Hypnosis in Media

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever experienced in trance as a subject or strangest thing a subject has requested to experience?

Since I have only hyp­no­tized peo­ple in train­ing sit­u­a­tions, where the focus was on the induc­tions, the lat­ter part of the ques­tion has nev­er arisen.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever experienced in trance as a subject?

I wrote ear­li­er (Day 1) about the fugue state I expe­ri­enced when I was hyp­no­tized for the sec­ond time.

At one point ear­li­er this year, I was in a game of “Truth or Dare” and asked to relate a sto­ry of a mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence under hyp­no­sis, as the oth­er peo­ple were aware of my inter­est in the sub­ject, with the pro­vi­so that I might expe­ri­ence it again. I pro­ceed­ed to tell it, giv­ing the full back­ground, up until the time I start­ed explain­ing how it felt to be in that state.

And that’s when I went into that same fugue state. (At least, it felt like the same fugue state.)

I remained there for sev­er­al sec­onds as the peo­ple around me final­ly decid­ed that I was­n’t just paus­ing for effect or try­ing to find the right words and was real­ly re-expe­ri­enc­ing that I was describ­ing. I did­n’t real­ly expect that would hap­pen but it cer­tain­ly did.

If a curious novice asked you to introduce them to the world of hypnosis, where would you begin and why?

I would prob­a­bly begin by say­ing that every­thing they know about hyp­no­sis is prob­a­bly wrong. Then I would explain how the mis­con­cep­tions sur­round­ing hyp­no­sis got start­ed, and why. After that, I would explain what we now know about hyp­no­sis, based on the stud­ies per­formed just in past decade. I would also add descrip­tions of some of my expe­ri­ences under and obser­va­tions regard­ing hypnosis.

When all that is done, I would ask if they want to be hyp­no­tized and if they would con­sent to let­ting my hyp­no­tize them.

After that? Well, by then they still may be curi­ous but they would­n’t be novices any longer.

Do any of your friends and family know about your hypnosis interest? Why or why not?

A num­ber of my friends know that I have an inter­est in hyp­no­sis, as do a few of my close fam­i­ly mem­bers. Of course, many of my friends are also involved with hyp­no­sis, so that is to be expect­ed. How­ev­er, I don’t make a major deal about my inter­est in the sub­ject, or in any of my oth­er inter­ests, for that matter.