Covert hypnosis story

About a year back, I attended a cycle of seminars on the subject of the brain and human mind. It was organized by our University and featured many professors, neuroscientists, physiologists, psychologists and psychiatrists.

It was a wonderful week full of great new views on the workings of the brain and human mind.

One particular course especially stayed in my mind to this day because I notice the lecturer clearly using covert hypnosis on us all - and very successfully at that.

He was a psychiatrist and the subject was no other than hypnosis. He told us he was using hypnosis on his patients and he had a very high success rate. He also told us he also uses hypnosis daily everywhere he goes. He answered a few questions about covert hypnosis and the audience was quite a bit sceptical so I guess he decided to do a little demonstration (he didn't tell us, of course).

He told us that he was going to get back to the subject of covert hypnosis but first he'd like to give his lecture on clinical hypnosis as this was the title of the lecture.

He begun explaining history of hypnosis, he mentioned a few very known hypnotists, including Milton Erickson and Dave Elman. He then proceeded to tell us about his approach to hypnosis and dived deeply into inductions.

He talked about how in order to put someone in a hypnotic trance, one has to get in a trance himself. He gave an example of how he talked to his patient when he was inducing trance. He begun to speak rhythmically and deepening his voice slightly every now and again, talking slower and slower. You could hear his deep breaths through the microphone.

All of the sudden, I begun to feel a bit drowsy and this wonderful feeling of connection came upon me. I realized what was happening and looked around the lecture room (which was a movie theater actually). There were around 300 people attending the lecture and when I looked around I was literally shocked...

Each and every person in the room looked like a zombie. They were all staring at him, breathing in sync and some had their jaw dropped. It was a hilarious sight. I tried to point this out to my colleague that was attending the lecture with me and was sitting to my right. When I looked at him, I almost burst out laughing - he was just as zombie-like as everyone else and he had his jaw dropped, too.

I didn't want to bother him so I listened on to the lecture. By now the psychiatrist was explaining exactly what the sensation of trance feels and looks like and then he said something interesting...

He said: "When you come out of this trance, you'll feel wonderful, euphoric even. You let go of all your worries and feel great"

He then started to talk about how he brings his subjects back to full awakening, suggesting wonderful feelings and euphoria all along.

He then had the staff turn on the lights and said this was all he had the time for.

People were completely overwhelmed (me included). Some had more questions about covert hypnosis and he briefly answered them. He then said he had to go and he got a huge round of applause. We could feel the euphoria in the room. Everyone was ecstatic. We were all happy to have such great psychiatrists in our country.

The lecture ended and as we were leaving the theater, you could hear comments such as: "By far the best lecture" and "This was amazing". Everyone had a big smile on their faces.

This was a truly amazing covert hypnosis experience. We were all brought down into a trance conversationally, without formal consent and knowledge of it happening. He was really good and he really opened my eyes even further to the power of covert hypnosis.