Elizabethtown College’s Office of Student Affairs (OSA) welcomed a professional hypnotist to campus on Saturday, Nov 2. Sailesh The Hypnotist took the opportunity to enlighten Etown students in the realities of hypnotics. Students seemed to be amazed at what Sailesh was capable of doing once the volunteers were under his control.
Prior to the start of the show, Katie Bolzano, a sophomore graphic design and business administration major said she was excited for the event and planned ahead for it.,
“A partner and I signed up to do this event because we’ve never seen [a hypnotist], and we wanted to experience thism” Bolzano said. “We worked together making sure there were enough seats and picking a date and time.”
Bolzano was one of the individuals who became hypnotized later on in the evening.
Sailesh chose volunteers from the crowd to come join him on stage. He encouraged the crowd to allow themselves to be hypnotized as well. This allowed him to gain an additional member to his act on stage once an individual was hypnotized from the audience.
Once Sailesh had all his volunteers hypnotized, the show officially began. The students on stage began following his every suggestion. During this process, he had the students travel to Mars, interact with an alien and control their own spaceship.
After they returned to Earth, they had an encounter with a belt that they believed was a snake. This experience seemed to have startled many of the hypnotized students. From the audience observations, it seemed like some of the hypnotized individuals may have been fading in and out of full hypnosis.
Ava Gates, a sophomore dual major at Etown was one of the individuals who was on stage.
“It was a lot of fun,” Gates said. “At first, I knew I was 100% hypnotized, but the hypnotist moved me to a different chair and from there, I knew the rest of the show I wasn’t. It’s still so crazy to me that I was able to be hypnotized even if it was for a very short period.”
Gates said her favorite part of the night was the superhero segment and the interview for a daycare she had.
Many audience members were in complete shock at what they were witnessing. Some of the other skits entailed playing invisible instruments and loosening up their hips for a dance party. Some of the audience members were stunned at some of the responses from the stars of the night.
“I was shocked,” sophomore early childhood education major Micheala Taylor said. “I was not expecting them to actually be hypnotized!” Taylor emphasized her enjoyment ofthe show and said she would attend again if OSA brought Sailesh back.
Sailesh has been working in this industry for roughly 30 years, he said, . Sailesh talked about how when he was younger, he worked for a hypnotist and became truly fascinated with the process. Since then, he has learned everything there is to know about chakra and mastered the art of hypnotizing. This was reflected during his performance.
Sailesh said that “having people do something they wouldn’t normally do and make them feel like superstars” was his favorite part of the performance.
Once Sailesh completed his experience with Etown, students still raved about how incredible the performance was. Some of the hypnotized stars stayed in the Koons Activity Venue (KAV) afterwards and talked about how they felt while they were hypnotized and how they feel now that they are free from the hypnotic state.
If you missed this event and would like to stay updated about other upcoming OSA events, check out their online schedule or follow their instagram: @etownosa.
