Ok, this blog entry is nothing but a big old plug, but it is a fundraising for charity plug. First up then let me ask you a question, what have the following hypnotherapists and hypnosis & NLP professionals, authors and trainers got in common:

Adam Eason, Andy Palmer, Andy Smith, Angela Page, Anthony Jacquin, Antonio Perez, Bob Burns, Danny Elliott, Debbie Lane, Elliott Wald, Gareth Lee Morgan, Gary Turner, Glenn Harrold, James Brown, James Tripp, Jill Harrington, Jonathan Chase, Judy Rees, Juliet Hollingsworth, Leo Gopal, Lindsay Shepherd, Nadia Harper, Rob Woodgate, Shlomo Vaknin, Sophie Fletcher, Steve, Trevor Silvester.

The answer: They have all contributed and made brilliant submissions to the unique ebook entitled “The First Natural Born Hypnotist.”

In order to get your hands on a copy of this hilarious and informative ebook, all you need to do is visit my sponsorship page here, sponsor me a minimum of £10.00 which goes directly to the mental health charity MIND and then I’ll email you a copy of the ebook:
www.virginmoneygiving.com/adameason

Those of you that follow this blog, receive my ezine or are in contact with me on social networking sites, will not have been able to avoid me waxing lyrical on a regular basis about the fact that I am running 5 marathons consecutively in April and May of this year, to raise money for a charity that leads the way in supporting people in psychological and emotional distress.

However, it seemed to me that this was just not enough for the hypnosis community – they wanted more.

The Natural Born Hypnotist was then itself born… I badgered, pestered, hassled and wrote to hypnosis professionals I loved, respected, admired or just knew really well (though because I knew them really well does not mean that I did not also respect, love and admire them). This is part of what I wrote to them:
“I have been looking for ways to raise funds for my charity efforts. I feel incredibly strongly about the charity Mind. Mental health in the UK in particular is still very stigmatised and is (as with so many things) having funding cut severely within the National Health service too. Mind do amazing work helping and offering services, support, research and treatment for individuals that suffer from emotional and psychological distress.

I work in this field. So do you. I am looking for ways which I can attract sponsorship from the hypnosis and hypnotherapy community and this is what this email is about. Rather than simply jumping up and down and yelling “sponsor me, I’m running loads of marathons” I thought that we’d create something fun, useful and unusual that the hypnosis community can invest in to raise funds for my charity.

To frame this idea of mine…

In the early 90s, a great TV comedy in the UK called Men Behaving Badly saw the two unlikely lads Gary and Tony having many debates. One such discussion involved them choosing how to create the perfect woman “Kylie’s arse, obviously” and then formed a Frankenstein-esque perfect female according to their drunken taste at the time. Not very PC, but relevant to what I am proposing here.

At a similar time, there was a government funded health advertisement being shown on ITV to encourage people to stop smoking. It showed the first natural born smoker, with special fingers for holding cigarettes, eyelids that filtered smoke, ears that did not listen, huge lungs to filter more effectively and leathery skin; it was scary and meant to be aversive, though I thought it cool as per my penchant for anything remotely sci-fi looking.

Anyhow, I am going to put together an ebook entitled “The First Natural Born Hypnotist” which we are going to get professionally and comically illustrated. I wondered if you would contribute to it, I would love it if you would. You only need to contribute a page, which includes a couple of paragraphs describing features that you think would make a natural born hypnotist. All I need from you is the following:

– A couple of paragraphs in your own words explaining any one single physical feature that you think would be useful for the natural born hypnotist.
– A couple of paragraphs explaining any one behavioural/emotional/psychological trait or instinct that our natural born hypnotist would have.

For example, my page is going to suggest that the Natural Born Hypnotist would have an extra long index finger, similar to that of ET’s, which glows at the end for which can be used for Braid’s classic eye fixation inductions and a variety of other inductions purposes. I’ll explain that in more depth. Naturally we’d like diversity, so if everyone chooses something to do with the eyes, for example, it’ll be less diverse – if you can be obscure and creative, that’d be marvellous.

Then, my emotional/psychological trait is going to be a brilliant memory and penchant for comedy that enables them to share humour and develop rapport with most people.

This is a person, a hypnotist of evolution, meant to be slightly tongue-in-cheek and have a fun element to it, but perhaps also contain some genuine hypnotic theory that makes it pertinent.

With contributions from a range of impressive and influential people such as yourselves, I’ll hopefully be able to generate interest from the field – it’ll be £10.00 paid directly to my charity cause and in return the individual will get the ebook.”

This ebook is then a result of the interpretations of those people that have contributed. Varying interpretations indeed. Many of which I find hilarious, many I find very relevant to the individual who wrote them, many even contain some incredibly erudite and insightful considerations.

So I need and want to thank all the authors and contributors to this ebook, whom without their efforts, such a project would not be possible.  Thank you for enduring my nagging too. You are all brilliant people.

The funds raised from this ebook are for an incredibly worthy cause and so if you want a copy of it, please do visit my sponsorship page and offer up at least £10.00 to the charity:
www.virginmoneygiving.com/adameason

Email me and let me know you sponsored me and you’ll be emailed the ebook right away.

Most importantly though, thank you for your investment and support