I would like to learn hypnosis but I don't know anything about it yet. Can anyone recommend a book for a beginner?

limhanchung,

A fine book for the beginner and onwards is "Fun with Hypnosis" by Professor Svengali.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/det......?s=books

In good spirit,

Jon

Get the book "They call it hypnosis" by Robert Baker. It will give you some background and information about what it really is and what it isn't. Unfortunbately what people have been led to beleive is hypnosis through the media (television, movies and stage hypnotists) is NOT what it really is.

PSIncerely Yours,
Paul Alberstat
http://www.stores.ebay.ca/abstagecraft

The New Encyclopedia Of Stage Hypnotism by Ormond McGill hands down.

I was skeptical spending so much money for a book but trusted several folks who vouched for it.

The book is easily worth more than it costs. It covers everything from inductions to routining. It even has many show examples to draw from.

The New Encyclopedia Of Stage Hypnotism

There's one called Hypnosis for Beginners by William W. Hewitt that helped me a lot. It's more about hypnosis for therapy than stage stuff, though. Of course, once you can induce hypnosis, it's really up to you how you make use of it. I'm trying to use self-hypnosis to help me improve on my magic. After all, every little bit helps.

If I were to choose one book between The New Encyclopedia Of Stage Hypnotism and They Call It Hypnosis. Which one would be more, worth the money?

Does the New Encyclopedia Of Stage Hypnotism teach me how to help people overcome fears?
If the techniques were used in a different language will it work?

They Call It Hypnosis covers stage shows and therapy.

It is the one to get.

Millard

Can someone please answer this? Thanks.

Hypnosis works in every language. Will it help you overcome your fear? It's all up to you. Hypnosis is only a tool to help you help yourself, nothing more.

If you want to overcome your fears, maybe you should read about NLP. It deals with that, along with a lot of other things.
The human body is really extraordinary when it comes to healing itself. The placebo effect, have you heard of that?

Anyway, I can give you a short example of what I read in an NLP book by Ian McDermott, and some other guy, they wrote this:
There was this guy, he had a severe case of cancer, he'd probably die within two weeks or so. The doctors asked if they could try a new medicine, and they were allowed to. They just injected water. And after a few days this patient felt a lot better and the cancer withdrew itself. It vanished COMPLETELY. When this guy, later on, heard about this experiment he immediately got sick again. They did the same thing, but with another "medicine", he got even better than before. No sign of cancer at all. He also heard about this later as well, he got sick once more, but couldn't make it.

That was a study performed somewhere some years ago. Which I believe is a perfect example of what the human body can do. Why am I writing this under a Hypnosis topic? I don't know.

But all hypnosis really is, is an altered state of mind. Where you more easily can be helped.

The technique will work in any langague, But you're looking at the wrong book. This is about stage hypnosis, you need a book about clinical hypnosis.

Fon

The use of hypnosis to aid someone to overcome a phobia (fear) or surmount other problems requires a full trained and certified, licensed hypnotherapist. I am NOT talking about someone that reads a few books and calls themselves a practitioner of hypnosis nor am I talking about someone who takes a weekend course on hypnotherapy and receives a so called diploma.

Hypnotherapy IS still therapy. it is a form of counselling and is NOT something to be taken lightly. For someone to use hypnosis properly and ethically to cure people requires more than a little knowledge of hypnosis. It also will not cure them immediately or in a few days. it will generally require extensive work with a hypnotherapist.

Why is it that magicians are the only group I know of that thinks that by reading a few books, watch a couple of videos that they are qualified to "do" such things as psychic readings (not for entertainment BUT the real McCoy that quite often requires true counselling skills), Hypnosis, or even mentalism (which usually winds up in a dismal display of boring, TRICKS not to mention a very bored audience.

PSIncerely Yours,
Paul Alberstat
http://www.stores.ebay.ca/abstagecraft

I would just like to add, that I do not consider myself a practicioner of either NLP nor hypnosis. I just happen to find it interesting and have read a lot about it. Some things may be of use for mentalists, such as suggestions. I am planning on studying psychology of some kind, behaviorism and also NLP. Just want to clear that out...
I'm totally with Paul on this, that it takes more than reading one book during a week to call yourself a hypnotherapist. It takes a great deal of study and many years of practice to get good at it. So it's not just something for the curious...

Here is an excerpt from the book "They Call It Hypnosis" by Robert A. Baker:

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Barber, Spanos, and Chaves (1974) point out that response to suggestions can be easily obtained without any hypnotic induction at all. In fact, "task motivational instructions," actually work better than standardized induction procedures involving suggestions of relaxation, drowsiness, and sleep. In motivation instructions the subjects are told:

1) Your performance will depend on your willingness to try to imagine vividly and to experience those things that will be described to you.

2) Previous subjects have been able to imagine vividly and to have the experiences that were suggested to them when they put aside the idea that this is a silly or difficult thing to do.

3) If you try to imagine to the best of your ability, you will experience a number of interesting things and you will not be wasting either your own or the experimenter's time.

Through a series of experiments the authors found that there were eight separate variables which enhanced responsiveness to suggestions. They were:

1) Defining the situation as "hypnosis."

2) Removing fears and misconceptions about hypnosis.

3) Securing cooperation, i.e., making the subject want to comply or convincing the subject he couldn't resist.

4) Asking the subject to keep his eyes closed, i.e., removing visual distractions.

5) Suggesting relaxation, sleep, and hypnosis.

6) Elaborating and varying the wording and tone of suggestions.

7) Coupling suggestions with actual events to enhance suggestibility.

8) Preventing or reinterpreting subject failure to act in accordance with suggestions.

All of the above variables heighten or augment suggestibility because they give rise to positive attitudes, motivations, and expectancies toward responding to suggestions and to being hypnotized, which in turn give rise to a willingness to think and imagine along with whatever is being suggested.

By far the most impressive and convincing aspects of Barber's work has been a series of experiments over a period of a dozen years or more demonstrating that any human activity or behavior that has been attributed to hypnosis – particularly the unusual ones, such as anesthesia, hallucination, enhanced muscular performance, amnesia, posthypnotic effects, unusual perceptual effects such as deafness, blindness, colorblindness, etc., and physiological effects such as heart acceleration, curing warts, pain suppression, etc. can be brought about in the normal waking subject without hypnosis just by direct suggestion. As Barber notes, thousands of books, movies, and magazine articles have woven the concept of "hypnotic trance" into the mainstream of common knowledge. Yet there is almost no scientific support for this concept. Since Mesmer's day it has been assumed the hypnotic trance state is real, i.e., that there is some reliable way to tell whether or not a person is hypnotized, some simple physiological measure such as brain waves, eye movements, pulse rate, etc. Yet no such physiological test exists, no way we can distinguish a hypnotized individual from an awake one. As Barber says, the notion of the hypnotic state is circular, i.e., state theorists say that a person obeys suggestions because he is in a hypnotic state. How do you know he is in a hypnotic state? Well, "because he obeys the suggestions."

The only reasonable challenges to Sarbin's and Barber's contentions have come from those state theorists who argue that hypnotized subjects are able to do things they would not or could not do while awake. It's hard to imagine that anyone could maintain his role playing or even a high level of motivation while undergoing major surgery. Both clinical and experimental evidence clearly shows that the hypnotic induction procedure followed by suggestions for pain insensitivity is highly effective in diminishing reports of pain. Robert Sears, for example, found that people's reports of pain from a sharp point could be reduced by twenty two percent under hypnosis when compared with waking controls. This ability to go through an ordinarily painful experience without reporting pain is so extraordinary that some theorists have suggested this as a test for the presence of hypnosis. Because of the importance of analgesia and the problem of pain we will take up the subject again at length in a later chapter. Suffice it to say here that it is not hypnosis per se that reduces the pain but the effects of relaxation and anxiety reduction, and suggestion and distraction serve as the active agents.

Regarding the other unusual or bizarre things that people do in hypnotic situations, Barber shows how wide-awake individuals accomplish the same things with ease. A standard stunt that nearly all stage magicians perform is to hypnotize a member of the audience and make his body so rigid that he can be stretched out like a plank, with his head on one chair and his ankles on another. It is assumed, of course, that in the ordinary waking state no one could do this. This is not true at all. Kreskin has shown how anyone can do the same thing while wide awake by just holding the body tense. The stunt is capped by having another person remove his or her shoes and then stand on the suspended person's chest. In such a case, usually the person playing suspension bridge has his shoulders on one chair and his calves on another. This simple stunt has nothing whatsoever to do with hypnosis.

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Millard

Thanks Millard.
If I wanted to do stage hypnosis, I should get The New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnosis, right?

I think that you need both books and a lot of practice.

Baker’s book has a chapter that deals with stage hypnosis including Kreskin’s version of the act.

McGill’s book has a tremendous amount of information (it is an encyclopedia), but much of it is of little use to the modern performer.

For a free set of hypnosis show skits, go to:

http://www.psywww.com/asc/hyp/art/skits.html

Please let me know what you think of the free site.

Millard

Little use to the modern performer? Why?

Because today's audiences are spoiled by television and have very short attention spans.

Also, there is a much greater chance of legal action against you for some of the stunts that were used in the distant past.

Remember that Ormond is about 90 years old and has been performing since the days of vaudeville.

Millard

Two points, if you want to do hypnosis either stage or clinical. It's riduculous to restrict yourself to only one book. Read everything you can get your hands on.
Someone mentioned, correctly that McGill is 90. I feel most of his material is a bit dated. But for a more up to date book on stage hypnosis, the Valley book is probably the best. Until next year, when the Kross book will be the best
from
Ford

Wow Ford. Your words caused a real sense of DeJa Vu.

Paul

But the second atavar makes me look younger
from
Ford