Ep. 72: Hypnosis for High Performance: How Intentional Focus Can Transform Pain, Sleep, and Stress with Dr. David Spiegel
The word hypnosis has baggage. If I’m honest, my first association with hypnosis wasn’t clinical, therapeutic, or performance-based. It was a high school assembly with a stage hypnotist. A teammate, our wrestling captain, brought up on stage and with the snap of a finger snap, suddenly this guy I knew as disciplined, intense, and tough as nails was acting in ways that seemed wildly out of character.
It stuck with me purely because I didn’t understand it. And when you don’t understand something that appears to override someone’s behavior, it can feel a little unsettling.
So when I had the chance to sit down with Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford, one of the world’s leading researchers in clinical hypnosis, and the founder of the Reveri self-hypnosis app, I knew I wanted to clear the slate. And it was one of the clearest explanations I’ve heard for how we can intentionally shift pain, stress, sleep, and even performance under pressure.
The Difference Between Stage Tricks and Clinical Work
Early in our conversation, I brought up that high school memory. I wanted to name the elephant in the room: most of us have been exposed to hypnosis as entertainment. Dr. Spiegel didn’t dismiss that world. He simply contextualized it.
Stage hypnotists, he explained, select people who are highly hypnotizable. They create a social environment designed for spectacle. There’s suggestion, yes, but there’s also compliance, social pressure, and the desire to be a good participant in front of a crowd.
Clinical hypnosis is entirely different. It isn’t about losing control. It’s about focused attention and intentional state change.
Dr. Spiegel described hypnosis as having three core elements: intense focus, the ability to dissociate from immediate sensory input, and a reduction in activity in the brain’s default mode network, that inner narrator that constantly evaluates and comments on our experience.
When those pieces come together, something powerful happens. You’re actually highly present, but your attention is directed with precision. As someone who works in mental performance, that caught my attention immediately because we talk about attention control all the time. We’re often looking for ways to focus and quiet the noise.
“The Strain and Pain Lies Mainly in the Brain”
One of the most compelling parts of our conversation centered around pain. Dr. Spiegel has spent decades studying how hypnosis can change the way the brain processes pain signals. He said something that I’ve repeated to clients since: “The strain and pain lies mainly in the brain.”
Now, that doesn’t mean pain isn’t real or that you’re imagining it. It means the suffering component of pain is constructed by the brain. And if it’s constructed, it can be influenced. And in a world increasingly dependent on pharmaceutical intervention, the idea that we have internal tools available to us is powerful.
Brain imaging studies have shown that hypnosis can alter the neural pathways associated with pain perception. The signal may still be present, but the brain’s reaction to it changes. In some cases, dramatically.
He shared stories of people undergoing surgery with hypnosis. Of his own wife using self-hypnosis during childbirth. Of patients reducing chronic pain without medication. For me, this wasn’t just medically interesting; it was actually very relevant to performance.
Every athlete I work with deals with discomfort: Fatigue, nerves, sometimes injury. If the brain’s interpretation of sensation can shift, even slightly, couldn’t that change the game?
Meditation and Hypnosis
At one point in our conversation, I wanted to explore something that personally matters to me: meditation. Meditation has fundamentally changed my relationship with self-criticism and it’s expanded my ability to observe without immediately reacting. Over the years, it has helped me develop compassion for parts of myself that once felt only harsh or demanding.
When I asked Dr. Spiegel about the relationship between meditation and hypnosis, his answer was nuanced. He said meditation is largely about being, cultivating open awareness, non-judgment, and presence. On the other hand, hypnosis is about doing, intentionally directing attention toward a specific goal. That distinction felt important.
Meditation builds capacity. It expands what Dr. Holly Rogers (in a recent episode) might call the “stretch zone”: your ability to remain regulated under increasing stress. Hypnosis takes that capacity and channels it.
One story Dr. Spiegel shared stuck with me. A woman had been meditating for years but continued to suffer from migraines. In a brief hypnosis session, she imagined placing an ice cap on her head. The migraines resolved. She later told him, “Thank you for freeing me to use my intentionality.”
Meditation had helped her observe, but hypnosis helped her intervene. As a coach, that’s a distinction I appreciate. There are times when expanding awareness is the medicine and there are times when we need a targeted shift. So really, the two practices complement each other.
The Gift, and Risk, of Being Highly Hypnotizable
Another fascinating thread in our conversation centered around hypnotizability itself. Not everyone responds to hypnosis in the same way; some people enter focused states quickly and deeply, while others require more practice.
Interestingly, Dr. Spiegel noted that people who are highly hypnotizable often demonstrate strong imaginative capacity and empathy. Meaning, they can take another person’s perspective easily, or immerse themselves fully in an experience. That’s a strength. And in the case of hypnotism, a vulnerability..
If you can suspend critical awareness easily, you may also be more susceptible to social influence. You might be talked into things you later regret, or override your own intuition in favor of external suggestion. That awareness matters, especially in high-performance environments where influence and persuasion are constant.
The goal of hypnosis isn’t to become more suggestible to others. It’s to become more skillful in directing your own attention. Forewarned is forearmed.
Performance Under Pressure
We eventually turned our attention toward performance. Dr. Spiegel has worked with athletes who use hypnosis to enhance focus and reduce self-consciousness. He mentioned golfers and elite performers who learned to narrow attention to process rather than outcome.
That’s something I see constantly in my own work. The tension between process and outcome. Between being in the moment and being hijacked by the future. Hypnosis can function as a rehearsal space. It’s a way to embody the state you want before the moment arrives.
When attention narrows around the next action instead of the final result, something shifts. The mind quiets and the body follows.
It’s not mystical. It’s trainable. And that word, “trainable,” is key because high performers aren’t looking for magic. They’re looking for methods.
Clearing the Air
When I reflect on that wrestling assembly years ago, I realize how incomplete my understanding was. Hypnosis isn’t about surrendering control, it’s really about reclaiming it. It’s about recognizing that attention is not fixed. That perception is not rigid. That the brain is plastic and responsive to how we direct it. In my field, we often talk about attention control through meditation, breathwork, visualization. Hypnosis sits comfortably in that family, with its own flavor, its own precision.
There was a moment in our conversation where I felt something familiar, that quiet sense of curiosity lighting up. The same feeling I get when a concept bridges worlds. Dr. Spiegel’s work doesn’t live only in psychiatry. It doesn’t live only in sport. It lives at the intersection of attention, physiology, and human potential. That’s the space I care about.
We often think performance is about grinding harder, pushing more, forcing outcomes. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s about learning to guide the mind with a steadier hand. To reduce the noise and use intentionality rather than be driven unconsciously by habit. Hypnosis, when stripped of spectacle, is simply that: intentional attention. And in a world that constantly competes for our focus, that might be one of the most valuable skills we can cultivate.
RESOURCES:
Learn more about Reveri, Davi’s self-hypnosis app, and get 20% off yearly or lifetime memberships with code MENTAL20: https://reverihealth.app.link/mental.
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