Hypnosis is created when a person is so intensely focused that it creates a freedom within the unconscious mind to act beyond the normal restrictions of what the conscious mind deems possible, real and proper.

Hypnosis training is best started by learning about the past and present of hypnosis itself. The history of hypnosis reaches centuries back; it wasn’t until the 1880’s that hypnosis advanced from the ‘Dark Ages’ and into a more scientific realm.

It was then that a Scottish neurosurgeon by the name of James Braid came up with the term hypnotism. Not only is James Braid responsible for coining the term hypnotism he is also responsible for the study that proved that hypnotism was not a product of magnetic fluids flowing through our bodies.

Braid spent time studying Animal Magnetism and Mesmerism and concluded from those studies that hypnosis could be induced by anyone as long as they followed a certain set of simple rules.

As Braid experimented and studied hypnosis he coined the term hypnosis for reasons that the subjects undergoing it looked to be sleepy. After further study he found that one could be hypnotized and still be wide awake, at this time he attempted to change the term hypnotism to monoidealism; mono- meaning one, and idealism for the focus on a particular idea.

This term made better sense as the act of hypnosis is created by complete focus on one idea to the extent that it eventually becomes a reality for the subject. The term monoidealism did not take and hence today hypnosis is still known as hypnosis.

As James Braid has shown us through history there are rules to follow and steps to take to induce a person into a hypnotic state. These steps are known today as the 4 Stage Formula. The 4 Stage Formula begins with Stage 1, to Absorb Attention. Absorbing attention is simply to capture the focus of your subject.

This requires intense concentration and the ability to draw your subject into you and to keep them following your lead with suggestions and language, after you have accomplished this you can move on to the second stage.

The second stage of the 4 Stage Formula is to Bypass the Critical Factor. Critical factor is known in hypnosis as the reasoning of the conscious mind that says, “this is not possible”.

Resistance to hypnotic trance is created when the critical factor stands between your subject and their hypnotic state. This must be bypassed in order for your subject to respond to you on an unconscious level.

Once you have bypassed the critical factor, which you will learn as we move through different articles, you will be able to present hypnotic suggestions in the form of advice. As long as no critical factor is standing in the way the suggestions will resonate with your subject and the advice will come out through the conscious mind and take effect.

After you have bypassed all critical factors stage 3 of the 4 Stages is to Activate an Unconscious Response. Activating unconscious responses is your sign that you have successfully led your subject into a hypnotic state.

Any unconscious response is a positive sign for you as a hypnotist, as well as for your client, because you are doing your job. Unconscious response can vary; a good example of an unconscious response is an emotional response.

Emotional responses are derived from an unconscious level, you have no choice in your emotions they are simply a product of your unconscious reacting to and implementing the thinking and understandings you posses.

Make sure to note that if you are dealing with a subject that is in a heightened state of emotion, say a breakup or recent loss, the subject is already in their own hypnotic process.

You as the hypnotist

You must be able to access and retrieve a response from the unconscious before you can begin working toward any desired outcome. This brings us to the fourth and final step in the 4 Stages; the fourth stage is to Lead Unconscious to Desired Outcome.

This step is simple to explain really it is as it sounds. Once you have your subject in a hypnotic state and have accomplished the three previous stages you will lead your subject through their unconscious by way of suggestions to obtain your desired outcome. When you successfully combine all four of the 4 Stage Formula you will be engaging with your subject in a conversational hypnotic interaction.

For more information please visit http://www.conversational-hypnosis.com

Find more hypnosis sessions by Steve G. Jones at his website: www.SteveGJones.com

The behaviours you exhibit from day to day are a direct result of the habits that are ingrained in your mind. Habits are formed in order to free up mental energy. It means that we allow our unconscious mind take over certain activities once they have been learned. The human mind is the best learning machine in the universe, but it isn’t always good at choosing good things to learn. That’s why we can quickly form habits that are not good for us in the long term, such as eating unhealthy and not doing exercise.

Hypnosis is ideally suited to change your habits. Whether you pay to see a hypnotist or make use of resources that allow you to experience hypnosis at home, hypnosis allows your unconscious habits to be reprogrammed so that you don’t even need will power or discipline to choose a healthier life style. You’ll find yourself automatically choosing new behaviours and over time your self-image will change to cement a permanent change.

Try the following easy hypnosis exercise at home. First find a quiet place to sit or lie down, somewhere you will not be disturbed. Then allow your focus to drift over different parts of your body. Just imagine relaxing each part of your body in turn, your feet, your hands, you eyes, every part that you feel like relaxing. When you are feeling nice and relaxed close your eyes and start imagining what it would be like to be in a deep trance. If you are having difficulty with this just pretend to go into a deep hypnotic trance. It isn’t even necessary to have any previous experience of hypnosis as your imagination will help create a suitable state for your intention; your intention to change your habits at the unconscious level.

Once your attention is focused internally and no longer on the outside world, start mentally rehearsing new behaviours. Be sure to start off with small new positive behaviours rather than imagining not doing something negative. For example, imagine yourself walking through the fruit and vegetable section in the supermarket, maybe buying a single apple, maybe even eating it later, instead of trying to imagine not eating too much food. The reason is that in order to imagine not eating too much food, you have to imagine yourself eating food first. The mind just can’t think of the absence of something.

Later you can start imagining more elaborate new behaviours such as researching new healthy recipes or taking up exercise.But as I’ve said earlier, start with very small behaviours. Once you’ve mentally rehearsed these new behaviours for a few minutes allow yourself to wake up and come back to the room, maybe by focusing on outside noises or the feeling of your clothes on your skin.

It’s important to not make yourself feel pressured to act out these new behaviours. Just make it part of your routine to spend 10 minutes a day imagining yourself with small new behaviours. The purpose of this exercise is to create new habits in your mind first. Because your mind can not tell the difference between real and imagined memories it will start to believe that these visualised behaviours actually happened. One day you’ll find yourself spontaneously acting out the new behaviours.

In conclusion, take out a couple of minutes each day to imagine new behaviours, start small, and don’t feel pressure to act these out, let them happen naturally in the coming weeks. This way you’ll find yourself losing weight easily.

If you’re interested in using hypnosis MP3s to help you lose weight visit Richard Mackenzie’s hypnosis MP3 site.

Conversational hypnosis is a form of hypnosis where you can put people into a light trance just by having a conversation with them. Rather than making someone lie down and close their eyes you simply talk to them in order to induce certain emotional states, in this case the will to buy what you are offering. Now this doesn’t necessarily have to be unethical because first of all you will do much better if you believe in your product or service and secondly you will not want complaints from disappointed customers as this will lead to a bad reputation. You actually want satisfied customers that give you lots of referrals.

The key to using conversational hypnosis in sales is to find out what their mental processes were when they last bought something, even better if it was a similar product or service. Simply ask them what happened the last time they bought a car, computer or insurance. Find out in detail what they thought just before they went ahead with the purchase. What did they notice that made them want to go ahead? The colour, the features, imagining how they would look in the new suit? When people imagine the past like this they actually go into a light trance, their voice tone will be lower and their eyes will glaze over as they remember the event in detail.

Make sure you listen out for the specific way in which they came to the decision. You might hear something like: “I looked at all the features and how they satisfy my requirements, I really loved the colour and then I felt a feeling in my stomach just telling me to get it”. Run through your normal sales pitch but make sure to focus on how their requirements are met, focus on the visual aspects of the product and how they are sure to be getting that special feeling from it. Then at the very end repeat what the went through when they decided to buy: “So when you see how all the features fit your requirements, looking at how much you love the colour red, you might be getting that feeling in your stomach that says: lets get this”.

Remember people are always telling you how they want to be convinced or sold to, you just need to listen out for it.

The first rule of hypnosis is that you must first enter the emotional state and mindset that you want others to experience. This means that if you go into an interview feeling relaxed and confident then the interview will unconsciously pick this up through your body-language, eye-contact and voice tone and this will in turn make him feel at ease and comfortable.

The next step is to match the way the interview speaks in a subtle and respectful manner. For example he might ask you: “We need people that feel confident when meeting clients and are able to leave a good impression, can you give us an example of a previous work situation where you acted like this”. In reply you could first give a suitable example and at the end attach “… which shows that I feel confident when meeting clients and leave a good impression with them”. Another example could be using key-words that the interviewer uses often. Words like: “drive, ambition, goal orientated”. Remember, using similar language to your interviewer not only makes them feel listened to, it also puts you in a similar ‘head-space’ so that you can more easily understand their point of view and how they think.

Finally, when you are asked to give examples of situations where you demonstrated particular skills make sure you use all senses to convey your message. Describe how you felt in challenging situations, the looks on the faces of your satisfied clients and how their voices sounded when you did a good job for them. Being good at describing the details of these stories will make them vivid in the mind of your interviewer. When he takes all the candidates into consideration your interview will be the most memorable.

Being able to hypnotize someone is valuable skill which you can use both in your personal and professional life. The basics are quite simple, yet you can develop the skill in many different ways. In this article you’ll be shown a very basic technique which will allow you hypnotize someone.

1. Get a volunteer to sit or lie down somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed. Ask them to be fully present in the room and notice how safe and relaxed they feel. When they are fully present in that safe feeling touch them on the shoulder and tell them that this is an anchor for that safe feeling and when you touch their shoulder in future they will instantly come out of any hypnotic trance feeling safe and secure. (If the volunteer starts to feel anxious at any stage, touch the anchor to make them feel safe)
2. Ask your volunteer to take a deep breath in and to slowly let it out. Then, using a very relaxed sounding voice, start telling them to relax different parts of their body. For example: ‘Relax your feet, relax your ankles, relax you legs’, moving along the body all the way to the top of their head. Make sure the commands don’t follow each other too quickly but are spaced out to give the volunteer time to process them. You can repeat this part several times until the volunteer is completely relaxed.
3. In the same relaxed and low voice give the following suggestion. ‘If you can, I want you to imagine what it would feel like to be in a deep hypnotic trance, and if you can’t imagine that, just pretend imagining going deep inside yourself and into a deep hypnotic trance where you mind is completely calm and at ease. As you breathe in, and out let that hypnotic feeling cover your whole body, inside and out’.
4. Pause for a few moments to let the person you are working with to start imagining that, which will actually make them go into a deep hypnotic trance.
5. Now start saying positive affirmations to the volunteer as if they were the one saying them. Affirmations like: ‘I love going to the gym, I love eating healthy, I’m confident I can reach my goals’. Do this for about 3 minutes.
6. Once you’ve done enough affirmations you can bring the volunteer back to the room using the following script: ‘Integrating all positive things you’ve said about yourself into the deepest core of your being you might start to notice the clothes on your body, the warmth of the room, different sounds you can hear inside and outside. And as you hear those sounds you will start to wake up, slowly at first coming back to the room in which you are now. Counting down from 5 you will be fully awake and present back in the room at the count of 1’. Then slowly count from 5 to 1.
7. Find out how your volunteer experienced the session, what they enjoyed and what could be done better. Feedback like this will help you make the experience more enjoyable in future and you’ll be able to help people more easily.

Remember, as with everything, practice makes perfect, even when it comes to being hypnotized. The more you go into hypnotic trance the better you get at it. This concludes this first lesson in how to hypnotize someone.

For the ultimate guide to hypnotizing people check out: The Power of Conversational Hypnosis.

To start using this hypnosis technique find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Sit or lie down and start focusing on breathing slowly and deeply. Allow your eyes to close and allow your attention to drift over each part of your body relaxing every muscle in turn. So far this is just like any other self-hypnosis session. But this time you will use the technique of fractionating. When you are ready open your eyes and focus your attention on the outside world, it may help to stand move your arms to become present in your body. Do this for a few seconds, then breath deeply into your belly and let out a long drawn out sighing breath. This time you will go into a slightly deeper trance.

Repeat the above steps as many times as you wish, each time going into a slightly deeper trance. This way you’ll be teaching your mind and body what it’s like to go into trance and what a deep trance is like in a much shorter time than normal.

There are several benefits of being able to go into a deep trance. When you are in a deep hypnotic trance you can have a much greater ability to make changes at the unconscious level. Your critical factor will be completely disabled which will allow you to install positive affirmations and visualizations with ease. Keep practising the exercises I taught you in the other parts of this series and soon you’ll be reaping the benefits of knowing how to hypnotize yourself.

By now everyone knows how powerful positive affirmations and visualising your success is. Yet for so many people it doesn’t seem to work. First of all don’t doubt for a moment that mentally rehearsing successful behaviour works. For example neuro-scientists have found that the parts of our brain we use to act out real behaviour is exactly the same as the parts that we use when we imagine that behaviour, or see others doing it. So it has a real scientific basis.

The reason why a lot of people can’t get positive visualisations to work for them is because of two reasons. The first is that their current beliefs and behaviours are ingrained into their neurology to the extent that any visualisation of new beliefs and behaviours is rejected by their minds. The second is that humans possess something called the critical factor. This is a part of your mind that distinguishes between what it thinks is realistic and possible and things that are not. Whether the critical factor is correct in these assessments is irrelevant, it does its job in a way it sees fit to.

Hypnosis is the ideal tool to bypass the critical factor and to momentarily suspend your habitual beliefs and behaviour which means that when you are in a hypnotic trance… anything goes.

So your exercise for the next time you put yourself into a hypnotic trance (See: How to learn Self-Hypnisis: Exercise 1) is to visualise yourself doing the behaviour you think you need to do in order to reach your goals. So if you want to one day retire on a tropical island imagine yourself researching a new business idea, finding partners to work with and working efficiently and productively to make the business a success. The key is to not focus on the end goal (that would just be day-dreaming) but on the journey. You can either see yourself doing this from outside or experience it through your own eyes whatever feels best to you.

This is the best way to use positive visualisations and by learning how to do self-hypnosis you’ll be setting yourself up to make the most of this powerful tool. Learning how to hypnotize yourself is one of the most important things you can do to get ahead so I advise you keep practising and keep exploring.

This exercise is one that you can use to hypnotise yourself into a relaxed light trance and can be repeated as many times as you want in order to go into a deeper trance.

First of all find yourself a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Make sure you sit or lie down comfortably and start breathing deeply into your belly. This means that your belly moves in and out as you breath.

When you are ready, close your eyes. Take a deep breath in and as you exhale say to yourself in soft and relaxed voice: ‘I relax my feet’.

Again, breath in deeply and as you exhale say to yourself in an even more relaxed and deeper voice: ‘I relax my ankles’. Continue breathing and with every breath out say to yourself that you are relaxing a part of your body. Work your way up from your feet to the top of your head.

You can repeat the whole sequence as many times as you wish, each time going into an even deeper trance. However most people will usually feel warm and relaxed by the time they get to the top of their head. Once you are in this state you’ll be completely focused on your body and how good it feels, hardly aware of the outside world.

In this state you’ll be able to imagine all the wonderful things you want to experience in your life. So imagine achieving your goals and how you’ll set about achieving them in vivid detail.

Practising this every couple of days will teach your body how to relax and feel good and will program your unconscious mind to drive you towards the ideal life you vividly imagined in the trance state. This exercise teaches you the most important skill that you’ll need in order to start your journey in learning self-hypnosis, so practise it often. Soon you’ll be able hypnotize yourself easily in order to get the better results in your life.

Let me start off by telling you that it is true that hypnosis can help you in all areas of your life, weight loss, to stop smoking, to do more exercise, be more successful, procrastinate less and become more confident. The problem is that many people have misconceptions about what hypnosis is. Ask the average person what comes to mind when they think about hypnosis and they’ll probably imagine someone on stage asking volunteers to join, telling them their eyes are feeling heavy, then getting them to make animal noises. Of course that kind of act happens all the time, it’s called stage hypnosis. In stage hypnosis, the hypnotist actually looks for volunteers, people that volunteer to go on stage are naturally more outgoing and thus more willing to display a range of emotions and behaviours in front of people, couple this with the fact that they have the expectation that the hypnotists has power over them. That last point is actually the key to understanding all hypnosis, not just self-hypnosis.

The stage hypnotist takes advantage of the fact that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. A hypnotist can not make anyone go into a trance, they can only help you put yourself into a trance. The biggest secret in hypnosis is that a hypnotic trance is something that you do to yourself and is something you can get better at the more you practice. This is why the best hypnotists will actually help you go in and out of trance multiple times in a hypnosis session as this quickly teaches you what it is like to go into a trance. This is the one thing you need to remember when learning any kind of hypnosiss

How to hypnotize yourself: A simple exercise

To get started with self-hypnosis try this simple exercise. Sit or lie down in a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed. If you want close your eyes and breathe deeply into your belly. As you exhale say to yourself, quietly or in your mind: ‘I relax’. Keep doing this over and over as you slowly feel warm and relaxed all over your body. At this point you’ll be in a light trance where you are completely focused on your body and your mind with almost no awareness of what is going on in the outside world.

This is an ideal state to be in that will let you explore your emotion, motivations and beliefs. However in this exercise I want you to vividly imagine what kind of person you want to be. Imagine what your ideal self would do every moment of every day, what do you say to yourself, what activities do you do, how do people treat you and how do you treat them. You can focus on one particular part of your life or imagine a totally ideal life, whichever you choose. Once you’ve done this for as long as you feel necessary start listening for sounds in the outside world, feel the bed or chair underneath you and slowly bring your awareness back to the outside world. That concludes the first self-hypnosis exercise. It will help you shape how you feel about yourself and what you believe you deserve in life, it will reprogram your subconscious and eventually lead to real changes in your life.

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to self-hypnosis. And feel more confident that you can now hypnotize yourself. The more you practise the exercise the better you’ll get, and you’ll be building a strong foundation for your future endeavours in hypnosis.