The Transparent Hypnotist

Elman. It is a name that reads like a mantra for hypnotists. It is bandied around, nonchalantly in various interviews (do a search on this blog and it pops up often), articles, and scripts for inducing hypnosis. If you are a regular reader here, very often the hypnotists featured in the 10 Questions mention Elman as a most fabulous technique. I even posted my favorite five modified Elman inductions last week.

But for many reading this blog, it is a name like any other, just something to pass over quickly and forget. In many beginning hypnotists circles the name is also just a word, maybe slightly tinged with mystique. So the question is – who was Dave Elman and why is his name a modern mantra?

There are a few articles (see sources at the end of this post) that provide a decent biography. In these you will find the story of a boy who watched his father suffer the pains of cancer. A family friend who was a hypnotist helped the elder Elman find relief and this impacted Dave greatly. However it would take several more years before he would make a mark in the hypno world. He was a musician (not only did he play the violin but also the saxophone), an entertainer, a writer, went into radio and even advertising until at the age of 49, then going into hypnotism full-time. How odd to encapsulate a person’s life in such a sentence. There is definitely more to it than I mentioned, but for the sake of time, I will move on with this post.

Here is one of the important things to know about Dave Elman - his magic lies in creating a hypnotic induction that works rapidly and deeply. This came about during his experiments with doing hypnotism as entertainment. He wanted to find a way to induce hypnosis that would be fast and effectual. The results were that he created an induction that both mentally and physically relaxes the client and suspends that little critical voice we all have playing in our consciousness (the one that says, I can’t be hypnotized, this will never work, what is going on – you get the idea). Components of his induction include eye-lock (the client’s eyes remain closed and they feel unable to open their eyes), repetitive deepeners (or re-inductions that provide a deeper state of hypnosis), arm dropping (used to help create physical relaxation), and fading numbers. It also happened that a member of the medical community saw him do a stage show using such inductions and was so impressed that he asked Dave to teach him and his colleagues how to do hypnotism. This sparked his career in teaching dentist and physicians hypnotism, propelling his name forward is hypnotism fame and respect.

As this is just cursory, I have two sources you should visit. Both explain the induction in greater detail and provide wonderful background information on Mr. Elman.

Sources:

• Heroes of Hypnosis - Dave Elman by Tom Connelly
• A Tribute to Dave Elman: (1962) from Paul Durbin’s‘ web site

Tags: Elman

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 6:31 am and is filed under Forms of Hypnosis, History, Induction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.