High five!

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

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

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

"Hey you did great! High five!"

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

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

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

Great fun!

The May '10 Meet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so it was.

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

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

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

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

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

A good evening out though!

A Truly Hypnotic Relationship

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

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

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

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

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

Does that sound familiar?

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

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

Now that's hypnosis if ever I saw it! 

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

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

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

So where are they going wrong?

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

"What does my subject want from this experience?"

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

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

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

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

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

Don't blink!

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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