Every time the conversation comes around to hands on healing or anything that looks remotely outside of surgery or pill popping there is always someone who starts shouting that it’s nothing more than hypnosis with the ‘placebo’ effect.

You know apart from the Black Death most of humanity has pretty much managed to stick around for the last few hundred thousands of years without a single ‘drug’ or medical procedure.

Hands on and all sorts of healing has been around and been quite successful for quite a few tens of thousands of those. The modern argument is of course that in the past people didn’t grow very big and didn’t live very long but the truth is that social evolution had a lot to do with that as much as medicine. And early 1800′s loads of people lived into their 80′s even in the middle ages the better fed got there too.

I know there are more people alive than ever before but that’s a lame argument for things like ‘Hands on’ and acupuncture not working, as the fact is yes there are more people alive, but there are more people alive today who are ill, diseased and disabled hanging on to lives wich should naturally have probably ended years before than there have ever been. When we talk about Placebo – the word by the way doesn’t mean *suggested healing* it means ….
A harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.
A substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs.
We talk as if modern pills and potions have been around forever and that they Always work. The truth is that most of them have been around for a few decades and that they ‘often’ help the bodies immune system overcome disease.

The thing is, the real thing is, that often the pills and potions given out by the medicos are themselves the true placebo, replacing good food, healthy exercise and the simple honest to goodness capacity for the body and mind to heal themselves, and sometimes others.

Jonathan Chase:
You know there are some theories which actually stop us finding out the best way to work to change our imaginations.

It’s almost like someone discovered the best, easiest and fastest way up the mountain. Then someone, who had never climbed the mountain before, tried that route on a really shitty day and fell off. That was because they had read the map but didn’t find out from the original discoverer that it’s best to climb mountains on nice dry warm days.

Now the guy who falls off will never admit He made a mistake, so he blames the map, the mountain and the weather for His mistake and so goes off looking for a harder more complicated way to do it. He falls even more this way BUT, it is HIS way so he ignores that because to admit he goofed would mean reducing his self image.

Now he gets a few students and he teaches them to climb the mountain his way, and when they ask about the easier way he makes it sound much worse than it was and shouts about it being dangerous and all sorts. Eventually, after student has taught student has taught student, the hard way becomes the Only way and the easy simple way is lost.

Then along comes someone who hasn’t been taught the hard way and it’s a nice day so he just strolls up the mountain the easy way and all those people at the top who have been taught to struggle, fall, get out of breath and have been told that is the best way, well they say, “you got up the mountain with no effort, but that was luck. Other people have died doing it that way and had their gonads ripped off. And anyway, the ease of getting here isn’t the point, It’s the Fact of getting here. So long as we get to the top who cares how we got here.” Then they collapse in exhaustion and the fella who rediscovered the easy way, well he shrugs and smiles and ambles off thinking, “Nice view up here…..”

Steve Sheldon: replied
Agreed Jon, but then what is the best way? Is it Jon’s or Barry’s, or the hundred others out there? This is why I think experimenting is very important for the hypnotist. We all know the basics on how to climb, but which path is the quickest and easiest?

Jonathan Chase: replied
Ask the bloke sitting on the top of the mountain. The one whistling and admiring the view…

To use a metaphor or analogy that is better understood, Hypnosis deals with the conversation and the emotional processing of the content of the conversation when people talk to each other over a mobile phone. It is not about how the network works, or how the phones themselves work. And focusing on that takes away from the conversation.

Smiles
JonC

I think we can safety apply this to hypnosis. In my not too shabby experience it has been my observation that around 1 in 5 people are what I was taught by my Mentor to call ‘A Somnambulist’. In hypnotic terms this means someone who is very easy to hypnotise. It is my opinion that these are the only people who can ‘do’ hypnosis to the point useful on stage.

The somnambulist is always in a state of suggestion acceptance. That doesn’t mean they are ‘gullible’ as the two are not entirely the same. Many more people can be conned to accept snake oil but they figure it out after the event. A somnambulist won’t even notice the hypnotic suggestion and have no defence against it when executed concisely.

This of course also means that 20% of people can no more be hypnotised than you could survive on a diet of cardboard. However not to worry because if you are doing it right, [ in my book ] and only hypnotising people who actively seek it out and volunteer, then you will never meet this 1 of five people because they are totally uninterested in hypnosis.

The other 60% fall somewhere from being fairly easy to get into hypnosis but unlikely to have particularly active creativity, right through to those who could take so long it isn’t a viable thing to put effort into unless of course you are doing something therapeutic which is outside the bounds of this Stage and Entertainment hypnosis forum.

Now for the newbie this should help you to realise that the 100% target isn’t doable unless you allow the somnambulist to come to you rather than you going to them. Then you’re success rate is likely to go right up to maybe 70% or 80%.

The trick in recognising a somnambulist is of course simple in stage terms. Stick the word hypnotist on a poster. In magician terms just mention the word ‘Hypnosis’ or ‘Hypnotist’ and then look for the person who is most interested and ask if they have ever been hypnotised. Then leave it, if they want it they will ask for it. You can of course push the situation but the more you push the more your success rate will fall.

Derren Brown often starts a live routine by claiming no one will be hypnotised and you can almost feel the somnambulists going under at the very mention of the word. Then it’s a simple matter of watching for the most energetic and determined physical response to throwing out a Frisbee or a stuffed toy to pick the most likely to go under. However in Derren’s audience I’d guess that the Perato rule is probably reversed and his average audience is very heavy with somnambulists as the non responsive 20% wont even be there which of course pushes the odds up somewhat.

One of the most worrying things I read from newbies and hypnosis students is their failure rate compared to old fogies like me. This has nothing whatever to do with our ‘superior technique’ or confidence, it’s all down to choosing the right subject in the easiest way and then it’s down to the good old Perato rule.

Hope this helps someone.

It cant be what the word means. For a child of 5 explaining what the word President means would be just as daunting as finding an understanding for f***.

It can not be whether the word is difficult for a child to say. All of the ‘adult’ words are one or at most two syllables unless hyphenated and even then on of the longest Mother-****** is very easy even for a three year old.

So it must be legislation, you know like driving a car, getting married or buying booze, there must be a legal age limit before you can say c***?

No, well not in any civilised country there isn’t, and even if there were just as the age of sexual consent in the UK is regularly ignored to the point of us having Europe’s largest percentage of ‘under age’ parents, such legislation would be totally ignored anyway.

So, what is ‘adult’ language. Why are some words more adult than others? 

Magic Moments of Hypnosis

There comes a point in everyday when the subconscious is open to suggestion. It isn’t trance in any sense of the word and it isn’t an ‘altered’ state. No more than being in any mood is an altered state.

As a hypnotist you can create these moments or you can just be observant and make use of them. Either way they are the times when a correctly formed suggestion can be easily given to elicit a planned response.

Hypnosis is often touted as being a natural state. A bit like the stuff you tread in visiting fields with cows, you are always in it, only the level varies.

This of course is true. There are times when your mind is more suggestible than others but that isn’t what they mean when they say hypnosis is natural. They are of course talking about the dream like state your mind enters as a symptom of being hypnotised.

Day dreaming is one, getting lost in book or turning off when driving a familiar route. All of these are touted as being states of hypnosis.

The truth is that none of these are magic moments of high suggestibility. In fact in experiments taking over any of the above and giving suggestions proves to be a complete waste of time as the mind is not focused on the suggestion but elsewhere.

It’s like comparing a puddle to the Pacific. I guess they are working on the good old if it looks the same it is the same. Which is sadly the mantra often used in hypnosis. If someone sits for several minutes with their eyes closed while you talk to them then hypnosis has happened, which of course is simply not true.

In the Svengali System I introduce the concept of hypnotic “Magic Moments”.

Magic moments occur when the mind takes over. You are not distracted nor otherwise focused. In fact the opposite is true, in hypnotic magic moments your focus and clarity of thinking is so lucid it’s as if for a second a veil has been lifted. But that is also the point where you are open to direct suggestion, which is basically what indirect hypnosis does.

It adds so much waffle around the direct suggestion it simply hides the fact that this is what’s happening.

Shock inductions create magic moments as does any intended action that breaks your pattern of attention or expectation.

So does being sacred or being angry or any event where you become fully emotive. The point of orgasm for instance is a perfect place to tell someone they want to make you a sandwich, or whatever it is you want to suggest.

Make use of Magic Moments and make your hypnosis work better.
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How Hypnotic Experience makes the difference.

I am a naturally talented hypnotist. I was getting results from hypnosis that people with way more knowledge would struggle with.

I don’t consider myself lucky although I guess I am gifted with the ability to follow the moment and get the hypnosis connection almost without trying.

I didn’t need to have loads of experience to do hypnosis well, mainly because my mentor was chapters ahead of me and the people who helped me in my career, either by their writing or by their stage work and lectures I attended, shared their experience with me.

If you like I borrowed the confidence their experience gave them and used it as if it were my own.

But, and it’s a twelve story but, it was their own personal experience. Not a second hand job.

In training, especially in hypnosis, I have found way too many people etching other people’s methods and experience as their own. Think of a seagull chick regurgitating their food to feed a smaller bird. The food has already been in the stomach of the parent, then the sibling then the next sibling and each time it’s passed on it gets digested a little more until eventually it has no nutritional value at all.

It’s what marketeers call ‘borrowed expertise’. That is simply taking what someone else has crafted and earned by dint of their own real world work and claiming it as your own. Then you get the situation where people who have no idea whether something is good or not, teaching other people the thing as if it were a time and experience proven thing. It may well have been but not by them.

I know, we live in a world where the marketeer has more power than the guru. So much so it’s hard to tell the two apart, so what to do?

Look for proof of experience. Success leaves trails outside of the market fed internet communities. Newspaper quotes. Actual book signings and or publication rather than the easy to do “Best selling ebook without even an ISBN number. TV appearances.

Experience is without doubt a great teacher, I didn’t start teaching until I’d got nearly 30 years under my belt, make sure your teacher has some. Otherwise you are being fed soft food theory with no value. You’d be better buying a book by the guy who taught the guy who taught the guy who taught them.

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the Hypnotist Radio show

Our guest this week is none other than the first lady of internet hypnotherapy Wendi Friesen who has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows including GMTV in England – The Style Channel – Queen Latifah show – FOX and is responsible for the most popular Hypnotherapy site on the InterWeb at Wendi.com.

Along with Reg’s Rant from co-host and New Zealand’s own Professional street hypnotist, Jon Chase will be pressing all the wrong buttons electronically and all the right buttons hypnotically on the live Call In Sleep with Strangers and making the usual Blatant Bribe where you could win a signed book just for calling in.

Look forward to talking to you – You Know You Want to!

Hypnosis the Great Pretender

Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend that our leg won’t move, or pretend that our arm is rigged or that our hand is floating toward our face or that our eyelids are locked.

Hypnosis is the use, application and manipulation of our capacity to pretend, to imagine, to create reality. That manipulation is caused by directing the imagination.

That’s it really, it’s all pretending. It’s all imagination.

Hardly surprising really when most of the way we perceive and respond to the world is pure pretence, sorry, imagination, sorry subconsciously. A phobia isn’t triggered by what is happening, neither is a panic attack or an anxiety state which are all the same body wearing a different coat. The phobic reaction is triggered by what we believe, what we imagine to come next.

Okay so in the hypnotic world simple procedures like pretending are wrapped up in all sorts of ‘models’ and dogma. Metaphor is just pretending one thing is another. Hallucination, I don’t believe it helps to say negative or positive as they are the same coin looked at from different sides. All hallucination is Pretending with a capital ‘P’ and big exclamation at the end! It is still just make believe.

Meta Models, Embedded Belief Systems, or my favourite Emotional Patterns, are all just other ways of describing an imagined reality, or rather pretending.

On my Hypnotist radio show last Sunday, in the chat room was a guy for whom hypnosis was difficult so he just played along, imagined, pretended he was hypnotised. Then a remarkable thing happened, the hypnosis became ‘real’. At least he believed it was real, and that’s what makes most of our stuff real, that belief. Which of course is just another word for pretending.

I like the way my good friend Reg Blackwood from New Zealand puts it.

“Hypnosis happens when you focus so well and imagine something so vividly that it becomes real to you.”

In that quote the hypnosis could be transposed with the word belief and ‘imagine’ could just as easily become pretend.

The thing with the subconscious or the Mind is that unlike the Brain – which has to work by logic being a physically limited machine, albeit a biological one – the Mind like stuff simple.

When I’m using my preferred induction, a slight variation on Elman’s eye closure, I’ve noticed that saying, “Pretend your eyes are closed,” Get’s a much faster and higher success than just saying imagine.

So a hypnotised person is without doubt the greatest of all pretenders whether that be pretending they’re Rudolf Nureyev or someone who doesn’t smoke. If they are doing it intently and focused enough then for them that pretending becomes their reality.

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Scriptnosis, Hypnosis Painting by Numbers

Hypnosis is an art. If it were a science then I am sure it would be taught in medical schools and universities.

The ‘research’ on the subject over the years would have brought about a definitive ‘truth’ as to how and why it works and you would be able to walk out on stage, do the script for it, and hypnotise the whole audience.

A dream of every stage hypnotist would be to bang them all under, wake them up a couple of hours later and tell them what a wonderful show they had just watched.

The truth is that like any art the result relies entirely on the skill of the artist in manipulating the medium to create the desired result. It also means that it requires a certain natural aptitude to apply it successfully and to create great works.

Anyone can paint. Even Chimpanzees can hold a brush and spatter some oil, acrylic or pigment suffused water on to a canvas or piece of paper. It isn’t hard to grasp the basics but does being able to do something mean you are doing it well?

I suppose you can say that hypnosis is different in as much as the medium you are manipulating has got its own ‘mind’ and can choose how it wants to go. If you are just scribbling by giving some advice down the pub sure. But that is just subconscious graffiti.

A true master would want to prepare, plan, and then when the basics are in place to allow the medium to flow whilst deciding where that flow should go. The true artist is then free to follow both their own preparation and more importantly to follow the ebb and flow of the feedback from their imagination and what that is causing in their emotions.

Most great paintings under xray show several different versions and ideas being applied on the way to the final result.

That’s something you won’t find in cold science. The flexibility to create on the fly.

Hypnosis is an art, it requires, at least in my book, a huge degree of flexibility and creativity and if you use a script written by someone who neither knows you or the person you are dealing with.

Then what you will end up with is nothing more than a Scriptnotist, not a Hypnotist.

And let’s face it, you won’t see a painting by numbers hanging in the Louvré.

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The Hypnotist Radio show

This week we interview Hugh Lennon the only Hypnotist we know to turn a dog into a swinging watch!

Hugh’s long stage career of nearly half a century started with lunch – with a lion!

From there it’s gone all over the world and he tells us he’s only ever used a single induction, although Hypnodog has tried out several dozen!

On the rest of the show….

Celebrity co-host Reg Blackwood will be presenting the weekly Reg’s Rant, I will be answering the BIG question and running the live “Sleep with Strangers” phone in which will win someone a signed copy of my new book, “How to Make Friends With Yourself and Influence People” available from Amazon, and the lovely Jane will be moderating the chat room on

Please add this show to your favourites and rate us! On Blogtalk Radio and on iTunes Podcasts …
Go On… You Know You Want To!

a Hypnotic High

The thing is, the truth of the thing is, that hypnosis can indeed be used to experience the world entirely through the imagination without the interference of the logical factors in your brain telling you that you can’t be bouncing on a rubber moon or floating in a psychedelic sea of used five pound notes being served peeled grapes by nubile ladies wearing not a lot. Sorry got carried away there.

The most watched hypnosis video on YouTube is entitled “Amazing Hypnosis Makes You High”. And my Auto Self Suggestion audio that gets me the most happy ‘private’ mail is designed to heighten your sensual experience in a Tantric way.

Actually you stand a far better chance of getting a high by standing on your head and trying to gargle.

The technique used of watching a spiral spinning in a darkened room will make your visual cortex play tricks with your balance for a few seconds but you won’t experience an altered hallucinatory or enhanced reality. More than likely you’ll just feel a bit sick.

Obviously watching you tube is not going to do the job, no matter how brain numbing it may be, not even the most basic Psychonautics will get produced. However, with the personal experience of a hypnotist who understands and knows what they are doing, the situation is an entirely different paradigm.

Under the influence of hypnosis as it were, you can get almost the same result as even the more escapist substances and pastimes, with the added bonus of having the whole process reversed and made therapeutic at the end, again stressing that this should be done under the direction of a good hypnotist.

Hypnosis is something we all do and get done by all the time without knowing we are doing or being done. It’s basic process, the giving and accepting of suggestion, is also how we teach and learn.

Hypnosis isn’t just a Bandaid for the emotional scuffs and scrapes of life. It can also be a fantastic tool for getting to places in our head and experience of life that would normally be available only with the danger of assaulting the physical body.

If you want you can experience that holiday you could never afford, be in space before Branson and fly higher than any pill or powder could ever get you without frying your brains, emptying your wallet, or giving you a bad case of incarceration.

Mostly it’s legal to imagine whatever you want to and providing a hypnosis high is terminated proficiently it’s about as harmful as day dreaming. In fact the benefits could well be way above normal escapism as the whole thing can be experienced for a ‘reason’.

Of course just as Doctors frown upon the recreational use of medicines, clinical hypnotherapy will frown and head shockingly tut-tut at the idea of hypnosis being used for the sake of enjoyment, happily though they neither own nor have a legal backing to disallow people using the capacity of their own minds to experience and think whatever they want to.

Of course they will shout that people will become dependant and addicted to this mental intoxication. If they do they need to think things through because if you are a good enough hypnotee for me to get you high, then you are a good enough hypnotee for me to easily be able to stop you smoking, get you to lose weight, eradicate a phobia and especially to prevent you becoming addicted to your own imagination.

Although to be honest, you already are.

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Hobby Hypnotists

Hypnosis as an art is now more than ever being done by Hobby Hypnotists who outweigh the professionals 4/1.

It’s amazing I now get many more fascinated curiosity driven people on my one day learning experiences and hypnosis masterclases than I do professional therapists or career driven people.

Personally I think that’s fantastic. Everyone should know the basics of hypnosis in the same way as everyone should know the basics of CPR and first aid.

If teachers were taught to understand how and when they are using suggestion not only would they know how best to install the necessary knowledge but they would better be able to positively influence the kids in their charge.

The same of course goes for parents.

If people knew the right way to suggest and had a basic grounding in the right suggestions then even in the most traumatic situations their desire to ‘help’ could become an actuality.

One of my students once was out walking with his baby daughter when he witnessed a car smash into a lamppost. He couldn’t get the badly injured and bleeding woman out but he could and did reduce her anxiety and bleeding by the direct use of suggestion and hypnosis.

Another couple of friends who had trained with me were hiking around the Grand Canyon when with the help of hypnotising each other and ‘increasing’ the input of their senses had an experience they’ll never forget.

Now don’t get me wrong. Amateur psychotherapy is not what I’m condoning here. But the use and study and experience of hypnosis as a hobby is fine. No more damaging to the business than hobby magicians, of which I am one, are detrimental to the magic circle which would probably die without them.
Kareeokay hasn’t killed the record business and one thing is for sure, hobby hypnotists will not only drag hypnosis kicking and screaming out of the maple lined couch garage but they will make people like me who teach technique and the art, much better and more widely targeted teachers.

Long live the Hobby Hypnotist.

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The Hypnotist Radio Show No4 – Sunday 18th April 2010

This weeks guest is one of the most multi-talented Hobby Hypnotists. Darren Altman not only hypnotizes or hypnotises, he plays drums and he does our voice overs as well!

He has a home studio from where he sends out voice-overs all over the world. He has played characters in computer games and animations, delivered celebrity impressions jingle packages for radio stations, voiced adverts for TV and radio, on-hold answering messages and more!

His clients include X-Box, ITV, The Discovery Channel, Intel, cash4gold.com, Virgin Mobile, Amazon.com, Nintendo Wii, Cisco Systems, NHS, 888Poker.com, British Telecom, Gala/Coral, Learn Direct and Webex.

As a freelance drummer, he is asked to play in diverse musical situations from jazz trios and Big Bands, Pop, Funk and Latin groups. He has recorded the music to numerous films such as The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers and Ella Enchanted and  and TV soundtracks such as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. And he has drummed for The Rat Pack in The West End and European tour, appeared as the house drummer for The Ronnie Scotts Allstars and toured the world with numerous artists.

Among the people he’s recorded and worked with are George Martin, The Pop Idol Big Band, Will Young, Gareth Gates, Pee Wee Ellis (James Brown), Darren Hayes, Anne Hathaway, Clare Teal and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  

When he’s not busy he co-leads Centre-Line, a contemporary jazz quartet and can be seen gigging all over the UK with numerous groups and artists.

And when he’s not busy some more he hypnotically zapps unsuspecting people on the streets of London.

To check out his work go to http://darrenaltman.com

I am Against NLP & Hypnosis, Words and Understanding

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I am against NLP

Apparently I am *against* NLP according to a comment on my very good friend Reg Blackwood’s blog.

This is in facet not true. Neuro Linguistic Programming is as far as one can tell, a study of human behaviour and how that results in excellence at any given task. And a theoretical application of it’s findings to create the potential for such excellence in others by dint of emulation. Being against it would need it to be something more than just another way of making the simple complex. It would be like being against flatulence.

That’s what it appeared to be when Messieurs Bandler and Grinder originally thought the whole thing up. Bandler is now on record of saying that it was a way of selling hypnosis to a larger market. However.

Now it’s mostly a sort of psudo-psychology for people who can’t be bothered to go to college to get the real thing, and it’s almost totaly ignored by established psychology and as such is massively attractive to lay therapists.

As a field of learning NLP is what it is – a sort of anchor for the good old school of let’s-make-it-up-as-we-go-along. As a tool for change it reminds me of most software produced by Microsoft, complex and bloated and full of stuff you’ll never use and which has only been tested in the mind of the developers. Even after all these years it’s still in Beta and gets updated every three months or so. That is compared to the Mac OSX approach of real direct hypnosis which is basically Zap ‘em and tell them to stop it!

Richard Bandler talks about NLP but uses, promotes and teaches what I and anyone with half a brain would realize was straight forward hypnosis. Well okay, not straight forward hypnosis. Side-winding corkscrew hypnosis. But at the end of the day hypnosis by any other name.

John Grinder seems to be closer to the original idea and so his videos are generally longer than Bandler’s and slightly more complex. More Linguistic. It’s like dong hypnosis but first having to shove the suggestions through the intellect rather than giving them directly to the subconscious.

So am I ‘against’ NLP? No.

I think it’s long-winded, largely inaccurate, inflexible, unproven and 80% bovine excreta but I’m not against it. You are free to waste your money and belief system on whatever you want.

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Hypnosis, Words and Understanding

Induce means to create or bring about. Comply means to agree or capitulate which means there is some kind of a choice involved. Understanding means the meaning given to a word, action or symbol by the observer or recipient.

Hypnotist in an online group, club or forum means having the capacity to ignore what a word means and to apply understanding ballistically.

Nothing is more frustrating than the endless discussions that go on and on in the hypnosis ‘community’ about what words mean. And nothing is more ludicrous than writing “Well that isn’t My understanding of what that means”, even in the face of the full dictionary definition.

Samuel Johnson must be rotating fast enough to achieve orbit.

I see that all the time. It’s okay I suppose. You have every right to ignore what some person has painstakingly researched and entered into the dictionary. Hey, language is after all organic and changes it’s pants at the drop of a diphthong. But does it help when the users of the Hypnotic in-speak can’t even agree on what the words they are using mean?

Semantics apparently are not important. Although to be honest that is usually an argument put forward by people who are not entirely sure what semantics actually means.

However, in Hypnosis nothing is really more important to the hypnotist than semantics. At least Lexical semantics. Because if you get the meaning of the words wrong for the hypnotee then their understanding comes into force and that could cause a lot of problems.

The subconscious mind understands words to a degree. To about the same degree as a bright nine year old child.

Vocabularies at that age are large and are not far off adult. Understanding however is far from clear or learned. The average kid can use some pretty damn complex words, even if they have no idea what they mean or what to do with them after. And funny enough the same can be said about the average adult. Especially those involved in a process which has it’s own language and understanding.

So what are Hypnotic words that and phrases that most people will understand, and that are not really open to argument?

Errm, ummmm, weeeelllll, urrrrrr, frarppppp, duhhhhhh….

Off hand there aren’t any. The artisans of hypnotism can’t even agree on what Hypnosis itself means let alone any of the other in-terms such as, Induce, Deepen, Compliance, Choice, and the big three, Subconscious, Unconscious and Conscious, all of which can apparently mean a process, a factor, an aspect and a real entity. And none of which come even close to meaning what their dictionary definition puts forward as a potentially agreeable understanding.

I put out a daily dose of hypnotism hints and tips to people who have signed up for it on my web site, and today’s is going to be this…

Find out what your hypnotee understands hypnosis to mean and give it too them. It’s their understanding that counts after all.

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This weeks The Hypnotist Radio Show

Sunday at 7pm UK Time my celebrity co-host Reg Blackwood and I are back together, this week interviewing American Stage Hypnotist Justin Tranz.

Justins record is indisputable, 10 years in his Las Vegas show, 18 months just finished on Broadway, 5 years with his own show on the PlayBoy channel where he hypnotizes couples to divulge their deepest darkest secrets.

Should be world class interview.

Of course there will be Regs Rant, The BIG [business in gear] Question, and the usual live chat and call in.

Are you ready to sleep with strangers?

Are Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy the same thing?

In my experience apart from the roots they ‘appear’ to have come from and the goals to which they are used – the two are very often entirely different.

It’s rather like asking if English Football and American Football are the same. And the answer to that has to be – well they are both games where as Patch Adams says, “You watch a load of millionaires playing with their balls.” That and the fact they both use the word Football.

On the whole people who are trained in hypnotherapy who come to my classes in hypnosis have largely never seen or used hypnosis. That is they do not induce, test by challenging the state and verifying full acceptance of suggestion and use direct suggestion to create a revised belief behaviour pattern in the Manipulated Subject. [ I have no problem with that term because it's a term that fits what Hypnosis does. ]

It’s also my experience to meet more people who have been to hypnotherapy and been dissatisfied that they never ‘felt hypnotised’ nor were they convinced that hypnosis had occurred.

However manipulation – skilful or artful management – isn’t an acceptable term in hypnotherapy because the two techniques and processes are not the same. In real Football a ‘penalty’ is a set free kick taken 10 yards away from the goal towards a goalkeeper and it is KICKED. In American Football a penalty is something entirely different even though the word is the same.

There is a huge difference I think between the term “Trance” when used by a hypnotherapist and that used by the hypnotist. Not because there is more than one trance but because the methods are so different the relaxed Trance state is the target in hypnotherapy. In hypnosis it only happens as a consequence of how the hypnotist is working.

I’m often asked what is the difference between a hypnotherapist and hypnotist and usually explain it this way:

A hypnotherapist will get you to relax and then perform the point of the exercise which is to use Psychotherapy of some description to enable your mind to make changes over a period of time.

A hypnotist bangs you under and tells you to stop it and do something better.

Now before you all start jumping up and down I personally have no problem with hypnotherapy and have no doubt it can and does work. I have no problem with psychotherapy. I have no problem with NLP [ it just makes me laugh a lot ] I even have no problem with American football of which I am an avid if only part-tim fan, even though there are too many players, too much ‘armour’ and it’s way more complex and complicated than is necessary for a sport. But the analogy between that and Hypnosis is spot on for me, because in English FOOTball the ball HAS to be kicked with the Foot.

So Hypnosis – the art of creating an entranced mesmeric state and formulating and delivering of direct suggestions which may Not be used therapeutically or remedially at all.

And Hypnotherapy {Relaxatherapy} – the technique of using psychotherapeutic approaches whilst the recipient is relaxed.

So although not entirely different fields of endeavour, hypnosis and hypnotherapy are very often entirely different in method, technique and experience, with a similar name.

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Hypnosis Does Stuff In The Brain – Official

Personally I’d always thought that if I give someone the suggestion they are “stuck” to thing, on things, in certain positions, that it was some sort of preternatural glue that clamped down on their limbs and sapped the will of movement from the little people who live in our bodies cells. I never for one moment thought the Brain would be involved!

Last year though when most people were laying on beaches getting skin cancer a group of researchers from the Neuroscience Centre and Medical School at the University of Geneva designed an experiment to assess motor and inhibitory brain circuits during hypnosis-induced paralysis. Basically this means getting stuck.

ScienceDaily reported it. (June 25, 2009) The study, published by Cell Press in the June 25 issue of the journal “Neuron”, uncovers the influence of hypnotic paralysis on brain networks involved in internal representations and self imagery.

So there you go. It’s official. Just as when you depress the accelerator pedal in your car the engine responds by working harder, give the mind a suggestion for a physical response and the brain and central nervous system works.

Research on the art of hypnosis like this always makes me smile. We human beings have this amazing capacity for researching and stating the bleeding obvious as if it’s some ground breaking cutting edge discovery. Sadly for the hard of thinking it is.

The connection between the Mind Brain and body is pretty much obvious to most people over the age of around seven. You think, “Pick the spoon up,” your brain takes in some data from your eyes and ears, does some quick calculus and then signals all sorts of bits of your neurology and musculature to take the required action and the force being with you, the spoon up is picked by your fingers.

The amazing thing with this research though is that the conclusion was reached that the suggestion to be cataleptic actually doesn’t stop the motor cortex from working, it just stops the thought to move working.

I guess this is sort of important for you if you don’t know about hypnosis and think we all have rotating eyeballs and eat babies. It means that even though you won’t be able to drop the spoon if given the suggestion not to, you will be able to when given the suggestion that everything is back to normal. And that’s because hypnosis works through your brain, not the other way around.

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SEX Hypnosis

It had to happen sooner or later. Erotica Hypnotica is now available on the InterWeb and you don’t need to pile up your swinging watches to reach the top shelf.

I’ve just discovered a fast growing social network for hypnotists and hypnotees, maybe hypnoholics, all to do with the erotic side of our imaginative and creative selves which of course you know I am interested if you’ve downloaded my audio entitled “Tantric Sensuality” from my Auto Self Suggestion System.

The site is called Inraptured and is far from the sleazy place some people would have you think it is.

Now, where is that brown Macintosh?….