The July meet

It is frustrating living so far apart from all of the other hypnotists I know, so of course the meet up in London every month is something that I always look forward to. It is always a fun social occasion if nothing else; even if very little hypnosis takes place it's nice to sit down, have dinner and a drink, and swap anecdotes.

For me this month's meet was much the same as others that have come before. The highlight was that Darren kicked off the hypnosis by demonstrating a confusion induction on me. I went into trance of course, but I didn't think this was because of the induction even though Darren's delivery of it was excellent nonetheless. I believe I've simply reached the point where an induction isn't really needed, I can access trance any time I'm asked to, if I want to.

The problem I have with confusion or overload inductions I think comes down to the way in which I have learned to think. I have been flying gliders solo for many years, and as a pilot one of the most important concepts is that of workload management. One inevitable consequence of flying is that there will be times when there is too much to do in that moment, when the flying becomes "interesting", and it is of importance to prioritise. There is a saying amongst pilots "Aviate, navigate, communicate", which sums it up quite well. First and foremost the pilot must concentrate on keeping the aircraft in the air, then they can worry about where they are, and then, finally, worry about talking to their passengers or radioing the ground to order more sick bags, etc.

Darren's induction consisted of giving me various tasks to do all at once whilst also going through his induction patter. Stare at that wall, move that arm in circles, spell "green" backwards, that sort of thing. It was very well delivered, but as I was most interested in Darren's patter and technique I kept my attention on that and my performance at the other tasks went by the board as a consequence. Gah! Stupid, useless brain!

Darren did however give me some rather fun suggestions to the effect that I'd tell the biggest lies I could think of in answer to any questions I was given. This had me insisting that I'd gotten my watch from the moon (as opposed to on sale from Argos).

I did a little hypnosis on Darren, which went quite well, but otherwise I didn't get up to much hypnosis wise. In the end it became quite a social evening, although of course the discussion stayed firmly on the topic of hypnosis.


What I missed later on, because I had to run off to catch my train, was what happened when the others hit Leicester Square. Apparently they drew a crowd, using Will as their first subject, but the crowd wasn't particularly friendly or restrained thanks no doubt to being the worse for alcohol.

I hate leaving early, but I suppose central London at 10pm isn't an ideal setting for street hypnosis.