Can hypnotic suggestion help when managing pain after a stroke?
Stroke Podcast Episode 26 – While there are many pharmaceutical products to help when managing pain after a stroke that is very successful the long-term use of pills is not ideal. When I recently met the latest guest on the stroke podcast I couldn’t help but wonder whether there are other tools we could use to help pain management.
In this episode, Kevin Grise shares how he stumbled on using hypnotic suggestions to help others manage pain and the success he had, while in the army as a university student in the late 1970s.
Why do I need help with managing pain?
My personal experience with pain related to my condition, occurred after surgery to remove the faulty blood vessel that had bled 3 times in as many years.
When I woke from surgery I could not feel my left arm and leg and although the numbness was not painful, something else was causing pain.
My sensory neurons (that one that helps you feel) had been injured and as a result, were more sensitive to touch. When you touch my hand gently that hurts but when you touch my hand with more pressure it does not.
Also as I walk, because the signal to the brain from the foot has been altered, my muscles tense in order to keep me upright and this causes muscle stiffness and joint pain.
I personally got a lot from this episode I hope you did as well.
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Highlights:
01:31 Introduction
08:39 The right time to use hypnosis
18:54 Self-hypnosis
25:58 Sugar in cigarettes
38:03 Navigating neuroplasticity
46:56 Self-forgiveness
Transcription:
Intro 0:05
Recovery After Stroke podcast moves you through life’s transit lounge and helps you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.
Bill 0:16
Now, if you or someone you care about has had a stroke, and has started the recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be. There may be a whole lot of questions going through your mind, like, how long will it take to recover?
Bill 0:31
Will I actually recover? What things should I avoid in case I make was my doctors and therapists were always helpful in explaining things, but obviously, because I’d never had a stroke before, I didn’t know what questions to ask. And so I worried a lot and missed out on doing things that could have sped up my recovery.
Bill 0:51
So if you’re finding yourself in that situation, stop worrying and head to thetransitloungepodcast.com where you can download a guide that will help you. It’s called seven questions to ask your doctor after a stroke. These seven questions are the ones I wish I’d asked when I had my stroke because they not only helped me better understand my condition, they helped me take a more active role in my own recovery rather than just waiting to be told what to do at my next appointment to the website now, https://recoveryafterstroke.com/ and download the guide. It’s free.
Bill 1:31
G’day everybody and welcome to another episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast. My guest today is Kevin Grise. Kevin Grise is a hypnotist with a broad background spanning over 30 years as a hypnotherapist, actor, model, and representative in the medical industry. Kevin’s professionalism and dynamic style are apparent in all aspects of his stage hypnosis show. The hypnotist will teach you that there is nothing magical or mystical about Hypnosis, we are all in a different form of hypnosis every day. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis.
Bill 2:08
At the same time, the hypnotist provides a hilariously funny stage show, which is a real belly laugh. Kevin Grise first became interested in the concept and power of hypnosis as a paramedic in the US Navy in 1975, a year after I was born, where he trained in clinical hypnosis for pain control during minor surgery and painless childbirth. Now, that is something that I’m sure a lot of women would love to know about implementing, and witnessing the results of this impressed and intrigued him so much that he began and completed a degree in counseling psychology. Welcome to the show, Kevin. How are you?
Kevin Grise 2:52
I’m doing excellent. yourself.
Bill 2:54
Yeah, very well, man.
Kevin Grise 2:55
Good. Well, thank you for having me on today.
Bill 2:58
My pleasure. Thanks for agreeing to be on this is going to be a good episode because some of the things that you don’t seem to be able to come together and be combined in a bio because they come from very different places. We’re talking about a paramedic in the military, a show hypnotist, and a counseling background. How did you ever bring all those things together?
Kevin Grise 3:28
It’s called being alive for 60 years. It didn’t happen in a week because it progressed, because I first became interested, like I said, as a paramedic in the military. And one of the flight surgeons I worked with was hypnotizing people and he’d be suturing them up with no anesthesia, and he would be dealing with a lot of placebo effect type treatments.
Kevin Grise 3:51
And like I said, watching women go through childbirth, but any pain with the smile on the face, I’ve just, I was an 18-year-old kid then and you know, you’re just god smack that the power of the mind. And once you understand the placebo effect and see it in action, well when I got into the military, I got into the psychology industry and went through the training at uni and worked with injured workers. I think he calls it work safe here what is that when somebody gets hurt at work, you’re in Australia?
Bill 4:22
Yeah. WorkSafe is one of the main bodies that sort of supports people to get back to work and also talks to you know, bosses and employers about how to transition people back into work. So it’s really important for people who are recovering from, you know, brain injuries or any other medical condition, but for us specifically stroke, absolutely. Work Safe and there are other organizations that can help bring people back to work and, also pay for a lot of the medical costs if it’s a workplace accident, and if an employer was at fault, for example.
Kevin Grise 5:05
Yeah. So that’s what basically I was doing in the States for five years. And then I got a lucky break and had a chance to come over to Australia for a couple of years on a two-year contract. And I ended up with a permanent entry visa and the work permits and all that stuff. And then America change your stupid laws to where you could have dual citizenship. And gs 27 years ago, they were given passports away. So I said, I’ll get my tree in the flag.
Kevin Grise 5:38
And I ended up staying. And that’s when I got into the corporate market selling medical equipment. Because back then, hypnosis was illegal in the state of Victoria, unless you were a medical doctor or a preacher. So they had really archaic laws. So I spent 10 years of my life Selling medical equipment all over Victoria and Tasmania.
Kevin Grise 6:03
And I also got picked up by a friend of mine who ran a modeling and acting agency who says, Hey, I can use a lanky yank like you to do that. started doing catalogs and commercials and television and I get a little bit of heart with an American accent and then just evolved from there. And that’s sent me all over the world just doing catalog work, television commercials, catwalk fashion, all kinds of weird stuff. So I never thought a million years. I didn’t have to do that. And then when I got us straight Julia in 1998 they change the law in Victoria where you could actually learn hypnosis and start practicing it.
Bill 6:48
So back then, did you guys actually call it hypnosis when you were in watching this gentleman in the military, hypnotizing people and suturing people up without anesthesia?
Kevin Grise 7:02
Not really. Back then you kind of kept things kind of quiet. But it was really amazing. This got y’all in the military, you got these officers where everything’s smooth and attention. So this guy was more just kick back, relax, and everybody. I mean, you’d walk past him instead of salute. He just waved saying, Hey, I just had a super cool pass.
Kevin Grise 7:24
Of course, dude, everybody loved his bedside manner, which is the number one secret when you’re dealing with people, especially in hypnosis is developing rapport with people and when you can get people to trust you and relax with you. And also when they just follow your suggestions. It’s just really amazing man. And that’s what kind of sparked it because I said, you’re using hypnosis on people. I mean, I’m just using bedside manner rapport, chill out, relax and I mean, when you’re in an emergency room, you’ve got everything working for you. Because the people are afraid, you’re in a uniform.
Kevin Grise 7:25
They don’t know what to do, and they’re going to tell you what, they’re going to follow your suggestions. And then you get that big light shining in on their eyes, which helps a lot. And you get them focused in a different direction, well, then you can go to work with them because the mind can only focus on one thing at a time. And that’s another one of the secrets. When the people focused over here, they can’t be focusing on where you’re working on $1 here.
Bill 8:39
Okay, so that sounds real simple process. But when people come in, I imagined a medical space from, you know, the military, they may have been shot, they may have had all sorts of serious injuries. Right? How do you get somebody to go from being in fight or flight mode, so almost You know, dying mode to concentrating on you? I know that rapport got something to do with it. But that seems next level, it doesn’t seem like you can just get there very, very quickly or can you?
Kevin Grise 9:12
Well, first of all, it’s situational ethics when you get a crisis like that. These people are already in a deep trance because it’s called shock. And fear and intimidation of authority. everything’s working for you. These people are already in a deep trance. So you don’t need to hypnotize them, so you wouldn’t, it’s not appropriate to be using these techniques in that situation.
Kevin Grise 9:38
I’m talking about minor stuff. where, you know, you got a little kid that’s yelling and screaming because you got a gash in his leg or arm or broken bone or something like that, and he’s freaking out. That’s when you want to use the techniques to calm them down, get rapport, get them focused on something else, and then you can work on them. Without making the situation worse by making them more afraid. So, yeah, you got to be doing the right thing at the right place at the right time.
Kevin Grise 10:09
Because hypnosis is not a cure hypnosis isn’t going to cure anything. That’s the first thing and realizing hypnosis is not a cure. It just helps you make everything work quicker, faster, and easier because when you’re relaxed and focused, you can heal yourself a whole lot quicker than being all stressed out.
Bill 10:32
Yeah, of course, that’s that makes sense. So it’s a tool to distract the mind from the sound of things.
Kevin Grise 10:38
Yeah, in that situation. Yes. Okay.
Bill 10:41
So in hypnotherapy, so, I hypnotize a hypnotist onstage and a hypnotherapist is different. I know they have similar skills. But before we go down that path and want to understand how, how you’ve worked with people recovering from you know, health challenges and all sorts of different things in your role as a counselor as well.
Bill 11:05
Firstly, I need to sort of touch on the topic of childbirth, he hypnotizing somebody during childbirth. So I understand the purpose of that is to try to relieve pain. And I understand that potentially what it can do is minimize the amount of anesthesia or whatever you want to call the drugs that people get during childbirth to deal with the pain. How is hypnotherapy or hypnotizing somebody helping in that area?
Kevin Grise 11:35
Well, first of all, you need to learn how to deal with the right people at the right place at the right time. And that’s what the screening is all about. Because you give people a lot of tests, a lot of questions because some people if you don’t have that rapport, or they just don’t get it, you’re wasting your time. Okay? Because only about 25 30% of the population are really good subjects. You have to be able to screen that out real real quick.
Kevin Grise 12:03
And then it’s a conditioning process because if I was a pregnant woman, I don’t want to be working with her, or I want to be working on myself. Six months ahead or nine months ahead of the process of teaching myself self-hypnosis. Hypnosis is self-hypnosis and the more practice that you give yourself, the better your odds, but a lot of times people read walking in under a lot of pain and stress and anxiety and fear.
Kevin Grise 12:31
I mean, the number one way to hypnotize somebody is fear and intimidation, and more fearful than going to a situation you’ve never been in before like childbirth, okay? So, when you get people to relax, focus, breathe. All of a sudden, they can calm down, they are in control of their life being in control of their body, and it’s amazingly quite simple. And a lot of it is, it’s so close to the placebo effect.
Kevin Grise 13:05
But it’s not. It’s just that bind line. Because if you take it, stick a needle through somebody’s arm and say like that are hurt, they Oh, that’s really cool. Then say, Okay, now you can take that and move it over to here, check that out, then you can move it to here, then you can do it to here. So it’s a conditioning process.
Kevin Grise 13:27
But I might add that you got to be really careful when you’re working with people with pain control. Because pain is good. Pain is your body telling you there’s something wrong and the last thing you’d want to be doing, like last night at the show at this show was over, this guy comes up to me, Oh, can you help me with my migraine headaches? I said, Have you had a workup with a medical doctor? Because if I told you, you know, hypnotize you and taught you how to feel a little more migraine headaches, what happens if you got a stroke that hasn’t been spotted?
Kevin Grise 13:59
You know, bubble In your head, what happens if you got a tumor in your brain that hasn’t been spotted? The first thing anybody with pain has to do is get to that doctor and get a complete workup. Get those MRI scans, and rule out, any medical condition before you start fooling around with getting rid of pain with somebody
Bill 14:19
like that, that’s really responsible. Actually, that’s what you need to do. You don’t need to tell people to avoid pain or not know, get rid of pain, or associate different things with pain unless their pain is manufactured by them in a way that is not correct. So right. So if I touch them on the hand, and they said, Oh, that’s extremely painful. Well, then, obviously, if there’s not a medical condition with me touching them on the hand when then that shouldn’t be really painful.
Bill 14:50
Let’s understand the relationship to pain that that person has. Let’s see if we can rework it, but if it’s pain, like I broke my arm, and you know, it’s hanging with hump direction. You know, maybe we need to do something about that pain. And it’s a really useful tool to tell us that there’s something wrong with our arm.
Kevin Grise 15:09
Especially with a headache because a lot of people come in for a headache. And I tell you what, if you start folding, all that kind of stuff without an MRI scan or a CT scan or whatever like in your situation it took a while before they spotted the blood. Yeah, leak brain. But my mom’s face the other few months ago was it was constantly twitching when they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Well, they did a scan on she has a benign tumor growing back over here. So then she had to go and get radiation therapy and so pain is good.
Kevin Grise 15:47
But once you’ve totally eliminated any medical condition, then a lot of pain is psychosomatic. I’m all stressed out. I’m all tense. I’m all worried about Next week, and all this other petty stuff, well, that’s the stuff where hypnosis can really, really help you get control of your life.
Bill 16:09
Awesome. So that’s really interesting because I organized to see a hypno therapist before my surgery for my head and before the surgery for my thyroid.
Bill 16:25
So, about a year after my brain surgery, I had thyroid surgery. Yeah, and both times I did what you said I brought in somebody to plan before the surgery, how I wanted my body to respond and how I wanted my head to bleed during surgery, which was I wanted it to bleed to do the clearing enough that it was helpful, but not too much so that it becomes unhelpful to me in the doctors.
Bill 16:53
And we also manage the whole when I wake up process, how I’m going to wake up how I’m going to recover, how I’m going to get back on my feet because I had to go into surgery. And there was a chance that I would, you know, have some complications, which I did, I couldn’t walk after surgery, I had to train myself to walk again.
Bill 17:14
And one of the really interesting things is that my recovery went, well, they expected it to be more than two months and my recovery took about a month before they sent me home after surgery. And everything that I was doing seem to be happening a lot quicker and the path to recovery was just a lot smoother and a lot quicker than everyone expected, including myself. And I had no pain after the surgery at all whatsoever.
Bill 17:44
No painkillers, no headaches, no nothing after the surgery the next day, so doctors were saying to me, can I take you your pain tablets and your medication? I said, No, I don’t want to I want to know where I’m at. At the moment. I don’t have any pain. So I didn’t take them. So I, of course, can’t prove that anything I did with the hypno therapist had anything to do with the way I was recovering. I can’t prove that but I still feel depth deep down, that it was definitely a useful process.
Bill 18:15
And I went into the surgery room, you know, into the post-operative area where they prepare you and put all the tubes and all that stuff into being extremely calm and doing exactly what you said, breathing. Talking to the doctors and surgeons that come in and telling them about it. I knew they were going to do a great job. I trusted them. I wasn’t telling them out loud. I was telling them on my own. I was having a conversation with them, but without speaking to them. So in my own mind, I was just going through this thing, and I was just sending out what I figured were good vibes, Kevin. That’s the best way I could describe it.
Kevin Grise 18:54
Well, that’s exactly what self-hypnosis is. And that’s what a good hypnotherapist is there to do to train them. You get your thoughts, right? Because what you think is what you are. And what you say is what you’re going to get. Never knows how the vast majority of people go through their life, talking about everything they don’t want. And they wonder why it comes upon them in abundance. Yeah, really, really gotta be careful what you think and what you say. Yeah. And that’s what I try to teach people to do.
Bill 19:26
So you went from being so how did you end up in the army helping people?
Kevin Grise 19:33
I was back in the 70s. I was lucky. I joined in 1975 when they pull out of Vietnam, but they still had a thing called the GI Bill, which basically says for every month that you spend on active duty, they would pay for a month and a half of college. So is it called the poor boy’s scholarship? I’m the oldest of eight kids. My mom and dad cannot afford to send you to college. I said, Well if I spent four years in the military, I’m going to get six years of college paid for. They just pulled out of Vietnam. And guess what, the four years I was on active duty. There was no war or anything. It was peacetime I think it was one of the few times was peace in America.
Kevin Grise 20:22
And I had a great time great education. Plus, it gave you some maturity because I didn’t start uni till I was like 23. And so I had four years of military experience. Then I went to uni, so I was selling out a little bit more. And then I just focused on the psychology courses and then ran into a guy that turned me on to hypnosis and then I started taking the side courses on hypnotherapy and all the different things you could do.
Kevin Grise 20:54
Mostly got to work in research, and actually work in clinical settings at university. hypnotizing people and practicing and seeing what it can do, what it can’t do, what works, and what doesn’t work. Because I tell you what, there is a lot of mythology and a lot of bogus information surrounding hypnosis in the world. And you got to sort out the myth from the fact
Bill 21:19
That the myth from the fact does that tend to occur because of the stage hypnosis, where people, you know, get this more mixed idea about what hypnosis isn’t to say people walking around and clucking like chicken is.
Kevin Grise 21:34
That’s a partly true stage hypnotist, a lot of really unethical say I work the corporate market and cruise ships and family show so I run clean, I run straight and my job because I also do hypnotherapy out of my house here. My goal is to get clients I don’t want to be scaring them and making them okay idiots. I want to say hey, this is really cool. Can you teach me how to quit smoking and lose weight? Um, that’s my sales pitch.
Kevin Grise 22:02
All right, yeah, I want to get hired back. But Stacy, HIPAA, HIPAA just don’t help a lot. But I think it’s more back to the fear of like that spin golly movie or The Manchurian Candidate, or I’m going to be brainwashed. That guy looked me in the eye and swings the watch, and I’m going to be out of control. Movies don’t help any.
Kevin Grise 22:29
There’s a lot of baloney going on there. And the medical industry doesn’t really help a lot either. I mean, some of the most evil things going out of the planet Earth come out in the psychiatry industry and the pharmaceutical industry. So even though I come from a medical background, and I say that’s your number one choice, I’m 100% Pro it. I’ve also been around long enough to know that hey, I always get a third opinion.
Bill 23:04
Yeah, right.
Kevin Grise 23:06
There are a lot of (inaudible) that you gotta be aware of. But most of what you know about hypnosis is false. For example, I asked to preach all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. You have to hypnotize yourself the hypnotist was giving you suggestions but you have to follow them and you have to hypnotize yourself.
Kevin Grise 23:36
Then you learn how to do it in the operating theatre before post-op and pre-op, right? So you’re doing it yourself. But also, hypnosis is the art of suggestion. See, everybody thinks, Oh, you got to be all these inductions ranging from Take a deep breath and relax. If you talk Bah, bah, bah, all the way to the rapid inductions and shock inductions. You don’t need an induction. You just need suggestions. That’s why they spend billions of dollars a day on television commercials pumping you with suggestions to buy stuff you don’t need. Okay, that’s how it works.
Bill 24:18
So, Kevin, you know how I’ve gone through the process of, you know, serious health issues, like a lot of people. For me, it was brain surgery, it was thyroid surgery. I was learning how to walk again. I know that you say and other people that I’ve spoken to say that you know, hypnosis can’t be can’t happen to somebody unless they want to be hypnotized. If I come to you during a condition like I’m recovering from a stroke-related matter.
Bill 24:49
And one of the things that I really must do for my own health and well-being is quit smoking or you know, change some of my habits and I come in. So I’ve heard that hypnosis works like I’ll just go and say this guy, Kevin, and I’ll get hypnotized out of smoking. Is that going to necessarily work? If my heart’s not in it? Like if I haven’t decided that I want to be a nonsmoker? How does that work? Can you do it? It doesn’t.
Kevin Grise 25:23
You got to be motivated. You have to want to. So that’s the biggest problem that I face every single day. Or can you make me quit smoking? Yeah, which jail? Is that what you want? see a lot of people they want you to do it for them. We are living in a really weak society where nobody wants to take responsibility for their life. They want you to do it for them. The bottom line and that’s where I get really harsh with people. I say I will show you how to take responsibility for your life.
Kevin Grise 25:58
I will show you the simplest take techniques and I can show you how to eliminate all the cravings and urges and desires because everybody thinks Oh, a cigarette is the nicotine cigarettes that I’m addicted to and it’s a habit. It’s also did you know that every cigarette got about a teaspoon of sugar in it? No. So when you start smoking sugar, I mean sugar is the most addicting drug on the planet.
Bill 26:29
I’ve never heard that before about sugar and cigarettes.
Kevin Grise 26:33
Absolutely. And when you start smoking sugar that’s like smoking crack. And also, that’s what causes lung cancer. Although molasses in the syrup and the sugar and stuff, mix with all the tobacco and the other chemicals, where you look at cultures like Russia or the Native American Indians where they smoke air-dried tobacco. They don’t have a lung cancer issue. He was smoking tobacco. It’s the Western world. And every country’s got a different dose like England’s got like 20% sugar and every cigarette you smoke.
Bill 27:11
Why the heck does a cigarette have sugar in it?
Kevin Grise 27:16
Because it’s very addictive. You know, women like to smoke Marlboro lights. It’s sugar mixed with chocolate.
Bill 27:27
Okay, so it’s not actual chocolate though, right? It’s not an I can’t go in there with the Microsoft and find a piece of chocolate Can I not literally like that? But is it yeah, right? Okay.
Kevin Grise 27:39
And a lot of the tobacco they spray it with sugar and molasses and tobacco and then dry it and then grind it up and then you’re smoking it you wonder why you’re so addicted to it. So you got to break that sugar habit.
Kevin Grise 27:57
And when you begin to learn these kinds of things, you can break that easily by giving your body what it needs. Your bodies. When people get that craving for food, or junk food or cigarettes. Their body is craving fresh air. It’s a craving for water. It’s craving, high-quality nutrition that your body’s not getting. And it’s screaming for you to give it to, but you’ve trained yourself through habit to get your deep breath.
Kevin Grise 28:31
Have a cup of coffee or a bottle of Coke backed up by a bunch of Becky’s or some more junk food. And then also you get that sugar fix and that high for 45 minutes and then your blood sugar crashes again and you go through that cycle. You got to break that cycle.
Bill 28:51
I like what you just said because a lot of people don’t understand the addiction to food and how food addictions work and some of the work that I’m doing is To bring awareness as to how to overcome eating, especially for people recovering from a brain injury, overcome eating things like wheat, and grains, because they actually don’t help in the recovery process and somebody recovering from a brain injury would be better off not eating carbohydrates like that.
Bill 29:21
So if people eat carbohydrates, like any kind of vegetable, I’m up for that there’s no problem there. And even if they have fruit in the form of an orange rather than in the form of juice, then I’m up for that as well. But they’re the grains and the big issue with that is that it does exactly that It raises blood, insulin levels, or blood glucose levels or blood sugar levels.
Bill 29:43
And that makes the body feel a certain way, just like any addict from either heroin or cocaine or anything like that. And then the body starts to enjoy that feeling of additional let’s call it energy or a higher level of you know, resource or something. And when it doesn’t have it, the buddy says, Well, you know what, we were probably getting a little more out of you when we were at that higher peak energy level or resource level that we could draw on.
Bill 30:12
Why don’t we get used to you back there? And when it crushes, it means that the insulin has done what it’s meant to do, it’s gotten it out of the body because that’s in high doses. Foods that turn into sugars, actually, damaging to the arteries are damaging to the veins damaging to the tissue in the body, and over long periods of time.
Bill 30:37
They’re what tends to cause weakness in arteries. And in my case, I believe that my diet potentially caused a weakness in one of the smallest veins being the weakest link and it allowed it to just get weak around the edges when I got stressed, then I increased my blood pressure through effort or exercise or work you just created a reason why that leak could occur and the leak occurred. Because what blood sugars do is damage collagen, collagen in the body.
Bill 31:10
And when you get damaged collagen, it means your skin and all your cells can’t bind together to give you the structure that they need to be in to allow them to stay, you know, strong. So if we go through this process of being on high levels glucose type diets, sugar diets, or diets that have food that is converted to sugars, and we don’t get them then we associate feeling low without knowing that we associated with our food.
Bill 31:44
So we’ve attached this, oh, I ate that food last time. I actually felt better. Let me eat the same food again. Let me get back to those high levels and I’ll feel okay. So what you’re saying about cigarettes and about other addictive substances is the second kind of thing, foods and cigarettes and all those can play a similar role in taking us out of our own control where we don’t are in control of ourselves where a substance is in control of ourselves.
Kevin Grise 32:16
Supporting to breathe, and learn how to become aware and learn how to give your body what it really needs, which is fresh air, water, and high-quality food. And that’s where people screw up. And the thing I like to teach people when I’m dealing with weight control issues is to get rid of the grain of your diet. I grew up on a farm and ranch area in Montana.
Kevin Grise 32:42
You know, you feed all your cattle and sheep and pigs to get them fat. Right, great. Get rid of it. Yeah, eat fresh veggies, fresh fruits, high quality, nutrition, whatever that you like. And I teach people To eat more healthily. And also, that’s a good hypnotic suggestion because everybody likes to eat less. I got to stop doing that. I got to do that. I say eat more. Gives the subconscious mind a suggestion that it wants to follow.
Bill 33:20
Yeah, I like that because you’re right. It is associated with weight loss diets all associated with eating less. And when we take people to this place of trying to eat less, they think well, how am I going to survive? I need to. It’s something they didn’t realize that they can eat a lot more as long as it’s a lot more healthy food.
Kevin Grise 33:40
The thing I teach you as a hypnotist in school is to treat your subconscious mind. Like a very intelligent, seven-year-old brat. You tell a kid, don’t do that. Stop, quit. No. What are you going to do? The opposite you can do just to find out what he’s doing. supposed to do. And when you tell us I’m going to quit smoking, your subconscious mind is gone. Piss off.
Kevin Grise 34:10
But when you taste it, I’m a fresh air breather. There’s nothing to argue with. Hmm. You give yourself a choice. Do I want to take a couple of deep breaths? Or do you want to take a walk around the park or don’t want to go get me a glass of water, or do a walk all the way down to the 711 and buy another $25 pack of cigarettes and kill myself? And when you give yourself some choices, also it gives you that chance to think Hmm, but you got to learn to talk to yourself properly and eliminate all the negative words because your subconscious mind will reject stop Don’t quit, should don’t. No, no. Replace those words with I am. I have I will. I love myself. Yeah, when was the last time you said I love myself?
Bill 35:03
I haven’t said that for a while.
Kevin Grise 35:05
Well look in the mirror and I love myself. I’m going to take care of myself. Thank you.
Bill 35:13
Yeah, they’re powerful words, I can understand why they’re important. Now, is that part of what you do when you’re dealing with people who you’re counseling, especially when they’re recovering from an illness or they’re experiencing some serious illness? How do you get people to go from understanding that, although things that illness may have changed things they can still be really productive, really healthy, and do really well in life?
Bill 35:40
So I’ll give you an example. So I experienced on a daily basis, I experienced, you know, pain in my left side, numbness in my left side, my balance is off a little bit because my left side, I can’t feel as many it does, I can’t feel will get the sensation as I used to. So it’s kind of like on one side, I’ve got this Different version of myself.
Bill 36:02
And that makes me get a lot of times to the point where I focus on what the problem or the challenge is because, you know, I nearly fall over or I can’t sleep at night because it hurts. So how do I go from being somebody who’s experiencing this condition to somebody who, even though I’m experiencing this condition, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been?
Kevin Grise 36:28
Well, when I’m working with people, first of all, you got to have that rapport and trust. And if you can’t have that, then you need to refer to somebody that you can relate to and is on the same frequency as you because I can only speak for myself but when I’m hypnotizing people, I have to be in a trance with them. I’m teaching you how to hypnotize yourself.
Kevin Grise 36:50
But then I go into a trance state and we it’s kind of like Ah, it’s really a strange folly I do, I guess the French call it or you got two people on the same page, thinking that, hey, you can actually do this. And when you’re working like that, also magic happens. And then it’s a matter of teaching you that neuroplasticity that you were talking about in your talk. That’s when that magic comes in. Because you’d be amazed at what would happen when you start practicing other parts of your body.
Kevin Grise 37:33
Maybe using instead of doing something with your right hand, you start practicing with your left hand also, that’s gonna start triggering different neurons in your brain to start rewiring yourself to work differently. And that’s what I kind of like to work with people because I ever worked with stroke victims, but I worked with a lot of people with back injuries and neck injuries and stuff like that. So you had a lot of that Mental injury issues to work with.
Kevin Grise 38:03
And I was amazed at what people would do if they started learning how to play a guitar, or drums or music, or something totally different than they ever did. Or instead of, you know, eating with your right hand, you start eating with your left hand, often that freaks out your brain and then starts healing itself quicker. For some reason. I’m totally fascinated with the neuroplasticity research going on at the moment.
Bill 38:31
Yeah, so what you’re saying is you can affect neuroplasticity, positively and negatively. Obviously, if I’m the kind of person who does the whole, I’ll never get better. I’ll never recover. I can have a negative effect on neuroplasticity and the ability of the brain to change itself.
Kevin Grise 38:48
Absolutely. What you think is what you are, what you said was you’re going to get and most people are really, really negative, right? And they wonder why they bring it on to them. So you got to really, really get real with yourself. Say this is a situation I’m in. Now, what can I do to make it better and get healthy? And what I mean, I’m not going to sit there and put rose-colored glasses on you because something’s really, really suck. And that is it. And that’s what it is. And that’s what you’re going to have to accept. And now, what are you going to do to at least make it better?
Bill 39:27
Yeah, to fix what we can or to influence what we can? Yeah.
Kevin Grise 39:31
Right. And here are the options that I got to heal myself quicker, faster, better, easier, because like you said, you had a remarkable recovery a month earlier than it should have been. And that was pure thought, attitude, and getting off your butt and doing something because you actually had to put in a lot of work to do that. There. A lot of people just lay down and give up and expect the world or their family or society to take care of them. Unfortunately, that’s not the way the world works.
Bill 40:00
I had the benefit of deciding that I wasn’t going to listen to doctors give me definitive answers to anything. So I never asked them, How long will it take for me to recover? I never said to them, Will I ever be able to walk again, I never said any of that stuff. All I thought was okay, this is the condition that I mean, I can’t walk, I can’t move my arm. So let’s see what I can get back on my own.
Bill 40:21
And when I wasn’t able to be in physical therapy because anyone who’s recovering from a brain injury will know that sometimes a minute a day of physical therapy was too much. I was able to meditate and visualize myself walking and visualize my arm working and visualize all these things coming back me running me driving again, me doing all these things.
Bill 40:45
So the visualization I felt helped me create new neural pathways. So start the neural plasticity before I had actually gone into, you know, the therapy room and then when I had done the therapy. It was familiar. My, left side kind of said, Okay, well, we’ve been there before because this guy has already seen that in his head with imagine that happened. So that was really an interesting time for me.
Bill 41:15
And I had one of my A friend of mine who I’ve also interviewed back in episode five or six, I think it was clear, tell me that one of her doctors, or one of her physical therapists told her that all right now how are we going to get this bad to work again, or to do this to do that? and Claire actually really got the nasty letter and said, Look, it’s not a bad arm. It’s just the arm that currently, you know, he’s healing and he’s going to get better.
Bill 41:46
So please don’t call it my bad arm, because it’s nothing bad about it. So my instinct taught me not to listen to people in the words that they were going to say to me and label myself. recovery in any way, shape, or form of my injury?
Kevin Grise 42:03
Well, I started teaching the medical society at the moment in the medical community is you got to be really careful what you say to people because they will take it seriously. And they’ve done a lot of research on people under anesthesia who can still hear. So when you say an operating theater during surgery, you better be really, really careful because even though they’re under the influence of anesthesia, they look like they’re out of it. They’re not, but they’re hearing everything that you say.
Kevin Grise 42:33
And you got to remember that. So that’s something to be very, very aware of. And like I said, what you say to yourself and what you say to others, I mean, remember that stupid blind sticks or stones won’t break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Yeah, that’s crap. You can kill people with the power of your voice and words and suggestions very easily and it’s done. Every single day.
Bill 43:02
So even if somebody thinks or says that your words will never hurt me, you’re saying that those words can still have an impact somewhere on the unconscious.
Kevin Grise 43:10
Oh, absolutely. Words are destructive. As I said, you can use words to kill people. Yeah, I do. I am Joel, an extreme example that is checked off the suicide bombers and kamikaze pilots.
Bill 43:24
Yeah. I get told what to do, and I do it.
Kevin Grise 43:27
Yeah. So you remember the power of suggestion, which is words, and the words that you choose to give people you can use for positive. You can use it to make the world a better place you can use it to heal yourself and others, or you can use it to destroy the planet. That’s all ethical choices that you have to make.
Bill 43:49
I did a presentation a little while ago and it was called words are like weapons. Yep. They will sometimes show Yeah, straight out. Song words are like weapons they win sometimes is what she said.
Kevin Grise 44:04
They kill sometimes.
Bill 44:06
Yeah, right. So you know I did. I did a presentation for about 10 minutes I’ve got a video on the YouTube channel. And we talked about a gentleman whose name at the time I think I remember was Ivan and Ivan was in rehab with me and he was looking at his hand and calling it a bastard. Because what needed to he needed to pick up this empty toilet roll and move it from one side of his body to another without it falling over on the short side you know without falling over, and his hand wouldn’t grasp it because he had a stroke as well and it wouldn’t do that and it wouldn’t move.
Bill 44:41
And I was on the other side of the table. I had my hand in a rice bucket trying to find all these little knickknacks in this rice bucket because I couldn’t feel things I needed to identify what they were, say what they were bringing it out. tell people I identified it so it was kind of retraining my hand to feel things and notice things even though it was getting all the rice input from around.
Bill 45:06
So while I was doing that, and I heard him say you know to say it’s a bastard. I said to him Ivan, what would happen if your hand moved like what would you call it? I said I would call it my friend. I so that’s interesting. Why don’t you call it your friend now? Pretend that it has moved and just see what happens. And you wouldn’t believe it, Kevin. I mean, you would you’ve seen it before, but he said to his friend, okay, friend move. As he said that, for the first time and I’m not sure how many days his hand closed, grasp the toilet roll, moved it to the other side of his body, let it go and it didn’t fall over.
Bill 45:44
He was stunned at how quickly he got a result from his hand. Now the movement wasn’t amazing. It wasn’t fluid. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot further in literally 10 seconds than he had got before. So words for me is where kind of the first thing that come into my mind was, words are like weapons, they went sometimes, and I didn’t know where it was from.
Bill 46:07
And then I realized it was a shared song. But then I associated, then I was able to tell that story in a really funny way. And people really do now I started to understand what you’re saying about words. I think it’s a really powerful and difficult thing. It’s a powerful thing to know. And if you know it, it’s a very simple thing to change. If you don’t know what you’re doing, and what you’re saying to yourself and to other people, if you’re a carer and you’re caring for somebody who is recovering from a major illness, right? And you’re using the wrong words, you could be cementing them into that scenario, rather than encouraging them to break out of that scenario. So it’s very, very interesting. I love that concept that you’re coming up with that you’re talking about there.
Kevin Grise 46:56
Well, he said, hypnosis is the art of suggestion. That’s it, in my opinion. So if you’re going to be talking to yourself instead of beating yourself, I mean, how many times do do something stupid and yell and scream? I mean, most people treat themselves worse than they do there, you know, anybody. I mean, you treated a dog the way you treated yourself and probably even late. So that’s one thing I always had to work on because I’ve always beat myself up.
Kevin Grise 47:27
You know, you could be doing just stupid. I mean, nice. Instead, take a deep breath go. Then you can say, look, I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you, jeez, cut yourself some slack. Because that’s what causes a lot of problems with people is, they, they just keep building it up and building it up and building it up, and eventually it’s gonna have to explode. And when it does, it’s not very good.
Bill 47:56
Yeah, there’s a lot to say about that. How Purpose had his purpose come into this whole thing, because you know what people wake up in the morning, they can’t move their arms, they can’t move their leg. And all of a sudden, they are not able to go back to their original version of their life or whatever it was that they were doing. How do we use purpose in suggestion to help people go, you know, to the next level of their recovery?
Kevin Grise 48:26
That’s a really, really tough, hard question because everybody is different. Because I’ve noticed something in my life that people that have something they’ll live for greater than themselves. The ones that pull through are usually a loving family or a loving wife or that support group, but then people that don’t have any of that kind of stuff. They lose that will. I’m sure you’ve seen that. Yeah. And once they lose they will have that purpose, which is something that they have to come up with. Those added up die, that I’ve noticed, yeah, or thing up and they don’t prosper grow. But I’ve noticed people that have got really strong families seem to pull through a lot better or that faith in God or whatever it is that belief. I mean, that spiritual element, and everybody’s different. And as a counselor or a hypnotist, you got to be aware enough of that, try to help that person find that. And you can’t do it for I’m sorry, I can’t I’m not good enough to do that. I can’t make people do something that you don’t want to do.
Bill 49:40
Yeah, so if they did have a purpose, though, but they didn’t know how to fulfill it, or they didn’t know how to go about it. Can we support somebody who is feeling like at the moment their body isn’t helping them get to their purpose or get to their, you know, better place? You know, how do we support them then like Do we give people the opportunity to remain patient and calm? And?
Kevin Grise 50:06
Well, that’s where you have to go back to what is his Take your time. Learn to breathe, visualize what you want to picture, imagine, act as if this, this, and this, you have to fill in the blanks. And then like I said, Don’t expect this to happen in the next five seconds. It’s going to happen as quickly as your subconscious mind and your body is ready.
Kevin Grise 50:33
And it’s just a lot of it’s really strange. I don’t work on scripts. Yeah, and how-to manuals or anything else. Because I kind of here’s the situation. Here’s what I feel. This is what I see what’s happening. If this isn’t working, then I can switch over to something else. And I think that’s what being a stage hypnotist really helped me because when you’re up on stage, you don’t have any scripts.
Kevin Grise 51:04
There isn’t a rehearsal and 100% live hundred percent improv. And if that doesn’t work, you had to go to that. So you learn how to tap dance really, really well. And that’s helped me with working with a lot of different people on a lot of different issues.
Bill 51:19
If something doesn’t work, try something else, right?
Kevin Grise 51:22
I’m switching and moving it because everybody’s different. Yeah. See a lot of people they go in, okay, here’s my script for quitting smoking. And then they wonder why their success ratio was so poor. I don’t run a script. Each person that you meet is a unique shooting star. You have to find out what they want, what they think, what they believe, and what they want, and then tie it into how are you going to take responsibility to achieve the goal of getting what you want. Because at the end day, I’m not going to do it for you. Yeah, I’ll show you how to do it yourself.
Bill 51:58
Nice. That’s much better. very empowering. Kevin. It’s been a really interesting chat. It’s been a fascinating understanding of what it is that you do and how people can help themselves recover. Tell me if somebody wanted to find out a little bit more about you, where would they go?
Kevin Grise 52:15
Well just go to Kevin Crusade, the hypnotist and I splattered all over our Australian stage hypnotist because that’s what I’m focused on at the moment. I am folk because I do a lot of traveling and I’m on the road a lot. But a lot of people see the show Well, they want to learn how to do it for quitting smoking, losing weight, managing stress, or baba baba, I can show you the path because I teach people how to become their own hypnotist. That’s my goal in life is to teach everybody how to watch what you think is what you say what you are and what you think is what you’re going to get. So be careful of what you do. Anyway, it’s been great talking to Bill and hey, we’re only a mile apart. Why don’t we walk down to the Northland shopping center and catch up for lunch? All right,
Bill 53:04
absolutely. Well, I couldn’t believe it when you told me earlier a kilometer away from me. I didn’t know we should have asked, we should have got together and done this in person. But that’s alright. We’ll do it next time. I will definitely catch up with you for lunch at Northland shopping center. I really appreciate your time. It was great to meet you a little while ago and I felt like your connecting made a big difference to me, I love that you connected with me after the presentation that I did. And not because I was going to get something out of it or etc.
Bill 53:40
But I, I think it’s really important. If you ask somebody who’s standing in an audience, listening to somebody speak and that person resonates with you or you enjoy what it is that they heard, get in touch, get to know more about what it is that that person does, and understand what it is that they can do for you. Not necessarily from the point of view of exchanging or buying something from them. Just tell them, hey, that was a great thing because we love the feedback, right? If you’re somebody who’s presenting, we love the feedback.
Bill 54:10
And that brings me to my next point. If you’re watching this program, you’ve seen the episode and you enjoy the interview. Get in touch with us. Let Kevin know he did a great job or you enjoyed what he said same with me. Let me know because it makes a big difference. Give us a thumbs up on the YouTube link. You know, where people can respond, type in a comment, whatever it is, we’d love to hear from Kevin, thank you so much, and I look forward to catching up with you soon. This episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast is brought to you by recoveryafterstroke.com
Bill 54:46
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Bill 55:14
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Bill 55:31
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Intro 55:39
This has been a production of https://recoveryafterstroke.com/ Check out our page on Instagram and start a conversation by leaving a comment at https://www.instagram.com/recoveryafterstroke/. Subscribe to the show on iTunes and check us out on Twitter. as presenters and special guests of this podcast intend to provide accurate and helpful information to their listeners.
Intro 56:04
These podcasts did not take into consideration individual circumstances and are not intended to be a substitute for independent medical advice from a qualified health professional. You should always seek advice from a qualified health professional before acting on any of the information provided by any of the Recovery After Stroke podcasts.
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Hypnosis is a fascinating and powerful tool. If you are interested in Hypnosis for other challenges like weight loss and quitting smoking, listen to this earlier interview with Helen Mitas
