In psychology class today we brought in Dave Hill – The World’s Greatest Hypnotist who performs in Las Vegas and has been on the David Letterman show several times. Over the course of an hour he attempted to put our class of 21 into a deep sleep and then read to us our post-hypnotic suggestions which we wrote on a sheet of paper beforehand. No one did any embarrassing or crazy things after waking, but most of us drifted in and out of hypnosis.
First, the hypnotist made us breath deeply and become very relaxed. Then we closed our eyes and weren’t allowed to open them until he told us so (once we went under, even if you tried to open them, you couldn’t). He then spoke to us to become more and more comfortable, which made us slouch more and more. "Very sleepy, very droopy, you are concentrating perfectly," he would say over and over. After we awoke, he tried "rapid induction" which he claimed only three people in the world can do. He stands right across from the subject, gets him/her comfortable, and then shouts "sleep!" and the person falls into his shoulder and becomes limp.
My post-hypnotic suggestion was "I will not check by BlackBerry for the next two hours." Instead, he read it "You will not check your BlackBerry for the next two weeks, and you will put it in the office of your teacher until November 7th." WTF? When he said that I consciously knew it wasn’t going to work.
Despite some people resisting – if you resist, you can avoid hypnosis – it was still a good time, and will be more fun to watch the video of ourselves tomorrow!