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McKenna and celebs Not enough discussion of his working with celebs, sports stars eg. boxers

[edit] McKenna's theories

Perhaps we could have some postings of McKenna’s theories. I found his 1993 book ‘the Hypnotic World of Paul McKenna’ particularly enlightening when it came to understanding hypnosis. This section explains it well:

Hypnosis is the name given to the induction and experience of trance. If you ask most people if they have ever been in a trance they will answer NO! but they will be wrong. Every single one of us enters naturally occurring trance states all day long - day dreaming, being engrossed in a book or even driving a car.

The key to identifying trance states is in the fixation of attention either internally or externally. Quite simply trance is all about the focus of a person's attention. When a subject is hypnotised this focus is highly concentrated by suggestion.

One of my favourite descriptions of trance comes from Milton Erickson : "All trance is a loss of the multiplicity of the foci of attention."

Television promotes a trance state; when watching you forget about the room around you, the carpet, curtains, the furniture - your focus is the television. Something scary happens on the screen and you sit forward, tense up and get a burst of adrenaline. Quite simply you plug your experience into that little box and while you are engrossed it becomes your reality.

However not all trance is detached and simple. Even a very sophisticated process can be performed in a trance. Have you ever driven several miles without remembering that part of the journey? You drove competently but suddenly somebody speaks or something catches your attention and you don't remember what you were thinking about before - you were in a trance.

Trance is often described as an altered state of consciousness, but altered from what? The way I see it, we are all moving from one kind of consciousness to another all day long. Your state of mind when operating a computer is simply different to being in an elevator, or the bath, or in an intense conversation.

So what's the difference between these natural trances that people go in and out of all day long, and a hypnotic trance? The difference is that hypnosis is a deliberately induced trance. Other deliberately created and utilised trances are used in traditional forms like yoga and meditation, and also newer disciplines like creative visualisation and stress management.

The context for hypnosis is most typically a therapy session or a stage show where the hypnotist alters the subject's awareness through language and psychological techniques. The hypnotist is the facilitator, the guide, the subject elects for his journey through the realms of his consciousness.

The name given to the most extreme state hypnosis is Somnambulism. A somnambulist subject has access to all the hypnotic phenomena, they are in a psychologically limitless environment. A subject can regress to early childhood transforming his manner and speech to that of a child and can achieve all the traditional ‘Deep Trance’ phenomena that I will refer to in more detail later.

In hypnotic trance the conventional limitations of our beliefs which run our lives do not exist. There is complete flexibility in the recovery of memories from your personal history. You are able to recall moments of trauma and gain new insights about them. You can tap into moments of personal excellence and duplicate them in the future. Athletes use this to find peak performance states, re-triggering them at appropriate times. You can even go into the future and imagine skills and resources you would like and bring them back with you!

[edit] What we really need to know

It’s all very well talking about his explanation of trance, but some of the later section such as the experience of trance which explore the subject better are more important: When you go into trance you will experience a change in awareness. Just as everybody is different in the way they experience life, so each person's way of experiencing trance is unique and every trance may also be different. You could even say that there is no such thing as a trance state, only infinite altered states of consciousness.

In many cases a naive subject does not actually believe that they were hypnotised when they come out of a trance. This is often due to preconceptions that people have about what trance will be like and quite often the experience does not match the expectations. Whilst hypnotised you do not necessarily stop being aware or conscious of what is going on around you - it is actually a heightened state of awareness.

There are also certain sensory signals a hypnotist can use to tell him that a subject's awareness is altering. Once again everyone is unique and individual but here are the most common external signals:

MUSCULAR CHANGES

A trance state can be one of relaxation, and often your muscles become limp and loose or they may even twitch. It becomes more obvious, for example, if a subject is someone who normally has a fixed grin or scowl. The face becomes relaxed and in some cases the lower lip becomes bigger. Amazingly, there are over 180 muscles in the face that can be moved in isolation. A subject may begin to swallow more or less. The muscles may become tight and rigid as an individual goes into a trance during a state of excitement, for example at a religious rally.

EYES

Many subjects close their eyes when going into trance. Some subjects display REM's (Rapid Eye Movements) which can be see behind the eyelid; this indicates a shift in brain waves. When you are visualising internally with your eyes closed the hypnotist will be able to see the eye-ball movements behind the eyelids.

When subjects go into trance with their eyes open the eyes often look glazed. There may be pupil dilation and here the rule is simple; the more open an individual is, the more dilated their pupils are. The eyes may roll upwards, beneath the eye lids. There may well be some de-focusing of the eyes when subjects are engaged in internal dialogue. The rate of blinking may also change.

SKIN COLOUR

There are often slight skin colour changes around the face due to re-distribution of blood. As muscular tension is relaxed blood can flow in the capillaries closer to the surface of the skin.

BREATHING

There will almost always be a change in your breathing pattern as you go into a trance. Some people breathe faster but the majority slow down their breathing as they relax. The depth can change from shallow to deep and often when subjects are visualising they tend to breathe from their chest.

PERISTALSIS

Tension and stress arrest the digestion. As we relax the digestive system gets going again and I often hear peristalsis or ‘tummy rumbles’ as my subjects go into trance.

LITERALISM

Hypnotic subjects tend to think and speak more literally. For example, when I was once demonstrating this, I put my hand six inches from a hypnotised subject's face and asked what was in front of him. He replied nothing but when I asked him what was in front of that he replied - your hand. That's a literal answer!

[edit] The real details

Why is there no mention of Paul McKenna’s love of curry. I know from several interviews that he loves chicken Tikki Masala. I believe this is how he likes it:

Ingredients : 2 tbsp coriander seeds 2 tbsp paprika 2 tbsp jeera 1 tsp mango powder 1 tsp chilli powder juice of a lime 10 good thick yoghurt salt to taste 2 lb chicken, diced 5 to 6 cloves garlic, chopped 1 large onion, finely chopped chicken stock or water oil

Method : Grind the spices and mix with marinade ingredients. Marinade chicken in the fridge for 24 hours. Heat oil in a frying pan or wok until becomes very hot. Stir fry chicken vigorously for about 5 minutes. Take out chicken and keep warm. Fry the onion and garlic until just browning and return chicken with any remaining marinade, plus stock, plus more spices if you think the sauce needs it an extra tsp of cumin and coriander may 'lift' it a little. Simmer until chicken is cooked and Sauce is nice and thick. Ready to serve.

Never mind about any alleged love of curry, why is there no mention of his personal life at all? Where he lives, family, where he went to school etc? I learned from one of his books that he spent several years living in New York - shouldn't hese detials be in a biography? Can anyone fill in the missing details? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.77.117.22 (talk) 15:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

what? that is a weird post, but the recipe sounds great, I might try it. thanks!--67.174.242.250 (talk) 18:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Style note=

AFAIK, neither NLP practitioners nor hypnotists like to refer to their services as "therapy," in that they will often try to help people improve, rather than fix a problem. Yakuman 00:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit wars

This article is constantly in edit wars with anonymous user(s). I ask that this page be semi-protected, so that editing by unregistered or newly registered users is disabled. Can anyone help with this? Yakuman 04:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To Admins

The 209.218.163.2 IP address may to belong to a hotel -- the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles -- so a permanent block may not be advisable. Yakuman 05:57, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Paul McKenna PhD

Is it Wikipedia style to introduce someone with their degree in the first line? There's a lot about McKenna's PhD in the text, but is it correct to style him Paul McKenna PhD in the first line? I don't see anyone else with a PhD credited in this way - there's no "Richard Dawkins PhD", for example. What's the consensus here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martin S Taylor (talk • contribs) 22:23, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've looked at other biographical articles and it is not customary to use the PhD in the first line. The article does state he has the degree in a later paragraph, which works for me. Absentis 19:05, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree. It's relevant to know about Ph.D.'s from the outset. John Grinder has his up there at the top in the first line. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rockerseasalt (talk • contribs) 15:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

From what I've seen, consensus is that a person's degrees are not mentioned in the first line. Unless someone can point me to some kind of precedent, a single example doesn't cut it. Absentis 19:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Why are people so tied up over this issue? Is there a certain amount of jealousy going on? Paul McKenna has attained a PhD, why do people feel it necessary to take this title away from him here in Wikipedia? Also, in regards to Martin S Taylor. Is this the Same Martin Taylor who lectures on hypnosis and is therefore a commercial competitor to McKenna?

No one is saying it's necessary to take his title away - the article clearly mentions it. We're just trying to apply a consistent style across Wikipedia. Most scientists don't have 'Ph.D' listed after their names, so why should those outside mainstream science such as McKenna and Grinder?

Whether it's the hypnotist Martin S Taylor who edits Wikipedia articles is irrelevant; this is purely a question of Wikipedia house style. As it happens, it is the same Martin S Taylor, though since I work at schools and universities where they could never afford McKenna and since I don't do any NLP, McKenna and I are hardly competitors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martin S Taylor (talk • contribs) 11:58, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, John Grinder is described as 'Ph.D' and Phil McGraw as 'Dr Phil'. I see no reason why McKenna should not be described in this way. Many only know McKenna's television shows and books, people do not realise McKenna's academic credentials. If Wikipedia is to be as accurate as possible it is important to have all the information about somebody and not let petty rivalaries comtaminate accuracy.

[edit] LaSalle

What about the section on self hypnosis: We all have the ability to hypnotise ourselves. It is a wonderful skill for relaxation, solving problems and overall personal enhancement. Rather than being hypnotised by someone else in self hypnosis your own conscious mind is the hypnotist.

Learning self hypnosis is a bit like learning to ride a bicycle. At first you think you don’t know how to do it but you just keep trying. You fall off, pick yourself up and try again. Then all of a sudden, sooner than you think, you discover you’ve ridden a whole long way and you don’t know how you did it. Trance is like that: you discover you can go into trance after you’ve just tried and found it happens even though you don’t know quite how. Like any skill it requires practice, then when you've mastered it you have a resource which is yours forever.

In every day life we drift into natural trances by focusing our attention - day dreaming, looking at clouds or watching the fire. This is the phenomena called the ultradian rest phase which is a natural cycle of rest and alertness that occurs about every 90 minutes, you notice it when you find yourself daydreaming with a sweet soft feeling in your muscles.

It's very easy and perfectly safe to use hypnosis. Some people let their acquired fears about hypnosis stop them from fully experiencing the state while others just try too hard. There is a lovely story about Erickson, who was out walking one day when he found a horse roaming free. He jumped on it and it went off, past the first farm, a second, a third and finally it turned in at a fourth farm. The farmer came up to him and thanked him for returning the house, but was puzzled at how he knew which farm to take it to. He said, I didn't but the horse knew, I just went with it and let it take me where it was going.

Trance is like that, you don't have to try to get it right, just notice where it takes you. You get out of the way and just let it happen. It is similar to the experience of trying to get to sleep, in that the harder you try the more awake you stay. That's called the law of reverse effort and by counting sheep or reading, conscious attention is diverted away from sleep and so the loop of reverse effort is broken. The same can happen with self-hypnosis, the secret is just to let it happen. Avoid over analysing, just notice the experience. In self-hypnosis you become the hypnotist and the subject. You find something to focus on, a physical object like a spot on the ceiling or counting numbers backwards, which will distract your conscious mind, the left brain or logical, critical part. This is essentially what the hypnotist does, whilst at the same time, like a good subject you become involved in the process, relaxing and noticing any thoughts and bodily sensations.

[edit] LaSalle

I added back the bit about McKenna's libel suit. It is relevant to the section it was in, since it's about libel litigation. And it's relevant to the article as a whole, because it shows that he was stupid enough to pay for a degree from LaSalle University (Louisiana), whose operator, according to Assistant US Attorney General William Moschella, pleaded guilty to conspiracy for falsely claiming it was accredited. He later realized that he had been duped, applied for compensation, and got another degree somewhere else.

Please don't remove it without a discussion. Novalis 21:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category: Social psychology?

Have I missed something out? Why is the article categorized in Category:Social psychology? --Ibn Battuta 13:08, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Needs a complete revamp

Gosh, what a mess! You can see the vandalism problems, but: the images were messing up the article (does it need the NLP tag? He's not mentioned, so I am not sure it does); the trivia section is out of control; and the references all mucked up! I am not going to start thinking about editing this, as personally I'd have POV issues with the subject - there's much to commend, but too much else as well, and this one needs a good balance edit between fact, referenced hype and removal of the fiction. Good Luck to whoever attempts it, but he does deserve better than this. Rgds, - Trident13 (talk) 01:29, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Its a good start but I still think this article reads like a press release. Perhaps the middle section could be toned down and various views ascribed to sources. ----Action potential ^{t c} 02:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

What about the page is written in an overly promotional tone so it can be looked at?

(moved comment to end of page where this topic coincidentally was already under discussion) -- The Red Pen of Doom 10:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Much of the pimping of products and shows has been toned down. You may wish to contact User talk:Demophon who recently moved the tag to the top of the article or User talk:Action potential based on the comment above (or User talk:Orangemike is also someone who is interested in this type of cleanup of articles.) I personally would not have serious objections if it came off at this time.-- The Red Pen of Doom 10:31, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

But also, if you are Mr. MckKenna or working on his behalf, please remember wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines-- The Red Pen of Doom 10:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)