Robert Lalah, Assistant Editor-Features

- Robert Lalah

Well, maybe that was a bit harsh, but I really didn't believe all this hypnosis mumbo-jumbo. After all, how are you going to help someone get over a fear just by playing mystifying music and telling them to recite a few lines? It didn't make sense to me, but I'm always up for an adventure and at the very least, I was willing to go along for a good laugh, or two.

Now, standing on the outside of the building, the place seemed normal enough; nothing out of the ordinary or even remotely supernatural. A nicely paved driveway, a few colourful plants and even a lanky gardener who exposed teeth of questionable aesthetic appeal when he smiled. What a let down! Call me demanding, but if there is going to be some hypnotising going on, I want to see some spinning black and white circles, a smoke machine, anything!

Then we went inside. This is where, for me, things got weird. The office is nice, but pretty bare. There was a strong odour of incense and there was only a small couch, a chair and a single table in the room that was little bigger than the average doctor's office. There was a painting on the wall of a boat travelling down a calm stream, that mimicked, perfectly, the mood in the office.

Trance music

Dr Rose Johnson is an affable woman. Her smile is bright and her eyes are captivating. She pulled up a chair and, sitting in the middle of the room, just across from her subject, Nashauna, she picked up a remote control.

"Let me just put on some trance music," she said, pointing the remote control in the direction of a small, black radio on a table beside the couch. Trance music?

Then, it started. It was a low hum, which was sporadically interrupted by whistles. It reminded me of the music you hear during the love scenes of the kung-fu movies that came on after midnight on the local television station, back in the '80s.

I took a few steps back to watch. For the next 10 minutes, the good doctor spoke in a very calm, gentle voice, telling her lizard-hating patient, whose eyes were closed, something about lines, time and space. To be honest, I missed most of it because the repetitious lines, coupled with the trance music, were making me sleepy. Before I knew it, I heard "open your eyes!".

I jumped, thinking the doctor had caught me dosing off, but breathed a sigh of relief when I realised that she wasn't speaking to me. She was telling Nashauna to open her eyes. "You're now cured!" she said, smiling.

"Horse manure!" I thought. "How could she have been cured that quickly? We hadn't been in the room for even 15 minutes."

A good laugh

I looked across at Nashuana, thinking we'd have a good laugh together at the doctor's expense. But, to my surprise, Nashauna said, "Do you have a lizard here that I could see?".

Huh? She's asking to see a lizard? Say it ain't so! The doctor left the room for a minute and returned with a white bottle. In it, was a brownish, long-tailed lizard that made a splatting sound every time it jumped from one side of the container to the next. Creepy stuff for the faint of heart.

I was left standing there, in open-mouthed fascination as the one-time lizard loather jiggled and tapped the bottle in apparent merriment.

Could it be true? Could this really have happened? I don't know what to say, but I sure got out of there as quickly as I could. I wasn't going to hang around to see what else could be changed with just the repetition of a few lines.