The Power of Hypnosis for Better Sex with Michelle Walters
In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, I sit down with clinical hypnotherapist, executive coach, and author Michelle Walters to talk about the power of the mind in shaping our reality. Michelle shares about her journey into the world of hypnosis, how it has since become her passion leading to her recently publish book, “An Alignment of Spirit”. This was such a fun conversation as we delve into hypnosis for intimacy and relationships! Personally, I’ve been curious about hypnosis for some time and Michelle answered all the questions as we explored Erotic Hypnosis, how it can help erectile dysfunction, and using hypnosis to visualize better sexual relationships. Listen in and learn how hypnosis can be a part of your journey to better sex.
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contact me at michelle@michellewalters.net
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In our commitment accessibility, help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts. The transcription is far from perfect, and in some cases quite amusing. As we grow edited transcripts are on the list in the meantime please enjoy.
Welcome to the Better Sex Podcast. My name is Deborah Kat and I am your shameless host. This is the Better Sex Podcast where we have unfiltered conversations about sex and relationships. This show is about the many different ways that we do and have sex and relationships. For people who want to have better sex on their terms, I truly believe that a sexy world creates a happier and safer world. If you want to do your part to create a sexy world, please hit subscribe. And thank you. So today we are going to dive into the world of my guest, Michelle Walters. She is a voracious imagination advocate, team leader, and corporate life graduate. Michelle writes and speaks on themes associated with the power of the mind, positivity and conscious and subconscious thought. Michelle is a clinical hypnotherapist, executive coach, and author. Her 2022 book on manifesting an alignment of spirit, finding work you love, combines science, personal stories, and activities for your subconscious that will help readers center and do the inner work necessary to find
the work they love. Hello, Michelle. I am so excited that you're joining me today. How did you get here? How did I get here? Well, I got into the work of hypnosis in kind of a crazy way. I had worked with a therapist in Dallas on and off for years, and she was a trained hypnotherapist, but we didn't really do that kind of work. And then one day I was reading a novel by one of my favorite Australian authors called A Hypnotist's Love Story. And the main character is a hypnotherapist. And it's kind of a comedic little book. And I read it and I was like, oh my God, that woman has the coolest job. Like she gets to talk to people and help them make changes. And I was like, maybe I could do that. So I Googled it. I found a school. I thought I'll take a session or two. And I went all the way through the highest levels of the program to become a clinical hypnotherapist. I just loved it. I have discovered I have a natural talent to help people go deep into their subconscious and discover their inner strengths and make transformations. And the work is so rewarding. I just love it. Thank you. So now I'm curious, how does hypnosis work? Hypnosis works because you let it work. When you get very, very relaxed, your conscious mind steps aside. It's kind of as if your conscious mind is driving the body that is your car all day, every day. And in hypnosis, you find a way to move that conscious mind into the passenger seat and move the subconscious mind into the driver's seat. So you still know what's going on, but you kind of don't care very much. And you can use a subconscious hypnosis time to understand why you have the patterns you do, to repeat positive suggestions that will put you on a better track. And study after study and experience after experience shows that it's a great way for people to be able to get in touch with those little inner programs that are embedded in our subconscious that drive us to do the things we do. So if you're looking to make a significant change,
hypnosis is an excellent tool. That sounds like we get relaxed and then we go into the subconscious and we take the pattern that's not working for us and we come up with a new story. Would you say
that's accurate? Yes. Yes, that's exactly right. So if you want to overcome your shyness, you can do that using hypnosis. If you want to change a behavior like picking at your fingernails, you can use hypnosis. If you have a strange phobia that you have no idea why you have it, hypnosis can use it to, you can use hypnosis to overcome it. So it's really helpful for not everything, but a whole lot of things. To be clear, as a hypnotist, I can't make anybody believe something that they couldn't possibly believe. The notion of creating a hypnotized zombie army is very fun, but it's not real. So you have to be ready to make that change, ready to have that belief, but working either with a professional hypnotherapist or doing self-hypnosis is really super effective for a great number of changes one might want to make.
Thank you so much for that distinction about… So what I really heard you say is that unless all of you is on board to begin with, or at least a good portion of you, you're not going to be able to get what it is that you're wanting. Is that accurate?
Well, no, I wouldn't even say it's that you're wanting. It's just that you couldn't believe it. So for example, if I hypnotized you and told you that when you woke up, there would be no more gravity, you would be like, that's ridiculous. I can't believe that. I'm not going to believe that and that kind of a thing. But if I hypnotized you and I said, you know, you've been starting to eat a healthier diet and you're going to be more thoughtful about what you eat and you're going to be a healthier person because you're going to make healthier choices moving forward. Now, that sounds like something you might be able to believe. Right? And it's that kind of suggestion that helps people to make changes. So since we just passed Valentine's Day, one of the questions that has been on my mind is like around falling in love. And so I'm curious, like could I hypnotize my partner to fall in love with me? Well, if he's already your partner or she's already your partner, I hope that that person is already in love with you. Could you use hypnosis to increase those feelings? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, hypnosis would not work very well like a love spell, so to speak. But could it amp up the feelings that are already present? Of course it could.
Definitely. It's funny hearing you say that I can imagine like, oh, you know, when we're all relaxed, like sweet nothings, not sweet nothings, but like, you know, just reinforcing those things that I love
about him in his ear. Yes. Speaking, well, so we all go through two states of hypnosis every day. Most people don't realize this, but that moment before you fall asleep, you actually pass through what's called a hypnagogic phase of brainwaves. And you go through the same thing as you wake up in the morning. And in that way, if you know the way to speak in a hypnotic way,
it makes for fabulous pillow talk. And speaking of pillow talk, I thought you might like pillow talk. I do. I do. You know, we were talking a little bit about erotic hypnosis before we hopped on the line. And I'd love you to speak a little bit about like, what is that? And yeah, just tell us.
So erotic hypnosis is hypnosis done for the intention of being sexy or being erotic. And the process is the same. The person who's being hypnotized is brought down into a relaxing state, usually by someone talking to them about calming down and relaxing and that kind of a thing. But the ideas and suggestions are sexual. And because when you are in hypnosis, you have much less, it's like your defenses are down, right? Basically you let your defenses down. So somebody talking to you and describing sexy situations when you have your defenses down is pretty damn sexy because your mind picks up on it. And so you can imagine those lips on a body part. You're imagining naked skinny dipping. You're imagining, you know, whatever it is that would be the content of the erotic hypnotist. And your imagination is what brings it all to life.
So that's how I describe it. And there are some outstanding erotic hypnotists out there. I think it's going to grow as a market because it's a great way to feel sexy. You know, it's funny hearing you say that. I don't know why this didn't occur to me in the past, but it could be part of how to stay connected if you are not with your partner for whatever reason,
if it's long distance or on a business trip or just you have a long distance relationship. Yeah. And I think that's becoming more and more possible. I mean, I don't know. I have to imagine on today's business trip, who's to say you couldn't FaceTime your honey from long distance and have a very sexy call that way. But the nice thing about hypnosis is it's typically done with your eyes shut. And there is something about not including the visual where all of that visual is in your mind that is, I think, really beautiful and really powerful and sometimes better. I mean, if you think about it, your imagination, your partner doesn't have to have the zit on their
cheek that they really have. You can just imagine that some of these things could be better in a way that only imagination can create. Yeah. And it just makes me think as somebody who uses a lot of blindfolds in their play, I guess what I'm tapping into is some version of the imagination of the hypnotic state. And what I've noticed when I bring in a blindfold or I take out, when I remove different sensations, you end up focusing in a different way. And so I imagine that I know that's part of the experience when you take the visualization out and that there is a heightening of the voice. And I feel like the voice has just a gift in, a gift in, not even sure what the words of this are, but when you're at a distance, there's something about the voice that takes you on a journey in a very different way that the
visual does. I mean, I think there's lots of people who really love the visual, right? Absolutely. But there aren't as many opportunities for us to sort of play with just voice and where does voice come from and how does that sound? And yet we all have distinct voices, right? You come to know your friend's voice, your mother's voice, your boyfriend's voice, and hearing those words from someone you love is very powerful. What about self-hypnosis? Self-hypnosis is fantastic. Self-hypnosis works for a ton of things and I use a lot of self-hypnosis with my clients. So they come and they work with me and then they're supported with listening to tapes or MP3s today between sessions because really it's said that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. I can't make anybody fall into hypnosis. I know how to guide them into it and if they're listening and open and want to go there, they will. Self-hypnosis is really useful for all kinds of things. For supporting a lot of the changes that people want, self-hypnosis is really great. Where self-hypnosis kind of isn't so good is when there's something that's really deep in your subconscious and you know it's there but you don't know why and you want someone to help you figure it out. So for example, a couple years ago, I had a client who was afraid of bumblebees. She'd never been stung, had no idea why she was afraid of bumblebees but just couldn't be outside, hated them. So we worked together for a few weeks and we used a technique called regression where you help, where me as the hypnotherapist, I help my client go back in time to an event that's related to that feeling. So she discovered an event she had no conscious recollection of at all but her recollection was being in a garden at a hospital with her mother. She was about a six-year-old girl and her older sister was upstairs in the hospital being treated for advanced kidney disease and might have died. Big sister didn't die but this little girl in the garden was watching the bees and the flowers terrified for her big sister and so she crisscrossed that fear with the bumblebees so that anytime she saw bumblebees or thought about them they triggered her. Once we were able to find that out, we could change her thought pattern to realize that no, in fact, bumblebees don't mean your big sister's gonna die and you can be around them. They're not there to hurt you or to be an omen of something bad.
So hypnosis is really powerful for things like that. Got it. Yeah, I am, you know, as I'm hearing you speak, I'm curious about, I hadn't thought about this before, but like is erectile dysfunction
some, could that be helped by? I haven't used it for that purpose but I suspect it would be very helpful for that purpose. What the technique in hypnosis, basically, you're getting somebody so relaxed as to build a belief in them. So if a guy is having problems in that department, believes that it could happen, it's just not happening right now, hypnosis would help him to sturdy that belief, to make that belief stronger. And I've never seen a statistic on it. I don't know anybody who specializes in this particular type of hypnosis, but I have to think that for a lot of men, hypnosis would be extremely helpful because, I don't know, the guys that I know have had this problem for the most part, it's a self-confidence thing or it's a thing that goes away after a little bit more familiarity with their partner kind of thing. And so I think hypnosis
would probably work really well. Yeah, I just, I think that most of the folks that I worked with in this realm, yes, it's either a fear of not performing or fear of not pleasing or not good enough. And I would imagine, as you said, if they have the story that yes, it can happen, that just allowing that to move through the self-confidence piece would probably be really helpful. Another thing I often see in my practice in terms of the more sexual realm is, and this is sort of with erectile issues, but also just not being able to become aroused or not being able to
relax into having their partners be able to touch them in different ways. I think where I have seen this come up is I have had at least one female client who, things had not gone well in that department in her youth, let's put it that way. There'd been some trauma, some sexual trauma in her youth and hypnosis was very effective at, so she was sort of acknowledging to me that she had a certain tightness in her pelvis, as that was kind of the way she talked about it. And the wonderful thing about hypnosis is that I could just help her release it by using her mind. I think with her, I did a hypnosis and I talked about feeling as if she was tied up in knots and visualizing all with her eyes closed those knots that she could untie those knots. She had the power to do that, right? And so I had her do this for a while and then I was like, well, is there any other body part you want to work on? Thinking that she would bring up her pelvis and I think she brought up her hands or arms or something. I was like, oh, this is great. It means we've released everything from that body part that we needed to.
You know, it's interesting. It hadn't occurred to me that visualization, as in, you know, because we were talking about how this is audio, but like all of the senses are really part of erotic hypnosis.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When I think about erotic hypnosis, I think about it from my practice where it would be a hundred percent audio, because that's how I deal with my clients. But it's the audio includes descriptions of touch, descriptions of feelings, descriptions of how those things are. And it's your mind. It's your imagination that senses them. I think it, you know, as you were saying, clients who maybe were reticent to be touched, like this, the nice thing about hypnosis is that you can have people imagine it. You have people imagine it over and over and
over again, so that when it actually happens, it seems normal. Does that make sense? It does make sense. It does make sense. And, you know, I'm a big person. I'm a big fan of practice. And so what I'm hearing you say is essentially you're practicing in a very safe, you know, space in your own comfort zone, in your own mind, within your own control, you're getting to practice like, oh, well, how would this feel? And I can imagine, well, I don't know if this would work, but I'm curious, like, if somebody had a problem, you know, asking for something different, like, could you maybe walk them through this touch, some touch, and then like, I don't know if he would do this before or after, but say, you know, actually, I want something different.
Well, hypnosis can be used to improve communication skills as well, right? So encouraging someone, helping someone have more confidence at their right to express what they feel, what they want to say, right? Encouraging them to have that. Now, hypnosis can't give them more words to be able to explain it, but it can absolutely help bolster their ability to speak about things. It opens the mind. It just opens your mind up. In hypnosis, your walls are down, and so it becomes more okay to say whatever you think. The subconscious mind is kind of like a child. It doesn't, just like kids kind of like, you know, they're not going to it doesn't, it just like kids kind of like say whatever they think, like they don't sit there wondering if they should say it this way or that way. They just say it. That's the way the subconscious works. And so it's kind of fun and kind of relieving because you're working with a part of yourself that is very much like your child self, not the grown up responsible,
critical self that we all have to be a lot of the time. So I'm curious, what are the qualities? So somebody's thinking to themselves, oh my gosh, that sounds amazing. I want somebody to help me with that. Like what are some of the guidelines you would give people about seeking somebody to work with around hypnosis? Because it sounds, what I keep hearing you say is that
you're in a very vulnerable state. Absolutely. It is important to think about who you're going to work with because in hypnosis, you are putting yourself in a vulnerable state. You don't want to put yourself in a vulnerable state of somebody who you don't like or you don't jive with. I would recommend if somebody's looking for a hypnotherapist to find somebody who went to a good school and who has a certificate for the number of hours, there's a lot of hypnotherapy schools around the nation, some of which have been in business for 40 plus years and some of which are created by one individual person who might not have the breadth or depth of experience. So I would definitely find somebody who's trained well. The next part is finding someone whose voice you like. You need to find someone whose voice you like, who you feel safe and comfortable with. Your subconscious will protect you so that if the hypnologist tries to get you to believe something crazy or ridiculous, you won't. But if you're paying for it and you're looking for good results, you want to find someone who you like, who you feel gets you and whose voice is pleasing to you.
Great. I love that. Thank you. So I'm kind of curious, what are you passionate about these days? What's fun for you or where's your attention going these days?
I put my attention to kind of two different camps. One camp is the work that I do with business people in my coaching work. And that's work oriented towards people who have a particular objective. Maybe they're looking for a new job, maybe they're looking for a promotion, maybe they're trying to navigate some nasty political situations at the office. But it pleases me to be able to help people with those kinds of problems because I've been in business for a long time. I think work is really important. And then I just love finding people that I can help on the hypnotic side of things with usually some of that is actually professionally related. I've had clients come to me like, oh, I was just really sick and I was out of work for a few months and I'm going back to work. And can you help me with the anxiety around that, the new expectations around that? But a lot of the hypnosis clients who come to see me are coming with really personal stuff. And it feels really good to me to be trusted to help them heal from these kinds of problems. The other thing to say about hypnosis is that it works pretty fast. It's not like psychotherapy, where you might be going every week for a year or two. Hypnosis is something that it's going to work, it's going to work in a few weeks and you're going to see a change. And it may get you to a new level, you may want to go back and do some touch-ups, you may go back and do another project, but it's very effective for rapid change, which is great.
Got it. So we went over a couple of places where hypnosis might be supportive to having better sex. And I'm just kind of curious, I'd love if you wanted to kind of underscore any of those or go deeper into it.
Well, I do like the notion we were starting to talk about sort of pillow talk. And I love the idea of spending time with your partner before in bed. Maybe it's sexy time, maybe it's not sexy time, but having your partner eyes closed and speaking those sweet nothings to your partner, even speaking those sweet nothings and then potentially adding touch to them or potentially just starting with those sweet nothings, because it's really powerful that way. It's a really nice way of building intimacy with people. And I think you don't have to be a hypnotherapist to be able to take advantage of somebody in that relaxed state with their consent, of course, they're there on the pillows, but using hypnosis as a way of supporting that intimacy, talking about how much you like looking at their body, talking about how appreciative you are for the nice thing he or she did for you today, like taking that time when you are relaxed and allowing those walls down to receive. Hypnosis is on my end, there's a lot of giving, but on the client end, there's a lot of receiving. And so it's a neat way to kind of throw that ball back and forth on the giving and receiving side of things. I'm curious hearing you say that. I'm curious, like,
so if you know, for whatever reason, like your partner has got some anxiety about going to work or something like that, and you wanted to help them unwind there, is that something like, could you just sort of start talking about the ease of which going back to work would be, or do you actually
need to have kind of a consensual conversation about? I think, well, you don't want to talk about, you know, your partner might or might not want you to be the one to talk about this. That might be a place where he or she really wants support, and maybe they want it from you, or maybe they don't want it from you. Like, I've, I don't know, I've had partners who didn't want me to talk about their frustrating jobs. That wasn't game with where we were. But if you have that kind of support, it's a very effective way of being supportive for each other. I also think, and this is just me, but I know there's other people like me out there, like, my target is to be supportive of my partner, like, my turn on is in my head. That is the way you get me turned on. And there's got to be other people out there because like, shades of gray and all that, they were books before they were movies. That the book experience is similar, right? You're reading, you're thinking, you're imagining. It's sexy. It can be super sexy. And so, you know, that's, I think, where erotic hypnosis, or even reading erotica, but being in that sort of super relaxed state is a wonderful way to personally enjoy fantasies and imagination and cool sex and impossible sex, right? You can have
impossible sex in your imagination. So, you know, why not? Absolutely. You know, it's so funny. The, I read the Sleeping Beauty series, and there is always Anne Rice, Anne Rice, exactly, under her other name anyway. But I, the thing about it was, was there's the part of me that was like, wait a second, this is anatomically impossible. And yet, at the same time, it was so freaking hot because like, you know, all of those pieces and parts were coming together. So, I love the idea of that being a place to play in the impossible sex realm.
Absolutely. You can do, you can do things, things in your dreams, or in novels don't have to be real, right? They don't have to, they don't have to work, so to speak. Your subconscious will find a way for you to see it as working, whether it's sort of changing the imaginary camera angle, or it's making a body part do things that it wouldn't do in real life. But why not? I think
that goes back to me being an imagination advocate. Like, I'm all for that. Right. Well, and I'm kind of cracking up because it reminds me of like, when my, my girlfriend and I, when we were like nine or something like that, and had Barbie and Ken together, and we didn't exactly know what they did, but we knew that they were sort of on top of each other. And so, we always sort of had them flying through the air. Sex can be flying if it's in your imagination, right? You know? Yeah. And it just really reminds me that like, we have sensuality and sexuality throughout our lifetime.
And I would imagine that our, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I would imagine that our fantasies shift and change a little bit, you know, depending on, on where and when we are. I know for me they have, I can't speak for very many other people in that particular department, but what, what I thought was sexy at 25 is not what I think is sexy at my current age. I so get that. It just, it changes, right? You know, we all change and we all change. The subconscious is like a recorder. It remembers a lot of those events. So as you age, you have more and more of those little data points that got registered in there. And in some cases, that's fantastic. Cause maybe you're having an experience and you're like, oh my God, nobody's made love to me like this since X person 15 years ago. It was for me anyway.
But it, it, it just sort of provides a history of those things. Yeah. So if you were to say to somebody who is listening to this, to this conversation, what would be like one thing that they could incorporate from all of the, from the things that we've been talking about, like one little step or, or
I would say, if, if yourself, the space to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to really listen to what's inside of you. We spend so much time driving our cars and grocery shopping and making lists and taking care of this and that we spend so much of our time in our conscious frame of mind. We spend very little waking time, really allowing ourselves to be quiet and listen to ourselves. And that can be time sitting at your desk. That can be time sitting in the garden. That can be time wherever, but making that time to connect with yourself is going to make you feel better. And in terms of sex, it's going to greatly improve how, how you, how you're able to support and show affection and be sexy in the bedroom. I see them as completely, as completely related. You, you, if you're not making enough time for yourself, how are you going to make good time for your partner? Thank you. And I know that you have a guess, excuse me. I know that you have a gift for those that are listening. I do. Thank you for your generosity. Absolutely. I have an Etsy store Etsy store is called mind powered junkie. That's a M I N D junkie is a mind power P O W E R. And then junkie is J U N K I E mind powered junkie. It's on Etsy and there's 21, I think hypnosis recordings there. I would be happy to gift anybody who listens to this podcast and is curious to try hypnosis. One of my Etsy products. And the easiest way you can find that is by going to my website and then adding a slash gift at the end. I think Deborah's going to put this in the show notes for all of you. But if you fill out that little form, I'll make sure you get a copy of one of my recordings and, and let me know if you want to talk. Cause I love to talk about hypnosis and how it can help.
Thank you so much. So my guest today is Michelle Walters. She is a clinical hypnotherapist. She works with all sorts of different people, executives, and who knows people looking to dive into the more erotic side of things. So thank you so much for being my guest today. And please check out the show notes so that you can get her very generous gift and learn a little bit more about hypnosis. Thank you, Deborah. So I am so pleased that you're here today. Thank you so much. And again, please go ahead and if you're listening today, subscribe and comment wherever you get your social media. Thank you so much.