welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic. The show where practical mind power and mystical wisdom collide with humor and wild curiosity.

Yeah, we're not here to play it safe. I'm Cinthia Varkevisser, your resident spiritual shit disturber. I stir things up with mystic power and bold action.

And I'm Michelle Walters, coach and Hypnotherapist. I bring strategy and transformative hypnosis to help you turn subconscious blocks into unstoppable momentum.

Let's shake up your thinking, dive into your soul and make bold moves in your life.

We'll take you on a journey of breakthrough and aha moments, exploring spirit, business, love relationships and self expansion.

We're connecting you with your highest self and flipping fear into strength. So

buckle up. We're doing this one wild, transformative conversation at a time.

Let's go.

Hello, friends. I am Michelle Walters. I am the mind power. Part of the Mind Power Meets Mystic. equation. My dear partner, Cinthia, has the week off. I am taking today's episode to talk to you a little bit more about science. I want to help folks explore the question of what is really happening in your brain when hypnosis is going on. We're going to talk about a number of different things in this episode, but I assure you, there is now a scientific basis to hypnosis, and I want to help our listeners better understand it, so that you don't have to be afraid of it, and that you might be willing to explore with being in a hypnotic state for accomplishing some of your current or future objectives. So we're going to talk about a number of things, including three core topics, which are dissociation, absorption and suggestion. We're going to talk about brainwaves, and we're going to talk about functional, meta, functional, MRIs, FMRIs. So I think for those of you who know me, I'm kind of a geek at heart. I was a science major undergrad, and it's exciting and fun to be able to share some of this information with you. So hypnosis is simply put a natural focus state where attention Narrows and the mind becomes more open to helpful suggestions. In short, we're sort of taking one experience and pushing it out of the way and putting in a new thought pattern. People have known about hypnosis for 1000s of years. We didn't have a good idea of what it was and how it worked, but people have known for a long time that there's this special way of getting in touch with your inner self, by playing with your brainwave patterns and seeing ways to be able to affect what is in your subconscious. Being in a state of hypnosis is completely natural, and even if you're not aware of it, you do it all the time, every day, everybody goes through a state of being in a hypnagogic state, a state of being in a mini trance, essentially as you are falling asleep at night and when you're waking up in the morning. You're also in states of hypnosis, maybe when you're lost in a good book or watching a movie, or in a deep state of kind of autopilot and flow in an activity that you really love. It shows up all the time, and when we work with it in hypnotherapy, we're really just inducing this particular way of thinking as a means of getting to some of the benefits that it has these three core ideas, these three things that are affected when you are in a state of hypnosis. So research has proven out that there are these three things, dissociation, absorption and suggestion, which all happen in states of hypnosis. So dissociation is kind of like when your mind steps back and you can just be very engaged. It's a way of, kind of like forgetting a little bit about the connection with your body. It's being able to imagine that you would do things that maybe are on kind of the edge of your imagination, and this dissociation is part of what's helpful for using hypnosis for things like weight loss and things like smoking, where people are going into this state of trance and using. Having this belief that they could be a little different, they could imagine themselves a little less connected to something. And part of that imagination is part of what powers the change. The pillar of absorption is that, as you know, in your waking life, you've got all these things going on, right, like the dots behind my head you've got you're paying attention to. Is it cold? Is it wet? Am I tired? Is she talking too loud? Do I have to do something this afternoon? And so your brain is always kind of doing lots and lots of things at one time. Well, when you're in a state of hypnosis, it can feel really, relaxing, because you shut out all of that noise, and you just bring into a place where you like to focus on one thing. You stay very, very quiet and are just paying attention to a single concept. You are absorbed by it. And then the last sort of pillar, or main concept, of what happens in the state of hypnosis is that one becomes more suggestible. And suggestible does not mean control. Suggestible means you're kind of more open minded about things. You are more willing to do something new, or try to do something a little different than maybe you did it before or the last time, hypnosis isn't requiring deception. It's not that at all. It's really just sort of like, oh, well, you know, we usually have coffee on this side of the street, but how about we have coffee on that side of the street? And you might think, Oh, I don't usually do that, but I might be worth a try. That's kind of the idea of suggestion. And so these three things come together, the power of dissociation, the absorption and the suggestion all come together and work at the same time. And that's a large part of what makes hypnosis work. So what's happening in your brain? What's really going on? Well, there are multiple brain wave patterns that we can now look at, and we can see different brain wave patterns. And whereas I thought they all happen, your brain had just one brain wave pattern, apparently no you can have different brain wave patterns in from parts of your brain, just to make things a little more complex, but slowing it down, making it a little simpler. Four important brainwave patterns are beta, alpha, theta and delta. Beta is where you probably are right now. Beta is where you're thinking, listening. It's kind of where you are most of the time you're paying attention. In general, it's life. Life really alpha is a state of being very relaxed, kind of daydreamy. And then you've got two states that are really sleeping, states of brainwaves, and those are theta and delta. And theta is creativity, and it begins to get into memories and imagery. And delta is very deep sleep. When a person is in a state of hypnosis, they're moving from that beta, normal waking day state to the alpha state, and in that alpha state, their brainwave patterns change, and that's part of what creates this environment where your brain is more malleable, where you can be more receptive and make new and different changes. Hello, listeners. You have been listening to this fine episode of Mind Power Meets Mystic. c. And Cinthia and I have a few things we wanted to share. Cinthia,

well, I've got a couple of crazy, cool things that come up every month, and one is called strategic intuition for greater business success. This is great for people who want to use their intuition for a better communication with their families, their companies and community, and that's on third Thursdays. These are all virtual. And the other one I have is called the prosperity flow. Shift your space, shift your life, and that's on First Fridays. Has everything to do with your home and any other space that you want to make more vibrant. So that's what I've got going on. What do you have going on? My friend,

I have two different kinds of events I do every month. One I've been doing for years now. It's called nourish and flourish. Nourish and flourish is a online hypnosis experience, and it is always on a Friday and always at noon Pacific. Usually it's the second Friday, but it floats around, so the best way to find the date for it is to go to the classes page on my website. There's a link there, and you can either use it to just jump in, or you can go over to Eventbrite and sign up. The second event that I've started hosting this year is some marketing event. It's I have two different talks that I give for small businesses who want to learn more about how to do great in their marketing. And those dates and the classes are also available on my classes page. All of these that we're talking about are free, good listener, and we would love to have a chance to meet you and welcome you to one of our events. So for me, check the classes page and Cinthia, where can people find the details about your events?

That is also on my website and the classes page, but let's make sure that we'll have them in the show notes, so that it's even easier for our listeners.

Love it back to the show. So studies by modern scientists, including one of my favorites, Dr David Spiegel. He's an MD at Stanford, and one of the leading hypnosis researchers did has done lots of studies to better understand what's going on in the state of hypnosis. And let me clarify here, for anyone who's unclear, I talk about hypnosis, and I talk about hypnotherapy. Hypnosis is the state of being in this trance state. And you could be in this trance state when you're falling asleep or you're driving or reading a book, or you could be in this trance state while you're on a stage in a silly show put on by a stage hypnotist. Hypnotherapy is using this state for therapeutic purposes, for using it to overcome a bad habit or change it an outdated pattern of thinking. That's the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Okay, back to Dr David Spiegel. He did a study in about 10 years ago, in 2016 where he looked at what was going on in the brain of people who were in a hypnotized state versus people who were not in a hypnotized state. And the summary of that is that in the hypnotized state, those folks showed decreased activity in certain parts of their brain by kind of getting out of their own way, they're able to make their mind and brain open to these changes. And so basically, you're looking at a time where the brain becomes better at separating thoughts from feelings. Usually those things are pretty connected, but in in a state of hypnosis, they're a little further apart, and by making them a little further apart, we can lean into that to help persuade people to make the changes that they're trying to make. So you worry less, you focus more deeply. And it's it's clear from the research like this actually exists. It's not, maybe what we thought it was, which felt almost like magic because we didn't have any scientific explanations. So speaking of science, I want to take a couple of myths head on. One of those myths is that if I go into a state of hypnosis, I'll lose control, and maybe the hypnotherapist will tell me to do things I don't want to do. Well, that's not going to happen, because your subconscious mind is present to take care of you. That's the whole purpose. Your subconscious mind is there to keep your heart beating and keep you breathing and keep you sweating and keeping all those body systems in operations. In in fact, your subconscious mind is really on, turned on 24/7 in order to take care of you. You cannot lose control if somebody says something to you when you're in a state of hypnosis and you don't believe or it doesn't make sense, you just wake up, you pop out of it. The second myth I want to talk about is only weak minded people can be hypnotized. Well, that's not true. The reality is that hypnotizability is not specific to any particular person or type of person. I've had clients who were PhDs and medical doctors and engineers, and they're perfectly capable of doing this. It is not about being weak minded at all. It is partially a part of imagination and being able to see things in new and different ways. If you were to think that hypnosis would be like sleep, well, it is like sleep, but it is actually this super focused awareness, and we know that by the results from the FMRI machine. Yes. And then the last myth that comes up from time to time is hypnosis doesn't exist. It's a placebo. Well, it's kind of like a placebo, but it's not really, because placebos are always put out there when you are looking to compare like the truth versus the deception, right? So you're looking at two different things, and hypnosis doesn't have that characteristic. So why does it work? Well, it's kind of a combination of psychology and biology. So when you go into this state, into this special brainwave state, you can create new neural patterns and pathways, and by creating those new neural patterns and pathways, you're able to overcome all kinds of challenges that had been there in the beginning. The way that this works is through a number of different kinds of sessions. I have sessions with my clients where I bring them into a state of hypnosis, and we work through their questions and their ideas. And we also have sessions where we're going back to take a look at what are problematic things from their past, or where did this particular problem seem to come from, and how can we go back to that time and fix it and visit it? And I do this work with my clients a lot, another kind of work that I do with my clients a lot is teaching my clients how to go into a state of self hypnosis, where they can take themselves into this easy place of relaxation and being able to visualize what it is they're looking for. I have found that self hypnosis is so powerful that I strongly encourage my clients to do it between sessions to listen to recordings before they fall asleep, because if you're listening to the recording as you're falling asleep, we're taking advantage of that very special moment in time where you can go between being awake and being asleep, and have this moment where you're using those powers of absorption, dissociation and suggestion to overcome and to make the changes that you're looking for. It is such a powerful way of doing things. I decided I needed to build an app to help people create custom recordings that would enable them to work very specifically on the thought patterns that they wanted to overcome. I created an app called make my hip new it's not an app store, it's actually a URL. So you go to make my hypno.com M, a, k, e, m, y, h, y, p, n, o.com, and if you go to make my hypno.com you'll see some testimonials there from folks who've had recordings and worked with me, and you'll see that these recordings are making changes in people's lives. Sonia told me that, at first she said the recording just helped me to sleep better, but after two weeks, it kicked in, and now Sonia is out walking and dancing and doing the exercise that she's always wanted to get I heard from Frida that her recording helped her to get to the gym and start lifting weights. It doesn't just work for exercise and overeating sugar and food and that kind of a thing. It works for imposter syndrome. Nicole told me that it helped her to be able to give a big presentation, and she feels so much more confident and better about herself. And I know that it is connecting with my clients on an emotional level, because Holly, who bought a recording from me, told me it made her cry, and then it helped her find those peaceful moments to reconnect with herself and feel so much better. If you would like to try make, make my hypno.com there's a link in the show notes below, and I will recommend that you do it today. Prices will be going up in 2026 not a lot, but a little bit. And so why not produce your own recording now, so that you can have it, you will want to listen to your recording probably every other day for a couple of weeks and watch the changes come in. It's probably one of the easiest ways to make changes in your life without having to do much, just get a recording, put it on when you go to sleep and watch the changes roll in. If it doesn't happen like that, be sure to let me know. I want to make sure my recordings are top notch. And maybe it's a problem that it would be better if you had some one to one help. So that's my podcast today on the science of hypnosis. If you. Want to learn more about the science of hypnosis. I have a previous mind power meets mystic way back on episode 43 you might want to check that one out. It's it's a good episode too. Thanks for listening. Cinthia and I will be back next week. Bye, bye. You've been listening to Mind Power Meets Mystic.