Oxford

It was on the 7th of September 2008 that I first looked at the subject of hypnosis and thought to myself "You know, I think I could actually learn how to do this!" I plunged head first into the hypnotic world and I've not once looked back since.

Six months later to the day I have just had the most amazing hypnotic day out and I can't believe how far things have come in just half a year!

Now, late last year I remember blogging to the effect that I thought that Oxford would be a brilliant hunting ground for students willing to experience a bit of impromptu hypnosis. Chatting with Ben about a month or so led us to decide that a Saturday would be the best option. This was in early February, and the trouble with fixing the date for a meet a month in advance is that it takes a while for it to come around. Nevertheless, come around it did.

As the organiser (sort of) of this little get together I'd chosen the Head of the River pub as the place to meet up and on the day six of us converged on the place. I've seen Ben and Darren before at every meet that we've organised but of course it's always great to meet up with them. We were joined by Liz, who I have mentioned before, her boyfriend Lex, and Conrad, a newbie on uncommonforum and a fan of Lex and Liz's blog.

We eventually managed to find ourselves a table inside the pub and started talking. The thing that I found most amazing was Lex's story about the first time he hypnotised someone, which he did a whole ten years ago and without any training or reading. He also talked a bit about some of the hypnosis videos he produces. Darren in particular seemed in awe of all this, and hastily started writing down web addresses for later reference. This was especially amusing for me because a couple of nights before when we'd been talking on skype chat he'd sent me the link to Lex's website, saying "Hay mate! Have you seen this?! I'm thinking of branching out!"

Ben then launched into a demonstration of inducing catalepsy in Darren's arm. Applying light touches to Darren's left forearm he managed to make it become completely frozen in space. It's very similar in fact to the Ericksonian handshake, which seems to be my current party piece. This almost non-verbal form of hypnosis is yet another area of hypnosis that is really very interesting and I really need to try to do more of in future.

Chatting to Liz online over skype a couple of nights before the meet had been a double edged sword. Her ability to engage her imagination and see things that aren't there never ceases to amaze me, and especially when it's from waking suggestions. I had taken advantage of this in order to drench her in non-existent water via my webcam using a non-existent water pistol, and had joked about bringing an actual water pistol to the meet just to tease her.

Her reaction in the pub when she saw my copy of Reality is Plastic, which happened to be on the table and has a picture of a water pistol on the back cover, was priceless. Later on I used this as yet another opportunity to prove to her how academic and interlectual my interest in hypnosis actually is. What I did was I reached into the back cover, took hold of the orange water pistol and proceeded to hold her up with it. Luckily for her this time Lex was on hand to allow her to also hallucinate umbrellas in order to defend herself.

I find this an absolutely amazing concept though, that a subject can engage their imagination and be able to see and feel suggestions as though they really exist. It also seems to work along the lines that, once something has been suggested, they just can't not think of or imagine whatever it is that has been put to them.

Just as an idle passing example of this, when Liz reads this sentence she will notice that same water pistol hovering in the air nearby and pointed at her. She's been nagging me to write this blog post, so now she'd better keep reading. If she looks away from the screen for more than a second or two before she's read all of this she is going to get wet. (Edit: Okay now I see she's read it, so if she reads it again it won't appear a second time. Aren't I nice!)

Quite a dull and pointless example for anybody but Liz though I guess, but at least the rest of us get to stay dry.

Unfortunately for me Liz got her revenge by firing off a post hypnotic suggestion that she'd given me the last time we'd spoken that would make me suddenly develop the urge to buy the next round. The scary thing is that nowadays such suggestions seem to be actually working on me. I did insist on buying the next round; it just felt like exactly the thing to do at the time.

Next we went in search of some kind of food and ended up going into ASK for something Italian. Darren took advantage of the wait for our food to arrive to offer to hypnotise Conrad, who was well away as a result of Darren's application of the rehearsal induction when the waitress came over with our meals. I was actually amazed by how unfazed she appeared to be by Conrad's apparent comatose state as she handed out the food. Still, barely anybody recognises hypnosis when they see it anyway. I think most people assume that the subject is drunk, or from Stoke-on-Trent.

After dinner we headed onward to a pub. Ben and Lex had conspired to have a bit of fun with Liz, telling her that every time she lost sight of me she'd forget who I was, and this was a fun diversion although I was almost hurt that I was so easy to forget. In any case, this was also a great opportunity to practice some handshake inductions, aided by the fact that before the meet Lex had also given her a compulsion to shake any hand offered to her without suspicion.

Zapped by the Bandler handshake induction in the middle of Broad street. She loved it really I'm sure!

Anyway, something that I absolutely love about Oxford is the way in which it is quite magical. By magical I don't mean actual magic as such, but simply that it has a lot of the real life phenomena upon which fictional magic is based. There is no better example of this than the way in which there are so many things about Oxford that the un-knowing eye simply doesn't notice until they are pointed out. There are, in fact, whole streets that I have somehow managed to walk past for years without noticing until someone told me they were there, and I'm sure there are more. That's a concept that I absolutely love; the idea of a place that cannot be found or reached except by those who already know about it.

The Turf Tavern, our final destination for the evening, is a great example of one of these hidden gems. It's a beautiful small pub with two huge beer gardens right in the centre of city amongst all of the colleges. Nobody stumbles across the Turf by accident though, because there is sign no out on the street to advertise it. Rather it is tucked away down an alleyway and you need to know where to look if you are to stand any chance of finding it. Every time I've been there in the past though I have thought to myself that it is the perfect impromptu hypnosis pub as it's such a friendly atmosphere and full of Oxford university students. I've been dying to bring some other hypnotists along and in doing so to pluck up the courage to do some approaching myself.

As we walked I found it surprisingly easy to slip on my metaphorical tour guide's hat and launch into a spiel about how I think the city really is magical, referring to the fact that a lot of the scenes from Harry Potter, including the great hall at Hogwarts, were filmed in Oxford. I then started pushing the bounds of fantasy by saying that the inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter was drawn from real secret places in Oxford. I amazed myself with my timing because I got to exactly the right bit of my narrative just as our group was about to walk past the alleyway that leads to the Turf and I told everybody to stop for a moment.

At this point I will admit that I had cheated a little bit. Nobody had paid the alleyway any attention of course, but that hadn't stopped me having the temptation to take it one stage further with one member of our party. Back in the restaurant I had tranced Liz and given her the suggestion that she wouldn't be able to see the entrance to the alley; there would be no gap there at all in fact, just a continuation of the walls on either side.

"See this brick wall here?" I said "If you just..."

I then strode quickly and calmly into the entrance to the alleyway, knowing of course that for Liz this would produce the effect of my having vanished through the wall.

I looked behind me and the expression on her face was priceless!

"Come on through guys!" I called after me.

The others followed my lead, leaving poor Liz on her own with her hands out in front of her on the invisible wall we'd just passed through. Lex went back for her, as I'd also told her that she would be able to pass through if he took her by the hand.

Once we'd found ourselves a table in one of the Turf's beer gardens we settled down into conversation for a bit. We were joined at this point by another hypnotist by the name of Rich. Liz got her revenge for the alleyway and her repeated loss of memory of who I was by putting me into trance and giving me a suggestion that I would give up my seat to Ben. Seconds later and I was quite happy standing up whilst the rest of the group sat, thankyou.

Despite having gotten a free takeover of my chair, Ben was the first to step up, take the initiative and get into a bit of pub hypnosis; he went over to a couple of girls nearby. Not wanting to crowd around and cramp his style, I stayed at the table and watched Darren showing Lex some rapid inductions.

It wasn't until slightly later in the evening that things really started to happen on the impromptu hypnosis front though. What happened was that we saw a group of students playing a drinking game at the next table who looked so obviously perfect. I remarked on this to Darren and Liz, who I was sat next to at the time. Liz had just been trying to show me how to do a kinaesthetic hallucination, so the next thing I knew I was being zapped back into trance and being told in no uncertain terms that I would, upon waking, approach that group.

"Okayyy... don't I get a say in this?" I thought.

Apparently not. I came back up and announced we should approach them, completely in keeping with the completely intangible feeling that one gets when under the influence of a post hypnotic suggestion. Darren said "wait until they've finished the round" but I wasn't going to wait. I don't know why; it was insane, but it just sort of happened! Before I even realised what I was doing I was up there in front of them and opening with "Hi guys, sorry to interrupt, but you look like a fun group of people..."

Darren was right behind me and jumped in with his own opening line "Hi guys, what's this, a bleedin' Cider appreciation society?". He told them all that we were hypnotists and asked if they wanted to give it a try. The looks of awe and wonderment that came across their faces were abslutely astounding and the response was a unanimous chorus of yes interspersed with cries of "ooh! me! me!" They were all up for it! I was amazed!

"What do you reckon?" I said to Darren. "Magnetic fingers?"

With a whole table of willing volunteers there was nothing for it but to go into a group selection routine. We had them all do magnetic fingers together first, and then followed with magnetic hands, all of which allowed us to clock who the most promising candidates were.



Darren chose a guy to our left who was clearly getting well into magnetic hands and proceeded to perform an absolutely amazing one-on-one hypnosis routine with him.

I would describe it all, but I don't think I could do it justice. Fortunately the group were happy to let Ben film us and a video says a million words. Enjoy!


What the video doesn't show is the incredible reaction Darren's performance got from the group. He certainly had them all completely speechless and seeing the looks of amazement on their faces as they saw their friend drop completely limp in his chair alone made the evening worthwhile!

It got better though. Rich jumped in and grabbed the girl I was stood next to, so I decided I should probably grab myself a subject too. One of the girls at the far end of the table in particular had been giving me and Darren what hypnotists call "the look", that expression of fascination that often implies they're going to be a good subject. I strolled around the table and asked her if she'd like to give it a go.

She was a little shy at first, but I said "Yes, but the thing is there's a part of you that really wants to know what it's like, isn't there!"

That was all the convincing I needed to do.

So, my first time hypnotising a complete stranger. I did a hand drop induction, got my subject nice and relaxed, floated her arm up, put her arms in her lap and made them too heavy to lift, and then stuck her hand to the table. It went quite well, although I did feel completely blown out of the water by Darren's earlier performance.

Ben caught some of it on film, and it's here in this short montage of clips from that evening.


Something that always amazes me when I see myself on film is the reactions of the audience, which sometimes I don't even realise that I have. When I'm being the hypnotist I never pay much attention to anything beyond my subject.

As soon as I'd finished with this girl, one of the guys from the group came up and asked if he could have a go.

"Sorry, bet this has spoiled your evening" he said, which surprised me.

I was quite happy to reassure him that I was quite happy sharing hypnosis with anybody who wanted to experience it. I put him under with magnetic hands and did much the same routine I had done with the girl before him.

Having finished with the guy, I then got brought over to have a go with a third subject, a nice girl by the name of Jo who wasn't from the same group but had been watching us and was absolutely fascinated by it all. She was a good example of a subject who had certain preconceptions about hypnosis and thus was disappointed about her apparent lack of response. Having now overcome similar misconceptions of my own I was able to address them and stick her hands together, which felt to me like a real achievement.

It seemed that everybody in the pub was wanting to be hypnotised and we were all in demand. Ben captured this sort of HypnoMania effect on video.


The time that Ben and I had to leave in order to catch the last train crept up on us very quickly, so we said our hasty goodbyes and dashed off on our way back to the station. I couldn't believe 8 hours or so went by so quickly and I could easily have gone on for much longer. It was such a buzz to finally get some impromptu subjects.

The last couple of hours in the Turf had been such a blur that I missed a heck of a lot of what everybody else had been up to. It wasn't until we'd boarded the train that Ben told me that Rich had given three girls hypnotically induced orgasms right there in their chairs that evening! I can't decide whether to feel sorry that I gave the girls I'd hypnotised a bit of a sub-standard performance. On the plus side, not having done so will probably mean my girlfriend will allow me to remain in the gene pool.

What a day! What a night! What an incredible end to my first 6 months as a hypnotist!