Here's a chance for the more highly skilled people to teach us some fun things. Take a trick Derren Brown has done and talk us through it, ideally showing how NLP skills like anchoring can be used in a performance context.

Most of his tricks aren't NLP, but he does use it as dressing - he's on a Victorian Mentalism Rivial gig really. However, he does put words in people's heads by omitting them from sentences, and he does draw in people's pictures.

The setting the watch and having people guess it recently, that used both of those.

When he does hypnosis, he seems to be really, really selective about his volunteers.

Anoraks on, spotters!

Martin.

Yeah, he uses NLP quite a bit but often as 'window dressing' and not the core of the trick. And, as Martin intimated, he picks his subjects carefully and although they occasionally show the times something doesn't work, I'm pretty sure they don't show *all* the times things don't work.

Then again, it wouldn't be as much fun to watch 'Derren Flubs It' episode 26, where Derren tries in vain for 23 minutes to get a cold reading to work on various subjects...

I'll pick a trick and do a play-by-play soon, if no one beats me to it.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Hi I wrote, this a while back, and I demonstrated the Mind reading Effectat using Hypnosis Mind reading & Anchoring at my recent Cold Reading Seminar.

Enjoy it may provide you with some ideas....

Cold Reading, Derren Brown & The Art Of NLP & Hypnosis To Read Minds

Well, last months article caused quite a stir...

I've had so many requests asking for more info on Derren Brown and NLP; I've decided that the quickest way to reply to all these queries was a follow up article!

It’s based on a something I wrote for on an Internet group, and provides you with lots of info on Derren's effects, and how I have replicated them using NLP & Hypnosis.

I’ve received a couple of complaints as they feel I‘ve given too many secrets away, however they then preceded to take on some private NLP coaching (Now that’s how you reframe)!

Enjoy....

As you may know I occasionally perform mentalism and Hypnosis at Private Parties, and all the effects I have outlined below I have performed...

I have met Derren on a couple of occasions and talked to various famous mentalists via email over the years, including Ian Rowland, Ford Kross, Richard Busch and Banachek (he liked my website!).

Whilst its fair to say that these people use a mixture of Psychological and Sleight of Hand Techniques, this article focuses on their psychological techniques.

To really understand how Derren uses NLP & Hypnosis, I am going to collate a number of techniques:

Hypnosis
Slight of Mouth
Psychological Forcing
Suggestion / Waking Hypnosis
Dual Reality
Cold Reading
Anchoring

Lets Start with Dual Reality

This is a technique where the subject (person doing the trick) and the audience are hearing the exact same words, however because the language is vague (slight of mouth) the audience believes that mind reading is happening whilst the subject believes he is being asked to do something else.

Kenton Kneppers Wonder Words uses this principal.

Psychological forcing / slight of mouth

By Using Words and gestures such as ''chose a card see it brightly and in colour'' (most people will see a red card).

For other examples I recommend Derren Browns Pure Effect and his Devils Picture book video I would also recommend Banachek's Psychological Subtleties.

Cold Reading

A technique used by Fortune Tellers / Palm readers to tell people about there innermost thoughts again by using vague Language and slight of mouth.

Ian Rowland's Full Facts of Cold Reading is an excellent read.

Suggestion / Waking Trance

As you know I perform Mentalism and hypnosis, and some people are more suggestible than others.

Once people have seen a number of effects the most suggestible member of the audience can be made to believe that there hands are stuck together...that there like stone..., that there jaw is tight....that they can no longer talk....

The New Encyclopaedia of Stage Hypnotism by Ormond McGill is excellent.

Hypnosis

As you can see from suggestion this is really a form of Hypnosis and Derren’s Handshake Interrupt is a way of inducing a deeper Hypnotic Trance...

Tranceformations By Bandler and Grinder is excellent.

Hypnosis Mind reading & Anchoring

I don't know if this is How Derren does it, but this is how I do it!

I performed this recently at a party:

When I was upstairs preparing a person came into the room.

I handshake interrupted him and put him in a trance and told him when I said the word sleep he would immediately would return to Trance!

I woke him up and he remembered nothing.

We carried on talking and I said ''sleep'', he immediately returned to Trance.

''Sleep'' is an ''Anchor'' for more info about anchoring you can visit the articles page on my site.

Once he returned to trance, I told him ''when I click my fingers I want you to tell me about your favourite pet....''

He then told me about his dog Barney in alot of detail....

I then walked him to the bathroom and told him he would wake up when he heard the bathroom door close.

I closed the door behind me and I went down stairs to do my show.

5 minutes later he appeared wide awake from trance, with total amnesia.

I then preceded to do my show including the effects above at the end I asked him up on the stage and said I was going to perform some mind reading.

I asked him to think of his favourite pet and clicked my finger.

I then asked him to whisper this to someone at the back of the audience which he did....

After this I read his Mind about Barney his dog and what breed, and what colour he was....

His face and the girls face where absolutely priceless.

I then looked at him and said ''I believe we have a powerful connection''.

He looked at me in awe and I said the word ''sleep'' he immediately went into trance and the crowd went wild...

So how is this useful?

The Handshake Interrupt

Whilst I demonstrate the Handshake Interrupt, I personally don’t find it particularly elegant, so I teach a more subtle everyday technique.

The level of trance is not as deep, however I find the results to be very effective.

Language Patterns and Sleight of Mouth

Language Patterns and Sleight of Mouth are excellent tools for:

Reframing objections, very useful in Sales and Arguments!

Placing people into desired states, i.e. moving you from anticipation to motivation…

And where appropriate influencing them to make certain choices and of course, placing them in a light trance conversationally.

Anchoring

Learning spatial anchoring will allow you to:

Influence a person’s choices i.e. make them pick one product / candidate, over another.

Cause certain reactions (feelings of relaxation, happiness, and what ever else pops into your minds)!

Or quite simply creating a trigger that returns a person a pre determined state when ever you require it.

I’m sure you can begin to imagine the applications…


Marc

http://www.persuasion-skills.co.uk

New S.T.E.A.L.T.H(TM)DVDs Now Available!

Marc,

Very interesting. I have also read Ian Rowland's Full Facts of Cold Reading. In Derren Brown's ''Messiah'' show in the US, he used the cold reading horoscope script from this book. The subjects thought the script was very accurate, even though it was the same for everybody with lots of cold reading vague language including Polyanna and rainbow predictions etc.

Another Derren Brown trick was based on the principle of continuity principle. He stopped passers-by at the street to ask for directions in a map. Then two men carrying a board with his picture separated Derren and the subject for a few seconds. During this time, another person took Derren's place and the subject continued giving him instructions blissfully unaware that the person asking directions had changed.

In the extreme case, a black man swapped places with Derren! Good fun.

I also agree with Marc that Derren uses a lot of hypnosis to do his tricks, but also plain magic tricks as well.

Having seen Derren Brown Live (well worth it if you get the chance) he hits much more than he messes. I've read most of the books that Marc mentions and have a copy of The Devils Picture Book; Derren uses a lot of 'standard' magic in his shows and is very good at it. He always states that showmanship is an element of what he does and he uses it in spades. In his books he does give a nod to NLP and, yes, he does use some NLP techniques but it is not WHAT he does.

The work of many 'Mentalists' is worth a look if you are interested in language as I'm sure we all are. I highly recommend Kenton Knepper and Derren's books are readily available if you go to a magic dealer.

I know he knocks NLP but isn't that part of the act? It keeps people off the scent, doesn't it.

Just enjoy it as good, (dis)honest entertainment.

Stuart

Hi Guys,

Interesting thread.

Mike, here's a quick one for you.

Derrens trick where he motions near one person (who has their hand held up and their eyes closed) or gets his shadow to cast over their hand) and their friend who's watching confirms that he has not actually touched them, but the person with their eyes closed swear that they felt him touch their hand.

This is a simple time-distortion trick where he actually touches their hand as he puts them in position. The fact that there's a time difference between that point and the time where he casts his shadow and motions (but doesn't touch them) is what makes the trick look magical.

When you do this trick, the person who has their eyes shut would have to be really distracted in order not to reaslise how you just did the trick, so you're unlikely to get away with a repeat performance on the same people.

I have notes on how many of Derrens tricks are done, but it seems a shame to spoil them by exposing it all

My local NLP practice group (NLP-South, in Southampton) has been an excellent place to learn about some really neat NLP strategies and we've had Jonathan Alfeld along a couple of times (which was an excellent experience).

Andy

Let't tackle the most famous one: The Heist!

In the program Derren gives many clues how he convinced three out of four subjects to rob the money car.

The main theme was multi-level anchoring. Anchors used were:
- Colour: green (uniform, security van)
- Sound: Jacksons: Can You Feel It, from a passing taxi
- Guard appearance, attitude, logo, uniform type
- Use of handgun, and all suggestions regarding criminality and stealing being useful frames of mind
- Rubbing the legs while intensifying the ''powerful green feeling''. A classic NLP anchor.

Derren also used selection process to spot the most suggestible subjects out of a larger initial group. In particular, the first test of robbing the candy store was hilarious. Seeing one of the guys getting caught and reciting trance-like Derren's line about 'scaling the wall' or something like that was fun.

As an aside, it was interesting to see the memory trick being taught to the attendees - they were able to remember 20 items in order. When asked to recall some item, all ouf their eyes shot up and left - a bit of clue how the technique works....

Any other notions on this? I suspect there was also hypnosis sessions prior to the Heist event, but these were not explicitly shown in the programme, so I am not sure.

Bump again

Is it just me who wishes that whenever NLP and life coaching featured in mainstream tv / film they weren't doing dodgy things?

Evie
www.applecoaching.com

What do you mean by 'dodgy'?

Milton Erickson explains a couple of these techniques in My Voice Will Go With You.

Darren does a trick where he gets someone to hide something over a large space, he did it with a stall holder in a London market while it was still closed.

Milton was told about a similar trick and then claimed he could replicate the result. He got someone to hide a pin in any building on a college campus. Then he walked around with hand contact. He found the pin on the second floor of a building stuck in the frame of a painting.

All you do, he said, is hold hands, you walk along, the person withdraws slightly when you get near the pin. So when he found a minimal withdrawal when he approached certain steps he went up those stairs. At the top the hand was tense again, so he turned one way and then the other and followed the direction in which the hand loosened slightly.

There is more than one way of doing this, hand to hand contact is not necessary, there are minute reactions in a persons face and posture which Derren has trained well at reading.

Derren is also excellent at reading sub-vocal speech in the lips, the neck (around the vocal chords and the face). If you study for long enough you can discern what the first letter of the next word is and once you say the first letter the subject will sub-vocally spell it for you. Eventually, full words can be discerned. Derren has definitely done his homework.

Clodagh,

Interesting account of the these tricks. Derren did this walking hand in hand trick you desrcribe in Venice a few weeks ago.

Another one is the wallet with lots of money in a public place that nobody will steal. This is based on just drawing a chalk line around the wallet in the road, a bit like a classic Police marking around a body spot in a crime scene.

Nobody takes the wallet as the marking makes people shun away from it.

Derren also uses hand gestures to make pictures. In additon to Marcs ''chose a card see it brightly and in colour'' which trigger red, he sometimes draws a diamond or heart to indicate one of the red suits.

He also uses presuppositions in his language, and as I said earlier, a lot of anchors.

I didn't quite know where to put this information, but the title of this topic kinda fits nicely.

Just purchased a copy of The Fast Phobia Cure with Paul McKenna and Michael Breen. The video is marked as 1997 and it features footage from a an NLP Practitioner Training wheer Michael and Paul do their respective phobia cures.

Footage of the audience clearly shows a young, slightly thinner, Derren Brown.

Just thought it was worthy of mention

Tim

timkenning wrote:

Just purchased a copy of The Fast Phobia Cure with Paul McKenna and Michael Breen. The video is marked as 1997 and it features footage from a an NLP Practitioner Training wheer Michael and Paul do their respective phobia cures.

Where can we buy that video?

I dunno. I got my copy from ebay. I looked around the internet and cannot find any other copies for sale.

Tim

Hi , the asking directions from one person then getting someone to walk in between with a door or board while you change the person asking for directions was originally done by Daniel J Simons as far as I recollect. He has loads of other video's on perception, the famous one being the basketball passes used by Professor Richard Wiseman on his Luck Factor programme. The site is here viscog.com home

Penny