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How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights
Hypnosis as a Career: Inside the Job of a Professional Hypnotherapist
00:38:20
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- [00:04]
A
You know, Tiger woods used hypnosis for his focus. Mike Tyson used hypnosis for his focus. Even the Chicago bulls in the 90s. It was guided meditation. But guided meditation is a form of hypnosis.
- [00:17]
B
Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make? I'm your host, Mira Vozeri. What if someone could change the way your brain thinks without medication or use of therapy? Today's guest is Tommy G. Rolando, a professional hypnotist with 20 years experience both as a hypnotherapist and a stage performer. We're going to unpack how hypnosis works, what it can actually do, and whether this unusual profession can really make a living. Let's turn to Tommy and find out. First of all, thank you so much for willing to participate and come on the show. I really appreciate it. I'm so excited because I'm so curious about hypnosis. So why won't we start with you telling me how you first introduced to hypnosis?
- [01:07]
A
My first experience with hypnosis was seeing hypnosis shows at my high school, actually. Kevin Lapine is a. He's a very well known hypnotist in Las Vegas. He went to my high school. He graduated years before I did, but he would come back and do fundraiser shows for the, like, the drama and some of that. And I always thought it was staged. I always thought it was fake. It was like the drama kids, right? The kids who were in theater already, they were the ones who would go up and volunteer. And to me, that was like, oh, yeah, I can see why they're doing that, because they're the ones who are good actors and stuff and so whatever. So I thought it was all fake. And then I found a friend of mine I found out was a hypnotist and he had been doing shows and I basically called him a con artist in a nicer way. But I was like, oh, you're one of those. Okay, okay, I see how it is. And he goes, well, Tommy, are you willing to be wrong? And I was like, sure, hypnotize my buddy over here. So he hypnotized my friend Andrew. Mike Brody was the hypnotist's name. Great guy. So he hypnotized my friend Andrew. And Andrew came out of it going, holy crap, can I learn this? Can I, like, help you, like, with something? Can I, can I pay you in some way? Like, I'm really good with computers and all that kind. So Mike's going, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll work something out. And so I was the test subject. And it worked. I remember he hypnotized me when I sat down. He goes, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. He hypnotizes me. He goes, now at the count of three, you're gonna sit up and you're gonna say bow wow. Automatically without thinking, it's just gonna come out of your mouth. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, that's dumb. Why would I do that? Like, that's just dumb. He snaps his fingers. I sit up and I'm like looking at him. He goes, tommy, how you feeling? And out of my mouth spills bow wow. And I was like, oh, man.
- [02:51]
B
Oh, you yourself heard what was going through your mind. I mean, what did you feel? Did you feel like you were going into a different realm?
- [03:01]
A
No, it's. It's just like, you know, being really relaxed and really focused and kind of in your own thoughts, like in your own mental space. I heard everything he was saying. I heard everything he was. He was telling. He was teaching Andrew while he was hypnotizing me. So I was hearing what he was saying. It was kind of just like if I was closed my. Closed my eyes and I'm zoned out, but I'm still hearing everything.
- [03:25]
B
And that's when you became a believer in hypnosis?
- [03:28]
A
That's when I became a believer when. And it wasn't like a clear bow wow was what really sold me. It was like this bow wow. Like it just kind of happened. And I was like, wow, that's so interesting. Mike started working with me. Andrew and I started practicing together. We practiced a lot. That first year. I just fell in love with it. I started doing street hypnosis everywhere I could. I was practicing on classmates. I was a senior in high school, so I was practicing in class, like getting in trouble, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I just fell in love with the stage aspect of it, the comedy, the fun things I could do. I was making water bottles taste like Sprite, you know, and that kind of stuff. It was so much fun. I wasn't even scratching the tip of the iceberg of the whole thing at that point, But I was hooked instantly.
- [04:11]
B
So then you started to do shows?
- [04:13]
A
Yeah, I started doing shows, yeah, paying shows. I was doing like senior all night parties for graduates and post prom parties and graduation parties and all kinds. It was pretty much high school stuff because I was a high school age, right? I was like 18 at that point.
- [04:29]
B
And in order to do a show, do you need any kind of certification or Something.
- [04:34]
A
No, certifications are made up by the certifier. I'm not saying they're not valuable to learn a skill and to have that certificate that says I learned this skill. But there really is not a. It's, it's not like there's any real oversight to it. So there's not a need for like certification for that. Now nowadays you have to be insured to do shows. Should be insured. It's very stupid to do a show and not have insurance. Any performer should have insurance for what they're doing because people sue for all kinds of things. But no, there was no certification for any of it. And that's actually why I wouldn't even touch hypnotherapy. As I thought at that time that you needed to be certified, that you needed different skill sets, that you needed to understand things on a deeper level than what I knew we're going to
- [05:20]
B
get to the hypnotherapist, which is highly interesting. But before I do that, I want to know, are there people that are impossible to hypnotize?
- [05:29]
A
I mean, there are people who fight it. There are people who choose not to be hypnotized. They'll kind of disingenuously say, hypnotize me. And they don't actually follow the instructions, so they won't be hypnotized. Anyone who has the ability to think though, anyone who has the ability to use their imagination in any capacity, has the ability to be hypnotized. And we're all hypnotized on a daily basis anyway.
- [05:54]
B
What do you mean? Give me an example.
- [05:56]
A
Everything around us, if you're using technology today, you are hypnotized a whole lot of your day, probably if you're mindlessly scrolling, you know, they call it doom scrolling. You're hypnotized, you're zoned out, you're focused in on something else. But the world around you kind of gets blocked out for a time. And you are hyper suggestible to new information. You're receiving information. The interesting thing about hypnosis is it's a scientifically verified phenomenon. It's medically proven. You can measure the effects with an eeg. You measure the brainwave frequencies with all of that. Hypnosis is really in that low alpha and into the theta brainwave frequencies. And so we go into alpha. Just when we close our eyes, you close your eyes, you're instantly in mid alpha. And it's just one of those things because the brain is then processing things differently. You're not utilizing the Glucose. The same way in your brain, you're. You're sending that. Different areas. Because when we're visually seeing things, it's not that I just see pictures in front of me, right? It's spatial. I'm basically defining everything that I'm seeing. I'm analyzing. There's a. There's a whole lot that happens within the eye and in the brain. And so if we cut that source off and we close our eyes, we're actually experiencing it differently. We don't need to use the resources within the brain that we were previously using. Those can be reallocated. And that's why if we're driving somewhere new we've never been before, we turn the radio down because we can hear better or we can see better when the radio is turned down. Right. There's less stimuli hitting us. Right. And so we can focus better on what needs to be focused on. And so it's really. That's that entry level into hypnosis in general.
- [07:34]
B
Let's say I come to you and I tell you, listen, Tommy, there's no way that I can be hypnotized. They tried to hypnotize me and it never worked. What would you do? First thing you'll ask me to do?
- [07:46]
A
I would ask you questions for you to ponder inward. There's a lot of misconception around hypnosis, first of all.
- [07:54]
B
Yeah.
- [07:55]
A
Many people say they can't be hypnotized because they weren't able to be hypnotized for a show. Right. And that's not the same thing for a show. They're looking to pick the people who are going to be the fastest and the ones who are going to have the biggest reactions because it's a performance, right? It's. It's. It's meant to be theatrical. And so if I pick somebody from the audience who isn't giving me a big reaction, it's not going to be as interesting. Right. If I find somebody who has a huge reaction and I kind of weed out the other ones, that huge reaction person could run the whole show themselves. Right.
- [08:29]
B
But how do you pick. How do you pick those people from the crowd to know that?
- [08:33]
A
I do a few. I do a few imagination experiments with them because that's really what hypnosis is utilizing, is the imagination on another level.
- [08:40]
B
Okay.
- [08:41]
A
We all can remember back to when we were kids and we would play with our toys and we would engage with them as though they were the real things that they represented. Right. If I was playing with my army guys like My little toy soldiers, whatever. I was engaging as though they were their own. They were living, they were in their world. And I was using the. I'm making up the noises and I'm like hearing the voices in my head about it, you know, not like in a schizophrenic kind of way, but in a, you know, in that imaginative play kind of way. I was engulfed in that space. And that same level of imaginative play is coming to play in stage hypnosis shows. It's kind of re engaging that part of the mind that so many of us as adults forget to use. And it makes it more playful and fun, and it lets us block out the things that would hinder that experience. And so it just brings us zoomed in right there. And so I'm doing imagination experiments with them, telling them things like, you know, I'm getting their eyes to stick shut. If their eyes stick shut very quickly, okay, they're a contender. Now I'm going to say, you know, let's, let's see if your hand will levitate. Now. Let's, let's get your hand to go up on its own. Can we get it to go up on its own? You know, it's a. It's a balloon, right? Oh, you're holding a balloon and now your hand is rising up on its own. And if their hand is rising up on its own, great. They're even better. Now if I say, now I'm going to pop that balloon. One, two, three, pop. If I watch their hand slowly come down, they might still be okay. The people whose hand just plummets, they're going to be good. So there's a lot of that kind of play involved with a stage hypnosis show. And that's how you pick those people. They're the people who can go really, really quickly into that state of mind.
- [10:23]
B
What does TV and movie get wrong about hypnosis?
- [10:26]
A
Almost everything. The hard thing with hypnosis and the way it's portrayed and the way that people will explain it on shows and movies is they will often consult with experts who overcomplicate it to death. Hypnosis is super simple. It's really the utilization of the imagination toward a focused purpose. And that's how I define it. It's engaging with the imagination for purpose, allowing yourself to really go inward. If you can do that, you can be hypnotized. Now, hypnosis has a lot of different facets to it, but a lot of the people that. They'll talk about it like it's Mind control or it's some way of being manipulated. And to some degree, we're all manipulated constantly. Right. I was talking about social media. Social media is the greatest manipulator we've ever had. Right. And they get that wrong. They get. I mean, there have been some decent portrayals of it, but hypnosis is such a wide spectrum of things that can happen and different techniques and different methods and modalities and things that people follow and approaches. And I, for example, do everything very naturally, organically, conversationally. It's all very in the moment. I engage with the person in front of me as a unique individual, and it's never the same session. Right.
- [11:48]
B
I wanted to know about what the process is like in your clinical. But before I want to go to the clinical, I read that if you do shows, you can make anywhere between 1,000 to 5,000. And if you do clinical hypnosis, it's between 100 to 300 a session. So I don't even know why you went into clinical when you can make a lot more money in shows.
- [12:11]
A
Well, number one, shows, you're working with a smaller set of people that are gonna hire you for a show. And good hypnotists. I'm gonna lump myself in there because I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I'm pretty solidly good at this. Good hypnotists can absolutely make good money doing shows. And shows are a lot of fun. And shows are great advertising for hypnotherapy too. Right. You get a whole group of people doing weird things on stage, and then you say something like, imagine what I could do with that habit that you wanna kick now. And suddenly people are thinking, oh, wow, that would be really cool.
- [12:47]
B
What do you charge per session, roughly? Between what and what?
- [12:50]
A
It's. It's basically $250 plus, you know, electronic fees. So it's. It ends up being like 257. 77, I think, is what it comes out to. I shared a link that, you know, anyone who's listening to this can get a 10% discount on their first session with me.
- [13:07]
B
Right.
- [13:07]
A
Usually the first session is also the last because it fixes what you needed to fix.
- [13:11]
B
Just want to tell the listeners that the link is in the shows.
- [13:15]
A
I charge a lot more. Usually it's closer to $2,000 a show. It's $2,000, and then if I have to travel longer than a couple hours, it's gonna go up significantly. A lot of hypnotists absolutely do strictly shows. For me, I could do strictly shows. I really enjoy helping people. I do shows still. You know, I travel around. I do shows across the country, I do them internationally.
- [13:41]
B
It's too good of an income to give up.
- [13:43]
A
Yeah, well. And I love doing it. It's a lot of fun, it. Watching people amazed that they can't believe this thing happened to them. Like they were able to do this. You know, it's. It's super fun. I think there's just something so much more rewarding because for me, it's not entirely about the money. I love being able to support my family on this. I think that's. That's key. But beyond that, I. I love seeing the relief in someone's face when they said, you know, I've had chronic pain for 12 years. I haven't been able to shake it. Chiropractors haven't helped. Massage hasn't helped. Acupuncture hasn't helped. And medication I don't want to use because of x, Y and Z reasons. And then I see in five minutes that their whole face relaxes and they go, I can't believe it's gone.
- [14:25]
B
So I want to say something. In my research, I went to the National Library of Medicine, it's a government website, and they were talking about chronic pain. And here is what they say. And I quote, in our experience, some patients experience an immediate reduction in pain severity following hypnosis treatment. It surprised me, I have to say.
- [14:48]
A
I have so. And what I say is the techniques that I use are very. They're common techniques. I didn't invent them. Right. There's nothing new under the sun. Right. That's just the way it is. The way I do these sessions, especially for pain, for anxiety. A lot of times it's so rapid. And there's a process that you follow. I have not had an instance. I have an over 99% track record for reducing people's pain by at least half.
- [15:19]
B
Wow. After how many sessions? Because they have to do.
- [15:22]
A
That's a single session that's in the moment. That's by half, at least. And most of the time it goes completely away.
- [15:29]
B
I also read in that same website that it's good for anxiety management and confidence building.
- [15:36]
A
I have such a myriad of cases that I work with that I don't like to strictly focus on one area. Now pain management is an area of specialty. I love doing that because it's so fast and it's a great way to give somebody relief. I have someone who. She can't take medication because she's on an organ donor list, and she needs a transplant, and so she can't take medicine. So she's in screaming pain half the day sometimes, and she just can't shake it. And so she comes to me and I show her a quick technique to get out of that pain. And even if she reduces it by 15%, that's still a big help. And. And what I've found is if you can reduce your pain by 10%, you can reduce your pain by 20% and then by 30 and then by 40. If you know that you can do that, it empowers you. But I work with everybody, ranging from pain management. Anxiety is a big one. A lot of people come for anxiety or depression. A lot of people are starting to come to me for work with borderline personality. Borderline personality disorder. I've been working with a woman. I had one session with her. It was over two months ago. It was on New Year's Eve. She has texted me at least twice a week since then to just update me because we did it as a case study. I wasn't sure what could be done with it, and I was like, you know, I'm not even charging her for that. I'm like, we're just going to see what we can do. She had a plan in place. You can go to Switzerland for euthanasia. If you have borderline personality disorder and it's severe, you can. You can be euthanized medically. And she had a plan that this November she was going to go. And she said, that's completely off the table. Wow, that's off the table completely. She said she hasn't had a situation that's triggered her. She hasn't had a meltdown. She hasn't had an unstable moment since our session. She said, wow, it's. It's been. Every single time she feels something coming on, she takes a breath, because we all breathe. And I linked. I basically made an anchor. It's called. I anchored her breath to a specific mantra, essentially.
- [17:38]
B
Okay.
- [17:39]
A
And every time she notices her breath now, she thinks that mantra, and it snaps her out of that headspace.
- [17:45]
B
After one session with you?
- [17:47]
A
After one session. It was about an hour long, a little over an hour long, and it was one session. And she said that she is now sending her therapist to me to learn things.
- [17:59]
B
What is the difference between hypnosis and meditation?
- [18:02]
A
Meditation, generally speaking, is just really focused, like concentration, relaxation. And that's mostly it. When it becomes guided, it is hypnosis. And in a nutshell, I kind of put it this way. So I have a book where I talk a little bit about this. In my book, I say hypnosis and meditation are kind of like rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares, right? So meditation, I would say, is like the rectangle and hypnosis is the square in that scenario, right. It's more specific. It's more like there's an intention to it. We're working toward a goal with it. That's really going to be the main difference with hypnosis versus meditation. Aside from that, headspace wise, you're in the same headspace, you're utilizing the same brainwave frequencies, and you are still. You are equally receptive in meditation as you are when you are in hypnosis, generally speaking.
- [18:59]
B
Walk me through the process. I come to you. Oh, Tommy, I got chronic pain in my back.
- [19:05]
A
So if you're coming to me for pain, I'm likely going to do something very abstract, very conversational. I'm going to have you close your eyes if you want to, and if you don't, then I just say, you know, as long as you can focus with your eyes open, that's totally fine. It's just gonna require some focus. Okay, I'm gonna walk you through, like, locate that. We're gonna. First of all, we're gonna remove the name Pain. Because if you take the name away from something, suddenly we interact with it differently. We're gonna call it something more amorphous. You know, we're gonna call it the sensation. We're gonna call it the feeling, the experience, something like that, right? Because it is all those things. But it's kind of like if I say, picture a triangle, you can picture what a triangle looks like. Or I'll say, tell me what a triangle is. You can tell me what a triangle is, you know, definition wise, right? If I say tell me what is a shape, it's a lot harder to define what a shape is versus what a triangle is. So we've removed some of that quality of like, specificity, right? So I immediately start there. I have them located, I have them play with it. I always tell them, we're going to get a little weird with this, right? We're going to get creative. We're going to have fun with it. Let's interact with it. It's not a distraction from it. We're going to engage and we are going to reassociate what we're experiencing. We're going to figure out what's actually pain and we're going to figure out what's more psychological. And we're going to remove much, if not all of it. Definitely. The psychological component will be gone. Oftentimes the physical pain will come back later. Because if it's an injury, then it should come back. Pain's the body's alarm system, right? It's the way you know something's wrong. You shouldn't be messing around. And I'm constantly asking you things like, what do you notice about it now? Where did it go? Just kind of presupposing, like what something must have changed. Maybe nothing had changed. But then when I ask that question, suddenly they notice a slight change. By the end, I just have them, you know, I tell them, you know, when the pain is at a level or that sensation is at a level that you are comfortable with and you're happy with, open your eyes. You are bringing someone inward to essentially they are walking through an abstract version of their experience. At no point am I ever reimagining traumas or revisiting traumatic experiences. I'm not utilizing their memory of something because the memory is not reliable. It's never absolutely correct. And it changes every time you access a memory. It changes that memory in some way. And so I never do any of that. It's all very abstract because it's really about how do we interact with this memory, how do we interact with the experience gained from that memory? And if we can reassociate our interactions and our reactions to situations, and we can experience that feeling within us differently, then we suddenly gain more control over every aspect of our lives. And that's why every time I do a session, sometimes people will say, I also want to come to you for this and this. And I go, that's great. Before you even try booking with me, give it a few weeks. Because you may find that those things work themselves out.
- [22:10]
B
Let's say somebody comes to you to quit smoking, and you tell them, think about that experience in order to know how to tackle it. So they think about smoking a cigarette and they enjoy every minute. They still gonna quit smoking.
- [22:24]
A
I would. Well, so that's where I have a consultation call with them to find out exactly why they want to quit. What I find is people who actually want to make the changes, they are going to make the changes most of the time. If you've got a good hypnotist.
- [22:38]
B
So what happens in the brain when you say, if you have a good hypnotist, what happens in the brain that really pushes them over the edge and they quit smoking?
- [22:46]
A
So when they Want to. A lot of times they've just created a narrative within their head about they can't quit, they're reliant on this. They like this too much, it feels too good. And so all we're doing is we're really essential. I use the word reprogramming, it's such a loaded word because people think of that as like brainwashing or what, you know, mind control. It's not like that, but alright, so the brain is like a computer, right? And the mind is the software. The mind is the operating system and everything. And I'm looking at you on a screen right now. You're looking at me. That's the conscious mind, that's the RAM of the computer, right? And then you've got everything underneath it. All the programming, all of the daemons, all of the. The ones and zeros of the binary code, right? All of the lines of code that are written into it that we don't see. All that is a subconscious mind, right? And that is interacting with itself and with the external world far more than we even realize. We think that we're thinking consciously all the time. Most of it is unconscious or subconscious. And so what we're doing is essentially we're deleting the mind virus of whatever it is you're wanting removed. You're struggling with alcoholism. We're gonna delete that virus out of your system, we're gonna clear all those files away, we're gonna get rid of all those and we're gonna install a firewall to protect you against any of those thoughts coming back in.
- [24:11]
B
Okay, I have two questions from listeners and friends that knew you were gonna come on and they have questions for you. So the first one is from Monica Nation.
- [24:21]
C
Hi. So while you're doing the actual hypnotizing, what thoughts are going through your mind? Are you repeating a mantra? Are you sending a message to the person? What's in your mind when you're doing it?
- [24:34]
A
Yeah, that's a good question. So in my mind when I'm doing it, I actually bring myself into that state of mind with them. So I get into that same headspace. I have to remain more aware and more conscious than that person does in that session. Because I have to kind of lead the session and ask the questions and all of that, but I'm really just. I'm allowing myself to. Usually what I do is I close my eyes with them and I will do the movements that I ask them to do. If I'm asking them about pain, for example. Okay, let's let's locate the sensation in your body. Where do you notice it now? And then they'll tell me. It's in my shoulder. Okay. Which shoulder? Left shoulder. Okay, great. Is in your left shoulder. What color is it? Oh, it's red. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. And I'm allowing myself to kind of experience with them. I'm. I'm engaging. I'm blocking out all the other stuff.
- [25:21]
B
And do you actually feel the pain when you allow?
- [25:23]
A
No.
- [25:24]
B
No. Okay.
- [25:24]
A
No, I. I'm removed. I'm just exploring it with them, and I'm engaging in it. That way I can have them lead the experience and I can continue to ask the right questions. Moving forward. As far as, like, repeating a mantra. No, I'm just really engaging with the person and how they're responding to the things that I'm asking. I'm in the moment with that person. I'm engaged with them. I will get myself into that same mental space so that I can ask the right questions because it comes more naturally that way.
- [25:52]
B
Okay, second question. It's from Kate Pearson, or you may know her from the B52s. She has a question for you.
- [26:00]
C
My question is, can hypnosis help you resolve conflicts in your mind, like anger and certain stress? Can it help you resolve these conflicts?
- [26:09]
A
It does it all the time. Yeah, it's. It's great for that. It's so good for. For controlling your anger or your outbursts or reactions to things. So hypnosis is beautiful. For whenever there is some kind of reactivity happening, you essentially reassociate how you want to respond. So I can associate things to, like, and I'll. I'll have them even describe, you know, if I'm. If I'm getting into it, like, anger. Let's talk about anger. Anger. What does anger feel like within you? Oh, it feels like, you know, hot. It feels heavy. It feels like my. Like I just ripping through me and. Okay, okay, that's. That's very descriptive. That's good. Does anything come to mind that you do when you're in that space that just naturally happens every single time? Yeah, I. You know, I'm usually like, I'll let out a sigh or I'll huff or. Oh, great. So something with your breath. I wonder if next time you just noticed that you're doing that and it can ground you a little bit more. Like I did with the woman that I worked with with bpd. You know, I said every time you. You take a breath in through your nose and you notice that breath when you notice the breath, you can just let yourself think, you know, new files in, old files out. Because we did a whole like computer analogy there, metaphorically, it's new files in, old files out. And she said that's the way that she thinks every time. Every time she notices a breath, she's thinking about the new files coming in and the old ones going out.
- [27:29]
B
Wow.
- [27:30]
A
And so it calms her down, it recenters her. And the same kind of process can be used for just about anything. It could be used for anger or stress or fear or whatever. And so, yeah, it's fantastic for those things.
- [27:42]
B
I read that they also, for full success, they need to practice at home. Sometimes the hypnotist give them recording of the session so they can repeat it. Do you do that, by the way?
- [27:54]
A
So for pain sessions especially, I tell people, listen back to this. I record every session for my insurance. Anyway, insurance requires it, so I record every session, but it stays between me and the individual unless they give me explicit permission to share.
- [28:07]
B
Is it the same process for anxiety management?
- [28:11]
A
Oftentimes, yeah. I incorporate the same processes in pretty much everything I do. If I'm doing an impromptu session with somebody who's having a panic attack at the airport because they're terrified of flying and I'm sitting next to them, I'm not going to do a standard hypnosis session because I'm probably going to be escorted off the premises for doing hypnosis at the airport. But I will invite them to close their eyes and do an imagination experiment with me, which is a session. It just doesn't look like one.
- [28:39]
B
Okay.
- [28:40]
A
And then I'll just kind of talk them through that experience, just like I would have with pain. And usually in about 5 minutes, 10 minutes, they feel light, they feel good, they feel confident and comfortable, and they don't feel that same weight in their chest that's causing that panic attack feeling.
- [28:56]
B
How do you build the trust? It's a lot of it based on trust, isn't it?
- [29:01]
A
There is a lot of trust built into that. And so, number one, I don't have an office anymore. It's all remote. It's all done over zoom. Unless I'm going to you, in which case I have a camera rolling from the time I pull up in front of your place of residence. And it stays rolling constantly.
- [29:19]
B
That's for your insurance.
- [29:20]
A
Back in my car. And it's going to show me and it's going to show you in the same shot. We both have to be in that shot, otherwise it's not going to happen.
- [29:31]
B
Were there cases where you refused to do some sort of hypnosis for somebody that even if they asked you to?
- [29:39]
A
Absolutely. I turn people down all the time. Like, what if someone is quitting because they need to and they don't want to? For example, you know, someone wants to quit smoking, but they're only quitting because the doctor said they need to quit. You know, and I can. I can kind of gauge in that moment, I'm like, well, do you actually really want to quit or do you enjoy it still? And there's not a wrong answer here. You know what? It's about you. They go, no, I really love it. I don't want to quit. And then I go, okay, well, then this won't work. I don't want to take your money. I won't do hypnobirthing. Because what pregnant woman is going to want to hear a man tell her, you know what? And I mean, I know there are men who do it, but I refer anyone who's interested in hypnobirthing, I refer them over to my friend Tiffany, who does hypnobirthing full time. That's her job.
- [30:25]
B
What is hypnobirthing?
- [30:27]
A
Hypnobirthing is where women are taught the skills to go into hypnosis to make the actual birthing process not painful, to make it more pleasant and be in the enjoyable moments. And it's still hard. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure it's still not fun to give birth, but it works.
- [30:44]
B
Hypnosis works for that.
- [30:45]
A
It works beautifully. You can undergo surgery with hypnotic anesthesia.
- [30:50]
B
Whoa.
- [30:50]
A
That's the thing. Yeah. You can. You can totally do anesthesia with hypnosis now. It takes practice to get to that point. You know, that's going to be. You're working with somebody for a long time for a few sessions to learn the skills to go into hypnosis. And then you're going to go into hypnosis and you're not going to experience any of the pain of the surgery.
- [31:09]
B
Do you ever hypnotize kids?
- [31:10]
A
I'm a little apprehensive to hypnotize kids.
- [31:13]
B
Why?
- [31:13]
A
Just because I'm a man and you hear horror stories about men and children sometimes.
- [31:20]
B
Right.
- [31:20]
A
And so from the perspective of covering my own behind. Right. Covering my butt. I am very cautious about working with children. Parent must be in the room. It must be something that we agree on. I don't do anything that is going to violate my morals whatsoever. I don't do anything that is going to be even questionable to my personal belief system. I don't hypnotize my kids. I do some of the imagination experiments with them. Like I make their eyes stuck or I make their fingers stick together or something and like some of that kind of stuff. My daughter will not go into it. She does not do it. But my oldest son, he travels with me across the country and does my shows with me.
- [32:02]
B
I saw on your website that you treat athletes. What do you do with athletes?
- [32:08]
A
So athletes use hypnosis for a number of things. Pain being a big one, pain and recovery acceleration. So they found that people who were suffering from broken bones and people who were suffering from burns. When hypnosis was used as the primary form of pain management alongside the medical treatment for the injuries themselves, those injuries healed 20 to 30% faster. So that's one way. Another way is flow state. That's. That's kind of a kitsch term. It's kind of like a catch all for being in the zone. But you'll see people watch, you know, Michael Jordan play basketball. It's on the Last Dance, the Netflix series. He had the flu on one of the championship games or something and he still scored like 60 something points even with the flu. And it's like that state of focus and determination where you can block out even your own body's system of like, I don't feel so good. It goes into overdrive. You go in automatic pilot mode. You know, Tiger woods used hypnosis for his focus. Mike Tyson used hypnosis for his focus. Even the Chicago bulls in the 90s, it was guided meditation. But guided meditation is a form of hypnosis.
- [33:15]
B
Do you ever hypnotize yourself?
- [33:17]
A
Every night.
- [33:18]
B
Seriously?
- [33:19]
A
Every night when I lay in bed, I say my prayers, I'm usually praying, and I'm in a state of hypnosis when I'm doing that. I lay there and I just kind of think through what I want to accomplish focus wise. Do I want to fall asleep? Usually it's to fall asleep. I want to fall asleep quickly. So I'll utilize hypnosis to help me go into that state of relaxation so that I fall asleep more quickly. Just taking myself down into the. Noticing the reduction in my brainwave activity, right. And just noticing the change in my body's energy and the way I'm breathing and whatever else and then thinking whatever intentional thoughts that I want to think.
- [33:50]
B
What is the most important skill somebody has to have in order to be a good hypnotist?
- [33:56]
A
It's kind of a Twofold thing, I would say it's asking the right questions and listening with curiosity. Oftentimes I find anybody, doctors, therapists, you know, they'll ask questions to get to a certain point. I think a good hypnotist is going to continue asking questions until the person uncovers what they are needing to uncover. So asking the right questions, asking very open, curious questions with a curious heart, and listening with a curious heart in mind are the two sides of the same coin of the skill that you would need to have.
- [34:27]
B
And if somebody wants to get in, what would be the first step they have to make to be trained by a mentor like you?
- [34:34]
A
Well, to be trained by me. I mean, you reach out to me. I have different trainings that I'm putting together throughout the summer that are going to be in person. I have a hypnotist mastermind community that I run where I actually coach hypnotists who have already learned hypnosis, but they lack the confidence and they don't know exactly what to do. Or maybe they were trained using scripts as their primary form of doing hypnosis. I get them off script. I'm teaching them how to do this and get the results every time instead of hit or miss, because maybe this person couldn't stand being read to script. There's also a lot of really great trainings that are less expensive than me. You know, I mean, you can learn a lot from books, you can learn a lot from videos. What's great about going through an actual training course? Like Mike Mandel, Hypnosis Academy is phenomenal. I have not personally gone through it, but I know enough about people who have gone through it. They are excellent hypnotists. There's a lot of great resources out there. The one thing I would tell people is if the instructor is saying that they're going to teach you to read scripts or write scripts, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. And that is kind of the key question I would ask anyone who's going to train me is are you going to teach me about hypnotic scripts?
- [35:48]
B
After two decades in the business, you said you're over 20 years in the business. That's what I read about you also. What keeps you going? What makes your work still exciting for you?
- [35:58]
A
I love talking to people. I love getting to know them and their backgrounds, that there's so many facets to hypnosis. There's the stage side of things where I get to entertain people and make them laugh and. And I get to. Every person reacts differently. I can give the same exact instructions, and people act in different ways with them because we're individuals, we're unique, and so they have a unique response. And it's always entertaining to see that. I get to help people who've been struggling, and I get to see the relief on their face when they are coming out of that, and they feel empowered, and they. And it's like that to me is like, oh, that's so beautiful. That's what I'm called to do, is that kind of change work. And then I see the hypnotist that are coming to me and saying, hey, I don't think I got the right training. Can you help advise me? Can you mentor me? Can you work with me on coaching or whatever else? And then I get them after just a few minutes of talking, they're, like, ready to get a session down, and they're taking my techniques that I'm showing them, and they're using them, and they're having the same results. And I'm going, yes, that's great. It's not even about me at that point now. It's just, like, the process works, and it's so cool to be able to see that be repeatable. So I get excited for people. I love people. I believe I was called into this line of work anyway. I was gonna be a musician in my mind. You know, that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a rock star. And I had bands that I was in that I was sure we were gonna do things, and I had opportunities to do things that I passed up, and everything just kept coming back to hypnosis. And the work that I get to do now, I get to work from home. We homeschool our kids, so I get to see my kids all day. I get to see my wife all day. I get to travel the world and te stuff to people who want to learn it. I get to travel and mentor. I get to travel and do shows, and I just love it. It does not get boring. There's something really rewarding about helping someone, and it just fills your soul in a way that nothing else can.
- [37:53]
B
I totally agree. And on that beautiful note, Tommy, thank you so much.
- [37:58]
A
Oh, thank you for having me. This was fun.
- [38:01]
B
Thanks for taking us inside this fascinating world of hypnosis and showing us what this career really looks like. And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please like and share. I'm Ravozeri, and I'll see you next time on how much can I make.