a headache. There’s nothing physical really happening, the body is responding. But there’s no physical thing called a headache. It’s a physiological response to in this case when it’s psychosomatic to an emotion. So we can say, Well what the headache is anger is really the headache is the result of anger from I am trapped. I’m powerless, I’m helpless. But really the headache is your anger at your dad, if we leave out the belief systems and summarise that shortly, so you don’t see headaches headaches anymore. In deep metaphysical philosophy, one of the most powerful, powerful principles is you translate things and the thoughts, translate things into thoughts, that headache is a thought, what kind of thought and unresolved thought with dad in this case. Now, therefore, those are the next bullet point below what’s really happening in this issue with that, and the subconscious being really angry at him, which means you haven’t forgiven him yet. And when there’s no forgiveness, there’s no love. Now there’s love underneath it all dad loves you, you love that it might be very buried in both of you, but it’s in there, or you know, in your client, when you so now instead of translating things into the thought that all must be a memory, or even a relationship in the memory. What you do in interpersonal hypnotherapy, and then again, this is a hugely I don’t think most people grasp just what happened in this one, shift in the way you’re seeing it. You see, the headache is lack of forgiveness. Do you have like, programme yourself with that, though, because it’s almost, it’s just so easy to get caught up in all these other layers. I got to resolve the symptom. Now I get emails all the time from students, what do I do about this condition? And then I usually just have to back with, follow your training, and then I have to remind them what their training is because they’re still thinking, there must be a unique protocol to resolve this physical condition. And they’re like, you just treat it directly. How do I heal asthma? How do I hear allergies? How do I heal ulcerative colitis? How do I heal Crohn’s disease? How do I heal trigeminal neuralgia and go on and on right? There’s 1000s upon 1000s and 1000s, of diagnoses, but there’s they’re all unforgiveness in this mode. Now, this model is really referring to psychosomatic illness. I’m not saying every illness is psychosomatic, I think a lot of them are for sure. And they can be healed through this work. And that’s just been my experience and all the behaviours are psychosomatic. So when you see that, that client who’s turning to alcohol to try to feel better, that behaviour, don’t see it as alcoholism, see it as unforgiveness. And then in the iosr, the initial sensitising relationship, we’re just finding out where’s the unforgiveness, when the forgiveness occurs, and the client is brought back to love, and then usually can occur within a two hour really good session.

 

Matthew Brownstein  57:48

We won’t go into it tonight, but interpersonal, I’ll touch upon it in one of the slides. Interpersonal hypnotherapy is a rapid resolution process. And it’s usually done in two sessions. It doesn’t mean I only see a client for two sessions. But if they have one issue, I pretty much apply one two session rapid Resolution Protocol based on these principles. Now, it doesn’t work. It’s not a panacea, it works a lot. If it doesn’t work in two sessions, okay, we can do more because the principles still apply. And it’s important to understand the headache, you know, you don’t have that many heads. You don’t have that many kind of aches you can have in your head. So the headache can be the result of a few people who made you angry, or the headaches, the result of anger in this case, and trapped, powerless, helpless beliefs. But maybe mom made you feel that way too. Or maybe Uncle Bob made you feel that way to. So now we’re talking about three relationships. So maybe six sessions, but you know, a client might invest under $1,000, I would think depending what the charge to go through those six sessions and plus or minus whatever, for the cost, but relatively small amount of money could be free of all that symptoms, behaviours, emotions, beliefs, negative memories, and unresolved relationships. So if you just focus, everything is an on every problem is unforgiveness. And you just have to trust me on that because this is a short talk on it. But this is from many, many years ago now. It’s been 22 years of doing hypnotherapy. You know, this stuff didn’t come to me yesterday, but I can say over decades of evolving this, I still believe all this to this day, I still practice it to this day, and we still train our students into it this day. Yet again, a lot of our graduates are not doing the 22 hour interpersonal hypnotherapist training, and that’s probably just got promoted enough I don’t know how to be promotional, but it’s super valuable. And again, if you can practice true forgiveness, and lead people to love and heal all their issues, you’ve done a huge service to the world to be a little biblical honeynet here they just got to quote a good book might said some good stuff. When if you study the miracles of Christ was doing. He said what was happening there, you know, from a kind of scientific or neuro linguistic programming perspective, if someone else can do it, so can we and if there’s an experiment that’s happening, right If he’s nothing, we can actually study him in that way, I think the true scientific method, but if you said a human being is doing something, and how can we do what he’s doing? You just have to say, Well, what are the principles he’s using? And when you realise like every single miracle is saying, You are forgiven, you are forgiven, then you have to ask, how much are you doing now with your clients? How many clients are you in helping to ensure right when crisis healing the blind, or you know, all these different miracles, he’s saying you’re forgiven, Your sins are forgiven this kind of like their hearing. This is, we’ll get into this with other slides. So hold that thought about forgiveness. And the reason I hesitated there is the idea of guilt. It’s a huge topic, we have some slides that will cover it. But this is the real essence of the work. It’s not just about your connection with your client. It’s not just making the relationship sacred. It’s not just helping me heal you. It’s not just your connection to source. It’s not even just guiding your claim to source because that’s a really nice idea. If you don’t move them through forgiveness, they can’t experience peace, joy, bliss, love and oneness. So that becomes a real focus of our work. All right,

 

Corey Benschop  1:01:01

All right, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Illuminated Mind podcast. If you haven’t done so already, make sure you subscribe to our podcast because we release a new episode every week. And also please leave us a rating and review on iTunes. It helps us get found by more listeners just like you. Plus, we’d love to see your feedback! Let us know if there are any topics or ideas that you’d like us to cover on this show. Finally, if you’re interested in pursuing hypnotherapy as a career for yourself, make sure you head over to our website https://www.instituteofhypnotherapy.com. We’ve got a lot of free resources, our blog, and conscious community classes there that you can check out, and every couple of months we’re starting a new certification course as well. So check out all of that at our website https://www.instituteofhypnotherapy.com. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, choose happiness my friends!