How Stage Hypnosis Works

*** Heartbreak Hypnotist® Sean Wheeler explains how stage hypnosis works, and addresses the myth that hypnosis involves a loss of control.

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🧠 ABOUT SEAN WHEELER & PURE HYPNOSIS
Sean Wheeler has been helping people solve their problems quickly using hypnotherapy for more than 20 years. Since being certified in May 2003, he has facilitated over 15,000 hypnotherapy sessions and has 135 5-star reviews and counting. He is a Licensed Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ by Richard Bandler (co-founder of NLP) and the Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming™. Sean is a certified member of the National Guild of Hypnotists, widely acknowledged as the number one association in the field of hypnosis.

Sean has appeared on The Bert Show, Star 94, CNN and Nancy Grace. He’s hypnotized radio personalities Jenn Hobby, Jeff Dauler, Bert Weiss and more than 3,000 others. His list of clients includes professional athletes, CEO’s, political leaders, medical doctors, scientists, college professors and others from all walks of life.

From his luxurious office in Buckhead, Sean and his team of trained and certified hypnotherapists help their clients to quit smoking, lose weight, overcome anxiety, solve relationship issues, and eliminate a host of fears and phobias. Most of our clients come to us after they've tried everything and nothing has worked. We solve their problems quickly, easily, and permanently.

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[LightsOnMultiMediaMindArts]

As a consulting hypnotist this is something that I’ve wrestled with for some time. I decided to throw out everything that I’ve read or been taught and go from what I can see for myself and experience. I’ve decided that we gather the loosely related phenomena of comedy hypnosis, hypnotherapy and conversational/covert hypnosis (maybe others) into a single thing called hypnotism. There is a slim connection between the three, but the differences between them are more significant than their similarities.

In hypnotherapy hypnotherapists "hot wire" their clients' REM state (per Tyrrell and Griffin). You can see the rapid-eye movement beneath the eye-lids; the even color (either pink or white) change of the face; the relaxation of the facial muscles; the change in breathing; the dark, waxy appearance of the eyelids; the relative immobility of the body. Watch a client's hand during a hand levitation. The movements are slow, jerky, fasciculated. The unconscious mind is not used to moving parts of the body without the support of the conscious mind.

That is not what I see in stage hypnosis. There's an element of social compliance in stage that is absent from hypnotherapy. People on stage smoothly parody the waking movements and actions like over-stimulated kids. They move, they dance, they move fluidly at whatever they are parodying unlike their hypnotherapy counterparts who can barely move. I see no evidence of the influence of REM state.

Conversational hypnosis is even more distinctive. Words are used to by-pass the conscious mind to persuade a listener to think in a way different than they would otherwise believe. No trance. No REM. No social compliance.

This idea that a hypnotist focuses anyone's attention doesn’t square with my own experience of hypnosis either. I've been hypnotized many times and I don’t really pay any attention consciously to what the hypnotist is saying or anything else. I drift off in a way not unlike those moments just before you go to sleep. The voice just goes into the background until the hypnotist starts the count of 5 to return me to full conscious. Then I start to emerge.

I also don’t believe "levels of hypnosis" is a useful way to indicate hypnotic engagement. It doesn’t fit what I’ve seen in my clients. I think a better term would be hypnotic flexibility. The more you enter trance the more flexible you become in that capacity. Some people are more naturally flexible hypnotically speaking than others, but everyone who experiences trance will loosen up with repetition. It's call fractionation.

I appreciate your posting this. Until we separate the phenomena into separate states, however, there's going to be a great deal of contradictory information about what "hypnosis" is.

[hypnofan]

Really nice explanation! Great way to make people feel comfortable with the experience.

[reghin]

I came here expecting to hear an advocate of hypnosis defend the validity of this practice. Instead, what I've found was a hypnotherapist who totally destroyed stage hypnosis without even realizing it. Of course, skeptics already know that hypnosis involves cooperation from subjects and that nothing happens without the subjects' approval, but to hear a defender of this practice admit it is hilarious. Where's your trance state, your induction, your suggestion, your rapport, if all you're doing is implicitly telling a bunch of people "hey, now that you're here on stage, let's put on a good show for the people still seated"? What use is there for the term hypnosis when such an event is no different from this new wave of interactive theater performances or from being called up to the stage by your favorite band during a concert to perform along side them? It's just entertainment with no particular technique involved.

[purehypnosis]

Quite the contrary! I'm the hypnotist who helps you get over a broken heart :)

[naz]

I’m just curious, do you know anyone who has experienced stage hypnosis? For example, when a hypnotist makes someone bark like a dog, lol. How does it feel for the person doing that? Are they consciously aware that their barking?

[Zalereth]

I've been to a couple of these comedy shows. I've never been on stage, well because I don't think I could be hypnotized.  Would this mental block prevent me from being hypnotized? Or do some people on stage think the samething?

[alexandergraham]

I don't think your explanation covers someone eating an onion and thinking it's an apple. Based on the explanation the person would know they are eating an onion, would they not? Wouldn't it still taste awful?

[Norcom]

Are some individuals harder to hypnotize than others? Is age a major facor? Can very self-conscious or deeply introverted people be hypnotized too?

[llVIU]

so hypnotized is sort of like getting drunk

[purehypnosis]

I would say that some individuals are more easily hypnotized in a stage setting than are others. It's not really a question of difficulty; it's more accurate to say that all people are different, so it may take a slightly different approach with some people. Age is relatively insignificant. Introversion and self-consciousness are also non-factors. Because hypnosis a natural state of mind,  anyone can experience it if guided properly by a skilled hypnotist.

[backinthecrystal]

What is a "Heartbreak Hypnotist"? Is it a hypnotist you hire who doesn't show up, thus, breaking your heart?

[MindTrigger]

in fact hypnosis is much more beyond that .. sometimes you can take full contorl of the subject . . even some people steal using hypnosis

[Jwdude]

Some people fake it. Cooperation is a form of control.

[jivebunny]

I suspect you might get entirely different results in a stage hypnosis setting if volunteers were actually put in to proper trance. Sean's video doesn't explain flopping and non responsiveness in a stage environment. Some of the most suggestible people are clearly going in to trance at little more than the drop of a hat, but most people are just going along with it all, some of them hide it well, others don't. I'm really not sure why stage hypnotists send people off stage for not being "hypnotized" if there's no hypnotic state past the immobilization of a volunteer's critical thinking ability.

[ronenfe]

I don't agree. You lose control of yourself and you can't resist the instructions given. I don't know how it works and why it can't work in other environments.

[jimmyjango]

So what your saying is, that we should all behave like hypnotized lobsters?

[linasayshush]

That's why I would never volunteer to these things. I'd rather be a killjoy and be right than quack like a chicken and have fun. I've been hypnotized before, as a child, in a therapeutic setting, and it didn't work at all, but I pretended it did because it was supposed to.

[jaynareynolds]

This doesn't explain the immediate sleep response when commanded by the hypnotist. The subject seems to have zero power to prevent going to sleep (deep relaxed trance mode). That in itself illustrates control over the subject.

[Jwdude]

Cooperation to make fools of people for entertainment. Degrading.

[jessedenwood]

Stage hypnosis of minors? Well they look like minors. In which case I seriously disapprove.