BlackMeridian

My Sex Robot

2011-12-13T12:28:00.004Z

Last night I watched a documentary on YouTube called "My Sex Robot". It was about the men who have developed a sexual fetish around the idea of a machine as a sexual companion, or even a romantic companion. I actually found it pretty fascinating to watch, partly because I can relate to it a little myself.

I have been alone for a large proportion of my of post-adolescant life and there have been times where a surrogate partner, if only for sexual release, has seemed like a very appealing idea. The thing is though that more recently I have real trouble seeing quite how a robot can ever meet what it is I truly desire, nor give me the kind of pleasure I get from meeting real women.

The show actually featured an academic who said that there are a lot of people who are lonely and frustrated and having robots for those people can only make the world better.

I cannot disagree more.

What it all seemed to come down to was a question of the self esteem these people have. It was the idea that an artificial partner would be completely incapable of judging or rejecting you. I found this expressed particularly well by one of the men interviewed when he talked about his obsession with shop mannequins. He said that because they were lifeless they wouldn't react, and "no reaction is better than a negative one".

What's missing here is an understanding that it doesn't have to be this way for any of these people. Self esteem isn't a finite resource like oil or gas, or indeed like money, it is one that can be grown and nurtured out of nothing. My own experience of working on my own sense of self esteem has been that as it has grown the world has become a progressively more friendly and accepting place.

People are, for the most part, warm and welcoming. It's extraordinary.

Once you start to get a taste of this different world, one where you can walk up to a group of strangers and they will smile at you, accept you, be interested about you and tell you about themselves, the thought of spending a night in with a robot starts to lose its appeal. There is so much emotion conveyed in conversation with another human being and there would be none of that with a robot that had anything short of human levels of intelligence. But if you could build a machine like that you get into all sorts of ethical questions. If this machine is as intelligent as you doesn't it also deserve the same freedoms as you? Such freedoms would no doubt include the freedom to leave you.

For some reason I am reminded here of that TV series The Outer Limits where every other week the plot was basically: man builds machine; man has sex with machine; machine becomes self aware; man rejects machine; machine tries to destroy the world. A natural story progression.

Anyway, coming back to the issue, as I see it what this hinges on is that there are a lot of men out there who are just unable to connect with women. This is sad, because the guys who want a robot because it won't reject them have no idea just how receptive women really are. Out of fear they are rejecting women before they've even given women a chance to connect with them.

Learning to be an easy socialiser, which is, I think, the linchpin to having attractive women in ones life is not an overnight transition but it is something that anybody who commits themselves to can realistically achieve. It does take effort, but it is worth it.

Likewise the only way to consistently attract the women you want, as a man, is to risk rejection. This is the only way. If you are unprepared to take that risk you cannot expect to reap the rewards of female attention, companionship and, yes, sex.

I really don't think that a futuristic sex toy is the solution all those lonely men out there really want. They are just unaware that they can take steps to become the men that the lonely women (let's not forget them!) want to meet. That or they are too scared to apply themselves to it. Either way this is not something that technology will solve; quite the opposite in fact. What it really needs is the old fashioned low-tech process of learning to love oneself and connect with other human beings.

Raise the stakes

2011-11-23T12:29:00.004Z

I had a moment recently that in many ways was one of these so called life changing events. Well, that said, it was more one of those moments that brought me to a realisation about my life purpose and my passion.

To set the scene, last weekend I was at Regent's College in London. A friend of mine, John P. Morgan, who I know through the London Hynosis Meets runs a company called The Magnetic Man and asked me if I'd like to go along to his first big seminar. John's passion in life is to help people connect with each other, and in particular to help men connect with women; it's a sort of antidote to the PUA approach to meeting women. I'm really glad I went actually, partly because the seminar itself was inspirational, but also because of something else that happened.

When we stopped for lunch, and we all made our way down the the cafeteria, John suggested to us all that we might take the opportunity to just practice talking to as many people as possible.

This was an amazing exercise. It might sound silly, but because I'd been chatting to some of the other participants about card tricks before the seminar began I wasn't going to be the guy who has said he's a bit of a card magician and a hypnotist and then have to say after lunch that I hadn't gone up and talked to any strangers.

I munched my way through a plate of chicken with pasta in carbonara sauce as I listened to the conversation of the other guys from the seminar I had sat with. They they were talking about PUA boot camps and training afternoons they'd been to; basically workshops to help guys approach women.

Great, I thought, if I listen to any more of this it's going to be far more difficult than it needs to be.

I spotted a likely looking group of people standing in the ever lengthening lunch queue, grabbed a pack of cards, stood up and wandered over.

"Hi guys, I can see you're queuing for dinner, sorry to interrupt but I'd like to show you a magic trick."

They were actually friendly enough, and quite intrigued, as indeed most people are when you wave something fantastical like magic or hypnosis under their nose. I ran through several of my usual basic tricks, thanked them for being a good audience and moved on up the ever lengthening queue stopping another couple of times to perform more tricks. It was a great place to find people who really didn't mind being entertained.

It was as I reached the beginning of the queue that I spotted three young women sitting down at a little round table. Right, I thought, time to try something a bit more intimidating.

"Excuse me," I said, wandering over, "I only have a minute or two but I'd really like to show you a few magic tricks"

They were quite pretty, but a bit young; I'd guess at 18-20 years old. They nodded their interest so I grabbed a nearby chair and, planting it so I'd be sitting with the char back between my legs, settled down to begin my routine.

I started with my favourite opening trick, which is topsy turvy cards. It's quite spectacular really, making half of the deck appear to magically flip over inside the deck. The girls were intrigued by this so I singled out one of them and moved on to another good trick, the poker player's picnic. This is an awesome self-worker of a trick in which the person you're performing to cuts the deck into four piles to discover that all of the top cards are aces. It's always fun to accuse them of having cheated unconsciously and say that you'll never play poker with them.

From the point of view of a magician this is all mechanical. The real magic happened for me with with my next and final trick called Design for Laughter. In this trick the magician appears to have gone horribly wrong but continues unaware of his mistake. I love this trick because it is a wonderful source of drama. This was something I was able to enhance further by using something I'd learned the week before on a creative writing class I've been taking. You see, something that fascinates me is the relationship between hypnosis, magic and story telling. As I see it, a magic trick is in essence a story, albeit a short one, and the same principles apply. Likewise all the best stories have a hypnotic effect on the people they are told to.

So, with this in mind when I performed this trick I incorporated a principle I have recently learned about story writing, which is that one has to build up tension, but do so in stages. I started the trick with a "hey, this should work" attitude, and escalated things over the course of the trick to the point where my entire reputation as a magician was riding on what happened next.

This was when I experienced one of the most profound moments. I was looking into the eyes of the girl I was performing the trick to, right at the moment when the tension peaked, and I saw her eyes widen. I have always found women's eyes to be beautiful and incredibly expressive but this time it was even more so. This time I could tell, I could feel from her, that she was going through a strong emotional experience. The amazing thing wasn't just that though, I was leading her through a strong emotional experience.

Nothing stronger than when I revealed her card showing I was right after all and I got screams of "Oh my god!"

This is why I love performing magic, I love being able to give those kinds of experiences. Not just that though, it's why I love writing, doing hypnosis, telling stories, dancing. It's why I love sex.

About a year ago I decided that I needed to define my raison d'être; I need to know what my purpose in this world is. The shortest version I could come up with was "To create and to share". It might sound like a cheesy corporate slogan, but I think it's true to say that the best moments of my life, the times when I have felt most fulfilled, have been when I have been true to the ideals of that statement.

I cannot wait to see where else it can take me.

Islands of reality

2011-09-20T13:13:00.011+01:00

There's a phenomenon I have become increasingly aware of, and which today I put a name to. If like me you are into self development, or rather you find that self development is an inevitable consequence of finding new levels of fun and general awesomeness in ones life, I'm sure this might be familiar to you.

When you become a hypnotist one thing that starts to become eminently clear is that everybody's reality is a subjective one, and is based upon their set of beliefs. This is why, on any controversial matter of opinion, you'll find that everybody is absolutely factually correct. If you don't believe me on this, just ask them.

Where this gets interesting is that people of similar opinions and outlooks will tend to seek each other out, cluster together and, not only that, through their interactions strengthen their own world views. "Everybody I've spoken to thinks the death penalty is common sense", "I haven't met anybody who thinks that a 20mph speed limit is reasonable", "Getting an Apple computer is a huge rip off, everybody I speak to on my PC support web forum agrees on that". We like to be right, and it feels comforting to be around people who we think are just like us and confirm what we already know.

We absorb our reality from the people we spend time with; we soak it up like a sponge just through our daily interactions. We can refer to the people you are regularly around in this way as one's "reference group" and they are incredibly important when it comes to your personal development.

What if up until now in your life you'd always had the same sort of friends, been around the same sort of people in school, maybe university, and in work. What will that do to shape your reality? Granted you won't be exactly like all of these people, but in many respects you are living on the same social island, the same island of reality as them. You will share their limiting beliefs too.

But now we come to you, dear reader, because I hope that you, like me, understand that you are responsible for generating your own model of reality. If you don't understand this simple truism you will find that your model of reality is at the mercy of your circumstances and often dictated by other people, and this really isn't a good thing.

So all of a sudden you realise that this isn't how it has to be, and that if you tailor your model of reality to what you want to do, what you want to be, you can push the boundaries and take your life wherever you want it to go. Furthermore, why not seek out other reference groups to spend time with, people from whom you can absorb beliefs and behaviours you'd really like to have.

This is when life starts to get exciting, but it's not without its challenges. One of the biggest of these challenges is facing what happens when you leave the island to go on this adventure, because when you return things will be different.

Let me give you an example. I recently went to a wedding; the couple were some friends of mine from a long time ago, and of course most of the guests I knew there were friends from that era. I've been at parties with these predominantly quiet and shy individuals before, and I've always been quite comfortably one of the crowd.

This time, however, I didn't want to sit quietly and talk to friends all evening, then maybe get up and dance with the group later. Oh no. After the bride and groom had started the first dance and the dance floor started to fill up with couples I spotted a pretty young woman who was obviously there on her own, walked over and asked her to dance.

I ask lots of women to dance every week. Quite deliberately I've chosen to live in a world where approaching women and asking them to dance in full confidence they'll say yes is the done thing; it's normal. So I was quite able to invite this woman into my reality.

The looks I was getting from my old friends were startling. Nobody knew quite what to make of it, because to them it just isn't what happens.

How the hell did he do that? Can he really just do that?

I could sense discomfort and in some respects I felt as though I'd brought an elephant into the room which everybody was far too polite to talk about.

I was recently listening to a recording of a talk given by a hypnotist by the name of Mark Cunningham and he used a phrase "disturbing the consensual reality" which sums the situation I have described above here perfectly I think. Sometimes it will just shock people, but in some cases it can even cause resentment.

People live their lives inside cages of their own devising. Learning to spot your cages and escape them, I believe, is the best and only way to a truly fulfilling life. At the same time be prepared for the natives to get restless.

"I'm no good at that"

2011-08-15T13:40:00.013+01:00

Following on from my last post about magic I feel I should talk a little bit about incompetence.

I am reminded of a comment I once heard one of my favourite songwriters come out with many years ago now. Sharon Corr, who is a solo artist these days but was best known as the violinist from The Corrs, was talking about the business of writing music for the band to play. Whilst I forget the exact wording the pearl of wisdom she conveyed was that the thing about song writing is that when you start writing the songs you write aren't very good, but if you keep writing they do get better over time.

It may sound like the most obvious statement in the world, and yet I think that there is a truism about the human experience here that so many people completely miss throughout their entire lives.

I'm thinking, as an example now, of what most people say when I suggest they try dancing.

"Oh no," the usual response goes, "I'm no good at dancing, I have two left feet."

Well really? You've not danced much or at all before and you are stating the fact that you don't think you're any good at it as a reason not to have a go.

How, if I may ask, would you be any good at dancing if you've never done it?! Really?

As with most things, the people who are good at dancing are the people who have danced, and have danced a lot. At some point in the past they were not very good at dancing, just like you. What makes them different? Well, they stuck with it long enough to become good.

Here's the lesson:

If you want to be good at something be prepared to be very bad at it.

I think it's important to get away from this attitude toward "talent" that seems to be all pervasive in our society. This notion that exceptional ability is a gift that's given indiscriminately to a lucky few, as opposed to a competence that is earned through persistence.

The bad news is that being exceptional doesn't drop out of the sky and into your lap. The good news is that being exceptional doesn't drop out of the sky and into anybody else's lap either. Yes some people may start slightly ahead and have an easier ride due to circumstances and more resources at their disposal, but long term the one thing that will make all the difference is your attitude. With the right attitude you will always have the advantage.

Afraid you won't be a good hypnotist when you try with your first subject? Guess what, you won't be! Keep at it though and soon enough you will.

I am at present enjoying developing my fledgling skills as a magician. I am not a brilliant magician. I have come to accept that every so often my "is this your card?" will be met with a blank look and a shaking of the head. Heck, I had a day a couple of weeks ago where I did four tricks in a row and none of them worked! The one thing I can tell you for certain is that it will happen again, I will fail, and not least because as I improve my skills I will constantly be trying to execute more difficult tricks.

Push your boundaries or they will never move and you won't grow as a person. Don't just do the things you can do; do the things you can't.

"Dancing? I've never done anything like that before and it really wouldn't have occurred to me to try... Sounds like fun! Let's go!"

If you need any more inspiration, take a look at this:
Step outside your comfort zone and study yourself failing

First Timers I ½ - Magical!

2011-08-02T13:11:00.008+01:00

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post intended to give advice to all those wannabe hypnotists out there who have yet to take the plunge and hypnotise a subject.

I made a start at the second post, plunging into details for a routine that these hypnotists could try but every time I started writing there was always something that kept nagging at me. Something was missing from the first post, I knew that. What was worse was that I knew exactly what was missing and the reason I hadn't brought it up, which was that I didn't have the answer.

What is the biggest problem for most of us when it comes to starting out in hypnosis?

I don't know about you, but for me the problem is scarcity. It feels as though willing subjects to try this out on are few and far between. What this inevitably means is that we end up subcommunicating neediness whenever we approach a potential subject. They feel as though you want something from them and can get defensive. Some may be curious enough to get past this and give it a go, but the next pitfall comes from being worried about failure because who knows when the next opportunity will be.

This is a biggie. It's THE biggie as far as I'm concerned.

What we really need is a different frame to the situation, and I did hint at this in my last post. Your potential subject should be the one asking, begging, you to hypnotise them.

Indeed, some of the best impromptu subjects I've had in the past have actually thanked me afterward for the huge favour I've done them. One actually apologised for spoiling my quiet evening out.

So how does one arrive at this desirable state of affairs? I figured it out recently and, believe me, what you are about to read could possibly be the most useful lesson you will ever learn as an aspiring impromptu hypnotist.

6. Get a pack of cards. Learn some tricks.

You heard me.

I should explain. A couple of weeks ago I was at a party in London that John Morgan had invited me along to. It was a charity fundraiser, and so John had also invited along another of the London Magic and Hypnosis crew, a magician called Mike Stoner.

Now, Mike is absolutely awesome at what he does, and he's also a people approaching machine. So after we'd spent a little while catching up we started wandering around the tables and Mike wowed each with some incredible magic and mentalism. Now, when I say incredible I mean "that card you chose and signed with a pen isn't in the deck, it's actually here in my wallet" and "also, the name of the card you chose is written on the pen I gave you at the start" incredible.

More than watching Mike at work though, both in seeing how easy he found it to approach people and in his presentation, I am indebted to him for what did next, which was to say this:

"If you think that's impressive, my colleague here is a hypnotist."

And I was in!

Did I mention that this party had the largest number of attractive young women I've seen in one place? It's a hard life it really is!

What's the lesson here?

I'd say it's this. There's a reason why the thought of approaching a group of people and saying "Excuse me would you like to be hypnotised?" feels weird, and that's because it is! It's such an unexpected and unusual proposition that a lot of people will default to the safe "no thanks" answer before even considering it.

As I said before, a different frame is needed. If you approach a group of people with a pack of cards and whilst shuffling them in your hands ask if they like card tricks they are much, much more likely to be intrigued and keen to see what you have to offer. Often if you're at a party all you need to do is produce the cards and shuffle them before someone asks you if you know any tricks with them. Seek out any environment where people want to be entertained and you'll find an impromptu magician is always welcome.

You don't even need to learn that much magic. In these days of YouTube it's so damn easy to learn a few basic tricks too. I know just four, all based on the overhand shuffle, but that's more than enough. You can go from group to group doing the same few routines over and over and getting good at them. Your audience don't know that they've just seen your entire repertoire and they don't need to know.

Set out to do magic, not hypnosis. Set out to entertain others, not acquire something for yourself. Let the subjects come to you.

What you are doing with each group is you're setting the frame. In their eyes you become an authority figure on magic and that sort of thing, you're demonstrating to them that amazing things happen around you and that you can lead them through fun experiences.

I have found that people are naturally curious about how and when you learned magic and when the inevitable question about that comes you can reply thus:

"I'm actually a hypnotist; the magic's just a hobby."

Try it. You'll be amazed at the responses you'll get.

Self-deception

2011-05-09T12:29:00.003+01:00

I was recently catching up on episodes of a podcast that I listen to, and highly recommend, called Radiolab. It's a science podcast predominantly but what I like about it most is that it is presented by telling the human stories behind the science. Go have a listen!

Anyway, there was an episode from last summer entitled Deception which was all about lies, why people tell them, and how they can be spotted. The full episode is still available to listen to here. The last section, at 47 minutes in, was to me the most interesting because it covered the subject of self-deception.

It's really worth a listen. The conclusion that the researchers being interviewed came to is that our abilities at self-deception can actually be looked on as a good thing, as a gift as such. They discovered that people who are more successful and happier in life tend to be better at deceiving themselves, where those who look at just the cold hard facts may tend to be down or depressed. The obsession with being objectively correct that many of us with a more scientific or logical background may have can be a very bad thing at times.

To me this all makes sense and it ties in with my last blog post, which was about faith. I guess faith is in itself a form of self-deception.

There is a message here to anyone looking for success or happiness in life, and I think especially to aspiring hypnotists. Disregard anything in the past that, however real and tragic it may seem, gives you negative feelings, step into the moment and go forward expecting happiness and success.

You are awesome and can do anything you put your mind to. Believe it! Deceive yourself for long enough for it to become true.

Faith

2011-03-16T12:52:00.002Z

Another day, another comment on Facebook written by a fellow atheist taking a dig at religion.

This time: "Science flies you to the moon; religion flies you into buildings"

Years ago I may have applauded along with the crowd at such a comment but nowadays I sigh at how my left-brained friends manage to so completely miss the point, which is one about belief.

Now, I'm agnostic; I see no evidence for the existence of a supreme being so I do not believe in one, but at the same I cannot disprove the existence of one either (if that sounds wishy-washy to you bear in mind I have a similar stance on the subject of the easter bunny).

Where I part company with many of my other godless friends is that I think that a life without faith is likely to be empty and unfulfilling. I just personally don't agree with religious faith.

To explain, as a hypnotist I feel I have more than a little insight into the human mind's capacity for belief. Let's face it, we're all capable of unquestioningly believing crazy things, evolution has wired us up that way, and the most impressive thing about belief is the way that it affects the nature of reality. I don't think that any kind of thinking is going to affect the objective universe, such as allow people to use telekinesis to unbend corkscrews, open a channel of communication to the deceased or make deities pop into objective existence, but bear in mind that none of us actually lives in an objective universe. You, and everybody you meet, live in a subjective universe, which is just your mind's interpretation of what your senses are telling you.

You are responsible for generating your perception of reality.

To the faithless the only way to think is one where belief follows evidence. This is fine if you want to work out something objective, such as calculate the age of the universe, but I think it's important to realise there are other areas in life where the scientific mindset doesn't have all the answers and can actually lead to mediocrity and misery. Those all too real entities in our worlds such as confidence, happiness, fulfillment are not objective quantities.

Faith, to me, is to place belief before evidence. Successful people, happy people, achievers, don't look for evidence that they will be successful, happy or get what they want; rather they believe it first. When we believe something our mind and body work overtime in thousands of imperceptible ways to make that thing true for us. This is why, for example, athletes will actually spend time just imagining perfect performance.

I think that a little faith is missing from a lot of peoples' lives. There are too many people waiting for evidence of the things they want from life so that they can then believe that they can have them, and in doing so they place the cart before the horse.

Faith

Faith and relationships

Here's an example that's been on my mind for the last few days.

I recently read a book entitled He's just not that into you by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo (two of the minds behind Sex and the City). It's a self-help book aimed at women wanting to understand men, but I was curious to get a bit of perspective and indeed a lot of it could apply to both sexes. It covers all sorts of different situations that might come up but there is a common theme, which is that there are times when by far the best thing to do is to cut the guy loose and move on.

This is a lot easier to say than to do of course, for both men and women, because this scene is set against the backdrop of what I've heard called, rather aptly, "the great emotional depression". This is a concept I read about in a book called If I'm so wonderful why am I still single? by Susan Page (both of these volumes reside on my allocated "scare women away" bookshelf). Page comes to a similar conclusion as Behrendt, that people perceive their own self-worth to be so low and good partners to be in such short supply that they stay in better-than-nothing relationships lest they never find anyone else. Low self esteem everywhere; it's like the economic depression of the 1930s except it's not money that's not circulating freely, it's singles.

A lot of my friends are couples and when two people are really good for one another there's a chemistry that I think is just wonderful to see and this somehow transcends my jealousy. They remind me why I am single.

There are no two ways about it, being single is very difficult at times but there are worse things than being single. There is, for example, being in a relationship that isn't going anywhere and yet holding on in hope that there is a future, somehow things will get better, or kidding oneself that this is as good as it's ever going to get. The problem is that this isn't so apparent from the inside; it's very difficult to admit to oneself that there are no butterflies and that low self esteem is at least partly responsible for cementing a relationship together.

I know lukewarm better-than-nothing relationships can be comfortable but the terrible truth is this: whilst someone is invested in such mediocrity one they are closing themselves off to finding something truly amazing. That person with the capacity to truly melt their heart may just show up, see they're unavailable, sigh, shrug shoulders and move on to pastures new without them even realising.

This is where we come back to faith; to choose to be single in todays world is a massive leap of faith. It's about knowing what you want, what you truly desire, and believing without question that somewhere out there at some point in the future you will find it. Keeping the faith through the inevitable lonely evenings is difficult; keeping it in the face of romantic opportunities that are admittedly agreeable but fall short of ones needs is even more difficult.

There's no way to prove that special person is out there; it's about having faith.

Faith in oneself

Heraclitus, a greek philosopher, once said "Character is Destiny".

The people who live truly remarkable lives suffer the same setbacks and circumstances as anyone. What makes these people different? Well the difference comes from inside of them in the form of their set of beliefs.

I think it's important to decide who you are and where you want to go with your life, be it in your career, relationships, or any other goals.

If you believe, truly believe, that you can achieve great things your mind and body will move mountains to make this true. If you decide that it is in your character you will put yourself out there, get the knowledge, take the risks, make the mistakes, earn the experience and learn the lessons to get where you want to go.

The way to a great destiny is through character and a great character comes through belief.

Faith is a wonderful thing.

Intuition

2011-02-25T13:22:00.005Z

I recently had a disagreement with a person I know. I won't go into specifics but suffice to say I had stated something to her which I knew to be a fact.

No, I was told, that's not right. I was even called a liar.

Well fine, I responded, but here's why what I say is true. Fact, fact, fact, and therefore, orignal fact.

All of that is true, came the reply, but I am going to believe my intuition.

Any logically minded individual will recognise the kind of frustration this has the potential to engender. What does this say about this person? Does it mean she's stupid, or insane? Well, no. What it means is that she's just human.

Imagine you were rolling dice and you rolled a 1, say, five times in a row. What does logic tell you the result of the next roll will be? What does intuition tell you it will be?

I once knew another person who insisted to me that her first impressions of a person always turned out to be right. As I got to know her better I could see that in her subjective view of the world she was absolutely right. The reason for this was that everything she saw of a new person after their first meeting was being viewed through the filter of her first impression. It's not uncommon either, it's something everyone does to some extent.

A few months ago I was at a social gathering and I made eye contact with a woman I'd never seen before. I met her gaze and held it, and it was about four or five seconds before she looked away and wandered off. Now, any guy who has studied attraction will know what effect holding a woman's gaze until it's her that breaks it can have. Sure enough when I actually got introduced to her she was all smiles and visibly nervous. I met her on several more occasions and by the end she was dropping fairly unsubtle hints that she wanted me to ask her out.

I am willing to bet that had I acted differently in those first few moments my relationship with this person would have been entirely different. Why? Because when she and I actually met her intuition was probably already telling her that I am strong, comfortable and confident and therefore attractive. If I'd done what a lot of men do when they make eye contact with a woman, which is to look away and down, she certainly would not have thought about me in the same way. The same people, the same lives and values, but a completely different relationship.

This isn't just with women of course, men are also completely capable of thinking this way. We all, trust me, do it far more often than we realise. Women are, on the whole, much more prone to making up their mind based on the premise of their infallible "Women's intuition".

Actually, whilst I'm commenting on the complete irrationality of the fairer sex I'll mention an interesting thing I found during my brief forray into online dating, which is that in this context women trust their intuition despite (given the nature of communication being text only) most of it not being plugged into anything. It's like a case of communicational phantom limb syndrome.

Most men of course simply see large breasts and think "Hmm, that woman must definitely be a nice person!"

This is what I'm getting at: often the intuition is arguably very wrong, but as far as the person is concerned it is right. Get the other person's unconscious intuitive process on board and there is no end to the sort of stuff you can get away with; likewise strike the wrong chord and it doesn't matter how honest you are. This is why, for example, people will happily get taken in by con artists, and why some of the most harmless honourably intentioned yet lonely men get rejected by women as creepy.

So there are two things to take away from this I think. The first is the understanding that getting a person's intuition on your side is crucial to having a positive influence on them. People don't instinctively judge you as good or bad based on your expressed morals, beliefs or intentions, they base it on your presentation of yourself. Putting yourself across in a way that wins over another person's intuition is learned skill, but it's worth learning because if you can do it their logical brain will often jump through hoops to agree with you. I would call the extreme example of this hypnosis.

Conversely trying to fight a person's intuition with facts, regardless of how true and clear they are to you, is a losing battle. The telltale is the emotional attachment, and clawing at it with logic will only make it dig itself in deeper.

The second thing is to begin to recognise when this is happening to you. If somebody challenges you on something you believe and you feel yourself getting emotional about it this is a good sign that there is some level of irrationality to your thinking. One very important lesson I've learned is which feelings to take as a sign that I need to stop and reconsider my own beliefs - there's a particular feeling of discomfort that tells me I'm definitely onto something.

Admitting to being wrong in the face of strong emotions that tell us we're right can be difficult, but those who can do it stand to learn a lot and grow as people.

It's harder to be wrong than right.

So going back to my earlier disagreement. As you would expect I performed an amazing feat of conversational hypnosis, engaging her on an emotional level, so convinving her that my opinion is worthy of her trust and thus winning her over to my argument.

Actually no I didn't. Sometimes you just have to let people believe whatever bollocks they want to believe. Sometimes the best thing one can do is just walk away.

Serendipity from misery

2011-02-01T13:02:00.001Z

Last night I figured something out about my own hypnotisability. It's early days, but I think I've hit on something fundamental, and what's more it's so blindingly obvious that I can't believe that it didn't occur to me sooner.

To make this discovery I needed to be extremely miserable. I have to say one of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given about being single, which I wish I'd know years ago, is that it's important to give oneself permission to be miserable from time to time. Don't get me wrong life is great at the moment for me but inevitably for any singleton there will be a day each month when they come home late to an empty home after a long day at work and the lack of companionship does tend to bite somewhat. In these situations it is best to face the negative feelings directly to get over them rather than to try to deny them or feel guilt for having them and end up wallowing in it for days.

For some reason on this particular occasion I decided that a hypnosis mp3 or two would be a good idea for something to listen to whilst I mulled over my state of mind. I find that when hypnosis is working best my thoughts fly off on a tangent and then fade, rather like a spark from a Catherine wheel. My idea was I'd listen to the mp3 whilst distracting myself with my own contemplation.

I went out like a light.

Not only that, over the course of the fastest hour in history the feelings turned from misery to intense joy.

Here then is my discovery about my own hypnotic response, and indeed why in the past it has varied so much. It seems that for a good trance I need to be emotionally charged.

The most ridiculous thing is that I have known about the significance of emotions in hypnosis for a long time. Indeed one of my pet peeves is the people who come to hypnosis from a background of computer programming (why are there so many of them?) and think that it is basically the same kind of dry, emotionless, command-action based process. "if this, then you will do that", and so on. A true hypnotist doesn't care about eliminating syntax errors, they are more interested in making sure their subject feels good. Crucially, following a suggestion should always be downhill for the subject; easier and more pleasant to follow than to snap out of it.

The concept that an emotional state is powerful catalyst, if not an absolute requirement for hypnosis should have been obvious to me.

This another one of those things that good hypnotic subjects know already, and thus a lot of hypnotists don't know because it's not something they've ever needed to instruct. Indeed the mp3s I have been listening to do nothing to induce an emotional state other that instructing the subject to relax.

So here's the lesson boys and girls: if you want a good trance, go for an emotional response.

Why I love to Jive

2011-01-30T21:15:00.015Z

Today I have been in London attending a workshop and it's brought me to understand a number of concepts, which I would like to share.

Readers of this blog will have noticed that I like to bring in references to other activities that I have participated in. Part of this is because I believe that a broad range of very different skills are worth more than the sum of its parts, but I also think it is true to say that an understanding of hypnosis is something that greatly enriches ones understanding of all aspects of life.

Something that has always been true of me is that I like to embrace completely new challenges from time to time. A few years ago I had a conversation with a co-worker about his interest in modern jive dancing. When, back in November, I found myself wanting to find new things to do with my time, and because dancing was definitely not me, as in not the sort of thing I'd ever even considered doing before, I of course threw myself straight into it.

If not modern jive, I can definitely recommend this attitude to life.

I also make no secret of the fact that meeting women played no small part in my motivation. As with most people whose vocation in life lies with engineering, the physical sciences or computers, my relationship with attractive young women has in the past been as a man lost in the desert's relationship with water. Meeting lots of women in an environment where the only agenda is to have fun has only been a good thing for me.

So how does modern jive relate to hypnosis? Well, I experienced a moment during the workshop today that connected so many dots it took me a couple of hours to trace all the lines. Hypnosis, trance, the subconscious and attraction all tied together, and it's beautiful.

You see as it's a partner dance one person, the man, leads and the other, the woman, follows. The link to hypnosis came out of the moment when the guy teaching the course started to demonstrate some of the more advanced concepts of lead and follow with his assistant. She was a gorgeous young woman with a wonderful petite figure, short brown hair and shining blue eyes, but the most impressive thing about her was the way she moved because it was so smooth and elegant, especially the way her hips swayed as she transfered her weight from foot to foot. She'd been dancing for five years, actually had "To live... Is to dance" tattooed on her forearm, and every movement of her body seemed so easy and natural.

It was when the teacher took her hand and started showing the men how to lead, however, that the hypnotist inside me woke up. "Oh my goodness" it said "she's going into trance". It was as plain as day, the shift in mental state was all over her face; I know that look and I'd recognise it anywhere! She was looking at the teacher with a blank receptive expression, her eyes locked on him, as her body responded to the instructions his hands gave her: forward; back; spin left; spin right. Obviously over years of dancing she has reached a point where no conscious input is required, she knows the cues and the subconscious responds making her body move as though on autopilot.

So firstly we have what every person who enjoys exercise has, which is a trance state. Secondly she is being purely feminine: she doesn't have to think along a timeline; she doesn't have to think about anything spacial; she can live and express herself in the moment. Finally we have the kind of sexual polarity that David Deida talks about between masculine and feminie that exists in the dance state (pardon the pun). Feminity is balanced against the masculinity of her dance partner who confidently leads the way into the next move and is always there to catch her.

No wonder she loves dancing!

A nice little showcase of this kind of lead and follow comes in an exercise that beginners to modern jive are shown. Partners stand facing each other and place their palms against the palms of their partner with just a little bit of pressure. The follower's role is to maintain that pressure and to move in whatever way is necessary to do so. The leader is thus able to move their partner around just by moving their own hands. The result feels exactly the same as a hypnotic hand stick and I guess a lot of the principles are the same. For the follower it's about agreeing to be led (not controlled; led) and going with it. If they really trust you, as the leader you can get them to close their eyes, lead them backward, forward, turn them in either direction and, if you're feeling particularly mischievous, without warning deposit them into the nearest sofa.

Before you ask yes I have been tempted to weave in a little hypnosis into that exercise, and I will probably at some point come up with a routine based on it.

Anyway, coming back to the hot assistant and her dance trance, so many things about what I find attractive in women slotted into place too. I have always found a woman's eyes to be the outward feature I find most attractive and I always know when a woman has had an impact on me because I have a lingering impression of her eye colour; it's possibly the closest thing I've ever had to synesthesia. Anyway I always thought my affinity for eyes was because they express personality and intelligence, and of course they do, but now I think there's more to it than that. I think that what I am seeing and being attracted to, certain looks and expressions, is an expression of something that is deeply feminine; that receptive almost entranced look especially.

Yes I did dance with that girl at the workshop. It was a lot of fun but my word was it intimidating. Asking "how did I do?" most unattractively after running through new moves was something that I found most difficult, although she did give me some very useful pointers on technique.

Going back to attraction a month or so ago following a conversation with a female friend who was having trouble finding men she was attracted to I wanted to see if there was any material out there that was the female equivalent of David DeAngelo's Double your Dating. I came across an ebook that seems to be exactly that called Sensuality Secrets written by a woman called Patty Contenta, and it turns out that she is a ballroom dance teacher. I actually found it fascinating because the emphasis is entirely different to all the material out there for men as it focuses on posture and body language, which I guess reflects how different the sense of attractiveness is to men and women.

My friend's reaction was interesting though, because she commented that a lot of the Sensuality Secrets stuff, from the preview material on the website, just comes across as being subservient. This came at around about the same time as a friend's girlfriend, who is a feminist, commented that I shouldn't be approaching women and taking it for granted I will be leading the dance, rather I should be asking them if they would like me to. I think these are responses that are indicative of the difficulties facing men in the modern era. Women are so empowered nowadays and some would even say women are so independent that they don't need men any more. What is our role supposed to be if we are no longer the breadwinners and the head of the household?

Personally I happen to think that women need men more than ever in the modern age. Women need men in order to be women, just as night cannot exist without day. It's all about polarity, and there is no escaping the behaviours and desires that evolution gave us. I think the independence and equality women have today is a very good thing; I actually find myself most attracted to strong independent women. Deep down though all women want to be led when it's time to dance; dance literally or metaphorically; they want to feel that polarity with a partner even if they don't understand it.

So, I like to dance because partner dancing is a microcosm of the relationship between a man and a woman. It's a great way for the sexes to appreciate what they want from each other when it comes to what they need from each other. Attraction is a dance, flirting is a dance, dating is a dance. As a man I can concentrate on learning the steps, leading with confidence, and letting everything flow naturally.

Above all though, dancing is fun.

First timers I

2011-01-26T13:26:00.004Z

Right, enough of my musings; now for something actually useful.

I've had a few friends who have looked at doing a bit of hypnosis, have read a book or two, or a hundred, on how to do it and yet still haven't hypnotised anybody. This is crucial, because to my mind nobody can call themself a hypnotist until they have actually hypnotised another person, in person; it's the distinction between being a hypnotist and being a person who knows a bit about hypnosis. I should say if your sole body of experience is hypnosis over MSN, or god forbid you're one of those people who has put put up a youtube video featuring only text or a computer generated voice, you are only a person who knows a bit about hypnosis.

Anyway, I was recently chatting with a friend who has yet to put her knowledge of hypnosis into action and she said that something that's bee a problem for her is knowing what to do next. She said what would really help her would be a routine to try, so I promised I would write something to encourage her to go forward with it.

So if you're one of these people who has learned about hypnosis but never (let's face it) worked up the nerve to go and give it a go with someone, this is for you. In this post I will give you some principles to think about, and then in the next I will give you an actual routine to go and try.

So, here is my advice to newbies.

1. Deal with your anxiety.

Do you know that feeling you get when you think you'd like to bring up your interest in hypnosis or ask someone to be your subject? That feeling of anxiety that comes up and makes it so easy to do nothing and let another opportunity slip through your fingers? Some news for you: this feeling will never go away. I would say that most or indeed every hypnotist gets this feeling, but what distinguishes them is an ability to act in the face of it.

A lot of people think they can overcome anxiety by learning more, or maybe they're just procrastinating. Either way I'm afraid this doesn't work. By all means keep reading, but understand that the only way you will get to hypnotise someone is by just getting on with it.

The best analogue for the feeling I can think of for me has been in the past when there's been an attractive woman I've wanted to go and talk to. Something that the pickup artist community puts about is the idea of the so-called three second rule - when you see her you have three seconds to go over to her or it's over before it's even begun. I think employing a similar principle with opportunities for hypnosis is a good idea. In the moment don't give yourself time to think; have a routine ready so you know where to start; go straight in.

I mean it! Don't think, GO!

The good news is that this feeling is a peak not a plateau. If you can face it and climb over it you will find yourself coasting down the other side. Once over the top you'll be on what B.A. Baracas used to call "The Jazz" and trust me for that feeling alone it's worth it. Learn to embrace your anxiety as a positive sign that you're pushing the bounds of your comfort zone. It's the time for full speed ahead because if you backpedal or even coast for just a moment you will never have the momentum to make it over that peak.

2. Find a good subject

This would be worth a whole blog post in itself but I'll mention a few key things here.

I would advise against working to persuade someone to be your subject because I have never had particularly good results from doing this. More often than not they will be looking for the first opportunity to let you down gently by saying it isn't working.

Think differently; don't hunt for a subject, fish for one. Trust me, if you mention in passing to enough people that you know how to do hypnosis it will only be a matter of time before someone will ask you to hypnotise them. This is the person you want to work with.

If your reply to the above is that you've asked everyone you know and nobody wants to give it a try consider it a signal that you should be going out and broadening your circle of friends. After all, what use is this skill to you if you have nobody you can use it with?

Girlfriends/Boyfriends or family members can be the worst people to try on for the first time, so only use them if they are especially keen to try.

3. Be the hypnotist

This is the standard advice that anyone teaching hypnosis will give, with good reason of course because it is far more important than any technique you will ever learn as a hypnotist. Here's my spin on it.

It's completely possible learn an induction word for word and execute it by numbers absolutely perfectly yet have absolutely nothing will happen for the subject. If you find that this is happening for you repeatedly the chances are you are not being the hypnotist.

Hypnosis is a game of lead and follow; it's a dance. Yes knowing the steps is useful but your dance partner isn't going to follow your signal to metaphorically drop all their weight into your arms unless they are certain you can take their weight. They aren't going to cede their control over their situation to somebody who isn't themself clearly and confidently in control. This is what hypnotists mean when they talk about congruence, knowing the words but matching it with a confident tone of voice and body language. The best, if not the only, way to achieve congruence is through inner belief and confidence in what you are doing.

No method will ever hypnotise a subject; it's your undoubting belief that you are able to hypnotise the subject that hypnotises them. Learn the method, learn the principles, forget the method. Be the hypnotist.

4. You are going to fail

Don't believe what you see on youtube, not everybody is an amazing subject. You are going to come across people who just do not respond to you with hypnotic phenomena. If you get really, really good perhaps you'll achieve something like an 80% success rate in an impromptu setting. If you go to hypnotise people you are going to fail from time to time; it's inevitable. Deal with it.

Now cross out the word "fail". With the right mindset you cannot fail.

There's an expression, "sometimes you win, sometimes you learn". Success in finding a brilliant subject is a lot of fun but it's not a good teacher. Embrace the times when things don't go to plan because you will learn a lot from them. Ask your subject what they were thinking, what the experience was like, because you will start to spot patterns and improve your technique over time.

Also remember that as the hypnotist the chances are you are the only person who really knows what's going on and what's supposed to happen. Often the first sign observers and even your subject will get that something isn't quite going to plan is when you bring it to their attention. The best musicians get away with playing a wrong note by not missing a beat.

5. Have fun!

Finally if, like me, you're approaching this as a hobby for goodness sake remember that you are doing it for fun. Loosen up, relax and enjoy yourself; if you do your subject will too.

I hope this has been helpful. Part II to follow soon.

Movie clip

2011-01-26T12:38:00.003Z

This is a clip from the film "My best friend's girl". It's not quite hypnosis but the psycology behind it intrigues me. Anyone who has read about attraction will instantly recognise what is going on here. It's David DeAngelo's concept of Cocky & Funny as an extreme sport.

It's also hilarious!

I love Kate Hudson because she's portrayed some really good characters over the years.

Attraction and Hypnosis

2011-01-20T22:20:00.004Z

Okay, whilst I've been incredibly busy for the last three months I'm beginning to realise just how much I miss blogging and so I've come back for another fix. You lucky people.

The last three months or so have passed in a bit of a blur, but I have also learned a lot in that time. Those of you who know me will know that I broke up with my long term girlfriend a while ago, which was both very emotional for me but also represented a major change in direction for my life. I am beginning to rather enjoy the single life, the freedom it affords me, and being on the market again so to speak.

Well, when I say that what I mean is I seem to be filling up my time with fun new activities rather than going out with the explicit intention of finding myself a new partner.

Never mind, as my previous girlfriend was never particularly keen on this hobby my current unattached state means that the gloves are off. I now have the opportunity to talk about hypnosis and dating and how the two relate to each other. Or rather, the experience of being single and knowing about hypnotic phenomena.

I have to say that now I'm single I'm seldom in a hurry to bring up the subject of my interest in hypnosis in conversation. I think this is because the first thing that occurs to me about hypnosis is its massive potential for creepiness. There is the whole Svengali evil hypnotist manipulating people to his own ends cliche that still persists to this day attached to the term hypnotist. Many people are very wary of something that they do not understand; I know this because that's how I felt before I entered this world.

My experience of bringing hypnosis up in conversation has been that most people who don't know about it immediately equate it with controlling other people. Any woman who doesn't have the word "Svengali" in her vocabulary will still be completely familiar with the cliche, and will at least have seen hypnotists in TV shows like Little Britain in which a stage hypnotist uses his skills on a date with a woman, or to get a woman's phone number. These scenes are hilarious and obviously ridiculous but I think they deliberately make light of what to some people might be a legitimate fear about being controlled through hypnosis.

Despite this I think there are also a lot of things that I think work in ones favour. Good hypnotists are by necessity good communicators, so for example we know how to build rapport and have awareness of small signals from another person's body language, which a lot of people just don't have. There are also other things like knowing how to make people feel positive emotions and feel good just through interaction. These are all attractive qualities.

Hypnosis, to me, isn't about control, and there are words like relaxation, connection, escape, detachment and sensuality that seem more appropriate and women are much more likely to appreciate.

Yes I know the line "I know how to make you orgasm using only my voice" might attract some women, but I suspect not the kind I'd want to attract.

Anyone who knows anything about what qualities in men women find attractive will of course know that on a deeper level most women are drawn to men who are naturally able to be in control of the situation, the natural leaders. Another plus point.

One of the books I have been through in the last few months is a book called The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. It's an extremely abstract book, but in it he describes the concepts of masculine and feminine, which exist within everyone, and suggests that attraction comes from the polarity between the two. Masculinity being characterised by strength, leadership, and being a secure fixed point, whilst femininity is colour, motion, existing in the moment and all that is beautiful in the world. This comes close to my heart in that it immediately makes me think of jive dancing, where like in most forms of partner dance the man leads and the woman follows, spinning and gyrating around him.

I think hypnosis is a kind of partner dance, in a way, because like the follower in a dance the subject is not being controlled but merely being led. This is probably why most hypnotists I meet are male, and most people who are really keen to try hypnosis are female. Just like with partner dancing there is polarity here and theoretically great potential for attraction.

So yes I feel there are upsides and downsides to bringing hypnosis up in conversation with women, but I think that the above just scratches the surface of this topic. There is a deeper question here I feel, which is to do with the concept of using ones knowledge of hypnosis in attracting women.

Let's face it, I've persuaded people that the person sat next to me is wearing a non-existent viking helmet and that their glass of flat cola is really the most delicious ginger beer they've ever tasted. Surely as a hypnotist eliciting the simple emotional response of feeling attraction toward me from women shouldn't be too difficult, especially with a little background reading from books written by experts in attraction such as David DeAngelo and Ross Jeffries.

Well it shouldn't, but how does this stack up morally?

Let's just consider for a moment that I could do a Kenny Craig. That it really would be possible for me to approach any woman I took a fancy to, wave my hands around, tell her to look in the eyes not around the eyes, snap my fingers and have her under my power. Say I could even maintain the attraction toward me from this gimmick indefinitely. What value would my connection with her really have? How would I feel about it?

It might appeal to some men but definitely not me, and I suspect in being the sculptor of her reality I would feel incredibly lonely. I think the most important thing for me in a relationship is that the person I'm with has qualified me, that they have a firm grounding in reality and yet they know me and are drawn to me because they recognise the person that I am and my array of positive attributes. I set the bar very high in being most attracted to strong, mature, intelligent and independent women; I think it helps drive me toward being my best possible self.

Okay, so we'll have none of this covert hypnotic manipulation or any of these attraction techniques. Just be yourself and be nice, like mother said, and everything will be fine, right?

Sadly not.

The unfortunate truth is that all of those things that women say they want in a man: intelligence; great conversation; being a good listener; sense of humour; adventurousness; being passionate about life; common interests; sensitivity; morality; these are all meaningless and might as well be completely invisible if the guy doesn't know how to spark attraction with the woman. If he doesn't in the best case the woman will just befriend him and in the worst case he'll be punished for his honourable intentions by being told he's creepy.

This is a big "aha!" moment that I have had in the last three months; the realisation that attraction in women, like hypnosis, is something that can be induced. Attractiveness is something that men can actually learn. Anyone who has read The Game by Neil Strauss will know that this is what in essence the pick-up artist community is all about. They have developed the art of procedurally creating the feeling of attraction in a woman and by means of such techniques leading her all the way to the bedroom. Seldom beyond it should be added.

Anyone who understands hypnosis will recognise that accidental hypnosis is occurring naturally all the time and spot it when it's happening. I experienced a similar revelation when I started to understand which male behaviours women find attractive. It's something else that's going on all the time, though most people don't realise what, how or why.

If these are things that people who are naturally good with others, and especially women, are using anyway I conclude that I have absolutely no qualms about using them myself. To not do so would be to shoot myself in the foot; to punish myself for having explicit knowledge about such things.

But wait is this manipulation? Well let's talk for a moment about something really manipulative, which is the more common approach men take. A man goes up to a woman in a bar and says "Can I buy you a drink?". He's offering her a drink but the subtext, whether he's aware of it or not, is that she is therefore obliged to talk to him or more. In fact, any occasion where a man is deliberately nice toward a woman he is attracted to in order to try to gain her approval he can unfortunately be assumed to have the words "...and please sleep with me" tagged on the end of his action.

Women spend hours prettying themselves up before they go out, enhancing their attractiveness to men's primarily visual sense of attraction with clothes that flatter them, styling their hair and using makeup. Is that manipulation? If a man's character really is to a woman what a woman's figure, face and hair is to a man, why not put in the effort to make sure that one is presenting ones best self, especially as the effects are even more pronounced for men than they are for women.

I can see why some people might object to what the pick up artists do and say they're taking advantage of the women they pick up. Personally whilst I don't condone telling lies or misleading people I think that the women who go for pick up artists know what they're doing and it's their right to enjoy enjoy themselves. Interestingly nobody seems to be raising the same objections about the proverbial busty blonde with the perfect figure who uses what she has to get what she wants.

I think the interesting question is where to draw the line when using this stuff. What is quite acceptable, and what is just self-serving manipulation?

The answer, to me, lies in the advice of John Morgan and his website Real Human Connect. Recently he and James Tripp have been putting together a dating programme called attraction games, which I'm sure will be well worth a look once it's up and running. The central premise to both of these sites is utilising the concept of play as opposed to work. The idea of just having fun and enjoying what comes naturally, as opposed to going out with a specific agenda. If the only thing on the agenda is to have a good time how can one be manipulative? Is it even possible to manipulate people into having fun?

So this is where I stand at the moment. Have to say I'm enjoying life right now.

Stay tuned. More hypnosis stuff coming.

Parkey.

A change in the winds

2010-10-24T22:55:00.003+01:00

This is just a short message to explain a few things.

The last month or so has been quite a difficult one for me for a number of personal reasons, which I won't go into. Suffice to say that I am feeling a lot better now and a lot more positive about the future.

However, I also feel as though I am entering a new phase in my life and I don't think that BlackMeridian is going to feature much in it. Hypnosis is part of who I am now, just as anybody who has learned how to use and experience hypnosis will understand, but even with this being the case I don't feel as though I will have much time or energy to keep this blog up to date in the way I have in the past. There are other writing projects that I want to pursue.

I hope that the words I have written here will continue to be the help and inspiration to others that many generous people have said that they are.

Who knows, I may pop back long enough to write a word or two in the future, but for now this is farewell!

I wish you all the best.

Parkey

Helping the hypnotist

2010-09-08T12:25:00.020+01:00

I have, on a few occasions, heard hypnotists saying this their subject:

"Don't try to help me, let it happen automatically"

Some of these times the subject has been me, and my own experience was that this instruction was very unhelpful, and even restricting, until I figured out a way to get past it.

I have said before that the biggest misunderstandings that some hypnotists have come out of their either being no good whatsoever as a subject themself, or else being a very good subject. This is, to my mind, another of such misunderstandings; a result of said hypnotist not appreciating what a subject with only mild abilities is experiencing.

Consider something like the magnetic hands set piece. You place your hands straight out in front of you, hands facing each other, close your eyes and imagine that there's a magnetic attraction between your palms.

Now, as you do that, consider this: Don't try to move your hands, let them move automatically.

Not that the exact phrasing of the statement isn't that important, it's more about the suggestion that there is a specific way in which the subject should respond. If you're anything like me you will be asking yourself the same question that I was, which I think is implicit in the statement: "Am I doing this consciously, or not?" The statement also gives the impression that consciously responding is something that the subject shouldn't be doing. "Am I doing something wrong by having my hands come together in this way?"

Now obviously this isn't the case for all subjects but the result for me, and for many subjects I've seen hypnotists fail with, is that the subject stops moving their hands together, or the equivalent thereof, consciously holds them exactly where they are, and stops to wait for hypnosis to move the hands instead.

My response to hypnosis is improving gradually but continuously and now I know how to respond to that kind of suggestion, which is to consider the question as to who or what is moving my hands to be unimportant, and appreciate that all that matters is that they are moving. To start with my response to many suggestions has felt very conscious and deliberate, but as time has gone on I have gotten better at responding and the process has felt more automatic.

This is why the learning analogy is something that works for me. The process by which my response to hypnosis has improved reminds me most, of all things in my life, of my experience of learning to play the piano. This started with me poking gingerly and very deliberately at the keyboard, but over time the process became much more natural and, if you like, "automatic". Conscious incompetence to unconscious competence is a gradual process for most people. It's now easy enough for me to find my way around a piano keyboard, play back tunes from memory, and sight read music, although I will confess I rarely practice these days. The one thing that was always guaranteed to throw a spanner in the works for me and bring any recital of a piece of music to a keyboard mashing halt was to try to think too consciously about the process, or worse question whether it was a conscious process.

I can easily picture a well seasoned pianist, who can barely remember when they were learning, or who was a child prodigy, telling a beginner to not just let their hands press the keys automatically; after all it's what works for them. I can also imagine someone who has never actually played a piano themself, but has heard that same mantra said by an expert, repeating that mantra because it works for someone who can play the piano very well and thus must be good advice.

This comes back to my feelings about that group of people that I have decided to call "undeveloped" subjects ("analyticals"). It is my belief that there is nothing wrong with these people as such, with respect to their apparent inability to go into trance, but that they simply lack certain important bits of information and practice with that information.

Many hypnotists, and as a result of my cynicism and the difficulty I had whilst starting out as a subject I would be inclined toward saying most hypnotists, do not know this information or how to teach it because they only work with subjects who already know it.

So in summary I would suggest this to you: You and your subject should not care what part of the subject's brain is responding to the suggestion; all that matters is that they're responding.

"Analyticals"

2010-09-06T13:08:00.002+01:00

Something that has really been getting at me recently is the way in which the term "analytical" is applied to a certain group of subjects by hypnotists. I think it is high time for me to challenge this expression and question exactly what it is supposed to mean.

It seems to me that the term "analytical" is generally used to describe subjects who are difficult to hypnotise; people who are at the opposite end of the scale to those somnambulistic subjects who are an absolute gift to any hypnotist. There are some well known supposed percentages to quote here; setting willingness aside, 20% of people are easily deeply hypnotised, 60% of people are capable of basic hypnosis, 20% are very difficult to hypnotise. It is this latter group that are usually branded as "analytical" subjects.

I have talked before about why I think some people, despite being equally willing to cooperate, are more hypnotisable than others. I think it comes down to being able to think in a certain way, in an uncritical way. Somnambulists can do this well; anti-somnambulists, if you'll pardon the expression, cannot do this or at least not very well in the right context.

The very term "analytical" is, I think, inappropriate when describing these hard-to-hypnotise individuals, because it carries with it a lot of implications that are in themselves quite misleading. The biggest red herring is the idea that a difficult subject is troublesome because they are analysing the suggestions they're being given, which is can lead to a profound misunderstanding of why the subject may be finding hypnosis difficult and how best to proceed with them.

Everybody is "analytical" if by that you mean they take in what's going on around them, including what the hypnotist is saying, and consider what they think about it. Something that I think illustrates this well is one of the better subjects I have worked with and what they said to me after the first induction I did on them. I was feeling confident so I went straight in with a hand drop induction, which actually induced fits of giggling but those soon melted from her face as I continued to deepen. Afterwards she told me that she remembers questioning whether that was really all there was to it, thinking how funny that the whole situation really was, then being surprised by how much she was relaxing because she never relaxed like she was in that moment, and then her memories of what happened next were a bit fuzzy.

Now it seems to me as though there's a general expectation that the word "sleep" is supposed to make something dramatic happen by both hypnotist and subject alike, like for example stop the subject thinking, knock them unconscious or shift them to a different astral plane. Something that is irritating for me is this pervasive received wisdom that the best way for a hypnotist to deal with an "analytical" subject is to use a shock, confusion, or overload induction. The subject might analyse your suggestions if you go slow, god forbid, so hit them hard and fast and knock them out before they have chance to start computing what you're doing. I really don't think that this does anybody any favours because this approach only serves to accentuate the above expectation, and for certainly the majority of people who experience hypnosis that isn't really what the experience is like for them at all.

There are hypnotists who claim to have zapped "analyticals" into somnambulism with a shock induction, who like patting themselves on the back for being so clever. I'm afraid my answer to this is that if the subject did go into a deep trance from those sorts of induction I cannot see how they can be one of these lower 20% anti-somnambulists, and thus described as an "analytical". To me the implication being made here is that if a subject does not know how to think uncritically telling to them to do so more suddenly will suddenly enlighten them; of course in practice that can't and doesn't work.

A lot of hypnotists subscribe to the view that the subject is either in hypnosis or out of it and that every induction is an instant induction because there is a specific point in time when a subject goes from not being hypnotised to being hypnotised. So, get the subject "there" and you're home and dry.

I like to see hypnosis differently. To me it's a more like a channel of communication that exists between the hypnotist and subject. This connection, rather than simply being on or off, is more akin to something that is ramped up in intensity along a continuous scale. The "sleep! you are now in a trance" model is still something that can be utilised of course, but as I have mentioned in previous posts it really isn't needed to achieve phenomena. The intensity of this state is of course characterised by the phenomena that one is able to achieve with the subject.

This is the point that I am trying to get to: I don't care how much my subject analyses what I am saying to them, because as far as I am concerned being "analytical" is not a problem. In fact, my best ever subject holds degree in chemistry from Oxford and is currently doing their Ph.D at Cambridge and I don't think I've ever met anyone more analytical.

No, a subject being "analytical" is not an issue whatsoever.

Or rather, to put it more precisely, it's not the issue. So what do hypnotists really mean when they say "analytical"?

Well, I think there are a number of words that better describe a willing but hypnotically unresponsive subject than "analytical". Such subjects could be described as "critical" or "challenging" for example, as in being naturally inclined to challenge what the hypnotist is saying and seeking to correlate it with outside evidence before they believe it. Perhaps "curious" is another word one could use; the subject having a desire to be fully aware so that they can watch hypnosis working on them.

Ultimately though I think that it is better to see an unresponsive subject not as someone who is doing something obstructive to hypnosis, but as someone who is simply not doing what they need to be doing for hypnosis to work. I still see the ability to go into a hypnotic trance as a skill which comes to some people more naturally than others, but is within the reach of anybody given the right guidance and enough practice. This is the premise that best fits my own experiences, and those of others that I have met.

My conclusion here is that I would like all hypnotists to cast off the misleading and inaccurate term "analytical" and refer to difficult subjects by an expression that conveys the impression that like everybody the subject has a latent ability to be hypnotised that, as a consequence of their natural way of thinking, merely remains undeveloped.

That's settled then. Until I find a better word I shall refer to these people as "undeveloped subjects"

Spammers

2010-08-29T20:42:00.003+01:00

I wonder if the spammer who keeps gracing my blog's comments with his self-promotional material realises how quickly I am made aware of what he has been doing, and how little I have to do to just delete what he's written.

Just a thought.

Quantum Physics

2010-08-25T12:33:00.021+01:00

Something that I like about hypnosis is that whilst some may be inclined to label it as "alternative" healthcare it is different from the rest of this category in one very important respect.

There is a name for the parts of alternative medicine that have been proven to work beyond simply being a placebo, and that is "medicine". In medicine, the effects of any given treatment are put on trial, tested and evaluated to prove that it is effective for the patients that it is used on. If an easily available natural remedy actually works in a true medical sense it is most likely already in use; a good example is the drug asprin, which I believe is derived from the bark of the willow tree.

A placebo is a pill and a suggestion. For the treatment to work you can have the suggestion without the pill, but you can't have the pill without the suggestion. A nice illustration of this was given when James Randi, a stage magician, took a lethal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills on stage at a TED talk back in 2007. The video is definitely worth a watch.

Alternative medicine is the business of selling a diverse range of supposed remedies whose significant effects are derived solely through the suggestion put into the mind of the patient. In this sense I have absolutely no worries about placing hypnotherapy in the same category as homeopathy, crystal energy healing, and so on. They all work in much the same way.

The difference between hypnosis, specifically hypnotherapy, and these other alternative forms of treatment is that hypnosis doesn't need to claim to be anything that it isn't. There's no pseudo-science claiming that shiny crystals have psychic energy fields, or that a medicine is effective even when it's been diluted beyond the point of no longer having any medicine in it. There are no daemons to exorcise or pixies re-aligning your DNA. Nobody even needs to talk of secret ancient medical wisdom of a bygone age (conveniently omitting the bit about how in bygone times broken or infected limbs were routinely sawn off without anesthetic).

Hypnotherapy is simply about making the subject feel better through the power of suggestion, but in a pure undiluted form. The results are subjective, the treatment is subjective, the success is subjective. So many issues that medical doctors have to treat are not so much medical conditions as merely indicators of personal or lifestyle problems, and this is where hypnotherapists are able to help, whilst acknowledging that if a client has a genuine medical problem they should see a doctor.

What has all this to do with quantum physics I hear you asking? Well, whenever I hear a hypnotist start talking about quantum physics I sigh inwardly. I personally, being a mechanical engineer by trade, like to think I have a good grounding in physics, significantly better than most hypnotists, but I will admit that even I don't really have a clue when it comes to quantum theory. Furthermore I have yet to meet or hear from a hypnotist who also happens to be a theoretical physicist. Even then physicists themselves have a saying: "If you think you understand quantum theory, you don't understand quantum theory"

Talking about quantum physics is just one example of how so many hypnotists fall into the trap of being pseudo-scientists and I find it really depressing when I hear some hypnotist making what I consider to be dubious and untested claims about what one can do with hypnosis.

Seriously. There is no need to drop to the same level as the crystal healers and the homeopaths with their made up science. I have heard of hypnotists who claim they can cure cancer through the power of suggestion, or that they know people who have been able to repair broken bones by going into a deep trance for a couple of days.

Hypnosis can undoubtedly be used to cure phobias and give up bad habits, it can do a lot for pain control and of course positive mindset is most certainly an aid to recovery in any medical patient. However I think hypnotherapists are rather well advised to leave treating the broken bodies to the medical experts.

The same goes for other claims relating to the highly objective world of science. Hypnotists can, and I think should, talk philosophy and consider theories of mind. These are interesting topics about which I and others have talked for hours, but we should also remember that hypnosis is not a science, it is an art. It is by its essence highly complicated, inconsistent and contradictory, and mostly because it involves peoples' minds, which are also highly complicated, inconsistent and contradictory.

I think quantum physics does have one thing that hypnotists can legitimately steal for their own purposes, and that's the following expression:

"If you think you understand hypnosis, you don't understand hypnosis."

The other half

2010-07-23T13:00:00.026+01:00

When I first started out in hypnosis I recall making the observation that there are generally two responses someone will give when asked whether they want to give hypnosis a try:

"That's really cool! It's something I've always wanted to try. Yeah, I'm up for that!"

"NO! No way! No! No! No! Nonononononononononononono! NO!.... but can I watch you do someone else?"

I have to say that for the most part this simple pattern has held true over the last year or so. What has, however, been far less simple has been the incredibly varied response the potential subject's partner has displayed. In fact there have been such a mixture of responses that I won't even bother to try to list them. Many are positive, others are negative, and others seem to be uneasy but neutral.

Imagine the situation though. You're entering a time in your life where nearly everybody you know is in a relationship. Hypnosis just happens to, admittedly with a little bit of shameless manoeuvring on your part, come up in the conversation. When someone expresses an interest to give it a try more often than not their partner is also around.

How does the partner feel about seeing their significant other being hypnotised in front of them? It's almost certainly a question that they haven't even thought about before, and so I nearly always find myself having to keep an eye on the partner for feedback almost as much as the subject.

The majority of the people I seem to end up hypnotising are female and that means that there's nearly always a boyfriend in the equation somewhere.

Now, my own experiences with relationships do rather lead me to empathise with the paranoia that comes with being with someone very special. When a beautiful creature places unremarkable you within the inner circle of their universe the last thing you want is for anybody to come along and tilt the axes, even gently. Goodness knows I'm still waiting for my own girlfriend to wake up and realise her mistake.

Quite obviously I am not going out with the intention of seducing other people's girlfriends, and I think I would be giving myself far too much credit if I said I thought that I or my hypnotist routine were especially attractive. No, my sole interest when I have a subject in front of me is in satisfying their needs or curiosity, whatever those may be, because it is through doing so that I get my own enjoyment. This is often enough to sow the seeds of discomfort in a partner though, especially a male partner, because what they see is somebody connecting with their beloved in a way that perhaps they can't or don't, and can also be seen to be quite intimate.

That's one perspective, another is the idea that hypnosis is scary ultimate mind control. This, in my opinion rather absurd, worry is usually easy enough to alleviate in most people although some hypnotists, usually the ones who will never be hypnotised themselves, I have seen refuse to let anybody else hypnotise their girlfriend on this basis. Or they will allow it but will insist on being there so they can hear every word, lest security be compromised.

Safety is quite a legitimate worry, and I do my best to assure everyone concerned that what I'm doing is safe, which of course it is. I don't think doing the "Zap" (throw your subject on the floor and just hope they don't get concussion) induction or anything similar would go down well, and it's completely unnecessary anyway.

There was one hypnotist I met whose girlfriend had a real interest in hypnosis and enjoyed being a subject too, but he wouldn't let anyone else do anything with her. She was a great subject and really receptive to the experience, and yet this guy kept utterly failing to do anything with her because he didn't have the patience or the empathy. That's the final thing worth mentioning here; jealousy. That was an extreme example of course, but I have found that some of the worse culprits for negative feelings about seeing their girlfriend hypnotised have been other hypnotists.

One thing that I think is clear is that hypnosis has a way of bringing to the surface deeper aspects of a relationship in the same way as it does for individual personalities.

A New Look

2010-06-29T23:17:00.001+01:00

I've given the format of the blog a bit of a revamp. Hope you like it!

And for an encore...

2010-06-29T13:10:00.018+01:00

"I have made your arm completely rigid, stuck the palm of your hand to your head, and stuck your other hand to your thigh. For an encore, would you like me to hypnotise you?"

Recently I carried out my first non-induction hypnosis session with a subject I'd never hypnotised before. I have to say that the experience left me on a complete high as a hypnotist and I am looking forward to trying out on more people. Of course it is a nice demonstration of the view that in hypnosis the induction is more a ritual for the benefit of the subject than anything else.

The way I approached this most recent session was that I dropped my usual routine of trying a new subject out with a set piece like magnetic hands and then moving on to an induction like the rehearsal induction. This time I felt that I should be a lot bolder and just go straight in for some waking hypnosis before I even did an induction.

I should say that my inspiration for my method was mostly taken from demonstrations I have seen done by Simon Goodlad and James Tripp, who writes the Hypnosis Without Trance blog. They really know their stuff, and seeing these guys at work at various hypnosis meets over the last year or so has been absolutely awesome and a real education in itself.

So what did I do? Well, I started with something like this:

"Okay, before I do any hypnosis let's just start with a little exercise. Let's see how good your imagination is. Just go with this and we'll see what happens. Give me that arm, that's good."

I took my subject's arm, supporting it with both hands.

"That's it, just relax your arm, give it to me; That's right, completely."

"Now, I want you to imagine what it would be like if that arm was actually made of something very stiff. What if it were made of wood, or perhaps solid stone..."

At this point I was engaged in the process of putting their arm in mid air. This is the process of inducing catalepsy, making someone's muscles become stiff and rigid, and it is quite easily achieved if you direct someones attention away from that part of the body, whilst at the same time manipulating it ambiguously such that it becomes unclear who is actually supporting it. Obviously I started off taking all the weight of the arm, but by gradually removing that support whilst keeping the arm in place it is possible to get the subject to take the weight back without even realising it. Tapping on the ends of their fingers and along their arm helps this along.

"...just imagine that arm is getting stiffer and stiffer. Imagine what it would be like if you could not bend that arm..."

I kept this up and after about a minute the arm was happily supporting itself and as I tapped it various points along its length I could tell that the muscles were all locked tight. Time to test it.

"In a moment you're going to try to bend that arm and what you're going to find is that you can't; in fact, the more you try to bend it the stiffer it will become."

The arm was locked tight, it didn't bend one bit.

I wasn't even sure my subject was trying, but trying they were. I moved on to say that they couldn't move it, but I could, and it would stay where it was put, which it did. Next I bent the arm and stuck their hand to their head, then took their other hand and stuck it to their thigh. I kept this up for a minute or so, but then I told them that when I snapped my fingers they would come free.

"Well, that was fun. It seems that you have a great imagination. Now, would you like to try hypnosis?"

it was from here that I went into the 8-word induction and my subject dropped like a sack of potatoes. Of course they did; they were already hypnotised.

I think that there is an important lesson here, because I have spoken to a couple of hypnotists in the past who have told me of times that they used a rapid induction like the 8-word induction and that when they did it failed to hypnotise the subject.

Hypnosis isn't about some magic effect generated by a specific set of actions, and it doesn't happen because there is anything special about what is said and done during an induction. Hypnosis is about the relationship between the hypnotist and the subject. It's bond formed from a healthy mix of context, anticipation, expectation, imagination and positive rapport that comes out of every piece of interaction between these two people.

On numerous occasions I have seen both Simon and James have subjects with their hand completely stuck to something, unable to remember their name, and all sorts of other crazy suggestions whilst at the same time insisting that no, they haven't been hypnotised. They demonstrate so well that no formal induction is needed to get these amazing results, and of course you can use it as a springboard to go into a more conventional routine.

I think this approach has several advantages. Firstly there is no pressure on the subject when you induce a suggestible state in them because "this isn't hypnosis, it's just a exercise for your imagination". It gives the subject a chance, that isn't intimidating, to try out the foothills of hypnosis before deciding that they want to take things further.

Secondly it means that when you, the hypnotist, come to do your "induction" you are all but guaranteed an excellent response. You can use a rapid induction and your audience will see you putting someone "under" in an impressively short instant. It's good for the subject too; I got a real kick when a subject once told me that my hand drop induction had been an incredible rush for them, like jumping from a cliff.

There is also, of course, the advantage that if it doesn't work you haven't "failed to hypnotise" anyone. In fact this approach, "let's see how good your imagination is", challenges the subject to use their imagination, and of course the subtext here is that if it has no effect the problem lies with the subject and not the hypnotist.

So for any hypnosis I find it's best to think about it like this: Engage with your subject to achieve the hypnotic state first, and then, only after that, do your induction - if you feel you even have to.

Mmmm, food...

2010-06-27T23:07:00.002+01:00

One of my brother's friends spotted this fun sign in Manchester recently. I wonder how well it works...

High five!

2010-05-30T20:09:00.007+01:00

I've actually been doing some hypnosis recently, which has been a nice change. As I've had willing subjects I've also been able to experiment a bit, and so I thought I'd share a few of the things I've tried recently.

Here's an induction that I think is brilliant and I've used a few times recently. I was originally shown it by a fella called James Brown in Covent Garden. James Brown, by the way, is an absolutely awesome "close up" magician and mentalist, well worth looking up, and when I say he showed me this induction what I mean is that he needed a stooge to demonstrate it on, and I happened to be nearest.

My interpretation of this is a little different from James', but the principle is the same. Basically the idea is to create a pattern interrupt much like with the handshake induction, but instead by getting the subject to "high five" you and surprising them. It's a splendid induction to use with anybody who is reasonably suggestible and not suspicious, and it also works well as a re-induction off the back of the previous routine.

"Hey you did great! High five!"

So what do you do? Well basically what I do is a high five with my subject, but when my hand meets theirs I grab it and pull it toward me, simultaneously telling them to sleep. I should stress that, if you try this, no extra points will be given if you yank the subject's arm out of its socket or throw them to the ground. Just grab their hand and pull it a few inches away from them and that will be enough of a surprise for it to work! This works best if you're both standing, but be ready to catch them if they are the sort to fold up when they go into trance.

Some of you might have already spotted the flaw of course. "My friends won't shake my hand, so I doubt they will trust me with a high five" might be the obvious comeback.

Well, how about this then: If your subject is the suspicious type and doesn't go for the high five give them the compulsion, as a post-hypnotic suggestion, that they will instinctively go for the high five immediately if it comes up again. Move on with your routine and re-visit the high five later. This works as a nice convincer because hypnosis works best for some people if it catches them off guard. Your subject will be responding and then back into trance before they even realise what's happening.

Great fun!

The May '10 Meet

2010-05-28T12:56:00.001+01:00

Well as there wasn't a meetup last month I was just a little bit keen to head into London and actually do some hypnosis this month. I made sure that there was a Last Thursday meet this month, got out of work early and made my way to London. Very few people actually turned up this month, but it was still a lot of fun.

Arriving shortly before 7pm I met up with Chris and we were joined shortly afterwards by a guy we'd not met before called Wayne. Shortly after that we were joined by a newbie by the name of James and his girlfriend Lucy.

Wayne turned out to be quite the amateur magician, the kind who makes coins appear and vanish from his hands and conjures small jars of jam out of thin air. Yes he really did produce an actual jam jar, which begs the question whether he goes around with jam in his pocket just in case anyone asks him to do a trick.

As I had a salt shaker and napkins on the table I took the opportunity to do the disappearing coin trick. Somehow I got it to work and didn't embarrass myself either. Excellent!

We'd been looking around for groups that might be good to approach, but I didn't feel particularly good about any of them to be honest. It seemed that Chris and Wayne felt much the same. Thankfully Lucy volunteered to be hypnotised, and so our hypnosis meetup actually featured some hypnosis.

Approaching Lucy as a subject had several advantages, not least that I knew she'd already been hypnotised by James and so I was completely confident that I could get her to go under, even stood up in quite a noisy bar. I also had some areas that I knew they both would like to work on; for example, he'd been unable to stick her to something in the past.

Something I really need to work on is my standard approach to a new subject. Often I end up winging my induction, instead of following a familiar route. In many ways my usual approach of trusting my instincts to bring out the appropriate words and actions in the moment works quite well, but I find it works better once I'm in the zone. Trying produce an induction on the fly before I've warmed up a bit seems to take me aback somewhat; I hope it doesn't show.

The induction I winged was sort of based on the magnetic hands set piece. Basically I had her hands come together and had her imagine they were getting bound tightly together. I could see she'd already gone from the way she was responding, so I simply said that in a moment I would tap her on the top of her hands and when I did she'd let her arms drop to her sides and go deep into hypnosis. As I did so, saying "sleep!" at the same time she went completely limp, though still standing, and I was able to deepen her whilst gently rocking her from side to side.

So I deepened her, gave the suggestion that she'd go back under if I told her to sleep. Brought her back up, checked she was comfortable, took her arm and went into an Ericksonian handshake, letting her arm become cataleptic as her eyes glazed over. I let her hang there for a moment or two, and then with "sleep!" she was going deeper again.

This was when I decided I'd have a bash at sticking the unstickable person to our table. I'm firmly of the opinion that any hypnotic phenomenon is a skill which some people may already have, but others simply have to learn; they have to be shown how. I've taught a few people to stick before and Lucy was quite clearly a better subject than many of them, so I was pretty confident I could stick her by showing her how, but first I thought I'd try a more direct method.

The way I approached it to string it off another suggestion. I took Lucy's arm and had her stare at it as I straightened it out. I got her to close her fist and focus on it as I tapped up and down the length of her arm and gave appropriate suggestions in a way I knew would induce catalepsy. I could feel her arm becoming stiffer and stiffer and told her that her arm would become completely locked rigid, that she wouldn't be able to bend it, that it'd be frozen in space etc. Sure enough she became completely unable to move her arm.

Next I kept her focusing on the stiff arm, but told her that in a moment her other hand would stick to the table, where I'd put it, and that just like her arm now she would be unable to move her hand. Then I told her that when I tapped her arm it'd come free, which it did when I tapped it, and then I said that was because her hand was now stuck.

And so it was.

As she looked at her immobile hand in complete and utter amazement I reflected on just how smug it is possible to feel as a hypnotist. I reinforced the suggestion by explaining that the more she tried to overcome that mental block that stopped her moving her hand, the more impossible it'd become, and what's more now she'd learned how to do it she would find such locks completely inescapable.

I felt sorry for James, who had tried to do this to her himself several times, but to be fair to him sometimes subjects just need a slightly different approach sometimes for them to make the right mental connections. I'm sure he will be able to get her to stick to things in future.

I tried some other suggestions on Lucy, such as making her laugh every time I clicked my fingers, and freezing like a statue below the neck if I said the word "freeze". I also demonstrated a few other inductions; I especially like doing the hand drop induction on good subjects because they all say it's quite an exhilarating experience. I also showed off a version of the "high-5!" induction, which I've been tinkering with recently.

Something that we have definitely found is the best way to find groups to approach is to hypnotise someone, ideally someone standing up in a prominent location, and to look around to see which groups are paying attention. Often there will be people who can't stop watching, and these are the people to approach and see if they're interested.

I'm not convinced that the current venue is the best place to be honest, and I have an idea for a more studenty area for the next meetup.

A good evening out though!

A Truly Hypnotic Relationship

2010-05-17T13:28:00.010+01:00

Having spent quite a bit of time around hypnotists something that I have noticed is that one topic of conversation that rarely seems to come up is the hypnotic relationship between a hypnotist and their significant other. By that I mean do they do hypnosis with their partner and if so, what do they do? Now, whilst this is not a blog about my relationship with my girlfriend, and I won't be discussing my own relationship here, that doesn't mean that it isn't a topic that I've not given some thought. I have the accounts given by a few who have been successful with their partners to go on, but of course no names will be mentioned.

So here my thoughts on the hypnotic relationship, by which in this context I mean a romantic or sexual relationship that involves hypnosis.

When I ask other hypnotists about whether they've used hypnosis with their partners the majority of responses are that it's either something that they've not really tried for whatever reason, or that it is something they tried and their partner didn't "go under".

This is something that baffles me, because to my mind the interpersonal connection between two people in that sort of relationship is already hypnotic.

Don't believe me? Consider it this way: When a person is intensely attracted to someone else they tend to focus their thoughts on that individual, become detached from the rest of the world and accept anything about or from that person seemingly without rational thought.

Does that sound familiar?

What got me thinking along these lines was recent discussion about the state of "permanosis" (a Jacquinism for a subject being in a permanent state of hypnosis). I agreed that some subjects will enter this state of continuous hypnotic receptivity during a hypnosis session, but I added that I think permanosis is a state that can and does exist for most people in certain circumstances.

The circumstance that immediately came to mind for me is the way that someone will react when faced with someone they are extremely attracted to. Men are probably the worst at this as far as I can see, but women are also susceptible. Over the years I've seen guys become obscessed with a particular woman, follow them around and do practically anything they ask in a seemingly trancelike state. Afterward they may even say to themselves "That was stupid! Why on earth did I do that?!"

Now that's hypnosis if ever I saw it!

So the impression I get is that many hypnotists I get fail to recognise this pre-existing hypnotic effect if try to do hypnosis with their partner. Going on what I've heard I get the impression that what they usually do is run through their normal routine, often set pieces then a rapid induction, and more often than not nothing happens.

In my opinion this is indicative of just how little understanding some otherwise brilliant impromptu hypnotists have when it comes to trance from the point of view of the subject. True it is said that close friends and family can be the hardest people to hypnotise because they may have trouble seeing someone they already know as the hypnotist, but there can be advantages too such as trust, rapport, and in the case of ones partner the pre-existing state of hypnosis I already mentioned. Hypnotists should have no excuse when it comes to hypnotising their partners, and yet so many seem to fail.

This is of course assuming that they aren't all really giving their partners orgasm handshakes every evening and just not telling anyone.

So where are they going wrong?

Well I think the biggest mistake they make has to do with context. As I have said before hypnosis is subject oriented; it is dependant on what the subject wants to get from the experience. Now in the case of a hypnosis show on stage, or a performance in the street, establishing this need is very easy; the subject is there to be entertained and the hypnotist has quite a broad remit to try whatever they want. When, however, they sit down with their partner the context is entirely different and I think difficulties occur when they don't adapt to meet these new circumstances.

"What does my subject want from this experience?"

This is by far the most important question any hypnotist should ask, and it isn't asked often enough in my opinion. This process is two way though; not only should the hypnotist make every effort to find out what it is that their partner wants, but they should also make the effort to explain what is on offer.

Both hypnotist and subject should got into the session knowing what sort of thing they are trying to do. The trick is to discover exactly what the other partner wants, and then to use hypnosis to give that to them, or enhance it.

For example, when one considers that all aspects of intimacy come under the umbrella of the rapport between a couple and the trances they are in when they are giving each other their complete attention the mind boggles at the wealth of possibilities that present themselves when they recognise that state for what it truly is, a hypnotic one. Everything from intensifying or triggering emotions or sensations all the way through to manipulating a person's sexual response, which I am told on strong authority works very well.

I know that a lot has been said about those who have a mind control or domination fetishes or other kinks, and certainly those sorts of games are possible applications of hypnosis, but I have also talked to couples who have used hypnosis in a more conventional form of intimacy, and not necessarily sexual intimacy either. So much is possible I would need hundreds of blog posts to cover them all; I don't have the time, and I really don't want to feel that jealous!

In conclusion what I would say to the impromptu hypnotist is this: Throw out the rulebook, forget your normal routines. Discover what it is that your partner wants, have them close their eyes and listen to you, and go from there.

Don't blink!

2010-05-16T19:10:00.002+01:00

A short post today. I'm sat at a coffee shop in Manchester Piccadilly station enjoying a hot chocolate before I catch my train back to Oxford. I love travelling!

Anyway, I thought I'd write a few words about an induction I've been experimenting with recently.

A year or so ago I remember Darren telling me about an induction that he had been shown by the legendary hypnotist John Cerbone on a course in Manchester. Darren was in fact the person that John used for his demonstration in front of the group, and luckily for those of us who weren't there someone was filming at the time.

This is what I have heard referred to as a "power induction", an induction that works purely on the effect of the hypnotist's projection of their confidence and their intent to hypnotise. I would also argue that a subject's willingness and ability to go into trance plays a part of course, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a poweful induction if one feels confident enough to use it.

Cerbone's induction basically establishes expectation by telling the subject they'll go straight into hypnosis the next time they blink, an action which is of course inevitable. He contends that blinking represents a natural pattern interrupt, a moment between thoughts into which a hypnotist can push a suggestion. He also, of course, hammers it home by shouting "sleep!".

I like this induction but I've been approaching it from a slightly different direction. I've only really used it as a re-induction with people I have hypnotised before, but perhaps one day I might try it as a first induction if I feel confident enough.

What I do is look the subject in the eye and say "look at me. That's good. Now, as you look at me try not to blink."

What this does is focus the subject's conscious attention on something, which is the effort required to not blink. From this point on they aren't giving everything I say their complete attention.

Keeping my eyes locked on theirs I then say "In a moment you are going to blink. When you do your eyes are going to stay closed; you'll let your whole body relax and go into a deep trance."

From this point on it's simply a case of meeting their gaze and waiting for them to drop like a sack of potatoes when they inevitably have to drop their eyelids, which is fun because it's hard to anticipate the exact moment. The hypnotist's stare is useful - focus on the bridge if their nose, not their eyes. You can also help by nodding almost imperceptibly every time their eyes almost close.

I haven't needed to cry "sleep!" at any point, which is good because as I said guessing the right moment can be difficult.

Give this induction a try. I think it's brilliant.

Negative Hallucination

2010-04-29T18:45:00.040+01:00

Or, a cyclist's anecdote about how the psychological phenomenon of negative hallucination is ever present in our lives.

I'm not going to the Last Thursday meetup this month for several reasons, but I thought I would share a short story about something that happened to me yesterday.

First though, watch this video.

My story starts as I was cycling home from the training course I had been on for a couple of days. The course was at a place only a few miles from my house so I decided that I would make the trip on my folding bike. It was an easy ride and I was glad of the fresh air and the exercise.

About a mile from home my route required me to cycle straight on at a roundabout. I should explain to my American readers that a roundabout, sometimes called a traffic island, is a popular kind of road junction in Europe. The principle is very simple in that traffic already on the roundabout has priority over approaching vehicles, which give way to their right (left on the continent). This constantly flowing arrangement can have many advantages over the alternative of, say, a traffic light controlled intersection.

The statistics show however that roundabouts can be very dangerous for cyclists and I think my misadventure illustrates this very well.

My ride home required that I cycle straight on and, being an experienced and confident cyclist, I proceeded to negotiate the junction in textbook fashion. I moved out to a position in the centre of my lane, waited for a gap in the traffic coming from my right, accelerated quickly out keeping well toward the centre of the roundabout, signaled my intention to turn left into my exit... and nearly got wiped out by a car.

I should make clear that the majority of bicycle accidents are what cyclists call SMIDSYs - "Sorry Mate I Didn't See You" - caused by the driver of a motor vehicle being in complete ignorance of the cyclist's existence, for whatever reason. This, and the fact that bicycles can negotiate junctions at much the same speed as other traffic, is why good cyclists take the centre of their lane when they have to manoeuvre. They need to be visible and act like the other traffic because being seen by motorists and lorry drivers is absolutely crucial to not being hit by them.

Unfortunately given the small number of bicycles on the road in the UK, and the even smaller number who actually display any understanding at all of good roadcraft, the bike awareness of motorists is often not especially high. Hence, when a motorist comes to a junction and gives way to traffic, in their mind what traffic means cars, lorries and buses. Did you spot the moonwalking bear the first time? Chances are you didn't, and that's because you weren't looking for one.

The motorist who pulled out from my left as I passed and nearly knocked me off my bike had been waiting in that spot for several seconds and just prior to pulling out had been looking right at me. I had, after all, very deliberately positioned in the place where I would be most visible. Cyclists often talk about the importance of getting eye contact with other road users for the very reason that knowing they've been seen is important, but as this case shows one can never be absolutely certain. As it turned out in this driver's field of view I wasn't a car, a lorry or a bus, I was the invisible moonwalking bear.

My point here is that all of us are capable of the phenomenon of negative hallucination, that it's happening all the time and that we simply aren't aware of it. If the brain doesn't believe that something is there we don't see it, it's that simple.

I could go on to talk about how, but for my taking evasive action, I would have easily been knocked off my bike. I could also go on to talk about the driver's response, which was to come alongside me a few seconds later and declare "I never hit you!" through an open window. I think human beings behind the wheel of an automobile can turn into such horrible individuals, and in this case it was his mission to prove to himself and others that he'd done nothing wrong. I could even recount exactly what I said in reply, although I'm not proud of my choice of language.

I will finish on a positive note however. I have cycled thousands of miles in the last few years and in my experience encounters like this are incredibly rare. This is in fact the first time that I have ever really felt in danger of being physically hurt by another vehicle. The vast majority of the time I find cycling to be a very enjoyable and rewarding activity, and I can't recommend it enough.

As an aside, if anyone is interested in learning about good cycling practice I can recommend the book cyclecraft by Jon Franklin.

Inside knowledge

2010-04-12T12:59:00.033+01:00

I've just realised that this is my 100th post! Wahey, go me!

Recently I did some hypnosis with a friend who had never been hypnotised before. This was quite a special session for me because it made me realise just how what I've learned during my own efforts at improving my own abilities as a subject is transferrable to taking the role of the hypnotist, and so I will share some of the highlights with you here.

My friend, whose name isn't Sarah, had expressed quite a strong interest in hypnosis ever since she heard about the time about a year or so ago when I hypnotised the guy who is now her boyfriend. It was clear to me, from the particular way in which she insisted that I simply had to hypnotise him again in front of her, that she really wanted to experience it herself at the next opportunity.

As we live quite a distance apart the opportunity was several months in coming, but recently on a holiday with a group of mutual friends I got the chance. You'd think that the chance to see some real hypnosis first hand would be a popular party trick but amongst our friends, a group of pilots, it turned out that this simply wasn't the case. Sarah, her boyfriend and I went back to our cottage, sat quietly by the roaring open wood fire and I took things from there.

I have found that pilots, by the way, are just about the worst bunch of people to try to pedal hypnosis to. There's an aura of egotistical control-freakery that seems to come hand in hand with the skills required to fly an aeroplane and this is added to the analytical mindset of the usual type of individual who decides to learn. This is not an ideal peer group of a hypnotist, much as I like my friends, but there is perhaps at least some consolation, which is their lack of desire to spontaneously close their eyes, go completely limp, and fly into the side of the nearest hill.

So anyway, I opened the session with my usual introductory routines of magnetic fingers and magnetic hands. Sarah did what quite a few people tend to do with magnetic fingers, which was to try to physically hold her fingers apart and I did what seems to work best in such cases, which was to tell her not to force it, but relax and go with it.

"Relax and just go with it, trust your instincts" is a good phrase I think.

You can always tell when someone is forcing their fingers apart simply by virtue of the fact that their fingers aren't moving together. When they relax simple physiology causes the fingers to move together on their own; hypnosis has nothing to do with it. Indeed, when a subject has done magnetic fingers I usually explain this, that it's not hypnosis, but what it has just done is show me that they are able to follow instructions and concentrate.

Next I moved on to magnetic hands. I like this because it follows on nicely from magnetic fingers, but it does rely on suggestion to work. Sarah responded well, always a good sign, and I made sure I continued to encourage her and pre-empted her hands touching. Pace and lead.

It's been a while since I hypnotised a new subject and so I decided that in light of this, since I wasn't feeling amazingly confident, I'd use the rehearsal induction next. I'm not such a fan of the term "induction" because from my own experiences I'm more inclined to see hypnosis not as something that one is in or not, but as a continuous scale from fully aware to deep trance. Sarah was a subject who was enthused about hypnosis, her hands had come together pretty quickly so she was clearly already in the foothills of hypnosis and I thought the rehearsal induction would be the best way to intensify the state.

I find it amazing how naturally the patter comes to me in the moment, and it's a good feeling when the words simply roll off my tongue with little effort. I explained to Sarah that as I raised her arm she would let herself relax and go into trance, and as I brought it back down she would come back to the room, and went through this process several times. I like this induction because it is a nice progressive progress which allows for plenty of feedback, and I was able to judge that Sarah was responding well and went into deepening the trance. Her facial muscles loosened and her breathing became slower and steadier, then she laughed.

Novice hypnotists take note here; a laughing subject is a good thing. This is a point worth mentioning because I've heard hypnotists say that they've had to re-start their inductions because their subject was laughing.

When, as a hypnotist, you are hypnotising someone what you are trying to do is get them into a state where their conscious mind is giving way to their subconscious mind. Assuming this, how can it be a bad thing if they are unable to hold back their own instinct to laugh? When a subject is amused, or if they start laughing, it means that the right part of their mind is calling the shots; they are letting their subconscious dictate their behaviour. This is exactly what you want to see from your subject! Commend them, and utilise it!

"You're laughing, that's excellent! Your instinct was to laugh and you went with it, you couldn't stop yourself doing it. That's exactly what we're looking for!"

One could even go further and tell the subject that they can't stop laughing, and challenge them to try to stop laughing. It is a good convincer, especially if you follow that by saying "okay, now become calm, let all your muscles relax, and go deeper" and the forced grin simply melts from their face.

With Sarah I actually tried to get hand levitation from her instead. Frustratingly, whilst I felt her hand getting lighter, I never really managed to get it to levitate. This was quite unusual because otherwise all the signs were good. I decided to switch to making her arm too heavy to lift instead, and this was where my inside knowledge as a subject proved to be quite invaluable.

I told sarah she could not lift up her hand, that it was stuck to her, and sure enough when I challenged her to lift her hand up she did not. Excellent, I thought, and so I told her that any time I told her to sleep she would go straight back into trance, reiterated that her hand would remain stuck to her leg and then brought her back up.

Her hand was indeed still stuck. "But," she said, "I can still do this."

And then lifted her hand up.

Now, back when I started out as a hypnotist and such phenomena were just things that happened to other people I would have become upset and demoralised by this response. I would have felt that the magic clearly wasn't working with this subject and given up. This time, however, having been through that experience, I knew I could hazard a pretty good guess at what she was thinking and carry things on.

"Ah!" I said, "but it took you a while to move your hand didn't it!"

She smiled.

I said, "A lot of people expect hypnosis to be very unlike what it actually is. You found it difficult to move your hand then, you had to resolve to do it, and what you're going to find from now on is that it becomes increasingly more difficult."

Then I told her to sleep.

As with a lot of new subjects she closed her eyes as though instinctively, but quickly opened them again. This is another of those situations where I know, as a subject myself, that what is usually going on in the subject's head when they do this is simply that they are looking for confirmation from the hypnotist. Of course the hypnotist who knows this, has confidence and keeps going will win through.

"See how your eyes closed then?" I said, "You're good at this, now let this happen, I can see you want to close your eyes."

Am I a mind reader? No, but I've had these experiences myself. I appreciate that the mind has to recognise, and to learn, how each phenomenon works in order to do it. Sarah's brain was actually very quick on the uptake especially, as she told me later, once she realised what it was I was trying to do as I deepened her. As soon as she made the link between states of mind she'd experienced in the past and hypnosis she was able to embrace the process and go into a deeper trance much more easily.

Something I may have said before is that I don't think it is ever necessary to feel that one should have to "trick" or otherwise deceive ones subjects into hypnosis. All you need to do is be honest, understand what they are experiencing, and use feedback to give them suggestions that work for them. In Sarah's case she even commented that in the past she'd visualised things to help her relax, like walking down some steps into water, so I immediately took notice of that and used it to deepen her.

We returned to the hand sticking suggestion a few times and, whilst on a couple of occasions she was able to lift up her hand again, it became a more and more difficult process each time to the point where she genuinely couldn't do it. Likewise the instruction to sleep became more effective each time. I also did a few fun suggestions such as getting her to laugh uncontrollably when I clicked my fingers, and took her to quite a deep level of trance.

If anything this episode revived my enthusiasm and confidence as a hypnotist, and I am very grateful to Sarah for letting me borrow her mind for an hour or so. Most of all though, it has strengthened my belief that the best thing hypnotists can do to understand the hypnosis their subjects are experiencing is to go there themselves and experience it first hand. It's the inside knowledge every hypnotist should have.

The March Meet

2010-03-27T12:53:00.003Z

There's not really much to say about the March meet. We, the last thursday group, are still meeting each month and once again this was a fun social occasion.

There was a lack of hypnosis, generally speaking, and I think we're all looking forward to warmer months when we can go out and perhaps approach people in parks. Crashing people's after work drinks and trying to do hypnosis in a loud bar doesn't seem to be quite so good.

The guys are meeting up again next week, but unfortunately I am going to be away on holiday. Ho-hum...

Legal clarification

2010-03-26T12:37:00.007Z

You may recall last summer the slight stir that came out of a certain hypnotist trying to cast the legality of street hypnosis into question.

Recently Jonathan Chase wrote this article on his website, explaining that he'd contacted his MP, who then in turn contacted the house of commons library for clarification.

To quote Jon:

"The general conclusion seems to be that street hypnosis is busking and as such does not need a licence – unless there is a local by-law specifically insisting on one and that calling it research in a pub would be seen as dubious by the courts."

So the word here from central government is that, subject to local bylaws of course, hypnosis on a public street probably does not require a license.

The second point in that statement refers to performing formal hypnosis stage shows without a license on licensed premises and calling it "research" in order to circumvent the licensing laws. This is something for which the hypnotist who was trying to stir up the trouble is known to do. My feeling after reading the above article is that this particular loophole is one that would be likely to close like a noose around his neck if he ever had to put any weight on it, something that would be immensely satisfying to watch.

I would like to thank Jonathan Chase for doing the obvious and clarifying this point for us all.

Also, whilst we're on the subject, be sure to tune into his new podcast radio show, the first episode of which is today, and can be found here.

The February Meet

2010-02-28T13:08:00.010Z

This month I made it to the meetup in London, which was great because it's been a long time since I met up with the London hypnosis crowd. Far too long.

We've chosen a new venue recently and it seems that our choice is also the choice for a lot of people to meet up for a drink after work. I managed to find Ben, who had found a table and was sharing it with a nice couple of young women, and about 15 minutes later I was even able to get us some drinks. It was pretty crowded

Later on however, once the surge in work leavers was over, this began to feel a bit less mad. I was able to catch up with Ben and chat with the ladies about hypnosis, to the usual interested but wary response that a swarm of hypnotists will tend to get, and a swarm we were, well a small swarm anyway, when Chris, Darren and Pete showed up.

Sometimes attractive women in pubs are really up for trying hypnosis, but sometimes they aren't. Ben settled for getting a phone number instead.

Overall the feel of the meetup was social rather than all of us feeling the immediate intention to go forth and zap people. The general feeling was that wandering around in parks in the summer when people are lazing around in the sun is better than disturbing them over dinner, although Darren and Ben did have a go.

The only hypnosis really worth mentioning was when Darren caught me musing about the hand clasp and managed to stick my hands together, dammit! He then proceeded to stick my drink to the table and to tell me that the drinking straw was white hot and would burn when I touched it. This had a fairly interesting result, which was that I went out of my way not to touch it, even though I knew I probably wouldn't feel anything if I did. As the conversation went on, I picked up one of the menus on the table, folded it, and used it to carefully lift the straw out of my drink and discard it onto the table.

The only other thing really worth mentioning happened later when Ben was explaining something to Darren. Ben likes to go into talking about deep concepts - in this case "everything we think is a metaphor" - and Darren likes to be perplexed by such abstract wordy... ness. Chris was looking on.

Here I saw an interesting pattern of behaviour that gets repeated at all of our meets, the Ben-Chris-Darren triangle, which I like to call the "that's bollocks!" exercise. Ben (B) stands facing Darren (D), whilst Chris (C) stands between them a couple of steps back, listening to the conversation. B explains something highly conceptual and confusing to D who protests that he is just talking nonsense. C stares into middle distance with one eyebrow raised and a half smile on his face, then chuckles when he judges that the conversation between B and D has become incensed.

Good to see everyone again. Same time next month then!

Curious minds

2010-02-18T12:57:00.007Z

It's time for a quick update about what I've been up to recently.

I'm pleased to be able to report that I am definitely improving as a subject. It's a slow process, but I am definitely getting somewhere. If you recall, back in December I was able to report that I had successfully been given a post hypnotic suggestion that I had no conscious awareness of and of course I'm not the kind of person to leave it there.

A friend and I have been able to successfully repeat the experiment several times since and confirm that yes it is absolutely possible to give me post hypnotic suggestions that I'm not aware of, which I will act on.

Who would have thought it? Me of all people!

It's worth mentioning that the process of hypnotising someone whilst they are on the edge of sleep seems to be quite effective. The lesson here is to be careful who you share a bed with; indeed one would imagine that this is knowledge that most people wouldn't want their partner to know about. Well, unless they rather like the idea of their partner messing with their head as they sleep; I've met a least a few people who fall into that category.

This could lead to paranoia of course, and causes me to recall someone I met in the past who insisted that people were sneaking into his house at night and hypnotising him in his sleep. Perhaps a good subject for a horror movie, but in my opinion pushing paranoia into the lands of delusion. This individual got rather angry when he was asked "Why don't they just give you complete amnesia and program you not to get suspicious?" and extremely angry when asked "Do you have any evidence, other than your belief, that they were there at all?"

I'm diverging from my theme so I digress.

What does it feel like to follow a post hypnotic suggestion without knowing what it is? It's actually quite bizarre and yet like most hypnotic phenomena I find it's very familiar too.

Everybody has occasions where they just do something on impulse, especially those who are used to acting spontaneously a lot of the time. I'm prone to thinking things through before I act, but even I have such "act now, think later" moments - a bit like rationality on credit. To me that's what an un-known PHS is like; I'll think "I know! Let's just do this!" and do it. It's only later I'll be told that the idea wasn't my own.

I've found that learning to be a good subject means learning to trust ones instincts a lot more. Why do that? Well, that's how in my experience hypnosis seems to manifest itself; following a suggestion is a kind of pseudo-instinctive behaviour. One could indeed argue that the kind of people that hypnosis works better on are people whose behaviour is more instinctive.

I heard Darren recently refer to the conscious mind as the "Curious mind" and to me this is something that makes a lot of sense. One way of looking at the process of going into a nice deep trance is see it as stripping away all of ones curiosity. I can feel myself getting better at that, and it feels good.

Why am I motivated to seek out this state? It almost seems paradoxical to seek out a state of zero curiosity for the sake of curiosity.

Perhaps I just think too much, and this is the backlash.

Against their will

2010-02-09T12:25:00.012Z

Another month, another rambling post I'm afraid. I was looking forward to the meet in London last month but I managed to catch the dreaded man-flu and couldn't make it.

This post is about something on which I feel I have been misquoted, which is my answer to the question that is often asked of hypnotists, namely this:

"Can a person be hypnotised to do things against their will?"

If you ask a stage hypnotist the answer will almost certainly be "No, of course not. Hypnosis is only suggestion and the subject can say no at any time."

It's a useful answer that I believe is true for most people. I think it is also a nice safety net in that it is arguably self-fulfilling if you suggest it to a subject before the formal part of the hypnosis begins. If you subsequently bring a subject up on stage or approach them in the street and hypnotise them for the sake of the experience of hypnosis they will probably be quite happy with the idea of being unable to speak, or being stuck to the floor, or such gimmicks. If you tell the same subject to strip off all their clothes or give you all their money the chances are they will refuse. In my experience at least the subject will come to their sense and say something along the lines of "Eh what? No!"

However, as this is a question about the very nature of people and how they act I don't think there can be a definitive answer to this question and the more you look at it it's easy to see it as a grey area. People are by their very nature varied and to say that people are incapable of acting in any particular way would not be very reflective of the real world. If you look for long enough there are people who would indeed rip their clothes off if the hypnotist asked them to, or likewise be trusting enough to hand over their wallet.

Making accurate generalised rules about what it is possible to influence people to do through hypnosis is, I think, analogous to making generalised rules about what it is possible for people to believe, and what some people will believe never ceases to amaze me.

In any case I think this question, like the acting dilemma, is intrinsically flawed. To me at least it conjures up images of a hypnotist clicking his fingers and the subject being forced by some sinister outside energy to dance and cluck like a chicken. They don't want to do it, but hypnosis forces them to do it, against their will not to.

To me I the flaw is that the question presupposes the assertions that free will is something that is firstly definitive, and secondly that it is a fixed point in space, neither of which I think are true.

I think that "free will" is a bit of an idealistic concept, to my mind idolised by those who like to believe the myth that all of their decisions are rational. I personally see behavioural decisions as being some kind of tug-of-war between a whole mish-mash of different and often contradicting internal arguments, some rational and some irrational.

So imagine, when someone is offered a bar of chocolate various thoughts bounce around inside their head such as "I'm hungry", "mmmm chocolate tastes nice!" and the perhaps more rational "but it's nearly dinner time". I believe that the final decision is a product of the balance between these factors. The individual wants to eat the chocolate bar, but they also don't want to lessen their enjoyment of their dinner by already having eaten. On some level they are willing to do either course of action, but in practice they have to choose one or the other.

Hypnosis does certainly have the power to cause people to act in a way that they normally wouldn't because, as I understand it, it influences the above decision process and can make less rational courses of action seem more attractive. A useful hypnotic principle to remember is that people do things because they want to do things, and because doing so will make the feel good. People will not do what they don't want to do; things that will make them feel bad. What I am saying here is that whilst a hypnotist can influence what somebody chooses to do, they can only choose from the menu of things that someone is willing to do.

Sometimes of course hypnosis will provide an extremely shy or repressed individual the excuse to vent something that they have always wanted to do. I think it is a common mistake of hypnotists to claim to have created it, rather than simply releasing it.

On a darker note I know of at least one hypnotist who insists that it is possible to hypnotise someone to make them do anything, even something horrific like killing their own child. My answer to this extremely distasteful proposition is the same as above, hypnosis will not make someone go against their will.

The only way it would theoretically be possible would be to arrive at the outcome through a circuitous means, such as giving the subject a gun and convincing them that it isn't loaded, or that it's only a toy like a water pistol. In such a case it isn't hypnosis as such that has caused the harm, rather it's a case of deliberate deception and violation of trust.

Consider this scenario. The same subject comes to the hypnotist and asks to borrow some sugar so they can make sweets for their child. The hypnotist, without using any hypnosis, gives them lethal poison in the form of a white powder and tells them that it's sugar. Same principle, same effect, and probably easier to achieve too.

The subject is most definitely not willing to shoot their child or feed that child poison, nor are they willing to be hypnotised by or to accept food from someone they know to be a murderous psychopath. Their mistake is misplacing their trust, and I'm glad that most people have enough intuition to recognise the warning signs before anything like the above could happen.

"Come into my bunker. Could you switch the light on please? It's the red button on the wall there. Thanks... Haha! Fooled you! That button doesn't turn on the light, it starts World War III! You pressed it, so it's all your fault!"

To anyone who read my last post (the one in which, by the way, I advised caution anybody wanting to take part in hypnosis online to be careful when putting themselves in the hands of an anonymous stranger) and came to the conclusion that what I'm telling people is that hypnosis is harmless so go nuts I say this. I will say it again, hypnosis in itself is harmless but as with any activity involving trust the laws of common sense apply when choosing who to do it with.

To those who think hypnosis is a way for people to take over the minds of others, in true Svengali style, I say this: Where are all the brainwashed hypno-slaves? Surely whoever could do such a thing would have taken over the world by now?

The truth is that in practice during a trance the vast majority of people do seem to maintain the ability to become suspicious of what's going on or to snap out of it if they start hearing things they aren't happy with. Of course that's not true for everybody, but with people no form of behaviour is universal.

Of course, incessant suggestion over longer periods of time will influence people and start to change their world view. I can think of two names for this form of legalised brainwashing and these are "Advertising" and "Religion". Note the lack of mind control rays; fiction has a monopoly on those.

Online hypnosis

2010-01-19T13:27:00.099Z

Well it's time I posted something.

First, let me say Happy New Year everybody! I wish you all the best for 2010, the last year of the first decade of the 21st century.

This is a post that's been brewing for a while, so I thought I should finish it off and put it up.

Back in 1998 I discovered a curious little application for my parents computer called "MSN messenger". Installing it kick started my own discovery of all that the Internet had to offer, including chatting to people I'd never met before in person. This was in the dark primeval days of dial-up, a time when MSN was a nice tidy little application, as opposed to its latest incarnation which seems to aspire to be the illegitimate lovechild of an advertising billboard and facebook's idiot younger brother.

I now own a Mac and refuse to use Microsoft's own software to access MSN, much to the betterment of my life in general. (In my experience an Apple computer is to a PC what a flying saucer is to an aeroplane: It's faster, shinier, can better everything the plane can do and even do things an plane never even thought of doing, but if you use one people look at you like you're from another planet.)

Even so it is my feeling that even the last twelve years or so the Internet hasn't changed much at all. Yes, I know what you're thinking, back then there was no facebook, no YouTube, I'd never even heard the word "Google", and the phone call to gain access was charged by the minute. Perhaps so, but what I was thinking about was the content written by the other people on there; the online community so to speak.

There are still people trying to sell all manner of things, even if only their own blinkered and misguided opinion. There are still lots of desperate men foolishly trying to find women using the Internet. There are still plenty of amateurishly coded websites that hurt the eyes and crash Internet explorer. There are even a few sepecialist websites with useful information. My point is that whilst the web may have grown by several orders of magnitude the nature of the protagonists has barely changed, and an enormous proportion of what's out there is just junk.

I remember going to chatrooms at the tender age of about 16 in the hope of meeting single women. I wasn't meeting any single attractive women in my day to day life and I made the mistake so many people have made before and since then, which was to see the Internet as a vast reservoir of potential for finding them. I won't say my illusions were shattered, but they were at least bruised by what I actually came across.

Under the banner of anonymity offered by the Internet many people will do things that they will not necessarily dare to do in real life. I remember being asked by others on these discussion forums the question "wanna cyber?", which in short meant whether I wanted "cyber sex", or rather to enter into a text only role play describing a sexual act with the other person. I was a teenager and overflowing with hormones, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the heck I'd want to do that. I had also once witnessed what the other end of one of these supposedly risque conversations was like; a female acquaintance of mine and her friend, sat with about 10 different chat windows open at once, responding to each guy's attention and laughing at how sad and pathetic they all were. The men on the other end of the conversation were, however, quite fortunate as they were talking to actual women (albeit not single or taking anything seriously) as opposed to men pretending to be women, which is also a very common phenomenon.

Now, I have made a number of friends over the Internet, some of whom I have subsequently met up with. I have also used MSN to a great extent to keep in touch with friends whilst at university and of course since then. I won't say that I didn't try to use the Internet over many years to find myself a girl, one interested in conversation not entirely related to body parts, because that would be a lie, but as time went on I became quite disillusioned by the whole thing. They say that you can be whatever you want on the Internet, but what they don't add is that it's only you that sees you that way; everyone else will most likely think you're deluding yourself, to put it politely. It came as no great surprise to me when my first girlfriend appeared in my life in a way that was completely unrelated to the Internet.

Something that caught me completely by surprise much more recently was the concept of online hypnosis, via voice or instant messaging, and just how many people there are out there doing it. It is of course not a topic that I am intimately familiar with, but today I'm feeling sufficiently misguided and blinkered of opinion to pass comment on it.

I realise I've been rambling on about the topic of men trying to find women online, and this is because I feel that there are many similarities between approaching people and hypnotising them and approaching someone one is attracted to and, say, asking for their phone number. It takes confidence and strength of character to overcome ones fear of rejection and to approach someone in person and ask for their phone number; those who don't have these attributes sit at home and go on the Internet. Likewise I think it takes a similar strength of resolve to hypnotise someone who's sat right in front you; but fear not, if you don't dare do that you can always go on the Internet and pretend to be a hypnotist.

The trouble is that hypnosis is based upon hypnotic rapport between hypnotist and subject; it's an interpersonal relationship. I don't think that an instant messaging program is comprehensive enough to convey all that a hypnotist is communicating to the subject, especially tone of voice and body language.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against hypnosis by text and I don't doubt that it works, but I do get the feeling that there are people out there calling themselves hypnotists whose sole body of experience is in that medium, and having seen some transcripts I get the impression those people sometimes forget that there's a person on the other end of it.

At the lighter end of the range of such individuals one will find the kind of people who pop up on sites like uncommonforum from time to time. These are the ones who ask others to read through their online hypnosis scripts to check they're using the best possible wording. Treating hypnotic triggers they want to install like programming functions, "when I say 'play hypnogame2' begin this game" and going through all of their syntax to make sure there won't be any errors or ambiguities when the trance code is parsed, like changing "when I say" to "when only I say".

I feel sorry for any subject on the other end of a trance from such an individual, indeed I hope they respond with the vengeful sword of sarcasm; something like "error: float 'tranceDepth' not declared."

(It's fair to say I would have studied computer science at uni, but I really didn't have the social skills)

The more worrying side of these online hypnotists are the ones who are into the whole mind control fetish scene, and have trouble telling the difference between their ill-conceived fantasies and reality. The best place to see the works of such individuals is on YouTube. You can recognise them by their awesome presence, so powerful that they must hide behind the visual of a headache-inducing spiral, and their commanding voice, which sounds suspiciously like the emotionless MS Windows computer voice. The voice tells the watcher that they are becoming a mindless slave, that pleasure is obedience, obedience is pleasure, etc. What a worthy individual for the title of hypnotist... I don't think.

Thankfully hypnosis is not the mind control ray out of the wet dreams of such online perverts, but the disturbing thing is coming across other videos of young girls watching such videos; it's just wrong.

Thankfully hypnosis is, for the most part, fail safe because it is based on trust between hypnotist and subject, and by virtue of the fact that it is really only suggestion, not mind control. Every so often one comes across case of an online pervert trying to use hypnosis like it's a magical power to try to take over and reprogram the mind of some unsuspecting individual, and most likely it doesn't work because becoming a slave or whatever else is being suggested isn't what the subject is interested in, and as soon as they realise what the hypnotist is doing they decide that they really don't want to play any more.

I remember a friend I once had commenting that for every good hypnotist there were 19 evil ones. To me, knowing the individuals I see at the last Thursday group, I found that hard to imagine, but of course those are hypnotists who need to be nice people for the subject that they approach to trust them, whereas it is not hard to believe that sad losers as two-a-penny on the Internet. In a text conversation, deprived of all non-verbal telltales, one is likely to take longer to realise just what the hypnotist is interested in doing, especially if ones own mind is filling in the gaps with what one wants the other person to be like.

Online hypnosis is something which potential subject should approach with caution, unless the hypnotist in question is known to them. To agree to experience hypnosis from a stranger one has met in a pub or bar, face to face and in the presence of ones friends, is more or less completely safe. To agree to the same but over the Internet to a stranger one hasn't met, and alone, is at least a little bit foolish in my opinion.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're one of these people who only does hypnosis online by all means do hypnosis that way with your friends, and use the Internet to make new friends with the same interests, but for goodness sake get out there and hypnotise some people face to face. If you don't do that you may forget that you're dealing with other human beings, and if that happens you don't deserve to call yourself a hypnotist.

Maybe... just maybe...

2009-12-16T12:26:00.003Z

Well it's nearly mid December so I guess I should write something. At least this time I have something to report.

I have mentioned on more than enough occasions that I have found my inherently poor response to hypnosis to be incredibly frustrating. Well recently it occurred to me that what this reminds me of most is the case of the friend who never gets in touch. The valued friend who one gets on well with and who seems to mutually really enjoy the relationship, but who never seems to make any effort to maintain it. The feeling that if one simply ceased all attempts to contact them that would be the end of it; they'd never be heard from again.

This is exactly how I've been feeling about hypnosis. It's just me keeping it going by constant and awkward effort, and if I stopped trying, stopped making it happen, the whole relationship would simply vanish.

Now of course with the friend, when questioned about why they never make any effort to say hello from time to time, they may of course say that they have been busy, they may say any number of true and legitimate things about their life which of course I would have no reason to dispute. The thing is though that I've always believed that broadly speaking people do what they want to do, and that actions speak louder than words. Regardless of what a friend may say, if they placed any level of value on being in contact they would be anticipating the next time and miss it when it was no longer there.

Traditionally I have always been one to derive my own sense of self-worth more from evidence than self-assertion, so I'm sure that what I describe above is something that used to upset me. More recent times and a better sense of self have brought me to realise that some friendships do just naturally fade out and there are better things to be doing in life than try to force things. Forcing makes things worse, because there's nothing more awkward than someone being friendly to an uninvited guest because they feel obliged to do so. Overall it's better to see a lack of response, over a period of time, as a signal to move on and find other people who do want to know.

I guess ultimately what I'm getting at here is that in assessing my relationship with all things hypnotic I have to try to avoid the trap of seeing it as an entity in itself, and applying the same rule to it. It would be so easy to see hypnosis as an acquaintance with whom the relationship just isn't working and thus to just leave it and move on. So much of the time it does feel as though I am just forcing the interaction, that it's just me pretending something is there.

Fortunately I have been able to recognise the difference, that hypnosis is an intrinsic part of my personality, and to press on. This is all just as well, because the other day hypnosis got in touch with me.

What I mean by that, as I try to keep this increasingly fragile analogy going, is that recently I was given a post hypnotic suggestion without being aware of it, and not only that, I also unwittingly followed it.

To the reader who doesn't know what a post hypnotic suggestion feels like I shall try to explain it. Those who are expecting mystical external forces to seize their limbs and make them move uncontrollably in true zombie fashion will perhaps be disappointed. I find a post hypnotic suggestion doesn't really have any particular "feeling" associated but the effect is actually very familiar.

Try to imagine a situation where you feel inclined to do something but have to intervene with reasoning to stop yourself from doing it. A classic example, and one well related to impending festivities, might be being offered more chocolates from a box and finding your hand already in the box picking one before you've even considered whether you've already eaten far too many chocolates already. Indeed, it's not an unusual situation for the subconscious part of the brain to have taken action before the conscious mind fully appreciates what's going on. One might even eat the chocolate without giving it a second thought.

The above is of course a suggestion which one gives oneself, especially if one likes chocolate. The thing is that if someone else has given you that suggestion, under hypnosis, and you have no memory of it the experience of following that suggestion is the same. You find yourself idly doing something and not knowing why, or indeed you don't even notice what you're doing because your mind is elsewhere. There is no "feeling" as such.

Then there's the other level, which is being aware of a suggestion and yet following it anyway, and the best comparison I can think of regarding that is lying in bed in the morning and resolving to get up, and yet staying in bed anyway.

So as I was saying I was recently given a suggestion in a trance that I was completely unaware of, which I subsequently followed without knowing.

How on earth did I get the suggestion without noticing? Well, when I told the friend I've been practicing with that they should consider me fair game little did I realise how inventive they could be. Catching someone completely unexpectedly is a great little convincer that hypnosis is working, as the subject will be unprepared and delighted to find that they've responded to the suggestion before they even knew what was happening. However, my friend in this case took the idea a little bit further and caught me when I'd fallen asleep! (Yes, the parties I hold in my flat are just that exciting!)

I remember a snap of the fingers, which I thought I had dreamed, but nothing else hypnotic. Apparently my eyes were fluttering like mad and I was twitching as I listened to the suggestions they were giving me - I remember none of that!

It's interesting because it suggests to me that the dreaming state that exists on the edge of sleep is not dissimilar to a hypnotic trance. How's that for a completely non-scientific piece of reasoning.

So yes, upon waking up I had absolutely no reason to believe anything had been going on. Until, that is, I found myself stuck where I was. What's more, I'd become stuck without even giving it a second thought, and it wasn't until my friend commented "try and move" before I realised that I was trying to and failing. It all happened in such a way as to remove any doubt as to whether it was something I was simply pretending to do.

So yes, something happened without any deliberate effort from me. My relationship with hypnosis, as a subject, is not simply wishful thinking and mindless persistence on my part.

Yay!

This was a couple of weeks ago. Needless to say my restored and limitless enthusiasm for hypnosis drove me to procrastinate over blogging about it for all this time.

I really should feel more positive than I do at the moment, but none of this has brought me out of the doldrums I've been in over the last few months. Perhaps I will find some opportunities to practice some hypnosis over Christmas.

Who knows, I might even finish "Analytical Subjects III"!

We'll see...

Disillusionment

2009-11-30T13:22:00.007Z

Well, I very nearly made it through the whole of November without writing anything!

I would like to be able to report that my lack of posts over the last month or so has been down to my being extremely busy hypnotising lots of people. Truth be told this couldn't be further from the truth and whilst I have been busy with things such as work and my girlfriend, I have also been suffering from a complete lack of enthusiasm for all things hypnotic.

The first issue I've had is the age-old one. I simply haven't been finding the opportunities I need to get hold of people to hypnotise. Going out an finding people in Oxford would be the best idea, but I'm really not so keen on the idea of going it alone. There are regular meet-ups in London of course but to go there takes quite a long time, costs too much for me to go more than once a month, and in any case the atmosphere in central London isn't one I feel particularly comfortable in.

I think the biggest issue however comes from my own experiences of hypnosis.

As subjects some people seem to be able to get incredible experiences out of hypnosis, but the more I do this the more rare those people seem to be. For the majority of people the experience is more lukewarm, and for the unfortunate few like myself those experiences don't even exist, at least to start with.

When I first discovered hypnosis I was very excited by all of the possibilities it might present in terms of things I could experience through it, as well as what exeriences I could give to others. The reality for me has been extremely disappointing, and the rewards I have reaped for months and months of working at being a better subject have been tiny.

How the hell am I supposed to go out and sell this to people I approach if my own belief in what hypnosis can really do is so compromised?!

Hypnosis without trance

2009-10-30T19:53:00.005Z

I feel I should give a plug at this point for James Rolph, who has recently started his own blog about his own unique approach to hypnosis. James has often come to the meetups in London, has a style of performance that I find extremely enjoyable to watch and from whom I have learned quite a few fun waking hypnosis tricks.

James' blog and videos can be found at http://www.hypnosiswithouttrance.com/

From my own perspective I think that "hypnosis without trance" is a bit misleading. I would personally say that trance is very much present during waking hypnosis, where a subject has their attention focused and is accepting suggestions. I suspect that James' definition of what constitutes "trance" (ie the eyes closed apparently sleep-like state) is different from mine.

Whatever one decides to call it, there is no denying the impressive results he is able to achieve through his methods. His site is definitely worth a look!

Man flu

2009-10-29T19:30:00.002Z

Yes that's right, I'm not in London this evening.

As my girlfriend has observed I have the dreaded "man flu" and find myself confined to my flat feeling sorry for myself. I have a head that's completely bunged up and for the last couple of days I've been occupied with the arduous process of trying to sneeze and cough the deeper sections of my lungs out of my body.

I'm absolutely gutted that I can't make it to the meet this evening because as always I've been really looking forward to going. Nevertheless, in my current state there's no guarantee that if I tried to go to London I'd get there, and even if I did manage to find the place I know very well that someone with my symptoms traveling on the tube would be extremely popular... not.

So I'm going to sit in tonight and concentrate on not getting any sicker.

What I have been doing all day today is watching hypnosis videos on YouTube, of varying quality of course. One that I particularly liked was this one, taken from the beginning of a Las Vegas stage hypnosis show. The optical illusion is impressive and a nice way to get the audience's attention for the more hypnotic context of the later suggestibility test.

Some good ideas here for the magnetic hands set piece. In particular like the action of rubbing hands together, which of course aids in encouraging the hands come together. I'm also beginning to like the idea of my own hypno-assistant, although I doubt my girlfriend would approve.

How not to do it!

2009-10-26T12:49:00.037Z

One thing about having hypnosis as a hobby is that subjects rarely, if not never, come to you. If you want to hypnotise people you have to ask them, or at least bring the subject up.

It rather reminds me of my experience of being male and being in my late teens to early twenties. I desperately wanted attention from women, but I learned the hard way that no amount of being an honest, considerate, and kind individual would make women notice me. Somebody, I forget who, told me "nobody is going to give you a girlfriend", and this turned out to be even truer than I cared to admit at the time. To this day I still hold to the belief that generally speaking the idea of single women is a myth perpetuated by wishful thinkers.

It is much the same when it comes to finding subjects to hypnotise. No amount of knowing how to be a good hypnotist will make the subjects come to you a bit of honest hypno-fun. The challenges are much the same. First it's a case of knowing where to go to find subjects, and secondly, if the potential subjects are strangers, having the confidence to approach them.

These musings are foremost in my mind at the moment because this weekend I was doing what I haven't done enough of recently, which is shamelessly leaping on any opportunity to bring hypnosis into the conversation when with friends. As I said before, if you never bring it up you never get the opportunity to practice.

I learned two lessons that evening, and both left me feeling rather foolish.

During one of these conversations a friend of mine, who as it happens I'd not seen in a few years said that he'd like me to hypnotise him. I was delighted to have the opportunity, so I went straight into magnetic fingers and then on to magnetic hands.

No response. The hands were rock solid in mid air.

I have nearly always found that an individual's response to magnetic hands is indicative of how good a subject they are going to be for me. It shows me how willing they are to follow suggestions and engage their imagination. Having known this person as long as I had and knowing very well that he is extremely suggestible I was frankly shocked at his lack of response to my suggestions.

I like to make a point of asking subjects who I fail with what it is they are thinking afterwards, and it was then that I found out why it hadn't been working. He told me that he was only doing it because his girlfriend had asked him to and that he wasn't expecting that it would work anyway. After I heard that I wasn't so bothered about my abilities, I just wished I'd been more perceptive about how willing my subject was.

A string of successes in front of friends is something that will build a reputation and expectations. I can't help but think that bad choices over when and who to try to hypnotise seem to have locked me into the opposite spiral as far as they are concerned.

This certainly wasn't helped by my second attempt at hypnosis that evening. Later on we were stood in a club in Oxford and a friend commented to me that I probably wouldn't be able to hypnotise her because it was too noisy. I told her that I didn't need to speak to hypnotise her. Intrigued, she asked how I would do that. I obliged by showing her a non-verbal Erickson handshake.

A non-verbal Erickson handshake is, for the practiced hypnotist, probably the most effort-free induction there is. To do it I ambiguously hold the subject's arm, making it unclear as to who is supporting it, and effectively stare out the subject until they go into trance. All I need to do is look them in the eye and give a barely inperceptible "that's right" nod any time they exhibit any signs of behaviour that is trance-like, such as blinking.

The first time she was distracted by a view of our friends over my shoulder, so I took her by the shoulders and gently turned her to face away from them so we could start again. This time her eyes closed and her head dropped forward in less than 30 seconds.

Just as I was feeling the elation that it had worked, and I stepped around to the side to talk into her ear to deepen, everything went horribly wrong. She snapped out of it suddenly with a squeal. Why? because being the clumsy idiot that I am I'd trodden on her foot!

I of course apologised immediately, but that was it for the evening as far as hypnosis was concerned. I am extremely glad that I learned this lesson on a friend and not a stranger who I'd approached, but I'm still kicking myself that I could be so stupid as to not think about where I was putting my feet!

I don't feel like a complete amateur at the moment. Really I don't.

Fun in Camden

2009-10-20T12:47:00.022+01:00

I decided that this month I would like to turn up to on of the MMH meets in London, so yesterday I booked the afternoon off work and headed down to Covent Garden in London.

The MMH regulars are a great bunch of people who are at least as adept at impromptu magic tricks as they are at hypnosis, and they often have me completely in awe when they make cards, coins and rubber bands in their hands do all sorts of crazy things.

I am currently working very hard on making a coin vanish. Ben endorsed my efforts by saying that it "works well... on 12 year olds maybe".

For the most part this was for me a Social meetup, at least for the first half. We all sat in the pub and chatted for most of the rest of the afternoon, and then went for dinner.

After much procrastination we decided that we should all head off to Camden, or rather some of us. We made our way to a very nice studenty bar in Camden where we caught up with Darren.

It was at this point that Pete Crossland asked if he could hypnotise me, a consequence of my gaining a reputation as an easy subject I suspect. He used a hand-to-eye fixation induction and tried a few tricks like sticking me to my stool, which of course worked, and then told me that Darren was invisible so I couldn't see him, which worked only in so far as that I couldn't look at Darren directly, but of course I knew he was still there and could see him in my peripheral vision.

Pete's routine certainly turned a few heads nearby. I came out of trance to find several bystanders staring at me intently as though they expected me to explode or something similar at any minute. It was the foot in the door that all impromptu hypnotists like to get, so soon two girls were being shown hypnosis.

Pete handed me over to Darren, who did a routine with me that felt rather groundbreaking in terms of my experiences as a subject. He told me that I would not be able to answer any question regardless how easy or trivial it was. In the past I have found my reaction to such suggestions to consist of hearing the answer loud and clear inside my head, but I simply cannot bring myself to say the answer out loud.

This experience was very different. I found myself completely unable to think about the question at all. Each question simply threw my mind into confusion as it scrambled around in the dark trying to find the meaning of it and follow it through. It was a very new experience for me and I was genuinely speechless!

It just goes to show how quickly response to a certain type of phenomena can actually develop once the brain actually discovers how to do it! When it comes to amnesia that is something that is genuinely quite exciting, if a little scary. Rollercoaster scary.

Once again I found myself heading off just as things were starting to kick off properly with the local students. Great to see everyone again though!

Analytical Subjects II

2009-10-13T13:06:00.012+01:00

In part 1 I talked a bit about why I think it is that analytical subjects have trouble with hypnosis. In this post I will talk about where I think most hypnotists go wrong in trying to hypnotise them and what the most common mistakes are.

Hypnotists who understand the issue with analytical subjects least fall broadly into two categories.

Firstly there are the hypnotists who are good subjects themselves and thus have difficulty comprehending how anybody could find trance difficult, which is quite understandable. In this case it is not so much a case of the blind leading the blind, rather a case of the sighted teaching the blind to play darts.

Actually no, that's an awful analogy but I'm sure you get the point. People who find it easy to be hypnotised often find it hard to explain just how they do it because they take so much of what they do for granted, like knowing where the target is.

Secondly there are the hypnotists who are not themselves good subjects or who are unwilling to even be subjects. These are often the worst offenders, because they have little or no understanding of what the experience of trance is really like and develop all kinds of misconceptions based on the reactions of their subjects. Don't get me wrong, some of the world's best hypnotists are no doubt poor subjects themselves, but it can lead to a complete lack of understanding about what the subject is experiencing.

Hypnotists who have themselves never been hypnotised will see subjects appear to fall like dominoes in their wake and think they're dealing out dynamite. Perhaps they are, but the point here is that that it doesn't always feel like that for the subject; as a general rule I think the subject nearly always underestimates how much hypnosis is really affecting them.

So the hypnotist will think that trance is this magic state and all that they have to do is get the subject there, get the subject into it and they've onto a winner. This is often a reason why such individuals have trouble experiencing hypnosis themselves; they go into a light trance with no trouble at all, but it feels so distinctly unimpressive that they believe it hasn't worked. The experience doesn't meet the expectation.

Mistake 1 - Trance or bust

Mistake, or indeed major misconception, number 1 is the nature of trance as an experience for the subject. Both of the above types of hypnotists expect trance to have some profound and, frankly, incapacitating effect on their subjects. Not only that, this expectation is picked up upon by the subject. Both parties in the hypnotic contract, hypnotist and subject, expect something astounding to happen when the word "sleep" is said.

Analytical subjects "don't get" hypnosis. They think critically by nature, thinking uncritically does not come naturally to them and especially not when they are required to do it on demand. However, having said that like anyone they do actually enter trance; they will have their eyes closed with their attention completely focused on the hypnotist, which is more than what's needed for trance. The important thing to understand though is that don't realise they're entering trance. Analytical subjects only go into a very light trance so they will not see or feel any evidence of anything unusual going on, and so they won't believe anything has happened.

This is where I think the build up of anticipation, which is usually very important for hypnotists, actually works against them when working with an analytical subject. The experience doesn't meet the expectation.

If the hypnotist expects trance incapacitate or at least impress their subject and it doesn't they will believe that they have failed to induce it. They don't recognise that, although the subject may not be convinced, trance is happening nonetheless and give up.

The hypnotist gives up, and of course that is the point at which they fail.

Mistake 2 - Special inductions

Mistake number 2 is what seems to come naturally after mistake number 1; the idea that there is a special induction out there that will work. They think their first induction failed to produce hypnosis, but if they use the right induction the magic will happen.

Many hypnotists will at this point start trying all sorts of special inductions. I lose count of all the times that I've heard of hypnotists saying words to the effect that "Oh, an analytical subject eh? You need an instant/confusion/overload induction for them!" Sure enough, the hypnotist will soon have the poor subject hopping up and down on one foot singing the national anthem backward whilst balancing a fish on their head, all so that this time when they say "sleep!" it will work!

As a subject I went through a phase of trying all sorts of inductions in the hope that something would work on me and a number of hypnotists, most notably Darren, have performed many instant and confusion inductions on me. Anyone who knows Darren will know how good he is at these, and when he demonstrated them on me he executed them flawlessly. However, none of these inductions produced a trance that was different to any of the others I'd already experienced, and as I didn't recognise that I really was in a trance I thought they hadn't worked.

If the subject didn't feel as though they were in a trance the first time they are much less likely to believe it a second time with an even bigger build up to the same thing. Trust me, the momentary confusion passes leaving the subject sat there with the same feeling they had before and when nothing appears to have happened this is when the hypnotist's credibility crumbles into dust.

Don't get me wrong, these inductions do work and they can be a lot of fun but in my personal experience they are less than useless with an analytical subject without also having the right attitude to the rest of the process. I cannot stress enough that to an analytical subject trance simply feels like the unremarkable feeling that they're sat there with their eyes closed. The more dramatic the fashion in which they are put there the more underwhelming the experience will seem to them when they arrive.

I call this approach to hypnotising an analytical subject the search for the "magic bullet" induction. This is the idea that for everybody there is a special induction that will put them in very deep instantaneously, if only it could be found. It is usually touted by hypnotists with little or no experience of trance themselves. It is impossible to disprove this assertion, as one can always insist that the magic bullet simply hasn't been found yet, however I am extremely skeptical.

In my experience if a willing subject is with a hypnotist whose approach they're comfortable with any induction is as good as any other; the subject will perform within the bounds of their abilities, perhaps pushing that envelope outwards in the process. I assert that trance is a skill; everybody has a latent ability when they start out, everybody gets better with practice, and everybody learns at a different rate. A good and experienced teacher with a good understanding of what the subject is experiencing can help this process, but I have seen and heard of nothing that will produce the step change needed to turn an analytical subject into a somnambulist in an instant.

I should stress that it is in my own best interests to be disproved on this point, but sadly so far I have not.

Mistake 3 - Trying to be clever

This mistake is less serious but definitely worth mentioning because it is more common.

The worst offender as far as this is concerned is the hypnotist that's got all the language patterns, all the clever syntax, all the textbooks, and thus all the answers they think they need. "Just say this, because it distracts the critical faculty away from the first statement and then you can confuse them with the next statement which is compounded and forced through by this particular adjective, and then hey presto!" etc etc. Then they pat themselves on the back for being so clever.

If analytical subjects are good at anything it is analysing what's going on. Foremost in their mind is always a sense of wanting to understand what's happening, the process, what the rules are and how things work. If they get the slightest impression that the hypnotist is withholding anything from them, or trying to trick or lead them blindly in any way, they get defensive until they have their answer. "What's the scam here?" sums it up nicely.

This is why overload or diversion tactics are not necessarily a good idea for analytical subject in my opinion. Far from having the desired effect the subject will in fact realise what's happening and instinctively put their attention where it's not being directed to try to understand the nature of the trick being pulled on them.

Analytical individuals do not take anything for granted, may have read up on hypnosis beforehand and faced with the usual pre-talk "lies to children" may also decide to ask difficult questions like "why?". They become suspicious if they believe the hypnotist isn't being sincere, or is unable or unwilling to answer their questions.

A lot of hypnotists simply like to aid the process of hypnosis by setting up a positive context with their subject by selective use of the information, and this isn't a bad thing at all. In such a case it's fair enough and the mistake isn't being too clever, the mistake is not being clever or subtle enough and getting caught out.

There is no need to lie to or patronise an analytical subject, and the hypnotist who does immediately loses all credibility.

Mistake 4 - Giving up

Mistake number 4 is the worst. This is giving up on the subject and writing them off as a lost cause. The belief that a number of hypnotists have is that some people cannot be hypnotised, and that some people simply aren't worth working with because they "won't go". There are some otherwise very talented hypnotists who are included in this number.

What happens is that the hypnotist, having tried and failed with everything they can think of, comes to the conclusion that the willing individual in front of them cannot be hypnotised. There are a number of rationalisations commonly used, one is to believe that some people simply can't be hypnotised, and another is believing that some fear or other form of reluctance on the part of the subject is preventing the hypnosis from working.

This is nonsense. I know this because I was once told such things myself.

There are some people who cannot be hypnotised but these are not intelligent and willing individuals. People with diminished mental abilities cannot be hypnotised. There are people who are simply unwilling to be hypnotised in a formal context, which is fair enough. I am firmly of the belief that anybody who wants to be hypnotised and puts their mind to it can do so.

Something that is worth considering is the question of what the objective of the hypnosis is, and whether can a particular subject be hypnotised to achieve the right sort of phenomena within a useful timescale. Analytical subjects don't usually give good results straight away and if the purpose of the demonstration is to entertain a group of people it is understandable if a hypnotist concludes that it's not worth the effort and moves on. Stage hypnotists have no use at all for analytical subjects because they are in the business of entertainment, they only want the best subjects they can find, and a stage hypnosis show with poor subjects too dull for words. This is of course entirely different to a one-on-one context where the focus can be focused solely on the subject's needs.

In the event that the hypnotist is having no success it is better for them to explain to the subject that perhaps a different time, a different place, and possibly a different hypnotist might be better for them, than to tell them that they can't be hypnotised. If they are willing, they can be.

...and next...

In my third and final installment I will explain how I would go about hypnotising an analytical subject.

Analytical subjects I

2009-10-09T13:30:00.017+01:00

Following on from my recent discussion of the acting dilemma I feel that I should take a while to talk about the topic of analytical subjects.

The lack of decent methods for analytical subjects, as Javier recently commented, quite rightly in my opinion, is something of an elephant in the room that hypnotists seem to shy away from talking about.

What we are talking about in this thread are the people who just "don't get" hypnosis. They just don't respond. You talk at them, give suggestions and nothing happens. There are plenty of people who just don't want to be hypnotised and will simply not go under, in a formal context anyway, and these are usually people who have been pressured into trying in the first place. What I am talking about here, however, are people who want to to be hypnotised but somehow can't seem to manage it.

I don't view my own model as definitive, but I would like it if my views on this stimulate debate. I am speaking as someone who was one of the worst examples of this sort of subject and I have a passionate desire to put across where it was that all of the approaches that hypnotists tried on me were going wrong, and even making the problem worse.

In this post I will talk about my model of hypnotisability. In subsequent posts I shall outline how I would go about hypnotising an analytical subject, or indeed how I would have liked someone to hypnotise me if I'd had access to this model this time last year. I will also explain where I think many hypnotists go wrong.

MBTI

I should talk a bit about the way my model of hypnosis explains the way in which different people respond to hypnosis differently.

My model is heavily influenced by something called the "MBTI", or Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Whilst this is not directly related to hypnosis or NLP in any way I do recommend reading a bit about it because it is a very interesting way of evaluating and understanding the way in which people make decisions.

I have mentioned MBTI before in my earlier post entitled "Typealyzer". Put simply it's a model that regards personality type as similar to left or right handedness: individuals are either born with, or develop, certain preferred ways of thinking and acting. In the model there are four opposite pairs of attributes, or dichotomies, which form 16 possible combinations (for example INSF, or ESTJ) each representing a distinct psychological type. The model asserts that individuals will, on the scale between each dichotomy, naturally prefer one type of behaviour over another, just as a right handed person will prefer to write with their right hand over their left hand. Indeed, people often find using their opposite psychological preferences more difficult, even if doing so would be to their benefit.

The four dichotomies are as follows:

Extraversion - Introversion
Sensing - iNtuition
Thinking - Feeling
Judging - Perceiving

I won't go into the meanings of these scales, interesting though they are, although I expect "Extraversion - Introversion" and "Thinking - Feeling" probably speak for themselves.

An individual's preferred behaviour type is often referred to simply by the four attributes toward which they lean. In my November article last year I subjected this blog to an analysis and the result was "ISTP". Most interestingly, if I typalyze BlackMeridian now I get this:

INTP - The Thinkers

"The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about."

As I said last November "INTP" has always been the result of MBTI tests I have taken in the past and it seems that with more information the algorithms the typealyser uses reach the same conclusion.

It's important to stress that these aren't laws, merely an individuals natural preferences, and something that the letters alone do not indicate is the extent of that preference. It's important to see an individual's relation to each dichotomy as a position on a scale rather than an absolute predilection for one type of behaviour or the other, and as my position on the scale between S and N has always been close to the borderline I was not too surprised when I got ISTP the first time instead of INTP. In truth I think my profile exists somewhere between the two.

My preference for Introversion and Thinking are, however, at the extreme ends of their respective scales. This would seem to indicate that I nearly always prefer to be in quiet surrounds and not be the centre of attention and that I usually like to think logically instead of emotionally, a generalised indication that is in fact very true to how I am.

MBTI is far from being a complete model of a person's brain, but it is a useful tool for understanding people and it's something that I believe in quite strongly. I feel the same way about the way my own model, which I will now explain, relates to hypnosis.

Critical or Uncritical?

So how does this relate to analytical hypnotic subjects?

I should say that I actually hate the term "analytical"; I prefer to use the term "critical", but the meaning in this context is much the same.

In my model of hypnosis I like to employ another dichotomy which, although completely unrelated to MBTI, borrows from it the idea of representing an individual's natural preference with a position on a scale. Such a scale, which I will call "U-C", or "Uncritical - Critical", would place natural somnambulism at one end, and at the other the behaviour of a willing but completely unresponsive subject - an "antisomnambulist" if you like.

The position on a scale does not state how someone will always behave, merely how they prefer to behave, what's instinctive to them. Also as with MBTI an individual's position on the scale may move depending on time, experience and context.

For the sake of my model I assert that there are two kinds of thought, critical and uncritical. Uncritical thought is when someone thinks and accepts something because it feels right to them, it's irrational and instinctive. Critical thought is the opposite of this, it's about reaching a conclusion through a logical, analytical thought process.

Uncritical thought is the kind of thought required to be in the state of hypnosis, Critical thought is the kind of thought that can be used to block hypnosis.

Needless to say everybody thinks with a mixture of both of these thought processes, but what we could do is plot a position on the U-C scale for each individual that would reflect which kind of thought process that they have a natural inclination to favour over the other.

What this means is that, in my model at least, an individual with a preference for uncritical thinking will make a better hypnotic subject than someone with a preference for critical thinking because when thrust into the unfamiliar territory of hypnosis they will favour their uncritical thoughts over their critical thoughts. Indeed, the more someone prefers to listen to their uncritical thoughts the more likely they are to listen to them to the exclusion of critical thoughts that contradict them. Their hand might, for example, get stuck to a table. Likewise the more someone favours being critical the more likely they are to shrug off such crazy irrational thoughts in favour of evidence and reasoning; of course the hand can move, what's stopping it?

Needless to say most people are nearer the middle of this scale, but some people live at the extremes. For example, one could argue that people who have "permanosis" (a term I have heard Anthony Jacquin use to describe being in a permanent state of trance) are people who are at the uncritical end of the scale. They have critical thoughts, but their thoughts are dominated by uncritical thoughts.

My assertion is that an analytical subject is someone who is well toward the critical end of the scale. Whilst they have uncritical thoughts their thought processes are dominated by critical thinking. They like to analyse, examine, reason, and will have a mistrust of how they simply feel about something if they can't find a logical reason to explain it.

Why be analytical?

So why analytical subjects analytical? I contend that they are critical simply because that's who they are, and frankly it's not as of itself a bad thing.

I said above that critical thinking can be used to block hypnosis, and I think it is this that leads many hypnotists to conclude that an analytical subject, who can't help but think critically, is someone who is afraid to go into hypnosis, or that they are resisting. This is an assertion that the completely willing subject will find at least confusing, and possibly baffling or annoying, because they know that they are doing everything they can to cooperate. They know it's nothing to do with fear.

If we stretch the definition of "fear" a little we could perhaps consider the way in which someone with a preference for a certain kind of behaviour might feel when faced with the opposite sort of behaviour. This is more a kind of awkwardness or discomfort and feeling out of place than actually being afraid. For example, an extreme introvert in a nightclub would feel very uncomfortable. A creative logical thinker in an art lesson might draw up the design for a helium-filled trans-Atlantic giant rigid airship passenger liner, complete with buoyancy and fuel consumption calculations and then feel very awkward when trying to explain their work in artistic terms to the rest of the class, who have drawn pretty flowers.

These are examples of when someone "doesn't get" something that the others around them are finding easy and natural simply because of the way they are used to thinking.

Analytical subjects just "don't get" hypnosis. It's not a defense mechanism; they just aren't accustomed to listening to the right part of their mind.

Now I have heard some people contend that young children don't have trouble with uncritical thinking and go easily and deeply into trance all the time, so therefore adults must also be able to. Perhaps so, but young children are also known to wet themselves or fall on their faces without putting a hand out, something that adults would find very difficult. Many people could put their foot in their mouth when they were children but most can't now. People grow up and develop as individuals; an adult's mind is very different to that of a child.

This is all about who someone is, and not what they were.

The good news?

The good news in all of this is that analytical subjects can be hypnotised; anybody who is willing can be. In parts 2 and 3 I will talk about the mistakes I think many hypnotists make when trying to hypnotise analytical subjects, and I will outline how I would go about it.

The acting dilemma

2009-10-07T13:26:00.076+01:00

On a couple of occasions over the last 9 months or so I have mentioned something that I have come to know as "the acting dilemma". This is a name that I believe Liz first coined, and I think it fits it very well because it is a real dilemma that doesn't seem to ever go away.

I should say if hypnosis is working for you as a subject just fine look away now. To know the acting dilemma is to become part of the acting dilemma!

It seems to me that the dilemma is what holds back an analytical subject from knowing how to be hypnotised, and that overcoming it is the only way to move forward. You see, to a great extent hypnosis works through belief. The "normal" (if there is such a thing!) subject extends their belief to the premise that hypnosis is going to work and as a consequence they find themselves responding, which then supplies the proof. Analytical subjects suffer from a critical outlook that requires proof to be provided before anything can be believed. They have it back to front, and it causes no end of trouble!

If an analytical subject can be persuaded to have a bit of faith and persistence they will soon find a seldom heard part of their mind, an irrational part that wants hypnosis to be real, calling out to them compelling their conscious mind to follow the suggestions being given. This may cause the subject to decide to play along.

It is this which poses the acting dilemma, which is as follows:

"Am I doing this because I'm hypnotised, or am I just pretending that I'm hypnotised? Am I not just acting?"

I wrote about this back in June in a post entitled "How to be hypnotised", in my answer to question 4, and in that post I explained the solution to the acting dilemma. This is not to worry and to follow the suggestions even if it feels as though you are consciously doing so. The idea is that soon enough you will find that responding becomes second nature and in effect the process becomes a subconscious one. "Fake it 'till you make it".

This works; trust me, it does! For example, initially when I was told by the hypnotist to "sleep" I would consciously close my eyes, consciously relax my body, and try to go into a trance, which frankly always felt as though I was just sitting there like a lemon with my eyes closed; nothing special at all. As I mentioned in my last post I have now reached a stage where my response to such a suggestion can feel completely involuntary and I have been in trances recently where my awareness of the world outside has fluctuated whilst a haphazard assortment of irrelevant thoughts have bounced around the inside of my mind like golf balls in a blender. It feels good, and it's definitely worth the months of "pretending".

Using this solution also becomes even easier if you use the rationalisation that telling yourself that you're only acting is in itself a rationalisation, and the real reason you're following the suggestions is hypnosis.

The problem is that using this solution to escape the acting dilemma is a bit like signing a pact with the devil, as I will explain in a minute. There is more to it, and it is news that is probably more depressing for the hypnotist than the subject.

The question is how does an analytical subject go about achieving the twin pinnacles of hypnosis, namely amnesia and hallucination? It's something that's been nagging at me for a while, but something happened recently that brought it to the front of my mind, and a recent conversation I had with Liz confirmed my suspicions.

At the last meet in London Darren hypnotised me and as part of the routine he was doing gave me a direct suggestion that I'd have amnesia for what he'd just told me. Now the fact that I'm writing this now will tell you that I did not forget Darren telling me to choose the five of spades from the deck, but that's not the point. The point is that I felt an incredibly strong urge from deep inside telling me to lie to Darren and to act as though I had forgotten!

I know I've said in the past that hypnosis certainly isn't an outside force, but as time goes by I'm increasingly finding that there are occasions when it seems that way. In this situation it was as though hypnosis was inside my mind, like a cliché demon on my shoulder, imploring me to lie against all common sense. Anyone who has experienced a post hypnotic suggestion that they're consciously aware of will know what I'm talking about, that almost instinctive desire to do something that doesn't make sense. It's a bit like the feeling that tries to make you have a little bit more of something you know you've had enough of, such as sweets, cake, ale, roller coaster rides or Scandinavian symphonic power metal.

The urge to just go along with the suggestion, even though the rational part of me was insistent that of course it could remember Darren telling me which card to pick, was very strong. I muddled through the routine with Darren, my head spinning from the dilemma, sort of saying I could remember but perhaps not, maybe; I did a very good job of confusing both of us.

Now if we go back to the dilemma and apply the same solution we reach the conclusion that to learn how to achieve amnesia it becomes necessary to follow the suggestion sincerely and pretend that it's working, even though it appears not to be. To do that though it becomes necessary to lie to the hypnotist! Likewise with hallucinations.

When I asked Liz about this she said that I was quite right about this, and that her success rate with difficult suggestions like amnesia and hallucinations was far from 100%, and certainly less than it might seem to anyone watching.

A list of all the embarassingly silly weird and wacky hallucinations I've done with her ran through my mind, and I found myself wondering which, if any, she had actually experienced as real.

"You'll never know" she said, with a grin.

I appreciated that she was sabotaging her own battle with the acting dilemma by admitting to me that she didn't forget or hallucinate everything she was told to, let alone admitting to it at the time. It occurred to me that I could use a hypnotic truth compulsion to get her to truthfully answer whether or not she was really pretending, but as I thought Liz's boyfriend wouldn't appreciate it if I destroyed her brain with a logical paradox I restrained myself on that one.

What I also realised, with some horror, was that the only way I have of telling whether someone is hallucinating, as a hypnotist, is what they tell me. It's their subjective reality after all. How do I know they aren't all lying to me! Is that all that hypnotic hallucination really is? Merely an overwhelming urge to insist that it happened when it didn't?

"I don't like to talk too much about this" Liz commented, "because it tends to depress people."

Too right, but even so I cannot conceive of any reason why Liz would persist in pretending her hallucinations exist if none of them ever did. At the end of the day she has a pain-in-the-ass analytical mind, and she'd simply give up and focus on other stuff that does work. I believe her when she says she really can hallucinate, bless her fibbing socks.

My own experience of amnesia suggestions do seem to suggest that it can be more than just an elaborate lie. I know I said I could remember the trance I mentioned earlier, or rather my rational mind was instant that it could remember. What I did find though was that when I tried to access those memories to any significant amount it was much more difficult than it should have been. It was like trying to reach out and grab a handful of smoke. It was a lot fuzzier than it should have been. Hmmm, interesting...

The trouble is that as far as I can see there is only one way in which I can find out for certain whether true amnesia or hallucinations are really possible or not and that's to keep going. I should keep walking down this path, paved with lots and lots of little white lies, getting better as a subject to the point where I can achieve these phenomena.

When I do, dear reader, rest assured that you should not believe a word I say!

Click

2009-10-07T12:31:00.020+01:00

Last November, only a month or so after I'd started out being a hypnotist, I asked the following question in one of my earliest posts, entitled "Sleep!".

"What does the experience of being zapped back into trance in an instant feel like? This is where I guess I have to ask for answers on a postcard."

I wrote it long before I actually tried hypnosis properly and had my bubble burst a bit by my apparent complete lack of receptiveness to it. That was last December, but of course since early this year I have been working hard to improve my abilities as a subject. Last night I had an experience that made me realise just how far I've come since those early months, and which I would like to share.

My response to the instruction to "sleep" so far has been one best described as "yeah, okay...". It's felt as though I have made the conscious decision to close my eyes and go back into trance, partly because I enjoy being in trance and partly because it's something you agree to do when you volunteer to be a subject. More recently I have come to accept that the above is probably more of a conscious rationalisation of what's really happening, which is probably a more subconscious process.

But it's always felt as though I've had time to think: "Trance? Yeah, okay. Why not. Let's just do that." Or indeed, as I confess I'm a bit of a junkie, sometimes: "Trance? Did someone say trance? Where? I want! My trance! Gimme!"

In either event I will allow myself to go limp, feeling compelled to go for maximum dramatic effect.

My experience last night was rather different. The friend I was with had given me the suggestion that I would go back into hypnosis whenever she clicked her fingers. On the face of it this might not seem any different from her simply saying "sleep", but for me the experience was something else entirely. This was especially as it caught me completely off guard; I did not see it coming at all. We were mid-conversation, I was in fact mid-thought when it came.

*CLICK*

It was like my reality hit a brick wall.

That's the best way I can describe it. There was no warning, no build up, no time to think about what I was doing. One moment I was sat there eyes open, chatting and thinking away, and the next everything had just stopped. For a split second the click was the only thing in the world and it seemed in the same instant that my eyes were already closed. Before I had a clue what had happened I was already in the warm darkness of trance and didn't care about the outside world. Don't ask how my body reacted, whether or not I flopped like a rag doll, I honestly don't remember noticing!

The change of state from alert wakefulness to the fuzziness of trance happened so instantaneously that there was absolutely no question whether I'd chosen to or pretended to follow the suggestion. It was all over by the time I had a clue what was happening.

It was, on balance, one of the most awesome experiences I have ever had.

The September Meet

2009-10-02T18:47:00.057+01:00

Cognitive bias, I thought to myself, is an interesting thing.

Thursday found me looking out of a train window watching the beautiful Thames valley whizzing past the window at 125mph. I had left my flat in order to make a brisk walk to the railway station to catch my train to London. I had discovered on arriving at the station that my train was running 15 minutes late. The train ahead of it, which would also have gotten me to London, I had just seen pulling out of the station as I arrived, on time to the nearest second.

"Bloody typical" would be the obvious response.

Is it typical though? Had both of the trains been on time, or if the earlier one had been late enough for me to catch and I'd gotten to London earlier than planned I probably wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Over 90% of trains in the UK arrive within 10 minutes of their scheduled time, but of course it's the occasions when they don't that catch our attention. What percentage of car journeys into urban centres can be said to suffer less than a 10 minute delay, especially at busy periods?

Best to appreciate the good things when they are present, as opposed to by their absence. So I thought as I appreciated being able to sit back and watch the mesmerising experience of the countryside rolling past. Train travel trances are much better than car travel trances I thought; you can go much deeper and there's no risk of causing an accident.

We'd agreed on a change of venue for this meet, nearer to Covent Garden, as well as the unusual date so on arriving it took me a while to find Ben, who'd found us a table in a cramped corner of the pub.

We chatted for a bit about magic tricks, and Ben told me how he'd spent time recently watching Peter Crossland and Marcus Lewis, hypnotists we know through the MMH group, working the crowd and he reckons that a couple of magic tricks are easily the best way to break the ice with strangers. Ben then demonstrated a really cool card trick to me, and I felt the need to redouble my attempts to learn a few magic tricks.

As if on cue Marcus joined us at that point, followed by Darren, and then followed by numerous phone calls from others trying to find out where the venue was. It turns out that as I had been the person to alert the Last Thursday Group to the date and venue, and as facebook in their continuing quest to evolve their interface into one that is utterly incomprehensible and impossible to use, it seems that the invites I thought I'd sent out hadn't gone out, and so only a few of us made it, and most of the others had to call us to find out where the heck we were.

After showing us a few impressive magic tricks Marcus asked if he could hypnotise me. I was actually about to ask him the same question, but I didn't especially mind going first. He used an eye fixation induction that had me staring at a playing card held in my hand, which seems to be quite popular at the moment. He then did a number of simple routines with me such as sticking me to my stool (which in this case didn't actually feel like sticking, but rather had me insisting that I was absolutely fine sitting where I was thankyou!) and having me forget my name.

Next I took a turn hypnotising Marcus. I already knew he was a highly responsive subject, so I felt confident using the Erickson handshake on him. What I wasn't prepared for was the way in which, just as I was starting, his head dropped and his legs nearly gave way under him I was already feeling very rusty with my patter, not having zapped anybody in a while, and in the noisy crowded space it seemed that it was all that I could do to keep him upright.

I tried a few suggestions, but when I brought him back from trance it didn't feel as though he was completely back, he was completely dazed and barely responded to anything I or anyone else was saying or doing. I tried patter to the effect that he would feel lucid and wide awake when I woke him up, but it really didn't seem to make much of a difference. Perhaps the situation was getting away from me simply because I was beginning to feel as though I wasn't fully in control. Whatever the reason, I wasn't feeling happy and decided to leave things there. I did a wake up and bought Marcus a drink by way of apology.

Next Darren had a go at hypnotising me with the old classics like sticking my hand to my drink and making me unable to say my name. I got my revenge by hypnotising him afterwards and having him split his sides laughing whenever I showed him a beer mat. After this I took some time out and just watched what everyone else was doing.

Darren came to me again later on and chatted to me saying that the trances I'd done with him were great, but I needed to work on my wakeups because he and Marcus had both been very groggy after I'd brought them back up from trance. I appreciated the advice from Darren and I take such comments completely seriously, they mean a lot to me, but at the same time I felt a little bit amateurish and out of my depth.

He then offered to show me a card trick. I knew he was up to something immediately; Darren doesn't know any magic tricks.

He had me staring at a card in a way that was not at all unfamiliar from the way Marcus had done to me, and I'd done to him earlier, then sure enough I was down and into trance. This time Darren tried a reverse mind reading trick on me, which I believe is taken from Anthony Jacquin's Manchurian Approach DVD. Basically it's a card trick where the subject is simply told which card to choose by the hypnotist, and then given amnesia for the suggestion.

This was the first time someone has given me an explicit instruction to forget that something has happened; Darren is just cheeky and confident enough to give something like that a try even if it probably won't work. My response to this routine made me feel closer to getting full amnesia, but very it's very hard to put the experience into words. I felt an overriding desire to go along with the routine and to lie to Darren that I couldn't remember being told which card to choose. At first that might seem like I was just pretending, and perhaps so, but the crazier thing about it was that whilst I knew very well that I had the memories of being given that suggestion I found actually getting at those memories to be very difficult! It was like trying to reach out and grab a handful of smoke, I could see what I was reaching for but when I tried to grab something for a closer look my hands were coming back empty. This hasn't really happened before.

I am getting better as a subject. Definitely.

Marcus had been chatting to the barmaid, who was interested in hypnosis and wanted to give it a try. Hypnosis wise he didn't seem to be having much success, although she clearly enjoyed having his full attention.

After hypnosis didn't really seem to work for her with Marcus, Darren stepped up and had a go.

This all led up to what I think is probably the best reaction to an induction I have ever seen, although not in hypnotic terms.

Darren had already tried one induction and she'd not "gone under", to her satisfaction, so Darren tried a hand drop induction on her. He had her push down on his hand, take a deep breath... that's right... push harder... take another deep breath... SLEEP!

The girl's eyes popped open wide in an expression of complete shock, showing white all the way around her pupils, and she recoiled as though Darren had suddenly turned into a poisonous snake. It's an image that will stay with me for a long, long time.

She clearly wasn't going to go under but Marcus used his initiative at this point. He offered to hypnotise her later, got her to write down her phone number on one of his cards, and then proceeded to do an awesome card trick routine by stringing effect after effect. It was incredible to watch.

I made it back to Paddington in good time to catch my train home. It was on time too, but then thinking back I can't remember any train back from London after a meet running late.

I'd had a good evening out, but all in all my feelings as I sat staring through the window at the blackness outside were not especially positive. For the first time at one of these meets had I managed to make myself feel like a complete amateur. Everyone else at the meets seems to be making more opportunities for themselves to get out and hypnotise people and they are absolutely awesome to watch, whereas I felt incredibly rusty and no better at this than I was many months ago.

I really need to start finding more opportunities to get out and zap somehow.

Lifting me

2009-09-29T13:09:00.001+01:00

Let me ask you a question dear reader. Which do you prefer? Pepsi or Coca-Cola?

I prefer Pepsi, and for a number of reasons. Firstly I definitely prefer the taste, and secondly I find that I find the blue colour of the cans and bottles much more pleasing than the red of its counterpart. That's why I prefer Pepsi over Coca-Cola.

Consider this though. I cannot recall having any preference for one of these drinks over the other prior to 1999.

No this isn't the result of some kind of mental millennium bug (especially as the current millennium began on 1st Jan 2001!), I believe I know the reason behind my change of feelings.

In 1999 I remember seeing a TV advert that featured the Corrs, and a song of theirs that I hadn't heard before "Lifting Me", which was in fact written especially for it. In keeping with the requirement for adverts to be surreal as possible it featured a guy with a sack in the crowd at a Corrs concert handing out cans of Pepsi to complete strangers. When he gets to the front you see a shot of Andrea, the lead singer, reaching down to him and he frantically dives into the bottom of the bag for a can to give to her, only to find that he's just run out. He cries out "Noooooo!", and then wakes up in his bed to find that in true cliché style the whole thing was all a dream.

I remember that the advert had me absolutely mesmerised when I first saw it. I was of course a really big fan of their music at the time, but there was something more. I can honestly say I never had a crush on any of the Corrs per se, but I have always been a fan of slim dark haired girls and that moment where Andrea looks right into the camera had the effect one might expect on a 17-year old male otherwise starved of female attention, not least stirring a whole bunch of assorted emotions up to the surface.

Little did I realise at the time that I was experiencing a form of hypnosis, and that my subconscious mind was being tampered with. Years later, and being familiar with what following post hypnotic suggestions feels like, I am able to recognise what happened for what it really is.

We all like to think we are rational and that the decisions we make in life are based on critical thinking and free will. In reality it is all too easy for the critical part of the mind to turn into the devils advocate for what deeper, unconscious parts of the brain want you to do, especially when gorgeous Irish women are thrown into the equation. After that advert struck such a chord with me Pepsi was always going to be my preferred drink, and it was left to my ingenious rational mind to think of some reasons why.

In my experience the subject always underestimates the amount to which hypnosis is affecting them.

You may think, when the hypnotist tells you that your hand is stuck that you are only pretending, that you are only playing along and that it isn't really hypnosis. Consider this though, when you didn't move your hand perhaps there was another mechanism at play, an unconscious reason why you didn't move it, and that telling yourself you're only pretending is how you rationalise your strange behaviour to yourself.

The hand didn't move; you were hypnotised my friend.

Neurology and models

2009-09-25T13:05:00.021+01:00

This topic is one that has come up recently on uncommonforum and much of this post is lifted from my contributions on there, so apologies to any readers who find parts of this familiar.

Consider why is it that only 1 in 5 people will respond strongly enough to hypnosis to, in the words of Kev Sheldrake, "do anything and forget everything", and indeed what is it that prevents the other 4 in 5?

My understanding of this is that it is all about neurology. For the sake of argument consider that all human thinking is made up of a mixture of critical and uncritical thinking. Some people naturally think predominantly in a way which exercises the uncritical parts of the brain, needed for deep hypnosis, much more so than others and thus when they meet a hypnotist the right neurology exists for good response to hypnotic suggestion. This way of favouring a particular way of thinking is a preference a lot like whether or not someone favours their left or right hand; most people naturally favour critical or uncritical thinking to a greater or lesser extent.

To draw an analogy, imagine asking a right handed person to write calligraphy with their left hand and regardless of their eloquence, vocabulary, wit, style and indeed their finesse writing with their favoured hand, the result of their efforts on the paper will be less than impressive. My point is that one will get a similar result when trying to hypnotise someone with a notable preference for critical thinking.

However, given enough time and practice, any right handed person can learn to write with their left hand. If the right hand is especially dominant this may take a long time, but it is always possible. This is why I believe that anybody can be deeply hypnotised given enough practice. It's simply a case of exercising that part of the brain and building up the required neurology.

Now of course I have only been a hypnotist for a year, so it would be extremely arrogant of me to push the above reasoning as any kind of objective truth. I have to stress that this is merely my model, which is based on my limited experience and understanding.

There are those who disagree with this model. For example, Ben White insists that there must be an easier way for someone to improve as a subject; truth be told I want to believe his argument because if it were true it would get me where I want to go a lot faster.

Then of course there's the argument that my model holds true for me, of course it does, merely because it's what I believe.

Joe, on uncommonforum, puts the argument that the reason I do not respond well to hypnosis is that I perceive it as losing my rationality and critical thinking, which is a part of myself that I treasure so deeply it makes me quite unwilling to turn that part off even temporarily. He suggests that I might even be afraid to do that. In this case presumably the belief that I need to learn how to be hypnotised in order to go deep is a mechanism that my subconscious has conjured up that would allow me to, using an analogy, lower myself into the cold water gently.

Given the way the mind works I have to say that I cannot discount this as a possibility. I am skeptical though.

For starters I know of other people who have developed their ability to be hypnotised over time. People who are far less restrained than me, and certainly much more willing to be submissive to another given the nature of their interest in hypnosis.

Secondly, Joe cited a line I wrote in a recent blog post:

"When I first tried to be a hypnotic subject I really wanted it to work, I will also confess that I was afraid that it would too, which was part of the excitement of it."

This line, separated from the context I wrote it in, can easily be taken out of context. Even so, I will admit that perhaps there is an element of fear in the excitement that I associate with the idea of experiencing deep hypnosis. There's an element of fear in my feelings about rollercoasters too; that's why I have a deep seated desire to go and ride on them, as many as I can!

There's a ride at Drayton Manor Park in Staffordshire called Apocalypse that, once you're helplessly locked into the harness, will lift you 54 metres above the ground, tilt you forward and have you plummet earthwards in a terrifying freefall. It scares the crap out of me, and yet I lose count of how many times I've gone back for more!

I do not believe that fear is an inhibiting factor for me.

I do value the way in which my mind works, including my critical and analytical nature, because over the years I have learned to feel good about who I am. In my opinion to do so is crucial to living a happy life. That, however, does not mean that I am not interested in or driven by the prospect of expanding the scope of my abilities and bettering myself.

So I may be building neurology I don't yet have, or I may be learning to trust a part of my mind that already exists, maybe I really am slowly overcoming some alleged inexplicably well hidden deeply held fear, or even something else yet again. Perhaps this is all just a question of terminology. At the end of the day whatever the label I or others choose to attach to the way in which my abilities as a hypnotic subject are developing what it is that really matters to me is that they are developing.

Expectation

2009-09-23T12:44:00.004+01:00

Yesterday evening I had another look at youtube to see if I could come across any other videos of people watching Derren Brown's "control the nation" show.

Derren had said during the show that his video wouldn't work if it was recorded or posted online, but it seems this hasn't deterred a lot of people from watching the show again, and getting stuck again. Needless to say if someone believes the video will work again it will, even though as I've already pointed out the video is just a piece of empty window dressing.

Most impressive though were a couple of videos I found where the individual was watching only the subliminal film, and so skipping all of Derren's vocal suggestions from before and after that were in the original program. In one case this was someone who hadn't gotten stuck the first time around, and yet just believing that the video would work was in itself enough to stick her to her chair!

All of this without hypnosis even being mentioned or any formal induction or trance. Absolutely incredible!

What I think this illustrates is that the suggestions that subjects give to themselves are just as important as those being given by the hypnotist. Build the right level of expectation and you don't even need to say or do anything to hypnotise someone.

Control the nation

2009-09-19T20:32:00.007+01:00

Last night Derren Brown went on UK television and performed a routine where he stuck viewers to their seats using a subliminal message video.

I have a great deal of admiration for Derren Brown as a performer and what I saw last night was no exception. What I thought was most impressive though was the way in which he was able to exploit the general ignorance of the vast majority of people to perform a waking hypnosis routine on television, which technically shouldn't be legal.

The program was quite long and the first half was devoted to a couple of "subliminal suggestion" routines, in which he was apparently able to influence the free choice of the people he was talking to. These were very impressive tricks, and I was especially impressed by the one set in Hamley's toy shop in London.

The second half featured the subliminal message video, in which he talked about the technology had been developed and fine tuning the effects of the video, etc. He then gave instructions on how to watch it and played the video. About half of the studio audience were stuck, and he recieved calls from people who had called in and were also stuck to their chairs.

Anybody who knows anything about hypnosis would recognise the incredibly simple way in which this trick was achieved, although hats off to Derren Brown for the delivery. It was very well done.

My understanding of how the trick worked was as follows. The subliminal message video probably didn't contain anything special at all because this trick was actually based on waking hypnosis. The program did a very good job of setting the context and builing anticipation. Derren then delievered all of the suggestions when he gave the instructions on how to watch the video under the guise of "you can expect the following...". The video itself was a useful tool in building expectation, but nothing more.

This routine is little different to the suggestibility tests used by all stage hypnotists and like those tests would not significantly affect the majority of people. A small percentage however (10%-20%) would take on board these suggestions simply because they are just that suggestible. Even 1% of an audience of millions calling in is enough to jam the switchboards. Most impressive was the high percentage (50%) of the audience who responded to the suggestions, although of course we don't know how they were selected or what pre-show work was done with them.

My understanding is that it is illegal to broadcast hypnosis inductions and suggestibility tests in the UK, but as he doesn't mention the H-word he can get away with it. He even asks one of the women in the audience "you're not hypnotised are you?" and she says "no". Of course she's hypnotised, but how would she know that? Few people recognise hypnosis even when they're in it, especially when there's not been a formal induction.

All very well done though, I take my hat off to him.

The show is currently available on 4oD and is all over youtube; definitely worth a watch, as are the videos of peoples responses to it.

Wizard's first rule

2009-09-18T12:50:00.078+01:00

Over the last few weeks I have found myself hooked on the music of a band called Nightwish, for which I can thank the influence of my girlfriend importing her music collection onto iTunes on my computer.

Those familiar with my musical taste may be surprised that I might like a heavy metal band as it's really not my thing. However, I do make an exception for Scandinavian symphonic power metal, and in particular I have been listening to their Once album. This is what happens when you mix a metal band with a philharmonic orchestra and a classically trained female singer and overcook the music to almost cliche levels, and the result is frankly awesome in my opinion. Throughout I find myself thinking that perhaps they had forgotten it was a mere album they were working on and thought they were actually making the soundtrack for some epic fantasy film.

This brings me onto something else that I've been hooked on, and Nightwish seems to engender in me, which is reading fantasy novels.

I've recently finished the Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan, which are pretty good, and spurred on by the mental images of epic journeys across strange lands engendered by Tarja Turunen's singing, decided to embark upon the doorstop that is Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind.

It is clear to me that Goodkind must have a large house with many doors to prop open because having written this book he has produced a further ten volumes to this saga, presumably to allow air to blow all the way through. This is as good a deterrent as any to starting out on the first book, but then I didn't realise this until I was half way through.

Anyway, unsurprisingly the plot of the book turns upon the concept of the the wizard's first rule, which is as follows:

"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool."

I'm not sure how much I agree with the term "People are stupid", but it does remind me of when someone once told me that "the person is intelligent, but people are stupid". I would say that a definition of this generalised stupidity is the rule itself; there is no need to state the stupidity explicitly.

I do think this rule speaks volumes about how people in general behave. The recent events with Dr Chicken Royale, as we now know him, and his letter to Westminster Council show very clearly how this rule can be employed to manipulate people. If one knows how to press the right buttons by using words and phrases that are anchored to the desired feelings within a person it is incredibly easy. Make someone in the council afraid of all the horrible things that their mind, in ignorance, can think of a street hypnotist doing and they will desperately want it to be illegal. Of course fear street hypnosis might be illegal and getting into trouble for failing to act to enforce it as such is just as likely.

I'm reminded of a line from Terry Pratchett's Discworld book The Truth, which is a satire and parody of newspaper journalism:

"A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on."

For a significant number of people resolving that something should be a certain way because of how they feel about it is the first step down the road of proving themselves right through a carefully biased selection and interpretation of the facts available.

As an aside this is why I believe religion will never be eliminated by scientific reasoning, even though the question "does god exist?" is undoubtedly one with a scientific answer. There is an utter absence of any scientific evidence at all for the existence of a supreme being, and all the logical arguments that follow place the odds of one actually exsiting at vanishingly small (it is impossible to completely disprove the existence of anything). However, a great many people want to believe in a personal god giving purpose to their life, want to believe in Heaven and everlasting life, and of course are afraid that hell might exist. For these people the debate is closed before it even starts, their mind is already made up, and as a consequence all the evidence they see subsequently points to their god being real.

Anyone trying to counter the influence of a wizard using the first rule with alternative information expressed in rational terms, regardless of how objectively true those facts may be, will find themselves facing a difficult and sometimes impossible task.

The last part of the first rule is the part that rings most true to me. It states that people "can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool". This to me reads as saying that the more certain somebody is that they are right, the easier it is for them to believe something that is untrue.

The Theism-Atheism debate is quite often mistaken as being one between those who believe devoutly in a god, and those who believe with equal conviction that there isn't, most people being on a scale somewhere between. In fact this is greatly misrepresents the position taken by the vast majority of atheists, which is that they will believe something for which there is evidence; their belief in a god is as strong as their perception of the weight of rational evidence for one.

I think that a more representative scale is based on critical thinking about the matter. People who are willing to believe something purely on the strength of their conviction would be at one end, and those who have no conviction and seek irrefutable objective proof for everything would be at the other. Most people are somewhere in between. It's a scale between two entirely different mindsets, as opposed to opposite ends of the same kind of conviction. On this scale the atheist who is 100% convinced of the non-existence of god is grouped with the hardcore theists, but good luck to you if you try to find one.

Now, moving on to hypnosis, I personally see hypnosis as a naked demonstration of the nature and power of belief over rational thought; without belief hypnosis does not exist. Possibly one reason why so many religious organisations are against it. Pot. Kettle.

Stop me if I'm being a bit controversial. I do enjoy it.

Now, when we turn the wizard's first rule the subject of hypnosis we see a similar spread of approaches in the way people think about it. For example, there are people who really want hypnosis to work on them, and therefore it does. There are arguably people who believe that hypnosis is all powerful are afraid it will work on them, and therefore it does.

I also believe that the better someone is at believing something, at being right as far as they are concerned, the better a subject they are. Sometimes in stubborn individuals this may only take the form of a sort of covert self-hypnosis, and these individuals are able to convince themselves of all sorts of weird and wacky things.

All of this tends me toward consideration of my own beliefs and my behaviours in relation to them. So begin my problems as a hypnotic subject.

When I first tried to be a hypnotic subject I really wanted it to work, I will also confess that I was afraid that it would too, which was part of the excitement of it. My trouble, I think, was that I was and still am someone who is by nature uncertain. I am not certain that I can tell a lie from the truth, and so I investigate further and look for evidence to settle the matter. Much to my indignation my mind appears to be quite unwilling to be fooled through the process of hypnosis, directly at least.

In spite of this however, the biggest lesson I think there is to learn from the wizard's first rule, for someone used to critical thinking, is that a significant number of people do not usually think in the same way and certainly nobody does all of the the time. No matter how much you value intelligent discussion and criticality, it is an unfortunate fact of life that such rational processes do not sell products or ideas half as well as manipulating the irrational part of other person's mind. This is something which anybody in advertising can tell you.

If you want to influence others, or indeed hypnotise them, appealing to their irrational side is the way to get results. Given this kind of motivation almost anyone will believe almost anything, and they probably won't even realise it's happening.

Hmm, perhaps Nightwish signed a covert deal with the publishing companies...

The August Meet

2009-08-28T12:26:00.006+01:00

Well once again the last Thursday group met up in central London and of course I was there.

Given the recent business with the legality of hypnosis being raised, and most people being a bit on edge, the atmosphere was more social than hypnotic for a little longer than usual to start with. Dr Chicken Royale, as I shall henceforth refer to him, and his rather significant unpopularity being one of the main topics of discussion.

Soon however we came back to our senses and we were zapping away as happily as we have always done. For me the highlights were coming back from the bar to find the way blocked by Ben sprawled on the floor having been used as a demonstration subject for a drop-back induction, Darren demonstrating to me how to do the Cerbone butterfly induction, and performing an Anthony Jacquin inspired "if you can unstick and grab the money you can keep it" routine. I also had fun performing an Erickson Handshake induction on Will.

What a wonderful bunch of people. Looking forward to next month!

Legal update

2009-08-27T14:18:00.009+01:00

I have just heard from Chris that Westminster Council have decided that the 1952 Hypnotism Act also applies to private residences. This effectively means that they're saying all hypnosis everywhere is illegal unless the hypnotist has a license issued for that venue at that time.

As it happens I'm sat on the train heading into London now. I do not have a hypnosis licence for any of the locations I shall be visiting or travelling through so I shall endeavour to avoid all human interaction, lest I accidentally induce a trance and break the law.

In addition - 28/9/09

In one of their messages to Chris they paraphrase the Act somewhat stating.

"Section 2 of the 1952 Act states that no person shall give an exhibition, demonstration or performance of hypnotism on any living person... whether on payment or otherwise, at any place... unless the controlling authority have authorised that exhibition, demonstration or performance."

They emphasise that "at any place" is key.

I see this as a great example of somebody interpreting the world in such a way as to satisfy the criteria of their own existing reality; someone working for the council will want to try to regulate everything, lest private individuals be able to make decisions for themselves god forbid. Notice that the crucial line "at or in connection with an entertainment to which the public are admitted" is omitted from their statement.

Consider if we gave a similar treatment to a possibly better known directive, erring on the side of the dramatic in order to make a point.

"Thou shalt... kill thy neighbour"

Quite a significant change in meaning can be engendered by the removal of parts of a statement.

Just because I'm in a controversial mood, and it's interesting demonstrating how people will paraphrase statements to find what they want to see, let's consider another. This one is from the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Now notice how the way in which we might interpret the meaning of this changes somewhat in light of the, less well known, complete statement.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

I'm not stating a political view on firearms control, just seeking to illustrate how two parties might see different meanings in a single statement.

The council clearly want to interpret the meaning of section 2 of the 1952 Hypnotism act as a requirement to regulate everything, and it is in doing so that they have opened up a huge can of worms for themselves. For example, without the qualification "in connection with an entertaiment" this also applies to hypnotherapy, should it be unsuccessful, and criminalises all hypnotherapists working in Westminster, including those on the payroll of the NHS.

It remains to be seen if, in light of this, Westminster Council will go back to their original sensible position, which was indeed that Section 2 only applies to hypnosis at or in connection with an entertainment to which the public are admitted.

Legal issues

2009-08-26T20:36:00.012+01:00

The last couple of weeks, following the meet up in Covent Garden, have been a bit manic for the London Magic Mental and Hypnosis group, and to some extent this has included me and my own ambitions as an amateur hypnotist. The "Last Thursday Group", as our monthly HypnoMeets are now knows, has also been affected but to a lesser extent.

Following the meet up the week before last, which everybody enjoyed, including the members of the public that were hypnotised, questions were raised about the legality of what was going on. It turned out that much of this controversy was down to the actions of a hypnotist who goes by the name of Jonathan Royle and it was plain from the outset that although he hadn't been present he did not approve of what had gone on.

The particular issue which Royle raised was whether street hypnosis is legal under the 1952 Hypnotism Act, which is the law that regulates hypnosis for the purpose of entertainment in the UK. He insists that street hypnosis is illegal and that anybody who performs hypnosis on members of the public without a license is breaking the law.

As someone who knew little about Royle and thus previously had a neutral opinion of him I have to say that I have seen little about this individual over the last couple of weeks that endears him to me. A cursory glance at his blog may imply that his reasons for trying to discourage the LMMH meets are due to his concern for the safety of the public and for the good name of the profession of hypnosis. I'm not convinced of this however, and I believe that as one reads on the real motives for his trouble stirring become clear.

There's much about Royle's character that I find objectionable. To start with a lot of his blog post is centred around demeaning the work and character of other hypnotists for whom I have some respect, most notably Anthony Jacquin, Kev Sheldrake, Amit Badiani, and Vince Lynch. However despite being willing to publish such negative comments he has no reservations about sprinkling keywords such as "reality is plastic" all over his own work, presumably to bump up his hit rate. He also lectures the LMMH group about the morality and legality of performing street hypnosis, whilst at the same time anyone who visits his youtube channel can see him performing examples of exactly what he's railing against, indeed using significantly more violent and potentially dangerous methods.

In my opinion he is acting purely out of misguided self-interest. His self promotion is shameless and yet so far the only person I've heard saying that he's good is him. He's quite willing to try to leech off the popularity and work of others, rather than generate new and original content of his own that sells off its own merit. Indeed, despite his continuous torrent of self-affirmation, I don't think he can be said to regard his own work and expertise too highly if he feels that the only way to sell it is to try to kick down everybody else.

It did not surprise me to find out that he has spent time in prison for fraud.

Joe, on Uncommonforum, did some interesting webtrawling and found a couple of links regarding Royle (aka "Alex LeRoy" or "Alex Smith"), which make for interesting reading. Links here and here. He also indicates that a google search for "alex smith hypnosis jail" is also an education in itself. I like Joe, he's brilliant!

Unfortunately when it became clear that communications had been opened with Westminster council, who replied that they believed street hypnosis was not covered by the 1952 Act and thus would not require their approval, Royle made it his business to send a message to them to put his point across. Clearly spooked by his email, the council then did what authorities everywhere do when there is a speck of controversy and it's impossible to separate the good from the bad, which is to ban everything. Or at least try to; they have stated "no exhibition, performance or demonstration can take place" and threaten to fine anybody who does. Scary sounding stuff, but I'm not convinced they have the power to do that. As of tonight that is how things stand.

So on to the legal stuff.

Anybody who is interested can find the 1952 hypnotism act here. If you intend to perform hypnosis on the public in the UK I would encourage you to read through it, take some time to understand it and decide on your own position in relation to it.

Note that, whatever Royle may claim, there is no definitive interpretation of this document and nobody has ever been prosecuted under these laws in 57 years.

What follows is my interpretation. I think section 2 of the act is most relevant.

2 Control of demonstrations of hypnotism at other places

(1) No person shall give an exhibition, demonstration or performance of hypnotism on any living person at or in connection with an entertainment to which the public are admitted, whether on payment or otherwise, at any place in relation to which such a licence as is mentioned in section one of this Act is not in force unless the controlling authority have authorised that exhibition, demonstration or performance.

For me the crucial line here is "in connection with an entertainment to which the public are admitted". This is what satisfies me that I am acting within the law if I hypnotise a stranger in the street or even in a pub; I cannot see how either are examples of "an entertainment to which the public are admitted".

It is also my opinion that it would take much more than simply practicing hypnosis on the street to prompt the authorities to take action. No council is likely to want to bear the expense of being the test case; indeed not only would they would have to prove that what is essentially a conversation between two private citizens is "an entertainment to which the public are admitted", but they would also have to prove that it was for the purpose of entertainment, that hypnosis was actually intended, that hypnosis was actually taking place (how do you prove that?), that hypnosis actually exists (many people believe it doesn't) and indeed if it did exist that it wasn't "self-hypnosis", which is permitted under section 6, and as many hypnotists believe that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis this could be difficult.

This said however, the bottom line is that any interaction with the general public, whilst not to be shied away from, should be approached with due restraint and caution. Subjects should be treated with complete respect, and consideration should always be paid to their health and safety. The hypnotism act may be little known, tenuous and open to interpretation, but it is also in my opinion the least likely charge one would face, and quite frankly deserve, for bad conduct in any case. More likely offenses would be examples such as causing an obstruction, public order, assault, or sexual harassment, which frankly a sensible hypnotist is unlikely to be guilty of.

My personal conclusion is that as far as I am concerned street hypnosis is legal and that nobody is likely to care anyway unless you make a scene, assault someone, or make inappropriate sexual approaches, none of which are things that are in my character.

Strange new worlds

2009-08-20T12:14:00.001+01:00

Chatting with Ben recently over MSN he mentioned one of Igor Ledochowski's exercises called "strange new worlds", which is supposed to help build trust between conscious and subconscious minds. The idea is to describe a scene or story out loud, but to talk too quickly to allow conscious consideration of what's being said.

I tried this exercise last night and the results were quite... interesting. I started from the point of a friend of mine who wants a 'cello, although many of us suspect that what he actually wants is a 'cellist. In mere minutes I had invented the concept of the Scandanavian ninja 'cellist elite. A ruthless band of blonde female mercenary musicians dressed in black skinsuits and highly agile on skis, their instruments slung across their backs. They had kidnapped my friend and, via a video link from their secret base on Svalbard, were demanding a ransom as they held a bow to his throat. Fear would hardly describe the expression on his face in this perilous situation.

I don't know what any of this says about my subconscious; it already has much to answer for. I am going to retain the movie rights for "Strings of fire and ice" though.

Saturday in Bristol

2009-08-16T18:28:00.101+01:00

I seem to have had quite a busy week hypnosis wise, but then I can never get enough of it anyway.

Yesterday my mighty folding bike and I paid another visit to Bristol, which is a nice place and definitely worth a visit just to see the sights. I was, of course, there for another HypnoMeet that Rich had organised. Also attending were Javier, Lex & Liz, and Keiron, a magician and hypnotist Rich knows.

I had deliberately planned to arrive there early so I could have a bit of an explore on my bike and I passed a productive couple of hours on my own before the others arrived. I looked around the shops, had lunch, found an overdue Birthday present for someone, and miraculously managed to go into a bike shop without buying anything. Having learned my lesson from last time I wheeled my bike up Park Street this time, then I parked up and made myself comfortable in a bar to wait for the others.

Lex and Liz arrived soon afterward and after a quick drink we decided to make use of the two hours before anyone else was to show up to have a bit of a wander around the shops. Apparently there was some imperative for Liz to find an outfit for the following day. Having some vague idea of the kind of outfits that appeal to them I couldn't help but feel some apprehension, but as it turned out I needn't have worried.

Something that I should have known of course, and even my girlfriend would probably second this, is that with any outfit it's best to start with the hat and work downward. Of course I should have known that, how could I not have?!

Well anyway this became quite apparent to me that afternoon. As we passed one of those shops that will sell you plastic spiders, plastic swords, inflatable badgers, etc and of course a multitude of hats. Lex pointed this out, but Liz wasn't keen; she said she'd feel a bit self-conscious trying them on. This is where Lex demonstrated the fun that can be had with a girlfriend who can't get enough of being hypnotised. One moment we were walking up the road and the next, a few choice words later, we were making a quick u-turn and heading back to the shop.

The next 10 minutes or so were occupied by a rigorous process of hat selection. I personally was quite fond of the huge stovepipe hat for the Isembard Kingdom Brunel look, complete with LED-lit plastic cigar. It would have fit my character quite well, the crazed mechanical engineer that I am, but I didn't fancy riding home on my bike wearing it. After much deliberation Liz, admittedly in a rather more enthusiastic guise, selected a Tricorn hat. This was after going through a dozen or so other options and I'd been told off by a shop employee whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to stand in the corner and tell customers not to take pictures. I wasn't about to explain to him that the subject of the photographs was hypnotised, wouldn't remember this incident, and that was why photographic evidence was important. I put my phone away.

We were then just leaving the shop when Liz spotted a red hat in the window, one that it has to be said reminded me too much of Virgin Atlantic stewardesses, and so in we went again to buy one of those.

Then during our second attempt at leaving I found a metal enamel plate with a retro picture on it that I thought would be a great gift for my girlfriend, so we paused again whilst I bought it.

Walking away from the shop, and after a few more words from Lex, Liz was ever so slightly disoriented.

"Deja vu?" he asked her.

"Yeah..." she said "Hang on! Where did those bags come from?!"

"We've been shopping" Lex said.

What followed, as we walked further into the shopping district, was a spirited attempt by Liz to find out what was in the bags. We weren't telling of course, and a hypnotic forcefield kept her prying hands away. Lex must have decided that this was cruel, so after a while he let her carry the bags, but she was completely unable to open them.

The final revelation for Liz came when she was marching along through a clothes shop like a woman on a mission, trailing her male companions in what is the standard form for women in clothes shops, and spotted the Tricorn on her head as she passed a mirror. She had no idea how long it had been there, and of course she still doesn't.

We eventually found our way back to the Berkeley, the Wetherspoons pub that the last Bristol Meet had been in, to meet up with Rich and Javier. Rich met us at the bar, and after I'd bought a round without the aid of post hypnotic compulsion we found ourselves a quiet table in a corner. Rich, who had been learning magic, pulled out a deck of cards at this point and demonstrated a couple of near cards tricks. I was able to show off the Key trick I learned in Covent Garden on Wednesday. Lex took the opportunity to demonstrate the "strings cut" trigger he'd given Liz which turned her into a kind of human marrionette although sadly this wasn't accompanied by anybody's seat retracting into the floor or the table moving aside to allow a rocket to launch.

Javier produced a set of "salad" playing cards with NLP phrases on them, determined to get £30 worth of use out of them having spent that much buying them. Unfortunately these phrases proved completely ineffectual in helping him is his attempts to sell his jacket to Rich, presumably to try to make back the £30 deficit.

We elected to a Chinese restaurant up the road for dinner, and I enjoyed getting myself wrapped up in the world of discussing hypnosis in the way that one can around other people who share the same enthusiasm for it. The food at the restaurant was first rate, and the all the better for being an all you can eat buffet.

Over dinner I heard Rich asking Liz on the topic of who she would be happy going into trance for. As her answer made it clear that this would probably extend to him I could hear cogs turning in his head as he filed this information under "iiiiinteresting".

I contented myself with making Liz's spoon vanish from her hand just as she was diving into her ice cream desert and watching Lex get the blame for it.

Returning to the Berkeley we met up with Keiron, who is apparently new to the world of hypnosis but has a long history of practicing impromptu magic.

Rich was keen to try out a new magic trick on Liz, or at least it seemed so at first. He had her pick out a card from the deck, note to herself which one it was, then put the card back and shuffle the deck thoroughly. What he did next was a bit sneaky; he slammed his hand down flat on the table with a bang and said "sleep!". It was a shock induction of course; it certainly shocked me! Liz, however, is the kind of subject that people she trusts as hypnotists can't say certain words around in normal conversation, for example "blank", "freeze" or "sleep". When playing scrabble one must take care to speak of the "blank... unblank" tiles or "tiles with no letters on" lest the game grind to a halt as a result of her mind switching itself off, and it seems Lex has only been able to say the word "sleep" out of the corner of his mouth for the last two years. Suffice to say that her response to Rich's command was predictable and immediate.

Rich had her tell him what her card was, and then come back to the room not noticing anything had happened. Then, the mighty magician that he was, he amazed her by pulling it out of the deck.

I shall have to try that shock induction sometime, although like a lot of instant inductions it's one that the hypnotist has to be prepared for it not to work a lot of the time. Indeed, Rich told me that it works about 30% of the time.

I got in on the card action by also pointing out that her card was also on the top of the freshly shuffled deck, which it was after I'd frozen her and done a bit of re-arranging. She was also amazed when *all* of the cards were her card thanks to a few suggestions. Suffice to say that I felt like a bit of a dirty cheat for doing this and owned up straight away.

As with his earlier actual card tricks Liz demanded to know how he'd done it. Rich wasn't going to say and pushed straight on for the holy grail of hypnosis, the invisible hypnotist routine. He put her back into trance and told her that she wouldn't be able to see him, but she would be able to hear him and see anything he moved.

Imagine her confusion when, no sooner had we explained that Rich had gone looking for potential subjects, one of the pint glasses on the table started moving around on its own. In fact I don't think I've ever seen her quite so taken aback before, not even by the Harry Potter wall in Oxford. This was especially so when the levitating glass, toted by a very smug Rich, moved toward her. This time, as Lex wasn't around, I took the full blame for the levitating pint glass Liz was sure she was hallucinating.

Rich having "returned" decided it was time to get to work, and he Javier, and Keiron who had been looking on in a kind of stunned silence, started looking for tables to approach. They approached two or three, but nobody seemed particularly interested in hypnosis, not even the table of about 20 women all dressed in red skirts and white shirts, presumably on a social night out with a society of some kind. Keiron's magic went down a bit better, but the three of them still ended up returning to our table soon after they'd left.

I wasn't in the mood for approaching tables. I had taken a moment to demonstrate magnetic hands on Lex, who in spite of his insistence that he has a poor response to hypnosis responded very well to the suggestions. Had I thought at the time I might have tried to demonstrate a few more exercises on him, but is request rather caught me by surprise. I do wonder if he suffers frustration at being amongst the number of hypnotists who don't have any deep experience of hypnosis as the subject, not being able to achieve most of the effects he routinely engenders in others. It's a frustration I know well myself.

Indeed, I became aware that of the six of use around the table there were only two of use who could be considered tranceable, and this in mind I was happy when Keiron changed the subject and went into demonstrating some of his magic routines.

"Wow!" I said, impressed "That's much better than when when Rich cheated earlier."

I should have kept quiet, because this re-ignited Liz's attempts to find out just how Rich had managed to find her card earlier, and needless to say Rich wasn't giving anything away.

It was at this point I heard a quiet voice beside my right ear. "Veritas. Parkey, how did Rich do that magic trick?"

Now, earlier in the day the conversation had touched on the subject of truth triggers, and indeed Liz had given me one of these during a skype conversation about four months earlier. I find that post hypnotic suggestions are always strongest when they catch you by surprise, and I was completely astonished to hear myself saying "Rich tranced you and then..." ...and then I realised what I was saying and could only exclaim "NOOOO!!!"

"I can't believe I said that!" I gasped, feeling myself going red. "Why did I just say that?!"

Liz patted me on the shoulder, "it's called hypnosis dear."

Being a somnambulist and experiencing the full force profound hypnotic phenomena straight away must be quite an amazing experience, but for the likes of me the slow road to improvement as a subject is lined with tiny but significant milestones. I find that moments like this one, where something hypnotic almost unquestionably occurred, are exciting and very special.

What followed was an attempt by Javier to see if other people could use that trigger.

"Veritas. Parkey, is it 'Veritas' that makes you tell the truth?"

"NO!" I lied, and then having realised I'd gotten away with being able to lie, punched the air, "Yessss!".

Thus defying the whole purpose of lying I reminded myself.

Anyway the evening only went on a short while longer for me after that because I had a train to catch. Liz, fresh from her success triggering a confession for Rich out of me, proceeded to stick my hands to my drink, drink to the table, etc, although this "brattishness", as she would call it, was a little bit encouraged by a few choice words. The suggestions holding my hand to the table held for a long time before breaking, even when my ribs were under bombardment from various peoples' prodding fingers. The things I'm willing to endure for the sake of affirmation!

Around about 10pm we left the pub and I said my goodbyes, leaving the others as they headed off down the street in search of better hunting grounds, riding my bike back to the station to catch the last train home and ending another awesome evening out!

Oh, if anybody's interested in Richard Skeates' hypnosis course in Bristol on 26th October the details can be found here.

Covent Garden

2009-08-13T13:19:00.025+01:00

A bit of a flurry of hypnosis activity this week, and it's set to continue as I shall be in Bristol on Saturday for another meet up. Yesterday I attended the Monthly Mental, Magic, and Hypnosis meet, or "MMM&H" meet in Covent Garden.

(This reminds me about the old joke about the companies 3M and Goodyear merging to form "MMMGood")

This meet was a lot of fun, and although I didn't quite feel in the mood to go forth and do some zapping myself I did meet a lot of new people, get zapped myself, and pick up lots of new tips.

Heading up through Covent Garden I didn't spot the group until I was practically on top of them. However, I soon spotted Darren and a few other faces I recognised stood out on the street. There were also plenty of new faces too, and it was great to be introduced to a few new people.

I have to say that the style of street hypnosis that was going on, whilst well received by the passing public, was a little more assertive than I have been comfortable in the past, where in fact most of the strangers I have hypnotised have actually asked me to do it. Here the group were approaching passers by and seeking to engage their interest, which in most cases wasn't difficult. I wasn't particularly in the mood for approaching people, so I was happy to just watch.

I learned a heck of a lot from just being there. James showed me how to do a magic trick with a key using "energy" to lift it up on ones hand. I was also wowed by some of the other magic tricks that were demonstrated by other members of the group. I really need to learn some magic!

Someone I met for the first time there was Vince Lynch, a hypnotist I'd heard a lot about. He offered to hypnotise me and I was happy to give it a try. I'm glad I did, because I got a lot out of it.

Vince's induction was quite interesting. He had me place my feet together, close my eyes and do magnetic hands, but this time imagine that my hands were being pushed apart instead. As my hands moved steadily away from each other and around my body he said that they'd reach a point where they couldn't go any further, and when they did I'd let them drop to my sides and go into hypnosis. Once I'd done that he did quite an interesting convincer, which was to imagine myself standing on a boat swaying backward and forward. This was why he'd had me put my feet together and of course it worked beautifully; I was soon swaying backward and forward.

Next Vince did some suggestions with me, such as getting my arms to raise up. I have to say this was the most convincing ideomotor experience I have ever had, my arms seeming to have a purpose of their own, and indeed Vince kept saying "no pretending". Soon enough he had me pretending to play air guitar and piano, my eyes thankfully still closed, the instruction seeming to bypass my mind and my hands obliging of their own accord. I count myself lucky he picked the two instruments I can actually play, as opposed to something crazy like a trombone, violin or timpani.

When he asked me to pretend to be a stripper I wasn't having any of it though, my eyes were open in an instant and I was pointing at him shouting "No! No way!".

"Interesting" he said.

I'm really grateful to Vince for that experience. I learned a lot from his techniques, and his manner and confidence of delivery.

Ben seems to have somehow transformed into some kind of people approaching machine. I felt a bit in awe at his recent loss of inhibitions over walking up to complete strangers, and diving into hypnosis routines, but then he has been going out during his lunch breaks to do it. I wish that my job offered me such opportunities.

I didn't stay too late, as I had been stood up all afternoon and had things to do at home, but this was a really good meetup and I met a lot of fun and interesting new people.

Water into port

2009-08-12T12:23:00.000+01:00

The cost of buying drinks, especially good drinks, can sometimes be a bit prohibitive, but worry not because hypnosis is on hand to help!

Recently I was fortunate enough to do some hypnosis with a friend who informed me, quite unknowingly because she was in a trance at the time, that her favourite drink is port.

This kind of hypnotic interrogation is potentially a wonderfully sneaky way to get around the age old difficulty of deciding what to buy someone for their birthday or Christmas. Quite often people are able to give exactly the same answers to questions if they're awake, although trance does seem to lower inhibitions somewhat, but being able to ask questions when somebody is in trance does have other advantages. In particular being able to surprise somebody with something that they like or want always feels very rewarding for me. It's also useful in terms of being certain that what I am doing is agreeable to my subject, which I think is very important.

Anyway, now knowing my subject's beverage of choice I was able to provide a glass of said port. Or rather, a glass of water. Hallucination was able to do the rest, and it was very strange to watch somebody handling, sniffing and drinking from a small glass of water as though the liquid inside was a particularly fine vintage of port. The body language we associate with different drinks is so completely different, but of course we tend not to notice how much so.

As my friend later commented this would make for very cheap dates in restaurants; Champagne every night with Parkey! I did point out that it might be a bit strange to have Champagne served in a jug, but never mind.

Feeling very intoxicated after just a few sips is also quite possible, but with sobriety a finger's click away and forget ever having a hangover!

I love hypnosis!

Subjectivity

2009-08-11T12:42:00.015+01:00

In a conversation with Ben recently he commented that after hypnotising an alternative therapist by chance during his lunch hour he had been invited to become a member of a alternative therapies centre.

I replied to this asking whether hypnotherapy really is an alternative therapy. Hypnotherapy can be shown to work, and isn't the reason why alternative therapies are called "alternative" that if they did actually work they'd just be called "therapy".

Ben has since commented that Wikipedia says that it is not an alternative medicine because it was considered a genuine state and therefore an "orthodox" therapy. It's interesting to consider though why hypnosis seems to fit into that "alternative" category in many peoples minds.

This subject came up after I recently watched a couple of documentaries by Professor Richard Dawkins looking at the rise of an "epidemic of superstition" in modern culture, especially in healthcare. It's called "Enemies of reason" and is available on Google Videos, YouTube and 4oD; well worth watching.

The irrationality of some of the beliefs that people will attach themselves to is quite an eye opener, especially when that belief appears to satisfy some emotional need they have. What becomes very worrying though is the thought that such individuals may go to an alternative therapist instead seeing a doctor.

A lot of this comes from the rise of relativism, which is arguably derived from our living in an increasingly socially liberal and multicultural society in recent decades. I believe both of these attributes to our culture are on the whole a good thing, but whilst allowing for tolerance of others one has to be very careful not to let relativism to stray into the realm of what should always be considered objective.

Relativism should allow for an appreciation and respect of other people's subjective experiences of the world, which will by definition be different from those of others. If for example someone were to tell me that they thought red was nicer to look at than blue, or that fries taste better with salt on them, I would not be in a reasonable position to decry that assertion as wrong, because it is a subjective one. That statement is true for them, but not necessarily for anyone else.

The danger with relativism comes when people who merely have a subjective belief in something conclude that their assertion is of equal weight to a position based on objective evidence from peer-reviewed work done by scientists. One cannot take objective scientific fact and simply say "that's true for you, but not for me". It doesn't matter what you believe; the ball will fall if I drop it, all life on earth did evolve from single celled organisms, the universe is billions of years old.

I heard Richard Dawkins refer to relativism in a lecture he gave at Harvard University in 2003 in what I think is a fantastic quotable line:

"[I shall not] lose any time on fashionable claims that science is just the western patriarchal dead white male view of truth. Science works. That is why, when you go to an international conference on cultural relativism, you go by Boeing 747 rather than magic carpet."

This point is extremely important and should not be understated. Science is concerned with the objective nature of the universe that can be measured in experiments that can be re-produced and demonstrated to others. It is most definitely not on a par with assertions based upon subjective experiences; any hypnotist reading this will know just how crazy and irrational those can be, especially after a few choice words.

Indeed, whilst I do have a great deal of respect for Richard Dawkins and agree with him on the vast majority of the material his commentary covers, probably because I have firm grounding in science and the scientific method in my chosen calling in life as an engineer, I do perhaps diverge a little as a consequence what I understand about hypnosis. I think that whilst it is important to try to prevent subjective assertions from undermining scientific fact it is also important not to underestimate the importance of subjective experiences and perception - not least because 100% of the universe yet perceived by humans has been done so in this way.

Watching that documentary through the eyes of a hypnotist, as opposed to the more objective position that I used to occupy, brings up some interesting thoughts. For example there is quite an amusing scene where Dawkins is sat in a room full of people who are sat with their eyes closed calling out a mystical chant and looking quite absorbed in it all.

A year ago I would have laughed and dismissed what those people were doing as silly, ridiculous, and wonder what on earth they were hoping to achieve because it was plain to see that nothing was happening. That was, however, before the word "somnambulist" had entered my vocabulary. Now I can look at those people as they quite obviously put themselves into a trance and know that there almost certainly is something going on and that they are probably really experiencing something, although of course nothing supernatural.

Give me a sufficiently suggestible individual right now and I could sit them down somewhere comfortable, perhaps get them to stare at a candle, have them relax, and within minutes I could have them experiencing practically anything they could imagine, and especially if they came to me with the expectation of having that experience. I would know the what it was I was doing, the spiritualists who do it may not, but either way the effect of hypnotic suggestion is just as real and just as profound to the person experiencing it.

I doubt that Richard Dawkins would be a good hypnotic subject, as I suspect he would suffer from much the same critical faculty problems I seem to have.

One part of the documentary that I found particularly interesting was the part about a double blind experiment to see whether dowsers, through the use of divining rods, really could detect the presence of water. I was once given a set of divining rods as a present when I was about 10 year old and spent an afternoon playing with them in my parents back gardern. I was amazed by the way in which, sure enough, if held parallel they would cross over if held over water.

A plausible scientific explanation for a dowser's ability to find water is that through their natural senses they become aware of the location of water, maybe only subconsciously, and that this manifests itself through the ideomotor effect causing the divining rods to move at the right time. My 10 year old self soon surmised this much of course, mostly because I couldn't understand any scientific reason why the rods would move. The wonderful word "ideomotor" eluded me for many years afterward, but I understood the concept at least.

If, however, my upbringing hadn't encouraged me to question why things worked in the way they did I might have been like the dowsers in the program, trying to find reasons why my rods had suddenly stopped working in a controlled scientific experiment. As, I might add, all paranormal phenomena somehow seems to do.

Suggestions put to the subconscious mind and the belief systems that those build up are very important because they shape the way in which an individual perceives the world. For example there seems to be a tendency for the human mind to interpret information in such a way as to fit with existing models and beliefs. This is something that a hypnotist can take advantage of; when they, say, tell a subject that their hand is stuck to the table the subject will take it as read that their hand will not move and then interpret the evidence from their senses in such a way as to build their interpretation of reality around the initial premise.

This tendency not to stop and re-consider a deeply held personal belief can, however, lead to potentially frustrating disagreements between highly idealistic individuals. For example I once came across someone who, presumably as a response to environmentalists telling him that his lifestyle of commuting 30,000 miles a year in his car might not be particularly agreeable to them, had convinced himself in a kind of polarity response that cars could do no wrong in the world. His ability to interpret any evidence presented to him in such a way as to confirm his own position was in the right (at least to himself) had turned him into a legend on the local news website on which he posted.

For example he once insisted that a cyclist will produce more CO2 per mile travelled than a motorist in a car because a cyclist would be breathing hard whilst a motorist would be resting. I find it hard to imagine anyone else, regardless of their views on climate change politics, agreeing with that statement.

He went on though. When challenged about the car's engine he would argue it was modern and thus very efficient. When asked about fossil carbon and how it doesn't generally feature in the diet of cyclists he would argue that the vegetarian cyclist's green beans had obviously been flown across the world and thus the cyclist would have the food miles to answer for. Asked about where the petrol for the car was sourced from and how it got to the pump he would have none of it. No rational evidence would shift this individual from his position. He genuinely believed in the validity of his own argument and his subconscious was there loyally shaping all the information entering his mind into a form that would support it.

In fact I'm not sure if there is any way such individuals can ever be brought to re-consider a personal dogma; they are perhaps too far gone. It serves as a strong example to me of the power of belief and its influence on the critical faculty of the mind.

Becoming a hypnotist has given me a much better understanding of something that science never could explain to me, and that is the importance of the subjectivity. Humans are by their very nature irrational beings and it's hard to understand why so many people act in the way they do without taking a moment to consider the world from their perspective. Irrational beliefs and ideas may have no foundation in science, but they can manifest themselves physically in the world we live in.

For example the power of suggestion to affect an individuals health is a well established in scientific fact. There are very few people who have not heard of the placebo effect. There is no doubt that if someone believes that, say, taking a sugar pill will improve their health this will have a positive effect. Similarly personal morale is a very important factor in terms of keeping good health. I once heard Kev Sheldrake, a regular contributor to UncommonForum make an interesting comment about placebos. He said words to the effect that a placebo was just a suggestion, and that the suggestion will work without the pill, but the pill won't work without the suggestion.

Suggestion is, of course, responsible for the majority of the positive effects that alternative medicine is able to convey. There are other effects too such as regression toward the mean and cognitive bias which also play their part in building belief systems. Creating mystical fairy tales or pseudo-science with no basis in fact is, sadly, centre stage to creating these suggestions.

Something that I like about hypnosis is the way in which it uses the same mechanisms as a lot of the mumbo jumbo that's out there, but it isn't under any illusions that it's something mystical or beyond the reach of science. The way hypnosis actually works is probably as difficult to understand as human consciousness, but it seems to me that hypnosis does stand up to scientific scrutiny. It is real, and it works.

Perhaps hypnosis only works because people believe that it does, or perhaps that is just part of it and there is much more to it than that. Either way most hypnotists aren't making up nonsense about Chi Meridians or Emerald Spirits; they don't need to.

Directions and goals

2009-08-04T13:18:00.005+01:00

Sometimes I wonder where I should be going with this interest of mine, especially when I consider the apparent progress being made by others who got into this around the same time I did.

For example Darren Altman, as a performer and a good one at that, seems almost destined to become a stage hypnotist, amongst his other talents (you heard the idle speculation here first!). Likewise Ben White is moving in the direction of performing professional hypnotherapy and has already had his first paying client. Both are brilliant to watch in action and seem to be taking their respective hypnosis talent and going somewhere with it.

From the beginning for me this was not going to be a serious endeavour in terms of being something I would want to do professionally. I love my day job far too much to ever consider giving it up, and besides I have other activities that take up a lot of my spare time. This was only ever going to be a hobby for me.

That doesn't mean that I haven't had the feeling recently that I've lost a lot of the momentum I once had, and that I really should be going out and getting a lot more inductions under my belt. I should also have some kind of goal to aim for or else at the very least this blog will become very boring.

I think ultimately the next step for me must be to get out and start hypnotising people in Oxford, for which I should probably look into local laws regarding street performers and sort out public liability insurance. To be honest I still feel that I would be much happier doing street hypnosis if I had an accomplice, even if it was just someone with a camera to film it.

Ho humm... one for me to muse about for a bit.

The July meet

2009-07-31T13:02:00.023+01:00

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.

Back to Bristol

2009-07-24T13:16:00.040+01:00

Good news! Readers may be pleased to hear that after several months of philosophical ramblings I've actually gone out and done some hypnosis worth blogging about for a change!

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!

Voiceover fun

2009-07-24T00:04:00.003+01:00

This isn't hypnosis, but anybody who knows Darren from the London HypnoMeets will be amazed to hear what he sounds like when he's not being a hypnotist.

I think this is hilarious, so I simply had to post it. Enjoy!

Assuming roles

2009-07-14T12:55:00.039+01:00

It's amazing what you can learn very quickly about others, even people you have known for years, in the context of hypnosis. Indeed, I see hypnosis as a great amplifier of a person's true nature.

For example, I have always been a great believer in the idea that you should treat others in the way in which you would like others to treat you. This leads into trying to understand the situation from the viewpoint of the other person

I am happy to take on the role of subject in a hypnotic context, admittedly in part to satisfy my own curiosity, but also to gain an understanding of hypnosis from the point of view of my own subjects. I do not think that I would consider it fair to practice hypnosis on others from a position of being unwilling to experience it myself.

I realise that in spite of my recent progress in this area I am still an appalling subject, but the principle is there at least.

There are, however, hypnotists out there who are unwilling to play subject, and I find that in correlation these tend to be the sort of hypnotists I am uncomfortable with the idea of being a subject for.

The very nature of the relationship between hypnotist and subject requires that both assume specific roles. The hypnotist takes a position of influence over the subject, whereas the subject must assume a deferential position. In return for this control the hypnotist must also assume responsibility for the subject's well being, and show the subject respect; this is part of the hypnotic contract.

That power and control is something that a lot of people, especially men, aspire to isn't exactly a revelation, and I could spend hours discussing it. Primarily though I think the trouble is that a lot of people have such aspirations but without the due respect for those who would be below them and look to trust them.

I could rant at this point about the cultural effect of television programs such as "The weakest link" and "The apprentice" in which teamwork is portrayed as working together but only as a consequence of everyone trying to ultimately be top dog; stab your teammate in the back as soon as you can, or else they'll do it to you. The message is that you must claw your way to the top at the expense of others, and trust nobody. I do not think that this is a good role model, and I am reminded of something I once heard a politician say, which was "Be nice to people on the way up, because you might meet them on your way down!"

I think that it is important to be versatile, not just in hypnosis but also in life. There are times when one should take control and responsibility and lead, but there are also times when one should be happy to fall into step and place ones trust in someone else. I don't think that having a preference for one or the other of these roles is a bad thing, but expecting to be one but not the other at all times is not realistic and can lead to bad relations with other people.

Going back to the subject of power hungry hypnotists. I have found that there are a lot of people online who seek power over others, or at least to play that role, through online hypnosis. Usually it's men seeking women who will play a submissive role for them.

Now, there are of course examples of romantic or sexual relationships with couples practicing hypnosis on each other out there, and usually this exists in what they like to call a "D/s" or Dominant/submissive arrangement. One of the couple, usually the man, will be the hypnotist and the other will be the subject. "D/s" also exists in a number of relationships without hypnosis too, but it seems to be something which hypnosis amplifies very well.

This is probably what all the above mentioned hypnotists would probably aspire to; having a permanent subject over whom they could wield ultimate hypnotic power. What is interesting though is a dynamic that seems to exist between the participants in these relationships; amongst the successful ones at least. This is that it is always the subject who is the one determining the direction of the relationship, not the hypnotist.

The subject may enjoy being dominated, controlled or manipulated by a hypnotist, but the relationship is always following their agenda, not that of the hypnotist.

One could even go so far as to argue that the best hypnotist to have for such a relationship is paradoxically one who doesn't actually crave power, or at least one who doesn't put that before the well being of their partner.

This comes back to a point I have made before, which is that hypnosis is subject oriented. The best way to be a good hypnotist is to respect and to understand the needs of your subject, and to place those ahead of your own agenda.

Start early, if you can!

2009-07-10T12:46:00.009+01:00

There are times when I wish that I had access to a time machine. In particular I wish that I could go back about 10 years and tell my younger (pre-university) self a few useful pieces of information.

In particular I would tell my younger self to go out and learn how to be a hypnotist.

There is a good reason for this, which is that back then my ablities at being able to understand, empathise with, and get into rapport with other people was pretty poor. Even now I still don't see myself as any kind of master or expert in a social situation, but in comparison... well, there is no comparison. I believe that a little knowledge of hypnosis has made an enormous and positive difference to my life and the way I think; a change that in some respects I could have done well with years before.

For example, I also used to fall into the trap, when women were concerned, of believing the evidence before me; which was that none of them were ever interested, and therefore that something was very wrong with me. A self-fulfilling downward spiral, and not an uncommon situation as far as I've been able to tell. In the end this spiral was broken, not by me, but by someone else seeing things inside me that at the time I couldn't.

Nowadays knowing a lot more about unconscious signals, the nature of confidence and the importance of a healthy sense of self worth, I can't help but wonder how different things would be if I found myself single and free to approach women again.

(This is also in a dream universe where the concept of single women isn't just an absurd myth perpetuated by wishful thinkers)

In any case, I am very happily spoken for these days so the above line of thought is more than little bit trivial.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that for someone who has always been far more interested in science and engineering than anything people related, developing the peripheral abilities needed to perform hypnosis has a significant effect on other parts of ones life, and I would say that this is reason enough on its own to take the time to learn.

By performing hypnosis I mean meeting people and hypnotising them face to face as opposed to text hypnosis over the internet - but that's another post.

My younger self could have benefited from what I know now, but I guess anybody could say that at any time in their lives; the most important thing is that my present self has learned those lessons and is getting the benefits. I hope anybody else who reads this and decides that they also want to learn hypnosis will discover the same.

Worlds apart

2009-07-04T22:59:00.003+01:00

It seems that it is impossible for any knowledge to be acquired by humanity without somebody somewhere trying to find sexual applications for it; if you don't believe me I suggest you visit the Internet. I therefore find it unsurprising that there people out there who have a sexual interest in hypnosis. In fact, there is quite a large community of such people to be found online if one knows where to look.

Interestingly this world appears to be largely disconnected from the mainstream, visible and public world of hypnosis, with which I generally like to associate myself and this blog. I believe that it is important to keep these two worlds firmly apart, keeping each in their appropriate context; the main reason for this being for the sake of people's comfort zones, admittedly including my own. I do, however, make no secret of the fact that there are certain aspects of this hidden side of hypnosis that interest me, and about which it's about time I wrote something; not least because most mainstream hypnotists tend not to talk about it.

My attention was first brought to this other side of hypnosis, "hypnofetishism", by my own apparent inability to be hypnotised. I was frustrated and I wanted to know more, so I started looking for written accounts about what it was like being hypnotised. Try it if you like; it's very difficult to find any. I have a theory that the kind of people who are best able to look critically at an experience and write a description of it in detail are actually by definition the worst possible hypnotic subjects for exactly the same reason! In the end I did start to find and read accounts and these were all blogs written by hypnofetishists.

Now, when performing stage hypnosis or impromptu hypnosis, what the hypnotist wants is to find the best subject ot subjects they can. Ideally they can use selection procedures to find the people with the best natural suggestibility to get the most dramatic results for a watching audience. If the subject doesn't go under too bad; the hypnotist can simply move on to another who does. Hypnotherapists do not need to produce theatrical results but as far as I understand they too usually have the luxuary of working with subjects who have at least some decent foundation to their natural ability to go into trance; I have heard two well known hypnotists (Jon Chase and Sean Michael Andrews) say in interviews that people who don't hypnotise easily tend not to go to hypnotherapists anyway. I think it is for these reasons that I found the mainstream expertise to be rather useless with regards my own situation, namely being a very poor subject but really wanting to experience hypnosis just for the heck of it. I will not repeat my "let go" rant; I believe I have already made that point enough times.

If, however, we consider hypnosis in the context of a romantic or sexual relationship it is needless to say that discarding the subject in favour of a better one is not really an option. Hypnotist and subject both have to work with and develop what they have. It is here that hypnofetishists are well aware of something that mainstream hypnotists seem not to be, or at least don't advertise, which is that anybody who really wants to be deeply hypnotised can be if they take the time to learn, including people who at first seem completely unable to even enter a trance.

I know I keep repeating that piece of information, but in my opinion it's important to hammer it home.

Anybody who has met Liz, who co-writes the Hypnofantastico blog with her boyfriend (and personal hypnotist) Lex, cannot help but be amazed by her abilities as a subject. Most noteworthy however is that she is not naturally a good subject, actually she's very analytical in nature, and has the kind of mindset that questions, analyses, describes, and... well... blogs. Her ability to enter trance easily and deeply is something that she has learned over time, with quite a slow start, and her story is far from unique in their world. it was, however, that story that got us talking.

Hypnofantastico and other blogs like it are hardly indicative of my own desired uses for hypnosis, especially with complete strangers in a pub, but Lex and Liz are fun people to be around and it is very interesting to see how far hypnosis can be taken in the context of a close and trusting relationship.

The topic of hypnosis in the context of a romantic relationship and the sexual side of hypnosis is quite a large one, and there is much about it that I think is interesting and worthy of mature discussion. I first came across it through my pursuit of information about improving my own abilities as a subject, but there are other areas that I will discuss in subsequent posts.

This isn't an erotic hypnosis blog though, so don't hold your breath for anything too risqué. I have no intention of publishing explicit material on BlackMeridian; if you want explicit go and visit the Internet.

Holiday time

2009-06-27T19:25:00.002+01:00

Even hypno-bloggers need to take a break; to go and climb a mountain or sun themselves on a tropical island. Time away from the demands of everyday life.

Here's wishing you, dear reader, that your summer break is as gloriously sunny and cheerful as mine. No prizes for guessing where I am.

How to be hypnotised

2009-06-16T12:25:00.002+01:00

Or, if you think hypnosis isn't working for you, think again!

Many people reading the title of this article will wonder what on earth I can mean by this; after all surely isn't it the hypnotist, using their hypnotising skills, who does all the work?

Well, yes and no.

Over the last nine months I have devoted a lot of time and energy into learning how to be a hypnotist. That, however, has been extremely easy when compared with the effort I have had to put in whilst learning how to be a subject.

It seems to me that an extremely large number of people who want to be hypnotised have tried and been disappointed with the results. For a significant proportion of the population going into hypnosis is not something that comes to them quickly or naturally, and I count myself in that number. The term "analytical" is frequently used to describe this personality trait, those who have trouble dropping their critical faculty and experiencing hypnosis, and whilst it's a term I don't particularly like it does seem to be the best word for it.

There is good news though and that is that, as far as I can tell, hypnosis is a skill which anybody can learn given time. If you, dear reader, want to be hypnotised, and yet seem not to be able to, there is no reason why you can't learn how.

I intend this article as a sort of FAQ guide on how to go about doing just that, based on my experiences so far. It is by no means comprehensive, and I'm sure it won't be without the occasional controversial point, but at the very least I hope it's helpful for others who find themselves in the position I was once in.

So, on to my FAQ:

Q1. "Can I be hypnotised?"

Yes. Absolutely.

In my opinion, and my experience, everybody has the capacity to be hypnotised.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that; there are obviously people who do not respond to hypnosis. There are various reasons for this, and generally speaking I believe these are:

They do not want to be hypnotised. If someone ultimately doesn't want to cooperate with the hypnotist then they will not respond to the suggestions they are being given. Their loss if you ask me.

They believe they can't be hypnotised. Hypnosis, in the context of being overtly hypnotised by a hypnotist generally works because the subject believes that it will. If somebody firmly believes that they cannot be hypnotised they will find this to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Arguably one of the best examples of self-hypnosis that there is.

They don't know how to be hypnotised. This something on which I feel I am able to shed a lot of light, but bear in mind that my insight is based upon my own opinion and experiences. To put it simply, everybody thinks differently and consequently some people are better able to take up a particular skill than others. Going into a deep hypnotic trance is a skill which comes to some people (ie somnambulists) quite naturally, but to others, especially those who are particularly analytical in their thought processes, it doesn't and these people have to learn how to do it.

The lesson here is that if you are willing to be hypnotised, believe that you can, and keep working at it, you can theoretically experience any hypnotic phenomena you want given time.

Q2. "Why don't inductions work on me?"

This seems to be quite a common complaint amongst people who find hypnosis difficult. The so called, analytical types. I have seen such subjects wanting to try every kind of induction under the sun, with every hypnotist they can find, and with all sorts of fancy language patterns, in the hope that they can find the one special combination that will "work". Of course once I was doing so myself.

The good news, and the bad news, is that usually the induction is in fact working but you just don't realise it. This is provided of course that you are a willing subject.

Quite often this is a question of expectations. I have often asked people who haven't "gone under" how will they know when an induction has worked. The usual response is that they don't know, but they expect to feel something.

Most people have seen stage hypnosis shows where volunteers from the audience have gone up and been hypnotised. These people seem to drop easily into an unconscious and comatose state, completely out of it, at the click of the hypnotist's fingers. The implication being, firstly that hypnosis renders you unconscious, and secondly that anybody who dares try will be affected in that way. This builds up expectations.

The truth is that hypnosis doesn't knock the subject unconscious, and indeed the sensation of being in a light trance is so indistinguishable from sitting there with ones eyes closed that anybody looking for some kind of affirmation that they are hypnotised often won't find one and thus believe that nothing is happening. One such individual once saw me in a trance and commented "Wow, you were completely out of it!", but of course they were completely unaware that in contrast to my outwardly lifeless appearance I was still completely aware of my surroundings, which is quite normal with trance.

The other thing that most people don't realise is that only a small proportion of the population naturally respond to hypnosis to the degree that would make them worth watching in a stage performance; say, 10%-20%. Stage hypnotists are adept at fishing these people out as their volunteers; it's fair to say that if the same audience went to another hypnosis stage show the odds that the same faces would be appearing on stage a second time would be quite good.

Against this backdrop it is easy to understand why some people believe that inductions haven't worked. The truth is though that inductions aren't magic; they only work because the hypnotist says so, and the subject believes they will.

The best thing you can do as a subject is drop all preconceptions about what hypnosis is and should feel like, go along with what you're being told by the hypnotist, and above all have faith that it is working.

Q3. "Why don't phenomena work on me?"

There are many different kinds of hypnotic phenomena, but generally for the analytical subject I think there are two reasons why a given phenomenon isn't working.

It is working but they don't realise it. Hypnotic phenomena rarely manifest themselves in quite the way one would expect. Often it is a case of simply giving it a bit more time and allowing something to happen, other times it is merely learning to recognise and accept the way in which it is happening.

For example, the first time I actually got my hand to "stick" to something, back in February, it wasn't as though anything that I was feeling actually changed, it was more the case that I suddenly recognised how it was supposed to work. Naturally I had been expecting something like a kind of force to hold my hand where it was, and no matter how much strength I applied I would be unable to move it. Hypnosis isn't an outside force though, it's all in the mind, and the revelation came when I realised that although I was disappointed that I couldn't feel any force, I was still willing to humour the hypnotist by leaving my hand exactly where it was, and didn't really consider moving it. That is how being "stuck" manifests itself to me; there is nothing physically holding my hand where it is, but as long as I am comfortable and having fun there is absolutely line of thought I can pursue that leads to my being able to move my hand.

Pretending to pull against an invisible force is just part of the fun.

They don't yet know how to do it. I have described the background to my learning to achieve the effect of my hand becoming stuck; it has been much the same for other phenomena. Ultimately being hypnotised and going into trance is a skill, and for most people that skill has to be learned and exercised before it can be used to full effect. Don't expect to play Grieg's piano concerto the first time you sit down at a piano. Great things will come with practice.

Hypnosis is never like what one would expect it to be, but as every subject gains experience they acquire new abilities and expand the range of phenomena they are able to achieve. The best thing you can do as a subject is have an open mind and to give yourself the time you need to learn.

Q4. "Am I just pretending?"

A lot of people who are slow to pick up hypnosis, especially analytical people who are looking for an affirmation that it's working, often become frustrated when they are given a suggestion and nothing happens. So they wait, and they wait, and the influence of hypnosis that they are expecting and waiting for never happens.

"Do I sit and wait for something to happen in which case nothing does, or do I consciously follow the suggestions, in which case it's not hypnosis doing it, just me, and surely I'm just acting?"

I had this problem before hypnosis started to work for me, and this is where we enter the territory of what I and a few others refer to as the "acting dilemma". Resolving this point was, for me, the big breakthrough I needed to make and I'm significantly indebted to the person who helped me past it. They know who they are.

The dilemma:

"Am I doing this because I'm hypnotised, or am I just pretending that I'm hypnotised?"

I think it's important to get used to acting dilemma, because it's something that doesn't go away. Consider, though, the possibility that it's also a bit of a false question. Hypnosis isn't some magical effect from outside the body; it's something which exists within the subject's mind. The hypnotist doesn't produce the phenomena, nor does some disembodied force called hypnosis, it's the subject who does it. Anybody who expects a hypnotist to issue instructions to them and to find their body immediately flailing around on its own like a puppet will probably be disappointed to hear that anybody under the influence of hypnosis is in fact, in some sense, acting.

So perhaps being hypnotised, and pretending to be hypnotised are in essence the same thing. The result is, after all, the same.

The advice I was given, and the advice I will pass on, is to accept the dilemma exists but don't worry about it. Endeavour to follow the suggestions, even if it feels as though you are doing so consciously. Soon enough you will find that responding to suggestions willingly becomes second nature and is actually happening before you have time to think what you're doing, or even without you being aware of it happening at all. Now that is hypnosis!

Q5. "I can hear/analyse the suggestions. Is that bad?"

This comes back to the common misconception that hypnosis by definition renders the subject unconscious, which is of course false.

It stands to reason that if a subject cannot physically hear the suggestions they are being given there is no chance of that suggestion working. So the question is more about how much attention the subject's conscious mind is giving to the hypnotist's words, and how much of that they subsequently remember.

It is actually quite rare for new subjects to have amnesia for their trances, and so it is quite the norm for the subject to be able to hear what is being said, and to be able to think about or analyse it.

I have found that this is only a problem or a hindrance to the suggestions if you, as the subject, believe that it is. Conversely, believing that the suggestions you are being given will work, and being willing to humour them and act as though they are working, is the best way to overcome this hangup, in my opinion.

Q6. "How do I 'let go'?"

In my opinion telling a subject that they need to "let go" is just about the most useless thing that any hypnotist can ever say.

For my part I found the worst part of being told to "let go" was the implication to the subject that it is them preventing the hypnosis from working by holding something back. To the subject who is genuinely giving it everything they've got, but who is unsure exactly what they should be doing, this advice is of no use whatsoever and ultimately only serves to cause the subject to blame themself and question their own abilities and potential.

In my opinion a hypnotist who tells a subject that they need to "let go" is neglecting to make the effort to properly understand the nature of their subject's hangups or to reassure them that they can be a good subject if they persist.

I do not endorse acts of violence against such hypnotists, however burning effigies, letting the air out of their car tyres or signing them up for adult spam email are all perfectly acceptable.

Q7. "Am I just not good enough?"

It is an incredibly unpleasant feeling to think that you just aren't good enough to experience all of the amazing things hypnosis has to offer; that perhaps there's something wrong with you.

Let me assure you, as someone who once couldn't be hypnotised, and who once felt as though the above applied to him, that it simply isn't true.

If you want to be, you can be a really good subject.

Q8. "How do I become a really good subject?"

Three words:

Practice. Practice. Practice.

Trust and Responsibility

2009-06-11T12:35:00.001+01:00

Recently I was reading another hypnosis blog, written by fella in the US, and there is a statement in one of his posts that I would be quite willing to carve in stone as the first law of being a hypnotist. Link here.

"(Hypnosis) is always about the other person. Satisfying their needs and curiousity whilst keeping them feeling safe should be your first, if not your only priority."

I have already talked a little about my feelings on the subject of taking on the responsibility associated with being the hypnotist, and I think the above statement describes the concept well.

Perhaps I would argue that "keeping them safe", and not just "feeling safe" would be more appropriate, but that is a fairly trivial point. I get the impression that the writer performs most of their hypnosis online, well away from the hazards of the more physical environment of, say, a pub, the street, or on stage.

What I am getting to here is trust and responsibility. Indeed, many hypnotists will talk of a metaphorical contract, a hypnotic contract, that both parties enter into. The subject agrees to follow the hypnotist's direction, and in return the hypnotist agrees to take responsibility for the subject.

Hypnosis is not mind control; the hypnotist has no more power over the subject than the subject is willing to hand over. That said, some individuals do not realise that they always retain ultimate control of themselves, and of course hypnosis isn't even needed for someone to place their trust in a person who really doesn't deserve to have it. In my opinion this is where there is potential for harm to be done.

In general I have found that for the most part hypnotists are likeable, ethical and trustworthy bunch. At least those who are willing to go out, meet people, and perform hypnosis face to face are. They have to be if they are to be able to get into rapport with their subjects, and to gain enough trust in a short time. A hypnotist who does not come across as being trustworthy, or who gains a reputation for not respecting their subjects, will soon find that potential subjects will turn them down.

Now, anyone who knows me will be able to confirm that I am a self-confessed trance junkie. I definitely enjoy the sensation of being in trance, and jump at the opportunity to experience more.

I'm also constantly champing at the bit to practice going into trance and try to achieve new phenomena. As far as I am able to tell the starting point for my ability to be hypnotised was exceptionally poor, and despite my enthusiasm to follow suggestions I still see myself as below average. In particular I have not yet been able to experience anything that noticeably alters my perception such as amnesia or hallucination.

So with both of these sources of motivaton gnawing at me you might find it surprising that I'm actually quite selective as to who I am willing to allow to hypnotise me. Well, actually in some cases those people will not be surprised given the constant badgering they get from me. It is actually quite a small number of people.

I don't think my selectiveness derives primarily from trust issues, at least not at present, because no hypnotist has yet been able to achieve any effect that I've been unaware of them doing, or found disagreeable. It's more that I find myself unable to enjoy a session with a hypnotist who doesn't respect their subject.

Generally speaking if someone is to hypnotise me I will like to know them reasonably well and to have seen them in action before I make my mind up. I don't really see this as a safety issue as such; it's more about avoiding a situation that will make me feel uncomfortable, so I'm generally interested in the sorts of things a hypnotist will want to do with their subject.

That said, the exception that tests the rule has been occasions in the past when I've been quite happy to be a volunteer for a first timer to practice on.

Where am I going with these ramblings? Well, on a couple of occasions recently I have been in the awkward situation where I have been faced with an offer from a hypnotist and not felt willing to accept their offer because of the way in which I have seen them conduct themselves with other subjects. It really is an awkward position to find oneself in, and it feels as though actually saying to someone "No thanks, I don't think I'd be comfortable going into trance for you" would be such a slap across the face I don't know if I could come out and say it.

So far I have been able to dodge the issue whenever it has come up. In some ways I almost feel sorry for those girls I asked out years and years ago who, when cornered, really didn't want to take me up on my offer, but also didn't want to hurt my feelings. The result was a lot of incredibly lame and unconvincing excuses. Why, I thought at the time, did they not just tell me they weren't interested? I guess I have a better understanding now.

In the end I think it comes down to trust and comfort zones, and being able to respect that the ultimate say lies with the subject. This is an essential part of being a good hypnotist.

So put the subject first. If you see yourself as someone who has specific goals to achieve with a subject go out and find a subject who shares those goals with you, but always put the subject first.

Why I do this

2009-06-08T12:41:00.038+01:00

This is a post that I have been intending to write for some time, but I've been encouraged to get on and write it thanks to a comment left by a reader in a recent post. I feel that whilst I have covered a lot about what can be achieved using hypnosis, how it can be done and how it feels, I guess I haven't really explained what it is that motivates me to learn and practice it.

A while back I remember somebody saying to me "Being a hypnotist doesn't appeal to me; I don't like the idea of being a puppeteer."

There are indeed hypnotists out there who enjoy the idea of gaining absolute power over someone, or indeed many others, but I do not count myself among them.

I believe that there are two reasons why:

The first reason for my not wanting to impose my will on another person has its origins in certain events that occurred in my first couple of years in university; events involving members of the opposite sex. I know what saying that might imply, but believe me it's nothing so dramatic. To an outside observer those events may have seemed completely trivial and unimportant, but they did have a strong influence on me and shaped a significant proportion of what the person I am today seeks from human contact. Suffice to say that if I am to enjoy sharing something with someone else it has to be because they want to do it, not because I want them to do it.

The second reason is that the thought of having power and control over another individual is actually something that I find quite daunting. I believe that too many people who seek power forget that with power there comes responsibility.

To my mind if as a hypnotist you are entering into a relationship with somebody whereby you have the ability to completely alter their perception of the world around them, and where they are not necessarily able to judge any risks they might be subject to, it is clear that it is the duty of the hypnotist to take responsibility for the subject and ensure they do not come to any harm. The subject must put their trust in the hypnotist, and it is essential that their trust is respected.

This is something of which I am very conscious of whenever I work with a subject who responds well. Yes, I do get quite a kick out of seeing a subject drop into trance on the command to sleep, but I also find that it is actually very intimidating too and especially when shortly afterwards I meet their gaze and see such a sense of child-like innocence and trust as they are unwittingly affected by suggestions I have given.

I always feel the need to bring things "back to normal", have the subject remember or at least know everything that went on, so that it is an experience they are able to appreciate.

The idea of not doing that, and to have a subject unaware of something crucial that has happened, or even worse to change an aspect of a subject's mind merely on some whim of my own, is most definitely not something that appeals to me. I could not morally bring myself to abuse anybody's trust like that, and of course even if I could entertain the idea of playing god in that way I know I would feel incredibly lonely in doing so.

So for me at least being a hypnotist isn't about being a puppeteer. Sure I have met and have worked with subjects who have enjoyed playing the part of the puppet, and in which case I have been happy to oblige them, but my enjoyment is derived much more from sharing their enjoyment than from my own desires.

There is more though; much more. To me being a hypnotist is about taking on the role of being a kind of guide on a magical journey. I've been with subjects as I've lit candles by clicking my fingers, made things disappear in front of their eyes, blocked doorways with invisible force fields, walked through walls, and led them as they swim in secret oceans.

To some extent a hypnotist is also a teacher as well as a guide. Trance is a skill, and in many ways teaching somebody who was previously to experience any hypnotic phenomena how to let their arm float up or stick their hand to something is just as rewarding as convincing a complete natural that your train ticket is a whatever false ID you care to name (thankyou Dr Who!). It is very satisfying to be able to show somebody aspects of themself and abilities that they simply weren't aware of before. Everybody carries around with them the ability to go into trance and ultimately to experience some amazing phenomena as a result every day of their lives, but so few people realise it.

I feel that the question of motivation is a very large subject area and that I have barely scratched the surface with this article. Needless to say I will revisit it at some point in the future.

More fun in Oxford

2009-06-07T18:24:00.098+01:00

After the success of the last meetup in Oxford it is fair to say that I have been under significant pressure from some of those present last time to organise another small gathering.

Once again the meeting place was the Head of the River, and arriving first I was able to bag the same table as we'd sat at the previous meet. I was soon joined by Andy and Ali, and then by Lex and Liz.

As Darren was unable to make it to the meet this time it fell to Andy to become absolutely fascinated by Lex's highly practical uses for his hypnosis skills.

Of course there will be prizes for guessing who had been putting the pressure on me to organise another Oxford meet up. I think it's perhaps the way that the bar staff seem to realise she's arrived and light the candle on the table that endears the place to her. This was, of course, before Lex locked her eyes on the tiny flame making her unable to look away.

With Liz distracted I was able to buy a round without the help of post-hypnotic compulsion.

After a while Rich and Javier joined us and with introductions over we set off in search of something to eat; Chinese this time. Once again we were able to get away with "a table for 7 please, we have no reservation", but of course we were quite early in the evening because we wanted to go on to the Turf Tavern.

On arriving actually found the Turf to be a heck of a lot quieter than it had been on that evening three months ago, which we put down to the poor weather earlier in the evening. We bagged ourselves a table, continued our conversation, and reached that stage of the evening where everyone was agreeing most emphatically that we should approach some students.

"Definitely."

"Absolutely."

"After you..."

I took the opportunity of this impasse to try out a Dr Who psychic paper trick with Liz, and she was amazed as I provided ID cards to prove I work for the CID, FBI, and HM Ministry of ogling, although something made her certain that they were fakes; can't think what. Lex must have taken sympathy on his girlfriend at this point, because he turned my cards into what I presume were compromising photographs of yours truly - I didn't hear the exact suggestion, but that doesn't mean I can't swear revenge.

I also managed to play my favourite double-bluff routine, whereby the hypnotist tells the subject that they'll be able to see a ball, and then actually produces a real ball. Not hypnosis as such, more a kind of cruel teasing. I actually felt quite sorry for Liz when, to compound the confusion I was subjecting her to, everyone else around the table started disputing what colour the ball was.

The most amazing thing about the Turf Tavern during these meets has been the way in which once it becomes clear that we're hypnotists we suddenly find ourselves besieged by students demanding to be hypnotised. Someone did comment to me that my demonstration of a non-verbal Ericksonian handshake on Liz had certainly turned the heads of some guys at the next table, but it wasn't until Rich kicked things off by approaching a nearby table that, as with last time, so much zapping was going on that I completely lost track.

I actually missed the moment when Rich decided to go up to one of the student tables because Ali had expressed an interest in doing some hypnosis and I was quite happy to play subject for her.

Ali used a magnetic hands induction on me, although interestingly she didn't ask me to close my eyes beforehand, which is how that induction is generally done. I found myself concentrating very hard on the space in between my hands, seeing everything blur. When my hands came together I found it completely natural to close my eyes and go completely limp. To tell the truth I was very impressed because straight away I felt that blurry sensation of trance which can often take me a while to reach.

It also made me realise how little practice at going into trance I've had recently.

Ali had some fun sticking one of my hands to the table, then my other hand to my head. Then I was able to remove one hand from my head by placing the other on my head, so that one was always stuck there. It was a nice little waking hypnosis routine similar to the one I'd done with her a month or so before.

Next she got me stuck speaking in a strong Yorkshire dialect, which were bloody marvelous.

It was at this point that I realised that Rich had gone and approached a table of three male students nearby. He had one of them eyes closed and in trance, but one of the others was looking intently in our direction. I decided to go over and have a chat.

The student in question was a skeptic, but insistent that I try hypnotising him. To be honest I really didn't feel mentally prepared for this, so I didn't feel particularly on form. To be honest to the guy he was really up for trying, but nothing seemed to be working with him very quickly, and his patience didn't hold out. After it transpired that he had drunk 7 pints that evening before calling upon my expertise I didn't feel quite so bad and I was at least able to fall back on showing off with the rubber band trick.

The rubber band trick works especially well if one can use a time-stopping freeze suggestion in order to make the rubber bands vanish and reappear in unlikely places, such as the subject's own fingers. Mind you drunk people are also impressed easily, so it wasn't too bad.

Returning to our table, which had subsequently been mobbed by prospective subjects, I soon myself with another keen subject. Once again it seems I was the recipient of the good intentions of my fellow hypnotists.

"Hey Parkey, this guy wants to be hypnotised but he's difficult so we saved him for you."

Thanks guys. I'll take that as a compliment!

As it turned out this guy was quite responsive (well, compared with Mr 7-pints he was!) so I was soon able to float his arm up. In fact I took this opportunity to use the ideomotor induction which Ben has talked about recently, which of course works very well when one has plenty of time and showmanship matters less. This subject did however find the background noise distracting so I wasn't able to achieve much else with him, but he was at least impressed with his floating arm.

I have come to the conclusion that I need to get much more practice at the impromptu side of hypnosis and develop a routine which I can follow. At present I feel too much as though I have been put on the spot when I'm faced with a new subject.

By this time it was getting quite late and in defiance of the hot weather of the last week it was getting a bit cold. We headed indoors, leaving the craziness of indiscriminate zapping behind us and returning to a more conversational setting; soon it would be time to go.

With not long remaining before most of us had to leave to catch our respective buses and trains Andy burst inside and told us that Rich was up to his old tricks again. Sure enough we found him outside hard at work with the full attention of a young lady. Just as Javier wasted no time in getting the attention of a table of 6 nice female students it was time. Reluctantly we left him and Rich to it and went our separate ways. I'm sure they were really disappointed to have all those subjects to themselves!

I must make it absolutely clear that putting attractive women into trance is under no circumstances a motivation for my interest in this hobby. My interests in hypnosis are purely academic, and if attractive women do demand that I hypnotise them, well, I most certainly don't enjoy it. Not at all...

Getting away when we did was a definitely a relief.

*cough*

One day I would like to be the last person to leave at a HypnoMeet.

Still, it was definitely a fun evening.

The May Meet

2009-05-28T23:36:00.051+01:00

One thing I am starting to be glad of these days is that whenever I hit a period of a few weeks when I have little opportunity to perform any hypnosis there's always the London HypnoMeet at the end of the month to look forward to.

As with last month this meet was in a nice quiet pub near Leicester Square. The turnout was really good and Andy, who had pointed us to this pub last time, had been so kind as to book the whole upstairs for us. This was complete with signs saying "Uncommon Meet Upstairs", from which I assume the public in general drew their own conclusions.

Invariably I end up having dinner at the meets, having jumped straight on the first train to London after work. So once I had arrived I sat there with my dinner listening to the general conversation. The turnout was very good, with a lot of familiar faces, but several newbies too, which is always good. In lieu of the hypnosis kicking off Glen, one of these first timers, showed me a couple of fun card tricks. I need to learn more of those.

One familiar face was Will, who was quite insistent that he would like to have his dinner before anybody did any hypnosis with him. This meant that no sooner had his plate been taken away Ben started, in a conversational tone, that it was "easy to go into hypnosis" etc. A conversational induction based on anticipation and persistence on Ben's part.

I helped it along by passing the occasional comment about how Will "didn't have to trance now" into his other ear.

Before Will had completely slumped over in his seat I was called over by Javier (aka Skeitel), who had been at the meet in Bristol I went to a few months back. He asked me if I'd like to try an induction on Kerry, his girlfriend, who had come along to the meet with him.

As always with my first induction of an evening I was a bit nervous and reluctant at first. I was also a bit uncertain about exactly what I should start with. Fortunately Kerry was really enthusiastic, so I simply took her hand in a handshake and performed an Ericksonian handshake.

Recently I have found a lot of people responding to this induction by just flopping eyes closed into trance, as opposed to stiffening up and zoning out with their eyes wide open. I think a lot of it is in the hand action and the suggestions I give, and perhaps I should practice this routine a bit more.

Either way it's yet to fail to induce some sort of trance, so I can't complain.

I deepened Kerry's trance and performed a similar routine to the one I performed to Ali last month. Sticking her hand to things, and so forth. It's definitely a fun game to play, and especially if it's the first time someone has experienced it.

Whilst absolute confidence will carry an induction a long way, I have found it is possible to be overconfident, although I have only achieved this by being far too cocky for my own good. The example in this case was what I tried next, which was with Darren. Basically I found myself trying to go too fast, too quickly, and the response I got from Darren was very lukewarm.

The response I got from my next subject wasn't much of an improvement. Will was just going under when he suddenly jumped up and declared he needed to go to the loo. He should have gone before he left full conscious awareness!

After this I found myself playing cameraman to a routine Darren was performing on Ben. Ben has written about this in his blog.

Darren was obviously on a roll, so next he went on to zap Kerry.

Suffice to say Darren is an absolute legend!

(Read as: Limelight stealing git)

With time fast running out, I was presented with another opportunity to do some hypnosis with Kerry myself. She responds well as a subject, so I decided to deepen the trance as much as I could before trying something a bit more advanced, like a hallucination.

What I used was a guided imagery deepener I learned from Liz a few months ago. It starts out with the subject imagining lying on a beach and then swimming out into sea toward an island. I like it because it produces potentially beautiful imagery which most people can relate to, and the analogy of swimming is something that most people can relate to experiencing full body fatigue; that all-over feeling of tiredness.

Afterward Kerry commented to me that she really did feel like she was swimming, and I realised that the way her breathing had deepened as I'd taken her through it had indeed been like that of someone who was swimming. I felt a small pang of jealousy, as I always do when I come across someone who is able to feel such profound effects from hypnosis so easily. It makes me realise just how far I have yet to go as a subject.

Still, I always thoroughly enjoy sharing hypnosis with someone who is as open to and as enthusiastic about trying it as Kerry was that evening.

In true HypnoMeet style the time flew past and I had to make my departure in order to catch the train home. Sadly next month I shall be away on holiday and won't be able to go to the meet, but there's always the month after. Far too long to wait if you ask me!

A slow month

2009-05-27T21:07:00.002+01:00

Hello there, and apologies for the lack of posts recently.

Sad to say hypnosis-wise not much has happened in the last month and I've been kept quite busy with other things, including planning my summer holiday. I've also been concentrating on other little projects which include, to reveal a not-so-secret secret planning a fiction novel that I intend to write... someday; maybe soon, maybe not.

The good news is that there's another HypnoMeet in London tomorrow night, so at least I'll have something to write about for this month.

In the meantime, if you're getting hypnoblog withdrawal symptoms I suggest you check out Ben White's blog, and especially if you enjoyed his recent guest post. Ben has been a regular attendee of the London HypnoMeets, and is developing his own very distinctive approach to hypnosis from which I think we all can learn a lot.

(Sorry, did I say "learn a lot"? I meant "nick his ideas")

Hope you enjoy. I will be back soon with news of Tomorrow's meet.

Ideodynamic signalling

2009-05-07T12:19:00.038+01:00

At the last meet in London Ben demonstrated this technique, which he's been working on recently. I think it's pretty cool, so I asked Ben whether he'd like to write about it in a guest post for BlackMeridian. He said he would, so here it is.

Ideodynamic signalling
- hard to say or write, but easy to do!

by Ben White.

Just a quick observation before we get in to the article/exercise: On writing this, I discover that “pre-talk” is just another word for “introduction”. I find myself wondering what else in my life could be improved by formulating my introductions more carefully...

“Hypnosis happens when you concentrate and imagine something so strongly it becomes reality,” Reg Blackwood

OK Pre-talk over lets get in some hypnosis:

The exercise in this article uses ideodynamic signalling to allow you to experience control over your state by consciously communicating with your unconscious. Sounds like a mouthful, but couldn't be easier.

This is also a great exercise for those who find it difficult or easy to enter trance alike, so follow the instructions below and enjoy the experience.

Get comfortable and take a deep breath and just take a moment to focus on yourself: how you're sitting, your shoulders and generally how you feel.
…
Now hold up a hand in front of you at a level that you feel represents how alert and awake you feel. There's no right or wrong here, so just allow it to sit at a level that feels appropriate.
…
Excellent, you can already see that your unconscious mind has chosen a place somewhere in the middle.
…
In a moment, I want you to ask your unconscious mind to allow your hand to go up just a little, hold it for a moment and then come back down to the normal level. I want you to notice what it feels like to be more alert for a moment!

Go ahead and do that now and afterwards, tell your keyboard (or leave comments) what you noticed about being even more alert and awake than normal.
…
You just discovered how to make yourself more awake by raising your arm and then, you made yourself less awake by bringing it back down! Have another go if you like – ask your unconscious mind to take your hand a little higher, before bringing it back down to the normal level.

You have just learnt how to manipulate your state! How exciting is that!? Next time you feel yourself falling asleep at your desk, try that out again and see how much more awake you feel.

The next part of the exercise is to ask your unconscious to allow your hand to come down a little bit to allow your unconscious to show you what its like to go (further?) in to trance. Remember to allow your hand to go back up to normal. Go ahead and do that now: ask your unconscious to allow your hand to drop a little to experience a light level of trance before bringing it back up to normal.
…
So what did that feel like? Did you notice any changes to your vision? How about sound? Perhaps you didn't really notice anything at all or perhaps you'll realise what happened a bit later. Whatever you did or didn't notice; it doesn't matter because you're now learning to go into and out of trance at will!
…
So far, you've asked your unconscious to show you a more awake state and a light level of trance.

Now ask your unconscious to take your hand down a little lower this time, experience the trance state for a moment and then bring your hand then higher to the normal level. Do it now and describe your experience once again.
…
What happened that time? Perhaps a slight change in your vision? A quietening of the surrounding room or was your concentration so focused internally that you didn't even notice?
…
OK, so you can see where this is going: once again I'd like you to ask your unconscious to drop your hand again this time even further, before once more allowing it to rise to your normal level. Go ahead and do it now.
…
How did that feel? Are you starting to get an understanding of how your unconscious already knows how to go in to trance?

Feel free to repeat the exercise, however I would advise you to set yourself a positive outcome and time limit - “take my hand down for 1 minute so that I can relax and really learn how it feels to be hypnotised so I can enter trance at will or under instruction from a hypnotist I trust, before raising my hand back up to normal wakefulness.” or something from your own excellent imagination.

As a practitioner of trance myself, I love this exercise and I use it regularly as a really excellent and relatively quick way of allowing someone to enter trance. It is an induction, deepener and sits (in my opinion) very much in line with the classic rehearsal induction. You will often find that after each repetition that the hypnotic's hand will not actually return to the same level as they originally started at – that's because each time they go in to trance, they're not coming back up as far, thus easing themselves into trance: fractionation!

I also like it because it raises (in my mind at least) many interesting questions about hypnosis:

Is “trance” a different state? If your unconscious mind chose a level of wakefulness that was in the middle of the possible range, then are you in fact existing in some permanent form of trance? If not, then does hypnosis really exist?

What of the unconscious mind itself: Was that your unconscious taking you up and down, higher and lower or your conscious command? Do you really need a metaphorical lever to change your state?

I can heartily recommend Rossi and Cheek's “Mind Body Therapy” (US link) which is where the idea for this came from.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to leave comments or discuss your experiences with us online at Uncommon Knowledge or my YouTube channel.

I would also like to thank Parkey for asking me to be his first guest writer: I am honoured!

Ben White
http://www.practitioneroftrance.com/

The April Meet

2009-04-30T23:22:00.000+01:00

Another month, another London HypnoMeet.

I really look forward to these meetings; they're great social occasions and I learn so much from watching other hypnotists at work.

This month I was a little bit later in arriving at venue due to onward travel plans and luggage (These were travel plans that didn't actually involve Mexico, although the look on Ben's face was priceless when I said they did! Sorry Ben...). The usual pub was as crowded as always but this time without yours truly, aka Muggins, having arrived early in order to secure a table we were standing at the bar. As it turned out there were just five of us this time too.

We decided to seek an alternative pub. So, pausing only to unfold the Brompton folding bicycle of hypnosis and re-inflate the tyres of somnambulism (you had to be there!) we made our merry way to a a nice quiet pub near Leicester Square.

Andy, who came to the last meet had come along again this time and brought his girlfriend Ali with him. Ben demonstrated to her his latest party trick which is an induction where he links the position of a person's hand to going in and out of trance. This was the induction he had demonstrated on me last month in fact, and there's a video of him doing it on the post for that meet. For her part Ali was definitely showing all of the signs of someone who enjoys going into trance, as Ben's routine fractionated her deeper. Soon she was in a nice deep trance.

In these situations I think it's important to fein disinterest in the proceedings, regardless of how impressive, so that the subject doesn't become self conscious. The wide eyed gawping can always wait until they have closed their eyes.

The discussion then moved on to Andy, who is relative new to being a hypnotist, commenting that he's been lacking confidence recently, and not being sure what to say. Personally, having seen Andy at work on Will at last month's meet I don't believe that he has anything to worry about. Of course the deciding factor for a hypnotist will always be confidence, not the perfect usage of words, so in order to convince Andy that he is as good as he actually is we ended up in a situation where he was hypnotising the other four of us using magnetic hands.

As always, our highly public demonstration of hypnosis barely drew any attention from anybody else in the room. Not even with four of us at once slumped over in our chairs. It never ceases to amaze me!

Likewise when Ali commented that she'd like to give being the hypnotist a try herself, and so hypnotised me with a magnetic hands induction and a staircase deepener.

There had been a distinct lack of phenomena taking place, so as a parting shot at this meet I decided to demonstrate a bit of waking hypnosis on Ali. The most enjoyable experiences I have had as a hypnotist have always been when I have been able to share it with a receptive subject who is willing to have a bit of fun, and this was one of those occasions.

I got to demonstrate my Ericksonian handshake, which is an induction that I really enjoy doing. Unusually my subject had trouble keeping her eyes open; very quickly they closed and then she went limp. Of course this isn't quite the desired effect, but given that it induced a trance I wasn't too bothered. As I have said before, everything that happens is always exactly what the hypnotist intended to happen. Always.

What followed was a fun little demonstration of waking hypnosis. I told her that her right hand was stuck to the table, then said it was time to go and offered my hand to her to shake. Of course she couldn't lift her hand to respond, so I told her that her right hand was now free, because her left hand was now stuck to her leg.

I find the "(this) ...because... (this)" is a very useful approach in waking hypnosis. After all, if one is true, why shouldn't the other be?

Eventually I got her to release her left hand by putting a finger in her right ear, which of course became stuck. I then had her release that by putting a finger in her left ear. I told her she knew how it worked now; put a finger in one ear to release the finger in the other. Finger in, finger out. Finger in, finger out. How do you escape? Why, you go really fast and eventually... that's it... they both come free. Amazing!

Okay it's a routine I stole off a YouTube video I saw a while back, but I don't care. It was a lot of fun.

Anyway, as usual I had to dash off to catch a train and as always I'm already looking forward to the next London meet.

Seeing things

2009-04-21T12:33:00.006+01:00

Just a short anecdote today.

A couple of weeks ago I was riding my bike to work, just like I tend to do most days. The route that I cycle is nice and quiet, away from busy roads, and so it's very rare that I come across other people at all.

On this particular occasion I was approaching a hill and concentrating on the ground in front of me. As the track started to rise I glanced up the hill for a moment and I saw another cyclist coming toward me on the opposite side of the path. I can see the image now as clear as I could then. Front on I could see their front tyre, their cycle helmet, and even white shoes spinning the pedals. Definitely a cyclist.

My attention returned to the track directly in front of me, but as I'd registered someone else on the track ahead I looked back a few seconds later. To my astonishment there wasn't a cyclist coming at all. Instead, in exactly the same place visually, but just off the track, was a wooden post.

There are no turnings off the path anywhere near where I was, nor could the cyclist have moved out of sight in such a short interval of time. I am in no doubt whatsoever that what I saw was in fact the product of my imagination. A hallucination if you like.

Now of course this is the kind of story that most people should be able to relate to, seeing something that on closer inspection is actually something completely different, and it comes from the way in which the visual senses work.

I think what was happening with my cyclist was that part of my brain, the department of my subconscious that has learned how to see the world I live in, had detected an object at that location but didn't have enough time to fully identify what it was. Instead what it did was put in that place an image of what it most expected that object to be given all the evidence it had. Of course, given more information, it realised it was wrong and when I looked back the object became a post.

What I find interesting about this is that it illustrates to me that my brain does have the capacity to produce visual hallucinations, and of course from that I can derive the confidence that sooner or later I will be able to tap into that ability under the effects of a hypnotic suggestion.

Let's take this concept one stage further though. Let us suppose that what the conscious mind sees is not the world, but rather the subconscious mind's interpretation of the signal from our eyes. It's a heck of a lot of information to process in real time, so as we grow up the mind learns how to simplify this process by making assumptions, replacing familiar objects and scenes usually in our peripheral vision with remembered images. This suggests that a huge proportion of the world that we experience is more the product of our imagination than of our senses.

In this respect we are all hallucinating all of the time.

Bristol HypnoMeet

2009-04-16T23:56:00.005+01:00

A short post this time.

I've just gotten back from a HypnoMeet, but this time in Bristol.

Not too much to report I'm afraid. Bristol was pretty quiet, so very little hypnosis occurred. It is, of course, during the university Easter holidays so a significant number of students aren't around.

There were four hypnotists turned up; the others were Enrich, Skeitel and BladeBlunter from UncommonForum. Mostly it was just us as a group exchanging hypnosis banter, although (En)Rich did managed to find a couple of girls who seemed interested and helped one of them with her fear of spiders.

We then moved on to a slightly better pub; a Wetherspoons I think. Rich asked me to demonstrate the Erickson handshake to him, which I was happy to do. He said he did manage to zone out for a minute, but unfortunately we'd chosen a table which, over my shoulder, afforded a view of parties of women coming and going.

Gah! Some people are far too easily distracted...

It was a short meet. I only got there after 7pm, and as always the time to leave in order to catch the train home came all too soon. Unlike London there aren't trains until after midnight. The 22:20 from Bristol is the last train, so there was no way I was going to miss it.

Rich had been kind enough to let me leave my folding bike in the back of his car, which he'd parked in a multi-storey car park. I had a surreal moment as I carried it down several flights of stairs to street level... going down that staircase, going deeper and deeper... although I doubt staircase deepeners usually involve the subject imagining carrying a bicycle at the time.

Anyway a fun evening! Looking forward to the next meet, which of course will be in London.