Was I in a hypnotic trance or was I just asleep?

Normally the question I get asked by a potential client is “what if I can’t relax enough?”, or “what if I am one of those people who can’t be hypnotised?”
Lately however the question has been “what if I fall asleep?”
With that in mind, I decided to write this blog post.

During my ‘prelim chat’, I generally tell clients at the beginning of their first session that they can view this as taking a light nap. I pause, letting that comfort them, and then I qualify it, by saying that it is not a real sleep, it just feels like that.

My clients breathe very deeply and often snore during my sessions. Are they asleep or are they in a deep trance?
They’re in a deep trance.
How do I know this? (particularly as I work mostly by Skype and phone)
Because they immediately wake up when I say 5, after quietly stating beforehand, that “on the count of 5, you will open your eyes, refreshed and alert”.
If that person was asleep, he wouldn’t wake up mid-snore, simply because I said ‘five’.
I led him in there and I led him back out.
The same goes for hypnosis audios. If you come out on command at the end, then I’d say you were in trance. (Unless of course, there was some loud noise near you that occurred simultaneously as the hypnotist told you to emerge :)

Sometimes clients think they’ve been asleep when actually, they achieved a deep trance* And during this trance, their subconscious was focused on my words, so much so that they followed my softly spoken suggestion to ‘emerge’ when I uttered a certain number.

Another reason I know my clients were in trance is the feedback I receive after the first session. They start manifesting the changes they wanted, usually the very next day.

What if you do fall asleep? Well, most hypnotists will say that it won’t work if the client falls asleep. I can understand why they say that. We need our clients to process what we’re saying… However from my personal frame of reference I cannot say that it won’t work. I have only had two clients fall asleep, one (ironically, an insomniac), and the other one was a smoker. Both undoubtedly fell asleep and I had to take additional measures to wake them up. (Both woke up within a few minutes' of the end of the session by the way.)
In both cases, they were successful. They got the results they wanted! You can read Dan (the former smoker’s) testimonial on the quit smoking page of my website.
That one was astonishing, because to eradicate a long term addiction, a person needs a series of sessions for reinforcement.

*The depth of hypnotic trance can vary with each person. Some clients feel disappointed if they remember hearing a hypnotist’s throughout, however it’s important to note that any level of trance is sufficient to make changes (e.g. make/break habits). You may be aware of every word I said in hypnosis, yet the positive changes you desire still take place. With all clients in that category, they have naturally gone deeper every session.

My tendency is to take clients quite deep, and they generally have no recollection of what I’ve said. That’s my personal choice, because I am often dealing with people who have spent many years going to behavioural psychologists and medical professionals without achieving the results they wanted. I find it beneficial in those cases, to put them into a deeper trance, because there is anxiety on their part as to whether or not this (“the last ditch attempt” as they call it!) will work and of course there is a lot of tension associated with the language of that context, as they will have discussed (and probably been criticised and nagged about) the ‘issue’ every day for years.

If you have any questions about whether my hypnosis with NLP-based coaching by Skype or phone will help you, feel free to email me to set up a free 10-15 consultation by phone or Skype. If I believe my services will help you make that change you want, I’ll tell you and if I don’t, I’ll tell you that too! :)

Best wishes to all reading this,
Louise