This is part of a series called ‘The Conversational Hypnosis Diary’ based on my experiences learning and applying the techniques and skills taught in ‘The Power of Conversational Hypnosis’ by Igor Ledochowski.

Over the past few days I’ve been listening to the section entitled ‘Beyond Rapport & Signal Recognition Systems’. Rapport can be described as the state you are in when you are really connecting with another person, you feel like you are on the same wave-length and communication between the two of you is effortless like two friends who have known each other for years. This is a great thing to have with another person if you want to lead them into a hypnotic state using conversational hypnosis skills.

As explained in this section building rapport is something that humans do naturally with our family and friends. But it is something that we can learn to do even better. Imagine for example being able to walk up to anyone and quickly creating a feeling within them that they have known you forever. Can you see how having that skill would be useful in sales, negotiating or in your personal life. In this section Igor explains exactly how rapport is created and how you can go about becoming better at creating rapport. Techniques called matching and mirroring are explained including the 6 most common mistakes made in building rapport.

There is a light trance induction that you can listen to in order to teach you the concept of hypnotic rapport (this course uses hypnosis to teach you hypnosis). Further an explanation is given of so called ‘Rapport Hooks’

Finally this section explain what a Signal Recognition System is and how important it is to become a great conversational hypnotist. A heightened awareness trance induction really cements this concept into your unconscious. After this the 12 Trance signals are explained so that you can easily recognize when someone is going into a hypnotic trance.

The seven exercises at the end of this section mostly involve going out to meet new people and quickly creating a deep sense of rapport with them. I admit it was actually a bit scary in a way when I realized how quickly I could make people feel really comfortable with me, moments after meeting them for the first time

Lesson learned today: Meeting new people and getting them to like you and feel comfortable with you is really easy when you are using hypnotic rapport techniques. If I could boil it down to one idea I would say that the key is to expect people to be open and friendly, this will translate into your voice tone and body language causing people to respond positively to you.

I’ve noticed more and more people becoming interested in learning conversational hypnosis over the last few years. People like Derren Brown and Paul Mckenna are bringing this skill into the main stream consciousness and people are realizing that hypnosis is something that they can apply in their every day life, whether it’s to get better at sales, improve their relationships or even to get an edge while playing poker.

There’s no dispute as to which resource is the best for learning this skill (Igor Ledochowski’s The Power of Conversational Hypnosis in case you didn’t). But the problem is that there is almost too much information contained in that course. Some people feel a little bit overwhelmed when they see just how much they can learn and how much is possible.

That’s why I’ve decided to start this conversational hypnosis diary. Every week I’ll read and listen to a section of the course and go out and apply it in real life. Now I’ve already studied the course before, but that was a few years ago and with this kind of material you’ll always discover new things when you go over it again.

Today I’ve read up to page 41 of the main e-book (which 631 pages long) and listened to the first MP3. In this section Igor introduces the 3 most important things that we need to be aware of in order to learn conversational hypnosis elegantly and the 4 stage protocol which is the basic structure for all hypnosis. After this there are 2 exercises to do. The first of which is to observe how people go in and out of different states throughout the day. This is really interesting because it makes you aware that people are always focusing on different things, inside and outside of themselves with different intensities. It really illustrates the idea that people are naturally in various kinds of trances throughout the day.

In the second exercise we are asked to see if we can grab someone’s attention and hold it for as long as possible. I did this in several ways, once by talking a bit louder than I would usually, the other time by actually speaking softer. The only problem with talking loud is that you tend to grab the attention of several people at a time, and not always of those you want! At the end of this section Igor provides a little trick that really helps with grabbing and holding another persons attention.

Lesson learned today: People are going into different states all the time and there are many ways in which you can get a hold of another persons attention.