Hypnotist Jim Wand poses for a portrait Friday night before his Homecoming performance in Farthing Auditorium. Photo by Tommy Penick

by EMILY MELTON
Lifestyles Editor

When he was a freshman in college, he was overweight.

A friend of the family encouraged him to try hypnosis and he refused, but after multiple refusals and little weight loss success, he finally gave in.

“It worked,” hypnotist Jim Wand said. “I took off about 65 pounds in six months, so I changed my major from computer science to psychology.”

Wand got his master’s, bachelor’s and doctorate in psychology and then ran a clinic for approximately eight years before he started touring, using hypnosis as a form of entertainment.

“I’ve had a lot of things happen to me over the years, just so many,” Wand said. “I had my nose broken in Iowa nine years ago. I had all the girls on stage think they were male WWF wrestlers and one of them kicked me right in the face.”

One year, Wand organized each male and female participant in a single-file line; the males became dogs and the females became their trainers.

“I went down the line, and I asked the trainers the name of the dog, the breed of the dog, the trick it was going to do,” Wand said. “When I got to the fifth trainer, the ‘dog’ bit me, right on the butt.”

Though he had to get stitches, Wand said the most embarrassing part of the experience was explaining what happened to his doctor.

Wand describes hypnosis as the movement from one brain wave state to another, leading to an opening from the conscious to the subconscious mind, similar to one’s state of mind before falling asleep, after waking up and while daydreaming.

“A lot of people think that when you’re hypnotized, you’re under someone else’s control,” Wand said. “That’s really not the case. When you’re hypnotized, you’re put into a situation that makes it easy to participate, but if you’re ever taken out of your comfort zone, you’ll shut it down.”

Wand brought several students to Farthing Auditorium’s stage during his R-rated performance Friday, giving them balloons to shape into adult toys and allowing them to show off their dancing skills.

“I was zoned out,” freshman music therapy major Freddy D. Perkins said. “The only thing I remember is when I first got on stage and I stared at [the light Wand used for hypnosis] and I zoned out. I woke up and I was back in the audience.”

It was a first time being hypnotized for Ashley B. Rodgers, sophomore music education major.

“It’s a weird feeling,” Rogers said. “[Wand] gave me the confidence to do whatever I was told to do.”

Rogers was able, however,  to refrain from anything she deemed too obscene.

“That’s the key to a good hypnotist,” Wand said. “You always want to make sure that the people, when they leave the stage, that they’ll do it again at the drop of a hat, and the people in the audience, that they just love it and want to come up and do it next time.”

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