HOW TO START HYPNOTISING
Honest, simple, practical advice for the aspiring mind controller
I’ve been around this world for a while – I guess you know that otherwise why are you reading this blog? Lol of course you read it for the snarky piss-taking of other hypnotists and silly magicians. But yes, I’ve been around for a while – as has Amy – and we’ve seen our fair share of “How to” and “Getting started” guides to hypnosis. And they all suck the huge [blue] donkey cock. Really, they do. They need to get in the sea. All together. Or go back to school. Or whatever metaphor you prefer.
So if these guides are all worthless, where do you start? Well, you can always visit our Basics and Resources pages and see what we have to tell you that’s different, better, and more likely to work. But what if you want it all now, in this post, in one simple suggestion? Well, this is it. How to hypnotise in simple terms. For the uninitiated. For the unprepared. For the novice.
So, before we get started we need to agree what hypnotising really means. We know there is no hypnotic state or trance, so if that’s your goal, well you’ll just have to suggest it using the framework I outline below. You don’t need to leave trance at the door to join this party, but you do need to accept that it only exists in your and your participant’s mind. It’s made up. Completely. So hypnotising is the act of doing hypnosis, not of putting someone into a made-up state. And “doing hypnosis” means giving hypnotic – or imaginative – suggestions and the participant acting upon them. Nothing more, nothing less.
What’s the difference between hypnotic and imaginative suggestions? Well, hypnotic suggestions follow a hypnotic induction (euurgh!) and imaginative suggestions are just a means of playing with the imagination. What we know (scientifically) is that the only difference between imagining a scenario and having that same scenario suggested to you, is that the suggested scenario feels automatic and involuntary, whereas the imagined scenario feels like something you can control. Imaginative suggestions, therefore, comprise the imagined scenario (that you can control) coupled with the sensation that you can’t control it. Hypnotic suggestions, on the other hand, are exactly the same, but following a hypnotic induction.
So what’s a hypnotic induction? Well it’s a suggestion to enter “hypnosis”, or “trance”. That’s it. “You are entering hypnosis.” “You are entering trance.” That sort of thing. Totally not worth your time – and if your hobby or fetishistic kink relies on the trance actually being real then: a) I’m really sorry for what history has done to you; b) maybe educate yourself to a role-play where you can enjoy the fun without it needing to be real; or c) maybe find yourself a new hobby or kink? There are loads out there!
But real – and I mean real – mind control doesn’t flow from hypnosis and suggestions. Even Martin Orne, who was funded by the CIA and found that people could be “made” to do things under hypnosis that were “against their best interests”, actually found that unhypnotised people would do the same to the same degree. It wasn’t the hypnosis that made them do the things; it was the white coat, the organisation, and the authoritative tone. The reality was more Stanley Milgram than it was Derren Brown. Sorry if you thought it was real. But CONGRATS! on realising that this is just a fantasy that you can enjoy in a whole manner of safe ways!
So, before we go further. Hypnosis and hypnotic states, and hypnotic trances, are just imagined scenarios inside your mind that you’re unaware that you are imagining. Pretty trippy, yeah? But, honestly, far less trippy than the alternative hypothesis; that people in this world can control how you think, feel and exist, using just words and their immense skills and experience. I mean, that would be absolutely scary and contrary to all mainstream psychology to date. I’m not saying hypnosis, as a social construct, doesn’t exist, but it isn’t mind control. But it can let you role-play mind control, with people who want to be “mind-controlled”. And to be totally clear, the role-played mind-controlled scenario can be pretty powerful, all-consuming, and loads of fun. Just don’t be surprised when they don’t take their clothes off, give you all their money, or assassinate your foes as a result of your suggestions. It just doesn’t work that way. More’s the pity.
So, if you don’t need trance, what do you need? Well you do need a hypnotic context. That’s just fancy words for “people need to be ready and willing to engage with your suggestions”. That’s not hard to understand and, with strangers at least, given a goatee beard, a cloak, some mystique and a decent perfume, not hard to pull off. But it can be tricky with family members and friends, because, honestly, you wouldn’t believe any of your family members or friends could hypnotise YOU, so why would you expect the opposite?
But, unlike other guides, you don’t really need strangers and you don’t really need social power – well, you do if you need to stick to historically accurate memes, but who wants to do that? At least for the first dozen times, why make it hard on yourself? Get good at it, then start to make it appear magical and otherworldly. Why overcomplicate it by trying to make it seem both alien and believable at the same time? Ha. Those other guides are so limited by their historical contexts. Like if you were a child playing cops and robbers but you had to be “SWAT team are coming” believable on your first outing. No, just play the game; enjoy the game; be cops and robbers without needing the whole world to believe your schtick.
The game I want you to entertain; the game I want you to consider playing; is the one where stuff happens that feels automatic and involuntary (the hallmarks of the classic suggestion effect) without anything that will make it less likely to happen, or less credible. In short, I want you to recreate (to some degree) the way I conduct hypnosis experiments in academia. That’s right (lol). Full-blown responses but with no risk or even much effort.
The usual game, as defined by hypnosis trainers, gurus, wannabes, and armchair experts, is that you have to hypnotise the person before you can give suggestions. You don’t. And I suggest a) you can’t anyway; but b) it’s better and easier if you don’t even try. They will still feel the effects happening to them – involuntarily – but you won’t have to suffer all the issues around inductions, whether they’re in trance, depths, etc. If you’ve ever heard of “hypnotism without hypnosis” then that’s where we’re at.
[As an aside, even when I was starting out, the idea that I could suggest phenomena and people would respond, but without having hypnotised them, was my major goal. Isn’t it more powerful if you can achieve all this while they are alert, awake, engaged, and otherwise “normal” (even if that’s just a setting on a washing machine)?]
The only change – and it’s a biggy – is that you need to relinquish the power. Ultimately, if you read enough quality hypnosis literature, then you will come to find that The Participant Does All The Work. Honestly, did you think that some metaphysical thing happened between your brain and/or words and their brain? Or did you think, more realistically, that they heard your words (or interpreted your actions, inferences, etc – we can discuss non-verbal suggestions later if you’d like), interpreted them, acted upon them, and made the actions feel automatic and involuntary? There’s nothing magic here, except for the way it all looks and feels!
So, if you’re happy that they do all the work (honestly, there is no other way it can happen) then are you prepared to let them know? That was a big one for me, but experience shows that it makes no difference. Instead of telling your participant, and the (whatever) audience that you’re going to make something happen, tell them that they are going to make something happen. Or at least they can try. And it might work if they try hard enough and are capable enough. That some people can do this. Do a thing that looks and feels magical. Isn’t that more impressive and interesting?
On the one hand, it is totally honest. You will give suggestions and they will try to act upon them. On the other hand, it totally relinquishes you from any concerns about it working. Anyone can say the words of a suggestion; only certain people can hear them, consume them, and have the magical thing play out. It isn’t down to how well you do your bit (not really); it’s mostly down to how well they do their bit, and a lot of that will be down to their thinking style and other capabilities.
If you’re ready, and they’re ready, then what you need to ask is whether they’d like to experience something totally and unbelievably off the charts. If they are, then you can proceed. They need to be aware that this is an exercise of their imagination, that some people imagine better than others, but ultimately it is up to them to make it work to the best of their abilities. There is no “force” in this – either they buy your game or they don’t, so sell it as best you can. If they don’t buy, then maybe that’s something to work on. Read Influence by Cialdini. Practice being sociable. Practice persuading people. Practice selling.
Then go ahead and work through the Phenomenological Control Scale as described here – it’s an introduction followed by suggestions, just as Barnier and Nash (2008) described hypnosis in The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis (Barnier, A J, & Nash, M R (2008). ‘Introduction: A roadmap for explanation, a working definition’.).
If the planets align and your participant has bought that this might be an interesting experience, that you might be an interesting experience-giver, and that they might be in a frame of mind to experience something interesting, then they will likely respond positively to some suggestions and not to others. This is to be expected. If your desire is that they (and your “audience”) are amazed, then I would repeat the suggestions they succeeded at after you’ve completed the script. Always end on a series of successes – if they succeeded 10 minutes ago, then they are likely to succeed at the same again now. If they are failing one after another, then cut it short and find a different participant.
I have delivered a shortened version of this script over a hundred times to people who had little interest and didn’t know me as a hypnotist. In fact, the word “hypnosis” was not mentioned at all in any of those sessions. Yet some experienced their hands stuck, some experienced hallucinations, most had involuntary experiences. None of those who experienced nothing thought less of me, or of themselves. To them, they just didn’t respond – they didn’t have the mindset that a responder would have. They didn’t have the capacity for phenomenological control.
Now, what I will say, is that I absolutely fucking delivered those scripts, even when I wasn’t sure they were landing. In my head, I was ‘Derren Brown’. In my head, there was no reason for them not to respond. I delivered them as a radio DJ would – smooth, confident, seamless. I did, I will admit, practice reading the script as coolly and seductively as I could, as many times as necessary, until I felt I could convince even the most hardened sceptic to at least give these things a try.
So yes, some of it is down to you and your delivery. Practice, sound competent and people will respond. Dive in unprepared, sound uncommitted, and act like you have no confidence, and get what you project. I absolutely appreciate that this is a nuance that you might not know how to pin down. That is why I will offer free Zoom sessions to anyone reading this post who wants coaching in delivery. At least up until an unspecified number of people have taken the offer, at which point anyone else can pay me or can take this post to a hypnotist friend and ask them to help you the way I would have done.
In a nutshell – no induction, no deepeners, no fractionation, no magic. Just suggestions delivered with power, plus the participant’s knowledge that they need to engage with them for them to succeed. Shift the balance away from you “doing” a thing, to them making a thing “happen” for themselves and you’ll have a success. Then, and only then, start to build outwards to some form of performance style of your own.
Good luck with it.