Doing Real Hypnosis

I visited my friend Rich Guzzi recently. He is arguably the most successul comedy hypnotist in the USA (he gets nearly all the comedy club bookings) and he is certainly one of the busiest and best.

We got to talking about our shows and why we choose to do things the way we do. Rich pointed out that his choices are all guided by the underlying principle that he wants to audience to know that it is real hypnosis. Not faked, staged or set up.

For example some people are very easily hypnotised. He could literally put them under in seconds, right at the start of the show. But were he to start off that way, some of the audience might question if it is real or not. So he does it differently.

People often ask me why I keep some of the people on stage that I do - even if they are not quite so “theatrical” as others. I think that for their friends and family in the audience they might still be the star of the show. And it helps to make sure they know that hypnosis is a real thing.

Even so - one of the most common questions I get is “is hypnosis real?”. And yes, it is.