A) BELIEF and EXPECTANCY
B) DISORIENTATION and CONFUSION
C) SUGGESTION and REPETITION
D) RELAXATION and SLEEP

Step A means that if you instill into them a belief in your powers as a Hypnotist and as such they believe that you are able to place them under trance, and they also expect to go under if you were to try it upon them, then they are in the correct state of mind to be very successfully and rapidly placed into a stage hypnosis trance state.

Step B means that once they are in the correct state of mind to be hypnotized you then use methods of disorientation and confusion to convince them they are starting to go into stage hypnosis trance, and that’s why they are feeling these strange effects. As such if they believe this to be the case then they will expect to go under deeper and as such they will, as in the end it’s all down to their personal state of mind.

Step C means that once these things are starting to convince them they are beginning to slip into stage hypnotic trance then you use methods of suggestion and repetition to confuse and disorientate them even further and also to convince them that they are going under more. If they believe this is the case and expect what you are doing to have an effect upon them, then indeed, in turn it most certainly will.

Step D is the end result of carrying out steps A, B & C and should be that if they believe what you have done to be Stage Hypnosis and expect it to work then this will have the result of relaxation and sleep. And as all Hypnosis really is, is deep relaxation they will then be in the Stage Hypnotic trance state.

So you see the secret to all induction’s of any kind whether Stage or Therapy and whether slow, rapid or instantaneous is that if the subject sincerely believes that what you are doing does work and they also sincerely believe and expect it to work on them, then the end result will always be that it works on them.

Basically, the key secret to all induction’s is to have instilled into the prospective subjects mind, the belief in your powers and the 100% expectancy that should you as the worlds greatest of great Stage and/or Therapeutic Hypnotists picks upon them to be Hypnotised then it will work and as such they will enter a trance.

SEVEN STEPS TO STAGE-HYPNOSIS

1) Obtain rapport (done through one liner jokes at start of act).

2) Induction of Hypnotic trance.

3) Deepening of trance (giving suggestion that each time they are told to return to sleep they will go deeper.)

4) Ego strengthening Therapy (butter them up/compliments etc).

5) Do the Therapy (in this case the comedy routines of your act).

6) Implant the major post Hypnotic suggestion. (N.B. This is done at stage two when they are told that when you tell them to return to sleep they will go deeper and is done so that all suggestions given to them are cancelled before they leave the stage).

7) Awaken them from trance (awaken them and ensure they feel strong and confident).

The modern stage hypnosis show must get the audience laughing, gain the audiences trust, create excitement, expectation and introduce you as an hypnotic entertainer that is confident, skilled and personable.

If you fail to achieve your goals in the opening it will be a long, long, miserable show! It won’t be entertaining, you will have trouble getting volunteers, it will be slow, and you’ll end up doing a long induction, or worse, not hypnotizing anyone!

You need to learn the specific steps to grab the audience and kick start your show to guarantee your hypnosis show success!

#2 Calling for Hypnosis Show Volunteers

You call for volunteers and ………nobody stirs…….
Does this ever happen?
Yes!
Does it happen much?
No, not if you know how to avoid it!

Before you perform your first show you need how to call for volunteers and have more volunteers then you can possibly use! This is one of the ingredients for a successful show.

In addition you should consider how you will react when you call for volunteers and nobody comes up. Make sure you develop specific techniques so that you can remedy that and bail your program out of stage hypnosis show hell.

#3 Hypnotizing your Show Volunteers

The success of your hypnotic induction is the cornerstone of your show. The faster, more entertaining your induction, the more enjoyable your performance will be for your audience.

You need a powerful induction that will drop them fast and be suitable for the performing venue. What that means is that in most performing venues you don’t want to use a PR Induction (Progressive Relaxation) and you don’t want any instant inductions either.

A PR induction is one where you bore the person into hypnosis, the problem is that you also bore the audience. An instant induction is usually one where you shock a person into hypnosis. This usually appears very violent and dangerous although it maybe neither.

It is not necessarily what is true that is important; it is what the audience perceives. So if you are hypnotizing a CEO’s wife he is probably not going to want to see you do an instant on his wife (it looks violent) or if you are working a
school event you would not want to bore the audience to tears, nor do you want to do an instant induction as the principle would never have you back.

That is not to say there are not places for those types of inductions. It is just merely to point out that you need to be choosing the right induction based on the needs of your audience. Only by having that type of induction will you be able to focus on what you should be focused on: providing outstanding hypnotic entertainment that your client will request again and again, year after year!

#4 The Show Routines

The modern show must create excitement, laughter and do so at a break neck pace. You need to create two lengths of shows for marketing purposes; one at sixty minutes and one at ninety minutes. The audience will judge your show by the routines you use. This may be the most important consideration of your show!

#5 Concluding the Successful Modern Stage Hypnosis Show

How you leave the audience often times dictates how they remember you. Be sure to leave your audience wanting more, more, more! In addition understand there are four main ways to end your show.
1) With post-hypnotics
2) Complete the show in the audience
3) Complete the show on stage
4) Offer suggestions for improvement

Conclude the show properly and you will end your program on a high note!

http://StageHypnosisCenter.com

People are drawn to see the show with preconceived ideas. Their own susceptibility to suggestion already heightened, they are already in a level of trance. Stage hypnosis, or instantaneous hypnosis is then fairly easy to achieve by a skilled operator.

All stage hypnotists and hypnotherapists know about post-hypnotic suggestions. The pre-hypnotic suggestion is less widely recognized or mentioned in books on therapy, yet it is highly important, and that cannot be stressed enough. The pre-hypnotic suggestion is vital in both areas of hypnosis, inclunding stage hypnosis. It goes back to the old saying, “As a man thinketh so is he”. What you believe will be true for you, especially when trance is induced. Therefore if you think that after having experienced hypnosis you will have a headache, you will most likely have one. If you think that it might drive you insane, then it could. If you think it will be a good laugh, then it will be. But remember, there is no general rule of thumb!

With a stage hypnosis setting many people are drawn to see the show as if by some compelling inner force. They are already controlled by their own fears and anticipation. Some of the audience are already on the verge of, or already in, a level of trance. Moods and feelings are contagious. The more packed the audience the more likely you have a crowd. A large gathering of people does not necessarily make a crowd. A crowd is when the gathering of people are all experiencing similar thoughts and emotions, and this creates an element of collective unconsciousness.

Man is a gregarious animal, and his mind can and does lose its individuality and personality when in a crowd setting. This is of course how mobs and riots occur. This is how a skilled politician can sway a crowd. This is how Hitler hypnotized a whole nation. A skilled stage hypnotist will use this to his advantage.

To turn a gathering of people into a crowd you need eloquence. You need to have everybody’s attention, and as you talk to them and they listen, by suggesting what they will or will not experience, by adding strong emotional content, with repetition, with their minds collectively focused on a single pointed idea, that idea being trance, you already have most of the crowd in trance, and they don’t even know it!
In some ways it could be described as a form of telepathy. There are numerous different types of telepathy. Most people when they hear the word telepathy think of mental telepathy. Probably the most common form of telepathy is emotional.

With a good crowd you have a very strong form of emotional telepathy. This of course can work for you, or against you if you don’t understand it. It is the gut feeling, literally coming from the solar plexus region.
It is an invisible energy which not only do we feel, but we also transmit and receive. It is as if the solar plexus is the main emotional radio of the body. When we are close together as with a crowd these feelings transmit more easily from aura to aura, from person to person. This is why there is likely to be total panic when a fire occurs in a public building like a nightclub or cinema. A skilled stage hypnosis operator can sense this, whether he is consciously aware of it or not, and can use it to his advantage. When the call for volunteers arises in a hypnotic show certain individuals just can’t help but put themselves forward, moved by an invisible compelling force. That is to say, the positive pre-hypnotic suggestions of the hypnotist have already been made, and they come forward as the post-hypnotic suggestion is made calling for volunteers. The fact is that they are already being controlled because they are already in an element of trance. Their trance may have started when they first heard about or saw a poster advertising the event. It may have occurred only minutes beforehand. But it has already occurred.

For More information, please visit: http://www.dangers-of-hypnosis.co.uk

The most frequent one that I have heard is the volunteer’s inability to come out of trance. This is simply not true. A person can come out of trance at any time he or she wants. It might be, though, that the person just is so relaxed or having so much fun or is liking the change of reality that he or she just doesn’t want to come out of trance. The best suggestion to give to such a person is to say that at the count of three (or whatever cue you want to use) that person will become the prime example of a person who is wide “awake” as opposed to “you’ll be wide awake by the count of three”.

But let the beginning stage hypnotist beware. Your show is unique in that you are using people from the audience who you have most likely never met before. The more shows you do, the higher the chance you may run into a volunteer that will act very strange (e.g. display totally unrelated emotions like crying, hysterical laughter, etc.). An experienced stage hypnotist will know to remove these people before they start to have the abreaction or what to do if they’ve already started to have the abreaction. For these type of people, stage hypnosis is just a mechanism that jump starts the abreaction, but most likely that person already had the problem to begin with-hypnosis just gave them the chance to bring it out.

If done properly, stage hypnosis does not create a problem. A stage hypnotist works with a large group and may not be able to spot these people all the time. And, in this day of lawsuits and ignorance about what hypnosis truly is, you may find yourself in a very difficult predicament in trying to explain to a court that stage hypnosis was not the cause of a person’s own problem. On top of this, you will also have to make sure that volunteers don’t end up hurting themselves on stage by accidentally tripping on something. (It is very difficult and expensive to get insurance for a stage hypnosis show since insurers are not really sure what stage hypnosis is.)

Also, be aware of how you word your suggestions. If you give a person the suggestion “Whenever you here the word ‘blue’, you’ll laugh uncontrollably” and you don’t nullify the suggestion before the show if finished, that person may continue to laugh uncontrollably for days, weeks, or months even if someone else says the cue word. Volunteers will take your suggestions very literally. So, be careful on how you word your suggestions during a stage hypnosis show.

With all this in mind, for those who still want to join this very intriguing and entertaining field, I wish you the best of luck. Remember, you’re not just a hypnotist up on the stage but you’re also a showman. Always perform with the intention to entertain while keeping in mind the welfare of your volunteers.

Stage hypnosis is also known as covert mass hypnosis for entertainment; many willing participants are brought on stage and given specific instructions and commands which trigger the minds natural hypnotic response.

As far as I know, there are no full time schools for learning just stage hypnosis. Most stage hypnotist’s probably learned their skills from watching or working with another stage hypnotists along with reading various books. But I suggest that anyone wanting to learn stage hypnosis take classes and training in the basics of hypnosis including history, conscious vs. subconscious mind, trance levels, pre-induction, induction, suggestion, and hypnotic phenomena. Doing so will improve your knowledge and skills in hypnosis in general which will add more depth to your show. But keep in mind that a stage hypnotist is not necessarily skilled in hypnotherapy. (The other way around can also be true.) It behooves the stage hypnotist to stay away from hypnotherapy unless properly trained in the field.

Many people will approach a stage hypnotist after a show believing that he or she can “make” somebody stop smoking, lose weight, get rid of a phobia, etc. The stage hypnotist does not have any special powers to do so. A professional and ethical stage hypnotist not trained in hypnotherapy will refer such requests to a qualified hypnotherapist.

Ormond McGill’s “The New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnosis” (ISBN# 1-899836-02-0, available at http://www.tranceworks.com) is the supposed authoritative book on stage hypnosis. It is quite thorough and has a lot of examples for methods on hypnotizing and for suggestion. I suggest you use it as a guide, but the best way is to combine that knowledge with the practical experience you can gain from watching other stage hypnotists or having them teach you the “tricks of the trade”.

Which leads me to my next point: someone to teach you “the trade”. Whether you’re studying hypnotherapy or stage hypnosis, there is nothing more valuable that getting a mentor that is willing to work with you on a one-on-one basis. I highly suggest that you find such a generous person. But be minded that these people are jewels-someone not to take advantage of and not easily found. Mentors are dedicated to their students as long as their students take what they are learning seriously. Missing appointments, having a lax attitude towards the subject or mentor, or abusing what you are learning are usually not tolerated and you will find yourself without a person to lead you in the right direction of a successful stage hypnosis practice or show. Sure, you can take general classes, but a caring mentor will be able to help you fine tune your skills.

For many people, their only contact with hypnosis is the stage performance, where the use of hypnotism is used to entertain and delight an audience. Stage performance can either be on tour, traveling throughout the country, or be on television shows, or both. This is obviously different from clinical hypnosis, where a hypnotherapist works one-on-one with a patient in an effort to solve a problem or seek a solution to an addiction

But the techniques are basically the same. Stage Hypnosis and clinical hypnosis both attempt to induce an hypnotic trance, and bypass the conscious mind to reach the unconscious, and then plant a suggestion into the unconscious mind.

Learning how to do a successful stage hypnosis show requires mastering several different very important concepts. Any good stage hypnosis class should teach the following key elements:

• How to Create Your Personal Stage Hypnosis Induction Style
• How to Deal with Abreaction
• How To Select “Rock Star” Participants
• How to Choose, Develop and Manage Stage Hypnosis Skits & Routines
• How to Properly and Safely Awaken a Subject from Trance
• How to Get Gig Bookings and Create Interest in Stage Hypnosis

A good stage hypnotist is no less skilled in trance induction and suggestion than a therapeutic hypnotist. In fact, a number of stage hypnotists have previously been clinical hypnotists; others may go on to became clinical hypnotists, and some do both at the same time.

However, a very important ingredient is the fact that before proceeding to his stage hypnosis session, the stage hypnotist gives the audience a lecture on the history and purpose of hypnosis, which creates an air of even greater interest of the hypnotic science, thereby increasing their suspense and vulnerability. 

Early in the last century interest was revived with the success of an American stage hypnotist, Ormond McGill. As well as pioneering hypnosis as TV entertainment, McGill wrote what is now known as ‘The Bible’ of stage hypnosis, his 1947 book The Encyclopedia of Genuine Stage Hypnotism.

Many people think that this kind of stage hypnosis is mind control; this is not true, the person performing the hypnotism has simply accessed the brain on a subconscious level, and has made influential suggestions, which in turn brought about a specific reaction.

In 1994 a panel of experts was set up by the Home Office to examine any evidence of possible harm to people taking part in public entertainments involving hypnotism, and to review the effectiveness of the law governing hypnotism for entertainment.

Publication of the expert panel’s report was announced in parliament in 1995, which concluded that “there was no evidence of serious risk to participants in stage hypnosis, and that any risk which does exist is much less significant than that involved in many other activities.”

The fact that modern society induces hypnosis so often by watching lots of movies and television, may contribute to the success of entertainer’s ability to perform stage hypnosis; as people are accustomed to letting their conscious minds take a side seat to be absorbed in something else that they find entertaining. Meditation and therapeutic hypnosis can also be more easily achieved do to this fact, though many people do find it difficult to relax enough without the focus of a television or book.

Nowadays the hypnosis stage show remains popular as both public and corporate entertainment. There are courses available on hypnotic stage techniques for those who wish to learn stage hypnosis online or on a professionally taught course.