[The following content is taken from the book Hypnosis with the Hard to Hypnotise.]
Becoming More Hypnotic!
The title of this chapter is intentionally ambiguous. Are we talking about clients increasing their own level of hypnotisability, or hypnotists being more hypnotic? The answer is a resounding, Yes!
The primary focus of this chapter will be on increasing the hypnotic responsiveness of clients. However, we will include some notes at the end of the chapter explaining how an awareness of these steps can be used by hypnotists to become more hypnotic generally.
The question of whether or not hypnotisability can be modified is hotly debated in academic circles. The topic is closely tied to the wider question of whether hypnosis is state-based or non-state-based. Unfortunately, the result of this wider debate is often one of polarisation, with neither side listening or learning much from the other. As such, I have no desire to enter into these debates here and will simply say that I am tentatively of the opinion that hypnotic responsiveness can be increased. In fact, I would go as far as Donald Gorassini in stating, ‘it cannot only be said that hypnotic responsiveness is modifiable. Hypnotic responsiveness is highly modifiable.’1
People like Gorassini incorporate all manner of things in their research, to increase hypnotisability. So, they include use of technological aids, an induction, level of expectation and so on. It stands to reason that we would agree that the use of an appropriate induction and building expectation can increase someone’s likelihood to respond to hypnosis and hypnotic suggestions. That is, after all, what the majority of this book has been about! However, the practices that follow are exercises that someone can partake in both inside and outside of hypnosis to increase their general hypnotic responsiveness.
It should be noted that in none of these exercises are we aiming to teach clients how to be less analytical. We are not even asking them to put their analysis to the side for the time-being. Instead, we are working on a series of skills that may enable them to use their minds in hypnotic ways, whilst still being as wonderfully analytical as ever.
Directed Imagination
People who do not think of themselves as particularly imaginative tend not to use their imagination as often or as freely as they could, understandably. However, the first step to becoming more hypnotic is to intentionally practice using your imagination. In fact, aside from any hope of becoming more hypnotic, I am inclined to suggest that this is a good daily exercise for everyone to be doing.
Many people think of imagining something as the same as visualising an image. Whilst this appears to be the case for some people, it is not true of all of us. For some people, imagining an apple, for example, might entail little more than pretending we can see one with our eyes closed. This is one of the reasons that during a hypnosis session, I rarely instruct people to “see” something. Instead, I might say, “visualise, imagine, or pretend…” Others might say, “get a sense of…”, or “become aware of…”
Directed imagination involves intentionally directing ourselves to actively imagine certain things. I usually suggest that people start with a piece of fruit. I might tell them to imagine a Lemon on their desk. I have them walk over and pick up the lemon. Then they move the lemon closer to them and then further away, noticing that it gets smaller when further away and larger when closer. I will tell them to move it to the left and the right. And that may be all for the first few days – just daily imagining a lemon.
After a few days, I would suggest that they start introducing more details. Maybe they notice the smell of the lemon more when they bring it closer. Perhaps they can see the small lumps and indentations on the surface of the fruit. And so on.
Then, if they have been imagining with their eyes closed, which most people seem to naturally do, I will encourage them to keep that lemon in their minds eye and allow it to be fixed in the mind. I might return to the initial location of the lemon on the desk and suggest that they picture it there, whilst their eyes are closed, and lock that image in place. Then, I have them keep hold of that image as they open their eyes, imagining that they can still see the lemon on the desk with their eyes open.
People have varying levels of success with this exercise, but most people I have lead through this exercise have managed to improve their ability to imagine and to direct their imagination at will, given enough practice.
Mindful Absorption
This activity follows-on from the previous one. In fact, we can continue using the lemon as a focal point. We will use this as a basic exercise in mindfulness, something that almost everyone can benefit from practicing.
Clients are encouraged to imagine the lemon and simply notice whatever they notice. There is nothing else for them to do but sit with the thought of the lemon. They may, as above, notice the smell or other details, but they are not intentionally directing their imagination this time. They simply sit with the lemon and notice it.
An important aspect of this exercise is learning to allow thoughts to come and go. If we are learning mindfulness – and even when we are experienced practitioners – we will find thoughts entering our mind, competing for our attention. The aim is not to reject them, or fight to keep them at a distance. Instead, practice letting them come into your head and then leave again, reminiscent of clouds passing overhead, or leaves being moved along on a stream. They come and they go. Simply let them be, as you focus on the lemon.
As people become more familiar with mindfulness, for hypnotic purposes they may want to practice becoming more absorbed in the focus of their attention. In one sense, the only real difference is an experiential one, as they find themselves drawn-in and getting lost in their focused awareness.
Useful objects for this stage of the exercise are a candle, an aquarium, or a log-fire. Practice a relaxed focus on such things, that gradually develops from mindfulness into absorption.
Some people find a bath a useful training ground for this exercise. Although they may not naturally be the kind of person who finds a bath relaxing, a number of clients have reported that having a flickering candle in their bathroom has served as a useful point of mindful focus, whilst the bath allowed their body to relax. They often report that it was only afterwards when they “snapped out of it” that they realised just how absorbed they had been in the experience.
Goal-Directed Fantasy
Within the field of hypnosis research, Goal-directed fantasies (or GDF, as they get called) are thoughts and images of situations that if they happened in the real world would produce the suggested response. A common example might be imagining helium balloons tied to your wrist, or a blast of water from a hose, underneath your palm, causing your hand to rise up into the air.
It is common for hypnotists to word their suggestions in such a way that GDFs take place. The helium balloons are a well-known example of this, as is the suggestion that magnets are causing your palms to come together. However, an interesting focus of some researchers has been the degree to which some subjects might occasionally make use of GDF when responding to a hypnotic suggestion, even if they haven’t been supplied by the hypnotist.2
This is a useful idea for our purposes, because people can learn to use GDFs as a way of increasing their hypnotic responses. In fact, training subjects to do just that is the cornerstone of a number of hypnotisability modification programs used by researchers.
Those wishing to increase their hypnotic responses can make use of GDFs in two different ways. Firstly, they can add GDFs to any suggestions that they hear from a hypnotist. So, if they were told that their arm was becoming numb, they could imagine that they had sat on their arm and lost all feeling in it, or they might imagine that it had become cold after being dipped in freezing water, such that it has now become numb.
Secondly, clients can practice using GDFs outside of hypnosis. I recommend that clients practice experiencing hypnotic phenomena at home. I tell them to imagine a hypnotist has given them a suggestion for levitation, catalepsy, amnesia and so on, and then to practice imagining situations where that phenomena would be the result. Clients are encouraged to keep track of how successful they are with this, repeating the exercise until they are increasingly skilled in the use of GDF.
They are then encouraged to take this to the next stage, which involves returning to the initial suggestion without consciously making use of GDFs. The hope is that as their expectation of responding to suggestions has increased significantly, they will do so naturally. They may be making use of GDFs without even being aware of it, though an equally likely explanation is that the increased expectancy is the vehicle for greater responsiveness.
Intentional Response
This exercise is most effective when practised after the client has got a handle on goal-directed fantasies. In fact, GDFs can play a role in the successful implementation of intentional responses.
This stage simply involves the client intentionally and consciously responding to suggestions. Over time, these responses will become less and less intentional until they are experienced as subconscious or automatic responses.
One way to practice this exercise is to do so in tandem with GDFs. The client may hear – or, if they are practising at home, think of – a suggestion for their arm to levitate. They then intentionally lift their arm. However, they employ GDFs so that their response does not feel completely intentional. So, they would intentionally raise their arm, but do so after having imagined it being pulled up by a large bunch of helium balloons tied to the wrist, to make it feel like it was rising by itself.
As with the previous exercise, clients are encouraged to work through all of the common hypnotic suggestions in this way. A natural way to progress is for their responses to feel less and less a result of their conscious compliance and increasingly due to the GDFs, then finally to simply be a response to suggestion.
Rapid Relaxation
This exercise is simply a case of clients practising progressive muscle relaxation in their own time. The goal is not to use PMR as an induction, but to become familiar with the experience of relaxation. This does not need to be undertaken solely as a means to increase hypnotic responses. It is a highly valuable practice in and of itself.
Some people find it helpful to employ visualisation during this process. For example, a common choice is to imagine laying on the beach, with the Sun passing down the body. And each part of the body that the Sun passes over relaxes.
Rapid Relaxation can be developed through the use of cue-words. This is best attempted after one is very familiar with both the process of PMR and the experience of relaxing.
Use the same tension-relaxation procedure as you do with a full PMR, but work with summary groups of muscles.3 However, this time, focus also on your breathing during both tension and relaxation. Inhale slowly as you apply and hold the tension. Then, when you let the tension go and exhale, say a cue word or phrase to yourself – something like, “Relax,” or “Limp and loose.” This will associate the cue word or phrase with the state of relaxation, so that eventually, through conditioning, the cue word alone will produce the relaxed state.
This takes practice, as with the full PMR routine. However, once you have learned PMR and are familiar with the feeling of muscle relaxation – and have sufficiently practised with a cue word or phrase – you will find it possible to simply think of and then relax the various muscle groups using your cue word(s).
Deep Simulation
Rather than being a separate exercise, deep simulation is perhaps something to be aware of when working on other techniques. The easiest way to explain it is to think of method acting, whereby an actor aims to become completely emotionally caught-up in their role.
It is tempting to say that this exercise is simply an encouragement for people to act as if they are good hypnotic subjects. However, in reality, it is much more than that.
Deep simulation involves taking on the mindset, the attitude, emotions and expectations of a good hypnotic subject. It means responding the way they would respond, for the reasons that they would.
As such, this exercise is possibly most useful when used in conjunction with GDFs and Intentional Responses. Growing in the skills that those exercises develop, whilst simultaneously adopting the attitude and expectations of a high hypnotisable, is a powerful way of learning to experience responses as automatic and hypnotic before they fully are.
Lessons for the Hypnotist…
There are some implications from these exercises for hypnotists to be aware of. Most of these will no doubt be clear, though some may bear explicit mention.
The role of expectation has long been known to play a significant role in hypnotic responses. If someone expects a certain phenomena to take place, then both their brain and body are more likely to prepare for and work toward that end. However, we can not put the full burden for expectation on our clients.
Expectancy is not only developed through our explanation or what will take place. Neither is it solely down to convincers or phenomena used in the pre-talk. In reality, every single thing about how we are with our clients will serve to increase or decrease expectancy.
If we are viewing clients with an attitude of “Oh, no, it’s an analytical!” we would be foolish to think that we are not projecting that for our clients to pick up on. However, if we adopt instead the expectation that they have a powerful mind, with an incredible capacity for transformation, this will be evident to the client.
The role of absorption, though not essential for hypnotic response, is something to bear in mind. I would recommend all hypnotists to become intimately aware of the experience of trance or absorption. If this is not something that comes naturally to you, then see that as a skill that you can work on. Find your trance, even if you have to seek out all manner of experiences to do so! When you are fully acquainted with the experience of absorption you will be better equipped to work with clients in a way that entices them in, through your use of words, your body language, your whole demeanour.
The idea of goal-directed fantasies is a useful one to be aware of. It is often the case that hypnotists might use GDF for their convincers of suggestibility tests (for example, employing a heavy book / helium balloon), but move towards more direct suggestions as things get more hypnotic. However, when working with someone who does not naturally think in a hypnotic way this can be a mistake. Such a client may have absolutely no idea how to have his arm float up into the air without just lifting it up himself. The idea of GDFs provide something of a stepping-stone for such clients.
Describing scenarios where the phenomena would occur, painting a vivid picture of what it would feel like if the phenomena were occurring, or providing metaphors and analogies that elicit the phenomena are not cheating. For some clients, they are the boost that they need. They may even be precisely what is needed for your client to begin to learn what it means to think in a hypnotic way.
There is no reason that you can not move increasingly away from GDFs as your session progresses, or your client goes “deeper” into hypnosis, if that is your model. However, it is important to do this at a pace that does not leave your client back at the beginning, wondering why levitation worked when you were only explaining hypnosis, but fails now that they’re actually in hypnosis!
Of course, GDFs are not limited to the traditional hypnotic phenomena. If you intend for your client to experience a state of absorption, you cannot just assume that it will happen automatically. They may have no idea how to bring that about consciously or subconsciously. Instead, you can tell stories, use metaphors, describe scenarios that evoke a state of absorption. As someone once said, seduce them into trance.
Finally, the notion of a deep simulation is particularly applicable at this point. It is of great benefit to all involved if the client can act and think as if they are a good hypnotic subject. Any way that you can orchestrate such a situation – overtly or covertly – is almost certainly going to be positive. This is equally true for the hypnotist’s perception of the client.
However, deep simulation is not only for clients. As well as adopting the idea that your client is a good responder, you can immerse yourself in the idea that you are a respectful, confident, skilled, intuitive and responsive hypnotist. You can embody the emotions and values of someone who is truly excited to be working with a client who has an exceptional mind that they wield in unique ways. You can fully enter into the story of someone who cherishes the opportunity to work with people who may have been dismissed or disheartened by other so-called helpers, and is privileged to be involved in seeing that spark re-enter someone’s eyes as they learn to hope and heal again.
Becoming more hypnotic is about building skills for our clients. I would go so far as to suggest that for hypnotists it is about discovering their true calling.
