We’ve already briefly explored two ideas that are corner stones for learning to hypnotize somebody in the posts “The first thing you need to know about hypnosis is …“  and “Want to learn how to hypnotize someone ?“. If you take-to-heart these two ideas you will be well ahead of the field. Many beginning hypnotists (and even quite a few who have gone through some form of training) never really get these ideas … so I’ll repeat them:

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.

Another important thing you need to keep in mind is that hypnosis is not an end in itself – actually, if you learn how to hypnotise without understanding that it is just a tool then you won’t find it that interesting. Learning how to hypnotise isn’t that difficult, in fact you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to assist someone in producing the hypnotic state within themselves – but then what?

Let’s list some of the uses that hypnosis can be put to:

• Learning to relax
• Stopping a habit
• Remembering forgotten facts
• To control an autonomic response (e.g. gaining access to body functions that are normally not accessible consciously)
• Pain control
• To change feelings about events
• Forensic retrieval of suppressed details
• Generation of wild and unusual states and perceptions (anyone want a trip)
• To access creativity
• To work with symbolic themes or access dreams
• To reprogram thought patterns
• To implant an idea
• To enhance someone’s feelings (seduction anyone?)
• To regress into ‘past lives’
• To regress to childhood
• To heal
• To entertain (stage hypnosis)
• To meditate

And that’s just a start. And here’s the real point I’m trying to make with this post – learning how to hypnotise is just part of the game … if you know nothing about repressed memories and abreactions let’s say, and you start messing around with memory … you might be in for more than you or the other person bargained. Each of those uses I listed is an area of learning in and of itself. Hypnosis is a tool – the use of the tool is where the art and science is.

So if you want to learn hypnosis, my suggestion is to always start with an end mind – it will make the journey a much more worthwhile endeavor.

Have a great trip!

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