1
IT’S TIME
TO AWAKEN
Y
ou are getting sleepier... sleepier.... As I count backward
from 10 to 1, you will feel your eyelids getting heavier... and
heavier....”
That’s the image you probably get when you think of hypnosis.
And you’re right. Hypnosis is about getting you so relaxed that
your mind, especially your subconscious, is more receptive to com-
mands. Hypnosis is controversial but effective. It’s been around
since 4 B.C., and for good reason. It works. To understand Hypnotic
Writing better, let’s begin with a little history.IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE TRANCE
According to William Edmonston in The Induction of Hypnosis,
trance states and the seeds for hypnosis began with the ancient
Hindus. Later, ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. used “sleep
temples” to help cure people. Most of the other ancients, including
the Romans, used words to create spells. They also usually placed
their hands on or over people to move the “magnetic energy”
within them.
In 1765 Franz Anton Mesmer, generally (and inaccurately) con-
sidered the father of “mesmerism,” opened salons where patients
applied magnets to afflicted parts of their bodies. Later Mesmer