Podcast #58: The Amazing Kreskin, flying tables and naked audiences

Chris: Welcome fellow storm riders. You are officially a rider on the hypnotic storm. Welcome to session number 58 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel and I’m Chris Thompson. He’s recently started sleeping more. He’s thrilled that its raining again today in Toronto and he keeps reminding me to book our flights to Las Vegas. Please welcome to the centre stage, the hypnotic gambler, the man who has been banned from every casino in Toronto, Ontario, Mike Mandel.

Mike: Wonderful. Absolutely lovely to see a world you know I can’t really… what a podcast we have for you today. We have tons of quality stuff as per usual. We’re still bouncing along at 5-star despite the game sayers Frodo and Chris, where do you want to go first? do you want to talk about the sleep thing?

Chris: First we should say [laughs] why have you been banned from every casino in Toronto Mike?

Mike: Well there aren’t any in Toronto.

Chris: That’s right and so it’s just hilarious joke.

Mike: Ah yes brilliantly funny as always just like the word trousers is funny. I am sleeping more because my insane Bengal cat, Tesla, and Egyptian mau, Gwayhir, been disrupting my sleep for two years now. It started with Tesla when he was born. So I just realized Chris I’ve been getting up at 6, 7 am when I naturally sleep until 8:30. It may not seem like a minor thing. I should’ve noticed I was having all these afternoon naps. Anyway my blood pressure as you know went ridiculously high 168, 169/97. Bad, bad stuff. I went to this amazing naturopath, homeopath nutritionist in Toronto and he determined it was sleep disturbance. I wasn’t getting enough sleep and so, he’s given me medications and so on of a homeopathic and natural variety of course and hurrah in doing what he said, I’ve began sleeping more, not letting the cats wake me up, letting my wife deal with them and my  blood pressure’s coming back down again. So if you’ve got high blood pressure it may be you’re just getting insufficient sleep.

Chris: Make sure you’re sleeping that’s right. I do remember Mike over the last few years I used to call you oh what I thought was a perfectly normal hour of the morning, 9 o’clock or something and your wife would answer the phone and say oh Mike’s just getting out of bed. He’s having a shower. I’ll have him call you back shortly. [laughs]

Mike: I used to sleep until 9:30 but now 8:30 seems my normal time so anyway guys, it’s a serious thing. High blood pressure can be caused by kidney problems, it can be caused by too much salt intake, a lot of things but in this case, it was insufficient sleep. So get lots of sleep. I’m a big 8-hour guy.

Chris: You were being proactive too. It wasn’t absurdly high by any means but now it’s totally back in the normal range.

Mike: Right under normal and I even remember I showed you the reading of my cardiac function. My heart is in the optimal range so I’ll be kicking back and cranking neck in Las Vegas

Chris: So pointing out which you keep bugging me to book our flights to Las Vegas. We are as a reminder again going to the hypnothoughts live conference. It is the 21^st to the 23^rd of august. So we’ll be there, come hang out with us. It’s actually quite reasonably priced. I’ve mentioned this before. I think the early bird rate is now over but it’s something like 359 bucks for three As.

Mike: Just go online. Hypnothoughtslive.com. I think it is or just Google.

Chris: htlive.net.

Mike: Whatever.

Chris: Yeah [laughs] you’re wrong.

Mike: I was wrong but I admit it so that was the right thing to do. So I mean I was right. So yeah check it out they’re doing a great job. It’s going to be a terrific conference so you want to hang out with Chris and i. we’re going to have a blast. I’m going to deliver a couple of key notes and we’re going to the bars at night and drink at will and then we’re going to win a lot of money in the casinos.

Chris: We’re making no money going to this thing so we don’t…

Mike: No, we do it out of the goodness of our hearts.

Chris: In fact, I bought my own ticket. Mike gets his ticket because he’s a speaker.

Mike: Yes.

Chris: But I had to buy my own ticket so just to disclose that.

Mike: Sounds like a shallow…

Chris: This is the cheapest way to get access to a couple of hours of training with Mike that there is which is really cool.

Mike: That’s one way of looking at it.

Chris: Right, in fact there’s a whole bunch of other stuff included. Go check it out htlI’ve.net.

Mike: Now can we get quickly to a put your mindscaping because I’ll let people know because 8 weeks away as of the recording of this podcast.

Chris: June 6^th and 7^th.

Mike: Yes.

Chris: Here in Toronto.

Mike: We have less than 8 weeks. Come and study mindscaping in Toronto with Chris and I. it is a 2-day intensive training. This is a modality I discovered a few years ago and I have been perfecting ever since and it’s useful if you are a therapist, a personal coach. If you’re a guidance counselor, a teacher, a hypnotist, this is a wonderful means of getting to the unconscious very, very rapidly without hypnosis. It causes transautomatically and you’ll get sterling and outstanding results so check on our website, Mikemandelhypnosis.com, click on trainings, click on mindscaping, sign up. We’d love to see you there. We’ve got people coming in from I think England for this as well so its going to be another killer training and hang out with us and have a blast.

Chris: Well what’s happening is a lot of people taking the May 25^th to 29^th architecture of hypnosis class are sticking around the following week because mindscaping is the next weekend.

Mike: Right.

Chris: So that’s really cool. Maybe talking about what mindscaping is, what makes it different from hypnosis is one of these things that doesn’t have to seem weird at all. People who think that hypnosis is weird, you’re not going to tell them that this kind of has built-in hypnosis anyway but you can frame this as just a really neat mental exercise that you can go through right?

Mike: Exactly. And what can you use that for? you can use mindscaping to enhance your immune system. You can use it to solve problems by figuring out the meanings of dreams. You can use it to build relationships. You can use it to remove blockages in your life or your attitude towards money. Whatever and it is astounding. Everybody who takes the course winds up getting scaped many, many times for lots of things including your health and all kinds of cool stuff and by the end of it, you’ll have some amazing, amazing skill sets.

Chris: Mikemandelhypnosis.com/mindscaping. All one word. Okay, shall we go to the mail bag?

Mike: Sorry, one point Chris.

Chris: Go ahead.

Mike: There’s also mindskyping which we’ll tell you how to do meaning if you’re a therapist or whatever, you can easily stay in your home and use mindscaping over Skype if you’ve got a good connection and help people around the world as Chris and I do and you can make extra income doing that. It pays for itself very, very quickly.

Chris: Right. it’s much easier to do mindscaping over Skype than it is to do hypnosis.

Mike: Than it is to do skyping over scaping.

Chris: Ha ha very funny. All right now shall we move to the mail bag?

Mike: Go.

Chris: All right. So we have a lot of questions that came in.

Mike: Sounds rather painful.

Chris: And we have been I will just admit it; we have been doing a poor job of making sure all the questions get in the podcast. So this is a bit of a catch up and if you have questions, definitely do send them in to us. Info2Mikemandelhypnosis.com is our email address though that actally goes to both of us. So first one, we have a whole slew of questions from this fellow Sam. He asked a lot of question.

Mike: Great questions.

Chris: Really good questions and I apologize in advaacne here Sam for not getting these on earlier. These are really cool questions. So the first one is Mike, what od you think about the table tilting demonstrated by the amazing Kreskin and for those who aren’t aware, who is the amazing Kreskin?

Mike: Let’s start with a foundational thing and move to the specific here.

Chris: That’s good.

Mike: The Amazing Kreskin burst on to the scene as a mentalist having a number of the techniques of Joseph Dunninger who is the first sort of solitary mentalist out of new York many, many years ago and he had a slight British accent even though he’s American. More about that later. Anyway, Kreskin was born George Kresge, American from New Jersey, from Italian polish background and he changed his name to Kreskin so it’s one name now like Cher or Madonna and he was a very good mentalist. He was on CJOH television out of Ottawa, Ontario, the nation’s capital. Canada’s capital for many years. A show called The Amazing Kreskin and every show he’d do power of suggestion, mentalism, all kinds of cool things. Be locked in a safe and would telepathically get a number or lock somebody else in a safe and figure out what the combination was. He’d do all amazing things and what to his credit was a very good thing was he would make sure that he showed his failures as well as the things that worked very well because they’re shooting this in front of a live audience, they couldn’t reshoot it. it would’ve looked stupid. Then he came back on the scene a few          years later. He was out of CFTO Toronto also on CTV network and I had occasion to see him a couple of times. In fact, I saw Kreskin live in 1974 November at Minkler auditorium Seneca College.

Chris: Wow you were on your early 20s then?

Mike: I was 21 and I saw his show and it fascinated me so much, I went to music shop international which was a booking agency. A friend of mine was an agent there and I said I could duplicate much of what he’s doing and he said show me and so I did and they started booking me. That’s when I quit my job at bell Canada having seen the amazing Kreskin live. So that was the good thing. I’ve got a new job. The bad thing in quitting my job even though it’s below the poverty line living with my parents at the time was I was the only guy in the office with 150 women freaking awesome.

Chris: [laughs] I remember you telling me that.

Mike: Anyway, we don’t rather get sexist. That’s a different discussion. So I saw Kreskin, he was starting doing a mentalist show and I was the only one really doing this across Canada at the same time. I’ve been doing a lot of the Same thing but the problem with Kreskin is this if he had just claimed to be a mentalist and an entertainer, which the loveable old humbug is, that would’ve been fine but he threw the gauntlet down and started claiming he produces ‘genuine phenomena’ in other words that there’s something mystical and magical about what he’s doing and everybody else is a fake. In fact, he wrote a book called how to be a fake Kreskin. In other words, he teaches you mentalism techniques and so on so you can use fake things to duplicate what he genuinely does.

Chris: Genuinely does. [laughs] nice presupposition attempt.

Mike: This was too much for me so I threw the gauntlet down and wrote a review on Amazon on a scathing review of the book and basically said Kreskin, next time you’re in Toronto and I know he passes through because we play in some of the Same venues and I said, meet with the mentalist group I’m a part of, M5 at that time and demonstrate your real phenomena with us. And of course, he refused to pick up the gauntlet which was not surprising. Now, Kreskin has done a number of things that have become his signature. One of them is he will come out on stage with a clipboard and he’ll say people start to think of different things focusing on different things, close your eyes and focus on your thoughts and ideas and whatever and he’ll say. Who’s thinking the initials DM? DM? and someone stands up and he said they’re your initials? the man says yes. Can I call you Doug? And the man said that’s my name and he said Doug, who’s Alice? that’s my wife. And everyone applauds wildly. It is amazing to watch. What you don’t see before the show goes on the air or in his live show is Kreskin running through the audience causing this mayhem passing out bits of paper to people, pencils, saying write down things that are significant to you. None of them will be collected. Put them in these envelopes, pass them down to the front, put them under your feet. If one could really read minds, there will be no need to write anything down.

Chris: Exactly.

Mike: Well he finger palms this stuff out of the envelopes as he’s passing them down the line and puts them in his pocket. Then on a TV show when he goes back in his dressing room, opens these at his palm, take a dozen. Takes the best ones, writes some notes really faint on sheets of paper on his clipboard and then reads it off the clipboard and pretends he’s writing or does write over it. now when he does it live, he finger palms it out but he can’t just open it in front of everyone without being seen so he has a clipboard that opens in three different ways and it creates a shield around it so it can work inside this without his hands being seen and then to push it further, he tells the audience to close their eyes. Everyone close your eyes. That gives him to open these and read them so he’s really, really good at this. really, really good at selling it but I’m only tipping this because this is not even his method. This is Joseph Dunninger’s method and it’s because Kreskin claims to be real and puts the rest of us mentalists down that he’s throwing the gauntlet down.

Chris: And you won’t let that stand. I know you.

Mike: I can’t let that pass Chris. So now the other aspect of this is his table tipping method which again is not his method. There’s two different things he does. One is he gets a number of people around a card table. They put their hands on the table with their fingers touching and they imagine that the table was starting to move and sure enough the table starts rocking wildly – well actually walk around the stage with the people struggling to keep their hands on it.

Chris: Oh wow.

Mike: But this is done entirely through idiomotor response.

Chris: Okay which is that’s what I was thinking.

Mike: Ideas produces motion. You start to get the resonance of the table and they are rocking it without knowing they’re doing it. Same as the Ouija board.

Chris: They are picking up on the others motion unconsciously.

Mike: In fact, there’s even a more powerful way of doing this than Kreskin does it. Anyone who tries this and succeeds at it, you’ll have amazing results. Get a card table and get four people and get four or five bottles of different sizes. Wine bottles, aspirin bottles whatever. Put a cork in each one with a thread hanging inside and something like a washer or a nut that will ding on the side of the bottle. So you have all these different sized bottles with different length pendulums inside.

Chris: Because they will respond to different frequencies.

Mike: Different frequencies which you as a scientist and engineer know. So people put their hands around the table with fingers touching again and they focus on one of the bottles. Now this comes out in Joe Fisher’s magic book and it’s excellent and what’ll happen is that one pendulum inside that one bottle will begin to swing and rock and the bizarre thing is it’ll swing so violently it’ll bang up the sides of the bottle and all the others stay absolutely still because of the amplitude of that pendulum.

Chris: So the physics behind this are well the physics is that the different length of the pendulum will mean a different frequency. It’ll have a different – thank you Mike correcting the engineer – it’ll have a different resonant frequency so what you’re saying is idiomotor signals or idiomotor movement, everybody focusing on one particular bottle with one fixed length of pendulum.

Mike: Yes they are finding the resonance.

Chris: It will resonate at a different frequency than all of the others and so when they all naturally unconsciously pick up on the right frequency, it starts moving.

Mike: Right and also they can then shift their attention to a different bottle and the one will stop and the other will start. It’s very bizarre to see but there’s nothing underneath.

Chris: There’s no magic.

Mike: So that’s one thing you can do that outdoes the tabetipping thing. The table walking around and bouncing. Now Kreskin then takes it to another point as does another well-known mentalist in the college circuit and I wont say his name because I have nothing against the man. He’s a very nice man from what I’ve known and so is Kreskin, its just again, he’s claiming the stuff is real so he’s asking for a response. Maybe he doesn’t want one but he’s asking for one of what he’s saying. The other thing he does Chris is the people around the table who put their hands on the card table that rocks or a small wooden table or quite a heavy one and it actually rises up the floor with their hands on top of it. his and the other people and…

Chris: Okay that sounds…

Mike: Right through the air like moving… feet in the air and down again.

Chris: So some kind of antigravity type of weirdness.

Mike: Much, much simpler. This is again out of a kid’s magic book and I presume this is the way he does it. all you need is a ring that has a bit of a notch cut into one side of it and you drive a straight pin into the top of the table with just a tiny little bit of space not driven in flat and you color it the Same black as the table. So you hook your ring under it and you’re able to lift it and the book even advices like pull up suddenly in the end and pin will go flying and nobody will see it but you don’t really need to go do that. And so this kind of thing is typical magic tricks that are sold as occult and magical powers and that’s why I’m telling you how he did it.

Chris: Okay that’s really cool so that’s probably a much more detailed answer than Sam was expecting on the tilting table.

Mike: Specialized on all that sort of thing.

Chris: Now let me just see if we’ve covered all the questions Sam asked here so Kreskin did a lot of mentalism on his show with dates and names of the audiences.

Mike: Same thing I said in the beginning. He can be so bold with that Chris. I’ve seen him live probably three times. I’ve met the man. He’s a really likeable man but he finger palms these folded billets out and he says some people actually think I’m stealing them from this and putting them in my pocket and he does this as he’s saying it.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: Talk about hiding in plain sight which is fantastic.

Chris: So just breaking this down because you’re an exceptionally skilled mentalist so you’re in the perfect position to talk about all these stuff. That’s all part of it right? doing stuff that no questions as questionable.

Mike: Too obvious yeah. You remember Chris I’ve said in a much, much earlier podcast. I used to do the one with Bill McClure taught me with a padful of numbers and they’re adding them up and all I’m doing is turning to the paddle as I’m handing it to them and leaving it in their hand, it takes – bravado. I won’t say the other word. It takes the bottle. You’ve got a bottle to do it mate. So just turning over and leaving their hands hoping they don’t turn it over and see the other figures on.

Chris: So you’ve got numbers on the other side.

Mike: Yeah and different handwritings. So all this stuff comes back, goes back to Dunninger and Kreskin made a great living on it and I applaud him. He’s on the road more than anyone. If you want to see Kreskin’s stuff, you really have to see the movie; I think it’s something like the amazing buck.

Chris:    If any listener knows…

Mike: I’d Google it afterwards. Anyway it’s a story about a guy like Kreskin and wasn’t Woody Haralson. It was John Malcovich plays this Kreskin type character in it.

Chris: Oh very cool.

Mike: So anyway check it out.

Chris: Okay so the next question was about how he used to glue subjects to their chairs without relaxing or sleeping the subjects with any inductions. Why isn’t that demonstrated by stage hypnotists?

Mike: It is. I’ve done all that stuff. Remember my initial induction was progressive testing. I didn’t do an induction. I would test people all different ways, hands locked together, magnetic fingers, eyes locked so eyelid catalepsy, rotating hands, autonomic movement, all of these things are producing through heteroaction as you know Chris a hypnotic state. So the person begins to fall into compliance set as well and will start to respond. That’s why Chris Kreskin can say I didn’t hypnotize you did I? and the person says no and he said try to stand up. Try. And the implication is they can’t and they’re stuck to their chair. It’s great. I mean he’s great at it but…

Chris: If you want to learn – those of you listening who want to learn a little bit more about heteroaction, head on over to Mikemnadelhypnosis.com, click on the blog link in the navigation area and Mike actually just published a blog post fairly recently so I’m recording this right now April 2015 so if you’re looking for it, you can find it based on that and it talks about how to set a client for hypnotic session or a stage hypnosis and heteroaction is discussed in there so you’ll get some appreciation for the topic. Now in terms of gluing people to their chairs, that’s really no different than the old trick of gluing someone’s hand to their heads. So called gluing, not really gluing, it’s stuck. Your hand is stuck to your head. You wont be able to pull your hand off your head no matter how hard you try. Try now, try really hard. Stop trying. Your hand is normal again. Okay, so or the old trick of hey, here’s a 20 dollar bill you won’t be able to get your hand off of your lap to reach out and grab that.

Mike: Did you say off of?

Chris: From… off of I guess. Off your lap. Some hypnotists will do tricks like that. You can glue the person’s hand to their lap.

Mike: Or someone else’s lap.

Chris: Or to anything. And they will not be able to get their hand attached from whatever it’s supposedly glued to, snatch the 20 dollars out of your hand. So this kind of thing is…

Mike: The funny thing with the money one is that the law of law of diminish and return. There’s a point that if you challenge the person, put more pressure on them, it makes it harder for them to do the task.

Chris: Until it becomes such a substantial sum.

Mike: I used to do a 20 dollar bill.

Chris: There’s 2 million dollars.

Mike: Try to pick up the 20 dollars. The person couldn’t and this was in high school in the 70s. 20 bucks – well back then, 20 dollars will buy you a house. You can buy a house with a swimming pool for that much. Anyway 20 bucks, the person was straining to try and get it. if I get it up to 100 bucks, I didn’t tell you, most of those people would’ve snapped out of it and picked up that money right away.

Chris: For sure and if you offered them life changing sums of money then absolutely even more or so because the lesson that you’re learning as a hypnotic subject in not being to grab that cash is suddenly dwarfed by the potential of all that money that you would have. All right, let’s talk about what else have we got here. so let’s talk about this Mike. Are the subjects on stages in the stages of hypnosis show really seeing the audience naked that is when they’re told that they’re going to in a snap of the fingers or whatever hypnotic suggestion they’re given and how long does the effect last if the hypnotist doesn’t awaken the subject?

Mike: Okay those are two very good questions. If you’re saying they’re really seeing the audience naked well the answer is obviously no.

Chris: obviously not.

Mike: you cannot give them with an x-ray vision.

Chris: I mean the audience isn’t actually naked.

Mike: we can’t give them x-ray vision and the audience is still clothed.

Chris: But they sure think they are.

Mike: Now the interesting thing is there’s no way of really reliably testing this. One of my very good friends, Dr. Arthur Parlini who’s a professor of psychology at Algoma University is also the dean there. His specialty is hypnosis and he did work with the legendary Nick Spanos of Ottawa who is well-known in hypnosis communities through his research and one of the things Arthur is very1 interested in is working with polygraphs, lie detectors and all this thing about recanting. So you could hypnotize a bunch of people and say did you see them naked and they say, yes absolutely. Then you check them with the polygraph and I’m making this one up. This isn’t one of his test and it shows that you know maybe 80 percent of them really believed that they did and 20 percent didn’t believe they did but they just said they saw them naked. So then you can reverse all this and say oh the polygraph isn’t really functioning, it’s not plugged in and they’ll recant on it and you can get them constantly changing their minds. There’s no way of absolutely getting to the truth on this.

Chris: Oh that is hilarious.

Mike: It’s an odd thing so clearly if you’re noticing the person naked but the levels of response will be different for everyone. I gave the example many years ago when I started playing around with hypnosis when I was about 18 so I’ve been doing it for about six years already at that point. I was at a party and…

Chris: I love this story.

Mike: Hypnotized a bunch of people – 2 girls and 1 guy – told them the next person to walk into the room of this apartment which was [unclear 22;18] apart in Toronto.

Chris: Is going to be Mick Jagger.

Mike: I say before looked like Don Naught.

Chris: And the guy who walked through the door.

Mike: Was black.

Chris: What did he look like?

Mike: He was black. He was form Jamaica and a friend of ours who had just finished his evening job and he came to the party late and so anyway, all three of them freaked out. ‘Oh it’s Mick Jagger. It’s Mick Jagger.’ And then I snapped them out of it and asked them what they saw and in no particular order, the one girl said ‘I knew it was Pat – let’s call him – but I heard myself saying it was Mick Jagger.’ Okay so she’s dissociated from it and hearing herself saying it’s Mick Jagger even she knew it was Pat. Second girl didn’t know Pat. She said ‘I knew it was some black guy but I knew it was Mick Jagger in some bizarre disguise.’

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: I’d said yeah, very, very good disguise. And the third guy said, ‘They’re crazy. I saw Mick Jagger walk through that door. I met him, I saw it was him.’ So you’re getting three different responses so who can say?

Chris: Yeah that’s a very good answer. Okay last one here from Sam is 2 subjects blindfolded on a stage parted away and the hypnotist or mentalist I think it’s probably more accurate here touches subject 1 in different areas of his body and subject 2 feels it in the Same spot. How does that happen?

Mike: It’s a trick. I’m very familiar with it. I won’t tip this because it’s not Kreskin but I will say it’s not difficult to find. You can probably find this from Tannin’s in New York, a magic supply house or browser den in Toronto and it’s a clever trick. A lot of it is In the timing of how things happened. We’ll say that much that touching doesn’t happen when you think it does.

Chris: oh isn’t that fascinating.

Mike: it’s how it’s reframed and my friend Paul Pacific who’s an excellent mentalist and yes that’s his real name. Paul Pacific does this in his act so I won’t say anything but he does a really good job where he’ll have a couple of women on stage and they close their eyes and he goes over the one woman who’s got long hair and takes her hair and brushes it across her nose and the other woman says I feel a hair like brushing my nose.

Chris: oh wow.

Mike: It’s the same thing.

Chris: That’s the same thing. Okay, so for any of you out there who are interested in learning mentalism, what would you say is a great starting point Mike? I mean they can buy these tricks. I just said I mean.

Mike: Oh no. Oh no.

Chris: We have to do it again.

Mike: That’s all folks.

Chris: Quick interruption. I better explain so podcast 57 Mike and I called each other to task for unnecessary filler language. In fact, that’s the title of the podcast. I named it unnecessary filler. We were catching ourselves saying things like I mean.

Mike: I hate that one.

Chris: When you’re about to say what you mean so

Mike: It’s redundant.

Chris: It’s totally redundant. Completely 100 percent redundant which is in itself redundant.

Mike: Right.

Chris: So in my mind, I reframed every time I’m about to say I mean. I’ll stop myself if I actually catch myself but if I don’t and I say it and then I catch myself after the fact, I have to put on the porky pig imitation. Porky pig imitation] That’s all folks.

Mike: As a form of self castigation.

Chris: Exactly and so I do it now no matter where I am and I’m finding that I’m catching myself more and more before I say it but I’m not completely…

Mike: You’re not definitely out yet but if you’re able to use this form of self punishment, self castigation and if you find it’s not working completely Chris, I suggest you switch to self castration. That’ll do the trick.

Chris: And what are you doing? you’re not doing porky pig when you catch yourself.

Mike: No, I catch myself saying I mean which I don’t know where I picked that up.

Chris: It’s horrible.

Mike: We’d be constantly doing this mental house cleaning. Get rid of these word whiskers and so on but when I do it, I do the goofy and that really annoys me so much. I don’t have to continue.

Chris: [laughs] fantastic. All right let’s see what else we have… we are just to do a time check, the 26-minute mark.

Mike: Okay let’s keep going.

Chris: all right, why not. Let’s just keep moving.

Mike: we like to give them approximately half an hour.

Chris: Plus we still have a metaphor and an ending.

Mike: Yes, we might as well launch right into those Chris because we’re quite near.

Chris: No, no. I do want to cover.

Mike: The Saudi Arabia question.

Chris: Not that one. We’ll do both. Why not? we’ll do Chris’s question. Chris in Charlotte, North Carolina. He just emailed me this morning in fact. It said that well he asked this question in another format online webinars. Our monthly webinars and we didn’t get to it so we’re going to add it in here to the podcast instead. He says I’m always looking at fun ways of explaining to others what I do, an elevator pitch, excitingly unconscious mind. What are some creative and fun ways that you have found for doing just that? now he’s a hypnotist for those of you out there wondering. So what are some creative ways for explaining to others that you’re a hypnotist in some sort of elevator pitch manner?

Mike: well I like this one [coughs] [laughs].

Chris: It’s Mike’s new [unclear 27:11] is he coughs in someone else’s neck.

Mike: it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant because it’s so stupid. I did it in the pub last night after British jujitsu and what you do is someone’s sitting on a table talking. It has to be a friend of yours and you sort of cough for about 10 feet away. They hear it in the background behind them and you keep coughing and you suddenly move forward and clutch their neck and shoulders so you’re having some sort of spasm and keep coughing on their neck so they feel it and it just freaks people out. Chris said to me.

Chris: This isn’t your best work.

Mike: not your best work like it’s a painting or something. I say Chris, it’s because it is so juvenile and so stupid that I find it to be absolutely brilliant.

Chris: [laughs] of course you do. All right what’s a great elevator pitch strategy for explaining that you’re a hypnotist?

Mike: I’m going to leave that one with you because I have no idea where to go with that. We hear a rare confession of failure.

Chris: I don’t have any… let’s think on that one and come back to you in podcast 59. We’ll have to put some thoughts… he’s doing it to me right now.

Mike: [laughs]

Chris: It’s horrible.

Mike: It’s hilarious.

Chris: People are going to think we’re not editing this podcast properly. What’s with all these coughing noise?

Mike: I know.

Chris: we’re going to come back to that one Chris because I honestly can’t think of a satisfying answer to the question right now.

Mike: we’re going to answer it now. Either you’ll be something like you have two minds. You have one you’re aware of and one you’re not aware of. The one you’re not aware of runs your heart and stores all your memories and all those things. I specialize in contacting the mind you aren’t typically aware of and helping people change as a result of that.

Chris: Okay, I love that. That’s very…

Mike: I’m a hypna-tist. I hypna-tize people.

Chris: [laughs] Don’t say it hypna-tize. Okay…

Mike: Where are we going?

Chris: We’re going to go to the question that came in via the live chat function on our website. It is a listener from Saudi Arabia and he says I want to program my unconscious mind for attracting wealth. Does it work if I record my voice repeating phrases like I have a million dollars on mp3 and then play that through my ear throughout the day even if I don’t believe it now? Doesn’t that sync to my unconscious when I’m not paying attention to it while engaging, doing other work or activities which could be trance?

Mike: My gut feeling is no. first of all, the rule is present state, associated. Desired state, dissociated.

Chris: Exactly.

Mike: If you tell your unconscious mind you already have a million dollars, it’ll go okay that one’s taken care of.

Chris: I don’t need to do any work.

Mike: So go on.

Chris: I love your comment there. Present state, associated. Target state, dissociated. So you have to work on seeing yourself in a situation in the future where you have the wealth that you want or the whatever it is. It doesn’t have to be wealth but since the question was about wealth, we’ll address it that way. The other thing is we find empowering questions are much more useful to get you into process because how do you get to the target state. You take some action. You have to apply some sort of process. You can’t just passively do nothing and expect to get to this target state. So you’re seeing yourself dissociated and you’re applying process to get yourself there. So what is it that you can do right now to take the necessary action to build the income that you want or the wealth that you want or whatever it is so just remember empowering questions? We discussed this in other podcasts.

Mike: Right empowering questions cause your unconscious to respond. Remember, your brain will answer whatever question you ask. It may not be the right answer. It may not even make sense but it will answer based on your scheme and all the requisite knowledge that you have for that task which is why you don’t want to say…

Chris: Why don’t I have a million dollars?

Mike: Well because you’re stupid, you can’t work very well and you can’t save whatever.

Chris: You’re not applying yourself.

Mike: Yeah, you want to ask empowering questions. How can I get that first million in record time while making the world a better place for others? things like that. Let your unconscious answer it but yeah, otherwise, go into a hypnotic trance. Give yourself 20-minute trances everyday so your unconscious mind can help you discover new ways to generate wealth. I am not a big believe that we can just attract money unless it’s a quarter.

Chris: [laughs] The other thing is remember, if you write your empowering questions out, put them somewhere you’ll see them every day so that you know, attached to your bathroom, your night side table. I can’t even speak Mike. Night side table, whatever it is that you have where you’re going to see this every day. Last question and then we’re going to do the metaphor and the ending. We have Cayden in the United States, 15 years old, reading our [laughs] – listening to your podcast. Reading our podcast Mike. He’s that skilled.

Mike: Deafening silence for me.

Chris: Looking for book recommendations on NLP to get started.

Mike: Is it with NLP alone or with hypnosis as well?

Chris: I think we should throw hypnosis on to the mix because they are so interconnected. The question was about neurolinguistic programs specifically.

Mike: As an NLP trainer, I will give you some great recommendations Cayden. There’s some really good books out there. You can’t go wrong. First of all, going back to the source, now although a lot of these patterns are considered archaic now like the switch pattern. If you go back to books like frogs and the Princess by Amber and Grinder. That’s a great book. It’s sort of a foundation – the early NLP. If you want to read how it ties into hypnosis, I would definitely get a copy of Trance-formations: Neurolinguistic Programming and the structure of hypnosis. That’s a fabulous book as well. I always recommend you look at the more recent stuff too and Chris was thinking about the sneeze.

Chris: I’m just looking at books in my bookshelf. There’s things like the Structure of Magic.

Mike: sneeze on my neck.

Chris: I was squinting my eyes.

Mike: the other one I would say though is the structure of magic is pretty dry. It’s more if you can’t sleep, it’s a great book but I recommend you read one of John Grinder’s recent books like Whispering in the Wind. That’ll show you where NLP turned into NLP new code and a lot of things you can do with that. Stephen Cunny, Rea Andreas have some excellent books. Heart of the mind is a really good NLP book. Change your mind and keep the change, Richard Bandler. Another really good one. So any of those will get you started in the right direction and reframing is another terrific book by Bandler and grinder. So on the top of my head.

Chris: Training Trances is not a bad one either at all.

Mike: Yes Overdurf training trances but that’s more people doing Ericksonian hypnosis in a group setting.

Chris: it’s almost a power training session. It’s an edited transcript of a training session.

Mike: We give out transcripts of our training sessions for free. Oh no, actually we don’t but if we did, we would but we found it to be far too much trouble. We try our lives rather than give things away.

Chris: all right so I think that wraps up the podcast.

Mike: oh no.

Chris: 58 which is fantastic. Hurrah! So thanks everybody for tuning in. Remember to head on over to Mikemandelhypnosis.com. Check out our website, check out the live classes, the online training that we have for you – the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy. World’s best online hypnosis training.

Mike: Mindscaping in June and also, we have added that extra Architecture of Hypnosis course in June.

Chris: June 22^nd to 26^th.

Mike: It’s filling up now and there are some spots left. Jump all over that. Spend a week in Toronto with us and have an absolute blast.

Chris: And come to Vegas in august and hang out with us. And last but not least as always, the most important thing to do is head on over to iTunes and leave a rating and a review for this podcast. Thanks folks.

Mike: What about the empowering question?

Chris: We didn’t write one. You want to make one up?

Mike: Yeah. Here’s the empowering question for today. How will you ensure that Chris and I never forget to do an empowering question and how will it be implemented in your life in a way that will be glanitive and persuasive while we’re moving all dursative elements so that even if things change in a more rapid rate than you had expected, it would still be just fine. That’s right.

Chris: Well done. All right, do you have a metaphor for us Mike?

Mike: Yes I do. Many years ago when I was touring with my hypnosis shows. So this would be late 1970s, about 1978, 79, I was in Thunder Bay, Ontario which used to be called fort William. In fact, as of me speaking at this moment, I was in Thunder Bay again last week and did a forensic graphology lecture and a hypnosis demonstration at Confederation College, had a wonderful time. Thunder Bay is very north. Its at the north edge of lake superior, the largest of the great lakes I think. The largest body of freshwater in the world and it was called fort William. One of the sites that people still go to see is something called the sleeping giant and the sleeping giant comes form native Canadian mythology and it looks like a giant lying there but it’s a huge rock formation and I’ve always enjoyed Thunder Bay. As soon as I got off the plane from you know porter airlines flying out of Toronto airport, Billy Bishop airport, it was fresh and clean in the air. As soon as it landed, I could breathe this all the positive ions or were they negative ones. I mean they’re good ones anyways and it reminded me Chris of back in the 70s when I was touring through Thunder Bay and I was working with backwards bob who could talk backwards and write upside down and backwards and get a memory act and at the end of our show which was a huge hit of course, we were attempting to leave the landmark hotel performance room to get back to our rooms and we’re standing at the elevator and this guy comes over, long hair, lumber jacket and he says hey you did that show right? I said yes we did and it was awesome. I said, thank you. thank you very much. Actually nobody was saying awesome back then. He said it was very good. I said thank you. He said, can I talk to you for a minute? and we’re trying to get in the elevator. Okay and he looks at us and all he does is sort of shrug and go so, you know… and we went, what? And he said so… he kept shrugging and moving his hands and bob says, what do you want? What are you asking us? And he goes you know just shrugging you know and we’re getting more and more frustrated and we said we got to go. We’ve got to get some sleep. We’ve got to get back to our rooms and he said what’s wrong with you guys? You don’t want to talk to me? and I said we’ll talk to you but you’re not saying anything and he said what do you want? he shrugs and waves his arms. This went on for way, way too long. [laughs] we just left and he was expecting still in the hallways there just shrugging at whoever comes out. It was one of the weirdest things in my life.

Chris: Oh that’s just too much. Okay, thanks everybody. That is the end of the podcast and goodnight.

Mike: Goodnight.