by Patrick Plaskett

Created on: December 27, 2006   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

"Hypnotist? I don't want anyone controlling my brain," the man said as he took another drag off his cigarette and followed it with a swig of Budweiser. I was at a beach bar making polite conversation with tourists when this fellow asked what I did during the day, and I had told him. Something inside me wanted to ask him, do you think you're really controlling your brain now?

Yet, I understood his fear of hypnosis. I was once ignorant about hypnosis, and approached it with some trepidation, even as I apprenticed myself to hypnotist Michael Stivers in 1991. Michael had been a policeman for one of the Gulf beach municipalities, and the police department sent him to hypnosis school so he could learn forensic hypnosis. He decided hypnosis was more fun than potentially being shot at, so he left the police force and opened his own hypnosis center in St Petersburg. He knew the basic techniques of hypnosis, and I knew the subconscious mind from my studies of psychology. I stopped in his clinic, we hit it off, and he taught me what he knew.

I was surprised how simple the basic technique of hypnosis induction is. The most popular technique is progressive relaxation, seen in old movies as, "You are getting sleepy." Of course there are the whiz-bang, quick inductions Michael would do on television shows, too, but I was more interested in the therapeutic aspects of hypnosis.

Hypnosis is a natural state that most people easily slip into when they're relaxed. Any person who's neurologically healthy can accept suggestion. That's why most people can immerse themselves in a movie; they've accepted the suggestion that what they are seeing on the screen is real. Never mind that they know who the actors are, who did the special effects, and so on. They know the scenes are fake, but they're in a self-induced state of suggestivity. They've left the rational, wakeful mind at the door. When the monster comes on the screen, the adrenaline level in their bloodstream will really rise, because the psychophysical connection is always in operation. When the heroine dies, they can be moved to tears.

The entertainment people (and the politicians) take full advantage of how susceptible we are to suggestions. Unfortunately, stage hypnotists have capitalized on this by suggesting by way of presentation that hypnosis involves some kind of occult power or superhuman mind control. Sometimes in the regalia of magicians, these skilled performers get volunteers to do incredible things they would never do

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