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.

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? 

How to Protect Yourself From “Street Hypnosis” and NLP

Set the scene. You are walking down the street, in the park or having a night out with your friends. A complete stranger walks up to you and before you know what’s happening the conversation has turned to hypnosis or maybe just to imagination and pretending.

Then twenty minutes later you find yourself standing there wondering where that time went while your compatriots are either guffawing or also looking
as stunned as you feel.

What’s happened?

Scene two is different, you are at an event and a person walks up to you, announces they are a professional hypnotist or magician hired as entertainment by the venue or event organisers and would you like to take part. You wake up ten minutes later with an audience applauding both you and your performing friend who offers to give you back the memory of astounding reality you’ve just experienced in the last few minutes.

I have no problem with scene two and neither should you. Forgetting any laws
or insurance neither of which would protect you from incompetence or for
that matter stupidity, in the second scenario you can be assured that the
hypnotist has two things to protect. Their reputation and their payment. If
you like their living.

Similarly if you are somewhere and hear someone discussing hypnosis who then
says they are a therapist, then if you ask and they hypnotise you then you
have instigated the thing and they will want you, and the people watching,
to take their card as a client base building exercise.

In both of the later scenes you have the security that the reason for the
hypnosis is one of professional demonstration as opposed to a simple ego
trip for the hypnotist.

Sadly that isn’t always the case. And when it isn’t you need to know how to
recognise and to avoid being effected by hypnosis in places you wouldn’t go
looking for it.

Unless it’s being done so quickly that it borders on assault, or so covertly
that the only way to really avoid it is to hum a tune in your head and not
talk to anyone you don’t know, the approach, setup and induction will almost
always follow a set procedure.

So what to look for?

Watch out for anyone who tries to break your pattern. That is they will hold
out their hand and as you go to shake it they will pull yours toward them or
pull it up towards your face.

They may just shake your hand and not letting go put their free hand on your
elbow or shoulder. While they do this they will either ask outright if you
have ever been hypnotised or much more powerfully they will ask if you have
ever felt “different” or “imagine yourself floating, or distracted, or day
dreaming”.

One of my favourite terms is very simple and gets most people into a
subconscious state instantly and that is, “Just Imagine.”

If they are a little less subtle they may ask you to stare at something,
anything, doesn’t really matter, although something bright or their own eyes
or your own finger are among the most popular.

Once they get past this point they are in your head and when that happens
they become your conscious and your conscience. That’s right they are the
ones making all the decisions and your subconscious hasn’t even been given
the suggestion that you will not do anything that goes against your morals
or your beliefs. This isn’t exactly right and is something which every
hypnotist should implant because when they don’t your morals and beliefs are
a very thin veneer and they are easily suggested away.

So now you are hypnotised and no longer in control of any but your very
basic actions what is the point? Well in a lot of cases of street hypnosis,
certainly when it’s covert, the intent is the gratification of the
hypnotists ego and as such your benefit is a cursory consideration because
they have nothing to loose. Not even in a court as it’s impossible even for
the best of us to prove hypnosis occurred.

So can you go out and buy an anti-hypnosis shield? Is their a tin foil hat
that will stop the hypnotic rays from entering your skull? Does your local
Radio Shack or Maplins stock a covert hypnotist detector? Sadly no. You have
two alternatives.

One is to visit a great hypnotist professionally and get them to install the
suggestion against any inappropriate hypnosis, or your entering an unwilling
hypnotic state at the suggestion of someone else.

Or you can learn how it’s done and then be in the place where if it’s
attempted with you, your subconscious can take over and reverse the
direction so the would be hypnotist becomes the hypnotised.

To learn how to turn the tables on anyone trying to hijack
control of your brain without permission, click here to
pick up a copy of my Svengali System online training.

Or you can own my new book “How to Make Friends With Yourself and Influence People” the transcript of the audio course available on Amazon or any other book seller.

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TheHypnotistRadio.com

No show on Sunday this week. I’m installing how to do real hypnosis into 30 odd minds this weekend and that is all about focus. But we recorded a very special mastermind show with me,Jonathan Chase, Justin Tranz, Reg Blackwood and our guest British award winning hypno-magician James Brown. You can listen to the show from the BlogTalkRadio page or here as a Podcast from iTunes

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

How to protect yourself from Political Persuasion NLP and Hypnosis.

NLP is Hypnosis when it works and unproven psychobabbling rubbish when it doesn’t. And if you live in Britain you are going to see and hear a lot of it over the next few months as we head towards that great British display of massive apathy which we call The Election.

It’s true, everyone who has to ‘speak’ is paying out huge chunks of the wages you pay them, to people like me, to learn how to use presupposition, visual anchors, embedded commands, Ericksonian language patterns and of course body language, to persuade and influence you to stand at a polling booth and choose them in favour of all the other people who apart from wearing a different colour tie or scarf are saying exactly the same thing with the same intent.

The thing is thanks to largely erratic training and the inevitable lack of finesse the vast majority of them end up sounding like a babbling-bush idiot and looking like something between a badly sown glove puppet and a Windmill. The scary thing is of course that it does actually work if you don’t know what you are looking or listening for.

Last night I sat and watched our PM – that’s prime minister, or president in everything but name for our friends in the sad position of not having any tradition older than the average pine tree. I watched Mr Brown on the news last night with his head poised at an angle that made him look like someone had removed a couple of vertebra, this apparently makes you look honest, as does the head
forward eyes up stance so favoured when you are an adulterating publicity seeking princess trying to convince people you are the personification of an angel.

Next we see the moment silence followed by the classic “Because” move. If you give a reason following the word “Because” it adds weight to your argument because people like to think you’re telling them everything. It doesn’t matter what comes after that magic word “I think you should do as I tell you Because it works that way.” Is an argument politicians use all the time if you really listen.

Actually politicians usually believe the above anyway so their impersonation of the spring loaded nodding dog you see on the parcel shelves of cars driven by people with the sense of humour of a slug, is being backed by Self Belief and Intent. A rare and powerful combination.

Next we watch the body. Mostly, and in the case of Mr Brown definitely, politicians are not oil paintings. Not of the Mona Lisa variety anyway, think more birds eye view of a badly executed pothole repair. It comes from all those years of stress as they toil to stop their erstwhile employers realising that they out number the occupants
of Whitehall Palace 500,000 to one and that they actually have a legal right to say ‘stop it’. All those years give the political visage the stickiness of a superglue sandwich and the flexibility of Michael Jackson’s death mask. Once they begin to smile or frown the chosen expression just stays there for hours.

Until of course they learn NLP and modelling, the safe face of suggestion and hypnosis. Then they realise that if you move something the eyes are attracted to the gesture and away from the face, especially away from the eye of the speaker where the true point of wanting to be in one of the highest paid jobs in the country can be detected. Then the focus is directed away from the obvious rubbish they are saying by the subconscious sign language which is, according to some of the experts, 90% of the communication mechanics between humans.

That is of course unless you are on radio, the telephone, txt’ing or typing and frantically misspelling in an InterWeb chatroom or on FaceSpace where our body language is replaced Neuro Linguistically by the use of embedded commands such as placing the call to action word ‘Now’ after a question, i.e., “When is Now a good time to give up all hope and enter the domain of despair you’ll live in for the next five years after voting for me?” And of course in writing and speaking by adding the dread exclamation mark to everything *!*. And I do mean Everything!

Actually the world communicates more now with video as the technology catches up with the fact that the human eyes are quite important. Most communication nowadays, especially in the UK if you are 16 and have thumbs more dexterous than Nijinski’s toes, is done without the ability to see the protagonists body. However most experts will tell
you that doesn’t matter, if you make the gestures anyway the listener will be able to detect them through the subconscious recognition of vocal tone changes in your voice. Which actually is probably true. It certainly works if you smile, people can and do ‘hear’ that for sure.

So how did this all come to the point where you should know how to protect yourself from it? There was a time of course when a great orator was simply that. Good at talking. Usually because they believed in what they were saying. They then said stuff in a certain way, moved their head and body just so. Clenched their fist or beat their chest. Or did nothing physically but changed the tone of their voice and spoke with absolute focus.

Back in the seventies, when I was watching the like of Robert Halpern on stage in Glasgow and the Amazing Kreskin on television and fuelling my own burning ambitions in hypnosis and total world domination, there was a movement of events which led to the idea that if you do and say what I do and say you become as good as me at what I do. Which may or many’nt be true. You’ll certainly not become better at what You do but that’s a different story.

This led to the phenomenon of people learning to be speakers and presenters rather than just believing in something and telling people about it with passion. At that time in the Americas, of which some States are United, NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming was developed, discovered or just plain invented by a linguist and a mathematician in California who were both very good at subconscious communication and suggestion. The force behind the ‘copy me become me’ school of thought was born. Or at least was wonderfully commercialised and corperatised so that the word Hypnosis didn’t come into the equation.

And this is what led to almost all speakers, especially of the trained variety, all looking like a cross between Ghandi, Hitler and Mother Teresa and sounding like the overly polite southern state psychiatrist which most of the really serious language patterns are based on, a guy called Erickson.

The thing that makes all this work of course is belief. No, not yours in their argument, what makes it actually work is their belief that doing this stuff means they are in control of your desires and decisions. Believe something strongly enough and you can rave and wave all over the place and regardless of any logic a vast amount of people can and will follow you. And like it or not if you don’t know what to look or listen for you too will be affected to some degree.
Sometimes even more so if you think you are critically analysing their drivel.

So, what do you do to protect yourself from the persuasion invasion already beginning to turn our tellies and papers into a mesmerising cock fight. Yes they are using the power that your inability of being unable to look away from the car accident gives them. So, how do you stop your mental process being directed and changed without your
knowledge?

Firstly don’t watch. Close your eyes or turn around. Body language is great when people can see it and pretty useless otherwise. Secondly listen for the words ‘Now” or any word that signals they are talking to You, You and Your are the obvious ones. And of course don’t forget the reason words like Because. I’d bet a pound to a penny that whatever comes before that word is dubious and after the word is a lie.

Thirdly move to an island in the south Pacific until after the
elections returning with the honest statement that no one can blame you because you weren’t even at the scene of the incident.

Fourthly? Vote for the raving loony party who are usually too poor or too crazy to use this stuff and who promise that when they get in they are taking everyone on holiday to the Bahamas for two weeks on the falling over fluids. Which for me is more believable than what the other lot will have you believe.

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Can we cure M.E.?

I read today that a woman in Britain was set free from the murder charge with which she had been given after assisting her daughter to commit suicide after suffering from ME from the age of 14 until she died at the age of 31.

I’m not interested in the morals of the case. People decide to do stuff and if the persons involved all know what they are doing and are not innocent or incompetent or just too plain stupid to make decisions then I figure it’s their life, their choice

What does interest me about this case is ME or Myalgic
Encephalopathy/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome or basically just feeling sick and tired with no apparent reason.

Now I have personally never dealt professionally with ME. Although I suspect I may have under a different label. Its symptoms which vary considerably to the point where there really are no specific ones and being labeled with the condition is what’s left after the medical diagnosticians fail to reveal anything and everything else. So in medical terms it stands for ‘No Idea’.

I have however read about similar states in very old books. In many books written before 1939 when the ME tag was added so that it could be filed more neatly, conditions of the spirit and body which seem unerringly similar to the dread ME were around. Everything from being possessed by a lazy spirit, through Ague and Morbidity right through to Hysteria. Yet, except for the possession theory, they all agreed that the root cause of the malaise was emotional or of the spirit!

Now don’t get me wrong here. If you have ME it is very real. Just because something is said to be all in the mind doesn’t mean that it does not affect the body, that would be stupid. The smallest emotion affects the body. That’s its job. Otherwise fear wouldn’t make you run away or freeze and amusement wouldn’t result in aching ribs and crying. And trust me I do know what it feels like to be consistently uncomfortable in some way and tired for most of the rest of the time. having a neuromuscular condition myself. So I empathise. What I am doing however is wondering about the cause and of course, the possible remedy of what is a totally debilitating condition.

On the UK ME association site – there’s an association for just about everything now isn’t there? On that site -
http://www.meassociation.org.uk/ – in the section marked
Complementary treatments the only mention of anything dealing with the mind is that of the ‘Lightening Process’ a combination of NLP, Hypnotherapy and Life Coaching.

Sad really because I have no doubt that even if hypnosis can’t get rid of the thing itself it can undoubtedly help to combat the effects at an emotional level which could make the difference between life being so unbearable that it stops being an option and getting enough from your existence that you at least enjoy more than you suffer.

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Google Masturbation

And now – this being the first of the Weekly Wednesday Wisdoms – to set the format for my meanderings I will have a look around the InterWeb for something Silly, unbelievable, disgustingly cute, terribly bad or just sodding amazing.

Something designed to fill your head with Dopamine
and make you smile. And just for the look of the thing I shall apply the eye of the Hypnotist to whatever we may find. . . if you have any suggestions where I should go then leave them below if there is a space for comments or go to TheHypnotist.co.uk and drop some graffiti off there.

Now this may or may not make you smile but it certainly made my grin chin appear. I Googled the name Jonathan Chase and pressed ‘I’m feeling lucky!’ and it went right to My site!

That’s it. I can retire now.

Now I am more ‘important’ than a Gay Actor, a Photographer and a General.

It’s hard. Well it would be wouldn’t it? This is Google Masturbation after all. Being number 1 on Google’s ‘lucky’ search is like having a penis extension without the cost of buying a Bugatti Veyron or a Range Rover.

It means you is ‘Da man’, or it means that everyone who shares your name hasn’t got as good a search engine optimisation programme as you.

Either way it made my day.

See you next week.

Smiles
JonC

Rock star Peter Buck used automatism as a defence in court. In court he has been found not guilty of assault on airline cabin crew and to be suffering from “non-insane automatism”, basically his mind is not in control of his body – although clearly something was.

In the UK the law considers hypnosis to be a form of induced “sleep” [1952 Hypnotism Act]. If that’s true then if someone commits a crime under hypnosis does that mean that they are also in a state of non-insane automatism?

The Svengali in me is wondering if it would then be possible to persuade someone to do something and both of us could claim neither was in control?

One thing is for sure. If his actions had been decided to be caused by alcohol or drugs or medicine [legal drugs such as anti-depressants which have been known to cause violent mood swings ] neither the Brewery, dealer or Doctor would be held responsible.

I look forward to your comments on this one.