Trance in Motion

They used their shoes to dial 911, cheered crazily for their race horses to win a million bucks and slept peacefully, all at the command of a voice.

Insane? No. They were in a trance. They were hypnotized.

In December, North Lake students gathered in A-206 to see master hypnotherapist Jim Tatum, who comes from a family with a century of experience with hypnosis.

Tatum explained that if you keep telling yourself that you can't be hypnotized, then you won't be. “Hypnosis is not sleep,” he said. “It's actually a focus on words.”

Tatum said that if people being hypnotized are concentrating on how they won't be hypnotized and not on the words that are being said, then they can prevent themselves from falling into a trance.

You don't have to be hypnotized by someone to be in a state of trance, he said. “You go through hypnosis every day,” Tatum said. When on “auto pilot” while driving or reading, people can experience a light state of trance and not even realize it, he said.

“All hypnosis is self-hypnosis,” he said. “If you allow it to happen, it can happen.”

Tatum put 13 participants on trial in the packed room.

To soothing background music, Tatum commanded volunteers from the audience, who came to the front of the auditorium, to relax and close their eyes.

“Breathe in, breathe out,” he kept repeating.

Tatum then asked the participants to go to sleep.

“Sleep. Drop,” he said. Most of them slept. One of the participants, Chris Dorrenbacher, dozed off on another participant's shoulder.

In a few seconds, on a count of three, when Tatum asked them to open their eyes, they woke up without knowing they had been asleep.

It wasn't only the participants sitting at the front who were following Tatum's instructions. Some of the audience members also were driven by his instructions.

Tatum requested those students to come forward. He sent the participants who hadn't felt his punch back to the audience.

Tatum made the remaining participants do a series of activities, validating that they were hypnotized.

He touched their foreheads and asked them to laugh at a hilarious joke they remembered, and they laughed loud; he made them sense something smelled bad, and they sniffed each other; let them feel their chairs were pinching them, and they felt the pain.

In one of the events, Tatum made Mary Greer, one of the participants, feel she won a million dollars at a horse race. She looked confused, but at the same time was holding onto the fake money that Tatum had handed her.

“I was skeptical, but I believe I was hypnotized,” said Greer.

Tatum also made the participants perform several other acts. One of them performed a ballet, another rode a stick horse as a rodeo cowboy with a hat, and a duo performed an act by the Blues Brother with the signature black glasses.

One of the Blues Brothers, Connie Herrara, said that she felt as if it was real. “I felt like I had to perform,” she said.

The participants had their own words about being hypnotized.

“I felt like going to a deep sleep and waking up,” said Dorrenbacher.

With her finals approaching, Greer said she was stressed and full of anxiety. She said that the event helped comfort her. “It relaxed me,” she said. “I'll try it again.”

Greer said that the hypnosis experience helped her in her exams: “I have an A in my English class.”

Greer also had the notion that Tatum's blessings and spirituality during the event was real, and “I believed it worked,” she said.

Greer shared her experience with her family and friends too. She said that some were willing to try and others thought she was crazy.

“I [also] had a problem believing it, and it worked,” she said.

Tatum's visit was made possible by psychology instructor Enrique Otero, who brought the hypnotherapist to North Lake.

The large crowd in attendance were mostly psychology students who were eager to know more about the mind.