Esoteric Robbery

Perhaps this would make a better section on the blog entitled "In the News," but I am not so sure this story involving hypnosis truly would deserve such a label.

Apparently this week in Marlborough, New Hampshire (this would have been more fun if it had been Marlborough, Massachusetts) there was a robbery involving hypnosis. So, if you were anything like me, upon hearing the subject of the story, you might have said to yourself something that would involve the notion that "well, you can only be hypnotized if you want to be," blah, blah, blah.

Read on. I found a fairly in depth article about it from a local New Hampshire station. Click here to read it and see the surveillance footage. Turns out the robbers did some handy, dandy little magic tricks and a bit of blackmail, along with a dab of hypnosis to convince the owner of the convince store to hand over $1000. They had told the owner that they were guruji, a form of Hindu priests and could read his mind. With what sounds like a fairly normal parlor trick (I had a waiter show me this on a cruise once) and probably some NLP knowledge, they were able to convince the owner that they were mind readers. It is not clear in the video what was actually said (bummer), so it is hard to tell. I guess they gave enough suggestions and NPL to convince the the owner he wanted to give them the $1000.

Any thoughts?

Lucid How-to's

Putting down the tea cup, what I want to know is how many of you have worked with lucid dreams using hypnotic suggestion, either as a hypnotist giving the suggestions or as the person being hypnotized? Or...have you used self-hypnosis to lucid dream?

I have to begun to think (and I may be slow on the uptake here) that maybe to become proficient with lucid dreams, the techniques are all self-hypnosis with maybe the exception being the use of the dream machines...but that seems hypnotic, too, just not so vocal based.

All this comes into my mind from perusing Bill Perry's Lucid Blog. Bill was kind enough to respond to the Sunday Question about lucid dreaming, and I am so glad he did. His experiences are pretty interesting, as is his approach. He uses an anchoring technique and it is as follows:

• As you are lying in bed, simply visualize the dream you would like to have. Experience it as you would like to experience it. Get as far into the visualization as you can. Hear the sounds, see the sights, smell how it smells. As you are getting into this visualization, clench your hands into fists. Not tightly, but relaxed fists. Use it as an anchor.
• Allow your brain to tie the feeling of clenching the hands into fists with he feeling of what your prospective dream feels like.
• Next time you are lucid, clench your dream fists and remember the dream you want to have. Much like running a computer program, your dream will now “load up” for you.
• And, since you are now altering the content of the dream, you don’t have to stick exactly to the “script” you’ve made in your visualization. You can now make things happen by the power of sheer thought.
• Dream on!

This was taken from his blog posting How to Control Your Dreams. Using both self-hypnosis techniques and NLP, is this just another fabulous tool of hypnosis? When I was debating using the home-made sunglasses dream machine to use the lights as an anchor to remind you that you were in a dream and now could take control of it, Bill's technique does this without all the gadgetry. Definitely worth exploring.