I was quite frustrated about missing out on the last meet in London thanks to being on holiday so I was more than keen to get out and socialise with the intention of going a little impromptu zapping into the bargain. Rich and Javier indicated that they wouldn't mind a night out in Bristol so that settled it, once again I would go to Bristol.
Getting to Bristol is an hour on the train, which is much faster than trying to drive, so once again I pulled out my trusty folding bike and jumped on the first train I could after work. On arriving in Bristol I was surprised how much I enjoyed the ride to our meeting place, the traffic was light and it was a pleasent temperature as I made my way past the docks and into the city centre. Slightly less fun was the ride up Park Street, which is quite steep and I was obliged to use my bike's lowest gear, my feet spinning madly as I inched my way up the hill, confused pedestrians overtaking me on foot.
Anyway, having parked my bike I ventured into the Wetherspoons pub where we were meeting. For those who don't know Wetherspoons is a chain of pubs that can be found in a lot of cities across the UK. It seems to me that the idea is to maintain the same consistent standards across all their pubs, such as being understaffed so as to guarantee a 15-minute wait to get served at the bar, and running out of Curry by 7pm during their 5pm-10pm Thursday night "Curry Club". I assume that the inability the staff have to pick up on my dry sense of humour is however just an incidental effect of working there.
In any case Rich and Javier showed up, as eventually did my dinner in the form of my 3rd choice of Curry, so we spent a little while catching up. Or rather they talked whilst I stuffed my face, I was very hungry by that point.
In the mood to find a suitable venue for approaching potential subjects we headed out and had a look around the other bars nearby. It seemed as though every bar we went into was empty and I couldn't believe how incredibly quiet it was. After 20 minutes or so we decided we'd be best off cutting our losses heading back to the Wetherspoons. Perhaps sometime during university term would have been a better idea.
The pub wasn't particularly busy so it only took us a minute or so to clock our the most likely group of potential subjects; a group of four young women sat by the door. As always though it took a little bit longer to build up the nerve to actually approach them; once again it was Rich who stepped up and wandered over. We couldn't hear his opening line, but I never get tired of seeing the look of wonderment on peoples' faces when they hear that the person who's approached them is a hypnotist.
Just as Javier and I arrived hot on Rich's heels it turned out that one of the four was leaving, but that was okay because the other three were really interested and one of them, called Rachel, was persuaded by her friends to volunteer to give it a try.
I always enjoy watching other hypnotists at work, so even though Rich's process of going through magnetic fingers, magnetic hands, hand-to-eye fixation induction contained nothing that was new to me as such it was great to watch the confidence with which he delivered it. Rachel's response was also worth watching; she had closed her eyes and was wearing a typical hypnotee expression which I can best describe as serene relaxation with a hint of concentration.
As we watched Rich's efforts, Javier and I got talking to one of the other girls, Malaika, who enthusiastically told us about having been hypnotised a few years before when she was in School and how it'd been quite an embarrassing experience for her at the time, making her reluctant now. She mentioned how good it had felt to be in trance and some phenomena such as being glued to the spot, although she was disappointed that she'd failed to hallucinate a pink elephant in the room. I think all three of us filed this under "iiiinteresting".
Never tell an impromptu hypnotist "I've been hypnotised before"!
Meanwhile, all the outward signs were that Rachel was going under quite nicely, which is what I think prompted Rich to jump straight to telling her that her drink would be stuck to the table as his first phenomenon. Sadly this didn't work, as she managed to pick her drink up with no difficulty at all. She did, however, say that she fell incredibly "chilled" and relaxed.
I offered to have a go, so as Rich got chatting to Malaika I found myself with my first proper subject after two months and hastily trying to remember what to do. Fortunately this is the point where the subconscious takes over and once I'd decided on a magnetic hands induction I went from there with no difficulty.
I like to link breathing to relaxing further, and talked her down using that to start with. Then, having asked permission first of course, I picked her arm up by the wrist, asking her to let it go completely limp, and then told her she'd feel twice as relaxed and go twice as deep when it dropped into her lap. I did this, gently, a couple of times.
Next I went into a convincer, my own variation of the floating arm. I supported her arm by the wrist again, but this time had her imagine it getting lighter. I find supporting the arm by the wrist means that you can use an ambiguous touch to help induce catalepsy. You can also feel when the arm does start to lift and tell the subject "that's right, you can feel it getting lighter". Soon enough her arm was drifting free from any support.
Next I told her that when she opened her eyes she'd look across the table at her friends and she'd find what she saw really funny. This didn't work so well, in that I didn't quite have her in stitches, but when she said to me "oh, that didn't work" she was grinning from ear to ear, which I pointed out to her.
I tried again to stick her hand to the table, with no success.
Rachel was lovely and whilst she was a bit lukewarm in terms of how she was able to respond as a subject I can't fault her for her willingness and enthusiasm for trying. I really need to work on some routines that are better suited to this kind of subject.
By this point Rich had somehow persuaded Malaika that he wouldn't embarrass her in the same way the last hypnotist had and then promptly zapped her under, so Rachel and I paused to watch as Rich went through the motions of sticking her drink to the table, her hands to her stool, etc.
I did one more thing with Rachel; during an interlude in Rich's routine with Malaika I did an Ericksonian handshake on her. I felt very bold trying this routine on such a lukewarm subject, but what the heck I thought, why shouldn't I try it. I took her arm, looked her in the eyes, and started telling her how easy it was to go into a daydreamy state right now, etc.
I always find it's impossible to gauge how well this is working with most subjects, but the trick is not to worry about that and keep going. All I could see was a pair of unblinking blue eyes and an unchanging half smile as I rattled off the patter. Afterwards she said she had felt very zoned out by it, and the way that I wasn't blinking (which I wasn't even aware of!) had certainly had an effect.
I was having a lot of fun, but sadly the end of any trip to Bristol is for me determined by the time of the last train home. At about 10pm Javier and I reluctantly said our goodbyes, left the pub and jumped on our Bicycles for the ride to Temple Meads station, as he was catching the same train as me as far as Bath.
For me it was great to see Javier and Rich again and what a fun evening we had! It was such a high to do some real hypnosis again after so long, and definitely worth the journey out there.
Staying behind Rich tells us he hung around for another hour with the girls. In fact he persuaded Rachel to hold his phone and film him doing another routine on Malaika. Here's the video.
If anybody in the South West of the UK is interested Rich is running a one day hypnosis course on Saturday 26th September. He's told me that the course will cover all aspects of impromptu hypnosis including pre-talk, subject selection, inductions, and suggestions. An excellent place for a complete beginner to get started and hypnotising people straight away by the sounds of it. I'll post more details here shortly.
I'm in London again next week for another HypnoMeet! Awesomeness!
1 comment:
“Slightly less fun was the ride up Park Street, which is quite steep and I was obliged to use my bike's lowest gear, my feet spinning madly as I inched my way up the hill, confused pedestrians overtaking me on foot.” – LMAO Parkey! I got a very clear image of that as I read it and laughed out loud. :D And might I say, great blog as always! ;)
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