Daydream Believers

You are feeling very…pregnant?  Under Dr. Scarpati’s trance, hypnotized patrons kiss a bird, dance a jig or stop smoking. The success coach will perform Oct. 5 at Bucks County Comedy Cabaret.

By: Daniel Shearer
   REPORTERS learn to approach stories with measured skepticism. This seemed doubly important during a recent interview with Churchville, Pa., resident Andrew Scarpati, a board-certified clinical hypnotist and self-billed "success coach."
   Any doubts I had flew straight out the window when the man hypnotized my girlfriend. No joke.
   Under hypnosis for nearly an hour, she kissed an imaginary bird on her finger, danced the ballet and did an impression of what it would be like to become an electric, automatic washing machine.

"Post-hypnotic
Post-hypnotic suggestion? Success coach Andrew Scarpati made a believer out of one writer. No, the reporter wasn’t hypnotized into providing an endorsement.

   She forgot her last name. Then, along with four other willing participants, forgot how to use her tongue. As you might imagine, it is very difficult to pronounce the name "Constance" without a tongue. She looked confused for several minutes, then got zapped into sleep land.
   Dr. Scarpati, you see, does an impressive comedy hypnosis show. He also owns the Comedy Cabaret, a chain of clubs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. He’ll be at the Bucks County Comedy Cabaret in Doylestown, Pa., for a show Oct. 5. Consider this a personal endorsement: He has talent.
   Hypnotism doesn’t work on everyone. Dr. Scarpati is quick to explain this during his show, as he asks for volunteers to fill the 16 vacant seats on stage. The act, as he puts it, "works on the numbers." He gradually eliminates participants who don’t seem to be following suggestions, whittling the field to between four and eight individuals.
   "I do progressive relaxation," he says. "It’s just taking some deep breaths, relaxing and focusing on different parts of your body. Once their mind gets focused on what I’m talking about, I can tell by visual cues. You start to see wrinkles or lines on the face start to soften up. You can see the whole body relax."
   Initially, hypnosis requires a quiet environment, not always easy to maintain in a comedy club. Despite his requests for silence, at least one table near the front issues persistent snickering. He shoots several nasty stares their way but struggles to silence them throughout the show. Despite this distraction, his soothing voice helps induce deep relaxation within five minutes.
   "I’m going to be counting down toward one," he says to the group. "By the time we get to one, you are going to be completely relaxed, feeling like we’re good friends."
   Constance’s shoulders are among the first to droop. Dr. Scarpati has no idea of her relationship with a certain writer, yet he singles her out, walking toward her and kneeling next to her chair.
   "You that I’m touching now," he says. "I want you to hold out your finger and imagine there’s a little bird on your finger."
   She complies.
   "Now, I want you to kiss the bird."
   Once again, she follows the suggestion, kissing her finger repeatedly and giggling uncontrollably. The audience roars.
   "Go to sleep," he says, touching her forehead.
   Bang. She’s out. Dr. Scarpati is only warming up.
   "Hypnosis is a normal state of mind that we all experience anyway," he says. "It’s the focused mental state, like daydreaming. You know, when someone is watching TV or reading a book, they’re so into it they don’t hear you call their name. It’s a state of hypnosis, basically.
   "Everyone experiences different levels of it. Some people are just more suggestible than others. I don’t know the reason why, I just know it’s true. Usually, the higher the intelligence, the more creative a person is, the more they can get involved in the whole thing."
   As the show builds, Dr. Scarpati embarks on more elaborate scenarios. He has his participants imagine they’re rooting for track horses, then hands them imaginary winnings and transforms the money to ice cubes once they’ve placed it in their pockets. Later, several of them become cows being milked. He suggests that one woman forget the number between five and seven, then has her count her fingers. She skips the number, counting up, then down. When asked if she still has 10 fingers, she replies, perplexed, "I thought I did."
   "Could you use another one?" he asks.
   "Sure," she replies, excitedly nodding.
   "OK. You’re going to remember the number between five and seven, now count your fingers."
   Magically, the number six reappears.
   Perhaps the best gag of the night comes with the help of two manly men, one of them in his 40s with a scraggly ponytail and tattoos. The other looked like he’d been to the gym earlier that day.
   "Guys, I want you to stick out your stomach as far as you can," Dr. Scarpati says. "You’re now pregnant. That’s right, pregnant. You are so pregnant, in fact, when I count to three and tell you to get out of the chair, you’re gonna have a hard time getting out."
   The men struggle out of their seats, looking pained. Dr. Scarpati walks over to one of them and asks, "Who did this to you?"
   "Some guy," the man replies.
   "Did you enjoy it?"
   "Not really."
   JOKES ASIDE, DR. SCARPATI MAINTAINS his show is a useful tool to demonstrate the potential of hypnosis to help people overcome addictions, deal with phobias, control pain or manage their weight. Much of his work centers around tracing experiences to an "initializing event," such as a traumatic childhood memory.
   "I do therapy on the event," Dr. Scarpati says, "so when I’m finished talking to someone about that event and helping them imagine different things about it, the session’s over. I basically turn the whole experience around, so at a deeper level in their mind they don’t experience it the same way."
   Dr. Scarpati started studying hypnosis in 1995, after taking a self-hypnosis class at The Learning Annex in Manhattan. He followed it with several weekend courses at the Hypnosis Institute in Manhattan, eventually earning a doctorate in clinical hypnotherapy through the American Institute of Hypnotherapy in Irvine, Calif., an organization that offers correspondence courses.
   "It’s a real cut-rate thing," he says. "Anybody can take a weekend course and they get a certificate handed to them. Then, in an advanced course, it’s another weekend.
   "My doctorate, it took two years to go through that. It took work, but you don’t have to be a genius to do it. I don’t consider myself a genius by any stretch of the imagination. But I sincerely enjoy helping people, and I didn’t know I had it in me. That’s the amazing part, to me. My whole life completely changed."
   Dr. Scarpati taught sixth-graders in the Pennsbury School District for three years, then left teaching to open the first Comedy Cabaret in 1980. Then, in 1995, the Bucks County native expanded his comedy club office in Richboro, Pa., opening a clinical hypnotherapy practice next door. A few weeks later, one of his first customers, a 27-year-old real estate agent, inadvertently gave Dr. Scarpati’s practice a major boost.
   "A guy walks through the door, he wants to quit smoking," Dr. Scarpati says. "I did a session with him, he stops. Now I didn’t know that his father is a medical doctor in Richboro. A couple weeks go by, I get a phone call from Dr. Lawrence Schmitzer. He said, ‘You helped my son. When can I meet you?’ Then, he tells me ‘I’m going to send you all my patients.’ That was it, man. They just started coming in, then one leads to another."
   Dr. Schmitzer, a family practitioner in Richboro and Bensalem, Pa., maintains his endorsement today. Initial sessions with Dr. Scarpati cost $150 for two hours, with $125 for a second session, if needed, and $100 for each additional session.
   "Sending patients to Dr. Scarpati is my first suggestion to help them quit smoking," says Dr. Schmitzer, who has sent dozens of patients to Dr. Scarpati over the years. "I get at least an 80 percent success rate with one visit.
   "I think it works because cigarette smoking, for me, seems more like a psychological addition, rather than a physical one. I send other people to him for phobias, weight control, alcoholism, they’re the main things. I will also be working with him in the future to explore the benefits of hypnosis for controlling cancer pain."
   Dr. Scarpati recently collaborated with Dr. Schmitzer on a fund-raiser for Gilda’s Club of Bucks and Montgomery Counties, an organization that strives to provide a home-like setting for cancer patients. As for why hypnotism works with some people and not with others, Dr. Schmitzer says that question remains a mystery.
   "The mind is a very unexplored part of our body," Dr. Schmitzer says. "The power of suggestion has immense benefits, but it doesn’t help everybody. If (Dr. Scarpati) feels he can’t hypnotize someone, he does not pursue it. He’s very honest with them."
   Dr. Scarpati responds to doubts about hypnosis in a different way:
   "What works 100 percent of the time?" he says. "Twenty to 30 percent of people who walk in the door will immediately be cured of something — the placebo effect.
   "I feel very proud of the fact that I’ve helped a lot of people get through some serious problems. I’m talking about abuse, all kinds of lurid, horrid things that you wouldn’t wish on anybody. There’s nothing I’ve done in my life that’s more fulfilling."
Dr. Scarpati will perform his Comedy Hypnosis Show at Bucks County
Comedy Cabaret, 625 N. Main St., Doylestown, Pa., Oct. 5, 9 p.m. Tickets cost
$17.50 in advance, $20 at the door. Smoke-free show. For information, call
(215) 345-5653. On the Web: www.comedycabaret.com.
For inquiries about Dr. Scarpati’s clinical hypnosis, The Achievement Center
of America, call (215) 364-6684. On the Web: www.drscarpati.com