Cool Tips 4 Hypnosis by sleepingirl

Sometimes going over the “big picture” of how hypnosis works is useful, but other times we’re looking more for little tricks and tools that we can pick up to add more to our trancing. In this article, we’ll be going over a few tips that are more specific and simple, but still work to teach some of the foundations of trancework between partners.

1. “You don’t have to do anything”

Many subjects report difficulty experiencing trance when they feel like they are the ones exerting effort or control in hypnosis. This can range from “helping” with suggested phenomena to not quite knowing the difference between being submissively obedient versus hypnotically responding. While experienced subjects are familiar with their capabilities of being “active” while in trance, it is still generally a very pleasurable thing to be hypnotized while feeling that it is happening without any effort or input from themselves. Milton Erickson also talks about the value of the subject simply “not doing” -- getting someone to a place where they are just feeling things happen without affecting the experience. This is a key part of Ericksonian hypnosis.

We want to spend some time proving to our partners that they are capable of two things: 1) they can have hypnotic experiences without “helping,” and 2) they can move away from the impulse to “help.” It is one thing to tell a person that they don’t have to do anything in order to be hypnotized, but it is entirely another to make that believable as well as get someone out of the pattern of being active -- especially when they are used to doing things in their everyday or in trance that are all about effort.

One of the ways that you can prove this to your partner is by leading them to feel the difference between something where they are exerting effort versus not. Pick something simple and something that relies heavily on their subjective experience. A good example of this is telling someone to very actively relax a part of their body, then telling them to relax their intentions and just feel and notice that part going limp. You can think of this as the person “flexing the muscle” that controls their feeling of effort and then relaxing it, getting them accustomed to the feeling of not making effort.

Repetition is helpful here, as is variation -- you can also use this contrasting technique on things like sinking deeper into trance, slowing thoughts, breathing changes, building arousal, or more. It is more helpful to choose something that is easy to accomplish and small; telling someone to spontaneously orgasm or otherwise have “big” responses can be challenging.

Anchor that feeling of “not doing” by acknowledging it as they experience it, and leaving allowances for their natural responses: “See how easy it is to just not to do anything? It feels so good, so you really don’t have to do anything, and even though sometimes you might get that impulse to help, your mind and body can remember that you don’t have to, that it’s not necessary, and you can just feel whatever feels good…”

2. “You don’t have to wake up”

There is a familiar and obstructive feeling that subjects can get where they feel as though they need to be “ready” to come out of trance at any moment. Especially if the hypnotist is quickly taking them in and out of trance like in some forms of fractionation, subjects can learn to anticipate awakeness, and this can actually make it more difficult to achieve a deep-feeling trance. This can also happen naturally at different points during hypnosis -- perhaps at the beginning of a trance, the subject doesn’t know how long they’ll be there, and as the trance goes on they may wonder if the wake-up is coming soon.

You can very easily get someone to go deeper more quickly by simply communicating with them that they won’t be awoken soon. Giving someone the confidence that they can let go of that preparedness and impulse to help bring themselves out allows them to focus more fully on the experience in the moment.

While you don’t have to, you can further enhance this by telling someone how long they’ll be in trance: “You don’t have to wake up for the next ten minutes.” This gives them a concrete understanding, but it’s one that you perhaps should emphasize through your trance, since you don’t want to leave your partner guessing how long it’s been. This even works for small increments of time as long as you emphasize it: “You still don’t need to wake up for a whole two minutes, and you don’t have to worry -- I will keep track of it. You can let go and take each moment of deep hypnosis, really enjoy it, really let your mind feel it.”

3. “Really?”

A simple and effective piece of language you can play with is the question, “really?” In this, you can use doubt to your advantage in trance by causing your partner to wonder about and produce more aspects of their experience. For example, when your partner is “awake,” you could say to them, “Are you really awake?”

These kinds of questions cause a person to look for verification. In this process, they need to think about how they would recognize that, thinking about signs of trance and imagining what they feel like. It’s extremely easy to confuse that imaginative experience with a real one, inadvertently putting themselves back into trance, or simply noticing things about their subjective feelings that they then associate with being hypnotized.

Working with doubt can be fun, but it’s very context dependent. You’ll have more luck, for example, right after you’ve woken someone up and they’re likely still feeling some lingering sense of hypnosis, even if they don’t notice it. You can also trick your partner with suggestions -- “Are you sure? Then why are your eyes glassy?” “You don’t notice how still you are?”

Doubt begets doubt, and teaching your partner not to trust their own observation of their experience opens up an immense amount of possibility and suggestibility. You are essentially creating a power dynamic -- telling them that they should trust you over themselves.

Here are some ideas and ways that you could phrase these questions:

• “Do you really think you’re not in trance?”
• “Are you sure there isn’t a little excitement that you’re feeling?”
• “Can you really trust yourself about how deep you think you are?”
• “There aren’t other things that you’re just not noticing?”
• “Do you really understand?”
• “Isn’t it possible that you’re not aware of all of it?”

4. Inevitability

The concept of something happening no matter what you do is a powerful one that we can add to our hypnosis. It can add a lot of opportunities for big responses when our partner feels as though they can’t help but respond, as though it’s happening outside of their control or in a way that they can’t escape. This can create a sense of D/s or helplessness, or can simply help a person experience something.

One of the ways that you can make your suggestions believably “inevitable” is by connecting them to physiological or psychological responses that are going to happen, no matter what. Here are some things that are reliably inevitable about a person’s experience:

• Getting tired while holding a certain position
• Breathing
• Blinking
• Heart beating
• An arm lowering when held up for a long time
• Thinking about what you are talking about
• Having an emotional/psychological response to something you say
• Getting aroused when they encounter/think about something that makes them hot

There are different ways that you can associate their automatic processes with your suggestions. You could do something as simple as making a comparison: “Just as you can’t stop yourself from breathing, you can’t stop yourself from going into trance.” (A suggestion like this creates an indirect association.) You generally want to utilize something that your subject is engaging in at the moment so that the inevitability is very concrete to them -- you can also directly connect those two things: “As your hand helplessly lowers, it makes you sink deeper into trance.”

You can add quite a bit of patter and preframing in these suggestions to help your partner form these connections, and as always, it helps to responsively utilize what is happening in the moment. For example, “There are all sorts of things that you do automatically -- see, now your attention is focused on that idea, wondering as I suggest it what sorts of things your body and mind do inevitably. Your brain helplessly thinks about what I tell it to do, and I’m going to use that helpless following to make your brain think about trance, as it naturally starts to focus on what trance feels like, as it begins hypnotizing you in a way that you can’t escape…”

In all suggestions, and especially ones that are progressive or suggest a process of some sort (like being hypnotized, building arousal, experiencing a transformation, etc), you want to ensure that you leave room for a response to happen at the exact pace that it does as well as nonlinearly. Arousal, for example, doesn’t build at a steady, predictable rate in any situation -- sometimes it is slow, fast, sometimes a person gets less aroused before it spikes again. Building in suggestions for your partner to both feel that something is inevitable, even if it happens at their own pace, is key. For example, “This is going to happen no matter what, and you can be confident about that, because even as you feel yourself sometimes going slow or fast, sometimes popping up a little before you go deeper, your personal pace will get you to the inevitable end of deep trance all the same.” Note the discussion of confidence -- very helpful to do things with your partner that are believable for them, and one of the best ways for something to be believable is for you to suggest what your partner experiences naturally (such as variance of intensity/response).

Here are a few examples of ways that you can talk about or imply something happening inevitably:

• Inevitably
• Sooner or later
• Inescapably
• No matter how quickly or slowly
• Helplessly
• Happening no matter what
• The end never changing
• No way for you to affect it
• No matter what you do
• As automatically as

5. Transformational Reframing

An easy trick to increase responsiveness with a partner is to reframe their experience in a way that changes the way they view themselves. Reframing is a technique where you present a suggestion or scenario differently so that the subject can have a different kind of response. For example, if you tell someone, “I’m going to put you deep in trance, and isn’t that kind of dangerous, to give your will to me as easily as you are right now?” versus “I’m going to put you deep in trance, and isn’t that such a relief to let me take control for a little while?”

When we talk about “transformational” reframing, we’re mostly creating a term to talk about the different ways that you can trick someone into responsiveness by having them imagine a scenario as though they were a different person. You can suggest to someone, “Imagine what it would be like to go deep into trance as the most perfect hypnotic subject, as though you were a person who was made to be hypnotized, so easily dropping…”

Depending on what sort of transformation you suggest, you can take advantage of all sorts of different effects. Think about the comparison you’re making and what kinds of qualities they could believably have. There are no rules except for what you’re able to “sell” to make sense to you and your partner. Here are a few ideas that you can mix and match:

• Doll (more automatic responsiveness, more blank-minded, more objectified)
• Bimbo (sillier, dumber, more gullible or susceptible)
• Pet (more soft, more obedient, more yielding, more playful)
• Someone who’s never been hypnotized before (more excited, more nervous, more anticipating)
• Someone who’s already been in trance this whole time (more suggestible, more unaware)
• Nymphomaniac (more easily aroused, more distracted by sex)

In addition to many different possible archetypes, there are all sorts of ways that you can frame these transformations for your partner.

• “What if you were…”
• “Imagine if you…”
• “Feel yourself helplessly taking on the attributes of…”
• “Feel yourself transforming into…”
• “Experience parts of yourself becoming…”
• “Visualize yourself as…”
• “Pretend that…”
• “As though you are…”

1. Better Wakeups
   

Bringing someone out of trance is often more nuanced than we give it credit for. As we progress through our hypnosis journeys, we learn that it’s not usually as simple as directly stating how a person should feel when they wake up. More often than not, subjects will feel some amount of hangover or lingering tranciness when coming out of hypnosis. This is generally fine -- often enjoyable, even -- and we know that it fades. But there are a couple of ways to make our wakeups more elegant.

Firstly, we should apply our knowledge of utilization and yes sets to our wakeners -- it should be rare that we go with a canned sort of suggestion that implies that our partners will be bright and fully aware as they come out of trance. They generally will not, which can create a level of dissonance and disbelief in the suggestion.

Instead, be honest about what may happen: “On the count of three, you’ll wake up from trance, probably still a little bit fuzzy but growing more aware as you readjust…” The more you are accurately describing your partner’s experience, the more there is a sense of rapport. Notice that you can embed presuppositive suggestions about the actual “waking up fully” feeling -- we’re just leaving them to happen naturally. Another way that you can phrase this is by saying something like, “I’m going to snap my fingers, and that’s a sign for you to awaken, which your body will process and manage at whatever speed it needs to be most effective.”

Another trick that you can use in wakeups is something that Erickson talks about. (Author’s note: This is also something that I realized that my partner/community educator MrDream does -- when I mentioned it to him a while back, he said he was doing it intuitively and without intention, but it very much amused me when I later read about Erickson doing it.) Counterintuitively, you can do what Erickson calls “ratifying the trance” in order to make someone feel more awake at the end of it. Essentially, we’re using fractionation and deepener techniques to make awakeness feel stronger.

Especially at the end of a longer trance, when you wake someone up, they’re generally fairly out of it. At that point, put them back into a short trance, and be very focused on their experiential sensations of depth, then wake them up. Fractionation doesn’t have to apply to making “down” feel stronger -- it simply describes the ability to create more noticeable intensity by using contrast. That initial wakeup makes “awakeness” very hard to identify, so you are creating contrast between what deep trance feels like versus awake.

Erickson talks about doing this in situations especially where someone has been in trance with their eyes open or when they’re being physically/verbally active. He has them close their eyes and go deeper before opening them again to wake up. We can use these kinds of strategies of ratifying the state and creating contrast to give our partners a better shot at functioning after a wakeup.