Shippensburg University students fell out of their chairs last Thursday when international comedy hypnotist Eric Mina dared them to dream using his fine-tuned power of suggestion.

Mina, dubbed “amazingly hysterical” by CBS, was welcomed on stage in the multipurpose room of the Ceddia Union Building with a roar of cheers and whistles.

“The best part about my show is it is not about me,” Mina told the excitable crowd. “It is about you guys.”

The hypnotist established some rules before the start of the show; no injured, asthmatic or pregnant people and no gum chewing on stage. He then offered a seat to those who abided by the rules, surging a storm of students to the stage for a spot in the show.

Mina began his performance by asking the entire crowd to sit with their eyes closed, arms extended and hands 6 inches apart. He told the audience to imagine magnets in their hands, drawing each other closer as he spoke in an increasingly dramatic voice.

When the crowd opened their eyes, many of their hands were touching.

“If you can imagine something in your mind, your body will respond,” said Mina. “The body is a slave to the mind.”

Mina hypnotized the students on stage using deep breathing techniques and the mantra “warm and heavy”. The volunteers gradually slumped into their seats with heads hanging forward as if in a deep sleep.

An altered sense of reality clouded the volunteers’ minds throughout the show as Mina suggested to the students they were kittens and dogs, cheerleaders, ballerinas, players in an orchestra, dance show contestants and judges in a talent show.

The certified hypnotist pushed the limits of volunteers’ visual reality, making them believe he was blue from head to toe.

“Your pants were red,” one student uttered sleepily, “now… you are all damn blue.”

Mina commanded the volunteers to “sleep” only to wake them to the perceived image of him naked, striking a consensus of embarrassment and disgust on stage.

“Please put clothes on,” a volunteer pleaded, hands over his face. “You do you, but not around me ok?”

One volunteer took kindly to Mina’s bare illusion. “You were hot before, but now you are even hotter,” she said. The crowd exploded in laughter.

“If you guys change your thoughts you will change your world,” Mina said before he left the volunteers with two last suggestions, the first a vision of success for their future to carry with them in life. The second; an amazing orgasmic sensation felt by the volunteer each time someone shook their hand and congratulated them on the show, lasting until they left the MPR door.

“I don’t remember much,” SU student and volunteer Jared Sivco said fuzzily as students crowded around him to shake his hand and congratulate him, inducing the climactic reaction Mina impressed on him.

“The show was amazing!” said SU student Amanda Domian, joining the crowd surrounding Sivco.

“All hypnosis is actually self-hypnosis,” Mina told the audience. “In all actuality, they hypnotized themselves.”

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