Hypnotist: The Truth About the Profession (2026)

Transcription

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Dan: Hi everyone, thanks for stopping by the Time We Discuss studio for another engaging conversation with yet another exciting professional. This channel is really young, so I'd appreciate you hitting all the usual buttons, like, subscribe, bell, all that good stuff. Doing this helps the channel grow and helps me get even more obscure professionals. Still trying to get that drone operator. All that being said, stick around because I have Chris Swift here and it's time we discuss hypnosis. All right, so tonight I have, or today actually, today I have Chris Swift joining me from White Rabbit Hypnosis. So I gotta admit, Chris, when I think of hypnosis and when I think of hypnotism, I think of two very distinct things. I think of, I'm a child of the 90s, so it all stems from the 1990s. I think of those infomercials with the sleep way down and the guy pulls the person and they fall over. Or the walk again safely and securely as they walk across the hot charcoals or the broken glass or whatever. So that's the first thing I think of. And then the second thing I think of is all of those, the parlor tricks, like you quack like a duck and squawk like a ch..., any of those things. But I'm almost positive, real, quote unquote, real hypnosis is not like that. So tell us, what is hypnosis exactly?

Chris Swift: Well, I don't normally have people walk on glass, but there are extreme circumstances. Yeah, so hypnosis is essentially a way of using the imagination to get the conscious and unconscious mind in sync to produce change. Most of the way I frame hypnosis has to deal with habits, habits of the mind, mostly habits of the emotions. And basically talking to the unconscious mind in a way that brings it into full cooperation with what you want to do. Oftentimes when people have something they want to change, they feel like that thing has its own kind of mind and it seems to act automatically. And what we do is we get it to act automatically in the way people want it to act instead of the way it's been acting if it's a problem.

Dan: So let me interject there. Okay, so give us an example of that. Give us like one or two tangible examples of what that really looks like, if you can.

Chris: Sure, sure. So let's say that a person has some kind of a fear and they never have to think about having the fear. If somebody has a fear of, let's say, elevators, they never have to remember to freak out in an elevator or to avoid an elevator. It's just there. And there also doesn't seem to be anything they feel like they can consciously do to just have that fear go away. And so what we do is we will work with them in a, it usually looks like a sleep like state. And I'll often have people close their eyes and imagine certain things and then work through some mental processes. And then they notice that when that stimulus presents itself, they don't have that old feeling again. And that's essentially what the experience is like. Now, the actual experience of hypnosis is probably pretty similar in some ways to what people are becoming familiar with. It's generally a relaxing experience. It's an eyes closed experience for the most part. I don't use a pocket watch. But there are all kinds of flavors of hypnotists. And that's one of the fun things about the field is that it's remarkably diverse in terms of people's interests and specialties. For instance, I deal mostly with people that consider themselves procrastinators, that they want to do a thing. But then they find themselves not doing that thing. So in a sense, it's kind of the opposite of the elevator example I just gave, that they do all their best to consciously do the thing. And yet unconsciously they find themselves doing everything else. Even things that they might have avoided otherwise, like cleaning something or organizing something instead of just doing the task, for instance.

Dan: Interesting, okay, so let me jump back to the elevator example. So I didn't know that could be like an aid for helping a person get over a phobia. I didn't know that, that's really neat. So how does that differ from, and again, this is just my rudimentary experience, I guess. If someone has a fear of riding an elevator, they would go talk to a therapist, psychologist, something of that nature. How does that approach differ from what you would do? And I'll leave it at that. Yeah, let's go with that. Sure, sure.

Chris: So there's an idea, there are different approaches that people have when it comes to dealing with mental phenomena, we'll say. I do not consider myself to be a mental health practitioner. I consider myself to be somebody that deals with habits.

Dan: Sidebar for one second. Are any hypnotists also like a medically certified or anything like that? Sometimes.

Chris: And in some states and in some countries, there are various requirements for what you can do, what you're allowed to call yourself. For instance, I'm in Pennsylvania, I can call myself a hypnotherapist. I tend to not to. I call myself a hypnotist. But in some states, there are legal requirements to call yourself a hypnotherapist. You may need to have some kind of a mental health certification or a counseling license or something like that. And that's going to vary from state to state and definitely from country to country.

Dan: Okay.

Chris: But I personally don't consider myself to be in that realm.

Dan: Okay, one thing you mentioned before you talked about it being like a "closed eye experience." Do you ever come across people where they are a little more self-conscious about or maybe feel what's the word I'm of looking for? Like vulnerable to being there with their eyes closed. Do you ever get any of that? Is that a normal response? Did you not see that? Not normally, but it is

Chris: particularly when it comes to what we call like impromptu hypnosis. If you're dealing with somebody in person, in public, we'll often lead them through what's called a suggestibility test, where there'll be a certain series of actions that they perform as a demonstration of hypnosis. And yet, it's one of these things where we won't start with the eyes closed thing because people are nervous about that kind of stuff. You just came up to them on the street and they don't know who you are. It's actually one of the advantages of doing virtual hypnosis or hypnosis via Zoom or other video chat type options I use Zoom, is that the client can feel safe in their own location and not have to be concerned about feeling like they can be victimized in any way, that they have any kind of vulnerability to that. And yet, hypnosis does not have to be a closed eye process. It just happens to be a closed eye process. It's usually easier for people to imagine things with their eyes closed and while there's some level of automatic subconscious engagement that I'm looking for, it's also important that the person is fully engaged in the process of doing their best to imagine a given thing. And they don't need any special imagination to do that. Some people expect that if they can't close their eyes and imagine like they're looking at a TV or something like that, that it's not going to work for them and that is far from the case. For most people, their imagination is somewhere in between that and seeing nothing at all.

Dan: Okay, so what you said made me think of another thing when I think of hypnosis. I can't help but think of the movie Office Space. So you talked about doing a virtual hypnosis session. So what happens, and I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but I have to ask, what happens when someone's in the middle of a hypnosis session and their power goes out or the zoom drops or something like that? Are they left in this state of eternal bliss? How does that work?

Chris: That would be great, right? I'd just sell that. I would just be an occupational hypnotherapist. People would be guttin' fish on their desks everywhere. Yeah, so in the event that the connection drops with a client, first of all, when I start a session, I always put out the disclaimer. If at any point in our session today, the connection should drop, you'll immediately emerge from this state into normal consciousness and reestablish the connection, etc. But what would happen if I didn't give that disclaimer is after some period of silence, the person would open their eyes, probably look a little confused, might be in a moderately disoriented state, but would just return to normal consciousness in a pretty quick order. While hypnosis is not a fragile state, you can open your eyes in hypnosis and talk in hypnosis and do things like that. It's also not one of these everlasting states. In fact, most of us go into trance states all the time. In fact, when you're doing something automatically, go back to that habit example, that is a trance phenomenon. We go into trances all the time when we do these kinds of habits. So you could make the argument that we're kind of going in and out of hypnosis all day long and not getting stuck there. So that's in a nutshell. You'd pop back into normal consciousness in short order, whatever that is for you.

Dan: Okay, now when you're doing a hypnosis session, is it difficult for someone to stay under hypnosis? Because if there's too much time that elapses, I'm sure there isn't because it's probably a lot of back and forth dialogue. But is that a challenge where certain people-- I kind of think of almost like a lucid dream, where you realize you're dreaming and you try to control it and invariably that starts to wake you up. And if you're lucky, you go back into that lucid state before you wake up and you can continue to control the dream. But what happens in hypnosis? Does anything like that happen where it's like you have to kind of keep them at that sweet spot to keep them under? Or is it like once they're under, they're there until you bring them back?

Chris: So when I have somebody in hypnosis, I intermingle what I'll say active and passive. Really, none of it's totally passive. But I try to keep the client active in the process because I'm less concerned about them "hopping out" of hypnosis than I am drifting off or maybe even falling asleep.

Dan: That would be another question I was going to ask you if that happens.

Chris: There's a bit of a divide on this. I am of the belief that you can in fact fall asleep in hypnosis. I'm not planning to test that with any clients. I will always have them do things consciously to make sure that they're still engaging with the process. Because I also want to know that they're still imagining what I'm asking them to imagine. But the big thing for me is not so much how deep are they because there's a lot of debate about the idea of hypnotic depth. But are they still responding to suggestion? Can I see that what I'm saying is having some kind of effect in the way they're responding? And if they're not, I'm going to engage them consciously in a more direct way to make sure that we're still on board. Hypnosis is a results game. And that means if I'm not getting results for my clients, I'm not likely to have many clients. Also, if I'm seeing a client for more than a few sessions for most problems, then we need to have a conversation. Something needs to be addressed. And most problems, I would say, are resolved within about three sessions. And that's something that when I do a consultation call with somebody, I'll give them an estimate of what we're going to be looking at for something. Some problems are a little more tied together and might need a little more unwinding.

Dan: What is a typical session duration? It's probably going to be different for everyone. Is it a 15-minute thing? Is it an hour? What does that typically look like?

Chris: The first session is usually 60 to 90 minutes. And then after that, about an hour. And of that, maybe 30 minutes is hypnosis. When I see somebody for a second session, usually what I ask is, what do you remember from our last session? And what's happened between our last session and today? Where are you now? What's going on? Because a lot of it is about road testing things. So if I have that client that had a fear of going into elevators or in closed spaces or whatever, I would finish the first session with them and say, OK, now go out and test this. I want to see how this works in the real world because I don't have a lot of elevators in my apartment. I don't imagine most people have a lot of elevators in Zoom rooms. They're in the world and you have to go and test these things. And so if it doesn't work in the real world, then our work is not done. Now, all of my clients learn self-hypnosis in the last session so that they can do tune-ups to things in their own life that they can address without my help. And if they find that more help is desired or necessary, then sure, that's always available. Generally, though, we're looking at two to three sessions for most problems. I book people for three sessions and I find it's a disservice to the client to do less than that. Because if I book them for one session and send them out into the world, I don't know how it works for them. Not everybody is going to come back and say, "Yo, rabbit, give me my money back. I'm scared out..." Some people won't come back and then I don't know. And I don't want to send people out with the problem they came in with and certainly not with a negative concept of what hypnosis is. And we've already got enough issues around how the profession is perceived. I don't want to add to that. And so it's a disservice to the client. It's a disservice to the profession, in my opinion, to book them for fewer than three sessions. And generally, I don't see them for more than three sessions either.

Dan: Okay, so we talked about phobias, essentially. What are some other things that people can have addressed under hypnosis? I'm trying to think of a good example. I don't know if I would want to necessarily say medical, but anything in that nature, any like, if they have, they say, "Um," apparently, maybe something like that.

Chris: Or we could just say, every time you say, "Um," this wonderful thing is reinforced in your mind instead. If you already have the habit, maybe we can link something to it, right? So, yeah, from a medical perspective, there's pain control. Pain has a lot of, there's a lot of research backing up the ability for hypnosis to modify a person's experience of pain or discomfort. That is born out in research. IBS actually has a lot of research behind it that hypnosis, hypnotherapy is very effective in treating IBS. In fact, for one of my continuing education adventures, I took a special training on IBS. I haven't focused on that as a niche, but there's a lot of success in that as a process of treating that. When it comes to things like bipolar disorder or diagnosed mental health conditions, I don't touch that. And the reason is, when you're dealing with, so you mentioned the word phobia earlier. Now, if somebody has a phobia that has been diagnosed as a phobia, I don't touch it because a phobia is a medical condition and I am not a medical practitioner. If somebody has a fear and it has not been diagnosed by a medical or healthcare professional as a phobia, we can work with that. That's not a problem. If somebody has, they feel sad or down or aren't motivated or don't have a lot of juice in their experience in life, I can deal with that. If they're diagnosed with clinical depression, not without cooperation with their healthcare provider or with their mental health provider, who sometimes don't look too favorably at people in my profession. So it's an interesting game when we get into that. I will never claim that hypnosis can be used to treat a medical condition. That being said, there is anecdotal evidence out there for certain things happening like that, particularly when it comes to skin conditions. That tends to, for whatever reason, hypnosis seems to be really good with that. There are people with anecdotal tales of how they used hypnosis to help them in recovering from things like cancer. But all of these things are anecdotal and I would never suggest to a client that they should ignore the care or the advice of a qualified healthcare practitioner for that. And yet, when it comes to pain, I've been able to remove pain from rheumatoid arthritis patients. They're not my patients, they're my clients or things like that. So there are definitely applications like that and certainly there's a lot of room to work together with traditional or even holistic medicine, functional medicine, I believe is what it's being called today, that we can work together with those practitioners to get the client to where they want to be.

Dan: Awesome. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. So you talked about continuing education. So if someone wants to get started in this career, they are a young adult, they decided, you know, hypnotism, this is for me, this speaks to me. What is a good path for them from an education perspective to go down this road?

Chris: So increasingly, the approaches to this are online certification bodies. So the NGH is a big one. They're the National Guild of Hypnotists. They operate largely in the United States. I believe they're actually international, although they're called the National Guild of Hypnotists. They're a popular one and you'll have different trainers that will provide training for that. There are various governing bodies, but the thing is, they're all self-appointed. There's no in the States, there's no requirement to be part of any of them. And in fact, in some states, you can just call yourself a hypnotist. You don't necessarily have to display that you have training. And as I said, in some states, they're a little more strict about who can do what. So if somebody came to me and said, look, I want to be a hypnotist or a hypnotherapist, what would you recommend? I would recommend in particular two avenues. The first of which I'm going to recommend right now would be, okay, so first of all, I would say, do you want to get done quickly? How quickly do you want to have that certification? Or how how much practice do you want to have before you get into it? What's your bank looking like? And so for most folks, I've found it to be useful to recommend the Jacquin Hypnosis Academy. It is affordable for most people. I believe it's, I'm not going to quote any prices right now, but it is very affordable. And it's kind of a longer term process. You're looking at about six months to get that done. I found it to be a remarkable process. And then after that, I would also recommend if you're looking to do it faster and you have a little more funding, I'd look into a guy named Jason Linett. And him and Richard Nongard offer a training work, Work Smart Hypnosis, I believe it's called. And it is a that is an also an online training. And that is a little faster in terms of certification. The last time I looked into it. Now, I've trained with Jason. In fact, my first certification was with Jason and he's an excellent trainer. And I've trained with Freddy and Anthony Jacquin and they are also excellent trainers. So it's not a difference in the quality of the training. It's a difference in at that point, how how fast you want to get it done, what your bankroll is looking like and how much you're looking to interact with other folks. Now, when I got trained by Jason, that was in the the physical world. I went to Virginia Hypnosis, where he was located at the time. And I got trained there when I did the training with the Jacquins, that was online. So I don't know the ins and outs of the of the online portion of Jason's stuff now. But I imagine it's great because he's pretty thorough in what he does. And yeah, so I would recommend those two. One thing that's good about the Jacquin program is that every few months or every couple months, they open a new cohort, which is geared towards a different time zone. And I also found that working with lots and lots and lots of people hypnotizing them online through the Jacquin program was really useful in making the jump from in person physical hypnosis, which was what I was used to, to a more online focused hypnosis, which has a bit of a learning curve compared to the first one. There are things you can't do like grab over and pick up a person's arm and drop it and see what their muscle tone is like. And again, it's they didn't figure that one out yet. Yeah, I got to work on that haptic, the haptic sensors or whatever. Let's go VR. Let's not. Let's not. This is probably what could go wrong. Right. Yeah, so so I would recommend looking into those two. They're also I have not trained directly with them. The Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy is based out of Toronto. Melissa Tiers is a phenomenal hypnotist. She offers an online based training. She's out in New York. She's a little more irreverent, rough around the edges. New York character. I really like Melissa. So there are some really good training programs out there. And a lot of it's going to deal with, do you like the personality of the person? Do they have cred? Anyone I've mentioned so far, they are all vetted hypnotists. They all have credibility. They're all reliable and you're going to get great training from any of them. I do not offer hypnosis training or I would plug my own stuff. But but those would be the ones I would look into. But they're other than that, maybe if there's a hypnotist in your town that you want to quote unquote apprentice under. I just do the online thing. That's what everybody's doing right now. And it gives you a wider net to cast in terms of your market, because you don't then have to stick local if you do your stuff online. So that would be my suggestion.

Dan: Awesome. Thanks for that. We're running. We're starting to run out of time. So I have two more things for you. One, I do like to give a surprise question to the to the people I'm speaking with. It has nothing to do with what they're talking about. So so, Chris, you're you know, you're all inked up. You have the long hair. You know, you seem to be a little rougher on the edges, which I appreciate. So I have to ask, give me give me a guilty pleasure. What is a guilty pleasure that you have?

Chris: Oh, man. I'm going to keep a tame one here. I'm going to say binge watching anime. That is that's one I'm a big fan of One Piece. I'm a big fan of really anything that involves magic. I love magic. I also love that as a topic. But we won't go into that right now. I'm going to say binge watching anime would probably be be a big one for me and getting tattoos. But that's a little more of an expensive one. So it it contains itself. The anime thing. I can be my own worst enemy with that. I could go on for a long time.

Dan: Finally, I like to give the person I'm speaking with like a good minute or two to talk about a cause that you believe in or a personal project or your company or something like that. So is there something that you like to just tell everyone about while you're here?

Chris: Yeah, yeah, sure. So yeah, I will plug my company for just a moment and just say, if you think hypnosis might be a solution to your problem, particularly if you consider yourself to be a procrastinator or have any of the issues that we discussed in this podcast, feel free to swing by White Rabbit Hypnosis dot com. Click on the menu up at the top that says to schedule an appointment. And in there, you will see a free hypnosis consultation call where we can just have a conversation about what it is that you're dealing with. And I can tell you if I'm the person that might be the best for that. If not, I can refer you to somebody else. And worst case scenario, you're going to learn some stuff about hypnosis in our conversation. And I'll send you out with some free resources to deal with your issue. So that is my little plug. And thank you for inviting me on to to talk about this. And just a word of encouragement for those out there looking into hypnosis or hypnotism as a field. The possibilities are vast, regardless of what your particular interests are, whether you want to do stage hypnosis for entertainment or street, whether you want to do past life regression or any of this kind of stuff. There's a remarkable field of opportunities for you to explore and I would encourage people to get out there and see what's possible for them to see if this is right for them. It's a great little career.

Dan: That's awesome. So much so much good information, Chris. And I feel like we just kind of really scratched the surface. I think there's so much more we could have talked about, especially talking about past life regression, what people can or cannot recover under hypnosis, things that have happened to people they want to recover, all kinds of possibilities. So perhaps we can maybe have you on again to dive a little deeper on those. That would be very interesting. One thing I will add to you talked about your website, you talked about going to white rabbit hypnosis.com, right? And you said that particularly people that have issues with procrastination, I will add, do not procrastinate. Get to the website now. That is one fly of the ointment there.

Chris: Let's book the call. Let's have a conversation.

Dan: Chris, thanks so much for being part of Time We Discuss. It was awesome speaking with you and have a great day.

Chris: My pleasure. Thanks so much.

Dan: Thanks for stopping by the studio. My name is Dan and this is Time We Discuss. I really enjoyed speaking with Chris from White Rabbit Hypnosis and I hope you enjoyed the time too. Who knew that hypnosis could help people struggling with IBS, fears, or even help with changing habits like procrastination. If you enjoyed the content or learned something interesting, do me a solid and comment, like, share, subscribe, all of those good things. Add a comment if you have a profession that you'd like me to cover or hit me up on social media. If you'd like to join me in the studio, please follow the sign up link in the description or visit timewediscuss.com and we'll get you on the schedule. Ask your friends or co-workers to do the same. When you sign up to be part of the show, use promo code hypnosis. This way I know you came after watching this video. That'll do it. See you next time on Time We Discuss.