My wife smokes and we both hate it. She has tried everything – cold turkey, the patch, the gum – and nothing has worked for long. Recently, she started talking about the idea of going to a hypnotist to see if that might help. From doing some reading on the subject, it seemed like hypnosis, although a useful treatment, would only be a temporary solution unless she kept going to keep the hypnotic suggestion fresh. I’ve always been interested in hypnosis, but hadn’t ever really learned much about it, so I decided that I would try to learn how and help her quit smoking.
A quick trip to Google gave me several places to start. After doing some research online, and reading a couple of books, I decided that I needed some more help before I was ready to tackle something like my wife’s smoking. I set up a meeting with one of the professional hypnotists that I found on the web, and we discussed my desire to learn hypnosis to help my wife. He was a little leery at first, since, naturally, I could have been trying to set myself up as a competitor. However, once we talked for a while, he decided that he could trust me.
“The great thing about hypnosis is the feeling of power that you can get when you’ve got someone in your control,” he said. “When I’m on stage or even here in my office, it’s a tremendous rush to know that you could make the person in front of you do almost anything.”
“Anything?” I asked. “I thought that you couldn’t use hypnosis to make someone do something that they wouldn’t ordinarily do?”
He laughed. “Well, that’s sort of true. They did an experiment once where they told subjects that a piece of paper they were holding was a knife, and then got them to stab someone with the fake knife. But when they actually gave people a real knife and did exactly the same thing, the subjects woke up from the hypnosis, and, in some cases were quite upset. At some level, the subject always realizes what he or she is doing. Now, with that understanding, depending on your skill, you can structure suggestions in such a way that the subject will do almost anything – either believing that they are doing something else or because you’ve actually found a way to express some deeper desire that they might not have even been aware of. You know how stage hypnotists make people believe that they’re really hot or cold, or that they can’t hear or see certain things, it’s just an extension of that. Imagine, for example, that I told someone in a trance that she was completely alone in a room, I might then be able to suggest that she do something that she wouldn’t ordinarily do in front of other people. So, if I layer the suggestions – first making her believe that she’s alone, and then second making her believe that she’s really hot – I mean really uncomfortably hot – then I might be able to get her to take off her clothes in front of a crowd or at least in front of me. Of course, I wouldn’t do anything that,” he said with a grin and a wink.
That really got my mind whirling with possibilities. We talked more about how to plant suggestions, how to determine whether a subject is a somnambulist (a sleep walker who might not remember things that happen in a trance), and other things. After a couple of hours and a few drinks, I was ready to start working on my plan.
After the meeting, I did some more reading, and decided that I needed some practice before I tried my abilities on my wife. There is a university not too far from our house, so I made up some cards advertising my services for weight loss, smoking and parties. I figured that students wouldn’t be too picky or too critical.
I got my first call a few days later. A junior named Diana wanted help losing weight. I told her that we would meet in the student union and talk about it. I was surprised at how nervous I was. I picked my spot carefully. I had a chair in a quiet corner of the building, next to a fairly soft couch.
When she arrived, I could see that she had no need to lose any weight. She wasn’t the prototypical college hardbody, but she was very cute with curves in all the right places. She had straight, chestnut brown hair that stuck out in a pony tail from the back of her sorority baseball cap and hung below her shoulders. She had that perfect, heart shaped face, with deep brown eyes and “pouty” lips. She was wearing a baggy university sweatshirt that hung down to mid-thigh, black running tights and running shoes. It was obvious that she had just come from the gym, which was good for me.
I stood up and introduced myself. “Hi, my name is Nick.” I used the even voice that I had been practicing. I shook her hand looked deep into her eyes. Her skin was warm and very soft.
“Thanks for meeting me, Nick. I’m Diana.”
“Please, sit down.” I gestured her to the couch and watched her sink into it.
“Oooh. That feels good. I just did a killer workout.”
“Really? What kind of workout?” I could use this information to help put her into a suggestable state.
“I did some lifting and then ran on the treadmill.”
“Do you work your arms, too?”
“Yep. Gotta avoid getting that flabby tricep.”
“I’ll bet your arms are tired.”
“Beat.”
I let that go. “You work out and you’re in great shape. So why do you want to lose weight?”
She struggled a little to get out of the deep couch. She turned her back on me and pulled her sweatshirt up to expose a very cute, bubble shaped rear end, shaped very nicely by the lycra running tights. She put one hand on the outside of each thigh and said in an intense whisper, “I’m starting to get saddlebags!” She turned sideways and held up her sweatshirt with one hand and said, “See? I’m also getting a little paunch! I want to have a washboard stomach. Will you help me?”
“Of course I’ll help you,” I said, admiring her legs and stomach, “but I have to tell you that I think you already have a fantastic body. You really don’t need to lose any weight.”
She blushed a little and said, “Thanks. I know I’m a little obsessed about it, but you should see some of the girls around here. Compared to them, I’m getting …. fat.” With that, she flopped back down into the couch.
“Ok, then, what are the things you’d like to cut out? We can do a simple hypnotic suggestion that you don’t like those things because they don’t taste good, and I can add a suggestion that if you do eat them, they will taste awful.”
“I eat pretty healthy already, but, being here at school I drink too much beer, and then I get the munchies so I eat all kinds of bad stuff when I’m drunk. If I could avoid drinking and snacking, I think that my normal diet and exercise regimen could get me in the shape that I want.”
“Sounds like a pretty healthy approach. I think we can do that, but you ought to know that hypnotic suggestions wear off. We would need to do regular sessions for a while until you got into the shape that you want. Is that ok?”
“How much would that cost? I don’t have a whole lot of extra cash.”
“I have to be honest with you, I’m still practicing to become a better hypnotist, so, I’m not an expert. If you’re willing to be my practice subject, I’m willing to help you out for free. If we get you into the shape you want, the only charge would be that you have to come over and cook a dinner for me and my wife.” I wanted to emphasize that I was married so that she would feel more secure with me, but I definitely had an ulterior motive for planting this suggestion early – if only it became possible!
“That sounds like a good deal for me, but I have to warn you, I’m not a very good cook.”
“That’s ok. It would just make for a nice night for us to have someone else make dinner in our home, without us going out.” I laughed. “Odds are that we’d both end up in the kitchen helping you, anyway. Would you like for me to try hypnotizing you right now?” I figured that since we were in a public place, that would make her feel a little more secure about our first session.
“You can do it here?”
“Well, we can certainly try.” I held my finger up in front of her face and said, “I want you to focus on my finger as I move it back and forth. I want you to feel yourself relaxing. Feel all of the tension draining out of your body. You can feel each of your muscles relaxing, starting at your toes… working up through your ankles to your calves… to your thighs… up into your chest… and from your fingers through your hands… up through your arms… to your neck… to your eyes. You feel so relaxed that it would be almost impossible for you to get up out of this sofa. You can feel yourself relaxing into the cushions.” I could see her eyes starting to close. “Your arms are so heavy that you can’t even lift them. You are so relaxed that you have no strength to move any part of your body. Your eyes are getting so relaxed that you can’t keep them open. Feel the weight of your eyelids as they close. They are so heavy that all you want to do is let them fall.”
“I’m going to count backwards from 10 to 1, and with each number you will become more, and more relaxed. When I get to 1, you will be completely unable to move, but you will be able to hear me and respond. 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6- 5- 4- 3- 2- 1.”
“Your body is totally relaxed. Your arms are so heavy that you couldn’t lift your arm even if you tried.” I was counting on the after effects of her workout to add some real validity to this suggestion. “Diana, I want you to try to lift your right arm. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to lift it.” I saw her brow knit in concentration, but there was no motion from her arm. “Good. You will listen only to my voice. My voice will relax you even further each time I speak, you will go deeper and deeper into a trance.”
“I want you to listen to my voice. You are completely under my control. You will do what I tell you. Do you understand, Diana?”
“Yes. I will do what you tell me.”
“You have decided that you really don’t like the taste of beer. It is sour and almost makes you sick to have in your mouth. Even thinking about drinking a beer makes your mouth taste a little sour. If someone offers you a beer, you will say, ‘No, thanks, I really don’t like beer.’ When you turn down a beer, you will feel warm, happy feeling. You really like to drink water. Water tastes cool and refreshing. Water gives your mouth a very mild, very nice tingle, and you feel the cool refreshing feeling of the water flowing through your body with each sip.”
“What will you say if someone offers you a beer, Diana?”
