Motor City Hypnotist Podcast with David Wright – Episode 42 Conversational Hypnosis

Conversational Hypnosis Show Notes In this episode of the Motor City Hypnotist Podcast we are going to talk about Conversational Hypnosis. What is it? How does it work? And I’m also going to be giving listeners a FREE HYPNOSIS GUIDE! Stay tuned! INTRODUCTION What is up people? The Motor City Hypnotist Podcast is here in the Podcast Detroit Northville Studios. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Motor City Hypnotist Podcast. I am David Wright and with me is my producer Matt Fox. FIND ME: My Website: https://motorcityhypnotist.com/podcast My social media links: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/motorcityhypnotist/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCjjLNcNvSYzfeX0uHqe3gA Twitter: https://twitter.com/motorcityhypno Instagram: motorcityhypno If you would like to contribute financially to the show, you can find me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/motorcityhypno?fan_landing=true FREE HYPNOSIS GUIDE https://detroithypnotist.convertri.com/podcast-free-hypnosis-guide Please also subscribe to the show and leave a review. (Stay with me as later in the podcast, I’ll be giving away a free gift to all listeners!) This episode of the Motor City Hypnotist Podcast is brought to you by Banner Season. Online marketing is saturated and people rarely open their emails. Are you in sales or does your business market to customers? How do you connect with family, friends, and clients? Banner Season takes your marketing into the “real world” by delivering kindness and thoughtfulness directly to your client’s physically. Imagine the excitement of your family, friends and customers as they receive personalized cards and gifts in their mailboxes. Go to bannerseason.com/fantastic and begin today to express kindness and make connections with others. https://bannerseason.com/FANTASTIC WINNER OF THE WEEK; Dave Grohl https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/nandi-bushell-dave-grohl-to-tour-together/ In this episode we discuss conversational hypnosis techniques and principles. Much of the following information used from Mike Mandel Hypnosis.com Arguably the greatest hypnotist in history, psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson, was the foremost master of conversational hypnosis, and he developed a lot of unique techniques that we’ll look at. What is Conversational Hypnosis? When you first think of “conversational hypnosis” it tends to sound strange. In reality, a skilled hypnotist is able to induce trance and cause change through what is a seemingly ordinary conversation. This is what we mean by conversational hypnosis. It’s a scientific and systematic method of putting someone in a trance by just talking to them. In case you’re also wondering about covert hypnosis, it is exactly the same thing as conversational hypnosis. The only difference is, when doing covert hypnosis, you’d be more subtle and you would not openly disclose that you’re doing anything hypnotic. Why would anyone do covert hypnosis? Because if you need to help someone change and you don’t think they’d be open to a hypnotic experience, you can still help them through conversation that is hypnotic without explaining that it’s hypnotic. Remember hypnosis is not mind control, and as a conversational hypnotist you can influence people, but you don’t have magical or mysterious powers over them. Conversational Hypnosis Happens Naturally The first thing to realize is that conversational hypnosis is happening all the time! Just telling someone about your vacation, or talking about your childhood will cause hypnotic trance to develop and fade, like waves on a beach. That’s because trance is a completely normal part of life. We go in and out of hypnotic states all the time, we just don’t typically realize it. So is it possible for someone to be in hypnosis without being relaxed, and without having their eyes closed? Yes. That’s because hypnosis, especially conversational hypnosis, is a normal part of life. In fact, we often slip in and out of trance while we are driving, daydreaming, watching television, or a host of other activities. Netflix is Your Hypnotist! Think of the last movie or series you watched. Remember in detail the characters, and everything that happened in the storyline. Notice that, when you think about it now, everything you saw on the screen has expanded to fill your awareness. You don’t think of the screen itself, or the carpet, or the wallpaper, or the dog lying on the floor. That’s because your experience watching video was hypnotic. Remember hypnosis is not mind control, and as a conversational hypnotist you can influence people, but you don’t have magical or mysterious powers over them. When we go into trance we narrow our awareness. In neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), we call this “downtime”. We become less aware of our surroundings, and we become much more aware of our own internal thoughts and feelings. Just daydreaming can be a naturally occurring trance. So you’re probably thinking: Okay, watching a movie is a kind of hypnosis, but what’s that got to do with conversational hypnosis? The answer is, it has everything to do with it. One of the ways our brains operate is to respond to a good story. A well-crafted story sweeps us along, as we experience a variety of thoughts and feelings, based on things we’ve already learned. A Story… Here’s an example from my own life. When I was a teenager…I worked at a summer camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula… on a lake…just south of Sault St. Marie…and it was a great place in the summer…apart from the insects…but because I was there from June to August…the weather varied at times… And…naturally…even though the days were mostly warm…the nights were often cold…and we stayed in cabins that had no heat source….and slept in bunks with our sleeping bags…and you know that feeling of being cozy in your warm bed and blankets…and having to get out of that warm place, even in your own house…it might feel like a drastic change in temperature….and because we were so close to Canada…it would often be very cold in the mornings…and I can still vividly remember the feeling of being warm……and dreading getting out of that warm sleeping bag…and the feeling of being instantly cold….shivering….shaking…getting dressed as quickly as possible….just hoping that I would warm up…… …it was always a relief…as the day went on…and the temperature gradually increased…and usually by mid day…I would be back in shorts and a t-shirt…enjoying the sunny day…the warm and often hot temperatures…. …and each night…it would start again…getting cozy and comfortable….feeling so warm….just dreading getting out of that sleeping bag in the morning….. Hypnosis is an Internal Experience… If you read that story slowly and carefully, it gave you an internal experience. You probably would have had some sense of what it was like, based on your own previous memories of similar things, like being somewhere cold and isolated, and wanting to get warm again. That’s because it’s all hypnotic. And it’s hypnosis created through the words of a conversation. And by hypnotic, I mean it’s the creation of an imaginary experience that is completely different from the outside “real” world. Note again, that this was accomplished entirely through language. The rich verbal descriptions caused you to access similar things that you could relate to, from your own memories. Words and Metaphor in Conversational Hypnosis Conversational hypnosis utilizes words to create trance, but does so much more casually than structured and rigid trance inductions. A skilled hypnotist can utilize language to guide a listener into a receptive state, where options may be considered, memories can be accessed, and change can happen. A classic example of this is the use of metaphor. Metaphor is when one thing stands for something else. A group of raucous lawyers might be called a kindergarten class. A family argument might be referred to as a knife fight, or a nuclear meltdown. Metaphor is a powerful method of causing change, because our brains have a pattern matching system that automatically finds similarity between different things. If we meet someone we like or dislike on sight, the pattern matching of the fusiform gyrus in the brain has found someone in our personal history that this person reminds us of. Words can do the same thing. When we tell a story that is rich in metaphor, our unconscious minds find similarities between the story and our own situation at that time. The result might be an instant understanding of a solution to a problem, or an insight into our relationships. This is because it’s the way our brains naturally work. The Power of Hypnotic Symbols Symbolism also fits well into the category of metaphors. There are many symbols of the unconscious mind itself, that are cross-cultural. The moon, a pond of still water, a mirror, a forest, are all unconscious symbols. When we drop them into our stories, the subject’s deep mind begins to take notice. Spooky gothic-style stories are filled with specific symbols designed to create anticipation and tension. This is what makes the stories enjoyable. You’ll often find elements like stormy nights, run-down castles on windswept cliffs, lonely lighthouses in thick fog, and waves crashing on rocks. There are often mysterious travellers on night-trains, washed-out roads, phones that don’t work, and stranded guests thrown together in strange circumstances. Sometimes you’re told about escaped convicts, lights in the windows of deserted asylums, and missing family members… If you took the time to read that last paragraph carefully, it would have caused what we call resonance. All of those creepy elements would compound with each other and create a spooky feeling or unsettling emotion. And once we create an emotion, hypnosis is never very far away… The Never Ending Sentence in Conversational Hypnosis A skilled hypnotist can intentionally create trance during a “normal” conversation. He or she can then redirect the attention of the subject to the solution to a problem, or help the listener access more resourceful states. Hidden Hypnotic Commands that Slip Past the Doorman of the Mind One of the most amazing techniques used in conversational hypnosis, is the use of embedded commands. Embedded commands are a covert way of getting suggestions into the mind of your subject. Typically, a part of the mind known as the Critical Faculty acts like the firewall on a computer. It prevents information from affecting the subject, much like a doorman keeps unwanted people out of a nightclub. Embedded commands are a way of slipping past the man on the door without him even noticing it’s happened. The information goes directly into the unconscious mind undetected. Hypnotists believe that the unconscious mind (some prefer subconscious) stores all of our life experiences, and is simultaneously monitoring all of our body systems, and keeping track of our surroundings. The unconscious mind is much more aware than our conscious minds, and this is where real and lasting change takes place. Embedded commands function at an unconscious level. Basically, an embedded command is a hidden hypnotic command. It’s a fragment that is concealed within a larger sentence. For example: If I wish to direct someone into a trance, I might conceal the embedded command: Fall into a trance in a longer sentence like this… I find myself wondering…if it’s going to be an easy thing, for you to fall into a trance as you sit there… The key to embedding a command is to do something known as Analog Marking. This means to mark out the command by saying it in a way that it stands out from the rest of the words. • You might say it slightly louder than the other words. • You might look directly into the eyes of the person as you embed the command. • You might touch the person as you say the command part of the sentence. • You might pause slightly before saying the embedded command. To my amazement, the entire group suddenly sagged as their bodies relaxed and they went deeper. Did You Know? A Brief History of Embedded Commands In 1930, Dr. Milton H. Erickson joined the staff at Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts, USA. He was a psychiatrist with a keen interest in hypnosis. He worked with schizophrenic patients who, he noticed, would speak in “word salad”. They’d say things that made no apparent sense. He eventually discovered that there were often understandable, logical statements embedded in this “word salad”. Erickson got the idea for embedded commands from this experience. To test out his own “word salad”, Erickson encountered a hospital secretary. She would regularly suffer from severe migraines during the onset of menstruation, and she had a migraine during this experiment. Erickson insisted this secretary perform dictation, which was common in this day. There were no tape recorders back then! She reluctantly sat down to do her job. Erickson embedded commands in the middle of his word salad. She certainly didn’t notice the commands consciously. She was too busy writing down his words to think about them. After 15 minutes she interrupted Dr. Erickson to excitedly tell him something. Her migraine was gone! Offering Options Offering options is one of the most powerful conversational methods you can use. By offering different ways for the subject to respond, it becomes impossible for him to do it wrong. A highly directive hypnotist might say “Your hand is rising in the air! It’s rising higher and higher!” But if it doesn’t rise, it will be interpreted as failure, or worse, that the person is being resistant, or is a “bad subject”. A conversational hypnotist offers a variety of options for the subject to consider. She might say “…and your hand may rise…or sink down even more relaxed…or it may do nothing at all…” Here’s a short list of the sort of external trance indicators that are very common: • Deeper breathing, or any breathing shifts • Twitching muscles • Head tipping forward • Eyelids fluttering • Lower lip seems to increase in size • Eyes unfocused and staring • Blink reflex slows or stops completely • Eyes reddening or tearing • Slower response to what you say or ask When you see a number of trance indicators, and if you have rapport, you might only have to say eyes closed now…and the subject will drop into trance. I’ve put people into trance like this, literally hundreds, if not thousands of times. Rapport Rapport is a sense of connectedness between the hypnotist and the subject. It causes the subject to feel both understood and valued. It’s sometimes described as: Entering the other person’s model of the world. One of the most powerful things you can do in conversational hypnosis is to build and maintain strong rapport. The End of Procrastination: How to Stop Postponing and Live a Fulfilled Life https://amzn.to/3m5RzBR Join my Empower Your Mind For Success Private Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/345625973445594 Free Hypnosis for Confidence https://bit.ly/2FIxxhd NEXT EPISODE: Special Guest Nutritionist Alisa Herriman Change your thinking, change your life! Laugh hard, run fast, be kind. David R. Wright MA, LPC, CHT The Motor City Hypnotist

Posted

in

by

Tags: