The best way to practice Hypnotic language without wanting to slam your head in a door

Let’s face it – practicing something new can be really dull. Like playing scales while learning a musical instrument, sometimes repetition is the key. Repetition can help you to internalise the learning, allowing you to make the knowledge your own. This is also true of learning hypnotic language patterns.

However, until you really own it, the practice can be frustrating and dreary.

But practice doesn’t have to be boring, if you know how.

With hypnosis, it helps to break the information into categories, so you can immediately understand the purpose of each piece. From there, you can place the learning in context and it will stick more easily.

So, for those of you at home who are frustrated by trying to get fluent at hypnotic language patterns, I’m going to give you a helping hand. Ready?

Hypnotic language streamlines into three categories: Time, Space and Reality.

Here’s the idea – when you do hypnosis, you’re trying to create a reality (just like Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field”). You make things real by using a kind of code for real experiences.

Remember that the world is made up of space and time – four dimensions. So words and phrases which create or manipulate time and space are hypnotic. There are other aspects of reality which don’t relate so closely to time and space, so these go into a third category.

So much for the theory, let’s do an example from each category.

Time: Starting and stopping
In life, things begin and end. They start, continue then they stop. Some things build and intensify after they begin, or diminish and fade before they cease.

All of these words express the changes that can happen within the flow of your experience and if you want to create a change, it makes sense to use words like these.

Examples of use in context:

  • Excitement: “you may start to feel a growing excitement as you think about all the possibilities”
  • Relaxation: “when you stop and think about relaxation, where do you feel it first?”

Exercise: How to lead using starting and stopping

  • Decide what experience do you want to lead the person into.
  • What is the other person experiencing now?
  • What does the other person need to start experiencing?
  • What does the other person need to stop experiencing?
  • Have a conversation with this understanding in mind.

Space: Direction
We use direction to describe so many of our experiences and an awareness of this can greatly improve the way you work with a person’s existing stories and metaphors.

For example, we can raise or lower our standards. We can feel ‘down’ or ‘up’. We can pick up an idea, or drop it. People can be ‘on a high’ or may be experiencing a ‘low point’ in their lives. Our performance can take a leap forward, or we can backslide instead.

You’ve probably noticed that all these directions come in pairs of opposites, so we can use changes of direction to change awareness, shift states of mind and alter perspectives too.

Examples of use in context:

  • Choice: “I can’t go back there.” “What would happen if you went forward instead? Where would that lead?”
  • Sales: “The price is too high.” “I can give you something cheaper if you’re prepared to lower your expectations…”

Exercise: How to practice using direction

  • Decide what experience do you want to lead the person into.
  • What way do the directions in their metaphors keep them from that experience?
  • How can you change their ‘directions’ to move them towards that experience?
  • Construct a set of questions that make use of that knowledge to create that experience.

BONUS: Direction can link with and accelerate ‘starting and stopping’ to some extent.

  • start to raise your skill level”
  • begin to move forward positively”

Reality: Automatic
When we do hypnosis, it’s useful to make certain actions or thoughts happen by themselves. The easiest way to create this often involves making the subject ‘a passive observer of themselves’.

This is easier to achieve than it may seem, and it’s a great way to make suggestions easier for your hypnotic subject to act upon.

Examples of use in context:

  • Choice: “…you might notice how certain new choices and possibilities arise…”
  • Creativity: “…you may find yourself coming up with better alternatives…”
  • Sales: “have you ever noticed how some decisions just seem to make themselves?”

Exercise: How to practice using Automatic words

  • Decide what experience do you want to lead the person into.
  • Which will need to happen automatically to start experiencing that?
  • Have a conversation with this understanding in mind.

I’m sure you can see how much fun it can be to learn hypnotic language this way.

If you want to know more about hypnotic language, or to be led through the hypnotic process in detail, with plenty of examples and practical exercises, get my book Hypnotic Conversations: The Secret Structure Behind Everyday Hypnosis.

Or if you want to know even more first, then watch my next video – Hypnotic Storytelling – The secret keys to the unconscious self.