Dr. John Butler

Liza interviews Dr. John Butler, PhD, Executive Director for the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners.

Dr John Butler is a highly regarded hypnotherapist with over 40 years of proven experience as a successful clinical practitioner. He has been a therapist to many high-level performers in the performing arts, the media, and business. He has been a highly regarded teacher of clinical hypnotherapy for over 30 years, gaining many awards for his teaching and a vast number of testimonials. He has been a hypnotherapy educator to a wide variety of health professionals, including writing and tutoring. The first official training in hypnotherapy in the NHS was in 1992, and he taught at the Royal College of Nursing in London.

John Butler Transcript

[MUSIC]

Good afternoon, John.
Good afternoon, Liza.
I want to tell our viewers, actually, this is one of my biggest dream and
honor and privilege to be sitting here next to you, sir.
And introducing Dr. John Butler, one of our esteemed hypnotherapist in this work.
Plus, our CEO of our organization of ACHE and former president and everything else.
Dr. Butler, would you please introduce yourself and
just give us a brief history of your work?
Yes, well, thank you, Liza.
I’ve been in the work, well, I’m thinking that 42 years,
44 years professionally, I’m teaching for 34 years.
I’ve used hypnotherapy in a wide variety of applications.
A lot of them in the mental health,
quite a few in the medical applications, chronic illnesses,
and also in in surguries for people coping with the very difficult surgeries may have.
And sometimes there are where recovery is complicated.
And sometimes they have problems with medications, so
if they can’t have a static, for example, we can use hypnosis to replace that.
To use their own natural chemical anesthesia, which we all possess.
Internally.
Yes, we all have our own opiates, serotonin, adrenaline, and so on.
Okay, well, Dr. Butler, for our viewers, you’ve been practicing and
you are practicing in UK, that’s where your home basis.
Yes, that’s right.
Okay.
And yet you travel everywhere.
I’ve been teaching in person classes in different countries for many, many years.
Correct.
In the US, in different parts of Europe, in the Middle East, and so on.
Perfect.
When you started talking about the clinical factor of anesthesia,
you yourself performed in UK a surgery, hernia surgery that was filmed.
Yes, that’s correct.
I was offered a general anesthetic, as far as I was told I
would need for this particular hernia, quite a severe one.
And I would injury if I were to sustain.
And I know I don’t need an aesthetics.
So I said I hope need that, and I would just use hypnosis, which I did.
And it happened to be filmed because I had
an opportunity with a very good cameraman who
is available, who I knew through different connections.
And it was just very much a synchronous thing.
Okay.
That he was available, and I said to
him, let’s do this for educational purposes.
And that’s excited people to imagination.
That you can do this for yourself, as well as when you’re learned to be a hypnotist.
You can learn to do that to help other people.
And from any people who don’t need, or who don’t have a problem with the anesthetic,
well maybe they’re very elderly.
And the recovery from the anesthetic may be a bit long.
Or other complications within the surgery, for example, post-operative infection.
Right.
If you’re elderly and various factors
complain to that, you can use hypnosis, speed up the healing.
And dramatically, we’ve seen from the data we
have, dramatically cut down the risk of infections.
Well, I do use self-hypnosis for my root canals and I’ve
done eight of them with absolutely no anesthesia or topical.
And yet, hernia, that means the surgeons, the hospital, everything
everyone had to be on board and approve of this, correct?
Because it is a real surgery.
Of course.
It has to be, and we’ve done other surgeries and not all hernias.
Of course.
It’s legally and medically, it has to be justified and agreed by hospital management
and the lawyers and so on, of course.
And this is just for the viewers, you cannot
learn how to do hypnosis and a week later
go and do a surgery, please.
I just wanted to make sure it takes years
of practice for the self-hypnosis to do that
kind of an induction, correct?
Well, you had other.
You had ground in literally going into that mindset.
Of course, of course.
Well, the human mind is a very complex thing of these.
The power was within there, in there, to be able to do that.
For example, in emergency setting, a person
could get on the sees you’ve got level straight off.
However, often they would not, because of
fear, the negative feelings from people about
the whole thing, from other people around them.
For example, if it’s a street accident, people
are often saying silly things, you know, and that couldn’t induce a state of fear.
So there’s no way then they’re going to be able to use their anesthesia.
When we call it elective surgery, a person
is allowing, maybe they’re getting ready for
it for a few weeks, and that can allow time to worry
and think about it in the negative way for some people.
So you would need to take that into account.
Because those are negative suggestions in themselves.
So training a person to do it, well, I usually
do it with four or five sessions, maybe.
I’ve done it in the last, but so that makes
sure that they’re safe and we’ve tested it well.
Now, if you want to do it to yourself, yes, it
usually would take a longer period of practice.
That’s my experience.
I wish you wouldn’t because I told it to
many people, but you’re very few will do it.
Now, there won’t spend the time often to dedicate,
to mastering the suggestions for numbness and anesthesia and so on.
But it’s practically shall we say doable in an emergency like that.
Right.
What exactly if you want to share with our
viewers the difference between meditation and
hypnosis and the power that we use with or subconscious mind.
If we go just a little bit about that because
in the United States, utilizing hypnosis,
especially in California, due to government and policies and red tapes.
It’s not as invited in a hospital setting.
Yes.
Well, are you saying that if a person was
learning meditation that could use that as well?
Because there’s a great overlap between hypnosis and meditation.
They’re both tapping the inner mind.
Right.
Usually, for different purposes, in the sense
that the hypnosis, we say it has an element
of directiveness or intention.
Telling the subconscious, I want this to be
numb or I want this healing or that to happen.
Now, in practice, we’re over 40 years and you have a school also.
You teach in UK.
We have many schools here in the United States
as a matter of fact, this weekend we are
at our conference and the entire thing started.
Our organization started with Gill Boyne.
Correct.
Where it was in Glendale, that’s where I attended and started.
So our conference is ACHE is mainly to bring
people to a accreditation of the person,
certifying them, and also certifying schools?
Absolutely.
It’s a very important organization.
It’s a 501 and it exists to promote the
profession and the members interest, the
members who have learned hypnotherapy to it.
To a certain level so that we know through the
schools that ACHE approved, that that person
is trained in a certain way to a certain level
and the organization then certifies those people as members.
It has maintained that work for all we’re now
talking 44 years since 1980 and Gill Boyne
was the founding member of it and along with
several other people then they set up the
first board and it’s continued that work ever since.
So it’s a very, very important organization to build in the therapy.
Its legacy is history and the work it continues to do to this day.
And it is always about standards which is about
protecting the public in a genuine way and it is the profession itself.
The people who train with schools in the ACHE
know that they are getting a solid training.
The conference is one of the times that people
can meet up in person and that’s a wonderful event.
It’s a wonderful education event as well as
networking and renewing friendships and making new friends.
The opportunity to learn from people who are actually working in the field.
Who do this work day and day out.
That’s invaluable.
It is because even else have no therapist
when we sit in a room that is a work crop and it’s a whole new speaker.
No matter how much we know, it’s always
fantastic to be refreshed and relearned probably
a new technique, a new way of doing that.
We either get so ingrained in our work or having a new way of doing it.
It’s like refreshing.
Absolutely.
Each practitioner who has an therapy is a
very individual person in the sense that they
have learned about the mind and you are
hearing a little mind’s interpretation of this work.
They are neurosynactic connections that they
require learning and practicing over the years.
You are tapping into that.
It gives you new perspective, new angles.
Even it’s like reading the very best books.
If you read it a few different times each time you
visit the book you are seeing in different places.
You are reading it a different brain.
This is a wonderful opportunity to come to a conference
like this and make the most of what’s on offer.
We are very careful about the topics and people who are selected to speak.
Dr. Butler, one of our viewers might turn around and say why have no friends.
What are the things that are in the world?
I would love for you to share the light on that.
Well, hypothyropic specializes in directly communicating with the subconscious mind.
We can do it indirectly as well.
As a hypothyropic you must learn how to use it directly.
To activate its power and guide that power towards specific ends.
Now cognitive therapy, the word cognition is very broadly applied in psychology.
Going back to cognitive psychology in the 60s and even earlier.
It has come to mean the intellectual aspects
of therapy more than the subconscious as
what we are promoting to study.
Now a good end of the therapist will use elements of cognition.
You can’t avoid it anyway.
They will have learned about how you use thoughts
to target certain feelings, change certain
feelings, generate certain feelings, but they won’t be relying on that only.
They are talking directly to the subconscious mind.
Well, like when I’m studying about the
subconscious for surgery you must activate it so
that you can release those neurochemicals that will be able to modulate pain.
Now intellectually telling your brain I won’t
have pain is not enough because the
subconscious may be saying, “Oh yes, you will.”
And so rather than trying to work to this
subconscious indirectly through the cognitive
faculties which can become very intellectual
in some people’s cases, you go directly to
the subconscious.
So there is an overlap of course but the
therapist is a subconscious specialist for the simple age.
Perfect.
As you see there is the clinical version of being a hypnotherapist and of course you
may have viewed some stage hypnosis which you believe there is the stage performance
and the entertainment aspect of it although we can all do that, our specialty and most
of the therapist in here we do the clinical aspect of it.
Correct?
Well of course, yeah.
Because our interest is in helping people with
their emotional, to me, in physical problems
where in which the physical problems which the
mind has a important role and that are triggering
the illness in the first instance or being an
exacerbatory factor because illness of course
can come from organic sources and organic nature
come from viruses, infections and accidents and so on.
And even then our body is not rehealing mechanism,
must cope with that and that’s subconsciously regulated.
So you see the great power of hypnosis to
activate the healing system when you know to
use subconscious to activate the healing
system to help with those physical problems.
And so we can do great work really in so many ways with hypnotherapy as a modality.
It is a very deep modality.
It embraces a wide range of philosophical approaches
and it is the foundation of psychotherapy.
It’s not a technique used at all of psychotherapy.
How did you hear that?
It is the foundation of psychotherapy.
Yes, historically the work of Mesmer who drew on other people’s work from the
Middle Ages times in fact going back to the philosophy of the magnetic energy, magnetic
fluid and so on, which is probably like a
life energy or however they conceptualize it
and in Mesmer’s case he thought of a very much life electrical energy.
But he also understood about the power and suggestion.
Anyway the dramatic results that Mesmer was
getting by triggering people’s minds through
the emotional catharsis and crisis as he called it.
That was taken up by people who said well we
don’t have to think about it as a magnetic energy or the animal fluid.
This animal magnetism is called, “an was meaning the soul.”
So, I’m not sure if you necessarily mean an animal.
That people then said well we are going to get away from that theory but we will keep
the rest of the imagination, the suggestion
and that led to modern hypnotherapy over time.
Of course one branch of that was Freudian
because Freud studied with Shaco who was a Mesmer
who was a very famous anatomist one of the most famous neuro anatomists all the time.
That’s how it came about.
Freud thought it knows it was a bit unreliable
and the other problems with it for a.
Later on the humidity we needed to be using it. After about 30 years he came back to
his own members, his own followers and said, ‘You need to use it’ in houses,
Roger and Riley were free association in dreams only but it never took off.
Within psychoanalysis, although afterwards, maybe 20, 30 years later, some of.
Them, some in psychoanalysis, psychiatrists using his methods drifted back into
using hypnosis and nowadays many, many people are using hypnosis or
aspects of hypnosis. They don’t always call it common sound.
The colored visualization, guided visualization.
Yes. Because when you’re working with the mind, subconscious, you’re
working with the way it affects the conscious mind, how it affects the
body. It’s at the foundation of your being where you’re really dealing with it
and so, therefore, it embraces all philosophy, all forms of psychology that
pertain to the individual and their health and actions and so on. So, by definition
it has to be very broad based. That’s why you can’t say there’s only one kind
of hypnotherapy, we’re called a cognitive hypnotherapy. Well, cognitive behavior.
Or hypnotherapy, no, you can’t restrict it at a loan.
Is that CBD? Yes, right.
So, you can say, I’m a hypnotherapist who uses a lot of CBD. Well, that’s true.
Would you come restrict yourself only to it? Otherwise, you’re even on hypnotherapy.
Now, you can be a CBT therapist who uses some hypnosis
to help your work, but you really are a CBT therapist.
Right. Right. Now, Dr. Butler, you work with military, you work with huge.
Four-to-five hundred corporations and
everything. Why would a company bring you on
to help or the military bring you on if it is
not just one-on-one and yet it is a one-on-one,
but a corporation bringing a hypnotherapist for their management or staff?
Sure. Well, they hear of my work and they know me from having given talks before.
I mean, so long story how I got started, that was often individuals who were sent me
very often men in those days and they were wives who maybe were in classes I taught,
said he needs to see you. And I said, well, it’s up to him to come.
Anyway, he would come and get benefit and
he’d say, can we do this for our executives?
Can we not use the word hypnosis? And I said, of course, because if there is
understanding of anyway, their objection to it
is primarily on the basis of misunderstanding.
It’s primarily around this idea of taking over
my mind and you’re irreducing me and that’s
a bit scary. So they’re just reiterating old
Hollywood tropes, so misunderstandings from
the old films. Correct. Like Sven Galley and so on. So I would say, yes, we’ll
work on what we call it something else. You know, what we call it a psychology.
Or a young woman form or another. And so that’s how I got started in doing that. And
they have many reasons to bring you in. Stress management, performance, and health
and helping people learn them. In some of the
huge firms I’ve worked with for accountancy,
people are going to be tough exams. Right. And we’re working to help with their study
methods for military folks, attention,
concentration, performing under stress, dealing with
situations where anxiety is going to come into
play for a lot of people. So those are just
some of the ways we may be using them. And of course, some of these people, they are
all who need to improve their management
methods. Well, they’re interpersonal skills,
really. They’re good managers in the sense of…
Actually, self-esteem and self-confidence
plays a lot and also speaking abilities. Yes.
And we’re coming a better speaker that it’s also
becoming confident enough to speak. Absolutely.
Those are some of the things that they really
want help with. And I’ve dealt with that.
Over the years many, many times. Beautiful.
And with the military and everything, it would
be more of the stress management, anxiety, panic, and the fears and phobias that also
go and go. Oh, of course, right? People with
PTSD, often why I’ve worked with soldiers who
have been through that and have problems, so
they have flashbacks to association, states
of mine that are very like multiple personnel,
you know, associated with that sort of. They
have depression and other factors as well, of
course. Now, we hope them with all of that.
The therapy is a marvelous method to help
people master that problems, those problems that
are left over from combat and so on. Yes.
And then, hoping people in different areas of
military learning, I’ve worked with people who
are high-level brains and people like that,
and they have to do top training mentally and
physically. And so managing stress and coping
with real, really difficult learning objectives
that they have to do top to master. So,
Yeah, these are just some of the military applications.
Right. I believe most of the first responders
from ER to police fire anyone that deals
with like an immediate trauma, their on-call,
they’re like the 911s. Yes. They go through and see a lot. And it does affect every
nerve in every essence of who they are. Most
certainly. Right. I’ve worked with people who’ve been
through some horrible atrocities. Is this from
among the public now? Okay. They may have had
been there in the Valley of Birmingham, when
friends of those who were blown to pieces,
or in a major rail accidents I’ve done without
them breaking the London bombings. I’ve done.
With people from that. And from many, many, many
horrible situations. And what they see and experience
these very deep impressions, the changes their
personality often in ways that are very, very problematic.
And so long-term depression is common, long-term
anxiety. So we work on them. And again,
I have to say, if the therapy is a wonderful
method, when it’s done properly. And we’re talking
about real traumas, not labeling everything a
trauma that you don’t like in your life. I mean,
nothing. The public will attend them to you.
Some people to overuse the word, overextend the
trauma. Right. There’s trauma and there’s something
traumatic. There is a date. And some of the things
some of the things you come across or hear
reporters at least are truly horrendous. And helping
people assimilate that, integrate it in their mind
so they can move forward in life without being
damaged or destroyed by it. That’s such wonderful work with him with therapy.
Exactly. And I want to make this lighter.
Yeah. Dr. Butler. I’m very happy with that.
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, this was amazing. And I’ve known you for over 20 years.
In many different aspects. So when I asked
Dr. Butler, I said, what do you do for fun? He says,
I’m working. Well, I was thinking of the procedures. Well, my work is a passion.
Yes. It’s where I get so much satisfaction. It’s a high. It’s a natural high. And
ever I don’t have to go and do golf to relax and get a high there. I mean, it’s,
I love good music. That’s a cup? Yes. Yes. I
like quite a few different genres of music. I can
listen to any good music. Just some wonderful
folk music, which is inspirational and some of the
best classical music is what, certain kinds of jazz
music and, and all the genres of music out there,
there’s good work. Yeah. And then there’s a chorus that’s really throw away music.
Now these we have a lot of that too. Yeah. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Good. Well, I want to say
thank you very much, not only for spearheading
our organization after our founder, but making our
work, our profession, a true career and a profession.
And I know there are many schools. So viewers
watch out, give me a call and let us be in
contact because you never know there might be
another one happening in our hometown Glendale by
the next year. And thank you for all the good work
and your leadership, sir. Thank you viewers. And
I hope this was beneficial for you. If you have
any questions by all means, you can always find
Dr. Butler because I will have his biography.
As part of this view on our YouTube
channel. And until then, goodbye. God bless.
Thank you and goodbye.
[Music].