Exploring the World of Hypnosis with Heather McFall

Exploring the World of Hypnosis with Heather McFall

In this episode of Open Forum in The Villages, Mike Roth interviews Heather McFall, a hypnotist from Lake Hypnosis in Lady Lake. Heather shares her journey into hypnosis, which started in 2003 as a psych major disillusioned with mainstream talk therapy. She discusses the benefits and applications of hypnosis, NLP, EMDR, and EFT in treating various issues such as weight loss, smoking cessation, stress, and pain management. Heather also talks about her book 'A Dedicated Life: An Empath's Journey,' which offers tools and techniques for empaths. The conversation touches on the effectiveness of stage hypnosis and the importance of addressing childhood trauma. For more information or to schedule a free evaluation, listeners are encouraged to contact Heather through her website.

00:00 Introduction to the Show and Guest
00:08 Heather's Journey into Hypnosis
01:13 Exploring Neurolinguistic Programming and Other Techniques
02:15 Effectiveness of Hypnosis and EMDR
04:09 Common Issues Addressed by Hypnosis
07:23 Stage Hypnosis and Audience Participation
13:53 Heather's Book and Empath Strategies
16:02 Childhood Trauma and Hypnosis
22:04 Final Thoughts and Contact Information
24:30 Show Closing and Acknowledgements

Transcript

Mike Roth: 0:00

This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. I'm here today with Heather McFall. Heather, thanks for joining me.

Heather McFall: 0:07

Thank you.

Mike Roth: 0:08

Heather is a hypnotist, and she runs her business at Lake Hypnosis in Lady Lake. Thank you. She became a hypnotist in 2003, when she was also overweight, smoking, and drinking, to relax, and had a terrible fear of small places and public speaking. Those are the reasons that you got involved with hypnosis.

Heather McFall: 0:32

Actually I was a psych major and I was really disillusioned by what they were teaching with mainstream talk therapy. And in searching client centered therapy, I found hypnosis. And then just realized in the first three months when I was practicing and learning to be a hypnotist, just made a checklist of everything I could think of that was wrong with me and just fixed it one at a time and it really developed my belief in it and my curiosity. To this day, almost 25 years later, I'm still wildly intrigued and excited about what you can do with belief.

Speaker: 1:10

hypnosis,

Mike Roth: 1:11

Yeah, and hypnosis,

Heather McFall: 1:12

is belief.

Mike Roth: 1:13

You've also worked with NLP. Yes. Neurolinguistic Programming. Tell us why you got involved with Neurolinguistic Programming.

Heather McFall: 1:21

Neurolinguistic Programming. NLP, EMDR, biofeedback, hypnosis, all of it is still managing your brain. So it's a toolbox. My goal is to get people. to where they want to be, so I just use whatever tool works best. Neurolinguistics is incredibly functional and fast, but also EFT, emotional freedom technique, tapping. It's just using the right tool for the job. Some things are a little deeper and you need to use hypnosis for it. Some things are topical that you can use tapping for.

Mike Roth: 1:54

Tapping when you

Heather McFall: 1:55

The emotional freedom technique where you're tapping on acupressure points. And it's also tools that you can take to send people home with so that they have something when they're in the trenches to use right away without having to lay down and close their eyes and listen to an audio. So you want something that works fast and in real time.

Mike Roth: 2:15

We had a very good success with EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing,

Speaker: 2:22

in

Mike Roth: 2:23

Dealing with sales people who had certain deep seated emotional issues which prevented them from doing the right things in their sales positions.

Heather McFall: 2:34

I work a lot with salespeople, sales and marketing, public speaking relations, but yeah, EMDR is accessing. your eye movement, where you look is the part of the brain that you fire off. So when you look up, you're firing off your visual field. And when you look left or right, you're firing off your auditory fields. So thinking about what you heard or what something sounds like, and looking down accesses your emotional or kinesthetics. So EMDR is breaking the pattern, which is the same thing as neurolinguistic programming.

Mike Roth: 3:09

They're on the same spectrum, okay, but they're different places. And frankly, in some cases the EMDR was much more effective and quick compared to hypnosis, which in some people's discipline didn't work, where EMDR worked faster.

Speaker 6: 3:26

EMD,

Heather McFall: 3:27

it's not that the technique worked or didn't work, it's that the practitioner can visually see if somebody's eyes are moving to know that they're tracking it to get to the end result in hypnosis, unfortunately. You are, all hypnosis is self hypnosis, so you can't crawl in somebody's ear and hear what they're saying to themselves in there. So hypnosis is highly effective when you're actually doing it. But if you're thinking, did I turn my curling iron off while the hypnotist is giving you a directive, it's not going to work. In EMDR, or neurolinguistics, where you have somebody participating and answering back what's happening, then the practitioner knows that they're actually doing the exercise.

Mike Roth: 4:09

In your practice in 25 years, what do most people come to you for? What issues?

Heather McFall: 4:15

Predominantly and what people mostly know a hypnotist for is weight loss, stop smoking, stress management, pain management. Since I've been in The Villages, I do a lot more cancer, death and dying, grieving helping with relationships. Pain management more but still predominantly weight loss, stop smoking, stress and pain.

Mike Roth: 4:34

Can everyone be hypnotized?

Heather McFall: 4:38

Everyone can be hypnotized, doesn't mean everybody wants to be hypnotized. Anybody with an IQ over 70, that is of sound mind not under the influence, so if you can pay attention, you can be hypnotized.

Mike Roth: 4:53

Yeah, it was interesting. Gee, I got to go back to probably 1987. I was at a Chamber of Commerce holiday party and they had one of these mystery gift exchanges. And I won a session with a hypnotist. And at the time I had just started Sandler training. And I wanted to have a post hypnotic suggestion put into my head to ask more questions as opposed to answering questions. And at the end of the session I told him this, I was never under hypnosis. I was listening to you, but I was always conscious as to what was going on.

Heather McFall: 5:29

You are always conscious that hypnosis isn't under, like when somebody says going under or in trance, the truth is you're awake and alert and aware the whole time. You remember everything That was said. You're actively participating, so it doesn't feel like anything. My very first, it was funny when you say that, because my very first post hypnotic suggestion that I ever gave myself when I learned self hypnosis was, I enjoy hearing what other people have to say, and I express myself in very few words. And I still remember that suggestion because I wrote it on the back of the hypnotist business card that taught me the self hypnosis. And it actually worked. It did make me more other focused and aware. But then I discovered that was a topical, it's like putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound, you really need to go

Mike Roth: 6:21

Deeper than to fix the problem.

Heather McFall: 6:23

Yeah.

Mike Roth: 6:23

That's a real issue.

Heather McFall: 6:24

Alot of people make that mistake and that's just poor Pre talk by the hypnotist. The fact that you didn't feel hypnotized or didn't think anything happened, that's because you had a bad hypnotist that didn't make you understand that's a myth and you're not, this isn't, you're not dropping acid, you're not using LSD, you're going into trance, which is what you do when you pray, when you focus, when you sing a song, when you make love, you're in trance and all of those where you're. Solely focused on that thing. So hypnosis originally was supposed to be called monoideaism. And James Braid, an an optician in the 1880s, is the one that coined the phrase hypnosis. Because all doctors, when you discover something, you name it in Latin. Because it looks like they're sleeping. But they're quite wide awake and alert and aware. You're actually hyper aware when you're in hypnosis. You're more sensitive to sound and touch and smell and taste.

Mike Roth: 7:23

That brings me to the gag hypnotists in Vegas who bring 25 people up on stage to get them to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothing. And he starts with 25 people on stage, attempts to induce hypnosis, and promptly throws five or seven people off the stage. And he gets down to five people. Are those five people plants? Or are they really people who decided they wanted to be in the show and would do whatever hypnosis guy asked them to do?

Heather McFall: 7:54

I actually do stage hypnosis also. And I can tell you that in a stage hypnosis show, the initial suggestion while everybody's still seated in the audience is, a few of you tonight will come up and become the stars of the show. then throughout the show, the more you clap, The more you laugh, the more they want to perform for you. And that gets the audience going, but it also is the suggestion. So what happened is if you have a dozen people up there that are nervous or scared or whatever, the people who are going to respond, the best are the ones who actually do want to perform. What's funny is people with stage fright make the best. Hypnosis subjects because they are the ones who have wanted to perform the most in their life and just didn't have the the courage to do it.

Mike Roth: 8:41

I'm gonna have to try that.

Heather McFall: 8:42

So when you take the fear away, they've got all of this pent up performance that they really want to put out there and it ends up being great. But they'll walk off and say, I don't think I was hypnotized. I was just going along. I didn't want to hurt the hypnotist feelings. You're like, okay, would you have danced like a ballerina in front of 200 of your coworkers before? No

Heather McFall AI: 9:00

But you don't think you were hypnotized.

Mike Roth: 9:02

I do the Improvisational Theater Club shows for The Villages. I produce them and direct them. And I think I'm going to take up that idea of planting an idea in an audience of 250 people. to make the shows go well, we always use someplace between a low of six and a high of a dozen audience members up on stage Some of the numbers with the audience members are just hilarious.

Heather McFall: 9:25

Oh, yeah, our stage hypnosis show starts tonight, together, we'll enter into the intriguing world of hypnosis. In a moment, a few of you will join us here on stage to become the stars of the show. But before you come up, let me dispel a few of the most commonly misconstrued myths, the way I remember it is dumb drunk jerks, because if your IQ is under 70, if you're too drunk to pay attention, and if you just plain don't want to be hypnotized, you won't, those are the three types of people that won't go into hypnosis. So You vaccinate against those types of people coming up on the stage by saying nobody likes that kind of person. But if you want to be the star of the show, if you want to be the center of attention, come on up. But if you have a little spiel like that at the beginning, then it's going to vaccinate against the people that are just going to be sitting there trying to force their way through it, and it's going to promote the people that really do have a craving

Mike Roth: 10:19

We've had some very good people come up on stage and we've had some duds.

Heather McFall: 10:23

Unfortunately, sometimes you have people that want to steal the show.

Mike Roth: 10:26

In improv, it's just okay. We're just going up there for the laughs and the giggles. How frequently does someone have to come to a hypnosis clinic to be cured of their problems?

Heather McFall: 10:38

I do a free screening to determine whether or not they're going to be a good candidate for hypnosis, to make sure they're going to play along and understand. Make sure also that they know what to expect. They read some client testimonials so they have a better idea of how it works and how people have used it. And then we come up with a price and a program, a number of sessions, but usually it's weekly. I don't do anything less than three weekly sessions. Because there's three ways we're hypnotized, so I need to unhypnotize them in all three ways. Repetition, authority, and trauma. So I'll do direct suggestion for the goal that they want. Stress management skills, so as challenges come up, they can see them as smaller and overcomable. And then confidence building, so they know they're worth making the change for. So the smallest thing I would do is three sessions,

Mike Roth: 11:25

And what's the longest you've had to work with a client to reach their goals?

Heather McFall: 11:29

I've had clients that came for 22 sessions, but usually that's because they have a lot of challenges at home and they just want more handholding. An illness or a handicap that precludes them from being able to exercise or they have bowel issues or something that makes it hard for them to eat fruits and vegetables, whatever. Some people, childhood trauma or trauma they're dealing with at the time and they just want extra hand holding. But, weight loss is usually three to six months so that I can witness them get to their goal.

Mike Roth: 12:02

I'm still trying to beat the weight loss trauma that I had when I was five years old. I went to kindergarten and with a they gave this little white pin with a plate with fork and knives crossed called the Clean Plate Club.

Heather McFall: 12:15

Oh no!

Mike Roth: 12:16

And I won the Clean Plate Club honor when I was five years old in Miami. And I'm still trying to get rid of that badge. Let's take a short break and listen to an Alzheimer's tip from Dr. Craig Curtis. This is Mike Roth and Dr. Craig Curtis talking about Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Curtis, can you talk about alcohol use and Alzheimer's?

Dr. Craig Curtis: 12:38

Yes, Mike. They have had studies out for years that show those with, that have one to two drinks a day actually have a lower risk of heart attack or stroke. And in a study published,

Mike Roth: 12:49

That's interesting. That means that people who totally abstain from alcohol have a higher risk?

Dr. Craig Curtis: 12:55

That's a, that's a difficult question, Mike. It's yes, those that abstain from alcohol, not with Alzheimer's disease, but actually had a slightly higher risk of heart attack and stroke. However, so this was a study published in June of 2023 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiologies in stress signaling in the brain. So essentially they had less stress, which we've always known. is a risk factor for a heart attack or stroke, but the American College of Cardiology currently is not advocating for the use of alcohol to reduce your risk of heart attack or strokes because of other concerning effects of alcohol on health.

Warren: 13:35

With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr. Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website, craig curtis md.com, or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar.

Mike Roth: 13:51

Thank you, Dr. Curtis. Now, Heather, I understand you wrote a book, could you tell us a little bit about that?

Heather McFall: 13:56

A Dedicated Life An Empath's Journey is, it was supposed to be just a textbook for empaths, people who take on other people's pain or emotions. And that was a challenge, it comes from childhood strategy, it's a childhood strategy in a precarious household where a kid is observing to find out whether it's safe to engage or not. And it's, I don't know that it is as rare as I thought it once was. Now that my book has been out there, it was more popular than I expected it to be.

Mike Roth: 14:29

How long ago did you write the book?

Speaker 6: 14:31

Actually

Heather McFall: 14:31

about a year and a half ago, I went to Ireland to write it so that I was out of everybody's energy that I could possibly know about and the cross breeze because Ireland is an island and out of anything that could remind me of anything. And I just sat down and wrote for a week until my hand cramped every day, put it on note cards and then arranged the note cards into a timeline. And it was self development. initially for myself and that I just didn't realize how many people were going through the same thing. But it has tools and techniques on how to get back into your own energy so that you're not being what somebody else needs or taking on somebody else's mood or their pain or their illness. And then there's techniques to discover how, like how to find yourself and be self accepting. And then the first chapter is about how my childhood trauma caused it, and comparative analysis for other people to review how they might have come up with the survival skill on their own as well. And then the back of the book has some anecdotes about unusual situations where my, empath strategy was obvious to outside people, like when I took on somebody else's rosacea on her face and it matched, or taking on somebody else's pain. I had somebody else's heart attack. I had somebody else's asthma attack. but just scenarios like that so people can go, Yeah, that's happened to me before.

Mike Roth: 16:01

Okay. Are there scenarios in early childhood which are similar in setting up the need for hypnosis like growing up in a single parent household?

Heather McFall: 16:12

If a single parent was doing a really great job, maybe not. But, turns out our parents are just a guy and a girl who fell in love and had some kids. None of us popped out of the womb with an instruction manual tattooed to our butt. Yeah. you're guessing, and it's almost impossible to raise a child perfectly, because even if you can control the environment in the household, they still have to go out for socialization. The more a child falls down and gets back up, the better developed they are into their adulthood. Weirdly, the more trauma a child goes through and overcomes in their childhood, The more solid an adult they become, but also the parent has to be able to be there with support and love and care when they're going through that, and that's the problem. And the more kids you have, the less likely you're going to catch. You also don't know what's happening between their ears. There's a in a Christmas story the Christmas movie, A Christmas Story with the little kid, that when he gets his mouth washed out with soap and sent to his room and he's laying in bed and he fantasizes about going blind, and he's, they say, Oh, Ralphie, what's happened to you? And he says, Soap poisoning. And he fantasizes this martyred position for having his mouth washed out with soap and then, it's funny because we all did it, and the problem with raising a child is you don't know when they get sent to their room, if they learned the lesson, or if they went into a martyred position. You can't tell what they conjured up in their mind to justify, the lesson, the punishment, their behavior. You also don't know if they're grading themselves so harshly that they think they're unloved now, incapable or broken because of the punishment. And good parenting is just finding out in real time what's happening between that kid's ears. And if you have a mentally disabled parent. An alcoholic just a lot of stress in the household, lack, significant poverty or something. All of those things are a factor in whether or not a child is supported properly, protected properly, checked in with properly.

Mike Roth: 18:36

we were working with sales people trying to get them to increase their sales more rapidly, we did a qualification disqualification in EMDR. Because at first I didn't believe it would work. I thought it was a total hoax. But then when I read that the FBI used it after the Oklahoma City bombing, I said, Oh that might have some credibility. But what we found is that if a salesperson had a parent die before they were 18, or if there was a divorce in the family before they were 18 Those were prima facie cases that EMDR was going to cure them in three weeks.

Heather McFall: 19:13

Yeah, because there's trauma. When you hold up that much trauma in your body, it's a significant relief. Just like I said, a stage hypnosis subject that's had stage fright their whole life makes a better subject. Because they have all of that to get to perform built up in them.

Mike Roth: 19:30

Yeah, we don't do the scene anymore in our improv. But we had A good lady improver get three or four guests from the audience to come up on stage to learn how to pole dance

Heather McFall: 19:41

Oh, yeah.

Mike Roth: 19:42

in front of the audience. Now there were no poles.

Heather McFall: 19:44

Oh, no.

Mike Roth: 19:45

It was improv. We don't have props and sets. And so there were imaginary poles and she taught them how to dance on the imaginary poles. And that was one of the fall on the floor funniest scenes we've ever put on the stage.

Heather McFall: 19:59

Yeah, the stripper scene in a stage hypnosis show is usually the funniest too, but then when you see somebody who actually was a stripper, or always wanted to be, or is very confident about their body, when they really start taking their clothes off, you've got to, and you're out now. This is family show.

Mike Roth: 20:14

most of our shows are inside The Villages, and we have to keep the shows PG rated, or better. Although later this year, we'll probably do at least one show out of the village's purview stage where we can do whatever we want. We did a couple of shows last year at the Joke joint in Somerville.

Heather McFall: 20:32

Oh, cool.

Mike Roth: 20:33

Summerfield And the shows were good.

Speaker: 20:36

That's

Mike Roth: 20:36

let's pretend I could take all of the knowledge you have now today and you could go back to talk to the Heather who was 22 years old. What advice would you give to that Heather?

Heather McFall: 20:49

Start your career now. There are a lot of people that need it.

Mike Roth: 20:53

Really?

Heather McFall: 20:53

the, probably the biggest regret I have in my life is at least once a week somebody comes in and their perspective on how their mom viewed them or what they're trying to live up to or how they're comparing themselves to others. The relief that they got, and it's so sad when a 75 year old woman for the first time is experiencing that she has a right to her own identity. That she's not a daughter, she's not beholden to what her mom's expectations were. And when I can fix that, teach her through it in a couple of weeks where she's living the life she always wanted, man, I wish I could have taught you this when you were 18, not 73. Yeah. At 22 years old, if I could have started doing this at 22 instead of 32, I would have hit the ground running. And the 80s were a lot better place to do a business than they are now. It was just, it was a dime pitch. They were selling pet rocks, and people were making money.

Mike Roth: 21:52

Who would believe you'd buy a rock in a box? Pet rock. One of the stupidest ideas ever. But there were several of those.

Heather McFall: 21:59

They made millions of dollars. You could sell anything in the 80s.

Mike Roth: 22:02

Almost anything. Good. So if someone wants to get a hold of you to find out more about hypnosis or schedule one of those free evaluations, how do they do that, Heather?

Heather McFall: 22:11

They can call me at 352 223 9444, or they can contact me through the website at lakehypnosis. com.

Mike Roth: 22:22

Good. Heather, is there anything we have left out that you'd like to add?

Heather McFall: 22:27

Nothing I can think of. You've been terrific. And I love hearing about your improv stuff. It just makes me want to go do it.

Mike Roth: 22:32

Good. We're always looking for more people who can think at improv.

Heather McFall: 22:37

I send a lot of clients, especially students, when I train somebody to become a hypnotist, I send a lot of them to improv classes to get more comfortable with riffing and expressing themselves.

Mike Roth: 22:51

Yeah riffing was Robin Williams game. I was trained with David Sandler, and David always said sales was a Broadway play performed by a psychiatrist and go take acting classes and take improv classes. And frankly, when I was working, selling and training people, I didn't have time to do any of that And the only training in improv I got, or acting was in Sandler training as a trainer or in high school. And, looking back at it now, I think, boy, I could have used more of the improv and acting training when I was actively working, but it was contraindicated.

Heather McFall: 23:26

Yeah.

Mike Roth: 23:27

Time wasn't available to do them both.

Heather McFall: 23:29

I didn't realize until I was training other people in hypnosis how much my theater background was helping me. I just took it for granted.

Mike Roth: 23:37

You were a theater major?

Heather McFall: 23:39

In college it was psych major, theater minor in college, and then I did all through high school and junior high, and then I was a costume mistress and everything, and I did a one woman comedy show at the Ren Faire. And It's just funny that I took it for granted, but I didn't associate it with my hypnosis career at all. And then when I went to train people who were very left brained, I realized I had a certain comfort and skill level that I couldn't teach. And it was because of life experience, and they needed to go out and risk and be able to become whatever somebody needs. So when you're doing improv or character acting, you look at the person and then you become what makes them laugh or makes them happy. And that skill comes from improv acting.

Mike Roth: 24:27

Great. Thanks for being with us today, Heather

Heather McFall: 24:28

Thank so much.

Nancy: 24:31

Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 a. m. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike at rothvoice dot com. This is a shout out for supporters Ed Williams, Duane Roemmich, Paul Sorgen, Kathy Loving, and Dr. Craig Curtis at K2 in the Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mike at rothvoice dot com. The way our show grows is with your help. Text your friends about this show if you enjoyed listening, or just tell your friends about the show. We thank everyone for listening to the show. The content of the show is copyrighted by Rothvoice 2025. All rights reserved.