Occult of Personality podcast

Lee Gerrard-Barlow, a Mesmerist, hypnotherapist, N.L.P. practitioner, and teacher is our guest in podcast episode 142.


Lee Gerrard-Barlow has been working therapeutically with trance states, meditation, and yoga based practices for the past 20 years. He trained as an N.L.P. Master Practitioner with Dr. Richard Bandler’s Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and studied hypnosis and hypnotherapy with The Institute of Clinical Hypnosis in London. He treats clients using individually tailored therapies based on his expertise in these disciplines. Lee is an Official Premier Trainer for ISI/CNV International, the continental school of Dr. Marco Paret, teaching the arts of Magnetism (Mesmerism) Fascination and ‘Presence based therapy’. Lee occasionally hosts courses and has written articles for magazines and online journals.


“Many people are familiar with ‘Hypnotism’ in it’s various forms such as stage hypnosis and hypno-therapies, and its modern hyper-packaged cousin neuro-linguistic programming (N.L.P.)… You may think that hypnotism is strange enough, but a curious fact is that even serious students of disciplines such as clinical hypnosis are rarely taught or even encouraged to research the far stranger origins of their profession. That to which I refer is Mesmerism. These days, many people are completely unaware of where the commonplace word ‘Mesmerism’ derives from. Mesmerism is the term coined due to Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), a most curious Austrian gentleman, well worthy of further research, who practised and popularised a therapeutic form known as ‘Animal Magnetism’. He believed in the reality of a ‘universal fluid’ that surrounds every living thing, that can be directed at will by an individual operator… Although it is of popular belief that Mesmerism (also known as animal magnetism or simply magnetism) fell into obscurity purely due to its being disqualified by the medical profession. In fact it was the hiatus caused by the onset of the French Revolution that obscured the art… Word of the powerful healing abilities of Mesmerism persisted despite its going underground, until in England in 1884 the surgeon James Braid of Manchester, after having personally observed the demonstrations given by the traveling Mesmerist Charles La Fontaine, made an attempt at laying the mystical belief in animal magnetism to rest by making a concise study of it; thereby forming the foundation of the so-called science of certain procedures that are to this day utilised by hypnotherapists.” – Lee Gerrard Barlow in “Modern Day Mesmerism“

“… Mesmerism can be very useful for the regeneration of nervous debilitation; for getting an individual re-centered and re-balanced and to regain a healthy relationship to ones own body and increased awareness of ones own energies which amounts to the same thing . Mesmerism was regarded as a panacea by many ancient practitioners. It is very much a matter of experimentation, application and research by the individual practitioner. Reading up on all the historic accounts tells you what was achieved and how the various practitioners related to their art. In my work I actually utilize a variety of hypnotic methods in therapy tailored to each individual case, but Mesmerism itself is definitely the most rapid method for getting people into deep states where real change can occur. So this art forms the basis of it all. What is also amazing, is that it is completely ‘non verbal’, and used for ‘inductions’, it is by far the best method compared to the lengthy verbal inductions of traditional hypnosis.” – Lee Gerrard-Barlow in “