Recently at Ultimate Seduction a question was asked about stage hypnosis by a young man who recently saw a Paul McKenna show on television. The question was basicall how do stage hypnotists zap their subjects so fast?

Another correspondent wrote in his answer that stage hypnotists work the audience before the show and find the most responsive folks then, hypnotize them, then give them post-hypnotic suggestions to come back later and be the subjects in the show.

Whoa there! No. No. No. No. Did I say "no" enough times on this one? This is not the typical procedure and is really much more trouble than it is worth.

I’m not sure which Paul McKenna show the original querant saw but I have a number of his shows in my collection so I’ll venture a guess. McKenna is one of the top hypnotists out of Britain and his shows are well-written and clever. His bits are often very elaborate and he has a rapid-fire delivery (when he’s in control of the environment, his Howard Stern appearance was horrible as he let himself get bowled over by Howard rather than controlling the show himself – Frank Santos is a more appropriate stage hypnotists for Howard’s show than McKenna). McKenna is pretty much the top NLP trainer in the UK and works with Bandler quite a bit.

If the show was "The Hypnotic World of Paul McKenna" stage/television show then you will note that there was a series of tests that McKenna ran the entire set of volunteers through. He uses standard tests such as balloon/dictionary, hand-clasp, arm lock, among others. He can select the responsive folks from his volunteers by appropriately judging their perfomance on these suggestibility tests.

If the show was the Howard Stern appearance with the Scores girls, then Howard’s staff had a group of girls in and Paul pre-hypnotized them before the show so he actually had plenty of time to test, deepen, and trance-train them beforehand. It is interesting to watch McKenna who normally exudes confidence and poise become reduced to a giggling schoolboy when Stern has him do naughty suggestions for the girls. If you’re not confortable talking about blowjobs or can’t give hypnotic suggestions about penis size without blushing, don’t do hypnosis with a bunch of professional strippers on the Howard Stern show!

If the program was "Street Hypnosis" show where McKenna runs around London doing instant inductions, that’s a good one. Remember, you don’t see everything. The show did not broadcast the failures nore did it show everything for many of the subjects. However, there was enough to see exactly what the method is. Basically, McKenna does a variation of the Hand Clasp suggestibility test with a rollover into the Sway test finally with a conversion into an instant induction. This is a very common method and you can find it described very fully in Ormond McGill’s excellent stage hypnotism book along with hundreds of other methods (anyone interested in entertainment hypnosis should own McGill’s book). Gerry Kein, Gil Boyne, and Jonathan Royale among others all sell videos with this induction. When I’ve used it, it really wows the audience as it appears magickal but is in fact very simple . . . albeit, you do have to have the balls to do it.

Hypnosis is a very easy skill set. Any stage hypnotist worth his salt knows that a good twenty percent of the population are highly responsive to suggestion. He will use a series of suggestibility tests to eliminate the folks who are not quite so easy to handle for an immediate effect. The induction appears to be instant because he’s already eliminated the nonresponsives. The rest of the show acts as a compounding process and deepener. He never stops working the trance.

Since a good stage hypnotist will explain that hypnosis is a consensual process and that folks have to want to enter trance and be smart enough to follow the directions, he eliminates the onus of having to have one hundred percent success with every subject on stage. Intractible subjects are removed quickly so as not to disturb the flow.

Most stage hypnotists to NOT mingle with the audience prior to a show. That destroys the mystique of his persona as performer.

Stage hypnosis, like any other form of hypnosis, is a simple process. Any competent hypnotist can learn the skill set. With practice, a stage hypnotist will eliminate chances for failure but it has nothing to do with preconditioning subjects (or with creating shills which would be the next step in that line of thought) . . . it has to do with knowing how to recognize good subjects, testing them, and reinforcing positive behaviors.

I know a number of stage hypnotists, have taught entertainment hypnosis classes, and have done my own shows and don’t know anyone who follows the procedure outlined. I would assume anyone who would try that didn’t have the courage or confidence it takes to do the job well. I am curious as to how did someone come up with this principle? Who is teaching this method for performance hypnosis?