Lots of people think that the secret to hypnotizing people is in the induction you use. Or maybe it’s in your pre-induction talk. Don’t get me wrong, those things are important. But like most skills, helping people go into trance depends on a mixture of factors. The one most people overlook is that inductions depend on a relationship between people. The words you say are important but the context of the relationship from which you say them is also important.
Imagine for a moment that someone you trust and someone you don’t trust are both saying the same thing to you –“Don’t worry, this is a perfectly safe investment. I’ll look after your money.” Obviously, the relationship you have with each person affects how you would respond to that statement.
Trust Is Key — Rapport Helps With Trust
In general, hypnotizing someone is easier when people trust you. Rapport helps with that. There’s another way that rapport helps — but only if you do something in particular. Before we get to what that is, it’s good to think about hypnotizing people differently than a lot of people do.
Rapport can be generated by acting, speaking and moving similarly to the person with whom you’re working (thus the penguin image). I’ve got a whole program on it 🙂
Hypnosis isn’t so much something one person does to another; hypnosis is something people do together. As long as you focus on hypnosis as something you do to someone, you’ll focus on what words you’re saying, what fancy induction technique to use, memorizing a script etc. When you shift your focus to the relationship between you and the person you’re hypnotizing, your attention shifts. You respond to what that person does. You adjust to how they respond. And you can do one more thing that really, really helps…
You Go Into Trance
If you have rapport with someone, they’re much more likely to follow you. If you go into trance, they may too.
When I talk about this in trainings, some people say, “I can’t go into trance! I won’t be able to speak or think.” Well, that’s simply not true. Being in hypnosis doesn’t mean you can’t hear, you can’t talk or you can’t think. You can do all those things (and so can the person you’re hypnotizing).
Give it a shot. The next time you hypnotize someone, make sure you have rapport, then go into trance with them!
Keith
PS: I’ve got a variety of resources on this site to help you with all aspects of hypnosis and NLP. There are over 200 free articles here (there’s a search function to help you locate what you want). As far as the subject of this article goes, if you don’t go into trance easily yourself, my self-hypnosis program can help. Here is some free information on inductions and I’ve got a couple of programs too — Amazing Inductions & Instant Inductions as well as my full hypnosis course.
