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By WanderingHypnotist, September 7, 2009 3:48 am

This wonderful little book is subtitled … “The Teaching Tales of Milton H Erickson“.

In your journey of learning how to hypnotise you will at some point come across the name Milton Erickson. You could spend a life-time studying him and still only be scratching the surface of the art of influencing change in a person. Erickson is considered to be THE MASTER of modern hypnosis – he was a medical doctor who lived in the 20th Century and pioneered what some people now call conversational hypnosis and the use of hypnotic metaphor.

I first came across this book about five years ago … and I’m still dipping into it every now and then. I probably started at the wrong end of the spectrum, only reading this book after having first delved deep into the hundreds of case history materials and books that Milton generated over his lifetime.

The ‘tales’ in the book are examples that Erickson presented to medical audiences and represent different cases and how he worked with them. The tales are delivered in the same style in which he delivers his interventions. In other words the tales are hypnotic metaphors in their own right. And you don’t have to worry about this at all if you are just starting out to learn how to hypnotize. Just read the book for what it’s worth – at the minimum you will get some insight into the range of issues that hypnosis can be applied to.

You won’t find a ‘how to hypnotise’ analysis inside this book. It doesn’t teach hypnotic techniques in the way you might expect or teach you how to do what Erickson did. But as an introduction to the art of metaphor and conversational hypnosis, this is a gem. Once you’re someway down your learning journey of hypnosis, come back to this book and re-read it … and you’ll discover things in there you didn’t see the first time through.

Have a nice trip

The Wandering Hypnotist

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By WanderingHypnotist, September 6, 2009 8:16 am

I am going to share one of the secrets of hypnosis with you. Now, I could of course let you go out there and learn all sorts of great hypnotic techniques and buy lots of online products, even attend some real live training … and you would learn to hypnotise rather well … and only when you’ve ‘earned’ your medals (and bought lots of products of course) let you into the inner circle of hypnosis.

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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By WanderingHypnotist, August 30, 2009 9:10 am

OK, just came across this wonderful demonstration of silent hypnosis. Whoever thought that hypnosis was about what you said … think again!

Posted via web from The Wandering Hypnotist

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By HowToHypnotise, August 28, 2009 5:41 am

So, if you haven’t already read my previous post “the two different styles of hypnosis“, go ahead and do so.

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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By HowToHypnotise, August 26, 2009 12:00 am

As you begin the the process of learning how to hypnotise, you’ll need to understand that there are two basic styles of hypnosis:

• 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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By HowToHypnotise, August 21, 2009 12:07 pm

OK, here’s the final piece of the hypnosis principle puzzle (for the moment) if you want to learn to hypnotize people. Then we’ll get on to basic hypnosis techniques in some of my future posts. And then back to some principles.

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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By HowToHypnotise, August 20, 2009 8:18 am

So, we’ve spent some time over the last couple of weeks looking at some basic principles for learning how to hypnotise. You’ll note that I haven’t even introduced any ‘techniques yet – they’ll come, but the principles come first.

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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By HowToHypnotise, August 16, 2009 12:08 am

So, in our exploration of how to hypnotise, this is where we are so far:

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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By HowToHypnotise, August 11, 2009 11:06 am

So you want to learn how to hypnotize someone eh? … Well, ok, here goes …

It’s both more complex and simpler than you might think. Remember my other post “The first thing you need to know about hypnosis is …“! As it suggests, learning to hypnotize someone is more the art of letting them give permission to themselves to ‘let go’ or ‘shift state’ than it is about anything else – you see, it’s about them not you.

A slight correction, it’s about them and it’s about you. Now you see, in order to learn to hypnotize someone you need to (IMHO) experience it yourself. I mean, how could you ‘lead someone’ to experience the hypnotic state if you don’t know what it is firsthand?

So this is the next thing you need to know in order to learn to hypnotize anyone inf fact:

Know what it is like to experience hypnosis yourself

And how do you go about doing this? Well, there a gazillion audio and video files out there that you can stream or download – a lot of them for free (Warning: never experiment with any of this trance stuff when operating machinery or a vehicle of any kind). You can pay for and download eBooks, order CD’s or DVD’s. You can go to the bookstore and get ‘guided visualizations’, meditations or trancey music. You can even go to a hypnotist or hypnotherapist if you want.

You may form opinions about what it is and what it isn’t once you’ve experienced it – and we’ll explore my take on it as well – but in the meantime, in order to learn to hypnotize someone I believe you need to first learn to hypnotize yourself!

Have a great trip!

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