The Science of Self-Hypnosis | Dr. David Spiegel

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, how are we doing, everybody? Today we're going to talk about uh yet another thing that I initially dismissed as nonsense, only to be proven wrong.

This is a recurring theme in my life. The subject in question today is hypnosis, more specifically, self-hypnosis. I'm talking to Dr. David Spiegel, who's from Stanford Medical School, where my parents went, and he's one of the leading researchers and practitioners of hypnosis. So we're going to talk about what hypnosis actually is and how it does and doesn't differ from the mainstream conceptions, you know, the stage hypnotists that we often see.

I remember seeing one when I was in college who came and had people make fools of themselves on stage, which is probably the point of origination for my skepticism about hypnosis. We're also going to talk about the types of people who are and are not hypnotizable and why. We go over the steps for self-hypnosis so you can do it at home. We talk about the differences between hypnosis and flow states, the difference between hypnosis and meditation, what happens in the brain during hypnosis, and what hypnosis is helpful for, including stress, anxiety, and panic. As a side note, I actually agreed to do this interview because I really wanted to see if self-hypnosis could help me with my ongoing claustrophobia on airplanes and elevators.

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