I watched this mentalist "Wayne Hoffman". He was cool and used alot of hypnosis. I noticed as he went about this performance he used alot of mental imagrey and visualisation techniques, constantly telling the subjects on stage to "Imagine" things. It was almost like he was walking them through energy raising.

I have also seen alot of hypnosis videos like this. I have also seen people like Criss Angel put someone in a seemingly endless state of relaxation just by telling them they where such. It seems to me that this could be used to help others learn AP and meditation? Perhaps a mix of self hypnosis...