Covert Hypnosis

It is required that you have already read and fully understood my previous article on how to hypnotize someone before reading this article. You will not be able to understand the content of this article, nor perform any of its exercises, if you haven't done so. Covert hypnosis is a highly advanced form of hetero-hypnosis. Anyone telling you it's suitable for beginners is misleading you.

Steven Peliari
Master Hypnotist

What is Covert Hypnosis?

So just what is covert hypnosis exactly? Covert hypnosis is essentially a way to hypnotise people outside of their conscious awareness. It works by influencing a person's subconscious mind as opposed to their conscious mind.

Covert hypnotist casually conducting an instant induction on a stranger in the street.

Throughout my use of covert hypnosis I have found that there are three primary fields that must be learned in order to execute covert hypnosis successfully, and these three fields are Hypnosis, NLP, and Mentalism.

In order to have gotten this far, you should already be familiar with hypnosis, particularly how to induct people into a trance state, implant suggestions within them that they can act upon whilst in this state, and also have an idea about post-hypnotic suggestion. I will not be covering these basics here, they are assumed knowledge.

The other two key fields, which we will briefly touch on before delving into covert hypnosis (which requires the unification of all three fields), are NLP and Mentalism. NLP teaches you the ways to apply hypnosis discreetly, outside of peoples conscious awareness. Mentalism teaches you ways to give people false illusions.

These false illusions can be used to create an environment where people are vulnerable to hypnosis and suggestion. When these three fields come together, many things become possible. This is what covert hypnosis is, the art of being able to use Hypnosis, NLP and Mentalism together as one in order to achieve your interpersonal goals.

A Journey Into Mentalism

The Art Of Deception

One of the things you will be doing as a covert hypnotist is wording suggestions in such a subtle way that people will effectively be deceived from your true intentions.

You may find doing this sort of thing uncomfortable, therefore if you don't want to practice the Mentalism techniques that you will be taught then you should at least learn them so that you can defend yourself from people that do practice them.

Psychics, mediums, clairvoyants and other charlatans usually use these techniques¹. It's important to understand that there is no such thing as supernatural phenomena, it is all fake, and it all works simply because you're deceiving other people into believing it works.

People are very easily fooled by charlatans, where someone pretends supernatural phenomena is occurring when in reality it isn't.

I never recommend that you practice any form of deception on anyone without their permission, and I do not condone the way psychics and other charlatans use deception to make money. I teach you these techniques in good faith.

So why is deception an essential part of covert hypnosis?

Covert hypnosis is about creating a false reality for a person, a false reality that they seemingly have no control over.

Just as you are sure that what you see, hear and touch is real, so too you also take for granted certain things you are told. If someone you trusted told you that they just saw a man running across the road, you'd believe them.

However, what if no man ran across the road and the person was just making it up? They've essentially constructed a false reality for you, a reality that isn't real.

We all do it from time to time. We're all prone to taking certain things for granted without testing whether they're real or not. It's just like believing in Santa Clauz when we are a child. We take it for granted because the person that's telling us Santa Clauz exists is trustworthy in our eyes².

From an early age, we believe false things simply because someone we trust said something was true. The belief of a child in Santa Clauz is an early example of this.

Believe it or not, we fall prone to this form of deception every day of our lives, even as adults. Sometimes in a desperate relationship we may cling to words that a partner is saying, even if they're not real.

People are willing to accept false realities all too often, and in covert hypnosis, we can use this major vulnerability in people to our advantage.

To start with, we will be covering Sleight of Mind.

Sleight Of Mind

Sleight of Mind is the art of creating an illusion in a person's mind in order to achieve a certain goal.

The three step procedure that we follow in Sleight of Mind is as follows -

1. Create an expectation
2. Deliver the expectation
3. Act as if the expectation has become a reality

Please note that this three step procedure is something that I created, you probably won't find it elsewhere. I do find it to be a highly effective model for explaining the procedures involved in Sleight of Mind.

We will now cover the three step procedure in a little more detail.

The first step is to create an expectation that something is going to happen. Now this expectation can be anything you like, it can be convincing the person that you can get rid of all their stress, stop them from feeling pain, make them fall in love with you, make them give you a discount on a product, it can be just about anything you can imagine.

Now the trick is, is to create this expectation in a convincing manner. Simply telling someone you just met "When I touch you, you will feel a tremendous sense of warmth" won't do much. The person doesn't know who you are, doesn't have any trust in you, and rapport hasn't been established either.

Therefore if we want to create an expectation, the first thing we want to do is to create trust and rapport with the person.

From there, we can build up the expectation in the person. We want the person to desire the expectation, we want them to think that it's really going to happen.

So, let's say for example that we wanted to convince someone that we had clairvoyant powers. Of course initially the person would most likely not believe us, therefore we start by creating the expectation.

We could do this in a number of ways. One of the best ways I find is through the use of a story. So let's look at an example of a story that we could use -

"You know when I was a kid I always seemed to be able to guess who was calling on the phone before anyone answered. And I don't just mean with people that always used to call at the same time, but with complete strangers too, sometimes people I never met. I know it sounds weird but I sort of found out that I had this ability, this sixth sense of sorts, to be able to see things for what they really are."

In the above example, we create curiosity in the person. They may have a slight interest, a slight belief in what we're saying. This creates the expectation in the person that we should be able to somehow prove that we do in fact have clairvoyant abilities.

The next step is to create that false illusion, to pretend to deliver the expectation even though we're not. The way we do this can be through a skill known as cold reading, which plays largely upon the use of observations of a person and generalisations based upon those observations.

If you've practiced the exercises covered in the previous article, you should now have a reasonable understanding as to whether or not a person is an emotional suggestible or physical suggestible after conversing with them for a short while.

An exaggerated illustration of suggestibility types. Physical suggestibles are often more likely to be extroverts and confident in public (left), than emotional suggestibles (right).

If our person is an emotional suggestible, we can now pretend to have some clairvoyant insight into their lives, when in fact all we're doing is making a generalisation that would apply to just about every emotional suggestible.

By doing this we're effectively playing out the expectation that the person has of us. In this case it's that we're clairvoyant. Let's look at an example of what we could say to an emotional suggestible -

"You know I can sense something about you, something that most people don't see... I can sense that you tend to think about things a lot, you tend to analyse your actions and past experiences a fair bit. Would I be correct in saying that you're quite self conscious about your actions?"

Since the introverted personality type is more likely to apply to an emotional suggestible, the person is likely to be able to relate to what we're saying.

Their reaction may be something along the lines of "Wow, yea that sums me up pretty real".

At this stage the person can see that we must have some sort of clairvoyant ability, as we told them that we were clairvoyant, and we've shown them a deep insight into their personality that they normally wouldn't let anyone know about.

Nevermind the fact that we've just done a basic form of psychological assessment on the person. The person is willing to accept just about anything they're told, and in this case since we told them we're clairvoyant, they're willing to accept that explanation.

Now we simply progress on to the third step, which is to pretend the expectation has become a reality. From this point forth, we simply pretend that we're clairvoyant, and if the person asks us questions such as "Are you really clairvoyant, I didn't think that sort of thing was possible, how did you really do that?" we can simply reply "It's not something that most people know about, but yes, it's real".

By acting upon the expectation, and pretending it's real, we create a false reality for that person. In their world, we're clairvoyant, even though we're not.

Now the above example utilises a form of Mentalism known as 'reading'. My course covers reading extensively, and we won't have enough time to cover it here as it's a huge subject, but you should understand the basics by now.

Now Sleight of Mind doesn't just have to involve us pretending to have supernatural powers, we can create other sorts of expectations as well.

Imagine that you're at a nightclub and there's a member of the opposite sex that you're attracted to. Let's say you want to kiss this person. If you simply walked up to them and kissed them, then odds are that they wouldn't feel comfortable with your behaviour.

If however you created the expectation that you kissing them would make them feel really good and happy, then they'll want you to kiss them.

We can apply the same three step principle to this example.

First of all, we create the expectation that a kiss will be a good thing. A way we could do this is by actively asking the person what it is they find makes a good kiss -

"You know I have a rather interesting question to ask you. I'm just curious, what do you believe makes for a good kisser?"

If we have established rapport with the person, they should be quite open to responding with a genuine answer, such as the following -

"I think a good kisser is someone who keeps eye contact through the kiss, someone that you can really connect to"

You may notice that the person is using a specific keyword here, such as 'connect'. They also mentioned the word 'contact'. We can incorporate these keywords in our response, without the person being consciously aware of it. Subconsciously however it will deepen our rapport with the person -

"Yea... it's almost as if you can become one with the person for a few moments. You can connect with each other on every level"

The person will most likely respond -

"Yea that's right.."

Now without you even mentioning that you wanted to kiss the person, you're creating the 'expectation' in the person that you're a good kisser.

The person will now carry forth the conversation themselves, and if all you do is maintain rapport, they will present an opportunity for you to deliver a kiss. No further action is required on your part.

You may subtly guide the person into the kiss by completing the second stage, which is acting upon the expectation. Sometimes this won't require any words on your part, you can just immediately go in for the kiss quite calmly, as if it's a natural progression. If you don't show any form of hesitation, the other person most likely won't either.

After the kiss has finished, you act upon the reality that you were a great kisser. You do this by perhaps smiling at the other person.

As you can see, you can apply this three step technique to any situation. Create the expectation, deliver the expectation, then treat the expectation as a reality.

Whilst in the second example the reality wasn't really false, you can use this technique to create real realities as well. This is essentially what Sleight of Mind is about, it's about creating realities through the use of expectation.

Misdirection

Misdirection involves diverting a person's attention from the current situation at hand. It may be something you've said, it may be something that's happened, but if for whatever reason you don't want a person to focus on the situation at hand, you may divert their attention elsewhere.

Traditionally misdirection is used by magicians as a means of diverting the audiences attention to something else so that the magician can use sleight of hand or some other technique in order to conduct an action that the magician doesn't want the audience to see.

Misdirection is most commonly used by magicians at magic shows.

Whilst the term 'misdirection' has carried itself forward to mentalism, the actual techniques that we use are quite different. The principle of diverting attention away from something still remains the same however.

So when might we want to use misdirection in a conversation? Let's say that we're attempting to plant a discreet suggestion in a person's subconscious, and in doing so the person consciously notices the suggestion we're planting.

We must act very quickly in such a situation, and quickly divert the person's attention to something else, so that they forget the suggestion we were planting. Let me give an example.

Let's say we were trying to get a person to hand us over a certain piece of paper they were holding. We could word a discreet suggestion as follows -

"You know, sometimes it's a good idea to hand over what you want, whatever it be, I think paper is a good thing to want"

If the person was in the appropriate state of trance and we had rapport with the person, then there's a chance they'd hypnotically hand over the piece of paper they were holding to us. If on the other hand the person wasn't in a trance, or we didn't have rapport, then they may respond as follows -

"I'm sorry, are you suggesting that I hand over this piece of paper to you?"

This is a direct challenge that we need to quickly avoid. We can use a form of misdirection to direct the person's attention away from what we've said. An example could be as follows -

"No I was saying that sometimes it's a good idea to just do what you want to do, to act upon your impulses, for instance haven't you ever felt the need to just go out with a group of friends when they've called you up, without any prior planning?"

The person may respond -

"Well yes, on occasion"

What we've done is we've misdirected the person's attention from the failed suggestion of ours that they discovered, which was for them to give us the piece of paper they were holding.

We've effectively changed the subject without them even noticing. Note that having your suggestions fail is a common occurrence, even for professional hypnotists. They don't always work, so mastering misdirection is essential for these occasions, among other uses.

The way we do this is quite simple. We simply repeat part of what we originally said, and then change the meaning of what we said.

In the above example, we repeated the words "good idea" when we were conducting the misdirection. This made the person think that we were still talking about what we spoke about initially, even though we changed the subject.

Now sometimes we may want to use misdirection to plant a suggestion and then quickly change the subject, even if the person doesn't immediately notice we planted the suggestion.

This may be because if we don't change the subject, the person may eventually consciously think about our suggestion, which we don't want. If we change the subject however, only their subconscious should remember the suggestion, and they will potentially act upon it.

For example, let's say we wanted a person to lift their right arm when we gave them the command 'raise'. We may word the suggestion to the person as follows -

"I always used to vote right wing, they had my hand in the vote. I've always been raised to vote right wing, my right hand would always be up when I was told to raise any funds."

This is a form of discreet suggestion, as you learned about earlier in the topic of Ericksonian hypnosis. We mention the keywords 'right hand' and 'raise'. The subconscious will put these two keywords together, and hopefully associate the word 'raise' with the action of lifting the right hand up.

We may now want to direct the person's attention onto a different subject after we've said what we did above. An example of a misdirection may now be -

"So anyway, what's your view on the current political situation?"

By doing this, we're diverting from the suggestion that was planted. This prevents the person from over-analysing our sentence.

So essentially, all misdirection is, is a way that we divert a person's attention from what we're discussing on to something else. We can use this for a number of purposes. Above you saw two examples that this could be used. In the first example, to divert the conversation from a potential conflict where our suggestion failed, and in the second example, to divert attention from a successfully planted suggestion to ensure that the person wouldn't analyse the suggestion consciously.

Revision Section

Make sure you understand the following questions and answers before moving on:

Q. What is deception?
A. The creation of a false reality.

Q. Why are false realities useful?
A. They allow a person to believe what we tell them, even if it's not real.

Q. What are the three steps involved in Sleight Of Mind?
A. The creation of an expectation, the deliverance of the expectation, and then acting as if the expectation has become a reality.

Q. What is misdirection?
A. Directing a person's attention away from the conversation or action at hand.

Q. What is misdirection useful for?
A. For avoiding a potential conflict in conversation, or to plant a suggestion and then quickly change the subject to prevent the suggestion being noticed.

Exercise Section

It is highly recommended you complete the following exercises before proceeding:

Exercise 1

Practice talking with someone and saying something that may start an argument. Once you notice a bad reaction from the person, attempt to misdirect the person by subtly changing the subject. You will need to use keywords from the topic that is causing the argument so that the person doesn't notice you're trying to change the subject.

Build up practice with this technique until you are able to seemingly divert people's attention away from potential arguments and maintain rapport.

Exercise 2

Using the knowledge you've learned thus far, practice giving people discreet suggestions and then quickly changing the topic of conversation so that the person doesn't notice the planting of the suggestion.

A Journey Into NLP

The Milton Model

Last article you were introduced to Ericksonian hypnosis. The principles from Ericksonian hypnosis are incorporated into NLP with what's known as the ‘Milton Model'.

The Milton Model of NLP applies NLP in a manner that is discreet and indirect. For the purposes of learning covert hypnosis, all methods of NLP that you will be learning will be based upon the Milton Model.

As you will now have learned, it is not possible to consciously instruct the subconscious mind. We must first be in a trance in order to give our subconscious suggestions that we desire.

Whilst our external environment is influencing our subconscious every moment that passes, we have little control over just what information seeps into our subconscious.

Our critical mind will filter information from entering into our subconscious, yet we don't have any way of consciously bypassing the critical mind.

What happens if we want to plant a suggestion in our subconscious but our critical mind won't allow it? Perhaps there's an element to our behaviour that we want to change, but since the behaviour is stored in our subconscious, we have no conscious way of managing it.

As you now know, there is a way that we can influence our subconscious. And we can do so by inducing ourselves, or someone else, into a state of trance. In a state of trance the critical mind is relaxed, and suggestions can be planted directly into the subconscious.

But what happens if, for whatever reason, we can't, or don't want to send someone into a trance? Is it still possible to plant subconscious suggestions? The answer is yes.

You are about to be introduced to a new way of bypassing the critical mind, and it's not through hypnosis. It's instead through the use of indirect, discreet suggestion.

If we word a suggestion in such a manner that it doesn't arouse any suspicion within a person's conscious mind, then it will flow directly into the person's subconscious without the critical mind even analysing it.

Once the suggestion reaches the person's subconscious, the person will then act upon the suggestion.

The trick lies in making the conscious mind believe that there is no suggestion in the wording at all, whilst making the subconscious recognise the hidden suggestion.

This may sound a little confusing initially. You may be thinking "well, if the conscious mind doesn't see a suggestion, how will the subconscious mind pick it up?"

To answer this question, you need to learn the different ways that the conscious mind and the subconscious mind analyse information.

The conscious mind will look at a series of words and draw upon the learned experience of the subconscious mind in order to determine their meaning. You're using your subconscious mind right now in order to determine the meaning of these very words.

Remember those many years back at school when you learned how to sound out an individual letter, and learned how to spell words? All that learning is stored in your subconscious. Your subconscious is doing all the thinking for you right now, outside of your conscious awareness.

The conscious mind is much, much smaller than the subconscious. The conscious mind is really only concerned with your current thoughts. All your other thoughts are stored in your subconscious. Your subconscious is what feeds your conscious with all its current thoughts.

When we consciously look at a sentence, we're only drawing upon our subconscious to understand its initial meaning. We won't pick up any hidden meaning in the sentence unless we really focus on it and allow our subconscious to help us determine such a hidden meaning.

In the course of day to day conversation, we rarely stop and pause each time someone says something and think "Hmm, I wonder if there's a hidden suggestion in this". Instead we just take the sentence at face value, and continue the conversation.

We don't consciously analyze every word someone is saying with a magnifying glass, however our subconscious does.

Now when this sentence is stored in our memory, our subconscious looks at it over and over again, outside of our conscious awareness. Since our subconscious contains all of our learned behaviours and experiences, it will be able to analyse the sentence in a way that is much more detailed than our conscious mind ever could.

Have you ever had a problem that you just couldn't solve? If you forgot about the problem for a week, you may have suddenly, quite unexpectedly, thought of an answer to the problem when you least expected it.

This was due to your subconscious analysing the problem and thinking of a solution to it without you even being aware it was doing so.

Now if someone were to talk to us, and in doing so planted a hidden suggestion within their sentences, then our consciousness could very well miss this hidden suggestion altogether. Our subconscious on the other hand, would be much more likely to pick it up.

Once our subconscious picks this hidden suggestion up, we will act upon the suggestion without any form of critical analysis, provided that the suggestion does not go against our fundamental morals and beliefs (remember, we cannot be hypnotized to act against our fundamental morals and beliefs).

The reason we will act upon the suggestion without thinking twice is because there is no critical mind in our subconscious. The critical mind only exists inside our conscious awareness, it does not exist within our subconscious awareness.

The techniques in NLP that I will be teaching you are all based around ways to discreetly word suggestions so that they bypass the critical mind.

This is essentially what the Milton Model is about.

Principles Of Rapport

When you speak with someone for the first time, there are a variety of things that will determine whether or not you will get along well with them.

Whether or not you have something in common, how well you feel that ‘natural connection' and what your physical attractions are can all seem to play a big part in whether or not you will want to get to know a person better.

In essence, the main thing that determines whether you will want to get to know a person better is rapport. If you can establish rapport with someone, then the interaction will most likely flourish.

So just what is rapport exactly?

Rapport is essentially connection. It's when you and another person can strike off a verbal or non verbal connection, show interest in one another, and enjoy that interest.

Two people in a deep form of rapport with one another.

Rapport can manifest itself in a number of different ways. Have you ever spoken to someone who had a gentle, consistent tonality in their voice? This may naturally have sent you into a relaxed state of mind, and you may have enjoyed speaking to the person despite what they were saying, or what their beliefs were.

This is an example of rapport and can exist even when there's no common interest shared between you and the other person. Tonality of voice can play a crucial role in establishing rapport. You will have already learnt about this in my prior article.

You will notice that once you develop such a tonality, people will enjoy speaking with you, despite what you have to say. You will have a naturally soothing effect on them.

Tonality however is only one way of establishing rapport. Body language is another way.

We subconsciously move our hands about when we talk. We breath at a certain rate depending upon how alert we are, how much we're focusing our attention on a certain task, and whether or not we may be experiencing anxiety or nervousness in some form. A person's body language can say a lot about the current state of mind a person is in.

What people look for in everyone they meet is a form of connection, a form of familiarity. They want the other person to relate to them, to understand them, even if this is a subconscious form of relation as opposed to a conscious one.

If you can match the breathing patterns of a person when you're speaking to them, and match other aspects of their body language, then they will subconsciously think that you're in a similar state of mind to them, as if you're on the same wave length.

You will appear less threatening, and the person will feel more comfortable opening up to you than they would be if your body language didn't match theirs.

Matching a person's body language however is just one way we can establish rapport. Another way is by having a genuine understanding in the person and what they're saying.

If you can convince someone that you really are interested in what they're saying, and can convince them to start talking about themselves, then this in itself can be a form of rapport.

If two people approach one another, say "Hi", and then the conversation dies, then there's no real sense of rapport that has been established.

If however the conversation naturally seems to flow freely from that point onward, and both you and the other person are really enjoying the conversation, then that in itself can be considered a form of rapport.

Now imagine if you combined all of these aspects of rapport together. If you had that soft tonality in your voice, if you made a person feel comfortable by matching their body language, and on top of it, you were able to make the person talk about a subject the person really enjoyed talking about.

That person would feel a deep connection to you, a strong desire to converse with you further, and the rapport that you established with that person would only grow stronger as the conversation progressed.

So why is rapport such an important thing to establish?

As you will have learned in your earlier studies on hypnosis, the critical mind is always alert to external influence. It's always ready to dismiss new ideas and suggestions and err on the side of caution.

If however a person has a form of rapport with you, that person will start to develop a subconscious trust for you. They may even want to go out of their way to maintain the rapport that they have with you.

Once this process starts to happen, the person's critical mind becomes a little more lax with your suggestions. In a sense they become more open to them. This presents the perfect opportunity to plant discrete suggestions in the person's subconscious, since the person's critical mind is less likely to really analyse or reject what you're saying.

It's this relaxed state of mind that you can use to your advantage, and later on you will be learning a variety of techniques to use on a person once you have established rapport with them.

So the purpose of this section is to give you an introduction to rapport, what it is, and also teach you some techniques for establishing rapport with people.

Before I teach you any such techniques however, it's very important you understand one thing that everyone has a deep desire for. Once you understand this desire, establishing rapport becomes a much easier process.

Establishing Rapport By Nurturing The Ego

There is one thing that people love to talk about more than any other subject, and that subject is themselves.

Most people have an incessant like about themselves; they believe they have a form of uniqueness in some way. With most people this is a moderate form of belief, however when the belief gets out of hand it becomes narcissism.

People usually feel that the most interesting person in their life, is themselves, even if they publicly hide it.

One thing is certain though, and that is that we all display some narcissistic traits, whether or not we're consciously aware of it. This doesn't mean we're narcissistic, it just means we have some form of love for ourselves. As the saying goes, how can you love someone else if you don't love yourself?

By understanding that people love feeling good about themselves, we can use this knowledge as a tool to establish rapport with people by inflating their egos.

If someone talks to us and at the end of the conversation they feel really good about themselves, then they'll most likely want to speak to us again. If however we leave them feeling bad or indifferent, then such a thing cannot be guaranteed.

So the aim with conversation is to make a person feel good about themselves, however it's important not to flatter a person. False praise or flattery doesn't do much for people, in fact it can even have a negative effect.

Before continuing, let's examine why flattery is bad.

Why Flattery Doesn't Inflate The Ego In Most Circumstances

When someone receives a compliment, it reinforces to their subconscious that they're somehow being successful with a task.

Now remember earlier that we mentioned our subconscious has access to a lot more information than our conscious does. Since all our memories and learned behaviours are stored in our subconscious, emotions can be created from the subconscious level, even if we're not consciously aware why we may feel a certain way.

Understanding the above principle is important to understanding the point I am about to make.

Since our brain learns and adapts through either positive or negative reinforcement, when we receive a compliment our brain thinks that it's done something correctly. The thing that our subconscious looks for however is whether or not the compliment is genuine.

If the compliment is false, this tells our subconscious that someone is actually trying to trick us in some way. Why would someone lie that we're good at something when we're not? This question raises further questions.

A person that receives flattery may think things like: "Is this person trying to get something from me by being nice?" "Is the person weak and inferior to me, is that why they're sucking up?" "Why would I even want to talk to someone who gives away compliments so freely when they're not deserved?"

Such thoughts by a person can kill their interest in a conversation within moments. Interestingly enough, it's been found that false flattery is a behaviour acquired from a very young age since when we were children³, thus a conscious effort is required to not do it.

If you were a male and approached a good looking female in a nightclub and said "Oh my goodness I can't get over how gorgeous you are, seriously, do you do modelling?" she would most likely take that as a form of grovelling, she would be subconsciously thinking "Why would I want to speak to someone that gives compliments like this so easily?". In the given situation, the female would most likely try to end the conversation then and there.

Incessant flattery is usually seen as either one of two things: Weakness, or an attempt to procure something.

Insincere flattery and grovelling are subconscious turn-offs in the vast majority of social encounters.

The vast, vast majority of people are smart enough to see through flattery the moment it's said.

So what you must understand is this: Flattery does not nurture a person's ego.

The way we nurture a person's ego is through genuine compliment. Quite simply, if we don't genuinely believe that someone deserves to be complimented for something they've said or done, then we shouldn't compliment them.

If someone says or does something that we think is stupid or nonsensical, then we may ignore the person's actions, not giving them any response.

This subconsciously builds up a desire to please us within the person's mind. The person thinks "this guy (or girl) isn't going to flatter me, in fact he's probably a person that's more likely to give genuine compliments when they're deserved, I wonder if I can earn his respect".

Now if you gave a person a compliment after they've vested value in your compliments, then you'd be nurturing their ego. They've lived up to your expectations. You've made them happy, and they'll most likely want to talk to you further to gain more acceptance and ego inflation from you.

You must have a genuine interest in another person, not a false one. So how do we have a genuine interest in someone?

This can be difficult to learn, but once you learn it, it becomes very easy. You quite simply must learn not to be obsessed with yourself in a conversation. If you can learn this, then you'll be better able to focus on what the other person is saying and doing, and you'll be in a better position to give them a genuine compliment when it's warranted.

Of course we're no different to other people. When we speak with someone obviously we're hoping to gain something from the encounter ourselves. That's fine, and perfectly reasonable, however we must temporarily put aside our interests and make the other person feel good first. Once the other person feels good about us and about themselves, then we can work on our interests.

So establishing rapport with someone is your first goal in a conversation. You establish this rapport by being genuinely interested in the other person and giving them genuine compliments, as opposed to just being interested in yourself.

Once you've done this, and the conversation is going well, then you can work on things such as discreet hypnotic suggestion.

Let's look at an example of a genuine compliment as opposed to a petty compliment.

You notice a girl is quite pretty. You want to compliment her on her appearance. An example of flattery which will not establish rapport would be: "I just have to say, you're really pretty". This means nothing as it has no substance. It sounds pathetic, and the girl most likely views it as pathetic. It's as if she's already dominated you and has no need to even speak with you.

An example of a genuine compliment would be you noticing that the girl's shoes were made in a certain area, and you genuinely liked her choice in them. In this case you could say "You bought those shoes in Italy didn't you?" the girl may reply "Yes", in which case you could reply "I can tell from the quality of the fabric design".

Notice in the second example we gave no form of flattery. We didn't say "Very nice" "Ohh how beautiful" "They're fantastic", we only gave the compliment strictly in the way that we meant it. We didn't say "I can tell from the quality of them, very nice".

If we added the words "very nice" then we're overdoing the compliment. It's like we're adding artificial sweetened sugar to a fine crème brulee. Leave it at the crème brulee, don't over do it with anything that's not genuine.

If we couldn't think of anything that we were genuinely impressed by with the girl's appearance, then we don't compliment her on her appearance at all. Making no compliment is far better than making a petty compliment, or flattery.

Obviously the above example could be used in the context of a female talking to a male as well; the principle still remains the same.

Maintaining Genuine Interest

So when we're striking conversation with people, our aim is to have a genuine interest in them, and give genuine compliments. We want to really listen to what the person is talking about, and ask them questions which will further reinforce to the person that we're interested.

If someone brought up a boring conversation such as "Well you see my step brother's mother's daughter is getting married next week and I'm really excited". Respond with something like "Where is the wedding being held?" This will prompt the person to speak about the wedding further.

You're giving the person the opportunity to talk about what they want to talk about, not what you want to talk about. Remember, people love talking about themselves, and topics of their own choosing.

If someone said something such as "Well I hope to return to university next year to continue my study of law, it's really interesting". Respond with something like "Law sounds like a complex thing to study, what do you find interesting about it?" This will allow the person to talk about themselves more, which is exactly what they want.

Let's say the person didn't say they found law interesting and made a closed statement. Pretend they only said "I'm returning to university next year to study law". We could reply with "And tell me, what is it about law that interests you?".

Either way, we're giving the person the opportunity to talk about themselves.

So essentially, all you need to learn to establish rapport at this stage is to ask a person interesting questions which will allow them to talk more openly about themselves.

The final two NLP topics you will need to understand that we haven't covered are those of anchoring and submodalities. Read those two articles if you havne't already. I go into greater depth about these two topics in my course, but for the purposes of conducting covert hypnosis as covered in this article, those two articles will suffice.

Body Language Mastery

Breathing Patterns

As you now know, a person's body language can say a lot about how they are feeling.

In this section we will look at breathing patterns, what they mean, and how we can use them to establish rapport with people.

When we are calm and relaxed, we breathe at a normal rate of once every few seconds. We inhale deeply, and we exhale. The breathing is controlled.

Now this obviously changes when we're scared, nervous, upset, or experience anxiety. We begin to breath in more and more, sometimes resulting in hyperventilation which is a result of us breathing much too excessively.

Most breathing that takes place in a conversation is usually somewhere between a normal state of breathing, and a more active state of breathing such as one experiences when nervous.

There are a number of things we can observe to determine a person's breathing rate. We can look at a person's pulse, as a pulse indicates how fast the heart is pumping, which can in turn determine how quickly a person is breathing.

We can also pay close attention directly to a person's diaphragm (the area just below the chest) and look at how quickly it's moving inwards and outwards as the person inhales and exhales. This is perhaps the easiest way to observe a person's breathing rate.

Now if you see someone inhaling and exhaling once every few seconds, then you know they're most likely in a relaxed state when they're talking to you.

If however they're breathing in and out once every second or more, then this is a possible indication of nervousness, anxiety, or some other uncomfortable emotion.

You can also pick up from a person's tonality whether or not they are breathing too fast and may be nervous. If the person often breaks their words, or sounds high pitched, this could be a sign of nervousness.

In order to make a person feel as relaxed as possible when talking to you, what you want to do is match your breathing pattern with theirs.

Pay close attention to when they inhale and exhale, and mimic the timing with your breathing. If you can, try and draw in each breath as they do, and exhale at the same time as well.

What this does is it causes the person to subconsciously establish a sense of familiarity with you. Once you have this subconscious familiarity and connection with someone, that person will release chemicals into their brain that make them 'feel good' and relaxed when speaking to you.

As a result, you will have established rapport with the person, as they will subconsciously think of you as someone that they have a lot in common with.

Anchoring Breathing Rate To External Actions

Another way of establishing that subconscious sense of familiarity with a person is by mimicking their breathing pattern with some external action.

This can include tapping your finger or a pen on the table in unison with the person's breathing.

Milton Erickson himself used a great example of how he was able to establish rapport with a young boy who had come to see him due to his consistent unruliness with his parents.

Initially the boy ran around Erickson's office, not paying any attention to what he was saying. The boy clearly did not want to be there, as he had other things on his mind.

Erickson did not reprimand the boy (as you should know by now, reprimanding someone is not an effective way to command long term obedience), instead he established a subconscious sense of familiarity with the boy which then led to rapport.

What Erickson did was he paid close attention to the boy's breathing rate. As the boy was running around the room, the boy was breathing quite heavily. Erickson tapped his pen on his table, loud enough for the boy to hear, but timed the tapping of his pen with the boy's breathing rate.

After a few minutes, the boy's subconscious associated his breathing rate with Erickson's tapping pen. What Erickson then did was he gradually tapped his pen slower and slower, but not too much... just a slight amount every few seconds.

Since the boy's subconscious had established a sense of familiarity with the tapping pen, the boy's breathing rate also slowed in time with the tapping pen. Eventually Erickson brought the pen to a tapping speed that was consistent with a normal breathing rate, and the boy's breathing also changed to this slower speed.

This in turn calmed the boy down, and he sat down to talk with Erickson. Erickson had established subconscious rapport with the boy, and even if the boy didn't consciously know why, he had a sense of familiarity with Erickson, and was willing to listen to what he said from that moment forth.

You too can mimic a person's breathing rate through an external action, be it a tapping pen, a consistent hand gesture, or your breathing rate.

If you do this successfully, and establish near perfect timing with the person's breathing rate, then subconscious familiarity should be established, which will lead to rapport.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is an almost universal formality among the entire human species. It doesn't matter which country you visit, or which culture you immerse yourself in, eye contact plays an important role in communication.

Whilst some countries view excessive eye contact as being rude, and indeed only minimal eye contact may be accepted, it nevertheless stands that some form of eye contact is a sign of mutual respect and interest in another person.

Now what I'm about to say may sound like common sense to you, but it's surprising how many people don't realize this - In western societies and cultures, if you're talking to a person and they're not maintaining eye contact with you, and they're constantly looking away, then this could be a very strong sign of disinterest.

We're often so absorbed in our conversation and what we have to say that we rarely pay attention to what the other person is feeling, and whether or not they are enjoying the conversation and our company.

Eye Contact And Representational Systems

You should remember your studies on representational systems and how certain eye cues represent the representational system a person is accessing.

Because people feel a need to maintain eye contact in order to be polite, there is a chance that they will access a representational system whilst forcing themselves to maintain eye contact. This can make it very difficult to determine the representational system a person is accessing.

The way around this is to ask a question that forces the person to really think about what you're saying. If you ask someone a simple question, say for example something related to a recent incident that happened to them, then they may already have this image in their conscious mind, and therefore won't need to access their representational systems to remember it.

In such a case, the person will simply respond to you without moving their eyes in any direction. If however you ask the person about certain details of the incident, then you're forcing the person to access a representational system, and thus their eyes will move.

So if someone is maintaining eye contact with you and you're expecting them to access a representational system and they don't, don't take this as a sign that representational systems don't work, rather try and probe the person a little deeper until they do look in a certain direction.

Facial Expressions

Facial expressions are a way that people can communicate things subtly without the need to be too forward. Sometimes these things can be good, sometimes they can be bad.

For example if someone frowned at you after you said something, this could be a way of saying "I really don't agree with that, why did you say that?" but without being rude and saying such a thing directly.

If on the other hand someone smiled, it could be a way of saying "That really makes me happy what you said" without being so forward.

One of the most important facial expressions is the smile. It can do so much, and it is by far the most powerful facial expression that you can use to establish rapport with people.

One way to attract attention when you're walking down the street is to smile at a person you're walking past. If you give out a pleasant, confident smile, then odds are that the person will return the smile to you.

This can be a great way to meet new people, as sometimes you may even start a conversation with someone after the smile, especially if you maintain good eye contact with the person. You could start the conversation off with something like "Hey...".

It's always a good idea to have at least a slight smile when talking with people, as it shows the person that you accept them into your life and you respect them. No one likes a person with a neutral or sad face all the time.

Using a smile to show interest

One thing that you can do is use the smile and an eye narrowing expression at the same time in order to indicate a positive sense of interest in the other person.

When someone sees your eyes narrowing they will think that you're interested in what they have to say, and combined with a smile it will show them that you're positively interested. This can go towards establishing rapport.

The False Smile

Some people will put on a 'fake' sort of smile as if trying to be polite when in fact they aren't interested in what you're saying.

The fake smile is often shown when a person only smiles with the left or right side of their mouth, as opposed to both sides at once. This is a subconscious way of the person saying "I see, but I'm really not interested".

It's very important to pick these sorts of smiles up as they could indicate that you're taking the wrong approach with your conversation.

Now there may be times when the false smile doesn't indicate disinterest, it could rather indicate sympathy, obvious agreement, or even confusion. If you said to someone "Well he was a good guy" the person may reply by nodding their head whilst using this false smile, in which case they would be agreeing with you, not showing disinterest in the conversation.

You have to look at the context of the conversation to determine whether the false smile is a sign of disinterest. One way to do this is to ask yourself whether or not what you're saying sounds really interesting to them.

If the conversation is really interesting to the other person, they will very rarely, if ever, use the false smile. If on the other hand it's only you that finds the conversation interesting, whilst the other person finds it boring, they will most likely use the false smile as a way of subconsciously showing disinterest.

So the main facial expressions you should be aware of are -

• Frowning
• The Genuine Smile
• The False Smile

Body Positioning

The way you position yourself when you're about to talk with someone tells the person a lot about you, before you've even opened your mouth.

Whilst the person may not consciously realise this, they certainly do subconsciously, and therefore you will want to pay attention to the positions you adopt in conversation.

If you're approaching a member of the opposite sex and you're a male, there is one thing that females look for subconsciously, and that's confidence.

If you approach a female hesitantly from the side, sort of 'hoping' that she'll acknowledge you, then there's a good chance she won't. If however you approach her from about a 10-20 degree angle, almost front on, then she will see that as you 'putting yourself out', and she will interpret it as a sign of confidence.

This doesn't mean that she will want to talk with you, however it does mean that there's a greater likelihood she will see confidence in you.

The reason you don't want to approach from a direct position (a straight line), is because this may be too dominating for the girl, and she may be threatened by it.

You still want her to be in her comfort zone, but at the same time want to display confidence, and therefore approaching just slightly to the left or right on a 10-20 degree angle away from where the girl is looking will achieve this.

If you're a female approaching a male, then funnily enough the direction doesn't really matter, although some males will find it less threatening if a girl doesn't approach them front on (just like with females).

Men should never approach a woman from behind or the side, as it will be viewed as either 'creepy', or displaying a lack of confidence.

Matching and Mirroring

When you're talking with someone, what you want to try and display is a delayed symmetry of their body language.

What this basically entails is replicating the person's stance, hand gestures, facial expressions and eye contact but delaying it by a period of about three seconds so that it doesn't seem obvious to the person that you're mimicking them. This form of mimicking is referred to as 'mirroring' and it shall be referred to as such from now on.

The reason mirroring works is because, like with other forms of rapport, the person's subconscious mind is noticing a familiarity in you.

If you display the same body language as the person, then the person will subconsciously build trust with you, as they will think they have a lot in common with you, even if it's only nonverbally.

So first of all, let's look at a person's stance and how we can mirror that.

If someone is standing on a certain angle, you want to mirror this angle, but make sure you're facing the person whilst doing so. If it would look too awkward to mirror the person, then don't. You never want to compromise what looks normal.

The other thing to pay attention to is the person's actual stance. If someone has one foot in front of the other, or one leg crossed over the other, then mirror that. You don't have to use the same legs as they do, you can use the opposite.

Let's say someone has their right leg crossed over their left leg. You can put your left leg over your right leg, either way it does not matter as the person's subconscious will still recognize the familiarity.

The next thing you want to pay attention to are the person's facial expressions. Whenever the person smiles, you should smile also. When they frown or display a negative emotion, you should do the same with your body language, however make sure to always delay this by at least 3 seconds so that it's not apparently obvious.

Eye contact is another important thing to pay attention to. You want to maintain eye contact with someone for as long as they maintain eye contact with you.

If the other person doesn't look away then you shouldn't either.

If the other person does look away and breaks eye contact then you should do so as well. Make sure to delay this by at least 3 seconds however so it doesn't seem to the person that you're just copying their every action.

Hand Gestures

When people are coming up with new ideas they will often express them with their hand movement.

Because people will often not communicate a lot of what they are thinking, hand movement is a great thing to replicate as these hand movements represent what the person is 'trying' to say as opposed to just what they 'are' saying.

What we want to do is match and mirror a person's hand movements whenever they're in an enthusiastic and positive tone of voice. By doing this, we're sort of subconsciously telling the person "I understand where you're coming from" and creating rapport.

Once again, we don't want to make it obvious that we're matching and mirroring the person's body language, so we will delay the hand gesture mirroring by a period of at least 3 seconds.

So say if the person has their hands separated whilst they're talking, moving them in a certain manner, you want to also adopt this same sort of position with your hands, but delay the actual movement by at least 3 seconds. So you're constantly in this 'lag' of 3 seconds behind the other person.

When starting out, I recommend you stick to a delay of 3 seconds, and as you gain experience you can make this delay longer and longer, and less obvious to the person.

The reason the delay is difficult to master at first is because there's many subtle gestures within the hand movement that you may miss. As you gain experience you'll gain a natural intuition as to which hand gestures are important to replicate, and which ones are not.

As was explained in a previously on anchoring, one way a person signifies that they're really interested in what they're talking about is by rotating their hands in a clockwise fashion. If you can replicate the person's hand rotation with a 3 second delay, then the person will believe that you're also really interested in what they're talking about.

Revision Section

Make sure you understand the following questions and answers before moving on:

Q. What can a person's breathing rate tell you about how they are feeling?

A. Whether they are relaxed, nervous or anxious.

Q. What is the desired state that someone should be in when you're talking to them: relaxed, nervous, or anxious?

A. As relaxed and comfortable as possible.

Q. How can you make someone who is nervous or anxious relaxed?

A. Mirror their breathing rate, and then slow your breathing rate down very gradually. The other person will subconsciously notice your breathing rate to lower, and will lower their breathing rate also, making them relaxed.

Q. Why is maintaining eye contact important?

A. It's a sign of interest and understanding in most human cultures.

Q. What happens if you don't break eye contact?

A. The other person may become anxious, or threatened.

Q. When should you break eye contact?

A. When the other person breaks their eye contact.

Q. What is matching and mirroring?

A. Copying another person's body language in almost every aspect but with a delay of at least 3 seconds. This copying can include facial expressions, hand gestures, eye contact, body positioning, and breathing rate.

Q. Why is it important to maintain at least a 3 second delay when matching and mirroring?

A. This will prevent the person from consciously picking up that you're replicating their body language.

Q. What does matching and mirroring achieve?

A. It establishes subconscious familiarity and a sense of rapport. This can be useful for getting the other person to open up to you more.

Q. If you are approaching someone, from what angle should you approach?

A. From about a 10-20 degree angle.

Q. What does approaching from the side (a 90 degree angle) signify?

A. Weakness, shyness, and nervousness.

Q. What is the problem with approaching a person from a frontal position?

A. It may be seen as a sign of intimidation or over-confidence, and may be perceived as quite threatening.

Q. Do you want to match and mirror hand gestures when a person is talking about something that they find upsetting, or they are angered about?

A. No, we only want to match and mirror hand gestures when the person is talking about something enthusiastically and positively.

Q. Is it possible to read a person's thoughts through body language?

A. No. We can use Eye Cues to determine the representational system a person is accessing, but we cannot read a person's thoughts from their body language.

Q. Do people say more about how they are feeling with their body language, or with their words?

A. With their body language.

Exercise Section

It is highly recommended you complete the following exercises before proceeding:

Exercise 1

Practice matching and mirroring the body language of people you talk to and see whether or not this makes establishing rapport easier. Pay particular attention to whether or not the person appears more open, and if they smile more than usual. These are both good indications of subconscious rapport.

Exercise 2

Practice maintaining eye contact with friends and family members without breaking eye contact. Test how long you can do this before it makes them feel uncomfortable.

Now try the same thing again, however this time break eye contact whenever the friend or family member does.

Lastly, try maintaining eye contact as you normally would.

Compare the results you get depending upon the method you use. You should find that maintaining eye contact and only breaking it when the other person does should lead to the best form of rapport.

Exercise 3

When walking down the road from now on, practice smiling to any member of the opposite sex that you pass. Notice how many smiles you get back. Don't feel bad if some people don't smile back, as some people are unfamiliar with this form of communication, or may simply not be interested.

Exploring Covert Hypnosis

Advanced Studies of Instant Induction

We are now going to get into some advanced studies of covert hypnosis. We're going to be focusing on specific strategies that you can use to conduct covert hypnosis on people in the quickest, most discreet and of course, the most effective manner.

It's assumed you've completed all the exercises in my previous article and this article, are confident hypnotizing people, and have adopted a hypnotic tonality, know how to mirror body language to the point you notice good results, and are confident in your abilities.

If you think you need to refresh your memory about anything that you've learned so far, it is recommended you look at the previous revision questions and exercises before proceeding. You must already be proficient at hypnosis for this section to be of any value to you.

You've learned about hypnosis and how it relates to different states of trance and suggestion. You've learned about NLP and how it can be used to establish rapport, anchor emotional states and determine the representational system a person is accessing through the use of eye cues. You've also learned about mentalism, and how cold reading and sleight of mind can be used to give the illusion of false realities.

We're now going to be bringing these three fields together, combining them as one, and exploring the practical use of day to day covert hypnosis.

To begin with, we will look at ways of establishing an instant trance induction with people through the use of a hypnotic pattern interrupt.

Instant Induction and the Pattern Interruption Process

You will recall from an earlier article that instant induction follows the following 9 step process:

1. Hypnotist conducts a pattern interrupt.
2. Pattern interrupt causes an overload of message units.
3. Overload of message units result in a temporary state of trance.
4. Hypnotist quickly conducts a deepening technique.
5. A further overload of message units result, and we stay in trance.
6. Hypnotist guides us even deeper into a hypnotic state, making sure that we will experience amnesia when we're taken out of hypnosis.
7. Hypnotist plants the suggestion.
8. Hypnotist affirms that we won't remember anything.
9. Hypnotist brings us out of hypnosis.

In this section we're going to be analysing each step of this process so that you can start practicing instant induction on others.

1. Hypnotist conducts a pattern interrupt

The pattern interrupt is the step whereby a person is expecting to perform an action, but you unexpectedly change their reality so that such an action cannot be performed.

This change can be almost anything you can think of. It could be the hand shake induction which you learned about in the previous article on hypnotizing someone, or it could be something as simple as asking someone for the time, and then quickly grabbing their hand and performing the same induction before they get the chance to look at their watch.

There really are limitless pattern interrupts that you can conduct, and in fact, creativity and originality is encouraged.

For our example, let's pretend we're conducting the handshake induction. As you should recall from our last article, we conduct the handshake induction by putting forward our right hand, and then quickly moving it away and bringing forward our left hand instead, grabbing the person's right hand and moving it up to their face.

2. Pattern interrupt causes an overload of message units

As you're aware, a pattern interrupt causes an overload of message units for a very short period of time, usually no more than a couple of seconds.

3. Overload of message units result in a temporary state of trance

As you're also aware, an overload of message units results in a state of trance. Since we're not inducing the person into a trance as we would through a normal induction, this state of trance is only very temporary.

4. Hypnotist quickly conducts a deepening technique

Here we conduct a deepening technique in order to ensure that the subject remains in this temporary state of trance long enough for us to plant our suggestion. A good example of a deepening technique is to place a finger of yours (such as your index finger) on the person's wrist, hand or shoulder and then mention the words "deep sleep" to them.

5. A further overload of message units result, and we stay in trance

By applying the deepening technique mentioned in step 4, we overload the person with more message units by asking them to focus on relaxing themselves. This ensures they remain in the state of trance.

6. Hypnotist guides us even deeper into a hypnotic state, making sure that we will experience amnesia when we're taken out of hypnosis

If the person responds in a positive manner to the command "deep sleep" such as by the tilting of their head or the closing of their eyes, you then talk to their subconscious, telling them to fall into an even deeper state of trance.

As example may be "I want you to feel every part of your body relax now as you feel yourself drifting deeper and deeper into this care free state."

7. Hypnotist plants the suggestion

This suggestion can be essentially anything you like, provided of course it does not go against the person's fundamental morals and beliefs.

Now what we want to do is word the suggestion according to the person's suggestibility type. If the person is a physical suggestible, the suggestion we will word is as follows -

"When you awaken out of this state you will feel a need to do XYZ. Whenever you hear the word 'catchphrase' you will perform the action of XYZ."

In the case of an emotional suggestible, we obviously need to be more indirect. An example could be -

"When you feel yourself awaken from this state you may feel a natural tendency to do XYZ when you hear the word 'catchphrase', as doing so may seem like a perfectly natural thing for you to do... a care free thing, something that you may want to do by your own free will"

8. Hypnotist affirms that we won't remember anything

We now want to make sure that the person will not remember anything when they awaken out of hypnosis. We can do this by planting a simple suggestion as follows -

"And when you awaken from this deeply relaxed state, you will not remember anything that was said to you, you will not even remember the experience"

9. Hypnotist brings us out of hypnosis

"And when I count to 5, you will feel yourself wide awake and fully alert, completely outside of this state of trance, forgetting everything that's happened. 1. ... being aware of your surroundings now and 5... wide awake and fully alert"

Whilst this 9 step process may seem a little confusing at first, once you start practicing instant induction it will become easier. There will be some exercises at the end of this chapter that you can use to get you started in this.

Manipulation Of Brain States

Earlier you learned about the various brain states, or trance states, that a person may enter. You learned that the more message units you give someone, the higher their brain frequency reaches, until eventually they reach an overload of message units and the brain frequency suddenly dips into a very low, trance state.

You've learned how to bring people into a relaxed theta wavelength through various techniques that result in an overload of message units.

In this section we're going to be examining the advantages of someone who is in a heightened frequency, such as at a beta or alpha frequency.

When someone is a beta frequency, they become highly alert of their surroundings. If we don't want to plant suggestions in someone, but instead want to help the person concentrate on something, be it studying something from a book, or if we want someone to really analyse and think about what we're saying, then we may bring the person into a beta frequency.

We do this by creating a large amount of message units in the person, however we don't overload the person with message units, instead we just get their mind into a really active and alert state.

Since we're not trying to plant any suggestion in the person, we don't need to worry about a person's suggestibility type. Instead, all we must do is get the person thinking quickly.

For example, we could ask the person a number of questions, quickly after one another, before they've had much of a chance to really think about what they've said.

An example could be asking someone a series of questions in quick succession as follows -

You: "So what are your views on the current world affairs in politics?"

Subject: "Well I think President XYZ did quite a...."

You: "And what do you think about the recent incident in the news with ABC?"

Subject: "Well I think that's shocking, and that..."

You: "Sorry to interrupt, can I get you something to drink, what do you like?"

Subject: "Ohh thanks, I'll just have a coffee"

You: "Just out of curiosity, do you drink tea at all?"

Subject: "Well I do on occasion"

In the above conversation we've forced the person to think of a variety of different things within a relatively short period of time, giving them little time to reflect on what they said.

Whilst it may not seem apparently obvious, what we've done is raised the person's conscious awareness up to an alpha/beta wavelength. This is equivalent to what's known as a 'heightened state of awareness'.

Heightened State of Awareness

A heightened state of awareness is a great state to be in when we want to be able to really understand our surroundings, analyse intricate details of sentences which we'd normally ignore and examine people's body language in more precise detail than we normally would.

A heightened state of awareness is really just our minds being in an alpha/beta state.

Now whilst we may artificially induce this heightened state of awareness on another person through the conversation given above, we normally enter into a heightened state of awareness when our mind thinks that something isn't quite right. It's more of a survival mechanism.

You can just imagine if you were about to be attacked by someone, you'd suddenly need as much concentration as your mind could muster so that you could respond to the threat, and this is what a heightened state of awareness does for you, it gives you intense concentration.

It's an evolutionary mechanism within us that was originally designed to protect us from external threats.

Before looking at ways of giving other people a heightened state of awareness, let's first examine how you can give this state to yourself, and the precise advantages this state gives you.

How a Heightened State of Awareness helps us respond to others

When something happens that you're not used to, such as having a car accident, hearing an odd noise, even dropping a glass on the floor, you enter into a heightened state of awareness. Have you ever felt that things seemed to go into slow motion when something bad happens? Let me give an example.

Let's say you're holding an expensive glass vase, and you accidentally drop it. As this glass vase is falling down, it seems like it takes an entire two seconds or so for it to reach the floor, as if time itself is momentarily slowed giving you time to catch the vase.

This isn't a unique experience to just you, or an unexplainable phenomena. It's simply a heightened state of awareness, an alpha/beta brainwave state, that your mind enters when it senses that something isn't quite right.

Your mind will 'snap you out of hypnosis' so to speak, raising your brain state from a theta level if you were in one.

When an animal in the wild hears the familiar call of a predator, it will also enter into this heightened state of awareness, allowing it to analyse a myriad of calculations within the space of a micro second in order for it to make an informed decision as to how to escape.

If the animal acted on autopilot and just ignored the sound of the predator, this animal could well end up as prey.

Likewise if we're driving along the road and see that we're about to have a head on collision, or drive into the rear of the car in front of us, our mind will immediately enter into this heightened state of awareness so that we can quickly analyse what to do.

Should we pull over to the side of the road? Continue driving in the same direction? Hit the brakes? These are all questions that need answering within the space of a micro second, and a heightened state of awareness allows us to do just that.

Imagine if you could live each and every day in this heightened state of awareness? You'd start to notice small intricate details of life that you wouldn't normally notice.

You'd start to hear certain sounds that you normally wouldn't pay any attention to, such as the noise of an insect rustling in the leaves.

Now imagine if you were speaking to someone whilst in this state of heightened awareness. Suddenly the tonality of their speech, the timing of their words, their facial expression, their body language, where they were looking, what words they were saying — all of this, you'd analyse within a fraction of a second.

Normally when we talk with people we ignore things such as hand gestures and tonality of voice, we don't see a point in analysing body language. Can you remember the hand gestures that someone used the last time you spoke to them? Most likely not.

The interesting thing is, is that people say so much more with their body language than they do with their words.

A very interesting experiment that you can do is try to speak to someone who doesn't speak a word of English. Notice how the person will be trying to convey a meaning to you subconsciously through their body language.

They won't even be aware that their hands are moving, it will just be something that happens naturally to them. Funnily enough, you'll be able to have a vague idea what they're talking about, even though they don't speak a single word of English.

Let's say someone is talking to you and they move their eyes in an upwards direction. This would indicate that the person is most likely thinking about something visual.

Now if every time you spoke to someone about something visually related, and they moved their eyes in an upwards direction, you'd begin to subconsciously associate the moving of the eyes in an upwards direction with a visual image.

So then, if you spoke to someone who didn't speak a word of English, and they were trying to convey a meaning to you in words you didn't understand, and they moved their eyes in an upwards direction whilst doing so – you'd know that what they were talking about would most likely be visually related.

Whilst this alone isn't much to work with, imagine if you had other cues that you had associated with body language as well? Different tonalities of voice would mean different things.

For instance we can all tell when someone is scared, nervous or frightened, as their tonality becomes a little shaky and simple words become difficult for them to pronounce.

If everybody knows that just from experience, imagine what you can know if you train yourself in reading body language properly?

The answer — you can know many, many things. You can tell when people are lying, you can tell when people are saying one thing but meaning another, you can even make educated guesses as to what people are thinking based purely upon their facial expression, breathing rate, and posture.

Interpreting Responses with a Heightened State of Awareness

So now that you know what a heightened state of awareness is, how do you go about entering it when you choose, as opposed to just when something unexpected happens?

The short answer is that you can't, nor would you want to. However we can replicate certain elements of a heightened state of awareness through proper training.

First of all, let's analyse when a heightened state of awareness is useful, and when it isn't.

We often operate on autopilot responses for a reason. Each day we go into a hypnotic, day dreamy sort of state in order to let our conscious mind rest.

This hypnotic state we enter is what allows us to be creative, focus on other things, and allows us to vent out certain elements of stress.

It is not desirable nor practical to always be in a heightened state of awareness, we need to have the autopilot functioning, it's a critical part of our survival.

With that being said, there may be times when we want to voluntarily activate a heightened state of awareness, such as when there's a large amount of information we want to analyse.

When we're studying for example, our mind will need to be in a heightened state so that it can absorb new concepts and ideas.

If we take the same approach talking to someone as we do when studying something, then we'll be a lot more alert when speaking with the person. We'll begin to analyse their body language and recognise certain cues in their speech that we normally wouldn't notice.

All you need to do to enter into this heightened state of awareness is focus. If you're talking to someone, have a genuine interest in what they have to say.

Really try and understand what the person is talking about, and don't think of a way that you can interject just so that you can say your part. Make your replies questions if possible so that you can find out as much about the person as possible.

As you learn to pay attention to people and what they have to say, you'll begin to focus more and more, and break out of your autopilot functioning.

The more you listen to a person and hear what they have to say, the more you'll get an understanding for what sort of a personality they have and how they'd likely react to certain situations.

You can't achieve this if you're only interested in speaking about yourself. Also, as you know, having a genuine interest in another person is key to establishing rapport.

So this has a two way effect. First, listening to another person intensively will raise your mind to a beta/high alpha wavelength. Second, this interest will establish rapport, as you know.

Uses of bringing others into a Heightened State of Awareness

So you learned about how to bring someone into a heightened state of awareness at the beginning of this section by asking the person a number of questions in quick succession, forcing their brain wave frequency to raise. When would you want to do such a thing you might ask?

The answer is not when you're attempting to procure something from the other person. This state is useful if you're attempting to get a child to have a genuine interest in something, or if you want someone to really listen to what you're talking about so you can get a point across.

For example let's say you had a child that said that he or she just couldn't find any interest in studying.

You could ask the child a number of questions in quick succession, questions obviously that the child could understand. Examples include -

"What do you dislike the most about school?"

"What do you think will happen when you get older if you don't have a proper education in school?"

"What are the advantages of studying?"

"What do you like the most about studying?"

Once the child is in an active, heightened state of awareness due to the multiple questions asked of him or her, a perfect opportunity would present itself to have the child study.

You could do this by using the typical Ericksonian illusion of free choice, which you learned about earlier. An example of this technique could be asking the child - "Do you want to study now, or later?"

Hopefully you now understand what a Heightened State of Awareness is, and why it is important for deep forms of thinking and analyses.

You should also understand how you can bring yourself and other people into this state.

Multiple Channel Hypnosis

When you're conducting covert hypnosis on another person, be it through an instant induction or through the use of subtle suggestion and rapport, it is important to maintain multiple forms of connection with this person, in case one form should, for whatever reason, cease.

Allow me to elaborate on what I mean by this. Let's say that you have rapport established with a person, and this rapport resulted from you matching and mirroring the person's body language.

If for whatever reason this matching and mirroring broke then the rapport may break too.

Now if you had rapport established with the person in a number of different ways, let's say through hypnotic tonality, through body language and through showing a genuine interest in what the person was talking about, then it wouldn't matter if one of these 'channels' of rapport broke (let's say your voice suddenly turned hoarse), you'd still have the other channels active, meaning that the rapport would still exist.

Let's look at the following diagram -

Now if one of these states were to end, such as hypnotic tonality, then the diagram would look as follows -

You'd still have rapport with the person, because you still had two other active 'channels' of rapport established.

Establishing multiple channels of rapport are important for two reasons. Firstly, it ensures that should one channel break, you still have other active channels to maintain the rapport. Secondly, the more channels you have open with the person, the deeper the rapport will be.

If one channel breaks it is better that the rapport is slightly weakened as opposed to being broken entirely.

We can apply this same concept to anchoring.

Let's say for example that we have an emotional state of happiness anchored to a certain hand gesture. We can also anchor this same emotional state of happiness to another action, such as a facial expression. We may also anchor a separate emotional state, such as one of interest and intrigue, to another action such as the tapping of a glass.

The channels we'd set up then would be as follows -

Now if we broke the hand gesture anchor, then we'd still have a separate channel through which we could trigger the emotional state of happiness, in this case the facial expression.

If we broke the tapping of the glass anchor however then we wouldn't have any other anchors that we could use to trigger the emotional state of intrigue. We could however create more channels for this anchor (more anchors) so that if one of them broke we wouldn't need to worry too much.

One last example we will look at is the association of hypnotic suggestions with specific actions.

Let's say you guided someone into a trance and planted the suggestion of "when I click my fingers you will have a deep desire to talk to me". We could also plant another suggestion as well, such as "when you hear the word 'interest' you will feel a deep desire to talk to me".

Therefore if one of these channels were to break for whatever reason, then we'd still have the other one.

If we really wanted to make sure that a person obeyed our suggestion we could even combine the two hypnotic suggestions together, by clicking our fingers and mentioning the word 'interest' at the same time.

In the course of an ordinary conversation you may have a number of separate channels existing for rapport, anchoring and hypnotic suggestion, such as follows -

So as you can see, the more channels you maintain with someone, be it through rapport, anchoring or hypnosis, the more leeway you have for circumstances outside of your control where rapport or anchoring may be broken.

As you gain practice, will be able to keep track of multiple channels that you're maintaining with someone. At first you should practice just maintaining two or three channels, and over time handling ten or more channels will not be difficult.

Safeguards Against Being Discovered

One thing that you don't really want to happen is for someone to yell out to you "you're trying to covertly hypnotise me!". In reality, this is almost guaranteed not to happen since the vast majority of people wouldn't even have a clue what covert hypnosis was.

If your techniques were obvious, the worst that would most likely happen is that the person may perceive you to be a little odd in some way. For example, if you were tapping a glass too excessively they may believe you had some form of obsessive compulsive disorder for tapping glasses, or perhaps they may think you were nervous.

Nevertheless, if you can avoid giving away any obvious signals as to what you're doing, then that's a good thing. This is especially true with instant induction. The last thing you want is for an instant induction to fail with someone and have them react badly.

So what are some safeguards you can set up for yourself against being discovered? To start with, you should always ask yourself "what would happen if the person found out what I was doing". You have to prepare for worst case scenarios should they arise, and have an instant response handy.

Every time you attempt to plant a subconscious suggestion in someone, also make sure that the meaning could be interpreted in another way to the way you mean it.

For example, let's say you wanted to discreetly plant a suggestion for someone to buy you a drink by saying "It's always nice to help other people, I believe that's the key to having good friends. Anyway, what are you all doing tonight, should we buy a few drinks?"

This could be a subtle suggestion to the person that they should buy you a drink, one in which they should not consciously pick up. If the person however responds "Were you suggesting that I should buy you a drink?" you may immediately respond "No not at all, I was hoping to buy you one".

Thus we should always be ready to respond to the possibility that our discreet suggestions may be discovered.

Now imagine that you were performing an instant induction on someone and you took hold of their hand and brought it up to their face and said "I want you to fall into a deep sleep for me". Imagine that the person responded "Just what in the heck do you think you're doing, why are you grabbing my hand like that, and what are you talking about?"

In such a situation you could immediately respond with "Sorry about that, I was just joking with you, I didn't mean any ill intentions".

Now the most important thing of all is obviously not getting discovered in the first place. That is why it's recommended that you practice your techniques on people that you trust before you practice them on absolute strangers.

Whilst some techniques may be safely practiced on strangers, others, such as the instant induction, should only be performed when you have a lot of confidence with the technique. Always prepare for worst case scenarios.

Revision Section

Make sure you understand the following questions and answers before moving on:

Q. State the 9 procedures involved in instant induction.

A. 1. Hypnotist conducts a pattern interrupt.
2. Pattern interrupt causes an overload of message units.
3. Overload of message units result in a temporary state of trance.
4. Hypnotist quickly conducts a deepening technique.
5. A further overload of message units result, and we stay in trance.
6. Hypnotist guides us even deeper into a hypnotic state, making sure that we will experience amnesia when we're taken out of hypnosis.
7. Hypnotist plants the suggestion.
8. Hypnotist affirms that we won't remember anything.
9. Hypnotist brings us out of hypnosis.

Q. Give an example of a pattern interrupt.

A. The handshake induction.

Q. How is the handshake induction performed?

A. This pattern interrupt is achieved by putting forward your right hand to shake the person's right hand. When the person moves their right hand forward to shake yours, you quickly move your right hand away and replace it with your left hand, gently grabbing the person's right hand and moving it up to their face.

Q. What does a pattern interruption do?

A. It causes a temporary overload of message units due to the confusion.

Q. What is a Heightened State of Awareness?

A. The state a person is in when their mind is in a high alpha/beta wavelength. They become very alert to their surroundings and notice subtle details they normally wouldn't.

Q. What is a Heightened State of Awareness good for?

A. It's good for concentrating on certain tasks, be it studying something, or paying careful attention to what someone is saying during the course of a conversation.

Q. Is it a good idea to plant suggestions in a person when they're in a heightened state of awareness?

A. Absolutely not. A person in this state will have an extremely active critical mind, and discreet suggestions will become very difficult, if not impossible to plant.

Q. How can you make others achieve a heightened state of awareness?

A. By asking them a number of questions in quick succession, forcing their mind to think actively, thus raising them to a high alpha/beta wavelength.

Q. What is multiple channel hypnosis?

A. It's a way of maintaining different types of anchoring, rapport and hypnotic suggestion on a person at the one time.

Q. Why is multiple channel hypnosis useful?

A. If one channel of connection is broken, then there are other channels that can be used to maintain the rapport, anchor or hypnotic suggestion.

Q. What is the best way to safeguard yourself against being discovered?

A. Making sure you prepare for the worst case scenario by having a counter-response should the situation arise.

Exercise Section

It is highly recommended you complete the following exercises before proceeding with the course.

Exercise 1

Practice doing various forms of instant induction with close friends and family members, provided you have their permission. Pay careful attention to each step of the 9 step process and see which steps you are successful with and which steps you aren't. Practice the instant induction technique extensively, using different pattern interrupts, before trying it on strangers. Make sure you have the stranger's permission as well before testing the technique on them.

Exercise 2

Practice bringing yourself into a heightened state of awareness by focusing on a task that requires your full attention. Try and maintain this same type of focus when speaking with people and see if you can pick up subtle signals from their body language. Pay particular attention to the body language you were taught earlier

Exercise 3

Practice maintaining multiple forms of rapport with someone (multiple channels) at the same time. Once you are able to do this, practice also maintaining multiple anchors, and then lastly multiple forms of hypnotic suggestion.

Conclusion

After having completed the above exercises, you should now be a proficient covert hypnotist. You should know how to establish rapport, anchors, and hypnotize people outside of their conscious awareness.

Do not be discouraged if what you have learnt doesn't work the way you expect initially. It can take years of practice to become proficient at establishing multiple channels of hypnosis, particularly as you increase the number and types of channels.

You now have enough theory to reach your goals as a covert hypnotist, so practice is key. For a more complete and full education to becoming a deadly proficient covert hypnotist, make sure to check out my full course, which also includes audio.

Best Wishes,
Steven Peliari