ELLY GRIMM

    • Leader & Times

Those planning on attending this year’s Chamber Bash will have a great evening of entertainment ahead of them thanks to comedy hypnotist Erick Känd.

As Känd tells it, however, hypnotism was not exactly in his life’s plans.

“I used to be a CPA, actually, but I've been performing doing hypnosis shows for slightly more than 23 years now. I started around 2003 and just thought it was interesting learning how to do it,” Känd said. “I started seeing clients and for hypnotherapy, and starting doing shows as well. And now I do a lot of corporate type events, colleges and even schools, which are always really fun. I saw a show when I was about 8 years old at a fair, and it made an impression on me. Many years later, I thought I would like to learn about that hypnosis stuff, so I opened up the phone book and I saw that there was a school of healing arts about 12 blocks from my house, so I started taking classes there. I started also flying to meet with various entertainers to learn how to do the stage hypnosis stuff. And that's how the ball got rolling.”

Känd said he particularly enjoys the chance to travel and meet with many different audiences, and revealed this year will actually be a return to Liberal for him, having performed at the 2012 Chamber Bash.

“It's fun and it's challenging getting to go to all these different places and being around all these different audiences and getting to know multiple different parts of the country,” Känd said. “It’s great to be returning to Liberal, Rozelle [Webb] from the Chamber of Commerce is the one who hired me last time, and she’s still great to work with. I think last time, we had about 300 people and it was in the high school auditorium and now we're probably expecting more like 400 people, and it's in the event center, which might not have even existed last time I was there. Another thing people will ask is ‘How do you select the people who volunteer to be a part of the program?’ I don't select anybody to be up on stage – I come out and I do opening comments, tell everybody what they can expect, and so forth. And then I ask for volunteers, so every single person who goes up on stage is somebody that has chosen to be there. And usually they're thinking ‘I wonder what there is to this.’ Maybe they're wondering if hypnosis can work for them, or maybe they're wondering if they can experience some kind of phenomenon or something new and different. My intention is for everybody who volunteers to end up being the ones who have the most fun in the room. Once the show is over, I get two waves of people that come up – the first wave of the people is the ones who were up on stage and tell me ‘Oh my gosh, I feel amazing. That was so great.’ And then the second wave of people are the ones who say, ‘Well, now that I've seen the show, I wish I had volunteered and not sat here.’ Again, the overall goal is pure fun for everyone.”

And after so many years, Känd said he still greatly enjoys putting on his show.

“The performing is the fun part, but the getting there and the travel can be not quite as much fun – there have been a few times when I've had to drive through literal blizzards in order to make a show on time,” Känd said with a chuckle. “But so far, I've had a pretty good track record, even though I've done some crazy things in order to make the show on time. After more than 20 years of performing, every once in a while, you run into some crazy situations with flights or weather or whatever, but those are the shows you really remember.”

Känd said he hopes to see a big turnout to the show.

“It's going to be a lot of fun for everybody. When you’re working with a volunteer-based show, the more people the merrier,” Känd said. “If we've got a good-sized group that allows us to draw a lot of different kinds of personalities on stage, that makes it fun for everybody, because the way people respond to hypnosis is unique to each person. It's not like everybody's doing and experiencing the exact same thing, so it's very interesting to watch because there are so many different types of response to the hypnotic effects going on onstage.”

Känd added each show certainly keeps his job interesting, and he hopes his return to Liberal will continue that.

“Even though I've been doing this a long time I still think this is the most interesting form of entertainment in terms of variety acts, because it's really one of the only things I can think of where the audience personalities are basically have this opportunity to be coached by me, because I'm just the coach really,” Känd said. “I know how to say the right things at the right time to help people get into that trance state, but they actually do it for themselves by, number one, volunteering to be up there on stage, and number two, just following some simple instructions, and they'll be able to have this experience. After the show, people tend to linger around and talk to the people up on stage and might ask ‘How long do you think you were up on stage?’ They might have been up there for an hour, but a really common response will be more like, ‘I don't know, maybe five minutes?’ because there's a hypnotic phenomena called time distortion, where you lose track of time. The unconscious mind is the source of all the power and all the resources, because that's where the emotions are, and that's also where you have unconscious competence. When you've done something so many times that you don't really have to think about it or hesitate, right? It's only the conscious mind that struggles right. The conscious mind is there to make your decisions, but it doesn't really have a lot of power. It’s just always really fun seeing how each individual show turns out. It's really the ideal conditions for an awesome show and should be a really fun time for everybody who goes. So I hope people don't hesitate about showing up, because I think it's going to be a great time.”