Next Steps
That’s it! Now that you have a reinduction trigger, waking trance, and can go through simple suggestions, you’re well on your way to doing many more fun things. Here are some good next steps.
Smush This Guide
You can technically do the entire guide in one session. Start with the Elman Induction, deepen, suggest a reinduction trigger and then fractionate to condition your partner and get them used to waking trance. Then lock in the reinduction trigger, and wake them up.
Gone in 60 seconds
Practice the Elman until you have it down cold. Elman’s view was that three minutes was too long, and ideally the Elman should be performed in no more than 60 seconds.
It is my firm conviction that if hypnosis is to have a respectable place in medicine and dentistry, it must be available to the doctor almost instantly. If he can’t use hypnosis on a more or less instantaneous basis, it has no practical value in the average doctor’s office. It is a rare doctor who can afford to spend from three minutes to two hours on the doubtful assumption that he might be able to succeed in obtaining hypnosis if he keeps trying long enough. So, at the beginning, use one minute for each patient and one minute only. Don’t take any more time than that–and you shouldn’t even need the full minute to gain the state. __
Hypnotherapy
Personalize it
I use "knots and snarls" heavily in hypnotic patter. At first it was talking about tight muscles in massages, and then stubborn thoughts and ruminations, and now I use it as as a theme and useful metaphor. If you and your partner have a different mental model that works for you, please adjust the script to suit and feel familiar for you.
Practice, Practice, Practice
The way to be a good hypnotist is to keep practicing, keep notes of what you feel are your strong and weak points, and aim to improve. This also applies to your partner. If you want to do things you are not capable of yet, then do the things that you can do and stretch them a little further each time.
Humans can do incredible things by regularly doing small things and getting a little better each time. Bodybuilders lift weights three times a week. Zen Monks meditate daily. Marathon runners go for morning jogs. In just the same way, you become a better hypnotist and your partner becomes a better subject through practice. It doesn’t matter how awkward you feel when you first start, you will get smoother and better.
This is especially useful if you have long term goals or suggestions that you want to add. There are many things you can do with hypnosis without getting into hypnotherapy, such as dealing with insomnia or stress, and you can use hypnosis to leverage new habits into your day, such as getting up before dawn or regular flossing.
Exercises For Subjects
There are some shortcuts that can make you more become more suggestible, but these are not as important as practice and a regular schedule.
There are exercises that subjects can do to build up trance muscles as well and describe the feeling of being hypnotized. In particular, subjects may feel too conscious and want to shut down their minds more. Meditation exercises like mantras and focusing on the feeling of trance can help.