Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
An almost-daily podcast for the State of Mind Community.
Offering ideas and answering questions on how to use your mind for growth, happiness and ultimately peace.
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
You Can Change Your Brain And Your Life By Practicing New Thoughts And Movements
Ask us a Question or Leave a Comment!
We explore how neuroplasticity reframes change, from rebuilding movement after injury to replacing stubborn beliefs with better ones. Stories, tools, and a simple truth tie it together: you weren’t born with your limits, and repeated practice can rewrite them.
• the shift from injury-based brain science to modern imaging
• clear definition of plasticity in everyday language
• mind vs brain causation questions and practical takeaways
• motor imagery, hypnosis cues, and pairing with physiotherapy
• habit loops in thought, emotion, and movement
• gym story as identity and expectation rewiring
• aging myths replaced with process-based progress
• reframes: you weren’t born thinking this; practice creates belief
Wherever you're listening to this, in the description, there will be links to contact us if you wish, links to ask a question if you wish anonymously, links to sign up for our school
We hope this helps a little as you go through your day.
We would love to hear your feedback or questions.
We will respond to both in future episodes.
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Okay, we are on the line. I have the right microphone on.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful.
SPEAKER_02:Do you mind giving us a thumbs up in the chat or something if you can hear us? I'm sure you can. But just checking. Thumbs up.
SPEAKER_00:Thumbs up. Microphone is on. Microphone is on. Sun is almost up.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of foggy out there.
SPEAKER_00:It's more than kind of. It's like walking through the fog, taking the garbage to the curb.
SPEAKER_02:It's like uh like a scary movie.
SPEAKER_00:I actually thought it was like the blue mist. Blue mist.
SPEAKER_02:Did you run into any aliens or I wondered?
SPEAKER_00:I wondered if if it was a good representation of the other side. I'm sure on the other side it's not wet. Yeah. And it did feel rather wet out there, but yeah. So what are we talking about?
SPEAKER_02:Today we're gonna talk about neuroplasticity in a broad sense, I think. In the way that we've helped people use it to make their lives better. We've had some people hear us talk little bits and pieces about it, and they have exclaimed that they want to hear more about it. So yeah, I thought it would be kind of an interesting topic. We're not neuroplasticity scientists or anything.
SPEAKER_00:I am not a neurobiologist.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But I do like reading what they write about.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I do enjoy learning what they what they discover. And, you know, it it to me, it's the perfect example of how science can really dramatically change in a short period of time. You know, uh science is such a beautiful process of discovery. When it's done really, really well, we hold back all of our assumptions and all the things we think we know, and we go through a process to see what we really, what we really can learn, what we can know. And yeah, for years and years, you know, the science of the brain was really limited to brain injuries. People who had suffered some kind of brain injury, and then essentially the scientists could, using things like x-rays, try to isolate where the problem is, and then associate that part of the brain with those kinds of functions. And it was really just about, you know, brain injury, whether it was from external forces or internal forces. And they used uh things like early brain surgeries as a way to try to understand understand the regions of the brain and the kinds of the kinds of activities or or movements or mental processes that were associated with different parts of the brain. And that led them to a lot of conclusions. One of the conclusions was that the fundamental wiring of your brain is really established yum and it doesn't change. And that was that was the view for like a hundred years. It was the view for a long time with early psychology and early medicine. And then we discovered things like MRIs, magnetic resonance imaging, right? Increased our ability to with CAT scans, X-ray technology, got way better. It was then possible to see what was going on in the brain while these physical activities took place. And yeah, millions of scans later, neurobiologists have really a long list of what they consider to be really established associations between brain activity and thought and body activity. Right? You can you can get somebody to go into a functional MRI and you can get them to move around and you can watch what parts of the brain light up. And now we have an association that's much more precise and has been enlightening because one of the most important things that they've discovered, and this is really why we're talking about this, is that you can change the wiring of your brain.
SPEAKER_02:So that's what the question today is what is it? So it is that it is the the plasticity of the brain, the ability to change the plasticity of the brain.
SPEAKER_00:Well, plasticity just means changeable. So I would say that it's about think of it in terms of wiring neurons.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Bundles of neurons or or basically nerve cells, the the cells that transmit signals through and to each other at lightning speed. Right. So you can. So this is the way I explain it when I'm working with clients. When you're born and you're new in the body.
SPEAKER_01:What's this?
SPEAKER_00:You know, you watch babies and they have a hard time, you know, getting their hand to their mouth. Whereas for most of us now, that is a really everybody's skilled in getting their hand to their mouth. Right? You can do it in the dark, you can do it with your eyes closed, you can do it because you've done it so many times. And so it is wired in as a fast and easy habit. So the the systems that facilitate that when you're an infant are learning and becoming. And the systems that facilitate that after you've done it, you know, a million, 10 million times, are wired in. They're established. That's why you can do it without thinking about it. That's why you can do it in the dark with your eyes closed. It's why these movements, these abilities are so well established. And I believe that it's part of the physiology aspect of the subconscious mind, being, you know, the subconscious mind is that habit area, that that part of the mind that deals with habitual behaviors and habitual reactions and habitual thoughts. Right. So, you know, neuroplasticity simply means that what used to be hardwired can be rewired.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. Through the well, back to MRIs, they've found that even just thinking about the movement, the same places of the brain light up as if you actually made the movement.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, the MRIs are really powerful tools. They have limits, and there's an element of imprecision in them. And there's still, you know, a causal question, right? What causes what? What causes thought? This is a big question for science. Science, there are thousands of scientists around the world dedicated to trying to understand how the brain creates consciousness. And there are thousands of scientists who believe that they've proven that the brain doesn't create consciousness on a causal basis. And this debate goes on because the materialist scientists believe that, you know, there's there are physical rules, and that's that. And the non-materialist scientists are finding evidence to suggest that yeah, that the brain is not the beginning of all these things. It's not the originator, it's not the creator. The brain is something else. And and science is moving quickly in other directions. Neuroplasticity, the fact that thought can change the way your brain is wired really suggests that the mind is not an emergent property of the brain.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because like I've written down here, like, how can we be working with something more than what we have that they say they have, we have, right? Does that make sense? So, like, if we to unpack it a little bit. If if our brain is creating thought, then oh man, if our brain is creating thought, then if we don't if we don't have the capacity with the brain to think more, to think thoughts that are helping change the brain, then how does the brain change? Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I know what you're driving at.
SPEAKER_02:Can you explain it easier?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, the the the perception, not the perception, the view was that you have a brain, and that is the center of who you are, because we can prove the existence of a brain. People talk about the mind, but the mind is something that science has a hard time proving the existence of, other than it seems that human beings go through, you know, millions of thought processes and thousands of thoughts in a day? Science is limited to the physical, right? This is this is the truth about physical sciences. Once we go beyond physical sciences and get into theoretical sciences, we find ourselves changing our fundamental view of things. So, how can the brain, which gets programmed, reprogram itself?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so the idea is that there is neuroplasticity shows that through thought we can reprogram the brain, reprogram our neurological system. There is a lot of evidence now that suggests that broken neurological pathways, broken nerve pathways can be regenerated, they can be re-established, they can be honed. Well, I I think of it in terms of they can be reverse-engineered. So what what one of the things that was going on in science for a while, I haven't paid attention to it lately, was that they would get people who have had neurological tissue damage so that they have some kind of paralysis. And then they would uh manually from outside forces move the limb that was no longer under the control of the person. They would move that in very routinized, highly repetitive motions. So the simple way to say it is, you know, if I if I found myself unable to use my arm through the help of a physiotherapist, sometimes a machine, they would literally thousands of times move my arm through a specific range of motion. They would move that on my behalf with the hope that the backwards motion with my attention would send the signal from the arm to the brain, thus finding a new pathway. And they had some success with that. Now, the question is, you know, why and how? And, you know, hypnotism and mind science, mind uh the world of people working in the in the mind, they have what they believe are explanations for that, which is neuroplasticity, that with the intention of the person and using their mind, because that's part of the process, they are re-establishing pathways. With that said, that's to me why, you know, when I do hypnosis with people who are working on this kind of thing, the the reframe we use, the the simple model that we try to embrace in the mind is that when we were babies, we didn't know how to move our arm. And now, after years and years and years, we've learned how to do it and do it so well that we do it unconsciously, that the body functions unconsciously. Then when the neurological pathways that we were reliant on to engage that movement are broken somehow due to injury. Maybe it's a brain injury or maybe it's an actual physical injury. We've got to learn again. So we're back to where we were as babies, establishing pathways between our brain and the parts of our body that would be used on a habitual basis to facilitate that movement. And when we say, Well, I I did it once, right? That's my favorite, my favorite reframe. I've done this before. I did this once as a baby, I can do it again as an adult. I can reuse my brain and my nerves and figure out how. And it's just, you know, we use the idea of electrical wiring and bypassing. If there's a broken wire, well, we put another wire in there and we bypass it. What's happened now is that when it comes to the science, is that scientists are actually quite literally using microscopic recordings of new neural pathways being established when a neuron attaches to a neuron that it hadn't attached to before. And they're showing how these connections take place. They're using MRI imagery to show very, very uh subtle shifts and changes in the way messaging moves from the brain to the parts of the body. There are lots of habitual behaviors that go beyond the physical. Right. We have habitual ways of thinking. We have habitual ways of interpreting things, we have habitual ways of thinking of ourselves. So if we take this idea that we can re-establish neural pathways in the body for the purposes of movement, it just opens to the door to say, well, can't we establish new neural pathways in the brain for the purposes of mind activities, mental activities. Yeah, sorry for just going on and on, but uh, this stuff has always fascinated me. And I've worked with people who are recovering from these kinds of injuries, and I have tons of fun with it. I have tons of fun with it because I get to take them into trance and propose silly little things.
SPEAKER_02:Like what?
SPEAKER_00:Most recently I just used the snapping of my fingers and and coordinated with the client that they would uh the sound of the snap on my fingers send a signal from the brain to the part of the body that wasn't functioning well, and that signal would go down and back in a new pathway, just imagining that you were basically rewiring a system. And so now the client's in there in a trance, uh, imagining that they're rewiring. And it it was it was fun because he was deep in trance, he was committed to the process mentally. Uh, when I would snap my fingers, he would physically jump in the chair, he would twitch. You could see by watching just the the musculature sort of uh clench and release. And I think that's fun. I think that's just tons of fun because we're accomplishing what we intended to do, which was send signals down new pathways to encourage connection, and and it was causing a physical reaction, and of course, that just confirms in the client's mind this is working, this is having an effect.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so when I've worked with people in this regard before, you know, watching them physically twitch was to me, you know, evidence that something was being done by their mind to get their body to react.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I had a client once that had sort of this deteriorating function of their arm and hand, and we were working together to understand where that was coming from, and also, you know, just like you're saying, increasing that signal from the brain to the hand to have a reaction. So what we did was a little different. We used the imagination, and he would imagine starting off in his brain at, you know, the control center and following a little light, like he was like riding on a little light down, down, down through his arm, right? Out of the brain, down his neck, across his shoulder, down his arm, into his hand, and then moving it a little bit, and then riding that light back up to the brain and back down to the arm, you know, up and down a multiple times. Anyway, it's just uh incredible the the the changes. Even I mean, it's not a it's not a cure. We're not definitely not saying that. And it's very important to keep in mind that this what they call motor imagery, it's important to pair it with physical, physical therapy to get the best results. So yeah, it's an it's amazing how the brain, the mind, can get these pathways going again, even if it's a little different pathway, right? Maybe it's not the old pathway that it's regenerating, but maybe it's a new kind of pathway. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I can't tell you exactly what's going on. I can tell you that the mind is having an impact on the body, and the result is that people have had changes in their physical abilities that doctors have been greatly surprised by. But when you think of, yeah, I I more and more lately I'm just so fascinated by the habitual nature of humans that we are all really the expression of many, many programs. And those programs are really useful because they they help us do things quickly, they help us uh they help us uh do dozens of things at the same time. All of these programs, all these subconscious behaviors, all these subconscious actions, all these unconscious activities that go on in our body. So habit is really important. And I think what it essentially says is that we as human beings have the ability to create highly high-velocity communication within our body. And then we become habitual about it and we become reliant on it. And that's what actually interferes with creating new activities, new high velocity communication systems, new more helpful habits. And it you don't have to have an injury to do this, right? Like, you know, it's been two and a half years, and I have been going to the gym. And for the first six months, boy, did I resist. I just resisted. Like, oh God, I don't want to go, and it feels so awful. Because I was just so in such poor physical shape. I had established really good neural pathways for sitting and doing nothing, and had lost the neural pathways for many of the things that I had established when I was young. When I was young, I was, you know, Mr. Mr. play every sport there could possibly be. And I loved doing it. And I felt back then like there wasn't anything I couldn't do, and that that there was a certain elegance to my my movements. You know, I was successful and I was, you know, often, you know, one of the better ones. And then I went back to the gym, and what I thought I had in terms of physical movement and physical elegance was just gone. It was gone. So in many respects, I had already established new neural pathways. So after a year, something finally clicked in me that said, you know, I want to do this. I went from I need to do this to I want to do this. And then I started paying closer attention to the movements and trying to open my mind to the idea that, you know, I'm not going to be reliant on what I used to be. I'm going to become something new. I've done this before. I'm going to do it again. And now, you know, every day starts with the thought, am I going to the gym? And what am I doing at the gym? And I look forward to looking at what the day's workout is. And I look forward to thinking about doing it. And I look forward to thinking about, you know, my friends at the gym, doing it with them and the pleasant conversation. And the whole thing has become, you know, one of the most enjoyable things that I do. But it's also, I think I'm at a point where I need it. My body wants it. My body needs it. My mind wants it. My mind needs it. You know, yesterday I was doing a different movement and it was frustrating as hell because, first of all, it didn't feel good. And second of all, it was something I hadn't done before. And I had to figure out, you know, the sequence of muscles necessary to do it. What's the posture? What are the different muscles I'm using? What are the different outcomes that I'm seeking? What is it supposed to look like? What's it supposed to feel like? So it was very much a neuroplasticity exercise for me. And as a result, you know, I feel physically different than I did two and a half years ago. I think about myself differently than I did two and a half years ago. My emotional reaction to physical activity is different than it was two and a half years ago. And this is just changing what and how I think about something that at one point I was resistant to, convinced that those days were done, convinced that I couldn't, convinced that I wouldn't, convinced that I didn't need to. All these thought patterns that I had established around exercise and going to the gym have all been replaced by a love of going to the gym, a love of pushing myself to the point of feeling really crappy for a little while, and different expectations. And I think that's a huge one, too, to talk about neuroplasticity. It's about expectations. You don't think about scratching your nose because you have every expectation that it's going to go fine until you have stroke. And then you try to figure out how to use this hand that you've been using just fine for 50 years and now it's not working. And you have to find a new way around it. You know, I think that we if we approach that from I can't, or this is hard, or I'm broken, these kinds of mentalities, then things don't change. And if we approach it from a no, my brain can rewire itself, my body can rewire itself. I can establish new thinking patterns because every thinking pattern is just a habit. And it's a habit that can be changed. So neuroplasticity starts to become almost a philosophy for your life. And I think that that's that's the potential of it, is to say that I can change. My habits are holding me in place. And it's okay. They've been helpful in many ways, but some habits are not helpful. Habits in the way I think, habits in the way I move, habits in the way I don't move. Those habits can change. I am, maybe this can be a really nice reframe for the day. I am not a thing, I am a process, right? Imagine a highway, a highway of a hundred miles, and you're traveling from one end of the highway to the other in a very linear fashion, slow and steady. You are the spot on the highway in this moment. But when this is all done, you were the being that moved from one end of that highway to the other. The highway existed, you existed, and you moved through it from one end to the other. You are a process, you are born, and yes, you will pass on. The body will grow, develop, strengthen, weaken in a whole series of steps that are going to take decades for most people. And there is no one moment in that journey that doesn't count. There's no moment in that journey that that isn't exactly part of you. So if I see myself as that process, if I see myself as this awareness engaged in that journey, and I see that every part of that journey is creative. Every part of that journey has the potential to be completely and totally different than anything that preceded it. When I see myself as a process, not a thing, and I know that I am in process always, well, creativity sort of naturally rises to the front. So see yourself shifting your thought from being a thing to being a process, and that that process is going to be optimally driven by your curiosity and your creativity. And then it's not, well, I can't because you know I just turned 62 and you know, I'm really kind of way too old for going to the gym. To now I'm 65 and I'm going to the gym today, and I've established a new personal record on my deadlifts. And now I'm going to try to push towards a new personal record by doing a series of exercises today that are going to use my previous max to enhance my skills, moving towards a new max a couple of months from now. I'm a process. Yeah. And my body is not done, and my mind is not done, and the future's only Find them when it's different.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And old science would have said that by the time you're 30, it's pretty much all downhill. Like you can't learn new things. That old, what comes to my mind is that old saying, well, I don't know if it's old. I feel like it's old. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It's out the window, really.
SPEAKER_00:Oh. It's it's it's a lie.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. There's there's a woman that I follow. She is in her 70s. And I don't know what age she started this, but it was like after 60 or after 65 or something. And she started doing one push-up a day. And she is bit like she aged backwards, it looks like, right? And and now she does more than one push-up a day, but she said, like most anyone can can do this, right? Can can their body can learn, their mind can train, their their mind can change, right? The the you can develop new pathways, you can develop new habits, you can learn all throughout life. It's not all downhill after 30 or whatever the age that they said. The brain locks in.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I think it's important to think of neuroplasticity, not in this extreme examples that we've had, you know, a lot of you know happy success in helping people rejuvenate neural pathways. It's also just a perspective. Neuroplasticity doesn't just rewire paralyzed limbs. Neuroplasticity changes the habits of your mind. And that's what's critical. That's how life gets better, right? That's why life feels like a routine because we're not trying to change anything. And when we finally get sufficiently dissatisfied with our state of being, and I think that's that's a topic unto itself. Sufficiently dissatisfied when we reach that point, we want change. And when we want change, I think it's absolutely essential to know you can have change. Anybody can have change. Yes, there are mental habits getting in the way. Yes, there are old limiting beliefs, which are just mental habits, mental interpretations, habitual patterned interpretations of what's possible and what's not. This is this is really normal. This is what human beings do in their minds. And it's knowing, and you know, this is the magic. I think certain things about myself, and they're just habits. At some point, a long time ago, I didn't think these things about myself. So I established these ideas about myself, and then I thought them over and over and over and over until they became habit. And now that they're habit, I want to change them because I see how they limit me. But if I created this mental habit, I can create a new one. I have the ability to create mental habits. That's why I have my perceived limits. But I can create new mental habits which change those limits. These things are created and they can be recreated. You weren't born with them.
SPEAKER_02:That's what I was just gonna say.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:It's okay. Just a reframe that I use all the time, sometimes multiple times a session, is you weren't born thinking this. Right. And it's funny how we go, a client, even myself, will go, oh yeah. It's it's almost like we can't feel into that, right? Because all we know is what we know now, and to think of ourselves even as a baby is almost hard, right? So just reframing this idea that with the reframe, sorry, that you weren't born doing this, you weren't born thinking this. And so it's not it's not even yours if you don't want it to be, right?
SPEAKER_00:Anything we create, we can recreate. And any belief you have about yourself has been created out of your experiences.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you can recreate that with different experiences, you can let go of that for the lie that it really is, because you are infinite potential. Anything's possible. A lot of people don't like that idea because they've gotten comfortable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't like the idea when I showed up at the gym and the coach said, Yeah, yeah, there's lots we can do. I was like, come on, I'm old. And now that I'm older and yet younger, and now looking forward to learning new things, trying new things. Yeah. Sorry, I just got lost in my own thoughts about all the things that are changing. And and really happy about that. And I guess, you know, let that be the point of that. That, you know, this is not stuff that I I preach. This is stuff that I use. And that's why I teach it. I use it and it's helped. And so I teach it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's important. And that's what we're hopefully doing on this podcast in life, working with people in the school, is just the things that we've learned, the things that we're still working on. We're not, oh my God, we're not perfect or anything. If we've found it helpful, then we we share it. And hopefully it helps helps you. A little moment of help, even in an hour-long podcast. If there's a moment where you go, Oh, oh yeah, that's that's what's most important to us. A little nugget. Any questions? No questions. Nope, no questions today. That's all right. So again, wherever you're listening to this, in the description, there will be links to contact us if you wish, links to ask a question if you wish anonymously, links to sign up for our school. Anything else, Les?
SPEAKER_00:Nope. Nope.
SPEAKER_02:He's going to the gym. Get those deadlifts in.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, have a good day. We'll see you later.
