01 - Pretalk Toolkit

Experienced hypnotists will tell you that the most important part of your session of your pre-talk. Intermediate hypnotists will parrot this advice and not know why - thinking it’s just about safety and consent in a recreational space.

In the spirit of enjoyable quickies - all these guides should be quick under-five-minute reads, and intend to give you a few tools you can use immediately.

Pretalk With Benefits

Here’s what you can get out of a good talk.

Safety:

• Avoid (most) abreactions. Do a vibe check, make sure their day was OK, don’t use a deepener involving water if they’re afraid of the ocean.
• Avoid unreasonable requests or weird emotional attachments.
• Make sure they’re into what you want to do, and vice versa.
• Check in with yourself. Make sure you’re up for this.
• Set up how you’d like your relationship to be after the session. You won’t accidentally make a pet or boygirltheyitfriend.

Avoid pitfalls:

• Make sure your subject doesn’t just treat you like an audio tape, and after 20 minutes you don’t hear “sorry I didn’t imagine anything when you asked me to imagine it.”
• Make sure the door’s closed, pets are fed, meds are taken, messengers are off, the phone is out of their pocket, the piss break taken, and if there’s something I forgot - you at least took care of everything else.
• If things don’t go as planned - or we don’t get as much response as we’d like, we can savor our successes instead of sulking in a stink.

Maximize response:

• Ask them questions about the suggestions you’ll be giving them - and find if there’s something they can relate to better.
• Ask them what’s worked for them in the past.
• Ask about their previous experiences - EG - if someone says they overthink during trance, you can suggest ways to work with it and accept it than have them be distracted trying to fight it the whole time.