Hypnosis for Swine Flu?

I don't know whether to be angry or just sad about the marketing of it - Victoria Gallagher, the hypnotist at hyptalk.com, has released a hypnosis recording to boost the immune system with hypnosis to help the listener not get swine flu.

Google has a lovely tool which I use called Google Alerts. It provides me with an email listing recently indexed sites and blogs relating to terms I specify. Linked in that email last week was a press release that made me quite angry.

You can read it yourself here, but I'll tell you the wording that made me contemplate the laws regarding these types of claims. I'll preface this by saying that the file probably just makes you relax and not worry so much about sickness, which could help your immune system; but some of these claims are just ridiculous.

The first line: "Spend 30 minutes a day in Hypnosis, and you will greatly improve your chances of staying healthy this year (and every year)." Iffy, but okay. It's a bit of marketing exaggeration for most, but true in the cases of some people who always think they're sick.

Later: "For those who might be scared of the risks involved with the Swine Flu Vaccine, Hypnosis provides a risk-free alternative." Wow. Claiming that hypnosis is risk free compared to the vaccine...what the risk of really getting swine flu? And what about the risk of then passing it on to someone you love? I mean, swine flu isn't that bad, but I wouldn't want to give my family a bad present for Christmas; why would I want to risk giving them an illness?

"So, you could find yourself staying healthy from all colds and viruses." The word could is a good qualifier, but 'all colds and viruses' includes meningitis, HPV, HIV, and all sorts of other things that aren't so much affected by stress levels. And being sick is about more than just experiencing symptoms.

The release starts to redeem itself in the second half, encouraging people to wash their hands, rest, and drink fluids, as well as hinting at the fact that what the file is doing is getting you to not think about getting sick, but by that point it's made some pretty fantastical claims.

She is/They are giving a way a file for free right now, but most of her files apparently sell for $39, which makes it no surprise that she's pushing this, even buying a special domain name, beastswineflunow.com. I assume the hope is that when someone listens and doesn't get swine flu, they'll line right up to buy the $99 packages for good luck so they can win the lotto.

Testing is key

I've been in limbo for the past month or so, and it's been really painful.

Why?

I've gone through several product revisions. I was on the verge of releasing my first script - a sleep aid that would also help you wake up at a specific time without using an alarm clock. But I ran into a problem.

The file worked too well. Those who listened to it were falling asleep before I even got to the part about their mental alarm clock.

So rather than sell something that only "sort of" worked, I figgured I'd tweak it. After another round, I decided that there was a better way - I'd split up the file into two seperate recordings, one for a mental alarm clock, and another for getting to sleep.

But now I've run into another problem - my beta testers are being a little flakey.

I don't want to put something up for sale until I'm completely satisfied, because that's what I want my customers to be. So I'm going to new lengths to get feedback on the file, and hopefully I'll be able to release both very soon.

If only it were so easy...

I like to keep tabs on traffic to my sites using Google's Analytics service.

It allows me to see what people are looking at, how many people are looking, and how they got to my site. This makes it easier for me to produce content people are looking for, improve the layout and usability of my sites, and how I can better promote them.

Every so often though, it produces some interesting surprises.

One of the most awesome features is that you can see what search terms brought you a viewer from Google. I was looking through that today when I ran across something surprising and strange.

One of my visits was from someone whose search term was "how to make someone your obedient slave with hypnosis."

Apparently, my site for hypnosis mp3 files, iHypnou.com features in position 13 for this term, thanks to some of my talk about hypnosis safety on YouTube where I discussed how rediculous many of the hypnosis videos are, claiming to be for simple relaxation but containing suggestions for obedience and submission.

Obviously, the person didn't find much information about enslaving people, but I'd like to hope they learned how rediculous the idea is before they shell out money for some worthless product.

If only it were so easy for me to rank highly for keyword traffic that I actually want...

Hypnosis Suggestion of Surgery

Another interesting story about what hypnotic suggestions can do, and what lengths some hypnotist go to in order to craft a successful suggestion:

Woman hypnotized to think she has gastric bypass surgery, and loses weight.

From the article:

"The therapy involved a number of sessions in which she was familiarized with the procedure of a gastric band surgery, including a real surgical gastric band and stomach model."

"She then underwent several sessions of hypnosis, in which every stage of the surgery was narrated to her ... a recording of surgical tools played in the background. The hypnotherapists also pumped smells into the room to simulate those found in ... a hospital."

Supposedly she has lost 55 pounds, though it doesn't say over what period. I imagine there would be an easier way to achieve weight loss through hypnotic suggestions, but if it works for her, more power to both her and her hypnotists.