World-renowned hypnotist Michael C. Anthony brought what VH1 calls “The Best Stage Hypnotist on the Planet” to Lee Hall Auditorium Wednesday night.
Anthony uses Ericksonian Hypnosis throughout his stage show. However, he chose to open the show with a simple, funny card trick to set a light tone.
After explaining the benefits of therapeutic hypnosis and expelling several negative myths about it, more than 30 volunteers came up stage.
Anthony performed a series of tests to narrow the field of volunteers down to 15, depending on how strongly the best volunteers reacted to hypnotism. One of the tests included the volunteers imagining that they were in extremely hot weather and that they must use their shoes as oxygen masks.
After narrowing down the number of volunteers, he began to single out several volunteers to do specific tasks. Anthony instructed one volunteer to act as a seat belt and dive across as many laps as possible when Anthony said “safety.”
He also convinced the volunteers that he was invisible, and therefore stunned them by waving a water bottle in the air, making the volunteers believe that the water bottle was moving on its own.
Anthony travels worldwide each year to perform. “I’ve been a full-time hypnotist for 12 years, and I do about 110 shows a year,” Anthony said.
“I was inspired to become a hypnotist because my uncle was also a magician and a hypnotist. I trained to be a hypnotist in Canada, where I studied neurolinguistic programming.”
Anthony said he’s had a couple of interesting cases in hypnotism over the past 12 years.
“About a couple of weeks ago, I did a trick where I made the volunteers believe that they were drinking vinegar, and a volunteer actually threw up on stage. We never expected that to happen,” he said.
The volunteers also seemed to be impressed and shocked by the performance. As soon as Anthony instructed them to realize what they had done, the volunteers broke into smiles and laughter.
Senior psychology major Katie Heidenreich said she was glad she volunteered to be hypnotized.
“It was so much fun, and I cannot believe that I got on the stage and danced in front of everyone,” she said.
According to Anthony’s Web site, he has hypnotized more than 20,000 people and makes CDs to help people lose weight, cure phobias, and do well on exams with the use of hypnotic therapy.