When we think of hypnosis, we think of stage shows, of people pretending to be clucking chickens, or of some fictitious charismatic figure who's able to sway mass amounts of people to do their bidding. The art of hypnosis has many preconceived misconceptions and beliefs, and it's easy to dismiss hypnosis without first conducting some form of inquiry into the subject.



The truth of the matter is that Hypnosis is used each and every day by people from all walks of life. From advertisers and political leaders, right through to every day people that use it help make their day as rewarding and productive as possible.

What most people don't realise, is that they've most likely been hypnotized at some point previously in their lives. When someone attends a hypnotherapist they're willingly being hypnotized. They're aware of what the hypnotherapist is doing to them and they accept the suggestions that the hypnotherapist gives them.

If however we're not willingly being hypnotized by a hypnotist, then we're resistant to hypnosis. When we're walking around each day, minding our own business, we're much less likely to willingly accept the suggestions of some random stranger. This is where the art of covert hypnosis comes in.

Covert hypnosis is the ability to hypnotize people without them being aware of it. When we have a chance encounter with someone, say a random guy or girl that we find interesting, it's usually up to our communicational abilities in order to establish some form of rapport or friendship with the person.

With covert hypnosis however, we're able to subconsciously plant cues within the person we're speaking so that they feel a natural form of rapport towards us, without us having to be great communicators. This use of covert hypnosis is achieved by overloading what's called the 'critical mind' of the person we're speaking to. Whilst the process is much too complex to explain within this article, the goal of a hypnotist is basically to overload the critical mind of a person by confusing them slightly, using what's called 'misdirection', whilst still coming across charming and interesting.

This confusion is caused by making the person think that they're not interpreting something correctly, and when they're in this state of confusion, we quickly plant suggestions within the person's subconscious. We may tell a person we have briefly confused that 'you're quite attractive' and then immediately proceed the conversation with something else. It will be as if you didn't say the suggestion at all. In the mind of the person you're speaking to, the words 'You're quite attractive' wouldn't register within their conscious, but would register within their subconscious.

Since the person will perceive a compliment from you that they can't consciously remember that you gave them, the person will feel a subconscious warmth and rapport with you that you wouldn't have otherwise achieved.

This is an example of using the art of hypnosis to hypnotize another person into liking you in some way. With more advanced forms of covert hypnosis (often referred to as 'conversational hypnosis') you'll be able to take further steps to hypnotize a person into doing certain things for you.