These people squirm when we say it’s stealing and say things like “It’s only a tiny amount.” But, how would they like it if we came into their home, opened the fridge and took the cheese out, or a bottle of milk? And the most startling thing is when you look at the number of downloads for your stuff and it out ways sales, they have just come into my home, turned my gas, water and electricity off for a year, stole all my clothes and half my food for 3 years and stopped me putting fuel in my car forever.

The thing is this is NOT freedom of speech or access to information. The likes of Wikipedia and YouTube takes care of that.

This is taking without asking even though they’ve been told they can’t and these 100MILLION people are no better than those who rioted on the streets of the UK last summer. Actually they are way worse because they do their thievery in back bedrooms hiding behind firewalls and false identities.

However I am also against the likes of Amazon allowing the sale of second hand stuff, some of which is just copied. And they get away with it. And the search engines should ban these sites if they break the rules, but google lists more free downloads on the first page than they do genuine product pages.

The American authorities should be looking at all the internet, including the corporate side of it, which of course it won’t.

The thing is this. You steal enough of my stuff and I’ll stop doing what *I* do and then we both lose.

Every time the conversation comes around to hands on healing or anything that looks remotely outside of surgery or pill popping there is always someone who starts shouting that it’s nothing more than hypnosis with the ‘placebo’ effect.

You know apart from the Black Death most of humanity has pretty much managed to stick around for the last few hundred thousands of years without a single ‘drug’ or medical procedure.

Hands on and all sorts of healing has been around and been quite successful for quite a few tens of thousands of those. The modern argument is of course that in the past people didn’t grow very big and didn’t live very long but the truth is that social evolution had a lot to do with that as much as medicine. And early 1800′s loads of people lived into their 80′s even in the middle ages the better fed got there too.

I know there are more people alive than ever before but that’s a lame argument for things like ‘Hands on’ and acupuncture not working, as the fact is yes there are more people alive, but there are more people alive today who are ill, diseased and disabled hanging on to lives wich should naturally have probably ended years before than there have ever been. When we talk about Placebo – the word by the way doesn’t mean *suggested healing* it means ….
A harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.
A substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs.
We talk as if modern pills and potions have been around forever and that they Always work. The truth is that most of them have been around for a few decades and that they ‘often’ help the bodies immune system overcome disease.

The thing is, the real thing is, that often the pills and potions given out by the medicos are themselves the true placebo, replacing good food, healthy exercise and the simple honest to goodness capacity for the body and mind to heal themselves, and sometimes others.

In consultation much better much easier.   You have time to try many methods, to mix and match. You have time and have to please only 1 person. The hypnotee. You can make another appointment. You don’t have to persuade them to be there. in consultation an Okay hypnotee is fine. In my experience it’s about 1 in 5 who really can’t do ‘hypnosis’ and they are the least likely to seek a hypnotist for treatment. You will see them but rarely. you don’t Have to rely on the new Buzz word, ‘Phenomenon’ to get a resultt. It’s useful and important but not vital. On stage ’Phenomenon’ is the ONLY point. 

Jonathan Chase:
You know there are some theories which actually stop us finding out the best way to work to change our imaginations.

It’s almost like someone discovered the best, easiest and fastest way up the mountain. Then someone, who had never climbed the mountain before, tried that route on a really shitty day and fell off. That was because they had read the map but didn’t find out from the original discoverer that it’s best to climb mountains on nice dry warm days.

Now the guy who falls off will never admit He made a mistake, so he blames the map, the mountain and the weather for His mistake and so goes off looking for a harder more complicated way to do it. He falls even more this way BUT, it is HIS way so he ignores that because to admit he goofed would mean reducing his self image.

Now he gets a few students and he teaches them to climb the mountain his way, and when they ask about the easier way he makes it sound much worse than it was and shouts about it being dangerous and all sorts. Eventually, after student has taught student has taught student, the hard way becomes the Only way and the easy simple way is lost.

Then along comes someone who hasn’t been taught the hard way and it’s a nice day so he just strolls up the mountain the easy way and all those people at the top who have been taught to struggle, fall, get out of breath and have been told that is the best way, well they say, “you got up the mountain with no effort, but that was luck. Other people have died doing it that way and had their gonads ripped off. And anyway, the ease of getting here isn’t the point, It’s the Fact of getting here. So long as we get to the top who cares how we got here.” Then they collapse in exhaustion and the fella who rediscovered the easy way, well he shrugs and smiles and ambles off thinking, “Nice view up here…..”

Steve Sheldon: replied
Agreed Jon, but then what is the best way? Is it Jon’s or Barry’s, or the hundred others out there? This is why I think experimenting is very important for the hypnotist. We all know the basics on how to climb, but which path is the quickest and easiest?

Jonathan Chase: replied
Ask the bloke sitting on the top of the mountain. The one whistling and admiring the view…

To use a metaphor or analogy that is better understood, Hypnosis deals with the conversation and the emotional processing of the content of the conversation when people talk to each other over a mobile phone. It is not about how the network works, or how the phones themselves work. And focusing on that takes away from the conversation.

Smiles
JonC

Find out A: How many people locally are looking for what you offer. B: Who and what the competition is doing.

With pain When doing research the best places are actually local newspapers, avoid Wiki it’s not very accurate, especially regarding hypnosis. Your main competition is drugs so I would find out how many people get hooked on painkillers and then sell your ‘natural’ approach.

Personally though I would go for Phobias, there’s no real big budget established drugs or medical competition there, or Tourette’s syndrome, or Irritable Bowel. A friend of mine specialises in MS clients.

In my experience it’s harder to sell solutions for which the client already has an easily obtainable and totally guaranteed cure. Pain killing drugs work for most people most of the time so it may be easy to do, but it’s hard to sell and if you are a full time professional hypno then you need to earn a living.

AVOID niches that cause long term disability or unemployment. Sadly these people can’t pay for your services. However you can keep the Kama going by charging well for those who can pay and doing freebies for those who can not.

Smiles
Jon

My thoughts on head hacking anywhere are:….

First off. I taught Anthony Jacquin and Kevin Sheldrake impromptu techniques on my stage hypnosis masterclass in 2004. They have taken it way beyond anything I have ever done with it and have found a market for it. I would like to think I somehow played a small part in getting them going, although Ant was already a very good and successful hypnotherapist. But I have to admit I’m totally jealous of their Youth – compared to me – their energy and their following. I think they should be banned and possibly imprisoned! Or at the very least hung drawn and quartered. How dare they have a whale of time being well known and successful!

The ‘Problem’ with street hypnosis seems to ME to be this… Except for my friend in New Zealand Reg Blackwood and the head hacking team themselves, the exponents of the Street form don’t appear to make money from it, even at a busking level. And lets face it the odd free drink or cucumber may be refreshing or bowel cleansing but you can’t buy your Broadband with it. So the point seems to be to entertain the performer more than a paying audience, but then that can be said of most people who do magic as well as over 80% of people buying tricks today will never use them outside of a small group of friends or colleagues. And what seems to upset many established stage pros is that street hypnosis is way more popular than full blown stage hypnosis at the moment.

The difference between Stage and Street for me is that whilst one can be passably executed with a knowledge of simple technique, the other can Only be presented with just a simple basic knowledge of technique. I can think of several professional stage performers who’s shows are not very good in theatrical terms. However unlike singers, dancers or actors not being very good doesn’t show that much as we are still a very small bunch and for everyone who has seen a full stage show there are a dozen who have not. Although the InterWeb is certainly putting a few heads on blocks. I’m planning on putting my full show up there, gulp!

Most stage ‘shows’ are just a collection of routines with no shape or finesse. Few of them are actually ‘shows’ but nothing more than Street done on stage. Most ‘Comedy’ hypnotists are not themselves funny – for the record I’ve never used that term – with the exception of perhaps Ken Webster that certainly covers most UK players. So perhaps the problem with Street Hypnosis as far as the stage performers are concerned is that it shows how anyone can hypnotise and when the amazing ‘skill’ is shown to be a shallow disguise of simple psychological procedures, then presentation skills and showmanship is up for scrutiny.

Stage hypnosis took a knock along with all forms of stage entertainment in the 90′s in the UK. No, not because there were more people doing shows as some people think, it was the fall of the Miners Welfare clubs and working mens clubs which taught people to go to live shows from being children, right up to the simple fact that it was shown on TV and people then only wanted to see the bloke on the Tele.

Then as the century turned we entered the age of ‘Show Me’ where with the internet and the Karaoke mindset more people want to do rather than watch. In 1999 when we started teaching there were 13 schools of hypnosis, at last count there are 162 and 10 of those are ‘stage’.

The truth is I didn’t like the street approach at first. Not sure I do now. For my old head they looked as if they should be taking a box of tissues with them and in the early videos came across as a group of giggling schoolboys playing pranks and copping a quick feel from drunk birds in pubs. Some still do. But to be honest and when I Really look at it, there is little difference between that and me making peoples arms go stiff without bothering to hypnotise in recognisable fashion – certainly not using a trance state, or removing someones phobia at a party with my ‘Hypnotic Powers!’ when there is no chance of that becoming a booking.

Then, I am doing it for Me.

I am after all, above all else, a SHOW OFF, and that is what street hypnosis is all about. It’s about showing off. Pure egotism. Having a laff at the expense of others which, to be frank is what hypnosis relies on, the fact that people laugh AT other people in embarrassing situations. People doing ridiculous things, that’s right, being ridiculed.

So for me the difference is this. Street Hypnosis is about mind manipulation techniques entertaining the protagonists and little else. Stage Hypnosis is, or should be, about the art of making those techniques a Show and entertaining a fee paying audience.