How to learn to hypnotize well

When you want to learn to get good at hypnosis, there are a number of things you can do. Some people are already well hypnotizable, they say 1 in 5 are even very well hypnotizable, but why is that? Why are those people easy to hypnotize and where does that come from? In this article you will discover which brain regions are responsible for that and how to train them

Hypnotizable is Makeable

Anyone can learn to go into hypnosis, but not everyone can get good at hypnosis right away. There's a reason for that. In 2012, there was a study that used an fMRI scan to study the brains of people who go into hypnosis well. Also, of course, of those who did not go well into hypnosis.

The brain was indeed different in the people who did go into hypnosis well. The areas in the brain of the highly hypnotizable people were different mainly in these areas. There was more connection in the Insula, the basal ganglia, the cortex cingularis anterior and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

It is assumed with the insula that the area aggregates sensory stimuli within an emotional context. The basal ganglia, along with the cerebellum, regulates motor activity. The cortex cingularis anterior is involved in processing pain and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is there to control and monitor our behavior. You could say the control center in our brain.

In the high hypnotizable (right), there were more connections between these areas and these areas also lit up during hypnosis. In the low hypnotizable (on the left in the photo), these did not light up as much. as shown here.

Especially interesting is the control center. When that does not "cooperate," people do not go into hypnosis. We call that area the critical mind (or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and you want to 'bypass' that area so that the suggestions you give will arrive at the person.

As a hypnotist, your main concern is to bypass the "critical mind," the control center. Or in other words, as shown here in the photo, you want it to light up more and thus cooperate rather than oppose.

What's even more interesting is that the people who are actually good hypnotizers have often experienced certain things in their youth. Perhaps you recognize yourself in this.

Which people are more hypnotizable?

You can select people by taking certain tests. You call that suggestibility testing. You test that by, for example, putting 2 arms forward and then imagine that in one hand is a heavy stone and on the other is a balloon. In people who are good hypnotizers, the arms react immediately. One arm then goes down and the other arm goes up.

For us as hypnotherapists, those kinds of tests are not very interesting, but for hypnotists they are. As a hypnotherapist, you use other tests such as levitation (arm goes up unconsciously automatically), having hand sticking or forgetting the person's name. These kinds of tests are important because they let you know if someone is good at hypnosis.

But what's interesting is that the people who hypnotize well, they have been read to often in the past. Also, those people have heard a lot of stories where they thus started to create images. So their brain is already trained to go into hypnosis easily.

People who grew up in violent families are also good hypnotizers overall. They have taught themselves from childhood to flee in trance namely and therefore they can still do so today.

Training yourself to go into hypnosis

You can train yourself to go into hypnosis by listening to many stories and creating images to go with them. In addition, learning to visualize is also a very good thing to do. This makes it easier to go into hypnosis.

When you have children, tell them lots of stories. This is good practice for you, but also very good for the children themselves. They then have to tap into their imagination and start creating images to go with it. Not only can they then go into hypnosis a lot easier later on, which is good because that way you can solve any problems easily, but they also become more creative. That means they can solve their own problems much faster later on.

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