Shawn W. Mash
Shawn W. Mash grew up in Pittsburgh's Hill District, a lively melting pot where his family operated a tiny neighborhood store and peddled vegetables from a horse and wagon. His Jewish upbringing centered on the Irene Kaufmann Settlement, where for a few dollars he attended camp each summer and first discovered theater, pool, and a close circle of Jewish friends. At seventeen he joined the army after the war and spent about a year and a half in Japan. He married young and had three children by the age of twenty-six, working for years as a salesman of aluminum siding, storm windows, doors, and roofs.
Two accidents, one in 1957 that left him paralyzed for a time, changed his life. During his recovery he met a hypnosis instructor in Pittsburgh who helped him walk again and inspired him to study hypnosis as a healing science for three years. He came to Dallas in 1961 with his first wife and children, though that marriage ended in divorce. In Dallas he met and married his second wife, Zelda, whom he credits as the driving force behind his growth. Together they raised a blended family of children and later welcomed seven grandchildren.
Encouraged by Zelda, Shawn took a teaching job at a synagogue school despite not yet being able to read Hebrew. Under educational director Alfred Rice, who taught him Hebrew each morning, he served for eight years, growing a small youth program into an acclaimed operation with an orchestra, drama group, and a large youth board. He earned a general studies degree by studying at several Dallas-area colleges over ten years and traveled to Israel and to summer programs at Cornell and elsewhere. He built a career as a clinical hypnotherapist, using guided imagery and mindful breathing to help clients heal from trauma, anxiety, and pain, and remains devoted to his family and faith.
Full Transcript
Sean mesh seann william mesh here are you from original Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and how did you get to Dallas well i got the Seattle Dallas actually my accident I had two accidents I had one in 57 ready to go back to work and then eight months later I had another one let me paralyzed for two months and actually out of that came my whole background and my whole professional becoming I had not nervous in fact they said I couldn't walk for two months I laid the hospital and that's when I met mr. doing Deavers who was the Dean of the hypnosis institute in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and he's the one that really was responsible for putting the circulation back in my legs getting me on my feet and actually at that time you know I got married very young I was barely 21 I had three children by the time I was 26 and I always was a home improvement salesmen I sold aluminum siding and storm ones and doors and roofs and that's all I ever did and when I was seventeen its I decided well enough of this i'm going to go to the army and the war was over so
i spent a year and a half in japan and the game back but anyway i studied with doing for three years because I not only learned hypnosis but I learned it as a science I learned how to deliver babies with hypnosis I learn how to work with salesmen who have burned out I will learn how to really understand that hypnosis is the science of the effects of suggestions and it's interesting it's the essence of a learning process it's the essence of really if you're a good therapist really the essence of empathetic communication or empathetic listening so I trained and I used to work with salesmen
were burned out and everything else but I always always work with children even when I travel so basically my career change when I realized we had to do something and I was working for a company in Pittsburgh and they decided to come to dallas to open up a company and then something happened because I was always a straight salesmen when they came to Dallas they were baiting and switching which meant they would advertise one thing and sell it for ten times 30 times more anyway I didn't want to do that so I rewrote their program and they accepted one partner did one part but anyway
after a while I could see you know it wasn't going my way and then here I met my second wife Zelda and when I met Zelda my kids were 8 12 and 14 hers were year and a half three and a half 1 F homina so we actually came together 47 years ago you know we went together for four years and got my mind and that's to her really you know I mentioned this because well we were honored the other day may in fact it Shh the Habad and I always want to talk about my wife you know I always say behind every great man
is a great woman well in my case that wasn't the case she wasn't behind me she was in front of me as here i was making thirty forty thousand dollars and then all of a sudden I didn't want to do that anymore so here I am 34 35 what am I going to do had no really educational vibe we stayed up all that and she said what do you want to be I don't work with children I want to go to school and sure enough first she took me to vocational counseling and he's the one you know would do the testing and everything he got
me a collar ship to go to send you but there's no way I mean I had to work you know so Zelda says what you really want to teach well here's a job it's sure his rule they have an opening for a teacher i saw i'll go but i don't know anything about judaism or I'm Jewish but that's it so then I met Alfre right he was the educational director truth is really he was the kind of man when he talked about God his eyes with water but shoshi introducing me to him and he's so happy to make this young fellow is a beautiful woman
that wants to teach in his school because he had the best school in the southwest so he says to me I'm so happy to meet you he says meta Barry v'reet as a no i don't know mr. bearer and i don't know mr. bri he says you're trying to be funny i said no i travel he says I asked you if you speak Hebrew I should speak it I can't even read it so he looks as hell de so what do you do she's in you just watch him teach one time and then that's the story him I took the job for 3,500 rollers of first-year stay to chair this room for eight years starting out with a budget you know they had about 13 14 under family for six children that's all they had involved in their youth program usy and a budget of six hundred dollars so not
only do they get me the 3500 otters and six months later they gave me a ray without known but then they gave me another five hours a week to work with the children as youth director when I left Sheriff eight years later I had a budget of 46 thousand dollars 20 of it was mine 26 a subsidized all the programs we had an orchestra we had a drama group we had a militia big kitchen / into the kitchen kids who come out of school they went right to the synagogue in a pool table and ping-pong tables we had a rap group I had 36 people
on my youth board in fact the head of the Jewish Family Service was upon my practice and I had a one psychiatrist to clinical psychologists and mothers fathers and also teenagers and then we train we train 18 paraprofessionals but we had telephone total breakfast is we had a summer program we had one a program where an orchestra it was just it was a great one was nothing like it in the country I remember that sounded work to ride alone with 0 everywhere zeldo telling her she was the one who cut the grass and cut the trees and and took me there then on top of
that that's finally alfre rice she taught me two hours every morning because I couldn't even read Hebrew them and I took a course and be all that was Shawn learning how to teach speak Hebrew but then she took me to El Centro college and enrolled me at night and I started there so two years I spent NL Central College for psychology but always set it on my own then I went to North Texas for philosophy we're north texas ok then I went to SMU for theology at perkins then i went to for arlington for Social Work and then I finished up when utd opened up
Dallas that's when I finished up so it took 10 years to get my BA in general studies because they pulled it all together so I'll never forget after eight years of chera two years it's a ferret I sisters all but you know I think I'll go back to school and become a rabbi that's a very good idea on Monday you become a rabbi I'm tuesday we get divorced he does not that's not a good job for Jewish boy you open your own practice and this is what cell descent that's why I always said she's in the front as a zelda on this piece of paper
here it says general sand doesn't say md doesn't say PhD you know she says you know i said no i had to agree she's you no longer i value the dumper you get pieces you have a degree nobody has you have a sean mash degree no one could get that degree you know and you have over 300 hours you know and hypnosis I mean you used to work with so many people and so many children blah blah much dresses all right all right she did you remember dr. Joe's a signal he was the leading a therapist everybody called him he was mr. mr. dr. Siegel was really the grandfather of all the therapists and Dallas he was having the Ethics Committee everyone so he introduced me to a man by name of Harvey Davidson and I went there and I wind up being his executive assistant I stayed here for three years and then opened up my own practice but still has always been the one that just cuts the grass and does ever having here she pushes she worked with me so she's been with me from the very beginning I mean I cannot tell you how many bus rides we took with no cushions or nothing all the way to wake them
but also why what every year I went to school every summer I went to Cornell one year and what the boss in another year what the Israel you know studied in Oakland haven and netanya what were you studying there I was supposed to be studying Hebrew and learning how to speak but for six weeks I'm sorry to say I'm not sorry to say out of a good time and it's real I saw the whole country you know and it was just a beautiful experience but it really gave me the it'sh kite and it gave me the spiritual watch I always had it but when you
go to Israel forget it when no matter what's doorman you're going to wake up it's really not Jewish that that tend to lead is going to wake up you know and you suddenly see you know you're on a bus with strangers but they're not strange their family and I remember I went to the Maccabee ornaments and at that time I've got my passport we rather stay but I get on the bus anyway and I don't know where I'm going so the bus driver systole you know in a forward I'm looking at he's okay where are you going I says that time he takes me off
the bus goes in front of the bus stops the first car and says natania and that's what it was like for me well and I was just amazing amazing experience now you grew up in Pittsburgh I lived in a hill sister you were squirrel you know I was going it was high class Stanton height was high class i live in the hill district centre avenue robert street bedford avenue it was a melting pot i was there any Jewish feeling or training growing up no training no but one thing for sure is paisans came and new dishes were out my why we had a little store
10 by 10 I think we had the first 7 11 in the country and my mother so penny candy of our you know baloney then they had income to that we had a horse and wagon so my dad and I you know he's still on the horse and wagon every morning and go about two miles and we get on an incline the Inca line was about as big as this room maybe go all the way down to Penn Avenue you see until the foot in 1936 was a big flood so we take down the horse and wagon you know by the vegetables and go out
and try to sell them in the you know they didn't steal whatever there was and and then when the horse died then we got a little push cart and I remember my dad pulling the Pushcart and my mother and two sisters of me pushing if we had a Jewish organization called the Iran Kaufman settlement called the Ike's per four dollars and fifty cents i would go to camp every two weeks for every summer you see and the more mashed potatoes you ate the more word you got except at night I was the only kid that never got crackers and chocolate milk because I I weighed
125 pounds when i was ten years old so it was it was in harmony PA and it was just unbelievable experience because the ira kaufman settlement and even at that time and a swimming pool bed theater that's how i got involved with the theater they had pool tables and big boat I mean so the kids the Jewish kids a small group that we had used to hang out at the Ike's there was 18 of us and now there's only two left and one just passed away cutter sha and just me and her we crazy looking but you kept up with all of them is sure
they all passed away and then cuddle just passed away a month ago Herbie Kramer he's can't walk but he's still alive you marry very young you said yeah so when you came eventually to Dallas did your family come with you my wife and three children but our marriage basically was really coming to an end and that's when we got divorced here and basically that's what I bet self and and your parents did they come to know my parents my dad died in nineteen fifty four and i came here in 1961 my mother died in 1964 can you tell us one or two of the things
that you've done as a professional hypnotist there was one that's quite recently in the last year having her client in monaco who always sends me people from all over the world and the call I got from the felon Monaco he says I have someone that was shot four times and I want you to work with him he says how soon can you be at your office I says well I could be there by 12 30 okay he'll get a call from Belgium this fellas on the phone he was a young nightclub owner he's about 34 years old was in his Taverner with business when they
start opening up at one o'clock in the morning was you know that kind of place and he's four people four men came from another country he wasn't shot he was stabbed four times and he was stabbed with the kind of knife that they went through the back through the ribs and cut into his liver he was practically dead when they finally got the ambulance there so they put him an artificial coma for 10 days and I worked with him I start from the very beginning teaching and what hypnosis isn't what it's not and I developed my own model of mine call them as shown in
my online and I teach a person because when something traumatic like that happens the first thing you have to do is get their mind quieted down and get them into them now you know because he has suffered with so much drama and everything else he was in the hospital well for 10 days he was in this artificial coma and when he finally came out all the nurses never believed he would be alive in fact they never believed he'd be normal again in six weeks time I got him back to work and I used to make him cds for morning and night but see the way
I use hypnosis is for a healing to produce homeostasis to produce a balance of red corpuscles carrying fresh oxygen white corpuscles carrying an ax box and platelets so I'm making these different tapes the first tape and if I had shown you a lot on my mind there's three parts of the month as the consciousness subconscious but in the middle is the preconscious mind because that's where your belief system is and if you can slow that down and create peace between the conscious and the sub clinches then you're in the now and I teach him posthypnotic suggestions that the least bit anxiety has you breathe now
it's called mindful breathing and it produces they oxygen that goes down into the body it reduces the endorsements with you can intensify that which i do then I was able to intensify the healing process and to get his mind clear but given the tools to be able you know whenever he started to be clear as mine did he'd have clarity you know and he'd be able to focus I got the tool that you gave him the tools were the deep relaxation called guided imagery using guided imagery you know you take a person you get them to visualize a tree they take the oxygen off down
into the bodies then they get back the tree the carbon diox-- now the hell of focus where deliver babies so now that takes down and when you breathe the domina blew through your mouth and I'll then the oxygen goes down then when they're deeply relaxed then you install the posthypnotic suggestions that whenever you feel anxious upset or things that whatever it is how are we going to thought our feeling you breathe slow you see now they call it mindfully bringing move really slow you relax that feeling passes you're in the now and then you can function then you intensify the healing process through suggestion you
can pull the oxygen down into the body and take the circulation all the way out and then intensify the healing new blood vessel new tissue knew everything that you need but the main thing is the attitude you have to connect them to God of their God of understanding if you can do that that's very important then you could really intensify the human process and this person was born very much in a religious home but you know you get older you just walk away so to speak so again you bring that back so you have all these different factors going as it different you give a
person a meaning and a purpose of life and I always have them read the book man's search for meaning by viktor frankl he was the one who developed logotherapy and he's the one that actually within that book there's one particular section called paradoxical intent when people develop anxiety they develop anxiousness but then anxiety it's reproduced to such a point it gets intensified and they wind up with an existential vacuum when you go into that existential vacuum you're suddenly disconnected from everyone your life has no meaning now how do you pull that person back out of that that hole how do you get them to realize
you know and reconnect them and give them meaning in their lives and how do you deal with anxiety and Lahti is the biggest killer there is to me it is but if you learn how to look at anxiety and fear in the face actually welcome it as you stop being afraid when you stop being afraid then you can deal with it seems to me that was your teaching first teaching and then Judaism and then the power of the mind it seems like they're all connected could you discuss that a little bit oh we all connected the other camp I was going to use was a
girl and delivered her baby okay but when i hypnotize a person have a child I don't just do the mother I do the mother and the father because i'm not going at a hospital two o'clock in the morning so he actually becomes the impetus but I take them through this whole process I'm making even realize yes it is painful to have a child but it doesn't have to be that much pain with these two they were able when the top time came stay at home for the first hour when the you know surges or contraction survive and it's in park and secondly when I got
to the hospital no matter what she was able to breathe she was comfortable and so forth and all of a sudden baby's heartbeat dropped and then everybody went crazy except her what's going on well something's happen so between her husband and her breathing this way everything quieted down and the baby's blood pressure went back up and dr. Milstein is the doctor who was there sucking right in that wasn't performed a caesarean but she was calm she wasn't crazy and she's office that's the key so how do i use it could be anywhere I work with children or adults who have pre test anxiety they just can't take the exam their minds go playing or people for lawyers whatever and stop smoking I mean there's so many things I do it's fear through a flying through swallowing a pill if you're driving on the highway so there's many different ways but working with teachers to teach them how to teach empathetically it's to me there is
a science of taking a person from a no posture to a yes posture take him to close mine to an open mind showing how to build a valued relationship through 13 words i have used what you have to get the thing you want but don't have you say that again use use what you have to get the thing you want but don't have give me an example as well so many things I've studied you know transactional analysis and just all but there's a new study called narrative therapy narrow therapies only about 30 years old maybe 40 came out of Australia narrative therapy is when you
take someone's history people come in here off of my office they're loaded with pain and fear and everything else so you move inside that body that mine by getting them to talk about the past well if people really start talking you'll find there's some great things they've done and there's a lot of strengths that they have but they forgotten that because you're so full of pain and fear now the key is how to quiet them down pull out that strength then thicken it you see you thicken it you build around it to the point you make them realize wait a minute I could do that
did you get again the tools and that tools is being able to teach them self hypnosis so I'm out of a job that's my goal I worked myself really I worked myself out of a job to set a man come from in Chicago he came from one city but he brought his sister from Chicago I thought he stopped him from smoking six years ago and just stopped her about three weeks ago there's so many different things you can you can do you know if you understand that hypnosis as a science but it's a healing science stuff you see on the stage and every answer but
two percent which you can do it knows my definition of what hip hypnotism is a science of the effects of suggestion the results of suggestion hypnosis is a manifestation of the suggestion hypnosis in my language is a high state of suggestibility where your normal processes are intensified yeah and there's an extraordinary concentration upon the suggestion given which means what is suggestibility it's a level of receptiveness okay when you're in a high state of suggestibility and your normal processes are intensified what is the normal process everything you see here you smell taste you imagine you see all of this is normal now the stage hypnotist his
intent is to get people by the way they volunteer you see and he hits them he takes him to occur in one minute he can pick out who's going to perform but see clinical hypnotherapist like myself is basically healing and seven children my one son he's an entrepreneur you know he is one of the biggest army navy products he manufactures and my other son he's very happy being a bartender for Marriott for the last 35 years a mother son he's a creative genius he's in 8th in LA and then my other daughter and she is has her own shop here in Dallas called Haute and
she worked with all cuz she's a worship people are very creative and other daughter cells and and other daughters of Miami and grand children seven grandchildren what is the overriding theme that you have been able to give to this family the thing is me and my wife thank God we're solid so if a child comes from a family that's the security that's what I think that is you know regardless of what happens all around they have a safe place to land what a wonderful way to end an interview thank you my friend my new friend you up