Going Global Again

Tams was sitting beside me, her right hand stuck firmly to the top of her head, her fingers wiggling impatiently while she waited for me to remember to undo the command. I have no idea what she was thinking.

Here's what I was thinking: "Damn, it works!"

I was in the midst of my second-ever public demonstration of the Global Suggestion, this time for an erotic hypnosis group in the Bay Area. And Tams had just helped me nail it.

After my first demonstration, last spring, I'd concluded that, for any future demos, having a subject already familiar with the Global Suggestion was crucial. I'd also decided to present the technique in reverse order -- to show off the impressive results first, before turning to the more subtle business of the induction and placement of the suggestion.

It was a perfect job for my hypnosub Shelly, who could not be more familiar with the ins and outs of this technique,  already knows some of this group's members and would cheerfully perform for me in public.

But to her frustration and mine, Shelly couldn't be there. I was going to have to trust that someone at the meeting would volunteer and respond well, for a method they'd never heard of.

Then, a week before the meeting, fortune smiled. Or Yahoo beeped, anyway.

It was Tams, on instant messenger, saying hi. We'd never met face to face, but four years earlier  I had tranced her online and installed the global suggestion. We'd played with it a bit, but reality intervened, our contact dwindled, and our last hello had been more than a year ago.

Now here she was again. She remembered me. I could bet that her subconscious remembered me. And she happens to live in the Bay Area. I suggested she attend the demonstration and help with my demo.

So that night, there we were, 15 of us in a big room, sitting in comfy chairs in a circle, with pizza in the middle.

I described the Global Suggestion  -- "Whatever I say, make it so". One of the merits, I said, is that, unlike many complicated hypnotic suggestions, it is so simple that the subconscious can remember it for years without reinforcement.

And to demonstrate that, here was my long-lost friend Tams.

I opened with a little scene. Imagine you're sitting next to each other at Starbucks, in a crowd, I said. Imagine you want to put a hypnosub through a little torment in public.

I told Tams to set her palms on the table ... and that they were stuck there. I told her that the smell of coffee was gradually raising her arousal. I told her that the sound of the espresso machine frothing up a drink was making her clench. And that each time I said "bang" she would feel a flogger across her upper back. Tams, very much a sensation fiend, felt every one of those things, immediately and vividly.

She responded so vividly that I had to admit to the group that I had tried out these little effects already, when I met her just before the meeting.

So then I threw in an effect that I was sure that Tams and her subconscious had not heard before.

Freeing her hands from the tabletop, I picked up her right hand and pointed to the palm. "Velcro," I said. Then I tapped the top of her head. "Velcro." Then I slapped her hand to the top of her head.

Bingo. She was stuck.

Damn. It works. It's really that simple.

And for the rest of the demo, I did not lack for volunteers.