James Harrison: Mental Foraging and the Neuroscience Behind Why Hypnosis Works

Kenton Knepper: Spoon Bending, Hermetic Philosophy, and Why Consciousness is the Magic That Matters

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Kenton Knepper — master mentalist, suggestionist, magician, mystic, and pianist — for one of the most wide-ranging, reality-bending conversations the show has ever had. Kenton joins from Phoenix, Arizona, where he has been quietly bending spoons, affecting weather, putting podcast hosts into trance mid-sentence, and channeling original piano music at a rate of three to four compositions a week — sometimes more — for most of his adult life. He has been doing paid magic performances since he was 8 years old. Professionals in his field refer to what he does as "Kentonism" — a strange blend of magic, mentalism, suggestion, psychology, and hypnosis that doesn't fit cleanly into any single category, which is exactly how Kenton likes it. His teaching website, WonderWizards.com, is primarily for magicians and mentalists, but the conversation makes clear that what he's really teaching is the nature of consciousness itself. Ryan came into this conversation having just drawn the Magician card from his tarot deck before hitting record. Kenton walked in carrying Hermetic philosophy, a spoon metaphor that reframed the entire culture war in about four minutes, a story about a skeptical partner and a perfectly timed Journey song, and a conversation he'd had with Claude about the future of humanity and AI that ended with the suggestion to buy less stuff from Amazon. The conversation covers: the moment as a teenager when Kenton stepped outside and realized it was all a movie — and turned to look, and it was gone. How Ormond McGill, the father of stage hypnotism, used to drop people coming off trains with a single word. Why the High Priestess in tarot is the same figure as the Virgin Mary in Catholic stained glass — and what that tells you about how symbols enter consciousness whether we understand them or not. Why Aleister Crowley's ego got in the way of his tarot deck. The BOTA deck, which you have to color by hand, because that's how the symbols go in properly. How Kenton relates every planet in astrology to specific piano keys and composes accordingly. Why he stopped doing singing bowls when everyone and their uncle got certified as a gong master in a weekend. And why the conscious mind is not the destination — it's the magnifying glass. He also puts someone into an altered state on a podcast by accident, refuses to let the host edit it out, and calls it the best proof he could offer for why this work matters. Three quotes from Kenton worth writing down: "Magic was always more like me being honest. It was a representation of things I'd actually experienced in life." "How do you make hot water cooler? You add cool water. You don't try to take away the hot water. That's how you work with polarity — you hold the other end, and slowly things shift." "The more I can get my personality out of the way to allow things to work, the better off I am. I'm just trying to keep up." Connect with Kenton Knepper: Magic, mentalism & intensives: wonderwizards.com  Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Jacquelyn Haley: Shamanism, Sister Miracles, and the Day the Tumor Disappeared

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Jacquelyn Haley — hypnotherapist, counsellor, shamanic practitioner, reflexologist, nutritional diploma holder, and one of the most genuinely alive people to ever sit across from a camera in South Wales — for a conversation that starts with a tarot card prediction and never really slows down from there. Jacquelyn's origin story is one of the most compelling in the field. She was a resort team leader traveling the world for a major tour company — not remotely interested in spirituality, loudly skeptical of anything she couldn't explain — when her sister was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2007. A brochure arrived through her door for a hypnotherapy school that specialized in cancer care. She was pregnant with her first child. She rang them up anyway, promised she'd be there by December, showed up, and fell completely in love from the very first session. What followed was a nine-year journey alongside her sister's cancer — multiple diagnoses, two major surgeries in six weeks, lung involvement, and then something her oncologist couldn't explain. Her cancer simply stopped following its predicted pattern. In 2016, she had her last bout. In February 2023, the NHS told her treatment was over — not because they'd given up, but because there was nothing left to treat. She now runs a Reiki practice and has a gift for mediumship that Jacquelyn says the trauma helped open. The conversation goes everywhere it wants to go. Jacquelyn walks Ryan through the Incan medicine wheel — snake energy, jaguar, hummingbird, eagle — and how each maps onto the stages of healing. She describes seeing things around her clients during sessions and thinking she was losing her mind, until she stopped fighting it. She talks about a client with a brain tumor, non-epileptic seizures four to five times a day, who came in dragging his leg and left three sessions later walking normally — and then sent a WhatsApp photo of a letter saying the remaining portion of the tumor had disappeared. She doesn't claim credit for any of it. She just says: who knows. She also talks about building a thriving practice without ever running an ad, buying a derelict old bus garage that her friends thought she was insane to want, and defining her business goal not as a revenue target but as being at every single school concert her children ever had. She made it to all of them. The sun came through the closed curtains and flooded the room for the entire recording. Her dogs wrestled on the couch. Ryan drew the Six of Cups before they started. It felt like it was supposed to happen. Three quotes from Jacquelyn worth writing down: "When you can remove all the noise — guess what happens? You connect." "If an emotion turns up in your body, it's saying: hey, I need your attention. You wouldn't leave a friend knocking at the door. So why do we do it to ourselves?" "I never doubted for one minute that it wouldn't work. Not one minute. This is what I was going to do, and this is where I'm going with it." Connect with Jacquelyn Haley: Instagram: @jacquelynhaleyhypnotherapy Facebook: facebook.com/jacquelyn.haley Jacquelyn is based in Swansea, South Wales, working one-to-one with clients in a city centre office. She is moving into a new space with a dedicated training room and will be launching group training and stage hypnosis shows in Wales later this year — collaborating with a singing client for combined music and hypnosis events. She is also training as a stage hypnotist with Dylan Lovejoy and in advanced techniques with Justin Tranz — reach out through her social channels for updates. Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Daniel Browne: The Hypnotic Rainbow, LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy, and Why Allies Need to Step Up Now

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Daniel Browne — hypnotherapist, counsellor, coach, author, trainer, and the man behind The Mind Bender Method — joining from Royal Leamington Spa in the UK. Daniel is internationally recognized as the leading authority on LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy in the hypnosis world, has trained thousands of practitioners across the globe, and is heading to HypnoThoughts Live with not one but two presentations: a full-day pre-conference workshop on the Mind Bender Method, and a main stage talk called The Hypnotic Rainbow: Tailoring Trance to Every Identity. Daniel came into hypnosis the same way a lot of people do — sideways, skeptically, and through a backdoor. His background was mental health care, supporting people with schizophrenia transitioning back into the community. He trained as a counsellor and psychotherapist, stumbled into a hypnosis qualification almost by accident, and was hooked from the very first class. Seventeen years later, roughly 60-70% of his clients are trans, and anxiety has replaced smoking cessation as the number one thing people come to see him about. The conversation goes deep and stays honest. Daniel talks about what identity crisis actually looks like — not just for LGBTQ+ people navigating gender and orientation, but for anyone who has lost the role that defined them: the mother whose kids just left home, the executive who got laid off, the person coming out of a decades-long marriage asking who am I now? The Mind Bender Method's three core outcomes — confidence, resilience, and clarity — turn out to be universal, even if the protocol was built specifically for queer communities. Daniel also opens up about his own internal work: a period where he was so uncomfortable around straight white men that he stopped going to networking events entirely. He talks through what self-awareness actually looks like in practice, why most people have buried prejudices they don't know they're carrying, and why the answer isn't shame — it's curiosity and doing the work. Ryan shares his own audit, wondering whether he might have biases he can't yet see. Neither of them pretends to have it fully figured out. And Daniel ends with a direct call to action: LGBTQ+ communities are in crisis right now — in the US, in the UK, globally — and the people who can help most are the straight, cis practitioners who are willing to get educated, stay open, and show up as vocal, visible allies. You don't have to be queer to do this work. You just have to be willing to learn. Three quotes from Daniel worth writing down: "You don't have to be part of this community to work with our communities. You just need to be open-minded, willing to listen, willing to learn, and accepting." "We know what it feels like to be on the outside — and I think that's exactly why LGBTQ+ communities tend to be so welcoming to everyone who's a bit different." "Now is the time to step up and be a visible ally and a vocal ally, and just realize how much good work you can do with your skills for this community." Connect with Daniel Browne: daniel-browne.co.uk  Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Simon Bartholome: Consciousness, Non-Duality, and the Illusion You Never Really Lost

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Simon Bartholome — a quietly profound German thinker, writer, and longtime student of non-dual spirituality who Ryan first discovered through his Facebook page, where nearly every post distills the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Eckhart Tolle, Rupert Spira, Osho, and others into something clean, universal, and free from religious baggage. Simon lives in Hirschbeck, Germany, surrounded by soccer posters, and is about as regular a guy as someone who casually talks about the nature of consciousness for an hour can be. The conversation moves from Bruce Lee and Triceratops boxing matches to Sanskrit, Charlie Brown and Lucy, Michael Jackson, near-death experiences, the difference between Ramana Maharshi and Neem Karoli Baba, why Christian theology accidentally puts God on a pedestal instead of pointing you inward, and why Simon thinks the word consciousness is more spiritually useful than God — because it carries no conceptual baggage and nobody puts up their shield when they hear it. Simon's central thread is disarmingly simple: you are not the thoughts, not the emotions, not the body — those are all objects appearing in awareness. What you actually are is the awareness itself. And that awareness, your true nature, has never been afraid, has never been separate, and has never really been lost. The path home is just uncovering what was always there — removing the conditioning, not acquiring anything new. Ryan shares his near-death experience. Simon talks about Ramana Maharshi surviving cancer surgery without anesthesia. They explore why 95-99% of our fears are about things that never actually happen, why joy and love aren't the opposite of fear but rather what remains when fear is seen through, and what it means that even hate — properly understood — is an expression of love. Then Ryan thinks he forgot to hit record. Simon laughs. Everything is fine. They roll with it. This one is for the quietly curious — people who sense there's something underneath all the noise but haven't found words for it yet. Simon is excellent at finding the words. Three quotes from Simon worth writing down: "Fear is just a thought. It is impossible to be afraid without thoughts. So your deeper, true self is always inherently free from fear." "95 to 99% of our fears refer to something that is not really there. In most cases, that which we are afraid of never really happens." "You are nothing special. You are just the infinity — that which is." Connect with Simon Bartholome: Facebook: facebook.com/simon.bartholome  Simon posts daily in English and German — quotes, reflections, and excerpts from spiritual teachers across traditions Books: Currently in German only, available on Amazon.de — two more in progress (one on Bruce Lee, one on animals). English translations are being considered for the future. Search "Simon Bartholome" on Amazon.de to find his current titles. Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Melissa Boher Jacobson: Neurodiversity, Unshakable Self-Esteem, and the WIN Method

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Melissa Boher Jacobson — hypnotherapist, coach, Bunny Talk certified trainer, and four-time presenter at HypnoThoughts Live — for a warm, practical, and genuinely useful conversation about what it takes to help people get out of their own way. Melissa joins from Mexico, where she now lives, and where she says the culture of open creativity and celebration is one of the reasons she stayed. Melissa spent over 25 years coaching performing artists before stumbling into hypnosis — skeptically, she'll tell you — and having a moment with a balloon and a bucket that changed everything. She became a devotee almost immediately. Since starting her practice in 2018, she's built a specialty working with families, kids, teens, and neurodiverse clients, and she's quick to reframe the whole conversation: ADHD and autism aren't deficits. They're different brains with different gifts — and often, extraordinary ones. In this conversation, Melissa and Ryan dig into why 85% of humans struggle with self-esteem, why narcissism is actually rooted in low self-worth, why neurodivergent people are disproportionately drawn to the arts and entrepreneurship (oasis of competence, she calls it), and why fear isn't a useful tool for anyone running a business or a life. The antidote, she argues, isn't confidence — it's trust. Specifically, self-trust. And she has a whole ladder for that. She shares two client stories that stop you in your tracks: a young man who was never expected to live independently and is now applying for scholarships and heading to college, and a 7th grader with crippling social anxiety and a mathematical genius-level mind who eventually flew to South Korea at 14 to speak at an aerospace conference — and who just messaged Melissa recently to say she's finally enjoying singing. Then, as a closing gift, Melissa walks Ryan through the WIN method live on air — What's Important Now — and dissolves his overwhelm in about four minutes flat. This one is practical, warm, and quietly profound. Come with your to-do list. Three quotes from Melissa worth writing down: "Failure is definitely an option as an entrepreneur. Lots of it. But here's what is not an option — and that is fear." "85% of humans have low self-esteem. And pretty much every single client I work with has some level of I'm not enough, or I'm not worthy." "We're born with self-esteem. It's a human right to feel good about yourself. So let's restore it." Connect with Melissa Boher Jacobson: Website: melissaboherjacobson.com Skool community (Self-Hypnosis for Success): skool.com/exceptional-you-8143 Facebook group: Change Work for Therapists and Coaches Melissa presents at HypnoThoughts Live in July — her talk is titled The Intersection of ADHD, Hypnotherapy, and Executive Function Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]