Learning Hypnosis - Learn Hypnosis for free

Unfortunately, there really isn't a queue of people all waiting to let other people use their minds for random experiments - which also explains the lack of amateur brain surgeons!

So really, there are only two ways to learn hypnosis; Firstly take a course in hypnosis (which means you'll be putting yourself in the 'client' position for others to practice on, in exchange for practicing on their brains), or secondly find a friend who also wants to learn hypnosis and learn together.

There are also very few courses for people to learn hypnosis unless you want an official qualification, so unless you want to spend some money or join an NLP Practice group (probably the only place where you can learn hypnosis for free with other people), finding an interested friend is the easiest approach. See How to Learn Hypnosis for more information on hypnosis courses and about learning NLP as a way to learn hypnosis.

What skills do I need to learn to become a good hypnotist?

There are many skills needed to become a good hypnotist, below are links to the relevant sections on PlanetNLP.com. Its a good idea to learn self hypnosis first because you will need to be a good hypnosis subject to become a good hypnotist.

Self Hypnosis

The best way to start learning hypnosis is to learn a simple and effective self hypnosis method such as Betty Erickson's, and practice regularly until you feel that you can easily get into a good relaxed state, then add programming to your sessions. Once you have got the hang of entering trance states easily then you may want to record your own sessions, experiment with instant hypnosis, or use self hypnosis for a particular purpose such as stopping smoking or losing weight. There are also several self hypnosis scripts you can use to get yourself going.

The following articles cover these areas:

General Hypnosis Skills

Much of hypnosis is down to communication. The following skills allow you to work with clients fluidly and get them into a good state of mind to work with, making the rest of your work much easier when learning hypnosis.

Milton Model

The following articles are based upon the notes I took during McKenna Breen's Practitioner and Master Practitioner courses in London. Milton Erickson's language patterns are the basis of most covert hypnosis and persuasion techniques. These patterns should provide the foundation for all your hypnotic language skills.

Richard Bandler's method of teaching language patterns is a mix of installation (you can search the internet yourself to find out about this interesting and somewhat controversial subject), and writing out pages of examples. The more you work with these patterns, the more you will surprise yourself as you discover these language patterns begin to naturally appear in your conversations. These language patterns will become the basis of your inductions and scripts so it's a good idea to master them fully.

Hypnosis Language Skills

Lastly you need to start working on writing scripts and learning to develop inductions on the fly. Once you have the hang of these, you are well on the way to learning hypnosis.