Let’s delve into the mysteries of our subconscious minds with Drake Eastburn! He’s returning to the podcast to discuss lucid dreaming, its potential applications in self-hypnosis, and the unique benefits of staying somewhat conscious during dreams.
You’ll take away valuable insights on how to employ self-hypnosis for improved sleep quality, control recurring dreams, and tap into the power of your subconscious to convey significant messages.
Drake’s first interview on the podcast is HM42: Olympic athletes and fear of flying. You can hear it here >>>https://www.drlizhypnosis.com/episode42
About Drake Eastburn
Drake’s website https://www.hypnodenver.com/
Drake Eastburn is a Board Certified Hypnotherapist (BCH), and Certified Instructor (CI) through the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH). Drake and his wife Lynsi are the co-founders the Eastburn Hypnotherapy Clinic and Eastburn Institute of Hypnotherapy. Drake is an adjunct faculty member of several hypnosis organizations, as well as Regis University and Colorado Free University.
With more than 40 years’ experience in the field of hypnotism, Drake maintains a thriving private practice with offices in the Denver Metro area. His books include The Power of the Past (healing through regression hypnotherapy); Power Patter (a script book for hypnotherapists); The Therapeutic Hypnotist (become the best therapeutic hypnotist you can be); The Power of Suggestion—What Every Hypnotist Needs to Know; No Time to Waist—Powerful Hypnotic Weight Loss Secrets You NEED to Know, and the definitive work on his profession, What Is Hypnosis?
About Dr. Liz
Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.
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Free hypnosis files at http://bit.ly/drlizhypnosis
Do you have Chronic Insomnia? Find out more about Dr. Liz’s Better Sleep Program at https://bit.ly/sleepbetterfeelbetter
Search episodes at the Podcast Page http://bit.ly/HM-podcast
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A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com.
Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work
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Transcript
0:00:29 – Dr. Liz
Thank you, Hi Drake. Welcome back to the Hypnotize Me podcast.
0:00:34 – Drake Eastburn
Well, thanks for having me. It’s been a while since we last talked, so it’s kind of nice.
0:00:39 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, it is, and I had your wife Lindsay on again.
0:00:43 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, she’s great.
0:00:45 – Dr. Liz
She is. She really is. Yes, you both seem to be really tuned in to what’s going on internally with people.
0:00:54 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, we’re both doing very different things, but I’m grateful for her and I think the other way around, because we always have somebody fairly close by we can bounce ideas off of and get opinions. And of course, she is an English and psychology major, so she looks at all of my writing and she’s one of those grammar Nazis, you know.
0:01:22 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:01:24 – Drake Eastburn
I appreciate it. It really is. It really is good.
0:01:29 – Dr. Liz
It’s nice to have an editor in-house.
0:01:31 – Drake Eastburn
Yes indeed.
0:01:32 – Dr. Liz
Before you send it off to the editor.
0:01:34 – Drake Eastburn
She’s about ready to kill me, but she wants me to stop writing books, I think. But it’s probably not going to happen.
0:01:41 – Dr. Liz
I don’t think so. You published three last December, december 22. Right, and you have more before that. How?
0:01:51 – Drake Eastburn
many do you?
0:01:51 – Dr. Liz
have total now.
0:01:52 – Drake Eastburn
So I’ve probably written a dozen books. There’s eight in publication right now.
0:01:57 – Dr. Liz
OK, are there two just waiting?
0:02:01 – Drake Eastburn
Well, like I have a novel that I’m probably going to release that in a Kindle type of thing or something like that, and I’ve got an autobiography, which I don’t know how I’m going to do that. I wrote that years ago. Well, I’ve got a book on mechanical things that I’ve probably got 1,200 pages of that I might be halfway done with, I’m thinking.
0:02:24 – Dr. Liz
But what kind of mechanical things?
0:02:27 – Drake Eastburn
All about engines and stuff like that, so in great detail.
0:02:36 – Dr. Liz
Really interesting. My mind does not think that way, so I’m always grateful for the people in my life whose mind does think that way.
0:02:44 – Drake Eastburn
Me too, and some of the books that I have benefited from the most are not ones that people would know much about. Or there’s a book called Internal Fire that I read years ago but it’s by C Lyall Cummins, who is the son of Klessie Cummins who developed the Cummins diesel engine. And Lyall Cummins is an engineer himself and has quite a few patents to his claim, but he went into great detail about the development of the engine from very early beginnings and stuff like that. And then he has a follow-up book about the development of the Cummins diesel engine. But it was amazing stuff and I wrote him Before. We did emails and stuff like that and I wrote him and I talked about his book and I appreciate that and I asked about some additional things that might have been part of that. And here’s a guy he’s probably worth zillions of dollars and he got plenty to do and he sat down, wrote me a letter and back to me, so I thought that was pretty impressive.
But, there’s people like that who are writing stuff. They’re writing it from me too, because my audience is pretty small. When you think about the hypnosis community, there is not that big, but we write valuable stuff. I mean, it’s like the people who need it they appreciate it. It’s like it’s so true it won’t get you a New York Times bestseller list, but it’s still going to be appreciated.
0:04:28 – Dr. Liz
Yes, absolutely. I have a script book that I reference. I actually reference. You have one that I reference as well, but there’s another one that’s pretty obscure and it’s literally just scripts for hypnosis for different kinds of topics, and hardly anyone knows about this book and I love it, I use it all the time.
0:04:49 – Drake Eastburn
So it is very helpful you wrote that book.
0:04:52 – Dr. Liz
It’s called. I think the title is very basic 70 hypnosis scripts. Oh really, and I’m really bad with author names, I’m not sure of the titles. I don’t know the author name.
0:05:06 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, there’s a couple that I recommend. I’m not big on script books. I think a lot of them are not that well-written, but some are. There’s a gal up, I think she’s in Chicago, her name is Summers and I’ll try to take the name of her book. But I’ve often recommended it’s a book. It’s kind of based in Ericksonian stuff, but when I look at it and a lot of it isn’t scripts, a lot of it is, you know, good hypnotic language and stuff like that. But I read her book, I go man, she’s saying the same kind of stuff I am, you know. So it’s good to see that out there.
0:05:45 – Dr. Liz
Yes, I think there’s an element to the book resonating with how you work personally, because some of them I read and where I see I’m in a group that will post scripts and it’s like I would never use any of this.
0:06:01 – Drake Eastburn
Right.
0:06:02 – Dr. Liz
It’s not that it’s a bad script, it just there’s no way. I would say that.
0:06:06 – Drake Eastburn
Yes, you know what I see when I pick a script book. A lot of times I see I read a script and I go this person has never used this script. I’m go, they were writing a script book and they needed something to put in there, and so they wrote a script for this and it’s not been time tested. I won’t give out any scripts that I haven’t used over time and made sure they have an effectiveness.
0:06:33 – Dr. Liz
Yes, interesting yeah.
0:06:36 – Drake Eastburn
Our wording. Our wording is very important and if you’re going to be writing scripts, you need to be using good hypnotic language. You know it’s like because some people are just going to sit there and read that script and you want the best possible outcome from that you can get.
0:06:52 – Dr. Liz
That is funny. I had written an author of a script book on weight loss and there is. It was like the first one you’re supposed to use and I we did maybe 10 emails back and forth because I could not understand how this would go in a session, like I was like you’re supposed to do what? Like it made no sense to me and this is years and years ago, so it’s clicking into place Like oh, perhaps that had not been used with an actual client.
Right yeah, sometimes they just put them into trance and then wake them up again, and then they’re supposed to talk out loud and read their lists and then put them back. It was like what. I don’t know anyone who wants to do that. Like, notice is pretty relaxing. Yes, I really want to come to you and read a list. I don’t. Yeah, I was like this isn’t going to work for me.
0:07:49 – Drake Eastburn
Absolutely, and it’s something I tell my students. You want to be familiar with a script before you use it because you don’t know. And I give some in class. I give some examples of scripts that are just horrendous. You know it’s like do not use these. These are examples to avoid, and so you want to be. You want to be certain, and not only that a script that worked for a client a couple of hours ago may not be appropriate for somebody. The same issues later on.
So there’s not a one size fits all in my way of looking at things.
0:08:29 – Dr. Liz
Agreed. Yes, it’s very much dependent on the client and what they’re presenting, and the way I see it is like where are they coming from? Like where where’s they are coming from. And how can I best fit into that so that we can shift into a pattern that’s making them happier?
0:08:46 – Drake Eastburn
basically, yes, I’ve seen uh scripts, books and scripts from people who are big names out there in the field and it’s like man, what are you thinking? You know it’s like God. I wouldn’t put this out there. It’s garbage.
0:09:02 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, yes.
0:09:03 – Drake Eastburn
But a lot of times the people who are on the receiving end of that stuff they don’t know. They don’t know, they’re just learning, and we should think of scripts as being our training wheels as we’re building hypnotic language so that we’re not reliant on scripts. You know so that some people, if they don’t have a script, they can’t do a session, you know, and it’s like I have hardly ever used the script. It’s some of my own stuff. I have a couple of scripts that even I can’t do off the top of my head or not very closely, because they are so they’re meant to scramble your brain.
So it’s like so it’s, you know we were getting a bypass of the critical faculty by uh using language that does bypass the critical faculty, and then we’re inserting embedded suggestions along the way.
0:09:55 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I can’t do those from heart either. There’s a lot of stuff I can do on the fly from heart all of that.
0:10:04 – Drake Eastburn
But yeah, one of those types you know it’s like I did the silver method in the very early 70s and they had a nice flow of language. A lot of that came out of Emil Cuell’s stuff and also trying to think of the guy’s name, but anyway, he was part of silver for a long time but he helped to create that flow of language that kind of stuck with me over the years so that you know, I could always come up with some decent hypnotic language, no matter what the situation was or whatever. And it’s a way we can help a client, no matter what their issue is. You know, it’s like if somebody comes in with something and you don’t know really what to do with that issue, we can still give us some nice hypnotic pattern that’s going to help, uh, to deal with whatever’s going on.
0:10:52 – Dr. Liz
Yes, yes, true, yeah, a lot of our work is very creative. I would say so let’s switch taxier and talk some about lucid dreaming.
0:11:03 – Drake Eastburn
It’s an interesting topic and I think it’s really helped me to form my regular dream habits. So, you know, a lot of people are disturbed by their dreams. Yes, and I was thinking about this and I’m going. I like my dreams, you know. I mean, I love getting in that dream world and most of my dreams are I’m always on some kind of adventure, you know, in the outdoors, or I’m you know, exploring something somewhere, and that’s kind of reflective of who I am.
But I think a lot of the reason that my dreams are not disturbing is because I learned to do lucid dreaming a long time ago and so I’ve kind of trained my subconscious in a way that hey, we’re not going there or we’re going to fix that. So yes, years ago in the early nineties, I first read about lucid dreaming and it was Stephen LaBerge and he wrote a book called Lucid Dreaming and I was reading his stuff and he said when you’re in a dream, look at your hands. Once you look at your hands, then you can begin to control the dream. He said well, this can take weeks of practice before you finally get started doing it. So I go, yeah, okay. So I went to bed that night, fell asleep, I’m dreaming, I look at my hands, right off the bat, and away we go. Ever since then I’ve been controlling it Now.
So what’s the benefit of this? Well, especially if we’re having ongoing theme in our dreams or things like that, we can begin to shift those things. But I think what wasn’t touched on in that early work is some of the real posse benefits of lucid dreaming, and one of the things I wanna insert here is as I talk about in some of my writing is for hypnosis, hypnotic effects, to occur, there needs to be just at least a bit of conscious mind present somewhere. Well, when we’re lucid dreaming and we’re guiding the dream, we have to have a little bit of consciousness there. So really lucid dreaming is a form of self-hypnosis and it’s a very deep state.
0:13:34 – Dr. Liz
Yes, I don’t know if I would call it that that you’re seeing from a sleep specialist perspective. It’s like you’re dreaming. You’re in the REM state. Right well you might be in a REM state yeah. Right? Well, you can dream in any stage, absolutely, but the vast majority of it occurs in the REM state. The question I would ask, then, is like all sleep, self-hypnosis?
0:14:02 – Drake Eastburn
No, no, I wouldn’t say that, because the best definition I’ve been able to find for sleep is a complete lack of conscious activity.
0:14:12 – Dr. Liz
So if we’re guiding, the dream, there’s not a complete loss of conscious activity. But yet you are still asleep. Like any sleep lab would say you’re sleeping. Oh yeah, oh yeah, you think you’re having and definitely when we come into those lighter stages of sleep, we absolutely have some consciousness there. And some people have more than others, like my husband has zero right. He’s a very deep sleeper.
0:14:35 – Drake Eastburn
Whereas.
0:14:36 – Dr. Liz
I’m like I can hear anything that’s happening in the house in those lighter stages of sleep.
0:14:41 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, a lot of women do yeah, well, that’s true, because women have that women’s intuition thing or whatever it’s like. When you have little kids, yeah, even when you’re asleep, some of your awareness is wherever that kid is.
0:14:56 – Dr. Liz
Absolutely yes.
0:14:58 – Drake Eastburn
So there’s that other sensory thing where men don’t tend to do that as much. And I know I never had kids until I met Lindsay, and at that time the youngest was four and the oldest was 10. But I was like that, I mean, even though the youngest room was down the hall I could hear him fussing in the night or whatever. Lindsay wouldn’t even know, but I was always kind of aware. So I was kind of intuitive that way. But you’re right, I think women are more inclined to be like that than guys are.
0:15:33 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, yeah, for various evolutionary reasons, right.
0:15:38 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, Part of it probably comes from our genetic past too, because in the past men had to be comfortable out in hunting and warring trips in not such comfortable situations. But they still need to get some sleep. So we’ve probably developed that ability a little more so, as well as the ability to be in less clean surroundings. So when your husband leaves his underwear on beer cans laying around, you can blame it on his genetics.
0:16:08 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, when I was doing a lot of couples therapy, which I don’t do couples therapy together anymore. I’m like I’m an individual to improve their marriage, but I don’t see them together. But when I was, I might have people ask me if I could hypnotize the other person to pick up their socks. I’m like no, sorry, Believe me, I would have done it if I could.
0:16:30 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, they have the lunch.
0:16:31 – Dr. Liz
My kids would be spotless and the dishes would be done and all of that. But back to the lucid dreaming. It is an interesting state because you are exerting some consciousness during it. I learned to lucid dream. I must have been in my teen years, so I used to have a lot of nightmares when I was little and I’d get up from my bed my dad was still awake and he’d make me like tea and toast, and then we talk about it some, and I think he’s the first person who ever told me I could have some control over those dreams. Yeah, so I must have been like pre-teenaged then when the first concept was introduced. But I would say like my first awareness of doing that would probably be late teens or early 20s, where I was being chased and I would tell myself to fly, like fly so that I could get away.
0:17:32 – Drake Eastburn
Hey, see, there you go.
0:17:33 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, and I would. I would fly, and it would be very, very difficult at first, like, oh my gosh, I can’t get off the ground, you know. Then everything easier and easier as time went on. So it is really this mixed state of you’re asleep for sure, according to any EEG, but you do have some consciousness going on in there.
0:17:57 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, so you know we said that in a deep Delta state there is no conscious awareness, at least in adult people, little kids, different thing. But now they’re saying that there are a lot of people who will sleep walk and sleep talk in adult states. So there’s something is going on. You know it’s not. We’re not just totally blitzed out.
0:18:20 – Dr. Liz
Well, it’s interesting because they consider those quote unquote disorders Like there’s something wrong with the Delta state that they can get up and walk and there was a court case around. That actually Is that right. Oh yeah, in a Delta state and he won the case. He really was asleep.
0:18:38 – Drake Eastburn
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, remember that. Yes, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right.
0:18:43 – Dr. Liz
Yes, but yeah, it is, but they’ve studied also meditators. There was a medium where I was reading his book and I don’t remember which one it was the name but when they put him in an EEG he was talking just like you and me contacting the spiritual world but his EEG showed a Delta state which was like unheard of.
0:19:09 – Drake Eastburn
Yes, yeah, well, and they’ve done tests on monks that were meditating and they could be in any state.
0:19:18 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:19:19 – Drake Eastburn
And they’d still be sitting there, like you know, just meditating away, but they could generate any kind of brain frequencies you wanted.
0:19:26 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:19:28 – Drake Eastburn
We used to think you couldn’t. You couldn’t hypnotize or be meditating in a gamma state. But now all kinds of things are going on in a gamma state, and that’s true and it’s craziness.
0:19:41 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, and for the listeners who are a little lost by this conversation, let me just say that normally when you’re walking around you’re in beta state. That’s a very focused aware state. Then the next stage of more relaxed state is alpha, then it’s theta and then Delta is typically considered deep sleep. Gamma is considered a flow state. It’s a mix of the most focused athletes, all kinds of people can actually enter a flow state, but it’s a mix of brain waves that’s actually. It measures higher than beta. It’s really interesting.
0:20:18 – Drake Eastburn
So we used to think gamma was and it can be a state of fight or flight. It can be that it can also be a state where we have spiritual experiences, things like that of a. It’s a state where you have to say up to 30 cycles per second. Now there’s in 300 cycles per second I did a training with Joe Dispenza. You know who he is.
Yes, I do I think it’s a week long meditation thing basically, and a lot of that was to get into gamma states and activating the pineal gland and you know I’m big into that stuff. Although I wasn’t getting some of the responses some people were because I mean, and some of them I think were showy I don’t think they were really maybe doing all the thought they would. But some people are getting into these crazy states by month, thinking, man, if it’s that good, why come out?
Someone has to clean the house and cook the food and right back to the lucid dreaming, one of the things that I figured out early on about that. What I’m practicing is you’re not just directing or controlling your dreams. You’re doing therapy on yourself, because what’s happening is you’re training your subconscious to take control in these various situations, which expresses on your external world as well.
0:21:54 – Dr. Liz
So I never thought of it that way. You’re totally right.
0:21:57 – Drake Eastburn
I’d be laying there in bed at night and I’m going oh man, I’m doing therapy on myself and I’m not even paying for it. You know free therapy. And in LaBerge’s book I think this book came out in 92 or so, but exploring the world of lucid dreaming he kind of gets more into focusing on specific things in your lucid dreams, like maybe you want to focus on abundance or your health or things like that. But he’s got some different kind of methods to to approach those things.
0:22:33 – Dr. Liz
So Well, we know we can affect it. As part of my CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia training, there’s a section of it that we do on nightmares, particularly for people having PTSD. They know that once we improve their sleep it can improve their PTSD or their depression or their anxiety. So sometimes we start over on PTSD, depression, anxiety and nobody really looks at their sleep and it’s like, oh, let’s improve the sleep and all of this stuff can get better. The technique is when they’re in the conscious state, rewriting what they want that dream to be, if it’s a recurring dream, and then that begins to happen in the dream. So it’s really interesting. So you could take that and apply it to different things yes, abundance or yeah, or whatever you want.
0:23:34 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, so if we have a recurring dream, it’s your subconscious trying to communicate to you through metaphor, and usually that means that some change needs to occur. Yes, we’re having nightmares. It’s your subconscious said hey, pay freaking attention.
It’s like this is important and if we, if we don’t pay attention, if we don’t take control, those things will keep repeating themselves. I think a lot of reason that people have trouble sleep sleeping is a lot of times they’re afraid of their dreams because they’re disturbing and it’s part of them that you know hasn’t addressed stuff. I’m, you know, or I’ve had cases where clients when they were little, they would have a parent who was an alcoholic or abusive or whatever, and they would come into their room in the middle of the night and abuse them in some way. Well, what the hell you know? Like no wonder you have sleep problems. You know, you know, because your, your subconscious is set you up to be aware. Yes, also, a lot of people are more hypersensitive, you know, and any little sound or anything disturbs them.
0:24:49 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:24:51 – Drake Eastburn
And part of that is could be the intuition thing, but part of that is we just is a control thing. That’s what I find. A lot of people have control issues, have trouble falling asleep because they don’t want to give up that control, you know to fall asleep you got to let go. You know it’s like you know away we go.
0:25:10 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:25:11 – Drake Eastburn
I have a little piece of pattern built in with some that talks about sounds in the night, and it’s not that we don’t hear these things, but we hear them through the subconscious, and the subconscious recognizes these things as being benign and just allows the conscious mind to go off to the beach or whatever.
0:25:32 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:25:32 – Drake Eastburn
And we can sleep through the night. But if we allow every little sound, if we don’t edit those sounds, then we’re going to wake up to every little thing, which really doesn’t need our attention.
0:25:44 – Dr. Liz
Right, yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. I started doing hypnosis for insomnia before I got trained in CBT for insomnia. It’s quite effective to use. Hypnosis is what people don’t realize and in fact when they do research studies with CBT and what they call relaxation kind of control group, it’s like you do get an effect there on the sleep. That it will better that when you start to give suggestions for someone to have deeper sleep, and sometimes those are direct and sometimes those are through metaphor, like dolphins diving deeply into the ocean and cycling back up for a breath of fresh air and then going right back down.
That type of language you can really affect how deeply someone sleeps and how many times they wake up through the night will decrease even to use the bathroom, like all kinds of stuff. Yes that’s a common one, when people say I have to wake up and use the bathroom so much and then I can’t get back to sleep, and it’s like, well, we can help you with that, with gnosis.
0:26:51 – Drake Eastburn
Sure, and you know what. We’ve all done this. We’ve all got up in the middle of the night and use the bathroom and really never did wake up. You know, it’s like you just kind of go into the thing and might not even remember you ever did it or know that you ever did it. So yeah, we can kind of stay in that sleep state almost and get our job done. So good thing for people to do is, you know, as you’re getting ready to go to bed, first of all, if you’ve got daily business in your head that you need to tend to, you should write it down somewhere on a pad of paper and when you’re going to take care of this you got phone calls in return or you got a meeting to do, or whatever write those things down and get them out. Then you’re not just processing business all night long and having that kind of a sleep. Also, you don’t want to do things like watch the news and then go to bed or whatever.
Now you feel the subconscious with all this and there’s nothing good on there.
It’s not going to be nothing going to put you to sleep on the news. As we drift off to sleep, we go through a hypnagogic state, which is a really good time to be giving yourself some positive affirmations, some positive images. As I’m going off to sleep, I’m always imagining myself in some really nice surroundings, like I’m out camping or building a cabin or doing something that gives me comfort, and like that. Or listen to your affirmation recordings or just give yourself some affirmations, because that’s going to help to set the tone for what’s going to happen next. And the same way, when we wake up in the morning, we go through the hypnopopic state, which again, is a hypnotic state.
Most people don’t take very good advantage of it because they don’t wake up naturally. You know they wake up when their feet hitting the floor and they’re off and running. Maybe they got an alarm clock that wakes you up. Well, now you’re missing out on that. And that’s what happens a lot of times. When people say I don’t remember my dreams, it’s not that they’re not dreaming, it’s that they wake. If you wake up more naturally, you have a better chance of recalling those dreams.
0:29:11 – Dr. Liz
That’s true.
0:29:12 – Drake Eastburn
And. But if we wake up to an alarm and we’re running out the door in the last, like that, you’re not going to have that. Also, your dreams set the mood for the day. We’ve all experienced. You know, we had a real pleasant dream where we woke up and the rest of the day seems to go well, you know. So also, as you’re going off to bed, you can tell your subconscious I’m going to have dreams about something pleasant or like that.
And it helps to it helps to your subconscious will do a lot of things if you just ask it. You know.
0:29:47 – Dr. Liz
Yes, one of the most common questions I get is whether the hypnosis is effective if you fall asleep to it, so I would love to hear your answer to that.
0:29:58 – Drake Eastburn
Yes, so as a hypnotist, the subconscious mind is still present. So just because you’ve, and a lot of times people think they fell asleep, but they really didn’t, but they probably are in a pretty deep state. Yeah, the thing is that unless you’ve been hypnotized a lot, the closest model you have for being in hypnosis is sleep. So a lot of times the mind just goes to oh, I was asleep. So, we need to set it up in our pre-talk so that whatever the client experiences is what’s going to move us in the right direction.
0:30:40 – Dr. Liz
It’s true, but let’s say they’re listening to it at night, while they’re falling asleep, and so they actually do fall asleep and they don’t wake up till the morning Sure.
0:30:48 – Drake Eastburn
So we’re still getting those subconscious messages. You know, it’s like we can get these recordings to play at night to learn a foreign language, and that’s what they operate off of.
0:30:58 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:30:59 – Drake Eastburn
Your subconscious is still digesting this stuff. Now, research shows something that’s repetitious and boring like learning a foreign language. The subconscious can pick up on it, especially if you have a little bit of background, maybe in that language. You’re not going to learn complicated mathematics or something like that in your sleep, that it doesn’t work that way. But you can learn things that are more repetitious and not that difficult. So that’s why language is one of the things that helps, because you listen to a Spanish tape or something. It’s all this repetition and stuff and eventually it drums it into your subconscious. So, yeah, we’ll pick up on those suggestions and things and, yeah, in our sleep.
0:31:47 – Dr. Liz
That’s what I believe too. I always say well, this is why we don’t recommend you fall asleep to like a violent TV show. Right, Because you don’t want that stuff in your subconscious mind when you’re falling asleep.
0:31:58 – Drake Eastburn
You want to be reading Stephen King’s latest horror novel as you fall out to sleep, you know, because you gotta be filled with that stuff.
0:32:06 – Dr. Liz
Totally, totally. In fact, I was reading a book that’s highly acclaimed and I’ve been reading it a couple of nights, but there’s some pretty disturbing imagery in it and I thought, oh, I’m not going to finish this one. Like I may finish it in the daytime, but this is not going to be my nighttime reading anymore. I’m looking for light, happy, give me a magical world while I’m falling asleep, not some like violent imagery going on.
0:32:34 – Drake Eastburn
Oh for sure you know, that’s one of the things when I did the silver method in the early 70s. That’s one of the things that they just preached. They go, don’t watch the news, don’t read newspapers, and I took that to heart. Now, if people go, well, how do you know what’s going on in the world? And I go, try not to know. I mean, we get so bombarded with this stuff.
it’s almost impossible not to know. John Stossel did a program on this, oh, several years back now, but he was saying that we are in the safest period of history we’ve ever been in. But people perceive us as being in the least safe period of history, as ever, he says a lot of it just has to do with media. You know, 150 years ago if a hurricane hit New Orleans, who’d know? By the time you got that news it’d be way over and done with.
0:33:27 – Dr. Liz
It’s true.
0:33:28 – Drake Eastburn
Yes, but now you know, if Prince Harry stubs his toe, everybody knows about it.
0:33:35 – Dr. Liz
You know, it’s like every little thing you know we know what Angelina Jolie did.
0:33:40 – Drake Eastburn
You know whether it means anything to us or not, but we hear it and yes, yeah, my older daughter.
0:33:48 – Dr. Liz
When we would drive to school she’d want to listen to the news radio in the morning on the way. It’s only like a I don’t know 10, 15 minute ride, but finally I sit there. I was like I can’t do it. I cannot do doom and gloom in the morning, I just can’t do it. That’s why I used to call it. I was like we can listen to music, I’ll let you listen to any of your music, but I cannot do doom and gloom. And it turns out. I guess one of the teachers had said oh, you need to know what’s going on in the world in the morning and I was like well, you know in the morning, should you the afternoon? You’re good to go.
0:34:23 – Drake Eastburn
But I am so totally with you on that.
0:34:26 – Dr. Liz
So yeah, back to filling your head with good stuff. You can do that all day. You’re using that, certainly before you fall asleep at night. Yeah, we’re coming up close to the end of our time here anymore. Good tips for good sleep, good processing, creating that ability to lucid dream and get tips around that.
0:34:48 – Drake Eastburn
So, on that same thing, you know, with lucid dreaming, we’re creating more productive dreams, and even in our external world as a result. But what is our self-talk all the time? You know, what are we saying to ourselves? I mean, you’re always talking to your subconscious mind. What is it you’re saying, you know? Are you saying I’m wonderful and I’m handsome and I’m athletic and I’m healthy? Or you saying I’m a loser and I’m going to? You know, I’m never a mountain, anything has. But listen to what you’re saying to yourself.
And people don’t realize, you know, they don’t. They don’t really stop and listen, but listen to yourself. How can you change that, just like changing those dreams, how can you change the way you’re talking to yourself and thinking about yourself? If you think of yourself as being a loser and you talk to yourself that way, what other option have you given the subconscious, you know. And so if you start to think differently and I know this can be tough sometimes, because a lot of that self talk stems from our critical faculty, which was formed, like when we were just coming into this world, you know, till about five years old or so, and and we’ve grown all our life with that same thoughts running around in our subconscious and limitations.
0:36:11 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:36:11 – Drake Eastburn
I was raised as the stupid kid in the family and I’ll tell you a quick story. When I was in the second or third grade it must have been the third grade, I don’t know if it was something in the school district or whatever but myself and my two brothers, we all had got IQ tests at the same time through the school system, and this was in Lincoln, Nebraska. And when we got our test results back, my parents said well, we’re not going to tell you what your test results are, we don’t want it to influence you.
0:36:48 – Dr. Liz
Now.
0:36:49 – Drake Eastburn
I might not have been too smart, but I wasn’t so stupid. I couldn’t figure out that one of us didn’t do really well, and that’s probably me, because I know if we’d all got 140, they’d have been up and down the street bragging to all the neighbors, but that didn’t happen. My older brother they made sure he did well in school, they got him to a good college and everything, and they made sure I could get a good grip on a shovel, because that’s where they figured I was going. And it was hypnosis, really, that helped me to get beyond that. And I was ADD as a kid, before anybody knew what ADD was.
I did poorly in school, I suffered from depression and it was my own mind. One day I just got to a point where I go I’ve had it and I’m going to change, and I separated myself from the negative influences in my life, which is mainly my family and school, and I don’t recommend people drop out of school, but to me, going to school every day was just a reflection of what a failure I was. And when I got away from all that stuff and got out on my own, I turned everything around.
0:38:11 – Dr. Liz
My life changed and how did hypnosis come into it?
0:38:15 – Drake Eastburn
So well, part of it was the Silva method, teaching me how to redirect my language, my self-talk and like that, and their kind of mantra was change your mind, change your life.
0:38:28 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:38:29 – Drake Eastburn
And I came from a very negative background and I did turn that around.
0:38:34 – Dr. Liz
Are they still around the Silva method?
0:38:37 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, Silva is now part of the Mindvalley organization.
0:38:41 – Dr. Liz
Oh, they are Interesting.
0:38:43 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, you can still tap into it now.
0:38:46 – Dr. Liz
Tony Robbins tells a similar story about how he turned his life around. It was from like self-help quote-unquote tapes that he would listen to.
0:38:55 – Drake Eastburn
He did Silva and I think he did Silva and Est and stuff. I did all those things back in the day. Yeah, it helped me a lot and encouraged me into this world of hypnosis because I took everything that Silva had to offer, then any other classes I could find, and then I went to Colorado Free University where I teach. Now, actually, what was Denver Free University at the time was offering some hypnosis classes and so I jumped in on those and the guy who was the instructor and one of the other students the three of us got together started a business using hypnosis methods and things and creating wealth and like that.
0:39:38 – Dr. Liz
Interesting. So was that your first hypnosis practice really?
0:39:43 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, I started whole-time practice 30 years ago and so before that I was doing a lot of stuff with it, but it wasn’t until one day the light came on and I go oh, I could make a living doing this.
0:40:01 – Dr. Liz
What were you making a living app before then?
0:40:03 – Drake Eastburn
I was a diesel mechanic.
0:40:05 – Dr. Liz
Oh, and you were doing hypnosis on the side. Yeah, Plus.
0:40:09 – Drake Eastburn
I owned a lot of real estate and I had a part of with my partners, owned a couple of companies an investment company and a property management company. And we were going like crazy, but myself and one of the other guys we got divorced right at that time and I sold out my interest and then I got more into looking at myself.
0:40:35 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:40:37 – Drake Eastburn
It’s been a fun time. I was an ultra-distance runner too, so that really played into the whole subconscious thing.
0:40:44 – Dr. Liz
Yes, yes, your first interview was about talking some about working with top athletes. Oh, yeah. So that makes sense to me now If you’re an ultra-distance runner. I’m watching the Netflix documentary about the Tour de France right now. Oh my gosh, it’s so good, but they were talking about the difference between they actually said an ultra marathon runner is individual versus the Tour de France.
0:41:12 – Drake Eastburn
Yeah, it’s a very team.
0:41:13 – Dr. Liz
It’s team. It’s not just that, like endurance, you have to have that the qualities of an ultra marathon runner, and you have to be able to play chess at the same time.
0:41:24 – Drake Eastburn
It is totally. It’s all this strategy and stuff. You’re right, and you know we hear names like Lance Armstrong and stuff, but Lance Armstrong would not be anything that wasn’t for all those guys behind him.
0:41:39 – Dr. Liz
It’s your team that get you across that line first, you know. Yeah, they’re very clear about that. Yes, yeah, yeah, it’s really interesting.
0:41:48 – Drake Eastburn
I really liked working with the cyclists because you don’t see these huge egos like you do in some other sports, you know because, it’s they’re, you know they’re talented. They don’t get the mega million dollar bonus checks.
0:42:05 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, they don’t right.
0:42:07 – Drake Eastburn
And they’re mostly. They’re much more down to earth kinds of people.
0:42:11 – Dr. Liz
Well, thank you so much for being on the show again.
0:42:15 – Drake Eastburn
Thanks, it’s nice talking to you again.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
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