Dr. David Spiegel, Stanford U. — Practical Hypnosis, Meditation vs. Hypnosis, Pain Management Without Drugs, The Neurobiology of Trance, and More (#731)

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“One of the things I love about working with hypnosis is people are surprised at what they can do because they’re trying out being different and seeing what it feels like.” — Dr. David Spiegel




Dr. David Spiegel is Willson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Director of the Center on Stress and Health, and Medical Director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he has been a member of the academic faculty since 1975. Dr. Spiegel has more than 40 years of clinical and research experience, has published thirteen books, 404 scientific journal articles, and his work has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, and more.



He is the founder of Reveri , the world’s first interactive self-hypnosis app.



Listen to the episode on  Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,  Overcast ,  Podcast Addict ,  Pocket Casts ,  Castbox ,  Google Podcasts ,  Amazon Music ,  or on your favorite podcast platform . Watch the interview on YouTube here .



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#731: Dr. David Spiegel, Stanford U. — Practical Hypnosis, Meditation vs. Hypnosis, Pain Management Without Drugs, The Neurobiology of Trance, and More













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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments .







Want to hear another episode with someone who takes hypnosis seriously? Listen to my conversation with Loonshots author Safi Bahcall in which we discussed using hypnosis for insomnia relief, common relaxation trance induction techniques, the most effective applications of hypnosis, how hypnosis compares to meditation for self-control, understanding anger as a gift, effective and non-effective ways of helping someone cope with depression, and much more .


#382: Safi Bahcall — On Hypnosis, Conquering Insomnia, Incentives, and More



SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE




Connect with Dr. David Spiegel :




LinkedIn | Stanford Medicine




Connect with Reveri :




Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram




Digital Hypnosis | Reveri



Conversion Disorder | Cleveland Clinic



The Truth About Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures | Epilepsy Foundation



Forensic Psychiatry | Wikipedia



Academic Politics Are So Vicious Because the Stakes Are So Small | Quote Investigator



Dr. Andrew Huberman — A Neurobiologist on Optimizing Sleep, Enhancing Performance, Reducing Anxiety, Increasing Testosterone, and Using the Body to Control the Mind | The Tim Ferriss Show #521



How Does Hypnosis Work? Here’s What the Science Says | Time



Shared Cognitive Mechanisms of Hypnotizability with Executive Functioning and Information Salience | Scientific Reports



Uncovering the New Science of Clinical Hypnosis | APA



Mihály Csíkszentmihályi on the Autotelic Experience | Goodreads



Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi | Amazon



Women’s Swimming & Diving | Stanford University Athletics



Tiger’s Psychologist: The Use of Hypnosis to Create a Champion | Golf Viral



Meditation, Mindset, and Mastery | The Tim Ferriss Show #201



How to Know If You Can Be Hypnotized with Andrew Huberman | JRE Clips



Piaget’s Theory of Childhood Development | Child & Family Blog



Test–Retest Reliability of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C, and the Elkins Hypnotizability Scale | International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis



Point-of-Care Testing of Enzyme Polymorphisms for Predicting Hypnotizability and Postoperative Pain | The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics



The Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP) in Clinical Practice and Research | International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis



The Eye-Roll Hypnosis Test: How to Measure Your Susceptibility with Dr. David Spiegel (Clip) | The Align Podcast



What Is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)? | EMDR Institute



“One Foot in the Present, One Foot in the Past:” Understanding EMDR | The New York Times



We’d Rather Feel Guilty Than Helpless | Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church



LSD May Chip Away at the Brain’s “Sense of Self” Network | Scientific American



MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy | MAPS



The World’s Largest Psychedelic Research Center | The Tim Ferriss Show #385



Psychedelics Open Your Brain. You Might Not like What Falls In. | The Atlantic



Psychedelics Aren’t For Everyone | Green Market Report



Research Takes a Closer Look at the Experience of Ego Dissolution | Binghamton News



Nolan Williams — A Glimpse of the Future: Electroceuticals for 70%–90% Remission of Depression, Brain Stimulation for Sports Performance, and De-risking Ibogaine for TBI/PTSD | The Tim Ferriss Show #714



Accelerated TMS: Moving Quickly into the Future of Depression Treatment | Neuropsychopharmacology



Scientists Use High-Tech Brain Stimulation to Make People More Hypnotizable | Stanford Medicine



Stanford Hypnosis Integrated with Functional Connectivity-Targeted Transcranial Stimulation (Shift): A Preregistered Randomized Controlled Trial | Nature Mental Health



Dr. James Esdaile and Deep Hypnosis | Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy



A Randomized Controlled Trial of Clinical Hypnosis as an Opioid-Sparing Adjunct Treatment for Pain Relief in Adults Undergoing Major Oncologic Surgery | Journal of Pain Research



Vasodilation: What Causes Blood Vessels to Widen | Cleveland Clinic



What Is Dissociation? | Mind



What Is Pain? | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke



Dr. David Spiegel: Can You Control Pain with Your Mind? (Clip) | The Proof #297



Hypnotic Alteration of Somatosensory Perception | American Journal of Psychiatry



How Hypnosis Can Alter the Brain’s Perception of Pain | Scope



What Is Interoception, and How Does It Affect Mental Health? Five Questions for April Smith | APA



Brain Activity and Functional Connectivity Associated with Hypnosis | Cerebral Cortex



The Pink Elephant Problem | Psychology Today



Hypnotherapy Compared to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Smoking Cessation in a Randomized Controlled Trial | Frontiers in Psychology



Trance and Dance in Bali | Wikipedia



From Magic Power to Everyday Trance | The History of Hypnosis



Re-Imagining Bleeders: The Medical Leech in the Nineteenth Century Bloodletting Encounter | Medical History



Mesmeromania, or, the Tale of the Tub | Cabinet



Recognizing and Treating Status Asthmaticus | Healthline



US Involvement in the Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive, 1968 | Office of the Historian



Floating in the Dead Sea | Dead Sea



The Secret of How Hypnosis Really Works | Time



The Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis | SCEH



American Society of Clinical Hypnosis | ASCH



The International Society for Hypnosis | ISH



Trance and Treatment: Clinical Uses of Hypnosis by Herbert Spiegel and David Spiegel | Amazon



Self-Hypnosis for Major Wellness Issues | Oneleaf



Fix the Miscommunication between Your Gut and Brain | Nerva



Boiling Energy: Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung by Richard Katz | Amazon



Rodney Dangerfield Quotes | IMDb




SHOW NOTES




[07:00] How Herbert Spiegel was exposed to hypnosis.



[10:14] Using hypnosis to cure non-epileptic seizures.



[11:53] What is a forensic psychiatrist?



[14:43] How hypnosis works.



[17:54] Hypnosis and the flow state.



[21:03] How hypnosis differs from meditation.



[22:38] Determining one’s susceptibility to hypnosis.



[27:21] I take the eye-roll test.



[29:33] Thoughts on EMDR.



[36:29] Therapeutic psychedelics and ego dissolution.



[41:05] Potential adverse effects of hypnosis?



[42:34] Accelerated TMS improves response to hypnosis.



[44:25] Hypnosis as a tool for stress and pain relief.



[48:56] David treats my back pain with hypnosis.



[57:09] Replicating this effect with self-hypnosis.



[57:57] Understanding the science of pain relief.



[1:03:18] Filtering the hurt from the pain.



[1:06:37] For us, not against us.



[1:09:12] Hypnosis vs. other addiction interventions.



[1:11:41] A mesmerizing tale of hypnotic history.



[1:16:10] Most surprising patient outcomes.



[1:24:53] Finding connection to treat the agitated.



[1:28:40] Who is Reveri designed for?



[1:31:15] Hypnosis as a first rather than last resort.



[1:35:02] Further resources and final thoughts.




MORE DR. DAVID SPIEGEL QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW



“One of the coolest things about the [hypnotic] state is you tend to let go of your ordinary premises — not just about what’s going on at that moment, but who you are, what kind of a person you are. … People can try out being different and see what it feels like. They can let go of their usual premises, and that’s where hypnosis is something like flow state.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“Most eight-year-olds are in trances most of the time. As you know, if you call your eight-year-old in for dinner, he doesn’t hear you. He’s doing his thing — work and play are all the same thing for kids. I don’t know why we try to train them to be little adults, because they have so much fun.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“By the time you’re about 21, your hypnotizability becomes as stable a trait as IQ.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“[EMDR is] another therapeutic technique, but I have to say that my overall impression is what’s good about it isn’t new, and what’s new about it isn’t good.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“Depression with post-traumatic stress disorder is so harmful to people because it tarnishes their feelings about who they are as people. And if you can understand the experience, but disconnect it in some ways from this default mode conclusion about what sort of a person you are, that can be powerfully therapeutic.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“The good thing about hypnosis is you can turn it on real fast, you can turn it off real fast. So the worst thing that happens most of the time is, sometimes it doesn’t work, so what? So you do something else. … Hypnosis has not yet succeeded in killing anyone. It’s just not dangerous.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“Hypnosis is like an underappreciated company that hasn’t been managed well and has a lot more positive resources, and that’s what it’s like. We just don’t take advantage of it.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“One of the things I love about working with hypnosis is people are surprised at what they can do because they’re trying out being different and seeing what it feels like.” — Dr. David Spiegel



“I’d love to see [hypnosis] integrated better with people’s overall health and wellness care. I think it’s been sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of psychotherapies.” — Dr. David Spiegel



PEOPLE MENTIONED




Herbert Spiegel



Marcia Greenleaf



Gustav Aschaffenburg



Henry Kissinger



Andrew Huberman



Afik Faerman



Mihály Csíkszentmihályi



Tiger Woods



Jay Brunza



Jean Piaget



Dana Cortade



Francine Shapiro



Robin Carhart-Harris



Nolan Williams



James Esdaile



Thomas Paul Hackett, Jr.



Franz Mesmer



M. de Voltaire



Anna Freud



Sigmund Freud



Louis XVI



Benjamin Franklin



Antoine Lavoisier



Joseph-Ignace Guillotin



Rodney Dangerfield

The post Dr. David Spiegel, Stanford U. — Practical Hypnosis, Meditation vs. Hypnosis, Pain Management Without Drugs, The Neurobiology of Trance, and More (#731) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss .