Suddenly it seems as though I am at a tent revival with Hudak the Fat Healer, laying on hands, using the same incantation, putting people out left and right. The Epson saleswoman gets the same treatment as Nell Dunklin does; only when Hudak tells her to sleep, she falls onto my shoulder. Within seconds, her mouth goes slack and her eyelids begin to twitch. I just hope she doesn't start to sweat.
All but one woman appears to go under, and she is terrified. Hudak talks to her playfully. "Don't you trust me?" he asks. She says she doesn't trust herself.
Brian Stauffer
Some claim that Robert Hudak, president of the Dallas Hypnosis Center, is a "master hypnotist." But the secret of his success may be more attributable to volume than visualization.
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He then begins his suggestions, racing through them so fast, repeating them so often, I sense he is slightly bored by his spiel: "Small amounts of food satisfy you...food is just not important anymore...I have people who say they don't like water. Who cares? Our bodies love it, demand it, want it. You are craving water all the time."
All said, the guy definitely has a flair. I had planned to eat dinner after the meeting, but even I'm not hungry.
I leave more confused than when I came. The next day I phone Deryl Harrison and ask him to help interpret what I saw. "Was Nell the first one he put under?" he asks.
I tell him yes.
"He likes to lead with her."
"Are you saying I was set up?"
"He has people like her in the class that are very good at going under [high hypnotizables]," he says. "He's conditioned them to relax instantly on a trigger word like 'sleep.' When others see how easy it is for people like Nell to go under, there is a certain group response." Some just like the show, he says, while others may be role-playing the part of hypnotic subject, caught up in the drama of it.
But you can't act your way out of 50 pounds of fat?
"These are the stars," Harrison reminds me. "They become part of the suggestion. The others in the support group benefit by believing it can happen to them, too."
"So when one person gets slain in the spirit, it's easier for the rest to fall?"
"Something like that," he says.
Hudak invited me to continue my hypnosis sessions, but I don't think I will be returning any time soon. I am uncertain if it's the process of hypnosis that I don't trust--or just his process. A part of me is just unwilling to make myself as vulnerable as the women I watched--although that may not be the part that is still 35 pounds overweight.
I realize I still need to lose the weight, and I'm beginning to feel motivated again: I bought my wife a treadmill for her birthday, and I've been staring at it a lot recently. And I keep hearing these advertisements on the radio about a new weight loss product called "Body Solutions"--a liquid formula taken at bedtime that is supposed to take off the weight while you sleep. As exhausted as I have been recently by our newborn, sleep is one altered state of consciousness I know I can achieve.
