Touch communicates emotion!

OK, most of us probably already knew that touch communicates emotion to some degree, but a researcher at DePauw University has gone ahead and put some scientific validation to it. Matthew J. Hertenstein, Ph.D. has been researching the way we communicate emotion through voice, facial expression and touch, and discovered some amazing things. He's correlated the likelyhood of divorce based on the degree to which the spouses smile in photographs, analyzed the importance of touch to developing children and how they pick up emotionsal reactions from adults, and most interesting, is discovering to what degree we can interperet a person's emotions purely by thier touch! Check out his site: http://www.depauw.edu/learn/lab/media/

VIDEOS!

It's about time! I've done hypnosis in every conceivable place: bars, restaurants, streets, bookstores... But I've never done it on video, but I've been wanting to. Well, I finally did it. Started to, anyway. We had some technical difficulties with the sound the first time 'round. I'm looking forward to doing a lot more--I had a great time, and everybody I worked with really enjoyed it and felt great. Please check 'em out and tell me what you think. For you technically minded hypnotists: I used a very short and direct approach and equally short direct pretalk (the approach actually took longer!), a fairly quick induction, about a minute's deepeners, 2-3 fractionations, a very general suggestion to feel great and relaxed and so forth, and brought them back, and talked about the experience with them for a few minutes after. The entire experience averaged about six minutes each.

Wild animals

We've all been attacked by them. It's the "8 Toxic personalities to avoid" by Brett Blumenthal. Check it out: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/8-toxic-personalities-to-avoid-461078/?posted=1

Three firm handshakes

I was chatting with a hypnotist-friend of mine the other day. The conversation got around to handshake inductions and suddenly we couldn’t agree on anything—not even the principles that made it work. Turns out, we were talking about different
handshake inductions!

There are three main handshake inductions that I know of and have used, and each works according to different principles. They’re all worth getting to know and practicing frequently. In the attached document I've put down my own understanding of them, based on my experience, how I label them, and how they work.

Here they are (in a sort of historical order):
Elman’s Handshake Induction
Erickson’s Handshake Induction
Bandler’s Handshake Induction
Let’s take a closer look…

Read the whole thing by clicking here (You'll be able to read it online, or download it as a PDF or word doc).

Do we have a subconscious mind?

As a hypnotist, I spend a lot of time working on the border between the conscious and subconscious mind. So much so, that I often forget that when I talk to someone about their "subconscious mind" that they may not have an entirely clear idea of what it is. Some folks have even wondered whether it exists at all. If you dive into it from the diving board of the Internet, you'll quickly find yourself swamped with all sorts of fascinating lore about it's mysterious powers, and it's place in mythology and philosophy. Not as easy to ferret out the useful, factual, accessible skinny on the other part of the mind. In the attached essay, you'll find my take on it. I hope it will clarify a few things. At the same time, I think that it will be useful to anyone coming from either a scientific point of view or a mystical one. (I may go back and revise this again, since I'm not sure I've completely hit the mark I aimed for. Please don't hesitate to give me feedback and questions. It'll help me make it a better essay!). Read the whole thing by clicking here (You'll be able to read it online, or download it as a PDF or word doc).

Sizzling conversation now! (Conversational State Elicitation)

Make your conversations fascinating by using your subjects' own feelings! Plenty of exercises & experiments for you to go out and try. Don't take my word for it--it works! The Question, the Hook... Ever get stuck in a dry conversation that turned into a “job interview?” No feeling of connection, no enthusiasm, and you just couldn’t get that spark? Ever have a great story or a routine, but your audience was just unreceptive? No connection? People usually feel a connection when they’re both experiencing similar emotional states. Think about it. When someone “really gets into” a TV show they usually feel a connection with their favorite character. A great song makes someone feel a connection to the singer, and people in a theater can feel so connected to the hero that they forget where they are—as long as the emotional state is strong. Here’s a really easy little conversational technique to jumpstart the momentum. Read the whole thing by clicking here! (You'll be able to read it online, or download it as a PDF or word doc).

Unsinkable Anchors!

AN EASY INTRO TO THE OBSCURE ART OF ANCHORING Here’s a quick follow up to our last meet-up on the basic "how-to" of anchoring techniques. “Anchoring” is one of the most commonly found topics in NLP literature. It’s been studied and codified to the point that it seems like a very complicated and esoteric thing, and you can certainly make a study of it. But at it’s heart, it’s pretty easy. An anchor is a thing (a word, a touch a gesture or a sound) that triggers an emotion, a memory of a feeling. Did you ever hear a song on the radio that reminded you of a time, a place or a feeling form your past? Is there a food that reminds you of something from your past? Have you ever seen or heard anything that made you think or feel anything else? That’s what anchoring is all about. It’s simply creating an association in the subconscious mind. Read the whole thing by clicking here! (You'll be able to read it online, or download it as a PDF or word doc).