Hypnosis and your Health, with Norman Plotkin

Ariel: Hello, again, everybody. Welcome back to the “Colon Health Podcast.” This is your co-host, Ariel Bridges. I am really excited. I know I say every week that I’m excited to chat with our guests, which I am. I’m very lucky to have the job that I have. But this week is especially exciting because we have a guest unlike any of the other guests that we’ve had in the past. Today, we have Norman Plotkin with us, who is a hypnotherapist. So, I’m going to throw it over to Norman now so he can tell us a bit more about what hypnotherapy is and what it’s even used for. So, hello, Norman. How’s it going?

Norman: It’s going great. Thanks. So, glad to be here, Ariel. Thanks for the opportunity. So, hypnotherapy is nothing more than deep relaxation and focused concentration. Now, that’s the simple explanation. There’s always much more to the story. It’s trance, and it’s been used since time immemorial. The original healers, aboriginal and indigenous healers used trance. They used drumming, they used incantations, they used focus, they did surgeries under trans people who underwent full-on surgery. So, there’s evidence that trance has been used as long as humans have been interacting. So it is, again, deep relaxation with a deep focus.

And so most people’s introduction is a Vegas stage show or the county fair, where they use hypnosis to demonstrate how powerful the subconscious mind is and how, with a little bit of prompting, from someone who’s trained in putting you in trance, you can suspend that part of your brain that usually makes you pay attention to things. And that part of the brain that makes you worry about what you look like in front of others. And so people cluck like chickens and bite into an onion and think it’s an apple. And if you’ve ever seen one of those shows, 10 people get up and 7 or 8 of them go into it, and 3 of them are dismissed. Thank you for playing along. And because that’s just the way it works is data out of studies out of Stanford, Dr. David Spiegel and UK suggests that 80% of people can be hypnotized, 20% not so much.

In my seven years of practice, I found anybody who wants to be, can be. But if you cross your arms in front of your chest and say, “You know, I dare you, then I can’t get in.” Otherwise, you know, I’d have a date every night, right? If it was that powerful. So, anybody who wants to be, can be. It’s this heightened awareness, and focus, and concentration, and deep relaxation allows me to… think of the conscious mind which is the tip of the iceberg just 5% or so of reason, logic, analysis, decision making, willpower. Think of it as a Labrador Retriever. And through just some soft talking, and some music, and some preparation, I throw a stick for that Labrador Retriever that is your conscious mind. And it runs off for a little bit chasing the stick. And then I speak directly to the subconscious mind, which is the bulk of that iceberg, which is where your programming lies.

From zero to eight years old, you’re in hypnosis, you’re highly suggestible, and you near and match the people in your sphere of influence. And so you’re just sponging everything up, and it lays down this string of code. And that becomes your programming. And so forevermore, your conscious mind, which gathers the data from your senses, and then it compares it to your programming. And if it comports with the programming, then the conscious mind goes along with whatever’s in front of you. If it doesn’t, it’ll come up with a complex rationalization.

And I’ll give you an example. You’re not born liking cigarettes. In fact, the pack says, the Surgeon General says it’s gonna kill you. But somewhere along the line you’re programming has made it okay. And so the conscious mind looks at that statement from the Surgeon General and says, “Yeah, but, aunt Sally smoked two packs a day and she lived till she was 93. I was gonna die anyway, and I’ll be old and it won’t happen to me.” And so there’s a rationalization that your conscious mind has used to overcome these environmental stimuli that doesn’t comport with your subconscious programming. So, that’s just kind of an easy example. But the programming is a well-worn path, and it’s very difficult to get out of because the subconscious mind also, it controls your autonomic nervous system.

Ask a five-year-old who’s tried to threaten mom and dad with suicide by holding their breath. I’m sorry, it doesn’t work because the subconscious mind is making sure you gasp for that next breath, right? And so the subconscious mind wants to bring you back to homeostasis, which is nothing more than your baseline 98.6, whatever your heart rate is for you. And so the same thing with your behavior. And it’s the thing that allows us to not have to learn how to ride a bike over and over and over. We’ve learned, and we know. It’s like riding a bike, it’s even a cliche, or play an instrument, or drive a stick shift. So, this is why the subconscious mind has developed this pattern of returning to repetitive behavior. So, there’s a very good reason for it. It just doesn’t work so well when the behavior is not so good, right? So, when it’s good, behavior you like, good, and behavior you don’t like, not so good. But that’s why it’s difficult to get out of and that’s why hypnotherapy so good for that.

Ariel: Wow. I don’t think I knew that trance or hypnotherapy has been around for such a long time. And I think you’re right, that is the kind of fair, showy bite into an onion, cluck like a chicken is a lot of our introduction, or maybe like the swinging pocket watch. It’s very interesting.

Norman: You’re getting sleepier. Yeah.

Ariel: Exactly. It’s very interesting to hear more of a scientific explanation behind a lot of these things that you’re explaining. And I want to get into that more, but I’m just curious myself, how did you get into hypnotherapy? I did some research on you. You have a very interesting background. So, I’d love for you to share some of that with our listeners as well.

Norman: Well, according to the Grateful Dead “Long Strange Trip,” it’s been, right? So, I joined the Marine Corps out of high school. I grew up in a rural area on a ranch, and rode rodeo. And I joined the Marine Corps, and I went off on an adventure. And hated every minute of it, but it used everything I learned all my life. So, it was super powerful. Then I got out, I worked in the oil fields and then a rock plant, like, Fred Flintstone making little rocks out of big rocks. And then when I was a kid, I climbed telephone poles, we built cable TV. And then my brother was killed in a car accident. And I was 24. He was 22. And it’s kind of a wake-up call. You know, he was pretty mad and worked really hard. I’ve never had to work hard. I’ve winged at a high level all my life, and, you know, it’s a blessing and a curse because, on one hand, I wing it at a high level. On the other hand, I wing it at a high level and realize I have been too thoughtful about a lot of things.

So, I started community college. I walked onto a campus with 25,000 people. I knew one. I took a bunch of big classes. My dad was a school teacher. I sat down eight hours and I went over math and English. I took a placement test and only had to take one math and English class in all of college. I was in a hurry. I finished in just over three years. I transferred to Sac State here in Sacramento, State Capitol nation state.

And the first semester I had a job as a clerk operating the voting system in the state assembly and doing the parliamentary procedure, which I have been exposed to in Future Farmers of America years and years before. At any rate, 25-year career from clerk to consultant. I was the health committee consultant. I did the insurance committee consultant, and then I was hired by the Medical Association. I represented the 30,000 doctors in California and I did public policy for the medical community. Then, I did that for a few years, and I opened my own lobbying firm and represented petroleum, and automotive, and energy, clients.

And I love the public policy. I love the strategy that my inner marine really liked the strategy and whatnot. But the politics, it’s dirty, it’s sophomoric. It’s just… And, you know, energetically, I spoke to others I didn’t have my own voice. I couldn’t write a letter to the editor and express my opinion, and my bear poorly on my clients or they might get mad, you know, who are you? You’re supposed to say our stuff, not yours. So, energetically, my throat chakra was blocked, and consequently, I had papillary carcinoma, which is thyroid cancer in the throat area, the throat chakra area, I had blockages. And initially, I just wanted to get back to normal. I had a radical thyroidectomy lymph node resection around the radiation, and I didn’t realize that normal was late made me sick.

And so I went back to drinking heavily, and, you know, stress ball, all the things that made me sick. And it came back, and I have a second round of radiation. My marriage didn’t make it because never about just the cancer, there’s so much other stuff. And so a friend of mine who had gotten out of politics and opened a yoga studio, and she took me to therapeutic yoga for cancer and taught me Ayurveda, so I’m Dosha, you know, I’m a pitta, not surprisingly fire. Yeah, you know. So, I learned about my Dosha and how to eat for my constitution, and how to meditate. Oh, my analytical mind is powerful to steel trap, but if it’s a trap, it can be. You know, 10:00 at night when the doctor is not there to ask questions to you, you can drive yourself nuts. And so I learned the power of the subconscious mind. I learned to meditate. And I got fascinated with it.

So, then I moved to L.A. because, you know, I just needed to get away from here a little bit, but I moved to Burbank, where there’s nice little airport, where I could fly my kids in every other weekend. So, you know, it’s all very logical, and I was just divinely guided. And turns out there’s a nationally accredited college of hypnotherapy in the San Fernando Valley near where I was living. And I was divinely guided. Yeah, that’s a whole another backstory, but just suffice to say that I was divinely guided. And I attended that school, and it was a great school, Hypnosis Motivation Institute, HMI in Tarzana, outstanding school, great education, really equipped me.

You know, given my experience, you know, having negotiated big deals across the table from powerful people, I stepped right into this, and I wanted to put myself into the service of others. I read… teachers began to appear during that period of my awakening. And Wayne Dyer, “Power of Intention,” Carolyn Myss, “Anatomy of the Spirit,” Deepak Chopra, “Quantum Healing,” Dr. Joe Dispenza, any number of his works. And so I realized I wanted to serve people, not corporations and politicians. And so this was my avenue. And I had never been hypnotized, but I found the argument for helping people naturally, organically, and non-invasively and non-chemically compelling. And I found the offering at HMI compelling. So, I signed up and I went through the course. I did the 18 months with residency, and I learned.

I had to straddle two worlds for a while. I represented a client, an automotive client in 16 western states. So, when I wasn’t flying into, you know, western state capitals from Hawaii to Oklahoma and Alaska to Arizona, I was doing hypnotherapy with people around the shoulders of time, during nights, weekends, and during the day when I wasn’t traveling. And then I wrote a book, I really wanted to tell the cancer story because my understanding of the whole journey grew exponentially, and I wanted to share it because they don’t tell you anything. Allopathic medicine, they don’t tell you anything, they just tell you where to go and sit down, shut up and take this medicine. And I’m a thinking human being. I don’t need someone with alphabet soup behind their name to order me around.

So, I learned a lot. And I tried to write this book. And I’ve been writing speeches and analyses. People voted on billion-dollar bills based on the analysis that I wrote for them, but it was mine and it was hard to write. And so I joined the Author Incubator program, and I wrote it in 90 days with a coach. And then I went to work for Angela in Author Incubator as an acquisition editor for a while. And I kept seeing clients around the edges. So, I eclipsed 10,000 hours, I was in place to help my mom. She had a stroke and then transitioned. And then my dad, a year later, they hadn’t been together in 30 years but died within a year of each other who, again, had strokes. And I was in position, no longer that self-important lobbyist. I was in a place to care for both of my parents. And it was so cool to hold their hands as they fulfill that soul contract. But that freed me up. Okay, now it’s time.

Now, I went full both feet in. And I have found my soul’s purpose. You know, when I was a lobbyist, I talked a lot. As a therapist, I listened. And as the reflective listener, people tell you, so people say, “Wow. Lobbyist to a hypnotherapist?” I’m like, “Well, it’s just persuasion of a different sort.” I see it very consistently, but it does seem a bit of a transition. But literally, I sit at my desk and I listen, and I watch people leave better than they came. And I’m just warmed by the experience, and I am uplifted by the gift of being able to find my soul’s purpose while I’m still here.

Ariel: Holy moly. There’s so much there. Wow. First off, whenever I’m listening to people speaking, I’m like, I want to say things while you’re in the middle. And I’m so sorry for your loss, and you’ve experienced so much, but it’s incredible how you’ve taken all of those experiences and what you’ve learned, and also what your strengths are and kind of flipped them to use things in a different way than what you were using them for before. And I wanted to pause to is that that book that you wrote in 90 days, is that the “Take Charge of Your Cancer?”

Norman: Yes, it is. And I wanted to call it, “The Unwrapped Gift.” And my publisher said, “Norman, cancer probably was a gift for you, but how long did it take you to figure that out?” I’m like, “Yeah, it was a few years.” He said, “You got to meet people where they are and when they’re in it, and they’re not gonna forget.” But you know, just like my brother’s death, and I have some guilt around this. But just like my brother’s death, that was my first unwrapped gift because I changed my life completely. I sold my cable TV company and moved in with my mom at 25. I was like, “Oh, my god, really?” Just like I moved in with my mom at 55 to take care of her.

If you see cancer is a message, and if you don’t listen and if you don’t understand the message, you will be reassigned. And I heard the message. Thank goodness, I heard the message. And it truly has been a gift that got me out of… I’d be dead if I hadn’t heard the message. And one of the things that in my darkest hour it’s just seeing my kids their scared little faces when I was sequestered in the hotel room after I’d been radiated. You know, they’re waving at me through the window from the parking lot. And that’s the thing that spurred you on to understand what’s the message? Let me learn from this. Let me learn quickly and move on to my next embarrassing moment.

Ariel: Oof, yes. So, for anyone that’s interested in reading more about that journey and wrapping that gift, I’m going to link that book, and I’m gonna link both of your books in the show notes below, so be sure to check those out. But there’s something else that you said that really stood out to me because we have a lot of listeners that that are on a quest for answers. They feel like something is off, but it may not be reflected in their test results, or what their doctors told them, or like you said, they think and know confidently in their souls that there’s another option for them outside of just medication. So, you make an ironclad promise to your clients that you can help them drill down to the root cause of their problems, which is major, I think, for so many people, for a lot of the reasons that you’ve already shared. Can you share a bit more about your three-step process that you use to help people through this?

Norman: Absolutely. So, I know a lot of brilliant doctors who their hearts are in the right place, but allopathic medicine steers them in the wrong direction, and they’re nothing more than symptoms managers. If you go with a broken arm or you’re in a car accident, the emergency room is gonna patch you together in a great way. But if you have an illness, that’s not the way to go. You have innate intelligence, your body has an innate intelligence, the problem is, you remember that programming, we talked about that well-worn path, we’re trained to think in certain ways. And so you go to the doctor, and they count those symptoms, and they put them in a bucket and say, “This is what you got, and all we can do is give you these pills.” And that’s not right. So, people come to me, and it’s never what they present for. And the 45-year-old woman who has all this stuff going on in life, she’s the leader of her household, and maybe she’s an executive or has a business. And everyone comes to her in the family for advice, and she’s caring for all these other people, extended families in the community, involved in education or kids. And so she can’t lose those last 10 pounds. She’s tried everything, every diet known to man and woman. And so dieting it’s a dead end, it’s a roller coaster ride, you change your behavior for a little while. And then they’re like, “Hey, look at me.” And then you reward yourself and you’ve deprived yourself. So, now you go haywire in the other direction.

So, anyway, it’s not about the diet, it’s not about the food, it’s about carrying an emotional layer that’s protecting you from the outside world. And it was learned when you were a kid. You watched your mom. And mom may have been verbally abused by dad and withdrew and became sullen and undiagnosed. And you say, “Well, I think there’s depression in my family.” Well, you know what? I don’t think it’s genetic, I think it’s learned. I think we see these things, and when we’re not aware of them when we’re a child. So, the three-step process is to do a deep dive. By begin by taking a history all the way back to childhood, your family structures, your experiences. It’s going to give me clues that you’ve overlooked, like, you’re too close. And the same thing that made me a super good analyst, makes me a super good therapist. I’m looking for dots to connect. I’m pattern matching. I’m looking for your early experiences, and then I’ll regress you to childhood, and I’m going to connect you with that little girl who lives inside and find out what were your traumas. And trauma can be a bitter disappointment. You don’t have to see someone die in front of you, although that works. It could be, you know, an emotionally unavailable father. It can be familial inappropriate touching. I’ve seen it all. And so we drill down, and I do a history.

And then step two is we connect these dots and I help you consciously understand the drivers. What happens if we have these experiences? And if we’re unable to process the emotions that are associated with these experiences, we somatize them right into our body and they become physical ailments. And these physical ailments are real. It’s all in your head. Psychosomatic medicine is a whole body of medicine called psychosomatic medicine. And it’s not all in your head, it originates there in your subconscious, but it manifests in your body, it’s unexplained leg pain or back pain, or you can’t get away from your problems together with the weight of the world. Unexplained arm pain, you can’t fight your way out of the problem. I’ve helped a lot of people with autoimmune or IBS. There’s a ton of studies out of the UK, and even a growing body of work in the U.S. If you go to Google Scholar and type in hypnotherapy, you’ll find that there’s a whole world of evidence-based documentation of the efficacy of hypnotherapy. You just don’t hear it because they don’t have billions to spend like the drug companies. So, step one, deep dive. Step two, connect the dots. Step three, release you into your power, being free from what’s held you back, understanding what caused these very real physical symptoms.

I had an autoimmune client for nine years, fibromyalgia. Went to doctor’s chief executives. She’s worked in the medical industry, knew a lot of doctors and all he could do is give her pills. After eight years, she said, “I’m done with the pills.” She tried a number of other modalities. I’m always the last resort, by the way, people they all try everything then they come to me. So, they’re so desperate. “I’m gonna, oh, maybe hypnotherapy. I’m so desperate.” I’m like, “Oh, I’ve been expecting you. Come on in.” Anyway, so after eight years, she ditches the pills and she finds her way to me. We’d worked together in the legislature years before. So, I get to know her differently by a deep dive. She grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, single mom, tough exterior, tough Air Force veteran, but deep down inside, and she doesn’t show this to anybody but I got to see it. It was an emotional marshmallow. And so three sessions in, I asked her the question that no doctor ever asked anybody, what was going on in your life when this started? And turns out she was going through a bitter divorce, and there was child custody. And the emotions were too much. And she just somatize that pain right into her body, because she was tough. She’s taken it in her body. So, we did a series of sessions where we released that from her body, she got her life back.

Same thing, I’ve got IBS clients are protocols, hypnotherapy protocols for IBS. The mind-gut connection, the gut is the second brain. You know, Deepak Chopra in “Quantum Healing” talks about the ability of humans to synthesize drugs that mimic our organic chemistry. They can synthesize them in the laboratory, and they can make an issue through these pills, but it’s not organic. And it lacks the intelligence of our own chemistry, in our own organs. And that’s why there’s inefficacy and side effects. And so nothing can help better than your own chemistry. And nowhere is that more important than in the gut, you have a gut feeling. When things aren’t right, you feel it in your gut. I teach people meditations that connect the brain, the heart, and the gut. Just visualize the string going from the brain to the heart and from the heart to the gut, and connect these important aspects of you so that when you get a gut feeling, your mind can act on it. Your heart is in conflict with your logic, tie them together, come up with a heart-based logical… It’s just all comes with the simplest answer is usually the best. And we try and overcomplicate everything. So, here’s some observations. We try to talk with overcomplicate everything. We live in a technocrat world. We want a technical explanation. And that’s never the best, simplest is always the best.

And then the other thing is that we externalize everything he said, she said the government, the rona we want to blame, everything, and we don’t want to take responsibility. Look inward, there’s another little thing that I give everybody, it’s the “Reader’s Digest” version of the Course in Miracles. And that is love is your birthright, it resides in your heart center. Its opposite is fear. At any moment, you can choose love or fear, love gives rise to all positive emotions. Fear gives rise to all negative emotions. And so then turning to… and you decide you can… So, what I do is I have them come up with an image icon or a picture that represents love, and 45 to 65 times a day, just bring it into your heart space. Keep practicing because we live in a fear-based society, and you got to retrain yourself because you’re coming from a place of fear. If you watch any television, if you go out fear is everywhere. There’s mass hypnosis going on right now, that’s a whole nother conversation, too. But I have them bring that image into their heart, multiple times a day to retrain themselves away from fear and toward love.

As we move from the third dimension to the fifth dimension, the fifth-dimensional world is fear-based, conflict, duality, we are ascending. And the key to ascension is love and compassion. And we’re moving into a feminine energy, a return to the goddess energy from the patriarchy. And look around you, the institutions are dying, and the patriarchy is dying. The world is changing right now, and we’re in the throes of a transition. And the key to that transition is emotional intelligence, love, and the feminine archetype qualities of cooperation, collaboration, creativity. Look at the women politicians, they’re trying to outman the men, they don’t run on their subtle feminine gifts. So, anyway, again, I don’t go down the bunny hole. But the point is, bring love in your heart space, love and compassion, bring it in your heart space. Remember, Dr. Victor Frankel’s statement that between stimulus and response, between action and reaction is a space, and in that space lies your power. Because you get to decide what kind of human being you’re going to show up. Not him, not her, not the government, not the rona, you decide. And if you bring love in your heart space, and show up as a loving human being, you will be exercising your power. And I don’t mean to be a doormat, I can lovingly exercise boundaries until you, “Look, buster, that’s not okay.” And still love you.

Ariel: Absolutely. There’s so much that you said that was just so empowering and just positive. I have shared this before on this podcast for any new listeners, something that brought me to the “Colon Health Podcast” is my own slew of GI issues, and my own history of colon cancer in my family at a young age. I have IBS. I have GERD, I have so many other GI ailments. And something, I mentioned earlier on the podcast, I have such a privilege that I have the opportunity to do this and speak with so many wonderful people. But it’s like speaking to people like you, Norman, where I really have learned and it’s confirmed with each episode, how interconnected things really are between the mind, the gut, the heart, and how all of that really plays such a huge role in how you feel. I hope that’s something that our audience takes away from all these episodes that they listen to. We are almost out of time. So, I want to finish up with a couple things. I want to know what you are working on these days, how can our listeners work with you? And then any final sort of tips for anyone that might be hesitant and/or curious about hypnotherapy and taking part of that?

Norman: Yeah, I told you before that my throat chakra was blocked, and it manifested as cancer in the throat area. Stomach issues, digestive issues. Energetically, you’re having a difficult time digesting what the world is giving you. Be quiet and still, and run the checklist, go through your life and the aspects of your life and find out what it is that you’re having a hard time digesting and make changes, but do an inventory, sit quiet and still, everyone should. Okay.

So, my next book is going to be called “The Compass.” And it’s about a reemergence into emotional intelligence, goddess energy, and the coming era of Aquarius, where men and women alike must express their feminine archetype qualities. We all have yin and yang, and it must be balanced. The pendulum is swinging toward just to the mean side of the center. And we need to understand that. We’re moving from Newtonian mechanics into the quantum field, from materialism, that was allopathic medicine, cell tissue organ system into energy. Look at the proliferation of modalities that use energy healing. Energy, the subatomic particles when physicists experiment to see if matter has a dual major like light, when they experiment to see if it was particle, it acted like a particle. And when they tried to see if it was a wave, it acted like a wave giving rise to what we call the observer effect, which means we can influence matter, locally and non locally. It’s a fascinating time. And so we are powerful. The energetic field, the quantum field, you don’t have to be a physicist to understand the power and the direction that we’re moving. Subtlety, subtle power, subtle energy, feminine qualities of creativity, and cooperation, and collaboration. And so that’s my next book.

There was one question you previewed with me before listening to hypnosis in the therapy is used for anesthesia all the time. And so I saw that there was a reference to colonoscopies when you’re awake. Hypnotherapy is used for people who can’t take anesthesia, they put them in hypnotic anesthesia. Like, I had a colonoscopy, they put me to sleep. I’ve been there. I’ve had it. I’m a man of a certain age, you’d be a fool, not to, and I did. And boy, if I didn’t have to take all the drug and be all groggy and stuff, I would be open to trying it. So, hypnotherapy has complete anesthesia application, and you want to make sure you’re with the right person who’s qualified to do so. But it’s absolutely within the realm of possibility and is being applied.

People can find me on my brand is my name. normanplotkin.com is my website. I’m on social Norman Plotkin. Anchor Norman Plotkin, CHT, Certified Hypnotherapist. I’m on IG, LinkedIn, Facebook, I have YouTube. I lead virtual meditations on Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m Pacific, and that’s an hour of lecture on a topic and then a deep meditation guided on that topic. And I’ve done love, compassion, you name it, the gamut of human emotions. And right now we’re doing a series on the meridians. My partner’s acupuncturist and so we’re explaining the meridians and then doing deep dive meditations into the meridians, which is an energy-based healing modality. So, at any rate, some of those are on my YouTube channel. So, I’m on all the social. Norman Plotkin is my brand.

The second book is “Master Mind Master Life.” And I’ve just created a website of that name mastermindmasterlife.com. The books are both available on Amazon. I have other offerings on “Master Mind Master Life,” including a writing coach. I read tarot. I’ve studied tarot under a psychologist, who has written five books on tarot and psychology. And it’s a gateway to the collective consciousness and really available insights for you if you’re interested in tarot, in a kind of semi-scientific way, not kind of a hippie on the blanket. Not that there’s anything wrong with a hippie on the blanket. It’s just, you know, my deal is a little more yin-yang based.

And so, anyway, I’ll even write your custom poetry or whatever. There’s a ton of offerings on “Master Mind Master Life,” including coaching. So, a lot of what I do with my hypnotherapy is coaching because I’m reflective listening, I’m connecting dots, and I coach and then I reinforce the coaching in hypnosis with positive suggestions for change. Making positive change, I always ask people, are you ready to write a new story? Because people hold on to their stuff because they get…It’s the thing called secondary gain, they get attention or sympathy. And so, you know, they get on Facebook and write about their diverticulitis and they get, you know, all these people send prayers and… what happened if that went away, then they wouldn’t have all these friends? You know what I mean? So, are you ready to give up because you’re sick? So I’m really gentle about that. I’m not going to beat you up when I find that you have an active role in your condition. We’re going to lovingly recognize that and move past it.

So, if you have any hesitation about hypnosis or hypnotherapy, the best thing you can do is if you can’t call me, I do sessions in my office in Sacramento, as well as by Zoom with people all over the world. But if you want to see someone locally and you’re not here in Sacramento, just make sure they’re trained because you can get a certificate in the weekend and learn how to hypnotize somebody, but that’s not what I do. I don’t just hypnotize people. Hypnosis is the tool that I use to get to where I need to be to help someone. So, as with anything powerful, it needs to be in the right hand. So, make sure that the person you’re seeing is qualified and has training beyond just learning how to hypnotize somebody. I would never speak ill of any of the other practitioners because their heart is always in the right place, and I’ve seen others who bash practitioners. Just do your research.

In my cancer journey, I had been a lobbyist for the medical association. So, my surgeon who removed my thyroid, his name was , and I’m like, “Where did to go to medical school in India?” He was the most loving individual I’ve ever… He operated on me with. I just felt his love. You know what I mean? And so Dr. Chi Chu was the guy who found the cancer. He went to medical school in Taiwan. So, who cares? Use your gut to tell you who’s right, and just make sure they’re well trained.

Ariel: Yes. Oh, Norman, thank you so much again. I know I am walking away from this conversation feeling empowered, having learned so so much. And everyone, all the things that Norman just mentioned, I am going to link in the show notes for you so you have easy access to them. Just scroll on down, click all of those links. And like Norman was just saying, trust your gut. And in order to trust our gut, we need to take care of our guts. We all have colons, do your research, but let’s take care of them together. All right? Norman, thank you so so much for being here. I really do appreciate it.

Norman: My pleasure.