Hypnosis For Kids - Indirect Suggestions

Indirect Hypnotic Suggestions

Indirect suggestions are those that relate to either the problem at hand or the specific desired response in a covert and, therefore, unobrusive way. They are the essence of covert hypnosis or waking hypnosis. They can be quite subtle. Such suggestions do not usually relate directly to the person's conscious experience. Rather, they are indirectly related and thus require the person to interpret them in an idiosyncratic way in order to make meaning of them.

Use of indirect suggestions can have the person wondering at a conscious level what you are talking about, while at the same time his or her unconscious mind is associating wat you are saying to his or her internal experience (underlying dynamic processes), thus paving the way for change to take place.

Indirect suggestions can take numerous forms, including storytelling (metaphors), analogies, jokes, puns, homework assignments, and disguised and embedded suggestions.

Any communication device that causes or requires the person to respond without directly telling or asking him or her to do so involves indirect suggestion to some degree.

If you suspect, on the basis of feedback from the person you desire to hypnotize, that you would be more likely to get eye closure through indirect methods, you might offer any of the following suggestions:

Can you allow your eyes to close?

Many of my friends like to sit in that chair with their eyes closed.

Isn't it nice not to have to listen with your eyes open?

I wonder what you will think of that will allow you to comfortably close your eyes.

go to Different Kinds of Hypnotic Suggestions page

go to Hypnotic Language page

go to Suggestibility Tests page

go to Hypnosis Inductions and Scripts page