My Self

1. Are you a full time hyp­no­tist, part-time or hobbyist?

Strict­ly a hob­by­ist and stu­dent at this time.

2. Do you spe­cial­ize in any type of hypnosis?

I want to learn it all!

But seri­ous­ly, I’m not plan­ning on mak­ing a career of hyp­no­sis. The most I would want to be is an speak­er and evan­ge­list on the subject.

3. Is there any type of hyp­no­sis you do not do? Why?

I real­ly don’t do any hyp­no­sis (except self-hyp­no­sis). I’m hedg­ing myself because of the legal sit­u­a­tion in the state of Indi­ana, which has the most strin­gent (and strangest) laws regard­ing hyp­no­sis in any state, and because I have very lit­tle for­mal train­ing (as yet.) As of July 1st, 2010, the hyp­no­sis train­ing and reg­is­tra­tion require­ments in the state of Indi­ana were repealed. They real­ly did­n’t serve any use­ful pur­pose, any­way. That still does­n’t mean I’m doing hyp­no­sis, but I am tak­ing occa­sion­al train­ing and would at least feel com­fort­able with giv­ing sim­ple demon­stra­tions if the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself.

4. Do you use self-hyp­no­sis reg­u­lar­ly in your life? If so, how?

I use it for relax­ation and pain relief: I suf­fer from neck mus­cle spasms which cas­cade up and over the top of the head and resem­ble sinus headaches. Self-hyp­no­sis helps by get­ting the mus­cles to relax while at the same time focus­ing on ignor­ing the pain. Its not always total­ly effec­tive but every lit­tle bit helps.

5. Describe your hyp­no­sis office or work setting.

My home office is a cramped for­mer bed­room with three large desks (one busi­ness and two com­put­er) two 6′ tall book­shelves, four fil­ing cab­i­nets and a clos­et with too much stuff.

6. Describe a typ­i­cal day in your life.

I am self-employed and own­er of a cor­po­rate videog­ra­phy com­pa­ny: I have video­taped sports events (most recent­ly for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, the NBA D‑League team) and awards pro­grams and vol­un­teer as a cam­era oper­a­tor for local cable access pro­grams. Because the busi­ness is some­what spo­radic, I also temp when pos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly at the Allen Coun­ty War Memo­r­i­al Col­i­se­um, where I do much the same video work to sup­port the video dis­play pan­el above the scoreboard.

When not temp­ing, my sched­ule is pret­ty set: I’m up by mid-morn­ing. When not active­ly work­ing on a busi­ness project, I’m usu­al­ly edit­ing a per­son­al video project, main­tain­ing the com­pa­ny and Hyp­no­sis in Media web­sites, and writ­ing. I usu­al­ly check my email around noon and late in the evening. Some­times I’m at a club meet­ing in the evening, or else I’m play­ing online in Guild­Wars.

7. Where did you get your train­ing in hyp­no­sis and are you certified?

I am almost entire­ly self-taught, although I am work­ing with a very great lady (Dr. Gisel­la Zukausky with the Mid­west Train­ing Insti­tute of Hyp­no­sis) who is get­ting her school accred­it­ed in Indi­ana (a Sisyphean task, it seems) and will like­ly get accred­it­ed through her school. I already have tak­en one course explic­it­ly and taped at least one other.

8. Most fab­u­lous hyp­no­sis tech­nique you use?

I don’t real­ly use any tech­niques, but if I would, I’d use some­thing like the tech­nique I had demon­strat­ed rather dra­mat­i­cal­ly on me once: it was a count­ing-down/­count­ing-up con­fu­sion induc­tion. Since I am very ana­lyt­i­cal most typ­i­cal induc­tions take a long time to work, but with this one I was hyp­no­tized in less than 20 sec­onds. Then, once I was brought out of trance, the instruc­tor put me back under imme­di­ate­ly by sim­ply drop­ping my hand and say­ing “sleep!”.

9. Worse moment ever in a hyp­no­sis set­ting that end­ed up being a valu­able learn­ing experience.

It was the sec­ond time I was ever hypnotized.

The first time was a few years pre­vi­ous­ly, at a con­ven­tion where one of the guests pre­sent­ed a pan­el on hyp­no­sis and did a group relax­ation induc­tion for the audi­ence. It was very mem­o­rable not only because it was my first real expo­sure to hyp­no­sis, the per­son was a true lady and some­one I am proud to have befriended.

The sec­ond time I was hyp­no­tized, it was by an old friend (and now a promi­nent hyp­no­tist in his own right) to demon­strate hyp­no­sis. As part of the demon­stra­tion, I was giv­en the stan­dard post-hyp­not­ic amne­sia sug­ges­tion. When I came out of trance, I lit­er­al­ly was speech­less. All I could do was mouth words: I couldn’t even think. Need­less to say, my friend was freaked but recov­ered quick­ly and put me back in trance and removed the suggestion.

What I believe hap­pened was the con­flict between the sug­ges­tion and the way my sub­con­scious mind inter­pret­ed it (to for­get EVER being hyp­no­tized) and the strong desire to remem­ber the first time I was hyp­no­tized. Once the con­flict was removed every­thing was fine. But it was a real­ly weird experience.

What I learned from it was the def­i­nite under­stand­ing that hyp­no­sis is real (I even use it to con­vince oth­er peo­ple) and how the mind can inter­pret things dif­fer­ent­ly than expected.

10. Any words of advice to poten­tial clients or oth­er hypnotist.

There are a lot of mis­con­cep­tions and mytholo­gies about hypnosis.

Clients: just about every­thing you’ve ever seen or heard about hyp­no­sis is prob­a­bly incor­rect. Go in to the ses­sion with an open mind and be pre­pared to be informed and surprised.

Hyp­no­tists: know them and under­stand these mis­con­cep­tions. That way you can help clients get over them or bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate with them to fur­ther their own heal­ing. And, if noth­ing else, you can adapt your ses­sion to match the client’s pre­con­cep­tions and mis­con­cep­tions. (I remem­ber read­ing of one ther­a­pist whose client ref­er­enced a rather bad movie: the ther­a­pist imme­di­ate­ly shift­ed his induc­tion to make suc­cess­ful use of that imagery.)

The above was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed in “The Trans­par­ent Hyp­no­tist” web­site and updat­ed as necessary.