If you're interested in learning more about hypnosis, I highly recommend you check out Mike Mandel Hypnosis for Self Hypnosis CDs, or head over to Igor Ledochowski's site for his ultra-powerful conversational hypnosis course. Both are excellent resources. Thanks for visiting!

You don’t always need to use covert hypnosis to get people to do what you want them to do.  Not every interaction has to be about you (the hypnotist) being Mr. Trance.  Sometimes you are just using simple persuasion techniques.

Here is a recent example.  Last night my wife and I had to go out to Home Depot to buy some hardware before our dinner date (having a babysitter once a week is awesome!).  We had a few small items in hand, and were ready to check out but we remembered we wanted to also buy a gift card for a Christmas present.  The gift cards are not sold at the cash, but at the service counter.

We asked the girl at the service counter to sell us a gift card, and let her know we also had to pay for these other items of hardware that we had with us.  She told us that she could sell us the gift card, but that the other hardware would have to be paid for at the regular cash.

We were not in a rush, there were few lineups, and I guess I wasn’t naturally in a mood to get my way.  So I was about to just comply with her answer.  But my wife said to her, “I’ve paid for things here before when I bought gift cards in the past”.  I heard her say this and instantly switched into “persuasion mode”

The girl behind the counter basically said, “We aren’t supposed to do that”.  Now, here is the magic that you must recognize if you want to get good at persuading people.  When someone says, “not supposed to”, or something to that effect, what you should hear is “it’s possible – I can do it but I’m told to say no”.

Here’s the thing:  People will take the lesser of two evils when given a choice.  Naturally, she did not want to allow us to check out at the service counter because it was against policy.  All I needed to do was to make it awkward for her to say no to me.  The possibility of a minor problem with her boss would then be less than the guarantee of awkwardness with me.

So let’s get back to the story.  She had said “I’m not supposed to”.  I calibrated in her what seemed like a small moment of confusion.  I jumped at it.  I immediately smiled, and politely said to her, “Oh, well just check us out for these small items with the gift card because we are in a bit of a rush”.  I then actually handed her the items we had to pay for and pulled out my credit card.

I never gave her the opportunity to say no.  I noticed my moment of opportunity and jumped at it without being rude, or seeming like a jerk.  I was very nice to her and thanked her for the help.  I wished her a nice evening and a great weekend.

Let me point out one last thing:  The word “because” has magic powers of persuasion.  Notice above that I said to her “well just check us out for these small items BECAUSE …”

The format is important.  There are three parts to the sentence.  Part 1 is a command.  It is not a request such as “would you be able to” or “can you”.  It is a polite order.  “Just do xyz”  Part 2 is the word “because”.  Part 3 is your request.  If you use this tactic the unconscious mind simply hears the word “because” and is programmed to understand that there is a reason.  Any reason will do.

When I first learned this back in 1993 the guy who taught it to me said you could literally use ANY reason after the magic word “because”.  It’s true.   You can almost say anything.  It works very often.

Enjoy!

Here is an easy language technique you can use to slip in an embedded command when you are having a conversation. You may already understand how to use an embedded command by marking out a fragment of a sentence. In case this is new to you, it’s simple. As an example, you could say, “It’s easy for some people to sleep easily at night”. The words “sleep easily at night” would be marked out differently by tone, tempo, or by looking directly in the person’s eyes when saying it. The unconscious understands the marking.

To enhance the power of the technique you can add a word such as “tonight” to the end of the sentence. But, to make it ambiguous, and therefore allow it to slip past the conscious mind even more effectively, you continue with another sentence. The idea is to have the word “tonight” serve as the last word of the first sentence, and the first word of the last sentence.

Full example: “”It’s easy for some people to sleep easily at night … tonight … I am probably going to go to bed early and I look forward to the rest”.

So you can notice how the embedded command is used, followed by the word “tonight”, which bridges the first and second sentence. This is a classic Milton Erickson technique. The conscious mind spends time wondering how to interpret the sentence, while the unconscious mind understands the message.

Check out the free hypnosis CD downloads available by clicking here.

If you are interested in the subject of covert hypnosis, then it’s natural to want to learn covert hypnosis language patterns. I have an awesome deck of playing cards (actually 3 decks) from Jamie Smart.  Jamie is a UK-based expert in NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis.  The cards were recommended to me by a friend.  I bought them and have kept them with me every day.  They are a fantastic way to learn covert hypnosis language patterns.

If you look up Jamie Smart from Salad Consulting on Google you’ll find them.  They are not really cheap, but they are good quality and come with a nice plastic case.  If you have friends who want to learn hypnosis, then you can easily use these while playing poker, blackjack, or any card game – you can just play with the following rules.  Any time a card is put down, the person to the left must use the language pattern on the card in a sentence.  The play will be slow, but you’ll learn a lot about covert hypnosis language patterns.

Naturally, the fastest way to get good at these language patterns is to actually invest in a proper course such  as The Power of Conversational Hypnosis by Igor Ledochowski.  Here is a link to his fantastic audio course in covert hypnosis.

There is a fine line between covert hypnosis and techniques of influence.  I say this because in my view, covert hypnosis is the art of causing someone to comply with your wishes without the subject putting up any kind of fight.  Furthermore, it applies to situations where the subject would not normally have complied.

Dr. Robert Cialdini is, in my view, a fantastic author on the topic of influence.  He would probably not describe his book as one about covert hypnosis, but I really think it is worth reading, and I think that if you stretch your definition of covert hypnosis, this book fits into the category nicely.

One of my favorite lessons is the power of the word “because”.  Cialdini describes an experiement conducted by Harvard social psychologiest Ellen Langer.  She demonstrated the power of the word “because” by approaching people who were in line to use the copy machine.  She approached the person at the front of the line and said, either:  ”Excuse me, I have five pages.  May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”  Or, she said, “Excuse me, I have five pages.  May I use the Xerox machine?

Notice that there is only one difference between the two questions.  In the first scenario she provides a reason, by saying “because I’m in a rush”.

This “reason” is what I would call covert hypnosis.  Why?  Because when she provided a reason a whopping 94% of people said “sure, no prob … go ahead”.  When she provided no reason onlly 60% of people complied, and the other 40% said, “yeah, right, get to the back of the line”.

I tell you:  ”because” is a magic word.  It causes compliance because it implies that there is a reason for the request.  Human brains tend to accept reasons, even crappy reasons, automatically.  This truly is covert hypnosis at work.

Cialdini’s book can be viewed at Amazon.com here (click on the picture).  I’ve read it 3 times, given it out as a gift several times, and loaned out my own dog-eared copy to many people.  Get this book!

One of the best covert hypnosis tools you can learn to master is called “embedded commands”.  Quite simply, an embedded command is a sentence fragment that, when stripped out of the sentence, represents its own stand-alone command.  For example “need to scratch your nose” could be the command you want to embed within a sentence.  Or even simpler, you could just embed, “scratch your nose”.

To embed the command, you would simply use a sentence including the command.  You could simply say, “Some people think that it is not polite to scratch your nose in public”.

When embedding a command in covert hypnosis, it is important to make sure that you mark out the command with something unique.  Often people use a different tone of voice, or a slower tempo.  Some people prefer to shift their gaze directly into the other person’s eyes to use direct eye contact as the marker.  Whatever you do, just make sure that it is congruent!

There are just so many great tools in covert hypnosis.  It’s easy to find yourself interested in learning more, isn’t it?

If you are interested in learning covert hypnosis then you absolutely must master the art of pacing and leading in regular conversation.  When I talk about pacing and leading in this article I’m specifically referring to the use of language, as opposed to the body pacing (mirroring/matching) that you lean in NLP.  I’m talking about pacing current experience. 

When you make statements that pace somebody’s current experience you create rapport, and you create unconscious agreement.  Here’s an example of pacing YOUR current experience:  You are reading an article about covert hypnosis.  The font size is suitable for many people, but some people like it larger and some people prefer smaller fonts. 

All I did was to give you a statement that was true.  That is pacing.  Now let’s talk about leading.  When you think about covert hypnosis, you are probably interested in knowing how to lead people. After the end of this post come back and re-read that sentence.  You’ll see I used leading right there.

Leading is where you make a statement that you want the other person to assume is true.  You want them to associate it to the previous pacing statement in an unconscious way.  You want their brain to think in terms of a cause and effect relationship between the pacing statements and the leading statements. 

Here’s a complete example: You are reading an article about covert hypnosis.  You’ve read several paragraphs now, so I know that this topic is quite interesting to you.  It’s interesting to a lot of people.  As you continue reading this blog, you’ll begin to notice that you can learn a lot from me.  You might start to look for ways that you can accelerate your learning of covert hypnosis through books.  Or even better, you might look for audio courses that you can purchase online.

I hope you see the beauty of this technique.  The first two statements in the above paragraph are truths.  The third statement is an assumption based on the two truths, and it will be deemed true by most readers.  The rest of the statements are leading statements.  The brain will unconsciously associate the leading statements to the pacing statements and this will cause them to be true in the readers’ mind.  

To use this tool you must start by understanding where you want to lead your subject.  Once you know the answer, you must simply pace their current experience and morph the verbal comments that you make into leading statements.  We’ve almost come to the end of this article.  The tool is very simple.  As you think about the simplity of the tool, and realize that it can be incorporated into everyday language, you can wonder where you’ll try it out in your own life.  The astute readers noticed that the last sentence was anothe pace and lead.

Covert hypnosis can be a lot of fun and the tools are simple, but require plenty of practise.  Stay the course.  Have fun.  Start using this stuff.

When you think about stage hypnosis I bet you don’t think that it has anything at all to do with covert hypnosis, do you?

One of the best hypnotists on the planet is Dr. Mike Mandel out of Toronto, Canada.  Currently in Toronto there is a big event on called the Canadian National Exhibition.  Dr. Mike Mandel does daily stage hypnosis shows at this event.  If you have ever seen him, and if you have any skill in covert hypnosis, then you’d realize immediately he is using covert hypnosis even before he gets anybody up on stage.

I encourage you to watch an excellent stage hypnotist such as Dr. Mandel.  Pay close attention to everything that he says and does prior to getting anybody up on stage at all.  You’ll notice that in a very conversational manner, he is getting people to enter a state of wanting to be up on stage.  He is embedding commands such as “want to come up on stage”.  Then, once the participants are actually up on stage he continues to talk to them in a very casual way.  As far as they understand, the hypnosis has not yet begun!  But it has … and it is all covert hypnosis.

Stage hypnosis can be so much fun to watch … and for me it’s all the pre-show stuff that is most interesting.

One of the most important things to keep in mind if you are serious about learning and practising Covert Hypnosis is the art of congruence. 

Congruence simply refers to the total alignment of all aspects of your communication.  Have you ever asked somebody how they enjoyed a movie, or a restaurant, only to have them say in an unconvincing way, “it was pretty good” … that is an example of incongruence. In covert hypnosis, and really in any form of communication, you shoudl aim to be totally congruent.  If a movie sucked, you should say so.  If it was fantastic, you should shout it from the top of the world. 

You can’t expect to influence someone else if you are not totally congruent in your communication.  So remember that whatever you are saying, you need to feel it 100%, and it needs to come through in your body language, your tone, your physical expression, your volume, your enthusiasm, etc.

I found a great blog posting discussing this topic here.  It’s worth reading.

Perhaps the most powerful method of covert hypnosis is to tell a simple story.  The theory goes like this:  If you tell an engaging story to somebody else, the only way that other person can make sense of the story is to somehow relate it to him or herself.  As they do this, they enter a state of trance and get a message from the story.  This is as old as mankind, and if you read any children’s book you’ll notice the stories are really covert hypnosis with hidden (positive) messages for children.

Stories are the perfect covert hypnosis tool.  They occupy the conscious mind (because the listener is busy listening to the details) and the unconscious message is free to be delivered and understood.

If I knew a friend who seemed depressed, I might tell him a story about a cousin of mine who had a job that was a good paying job, but it was horribly boring and gave him no enjoyment.  I would then proceed to explain how much he hated the job, and I’d use vague language so that it would force the listener (the depressed friend) to search for his own meaning of what I was saying.   I’d go on to explain how my cousin got some really great advice from a trusted advisor.  I’d tell him that the advice was, “You need to find out what makes you happy and just start doing a lot more of it”. I’d tell my friend that about two weeks after hearing this advice, he happened to get offered the job of a lifetime doing exactly what he loved doing. 

Now let me explain a few of the things that make this covert hypnosis.  First, if you grab the attention of your friend and establish rapport, you know you can engage him in a story.  When he is fully paying attention to the story, it alters his state because he is relating to the story on a personal level.  This altered state is hypnosis.   When I  explain to my friend the advice that was given to my cousin, I’m really marking that advice out to my depressed friend.  He just doesn’t realize consciously.  But his unconscious will get the message.  Finally, by telling my depressed friend what the outcome was for my cousin in his job situation, my friend will get the message that if he spends more time doing what makes him happy, he’ll stop being so depressed! 

The story is told in a very conversational way, which is why it works as covert hypnosis.  You don’t pull your friend aside and say, “Hey Jim, I need to tell you an important story that will help you with your depression”.  That would wreck it!  Never explain the meaning of a story.  Ever. 

Try it out on somebody today.  Just tell any engaging story and have something burried within the story that will be helpful to the listener.  But don’t explain it.  Just tell it casually.  That’s covert hypnosis.

As a student of covert hypnosis, it’s essential that you build up a toolbox of words and phrases that can have multiple meanings.  For example, the word “right” can mean “correct” or it can be used to mean “the side other than left”.  When you use one of these ambiguous words multiple times in a communication with someone else, you create a state of confusion.  This is useful for covert hypnosis because confusion creates openness to suggestion.  In other words, if you want to do covert hypnosis then one of the tools you want to use is confusion followed immediately by a suggestion. The suggestion will often be followed be followed and the subject will likely not clue into the fact that you provided the suggestion in the first place. 

I found a great article discussing this topic here.  It’s worth checking out.