Regular readers already know that I’m a trained hypnotist. When people hear that, the most common response I hear is “I can’t be hypnotized.” I suppose people are trying to tell me they have too much will power.
What they actually tell me is that they have no understanding of hypnosis. Luckily I’m here to clear up everything.
The best way to think of hypnosis is on a continuum of methods for influencing people. On the extreme side of the continuum you would have outright brainwashing of the sort where a kidnapped person begins to sympathize with the kidnappers, or a new recruit is drawn into a cult.
On the opposite end of the influence scale we have the legal and widespread practices of advertising and marketing. You practice a little bit of marketing every time you get dressed. We are all in the business of influencing people.
Hypnosis is somewhere in the middle. And everyone can be hypnotized unless they don’t want to be. The only difference is the degree. About one person in five can be so deeply hypnotized that he sees and feels things almost as if they were real. But even that person understands while under hypnosis that the illusions are exactly that – illusions.
So while you might not be able to see an elephant appear in front of you, you could certainly learn how to better relax through hypnosis. And you could learn how to improve your performance in some area of your life that would benefit from focus and visualization. For example, it might help you get rid of the yips in your golf game, or become a better public speaker. In that way, hypnosis is much like having a good coach.
It’s a myth that people don’t recall their experiences under hypnosis. And the hypnotist can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. In fact, hypnosis works no better than other methods for things like quitting smoking and losing weight. The problem is that people like to smoke and they like to eat, and hypnosis isn’t a tool to make you do what you don’t REALLY want to do.
This is all background for telling you that if you read my post yesterday (Small Pleasures) you were probably hypnotized. The piece is written in the form of a hypnotic induction. I’ll explain the elements later.
If it worked for you, you had a better day than you would have otherwise. That was the suggestion at the end of the piece.
For some of you, the post seemed “too gay.” (I deleted those comments.) That doesn’t mean you can’t be hypnotized. It means that if I were working with you one-on-one I would quickly figure out that images of cats aren’t your cup of tea. I’d find something you liked to imagine instead.
Allow me to explain how the hypnotic induction in Small Pleasures was constructed. A common induction method involves using a series of relaxing images. That’s what the entire piece was about. But there’s some art to it. First, I varied the images to activate your five senses. There were suggestions that made you imagine touch, taste, smell and sound. And all of the images had a visual component. Activating all of the senses in rotation puts you in a relaxed frame of mind. It’s the same reason that seduction works best with chocolate, music and a backrub. You want to get all the senses involved.
I chose images that were as universal as possible, and where I could, also generic. Everyone knows what it feels like to stand in the shower. I didn’t mention the brand of pen I described because it allowed you to imagine your own best pen. I didn’t tell you the color of the cat because it allowed you to imagine your own favorite cat. I did mention Diet Coke, but I quickly generalized it to caffeine. The theory is that you will better imagine your own most relaxing situations if I don’t exclude them by insisting on my own “wrong” details.
At the end of the piece I told you to release the knot in your back. Practically everyone who uses a computer has a knot in his or her back. If that rang true for you, it probably felt like I was somehow in your head. “How did he know I had a knot in my back?!” You will resist suggestions from sources outside your head, but if the suggestion seems to be coming from the inside, it’s hard to distinguish it from your own good ideas.
So there you were, relaxed by the imagery, some of you allowing me to climb inside your head. I ended the piece by asking you to wiggle your feet and enjoy your day. Each one of you is different and will have your own reaction to this sort of thing, but if you literally wiggled your feet, I can almost guarantee you also enjoyed your day.
Did you wiggle your feet?
[P.S. This sort of induction is what I used in the first chapter of God’s Debris. I couch this discussion in terms of hypnosis but it is standard writing practice. It’s not a coincidence that Harry Potter books always include descriptions of food.]
[Update: For the record, I wrote the Small Pleasures piece in its entirety before realizing it was a perfect example of a hypnotic induction. Once you understand how hypnosis works, it’s no longer a “technique” so much as a knowledge that informs everything you do. (There’s a reason Dilbert’s boss has no name, for example. He’s generic, so he can be your boss.) The small pleasures I mentioned were indeed mine. I only realized it was interesting the next day when I was deciding what to blog about.]