How to Entertain With Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a powerful and interesting practice that is used by many knowledgeable and skilled practitioners around the country. However, the serious nature of hypnosis doesn't make it exempt from being used to entertain audiences. The amazing effects of a hypnotic suggestion can wow almost any audience and provide hours of wonderment and laughs if done properly. Following are some steps to help you entertain with hypnosis and use this powerful form of subconscious suggestion to make your next party a hit.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Read up on hypnosis so that you have a working knowledge of how hypnosis works. Understand the fundamentals of brain waves, hypnotic suggestion, altered states of consciousness and relaxation techniques as this will arm you with sufficient information to begin hypnotizing for entertainment.

2. Develop a gimmick or stage presence that gives your act an individual spin, for instance hypnotizing men to bark like dogs or giving suggestions to people to make them feel they are vegetables, anything that will be memorable and that speaks to you. Learn how to effectively deliver a hypnotic suggestion using sensory deprivation when in a crowd and soothing voice techniques to invoke relaxation.

3. Make sure that you have a personable stage presence and know how to make people laugh, one of the most important aspects of stage hypnotism is the ability to make an audience laugh. Isolate your subject or volunteer and work hard to put them into an altered state of consciousness (you will often have to elicit complete silence from the rest of the room and allow your subject to become relaxed even in the presence of many others which can be difficult).

4. Take a course on hypnotism and visit other stage hypnotists shows so you can see how they utilize darkened theaters in order to help reduce sensory stimulation. Some even utilize projection screens with visualizations to help to ease anxiety of subjects. Learn to give suggestions that are funny, and ensure that you always appear in command of the situation (this is the time to say "when I snap my fingers you will bark like a puppy").

5. Consider utilizing mentalism which is a form of magic in which the performer uses guided visualizations and mental suggestions to create a fun atmosphere, this can often be just as much fun as inducing a hypnotic state on a person and has much less liability attached. Put together a stage routine that leads up to a big finale, perhaps hypnotizing a whole side of the room or a whole room and filming their responses to suggestions.

Tips & Warnings

• Confidence is everything; you must be secure in your own hypnotic abilities for others to trust you. Work exclusively at first at being confident in your skills and easing the minds of even the most skeptical of subjects.
• Utilize humorous signals such as ringing bells, snapping fingers and playing specific songs as cues for a hypnotic suggestion, this always gets a laugh and is typically what people think of when they think of stage hypnotism.
• Do not endanger the lives of anyone during a hypnotic suggestion.