I hypnotise people for a living – here is the fastest way to get other people to change.

I used a catchy title to draw your attention (of course), but it isn’t an exaggeration of what I’m about to share. Much like the popular quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” you really need to begin with your own inner state. In the next 2–3-minute read, I am going to take you on a journey – expanding your way of thinking and shifting your perspective in the process. Follow along for the ride.

Have you ever heard of co-regulation? Co-regulation is an interactive process in which one person can help another regulate their bodily feelings and way of thinking through their presence alone. There are a few different ways to understand how your presence influences other human beings.

Firstly, on a physical level, your autonomic nervous system is always scanning the people around you for cues of safety or danger, a process called neuroception. According to Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, this happens below conscious awareness, through tone of voice, facial expressions, posture and breathing. Mirror neurons in the brain are thought to help us “catch” another person’s state, and during close interactions, two people’s brain activity can even synchronise, which researchers call neural attunement. Your chemistry follows too. Eye contact and gentle touch raise oxytocin, the bonding hormone, while stress hormones like cortisol drop. Sit with a calm person and your vagus nerve signals safety; your breath slows and your shoulders soften. Sit with a stressed person and your body braces with them. In a very real, biological sense, we feel what others feel.

On an energetic level, HeartMath researchers propose that each human body is surrounded by a bioelectromagnetic field, which they suggest may reach 6–8 feet around you. Their theory is that when you’re near someone, you may become attuned to the rhythm of their heartbeat without being aware of it. Like two tuning forks, you may start to resonate with each other and fall into sync. In their view, this can influence how your body functions and feels, and even the quality of your thoughts. Whatever the exact mechanism, most of us know the experience: some people make you feel calm and safe the moment they walk in, while others leave you drained without saying a word. You’re not just hearing or seeing them. You’re feeling their frequency.

Here’s a great example. During World War II, thousands of British children were sent away from their families to keep them safe from the bombing. Years later, researchers found that those who stayed home with their mothers, even through the air raids, grew into adults who felt more secure in their relationships. Many of those sent away grew up longing for closeness while bracing for rejection (Rusby & Tasker, 2008). Anna Freud saw the same thing at the time: children stayed calm through the bombs as long as their mother stayed calm (Freud & Burlingham, 1943). They weren’t reacting to the danger around them. They were reacting to her. Being physically safe mattered less than being near someone whose nervous system told them, “You’re okay.” The mother’s own feelings, reactions and state affected and regulated her child far more than the distance from the bombs did. That’s the power of owning and controlling your own state of being.

In my hypnotherapy work, a client once asked me if I could work with her young daughter to help her. I told her, “The greatest thing for her isn’t my help – it’s your own healing and self-regulation.” The more you can feel self-love, joy, peace and calm, the more your child will match it. The longer you can stay in that emotional state, the stronger it will become. A young kid doesn’t need “fixing”; they need an adult who is stable, because they will – and I mean… THEY WILL – regulate with their parents. They feel what their parents feel, and by proxy, think how their parents think and act how their parents act.

Here are a few core lessons from this, and ways to apply them in real life.

Humans are not meant to live in isolation. We are biologically designed to co-regulate. From an evolutionary perspective, being rejected from the group made injury and infection more likely. Over time, our brains developed systems that detect social threats and prepare the body to handle harm by increasing inflammation (Dhabhar et al., 2012; Slavich & Irwin, 2014). Social rejection, and even the threat of it, sets off a cascade of stress responses in the body, releasing cortisol and creating inflammation over time. Research also shows that this inflammation can trigger “sickness behaviour”, such as fatigue, loss of pleasure, low appetite and social withdrawal, which looks very similar to depression (Eisenberger & Moieni, 2020; Slavich & Irwin, 2014). So while you might feel the urge to cut “toxic” people out of your life, doing so can hurt their health and your own. From a purely evolutionary and biological perspective, being completely alone without social support or resources can harm you too. Humans are social creatures. Through hard times and good, we are meant to support one another to achieve optimal health and interrelational harmony.

Taking that a step further, intentionally surrounding yourself with people whose quality of life, way of thinking and personality you admire can help you level up faster, as you embody their way of feeling and being simply by being near them. While writing this, I was reflecting on the importance of mentors in my life. From the age of 15 or 16, I began investing any savings I had in working with teachers who were much better than me in the field I wanted to pursue. At first, it was jazz saxophone. Being around them, I could feel their energy and embody their form, and it helped me improve much faster. Like a light in a dark tunnel, they illuminate the path to guide you to your destination. Since then, I’ve invested in working with great hypnotherapists, spiritual mentors like Mandev and Harijiwan from Kundalini Yoga, David Snyder in San Diego for hypnosis, a Jikiden Reiki master, yoga teachers in Indonesia, and even one of the best Medical Qi Gong practitioners in the USA. When you feel how they feel, get into the correct posture or mindset and experience the correct breathing, it becomes a new experience for your nervous system to draw from and recreate. Without that initial experience, it’s hard to imagine how to create it. That’s why so many traditions are passed down from teacher to student.

Lastly, be careful about which environments you choose. Are you working in a café surrounded by tourists, in a co-working studio with entrepreneurs, or in a school full of ambitious students – or possible students who don’t want to be there? Are you working out at a gym where people feel motivated and joyful, or intense and overly serious? With this new awareness, try to be mindful of where you spend your time. As you regulate with those around you and feel what they feel, you also begin to think how they think and act how they act. So always observe yourself, and don’t identify with any thoughts or feelings that aren’t your own.

Do you want the people around you to be more friendly, kind, helpful, or less difficult? Learn to control your state. Choose joy, peace, playfulness, curiosity or awe. As you keep building that state, believing in it, and holding it more and more often, you will amplify its signal. By default, your inner state will start to override the states of the people around you. You will influence the people in every room you walk into, without them even knowing it.

References

Dhabhar, F. S., Malarkey, W. B., Neri, E., & McEwen, B. S. (2012). Stress-induced redistribution of immune cells—From barracks to boulevards to battlefields: A tale of three hormones. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 37(9), 1345–1368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.05.008

Eisenberger, N. I., & Moieni, M. (2020). Inflammation affects social experience: Implications for mental health. World Psychiatry, 19(1), 109–110. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20724

Freud, A., & Burlingham, D. T. (1943). War and children. Medical War Books.

McCraty, R. (2017). New frontiers in heart rate variability and social coherence research: Techniques, technologies, and implications for improving group dynamics and outcomes. Frontiers in Public Health, 5, Article 267. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00267

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Rusby, J. S. M., & Tasker, F. (2008). Childhood temporary separation: Long-term effects of the British evacuation of children during World War 2 on older adults’ attachment styles. Attachment & Human Development, 10(2), 207–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730802113737

Slavich, G. M. (2020). Social safety theory: A biologically based evolutionary perspective on life stress, health, and behavior. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 16, 265–295. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032816-045159

Slavich, G. M., & Irwin, M. R. (2014). From stress to inflammation and major depressive disorder: A social signal transduction theory of depression. Psychological Bulletin, 140(3), 774–815. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035302