But seriously...

A quality that I have always seemed to possess is that people often don't know whether something that I have said is a joke or not. A lot of the ways in which I like to make people laugh stem from "wouldn't it be funny if..." or "imagine this farcical situation...". It's something that I like about myself, but sometimes someone who doesn't know me very well, and even on occasion someone who does, will get the wrong end of the stick and I'll feel like a bit of a lemon as I try to explain what I was thinking when I made that stupid comment.

Now, one of the brilliant things about being a hypnotist is that you can perform hypnosis, words and action that have no mystical significance in themselves, and people will take you seriously, they will go into hypnosis. One of the ways in which this can potentially backfire is when someone, or maybe just part of them, takes you seriously when you think you're only joking.

A while back I hypnotised a friend at a party. He was starting to respond quite well, and I'd already given the suggestion that he'd drop back into hypnosis whenever I said "sleep". At this point some of his relatives, who were leaving, came into the room to say goodbye so he jumped up and went to see them off. Someone else immediately said they wanted to give hypnosis a try, so I moved on and thought no more of my first subject.

Later on however, when it was my turn to leave I made a joke of saying "sleep" to him, and in response he pretended for a moment to drop into trance, before opening his eyes and laughing about it. How much of it was pretending though? Obviously the context for staying in hypnosis wasn't there, but the spontaneous reaction to what I said could easily be down to a lingering post hypnotic suggestion, at least in part.

I experienced this myself at the last London meet when Ben said to me "Parkey, go into trance now". Again it was a joke, but pretending to drop into trance, just for a moment, seemed like exactly the right thing to do at the time. It happened before I'd even thought about it.

That is, of course, the thought process that follows a post hypnotic suggestion, and one which I am becoming more familiar with. The "hang on... why did I just do that?" thought.

This is all very well as long as one doesn't take the joke too far. I was chatting to someone I'd hypnotised before online recently and, just as she was signing off to go to bed, I sent her a text message jokingly trying to trigger a suggestion I'd given her earlier on. I got a reply back in quite a mocking tone telling me something to the effect that I'd have to try harder if something that silly was going to work. So I did; I sent a one word reply that simply said "sleep!".

She doesn't remember getting the text, just waking up several seconds later sprawled on the bed with her boyfriend sat over her reading her phone.

Afterwards I felt a bit embarrassed about the whole thing because it was a bit of a silly thing to do. Online hypnosis by over something like MSN where you at least know where the subject is at the time is one thing, but firing off major post hypnotic suggestions by a text message with no knowledge of where the subject is, what they are doing, and without being on hand to take responsibility for the subject is something else entirely.

I guess there are two points here. The first is that sometimes somebody will take a joke seriously and it could be fun to take advantage of this and it to take the situation further.

The second point is that sometimes somebody will take a joke seriously, so be careful what you say. Being the hypnotist is fun, but it also carries responsibilities.