Students under hypnosis

    You are getting very sleepy. Very sleepy. And when I snap my fingers you will flap your arms and cluck like a chicken. SNAP!
    This might have been the scenario some students were anticipating during the Oct. 7 hypnosis show.         The performance, featuring famed hypnotist Tom Deluca, was presented to GCSU students as one the many productions during Campus Activities Board’s Fall Frenzy week.
    Students and curious on- lookers alike crowded into the Magnolia Ballroom Friday evening for two hours, watching their friends and peers lose inhibitions and, essentially, perform for the audience.
    “Hypnotism is basically bypassing the analytical part of someone’s mind and giving people suggestions that go into their subconscious mind without a lot of critical analysis,” said Deluca, who first learned about hypnotism in graduate school.
    “And it’s done in a variety of different ways. You can do it yourself. You can talk to yourself and give yourself suggestions. Good or bad. You can have other people say things that you don’t really analyze but that you accept it.”
    After introducing hypnotism, telling the crowd that hypnotism is “enhanced imagination and concentration,” Deluca selected various volunteers from the eager crowd.
    Ten guys and ten girls were invited on stage to begin what promised to be an entertaining experience.     Deluca then began to slowly relax his “victims” into a deep sleep. Soon, most of the 20 volunteers dropped their heads to their chests in what appeared to be a semi-unconscious state. There were a few who didn’t quite fall under the spell and were asked to leave the stage.
    For the next hour and a half, the crowd erupted into fitful laughter over and over again as they watched the volunteers drive cars, milk cows, compete in body building contests and perform in a ballet. At least, that’s what the participants thought they were doing.
    “I remember my freshman year I was friends with some older folks and they said they had been and I had always heard them talk about it,” said Clifford Barnette, GCSU graduate student and a volunteer during the performance.
    “So this year we’re gonna go and I want to get hypnotized,” Barnette said.
    Among the many scenarios he was asked to act out, Barnette was involved in one of the most memorable: the ballet act. Barnette and fellow volunteer Cameron Steele danced across the stage in what can be described as a less the elegant performance. But not everything was as it seemed, claimed Barnette.
    “He was telling us ‘Pick him up. Twirl him around.’ When he turned his back to the audience and took the mic from his face he was giving us suggestions,” says Barnette of Deluca.
    Overall, Barnette described his experience as fun and extremely relaxing.
    “He said when we got up there that we’d feel like we slept a couple of hours,”  Barnette said. “Like six or seven hours. I really did. Every muscle in my body was just completely relaxed when I left.”
    By the end of the show, the volunteers had lost their butts, competed in a “Shake It” contest, and danced the night away in a dance club. But most of all, they had entertained the crowd.
    As for whether or not his participants would remember their performance, Deluca said that it all depends on the person.
    “Some of them come up and ask me,” Deluca said. “Most of their friends come up and tell them and they remember.”
    After the show, students had mixed feelings about what they had just seen.
    “I am still not sure what to believe in,” junior Hannah Oothoudt said. “I knew some people that were in it and they truly did seem to be hypnotized, but it’s still hard for me to believe that something like that could actually happen.”
    “There were people there onstage both years that I know and am close to. They were completely out of it and would never be able to do the things they did with a straight face,” student Kika Caparisos said. She claimed that, after watching the performance, she definitely believes in hypnotism.
    As for Barnette, he believed in hypnosis coming into the show but wasn’t sure what to expect. Now that he has participated, he says he would have no problem being hypnotized again. On a final note, he wanted to reassure his friends and audience members that he does not plan on making ballet his profession.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 18 2007. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry