Hypnotized
Y'know, one thing I don't think I've ever talked about in my silly little blog here are my early explorations of hypnosis. So I thought I'd tell you about the first time I was ever successfully hypnotized.

I think I've been interested in hypnosis since the first moment I was aware of the concept, but what may've really heightened my interest was my first time seeing a stage hypnosis act in person. At my high school, they would hire one each year as part of the Homecoming Week festivities.

If you've ever been to one of these stage acts, you know the first thing they do is try a little test that the entire audience can participate in. This is so they can tell right off the bat who the most suggestible people in the audience are, since not everyone is equally suggestible to hypnosis. It's usually things like being asked to clasp your hands together, and discovering they are now locked together until the hypnotist says release, and a visualization one where you close your eyes and imagine a balloon tied to your wrist, which slowly causes your wrist to rise. This last one in particular is especially effective for the stage hypnotist, because generally the higher their hand is in the air, the more suggestible they likely are. In fact, its like they've already raised their hands to volunteer, which is why this is the last one he does before gathering volunteers.

I remember the first couple times I attended these acts, I was afraid to participate in these small test examples. This was partly out of fear that it would end up working and friends would somehow convince me to go up on stage, which I did not want to do. But also, just a general fear of losing control of myself and/or my inhibitions in front of a group of people. This may sound silly, but that's also the main reason I've never been interested in trying alcohol.

Anyways, a long story slightly less long, toward the end I finally worked up the courage to see if the audience participation bits would work on me. And what I discovered was...they didn't. At all. At first I thought maybe it was because I was up in the balcony, and maybe hypnosis had something to do with range from the hypnotist (which it doesn't, btw). At the very last school hypnotist act I attended, I sat down on the floor, closer to the stage, and tried it again. And nope, nothing.

For a long while, I was convinced I was simply unhypnotizable. The irony, having such a strong interest in being hypnotized, and being completely immune to it.

In college, I discovered a free-hypnosis-mp3s website that I hesitate to name, but it was called Warp My Mind. I decided to give these a go, to experiment further and figure out if maybe different techniques might work on me. The site had various different inductions, but none of which seemed to have any effect on me. For my test to see if it worked, I used a freeze trigger trance file, which was followed by an mp3 of him giving the trigger, followed by some silence and then a release trigger. But no induction seemed to work.

I started to wonder if maybe i was doing it wrong. People are supposed to forget the trance generally, aren't they? Maybe I'm listening *too* closely, and I'm supposed to sort of not listen to it consciously in order to let it sink into my subconscious. I tried falling asleep to induction files, letting files play while I slept, etc. Nothing. (In hindsight, I think it was just the sound of boredom in his voice kind of grating on me, and the background noise of cars driving by outside his window being extremely distracting.)

One day while reading up on instances of hypnosis not working for people, I came across one comment where someone said they'd had a partner who didn't at first seem effected by the hypnosis, but that if they said the trigger word several times in a row, rather than just once, it seemed to stick then. So I decided to try that.

I loaded up my trusty CD walkman with the disc of burned mp3s once again, and this time when he spoke the trigger word, I pressed the "back" button so that the word would repeat again.

"Nope, nothing." Back.

"Still nothing." Back.

"Again, nothing. Wait. Why am I not pressing the back button? I can't seem to get my finger to push it...whoa, I can't move!"

And that's the first time I ever got hypnosis to work. Of course, being as into "the struggle" as I am, I couldn't help but try to test myself to see if I could break out of it before the release trigger...which I did, after only 10 seconds or so. But after that, hypnosis became much easier, and I've had some pretty decent luck with several different people, including being once frozen in front of my monitor for around a half hour. But those are stories for another time.