Which Program is Right for You?
What is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is the art and science of using altered states of consciousness (trance) to bring about rapid change in someone's sensation, feeling, experience, belief, thought, behavior, or ability. Don't be put off by the terms "altered states" and "trance." Whenever you pay attention to anything at all to the partial and temporary exclusion of everything else you are entranced by it. And that's where it all starts.
Why Study Hypnosis?
It happens to you all the time: be aware of it. You do it to other people all the time: do it well.
The Programs
Mixed Media Courses:
Conversational Hypnosis and Secrets of Hypnosis Revealed
How can you resist an hypnotist named Igor — especially when his noble Eastern European family includes, among other historical figures, one of the most powerful Black Popes of the last century? An Englishman trained in the law, Igor Ledochowski is a martial arts master who is known as one of the most effective NLP trainers on the business scene. Conversational Hypnosis is often considered the gold standard in Ericksonian hypnosis training for the home. (Milton Erickson was the psychiatrist who inspired the founders of NLP, and a great many others as well.) Secrets of Hypnosis Revealed offers a free mini-course and a rather disturbing report on the contemporary use of clandestine mass hypnosis, also free.
Ultimate Conversational Hypnosis
Steve G. Jones has been called the 90210 hypnotist and hypnotherapist to the stars, and his colloquial, almost folksy manner makes the material seem deceptively simple. Don't be deceived. Jones was a student of one of the founders of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and his graduate studies in the field of education have made him a master of presenting concepts in their most concrete terms in the most effective order. It is characteristic of the American school of hypnosis, going back to the great Andrew Salter, to acknowledge their debt to Ivan Pavlov's work on classical conditioning, which makes the NLP theory of anchoring much easier to grasp. (Somebody should tell Jones' publishers that Pavlov received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, not the Nobel Peace Prize — even Al Gore got one of those!)
Underground Hypnosis
This is the No More Mister Niceguy course created for those of us who are not looking for hypnosis to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. But there is much here which can be put to good use, and it's probably a good idea to be aware of the other stuff as well, if only to protect yourself from it. This program has a distinct advantage in price — it's a lean, mean hypnotizing machine. Got a problem with that?
Raw Hypnosis
Not as in-your-face badboy as Underground Hypnosis and even more reasonable in cost, it still does the job.
Self-hypnosis for Success
Englishman Adam Eason has some wonderful programs to hypnotize you and teach you to hypnotize yourself to address several important life issues. These include Personal Magnetism and Hypnotic Attraction, High Self Esteem in 21 Days, Wealth Wizard, The Hypnotic Salesman, The Mind Workout, and even a program for erectile dysfunction charmingly entitled The Brain in Your Underwear.
eBooks:
Mind Force Master System
It's doubtful whether you can learn to do hypnosis from a book, though you can certainly learn a good bit about hypnosis from books, most of which are written for the professional, or for the self-help industry. This is an exception.
How to Hypontize
This is one of the few courses aimed at teaching stage hypnosis, though many other topics are covered in the extensive library of supplementary materials. If you want to do hypnosis for amusement with willing subjects, rather than to manipulate people secretly for your own profit, this one might just be for you, and more power to you!
Covert Hypnosis Revealed
Persuasion, Sales, and Body Language expert Kevin Hogan spills the beans. This is actually a decent manual of practical psychology for salesmen and others. Some of it isn't exactly covert or hypnosis strictly speaking, but perhaps useful none the less. Why quibble?
How to Secretly Hypnotize Anyone and Make Them Do What You Want
Hypnotist Nathan Blaszak starts his sales pitch with a picture of a woman he claims is his wife: beautiful women are a fringe benefit of his techniques, he says. Need we say more?
NLP ToolBox
NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) is the development of Ericksonian hypnosis which has arrived at the point that you are not sure whether to call it hypnosis or not — for the most part it dispenses with the classic routines for inducing "trance" states, and is the common background to various methods of covert, clandestine, and conversational hypnosis. The publishers offer a five lesson mini-course to familiarize you with the concepts before you invest in their book.
Forbidden Patterns
This is largely a collection of NLP routines passed around in the "seduction community" depicted in the novel The Game by reporter Neil Strauss — the one bound like a Bible, fake leather cover, round corners, gold edges and all. They are "forbidden" in the sense of being deprecated by most NLP practicioners, and many of them are spectacularly bad ideas, not only the sickness and death curses. You really don't want to convince your lover that she can't live without you. Honest. And you had better know someone really well before you try to evoke their Jungian "shadow" side. Really.
The Commander
This link is included as an example of what people might be afraid of when they hear that you are a student of what they think of as mind control. A man who wants to dominate, hurt, and humiliate women can find here instructions for locating victims on the Internet, as well as techniques for getting what he wants from them. My own fantasy — and hope — is that there are enough copies of this in the hands of law enforcement and parent vigilante groups that anyone who attempts to make use of it will be caught in a sting operation. If you have a teenage daughter getting on the internet, you might want to show her the ad copy. Unless you are afraid of giving her ideas.
Concluding Remarks
It is one thing to use self hypnosis for self improvement of various kinds; this page not mainly about that, though the above links should prove useful. It is quite another to set up a practice to help other people improve their lives. This page is not about that either — if this is your goal a course you get on line won't be enough for you to have an ethical practice, though it might help you decide whether a particular theoretical or practical approach is appropriate to your needs and congenial to your personality.
A great deal of the online market is devoted to methods of influencing people without their fully informed consent, sometimes without their knowledge. In order to be able to live with yourself, you need to think about the morality of that, especially when the sales materials you see seem to promise the kind of power over others a healthy person doesn't want.
First, we have to realize that whether we are salesmen, police officers, teachers, housewives, or standup comics, we are all attempting to influence others all the time, and we might a well do it effectively. Second, we must admit that most of us are sleepwalking through life most of the time, and some of us all the time. We want to influence others for their own benefit, and in a way that in the long run tends to expand their consciousness and enhance their freedom, but when we assume consciousness and freedom at the beginning we are doomed to frustration.
If you want to think in a systematic way about ethical matters, check out F. H. Bradley's Ethical Studies. I say check out, because if you have easy access to a library, that might be the best place to look for this classic. If your main ethical interest is your sex life, look for Roger Scruton's classic Sexual Desire.
