Freeze!

It has become apparent to me, after a comment Will made following Sunday's meet up, that I seem to have become a bit of a catalepsy specialist. Well, by specialist I don't mean that I know a lot, rather that I've practiced these effects more than some of the other effects.

Catalepsy is a phenomenon where, as I understand it, opposing muscle groups strike a balance causing that particular body part to become stiff and immobile. Inducing catalepsy does not require a particularly deep trance, and it quite often occurs during certain types of induction. Indeed, I guess the reason why I have become reasonably well practiced at these phenomena is that I've yet to find anybody who doesn't respond well to them. They seem to work well for me as a springboard from which to launch into phenomena that seem to require a deeper trance to work properly.

So, in this post I thought I'd touch a little on the range of catalepsy phenomena I have been able to induce. I should of course stress that none of the ideas here are mine originally, but this is my take on them.

Stiff arm

This is a routine taken directly from the pages of Anthony Jaquin's book Reality is Plastic and I know of several hypnotists who like to use the stiff arm routine as a set piece in the way described there. To tell the truth though I've tried it a couple of times in the past in this context and it didn't work and so I've avoided doing so since. I have found that things are different after the induction however, and it always has always worked well for me if I do it after I have actually hypnotised someone. That said, perhaps I should give it another go sometime as a set piece.

Basically the idea behind this routine is that you have someone hold their arm out straight in front of them with their fist clenched and suggest to them that the arm is getting stiffer and stiffer. Made concrete, metal bar down the middle, end snagged on a skyhook, etc. Then you have them try to bend their arm and find that they cannot do so. This trick is aided by the physiological fact that if someone is tensing their arm muscles they will already find it hard to bend their arm, so only a small amount of suggestion is required to achieve quite a simple effect. I feel helps get my subject into the swing of things, and makes later suggestions more believable.

I have generally done this with people who are in trance, have them find they cannot, then ask them to open their eyes and try again. The stiff arm is quite special to me because it on quite a few occasions so far it has been the first "eyes open" hypnotic effect my subject has experienced. Experiencing strange things happening in trance is one thing, but most of my subjects appear to find seeing their own arm completely motionless in front of them and seemingly beyond their control to be quite a profound and surreal moment.

If I'm feeling confident that the arm is going to stay completely stiff I will sometimes move the arm to new positions, keeping it straight and watch my subject's bemusement when it stays where I put it.

Completely relaxed

The inspiration for this little routine comes from the response of one of the very first people I hypnotised. I use magnetic hands as my induction and as I tried to do the lifting hand routine I was concerned when I appeared not to be getting any response at all. At the time I decided what had happened was that my induction simply hadn't worked. I told my subject to open his eyes and much to his confusion asked him to shake my hand, going straight into the handshake induction instead. He hasn't let me shake his hand since.

What I hadn't realised was that the guy was actually a natural, that he'd gone straight under first time, and that he was just so completely relaxed it would take a very long time for the hand to start to lift. In any case, as I tried to lift his hand up the second time and it still didn't appear to be having any of it I remembered a good piece of advice I'd been given, which was to turn things around so that they worked in my favour.

I told my subject that his arm was getting very heavy and he wouldn't be able to lift it.

This little convincer worked really well, so shortly afterward one of my post hypnotic suggestions was that when he woke up he would stay completely relaxed below the neck and would be unable to move. It worked really well, and I've used this suggestion quite often since, usually as a precursor to giving someone a "freeze" trigger.

I like to, for effect, lift their arm up and drop it back in their lap to demonstrate how limp their body has become.

Sometimes when I've done this routine friends of my subject who have been watching have tried to take advantage of their apparent helplessness by going to prod, tickle or even, on one occasion, draw on them with a pen. I've almost surprised myself with how defensive of my subject I've gotten in these situations, but I guess it's just the way I respond to the feeling of responsibility I have when someone puts their trust in me. I think it also irritates me when people are willing to tease someone in such a way and yet they're too afraid to try it for themselves.

"Your turn next then is it?" has been a useful phrase.

Freeze!

So having demonstrated catalepsy to people with the stiff arm and maybe the pseudo paralysis I described above I generally move on to the freeze trigger. This is where I tell them that if I say the word "freeze" their whole body below their neck will freeze solid like a statue, just like their arm froze earlier. Then I tell them that if I say "unfreeze" they will be able to move as normal.

I usually get one of two responses. If the subject is already having amnesia for their trances and doesn't remember being this suggestion, I find that the look of surprise they have on their face at not being able to move at all is absolutely priceless. Alternatively, if they can remember, their surprise that it has actually worked is no less significant.

In fact, usually subjects can remember being given these instructions but I've so far found that if they do it makes no difference at all.

Something I have had fun with is giving the subject a way in which they could inadvertently trigger this effect. On one occasion I'd given a friend this suggestion and told her that it would also work if she said the trigger word. On waking, completely oblivious to this fact, she had walked halfway across the room before saying something along the lines of "and don't you dare say freeze now!" and instantly stopped dead in her tracks.

Of course, she couldn't unfreeze herself and I was too busy holding my sides and rolling around on the floor to be of any help. Seeing someone break down in hysterics themself at what they've just done, but only from the neck up, is also quite a surreal sight.

Something else that it's possible to do when someone is frozen is to have fun moving their arms around. In fact it's possible to pose someones entire body in this way. Interestingly if they're stood up they'll also keep their balance but otherwise remain completely immobile.

The freeze command is also a great platform for a bit of waking hypnosis; that is to say giving the subject suggestions when they're outside of trance. I like to tell my subject that one of their arms will be free to move when I tap it and have them move their still frozen arm around with their free arm. This lets them feel their own catalepsy, which I'm told is a very surreal experience.

Sometimes, having played with the freeze trigger a bit, I go even further and tell them that the freeze will extend to their their head, including their eyes and facial expression and that obviously they will still breathe and blink, but they won't be able to make a sound or talk. I'm told this experience is very surreal, and incredibly frustrating too.

To be honest I don't use this one quite so much because it can make conversation very one sided and I enjoy hypnosis most when it's a two way process.

Frozen in time!

In my opinion this effect, which I will call the "time-stop freeze" takes all of this to a completely new level, and suffice to say it is pretty damn dramatic. So far I have only achieved it on one occasion, with my friend last week, and it took a bit of tinkering with the patter to get it to work properly. I'd tried it before and not had much success, but a conversation with a guy by the name of Paul at the meet in London encouraged me to give it another go. It was definitely worth it!

The idea is that when the subject is frozen and subsequently unfrozen they have absolutely no awareness of anything that happens during the time they were frozen. In fact they may not be aware of anything happening at all unless something has obviously changed.

In fact the majority of the fun to be had with this effect is with the changes that do occur whilst the subject is frozen, because from their perspective this change is instantaneous. Changing your own posture, position, their posture, moving objects around, etc. I will confess to having a little bit of fun with this one with my friend; when the time came for her to leave she went to pick up her bag and found it vanishing from in front of her and reappearing nearby. Not in the least bit frustrating.

Thinking about it I imagine it's even possible to, in effect, "teleport" a subject from one place to another simply by freezing them and moving them before unfreezing them again. I'll have to try that one.

There are plenty of videos of this effect floating around on youtube. For example there are several examples of photo shoots where there are models frozen by the flash of the camera, and unfrozen again by the next flash, experiencing only one flash. I have even heard a story of someone who, courtesy of her hypnotist boyfriend, experienced this effect on a London underground train of all places! She saw the train doors close, then open again and only realised something had happened when she heard the voice announcement declaring a different station!

Suffice to say I have barely scratched the surface of what sort of fun can be had with this particular suggestion. Now I've finally got it to work I look forward to trying it on more people and recounting my experiences here.

Anyway, I hope this has been an interesting read. My next post in a few days will probably be about the session I had with my friend last week. We did some really fun stuff that I can't wait to write about!