Missing the Forest for the Trees: Perception and Intuition in Hypnokink

Hypnosis can feel like true magic. A few words or even the right look or touch can invoke powerful feelings of control, submission, and sex. But in the pursuit of wielding this magic, sometimes we are caught up in the “formula,” and it holds us back.

The medium through which hypnosis works isn’t carefully-chosen words. It is a holistic process that uses the entirety of two people to induce trance.

I had an interesting conversation with someone about Milton Erickson. I was lamenting that I feel like “Ericksonian hypnosis” often gets boiled down to things like “storytelling inductions” and “indirect language,” when in reality his methods were much more. This person said that mostly, Erickson’s extreme perceptiveness was what made him so successful, and that’s “not even really hypnosis.”

I don’t disagree -- except, I feel that that is the core of hypnosis, and that’s why Erickson was so good at it.

A novice spellcaster recites incantations by rote to try to learn them. An intermediate spellcaster knows how to string different words together to create more enchantments. But an expert spellcaster understands the abstract medium of magic and all of the ways that it interacts with what it touches. The words are an afterthought.

It is through perception and intuition that we truly grow our skill in hypnosis. When we say a suggestion and we see or know how it is affecting a person. We need to be able to know a person’s mind and thoughts and be able to be responsive to them.

No one can be Milton Erickson. But we can start working on our perceptiveness and intuition in order to pursue a better proficiency in magic.

Study Yourself

We have the tools available to understand the mind -- we have a mind ourselves. Certainly, everyone is different and we don’t want to assume that everyone thinks and processes the way we do. But it’s a great starting point to be able to develop an understanding and the “muscle memory” that’s needed to learn others’.

Introspection is incredibly valuable. If we are magicians of the mind, then we should turn inwards and study. If we’re comfortable, we should explore what it feels like to go into hypnosis in many different ways. We should look at ourselves with interest and curiosity and ask “How am I responding? What am I feeling? What did that make me think?”

You can develop this by becoming more self-aware and introspective in your day-to-day life. When you are having a conversation; when you are watching TV or reading; when you are in the shower -- give yourself moments where you do a little check in. Maybe you felt some emotional response, or you were lost in thought, or you were absorbed in something, or you were reminded of something, or you felt something interesting.

Ask yourself:

• “What am I thinking?”
• “What did that thought feel like?”
• “Do I feel something in my body?”
• “Am I associating/connecting something with that?”
• “Am I imagining something?”
• “Am I thinking different things at once?”
• “What am I most focused on?”
• “How am I thinking?”

And whatever else. You want to learn to be perceptive about the subtle qualities of your own process. The more you do this, the more it will become second-nature and unobtrusive, even in trance (and this will help you to eventually have deeper trance experiences, as well).

You can try to experience all different kinds of trances -- from different people, from text, from audio. Another option is self-hypnosis or really any kind of self-directed practice. This could be meditation, yoga, or a witchy practice if that’s something you do. The benefit of self-direction is that it teaches you how to gently manipulate your own experience -- you see in real time what happens if you poke or prod at something inwards and how you respond. (You can use your hypnosis knowledge to do this, and I also wrote a [free] small guide that teaches some of these techniques.)

Learn the role of quiet, curious, intuitive observer. Strike a balance between watching and experiencing -- move the “slider” on that from one end to the other and see how you develop. You can think about your own process in any way you want. You can be very passive or active about this -- every experience you have is teaching you something about the mind and how to look.

Your supposed “skill” at going into trance doesn’t matter (in fact, if you think of yourself as a “difficult subject,” all the better -- you’ll learn to be more discerning about what is happening). All that matters is training yourself in self-awareness and perception. Trance will follow.

Study Others

Looking at yourself teaches you to have “observation goggles,” and all you need to do to understand others is to turn your gaze outward.

A person’s external responses are a reflection of their internal experience. Whenever you interact with someone (or you’re watching other people interact), pay attention to what they’re saying but also all of the metacommunication they give -- their tone and pattern of voice, their body language, their expressions and microexpressions. This isn’t an easy skill to learn for everyone, but there are guides available to help. And again, this is about developing the reflex to simply pay attention and look.

Have conversations with different people about their experiences. Ask others to be introspective and request that they share that with you.

• How do they think?
• What do their thoughts feel like?
• What does trance feel like to them?
• Where do they feel it in their bodies?
• When they recall a memory, what is that like?
• When they imagine something, what is that like?
• When they hear a suggestion, what happens?
• What makes them happy?

Do this casually (and respectfully) outside of hypnosis, talking to many different people, and also do this as part of your trances (before, during, or after). These lines of questioning can be naturally hypnotic because they cause a person to go inward and experience.

Listen, and also watch. What is their metacommunication like? (There is metacommunication in text as well -- observe the way that someone types and see how that changes.)

You will discover, especially if you’re working with someone consistently, that you’re able to intuit what people are feeling and thinking over time. When you see someone respond, when you say something to someone else in any context, think: “How would I be feeling and thinking if I was them right now? What if I was in their shoes?”

Eventually you will find some commonalities between people -- at first you’ll be comparing others to yourself and your own experience, and then you’ll develop a more broad understanding.

Apply

It is with these perception skills that hypnosis really shines. This is how you effectively pace and lead, choose ambiguous language, and make suggestions that utilize the whole of someone’s experience. Naturally, these and more (including the nature of hypnosis) are concepts you need to learn to become a great hypnotist -- you don’t get to be a masterful magician without picking up a few books. (I would recommend my own for this highly as well as Erickson’s HYPNOTIC REALITIES.)

But here are some quick tips:

• Read minds

It is incredibly intimate and hypnotic when someone says what you’re thinking. It builds rapport rapidly and makes suggestions work more effectively because you’re basing them in the truth of someone’s experience.

When you perceive or intuit something about what someone is thinking or feeling -- or even what they are physically doing like listening, breathing, relaxing, tensing -- say it. Simply feed your observations back to a person.

• “I’m noticing…”
• “Are you feeling…”
• “I bet you’re…”
• “I can tell that…”

You should also weave these into your suggestions.

• “Because you’re feeling x, then…”
• “You must be starting to y because you’re thinking z…”
• “I wonder if feeling x makes you more likely to…”

Ambiguity and language skills will help you do this. But the #1 rule in hypnosis is that if you know someone is responding, acknowledge their response. Tell them that you see them and that you know them.

• Work with concepts, not words

Drop the scripts and the rote language patterns. When you hypnotize someone, try to hypnotize them with concepts instead of magic words.

Think about the concept of bringing someone into trance. What does that involve in their experience? What does that involve in your experience when you go into trance? Talk about those natural intuitions with the intent to simply “suggest” them -- not to complicatedly, formulaically make them happen -- just bringing them up in a way that lets someone think about them.

What do your most relied-upon suggestions/language actually do and communicate? How could you say it in plainer or different language? How could you say it in a way that best and naturally communicates the underlying concepts? How could you show your work about why it works?

If you say, “Imagine yourself going down a staircase,” break that down. Your intent is to make someone focus on an imaginary experience. Your intent is to use a metaphor of downwards motion. Your intent is to watch and perceive someone slowly going deeper into trance and build off of their responses. So how else can you communicate about that? What if you simply stated it?

This is a more abstract concept in hypnosis that will come with time. When you’re starting out, just try shifting your perspective to care more about the underlying ideas you’re talking about rather than the language you’re using.

It Takes Practice

I can’t overstate how much hypnosis is a high skill-ceiling activity. Much in the same way I’d imagine sorcery would be, it is a long-term commitment towards expertise in all manner of skills relating to understanding and working with the mind. I have hundreds of hours of experience with hypnosis -- 13 years worth -- dozens of books read and classes attended, and I’m still always learning and honing what I do.

Enjoy the journey, and think of yourself as a magician on a long and winding path, always furthering your knowledge of how the arcane interacts with people; transforming yourself over time into someone who’s excellently suited to what we do.

Step 1: Look and listen.

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If you enjoyed this essay and/or you’re curious about other things I have to say regarding intermediate+ hypnosis education (they are not all this esoteric…), I highly recommend you check out my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/masterpost-index-72642483 (where I write detailed, useful articles) and my website https://sleepingirl.carrd.co/ (where you can see a huge amount of content, both free and paid, that I’ve created). Thanks for reading!

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Hi Patreon! I’m working hard every moment that I’m able to get the next essay done! But it’s been a bit of time since I got some writing out and I knew this one would be a super quickie, so I wanted to bang it out and post it. Much love, y’all!