Hypnosis works because it can do something extraordinary.
It can access the power of the human brain.
It can help switch off the conscious, critical, analytical mind and let the unconscious mind take over.
As soon as that happens, your subject can go into trance.
And once they’re in a trance, that’s when you can start helping them solve their problems.
Of course, because people can go
into a trance completely on their own.
When they’re watching TV, or reading a book, or driving a car. Their thoughts drift away, almost as if their conscious mind was taking a break.
At times like that, it happens by accident. Where hypnosis is concerned, though, you want it to happen deliberately.
But how do you go about it?
Believe it or not, you can access the unconscious mind just by talking to people. You can put them in a trance with nothing more than a conversation... and without them even knowing you’re doing it.
Here are 5 powerful techniques that will enable you to achieve that.
1. Anecdote: The Hypnotic Power Of A Good Story
Can you guess how many books are published every year?
Or how many movies are released?
Probably a lot more than you think. But why so many?
Because everybody loves a good story.
Whether it’s in the form of a novel or a film. Stories have the power to transport us.
To let us experience other people’s lives.
To help us put our problems into perspective.
And one of the easiest ways to tell a story is using the anecdote, or the
My Friend John format.
It doesn’t have to be John.
It could be any name, male or female, depending on the subject and the situation.
You’re simply telling a story about a friend of yours. To follow what you’re saying, the subject has to play along. To get involved.
To relive the experience with you. And if that experience involves going into a trance, and slowing down the breathing, your subject will find it difficult to resist.
Meaning you’ll get them into a trance without even trying.
Naturally, you won’t be able to use the My Friend John (or Frank, or Barbara) technique over and over on the same subject.
Instead, you can branch out into other forms of storytelling called hypnotic lectures.
These can be either direct or indirect:
- Direct - This involves telling stories that allow people to have an experience. Stories about figures from history or literature. Stories that already have a natural trance theme embedded in them. Like the story of Mesmer, or the Oracle of Delphi, or Milton Erickson. Or the Thousand and One Nights, where Scheherazade stalls her own execution by telling gripping stories that end with a cliffhanger. The only way for her executioner to hear the rest of the story is to spare her life, and so each night Scheherazade finishes one tale and starts another, always leaving her audience wanting more.
- Indirect - This involves distancing yourself from the story entirely. You tell it as if it’s a story you read about, or saw on TV, or found in a report, or watched in a film. Because it’s not "your" story but someone else’s, it absolves you of any responsibility. This is particularly useful if your audience is skeptical in any way, either about hypnosis or about the subject you’re presenting.
2. Irresistible Induction: Your Own Performing Monkey
Want to take the perfect subject with you everywhere you go? That’s what performers did in the old days.
To others, it appeared that they were choosing people from the audience at random. In fact, those people were paid to travel around with the performer.
If you looked, you’d find them in every show, sprinkled in among the crowd. And once people saw them being influenced, being put into a trance, it reinforced their belief in the hypnotist.
It made it easier for him to hypnotize other members of the audience.
Why?
Because while he was putting his "planted" subjects into trance, the trance state affected other members of the audience too.
But doing the same thing these days is impractical.
Paying people to follow you around from one show to another can get expensive, and it might even lead to charges of fraud or misconduct.
So instead, why not use the next best thing? Yourself.
Simply describe what it feels like when you go into trance, but change from the first person to the second person.
It will sound like you’re talking about somebody else – the way their body relaxes, the way their breathing slows down, the quiet and serenity they feel inside - when in fact you’re simply describing your own experience entering a trance.
And unless they’re made of stone, your subjects will find themselves doing the same thing.
Being pulled irresistibly into an induction without even being aware of it.
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Conclusion
You can use any or all of these techniques in whatever order you wish.
Their power lies in their ability to create a dissociation between the
conscious and unconscious minds.
This helps you separate experiences out so you’re able to do something with them.
But what’s really cool is this - you can do all of it just by talking. Just by holding what seems to be an ordinary conversation. Giving you the power to "talk" to the unconscious mind directly.
