Aidzee is an amazing stand up comedian, and an interesting inspiration to my life in terms of presentation and self confidence. I had the wonderful pleasure of hypnotising a classic stand up comedian and watching the process where he fills for time is an interesting exercise when I tell him that his name is gone far away and that he's forgotten his name.

Sticky hands with Ned

Ned is one of those people who are also active in the YouTube community and had never done hynpnosis before and was eager to give it a shot. Sometimes some things don't quite go to plan, like name amnesia, however I decided to roll with the punches and see if his body would respond to the "super glued hands" suggestion. The resulting video is what happened when I got the suggestions rolling, and you also get a sneak peak of what was going though his head when I provided the suggestion to him.

Hypnotic Handshake with Billie

So apparently my video showing me performing a Hypnotic handshake induction with Billie has reached a thousand views. Whilst unfortunately you can't hear the audio of what happened on the day because it was quite windy, it's quite interesting to see how different people react to the handshake induction.

If you want to study the actions again, please feel free to watch this video over and over!

Hypnosis with Tyson (aka ForestHillVlog)

So lets revisit an oldie but a goodie. Tyson was yet again one of those people who haven't been hypnotised before and wanted a go. Tyson was a good sport and his personality reflects the slightly more childish side to him. So I decided to play on this. This is the second half of a suggestion which didn't record properly, but I told him prior that if he saw two fingers being held up on a hand, it would be the funniest thing he had ever seen and can't help but crack up laughing. As always you can click on the video to watch it through.

More fun with Squidgy

So I decided this week to revisit old footage, and break it up a bit. Depending on the level of suggestibility of a person, we can perform negative hallucinations, or making people think someone else, or some other object is invisible. In this case, Squidgy felt so comfortable the first time I hypnotised him, that I figured I'd give this a go, and I make his mate Michael disappear. You can see what happened by clicking the video above. Also part 1 of the Squidgy experiment can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOlKoPXseb8

In the beginning

So if you've ever been interested in hypnosis and what it's all about, I'd like to start with a little game with you guys. Don't worry, this isn't going to get it so you start barking like a dog, or anything like that. It's a simple game to see how suggestible you are in the current environment you are watching the video below:

So regardless of watching the video, I told you this was an imagination game. This is purely to see what your subconscious mind would do. Most people follow the suggestions as it's an easy one to follow, but how much of that they follow is how imaginative you can make yourself, and the environment around you, such as, is it safe? are you amongst friends? do you feel comfortable?

So this is a good starting test. You can play this game as many times as you like, or share it with friends. It's really to get you thinking about how fun hypnosis can be, and what your potential could be as well.

Hand stick suggestions

One of the things that I do for the first time that I've hypnotised someone is to provide usually name and/or number amnesia, as well as a "hand stick" suggestion. This is to give people a taste for what hypnosis is like, and what it's about, and it's something fun to do.

Matt was an awesome volunteer who knew nothing about hypnosis, as most of us don't know anything. So the first thing I did was remove any element of fear, as well as any elements of expectation. I told Matt during the session that I don't want him to expect for things to happen and I didn't want him to feel that he was doing something wrong or right.

Once this pretalk was in place, it was time to do some hypnosis! The results of the hypnosis can be seen here:

Stressful days and Anchoring

It's days or even weeks like this week where it's been horribly stressful as most Australian kids and teachers are well into the swing of school again. As a consequence working in IT and education, this means increased amount of phone calls to the helpdesk, and what I'm finding more and more is that you have no option but to take it on the chin and smile and answer the phone.

So without going postal an suicidal at the end of the week, I've found something interesting to keep myself somewhat calm and sane, which isn't taking illicit drugs, or smoking, or drinking. It's a hypnotic technique called "Anchoring".

So what does anchoring involve? well it's as something as simple as think of the most powerful amazing happy thought that you can think of. Now touch your right earl lobe.

As you continue to come down from your little high, what you should find is that the next time you touch your right ear lobe, that partial feeling will come back. I may not be as strong as before, but it should be there. Do this enough times and you should be able to save yourself from a depressive spiral if you need to.

Having said that, it's not a magical fix for depression or wanting to cause self harm, and not being a doctor, a lawyer, or a therapist, I would hate to give bad advice on using this as a magic bullet to everything, because it doesn't always work for everyone.

Whilst I was in Brisbane, I taught a friend of mine how anchoring works without even hypnotising him. He was intrigued and somewhat impressed. However, I may leave this story for another day... and if you know me in person, do ask me, and I may finish this story for you.

Hypnotic magnetic hands

So the first video of the new year has officially been posted. Welcome to the first video of Dylan (aka SethNero on YouTube) being hypnotised by magnetic hands. Dylan had been hypnotised before by me and has already had the pretalk and knows what happens during the process of hypnosis, so at the time I've asked him to imagine the magnet, I know that he's already to go under and follow the suggestions that I provide for him.

This induction can be used as one for beginners, however with the right pretalk and setup, it's difficult to get the subject to follow where you need for them to go. As I've said before, this certainly isn't a verbatim script on how your subjects WILL behave, but it's a useful tool to start the hypnotic process rolling.

Confidence and rapport

So for those of you who are following along at home should probably know I travel a lot. On occasion I like to test my skill set in seeing how charming I can be and upgrade a plane booking, or seat allocation or cheekily ask for something that I would usually not be entitled to.

For example, sitting in a closed Perth airport gave me time to sit and think and document what I do just to schmooze.

So what does this have to do with hypnosis? Well it's got a lot to do with rapport. It's how quickly you can make someone trust you in the first 30 seconds of meeting you.

For example, I ALWAYS greet someone when they ask 'Hi. How you going?' with 'yeah, great thanks. And you?' people always smile and feel fluffy that I've asked about them. You can usually offer a compliment to short joke and suddenly they like you because you aren't the arsehole that is out to wreck their day.

It's these little life lessons that you don't think about but can instantly gain you respect. Even if it seems like useless small talk.

Things to Come

So the schedule grows closer for the release of hypnosis videos! So you're probably thinking to yourself, what tricks does he have up his sleeve. The short answer is that I don't have much. I'll be showing you that with performing each of these videos, I've been growing with confidence. And lets face it, that's all a hypnotist needs. Confidence.

Please also remember that I basically record these for show with friends, and whilst I would never call myself a professional hypnotist, I have taken every precaution to make sure that the correct safe guards are in place so that anyone that I record with, are trusted, and trusting of me, as well as making sure that all the suggestions made during the session are removed. And of course consent is provided to the recording and uploading of videos to YouTube.

I will be posting more and more as I go, but essentially, I never want these videos to be a verbatim thing on how you hypnotise your friends, but for now, I'd like to show you the different reactions from different people of the same basic suggestions that I use! And, of course, I'll throw some advanced suggestions in there too! Happy hump day people, and it'll be the weekend soon! Which means the first video of the new year (well hypnosis wise) will be on Sunday 5th Feb (AEST - That's Australian Eastern Standard Time)