Hello this is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. I am super excited today to have with me John McGrail. So, I will ask him as I do with most of my introductions he obviously has this amazing bio and experiences in this really great synthesis so I’ll say the synthesis and the synergy of like the practical and the more magical like I like to talk about. But what’s amazing about John and you’re going to feel it here in a second is Day is just like a warm hug. When he starts talking and so I won’t spend a ton of time bragging about him but I do I do want to highlight a few things that I think are extremely impressive. The just amazing major print and online publications that he’s been featured in my time Reader’s Digest I mean these are small things folks these are household names the Chicago Tribune The New York Daily News this guy’s information is out there and I’m really pleased that he chose to participate in the interview this morning so that you all can get a feel for what this looks like so many of you are called to do similar work but it can be daunting to know how that’s going to going to be received at the world. So, I’m excited for John to share that story with us. John welcome to the show.
Hi Tonya. Thanks so much. I’m delighted to be with you today.
Good. And so, we’re in a dive right in and ask you what are your Super Powers?
Well it’s interesting that you call them Super Powers. I would prefer to at least in my parlance I just call them my natural powers. And really, it’s going to sound so simple and maybe over simple but I learned many years ago, to tap into what I like to call my intuitive or our intuitive sixth sense through spirituality through recognizing that I am not just a physical being with a mind that I’m a mind connected to the energy that moves through all things that’s very Native American which is how I got started in this. But it’s really interesting in modern western culture and I’m sure the listeners are all really aware of that. We are so disconnected we are so wrapped up in the material in the physical world. And I was blessed to be exposed to the spiritual world through my natural interest in Native American philosophy. I can’t tell you where that came from it was just something that was always there. And at a very critical time in my life I began to really study how the native peoples of the world lived and to my amazement I found that they did not suffer from all the stuff that we suffer from all these weird maladies like bipolar and us an obsessive-compulsive disorder and all these weird diseases that modern western culture suffers from. It just didn’t exist in their culture they lived in balance with their world with one another and of course they were human they had challenges they fought against one another of course the Native Americans when they had wars they just touched the other guy. He was dead. He was out of the fight. much better.
But I really dove into this at a time in my life when I needed to change a lot of things. I was a very unhappy camper. And the more I learned and the more I began to practice this very simple but very powerful the practice of spirituality and energetic balance is what I like to call it with my clients integrating and balancing my physical emotional and spiritual energies then my life transformed and it’s never been the same since. So is it a Super Power. I think it’s a natural power we all have in Western culture we have learned to ignore it now. But it’s there and anybody can tap into it.
I love that you said that. I can talk a lot on the show that people’s really unique Super Powers are typically the thing that comes most naturally to them and we don’t see those Super Powers. And so just given the number of people I talked to about this topic I can assure you that that is absolutely a Super Power that you tapped into that and embraced it. It’s actually in a world like you said that it’s really all about the mundane and the physical and it’s challenging sometimes to see beyond that. And so that that’s a very critical thing that you’re that that you speak about one of the things I didn’t mention when I was introducing it was it was that you are a clinical hypnotherapist and you and I discussed a little bit about how we have the shared veteran background so I’m super curious about how you went from the military into the spiritual journeying if you will and did hypnotherapy come in the middle there at the end of that. Talk to me about your timeline.
Well, it’s really interesting and it’s a bit convoluted so I’ll try to make it as simple as possible but before I do I really have to say I love what you said about natural abilities. So many of us try to live our lives according to the expectations of others.
And it just gets to center every time. If anybody decides to read my book there are many stories of people in there that I’ve worked with and all we really had to do to get them tuned up and straightened out was allow them to believe in what they wanted to do and start doing it rather than what mom and dad or husband or wife or sister or brother or friends said or society said they should be doing. And that was that was really big in my evolution. But to answer your question directly I’m not going to be one of these politicians that just because we had to go there would you.
So, when I was in the military I was a Coast Guard aviator and young guy pretty what behind of years in my 20s. And when I when I was designated an aircraft commander as you well know and many of the listeners probably knew the Coast Guard doesn’t get sent out when the weather is good. We usually get sent out when things are really bad because people don’t get in trouble when the weather is good. And it was a very stressful position. I had a crew of six on the airplane and I’m flying in hurricanes and all kinds of stuff. And I was I was pretty high strung back then. And I started playing with self-hypnosis just as a hobby. I was just I gravitated toward it and I began to use it way back then when I was in the service. Just to help me with my stress levels. And then with my golf game and I just found that I’m tapping into the power of my mind. I did better so that was the seed and it sat there for probably 25 years. And then some of the airlines and from the airlines into film and television and that was a long progression.
The short of it was that I came to a crossroads in my life where I was laid off from a very lucrative cushy comparatively speaking media job and I had to sit and say OK what am I going to do with myself. I can dust up my resume and go be somebody else’s V.P. of Business Development. And I hated it, but I was making really good money. Or what do I really like to do? And so, I did a survey of all the jobs I had ever had from college up to this point and this point now I had been in the professional world for about 25 years I guess. And it dawned on me that every position I had ever had in the military and the airlines even in the media industry, I had always somehow been funneled into a teaching, coaching, mentoring position. I was an instructor in the military. I was an instructor in the airlines. I did a lot of training in instructing and mentoring work in film and TV. And so, I said OK what do I really like to do what am I best at. And I realized teaching, coaching, and mentoring when I had that cushy job that I hated. The one thing I loved about it was working with my staff because I had a lot of young people right out of college, and it was so cool to guide them into being able to survive in a very cutthroat environment. And TV is not a nice industry.
And so, then I said, well and I worked with a hypnotherapist when I was reinventing myself and the two came together and said I really want to do this for a living so I looked at divinity school. I looked at getting a Ph.D. in psychology and becoming a psychotherapist. I looked at all the different kinds of teaching and helping professions. And again, because I was well past mid-career I had to do something that was practical because I had to make a living. I had a wife who had a mortgage I can’t just go to school for 10 years to get my Ph.D. in psychology. I had to work. And ironically or not this is how the universe works. I happened to be reading the L.A. Times one morning, and I saw this ad for the hypnotherapy college in L.A. which is one of the first accredited by the federal government and in the U.S. And I remembered the gal that had helped me so many years ago, I had graduated from that school. So, I went up the next day and talked to them and enrolled and the rest is history. It was it was something that I could do while I was working I did consulting work for the year I was in school got my certification and then once I started working in building my practice I went back and got my Ph.D. while I was working. But that’s how it happened it was a natural interest my proclivity to the spiritual aspects of Native American philosophy the fact that I worked with a hypnotherapist and she just helped me change my life in such a short amount of time so it all came together and that’s how my Super Power was born so to speak.
I love that. It never ceases to amaze me, just the process that we all go through folks. I really gleaned from that is just that trust. You just have to keep putting one foot in front the other. It’s not like we wake up one day and you’re like, “Oh, I see. All of this is going to change and I’m going to do this and everything else.” Some of us have that vision goal, but the path to get there is tenuous at best. It really is an unfoldment process, and part of that comes from how I see things. You try to explain to people how you see potential futures. It’s like Wall Street. There’s all these different figures and numbers that are changing constantly, based on percentage of likelihood that that future is going to happen for you. It’s not like some puppeteer is dictating all this. It’s all based on where you choose to put one foot in front the other, what you’re choosing to focus on and where you’re choosing to the direction you’re choosing to go and in the second you like turn your eyes to the left. It’s tragic. You just go onto a different path and then and now the figures change over here and when you really start playing with it in that way. Well for one thing that paralyzes a lot of people because of a whole lot of choice to mess with but it but when you see that it’s choice and the power in it. It really does make you the pilot of your own existence. And so, I love that. I love the unfoldment process. In the other piece is just your courage, rather than getting stuck.
You’re a veteran and you have to have a job and all these things, but you allowed for the eagerness to come out. And in the doing this, can take all kinds of different shapes and hybrids and enmeshment. When you focus on that purity of what’s moving you, on which you so eloquently spoke about. I love that about your journey.
I’ve felt like it gets really interesting and I know it’s right.
When I began the process of integrating my physical, emotional, and spiritual energy, and acknowledged that. This is what I help my clients in workshops and seminar students do. Once you really learn to listen to that the way it was taught to me is inner vision that intuitive sixth sense we all have it. And if you study any of the native aboriginal cultures in the world, they are so in tune with themselves and the earth and the universe and the environment for really quickly there was that horrible tidal wave tsunami in the Indonesian archipelago back in 2005 or 6. And thousands and thousands of people and companion animals were killed. What they didn’t tell you, it was very briefly covered was that none of the tribal peoples in the world in that area were killed. They all got to higher ground because they knew it was coming before it hit. And it was fascinating to me.
There was an article written by a guy named Roy, and you could look this up. And he said these people have a sixth sense we don’t have. They knew it was coming they all got to higher ground their villages were destroyed, but they didn’t lose one person. They didn’t lose any of their cattle or anything and we all have the same sense we’re all human beings. And it really was that in the thing the essence of it. This all sounds like really complex, but it’s so simple. And that is to listen to what your gut your inner vision is the way it was taught to me by my native American shamans is telling you. And it was really an easy decision. Now you can just imagine I grew up in New England which is about as provincial as it gets right there and nothing’s ever wrong. You just suck it up.
I was expected to go to college, which I did get a job like he said. And pretty traditional and of course the military so you can imagine what it was like. At 40 something years old, to call my mother and say listen I’m going to Hypnotherapy College. What are you going to do? But it felt so right and that’s what I would tell the listeners.
And the other thing you mentioned, Tonya, that’s important for the listeners to understand is that almost all of us, when we’re making these kinds of transitions. If you’re not feeling right and there’s something else that you’re supposed to be doing, which you can’t quite figure it out. Almost everybody needs a little assistance in making that happen. It’s not because there’s something wrong with you, it’s not because you’re inferior or that you’re not enough. It’s because of the way the human mind has evolved and functions. And then of course that’s what I do as I help people in that process. Most of us need a little outside help because we are autopilots. As you mentioned, our program for this pattern that’s usually not very self-honoring, you need some help to change that programming and it very much is a program.
So, if anybody is out there saying, well I should be able to do this and what’s wrong with me. No. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just that most people need a little help and I’m going to plug my own video series in a few minutes. But if you go to my video series on my YouTube channel, John McGrail, I’ve got this “A Better You In A Minute Or Two.” I talk about all this in the first few episodes. So, I love that you brought that up, but it’s just listening to what is authentic for you and the hell with everybody else. If you don’t mind me saying it that way.
I don’t. I don’t at all. And I think it’s good to get a little bit of that Warrior Sequel Energy built up, a little bit beat because, like you talked to, we are taught to just not give voice to this stuff. That it’s a very powerful stance when you can get to the place of saying, “Wait, no!” like you just said this is my life. This is neo this is this is me. And most of us have no idea just how many stories and programs and everything else we’ve taken on or expectations. I love that you talked about family. I’d heard one time that you truly start living your life and so both of your parents passed away. And I was like What can that be true. when you take yourself through an exercise of like OK where am I making decisions based on somebody else’s expectations or wanting affirmations or approval. When you go down that trajectory and start peeling back those layers like those run deep. And we get those messages in society. I’m starting to become hyper aware of all of that and how pervasive it is throughout much of our mass media and social media and stuff and so. But when you are really willing to take a hard look at that and said wait why though why do I do things like that. I tell I tell our members and our clients like ask here’s a question everything like. Do you even like chocolate ice cream like you’re putting it in your mouth like do you even like it. Like how do. And really a glass of yes. Where. Did I lose you. Up the class together you did well I lost you. I don’t know. I’m back. I know I was bad this was good. I was out on the road so it’s ok to eat it here. Just know that it was brilliant. Well just go. OK.
There’s a story that I share in my book The Synthesis Effect. This young man came to me with needing it according to him. He couldn’t pass the bar exam. He graduated from one of the finest law schools in the country at the top of his class and had taken the bar exam three times and failed three times. And it just there was no congruence there it did not make sense and it didn’t take very long to find out or to discover in his first session that he really didn’t want to be an attorney. He went to law school. Everybody in his family had been for three or four generations and that’s what we do you. You will. Do as I say. OK well look here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to help you pass the Bar Exam will get you through your mental block because that’s all it is. And then I’m also with your permission to help you figure out what it is you want to do and he already knew he won. That’s where. You want to go to college and be a chef. So. We got to the point where he said my dad. We’re so sorry I went to law school I asked. I followed every school and he is there apoplectic distress. They were be on themselves. But now the guy is about 10 years ago, owns six or seven.
Yes. So, he went and passed the bar exam and that they were all ready for him to join the Fermi’s honorary school. I want to be a chef and I’m sorry you don’t like it but it’s my life and it’s my choice. And they were they were just apoplectic I mean they were shocked and dismayed and it’s just not what we do. But he did it. He stayed the course and followed his path. He knew it was right for him and now he owns six or seven restaurants he’s internationally known and extremely successful. Of course, now they’re beyond themselves they’re so proud of their son.
Yes, he does. And we all need to do it.
So, but it’s so important because we do. It’s your life, it’s your path. And I know one of your questions is going to be what’s your favorite quote and my favorite quote is from Christopher Morley. “There is only one success to live your life the way you want to.” That’s a paraphrase. Really, how many chances do we get per lifetime. So, it’s so cool that we’re talking about this. And I just love to see the light bulb go off and people and my clients and students when they say, “I’m going to follow my gut I don’t care what anybody else says. This is my life I’m going to live it my way.”
And isn’t it amazing, just how subversive and pervasive like some of those really concepts are though like I and this is my experience too. I thought I was very clear. I know there’s been many moments in my journey where I would tell you, I was extremely strong exactly what I was going to do. Nobody could stop me. Then to flake there’s another layer of something that was dictating my choices and I wasn’t even aware of it and you can’t. Like you have to peel those layers back because you can’t see the bottom layers sitting at the top of the layers. And so, it’s just the journey itself is so fascinating to me. And if I can offer any advice to anyone it’s just to stay the course with that and constantly be willing to ask those questions and to challenge yourself and say OK do it and is this still the trajectory I want to be on because it changes it really does. And at the end of the day it’s how you feel and when you begin to really tap into that and tune into it and turn onto it. And your consistent consistency is key and you balance those energies. It’s amazing how you begin to manifest and how smoothly and beautifully your life can unfold. It really truly is. And that’s the joy of doing what we do for a living is helping people discover that.
Absolutely. So, it’s obvious you’re doing your part to help change the world what’s next for you what is it what do you see yourself continuing to do the one on one work with people or what projects are you looking at next?
Well yeah, I think I’ll always do one on one work I really get great joy out of it. And of course, things are expanding. I’ve got my new video series and I’m in discussions with a production company for a TV show. I’m not sure exactly what that’s going to look like. And I certainly I’m always, I do a lot of radio and television now just as a guest. But this would be a TV show where I would be the host of it. And it was a combination of a talk variety show with edutainment to just help educate people and to let everybody know that look we all have the right to live a beautiful, powerful and the ability abundant joy for life. And so, that’s in the works.
And then, I’m always open to speaking engagements and I love doing workshops and seminars. the more people I feel that with the viral nature of information propagation today that we do it one person at a time. But if you can get 100 or 200 people to start thinking this way and living this way if we can really react to all the negativity in the world. Why can’t we do the same thing the other way and maybe change our species? It’s there, so it’s interesting. We focus on all the misery the gloom and doom and fear. And again, just look at the political climate in in our country today. But we could we could flip that switch and look the other side of it they never say on the news by the way folks before we tell you about all the crap that’s happening and scare the hell out of you. Most of the world and most of the people in the world. The vast majority of the seven point two billion of us are fine are fine. Millions of people are suffering, yes. But billions aren’t.
I love that and it’s so crucial we talk about that a lot. And I remember sitting here and that’s the whole point. We called them the Network of Evolutionary Transformation, but it really is to bring people together, to create that support. That social proof, that confidence, that we were, you can choose to look differently at things. We can choose to look over here and look over here, and it’s what makes the misery more real than the happiness it’s just a choice. And we talk about that a lot.
Like me, it feels almost like you go into this almost irresponsible adolescence again where you’re just like, “I can’t hear you.” l get up to put your blinders on in your ear muffs it just be like, no. I’m just going to go this way everybody to stop telling me all the reasons why I can’t or shouldn’t or anything else. And lo and behold the second you pushed through that nobody’s contradicting you anymore when you don’t need that conflict in your existence. Then you started seeing and it was like oh yeah that’s OK you can absolutely live that way. But we create these sandpaper moments to really test our conviction.
And see, I do really want to step into that space. And like you, that’s the piece I love is when people cross that threshold and they look back like, oh now I get it. Like what was that? Why was I so worried about really being away and the other pieces? I remind people all the time there’s always somebody watching you to see if it’s safe to show up fully as who you are. And that that’s what people want they want the cellular confidence and the social proof, that it’s OK to do it because we have many stories in our existence and our history that say it’s not safe to do that. And so, in this lifetime those of us who are waking up, and if you listen to this interview, obviously on some level you are in a degree of awareness. It is our responsibility to show up fully and to illuminate that it’s OK to do that because there are people watching. Our younger generation is watching even the people right beside you are watching you because once you start opening up to those higher frequencies people know. They feel it from you. And if you’re playing small after coming into awareness all you’re doing is perpetuating the idea that it’s not safe and that people should remain small. And I take that responsibility very seriously. And so, and plus it’s fun like it’s just a much more enjoyable way to exist. So, it’s twofold there.
I could I could absolutely keep going for hours but I want to be sensitive to our time here. The final question I want to ask you about is, we do that Live In Your Power Segment, where we talk about what does it look like to do all this stuff that we’re talking about. Do you have an example of a time when you really followed your intuition and what transpired?
I do. I have one of the most seminal moments of my life. And it was a period after I had begun this process and I had been in it for several months just learning this energetic integration and living authentically. If you will be rediscovering who I was and at the time I was in between positions I wasn’t. And I got invited to interview with a major airline as an instructor which was a good job because I love teaching. And it was it was a company back east and one of my best friends from my airline days worked for them and it was a very secure position because it was a management position and so stock options. And basically, if I took this job, I was set for life financially and I’d be teaching and I’d be back in aviation. So, I flew back east for the interview and three of the people on the interview board were actually people that I had flown with at my former airline. So, it was a slam dunk that I could get this job if I wanted it. And I did the interview and it was two days before.
Two days before Christmas Eve I think it was and I was get it and then fly back to New England for the for the holiday. And now at this time I was in the middle of a div,orce. My divorce from my first wife, which another subject, but a marriage that never should have happened, was just about finalized. And I was really in flux. I was standing there waiting for the cab to take me to the airport to fly back to New England. And I’ll never forget it. I was sitting there and I said, “What I don’t want this job. I do not want to do this. I like who I am. I like the way I’m living. I don’t know exactly where I’m heading, but I’m not going to do it.” And it was this epiphany this moment. I felt like the weight of the world had lifted off my shoulders. I was giving up financial security and something that I would have been good at to dive into the unknown because this was way before. I went to school to do what I do now. And I said I’m just going to trust that I’m doing what I do. I like who I am. I like where I’m living. I like Los Angeles. I’m not doing this job.
Well I went home and then went up to see a friend in the Boston area which is where I lived before I moved to L.A. And the very next day, I met my wife, my current wife, who had been blissfully in love with for 20 years, and then very soon after that my whole life changed when I got back to L.A. But it was that one moment where I said I’m not going to do this. This is what everybody expects me to do. I don’t care about the money I’m going to be who I’m supposed to be. And nothing has been the same since and I can tell you that my life has been absolutely a lot of fun. Rule number one methodologies I’m sure is that life is supposed to be fun and OneSteel tell everybody out there. It can be. You have everything you need to make it that way. And its people like Tonja and I will just include myself that can help you do it. So, that was my moment and I’ve been living in my power ever since.
Beautiful. I love that example. Perfect all around. John where I know people are going to want to find out more about you. You referenced a video. Where can they find all of that?
Well, on my website. I have two websites hypnotherapyLosAngeles.com all one word spelled. Lots of information about the hypnosis part, which is just a tool one of many I use. DrJohnMcGrail.com is my other website. It’s currently being redesigned. Go to my YouTube channel or Facebook. John McGrail, just my name, a YouTube channel. There’s a whole new video series. I launch a video every week. Just little bits, A Better You, which is the name of my company. In a minute or two and it’s just a two three four-minute video, which just shares some of the little secrets. And things that you can do on a practical everyday level to get this process started. So, I’m in and I’m reachable through my websites, if someone goes to my Website you can e-mail me, you can call me. I always answer personally. I don’t have people that do that. People may take it in, but I answer every inquiry personally and delighted to see if anyone has questions about my process or my book, The Synthesis Effect, which is available at Amazon Barnes and Noble. I’m happy to answer them. And thank you, so very much Tonya. This has just been a blast. We should do it again.
I agree. I was just going to ask you if you’re open to that. Maybe we can pick a topic or something and dialogue around it together.
I would love to do that. This has been really fun.
Very cool. Thank you, John. Thank you so much for all the work that you do in the world. I love knowing that you all are out there doing your part and it’s so affirming. And I think that we are so close to that tipping point where we can just keep taking people to that edge and holding them as they choose to jump off that. I see that real shit happening so than you for your part.
Thank you back for yours.
Absolutely. All right. Well, and to all of you out there as always, we appreciate your loyalty. And until next time go out discover your Super Powers and Change the World. Take care everyone.
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