A hypnotic deepener is an induction that is used to deepen trance after the hypnosis subject goes into hypnosis. Hypnotic deepeners ensure that the subject remains in hypnosis for long enough for effective change, and they ensure that the subject knows they were hypnotized.
One common problem that hypnotists run into when they are starting out is not knowing what to do next.
This can leads to issues such as the hypnosis subject coming out of hypnosis before anything meaningful happens.
It can even lead to the subject thinking they weren’t hypnotized.
And when you’re in the early stages of learning something new, having a subject imagine they weren’t hypnotized can be demoralizing.
Luckily there’s an easy way to inoculate yourself and minimize the risk.
If you want to be sure that your subject knows they were hypnotized, give them an experience that matches their expectation of hypnosis.
In practical terms, this means that they have to experience deep trance.
And the best part is that in order to get someone into deep trance, all you have to do is not stop until they are emitting enough signs of hypnosis for you to become convinced they are there.
Hypnosis Deepening Techniques
In the simplest sense, a hypnotic deepener is nothing more than another induction.
Because the subject is already in hypnosis, it can be as simple as a suggestion that they will go deeper now.
And it can be as complex as multi-dimensional fractionation.
The Just Keep On Talking Hypnotic Deepener
If you have some experience with hypnotic language patterns or multi-dimensional fractionation, it’s possible to deepen someone’s trance by doing nothing more than not shutting up.
Yep.
Just keep right on talking. And watch as their eyes become heavy and they drop ever deeper.
The Direct Suggestion Deepener
The single simplest way to deepen hypnosis is to suggest that it’s going to happen.
Once your subject is in trance, tell them that they will go deeper.
In a pinch, you can literally do nothing more than say something like Deeper… deeper… deeper… that’s right… all the way down now and so on.
Use Hypnotic Triggers to Deepen Trance
A very common method of deepening trance is to link a word, gesture, or other thing you can perform, to your subject going deeper into hypnosis.
There are lots of ways to do this.
Create a hypnotic trigger and then link it to your subject going deeper by saying something like: Every time you hear my fingers snap like this [SNAP YOUR FINGERS HERE], you will go twice as deep into hypnosis as you’ve ever been before.
Naturally the [SNAP YOUR FINGERS HERE] part is an instruction for you and not something you should say out loud.
Repeat a few times to make sure they’ve got it.
This one is brilliant because each time you snap your fingers while setting it up, it reinforces the trigger.
And the trigger itself is a mini shock induction, which makes it very difficult for a lot of people to resist.
Visualization Hypnotic Deepeners
One of the easiest ways to get someone to go deeper is to describe a scene or journey to them in vivid detail.
When you do this, be sure to make it a multi-sensory experience. Describe not only what they see, hear, feel, taste and smell, but also things like colors, textures, spacial location, and anything else that naturally fits into the description.
Count Someone Down Into Deep Trance
Numbers can be hypnotic. Not only that, but these days most of us have a built-in unconscious pattern that associates counting down with going deeper.
On top of that, people automatically associate things like going down a staircase or an elevator with depth of trance.
Naturally as hypnotists this is something we can exploit!
After you’ve hypnotized your subject, tell them that you are about to count them down into deep trance. Then count down from 10 to 1, or whatever number range you prefer. Between each number, riff around the basic idea that they are going deeper into hypnosis.
It looks a bit like this: Now, I’m going to count down from 10 to 1 and when we get to 1, you will be in the deepest hypnotic trance you’ve ever experienced. 10. Going deeper and deeper with every number. 9. Eyes growing heavier and heavier. So heavy now that you cannot open them even if you try. 8. Twice as deep with every step down. 7. Feeling that heaviness sweeping throughout your body. 6. And your mind. Twice as deep.
And so on.
When you do this, it provides a framework that allows you throw in whatever suggestions you’d like. The numbers also create natural breakpoints, so you can subtly switch between different things that people tend to associate with deep trance with every one.
If you’ve heard of the hypnotic staircase deepener, that is a variant of the countdown in which we tell them they will descend a staircase in front of them to a room below. Then we count them down, throwing in some vivid descriptions of the steps, railing, and room they are descending into for good measure.
Deepen Hypnosis With Stories
Have you ever found yourself caught up in a good book, TV show, or movie?
These days, it happens to most of us from time to time.
As it turns out, books, TV shows, and movies are all hypnotically engineered to keep us engaged.
And you can use the same thing in your hypnosis.
Once you’ve hypnotized someone, tell them a story. For bonus points, make sure that the story conveys a message or principle that your subject would like to take on.
Use Fractionation
At the simplest level, the primary way that people get good at stuff is by repeatedly doing it correctly.
We exploit this in hypnosis by taking our subjects in and out of hypnosis multiple times. Each time we do so, they become better at experiencing hypnosis, and as a result go deeper the next time.
This is known as fractionation and it has the added bonus that it doesn’t matter too much if we mess up. When we do, all that happens is our subject comes out of hypnosis a bit. Which means that we get to fractionate them even more.
Yep. Even when we mess up, they go deeper into hypnosis.
Guide Someone Into Deep Hypnosis With Your Voice Tone
Once you’ve got someone in hypnosis, it’s quite easy to deepen their experience by changing your voice tone.
This is generally known as using your trance voice.
Choose a voice tone that people will naturally associate with hypnosis. Then practice using that voice tone until you can do it on demand.
Each time someone goes into hypnosis, switch to your hypnotic voice to deepen the effects.
When you get good at this, your trance voice becomes an anchor. And once that happens, it often becomes possible to flip people into hypnosis by doing nothing more than switching to your trance voice.
Naturally, you have to have hypnotized them at least once first to install the anchor.
Deepen Trance With Layered Hypnotic Realities
One of my favorite ways to deepen hypnosis is to guide the subject on a journey through multiple layers of hypnotic realities.
A hypnotic reality is nothing more than an imagined reality that can feel as real as the real world to the hypnotic subject.
It’s probably easiest to think of this as being like a supercharged visualization deepener using shifting focus.
When I do this, I usually start out by orienting the subject wherever they are in the real world. Then I have them notice the details and move progressively further out from their body.
Along the way I have them focus on individual items they can perceive. Initially these are things inside their room that they have a memory of. Then I move their awareness further out encompassing whatever is outside.
As I move them out each layer, I have them focus on all the details of one or two things within that layer. For example, if I have moved their attention outside of the city, I might have them take in the entire landscape, and then have them focus right down on a single tree.
You can really go to town using your imagination with this particular deepener, and it is possible to have subjects experience literally anything you can describe to them.
You can even have them bootstrap things that you have no idea of with a few simple suggestions.
Use Focus to Deepen Hypnosis
Another powerful deepener is moving your subject’s attention between different levels of detail.
By this, I mean you might have them focus on the room around them, then have them focus on one specific spot. Go deep inside all the details.
This combines visualization and fractionation, and after a few cycles, most subjects will be in a fairly profound trance.
As an added bonus, you’re also training them to become good at focusing on things, looking at the big picture, and seeing the fine details.
And best of all, most people have no idea that this sort of thing will lead to hypnosis.
This is the basis of non-awareness inductions, in which we constantly move our subject’s attention to where it wasn’t.
Physical Hypnotic Deepeners
A physical hypnotic deepener is one where your subject takes some physical action resulting in increased depth of trance.
There are a few variants of this.
In the Elman Induction, we have the subject repeatedly open and close their eyes, while suggesting that their eyes will become heavier with each cycle. This combines fractionation with a physical deepener, and can lead to deep trance within minutes.
Another variant is to suggest that when the subject’s arm drops, they will go twice as deep as ever before. Naturally their arm has to be raised for this to work.
This one can be effective even online if we create the hypnotic phenomenon of their arm raising by itself, suggest that they will go twice as deep when it drops, tell them it will drop on our command, build a little potential, and then give them the command to drop their arm.
There are lots of variants possible here, and the best approach is to use your imagination and explore.
How to Use Hypnotic Deepeners
To use a hypnotic deepener, first hypnotize your subject, then flow directly into the deepener of your choosing. Continue deepening them until they are in deep trance.
As mentioned earlier, the key with making any deepener work lies in not stopping until they are as deep as you’d like to send them.
I’ve found that shifting focus, fractionation, and visualization are the most powerful deepeners. Naturally, this will be partially due to my own experiences, and you may find that others work better for you.
If you are starting out, choose one of the simpler hypnotic deepeners to begin with. Practice each of them until you can do them without really thinking about it. And then start to mix them together.
To move your subject into deeper hypnosis, all you have to do is flow into another deepener. And another. And another. Until they are as deep as desired.
The overall process for using a hypnotic deepener fits into hypnosis like this:
- Go into hypnosis yourself
- Build rapport
- Induce hypnosis in your subject
- Deepen your subject’s hypnosis with the deepener(s) of your choice
- Make some hypnotic suggestions
- Bring your subject out of hypnosis
Most hypnotists will bring their subject out of hypnosis by working through whatever was in their deepeners and induction in reverse order. This is not strictly necessary, but doing so allows us to draw on the Zeigarnik Effect to make it more difficult for the subject to remember what happened during the session.
Conclusion
We started out by saying that a hypnotic deepener is nothing more than an induction that is run after hypnosis is induced.
So far we’ve covered a bunch of ways that this can be achieved, and we’re still just scratching the surface.
The truth is that exceptional hypnosis happens when the hypnotist has enough tricks up their sleeve to keep the subject’s mind occupied enough that they go deep into hypnosis.
And a formal hypnotic deepener is just one way to do this.
If you’d like to learn some of these tricks and discover how to subtly change the way you do hypnosis to send your subjects even deeper into trance, check out my article on Hypnosis Tricks That Work right now!
