54: Ray Sydner does hypnotherapy

There is the hypnosis done for entertainment—on the stage or in a room of conference-goers. Like, say, this. A hypnotist gathers a group, asks the members to relax, and watches them, with their eyes closed, to see if they’re receptive to the hypnosis. The hypnotist kicks out the ones who are “faking it” or aren’t relaxing. Then the others cluck like chickens or get hot or cold or act silly. 

There is another hypnosis, built on the same principles, used as a therapy technique. Ray has used hypnotherapy to help people stop smoking, give up other bad habits, and explore their trauma. That’s the front half of this podcast episode. 

In the back half of this episode, we wander into a world less scientific, more “woo woo” and still wickedly fascinating: hypnosis used for past life regression. A woman on Oprah.com wrote about her good experience trying it. A professor at University of Virginia wrote about his concerns about its use. Here’s the Wikipedia article on it. Decide for yourself. 

However, I’d urge you to listen to Ray’s poignant account of her very real, very felt experience from past life regression that gave her some insight into her irrational love of water and her obsession with certain colors. 

Oh, my experience with hypnosis? I went on two dates with a nice Jewish woman years and years ago, and our first date was to a comedy hypnotist show. I volunteered. She did not. I sat, closed my eyes, and followed the hypnotist’s directions. Breathe this way. Breathe that way. You’re hot. You’re cold. You feel this way. You feel that way. I never felt lost or out of sorts—I was happy doing whatever the hypnotists. But I was always myself; I never lost myself. And that’s how Ray talks about hypnosis. You need to want to be hypnotized, which means you’re not out of control. You’re aware of what’s going, and you’re allowing it to happen. Some people can do it. Some people, in that moment, aren’t ready. Some people hate that. 

Caveat: I step on Ray’s introduction (“My name is Ray”), because I’m blathering about some other person’s introduction when we get started. That’s all. Apologies. 

To Feed Further Curiosity:  

• If you want to know more about hypnotherapy, Ray recommended, hey, just go search “hypnotherapy” on the internet and evaluate things yourself. If you want to know about its use in past life regression, do the same thing. But she said she did like a particular book on past life regression, Many Lives, Many Masters, by psychiatrist Dr. Brian L. Weiss.