LISA MACHENBERG: I hypnotise my children and
my husband to do things for my benefit all the time.
LISA MACHENBERG: Now just listen to my voice
and picture the beautiful gold and yellow light radiating all around you.
COMM: Mum of three, Lisa Machenberg, has hypnotised
over a thousand children over her twenty-three year career.
LISA MACHENBERG: Hypno-parenting is a natural
marriage between hypnosis and parenting. I hypnotise my children and my husband to do
things for my benefit all the time. We have a household to run, many times I exert influence
so that my children are able to get their chores done so that this house runs efficiently.
JAKE NEY: It can get a little crazy when she
tries to hypnotise us at every single possible situation that she can. It can get like a
little overbearing, you know, she kinda can try to, you know, get into your head. It can
get like a little crazy and she’ll use like a very soothing voice.
BRYAN NEY: I see no downside to having Lisa
hypnotise family members, but maybe that’s because she’s hypnotised me to think so.
Lisa: Hey, good morning everybody, how are you?
COMM: Clients pay $125 an hour, and as well
as addressing the children’s varying needs, she also teaches parents to hypnotise their own kids.
LISA MACHENBERG: We’re gonna learn formal
hypnosis. Libia, what you would like is to use hypnosis to hypnotise your son, so he’ll
have the love and the passion for basketball once again. We’re gonna use hypnosis for
you to detach and we’re gonna use hypnosis for her to continue to do her personal best.
Let me teach you all how to hypnotise your kid without your kid even knowing! All children
are hyper suggestible to their parents between 0 and about 9 or 10 years of age. So the first
step in hypno-parenting is teaching each and every parent how to hypnotise him or herself,
once you’re calm in any parenting situation, you can teach your children containment.
LIBIA LONDONO: You’re never off with parenting
you, you're 24/7. Having these tools makes it so much easier. You don’t want to be in
war with your family.
ABIGAIL AGUILERA: It is controversial. I have
parents that ask me, “Don’t you feel like you are manipulating people or you are manipulating
your children.” It’s actually not, I am helping them be more assertive, be stronger.
JENEVIE CORRAL: Lisa hypnotises me to make
me brave. I was crying a lot in school, I didn’t want to go to school so I, I wanted
to tell my mom, “Mommy, Mommy I wanna go home, I wanna go home.”
Lisa: Now just listen to my voice and picture the beautiful gold and yellow light radiating
all around you. Jenevie: So I got hypnotised and now I love
school so much. Lisa: How do you feel now? Do you feel brave?
Happy and brave?
ANTHONY WHITE: Like, like when she’s saying
it, it feels, feels like it’s actually happening.
LISA MACHENBERG: Take a deep breath and exhale
all your nervousness and watch as you see yourself dribbling like the best basketball
star you’ve ever seen and you can watch yourself dribbling. And you are dribbling
like never before, you can picture it, and you can picture it, it makes you smile!
RAYNA NEY: I have picked up a couple of hypnosis
techniques. There is this one teacher I really didn’t like at my school and he gave me
a very bad grade on a test that would’ve brought my grade down to a ‘B’ from an
‘A’. So I went to talk to him and when I did, I made sure my hand was close to his
arm and I said, “You will raise my grade!”
MAX NEY: As far as like getting into college,
it helped me, you know, talk to teachers, get them to write like really good letters
of rec for me. I feel like we definitely do have an advantage, but it’s not like you’re
using some sort of magic to like overpower people’s wills.
COMM: Lisa shrugs off criticism of her methods.
LISA MACHENBERG: If someone says to me, “It
is unethical to manipulate a child by using hypnosis to take control of the child’s mind.”
I’ll ask, “When you parent your child, tell me about what you do? Is it effective?
Is it working? Is it kind?”
RAYNA NEY: Isn’t everyone manipulated by
their parents when they’re growing up? If you grow up with really supportive parents,
they are going to inadvertently influence most of your activities.
LISA MACHENBERG: We learn how to hypnotise
our children to be cooperative, peaceful, have containment, have good study habits,
and to not just be good children, but to become good adults.