06 - Approach

Before you get started - it’s important to check the vibe and make sure it’s well charged. We can do this by…

Framing this as a fun and playful experience where you both get to try something out, there’s no wrong responses, just more data and something to giggle at if things fail.
Mentioning that while there’s a dynamic between the hypnotee and hypnotist, it’s ultimately up to them to create and enjoy their experience. You’re more like a coach than a mind-control device.
Letting them know hypnosis can feel like roleplay when you’re starting.

But, it’s a gradient. Ask them to notice how automatic their responses feel, and the subtle changes in that feeling over time. They may even be surprised at some point how automatic their responses are.
Creating an inviting atmosphere. Quite literally. Invite them to notice what they notice, feel what they feel, and experience what they experience.

Give this video from Etheri does hypnosis a watch. All the advice here is solid - but I’d like you to notice something else. I’ll get back to that when you’re done watching.

Done? Good job!

How did you feel while watching this video? Relaxed? Calm? Did you feel like you were welcomed to try things? Did you feel invited to enjoy or immerse yourself in an experience?

This is the sort of vibe you want to shoot for - you’re trying to collaboratively create a fun and immersive adventure. There is so much more to this than following some guidelines or doing things “correctly.” Go create the emotional space for you and your subject to enjoy your time together.

VR Specific Considerations

If you’re not doing hypnosis in VR - feel free to skip this section.

Unless your partner is in to them, please avoid shaders, props, and sounds when you’re starting out. While spirals can draw focus, and pocket watches have hypnotic associations, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice. Bring out the toys when you’re not practicing.

Reading your partner’s expression in VR is more difficult than IRL, but it’s not impossible. Unless your partner has eye and face tracking, you won’t be able to watch their eyes close, and you’ll have to rely on your intuition instead of watching their gaze to see if they’re relaxed or dissociating.

There are some things you can do regarding feedback:

Ask them to turn their noise gate off. You’d be surprised what subtleties you can pick up from someone’s breathing.
Ask them to rest their hand on their chest. You might be able to suss out their breathing from slight movements there.
Watch for finger movement as they relax. As much as I harp on trance not mattering, you can sometime see someone’s fingers twitching as their experience deepens.
Over time, you’ll get a knack for spotting tiny changes in head tilt that indicate they’ve relaxed their neck muscles.
Even if your partner doesn’t have full body tracking, you’d be surprised how much body language you can read through just their head and hand positions. It’s pretty intuitive.

Many physiological tricks don’t translate well to VR. For example - often when someone does an arm levitation by suggesting they’re tying a string around someone’s wrist, they’ll actually take their fingers and trace around that area, gently pinching at the top. Try that on yourself, lightly pressing in with your nails. Notice that the feeling has an ‘afterimage?’

Beyond it just being full of good advice, one of the reasons I recommend Hypnosis without Trance is precisely because it’s approach is primarily conversational. Just about every technique in that book can be easily and immediately applied in VR, and I can get my street hypnosis fix.

Despite the lack of tactile interaction, I’ve still had good luck with things like the butterfly induction. It’s easy to make adjustments around. You can use a few lines like:

“Okay, usually I would ask you to press your hand up against mine, but you’re going to have to work with me here.”
“I’d like you to absorb yourself in the idea of the feeling you’d get if you held that hand up against my own.”
(Removing hand, passing my hand over the front of their view.) “And you can just let that and fall, and your eyes can follow. That’s right… Sinking all the way down, just like that.”

On the flip side, if you run in to a willing subject with a heart rate monitor, face, and eye tracking, you’re both in for a treat.