#264 In this episode, Drake explored the practical applications and benefits of hypnosis in professional settings. He highlighted how hypnosis can effectively address emotional issues and enhance performance for athletes. Additionally, he emphasized the effectiveness of hypnotherapy, which utilizes hypnotic methods for therapeutic purposes, in helping individuals overcome past conditioning and limiting beliefs.

Drake underscores the significance of the hypnotic process in professional settings. He explained how hypnosis can assist individuals in visualizing themselves successfully performing specific tasks, particularly beneficial for athletes. Furthermore, hypnosis can help individuals overcome barriers and challenges rooted in past experiences or negative conditioning.

Overall, the episode emphasizes that hypnosis is widely utilized in professional settings, particularly in sports performance and therapy. It highlights the potential benefits of hypnosis in overcoming limitations, improving performance, and addressing emotional issues.

If you enjoyed this podcast, you may also like: Hypnotherapy & Regression-Based Practises To Release Emotional Pain & Trauma | Paul Aurand

          

---

About Drake: Drake Eastburn is a Board Certified Hypnotherapist (BCH), and Certified Instructor (CI) through the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH). Drake and his wife Lynsi are the co-founders the Eastburn Hypnotherapy Clinic and Eastburn Institute of Hypnotherapy. Drake is an adjunct faculty member of several hypnosis organizations, as well as Regis University and Colorado Free University.

With more than 40 years’ experience in the field of hypnotism, Drake maintains a thriving private practice with offices in the Denver Metro area. He works with clients globally via telephone, Zoom, and Skype. He has trained students to become Certified Hypnotherapists worldwide, and he offers abundant post-graduate and continuing education coursework for those who wish to specialize and/or broaden their practice.

Drake is the official hypnotist to the U.S. Olympic Cycling Team. One of the most prolific authors in contemporary hypnotism, Drake has written seven books on the subject, several of which are used in hypnotherapy trainings globally. His books include The Power of the Past (healing through regression hypnotherapy); Power Patter (a script book for hypnotherapists); The Therapeutic Hypnotist (become the best therapeutic hypnotist you can be); The Power of Suggestion—What Every Hypnotist Needs to Know; No Time to Waist—Powerful Hypnotic Weight Loss Secrets You NEED to Know, and the definitive work on his profession, What Is Hypnosis?

►Audio Version:

Key Points Discussed: 

• (00:00) – Unlock Your Subconscious Mind with Lucid Dreaming & Little-Known Hypnotherapy Techniques
• (01:50) – Hypnotherapy as a career.
• (07:46) – Working with Trichotillomania.
• (09:09) – Fear of being hypnotized.
• (13:18) – Repressing traumatic memories.
• (19:57) – Emotional release during hypnosis.
• (23:14) – Anxiety and living in the now.
• (27:00) – Overcoming depression and finding hope.
• (31:23) – Sense of exhilaration.
• (35:30) – Migraine relief techniques.
• (42:03) – Waking hypnosis.
• (44:07) – Lucid dreaming.
• (49:21) – Dreams and personal growth.
• (54:41) – Working with the subconscious.
• (58:11) – Hypnosis in professional settings.

 

How to Contact Drake Eastburn:
www.hypnodenver.com

 

About me:
My Instagram:

www.instagram.com/guyhlawrence/?hl=en

 

My website:

www.guylawrence.com.au
www.liveinflow.co

 

TRANSCRIPT

Guy (00:00):
Welcome to my podcast. This is Guy, of course, and today my guest is Drake Eastburn. Now, interestingly enough, I get pitched to pretty much daily for people to come on my podcast. Obviously, when you create a platform and you want to showcase people, more and more people reach out to want to be a part of it. And there was an agency that reached out with Drake and I instantly for whatever reason just was attracted to his work. And he is a hypnotherapist. And I’ve not really dived into the topic of hypnotherapy on the show before. So I decided let’s bring him on and have a chat. And he’s a top guy. I really enjoyed my conversation with him today. And we dive into the world of hypnotherapy a little bit about his journey as well. But there is lots of gold nuggets from this today. And I think things that actually we can action today that are applicable in our lives that we can move forward. So I have no doubt you’ll get a lot out of it. And of course, if you’re enjoying the shows, drop me an email, let me know, hit me up on Instagram, Guy H Lawrence, if you use Instagram, leave a comment, whatever it takes to help continue to get this work out there and connect with me because I get to do get to meet people in person on our one day workshops and our retreats, which is always nice when I meet a podcast listener in the flesh because we just send them out into cyberspace. And all I see is stats and downloads. So all helps as we continue to move forward. Anyway, much love from me. Let’s go over a Drake. Enjoy the show. Drake, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I’m fascinated to see where this conversation goes today. Just to open up the dialogue, if you were on an airplane right now, and a stranger asked you what you did for a living, what would you say?

Drake (01:38):
I’d probably say I have probably the best job in the world or one of them anyway. So I get paid to talk to people in a way that’s a privileged way, you know, that not not everybody gets to, but I’m a hypnotherapist and I work with all kinds of issues. So, you know, a lot of people, my clients, for instance, I’ll ask them, you know, what they do and go, well, I do X, Y, Z, and I hate every minute of the night, wake up Monday morning with a sick feeling in my stomach, you know, and it’s like, I never had that. To me, every day is an adventure. So maybe I’m an adventurous, I don’t know, but I like to take on anything that comes to the office because you never know, you know, you think somebody’s coming in to lose weight or stop smoking or something and then it ends up being something totally different altogether.

Guy (03:08):
Do you do you find like, because obviously, I think you’re like my 260 odd guests on this podcast, right? Over a period of time and I speak to all sorts of amazing people like yourself and but normally, the modalities they use is like, people come to them when they’ve run out of steam, when they’ve kind of run out of ideas. Is that what you find with?

Drake (03:37):
You know, yeah, and I write about that in one of my books, the therapeutic hypnotist. It’s like, a lot of times, I’m what you call the last resort because people tried all these other modalities and nothing worked. And some people think, well, I don’t know if I want to be the last resort, but no, that’s a good place to be. Because if all that other stuff didn’t work, then I’m what’s going to work, you know, because it’s, it’s something psychological, it’s something up there in the subconscious. And then that’s, that’s what I work with is the subconscious. And it’s amazing at times, you know, just what we can do. I mean, I, people go, Oh, well, somebody came to me or this or that, and they sent it to me or something, because I don’t know what to do with that. And I go, you know what, a lot of people came to me and I didn’t know what to do. But, you know, if you follow the principles of hypnosis, you can, you can help anybody, you know, I mean, as long as they’re psychologically stable, you know, I mean, we don’t want to work with somebody who’s, you know, having real psychotic episodes or something. But, you know, I’ll give you an example, because years ago, there was a town Trinidad, Colorado, which is down the far southern part of the state. And, well, it’s still there. But the what goes, what’s going on there is not. But at that time, there was a doctor there who was the first surgeon, I think maybe anywhere who was performing sex change operations. And a lot of people go, Oh, my God, that’s horrible. But, you know, people were getting some real help from this guy. And people were flocking down there, because that was the only place now you can pray, go down the street now and get that. But at that time, he was the guy who was doing it. And I was getting a number of these people to help them, you know, make this transition. Now, when I when it came to me, they’d already decided I mean, they already started hormone therapy or whatever might be involved in it, depending on what their situation was. But a lot of people, you know, they come in and, you know, I never took some class, so they talked to work with sex change and stuff like that. But if we apply the principles of hypnosis, we can help anybody. And some of these ones that come in that are unusual are some of the you know, those challenging ones are the ones that really stretch you as a hypnotist and really help you to evolve. I got really good at doing trick-a-tilla mania. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with what that is. But this is it’s a body focus, repetitive behavior. It’s kind of like biting your nails or something. But people pull their hair out. And, you know, I would get clients like that every once in a while. But one day, a gal came in. And she had trick-a-tilla mania. And she was 22, I think, at the time. And I looked at her, I go, boy, you know, you look like everything’s fine, you know. And then she pulled her wig off. And she had one little tuft of hair on her head and rest of her head she had plucked it bald. And she was the leader of a trick-a-tilla mania support group. Well, I helped her. She sent every member of her group in to see me. They all stopped pulling their hair. There was another group near Denver University. They came in to see me. They all stopped pulling. A group from Boulder and a group from Fort Collins. Yeah. And they all stopped pulling. And so it gave me a chance to really hone the skills in that area. Now I teach a class on working with those kinds of issues in deep state hypnosis. But those kind of opportunities come along. I’ve also been a hypnotist to the Olympic cycling team. I’ve worked with all the male Olympic cyclists and part of the female team. And I’ve worked with a lot of cyclists who go to the Tour de France. And cycling’s big down in your part of the world, isn’t it?

Guy (08:13):
Most sports are. They’re very sport fanatic here in Australia, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I got to ask you that, Drake, because we might as well go there now. How would you define hypnotherapy? Because I remember growing up as a kid, right? And the only time I’d ever heard of a hypnotist was on TV. And I’ll never forget. What’s his name? Was it Dennis McKenna or McKenna? Oh, McKenna. Yeah. McKenna. I can’t remember his first name. Paul McKenna. Paul McKenna. Sorry. Dennis McKenna is the yeah. Anyway, I’ve had him on the podcast. No, Paul McKenna. That’s right. And it was all very staged. And he had to get somebody on stage. The next thing you know, he’s walking around like a chicken on the stage or something like that. I’ve always had this imprint. Do you find people are fearful of being hypnotized at first?

Drake (09:09):
Well, there is a lot of that. There is a lot of that. Most of the people who come into my office have already made a determination, you know, we’re going to do this and this is going to help. Or maybe they were referred by somebody who came to me before and had good success with it. So that helps in the hypnotic process. But hypnotherapy is the use of hypnotic methods to help with the more emotional sorts of issues that people have. So if I’m working with an athlete, it may or may not enter into hypnotherapy, maybe more in the area of hypnotism. Maybe I’m just helping them to imagine themselves doing a certain thing correctly or whatever. But all our times, the therapy does enter into it too, because there may be some past conditioning or something that a person’s had where now they’ve run up against a a stop. And it’s kind of my thing to help them get past that. Maybe early in their childhood somebody told them they’d never amount to anything and they get real close to that finish line. Somebody else always kind of breaks the tape first. So it’s that sort of thing. Little things like that. When I work with professional athletes, you know, I tell them right off the bat, I’m not going to make you a, I don’t want to say professional athlete, but that’ll work. I go, you are already there. What I’m going to do is going to give you that edge that puts you over the line first or, you know, like that. And that’s what we really work on. Now with other people like the golfer down the street, it may be more basic kind of stuff, but it all depends. And I never have anything laid out for a client. What happens is they come in and we talk, we do a thorough intake. And then I begin to take that information and create a session based on that. So it’s not the same thing I do with everybody else. People go, well, what do you do with the athletes? And I go, you know, it’s, I don’t know until they get in here and we find out what’s going on.

Guy (11:38):
Yeah. So what about people with trauma? Cause I would imagine there’d be a lot of people walking through your door that the habits and the things that are manifested probably root back to some childhood trauma. Yeah. Very, very much so. What would be the key principles then of hypnotherapy that allow like, what is it like a regression? You take people back to go back to the instance. Okay. Yeah. How does it work?

Drake (12:04):
Sometimes it is. And yeah, just yesterday that was the day before I had a gal and she’s had trauma of various sorts. And she also had repressed memory, which is not uncommon when people had a lot of trauma. They repressed the memory of it because it’s painful and she wanted to recall what that was. And we have uncovered some of it. There’s going to be more, but if a person doesn’t remember what happened, but they know that something happened, then how do we get there? Well, I look at things like this. Okay. What is going on in your life that you might be avoiding? Because if we’re repressing a memory, the subconscious is still holding that in there. So what tends to happen is that person who’s repressing is also limiting their life in some way. Avoidance is very common. Well, I don’t go to the shopping mall or I don’t go on mountain roads or I don’t do this or that. So those are telling us where that might be. And then how are you feeling when you go to the shopping mall? What kind of feelings does that bring up? Because the feelings will tell us what happened, you know, because we might not have an exact memory of it. And some of these memories might even be pre-verbal. So, but the emotion, it was there at the beginning and that will help take us back to that time when this thing happened. And through the process, it’s as if that thing never happened at all. We create a new memory, so to speak, based on their input. And it’s a product of cognitive dissonance. The mind wants to go from a dissonant state to a consonant state. In hypnosis, this is magnified many times over. So that thing that was traumatic, we really want to get out of that and we really want to move to a more consonant state. So we accept the new image as if it was real and that’s the way we begin to operate our life. Could you explain that, the dissonant state, the consonant state for people? Yeah, so this is a theory brought up by Leon Festiger in the mid-50s. But if we’re in a dissonant state, and we could call that a stressful state, our subconscious wants to do something to get out of that. And we will do a lot of things to get out of that. We might do some simple things like we might have a cocktail to help get us out of that dissonant state, or we might eat a bunch of food or whatever. But we do something to get out of it. We might join a cult or accept a belief system that helps us to feel more safe and comfortable, rather or not. That’s really a good thing or not. It doesn’t matter what the mind will travel towards that consonant state. We see this in politics, people’s beliefs right now, because they’re accepting some things as reality that aren’t reality at all. But it fits into their narrative, so it’s more comfortable than to question what they are thinking and doing.

Guy (15:46):
So it’s almost the case of then, instead of seeing for what it is and wanting to get to the truth, we’re literally just doing something to escape the pain or the stress that we’re in. And we accept, believe and surrender into that, just to move out of that.

Drake (15:58):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I have clients that were in a very dysfunctional family situation. There was trauma and like that. And this happens a lot in the psychology. But the person who does the work and begins to recognize what went on, tends to get rejected by the rest of the family because they would rather stay in their denial than to admit what went on there. Because we’ve created this whole other reality of what our life is about. And that’s the one we want to live by, because it’s more comfortable than facing the truth. We do this historically. Those who win the battles write the history books in a way that makes them look more favorable. And that way we can kind of live with our conscience, but it’s not reality either. But that’s kind of the way we do.

Guy (16:59):
Yeah. So bringing it back to say somebody then that’s had an experience or trauma as a child and avoiding that memory, then you say they’re limiting their life in certain areas, like you say, that particular feeling. So is that then avoiding the, we’re just trying to remove ourselves from that stressful state that the body is holding continuously?

Drake (17:24):
Yeah. And rather we realize it or not, we’re not expanding out in the world like we could be. If we weren’t dealing with that trauma, even if it’s back in our subconscious where we’re not consciously thinking about it all the time, it’s still slowing us down. It’s still keeping us from expanding out of the world. Or we have what I would call a narrow homeostasis where we have a comfort zone that we live in. I have clients with agoraphobia. In fact, I got a new one coming up, but people who have agoraphobia, it’s really a fear of expanding into the world. And in really serious cases, people won’t leave their homes. I don’t like that. I’ve actually had to go to people’s homes to work with them, which in hypnosis, we don’t consider this a good thing because you don’t want to work with somebody in their place of comfort and power. But sometimes you have to in a case like that. And I got one of these coming up that can’t leave. In the worst case I ever saw was my wife and I were watching a case of this on a TV show. And this guy had locked himself in the bathroom and he’d been in there for months, as far as I can recall. And his wife had to slip food under the bottom of the door. So I’m guessing he ate a lot of pizza and flatbread. And I didn’t get to see the end of it, but some psychologists had come in to help deal with it. And I don’t know exactly how it ended up. But my wife says, well, what if I locked myself in there? I said, I’d kick the door. And that’s part of it. A lot of times these emotional issues require an enabler, somebody that helps us to keep that going. It’s like some of these really obese people that can’t even get out of bed, they’re there because somebody’s helping them. They’re enabling them to stay there. They’re bringing them the bags of donuts and the Kentucky chicken and all that kind of stuff. And there’s usually a payoff for them to do that.

Guy (19:50):
Wow. I’m just curious, because I’m just kind of tying it up to my line of work here, because we hold space for people to meditate and we work with sound and the body. When you’re taking somebody through hypnosis, are they semi-conscious when it’s happening? And also, when you get to, let’s say, the root or wherever they guide themselves to, is there an emotional release sometimes?

Drake (20:18):
Oh, yes. Yes, it can be very cathartic at times. Yeah. For hypnosis to occur, as I write about in some of my books, is there needs to be just the tiniest bit of conscious mind there. It seems. And I’m willing to be wrong, but so far it’s proven out. It’s hard to measure those things. It’s hard to say, well, there’s empirical evidence that backs it up. But I think there’s always just at least the tiniest bit of consciousness is there. Now, a lot of the stuff that I do, people are, I do a lot of work in a really deep hypnosis and there’s no interaction with the client as far as they’re not speaking. We’re not speaking to each other like that. But I found this to be very effective for like the trichotillomania, for instance. But also the thing that shows up in my office the most these days is anxiety, anxiety and panic attacks. And it’s just an epidemic. I mean, 80% of the clients, maybe more, they’re coming to me now, it’s anxiety and or anxiety related things. It used to be I’d get three or four smokers a day. Not so much anymore. Now it’s anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. It’s the new smoking habit. I think it’s a reflection of our culture and the world. We’re all tensed up. And it doesn’t matter where you fall in that. It’s a stressful situation.

Guy (22:05):
The stats, I reckon, would be staggering. I think I read 800 million people suffer anxiety every year. It has to be more.

Drake (22:21):
Yeah. You know, we get to a point where people’s coping strategies begin to break down. And then all of a sudden, we need help. I’m thrilled I can be there to help these people. And in a way that is usually very easy. There are times when I might have to do some really deep regression or something like that. But a lot of times it’s just me sitting there in these deep states and talking to the subconscious mind and getting it to adjust to that. There’s a different way of doing things or easier way. You know, we get on a neural pathway and we keep heading down that pathway and it doesn’t work. And we lose awareness of the fact that there might be another way to feel and do and to operate in the world. Anxiety is about the future. And it’s about stuff that might never happen in the future. But it really ruins our experience of the now. And well, if you’re in meditation and stuff, that’s probably a lot of what you’re doing is getting into the now, getting out of that state. But people just aren’t doing that enough.

Guy (23:40):
And yeah, with that anxiety then, because it does feel like you say they kind of go down this neural pathway that they just keep reconditioning that response, reconditioning that response and that becomes their default life of how they know it. Where does hypnotherapy, how do you alleviate that? Is it just by almost bringing awareness to the subconscious and that feeling or do you still find there’s a trauma at the base of that anxiety as well?

Drake (24:04):
Sure. Part of it is just giving them an experience of what it feels like to go down some other path. You know, I use this analogy a lot. And that is this, if every morning I get up and I step out on the front porch and I head down this path, and it could be, and it’s the same path I’ve headed down every day, and it could be the path of a smoke or it could be anxiety, it could be any number of things, but that’s the way I keep going. And I’ll continue doing that because that’s what subconscious likes to do. It does what I call it takes the path of least resistance. And it doesn’t matter if that path is really good for us or not. It’s the easy way. That’s the way we’ve done. So one morning I get up and I step out on the porch and there’s been a huge snowstorm and there’s no sign of the path except over here in the night to the help of our local hypnotist, we dug a new path and now that becomes the path of least resistance. And it’s a new healthier path. And a lot of times it’s pretty easy to get onto that path because that path starts working for us a lot better than the other one. But that’s the mind, the subconscious, it likes to do the same thing over and over. And it doesn’t care if that’s good for you or not. You know, if you have a habit of going to the gym five times a week, that’s a path that’s going to work in your favor. But if you have a habit of going to the fast food every day, subconscious doesn’t care. That’s not going to work for you over the long haul, but the subconscious doesn’t care because it’s just going to do the same thing over and over. And by giving it something new, it’s like people who have depression. You know, if people have been depressed for a long time, they lose their model for how it feels to be in joy, you know, and somebody can come to me and I can go, oh, you feel great. You feel wonderful. Life is good. That doesn’t do anything for them. But if I take them into an experience of joy, now they have a model, another path that they can start heading down. And, you know, sometimes I think people will get that with medication. But generally, if somebody stops taking the medication, they end up being depressed again. So they didn’t get cured of anything. But I think there are times when maybe a medication might help them step into a new path. But mostly it’s up here where we got to make that switch. And in my own experience with that, when I was in junior high and high school, I was very depressed. I was in a very dysfunctional family. They didn’t recognize anything less serious than a compound fracture. And so I was not going to get any help. And one day I just go, I’m done with this. I’m going to start feeling better. And I made that determination. And I distanced myself from the negative elements, which was basically my family and school. I don’t recommend people leave school. But for me, every day when I went to school, it was just a reflection of what a failure I was. And by stepping away from that, and recreating my life, I walked away from the depression, turned my life around, and it’s gone fine. And there’s been a few times when I had a spat of depression, but I knew in that moment that I could turn it off like a light switch. But I would allow myself to experience that for a finite sort of time. And then because I, you know, the shadow, it needs to express itself in some way. And if we try to repress it, it’s going to squirt out somewhere. So at least, you know, I’ll go, okay, we’ll let this happen. You know, I get creative in these times, do some of my best writing and whatever. So, you know, it’s like, it’s not necessarily the demon that we think about. If it goes on for long, if people stay depressed very long, then it’s hard to get back out of it.

Guy (28:33):
You’ve opened a couple of loops in my head there. They go off into two different, because I want to dig into your past a little bit, because I’m curious about that. But before we do, then, if we create, let’s say that moment of joy, that moment of love that they’ve never experienced, because they’ve been practicing being depressed unconsciously or anxious for the last 20 years, say, and have no reference point anymore. Mm hmm. When we get them on that path in that moment, how do you find we keep them on the path initially to make sure that path is then well-worn, well-traveled, and we keep going on that path? Because that’s something we experience and witness in our retreats and things we do. Because the longer we have someone, the more entrenched we can get that path going, if you like, so we can really feel those things.

Drake (29:29):
Well, you’re right. The more we experience that joy or whatever it is, the more that’s become our path of least resistance, and we’ll keep heading down that way. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to break that cycle. There are things we can do, even in a more conscious state, that will help to break that. I’m using the example of depression, but it could be just stress in general or sorts of things like that. Doing things that are out of character for us, like jumping out of airplanes or shooting the Whitewater Rapids or bungee jumping or going to the amusement park. When you’re shooting down that roller coaster ride and you’re hearts up here and you’re screaming like a little girl, you’re not depressed. And you’re not thinking about that crappy job you got or any of that stuff. That’s what we call an opposing stress. And I’m a big fan of opposing stresses because opposing stresses knock us out of our normal mindset. And we’re not thinking about that crappy job or boss or that bad check that I just wrote or those kinds of things, because now we’re in a whole different state altogether. Opposing stresses put a stress on our system, but opposing stresses tend to have a very short lifespan and leave us with a sense of exhilaration. When you’re shooting through the Whitewater Rapids, you’re not worried about the car payment. You’re not worried about the kids college fund or anything. You’re just trying to keep your rump from drowning. And when you make it, you’re left with this sense of exhilaration, which is a lot better than the desperation you went in with.

Guy (31:36):
Yeah. Gosh, you’re not wrong. I actually remember when I was in my 20s, because I was definitely in an unhappy place. And I went skydiving. And I did a skydive for the first time and I was chewing on it all week. Once I booked it in, I was terrified. It became all consuming. And I did this tandem skydive. And I think we free-falled for 55 seconds. It was a big jump. And I’ll never forget the way I felt after that day. It was just incredible. It sat with me ever since. The sheer joy and rush that you can have from life was quite exhilarating.

Drake (32:23):
That’s great. And that’s the sort of thing that really helps us to expand and broaden that homeostasis. So many people have created a comfort zone that they don’t want to venture out of. But when we do that, we are limiting our experience of life, of the world around us. And it’s, yeah, I’m not saying you should go out there and do things necessarily. But I’m not saying don’t do it either. But the more we do things like that, the more… Many years ago, I did the Fire Walk experience with Tony Robbins. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, I’ve done it. Yeah. I had such a blast doing that. And I walked into… It was a big hotel room, conference room. When I walked in there, I was ready. I could have jumped in the fire right then and there and gone. But now I’ve got to wait for all these other people to catch up. Because… But it was just a real fun experience. And people go, oh, well, that’s hokey or whatever. Go walk across there. You think you won’t get burned? Go ahead and try it.

Guy (33:44):
Exactly. So was it your own depression that led you into hypnotherapy? Did you find it impactful for you back then?

Drake (33:52):
What really happened was in the early 70s, I was looking at doing some personal growth type of stuff. And I did the Silva method. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. The Silva method? Yeah. Yeah. Funnily enough, it came up on a podcast a few weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, Jose Silva had this stuff and it was all… It helped to develop… It was hypnosis. He didn’t want to call it hypnosis because he thought hypnosis had a bad connotation. So he called it Silva mind control. Well, mind control wasn’t all that good of a connotation either. But anyway, there was a lot of stuff of developing psychic abilities and healing and all kinds of stuff. But it was all hypnotic stuff. And I’ve used… Still used those methods. But at the time, I was a migraine sufferer and I used hypnosis methods to get rid of the migraines. Never had a migraine since. And I’ve used the hypnosis to get rid of… Help people get rid of their migraines. And the methods that I use now are like a zillion times faster than what I was doing back then. In fact, I’ll give you a little story. I was teaching a class and this one gal was from Quincy, Illinois, and she’s got a clinic up there. But I was teaching the class. Sometimes you can look at somebody and go, oh, that person’s got a migraine. And I said, do you have a migraine? And she goes, yeah. And I says, you want me to get rid of it? And she goes, oh, yeah. No, I don’t get rid of anything. They get rid of it. But by saying, do you want me to get rid of it? I’m letting them give it up, letting them release it. Yeah, you can have it. I don’t want this. And she sat down in the chair while everybody watched. And I didn’t work with her five minutes. Done. I ran into her two or three years later. I ran into her at a convention and she comes up to me and she goes, you know, since you did that thing with the migraine, I never had a migraine. It’s like, yeah, it can be that easy.

Guy (36:07):
Wow. Wow. So let’s say take the migraine, for instance. Let me just, I’m just, I’m just, I’m just becoming the curious explorer here. But what would you do in that instance in those five minutes? Do you just get her into the subconscious, to the root?

Drake (36:29):
You know what? I barely do any kind of induction or anything. I just haven’t sat down kind of chill a little bit. And I take them through a process, which is basically increasing the migraine. I make the migraine worse. And then we come back down. Well, you think, well, what the heck’s that going to do? But what the mind is learning, if I can turn it up, I can turn it down. And pretty, and pretty soon now the subconscious realizes it can control this. And also what’s the need of this thing if I can shut it off, you know, now with migraines, there is often what we call secondary gain. The person may be using these migraines to manipulate their world. Like, God, I don’t want to go to that party Saturday night. So, migraine, or I don’t want to sleep with that fat, disgusting husband, migraine, you know, so we use these things to manipulate the world. And so sometimes we have to work on what is that secondary gain. But for the most part, boom, they go away pretty quickly.

Guy (37:47):
Yeah, got it. That’s amazing. Amazing. What do you, how would you explain that? Because you got me thinking with the silver method, right? And then you got hypnotherapy, you got meditation. I’ve heard the silver method kind of been branched off into I think alpha brainwave training. I’ve seen the healing, you know, you get all these different modalities. And even if you just broke it down to meditation and hypnotherapy, what would you say would be the differences and where the crossovers are?

Drake (38:12):
Okay, so the difference is in semantics. They all really are under the banner of hypnosis. Now it’s about application. How are we taking these brainwave frequencies and so forth and putting them to your use? You know, if I sit here, if I use meditation beads or something, that’s one way that I can put myself into a trance. Or I could use counting. I could do a lot of things that would put me into that trance. That’s what we call a trance loop. My brain. But anyway, anytime we use counting, we use the beads or mantra. You know, we’re using a trance generating loop is what I’m trying to say, which brings the mind in. You know, people are always concerned, well, I try to meditate and the thoughts come in, you know, and partly by focusing on the beads or the counting of the mantra or whatever, it keeps bringing the mind back around. In hypnosis, we don’t have to worry about that. Your mind can wander around, but I’m out here guiding the thing along. I’m talking to your subconscious and whether it’s maybe feels distracted doesn’t matter because I’m still slipping in the suggestions or whatever. So it doesn’t really matter. It’s all about application. And I write about this in my latest version of what is hypnosis. And I talk about the application theory of hypnosis because there’s all these different definitions of hypnosis, and they’re all really pretty not accurate at all. But everybody wants a nice little concise statement. This is what hypnosis is, but it doesn’t fit into some nice little neat compartment where we can trap it there. And people have tried to do that over and over and they’ve given it definitions like, well, it’s a relaxed state or a profoundly relaxed state, or it’s a state of hyper awareness, or it’s a state of heightened suggestibility. And all of these things are really observations of qualities that we experience while we are in hypnosis. So if it’s a quality of hypnosis, it cannot be the definition of hypnosis because hypnosis is this other thing. And that’s why I say hypnosis is about application, meaning has something occurred that creates a certain hypnotic response. Now, for instance, the application might be me hypnotizing, having somebody enter the hypnotic state, and the result is their headache is gone. So it can be pretty obvious what happened, but it’s not always so obvious, because we can get hypnotized for so many reasons. And the outcome might not be as obvious, but the outcome may be something just as simple as we feel a little more relaxed or whatever. And but it’s still there. It’s some application has occurred and some result as it has occurred.

Guy (41:37):
Got it. So what about the millions of people just sitting there watching the news?

Drake (41:46):
Yeah, my advice is don’t do that. Yeah, we’re being hypnotized all the time. And I’m working on a new book about waking hypnosis. And that’s part of it. We are subjected to hypnosis all the time. And people don’t they’re afraid to come to a hypnotist. Don’t be afraid of me be afraid of all the messages that you’re getting out there through advertising and all that. When I did the Selva method, one of the first things they told us was don’t watch TV, or don’t watch the news and don’t read newspapers. And I took that to heart. And people go, Well, how do you know what’s going on in the world? And I go, how do you not know? I mean, especially in this day and age, you can’t turn on your computer or anything without getting some kind of notice and people are yik yakking on Facebook and everything. It’s hard to and and most of this stuff is not pleasant. You know, it’s all these horrible things that are going on. It’s no wonder. I got a profession because people are anxiety.

Guy (42:54):
It’s crazy. Hey, like, you know, many years ago, I remember growing up, you’d be exposed, I’d be exposed to the news at 6pm at night. I think it was like, and it was just once a day. And even then, you know, as a kid, you don’t take it on board kind of thing. But now it’s 24 hours every you can just tap in and people love talking about it, you know, and reaffirming the fear that they’re hearing.

Drake (43:19):
It’s exactly right. And fear is a big motivator. You know, the TV stations use fear, you know, go, Oh, something’s horrible is going to happen. Tune in at nine to get the details. Well, now you can’t sleep, you got to watch the news because what’s going to happen if I close my eyes and I don’t know. But advertisement does the same thing. They create something is wrong with the world and their product is going to solve it. And, and and that’s the the cognitive dissonance stuff. They create a problem. If we don’t already have one, they create one and then we look for a solution, which is buying their product. Basically, the world is a crazy place.

Guy (44:00):
I know, I know. I want to touch on one more topic. We’ve covered a lot of ground already. Time is flying. It’s me. Lucid dreaming. Yeah. Why lucid dreaming? What like and where’s the crossover? Because I’ve heard it come up in many different areas of it. Yeah, this kind of work.

Drake (44:30):
You bet. And I got involved in lucid dreaming in the early 90s. And I read some stuff by Steven LeBerge. And he had a book out called lucid dreaming. And I think it came out in the 80s. And now he has in 1990, kind of another one, which is making use of lucid dreaming. That’s not the exact title, but it’s like that. But I was reading his stuff. And he said, if you want to experience lucid dreaming, he says, when you find yourself in a dream, look at your hands. He says, now, it could take a long time before you actually perfect this and it starts to work. So I went to bed that night. I started dreaming. I look at my hands. Boom, I’m off and running. But once you look at your hands, you can begin to control the dream. And which is interesting in and of itself. But as I began practicing that, and you know, once you start doing it, you know, and in this other book, what’s it called, Experiencing Lucid Dreaming or something like that, gosh, it’s sitting over there. But that’s okay. But he actually gives you more techniques on how to use it in a beneficial way program. You know, maybe getting rid of anxiety would be one of those things. But what I began to realize as I was doing lucid dreaming was it wasn’t just that I was controlling these dreams or taking them in a different direction, but I was actually doing therapy. Because what you’re doing is if you’re taking control of your dreams, you’re taking control of your subconscious that it can take control in other situations in your life. And I remember laying there in bed many times and I go, oh, I’m doing therapy on myself. I’m not even having to pay for this. You know what that’s like. But that was a benefit that that wasn’t brought out there initially. But now with this other book, he actually gives you a little bit of a lesson. Now with this other book, he actually has different exercises and how to pursue different things and various ways of entering into lucid dreams. I can give you like the short course is as you’re going off to bed at night, especially if you’re a little dreamy drowsy as you do it and tell yourself you’re going to control this. You’re going to go do lucid dream. You’re going to look at your hands. You’d be surprised how easily your subconscious would likely go along with that. Also tell yourself what kind of dreams you’re going to have. You know, as we’re falling off to sleep, we go through what is called the hypnagogic state. And this is a state of hypnosis that we enter into as we fall asleep. Everybody does it naturally. And that’s a good time to kind of program your subconscious mind. Give yourself some positive suggestions or whatever. I always create some positive images, you know, like being out camping or, you know, having an, we want to get a little farm. And so my mom, my wife says, oh, you can’t don’t call it a farm. It’s an estate. Okay, okay. It’s an estate. Sounds better. So anyway, I imagine that happening being on property and things like that. So I go into the dream states with a positive thing. But dreams are a way that our subconscious communicates to us. And if we have repeating themes in our dreams, the subconscious is saying, hey, pay attention to this. This is something that you should be looking at. Now, if we have nightmares, the subconscious is saying, hey, pay fricking attention. You know, this is big deal. And until we, we listen to the metaphor of those dreams, though, I will just keep going. And we need to pay attention. I know when I was married to my ex-wife long time ago, I kept having dreams of, you know, I was trying to escape, but my feet were like stuck or heavy and, you know, I couldn’t get away. And then that that went on for quite a while. And then when we split those dreams stopped, you know, because I had taken control and I was free and I could move ahead. I like my dreams. Some people don’t like dreaming, you know, maybe it’s because there’s still stuff they haven’t been dealing with. But my dreams are all about adventures. I was, you know, I don’t always remember them all, but I like them. People who say, well, I don’t remember my dreams, it’s usually because we wake up too quickly. You know, if the alarm goes off and we hit the floor, run in or whatever, if you wake up more naturally, there’s a better chance you’ll recall some of those. And as we wake up, we go through a hypnopompic state, which we are again, the subconscious is very suggestible. So it’s a good time to get some positive suggestions. I’ve thought, you know, I need to create an app or something for your alarm so that I’ll come on and tell you some nice things instead of just alarm going off and you jolting you out of bed. But it’s one reason we don’t want to go to bed watching the news and or reading the newspaper or horror novel or something like that, because you’re filling your subconscious with all that negative stuff. And it’s going to churn that. Also, another good thing to do is as you’re getting ready to go off to sleep, if you have any business that needs to be taken care of, like phone calls you need to make appointments, you need to set, you know, take some time before you fall off to sleep, write it down on a notepad or in your day timer or whatever, what things you need to do and when you’re going to do them. Otherwise, you’ll go to bed and your subconscious will be churning all this business stuff and we don’t need that. No, we don’t. I’ve been guilty of that a few times, that one. So essentially then lucid dreaming can be a form of healing and self-hypnosis. It is. That’s a good point. And that’s what I said is, if we are controlling the dream through lucid dreaming, then there must be just at least this much of conscious mind there to control the dream. So now it becomes a form of self-hypnosis. So that’s what we’re doing. And it’s great. I mean, it’s perfect because we can, you know, the best definition I have found of sleep is a total suspension of conscious awareness. So in lucid dreaming, we don’t have a total suspension of conscious awareness because we’re controlling the dream. So it is a state of self-hypnosis is what’s going on. And that’s good. Maybe we learn from that, that we can use that tool anytime we want.

Guy (52:47):
Yeah. It’s fascinating. Because I actually woke up this morning, I eased into my morning, but I had a vivid dream last night and it was very vivid. And I was thinking now, and even researching you yesterday, I heard you say, look at your hands, right? But I’m kicking myself because I didn’t do it because I was trying to land this small airplane last night. And somebody was teaching me how to land the plane. And I still have no idea what the significance of that is. But it was very prominent and very real. And I can still imagine all the detail now. So I find those fascinating. And it’d been interesting to see if I’d looked at my hands and took control of that dream.

Drake (53:31):
You know, after you’ve done it a bit, it’ll come pretty natural. You don’t even have to worry about looking at your hands, but you need to get to a place where it gets real natural to just take control of the dream and head it in the direction that you want. It’s good to tell yourself what kind of dreams you want at night too. Well, I’m going to dream about my new home or whatever. And amazingly, the subconscious is pretty good at cooperating with those kinds of things.

Guy (54:04):
Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. So just to wrap the podcast up today, Drake, we’re nearly hitting an hour, which is amazing. What can somebody do now in their own home or listening to this just to explore the ideas of hypnosis? Obviously, they can come and see you and go deeper. But is there anything that you, the kind of little practices you have or do just to kind of work with the subconscious a little bit?

Drake (54:36):
Easy place to start is, like I said, as you’re drifting off to sleep at night, spend a little time giving yourself some positive suggestions. Actually, there’s some of those on my website don’t cost anything. People can just download them for nothing. And that would be a good step in the right direction. Emil Cuey was a famous hypnotist back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He’s what they call the father of conditioned conditioning or let’s say that quite right. But uh, he was really big on these affirmations. And sometimes it’d be nothing but every day in every way. I am better and better now. And he said that is really all you need to know. It doesn’t matter what necessarily you want to change. But if you just say every day in every way, I am better and better. The subconscious kind of knows where to go with that. You don’t have to say every day in every way, my hair is growing or every day in every way, my eyesight is better, because the subconscious kind of knows where to go. Now you can be more specific and like that. You have to be kind of careful how you formulate those affirmations because people know what they want, but they don’t always know how to ask for it. You know, so that the subconscious receives it. And in my book, The Power of Suggestion, it talks a lot about how to formulate suggestion so that the subconscious will. You never want to talk in terms of what you don’t want, you know, people will, well, I don’t want to be fat. Well, that doesn’t help anything, because you’ll, you’ll keep not wanting to be bad. It’s not going to change. But something like, I enjoy having a slim body or I enjoy the health benefits of a lean body or something like that is the subconscious is going to be more receptive to that than it would be to some other suggestions. So it’s important we kind of learn how we, because we talk to our subconscious all the time, but it’s like, what is it that we’re saying to the subconscious that’s important, you know?

Guy (57:08):
Totally. And where’s the best place to send everyone if they want to grab that, your website? Okay. hypnodenver.com. hypnodenver.com. Beautiful. The links will be in the show notes for everyone. Anyway, to come and check it. Because you do, you do online as well.

Drake (57:27):
Yes, Zoom sessions and like that.

Guy (57:30):
Yeah, easy. It can be reached all around the world like we are this morning. Hey, Drake.

Drake (57:35):
It’s amazing. You know, I teach classes and stuff and some people are in Australia or Germany or wherever, you know, and it’s a different world we’re living in these days.

Guy (57:46):
Yeah, totally, totally. Well, I have no doubt people will come and explore you after listening to this today. That’s for sure. We’ll get a few coming across. One question to wrap up the podcast, Drake, and that is with everything we’ve covered today, what would you like to leave the listeners to ponder on?

Drake (58:04):
Yeah. Well, you know, realize that hypnosis is, it’s everywhere. It’s not something. Well, there are times it’s something to be feared, but not not in a professional setting. And, and the more we know about hypnosis, we can make positive use of it. And so, you know, this book, What is Hypnosis? Really, that would tell people a lot, you know, get them in a feel for it and understand that it’s something we can, we can make good use of and not be feared.

Guy (58:42):
Yeah, beautiful, Drake. Thanks for coming on the podcast, man. It’s been a pleasure listening, listening to you share all your wisdom today. It’s the first time I’ve really dived into hypnosis on the show. So it’s been a great conversation. Thank you for coming on. Great. It’s been a pleasure. You’re very welcome, mate. Thank you. Thank you.