My wonder garden (or Sleeping fast part 2)

Dear reader,

I already wrote about what may help to go to sleep faster once (Sleeping fast... if you want it and remember...). Today I want to share with you a method, which has helped me some years ago. I don't use it much these days, because I can go to sleep fast and easy and the methods I described in my earlier post help me sufficiently enough. Nevertheless the one I like to tell you about today is also very effective. When I started using it, I didn't know it is actually a hypnosis method. Only later on when I read about hypnosis, did I recognise this method again. What I am going to describe now, is purely my own imagination. Of course you're totally free to change elements of it as you please and envision them.

I'd have my eyes closed and would imagine a staircase out of bricks in a building of bricks. Something like a hallway in a castle. The staircase were clearly visible, although the hallway wasn't lit as such. I never counted the steps and didn't walk them very consciously. Sometimes I would sit on the top step for a while and wait a moment, before standing up and starting to go down. Sometimes, after a few steps down, I'd just “be” at the bottom. At the end of the stairs there'd be a closed round wooden door with a door knob.

Behind the door is a garden with a path with a bend. The garden is blooming with lots of colourful flowers. The reader might enjoy bending down and take a sniff at some of the flowers. Are there butterflies in your garden, too? Let's go further down the path. First a bit more straight on. Then there's the bend. A bit further straight ahead. The path leads to a sitting area with a couple of chairs and a bench.

It's always a pleasure and surprise for me to see who's sitting there at the table waiting for me. Sometimes the two chairs that I have there are taken and also the bench has one or two persons sitting there. Sometimes there's just one person there. In any case never a person I really know, but always people I'd assume to be enjoying their presence or people I'd like to have conversations with or that might inspire me. Magicians like the “psychological illusionist” (as he calls himself) Derren Brown, who himself uses a lot of hypnosis and could “hypnotise” me to sleep. Although so far nobody spoke a word in my garden. Or Teller of the magic duo Penn & Teller. During performances he never speaks. If he does speak, it's always with his back to the audience or with his mouth covered. But on YouTube you'll find videos in which he does talk. So I do know his voice. In the garden he wouldn't speak though. Most of the time I'd find him there with a coin in his hand and he'd roll a coin across his knuckles. His decades of practise and experience make tricks like that look much easier than they are for me. With him it's a flowing movement and he could do it en passant. Charming. Bewitching.

After sitting there for a bit and watching Teller with the coin or just enjoying the presence of people there, I'd fall asleep. If the bench is free, I might lay down there and go to sleep in the garden and for real.

Like I already wrote above, you are free to create your own garden and take from mine what you like. Still I'd like to give you a couple of things to consider to get the best effect from this: 

• If you want an exact number of steps to the door, I'd recommend 20.
• Also I'd suggest to take a sniff in your garden and sense smells at least once, even if you don't specifically bend down to a flower. Far too often there's talk and suggestions only about visual aspects in exercises and methods like this. It's a fact however that we find it easier to get into a situation, the more senses are activated. Smell and taste usually are ignored. By smelling a flower, you'd have at least have smell in a bit once.
• Of course a sitting area is no must have, neither is having one or more persons sitting there. Create your own surprises for yourself, like I keep surprising myself about who'd be sitting there.
• For sort of “security reasons” I'd recommend to you, if you have persons, to make it people you don't know and are rather very unlikely to ever meet. Known persons may hurt or disappoint you some day. Those persons are not very likely to be in your garden anymore. Generally it's still better to not have people you know in places like that garden from the start. That way the garden is forever a safe place full of joy. 

My hypnosis friends (you know who you are) might have other suggestions to consider. Maybe I'll add more in my text depending on your comments or if I think of additional important aspects. For now that's it for me. I wish you much fun and joy in your garden and sweet dreams. If you like, you can share your experiences here.

Until next blog,

sarah

Long live placebo!

Dear reader,

the word placebo comes from the latin and means "I please", certainly does please scientists. Because often when medicine or the effect of something has to be tested, the so called control group gets a placebo, which seemingly looks alike, but doesn't contain anything effectual at all. If there is still a positive change that can be measured objectively on the test person, that's called the placebo effect. Then there's "something" about the way the treatment was given that made the positive change, added to the ingredient, which with a placebo is nothing at all. As far as I know, there is no study so far on placebos as such. They're only used to compare to the "real" ingredient.

In his two part program "Fear and Faith" from 2012, the magician Derren Brown made a fascinating experiment. It was based on the following story: a company had created a drug that was talked about as the new wonder weapon in the military. The soldiers would stop being afraid and be totally fearless. Now the drug was to be tested on a group of civilians and Derren Brown, the well known skeptic wanted to run a documentary on that. In reality the drug was a placebo and the company wasn't real either. What Derren Brown really tested was the placebo effect.

Towards the end of the program he explains to the people, what it was really about. In the meantime however the placebo effect had kicked in with many of them and with very positive effect and I thought sometimes quite surprisingly, indeed. You can watch the whole program on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfDlfhHVvTY (about 47 minutes)

Capsules are more effective than pills and injections more effective than capsules according to Derren Brown. I decided to test that for myself. I couldn't think of something of the shape of a pil, but found that tic tac do look quite like capsules. I bought myself a pack. Since I was for real quite anxcious at that time, I told myself that they would calm me. I sucked them, which took about 10 to 15 minutes and after that I really was calmer. Up until then I thought that the placebo effect could only work, when the test person doesn't know that there is no actual ingredient in. Apparently that's not the case. I was very well aware that tic tac are no tranquilliser capsules, especially since I kept them in their original box. Now there are always different kinds. At least orange and mint. What might be worth testing would be if orange are tranquilliser capsules, whether mint could have another effect and if both would only create reactions according to their ascribed effect. At the moment I don't have an idea or the need for mint capsules. Should I do test that some time, you'll know where you can read about it...

The second part of "Fear and Faith" deals with Derren Brown testing whether he could turn an atheist woman in a believer in about an hour. With indirect hypnosis. I won't tell you how it ends. Only this much: like with all the other programs in which he does bigger experiments with and on people, he tells her at the end of the show what really happened and why.

Here is the link to the second prt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LksVbHxLRvY (about 47 minutes)

Until next blog,
sarah

Let there be Lightman

Dear reader,

part of doing hypnosis and especially hypnotherapy, is to observe the client. Something very important is to look for incongruence. That's when the body contradicts the spoken word. You may have experienced this in your daily life before. Usually, I guess, we get a strange feeling. "Something" isn't quite right. It's when I'm with a friend and ask him if he wants to come over to my flat. His mouth says "yes", but he's shaking his head "no". So which is it now?

A certain Albert Mehrabian did an experiment and found out that if someone is incongruent, we break down his non-verbals and what he says. According to Mehrabian, about 55% is body language as such, 38% is speech (how fast it's said and that kind of thing) and only 7% is what's actually said. This means that when we're in doubt and someone is incongruent, we tend to trust the non-verbals and body language more than the actual talk. Mehrabian found that out in 1971. People still like to quote that study. But they misquote it badly actually. They leave out that his study was for incongruence and say that we trust the words only 7% all the time. That's wrong! I guess this misquoting and misinterpretation happens when people take out of the study what they like and other people quote the people quoting that study. I believe that rather few people actually read the original story, but (mis)quote it all over the internet. That's so sad.

Another person worth mentioning when the talk is about body language, incongruence and lies is Paul Ekman. He's the lead expert on deception and lies. According to Ekman, there are 7 basic emotions, which are the same with every human around the globe. They are:

anger: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5708.htm

contempt: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5709.htm

disgust http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5710.htm

fear: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5711.htm

happiness: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5712.htm

sadness: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5713.htm

surprise: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5714.htm

The pictures above show Tim Roth and the pictures have been made as part of the tv series "Lie To Me", where he plays the deception expert Dr. Cal Lightman. He's modelled after Paul Ekman, who also worked as consultant for the show. So "Lie To Me" isn't just any wanna-be-science show. Much of the science on that show is actually true and really works. FOX, which by now has cancelled LTM in the middle of season 3, has since taken away Paul Ekman's blog where he explains aspects of his science on almost all episodes. There are only a few exceptions, for episodes in which nothing special regarding his science came up. You can still read it here now: http://www.paulekman.com/lie-to-me/

Personally I have so far only read "Why Kids Lie" by Paul Ekman. It's a nice read. Especially I found it interesting that the book was a family project really. Paul started of, then his son took over to write from a child's point of view, including some advice for what parents should be doing or can do. And then his wife, who worked as an attorney, wrote the last chapters.

What fascinates me about body language and lie detection is the aspect of so called micro-expressions. That's very quick expressions you make showing your real emotion and then hide it with another expression. Paul Ekman is better at explaining this, so I'll let him talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXm6YbXxSYk

I think it's helpful to know the science of facial expression. Probably we don't need to bring it to perfection to see micro-expressions. Knowing the science of facial expressions as such, does help though. Lightman makes that point at the end of the second episode of season 1. In the pilot episode they get a new staff member, Ria Torres, who is a natural. She can see and correctly read facial expressions, including micro-expressions, without formal training. Lightman seems a bit annoyed by her and teases her quite a bit in that second episode. There are scenes when Torres says nothing, but Lightman reads her face and she shows negative emotions. She pays him back in the final scene when she reads his face. However he shrugs it off. When she calls him a liar, he simply tells her to get used to it. Seeing things is one thing. He tells her that without the science, she's unable to see the whole picture and people get hurt. I have to agree with him, that with the science of it in mind, we get a deeper understanding.

Paul Ekman also created programs to train yourself in recognising facial expressions as well as micro-expressions. If you're interested in those kind of things, check out his website.

One thing about detecting lies: It's a widely accepted myth that liars would break eye contact with you. The idea being that the liar can't stand looking you into the eye for a longer time. Probably for fear of you seeing he's lying. Actually eye contact says nothing about whether someone lies or tells the truth. As Lightman and his colleagues repeatedly state: The important thing is to have a base line. Some sort of reference point which tells you what the person is like in a fairly relaxed state. If you don't know what a person is like in a relatively relaxed state, you're unable to tell anything about him. If he has a twitching hand, even when you're talking small talk, it's likely to be a normal behaviour for him and has nothing to do with nervousness or impatience or anything like that. If that person has calm hands in a small talk situation and the hand twitches when the talk gets to more serious matters, it's likely that something is going on now. But a twitching hand as such means nothing. Similarly, if someone crosses his arms and legs, it doesn't necessarily mean disagreement. Notice what the person is like when you think he's fairly relaxed and telling the truth. Once the person does something else and breaks this behaviour in some general way, these may be signs of holding back informations and/or telling lies.

The british magician, or self-proclaimed "psychological illusionist" Derren Brown makes those points of how to tell a lie in his book "Tricks of the Mind" as well. He also explains a trick/experiment you can do with anybody willing to take part. If you go for the three main sensory systems we have visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Ask a person five or so questions for each of those sensory systems. They should tell you the truth. It can be really simple questions. Notice how they move their eyes. If you think you know their pattern, you can ask them to tell you a number of things (say five again) and one should be a lie. The lie is when they don't keep their usual pattern of "truth telling", as you established before. Derren Brown makes it seemingly even more interesting and mysterious as he tells the person only to think of the answers and not say them aloud. Here's a video of Derren Brown doing this trick with car salesmen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2cvop3vbM

Go with Derren and make your choice about which facts are lies. Again: don't just go for eye contact or breaking eye contact. Eye contact or not are no indicators for lies or truths!

The blog title today comes from... you guessed it, Cal Lightman. In episode 2, season 3, we see him having problems starting to write his new book. Instead he procrastinates big time with making beans on toast at 4 a.m. and even sets off the fire alarm when he burns the toast. He's distracted with a video he watched on his laptop. So his daughter Emily comes down to see what's going on. She suggests writing just any sentence. Lightman rejects her first line, so he types into the laptop: "Let there be Lightman." and presents it with his arms stretched in a "ta-da!" kind of fashion. Emily tells him to hire a ghost writer and decides to go to bed again. I love the scenes with the two of them. Sometimes Emily seems much more grown-up than her dad. He often does what he feels like doing, which isn't always appropriate and sometimes even dangerous. See for yourself.

Well, I think that's it for now. My take on body language, truth, lies and those kind of things.

I'll keep you posted! Stay tuned!

Sarah

My Barnum Effect Test

Dear reader,

well, it's not mine. The experiment is old, of course. The magicians Penn & Teller did their version in their series "Bullshit" (season 7, episode 2: Astrology). Derren Brown shows this experiment as part of an episode of his series "Trick of The Mind" (season 3, episode 1). Which are only two that come to my mind right away, which I've seen myself. Others have done that experiment, too and towards the end of my studies at uni, I did as well.

I talked to the professor of a psychology class. The class was, at least in theory, about doing things and not just teaching and theory. The right course for my experiment, I thought. So I asked the professor if it was okay if I did a little experiment I had thought of doing for a while already. She agreed, so the week before easter holidays, I came in with yellow index cards I told others that over the course of the semester holidays, I had worked on creating a personality test program and would like to test its accuracy with them. I told them to write down: on the left top corner the day of birth, should they know it, also the time. But it wasn't necessary for me to have the time. On the right top corner they were to write a code of any combination of numbers and letters. Just so they knew theirs. In the middle they should write one short sentence that described them. (I should give Penn & Teller credit for that one. In their Bullsh!t episode on astrology, they let a psychology professor do exactly that. Since I couldn't come up with anything else as a basis for information.)

Then the easter holidays came and then the first day after the holidays came and the seminar was later that afternoon. So plenty of times for fellow students to approach me and ask about the test. Well, two came up to me right after the first seminar that day. One saying that she changed courses, but should I have the results, she'd like to know hers. I gave her her index card. The "result" I had stuck on the back of it with a paper-clip. I told her the truth right away that the twist to this wasn't so much the text, nor the test, but how they reacted. Another girl approached me saying she had an appointment at the doctor's. She'd try to change it, but couldn't. I desperately hoped the wouldn't tell the others about my text!

Anyway, I came into the room where the seminar would be held. One girl came to me and asked me about three times, "Are you going to tell us now?" She was really eager.

A short break time during the seminar was my time. I said, "Last time I asked you to fill out index cards for me for a personality test. I've got the results now. Please, pick your card and read it quietly for yourself. Don't share it with others. I want to ask you for quick judgment about how well it fits you." They went and read their card. I asked, "On a scale from 1 to 5, 1 meaning doesn't fit and 5 means it fits, how many think it sucked? 1?" No one. "How many say: a bit? 2?" Still no one. "How many say: so and so? Kind of half half? 3?" Two or three raised their hands. "How many say 4?" I didn't count, a good deal of people. "5?" The rest of them. One half joked, "Mine's like 4.5." That got a laugh. I said, "Of those, who say it's 5, would any of you care to read like the first two or three sentences for us? Just to show how a well done one would have looked like?" One started reading hers. The others started smiling and looking at each other. The reader asked me, if she should go on. I thanked her and said, it was enough and that the reason why the others smiled was, because they had the same text.

"You all have the same text", I said. "And here's another truth: that program I told you about doesn't exist." I could feel the relief that spread in the room. "I didn't even write the text. The text is from the wikipedia entry to 'Barnum effect', which is what happened here: if you have a bunch of information, you pick the things you think fit and make them fit to yourself. Barnum was a circus director, who had that motto of: a little bit for everyone." I went a bit on and then told them about, also that fortune tellers and the like use this technique.

I told them that my mom had told me about an aunt, who had went to a fortune-teller. She told that aunt that she was about to die in a car within the next 1 to 3 months. I said, "She lived longer than 3 months. But can you imagine - and we're right into the topic of this seminar here - the mental stress she would be in, every time she had to go into a car? This could be the one, she'd die in." I said, "So maybe you say: well, that's fortune-telling. I don't believe in that anyway. But you did believe me."

I was about to leave it at that, but one girl raised her hand and asked me something I don't remember anymore. It got us into a quite relaxed, but interested and interesting discussion (probably for 10 to 15 minutes, in any case longer than the teacher intended for that break) about fortune tellers, cold reading and the like. I felt good. It's one thing watching videos of Derren Brown or others doing it or reading about it. It's another to be able to feel that they believe you and knowing you cheated on them. I knew they wouldn't like strangle me or something. But I was quite nervous as to how they would react. I was very pleased how they reacted. Even surprised to find that they actually had questions and were really interested in knowing and discussing more!

Until next blog,

sarah