stay lifeless and I may be stuck in the trance. But, when he reached the number four, Wannigman said I would feel a wave wash over like being splashed with cool water. And, I did. Once he got to the number five, my eyes were open, struggling to adjust to the light.
I was able to enter trance, but like my first experience, part of me was still not completely in it. The chairs in the Rec. Center are much less comfortable than Wannigman’s office recliner. I tried to focus on Wannigman’s script but drifted off.
I tried my best to be cooperative. But during my first session, I couldn’t suppress the skeptic voice in my head, telling me that this whole experience was shrouded in a thin layer of bullshit.
The group hypnosis was preferable to the individual one. I was able to relax more easily when other people were doing it too and didn’t feel like I was under a spotlight. We came out of trance and everyone wanted to know the same thing: How long were we hypnotized?
Workshop Day 1 I started Wannigman’s six-day Hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming Workshop. Day one was a general introduction with some hypnotherapy exercises. The participants were mostly HSU students whose reasons for attending varied from wanting to manage pain to being able to better understand themselves. Others, like me, were simply curious.
It had been nearly 35 minutes but seemed like half that time. In the following days, I noticed some changes. I recognized the pre-formed behaviors I was exhibiting and found ways to break them. For example, I started raising my hand in class — something I typically would not do. And I worked up the nerve to approach a stranger on the street.
Discussing mindfulness, Wannigman explained one way the Workshop Day 3 brain typically works that hypnotherapy works to change. He wrote it on a whiteboard: On day three, I arrived early to the Rec. Center. Before the workshop started, Wannigman, Mike Bishop and I were Event > Thought > Belief > Behavior > Results (Repeat) there alone for a few minutes when Bishop started to air doubts about what we were learning. As he explained it, something happens, triggering a thought about the event. That thought forms a belief. That belief In the previous session, Wannigman introduced us to Edgar dictates the behavior that occurs the next time a similar Cayce, a healer born in 1877 whose psychic abilities allowed event happens. This leads to the same results each time the him to diagnose illnesses and memorize books just by sleepsituation comes up. ing on them. Bishop is a Psychology major who took classes with Wannigman at HSU. Wannigman taught us that the brain is a survival tool, and many of our behaviors are learned and habitual. I realized “That’s where I have to put the Kool-Aid down,” Bishop said, that if I wanted to make a real change, I would need to break questioning the lesson on Cayce. “I just can’t believe that old habits. someone could sleep on top of a book, wake up and know the contents of it.” “We all have learned patterns of behavior from childhood,” Wannigman explained. “But now, those same behaviors can It was what I needed to hear. Bishop affirmed that I was create limitations and sorrow.” not the only person with reservations about what we were doing. Workshop Day 2 I came to know Wannigman as this relentlessly happy guy. On day two, Wannigman hypnotized all 15 of us at the He always had a huge smile and often silly, welcoming pressame time. ence. He ended each workshop with a running high-five for
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