What's on the Horizon for Real Hypnosis Reviews

Full Confession Here: I love gadgets.

I'm not really a tech dude. Hey, I'm a liberal arts major. But I went through a period in my childhood when I took apart all my battery-operated toys, extracted the wires, motors, and lights, and built new toys out of them. Gadgets are cool.

Up to this point, it's been my pleasure to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly details regarding hypnosis DVDs, CDs, books, and webinars, and I'm honored that many of my loyal readers keep coming back for my honest, unbiased opinions.  So don't worry, I plan to keep right on telling you about these same types of products. There's a big stack of them in the pipeline.

At the same time, I've decided to indulge my love of gadgets and expand this blog with a series that addresses one of the perennial questions:

What kind of equipment would be helpful in my hypnosis office?

Over and over, this question comes up on Hypnothoughts and other forums. For that reason—and my love of gadgets—I've decided to initiate the Real Hypnosis Reviews Tech Series.

Through the next year, we'll be looking at a wide range of products with a variety of applications—some overlapping, some completely disparate. As long as someone thinks it has a place in a hypnosis office, we'll be taking a look at it.

One of the most basic applications of technology in the hypnosis office is the ability to record a session for a client to take home. After all, repetition can be the key to a client's success. So we'll be examining several different solutions, ranging from smart phone apps to full-fledged sound systems.

Speaking of sound systems, probably the next most popular role of tech in the hypnotorium—do you like that word? I stole it!—is to mix the hypnotist's voice with music and nature sounds, and pipe it all into some headphones for the client to hear. Of course, if you're going to that much trouble, you'll probably want the recording your client takes home to be as pretty as what you piped into the headphones, so there's some overlap with the first application here.

Now, once you've put headphones on a client, you can start getting really fancy: binaural beats, bilateral stimulation, and other nifty forms of auditory brainwave entrainment are at your fingertips.

(If those terms sound foreign, don't fret. I'll be providing a brief primer on brainwave entrainment as part of the series. See how nice I am?)

Having opened the Pandora's box of brainwave entrainment, you might then wonder how much further you can go with that. The answer is literally right in front of your eyes: photic stimulation, aka flashy, blinky light goggles. Hated by some hypnotists and adored by others, light & sound machines, how (or whether) they fit in a hypnosis office, and all the ins and outs of using them will be part of this Tech Series.

But it's not all hardware. There are a lot of software solutions for hypnotists, whether your goal is make simple audio recordings or fancy brainwave entrainment products. In the Tech Series, you'll get the details on where to spend your money and when to take a pass.

Now as hypnotists, we're in the business of helping our clients change, so it's sometimes helpful to show them concrete evidence of physiological change happening. For that reason, some hypnotists use simple bio- and neuro-feedback devices as powerful convincers, and we'll be looking at a few of those as well.

And that's just a few of the categories the Tech Series will examine. If you have any thoughts or want to nominate any products for review, drop me a line.

There are a few things I won't be reviewing in this series: products that you can't ship to the United States, and products by companies that ignored my request for permission to review. So if your product gets left out of  the spotlight, that's why.

While price generally hasn't been a major factor in my book and DVD reviews, when it comes to technology, we're in a completely different financial category. For that reason, these reviews are going to look at all products from two viewpoints: that of the financially successful hypnotist, with a practice that has reached "cruising altitude"; and that of the hypnotist who is just starting out and most likely "bootstrapping" their business and squeezing every penny. I even plan to include some special reports and tips for the bootstrapper.

A final word:

Every time a hypnotist talks about or shows off the cool gadgets in their office, someone comes along and says, "You don't need all that to do hypnosis!"

And that's true.

You don't need headphones, a microphone, background music, a computer, software, binaural beats, bilateral stimulation, light goggles, and so on to do effective hypnosis.

Then again, you don't need a comfy chair or an office to do hypnosis either. The first time I helped someone release a major phobia, we were sitting in camp chairs backstage at a renaissance festival with people walking around and all manner of chaos and distractions. Come to think of it, the chairs were optional; though it would have become uncomfortable, we could have done the whole session standing up.

Still, given the choice, I'd much rather sit a client down in my nice comfy office, dim the lights, turn on the massage function of the zero-gravity recliner, and talk to them through headphones while layering my equalized, enhanced voice over soothing music, nature sounds, and entrainment tones.

I don't need all that stuff, but it sure is nice to have it.

Besides, I love gadgets.

See you in the next review.