My old friend Howie Mandel got "hypmotized" last night on "America's Got Talent."
A hypnotist Chris Jones put him "under" and the next thing we know, had convinced him to shake hands with people, contrary to a lifelong phobia of his about germs, related to his OCD.
Most doctor's think that phobia's are psychosomatic - however that doesn't stop them from prescribing meds that confuse the brain enough to not be terrified of the terrors they bring - not for a moment stopping to wonder if the side effects of the psychotropic drugs might be deleterious... but I digress.
Hey Howie! I love you man!
We wrote a script together for Columbia pictures (along with Luana Anders) called "Watch Your Step." Kind of a prescient title come to think of it. Howie is hilarious, a funny, funny guy, and I believe is aware of his phobias and is suffering from them to some degree.
We no longer share a manager (I saw our old manager last week, he's great actually) so I don't have easy access to email this to Howie.
So maybe the magic of the internet with its "tags" will somehow find its way to his people, or find its way to him. Howie, I'm asking (through the internet, mind you, no germs here, except for all the keyboards on the planet) if you want to stop or end or understand this phobia without the benefit of drugs. I can here you on the flipside of the screen saying "What? Martini? Seriously? Okay, go ahead, I'm listening."
I've been filming people under deep hypnosis for six years now. Not the kind that you went through last night on the show - "stage hypnosis" which deals with a certain level of consciousness. But six hour sessions, where the client determines what they'd like to visit and explore.
And I came upon the research that people could cure "psychosomatic" illnesses while under hypnosis. (I'd give you all the cites, but there are many, including Dr. Brian Weiss, Dr. Anita Moorjani and others). People who during a consciousness altering event, were able to examine and "cure" their illnesses.
So let's begin there, shall we? If that's possible, to cure, or alleviate symptoms of an illness - and we don't have a word for them, really, because psychosomatic implies being "made up" - but the symptoms are real, sweating, feeling nausea, etc. Those events exist - it's just that medicine can't tell you what the problem is, so they "send you to a shrink." Well, sometimes a hypnotist.
But like the words "healing" or "home" - we all have a different definition of those variations, and that includes hypnosis. One hour session on a couch with someone who tries to convince you to not have fear is not guaranteed to work - but doing a session with a trained hypnotherapist who has done this hundreds of times before, you have a pretty good shot at asking yourself "So what's the genesis of this fear? Where does it come from? Does it come from this lifetime? Does it come from a previous lifetime? And once I examine that, how can I help alleviate those symptoms?"
Case #1. Woman with aquaphobia. She's a hypnotherapist in NYC, and has agreed to let me film her "between life" or LBL session. She sees a lifetime where she drowned - was killed by drowning, thrown off a ship actually. She named the dates, place, other details that I could verify (and did so in the book and film "Flipside"). But when she goes to the end of that lifetime, past the drowning part, she sees that there's a reason why this happened. The man who killed her appears to say "You have no idea how hard that was to do to you in that lifetime." She recognizes this man as her father in this life, and remembers how he saved her from drowning as a child. In those moments, she cures herself of her phobia, and some months later, I filmed her swimming in the ocean. She told me "her recurring nightmare" turned into a wonderful dream where she was swimming effortlessly. No Doctor or drug could make this change, she made it herself.
(Footage of this session is in the film "Flipside" and a transcript of the session is in the book "Flipside: a Tourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife.")
Case #2. A jaded Hollywood agent (mine) agrees to let me film him under hypnosis. (also in the film "Flipside"). Unbeknownst to me, he's had a lifelong kidney ailment he's spent "millions of dollars" on finding a cure (sound familiar Howie?) that Doctors can't seem to cure. During the session, with Scott De Tamble from Claremont, (see below) jaded agent sees a lifetime where his father stabbed him in the back. In that moment he examines those details and the pain in his kidney goes away. Afterwards, he tells me "It's 95% gone, like an echo of what it once was." His Doctor even calls me to ask "what happened in that session?" because his "panels have returned to normal." (Footage of this event is in the documentary and in the book as well, as cited above).
Case #3. Woman with pretty severe Parkinson's is an old pal, agrees to do a session. During her session, for about 5 hours, she explores previous lifetimes and examines various reasons for her current choice of a life and situation. During this entire time, her symptoms disappear. No shaking. Just her finger, rhythmically tapping as she speaks. When she's "brought back to consciousness" her symptoms reappear. The hypnotherapist didn't insist that her symptoms should go away - nor did she attempt to do so, rather she examined the "source" of her illnesses, and related it to a dramatic event that she'd kept private and secret since the event - and it was the start of her not giving her body the kind of care and nutrition she needed. So whole she didn't "cure" herself of the illness, she did give herself a path to health. (A transcript of this session is in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures in the Flipside.")
So. Howie. Seriously. You want to explore your OCD and your phobia about germs? You can. It's not an illness, or an affliction. It's just part of who you are as a human, and without ascribing any negativity to the choice you made to come to the planet and experience these things, it is something you can dramatically change "overnight."
Check it out for yourself.
I noted that after the hypnosis session you seemed particularly spiritual - of course the show is likely show out of sequence - but there was a moment where you said to the father who wrote the song about his son who had passed away "I can feel his presence in the room when you sing." That would be accurate in terms of this research.
Hope this missive finds its way to you. And I still have a copy of our script!
Meanwhile:
Something on topic, but a bit different. This past weekend, I did a book talk for my second book "It's a Wonderful Afterlife: further adventures in the Flipside" at the LA branch of iands, the international association of near death studies. However this time, I brought along two pals, Jennifer Shaffer and Scott De Tamble. Jennifer is a medium/intuitive who works with law enforcement nationwide to help with missing person cases and others, and Scott is a clinical hypnotherapist based in Claremont, CA, and has done 100's of cases. I've filmed a number of them, and he appears often in "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife." I haven't posted the second part, which was a past life regression for all those present, out of respect for their privacy - but we did hear some really unusual tales, including someone from law enforcement who came to check it out, and saw themselves in a previous lifetime and could relate the trauma of that experience (3000 years ago) to a similar trauma that has taken place in this one.
Time as they say, is relative. (For me, a distant relative.)
And now for something completely different; "Its a Wonderful Afterlife" book talk with Clinical Hypnotherapist Scott De Tamble, Medium-intuitive Jennifer Shaffer, Bob Siress from iands.org comparing near death experiences to between life sessions, past life memories. 75 minutes which will pique your paradigm. Hang onto your coffee, "we're going in!" https://youtu.be/rUK4mfP_4Fs
A hypnotist Chris Jones put him "under" and the next thing we know, had convinced him to shake hands with people, contrary to a lifelong phobia of his about germs, related to his OCD.
Most doctor's think that phobia's are psychosomatic - however that doesn't stop them from prescribing meds that confuse the brain enough to not be terrified of the terrors they bring - not for a moment stopping to wonder if the side effects of the psychotropic drugs might be deleterious... but I digress.
Hey Howie! I love you man!
We wrote a script together for Columbia pictures (along with Luana Anders) called "Watch Your Step." Kind of a prescient title come to think of it. Howie is hilarious, a funny, funny guy, and I believe is aware of his phobias and is suffering from them to some degree.
We no longer share a manager (I saw our old manager last week, he's great actually) so I don't have easy access to email this to Howie.
So maybe the magic of the internet with its "tags" will somehow find its way to his people, or find its way to him. Howie, I'm asking (through the internet, mind you, no germs here, except for all the keyboards on the planet) if you want to stop or end or understand this phobia without the benefit of drugs. I can here you on the flipside of the screen saying "What? Martini? Seriously? Okay, go ahead, I'm listening."
I've been filming people under deep hypnosis for six years now. Not the kind that you went through last night on the show - "stage hypnosis" which deals with a certain level of consciousness. But six hour sessions, where the client determines what they'd like to visit and explore.
And I came upon the research that people could cure "psychosomatic" illnesses while under hypnosis. (I'd give you all the cites, but there are many, including Dr. Brian Weiss, Dr. Anita Moorjani and others). People who during a consciousness altering event, were able to examine and "cure" their illnesses.
So let's begin there, shall we? If that's possible, to cure, or alleviate symptoms of an illness - and we don't have a word for them, really, because psychosomatic implies being "made up" - but the symptoms are real, sweating, feeling nausea, etc. Those events exist - it's just that medicine can't tell you what the problem is, so they "send you to a shrink." Well, sometimes a hypnotist.
But like the words "healing" or "home" - we all have a different definition of those variations, and that includes hypnosis. One hour session on a couch with someone who tries to convince you to not have fear is not guaranteed to work - but doing a session with a trained hypnotherapist who has done this hundreds of times before, you have a pretty good shot at asking yourself "So what's the genesis of this fear? Where does it come from? Does it come from this lifetime? Does it come from a previous lifetime? And once I examine that, how can I help alleviate those symptoms?"
Case #1. Woman with aquaphobia. She's a hypnotherapist in NYC, and has agreed to let me film her "between life" or LBL session. She sees a lifetime where she drowned - was killed by drowning, thrown off a ship actually. She named the dates, place, other details that I could verify (and did so in the book and film "Flipside"). But when she goes to the end of that lifetime, past the drowning part, she sees that there's a reason why this happened. The man who killed her appears to say "You have no idea how hard that was to do to you in that lifetime." She recognizes this man as her father in this life, and remembers how he saved her from drowning as a child. In those moments, she cures herself of her phobia, and some months later, I filmed her swimming in the ocean. She told me "her recurring nightmare" turned into a wonderful dream where she was swimming effortlessly. No Doctor or drug could make this change, she made it herself.
(Footage of this session is in the film "Flipside" and a transcript of the session is in the book "Flipside: a Tourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife.")
Case #2. A jaded Hollywood agent (mine) agrees to let me film him under hypnosis. (also in the film "Flipside"). Unbeknownst to me, he's had a lifelong kidney ailment he's spent "millions of dollars" on finding a cure (sound familiar Howie?) that Doctors can't seem to cure. During the session, with Scott De Tamble from Claremont, (see below) jaded agent sees a lifetime where his father stabbed him in the back. In that moment he examines those details and the pain in his kidney goes away. Afterwards, he tells me "It's 95% gone, like an echo of what it once was." His Doctor even calls me to ask "what happened in that session?" because his "panels have returned to normal." (Footage of this event is in the documentary and in the book as well, as cited above).
Case #3. Woman with pretty severe Parkinson's is an old pal, agrees to do a session. During her session, for about 5 hours, she explores previous lifetimes and examines various reasons for her current choice of a life and situation. During this entire time, her symptoms disappear. No shaking. Just her finger, rhythmically tapping as she speaks. When she's "brought back to consciousness" her symptoms reappear. The hypnotherapist didn't insist that her symptoms should go away - nor did she attempt to do so, rather she examined the "source" of her illnesses, and related it to a dramatic event that she'd kept private and secret since the event - and it was the start of her not giving her body the kind of care and nutrition she needed. So whole she didn't "cure" herself of the illness, she did give herself a path to health. (A transcript of this session is in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures in the Flipside.")
So. Howie. Seriously. You want to explore your OCD and your phobia about germs? You can. It's not an illness, or an affliction. It's just part of who you are as a human, and without ascribing any negativity to the choice you made to come to the planet and experience these things, it is something you can dramatically change "overnight."
Check it out for yourself.
I noted that after the hypnosis session you seemed particularly spiritual - of course the show is likely show out of sequence - but there was a moment where you said to the father who wrote the song about his son who had passed away "I can feel his presence in the room when you sing." That would be accurate in terms of this research.
Hope this missive finds its way to you. And I still have a copy of our script!
Meanwhile:
Something on topic, but a bit different. This past weekend, I did a book talk for my second book "It's a Wonderful Afterlife: further adventures in the Flipside" at the LA branch of iands, the international association of near death studies. However this time, I brought along two pals, Jennifer Shaffer and Scott De Tamble. Jennifer is a medium/intuitive who works with law enforcement nationwide to help with missing person cases and others, and Scott is a clinical hypnotherapist based in Claremont, CA, and has done 100's of cases. I've filmed a number of them, and he appears often in "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife." I haven't posted the second part, which was a past life regression for all those present, out of respect for their privacy - but we did hear some really unusual tales, including someone from law enforcement who came to check it out, and saw themselves in a previous lifetime and could relate the trauma of that experience (3000 years ago) to a similar trauma that has taken place in this one.
Time as they say, is relative. (For me, a distant relative.)
And now for something completely different; "Its a Wonderful Afterlife" book talk with Clinical Hypnotherapist Scott De Tamble, Medium-intuitive Jennifer Shaffer, Bob Siress from iands.org comparing near death experiences to between life sessions, past life memories. 75 minutes which will pique your paradigm. Hang onto your coffee, "we're going in!" https://youtu.be/rUK4mfP_4Fs
