Chapter 1

I never realised that hypnosis could have such a beautiful effect on some people.

Derren Brown taught me this in one episode of his TV show

Derren Brown is an english TV mind specialist of sorts. It is quite hard to pin down exactly what kind of performer he is, but he does use to hypnosis and suggestion techniques in his shows.

In this particular show he was working with a young lady, who we were told had never played the piano before. His challenge was to get her to play a concert performance to an audience of about 150 people within fortnight.

Over the next 2 weeks he worked with her, giving her regular hypnotherapy sessions in order to for her to become a concert pianist. As the days went on the girl was becoming increasingly nervous about playing and wanted to pull out of the concert, but Derren Brown convinced her to stay on.

After much persuasion she did eventually perform and she was amazing. I couldn’t believe that someone could be hypnotised to play like a concert pianist in just 2 weeks, but she did. I started to think I’d quite like to be hypnotised to become a martial arts black belt! Sadly you can’t make a novice pianist play like Rachmaninov in 2 weeks through just the power of suggestion. What had actually taken place was far more wonderful than that.

Before she began the sessions the lady was already a concert standard pianist, but had completely lost the will to play and love for her art. She was hypnotised her to think that she really couldn’t play. So when she did play the concert it was such a glorious experience that she fell in love with her art again. She was interviewed a few weeks later and was still absolutely passionate about the piano.

I love this episode it is for me a great TV moment, it showed how beautifully creative some people can be with hypnosis.