ENTERTAINMENT hypnotists love to make hypnosis look dark and mysterious and complicated. They love to pretend that they have special powers that no-one else possesses.

I love to make things bright and clear and open, and I do not claim any special powers.

In this first chapter I am going to ask you to try out various things and to think about them. These things are simple and everyday, and will turn out to be not at all mysterious, and yet they are a foundation on which much of hypnosis is built.

Words can trigger pictures in your mind.

This must seem a pretty obvious fact. You need only think of reading a novel and remember the pictures that come to mind as you do so to realize the obvious truth of this. But it is still worth doing a little exercise on it, as follows.

First just think to yourself, “I am on holiday.” STOP NOW; did you see a picture of it in your mind? People vary, but it is unlikely, in the very short time I allowed you, that you saw anything very clearly.

Now allow yourself more TIME. Think, “I am on holiday.” Pause. “It is my favorite kind of place.” Pause. “The weather is just how I like it.” Pause. “I am wearing my favorite clothes.” Pause. “I am doing my very favorite thing.” Pause. “I am on holiday!”

In all probability that extra time was repaid by a very much more vivid picture or pictures in the mind. But it is best, especially if you are a student of

hypnosis

, to get someone else to do the same thing, perhaps with you saying the words: “Picture yourself on holiday.” Pause. “It is your favorite kind of weather.” etc.

In this way you will discover for yourself the fact that people can have quite different degrees of clarity of picture, and the pictures themselves can be quite different. I, for example, usually manage only rather washed out images.

The conclusions I would expect you to be able to agree with, after some experience, are the following simple ones.

1) Words can lead to pictures in the mind.

2) It takes a little time for them to arise.

3) The time taken and their nature varies from person to person.

As a next little exercise explore the extent to which words can directly affect muscles without going via the usual volitional process of willing an action.

Hold your arms straight ahead of you with the palms facing each other and a couple of centimeters apart. Look at the gap and say “Close… Close… Close…” repeatedly at a comfortable speed.

A typical result is that over a period of a minute or so the hands do move together until they touch. To check this try it on other people (for students it is essential that you do). In that case you can speak the words as you both watch the hands.

In this way you will discover that there is again a range of responses. An average closure time is a couple of minutes. In some people it will happen in seconds. In others nothing seems to happen before you run out of patience. Occasionally someone will resist and there will develop a trembling in the arms as one set of muscles acts to pull the hands together and another acts to separate them. Another rarer response is for the hands to fly apart. But in each case you or your friends should find a strange feeling of things happening which are not willed.

The conclusions I would expect you to be able to agree with are the following simple ones.

1) Words can lead directly to muscular action.

2) It takes a little time for this to happen.

3) The time taken and the nature varies from person to person.

4) It makes little difference who is saying the words.