An altered state of mind

Have you ever read a book and been so immersed in the story that hours later you are not conscious of even turning a page? This is an altered state of mind and is linked quite closely to hypnosis. To enter unreservedly into a story is an exhilarating experience. It can bring you to tears, laughter, excitement, sadness and joy. This is the power of story. It can be delivered in a book or orally by a storyteller.

I believe that storytelling is a special gift. For me, telling stories requires total involvement. I am in the story: mentally and visually. I invite my audience to trust me and come with me on the journey. For the willing audience, the experience is similar to that of being under hypnosis. Every person builds their own visual impressions as the story unfolds. No one person’s story world is the same as any other. Their world is uniquely personal and yet they are all drawn together through the theme of the story as delivered by the storyteller.

For a storyteller to be able to induce this state of total involvement it is necessary to select material to which the audience is likely to relate. The teller must, of course be totally committed to the story. Panning across your listeners, eye-balling them fleetingly, you invite them to come with you on your personal journey. The audience participates by focusing unreservedly on the story being told. This is a personal commitment of time and effort on behalf of the listener. Occasionally, in the course of the story, re engagement by eye helps to maintain the listener’s interest and commitment.

Minimising distractions will help listeners to remain engaged. Mobile phones must be turned off (including your own), body movement should be kept to a minimum and jewellery be avoided. Stories of no more than ten minutes work best for me. Accordingly my material is mostly drawn from poetry. The discipline of meter and rhyme imposed on poets helps to ensure that the story is told powerfully with a great economy of words.

To put together a performance of storytelling, four to six stories would deliver entertainment for between thirty and forty-five minutes (allowing an average of seven minutes per story). In order to provide the audience with an exciting journey, they should be exposed to the greatest possible range of emotional experience. Therefore, light and shade, humour and pathos should be thoughtfully mixed to deliver the maximum impact. If possible deliver your stories acoustically (that is without a microphone), but be sure that your audience is able to hear your words easily. The degree of your commitment will determine the level of energy you deliver to your listeners. Generally, your audience, by their total involvement will return energy to you.

There are audiences, however, who may be less unable to return energy due to being very elderly or mentally impaired. But these are the people who most need the opportunity to escape into the realm of story. No longer can they read. Radio seldom delivers the radio stories they loved so much when they were young. TV does not deliver the same escape. You, the storyteller can. For a short while you can take them on a journey, help them enter a world far away from their current, often depressing circumstances, where they can laugh and cry and experience life away from reality through an altered state of mind.

Dreaming through a dark window.