Now, here’s a pleasant find . . . a bit dated now, but still well worth the read . . . a review of my original WALKABOUT TRANCE BEACH RESORT GETAWAY, the first one in Los Angeles way back when:

I’m back from Hermosa Beach and the Walkabout Trance Beach Resort Getaway, where the seminar topic was Rapid and Speed Inductions, Anywhere, Anytime, Anytrance. It was WONDERFUL! There were folks from Detroit, Texas, New Hampshire, Atlanta, Portland (two, besides me), Seattle, and all over California. There was even a guy from India. Some had been hypnotists since their teens; others had never hypnotized anyone before — or been hypnotized themselves. Of 50+ people, maybe a dozen women. I met some absolutely dear people, and the time went by far too quickly…

Some of the most valuable stuff for me:

1. Getting to do rapid and speed inductions over and over again with different people; noticing what "worked" and what didn’t; beginning to see for myself the patterns I’d heard described for years; being in a well-lit room and developing my sensory acuity for noticing signs of trance in 1-4 minutes. (You gotta pay attention!)

2. Improvisation. Brian’s exercise — the Speed Trance Train — really forced me to let go and PLAY. Since then, I’ve played with the Teakettle Induction, the Doorbell Induction, and the Peanut Butter on Toast Induction. I love, love, love the "anything can be an induction" philosophy.

3. Roll-over into something different. The skillsets that Brian taught emphasized being able to quickly and seamlessly modify what you are doing — more of what works, less of what doesn’t — with inductions, deepeners or skits. I know this is old hat, but I had a new experience of it, and I’d like to be more flexible, so it was very valuable and I’ll be practicing more deliberately (and playfully).

4. Affect/Emotion. Brian talked a lot about chaining positive emotion to physical phenomena ("the higher your hands go, the happier you feel") and leaving people better than we found them. When I was doing one of the exercises and mentioned to my partner that he felt almost like when he was a little kid at Disneyland, his hands leaped about eight inches. WHAM. I flashed on something I think Tony Robbins said: The only reason anyone does ANYTHING is for the feelings they get. I think one common element in my least successful bar gigs was that I didn’t spend as much time telling my volunteers how wonderful and fantastic they felt, and how that feeling got stronger the more they responded. Whoa. Light bulb.

5. I have a completely different view suggestibility tests! Now they are like playing with a Brain Chemistry Set for Christmas! How fun!

At lunch on Day One, we went out in competitive teams to hypnotize people on the boardwalk. When we got BACK from lunch, people shared experiences. That was a real eye-opener and made very clear to me (again) that IT’S ALL ABOUT MINDSET. Or context. Be very careful of the words, "I can’t." What was "out of bounds" for some people was well within the comfort zone of others. The sharing of information and encouragement really touched me.

Feel free to check out the rest of the complete essay at To See The World in a Grain of Sand: Walkabout Trance Beach Resort Getaway.

Nice. 🙂

– Brian