Aaron Johnson – General Assignment Reporter
It was a standing room only in the Farnham Hall basement this past Monday evening, as the start of “Hump Week” kicked off with a night of laughs and fun with hypnotist Dan LaRosa.
“It felt pretty weird to get hypnotized to be honest,” said Mohammed Bilal. “My mind was gone. I felt him controlling me but I still had my sanity.”
Bilal – along with several other brave SCSU students – volunteered to be hypnotized by LaRosa. SCSU student Josh Licusi said that no matter how many times he has been hypnotized the feeling is always something he enjoys.
“This is the third time I’ve been hypnotized. You know what’s going on but you don’t know why,” said Licusi, a communication disorder major from Southington.
The show featured LaRosa getting Bilal, Licusi, and three other students to do everything from dancing ballet to imagining they are riding in a horse race. The audience participation was also key throughout the night, cheering on the volunteers as they did one funny, wacky thing after another.
“I really enjoyed doing something like this at Southern,” said LaRosa. “The kids here are fantastic. I was very happy with the turnout tonight. I was honored that we had such a good crowd.”
LaRosa has been doing hypnotism for 30 years and he said that though his routine will change each show, he always wants to be an inspiration to whoever is there to see him preform.
“In all the years that I’ve been doing hypnosis and been using it,” said LaRosa. “I never get tired of it I always love it; I try to be somewhat inspiring to folks. My point behind that is that I feel like I’ve done my job and someone’s looked at it and said yeah I want to try to better my life because of it.”
During the night, the wacky and funny things that LaRosa had the volunteers do included not only horseback riding and ballet, but also running in slow motion, playing the drums, posing for paparazzi, and even dancing with him. LaRosa described the multiple levels of hypnosis that made it even possible for him to make the students do whatever he wanted.
“There are six levels of being hypnotized and anyone can go to level one which is really daydreaming,” said LaRosa. “But to go to the level that these guys were at, that’s very deep hypnosis and it doesn’t look really different to people observing and it doesn’t feel different to these folks but for them to experience something like to dance with me, that’s pretty wacky.”
While under hypnosis, the volunteers were not aware of any of the things they had done. But at the very end LaRosa asked the audience whether or not they should be aware of the things that they did. The vote was a unanimous ‘yes.’
“It’s so weird to remember everything at the end. It like just pops back into your head and you are just like ‘oh no way’,” said Licusi, with a small chuckle.
Although he wanted to just watch the show, Licusi said that he volunteered because his friends enjoy seeing him hypnotized.
“I wanted to kind of watch the show for once but all my friends get a kick out of it so I do it for
them,” said Licusi.
Unlike his volunteer partner who was willing and enjoys being hypnotized, Bilal said that he felt completely different. Although he did want to try to see what it was like to be hypnotized he really did not enjoy the feeling too much.
“No I would not do it again,” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t like the feel I was trying to stop myself but I couldn’t control it.”
