The London Hypno-Meet

Well that was awesome!! What a great turnout. We all hooked up as planned, myself, Parkey, Matt, Ben and Moses and his mate Tamush. The pub was rammed with all the pre-theatre goers, so far too crouded for any hypnosis shenanegins! Out of the blue, 2 guys came up to us and one of them said "which one of you is Darren?!" When I introduced myself they told me that they were told about this hypno-meet be a trumpeter friend of mine who I messaged when I saw he was on a UK SpeedTrance group on Facebook. I didn't know he was into hypnosis and mentioned that we were all going to get together. He himself couldn't come as he was gigging, but he must have mentioned it to 2 of his friends, James who's a practicing hypnotherapist and his mate Simon who's currently studying NLP and hypnotherapy. Both lovely guys, so they tagged along as we went to find a quieter pub. On the way we bumped into Peter, who I met on the Cerbone/Nongard course, so all in all there was 8 or 9 of us!

When we finally found a suitable pub, Moses (John) wasted no time and set up 2 bar stools in what was obviously mean to be 'the stage!'. "Come on John" I said "Let's have a go!" I did the Cerbone Butterfly induction on him and he went down a treat! I then did some other inductions, such as the handshake interrupt and the hand drop as re-inductions and before he knew it, his eyes were glassy as anything and his arm was glued to his leg!!

For the next couple of hours, we took up the corner of the pub and it was like a graveyard! I looked over to see Matt slumped by the bar with Ben standing by him, doing one of his fantastically relaxing deepeners and giving him empowering thoughts. Matt was in heaven!

James and Simon didn't seem to have that much experience of rapid stuff, so were intrigued to see it all going on. I showed James Anthony Jacquin's Rehearsal Induction and he went on the third run through, he loved it! He said that it would have uses in his clinical work. I then showed him a great confusion induction that I got from Nathan Thomas, where you get the subject to wiggle one hand while rotating the other, then swapping them and getting him to concentrate "on that hand... no, the other one... now look at this... no this arm, while wggling... no, not that... these fingers... SLEEP!!"

Parkey then did his Erikson handshake on me, which was waking hypnosis, he shook my hand and very gradually loostened his grip, while telling me how easy it is to let the sounds of the pub melt away and just zone out. Incredible! I've never experienced that before and I was left standing with my arm in the air, eyes wide open and tranced out!

While this was all going on, John (Moses), James and Simon were doing the most incredible card tricks. John is very talented indeed and refused to tell me how they were done, to his credit!

I mentioned to John that I've never been able to experience amnesia, so he soon put pay to that! He sat me down, wacked me under, deepened me and then worked on me for ages with his cheeky language patterns! He was telling me that "the number between 2 & 4 didn't exist, that I could see it being wiped out by a chalk board, like when I was sitting back in a classroom as a child and that I "one two, four myself!!" Clever. Very Clever! I ended up counting 1 2 4 5 6 and was really confused as it was the first time this has happened. Congrats mate!

As I was woken up and brought out, somewhat dazed, Parkey ran up to me like a lion pouncing on a startled wilderbeast and said the next time I blink I would go straight back to SLEEP. Bastard!!

Matt said that he absolutely loved being under, but was a bit frustrated as his confidence wasn't that high, so it prevented him from being the hypnotist. "Sod that" I said!! and sat down. "come on mate, zap me now!" He was great! He did a Butterfly induction on me, deepened me and brought me out. Perfect! Nothing wrong with that at all and I actually learned from him. I now know that I personally prefer to be told to 'relax further' as opposed to 'going deeper and deeper'. It seems more natural and the word relax is much more relatable and user friendly to me.

We then said goobye to Ben, Rich and Peter and I thought that it was about time we took this to the streets!! 2 girls were sitting by the bar so I asked them if they've ever experienced hypnosis and we were all hypnotherapists (!). They politely said "no thanks". Typical!!

Refusing to be deterred, me, John, James and Simon then went to the noisiest pub in The West End, The Witherspoons on Wardour Street. Three floors, all BANGING with loud music!! We got our drinks and found a relatively quiet area. There was a table with a few guys and girls sitting on it, so I said hi to one of the guys and told him that we were hypnotherapists on a night out! He pointed to his friend and said that she would give it a go! I said hi to her, gave her a little pre-talk, telling her that she would feel so wonderfully relaxed and asked her if she would be up for it. She said yes!!

I zapped her under, did a few re-inductions, so she was suitably deep and then tried a few tricks with her. They all worked and I was thrilled! I stuck her hand to the table and no matter how hard she triend she couldn't move it. She tried to drink her drink, but it was stuck down and she couldn't pick the glass up! She 'forgot the number 3' until I touched on the forehead and said it "comes back NOW" and finally told her that whoever I pointed at would make her laugh really hard like the funniest joke she's ever heard! I was so happy!

I think that everyone has improved so much and I could see that the confidence in everyone increases with every time we get together. What an amazing night. Everyone was a star and so giving with wanting to be volunteers and learning from each other, a really great bunch of people. So sorry that Lee couldn't make this one, but I know he'll be there for others. Thanks for a lovely evening everyone and can't wait for the next hypno-meet 09!!