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!
Showing posts with label HypnoMeet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HypnoMeet. Show all posts
Friday, 28 May 2010
Saturday, 27 March 2010
The March Meet
There's not really much to say about the March meet. We, the last thursday group, are still meeting each month and once again this was a fun social occasion.
There was a lack of hypnosis, generally speaking, and I think we're all looking forward to warmer months when we can go out and perhaps approach people in parks. Crashing people's after work drinks and trying to do hypnosis in a loud bar doesn't seem to be quite so good.
The guys are meeting up again next week, but unfortunately I am going to be away on holiday. Ho-hum...
There was a lack of hypnosis, generally speaking, and I think we're all looking forward to warmer months when we can go out and perhaps approach people in parks. Crashing people's after work drinks and trying to do hypnosis in a loud bar doesn't seem to be quite so good.
The guys are meeting up again next week, but unfortunately I am going to be away on holiday. Ho-hum...
Sunday, 28 February 2010
The February Meet
This month I made it to the meetup in London, which was great because it's been a long time since I met up with the London hypnosis crowd. Far too long.
We've chosen a new venue recently and it seems that our choice is also the choice for a lot of people to meet up for a drink after work. I managed to find Ben, who had found a table and was sharing it with a nice couple of young women, and about 15 minutes later I was even able to get us some drinks. It was pretty crowded
Later on however, once the surge in work leavers was over, this began to feel a bit less mad. I was able to catch up with Ben and chat with the ladies about hypnosis, to the usual interested but wary response that a swarm of hypnotists will tend to get, and a swarm we were, well a small swarm anyway, when Chris, Darren and Pete showed up.
Sometimes attractive women in pubs are really up for trying hypnosis, but sometimes they aren't. Ben settled for getting a phone number instead.
Overall the feel of the meetup was social rather than all of us feeling the immediate intention to go forth and zap people. The general feeling was that wandering around in parks in the summer when people are lazing around in the sun is better than disturbing them over dinner, although Darren and Ben did have a go.
The only hypnosis really worth mentioning was when Darren caught me musing about the hand clasp and managed to stick my hands together, dammit! He then proceeded to stick my drink to the table and to tell me that the drinking straw was white hot and would burn when I touched it. This had a fairly interesting result, which was that I went out of my way not to touch it, even though I knew I probably wouldn't feel anything if I did. As the conversation went on, I picked up one of the menus on the table, folded it, and used it to carefully lift the straw out of my drink and discard it onto the table.
The only other thing really worth mentioning happened later when Ben was explaining something to Darren. Ben likes to go into talking about deep concepts - in this case "everything we think is a metaphor" - and Darren likes to be perplexed by such abstract wordy... ness. Chris was looking on.
Here I saw an interesting pattern of behaviour that gets repeated at all of our meets, the Ben-Chris-Darren triangle, which I like to call the "that's bollocks!" exercise. Ben (B) stands facing Darren (D), whilst Chris (C) stands between them a couple of steps back, listening to the conversation. B explains something highly conceptual and confusing to D who protests that he is just talking nonsense. C stares into middle distance with one eyebrow raised and a half smile on his face, then chuckles when he judges that the conversation between B and D has become incensed.
Good to see everyone again. Same time next month then!
We've chosen a new venue recently and it seems that our choice is also the choice for a lot of people to meet up for a drink after work. I managed to find Ben, who had found a table and was sharing it with a nice couple of young women, and about 15 minutes later I was even able to get us some drinks. It was pretty crowded
Later on however, once the surge in work leavers was over, this began to feel a bit less mad. I was able to catch up with Ben and chat with the ladies about hypnosis, to the usual interested but wary response that a swarm of hypnotists will tend to get, and a swarm we were, well a small swarm anyway, when Chris, Darren and Pete showed up.
Sometimes attractive women in pubs are really up for trying hypnosis, but sometimes they aren't. Ben settled for getting a phone number instead.
Overall the feel of the meetup was social rather than all of us feeling the immediate intention to go forth and zap people. The general feeling was that wandering around in parks in the summer when people are lazing around in the sun is better than disturbing them over dinner, although Darren and Ben did have a go.
The only hypnosis really worth mentioning was when Darren caught me musing about the hand clasp and managed to stick my hands together, dammit! He then proceeded to stick my drink to the table and to tell me that the drinking straw was white hot and would burn when I touched it. This had a fairly interesting result, which was that I went out of my way not to touch it, even though I knew I probably wouldn't feel anything if I did. As the conversation went on, I picked up one of the menus on the table, folded it, and used it to carefully lift the straw out of my drink and discard it onto the table.
The only other thing really worth mentioning happened later when Ben was explaining something to Darren. Ben likes to go into talking about deep concepts - in this case "everything we think is a metaphor" - and Darren likes to be perplexed by such abstract wordy... ness. Chris was looking on.
Here I saw an interesting pattern of behaviour that gets repeated at all of our meets, the Ben-Chris-Darren triangle, which I like to call the "that's bollocks!" exercise. Ben (B) stands facing Darren (D), whilst Chris (C) stands between them a couple of steps back, listening to the conversation. B explains something highly conceptual and confusing to D who protests that he is just talking nonsense. C stares into middle distance with one eyebrow raised and a half smile on his face, then chuckles when he judges that the conversation between B and D has become incensed.
Good to see everyone again. Same time next month then!
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Fun in Camden
I decided that this month I would like to turn up to on of the MMH meets in London, so yesterday I booked the afternoon off work and headed down to Covent Garden in London.
The MMH regulars are a great bunch of people who are at least as adept at impromptu magic tricks as they are at hypnosis, and they often have me completely in awe when they make cards, coins and rubber bands in their hands do all sorts of crazy things.
I am currently working very hard on making a coin vanish. Ben endorsed my efforts by saying that it "works well... on 12 year olds maybe".
For the most part this was for me a Social meetup, at least for the first half. We all sat in the pub and chatted for most of the rest of the afternoon, and then went for dinner.
After much procrastination we decided that we should all head off to Camden, or rather some of us. We made our way to a very nice studenty bar in Camden where we caught up with Darren.
It was at this point that Pete Crossland asked if he could hypnotise me, a consequence of my gaining a reputation as an easy subject I suspect. He used a hand-to-eye fixation induction and tried a few tricks like sticking me to my stool, which of course worked, and then told me that Darren was invisible so I couldn't see him, which worked only in so far as that I couldn't look at Darren directly, but of course I knew he was still there and could see him in my peripheral vision.
Pete's routine certainly turned a few heads nearby. I came out of trance to find several bystanders staring at me intently as though they expected me to explode or something similar at any minute. It was the foot in the door that all impromptu hypnotists like to get, so soon two girls were being shown hypnosis.
Pete handed me over to Darren, who did a routine with me that felt rather groundbreaking in terms of my experiences as a subject. He told me that I would not be able to answer any question regardless how easy or trivial it was. In the past I have found my reaction to such suggestions to consist of hearing the answer loud and clear inside my head, but I simply cannot bring myself to say the answer out loud.
This experience was very different. I found myself completely unable to think about the question at all. Each question simply threw my mind into confusion as it scrambled around in the dark trying to find the meaning of it and follow it through. It was a very new experience for me and I was genuinely speechless!
It just goes to show how quickly response to a certain type of phenomena can actually develop once the brain actually discovers how to do it! When it comes to amnesia that is something that is genuinely quite exciting, if a little scary. Rollercoaster scary.
Once again I found myself heading off just as things were starting to kick off properly with the local students. Great to see everyone again though!
The MMH regulars are a great bunch of people who are at least as adept at impromptu magic tricks as they are at hypnosis, and they often have me completely in awe when they make cards, coins and rubber bands in their hands do all sorts of crazy things.
I am currently working very hard on making a coin vanish. Ben endorsed my efforts by saying that it "works well... on 12 year olds maybe".
For the most part this was for me a Social meetup, at least for the first half. We all sat in the pub and chatted for most of the rest of the afternoon, and then went for dinner.
After much procrastination we decided that we should all head off to Camden, or rather some of us. We made our way to a very nice studenty bar in Camden where we caught up with Darren.
It was at this point that Pete Crossland asked if he could hypnotise me, a consequence of my gaining a reputation as an easy subject I suspect. He used a hand-to-eye fixation induction and tried a few tricks like sticking me to my stool, which of course worked, and then told me that Darren was invisible so I couldn't see him, which worked only in so far as that I couldn't look at Darren directly, but of course I knew he was still there and could see him in my peripheral vision.
Pete's routine certainly turned a few heads nearby. I came out of trance to find several bystanders staring at me intently as though they expected me to explode or something similar at any minute. It was the foot in the door that all impromptu hypnotists like to get, so soon two girls were being shown hypnosis.
Pete handed me over to Darren, who did a routine with me that felt rather groundbreaking in terms of my experiences as a subject. He told me that I would not be able to answer any question regardless how easy or trivial it was. In the past I have found my reaction to such suggestions to consist of hearing the answer loud and clear inside my head, but I simply cannot bring myself to say the answer out loud.
This experience was very different. I found myself completely unable to think about the question at all. Each question simply threw my mind into confusion as it scrambled around in the dark trying to find the meaning of it and follow it through. It was a very new experience for me and I was genuinely speechless!
It just goes to show how quickly response to a certain type of phenomena can actually develop once the brain actually discovers how to do it! When it comes to amnesia that is something that is genuinely quite exciting, if a little scary. Rollercoaster scary.
Once again I found myself heading off just as things were starting to kick off properly with the local students. Great to see everyone again though!
Friday, 2 October 2009
The September Meet
Cognitive bias, I thought to myself, is an interesting thing.
Thursday found me looking out of a train window watching the beautiful Thames valley whizzing past the window at 125mph. I had left my flat in order to make a brisk walk to the railway station to catch my train to London. I had discovered on arriving at the station that my train was running 15 minutes late. The train ahead of it, which would also have gotten me to London, I had just seen pulling out of the station as I arrived, on time to the nearest second.
"Bloody typical" would be the obvious response.
Is it typical though? Had both of the trains been on time, or if the earlier one had been late enough for me to catch and I'd gotten to London earlier than planned I probably wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Over 90% of trains in the UK arrive within 10 minutes of their scheduled time, but of course it's the occasions when they don't that catch our attention. What percentage of car journeys into urban centres can be said to suffer less than a 10 minute delay, especially at busy periods?
Best to appreciate the good things when they are present, as opposed to by their absence. So I thought as I appreciated being able to sit back and watch the mesmerising experience of the countryside rolling past. Train travel trances are much better than car travel trances I thought; you can go much deeper and there's no risk of causing an accident.
We'd agreed on a change of venue for this meet, nearer to Covent Garden, as well as the unusual date so on arriving it took me a while to find Ben, who'd found us a table in a cramped corner of the pub.
We chatted for a bit about magic tricks, and Ben told me how he'd spent time recently watching Peter Crossland and Marcus Lewis, hypnotists we know through the MMH group, working the crowd and he reckons that a couple of magic tricks are easily the best way to break the ice with strangers. Ben then demonstrated a really cool card trick to me, and I felt the need to redouble my attempts to learn a few magic tricks.
As if on cue Marcus joined us at that point, followed by Darren, and then followed by numerous phone calls from others trying to find out where the venue was. It turns out that as I had been the person to alert the Last Thursday Group to the date and venue, and as facebook in their continuing quest to evolve their interface into one that is utterly incomprehensible and impossible to use, it seems that the invites I thought I'd sent out hadn't gone out, and so only a few of us made it, and most of the others had to call us to find out where the heck we were.
After showing us a few impressive magic tricks Marcus asked if he could hypnotise me. I was actually about to ask him the same question, but I didn't especially mind going first. He used an eye fixation induction that had me staring at a playing card held in my hand, which seems to be quite popular at the moment. He then did a number of simple routines with me such as sticking me to my stool (which in this case didn't actually feel like sticking, but rather had me insisting that I was absolutely fine sitting where I was thankyou!) and having me forget my name.
Next I took a turn hypnotising Marcus. I already knew he was a highly responsive subject, so I felt confident using the Erickson handshake on him. What I wasn't prepared for was the way in which, just as I was starting, his head dropped and his legs nearly gave way under him I was already feeling very rusty with my patter, not having zapped anybody in a while, and in the noisy crowded space it seemed that it was all that I could do to keep him upright.
I tried a few suggestions, but when I brought him back from trance it didn't feel as though he was completely back, he was completely dazed and barely responded to anything I or anyone else was saying or doing. I tried patter to the effect that he would feel lucid and wide awake when I woke him up, but it really didn't seem to make much of a difference. Perhaps the situation was getting away from me simply because I was beginning to feel as though I wasn't fully in control. Whatever the reason, I wasn't feeling happy and decided to leave things there. I did a wake up and bought Marcus a drink by way of apology.
Next Darren had a go at hypnotising me with the old classics like sticking my hand to my drink and making me unable to say my name. I got my revenge by hypnotising him afterwards and having him split his sides laughing whenever I showed him a beer mat. After this I took some time out and just watched what everyone else was doing.
Darren came to me again later on and chatted to me saying that the trances I'd done with him were great, but I needed to work on my wakeups because he and Marcus had both been very groggy after I'd brought them back up from trance. I appreciated the advice from Darren and I take such comments completely seriously, they mean a lot to me, but at the same time I felt a little bit amateurish and out of my depth.
He then offered to show me a card trick. I knew he was up to something immediately; Darren doesn't know any magic tricks.
He had me staring at a card in a way that was not at all unfamiliar from the way Marcus had done to me, and I'd done to him earlier, then sure enough I was down and into trance. This time Darren tried a reverse mind reading trick on me, which I believe is taken from Anthony Jacquin's Manchurian Approach DVD. Basically it's a card trick where the subject is simply told which card to choose by the hypnotist, and then given amnesia for the suggestion.
This was the first time someone has given me an explicit instruction to forget that something has happened; Darren is just cheeky and confident enough to give something like that a try even if it probably won't work. My response to this routine made me feel closer to getting full amnesia, but very it's very hard to put the experience into words. I felt an overriding desire to go along with the routine and to lie to Darren that I couldn't remember being told which card to choose. At first that might seem like I was just pretending, and perhaps so, but the crazier thing about it was that whilst I knew very well that I had the memories of being given that suggestion I found actually getting at those memories to be very difficult! It was like trying to reach out and grab a handful of smoke, I could see what I was reaching for but when I tried to grab something for a closer look my hands were coming back empty. This hasn't really happened before.
I am getting better as a subject. Definitely.
Marcus had been chatting to the barmaid, who was interested in hypnosis and wanted to give it a try. Hypnosis wise he didn't seem to be having much success, although she clearly enjoyed having his full attention.
After hypnosis didn't really seem to work for her with Marcus, Darren stepped up and had a go.
This all led up to what I think is probably the best reaction to an induction I have ever seen, although not in hypnotic terms.
Darren had already tried one induction and she'd not "gone under", to her satisfaction, so Darren tried a hand drop induction on her. He had her push down on his hand, take a deep breath... that's right... push harder... take another deep breath... SLEEP!
The girl's eyes popped open wide in an expression of complete shock, showing white all the way around her pupils, and she recoiled as though Darren had suddenly turned into a poisonous snake. It's an image that will stay with me for a long, long time.
She clearly wasn't going to go under but Marcus used his initiative at this point. He offered to hypnotise her later, got her to write down her phone number on one of his cards, and then proceeded to do an awesome card trick routine by stringing effect after effect. It was incredible to watch.
I made it back to Paddington in good time to catch my train home. It was on time too, but then thinking back I can't remember any train back from London after a meet running late.
I'd had a good evening out, but all in all my feelings as I sat staring through the window at the blackness outside were not especially positive. For the first time at one of these meets had I managed to make myself feel like a complete amateur. Everyone else at the meets seems to be making more opportunities for themselves to get out and hypnotise people and they are absolutely awesome to watch, whereas I felt incredibly rusty and no better at this than I was many months ago.
I really need to start finding more opportunities to get out and zap somehow.
Thursday found me looking out of a train window watching the beautiful Thames valley whizzing past the window at 125mph. I had left my flat in order to make a brisk walk to the railway station to catch my train to London. I had discovered on arriving at the station that my train was running 15 minutes late. The train ahead of it, which would also have gotten me to London, I had just seen pulling out of the station as I arrived, on time to the nearest second.
"Bloody typical" would be the obvious response.
Is it typical though? Had both of the trains been on time, or if the earlier one had been late enough for me to catch and I'd gotten to London earlier than planned I probably wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Over 90% of trains in the UK arrive within 10 minutes of their scheduled time, but of course it's the occasions when they don't that catch our attention. What percentage of car journeys into urban centres can be said to suffer less than a 10 minute delay, especially at busy periods?
Best to appreciate the good things when they are present, as opposed to by their absence. So I thought as I appreciated being able to sit back and watch the mesmerising experience of the countryside rolling past. Train travel trances are much better than car travel trances I thought; you can go much deeper and there's no risk of causing an accident.
We'd agreed on a change of venue for this meet, nearer to Covent Garden, as well as the unusual date so on arriving it took me a while to find Ben, who'd found us a table in a cramped corner of the pub.
We chatted for a bit about magic tricks, and Ben told me how he'd spent time recently watching Peter Crossland and Marcus Lewis, hypnotists we know through the MMH group, working the crowd and he reckons that a couple of magic tricks are easily the best way to break the ice with strangers. Ben then demonstrated a really cool card trick to me, and I felt the need to redouble my attempts to learn a few magic tricks.
As if on cue Marcus joined us at that point, followed by Darren, and then followed by numerous phone calls from others trying to find out where the venue was. It turns out that as I had been the person to alert the Last Thursday Group to the date and venue, and as facebook in their continuing quest to evolve their interface into one that is utterly incomprehensible and impossible to use, it seems that the invites I thought I'd sent out hadn't gone out, and so only a few of us made it, and most of the others had to call us to find out where the heck we were.
After showing us a few impressive magic tricks Marcus asked if he could hypnotise me. I was actually about to ask him the same question, but I didn't especially mind going first. He used an eye fixation induction that had me staring at a playing card held in my hand, which seems to be quite popular at the moment. He then did a number of simple routines with me such as sticking me to my stool (which in this case didn't actually feel like sticking, but rather had me insisting that I was absolutely fine sitting where I was thankyou!) and having me forget my name.
Next I took a turn hypnotising Marcus. I already knew he was a highly responsive subject, so I felt confident using the Erickson handshake on him. What I wasn't prepared for was the way in which, just as I was starting, his head dropped and his legs nearly gave way under him I was already feeling very rusty with my patter, not having zapped anybody in a while, and in the noisy crowded space it seemed that it was all that I could do to keep him upright.
I tried a few suggestions, but when I brought him back from trance it didn't feel as though he was completely back, he was completely dazed and barely responded to anything I or anyone else was saying or doing. I tried patter to the effect that he would feel lucid and wide awake when I woke him up, but it really didn't seem to make much of a difference. Perhaps the situation was getting away from me simply because I was beginning to feel as though I wasn't fully in control. Whatever the reason, I wasn't feeling happy and decided to leave things there. I did a wake up and bought Marcus a drink by way of apology.
Next Darren had a go at hypnotising me with the old classics like sticking my hand to my drink and making me unable to say my name. I got my revenge by hypnotising him afterwards and having him split his sides laughing whenever I showed him a beer mat. After this I took some time out and just watched what everyone else was doing.
Darren came to me again later on and chatted to me saying that the trances I'd done with him were great, but I needed to work on my wakeups because he and Marcus had both been very groggy after I'd brought them back up from trance. I appreciated the advice from Darren and I take such comments completely seriously, they mean a lot to me, but at the same time I felt a little bit amateurish and out of my depth.
He then offered to show me a card trick. I knew he was up to something immediately; Darren doesn't know any magic tricks.
He had me staring at a card in a way that was not at all unfamiliar from the way Marcus had done to me, and I'd done to him earlier, then sure enough I was down and into trance. This time Darren tried a reverse mind reading trick on me, which I believe is taken from Anthony Jacquin's Manchurian Approach DVD. Basically it's a card trick where the subject is simply told which card to choose by the hypnotist, and then given amnesia for the suggestion.
This was the first time someone has given me an explicit instruction to forget that something has happened; Darren is just cheeky and confident enough to give something like that a try even if it probably won't work. My response to this routine made me feel closer to getting full amnesia, but very it's very hard to put the experience into words. I felt an overriding desire to go along with the routine and to lie to Darren that I couldn't remember being told which card to choose. At first that might seem like I was just pretending, and perhaps so, but the crazier thing about it was that whilst I knew very well that I had the memories of being given that suggestion I found actually getting at those memories to be very difficult! It was like trying to reach out and grab a handful of smoke, I could see what I was reaching for but when I tried to grab something for a closer look my hands were coming back empty. This hasn't really happened before.
I am getting better as a subject. Definitely.
Marcus had been chatting to the barmaid, who was interested in hypnosis and wanted to give it a try. Hypnosis wise he didn't seem to be having much success, although she clearly enjoyed having his full attention.
After hypnosis didn't really seem to work for her with Marcus, Darren stepped up and had a go.
This all led up to what I think is probably the best reaction to an induction I have ever seen, although not in hypnotic terms.
Darren had already tried one induction and she'd not "gone under", to her satisfaction, so Darren tried a hand drop induction on her. He had her push down on his hand, take a deep breath... that's right... push harder... take another deep breath... SLEEP!
The girl's eyes popped open wide in an expression of complete shock, showing white all the way around her pupils, and she recoiled as though Darren had suddenly turned into a poisonous snake. It's an image that will stay with me for a long, long time.
She clearly wasn't going to go under but Marcus used his initiative at this point. He offered to hypnotise her later, got her to write down her phone number on one of his cards, and then proceeded to do an awesome card trick routine by stringing effect after effect. It was incredible to watch.
I made it back to Paddington in good time to catch my train home. It was on time too, but then thinking back I can't remember any train back from London after a meet running late.
I'd had a good evening out, but all in all my feelings as I sat staring through the window at the blackness outside were not especially positive. For the first time at one of these meets had I managed to make myself feel like a complete amateur. Everyone else at the meets seems to be making more opportunities for themselves to get out and hypnotise people and they are absolutely awesome to watch, whereas I felt incredibly rusty and no better at this than I was many months ago.
I really need to start finding more opportunities to get out and zap somehow.
Friday, 28 August 2009
The August Meet
Well once again the last Thursday group met up in central London and of course I was there.
Given the recent business with the legality of hypnosis being raised, and most people being a bit on edge, the atmosphere was more social than hypnotic for a little longer than usual to start with. Dr Chicken Royale, as I shall henceforth refer to him, and his rather significant unpopularity being one of the main topics of discussion.
Soon however we came back to our senses and we were zapping away as happily as we have always done. For me the highlights were coming back from the bar to find the way blocked by Ben sprawled on the floor having been used as a demonstration subject for a drop-back induction, Darren demonstrating to me how to do the Cerbone butterfly induction, and performing an Anthony Jacquin inspired "if you can unstick and grab the money you can keep it" routine. I also had fun performing an Erickson Handshake induction on Will.
What a wonderful bunch of people. Looking forward to next month!
Given the recent business with the legality of hypnosis being raised, and most people being a bit on edge, the atmosphere was more social than hypnotic for a little longer than usual to start with. Dr Chicken Royale, as I shall henceforth refer to him, and his rather significant unpopularity being one of the main topics of discussion.
Soon however we came back to our senses and we were zapping away as happily as we have always done. For me the highlights were coming back from the bar to find the way blocked by Ben sprawled on the floor having been used as a demonstration subject for a drop-back induction, Darren demonstrating to me how to do the Cerbone butterfly induction, and performing an Anthony Jacquin inspired "if you can unstick and grab the money you can keep it" routine. I also had fun performing an Erickson Handshake induction on Will.
What a wonderful bunch of people. Looking forward to next month!
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Saturday in Bristol
I seem to have had quite a busy week hypnosis wise, but then I can never get enough of it anyway.
Yesterday my mighty folding bike and I paid another visit to Bristol, which is a nice place and definitely worth a visit just to see the sights. I was, of course, there for another HypnoMeet that Rich had organised. Also attending were Javier, Lex & Liz, and Keiron, a magician and hypnotist Rich knows.
I had deliberately planned to arrive there early so I could have a bit of an explore on my bike and I passed a productive couple of hours on my own before the others arrived. I looked around the shops, had lunch, found an overdue Birthday present for someone, and miraculously managed to go into a bike shop without buying anything. Having learned my lesson from last time I wheeled my bike up Park Street this time, then I parked up and made myself comfortable in a bar to wait for the others.
Lex and Liz arrived soon afterward and after a quick drink we decided to make use of the two hours before anyone else was to show up to have a bit of a wander around the shops. Apparently there was some imperative for Liz to find an outfit for the following day. Having some vague idea of the kind of outfits that appeal to them I couldn't help but feel some apprehension, but as it turned out I needn't have worried.
Something that I should have known of course, and even my girlfriend would probably second this, is that with any outfit it's best to start with the hat and work downward. Of course I should have known that, how could I not have?!
Well anyway this became quite apparent to me that afternoon. As we passed one of those shops that will sell you plastic spiders, plastic swords, inflatable badgers, etc and of course a multitude of hats. Lex pointed this out, but Liz wasn't keen; she said she'd feel a bit self-conscious trying them on. This is where Lex demonstrated the fun that can be had with a girlfriend who can't get enough of being hypnotised. One moment we were walking up the road and the next, a few choice words later, we were making a quick u-turn and heading back to the shop.
The next 10 minutes or so were occupied by a rigorous process of hat selection. I personally was quite fond of the huge stovepipe hat for the Isembard Kingdom Brunel look, complete with LED-lit plastic cigar. It would have fit my character quite well, the crazed mechanical engineer that I am, but I didn't fancy riding home on my bike wearing it. After much deliberation Liz, admittedly in a rather more enthusiastic guise, selected a Tricorn hat. This was after going through a dozen or so other options and I'd been told off by a shop employee whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to stand in the corner and tell customers not to take pictures. I wasn't about to explain to him that the subject of the photographs was hypnotised, wouldn't remember this incident, and that was why photographic evidence was important. I put my phone away.
We were then just leaving the shop when Liz spotted a red hat in the window, one that it has to be said reminded me too much of Virgin Atlantic stewardesses, and so in we went again to buy one of those.
Then during our second attempt at leaving I found a metal enamel plate with a retro picture on it that I thought would be a great gift for my girlfriend, so we paused again whilst I bought it.
Walking away from the shop, and after a few more words from Lex, Liz was ever so slightly disoriented.
"Deja vu?" he asked her.
"Yeah..." she said "Hang on! Where did those bags come from?!"
"We've been shopping" Lex said.
What followed, as we walked further into the shopping district, was a spirited attempt by Liz to find out what was in the bags. We weren't telling of course, and a hypnotic forcefield kept her prying hands away. Lex must have decided that this was cruel, so after a while he let her carry the bags, but she was completely unable to open them.
The final revelation for Liz came when she was marching along through a clothes shop like a woman on a mission, trailing her male companions in what is the standard form for women in clothes shops, and spotted the Tricorn on her head as she passed a mirror. She had no idea how long it had been there, and of course she still doesn't.
We eventually found our way back to the Berkeley, the Wetherspoons pub that the last Bristol Meet had been in, to meet up with Rich and Javier. Rich met us at the bar, and after I'd bought a round without the aid of post hypnotic compulsion we found ourselves a quiet table in a corner. Rich, who had been learning magic, pulled out a deck of cards at this point and demonstrated a couple of near cards tricks. I was able to show off the Key trick I learned in Covent Garden on Wednesday. Lex took the opportunity to demonstrate the "strings cut" trigger he'd given Liz which turned her into a kind of human marrionette although sadly this wasn't accompanied by anybody's seat retracting into the floor or the table moving aside to allow a rocket to launch.
Javier produced a set of "salad" playing cards with NLP phrases on them, determined to get £30 worth of use out of them having spent that much buying them. Unfortunately these phrases proved completely ineffectual in helping him is his attempts to sell his jacket to Rich, presumably to try to make back the £30 deficit.
We elected to a Chinese restaurant up the road for dinner, and I enjoyed getting myself wrapped up in the world of discussing hypnosis in the way that one can around other people who share the same enthusiasm for it. The food at the restaurant was first rate, and the all the better for being an all you can eat buffet.
Over dinner I heard Rich asking Liz on the topic of who she would be happy going into trance for. As her answer made it clear that this would probably extend to him I could hear cogs turning in his head as he filed this information under "iiiiinteresting".
I contented myself with making Liz's spoon vanish from her hand just as she was diving into her ice cream desert and watching Lex get the blame for it.
Returning to the Berkeley we met up with Keiron, who is apparently new to the world of hypnosis but has a long history of practicing impromptu magic.
Rich was keen to try out a new magic trick on Liz, or at least it seemed so at first. He had her pick out a card from the deck, note to herself which one it was, then put the card back and shuffle the deck thoroughly. What he did next was a bit sneaky; he slammed his hand down flat on the table with a bang and said "sleep!". It was a shock induction of course; it certainly shocked me! Liz, however, is the kind of subject that people she trusts as hypnotists can't say certain words around in normal conversation, for example "blank", "freeze" or "sleep". When playing scrabble one must take care to speak of the "blank... unblank" tiles or "tiles with no letters on" lest the game grind to a halt as a result of her mind switching itself off, and it seems Lex has only been able to say the word "sleep" out of the corner of his mouth for the last two years. Suffice to say that her response to Rich's command was predictable and immediate.
Rich had her tell him what her card was, and then come back to the room not noticing anything had happened. Then, the mighty magician that he was, he amazed her by pulling it out of the deck.
I shall have to try that shock induction sometime, although like a lot of instant inductions it's one that the hypnotist has to be prepared for it not to work a lot of the time. Indeed, Rich told me that it works about 30% of the time.
I got in on the card action by also pointing out that her card was also on the top of the freshly shuffled deck, which it was after I'd frozen her and done a bit of re-arranging. She was also amazed when *all* of the cards were her card thanks to a few suggestions. Suffice to say that I felt like a bit of a dirty cheat for doing this and owned up straight away.
As with his earlier actual card tricks Liz demanded to know how he'd done it. Rich wasn't going to say and pushed straight on for the holy grail of hypnosis, the invisible hypnotist routine. He put her back into trance and told her that she wouldn't be able to see him, but she would be able to hear him and see anything he moved.
Imagine her confusion when, no sooner had we explained that Rich had gone looking for potential subjects, one of the pint glasses on the table started moving around on its own. In fact I don't think I've ever seen her quite so taken aback before, not even by the Harry Potter wall in Oxford. This was especially so when the levitating glass, toted by a very smug Rich, moved toward her. This time, as Lex wasn't around, I took the full blame for the levitating pint glass Liz was sure she was hallucinating.
Rich having "returned" decided it was time to get to work, and he Javier, and Keiron who had been looking on in a kind of stunned silence, started looking for tables to approach. They approached two or three, but nobody seemed particularly interested in hypnosis, not even the table of about 20 women all dressed in red skirts and white shirts, presumably on a social night out with a society of some kind. Keiron's magic went down a bit better, but the three of them still ended up returning to our table soon after they'd left.
I wasn't in the mood for approaching tables. I had taken a moment to demonstrate magnetic hands on Lex, who in spite of his insistence that he has a poor response to hypnosis responded very well to the suggestions. Had I thought at the time I might have tried to demonstrate a few more exercises on him, but is request rather caught me by surprise. I do wonder if he suffers frustration at being amongst the number of hypnotists who don't have any deep experience of hypnosis as the subject, not being able to achieve most of the effects he routinely engenders in others. It's a frustration I know well myself.
Indeed, I became aware that of the six of use around the table there were only two of use who could be considered tranceable, and this in mind I was happy when Keiron changed the subject and went into demonstrating some of his magic routines.
"Wow!" I said, impressed "That's much better than when when Rich cheated earlier."
I should have kept quiet, because this re-ignited Liz's attempts to find out just how Rich had managed to find her card earlier, and needless to say Rich wasn't giving anything away.
It was at this point I heard a quiet voice beside my right ear. "Veritas. Parkey, how did Rich do that magic trick?"
Now, earlier in the day the conversation had touched on the subject of truth triggers, and indeed Liz had given me one of these during a skype conversation about four months earlier. I find that post hypnotic suggestions are always strongest when they catch you by surprise, and I was completely astonished to hear myself saying "Rich tranced you and then..." ...and then I realised what I was saying and could only exclaim "NOOOO!!!"
"I can't believe I said that!" I gasped, feeling myself going red. "Why did I just say that?!"
Liz patted me on the shoulder, "it's called hypnosis dear."
Being a somnambulist and experiencing the full force profound hypnotic phenomena straight away must be quite an amazing experience, but for the likes of me the slow road to improvement as a subject is lined with tiny but significant milestones. I find that moments like this one, where something hypnotic almost unquestionably occurred, are exciting and very special.
What followed was an attempt by Javier to see if other people could use that trigger.
"Veritas. Parkey, is it 'Veritas' that makes you tell the truth?"
"NO!" I lied, and then having realised I'd gotten away with being able to lie, punched the air, "Yessss!".
Thus defying the whole purpose of lying I reminded myself.
Anyway the evening only went on a short while longer for me after that because I had a train to catch. Liz, fresh from her success triggering a confession for Rich out of me, proceeded to stick my hands to my drink, drink to the table, etc, although this "brattishness", as she would call it, was a little bit encouraged by a few choice words. The suggestions holding my hand to the table held for a long time before breaking, even when my ribs were under bombardment from various peoples' prodding fingers. The things I'm willing to endure for the sake of affirmation!
Around about 10pm we left the pub and I said my goodbyes, leaving the others as they headed off down the street in search of better hunting grounds, riding my bike back to the station to catch the last train home and ending another awesome evening out!
Oh, if anybody's interested in Richard Skeates' hypnosis course in Bristol on 26th October the details can be found here.
Yesterday my mighty folding bike and I paid another visit to Bristol, which is a nice place and definitely worth a visit just to see the sights. I was, of course, there for another HypnoMeet that Rich had organised. Also attending were Javier, Lex & Liz, and Keiron, a magician and hypnotist Rich knows.
I had deliberately planned to arrive there early so I could have a bit of an explore on my bike and I passed a productive couple of hours on my own before the others arrived. I looked around the shops, had lunch, found an overdue Birthday present for someone, and miraculously managed to go into a bike shop without buying anything. Having learned my lesson from last time I wheeled my bike up Park Street this time, then I parked up and made myself comfortable in a bar to wait for the others.
Lex and Liz arrived soon afterward and after a quick drink we decided to make use of the two hours before anyone else was to show up to have a bit of a wander around the shops. Apparently there was some imperative for Liz to find an outfit for the following day. Having some vague idea of the kind of outfits that appeal to them I couldn't help but feel some apprehension, but as it turned out I needn't have worried.
Something that I should have known of course, and even my girlfriend would probably second this, is that with any outfit it's best to start with the hat and work downward. Of course I should have known that, how could I not have?!
Well anyway this became quite apparent to me that afternoon. As we passed one of those shops that will sell you plastic spiders, plastic swords, inflatable badgers, etc and of course a multitude of hats. Lex pointed this out, but Liz wasn't keen; she said she'd feel a bit self-conscious trying them on. This is where Lex demonstrated the fun that can be had with a girlfriend who can't get enough of being hypnotised. One moment we were walking up the road and the next, a few choice words later, we were making a quick u-turn and heading back to the shop.
The next 10 minutes or so were occupied by a rigorous process of hat selection. I personally was quite fond of the huge stovepipe hat for the Isembard Kingdom Brunel look, complete with LED-lit plastic cigar. It would have fit my character quite well, the crazed mechanical engineer that I am, but I didn't fancy riding home on my bike wearing it. After much deliberation Liz, admittedly in a rather more enthusiastic guise, selected a Tricorn hat. This was after going through a dozen or so other options and I'd been told off by a shop employee whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to stand in the corner and tell customers not to take pictures. I wasn't about to explain to him that the subject of the photographs was hypnotised, wouldn't remember this incident, and that was why photographic evidence was important. I put my phone away.
We were then just leaving the shop when Liz spotted a red hat in the window, one that it has to be said reminded me too much of Virgin Atlantic stewardesses, and so in we went again to buy one of those.
Then during our second attempt at leaving I found a metal enamel plate with a retro picture on it that I thought would be a great gift for my girlfriend, so we paused again whilst I bought it.
Walking away from the shop, and after a few more words from Lex, Liz was ever so slightly disoriented.
"Deja vu?" he asked her.
"Yeah..." she said "Hang on! Where did those bags come from?!"
"We've been shopping" Lex said.
What followed, as we walked further into the shopping district, was a spirited attempt by Liz to find out what was in the bags. We weren't telling of course, and a hypnotic forcefield kept her prying hands away. Lex must have decided that this was cruel, so after a while he let her carry the bags, but she was completely unable to open them.
The final revelation for Liz came when she was marching along through a clothes shop like a woman on a mission, trailing her male companions in what is the standard form for women in clothes shops, and spotted the Tricorn on her head as she passed a mirror. She had no idea how long it had been there, and of course she still doesn't.
We eventually found our way back to the Berkeley, the Wetherspoons pub that the last Bristol Meet had been in, to meet up with Rich and Javier. Rich met us at the bar, and after I'd bought a round without the aid of post hypnotic compulsion we found ourselves a quiet table in a corner. Rich, who had been learning magic, pulled out a deck of cards at this point and demonstrated a couple of near cards tricks. I was able to show off the Key trick I learned in Covent Garden on Wednesday. Lex took the opportunity to demonstrate the "strings cut" trigger he'd given Liz which turned her into a kind of human marrionette although sadly this wasn't accompanied by anybody's seat retracting into the floor or the table moving aside to allow a rocket to launch.
Javier produced a set of "salad" playing cards with NLP phrases on them, determined to get £30 worth of use out of them having spent that much buying them. Unfortunately these phrases proved completely ineffectual in helping him is his attempts to sell his jacket to Rich, presumably to try to make back the £30 deficit.
We elected to a Chinese restaurant up the road for dinner, and I enjoyed getting myself wrapped up in the world of discussing hypnosis in the way that one can around other people who share the same enthusiasm for it. The food at the restaurant was first rate, and the all the better for being an all you can eat buffet.
Over dinner I heard Rich asking Liz on the topic of who she would be happy going into trance for. As her answer made it clear that this would probably extend to him I could hear cogs turning in his head as he filed this information under "iiiiinteresting".
I contented myself with making Liz's spoon vanish from her hand just as she was diving into her ice cream desert and watching Lex get the blame for it.
Returning to the Berkeley we met up with Keiron, who is apparently new to the world of hypnosis but has a long history of practicing impromptu magic.
Rich was keen to try out a new magic trick on Liz, or at least it seemed so at first. He had her pick out a card from the deck, note to herself which one it was, then put the card back and shuffle the deck thoroughly. What he did next was a bit sneaky; he slammed his hand down flat on the table with a bang and said "sleep!". It was a shock induction of course; it certainly shocked me! Liz, however, is the kind of subject that people she trusts as hypnotists can't say certain words around in normal conversation, for example "blank", "freeze" or "sleep". When playing scrabble one must take care to speak of the "blank... unblank" tiles or "tiles with no letters on" lest the game grind to a halt as a result of her mind switching itself off, and it seems Lex has only been able to say the word "sleep" out of the corner of his mouth for the last two years. Suffice to say that her response to Rich's command was predictable and immediate.
Rich had her tell him what her card was, and then come back to the room not noticing anything had happened. Then, the mighty magician that he was, he amazed her by pulling it out of the deck.
I shall have to try that shock induction sometime, although like a lot of instant inductions it's one that the hypnotist has to be prepared for it not to work a lot of the time. Indeed, Rich told me that it works about 30% of the time.
I got in on the card action by also pointing out that her card was also on the top of the freshly shuffled deck, which it was after I'd frozen her and done a bit of re-arranging. She was also amazed when *all* of the cards were her card thanks to a few suggestions. Suffice to say that I felt like a bit of a dirty cheat for doing this and owned up straight away.
As with his earlier actual card tricks Liz demanded to know how he'd done it. Rich wasn't going to say and pushed straight on for the holy grail of hypnosis, the invisible hypnotist routine. He put her back into trance and told her that she wouldn't be able to see him, but she would be able to hear him and see anything he moved.
Imagine her confusion when, no sooner had we explained that Rich had gone looking for potential subjects, one of the pint glasses on the table started moving around on its own. In fact I don't think I've ever seen her quite so taken aback before, not even by the Harry Potter wall in Oxford. This was especially so when the levitating glass, toted by a very smug Rich, moved toward her. This time, as Lex wasn't around, I took the full blame for the levitating pint glass Liz was sure she was hallucinating.
Rich having "returned" decided it was time to get to work, and he Javier, and Keiron who had been looking on in a kind of stunned silence, started looking for tables to approach. They approached two or three, but nobody seemed particularly interested in hypnosis, not even the table of about 20 women all dressed in red skirts and white shirts, presumably on a social night out with a society of some kind. Keiron's magic went down a bit better, but the three of them still ended up returning to our table soon after they'd left.
I wasn't in the mood for approaching tables. I had taken a moment to demonstrate magnetic hands on Lex, who in spite of his insistence that he has a poor response to hypnosis responded very well to the suggestions. Had I thought at the time I might have tried to demonstrate a few more exercises on him, but is request rather caught me by surprise. I do wonder if he suffers frustration at being amongst the number of hypnotists who don't have any deep experience of hypnosis as the subject, not being able to achieve most of the effects he routinely engenders in others. It's a frustration I know well myself.
Indeed, I became aware that of the six of use around the table there were only two of use who could be considered tranceable, and this in mind I was happy when Keiron changed the subject and went into demonstrating some of his magic routines.
"Wow!" I said, impressed "That's much better than when when Rich cheated earlier."
I should have kept quiet, because this re-ignited Liz's attempts to find out just how Rich had managed to find her card earlier, and needless to say Rich wasn't giving anything away.
It was at this point I heard a quiet voice beside my right ear. "Veritas. Parkey, how did Rich do that magic trick?"
Now, earlier in the day the conversation had touched on the subject of truth triggers, and indeed Liz had given me one of these during a skype conversation about four months earlier. I find that post hypnotic suggestions are always strongest when they catch you by surprise, and I was completely astonished to hear myself saying "Rich tranced you and then..." ...and then I realised what I was saying and could only exclaim "NOOOO!!!"
"I can't believe I said that!" I gasped, feeling myself going red. "Why did I just say that?!"
Liz patted me on the shoulder, "it's called hypnosis dear."
Being a somnambulist and experiencing the full force profound hypnotic phenomena straight away must be quite an amazing experience, but for the likes of me the slow road to improvement as a subject is lined with tiny but significant milestones. I find that moments like this one, where something hypnotic almost unquestionably occurred, are exciting and very special.
What followed was an attempt by Javier to see if other people could use that trigger.
"Veritas. Parkey, is it 'Veritas' that makes you tell the truth?"
"NO!" I lied, and then having realised I'd gotten away with being able to lie, punched the air, "Yessss!".
Thus defying the whole purpose of lying I reminded myself.
Anyway the evening only went on a short while longer for me after that because I had a train to catch. Liz, fresh from her success triggering a confession for Rich out of me, proceeded to stick my hands to my drink, drink to the table, etc, although this "brattishness", as she would call it, was a little bit encouraged by a few choice words. The suggestions holding my hand to the table held for a long time before breaking, even when my ribs were under bombardment from various peoples' prodding fingers. The things I'm willing to endure for the sake of affirmation!
Around about 10pm we left the pub and I said my goodbyes, leaving the others as they headed off down the street in search of better hunting grounds, riding my bike back to the station to catch the last train home and ending another awesome evening out!
Oh, if anybody's interested in Richard Skeates' hypnosis course in Bristol on 26th October the details can be found here.
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Covent Garden
A bit of a flurry of hypnosis activity this week, and it's set to continue as I shall be in Bristol on Saturday for another meet up. Yesterday I attended the Monthly Mental, Magic, and Hypnosis meet, or "MMM&H" meet in Covent Garden.
(This reminds me about the old joke about the companies 3M and Goodyear merging to form "MMMGood")
This meet was a lot of fun, and although I didn't quite feel in the mood to go forth and do some zapping myself I did meet a lot of new people, get zapped myself, and pick up lots of new tips.
Heading up through Covent Garden I didn't spot the group until I was practically on top of them. However, I soon spotted Darren and a few other faces I recognised stood out on the street. There were also plenty of new faces too, and it was great to be introduced to a few new people.
I have to say that the style of street hypnosis that was going on, whilst well received by the passing public, was a little more assertive than I have been comfortable in the past, where in fact most of the strangers I have hypnotised have actually asked me to do it. Here the group were approaching passers by and seeking to engage their interest, which in most cases wasn't difficult. I wasn't particularly in the mood for approaching people, so I was happy to just watch.
I learned a heck of a lot from just being there. James showed me how to do a magic trick with a key using "energy" to lift it up on ones hand. I was also wowed by some of the other magic tricks that were demonstrated by other members of the group. I really need to learn some magic!
Someone I met for the first time there was Vince Lynch, a hypnotist I'd heard a lot about. He offered to hypnotise me and I was happy to give it a try. I'm glad I did, because I got a lot out of it.
Vince's induction was quite interesting. He had me place my feet together, close my eyes and do magnetic hands, but this time imagine that my hands were being pushed apart instead. As my hands moved steadily away from each other and around my body he said that they'd reach a point where they couldn't go any further, and when they did I'd let them drop to my sides and go into hypnosis. Once I'd done that he did quite an interesting convincer, which was to imagine myself standing on a boat swaying backward and forward. This was why he'd had me put my feet together and of course it worked beautifully; I was soon swaying backward and forward.
Next Vince did some suggestions with me, such as getting my arms to raise up. I have to say this was the most convincing ideomotor experience I have ever had, my arms seeming to have a purpose of their own, and indeed Vince kept saying "no pretending". Soon enough he had me pretending to play air guitar and piano, my eyes thankfully still closed, the instruction seeming to bypass my mind and my hands obliging of their own accord. I count myself lucky he picked the two instruments I can actually play, as opposed to something crazy like a trombone, violin or timpani.
When he asked me to pretend to be a stripper I wasn't having any of it though, my eyes were open in an instant and I was pointing at him shouting "No! No way!".
"Interesting" he said.
I'm really grateful to Vince for that experience. I learned a lot from his techniques, and his manner and confidence of delivery.
Ben seems to have somehow transformed into some kind of people approaching machine. I felt a bit in awe at his recent loss of inhibitions over walking up to complete strangers, and diving into hypnosis routines, but then he has been going out during his lunch breaks to do it. I wish that my job offered me such opportunities.
I didn't stay too late, as I had been stood up all afternoon and had things to do at home, but this was a really good meetup and I met a lot of fun and interesting new people.
(This reminds me about the old joke about the companies 3M and Goodyear merging to form "MMMGood")
This meet was a lot of fun, and although I didn't quite feel in the mood to go forth and do some zapping myself I did meet a lot of new people, get zapped myself, and pick up lots of new tips.
Heading up through Covent Garden I didn't spot the group until I was practically on top of them. However, I soon spotted Darren and a few other faces I recognised stood out on the street. There were also plenty of new faces too, and it was great to be introduced to a few new people.
I have to say that the style of street hypnosis that was going on, whilst well received by the passing public, was a little more assertive than I have been comfortable in the past, where in fact most of the strangers I have hypnotised have actually asked me to do it. Here the group were approaching passers by and seeking to engage their interest, which in most cases wasn't difficult. I wasn't particularly in the mood for approaching people, so I was happy to just watch.
I learned a heck of a lot from just being there. James showed me how to do a magic trick with a key using "energy" to lift it up on ones hand. I was also wowed by some of the other magic tricks that were demonstrated by other members of the group. I really need to learn some magic!
Someone I met for the first time there was Vince Lynch, a hypnotist I'd heard a lot about. He offered to hypnotise me and I was happy to give it a try. I'm glad I did, because I got a lot out of it.
Vince's induction was quite interesting. He had me place my feet together, close my eyes and do magnetic hands, but this time imagine that my hands were being pushed apart instead. As my hands moved steadily away from each other and around my body he said that they'd reach a point where they couldn't go any further, and when they did I'd let them drop to my sides and go into hypnosis. Once I'd done that he did quite an interesting convincer, which was to imagine myself standing on a boat swaying backward and forward. This was why he'd had me put my feet together and of course it worked beautifully; I was soon swaying backward and forward.
Next Vince did some suggestions with me, such as getting my arms to raise up. I have to say this was the most convincing ideomotor experience I have ever had, my arms seeming to have a purpose of their own, and indeed Vince kept saying "no pretending". Soon enough he had me pretending to play air guitar and piano, my eyes thankfully still closed, the instruction seeming to bypass my mind and my hands obliging of their own accord. I count myself lucky he picked the two instruments I can actually play, as opposed to something crazy like a trombone, violin or timpani.
When he asked me to pretend to be a stripper I wasn't having any of it though, my eyes were open in an instant and I was pointing at him shouting "No! No way!".
"Interesting" he said.
I'm really grateful to Vince for that experience. I learned a lot from his techniques, and his manner and confidence of delivery.
Ben seems to have somehow transformed into some kind of people approaching machine. I felt a bit in awe at his recent loss of inhibitions over walking up to complete strangers, and diving into hypnosis routines, but then he has been going out during his lunch breaks to do it. I wish that my job offered me such opportunities.
I didn't stay too late, as I had been stood up all afternoon and had things to do at home, but this was a really good meetup and I met a lot of fun and interesting new people.
Friday, 31 July 2009
The July meet
It is frustrating living so far apart from all of the other hypnotists I know, so of course the meet up in London every month is something that I always look forward to. It is always a fun social occasion if nothing else; even if very little hypnosis takes place it's nice to sit down, have dinner and a drink, and swap anecdotes.
For me this month's meet was much the same as others that have come before. The highlight was that Darren kicked off the hypnosis by demonstrating a confusion induction on me. I went into trance of course, but I didn't think this was because of the induction even though Darren's delivery of it was excellent nonetheless. I believe I've simply reached the point where an induction isn't really needed, I can access trance any time I'm asked to, if I want to.
The problem I have with confusion or overload inductions I think comes down to the way in which I have learned to think. I have been flying gliders solo for many years, and as a pilot one of the most important concepts is that of workload management. One inevitable consequence of flying is that there will be times when there is too much to do in that moment, when the flying becomes "interesting", and it is of importance to prioritise. There is a saying amongst pilots "Aviate, navigate, communicate", which sums it up quite well. First and foremost the pilot must concentrate on keeping the aircraft in the air, then they can worry about where they are, and then, finally, worry about talking to their passengers or radioing the ground to order more sick bags, etc.
Darren's induction consisted of giving me various tasks to do all at once whilst also going through his induction patter. Stare at that wall, move that arm in circles, spell "green" backwards, that sort of thing. It was very well delivered, but as I was most interested in Darren's patter and technique I kept my attention on that and my performance at the other tasks went by the board as a consequence. Gah! Stupid, useless brain!
Darren did however give me some rather fun suggestions to the effect that I'd tell the biggest lies I could think of in answer to any questions I was given. This had me insisting that I'd gotten my watch from the moon (as opposed to on sale from Argos).
I did a little hypnosis on Darren, which went quite well, but otherwise I didn't get up to much hypnosis wise. In the end it became quite a social evening, although of course the discussion stayed firmly on the topic of hypnosis.
What I missed later on, because I had to run off to catch my train, was what happened when the others hit Leicester Square. Apparently they drew a crowd, using Will as their first subject, but the crowd wasn't particularly friendly or restrained thanks no doubt to being the worse for alcohol.
I hate leaving early, but I suppose central London at 10pm isn't an ideal setting for street hypnosis.
For me this month's meet was much the same as others that have come before. The highlight was that Darren kicked off the hypnosis by demonstrating a confusion induction on me. I went into trance of course, but I didn't think this was because of the induction even though Darren's delivery of it was excellent nonetheless. I believe I've simply reached the point where an induction isn't really needed, I can access trance any time I'm asked to, if I want to.
The problem I have with confusion or overload inductions I think comes down to the way in which I have learned to think. I have been flying gliders solo for many years, and as a pilot one of the most important concepts is that of workload management. One inevitable consequence of flying is that there will be times when there is too much to do in that moment, when the flying becomes "interesting", and it is of importance to prioritise. There is a saying amongst pilots "Aviate, navigate, communicate", which sums it up quite well. First and foremost the pilot must concentrate on keeping the aircraft in the air, then they can worry about where they are, and then, finally, worry about talking to their passengers or radioing the ground to order more sick bags, etc.
Darren's induction consisted of giving me various tasks to do all at once whilst also going through his induction patter. Stare at that wall, move that arm in circles, spell "green" backwards, that sort of thing. It was very well delivered, but as I was most interested in Darren's patter and technique I kept my attention on that and my performance at the other tasks went by the board as a consequence. Gah! Stupid, useless brain!
Darren did however give me some rather fun suggestions to the effect that I'd tell the biggest lies I could think of in answer to any questions I was given. This had me insisting that I'd gotten my watch from the moon (as opposed to on sale from Argos).
I did a little hypnosis on Darren, which went quite well, but otherwise I didn't get up to much hypnosis wise. In the end it became quite a social evening, although of course the discussion stayed firmly on the topic of hypnosis.
What I missed later on, because I had to run off to catch my train, was what happened when the others hit Leicester Square. Apparently they drew a crowd, using Will as their first subject, but the crowd wasn't particularly friendly or restrained thanks no doubt to being the worse for alcohol.
I hate leaving early, but I suppose central London at 10pm isn't an ideal setting for street hypnosis.
Friday, 24 July 2009
Back to Bristol
Good news! Readers may be pleased to hear that after several months of philosophical ramblings I've actually gone out and done some hypnosis worth blogging about for a change!
I was quite frustrated about missing out on the last meet in London thanks to being on holiday so I was more than keen to get out and socialise with the intention of going a little impromptu zapping into the bargain. Rich and Javier indicated that they wouldn't mind a night out in Bristol so that settled it, once again I would go to Bristol.
Getting to Bristol is an hour on the train, which is much faster than trying to drive, so once again I pulled out my trusty folding bike and jumped on the first train I could after work. On arriving in Bristol I was surprised how much I enjoyed the ride to our meeting place, the traffic was light and it was a pleasent temperature as I made my way past the docks and into the city centre. Slightly less fun was the ride up Park Street, which is quite steep and I was obliged to use my bike's lowest gear, my feet spinning madly as I inched my way up the hill, confused pedestrians overtaking me on foot.
Anyway, having parked my bike I ventured into the Wetherspoons pub where we were meeting. For those who don't know Wetherspoons is a chain of pubs that can be found in a lot of cities across the UK. It seems to me that the idea is to maintain the same consistent standards across all their pubs, such as being understaffed so as to guarantee a 15-minute wait to get served at the bar, and running out of Curry by 7pm during their 5pm-10pm Thursday night "Curry Club". I assume that the inability the staff have to pick up on my dry sense of humour is however just an incidental effect of working there.
In any case Rich and Javier showed up, as eventually did my dinner in the form of my 3rd choice of Curry, so we spent a little while catching up. Or rather they talked whilst I stuffed my face, I was very hungry by that point.
In the mood to find a suitable venue for approaching potential subjects we headed out and had a look around the other bars nearby. It seemed as though every bar we went into was empty and I couldn't believe how incredibly quiet it was. After 20 minutes or so we decided we'd be best off cutting our losses heading back to the Wetherspoons. Perhaps sometime during university term would have been a better idea.
The pub wasn't particularly busy so it only took us a minute or so to clock our the most likely group of potential subjects; a group of four young women sat by the door. As always though it took a little bit longer to build up the nerve to actually approach them; once again it was Rich who stepped up and wandered over. We couldn't hear his opening line, but I never get tired of seeing the look of wonderment on peoples' faces when they hear that the person who's approached them is a hypnotist.
Just as Javier and I arrived hot on Rich's heels it turned out that one of the four was leaving, but that was okay because the other three were really interested and one of them, called Rachel, was persuaded by her friends to volunteer to give it a try.
I always enjoy watching other hypnotists at work, so even though Rich's process of going through magnetic fingers, magnetic hands, hand-to-eye fixation induction contained nothing that was new to me as such it was great to watch the confidence with which he delivered it. Rachel's response was also worth watching; she had closed her eyes and was wearing a typical hypnotee expression which I can best describe as serene relaxation with a hint of concentration.
As we watched Rich's efforts, Javier and I got talking to one of the other girls, Malaika, who enthusiastically told us about having been hypnotised a few years before when she was in School and how it'd been quite an embarrassing experience for her at the time, making her reluctant now. She mentioned how good it had felt to be in trance and some phenomena such as being glued to the spot, although she was disappointed that she'd failed to hallucinate a pink elephant in the room. I think all three of us filed this under "iiiinteresting".
Never tell an impromptu hypnotist "I've been hypnotised before"!
Meanwhile, all the outward signs were that Rachel was going under quite nicely, which is what I think prompted Rich to jump straight to telling her that her drink would be stuck to the table as his first phenomenon. Sadly this didn't work, as she managed to pick her drink up with no difficulty at all. She did, however, say that she fell incredibly "chilled" and relaxed.
I offered to have a go, so as Rich got chatting to Malaika I found myself with my first proper subject after two months and hastily trying to remember what to do. Fortunately this is the point where the subconscious takes over and once I'd decided on a magnetic hands induction I went from there with no difficulty.
I like to link breathing to relaxing further, and talked her down using that to start with. Then, having asked permission first of course, I picked her arm up by the wrist, asking her to let it go completely limp, and then told her she'd feel twice as relaxed and go twice as deep when it dropped into her lap. I did this, gently, a couple of times.
Next I went into a convincer, my own variation of the floating arm. I supported her arm by the wrist again, but this time had her imagine it getting lighter. I find supporting the arm by the wrist means that you can use an ambiguous touch to help induce catalepsy. You can also feel when the arm does start to lift and tell the subject "that's right, you can feel it getting lighter". Soon enough her arm was drifting free from any support.
Next I told her that when she opened her eyes she'd look across the table at her friends and she'd find what she saw really funny. This didn't work so well, in that I didn't quite have her in stitches, but when she said to me "oh, that didn't work" she was grinning from ear to ear, which I pointed out to her.
I tried again to stick her hand to the table, with no success.
Rachel was lovely and whilst she was a bit lukewarm in terms of how she was able to respond as a subject I can't fault her for her willingness and enthusiasm for trying. I really need to work on some routines that are better suited to this kind of subject.
By this point Rich had somehow persuaded Malaika that he wouldn't embarrass her in the same way the last hypnotist had and then promptly zapped her under, so Rachel and I paused to watch as Rich went through the motions of sticking her drink to the table, her hands to her stool, etc.
I did one more thing with Rachel; during an interlude in Rich's routine with Malaika I did an Ericksonian handshake on her. I felt very bold trying this routine on such a lukewarm subject, but what the heck I thought, why shouldn't I try it. I took her arm, looked her in the eyes, and started telling her how easy it was to go into a daydreamy state right now, etc.
I always find it's impossible to gauge how well this is working with most subjects, but the trick is not to worry about that and keep going. All I could see was a pair of unblinking blue eyes and an unchanging half smile as I rattled off the patter. Afterwards she said she had felt very zoned out by it, and the way that I wasn't blinking (which I wasn't even aware of!) had certainly had an effect.
I was having a lot of fun, but sadly the end of any trip to Bristol is for me determined by the time of the last train home. At about 10pm Javier and I reluctantly said our goodbyes, left the pub and jumped on our Bicycles for the ride to Temple Meads station, as he was catching the same train as me as far as Bath.
For me it was great to see Javier and Rich again and what a fun evening we had! It was such a high to do some real hypnosis again after so long, and definitely worth the journey out there.
Staying behind Rich tells us he hung around for another hour with the girls. In fact he persuaded Rachel to hold his phone and film him doing another routine on Malaika. Here's the video.
If anybody in the South West of the UK is interested Rich is running a one day hypnosis course on Saturday 26th September. He's told me that the course will cover all aspects of impromptu hypnosis including pre-talk, subject selection, inductions, and suggestions. An excellent place for a complete beginner to get started and hypnotising people straight away by the sounds of it. I'll post more details here shortly.
I'm in London again next week for another HypnoMeet! Awesomeness!
I was quite frustrated about missing out on the last meet in London thanks to being on holiday so I was more than keen to get out and socialise with the intention of going a little impromptu zapping into the bargain. Rich and Javier indicated that they wouldn't mind a night out in Bristol so that settled it, once again I would go to Bristol.
Getting to Bristol is an hour on the train, which is much faster than trying to drive, so once again I pulled out my trusty folding bike and jumped on the first train I could after work. On arriving in Bristol I was surprised how much I enjoyed the ride to our meeting place, the traffic was light and it was a pleasent temperature as I made my way past the docks and into the city centre. Slightly less fun was the ride up Park Street, which is quite steep and I was obliged to use my bike's lowest gear, my feet spinning madly as I inched my way up the hill, confused pedestrians overtaking me on foot.
Anyway, having parked my bike I ventured into the Wetherspoons pub where we were meeting. For those who don't know Wetherspoons is a chain of pubs that can be found in a lot of cities across the UK. It seems to me that the idea is to maintain the same consistent standards across all their pubs, such as being understaffed so as to guarantee a 15-minute wait to get served at the bar, and running out of Curry by 7pm during their 5pm-10pm Thursday night "Curry Club". I assume that the inability the staff have to pick up on my dry sense of humour is however just an incidental effect of working there.
In any case Rich and Javier showed up, as eventually did my dinner in the form of my 3rd choice of Curry, so we spent a little while catching up. Or rather they talked whilst I stuffed my face, I was very hungry by that point.
In the mood to find a suitable venue for approaching potential subjects we headed out and had a look around the other bars nearby. It seemed as though every bar we went into was empty and I couldn't believe how incredibly quiet it was. After 20 minutes or so we decided we'd be best off cutting our losses heading back to the Wetherspoons. Perhaps sometime during university term would have been a better idea.
The pub wasn't particularly busy so it only took us a minute or so to clock our the most likely group of potential subjects; a group of four young women sat by the door. As always though it took a little bit longer to build up the nerve to actually approach them; once again it was Rich who stepped up and wandered over. We couldn't hear his opening line, but I never get tired of seeing the look of wonderment on peoples' faces when they hear that the person who's approached them is a hypnotist.
Just as Javier and I arrived hot on Rich's heels it turned out that one of the four was leaving, but that was okay because the other three were really interested and one of them, called Rachel, was persuaded by her friends to volunteer to give it a try.
I always enjoy watching other hypnotists at work, so even though Rich's process of going through magnetic fingers, magnetic hands, hand-to-eye fixation induction contained nothing that was new to me as such it was great to watch the confidence with which he delivered it. Rachel's response was also worth watching; she had closed her eyes and was wearing a typical hypnotee expression which I can best describe as serene relaxation with a hint of concentration.
As we watched Rich's efforts, Javier and I got talking to one of the other girls, Malaika, who enthusiastically told us about having been hypnotised a few years before when she was in School and how it'd been quite an embarrassing experience for her at the time, making her reluctant now. She mentioned how good it had felt to be in trance and some phenomena such as being glued to the spot, although she was disappointed that she'd failed to hallucinate a pink elephant in the room. I think all three of us filed this under "iiiinteresting".
Never tell an impromptu hypnotist "I've been hypnotised before"!
Meanwhile, all the outward signs were that Rachel was going under quite nicely, which is what I think prompted Rich to jump straight to telling her that her drink would be stuck to the table as his first phenomenon. Sadly this didn't work, as she managed to pick her drink up with no difficulty at all. She did, however, say that she fell incredibly "chilled" and relaxed.
I offered to have a go, so as Rich got chatting to Malaika I found myself with my first proper subject after two months and hastily trying to remember what to do. Fortunately this is the point where the subconscious takes over and once I'd decided on a magnetic hands induction I went from there with no difficulty.
I like to link breathing to relaxing further, and talked her down using that to start with. Then, having asked permission first of course, I picked her arm up by the wrist, asking her to let it go completely limp, and then told her she'd feel twice as relaxed and go twice as deep when it dropped into her lap. I did this, gently, a couple of times.
Next I went into a convincer, my own variation of the floating arm. I supported her arm by the wrist again, but this time had her imagine it getting lighter. I find supporting the arm by the wrist means that you can use an ambiguous touch to help induce catalepsy. You can also feel when the arm does start to lift and tell the subject "that's right, you can feel it getting lighter". Soon enough her arm was drifting free from any support.
Next I told her that when she opened her eyes she'd look across the table at her friends and she'd find what she saw really funny. This didn't work so well, in that I didn't quite have her in stitches, but when she said to me "oh, that didn't work" she was grinning from ear to ear, which I pointed out to her.
I tried again to stick her hand to the table, with no success.
Rachel was lovely and whilst she was a bit lukewarm in terms of how she was able to respond as a subject I can't fault her for her willingness and enthusiasm for trying. I really need to work on some routines that are better suited to this kind of subject.
By this point Rich had somehow persuaded Malaika that he wouldn't embarrass her in the same way the last hypnotist had and then promptly zapped her under, so Rachel and I paused to watch as Rich went through the motions of sticking her drink to the table, her hands to her stool, etc.
I did one more thing with Rachel; during an interlude in Rich's routine with Malaika I did an Ericksonian handshake on her. I felt very bold trying this routine on such a lukewarm subject, but what the heck I thought, why shouldn't I try it. I took her arm, looked her in the eyes, and started telling her how easy it was to go into a daydreamy state right now, etc.
I always find it's impossible to gauge how well this is working with most subjects, but the trick is not to worry about that and keep going. All I could see was a pair of unblinking blue eyes and an unchanging half smile as I rattled off the patter. Afterwards she said she had felt very zoned out by it, and the way that I wasn't blinking (which I wasn't even aware of!) had certainly had an effect.
I was having a lot of fun, but sadly the end of any trip to Bristol is for me determined by the time of the last train home. At about 10pm Javier and I reluctantly said our goodbyes, left the pub and jumped on our Bicycles for the ride to Temple Meads station, as he was catching the same train as me as far as Bath.
For me it was great to see Javier and Rich again and what a fun evening we had! It was such a high to do some real hypnosis again after so long, and definitely worth the journey out there.
Staying behind Rich tells us he hung around for another hour with the girls. In fact he persuaded Rachel to hold his phone and film him doing another routine on Malaika. Here's the video.
If anybody in the South West of the UK is interested Rich is running a one day hypnosis course on Saturday 26th September. He's told me that the course will cover all aspects of impromptu hypnosis including pre-talk, subject selection, inductions, and suggestions. An excellent place for a complete beginner to get started and hypnotising people straight away by the sounds of it. I'll post more details here shortly.
I'm in London again next week for another HypnoMeet! Awesomeness!
Sunday, 7 June 2009
More fun in Oxford
After the success of the last meetup in Oxford it is fair to say that I have been under significant pressure from some of those present last time to organise another small gathering.
Once again the meeting place was the Head of the River, and arriving first I was able to bag the same table as we'd sat at the previous meet. I was soon joined by Andy and Ali, and then by Lex and Liz.
As Darren was unable to make it to the meet this time it fell to Andy to become absolutely fascinated by Lex's highly practical uses for his hypnosis skills.
Of course there will be prizes for guessing who had been putting the pressure on me to organise another Oxford meet up. I think it's perhaps the way that the bar staff seem to realise she's arrived and light the candle on the table that endears the place to her. This was, of course, before Lex locked her eyes on the tiny flame making her unable to look away.
With Liz distracted I was able to buy a round without the help of post-hypnotic compulsion.
After a while Rich and Javier joined us and with introductions over we set off in search of something to eat; Chinese this time. Once again we were able to get away with "a table for 7 please, we have no reservation", but of course we were quite early in the evening because we wanted to go on to the Turf Tavern.
On arriving actually found the Turf to be a heck of a lot quieter than it had been on that evening three months ago, which we put down to the poor weather earlier in the evening. We bagged ourselves a table, continued our conversation, and reached that stage of the evening where everyone was agreeing most emphatically that we should approach some students.
"Definitely."
"Absolutely."
"After you..."
I took the opportunity of this impasse to try out a Dr Who psychic paper trick with Liz, and she was amazed as I provided ID cards to prove I work for the CID, FBI, and HM Ministry of ogling, although something made her certain that they were fakes; can't think what. Lex must have taken sympathy on his girlfriend at this point, because he turned my cards into what I presume were compromising photographs of yours truly - I didn't hear the exact suggestion, but that doesn't mean I can't swear revenge.
I also managed to play my favourite double-bluff routine, whereby the hypnotist tells the subject that they'll be able to see a ball, and then actually produces a real ball. Not hypnosis as such, more a kind of cruel teasing. I actually felt quite sorry for Liz when, to compound the confusion I was subjecting her to, everyone else around the table started disputing what colour the ball was.
The most amazing thing about the Turf Tavern during these meets has been the way in which once it becomes clear that we're hypnotists we suddenly find ourselves besieged by students demanding to be hypnotised. Someone did comment to me that my demonstration of a non-verbal Ericksonian handshake on Liz had certainly turned the heads of some guys at the next table, but it wasn't until Rich kicked things off by approaching a nearby table that, as with last time, so much zapping was going on that I completely lost track.
I actually missed the moment when Rich decided to go up to one of the student tables because Ali had expressed an interest in doing some hypnosis and I was quite happy to play subject for her.
Ali used a magnetic hands induction on me, although interestingly she didn't ask me to close my eyes beforehand, which is how that induction is generally done. I found myself concentrating very hard on the space in between my hands, seeing everything blur. When my hands came together I found it completely natural to close my eyes and go completely limp. To tell the truth I was very impressed because straight away I felt that blurry sensation of trance which can often take me a while to reach.
It also made me realise how little practice at going into trance I've had recently.
Ali had some fun sticking one of my hands to the table, then my other hand to my head. Then I was able to remove one hand from my head by placing the other on my head, so that one was always stuck there. It was a nice little waking hypnosis routine similar to the one I'd done with her a month or so before.
Next she got me stuck speaking in a strong Yorkshire dialect, which were bloody marvelous.
It was at this point that I realised that Rich had gone and approached a table of three male students nearby. He had one of them eyes closed and in trance, but one of the others was looking intently in our direction. I decided to go over and have a chat.
The student in question was a skeptic, but insistent that I try hypnotising him. To be honest I really didn't feel mentally prepared for this, so I didn't feel particularly on form. To be honest to the guy he was really up for trying, but nothing seemed to be working with him very quickly, and his patience didn't hold out. After it transpired that he had drunk 7 pints that evening before calling upon my expertise I didn't feel quite so bad and I was at least able to fall back on showing off with the rubber band trick.
The rubber band trick works especially well if one can use a time-stopping freeze suggestion in order to make the rubber bands vanish and reappear in unlikely places, such as the subject's own fingers. Mind you drunk people are also impressed easily, so it wasn't too bad.
Returning to our table, which had subsequently been mobbed by prospective subjects, I soon myself with another keen subject. Once again it seems I was the recipient of the good intentions of my fellow hypnotists.
"Hey Parkey, this guy wants to be hypnotised but he's difficult so we saved him for you."
Thanks guys. I'll take that as a compliment!
As it turned out this guy was quite responsive (well, compared with Mr 7-pints he was!) so I was soon able to float his arm up. In fact I took this opportunity to use the ideomotor induction which Ben has talked about recently, which of course works very well when one has plenty of time and showmanship matters less. This subject did however find the background noise distracting so I wasn't able to achieve much else with him, but he was at least impressed with his floating arm.
I have come to the conclusion that I need to get much more practice at the impromptu side of hypnosis and develop a routine which I can follow. At present I feel too much as though I have been put on the spot when I'm faced with a new subject.
By this time it was getting quite late and in defiance of the hot weather of the last week it was getting a bit cold. We headed indoors, leaving the craziness of indiscriminate zapping behind us and returning to a more conversational setting; soon it would be time to go.
With not long remaining before most of us had to leave to catch our respective buses and trains Andy burst inside and told us that Rich was up to his old tricks again. Sure enough we found him outside hard at work with the full attention of a young lady. Just as Javier wasted no time in getting the attention of a table of 6 nice female students it was time. Reluctantly we left him and Rich to it and went our separate ways. I'm sure they were really disappointed to have all those subjects to themselves!
I must make it absolutely clear that putting attractive women into trance is under no circumstances a motivation for my interest in this hobby. My interests in hypnosis are purely academic, and if attractive women do demand that I hypnotise them, well, I most certainly don't enjoy it. Not at all...
Getting away when we did was a definitely a relief.
*cough*
One day I would like to be the last person to leave at a HypnoMeet.
Still, it was definitely a fun evening.
Once again the meeting place was the Head of the River, and arriving first I was able to bag the same table as we'd sat at the previous meet. I was soon joined by Andy and Ali, and then by Lex and Liz.
As Darren was unable to make it to the meet this time it fell to Andy to become absolutely fascinated by Lex's highly practical uses for his hypnosis skills.
Of course there will be prizes for guessing who had been putting the pressure on me to organise another Oxford meet up. I think it's perhaps the way that the bar staff seem to realise she's arrived and light the candle on the table that endears the place to her. This was, of course, before Lex locked her eyes on the tiny flame making her unable to look away.
With Liz distracted I was able to buy a round without the help of post-hypnotic compulsion.
After a while Rich and Javier joined us and with introductions over we set off in search of something to eat; Chinese this time. Once again we were able to get away with "a table for 7 please, we have no reservation", but of course we were quite early in the evening because we wanted to go on to the Turf Tavern.
On arriving actually found the Turf to be a heck of a lot quieter than it had been on that evening three months ago, which we put down to the poor weather earlier in the evening. We bagged ourselves a table, continued our conversation, and reached that stage of the evening where everyone was agreeing most emphatically that we should approach some students.
"Definitely."
"Absolutely."
"After you..."
I took the opportunity of this impasse to try out a Dr Who psychic paper trick with Liz, and she was amazed as I provided ID cards to prove I work for the CID, FBI, and HM Ministry of ogling, although something made her certain that they were fakes; can't think what. Lex must have taken sympathy on his girlfriend at this point, because he turned my cards into what I presume were compromising photographs of yours truly - I didn't hear the exact suggestion, but that doesn't mean I can't swear revenge.
I also managed to play my favourite double-bluff routine, whereby the hypnotist tells the subject that they'll be able to see a ball, and then actually produces a real ball. Not hypnosis as such, more a kind of cruel teasing. I actually felt quite sorry for Liz when, to compound the confusion I was subjecting her to, everyone else around the table started disputing what colour the ball was.
The most amazing thing about the Turf Tavern during these meets has been the way in which once it becomes clear that we're hypnotists we suddenly find ourselves besieged by students demanding to be hypnotised. Someone did comment to me that my demonstration of a non-verbal Ericksonian handshake on Liz had certainly turned the heads of some guys at the next table, but it wasn't until Rich kicked things off by approaching a nearby table that, as with last time, so much zapping was going on that I completely lost track.
I actually missed the moment when Rich decided to go up to one of the student tables because Ali had expressed an interest in doing some hypnosis and I was quite happy to play subject for her.
Ali used a magnetic hands induction on me, although interestingly she didn't ask me to close my eyes beforehand, which is how that induction is generally done. I found myself concentrating very hard on the space in between my hands, seeing everything blur. When my hands came together I found it completely natural to close my eyes and go completely limp. To tell the truth I was very impressed because straight away I felt that blurry sensation of trance which can often take me a while to reach.
It also made me realise how little practice at going into trance I've had recently.
Ali had some fun sticking one of my hands to the table, then my other hand to my head. Then I was able to remove one hand from my head by placing the other on my head, so that one was always stuck there. It was a nice little waking hypnosis routine similar to the one I'd done with her a month or so before.
Next she got me stuck speaking in a strong Yorkshire dialect, which were bloody marvelous.
It was at this point that I realised that Rich had gone and approached a table of three male students nearby. He had one of them eyes closed and in trance, but one of the others was looking intently in our direction. I decided to go over and have a chat.
The student in question was a skeptic, but insistent that I try hypnotising him. To be honest I really didn't feel mentally prepared for this, so I didn't feel particularly on form. To be honest to the guy he was really up for trying, but nothing seemed to be working with him very quickly, and his patience didn't hold out. After it transpired that he had drunk 7 pints that evening before calling upon my expertise I didn't feel quite so bad and I was at least able to fall back on showing off with the rubber band trick.
The rubber band trick works especially well if one can use a time-stopping freeze suggestion in order to make the rubber bands vanish and reappear in unlikely places, such as the subject's own fingers. Mind you drunk people are also impressed easily, so it wasn't too bad.
Returning to our table, which had subsequently been mobbed by prospective subjects, I soon myself with another keen subject. Once again it seems I was the recipient of the good intentions of my fellow hypnotists.
"Hey Parkey, this guy wants to be hypnotised but he's difficult so we saved him for you."
Thanks guys. I'll take that as a compliment!
As it turned out this guy was quite responsive (well, compared with Mr 7-pints he was!) so I was soon able to float his arm up. In fact I took this opportunity to use the ideomotor induction which Ben has talked about recently, which of course works very well when one has plenty of time and showmanship matters less. This subject did however find the background noise distracting so I wasn't able to achieve much else with him, but he was at least impressed with his floating arm.
I have come to the conclusion that I need to get much more practice at the impromptu side of hypnosis and develop a routine which I can follow. At present I feel too much as though I have been put on the spot when I'm faced with a new subject.
By this time it was getting quite late and in defiance of the hot weather of the last week it was getting a bit cold. We headed indoors, leaving the craziness of indiscriminate zapping behind us and returning to a more conversational setting; soon it would be time to go.
With not long remaining before most of us had to leave to catch our respective buses and trains Andy burst inside and told us that Rich was up to his old tricks again. Sure enough we found him outside hard at work with the full attention of a young lady. Just as Javier wasted no time in getting the attention of a table of 6 nice female students it was time. Reluctantly we left him and Rich to it and went our separate ways. I'm sure they were really disappointed to have all those subjects to themselves!
I must make it absolutely clear that putting attractive women into trance is under no circumstances a motivation for my interest in this hobby. My interests in hypnosis are purely academic, and if attractive women do demand that I hypnotise them, well, I most certainly don't enjoy it. Not at all...
Getting away when we did was a definitely a relief.
*cough*
One day I would like to be the last person to leave at a HypnoMeet.
Still, it was definitely a fun evening.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
The May Meet
One thing I am starting to be glad of these days is that whenever I hit a period of a few weeks when I have little opportunity to perform any hypnosis there's always the London HypnoMeet at the end of the month to look forward to.
As with last month this meet was in a nice quiet pub near Leicester Square. The turnout was really good and Andy, who had pointed us to this pub last time, had been so kind as to book the whole upstairs for us. This was complete with signs saying "Uncommon Meet Upstairs", from which I assume the public in general drew their own conclusions.
Invariably I end up having dinner at the meets, having jumped straight on the first train to London after work. So once I had arrived I sat there with my dinner listening to the general conversation. The turnout was very good, with a lot of familiar faces, but several newbies too, which is always good. In lieu of the hypnosis kicking off Glen, one of these first timers, showed me a couple of fun card tricks. I need to learn more of those.
One familiar face was Will, who was quite insistent that he would like to have his dinner before anybody did any hypnosis with him. This meant that no sooner had his plate been taken away Ben started, in a conversational tone, that it was "easy to go into hypnosis" etc. A conversational induction based on anticipation and persistence on Ben's part.
I helped it along by passing the occasional comment about how Will "didn't have to trance now" into his other ear.
Before Will had completely slumped over in his seat I was called over by Javier (aka Skeitel), who had been at the meet in Bristol I went to a few months back. He asked me if I'd like to try an induction on Kerry, his girlfriend, who had come along to the meet with him.
As always with my first induction of an evening I was a bit nervous and reluctant at first. I was also a bit uncertain about exactly what I should start with. Fortunately Kerry was really enthusiastic, so I simply took her hand in a handshake and performed an Ericksonian handshake.
Recently I have found a lot of people responding to this induction by just flopping eyes closed into trance, as opposed to stiffening up and zoning out with their eyes wide open. I think a lot of it is in the hand action and the suggestions I give, and perhaps I should practice this routine a bit more.
Either way it's yet to fail to induce some sort of trance, so I can't complain.
I deepened Kerry's trance and performed a similar routine to the one I performed to Ali last month. Sticking her hand to things, and so forth. It's definitely a fun game to play, and especially if it's the first time someone has experienced it.
Whilst absolute confidence will carry an induction a long way, I have found it is possible to be overconfident, although I have only achieved this by being far too cocky for my own good. The example in this case was what I tried next, which was with Darren. Basically I found myself trying to go too fast, too quickly, and the response I got from Darren was very lukewarm.
The response I got from my next subject wasn't much of an improvement. Will was just going under when he suddenly jumped up and declared he needed to go to the loo. He should have gone before he left full conscious awareness!
After this I found myself playing cameraman to a routine Darren was performing on Ben. Ben has written about this in his blog.
Darren was obviously on a roll, so next he went on to zap Kerry.
Suffice to say Darren is an absolute legend!
(Read as: Limelight stealing git)
With time fast running out, I was presented with another opportunity to do some hypnosis with Kerry myself. She responds well as a subject, so I decided to deepen the trance as much as I could before trying something a bit more advanced, like a hallucination.
What I used was a guided imagery deepener I learned from Liz a few months ago. It starts out with the subject imagining lying on a beach and then swimming out into sea toward an island. I like it because it produces potentially beautiful imagery which most people can relate to, and the analogy of swimming is something that most people can relate to experiencing full body fatigue; that all-over feeling of tiredness.
Afterward Kerry commented to me that she really did feel like she was swimming, and I realised that the way her breathing had deepened as I'd taken her through it had indeed been like that of someone who was swimming. I felt a small pang of jealousy, as I always do when I come across someone who is able to feel such profound effects from hypnosis so easily. It makes me realise just how far I have yet to go as a subject.
Still, I always thoroughly enjoy sharing hypnosis with someone who is as open to and as enthusiastic about trying it as Kerry was that evening.
In true HypnoMeet style the time flew past and I had to make my departure in order to catch the train home. Sadly next month I shall be away on holiday and won't be able to go to the meet, but there's always the month after. Far too long to wait if you ask me!
As with last month this meet was in a nice quiet pub near Leicester Square. The turnout was really good and Andy, who had pointed us to this pub last time, had been so kind as to book the whole upstairs for us. This was complete with signs saying "Uncommon Meet Upstairs", from which I assume the public in general drew their own conclusions.
Invariably I end up having dinner at the meets, having jumped straight on the first train to London after work. So once I had arrived I sat there with my dinner listening to the general conversation. The turnout was very good, with a lot of familiar faces, but several newbies too, which is always good. In lieu of the hypnosis kicking off Glen, one of these first timers, showed me a couple of fun card tricks. I need to learn more of those.
One familiar face was Will, who was quite insistent that he would like to have his dinner before anybody did any hypnosis with him. This meant that no sooner had his plate been taken away Ben started, in a conversational tone, that it was "easy to go into hypnosis" etc. A conversational induction based on anticipation and persistence on Ben's part.
I helped it along by passing the occasional comment about how Will "didn't have to trance now" into his other ear.
Before Will had completely slumped over in his seat I was called over by Javier (aka Skeitel), who had been at the meet in Bristol I went to a few months back. He asked me if I'd like to try an induction on Kerry, his girlfriend, who had come along to the meet with him.
As always with my first induction of an evening I was a bit nervous and reluctant at first. I was also a bit uncertain about exactly what I should start with. Fortunately Kerry was really enthusiastic, so I simply took her hand in a handshake and performed an Ericksonian handshake.
Recently I have found a lot of people responding to this induction by just flopping eyes closed into trance, as opposed to stiffening up and zoning out with their eyes wide open. I think a lot of it is in the hand action and the suggestions I give, and perhaps I should practice this routine a bit more.
Either way it's yet to fail to induce some sort of trance, so I can't complain.
I deepened Kerry's trance and performed a similar routine to the one I performed to Ali last month. Sticking her hand to things, and so forth. It's definitely a fun game to play, and especially if it's the first time someone has experienced it.
Whilst absolute confidence will carry an induction a long way, I have found it is possible to be overconfident, although I have only achieved this by being far too cocky for my own good. The example in this case was what I tried next, which was with Darren. Basically I found myself trying to go too fast, too quickly, and the response I got from Darren was very lukewarm.
The response I got from my next subject wasn't much of an improvement. Will was just going under when he suddenly jumped up and declared he needed to go to the loo. He should have gone before he left full conscious awareness!
After this I found myself playing cameraman to a routine Darren was performing on Ben. Ben has written about this in his blog.
Darren was obviously on a roll, so next he went on to zap Kerry.
Suffice to say Darren is an absolute legend!
(Read as: Limelight stealing git)
With time fast running out, I was presented with another opportunity to do some hypnosis with Kerry myself. She responds well as a subject, so I decided to deepen the trance as much as I could before trying something a bit more advanced, like a hallucination.
What I used was a guided imagery deepener I learned from Liz a few months ago. It starts out with the subject imagining lying on a beach and then swimming out into sea toward an island. I like it because it produces potentially beautiful imagery which most people can relate to, and the analogy of swimming is something that most people can relate to experiencing full body fatigue; that all-over feeling of tiredness.
Afterward Kerry commented to me that she really did feel like she was swimming, and I realised that the way her breathing had deepened as I'd taken her through it had indeed been like that of someone who was swimming. I felt a small pang of jealousy, as I always do when I come across someone who is able to feel such profound effects from hypnosis so easily. It makes me realise just how far I have yet to go as a subject.
Still, I always thoroughly enjoy sharing hypnosis with someone who is as open to and as enthusiastic about trying it as Kerry was that evening.
In true HypnoMeet style the time flew past and I had to make my departure in order to catch the train home. Sadly next month I shall be away on holiday and won't be able to go to the meet, but there's always the month after. Far too long to wait if you ask me!
Thursday, 30 April 2009
The April Meet
Another month, another London HypnoMeet.
I really look forward to these meetings; they're great social occasions and I learn so much from watching other hypnotists at work.
This month I was a little bit later in arriving at venue due to onward travel plans and luggage (These were travel plans that didn't actually involve Mexico, although the look on Ben's face was priceless when I said they did! Sorry Ben...). The usual pub was as crowded as always but this time without yours truly, aka Muggins, having arrived early in order to secure a table we were standing at the bar. As it turned out there were just five of us this time too.
We decided to seek an alternative pub. So, pausing only to unfold the Brompton folding bicycle of hypnosis and re-inflate the tyres of somnambulism (you had to be there!) we made our merry way to a a nice quiet pub near Leicester Square.
Andy, who came to the last meet had come along again this time and brought his girlfriend Ali with him. Ben demonstrated to her his latest party trick which is an induction where he links the position of a person's hand to going in and out of trance. This was the induction he had demonstrated on me last month in fact, and there's a video of him doing it on the post for that meet. For her part Ali was definitely showing all of the signs of someone who enjoys going into trance, as Ben's routine fractionated her deeper. Soon she was in a nice deep trance.
In these situations I think it's important to fein disinterest in the proceedings, regardless of how impressive, so that the subject doesn't become self conscious. The wide eyed gawping can always wait until they have closed their eyes.
The discussion then moved on to Andy, who is relative new to being a hypnotist, commenting that he's been lacking confidence recently, and not being sure what to say. Personally, having seen Andy at work on Will at last month's meet I don't believe that he has anything to worry about. Of course the deciding factor for a hypnotist will always be confidence, not the perfect usage of words, so in order to convince Andy that he is as good as he actually is we ended up in a situation where he was hypnotising the other four of us using magnetic hands.
As always, our highly public demonstration of hypnosis barely drew any attention from anybody else in the room. Not even with four of us at once slumped over in our chairs. It never ceases to amaze me!
Likewise when Ali commented that she'd like to give being the hypnotist a try herself, and so hypnotised me with a magnetic hands induction and a staircase deepener.
There had been a distinct lack of phenomena taking place, so as a parting shot at this meet I decided to demonstrate a bit of waking hypnosis on Ali. The most enjoyable experiences I have had as a hypnotist have always been when I have been able to share it with a receptive subject who is willing to have a bit of fun, and this was one of those occasions.
I got to demonstrate my Ericksonian handshake, which is an induction that I really enjoy doing. Unusually my subject had trouble keeping her eyes open; very quickly they closed and then she went limp. Of course this isn't quite the desired effect, but given that it induced a trance I wasn't too bothered. As I have said before, everything that happens is always exactly what the hypnotist intended to happen. Always.
What followed was a fun little demonstration of waking hypnosis. I told her that her right hand was stuck to the table, then said it was time to go and offered my hand to her to shake. Of course she couldn't lift her hand to respond, so I told her that her right hand was now free, because her left hand was now stuck to her leg.
I find the "(this) ...because... (this)" is a very useful approach in waking hypnosis. After all, if one is true, why shouldn't the other be?
Eventually I got her to release her left hand by putting a finger in her right ear, which of course became stuck. I then had her release that by putting a finger in her left ear. I told her she knew how it worked now; put a finger in one ear to release the finger in the other. Finger in, finger out. Finger in, finger out. How do you escape? Why, you go really fast and eventually... that's it... they both come free. Amazing!
Okay it's a routine I stole off a YouTube video I saw a while back, but I don't care. It was a lot of fun.
Anyway, as usual I had to dash off to catch a train and as always I'm already looking forward to the next London meet.
I really look forward to these meetings; they're great social occasions and I learn so much from watching other hypnotists at work.
This month I was a little bit later in arriving at venue due to onward travel plans and luggage (These were travel plans that didn't actually involve Mexico, although the look on Ben's face was priceless when I said they did! Sorry Ben...). The usual pub was as crowded as always but this time without yours truly, aka Muggins, having arrived early in order to secure a table we were standing at the bar. As it turned out there were just five of us this time too.
We decided to seek an alternative pub. So, pausing only to unfold the Brompton folding bicycle of hypnosis and re-inflate the tyres of somnambulism (you had to be there!) we made our merry way to a a nice quiet pub near Leicester Square.
Andy, who came to the last meet had come along again this time and brought his girlfriend Ali with him. Ben demonstrated to her his latest party trick which is an induction where he links the position of a person's hand to going in and out of trance. This was the induction he had demonstrated on me last month in fact, and there's a video of him doing it on the post for that meet. For her part Ali was definitely showing all of the signs of someone who enjoys going into trance, as Ben's routine fractionated her deeper. Soon she was in a nice deep trance.
In these situations I think it's important to fein disinterest in the proceedings, regardless of how impressive, so that the subject doesn't become self conscious. The wide eyed gawping can always wait until they have closed their eyes.
The discussion then moved on to Andy, who is relative new to being a hypnotist, commenting that he's been lacking confidence recently, and not being sure what to say. Personally, having seen Andy at work on Will at last month's meet I don't believe that he has anything to worry about. Of course the deciding factor for a hypnotist will always be confidence, not the perfect usage of words, so in order to convince Andy that he is as good as he actually is we ended up in a situation where he was hypnotising the other four of us using magnetic hands.
As always, our highly public demonstration of hypnosis barely drew any attention from anybody else in the room. Not even with four of us at once slumped over in our chairs. It never ceases to amaze me!
Likewise when Ali commented that she'd like to give being the hypnotist a try herself, and so hypnotised me with a magnetic hands induction and a staircase deepener.
There had been a distinct lack of phenomena taking place, so as a parting shot at this meet I decided to demonstrate a bit of waking hypnosis on Ali. The most enjoyable experiences I have had as a hypnotist have always been when I have been able to share it with a receptive subject who is willing to have a bit of fun, and this was one of those occasions.
I got to demonstrate my Ericksonian handshake, which is an induction that I really enjoy doing. Unusually my subject had trouble keeping her eyes open; very quickly they closed and then she went limp. Of course this isn't quite the desired effect, but given that it induced a trance I wasn't too bothered. As I have said before, everything that happens is always exactly what the hypnotist intended to happen. Always.
What followed was a fun little demonstration of waking hypnosis. I told her that her right hand was stuck to the table, then said it was time to go and offered my hand to her to shake. Of course she couldn't lift her hand to respond, so I told her that her right hand was now free, because her left hand was now stuck to her leg.
I find the "(this) ...because... (this)" is a very useful approach in waking hypnosis. After all, if one is true, why shouldn't the other be?
Eventually I got her to release her left hand by putting a finger in her right ear, which of course became stuck. I then had her release that by putting a finger in her left ear. I told her she knew how it worked now; put a finger in one ear to release the finger in the other. Finger in, finger out. Finger in, finger out. How do you escape? Why, you go really fast and eventually... that's it... they both come free. Amazing!
Okay it's a routine I stole off a YouTube video I saw a while back, but I don't care. It was a lot of fun.
Anyway, as usual I had to dash off to catch a train and as always I'm already looking forward to the next London meet.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Bristol HypnoMeet
A short post this time.
I've just gotten back from a HypnoMeet, but this time in Bristol.
Not too much to report I'm afraid. Bristol was pretty quiet, so very little hypnosis occurred. It is, of course, during the university Easter holidays so a significant number of students aren't around.
There were four hypnotists turned up; the others were Enrich, Skeitel and BladeBlunter from UncommonForum. Mostly it was just us as a group exchanging hypnosis banter, although (En)Rich did managed to find a couple of girls who seemed interested and helped one of them with her fear of spiders.
We then moved on to a slightly better pub; a Wetherspoons I think. Rich asked me to demonstrate the Erickson handshake to him, which I was happy to do. He said he did manage to zone out for a minute, but unfortunately we'd chosen a table which, over my shoulder, afforded a view of parties of women coming and going.
Gah! Some people are far too easily distracted...
It was a short meet. I only got there after 7pm, and as always the time to leave in order to catch the train home came all too soon. Unlike London there aren't trains until after midnight. The 22:20 from Bristol is the last train, so there was no way I was going to miss it.
Rich had been kind enough to let me leave my folding bike in the back of his car, which he'd parked in a multi-storey car park. I had a surreal moment as I carried it down several flights of stairs to street level... going down that staircase, going deeper and deeper... although I doubt staircase deepeners usually involve the subject imagining carrying a bicycle at the time.
Anyway a fun evening! Looking forward to the next meet, which of course will be in London.
I've just gotten back from a HypnoMeet, but this time in Bristol.
Not too much to report I'm afraid. Bristol was pretty quiet, so very little hypnosis occurred. It is, of course, during the university Easter holidays so a significant number of students aren't around.
There were four hypnotists turned up; the others were Enrich, Skeitel and BladeBlunter from UncommonForum. Mostly it was just us as a group exchanging hypnosis banter, although (En)Rich did managed to find a couple of girls who seemed interested and helped one of them with her fear of spiders.
We then moved on to a slightly better pub; a Wetherspoons I think. Rich asked me to demonstrate the Erickson handshake to him, which I was happy to do. He said he did manage to zone out for a minute, but unfortunately we'd chosen a table which, over my shoulder, afforded a view of parties of women coming and going.
Gah! Some people are far too easily distracted...
It was a short meet. I only got there after 7pm, and as always the time to leave in order to catch the train home came all too soon. Unlike London there aren't trains until after midnight. The 22:20 from Bristol is the last train, so there was no way I was going to miss it.
Rich had been kind enough to let me leave my folding bike in the back of his car, which he'd parked in a multi-storey car park. I had a surreal moment as I carried it down several flights of stairs to street level... going down that staircase, going deeper and deeper... although I doubt staircase deepeners usually involve the subject imagining carrying a bicycle at the time.
Anyway a fun evening! Looking forward to the next meet, which of course will be in London.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
The 5th Meet
Well it seems that the London HypnoMeets are now a well established monthly fixture; the last Thursday of every month.
Once again I took the opportunity to get to London nice and early and engage in a bit of shopping before the meet. I got to the pub quite early and took it upon myself to grab a fairly large table. Fortunately I only had half an hour or so to kill before people were planning to start showing up, and gloating over the things I'd bought on my mini spending spree during the afternoon killed the time nicely. In particular trying to figure out how you're supposed to unlock a new bicycle D-lock if the keys are locked to the shackle. Ergh!
Anyway, there I was sat at this large table in the pub, which started filling up... and getting crowded... and none of the other hypnotists were showing up.
The looks I was getting from the standing crowd near the bar got steadily dirtier.
Ben showed up eventually, and it couldn't have been sooner, although he then went to the bar to get some drinks and I was left holding the table again.
The question is Parkey, I said to myself, if one of the many other groups eyeing up this table, which is protected only by by you at one end and your coat at the other, decide that they want it will you be able to zap them into giving it back?
It was at this point that all of the usual suspects from the last meet started showing up, so my Jedi table retention skills were thankfully never put to the test. Too many people showed up in fact, so tablejedi master Darren managed to arrange a swap with a table of girls across the room so we could all have a seat. Ben then offered to go up to the bar and order some food.
I found myself chatting to Will, who had turned up to the second meet back in December, and his friend Andy who was a newbie. In fact I was very impressed with Andy because although he was completely new to hypnosis once he'd gotten started he seemed completely able to confidently roll out the patter with no difficulty at all! Will was keen to try being hypnotised again, so all I needed to do was show Andy how to do a couple of rapid inductions and they were off. My work here was done.
I settled down to eat my pie.
Well actually my work wasn't quite done. Will commented that he'd like to go deeper than he was going, and of course I cannot resist such a challenge. I sat him down, did a hand-to-eye induction, and proceeded to deepen using a guided imagery technique that a friend taught me recently. 10-15 minutes later and Will had slowly sunk into the sofa to the point where he was practically looking up at his shoes. Having reached this depth I then gave him the sleep suggestion, telling him he would be able to come straight back to the state he was in. I then marveled at the way in which someone in a trance, no matter how deep they've gone, or how far away they are, still comes back out again when they're told to.
Will seemed quite amazed at how deep he'd been able to go, but he wasn't quite so amazed as I was when I told him to sleep and he folded up like a rag doll.
Ahh, that smug type of amazement.
I then spent a little while trying to teach Will, as a subject, how to freeze in place and trance out with his eyes open, so as to not notice any time had passed. I think he was starting to get the hang of it, but at this point Andy came back and took over zapping Will, so I moved on.
I changed tables and joined Chris and Ben. Chris briefly had a go hypnotising me, but having had a bit of a long day he wasn't really able to come up with anything new. Result - I got my fingers glued to my temples... again! Gah!
We were quite amused at this point so see Andy wandering off to the bar, leaving Will in a trance on the sofa.
Having exhausted Chris's obviously depleted imagination I asked Ben if he'd like to try something. Here's the video:
The induction was quite an interesting experience; Ben linked the position of my hand to my level of awareness of what was going on in the room, and this did make it very easy to experience that now familiar slide into trance as I let my hand come down to my lap. I still don't really feel as though I "go anywhere" when I'm in trance, I'm still aware of where I am and what's going on around me, and indeed what the suggestions I'm being given are, I just feel quite willing to stay down and humour whatever is going on.
What went on this time was at least original. Ben told me that I would be drunk, which didn't really work as far as my thought process was concerned, I could still think absolutely fine, but that didn't mean I was able to stop doing quite an (apparently) convincing drunk impression. Likewise when Ben told me that I would would insist that my name was "Rrrrrrichard" (rolling the R), I tried to say it was "Parkey" on several occasions and my response reminded me of the episode of Red Dwarf where Kryten tries to call Rimmer a "smeg head" and it gets stuck on "Smm... Smmmeee...". No amount of hypnosis has yet enabled me to roll my Rs anyway.
Ben's final suggestion, which to his credit he was willing to persist over, was to try to get me to hallucinate a clock somewhere in the room. I never saw the clock, but the crazy thing was that I had a very clear picture in my head of what it would look like, and exactly where it would be on the table in front of me. I was even inclined to mime picking it up at one point! Bizarreness!
Then of course, with work the following day I had to leave. My departure was however delayed by Darren telling me to "freeze!" as I went to shake his hand. For some reason I instinctively became completely immobile from the neck down, and had to ask Darren nicely to let me move again or I'd miss my train home!
I'm not sure where that came from but suffice to say somebody will pay for that one.
Once again I took the opportunity to get to London nice and early and engage in a bit of shopping before the meet. I got to the pub quite early and took it upon myself to grab a fairly large table. Fortunately I only had half an hour or so to kill before people were planning to start showing up, and gloating over the things I'd bought on my mini spending spree during the afternoon killed the time nicely. In particular trying to figure out how you're supposed to unlock a new bicycle D-lock if the keys are locked to the shackle. Ergh!
Anyway, there I was sat at this large table in the pub, which started filling up... and getting crowded... and none of the other hypnotists were showing up.
The looks I was getting from the standing crowd near the bar got steadily dirtier.
Ben showed up eventually, and it couldn't have been sooner, although he then went to the bar to get some drinks and I was left holding the table again.
The question is Parkey, I said to myself, if one of the many other groups eyeing up this table, which is protected only by by you at one end and your coat at the other, decide that they want it will you be able to zap them into giving it back?
It was at this point that all of the usual suspects from the last meet started showing up, so my Jedi table retention skills were thankfully never put to the test. Too many people showed up in fact, so tablejedi master Darren managed to arrange a swap with a table of girls across the room so we could all have a seat. Ben then offered to go up to the bar and order some food.
I found myself chatting to Will, who had turned up to the second meet back in December, and his friend Andy who was a newbie. In fact I was very impressed with Andy because although he was completely new to hypnosis once he'd gotten started he seemed completely able to confidently roll out the patter with no difficulty at all! Will was keen to try being hypnotised again, so all I needed to do was show Andy how to do a couple of rapid inductions and they were off. My work here was done.
I settled down to eat my pie.
Well actually my work wasn't quite done. Will commented that he'd like to go deeper than he was going, and of course I cannot resist such a challenge. I sat him down, did a hand-to-eye induction, and proceeded to deepen using a guided imagery technique that a friend taught me recently. 10-15 minutes later and Will had slowly sunk into the sofa to the point where he was practically looking up at his shoes. Having reached this depth I then gave him the sleep suggestion, telling him he would be able to come straight back to the state he was in. I then marveled at the way in which someone in a trance, no matter how deep they've gone, or how far away they are, still comes back out again when they're told to.
Will seemed quite amazed at how deep he'd been able to go, but he wasn't quite so amazed as I was when I told him to sleep and he folded up like a rag doll.
Ahh, that smug type of amazement.
I then spent a little while trying to teach Will, as a subject, how to freeze in place and trance out with his eyes open, so as to not notice any time had passed. I think he was starting to get the hang of it, but at this point Andy came back and took over zapping Will, so I moved on.
I changed tables and joined Chris and Ben. Chris briefly had a go hypnotising me, but having had a bit of a long day he wasn't really able to come up with anything new. Result - I got my fingers glued to my temples... again! Gah!
We were quite amused at this point so see Andy wandering off to the bar, leaving Will in a trance on the sofa.
Having exhausted Chris's obviously depleted imagination I asked Ben if he'd like to try something. Here's the video:
The induction was quite an interesting experience; Ben linked the position of my hand to my level of awareness of what was going on in the room, and this did make it very easy to experience that now familiar slide into trance as I let my hand come down to my lap. I still don't really feel as though I "go anywhere" when I'm in trance, I'm still aware of where I am and what's going on around me, and indeed what the suggestions I'm being given are, I just feel quite willing to stay down and humour whatever is going on.
What went on this time was at least original. Ben told me that I would be drunk, which didn't really work as far as my thought process was concerned, I could still think absolutely fine, but that didn't mean I was able to stop doing quite an (apparently) convincing drunk impression. Likewise when Ben told me that I would would insist that my name was "Rrrrrrichard" (rolling the R), I tried to say it was "Parkey" on several occasions and my response reminded me of the episode of Red Dwarf where Kryten tries to call Rimmer a "smeg head" and it gets stuck on "Smm... Smmmeee...". No amount of hypnosis has yet enabled me to roll my Rs anyway.
Ben's final suggestion, which to his credit he was willing to persist over, was to try to get me to hallucinate a clock somewhere in the room. I never saw the clock, but the crazy thing was that I had a very clear picture in my head of what it would look like, and exactly where it would be on the table in front of me. I was even inclined to mime picking it up at one point! Bizarreness!
Then of course, with work the following day I had to leave. My departure was however delayed by Darren telling me to "freeze!" as I went to shake his hand. For some reason I instinctively became completely immobile from the neck down, and had to ask Darren nicely to let me move again or I'd miss my train home!
I'm not sure where that came from but suffice to say somebody will pay for that one.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Oxford
It was on the 7th of September 2008 that I first looked at the subject of hypnosis and thought to myself "You know, I think I could actually learn how to do this!" I plunged head first into the hypnotic world and I've not once looked back since.
Six months later to the day I have just had the most amazing hypnotic day out and I can't believe how far things have come in just half a year!
Now, late last year I remember blogging to the effect that I thought that Oxford would be a brilliant hunting ground for students willing to experience a bit of impromptu hypnosis. Chatting with Ben about a month or so led us to decide that a Saturday would be the best option. This was in early February, and the trouble with fixing the date for a meet a month in advance is that it takes a while for it to come around. Nevertheless, come around it did.
As the organiser (sort of) of this little get together I'd chosen the Head of the River pub as the place to meet up and on the day six of us converged on the place. I've seen Ben and Darren before at every meet that we've organised but of course it's always great to meet up with them. We were joined by Liz, who I have mentioned before, her boyfriend Lex, and Conrad, a newbie on uncommonforum and a fan of Lex and Liz's blog.
We eventually managed to find ourselves a table inside the pub and started talking. The thing that I found most amazing was Lex's story about the first time he hypnotised someone, which he did a whole ten years ago and without any training or reading. He also talked a bit about some of the hypnosis videos he produces. Darren in particular seemed in awe of all this, and hastily started writing down web addresses for later reference. This was especially amusing for me because a couple of nights before when we'd been talking on skype chat he'd sent me the link to Lex's website, saying "Hay mate! Have you seen this?! I'm thinking of branching out!"
Ben then launched into a demonstration of inducing catalepsy in Darren's arm. Applying light touches to Darren's left forearm he managed to make it become completely frozen in space. It's very similar in fact to the Ericksonian handshake, which seems to be my current party piece. This almost non-verbal form of hypnosis is yet another area of hypnosis that is really very interesting and I really need to try to do more of in future.
Chatting to Liz online over skype a couple of nights before the meet had been a double edged sword. Her ability to engage her imagination and see things that aren't there never ceases to amaze me, and especially when it's from waking suggestions. I had taken advantage of this in order to drench her in non-existent water via my webcam using a non-existent water pistol, and had joked about bringing an actual water pistol to the meet just to tease her.
Her reaction in the pub when she saw my copy of Reality is Plastic, which happened to be on the table and has a picture of a water pistol on the back cover, was priceless. Later on I used this as yet another opportunity to prove to her how academic and interlectual my interest in hypnosis actually is. What I did was I reached into the back cover, took hold of the orange water pistol and proceeded to hold her up with it. Luckily for her this time Lex was on hand to allow her to also hallucinate umbrellas in order to defend herself.
I find this an absolutely amazing concept though, that a subject can engage their imagination and be able to see and feel suggestions as though they really exist. It also seems to work along the lines that, once something has been suggested, they just can't not think of or imagine whatever it is that has been put to them.
Just as an idle passing example of this, when Liz reads this sentence she will notice that same water pistol hovering in the air nearby and pointed at her. She's been nagging me to write this blog post, so now she'd better keep reading. If she looks away from the screen for more than a second or two before she's read all of this she is going to get wet. (Edit: Okay now I see she's read it, so if she reads it again it won't appear a second time. Aren't I nice!)
Quite a dull and pointless example for anybody but Liz though I guess, but at least the rest of us get to stay dry.
Unfortunately for me Liz got her revenge by firing off a post hypnotic suggestion that she'd given me the last time we'd spoken that would make me suddenly develop the urge to buy the next round. The scary thing is that nowadays such suggestions seem to be actually working on me. I did insist on buying the next round; it just felt like exactly the thing to do at the time.
Next we went in search of some kind of food and ended up going into ASK for something Italian. Darren took advantage of the wait for our food to arrive to offer to hypnotise Conrad, who was well away as a result of Darren's application of the rehearsal induction when the waitress came over with our meals. I was actually amazed by how unfazed she appeared to be by Conrad's apparent comatose state as she handed out the food. Still, barely anybody recognises hypnosis when they see it anyway. I think most people assume that the subject is drunk, or from Stoke-on-Trent.
After dinner we headed onward to a pub. Ben and Lex had conspired to have a bit of fun with Liz, telling her that every time she lost sight of me she'd forget who I was, and this was a fun diversion although I was almost hurt that I was so easy to forget. In any case, this was also a great opportunity to practice some handshake inductions, aided by the fact that before the meet Lex had also given her a compulsion to shake any hand offered to her without suspicion.
Zapped by the Bandler handshake induction in the middle of Broad street. She loved it really I'm sure!
Anyway, something that I absolutely love about Oxford is the way in which it is quite magical. By magical I don't mean actual magic as such, but simply that it has a lot of the real life phenomena upon which fictional magic is based. There is no better example of this than the way in which there are so many things about Oxford that the un-knowing eye simply doesn't notice until they are pointed out. There are, in fact, whole streets that I have somehow managed to walk past for years without noticing until someone told me they were there, and I'm sure there are more. That's a concept that I absolutely love; the idea of a place that cannot be found or reached except by those who already know about it.
The Turf Tavern, our final destination for the evening, is a great example of one of these hidden gems. It's a beautiful small pub with two huge beer gardens right in the centre of city amongst all of the colleges. Nobody stumbles across the Turf by accident though, because there is sign no out on the street to advertise it. Rather it is tucked away down an alleyway and you need to know where to look if you are to stand any chance of finding it. Every time I've been there in the past though I have thought to myself that it is the perfect impromptu hypnosis pub as it's such a friendly atmosphere and full of Oxford university students. I've been dying to bring some other hypnotists along and in doing so to pluck up the courage to do some approaching myself.
As we walked I found it surprisingly easy to slip on my metaphorical tour guide's hat and launch into a spiel about how I think the city really is magical, referring to the fact that a lot of the scenes from Harry Potter, including the great hall at Hogwarts, were filmed in Oxford. I then started pushing the bounds of fantasy by saying that the inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter was drawn from real secret places in Oxford. I amazed myself with my timing because I got to exactly the right bit of my narrative just as our group was about to walk past the alleyway that leads to the Turf and I told everybody to stop for a moment.
At this point I will admit that I had cheated a little bit. Nobody had paid the alleyway any attention of course, but that hadn't stopped me having the temptation to take it one stage further with one member of our party. Back in the restaurant I had tranced Liz and given her the suggestion that she wouldn't be able to see the entrance to the alley; there would be no gap there at all in fact, just a continuation of the walls on either side.
"See this brick wall here?" I said "If you just..."
I then strode quickly and calmly into the entrance to the alleyway, knowing of course that for Liz this would produce the effect of my having vanished through the wall.
I looked behind me and the expression on her face was priceless!
"Come on through guys!" I called after me.
The others followed my lead, leaving poor Liz on her own with her hands out in front of her on the invisible wall we'd just passed through. Lex went back for her, as I'd also told her that she would be able to pass through if he took her by the hand.
Once we'd found ourselves a table in one of the Turf's beer gardens we settled down into conversation for a bit. We were joined at this point by another hypnotist by the name of Rich. Liz got her revenge for the alleyway and her repeated loss of memory of who I was by putting me into trance and giving me a suggestion that I would give up my seat to Ben. Seconds later and I was quite happy standing up whilst the rest of the group sat, thankyou.
Despite having gotten a free takeover of my chair, Ben was the first to step up, take the initiative and get into a bit of pub hypnosis; he went over to a couple of girls nearby. Not wanting to crowd around and cramp his style, I stayed at the table and watched Darren showing Lex some rapid inductions.
It wasn't until slightly later in the evening that things really started to happen on the impromptu hypnosis front though. What happened was that we saw a group of students playing a drinking game at the next table who looked so obviously perfect. I remarked on this to Darren and Liz, who I was sat next to at the time. Liz had just been trying to show me how to do a kinaesthetic hallucination, so the next thing I knew I was being zapped back into trance and being told in no uncertain terms that I would, upon waking, approach that group.
"Okayyy... don't I get a say in this?" I thought.
Apparently not. I came back up and announced we should approach them, completely in keeping with the completely intangible feeling that one gets when under the influence of a post hypnotic suggestion. Darren said "wait until they've finished the round" but I wasn't going to wait. I don't know why; it was insane, but it just sort of happened! Before I even realised what I was doing I was up there in front of them and opening with "Hi guys, sorry to interrupt, but you look like a fun group of people..."
Darren was right behind me and jumped in with his own opening line "Hi guys, what's this, a bleedin' Cider appreciation society?". He told them all that we were hypnotists and asked if they wanted to give it a try. The looks of awe and wonderment that came across their faces were abslutely astounding and the response was a unanimous chorus of yes interspersed with cries of "ooh! me! me!" They were all up for it! I was amazed!
"What do you reckon?" I said to Darren. "Magnetic fingers?"
With a whole table of willing volunteers there was nothing for it but to go into a group selection routine. We had them all do magnetic fingers together first, and then followed with magnetic hands, all of which allowed us to clock who the most promising candidates were.
Darren chose a guy to our left who was clearly getting well into magnetic hands and proceeded to perform an absolutely amazing one-on-one hypnosis routine with him.
I would describe it all, but I don't think I could do it justice. Fortunately the group were happy to let Ben film us and a video says a million words. Enjoy!
What the video doesn't show is the incredible reaction Darren's performance got from the group. He certainly had them all completely speechless and seeing the looks of amazement on their faces as they saw their friend drop completely limp in his chair alone made the evening worthwhile!
It got better though. Rich jumped in and grabbed the girl I was stood next to, so I decided I should probably grab myself a subject too. One of the girls at the far end of the table in particular had been giving me and Darren what hypnotists call "the look", that expression of fascination that often implies they're going to be a good subject. I strolled around the table and asked her if she'd like to give it a go.
She was a little shy at first, but I said "Yes, but the thing is there's a part of you that really wants to know what it's like, isn't there!"
That was all the convincing I needed to do.
So, my first time hypnotising a complete stranger. I did a hand drop induction, got my subject nice and relaxed, floated her arm up, put her arms in her lap and made them too heavy to lift, and then stuck her hand to the table. It went quite well, although I did feel completely blown out of the water by Darren's earlier performance.
Ben caught some of it on film, and it's here in this short montage of clips from that evening.
Something that always amazes me when I see myself on film is the reactions of the audience, which sometimes I don't even realise that I have. When I'm being the hypnotist I never pay much attention to anything beyond my subject.
As soon as I'd finished with this girl, one of the guys from the group came up and asked if he could have a go.
"Sorry, bet this has spoiled your evening" he said, which surprised me.
I was quite happy to reassure him that I was quite happy sharing hypnosis with anybody who wanted to experience it. I put him under with magnetic hands and did much the same routine I had done with the girl before him.
Having finished with the guy, I then got brought over to have a go with a third subject, a nice girl by the name of Jo who wasn't from the same group but had been watching us and was absolutely fascinated by it all. She was a good example of a subject who had certain preconceptions about hypnosis and thus was disappointed about her apparent lack of response. Having now overcome similar misconceptions of my own I was able to address them and stick her hands together, which felt to me like a real achievement.
It seemed that everybody in the pub was wanting to be hypnotised and we were all in demand. Ben captured this sort of HypnoMania effect on video.
The time that Ben and I had to leave in order to catch the last train crept up on us very quickly, so we said our hasty goodbyes and dashed off on our way back to the station. I couldn't believe 8 hours or so went by so quickly and I could easily have gone on for much longer. It was such a buzz to finally get some impromptu subjects.
The last couple of hours in the Turf had been such a blur that I missed a heck of a lot of what everybody else had been up to. It wasn't until we'd boarded the train that Ben told me that Rich had given three girls hypnotically induced orgasms right there in their chairs that evening! I can't decide whether to feel sorry that I gave the girls I'd hypnotised a bit of a sub-standard performance. On the plus side, not having done so will probably mean my girlfriend will allow me to remain in the gene pool.
What a day! What a night! What an incredible end to my first 6 months as a hypnotist!
Six months later to the day I have just had the most amazing hypnotic day out and I can't believe how far things have come in just half a year!
Now, late last year I remember blogging to the effect that I thought that Oxford would be a brilliant hunting ground for students willing to experience a bit of impromptu hypnosis. Chatting with Ben about a month or so led us to decide that a Saturday would be the best option. This was in early February, and the trouble with fixing the date for a meet a month in advance is that it takes a while for it to come around. Nevertheless, come around it did.
As the organiser (sort of) of this little get together I'd chosen the Head of the River pub as the place to meet up and on the day six of us converged on the place. I've seen Ben and Darren before at every meet that we've organised but of course it's always great to meet up with them. We were joined by Liz, who I have mentioned before, her boyfriend Lex, and Conrad, a newbie on uncommonforum and a fan of Lex and Liz's blog.
We eventually managed to find ourselves a table inside the pub and started talking. The thing that I found most amazing was Lex's story about the first time he hypnotised someone, which he did a whole ten years ago and without any training or reading. He also talked a bit about some of the hypnosis videos he produces. Darren in particular seemed in awe of all this, and hastily started writing down web addresses for later reference. This was especially amusing for me because a couple of nights before when we'd been talking on skype chat he'd sent me the link to Lex's website, saying "Hay mate! Have you seen this?! I'm thinking of branching out!"
Ben then launched into a demonstration of inducing catalepsy in Darren's arm. Applying light touches to Darren's left forearm he managed to make it become completely frozen in space. It's very similar in fact to the Ericksonian handshake, which seems to be my current party piece. This almost non-verbal form of hypnosis is yet another area of hypnosis that is really very interesting and I really need to try to do more of in future.
Chatting to Liz online over skype a couple of nights before the meet had been a double edged sword. Her ability to engage her imagination and see things that aren't there never ceases to amaze me, and especially when it's from waking suggestions. I had taken advantage of this in order to drench her in non-existent water via my webcam using a non-existent water pistol, and had joked about bringing an actual water pistol to the meet just to tease her.
Her reaction in the pub when she saw my copy of Reality is Plastic, which happened to be on the table and has a picture of a water pistol on the back cover, was priceless. Later on I used this as yet another opportunity to prove to her how academic and interlectual my interest in hypnosis actually is. What I did was I reached into the back cover, took hold of the orange water pistol and proceeded to hold her up with it. Luckily for her this time Lex was on hand to allow her to also hallucinate umbrellas in order to defend herself.
I find this an absolutely amazing concept though, that a subject can engage their imagination and be able to see and feel suggestions as though they really exist. It also seems to work along the lines that, once something has been suggested, they just can't not think of or imagine whatever it is that has been put to them.
Just as an idle passing example of this, when Liz reads this sentence she will notice that same water pistol hovering in the air nearby and pointed at her. She's been nagging me to write this blog post, so now she'd better keep reading. If she looks away from the screen for more than a second or two before she's read all of this she is going to get wet. (Edit: Okay now I see she's read it, so if she reads it again it won't appear a second time. Aren't I nice!)
Quite a dull and pointless example for anybody but Liz though I guess, but at least the rest of us get to stay dry.
Unfortunately for me Liz got her revenge by firing off a post hypnotic suggestion that she'd given me the last time we'd spoken that would make me suddenly develop the urge to buy the next round. The scary thing is that nowadays such suggestions seem to be actually working on me. I did insist on buying the next round; it just felt like exactly the thing to do at the time.
Next we went in search of some kind of food and ended up going into ASK for something Italian. Darren took advantage of the wait for our food to arrive to offer to hypnotise Conrad, who was well away as a result of Darren's application of the rehearsal induction when the waitress came over with our meals. I was actually amazed by how unfazed she appeared to be by Conrad's apparent comatose state as she handed out the food. Still, barely anybody recognises hypnosis when they see it anyway. I think most people assume that the subject is drunk, or from Stoke-on-Trent.
After dinner we headed onward to a pub. Ben and Lex had conspired to have a bit of fun with Liz, telling her that every time she lost sight of me she'd forget who I was, and this was a fun diversion although I was almost hurt that I was so easy to forget. In any case, this was also a great opportunity to practice some handshake inductions, aided by the fact that before the meet Lex had also given her a compulsion to shake any hand offered to her without suspicion.
Zapped by the Bandler handshake induction in the middle of Broad street. She loved it really I'm sure!
Anyway, something that I absolutely love about Oxford is the way in which it is quite magical. By magical I don't mean actual magic as such, but simply that it has a lot of the real life phenomena upon which fictional magic is based. There is no better example of this than the way in which there are so many things about Oxford that the un-knowing eye simply doesn't notice until they are pointed out. There are, in fact, whole streets that I have somehow managed to walk past for years without noticing until someone told me they were there, and I'm sure there are more. That's a concept that I absolutely love; the idea of a place that cannot be found or reached except by those who already know about it.
The Turf Tavern, our final destination for the evening, is a great example of one of these hidden gems. It's a beautiful small pub with two huge beer gardens right in the centre of city amongst all of the colleges. Nobody stumbles across the Turf by accident though, because there is sign no out on the street to advertise it. Rather it is tucked away down an alleyway and you need to know where to look if you are to stand any chance of finding it. Every time I've been there in the past though I have thought to myself that it is the perfect impromptu hypnosis pub as it's such a friendly atmosphere and full of Oxford university students. I've been dying to bring some other hypnotists along and in doing so to pluck up the courage to do some approaching myself.
As we walked I found it surprisingly easy to slip on my metaphorical tour guide's hat and launch into a spiel about how I think the city really is magical, referring to the fact that a lot of the scenes from Harry Potter, including the great hall at Hogwarts, were filmed in Oxford. I then started pushing the bounds of fantasy by saying that the inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter was drawn from real secret places in Oxford. I amazed myself with my timing because I got to exactly the right bit of my narrative just as our group was about to walk past the alleyway that leads to the Turf and I told everybody to stop for a moment.
At this point I will admit that I had cheated a little bit. Nobody had paid the alleyway any attention of course, but that hadn't stopped me having the temptation to take it one stage further with one member of our party. Back in the restaurant I had tranced Liz and given her the suggestion that she wouldn't be able to see the entrance to the alley; there would be no gap there at all in fact, just a continuation of the walls on either side.
"See this brick wall here?" I said "If you just..."
I then strode quickly and calmly into the entrance to the alleyway, knowing of course that for Liz this would produce the effect of my having vanished through the wall.
I looked behind me and the expression on her face was priceless!
"Come on through guys!" I called after me.
The others followed my lead, leaving poor Liz on her own with her hands out in front of her on the invisible wall we'd just passed through. Lex went back for her, as I'd also told her that she would be able to pass through if he took her by the hand.
Once we'd found ourselves a table in one of the Turf's beer gardens we settled down into conversation for a bit. We were joined at this point by another hypnotist by the name of Rich. Liz got her revenge for the alleyway and her repeated loss of memory of who I was by putting me into trance and giving me a suggestion that I would give up my seat to Ben. Seconds later and I was quite happy standing up whilst the rest of the group sat, thankyou.
Despite having gotten a free takeover of my chair, Ben was the first to step up, take the initiative and get into a bit of pub hypnosis; he went over to a couple of girls nearby. Not wanting to crowd around and cramp his style, I stayed at the table and watched Darren showing Lex some rapid inductions.
It wasn't until slightly later in the evening that things really started to happen on the impromptu hypnosis front though. What happened was that we saw a group of students playing a drinking game at the next table who looked so obviously perfect. I remarked on this to Darren and Liz, who I was sat next to at the time. Liz had just been trying to show me how to do a kinaesthetic hallucination, so the next thing I knew I was being zapped back into trance and being told in no uncertain terms that I would, upon waking, approach that group.
"Okayyy... don't I get a say in this?" I thought.
Apparently not. I came back up and announced we should approach them, completely in keeping with the completely intangible feeling that one gets when under the influence of a post hypnotic suggestion. Darren said "wait until they've finished the round" but I wasn't going to wait. I don't know why; it was insane, but it just sort of happened! Before I even realised what I was doing I was up there in front of them and opening with "Hi guys, sorry to interrupt, but you look like a fun group of people..."
Darren was right behind me and jumped in with his own opening line "Hi guys, what's this, a bleedin' Cider appreciation society?". He told them all that we were hypnotists and asked if they wanted to give it a try. The looks of awe and wonderment that came across their faces were abslutely astounding and the response was a unanimous chorus of yes interspersed with cries of "ooh! me! me!" They were all up for it! I was amazed!
"What do you reckon?" I said to Darren. "Magnetic fingers?"
With a whole table of willing volunteers there was nothing for it but to go into a group selection routine. We had them all do magnetic fingers together first, and then followed with magnetic hands, all of which allowed us to clock who the most promising candidates were.
Darren chose a guy to our left who was clearly getting well into magnetic hands and proceeded to perform an absolutely amazing one-on-one hypnosis routine with him.
I would describe it all, but I don't think I could do it justice. Fortunately the group were happy to let Ben film us and a video says a million words. Enjoy!
What the video doesn't show is the incredible reaction Darren's performance got from the group. He certainly had them all completely speechless and seeing the looks of amazement on their faces as they saw their friend drop completely limp in his chair alone made the evening worthwhile!
It got better though. Rich jumped in and grabbed the girl I was stood next to, so I decided I should probably grab myself a subject too. One of the girls at the far end of the table in particular had been giving me and Darren what hypnotists call "the look", that expression of fascination that often implies they're going to be a good subject. I strolled around the table and asked her if she'd like to give it a go.
She was a little shy at first, but I said "Yes, but the thing is there's a part of you that really wants to know what it's like, isn't there!"
That was all the convincing I needed to do.
So, my first time hypnotising a complete stranger. I did a hand drop induction, got my subject nice and relaxed, floated her arm up, put her arms in her lap and made them too heavy to lift, and then stuck her hand to the table. It went quite well, although I did feel completely blown out of the water by Darren's earlier performance.
Ben caught some of it on film, and it's here in this short montage of clips from that evening.
Something that always amazes me when I see myself on film is the reactions of the audience, which sometimes I don't even realise that I have. When I'm being the hypnotist I never pay much attention to anything beyond my subject.
As soon as I'd finished with this girl, one of the guys from the group came up and asked if he could have a go.
"Sorry, bet this has spoiled your evening" he said, which surprised me.
I was quite happy to reassure him that I was quite happy sharing hypnosis with anybody who wanted to experience it. I put him under with magnetic hands and did much the same routine I had done with the girl before him.
Having finished with the guy, I then got brought over to have a go with a third subject, a nice girl by the name of Jo who wasn't from the same group but had been watching us and was absolutely fascinated by it all. She was a good example of a subject who had certain preconceptions about hypnosis and thus was disappointed about her apparent lack of response. Having now overcome similar misconceptions of my own I was able to address them and stick her hands together, which felt to me like a real achievement.
It seemed that everybody in the pub was wanting to be hypnotised and we were all in demand. Ben captured this sort of HypnoMania effect on video.
The time that Ben and I had to leave in order to catch the last train crept up on us very quickly, so we said our hasty goodbyes and dashed off on our way back to the station. I couldn't believe 8 hours or so went by so quickly and I could easily have gone on for much longer. It was such a buzz to finally get some impromptu subjects.
The last couple of hours in the Turf had been such a blur that I missed a heck of a lot of what everybody else had been up to. It wasn't until we'd boarded the train that Ben told me that Rich had given three girls hypnotically induced orgasms right there in their chairs that evening! I can't decide whether to feel sorry that I gave the girls I'd hypnotised a bit of a sub-standard performance. On the plus side, not having done so will probably mean my girlfriend will allow me to remain in the gene pool.
What a day! What a night! What an incredible end to my first 6 months as a hypnotist!
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