Category: Hypnosis on Television and radio

1. Why It's good for your health to hate Adele

   Posted on 5:54am Thursday 5th Nov 2015

   It's official. You can stop listening to Adele right now!

   

   If you dread the sound of an Adele song coming on the radio and it feels like a funeral dirge designed to bring you down, then the good news is that you now have the perfect reason to turn over the radio and delete her songs from your music accounts. A new study shows that listening to sad songs can in fact be bad for your mental health. In fact they say it can make you even more anxious and neurotic.

   Music to suit your mood

   You probably already realise that when you hear a happy song it can lift your mood. As an ex radio presenter we all expect to play Katrina and the Waves and Walking on sunshine as soon as the clouds part at the beginning of summer. Perhaps when you have felt low you have put on a sad tune and noticed that it really suited your mood. Well the author of a new study has shown why it may well be a good idea to avoid the new Adele album 25 when it arrives in the shops and online.

   Emily Carlson is the music therapist and author of the latest study. In order to find out what the effect of the music that people were listening to on their moods the researchers tested the neural responses of the participants while they listened to happy, aggressive and sad music and compared this to markers of mental health including depression, anxiety and neuroticism.
   
   Emily said ‘Some ways of coping with negative emotion, such as rumination, which means continually thinking over negative things, are linked to poor mental health.’We wanted to learn whether there could be similar negative effects of some styles of music listening.’
   
   

   If you are a man then you really do have an excuse to ask your other half to turn down Adele

   They also found that listening to music affected the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain, with those using sad and aggressive music to reflect on their emotions having higher levels of anxiety and neuroticism than those who didn’t. Interestingly they found that in male subjects this effect was more pronounced. So, at least we have a real reason not to listen to Adele singing now! Don't get me wrong, she seems like a lovely person, but when a song of hers comes on the radio I will flick to another channel because it doesn't really appeal to me. Now we know that there is science behind that feeling.

   Senior study author Elvira Brattico said: ‘These results show a link between music listening styles and mPFC activation, which could mean that certain listening styles have long-term effects on the brain.’ I'm pretty sure that Adele herself would laugh it off, but then she has sold millions of records and that is set to continue when the new album sells millions more.

   So perhaps it's time to dig out those old eighties Wham and Duran Duran albums and have yourself a party!

    

2. Is Mesmerised a fake hypnosis show?

   Posted on 11:48am Friday 16th Oct 2015

   Is Peter Powers really hypnotising people on Mesmerised?

   Another new TV show starts this week that uses hypnosis for entertainment. In the UK we have had  “Back in the Room” which will return for a new series next year and has also aired around the world, including France where a new version has just begun.

   Are they faking it on Mesmerised?

    This time the show appears on Australian Television on Channel 7 Starting on October 22^nd and is called “Mesmerised” The star and hypnotist of this show is British Born Peter Powers who has been living and working don under for many years.

    

   When interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald to promote the show he was asked if he was at all worried that the contestants on his tv show might feel humiliated. 

   "They know it's a comedy. People who volunteer know what it will entail, but not specifically the routine, because the way hypnosis works, if the person knows in advance what is required of them, you will not get the subconsciously driven hypnotic response. I've been doing the stage shows for 31 years, and I've had no complaints from people saying, 'I didn't know you were going to make me squawk like a chicken or behave like a belly dancer'. I say to them in advance that their imagination can be played with, so I can make something appear that isn't really there, or I can make something disappear that is really there, I can change your mood, I can make you ecstatic, I can make you think somebody has a really bad smell if they sit next to you. 

    

   But the assurance I could give them for this series, because this is Channel Seven, prime time, is you will not behave in any way that is sexual in nature, you will not be removing your clothes, you won't be swearing, this is a family show where people can watch with their children. There's no way we're going to expose people to something they find humiliating or that they'll never live down with their families.

    

   Can they remember what happened when they come round?

   Is Mesmerised a fake hypnosis show?

    

   It’s interesting that when the British show Back in the Room aired with Phil Schofield presenting and Hypnotist Keith Barry working with his volounteers he made a big deal about the fact they would not remember what happened to them when they “woke up”  this is in fact far from reality. When asked the same question by the SMH Peter Powers gave a much more honest response..

   "They don't forget, by the way. When you've finished filming, it's not as if they think, 'I've just come round, I've got no idea what just happened'. That's a misconception. The people who've been involved in a certain routine, they know about it."

   You can read more about myths about hypnosis and see how you could hypnotise yourself with any pocket watch or even a swinging chain in this video...

    

   Mesmerised airs on Thursday, October 22, at 8pm on Channel Seven in Australia.

   Update from 22nd October..

   Mesmerised the Hypnosis TV show fails to hypnotise the audience.

   The latest news about this TV show is that it has been put to sleep after just one episode aired.

   The second episode of Mesmerised, was to have aired on Thursday but the Seven Network has replaced it with yet another animal-based series called Dog Patrol, a documentary series about canine support teams who help the police fight crime.

   Peter Powers may be well known in Australia for his stage shows featuring hypnosis but unfortunately his skills didn't convert into TV ratings.

   The ratings showed that in fact the launch episode which aired on October 15 attracted just 411,000 viewers and was 22nd overall on OzTAM's overnight five-city metro ratings.

   A Seven Network Television spokeswoman says Mesmerised is yet to be rescheduled.