“What you’ll notice when you first bite into this piece of cheese Lora is the rich maturity of the cheddar, and then comes the pineapple, can you taste that?”
Lora chewed for a moment in silence, and then . . .
“Oh my God that’s so wonderful and I’m getting that aftertaste of pineapple, amazing! I’ll take it”
“Now the wine. First we swirl, like this, so the wine covers the surface area of the glass, that’s it… push your nose well into the glass and inhale. What you’ll get, are those heady tones of berries, got that?
A moment passed as Lora consider what she was smelling . . .
“Oh yes, definitely” she said.
“Okay, now we take a sip and what you’ll notice, at first, is the overtones of chocolate closely followed by old, burnt tyre.”
Lora sipped . . .
“Um… old burnt tyre you say?”
“Sure,” said the wine expert.
“Well you know what, I’m definitely getting that, I’ll take two bottles!”
SOLD!
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Interestingly enough I did once experience someone eating a piece of cheese and being told it had pineapple in it, when the reality was, she was sampling a plain piece of sweaty cheddar from the local supermarket. She reported how lovely it was and how the pineapple added to the experience. She was in fact made to look a bit of a twit.
It was of course the power of suggestion that caused her to taste the pineapple. There was no pineapple. Just like there are no ghosts. It gets really interesting, when we consider how the lady in question, did actually taste pineapple. She wasn’t making that up, it was the guy suggesting it had pineapple in it, who was creating the fiction.
Stage Hypnotism
Although not as popular as they were some years ago, the stage hypnotist knows all about the power of suggestion. How suggestion works is a very simple process provided several elements have combined to create the correct environment.
Before I go on, it’s important to bear in mind, that the cheese tasting lady mentioned earlier hadn’t been hypnotised. People hypnotised on stage have been known to go to much further extremes. Eating an onion in the belief it’s an apple is an example.
For suggestion to be at its most powerful, it helps, if the subject is hypnotised. But as mentioned, this isn’t always necessary.
Suggestion taken as fact happens all the time. When it comes to us humans, it could be considered a bit of weakness. One of our weaknesses is that we don’t always question the validity of what we’re being told. We can be drawn in by suggestion, simply because it either matches our expectations, or suits our particular agenda.
So, back to the necessary elements, for suggestion to be at its most powerful. Suggestion is most powerful when our conscious critical faculty is subdued or completely bypassed. A subdued critical faculty can be rendered this way due to several factors.
- There could be peer pressure (cheese tasting lady was in a crowd).
- She may have felt the need to please the person making the suggestion.
- She might have been enjoying the limelight (ego).
- There might have been an element of fear (she didn’t want to appear foolish in front of everyone through not tasting pineapple).
Ironically enough she did of course become the object of ridicule. All of this can happen to such an extent, that even if our cheese tasting lady hadn’t experienced the taste of pineapple, she would have lied!
Placebo
Much of what we’ve talked about relates back to our expectations, or put a better way, our beliefs. Believe you’re eating pineapples and you will be. Believe life gives you lemons and it will (the solution to that particular issue, as you might already know, is to drink lemonade!).
It has been well documented how the mind can be hoodwinked into believing something that isn’t true. We might be fed a sugar pill and told how it’s the most powerful analgesic in the world. Our pain disappears. We need to believe certain things. It’s recently been reported, that even when people are told it’s a sugar pill, the belief in the placebo effect, still creates a positive result! And how interesting is that?
Hypnosis
So let’s say the conscious critical faculty won’t accept a suggestion that is for our better good? An extreme example, if slightly odd, could be the suggestion: women find men with warts on the end of their noses very attractive. This is quite plainly nonsense to most. If we employ hypnosis though, it can prove far easier to bypass our critical faculty (judgemental mind), and plant the suggestion, that there’s nothing wrong with warts.
There are of course many things we choose to filter out of our lives that would in fact enhance our experience of it. If we were to accept the suggestion – life is for the taking and we must recognise and embrace all the good things we’re offered – how much brighter would things become? Many of the beliefs we have about life hold us back terribly.
It doesn’t take a great deal to question these things, and once we do, suggestions for a brighter future, are far easier accepted now. You can forget all about the cheese and wine by the way.
Do you know a Hypnotherapist who can help you question and change your limiting beliefs for good? I do.
Practising Mindfulness 