Mesmerism is a name that evokes striking effects …
Mesmerism, fascination and magnetism very effective healing methods that every professional should know but that can appeal also to an everyday’s use.
We can live better, develop ourselves, get more results.
Many times we can get with them results faster as with verbal hypnosis, since they are completely non-verbal techniques and the non verbal is more natural than the verbal.

HERE A VIDEO ON THE EFFECTS OF NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_SdOv3pa8w

Where the name mesmerism stem for?
The name mesmerism derives from Frederick Anthony Mesmer. Mesmer was born in Switzerland on the 23d of May 1734. In 1777 he departed from Vienna, and early in the following year made his appearance in Paris. There, besides making a convert of Dr. D’Eslon, he performed many remarkable cures in the class of distinguished persons
People got healed more than with any other method. In these days of hortodoxy, hostile critics sneered at Mesmer but Mesmer’s own special theory, was lately rehabilitated.
Many men of the highest eminence on the Continent of Europe, despite the din of war around them, devoted a considerable degree of attention to Mesmerism, and in progress of time it began to be heard of in the works of the great German physiologists, and others—names as well known on the Continent as those of Harvey or Hunter in Britain. In 1817, the practice of Mesmerism was by law ordered to be confined to the medical profession in the Prussian dominions; and in 1818 the Academy of Sciences at Berlin offered a prize of 3340 francs for the best treatise on Mesmerism. Even Schopenauer and Hegel wrote about it.
Today many people confuse original magnetism and mesmerism with what we get with verbal hypnosis, but the basic tenets are different, and even the origin of the techniques.
The goal of this article is to clarify some of those differences.

Connection between mental states
What happens in mesmerism and magnetism is that, in some kind of way, the mental state of the operator has an impact on the subject.
In magnetism, the state of the operator is a specific state corresponding to a more immediate and primal way of thinking, one which is concentrated on the idea of healing and wellbeing. It is this very specific state that will produce an effect on the patient.
There have been many researches on why this happens and how this communication is capable of materializing.
From a subjective point of view, the operator can sometimes have the sensation of a fluid transmitting his vitality or energizing the patient. All traditions, including the Indian and Chinese traditions, speak of “energy flows”.
From an objective point of view, this idea can take the form of a metaphor, a different way of elucidating a concept, something that could be explained at the same time in two ways:
Firstly in terms of a “super-effective” non verbal communication;
secondly, on the basis that there are also many situations which cannot be explained in the former way.
We might try and find an explication by resorting to quantum physics.
Today, quantum physics has re-discovered similar concepts of energy and in the process exposed the limitation of conventional science, due to its use of indirect observation.
The circumstance that these subtle changes in mental state affecting the subjects are not easily detectable from the outside is the main point behind the inability in the past to really understand mesmerism, and behind the different results which have been recorded between persons apparently going through same magnetic steps and performing the same movements.
As everything proceeds from inner work, magnetic “passes” and movements are most useful only in respect of those individuals who have gone through some personal development path.
In the past, people looking at mesmeric and magnetic demonstrations called it a “personal power of inducing change”, but in reality this power has a structure.
It is personal only in the sense that it starts from the person.
What works on the client is no longer the rational mind of the therapist, but rather the latter’s unconscious mind, his primal mind.
This mind is no longer identified as a form of I, but rather possesses a wider look, the beginning of which is located in the inner self.
From a certain viewpoint, we could say that in magnetism “the operator does not exist, what exists is the effect”.

The experiences of the mysterious Virgilio Torrizzano and Prof. Erminio di Pisa
One of our masters, whose name was Virgilio Torrizzano, and who was the last representative of an ancient western tradition, was lightning fast in inducing a deep hypnotic trance merely through the use of his eyes. Virgilio, who employed the word hypnotism to refer to “magnetic hypnotism”(hypno-magnetism), said, ‘The hypnotist does not exist, what exists is hypnotism itself.’
The internal state of the operator is therefore very important.
This is an element of significance. Even traditional yogic healing requires the operator to enter a specific state, to be the master of his mind and not a slave of his thoughts, of his “limited I”. Some called this state a state of “no thinking”.
It is very easy to step into a state of no thinking, of a “void” lasting a few seconds, as that occurs while we practice fascination.
Erminio di Pisa was able to get results in a few seconds simply by using the gaze, in so doing healing many pathologies and pains.
In this case, the physiological action produced by the gaze, combined with the simultaneous desire of healing, occasions the desired effects.

Traditional magnetic methods and striking effects

In truth, even traditional, slower magnetic and mesmeric methods based on interchange, are in need of this approach. They are in need of developing the ability to penetrate a primal state.
Healing in itself seems to be a reaction to the specific state we create in ourselves.
As we create this specific state, along with healing, we might be able to observe other strange effects.
Coming back to facts which are incapable of being explained merely on the basis of “ultra effective” non-verbal communication, it is for instance well known that the early mesmerists were seemingly able to constantly and habitually develop some reactions, ostensibly of a telepathic nature, in their subjects. These experiments were often carried out, under stringent test conditions, by the most careful and conscientious scientists. Their results are recorded in the many volumes which were written on the subject at the time. University professors, philosophers, and even very skeptical individuals, witnessed such experiments. Many of these works were written by scientists whose methods of investigation were painstaking and accurate to the ultimate degree. Ochorowitz, for example, wrote a book titled “On Mental Suggestion”, where he tested this fact in a very scientific way.
The question one has to pose is why is it that the power to develop such phenomenon on the part of mesmerists has been lost or fallen into desuetude. The hostility and ridicule heaped up by the academicians undoubtedly had its effect on many minds, and caused many scientific investigators to shrink from publicly avowing their convictions or the results of their investigations. That still does not account, however, for the fact that these results are rarer in our times.
They are nonetheless present. Let us examine the moments in which we verify them, and compare them with mesmerism.
At times, some hypnotists report the fact that they have experienced strange coincidences between their feelings and what their patients felt, while others note the existence of some “synchronicities”, i.e. coincidences. Yet another group of hypnotists do not achieve the same results.
It is an established fact that, today, those hypnotists who say that practicing hypnosis brings about the highest extent of coincidences and telepathic effects (even through traditional hypnosis), are hypnotists who study such concepts as “the law of attraction”, or who practice Yoga and meditation alongside their hypnotic practice.
In essence, these are mainly people with a different approach to the mind; people who attempt to develop their intuitions and get in touch with some deeper part of their own selves.
There is an easily perceived link between this and the fact that the same effects were very common among ancient mesmerists, and might be readily observed.

The change in methodology

The first question which presents itself to a person seeking to understand why the earlier people related so many supra-normal results is one that relates to timing. When did the higher phenomena show the first signs of decadence? A moment’s reflection will help fix it at, or about, the date of the promulgation of the theories of Dr. Braid. It is a historically proven fact, one that is well known to all who have watched the progress of hypnotic science, that as soon as it was found that the mesmeric or hypnotic sleep could be induced by causing the subject to gaze upon a bright object held before his eyes, all other methods were practically abandoned.
It was much easier to hold an object before the subject’s eyes for a few minutes, the hypnotist’s mind set at rest, than to take active magnetic steps with such subject for an indefinite length of time, accompanying such steps by a fixed gaze and an intense concentration of mind, as it had been habitually done most of the times in the past.
The important point to bear in mind in this immediate context is the fact that, in the old mesmeric method:
1) Fixity of gaze escorted by reciprocal looks between operator and subjects, which was the regular practice, and
2) Concentration of the will on the part of the operator,
were jointly considered to be indispensable to success.
If we read the old books, we find that the operators invariably spoke of an inner “sensation” which they felt.
It seems clear, then, that it is in the change of methods subsequent to Braid that we must look for an explanation of the change in results. Once that is conceded, we must inquire how the conditions were changed consequentially upon the change of methods. We must inquire, that is, as to which pre-conditions for successful effects are missing, either in the condition of the subject or in that of the operator, or in both, whenever the new methods are applied.
The operator, in the method promoted by Braid, does not look at the subject. In the past, by contrast, the operator used to look at the subject, thereby creating in himself a specific state which somehow affected the subject, while being himself a main element in the healing process.
I invite everyone to conduct experiments in front of a mirror, as they will then understand what I mean pretty soon. In front of the mirror, your conscious mind will undergo a change of state.
Our free course (see below) will help you travel through this path.

Cases in which even modern hypnotists get the most striking effects

It is necessary at this point to recall to one’s mind the fact that Braid changed the paradigm: 1) No reciprocal gazing at one another on the part of operator and subject was allowed, unlike what prevailed in mesmerism; 2) The operator performed the function of an external observer, instead of being an active participant in the process of change. With Braid, we have observer (therapist) and observed (patient). In his method, concentration was only demanded of the subject. With many persons, this method, accompanied by concentration of mind and a state of mental expectancy, will help cross the threshold of consciousness to a greater or less extent, depending upon the mental characteristics of the individual subject and the circumstances surrounding him. All along, however, the operator does not get into the game, or at least he does not officially engage in it, since even people who practice modern Ericksonian hypnosis know the marked extent of the significance attaching to personal involvement in the therapy. If you think about your future holidays while you work on a patient, successful results will of necessity be rarer. There are also certain moments, as one works on a client, when a certain feeling, difficult to express in words, sets in. It is some kind of state that can effectively guide the client to a change. There are “magical moments” even in modern therapy, but the way of getting to them is not that much capable of being codified.
I think that is so because these “magical moments” are an expression of the state of the operator himself. We must also remember something that most of the time gets forgotten when one practices Ericksonian hypnosis: The fact that Erickson did a lot of work on himself. For the main part, modern Ericksonian hypnotists learn formulas, but do not spend even a single month learning the sensations that arise from their own bodies; nor do they try to understand their bodies in order to heal themselves. Even if these concepts are written in all of M. H. Erickson’s books, they are never practiced. Yet for many years Erickson worked on attaining awareness of his own body.
NB: I referred to “most of Ericksonian hypnotherapists”. I in fact think that, were somebody to traverse the same path as Erickson did, he might well place a lot of attention on his own state.
Even if M. H. Erickson carried out this work outside any traditional path, he got to the point. The point is to establish contact with our physical selves, in a primal manner, prior to getting in touch with the rational selves of our beings: It is at such point that the subjective primal, immediate powers, are consequentially brought into play. Something different happens. The obvious and unassailable conclusion is that, when a mesmerist employs the old methods of inducing a subjective state, magnetic steps, gazing fixedly, and mental concentration, he plunges into a specific state himself, and he does so by the very same act whereby he mesmerizes the subject.It is this state that is conducive to mesmeric responsiveness.
We call it “energetic state” only because we do not have other words by which to express it.
The subjective powers are thus brought into play. The primal (unconscious) mind is released, or is elevated above the threshold of consciousness, and it now performs its functions independently of, or synchronously with, the objective (conscious) mind, in a manner exactly commensurate with the degree of hypnosis that has been induced. It might be realized up to a slight degree only, it might be imperceptible to those around him, or it might reach a very deep state. The plainly evident and unimpeachable conclusion is that, when someone utilizes the old methods of inducing the subjective state, magnetic steps, intensely fixed gazes, and a state of mental concentration, or when he makes use of the even more rapid method of fascination, he hypnotizes himself by the same act through which he mesmerizes the subject. Once again, as a result thereof he will achieve very significant results.

If you want to learn more, I invite you to visit our site:

http://www.mesmerismus.info

or take our free online course disponible writing an email to: mesmerismus_eng@getresponse.com.

You can also see an interesting video on fascination here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuWD6eyD8aI 
I can even answer you by email. Just write to: nice@neurolinguistic.com .