Rob Cashman is a Hypnotist and a Hypnotherapist in New York. Rob Cashman is also a professional Speaker on Persuasion, Language Patterns and Cutting Edge Prospecting Techniques. It was a good few years back that I last went to see a show like this, but I still remember some of the hilarious things some people were made to do, by the Hypnotist. Why people volunteer to go up on stage and make fools of themselves, beats me, but it is the things that those people do, that really fascinate me. I mean it is a family show and some areas are taboo, but even so, those people all do what is asked of them and seem to have no recollection of what they did. I remember they were made to "take a bath". They went through the motions of stripping off, getting into the bath, washing themselves, getting out again, drying themselves and then dressed themselves. I also remember a group of elderly women were told that they were young teenagers at a Beatles concert. Those old dolls screamed, shouted, jumped around and went totally berserk over the Fab Four. In real life they probably would not have been able to move around like young girls. Another show had a group of people believing they were Michael Jackson.

Well, that was funny. Everyone was singing into imaginary mikes and doing the moon walk. Yet another group was led to believe they were top racing drivers. I can still picture them sitting on chairs and thinking they were driving. The vocal sounds of high revving engines, the changing of imaginary gears were very real to them. As a young boy, I went to watch the local Indian religious festival, in which some of them walk across hot beds of glowing coals, pierce large needles through their lips, cheeks, noses and other body parts. They seem to feel no pain and more surpising, is the fact that these wounds do not bleed. I saw 2 of these participants, in town, a couple of days later and they seemed none the worse for wear. I know a lady who was a chain smoker. She sought help from a Hypnotist and not only gave up smoking immediately, but developed an aversion for other smokers. She hated the smell, forbade smoking in her house and developed a form of nausea, when others smoked near her.

Now, without getting in to the religious, medical, or physcological arguments of these occurances, what do they all have in common? Some were hypnotised and unaware of their antics and some were in a self induced trance to prove their religious beliefs, but all were able to perform these acts through the power of the mind. By believing what they were told, they acted exactly what they believed. They really thought they were at a Beatles concert, or racing drivers, or Michael Jackson himself, or they believed they would not feel pain, or that smoking was terrible. They were not self conscious, or embarrassed.