Viti

So I saw this Hypnotainer last night because that's what my aunt wanted to do for her birthday (she is actually my dad's cousin, but there is an ongoing family debate about whether that relationship is second cousins or first cousins once removed so Aunt/Niece works...but there's another post in that subject). Here is the guy we saw http://www.anthonycools.com/home.htm the show we saw was touted as "uncensored" meaning he had a lot of sexual content.

Anyhoo, I had assumed it would all be fake, that everyone on stage would be a plant. They weren't...it was a small crowd and he had a hard time getting volunteers but every person on that stage, with one exception, was a normal tourist...an average person. My aunt got called up. So he starts the "induction" and I am watching each person's face and I can see my aunt has her eyes open and some people are fidgeting and what not. So he had each of them relax with their chins on their chests, then told them all to sit up and open their eyes.

Then, he approached each person and grabbed their arm and told them to sleep again and those that didn't respond a certain way he said "I'm sorry it didn't work for you, thanks for trying" and sent them back to their seats. With the same exception, he pulled out the people I had noticed including my aunt. By the way, the exception was one of the stars of a show called "Crazy Girls" (even one of the bronzed butt girls if you've ever been to Vegas) and she was hot, so I think he kept her up there for eye candy and she played along.

Okay, so now he has like, 10 people on stage supposedly hypnotized. I was all skeptical and watching very closely, and he pulled out two more people who were faking after touching them and talking to them. So, he starts by telling them on the count of three they are in an orchestra and to play their instrument with a big smile on their face then starts the 1812 Overture and by gawd those people were going to town playing air violin or piano or whatever except for two, and those he put back to sleep.

I am still skeptical...big deal they're playing air instruments anybody could fake that. Then he tells one guy that when he hears a certain song he is going to get a horrific case of asshole burn, and the only way to alleviate it is to scoot his butt across the stage. Now I am intrigued because what person is going to embarass the shit out of himself like that just to "play along"? I mean scooting like a dog in front of 150 people? Damned if that guy didn't jump out of his chair when the song started and start ascootin' with absolutely no emotion registering on his face!

He told another woman that every time he said her name her cootchie would start talking and she would know that everyone in the room could hear it and she would tell it to shut up, and it would until he said her name again. This was a rather large woman in her late 50's with some sort of German type accent. Totally normal everyday woman yet he said her name and she started squirming in her seat and looking very embarassed. He had a rough and tumble, New York Italian guy named Dino walking around the theater with a megaphone looking for his "dog" named Butt Fuck Me.

Then he put them all back to sleep and told them when they woke up they were to imagine themselves naked and waiting for an audition for a porno movie. He put a chair at the front of the stage and told them it was their fellow actor and they were to go have sex with this person in creative ways. Now I knew that the large German woman and this woman who was my age and obviously from the Midwest or something (something about the 80's hair style and clothes) would be horrified if they were faking it. They weren't. Each person on that stage watched, totally expressionless as others went up one at a time and had their way with this chair. The audience was laughing and hooting and hollering but those people were like waiting for a bus! When Miss Kansas or wherever she was from was called up she did that chair reverse cowboy style...the German woman straddled it!

Then he had the women go back stage and put their bras on over their shirts, and had the men do a Chippendale's strip and dance down to their underwear and they all did it. Dino had his shorts around his ankles and was posing in his tighty whities and the German lady was calmly sitting there with her FFF size bra on over her blouse. He ended the show by shaking each one's hand with the suggestion that they would have an orgasm while he was touching them, then when he let go they would wake up and remember everything they had done but would feel no remorse. They orgasmed and then they looked shocked when they woke up...the first expression I had seen on their faces. One guy woke up before the orgasm part and I heard the hypnotist tell his assistant "He was a light sleeper". The guy apparently thought he had been awake the whole time until he remembered stripping.

How is this possible? I assume it is the same mechanism by which faith healers and charismatics make people fall down when they are touched and writhe on the ground and speak in tongues and such...but I don't understand what mechanism in the human brain allows for this type of thing!

So, was I duped, or are some people really that susceptible?

trillian

It is real. But I'm amazed at how quickly they can put someone into a state of hypnosis. Really incredible.

A few years ago we went to one with some friends. One guy in our group went up on stage-- he changed shoes with a girl with high heels (or tried!), scratched his balls for a full 2 minutes or so, danced like a ballerina, and had to talk lovingly to an imaginary parrot. No way he would ever have "played along"!!

In fact, when he came back to his seat he announced to all of us "See? it didn't work! <then a few minutes later>... Hey, wheres everyone going? Why are you all getting up?" He wouldn't believe us until he actually remembered himself an hour later.

A woman was given a post hyptonic suggestion. She was one of the first to come down back to her seat and when we all said a certain phrase, she shot up and announced "I have V.D.!" and then looked amazed that she had done such a thing!!!

I know it has to do with altering alpha waves in the brain in a similar way that the healers do it, with light, sound, and suggestion. I read only about 20-30% of people can be put under at those shows.


trillian

SimplyAtheistic

Call me skeptical, but I don't think that hypnosis is possible. Has any medical institutions recognized and documented cases of it? People believe what they want to believe. Then again I may be completely wrong.
Jake

Viti

A skeptical look at hypnosis Apparently it is possible with those who believe it is possible and are highly suggestible

Emmanuel Goldstein

My friend is a stage hypnotist, and has been doing it for about a year now. I've seen a lot of his shows on tape.

This would be the last place I would have thought people who be convinced that stage hypnotism is real.

The hypnotist finds people who are willing to play along (get hypnotized) during the induction, and simply dismisses the rest.

This works for the same reason that I take off my hat and sing along to the Canadian Anthem (prayer) during large crowd gatherings. I don't like the anthem, don't like words, and consider taking my hat off something akin to religious. Yet I still do it because something about being within a crowd of people and not doing as they do is very difficult.

Naturally some people are better than this, and the hypnotist gets rid of them during the "induction"

penumbra

I don't know about "Hypnotainment", never seen a stage hypnotist, but I do know that my now-retired family practice doctor used hypnosis on occasion, especially to help teach stress-relief techniques and help with bio-feedback. I found it much similar to meditation and/or guided relaxation techniques.

Jesse

I don't believe it's just "playing along"...I went to a stage hypnotist a while ago who found suggestible subjects by telling the whole audience to grip their hands together and then tried to convince them they were unable to pull them apart...it didn't work for me, but it did for my sister (she didn't volunteer to go on stage though). It's not like there's anything mystical about it, it just shows that people's own brains can put them in some kind of altered state in certain circumstances, which shouldn't be all that surprising. Is the stuff people do when hypnotized any stranger than the stuff we do every night in our dreams?

Arken

When I was on the standup comedy circuit, I did a few shows with a guy who was a hypnotist (with a PhD in psychology no less, but he decided to perform instead) and he freely admitted that there was nothing mystical about it... it was essentially, he said, intense trust to the point of surrendering your free will. The example he gave which I always remember is that when you are driving somewhere familiar and you don't really pay attention to the road or the spedometer or anything, you are self-hypnotizing because you are separating your conscious thoughts from the road and putting your complete trust in your unconscious ability to drive.

Viti

This guy said flat out during the show it wasn't mystical or magical...that the subjects could only be hypnotized if they wanted to be and that it was simply a deeply relaxed and concetrated state.

Arken

Right. Same with the guy I worked with. In fact, he introduced the act by dispelling common myths about astrology, "I can't bring you into a past life, I can't make you remember the time the alien shoved the probe up your ass. Sorry."