To boost your confidence, raise your self-esteem, manage your stress levels, and help change aspects of your behavior for the better.
Under the right conditions, it’s capable of doing all of these things. Provided it’s used ethically, correctly, and by a certified practitioner.
Why is that the case?
That’s a really easy question to answer.
Just think of the range of individuals who might visit a hypnotherapist. Each of them has their own issues, their own history, their own medical background, their own goals, their own aspirations, and their own motivation for seeking help.
Before they can be hypnotized, you need to find out about ALL of these things. After all, they’re real people with real problems; they’re not guinea pigs.
They deserve all the time, respect, and dignity you can give them.
And if you think there’s a chance that you can’t help them, you should simply say so, straight out. Advise them, or refer them on to get help from another professional who can provide the kind of treatment or therapy they need.
That’s one of the things any professional hypnotherapist should automatically do.
One who’s been certified by a professional body.
One who follows a strict code of conduct as set down by the authorities.
Because if you practice hypnosis without these things, you’re totally asking for trouble.
International Laws Regarding The Practice Of Hypnosis
The truth is that getting qualified as a hypnotist is easy.
You can simply sign up and take a course online.
You can even start practicing hypnotherapy as soon as you want to.
There are very few restrictions on your ability to work as a hypnotist anywhere in the world. In many places, such as Australia, hypnotherapy is a self-regulating profession.
In other places, like Washington State, you have to register to become a hypnotherapist. But you don’t need to be certified. You simply fill in some paperwork and hand over some cash.
Once that’s done, you’re governed by the rules and regulations that apply to the operation of your business.
Same as any other business.
But they don’t know if you’re actually “trained” to do hypnosis.
Here’s a quick look at how hypnosis is regulated - or not, as the case may be – around the world.
Hypnosis Laws In The US
In America, hypnosis is an unregulated profession.
You don’t need a license, you just need to meet certain criteria.
That criteria can vary from one state to another, so it’s down to you to find out what the rules are where you live.
The first state-licensed hypnotherapy center was the Hypnotism Training Institute of Los Angeles, licensed as long ago as 1976.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Much of the information contained in this article is available in the public domain. It doesn’t necessarily represent the views of the Hypnosis Training Academy, nor can we be held accountable for it. You should always research the requirements for your own country and ensure that you abide by its laws and regulations.
Lucid dreaming is another fun and relaxing way to connect with your unconscious mind, especially when coupled with self-hypnosis. So why not play around with the steps above, and learn how to become the director of your dreams!
Faking a smile when you meet someone you don’t particularly want to engage with.
It’s almost impossible not to at times, isn’t it?
Like you simply can’t help yourself.
As if some unseen force has taken control of your body.
It’s no big deal.
It happens to everyone.
Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t even give it a second thought. Unless, that is, you wanted to use that information to your advantage.
What information?
The signs and signals you pick up from another person’s body language.
The trick is that they’re not always as obvious as the examples given above.
That "unseen force" is at work and they’re operating on autopilot, at an unconscious level.
But even though they don’t know they’re doing it, you can train yourself to spot it.
And when you do, and when you know what to look for, it can give you the upper hand.
It can put you in control of any situation because you’ll be able to tell almost instantly how the other person is feeling.
You’ll be able to tell what they’re thinking. You’ll be able to tell how they’re going to react and respond. Why?
Because their bodies will betray them by giving off unconscious signals.
They’ll do that at 3 specific times:
The approach - when you meet them
The duration – while you’re with them
The exit – when one or both of you leave
It doesn’t matter who they are or where they live, LA or Beijing, Melbourne or Johannesburg.
As long as their culture allows it, they’ll all unconsciously give off the same signals.
They can’t help it – it’s part of human nature. So what exactly are these signals and how can you learn to identify them?
# 1: Legs
Watch someone’s legs and you’ll discover a lot about them. A person’s legs are good indicators of what they’re really feeling. That’s because they’re furthest away from their head.
You may have noticed, for example, that when someone’s about to leave, their legs leave first. That might be because they’re in a hurry.
Or they might not like you and want to get away from you as quickly as possible. Whatever the reason, their legs will give them away.
They’ll point a foot in the direction they want to go. The same thing happens with the arms. When you’re driving a car and you see something that grabs your attention, often your arms will drift over in that direction, taking the steering wheel and the car with it.
Unconsciously you feel the need to move towards whatever it is. Same with the legs.
A person’s legs will tell you more about what they’re feeling than their facial expression, their words, or their tone of voice.
Why?
Because they have a better awareness of their words which determine their facial expressions and are able to control them more.
#2: Torso
The word torso comes from the Latin thyrsus, meaning stalk.
This is the trunk area of the body that contains the vital organs. That’s why sculptors include it with the head when they create a bust.
But unlike statues, the torso is actually quite flexible.
It can twist and turn. It can bend forward and back. And like the legs, it’s one of those areas we have less conscious control over. So if someone turns their torso away from you, they could be unconsciously saying they want to leave.
Or they could be feeling threatened and displaying a primitive instinct to protect their vital organs.
Or it might be that they just don’t like you.
Of course, if it’s someone they really don’t like, they’ll go even further and turn their back on them. Or give you the “cold shoulder.”
#3: Arms & Hands
Generally speaking, your arms and hands help you express yourself.
You might use them to help someone visualize what you’re talking about.
Saying “I caught a fish and it was this big” for instance, spreading your arms to give them a rough idea.
But you also use them in less obvious ways. So when you’re feeling confident, you might open your arms up wide.
When you’re nervous, you might wring your hands together.
When you’re bored or impatient, you might drum your fingers on the table or shove your hands in your pockets.
It can be easier to spot these signals because people tend to keep their hands in front of their torso, especially when they’re sitting down. When you meet someone for the first time, it’s common to extend a hand.
But what if they don’t? Are they being defensive? Are they socially awkward?
Is there some cultural phenomenon at work that you’re not aware of?
Likewise, someone who crosses their arms could be creating a barrier between you and them, or they could just be very relaxed so you have to look for other signals as well to determine which one it is.
Where the arms are concerned, it’s a lot to do with stress and comfort levels. The more open and expansive a person’s arms are, the more relaxed they feel.
When they’re feeling stressed, however, that’s when they might cross their arms or keep them tucked in close to their body.
Imagine, just for a moment, that you are your hypnosis subject.
That you're in a conversation with "you" trying to listen to the story that you're telling.
What words are standing out?
How is the story piquing your interest?
Is your story grasping your attention enough to stop you from thinking about how you wish that you had eaten lunch beforehand, for example?
And how, to make up for missing it, you're going to devour one of those fresh baguette sandwiches from that new French restaurant next to your office.
Wait. You had that yesterday. Maybe you'll treat yourself to the duck...
So, is it working?
Is your story enough to compete with a hungry stomach?
A cold office?
Or any of the other things that creep into someone's mind when a story is lacking that je-ne-sais-quoi.
Or otherwise put, when boredom has crept in - and the listener would prefer to create their own story in their head... rather than listening to yours.
Ouch.
We're all guilty of it.
An unintentional technique to occupy the conscious mind and keep it entertained... when it has decided that it no longer is.
And while this has its advantages when you're stuck without a book on a long train ride, for example, it spells disaster if your hypnosis subjects are doing the same... when in fact you think you're practicing conversational hypnosis.
So, it begs the question, how do you get good at telling stories so you become a fantastic conversational hypnotist?
Fortunately, the answer is easy.
You start by telling stories. And lots of them.
The more stories you tell, the better your storytelling skills will become.
Filled with drama and adventure. Overflowing with emotion.
Packed with personal change.
Believe it or not, even the most mundane story can be turned into a gripping tale.
And that makes storytelling the perfect vehicle for conversational hypnosis.
Turning an everyday event into a riveting experience. Keeping your subject enthralled. Getting past their conscious critical mind and easing them into trance, naturally.
Making your stories, well, hypnotic. Once you know how to do that, you can turn ordinary events that you might otherwise think are boring into spellbinding yarns.
So how do you it? By making sure every story has a number of crucial, basic ingredients...
The 3 Basic Ingredients Every Story Needs
To tell a good story that holds your subject's attention, it needs to include the following:
1. A Sequence Of Events
This is not necessarily the beginning, middle, and end of traditional stories. All it means is that the story has to be a sequence of events.
For example, imagine someone ordering a burger:
"He called, he ordered, he ate."
It's a sequence of events, but it's not a story. It's the basis for a story, which you can expand on.
"He was hungry, so he called, ordered a burger, and ate it."
2. A Break In The Sequence
Breaking up the original sequence of events is a simple way to extend any story. It acts as a trigger to tell the unconscious mind that a story is on the way.
To do it, just extend the time period in which the sequence of events occurs:
"He was working late, trying to get his report finished, but he just couldn't concentrate. He was too hungry. He knew he wouldn't be able to continue until he had something to eat."
3. An Emotional Change
In order for your story to have the right impact, there needs to be an emotional change.
There has to be a shift in emotions that alters one of the story's characters in some way. This shift acts as a signal to your listener that the story has reached a satisfying conclusion.
"He was working late, trying to get his report finished, but he just couldn't concentrate. He was too hungry. He knew he wouldn't be able to continue until he had something to eat.
So he picked up the phone, ordered a burger, and devoured it with pleasure.
Just what he needed.
He felt so good, in fact, that he decided he'd done enough work for one night. Instead, he took off his shoes, put his feet up, and let himself relax."
The other thing to remember is that any story you tell, as a rule of thumb, should be based in reality.
It needs to be something that actually happened, to you or to somebody else. That's what gives it its ring of truth and helps your listener identify with whatever's going on.
To pay tribute to an American great, each January a federal holiday is celebrated in the name of Martin Luther King, Jr.
So while this article is part homage to this holiday, it is also to recognize the powerful hypnotic techniques that were at play in MLK’s history-changing speech, "I Have A Dream."
And while MLK may not have knowingly used hypnotic language, it’s clear from this speech that he had a keen understanding of the persuasive power of words.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to watch it before, you can check it out here:
The whole point behind hypnosis and hypnotic language can be summed up using the ABS formula, which is:
A - absorb attention
B - bypass the critical factor
S - stimulate the unconscious mind
Regular readers will already be familiar with this formula, so here’s a quick recap of how it works.
In order to be able to hypnotize someone, you need to get their attention. If you can’t get their attention, then they won’t be listening to what you have to say.
And unless they’re listening, you won’t be able to communicate with them on any level. One sure-fire way to get their attention is through the use of hypnotic language.
Once you’ve got their attention, your next task is to bypass their critical mind. That’s the part of the conscious mind that’s always criticizing, analyzing, and rejecting information.
It thinks logically and rationally, blocking messages so they can’t make their way into the unconscious mind, the place where creativity, imagination, inspiration, motivation and insight reside.
Hypnotic phrases, themes and power words are the perfect tools to access it.
As soon as that part of the conscious, critical mind is bypassed, you’re able to start communicating directly with the unconscious.
You might recognize this as the process that takes someone into a hypnotic trance, to a stage where it’s possible to make suggestions that will lead their thinking and future actions in a particular direction.
You can achieve this by making good use of hypnotic themes.
Clearly, Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t trying to hypnotize his audience in the strict sense of the word. And yet, much of this famous speech has a great deal of hypnotic power.
Let’s take a closer look at the speech and see if we can identify some of the techniques found within it.
Hidden Hypnotic Techniques In The "I Have A Dream" Speech
1. Hypnotic Themes
Looking at the speech as a whole, you can see that there are a number of hypnotic themes that permeate it.
A hypnotic theme is simply an idea, like relaxation, comfort, potential, success, and so on. In the context of this speech, the themes that run through it include the notions of freedom, independence, unity, equality and justice.
That makes absolute sense, since MLK gave the speech exactly 100 years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
The theme of freedom begins on the very first line.
The word "freedom" is repeated no less than twenty times in total, with the shorter version "free" appearing an additional five times.
That’s what you’d expect in a speech designed to help put an end to segregation and inequality.
Ironically, the word independence only shows up once in a reference to the Declaration of Independence.
Naturally, though, if someone has their freedom, that implies they’ve also got their independence. So the theme of independence is present even if not stated outright.
What’s the most universal sign of unity?
The act of joining hands.
To make this even more poignant, the text refers to boys and girls from both ethnic backgrounds joining hands "as sisters and brothers."
The speech concludes with another reference to the act of joining hands, this time stating that "all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing" - showing clearly the need to put aside our differences and start treating each other as equal human beings.
Where equality and justice are concerned, King uses a number of techniques to drive these themes home. He quotes the famous line from the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." The word "justice" appears in the speech eight times, making listeners aware of two important facts:
That all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin, are entitled to the same privileges and considerations
That black Americans have been waiting patiently for their "justice" for 100 years
2. Metaphors
This speech is nothing short of a master class in the use of metaphor.
King paints pictures with words as skillfully as if he’d been given a paintbrush and every shade of pigment under the sun.
There are so many examples, in fact, that there isn’t room in this article to discuss every one of them.
Instead, here’s a list of some of the most potent and descriptive metaphors that still resonate with anyone who listens to the speech:
Seared in the flames of withering injustice
Crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination
A lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity
Rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice
From the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood
The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent - (note the allusion and comparison to Shakespeare’s speech from Richard III, "now is the winter of our discontent")
Drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred
Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream - (a couple of similes, but equally as provocative)
Hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope
Transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood
You’ll also notice how some of these metaphors do more than paint pictures: they also make a stark contrast between two extremes, such as the stone of hope versus the mountain of despair.
3. Anaphora
In case you haven’t heard of it before, anaphora is a rhetorical term that refers to the repetition of words at the beginning (and sometimes the end) of phrases.
The most often quoted example of this is the phrase "I have a dream" which appears eight times in successive sentences.
Other uses of the device include the following:
One hundred years later
Now is the time
We can never (cannot) be satisfied
Let freedom ring
As you probably realize, repetition is a useful tool that helps activate the hypnotic state.
It can have the same effect as a mother gently sending her child to sleep with the back and forth movement of a rocking chair.
In the hands of a great speech writer, the repetition of key phrases helps bury significant ideas into the minds of listeners, making sure they take away as much of the message as possible.
4. Power Words
We’ve seen how the speech makes extensive use of metaphors to implant pictures into the unconscious mind.
Not close-ups, but vast landscapes needed to embrace those large universal themes mentioned earlier.
You may have heard of power words.
They’re words such as: and, because, as well as, imagine, and remember.
These are simple words that get repeated to help you create your own pattern of hypnotic language.
What you may not be so familiar with is the Hypnotic Language Shortcut System (or HLSS).
The HLSS is a collection of cards with 70 power words organized into a number of different suits and categories.
The cards are colored according to their designation, so that RED suit stands for imagination, GREEN suit for linkage, ORANGE suit for need, and so on.
On one side of the card you’ll find the power word (such as imagine) while on the other side you’ll find several sentences giving examples of how to use the word in a hypnotic language context.
Let’s get back to the ABS formula.
Each of the categories contained within the HLSS cards is designed to address one of the 3 parts of the formula, i.e. to absorb attention,bypass the critical factor, or stimulate the unconscious mind.
The question is, how do those criteria apply to one of the most famous speeches in history?
To find out, we’ll see if we can match up elements of the speech to the various HLSS categories, in an effort to discover which power words MLK made use of.
Read on to know more about the hypnotic power words and how they can influence people, like, MLK's speech on "I have a Dream" Visit here »
If you ever wanted to know how to make your hypnotic language more convincing, more persuasive, and more inspiring, you could do a lot worse than to study this speech.
You might even benefit from reading it out loud a few times. More than 50 years after it was written and delivered, its message is just as stirring, evocative, motivational and hypnotic as ever.
And if you’d like to learn more about hypnotic language - and perfect some of the techniques MLK used in his famous speech - we’re giving away copies of the Hypnotic Language Shortcut System for free, so get yours here.
