Okay, so I'm taking some courses, but that sure isn't the same thing as knowing how to run a practice.

So, I'd like to give a "shout out" to Cal Banyan, a week or so back I finished his and Jerry Kein's "Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy..."

The minute I looked at the table of contents, literally, its like an outline of *most* of the questions that I've been having.  Then, the book itself is pretty lean and to the point, it follows that outline pretty much directly, and there's very little extra, or unnecessary.

They say they assume you already know how to induce hypnosis, and that in itself was nice, to not have to slog through *another* Elman discussion.

There is no replacement for actual experience, however, there's something to be said for having *some idea* of how to go about getting that experience, which is what their book has given me.  It may sound silly, but I actually gained a little confidence, just having read it - I'm a little more prepared now, if only a little.

It *will* be on my shelf right next to my Elman, I've already got some little tabs on it for quick reference.

I've got a buddy, from the start he's always let me hypnotize him, and occasionally he even brings his friends over for me to hypnotize, as well! 

A while ago, he brought over a couple of girls, and all three of them wanted me to hypnotize them.  The girl who is one of the two main characters in this story, she had more than 20 piercings, short-cropped multi-colored hair, tattoos everywhere, told me her mother was a prostitute in Detroit and all kinds of other fun things, she was a recovering heroin addict, and I'm guessing she was only 20 or 21. 

Another thing she mentioned, is that she has Fibro-Myalgia (god knows if that's spelled right).  Occasionally over the course of the 5 or 6 hours they were hanging out, she would get into these shivering fits, like she was cold.  It was disturbing to be around, and instantly her girlfriend would come over and rub her shoulders and generally mother her.  These two were best friends, and it was obvious that there was a routine, or a ritual, in the way these two interacted when the fits came, which tells me this is not a new thing, its been going on for years.  The friend seemed like the mother, and Our Heroine like a sick little girl.

Anyway, so I hypnotize this girl, no changework, just proving to her that she could be, and letting her have all the good feelings, and just explore it.  Its funny, because I hypnotized all three of them in my living room, at any time two of them would be sitting on my couch with me, and the "subject" would be in the recliner that's become my "hypno-chair".  As I was working with the first of them, after a bit I looked over my shoulder to my couch, and BOTH of THEM were completely out, too!  This happened each time I worked with one of them, the other two would drop, too.  And each time, they refused to believe that they had been out!

I was kind of proud of that, actually.  :-)

So, I bring this young lady up with the 5-count, and she wakes up, and we talked for a minute and she starts getting one of these shivering fits.  Again, here comes her friend to comfort and soothe, while my friend and I watched on, uneasily.  As I said, it was a little disturbing, though this was NOT an epileptic fit.  It was just shivering.  So we're talking about the whole thing, all the doctors she's seen, etc.  And, I got this little intuition and asked her "so, I'm curious, what does it feel like when you find the shivering has stopped?"

And instantly the shivering stopped, and I saw her accessing to her right, thinking about my question.  And whatever she was saying, it was very thought out, and she didn't shiver at all.  Then my genius friend says "Dude!  Was that hypnosis?!"

And instantly the shivering started up again.  Instantly, not a beat lost.  I've been turning that moment in my head ever since...

There is a woman that I work with, she's kind of what you might call a "sad-sack".  EVERYTHING in her life is unfair and impossible and messed up and too much for her to handle.  She ALSO has this Fibro Myalgia, and the other day I was thumbing through a book that she has on the subject.  I went to the index, found the hypnotherapy page, and opened it up for her to read.  We talked about it later, and she seemed very interested. 

She said she'd been to a therapist who used hypnosis, who wanted her to face some event that happened in her childhood.  She claims she can recall the entire thing up to the images on the tv screen, but she's completely dissociated from it, and she actually left when the therapist tried to get her to "feel" again.  When I told her I could teach her self-hypnosis to control her pain, she again seemed really interested.

I had JUST gotten back from the Hermosa Beach thing, so I had just met Scott Sandlin and his pain-management stuff, which was what I had in mind for her, because I knew I could work with that, at least.  I even offered to do do it on my personal break time, to "teach her how to do it on her own", as I told her. 

But she didn't bite, and I'm not going to force it on anyone.  I mentioned I was going to be trying to meet some local hypnotists, and she gave me her phone number, telling me to give it to the ones I met.  Wasn't interested in me giving her THEIR phone numbers, though, she didn't want to have to call on her own.

So, she didn't want to learn to do it on her own, didn't want me to hypnotize her or teach her how, and didn't want to call a "professional", but did want them to call her.  Am I wrong in smelling something fishy here?

Because, from the way she tells it, the pain is unbearable, and she's so lonely, and unhappy, and broke, and what ever else you can think of that could be bad, she's got a story that will simply astound you (or bore you), attesting to how bad she has it.

In the personalities of these two women, I sense something similar.  Both seemed very protective of their "stories", and proud of them, in some way.  I also actually used to have a lady cut my hair, she had this Fibro Myalgia too, and had been a HARD partyer in her day, and had the messed-up family life, and addictions, and abusive boyfriends, etc., just like these others.  But who knows if that's a pattern, cause I've only known the three women, and it could just be that I live in Detroit, and its something in the water!!

I guess the point of writing this was to sort out what I've learned.  I met with a local hypnotherapist named Amy Hale the other day (who was VERY nice and informative), and she was saying how over-weight clients are the bane of the hypnotherapist, because they (often) have no motivation, and end up just being kind of a hassle.

I think that's what I just realized with this woman at work.  She's happy being miserable, or at least "comfortable" with the way things are.  In everything in her life, even how she works, her goal seems to be to get attention, but not much else.  And when for instance she's late for work every day, she cries and moans to everyone, but never sets her alarm clock 20 minutes earlier, you know?  So EVERY DAY its the same thing, over and over.

On another note, what I guess I'm hinting at with this Fibro-thing (cause I'm tired of trying to spell it), is a suspicion that a lot of it has to do with attention.  I won't write any more on that, cause I worry that it sounds very judgemental, without much evidence to be making assumptions on.  But whatever, you've got to trust your gut...

I'm reading this story about the kid in Dekalb, Ill., who snuck guns into a school and just opened fire, out of nowhere.  Here's the line that got my brain a movin:

"If there is such a thing as a profile of a mass murderer, Steven Kazmierczak didn't fit it: outstanding student, engaging, polite and industrious, with what looked like a bright future in the criminal justice field."

As the story goes, he stopped taking his meds, started to act "erratic" the last couple of weeks, and this all culminated in the tradgedy.

Another quote:  "He was engaging, motivated, responsible. I saw nothing to suggest that there was anything troubling about his behavior."

These all sound like nice traits to have.  But, it seems to me, that if he had to have a pill to make these traits work, then maybe the whole thing was a lie, the entire "public" persona of the guy.  The only thing that was keeping the people around him safe from actual physical harm, was that ritual of taking the pill everyday. 

I say ritual, cause I'm not sure I believe in anti-depressants.  Just like they say that Hypnosis is just a social construct, and people just act "hypnotized" because they know they're supposed to, I just wonder if taking meds doesn't perform the same fucntion in lots of people's minds - they take the pill, they're "ok".

But even if you do believe in anti-depressants, I hope you can agree that the physical act of ingesting that pill, including its chemical components, was the main thing keeping this attack from happening.  Whether they're a good thing or not, that's a paper-thin safety barrier, if you ask me.  I have no idea what a solution might be, but I gotta think, how many *more* terrible things are 12 pills away from happening?

All of this gets me wondering, from a hypno perspective, how powerful are our daily rituals?  I just finished Bandler and Grinder's "Reframing", and there was a story about a friend of theirs who went to a new management position at some corporation.  His philosophy was to make things more "people-oriented", so he got rid of the impersonal time-clock.

Immediately, productivity dropped.  Apparently, the clock was an anchor for these people.  Everyday, they started their morning rituals, and when they got to the part where they "clocked-in", that was their signal to "be at work".  When he got rid of the clock, no one knew what to do!

In my own daily rituals, I find I get the pattern-interrupt when I deviate from them.  The more ingrained they are, that is, the less attention that I have to pay to them to perform them, well, the more ingrained they are.  The harder they are to replace, or change.

You know, who knows what happened with this guy, and I'm not trying to pretend that I do.  But imagining that I'm him, it seems like an awful big burden to have to take that pill to be "normal", to have to act normal, to be all those wonderful things quoted above, all the time.  Not only the doing of those things, but the knowledge of them, as well.  The knowing that if not for that thankful pill, what would I be?

Not only that, but if the time came that I was "done", that I'd had enough with life, well, I'd have a convenient escape hatch.  Once I stopped taking the pill, you couldn't blame me for anything I did.  And I wouldn't have to feel bad about it.  Its my genetics.

Again, all conjecture.  But I re-read that first line, about his not fitting the profile of a mass-murderer.  And then I think about that idea that he was faking "happiness" all that time, *because* he was on those drugs. 

And it sounds like a lot of self-delusion.  On his part, for pretending to be something he wasn't.  And on our part, for wanting so badly to believe that all we need to do is medicate someone, and all will be well, we won't even have to check up on them after that. 

And for getting angry each time it doesn't work...

I just got back from the Hermosa Beach Walkabout Trance Getaway out in LA.

Which even led to me finding this site, so its an appropriate first blog, yeah?

I've personally been living in my own little trance world, where I was really the only person I knew who found hypnosis, and all the surrounding phenomenon, completely fascinating.  It was kind of boring, actually.  Stifling might be another word we could use.

I've been to a couple of Essential Skills seminars, but those people aren't overt "hypnotists".  A lot of the point of what those guys teach is, ssh, we gotta keep this secret.  Which can be cool, don't get me wrong.

I've been studying and honing my skills under a veil of secrecy, cause that was how I was taught to view it, and I think I assumed from that veil that ALL hypnosis needs to be covert, or that even someone who's willing, you still have to trick them.  That's been my approach, basically.

What a shock this past weekend was!  Here was a room full of people who live and breathe this stuff, most of whom are successful at it. 

I kind of assumed there would be lots of "amateurs" like me there, curious types, etc.  Then I see Wendi Friesen walk in and sit next to me, and I was pretty sure I'd seen her on youtube with Gerry Kein (hope I'm getting these names right).  Later on, someone points out this guy Scott Sandlin who's kind of a big deal, and Richard Rumble, etc al.  Honestly, if I'd have realized how many "big names" would have been there, I might have chickened out and not gone at all.

I'm so, so, so very glad I did.

Me, and approaches, not a good mix.  I could only get one kid to let me play, and even he was sent to me by Mindy.  We're standing on the boardwalk, hundreds of people milling about, his buddy is working with someone else in my group and looks to be having fun, so he tells me he wants to be hypnotized to feel drunk.  Heh, easy enough.

Several people that I tried to play with were *really* interested.  But not enough to let me do THEM.  A girl at a bar Saturday night, she kept telling me, "man, you know I REALLY think you ought to go down the bar and hypnotize people.  I'll stay here and watch your coat..."  "Paul, you should hypnotize THAT guy...!" 

She was a really enthusiastic observer.  I bet she'd even have clapped for me, to root me on.  But she wasn't gonna let me do it to HER...  It would have been nice to have gotten to work with more of the people on the streets, but I'm really not complaining.

Cause, see, as I mentioned above, everyone that I know thinks this little hypnosis hobby of mine is a little hokey.  "Oh Paul, you're always trying to be different, aren't you?"  But in my boring factory job, I've often sat there with my hokey books daydreaming about starting my own hokey practice. 

Two of my hopes for this seminar, was to explore how possible that little dream might be, and also to just be around other people who shared my interests for a change.  I got both of those two wishes met, and I'd like to thank anyone who happens to see this who was there, the whole thing was great. 

Because at no time did I detect "hokey".  I mean, I did, the whole thing was just a goofy trance party.  But everyone there enjoyed what they were doing.  Including myself, though it took a day to loosen me up.

As a factory worker, I've never had a need to go to "industry events" or conferences or any of that, and I've always been kind of curious about why people go to those things.  Now I get it.  This is how you meet people with your interests, in similar lines of work, this is how you network, oh yeah, and you ought to have some fun, too.

Its like a whole new world for me.  So, like I said, thanks to everyone!

Maybe some of you are curious about Brian David Phillips, since few of you have met him?  I found his style to be a 50/50 mix of "serious" hynotist, and the guy who's doing magnetic-orgasmic-butt tricks in his stage show.  A very pleasureable guy to be around.  He'd be explaining some theory or other, disussing the strategies or theories, and then he'd turn right around and stick someone's hand to their head, with no noticable switch between the two roles.  I went to dinner with a group on Sunday, and got to talk to him for a while, and at no time did I find him argumentative, overbearing, full of himself, um, and really anything else unlikable.  Just a really peaceful guy, who seemed completely at ease with whatever he is.

But really everyone I met was friendly and fun.  Good times!