One thing about having hypnosis as a hobby is that subjects rarely, if not never, come to you. If you want to hypnotise people you have to ask them, or at least bring the subject up.
It rather reminds me of my experience of being male and being in my late teens to early twenties. I desperately wanted attention from women, but I learned the hard way that no amount of being an honest, considerate, and kind individual would make women notice me. Somebody, I forget who, told me "nobody is going to give you a girlfriend", and this turned out to be even truer than I cared to admit at the time. To this day I still hold to the belief that generally speaking the idea of single women is a myth perpetuated by wishful thinkers.
It is much the same when it comes to finding subjects to hypnotise. No amount of knowing how to be a good hypnotist will make the subjects come to you a bit of honest hypno-fun. The challenges are much the same. First it's a case of knowing where to go to find subjects, and secondly, if the potential subjects are strangers, having the confidence to approach them.
These musings are foremost in my mind at the moment because this weekend I was doing what I haven't done enough of recently, which is shamelessly leaping on any opportunity to bring hypnosis into the conversation when with friends. As I said before, if you never bring it up you never get the opportunity to practice.
I learned two lessons that evening, and both left me feeling rather foolish.
During one of these conversations a friend of mine, who as it happens I'd not seen in a few years said that he'd like me to hypnotise him. I was delighted to have the opportunity, so I went straight into magnetic fingers and then on to magnetic hands.
No response. The hands were rock solid in mid air.
I have nearly always found that an individual's response to magnetic hands is indicative of how good a subject they are going to be for me. It shows me how willing they are to follow suggestions and engage their imagination. Having known this person as long as I had and knowing very well that he is extremely suggestible I was frankly shocked at his lack of response to my suggestions.
I like to make a point of asking subjects who I fail with what it is they are thinking afterwards, and it was then that I found out why it hadn't been working. He told me that he was only doing it because his girlfriend had asked him to and that he wasn't expecting that it would work anyway. After I heard that I wasn't so bothered about my abilities, I just wished I'd been more perceptive about how willing my subject was.
A string of successes in front of friends is something that will build a reputation and expectations. I can't help but think that bad choices over when and who to try to hypnotise seem to have locked me into the opposite spiral as far as they are concerned.
This certainly wasn't helped by my second attempt at hypnosis that evening. Later on we were stood in a club in Oxford and a friend commented to me that I probably wouldn't be able to hypnotise her because it was too noisy. I told her that I didn't need to speak to hypnotise her. Intrigued, she asked how I would do that. I obliged by showing her a non-verbal Erickson handshake.
A non-verbal Erickson handshake is, for the practiced hypnotist, probably the most effort-free induction there is. To do it I ambiguously hold the subject's arm, making it unclear as to who is supporting it, and effectively stare out the subject until they go into trance. All I need to do is look them in the eye and give a barely inperceptible "that's right" nod any time they exhibit any signs of behaviour that is trance-like, such as blinking.
The first time she was distracted by a view of our friends over my shoulder, so I took her by the shoulders and gently turned her to face away from them so we could start again. This time her eyes closed and her head dropped forward in less than 30 seconds.
Just as I was feeling the elation that it had worked, and I stepped around to the side to talk into her ear to deepen, everything went horribly wrong. She snapped out of it suddenly with a squeal. Why? because being the clumsy idiot that I am I'd trodden on her foot!
I of course apologised immediately, but that was it for the evening as far as hypnosis was concerned. I am extremely glad that I learned this lesson on a friend and not a stranger who I'd approached, but I'm still kicking myself that I could be so stupid as to not think about where I was putting my feet!
I don't feel like a complete amateur at the moment. Really I don't.
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