also: suggestion:
Waking suggestion aka hypnosis

Actually, yaroslavvb, hypnosis does indeed work. Yes, the participant has to be willing, but the brain patterns displayed by those under hypnosis are not witnessed during any other state of mind, be it wakefulness, meditation, or any of the sleep stages. It is a state of mind that one must be willing to reach, but it is indeed a true state of mind. I didn't believe in hypnosis either until I actually took some classes and did some research on the subject.

As far as paranormal activity, supernatural events, and visits from aliens (the extra-terrestrial kind), well, they're bunk.

southblvd -- you are making it sound like there is a hypnotist show that *isn't* an act, lol

Hypnosis belongs in the same category as paranormal activity and aliens, in that there's little evidence to support the practitioners' claims, yet many people believe in it nonetheless. Conventional explanation is that hypnosis "works" because some people are willing to play along. This is why using acting students is good -- they are good at pretending.

If you remember other clips of Darren Brown that made it to Video Sift, you'll see that he tends to "explain" his tricks through his knowledge of psychology. But that's standard magician practice -- to mislead the people into thinking their tricks are done through some hard to grasp/reproduce technique. For instance David Copperfield does it -- a friend of mine was called into David Copperfield number where she disappeared from the stage, and David Copperfield asked her to tell friends he did this trick with mirrors (or each friend will tell 2 friends, and years of work will be wasted, blabla)

I'm not the only one that thinks that Derren Brown's tricks have nothing to do with psychology
http://www.simonsingh.net/Derren_Brown_Article.html

This realy is a piss pore documentry that simply is designd not to shine light on things but to make people dismiss opisotoin to the oficeal story. you would have hoped that the bbc could have dismissed all the stupid consipicy theries and actualy done some research into this. there are a cuple of key issues that need looking at

boulding 7 colaps although it is mentoind in this documentry the structure of the reporting sides with the non consiprcy people and the last coment ends with sajestoin saying the oficeal report is sead to conclude that the boulding WAS NOT DEMOLISHED the emphasis on the last words is actualaly a method used in hypnosis to convay relavence to aireas of a sentence that in reality have equal relivence to the rest of the sentence.

it didnot look at fall velocities and how the bouldings fell at free fall
it didnot investigate the varouse sound recordings that record multiple explisoins before and during the colaps

additoinaly to all this alix jones is a compleat cock and lose change is just a bad documentry as this bbc one. why dident the bbc look at some of the decent documentries out there ore evan better look at the evidence for themselfs. the priority should be findinf the truth not tring to prove a predetermd piont that you have come to.

Description:

About the Author Alexander Duvall Duvall is a self-taught stage hypnotist as are many of the world's best stage hypnotists. He was first bitten by the hypnosis bug years ago when he began collecting every old and new book, audiotape and videotape on the subject. These now comprise his vast, private collection.