I had been interested in NLP and Hypnosis for a few years when my friend Magnus invited me to go on a two day Mentalism course by Igor Ledochowski. (Mentalism is the blend of Psychology and magic that performers like Derren Brown and David Blaine practice). Although I have only a passing interest in practising magic I know that many effects make use of the way human psychology works and that’s what interested me most. So we drove down to London for the weekend to see if there was anything for us to learn.

Now Igor is amongst other things an NLP Practitioner and Hypnotherapist and it turned out that some of what he would be teaching would involve using some of the skills from these disciplines. I felt quite a lot anticipation when I sat down in the room with 40 or so other people because I had heard that Igor was good at putting people into deep trances. Well it turns out he is phenomenal at it.

He started off by telling us a story about how Milton Erickson discovered his particular method of hypnosis.. But this wasn’t an ordinary story. Because as I was sitting there, listening to the words, allowing them to run through my mind, I started to feel my arms getting heavy. This feeling started to creep around my body and I found my attention completely transfixed on Igor. I was going into trance and so where the other 39 people in the room. I couldn’t believe what was happening and fought to regain control over my body. But the only part that I could still move was my left big toe, everything else felt warm and good. Yet I couldn’t move a muscle. Out of the corner of my eyes I even saw people’s heads drop towards their chests as they nodded off, and all he was doing was telling us a story about how some other guy discovered how to put people into trance.

That was the first time I had really experienced deep trance and it was one of my first ‘Seeing the Matrix’ moments. When you have an experience like that it makes you realise the power of the mind and how little most people know about it. I wonder why hypnosis still has such a pseudo-scientific image as it’s obviously very powerful and is being used increasingly in the context of mainstream medicine for things like pain control. If I were paranoid I’d think that the powers that be don’t want us to have these kinds of skills and knowledge.

So what where the three things I learned?

1. Go into the state you want to induce in others.

People naturally follow each other into various states; energetic, relaxed etc. So if you want other people around you to start feeling relaxed and at ease you have to feel that way yourself first. Once you do that you’ll find that your voice and body language will reflect this and the people around you will start to feel the same.

2. Pace and Lead.

Hypnotism is nothing more than leading someone through different states, and in order to do that you need to first describe what the other person is experiencing in that moment. For example: ‘You are sitting, reading this sentence, saying the words in your mind’.

Then you lead them into a new thought or feeling; ‘and as you’re sitting there reading this sentence your mind might wander off and start to think about in what ways learning this skill could be useful’.

3. The hypnotic state is something you do to yourself.

This literally blew my mind, though now it seems obvious. A hypnotist isn’t sending out magical brain-waves to put other people into trance. They only help us find that state within ourselves. We are the ones that are creating the bodily sensations and thoughts. That’s why the more you trance you experience the better you get at it.

Remember those people that were nodding off during Igor’s story? Those were actually the people that have been practising hypnosis the most. They’ve built up the skill that allows them to go in to trance very quickly.

Those three points raise many interesting questions. First and foremost: Are people putting themselves in and out of trance all the time naturally? What do you guys think?

Anyway, if you want to find out more about Igor Ledochowski and how you can learn these ‘Jedi-level skills’ yourself, check out his site: Conversational Hypnosis.