The bad with the good

So far I have only talked about my successes with hypnosis, but it's needless to say that I have also had failures too; every hypnotist does.

I do believe it when I'm told that everybody can be hypnotised, and that even includes me. What that doesn't mean, however, is that everybody can be hypnotised anywhere by any hypnotist. Context can be everything.

This is the point where I have to reveal the fundamental secret of hypnosis, as I understand it. The single piece of knowledge shared by all hypnotists that means they are able to hypnotise people, whereas the uninitiated can't. The secret is as follows:

"I am the hypnotist"

In order to hypnotise people the hypnotist has to believe the above statement wholeheartedly. It's as simple as that. If they don't believe it, if there are doubts in their mind, these doubts will ultimately manifest themselves in the way they speak, in their body language, and if the subject gets wind of it... well, suffice to say things don't work.

It's true that many of my outings as the hypnotist have been quite bungled. The wonderful thing about hypnosis has been the way in which, by knowing almost infinitely more about it than everyone else around me, I have been able to get away with serious mistakes.

I have made a complete mess of an induction, only to say "...that's good, now we're going to do this..." and move onto an alternative induction without losing any momentum.

People have sometimes been so inconsiderate as to not sleep when I've damn well told them to sleep, and just sat there with their eyes open, but it hasn't mattered if I've just said "That's right; just let your eyes close and go ten times deeper" without breaking step.

I've even told somebody they would forget their name when they were woken up, and then said something like "Okay, eyes open wide awake John" - oops! I got away with it though! The amnesia still worked, and I was able to work the fact I'd even just told them their name into the act.

"I am the hypnotist. Everything that happens is what I meant to happen all along, and I appear to have total control because I never ask for anything I'm not going to get."


Failures

Different people respond to hypnosis in different ways, and I have had at least a couple of people who have proven extremely difficult to hypnotise. When I get one of these people, the kind who just don't respond very well I consider myself to have been very successful if I managed to just pull off a convincer, usually something like floating their arm up.

Even amongst these though I have already had a couple of what I would call failures. Occasions where someone seems to have switched hypnosis off at the wall and nothing I try works.

One of these occasions was, I'm pretty sure, down to the fact that the person was a close family member. I've heard it said that a lot of hypnotists find that close friends and family are the most difficult to hypnotise, and I guess the main reason for this is that these people find it hard to picture them as the hypnotist.

I think that with this particular family member this was the issue. Because I knew this person to be a sleepwalker I went in confident of success all guns blazing with a hand-to-eye fixation induction. It seemed to be working very well, I was getting lots of eye flutter, so I told them that their hand was stuck to their face. To my dismay the hand instantly came away, their eyes opened, and that was the end of it.

In hindsight I do remember seeing that person testing their hand on their forehead before I told them to try to remove it. I believe a complete stranger is more willing to take the hypnotist's word for it, whereas someone who knows the hypnotist may have difficulty becoming a believer. They're more likely to challenge what they're being told.

I tried another induction and that didn't work either. There are certain signs that as a hypnotist you start to recognise as to whether your subject is going into trance or not. Continuing when the subject is displaying signs of not doing so, such as removing their hand from their forehead without being told to following a hand-to-eye induction, is very difficult.

There was another occasion, before the one above, where I didn't see any signs of trance at all, even after trying several different types of inductions. I have no idea what happened on that occasion, truth be told. I suspect that the person in question was under stress and had personal issues at the time. I'm pleased to say I moved on and haven't really dwelt on it since.

I think the most important thing to do in the face of failure is to remain positive and confident of success, and generally I think I can do this quite well. However, when I find myself in a situation where my last attempt was a failure and then a couple of weeks go by without any opportunities to practice coming up that can get quite hard.

My last attempt at hypnosis was a couple of weeks ago now, when drunken girl interrupted me, and that feels like an eternity ago.