Year: 2015

  • Learning from a Stage Hypnotist

    So I went to a stage hypnosis show, with the eager goal of going on stage and experiencing it. I wanted to have a greater appreciation of how stagecraft, lights, audience and unpredictability affected things, as well as to experience being a hypnotic subject with a seasoned professional. Unfortunately, the night didn’t live up to…

  • The exaggerated and misjudged nonsense of NLP – as shown in the words of Richard Bandler

    I recently read Richard Bandler’s “Make Your Life Great” (2008). It reawakened my frustration with NLP as a whole, and how it preys on a crowd hungry for hope (the customers) or power (the practitioners) to perpetuate its inflated promises and flimsy doctrines. Here’s an example of the kind of bullshit I’m talking about: “I…

  • Compliance – is it Hypnosis, or just being nice?

    Compliance vs Unconscious Response I saw a hypnosis demonstration recently in a lecture hall of professionals. The speaker asked for a volunteer, then selected one based on their prior suggestibility. As the volunteer stood up, the speaker said “and you can just go into a trance right now… as you come up to the stage”.…

  • Hype-nosis

    On most occasions, when I’ve met highly reputed hypnotists, I’ve had that realisation of “oh, they’re just people too”. What was I thinking? Many seem to become these almost mythical figures, wielding some special power that isn’t available to anyone else. Its all hype of course – suggestion and influence being the very thing that…

  • The Dark Imagination: My Theory for Hypnotic Phenomena

    There are a few theories that attempt to explain hypnosis, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. I don’t particularly want to get into them all here to prove anything, but I will touch on a few that resonate with my intuitions and experiences the most. Recently through studying the idea of conscious will being…