I had decided that I would combine getting to the meet in good time with a bit of shopping in London, and caught a mid afternoon train into Paddington. So, in true top gear fashion, I was the first to arrive. I found my way to the upstairs part of the Crown and two chairmen pub in Soho, where we'd agreed to meet and settled myself to wait for the others in the company of a drink and my iPhone's web browser.
Chris was the first to arrive, followed by Ben, and so as the upstairs of the pub started to fill up we grabbed the largest table we could monopolise and chatted about our recent experiences. Ben was also quite keen that Chris should zap him and fill him with confidence for the evening; I got to hold Ben's shiny camera a film them whilst they did this.
Getting our priorities back into the right order we then set about ordering some Dinner. I am pleased to report that the Crown and two chairmen does a delicious sheppard's pie.
The next guy to join us was Joey, who was a first timer at one of our meets. He was harbouring concerns that he might not "go under", given that he's quite an analytical person. Having seen his posts on the forum before the meet I'd tend to agree with this diagnosis. I was keen to see if my own experience at overcoming this particular hurdle could be used to help him, so having had my dinner and whilst others were still arriving I offered to be the first to try to hypnotise him.
In fact, Joey was just the first of several analytical types that I ended up hypnotising that evening as for some reason people seemed to keep referring them to me. A disproportionate number of hypnotists seem to be the type who are difficult to hypnotise. I had mixed results with the people I worked with that evening, although I like to think I managed to get hypnotic phenomena out of each and every person I worked with. I really need to work out a routine for people who don't respond well so that they can get the most out of the experience.
Of course as far as I am able to tell there is no miracle zap one call pull on a subject who naturally doesn't respond very well. It comes naturally to some people, but for others if they reall want to experience being hypnotised it is something that they have to learn and that takes time.
Something that I have been trying recently is a slightly different way of doing the floating hand convincer. In the past I have on occasion zapped someone into trance and then talked to their hand for about five minutes practically pleading with it to rise and thus prove to the subject they're hypnotised. When I have failures this is usually when people decide it's not working for them and give up. My experience with the Erickson handshake has shown me that trance can be helped along by ambiguously supporting the subject's arm. Also experiencing this convincer for myself has shown me that getting the arm to part company with its resting place is the most difficult part. What I do now is drape the subject's arm over my own hand or a finger as I tell them to imagine it getting lighter. Making my support of that arm ambiguous encourages it to become cataleptic and be pulled up by the subject's imagination. Cool eh!
Anyway, having finished trying to help Joey experience hypnotic phenomena I asked if he wanted to have a try hypnotising me. He started with a good effort at a magnetic hands induction, and I was quite well aware of myself trancing as my hands came together, but he wasn't feeling quite confident enough to shout "sleep!" at me or deepen, so after a short while I opened my eyes. At that point Gaz seemed to take Joey under his wing for a bit of tutoring, so I turned to Chris and asked him if he wanted to have a go.
Chris obliged by performing a hand-to-eye induction on me, which I was easily able to follow and just let myself drop into trance. This was the first time I'd actually believed that hypnosis was really working on me in a pub environment. The strange thing was that it didn't feel different to my previous pub hypnosis attempts, I certainly didn't feel as tranced as I have felt in longer more private sessions. I feel what made the difference was the confidence that it was working. That and the way in which, whilst quips and witty comebacks still popped into my mind at what Chris was saying I simply couldn't bring myself to come out with them. Definitely something unusual going on there!
Chris stuck my hand to the table. This worked of course, although "stuck" is always a bit of a misnomer for me; it's more a case of being quite happy to leave my hand where it is thankyou very much, regardless of whatever else I want to do with it. I act as though my hand is stuck, rather than feeling any kind of force holding it there, but I just can't not act.
I often wonder how far this acting would stretch though. For example, Chris released my hand from the table by saying "you'll be able to lift your hand up and hit me". Without thinking I did start to take a swing at him, and only stopped when he laughed and said "don't hit me". Although it did only feel like play acting at the time, I do wonder what would have happened if he hadn't told me to stop.
The next suggestion was just a little bit irritating, and it was certainly going to work because I'd had it done to me before. I guess I'm partly to blame for revealing this to Chris beforehand. He told me that when he said "purple" I would put my index fingers on my temples and wouldn't be able to remove them. This wasn't at all embarrassing, especially when someone shoved a camera video camera in my face. "Don't try this at home kids!" was the best thing I could think of to say.
Chris's last suggestion was that I wouldn't be able to see him, but I really wasn't surprised when that one didn't work.
The whole experience of being a successful subject in the pub was quite odd, surreal even. As my reward my antics as a hypnotic subject are also now firmly placed in the land of YouTube. Somebody, and they know who they are, can look forward to my revenge for this, and as we all know revenge is like leftover pasta - best served cold.
I got my revenge on Chris by demonstrating my Ericksonian handshake induction on him, and then sticking his hands together.
Thinking about it now he got off lightly too.
Darren also had a go at hypnotising me. He did the three handshake induction, and of course I just let myself drop into it. He stuck my hand to the table, my face, etc. Then he asked me to try to hold something, I think it was a beermat, and told me that it would be too heavy for me to lift. When he gave it to me it didn't feel any heavier at all, but I certainly couldn't move my hand any direction but down.
Escaping from Darren I somehow ended up holding Ben's video camera. Matt and Chris were near the bar so I joined them and proceeded to film, although it was difficult at such short range even with the wide angle lens on the camera. Chris had taken advantage of Matt's inherent qualities as a trance junkie to put him under with a shock handshake induction, stuck his elbow to the bar, and put a force field around his beer bottle.
As an encore, and most impressively, Chris then told Matt that he wouldn't be able to see him, but could see anything he was holding. Being behind the camera I really didn't take this in completely as I was concentrating on where I was pointing it, but Matt did seem completely stunned and off balance by the way in which his beer bottle was moving. He also folded up when Chris decided he'd had enough and told him to sleep and removed the suggestion.
"Is he really hypnotised?" Asked the barmaid, who had been watching.
"Sure" Chris said. "Matt sleep!... and you are now going to listen to what the barmaid says and do exactly what she says. Listen now and she'll tell you."
Chris looked over at her expectantly.
"Errrr..." the barmaid paused, and then in possibly the least hypnotic voice I have ever heard said "can you go around and collect some glasses off the tables please?"
"You hear that," Chris said, "you're going to go around and pick some glasses off the tables, then you're going to buy a round, and get the barmaid one too because you think you rather fancy her."
Sadly the result of this interesting set of suggestions was merely that Matt just looked incredibly dazed. Although I guess not quite so much as before because at least this time his beer bottle was behaving itself.
For me the highlight came toward the end of the evening when I hypnotised Darren. I did it properly too this time, as I felt that the surprise blink induction that I inflicted on him at the last meet had been a bit of a gimmick.
I used a hand drop induction, which I tend to favour these days with a promising subject, and having deepened for a little while I woke Darren up and proceeded to try some waking hypnosis. I've been experimenting recently with how little I can get away with saying to get suggestions to stick, so on bringing Darren out of trance I simply asked him to place his hands out in front of him. I then quickly pushed them together and simply said "stuck!". He couldn't pull them apart, and I felt rather smug.
Darren has also made fun of my hypnosis "Not Learned Properly" (or NLP) in the past, and of course I tend to interpret such mocking as an open invitation. Now, I don't see myself as being any kind of NLP guru but I do believe that the ability to use indirect language patterns and metaphors is important and I also think that there's no better showcase of this sort of approach than in an Ericksonian handshake.
This is what I did; I took Darren's hand and talked him into an eyes open trance in less than a minute. Next I did what I tend to like to do with this induction, which was to tell him that when I brought him out of trance that he'd be frozen stiff from the neck down, unable to move his body. He Genuinely couldn't move his body at all.
Darren had commented during the week on facebook that he'd been doing voiceovers for various companies in particular accents, so I thought I'd see if I could play with this. Once again suggesting he'd hear me speaking in an Irish accent didn't really work, but when I suggested he would get stuck speaking in one himself... oh my goodness, the result of that little suggestion was amazing.
"F***in' 'ell! He's meahd me talk in a f***in' oyrish accent!" exclaimed an astonished Darren.
Someone offered him a Guinness.
What was most amazing was how good Darren's Irish accent was; it was absolutely impeccable. As an encore I told him the accent would switch to South African when I clicked my fingers, as a waking suggestion. This also worked very well.
I can't remember the last time I've laughed that much.
So that's about it. Shortly after this I had to head off to Paddington to catch the train home. I had yet another awesome evening out with some great people and I can't wait for next month!
See you then guys!
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