Walkabout Trance - A Review

I attended Brian David Phillips' Walkabout Trance training in Hermosa Beach, CA on 8 and 9 February 2008. The training was held at the Beach House Hotel which is right on the water and the facilities were outstanding. Brian is a very funny, extremely knowledgeable speaker and kept the class flowing nicely. Because of Brian's reputation, the training was very well attended and many of the leading hypnotists from this country and others attended the class. I originally attended because I wanted to find out more about Brian's instant inductions which are much softer than the ones I use.

Here are some data points that I found interesting in the training A lot of other material was covered.

• Brian taught some excellent suggestibility tests and routines which can be made to flow into a very entertaining demo during a cold walk-up. One starts with giving the subject a business card, suggesting that the subject's fingers are now tightening on the card and then suggesting the card can not be dropped. Then switch the card to the other hand where it becomes stuck. You could then tell the subject that the best way to un-stick the card is to put it in his pocket! What a great routine to add to your elevator speech! You could also roll into sticking the person's hand to his head, the other hand to his hip, then stick one of his feet to the floor. The Flow of the operation was what was most interesting to learn. After physical effects are achieved, then psychological effects can be added, (losing name, stuttering, etc)
• He offered lots of suggestions on how to effect the cold walk up, including magic tricks, dumb questions, etc. I like the idea of calling the exercise an "imagination game" instead of suggestibility test. My favorite way to get the ball rolling is to set up my camera and do my brief pre-talk until interested people stop to see what's going on.
• Brian demonstrated his "happy balloons" routine which I found very instructive. When a subject does not readilly accept the suggestion that his hands are being lifted by the balloons, Brian will "help" his hands begin to rise, and this seems to work well. This was a bit of a revelation to me. Also, if he is doing arm levitation with a standing subject, he always starts with the subject's arms straight out in front of her. Once during a "happy balloons" demo with a very good subject, Brian asked the subject to open his eyes and look up and tell us what color the balloons were. "Red!" said the subject. It was a good demo!
• "How does it feel when you meditate?" Not a bad question to ask a subject to put her in the right frame of mind to enter the altered state of hypnosis.
• Brian tends to touch subjects on the third eye when suggesting that a suggestion is locked in but he does a little variation that I found interesting. He acts as though he is turning a five-position key as the suggestion is locked in.
• One NLP technique he demonstrated was after anchoring a negative feeling to the subject's shoulder, he moved it gradually down the arm and out the end of her fingers while suggesting the negativity leave. Nice touch.
• The "happy finger" demo was good. He started out with the "eleven fingers" routine and then suggested that the extra finger could be a "happy finger" and then anchored a happy feeling to that finger. Every time the subject strokes the finger, happy feelings come up and intensify.
• A book was recommended for ice breakers called Psychological Subtleties in Mentalism by Banachek. This book appears to be out of print, so if any readers know of where this book can be found, please email me.
• The class included an exercise the first day at lunch where groups went down to the promenade and performed simple trance activities such as suggestibility tests with strangers. Some of the groups did amazingly well.
• A phrase Brian uses that I particularly like is "In just a few seconds, which is all the time you need, you can (fill in the blank). Could be "fall into a trance" or "notice that your hand is rising" Good phrase.

Now a bit about Brian's seated, softer arm pull induction. My arm pull us usually quite sharp so that I can achieve the shock necessary to activate the "fight or flight" mechanism. I then shout in the word "Sleep!" and continue with a head rotation and further suggestions of deepening. I was intrigued by Brian's method. Holding th subject's hand, he uses confusion by asking the subject if she is right handed or left handed. Whichever the answer, he then switches to her other hand. then he gives the hand a soft pull as he lightly taps on the back of her neck and quietly says, "Sleep," and gently rocks the subject while deepening. This works very well with a subect who has already been in trance or is experienced in hypnosis. It can be problematic with a subject who has never been hypnotized UNLESS that subject is a natural somnambulist. In my therapy practice, I usually condition my clients for rapid induction so that they can quickly enter trance during the follow-on sessions. I believe that Brian's method will be very good to use in this setting.

As I mentioned earlier, Brian's class attracted some very heavy hitters in the hypnosis community and presented an outstanding networking opportunity. I'm very glad I attended!

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Sean Michael Andrews

WorldsFastestHypnotist.com