I felt I should write a bit about a new induction that I have just figured out how to do.
As an induction the Erickson handshake is quite unusual, and I've also found it to be quite mysterious too, especially in my attempts to find examples of it to emulate. I've heard it mentioned a number of times in the hypnosis books I've been reading, but so far I have only seen one example of it being performed, in a youtube video by a young American magician and mentalist called Katherine Anne. Nevertheless it looked very interesting so I decided that I really wanted to give it a try.
When I first started learning hypnosis I treated inductions almost like, if you'll pardon the analogy, magic spells. I've treated them like procedures that must be followed almost to the letter, and if done correctly trance will result. As my knowledge and experience have started to grow I have come to realise that the words and actions during an induction don't matter as much as the context in which they are placed. What do I mean by that? Well, put simply the procedure of an induction is merely a vessel for the hypnotist's intention to hypnotise. Once the hypnotist understands this it means that practically any induction will "work" as long as that belief and confidence is strong enough.
To me it feels as though, as an induction, the Erickson handshake depends on this intention principle even more than others because the subject's eyes remain open and consequently the hypnotist has to keep eye contact. At the pub a few weeks ago Darren demonstrated a three handshake induction on me and something that I was very aware of then was how effectively his eye contact communicated his intention to hypnotise. I think it was perhaps this lesson that gave me the inspiration to try the Erickson handshake.
So what is the Erickson Handshake? Everybody seems to know the "handshake induction" but this is usually the one credited to Richard Bandler where the hypnotist performs a motor pattern interrupt by catching the subject' right hand with their left before it makes contact, lifting it up in front of their face, and pacing and leading from there with the "look at your hand..." spiel. Erickson's version is quite different; as far as I can tell it still uses the pattern interrupt, but the idea is to use an ambiguous touch to induce catalepsy in the subject's arm whilst talking the subject into trance with a steady stream of hypnotic language patterns. It's quite tricky to pull off because it requires multitasking; there's the ongoing delicate manipulation of the subject's arm, keeping up a steady patter, and all whilst keeping up that all-important eye contact.
So anyway, I was with a friend who had expressed an interest in learning a bit of hypnosis and after she'd practiced on me a couple of times, floating my arm up and down, I asked if I could show her something. When she agreed I took her hand as I would if shaking her hand, brought it out in front of her, and also supported the arm under the elbow. Then, looking her directly in the eye, I started talking. It was something like this:
"Have you ever found it interesting that it's possible for people to start daydreaming anywhere? Perhaps you might remember a time, maybe in a lecture, when you just zoned out. You'd be relaxed and your eyes would be open but you'd just start to loose focus on the things going on around you. Your thoughts would start to drift taking you deeper inside yourself, and that's okay because it's natural for people to zone out like that, to go into trance. Now, you might find that..." etc
At the same time I was alternating support of the arm between elbow and hand. The idea behind this ambiguous touch is that the subject isn't sure who's supporting the arm. I felt like Indiana Jones swapping his little bag of sand for that gemstone or whatever it was in that film; a very delicate touch needed.
This said, I think the most difficult thing was to hold onto my confidence and keep talking as by this point friend was just looking back at me blankly but not really displaying any signs of trance that I recognised. It would have been so very easy to get distracted in questioning whether it was actually working.
As it was my friend broke before I did and, snatching her arm back, she said "Whoa! That's weird!" She went on to tell me that everything around the edges of her vision was starting to blur out and it was as though she was getting drawn into my voice, but not the actual words - they were blurring too. I've heard of subjects commenting on this induction being quite an odd experience, especially the eyes open part, so to tell the truth I wasn't too surprised at my friend's reaction, although I was quite amazed that it had worked.
Needless to say this eliminated any doubts as to whether what I was doing was working, and so on the second time I had no trouble continuing. It was a very surreal experience because of the way that my friend's eyes glazed over. She was also noticeably blinking more, so on the spur of the moment I linked that to eyes feeling heavier, and had her close them. By this point I'd removed my hand from her elbow and had drawn my other hand gradually away to the point where I only had one finger remaining in contact supporting the arm. It was strangely like playing Jenga, and it's true to say I experienced the same satisfaction when the arm didn't come crashing down when the last finger broke contact, it just hung there in the air.
I would say that it's as simple as that, but I feel it really isn't. I don't think I could have done this induction a month or so ago. The fact that there's so much going on at once makes it very difficult and I don't think I could have kept the patter up. That said, having gotten this method to work I feel absolutely over the moon, itching to practice it again and see how much I can improve my technique.
Monday 29 December 2008
Sunday 28 December 2008
More pub hypnosis
I have talked before the ongoing hazard, when one is a hypnotist, of seeing any social gathering as a potential hypnosis opportunity. Last night my girlfriend and I met up with an old school friend of mine and his girlfriend for drinks in a pub, and as it turned out this occasion was no exception.
I think it was about an hour into the evening, after discussing the insane things that my friend and I had gotten up to at a very young age, that my friend's girlfriend commented that it was Saturday night and we should therefore be doing something crazy. Of course, being me, I could only respond to this by asking if she'd ever been hypnotised before and would being hypnotised right there in the pub qualify as crazy enough?
As I've said before I have so far found that when presented with the offer of being hypnotised most people will respond in one of two ways. They'll either be really up for it or completely the opposite. This said, of those who are interested in trying hypnosis there are a very small group of people who go beyond simple interest and are really really keen to try it. I've heard other hypnotists talk about "the look" that these people get and the statement "you'll know it when you see it" is completely true. It's hard to put into words what it's like, but I guess I can best describe it as a kind of wide eyed fascination, it is as though they are instantly hanging on your every word, and of course the only question on their lips is "can you hypnotise me?"
Now I bring this up because my friend's girlfriend was one of these people, and no sooner had I mentioned that I could do it was she telling me that it was something she'd always wanted to try and could I please hypnotise her? and now? Suffice to say I was instantly in hypnotist heaven!
This was but for one thing. She'd already had a glass and a half of wine and was feeling a bit "cheerful". The trouble is that I don't seem to ever be able turn down any opportunity to practice hypnosis, and this was no exception.
This was the first time I have used the 8-word induction as a first induction and I was actually very pleased with the results. The key to these instant inductions, I've found, seems to be in going immediately into a deepening routine. I've found that as my confidence has improved I have gotten better at rattling off the patter clearly and quickly. My subject was sort of giggling for a couple of seconds after the "sleep!" but her expression was soon blank with her head dangling at an unusual angle.
I ran through my usual routine of deepening the trance, lifting up an arm as a convincer, fractionating, and then started with my familiar routine of catalepsy demonstrations, starting with a stiff arm and then the completely relaxed body, which worked fine.
Next I moved on to the freeze trigger and the response to this was a bit more... interesting. It did work, sort of, but rather than immobilising her just made her very stiff. She was still able to move but her movements were very slow and jerky, and repeated compounding of the instructions didn't make any difference. It felt as though she just didn't understand what I was asking of her.
I then tried the whole "you'll forget being hypnotised" routine. Again this worked, but again only partially; she knew she'd been hypnotised but couldn't remember what we'd actually done. I had also told her in trance that she'd remember it all when she next had a sip of wine, but unfortunately this didn't quite work so she kept drinking the wine to try to remember more. "hmmm... it's in the wine..." she said.
In the end I had to prompt her with "do you remember when..." and, as with everybody, the response was "actually, yes, now you mention it..."
The other interesting thing was when I did my wake up. After I'd explicitly removed the sleep suggestion from her, as I've done to everybody I've worked with before, I demonstrated this by saying "just to show you this doesn't work now - sleep!". To my total bemusement she went straight back under. Again, she'd misunderstood what I thought were very simple and clear instructions.
I've talked about what I did with this subject because I think it demonstrated to me the first main effect alcohol has on hypnotic subjects, which is a loss of concentration that seems to manifest itself in the subconscious not fully understanding the suggestions given in trance even though they might be quite simple and have been compounded repeatedly. My example here was the "freeze" trigger. It's actually quite a simple instruction to give, but it was easy to see that the subject, or the subject's unconscious, was a bit confused about what was supposed to be happening.
Then of course there's the other most noticeable effect, which is a shortened attention span. This is where post hypnotic suggestions, like "freeze" just break down because the subject becomes "bored with them" and wants to move on to something else. I've mentioned this one before.
I think what I really need to do, as I seem to be occasionally ending up with slightly sozzled subjects, is to devise a canon of tricks that aren't too mentally taxing and so will work on these occasions. It's also certainly a good way to practice making ones instructions as clear and unambiguous as possible.
The more I learn about hypnosis, the more I feel that I really don't see the point of drinking at all. Our minds are capable of such amazing things, so why do so many people seek out large quantities of a drug that takes so much of that away from them? In the past I've never been one for drinking anyway, granted I enjoy my glass of wine or pint from time to time, but nothing puts me off drinking to excess more than seeing how even small quantities of alcohol affect the concentration a person needs to be hypotised.
On a lighter note, something else which has featured quite a bit recently has been the bit of NLP anchoring the Ben showed me in the pub a few weeks ago. He showed me how to give someone an anchor that will make them laugh. Even several weeks later it still works. I know this because my girlfriend inadvertently discovered how to trigger it and has been poking me incessantly for the last few days! Damn you Ben!
I think it was about an hour into the evening, after discussing the insane things that my friend and I had gotten up to at a very young age, that my friend's girlfriend commented that it was Saturday night and we should therefore be doing something crazy. Of course, being me, I could only respond to this by asking if she'd ever been hypnotised before and would being hypnotised right there in the pub qualify as crazy enough?
As I've said before I have so far found that when presented with the offer of being hypnotised most people will respond in one of two ways. They'll either be really up for it or completely the opposite. This said, of those who are interested in trying hypnosis there are a very small group of people who go beyond simple interest and are really really keen to try it. I've heard other hypnotists talk about "the look" that these people get and the statement "you'll know it when you see it" is completely true. It's hard to put into words what it's like, but I guess I can best describe it as a kind of wide eyed fascination, it is as though they are instantly hanging on your every word, and of course the only question on their lips is "can you hypnotise me?"
Now I bring this up because my friend's girlfriend was one of these people, and no sooner had I mentioned that I could do it was she telling me that it was something she'd always wanted to try and could I please hypnotise her? and now? Suffice to say I was instantly in hypnotist heaven!
This was but for one thing. She'd already had a glass and a half of wine and was feeling a bit "cheerful". The trouble is that I don't seem to ever be able turn down any opportunity to practice hypnosis, and this was no exception.
This was the first time I have used the 8-word induction as a first induction and I was actually very pleased with the results. The key to these instant inductions, I've found, seems to be in going immediately into a deepening routine. I've found that as my confidence has improved I have gotten better at rattling off the patter clearly and quickly. My subject was sort of giggling for a couple of seconds after the "sleep!" but her expression was soon blank with her head dangling at an unusual angle.
I ran through my usual routine of deepening the trance, lifting up an arm as a convincer, fractionating, and then started with my familiar routine of catalepsy demonstrations, starting with a stiff arm and then the completely relaxed body, which worked fine.
Next I moved on to the freeze trigger and the response to this was a bit more... interesting. It did work, sort of, but rather than immobilising her just made her very stiff. She was still able to move but her movements were very slow and jerky, and repeated compounding of the instructions didn't make any difference. It felt as though she just didn't understand what I was asking of her.
I then tried the whole "you'll forget being hypnotised" routine. Again this worked, but again only partially; she knew she'd been hypnotised but couldn't remember what we'd actually done. I had also told her in trance that she'd remember it all when she next had a sip of wine, but unfortunately this didn't quite work so she kept drinking the wine to try to remember more. "hmmm... it's in the wine..." she said.
In the end I had to prompt her with "do you remember when..." and, as with everybody, the response was "actually, yes, now you mention it..."
The other interesting thing was when I did my wake up. After I'd explicitly removed the sleep suggestion from her, as I've done to everybody I've worked with before, I demonstrated this by saying "just to show you this doesn't work now - sleep!". To my total bemusement she went straight back under. Again, she'd misunderstood what I thought were very simple and clear instructions.
I've talked about what I did with this subject because I think it demonstrated to me the first main effect alcohol has on hypnotic subjects, which is a loss of concentration that seems to manifest itself in the subconscious not fully understanding the suggestions given in trance even though they might be quite simple and have been compounded repeatedly. My example here was the "freeze" trigger. It's actually quite a simple instruction to give, but it was easy to see that the subject, or the subject's unconscious, was a bit confused about what was supposed to be happening.
Then of course there's the other most noticeable effect, which is a shortened attention span. This is where post hypnotic suggestions, like "freeze" just break down because the subject becomes "bored with them" and wants to move on to something else. I've mentioned this one before.
I think what I really need to do, as I seem to be occasionally ending up with slightly sozzled subjects, is to devise a canon of tricks that aren't too mentally taxing and so will work on these occasions. It's also certainly a good way to practice making ones instructions as clear and unambiguous as possible.
The more I learn about hypnosis, the more I feel that I really don't see the point of drinking at all. Our minds are capable of such amazing things, so why do so many people seek out large quantities of a drug that takes so much of that away from them? In the past I've never been one for drinking anyway, granted I enjoy my glass of wine or pint from time to time, but nothing puts me off drinking to excess more than seeing how even small quantities of alcohol affect the concentration a person needs to be hypotised.
On a lighter note, something else which has featured quite a bit recently has been the bit of NLP anchoring the Ben showed me in the pub a few weeks ago. He showed me how to give someone an anchor that will make them laugh. Even several weeks later it still works. I know this because my girlfriend inadvertently discovered how to trigger it and has been poking me incessantly for the last few days! Damn you Ben!
Wednesday 24 December 2008
Idle thoughts
Something I've found about having a little bit of experience and knowledge of hypnosis is that I find it manages to creep into my though process in practically any context. A good example of this is a couple of idle thoughts I had today in town during my last minute Christmas shopping.
The first thought was that one of these days I am going to snap and try a handshake induction on one of these individuals who insist on stopping people on the street with clipboards. I guess this thought has its origins in Reality is Plastic, where Anthony Jacquin suggests practicing the handshake on traffic wardens. Trouble is I never know how seriously to take him when he makes comments like that.
I guess what I'd do is just say "Sure, you can survey me, but first can I show you something?", show them magnetics fingers, then go for the handshake. Of course the big question would be what to do with them next. Probably have them think that I've already filled out their damn form at least, but that's not very inventive.
I've not yet managed positive hallucinations, but perhaps somehow having them believe they're filling out a form for their favourite celebrity would be a good idea to aim for. Or they might forget how to use a pen, or find their feet have stuck to the floor. There are indeed many possibilities...
Of course though there's the other factor, which is that doing this would require quite a bit more confidence on my part than I feel I currently possess, so I'll have to file this thought under "someday maybe".
The latter, and significantly more idle, of my thoughts today came from a strange moment in a shopping centre. I was passing one of these innumerable identical women's fashion shops when a very realistic looking mannequin in a shop window caught my eye. This wouldn't have qualified for any further thought but for the fact that it moved ever so slightly and I realised that it was also blinking and breathing. This mannequin was actually some girl that was presumably being paid to just stand, almost motionless, as a sort of living window display.
I would love to know how she is able to overcome self consciousness to the point where she is able to stand in full view like that, because that really impresses me, but I'd also like an insight into her motivation. I mean, is her human mannequin act just for a little cash, or perhaps there's more to it and she's a drama student taking an opportunity to develop skills and self-discipline? Does she enjoy doing what she's doing? What's she thinking about when she's stood there looking at shoppers passing by? Suffice to say I would pay more than a penny for her thoughts.
I was quite impressed how motionlessly she was able stand there too, hand on one hip with a constant smile. Well, actually almost impressed... and I'm sure you can guess where this is going.
Yes I have to confess that my inner hypnotist, which since I discovered it never seems to hide particularly deep beneath the surface in any case, hijacked my thought process from here onward. Would this girl be interested in trying a few hypnotic techniques to make her job easier or maybe even more fun?
I might have found a practical application for the freeze trigger! This girl was very good at standing still, but she it was easy to tell from the small movements that she did make that this motionlessness was down to a conscious effort on her part rather than hypnosis. It might certainly be a lot easier for her if one could make being frozen completely subsconcious, removing any conscious effort from the process, and it would certainly be a good position from which to relax mentally and enjoy a bit of people watching, if that's her motivation.
Then of course there's the mental state side to it all. I've had people tell me that being completely frozen is an incredibly odd experience, and it might get a bit boring after a while, but of course one could always direct the conscious mind to just wander off into a pleasant daydream for the duration of the freeze, and of course there's always the option of trancing out completely and not noticing any time passing at all with a "time stop". Just pray nobody asks the subject the question "so, how was your day?" or she'll be a bit stuck for an answer.
Perhaps, to make things more interesting one could arrange it so that the freeze would triggered by a repeating watch countdown timer or something, allowing the subject to change pose periodically whilst the beeps were sounding. This would certainly produce interesting results if she felt the need to scratch and didn't get back into pose quickly enough. Use with caution!
Of course it's all very well having these idle thoughts but somehow the thought of going into that shop and saying "Hello, I'm a hypnotist and I'd like to talk to the woman in your shop window, you know, the attractive one wearing only pajamas..." seems just a little bit too surreal.
By the time my mind had reached this point my feet had somehow carried me out of the far end of the shopping centre and I realised I'd overshot the shop I was aiming for by miles. An interesting example of trancing oneself and proceeding completely on autopilot. Fortunately I was able to double back and complete my Christmas shopping.
Anyway, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
The first thought was that one of these days I am going to snap and try a handshake induction on one of these individuals who insist on stopping people on the street with clipboards. I guess this thought has its origins in Reality is Plastic, where Anthony Jacquin suggests practicing the handshake on traffic wardens. Trouble is I never know how seriously to take him when he makes comments like that.
I guess what I'd do is just say "Sure, you can survey me, but first can I show you something?", show them magnetics fingers, then go for the handshake. Of course the big question would be what to do with them next. Probably have them think that I've already filled out their damn form at least, but that's not very inventive.
I've not yet managed positive hallucinations, but perhaps somehow having them believe they're filling out a form for their favourite celebrity would be a good idea to aim for. Or they might forget how to use a pen, or find their feet have stuck to the floor. There are indeed many possibilities...
Of course though there's the other factor, which is that doing this would require quite a bit more confidence on my part than I feel I currently possess, so I'll have to file this thought under "someday maybe".
The latter, and significantly more idle, of my thoughts today came from a strange moment in a shopping centre. I was passing one of these innumerable identical women's fashion shops when a very realistic looking mannequin in a shop window caught my eye. This wouldn't have qualified for any further thought but for the fact that it moved ever so slightly and I realised that it was also blinking and breathing. This mannequin was actually some girl that was presumably being paid to just stand, almost motionless, as a sort of living window display.
I would love to know how she is able to overcome self consciousness to the point where she is able to stand in full view like that, because that really impresses me, but I'd also like an insight into her motivation. I mean, is her human mannequin act just for a little cash, or perhaps there's more to it and she's a drama student taking an opportunity to develop skills and self-discipline? Does she enjoy doing what she's doing? What's she thinking about when she's stood there looking at shoppers passing by? Suffice to say I would pay more than a penny for her thoughts.
I was quite impressed how motionlessly she was able stand there too, hand on one hip with a constant smile. Well, actually almost impressed... and I'm sure you can guess where this is going.
Yes I have to confess that my inner hypnotist, which since I discovered it never seems to hide particularly deep beneath the surface in any case, hijacked my thought process from here onward. Would this girl be interested in trying a few hypnotic techniques to make her job easier or maybe even more fun?
I might have found a practical application for the freeze trigger! This girl was very good at standing still, but she it was easy to tell from the small movements that she did make that this motionlessness was down to a conscious effort on her part rather than hypnosis. It might certainly be a lot easier for her if one could make being frozen completely subsconcious, removing any conscious effort from the process, and it would certainly be a good position from which to relax mentally and enjoy a bit of people watching, if that's her motivation.
Then of course there's the mental state side to it all. I've had people tell me that being completely frozen is an incredibly odd experience, and it might get a bit boring after a while, but of course one could always direct the conscious mind to just wander off into a pleasant daydream for the duration of the freeze, and of course there's always the option of trancing out completely and not noticing any time passing at all with a "time stop". Just pray nobody asks the subject the question "so, how was your day?" or she'll be a bit stuck for an answer.
Perhaps, to make things more interesting one could arrange it so that the freeze would triggered by a repeating watch countdown timer or something, allowing the subject to change pose periodically whilst the beeps were sounding. This would certainly produce interesting results if she felt the need to scratch and didn't get back into pose quickly enough. Use with caution!
Of course it's all very well having these idle thoughts but somehow the thought of going into that shop and saying "Hello, I'm a hypnotist and I'd like to talk to the woman in your shop window, you know, the attractive one wearing only pajamas..." seems just a little bit too surreal.
By the time my mind had reached this point my feet had somehow carried me out of the far end of the shopping centre and I realised I'd overshot the shop I was aiming for by miles. An interesting example of trancing oneself and proceeding completely on autopilot. Fortunately I was able to double back and complete my Christmas shopping.
Anyway, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
Thursday 18 December 2008
A brilliant subject
Well it's been a week since I had a particularly memorable hypnosis session with a friend, but I've finally gotten around to writing about it. I was very fortunate in that she allowed me to set up a video camera to film it, and reviewing the footage has certainly helped me to go over what happened in order to refresh my memory and cast a critical eye over my own methods.
What can I say about this particular session? Well, probably that it was probably the most exciting adventure into being a hypnotist that I've had to date.
This subject was someone I've done a bit of hypnosis with before and from that previous experience I already knew her to be a natural somnambulist, so I was expecting very good results. What really made the session for me though was the way in which she was quite willing to have fun, and that made her an absolute pleasure to share this with!
That's not to say that the session wasn't a little difficult for me to begin with. At this point I'd not hypnotised anybody properly for about 4 weeks, and I felt distinctly out of practice. I was also getting over a cold at the time, and at that yucky lingering clogged throat stage. Looking back at the video of the induction it doesn't seem too bad, but at the time I felt that I was making such an incredible hash of it. I had so much trouble coming out with the patter and I desperately needed to cough. Thankfully this picked up later on as I got myself back into the zone.
I'd chosen to use magnetic hands as the induction and I went straight into it. I didn't think any warm ups or set pieces were neccessary given that she'd been hypnotised before and how well she'd responded the last time. I had her place her arms out in front of her and imagine a magnetic force pulling them together, telling her that when they touched she'd go into hypnosis. An interesting effect at this point point was the way in which her hands started to drop toward her lap as I said "...and as you relax..." and I had to support them so they could come together without hitting her knees. Something that didn't even occur to me at the time, and in fact not until Ben saw the video and pointed it out to me, was that she was already right there the moment her hands started to droop. I could probably just have said "sleep!" at this point and it would have been enough.
Once I'm happy that my subject is in trance I usually go for the floating arm convincer, so this is what I did next. This is where I ask the subject to just imagine one of their hands becoming lighter and lighter to the point where the arm lifts up by itself. It's a very surreal experience for anyone who's never experienced it before. I really like the floating arm because it's not an instant pass or fail test like, say telling someone that their eyes are locked closed or that they can't lift their arm, and it's also very unlikely to fail to work. In fact, even I can do it!
Something that I seem to find tells me a lot about the subject and the experience they're having is a little routine that I like to add onto the floating arm. What I do, once the arm has floated up to about shoulder level, is tell the subject that the arm is going to drop back to their lap but only at the rate at which they're happy to go deeper into hypnosis. My friend's arm had come up to a point above her head reasonably quickly, but the most amazing thing was the rate at which the hand came down again. It took barely a second, as far as I've been able to tell this is the subject's subconscious to telling the hypnotist that it can't get enough hypnosis and it would like more please, lots more! Of course I was only too happy to oblige.
Catalepsy
I went into my usual catalepsy routine as this always works as a nice warm up for me. Given the strength of response I'd had from my friend in the past, and the way her hand had dropped down so quickly I was satisfied that she needed no warm up at all. I froze her arm, had her move it around with her other arm, and then I unfroze it by tapping it.
"Why tapping it?" she asked me. Well of course it wasn't the tapping it that had unfrozen it, it was my saying it could move again, but I took the opportunity to try out some waking hypnosis. I told her that arm was completely frozen again - not in trance this time, wide awake, and frozen it was. I then released it by saying it would when I snapped my fingers. I think it's absolutely amazing how the mind still takes suggestions like that outside of trance. The power of rapport I guess.
I find one of the joys of learning hypnosis is constantly trying new things like this. It feels so good when something new works, and of course usually the subject has absolutely no idea they're the first person you've tried that particular routine on.
Next I demonstrated how her whole body below her neck would become as still as a statue, having given her that suggestion in trance, by offering her a mint from a tin (one of her own mints too!) and freezing her just before she could get one.
I should also say that by this point my friend was having complete amnesia for her trances, which is a situation I think makes things a lot more fun because they have no idea what to expect at all. Something I have yet to understand is how hypnotic subjects are so unphased by the whole process of being tranced upon their being woken up again. If I were them I would probably be demanding to know what I'd been up to, but then I guess I have a better insight into the mischievous inner workings of my mind.
I confess I always find the freeze trigger a little bit too much fun and start to feel guilty about it. I think my guilt was further compounded by the way I went on to tease her by balancing the tin of mints on the top of her hand, and then unfroze and re-froze her several times as she attempted to transfer one from the tin to her mouth.
I then pushed my guilt to ever greater heights by having her face and head freeze too, which again was far too much fun. In fact it's so much fun I'm sure that it must have hidden adverse consequences. Perhaps every time a hypnotic subject is frozen in this way somewhere a cute bunny dies.
Along these lines something that in all probably is responsible for decimating the world bunny population is the time-stop freeze, which I managed to get to work for the first time at this point. I've already talked about this a couple of posts ago, but suffice to say how I felt when I actually got it to work was really something else. Several times I froze my friend and, with her suspended in one moment in time, moved things around such as her tin of mints, or myself, or her arms, and then unfroze her, just to see her reaction to what felt to her as the world changing around her instantaneously.
Amnesia
Next I thought I'd try for a bit of amnesia. Realising that what I was about to do is probably one of the oldest tricks in the book for hypnotists, I thought I'd have a go at it anyway. I put my friend into trance and told her that she would think she hadn't been hypnotised yet, have no memory of what we'd already done since I had hypnotised her, and that we were just about to start.
Upon bringing her back out of hypnosis I went straight into setting up for the induction, almost in a deja-vu of earlier, and after a few seconds of her going along with this quite naturally I just stopped and said "Actually I think I might have hypnotised you already."
"I don't think so" she replied.
I can't begin to describe what it felt like to be be looking into her eyes and see her looking back at me with that look of innocent sincerity on her face. She really believed that she hadn't been hypnotised. It was almost intimidating to be honest.
We went through the last things she remembered doing and sure enough it was things like setting up the camera that we'd done just before we'd started. Then I put her back into trance, a trance that I told her that she wouldn't remember, and gave her the instruction that she would remember being hypnotised the next time she put a mint in her mouth. Suffice to say when she did the look on her face in that moment of revelation was absolutely priceless.
"That's mean!" she scolded me, although admittedly she had a smile on her face as she said it.
Hallucinations
The next thing I thought we'd have a go at was some hallucinations.
I already knew that my friend responded to audible hallucinations, so I thought I'd try something along those lines first. Zapping her back into trance, I told her that when I woke her up she would hear me speaking in a very strong Irish accent. The conversation that followed that little suggestion was quite hilarious.
"Hi. How're you feeling?" I asked her.
"Fine...." she answered, with an expression of wide eyed startled amusement on her face, "but you sound like Father Ted."
"Oh come on now! What?" I said, feeling as though saying that in my usual English accent was almost as corny as if I'd actually tried to put on an Irish one. Although in truth I expect most people who have actually heard my attempts at putting on an Irish accent in real life wouldn't be opposed to using hypnosis to purge the experience from their memory forever.
"Yep. Definitely Father Ted. Big cows... little cows..."
"Ah!" I said. I picked up the tin of mints. "These are small..."
"Yes! That's it! And those are far far away!"
"Okay so..." I paused for thought.
"Yes you do sound like you're doing an impression of Father Ted," she said, trying to keep a straight face, "which is quite funny. I could see you as Father Ted."
"Oh, we could try that..." I suggested.
"No."
With my brilliant concept for an interesting and not at all unnerving visual hallucination thrown back at me I decided to try a different sense. We'd already played with her sense of hearing, and visually hallucinating Irish catholic priests was a apparently a no-no, so I decided to try touch.
Putting her back into trance, I decided that I'd try getting her to feel herself being tickled. I then realised I'd forgotten to ask if she was actually ticklish. No matter, I just asked her whilst she was in trance, and I got a very quiet and spaced "yes" in reply. I then proceeded to tell her that she would think of the most ticklish place on her body (although not anywhere particularly private) and just imagine as though she were being tickled in that spot.
After continuing with these suggestions for a short while I noticed she was starting to clench the palm of her right hand, which was obviously where she was feeling tickled. As the convulsions of her hand got worse I eventually told her to stop because I was really starting to feel sorry for the poor girl, but I then told her that if I said the word "tickle" whilst she was awake she would feel that tickling sensation again.
When I woke her up she had absolutely no memory of the tickling experience she'd just had, which amazed me given her reaction to it at the time.
"What if I say tickle?"
"Now my palm's itching... That's quite strange!"
It turned out that, yes, the palm of her hand is her most ticklish spot. Well, I guess her subconscious would know these things.
After this I had a try at some visual hallucinations and interestingly these were the only suggestions during the whole session that failed to work. I tried to get her to imagine a ball in my hand, with not success. The same went for when I tried a negative hallucination; making myself invisible to her.
Out of desperation I finally managed invisibility freezing her and then hiding behind her chair, which I admit was a bit of a cheap trick, but it was still fun.
Therapy
This all brought me to the part where I had a go at curing my friend of her phobia of heights. For this I used the Rossi-style method explained in Reality is Plastic. I think I'll talk more about this in detail in another post. Suffice to say looking back I could have performed this procedure a lot better than I did, being as this was the first time, but I do feel quite positive about it. We did a test afterwards and, as far as one is able to test for a mortal fear of plunging headlong to ones death in a small one bedroom flat, it seemed to have made a difference.
Back to normal
I've always made a point of going through a wakeup and removing any suggestions from my subjects after I've finished with them. I don't think this is absolutely essential but I believe it's good practice and good for the purpose of peace of mind if nothing else. I'll say "just to check... sleep!", and of course nothing will happen. As I say, peace of mind.
I went through the usual process of saying "all the suggestions I gave you will be gone" but this time I thought I'd get inventive and remote trigger it, so to speak. I told my friend everything would go back to normal when she crossed the threshold of my front door.
The process of her getting ready to leave was only hampered a couple of times by her bag vanishing in front of her and reappearing elsewhere in the flat.
For an encore I may also have put a force field across the door, which also delayed things. Damn those force fields!
I really enjoyed this session, and given exactly how much we did it's not surprising that it's taken me a while to process it. It was really good to share this hypnosis with someone who was so open to having a bit of fun, but the best feeling of all though is the knowledge that what I did made a real difference to my friend's phobia.
I've also added "my own natural somnambulist" to my Christmas list.
What can I say about this particular session? Well, probably that it was probably the most exciting adventure into being a hypnotist that I've had to date.
This subject was someone I've done a bit of hypnosis with before and from that previous experience I already knew her to be a natural somnambulist, so I was expecting very good results. What really made the session for me though was the way in which she was quite willing to have fun, and that made her an absolute pleasure to share this with!
That's not to say that the session wasn't a little difficult for me to begin with. At this point I'd not hypnotised anybody properly for about 4 weeks, and I felt distinctly out of practice. I was also getting over a cold at the time, and at that yucky lingering clogged throat stage. Looking back at the video of the induction it doesn't seem too bad, but at the time I felt that I was making such an incredible hash of it. I had so much trouble coming out with the patter and I desperately needed to cough. Thankfully this picked up later on as I got myself back into the zone.
I'd chosen to use magnetic hands as the induction and I went straight into it. I didn't think any warm ups or set pieces were neccessary given that she'd been hypnotised before and how well she'd responded the last time. I had her place her arms out in front of her and imagine a magnetic force pulling them together, telling her that when they touched she'd go into hypnosis. An interesting effect at this point point was the way in which her hands started to drop toward her lap as I said "...and as you relax..." and I had to support them so they could come together without hitting her knees. Something that didn't even occur to me at the time, and in fact not until Ben saw the video and pointed it out to me, was that she was already right there the moment her hands started to droop. I could probably just have said "sleep!" at this point and it would have been enough.
Once I'm happy that my subject is in trance I usually go for the floating arm convincer, so this is what I did next. This is where I ask the subject to just imagine one of their hands becoming lighter and lighter to the point where the arm lifts up by itself. It's a very surreal experience for anyone who's never experienced it before. I really like the floating arm because it's not an instant pass or fail test like, say telling someone that their eyes are locked closed or that they can't lift their arm, and it's also very unlikely to fail to work. In fact, even I can do it!
Something that I seem to find tells me a lot about the subject and the experience they're having is a little routine that I like to add onto the floating arm. What I do, once the arm has floated up to about shoulder level, is tell the subject that the arm is going to drop back to their lap but only at the rate at which they're happy to go deeper into hypnosis. My friend's arm had come up to a point above her head reasonably quickly, but the most amazing thing was the rate at which the hand came down again. It took barely a second, as far as I've been able to tell this is the subject's subconscious to telling the hypnotist that it can't get enough hypnosis and it would like more please, lots more! Of course I was only too happy to oblige.
Catalepsy
I went into my usual catalepsy routine as this always works as a nice warm up for me. Given the strength of response I'd had from my friend in the past, and the way her hand had dropped down so quickly I was satisfied that she needed no warm up at all. I froze her arm, had her move it around with her other arm, and then I unfroze it by tapping it.
"Why tapping it?" she asked me. Well of course it wasn't the tapping it that had unfrozen it, it was my saying it could move again, but I took the opportunity to try out some waking hypnosis. I told her that arm was completely frozen again - not in trance this time, wide awake, and frozen it was. I then released it by saying it would when I snapped my fingers. I think it's absolutely amazing how the mind still takes suggestions like that outside of trance. The power of rapport I guess.
I find one of the joys of learning hypnosis is constantly trying new things like this. It feels so good when something new works, and of course usually the subject has absolutely no idea they're the first person you've tried that particular routine on.
Next I demonstrated how her whole body below her neck would become as still as a statue, having given her that suggestion in trance, by offering her a mint from a tin (one of her own mints too!) and freezing her just before she could get one.
I should also say that by this point my friend was having complete amnesia for her trances, which is a situation I think makes things a lot more fun because they have no idea what to expect at all. Something I have yet to understand is how hypnotic subjects are so unphased by the whole process of being tranced upon their being woken up again. If I were them I would probably be demanding to know what I'd been up to, but then I guess I have a better insight into the mischievous inner workings of my mind.
I confess I always find the freeze trigger a little bit too much fun and start to feel guilty about it. I think my guilt was further compounded by the way I went on to tease her by balancing the tin of mints on the top of her hand, and then unfroze and re-froze her several times as she attempted to transfer one from the tin to her mouth.
I then pushed my guilt to ever greater heights by having her face and head freeze too, which again was far too much fun. In fact it's so much fun I'm sure that it must have hidden adverse consequences. Perhaps every time a hypnotic subject is frozen in this way somewhere a cute bunny dies.
Along these lines something that in all probably is responsible for decimating the world bunny population is the time-stop freeze, which I managed to get to work for the first time at this point. I've already talked about this a couple of posts ago, but suffice to say how I felt when I actually got it to work was really something else. Several times I froze my friend and, with her suspended in one moment in time, moved things around such as her tin of mints, or myself, or her arms, and then unfroze her, just to see her reaction to what felt to her as the world changing around her instantaneously.
Amnesia
Next I thought I'd try for a bit of amnesia. Realising that what I was about to do is probably one of the oldest tricks in the book for hypnotists, I thought I'd have a go at it anyway. I put my friend into trance and told her that she would think she hadn't been hypnotised yet, have no memory of what we'd already done since I had hypnotised her, and that we were just about to start.
Upon bringing her back out of hypnosis I went straight into setting up for the induction, almost in a deja-vu of earlier, and after a few seconds of her going along with this quite naturally I just stopped and said "Actually I think I might have hypnotised you already."
"I don't think so" she replied.
I can't begin to describe what it felt like to be be looking into her eyes and see her looking back at me with that look of innocent sincerity on her face. She really believed that she hadn't been hypnotised. It was almost intimidating to be honest.
We went through the last things she remembered doing and sure enough it was things like setting up the camera that we'd done just before we'd started. Then I put her back into trance, a trance that I told her that she wouldn't remember, and gave her the instruction that she would remember being hypnotised the next time she put a mint in her mouth. Suffice to say when she did the look on her face in that moment of revelation was absolutely priceless.
"That's mean!" she scolded me, although admittedly she had a smile on her face as she said it.
Hallucinations
The next thing I thought we'd have a go at was some hallucinations.
I already knew that my friend responded to audible hallucinations, so I thought I'd try something along those lines first. Zapping her back into trance, I told her that when I woke her up she would hear me speaking in a very strong Irish accent. The conversation that followed that little suggestion was quite hilarious.
"Hi. How're you feeling?" I asked her.
"Fine...." she answered, with an expression of wide eyed startled amusement on her face, "but you sound like Father Ted."
"Oh come on now! What?" I said, feeling as though saying that in my usual English accent was almost as corny as if I'd actually tried to put on an Irish one. Although in truth I expect most people who have actually heard my attempts at putting on an Irish accent in real life wouldn't be opposed to using hypnosis to purge the experience from their memory forever.
"Yep. Definitely Father Ted. Big cows... little cows..."
"Ah!" I said. I picked up the tin of mints. "These are small..."
"Yes! That's it! And those are far far away!"
"Okay so..." I paused for thought.
"Yes you do sound like you're doing an impression of Father Ted," she said, trying to keep a straight face, "which is quite funny. I could see you as Father Ted."
"Oh, we could try that..." I suggested.
"No."
With my brilliant concept for an interesting and not at all unnerving visual hallucination thrown back at me I decided to try a different sense. We'd already played with her sense of hearing, and visually hallucinating Irish catholic priests was a apparently a no-no, so I decided to try touch.
Putting her back into trance, I decided that I'd try getting her to feel herself being tickled. I then realised I'd forgotten to ask if she was actually ticklish. No matter, I just asked her whilst she was in trance, and I got a very quiet and spaced "yes" in reply. I then proceeded to tell her that she would think of the most ticklish place on her body (although not anywhere particularly private) and just imagine as though she were being tickled in that spot.
After continuing with these suggestions for a short while I noticed she was starting to clench the palm of her right hand, which was obviously where she was feeling tickled. As the convulsions of her hand got worse I eventually told her to stop because I was really starting to feel sorry for the poor girl, but I then told her that if I said the word "tickle" whilst she was awake she would feel that tickling sensation again.
When I woke her up she had absolutely no memory of the tickling experience she'd just had, which amazed me given her reaction to it at the time.
"What if I say tickle?"
"Now my palm's itching... That's quite strange!"
It turned out that, yes, the palm of her hand is her most ticklish spot. Well, I guess her subconscious would know these things.
After this I had a try at some visual hallucinations and interestingly these were the only suggestions during the whole session that failed to work. I tried to get her to imagine a ball in my hand, with not success. The same went for when I tried a negative hallucination; making myself invisible to her.
Out of desperation I finally managed invisibility freezing her and then hiding behind her chair, which I admit was a bit of a cheap trick, but it was still fun.
Therapy
This all brought me to the part where I had a go at curing my friend of her phobia of heights. For this I used the Rossi-style method explained in Reality is Plastic. I think I'll talk more about this in detail in another post. Suffice to say looking back I could have performed this procedure a lot better than I did, being as this was the first time, but I do feel quite positive about it. We did a test afterwards and, as far as one is able to test for a mortal fear of plunging headlong to ones death in a small one bedroom flat, it seemed to have made a difference.
Back to normal
I've always made a point of going through a wakeup and removing any suggestions from my subjects after I've finished with them. I don't think this is absolutely essential but I believe it's good practice and good for the purpose of peace of mind if nothing else. I'll say "just to check... sleep!", and of course nothing will happen. As I say, peace of mind.
I went through the usual process of saying "all the suggestions I gave you will be gone" but this time I thought I'd get inventive and remote trigger it, so to speak. I told my friend everything would go back to normal when she crossed the threshold of my front door.
The process of her getting ready to leave was only hampered a couple of times by her bag vanishing in front of her and reappearing elsewhere in the flat.
For an encore I may also have put a force field across the door, which also delayed things. Damn those force fields!
I really enjoyed this session, and given exactly how much we did it's not surprising that it's taken me a while to process it. It was really good to share this hypnosis with someone who was so open to having a bit of fun, but the best feeling of all though is the knowledge that what I did made a real difference to my friend's phobia.
I've also added "my own natural somnambulist" to my Christmas list.
Self hypnosis
I've just had quite an interesting experience that I thought I'd write about.
This evening I decided that I'd give self hypnosis a bit of a try. By now I'm used to progressive relaxation inductions and deepeners and their associated patter, so I decided to just sit down, relax and go through that sort of thing in my own head.
So, sitting in my favourite Poäng (thankyou IKEA) I just concentrated on feeling relaxed, let my breathing become regular, and tried to access the relaxed state I'd been in a couple of times on Sunday. Then I concentrated on just imagining my right hand getting lighter and lifting up.
Breathe in - hand feeling lighter, breathe out - going deeper, breathe in - hand feeling lighter, breathe out - going deeper...
I was very quickly aware of my hand actually feeling lighter, but it was only after what felt like a couple of minutes when I first noticed a twitch in my fingertips. They were lifting! This continued for another minute or so with my fingers moving upward with little jerks of movement that told me that I'd actually made my hand cataleptic. It was a weird sensation too, as though my joints were actually creaking.
By the time I felt I'd had enough my fingers had only moved a few millimetres but the actual distance was irrelevant. It was enough to convince me that something was happening.
I'm going to have to try this self hypnosis thing a bit more often. Perhaps I should see if I can raise my hand above my head sometime.
This evening I decided that I'd give self hypnosis a bit of a try. By now I'm used to progressive relaxation inductions and deepeners and their associated patter, so I decided to just sit down, relax and go through that sort of thing in my own head.
So, sitting in my favourite Poäng (thankyou IKEA) I just concentrated on feeling relaxed, let my breathing become regular, and tried to access the relaxed state I'd been in a couple of times on Sunday. Then I concentrated on just imagining my right hand getting lighter and lifting up.
Breathe in - hand feeling lighter, breathe out - going deeper, breathe in - hand feeling lighter, breathe out - going deeper...
I was very quickly aware of my hand actually feeling lighter, but it was only after what felt like a couple of minutes when I first noticed a twitch in my fingertips. They were lifting! This continued for another minute or so with my fingers moving upward with little jerks of movement that told me that I'd actually made my hand cataleptic. It was a weird sensation too, as though my joints were actually creaking.
By the time I felt I'd had enough my fingers had only moved a few millimetres but the actual distance was irrelevant. It was enough to convince me that something was happening.
I'm going to have to try this self hypnosis thing a bit more often. Perhaps I should see if I can raise my hand above my head sometime.
Tuesday 16 December 2008
Freeze!
It has become apparent to me, after a comment Will made following Sunday's meet up, that I seem to have become a bit of a catalepsy specialist. Well, by specialist I don't mean that I know a lot, rather that I've practiced these effects more than some of the other effects.
Catalepsy is a phenomenon where, as I understand it, opposing muscle groups strike a balance causing that particular body part to become stiff and immobile. Inducing catalepsy does not require a particularly deep trance, and it quite often occurs during certain types of induction. Indeed, I guess the reason why I have become reasonably well practiced at these phenomena is that I've yet to find anybody who doesn't respond well to them. They seem to work well for me as a springboard from which to launch into phenomena that seem to require a deeper trance to work properly.
So, in this post I thought I'd touch a little on the range of catalepsy phenomena I have been able to induce. I should of course stress that none of the ideas here are mine originally, but this is my take on them.
Stiff arm
This is a routine taken directly from the pages of Anthony Jaquin's book Reality is Plastic and I know of several hypnotists who like to use the stiff arm routine as a set piece in the way described there. To tell the truth though I've tried it a couple of times in the past in this context and it didn't work and so I've avoided doing so since. I have found that things are different after the induction however, and it always has always worked well for me if I do it after I have actually hypnotised someone. That said, perhaps I should give it another go sometime as a set piece.
Basically the idea behind this routine is that you have someone hold their arm out straight in front of them with their fist clenched and suggest to them that the arm is getting stiffer and stiffer. Made concrete, metal bar down the middle, end snagged on a skyhook, etc. Then you have them try to bend their arm and find that they cannot do so. This trick is aided by the physiological fact that if someone is tensing their arm muscles they will already find it hard to bend their arm, so only a small amount of suggestion is required to achieve quite a simple effect. I feel helps get my subject into the swing of things, and makes later suggestions more believable.
I have generally done this with people who are in trance, have them find they cannot, then ask them to open their eyes and try again. The stiff arm is quite special to me because it on quite a few occasions so far it has been the first "eyes open" hypnotic effect my subject has experienced. Experiencing strange things happening in trance is one thing, but most of my subjects appear to find seeing their own arm completely motionless in front of them and seemingly beyond their control to be quite a profound and surreal moment.
If I'm feeling confident that the arm is going to stay completely stiff I will sometimes move the arm to new positions, keeping it straight and watch my subject's bemusement when it stays where I put it.
Completely relaxed
The inspiration for this little routine comes from the response of one of the very first people I hypnotised. I use magnetic hands as my induction and as I tried to do the lifting hand routine I was concerned when I appeared not to be getting any response at all. At the time I decided what had happened was that my induction simply hadn't worked. I told my subject to open his eyes and much to his confusion asked him to shake my hand, going straight into the handshake induction instead. He hasn't let me shake his hand since.
What I hadn't realised was that the guy was actually a natural, that he'd gone straight under first time, and that he was just so completely relaxed it would take a very long time for the hand to start to lift. In any case, as I tried to lift his hand up the second time and it still didn't appear to be having any of it I remembered a good piece of advice I'd been given, which was to turn things around so that they worked in my favour.
I told my subject that his arm was getting very heavy and he wouldn't be able to lift it.
This little convincer worked really well, so shortly afterward one of my post hypnotic suggestions was that when he woke up he would stay completely relaxed below the neck and would be unable to move. It worked really well, and I've used this suggestion quite often since, usually as a precursor to giving someone a "freeze" trigger.
I like to, for effect, lift their arm up and drop it back in their lap to demonstrate how limp their body has become.
Sometimes when I've done this routine friends of my subject who have been watching have tried to take advantage of their apparent helplessness by going to prod, tickle or even, on one occasion, draw on them with a pen. I've almost surprised myself with how defensive of my subject I've gotten in these situations, but I guess it's just the way I respond to the feeling of responsibility I have when someone puts their trust in me. I think it also irritates me when people are willing to tease someone in such a way and yet they're too afraid to try it for themselves.
"Your turn next then is it?" has been a useful phrase.
Freeze!
So having demonstrated catalepsy to people with the stiff arm and maybe the pseudo paralysis I described above I generally move on to the freeze trigger. This is where I tell them that if I say the word "freeze" their whole body below their neck will freeze solid like a statue, just like their arm froze earlier. Then I tell them that if I say "unfreeze" they will be able to move as normal.
I usually get one of two responses. If the subject is already having amnesia for their trances and doesn't remember being this suggestion, I find that the look of surprise they have on their face at not being able to move at all is absolutely priceless. Alternatively, if they can remember, their surprise that it has actually worked is no less significant.
In fact, usually subjects can remember being given these instructions but I've so far found that if they do it makes no difference at all.
Something I have had fun with is giving the subject a way in which they could inadvertently trigger this effect. On one occasion I'd given a friend this suggestion and told her that it would also work if she said the trigger word. On waking, completely oblivious to this fact, she had walked halfway across the room before saying something along the lines of "and don't you dare say freeze now!" and instantly stopped dead in her tracks.
Of course, she couldn't unfreeze herself and I was too busy holding my sides and rolling around on the floor to be of any help. Seeing someone break down in hysterics themself at what they've just done, but only from the neck up, is also quite a surreal sight.
Something else that it's possible to do when someone is frozen is to have fun moving their arms around. In fact it's possible to pose someones entire body in this way. Interestingly if they're stood up they'll also keep their balance but otherwise remain completely immobile.
The freeze command is also a great platform for a bit of waking hypnosis; that is to say giving the subject suggestions when they're outside of trance. I like to tell my subject that one of their arms will be free to move when I tap it and have them move their still frozen arm around with their free arm. This lets them feel their own catalepsy, which I'm told is a very surreal experience.
Sometimes, having played with the freeze trigger a bit, I go even further and tell them that the freeze will extend to their their head, including their eyes and facial expression and that obviously they will still breathe and blink, but they won't be able to make a sound or talk. I'm told this experience is very surreal, and incredibly frustrating too.
To be honest I don't use this one quite so much because it can make conversation very one sided and I enjoy hypnosis most when it's a two way process.
Frozen in time!
In my opinion this effect, which I will call the "time-stop freeze" takes all of this to a completely new level, and suffice to say it is pretty damn dramatic. So far I have only achieved it on one occasion, with my friend last week, and it took a bit of tinkering with the patter to get it to work properly. I'd tried it before and not had much success, but a conversation with a guy by the name of Paul at the meet in London encouraged me to give it another go. It was definitely worth it!
The idea is that when the subject is frozen and subsequently unfrozen they have absolutely no awareness of anything that happens during the time they were frozen. In fact they may not be aware of anything happening at all unless something has obviously changed.
In fact the majority of the fun to be had with this effect is with the changes that do occur whilst the subject is frozen, because from their perspective this change is instantaneous. Changing your own posture, position, their posture, moving objects around, etc. I will confess to having a little bit of fun with this one with my friend; when the time came for her to leave she went to pick up her bag and found it vanishing from in front of her and reappearing nearby. Not in the least bit frustrating.
Thinking about it I imagine it's even possible to, in effect, "teleport" a subject from one place to another simply by freezing them and moving them before unfreezing them again. I'll have to try that one.
There are plenty of videos of this effect floating around on youtube. For example there are several examples of photo shoots where there are models frozen by the flash of the camera, and unfrozen again by the next flash, experiencing only one flash. I have even heard a story of someone who, courtesy of her hypnotist boyfriend, experienced this effect on a London underground train of all places! She saw the train doors close, then open again and only realised something had happened when she heard the voice announcement declaring a different station!
Suffice to say I have barely scratched the surface of what sort of fun can be had with this particular suggestion. Now I've finally got it to work I look forward to trying it on more people and recounting my experiences here.
Anyway, I hope this has been an interesting read. My next post in a few days will probably be about the session I had with my friend last week. We did some really fun stuff that I can't wait to write about!
Catalepsy is a phenomenon where, as I understand it, opposing muscle groups strike a balance causing that particular body part to become stiff and immobile. Inducing catalepsy does not require a particularly deep trance, and it quite often occurs during certain types of induction. Indeed, I guess the reason why I have become reasonably well practiced at these phenomena is that I've yet to find anybody who doesn't respond well to them. They seem to work well for me as a springboard from which to launch into phenomena that seem to require a deeper trance to work properly.
So, in this post I thought I'd touch a little on the range of catalepsy phenomena I have been able to induce. I should of course stress that none of the ideas here are mine originally, but this is my take on them.
Stiff arm
This is a routine taken directly from the pages of Anthony Jaquin's book Reality is Plastic and I know of several hypnotists who like to use the stiff arm routine as a set piece in the way described there. To tell the truth though I've tried it a couple of times in the past in this context and it didn't work and so I've avoided doing so since. I have found that things are different after the induction however, and it always has always worked well for me if I do it after I have actually hypnotised someone. That said, perhaps I should give it another go sometime as a set piece.
Basically the idea behind this routine is that you have someone hold their arm out straight in front of them with their fist clenched and suggest to them that the arm is getting stiffer and stiffer. Made concrete, metal bar down the middle, end snagged on a skyhook, etc. Then you have them try to bend their arm and find that they cannot do so. This trick is aided by the physiological fact that if someone is tensing their arm muscles they will already find it hard to bend their arm, so only a small amount of suggestion is required to achieve quite a simple effect. I feel helps get my subject into the swing of things, and makes later suggestions more believable.
I have generally done this with people who are in trance, have them find they cannot, then ask them to open their eyes and try again. The stiff arm is quite special to me because it on quite a few occasions so far it has been the first "eyes open" hypnotic effect my subject has experienced. Experiencing strange things happening in trance is one thing, but most of my subjects appear to find seeing their own arm completely motionless in front of them and seemingly beyond their control to be quite a profound and surreal moment.
If I'm feeling confident that the arm is going to stay completely stiff I will sometimes move the arm to new positions, keeping it straight and watch my subject's bemusement when it stays where I put it.
Completely relaxed
The inspiration for this little routine comes from the response of one of the very first people I hypnotised. I use magnetic hands as my induction and as I tried to do the lifting hand routine I was concerned when I appeared not to be getting any response at all. At the time I decided what had happened was that my induction simply hadn't worked. I told my subject to open his eyes and much to his confusion asked him to shake my hand, going straight into the handshake induction instead. He hasn't let me shake his hand since.
What I hadn't realised was that the guy was actually a natural, that he'd gone straight under first time, and that he was just so completely relaxed it would take a very long time for the hand to start to lift. In any case, as I tried to lift his hand up the second time and it still didn't appear to be having any of it I remembered a good piece of advice I'd been given, which was to turn things around so that they worked in my favour.
I told my subject that his arm was getting very heavy and he wouldn't be able to lift it.
This little convincer worked really well, so shortly afterward one of my post hypnotic suggestions was that when he woke up he would stay completely relaxed below the neck and would be unable to move. It worked really well, and I've used this suggestion quite often since, usually as a precursor to giving someone a "freeze" trigger.
I like to, for effect, lift their arm up and drop it back in their lap to demonstrate how limp their body has become.
Sometimes when I've done this routine friends of my subject who have been watching have tried to take advantage of their apparent helplessness by going to prod, tickle or even, on one occasion, draw on them with a pen. I've almost surprised myself with how defensive of my subject I've gotten in these situations, but I guess it's just the way I respond to the feeling of responsibility I have when someone puts their trust in me. I think it also irritates me when people are willing to tease someone in such a way and yet they're too afraid to try it for themselves.
"Your turn next then is it?" has been a useful phrase.
Freeze!
So having demonstrated catalepsy to people with the stiff arm and maybe the pseudo paralysis I described above I generally move on to the freeze trigger. This is where I tell them that if I say the word "freeze" their whole body below their neck will freeze solid like a statue, just like their arm froze earlier. Then I tell them that if I say "unfreeze" they will be able to move as normal.
I usually get one of two responses. If the subject is already having amnesia for their trances and doesn't remember being this suggestion, I find that the look of surprise they have on their face at not being able to move at all is absolutely priceless. Alternatively, if they can remember, their surprise that it has actually worked is no less significant.
In fact, usually subjects can remember being given these instructions but I've so far found that if they do it makes no difference at all.
Something I have had fun with is giving the subject a way in which they could inadvertently trigger this effect. On one occasion I'd given a friend this suggestion and told her that it would also work if she said the trigger word. On waking, completely oblivious to this fact, she had walked halfway across the room before saying something along the lines of "and don't you dare say freeze now!" and instantly stopped dead in her tracks.
Of course, she couldn't unfreeze herself and I was too busy holding my sides and rolling around on the floor to be of any help. Seeing someone break down in hysterics themself at what they've just done, but only from the neck up, is also quite a surreal sight.
Something else that it's possible to do when someone is frozen is to have fun moving their arms around. In fact it's possible to pose someones entire body in this way. Interestingly if they're stood up they'll also keep their balance but otherwise remain completely immobile.
The freeze command is also a great platform for a bit of waking hypnosis; that is to say giving the subject suggestions when they're outside of trance. I like to tell my subject that one of their arms will be free to move when I tap it and have them move their still frozen arm around with their free arm. This lets them feel their own catalepsy, which I'm told is a very surreal experience.
Sometimes, having played with the freeze trigger a bit, I go even further and tell them that the freeze will extend to their their head, including their eyes and facial expression and that obviously they will still breathe and blink, but they won't be able to make a sound or talk. I'm told this experience is very surreal, and incredibly frustrating too.
To be honest I don't use this one quite so much because it can make conversation very one sided and I enjoy hypnosis most when it's a two way process.
Frozen in time!
In my opinion this effect, which I will call the "time-stop freeze" takes all of this to a completely new level, and suffice to say it is pretty damn dramatic. So far I have only achieved it on one occasion, with my friend last week, and it took a bit of tinkering with the patter to get it to work properly. I'd tried it before and not had much success, but a conversation with a guy by the name of Paul at the meet in London encouraged me to give it another go. It was definitely worth it!
The idea is that when the subject is frozen and subsequently unfrozen they have absolutely no awareness of anything that happens during the time they were frozen. In fact they may not be aware of anything happening at all unless something has obviously changed.
In fact the majority of the fun to be had with this effect is with the changes that do occur whilst the subject is frozen, because from their perspective this change is instantaneous. Changing your own posture, position, their posture, moving objects around, etc. I will confess to having a little bit of fun with this one with my friend; when the time came for her to leave she went to pick up her bag and found it vanishing from in front of her and reappearing nearby. Not in the least bit frustrating.
Thinking about it I imagine it's even possible to, in effect, "teleport" a subject from one place to another simply by freezing them and moving them before unfreezing them again. I'll have to try that one.
There are plenty of videos of this effect floating around on youtube. For example there are several examples of photo shoots where there are models frozen by the flash of the camera, and unfrozen again by the next flash, experiencing only one flash. I have even heard a story of someone who, courtesy of her hypnotist boyfriend, experienced this effect on a London underground train of all places! She saw the train doors close, then open again and only realised something had happened when she heard the voice announcement declaring a different station!
Suffice to say I have barely scratched the surface of what sort of fun can be had with this particular suggestion. Now I've finally got it to work I look forward to trying it on more people and recounting my experiences here.
Anyway, I hope this has been an interesting read. My next post in a few days will probably be about the session I had with my friend last week. We did some really fun stuff that I can't wait to write about!
Monday 15 December 2008
Back to London
Well the last week has seen a lot of exciting hypnosis things happen so I'm going to have to break them down into several posts.
Late last week I managed to have another session with a friend I'd previously hypnotised, which I enjoyed a lot. I also have reason to believe I've helped her a lot with her phobia of heights, and that feels very good. I'll write more on that soon I promise.
Anyway, this weekend presented me with another opportunity to meet up with some of the other hypnotists I met a in London few weeks ago, so of course I took it. The venue was a very nice quiet pub near Leicester Square, and in the end there were three of us from the last meet - Ben, Darren and myself. We were joined by a fourth, a guy by the name of Will who was curious about hypnosis, had been in touch with us via the forum, but hadn't been able to make it to the last meet.
One thing that has impressed me is the way in which all of the hypnotists I have met thus far have been such nice people. To me it was little wonder that we ended up spending close on four or five hours discussing inductions, deepening, and we even ended up practicing quite a bit on each other.
What did amaze me though was the way in which, as the pub gradually filled up over the course of the afternoon, nobody paid us the slightest bit of attention. This was despite loud cries of "sleep!", Will periodically frozen like a statue or stuttering, or even the ensuing hysterics. The bar staff didn't even raise an eyebrow when they came over to collect empty drinks glasses and somebody at our table was slumped over in their seat in a deep state of trance.
In fact the only thing that did draw any attention was when Ben asked me to film something that he was doing with a video camera. The camera drew attention, but the comatose Darren that it was pointed at certainly didn't.
I was reminded of Douglas Adams' concept of a "somebody else's problem field" generator. It's probably a feature on my iPhone that's switched on and draining the batteries without me realising. That would explain a lot certainly.
Let the hypnosis begin...
So anyway, after we'd had some lunch Will told us he'd be happy to be hypnotised.
Somehow I got volunteered to go first, and I actually felt quite nervous. Every time I've hypnotised people in the past I've been the only person present who's known anything about hypnosis. having two other hypnotists watch me work felt a bit unnerving at first. Fortunately whenever I do hypnosis I find myself entering a kind of trance myself, with my attention focused on my subject, so I was soon able to block the others out and get on with it.
It is because of this need to focus my own attention that I find set pieces as useful a warm up for myself as for my subject, so I ran through magnetic fingers and magnetic hands before going straight into a hand-to-eye fixation induction. I did some deepening and then went into a convincer to demonstrate to Will, and to myself, that he was in a trance. I chose to go for a floating arm, so I talked his hand into lifting up. This was working fine until the table got in the way of his hand and he snapped out of it.
At this point Ben kindly took the baton for a bit and performed a slower induction based on relaxation and imagery. He managed to freeze Will's arm and have him go under by giving the sleep suggestion.
To be honest we did so much over the next couple of hours that most of it is still a blur to me. Will was a brilliant sport, allowing all three of us to practice on him and try different effects.
There were certainly a few highlights though. In particular there were a couple of new ideas that I'll have to try myself when I get the chance. Ben gave Will a suggestion that he would have difficulty speaking at a given signal, which in this case was a cool little clicker thingy that Ben had brought. Darren also gave Will a suggestion that his drink was stuck to the table, which was quite amusing because by that point Will could remember that the suggestion was about the drink, but not exactly what it was.
I got to demonstrate my current party piece, the "freeze" command, which rendered Will completely motionless below the neck. Later on I extended it to include his head and face too, and made it so that he could also trigger it. Trying to get him to say "freeze" was amusing enough in itself.
Darren also managed to get Will to forget his name, and it was obvious he could see this one coming as Darren introduced himself, Ben and me and said "sorry, what was your name again?"
Will looked so frustrated I felt I should say something.
"Was it freeze?" I asked helpfully.
There were some things that didn't quite work. For example, Darren's attempt to get Will to speak in fluent Mandarin was a bit of a non starter. Will also expressed disappointment at not being able to get significant amnesia too.
Trying to do the time stop freeze, where the subject doesn't notice or remember any of the time that passes when they're frozen, with Will didn't work though, and it stopped the existing freeze command from working. This didn't surprise me that much, as I've so far found is that it needs a subject who's quite practiced at amnesia to get it to work properly.
Ben and Darren also did a bit of hypnosis on each other, some of which I recorded for Ben on his camcorder. This drew the sum total of the attention we received from other people in the pub.
Something I love about being a hypnotist is that there's no single right or wrong way of doing things, and so you're free to develop your own style and approach to what you do. I was more aware than ever of this watching Ben and Darren work.
Ben's style of hypnosis came across as being slightly gentler in pace than mine and had a lot more emphasis on imagery. Darren, on the other hand, seems to have more closely followed the Nongard & Cerbone school of thought with emphasis on quite dramatic rapid inductions. I personally see my own style as sitting somewhere in the middle.
The best thing about these meets, in terms of hypnosis, is exchanging ideas and techniques, and I love the way that seemly all hypnotists are so happy to do this.
A good example of this was when Ben Showed me how to give somebody a laughing anchor using NLP. He then asked me to demonstrate on Darren; here's a video of his response.
My own experiences
At one point fairly early on in the afternoon Ben asked me if I'd like to try being hypnotised. My immediate reaction was no, as to be honest I felt a bit nervous about the whole thing, and afterward I felt that perhaps I'd been a bit rude because my response to his question was perhaps a bit short. It was an hour or so later that I began to think that yes, perhaps I would like to give it a go, and so I asked Ben to try.
I've already mentioned my frustration at my seeming lack of response to hypnosis mp3s, and it was because of this I was hoping that face to face hypnosis would produce much better results for me.
Ben asked me to start with magnetic hands, that worked of course, and so did to some extent the imagery which he then moved on to, having me remember a loved one. Next he told me that my hands would become stuck together, and I'm sad to say that with that instruction, much as I really wanted it to work, absolutely nothing happened. My hands came apart the instant I tried.
Ben persisted, allowed me to rest my hands in my lap, and went into the lifting hand routine. I have experienced this phenomenon before myself, where you imagine your hand getting lighter and it lifts up by itself. Ben's attempt at it with me worked rather well, although interestingly it felt like my hand was moving sideways to start with. I ended up with the hand up against my face, with enough force to make my head to tilt back. Sadly though, despite Ben's best efforts, the hand didn't stick to my face. It came away the instant I tried.
Ben also did the stiff arm routine on me whilst I had my eyes closed. This the one where you hold your arm out straight with your hand in a fist and become completely unable to bend it. It was odd because I didn't feel it was working at all. My arm felt stiff, but it did feel as though my arm was bending. The others assured me afterward that this was not the case at all, that my arm was barely moving.
Darren also stepped up to have a go. I've never really managed the stiff arm as a set piece before, so it was interesting experiencing it. I believe that what made it work was focusing my eyes on my knuckle, and I was aware of a light trance with only the end of my arm in focus, everything else a blur. So, after all the suggestions about my arm being rigid, sure enough I really couldn't bend my arm. It was almost as though I'd just forgotten how to do it. In fact in trying to bend my arm I merely found myself pivoting bodily, my torso traversing like a gun turret, which was quite hilarious at the time.
Darren then turned this set piece into an induction, telling me to "sleep", and I simply allowed myself to drop and go along with it, likewise when he tried again shortly afterward with a three handshake induction. Perhaps it was Darren's method or just the fact it was just a continuation of earlier experiences but I did become much more aware of mentally being in a trance state. I even felt a sort of mental floating sensation, which I'd previously associated with trying to squeeze my eyes closed but this time my eyes were relaxed. Sadly though, Darren tried to give me a suggestion that my hand would stick to my leg, and this didn't work.
So frustrating!
I got the feeling that I'd knocked back confidences a little. It wasn't obvious on the surface of course, but I know from experience what it's like when something doesn't work. Especially something really simple and easy like sticking someone's hands to something.
It might sound silly but I am becoming increasingly jealous of the people who find being hypnotised easy. There are so many things that I've done and can achieve so easily with pretty much everybody I work with that just don't seem to work on me. In this respect I didn't feel quite so positive coming away, but looking back now as I recount these events it does seem that I did experience quite a lot, and several new things. It was a good experience and I do believe that, like the stereograms, I will figure it out in the end.
Still, I came away from this meet up feeling that I'd learned a lot from it. It was a heck of a lot of fun too! Thanks guys!
Late last week I managed to have another session with a friend I'd previously hypnotised, which I enjoyed a lot. I also have reason to believe I've helped her a lot with her phobia of heights, and that feels very good. I'll write more on that soon I promise.
Anyway, this weekend presented me with another opportunity to meet up with some of the other hypnotists I met a in London few weeks ago, so of course I took it. The venue was a very nice quiet pub near Leicester Square, and in the end there were three of us from the last meet - Ben, Darren and myself. We were joined by a fourth, a guy by the name of Will who was curious about hypnosis, had been in touch with us via the forum, but hadn't been able to make it to the last meet.
One thing that has impressed me is the way in which all of the hypnotists I have met thus far have been such nice people. To me it was little wonder that we ended up spending close on four or five hours discussing inductions, deepening, and we even ended up practicing quite a bit on each other.
What did amaze me though was the way in which, as the pub gradually filled up over the course of the afternoon, nobody paid us the slightest bit of attention. This was despite loud cries of "sleep!", Will periodically frozen like a statue or stuttering, or even the ensuing hysterics. The bar staff didn't even raise an eyebrow when they came over to collect empty drinks glasses and somebody at our table was slumped over in their seat in a deep state of trance.
In fact the only thing that did draw any attention was when Ben asked me to film something that he was doing with a video camera. The camera drew attention, but the comatose Darren that it was pointed at certainly didn't.
I was reminded of Douglas Adams' concept of a "somebody else's problem field" generator. It's probably a feature on my iPhone that's switched on and draining the batteries without me realising. That would explain a lot certainly.
Let the hypnosis begin...
So anyway, after we'd had some lunch Will told us he'd be happy to be hypnotised.
Somehow I got volunteered to go first, and I actually felt quite nervous. Every time I've hypnotised people in the past I've been the only person present who's known anything about hypnosis. having two other hypnotists watch me work felt a bit unnerving at first. Fortunately whenever I do hypnosis I find myself entering a kind of trance myself, with my attention focused on my subject, so I was soon able to block the others out and get on with it.
It is because of this need to focus my own attention that I find set pieces as useful a warm up for myself as for my subject, so I ran through magnetic fingers and magnetic hands before going straight into a hand-to-eye fixation induction. I did some deepening and then went into a convincer to demonstrate to Will, and to myself, that he was in a trance. I chose to go for a floating arm, so I talked his hand into lifting up. This was working fine until the table got in the way of his hand and he snapped out of it.
At this point Ben kindly took the baton for a bit and performed a slower induction based on relaxation and imagery. He managed to freeze Will's arm and have him go under by giving the sleep suggestion.
To be honest we did so much over the next couple of hours that most of it is still a blur to me. Will was a brilliant sport, allowing all three of us to practice on him and try different effects.
There were certainly a few highlights though. In particular there were a couple of new ideas that I'll have to try myself when I get the chance. Ben gave Will a suggestion that he would have difficulty speaking at a given signal, which in this case was a cool little clicker thingy that Ben had brought. Darren also gave Will a suggestion that his drink was stuck to the table, which was quite amusing because by that point Will could remember that the suggestion was about the drink, but not exactly what it was.
I got to demonstrate my current party piece, the "freeze" command, which rendered Will completely motionless below the neck. Later on I extended it to include his head and face too, and made it so that he could also trigger it. Trying to get him to say "freeze" was amusing enough in itself.
Darren also managed to get Will to forget his name, and it was obvious he could see this one coming as Darren introduced himself, Ben and me and said "sorry, what was your name again?"
Will looked so frustrated I felt I should say something.
"Was it freeze?" I asked helpfully.
There were some things that didn't quite work. For example, Darren's attempt to get Will to speak in fluent Mandarin was a bit of a non starter. Will also expressed disappointment at not being able to get significant amnesia too.
Trying to do the time stop freeze, where the subject doesn't notice or remember any of the time that passes when they're frozen, with Will didn't work though, and it stopped the existing freeze command from working. This didn't surprise me that much, as I've so far found is that it needs a subject who's quite practiced at amnesia to get it to work properly.
Ben and Darren also did a bit of hypnosis on each other, some of which I recorded for Ben on his camcorder. This drew the sum total of the attention we received from other people in the pub.
Something I love about being a hypnotist is that there's no single right or wrong way of doing things, and so you're free to develop your own style and approach to what you do. I was more aware than ever of this watching Ben and Darren work.
Ben's style of hypnosis came across as being slightly gentler in pace than mine and had a lot more emphasis on imagery. Darren, on the other hand, seems to have more closely followed the Nongard & Cerbone school of thought with emphasis on quite dramatic rapid inductions. I personally see my own style as sitting somewhere in the middle.
The best thing about these meets, in terms of hypnosis, is exchanging ideas and techniques, and I love the way that seemly all hypnotists are so happy to do this.
A good example of this was when Ben Showed me how to give somebody a laughing anchor using NLP. He then asked me to demonstrate on Darren; here's a video of his response.
My own experiences
At one point fairly early on in the afternoon Ben asked me if I'd like to try being hypnotised. My immediate reaction was no, as to be honest I felt a bit nervous about the whole thing, and afterward I felt that perhaps I'd been a bit rude because my response to his question was perhaps a bit short. It was an hour or so later that I began to think that yes, perhaps I would like to give it a go, and so I asked Ben to try.
I've already mentioned my frustration at my seeming lack of response to hypnosis mp3s, and it was because of this I was hoping that face to face hypnosis would produce much better results for me.
Ben asked me to start with magnetic hands, that worked of course, and so did to some extent the imagery which he then moved on to, having me remember a loved one. Next he told me that my hands would become stuck together, and I'm sad to say that with that instruction, much as I really wanted it to work, absolutely nothing happened. My hands came apart the instant I tried.
Ben persisted, allowed me to rest my hands in my lap, and went into the lifting hand routine. I have experienced this phenomenon before myself, where you imagine your hand getting lighter and it lifts up by itself. Ben's attempt at it with me worked rather well, although interestingly it felt like my hand was moving sideways to start with. I ended up with the hand up against my face, with enough force to make my head to tilt back. Sadly though, despite Ben's best efforts, the hand didn't stick to my face. It came away the instant I tried.
Ben also did the stiff arm routine on me whilst I had my eyes closed. This the one where you hold your arm out straight with your hand in a fist and become completely unable to bend it. It was odd because I didn't feel it was working at all. My arm felt stiff, but it did feel as though my arm was bending. The others assured me afterward that this was not the case at all, that my arm was barely moving.
Darren also stepped up to have a go. I've never really managed the stiff arm as a set piece before, so it was interesting experiencing it. I believe that what made it work was focusing my eyes on my knuckle, and I was aware of a light trance with only the end of my arm in focus, everything else a blur. So, after all the suggestions about my arm being rigid, sure enough I really couldn't bend my arm. It was almost as though I'd just forgotten how to do it. In fact in trying to bend my arm I merely found myself pivoting bodily, my torso traversing like a gun turret, which was quite hilarious at the time.
Darren then turned this set piece into an induction, telling me to "sleep", and I simply allowed myself to drop and go along with it, likewise when he tried again shortly afterward with a three handshake induction. Perhaps it was Darren's method or just the fact it was just a continuation of earlier experiences but I did become much more aware of mentally being in a trance state. I even felt a sort of mental floating sensation, which I'd previously associated with trying to squeeze my eyes closed but this time my eyes were relaxed. Sadly though, Darren tried to give me a suggestion that my hand would stick to my leg, and this didn't work.
So frustrating!
I got the feeling that I'd knocked back confidences a little. It wasn't obvious on the surface of course, but I know from experience what it's like when something doesn't work. Especially something really simple and easy like sticking someone's hands to something.
It might sound silly but I am becoming increasingly jealous of the people who find being hypnotised easy. There are so many things that I've done and can achieve so easily with pretty much everybody I work with that just don't seem to work on me. In this respect I didn't feel quite so positive coming away, but looking back now as I recount these events it does seem that I did experience quite a lot, and several new things. It was a good experience and I do believe that, like the stereograms, I will figure it out in the end.
Still, I came away from this meet up feeling that I'd learned a lot from it. It was a heck of a lot of fun too! Thanks guys!
Monday 8 December 2008
Stereograms and trance
I have mentioned before now the incredible frustration I feel in finding it impossible, or at least incredibly difficult, to access trance. Recently on during a discussion Uncommon Knowledge a guy by the name of Simon (alias cyman1964uk) drew a parallel that gives me rather more hope than I'd previously had.
This is a stereogram.
Until recently these have always been known to me as "those damn pictures that everybody except me can see!" That was until recently, at a training course with work of all places, when someone showed me how to do it; how to see the 3D image hidden in the noise. There was a sense of "Ahhhhh! Now I get it!", and I've been able to see every one I've come across since.
I'm hoping that for me the same will be true of trance. Until now I've had exactly the same feeling, as though everybody else seems to be able to experience a hypnotice trance and I just can't. Perhaps at some point there will be the same moment of revelation for me.
This is a stereogram.
Relax your eyes, and as you see the pattern emerge you'll know what to do...
Until recently these have always been known to me as "those damn pictures that everybody except me can see!" That was until recently, at a training course with work of all places, when someone showed me how to do it; how to see the 3D image hidden in the noise. There was a sense of "Ahhhhh! Now I get it!", and I've been able to see every one I've come across since.
I'm hoping that for me the same will be true of trance. Until now I've had exactly the same feeling, as though everybody else seems to be able to experience a hypnotice trance and I just can't. Perhaps at some point there will be the same moment of revelation for me.
Tuesday 2 December 2008
The bad with the good
So far I have only talked about my successes with hypnosis, but it's needless to say that I have also had failures too; every hypnotist does.
I do believe it when I'm told that everybody can be hypnotised, and that even includes me. What that doesn't mean, however, is that everybody can be hypnotised anywhere by any hypnotist. Context can be everything.
This is the point where I have to reveal the fundamental secret of hypnosis, as I understand it. The single piece of knowledge shared by all hypnotists that means they are able to hypnotise people, whereas the uninitiated can't. The secret is as follows:
"I am the hypnotist"
In order to hypnotise people the hypnotist has to believe the above statement wholeheartedly. It's as simple as that. If they don't believe it, if there are doubts in their mind, these doubts will ultimately manifest themselves in the way they speak, in their body language, and if the subject gets wind of it... well, suffice to say things don't work.
It's true that many of my outings as the hypnotist have been quite bungled. The wonderful thing about hypnosis has been the way in which, by knowing almost infinitely more about it than everyone else around me, I have been able to get away with serious mistakes.
I have made a complete mess of an induction, only to say "...that's good, now we're going to do this..." and move onto an alternative induction without losing any momentum.
People have sometimes been so inconsiderate as to not sleep when I've damn well told them to sleep, and just sat there with their eyes open, but it hasn't mattered if I've just said "That's right; just let your eyes close and go ten times deeper" without breaking step.
I've even told somebody they would forget their name when they were woken up, and then said something like "Okay, eyes open wide awake John" - oops! I got away with it though! The amnesia still worked, and I was able to work the fact I'd even just told them their name into the act.
"I am the hypnotist. Everything that happens is what I meant to happen all along, and I appear to have total control because I never ask for anything I'm not going to get."
Failures
Different people respond to hypnosis in different ways, and I have had at least a couple of people who have proven extremely difficult to hypnotise. When I get one of these people, the kind who just don't respond very well I consider myself to have been very successful if I managed to just pull off a convincer, usually something like floating their arm up.
Even amongst these though I have already had a couple of what I would call failures. Occasions where someone seems to have switched hypnosis off at the wall and nothing I try works.
One of these occasions was, I'm pretty sure, down to the fact that the person was a close family member. I've heard it said that a lot of hypnotists find that close friends and family are the most difficult to hypnotise, and I guess the main reason for this is that these people find it hard to picture them as the hypnotist.
I think that with this particular family member this was the issue. Because I knew this person to be a sleepwalker I went in confident of success all guns blazing with a hand-to-eye fixation induction. It seemed to be working very well, I was getting lots of eye flutter, so I told them that their hand was stuck to their face. To my dismay the hand instantly came away, their eyes opened, and that was the end of it.
In hindsight I do remember seeing that person testing their hand on their forehead before I told them to try to remove it. I believe a complete stranger is more willing to take the hypnotist's word for it, whereas someone who knows the hypnotist may have difficulty becoming a believer. They're more likely to challenge what they're being told.
I tried another induction and that didn't work either. There are certain signs that as a hypnotist you start to recognise as to whether your subject is going into trance or not. Continuing when the subject is displaying signs of not doing so, such as removing their hand from their forehead without being told to following a hand-to-eye induction, is very difficult.
There was another occasion, before the one above, where I didn't see any signs of trance at all, even after trying several different types of inductions. I have no idea what happened on that occasion, truth be told. I suspect that the person in question was under stress and had personal issues at the time. I'm pleased to say I moved on and haven't really dwelt on it since.
I think the most important thing to do in the face of failure is to remain positive and confident of success, and generally I think I can do this quite well. However, when I find myself in a situation where my last attempt was a failure and then a couple of weeks go by without any opportunities to practice coming up that can get quite hard.
My last attempt at hypnosis was a couple of weeks ago now, when drunken girl interrupted me, and that feels like an eternity ago.
I do believe it when I'm told that everybody can be hypnotised, and that even includes me. What that doesn't mean, however, is that everybody can be hypnotised anywhere by any hypnotist. Context can be everything.
This is the point where I have to reveal the fundamental secret of hypnosis, as I understand it. The single piece of knowledge shared by all hypnotists that means they are able to hypnotise people, whereas the uninitiated can't. The secret is as follows:
"I am the hypnotist"
In order to hypnotise people the hypnotist has to believe the above statement wholeheartedly. It's as simple as that. If they don't believe it, if there are doubts in their mind, these doubts will ultimately manifest themselves in the way they speak, in their body language, and if the subject gets wind of it... well, suffice to say things don't work.
It's true that many of my outings as the hypnotist have been quite bungled. The wonderful thing about hypnosis has been the way in which, by knowing almost infinitely more about it than everyone else around me, I have been able to get away with serious mistakes.
I have made a complete mess of an induction, only to say "...that's good, now we're going to do this..." and move onto an alternative induction without losing any momentum.
People have sometimes been so inconsiderate as to not sleep when I've damn well told them to sleep, and just sat there with their eyes open, but it hasn't mattered if I've just said "That's right; just let your eyes close and go ten times deeper" without breaking step.
I've even told somebody they would forget their name when they were woken up, and then said something like "Okay, eyes open wide awake John" - oops! I got away with it though! The amnesia still worked, and I was able to work the fact I'd even just told them their name into the act.
"I am the hypnotist. Everything that happens is what I meant to happen all along, and I appear to have total control because I never ask for anything I'm not going to get."
Failures
Different people respond to hypnosis in different ways, and I have had at least a couple of people who have proven extremely difficult to hypnotise. When I get one of these people, the kind who just don't respond very well I consider myself to have been very successful if I managed to just pull off a convincer, usually something like floating their arm up.
Even amongst these though I have already had a couple of what I would call failures. Occasions where someone seems to have switched hypnosis off at the wall and nothing I try works.
One of these occasions was, I'm pretty sure, down to the fact that the person was a close family member. I've heard it said that a lot of hypnotists find that close friends and family are the most difficult to hypnotise, and I guess the main reason for this is that these people find it hard to picture them as the hypnotist.
I think that with this particular family member this was the issue. Because I knew this person to be a sleepwalker I went in confident of success all guns blazing with a hand-to-eye fixation induction. It seemed to be working very well, I was getting lots of eye flutter, so I told them that their hand was stuck to their face. To my dismay the hand instantly came away, their eyes opened, and that was the end of it.
In hindsight I do remember seeing that person testing their hand on their forehead before I told them to try to remove it. I believe a complete stranger is more willing to take the hypnotist's word for it, whereas someone who knows the hypnotist may have difficulty becoming a believer. They're more likely to challenge what they're being told.
I tried another induction and that didn't work either. There are certain signs that as a hypnotist you start to recognise as to whether your subject is going into trance or not. Continuing when the subject is displaying signs of not doing so, such as removing their hand from their forehead without being told to following a hand-to-eye induction, is very difficult.
There was another occasion, before the one above, where I didn't see any signs of trance at all, even after trying several different types of inductions. I have no idea what happened on that occasion, truth be told. I suspect that the person in question was under stress and had personal issues at the time. I'm pleased to say I moved on and haven't really dwelt on it since.
I think the most important thing to do in the face of failure is to remain positive and confident of success, and generally I think I can do this quite well. However, when I find myself in a situation where my last attempt was a failure and then a couple of weeks go by without any opportunities to practice coming up that can get quite hard.
My last attempt at hypnosis was a couple of weeks ago now, when drunken girl interrupted me, and that feels like an eternity ago.
Monday 1 December 2008
Sunday in London
I've mentioned in a few previous posts that I would really like to get a lot more practice at hypnosis than I currently am getting and recently it seems that plan B - hypnotising complete strangers in pubs - has come back to haunt me. However, as I'm officially turning out to be what Lee, one of the guys who came to the meet last Thursday, refers to as "a victim of the confidence and shyness monsters" I have so far failed to perform any impromptu hypnosis.
Yesterday afternoon I caught the train to London in order to meet up for lunch with Chris (alias elvisampio), who I also met for the first time on Thursday. The plan was that the two of us could go and try our luck at finding some people to hypnotise. Sunday afternoon, we thought, would be a good time to go looking because generally people would be sober and not in any hurry to be doing anything else.
I have decided (and I can say this from a true position of knowledge and experience...) that University students are probably the ideal impromptu hypnosis subjects. They're usually inoffensive, supposedly intelligent and more often than not have nothing better to be doing. Many of them are on degree courses like history of art psychology, with about 2 optional lectures a week, and so idle time is often their forté. Chris agreed with this before I even suggested it, and so it seemed to me the best course of action was to type "student pub" into Google maps, and choose the first hit that came back; The Court, a pub on Tottenham Court Road, near UCL.
If nothing else we discovered that it's possible to get a full Sunday roast in central London for under £5 if you know where to look.
Unfortunately, having finished lunch, we realised that another form of hypnosis had taken over the attention of everybody else in the pub; the football was being shown on the large wall TV screens. Deciding try our luck elsewhere, we wandered around the local area only to find that all the other pubs, the ones without TVs at least, were practically empty.
Eventually we wandered into a Wetherspoons, and here we thought we were onto something because it was a lot busier than anywhere else we'd been to. We got ourselves some drinks and found a table from which to survey the scene. Having excluded all of the people who were eating or not speaking English we came to the conclusion that our best and only bet was the group of people of about student age, four girls and one guy, in the corner.
As the glasses containing our (non-alcoholic) drinks emptied our conversation narrowed to the point where we were agreeing with each other, quite emphatically, that we really should approach that group. Absolutely, definately, certainly, and after you. It became apparent to me that Chris was a little bit nervous about doing the approaching bit. From my own position of extremely nervous I was rather jealous of that, truth be told.
I was never in the scouts, but if I had been I would have definitely had my procrastinator's badge (naturally the other badges would have been work in progress).
Suddenly, without warning, Chris jumped up strode off across the bar and after a couple of seconds I realised he was going up to that table. Then I realised that somehow I was following him. I didn't hear his opening line, although I gather it was something about whether they could settle a bet over whether men or women were more up for trying hypnosis. Chris does seem to have a real talent for talking to people he doesn't know, I have the hand that one to him, and once he'd started I was able to join in. In the event the group were friendly enough, and we got nervous smiles off the four girls at least, but it soon became clear that none of them were interested in being hypnotised.
It's easy to play the in hindsight & what-if game. What if we'd opened with a different line? What if we'd persisted a little bit more and asked why they weren't keen? In my experience people who say no are nearly always wishing that someone else is up for it so they can watch, so maybe we could have played on that? Lessons for next time I guess.
We wandered around a bit more but we ran out of time before we found another group that I felt happy approaching (it was my turn). All in all, London just felt too large and unfriendly and the student population seemed almost non-existent, if not just highly diluted.
Once again I found myself wishing for the pubs of Oxford. Chris seemed keen to come and try this too, although I'm now afraid that having said how good a hunting ground it is it will actually turn out to be disappointing on the night we try. It shouldn't be though, twice on weekday evenings during my previous excursions I've found conditions to be almost perfect, barring my own hangups of course.
Anyway, I'll be in Oxford on Wednesday so with any luck I'll get the opportunity to face my confidence demon again then.
Yesterday afternoon I caught the train to London in order to meet up for lunch with Chris (alias elvisampio), who I also met for the first time on Thursday. The plan was that the two of us could go and try our luck at finding some people to hypnotise. Sunday afternoon, we thought, would be a good time to go looking because generally people would be sober and not in any hurry to be doing anything else.
I have decided (and I can say this from a true position of knowledge and experience...) that University students are probably the ideal impromptu hypnosis subjects. They're usually inoffensive, supposedly intelligent and more often than not have nothing better to be doing. Many of them are on degree courses like history of art psychology, with about 2 optional lectures a week, and so idle time is often their forté. Chris agreed with this before I even suggested it, and so it seemed to me the best course of action was to type "student pub" into Google maps, and choose the first hit that came back; The Court, a pub on Tottenham Court Road, near UCL.
If nothing else we discovered that it's possible to get a full Sunday roast in central London for under £5 if you know where to look.
Unfortunately, having finished lunch, we realised that another form of hypnosis had taken over the attention of everybody else in the pub; the football was being shown on the large wall TV screens. Deciding try our luck elsewhere, we wandered around the local area only to find that all the other pubs, the ones without TVs at least, were practically empty.
Eventually we wandered into a Wetherspoons, and here we thought we were onto something because it was a lot busier than anywhere else we'd been to. We got ourselves some drinks and found a table from which to survey the scene. Having excluded all of the people who were eating or not speaking English we came to the conclusion that our best and only bet was the group of people of about student age, four girls and one guy, in the corner.
As the glasses containing our (non-alcoholic) drinks emptied our conversation narrowed to the point where we were agreeing with each other, quite emphatically, that we really should approach that group. Absolutely, definately, certainly, and after you. It became apparent to me that Chris was a little bit nervous about doing the approaching bit. From my own position of extremely nervous I was rather jealous of that, truth be told.
I was never in the scouts, but if I had been I would have definitely had my procrastinator's badge (naturally the other badges would have been work in progress).
Suddenly, without warning, Chris jumped up strode off across the bar and after a couple of seconds I realised he was going up to that table. Then I realised that somehow I was following him. I didn't hear his opening line, although I gather it was something about whether they could settle a bet over whether men or women were more up for trying hypnosis. Chris does seem to have a real talent for talking to people he doesn't know, I have the hand that one to him, and once he'd started I was able to join in. In the event the group were friendly enough, and we got nervous smiles off the four girls at least, but it soon became clear that none of them were interested in being hypnotised.
It's easy to play the in hindsight & what-if game. What if we'd opened with a different line? What if we'd persisted a little bit more and asked why they weren't keen? In my experience people who say no are nearly always wishing that someone else is up for it so they can watch, so maybe we could have played on that? Lessons for next time I guess.
We wandered around a bit more but we ran out of time before we found another group that I felt happy approaching (it was my turn). All in all, London just felt too large and unfriendly and the student population seemed almost non-existent, if not just highly diluted.
Once again I found myself wishing for the pubs of Oxford. Chris seemed keen to come and try this too, although I'm now afraid that having said how good a hunting ground it is it will actually turn out to be disappointing on the night we try. It shouldn't be though, twice on weekday evenings during my previous excursions I've found conditions to be almost perfect, barring my own hangups of course.
Anyway, I'll be in Oxford on Wednesday so with any luck I'll get the opportunity to face my confidence demon again then.
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