NLPhilia Blog

Four placebo pills a day work better than two. Blue placebo pills are superior at improving sleep; you’ll want green placebo pills for reducing anxiety. But placebo capsules beat placebo pills—and placebo injections were even better. Oh, and expensive, brand-name placebos beat cheap generic ones. Huh? Why would the method of administration make such a difference when the (inactive) substance delivered was always the same? And the craziest result of all? Placebos even worked when they were “open label” placebos—yes, you could tell people that the fake medication was fake and they’d still feel better.

This Is How To Have A Long Awesome Life

An early depiction of hypnosis on TV. Original air date September 22, 1959. Based on an allegedly-true story, as all of the episodes of this show were.

Are you always on the lookout for relaxing sounds to play in the background of your hypnosis sessions?

A recent Lifehacker.com post points (or, rather-re-points, as it had covered them before) to a very simple and very cool Web app that generates a wide variety of relaxing sounds and lets you mix them to your personal taste. Choose from drums, flutes, or “vibes”, add up to four choices of sound (birdsong, ocean waves, crickets, etc.), set the volume for each, and let it play.

Go check out Sound Sleeping. (Requires Flash.)

By the way, you can also download MP3 tracks of pre-mixed relaxation for a nominal price.

Jay Budzynski recently started a blog:

The purpose of this blog is to introduce some of the component elements, from the works of Milton Erickson, and to expand and to create an platform, that demonstrates how to use conversational hypnosis, in any day-to-day usage, be that in the form of communicating with friends and family or peers, and in a cross-section of contexts, you will be provided with step-by-step instructions and directions in how to practice, and use the skills, in away that becomes an automatic integral part of your communication skill sets.

Here’s the feed URL and here’s the Web URL.

If you’ve yet to sign up for Doug O’Brien’s advanced workshop on altered states, “How Deep the Rabbit Hole: Further Adventures in Neo-Ericksonian Hypnosis,” your time is running out! It’s this coming weekend!

Explore the inner/outer reaches of Ericksonian-based Hypnosis and therapeutic interventions. Discover not only what it has to offer your clients, find out what it has to offer you.

Hurry and sign up at How Deep the Rabbit Hole.

PS: Doug tells me he’s arranged for a Shaman, initiated in Brazil, to personally conduct Shamanic Journeys. It’ll be amazing.

Elvis Keith Lester just released a hypnotic screencast. Great mellow music, beautiful photos of Yellowstone National Park, and a compelling hypno-voiceover.

Go experience some Natural Tranquility.

You can get the music from TranceLand.

I received this back in April, but just found it, neglected, among some other e-mail.

Doug O’Brien and Nick Kemp composed and recorded original music for their 2006 collaboration, “How Deep the Rabbit Hole.” While they were at it, they decided to create some music that anyone could use in their trance inductions. The “license” is as follows:

The music is 15 minutes in length. You are free to use it however you choose. We only ask, if you use it for a distributed recording, please give us a music credit. Thanks.

It sounds really cool. Go get it. If you like, let ’em know; maybe they’ll give you some more.

No matter what your response to Barack Obama, you’ve got to admire his amazing skill with language. His ability to stay both engaging and content-free is astounding.

Here’s a transcript of his convention address. I was just working through it. It’s got everything a hypnotist could want in a trance induction. I wish now that I’d watched it so I could experience his paraverbal and nonverbal stuff too.

(Edited to add: Bert Decker over at Create Your Communication has posted his critique of Obama’s presentation, and it’s worth a look.)

I got some great news from Doug O’Brien: he’s started a blog, and will be making regular posts on the subject of Ericksonian language patterns. Doug is an amazing trainer, and he’s sharing his expertise with the world for free!

Go to the Web site or subscribe to the feed!

We all got good news(letter) from Barb Stepp today: her company, Excellence Quest, has acquired the right to produce and distribute the famous Zebu Cards!

Get your Zebu Cards from Excellence Quest!