Several years ago, when I was starting out in hypnotism, I began my career doing stage hypnosis.

One of my first shows was a college show nearby. I hired a videographer (in the days before everyone had a video camera!) and it wasn’t cheap. Unfortunately, this was during midterms and most of the students weren’t so interested in watching a hypnosis show.

I had 17 students in the audience, the event director was tapping her watch and the clock was running on the video guy.

What a way to start a show.

After convincing the director that we needed a larger audience (I mean, if some volunteer to be hypnotized, then who will be watching the show, right?) we started the program with just 19 students watching.

Even with just a small audience, it was a blast. I have it on video and it’s a real hoot.

Now, a funny thing happened immediately after the show. Two of the girls who were hypnotic volunteers onstage said that they couldn’t remember a thing about the show. Nothing.

They were experiencing some sort of temporary hypnotic amnesia. This, by the way, would have worn off soon anyway, but I decided to experiment with this.

I said to one of the girls, “When you shake my hand, you will remember everything about the show.” We shook hands and…

… she reeled back and gasped, “Oh my goodness!! I did that? Are you kidding me?!? No way!!”

Now, realize, all she did was talk into her shoe, forget the number “eight” and a few other funny things. But, to her it was embarrassing at that moment.

So, to fix this I said, “Now when you shake my hand again you will no longer be embarrassed at all.” We shook hands and everything was back to normal.

I did the same with her friend but now I knew better. I said, “When you shake my hand, you’ll remember everything about the show and you won’t be embarrassed at all.” We shook hands and she smiled and said, “That’s so cool! I remember it now!!” Smiles all around.

When the first girl reeled back in astonishment, that was the exact moment I knew that hypnosis was real.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Stage Hypnosis/Show Biz, Hypnotism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.