A brilliant subject

Well it's been a week since I had a particularly memorable hypnosis session with a friend, but I've finally gotten around to writing about it. I was very fortunate in that she allowed me to set up a video camera to film it, and reviewing the footage has certainly helped me to go over what happened in order to refresh my memory and cast a critical eye over my own methods.

What can I say about this particular session? Well, probably that it was probably the most exciting adventure into being a hypnotist that I've had to date.

This subject was someone I've done a bit of hypnosis with before and from that previous experience I already knew her to be a natural somnambulist, so I was expecting very good results. What really made the session for me though was the way in which she was quite willing to have fun, and that made her an absolute pleasure to share this with!

That's not to say that the session wasn't a little difficult for me to begin with. At this point I'd not hypnotised anybody properly for about 4 weeks, and I felt distinctly out of practice. I was also getting over a cold at the time, and at that yucky lingering clogged throat stage. Looking back at the video of the induction it doesn't seem too bad, but at the time I felt that I was making such an incredible hash of it. I had so much trouble coming out with the patter and I desperately needed to cough. Thankfully this picked up later on as I got myself back into the zone.

I'd chosen to use magnetic hands as the induction and I went straight into it. I didn't think any warm ups or set pieces were neccessary given that she'd been hypnotised before and how well she'd responded the last time. I had her place her arms out in front of her and imagine a magnetic force pulling them together, telling her that when they touched she'd go into hypnosis. An interesting effect at this point point was the way in which her hands started to drop toward her lap as I said "...and as you relax..." and I had to support them so they could come together without hitting her knees. Something that didn't even occur to me at the time, and in fact not until Ben saw the video and pointed it out to me, was that she was already right there the moment her hands started to droop. I could probably just have said "sleep!" at this point and it would have been enough.

Once I'm happy that my subject is in trance I usually go for the floating arm convincer, so this is what I did next. This is where I ask the subject to just imagine one of their hands becoming lighter and lighter to the point where the arm lifts up by itself. It's a very surreal experience for anyone who's never experienced it before. I really like the floating arm because it's not an instant pass or fail test like, say telling someone that their eyes are locked closed or that they can't lift their arm, and it's also very unlikely to fail to work. In fact, even I can do it!

Something that I seem to find tells me a lot about the subject and the experience they're having is a little routine that I like to add onto the floating arm. What I do, once the arm has floated up to about shoulder level, is tell the subject that the arm is going to drop back to their lap but only at the rate at which they're happy to go deeper into hypnosis. My friend's arm had come up to a point above her head reasonably quickly, but the most amazing thing was the rate at which the hand came down again. It took barely a second, as far as I've been able to tell this is the subject's subconscious to telling the hypnotist that it can't get enough hypnosis and it would like more please, lots more! Of course I was only too happy to oblige.

Catalepsy

I went into my usual catalepsy routine as this always works as a nice warm up for me. Given the strength of response I'd had from my friend in the past, and the way her hand had dropped down so quickly I was satisfied that she needed no warm up at all. I froze her arm, had her move it around with her other arm, and then I unfroze it by tapping it.

"Why tapping it?" she asked me. Well of course it wasn't the tapping it that had unfrozen it, it was my saying it could move again, but I took the opportunity to try out some waking hypnosis. I told her that arm was completely frozen again - not in trance this time, wide awake, and frozen it was. I then released it by saying it would when I snapped my fingers. I think it's absolutely amazing how the mind still takes suggestions like that outside of trance. The power of rapport I guess.

I find one of the joys of learning hypnosis is constantly trying new things like this. It feels so good when something new works, and of course usually the subject has absolutely no idea they're the first person you've tried that particular routine on.

Next I demonstrated how her whole body below her neck would become as still as a statue, having given her that suggestion in trance, by offering her a mint from a tin (one of her own mints too!) and freezing her just before she could get one.

I should also say that by this point my friend was having complete amnesia for her trances, which is a situation I think makes things a lot more fun because they have no idea what to expect at all. Something I have yet to understand is how hypnotic subjects are so unphased by the whole process of being tranced upon their being woken up again. If I were them I would probably be demanding to know what I'd been up to, but then I guess I have a better insight into the mischievous inner workings of my mind.

I confess I always find the freeze trigger a little bit too much fun and start to feel guilty about it. I think my guilt was further compounded by the way I went on to tease her by balancing the tin of mints on the top of her hand, and then unfroze and re-froze her several times as she attempted to transfer one from the tin to her mouth.

I then pushed my guilt to ever greater heights by having her face and head freeze too, which again was far too much fun. In fact it's so much fun I'm sure that it must have hidden adverse consequences. Perhaps every time a hypnotic subject is frozen in this way somewhere a cute bunny dies.

Along these lines something that in all probably is responsible for decimating the world bunny population is the time-stop freeze, which I managed to get to work for the first time at this point. I've already talked about this a couple of posts ago, but suffice to say how I felt when I actually got it to work was really something else. Several times I froze my friend and, with her suspended in one moment in time, moved things around such as her tin of mints, or myself, or her arms, and then unfroze her, just to see her reaction to what felt to her as the world changing around her instantaneously.

Amnesia

Next I thought I'd try for a bit of amnesia. Realising that what I was about to do is probably one of the oldest tricks in the book for hypnotists, I thought I'd have a go at it anyway. I put my friend into trance and told her that she would think she hadn't been hypnotised yet, have no memory of what we'd already done since I had hypnotised her, and that we were just about to start.

Upon bringing her back out of hypnosis I went straight into setting up for the induction, almost in a deja-vu of earlier, and after a few seconds of her going along with this quite naturally I just stopped and said "Actually I think I might have hypnotised you already."

"I don't think so" she replied.

I can't begin to describe what it felt like to be be looking into her eyes and see her looking back at me with that look of innocent sincerity on her face. She really believed that she hadn't been hypnotised. It was almost intimidating to be honest.

We went through the last things she remembered doing and sure enough it was things like setting up the camera that we'd done just before we'd started. Then I put her back into trance, a trance that I told her that she wouldn't remember, and gave her the instruction that she would remember being hypnotised the next time she put a mint in her mouth. Suffice to say when she did the look on her face in that moment of revelation was absolutely priceless.

"That's mean!" she scolded me, although admittedly she had a smile on her face as she said it.

Hallucinations

The next thing I thought we'd have a go at was some hallucinations.

I already knew that my friend responded to audible hallucinations, so I thought I'd try something along those lines first. Zapping her back into trance, I told her that when I woke her up she would hear me speaking in a very strong Irish accent. The conversation that followed that little suggestion was quite hilarious.

"Hi. How're you feeling?" I asked her.

"Fine...." she answered, with an expression of wide eyed startled amusement on her face, "but you sound like Father Ted."

"Oh come on now! What?" I said, feeling as though saying that in my usual English accent was almost as corny as if I'd actually tried to put on an Irish one. Although in truth I expect most people who have actually heard my attempts at putting on an Irish accent in real life wouldn't be opposed to using hypnosis to purge the experience from their memory forever.

"Yep. Definitely Father Ted. Big cows... little cows..."

"Ah!" I said. I picked up the tin of mints. "These are small..."

"Yes! That's it! And those are far far away!"

"Okay so..." I paused for thought.

"Yes you do sound like you're doing an impression of Father Ted," she said, trying to keep a straight face, "which is quite funny. I could see you as Father Ted."

"Oh, we could try that..." I suggested.

"No."

With my brilliant concept for an interesting and not at all unnerving visual hallucination thrown back at me I decided to try a different sense. We'd already played with her sense of hearing, and visually hallucinating Irish catholic priests was a apparently a no-no, so I decided to try touch.

Putting her back into trance, I decided that I'd try getting her to feel herself being tickled. I then realised I'd forgotten to ask if she was actually ticklish. No matter, I just asked her whilst she was in trance, and I got a very quiet and spaced "yes" in reply. I then proceeded to tell her that she would think of the most ticklish place on her body (although not anywhere particularly private) and just imagine as though she were being tickled in that spot.

After continuing with these suggestions for a short while I noticed she was starting to clench the palm of her right hand, which was obviously where she was feeling tickled. As the convulsions of her hand got worse I eventually told her to stop because I was really starting to feel sorry for the poor girl, but I then told her that if I said the word "tickle" whilst she was awake she would feel that tickling sensation again.

When I woke her up she had absolutely no memory of the tickling experience she'd just had, which amazed me given her reaction to it at the time.

"What if I say tickle?"

"Now my palm's itching... That's quite strange!"

It turned out that, yes, the palm of her hand is her most ticklish spot. Well, I guess her subconscious would know these things.

After this I had a try at some visual hallucinations and interestingly these were the only suggestions during the whole session that failed to work. I tried to get her to imagine a ball in my hand, with not success. The same went for when I tried a negative hallucination; making myself invisible to her.

Out of desperation I finally managed invisibility freezing her and then hiding behind her chair, which I admit was a bit of a cheap trick, but it was still fun.

Therapy

This all brought me to the part where I had a go at curing my friend of her phobia of heights. For this I used the Rossi-style method explained in Reality is Plastic. I think I'll talk more about this in detail in another post. Suffice to say looking back I could have performed this procedure a lot better than I did, being as this was the first time, but I do feel quite positive about it. We did a test afterwards and, as far as one is able to test for a mortal fear of plunging headlong to ones death in a small one bedroom flat, it seemed to have made a difference.

Back to normal

I've always made a point of going through a wakeup and removing any suggestions from my subjects after I've finished with them. I don't think this is absolutely essential but I believe it's good practice and good for the purpose of peace of mind if nothing else. I'll say "just to check... sleep!", and of course nothing will happen. As I say, peace of mind.

I went through the usual process of saying "all the suggestions I gave you will be gone" but this time I thought I'd get inventive and remote trigger it, so to speak. I told my friend everything would go back to normal when she crossed the threshold of my front door.

The process of her getting ready to leave was only hampered a couple of times by her bag vanishing in front of her and reappearing elsewhere in the flat.

For an encore I may also have put a force field across the door, which also delayed things. Damn those force fields!

I really enjoyed this session, and given exactly how much we did it's not surprising that it's taken me a while to process it. It was really good to share this hypnosis with someone who was so open to having a bit of fun, but the best feeling of all though is the knowledge that what I did made a real difference to my friend's phobia.

I've also added "my own natural somnambulist" to my Christmas list.