I’VE studied hypnosis and hypnosis works around a very, very simple format. It’s based around the questions you get people to answer in response to whatever you want. Let’s give an example.
Think of watching a stage show, such as Paul McKenna. There is a lot of work that goes on beforehand before we see the 30-minute show. He will have the audience and he needs to find his10 stars of the show. There might be 150 to 200 people in the audience and he needs to whittle that down to 10 people who’d like to come up on stage.
Now, because there’s no guarantee he will get the response he wants he needs the most suggestible people he can find to be on stage.
So what he’ll do is say ‘right then everybody, what I’d like you to do, I’d like you to follow just a few simple instructions’.
Then he asks you to do something like put your hands together.
‘As your sitting in your seat, in this wonderful auditorium, listening to the sound of my voice, I’d like you to notice that your hands are starting to get tighter and tighter.’
Now you or I might say, well actually they’re not. Then there are suggestible people who are going to go ‘yes, that’s amazing!’
All he has done is pre-programme people with three very simple statements. The first thing he did was a get a rapport with everybody. At the same time he said, ‘I’d like everybody to do this’ and everybody follows.
There’s an instant rapport. Now he fires out three statements which are jumped upon by the unconscious mind quicker than a back bencher in the House of Commons. You’re sitting in your seat thinking, ‘I’m sitting in my seat, yeah, in this wonderful auditorium, yeah and listening to the sound of his voice’.
A yes to all three. Bingo!
It’s been proven that once you get three yes votes the unconscious mind is already pre-prepared to say yes.
Here goes Paul again.
‘I’d like you to notice that your hands get tighter and tighter’. The most suggestible in the audience think, ‘yes they are’. Instantly he’s pulled his target down from 200 people to less than 50 per cent. Because certain people you meet want to get on stage. So all those people who’s hands get tighter, stand up. The ones who want to get on stage will keep doing what Paul says. Otherwise they’re not going to get their 15 minutes of fame.
So all we see is the 10 people who are the stars of the show.
If you ever see any re-runs, the majority of the acts will have the same three to five people all the time. Because they are his stars.
Rather like The Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean, the whole thing is rigged.
It’s fantastic stuff and it’s great entertainment. People do not know they are doing those things, and yet in a sense they are hypnotised, as they are in some form of relaxed state. If you asked them afterwards what happened they wouldn’t really know.