Have you ever heard of anyone getting “stuck in hypnosis?”
If so, how did they ever become “unstuck?”
Lately, my friend Paul sent me a recent article of a young hypnotist getting middle school students stuck in hypnosis during a stage performance. The young hypnotist had to call on his mentor to rush to the school to unstick those students from hypnosis.
I am sure the teachers, administrators, students and parents, where frightened to death at the time. Just think, if it was your precious child who was stuck in hypnosis. How would you feel and what would you do?
How does a person become stuck in hypnosis?
First and foremost, hypnosis is a stage of deep and focused concentration. If you are in a hypnotic condition while at home, the concentration is difficult to maintain. Regular daily distractions are constantly tugging at you, pulling you into another direction. These distractions pull you out of the hypnotic condition.
When you volunteer for a stage hypnosis show, you are allowing someone else to point out a focal point of concentration, as well as having another person tell you how to eliminate those distractions.
The points of concentration are the hypnotist’s voice, his words, and the ideas he is implanting to create entertainment for the audience.
The distractions include, people laughing and yelling in the audience. Early in the stage hypnosis experience, the hypnotist points out these distractions and then tells the volunteers on stage “the laughing and noise in the audience will assist you in going deeper into the state of hypnosis.”
This is not unlike when you are at a loud concert event, where people are shouting, laughing and making noise, but you are concentrating on something else at the time. Maybe you just received news that your best friend died, or your girlfriend just accepted your marriage proposal. You may not even notice that the large noisy crowd is even there.
I have a friend, who played American Football in College. He intercepted a pass and ran down the sideline scoring a winning touchdown. He said that during his runback, he could not hear the fans screaming at him to score. All he focused on was running the ball into the end zone. When he finally crossed the goal line, which is when his mind gave him permission again to hear the fans. The noise at that point was incredible.
He was running in the state of hypnosis. The goal of scoring with the ball was his major focal point, it was unnecessary for him to listen or watch the fans in the stadium, so he temporarily blocked them out.
Back to the stage hypnosis scene where students were stuck in hypnosis:
When the young hypnotist tried to take all of the students out of hypnosis, some students may have reacted too slowly coming out, or they just decided it felt so good being in this state that they resisted coming out of it.
The term I use for this condition is
“Hangover.”
What is “Hangover” as it applies to the Hypnotic Condition?
Hangover is a mental condition where you want to remain in the hypnotic condition. Some physical reactions in the order of frequency will include lethargy, nausea, and headache.
Fortunately you can eliminate these conditions very quickly and easily.
Two Methods of Eliminating Hypnotic Hangover (or being stuck in hypnosis)
1. Preemptively removing hangover before it strikes
When you put someone under hypnosis whether in a hypnotherapy mode or on stage, you use a countdown or count up in order to prepare your client or volunteer to emerge from hypnosis. For example, when I hypnotize someone I will say; “at the count of five you will emerge from hypnosis.” “You will be wide awake, alert and feeling better than you have ever felt before.” “All of the effects of hypnosis will be gone.” “All right, One…two…three…four…coming around to full awareness now and five…wide awake and alert, feeling better then ever before.”
And then I ask the question, how do you feel?
I look into my client’s or volunteer’s eyes and look for the symptoms I wrote about earlier.
During the hypnosis session, my clients and volunteers are listening for tasks to complete. These tasks may be for entertainment, for example, or the tasks may foster help in overcoming a bad habit. All of their concentration is on completing the tasks successfully.
As each volunteer or client listens to my words near the end of my session or show, he/she is listening intently and concentrating. As I mention being wide, awake and alertness following our intervention, they want to complete that task successfully and usually do.
By pre-empting the hangover possibility with suggestions of wellbeing at the end of the hypnotic experience, my chances are great that no hangover will appear. In other words I have a better chance of avoiding hangover by making it more attractive and beneficial to be “out of hypnosis,” than the still be in it.
2. Removing hangover after it strikes
I talked earlier about the young hypnotist who was unaware how to remove hangover during a middle school stage hypnotism show. He had to call his mentor to come to the rescue. The mentor had to remove hangover after the stage experience.
Hypnosis is a temporary condition that takes tons of concentration. If he could have evacuated all of the audience, teachers, and other people from the area, and just left the students on stage by themselves with no interference, sooner or later they would have emerged from hypnosis without any help from anyone. However, with students and others still being in the auditorium, there was an unconscious expectation by the volunteers to remain in hypnosis, in spite of the hypnotist’s urgings in returning to the normal mental state.
Therefore, if you are hypnotizing people onstage you will have to take your volunteers out of hypnosis by making the next experience of being wide awake and alert, better than being asleep in hypnosis.
I accomplish this by saying the words I used in Method 1, telling my volunteers that they will feel better than ever before. Plus once everyone has emerged from hypnosis and gone back to their chairs, I ask the audience members to let me know if any of the volunteers are experiencing anything unusual.
Audience members will quickly point to one or more students and then I walk confidently over to the area where the problem student is located and make this a learning experience for the audience members hanging around closely the affected student.
I ask the student how he feels, and he may say,
“I have a headache,” or “
I feel nausea.”
I take my right hand, put it on the student’s back and at the same time I tell him to close his eyes.
I say the following, “Close your eyes down tightly and go deeper into hypnosis then you ever achieved on stage.” “In a moment I am going to count from one to five.” “When I reach five you will be wide awake and alert and feeling better than you have ever felt before.” “Anything that was bothering you before will cease to bother you know.”
All right…, One, two, three, four, five, WIDE AWAKE. (I say wide awake very loudly and forcefully at that point)
I then ask the person,
“how do you feel?
Most of the time he will say “great,” and you can visibly see the difference of an alert, wide awake and calm student compared to the student experiencing hypnosis just a few seconds before.
If the student still experiences hangover, I will re-hypnotize him by using the same words as above, and then take him out again, asking how he feels. It happens very rarely that I have to re-hypnotize him a second time for hangover, but I have done so, and it always works splendidly.
Volunteers and clients can become “stuck” in hypnosis for a brief time. It can cause the audience or others in a hypnosis session panic. The best methods of overcoming hangover are by Method #1, the Pre-emptive Strike and Method #2, Hangover Removal after it Strikes.
Whether you are a beginning hypnotist, or hypnotherapist who is looking to present stage hypnosis shows, be sure you understand and master the skill of overcoming hypnotic hangover, so your volunteers will remain unstuck!
Wayne F. Perkins Master Hypnotist Trainer
“My mission in life is to help you achieve your mission in life.”
Learn how to hypnotize on stage as well hypnotize people for goal achievement.
Wayne F. Perkins,
Master Course will allow you to listen to hypnosis, exactly how to administer hypnotic suggestions. You also learn how to administer hypnosis safely and overcome hypnosis hangover.
http://www.wayneperkins.net/home-study.html
Do you want to master the art of self-hypnosis? Do you want to achieve all of your goals all of the time? Click on the link below for more information on how to change your life.
http://www.wayneperkins.net/hypnosis/self.html
