It Starts with “Close Your Eyes”

How does that transfer happen?

The simplest first step is to give an instruction and get the person to follow it.

“Close your eyes.”

“Take a deep breath.”

“Bring your attention to your left hand.”

“Feel warmth in your chest.”

“Imagine moving forward through a dark space.”

“Look within.”

Each instruction, taken on its own, can sound harmless. But one instruction is not the issue. The sequence is.

You follow the first. Then the second. Then the third.

Little by little, you stop checking why you are being asked to do these particular things. You simply follow the voice. Accepting the next instruction becomes automatic.

A command, an instruction, a suggestion: in this process, they serve the same function. Once accepting the next instruction as true becomes automatic, you have entered what I call a hypnotic state. There are degrees of it. The deeper the state, the more implausible a suggestion you may accept.

That is where control begins to pass to the hypnotist.

Closing your eyes is especially useful because it cuts off much of the information coming from the world around you. You see less of the room and depend more on the person guiding you.

Keeping your eyes closed also resembles a familiar arrangement for the brain: sleep. We spend an enormous part of life asleep with our eyes shut. Closing them can help bring on a drowsy, sleep-like state in which suggestions are easier to accept. Your body grows still. Your surroundings recede. But you can still hear the hypnotist's voice.

You are in an in-between condition: not fully asleep, but no longer engaging with the world as you were a minute earlier. “Waking sleep” is one of the old descriptions of hypnosis, dating back to the nineteenth century.

Part of the nervous system seems to rest while another part keeps following the voice. And that voice begins constructing your reality.

The first action you carry out becomes the first act of agreement.

You close your eyes. They ask you to notice your breathing; you do. To notice your heel; you do. To imagine light; you do. Or darkness. Or nothing at all.

Then they ask you to feel love, and you begin searching inside for anything you can call love.

Warmth appears: you call it love.

Relaxation appears: you call it love.

Tears come: they tell you your heart is opening.