Your Eyes Are Stuck!
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By: Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht
I never liked those weekend hypnosis seminars. They promise to teach you all about hypnosis in two or three days, and all of those who promise such a grandiose delusion are big fat liars.
My professional training took almost 2 years to complete. I went to school at least 3 times a week, plus I had to participate in practical workshops there during the weekends. There was no escape – hundreds on hundreds of supervised practical hours, and it proved itself when I had my private practice.
So I almost never went to the “learn hypnosis in 2 days” seminars. Just almost, because I was curious at least once.
The ad said, “Learn the Darren Brown’s secrets of hypnosis”. That’s already a catchy title, so I called. $50 later, I was in.
It was boring!
Very boring.
In fact, I wanted to leave right after the first 30 minutes, when the speaker started talking on controling other people’s minds with hypnosis… Usually I would raise my hand and ask annoying challenging questions, but this time I didn’t even want to bother.
Then they said, “and to demonstrate a Darren Brown hypnosis trick, we need a volunteer…”
Ok, so I’m staying a few more minutes to see what comes up. In fact, I raised my hand to volunteer. They didn’t choose me, though. They picked up a young girl from the front row, who giggled all the way to the stage.
The speaker asked her, “and you, lovely lady, what’s YOUR name?”
“Emanuel”, she responded, still giggling, and with her a few more giggles came from the audience.
“Thank you, Emanuel”, said the speaker. “Now, what I want you to do is very simple. Do you see my finger here?” – I would assume she can, as he was pointing his finger almost into her eyes.
“yes”
“Good”, he responded. “now, just take a good look at my finger as it moves around”.
He said his finger is moving around, but in fact he just moved it a little bit upward and then downward and then upward again.
Then he started wiggling with his finger about 3 inches above her nose. “Without moving your head, take a good look at my finger”.
She probably did.
“Now I would like you to blink three times” – she blinked 4 times.
“and close your eyes comfortably” (strange word, “comfortably”, considering what happens next)
“Good, now I want you to move your eyes, while keeping them CLOSED, to look upward where my finger is. Imagine that you can see my finger even while your eyes are CLOSED” – again, some people in the audience were giggling, but I assume it was because of the speaker’s funny accent when he said “clooooooseddd”.
“Now, Emanuel, this is very important so listen carefully”, he said. “In a moment you’ll find out what I know already – that your eyes are stuck and you cannot open them. Now, don’t worry because I have the magic touch – when I touch your forehead with my finger which you know is right up here, you’ll be fine. ”
And then he said, “But until then, you keep seeing my finger up there right?” – she nods and for some reason started to breath deeper (don’t ask me how I know, it’s easy with women)
“in fact, I want you to challenge me and try to open your eyes. Come on, let’s see, since your eyes are stuck, the harder you try the more stuck they become, like a GLUUUE” (now I was giggling)
She couldn’t open her eyes. She tried, she even got nervous and somewhat anxious. But still, she couldn’t open her eyes for over 30 seconds of trying. I think I saw her starting to sweat up there… at least the speaker wasn’t the only one sweating.
Then he said, “Ok, Emanuel, let me help you out. When I touch your forehead, you will forget about my finger up there and you will LOOK DOWN to calm down, NOW!” and he touched her forehead.
What a surprise, she could open her eyes again.
At first, I thought to myself – ok, she’s young, she’s giggling, she’s easy to influenced. But then they did it with another man, older one, who seemed a lot more skeptical than what I could ever be.
So this time I followed along (which is a good trick if you want to learn something really good).
“close your eyes and imagine my finger up there”, I did it too.
“try to open your eyes”, I tried – and couldn’t.
“when I touch your forehead, etc. etc.” – no one touched my forehead but I did LOOK DOWN. And then it revealed itself, all wide open.
You see, it’s a gimmick and basically it has nothing to do with hypnosis, but everything to do with impressing others:
Close your eyes. Now, look UP without opening them. Keep looking up and try to open your eyes – physically, you simply cannot. Now, look down – Voila! A miracle!
If I pay (and let them keep my money), I usually make a point of leaving a seminar with at least one good idea. What I got from those few hours with the funny-accent speaker was this: stay simple. You don’t need a full handshake induction to demonstrate the power of the mind – hey, get the listener’s eyes to be stuck (leave him there for a couple of hours if they really nagged you), and you’ll make a great impression without sweating.
How much easier could it be anyway…
This story was amusing, as it proved that we are not always doing things the “correct” way. There are many ways to achieve the “correct” way. ;o)
So,what do you want? someone did it differently to you. How rotten of Milton Erikson to get Polio and use that severe experience to his best advantage instead of
learning your way!! man,your hard done by.
Thanks for the story. This definately says alot about how people can be easily convinced about things like hypnosis. I agree that hypnosis is something that should you experience and take several months or years to learn.
It didn’t work for me. I closed my eyes, looked up as much as it went, opened them easily while they were still up, but got a pain there. I can understand why people would have hard times opening their eyes in such a position – mainly because they are already stressing muscles to hang their pupils up, and there might be a confusion between those muscles.
Anyway, I agree about those fast seminars. It seems that people see this as a gold mine, for earning fast money, from those who are eager to become Darren Brown.
People want to believe, so they are attracted to [seminars] people that will make it easy for them to do so. Gimmick or not, it is what they paid to see because of the curiosity.
Fascinating stuff though it is. Thanks for sharing.
I agree with the 2-3 day hypnosis sentiment, but if you are going to dis the guy’s name then at least get it right! It’s Derren Brown.. not ‘Darren’!… and he calls himself a ‘Psychological Illusionist’for a reason.. it’s entertainment, not therapy.
Great report from an expert hypnotherapist. Loved it! If only they knew whom they had in their audience.
Since I teach hypnosis (125 hour course) I might go to such a workshop and watch what get’s people’s attention. You can learn a lot from watching how people respond. Then, I would try to get contact information from as many people there as I could so I could follow up and find those seriously interested in learning hypnosis.
One is not qualified to practice hypnosis after a weekend. At the same time, so many people spend so much time training that they don’t do actual hypnosis and build the confidence they need to be able to hypnotise someone even after long courses–there is always one more thing to learn or one more certification to obtain.
The important thing is, until you start hypnotising people you don’t really know what they need or how to best serve them. Get hypnotising. The skills will grow.
I read here in these comments. So much emphasis on the actual induction of hypnosis. This inducing of hypnosis is the least part of therapy work.
The mountain of knowledge one must turn over and over through your own mind.
Consists of methods used to bring about the patient’s required ‘change’ of behaviour.
This patterns methods of therapy are collected and sifted from the thousands of case-histories that you study continually and the experience from each patient/victim that allows you to practice upon them.