This is a brief introduction to some of the hypnotic tools and techniques we use on this recording. It is by no means a complete explanation of everything done on it. And don’t worry, knowing some of these techniques will not make them less effective.

Progressive Relaxation Techniques

The most common way to hypnotize someone is through progressive muscular relaxation. So we have interspersed phrases throughout the recording asking you to relax your hands and fingers or your eyes or the muscles in your face. We have also included a modified Elman Induction in it (named after its creator Dave Elman).

The Elman Induction is the most widely used muscular relaxation induction in the world, because it is very quick (it takes about five minutes) and is able to hypnotize approximately 60% of the population when done during a live session with a hypnotist.

It involves bringing your awareness to your eyes three times and then taking the relaxation you create each time and sending it down your body like a gentle wave. The first time you simply relax the muscles involved in your eyes, particularly those that open and close your eyelids - as deeply as you can before sending this relaxation down your body. The second time you relax them ten times deeper before you send this relaxation down your body. And the third time you simply double the relaxation before sending it down your body.

Violating Linguistic Rules

Some of these linguistic techniques were pioneered by master hypnotist and psychiatrist Dr. Milton Erickson MD. He found that when he broke certain grammatical rules it caused the conscious mind and the part of the brain that processes language to jam, allowing any suggestions that followed to be more readily accepted.

One form involves ending and beginning what should be two separate sentences with the same noun phrase, in effect scrunching them together. An example (not on the recordings) would be:

Normal version: “I visited Mary and played with her cats. Cats are masters at catnapping and they really know how to just let go of all tension in their body.”

Hypnotic version: “I visited Mary and played with her CATS are masters at catnapping and they really know how to just let go of all tension in their body.”

Another way of violating some of the innate rules of grammar are as simple as changing a single word in a sentence. Using our previous example: “I visited Mary and played with her CATS are masters at catnapping and they really know how to just let go of all tension in YOUR body.”

Another thing we do is to play with the word order and may stick the verb at the end of a sentence rather than in the middle. English generally follows a subject-verb-object word order such as “I ran home;” whereas a language such as Chinese generally follows a subject-object-verb word order or “I home ran.” So we can say “you relax your fingers” or we can make it a little more difficult to process by saying “you fingers yours relax.”

We also play with words that modify other words. For example (not on the recording) in “I was very happy” ‘very’ can only modify ‘happy’ and so we can twist this a little by saying “I very was happy.” And while “it very is easy” to understand the idea being communicated, it makes the linguistic processing centre in our brains work just a little bit harder, allowing any following suggestions to be a little more readily accepted.

Embedded Commands

Embedded commands are commands that are hidden in the sentence, and are usually spoken with a slightly different tone (which is not obvious to the conscious mind, though it is flagged by the subconscious). To use a previous example: “I visited Mary and played with her CATS are masters at catnapping and they really know how to just let go of all tension in YOUR BODY.”

The Confusion Technique

This was another one pioneered by Dr. Milton Erickson and it involves using language in a way that becomes more and more confusing such as: “your subconscious will now help you to help you to forget what it was that you did not wish to remember. And forgetting to remember what you wish to forget to remember or even remembering to forget so easily whatever that was you can’t even remember.”

Brain-Wave Entrainment

A simple demonstration of the entrainment process is where you have two identical tuning forks and you hit one and get it vibrating and then bring it close to the second one (without touching), the second one will become entrained and begin vibrating at the same frequency. You can also demonstrate this by blowing a trumpet, or even yelling, beside a piano. Because this will cause certain strings on that piano to become entrained and make a sound.

Scientists discovered that the human brain can also be entrained. The first study did this using lights. They subjected volunteers to lights that flashed ten times per second (or hertz) and found that the electrical frequency of the volunteer’s brain resonated in tune at 10 hertz.

Other researchers discovered this same effect could be achieved by sound. And that if you play one specific frequency into one ear and then a slightly different one in the other ear, the brain began to resonate at the difference between the two frequencies (or binaural beats to use the technical term).

This process makes use of the fact that our brains have evolved to locate the source of sounds and it does this because any given sound will reach one ear a fraction of second ahead of the other ear. Allowing the brain to measure the difference and locate the source of the sound.

This means if you want to entrain the brain with sound you need to send each ear a slightly different frequency. So on our recording a tone of 130 hertz (approximately “Low C”) is sent to one ear and a tone of 131.5 hertz into the other ear. So your brain will begin resonating at the difference, which is 1.5 hertz, or just on the deepest edge of the hypnagogic state (also known at the Delta Brain-Wave State).

This process also lead to the state of hemispheric synchronization where both sides of the brain (which usually operate at different brain-wave frequencies). This has been proven to enhance creativity and even help people suffering from emotional problems because these problems are usually localized in one of the cerebral hemispheres).