How does hypnosis work

Many ways are used and exploited to make people spend money or do what is in the best interest of the exploiter. Some of which have been proven to work over and over again by studies, practice and history.
In this article we will take a look in the world of hypnosis.

While you are here on steemit, and you begin to read this article, and your eyes focus on the words, inside your mind you might have a certain idea about hypnosis, and as you think about what this idea exactly is, you might have a good or a bad feeling about it, is it not?
Whatever it is you think about hypnosis, there is a big chance thinking about what this idea exactly is made you go into an altered state already. This is part of hypnosis.
Because, when you are reading this article, it not important for you to focus on anything other but the screen, and it is not important to know whether you are wearing shoes, and maybe one foot is feeling slightly different from the other, and that you are wearing cloths, that you are, you can forget about that, because in trance you pay attention to the things that are immediately important to you.

Most of us remember sitting in the classroom, waking up out of a trance, and noticing we have been paying attention only to our imaginations for quiet a while.
Some of us notice this while driving to the same place over and over again, watching over the steeringwheel through the windows, seeying the same road, with the same stripes flashing by, driving, and driving, and after a while noticing you have no idea how you got where you are.
We can even do it watching tv, going so deep in a movie, you forget there is anything other than the movie, the movie becomes almost life-size. You begin to feel all the emotions, and the idea that all of it is just a play fades out of your consciousness.

All of the above are quick examples of how people are in trance all the time. Richard Bandler even said when you think you are in normal mode, that is the trance of you being normal.

Because it is hard to give examples for everyone reading this how they have been manipulated into sales or unexpected action by hypnosis, I want to give you a list of ways people use hypnosis that you don’t, or hardly recognize when you have not studied the subject. So fasten your shoelaces, this will be fun!

THE ECHO EFFECT

The echo effect is one of the most powerful ways to gain rapport and get people to step into your world. Unfortunately if you don’t talk to old ladies much, you might not be easily convinced. Older women tend to do this more and more in every day conversation. It seems to be a way for them to better remember what is said, but the effect is a very deep rapport amongst them. The video I will share for you to see how this effects people in conversation is a beautiful example because the man undergoing the process is in a hypnosis seminar and has been in more than one trance before, so he goes way way deep inside himself. Please keep in mind, this is not what happens to everyone in a first time conversation like this, this is a man that is in and out of trance for a couple of days now.

REVIVIFICATION

This is practically the Echo Effect mostly used within a subject of the person undergoing the process that has already gave this person a very relaxt or trance-like experience.
A simple question would be “Have you been in trance before?” or “What specific memory do you have of being completely relaxt?”, and from there on, the above Echo Effect begins.
Since you have to relive in a sense, the experience, and the echo of your words make you relive it again and again so your unconscious knows what is said, you will relive it more vividly and you will go right back into that state. More of how your unconscious does this trick on you is explained in Ambiguity.

AMBIGUITY

This is one of the techniques a skilled user can have a lot of fun with. Depending on the outcome you are looking for, you can use this completely under the radar, or totally visible, and they can all still have the same effect.
To understand this better I will have to explain what kinds of ambiguities there are, and what you do with these words inside your brain for them to have such a claimed effect on you.
Ambiguities are words with two or even more meanings, other ambiguities I will explain in a bit. Before you consciously decide you understand a sentence, there is a complete process your brain (the unconscious) undertakes for you to get this far.
There are complete books written, mostly NLP, to better understand this process, so bear with me while i’ll compress it into a couple of sentences. Let’s make an example of your livingroom: When you allow yourself to close your eyes and think about your livingroom, when I ask you the question “How many chairs are in your livingroom?” you will see, in your mind’s eye, exactly the answer to the question. I can even ask “Take a look around inside your livingroom” and you can, inside your mind. You are not physically seeying the room, but yet you see exactly what you need to see to follow my instructions or questions.
Now, when people use ambiguities, before your mind’s eye can come up with the images that will make you understand what is said, it has to find the right meaning of the word inside the sentence. This means, it will go through all the known options. So even when lot’s of the time you are unaware of the ambiguity, your unconcious has gone through the options. Is that fair to say?
Here I will give you some examples:
Phonological ambiguity – written differently, but sounds the same
Examples:
Your unconscious / You’re unconscious, By now / Buy now, I / Eye, Know / no, But / Butt, Not / Knot, Whole / hole

Syntactic ambiguity
Examples:
Hypnotizing hypnotists can be tricky.
Speaking to you as a person willing to change.

Scope ambiguity
Examples:
The disturbing thoughts and feelings. (are the feelings also disturbing?)
The long nights and days. (are the days also long?)

Punctuation ambiguity – from well-formed to ill-formed, this prompts confusion and transderivational search
Examples:
I like your –watch- how your breathing begins to slow down.
You can learn how to –relax- each muscle in your body.

BYPASSING THE CRITICAL MIND

This is something that is more easily done one on one but is also used in news and other media. The introduction to this article is already an example, which for some people works, and some people find it just a strange read. The way this works is by giving the reader a couple of leads the reader can agree with fully, finished with a suggestion. So to make sure what is given is agreeable, we will not give the reader opinions, but facts, like you are here reading this sentence now. An opinion would be you might still be sceptical.
What is happening when the reader or listener is getting a row of (normally you start with 3 to 5) facts, is his critical mind, the librarian, will run up and down your file cabinets to check if what is said is true. So when I tell you, now, as you are NOT reading this SLEEPING in your CAR, the librarian runs up and down and says AM READING! NOT SLEEPING! And telling you wherever the H*ll you are! And when I say, you have feet, you have hands, you are breathing in and out as you read this article, and you can begin to relax. Your librarian says CHECK! CHECK! CHECK! CHECK! Hmmm must be another CHECK right?!
In the news for instance, they can say “What you see here is... and.. with... which means WAR!” As long as they keep pacing what you see or already know is fact, you say CHECK, and the suggestion which does not have to be true, will get a CHECK!

POWER WORDS

There are words that are more easily accepted by most humans than other words, for instance the word “because” is a very powerful word. Studies are done, if interested ask in the comments for examples, to prove this. The best reason for this is probably because most of us as kids went through our learning process by asking our authority figures (parents) “Why is this, why is that, how come, how come?” and most of the answers would have started with “because.....”. So hearing a because makes our brains want to make sense out of things that might not make sense at all. “You can feel very small sometimes –because- inside your home you stare mostly at walls.”
Another example is “the more, the more” patterns. “The more you think all of this makes some sense the more you like to share this information with others.” Or a variant of this pattern like “The deeper you relax from reading this, the more you realize all of this makes sense.”.
There are a bunch more Power words used this way, but i’m not writing a book here, or am I?

TONAL DISTINCTIONS

Everyone of you has heard of Pavlov’s dogs right? This form of Ankering/conditioning is clear enough for most of us to notice all the time and to understand. By the way, for you discovery channel watchers, have you noticed Pavlov’s Gong in every single show right inbetween the exciting background tunes when nothing is really happening? That makes for the Discovery channel addiction to what would otherwise be completely boring shows.
Tonal Distinctions are like this, but much more subtle and for the subconscious mind to notice only. Because this is an article and not a book, I will use a previous example to show how you can make this work.
“You can learn how to –relax- each muscle in your body.”
To make use of this sentence more than just saying it, what you can begin to do is this:
Learn to control your voice in a way where you have your normal voice, and a deeper vibrating chest voice. Now, say in a normal voice “You can learn how to” and use the deeper voice to say “relax each muscle in your body.” By doing this, your unconscious will have noticed the deeper part as being a seperate command.
Another way of doing this is by using pauses, so again, you begin by saying “You can learn how to” ...now pause... “relax each muscle in your body.”
Noticing which part of your sentences are, or can be, commands will give you much more control over your conversations.
Another trick you can begin to utilize is downward inflection to make a question a command, this is a simple trick to learn. Search for inflection on youtube, and see how there are many ways to use inflection, and hopefully someone will show the use of downward inflection to make a question a command.

VISUALS

Alhtough the next video is interesting to watch completely so to wrap your mind around the possibilities, for this article it is most interesting to watch from 41 minutes up to see how news visuals evolved into very rapid flashing lights, too detailed visuals to consciously notice and get an overload and constantly moving aminations in the background, and what is done by most of them, and was done by our parents to make us comply is counting!

CONFUSION

It’s not right that they left the right papers on the left pile where the right pile has left the building so all that’s left is the right pile while the left pile has all the right papers.
See what you can do with this. ;)
Another way hypnotists use confusion is by asking questions that sound like you can answer them but you really can’t in a way that would make sense. Some might call this Mind Bending Language MBL, and this is used because when people go into a state (trance) of confusion, it is much more easy to connect good feelings to what at first was a problem.
The next example might not make much sense to the untrained listener but that is the intention of confusion isn’t it? You will also at first see The Echo Effect in effect. It will take about 2 minutes for him to go into MBL, enjoy the crazy questioning :).

STORYTELLING

If not all of you remember stories beginning with “Once upon a time...” I will be amazed!
This is the big story to tell, since all of us do remember stories, are mesmerized by stories and love stories, so I will cover this in much more detail in a seperate article if people are interested, so when you do, let me know.

Love, Nico