Session #25: Dr. Jim Wand – Part 2

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So there’s the training side, there’s the experience side. There’s also just going through it. Um, I heard you speak recently and we had this great experience. I was doing, uh, a class in advance of the hypno birthing conclave recently, and we took the entire class to go see, uh, Mark Sard out in Vegas. Yeah.

And uh, Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Welcome back. It’s part two of the two part series with Dr. Jim Wa. This is session number 25 of the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast.

In the last program with Jim, you heard us talking. Sort of more of the history of his experience. And since we had this time together, I want to spend some time specifically talking about experiences crafting the program, how we put it all together, how we interact with those volunteers, how we even begin to rethink about the direction that hypnosis is going in the future.

And I think he’s got some. Fabulous insights in terms of what those next steps need to become for all of us to continue to grow and improve within this profession. Let’s jump right in. By the way, real quick, that website that we’re gonna reference, the powerhouse summit.com, I think it’s a fabulous opportunity.

It’s gonna be seven days of training. With, uh, Sean Michael Andrews, with Dr. Jim Wa, as well as Richard Barker. Again, that site is the powerhouse summit.com. Check that out. Or even just, uh, Jim Juan’s website directly hypnotism.com. Great url. Here we go, part two with Dr. Jim Wa.

You have that committee of volunteers on stage and you’re doing a mixture at times of routines with the group and then also selecting specific people for individual bits. How is it, what’s kind of going through your mind? What’s your strategy for choosing those quote superstars to work with within that group?

Yeah. Kind of depends on how I feel the callbacks are going to best benefit the. For instance, if I have a number of really good substitute in the audience that I don’t have room for on stage. Now I’ve developed something this last year that works out really well. Let’s say I have, uh, room for 20 people on stage and I get 22.

I will, uh, I tried this a year ago and worked really well, so I continue to use it. Uh, I put one on, uh, each edge of the stage on the wall, and I tell ’em they’re on a Velcro wall. They’re stuck on a Velcro wall, a Velcro. So they do the whole show standing up stuck to the wall, and they do people on stage do.

But with that being said, I might pick four or five people in the audience, uh, who are really good subjects, and I tell them on a certain word, they’ll jump up and yell something and then move to another location. If I wanna keep it going in the audience. And if I have so many people that it’s gonna add to the show, if I feel it’s gonna take away from the show, then I, then I minimize that.

Uh, the next step is I do find several people on stage who I think that are the superstar. And, and almost every show has a superstar, one or two. I don’t care, um, how low key a show might be with a corporate group or how animated it might be with a after prom group. There’s always a superstar. You just utilize ’em in a different way.

So I utilize that superstar to where we’re gonna get the best value out of that superstar. Uh, for instance, the other night I had a gentle. I had him jump up and say something, Well, it was, it was an adult show, so he jumped up and said something really funny and it worked out really well. So I told him that, uh, after the second time, every time he jumped up, he’d do it in a different language.

And I mean, the audience responded so much to that. I used it about five times and each time, I mean, it was nonsense language, but he was so intense, so much. that the audience just loved it. So I would use the callbacks as I see they’re going to benefit the person who is hypnotized the benefit myself in the show and the benefit the audience.

Typically, the majority of my personal callbacks are at the end of the show, and I usually use about five to eight. During my post hypnotic show routines where they’ve actually already come out of a hypnotic state, I might be one where I say the word hypnosis. I try to use common words that I’ll remember because the big thing is you have five to seven or eight different people that you’ve given different words to.

You have to make sure that you use all the words and use ’em the right context using the right time. So I used words that are easier, like hypnosis, the name of the venue, uh, the state that we’re in. Uh, so I use certain words that usually. Respond with certain types of reactions from the people on stage.

I might tell one person every time, say the word hypnosis, they’ll slide off their chair, their sugar goes on backwards, their shoes are on the left, on feet, you know, So I have that going. Then I might have another person over his time, a certain word, the ceiling’s falling so they can get up. Make sure that people are leading the venue cuz the ceiling’s falling with the other guy is slipping out of his chair.

Well another person jumps up and the house, who’s my daddy? Another person, you know I’m your dad, . You get those things going and you get em loop. And you get ’em looping. And as you get ’em looping, I mean, everybody gets into it. Everybody responds to it. And the one thing I found too, and, and I don’t think people do this enough, but if you have one link in that chain that breaks, it can break the entire routine segment, so to speak.

So what I do is I make sure the first one and the second one, I know absolutely for sure they’re gonna do it. If I feel that one person might not be into it, I make sure. I get compliance from them with a, with a visual head shake to make sure they understand, to make sure they’re going to do it. Because the worst thing can happen is you give a suggestion and they don’t reply to it.

Usually the reason they don’t respond to it is, number one, they don’t understand it, or number two, they don’t wanna do it, and you don’t want a person doing something that he or she’s uncomfortable with. Wanna make sure they understand it and that they’re willing to do it before you get them in part of the mix, cuz it gives them, uh, much more of an ownership into doing a good job with that particular bit.

Well it’s also that statement of building a program with a lot of texture. You know, you’ll see some stage osis shows that are very. , and I hesitate to use the word, but formulaic in the sense of here’s the induction, here’s the deepeners, and then here’s a routine. Everyone eyes closed, here’s a routine, everyone eyes closed.

And they basically repeat a similar sequence with different, Different routines. Different skits. But it’s kind of like, and I, I use the metaphor of, um, It’s the music album where every song is basically sounding the same. Yes. Um, when you go to see a good concert, and here’s the upbeat song, here’s the ball, here’s the moment where they suddenly put down the guitar and they tell a story.

And it’s that statement of how do we build a program that satisfies that, first of all, that flexible need, also that texture, so it’s not the same tone the entire time. Uh, cuz I’ve seen in your program, there’s moments where you. You know, you, you’ll tell a story in a recent event you showed a video. Yes.

Where there’s just that texture of the program and even utilizing things that happen by accident and often making those accidental things happen very frequently too. Yes. And then making an accident become part of the show. I, I do a thing, uh, one, one of my beds in one of my college shows. I don’t do this for corporate of course, and I don’t do it for high school either, but college I do it where, uh, some young man, the backside is on.

And he jumps up, but he can only move in slow motion with his backside on fire, . And then I tell two girls of the firemen, they can put the fire out, they can blow on it, they can spank it, they can do whatever they need, , uh, to put the fire out. Well, uh, about six months ago I was doing this and I had a bottle of water sitting on the side of the stage and underknown to me, one of the young ladies when I was looking another way, grabbed the bottle of water, jumped it all over the back of the guy.

Which added entertainment value to the show. Everybody’s, and I, you know, I, I acted like, my gosh, what did you do that for? You weren’t supposed to do that. So I acted surprised to the audience, but it got such a response that now I put a bottle of water near a place on stage where they can see it. And after the second time, if they don’t see it off the mic, I find a way to tell the one, a young lady say, There’s a bottle of water.

You can use it if you want. So it becomes part of every, it becomes part of every show that I use about on fire with a, with a bottle of water because it’s become part of, because something that happened inadvertently during one of my past shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s program, there’s a bit that I do in the program that I’ll do for schools where it’s getting really cold and by accident, the one on the end always ends up grabbing me.

Yeah. Uh, where it’s the, Oh yeah. That happened again. Like it happens every single night that I do the program. Yep. . And you know, when you make that, when you make you become part of the show that way. The audience likes it more because you’re willing to accept part of it too. You’re willing to get involved, you’re willing to get hugged.

The other night I had a guy drop me on the floor and I was underneath him and I couldn’t get up and I, I had the micro, This just happened Saturday night, this casino, and I asked, What are you doing down there? You gotta get up off me. You gotta sit back in your chair. But I, I let go for about you 30, 40 seconds because the audience was really into it and it wasn’t hurting me.

So it worked out. So there’s the training side, there’s the experience side. There’s also just going through it. Um, I heard you speak recently and we had this great experience. I was doing, uh, a class in advance of the hypno birthing conclave recently, and we took the entire class to go see, uh, Mark Sard out in Vegas.

Yeah. And uh, You know, encouraging the students to also get up on stage as well. And, uh, I’ve heard you speak before about just getting up on stage as the hypnotist and experiencing it. I had, um, I, I volunteered for local hypnotist one time and it kind of changed my whole perception of the process because my internal experience was that I was doing the things I was being asked to do and then I was hearing.

Yes. And it wasn’t until that point that I started to understand my own representation of, you know, we talk about a bypass of the critical factors of mind, and that was how I was experiencing that. And I think that’s just probably one of the most valuable experiences for the hypnotist to have to just go through the process.

And I know that’s something you’ve done quite a bit too. Absolutely. I, I called multimodality experiencing, and not only do I do, I learn more about that, but I also learn about what I could do to make my show better. I every time. I met a stage show where I feel comfortable with the hypnotist. I’ll go on stage cuz I learned a lot from the other side.

Uh, two years ago I was, I was on stage actually last year was two, but with, uh, but two years ago I was on stage. I was at the very end of the committee. And I won’t say who the hypnotist is at this point. It doesn’t, I mean, it doesn’t really matter. But I was on end of the committee and I, I’m very animated.

I’m some istic subs. I’m very animated, and the, the entire committee on stage, other than one person toward the other end was, was pretty lifeless. Well, by the end of the show I had two, three, I had about four people in becoming very animated like me because you know that people feed off the people around them.

If, if this hypnotist at that particular time had moved me to the, Then the entire stage would’ve become animated. So I’ve learned that when, when like people ask me why do I take my chairs together for safety? Yes, but also it creates animation. If I have a whole stage of 30 volunteers and only four of ’em are animated and we’re all at one end, rather than having one end animated, I’ll disperse those four people, uh, e equally throughout the 30 volunteers, and I’ll have a whole stage animated because they hear what’s happening around.

Yeah, you’d hear some people often complain about that as they’re doing shows. Often they have chunks. They have this little group that’s animated, this little group that’s not so animated. Right. And that’s the answer to that. Shuffle the bodies around and then they can sense that movement. That’s right.

And you also notice at the end where there’s not animation, uh, that, and you start losing people many times, Aren, you start losing ’em because they become disassociated from not only any animation, but the group. There’s one person on their left, let’s say for instance, not doing anything. There’s nobody on their right.

Pretty soon they get wondering what all the laughter is about and move the other end that they’re not experiencing. Many times they can bring that person out of hypnosis. You can get a domino effect going where you can lose half a committee. That could have been a really good committee had you just made a couple change the lineup recently.

What I’ve been doing, and, and this is something as part of the showmanship part of it, but several times during my most recent videos, you might see this, that they’re posted on YouTube is that I’ll have people stand. And I’ll move people around several times during every show. Number one, the audience is wondering what I’m doing, which is fine.

Number two, I’m finding that different people work differently with different partners next to ’em. So you can create whole different scenarios by moving, but the only way you’re gonna find out is by doing that several times until you get to the right combination for your stroke. What I do is I never any longer say sleep when I put p.

I use a different format. Every time I take ’em back down, I don’t just, uh, drop my hand. Like I’ll do a head bounce, I’ll do a domino effect. I’ll do a thing on my finger, I’ll do a magic finger. So what I’ve done to kind of eliminate that boredom from every taking person back down into emergency, I’m into hypnosis.

I’ve changed it every time now, which, which adds a lot because the audience doesn’t know what’s gonna happen each time either. And it just act, It adds more to the show because now I. Uh, 5, 6, 7, 8 different additional routines, uh, added to it, just with the, you know, re. Yeah, no, I’d share the experience, uh, cuz I did my original NGH training with Sean.

Okay. And it was kind of a fun experience cuz there we were, I think the first day of the class and I had just done a local, uh, TV spot. And I had someone that really at that point, and I’d say this is probably in response to the training level I had at the time, the experience level too. I had someone that just wasn’t that responsive to.

You know, skits and routines. Okay. That I would do things and I didn’t know enough yet to bump that up to get that more animated. But she was somebody that the, the process of the induction and reduction was just phenomenal. And basically just out of the desire to go, I got three minutes to fill, I gotta do something.

That’s what I was doing. Bringing em up. Taking back. Yeah. Bring, Bring her up. Bring her down. Sure. And just the different texture of when this happens. When that happens. And I think that’s one of those things that you’re, You’re right, that many hypnotists, even stage and nineties even say even in clinical environments too, that ability to on one side is just fractionation, but on the other side, it’s that extra convincer in the process too.

And it’s amazing to the lay person out there. It’s amazing to how you do that. It’s amazing to the person who’s interviewing you and last, not least, the person’s actually being hypnotized. Yeah, well, I mean there are some stage heist out there where their, their show is almost entirely the induction process, that they’re a little heavier on that side with the phenomenon of what’s happening.

And then almost as a courtesy at the end, they’re doing a couple of routines. You know, both models I think work. I, I tend to like the nice balance of the two. Yeah. Well, I, I think a lot of the, uh, therapeutic heists who are using stage hypnosis more as a demonstration, I think they might. Do a little bit more of the longer induction just because that’s what they’re more comfortable with, even though it’s not necessary.

That’s what they’re most comfortable with and if they’re more comfortable with that style, the bottom line is, is it working for them and are they getting the response that’s in well from the audience. If it is, then fine continue to do it. Just have some other tools available if you want to try, you know, some different aspects of presenting to whatever group you might be talking.

Well, I know your program is very flexible, but the most recent time I saw you before you officially began with the entire, uh, committee of volunteers, which is a bit of a misconception anyway, cuz once they’re on stage, they’re your volunteers. Once they’re in the audience listening to you, they’re participating.

But you did an instant induction with a very, very tall guy standing. , uh, which you and I are about the same height, , uh, and a guy maybe a foot and a half taller, which is just building that expectation of all those volunteers. It follows the same principles of Sure. Mo moving around the animated volunteers.

Absolutely. Yep. So anything you can do to sell yourself and this start what you’re gonna do. In some groups, like, you know, as well as I do, much more convincing is necessary than others. And some you just walk up there. Like, when I do an after prom party, you know, my pre-talk might be, might be 90 seconds max.

Mm-hmm. before, before I get the volunteers and hypnotizer I doing a corporate group, I might need 15 minutes, uh, to get the same job done. So you have to do what you need to do for the group that you’re working with. Read the group, read the audience, read the subjects. You’re always gonna have a good. Well, it’s that benefit too, of working some of the same venues, some of the same groups, year end, year out, Absolut.

That they, and I think that’s the biggest takeaway in terms of what the real selling point I’d say, as to a stage hypnosis show would be that so many other forms out there are, here’s the program, here’s the start time, here’s the end time. But with what we’re able to do, it’s all of the expectation leading up to the program.

It’s all the stories they’re telling afterwards. And then you show up the next year and that conversation is still going it, it really. It really did. I, I had a school that I did a few years ago and it was one of those learning lessons of I’m working a little too hard, uh, cause I show up and I mean, they’re all ready for it.

They’ve all been telling the stories, They’re all pumped up for the program. And I’m, I, I decided to just play for a moment and, uh, How many of you’re on stage last year? Just one person. And I recognized him and he was just, he was my flop of the year before. So I recognized, okay, I gotta give some safety, safety instructions.

The chair beneath you will be there to support you completely. Your body will safely remain in the chair. Just watch my hand and just lowered down. The guy just collapses. And at that point, yeah, I could have done that with the rest of the volunteers and probably should have, rather than follow my full routine the way I knew ’em really did at the.

Yeah, because you already had a condition at that point. Like, I’ll, I’ll, if I have a group on stage and, and let’s say it’s getting more and more as I repeat engagements, where you get 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 people, as many as that, who have been hypnotized before on stage, and me just randomly picking people outta the audience, and I’ll still get that many, What I’ll do is I’ll go right down the line, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, all six or seven and everybody else would be said, Whoa.

And I’ll bring them back up and then I’ll do it with the whole group. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And it works like you said. So if you’re not, if you’re not using the word sleep, what are you using? Relax. Let go. There you go. Mm-hmm. , feel it. Release. Love that. So I’m doing other words. Uh, cuz I think, you know, sleep is a misnomer.

And I mean, Sean, you know, he’s got the, you know, the htic stare and the, you know, which kind of a part of a shock in conduction, uh, which he does. And he’s comfortable with that and it works. But I find on stage you don’t necessarily have to do. Do other things because if you go to a group of, uh, like say corporate attorneys and you say, Sleep well, I’m not asleep.

Well, no, you’re not asleep. If they hypnotic asleep, it’s much different. But if they don’t understand that and you start saying sleep, they start thinking about it, they start to analyze it, and they come out of hypnosis, or at the very least, do very little in terms of animation during the show. So let me ask you this, Uh, that’s kind of the bigger question of all.

If you could give just one piece of advice to the entire hypnosis profession, I know I asked the simple questions here. Uh, what would you want that to be if you could make one change and the direction all this is gonna go in the next 10 years? Number one, there’s no big secrets in hypnosis. Do not be afraid to share your knowledge.

Do not be afraid to share what you’re. I think so many people have inductions that are secretive. They don’t think other people should be able to use their, their particular routines, that they think that they have to be very protective and guarded. The way we’re gonna grow as a profession is to work together, and I think that’s one thing that we’re having a hard time doing is working together as a profession.

Uh, the second thing is never quit learning. Never think you’re too good. Never think there isn’t something else that you can find. From others and from yourself inside. It’s gonna make you a better hypnotist, a better person, and a better part of the entire Patic community. Excellent. Excellent. Jim, this has been a pleasure.

Absolutely. My mine too. Thank you so much. Well, excellent. That, uh, the training coming up, you can find it online when I put the links in the show notes. It’s the powerhouse summit.com. Right. You can also find more about, uh, Dr. Wa at hypnotism dot. Jen, thanks so much. Absolutely. Thank you. And thank everyone for listening.

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