When something suddenly interrupts an automated unit of behavior a strange but interesting thing occurs. There is a pause – a blank 1 or 2 seconds – where the brain doesn’t know what to do. The conscious mind hasn’t fully engaged again and there is essentially a blank slate as far as a hypnotist is concerned. If you give a suggestion in that pause – it is more likely than not that the brain will act on the suggestion.

If you then carry on as if nothing has occurred then quite often the person will have total amnesia of that 2 second pause. So here is the 2 second hypnosis secret in order.

1. blah blah blah blah (normal conversation)
2. pattern interrupt (just something unexpected during an automatic habitual action)
3. suggestion – in a different tone of voice if possible (you got 1 or 2 seconds)
4. blah blah blah (carry on with you conversation in the same tonality and pace as before the interrupt

That’s it folks. There is more to it than this, but this is the core underlying principle things such as the ‘handshake interrupt’. I teach this stuff in seminars on influence to business groups. It works. I just had a lady give our group some feedback … she interrupted a kiss from her boyfriend just before their lips touched by turning her head away and whispering that she wanted some sunflowers (this boyfriend had only bought her flowers twice in the last 4 years). A few days later he turns up with sunflowers. She asked him if he had just done this because she said so … and he flatly denied it. He had no recollection of her saying anything to him.

So, I’ve let the cat amongst the pigeons here in exposing the sneaky little 2 second hypnotic session. Have fun. Don’t do anything silly with this – and remember you can’t get anyone to do anything that goes against their core principles (contrary to what a lot of hype out there is suggesting). And this takes practice to get right. Good luck on your journey in learning how to hypnotise.

Happy trips

The Wandering Hypnotist

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One way to set up rhythm in the beginning is simply using the pace of your voice. This can take a little practice and one way to experiment with this when you start to learn to hypnotise is to use a metronome (you can get a real one or use a software based one with earphones – I’ll post a blog on how to do this if you are interested at some point). Using a metronome and pacing your script delivery in-time with the beat can work wonders on the impact and effectiveness of your hypnosis induction technique.

It’s almost like poetry … and as you play with a metronome … do a little self-hypnosis and set-up your own internal metronome that you can gently turn on in the background as an internal rhythm generator for your hypnosis techniques.

I have a few other secrets but before getting to them, go away and play with rhythm. Even within this one area there are some really sneaky ways of introducing rhythm in your ” learn to hypnotise ” journey.

Happy journeys.

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Underlying most of the techniques you will be exposed to as you learn how to hypnotise is this simple yet complex hypnosis secret:

Grabbing and directing attention (whether conscious or unconscious attention) is THE secret behind every induction.

I can already hear some objections so let me share a couple of observations.

1. Most beginning hypnosis techniques are about gently guiding the conscious awareness on a little journey while you ‘establish communication’ with subconscious resources without the ‘critical judge’ of the conscious mind so much in-the-way. As you advance you might also be introduced to ‘rapid induction’ hypnosis techniques … there are plenty of twitter ads and search engine ads out there promoting those “how to hypnotize someone in 60 seconds” type of products and courses. In my opinion, these are still of this the ‘grab and direct’ conscious attention hypnosis techniques (I’ll give you a run-down on how these work at some point).
2. The other class of hypnosis techniques are about grabbing and directing the attention of the unconscious mind. These are a very different (and powerful) type of hypnotic induction. The conscious mind is secondary … you might not even care about directing the conscious mind … the conscious mind might not even know that the induction has already taken place, the suggestions made and the interaction complete. ‘Conversational hypnosis’ techniques are some of the ways in which you can begin to do this — BUT this is not the be-all or end-all of this class of hypnosis techniques. There are in my opinion much more powerful means of inducing hypnosis unconsciously than conversationally. But this is advanced stuff.

I went through the classic path of learning to hypnotize by going through the first class of techniques above, then the second class … and only realized some fundamental underlying secrets in the last few years. I’ve begun to talk about some of them in these posts … but not all has been revealed yet .

So, as you go forward and learn how to hypnotise keep an eye and ear out on whether you grabbing and directing the conscious mind or the unconscious mind … and as you develop more skill begin to figure out which is more effective generally for you.

Happy trips

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Just about all courses you go to will teach this basic hypnosis induction and we’ll do just the same. It can quite literally have an enormous positive impact on your life learning this particular form of self hypnosis. It is used in various guises with:

• stress management,
• meditation practice,
• as an exercise in helping people sleep
• hypnosis sessions
• as an introduction to guided imagery
• preparation for sports and martial arts
• etc. etc.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Yes, you’ve probably heard of or even experienced this for yourself. It may not have been under the ‘hypnosis’ label but it is a classic hypnosis induction technique. I’ll give you my version of it here:

(Warning – if you have high blood pressure or a heart problem you might want to skip the tensing part … just imagine tension flowing out into the floor as you progressively go through the muscle groups below).

1. Get into a comfortable chair or couch (you can even to this lying down … but you might fall asleep )
2. Loosen any tight clothing you may have, remove your shoes if they are tight.
3. Center your balance by gently rocking backwards and forwards, side-to-side, making the movements smaller and smaller until you feel perfectly centered.
4. Take a deep breath … and as you breath out gently close your eyes.
5. Starting with the top of your body (e.g. your eyes), as you breath in, tense them more than you are now (e.g. scrunch up your eyes), hold for a count of 3 … and release … let go … as you breath out.
6. Repeat for your cheek and jaw muscles … breath in … and as you breath in tense your jaw muscles more than they are now (don’t go overboard with the tension people … we trying to relax, not stress you further) … hold for a count of 3 … and as you breath out …. feel as if all the tension is melting out of your face … dripping onto the floor. Move your jaws … make sure it is relaxed. Repeat this if necessary.
7. Move on down for all your muscle groups … your shoulders, your biceps, your hands, your stomach, your buttocks, your thighs, your calves and your feet/toes.
8. Don’t go overboard on the tensing … the key is to begin to notice the difference between tension and relaxation … and to consciously let go … we often don’t realize just how tense we are holding our muscles.
9. Remember to tense as you breath in … release as your breath out …
10. When you have reached your feet … you should be totally relaxed. You could consider this to be a mild hypnotic state.

Practice this at least once a day … after a couple of weeks you should be able to just ‘intend’ to relax, take a deep breath and let all the tension go as you exhale (you can skip the progressive muscle bit – that’s just to make you aware of the difference between tension and relaxation).

Have a good trip!

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Now, I’m going to be permissive (hypnotically speaking) here and introduce a key linguistic setup for you to go away and play with. In learning how to hypnotise the permissive way the key is to offer choice at the same time as you build your authority in the persons mind.

That may sound complicated or a bit deep so let’s explore what I mean by way of an example.

“You may or may not be beginning to relax or you may not even be aware of just how relaxed you are right now”

A number of things are happening here with this sentence. I’m offering choice. I’m offering choice that covers every possibility. I’m not saying which possibility is the ‘correct’ one, but I’ve covered all bases. And because naturally the person being hypnotized will ‘identify’ with one of the possibilities, they will naturally build trust in me. I’ve demonstrated choice. Even if they weren’t aware of how relaxed they currently were (the 3rd possibility in the sentence above), they will be now as I’ve directed their attention to one of the other two possiblities.

(More importantly I’ve reflected back to them something that is already happening in their experience … and we’ll look at that in a future post).

So the take-away lesson here is that offering choice that covers all possibilities builds trust and authority in you as the ‘hypnotist’. This is what I mean by a permissive style of hypnosis.

When you learn how to hypnotize someone then it much easier to start with a permissive style like this. Try this in everyday conversation and see what sort of effect it has. And we’ll continue this exploration in a future post.

Have a good trip

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• Permissive style
• Authoritative style

The permissive style is the more usual style in therapeutic situations where the ‘client’ needs to feel like they are in control of the situation before they can begin to relax. Attending a hypnosis session for the first time can be a scary thing because of all the mythology that a person probably has about hypnosis.

The permissive style is about giving a person choice. For example, you might say to a person “You may or may not begin to notice that you’re breathing is beginning to relax”. That sounds like a simple sentence doesn’t it? But that simple sentence is stacked with enough hypnotic stuff to spend a whole afternoon explaining. But right now, I just want you to notice that you are offering choice – choice that the person may or may not notice. There is no threat here, no ‘I’m in control and you have no choice’ implication to the conscious mind of the client.

The authoritative style was common in the 1950’s and 1960’s and relied on the ‘aura’ and ‘mystique’ of the hypnotist. Stage hypnotists, some street hypnotists and even some hypnotherapists still use this style. It uses a much more direct authoritative command-like interaction, e.g. “you will notice how your eyes just want shut right now”.

The more congruent a hypnotist is in their ‘authoritative’ style (everything from tonality, dress, voice, style of language, body stance etc.) the more chance there is that the authoritative style has of working. It all reinforces in the mind of the person being hypnotized that the hypnotist is in charge here. The person believes their own myth that the hypnotist is ‘doing something’ that they have no control over – and that is exactly what happens. Of course, this is exactly what you want to leverage in certain situations where the ‘mystique’ needs to be maintained – e.g. a stage show.

So, as you begin to learn how to hypnotize someone, you may or may not begin to realize that there are different styles of hypnosis!!!!! (That was permissive by the way if you didn’t already get that )

An exercise for you in learning what is more ‘natural’ for you is to, in everyday life, is to ask someone you know to do something in a permissive manner (where you offer choice) and to also command it authoritatively.

e.g. “Could you go and buy a loaf of bread for me?” vs. “Buy a loaf of bread for me please” – an inane example perhaps, but the first is more permissive while the other is a command. Actually, they are really both commands, the first one only seems like there is more choice, but your relationship with the person and their sense of obligation is likely a ‘bind’ on them to obliging you anyway.

We’ll come back to some of those other hidden hypnotic secrets hidden in simple language in a future post in our learn to hypnotize series.

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I will be taking some time-out to review at least one hypnosis product every couple of weeks or so right here in this Hypnosis Reviews area. I’m only interested in sharing with you the best material I’ve found so I’m not going to be wasting my time (and it just isn’t my style) giving bad reviews of hypnosis products that don’t meet my minimum standards; if a product doesn’t live up to the hype, then I simply wont be posting a review.

And don’t make the mistake that just because I haven’t posted a review doesn’t mean that a particular product isn’t good. I may have simply not reviewed it (there are many many products out there). I want to purposely point you in the direction of what I believe is good material.

You are always welcome to comment.

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It’s what the hypnosis techniques do that counts – not what they are.

I can’t emphasize this point enough. You can learn the best so-called hypnosis techniques out there and if you don’t understand what it is they do, what the intent behind them is … you will fall flat on your face one day. You’ll come across a situation that you have ‘no technique’ for. And you’ll be stuck.

However, if you know the intent of a particular step in a hypnosis technique … then you’ll be able to generate techniques on-the-fly if necessary (after a little practice), because you’ll know you are after a particular response or result.

If you take all these principles to heart, particularly this one, then I believe you are going to be far ahead of the typical hypnosis student. You’ll have the flexibility to adapt as you go because you’ll know it’s not the hypnosis technique that count but what lies behind the intent of the technique.

Have a good trip.

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So let’s recap shall we? The principles so far in this ‘how to hypnotise’ blog are:

1. Hypnosis is not something you do to people – it is something that they do to themselves.

2. Know what it is like to experience hypnosis yourself

3. Start with the end in mind

4. We do hypnosis all the time

My next blog entry is going to be a final basic principle (the final one I’ll be sharing at this point at least) in learning how to hypnotise before we move onto the first core technique.

(Note, if you are impatient you can always click on the link over there in the sidebar and have a look at a product I’ve reviewed myself and can happily recommend. It has a different take than me, but is packed full of information. Actually, I’ll put a review up on this site at some point).

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Hypnosis is not something you do to people – it is something that they do to themselves

Know what it is like to experience hypnosis yourself

Start with the end in mind

And now we must bust another myth in your exploration of how to hypnotise. Back in the 20th century some academic types tried to ‘measure’ the depth of hypnosis. They tried to figure out the ‘parameters’ or ‘attributes’ that could be used identify the state of hypnosis. Amongst these attributes were

1. Anesthesia (loss of feeling)
2. Amnesia (loss of memory)
3. Time distortion (things go subjectively really slowly or really fast)
4. Positive hallucination (seeing something that isn’t there)
5. Negative hallucination (not seeing something that is there)

Now, the important thing to realize is that these are ‘natural’ states that we as humans go in and out of all the time – probably all of them within a normal day. The myth is that hypnosis is some ’special state’. Well, it isn’t. That’s not quite correct, what’s special about it is the purposeful intent to attain this state (with some or all of these attributes) for a specific purpose.

To summarize the point …

The hypnotic state is a natural state we go in and out of all the time.

Have a great trip!

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