Article by Lamb
I understand and empathise with new tist nerves and wanting to use a script or follow notes.
Although, it’s really important to note a few flaws in this strategy
- it won’t teach you technique
- you won’t be prepared for any situation outside of the script
- you won’t be paying attention to the person, and hypnosis is mostly about rapport
- being new makes it difficult to recognise what’s a good script or not
As a new tist, there’s a bunch of things you can do to set yourself up for success within your first few scenes, as well as long term success.
Emotionally
- everything is a skill, and recognising that you won’t be perfect at something at first can help you adjust your expectations towards achievable goals.
- talking to your partner about how you feel is also good. I personally found having a partner who was kind and understanding towards my newness to be what got me over how frightened I was of failing.
- setting small attainable goals will give you a sense of pride and accomplishment, and you can expand on them as you go. To begin, you may just want to focus on inductions and feeling comfortable guiding someone. Once you’re comfortable doing that, you might want to start adding in other things you’d like to explore.
Intellectually
- it’s perfectly okay to read a script to yourself, practice it, then just wing it later.
- Writing is great way to practice using hypnotic language by yourself
- it’s okay to write little notes to yourself on how you’d like a scene to go and work off them. You can make these as short and ambiguous as you like while you move forward
- you can just walk someone through a fantasy that you’ve had about them, an idea, or even a story. When you’re new a learning, you don’t need to stress too much about every component that makes an induction, the most important detail is that you both enjoy yourselves..
The skills
- Pacing and leading: This looks like telling someone some truths then leading them towards a desired outcome with a suggestion.
This can look like “you’re listening to my voice (truth/pacing) because you like the sound of my voice (truth/pacing) and it feels good (truth/pacing), that’s why it’s so easy to drop to my voice (your suggestion/leading). You can do a decent trance with just pacing and leading. - building expectancy: telling someone what you’re going to do builds that reality in their mind
“I’m going to say some pretty words and eventually you will drop for me” - just talking to someone, checking in, getting them to say how they feel. Asking people to verbalise things is a great way to make that experience feel more real for them.
