A covert hypnosis induction consists of bringing someone into a state of trance and planting suggestions within their subconscious without them being aware that you're doing so.

A popular way to induce someone into this state is through the use of what's known as hypnotic tonality. Hypnotic tonality basically involves achieving a relaxing, non threatening tone of voice that naturally sends others into a deep state of trance. One of the best ways to achieve this tonality is by not emphasising any words in your conversations. What you want to do is have a naturally consistent tonality with every word you say, so as not to draw any attention to any word in particular.  Take for example the sentence “Well I'm really angry with the way he behaved”. Normally when we say this sentence, we would emphasise the word 'really' and carry on this emphasis to the word 'angry'.  If instead we said the sentence in a soft tonality, with 'really' and 'angry' both being neutral words, without vesting any form of emotion into them, then our otherwise threatening sentence will seem quite soothing, and relaxing.  By doing this we're effectively making people subconsciously trust us, establishing a form of deep rapport with the person that we otherwise would not have had. Once this subconscious rapport is established, the process of induction becomes a lot easier.   One of the most famous covert hypnosis induction techniques was used by Milton Erickson, founder of modern covert hypnosis, and is what's known as the handshake induction. The handshake induction basically involves using pattern interrupts in order to make a person momentarily confused, thus resulting in a very temporary state of trance.  Once this state of trance is triggered, a deepening technique is conducted, such as telling the person that they will feel very sleepy the moment our hand touches their shoulders. We then quickly touch the person's shoulders and sure enough, they will remain in this state of trance. Now the pattern interrup itself can be something as simple as a handshake. You could simply go in to shake the person's hand, and then move your hand away at the last minute and instead grab their hand and move it up to their face, resulting in confusion, since the person was not expecting such a thing to happen (hence the pattern interrupt).  This process works because the person was familiar with a certain routine when shaking another person's hand, and since you're interrupting that routine, the confusion results. This form of covert hypnosis induction does however take a lot of practice, and the steps cannot be explained within any article alone.  

Steven Peliari is a Master Hypnotist and Chairman of the International Hypnosis Association. He has recently released his famed best selling course The Art Of Covert Hypnosis, which teaches people how to use a covert hypnosis induction in order to achieve conversational goals.