Podcast 922: Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis: A Journey to the Center with Dr. Ran Anbar

I had the pleasure of  interviewing Dr. Ran Anbar for this podcast about his new book entitled Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis: A Journey to the Center.

Dr. Ran, a board certified in both pediatric pulmonology and general pediatrics, offers hypnosis and counseling services at Center Point Medicine in La Jolla, California, and Syracuse, New York. Dr. Anbar is also a fellow and approved consultant of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. With his experience, he has successfully treat over 5,000 children. He also served as a professor of pediatrics and medicine and the director of pediatric pulmonology at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, for 21 years.

Truly amazing in his profession, Dr. Ran also has came up with a book. Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis: A Journey to the Center offers examples of using hypnosis with children to address physical and mental challenges. This book is very timely as it is a collection of patients’ healing experiences, the takeaway information parents and practitioners should consider as they deal with medical and psychological challenges in their children’s and patients’ lives.

If you’re interested on learning more about Dr. Ran and his works, you may click here to visit his website.

Thank you for listening to this engaging interview!

THE BOOK

Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis is a timely collection of patients’ healing experiences, the story of how these events changed one physician’s approach to medicine, and the takeaway information parents and practitioners should consider as they deal with medical and psychological challenges in their children’s and patients’ lives.

Every year millions of pediatric patients could benefit from hypnosis therapy to deal with and alleviate physical and psychological symptoms big and small. The benefits of hypnosis-facilitated therapy range from complete cures to small improvements. They extend beyond the physical and into the psychological and spiritual, building confidence, positivity and resilience. They include the empowerment of children with chronic health issues to feel more in control of their own minds, bodies and circumstances. They sometimes lead to the reduction or even elimination of medications. Hypnosis is painless, non-invasive, and cost-effective. It doesn’t preclude any other treatment, and drawbacks are virtually nonexistent.

THE AUTHOR

Ran D. Anbar, MD, FAAP, is board certified in both pediatric pulmonology and general pediatrics, offering hypnosis and counseling services at Center Point Medicine in La Jolla, California, and Syracuse, New York. Dr. Anbar is also a fellow and approved consultant of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.

Dr. Anbar is a leader in clinical hypnosis, and his 20 years of experience have allowed him to successfully treat over 5,000 children. He also served as a professor of pediatrics and medicine and the director of pediatric pulmonology at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, for 21 years.

You may also refer to the transcripts below for the full transcription (not edited) of the interview.

Dr. Ran Anbar Interview
Fri, 4/8 12:32AM • 45:01
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
hypnosis, child, patient, subconscious, book, people, symptoms, drugs, works, listeners, case, paul, talked, teach, treat, result, cystic fibrosis, arm, pulmonologist, pediatric
SPEAKERS
Dr. Ran Anbar, Greg Voisen

Greg Voisen
Welcome back Inside Personal Growth this is Greg Voisen the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from La Jolla. Just right down the street is Dr. Ran and bar and he has a book that I'm particularly interested in. Because I actually have hypnosis performed on me. Although he does hypnosis on children to cure ailments. Good morning to you, how are you?

Dr. Ran Anbar
I'm great, good morning to you. Well, this Changing Children's Lives with Hypnosis: A Journey to the Center really is. It's packed full of stories, great stories that are great examples for our listeners to understand really what it is that you do, how you do it, and how you've helped so many families with children overcome everything from pulmonary challenges, to anxiety to all kinds of things, but I'm going to let our listeners know a little bit about you. Dr. Anbar MD. F A A P is board certified in both pediatric pulmonology and general pediatrics, offering hypnosis and counseling services at center point medicine in La Jolla, California, and Syracuse, New York. Dr. Ann bar also is a fellow and approved consultant of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. He is a leader in clinical hypnosis, and in 20 years of experience, has allowed him to successfully treat over 5000 children. He also serves as the professor of pediatrics and Medicine and Director of pediatric pulmonology at Upstate Medical University Santa Fe as at SU N Y. University in Syracuse, New York for 21 years. Well, it's a great bio, but more importantly, for my listeners, if you want to learn more, go to www.centerpointmedicine.com, There, you can learn more about Dr. Anbar, you can learn more about the book, you can also learn more about the services that he provides. And that's what we're going to talk about. It's not just the services, but really just the power of hypnosis today. If you would please tell a little bit about your story as a pediatric pulmonology. treating children with pulmonary disorders. And your reason for embracing hypnosis as a method of treating children with pulmonary disorders and other diseases. Because, you know, it's not a normal transition for a regular MD, to say, Okay, I'm going to embrace hypnosis. We were talking about Steve Berman, the gentleman that I go to That's Lee right here in Del Mar. But I'm just curious as to listeners want to know, how did you get over there? How did you make that jump?

Dr. Ran Anbar
Well, 25 years ago, I was practicing pulmonology, when a young man who was referred to me he had very bad allergies to milk products. And twice in his life. He almost died from eating and milk products. And I was seeing him for his asthma. And he came in one day and he says, you know lately when I've been smelling cheeseburgers, I've been developing asthma attacks. I thought it was a strange sounding symptom. I wondered if a milk molecule could be wafting through the air and affecting him, which it can't do, by the way. And I asked him, what can you imagine eating a cheeseburger, which is something he could not do in real life. And within seconds, he was having a lot of trouble breathing. And I thought to myself, Oh, no, he's going to have a terrible attack. I said, stop it. So he did. I said, Whoa, what just happened here? Can you imagine yourself into an illness? And then the immediate corollary question is, can you imagine yourself out of anneals? Later, I found out what was going on was hypnosis. And that was my dramatic introduction to the field.

Greg Voisen
Well, that's quite a dramatic introduction. And, you know, you never know exactly why certain things are brought to you, right? And if you are curious enough, you go down the path. Your life changed as a result of meeting a very special children. Harry and Paul, you refer to him in the books. Can you tell the story and the impact that these children had on your career because there were two of them. And I think the listener liked to know the story and the impact.

Dr. Ran Anbar
Sure, Harry came first Harry I met when I was 16 years old. I was volunteering at the Children's Hospital at Stanford. And he was 12. He had a disease called cystic fibrosis. What In those days, was it still a lethal disease when those days the average patient lived to be in the late teens. It's a lung disease that causes a lot of mucus that damages the lungs. And because of hairy, I ended up going into medicine becoming a pulmonologist. I want to find a cure for cystic fibrosis. He was an early guide for me. Paul is the young man with a cheeseburger allergy. Okay. He asked me, Well, I wanted to send him when I recognize he was doing hypnosis, I want to send them to a psychologist who would teach him hypnosis, figuring if you could learn how to control his mind. It might help his health. He didn't want to go see a psychologist. He said, I rather work with you. And I said, that's nice, but I don't know anything about it. And I, and he said, I don't care teenager. So I went to my friend, Dr. David Keith, who was a psychiatrist upstate and asked if he could back me up. And he said he would. And that's when I started learning about hypnosis. I read a lot about it. And I practice with Paul for a good year. And a lot of the things I talked about, in the book started off with Paul, I should tell you that Paul tragically died a year later, as a result of exposure to milk product. And after his death, I went to his family's home, and I spoke with his parents. And I told them that Paul's work will be my work. Paul wanted to be a pharmacist and help people and, and my work with hypnosis is a testimony to Paul, and that the book is dedicated to him.

Greg Voisen
Well, again, you've had these crossings in your life and people that have come into your life, which, you know, Joseph Campbell's story about, you know, you go out and journey and the journey basically takes you and you find somebody and there's a career change path or something happens. And you get help along the way. And in your case, you got a lot of help. And you know, my best friend's daughter in law, you were speaking to Stanford and cystic fibrosis, had cystic private fibrosis still does. But Stanford did a double lung and heart transplant on her. And I ran a campaign to help raise money to help the family. And I didn't know that that even was something that anyone could do. And she today is still alive. And running triathlons, and doing everything pretty normal and had a baby and a child. And it's a phenomenal story. Although the symptoms now are coming back again, it's starting to slowly creep back in. So you know, CF is, is a tough disease to fight. And as you said, life expectancy is shorter than normal. But, you know, to actually get a double lung and heart transplant at Stanford. Wow. I just like was blown away.

Dr. Ran Anbar
Well, to update your listeners in the last 30 years, the major part of my medical career, cystic fibrosis therapy has advanced a great deal. There are now drugs that are almost curative, really, person these days lives into their late 40s. Yeah. And children are born with that now could have a normal life expectancy because of the advances in the field. So I don't want to leave a misimpression from the early 70s. Now in the 2020s, we're doing much better in treating that disease.

Greg Voisen
Well, you're saying that you they can get these drugs and take them for a lifetime. And the reality is, if they start them early enough, it can extend their life expectancy quite a bit or maybe even normal. Yeah, that's it is really a testament to our medical community, and the drug companies and everybody who are doing this intensive research. We live in unprecedented times that way. And I just I want to state that because I have a son who has chronic myelogenous leukemia, and started on Gleevec. And if it hadn't been for Gleevec, now Spry cell, and he's now had it 22 years, and has lived with leukemia for 22 years with those drugs. So pretty, pretty interesting what these drugs are now doing to treat these chronic conditions. Yep,

Dr. Ran Anbar
just since we're talking about this, I want to also acknowledge the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation that spearheaded a lot of this research, and CF community, all these patients. 1000s of patients participated in drug trials to bring the current drugs to market so they really was a group a team effort.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it always is. And there has to be people willing to be part of that. Those trial drugs, and you mentioned that hypnosis is nearly as old as the history of civilization. You say part of the global spiritual and healing traditions dating back to ancient Egypt. of Persia, China, India and Rome. Can you explain why hypnosis is so effective at tapping into the subconscious, allowing us to reprogram our thoughts?

Dr. Ran Anbar
Well, what hypnosis can do many things. One of the things you could do with it is to park your conscious mind, in a calm activity. And by cell parking, the subconscious is better able to express itself. And the subconscious can express itself in many different ways as well as can express itself and in thoughts. It can express itself in imagery, you can express yourself in feelings, and all the long history of hypnosis involve different ways of allowing the subconscious to express itself. Our conscious mind is fairly limited. We can't handle too much information, and the brain, the subconscious, brain, filters, and digests the inputs that we get, and feeds it to our conscious brain in a way that we can understand. So hypnosis allows us to short circuit the system and to interact sometimes with the subconscious directly.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it is amazing. What are your thoughts? Maybe not for children. But in society at large, we're seeing people with PTSD and various diseases, actually using micro dosing drugs. And in our case, you know, let's say LSD, very, very small, microdoses mounds and they're seeing amazing results. I know Michael Polin, from the Bay Area, who's written all the books on health, wrote about it. We have lots of people writing about it today. Where do you stand as it relates to, you know, high anxiety, PTSD, psychological disorders, which are totally debilitating for somebody to maybe take that kind of therapy.

Dr. Ran Anbar
So I'm not an expert in this, but I'll tell you what I've my viewpoint is this I think that psychedelics and certain drugs do the same function as hypnosis, they park the conscious mind. So I think, for example, the hallucinations that can accompany psychedelic experience, I think, come up from the subconscious, and through the subconscious, and you'd become more aware of them, because your conscious mind is not filtering them out, or they're not filtered out before it gets to the conscious mind. I have a belief that the subconscious mind can tap into realms beyond ourselves. And when we do use a psychedelic drug, you become more aware of those realms, such as why people have these amazing experiences and new perspectives following such an interaction. All that being said, I think if you're gifted at hypnosis, you can achieve many of those same results by without use of drugs.

Greg Voisen
Well, I'm glad to hear you say that because I actually believe that there aren't many, you know, a lot of people would be afraid to go down that path. And because of maybe the repercussions or after effects of the drugs and not knowing it, but to go in and get hypnosis, whether it's on your child or you are you is a completely safe, logical way to approach this. And I can speak from experience it works. It works in so many different wonderful ways. Now you state that the physical and the mental health are deeply interwoven. You've said that, how do you determine when you will use hypnosis as well as more conventional methods, including drugs to treat patients? Or is it the standard protocol in most of your cases, to combine, let's say, a drug for something, and hypnosis? So if this child happens to be on a drug, are we keeping him on the drug? Or are we trying to actually get him off of the him or her off of the drug and have hypnosis basically cure the condition?

Dr. Ran Anbar
So that's a complex question, because the answer will vary depending on the situation that patient is dealing with. And this is why I think it's important to state here that whoever is doing hypnosis with you should either be an expert in treating the condition they're working on without use of hypnosis, or they're working in conjunction with it. That's a physician who understands the condition well, because you don't want to treat someone with hypnosis, if a medication is better, and you don't want to treat somebody with a medication if hypnosis is better, but you have to be an expert to be able to guide that. I should back up just a moment we've talked about. You've mentioned doing hypnosis on people. Hypnosis is done with people. I love that. Well if Gnosis

Greg Voisen
itself, got it, got it, okay.

Dr. Ran Anbar
And Just to clarify, we haven't talked really about misconception I'm going to spend a moment talking about that. So people hear hypnosis, they think, oh, some magician is going to make the click like a chicken and I'm evildoer will control my mind. And that's all fake. Yeah, that is not what hypnosis is. Now, all hypnosis is self hypnosis. The only one in control of your mind is yourself. hypnosis can help you better control your mind, which is what we're talking about. In terms of your question about how do I decide whether medication or hypnosis is necessary depends, again, in a medical condition. So for example, there is an entity called vocal cord dysfunction, in which the vocal cords shut off or close off. When you're trying to breathe in. It's very hard to breathe.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you had an example of a girl was a runner that we're gonna get to actually, it's one of my questions. But you know, her case was is this was extreme.

Dr. Ran Anbar
Correct. And what was extreme is the, what the physician did to her was extreme, because they tried to cure her with medications. And for vocal cord dysfunction, which happens because you're stressing yourself out too much. medications don't work. And then they tried to cure her by taking out her tonsils. And then they wanted to inject her with Botox that boat because Botox, and that's also unnecessary, because for that kind of condition, using hypnosis to teach her how to relax was curative. In a case of a child with asthma, as an example, sometimes medications are very much needed to control the asthma. But teaching a child how to relax can also control the asthma sometimes better than even their medication effects. There's a hypnotic technique involving imagining, the very first time you had trouble breathing, and teaching the younger version of yourself to not to panic at the time, you couldn't prove from the first asthma attack. And sometimes that makes all your symptoms go away. If you do that, then you can actually take away medications. In other cases, let's say somebody with cancer, they need their chemotherapy, or they need the radiation therapy, by hypnosis can be very helpful in helping them cope with the discomfort of the illness of discomfort of medical procedures. So in that kind of patient, you'll want to use both medication, and hypnosis. And finally, there are patients that you wouldn't want to use hypnosis for somebody that comes in with a headache, and has never really been worked up by a physician, and shouldn't be seen by a physician first, maybe they have a brain tumor, using hypnosis, there would be malpractice and be very bad, because you might delay the diagnosis being made, and the patient could even do very badly. So that's why you need to know what you're doing when you're using hypnosis for medical issues.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, look, the suggestive thoughts that a hypnotist, let's say, puts a patient under is extremely powerful, powerful enough to, as you said, mitigate some of these challenges associated with pulmonary conditions and other conditions. And I totally believe that and I think that, you know, the follow on treatment, if the hypnosis works, is a long practice. This is my personal commentary of meditation. Because it works so well at calming the whole body, that it would be good now you listed in the book clues that suggested child's emotion may be related to their physical symptoms. Can you tell us what some of those signs are, and what a patient or a parent might want to look for in their child as far as the list, you put a list in the book of those.

Dr. Ran Anbar
So a child who gets very emotional as a result over their symptoms, suggests that their emotions may be impacting the symptom, a child whose emotions impact the symptoms, or they get upset and they get their symptom that suggests emotions are at play, as symptoms attend to stop when you fall asleep, are more likely to have emotions involved. And then symptoms that go don't get better with medications are quite likely to have emotions involved. I will tell you, the majority of medical practice involves dealing with symptoms that are the result of emotions, the majority, this is not some weird kids. And if you go to the emergency room, that people come in with chest pain, and with headaches and stomach aches, the majority of those have psychologically driven symptoms. Of course, you have to make sure they're not having a heart attack. Right, not having bleeding ulcer, but those are infrequent.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, no, I totally am in your lane. I agree with everything that you're saying because the power of the mind over the physical body. I speak from curse My experience having had long bouts with anxiety attacks, and those guys, anxiety attacks, I couldn't determine or how they were being triggered. But I went to Scripps, and they this goes back into the 70s, right? I mean, well, let's see was the early 80s. I take that back. And they wired me up and put on the sensors put on my brain. And I can see on the screen, what my body was actually doing neurologically. And I could see myself having one of these panic attacks, and I then went did start doing meditation, and meditation. For now. 40 years, I've never had an anxiety attack again. But the anxiety attacks were real, you know, you feel like you're having a heart attack, you feel like you're, you're claustrophobic you feel like the world's coming in on you. You're, you know, there are all kinds of symptoms associated with that. Now, you, you talked about the vocal cord thing. And that's Kayla, this was this middle school student and athlete who developed this perplexing crisis dermis, every cross country event, which was the vocal cord dysfunction. And I think you've already addressed it. So I'm gonna kind of move on beyond that a question. But you treated her with hypnosis. And it works tremendously well, because the story was fantastic.

Dr. Ran Anbar
Well, if I may tell you another story about another child with vocal cord dysfunction. And this story will tell you how much psychology can affect symptoms. This was a 12 year old boy who developed vocal cord dysfunction. But unlike Kayla, who only developed her problem, when she was exercising, he had it all the time. And he couldn't. He had, he spoke very softly, because his vocal cords were touching each other. And he had been through speech therapy and psychological therapy, he came to see me I taught him hypnosis, which is teaching him how to imagine relaxing in a safe place, and matching all of his senses, and teaching how to calm down. And typically, that's enough to treat vocal cord dysfunction. In his case, it didn't make much of a difference, he still was having trouble breathing. So then I taught him how to interact with his subconscious. And there are many ways of doing that. A simple way is having a subconscious move fingers for you, one for yes, one for no one for I don't want to say, then you can ask questions. So talking to subconscious, his subconscious said he knew why the boy was having trouble breathing, and he was willing to type with me subconscious can actually type, which is another way interacting the subconscious. And then you can have full conversations. And the story was the year before I met him, this boy was so despondent, he almost committed suicide almost hung himself. And he didn't obviously, and but he couldn't believe how close he came. And he was feeling guilty about it. And the reason he had the vocal cord dysfunction is he was still guilty about almost having hung himself. When we talked through that. And I pointed out to him that this is a year later, he's overcome that the vocal cord dysfunction stopped, his breathing became normal. But then next week, he developed blindness. He couldn't see. And the parents were quite panicky. But I brought him back in and I talked to your subconscious that even though he was blind, he was able to see the typing. And the subconscious explained, he made him blind. So they couldn't see hangars in his room and remember that he tried to hang himself. So we talked through that, and his blindness resolved. And the next week, he became deaf, brought him back talk to subconscious, the subconscious said, Why didn't want to hear things that will remind him of that he tried to hang himself. So we talked through that, and he could hear again. And the next week, he came in and he couldn't move his arms. Talk through that. And the reason was, he didn't want to hang himself again. So he couldn't move his arms. We talked through that. And then he was able to move his arms, and then he was fine. Thereafter, it's been a couple years, he's been fine. This case, which is not in the book, so you get a bonus here illustrates how much psychology can affect symptoms. And sometimes how complex it is to unravel the symptoms. Most patients Fortunately, it's much simpler. Two thirds of my patients, teach them to relax and are much better. But some things are quite complex if this young man, and it takes a while to unravel.

Greg Voisen
You know, the state of the journey of a child from birth to adolescence is wrought with all kinds of challenges and so on. And I'm just wondering, you know, because sometimes this they say this is a call for attention. They're looking for attention psychologically. It's so it manifests in this ailment or whatever, so they can get the attention. I don't know what birth order, I'm not certain that that makes any difference one way or the other. Do you have a comment about this, this whole journey from being born to going into adolescence, trying to get attention because you're either competing against siblings or something occurred along the way, where a father or mother just said you weren't enough? You were never enough? It seems to be an ongoing issue that all I think it's a disease within society. Right? I don't I don't think that any of us. I should say that not any of us, but a very small percentage of us, where we were just praised so much that we were always enough. Do you believe that some of that manifests is a result of that journey? And then it expresses itself in a disease where they can be noticed? No, no.

Dr. Ran Anbar
I think that can be the case, I would say to you, any psychologically driven symptom, which is many, many symptoms, has a reason for that. There's some benefit to the patient or their or the patient expressing themselves in some way. So the case that we've discussed so far, the girl who was stressing herself out and with sports, and couldn't breathe, they couldn't breathe was telling her I'm worried about doing well in sports, the boy who couldn't breathe, because he had almost hung himself is saying, I'm really having trouble dealing with the trauma of almost having hung myself. But yes, there are children develop symptoms, because that's the only way they get attention. And sometimes it's not even selfish. Sometimes they draw attention onto themselves, to get the attention away from their parents. I had a child ones who came to me I was a fifth Medical Center. He had headaches, chest pain, and stomach aches. And nobody could find a cause for these symptoms. When I, the last Medical Center, send them to me said, they knew I did hypnosis, and they figured a psychological and I thought it was psychological as well, because stress causes all those things, headaches, chest pain, and stomach aches. And I told the parents, hey, let me teach your child hypnosis. If I'm correctly, these are all related to stress, you'll get much better. And the child I could tell was interesting. The parents said, we're both university professors. We believe in the mind body connection, going up can let you teach our child to do posts, and they left. And I'm thinking Hmm, why would parents who have gone to five different medical centers not want me to teach their child how to help himself get better? And I could think of a few reasons. One reason is, they would feel foolish, because they've been looking for so long. Another reason might be that they were having trouble in their marriage. And by focusing on the child's illness, they didn't, it helped them cope with their trouble, right? And that kind of scenario. And I've seen that in other cases, if the child may not get better, either, because a child needs to play that sick role within the family. So it can get actually quite complex.

Greg Voisen
So your counseling is not only with the patient, but it's with the parents of the patients as well, because you obviously are working with them along the way. Correct?

Dr. Ran Anbar
Correct. So family members often play a role in the patient, if I may, one time I work with an 85 year old lady, and the only reason I was working with her she had habit cos pulmonary problem that resolves nurses habit, cough is a cough without a physical cause. And it can last for years as it had in hers. And she was referred to me by her pulmonologist asked, Can I please help. So I said, Sure. So I met with her and I taught her hypnosis and a cough improved. But like many other physical symptoms, as we got to know each other, we found out her cough got worse when she became frustrated with her husband, and husband had worked all his life, but he was retired. And she had worked all her life, and she wanted some help from him in the house, and he wouldn't give her the help. He wasn't used to doing that. And she was really aggravated with him. And that's when her cough would manifest itself. And I ended up sending him to marriage therapy at the age of 80.

Greg Voisen
At the age of 80, something well, you know, like a lot of marriages go a long time doesn't mean they're perfect. It just means that we've developed ways to tolerate, right? You state that nearly every aspect of medicine has an artistic component as well as a scientific one, but that it is rarely discussed because creativity and sensitivity are more difficult to observe and describe, measure and replicate that pure science. If you would speak with us about the power of the words with empathy and creativity to help heal patients.

Dr. Ran Anbar
So, all good physicians are careful with what they say. And they're aware that how they present information will affect the patient. So for example, if I'm going to put you on a medication, and I say, hey, let's try this medicine and see how it works, if it doesn't work, we'll try something else, that's gonna get one result from the patient, as opposed to, hey, let's do this medication has helped many of my patients I believe is going to help you, it's going to get a different result. This kind of approach is not discussed in medical schools, of course, not discussed by pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical companies, and yet is vital in terms of getting the best results for your patients. And that's just a small example. So when you learn how to do hypnosis, as a, as a clinician, it sensitizes you how to talk to people. So for example, we will talk about when your stomach improves, then you can resume your life as opposed to when your stomach stops hurting. Because when you say stops hurting, the patient hears hurt, and that makes the stomach feel worse. So just simple words like that can make a big difference in how we talk to ourselves. Same kind of thing. When you say, I'm afraid I'm going to fail my test tomorrow, you're more apt to do poorly than if you say, I would like to do well on my test tomorrow. Again, that's actually the first lesson when I meet a patient, I teach them about the power of words.

Greg Voisen
Well, this show is around personal development. And for years, I've done interviews with authors on, you know, everything, from affirmations, to mantras, to meditation to whatever it is, and all of these tools, all these processes, all of these techniques are to reprogram the mind. Such that the mind is not, you know, in this case, kind of controlling the outcome and your case, you're getting to the subconscious mind, which is being reprogrammed, and I love it. Now, you're aware that hypnosis works best when the children you treat, have buy in for what you're doing. And we just talked about this, because of the way you say it, you use exercises to get them to experience the power of the mind. One example in the book was applied Kinesiology. I mean, at least that's what I assumed. You said, Lift up your arm, push your arm down, associated with being strong or weak. Can you explain how this works and the effects it has on your patients, because it is the power of suggestion, you tell me, I'm pushing against my arm. You know, I've had that done by numerous doctors. But

Dr. Ran Anbar
tell us though, the demonstration really show is that the child puts out their arm and I tell them to resist me when I say when they say themselves, I'm weak and weak and weak, they become weak. When they say I'm strong, they remain strong. And when they say I'm not weak, they become weak as well. And then we discussed that the main word we use is what the mind focuses on. And then there's a corollary to that demonstration, I, I have them hold out the arm and I say to them, you're weak, and they get weak. And I say to them, you're strong and they become strong, then we talk about how they take other people's input in, and that affects their strength as well. And therefore they want to surround themselves with positive people, I will have the parent in the room for these demonstrations. Because the parent needs to learn how to talk differently to the child, sort of saying stop yelling, the parent might say, become standard, stay calm or become calmer. And then finally I teach the child you can block this effect I asked him how do you think you can block when I see weak? How can you block me? They pretty quickly forgot. They can tell themselves that they're strong. And then they stay strong? And then I tell them? Have you ever dealt with any bullies who made you feel bad? And they'll say yeah, and I said who's responsible for you're feeling bad. And some of them will say the bullies. Some people will say me and we ultimately yeah, you're responsible because you let it in. If you don't want to, you can block it, and nobody can affect you without your permission. And that's the first lesson which is really powerful. As you mentioned applied kinesiology, I want to say a little warning for the listeners. What I've learned with this arm strength demonstration, is that my beliefs as the practitioner affects the arms response, even when I'm not aware of it. My subconscious belief can affect our response. And I think one of the few reasons that pi kinesiology does not have the best reputations is because people are doing like testing for food allergies, and they say Oh, you must be allergic to this food because your arm went down. However, what they don't realize is that if that's a practitioner thought there might be an allergic reaction. They can cause the arm to go down without even being aware they're doing it. I learned about this myself, when I had a medical students stand behind me. And I was testing out whether patients good arm gets strong or weak. What I expect is what the patient did. But it had nothing to do with the patient was thinking. So I learned that, that it's that that's part of it. So to be careful when you use it

Greg Voisen
very much so and but it is used a lot by chiropractors and folks to test for allergies or to test for muscle weakness, or, you know what, but they it is being used, but I totally concur that the words you use are so powerful. And the way in which a physician who wears a white coat speaks with a patient because he speaks from authority can actually have either a positive or negative impact on the outcome of that patient is a way in which they address that patient's conditions. So the little simple changes in the words that you used in your example are so important. And you speak about identifying your patient's pain and state that this becomes complicated with the fact that the emotional and psychological factors hold sway over the way pain presents itself. What are some of the techniques that you use to identify the pain? And how does this differ from conventional medicine and the tools that we use to identify the patient's pain?

Dr. Ran Anbar
Well, pain is subjective. So the patient's pain is defined by the patient. That's the first thing. So I'll ask the patient. And then the tools to deal with the pain involves teaching the patients to redirect their thinking, either by distracting themselves to the pain, for example, by imagining being in a safe, comfortable place, or directly thinking about the pain and maybe imagining a pain or a comfort dial at domestic pain, dial it comfort dial that if you dial up, if you dial up, you're in more discomfort, if you dial down, you're in less discomfort in the patients can actually modulate their pain. And before we move too far, from the word of the discussion about words, making a diagnosis can be harmful. Doctors make diagnoses because they're trying to figure out how to best treat you and can bill for the insurance company. But if you aren't told you have a certain diagnosis, some patients or many patients just take this to heart. This is what claim it, they claim it and they believe it can't be changed. Yeah. And that is so wrong. I fell into that same trap. One point, my doctor told me, you have familial hypercholesterolemia, you have high cholesterol, genetic, great, nothing I could do about it. Well, that's wrong. I learned later in life when I after I lost a lot of weight, that my cholesterol became completely normal. So what I have is a familiar tendency to high cholesterol. But that doesn't mean I can't do anything about it. And so too often, doctors, by giving us a diagnosis make us feel trapped in the tough dive into that diagnosis.

Greg Voisen
Well, epigenetics like you can walk around and decide you're going to believe what He says or not believe what he or she says. And in your case, because you're a physician, you get you had the ability to rebuke that, that authority word about familiar cholesterol conditions, you know, and so I understand because I came from a family with all kinds of things associated with cholesterol and heart disease and so on. But that doesn't mean it has to be you. So just because it was in the genetics, and it depends, a lot of people say, Oh, it's genetics, it's genetics. It's genetics. No, no, you're an individual soul. You were born into this world the way you were born in. And your history plays an important role, how you eat, how you exercise, all those are factors we could talk about. Now. But you and your book, and this is my kind of my last question here with a with Paul, your patient, having handwritten a poem that he disavowed knowledge of having written the poem. And you it's nicely typed in your book, by the way, and you come in about was the problems are worked out in the subconscious? And then the answer is delivered into awareness. Can you tell the story and the awareness that you believe Paul came to as a result of this poem? Because it's like he said, Why didn't write the poem, but in essence, he did.

Dr. Ran Anbar
His subconscious did. Yes. And poetry is really interesting. Some people say that channels and poems. The subconscious says the channels that contradicts it says, I'm not writing it either comes from outside of me. Actually, a lot of great poets have talked about channeling poetry. So it's an interesting concept. Remember, I talked to you earlier about the idea that in our subconscious, we have ability to communicate perhaps with something outside of us. In Paul's case, the poem actually predicted his death. And we actually talked about at some length. And he wanted to understand what it meant to him. And I helped him interpret it. So the subconscious, maybe at some level knew what was going to happen. Maybe I knew at some level, he was going to die, because I sent him to make your wish. Four months before his death, make a wish, is an organization, typically for terminally ill children. But at that time, they also took in children who were at risk of death. And I argued he was at risk because he had bad milk allergy. And they, they actually took him under, after some a twisted their arm, he went to the NBA Finals, Utah Jazz against the Chicago Bulls in 1988, which was his wish. So maybe I knew at some level that it's going to come to this. And maybe I knew at some level, I write this book, because we, Paul and I talked about, that he was teaching me so much, and that I would write a book about it. And this book is a fulfillment of that promise?

Greg Voisen
Well, it's a great way to kind of bring your book, bring closure to your book, I should say, because Paul did pass away, as you had mentioned. And the reality, though, is you can, you can really see how you brought around the power of the subconscious mind, no matter what that was that souls journey, had a start date and an end date is all of ours do, and how you treat it in between is important. And I think what you're doing is so important for people to look for alternatives. You know, just because you're going to pulmonologist for your child, doesn't mean that you can't try something different. And what I'd encourage my listeners who are listening today to this is, at first, if you want just go get the book, you can get it on Amazon, we'll put a link to it. Changing children's lives with hypnosis, and ran and bar is our guest. And please go do that. And again, to learn more about how he treats patients, and how you can get in touch with him, go to Centerpoint medicine.com. We're going to put a link to that as well. And for the listeners who might be considering hypnosis for themselves or their children, what, what are some of the things that you would say kind of wrapping up here, that would give an opportunity for us to kind of speak a little bit more about, say, if they have questions. I'm dubious about what it is that you do, I really want to know more. What would you tell them other than getting the book.

Dr. Ran Anbar
While they can I have another website called Centerpoint hypnosis.com. That talks more about hypnosis, what that is, I would encourage them to check out that website, they might also check out the website of the American Society of Clinical hypnosis, hey, S C h.net. That has a lot of information about hypnosis. And I would tell them, there is no downside as long as your child's interested. Because if they're not interested, nothing's going to happen. As long as it's not interested. There's only potential benefit. And if we have one more moment, if I can talk to you about the book cover briefly, I got a chance to help pick the book cover. And I went through hundreds of photographs of boys and in boats on a lake because that was where Paul used to imagine going to is to relax in a lake. And after the book cover was picked several months later, I was looking@bing.com and images of kids on a lake. And apcom came up with a book cover in color version. And it said more photos like it. And it's it said where the photograph was taken. It was taken in Oneida lake in New York, which was 18 miles from where Paul lived. And this is probably his Lake. Somehow, through Providence I picked out of hundreds of other photographs.

Greg Voisen
It said divine intervention there, you really did have that, again, for my listeners. Thanks for taking the time today to impart some of your wisdom about Gnosis and in particular hypnosis on children. And how you apply that. We'll put links to your website, we'll put links to the book. It's been a pleasure having you as a guest on inside personal growth. And please, everybody, if you have questions, go to his website, send an email. Check it out. We'll put links to all of these. Thanks so much for being on.

Dr. Ran Anbar
Thank you so much for having me.

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