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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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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And then again, revealing this now may or may not have any impact whatsoever – at least not right away. But as you gain your hypnosis skills this one simple insight will transform your ability to work with a much wider group of people. There are layers to this secret. What you take away from it now will be different than what it means in 10 years time.

Are you ready?

The most powerful way to hypnotize someone is to go there first!

Richard Bandler repeats this point over and over (Richard is this amazing genius of human communication who co-invented NLP). I didn’t really understand it at first. However, now I do – and I am still staggered at the implications of this secret. But like any knowledge, I could give you the secret to the universe and it would be meaningless unless you claim it as your own – you need to go out and experience this information as directly experienced knowledge.

So what does it mean … you really need to go and test it to understand the implications … at its most basic level it means that if you can learn to ‘go into the right hypnotic state’ yourself, then it is much more likely that the person you are working with will ‘follow’ you.

When you stop and think about this it makes sense. When someone walks into the room who is really happy … everyone’s mood is lifted. If someone comes into the room all ‘doom & gloom’ … it impacts everyone. Same goes for excitement, laughter, anger … in fact any strong emotional state … that state ‘jumps’ from person to person. Hmmmmmm … does this work for other states … hypnotic states, meditative states, curious states?

I’ll leave you to ponder this hypnosis secret – and I’ll really encourage you to really go out and learn how to hypnotize yourself first … and then ‘play’ with the state in yourself and observe its impact on others.

Have a good trip …

The Wandering Hypnotist

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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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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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