Back to London

Well the last week has seen a lot of exciting hypnosis things happen so I'm going to have to break them down into several posts.

Late last week I managed to have another session with a friend I'd previously hypnotised, which I enjoyed a lot. I also have reason to believe I've helped her a lot with her phobia of heights, and that feels very good. I'll write more on that soon I promise.

Anyway, this weekend presented me with another opportunity to meet up with some of the other hypnotists I met a in London few weeks ago, so of course I took it. The venue was a very nice quiet pub near Leicester Square, and in the end there were three of us from the last meet - Ben, Darren and myself. We were joined by a fourth, a guy by the name of Will who was curious about hypnosis, had been in touch with us via the forum, but hadn't been able to make it to the last meet.

One thing that has impressed me is the way in which all of the hypnotists I have met thus far have been such nice people. To me it was little wonder that we ended up spending close on four or five hours discussing inductions, deepening, and we even ended up practicing quite a bit on each other.

What did amaze me though was the way in which, as the pub gradually filled up over the course of the afternoon, nobody paid us the slightest bit of attention. This was despite loud cries of "sleep!", Will periodically frozen like a statue or stuttering, or even the ensuing hysterics. The bar staff didn't even raise an eyebrow when they came over to collect empty drinks glasses and somebody at our table was slumped over in their seat in a deep state of trance.

In fact the only thing that did draw any attention was when Ben asked me to film something that he was doing with a video camera. The camera drew attention, but the comatose Darren that it was pointed at certainly didn't.

I was reminded of Douglas Adams' concept of a "somebody else's problem field" generator. It's probably a feature on my iPhone that's switched on and draining the batteries without me realising. That would explain a lot certainly.

Let the hypnosis begin...

So anyway, after we'd had some lunch Will told us he'd be happy to be hypnotised.

Somehow I got volunteered to go first, and I actually felt quite nervous. Every time I've hypnotised people in the past I've been the only person present who's known anything about hypnosis. having two other hypnotists watch me work felt a bit unnerving at first. Fortunately whenever I do hypnosis I find myself entering a kind of trance myself, with my attention focused on my subject, so I was soon able to block the others out and get on with it.

It is because of this need to focus my own attention that I find set pieces as useful a warm up for myself as for my subject, so I ran through magnetic fingers and magnetic hands before going straight into a hand-to-eye fixation induction. I did some deepening and then went into a convincer to demonstrate to Will, and to myself, that he was in a trance. I chose to go for a floating arm, so I talked his hand into lifting up. This was working fine until the table got in the way of his hand and he snapped out of it.

At this point Ben kindly took the baton for a bit and performed a slower induction based on relaxation and imagery. He managed to freeze Will's arm and have him go under by giving the sleep suggestion.


To be honest we did so much over the next couple of hours that most of it is still a blur to me. Will was a brilliant sport, allowing all three of us to practice on him and try different effects.

There were certainly a few highlights though. In particular there were a couple of new ideas that I'll have to try myself when I get the chance. Ben gave Will a suggestion that he would have difficulty speaking at a given signal, which in this case was a cool little clicker thingy that Ben had brought. Darren also gave Will a suggestion that his drink was stuck to the table, which was quite amusing because by that point Will could remember that the suggestion was about the drink, but not exactly what it was.

I got to demonstrate my current party piece, the "freeze" command, which rendered Will completely motionless below the neck. Later on I extended it to include his head and face too, and made it so that he could also trigger it. Trying to get him to say "freeze" was amusing enough in itself.

Darren also managed to get Will to forget his name, and it was obvious he could see this one coming as Darren introduced himself, Ben and me and said "sorry, what was your name again?"

Will looked so frustrated I felt I should say something.

"Was it freeze?" I asked helpfully.

There were some things that didn't quite work. For example, Darren's attempt to get Will to speak in fluent Mandarin was a bit of a non starter. Will also expressed disappointment at not being able to get significant amnesia too.

Trying to do the time stop freeze, where the subject doesn't notice or remember any of the time that passes when they're frozen, with Will didn't work though, and it stopped the existing freeze command from working. This didn't surprise me that much, as I've so far found is that it needs a subject who's quite practiced at amnesia to get it to work properly.

Ben and Darren also did a bit of hypnosis on each other, some of which I recorded for Ben on his camcorder. This drew the sum total of the attention we received from other people in the pub.

Something I love about being a hypnotist is that there's no single right or wrong way of doing things, and so you're free to develop your own style and approach to what you do. I was more aware than ever of this watching Ben and Darren work.

Ben's style of hypnosis came across as being slightly gentler in pace than mine and had a lot more emphasis on imagery. Darren, on the other hand, seems to have more closely followed the Nongard & Cerbone school of thought with emphasis on quite dramatic rapid inductions. I personally see my own style as sitting somewhere in the middle.

The best thing about these meets, in terms of hypnosis, is exchanging ideas and techniques, and I love the way that seemly all hypnotists are so happy to do this.

A good example of this was when Ben Showed me how to give somebody a laughing anchor using NLP. He then asked me to demonstrate on Darren; here's a video of his response.



My own experiences

At one point fairly early on in the afternoon Ben asked me if I'd like to try being hypnotised. My immediate reaction was no, as to be honest I felt a bit nervous about the whole thing, and afterward I felt that perhaps I'd been a bit rude because my response to his question was perhaps a bit short. It was an hour or so later that I began to think that yes, perhaps I would like to give it a go, and so I asked Ben to try.

I've already mentioned my frustration at my seeming lack of response to hypnosis mp3s, and it was because of this I was hoping that face to face hypnosis would produce much better results for me.

Ben asked me to start with magnetic hands, that worked of course, and so did to some extent the imagery which he then moved on to, having me remember a loved one. Next he told me that my hands would become stuck together, and I'm sad to say that with that instruction, much as I really wanted it to work, absolutely nothing happened. My hands came apart the instant I tried.

Ben persisted, allowed me to rest my hands in my lap, and went into the lifting hand routine. I have experienced this phenomenon before myself, where you imagine your hand getting lighter and it lifts up by itself. Ben's attempt at it with me worked rather well, although interestingly it felt like my hand was moving sideways to start with. I ended up with the hand up against my face, with enough force to make my head to tilt back. Sadly though, despite Ben's best efforts, the hand didn't stick to my face. It came away the instant I tried.

Ben also did the stiff arm routine on me whilst I had my eyes closed. This the one where you hold your arm out straight with your hand in a fist and become completely unable to bend it. It was odd because I didn't feel it was working at all. My arm felt stiff, but it did feel as though my arm was bending. The others assured me afterward that this was not the case at all, that my arm was barely moving.

Darren also stepped up to have a go. I've never really managed the stiff arm as a set piece before, so it was interesting experiencing it. I believe that what made it work was focusing my eyes on my knuckle, and I was aware of a light trance with only the end of my arm in focus, everything else a blur. So, after all the suggestions about my arm being rigid, sure enough I really couldn't bend my arm. It was almost as though I'd just forgotten how to do it. In fact in trying to bend my arm I merely found myself pivoting bodily, my torso traversing like a gun turret, which was quite hilarious at the time.

Darren then turned this set piece into an induction, telling me to "sleep", and I simply allowed myself to drop and go along with it, likewise when he tried again shortly afterward with a three handshake induction. Perhaps it was Darren's method or just the fact it was just a continuation of earlier experiences but I did become much more aware of mentally being in a trance state. I even felt a sort of mental floating sensation, which I'd previously associated with trying to squeeze my eyes closed but this time my eyes were relaxed. Sadly though, Darren tried to give me a suggestion that my hand would stick to my leg, and this didn't work.

So frustrating!

I got the feeling that I'd knocked back confidences a little. It wasn't obvious on the surface of course, but I know from experience what it's like when something doesn't work. Especially something really simple and easy like sticking someone's hands to something.

It might sound silly but I am becoming increasingly jealous of the people who find being hypnotised easy. There are so many things that I've done and can achieve so easily with pretty much everybody I work with that just don't seem to work on me. In this respect I didn't feel quite so positive coming away, but looking back now as I recount these events it does seem that I did experience quite a lot, and several new things. It was a good experience and I do believe that, like the stereograms, I will figure it out in the end.

Still, I came away from this meet up feeling that I'd learned a lot from it. It was a heck of a lot of fun too! Thanks guys!