James Tsakalos: NLP as a Full-Contact Sport, the Art of Modeling, and Why Everyone Is Just Making It Up

James Tsakalos: NLP as a Full-Contact Sport, the Art of Modeling, and Why Everyone Is Just Making It Up

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan goes down the rabbit hole straight through the Earth's core and comes out in Melbourne, Australia — where he finds James Tsakalos, one of the most respected and quietly influential figures in the NLP world, running a live Master Practitioner training in the room right behind him, whiteboards covered, Italian pasta lessons happening between sessions. James has been teaching NLP for over 30 years, and the reason people in the field — Lance Baker, Melissa Tears, James Tripp, Jonathan Alfelt, and others — keep saying his name with a particular kind of reverence is simple: he teaches NLP the way it was originally meant to be taught. Long, immersive, embodied, in-person. Not a 7-day certification. Not a Udemy click-through. The real thing. He describes it as a full-contact sport, and he means it literally — most of what NLP is actually about lives in the body and in unconscious competence, not in techniques and language patterns you can read from a slide. The conversation goes deep on what NLP actually is at its core — not a bag of tricks, but a process of reverse-engineering extraordinary human performance that most people never encounter. James draws a sharp distinction between the modeling process itself and the techniques that come out of that process, and explains why the field drifted toward selling the outputs rather than teaching the method. He introduces apprehension vs. comprehension — the difference between knowing something through your senses and nervous system versus knowing something through logic and explanation — and makes the case that most of the important things we learn in life, from language as children to reading a room as adults, we learn through apprehension. Trying to get there through comprehension is the thing that blocks it. They also cover: why kids are the best models for the state you need to do real modeling work, why the comparison and judgment that emerges around age 6 or 7 might be the original sin of learning, how Gregory Bateson introduced Bandler and Grinder to Milton Erickson, what metaphors like the "brain as computer" silently do to how we think about change, pattern detection vs. pattern understanding, language evolution, the funk, the Tao, and why if a trainer is being presented as a celebrity with the power to change your life you should run in the opposite direction. And then — what James did or said in the two minutes he stepped off camera while Ryan accidentally stopped recording — remains the secret to having everything you want in life. We'll never know. Three quotes from James worth writing down: "NLP is an attitude of wanton curiosity, and a methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques. The techniques are not NLP — they're what NLP left behind." "Your ability to understand something has nothing to do with your ability to perceive its existence. Pattern detection and understanding are completely different things. And one of them will prevent the other." "Everyone is just making it up as they go along. Everyone. The most successful people you've ever met — they're all just winging it. Be okay with that." Connect with James Tsakalos: Website: jamestsakalos.com  Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Brandi EMME: Energetic Medicine, Metaphysical Experiences, and the Art of Neutral

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Brandi EMME — certified clinical hypnotherapist, shamanic practitioner, astrologer, former fitness instructor, cuddle therapist, and the force behind EMME Therapy Lounge — for one of the most wide-open, spiritually electric, and quietly profound conversations the show has produced. Brandi joins from wherever her life has landed her, carrying two decades of vegan living, a Tibetan shaman master who changed everything, and a last name she invented — which turned out to mean exactly what it needed to mean. Before they even hit record, she pulled up Ryan's natal chart. Libra sun, Gemini moon, Sagittarius rising. She had notes. Brandi came into hypnosis through a Tibetan shamanic lineage — not a weekend certification, but years of deep practice with a master who refused to give her the one thing she showed up wanting: amnesia. She arrived with money in hand, ready to erase a childhood that included watching her father shoot her in the face and murder her mother. The shaman said no. Instead, he put her in neutral — and spent the next two years watching her fight it. When she finally stopped fighting, something shifted. The anger valve disconnected. She noticed it the day a stranger rode off on her bicycle and she just... let him go. The session that changed her relationship with hypnosis entirely came during a past life regression in school — when she found herself in a beautiful, lonely castle in a white satin slip gown, and then watched her mother roll in, in the same dress, in a glass casket. And heard, clearly, that she was doing exactly what her mother had done — staying loyal to a man who would destroy her. She left her ex-husband shortly after. She credits that regression with saving her life. From there the conversation goes everywhere it wants to: why Black and Hispanic communities are underrepresented in hypnosis (it's not mistrust of hypnosis specifically — it's mistrust of the category, rooted in religious culture and historical good reason), how Brandi accidentally discovered she was conducting body attunements during cuddle therapy sessions without knowing it, a woman who came for fertility work over Zoom and two days later had baby footprints mysteriously appear on the back of her car window — and three months after that, a baby. A smoking cessation session that turned into a full shamanic extraction. And why Brandi doesn't use scripts, doesn't guarantee specific outcomes, but does guarantee transformation. She also breaks down what EMME stands for — Energetic Medicine Metaphysical Experiences — which she didn't consciously know when she chose the name. It came to her a year later, as a joke, in a conversation over drinks. It clicked immediately. That's pretty much how her whole life works. Three quotes from Brandi worth writing down: "Whatever I'm doing to you, I'm doing to me too. Energy does not discriminate. We're just channels." "I went to look for my anger, and it wasn't there. I said, come on — where'd you go? And it just... wasn't there anymore." "You will never leave the same way that you came in. No one does. And you never will." Connect with Brandi EMME: EMME Therapy Lounge Linktree: linktr.ee/EMMETherapyLounge  Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

Shawna Griffin: Breaking the Cycle of Molest, Rewiring the Brain, and the Calling You Can't Outrun

Note: This episode contains open, honest conversation about childhood sexual abuse. It is handled with care and courage by both Ryan and Shawna — but please be mindful of your own readiness before listening. In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan sits down with Shawna Griffin — hypnotherapist, manifestor, former real estate powerhouse, world traveler, and the woman behind both Trance-formed Hypnosis and The Butterfly Theory Podcast — for one of the most raw, courageous, and unexpectedly hopeful conversations the show has ever had. Shawna didn't plan to become a hypnotist. She was in real estate, thriving by most measures, when she got so sick she couldn't get out of bed. Doctors found nothing. But the downloads kept coming — first a pull toward talking about childhood sexual abuse, a subject she'd never discussed publicly, then the word hypnosis, arriving three or four times in the span of a week until she finally booked a last-minute flight to a cram course and never looked back. She describes the whole arc like Jonah and the whale: she kept saying no, and the universe kept saying actually, yes. She didn't get well until she said she was all in. Within a few days of surrendering to it, she was back on her feet. The mission she landed on is both specific and profound: breaking the cycle of molest by working with at-risk individuals — not primarily the survivors, but the people at risk of perpetrating. Her working theory, still forming, is that most people who commit these acts had a neurological wiring event in childhood — their own abuse, early exposure, a moment of shame that froze them in time — and that hypnosis can reach the root cause in a way nothing else can. She's considering building a non-profit around it so that no one who genuinely wants help can be turned away for financial reasons. Ryan meets her there completely — sharing his own experience of being abused as a child, dragged into a basement, screaming for help while people walked by. He talks about eventually realizing that the cycle of self-abuse — holding onto the identity of a discarded tissue — was something he was perpetuating on himself long after the original perpetrator was gone. And that forgiving himself for that was the door to forgiving the man who hurt him, a man who later murdered his wife and went to prison. The conversation moves through parts work, intuition vs. fear, manifestation without force, the Bhagavad Gita, Pentecostal downloads, the movie The Drama, cholesterol, Popeyes, and why the best practitioners in any field show up not because they need clients but because they're simply here to help. It is heavy in places and strangely light in others. That balance is the whole point. Three quotes from Shawna worth writing down: "If you're hearing two different things — should I, should I not — one of them is your intuition. And the other one is probably fear." "I believe that most people who commit these acts had a wiring in their brain at childhood. And if we can get to the root cause of that and shift it — they don't do that anymore." "I didn't get well until I said I was all in. And within a few days, I was feeling better." Connect with Shawna Griffin: Email: tranceformedhypnosis@gmail.com [tranceformedhypnosis@gmail.com] Podcast: The Butterfly Theory Podcast — search YouTube and major platforms Shawna's podcast is brand new and just launching — now is a great time to find it early and follow along as the mission unfolds Connect with Ryan DeJonghe / TranceWell: Website: trancewell.help Email: ryan@trancewell.help [ryan@trancewell.help]

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]