The 4th Meet

True to our now long established tradition, which started this month, the last Thursday of the month is when we have our hypnomeets in London.

I had decided that I would combine getting to the meet in good time with a bit of shopping in London, and caught a mid afternoon train into Paddington. So, in true top gear fashion, I was the first to arrive. I found my way to the upstairs part of the Crown and two chairmen pub in Soho, where we'd agreed to meet and settled myself to wait for the others in the company of a drink and my iPhone's web browser.

Chris was the first to arrive, followed by Ben, and so as the upstairs of the pub started to fill up we grabbed the largest table we could monopolise and chatted about our recent experiences. Ben was also quite keen that Chris should zap him and fill him with confidence for the evening; I got to hold Ben's shiny camera a film them whilst they did this.

Getting our priorities back into the right order we then set about ordering some Dinner. I am pleased to report that the Crown and two chairmen does a delicious sheppard's pie.

The next guy to join us was Joey, who was a first timer at one of our meets. He was harbouring concerns that he might not "go under", given that he's quite an analytical person. Having seen his posts on the forum before the meet I'd tend to agree with this diagnosis. I was keen to see if my own experience at overcoming this particular hurdle could be used to help him, so having had my dinner and whilst others were still arriving I offered to be the first to try to hypnotise him.

In fact, Joey was just the first of several analytical types that I ended up hypnotising that evening as for some reason people seemed to keep referring them to me. A disproportionate number of hypnotists seem to be the type who are difficult to hypnotise. I had mixed results with the people I worked with that evening, although I like to think I managed to get hypnotic phenomena out of each and every person I worked with. I really need to work out a routine for people who don't respond well so that they can get the most out of the experience.

Of course as far as I am able to tell there is no miracle zap one call pull on a subject who naturally doesn't respond very well. It comes naturally to some people, but for others if they reall want to experience being hypnotised it is something that they have to learn and that takes time.

Something that I have been trying recently is a slightly different way of doing the floating hand convincer. In the past I have on occasion zapped someone into trance and then talked to their hand for about five minutes practically pleading with it to rise and thus prove to the subject they're hypnotised. When I have failures this is usually when people decide it's not working for them and give up. My experience with the Erickson handshake has shown me that trance can be helped along by ambiguously supporting the subject's arm. Also experiencing this convincer for myself has shown me that getting the arm to part company with its resting place is the most difficult part. What I do now is drape the subject's arm over my own hand or a finger as I tell them to imagine it getting lighter. Making my support of that arm ambiguous encourages it to become cataleptic and be pulled up by the subject's imagination. Cool eh!

Anyway, having finished trying to help Joey experience hypnotic phenomena I asked if he wanted to have a try hypnotising me. He started with a good effort at a magnetic hands induction, and I was quite well aware of myself trancing as my hands came together, but he wasn't feeling quite confident enough to shout "sleep!" at me or deepen, so after a short while I opened my eyes. At that point Gaz seemed to take Joey under his wing for a bit of tutoring, so I turned to Chris and asked him if he wanted to have a go.

Chris obliged by performing a hand-to-eye induction on me, which I was easily able to follow and just let myself drop into trance. This was the first time I'd actually believed that hypnosis was really working on me in a pub environment. The strange thing was that it didn't feel different to my previous pub hypnosis attempts, I certainly didn't feel as tranced as I have felt in longer more private sessions. I feel what made the difference was the confidence that it was working. That and the way in which, whilst quips and witty comebacks still popped into my mind at what Chris was saying I simply couldn't bring myself to come out with them. Definitely something unusual going on there!

Chris stuck my hand to the table. This worked of course, although "stuck" is always a bit of a misnomer for me; it's more a case of being quite happy to leave my hand where it is thankyou very much, regardless of whatever else I want to do with it. I act as though my hand is stuck, rather than feeling any kind of force holding it there, but I just can't not act.

I often wonder how far this acting would stretch though. For example, Chris released my hand from the table by saying "you'll be able to lift your hand up and hit me". Without thinking I did start to take a swing at him, and only stopped when he laughed and said "don't hit me". Although it did only feel like play acting at the time, I do wonder what would have happened if he hadn't told me to stop.

The next suggestion was just a little bit irritating, and it was certainly going to work because I'd had it done to me before. I guess I'm partly to blame for revealing this to Chris beforehand. He told me that when he said "purple" I would put my index fingers on my temples and wouldn't be able to remove them. This wasn't at all embarrassing, especially when someone shoved a camera video camera in my face. "Don't try this at home kids!" was the best thing I could think of to say.

Chris's last suggestion was that I wouldn't be able to see him, but I really wasn't surprised when that one didn't work.

The whole experience of being a successful subject in the pub was quite odd, surreal even. As my reward my antics as a hypnotic subject are also now firmly placed in the land of YouTube. Somebody, and they know who they are, can look forward to my revenge for this, and as we all know revenge is like leftover pasta - best served cold.


I got my revenge on Chris by demonstrating my Ericksonian handshake induction on him, and then sticking his hands together.

Thinking about it now he got off lightly too.

Darren also had a go at hypnotising me. He did the three handshake induction, and of course I just let myself drop into it. He stuck my hand to the table, my face, etc. Then he asked me to try to hold something, I think it was a beermat, and told me that it would be too heavy for me to lift. When he gave it to me it didn't feel any heavier at all, but I certainly couldn't move my hand any direction but down.

Escaping from Darren I somehow ended up holding Ben's video camera. Matt and Chris were near the bar so I joined them and proceeded to film, although it was difficult at such short range even with the wide angle lens on the camera. Chris had taken advantage of Matt's inherent qualities as a trance junkie to put him under with a shock handshake induction, stuck his elbow to the bar, and put a force field around his beer bottle.

As an encore, and most impressively, Chris then told Matt that he wouldn't be able to see him, but could see anything he was holding. Being behind the camera I really didn't take this in completely as I was concentrating on where I was pointing it, but Matt did seem completely stunned and off balance by the way in which his beer bottle was moving. He also folded up when Chris decided he'd had enough and told him to sleep and removed the suggestion.


"Is he really hypnotised?" Asked the barmaid, who had been watching.

"Sure" Chris said. "Matt sleep!... and you are now going to listen to what the barmaid says and do exactly what she says. Listen now and she'll tell you."

Chris looked over at her expectantly.

"Errrr..." the barmaid paused, and then in possibly the least hypnotic voice I have ever heard said "can you go around and collect some glasses off the tables please?"

"You hear that," Chris said, "you're going to go around and pick some glasses off the tables, then you're going to buy a round, and get the barmaid one too because you think you rather fancy her."

Sadly the result of this interesting set of suggestions was merely that Matt just looked incredibly dazed. Although I guess not quite so much as before because at least this time his beer bottle was behaving itself.

For me the highlight came toward the end of the evening when I hypnotised Darren. I did it properly too this time, as I felt that the surprise blink induction that I inflicted on him at the last meet had been a bit of a gimmick.

I used a hand drop induction, which I tend to favour these days with a promising subject, and having deepened for a little while I woke Darren up and proceeded to try some waking hypnosis. I've been experimenting recently with how little I can get away with saying to get suggestions to stick, so on bringing Darren out of trance I simply asked him to place his hands out in front of him. I then quickly pushed them together and simply said "stuck!". He couldn't pull them apart, and I felt rather smug.

Darren has also made fun of my hypnosis "Not Learned Properly" (or NLP) in the past, and of course I tend to interpret such mocking as an open invitation. Now, I don't see myself as being any kind of NLP guru but I do believe that the ability to use indirect language patterns and metaphors is important and I also think that there's no better showcase of this sort of approach than in an Ericksonian handshake.

This is what I did; I took Darren's hand and talked him into an eyes open trance in less than a minute. Next I did what I tend to like to do with this induction, which was to tell him that when I brought him out of trance that he'd be frozen stiff from the neck down, unable to move his body. He Genuinely couldn't move his body at all.

Darren had commented during the week on facebook that he'd been doing voiceovers for various companies in particular accents, so I thought I'd see if I could play with this. Once again suggesting he'd hear me speaking in an Irish accent didn't really work, but when I suggested he would get stuck speaking in one himself... oh my goodness, the result of that little suggestion was amazing.

"F***in' 'ell! He's meahd me talk in a f***in' oyrish accent!" exclaimed an astonished Darren.

Someone offered him a Guinness.

What was most amazing was how good Darren's Irish accent was; it was absolutely impeccable. As an encore I told him the accent would switch to South African when I clicked my fingers, as a waking suggestion. This also worked very well.

I can't remember the last time I've laughed that much.


So that's about it. Shortly after this I had to head off to Paddington to catch the train home. I had yet another awesome evening out with some great people and I can't wait for next month!

See you then guys!

Letting go

A couple of months ago I was going through quite a dark time, in terms of hypnosis at least.

At no point since September when I took my first steps into the hypnotic world have I ever had any complaints about my development as a hypnotist. I feel as though my skill and confidence has always been coming on by leaps and bounds, and the inspiration and confidence to try the next new thing never seems to stop flowing. It's an amazing journey and I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Well perhaps something I could complain about is the lack of a steady stream of attractive young female subjects knocking on my door and demanding to be hypnotised right now, but I wouldn't because my girlfriend might decide to read this and apology meals out are expensive.

Anyway, given my recent successes with actually experiencing hypnosis as the subject I find it quite hard to believe that it was such a short time ago that I was very worried because nothing seemed to be working. For me it such a horrible feeling to think that perhaps I was just incapable of experiencing any of the amazing things I've been sharing with others. It had me thinking that there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

It was at this time that I went to a couple of my regular messageboards on the internet looking for help on this issue. I should, I thought, be able to get a straight answer to the question of whether my response would improve if I kept trying, or was I to be stuck being a hopeless case for life? I needed to know.

I was actually quite surprised, shocked even, at the lack of any useful response from anybody. Normally the hypnotists on these boards are brimming with definitive and helpful advice, but my experience has been that on this issue a significant number of hypnotists are pretty tight lipped, and most of the rest are just useless.

One phrase kept coming up though: "Let go"

At this point I was completely committed to being hypnotised and felt that I was holding absolutely nothing back in my attempts to feel something... anything, for something to work, and yet of course nothing was.

"Let go eh? Oh! Thankyou! If only I'd thought of that one earlier!"

I needed reassurance that people could get better over time. I was clearly missing something important about what I was supposed to be doing and wanted to know what that might be. But to keep getting that same, useless, meaningless, phrase over and over and over was so infuriating.

Let go of what?! I not holding onto anything! Be glad I'm not, because if I was I would probably throw it at you!

I am in a situation where I am able to look at this and find it amusing. I feel I have overcome this particular hurdle; I know now that I can become a brilliant hypnotic subject if I put my mind to it, which of course I intend to do. I eventually found that missing piece of the puzzle, and now it really feels as though hypnosis is working for me. The future looks exciting.

The reason why I am referring back to this now is that for some reason the thread I started on one of these forums has jumped back into life. More people have visited in order to advise me that what I really, really, need to do is to... that's right, you guessed it, "let go"!

Either that or first give me an anecdote of what their first time being hypnotised was like, how easy it was for them, how deep they went and what a profound experience it was. Just, in fact, what someone who's clearly upset that they aren't experiencing anything at all and wondering if they never will wants to hear.

Then they tell me I need to "let go".

For me this is a wonderful example of the concept of anchoring, albeit unintentional. At the time I felt that if just one more hypnotist told me to "let go" I would actually scream. A strong emotional response and compulsive action initiated by an external trigger.

I have since gotten this under control.

I now merely fantasise a mental image of myself brandishing a claymore above my head and screaming celtic war cries as I charge headlong into a crowd of hypnotherapists, who for are all for some reason dressed up as medieval monks and chanting "let go! let go!" from under their hoods.

Just a moment. I'm going to savour that image of flying severed limbs and pocket watches. It is rather satisfying.

So anyway everything's on the up and the future looks bright, but please don't ask me to "let go".

Text Hypnosis

Well, another week has gone by and I have another hypnotic experience to describe.

At my current age of 26 I see myself as one of the first of a generation that can say that they have always had a computer in their house, and I have fond memories of sitting playing wonderful games such as Space pilot and Granny's garden on my dad's BBC Micro. Interacting with the world inside a computer through a screen and keyboard is a concept that is as familiar to me as a a pencil and paper because I have not known a world without it.

Having said that it was only about 10 years ago, towards the end of my teen years, that I discovered the internet. I'd seen it before then of course, but I was never interested until I started to realise that it was a way in which I could reach out to the world and meet other people of my age group with similar interests. I think it's fair to say that I have been a very regular user of MSN messenger ever since that time, and instant messaging has become something I've taken for granted as a part of my day-to-day life.

When I first started to learn about hypnosis something that did come as a complete surprise was that it is actually possible to perform hypnosis over an instant messenging program in the form of text. It was quite odd though to think that MSN, something that I have used routinely more days than not for the last decade, could actually be used for such hypnotic purpose. If I'd actually known more about hypnosis and how it works I wouldn't have been so surprised. Most people can probably remember a time when they became so absorbed in the book or magazine that they were reading that things would happen in the world around them but completely escape their notice, and of course in such a situation the time seems to fly by really quickly. This is an example of a naturally occuring trance.

For me the best example of this was in my second year of university when I simply couldn't put down the Lord of the Rings. This was, of course, after I'd gotten past the bit in Lothlorien, which doesn't induce trance but actual sleep through unrelenting boredom. Books do tend to draw me in and especially if they are set in a fictional world, which of course allows me to engage my imagination and picture the scene portrayed.

I also vow, at some point in the not too distant future, to reverse the process and put the fictional products of my own imagination onto paper by writing a fiction novel. Maybe I will mention this idea again at a later date.

Anyway, I had heard of text hypnosis but I was a little skeptical. Not skeptical that it would work, I believe other people when they say it has for them, but more that I wasn't ever sure that this was something that would work for me. Of course none of that meant I'd turn down the opportunity to give it a try if it came along.

Enter, at this point, the hypnotist who offered to give me a demonstration.

I tend to have my computer on in the evenings after work, even if I am doing other things at the time, and of couse MSN is always running in the background. Thanks to this for the last couple of weeks I've been chatting on and off to Liz, the expert to whom I referred a few posts ago, and when the subject of text hypnosis came up she indicated that she'd done it before and was more than willing to satisfty my curiousity.

So to set the scene, there I was sat in a comfy chair with just the one MSN conversation window open and maximised on the screen. Liz had assured me that all I needed to do was just relax and follow her instructions as she typed them to me.

The induction that Liz did was much the sort of thing that I've done before when I've done more traditional inductions. I don't know if it was the type of induction or some mystical ability to empathise on Liz's part but it did seem as though she knew a lot about me and what I was thinking at the time. Probably something about being female, which I swear is always dangerous in a hypnotist. In any case I was focusing on the words and each line came a bit too fast for me to deliberate on how she was managing to do that.

After a while she went into a guided imagery routine, which I was just about able to follow, based on lying on a beach and then swimming out to an Island. I could definitely relate the memory of the kind of whole body fatigue that comes from swimming to what we were trying to achieve and remember what that was like for me. What was interesting was that even though I couldn't actually feel it I was easily able to pretend that I was.

A couple of months ago if I had been faced with such suggestions I would have sat there, read the text, and felt upset because nothing was happening. Now that I understand that the best way to describe hypnosis isn't some outside force making things happen, but rather a deep willingness to imagine and pretend, I genuinely felt as though things were happening. I could have stopped at any point, but what mattered was that I didn't.

A good example of this was when Liz told me that I couldn't take my eyes off her words. I knew that there was nothing at all stopping me from looking away, so I let my eyes wander up to the menu bar at the top of the screen. "Aha!" I thought triumphantly "I can look away! She's not the boss of me!" Then I felt guilty and checked back to see if she'd written anything else.

In the next few minutes my eyes wandered as far as the windows "start" button and even on one occasion my keyboard, but they didn't stay there for long. There was no outside force at play here, at any point I could have looked away. I just didn't want to.

Whilst I was completely focused on the flow of Liz's words it wasn't as though I didn't notice things beyond my laptop screen either. I could still hear people moving around in the flat next door. I could hear dogs barking. I could even hear that accursed ice cream van driving around. Do they really expect to sell ice creams in mid February?! They drive around every day, every week, every year playing that awful tune but I just can't imagine how on earth they manage to stay in business! And why on earth can't they at least invest in a different tune to play once in a while?! Oh dear I've gone off one one...

The above paragraph describes well what entering a slightly more intense state of trance seems to feel like for me. My train of thought will fly off tangentially like the spark off a Catherine wheel, diverging from the other ongoing processes, getting slower, and then finally dying out. It is at this point that I realise I've not been consciously paying attention to what the hypnotist has been saying to me, even though I have never stopped listening, or in this case reading.

I have to say that the most difficult thing for me about text hypnosis came a little later when I was imagining swimming to my island. I was imagining the tiredness to the extent that I was actually having difficulty keeping my eyes open. I didn't feel tired as such, but it did feel really good just to rest my eyes. For some reason it just seemed like the thing to do at the time. At one point I blinked and upon opening my eyes realised that at least a minutes' worth of messages had appeared and I'd lost my place because it'd been pushed off the top of the screen!

It's really difficult to describe how the experience felt, because in many ways it didn't feel unusual at all. My eyes were quite insistent that they'd like to be closed, and yet I didn't feel tired. My arms were acting slow and clumsy on the keyboard when Liz asked me to type responses to her, but I didn't feel fatigued. At one point, in typing "yes" I even managed to get a key stuck down so it came out as "yeeeeeees", but I really didn't feel motivated to try to delete it and start again, it was just too much effort.

My best attempt at describing my mental state would be "not feeling dazed, but pretending to be dazed, and also dazed. I was thinking throughout, but just seeing things in this blurred and blinkered way just seemed the thing to do at the time.

It was very odd. A description which I had to later assure Liz didn't mean anything negative, in fact the whole thing was a very positive experience for me.

I'm afraid that I'm turning into a bit of a trance junkie.

Liz didn't do much beyond just the induction and deepening me with her island routine, but what she did do was give me a re-induction trigger, which we tried a few minutes after she'd brought me back. That was also an interesting experience because when I read it I didn't feel as though anything had changed at all.. but hey, why shouldn't I just close my eyes and zone out for little bit, just as she suggested? So I just sat there, closed my eyes and just daydreamed for a few minutes.

So there it is then. That's what it feels like to hypnotised via MSN. Part of me is a little disappointed that as an experience hypnosis isn't the cliché flashes of lightning, invisible forces, fuzzy vision and sudden dizziness, all topped off with a good measure of involuntary limb flailing, but the more I experience it the more I do enjoy it and I definitely want to continue my learning experiences on both sides of the swinging pocketwatch.

If nothing else this served as a bit of an eye opener to me for how far I've come in terms of my response in the last few months. I am definitely getting better at being a hypnotic subject, and that feels good.

I really owe Liz a debt of gratitude for this very interesting and positive experience. "It were champion!", as they say in Yorkshire. Perhaps sometime soon I can show her the wonders of the Ericksonian handshake...

News bulletin

Just a quick post this lunchtime to say a couple of things.

First, the 4th HypnoMeet in London next Thursday.

Darren has suggested a meeting at a central London near Oxford Circus. It looks like the turnout is going to be very good too, so definitely something for us to look forward to, I know I am! Better still I think the plan is to make the HypnoMeets an ongoing monthly fixture. Excellent stuff!

Details are on the UncommonForum here, or on Facebook here.

There's also a meet in Oxford (the city not the street) coming up in early March. Again, I'm arranging this through the UncommonForum here.

The other thing is that I've finally gotten around to hitting the publish button on a post from mid-December that's been left lying around neglected and unfinished for a couple of months. Link here.

Wow! I'm up to date on all my posts now! Perhaps I may even have to go out and actually hypnotise someone for once!

Waking hypnosis

Just a few words about what I've been up to recently and a new concept that I've been enjoying exploring.

I've heard it said that there are two types of people. There are those who will say that their glass is half full, and there are those who will say it is half empty; optimists and pessimists. This may be so, but as I've gotten older I've started to realise that in truth the world actually belongs to the small group of people who have the shameless bloody cheek to hold out their glass and ask for a top-up!

In my university days when I was free and single, painfully so, I used to harbour enormous quantities of envy and loathing for the guys I saw around me who seemed to have some mystical ability to win female attention. I've never considered myself unattractive, but at the time I did feel as though there was some inherent invisible property that those other guys had that I didn't because all the evidence for it was there; they were getting all the attention and I wasn't.

If only, at the time, I had known about the NLP concept of modelling behaviour. The thing to do would have been to ask myself what those other guys were doing that I wasn't. Why were they being so successful at getting female attention when I wasn't?

The answer, of course, was that they were going out and finding it, whilst I was practically waiting for it to come to me. These guys were daring to ask for that attention, not just in words but in their actions, and daring to step up and make themselves known. They weren't wasting time pondering over what their chances might be if they asked, or when might be the best time to ask, they were just asking. Chances are that the answer was no for quite a lot of the time, but if someone actually dares to ask and does so enough times the answer will be yes, and for someone with the confidence to ask it seems the answer is yes more often than one would expect.

Nowadays of course I am older, wiser (hah!), and have found myself a very nice "yes" in the female department, which of course though Murphy's laws dictates that I am qualified come across the above knowledge on the basis that it is now useless to me.

That said the same lesson, to be cheeky and just ask, can apply to all aspects of life. For example, anybody who is buying a guitar from a shop should know to say "I could do with some spare strings" to the shop assistant. Just put yourself in that situation, or one that's analogous. What's the worst thing that can happen? They might then tell you how much spare strings are, but on the other hand they might just throw them in for free.

Perhaps you've read someone's blog or seen their YouTube channel and thought that you'd really like to talk to that person because they seem really interesting. Is the thought that they might not want to talk to you or might not find you interesting enough to reply reason enough not to try getting in touch? Nothing bad will happen if you do send that message to them, so try and they may just reply. You may even become friends or more; it's been known to happen.

Then, of course, one could try asking this of someone: "Hi. have you ever been hypnotised?"

In any of the above situations the worst thing that can happen is a simple "sorry, no". This may result in a temporary disappointment, and let's be honest that isn't really a disaster is it? A volcanic eruption, a tsunami, a plague of locusts, an escaped pack of velociraptors, Beyoncé Knowles, all-out nuclear war or an asteroid impact; these can all be classed as disasters, but not "sorry, no".

So the lesson is, don't ask, don't get!

How does all of this apply to hypnosis, and specifically what I've been up to recently?

Well, as we know there is nothing at all arcane or magical about the words or the actions taken by a hypnotist in order to induce trance in their subject, and there's nothing stopping anybody else from saying or doing exactly the same thing. What makes the hypnotist different is that he (or she) actually has the gall to do it and take it seriously.

The hypnotist dares to ask.

So using this gung-ho and sometimes downright cheeky attitude the hypnotist can pitch up in front of a new subject, give the spiel, zap them into trance, and they do this by daring to ask.

We can take this idea further though. The usual format for hypnosis, the one that everyone is familiar with, is this: The subject goes into trance, the hypnotist gives suggestions, the subject comes back out of trance and acts on those suggestions, the hypnotist then puts the subject back into trance, gives the next suggestion, and so on. This is quite an obvious way to proceed, and of course giving suggestions to someone who is obviously zoned out in a deep hypnotic trance doesn't really take any more nerve than getting them there in the first place.

Consider this though. What happens if the hypnotist actually has the nerve to start giving someone suggestions when they're out of trance?

A few weeks back a friend of mine asked me to help her with her university studies. She was having trouble concentrating on getting her work done without getting distracted by other things, and so she asked me to have a quiet word with her subconscious to tell it to get its act together. This friend responds best to a more indirect approach and doesn't like rapid inductions, so I went for a nice gentle and progressive approach and after about 10 minutes or so I thought I had her nice and deep so I went into giving her my suggestions. In total she was probably under for about 20 minutes.

Upon waking her from the trance she had absolutely no memory at all of anything I'd said beyond a short way into my induction. In fact she was convinced that she must have fallen asleep on me, and she was almost apologetic about that.

I have no idea what possessed me at that moment, but I simply said "If you weren't hypnotised why is your left hand completely stuck?"

She was absolutely amazed to find she couldn't move her hand.

I was even more amazed given that I'd not made any suggestions to that effect when she was in trance. I've done some waking hypnosis before of course, but in the past it had always been off the back of a suggestion in trance. For example, freezing someone's arm whilst they are in trance, then having woken them up, after a short while, telling them they can move it again, then freezing it again, and so on. i felt that this simple trick was a completely different order of magnitude though. I surprised myself with the impromptu nature of it, and the fact that it worked was a real buzz.

As I told my friend that her hand had now unstuck, but that was because her other hand had stuck instead, much to her bemusement, I resolved there and then to try more waking hypnosis in future.

A routine, which I think I saw first on YouTube but can't remember where, that I have since done a couple of times and taken a liking to is to give the subject something to hold such as an umbrella or a beermat. I've found it's easy to tell them they can't let go of it, and then have it become too heavy to lift, and then too light to hold down, having it draw their hands and arms down or up with it. All through waking suggestions alone.

My best effort so far in terms of an impromptu suggestion has been an occasion this weekend when I asked a friend, whom I'd hypnotised on several hours before, to place her hand on top of mine. I asked her to focus on her knuckle for just a moment and imagine her hand becoming completely stuck there. It was a bit of a long shot, almost a joke, but I was amazed when it actually worked!

Needless to say not everything I've tried has been successful, but the fact that now I'm sat thinking about it I can't remember specific examples of it failing I take to be a good sign. No hypnotist has a 100% success rate, and so I think the best approach is to learn from the times something doesn't quite work properly and just move on.

So there you have it. If you're a hypnotist and you're not sure whether you can give someone a waking suggestion, or indeed any suggestion, and have it work... well, have you asked?

Give it a try. I think more often than not you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Instant Inductions

Okay, so having talked about rapid inductions in a recent post here is my post on instant inductions.

By my definition, an instant induction is a rapid induction that uses momentary shock or confusion to induce trance, usually with the hypnotist saying "sleep!" at this point.

In truth no induction is truly instant because the key to any instant induction is the buildup beforehand. I have nearly always done a set piece like magnetic hands to get my subject in the right frame of mind, and even if I haven't I always tell them "what's going to happen is...". Even without such preparation however, any good subject is already in a suggestible state. As Jon Chase says, "from the moment they realise you're a hypnotist everything you say becomes a suggestion".

Whilst the mechanics of all the various instant inductions may be drastically different the principle is the same. The idea behind an instant induction is to create a moment of imbalance, a "what the hell?!..." moment in subject's mind, and to use this moment to deliver the suggestion to go into trance.

From the advice I've had and my own experience I would say that the most important thing to remember the first time one tries any of these inductions is KEEP GOING! One shouldn't ever stop to see if it has worked, because doing so will probably mean that it won't have. Having a deepening routine ready and going straight into it with confidence is essential.

Now, in truth I only really use one instant induction by the above definition, the hand drop, or "8-word" induction, but I will point out some others that are worth a look. Maybe sometime when I've been doing hypnosis for a bit longer I will feel I want to try some of the other instant inductions.

8-word induction
If I have a very keen subject or I'm feeling confident of success I will nearly always use this induction. I like it because it is simple, fast, effective, and above all it is quite gentle compared with a lot of other instant inductions. I learned the 8-word induction from this video. There are plenty of examples of hand drop inductions on YouTube so if you want to see more go and do a bit of searching.

Mechanically the way this induction works is that the hypnotist has the subject place their hand palm down on top of the hypnotist's hand, which is palm up, and press down. It doesn't matter if they are seated or standing. They are then told to close their eyes. This only leaves the shock, which comes from the hypnotist letting their hand drop away from underneath the subject's.

The eight words are as follows:

"Press on my hand... close your eyes... SLEEP!"

I've never felt as though this induction has to be strictly limited to 8 words. Telling the subject to "relax" once they have their eyes closed is sometimes useful, as is telling the subject to "take a deep breath" just before I drop my hand.

I've never been a fan of some of the more physical deepening techniques I've seen, especially something like a head rotation, but following the 8-word induction I've sometimes rocked the subject's body from side to side by the shoulder as I've deepened, and this seems to help things along.

Other instant inductions

Undoubtedly the best place to look for more information on instant inductions is in the "Speed Trance" work of Richard Nongard and John Cerbone. Whilst I've not used any of their stuff as such I have seen it used quite a bit at HypnoMeets. See my previous post for a video which includes plenty of footage of Darren, who recently trained under them in Manchester, zapping people under very quickly indeed. Their YouTube channel is here.

Someone else who seems to favour instant inductions for his street hypnosis is Sean Michael Andrews. He seems to like to use an arm pull induction, which is interesting to watch if you want to get an idea of just how quickly someone can be put into hypnosis. His YouTube channel is here.

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Anyway, that's all for now. Again I hope this serves for a useful point of reference for those who don't know much about the rapid side of hypnosis and want to know where to look next.

Definitely not stuck

I may have, in the last few months, communicated certain feelings I've had about my own response to hypnosis, or apparent lack thereof.

Sure I've been able to do the hand levitation trick for a few months now, and I have experienced a number of other things that imply hypnosis, such as amnesia for what's been said to me in trance (or was I just asleep?). What I have been lacking up until this point has been a post hypnotic suggestion that is undeniably present and real.

I'm pleased to say that over the weekend that changed.

Now, as I understand it, about 20% of the population are natural somnambulists and respond very well to hypnosis, 20% of the population respond very poorly, and the remaining 60% are somewhere in the middle. It's a little known fact that if one kept putting the same audience back into hypnosis stage shows, the same few faces would most likely keep appearing on stage.

Of course, if you're one of the unlucky few with a poor response, as I am, it can be incredibly disheartening if you really want to experience hypnosis for yourself and it appears that you really can't. My self given challenge of the last few months has been to find out whether it is possible to learn how to be a better hypnotee. Is it possible for someone who has no noticeable response to start with to develop the skills to experience some of the more intense hypnotic phenomena? If so how does one go about doing that?

The trouble is that, at least in my limited experience, hypnotists are often quite useless on this topic. There is a general tendency amongst hypnotists, especially amongst stage hypnotists, to just skip over the boring people and concentrate on those who respond well. They are, after all, much more fun. I am as guilty of this as anybody else; see my remarks in my previous post about magnetic hands. Some hypnotists, most notably Jon Chase, will even go so far as to say that a whole 20% of the population cannot be hypnotised.

I have always somehow clung onto the point of view that anybody can be hypnotised. Of course this is different to staying that anybody can be hypnotised by any hypnotist using any method at any time and get good results first time, or indeed that anybody would want to try. What I'm getting at here is that what I've always wanted to believe is that anybody who wants to experience hypnosis can do so, if they find what works for them and give it enough time.

I am glad that I never completely gave up on that belief, because I feel that recent developments have vindicated this viewpoint somewhat.

The big breakthrough for me came from some advice I was given recently. I was chatting online to a girl by the name of Liz. Now, I think it's fair to say that Liz is an expert when it comes to hypnosis, but from the other side. Her boyfriend is a hypnotist, rather a good one at that, she loves being hypnotised, and needless to say that arrangement has led her to gain rather a lot of insight into what it's like to experience some of the more extreme hypnotic phenomena.

In fact if you have ever found yourself wondering what happens when a couple practice hypnosis on one another then you may find their blog interesting. If you haven't, I warn you now don't even go there.

Anyway, when I first heard about some of what she'd experienced I immediately found myself thinking "Well it's alright for her! Bet she's a somnambulist!". In fact I was completely wrong about that; her first experiences of hypnosis sounded as though they were rather lukewarm and in fact they sounded a heck of a lot like mine. She just kept at it to get to where she is now.

So the first thing I learned was that, yes, it is absolutely possible to become a better hypnotic subject through practice, practice, practice.

What I am most grateful for though is the advice that Liz was able to offer me about what she calls the "acting dilemma". I've mentioned this before; feeling as though I could always just act along with whatever suggestion is given, but is that hypnosis or just bad acting? Her advice was to get used to that dilemma for now, but just go along with things and don't worry. Ultimately it's not a case of the hypnotist making the subject do things, it's the subject making the subject do things, and so if they don't do anything nothing happens.

This makes a kind of sense. A post hypnotic suggestion is a sort of subconscious behaviour pattern. Another example of such a pattern is, say, changing gear in a car. When a skilled driver is driving they don't have to think consciously about moving their hand to change gear because it happens automatically; the subconscious takes care of it. One doesn't, however, learn how to change gear by sitting in the car, listening to the instructor, and expecting the arm to move by itself.

For everyone the process of learning goes through three phases: Conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence. Somnambulists just do it a lot quicker!

All of this leads me on to describe what I experienced this weekend.

The close friend with whom I have been practicing a lot recently tranced me, but at the end of the trance, just before waking me up, she told me that my hand would be stuck. My mind had wondered off during the deepening, but as suggestions were being given I was completely aware of every word, as usual, and maybe feeling a bit cynical.

I opened my eyes and sure enough I was acting as though my hand was stuck. There was absolutely nothing holding my hand where it was but me, and I could move it any time I wanted.

Except I didn't.

It was the weirdest experience and quite hard to put into words.

The best way I can describe it is to compare it to that moment in the morning when you decide that you really should get out of bed but you just don't move. For me such a moment of resolution can last for over half an hour of complete inaction. Lying in is one of my fortés.

Or perhaps I can better describe it by saying it's more like a situation where there's someone across the room you have a huge crush on. You can decide as much as you want that you should walk straight over there and talk to them, but the signals never seem to reach your legs.

For that matter it reminds me of a situation there's a group of people nearby that you want to approach as a hypnotist and offer to hypnotise, but you just can't bring yourself to do it...

So there I was with my hand apparently completely free and yet no amount of "I'm going to move it... right now... yep, now... I'll show her! Right now!" would make my arm move! It was as though I was play acting it, but I couldn't really consider doing anything else. Actually no, not "couldn't consider", more "didn't consider".

I finally got myself free by miming giving it a good tug with my other hand, which seemed to break the mental block that I had and restored control of the hand.

I'd no sooner consolidated control of my own arm when my friend tranced me again. Again the way in which I stopped talking mid-sentence, let my face go blank and I just slumped felt as though I was acting it, but the strange thing is that I did it without even thinking about it.

I didn't feel particularly deep when I was in that trance in fact, but my friend proceeded to tell me that my right arm would freeze motionless if she said "freeze". It actually worked! I froze my arm motionless in mid air just as she said that word, again it was as though acting but from there I couldn't move it! I genuinely couldn't! It didn't feel confined or physically locked in place, but I sure as heck couldn't move it. In fact as I tried I could feel the catalepsy in my hand and fingers! Amazing!

So needless to say I'm feeling pretty good right now. I am making progress! What to try next I wonder?

Rapid Inductions

Something that I have become aware of recently is that although my background has been in rapid inductions there are a lot of hypnotists out there who don't use them, or at least not as their bread and butter. Strangely enough this really hadn't occurred to me because most of the hypnotists I know have come into this game through the same route as me. I take these inductions for granted, and after all how could anyone go about it any other way?

However as I meet more people who practice hypnosis, both online and at HypnoMeets, I am beginning to realise there are hypnotists out there who don't know much about the wonderful field of rapid inductions.

There are, of course, also people who are new to learning hypnosis who might also benefit from a bit of an introduction. Some of the best advice I was given when I started out consisted of "look up *this* induction" and so on.

For these reasons that I thought that a blog post about the rapid inductions I use is long overdue.

So what is a rapid induction? Pretty much every hypnotist who uses them will give you a different answer according on their personal views. The working definitions below are mine, and probably the furthest from definitive one can get, but I find they work for me.

For me a rapid induction is an induction that puts someone into hypnosis within a couple of minutes. Of course having done so there's the subsequent deepening that follows, but here I'm only going to talk about the induction itself. It's also important to point out that rapid inductions are no more difficult than the slower more traditional inductions. At least that's how I find it.

I personally make the distinction between a rapid induction and an instant induction, although I guess instants are really a subcategory of rapids. To me an instant induction is any induction that uses a shock element to induce trance. I'll write more on these inductions in a subsequent post.

So what I'll do is list and describe the rapid inductions I've tried so far. I won't go into a full set of instructions but where I can I'll put linkage to where I learned them from.

• Rehearsal Induction
• Magnetic hands induction
• Elman anticipation induction
• Hand-to-eye fixation induction
• Bandler handshake induction
• Erickson handshake induction

Rehearsal Induction
This induction is probably the most effective induction I know, and that includes slower traditional inductions. The variation I know is taken directly from Anthony Jacquin's book Reality is plastic, in which he boasts that he's never failed to hypnotise anybody using this induction. A rehearsal induction technique, which Ant says his version is based on, is also outlined in Training Trances, by Overdurf & Silverthorn.

In this induction the hypnotist links raising the subject's arm in a certain way with going into hypnosis, possibly demonstrating on their own arm first. They then raise the subject's arm in a "rehearsal" of going into hypnosis, and then lower it to bring them back. Repeating this process several times induces hypnosis in the subject.

This induction is the first I ever did, and it worked perfectly. I would say it's an ideal method for the first time hypnotist because each lift of the arm is just a "rehearsal" and so there's plenty of time to pluck up the courage to make that first leap of faith that the subject is in hypnosis and move on to deepening.

Magnetic hands induction
This induction also comes out of Reality is plastic, although I've also read about it in Jon Chase's Deeper and Deeper.

The magnetic hands trick in itself itself can be used as a nice opener to get a subject in the right mindset for hypnosis. It is what Anthony Jacquin and many who have learned from his book refer to as a "set piece", or otherwise known to some as a "suggestibility test". I agree with Ant's assertion that the term "test" is best avoided, although I have learned the hard way that if I try this with someone and they don't respond it's probably not worth trying my trying to formally hypnotise them; I usually tell them to keep trying and find somebody else.

If you're reading this as someone who is curious about hypnosis but have never experienced it you can try this set piece right now. Place your arms out in front of you at shoulder height with your palms facing each other. Close your eyes, and imagine a magnetic force pulling your hands together. Concentrate on and imagine that idea, what it would look like and how it would feel. Your hands should move together by themselves, and this is a phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect.

Whilst my usual use for magnetic hands is to show it to someone to get them interested and then move on to another induction, it can be used as an induction in itself. The moment those hands start moving together that is a hypnotic phenomenon and the subject is already experiencing hypnosis, albeit informally. All one has to do is formalise it by having them anticipate the moment when the hands come together as the point they go into hypnosis, and as that happens tell them to "sleep" and bring their arms down to their lap.

Elman anticipation induction
Not to be confused with the Elman induction. The anticipation induction is a favourite of mine, and yet I can't remember where I first came across it. I think it was a YouTube video, but I've since been unable to find it. This induction is very simple, and yet it works very well and it's absolutely brilliant for a subject who's been hypnotised before, as a re-induction, or else for someone with a neon sign over their head saying "Natural Somnambulist".

As it's so simple I will post a description. It goes something like this:

"I'm going to click my fingers three times. On the first click you are going to let your whole body relax. On the Second click your eyes are going to feel heavy and you're going to let them close. On the third click you will go into a deep state of hypnosis."

"1... feeling relaxed... 2... let your eyes close... 3... deep asleep..."

That's all there is to it!

Hand-to-eye fixation induction
This is another technique outlined in Reality is plastic and for a while it was my favoured induction.

The hypnotist takes the subject's hand and holds it so their palm is about 30cm from their face. They then direct the subject to look at a point on that hand, and as the hand is moved toward the subject's face the subject is told to notice the changing focus of their eyes. This allows the hypnotist to pace and lead the subject to close their eyes and go into hypnosis. The whole induction, before deepening, takes about 30 seconds.

Bandler handshake induction
This is also outlined in Reality is plastic, and the best way to find examples of this is to search YouTube for "handshake induction". It's basically the above hand-to-eye induction but in a different context. The hypnotist goes to shake the subject's hand but before making contact, as the subject is expecting, the hypnotist instead catches the subject's right wrist with their left hand in order to bring the subject's right hand up in front of their face.

This takes advantage of what's called a motor pattern interrupt. Think of the last time you climbed a flight of stairs and thought there was one more than there actually was. Get the subconscious to execute a learned routine, such as a handshake, and then interrupt it by having something unexpected happen and it will result in that moment of confusion where the subconscious screams out for instructions. If the hypnotist exploits this window of opportunity, which maybe lasts for as long as a second and a half, they can get their instructions in first and the result is a rabbit-in-headlights effect all the way down into trance.

I have at least one friend who now refuses to shake my hand again after I used this on them.

Erickson handshake induction
How could I write about rapid inductions without a quick mention of my favourite induction. Of course I've already outlined this induction here and here, so I won't say much more about it here.

This induction uses Milton Model language patterns and an ambiguous support of the subject's arm to induce trance. It's quite an unusual experience for the subject in that it trances them with their eyes open. It's also quite tricky because it involves the hypnotist doing several things at once. I've practiced on seven people so far and I still have a heck of a long way to go before I'll be happy with my technique.

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Anyway I hope this has been a useful introduction to the world of rapid inductions. I intend to write again in a few days on the subject of instant inductions, which are even more fun!

Be sure to leave a comment if you have any thoughts to add or any questions you want to ask.

Not in Bristol

As I am writing this I am in fact missing the 4th HypnoMeet, which is in Bristol.

The reason for this is that, whilst the snow that we've been suffering from for the last week seems to be melting at the moment I am assured that there is more on its way right now. In all likelihood the trains to and from Bristol will be running just fine this evening, but quite frankly if I'm in a situation where I'm relying on the last train back to get me home I'm not willing to run the risk of getting stranded. Especially not if it's going to snow heavily overnight and what that would mean about making the trip home in the morning.

I guess I'm just going to have to wait to see the pictures and videos.

Shame! I was really looking forward to going.