The New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnotism by Ormond McGill
This book is truly an encyclopedia which includes not only a wealth of information about Stage Hypnosis but a whole variety of techniques and principles that are applicable to any hypnosis situation. This book includes information about how hypnosis works, hypnotic principles that apply to any situation, a whole chapter dedicated to 100 ways to getting someone into hypnosis, and it even shows you how to hypnotize a chicken. Note: Even those hypnotists who are not interested in doing any stage work should read this book! Take my word for it, it is one of the best out there.

Hypnotherapy by Dave Elman
Elman was a pioneer in the art of medical hypnosis, and this historical classic explores not only the Dave Elman Induction, but shows a wealth of other hypnotic techniques like using hypnosis as an adjunct to chemical anesthesia, as a tool for impotence and frigidity, and using hypnosis to eliminate stuttering. It’s worth it to read this book just to get inside the mind of one of the legendary hypnotists of the past, as well as learn a lot of useful techniques.

Uncommon Therapy by Jay Haley
This book quite simply blows my mind. Jay Haley provides a detailed account of Ericksonian hypnosis, and tells quite a few stories of how Milton Erickson performed his work. This is where you’ll find a lot of the examples of how to interact with a person, as well as information breaking down the structure of that communication and demystifying it so that you can use it. If you are a person who hopes to do any sort of therapy or coaching or to help people in their lives using hypnosis, this book is an absolute gold-mine of information.

The Ronning Guide to Modern Stage Hypnosis by Geoff Ronning
If you’re in for the par to learn stage hypnosis or want to be a professional stage hypnotist, I suggest checking out this book. Geoffrey Ronning has put together a very comprehensive guide on specifically how to perform a stage hypnosis show, how to get bookings, what happens if it all goes wrong, and tons of motivation. Although this book is mostly for stage hypnotists and it’s content is geared 90% towards that audience, if you do street hypnosis or even if you are just looking for a good suggestibility test to add onto your repetiore, this book will fulfill those needs.

Influence by Robert Cialdini
I do believe I’ve quoted this book about a hundred times in instructing various events and seminars over the years. Cialdini was a guy who always fell for scams; if someone showed up and gave him a fancy sales pitch, he had to buy it. He got very curious as to why he always fell for these gambits, and began a length research procedure which now has been very well documented in his book. Most hypnotists have probably already read this book, but if you haven’t, order a copy. It’s very interesting reading.

Applied Hypnosis and Hyperempiria by Don Gibbons
Probably my second most quoted book is this one, and usually I’ll just reference the book and tell people to go get it. This book by Don Gibbons is an accurate and realistic portrayal of what hypnosis is and what it isn’t. He talks about how hypnosis has been associated with sleep over the years, and how hyperempiria is actually the opposite of that, but that we use essentially the same process to get people into both states. As a bonus for this book, you learn how to take people into hyperempiric states of consciousness which can be very fun to play with. I’m always surprised at how many hypnotists haven’t even heard of hyperempiria or some of the other states that we have available to us. This is a must-read.

Reframing by Richard Bandler and John Grinder
Reframing is a critical part of working with people and yet some of us know so little about it. A caller’s objections or a client’s misperceptions both have to be reframed and put into their proper light. People who are talented in the art of reframing are perceived as smarter, they make more money, and their clients have better results. This book shows you how to do it, along with giving you lots of techniques and understandings. It is a transcript of a live seminar that Bandler and Grinder did, but do not be fooled, this is one amazing book. I highly recommend picking up a copy.

Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., by John Grinder, Judith DeLozier, and Richard Bandler
Another great book by Bandler and Grinder, this one also by Judith DeLozier, is the book that introduced the concept of the Milton Model in NLP. If you’re not familiar, Richard Bandler and John Grinder spent 9 months studying Milton Erickson and watching his videotapes. The very core essence of his patterns, called the Milton Model, is now taught in 1 day in NLP practitioner trainings. There’s two volumes to the series, and they are both great, although difficult to get through. It’s not light reading, but I think it’s time well spent. Great book.

My Voice Will Go With You by Sidney Rosen
The subtitle of this book is “The Teaching Tales of Milton Erickson” and this one can be a lot of fun to read. These are some of the stories that Erickson used to tell people when hypnotizing them or before hypnotizing them. If you want to be fascinated with just how smart this guy was, read a couple of his stories and you might find yourself drifting off. Erickson was amazing at metaphor and relating concepts together, and Sidney Rosen does a fantastic job in this book cutting to the core of what we want to know. This should be in your library!

Trancework by Michael Yapko
Trancework is a comprehensive guide to learning the fundamentals of clinical hypnosis. Although Yapko is mostly an Ericksonian-style hypnotist, he provides step-by-step instructions for getting things done in hypnosis. The book is also grounded firmly in research and pragmatism, and provides a great introduction to the art of hypnosis which you should re-read every couple of years to find out what you missed the first time.

Engage the imagination, Change the belief.

Here is a belief change process that is quite cool that I came up with today. It hasn’t been coded yet into a “ready set and go” technique but for the intermediate to advanced hypnotists and NLPers out there, you will find a lot of great things to use in this. This is best done when you have already elicited the limiting belief, and the resourceful belief that they want to replace it with. Enjoy.

The Process

The setting is that your beliefs or thoughts are like a transparency that’s been put on a projector in a room… so that when you flip the projector on, it appears to light up kind of big on the screen, right? [Get them to agree, this is leading] It SEEMS real, right? [This is distancing them from it]

But you know that in reality that someone wrote those words on there, or put those pictures up there, and you could actually just erase them and start over. So imagine your limiting beliefs that you want to change being up there, and you know that since they are on a projector, that they have a bit of transparency to them, they are just light being projected.

Now these beliefs, of course, are very old, and dusty, aren’t they. [Tag question] Maybe they have fingerprints on them, or maybe the pictures are faded, or the words are partially erased from being written in that whiteboard marker that wipes off so easily.

And you know that at any time you could flip on the lights and that the projector would not be the only thing you would be focused on, and if the projector turns off, then you become aware of the rest of the room. And so up until now you have had those beliefs [Notice the changing of tenses here to put the beliefs in the past] up there, and they were up there shining pretty brightly and kind of taking over your attention … but you know at any time you can go ahead and flip on the lights in the classroom [Command], and realize that you are still learning.

Note: this is a metaphorical shift; we started off with a projector, then I added in that it’s in a room, then a classroom.

From being in a classroom we know we have the classroom lights and the projector lights, and if you turn on the classroom lights then it becomes obvious that the projector is no longer real. When we are in classrooms, we learn things. So I’m framing the whole process as a learning experience.

And if before those old beliefs start to fade away the lights turn on [Command and leading language], then you can grab the old transparency of those old beliefs and spray it with some solution to remove all the dust and grime, and maybe some of the old beliefs start to smudge as well, or maybe they wipe off all at once. Then find the trashcan and throw away that transparency, and take a new one out of the pack that is completely clean and free of smudges.

Now if you take the time to think about what would be better things to believe, notice if it is something where the better images immediately pop into place on the projector and you believe it just as strongly, or if you need to first dim the lights before the new images come up and they start to entrance you. [Double Bind]

So make sure that the new beliefs are just the way that you want them, and then you can dim the lights and start to play the pictures on the projector. Maybe they are moving pictures and you start to dream about how nice it is to believe these things, having had made these changes [Hypnosis Language Patterns]

Notes and Comments

If you wanted to you could easily make this into a more action-step type of process. The way I discovered this was by talking one of my clients through a changework process in which they had wanted to change some beliefs. They wanted to use a submodality swish, but they didn’t seem to be having much luck with it, so I came up with a new metaphor: the transparency on the projector.

There are lots of other things you can play with in this. I purposefully picked a transparency, because one of the visual submodality shifts is whether or not an image is solid or transparent. So if the client wasn’t quite getting it, I could easily go back to making the old beliefs transparent. And if I wanted to concrete the new beliefs, I would have them go back to being completely focused on the projection of the transparency, and have them step into it, making it real and solid.

By changing the context of what is happening, I make a shift between “old beliefs” (transparent / projector) and “new beliefs” (real and solid) … there’s also some great stuff in there about how they are always in a classroom, which means they are always learning, and so if they are learning then they can’t possibly have old beliefs (which were just written on a transparency with magic marker) to be somehow “stuck” there… instead we can spray solution on it, erase the old beliefs, smudge them, and do whatever to do them, because they are only a transparency…

Get the structure? I really like this one. Try it out and leave a comment to let me know how well it worked for you!

Here is a quick hypnosis and NLP technique that I often use:

When explaining the pre-talk to the person, tap a space on the table that is closer to them, and label it the “conscious” mind. Then refer to a space closer to you, and label it the “unconscious mind.” This way when you’re talking, you can put things into the space for the unconscious mind.

Note: When I say “label” it, I mean that you are referring to it in an ambiguous way. You don’t outright tell them, “this is your conscious mind, this is your unconscious” instead you say “your unconscious mind” while gesturing to the space closest to you.

The unconscious space is closer to you, so it presupposes that if things come from that direction, they must be intended for the unconscious mind. You are essentially creating a submodality shift — by aligning things on a line, for which close to you means “unconscious” and away from you means “conscious”.

We can also indicate messages to be for the unconscious mind by using tonal marking and by referring to a visual location with our eyes (example: looking over the person’s right shoulder every time a message is meant for the unconscious mind)

Since my last article on voice training exercises had some good responses, I thought I’d continue by talking more about a hypnotist can improve their voice.

This time I want to talk about emotional undertones in your voice and the different states that are possible to lead someone through just by using the voice. Our model for this is Tony Robbins. That guy is amazing with his voice. He captivates the audience, mostly with his voice.
Do you think Tony Robbins knows how to do playful? outrageous? excited? teary-eyed soft moments? huge rushes of adrenaline? You KNOW he does, if you’ve listened to him.

The emotional undertone of how you are speaking can be so very important, because by altering how we pause at certain moments, or whether our voice is soft and tender or in-your-face intense, we can get people to feel differently.

Using this in hypnosis, at some times we want to be very calm. “You are now floating in a boat, calmly at sea, gently drifting along, as if all the cares in the world float away with the passing clouds…”

But at other times you want to make an impact with them. You want to get emotional. “You are NOW a non-smoker and you’ll be a non-smoker for the rest of your life! Your hands are STUCK together. You are UNABLE to speak your name!”

And my guess is that Tony did not start out being able to do all those emotions. I’m going to guess he practiced them. A LOT. It’s like an actor in a lot of ways, you practice the emotions you will need, so that when you need them they are there for you, and you can do excited, or angry, or apathetic, or loving, or any other emotion, in the moment.

Do most hypnotists that you know have that much of control over their voice and how they command attention? Do you have it? If you don’t then realize it’s another thing that you can learn. Just as you have been learning hypnosis, you can also learn to have a great control over your voice. So when it comes time to pound that message into someone that they will get all the changes you have suggested to them, you’ll be able to do it, no problem.

Now here’s another voice exercise called the Alphabet or Vowels exercise. You will say the vowels, but the way you will say them will vary. First you start out with very pleasurable feel-good tip-of-the-orgasm type feelings, and then you do anger, and then you do like you are begging someone for a request and you really need them to do it for you.

So how could you say “E” (and hold the note) and make it sound like you were a little kid, curious about the world, discovering something new? If this isn’t an experience you have a reference for, invent one. Then imagine if you were a 30-something woman and you had just been treated to a day at the spa, and hold that same vowel with that in mind. Then do it like you are commanding someone to do something.

Obviously this is hard to describe over text, and maybe I will do an accompanying mp3 with this to demonstrate how it is done if there are enough requests! Enjoy.

This is a video I did a while ago which is a double induction (also called a dual induction) that I did with another hypnotist, Oscar Rodriguez.

I always like to cover how to do the multiple person inductions when certifying people, because they’re lots of fun and can establish very profound states of hypnosis. In this case we “Tranced Out” an entire class of people and later conditioned them to go deeper.

This segment was part of a class we were doing on Hypnotic Language Patterns, and even though the DVDs for this one are no longer available (sorry guys and gals), we will be coming out with a Tranced Out Language Patterns product pretty soon, after our inductions set gets released. Look out for that one because it’s going to be a doozy

Here’s the video:

It’s 9 A.M. and I’m surprised the neighbors haven’t called the cops on me yet. For the past hour I’ve been blasting away at the walls doing vocal projection exercises. This particular exercise involves reciting famous passages like Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, and Patrick Henry’s Call to Action, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

As hypnotists we should be always improving ourselves, and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I am an advocate of “CANI” or Constant And Never-Ending Improvement. Your voice is one thing that you should be practicing to improve at least once in a while, and one of the ways is by doing voice training exercises.

If you have studied NLP at all, you know that some people are primarily auditory, and making this type of person happy means that you will need to sound pleasant to the ears. I have a friend who is very auditory, and he’s a musician out in LA. I’ve hypnotized him quite a few times, and he’s been hypnotized by others as well, and he will always mention to me how the quality of a person’s voice can make or break the experience.

With that in mind, here is a powerful exercise that you will want to do, to enhance the depth of your voice, and it has to do with finding your optimum pitch.

In the “Voicing It” program, Nancy Daniels talks about doing “doughnut O’s” which helps you to find the optimum center of where you should be speaking and to speak at the correct pitch. Here is how you do it:

Put your hand on your diaphragm, which is going to be in the lower part of your chest, about 2-3 inches above the solar plexus. Then, as deeply as you can, and keeping your head in a neutral position (don’t lower the head down too much), say “HO HO HO” like Santa Claus, and say it as deep as you possibly can. You should feel vibrations in the lower part of your chest and around the rib cage, which will tell you that your voice is reverberating. That is what you want!

Once you get that, hold the “O” sound and begin speaking at that same exact pitch (pitch is the relative highness or lowness of a note – in this example we are reverberating a very low pitch).

Now, since some of the readers of this blog are women, they might be thinking, “But Taylor, I don’t want to sound like Santa Claus.” This is a good point to bring up. What you have to remember is that a deeper voice, even in women, is very attractive. Super-high voices are usually associated with nagging and are not that pleasant. If you want someone to ignore what you have to say, just talk with a very high pitch and speak quickly. If you want them to listen to you and for you to be more hypnotic, lower the voice down.

You’re going to get better results by developing a smooth, deep, resonant voice.

What this exercise does is it allows you to find the optimum pitch that you should be resonating at. This is the pitch range at which you will have the most power in projecting, and it will be much easier to vibrate at that range.

This brings me to a funny exercise that Bandler does with his students, where he has them put their finger on their nose, speaking through the nose, and saying “This is my nose…” and of course they sound very nasal. Then they go “This is my mouth” and they speak through that area, then “This is my chest” … and then finally, “This is my diaphragm… and when I talk from here, I will make millions of dollars and have lots of steamy sex.”

If those things are attractive to you, do this voice training exercise! I promise it will pay off.

I made a video to show you how to do this technique. Check it out:

“Consider the Pre-Talk like laying the foundation of a house. Without a good foundation, no matter how strong the framework of the house, the strength of the house is severely compromised and can be subject to weakening with a good push.” – Matt Sison

The pre-talk is one of the most important parts of a clinical hypnosis session. This is an education that we give someone, where we explain to them what hypnosis is, and what it isn’t, in a quick and effective manner. The main purpose of the hypnosis pre talk is to remove fear, and to build expectancy. The media for the most part has demonized hypnosis, and misconceptions thrive around the subject. The pre-talk is how we talk them out of that.

Some of the misconceptions include:

» Loss of consciousness
» Surrendering of the will and losing control
» That hypnosis is a sign of a weak mind
» Revealing secrets in hypnosis
» Getting “stuck” in hypnosis
» Getting addicted to hypnosis as you would to drugs
» Being hypnotized against their will, or
» Doing criminal or antisocial acts

No matter how illogical some of these misconceptions might seem, people may believe them when they come to see you for clinical sessions, which is why it’s important to do a pre-talk.

In addition to removing misconceptions, we also want to build positive expectation and anticipation in their mind of what is going to happen. Have your client feeling great about hypnosis, ready and excited about the changes they are about to go through. When you get people who very much want to be hypnotized, it’s easy to take them there.

I have different lengths of pre-talks. I have a very short one, a short one, a normal-length one, and then I have a very long pre-talk that can take sometimes as long as 30 minutes or more, for clients that I think might need it. Most people however get a 5-10 minute coaching on what hypnosis is, and they go along their way.

Do you have a great pre-talk that you use? Post it in the comments.

This is the light switch technique: a self hypnosis how to.

You may already have a way that you do self hypnosis, but this is a great self hypnosis induction that you can use that I’ve found to be very effective. The other day I was at a hypnosis training, and one of the things we did was a very effective technique called the light switch. It’s great for instant self hypnosis.

Here are the steps:

1. Imagine that you have two big bundles of wires coming down from your brain, and that the wires then split off and go into every nerve and fiber of your body.
2. One bundle of wires goes and controls all of the core functions of your body, like your blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. We’ll leave that bundle alone. And the other bundle connects to every single voluntary muscle and nerve in your body, so that if you were to shut off power to that second bundle, all of your nerves would relax instantly!
3. Now lift up the index finger of your left hand, and imagine under that index finger is a light switch that will either turn off or on that entire bundle of voluntary muscles and nerves. Right now that light switch is in the ON position.
4. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and go into a light state of hypnosis.
5. To deepen your trance, turn off that light switch, and allow all of those muscles and nerves to relax completely, as if all of the electrical power had just been cut off.

You may even want to imagine what it is like when the power suddenly goes off in your building. Feel that feeling of complete and total darkness, and have that happen every time that you switch that light switch off.

Now, one of the best ways to do this technique is to get someone into hypnosis using for example the Dave Elman Induction, or using your instant induction techniques (such as the ones in our upcoming 5-DVD set, join the mailing list) and then to give the suggestion of the light switch being there, and right as they turn off the switch you lower your voice and guide them even deeper into it.

Ideally you’ll test and go back and forth a few times, so the person can do self hypnosis very effortlessly, without having to have additional self hypnosis training. Go test this out and let me know what you think, in the comments.

I’ve been doing a lot of hypnosis lately, I find some way to weave it into the conversation.

Here’s how the conversation went tonight (paraphrased):

Taylor: “So how about you, what do you do?”
Guy 1: “Oh I work in manufacturing”
Taylor: “Oh really? What type of stuff do you process?”
Guy 1: “Ah you know, Mil spec stuff”
Guy 2: “Lets shouldn’t talk about work now guys, we’re at a party! We could talk about sports, or women, or beer…”
Taylor: “Well, I like talking about hypnosis. I’m a hypnotist so it works well that way…”
Guy 1: “Oh, yeah, hypnosis, so what’s that about?”
Taylor: “Well, what I tell people to do is that when you stop… and focus in with your breathing, your mind goes blank because your unconscious mind… that if you were having the belief that you can go into a trance, what you do not know yet will learn unconsciously will consciously come up for you. This is how deep your trance works. You adjust your breathing and go into that state.”
Girl: “Wow… you are so intelligent, Taylor”

But basically I bring it up in every conversation.

My goal is to have them do some sort of suggestibility test. My favorites are:

- Book and the Balloon (Light Hand/Heavy Hand)
- Hand tightening game

With the book and the balloon, I usually have them close their eyes… with the hand tightening test, I want them staring fixedly at a spot on their hand.

Today I did … 3 of the book and the balloon.. and 3 hand tightening games of which one was having the hands glued together like the hands are in prayer. (I saw a video of Brian David Phillips’ approach with this and I liked it a lot: video)

Depending on what a person is presenting to me, I vary what I show them. If someone is only a “little” interested in hypnosis, I’ll show them the book and the balloon. If they’re a little bit more, I’ll show them the hand tightener… But I only go through the deeper levels of hypnosis with people who are committed to experiencing it.

My format now is:

1. Do an instant induction, deepen QUICKLY…
2. Immediately start fractionating them using a trigger
3. Start having them do simple hypnotic phenomenon right away – e.g. handlock
4. Deepen trance in some significant way, then proceed on to more advanced phenomenon

It seems like we are constantly being bombarded in the news that America is in fact “in a recession,” and that means that we all have to feel bad and mourn about how many jobs are being cut.

In fact, people seem to believe that they themselves must take this recession personally, even if they have a secure job or business, and even if the rest of their life is going great. Weird, huh?

When it rains, it pours.

From the positive living camp, Norman Vincent Peale wrote that “problems are a sign of life.” And if we dig deep enough into our philosophies, isn’t it true that most of this money-stuff is on the surface?

And here’s a question – if we COULD let it go, … should we?

I think we should. Emotionally, at least. To release the emotions so that the flow of life can return.

And one of the great ways that some people are letting it go, and giving themselves permission to do so, is through hypnosis.

Either self-hypnosis through a set of steps, listening to recordings,

Or being hypnotized by a professional. (Hey, did you know that I do phone sessions?

By the way, here is a great self-hypnosis method that you can use, to calm your nerves…

Stand shoulder-width apart… put a little flex in your knees… Inhale very deeply for about 5-8 seconds….

Now begin to exhale slowly, close your eyes, and focus on your heart beat.

And in the moment, notice everything about the external environment… what temperature is the air?

Then, let all of that go, and focus exclusively on your internal body. What do your organs feel like inside of you? What is happening to the hair on your skin? How are your eyes relaxing inside your eyes?

Keep your throat, your jaw muscles, your facial muscles, your eyes, and your forehead completely relaxed…

And breathe for a couple minutes for 10 seconds in, 10 seconds out.

Then open your eyes…. SMILE….

Look right up at the ceiling … shake your shoulders out a bit, and wiggle your body. Get some blood circulating, and feel your body ready to take on whatever comes along.

This can have some great effects.

Have fun.