My favorite trance method.
Hi all,
here’s the summary of my presentation of June 2, 2008. Eye fixation method
Supposedly first applied by James Braid in the 1840s. He was an oculist (eye doctor) and probably an occultist in Victorian times . He coined the name Hypnosis for trance state. I mentioned the Greek Gods: Eros (Love), Tanathos (Death) and his twin brother (Hypnos), god of sleep (or little death). Hypnosis generated this way looks the patient/subject is sleeping, passively sitting in the chair.
Referred to Shelley Stockwell’s video where she shows relaxed left hand (relaxation) resting on firm stretched upward right hand (concentration). The greater those two seemingly contradictive components are present in a person the deeper the trance state or experience of hypnosis will be.
Thank you Scott Sandland for being my patient in the demo.
So I proposed to first relax the patient, do a mental massage from toes to head (bottom on up), starting at muscles of the toes and expanding this feeling of relaxation throughout the rest of the body, where as many body parts and muscles are relaxed as you can remember. The patient has their eyes closed. Use environment elements in the introduction and proceed to completely relax your client.
After the relaxation process of 10-15 minutes, ask them to open their eyes, fix gaze on a spot on the wall or if they are reclined, to pick a spot on the ceiling. This spot should be at about 10-11 o’clock to physically induce eye fatigue and use that phenomenon to link with suggestions of heavy tired eyelids, relaxation etc. The main two ways in essence to do this are: either have customer stare at spot and the hypnotist counts back from 100 to 0, mixing in incrementally stronger suggestions of eye lid fatigue and relaxation. When eye closure sets in allow them to go further deep. Usually eye closure is reached before the count of 75.
The second method: Encourage the patient to keep eyes open while staring at the spot on the wall, even when they are ready to close them, it will deepen the trance greatly. I was allowed to close my eyes at about 30-40 and the release deepened my state of hypnosis greatly. I felt I ended up in a thick fog and had partial spontaneous amnesia from this wonderful experience. So have patient count backward from 100 to zero, but tell them to count one up at the snap of your fingers and then back down. This is a confusional technique, eye fixation, count backward all the while the patient’s undergoing the input of suggestions of upcoming sleep and further relaxation, heavy eyelids, breath focus, count backward fatigue, finger snap conditioning. You could even add handclasp and arm stiffening to reach deeper effect. You observe the eyelids wanting to close but every time patient wants to do this, interrupt and tell them to keep their eyes open and keep counting backward slowly with eyes fixed on one point. At the end of the process include suggestion that they are now only focused on your voice, this is the narrowed consciousness and concentration point on the voice of the hypnotist so that beneficial suggestions can be applied and accepted. Some say that hypnosis is about offering an overload of “Message Units” to the conscious mind, until it gives up (surrenders) and then the subconscious mind is wide open (left unprotected by the consciously thinking part of the mind), to do healing reprogramming per the desires of the customers or via your experience in function of the effects your customer wants to realize. The therapeutic work can begin.
Ormond McGill used to say: Always be respectful of your customers’ subconscious part of the mind, you are touching Divinity, in the mind meld.
Live long and Prosper