Going Under? : Teacher’s Classroom Hypnosis Provokes Trustees’ Anxiety

Once a semester, Lynn Meschan puts her psychology students into a trance.

Hypnosis “creates an altered state that’s natural, where that person himself is in charge,” said Meschan, who teaches at Moorpark and Ventura colleges. “What students are learning is that they can create for themselves a wonderful, relaxed, peaceful state of mind.”

But what Meschan calls wonderful and peaceful, some Ventura County Community College District trustees worry may be inappropriate and legally indefensible.

Eighteen years after Meschan began using hypnosis in her introductory psychology classes, at least three of the five trustees say she may have to snap out of it.

“Hypnosis may have usefulness, but I’m not familiar with it,” said Karen Boone, the trustee who initiated an investigation of the practice. “I even have a psychology minor from a four-year institution, and I’ve never encountered that.”

Boone said she grew concerned with the practice about two years ago. At that time, she said, two students approached her separately, saying frightening dreams--which they attributed to the 15-minute hypnosis sessions--plagued them with unnerving frequency.

“We don’t want anyone having a negative experience at the colleges,” Boone said.

Since then, the district chancellor, college presidents, other teachers and administrators, Meschan and even her psychology students have entered the alternative-consciousness fray.

Meschan--who is considered extremely popular with her students for her innovative methods--teaches three introductory psychology classes each semester at Moorpark College and one each semester at Ventura College.

Students at both colleges have defended the practice in writing, some saying it was one of the most memorable lessons of the semester. Meschan has made her case before department heads and both college presidents and won assurance that she would be allowed to continue her hypnosis sessions, she said.

Then the district’s lawyer weighed in. The college district, he said, could be setting itself up for a lawsuit every time Meschan asks her students to close their eyes and concentrate on her voice.

The lawyer’s opinion gave pause to Trustee Gregory P. Cole. “I’m alarmed because of the potential liability,” he said. “What happens if . . . someone claims he was damaged mentally or physically by this?”

Board President Allan Jacobs said the attorney’s letter also made him wary. “It isn’t that I’m opposed to hypnosis--personally, I feel it’s helpful to a number of people,” he said, adding that he has never been hypnotized.

“But there may be long-lasting effects which we don’t know about,” he continued, “and with the litigious society we have around us, we don’t need anything more to bother us.”

Board members will consider the issue at next month’s meeting. Meanwhile, the college presidents are gathering information on whether teachers at other college districts permit hypnosis in class.

For their part, Meschan’s students view the whole to-do as evidence of an unenlightened board of trustees.

“It was relaxing and rather harmless,” said Chris Dellith, 28, of Agoura. “Look, she can describe it to you or she can help you experience it. What’s better, a description or the actual experience?”

Mami Sakamoto, 20, of Moorpark didn’t participate in the hypnosis session, although most of her class did, because she was a little afraid of what might happen. She remembered watching a hypnosis demonstration on television in which the hypnotist made people do a crazy dance, she said. Sakamoto did not feel like dancing.

Now, after watching the session in early February, she said she wishes she had been part of it. “It looks like fun,” she said with a giggle.

This, Meschan said, is what she does: She spends about five minutes or so helping the students relax their bodies, encouraging them to visualize a peaceful, natural setting and to feel safe and comfortable. They are encouraged to feel each limb growing heavier, as if releasing all the tension that usually prevents an arm or leg from hanging limp.

Then she gives them suggestions on positive study habits and effective test-taking, on the assumption that in a hypnotic state, their subconscious mind will be more receptive to the information. She is then quiet for a minute, asking them to silently review their personal study goals.

Finally, she counts to 5 and they return to their normal, conscious state.

Meschan, who is certified in hypnosis by the Psychodynamic School of Hypnosis in Northern California, emphasizes that students are not pressured into participating and that no one in a hypnotic state can be persuaded to do something he or she does not want to do.

“If you feel comfortable clucking like a chicken, you will cluck like a chicken,” she said. “But if you don’t feel comfortable, you won’t.”