Education

“The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.”
-Russell Green

Viva La Trance

The popular band Coldplay has a new album out next week, and in a new article it’s revealed that they hired a hypnotist to help them while creating “Viva La Vida” in the studio.



Here’s an excerpt from Entertainment Weekly:

Q: And you also hired a hypnotist during the sessions? What was that about?

BUCKLAND: [Producer] Brian Eno knew a hypnotist and we thought it might get some interesting results. We all went upstairs, sat down, and he walked around us. He got us into some strange kind of trance, and we came down and played some more.

MARTIN: Quite a long time, I think. It did work, actually. We came up with a lot of interesting noises, which we used. I think the whole process of getting our own place and working with Brian has been really liberating for us. Because it was starting to become a little difficult to be in Coldplay — there's so much opinion, expectation, and criticism. We wanted to be free from that for a bit, to try things and just be a little group, which Brian really spearheaded. So things like the hypnotism, all these little crazy experiments that he tried with us was just an effort to say, ''It's OK. Not everybody hates you because you're in Coldplay. Just play some music and don't worry about it.''

Other famous people known to have used hypnosis include Matt Damon, Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson, Tiger Woods, Jimmy Connors, Rod Carew, George Brett, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.

For a full list, see this page on my official website.

Take it Easy

I’ll be out of the office this week beginning Monday afternoon, and will return on Friday the 13th. You can still reach me via phone or email, but my response time will be a bit slower than usual.

Here’s a quote to get your week started...

Have a great one.

-Sean



“Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”
-Eddie Cantor - US comedian & singer (1892 - 1964)

Patience

“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.“
-Saint Francis de Sales

Why is Hypnosis Still Obscure? Think Green.

I went through the first 26 years of my life without learning anything significant about hypnosis. I’ll spare you the story of how I first got into it, but I was certainly skeptical at first. I figured anything useful or effective would naturally be known about and widespread by now. I mean, duh… if hypnosis is so freakin’ great, why isn’t everyone doing it?

First of all, many people are doing it, but not nearly enough have even heard much about it.

There are many reasons why hypnosis still remains on the fringe. One answer is fear. People fear the unknown. They fear being controlled. They fear feeling stupid for being taken in by a scam.

Another reason is that there isn’t much money in curing people through hypnosis. Sure, there are hypnotherapists who make a decent living for themselves, but that’s nothing compared to the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, which is based upon the assumption that only drugs can “fix” us, and that we, as humans, are ultimately powerless.

The top ten pharmaceutical companies earn more money per year than the other 490 Fortune 500 companies combined. You see, there is BIG money to be made by convincing people that they are powerless to help themselves.

Just watching the commercials during the evening news will “inform” you of two important things:

1) You have lots of problems.
2) A powerful new drug can help you.

Are you depressed? Try this powerful new anti-depressant! Can’t sleep? We have a great drug for that, too! Problems with erectile dysfunction? We’ve got you covered! Allergies? You betcha!

Take a look at “Big Bucks, Big Pharma” below. This is only part one, so visit YouTube to view the remaining portion of this informative video.



Also, check out this interview with Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceutical sales rep and author of “Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher,” a book revealing her experiences not only as a member of the industry, but also as someone who took dangerous anti-depressants herself. Also check out Prescription: Suicide?, a documentary based in part on her experiences.



And by the way, if you’re wondering why you don’t hear too much about hypnosis on the news, just imagine how thrilled the drugs companies would be if, just after running an expensive commercial for Lunesta, CNN aired a story about how you can sleep easily and naturally after a few sessions of hypnosis.

Just a thought you may wish to consider...

Heck, women in the United States can’t even give birth to a child without going to the hospital and getting injected with a chemical cocktail. Even though women have been giving birth since, well, forever... they have been hypnotized by our society to believe that a hospital is the only safe place to bring a child into the world.

Here’s a trailer for “The Business of Being Born,” an excellent documentary about the state of the birthing industry in America.



Is there nothing we can do on our own?

You have a problem? Chances are there’s a fancy new drug out there that’ll make it go away.

Of course, there will be side effects to taking all these drugs, which are often far more serious than the problem being treated.

Furthermore, most pharmaceutical drugs have tested only slightly better than placebos! That’s a documented fact. In fact, the placebo issue has become so problematic for drug manufacturers that they are currently making efforts to exclude subjects who responded to placebos from future studies. How awful it would be if the public discovered that their new wonder drug was only 2% more effective than a sugar pill, not to mention the enormous financial expense and all the dangerous side-effects.

Sadly, many of today’s licensed psychiatrists have become more like glorified drug dealers. I have worked with many clients who had previously seen psychiatrists or other mental health professionals over a long period of time without experiencing any noticeable improvement. Maybe that’s because psychiatrists openly acknowledge that they can’t “cure” any mental illness (see video below).



The underlying message is that you need medical intervention to solve your problems. Now, is that empowering? Is that the kind of treatment that builds self-confidence or a sense of independence?

Of course not. But it is very difficult to sell people things they don’t need unless you first convince them that they actually do need it.

My message to my clients always boils down to this: you can do it. It may not come easily, but you can do it. You can find a better career. You can get back in shape. You can have fulfilling relationships. You can stop smoking, drinking, biting your nails and obsessing over trivial things.

You can do it and you can do it on your own. You may benefit from some guidance and good advice, but you don’t need to take a pill, and you don’t need a nose job or a tummy tuck to feel better about yourself.

That’s my message, and yes, I make a decent living by helping people understand it and change their lives for the better.

Hopefully by now you understand a bit more about why hypnosis, if it can be so powerful and effective, still isn’t as popular as McDonald’s or Starbucks.

Anyone who’s seen “Supersize Me” knows what a steady diet of McDonald’s will do to you, and that healthy, fresh foods are the way to go.

So maybe the fact that something is popular (or not) isn’t the most important thing when considering your options.

The truth is, you don’t even “need” hypnosis... but compared to the alternatives, it sure is a safer and far more reasonably-priced solution.

Keep that in mind, and keep that mind open.

Getting Things Done

“Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”
-Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826); 3rd president of the United States

The Biology of Belief

I saw this information years ago while I was training to be a hypnotherapist, and it’s very impressive. I’m currently reading his book - “The Biology of Belief,” which is a bit more technical than I’d like, yet easy enough to follow.



Basically, he’s a cell biologist who demonstrates that perception and belief - not genes - determine our lives.

From his website:

His research at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, between 1987 and 1992, revealed that the environment, operating though the membrane, controlled the behavior and physiology of the cell, turning genes on and off. His discoveries, which ran counter to the established scientific view that life is controlled by the genes, presaged one of today’s most important fields of study, the science of epigenetics.
This is a description of the below video, taken directly from Google Video:

Recent advances in cellular science are heralding an important evolutionary turning point. For almost fifty years we have held the illusion that our health and fate were preprogrammed in our genes, a concept referred to as genetic determinacy.

Though mass consciousness is currently imbued with the belief that the character of one's life is genetically predetermined, a radically new understanding is unfolding at the leading edge of science. Cellular biologists now recognize that the environment, the external universe and our internal physiology, and more importantly, our perception of the environment, directly controls the activity of our genes.

This video will broadly review the molecular mechanisms by which environmental awareness interfaces genetic regulation and guides organismal evolution

Below the video is a brief bio of Dr. Lipton.





About Dr. Lipton (from his website):

Dr. Bruce Lipton is an internationally recognized authority in bridging science and spirit. He has been a guest speaker on dozens of TV and radio shows, as well as keynote presenter for national conferences. Dr. Lipton began his scientific career as a cell biologist. He received his Ph.D. Degree from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville before joining the Department of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine in 1973. Dr. Lipton’s research on muscular dystrophy, studies employing cloned human stem cells, focused upon the molecular mechanisms controlling cell behavior. An experimental tissue transplantation technique developed by Dr. Lipton and colleague Dr. Ed Schultz and published in the journal Science was subsequently employed as a novel form of human genetic engineering.