Our EdTech keynote speaker for today was hypnotist “Doc” Holiday. I’m still trying to figure out what this has to do with educational technology, but I decided I’d go just for the fun of it.
My crew was sitting down toward the front, and many of them were talking about volunteering to go up on stage and be hypnotized. Holiday began his schpeil by talking about how relaxing hypnosis was. He said that if we were under stress, it would be one of the best things we had ever experienced. Given the day I had with Internet problems, that was a very compelling argument. At the urging of my colleagues, Roxann Owens and I joined fourteen other volunteers on stage to be hypnotized.
Holiday began the process of hypnosis, and asked us to relax by picturing ourselves on a beach. He went through several other imagery scenarios. At one point he said that when he made a particular noise, we would fal asleep. He walked from one to another making the sound. When the woman next to my had the sound made in her ear, she collapsed onto my shoulder. From that point on, I was hopelessly distracted, There was no way I could relax to the point of hypnosis.
I spent the rest of the time playing along, faking a lip-sync of Julio Iglesias on stage, etc., etc. I think that if I had been truly hypnotized I would have been a bit less inhibited when he asked us to dance like Chippendale dancers. Perhaps that’s a good thing.
It was fun, but I still have my doubts about hypnotism. Several who were on stage said that they were basically playing along too, which makes me wonder how many were really hypnotized. But perhaps there was something to it, along the lines of “Office Space.” At the CSI party that evening I got on stage and sang a karaoke version of “Jenny, Jenny (867-5209)” at the Hard Rock Cafe.
And despite my inhibitions being intact, my tech staff still claim to have incriminating photos.
I read this with a lot of interest to see if you would become hypnotized or not. Glad to see you had so much fun with it, but the result was not surprising.