London Meet

If there has been any single factor that has helped me keep my enthusiasm for learning hypnosis it has been the constant contact and support I have had from other hypnotists, of various levels, via an online message board called Uncommon Knowledge.

Several weeks ago somebody floated the idea of having a get together and actually meeting each other in person. In the end it was a guy under the alias of "Benwha" who snapped first by actually getting us organised, and so eight of us converged on the Archduke restaurant near Waterloo station in London. The table was booked under the name of Erickson.

(In spite of our consistent teasing the waitress agreed to take a picture of us, yours truly on the far left - Picture courtesy of Paul Longhurst)

I will admit to being quite nervous on the way to the meet. I hadn't met any of the others who would be turning up before, nor had I even met other hypnotists before. As it turned out I need not have worried at all. I found myself having a fun evening with a great bunch of like minded people and it was great to put names to faces. I learned quite a few ideas and tips too, and not least which books and DVDs should be on my Christmas list.

The whole evening went by without anyone even attempting to do a handshake pattern interrupt; that's how nice everyone was! Although I did have an odd moment when a jug of water I was trying to lift off the table with the handle at an awkward angle turned out to be slightly heavier than I was expecting and for one irrational split second I found myself thinking "Bugger, someone's got me!"

This evening was also interesting for me because, believe it or not, it was the first time I have ever seen hypnosis done (or at least attempted) in person without being the hypnotist myself, although admittedly not as much hypnosis as you'd expect with eight hypnotists present went on whilst we were at our table. There were other party tricks though. Paul, the guy sat opposite me, clearly knows his stuff when it comes to magic tricks and wowed us with an illusion where he somehow managed to pull one rubber band through another between his fingers. In keeping with the spirit of this I was able to give drunken girl's necklace trick a bit of an outing.

(I have been trying that rubber bands trick today and so far I have only managed to fire them across the room about five times, which frees my hands but I don't think that's exactly the point.)

(Paul sticking Chris's hand to the table)

Having eaten and failed to persuade the waitress that she really wanted to be hypnotised we moved downstairs to the bar, where one of the other guys, Chris, had somehow found a couple of women who wanted to give it a try. Very brave people if you ask me; three months ago I'd certainly have been just a little bit uncomfortable joining a group of hypnotists in a bar.

(Ben giving his pre-talk)

One woman was successfully hypnotised by Paul, but the other didn't seem to be having any of it in spite of a spirited effort on Ben's part. The lesson of the evening being that it's very hard to get someone to concentrate on the magnetic fingers trick if they can see their friend over your shoulder being zapped by one of the more theatrical rapid inductions (Cerbone butterfly I believe) and then slumped forward completely motionless.

Something else we discussed was the possibility of going out and finding people for a bit of impromptu hypnosis. To this end we even tried a few of the bars in the local area, but 10pm on a Thursday evening near Waterloo didn't seem to be a good time or place. I found myself wishing that we were in Oxford with it's quiet pubs that I know well to be brimming with relatively sober and inoffensive students at that time of the evening. More than a couple of us decided that a Sunday afternoon might be a better time if we were going out with impromptu hypnosis in mind.

In any case I had a really good evening, met some really great new people, and I'm definitely looking forward to the next meet up.

Stood up

I've just returned from a very short evening in Oxford. Ever go to an arranged weekly get together with friends in a pub only to find that nobody else turns up for various reasons and you're the only one there? That was my evening.

The thought of going through with my ambition to start hypnotising complete strangers in pubs entered my head. I pushed it back down. I really wasn't in the mood I told myself.

Then I got a text from my girlfriend, in answer to my complaint that I was sat in a pub all on my lonesome, suggesting I should look for "random strangers to victimise". I informed her that the thought had occurred, but my confidence was currently cowering in a corner behind a sofa.

Then, having gotten bored and boarded the train home I got a text from a friend apologising for not showing up and suggesting, completely off the bat, that perhaps I should "hypnotise a random". "Good idea!" I replied. "hadn't thought of that!"

Perhaps there's something in that zapping strangers idea after all. I may give it a go next week if I find it easier with friends present to talk me into doing it.

In other news I have discovered that Anthony Jacquin has a blog of his own, and it's definitely worth a read. Especially this post, which has exactly the advice I need right now.

Maybe I should try to remember how to do that magic trick the drunken girl showed me last week.

Typealyser

Having advertised the existance of my blog on the hypnosis forum I have had a lot of good feedback, which is always nice to have.

A fellow contributor to the forum, Adrian Tannock, has also posted a link to his own blog Lasting Change. On this blog he has posted an article about Typealyser which is a website that claims to determine the Meyers-Briggs personality type for any particular blog. Not wanting to feel left out, I had BlackMeridian typealysed.

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

What does it mean?

Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is quite an interesting analysis of a person's personality and I'm genuinely impressed because as I see it the Typealyser got 3 out of 4 correct. I have done several MBTI tests in the past and I always come out as an INTP.

Yes I am a very introverted individual (I), I generally have a logical approach to things (T), and yes I tend toward the P on the P-J scale. My N on the N-S scale usually comes out quite borderline too, so I can believe the S to some extent. Being a mechanical engineer by trade (albeit without the dungarees) also makes the type definition quite apt.

I am impressed that a computer algorithm can determine this merely from about 5000 words of text I've written. Or did it just get lucky?

Tranceproof? Or not...

So far I have focused on my experiences with learning how to do hypnosis on other people. In this respect I feel that I have been successful; I have achieved some visible results with the subjects I've worked with and that make me feel good. My attempts at experiencing hypnosis for myself however have been rather less successful.

I have already mentioned my early sessions on youtube looking for hypnosis videos. Videos where you watch, listen and by doing so you experience hypnosis. In particular there are a couple by Richard Nongard which have a significant number of viewers' responses to the effect of "Wow! That really worked!". I watched these videos, followed all of the instructions by the hypnotist to the letter and.... nothing, absolutely nothing!

Now, believe it or not going into hypnosis is a skill. Everybody can be hypnotised, but some people respond more naturally to it than others. Asking "who can be hypnotised?" is like asking "who can play a tune on a piano?" The answer is that generally speaking anyone can, but some people will find it easier to pick it up than others. Anyone can get pretty good at it too, with practice.

The fact that all the evidence seems to suggest that I'm absolutely no good whatsoever at going into a hypnotic trance surprises me. I pride myself on having a very active imagination and I daydream a lot, perhaps far too much. I have absolutely no problem focusing on whatever book, film, or something on a computer that has my attention at the time to the exclusion of other things around me. I'm also very aware that I have a good sense of spatial awareness, and I use this to a great extent in my job where I solve mechanical engineering problems. These are all examples of my accessing a state of trance, and yet I just can't seem to get hypnotised.

Well, I say that I can't get hypnotised and I know that isn't strictly true. To date I have had but one experience of a hypnotic phenomenon and that particular incident has a bit of an embarrassing story behind it.

My rude awakening

It was perhaps a week or so after I'd started learning hypnosis that I decided that I really wanted to get some idea of what it felt like to be hypnotised and so I widened my search. To put it midly I went completely nuts and trawled the internet using google, bittorrent and various other sources to download every hypnosis mp3 I could find in the hope that I'd find something, anything, that would actually work.

Needless to say a lot of the mp3s that are out there on the internet are pretty useless, or at least that's how I found it. The trouble with a light trance is that most people find it very hard to tell if they're even in one. At a low level hypnosis feels like sitting there, eyes closed, listening to someone talk to you. These recordings were just like that, someone talking away giving instructions which I was following as best I could, but to tell the truth I was getting pretty bored and nothing proved to me that I was going into trance, even if I was.

So after a long evening of lounging about with my headphones on trying track after track and getting increasingly bored and frustrated I came across a file amongst the others I'd downloaded that was labelled "relaxation".

I knew within the first few seconds of listening to this track that I was onto a winner. The induction on this track was an incredible example of vague and permissive Ericksonian techniques with excellent use of ambiguity, as in "you might think this... or perhaps that..." Most other hypnosis mp3s I've come across tend toward "YOU ARE IN A FOREST! IT. IS. A. NICE. FOREST! THERE. ARE. UNICORNS! OKAY?!! DEAL WITH IT!" It was this ambiguity that made it so easy to just relax and let my mind wander, I felt really comfortable following these instructions.

The speaker was a woman's voice, many of the tracks I'd already listened to also had female voices, but there was something very special about this voice. The quality and sweetness of the voice were absolutely amazing and the way in which the delivery was so open and friendly, almost bordering on flirtatious, meant that I found it very enjoyable to just listen to and concentrate on every word said.

So far, so good; nothing wrong with any of the above.

The induction itself was just about relaxing, which was what lulled me into a false sense of security. I felt relaxed, no more or less so than on other times I've tried listening to hypnosis audio tracks, but this time something actually happened.

The track told me words to the effect that my right hand was getting lighter, something I'm starting to loose count of the number of times I've induced in other people, but this time it was me that was experiencing it. To my complete amazement my hand really did start to lift off the arm of my chair. I've no idea exactly how much it moved, and I'm sure it couldn't have been more than a couple of inches, but that didn't matter because I knew I wasn't consciously moving that arm.

I didn't feel hypnotised and I was aware of everything that was being said to me, I knew I could just move my arm myself or open my eyes, get up and wander off at any point, but the way that my arm was just moving by itself was an amazing and surreal experience. It was although my arm was suddenly acting out a subtle agenda of its own. I was experiencing a real hypnotic phenomenon, and it felt pretty good.

This is where things get embarrassing.

I have mentioned I felt relaxed, and that the voice speaking to me was very attractive. I felt comfortable, relaxed, and the wording of the track so far, coupled with that incredible voice, made it very easy for me to trust and accept what the track was telling me.

What happened next caught me completely off guard, because the narrative changed direction very quickly. One moment I was feeling very good about having actually experienced some real hypnosis for myself, and the next I was aware that I was being told that I was becoming more and more sexually aroused. What's more, the voice was now instructing my hand to do rather more than just float up in the air a little; it was directing it... somewhere else, and suffice to say it wasn't toward my wallet! What was scariest was that my hand seemed quite happy to place these suggestions at the top of its newly established own agenda and began to move quite purposefully.

...and then I snapped out of it!

There's a moral to this story, and that is always, always listen to the suggestive content of a hypnosis mp3 before you listen to it! I believe this particular track to be the work of a hypnotist by the name of Isabella Valentine, and having since seen her website and the kind of material she produces I would certainly have reservations about every listening to anything else of hers. I deleted the file soon afterward, rather than have someone else find that file on a playlist or something, which I think has frustrated a number of people who have asked me about it since and wanted a copy ("for a friend" I'm sure). Having briefly looked at Isabella's website I have not been able to identify which track it is either, although the "relaxation" tag and the rapid change in direction imply to me that somebody has been having a tinker with some of her material for a practical joke... ha ha!

Suffice to say this whole thing was quite an eye opening experience! Literally! This little experience reminds me of an old saying about the way men respond to the request women make of them, and it goes something like this:

"A man can always have the last word with a woman, as long as that word is 'yes'"

It is for this reason that I have come to the conclusion that female hypnotists in general are an extremely dangerous concept. Women have too much power over the male mind as it is even before hypnosis is thrown into the mix. What's even worse is that I cannot decide whether this concept scares me or excites me.

Frustration!

Before and after this one incident I have not experienced any hypnotice phenomena whatsoever, or at least, not any that I've been aware of. If I am completely honest this is something that I find very frustrating, especially with the more I hear from other peoples' acounts of their own hypnotic experiences, both on the net and first hand from the people I've hypnotised myself. I also feel that experiencing these things for myself can only improve my own skill as a hypnotist.

I've tried so many mp3s I've lost count and nothing seems to work.

"Your eyes are stuck closed"
*Pop* no, they opened instantly...

"Your arm is too heavy to lift"
*Lift* no, up it came straight away...

Because I really feel as though I'm missing out ultimately I think I am going to have someone hypnotise me in person, one on one. The conditions under which I would be be willing to do that, and who I agree to have do it to me, are another matter of course. One thing's for certain, it will most certainly not be another female hypnotist with nefarious intentions.

Plan B

If starting to learn hypnosis taught me one thing it was the depressing realisation that over the last few years since I left university and moved to live near my work my social life had narrowed to the point where it more or less entirely consisted of my girlfriend, my family, and the odd conversation on MSN.

Now I'm pleased to say that I've made the effort to get out more and socialise during the week. This is time I'd usually spend home alone because my girlfriend isn't around, and generally I feel much happier for having done this. Yet another good thing hypnosis has done for me!

Socialising does of course offer opportunities to practice hypnosis on friends, and I've already described a couple of successes I've had doing this in earlier blog posts. So far everyone's been very interested and there's always been someone willing to give it a try. The thing is that I am very aware of the obsessive nature of my personality and this awareness can translate into paranoia that I'm bringing up this one topic far too often.

Even if I can accept the guilt of seeing every social meet up as a potential hypnosis opportunity that still doesn't satisfy my appetite. Currently the number of people I have successfully hypnotised is still smaller than the number of weeks I've been learning, and that bothers me.

Reading how to do hypnosis in books is all well and good, but I feel I've reached a point of saturation where I can't possibly learn much more off the page without first having consolidated what I've already learned. What this means of course is practice, practice, practice! I want to get out there and hypnotise as many people as I can just so I can work on my technique, build my confidence, and experiment with new ideas.

This is why I keep coming back to the idea of going out and finding people to practice on, and by people I mean complete strangers. Plan B, where Plan A is sticking to friends and family.

Along these lines one evening last month I decided that I'd have a wander into town with the aim of seeing what the atmosphere in the pubs was like in the early evening, and maybe hypnotise a few uni students if I could coerce myself into doing it. The good news is that there are plenty of nice quiet pubs and there were plenty of groups of students I could have approached. Bad news is I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I find this frustrating looking back because I couldn't have imagined conditions that would have been more perfect.

A few days later I decided I'd like to give it another try, that I could overcome that confidence barrier, and so into town I went again.

"Hi guys. Sorry to interrupt but you look like open minded people and I'm doing a study into how different people respond to hypnosis. Could I borrow you for a few minutes?"

That was my perfect opening line. Well, I thought so. Sad to say I never used it. I trudged around for an hour or so trying to find a suitable pub that actually had some groups of students in it. Then, when I did, I just froze up. I felt stupid because this was something I really really want to do, and yet having bravely marched up to the cusp I just couldn't find it in me to go that extra few feet and get on with it

This is where things stand at the moment. I have gone out twice with the intention to try hypnotising people and I have bottled out at the last minute on both occasions.

One thing that I do feel unsure about is doing this as a lone wolf, on my own. It did occur to me that if I went out there with a co-conspirator in the form of a fellow hypnotist... well, it might not be easier, but it'd be harder for me to turn tail and go home.

Every time I get frustrated by the realisation that it will be significant number of days before I can give my hypnosis skills another outing Plan B seems to pop into my head. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before I find myself heading into town once again, although to what result who can say?

Hypnosis and Alcohol

...don't mix.

It seems to be a commonly held misconception that it's easier to hypnotise someone if they've had a lot to drink. Unfortunately this couldn't be further from the truth. Hypnosis is about following instructions and engaging the imagination, and of course excessive alcohol consumption improves neither of these.

I have decided that drunk people are no good in or around hypnosis, full stop. This revelation coming to me after another evening with friends in Oxford and having had another bash at a bit of pub hypnosis. On this occasion I'd gotten to the point where I'd talked a friend who'd kindly volunteered into a light level of trance and was performing a convincer on him, and everything was working absolutely fine.

Enter, at this point, drunken girl. A nice girl, and really good natured, but obviously three sheets to the wind. Even the best of hypnotic subjects find it hard to get into a trance when somebody's poking them and asking them if they have spare marshmallows to toast (another story). The spell was broken and my friend was awake again and finding the girl too hilarious to concentrate.

Losing my subject was the least of my worries though. Drunken girl (I never did get her name) demanded that I hypnotise her instead. I was skeptical whether it would work, but of course I find it impossible to resist trying with someone who's showing enthusiasm. I did a hand drop induction, and things sort of worked for a bit but she just didn't have the patience. She opened her eyes and started giving me pointers on how I could be doing it better, then on the spur of the moment showed me a magic trick with her necklace.

Hypnosis and Alcohol; if you want a lot of one, you can't have much of the other.

So, if you ever see me looking heartbroken as the people around me get the drinks in, now you know why. Not to worry though, I can always watch people do lots of silly things on their own and not have to take any responsibility!

Sleep!

In the couple of months or so I've been learning hypnosis I've found that nothing freaks a lot of people out more than the way in which somebody under the effects of hypnosis responds when the hypnotist tells them to "sleep". Usually their eyes close, their face goes completely blank and their head will slump forward; quite a spectacular transition from completely awake to a deep state of trance.

For the uninitiated reader to understand this better I guess it's best to explain what's actually going on.

Here comes the science...

The first thing to say is that the state of hypnosis isn't actually sleep, where the mind is generally quite inactive, rather it is a state of trance and the mind is very much active. Books have been written about hypnotic trances so I won't go into that subject in any detail, but suffice to say the term sleep is a misnomer that has stuck for at least a couple of reasons. Firstly it is a nice, short, clear word, which is good as it is probably most hypnotists' most commonly used instruction. The second is that generally speaking everybody already knows what a hypnotist means when they tell someone to sleep, and this alone makes it more effective.

When someone who has been hypnotised is "woken up" they do exactly that; they aren't in hypnosis, they are awake. I've had people ask me "how do you un-hypnotise someone?" and the simple answer is tell them to wake up (or else poke them, tickle them, or tell them if they stay in trance you'll charge them double for the time). The reason people will do unusual things when they are awake, having come out of hypnosis, is the result of what's called Post Hypnotic Suggestion (PHS). Generally speaking, the format is that people are given instructions in hypnosis and those suggestions stay in effect when they are out of hypnosis.

The first time in any given hypnosis session the subject is put into trance by means of a process called an induction. Having woken up from hypnosis the subject is no longer hypnotised and so to put them back into trance requires the hypnotist to perform an induction again, doing this is often referred to as a "re-induction". Technically this can be achieved using the same method as before, but I'm sure you can imagine that going through a formal induction every few minutes could get very time consuming!

The instruction to "sleep" is basically re-induction by post hypnotic suggestion. That's to say the first time the subject is in hypnosis hypnotist gives them an instruction that on being told to "sleep" they will immediately return to hypnosis. This simple procedure is a hypnotist's bread and butter because being able to put someone back into trance with a single word saves an enormous amount of time.

Anyway, having gotten a bit technical and almost certainly having said something that will draw comment from those with a better understanding of such things I'll go back to what I do best, and that's rambling.

Sleep... err... please?

In my opinion the best single thing about being a hypnotist is the buzz that you get when you use the sleep suggestion. Sure I get a heck of a lot out of sharing hypnosis with people, showing them some of the amazing things their mind is capable of doing and listening to them describe their experiences afterward, but just for kicks there's just nothing that beats that first "sleep" on someone. For me it is the moment that I know I have succeeded; I am the hypnotist! Or perhaps just incredibly boring.

I'm quite new to all this so perhaps the buzz will wear off given time, but I hope not.

Of course this suggestion doesn't always work first time with everybody and in fact so far I have found that how well someone responds this suggestion generally corresponds to how good a hypnotic subject they are going to be. Some people seem to get it first time and go out light a light; others need a little bit more instruction. Everybody can do it given enough practice.

I found out quite early on that simply saying "sleep!" repeatedly if the subject doesn't go under the first time doesn't work. "Please sleep!" out of desperation doesn't work either.

Like everything else in hypnosis this trick needs absolute confidence on the part of the hypnotist, outwardly at least, although I have discovered it is still effective if my internal monologue includes "Please work! Please work! Go on, sleep please please please! ...Bloody hell! That actually worked! ...what on earth do I do now?!".

What does it feel like?

What does the experience of being zapped back into trance in an instant feel like? This is where I guess I have to ask for answers on a postcard.

I guess the not so simple answer is that it's different for different people. Some people seem to be in trance before they even realise consciously what's going on, and with some of these people they don't even remember going into trance at all. Others have said to me that they are very much aware of the whole thing and also know that they can always stop the process if they like, but simply choose not to.

One thing I can say for sure is that it's not an unpleasant experience. Anna, the first person I ever hypnotised, describes it as disorientating, which I guess makes a lot of sense. What she's perhaps not aware of is that outwardly she reacts to being told to sleep with the same elation as a young child being told that they can go and play in the swimming pool. She goes completely limp and collapses bodily onto the sofa with a big smile on her face. One time she even said "Okay!" on the way down, which I thought was quite endearing. Then she snuggles up to the sofa and cushions looking very content. Perhaps I should video it and show it to her.

Anyway, I really don't know as much about this particular topic as I'd like to, so I'm always keen to hear people describe the experience to me.

If there's one aspect of hypnosis I really want to experience for myself I have to say this is it. Someday I'm sure I'll get an opportunity that I feel happy with, and then I guess I'll find out; I will continue to look forward to that time.

Is it dangerous?

One evening a friend of mine, who is still reluctant to give hypnosis a try, was asking me about the "sleep" command as I was hypnotising someone else. He was concerned about what he called the "long term effects". "But what if she's driving or something?" he asked me.

"Lets see", I said

My friend was going into trance very easily and deeply whenever I said "sleep", so after proving this a couple of times I asked her to hold out her hand and I balanced a wine glass on it. I then said "sleep!" again. I tried several times. Of course she didn't, she merely said "No, I'll drop the glass!"

I guess what this little experiment shows is that hypnosis doesn't turn people into mindless zombies. As I see it people are generally aware on some level if closing their eyes and zonking out into trance isn't a particularly good idea and in such a situation they simply won't do it.

In any case it's useful to have the above example to bring up whenever people express these concerns to me. I really have had people tell me "don't hypnotise me tonight, I'm cycling home", which I have to say makes me chuckle; I love the mental images it conjures up.

Sleepy...

Anyway I guess I've gone on enough on this particular subject for the time being. Rest assured I'll be back as soon as I've found something else to ramble on about...

So, how did I get into hypnosis?

If there's one thing I absolutely love about life it has to be the way in which new sources of fun and interest can appear from nowhere and completely by surprise.

Many of the things I have decided to pursue in my life have been long standing ambitions, such as flying a glider solo or sailing on a tall ship, but there are always other ideas and opportunities that present themselves when one is least expecting, and in my opinion these are to be embraced. People have asked me where my latest interest interest originated and I'm afraid to say that I really don't know.

If someone had told me a year ago that I would decide to learn how to be a hypnotist I don't think I could think of anything else would have seemed less likely.

I guess this whole story starts about two months ago, back in September, when I had a free weekend. Usually my weekends get booked up a long time in advance, so it was nice to be able to kick back a bit, laze about, and make a token effort at making my flat look like it had merely been bombed as opposed to its usual Hurricane Katrina aftermath appearance, although possibly with a little less flooding, but more debris.

My procrastination over tidying up was going so well I decided to celebrate this by spending yet more time browsing the web at random. I have yet to fathom how procrastination was even possible in the pre-internet era. Carrier pigeons perhaps? Anyway, sailing the sea of the world wide web without a compass is always an interesting if hazardous experience, and thanks to websites such as YouTube and Wikipedia, where content is often linked to only possibly related content, it is easy to follow the winds of idle curiosity for hours and end up miles from where you started.

I probably started with a completely unrelated subject such as a YouTube video on how to true a bicycle wheel using only your teeth and M&Ms and following the trail of links I soon found myself coming across links related to hypnosis. Completely freaked out by what I saw, in particular a video of Richard Nongard performing what he referred to as "gentle" rapid inductions, gentle being apparently knocking someone out cold with hypnosis in about 5 seconds, I resolved to learn more about it purely out of a kind of morbid curiosity.

To get a better idea of what was going on I decided to try some of the YouTube videos that claim to hypnotise you, including a couple of Richard's own, and didn't feel anything at all. Frustrated by the innumerable comments on those videos that said "wow! that was amazing!" I set about learning even more; if about 80% of a video's commenter's were experiencing something and I wasn't I wanted to know why not dammit!

Within a very short period of time, spent reading from various websites about hypnosis, I began to realise that this was something that I might be able to learn. I came across several short (and free!) e-books that laid down the basic principles and from that moment it's fair to say that I was hooked. I also came across a couple of online communities and message boards where I was able to share my learning experience with other learning hypnotists. It was through these boards that I was first recommended Anthony Jacquin's book Reality is plastic, which I immediately bought and I would agree that this is indeed the perfect starting point for anybody wanting to learn hypnosis.

My knowledge and interest in hypnosis is now firmly here to stay. Finding it has been like finding a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle that links various other groups of pieces of my life and how I see the world together. It joins aspects of how I communicate, how I think, what I believe, and even how my sense of humour works (badly some would argue). I also feel it has done wonders for my confidence in front of others, even in just a couple of months. I guess I will talk more about these at some point in the future.

I may not have solved the jigsaw puzzle of life and I may never, but now at least I have a corner piece and a bit of an edge. I feel good about this!

Absolutely buzzing!

Well I've just gotten back from Oxford and I'm absolutely buzzing, so I thought I'd write a quick entry about the present before I revert to my back story in my next installment.

I've been a feeling a bit subdued in my confidence as a hypnotist recently, so it was absolutely amazing to get the chance to work with someone who is probably one of the best subjects I've had to date, to put it mildly. This person also had a genuine interest in giving it a try, and it's always wonderful to meet people with that kind of enthusiasm.

I met up with this person and a group of other people we know in one of the many nice pubs in Oxford. One of the ones that's tucked away and you'd end up walking past for years completely oblivious if you didn't know it was there. It was good to sit out the back of this particular tavern with this great bunch of people toasting marshmallows on a brazier. I'm starting to really love Oxford!

Of course, what was even better though was that my friend said she was willing to give a little hypnosis a try that evening. This we like to hear!

I was quite confident that she'd respond well thanks to an insight offered by Anthony Jacquin. He says that people who have a history of sleepwalking are always brilliant hypnotic subjects. This girl has a history of sleep talking and sleep fighting (apparently her boyfriend has the bruises to prove it!) , so I was confident of success. Hats off to Ant, he was so right about this I was amazed.

Because I felt confident I brought out my newest trick; a hand drop rapid induction. This is where the subject is asked to press their hand down on top of the hypnotist's hand, which the hypnotist suddenly drops without warning, at the same time telling the subject to "sleep". My friend went out like a light. I deepened, fractionated, gave the sleep suggestion and knew immediately from her response that I was in the presence of a master; someone truly talented hypnotically.

I went through my usual canon of catalepsy tricks, which I'll detail in later posts because I've done these before, but the real highlight of the evening was achieving a couple of new effects I've not managed before. The first of these occurred on the spur of the moment when a choir of singers came into the beer garden and started serenading us all. My friend wasn't too keen on them, so I zapped her back into trance suggested that she'd not be able to hear them. This produced a really weird effect because upon waking her sure enough she couldn't hear the singers, but for some reason the sound of their singing had been replaced with that of someone playing on a mouth organ; that was what she could hear. It's interesting because the group had been using one to get the right note before they started singing.

The latter of the two new things I tried was a little bit more usual. I suggested to my friend that she'd be convinced she hadn't really been hypnotised and that she'd been playing along all the time. The conversation went along these lines:

"Sorry Parkey, I've just been playing along."
"Oh really? Why can't you move your arm?"
"I don't want to move it, I'm playing along."
"No, really move it."
"I don't want to!"
"I think you've been hypnotised."
"No I haven't!"
"Sleep"

...and that settled that one. This routine went down quite well. Of course there were a couple of people present who couldn't decide whether it was a wind-up or not, but they soon went quiet when I offered to let them try. They always tend to, hehe.

Anyway, that was my brilliant evening.

First success!

How would you react if one of your friends, out of the blue, asked you “Hey, can I hypnotise you?”

I still find that the most challenging part of learning hypnosis is finding opportunities to practice my skills (or read as finding unsuspecting people who are willing to lend me their brain for an hour or so).

With few exceptions I have found that there are two attitudes to the above question:

1. "That's really cool! It's something I've always wanted to try. Yeah, I'm up for that! "
2. "NO! No way! No! No! No! Nonononononononononononono! NO!.... but can I watch you do someone else?"

I am very lucky in that a close friend of mine, a fellow survivor of my university, belongs group 1 and was willing to give the whole hypnosis thing a whirl in exchange for a free dinner. My initial hope was that I could use hypnosis in that first instance to make her forget that I owed her food; but in the event this was not required as she simply forgot on her own and cooked some dinner for me anyway. Wahey!

Anna (I'm not using her real name without asking her) and I met up at her flat, chatted for a bit about this and that as we often do, and then got started with some hypnosis.

On paper the actual process of putting someone into a state of hypnosis is mindbogglingly simple and easy to execute. That said, when you think about it, so is the process of approaching a girl in a bar and coming away with her phone number. There are a lot of parallels between the two.

For starters, if you approach either with the attitude "no way is this ever going to work" of course it won't. Fresh from my success with chatting up women through my time at university, where I usually managed to escape with only severe wounds to my pride and a feeling that the first digit of said girl's number might possibly be zero just like every other UK phone number, I felt good about my prospects for my first attempt at hypnotising someone.

Confidence is always the watch word. If often doesn't matter quite what you say, or how ridiculously cliché it might sound, as long as you believe it's going to work. How do you gain said confidence? Well practice and success of course. How do you gain those? Why, confidence of course. Ahh how I do love a nice paradox.

I have no idea where I managed to find the confidence I did on that evening. I suspect a lot of it stemmed from having read and read and read about hypnosis and the methods I would use to the point where I was completely certain about what I was doing. Anna has since confessed to me that she didn't believe at all that it was going to work. Somehow I was completely certain that it would.

Having warmed up on a few set pieces, which are little tricks of the mind that highlight the power of the imagination to a potential hypnotic subject, I went straight into a routine known as the rehearsal induction.

I'm told that the rehearsal induction is probably the most reliable rapid induction technique there is. I've since used it a few times; usually when I don't feel incredibly good about how things might go. If I pull out this particular tool, you know that I'm feeling down on my confidence. Actually, why am I saying this?! If I do this induction it means I feel that you're a brilliant hypnotic subject! Yes, that's it. That's exactly what I meant to say.

The general idea is that you link going into trance with lifting up the subject's arm in a certain way and practice it a few times with them before keeping them there and deepening the trance. The nice thing about this is that as the novice hypnotist you can keep repeating it until you build up the confidence that the subject really is going into a light trance to take things to the next level. 4 or 5 repetitions is usually enough, I ended up doing about 7 or 8 before I was confident enough to make a leap of faith and start deepening Anna's trance.

It is a wonderful feeling when you see signs that what you're doing is actually working. You see your subject visibly relax and other telltales such as fluttering eyelids and a change in breathing. I saw these happening with Anna as the deepening routine seemed to roll surprisingly easily off my tongue, she was clearly in a trance, so it was convincer time.

A good hypnotist always tests their work with a convincer. From what I've heard and experienced myself so far, being in hypnosis feels so completely, well, un-unusual for most people that they could be hypnotised and not subsequently believe it. A convincer is a little routine, usually quite simple, that convinces the subject that they have, after all, been hypnotised. It also convinces the hypnotist that what they're doing is actually working! If it doesn't work there's always the option of making an exit by diving out of the nearest door or window before the subject wonders why it's gone quiet and opens their eyes.

Having spent a few minutes deepening Anna's trance, and in the process saying "deeper and deeper" far too many times, I then set about a simple convincer. I started to tell her that her arm, on her lap at the time, was getting lighter. Lighter and lighter. To anyone who hasn't had their arm levitated by hypnosis I can say that it is one of the strangest experiences when your arm starts moving, seemingly with an agenda of its own. When her hand reached an inch or so above her leg Anna's eyes snapped open in complete amazement. "That is so weird!" she said.

Over the next hour or I got to try more inductions and more convincers. Looking back nothing that I achieved that evening was particularly amazing in practical terms, for me did feel like my first major milestone and I did go home completely buzzing. I was a hypnotist!

I'm much indebted to Anna for volunteering to be my first victim. I also fear that I still owe her that dinner...

Testing, testing...

First post! Here goes!

Hi Everyone, I’m Parkey. I’m a 26 year old male living in South Oxfordshire in the United Kingdom, and two months ago I decided to start learning how to be a hypnotist.

Imagine, if you will, you were travelling on a train and you came across one of Harry Potter’s school books (let’s assume that it had been left there by a ministry of magic employee, as seems to be the current government trend). Nobody who learns about what hypnosis is and what it can do can quite look at the world and the reality they experience in the same way again. We are brought up to believe that magic is a myth, and yet in many ways it isn’t. I have spent a lot of time recently at a metaphorical Hogwarts.

Anyway, as the last two months have been very exciting for me, and as I’m enjoying the ongoing process of learning the art of hypnosis so much I thought I should probably start keeping a record of it. Starting quite early on I have had a number of quite significant successes, and I have also had the occasional taste of what it’s like when things start to go wrong for the hypnotist.

I guess I have a couple of reasons for writing this blog. The first of these is that, as my girlfriend can tell you, when I get really enthused by a subject I find it really hard to not to keep blabbering on about it all the time. With any luck this blog will serve as a way of safely earthing my constant stream of thoughts, opinions and anecdotes so that with any luck I will be able to retain said girlfriend, and maybe even avoid having to forfeit having to go to see Mamma Mia at the cinema with her… again. I am hoping, dear reader, that you are reading this out of an interest in the subject and my occasionally bungled attempts at practicing it, and so do not mind if I go on a bit.

My second reason for writing this is that, as much as I love to talk, I also love to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions on what I have written, so if you have any thoughts on anything I write here please do leave a comment.

I've got two months' worth of events and thoughts to go through, so bear with me. Hopefully I can quick fire off several entries in the next few days and get myself up to date.