How to Refine the Piggy Back Hypnotic Induction

The piggy back hypnotic induction is a perfect induction for many different clients.  When it has become a skilled and practiced technique it will cover all of the stages in the 4 Stage Protocol; these include absorb attention, bypass critical thinking, get an unconscious response and direct an outcome from that response. 

In the piggy back hypnotic induction you will absorb attention through four or five statements you make that are verifiable facts about the sensations and sense in their physical being.  These are statements about how their hand my feel or comment on their breathing.  At the end of the statements you will attach a suggestion. 

This is why it is called the piggy back hypnotic induction.  The induction and placing of suggestions happens using the piggy back principal.  As you attach suggestions to your true statements they will generally be accepted as truth simply because it is easier to accept than deny them.

As you make the true statements you are taking control of the person’s attention by directing it to the true sensations of the body and its experience. Those statements are accepted which sets the critical factor up for bypass.  As the suggestions are attached the slip in unnoticed to the listener and an unconscious response is usually the result.  After you have attained an unconscious response you can go ahead with the hypnosis and embed your life changing suggestions.

This is a brief overview of how the induction works and how it utilizes the 4 Stage Protocol.  Now it is time for you to refine the method, reading in detail about the piggy back hypnotic induction is suggested.  After you have studied the process you should be ready to refine it with the remainder of this article.

The first way to improve this induction is to talk about indirect hypnosis themes.  When you decide it is time to go in a more indirect route with your induction you will use these suggestions to do so.  The best way to alter your induction so that it is more indirect is to go from talking about trances and hypnosis to talking about comfort and relaxation. 

As far as the induction itself goes it doesn’t matter whether you choose to go the indirect or direct route.  You will choose your approach depending on which is more suitable for the situation.  You will get more skilled at making these determinations as time goes on, for now just do what is comfortable to you.  There is always the option of merging the two, direct and indirect, to come up with something in the middle.

The second refinement that you should be aware of is to use the ‘my friend John/Jane’ technique.  This is the same as in the hypnotic gaze induction.  This addition to the induction will also take your piggy back hypnotic induction in a more indirect direction. 

This becomes more indirect because you are no longer talking about them in the audible sense.  You are describing someone else’s experience.  However the listeners sub-conscious will pick up that you are speaking about them on some level and internalize the experience as if you were telling them it was their own.

Refinement number three is to start with external awareness and move to the internal awareness.  This again makes the induction much more indirect by starting your statements with the external things that are going on.  These things may include things that are seen, heard and felt outside of the body. 

As time goes by you will move your statements to bring attention to the more internal thing that are going on within them.  These would include subjects like bringing attention inside themselves, feeling the way relaxation affects the way their body feels on the inside.  This would include anything you can direct to the feelings and senses that happen within the body.

The final refinement for the piggy back hypnotic induction is to read minds.  Yes you need to learn how to read minds.  But not quite in the sense you see in old movies and Hollywood.  Reading minds in this sense is the same but then again different. 

In this refinement you be changing the type of true statements that you are making, you will give them a ‘guessed’ truth instead of the sensory rich statements you have been using up until this point.  The statements you have been using are all about things the person can see, hear and feel.  These can become very tired and predictable pretty quickly. 

So your other option is to use the mind read statements.  These are thoughts that you retrieve from their experiences, you pretend to be at the library in their mind checking out and using their experiences on a more intellectual level as opposed to a sensory level.

There are several different types of mind read statements.  The first is that of personal experience.  The way this works is to use themes that everyone must go through in their lives, and make true statements about those themes. 

An example might be that they have met both nice and not so nice people through out the course of their lives, or they have disagreed with a parent.  These two statements are true for nearly everyone you speak to, the only thing to beware of in this is to know the area you are in and know the common practices there. 

To say to someone in America that they have know freedom for the majority of their lives would be true, but to say that to someone who lives or has lived in China may not apply.  Just be aware of your surroundings and the customs there and in the environment your listener is from.

This mind read is in a nut shell like making a very, very accurate guess at the personal experiences they have had in their lives.  It is determined by cultural experiences and common themes that run along the lives of many.

The second mind read technique has to do with beliefs and expectations.  The same principal applies, that you will be making an accurate guess involving the beliefs and expectations of your listener.  The difference is simply the subject matter. 

Beliefs and expectations that you may use in your mind read are political views, religion and religious beliefs or anything you may know their personal view on.  In order to use this mind read you will have to be more than just casually acquainted with your listener, you will really need to know something about them; this is not a huge requirement but nonetheless it is necessary to know a little. 

You can usually use just about anything you know about them, especially things they have personally told you, in this mind read

The third type of mind read is one called truisms and generalizations.  These are simply statements in each culture that is generally accepted as true due to passed down belief.  A great example of a truism is ‘better safe than sorry’, or ‘better late than never’.   These are both things that most people would agree with and have agreed with since they heard it.

And finally the last form of mind read is cultural assumptions.  This category is quite similar to the beliefs and expectations; these are the things that most will assume to be true given the culture they are in. 

Remember that these will of course vary depending on the area and culture you are in.  Do not make assumptions that could be ill conceived.  Keep in the cultural reference points of where you are that they accept.

As you now take these refinements of the piggy back hypnotic induction with you, you will realize all the different ways that people internalize and experience things.  You can use any of these mind reads in regular conversation and you should in order to see how they work and get a good grasp of them. 

This will be good practice as you will soon be using them in your hypnosis.

For more information please visit http://www.conversational-hypnosis.com