Steve Bierman, Hypnosis and NLP in the ER |570|

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Steve Bierman, Hypnosis and NLP in the ER |570|
by Alex Tsakiris | Sep 20 | Consciousness Science
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Dr. Steve Bierman is vertern ER physician and hypnotherapist who explains why compassion isn’t enough when it comes to patient communication.
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I don't have the experience or knowledge in this area to offer an adequately informed medical opinion, but, I've read anecdotal accounts that affirm the power of positive thinking, and I've applied that in general to my way of living, with generally beneficial results ( for me anyway ). One of the first things I applied it to was improving my memory.

For example, when the word I'm looking for isn't coming to mind, instead of saying, "I can't remember." I started saying, "I don't recall what it is right now, but it will come to me later." Sure enough, it never seems to fail. It's as if I've told my brain that it's in there someplace and to start running a search for it. It might take a few seconds or minutes or hours or longer, but it always surfaces.

Another example is that I rarely get ill, but if I do, and it starts to drag-on longer than I expect, I just say to myself, "I've had enough of this. I'm going to get moving and kick the crap out of whatever this thing is". Then I just just will myself to get up, go outside, get some cardio happening, and imagine how that is speeding up all aspects of my metabolism, including my self-repair systems — and it seems to work.

Obviously, there's some stuff that requires external treatment, but even the success of those treatments seems to be enhanced by the same sort of personal will to persist.

The bottom line for me when it comes to medicine, is that the ideal treatment is the kind that works whether you believe in it or not. It's even better if it works when you don't believe in it — like blood transfusions, or the antidote to a poison. With treatments that good, all the psychological support systems in the library are irrelevant. I wish all treatments were that effective, and I see no reason why someday they can't be.

To answer Alex's question, do I believe Bierman's account of him helping to normalize a patient's heart rhythm using his method? I see no reason to doubt his word. I've experienced similar arrhythmias, and I know in no uncertain terms that my mind was able to affect the condition. There's also extremely powerful evidence that making a connection with another person directly affects heart rhythm.

All in all, it seems very positive to me. At the very least, I don't see how it could harm anyone. If it were widely implemented, I think it would likely result in an overall improvement to the medical system. My only caution would be to not become a purveyor of false hope that causes patients to avoid solid science based treatment that they later find out would have benefitted them.


 

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Great episode so far.
I like to think I have a sensitive ear for NLP. I can’t stand listening to people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hypnotize people for political non-healing purposes, especially children.
I wonder what Dr. Bierman would say are the buried/implicit meaning(s) inside of phrases such as:
-Black Lives Matter
-Flatten the Curve
-I Can’t Breath
-Stay 6ft. Apart
-Believe All Women
-Save the Planet
-Trust the Science
-Make America Great Again
-Trust the Plan
-Get out and Vote
 
Alex,

That is an excellent podcast! I am still listening to it, but I'd encourage everyone here to listen. I'm also getting his book.

David
Yes. I found it very interesting. That said, I was a bit perplexed when he talked about dealing with a cancer patient. He seemed to more or less accept that the only vaid way of "hypnotising" them was in terms of making a certain course of action seem more acceptable to them. IOW, he wasn't questioning the mainstream version of what cancer is and how to cure it.

Whilst to some extent he seems to challenge conventional narratives, in others, i.e. cancer, he doesn't. Apparently "miracles" can't happen when it comes to cancer. He seems to be saying to himself: here's this patient who has cancer, and in his/her particular case, s(he) needs chemo, surgery, drugs or radiation therapy or some combination thereof. Okay, I'll get myself on his/her side and keep them optimistic, because their optimism will be very helpful to them.

One wonders if he's aware of alternative therapies such as Essiac treatment, or of cases where it really does seem that "miracles" happen, such as in the case of Anita Moorjani, where there's a spiritual element involved with her NDE.

He seems to be in a kind of half-way house, where he recognises the tremendous healing power of the body, and how important for that is human psychology, but is still somewhat tied to allopathic medicine, which in large part, I think, addresses symptoms rather than causes.

I'm not saying that his approach isn't an improvement on common medical practice; it probably is. But he doesn't seem to have gone the whole hog yet. Maybe his job would be endangered if he did. OTOH, for himself personally, he didn't mind journeying to the jungle to see a shaman and get cured that way rather than resorting to the surgery that had been proposed for him.

Maybe he's gone as far as he can given his situation.
 
Alex,

That is an excellent podcast! I am still listening to it, but I'd encourage everyone here to listen. I'm also getting his book.

David
I really like the interview from the start. I was taught that "mirroring" technique while dealing w/ upset children. Get eye-level contact w/ them, match the breathing as much as possible, & tell them they'll be just fine. I think this is the basis for the Voice "myth" in Star Wars & other literature. I've run across it in lowly, free sci-fi literature as well. In fact, I am of the mind that the vaxxing phenomenon of protection against the COVID boogey-man is none other than the placebo effect.
 
Yes. I found it very interesting. That said, I was a bit perplexed when he talked about dealing with a cancer patient. He seemed to more or less accept that the only vaid way of "hypnotising" them was in terms of making a certain course of action seem more acceptable to them. IOW, he wasn't questioning the mainstream version of what cancer is and how to cure it.

Whilst to some extent he seems to challenge conventional narratives, in others, i.e. cancer, he doesn't. Apparently "miracles" can't happen when it comes to cancer. He seems to be saying to himself: here's this patient who has cancer, and in his/her particular case, s(he) needs chemo, surgery, drugs or radiation therapy or some combination thereof. Okay, I'll get myself on his/her side and keep them optimistic, because their optimism will be very helpful to them.

One wonders if he's aware of alternative therapies such as Essiac treatment, or of cases where it really does seem that "miracles" happen, such as in the case of Anita Moorjani, where there's a spiritual element involved with her NDE.

He seems to be in a kind of half-way house, where he recognises the tremendous healing power of the body, and how important for that is human psychology, but is still somewhat tied to allopathic medicine, which in large part, I think, addresses symptoms rather than causes.

I'm not saying that his approach isn't an improvement on common medical practice; it probably is. But he doesn't seem to have gone the whole hog yet. Maybe his job would be endangered if he did. OTOH, for himself personally, he didn't mind journeying to the jungle to see a shaman and get cured that way rather than resorting to the surgery that had been proposed for him.

Maybe he's gone as far as he can given his situation.

Yes, I suppose his exploration is constrained by the fact that he has a hospital job in the US! Is it even possible that before the podcast he said to Alex, "let's avoid certain avenues so as not to get me into serious trouble"!

If a shaman can fix a serious damage to the neck in a very short amount of time, what can't they fix?

The fact that he discussed his visit to the Shaman quite openly was stunning. Alex missed a chance to ask him whether he would have gone to the Shaman if he had received a cancer diagnosis! Explaining all these phenomena as a "generalised placebo effect' seemed a bit weak too - I mean the placebo effect is itself an anomaly in need of an explanation.

The value of what he is doing is really that he is spilling a lot of medical experience of anomalies out to the public - rather like the hospice nurses who have a blog describing all the things that happen as people die:

https://allnurses.com/death-bed-visions-t214844/

David
 
I really like the interview from the start. I was taught that "mirroring" technique while dealing w/ upset children. Get eye-level contact w/ them, match the breathing as much as possible, & tell them they'll be just fine. I think this is the basis for the Voice "myth" in Star Wars & other literature. I've run across it in lowly, free sci-fi literature as well. In fact, I am of the mind that the vaxxing phenomenon of protection against the COVID boogey-man is none other than the placebo effect.
Except of course that it is increasingly clear that it has done a huge amount of harm.

David
 
Yes. I found it very interesting. That said, I was a bit perplexed when he talked about dealing with a cancer patient. He seemed to more or less accept that the only vaid way of "hypnotising" them was in terms of making a certain course of action seem more acceptable to them. IOW, he wasn't questioning the mainstream version of what cancer is and how to cure it.

Whilst to some extent he seems to challenge conventional narratives, in others, i.e. cancer, he doesn't. Apparently "miracles" can't happen when it comes to cancer. He seems to be saying to himself: here's this patient who has cancer, and in his/her particular case, s(he) needs chemo, surgery, drugs or radiation therapy or some combination thereof. Okay, I'll get myself on his/her side and keep them optimistic, because their optimism will be very helpful to them.

One wonders if he's aware of alternative therapies such as Essiac treatment, or of cases where it really does seem that "miracles" happen, such as in the case of Anita Moorjani, where there's a spiritual element involved with her NDE.

He seems to be in a kind of half-way house, where he recognises the tremendous healing power of the body, and how important for that is human psychology, but is still somewhat tied to allopathic medicine, which in large part, I think, addresses symptoms rather than causes.

I'm not saying that his approach isn't an improvement on common medical practice; it probably is. But he doesn't seem to have gone the whole hog yet. Maybe his job would be endangered if he did. OTOH, for himself personally, he didn't mind journeying to the jungle to see a shaman and get cured that way rather than resorting to the surgery that had been proposed for him.

Maybe he's gone as far as he can given his situation.
He also made it quite clear that he kept his innovation on the down-low where needed. I believe this would apply to Cancer more than anything.

Cancer being probably the largest industrial medical concern including narrative key words and all, had/must/has to be like the most difficult.
choosing his 10-20 words (which is all he said often had time for) carefully must have included avoiding making any statements about Cancer which don’t line up with 99% of the industry. Such statements would likely do more harm than good until the day that number gets chipped away to like 85-80%. Aka “you can heal this cancer” said in 2022 would probably snap anyone out of a trance state into like “wtf did you just say?”
If he represented himself truthfully, I have a feeling he might be working a lot behind the scenes regarding cancer, and if he had any major successes they wouldn’t be stated on record for now.
 
Near the beginning of the interview:
So true about the power of words & framing. I've read a lot of the NLP literature (e.g. Bandler & Grinder, Derren Brown, etc.). In a lecture, Bandler used an example from the German language, that 'hospital' = 'Krankenhaus' = 'Sick House' / 'House for sick people'... Instead, a more helpful term would be e.g. house of healing
 
Around the 21:00 timestamp:
In western countries at least, there aren't enough doctors being trained, so they get overworked / don't have enough time for each patient.

Thus like so many degenerate manifestations in western countries, the main blame can be found in a relatively tiny group of psychopaths at the helm
 
39:30
NLP specifics
I once saw a Derren Brown episode in which through NLP and hypnosis he cured people (at least temporarily) of different ailments. Similarly Paul Mckenna, who'd learnt directly from Bandler

Does anyone know of a way to cure allergies using these techniques?
(I have a strong allergy to grass and plane trees, and antihistamine medication doesn't work)
 
58:00
'Generic Placebo Suggestion'
Seems that Steve Bierman is universalising this too much though, and in the process overlooking the anomalies/ paranormal abilities of the shaman involved (e.g. remote viewing(?), clairvoyancy(?), blowing frigid air onto the patient).........
 
1:00:00
Alex goes on to ask the same questions I had: what agency did the shaman have in all of this?
 
I was a bit disappointed by Bierman's reaction to the Dr Michael Newton past incarnation regression story. To compare that to curing phobias using NLP is unfair. The latter is well-known by NLP practitioners to be one of the simplest, most effective procedures. But Bierman seems to be implying that the arm of Dr Newton's patient could have been cured using a simple NLP technique. Maybe, but maybe not...

I think that can be a weakness of NLP, that the search for the underlying cause of an ailment is downplayed, even looked down on (at least Bandler is vociferous in this regard)
 
Near the end of the interview, I was impressed that Bierman directly addressed NLP being used for evil. (Not just bad results through ignorance, but willful hurting of people through NLP)

I'll just add, that according to Grinder, the main reason why he and Bandler fell out is that Bandler was using NLP in an immoral way
 
I was a bit disappointed by Bierman's reaction to the Dr Michael Newton past incarnation regression story. To compare that to curing phobias using NLP is unfair. The latter is well-known by NLP practitioners to be one of the simplest, most effective procedures. But Bierman seems to be implying that the arm of Dr Newton's patient could have been cured using a simple NLP technique. Maybe, but maybe not...

I think that can be a weakness of NLP, that the search for the underlying cause of an ailment is downplayed, even looked down on (at least Bandler is vociferous in this regard)

I'm a huge believer in the Past Incarnation Regression story, but I was actually buoyed by Bierman's perspective because it once again tells us there's more out there (Horatio)... I agree that some of those cases could very well be just the power of the suggestion, but obviously not all of them.
Too many corroborating details with the material facts to say it's all just how the person reframes things.
But that's a deeper conversation that's outside of his expertise.
This is one of the bigger arguments I have against the idea of some grand conspiracy. Everyone is working diligently in their own little fiefdoms and really can't see the forest for the trees. And when you settle on a particular belief system suddenly all those trees have a specific purpose. They may be only there for your beavers to gnaw down. Or for shelter. Or for sawing into logs. Or gathering nuts and maple syrup.
The main point of a forest is its diversity of functionality.
The danger of the human experience is when we decide things are REALLY ONLY this one thing. Life ain't like that. This incarnation is an amusement park of experiences.
 
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