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Thursday 29 January 2009

A little help

Something that I have been aware of for some time but I don't think I've truly appreciated until recently has been the considerable potential for hypnosis to help others. Given the enormous amounts of fun that I have been able to have sharing hypnosis with people it's quite easy to neglect this other, just as important, aspect to it.

The first instance of my using hypnosis for anything other than entertainment was back in December when a friend of mine asked me if I could have a go at curing her phobia of heights. Now I'll grant that offering to help with a phobia is a wonderful way in which to entice someone into trying some other more fun aspects of hypnosis, but of course it does feel really good to make a real positive difference to their life.

In the case of my friend I used the Rossi style technique that is outlined in Reality is Plastic and despite its amazing simplicity it seemed to make a real difference. It didn't make the phobia go away, but my friend did comment that she felt a significant improvement. In truth I feel I made a bit of a hash of the procedure, with it being the first time I'd used it, and I'm hoping to catch up with her again in the coming months and see if I can finish the job.

Another way I've found of helping people has been through metaphors. I have a friend who really doesn't respond at all to the more direct methods I've used but she goes out like a light if I use an indirect approach. In this case instance a detailed description of a pleasant scene involving all the senses works incredibly well, and I was able to use a similar approach to help her deal with a stressful time in her studies.

One session I did with this person involved my telling a story and leading her imagination on a journey. It started with us on a sailing ship coming into a calm harbour leaving the stormy seas behind. Then we went for a walk from the harbour up a valley and into the mountains, climbing toward a mountain pass, it was hard work but we could always stop to turn and admire the view behind and feel good about how far we'd climbed. At one point we could see that there was a large boulder ahead that had fallen across the path, but that was okay because we knew that we would be able to get around it when we reached it so there was no need to worry. Then we reached the pass itself and of course it was downhill all the way from there.

The metaphors there are of course blindingly obvious and almost cliché, but that really doesn't matter; the feedback I got several days later was very positive.

There is of course something else that I'm sorry to say I overlooked to start off with, and that's the act of doing a positive wakeup. Granted I've always removed any suggestions such as "sleep!" that I've given to people in my wakeup, but it's only recently that I've started making a point of really emphasising the point that my subject will feel really good when they come out of hypnosis and enjoy the rest of their day/evening. The effects of this are very real to the subject and it costs nothing at all so I strongly recommend that anybody else learning hypnosis considers just taking those extra 30 seconds to give their subject that lingering good feeling.

Hypnosis really is a powerful tool for helping people and I think it should be used as such werever possible.

More on the handshake

Following on from the video of last Thursday's fun in the pub Ben has been kind enough to put up the video of my first Ericksonian Handshake that evening, so here it is.



I tend to look at my own performance in videos very critically and I see a lot of room for improvement in my performance here. This was, however, the first time I performed this induction in front of the group that evening and truth be told I was feeling very nervous about it.

What the video doesn't show is that the suggestion I gave to John, that he'd be completely frozen like a stature below the neck, didn't really work. In hindsight I should probably have taken a bit longer over the induction and done a bit of deepening too. I also don't know what was going on with my arm waving gestures after I'd let go of John's hand. I definitely need to watch out for those in future.

My very own youtube video! Thanks Ben!

Thursday 22 January 2009

The 3rd meet

It's interesting how quickly time flies! This evening saw the 3rd HypnoMeet in London, and it barely seems like a week ago that I was on my way to that first meet up near Waterloo, but that was back in November!

Let me also say that I hate prefixing anything with "hypno", but I can't think of a better name for it at the moment.

On arriving at the pub I was quite surprised to find that the place was completely heaving, although in hindsight that was what one should expect from a pub in the west end just before the theatres opened. To start with there were four of us from the original meet in November, but as our numbers grew we were forced to go in search of an alternative pub.

Our numbers were growing because Darren seemed to be some kind of unwitting magnet for every hypnotist in London. In the first pub a couple of people approached and turned out to be friends of a friend of Darren's. Then several people he'd met on a recent hypnosis course turned up. If any more had turned up we would probably have had to start building our own pub!

As it was we found a nice small pub nearby and, most of us standing up, took over one end of the bar area. This was good because for most of the evening it found us wandering around amongst ourselves and we weren't stuck chatting to just the same couple of people for the whole evening. Once again I was amazed how nice everybody was.

Anyway, John, one of the guys who'd been on the recent course with Darren pulled up a pair of bar stools and volunteered to sit in it whilst Darren hypnotised him. Darren later commented that this gave us a sort of stage, and I would agree completely if it hadn't been for the through traffic en route to the toilets. The craziest thing was that whilst I felt that we were being very conspicuous, just like the last time we'd met up and done hypnosis in a pub, somehow most of the people in the there didn't pay us any attention at all!

Darren proceeded to demonstrate various inductions on John including what seems to be his favourite, the Cerbone Butterfly induction. Most of them are very fast and direct, although Darren also seems to have developed a liking for the Rehearsal Induction, one of my own favourites.

I don't know why but John goes under the alias of "Moses" (I have a theory, but we weren't near enough to the Red Sea for me to test it)

At one point the barman caught my eye and pointing to John, who was bent double in hypnotic trance on his barstool, and mimed a drinking motion with his hand, obviously asking me whether John was the worst for drink. I shook my head, and after the barman had nodded and turned away I wondered to myself how I could have mimed "it's okay, he's just hypnotised". Perhaps a swinging watch motion...

Anyway, just as Darren finished with John I decided that I really needed to overcome that pre-hypnosis anxiety that I always get and jump straight in with both feet, so I stepped up and asked Darren if he minded if I borrowed his subject.

So I did my first Erickson handshake of the evening. Without explaining what I was going to do I took John's hand in a handshake and, pulling it out to support it under hand and elbow, proceeded to talk him down into an eyes-open trance. It worked very well, and I could see and feel it working as his eyes glazed over and in the way that his arm became stiffer and stiffer as time went on. When I finally removed my hand I tried to make a suggestion that he was frozen in place on his stool, but this didn't work quite so well; perhaps I should have deepened a bit more.

This didn't matter anyway because I suddenly was faced with a queue of people all wanting me to do the handshake on them and I ended up doing it about five times on five different people in the space of 30 minutes! It felt really good because I had something a little bit different to share.

I do really love the Erickson Handshake induction and I think a lot of that is because it's so different from anything else. The experience of being completely tranced with eyes still open seems to be quite a novel experience to those who tried it; again I find myself wishing that my response to hypnosis wasn't so awful so I could get a decent experience of it!

In fact, at my encouragement Ben tried this induction on me. He was doing very well and I could even feel myself starting to go cross eyed and loose focus. The trouble was that he'd started with a bit of an insane grin on his face and that seemed to send my thoughts off on a tangent. For some reason I found myself thinking of Just a minute on Radio 4, Ben talking about the Erickson Handshake for 60 seconds without deviation, hesitation or repetition and just at the point where Clement Freud buzzed in to challenge I lost my composure and laughed. I felt really bad about that afterward because Ben was actually doing very well and I know that it can be a bit disheartening when the subject seems to snap out of it, especially if they're laughing.

Ben also tried the Bandler handshake on me and went into a deepening routine based on imagery. It was good patter, but even after about what seemed like 5 minutes I really didn't feel anything was happening at all. I've recently started to develop an understanding of what going into trance feels like and I'm sad to say I just wasn't getting any of that detached feeling.

It was much the same later on when Darren demonstrated a confusion induction on me. I was genuinely confused and I dropped when Darren surprised me with "sleep!", the trouble was that I quickly realised what was happening and from that moment on absolutely nothing seemed to be happening. I was very much there in the present, didn't feel any of the sensations I've learned to associate with trance, and of course as always the phenomena that Darren tried didn't work.

Darren and Ben are both excellent hypnotists and I swear that if I wasn't so completely awful at being zapped I'd have been looking up at my own shoes!

The hypnosis was also mixed with some of us doing magic tricks. Most of these were card tricks, although it was an opportunity for me to show off the rubber bands trick, which I learned late last year (Thanks for that one Paul!)

I think the craziest moment of the evening for me came at the time I went to get my coat.

Darren was sat nearby and John had just finished working him into various tricks like number amnesia. Earlier earlier this month Darren showed me a video of him being hypnotised by John Cerbone himself on the "speed trance" course that he'd been on in Manchester. In this video Cerbone had performed an amazing one word induction based on expectancy and the idea that blinking is a natural pattern interrupt. I knew that Darren was quite "warm" in terms of hypnosis, so I knew that he would respond to such a trick if I tried it myself.

On a mad impulse I decided to do it. I marched straight up to him, looked him in the eye, and said "Darren, the next time you blink you'll drop straight into hypnosis!"

He gave me a surprised, dazed look and almost blinked.

I said something like "That's right you can try to resist it but it's going to happen!"

It was at this point he blinked, and I was a little bit slow with my "sleep!" but it didn't matter because he was already on the way down!

Off this I tried a couple of times to get him to hallucinate me speaking in an Irish accent, but all I got was a few funny looks from him. I was able to make him feel a bit less dazed about it all though as a kind of a farewell gift.

That little escapade was my parting shot though as I had to go and catch the train home. It turned out that Darren and the others had gone on elsewhere and had done a bit of impromptu stuff with strangers. Dammit! Hopefully I won't miss out on that next time.

As a bonus, here's the video Ben shot that evening:




Once again I had a really good time and learned a lot. Cheers guys!

Monday 19 January 2009

The trance mirror

A point that I have seen made a number of times in my hypnosis literature has been the concept that in order to induce trance, one must be in trance oneself. Igor Ledochowski is very specific about this in his Deep Trance Training Manual.

I have been very aware of the "hypnotist's trance" ever since the first few people I've hypnotised. It's the same kind of trance state we all experience when we read a book or watch the television. It feels like a loss of, well not peripheral vision as such, more like peripheral awareness, as my attention focuses on my subject and reading their response.

One effect of this trance state is that if I am completely focused on my subject, and especially during the induction, other things that may be happening around me will quite often go completely unnoticed. Good examples of this have been people entering or leaving the room or people taking photographs. Recently at a party I hypnotised someone, having taken her and her boyfriend aside into a different room to do so. I was very surprised when a friend who had also been at the party made a few comments to me later about the hypnosis session and the subject's response, and yet I have absolutely no memory of her being present at the time!

Something else that happens though is that there is a natural tendency for people to subconsciously mirror others around them. Think of a time when someone nearby has yawned and you've found yourself wanting to yawn.

I'm even doing it now just thinking it! You don't have to yawn now though.

I have experienced this effect in a hypnotic context when a friend had me look her in the eye as she started her induction. As she went into her patter I became aware that she was blinking a lot. "Clever girl!" I thought as I sat there, instinctively analysing everything to death of course, and becoming aware of my own eyes wanting to blink and close. I filed that idea away for later use, even though it later transpired that my friend had merely been tired!

What this demonstrates... I think, is that it's possible to aid someone's transition into hypnosis by, as the hypnotist, entering a trance state oneself. I feel this is why I am taking the development my own skills to access the hypnotic state very seriously at present. How I can I possibly lead someone into a hypnotic trance easily with my instructions if I've not been through the process myself?

I guess what I mean by all of this is that I think that if I can get better at trance, I will be able to produce a better trance in my subjects.

This weekend has seen me getting some more practice at being hypnotised, courtesy of my friend. To my disappointment I've not accessed that really deep state again since that one time, but I do feel that my depth is also fluctuating a lot less. I still have no response at all to any explicit phenomena, although my friend did give me some positive suggestions which seem to have helped - although I really can't remember what they were! I cycled to work this morning for the first time in months and I've been able to keep my attention firmly on my work all morning.

Monday 12 January 2009

A question of depth

A much more cheerful post today! A long one too.

This weekend has seen me learning a lot about hypnosis and I'm sure that not all of these learnings are things I am consciously aware of. Today I experienced something quite remarkable, and whilst I fear my troubles with learning to be hypnotised are far from over once again I feel I am back on the road of progress.

The breakthrough for me here has been that a close friend, who is now into learning some hypnosis, was willing to do a bit of practice with me, and I also found that this was helped by the fact that she has similar problems to me, namely thinking too much about what's going on. It would seem to me that to some extent a knowledge of hypnosis, coupled with a curious and analytical mind, have the effect of making it harder to learn how to be a good subject. I don't know if this is true, but I have heard anecdotal evidence from other people to this effect too; that people who have given it a lot of thought have a much more lukewarm response, possibly because of preconceptions.

The problem I seem to have is consciously thinking about what I should be doing. The best analogy I can think of is from my archery. Once, as an archer, you've practiced and practiced how to draw, aim and loose an arrow from your bow the process becomes a subconscious one and happens almost automatically. Something that I've experienced at archery competitions is that, following a less than satisfactory shot, I will decide to myself "right, I must concentrate with the next one and get it right!". Of course this concentration nicely interferes with the hard learned and consistent routine of my subconscious, and because consistency in archery is essential with my conscious mind pulling strings, literally, there's no telling where my next arrow will end up.

I've also experienced this effect playing musical instruments too. For example, I can play B*witched's To you I belong - one of my favourite ever songs - on the piano from memory quite easily, but if at any point I ever think "now, which notes do I play next?" I'm completely stuffed and end up grinding to an abrupt halt.

I believe the trouble I am experiencing is very similar to this. My subconscious is completely able to take me into hypnosis. Unfortunately because I know the format I am consciously concentrating on making it happen; I am trying to draw that string back or find that E-flat chord when it's really help that I don't need.

Unfortunately I find it impossible, having thought about it, not to do that.

Have you ever had difficulty not thinking something. Pink elephants for example? A mental picture of a pink elephant. Just don't think that thought. If it never occurred to you in the first place it wouldn't be a problem would it, but now I've said it. Don't think it. Forget it now.

Phenomena

My friend and I did several sessions over the weekend and because we both have trouble with thinking too much about what's going on we focused on deepening the trance. In any case I've had a couple of people I've hypnotised comment that I should perhaps spend more time on deepening, so this was useful practice.

With the first session I didn't feel as though anything at all was happening. This didn't perturb me though because I know that to most people a light level of trance just feels like sitting there with your eyes closed. At one point I felt as though my attention had wandered off. This didn't bother me so much though, because my friend was able to float my arm up.

The odd thing with the ideomotor stuff like the lifting arm is that the sensation has changed. When I first did it I could feel catalepsy down my arm and in my fingers, the motion was slow and jerky and it was clearly not a conscious action. Now it's a lot smoother, I'm less aware of the catalepsy and the distinction between whether it's my imagination or my will controlling it is subtler. Certainly with the self hypnosis when I lift my wrist up by just imagining it that is a conscious act, but it feels as though I'm doing so via a different control circuit. That's the best description I can offer anyway. Very strange.

My friend tried to make my hand too heavy to lift and stick it to something and this didn't work though. I still need to learn how to do that one!

Whilst no post hypnotic suggestions seemed to work yet either, at least on the face of it, I do have reason to believe that my subconscious is taking in the suggestions given. The reason for this is that, whilst my friend managed to completely fail to stick my hand to hers, she tried again with a different suggestion. This suggestion was that whilst my hand didn't have to stick to hers, it would want to follow it. Now, as I was sat there looking at my hand and moving it near hers I couldn't perceive or feel any such compulsion affecting it. It was only a few minutes later, when the topic of conversation had moved on and my attention was elsewhere, that my friend pointed out that my hand had been following hers. She'd been moving her hand around and mine had been happily en tow it without me even realising, in the manner that one might idly scratch behind ones ear or tap ones finger when bored. Of course that stopped the moment that she pointed it out.

Another strange effect was when my friend suggested that my hand could lift up but that it really couldn't be bothered and that it would want to stay where it was. I remember opening my eyes, looking at that hand and feeling very disappointed because nothing felt different at all. I just left it there almost as though I was indulging her, not wanting to hurt her feelings because her suggestion hadn't worked. At the time I was sure there was nothing hypnotic about my keeping my hand there, but thinking back it does occur to me that surely the suggestion achieved exactly what was intended, just in a very subtle way.

Now I'm sure you're aware that the narrative may have wandered off for a bit, but have you remembered not to think that thought? You know, the one I mentioned above? ...and whoops, you're thinking about it again! Stop that!

Depth

So far all of this has been rather questionable as to whether hypnosis has been having any effect at all. In fact I'm disappointed to some extent. I've been able to produce the effect of freezing people's whole bodies like statues for several months now, so how come I can only manage some minor behavioural effects that, given the benefit of a doubt, might have just happened that way anyway. I was hoping for something a bit more dramatic. The same anecdotal sources I mentioned earlier suggest that it just takes a bit of time for some people to get used to it, the time it takes for the subconscious to learn, despite the conscious mind.

Anyway, moving on, the most profound experience for me was the last session in which my sparring partner did absolutely nothing but about 30 minutes of deepening. I seriously owe her one for doing that, because it was quite an amazing experience. For the first time I have ever actually felt deeply hypnotised.

Up until this weekend my experience of hypnotic trances has left me doubting that anything is happening at all. If it wasn't for the ideomotor "convincers", such as my hand floating up, I wouldn't have reason to believe anything was happening at all, which of course is the whole point of a convincer anyway. Were I to describe the experience I would say it is like sitting there with your eyes closed, letting yourself feel relaxed and listening to someone talk to you. There's nothing special about it at all.

With each session, however, I became more aware of something else going on. After a while I would find my thoughts drifting away from what was being said. It was like daydreaming to some extent in that my train of thought just seemed to go off on a tangential track. It was almost a feeling of being distant, as though the outside world was further away; again it felt to me like daydreaming.

Now, my friend seems to have a very good sense of how deep she is at any given time. As far as I can tell I have nothing near that level of insight into my own state of depth. In fact it seems as though this attempt to gain such insight, asking myself how deep I am, that seems to always bring me back to that really light state of trance again. This results in my trance being almost tidal, with my going deeper, realising I've done so and consequentally returning to that light trance state again as a result of consciously trying to stay deep.

Now you may say "well just don't think that then". Well, quite frankly, that's not easy! Have you succeeded in not remembering what you're supposed to not be thinking about?

Oh dear! And you were doing so well too!

Anyway, this sensation was something I'd barely noticed on the first session, but on the second session I realised that my mind had wandered off and that my friend was on 10, counting down from 20, and that I couldn't remember any number since she said 15 because my attention had just wandered off. I told her about this afterward and she admitted that she had been leaving some numbers out, but none between 15 and 10.

Of course having the realisation in trance that you've drifted off, coming back to awareness as a result, I've found it impossible to drift back. Ever try really, really hard to go to sleep? No amount of conscious effort will get you there.

It was the third session over the course of the weekend where something truly incredible happened though. Basically we decided to forget the suggestions and just focus on deepening, and suffice to say that worked very well! Well, sort of.

So we started out with a re-induction suggestion. For some reason my friend doesn't like the "sleep!" thing so instead we'd been pressing down on each other's shoulders and saying "relax", to much the same effect. To be honest I've not had any trouble accessing a light trance anyway as I've done so numerous times with my self hypnosis, but it did seem much easier with that instruction, and easier each time. This time my head also sagged a little as I closed my eyes without my having to think about relaxing it. That's how hypnosis seems to be manifesting itself; creeping in around the edges of my attention rather than as a lightning bolt from centre front, which I think would be scarier but certainly less frustrating.

Anyway this session started off like any other. I felt as though I hadn't gone anywhere at first, I was just sat there with my eyes closed almost as though I was pretending to be hypnotised. Then as time went on my attention would start to wander again, starting with the same tangential thought process as daydreaming. I would not be listening to my friend's words, I was just getting sidetracked by my own thoughts.

Then I'd realise what I was doing, think "Hey great! I'm going deeper! Let's keep it up!" at which point I would inevitably slide back to that light trance state again. It was quite frustrating, because it would be a while before I forgot about trying to daydream and so consequently started daydreaming again.

Could you daydream on demand? I certainly can't!

Could you even identify the moment at which you started daydreaming?

What did happen though, was that I found myself going progressively further away each time I did go deeper. I was either going faster or allowing myself to go for longer before I caught myself, and don't ask me which because my perception of time wasn't exactly good at that point. Even though it was almost a feeling of delight that I had each time I noticed what was happening, that thought always brought me back again. It was quite frustrating.

What did characterise these expeditions into a deeper state to me, and what made them seem different to daydreaming, was this. When one daydreams ones thoughts may go in any direction but they keep also keep flowing along at a steady pace. What was happening more and more each time in this trance was it felt as though my thoughts were just slowing down. Getting slower and slower the more their relevance diverged from the outside world.

It was at this point that it happened. On my last slide into a deeper state, and I can't remember going in, only realising once I had, it was as though my thoughts had just come to a complete halt. It was an odd and not unpleasant experience. In fact, thinking back, it felt pretty good. Come to think of it, if that's anything like the state that my somnambulistic subjects have fallen into each time I've said sleep I can see just why they're so keen to do it.

The strangest bit was still to come though, and it happened the moment I realised where I was, tried really hard to stay there and thus guaranteed my return from that state. My vision was suddenly flashing black-white-black-white-black-white as though someone was holding a powerful strobe light in front of my closed eyes. It was so incredibly vivid I found myself wondering what on earth could be going on in the outside world to cause it and tried hard to clear my vision, although interestingly I never came close to making my eyelids move. Quite an odd experience; to see a bright flashing light that wasn't there!

Then of course I was back in that light trance state again, wishing I could somehow break the paradox of thinking of a way to not think. I wanted to go back but I couldn't.

My friend started giving me some positive suggestions as a prelude to waking me up, and of course because this was slightly more interesting than the deepening I was unable to drag my conscious attention away from listening to what she was saying. Interestingly I can't remember any of the words she used now though, that memory seems very distant.

Then she woke me up, and that was that! I told her where I'd been and she said she'd noticed that I'd sort of come and gone during the session. I really owe her a huge debt of gratitude for keeping it up for that length of time as it really was an amazing experience for me. I definitely can't wait for my next chance to further hone my skills as a hypnotee, as well as a hypnotist.

Whew! What a long post! That's all for now; I hope you enjoy!

Oh, and I hope you've managed to forget those elephants... DAMN!

Friday 9 January 2009

Frustration!

Well, that didn't last long!

This is a blog of the highs and the lows. Well, the current time is a low point for me.

Ever since I started practicing hypnosis and sharing these amazing experiences with my subjects I've been simply dying to experience it myself. A mix of curiosity and the knowledge that experience would make me a better hypnotist. Hence my constant frustration at never appearing to respond at all to it.

Over Christmas, as I was reading his book at the time, I had a listen to Jon Chase's interview on Keys to the mind and one of the things he said was that there's about 20% of the population who can't be hypnotised, no matter how much they want to be. That comment scared me. I didn't and don't want to believe it, and I certainly don't want to be given that life sentence of being one of Jon's 20%

There are other schools of thought, for example Igor Ledochowski who seems to suggest in his book, which I also got for Christmas, that given time anybody can access the deepest levels of trance. Needless to say I want to believe his view on this.

I was feeling very good at the beginning of this week because, as I wrote, I was getting good at floating my arm under self hypnosis and I was able to use my imagination to lift my arm up against a conscious instruction for the arm to come down. I felt over the moon because it seemed like a step forward toward actually being able to experience hypnosis. Something which I feel I haven't experienced at all yet. Not really.

Now it's stopped working. Completely.

I now don't even appear to be able to even lift my arm up, and of course the complete lack of phenomena makes me question whether I'm even accessing trance. It's as though my mind has learned how to sabotage my own self hypnosis attempts, which probably sounds insane but it's true. How it happens is that I can't stop myself from thinking "but you're doing that consciously" and that thought instantly stops the arm lift happening. Like it or not, my conscious mind is back in control of the arm.

So, so, damn frustrating it's untrue!

A couple of guys on the forum have offered me some help, which I really appreciate, but even when a hypnotist tries with me, by mp3 or in person, I just don't know what to expect to happen or what I should be doing with my mind. "Let go and let it happen" they say. Trouble is that that's a conscious act. Do I choose to follow the instructions consciously and feel like a bad actor, or do I choose to not follow them, "let things happen", and end up sitting there with nothing at all happening? I think too much... but how on earth does one stop thinking?!

"I may have trouble letting go" they say. Actually no, I do not feel I have a problem with my desire or intention to "let go". I just have not been able to work out how to do it! What am I going to think when someone says "let go"? That's right, I'm thinking "Okay. No Problem. I want to do that. Done. Have I let go yet? No, I'm consciously thinking. Must stop consciously thinking. Damn, this is more conscious thinking! Dammit so was that! Stop this! Damn!..." and so on.

I guess I'm worried that my brain is just not wired up right for hypnosis. I work as a mechanical engineer, and I've gone along this career path in life because I have a mind that questions, analyses and looks for explanations and solutions. I really like that part of me and I like being good at what I do, but that doesn't stop me cursing it when it kicks into gear and destroys my attempts at going into a hypnotic trance.

I'm afraid I am one of that alleged unlucky few who will never. It's probably a stupid irrational fear, but it's in these dark hours that those come out to have their day.

I don't know what to think frankly.

Thursday 8 January 2009

Getting perspective

I've had a few thoughts recently about my own writing that I thought I'd like to share.

When I first started writing this blog I made it clear that this blog is my personal account of my experience of learning to be a hypnotist. It's so I can look back on it in the future and enjoy all of the memories associated with it. I also enjoy sharing my writing with others, and I like to think that others who are learning and going through what I have can draw benefit from it.

I guess what I'm worried about is coming across in my writing as though I am an authority on hypnosis. The more I do learn, and I feel I have learned a lot since I started in mid-September, the more I realise how eclipsed it is by what I don't know.

Recently I asked a question on the Uncommon Knowledge forum, it was about whether people can learn to become better hypnotic subject with practice, and when I read a couple of the responses I felt like asking "Sorry, is that actually in English?!" There are so many concepts, especially with NLP, that I've not even started to grasp yet.

There has also been a recent occasion where I wrote a post about the detrimental effects alcohol appears to have on hypnosis. Well fine, yes, the three or so people I have hypnotised who had been drinking reacted in this way. I was feeling good about having built that little sandcastle for myself until a more experienced member on the forum posted saying that his best couple of sessions ever had been with subjects who were drunk at the time! The number of hypnosis sessions I have had with people is now well into double figures, but if someone who's probably at least into quadruple figures says things that contradict my own very small number of observations I know who I'm going to believe!

Having established just exactly how green I am at this however, there are the confidence and certainty factors to take into account. Jon Chase, in his book Deeper and Deeper, talks about asking his students "who is THE hypnotist?", and if they say "you are" it's fair to say they don't yet understand. The right answer, the answer that one really needs to believe, is "ME! I am THE hypnotist!" As far any of my subjects are concerned I am the authority on hypnosis and of course I know exactly what I'm doing. What I say is the truth, and what I say goes. That is the face that any good hypnotist has to present.

It's an interesting line to try to walk.

So I will continue to describe my experiences and, as with the alcohol thing, try to make intelligent observations as I go, and try not to deviate too much from the line. Maybe years into the future I'll look back and say to myself "Hah! Did I really believe that? What a fool I was!" Hopefully it will at least be entertaining reading.

So if you're reading my blog and you don't think that what I've written is correct, or that I'm just talking complete rubbish, please post a reply and put me right.

Or just post a reply anyway. I like replies.

Tuesday 6 January 2009

Self development

Back in December I talked about my first attempt at self hypnosis and my amazement at being able to, simply by imagining it, lift my own hand up using my subconscious.

Needless to say I didn't just leave it at that, and over the past few weeks I have done more self hypnosis. The wonderful thing is that I seem to be getting better and better at the whole hand levitation trick. A few days after my last blog post on the subject I was able to lift my whole arm, including my elbow, up above my head. I have repeated this exercise a number of times since then, and I feel that I have gotten much better at it, needing less time to start it off, and getting a much faster movement.

Despite this success, the biggest hurdle that I have been trying to overcome is the way in which, just like when other people try to hypnotise me, a return to conscious control never seems to be more than a misplaced thought away. I think this is why nobody has ever been able to, for example, "stick" my hand to anything. All I have to do is so much as think about consciously controlling my arm and I can feel the catalepsy instantly melt away.

Now, over Christmas I was given Igor Ledochowski's Deep Trance Training Manual Vol.1 as a present; I have found this incredibly useful and I highly recommend it. This books states that one important principle of hypnosis is that in a battle between imagination and will, imagination will always ultimately win. It was with this in mind that I came up with the following idea. What I did was I gave myself contradicting instructions. With my arm floating up in front of me I consciously directed it to fall, whilst at the same time holding onto the image of it still rising.

It worked! For several seconds my arm was actually rising even though I was consciously trying to force it down as hard as I could!

In fact it worked so well that, buoyed up by my success, I was somehow completely unable to repeat it despite making a couple of attempts. I have found this before too, that I will achieve something new, but it will then stop working, almost as though my mind becomes tired of trance and needs some time to recharge.

What does feel good though is that I do believe that I am getting better at this. Perhaps there is hope for me yet!

Of course I'm not jealous of the subjects I've had who've naturally been able to go from naught to somnambulism in less than 30 seconds. Most certainly not!

Monday 5 January 2009

Visual ambiguosity

Happy new year!

Well, I'm back at work and back to my lunchtime blogging, so this will be a short one.

Something that I have heard from a lot of other hypnotists, and I feel also applies to me, is that for a lot of people learning hypnosis is in many ways nothing new, but merely applying a name to something that it already there inside oneself. Here's an example of how I was reminded of this recently.

For Christmas my girlfriend bought me a big book containing the works of M.C. Escher, my favourite artist. Saying that he's my favourite artist is high praise indeed from me, because generally speaking I can't think of anything more boring than art. The book contains all of his most famous works, and I think it was was a wonderful present!

I've always been captivated and fascinated by the way Escher toyed with reality, but it's only recently that I think I've been able to start to understand why.



Two constructs which make sense in themselves, but form a non-sequitur when put together. Now, I'm sure that's familiar from somewhere...

Escher's works demonstrate to me the way in which the human mind will attempt to make sense of something it sees, even when there's no logical solution. This is, of course, something which will induce trance.

Some of his other works also show the tendency of the human mind to look for patterns in nature, which is inherently chaotic. Again, this is trance inducing.

I wonder if he ever realised that he was a hypnotist...