Holly Stokes: The Miracle Code, Placebo Surgery, and What Else Is Possible

Dr. Michael Harris: The Lost Secrets of NLP, Forbidden Hypnosis, and How He Reversed Diabetes in Six Months

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Dr. Michael Harris — Doctor of Clinical Hypnotherapy, NLP practitioner, author of five books (and counting), trainer, and the man behind drmichaelharris.com — for a conversation that starts in a Fort Worth construction company in the pre-internet era and ends with Ryan signing up for the Nonverbals course and both of them agreeing to a part two. Dr. Harris trained with Robert Dilts, Tim and Kris Hallbom, Suzi Smith, Nick LeForce, and Steven Gilligan, worked alongside Steve Andreas on a shared client, has stories about Dave Dobson that nobody else has, and spent years working with USA Gymnastics Junior competitors before semi-retiring, meeting his wife during COVID lockdown, and deciding to build what he calls a new wild bunch. His origin story runs through a construction company where he noticed a vast communication gap between the C-suite and the rank and file, found an ad in the back of the Green Sheet for a communication class, called his company owner to get reimbursed for a weekend course, and came out the other side feeling like someone had pulled the curtain back on language. He never stopped pulling. Personal training company, 17 lead singers, sold it, played golf for a year, got bored, heard about a hypnotist named Dr. Mike who made a fortune doing stop smoking and nothing else out of a wrapped minivan, ended up writing a check to a small university in Huntington Beach to do their master's and PhD program, sat in a lawn chair in a bare apartment with a train 150 feet from his front door at 4am making a threshold decision to finish his dissertation on Sleepnosis or go get a job. He finished it. Here we are. The conversation goes deep in every direction. He walks through his approach to well-formed outcomes, with a fourth question that most NLP trainers skip: does this align with your core values? Before the old NLP version asked what's preventing you from having this now, which collapses all the energy you just built. He explains the six representational sequences that determine how someone actually succeeds, not just VAK but the specific order that completes the loop, using the example of a kid who didn't sit down to play chess but stalked the board. He covers the ecology check, the double-bind presuppositions Bandler and Grinder borrowed but never fully taught, how every presenting problem maps to a hypnotic phenomenon the client is already running on themselves, and why Dave Dobson's concept of dehypnotizing people is still the most useful frame for all of it. He also tells the Samantha story: a gymnast competing in one out of four events when he met her, working with a coach who was slowly demolishing every girl in that gym, and the moment the following season when she changed gyms, came back in, said she had a goal but didn't want to tell him what it was, and he ran the whole well-formed outcome content-free. Then there is the diabetes story, which Ryan asks to keep going even though they're running over time. Blood sugar at 441, A1C at 13.2, a doctor on the phone at 7am asking why he wasn't in the hospital. Six months of daily self-hypnosis, talking to his liver, talking to his pancreas, and most importantly clearing every trace of bitterness. Metaphorically, he points out, Type 2 diabetes is the body's inability to accept sweetness. He reversed it. His endocrinologist is perplexed. His next goal is his eyesight. They close with automatic writing, idiomotor signals, and a plan for part two. Three quotes from Dr. Harris worth writing down: "The primary focus of my self-hypnosis was eliminating every trace of bitterness in my life. Metaphorically, Type 2 diabetes is your inability to accept sweetness. What is the opposite of sweetness? Bitterness. So I worked on that." "Everybody is already in trance. The only question is whether it's the trance you want to be in. Dave Dobson called our job dehypnotizing people." "I want to create a new wild bunch. Train people up and empower them to fly higher than I ever dreamed." Connect with Dr. Michael Harris: Website: drmichaelharris.com Free 30-minute consultation: email through his website Free Mastermind: email to join the list, get access to full recordings and club pricing ($300 per course vs. standard rates) Free book: Hidden Agenda (teaches how presuppositions work in media and news) — ask for the link when you join Books on Amazon: Forbidden Hypnosis (Volumes 1 and 2), Ericksonian Alchemy, The Lost Secrets of NLP, and companion presupposition books for attorneys and analysts — search Dr. Michael Harris Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Holly Stokes: The Miracle Code, Placebo Surgery, and What Else Is Possible

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Holly Stokes — international bestselling author, Master NLP Coach Trainer, National Guild Hypnosis Trainer, speaker, and the Brain Trainer herself — for a conversation that moves from autoimmune disease to placebo surgery to the Wright Brothers to Ryan laughing while his dentist drills out a tooth, and somehow all of it connects. Holly co-owns the Life Harmony Wellness Center and Training Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, has worked with thousands of clients over 20 years rewiring the brain out of old habits, fears, stress, and self-sabotage, and has been quoted in Shape Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and Active Times. She is presenting at HypnoThoughts Live on Intuitive Hypnosis Mastery. Her origin story is dramatic in the best way. She was a professional whitewater rafting guide and wilderness backpacker for a decade — her actual job was camping — when she started noticing unexplained bruising and eventually received a diagnosis of an incurable autoimmune condition. The symptoms included an allergy to sunlight. For an outdoor girl who lived in sunshine, the diagnosis was devastating. Western Medicine's answer was: suppress your immune system and hope for better drugs. Holly's answer, pieced together over years of applying hypnosis, NLP, herbalism, and systems thinking to herself, was different. She is now medication-free, symptom-free, and back in the sun. Her book, The Miracle Code, is her practical account of how she got there. The conversation builds a coherent argument from the ground up. Stress is not just a feeling — it's a biochemical event that floods the body with hormones that affect everything from pain response to immune function to sleep. Eighty percent of the stress most people experience comes from their own thinking, not from their circumstances. Trauma encodes not just the event but the meaning the mind assigns to it, and it's the meaning that keeps the stress response running long after the original event is over. Those meanings become identity-level beliefs — the I'm-nots, as Holly calls them — and those are the stickiest ones to shift because the unconscious mind argues for them the way it argues for anything it has claimed as self. Then she gets into placebo surgery. A knee surgeon wanted to know which part of his procedure actually drove recovery, so he set up three groups: one group got the full procedure, one got part of it, and one got a sham surgery with an incision but no physical intervention. Followed up at two and five years, all three groups healed equally well. Holly's read on it: the doctor may not be the agent of healing so much as the permission structure for it. The body already knows how to heal a cut without a band-aid. The question is what else it's capable of when given the right conditions. Ryan's dentist visit the day before the recording becomes a perfect live example. He went in expecting dread, shifted his mind deliberately, laughed through the drilling, and watched the bill drop from $1,100 to $500 to zero in three conversations. Holly just nods. That's the whole thesis. She also walks through her change structure formula — the iceberg model of conscious versus unconscious mind, how to identify the brain tangles underneath any presenting symptom, and why Intuitive Hypnosis Mastery means not needing a specific script for every issue because the deeper structure of change is always the same. She closes with a centering technique she does with every anxiety client: tapping gently on the chest, and saying out loud, even though I feel this stress, I come back to my center now. Past tense version too, because the unconscious holds history. Three quotes from Holly worth writing down: "If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them." "80% of the stress people experience every day actually comes from their own mind. Not their circumstances. Their thinking." "What else is possible? That's the question. Whatever you're facing — are you open to something more? Are you open to the solution?" Connect with Holly Stokes: Website: thebraintrainerllc.com Book, placebo effect documentaries, and free Keys to Self-Healing video: thebraintrainerllc.com/book Holly presents at HypnoThoughts Live on Intuitive Hypnosis Mastery — she also teaches NLP, hypnosis, and coaching skills through her training center in Salt Lake City Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Kathy Lindert: Rocks from Mother Nature, FTS, and the Art of Commanding Your Day

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Kathy Lindert — certified hypnotist, former stockbroker and mortgage banker, published author, first responder specialist, and the woman behind The Mental Edge LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina — for one of the most energetic, practical, and genuinely funny conversations the show has had. Kathy came out smiling, as her mother will confirm, and has not really stopped since. She's been quoted in Woman's World and Discover magazine, has been doing this for over 20 years, and is presenting at HypnoThoughts Live on Friday morning, which means everybody better show up sharp because she will be moving fast. Kathy did not come into hypnosis from a spiritual background or a healing calling. She came in from the Yellow Pages, a mortgage banker suit, a briefcase, and a son named Kevin who had OCD so severe he wouldn't eat and couldn't sleep. Medication was making it worse. She found a tiny article in Prevention Magazine that said hypnosis helps with fears and phobias. She was having panic attacks of her own — couldn't drive over bridges, felt her world caving in. She called a school in Edison, New Jersey the next day, told them she'd pay for it one week at a time if it didn't work, showed up with her pens and her pad, told them to pick on her as much as they wanted because she was there to learn, and went home that night with one NLP knuckle technique. She did it with Kevin. He slept through the night. The teachers started asking questions. Her panic attacks about bridges dissolved after one session, and she used the same anchor — green, the number seven, left hand — to drive over the Tappan Zee for the first time. That was her entry point. Twenty-plus years later, she has built a practice around the people who need it most and are the least likely to ask: first responders. Police officers, firefighters, EMS workers, nurses — people who absorb other people's trauma and crisis all day, get screamed at, get called names, have to hold it together in front of everyone, and statistically have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession. The tipping point for Kathy was a police officer on Highway 485, Steel Creek, who pulled off the road and killed himself. She said, there has to be a better way. She is now one of the people building it, and her HypnoThoughts presentation will teach practitioners not just the techniques but how to actually break through the blue line and get in the door. The conversation is also full of practical gold: her three rules for every client (it's about you, we're changing your language, and yes, she curses), why she gives out rocks from the Jersey Shore and Lake Wiley and why losing one means Mother Nature took care of it, why she anchors in a higher power whenever she has permission to, the knuckle technique she used on Kevin that night, why she demands a number instead of the word "good," how she did better success rates on Zoom during COVID than in person because clients could rewatch the session, and why she finishes every induction with God kissing the client on the forehead and saying I love you, I'm here, lean on me. She closes with the word that started it all: Abracadabra. Aramaic for I will create as I speak. She holds it up on her phone for the camera, lets it land, and says, be careful with what you take in, because that's what you're creating. It lands exactly as it should. Three quotes from Kathy worth writing down: "I teach them to not own that shit. I teach them to command their day." "When you constantly hear derogatory statements, it does something to the person's psyche and their confidence. And so I teach them to change their language. I can. I will. I'm worth it. I'm important." "Abracadabra is Aramaic for I will create as I speak. Be careful with what you say, or what you take in, because that's what you're creating." Connect with Kathy Lindert: Website: mentaledgellc.com Kathy is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and sees clients both in person and on Zoom, with ongoing referrals from doctors in New York and New Jersey Books: How to Quit Smoking Without Gaining Weight (currently being updated and rereleased) — search Kathy Lindert on Amazon HypnoThoughts Live: Friday morning session on working with first responders, including techniques and a full marketing breakdown for practitioners who want to break into this community Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Doug O'Brien: Sleight of Mouth, Havening, and the Horse That Knew the Way Home

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Doug O'Brien — NLP Master Trainer, certified hypnotist, Havening techniques practitioner, storytelling teacher, personal success coach, and the author of the User's Guide to Sleight of Mouth and the User's Guide to Storytelling — for one of the most wide-ranging, funny, and genuinely illuminating conversations the show has had. Doug joins from the same time zone as Ryan, which they both somehow find surprising. ACDC was originally scheduled to open. They called out last minute. Doug's entry into this world started in New York City, where he was playing rock and roll and scraping together enough money to stay in youth hostels. A friend dragged him to a Tony Robbins firewalk. He didn't want to go. He went. He found it surprisingly, genuinely interesting — and the 15-day certification course that followed brought in Richard Bandler for a day, Robert Dilts for a day, and a hypnotist named Dave Dobson, who stopped Doug in his tracks completely. Dobson became his primary mentor. Stephen Heller, who shared an office with Dobson and inherited his client list when Dobson retired to Friday Harbor, became another important voice. Doug has been studying, teaching, and practicing in this lineage ever since. The conversation covers a lot of ground and earns every minute of it. They dig into why NLP started as modeling and drifted into technique-selling, how Bandler and Grinder literally became Fritz Perls and Milton Erickson — adopting their accents, their postures, their cigarettes — before they understood what they were doing, and what it means to model someone at a level beyond their writings. Doug tells the story of Stephen Gilligan being double-inducted by Bandler and Grinder into a deep trans-identification with Erickson, then saying things to Gregory Bateson — personal, private things between two old friends — that Gilligan had no possible way of knowing. Bateson ran from the building. From there they move into hypnosis as a state of being rather than a technique, the bicameral mind and what Julian Jaynes thought was actually happening when someone goes under, why the other-than-conscious mind is purposeful rather than rational, why you can accidentally give yourself terrible suggestions while drifting off to sleep, and why prayer and manifestation work by the same mechanism. Ryan holds up the idea of trances like clothes — we're always wearing one, hypnosis just gives you the choice of which one to put on. Doug loves it. Then Doug breaks down Havening in detail: the four conditions required to encode a trauma, the neurochemical cascade that locks it in place, and how stroking the arms, face, and hands generates delta waves that open voltage-sensitive calcium channels in the lateral amygdala, dissolve the phosphate molecule holding the AMPA receptors in place, and remove them permanently. The trauma doesn't get managed. The receptor that was firing it simply disappears. Ryan points out that it looks exactly like Mr. Miyagi. Doug agrees immediately. Ryan then presents his theory that the subconscious might live in the mitochondria — which have their own DNA, inherited entirely from the maternal line, connecting every human back to a single original mother. He suggests the fascia might be how they communicate outward. Doug is quiet for a moment and says, wow. That's it. Just: wow. And then Doug closes with the Erickson horse story, which is maybe the best answer anyone has ever given to the question of how you do psychotherapy. Three quotes from Doug worth writing down: "We're in trances all the time. The question is, can you get into a productive one? Erickson used to say: discover their patterns of happiness." "The other-than-conscious mind is purposeful. Tell it to go forward, it goes forward. But you better be careful what you're telling it — because it's listening all the time, including when you're falling asleep." "I didn't know where the horse belonged. But I knew the horse knew. All I needed to do was keep its attention on the road." Connect with Doug O'Brien: Essential coaching skills membership: essentialcoachingskills.com Books: User's Guide to Sleight of Mouth, User's Guide to Storytelling — search Doug O'Brien on Amazon Doug teaches Sleight of Mouth, Havening, and personal success coaching — check his site for current training dates and membership options Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Janet Rotella: Faith, Energy Work, and What a Dog Named Little Big Daddy Knows About Healing

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Janet Rotella, certified professional hypnotist, Reiki practitioner, sound healer, meditation teacher, and the founder of Calm and Brite Holistic Wellness Services in Florida, for one of the most spiritually grounded and quietly emotional conversations the show has produced. Janet is presenting at HypnoThoughts Live for the second year in a row, this time for a full hour on hypnosis and energy work with autistic, special needs, neurodivergent, and non-to-low verbal communities. Little Big Daddy, her therapy dog and former service dog to her late sister, makes a brief but memorable cameo. Janet came to this work through a path that keeps proving her own point about coping skills: a background in marketing and communications, a mobile day spa that was the first business shut down during COVID, a COVID grant she used to go back to school for hypnotherapy, and a lifetime of watching her only sister, Andrea, navigate the world as a low-verbal special needs person who was given exactly two options at birth in 1968 or 1969 — an institution, or home with no support. Her parents took her home and did everything with her. Andrea learned to ride a bike, went to speech therapy for years, eventually developed a vocabulary that included a respectable collection of curse words, and became Janet's reason for every certification she ever earned. Janet brought her through nine months of terminal cancer using hypnosis, going all the way into OR rooms, inducing her at the edge of PET scan machines, and sitting with her every night to say a prayer they made up together. When Andrea passed at 55, Janet changed the last line of the prayer. She still says it. The conversation goes deep and moves around a lot. They talk about why the non-verbal community often responds to hypnosis better than anyone else — because they have no filters, no skepticism, no performance anxiety, just a lifetime of signals stuck inside them with nowhere to go. Janet's whole philosophy around the special needs community reframes autism and nonverbal behavior not as a cognitive absence but as a wiring short: everything is registering, nothing can get out. Her job is to give them a different way through. They get into the question Janet says comes up constantly: how does a devout Christian who serves at her Bible-based church every Sunday also run a Reiki and energy work center? Her answer is thorough, personal, and lands pretty simply. Nothing about holistic healing is new. Oils, laying on hands, healing through prayer, walking up to a bush and pulling off a berry to make a salve: that's biblical. She calls Reiki prayer on steroids and leaves it there. She also talks about doing explicitly Christian-based inductions for clients who want them, using scripture as suggestion, and finding that the framework of abundance and limiting belief maps almost perfectly onto what she was already reading in Jeremiah. There is also a conversation about God, the Holy Spirit, the soul, the subconscious, a corporate org chart, a Bentley with flat tires, a hard drive that needs defragging, and Dan Marino finally getting his Super Bowl ring in heaven. And then Little Big Daddy wanders onto camera, does his paws up, gives a big yawn, and the whole thing feels exactly like what Janet's center is actually trying to be: a place where you can just show up as you are, even if all you can do is make it to the parking lot. Three quotes from Janet worth writing down: "We have something for everyone, because everyone has something. And there is always help, and there is always hope." "I wanted her healed. I just didn't get her healed in the way I was expecting. But I got her healed." "If the ocean can calm itself down, so can you. Let's work on it together." Connect with Janet Rotella: Website: calmandbrite.com Janet is based in Florida and presents at HypnoThoughts Live in July — Little Big Daddy will be there too Calm and Brite also rents space to other practitioners and hosts group classes including Janet's signature Hypnoki sessions, a fusion of hypnosis, Reiki, sound healing, and meditation Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]