If you had the power to change anything about yourself, what would it be? Peter Blum suggests that each of us has within ourself the potential for transformation. Even if he’s wrong, it’s a useful thought-experiment. (I, for example, would overcome my internet addiction.)
Blum is a certified hypnotist, and in fact was named Hypnotist of the Year in 2015 (by the International Association of Counselors and Therapists). What’s Your B. S.? is simultaneously: a) an introduction to hypnosis, b) a guide for professional hypnotists, and c) a handbook for people (like myself) with no interest in hypnotism, but a desire to change their lives. (“B. S.”, incidentally, stands for “belief system.”)
The text is set up like a workbook, with short chapters, most of which end with an exercise. Here’s my favorite suggestion, from Chapter 5, “Save the Last Trance for Me”:
Choose a topic with two opposing points of view. The example I remember is where one person was a fanatic vegetarian and the other a proud owner of a beef cattle ranch. Argue the relative merits of your position, as if you were that person. Then switch roles and again present your point of view.
This might be the one way to solve the deep divisions in our nation.
I must admit I had a prejudice against hypnotism when I started this book. If you’ve ever watched “hypnotist humor” on YouTube — which I suggest you avoid — you’ve seen a self-satisfied guy (for some reason, it’s always a man) humiliating audience members (who are usually women) by convincing them that they’re chimpanzees. What Blum does is light years away from that.
Blum grew up in the Bronx and moved to Woodstock in 1969 — just after the festival — and has been there ever since, except for a three-year stint in Amsterdam. For many years he wrote for the Woodstock Times, the antecedent of this newspaper. In fact, that’s how he began his current career. In 1985, he interviewed Richard A. Zarro, poet and hypnotist, who led him in a self-hypnosis session in which two voices, one in each channel of a set of headphones, told two stories simultaneously. Blum was so impressed with the experience that he returned and was given a method to improve his tennis game. It worked, and the rest is hypnosis history.
I never knew that there are different schools of hypnotism, the way there are schools of painting or architecture. Blum derives his philosophy from Milton H. Erickson, an innovative thinker who believed that everyone enters trance states throughout their lives. We speak of a musician being “entrancing” without noticing that this has a literal meaning. Storytelling is a form of hypnosis, according to Blum. The phrase “once upon a time” can trigger a state of receptivity in the listener.
Actually, through much of history, humans have been in a trance. Our ancestors spent hours staring at streams and campfires, or watching rain fall. We have substituted television for this sort of contemplation, but that’s a trance in itself.
Blum is a glutton for spiritual instruction. He’s been studying Tibetan Buddhism since 1975 — that’s 50 years! — while also practicing yoga, learning Neurolinguistic Programming, and taking part in numerous sweat lodges with Native American elders, especially his main teacher, Joseph Rael, also known as Beautiful Painted Arrow. There are parallels between the chanting and drumming of traditional shamanism and modern techniques of hypnosis. Blum tells a story where a Dr. Bergman teaches hypnotism at a Navajo school for healers:
Thomas Largewhiskers, a revered 100-year-old medicine man, said he was surprised to see that white men knew anything so worthwhile!
Blum doesn’t concern himself with the theory behind hypnosis. He’s interested in the process, and the results. The latter part of What’s Your B. S.? consists of case histories, sometimes including transcripts of conversations. And they aren’t all successes! Blum’s struggles with a 16-year-old boy who diagnoses himself with schizophrenia because he hears a voice in his head is poignant and almost tragic. On the other hand, his story of curing a 104-year-old woman of her fear of the dentist, by teaching her self-hypnosis, is uplifting.
Some of the transcriptions of his sessions read like poetry. Here’s an extract of one of Blum’s guided visualizations, delivered to a patient who was overweight and struggling with diabetes:
… every person has had some experiences where they have been out in nature… looking around… seeing plants, flowers… growing their ferns. And really having an affinity with the plant kingdom. Perhaps have watched small wildlife in the woods… A rabbit for instance… or a fawn – who doesn’t eat three meals a day… But rather browses and grazes… eats many small helpings of different green, growing things. And is able to move quickly, lightly on her feet. And really does enjoy that… hopping around. [Italics in the original.]
Hypnotism could literally change the world. Suppose you had a personal meeting with Donald Trump, and held up a coin, claiming it was worth $10,000 – then moved the metallic object back and forth, hypnotically. Once Trump was entranced, you could simply implant the suggestion that he revoke all his executive actions since January, and adopt the Democratic platform. (It sounds absurd, but Rasputin did something quite similar to Tsar Nicholas II.)
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