Maniac On The Street Hypnotizing Random Passers-By

Posted by Keith Livingston on April 23rd, 2008 filed in Hypnotic Inductions

Maniac On The Street Hypnotizing Random Passers-By

A few weeks ago, I was down near L.A., minding my own business, walking toward the beach. In the distance, on the boardwalk, I saw a crowd gathered around a man. There was a camera crew… something was going on. As I drew near I could see he was hypnotizing people right there on the boardwalk!

Rapid inductions, instant inductions, suggestibility tests, you name it–he was doing it.

Later that day, I got a chance to talk to him. It turns out, he recognized me through my products and we knew each other through several people in the hypnosis and NLP field. In fact, I’d heard about this madman running around hypnotizing folks through a few of my hypno-buddies.

Who is he? He is Sean Michael Andrews. Here are a few videos of him in action, doing instant inductions. Enjoy,
Keith

Starting a Hypnosis Practice: Resources

Posted by Keith Livingston on December 3rd, 2007 filed in Running a Practice

Starting a Hypnosis Practice: Resources

In my program, How to Start a Hypnosis Practice, we cover how to do just that–start one of the most rewarding businesses there is. It struck me one day after a smoking cessation session, that I was helping save lives! You can too. Each person you help stop smoking, lose weight, get over an old trauma or manage their pain better is a potential source of lifelong gratefulness. My hypnosis course can show you the hypnosis part. How to Start a Hypnosis Practice can help you with the non-hypnosis part.

And starting a hypnosis practice is one of the lowest cost, lowest risk, highest profit potential businesses. You really can start one on a shoestring budget. But a lot of people don’t know how. So I put together a program on starting a hypnosis practice. In the program, we cover business plans, legal requirements, business entities, marketing, paperwork requirements, hypnosis organizations and more. Here is a list of resources that can help you further along those lines.

Business Plan Software

Business Plan Pro

Help Starting a Business

Small Business Administration

Credit Card Processing and Shopping Carts

To take credit card payments over the Internet, the simplest way is to sign up for PayPal business account…

Taking credit card payments at the door of the seminar? The first thing to remember is that you may not have to charge their credit card right then (it all depends on your web site setup). Just get what’s called a “knuckle buster” and some blank credit card slips. The knuckle buster makes an imprint of their credit card on the slip. If you have their name, address, card number and expiration (everything but the address will be on the sales receipt) - you can run the transactions later from your web site (if you have it set up fully).

knuckle buster

Ask whoever you order the knuckle buster from for some compatible blank receipts/ sales slips.

If you’re going to enter payments yourself from your web site, you’ll need a shopping cart program. That’s a thingy that interfaces with PayPal or your other methods of accepting payments. I use UltraCart. I recommend them.

If you want to go whole hog, you’ll need a bunch of stuff.

Practice Pay Solutions handled my setup and all the details for me.

You’ll also need a merchant account - I set up a business account at Washington Mutual
com as my merchant account (no monthly fees and they’re near my place).

In a nutshell…

If you’re just doing sessions, just use PayPal with no shopping cart. In this case, you might consider requiring people to pay via PayPal before they get to you.

If you want to be able to take credit card payments at your door, get a shopping cart program that works with PayPal (such as Ultra Cart)

If you want to go all out, use Practice Pay Solutions. They’re experienced in handling processing for counselors, consultants and hypnotherapists. They’ll help you to set up the rest of what you’ll need (Merchant account, gateway, accounts with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex etc.). I’d still recommend using Ultra Cart and accepting payments through PayPal with them.

In the long run, you’ll want to do the full merchant account, gateway Practice Pay Solutions thing. It’s the real deal but there are monthly fees. If you do more than a certain volume, it will be cheaper though and PayPal has some other drawbacks. But to start out - PayPal.

Choice of Entity Information

Choosing a Business Structure (US)
UK Business Structures
Australian Business Structures

Hypnosis Organizations

International Hypnosis Association
National Guild of Hypnotists
American Council of Hypnotist Examiners
Professional Board of Hypnotherapy

Advertising, Marketing and Promotion

Marketing Your Hypnosis Practice: Million Dollar Secrets of a Hypnosis Marketing Maven
Get a Web Site on the Internet Fast: For Just Pennies a Day!

Paperwork

There are tons of forms available in How to Start a Hypnosis Practice.

Insurance
Allied Healthcare Professionals Insurance Center

Triggering Emotions During Hypnosis: Anchor Collapsing

Posted by Keith Livingston on July 25th, 2007 filed in Hypnosis Tips

Triggering Emotions During Hypnosis: Anchor Collapsing

Today’s topic is using emotions to make our work more powerful. Now, whether we’re working with ourselves or with clients, we know that emotion helps us be more programmable. It helps the work that we do get in there much more effectively and more powerfully. In earlier videos we’ve talked about how to amplify the emotion, now we’re going to talk about how to use it, and I’ll use hypnosis as an example.

NLP has a very simple process called collapsing anchors. I have a video on that if you don’t know how to do that, so go take a look at that one. In hypnotic suggestion, the way to do it is very similar. What we want to do is we want to find out the trigger that somebody has that causes the problem.

(More text below video)

High Speed Connections

Low Speed Connections

Anchor Collapsing for Fear of Public Speaking

Let’s talk about fear of public speaking as an example. Let’s suppose that during the intake we discover that the client, whenever they walk out on stage, as soon as they look up at the people’s faces, then that feeling of fear washes over them. We can use either that trigger, looking up at people’s faces, or a moment right before as the trigger for a new, powerful positive emotion.

So, let’s suppose we’ve stepped them into a feeling of confidence, we’ve gotten it up and running in their bodies, we’ve amplified it and we’ve anchored it by touching their shoulder. Here’s what we might do.

Now, imagine that you’re walking out on stage, and right as you look up at the audience (you fire that anchor). That new feeling of wonderful, powerful confidence flows into every cell, every fiber of your being as you look at those members of the audience. OK? Or we can take a step back and say, “OK, whenever you walk out on stage,” and fire that anchor.

What we want to do is get the emotion up and running, get it pumped up, get it super powerful, and then attach it either to the old trigger, for the old negative emotion, or to a time right before that old trigger. And that’s it. It makes our hypnotic work very, very effective.

Enjoy,

Keith

Amplifying Emotions with Association

Posted by Keith Livingston on July 19th, 2007 filed in Hypnosis Tips

Amplifying Emotions with Association

Today’s topic is amplifying emotional states. In an earlier video tape we talked about how important it is to add emotion to your hypnotic suggestions and how important the emotion is to NLP processes. In this video we’ll talk about how to amplify that emotion, and one way to amplify emotion is to associate a person as opposed to disassociate a person.

Let’s talk a little bit about how this works. One of the easiest ways to get an emotional state up and running in a person is to ask them to step into a time when they had previously experienced the emotion you need. Let’s suppose you’re looking for an emotion of confidence and you’re working with a client. You might say, “OK. Remember a time when you were absolutely confident and it felt just wonderful. Now step into that time.” Now, that’s the association part.

(More text below video)

People experience memories and imaginations “associated” or “dissociated.”

People can think of emotions, they can think of experiences in two ways. They can either see themselves going through the experience, or they can be themselves. They can be first person inside the experience. And to experience the maximum amount of emotion, we want them associated first person into the experience. And the way to do this is to use language like “step into that experience” rather than “think of that experience.”

And it’s important that you watch your language throughout this process. In other words, use “be” language, not “think about” language. Keep your tenses straight so that you use present tense. Use present tense as you step them into the experience. So, rather than, how did that feel, how does that feel. You can also use language like, looking out through your own eyes, hearing through your own ears, you’re inside your body, in that experience, what is it like rather than what was it like.

So, you can pick an experience that someone had that has the emotion that you would like to elicit in them and you step them into that experience, make sure it’s first person so that it’s associated. And that’s a great tip about how to amplify emotion.

Calibration in NLP

Posted by Keith Livingston on July 17th, 2007 filed in Calibration

The Importance of Calibration in NLP

Calibration is the art of taking a “mental snapshot” of a person’s emotional state(s). The purpose? So you know when they are accessing that state again. Another word for calibration is “measurement.” So, you’re looking/listening/feeling for clues and cues that mark a particular emotion in a person.

How do we use it???

Examples Where Calibration is Useful

Let’s suppose you’re working with a client and they have anxiety about a situation. You calibrate the anxiety state and a relaxed confident state. After you’ve done your work, you associate them into the formerly anxious situation. They say they feel fine but you notice they have several markers of the anxious state present.

You’re doing a collapse anchors. You’ve calibrated both states and fired off both anchors. How do you tell what’s going on and if it’s working? Calibration.

You’ve met someone you’re interested in. You’ve calibrated them to like/dislike. You can use your calibration skills to tailor your message to them to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.

Without Calibration Skills, You’re Driving Blind

In the above examples and in many other situations, without calibration, you’d be driving blind. More accurately, you’d be relying on conscious information and ignoring unconscious information. It’s not that people are lying all the time; it’s just that sometimes the conscious mind and the unconscious mind have different ideas or are in conflict about something.

Enjoy,
Keith