The four-stage protocol is essential in covert hypnosis and it will be the foundation to every technique that you apply.
This procedure helps you to induce any hypnotic trance, and without doing it properly, it’s almost impossible to make anything else in the latter stages of covert hypnosis work.
You must begin learning these four crucial stages before advancing further, and each stage has their own techniques to achieving the desired result.
Stage 1 – Absorb Attention
The first step is all about capturing someone’s attention in such a way that they’re fully focused on what you’re doing and saying to them with no external distractions.
What you’re actually doing when you absorb someone’s attention is that you’re drawing them into you and leading their thoughts along the path that you’ve set out for them.
You can fixate someone’s undivided attention by asking them an interesting question, telling them something interesting or asking them to do something for you. These are all direct methods of absorbing attention.
You can also use indirect methods such as using the hypnotize gaze which involves maintaining eye contact in a way as though you were looking straight through them. Indirect methods are more subtle and requires more skills and patience to master.
Stage 2 – Bypass The Critical Factor
The next stage is to bypass the critical factor, which is the logical part of someone’s mind that says “no, this isn’t possible”.
If you’ve ever given a friend a good piece of advice only for them to turn to you and say “no, I’ve tried that already, it doesn’t work”, then you’ll know exactly what I mean.
This is the critical factor that needs to be bypassed, and there are various inductions that allow you to do this. Once you’re able to get pass this point, you can then give your hypnotic suggestions disguised as a piece of advice.
Stage 3 – Activate An Unconscious Response
At this stage, you need to activate an unconscious response from the subject, and at this stage, any form of an unconscious response is a good one.
A good example of an unconscious response is an emotional response, because you don’t choose or think about how you feel about something, it just happens.
Say if your friend is deeply in love with who you think is not a good person, you’ll realize that no matter how hard you try to convince them otherwise, they’re simply immune to any kind of reasoning because they’re under a hypnotic process, one that you’re not an authority of.
Therefore, you must get your subject to respond to you unconsciously in order to have something to work with. One way of doing this is by building a strong rapport with your subject or/and by using the mirror and matching technique.
Stage 4 – Drive The Unconscious Mind To The Desired Result
Once you’ve recognized specific signs of an unconscious response from your subject such as pupil dilation, change of voice tone, an emotional response etc., you need to lead them into the outcome that you have in mind.
Your desired outcome may be to get a date with your subject, get an excellent deal from a salesman on a car or to have a positive impact on your subject’s life.
You can achieve your desired outcome by using a variety of suggestion techniques such as the future memories technique which is basically moving the subject’s mind to a point in the future where their problem is already resolved or a certain decision will have a positive outcome. x