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'"
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.
2 comments:
Sounds like you might be one of percentage of people who have a polarity response ie. you do the opposite of what most people do. If you're told that your eyes are sealed shut, you automatically open them, if you're told that you are getting more relaxed, you tense up, etc.
Just a few points; you said "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..."
This should have been the point at which you realized that trance and hypnosis are two different things.
Secondly, as a hypnotist and a hypnosis trainer, if I have hypnosis in a subject, he may 'think' he could just get up and walk away... but he can't. And more than likely, he will never actually feel that way.
Real hypnosis produces a near singularity of thought such that the only thing in their mind is my instructions.
Finally, there is no such thing as self-hypnosis. There is auto-hypnosis using recordings of yourself to induce and use the hypnotic state. But it isn't possible to simply hynotize oneself.
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