Which hypnotic suggestions should you use in hypnosis? Below, I will show six main suggestions and discuss how you can use them in your hypnosis practice.
Here are the six main suggestions.
1. Relaxation suggestion puts you at ease, introduces a state of receptivity and establishes comfortable foundation for further suggestions. It helps you to focus inward while shutting out external conditions.
For example, "Feel your muscle relax and feel your neck and shoulders relax and as they relax you will find your mind relax".
2. Deepening suggestion puts you into a deeper trance. It improves your trance state in a different ways and provides an activity with a single focus.
For example, "Your eyes are closed and they are so shut that you cannot open them. Your eyes are tightly shut, very tightly shut and they are so tightly shut that".
3. Direct suggestion gives you certain actions and instructions which are simple and direct to the point. Direct suggestions are given to respond to the words rather than images.
For example, "You fall asleep gently and quickly, enjoying a restful peaceful sleep, sleeping soundly through the whole night and waking refreshed".
4. Imagery suggestion augments other suggestions. It creates mental pictures and set scenes for specific purposes, such as to relax or to create such environment that all behaviors can be reprogrammed.
For example, "You feel you are as strong as the young man you were when you hit home runs on the sandlot. You can feel the bat in you arms".
5. Indirect suggestions have two major types. In the first type, the desired emotional state is focused on interviewing person's past experience. In the second type, the hypnosis subject is motivated during the induction to relieve the experience and positive emotion accompanied it.
For example, "I wonder how aware you are that many people respect you, and admire you".
Metaphors and analogies are widely used in second type of indirect suggestion to give suggestions outside the conscious awareness of the subject. Indirect suggestions are highly individualized. Each suggestion must fit the subject and his (her) specific problems.
6. Posthypnotic suggestion is given during hypnosis for an action or response to take place after the hypnotic experience. Posthypnotic suggestions may be for an action, a feeling or an internal physical change to occur.
For example, "Some time in the next days before the end of the week you will notice a sudden flash of light, or hear an unexpected sound and that will instantly remind you of all you have learned here today and you will be filled with that wonderful feeling of release that tells you will never smoke again".
These are the six main hypnotic suggestions. Use them wisely in your hypnosis sessions and improve the effectiveness of the hypnotic process.