Yes indeed… Someone hold me back…

So, the weekend is upon us which means I am ready for a big blow out on the blog… It’s Friday… And there are some utter nonsense going on out there in the world of hypnosis that I need to highlight today…

Ok, so let me vent my spleen… Ahem… Let me explain:

Many of my hypnosis professional peers are mentioning it and I have to join in…

One of my pet dislikes in this world is the fact that the vast majority of media articles about hypnosis seem to use the headline “you are getting sleeeepy” or something similarly clichéd and predictable or unimaginative along those lines…

Another is people thinking it is absolutely hilarious to say “look into my eyes, look into my eyes, not around the eyes, into my eyes” which was moderately funny at the start of century but my enthusiasm for the joke from TV’s Little Britain has waned somewhat during the past 100 years…

Then we come on the downright ill-informed and non-educated responses and comments from people… Like when I was at my solicitors Christmas dinner and as we sat down to dinner at the posh hotel, in black tie attire, the head solicitor said to his wife “Oh this is Adam Eason, don;t look into his eyes, he’ll make you do all kinds of things!” as he chuckled to himself, he actually surreptitiously ensured that his wife actually did not look into my eyes any time we spoke!

I was tempted to capitalise on this in a very naughty manner, and use the fearful trance induced by her husband and suddenly unveil my velvet lined cloak, and start to wave my black gloved hands in front of her face — Svengali style — and start suggesting that she get a divorce… But I had not brought the props with me that night, not suspecting I’d need them… 😉

What about the classic remark “Oh, he’ll make you cluck like a chicken” ?

I mean come on… Even if you speak to stage hypnotists, hardly any of them ever actually do this! Or barking like a dog!

Yet the basic education… The basic message we attempt to get out there on a daily basis does not seem to have reached Kansas… The place, (which if I was equally uninformed about) is a place in the world that had me believing in flying witches being killed by storm swept houses!

Yes indeed, over in Kansas, a school had been using the services of a local minister who had been using hypnosis and hypnotising the school basketball team in an effort to improve the season’s performances, which had ben poor.

By all accounts, the students enjoy it and found benefits in it, but the school board has some reservations, and in keeping with nonsensical beauracracy has ordered the hypnotherapist to stop with the sessions.

What’s more… If you listen to the radio interview here about the
entire thing, having lost their previous games — then following the hypnosis sessions, the team won their next
game by 10 points… Is no-one thinking that there is some kind of
coincidence going on there? It is not even this that I am frothing at the mouth about today though…

If you read either this hypnosis article about the episode by the lady in the radio interview or this hypnosis aticle at USA today… The thing which is irritating me is to read all these clichéd ideas and plain inaccuracies that formed the school boards decision to stop with the hypnotherapy.

The truth is that hypnosis can advance performance massively… And aslo aid the personal belief system of those performers. This particular school board are just replaying old antiquated cliches and nonsense about hypnosis that deters people from using hypnosis to make fabulous benefical enhancements to their peformance and life.

For example, superintendent James Kenworthy is quoted as saying, in reference ot the use of hypnosis: “It may give kids a mixed message if you can’t do it on your own.

Pah! Hypnosis is not something you stick in a syringe and then intravenously inject into your body… It is not giving anyone anyone anything that did not exist within them as potential anyway.

It is like people climing in the 90s that the boxer Nigel Benn had an unfair advantage in the boxing ring because Paul McKenna had worked with him… he still had to go in the ring and fight… He was still only using himself as his tool.

Hypnosis shows how to make more of your mind and how to use it to enhance so many facets of yourself… Imagine being able to harness and control your skills and abilities!?

Someone who should know better is sports psychologist Scott Ward, who adds his pearls of wisdom to the debate: “When I think of hypnotism I think of someone going into a comedy club and being hypnotized to cluck like a chicken, it’s not used in sports with the leading athletes.”

Scott, ahoy there… Join us in the 21st century will you?

First up, in the recent Olympics, there was Vincent Hancock, the skeet shooter who used hypnosis to get a gold medal, Australian pole vaulter Steve Hooker used hypnosis and he got a gold medal and the Olympic record last year, and also former Olympic silver medallist from Canada, Angela Bailey who is now an actual hypnotherapist herself!

There are many more examples I could give.

On his blog, my good friend Phil Mattingly has been commenting on the same thing and he cites actual research done specifically in the field of basketball that Scott Ward seems to have blissfully missed too:

Pates, J., Maynard, I., & Westbury, T. (2001) An investigation into the effects of hypnosis on basketball performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 13(1), 84-102.

The effects of hypnosis on flow and in the performance enhancement of basketball skills. Vasquez, B. (2005). Thesis (Ph. D.) Washington State University, December 2005.

With each of these studies, it is clearly shown that hypnosis does improve a person’s basketball skills in a wide variety of areas if used correctly.

Now to top it all off… The Coach, a chap called Jerod Horchem really does add the cherry on top of this entire cliché fiasco, here is what he says:

If we did something like that we’d probably hypnotize our guys, they’d fall asleep and never wake up. But if that would make them shoot better and I could do that in the next 10 minutes, then get me a watch on a string.

Hahahahaha… If I did not laugh I would cry…

Sleep is nothing at all to do with hypnosis, they are utterly different states… And as for the watch on the string, when that cliché is at home stuffed in the cupboard with my velvet lined cloack and black hypnosis gloves!

Hypnosis works with the mind… You ask Michael Phelps or Tiger Woods how important the mind is to their performance and they’ll tell you… In fact, you ask any and every top performing sports performer if they use their mind to advance what they do and they’ll tell you the importance of it… heck, I worked with Gold Medallists Sally Gunnell and Steve Cramm on the BBC1 TV show “Run for Glory” so that they could impart the mind skills into the competitors…

Everyone ought to know that the mind affects sports performance — ask John Terry about how he came to miss a penalty in the European Cup final… Or many athelets that have choked at the final hurdle when their mind has impaired performance.

Ok… That is out of my system… It has started snowing again outside… I mean really snowing… I hope you enjoy a fabulous weekend, thank you for reading this week, I’ll be back on Monday 🙂