More pub hypnosis

I have talked before the ongoing hazard, when one is a hypnotist, of seeing any social gathering as a potential hypnosis opportunity. Last night my girlfriend and I met up with an old school friend of mine and his girlfriend for drinks in a pub, and as it turned out this occasion was no exception.

I think it was about an hour into the evening, after discussing the insane things that my friend and I had gotten up to at a very young age, that my friend's girlfriend commented that it was Saturday night and we should therefore be doing something crazy. Of course, being me, I could only respond to this by asking if she'd ever been hypnotised before and would being hypnotised right there in the pub qualify as crazy enough?

As I've said before I have so far found that when presented with the offer of being hypnotised most people will respond in one of two ways. They'll either be really up for it or completely the opposite. This said, of those who are interested in trying hypnosis there are a very small group of people who go beyond simple interest and are really really keen to try it. I've heard other hypnotists talk about "the look" that these people get and the statement "you'll know it when you see it" is completely true. It's hard to put into words what it's like, but I guess I can best describe it as a kind of wide eyed fascination, it is as though they are instantly hanging on your every word, and of course the only question on their lips is "can you hypnotise me?"

Now I bring this up because my friend's girlfriend was one of these people, and no sooner had I mentioned that I could do it was she telling me that it was something she'd always wanted to try and could I please hypnotise her? and now? Suffice to say I was instantly in hypnotist heaven!

This was but for one thing. She'd already had a glass and a half of wine and was feeling a bit "cheerful". The trouble is that I don't seem to ever be able turn down any opportunity to practice hypnosis, and this was no exception.

This was the first time I have used the 8-word induction as a first induction and I was actually very pleased with the results. The key to these instant inductions, I've found, seems to be in going immediately into a deepening routine. I've found that as my confidence has improved I have gotten better at rattling off the patter clearly and quickly. My subject was sort of giggling for a couple of seconds after the "sleep!" but her expression was soon blank with her head dangling at an unusual angle.

I ran through my usual routine of deepening the trance, lifting up an arm as a convincer, fractionating, and then started with my familiar routine of catalepsy demonstrations, starting with a stiff arm and then the completely relaxed body, which worked fine.

Next I moved on to the freeze trigger and the response to this was a bit more... interesting. It did work, sort of, but rather than immobilising her just made her very stiff. She was still able to move but her movements were very slow and jerky, and repeated compounding of the instructions didn't make any difference. It felt as though she just didn't understand what I was asking of her.

I then tried the whole "you'll forget being hypnotised" routine. Again this worked, but again only partially; she knew she'd been hypnotised but couldn't remember what we'd actually done. I had also told her in trance that she'd remember it all when she next had a sip of wine, but unfortunately this didn't quite work so she kept drinking the wine to try to remember more. "hmmm... it's in the wine..." she said.

In the end I had to prompt her with "do you remember when..." and, as with everybody, the response was "actually, yes, now you mention it..."

The other interesting thing was when I did my wake up. After I'd explicitly removed the sleep suggestion from her, as I've done to everybody I've worked with before, I demonstrated this by saying "just to show you this doesn't work now - sleep!". To my total bemusement she went straight back under. Again, she'd misunderstood what I thought were very simple and clear instructions.

I've talked about what I did with this subject because I think it demonstrated to me the first main effect alcohol has on hypnotic subjects, which is a loss of concentration that seems to manifest itself in the subconscious not fully understanding the suggestions given in trance even though they might be quite simple and have been compounded repeatedly. My example here was the "freeze" trigger. It's actually quite a simple instruction to give, but it was easy to see that the subject, or the subject's unconscious, was a bit confused about what was supposed to be happening.

Then of course there's the other most noticeable effect, which is a shortened attention span. This is where post hypnotic suggestions, like "freeze" just break down because the subject becomes "bored with them" and wants to move on to something else. I've mentioned this one before.

I think what I really need to do, as I seem to be occasionally ending up with slightly sozzled subjects, is to devise a canon of tricks that aren't too mentally taxing and so will work on these occasions. It's also certainly a good way to practice making ones instructions as clear and unambiguous as possible.

The more I learn about hypnosis, the more I feel that I really don't see the point of drinking at all. Our minds are capable of such amazing things, so why do so many people seek out large quantities of a drug that takes so much of that away from them? In the past I've never been one for drinking anyway, granted I enjoy my glass of wine or pint from time to time, but nothing puts me off drinking to excess more than seeing how even small quantities of alcohol affect the concentration a person needs to be hypotised.

On a lighter note, something else which has featured quite a bit recently has been the bit of NLP anchoring the Ben showed me in the pub a few weeks ago. He showed me how to give someone an anchor that will make them laugh. Even several weeks later it still works. I know this because my girlfriend inadvertently discovered how to trigger it and has been poking me incessantly for the last few days! Damn you Ben!