There are so many ways of inducing hypnosis it can be hard to know which to choose from. There are progressive inductions which take up to half an hour, and, my preference, instant and rapid inductions, which tend to take anywhere from 1 minute to 1 second.

I will not go into all the different types of instant and rapid inductions here, but
the induction I am going to focus on here is a very quick version of the Elman method.

For some rather absurd reason many hypnotherapists have lengthened Dave Elman’s induction method, which in his own words should never take more than a minute, and only tends to last about 10 seconds, to a process which takes several minutes to complete. In fact, everything I have read on the Elman induction that was not written by Elman himself makes the process take at the very least three minutes. This is just absurd! Why make a 10 second process take three minutes!

The way the Elman Induction works is the following. You ask them to close their eyes, then to imagine and pretend that their eyes are so relaxed that they just will not open, and then to test them and make sure they won’t open.

“Ok, now just close your eyes and relax your eyes to the point where they just won’t open, and when they’re so relaxed that they just will not open test them to see that they are glued shut.”

Of course, you can phrase this in anyway you like, but that is the basis of it. The vast majority of people will at this stage be trying in vain to open their eyes, much to the delight of whatever crowd there is.

At this stage you simply tell them to transfer that feeling from their eyes to the rest of their body, and to just “sleep deeply and go right down into a deep trance.”

With the very few people who do just open their eyes simply say to them something along the lines of “no, I said to test that you can’t open your eyes, not that you can. It’s obvious that you can open your eyes, but the idea is to make it so that you can’t.”

I have had one or two determined skeptics who still open their eyes even after this, at which point I suggest you switch inductions. This should happen less than 1 in 100 times, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Now by this time you definitely have trance, but it can be wise to go into deepeners to both formalize the trance state, and build even more responsiveness. At this stage a simple 10-1 count down should work.

"I'm now going to count from 10 down to 1, and with every number i count you just go deeper into trance, 10, going down even deeper, 9 beginning to realize just how wonderfully relaxed your are feeling great, 8 all the way down going deeper with every word i say, 7 noticing your breathing deepen as you go all the way down..."

And that's it!
The actual induction element should have only taken a few seconds, and the secret is, as soon as they admit their eyes are glued shut, they are in hypnosis!

So enjoy using this technique in the real world, and I'll see you soon!
Cheers
Nathan Thomas