Hypnosis is a powerful mind tool that allows you to get through to your subconscious mind. To do this, you need to bypass your conscious mind which is not as easy it may sound.
And this is because, the conscious mind filters all the information your mind receives through the five senses. To further describe hypnosis, consider the following example.
If you want to ask a friend to do something for you, they have to use their conscious mind to decipher the message and assess whether it is possible or not.
Access to their subconscious mind through hypnosis would make your friend obey your requests much faster. Hypnosis is a powerful technique when mastered properly. To induce it, there are thousands of known ways to induce hypnosis.
All of them, no matter how different the techniques are, achieve the same result – access to the subconscious mind. The techniques involve first achieving a trance and then deepening or maintaining the trance as long as possible.Hypnosis techniques can be verbal, action or a combination of both.
To start hypnosis, you first have to understand what exactly we are trying to do – to get access to the subconscious mind.
For this access, we have to quiet down the conscious mind, or silence our never-ending thoughts. And to do this, the conscious mind has to be ‘distracted’ by something else.
The best hypnosis induction techniques
Eye Fixation Technique
Eye fixation is one of the oldest hypnosis technique used today. For this technique, the hypnotist asks the subject to gaze or stare at a specific object or a certain spot. The subject most times has to look up while leaning back and stare at a spot.
Soon, the mind and eyes start to become tired and the subject will all into a sort of trance where they are not thinking about anything in particular. The subject should hold out from shutting their eyes for as long as possible.
When the spot on the ceiling starts to become misty, blurry or even starts moving, it’s a good time to now close your eyes. The subject should close their eyes and now enjoy the immense amount of relaxation that comes with hypnosis.
Visualization
Visualization is a very straightforward technique and one of the easiest to do on yourself. The hypnotist first asks the subject to recall a certain room they are very familiar with, for instance, their own rooms.
The hypnotist then asks the subject to imagine every detail in that room, from the windows, the curtains, and the floor to the color of the sheets to the painting on the wall and the sunlight every morning.
After this, the hypnotist should then ask the subject to imagine a less familiar room in the house and ask them to imagine the small details of that room. The subject will likely struggle to remember this small details and the mind will be open to new suggestions.
Visualization is used to recall positive moments and memories and link them to rewarding behavior. It is usually done to change the subject’s perception of a negative image.
Handshake Technique
The handshake technique was created by the father of hypnotherapy himself, Milton Erickson. Handshakes are the most common methods of greeting everywhere in the world.
The handshake technique works by shocking the subject using a handshake. This is done by pulling the subject forward or grabbing the wrist of the subject off balance. Since the normal pattern is interrupted, the subconscious mind is opened to suggestions.
Countdown Breathing
As the name suggests, this technique requires the subject to countdown as they breathe slowly. It is a method adopted from mediation that works perfectly for hypnosis. It works in the following way. The subject first closes their eyes and sits upright with the arms on their laps.
They should then inhale deeply through the nose and then exhale slowly through the mouth. As they slowly breathe in and out, they should use the breathing pattern to countdown from 100.
Each exhale marks one interval. By the time the subject is reaching one, they should be in a trance. Otherwise, continue counting down this time from a higher number.
Body scan technique
This popular method is one of the best and most effective hypnosis induction methods. In this technique, you are required to close your eyes in a quiet environment and slowly scan your body with your mind from head to toe.
What we mean by scanning your body with your mind is, you should listen and feel every sensation on every part of your body. Feel the chest cavity as it moves up and down as your breathe, feel the chair on your back, feel your arms against your thighs and feel your feet against the ground.
Repeat the process, feeling everything until you enter a trance. The body scan technique can be used with other technique to make it as effective as possible. It is usually combined with countdown breathing to make either technique more effective and increase the chance of it working.
Sensory Overload technique
This is one of the more harsh methods used. As mentioned earlier, hypnosis aims to quiet down the conscious mind. The sensory overload technique does exactly the opposite. It involves creating somewhat of chaos in the mind to access the subconscious mind. This is done by creating a lot of sensations that the mind has to process.
Stealth Technique
The stealth technique is a natural method of hypnosis. You may have found yourself in a boring class or speech and your mind slowly drifts away into a fantasy or day dream. When this happens, you are in a trance and you can’t hear the speaker or feel any external distractions, you are simply in your mind.
This is what is referred to as stealth technique. When done by a hypnotist, he or she will read a long story or article in a monotone and ask you to focus on the sound of their voice. Slowly but surely you (the subject) will drift away into a trance.
The arm levitation technique is used to direct the mind’s attention towards body sensations and body movements. This is done to take your mind away from thoughts which are the toughest distractions when it comes to hypnosis.
It is a very effective method and a great one to do on your own. Start by moving you right arm up and down to get accustomed to the movement.
Listen and feel the muscular movements. As you do it, get deeper into the micro-muscular movements and you will get into a trance.
Final Words
As you scroll through the internet, you will find many induction scripts to go along with the techniques. The scripts are not of much help without first practicing the techniques.
There are also many other techniques but most are just variants of each other. The methods listed above are some of the most popular and most effective hypnosis induction technique. We encourage you to try them all out and pick your favorite.