Don’t think about the Canadian Flag...now try not to think about the Statue of Liberty.
Did you stop yourself? Probably not and there’s a reason why.
“Once the mind and body are relaxed enough, the subconscious mind simply becomes more susceptible to the power of suggestion,” said Sebastian Steel, an Edmonton hypnotist who will be performing at the Jasper Royal Canadian Legion on Sept. 18.
For more than 17 years Steel has been using the power of suggestion to hypnotize people.
“You have two minds about you, you have your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. The conscious mind is the mind that you control and use to make conscious decisions. The subconscious mind is the mind that controls us. We can’t control it.
“That’s because it’s aggressive and usually works in a reflex response,” said Steel.
“The subconscious automatically goes to contradiction, so if you say no it will think yes, simply because you thought no,” explained Steel.
He said this is part of the reason some people struggle with quitting smoking, because as soon as they say they don’t want a cigarette their subconscious responds by suggesting that they do want a cigarette.
“The more you think no the more [your subconscious] thinks yes until eventually it has you picking up a cigarette against your will.”
The key to hypnosis is getting people to relax, allowing their subconscious minds to become less aggressive and open to suggestion, explained Steel. Once they are relaxed, the body then starts to believe in that suggestion.
“Most of it is based on your imagination. The more relaxed you get the more your imagination and thought process come into force, just like day dreaming,” he said.
A common tactic used by hypnotists is asking the audience to clasp their hands together and imagine they are glued together.
“You know there is no glue there, but if you start imaging that glue’s there and you’re in a relaxed state where [your mind is] susceptible, you start thinking ‘What if the glue was there? What would it be like?’ and the next thing you know your hands are stuck and you can’t get them apart,” said Steel.
He said the power of suggestion doesn’t mean people could suddenly become capable of doing something they previously couldn’t do. For example, if he asked someone who was hypnotized to speak Mandarin, they wouldn’t suddenly become fluent, but they would likely speak some form of gibberish that in their mind they believe is Mandarin.
According to Steel, people don’t need a hypnotist’s help to tap into their subconscious.
Using an analogy, he paints a picture of a child about to fall asleep.
“As they’re relaxing deeper and deeper, getting closer to that state of sleep, the child sees clothing slumped over a chair across the room. As he’s lying there staring at the clothing, relaxing more and more, his imagination starts to make shapes out of the clothing on the chair. He starts thinking it looks like the boogeyman. Eventually knowing it’s clothing over a chair, he reaches that state of relaxation where the subconscious says to his imagination this feels real.”
According to Steel, in that state of relaxation the subconscious becomes less aggressive and people can implant their own suggestions, creating a form of reality that isn’t real.
In addition to his skills as a hypnotist, Steel also incorporates his experience as an improvisational actor into his shows.
The average show is about two hours long and he uses between 13 to 15 different suggestions from a list of more than 200 he’s compiled over his career.
“I never know what I’m doing until I get to the venue and I’m on stage and I see the audience,” he said, stressing the show is tasteful.
“I’m not out to degrade or humiliate people. To me that’s not what hypnosis is about. I want people leaving the show knowing, whether they were sitting in the audience or sitting up on stage, they had fun.”
Paul Clarke [email protected]
