Healing, Hypnosis, & Finding Purpose with Norman Plotkin & Manon on The Healers Café

Norman Plotkin  06:28

Along the way, I I studied under a psychologist who’s written five books on tarot and psychology, and so I used the tarot cards therapeutically. He wrote his he wrote his doctoral thesis on therapy therapeutic use of tarot cards. I study shamanism, but my day to day was, and my my goal was. It’s not easy to start a hypnotherapy practice. So in the beginning, I took I took a contract position with one of my former clients, and I covered 16 Western states. So when I wasn’t flying to one of the capitals in the Western United States, I was doing hypnotherapy out of my office, and I reached a point where I I was able to leave that once and for all. And my goal was just to color up my calendar. If I could have a colorful calendar. It meant I was busy and I was helping people, and the the money would flow in terms of you know it’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough to earn a living. And along the way, you know, you have to learn. It’s not I’m I’m 62 years old. You know, it’s not the old way. You know, I remember when I worked in the legislature when PCs were distributed in in the mid ’90s, and I didn’t. I had a little Mac Seven in college. You had seven seven megabytes of RAM, 70 megabyte hard drive. You know, and so suddenly had these powerful things. I tried, you know, Facebook ads and different things, and and finally settled on Google ads, which is, and because those people are searching. But along the way, I’ve learned so much and and grown in my ability. The thing that drives me is that I I feel like I’ve found my purpose. It feels really good when people leave better than they came.

Manon Bolliger  08:26

Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s quite a. You exposed yourself to a lot of moments in life that can really have impacts. That’s how I see it. You know, it’s like yeah,

Norman Plotkin  08:40

yeah. I’ve had you know kind of four distinct lives. You know, the early years in the Marine Corps, and you know, then the the blue collar, heavy blue collar work, and then the legislature, and then and and now being in service. Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention, was really a seminal work for me. You know, if you put yourself into the service of others, you really don’t have to worry. The rest will come. And money is energy, and it’s an energetic exchange. He he he borrowed from a biblical reference. He would he talked about the raccoon that that goes along the riverbank, and doesn’t worry about where lunch is going to come from. The universe provides, right? And you just be a really thoughtful and intentional raccoon, and and the universe will will. And in the Bible, it’s the industrial ant. But anyway, it’s the same thing that. And that that led me to color up your calendar, you know. And I’ve got appointments throughout the day, and that was the true measure of success, because that gave me the access to meet people where they are and to help them solve their problems.

Manon Bolliger  09:51

Yeah, well, it’s interesting. I mean, there’s so many courses on marketing. You know, when you’re in practice, and you know, it’s like huge. Goals and you know visions, which I’m not saying they’re wrong. They’re wrong if you feel them and you can live into them. You’re you’re bringing them into the present. But I like the the very tactical, you know, vision of the calendar full, right, and colorful. It really is the present, you know.

Norman Plotkin  10:23

Right. The yellow ones were the consultations, and the green ones were the sessions, and you know, red was a business meeting, and you know, so it’s it’s all about your intention, and if you set the intention and and and live it, it tends to work out.

Manon Bolliger  10:43

So I have a question for you. Let me see how I can pose this one. So obviously, with the thyroid cancer and reoccurrence, you light was shed on the medical system, and it’s let’s call it its limitations. To be polite, I have a lot of words I could use, but we’ll try that one for now. And obviously, you you have interest in hypnotherapy, and we are really facing a, I would say like a mass hypnosis that it’s changing. I mean, whatever is happening, even if you know we’re watching a movie to wake people up, and all of these things could be true. I’m not you know denying any of it, but it’s it feels excessively slow. I realize that the job is excessively big that needs to be achieved, but from a hypnotherapy point of view, have you thought like what is it that keeps people so so hypnotized into not like it’s always an event that allows people to wake up, you know, like a cancer that doesn’t get cured the normal way, or you know, like it seems like it takes us a big shock to our system before we kind of go, “What’s going on here?” Right? Or losing a friend or family member, or you know, it’s every story I’ve heard is like that.

Manon Bolliger  12:38

Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  12:38

What can you tell us about that process.

Norman Plotkin  12:42

Well, you know, Joseph Spencer speaks about that in terms of you know why does it take something like an illness or a death or you know something to strike us, and you know there’s there’s the old cliche about putting a frog in a pot of water, and if you if you put him in the hot water, he’ll jump out. But if you put the frog in tepid water and then turn up the heat slowly, he’ll boil to death. And so, people ask me about hypnosis, and they say, “Did Hitler hypnotize the German people?” And I always begin with this: there are three things required for a hypnotic modality: Authority, a doctrine or paradigm, and you must and you must feel something. So I have my authority up on the wall. The doctrine or paradigm is hypnotherapy, and when people come in, they they are deeply relaxed and you know deep relaxation with focused concentration. They feel it, but let’s look at some other aspects of life.

Manon Bolliger  13:48

Lap

Norman Plotkin  13:48

coat and stethoscope is the authority. Medical school, medical books is the doctrine or paradigm. Do you feel something when you go to the doctor? You could don’t get your blood pressure taken there. What do they call iatropic, yeah, you know,

Manon Bolliger  14:02

white coat syndrome.

Norman Plotkin  14:04

That’s right. Or you can be relieved that your test results was were good, or that you’re pissed off that you spent an hour in the waiting room to get five minutes with the physician. So you felt something. Or how about this one: the collar, or cape, or caf, the book. I’ve read. I’ve read them all: the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching. And when you go to mosque or temple or church, do you feel something? People sing and dance and are moved by spirit. That’s hypnosis. All of these things are hypnosis. So when when you have the Fuhrer standing at the podium, it’s the authority. National socialism was the doctrine or paradigm, and did the German people feel something? They felt pride. They marched in the streets, and so they’ve studied this in depth and more recently, and they they’ve come with on a. Level on that type of level, they now call it mass formation psychosis.

Manon Bolliger  15:04

Right,

Norman Plotkin  15:05

and so we can look at recent events and see the authority, Fauci, Burks, and the doctrine of paradigm was neurology and and epidemiology, and did people feel something? Well, if you watched your television, you were seeing case case counts, death counts, you know, stories of you know, and so, you know what I did differently during that period?

Manon Bolliger  15:31

No,

Norman Plotkin  15:31

absolutely nothing. I did I did nothing different than I ever did before, and so people, you know, there’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and if your if your needs are taken care of, then you fall into a sense of comfort. We live in an exceedingly comfortable existence compared to our ancestors who lived lives that were nasty, brutish, and short, and fight or flight was a constant. And so today, today we can’t run and fight. There’s no saber-tooth tiger to grab a stick or to run. And so when we have something that makes us anxious, adrenaline is dumped into the bloodstream and pushed out to the extremity, so you can run or fight. But there’s no run and there’s no fight, and so now you have adrenalized blood in your system, and we’re dropping into fight or flight, and you know autonomic nervous system, and so so what does that do? That what that does is it creates suggestibility, and so people are walking around highly suggestible, and at at the same time, we have modern media that you know is ubiquitous, and and so people are highly suggestible, and and they fall into behavior, and you know it’s also the social media phenomenon has everybody angry, and you know they talk about red ants and black ants. They go about their way, and everything’s fine. But if you put them in a jar and shake it, all of a sudden they attack each other, and and so so people are tend to externalize and blame outside world for their problems. In Carolyn’s book *Anatomy of the Spirit*, she talks about why we don’t heal. You, we all know the person who gets on Facebook and posts about their diverticulitis. You know, and why do why did? And they hold on to this. One of the one of the biggest challenges for me as a hypnotherapist is getting people to agree to let go of what they’ve been carrying for so long. You know, it becomes their identity, and and so there’s a thing called secondary gain. They get something: sympathy, attention, empathy, and their identity becomes wrapped up in yeah, and so I’m certified in hypnotherapy for cancer. It was obviously it was an area of my interest given what I had gone through, and I wrote a book about my experience. And the first thing you know, one of the first things I asked them is, why did you produce this cancer? I didn’t produce this cancer, and I said, “Well, until until you’re willing to accept that you had a role in it, we can’t get past it.”

Norman Plotkin  18:31

I produced mine. I was a lobbyist. I spoke for others. My throat chakra. This is where I got sick. I didn’t have my own authentic voice, And so, so if you look at it like this, we all have an immune system, and a healthy immune system eradicates mutations. But if you if you have unresolved, repressed, and suppressed emotions that are traumatic based. Then it there was a there was a Dr. Carl Simonton in the 70s. He was a radiological oncologist, and he saw a lot of people with cancer, and he came up with a a theory that these unresolved traumas, these repressed and suppressed emotions that are largely unacknowledged, they’re deep, buried deep within your subconscious mind and unacknowledged. You think you moved on, but the emotional pain that’s deep seated, it percolates and it may rise to the level of the point where the subconscious mind perceives death as a way out of the unconscious emotional pain, at which time it can modulate your immune system downward.

Manon Bolliger  19:55

Manon Bolliger here, and I want to thank you for taking actionable steps towards. Engaging your healing journey and helping others discover their path by watching, sharing, subscribing, and reviewing these podcasts. Every review and share helps spread the word on these different perspectives and choices and options for healing. And to thank you, I’d like to invite you to sign up to my free seven sequence email tips on health and healing for everyday life, and you can go to healerscafe.com tips. Thanks so much,

Norman Plotkin  20:40

And so, trauma release is super important. With almost all, I mean, with all of my clients, I regress them to childhood. I study their family structure. We make peace with that little boy or girl inside, and and we do an inventory of traumas, and and really, really help them let them go, and that’s the gateway to moving forward.

Manon Bolliger  21:09

In your like your experience with hypnotherapy, and you’re when you’re bringing up or allowing these traumas to surface and Release. How much consciousness do you find is required? I mean, it’ll come up in the. I’m asking because in the work that I did when I used to be able to do that, you it was through touch and it was Bowen therapy and the way that I taught it and did it, I would find that things would come up, but the you know it’s as if the person nothing would come up that the person couldn’t handle, but it didn’t come up with the mind first. It felt as if the body kind of brought up a memory, you know, which is kind of how, on some level, I see the subconscious. It’s, it’s um, it’s this the the voice that is below the what we make of it and what we rationalize and whatever, but it doesn’t always know what happened, right? Like what caused. I mean, I don’t know. There, you know, there’s a lot of authors that say you don’t remember if you’re under two, whatever. Different theories on that, but do you think you need to identify the incident, or just allow the emotion to to come out and release? What’s your feeling on that?

Norman Plotkin  22:53

So the body keeps the score, and we oftentimes somatize difficult emotions into body syndromes, and they can express as disease. The there there are three levels of hypnosis: hypnoidal. You’re driving a car home from work, pulling the driveway, don’t remember the trip. That’s hypnoidal hypnosis. Then there’s catalepsy that mimics the dream world. Your hands and feet will go numb and cataleptic, and you’ll move in and out of awareness of the situation. You’ll drift off and start having thoughts of dinner or unfinished business, and then you’ll come back. And then there’s somnambulism, which is characterized by amnesia, where you don’t remember. Now, painful events as a defense mechanism, most people block them out, but the subconscious knows everything.

Manon Bolliger  23:54

Right.

Norman Plotkin  23:55

And so, so with hypnosis, there’s the conscious mind. It’s reason, logic, analysis, decision making, willpower is the tip of the iceberg. We think that’s part in power. Below the surface is the base of the iceberg, which is the subconscious mind, which is your programming. And so, when I put someone in trance, it’s like the conscious mind is a Labrador Retriever, and I throw it a stick. It’s off. It’s off chasing the stick, and I speak to the deeper part of the mind where the programming, where the defenses are down.

Manon Bolliger  24:29

Your

Norman Plotkin  24:30

defenses are down. Your your defenses are up through the conscious mind. That’s it. Keeps you protected. With a with a lot of intransigent conditions, I do inner protector. I take them into houses. I and I introduce them to their inner protector, and I set them down in two overstuffed chairs to have a conversation. I had trauma. I needed love, and you were there for me. You were like a parent, but I got it now, and I dismiss you. It’s a little more elaborate than that, but letting that inner protector go. Because all of these things, all of these, all of these things that we create are to keep us safe. What would I do if I didn’t have my diverticulitis? Who would care about me if I, you know? And so, so the law of opposites says you can’t be relaxed and anxious at the same time. So when I get you into a deep catalepsy and you are totally relaxed but sharply focused, and I begin to regress you, I’ll ask, you know, when was the last time you felt this? And when you remember that, nod your head or lift your finger. I’ll have them give me an ideomotor response, and then and then before, and then the time before that. Now let’s go all the way back to the first time you remember this, and and see it’s a progression. It’s a progressive regression. That’s what it is.

Manon Bolliger  25:59

Right. Right. Okay.

Norman Plotkin  26:00

Yeah. And so now you have to be careful because there can be an ab reaction. I’ve never experienced one. I one time I was doing a past life regression with a woman who had a history of heavy drug use, and I triggered something, and I just brought her up out of it. You know, I just I you know I’m tending to the client at all times. I brought her out of it, but that was that was just an extreme. So you’re deeply relaxed and it’s dissociative. So it’s like watching a movie.

Manon Bolliger  26:32

Yeah,

Norman Plotkin  26:33

and you’re not, and you don’t, you’re not reliving it. You’re watching it. You’re watching, and and things come up, and and the inner child. Sometimes people bawl their heads off. Sometimes one hot little tear. Some people. Sometimes the those who had the most traumatic childhoods allow themselves to remember something magical that they had blocked out because all they allowed themselves to remember was all the tragedy.

Manon Bolliger  27:00

Yeah, yeah, well, hmm, yeah. No, it’s interesting too how you see the the body like mentally that mentally and emotionally that we protect ourselves, right? And that’s sort of the the ego or the the comfort, you know, like what would I be if I didn’t have diverticulosis, right? But it’s also interesting physically, because again, if you do normal science and normal medicine, you don’t really study healing or health, right? It’s more medication and how to remove symptoms, right? But it’s interesting this idea of the body creates also things that it really actually doesn’t need, but does to protect itself.

Manon Bolliger  27:58

Yeah,

Manon Bolliger  27:58

you know, so it’s like swelling, right? It’s so that that way you can’t further injure that knee, because now it’s swollen, right? But the swelling isn’t really part of the the healing; it’s the protective layer, right? So when you do, you know, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, any of these, you know, Bowen therapy, so-called alternatives, you’ll see that protection, so-called, disappear right away when the body’s focused on healing. Yeah,

Norman Plotkin  28:35

so you’re right. They don’t. They don’t teach healing. They, they, modern allopaths are symptoms managers now? If you if you break your arm, a surgeon can you know stitch you back together with some titanium. You know, I have a couple plates and rods from extreme sports, but but in day to day medicine, they’re symptoms managers. So when I was a lobbyist for the medical association, pharma paid for everything,

Manon Bolliger  29:02

right? They

Norman Plotkin  29:04

and you know all the junkets, all the events, all of the conventions. Pharma were the sponsor for everything, and with with respect to mental health, a number of years ago, see real doctors prescribe. So the mental health side of allopathy, and this may be controversial, but it’s my opinion. They came up with the notion of a chemical imbalance,

Manon Bolliger  29:33

right?

Norman Plotkin  29:34

And there’s no baseline. There’s no baseline. That’s a

Manon Bolliger  29:37

notion. I agree.

Norman Plotkin  29:38

Right. And so when you have a chemical imbalance, now we can prescribe, and the psychologist. You know, we used to fight these scope battles. The psychologist wanted prescriptive authority, and and and you know, the medical association fought against it, right? And so, so now the psychologist is partnered with a psychiatrist, and they they team up and and load. The prescriptions, but all those, you know, if you read Deepak Chopra’s Quantum Healing, he talks about he talks about our ability to synthesize our chemistry in the laboratory, but it’s not organic chemistry; it’s inorganic, and it leads to inefficacy and side effects.

Manon Bolliger  30:19

Yep,

Norman Plotkin  30:20

and so when these mind-altering substances are taken, it numbs out the executive function, and you know, so you don’t you don’t have any lows, but you don’t have any highs. You just blah, and you might engage in in dangerous behavior because there’s no that that that part of you that says, “Wow, that’s dangerous! Don’t do that!” is unmanon.

Manon Bolliger  30:46

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I can’t. You know, our time is up already. I feel like we haven’t even started. Well.

Norman Plotkin  30:58

Well, yeah. I mean, yeah.

Manon Bolliger  30:59

When we concluded, but I don’t know what what to say. I feel like we’ve just touched on things. But why don’t you leave a message and we’ll we’ll do that for now.

Norman Plotkin  31:10

We all have our own answers, and you just have to be brave enough to dive in and have a look and make a decision to change. And if you do, anything is possible, including health.

Manon Bolliger  31:26

I would agree with that totally. But thank you very much for sharing your personal experience and you know your your your life experience to give us a really good context.

Norman Plotkin  31:38

Yeah, it was a pleasure. Maybe we can meet again, and I’ll talk to you about what I’ve learned about Chinese medicine. I’ve written. Well,

Manon Bolliger  31:44

I saw that afterwards. I know. Well, why don’t we do that? Okay, great. I’ve written.

Norman Plotkin  31:50

I’ve written two books with my partner, and although I’m not a practicing acupuncturist, I know about the Wangdi Niqing and a whole lot of cool stuff that complements.

Manon Bolliger  32:02

Let’s. do that. Then we’ll we’ll book a time and do part two.

Norman Plotkin  32:06

Okay, outstanding.

Manon Bolliger  32:08

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Ending

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Cafe. If you haven’t already done so, please like, comment and subscribe with notifications on as I post a new podcast every Wednesday with tons of useful information and tips for natural healing that you won’t want to miss, go to DrManonBolliger.com/tips for more tips