07 - Intentions

What makes an induction an induction?

You can think of them as bundles of road-tested suggestions. Often, they’ll have some of these components:

Relaxation. It’s easier to take suggestions when you’re buttered up.
Going deeper. Deeper is ambiguous - but it indirectly gives your subject the option to zone out or to just let your words become more effective.
Playing Simon Says. You say thing, and thing starts to happen automatically. You’re creating a gradual shift from ‘doing’ to ‘happening.’
Dissociation. Fractionation feels ‘weird’ and ‘abstract’ and makes it feel like something special is happening. This gives you credibility.
Building rapport and trust. Do you know what you’re doing? I have no fucking clue, but at least you’re doing your reading.
Giving you, the hypnotist, time to get into the groove. It’s normal for the first bit of your induction to be the roughest when you’re starting out - by the time you’re a minute in, you’ll be confident and butter smooth.
Time to notice (and later utilize) responses Saying funny words doesn’t make shit happen. All the action is happening in your subject where they’re hopefully able and willing to follow along.

Introducing Your First Induction

Often, when a newbie asks around to find out what they should be doing to get started with hypnosis, they’re given a few resources, and told to practice doing PMRs (progressive muscle relaxation.) This isn’t bad advice, but it leaves a lot to be desired. (Hell, I’m guilty of telling folks just do PMRs, too.)

Asking someone to read a book or guide before getting started is similar to consuming an entire banana before enjoying it. With a PMR, you really only learn one technique - pummeling the subject into relaxation through brute force. There’s a middle ground between “read a lot” and “just tell the subject to relax repeatedly and figure it out.”

Here’s my proposal. Start with Graham Old’s Sensory Overlap Induction. Like a PMR, it’s low risk, reasonably easy to learn, and doesn’t require much of the subject. In contrast, it’s more fun for both the subject and hypnotist, and you’ll pick up a set of techniques you can use in almost any hypnotic situation.

There’s no weird dynamics here, just invitations to relax. If lewd is your thing, that’s great! But, if you want to practice and improve, we can open ourselves up to more opportunities by keeping it clean and straightforward. There’s no expectation of ‘trance,’ but we do have a bit of hypnotic phenomena tacked on at the end. The goal for our subject is to notice any changes in how they feel, not to get something done. With this frame, you can rapidly get feedback without implying anything went wrong or coloring the experience.

Even if you have some experience using inductions, the analysis here will give you fresh ideas on how things work under the hood, as well as show you how to start critically thinking about scripts.

But What about PMRs?

In earlier versions, I’d recommend learning to do a PMR. While this is easy to memorize and execute, it’s not the most informative place to start. While I will be walking you through the sensory overlap technique, here’s some other options, including two PMRs that I like, all of which would fit nicely into your tool belt.

Binaural Histolog PMR - A good tool for your toolbag.
Binaural Histolog Fractionation - Better suited to lightly experienced subjects.
How To Do Induction’s (Graham Old’s) PMR - Yet another PMR. Compare it to Binaural Histolog’s version if you like. They’re both effective.

FWIW, it’s perfectly fine to start out with doing PMRs. If that feels easier to you, please do so! Regardless, there’s still plenty you can learn from reading the rest of this guide.

🦈 Bruh! I heard I don't need to use an induction...

You're right! Strictly speaking, you don't. But it's a great way to get warmed up. These scripts are just as beneficial for the hypnotist as the subject. Learning how inductions 'work' is a rite of passage.

Also, if you know this, you’re probably already way ahead of this guide. Go read Graham Old or the journals in Clinical Hypnosis and Self Regulation. Or - if you like the idea of working sans induction, just jump in to reading James Tripp’s Hypnosis Without Trance.

🦈 Don't I need trance?

Here’s a hot take:

Hypnotic trance is subjective, therefore, it’s the byproduct of expectation and suggestion, and not set in stone.

Many people you’ll work with are routinely ‘stuck in their heads.’ While most people will be wowed and amazed with how they felt, and how they were able to focus on your voice after an induction, some people will just feel like they were focusing a lot, and others like they just started their afternoon yoga class.

I’ll get to it later - but if you need to ‘convince’ someone that something hypnotic happened, your go-to tool should be phenomena, not trance. This includes things like arm levitation, being unable to move, or being unable to say their name.

Getting to the point - while trance isn’t necessary for hypnotic phenomena, trance and inductions do increase expectation. Graham Old puts this pretty well…

… the early stages of any conversation sets the character of the interaction that follows. And if that is true, to put it crudely, induction-less hypnosis may be the equivalent of trying to take someone to bed without even buying them a drink. In your eagerness to get to the action, you are skipping the stuff that actually counts. And that can be disrespectful, it can be a sure-fire way of guaranteeing that the action is anti-climatic, and it doesn’t get you a second date!

-Old, Graham. Therapeutic Inductions: Rethinking Hypnosis from the Very Beginning (p. 52). Plastic Spoon. Kindle Edition.

Overdoing It

While it’s tempting to want to absolutely knock their socks off with the intensity of what you want to provide, I’m going to ask you to avoid that urge. Sure, validation is fantastic, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting them to have a fun ride. However, if you blow all of their previous times in trance out of the water, or set an incredibly high bar, they’ll have nothing to look forward to, and other sessions will pale in comparison. It’s not only OK to be mediocre while practicing, but desirable. It’s often much easier to seek a more intense ride later, than to try to make peace with the fact that you’ve already hit the peak.

So - don’t worry about your ego or being impressive. This is a practice session.

Sensory Overlap Commentary

Graham Old, the author of howtodoinductions.com, introduces his induction with some context. Classically, we’re often problematically told to overload “analytic” subjects. In a therapeutic setting, people don’t want to be overloaded. This approach also assumes you can out-think your client, and beating them into submission is a shitty way to start collaborating on a problem. His goal is to get the subject to embrace their internal experience, rather than fight it.

As I said before, there’s no expectation of trance in this induction. For the subject, it’s an exercise in letting the experience happen to the best of their abilities. Relaxation and catalepsy are very likely to occur, but they’re perks. Whatever happens is normal and valid, and worth talking about in the exit interview.

Not Just for the Nerds

I’d like to add that this induction and structure isn’t only for analytic subjects. It’s just well designed. There’s no expectation of trance, and you can validate whatever happens as their real experience.

The thought that we need to treat “analytical” individuals differently is silly. I stopped having trouble working with them when I was able to provide clear instructions.

Here are some common misunderstandings from those prone to analysis:

They may not know how to engage with the suggestions you provide.
They’re not used to letting experiences happen.
They may not realize they’re supposed to actively engage with suggestions.
They may be trying to figure out what you’re doing, and think that their analysis prevents hypnosis from working.
They may be skeptical, and immediately devaluing their own experience.

Most of this is taken care of with the pre-talk.