Hypnotic Rapport

As you know by now, rapport is a key skill that you will need to master to be a successful hypnotist. Without rapport, your subject will not be open to your hypnotic suggestions and communication.

A brief definition of rapport is the harmonious relationship that you share with people. In this relationship, you understand and relate to people’s feelings and ideas as well as communicate them well with one another. Everyone does this everyday with the different relationships they share with family, friends, and co-workers.

In order to build a strong and wide rapport, you will need to practice and perfect certain skills. Rapport in normal circumstances can often come easily. Think of how easily you share your life with a spouse or your best friend. The rapport here is focused and good and it comes easily and casually.

However, hypnosis is not a normal or casual relationship. A deep amount of comfort, trust, and familiarity must be established before you can reach your goals with a hypnotic subject. Remember: they are going to let you into their mind, and this is not a place that’s open to just a perfect stranger.

As you are learning hypnosis, you will want to focus on advanced strategies for building rapport. Creating and building on ‘rapport hooks’ is a great skill that will get other people to build rapport with you. Rapport hooks are going to do the work of drawing your subject into you as you get acquainted.

Rapport hooks are developed in a way that will keep people coming back to you to build on the relationship. They cause people to work hard and value the relationships they are building. If a person feels that they are working hard to build something, they will also continue to work to maintain their past successes.

When you put rapport hooks into action, they will keep the person coming back for more information. The hooks will get your subject to continue to ask questions, and come back to fill in the informational gaps you purposefully leave out of your stories.

One way to get a person to keep coming back for that information is to give them small pieces of information that may not be complete. Leave questions in their mind as you tell stories. Give a casual tone but leave the what, why, and how open for your subject to ponder.

The key here is to avoid forcing information onto your subject. Get them interested, but leave your topics open by adding suspense and unfinished information.

For example, if you are telling a story about a place you visited, use the name of the country but give no specifics about where you went. Tell them the scenery was beautiful, but let them ask about the region or sites you saw. Let them probe for these answers. You can do this with almost any topic.

While you are talking, remember to use a casual tone and present the information in a way that inclines them to ask for more. If your subject’s curiosity is aroused, they will be inclined to want to know more to the point of asking you.

In this manner you are elegantly giving them a good story and drawing them in as well. The more curiosity and interest the person has, the more questions they will ask. Asking you questions is subconsciously earning them the right to the information and they begin to feel it is more important.

When you use rapport hooks it will also help you with fractionate rapport. Fractionate rapport happens when you give rapport then consciously take it away.

Give your subject your full attention for a while, then distract yourself. Getting casually distracted by looking around or engaging your attention elsewhere will cause the subject to re-engage you. If the person does re-engage you, then you are on board with the beginnings of a foundation for an advanced rapport.

Again, this is causing the person to work for your attention. You give it and then take your attention away. They then have to work to get it back. This makes the relationship more valued again because it is not being forced upon them. They are asking for it and earning it.

When using these advanced rapport building skills, you will successfully push your rapport further and faster than normal. The more push and pull you involve in your conversations, the quicker and deeper your rapport will go.

These skills will take your relationship to higher levels of comfort and trust quickly, so a good and wide enough rapport is set to continue. Once this is founded and put into place, you will be able to begin to put your subject into trance and begin the real work of hypnosis.