Stone, a.k.a. the “Hollywood Hypnotist,” has been making people do stuff they didn’t think they could for 10 years. A Delta Frequent Flyer, Stone, 40, balances a clinical hypnotherapy practice in Southern California with a career as a stage hypnotist, complete with Las Vegas–style special effects and a booking schedule that keeps him on the road two to three weeks each month. Some people might have trouble reconciling the satin-suited showman with the gabardine-clad clinician, but Stone flies between the theatrical world and the clinical environment with the greatest of ease. Moments after the end of a lively show at the L.A. County Fair last September, he was down off the stage counseling audience members who had lined up to seek his advice.

     “If you’re smoking, if it’s a weight issue, or you want to increase your earning power, gain more confidence—whatever it is you want to think about, you can change through hypnosis,” says Stone. “Your mind is like a computer system. What I do, I am really a computer programmer. I take out that negative programming . . . and replace it with positive programming.”

     Stone sees clients at two hypnotherapy clinics, one in San Diego, where he lives, and the other in Los Angeles. People come to him with a range of issues, but he has developed a specialty in helping sports figures and entertainers enhance their professional performance. He also does pro bono work at White Memorial Medical Center in East L.A., where he trains physicians and other medical professionals in techniques to help patients manage pain. But most of the time he’s taking his hypno-show on the road, whether it’s headlining at a comedy club, performing at a corporate special event or providing the entertainment at a fair. Stone is upbeat about his high-pressure lifestyle. “When it comes to my hectic schedule, I don’t really see it as work,” he explains. “I see every day as a party. I enjoy every second of it.”

     Hypnosis was not Stone’s original career plan. With a degree in communications, he had hoped to be a news anchor or sports commentator—“the next Ted Koppel,” he recalls. But along the way he happened to sign up for a basic course on hypnosis that he thought might help him stop his longtime nail-biting habit. Within a few sessions, Stone did indeed stop biting his nails. As it turned out, Ted Koppel could stop biting his nails, too, because the initial exposure to the power of hypnosis was enough to launch Stone on a new career path. He completed a two-year program at the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in Tarzana, California, earning a certification in hypnotherapy and later becoming board-certified.

     Stone is quick to say that when it comes to hypnotism, he was the original skeptic. “I didn’t believe in it, to tell you the truth,” he says. “I believed what everybody else thinks hypnosis is, the old Svengali guy with the hypnodisc [the spiral-patterned disc used by some hypnotists] and the watch that he’s swinging, and he’s controlling you, and like the old ‘Columbo’ shows, you’re hypnotized to jump off cliffs and kill people and all that silliness.”

     Skeptics would do well to take in one of Stone’s stage shows, where he demonstrates an uncanny ability to get inside people’s heads in a remarkably short time. During a typical performance he asks for volunteers from the audience, seats them onstage and within a few minutes has caused most of them to fall into a hypnotic state so deep that they collapse on each other like a row of snuggling puppies. The most suggestible of the subjects instantly obey Stone’s every command, from dancing ballet to speaking only Japanese—actually complete gibberish that sounds like Japanese. Stone sets up several very funny situations, but he takes care not to ridicule his “stars,” and closes each show with a brief hypnotherapy session designed to address issues that the subjects might want to change.

     Stone’s onstage assistant is his wife, Yvette, whom he met while performing at a comedy club in Texas six years ago and married last year. During shows, she helps make the complicated task of hypnotizing a large group of people look effortless. Offstage, she facilitates the complicated task of getting her husband from one coast to the other. Both Stones take a disciplined approach to travel. They bring along a considerable amount of production equipment, but when it comes to personal baggage, they have learned to simplify. “People tend to overpack because of insecurity; you’re unsure of what the weather might be or what you might need,” says the Hollywood Hypnotist. “Well, you don’t need it. Wherever you go there’s a laundromat or a store. We take exactly what we need and no more.”

     When you’re the entertainment, there’s a lot riding on your on-time arrival. “People have paid good money for the 8 o’clock show, and if I’m not there—the stress and anxiety for someone like me is much greater than for your normal traveler,” Stone observes. But while your normal traveler might have a meltdown when there’s a snag in the trip, Stone says he never lets it get to him. “I use self-hypnosis to allow myself to remain calm, relaxed, confident, secure,” he says. “The mind is a very powerful tool, and I only project complete and total positives; I actually see the pictures of how it’s going to lay out for me when I travel. And I must tell you, I don’t have any problems at all.”