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In the mid 1990s, I was one of the keynote speakers and a trainer at a week-long training event for about 400 Hewlett-Packard sales representatives in North America. For entertainment, HP brought in a hypnotist who did a hypnosis demonstration twice a day, each day of the conference. It was a fascinating demonstration and many people attended the hypnosis session multiple times and on Friday, both sessions were standing-room only.
The hypnotist started out by explaining that a state of hypnosis is similar to a dreamlike state of being, sort of like when a person is just walking up and is half awake or half asleep. It is very much like someone who is sleep walking or talking in their sleep. The person is semiconscious, somewhat aware of the surroundings and very much open to suggestion.
He said that to be hypnotized, a person must be willing to be hypnotized. That is, the person must willingly submit and not fight against it. He said when people are under hypnosis, he couldn't make them do something they wouldn't normally do in their normal state of being. So, if the hypnotist said, "Undress in front of this audience" the people wouldn't do it under hypnosis, because they wouldn't do it in real life in front of the audience. However, the hypnotist could create a setting in which the people would undress in front of the audience. With the person in a hypnotic state, he could say, "You have just gotten up for the day and you need to shower before going to work. Remove your clothes and place them on the chair and then get in the shower." In this setting, the person would follow the suggestion and disrobe in front of the audience because the audience isn't even there in the setting.
The hypnotist then said he was going to come into the audience and find people who wanted to be hypnotized and were very susceptible to suggestion. He dimmed the lights in the conference room and then said those who wanted to participate should close their eyes and relax and let themselves get sleepy. He instructed them to raise their right arm above their head. As he continued to talk, he walked into the aisle in the audience and selected about 12 individuals who were in that dreamlike state and brought them up on stage.
He told the participants that they were going fishing. He told them to pick up their fishing poles under their chairs and to put some bait on the hook. Then he told them to cast the hook out into the water. All the participants did exactly as they were told.
“You’ve got a bite. Quick. Set the hook . . . , And start reeling in the fish.” Three of the people were obviously not anglers because they did nothing when he said to set the hook. They didn’t know that to set the hook in the mouth of the fish, you must give a quick tug on the pole. The other nine jerked a little or a lot on the fishing pole to set the hook firmly in the mouth of the fish. And all 12 participants reeled in their fish with varying degrees of skill and movement, depending on the size of the fish they had hooked.
After the fishing expedition, the hypnotist took them through different activities including acting like farm animals and performing useful household chores.
He had a few participants do some rather embarrassing things just through some of their actions that they would never normally do. For example, one woman was an extreme introvert, but under the hypnotist’s influence, she was extremely outgoing and the star of the show. Afterwards, when asked what she remembered doing on stage, she said she remembered absolutely nothing. Thankfully, they recorded two of the demonstrations, including the one with this woman in it, and everyone could order one or both of the recordings.
The hypnotist’s demonstration was highly educational and wildly entertaining. If you ever get a chance to see a demonstration like this one, I highly suggest that you go to it, and on the count of three, you will not remember that I suggested it. 1 – 2 – 3.
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