Once again I took the opportunity to get to London nice and early and engage in a bit of shopping before the meet. I got to the pub quite early and took it upon myself to grab a fairly large table. Fortunately I only had half an hour or so to kill before people were planning to start showing up, and gloating over the things I'd bought on my mini spending spree during the afternoon killed the time nicely. In particular trying to figure out how you're supposed to unlock a new bicycle D-lock if the keys are locked to the shackle. Ergh!
Anyway, there I was sat at this large table in the pub, which started filling up... and getting crowded... and none of the other hypnotists were showing up.
The looks I was getting from the standing crowd near the bar got steadily dirtier.
Ben showed up eventually, and it couldn't have been sooner, although he then went to the bar to get some drinks and I was left holding the table again.
The question is Parkey, I said to myself, if one of the many other groups eyeing up this table, which is protected only by by you at one end and your coat at the other, decide that they want it will you be able to zap them into giving it back?
It was at this point that all of the usual suspects from the last meet started showing up, so my Jedi table retention skills were thankfully never put to the test. Too many people showed up in fact, so tablejedi master Darren managed to arrange a swap with a table of girls across the room so we could all have a seat. Ben then offered to go up to the bar and order some food.
I found myself chatting to Will, who had turned up to the second meet back in December, and his friend Andy who was a newbie. In fact I was very impressed with Andy because although he was completely new to hypnosis once he'd gotten started he seemed completely able to confidently roll out the patter with no difficulty at all! Will was keen to try being hypnotised again, so all I needed to do was show Andy how to do a couple of rapid inductions and they were off. My work here was done.
I settled down to eat my pie.
Well actually my work wasn't quite done. Will commented that he'd like to go deeper than he was going, and of course I cannot resist such a challenge. I sat him down, did a hand-to-eye induction, and proceeded to deepen using a guided imagery technique that a friend taught me recently. 10-15 minutes later and Will had slowly sunk into the sofa to the point where he was practically looking up at his shoes. Having reached this depth I then gave him the sleep suggestion, telling him he would be able to come straight back to the state he was in. I then marveled at the way in which someone in a trance, no matter how deep they've gone, or how far away they are, still comes back out again when they're told to.
Will seemed quite amazed at how deep he'd been able to go, but he wasn't quite so amazed as I was when I told him to sleep and he folded up like a rag doll.
Ahh, that smug type of amazement.
I then spent a little while trying to teach Will, as a subject, how to freeze in place and trance out with his eyes open, so as to not notice any time had passed. I think he was starting to get the hang of it, but at this point Andy came back and took over zapping Will, so I moved on.
I changed tables and joined Chris and Ben. Chris briefly had a go hypnotising me, but having had a bit of a long day he wasn't really able to come up with anything new. Result - I got my fingers glued to my temples... again! Gah!
We were quite amused at this point so see Andy wandering off to the bar, leaving Will in a trance on the sofa.
Having exhausted Chris's obviously depleted imagination I asked Ben if he'd like to try something. Here's the video:
The induction was quite an interesting experience; Ben linked the position of my hand to my level of awareness of what was going on in the room, and this did make it very easy to experience that now familiar slide into trance as I let my hand come down to my lap. I still don't really feel as though I "go anywhere" when I'm in trance, I'm still aware of where I am and what's going on around me, and indeed what the suggestions I'm being given are, I just feel quite willing to stay down and humour whatever is going on.
What went on this time was at least original. Ben told me that I would be drunk, which didn't really work as far as my thought process was concerned, I could still think absolutely fine, but that didn't mean I was able to stop doing quite an (apparently) convincing drunk impression. Likewise when Ben told me that I would would insist that my name was "Rrrrrrichard" (rolling the R), I tried to say it was "Parkey" on several occasions and my response reminded me of the episode of Red Dwarf where Kryten tries to call Rimmer a "smeg head" and it gets stuck on "Smm... Smmmeee...". No amount of hypnosis has yet enabled me to roll my Rs anyway.
Ben's final suggestion, which to his credit he was willing to persist over, was to try to get me to hallucinate a clock somewhere in the room. I never saw the clock, but the crazy thing was that I had a very clear picture in my head of what it would look like, and exactly where it would be on the table in front of me. I was even inclined to mime picking it up at one point! Bizarreness!
Then of course, with work the following day I had to leave. My departure was however delayed by Darren telling me to "freeze!" as I went to shake his hand. For some reason I instinctively became completely immobile from the neck down, and had to ask Darren nicely to let me move again or I'd miss my train home!
I'm not sure where that came from but suffice to say somebody will pay for that one.
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