How To Use Hypnosis
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Much of our common understanding of hypnosis has been gleaned from mind-control plots in Hollywood movies or hokey on-stage demonstrations. On this episode of How To!, Carvell Wallace brings on Stanford University psychiatrist and researcher Dr. David Spiegel to talk about what hypnosis is (and isn't), as well as its potential to address stress, pain, and even athletic performance. Plus, with Carvell wrestling with an ongoing major project, Dr. Spiegel tests our host's hypnotizability—then leads him through an exercise aimed at confronting procrastination.
Learn more about Dr. Spiegel and his self-hypnosis app, Reveri. If you liked this episode, check out How To Stop Being Anxious and How To Quiet the Chatter in Your Head.
Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.
How To! is produced by Rosie Belson, with Kevin Bendis and Sophie Summergrad, who produced this episode. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.
Transcript
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| 0:30.2 | So first I want you to look up to the top of your head, way up toward your eyebrows, |
| 0:35.7 | and as you keep looking up, slowly close your eyes. |
| 0:39.0 | What you're listening to is a test of someone's hypnotizability. |
| 0:43.4 | To be more specific, it's a test of my hypnotize ability. |
| 0:47.3 | Just imagine you're floating somewhere safe and comfortable like a bath, a lake, a hot tubber floating in space. |
| 0:59.9 | The voice you're hearing belongs to psychiatrist Dr. David Spiegel, who is Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and he's also one of the |
| 1:04.5 | leading authorities on the study of and practical application of hypnosis. |
| 1:09.9 | And right now, he's trying to see if I'm someone who can be |
| 1:14.0 | easily hypnotized, if I can enter that mental state where hypnosis might help a person with |
| 1:20.5 | all kinds of things, from smoking to stress. Let your left hand float up in the air like a balloon, |
| 1:30.0 | all the way up higher and higher. And just to like paint a picture for you, here's what it looks like. |
| 1:33.7 | Dr. Spiegel and I are on a Zoom call. |
| 1:36.0 | He's at his home giving me a bunch of very specific and kind of weird instructions. |
| 1:41.2 | And let it rest in a comfortable upright position. And I'm sitting at my desk |
| 1:46.0 | with my eyes closed. That's right. I'm being hypnotized over Zoom, which I'm sure is how many |
| 1:52.8 | people feel when they're in work meetings. When I ask you to pull your left hand down with your |
| 1:57.4 | right hand and then let go, your left hand will float right back up to the |
... |
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