The Deep Trance Training Manual: v.1: Vol 1 [Spiral-bound]

The Deep Trance training manual demystifyied much of the hypnotic process for me. It was the first book I had ever read on hypnosis and explained in a clear and unambiguous way the many ways of inducing a deep trance. I had often imagined what it was like to be a hypnotist and through this book I have begun to open a whole new world for myself a hypnotic world where the boundaries of everyday existence begin to fall away. I would strongly recommend this book to any beginner like myself or practised hypnotist as those I have spoken to have found something of interest within the pages of Igor's book.

I should first point that that if you are familiar with NLP, Ericksonian Hypnosis and with techniques from Ormond McGill - you will not find anything new in this book.

In that respect I was initially disappointed when I got this book, but then I have realized that it does fill the need for people who don't like to read a lot and who have attended only one of those three-day or seven-day hypnosis trainings, because most of the stuff that is presented in this book is not even taught in such courses. So for a person with an average hypnosis training, the techniques in this book are bound to take his hypnosis practice to the next level.

This is a very small book - only about 100 pages and the first half of the book takes you through some very basic and essential NLP skills such as calibration, eye-accessing cues, verbal predicates, establishing rapport, Milton Model, and at the end of the book, you'll find a list of hypnotic language patterns. I still believe that any professional hypnotist should take NLP training.

The next section of the book has an overview of different suggestibility tests, inductions and deepeners both from traditional hypnosis, from Ericksonian hypnosis and from Ormond McGill.

I'd like to add few words about Ormond McGill, since he seems to be the only well-known hypnotist in the west who has incorporated what are otherwise known as esoteric techniques in his practice of hypnosis.

You'll find a lot of books on hypnosis that deal just with traditional hypnosis, NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis.

Traditional hypnosis had a path similar to the way that chemistry emerged from alchemy: people kept the mechanical techniques, but left the spirit (life-force) out of it. You still get the results, but there's always something missing there - like a physical body without life in it. That was also the path of modern medicine.

Mesmer was on the right track. He recognized that there is something intangible (life-force / energy) involved in the process - he called in animal magnetism. Benjamin Franklin laughed him away - saying no, no, it's imagination that does the trick. Yet both were right. It is imagination that stirs the energy, the life-force and creates changes. Traditional hypnosis dropped the "working with the energy" bit, and kept for the most part just the mechanical techniques and went on toward the development and use of hypnotic language (as in Ericksonian hypnosis).

In Eastern countries, where this invisible energy is accounted, there are numerous practices for learning how to use mind-power to play with this energy and get some extraordinary results. Ormond McGill published one lovely book "Hypnotism and Mysticism in India" which contains some good exercises. In essence they are very similar to the mind-training exercises described in the book "Initiation into Hermetics" by Franz Bardon.

If you understand the role that "energy / life-force" plays, and you learn to use your own mind-power to manipulate it, you'll get much, much farther with hypnosis. Hypnotic techniques and hypnotic language, together with essential NLP skills will give you "external skills" of hypnosis, working with the energy will give you "internal skills" (I like to refer to them as "internal martial arts" - after all, that's what Oriental "nei kung" practices are all about).

This book "The Deep Trance Training Manual" deals for the most part with "external skills", but there is a brief mention of some methods used by Ormond McGill, and I am very glad that Igor mentioned them. But, there is much, much more to this.

Still, if there were only one practical book on hypnosis that you were buying, I'd recommend you get this one. It has no fluff, only one technique after another. If you put to practice everything you learn in this book, you will be way ahead of any average hypnotist.

The Deep Trance Training Manual is not a book "about" hypnosis - there is nothing in it about the history of the art, or its key practitioners - neither is it full of scripts for every situation; rather it is a very practical training manual. Virtually every page contains an exercise laid out step by step to improve your skills. It is a very concise and nicely written book, the provides a lot of good practice in barely 100 pages. I just wish there was more !. I recommend it to anyone moving on from an interest in the science and theory of the subject and wanting to develop practical skills. A very well thought out book.