Matching Inductions and Deepeners to Individual Clients

If you are relatively new to practising hypnotherapy, you may have found yourself wondering how to choose the most appropriate induction and deepener for your client sessions, this article aims to help you to decide which one, out of the dozens available, to use.

In your earliest sessions you might decide to try out different inductions to see which one suits your style and that is fine, some inductions will resonate more than others; most hypnotherapists have a handful of favourite inductions that they feel work better than others.

Individual Clients' Needs

There is also the case for selecting an induction that fits your client’s needs or circumstances, for example, if you are delivering a hypnosis session with someone who you know goes quickly into trance or if you or they are limited for time, you might need a shorter than normal induction or even a rapid induction.

And of course, if you are hypnotising a child or someone with a short attention span or a client with a learning disability, you would need to consider the best approach and ensure it matches the child’s level of maturity.

Integrate Interests

Clients with a strong interest in certain activities can respond better to a script that includes a visualisation or a script that includes references to their interest.

Information gathering at the beginning of your session is important, not only because it gives you an insight into your client’s issues and what they are seeking therapy for, but also the type of person they are and what sort of things interest them.

This information can give you a clue into the client’s preferred representational system. For example, a client who lists enjoying listening to music or playing a musical instrument will often respond favourably to an induction or deepener that includes auditory elements such as visualising themselves listening to a favourite melody.

Sporty clients may respond better to a kinaesthetic approach, such as having them imagine themselves swimming in a tranquil ocean or walking along a path in the mountains.

If you feel unsure about having enough knowledge about your client’s passion, don’t be afraid to ask questions to learn more about what they enjoy.

For example, a client listed their hobby as fishing, so was asked which type of fishing they usually did, where they would usually go and the type of fish they usually fished for.

They were asked to describe a favourite experience from when they had gone on a fishing expedition, and, picking up on the terminology used, this was fed back to them during the hypnotic visualisation.

Another client listed her hobby as decoupage, so she was asked to visualize herself cutting around the shapes and creating an image of what relaxation meant for her.

Incorporating Unexpected Factors

In a similar way, the actual session situation may be incorporated into an induction.  For example, a hypnosis session once took place on bonfire night, and loud fireworks were being let off nearby.

To avoid the noises from distracting the client, a deepening visualisation of the client revisiting a childhood memory was used by describing them standing around a huge fire with family and friends and watching in awe as the different fireworks went off, lighting the sky with their beautiful patterns.

Out of all the hypnotic inductions available, the progressive relaxation induction is possibly one of the easiest to master, as you will guide the client’s attention around the different areas of their body.

Once you have the initial patter, you can simply scan your client so that you know which part of the body to mention next, for example, starting with the soles of the feet, you can then ask them to move their attention to the toes and the whole of the foot, then over the heels into the ankles and up into their upper legs and so on.

Another easy induction to use is the eye fixation induction, where your client is instructed to focus the eye on a point a little higher than eye level and suggestions are offered that the eyes are tiring, beginning to blink, straining, etc. until they eventually close and remain closed.

You will need to observe the client carefully to ensure that you’re not giving suggestions about them blinking when their eyes actually close, also, feed back what they appear to be experiencing. It’s usually easy to tell when a client’s eyes are beginning to tire or as they blink more and more or when the eyes begin to water.

Selecting a Deepener

Once eye closure is achieved, you will typically move on to the hypnotic deepener, which is followed with suggestions and the techniques you intend to use for the session.

Milton Erickson, the acclaimed father of hypnosis, used confusional techniques in his inductions.  He might mention a long past date when something irrelevant happened and follow this with another date with, for example, what they had for dinner at that time.

This would continue until the client completely lost track of all the dates and different meals, by which time it was much easier for them to simply go into a nice hypnotic trance.

Some hypnotherapists use direct or instant hypnosis whereby they might click their fingers and tell their subject to ‘go into trance’.  This technique might work well on stage, where the hypnotist has already worked out if their subject is going to be susceptible but isn’t used so much in the therapy session.

Deep breathing is often included in an induction and suggestions are compounded by associating the breathing with going deeper, relaxing more and more and so on.

Some hypnotists like to take their subject by surprise and make a movement to shake their hand but following this action with doing something completely different. Again, this technique is mostly used by stage hypnotists rather than in the therapy session.

Inductions are often combined with the deepener, as in the fractionation induction and deepener, where a client is instructed to close their eyes as they relax, only to follow this with another instruction to open those eyes and immediately close them again.

This exercise can be tiring for the subject as the eyes become heavier and heavier until they simply ignore any opening suggestions and allow the eyes to remain closed.

Therapists will often count their clients down into hypnosis, sometimes by asking them to visualise themselves at the top of a staircase and slowly descending, others entering a lift or elevator, and watching the floor display number going a little deeper between each relaxation suggestion.

An easier method is to simply tell the client you are going to count down from twenty or ten to one and intersperse each number with suggestions that they are going into a deeper level of trance.

The visualization may be used to deepen the trance, as explained earlier.  Instead of swimming in a beautiful ocean they may be asked to imagine a room full of different coloured balloons and each one that they pop take them deeper, or they may go on an imaginary spaceship and travel through the galaxies or sit on a train, observing each station that the train passes.

The number of inductions and visualizations is limited only by your imagination and can be inspired by your subject so have fun creating different ones, or check out the Inductions Index on Hypnotic World to see what we have to offer.