The Transparent Hypnotist

Photograph by Sebastià Giralt

Dr. Free-Ride: OK, we have these ways of talking, and the tricky thing is to sort out which of them are just metaphors and which point to real stuff. So, we’re happy to say that Cupid isn’t real.

If you subscribe to my blog, you may have just gotten a  notice that I had updated it with a new post. This new post included a link to another blog post, one that I thought was a great topic for today. I liked it so much, I clicked on the share button to have it posted here, but then when it did, sadly, it was lacking, well, everything. I was hoping for the opportunity to segue into it or at least give an introduction. Nope. All it did was post a link. Very unsatisfying.

Instead, I write this lament (the above) and will post a link myself. (And yes, I took the generic link post off the site).

Now to get rid of the grumbles. In looking for a fun subject for this Esoteric Saturday, I found a dialogue about hypnosis from Dr. Free-ride (Janet D. Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science) with her better-half and child. It brightens my day when others speak intelligently about hypnosis. Good for her better-half – he is my hero for being eloquent in his defense of the hypnotic state.

For the rest of this post, I suggest you visit Friday Sprog Blogging: hypnotized.

Location: Dublin, Ireland
Cyber Location: www.advancehypno.com

1. Are you a full time hypnotist, part-time or hobbyist?

I am in full time practice

2. Do you specialize in any type of hypnosis?

No, I see people from right across the spectrum from smoking cessation to phobias, weight loss etc

3. Is there any type of hypnosis you do not do? Why?

I don’t do past life regressions. It’s just something I personally don’t like to do

4. Do you use self-hypnosis regularly in your life? If so, how?

I use self hypnosis everyday, fifteen minutes of positive visualization twice a day (even on the bus on my way into the office) gives me so much energy and clears the mind

5. Describe your hypnosis office or work setting.

My office is in the centre of Dublin City in a fabulous old building, its bright and spacious inside and has a very relaxed feel to it

6. Describe a typical day in your life.

Up at 6:20 am have breakfast with family then into the office I see my first client at 9:00 am and go through to 6:00 pm with a lunch break in between. I see six or seven clients a day

7. Where did you get your training in hypnosis and are you certified?

I have done lots of training and courses along the way, I did some very good training with Dr. Raymond Roberts of Elestial Training in Cardiff some years ago, and that kind of made up my mind to go from part time into full time practice. I am a founding member of the Clinical and Therapeutic Hypnosis Association. I am member of the NGH and a registered Hypnotherapist within the GHR.

8. Most fabulous hypnosis technique you use?

I love using the Elman Induction with my own modifications to it, It is so easy to adapt it to the clients needs. Every Hypnotists should read Dave Elman’s book.

9. Worse moment ever in a hypnosis setting that ended up being a valuable learning experience.

When I was learning hypnosis. Against all advice I tried to hypnotize my mother, who had left a pot boiling on the cooker. Result;  Pot burnt, fire alarms ringing.

Lesson; Don’t hypnotize your mother.

10.  Any words of advice to potential clients or other hypnotists.

To Clients; Just expect to be relaxed

To Hypnotists; Explain to the clients that they will just be relaxed

With a backlog of things that I need to do - this living thing can be hard work - I find myself feeling a bit tapped out. My concentration is not as acute as it has been in the past, so I am boiling things down, learning the life lessons I need (everything is an opportunity for learning, yes?), and assigning priorities. Therefore I am going to look at my list of goals and begin to move forward on them.

I have two goals that I think can go in tandem with each other - working through Gorilla Marketing tactics and creating a hypnosis audio. I created a free guided meditation last year as an act of kindness for one of the various blogger’s unite days and I do client audios, so I do not think this is a far stretch. Therefore I am starting to get ideas and resources together for it.

Back in November I did a post on photo resources and one was from acobox.com. They have another site that is a consumer network. It is a social networking sort of place, where you can post information on well, just about anything. You can see what other people have to say about various products including blogs. I registered and put in a blurb about my blog. If you are curious, you can see it at http://www.acobay.com/topic/520246. (Please feel free to leave a review or comment).

It is a really simple interface. You join with the standard user name and password. Then you can add items randomly, look for stuff and then add your own reviews just by clicking what looks like a + sign. After this, you type, type, type away, immortalizing your words for eternity (or the duration of the site). And there is the ever present make new friends thing that happens on social networking sites. Always a plus.

It will be interesting to see how this goes and a I said I plan to shamelessly plug the new audio once it is finished. But you know, you could beat me to the punch…

Photograph by Or Hiltch

There is green tea (Gunpowder) with a teaspoon of honey in it beside me. I stretch, still in my bathrobe, sitting at MY kitchen table, and kept company by MY cat. It is good to be home again.

My mum is doing well with her eye, I am pleased to say!

Now I am in the mode for catching up, so if you came by Monday for the recent hypno news, finally, here is what is going on in the hypno world.

Good

So lawyers do have a sense of fun. Fun? Is that the right word for Amy Goodusky’s article in the Connecticut Law Tribune? She discusses who has the right to bill for research. The real question is, can an alter ego? Ms. Goodusky’s Sybil personality seems to want to bill for her research or at least that is what she claimed during a hypnosis session.

Follow Lisa Jamison as she uses hypnosis to quit smoking. The hypnotist working with her is Joe Smith, who runs Mind Gate in Temple, PA (wfmz.com).

Jessica Murdy wrote about hypnotist Lee Dyson from Chilliwack River Valley, British Columbia for an upcoming stage show he is doing, but ended up experiencing a hypnosis session herself (www.bclocalnews.com).

The Bad (as in cool)

Even psychics can benefit from hypnosis. The government, in the past, has hypnotized Dayle Schear to access her future predictions (honoluluweekly.com).

Even hypnotist can be rock stars. Michael Johns talks about how he achieves his rocker look (The Examiner).

Good Articles About Other Hypnotists

Meet Jo. She had gained a bit of weight and it began to affect her self-esteem (sound familiar?). Noticing Lily Allen’s successful weight loss bout through the motivation of hypnosis (Lily worked on being more motivated to exercise), Jo decided to give it a go. This article is about her experience with hypnotist Monica Black of Hampstead Hypnotherapy in London (UK) (The Mirror).

Dr. Bruce Eimer success in helping two women lose a cumulative 30 lbs. is chronicled at www.nbcdfw.com.

Feeling the need for a little help in money matters? Rather than seeing a financial analyst, how about changing a few habits first? Robert Neumann of The Vital Connection in Tacoma, WA says he is seeing more clients for money management help (The News Tribune).

Articles About Hypnosis Show People

Chuck King for his show in upstate New York (The Source).

Rick Longstreth for his show in Seneca, IL (Morris Daily Herald).

Mark Anthony Hanni for his show in Kalamazoo, MI (mlive.com).

If you are reading this, it means that I am still with my mum, but may well be on my way home. Let us hope so.

There is still more to tell you about the healing hypnosis in which Mum and I have been embarking.

The following day after Mum’s surgery, we were to return to the doctors office so he could see how her eye looked. His assistant carefully peeled off the bandages (her poor eyebrow!!!) and had her do a vision test. It sounded like she did fine.

While left alone together and waiting for the arrival of his highness, Mum had me look at her eye. I guess I expected much worse with a look of black and blueness that would have indicated I beat my mum on a regular basis. Mum says there is a bit of black and blue, but I still fail to see it. As described before, my impression is of a seriously allergy ridden eye or perhaps an acute case of pink-eye.

The doctor came in ,examined her very thoroughly and said she was healing well and her eye pressure (the surgery was to reduced her eye pressure) was excellent. Then he said a few more things that jarred my attention. He did not want her eye to fully heal, he need the incision path to remain open for awhile so that eye does not collapses (or something like that - sorry all, he is the doctor, not I), etc., horrifying, electra. And do not mistake me - I do not question his wisdom as all. I question mine. After Mum’s surgery I gave her general suggestion for healing. Yes, I made the assumption she was supposed to heal. Is that not what you are supposed to do when recovering from a surgery?

Later, I decided to do a little clarifying hypnosis to support the instructions and desires the doctor wished for during the corrective pressure process. Using my favorite confusion induction and checking my mum’s hypnotic depth, I regressed her back to the recent doctor’s appointment, asking the subconscious mind to recall the “instructions” that the doctor had for her healing process. Using ideometeric responses, she indicated that the subconscious mind had accessed them, and I suggested that the subconscious mind utilize them in her eye healing process. I also gave her a post-hypnotic suggestion to ask the doctor for further instructions in how he wants her healing to advance and to engage in it, keeping her eye pressure at a healthy level.

At this very moment, I may well be on the road. I might be driving my mum to her second doctor’s appointment since surgery (sounds like she and the doctor will become quite chummy). I am hoping at this time, he will have told her that all is progressing well; the same thing he told her last week. It is also my hope that he will not need to see her tomorrow, but that she is doing well enough to wait until Thursday. If that is the case, I may be on the road to home again. If all is not so well, well, I will remain a little longer with my mum.

I promised to tell you about the hypnosis portion of her surgery. As it turns out, I was permitted to do it during her time in recovery after the surgery, as she was coming out of the anesthesia. Not my preferred choice, but I am willing to take what I can get. As I write this I am doing my best to write about it as a positive experience with the medical world. It is my choice to see it that way.

My mum is a diabetic so we were hoping she would have surgery at an early morning hour since fasting was involved. We remained positive even though we could only get it scheduled for 1:30 p.m. At 1:15 p.m. I was allowed to go with her into the waiting area. She was doing fine until we were told the doctor was running late and they could not verify when he would arrive. Deep, deep, breathe. Sigh. Mum began to worry about her blood sugar count, but no one seemed particularly concerned. In trying to distract her, we created a visualization that I would use later. I asked her to describe the most relaxing holiday she could imagine (Tahiti, very warm, gentle waves, sunlight). Nice. But then we began to worry that my other relatives were probably worrying about her back in the other waiting room so I agreed to switch places with one of them. Finally my brother returned to the waiting room at 3 p.m. The doctor had arrived.

At 4 p.m., a nurse came to get me. There was mum, eye heavily bandaged, semi-conscious but drinking potent apple juice. I asked if she wanted me to proceed in our healing hypnosis and she answered affirmatively. I began by taking her to the warm, sunlit beach in Tahiti.

Then a nurse (bless her heart) interrupted me to give me instructions for Mum for later in the day. These instructions were repeated six times before I left the premise - two Tylenol when we arrived home, two Tylenol before bed.

When the nurse was done with her interruption, my mum muttered “Tahiti, I am still in Tahiti.” I smiled at this and continued on. As the nurse smirked in my direction and laughed with her cronies, I found myself having to really concentrate hard to remain focused on my task. I continued with Tahiti but brought in elements of using the beeping of the heart monitor as a relaxation device (which my mother very much enjoyed).

I gave her suggestions for healing well, a way that would heal the incision in her eye and help her awaken feeling wonderful, rejuvenated, and optimistic (to counter balance any potential ill-affect of the anesthesia). When she opened her eye again, the one without the bandage, she seemed more alert and a healthy color had returned to her face. She also felt quite warm, like she had been in the sun.

The nurse again returned to reiterate the instructions and to take my mother’s vitals (hurry up, sit up, get out of bed, get dressed, and leave). My mum asked the nurse a few questions and it came out that the drugs they used on her are classified as hypnotics, anti-memory drugs. I mentioned to the nurse that that would have been the perfect time to employ hypnotic suggestions, and she replied that the anesthesiologist talked to Mum during that time, telling her the surgery would go well and such.

So what did I learned from this experience? Talk to the anesthesiologist. That is the important person for doing suggestion work during the surgery. I did sort of know this, but I felt the need to have her eye doctor onboard. He more or less blew me off in the end.

But all in all, it went well. There is a little more to the story but I will hold off until tomorrow. This is long enough already.

My mum sits peacefully reading the Sunday news, comfortably ensconced on the couch with a cup of tea beside her, and I, well, truth be told, I may still be sleeping. I am actually writing this as of yesterday because it is a time when I am able to get to a wi-fi location to continue to update the blog. 

Many thanks to all of you who wished my mum well with her recent eye-surgery. As you can tell from the above paragraph, she is fairing quite well, even having the eyepatch removed 12 hours after her surgery. She thinks her eye looks awful. I think she looks wonderful - a little as though she were having a terrible allergy attack, but good none-the-less.  I will give you more of a briefing on our adventures in recovery hypnosis tomorrow.

But for today, I will remain on topic. As you or may not be aware, I have been working with my mum using hypnotic suggestion to help her in the recovery process. It has been a learning experience. 

That leads me to the question of the day: hypnotists, healers, or care-givers, what experiences have you had in helping love one’s heal from various traumas? Are the experiences positive, negative, or indifferent, and if so why? 

by Terry O’Brien

In a century that has produced a number of great stage hypnotists, from Gil Boyne and Ormond McGill, Pat Collins, the Amazing Polgar and Kreskin, to Paul McKenna and Derren Brown, there is one man that outshines them all.

His name is Walford Bodie, “MD”, and he was quite the flamboyant character.

Born in 1869 as Samuel Murphy Bodie in Amberdeen, Scotland, he worked as an electrician for the Scottish National Telephone Company but eventually his side career as an illusionist became his true calling. He was a natural showman: a stage magician, sleight of hand artist, ventriloquist, and hypnotist. Among his titles was “The Electrical Wizard of the North”, the “British Edison”, “Modern Miracle Worker” and “The Most Remarkable Man on Earth”.

His act consisted of a number of radical phenomena of the time period, especially electricity and stage hypnosis. Stage hypnosis as a specific art was quite new at that time (I have only found a few references from this time period explicitly using the term “stage hypnosis”, including a few books with this title) and he is the earliest stage hypnotist on record that I have been able to locate with an international reputation.

His electricity demonstrations were very showy. His act included a fake electric chair, a replica of the one that executed William Kemmler in Sing Sing in 1890 (the first prisoner to be executed by the electric chair.) Bodie, who billed himself as “The Man They Could Not Electrocute”, would place himself in the chair and pass 30,000 volts through his body for the climax of his act, illuminating sixteen incandescent bulbs and two arc lamps held in his bare hands. (Electric currents with high voltages and low amperage can arc across relatively long distances but cannot overcome or cause damage to objects with even modest resistance, such as the human body.) However, in 1920, Harry Houdini arranged to obtain the real thing for Bodie. (Houdini was a great friend and correspondent of Bodie’s.)

There are no definitive records or descriptions I can find about his stage hypnosis act: what little I can discover was that he did not perform what we would expect as a modern stage hypnosis performance. His stage hypnosis act was more medical in direction, involving sensational cures, especially of paralysis. His bloodless surgery’ demonstrations utilized hypnotism and electricity (’Bodic Force’) to cure the afflicted and the lame. He even formed the Bodie Electric Drug Company, retailing ‘Electric Life Pills’ and ‘Electric Linament’.

Lacking a medical degree, he said the initials “MD” stand for “Merrie Devil” which got him in trouble more than once. During a performance in 1909, medical students thronged the audience and pelted him with rotten fruit, eggs, and other garbage, so much so that he had to leave the stage to the chanting of “Bodie, Bodie, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack”, wearing, as one commentator put it, “a coat of many colours”. That same year, a group of Scottish medical students took him to court to challenge his use of the initials “MD”, but, showman that he was, he turned the proceedings into another of this performances and won exoneration.

Bodie died in 1939, at the age of 70, after completing a season of performances.

Trivia:

• Bodie and his signature waxed mustache was the target of a parody by Charlie Chaplin: Chaplin’s first big break in show business was in a review lead by comedian Will Murray in 1906 in London, where Chaplin parodied Bodie in a performance entitled “Casey’s Court Circus”. Chaplin was 17 at the time.
• Bodie himself campaigned against the electric chair as a means of execution, advocating the gallows, instead, as a more human method.
• Bodie was so popular that when, in 1916, he lost his entire production equipment during WW I, he was back on tour within six months. His production company was on their way through the Mediterranean to perform in India when the ship he was traveling on was sunk. He and his wife were separated during the rescue and were not reunited for several weeks because his rescue ship was also sunk.
• During a tour of Ireland, Bodie was named Life Governor of the town of Cork.
• Bodie was also an author. Two of his most notable publications are “The Bodie Book”, a nonfiction account of hypnosis and related paranormal subjects like telepathy and mental suggestion, and “Harley the Hypnotist”, a mystery novel involving a hypnotist detective.
• A true Scotsman, Bodie officiated at the opening of the Royal Tarlair Golf Club in Macduff, Scotland, on April 4th, 1926 and drive the first ball on the course.

Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Cyber Location: www.jamiejohnsonconsultinghypnotist.com

1. Are you a full time hypnotist, part-time or hobbyist?

I’m part time working towards full time

2. Do you specialize in any type of hypnosis?

My interest is in stress management, combining meditation and breathwork with hypnosis. But almost all my clients are coming to me for weight management, which I love as well.

3. Is there any type of hypnosis you do not do? Why?

I don’t do stage because I haven’t studied it yet. I prefer to work with people to create change from this very moment into the future. A to B. You’re at A right now, moving to B. So I don’t do regression or past lives. But that could change one day.

4. Do you use self-hypnosis regularly in your life? If so, how?

I use a audio recorder to record hypnosis sessions for myself. The emphasis changes weekly but typically is a theme of confidence, eating more vegetables, and living in the present moment.

5. Describe your hypnosis office or work setting.

I have a beautiful space in a healing center that I can rent by the hour. It’s so beautiful that clients are almost hypnotized into deep relaxation by just walking through the door.

6. Describe a typical day in your life.

I start with coffee and emails. Then I meditate for about 30 minutes. My mornings are spent writing and marketing my business. Afternoons I see clients and teach classes. I call my classes Hypno-meditation. I also spend time creating CDs and learning about the technology to do so.

7. Where did you get your training in hypnosis and are you certified?

I was trained and certified by National Guild of Hypnotists. I also have a certification with Hypnosis Motivation Institute in Los Angles.

8. Most fabulous hypnosis technique you use?

I think hypnosis by itself is amazing and fabulous. I don’t think I have a technique that makes it any more fabulous. I anchor remembering to take slow deep breaths to release tension to the color red and also to standing up from their desks. Very effective, not sure if it’s fabulous.

9. Worse moment ever in a hypnosis setting that ended up being a valuable learning experience.

My first abreaction really freaked me out. I was hypnotizing a friend and she started to cry. I’ve since come to view crying as a natural healthy response, though it hardly ever happens.

10. Any words of advice to potential clients or other hypnotists.

To clients: hypnosis is so powerful at creating change that it will begin to expand your belief system as to what kind of other changes you can make. For example after someone succeeds at weight management, I suggest they start to look at their self talk and attitudes regarding aging. Hypnosis is only the beginning of an amazing journey.

To hypnotists: When you start out people encourage you to jump in, call the media, make speeches at the rotary club. My advice is to spend time creating your style and learning everything you can. It really is an art form of words and presence.

Perhaps this should be an Esoteric Saturday, but I am not sure on the timing of it (it may have been on January 18), so I thought I would mention it now. There is an interesting auction happening right now for some hypnosis object d’ arts. Included is the image included above. It is by “Escher.” I have been trying to tie it to M.C. Escher, but cannot quite get there. This just does not have the feel as his other work of the time, but then again, I am a hypnotist, not an art historian. I suppose it could be another Escher. Anyway it is an interesting piece, the Buddha and the hypnotist juxtaposition against one another. Wonder what the message is here? Any thoughts?

Also, the image on the left is a book of parlor tricks, but I cannot help appreciate the aesthetics.

It looks like the auction actually started on January 18.

To learn more about either object, click on the picture and it will take you to the auction.