Hiring a Stage Hypnotist

Now, I’m neither an event promoter, nor a professional stage hypnotist, but I do know a little about each, and I was recently approached about doing a stage show for an organization some of my friends and acquaintances are affiliated with.

The request was rather vauge, in that they were just wanting a hypnotist to hypnotize folks in attendance, and it was ‘entirely up to me’.

When you get right down to it, however, any time you hire entertainment, you typically have some idea of what you’re looking for, and it’s in both your best interests and the entertainment’s to ensure understanding of these desires. You want to be satisfied with how you’ve spent your money, and the entertainment, hypnotist or not, is probably interested in being invited back for another performance.

When you’re looking for a stage hypnotist, here are a few guidelines:

1. Know what you’re looking to get out of the show. Are you looking for comedy? New-Agey wonderment? Relaxation or motivation? Something more edgy? Most hypnotists will have a mix of these elements; some will lean heavily in one direction. If the hypnotist has examples of their work, like a demo reel of hypnosis videos, be sure to see if that showcased work is what you’re looking for. If the hypnotist fits, make sure to still let them know what you’re looking to get, because that will help them plan ahead or even decide on the spot what they might do.

2. Know how big the show will likely be. Be able to describe the size of the show to the hypnotist, in terms of both scope and length. If he or she is to headline and perform for two hours before a several hundered people eating dinner, it’s much different from performing in a relaxed setting with perhaps a dozen audience members for 45 minutes. This will allow him or her to work with you to know what sort of setup work must be done, and what sort of bits they might consider using.

3. Discuss the venue. Will the hypnotist need chairs? Lights and sound? Elevators or disco balls or a plug in for his spiral disc? The answer to the first two, at least, is probably yes. Most of the time, hypnotists are improvisational artists at heart, so a missing element won’t stop the show as long as they know what they’ll be dealing with.

With these three tips, you should be in a much better position when looking to hire an entertainment hypnotist for your next event.

An Interesting, Annoying Tactic

I try to stay on top of developments in the online hypnosis community as best I can, and I've noticed something interesting over the past couple of weeks.

Someone's gone out and registered a bunch of domain names that are of the form *state name*hypnotist.com and is then using automated posting to fill them with content, mostly pulled from Yahoo Answers or article databases. They even pull the responses and post them as comments.

What are they looking to gain from these sites? I would assume they hope to be able to pull traffic from local searches, with the goal of either selling the urls or pushing referrals, since the targeted domain name would help, but they might just try to do affiliate sales or link building.

It bothers me to see people putting more junk and duplicate content (Especially when they don't own it!) on the internet, especially in areas that I care about.

Indiana Hypnotist Committee Closed

For a while there, Indiana was an interesting location for hypnotists - it was one of the few states to regulate hypnosis and the only one to require licensing from a state board to practice hypnosis. For the most part, the rules only applied to pure hypnotherapists who didn't hold any other certification, but it was still an important consideration.

According to the comittee's website, however, effective July 1st the committee, and thus all it's associated laws, ceased to exist. Thus as I understand it anyone, with any level of training or certification, can now practice hypnotherapy in Indiana.

Now, considering some of the issues caused by the committee, I would almost say this is a good thing. Certification was difficult in some cases, and many of the applicants were actually practitioners from other states simply looking to become 'state-certified' for marketing purposes. There is no true non-profit overarching accreditation organization for hypnosis, that I'm aware of, to base standards on either.

Lawsuit - Hypnosis for Sexual Harassment

Here's yet another accusation of someone using hypnosis for nefarious purposes.

Supposedly, her boss had her lie down on his 'magic couch' where he hypnotized her, gavve her pleasure suggestions, touched her inappropriately, and possibly posed her for pictures in various states of undress.

Now, there tend to be two camps about hypnosis. One says that hypnosis is a magical tool giving the hypnotist untold powers. The other claims that nobody can hypnotize you and force you to do something you wouldn't normally want to. My position, and the position of iHypnou.com is that the second option is sort of right, but "wouldn't normally want to" has a lot of wiggle room, depending on the situation.

Is her claim ridiculous? Probably. Possible? Probably. Worth $5 million? I'd say no, but then again, I've never been hypnotized and molested.

Amazing Response to Hypnosis How-To

iHypnoU does more than just offer great hypnosis .mp3s and hypnosis videos - we're also hard at work preparing educational materials so you can learn how to hypnotize people.

In that vein, we posted a how-to on Instructables.com on one of Michael's favorites: the super easy magnetic hands induction.

In just 5 days, we've had almost 1300 views. It's been selected as a featured instructable, and has attained 'popular' status thanks to how many people have read it. If you're looking to learn hypnosis, it's a good place to start.

Easy Hypnosis Induction

I've posted a simple how-to guide on one of my favorite hypnosis inductions over at Instructables.com. If you've never heard of the site, it's a great place for posting step-by step instructions for all sorts of projects and skills. This is the sort of thing that I envisioned for iHypnoU.com from the start. It's not just about making hypnosis .mp3s where we hypnotize you. It's also about killing a lot of the disinformation about what hypnosis is and what it can do. iHypnoU also works as Internet Hypnosis University, for what it's worth...that's a little pretentious, but I love being able to share the joys of hypnosis with people.

Finally bit the YouTube bullet...

After hearing some good feedback, I posted a really fast induction on YouTube.

No suggestions, no post-hypnotics...just down and back up, with a bit of relaxation in the middle. Considering I have a video about hypnosis safety on YouTube I have a bit of a reputation to uphold.

Each Subject is Different

I just posted a new video to YouTube...here's the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo7Pq0UuEjY

In the video, I show my work with one subject on a simple demonstration: forgetting the number 7. It turns out to not be so simple though, when her analytical nature and math background cause her conscious mind to balk at the suggestion.

Know Your Hypnotist

I've been seeing entirely too many of these stories lately:

Hypnotist jailed after sexually assaulting woman he placed in a trance

Hypnotherapy is about helping people, not taking advantage of them. I do believe that people, even under hypnosis, have ultimate control of their actions, but I also believe that you can get people to do a lot of things when they are in a suggestible state, especially when compounded with the fact that someone looking into hypnotherapy is probably in a vulnerable state to begin with.

This sort of thing not only hurts the victim, it hurts other hypnosis practitioners as well, when the public associates one hypnotist's disgusting behavior with the profession as a whole.

Know Your Audience

I'm not a stage hypnotist, (yet?) but I read an article today about one that demonstrates an important point regardless of what type of hypnosis you're doing.

'Offensive' hypnotist shocks students - USM Free Press

What started as an entertaining stage show soon got a bit raunchy in the views of some of the student audience. A college is a diverse place, and I'm sure a lot of the people watching thoroughly enjoyed it. I've definitely been to an adult-themed hypnosis show, but I and everyone else there was expecting it - the marketing material proudly proclaimed it to be X-rated, though it might have squeaked by with a PG-13 if it were a movie.

When you perform a show in front of a mixed audience, it's fairly important to perform to the lowest common denominator of tolerance to offensiveness. The story doesn't state if the marketing materials had proclaimed it to be on the wild side, but I imagine if they had, those who would be bothered by it wouldn't have shown up in the first place.

But the difficulties in playing to your audience extend beyond even that. The hypnotist, who is unnamed in the article, is described in the articles thusly: "a very bulky man with a long pony tail, arrived on stage wearing all black clothes and a pair of strikingly white sneakers." Not the best of appearances for garnering trust and acceptance, but probably thought to look edgy and attention-getting by him. This issue extends even into a private practice, where wearing serious clothing will get people to take you seriously.

Did all the subjects volunteering know what they were getting in to? Probably not, but if they were truly bothered by it, they wouldn't have stayed on stage very long. But, given that my friend once described a similar show as "mental rape of the feeble-minded" it's clear that the audience doesn't always know or care if that's the case.

One screwup like this can seriously hurt or kill a career as a performer, and can certainly result in one less venue to play. If you can take the lessons and apply them to your own hypnosis sessions, you might avoid a similar fate for your endeavours.

Someone had some faith in his abilities

An interesting news story has been floating around the last two days about a man who apparently hypnotized himself in the mirror for about five hours.

I'd say it was bunk, but I have a friend who did the same thing to herself on several occasions, only not while looking into the mirror. She's one of my favorite people to hypnotize, because it's just so easy and she's really responsive.

To top it off, he also does sword swallowing, and apparently he's about as good at it as he is at not hypnotizing himself too. Maybe he should find some less risky hobbies.

Hypnosis Show in Columbia, MO Next Week

Tony Lucero will be performing at the Deja Vu Comedy Club again next week, January 14-16. I saw his show last year and thought it was entertaining, despite some shortcomings. Tickets range from $7 to $10 depending on which show you see. You can also read my thoughts and impressions after watching his Saturday night erotic show.