A hypnotizing public relations event

The mind is a mysterious thing. The way we feel and think affects every aspect of our lives. But people tend to neglect the importance of their mental and emotional health and spend more time bettering their physical health. Mental and emotional health is difficult to understand and I think intimidates people. For many years problems with mental and emotional health have stigmatized people with being crazy. But things are changing. Society is beginning to urge people not to disregard mental and emotional health issues, but instead nip them in the butt.

One way in which people try to find out what’s going on in their minds is through hypnosis. Hypnosis can help people get over their fears, quit smoking, deal with confidence issues and many other matters of the mind. On January 4, 2010, World Hypnosis Day, a British hypnotist named Chris Hughes organized Socialtrance, a hypnosis session on Facebook and Twitter. Hughes was trying to set a Guinness World record for the biggest online hypnosis session. Over 31,000 people from 85 different countries logged onto to the session. Hughes attempted to test the power of his hypnosis by locking together participants hands and making it impossible for them to open their eyes. Hughes’s goal was to help people have more self-confidence and motivate them to achieve their goals in 2010. By January 5, 17 hours into the session, lawyers stepped in and cancelled the event due to their concerns participants would get stuck in the trance. However, Hughes still feels the event was extremely successful. He said he has received over 1,000 email from participants saying how amazing the experience was and how they would have never tried hypnosis if it wasn’t for this event. Even if the session was stopped by lawyers, Chris Hughes achieved his goal of educating people about hypnosis and getting them to try something they normal would not have.

Thanks to this event Hughes received coverage is British newspapers and online as well as getting the hypnosis community interested and talking about him.