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.

My thoughts on head hacking anywhere are:….

First off. I taught Anthony Jacquin and Kevin Sheldrake impromptu techniques on my stage hypnosis masterclass in 2004. They have taken it way beyond anything I have ever done with it and have found a market for it. I would like to think I somehow played a small part in getting them going, although Ant was already a very good and successful hypnotherapist. But I have to admit I’m totally jealous of their Youth – compared to me – their energy and their following. I think they should be banned and possibly imprisoned! Or at the very least hung drawn and quartered. How dare they have a whale of time being well known and successful!

The ‘Problem’ with street hypnosis seems to ME to be this… Except for my friend in New Zealand Reg Blackwood and the head hacking team themselves, the exponents of the Street form don’t appear to make money from it, even at a busking level. And lets face it the odd free drink or cucumber may be refreshing or bowel cleansing but you can’t buy your Broadband with it. So the point seems to be to entertain the performer more than a paying audience, but then that can be said of most people who do magic as well as over 80% of people buying tricks today will never use them outside of a small group of friends or colleagues. And what seems to upset many established stage pros is that street hypnosis is way more popular than full blown stage hypnosis at the moment.

The difference between Stage and Street for me is that whilst one can be passably executed with a knowledge of simple technique, the other can Only be presented with just a simple basic knowledge of technique. I can think of several professional stage performers who’s shows are not very good in theatrical terms. However unlike singers, dancers or actors not being very good doesn’t show that much as we are still a very small bunch and for everyone who has seen a full stage show there are a dozen who have not. Although the InterWeb is certainly putting a few heads on blocks. I’m planning on putting my full show up there, gulp!

Most stage ‘shows’ are just a collection of routines with no shape or finesse. Few of them are actually ‘shows’ but nothing more than Street done on stage. Most ‘Comedy’ hypnotists are not themselves funny – for the record I’ve never used that term – with the exception of perhaps Ken Webster that certainly covers most UK players. So perhaps the problem with Street Hypnosis as far as the stage performers are concerned is that it shows how anyone can hypnotise and when the amazing ‘skill’ is shown to be a shallow disguise of simple psychological procedures, then presentation skills and showmanship is up for scrutiny.

Stage hypnosis took a knock along with all forms of stage entertainment in the 90′s in the UK. No, not because there were more people doing shows as some people think, it was the fall of the Miners Welfare clubs and working mens clubs which taught people to go to live shows from being children, right up to the simple fact that it was shown on TV and people then only wanted to see the bloke on the Tele.

Then as the century turned we entered the age of ‘Show Me’ where with the internet and the Karaoke mindset more people want to do rather than watch. In 1999 when we started teaching there were 13 schools of hypnosis, at last count there are 162 and 10 of those are ‘stage’.

The truth is I didn’t like the street approach at first. Not sure I do now. For my old head they looked as if they should be taking a box of tissues with them and in the early videos came across as a group of giggling schoolboys playing pranks and copping a quick feel from drunk birds in pubs. Some still do. But to be honest and when I Really look at it, there is little difference between that and me making peoples arms go stiff without bothering to hypnotise in recognisable fashion – certainly not using a trance state, or removing someones phobia at a party with my ‘Hypnotic Powers!’ when there is no chance of that becoming a booking.

Then, I am doing it for Me.

I am after all, above all else, a SHOW OFF, and that is what street hypnosis is all about. It’s about showing off. Pure egotism. Having a laff at the expense of others which, to be frank is what hypnosis relies on, the fact that people laugh AT other people in embarrassing situations. People doing ridiculous things, that’s right, being ridiculed.

So for me the difference is this. Street Hypnosis is about mind manipulation techniques entertaining the protagonists and little else. Stage Hypnosis is, or should be, about the art of making those techniques a Show and entertaining a fee paying audience.

This video demonstrates both a very fast version of the eye closure – my favourite induction – and a rapid intervention. Enjoy!

If you like to be educated and entertained at the same time, you need to join us Monday on the Interweb.

Why is talking to yourself so important?

I was in the post office one day when the rain outside was doing a great impersonation of Niagara Falls.

It wasn’t just raining it was a deluge, which basically means that the wind and sun had scooped up a good wedge of the North Atlantic and the North Sea and had managed to drag the billion gallons a few hundred miles south to Devon and then decided to throw the bloody lot down at once. Mostly on the people who needed to buy a stamp.

Now I’m in the que when this little and presumably old lady came tottering in. I guessed she was either old or her she’d had her face out in the water too long.

We are not talking the wrinkles you get on your finger tips in the bath here. This was more like the satellite Google Map of the high Alps.

Any way in she tottered holding on to one of those formula one walking frames. You know the ones with the breaks to slow them down when they are cornering?

Anyway, she short of shook herself a bit like a dog and managed to wet everything inside the shop that the roof had otherwise been keeping dry, and then she spoke the classic mantra of the terminably weather obsessed.

“Isn’t the weather miserable?” she asked of no one in particular and everyone in general.

“No”, I replied, “The weather is the weather, you’re the one that’s miserable.”

Now I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking I was being sarcastic and that she didn’t actually mean that the weather was fed up and was taking prozac.

You are thinking that the words she spoke were, well, just words, and that even though I had exhibited a high degree of metrological knowledge and sartorial observation, I was just gobbling off to an old lady for no reason other than because I could.

Well yes, it was partiality that but it was mostly because when we talk to ourselves and to others about ourselves if we start to listen then we get two things. One, we get the picture of what we project to the outside world and two, and way more important, we get what we think of ourselves inside. What we really think.

Everyday you talk to yourself and about yourself.

You affirm your beliefs, explain your behaviour, predict your future. You persuade, cajole, order and suggest stuff constantly and consistently.

To Yourself and that’s what makes you – You.

And you are very good at being you.

For this reason alone you can be very good at being the you, YOU really want to be.

And all you need to do is to use the techniques of self seductive suggestion that you are using right now to keep you where you are.

Imagine working with the worlds greatest hypnotist and suggestionist all the time with no trance or need for swinging watches or staring eyeballs.

Well you can, because that’s you that is.

SELFSEDUCTION steps
Think have a thought – doesn’t need to be ‘positive’ but it should be producetive.

Imagine – pretend make up, create, whenever you get a great thunk, back that up with detail and desire.

Listen – to yourself, what are you telling the world about you and what are you telling yourself to be?

Repair – When you say something bad about yourself repair it, reverse it. Put it right because no one else will or can.

Don’t wait! – Repair it as it happens, even in the middle of a conversation.

Say it out loud – don’t internalise it. You talk to yourself out loud when you are alone because self suggestion is strongest done that way.

Use GOOD words – Good words like will, have, now, can, always, definitely, yes.

Use EMOTIVE words – like awesome, fantastic, cool, sexy, amazing.

Get emotional – feel the words, it’s great seeing pictures but your mind will respond best to feelings so will your brain as it produces dopamine and endorphins.

Habitual ritual – do it all the time. You talk to yourself all the time anyway but make self suggestion really useful by repeating it in a ‘special’ set out to do this thing way. Then it works a bit like saying preyers did when you were a kid. And the same thing is listening – You are.

Using Rapid Repetition – a little trick I developed on my one day training – the more you say the more it works.

One thing at a time – change one thing then move on. Don’t spread the attention, that would be like having a 1 on 1 with the population of Wolverhampton all at once.

The 30 day rule – most habits take around 30 days to acquire and bed in according to Nasa, although this isn’t rocket science it seems to work best that way.

Give yourself believable suggestions – don’t tell yourself you can fly, walk on water, run through brick walls or live beneath the sea without breathing gear. Your mind might just believe you and that could cause shit loads of problems.

Make it Seductive – Seduction:-
Something that tempts or attracts, beguiles or persuades.
The process of deliberately enticing a person into an act.

Self Seduction:-
Enticing and cajoling oneself into pleasant and rewarding behaviours and beliefs.

Suggestion:-
The process of inducing a thought, sensation, or action in a receptive person without giving rise to reflection in the recipient.

Autosuggestion:-
Suggestion arising from oneself, as the repetition of verbal messages as a means of changing behaviour.

I’m thinking of running a teleseminar on Self Seduction if enough people would be prepared to pay a ridiculously small fee for virtual seats and get an up close and personal Q & A.

To get me to make this a definite go just comment below and say yes.

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A Record discount.

I had a great e-mail this week from a student who on the way back home from the advanced hypnosis training in Bristol applied just one small part of my Svengali System with the taxi driver who she didn’t really understand.

Even through the breakdown in understanding due to English not being a primary language, the result she got was a very happy taxi driver and a discount!

Now that shocked me. I knew this stuff was good but everyone knows taxi drivers almost hold you to ransom for a tip. To get a discount must be a record.

I just love it when the plan comes together.

If you haven’t got it yet the book based on the online Svengali System training, “How to make friends with yourself and Influence people” is on Amazon.

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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

Does Hypnosis exist?

Back in the 1960′s the Amazing Kreskin the mesmeric mentalist and something of a hero of mine, proved in a court of law that hypnosis was the applied art of suggestion and that as an entity it actually does not exist. Sadly of course he’s totally wrong. Even though I can’t ‘prove’ it and claim the reward he offers in his latest book Kreskin Confidential.

Hypnosis is a word that describes the process of interaction between two people. It also describes the result of that interaction as a state of mind. Now Kreskin argues that there is no altered state but that’s like saying that when you are in love or in lust you are exactly the same as when you are in distress or angry.

Actually you are. You are in a mood and it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has ever had moods that they may not exist in the same way as Mount Etna exists, but just like Etna they are there and often just as hard not to notice or climb over.

Emotions and beliefs are the stock in trade of the hypnotist as we deliver our suggestions to the root of our moods and behaviours directly to the subconscious Mind. Which unlike the conscious Brain also doesn’t exist in any way we can put bits of it into a test tube and see how it works.

So emotions, faith, hope, disgust and despair likewise don’t exist so that’s good and bad because as they don’t exist you can’t feel them and they can not affect you even thought they do every single minute of every single day. Mmmmmmm.

Hang on, just let me wipe the tear from my eye because this thinking makes my brain sting.

Lets look at this. There is no such thing as hypnosis. Then there is no such thing as suggestion which in psychological terms means – and this is from dictionary.com not my head,
a. the process of inducing a thought, sensation, or action in a receptive person without using persuasion and without giving rise to reflection in the recipient.
b. the thought, sensation, or action induced in this way.

And hypnosis basically means the same thing, it certainly describes it. But it can’t because it does work but does not exist, so it can’t.

Is it making your head hurt as well. Well that’s okay because pain is subjective and does not cause an altered state of focus, belief or concentration and therefore, jut like hypnosis, it, and you for that matter, don’t exist.

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Hypnosis and The Placebo theory

I’m going to put aside the above and assume that a process of the delivery, management, creation and acceptance of suggestion does exist and that for sake of clarity and because it’s easier I’m going to call it Hypnosis.

Now the argument springs forth every now and then that hypnosis is Placebo. Of course this is because the people who put forth this idea haven’t read the dictionary again and don’t actually understand the word they are using or that they have some vague idea that placebo is a bad word, like work or haemorrhoids, and that like those things you shouldn’t wish the experience of a placebo on your friends.

Of course if truth is told you will and do wish such things on your worst enemies but then that is what worst enemies are for. It creates balance.

The fact is Placebo means – again with many thanks to the dictionary;
a substance having no pharmacological effect but given merely to satisfy a patient who supposes it to be a medicine.
b. a substance having no pharmacological effect but administered as a control in testing experimentally or clinically the efficacy of a biologically active preparation.

And it is also from the Roman Catholic Church. Meaning the vespers of the office for the dead: so called from the initial word of the first antiphon, taken from Psalm 114:9 of the Vulgate. {No I don’t what it is either!}

Now, seeing as how hypnosis isn’t a substance and the person who experiences is probably aware it isn’t a medicine, and that as a process it has nothing it can substitute for, except maybe some other form of psychological technique – maybe it would be as impossible for hypnosis to be a placebo as it would be for a chemical pill to be a cure for phobias.

I rather suspect that this idea comes from the fact that both hypnosis and placebos apparently work because of the human belief and behaviour system. Although in actual fact Hypnosis has a much better success rate than placebos. For that matter education and religion also work on the good old ‘this happens so I do this’ system so I guess they are a placebo as well by this understanding. Although what medicine they could be replacing is hard to fathom.

The fact is that it really doesn’t matter whether you are sold Snake Oil or a chemical concoction based on extract of tarmac. If it works is the whole point surely? With hypnosis the important thing is has your belief, and therefore your behaviour, changed? And if so, well no placebo has been administered because after all – there is no such thing as hypnosis. [wink]

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And finally

This Friday at the time of 18.30 hours or 6.30 pm in the UK GMT I’m launching my first The Hypnotist Radio show on BlogTalkRadio.com

If you go along to the page you can get it to remind you in your local time when the show is but for the record here’s the gumph from the show page:

The format show.

Laying down the format for all forthcoming The Hypnotist Radio shows. The first of many.

Joined by co-host Reg Blackwood, Hypnotist, Comedian, Trainer, New Zealand’s number 1 and the world’s only Street Hypnotist who makes money doing it not just teaching hypnosis at http://www.Quicknotist.com

You can call in using a phone or indeed Skype, use the text chat room and you can send emails and owls or pigeon post.

Live on the show You can ask the BIG [Brain In Gear] question about using hypnosis to add value and profit to your business and marketing.

Tell us about your Situation which maybe we can help your sort out, confidence, habits, cravings, stress, habits, emotional angst, phobias and of course habits. All sorts of problems can be sorted in the Dear Jon section of the show.

When ever I can persuade a famous, infamous or just free hypnotist to throw caution to the wind, I’ll be conducting the Hypnotist Interview asking all the questions you really want to know like who, what, why, when and where.

And to spice things up there will be prizes and Blatant Bribes and you’ll be mesmerised by the magnificent content on the only hypnosis show online designed not to therapise you!

Tune in to the Hypnotist Radio with me Jonathan Chase and get ready to Sleep With Strangers

The Hypnotist Radio is an Edutainment Production from the Academy of Hypnotic Arts ltd.

The Guardian newspaper ran a piece this week in their business problems section, a sort of Agony Aunt self help section for wannabe
entrepreneurs, on the ethics of using Hypnotherapy to boost performance at work.

In “Is it OK to be hypnotised to improve my work performance?” a boss
has apparently suggested ‘Cognitive Hypnotherapy Treatment’ to his sales team to boost their performance.

Of course the author is a bit nonplussed and is questioning the ethics of being told he is sick or ill and needs ‘treatment’.

As always the worse thing here is the addition of the Suffix ‘therapy’ to the word hypnosis. Regardless of the origin of the word meaning to
give service, the common understanding is that therapy is what happens when you are broken and need to get fixed. That and the relentless and so far largely fruitless attempts by people in the therapy game trying to be ‘accepted’ by the established medical profession as a ‘clinical’
or ‘medical’ practice.

Now in the UK we have a wonderful duel aspect of our medical services. Whilst on the whole the average person will accept that the NHS works and saves lives etc, the majority of people largely distrust their doctors and hospitals with a grumbling passion we Brits are so bloody good at. In the States they seem to be even less enamoured of their medical professionals often portrayed, certainly on
the InterWeb if not by their TV shows, as money grubbing sawbones.

Personally I’ve always had a problem with my beautiful art of hypnosis being associated with something that for one it isn’t the only use of
our mind, and for two isn’t actually what the majority of hypnotherapists do. The vast majority of them actually do psychotherapy to someone with their eyes closed, and an even bigger majority do that from a converted bedroom or dining room on a part
time basis and have the audacity to join form and join ‘Professional’ associations.

Now the usual argument is that Stage Hypnosis gives the thing a bad name and that images like the one from Getty used in the Guardian
article of a
guy swinging a watch is the reason people have a bad image of the process and the people practicing it. But let’s look at the facts.

I went on a Google of hypnosis and hypnotherapy and whilst I found 1 case of an English Stage Hypnotist being found guilty of “A lack of
due care and attention” and being told to pay £6,000 in a civil case brought about by a disgruntled person who volunteered to go on stage and then blamed the hypnotist for feeling poorly six months later. He didn’t bother to defend the case so lost by default, the fact that her supporting hypnotherapist who brought the case to court was the infamous Derek Crusell who was involved with the campain aginst stage hypnosis and had also been the therapist on the more well know Paul McKenna case wich which Paul did defend and easily won because it’s silly thinking that taliking in an imaginary way like a Martian is going to cause full blown psychosis. But I guess that has nothing to do with anything.

I found Several cases of hypnoTherapists being Jailed for Cat to a few. And if I can find that most certainly the general public can. What I can’t find however is any public rebuttal in the defence of the slip ups. I know that wouldn’t actually kiss and make it better but it might go some way to show that hypnotherapy actually cared, even if it did come across as Volkswagen apologising for buying and still making the Skoda.

On the whole the general public’s view of hypnosis administered as a Therapy and its use as a form of recreation and a direct method of
personal development and experience enhancement is actually pretty accurate. And if that’s bad then hypnotherapy has no one to blame but
itself. They scream and shout that it’s the stage hypnotists who do what they do in front of thousands of witnesses, giving people the opportunity to romp about being kids again, that give hypnosis a bad image. May the Gods forbid it could be the fact that being hypnotised 1 on 1 behind closed doors and opening your most innermost self to a bloke who can’t even be bothered to rent an office and who has more letters behind his name than in it, might just be a bit scary.

Did you know that in the United Kingdom except for Northern Island Stage Hypnotists have to be licensed by your local authority for every public show and have to carry insurance where as anyone with no training other than a correspondence course, which lets face it is an expensive book, can set themselves up as a hypnotherapist?

I think it’s about time the therapy game stopped blaming everyone else for their image and started to clean up their own act. And I wish that the hypno’therapists’ who don’t actually hypnotise would call what they do Psychotherapy and stop giving the beautiful art of Hypnosis and the Hypnotist who practices it, such a bad image.

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Mindset for weight loss.

People are fat. There are more fat people than thin people in nearly all of the westernised developed countries. And being as the majority
of the rest of the world doesn’t count Most people are fat.

The truth of course is that most people are normal. Because most people have the mindset to be just as they are.

It’s the countries that are inundated with reports news and personal development evangelists telling us we are inadequate and focusing our
attention on obesity that have all the problems.

But don’t worry. Thanks to the InterWeb and the invasion of McD KFC & PH followed closely by translations of all the nut case diets out
there the rest of the world will soon catch us up.

Now I’ll admit to having around 50 or so pounds more than someone my height should on average have. I do however have an excuse… I don’t care much. I’m more or less happy where I am and don’t have any driving need to go anywhere else. However I am still intelligent enough to understand the process that got me here and what to do to get out of it if I wanted to.

It’s Mindset.

I know, I know – what’s a MindSet besides Personal Development inspeak? Well basically it’s two things, your mood and your repeated habitual thoughts concerning something. It’s the pattern of thinks and thunks your head runs when you are subjected to a certain event, like looking at your scales or trying to run upstairs, or worse reading a menu or trying desperately hard not to have just one more mouth full.

It’s your mindset that actually decides what you choose and puts into your body. If that mindset says you want to feel satisfied and ‘full’
then that is how you will choose to eat. If your mind set is different today, such as when you are upset and ‘Can’t eat’, then the story
is different.

What you do is down to what you think about what you are doing. Mindset.

So how do you get the mindset to change what you do as far as eating is concerned? Of course being a hypnotist I’d say go see a hypnotist.
On the other hand having a traumatic event can do it as well but I suggest you don’t go for that one as it tends to sting a bit. What is
left is restructuring your mindset the way it was created. Over time by repetition by talking to yourself.

Self suggestion is undoubtedly what creates the mindset that keeps you where you are. If it’s that good you can use it if you want to
change.

Just focus your mind on what you want. “I am thin.” would do but if you take that beyond just having a normal body shape to what you
can do when you get there, it’s way more powerful. “I Move With Ease and Grace” is the phrase I chose for my audio download recording,
because it’s that, along with suggestions that confirm that you want to do this, that will create the right mindset for your desired
outcome.

If you can’t be bothered to formulate your own self suggestion and put it in a format designed to use music and words to help you talk yourself into a better body regime then I have of course done it for you. And it’s on the front of the site on the homepage special offer box.

After all it’s what got you here, so we know for sure it can get you somewhere else.

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HypnoGoggle

I Googled “Hypno” just to see what would happen and in among the usual tragic attempts to give me a video hypno-high and the expected
stopsmokingreducstress stuff I found a Brilliant looking space age set of rollerblades-come-lesiure-shoe a design company who’s site looks
like my kids attempt at a WordPress blog, and buried deep dooooown a bed.

Not surprising and not very amusing.

Now last time I reported on my excursion into google-masturbation, that’s searching for your own name, so I thought I’d try it with some
of the other guys I know in the hypnotist business in the UK.

Naturally Paul McKenna is pretty much in control of his name. Although the Paul McKenna Band, and the reader for Physics at Strathclyde
University do get a look in on page one and two.

Derren Brown who of course doesn’t do stage hypnosis except when he is on stage or the TV benefits from misspelling his first name and no
other DB did I see, and I went five pages down and gave up.

So maybe there’s a lesson there. If you want to dominate Google, misspell your name!

Smiles
JonChase