If you suddenly feel compelled to swing by Owens Community College this month, it may be because a nationally renowned comedy hypnotist will be making an appearance.

Actually, Frederick Winters can’t hypnotize just anyone — they have to volunteer — but by all accounts he keeps his audiences laughing.

Voted Campus Activities Magazine’s 2010 Best Male Performer and its 2006 College Entertainer of the Year, Winters loves to be onstage. He has performed more than 2,000 shows and hypnotized more than 155,000 people, according to his website.

Winters will perform from noon to 1:30 p.m. Jan. 13 at the Center for Fine and Performing Arts’ Mainstage Theatre at the Toledo-area campus, 30335 Oregon Road, Perrysburg. Admission is free and open to the public.

Nicole Lance of Owens’ Student Activities Office said the group heard good things about Winters at a conference and were won over after watching a video of him perform.

“I think it’s going to be really hilarious,” Lance said.

Frederick Winters

Winters said it’s impossible for him to pick a favorite or funniest moment from one of his shows.

“I think a hypnosis show is so genuinely funny because I put very logical people into very illogical situations. They don’t rationalize the way a fully conscious person does, so it’s very unpredictable, very spontaneous and hugely entertaining. I wouldn’t know where to begin isolating one over the other,” Winters said during a phone interview. “All I can say is every show has one of the funniest moments I’ve seen. I have a good laugh along with the audience sometimes.”

Winters might tell his subjects they’re on a roller coaster, causing them to scream while simply sitting in a chair. Or suggest they lost their belly buttons and a person in the front row has it.

“When you watch someone get hypnotized, you know something is going on,” Winters said. “You know these people wouldn’t be doing all these crazy, illogical things if they weren’t under some kind of hypnotic suggestion.”

Winters said a small number of people can be induced simply with a handshake, but he typically takes it slow during shows, gradually deepening the level of hypnosis during 12 minutes.

Winters, who became interested in hypnosis while attending Northwestern University and trained under master hypnotherapist George Vaughn Lowther, describes hypnosis as simply an altered state of consciousness.

“I’m putting them in this relaxed state of mind, but it’s no different from what watching ‘I Love Lucy’ will do; your brain goes and you lose yourself for awhile,” Winters said. “When you stare at a TV set, time passes quickly, or when in a movie or on the computer or when driving down the highway and you’re not aware you’re driving, but you are. Those are hypnotic states.”

Although he now tours full time with his comedy routine, Winters is also a certified clinical hypnotherapist and sells CDs that help people quit smoking, lose weight, improve memory, improve sports performance and more.

Along with entertaining audiences, he educates his crowds about the many misconceptions of hypnosis as well as how hypnotherapy can be used to modify perceptions, behavior, sensations and emotions.

But there is a limit on what he can make people do.

“If I tell them to jump off a cliff, they wouldn’t do it because they aren’t unconscious. They still have reservations, but it becomes a natural tendency to obey the voice of the hypnotizer,” Winters said. “If forced (on stage) against their will, they wouldn’t respond to hypnosis. If someone can’t be hypnotized, it doesn’t mean they can’t be hypnotized, it just means they don’t want to at that moment.”

Winters said people will enjoy his show, whether participating or watching.

“I think if nothing else, I hope they forget about life for a while, hopefully laugh their heads off,” Winters said. “I hope they walk away saying ‘That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, I didn’t believe in hypnosis when I walked in here, but now I do.’”

For information, visit www.frederickwinters.com or contact Owens’ Office of Student Activities at 1-800-GO-OWENS, Ext. 2569.

Tags: Frederick Winters, Owens Community College

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 at 8:56 am and is filed under Comedy, Star.
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