When you first start out as a hypnotist, the thought of hypnotizing others can be a daunting one. Many doubts and fears stir inside you “What if I say the wrong thing?” “What if it doesn’t work?” “What if something happens that I don’t know how to deal with?” “What if they are resistant or too analytical?”

These are all valid concerns and they are also easily overcome. Hypnosis, like any other skill, takes time and repetition, accompanied with diligent study and self-correction, to master. Let’s recap the 4 stages of all learning.

Unconscious Incompetence – We don’t know what we don’t know. Continuing with the hypnosis scenario, this is the stage we were in when we had never seen or heard of hypnosis. We were totally

unaware of its existence in the world and so we were both ignorant of it and totally incompetent in its application.

Conscious Incompetence – This is the stage we were in when we encountered hypnosis for the first time. Maybe it was watching a movie or TV show where someone was “being hypnotized” or perhaps it was at a stage hypnosis show. First there’s the feeling of disbelief “That can’t be real! Those people are just pretending.” Then there was the realization that this “could be real” and a fascination to understand more. Now we are consciously aware of hypnosis, but still completely incompetent in its application.

Conscious Competence – This is the stage we enter when we begin to research and study hypnosis for the first time. We read some books, we watch some videos, and maybe we even attend a class or two. We learn some basic inductions and we “try it out” on some friends and family (often times with little or no success). We are consciously aware of hypnosis and have a small level of competence in its application, but we still have to think about what we are doing. It doesn’t come naturally to us.

Unconscious Competence – This is the stage we enter when we have been studying and practicing hypnosis for years. We completely understand the hypnotic process. The language patterns we use flow smoothly and effortlessly. We enjoy high levels of success in hypnotizing others. Sure there are times when things don’t work, but we have learned from experience that this is not a reflection on our skill level; it’s just the dynamic nature of the interaction between hypnotist and subject. Hypnosis has become a part of “who we are” not just “something we do”.

Many hypnotists get stuck in the “Conscious Competence” stage, because they never learn that hypnosis is not a linguistic trick. It’s not something we do “to people” it’s something we do “with people”. What I mean here is that a masterful hypnotist realizes that in order to create the optimum context to allow hypnosis to occur, they must “go there first”.

Remember this acronym “B.M.I.R.” It stands for Behavioral Manifestation of and Internal Representation. You may have heard the saying “As within, so without” Basically, what this all boils down to is whatever you are feeling inside, is what you project to others, in your voice, your tonality, even in your body language. If you want your subject to relax, but you yourself are not relaxed, then they will pick up on your tension and have difficulty relaxing. However, if you relax first, then your voice, tonality and body language will be congruent with your internal state. You client will pick up on this, at a subconscious level, and react accordingly, by relaxing.

So here are some tips or ‘secrets’ to a successful hypnotic encounter.

1. Intent – Always approach any hypnotic encounter with the proper intent. You should have a strong desire for the subject to experience a positive hypnotic state and You have a strong desire for the subject to gain a positive outcome from the encounter.

2. Go there first – create the state you want your client to experience within yourself first. As you become more skilled you’ll actually learn to take yourself into a hypnotic state before “leading” your client there.

3. Remember the A.B.S.D. formula for the hypnotic process:

a. Attention – Make sure you have your subjects undivided attention.

b. Bypass the critical factor – This can be accomplished by introducing shock, surprise, confusion or loss of equilibrium.

c. Stimulate the subconscious – Once you have critical factor bypass, you stimulate the subconscious by giving a command. The most common command is “Sleep!”

d. Deepen – You must then use deepeners in order to stabilize the trance state. This is where most new hypnotists mess up. They are so surprised that the ABS portion worked, that they forget to do the D portion.

4. Remember, there is no failure, only feedback – In hypnosis this rings so true in most cases. Many times, a new hypnotist will attempt to hypnotize someone and doesn’t achieve the effect they wanted. At this point they believe they have failed and sheepishly apologize to the subject and stop there. An experienced hypnotist will realize that just because one approach didn’t get the desired effect, it doesn’t mean that something else wouldn’t either. The experienced hypnotist will simply say to the subject “Perfect, I now know everything I need to know about how your mind communicates.” And then they will try a different approach. The subject doesn’t know what is working and what isn’t and often times the second or third approach will achieve the desired result. Never give up.

5. Practice, practice, practice – I’ve been doing this for over 25 years and I still seek out opportunities to practice my skills and develop new techniques. Hypnosis, like anything else, can get rusty if not used on a regular basis, so it’s important to practice as frequently as you can. If you’re lucky enough to find a group like ours to practice with, then that’s great, but if not, still practice on your own, either with someone else, or with your pillow. The key thing is to stay familiar with the techniques and language patterns, so that when you are ready to use them, they flow naturally.

Michael C. White, C.Ht.