The problem with hypnotism is, as cheza2283 said, his/her psychology teacher said that it does not work. Although this
is true to some cases, in reality it is just the opposite. It ACTUALLY WORKS.
The fact is, if you have a strong mind or an intention that no one will be able to hypnotize you, then it becomes
extremely hard for a person to hypnotize you. Hypnotism is based on 'mind over body'. The stronger the mind
(which resist against it) the higher the chance of not getting hypnotized.
Another fact is, like every cases in human history, there is always exception. There was one person during WWII, who
Hitler tried to capture, because he could control people's thought just by giving orders to a person. He used this
power first when escaping from home on a train WITHOUT A TICKET. He gave blank white small paper to the checker and the
guy took it as a ticket. Later he used it to escape German prison, by giving DIRECT ORDERS to the soldiers who locked
him in the cell! Believe it or not both CIA and KGB revealed SOME INFORMATION about him after WWII, about 10 years
later...(I am not sure about the time when.)
Anyway, hypnotism is also dependent on the hypnotizer (hypnotist). If he is strong then chance goes up.
There are many different ways to hypnotise a person. Chinese used "acupuncture pressure point" to control
muscle and mind to some degree (note that it has nothing to do with acupunture with needles).
In India, people use hand signs or seals to hypnotise people. This is popular in Western countries as well, however,
India developed it thousands of years ago for self improvement, not for magic show!
A person who hypnotize himself is called mesmerist (from the word Mesmerism).
If you look carefully, you will see that hypnotism is all about manipulating the mind. Today's magicians use tricks
and low level hypnotism. The true form of it is extremely strong and very few can actually do that.
The method (not trick) is:
Using proper hand signs, suggestions (psychology, heheheh), and in extremely rare cases, using energy channeling, a
hypnotist reduce a person's brain wave from standard alpha (Berger's wave) or similar wave to very low
frequency gamma or theta wave. This means that hypnotized person loose his control over his body
('unconscious' takes over the body and is open to suggestion given by the hypnotist).
That is pretty much it. There is more to it than that, but I don't want to write a book on it here! So that is a
summary I guess.