10: Utilization and cold reading

It’s now that we introduce one of the most important concepts in hypnosis: “utilization.” Utilization refers to the principle that we want to “use” what’s available to us in order to hypnotize someone—that could be talking about what we know our partner is thinking or feeling, or using a memory that we share together as part of the trance. Who is your partner? What do they like? How do they think? The whole of a person and their environment are the ingredients available to us.

If this sounds familiar—like saying “truths” or pacing our partner as part of hypnotizing them—you’ve got it! But philosophically, it’s an essential idea.

The more you make hypnosis feel personal, the more intimate it is, and the more that your partner is going to feel vulnerable or open to you in a positive way. Hypnosis absolutely thrives on personal touches—you’re playing with someone’s mind!

If you know your partner has certain tastes or feelings about hypnosis, try talking about them as part of the trance. This goes especially well with calling back to previous trance experiences you’ve shared together, or making comparisons to other things in their life. Here are some examples:

• You know your partner likes their neck kissed, so you talk about what it would be like to hypnotize them with your lips right against them (or you actually do it!)

• The last time you and your partner played, they reacted really well when you said a certain word, so you use the word again and let them know you know how it makes them feel

• You know your partner feels like they have a very active mind, so you give suggestions that that “activeness” is going to make their brain work extra diligently to push them deeper into trance

The name of the game in hypnosis is engagement or immersion of attention—so when you think about the things you know about your partner, ask yourself: How could I use this idea to hypnotize them? How could I use this idea to fixate their attention. And: What could this idea lead to?

Playing intimately with someone is a constant learning experience—you are learning who they are and what they like. When you’re hypnotizing someone, think about all the information you’re getting, and use that all in your trance.

Utilization importantly refers to the philosophy that we are not “putting someone into hypnosis” so much as we are using all of their available mental processes and psychology. Hypnosis is not a magical external force—it’s just making use of the way a person thinks and what’s already in their head. Keep this in mind as you move forward with hypnosis! This will become even more apparent in the next sections, where we talk about making suggestions around some of the ways that a person’s brain operates.

Cold reading

It may seem intimidating to try to figure out truths about a person’s experience or come up with good suggestions—but the reality is that there are things that you can say that will almost always hit.

We want to say things that are both accurate and personal about a subject, and we use these truths as springboards to make more suggestions. The best way to do this is to get to know your partner and talk about their own personal experiences, as we’ve said.

But, in addition to this, you can draw upon some near-universal aspects of the hypnokink experience. We might call this akin to “cold reading,” where a mentalist makes generalized, highly-relatable statements to get the people around them to feel like their minds are being read.

At the same time as learning these “tricks,” you’ll be learning about important parts of hypnosis!

“Barnum statements” (things that are usually true)

In cold reading, there’s a type of phrase called a “Barnum statement” that simply refers to things you can say that most people will relate to. For example, a mentalist might say to someone, “I know that you struggle with insecurity sometimes.” This feels like mind reading, but the reality is that that’s true for almost everyone!

When we apply this to hypnosis, we find statements and concepts that are simply generally true for most people. We’re going to look at two aspects of a subject’s experience: 1) Their desires, and 2) what they might psychologically experience in hypnosis.

• General Desires

Talking about someone’s desires is one of the best ways to make them feel “seen.” It’s an incredibly intimate thing to talk about—or to feel like your desires are known—especially in hypnokink. It can really help to create feelings of trust between people.

• Complexity of desire

Sexuality in general is often a complicated beast for people. Especially considering hypnosis as a kink or fetish, fringe sexuality can be even more so. We can feel fairly confident telling our partners that we understand that their desires in being hypnotized or controlled aren’t simplistic, even if we don’t necessarily know exactly why. Acknowledging this can add intimacy and heat to a scene as well as potentially put our partners at ease!

Example statements: 

“I know that you have your own personal feelings about this.”

“It’s OK to have a lot of different thoughts about your desires.”

• Desire for trance/play

If someone has expressed an interest in playing with you in a kinky context, you can safely assume that there’s some desire behind those words. There is a lot of power in telling someone that they want something, especially alongside the concept that they are getting it at that moment, or that they’re motivated. Sometimes, this desire is more of a curiosity—use what you know about your partner’s motivations!

Example statements: 

“You want to go deep for me, don’t you?”

“You’re going into trance, it’s happening right now, and you can let your curiosity about that grow stronger…”

• Desire to feel good

People want to feel good! Even though we can feel complex or even embarrassed about our drives for (sexual or nonsexual) pleasure, those drives exist, and it’s often part of our motivation for play in the first place. It can often feel very pinning to call someone out on what is ostensibly a base need—potentially part of an exchange of power.

Example statements: 

“It feels good, and very simply, you like feeling good.”

“Your desire for pleasure makes it easier for me to hypnotize you.”

• Desire to do it right

Most subjects do or have at some point felt like they want to “do the right thing” in trance. Whether this is in a power exchange context such as wanting to obey well, or it’s in a general context where they simply want to “get it right” to go into trance, many people, especially those new to hypnosis, worry about their performance. We as hypnotists want to allay this fear, and acknowledging it out loud allows us to explain that there is no “wrong” here.

Example statements:

“I know you’re worried about doing the right thing, and it’s OK to feel that, but your responses are your own, so there’s no way to get it wrong.”

“Maybe you think about what you need to do better to go into trance, but you can notice that you feel parts of hypnosis even when you’re not trying.”

• Psychological Experiences

These are some examples of things that a person’s brain does—things you can talk about to utilize someone’s actual mental processes!

• Change

Hypnosis involves changes in experience and perception. These moments of change can be subtle or overt, but part of the intensity is in how we notice them, so talking about a change can make it feel bigger. There are shifts in the way that someone pays attention, like the moment you enter into a scene, the way they feel through the words you say, or when they focus on different parts of their experience. There is also change inherent in trance; the actual feelings of hypnosis are fluid, and they’re “changed” from being awake. Talking to someone about them experiencing a change is one way that we can reliably “mind read” someone, and especially when we take body language cues—as we’ve said before, if someone has an external reaction to something, it’s reasonable to think that internally, something has changed a little!

Example statements: 

“I know that you’re going to go through some changes in the way that you’re feeling right now as you listen to my words.”

“Your thoughts are different now than they were when I first started talking to you.”

• Attention shifting

More specific than general change, we can understand that as you speak to a person, their thoughts will naturally follow your words. If you talk to your partner about your voice, they will think about your voice. If you talk to your partner about their physical experience, they will think about what they feel. Though this experience of attention can change, we can effectively mind read by pointing out these simple things—telling someone very explicitly, “You’re thinking what I tell you right now.”

Example statements:

“As I say things to you, your mind processes my words, and I am controlling what it thinks just by talking.”

“Did you notice how when I talked about your legs relaxing, you focused more on your body?”

• “Hallucination”

Hallucinations in hypnosis—seeing, feeling, or hearing something that isn’t actually there—have the context of being very grand, but the reality is that we can think of all sorts of feelings and imaginative experiences as hallucinatory. Recalling a memory has sensory aspects, and so does imagining/visualizing a scenario or suggestions. We can pay attention to what kinds of language we’re using to read the sorts of sense-experiences a person might be having.

Example statements:

“As I tell you how I’m going to fuck you, your body is imagining what that’s going to feel like…”

“What parts are you most focused on when you remember your trances?”

• Associations

One of the primary ways that hypnosis works is through the associations of thoughts and concepts. People are relating, comparing, and connecting our words to their experiences all the time. For example, we can acknowledge that many existing hypnotic concepts are all associated with desires and past experiences. We can also understand that when any two things are happening at the same time, a connection can be made, like a trigger, or just a general relationship between (for example) your words and their pleasure.

Example statements: 

“Are you feeling the link form between the sound of my voice and your trance getting deeper and deeper?”

“Your mind is like a big web of connections and memories—I wonder what kinds of responses it’ll make when I tell you [x]...”