Beginning, again! :D

DeGlaive wrote: Over a week, I've hypnotized around 7 people in two "mini-impromptu representations" outside that were attracting quite a little crowd and bring us more money than expected, for 10 minutes of work.

So you make money. That is your goal, to influence people to give money, as a street performer.

Not a week without thinking about hypnosis. Without the strong f*cking desire to awake groups of strangers to their potential, to sell them the idea that they CHOOSE AND COMMAND what happens in their life. Not a single moment that I doubt that it is part of my Fate.

So they can choose and command their lives, other than you must "sell them the idea" via showing people being hypnotized, demonstrating that you can command and control them. Sounds a bit counterintuitive to me. You hypnotize someone in the street, make them cluck like a chicken for money, then you announce to the crowd how they choose and command what happens in their life.

I want to make this point everywhere around the planet. I live in a 12L backpack - yet, am closer now to your archetype of a Monk than a hobo.

These days you can make a point everywhere around the planet without needing a 12L backpack. You can just use the Internet. Plenty of hypnosis YouTube videos.

Anyway, I have been living out of my "Tortuga" backpack for 5 years now while traveling the world. I work mostly online, which gives me the freedom to travel. I'm not a Monk, nor a hobo. I own 8 shirts, 8 pairs of socks, 8 pairs of underwear, 3 pairs of pants, 3 pairs of shoes...you get the idea.

I highly recommend the Tortuga for your travels. It is built so you don't have to check your bag which is important when it is pretty much all the clothes you have. My office I carry in my personal bag (a smaller backpack).

I've got massive fear to approach people like before - it is strange.

??? How is this possible? Why not just hypnotize yourself? Or have someone else hypnotize you? Maybe you have been hypnotized and you just don't realize it yet? Forgive me, as hypnosis is not my area of expertise, but it seems rather odd that you can hypnotize your mother and all these other people, yet it doesn't work for you?

Anyway, I applaud you on your desire to travel while making money hypnotizing people in the street. Traveling is a wonderful lifestyle. Do you speak Portuguese or Spanish by chance? There are a ton of street performers, young adults that live out of backpacks and travel around South America. Argentina and Brazil seem to have that culture quite readily embedded and widely accepted. It is fun to watch.

What I would suggest regarding your fear is to start off on some side streets with fewer people. I'm not talking with no one walking along in a residential area. Obviously you want tourist spots, people with disposable income, but don't start in the city center or town square where it is packed. Go a few streets over where there is less traffic. That might make it easier for you.

Good luck!

Thanks Richard!

To make it quick, the performance that I aim to do is oriented toward education and won't include any chicken impersonation. I want it as educative as it is entertaining : I would aim for routines that will bring people to experience change level of consciousness (feeling drunk, overjoyed) get over their inhibition (singing, dancing if this is what they like) and such. The idea behind is the show is : suggestions make your world - the one that I was giving her, you can give it to yourself. What's ironic is the hard time that I have to apply it to myself on that specific project.

Plus, money is not the primary goal here : traveling and doing that performance for a while is the aim. Money is the necessary to finance the project.

As for making a point everywhere using the web, the issue is that you preach to converted. People taking the time look at hypnosis video already have a good hint of the benefits that the practice can have for them.

This is were "selling" the idea count. I believe that what's refraining most people to take control of their life is the fear or responsibility. You need a solid approach to show them how the benefits are worth that price. I would convince a small minority, but each and every individual that'll help understand that is worth the process.

I'm really happy to meet a fellow nomad here. What's your online business? How long did you take to be able to live out of it? I would really like to hear more about that!

Thanks again!

DeGlaive wrote:I'm really happy to meet a fellow nomad here. What's your online business? How long did you take to be able to live out of it? I would really like to hear more about that!

I teach online. There are various online education platforms, including Teachable, Udemy, Coursmos, EduFrye, etc. On Udemy there are courses on hypnosis that sell for $200. It took a couple of years, but well worth the effort. I'm up to 33 countries and over 150 cities. I'm currently in Bogota, Colombia for my 3rd visit.

I would recommend when possible having someone help video any street performances. It has a number of benefits. It protects you from accusations of doing anything illicit, it can help you review and improve the performance and it can be uploaded to YouTube or other sites to spread the message and get valuable feedback in the form of comments, likes, etc. It can also generate a bit of revenue. And don't discount the online courses as an additional revenue stream. It is good to have income from multiple streams, because sometimes you might have slow months.

Inspiring! Thanks Richard!

I'll get those videos as soon as possible!

I have a average frame, but still look slightly threatening [...] So, most of the time, I was stopped by a worried look that my prospects were showing - I babbled something polite and turn away

In the meantime, I've been salesman, security guard & bouncer. If you've ever took one of those position, you know that the skills required for outstanding success are totally related with the one needed for hypnosis.

And here we are.

The thing that jumps out to me is that both bouncers and security guards are *supposed* to look intimidating! Perhaps salesmen less so, but unless you were going door to door, the context probably gave you some legitimacy (he works here, I am interested in their products, etc) that makes it a bit easier not to scare people away.

The next step is easy : get in the street and practice. But I'm progressing slowly on that. I've got massive fear to approach people like before - it is strange. I believe that I make the topic so-much-of-a-big-deal right now that it make me freeze. Rationalizing doesn't work.

Did it happen to you? How did you overcame that?

Yes, I've dealt with this exact thing - both the anxiety about it and the actual outcome of making people uncomfortable.

I was trying it on hard mode though, since I was trying to go straight into the handshake induction without even introducing myself as a hypnotist. One of the things that helped me (which unfortunately isn't as *straightforwardly* applicable to your case) was to stop and talk to the people afterwards and explain myself. Basically "hey, so I got this crazy idea in my head that it should be possible to just walk up to someone and hypnotize them without even asking. What was that like for you?". One of them explicitly told me that he was intimidated because I was kinda a big guy, and that if it had been the smaller guy next to me trying to shake his hand he probably wouldn't have been so intimidated. (I met that smaller guy through this forum and he had crazy success doing this, btw).

It helped me spend some time with the uncomfortable idea of what I kinda already knew - that is, it's kinda scary being approached by a big dude trying to shake your hand when you don't know what your intent is, and *doubly so* when he looks like he's anxious because he anticipates that you might freak out! (I did bring a (non-hypnotist) female friend out, and even though she was way more anxious than me (literally turning and running away halfway through the handshake interrupt), she wasn't intimidating *anybody* and had a really easy time getting strangers to shake her hand out of nowhere. No fair )

I had to sit down and accept the idea that I was not a harmless little girl, but a big scary dude, and that if I wanted to do anything out of the ordinary like this, *people were going to notice*. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be *scared*, per say, but that idea is going to *be there*, and I'm going to need my body language to communicate "yeah, I know I can be intimidating, and that's alright because my intentions are good and I know you'll see it:)" - not "please don't be scared!". I needed the idea of them being scared of me not to trigger that little voice saying "but they're going to think your bad and it will be bad!" but rather "hey, this is *normal* for them to be a bit unsure if they're safe, and it's *okay*. Just reassure them". Talking to them after my failed cold-instant attempt and being completely upfront about my intentions was hugely helpful here. *I* always knew that I wasn't going to steal anyone's wallet or anything, but being able to watch them come to realize this and then completely trust me afterwards was incredibly reassuring because it let me rest on "and they will see this, even if they get a little freaked out initially". It let me know that I had a way out and could try weird creepy sh** without people forever concluding that I am in fact a weird creep. Whereas before my implicit frame was something like "they very reasonably might get afraid, and this is bad. If I close my eyes really tight and hope real hard maybe it won't happen", my new frame was something like "Yes, they might get afraid. This is okay. This is *reasonable*, but it is also *wrong*. There is nothing to be afraid of, and I can show them that so that they will be able to see it"

From that realization on, I had a *much* easier time approaching without anxiety, and people were much more comfortable in response - and if I remember correctly, not one person walked away scared or thinking I was a bad guy.


As long as you're not actually a bad guy, it's okay if people are initially a little intimidated and don't know what to think. It's natural, and it's something that you can address by sub-communicating that everything is fine so that they can know how to interpret things. If you're a bit "intimidating" looking, it does require cleaner sub-communication, and this does make it a bit harder to get started because it front-loads a lot of the hard work. However, once you do, it's quite an advantage.

“Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.” - Friedrich Nietzsch

I need to fulfill my vision. And it involve making impromptu representations and then small shows that are mostly oriented around the idea of empowering the spectators. Let them know that their mood, tribe, occupation and very reality are in their hands - that they have the choice

.

The idea behind is the show is : suggestions make your world - the one that I was giving her, you can give it to yourself.

You might be interested in watching some of Anthony Galie's stuff, if you haven't already. He does stuff like this and it's pretty cool. There are some videos online.

What's ironic is the hard time that I have to apply it to myself on that specific project.

It is interesting, isn't it?

This is one of the biggest and most interesting lessons that my study of hypnotism has taught me: If you know - from having seen it, done it, and made it happen - if you *know* that suggestions make your world and that it's as simple as accepting a different suggestion, then what does that imply when you have a hard time applying it to yourself? What does it say about how best to address the issue when you want to help other people accept suggestions that might improve their lives?

It's a very interesting and *long* line of questions, and very fruitful in my experience.

Inspiring! Thanks Richard!

I'll get those videos as soon as possible!

Seconding Richard's suggestion to record it. It'll also give people something to show their friends after their mind gets blown by the hypno-busker they saw on the street

I'd also be interested in watching them if you post them here.

Thanks a lot Jimmyh, that is a incredibly helpful post! I will focus on that idea :

"Yes, they might get afraid. This is okay. This is *reasonable*, but it is also *wrong*. There is nothing to be afraid of, and I can show them that so that they will be able to see it"

I'll let you know how it goes!

I am really curious about that experience in impromptu instant induction that you did with your friend! Did you document it or record it in some way?

Heh. I did get some video, but he didn't want word getting out due to stuff about becoming a hypnotherapist so I've only shown a few people and I don't think I've written much about it either. I remembered that he had moved on from the hypnotherapy thing so I pinged him and he says it's cool to share with the world, so I'll tell you all about it. It was super interesting and I didn't end up eating at all that day because I was just so focused on making the most out of the day I was out there. It was a really surreal experience for me for a few different reasons.

To give a brief bit of background, some ways of thinking about hypnosis suggest that instant inductions should work without any pretalk or even permission. There's good reason to believe it can work this way even before seeing anyone pulling it off, but we also had that in Mayajids many videos of "hypnosculpting" and the video of our moderator Anthony Jacquin pulling one off for a TV show thing he was working on. There's also some discussion of the topic if you search through the archives.

Although there's good reason to believe it can work, there's also plenty of reason to doubt - and the video evidence not *that* solid. If I remember correctly, in Anthony's case the guy didn't even know he was a hypnotist and the only prior interaction with the guy beforehand was to ask who his favorite movie star was, but there were cameras there and that can definitely change things. In Mayajid's case, who knows what's really going on off camera. Looks like it could definitely be legit and he did post a failure video, but even if he's totally legit there's no telling his success rate. When he would do two or three in a row that's evidence that his success rate can't be *that* bad, but at least in the case with the three, the next two aren't so "cold" anymore.

On top of that, there was another guy claiming crazy success with it and I had just caught the guy out for lying and making everything up. Jake didn't fit the same patterns/motives, but he was still making some pretty big claims (which, when I asked him for permission to share the videos the other day, he admitted were pretty exaggerated (hah!)). So I was already a quite skeptical when I was buying the plane tickets to stop by NYC to meet Jake on the way home from that side of the country.

It got worse when he seemed to be backing off his claims a bit and saying stuff like "I haven't done this stuff in a while, since I've been working on becoming a hypnotherapist" and "I went out again to brush up before your visit and I didn't have that much success". The first checked out with what I knew already, and the second was kinda expected anyway given how important state is for cold instants and the pressure to perform he must have been feeling. He's the kind of guy that *really* doesn't like looking arrogant and he had some big claims to live up to, so it really wasn't surprising. He ended up showing up a bit late, so the whole time I was just standing in grand central station wondering if I had been duped and he was gonna no-show and I was gonna be the fool that was gullible enough to actually buy a plane ticket to test this belief.

He did show, and I thought it would be funny to pretend to do a surprise handshake induction on him - and I thought for sure he was going to do the same to me (turns out he did consider it, but decided that he didn't want to be a jerk). So I was the jerk, and when I said "sleep" he *dropped* - like, *physically dropped*. I had to hold him up and he was visibly confused about what was happening. I guess he had gotten pretty conditioned to respond to "sleep!" in his hypnotherapy training course. Oops.

So I had just inadvertently hypnotized this guy, whom I had literally *just met*, and I was holding this guy up, while people walked by presumably giving me weird looks - I couldn't really check because I was too busy taking it all in and realizing that *this is really happening*. It just got weirder from there as he handed me a camera and actually started approaching random people and trying to hypnotize them out of nowhere. He approached this guy, started asking for directions or something, and then *went for it*.

And it didn't work. The guy got angry and aggressive and Jake just tried to put his hands up and say "sorry". I really thought I was about to watch him get his donkey kicked. I watched him do it again and again with the same fate. It was a really weird combination of "this guy actually showed up, gave me his camera, and is really going for it" and "there's *no f***ing way* this can actually work, and he's getting shut down exactly as hard as you'd think he would when pulling sh** like this". There really was no good explanation for what I was seeing.

And then on the fourth time it f***ing *worked*.The guys head dropped down and Jake was doing his snappy thing and my jaw literally dropped. I just couldn't believe it. A moment later Jake supposedly felt some resistance (I maintain that he just pussed out ) and bailed, walking quickly past me. I was trying to be as inconspicuous as I could, so I turned the camera down and missed this guys expression as he walked passed me, but the guy was a freaking *zombie*. It still weirds me out how quickly he got into that state, but sh**'s *real*.

The rest of the day was mostly me trying to come to terms with and make sense of what I saw. It was a pretty big shift going from "this should be possible in theory [but I've never seen anything like it and it sure doesn't *feel* real]" to "yep, this is just a real thing that can happen". He tried several more times, but his head really wasn't in it - and state is *crucial* for cold instant inductions. (I also saw him try it on a dude in a Mickey Mouse costume with literally no introduction, but with the costume it was impossible to tell whether it had actually worked or if the guy was merely going along with it until Jake bailed again. Unfortunately I didn't get this one on film because I had literally no warning)

We took a bit of a break to do some parkour in the park, and had gathered a bit of a crowd. Between seeing it actually work, seeing that Jake was kinda out of the mental and emotional energy that it takes (and besides, had already proven his point that it was absolutely possible), and seeing him actually have the *balls* to do it, I kinda had to sack up and give it a shot myself. We had been talking to one of the guys who stopped to watch us for a few minutes, and I was starting to feel comfortable that I could give it a shot on him without it being quite as scary of a thing if (when) it didn't work out as hoped.

I tried, and it predictably didn't work. I was still being a bit of a bitch and my delivery of "sleep!" was a bit too much like "sleep?" so he didn't really understand what it was he was supposed to do. Anyway, I explained what I was trying to do and asked him what it was like for him. He explained that it was mostly just confusing, and it seems that the problem was that I wasn't being clear and assertive enough, not that he had actually rejected it. We showed him the recordings from the day and he thought it was pretty cool.

That gave me the confidence to try it a little more (in that same non-committal way), and while I didn't succeed that day, I did learn a lot about what I had been doing wrong and what it was going to take to succeed.

All in all, great day.