#985 - Dr David Spiegel - Hypnosis, Brain Hacking, & Mental Mastery

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2025

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. David Spiegel is a psychiatrist, Stanford professor, and leading authority on hypnosis and stress-related health. What exactly is hypnosis? Most of us picture it as a magician’s trick, when someone dangles a watch, your eyes get heavy, and suddenly you’re suggestible. But that barely scratches the surface. The real question is, what’s the true purpose of hypnosis? And what if we aren’t just hypnotized during those sessions, but in some sense all the time, walking through life under subtle trances we don’t even notice? Expect to learn what Dr. Speigel thinks most people misunderstand about what hypnosis is or how it works, what’s actually happening in the brain when we enter a hypnotic state, if anyone can be hypnotized or is there a specific “profile” of someone more likely to respond, the neurobiological difference between someone pretending to be hypnotized vs. someone actually in a trance state, how effective hypnosis is for improving sleep, the role hypnosis could play in reducing our reliance on pharmaceuticals, and much more… Sponsors: See me on tour in America: ⁠https://chriswilliamson.live⁠ See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get up to $350 off the Pod 5 at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Get 20% off Reveri's yearly or lifetime membership at https://reverihealth.app.link/modern-wisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What do you think most people misunderstand about hypnosis, what it is, how it works?
0:08.0	Well, there are sort of offsetting misunderstandings.
0:11.0	They either think it's really dangerous or it's useless or maybe it's both.
0:19.0	And the biggest fear and misunderstanding is that it's losing control.
0:24.7	And I'm here to tell you that hypnosis is a way of teaching people how to enhance control of mind and body.
0:31.3	And so the very thing that people see, you know, I don't like stage hypnosis very much.
0:36.3	I don't like making fools out of people. But when you see the football coach dancing like a ballerina and you know, I don't like stage hypnosis very much. I don't like making fools out of people.
0:38.3	But when you see the football coach dancing like a ballerina and you think, what the hell's going on here,
0:43.3	you're watching somebody who's willing to let go of his old assumptions of who he is and what he is and should be and trying out being different.
0:51.3	And one of the great things about hypnosis is you can try out being different.
0:55.0	And sometimes it works in a hurry. And that's what I do with my patients and that's what we do with
1:00.5	reverie. Is there a marked difference in what's going on in the brain of somebody who's dancing
1:07.6	like a ballerina on stage at a sandals resort in, you know, Jamaica.
1:12.5	Right.
1:13.9	Compared with, is it the same mechanism?
1:18.9	Yes.
1:19.6	Right.
1:19.9	Okay.
1:20.1	It is the same mechanism.
1:21.6	It'd be hard to do an MRI scan of the football coach.
1:24.3	But we've done it with Stanford students and other volunteers
1:28.3	who are high in hypnotizability. I can talk about that later. It makes a difference.
	...

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