Trance Class By Anne Kadet When I got the opportunity recently to take a weekend course in hypnotherapy at the Tribeca Hypnosis & Healing Institute, I imagined myself helping people stop gorging on Doritos or getting my dog to quit lunging at rollerbladers. The course, after all, would earn me a certification in hypnotherapy from the International Network for Alternative & Intuitive Therapies. Goodbye, journalism career, hello, well-heeled hypnotist! So I called Trudy Beers, a longtime Tribeca resident who runs the Healing Institute out of her Beach Street loft. The ticket to my hypnotherapy certificate, I learn, is Dr. Barry Seedman, a top hypnotherapist based in Las Vegas who uses hypnosis to cure cancer, heal childhood trauma and help executives improve their golf game.   Beginning his lecture to a class of 20, Seedman promises us that in one weekend he will banish our stress, free us from negative childhood programming and cure our addictions. That’s a lot to pack into a 20-hour course! After a quick lecture on psychotherapy and brain function, we get our first demonstration. Seedman asks two students to stand in front of the room with their arms outstretched. Magnets in their hands, he tells them will pull their hands together. “The magnets are getting strong and stronger!” he cries. “Powerful! Powerful! Powerful powerful powerful!” Sure enough, the students’ hands come together. Now it’s our turn to hypnotize each other. I’m paired with Howard, a former English barrister. “You can feel your hands pulling together,” he intones. I can? “Magnets!” I tell myself. “Powerful powerful powerful!” My hands are moving. Am I doing this consciously? I can’t believe I can be manipulated so easily! “I’m not sure I’m hypnotized,” I tell Howard, ignoring my hands. Our next assignment is to hypnotize each other from a script in our workbook. Howard tells me that I will count down from 100 and forget every number past 98. “Sure, buddy,” I think. “100...99...98...” and then nothing. I have no idea what the next number is. Holy hypnotherapy! The exercise works on Howard, too: He doesn’t even make it to 99. Yes! I can even hypnotize barristers and make them bend to my will! The next day, we cover energy fields, weight loss and self-hypnosis, and get a crash course in marketing our new skills: Get referrals from doctors and psychologists, target smokers huddling outside office buildings, and charge $150 a session. My classmates have lots of nitty-gritty questions about hypnosis, like “What if the person has to go to the bathroom?” and “What if it’s an emergency and you don’t have time to wake the client?” For one of the last exercises Seedman says he will demonstrate how to make someone quit smoking. Any volunteers? In a class full of holistic nurses, astrologers and yoga instructors, I am the only candidate. The day before, I remember, Seedman had hypnotized a woman, helping her resolve some very personal issues. The next morning, her eyes sparkled. “I feel absolutely wonderful,” she had told me. That was convincing, but lying on a cot in front of the class, I still feel very silly. Especially when Seedman gives me his patented one-eyed stare and snaps his fingers. Other students had instantly gone limp, as if they’d been blasted with chloroform. With me, nothing. I feel ashamed, like an obstinate child who won’t perform for the grandparents. Not to be rude, I shut my eyes and fake it. In his soothing voice, Seedman tells me a long fairy tale that includes elaborate descriptions of how relaxed I am. Just when I’m in a dreamy reverie, he tells me to imagine walking through the countryside and seeing a funeral— for a cigarette! “Look at the cigarette. The cigarette is about to go into a casket,” he says. I keep my eyes closed, but suddenly, I am wide awake. “They are lowering the casket into the ground,” Seedman continues. “And now someone is saying a eulogy for the cigarette. Let’s listen.” I am not going to laugh, I am not going to laugh. “We are gathered here today to say our final goodbyes to our good friend the cigarette!” Seedman eulogizes in a strange, high-pitched voice. “This friend has been with us in times of happiness, in times of despair...” I maintain control until the “priest” sprinkles holy water over the cigarette’s casket and I feel droplets raining down on my face. Seedman is sprinkling me with his bottle of Poland Spring. It’s too much. I give it up and laugh until tears run down my cheeks and mingle with the holy water. “Goodbye, cigarette!” cries Seedman, ignoring my outburst. “Goodbye!” At home, I try the magnet trick on a friend. He sits on my couch, arms outstretched, as I read from the script. “Feel those hands pulling in,” I tell him. “Pulling and drawing, closing in and almost touching...” I read the lines over and over. Nothing. Finally, my friend sighs and opens his eyes. I ask how he feels. “Well,” he says, “my arms are tired.” I bury my certificate in a keepsake box, light a cigarette, and say goodbye to my future in hypnotherapy. But I haven’t given up on a career change. In February, Trudy Beers is hosting a weekend class leading to certification in past life regression. There’s hope for me yet.