Do you struggle with self-doubt? Low self-esteem? Anxiety and overwhelm? have you tried everything under the sun to fix it or don't know where to begin? Today Louie and Jess speak with Pharmacist; former CEO turned Hypnotherapist Amjad Richani. Who's life was turned around when he discovered Hypnotherapy's power and transformation qualities. It helped him heal his relationship with his father and finally find inner peace. Fast forward to today, he is helping hundreds of other people break down their limiting beliefs and overcome anything holding them back from achieving what they want.
In this episode, we chat about:
- What is Hypnotherapy, and how it can help you
- How does the subconscious mind play out in our behaviour and decision
- How does Hypnotherapy retrain the subconscious mind
- How does Hypnotherapy help people with their mental blocks and fears
- What are the mental blocks with sexual dysfunction
- Can Hypnotherapy be used in combination with other treatments to treat sexual dysfunction
Where to find Amjad Richani:
Transcript:
Jess: Welcome to Flip The Script podcast, where we flip the narrative on issues that affect men's health.
Louie: Our aim is to talk about the weird, the wonderful, and perhaps the unspoken issues that affect men. So you can feel empowered and back to living your best life.
Jess: Let's get into it.
Louie: Welcome back everyone to another episode of Flip The Script. I'm here as usual with Jess, and in today's episode, we'll be chatting about the subconscious mind and how it relates to sexual performance, your relationships, and your overall happiness. Our guest today, he's no stranger to be an overachiever. He's a qualified pharmacist, a personal trainer, a former CEO of one of Australia's largest private hospitals, and has been involved in the healthcare sector for over 20 years. We are very excited to have hypnotherapist, Amjad Richani, here with us today. Hi, I'm Amjad.
Amjad: Hello. Very, excited to be with you here today.
Louie: Well, thank you very much for joining us. From what I've touched on, you have had quite the expansive professional career, but the latest profession and what we'll actually be focusing on today will be the hypnotherapy part. So Amjad, what led you to become a hypnotherapist?
Amjad: Well, that's a story in itself, but I'll keep it very brief for you. I was a busy professional, like most people out there and I had like most people growing up with parents, they do their best. And I had a lot of issues relating to my dad and building a good relationship with him. So I tried many therapies along the way. And then I actually came across a therapy called RTT or Rapid Transformational Therapy by a lady called Marisa Peer. I followed her online for a while, and then I kept hearing this word RTT and hypnotherapy. So then I actually found a local therapist that does practice the method. And I went to do one session. And after I walked out of that session, not only was I aware of how my subconscious mind had been playing out my stories, but I decided that this is something that I want to learn. And then two years down track, the opportunity came up where I was able to do my course with Marisa Peer and get certified as a hypnotherapist and Rapid Transformational Therapy.
Louie: It's interesting, you touched on your family issues, I guess, what was holding you back? What was the reason that you were looking at seeking therapy and to sort of try and clear that out?
Amjad: Well, like most people, as we get older, we understand that our parents did their best, but my dad and I, every time we had a conversation, I was very easily triggered and I would actually respond with a lot of anger and we would end up cutting the conversation and going long periods of times not talking to each other. And I tried, what people say to that you need to learn to forgive. You need to learn to let go. And I did all of that. I read a lot of books, but what I didn't actually understand is why is it that I still have an anger response as opposed to being able to just have a conversation and let it bounce off me and not impact me. And, I thought, well, I've tried six or seven different modalities. I may as well try hypnotherapy. And that was the one that actually tapped into it. And the reason being is because I discovered that I had a five year old's mind or reaction running my responses as a man in his 30s.
Louie: The triggers, it reminded you, or went back to sort of how you would protect yourself as a young child. And that's how you would be reacting back.
Amjad: Absolutely, look most of our beliefs, we actually pick up by the time we are seven or 10 years old, or up to the age of 15, the subconscious mind is a beautiful, beautiful tool that we have as humans. It's the operating system that runs beneath our conscious level of everyday operating. And it runs about 90% of our lives. The thing is with the subconscious mind is it's job, like your mind is there to protect you and to do exactly what it thinks you want it to do. Now, the thing about the subconscious mind is it doesn't have a sense of age or a sense of humor.
So if you've experienced the painful memory at five years old or seven years old, your subconscious mind still thinks that you are that age and you are that person. And anytime it senses that you might experience that uncomfortable feeling, it will actually cause you to behave in a way that avoids that situation. But as an adult, you find yourself doing things that you go, well, I can't believe I said that, or I can't believe I behave that way or how come my willpower just isn't strong enough to do so?
Jess: So. I want to know how hypnotherapy helps that.
Amjad: Yeah, absolutely. So, when I talk about the mind, I always say to people, your mind is split in two parts. Now it doesn't mean we have two different personalities. It just means that about 10% of our mind operates on the conscious level. The conscious level means that things that I'm aware of, for example, when I want to get up and make a cup of coffee, or I want to actually go out and sit on the balcony, that's a conscious decision that I'm making. But the other part of it is the 90%.
That's the subconscious part. And that's trained by repetition. That learns by things that we do over and over and over again, until it becomes second nature. For example, the majority of people listening to this, drive a car, and we've all had the experience where we've left home, we're slightly distracted by something that's happened. Or we might be on a headset having a conversation, or you may even have someone in the car with us. And we are not even paying attention to the road that we're traveling, but we find ourselves getting to our destination and then you park the car, and you go, I don't even remember how I got here.
Louie: Well, that happens.
Amjad: Yeah, that's your subconscious mind driving because your subconscious mind has learned by repetition that this is the way that you travel to this particular destination. And in fact, it gets more interesting because if you've ever had to change locations, for example, some of us might have changed jobs. And all of a sudden, instead of us turning left on the highway, we turn right. But you'll find yourself missing that a few times in the beginning because your subconscious mind will take over as soon as you drive and you'll find yourself turning towards your old workplace. And then all of a sudden you go, oh, why am I going this way? I'm supposed to go the other way. Well, that's because your subconscious mind already knows the routine. It's a bit like showering or brushing your teeth. Now hypnosis is a very natural state that we all experience on a daily basis.
So any time that you brush your teeth, you have a shower, you drive the car, you do anything that you are so used to doing that you could do it without conscious thought. That is a form of hypnosis, because we've simply just trained the subconscious mind to do things by repetition. Now the power of hypnotherapy is if you have a behavior or an action that you don't want to have in your life anymore, and something that you want to let go of, many of us have tried to do affirmations, willpower, counseling, all sorts of therapies.
And some many of them are very effective. But sometimes we find that despite me doing all that work at the smallest trigger or the smallest comment or the smallest event will cause me to then behave in exactly the way that I'm choosing to resist. And that's because we don't know what your subconscious mind thinks that behavior means to you. So what I do a lot in hypnotherapy is I actually help my clients discover and shine the light on the meaning that their subconscious mind has for a particular behavior. For example, men, yeah, go.
Louie: I was going to ask, is that what they call shadow work? They call it many different things. We call it regression therapy, because what I do in my sessions is to put somebody in hypnosis is very, very easy. I can teach somebody to go into self-hypnosis in less than 10 minutes, but the real power of RTT and hypnosis is when you're in hypnosis, that conscious part of your mind that is always criticizing and always filtering simply just walks down the road and has a cup of coffee. And it then allows that subconscious mind that already has all the answers and already knows the reason why you behave the way you do to actually become very alert. And then when I regress people back to a particular scene or event, all to do with that behavior, what tends to happen in a regression therapy is you'll see yourself, like just on a computer screen, you'll see yourself at a certain age, time and place.
And the most important question every client gets asked is what are you feeling in that moment? 'Cause whatever you felt in that moment that your subconscious mind is trying to remember is what it's holding onto. And that's the feeling it's trying to protect you from. And because I said it doesn't have a sense of age or sense of humor. If you behave that way, when you are 10 years old, even if you are 40 years old, it still thinks you are that 10 year old child. That once you are boy being embarrassed, for example, by stuttering in front of the classroom, when you got up to read out loud, and so you find yourself as an adult saying, okay, my job requires me to do public speaking and to speak to large crowds. But when I go to do that or the very thought of it, I end up having anxiety, sweating, diarrhea, I call in sick and I will do anything but to speak in public.
And you find yourself as an adult, very puzzled because you don't quite understand why is it that I can't bring myself to do this? And that's because your subconscious mind is doing a very good job of protecting you from what it perceives to be an unpleasant experience. Now, the great thing about the regression therapies, once you actually understand that what your subconscious mind believes is not what you believe today, because the person that you are today is much more experienced and has the ability to make their own choices.
It becomes very easy to replace those thoughts, but first of all, we need to figure out what does this behavior mean to my subconscious mind? And the easiest way to do that is by going to hypnosis. 'Cause when you are on hypnosis, we're communicating with the 90% of the subconscious mind that has every memory available to it.
Jess: So I want to know what are those steps to actually get you into hypnosis? You're saying it's quite easy. And also the second question I had was, what if you don't remember like these triggering scenarios that happen as a kid, like you said that sometimes you don't consciously remember these events because they could be so traumatic that your mind is protecting itself. So how do you get to that point to firstly uncover where it is in the timeline of your life and get someone to a subconscious state?
Amjad: That's a great question, Jess. And just about every client says, what if I can't go into hypnosis? Or what if I can't remember? Well, the truth is that anyone can go into hypnosis if they choose to. So the thing about hypnosis is I cannot put somebody into hypnosis if they don't want to be hypnotized. And the easiest way to go into hypnosis is if everybody listening to this right now just simply kept their head at the same level and rolled their eyes up, as if they're trying to look into eyebrows, they will actually start to sense there's a slight fluttering sensation that happens, and that's already your brain going into what we call the alpha wave. And then when I ask the client to close their eyes, I do a series of breathing exercises as well as taking them down into hypnosis. And what happens is that the body, the physical body starts to feel very relaxed and very calm.
But the subconscious mind is then able to become very aware, and it already remembers. You see, your subconscious mind already knows why you behave the way you do, but rarely is it given a chance to actually speak. Now, what I say to every client is you don't have to remember anything, don't even try and make a list or remember, just allow your subconscious mind to do its job. Because as a therapist, my role is to make sure that I put you into physical hypnosis and I relax your mind and body enough, so that your conscious mind is no longer taken over. And that your subconscious mind is able to become hyper-focused and you will find that instantly a memory will pop up. And many of my clients, if not all of them at the end of each session go, wow,
I would've never remembered that. And that's what impressed me about the therapy when I first had it, because my first session, I went back to three scenes and not in a million years would I have remembered these scenes or thought that they were significant because we sometimes think that it's the significant events and the big events that have shaped our lives. But it's really not. It's the little things that made us feel an intense emotional response, now with trauma and with a lot of people, they come to me and they say, I can't remember anything under the age of 10 or 12.
That's also a protective mechanism because what your subconscious mind does is it tends to bury things that are painful very, very deep so that you don't actually have to deal with them, 'cause it's trying to protect you from them. And the good thing about hypnotherapy is even if you say to me, I've had a very traumatic childhood and I don't want to go back to those events. We don't have to, because quite often there's enough events that have happened in all of our lives way before we get to that really painful part that you don't remember, that is enough for the client and myself to already link the dots together and go, this is really where the false belief comes from.
Louie: So you mentioned that, if they don't want to be hypnotized, most likely they won't, they can sort of push away from it or not let you or access their subconscious. But if you are able to get them into that state, is this something that can help everyone?
Amjad: Look, it helps everyone who is open to it. Now hypnosis is like every therapy. There's no therapy out there that's 100% effective. I would say that hypnosis, it works for about 70 to 80% people. Now the way we look at it in hypnotherapy is there's 20% of people, are the dream people to deal with, where they will actually start to go into hypnosis just from the very first words that I say to them. And they're easily suggestible. And that tend to be the quite creative people or people who have very vivid imagination. Now there's the other spectrum of it, the 20% that just refuse to give up control. They are the people who have to be in control all the time. So when they're sitting there in the hypnosis session, they're resisting and they're fighting, letting go of it and allowing themselves to go into hypnosis.
But then 60% of us fall somewhere in between where if I do two sessions on the same person, they may respond very, very well in the first session. But in the second session, we may actually get less scenes come up because we tend to go from one extreme to the other. So, the reality is that it works, in my experience, I would have to say that successfully work for about, 70% of my clients, the 30% that don't respond is either, a, they don't allow themselves to get into hypnosis. But also part of my therapy is, the session is one part. The second part is a personalized self-hypnosis recording because during the session I discover the, what you don't want and what are the limiting beliefs or behaviors?
But then I have to tell the subconscious mind, what is it that you do want, who do you want to become? And what are the behaviors you want to make permanent in your life? And because your subconscious mind learns by repetition, I then make a personalized recording for each client, which is counting them into hypnosis and the suggestions that they want to manifest into their life. And all they have to do is listen to it once a day for 15 minutes for around 30 days, because that's how it becomes permanent.
Louie: So Amjad, you are saying that you can put yourself into a subconscious state and teach your subconscious what you want. And then when you come out of it, it will tell your conscious state how to act and behave to get that?
Amjad: Correct, because what happens is that the subconscious mind, the mind thinks so fast and the subconscious mind is always thinking, but I say that the body is the messenger. So think about when you are worried about something far away or you're having subconscious thoughts, somebody's just asked you to do a presentation and to speak at a conference. Now you absolutely would rather die than actually get up and speak in public. In fact, most people, statistically do, they prefer to die rather than actually speaking public. So your subconscious mind will start to actually cause you to have tension in your shoulders, upset stomach, and cause you all sorts of physical sensations. And that's just because the subconscious mind thinks and the mind thinks, but the body actually is what tells us the messages. And so what has to happen with a lot of clients is that during the session also, there's always a physical location in your body that I help them find because there's a sensation that happens just before I experience that feeling of being rejected or not being good enough or having anxiety around performance.
And it's usually something to do with a tightness in the chest or knot on my stomach, or it could even be tension in my legs. And so they actually realise that, see, your subconscious mind is already communicating to you, but now that you are aware what it is, you can pay attention to it. And the reason why they need to actually listen to the suggestions over and over again is because your subconscious mind has learned by repetition. That's how we all learn to brush our teeth and how to walk and how to drive a car. And it's no different. So if you want to actually change your belief from, for example, if you were to go, I'm not a great lover to be, I'm an amazing lover, you need to actually tell your subconscious mind that you are an amazing lover.
And what happens is the first few days, your mind will fight you on it. And when you say it to yourself, your mind will go, who are you kidding? And it will try and fight you. But if you do it over and over again, after 10 days, your subconscious mind goes, this guy's actually not giving up. He keeps telling himself that he's an amazing lover. And the reason why I do the suggestions under hypnosis is because whatever you hear and say to yourself under hypnosis, goes directly into the subconscious. There is no filtering. There is no criticism from the conscious part. So it makes it very easy to reprogram the operating system. Think of it as upgrading your phone. The reason why you might upgrade your phone is because you get new software and hardware and you get a whole new operating system that can do things that your old phone wasn't able to do.
If you can do that with your mind, you can actually make those behaviours permanent. Because what you want to do then is when you experience that situation, that used to cause you to react negatively, your subconscious mind will, once it gets the message that you've retrained it, it will actually set you on positive behaviours. And what I say to clients all the time is pay attention to the little changes because permanent change is not always just an event. It's actually the little behaviours that we have.
And so many people are surprised because 5, 10, 15 days after a session, they will encounter a trigger that would've caused them to behave in a negative manner, but all of a sudden, they say I was very calm and it actually did not, I was indifferent to it, or I actually handled that very well. And that's where they know that oh, see my operating system, my automatic response has now become what I actually wanted to be. And now my subconscious mind is working for me instead of letting it run loose and work against me because it still believes I am all those different ages where I've experienced uncomfortable things.
Jess: So you were speaking about repetition. How is it different for everyone? How much does somebody need to expose themselves before they retrain their behaviours?, their decisions, their beliefs?
Amjad: Well, a lot of the science around this, says that it takes about 21 days to actually make a new habit permanent. It's the same with the subconscious mind. It takes at least 21 days of hearing the same message for your subconscious mind to go well, okay, I now believe that you have this particular new behaviour. The other reason why it's very important to do it, at least for 21 days is because your subconscious mind is going to believe what you tell it. You see, the most important praise, the most important thing that we can ever say to ourselves is what we say to ourselves. Because whenever somebody says something to you, there's always an agenda behind it. If your boss says to you, you are amazing, could you stay behind and work this weekend? Your neighbour might say to you, you know what?
I really love the way you cut your lawns. Do you mind doing my garden the next time you do your lawns? So there's always an agenda. But if I say to myself, or if I'm listening to something that is telling me, I am enough, I am lovable, I am a participant in the bedroom. I can actually enjoy pleasure as well as give pleasure. My subconscious mind will go, well, he's talking to himself and he doesn't lie to himself, so I'm going to believe it. And so 21 days is the minimum. I have found that 28 days to 30 days is the ideal.
Louie: So Amjad, you've been touching a little bit on performance and I know we want to touch on relationships and also performance 'cause that's majority of what we do. We do speak to a lot of men who, they have bad experiences in the bedroom, they have bad past relationships and they find that even though they don't have a physical issue most of the time, they just find it very difficult to perform and it's like that they're holding themselves back. So I just wanted to ask, have you dealt with a lot of men who have mental blocks with their sexual performance?
Amjad: Many of them, many of my clients have come to me and they really have problems with their sexual performance, either be it erectile dysfunction on different levels or even the fear and anxiety around performance. Because I can speak as a man. And I can say to you that, I say this to a lot of men, is all it has to do is happen once, if you, for example, are tired, you've had too much to drink and you cannot physically get aroused. Then that happens to all men at any stage in their life. But where it becomes an issue is that some of them may have experienced a negative reaction from their partners and or they actually go into self-judgment. And then they actually think that this is a reflection on me.
I'm not good enough. I have failed. And then next time they go to actually want to engage and be intimate with their partner, guess what happens? The subconscious mind remembers that feeling of how you felt helpless, useless, and you beat yourself up last time and it goes, you know what? That activity causes you to get anxious and stressed. So I'm actually just going to cause you performance anxiety where you're not even going to try. And a lot of men have expressed to me that when they walk into a situation where they want to be intimate, they feel that they have to broaden on performance. And one of the main things that I teach my clients, both men and women, but especially for us men is that you are not a performer. You are not there to put on a show. You are a participant, and a participant means that you are there to both engage in both the giving and receiving of pleasure.
But unfortunately society has conditioned us that it's the man's job to go on there and put on a performance and make sure that, sort of their partner is satisfied. Now, if you go into that situation and you have any doubts that you might be able to, sort of live up to the task, your subconscious mind is already blocking you. And as we know, the mind and the brain is the largest sex organ, and all arousal begins in the mind. And if my mind is already anxious, already anticipating that I'm not going to be able to maintain erection or that my partner's going to judge me, guess what? My physical, body's not going to respond because my mind is the one that tells the rest of the body, hey, it's safe, and it's okay to go ahead and enjoy that experience. And so a lot of my clients, I have to actually get them to realise that it's more of a mental block.
And sometimes it's a block that's come from the fact that they feel they've lost control or they've had a negative reaction from a partner. I'll give you a very quick example. I had a young man come to me who's 28 years old. Now he has no issues performing in the bedroom if he's having a one night stand or a random partner, because he said, I'm never going to see her again, and I don't care what she thinks of me in the bedroom, whether I perform well or not. But every time he gets into a stable, loving relationship, it's when his erectile dysfunction begins. Now, when we did some regression work, it turns out that twice in his lifetime he's had relationships where, because he drinks too much, he ended up having erectile dysfunction and his partner humiliated him because of it.
Now, guess what his subconscious mind remembers, is the humiliation and it's associated sex with being humiliated. So in his mind, he goes, don't get into a regular relationship or with somebody that I have to see more than once. Because when he goes into a situation where he knows it's going to be a once off, he said, my mind doesn't even care or think about the humiliation. And I find that I'm my old self again, once I got him to see that it actually isn't the actual act of sex that's the issue. It's actually the fact that your mind has linked sex to being humiliated, and that's a false belief, we were very easily able to flip that around and he was actually able to go on to continue a healthy relationship with the partner that he is with now, because that's what he really wanted.
Most men come to me and they say, I love my partner, and I want to be able to enjoy intimacy with them. But so there's two things I have to teach them, is what are the negative feelings that you associate to intimacy, but also you are a participant, not a performer. And there's a big difference in mindset. 'Cause as soon as I say to men, you are a participant, that is, are both allowed to receive and give ,their whole mind and body relaxes. You can just see the weight fall of their face because again, culturally and a lot of us in society are taught that, if a man goes into that situation, he's the one who has to put on the performance. And it's more difficult for us men as well because we have physical characteristics that show whether we're aroused or not.
And that's what a lot of men worry about. And there's also still a lot of stigma around erectile dysfunction because as a pharmacist, I've obviously seen many, many men come in and if they're brave enough to come in with their prescription, which I would encourage everyone to do, 'cause pharmacies deal with it all the time. But a lot of times that they say they’re partnering because they still think that, if I'm getting help be it through medication or through psychotherapy, then there's something wrong or less with me as a man. And that's a false belief in itself. And so it's just about giving them their confidence back and letting them understand that, if you've had a situation here and there, it's very normal and many are times what I have discovered also when I've done therapy with both the both partners separately, is that the other partner doesn't actually care and they actually want to support them. But many men do not come forward and ask for help as well.
Jess: And how does hypnotherapy work with your medical treatments, for example?
Amjad: Yep. I would say 90% of my clients are on medical treatment, some form of medication. And they're finding that the medication works very, very well for the physical symptoms or to actually help with certain parts of it. But they still have a mental block. So where the hypnotherapy comes into it, is we go in there and find out, are there any false beliefs that you have developed that we can then shine the spotlight on? Because all I do as a therapist is I don't fix anything. I just shine the spotlight on the false beliefs.
And then I actually let the client see that who they are today, they actually don't believe that false belief cause what you believed at 15 is not what you believe at 35, and remove that mental block. And what it does then, is it compliments their medications very, very well, because I've had men who have sought out medical treatment for example, for erectile dysfunction, they've taken the tablet and they've come to me the next day at the pharmacy and they go, nothing happened. And then I actually said to them, well, this is a psychological barrier that you have. It's probably not so much as physical, 'cause physical we can treat quite easily with medications, but the psychological one is what we need to actually understand.
So I would say they compliment each other very, very well. And in fact, whenever I work with any client, I like everyone else out there, but also like every healthcare professional I encourage them, don't ever stop your medications. You don't have to, this is actually just helping you take control over a part of your mind that might also be welcome.
And when it comes to sexual performance, we need to have both the physical element of it, which the medications can help us overcome. But we also have to have the largest sex organ, which is our brain also engage in the activity, 'cause if our brain is switched off and going, I have no interest in what you're about to do. The body's not going to respond. So yeah, so I would say they compliment each other quite well.
Jess: That's great to hear. I actually wanted to circle back at the beginning where you were touching on that 20 to 30%, won't be able to see success out of hypnotherapy. And you said it's around control. I feel like a lot of anxiety and limiting beliefs and stress and overwhelm, all are centred around control. So is there things that people can do to prepare themselves to get hypnotherapy? Is there kind of like precursor situation for you to break down those barriers and that control? 'Cause I'm sure a lot of people would want to not have such a white knuckle grip around control, but they just can't, they don't even know how to get rid of that.
Amjad: That's a great question, Jess, what I do with every client of mine is I actually don't see clients unless I've had a conversation with them. And before we get to the conversation, there's a simple questionnaire that I get them to fill out, 'cause the questionnaire is very, very simple, but it actually allows them to start thinking about what is it really that I want to treat? What are my current beliefs right now? And what is it that I actually want to believe or be? So once I actually get a questionnaire and I have a conversation with a client, I typically spend about 30 minutes with each client, complimentary, free of charge where I explain to them the whole process of the session, what does hypnotherapy do? What they will experience in this session, and they also get to ask me lots of questions.
Now I find that doing that alone removes a lot of the stress and anxiety because therapy in itself is a very personal thing. And the rapport you have with the therapist is just as important as the therapy that is being performed. So I want my clients, when they have their sessions with me over the phone or video or in-person, they're already familiar with my voice, they've already had a conversation with me and they go, you know what? He's just a regular guy, who's just going to actually help me, help myself figure out what my beliefs are. So the other thing that I ask everybody [inaudible 00:34:19] control, and some of you who are listening to this might relate to it. Now some people say to me, I don't have control issues. And the first thing I ask them is, do you have a fear of flying?
Because people don't actually, statistically we know that flying is safer than driving a car, but more people fear flying than they actually do driving. And that's because they fear the loss of control. 'Cause when you are sitting on an airplane and you are up in the air, you have to trust that the pilot knows what they're doing and you have no control what goes wrong. And the other question that I ask people, and some of you might be asking yourself is, do you actually tidy up your house and clean up and make sure all your laundry's done and put away before you actually travel or leave the house, because God forbid something should happen to you when you're traveling and somebody walks in and sees your dirty underwear on the floor. And a lot of my clients goes, yeah, I actually do that, and see, what are these.
All of a sudden they realise, I don't have anxiety. I don't have so much as the fear of, it's not travel that I'm not excited about. It's the fact that I don't want to lose control. And so then what I do is I actually go through with them, through some exercises of how they can actually feel in control, because during my session and every person that does hypnotherapy, you're 100% in control the entire time. At no time during hypnotherapy, will you ever be made to say anything or do anything that you are not consciously aware of. And it brings me to the stage hypnotist, 'cause I have to mention that here, we've all seen the shows where somebody gets on stage and they act like a chicken or a motorbike. Well, the secret is that people get up and do that because they consciously want to do that.
Typically, if I was to do that, I would pick 10 people and you'd see me send back about three at four. That's because I would give them a few suggestions initially and see who's going to play along and be the extrovert and wants to put on a show. But I know that these people are, I can put them in hypnosis. But if I say to you, get up and act like a chicken right now, there is no way I can make you do that if you don't consciously choose to do that. And so a lot of times the concern that people have particularly around control is will I lose control or even fall asleep during the session? Will I actually lose consciousness? The answer is, no. The therapy that I do, my clients are always aware that they are at home or on the couch or on the therapy bed.
They can sense their whole body. They know they are speaking to me. They have absolute control when I ask them a question of what they choose to tell me. And in fact, when it comes to regression, some of my clients have regressed back to scenes that they don't particularly want to tell everybody about for whatever reason and they don't have to. So I tell every client before each session that if I take you back to a scene and you don't want to tell me what's happening, you don't have to. But what I want to know is what are you feeling in that scene? Because your subconscious mind holds onto feelings. And so when it comes to control, it's the most common question that everybody asks me, is will I lose control? And I don't think I can be hypnotised. The truth of it is anybody can be put into hypnosis if they choose to.
And in order for them to do that, they need to relax. Now, I also spend time at the beginning of the session, doing some relaxing breathing and some actual hypnosis around allowing the body to relax because once the physical body relaxes and people can see that I'm still here, I'm still in control. They then allow themselves to participate in the session. And I have had many clients who have control issues or fear of loss of control, and they have had successful sessions and they have allowed themselves to relax into it. But the way it all starts is by me having a conversation with them so that I can actually explain to them exactly what I will be doing in the session, what they can expect. And they can ask me any questions that they have. And I find that by doing that, when we get together to the session, we're not strangers and they're not actually sitting there crunching their knuckles and worried about, me making them do things that they don't want to do, because they understand that's not possible.
Jess: Thank you so much Amjad for joining us today. You've covered a lot and I've really learned a lot and I personally want to do hypnotherapy now. I think it's so incredibly powerful. I don't think there's anyone out there that doesn't have any type of limiting belief or block holding them back. I want to know where the listeners can find you.
Amjad: Yeah, well look, I mean the easiest place to find me is on my website. So my website is called rapidhypnotherapy.com.au. So that's rapid, R-A-P-I-D, hypnotherapy.com.au, and fill out a free discovery call and fill out the questionnaire. And let's get on the phone together for 15 minutes to half an hour and take it from there. Because in that conversation, you can actually decide whether hypnotherapy is right for you. And also I need to make sure that I understand what you want to achieve out of it and that I can get you the arc.
Louie: Yeah, Amjad, really it was a pleasure having you on. I understand it much more, and I think that's a lot of people that they don't understand what hypnotherapy is, probably wouldn't push them in this direction, but I really hope that all this information has helped them to get in contact with you and ask any further questions that they have, which I'm sure they will.
Amjad: I would absolutely welcome that. Look, I'm always happy to talk to anyone about... 'Cause a lot of people call me or they email me and they have questions. A part of my role and what I love about being a hypnotherapist is the fact that I want to educate people about the potential benefits of hypnotherapy and how it can compliment any other therapy that you are on. But also, one last comment to everybody is that I say that all therapy is good and any therapy is better than no therapy. So if you are struggling with any issue in your life or there's something that is not to your liking, go out there and seek solutions, there are medical treatments, there are psychological treatments and you are more in control when you actively take steps towards it than just sitting back and letting it happen to you.
Jess: That's amazing. Thanks again, and we'll speak to you soon.
Amjad: Thank you.
Louie: Again. I'd like to thank Amjad for joining us today. If you want to get in touch with Amjad, his details will be in the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to leave us a review and as always, thank you for listening and we will catch you next time. See you later.
