Mark J. Ryan is an American NLP and hypnosis coach who spent decades helping people clear what he called the blocks between them and the life they wanted. He’s also the friend who first told Joe Vitale about ho’oponopono. Now retired, his family shares videos from his archive on YouTube. [1] [2]
Who is Mark J. Ryan?
For years Mark J. Ryan described himself as an NLP master practitioner and trainer and a hypnotherapist who trained other professionals to use hypnosis. Later he moved away from those labels, though he said he still used all of those tools in his coaching. [3]
He had been studying this work for a long time. In a 2018 video he said he’d spent over thirty years learning what he could do to help people, approaching each issue in several different ways. [3]
He started podcasting in 2004, among the early podcasters. His first shows were about communication between men and women: how to talk with your partner and how to hold a feeling while you’re talking. [4] He went on to make products with the hypnotist Kevin Hogan, whose scientific approach he enjoyed, and then with Joe Vitale, whose spiritual approach he loved. [4] Since 2003 he has run Maximum Clarity Media, which produces his DVD and online programmes. [5]
He spent many years connected to Mount Shasta, California, and later moved towards Phoenix. He often travelled to Scottsdale, Arizona, to train and assist at seminars with the NLP trainer John Overdurf. [3] [4] He coached clients around the world over Skype and the phone as well as in person. [3]
His YouTube channel, started in 2007, holds more than 120 videos. Its description says he has now retired and is no longer available for personal sessions, and that his family posts videos from his private archive. Courses are still available on his website. [1] [6]
His approach in brief
- No judgment. “It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is.”
- Find the key bubble. Look for the one belief holding many others in place.
- Clear it. Shift how the information is being processed.
- Ask again. From the clear space, decide what you want now.
At a glance
Main tools: NLP, conversational hypnosis
Also taught: Ho’oponopono
Format: Talks, podcasts, meditations
Status: Retired; archive channel
YouTube: @HypnoticMedia
Good fit if
You’re curious about NLP and hypnosis from someone who practised them for decades, you want the backstory to ho’oponopono’s spread in self-help, or you like long, reflective talks rather than quick tips.
Our take
A warm, curious practitioner whose archive rewards patient listening. Start with his video explaining what he did, then his ho’oponopono talk.
Mark J. Ryan’s techniques
These are the main ideas he taught, described as he explains them. Tap a card to read more.
It’s just the way it is
“A main premise of the work that I do is it’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is.” Whatever had happened in a client’s past, he said he wasn’t there to judge it. His question was how to help them process it and reach a state that would help them go where they wanted to go. [3]
He compared it to fixing cars, which he did when he was younger. If he found a cracked pipe in a cooling system, he didn’t get angry and call it a bad pipe. He just worked out what was wrong and fixed it. A problem might feel deeply personal, but he said he had probably heard it and dealt with it “a thousand times”. [3]
He also saw problems as starting points. In his words, every one of your problems “has the key” to getting back what you’ve lost or taking things to the next level. His image was a coin: you may only see heads, but there’s also tails and the rim. [3] Looking at a situation differently is close to what psychologists call reappraisal. [7]
The thousand bubbles
One of his favourite metaphors was a glass of cola just after you pour it. Imagine each bubble in the foam is a doubt, an argument or an inner voice saying “you can’t do that”. Most of your daily energy, he said, goes into battling all those bubbles. [3]
His aim was to find the one bubble holding a thousand others together. Clear that, and a whole set of issues clears with it. He used a computer image too: rather than deleting a thousand files one by one, find the folder and delete it once. People usually feel the difference straight away, he said, like clouds clearing to show blue sky. [3]
He listened to the content of what people said, but paid more attention to how they processed information. With one chiropractor, the block turned out to be a misreading of what a single word meant; exploring other meanings for it changed how the client saw his situation. [3]
Our NLP guide explains the wider field this comes from.
Asking again
Clearing a block wasn’t the end of a session for him. “Now what do you want to do?” he’d ask. [3]
He noticed that when people first describe what they want, they answer from inside the problem. Once “the elephant” is out of the room and they feel open and creative, the same question often gets a completely different answer. He’d then help them turn that answer into specific steps, a stage he linked to reconsolidation. [3]
He wanted clients to stay aware during the process rather than be put into a trance and told what to do. “I don’t want to just give you a fish,” he said; the goal was to teach them to notice and shift patterns for themselves. Early on he loved quick, single-session NLP changes. Later he found that working over ten or more sessions let deeper things surface once people felt safe. [3]
For more on trance-based approaches, see our hypnosis guide.
Ho’oponopono cleaning
Mark has a special place in the story of ho’oponopono in self-help. Joe Vitale writes that at a hypnosis convention in August 2004, his friend Mark Ryan asked him, “Have you ever heard of the therapist who healed people without ever seeing them?” Mark had first read about the Hawaiian psychologist Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len in a small booklet given to him at Mount Shasta. [2] That conversation led to Vitale’s book Zero Limits, written with Dr Hew Len, which thanks Mark as “the priceless friend who first told me the story”. [2] [8]
Mark recalls Dr Hew Len greeting him at the first Zero Limits event with a smile and a reminder that “you started all this”, followed by a hug. [9] His channel description still ends with the four phrases of the practice: “I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” [1]
His advice to newcomers was to expect things to get stirred up at first, and to keep “cleaning”. He reframed the upsets as parts of yourself lining up to be cleaned, and told viewers to “stay away from the meaning of it”. He also admitted he had sometimes paused the practice “to catch my breath” before going back to it. [9]
Read our ho’oponopono guide and our Joe Vitale profile.
Finding who you’re not
In later years his work turned more spiritual. With some long-term clients, he moved from fixing specific problems towards the bigger question of identity: who you are, and how that might connect with something larger. [4]
He drew on the Indian teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj’s approach of finding out who you are by finding out who you’re not, the “not this, not that” idea. His own moment came while listening to Dan Ariely’s audiobook on dishonesty during a drive to a seminar. Halfway through, he realised he did the same things the book described. Then he realised that if this was a common human pattern, it wasn’t really him. [4]
He was clear that he worked within each client’s beliefs, whether they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim or atheist. It wasn’t about converting anyone; it was about how they processed information. [4] Stepping back to watch your own patterns from a distance has been studied as a way to reflect without getting swept up. [10]
Doing the work yourself
“To be a good coach… you better be doing the work yourself,” he said. He described spending six hours a month in sessions with John Overdurf as the client, because he wanted to learn from “the best in the world” and add their methods to his toolbox. [3]
He also learned from the teacher Jerry Stocking, who once told him he didn’t know what he’d talk about until the audience arrived. Mark took that to heart when he spoke on “hypno-mystic” change work at the HypnoThoughts conference in Las Vegas in 2019. He prepared for eight months, covered maybe a tenth of his notes, and found that letting the room lead worked better. [4]
Long sessions mattered to him too. He compared an hour-long call to the choppy surface of the ocean; over three or four hours, he said, the distractions settle and deeper insights come up more calmly. [4] Simply putting a feeling into words has been studied as a way to take some of the heat out of it. [11] Our meditation guide offers other routes into quiet.
Videos with Mark J. Ryan
Hand-picked and checked one by one from his archive: his own explanations, ho’oponopono, NLP lessons and guided meditations.
Start here
His story
Ho’oponopono
NLP and hypnosis lessons
Meditations
Articles about Mark J. Ryan
Mark J. Ryan’s books
Mark’s teaching came mainly through audio, video and courses rather than books. These titles connect directly to his story.
Find Zero Limits in your country: US · UK · Canada · Australia · India.
Courses
Mark no longer offers personal sessions, but his website still lists courses. [1] Featured ones include Subliminal Clearing: Z+ Advanced Ho’oponopono; Clearing to Zero, which combines ho’oponopono with NLP, hypnosis and meditation; and The Neuroscience of Getting Rich: The Success Switch. [6] The YouTube archive, including several of his Secret Meditation videos, is free.
The courses and videos are online, so they’re available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Europe and India.
What the Research Shows
Mark taught from decades of NLP, hypnosis and coaching practice, not lab research. Studies on stepping back from your own experience, reframing how you see a situation and putting feelings into words touch on similar ground:
- How you talk to yourself. Talking to yourself in the second or third person helped people stay calmer and perform better under stress. [10]
- Reframing. People who habitually reframe how they see a situation tend to feel more positive emotion and report better wellbeing. [7]
- Naming feelings. Simply putting a feeling into words reduced activity in the brain’s alarm centre. [11]
Frequently asked questions
Who is Mark J. Ryan?
An American NLP and hypnosis coach and trainer who ran Maximum Clarity Media and the Mark J. Ryan Experience podcast. He is now retired.
Is he still coaching?
No. His channel says he has retired and isn’t available for personal sessions, though his courses are still online.
Who runs his YouTube channel?
His family, who post videos from his private archive.
What is his link to ho’oponopono?
Joe Vitale credits him with first telling him about Dr Hew Len and ho’oponopono in 2004, the story behind Zero Limits.
What was his coaching like?
Conversational and non-judgmental, using NLP and conversational hypnosis to find the key block and then ask what you want next.
Who did he work with?
He made products with Kevin Hogan and Joe Vitale and trained with John Overdurf and Dr John Burton.
Where should I start?
Watch “What Exactly Does Mark J Ryan Do?”, then his ho’oponopono talk.
Sources
- Mark Ryan (HypnoticMedia) on YouTube: About
- Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len, Zero Limits (Wiley, 2007), acknowledgements and chapter 1
- Mark J. Ryan: What Exactly Does Mark J Ryan Do?
- Mark J. Ryan: What happened to Mark J. Ryan? (podcast, 2019)
- Mark J. Ryan on LinkedIn
- The Mark J. Ryan Experience: official site
- Gross and John, Individual Differences in Two Emotion Regulation Processes, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2003
- Joe Vitale: The Man Behind Zero Limits
- Mark J. Ryan: Is Ho'oponopono DANGEROUS? Watch This Before Trying!
- Kross et al., Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2014
- Lieberman et al., Putting Feelings Into Words, Psychological Science 2007
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