Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hypnotize anyone just by talking to them? Now, before you think that there's no possible way to hypnotize anyone with out the person knowing it,let me clarify what I mean by 'hypnotize.' I'm not talking about sitting or laying down in a dimly lit room listening to a soft soothing voice as you drift into a state of total relaxation.

The secret, however, is to be able to do this just by talking to someone while using the same language patterns that work in traditional hypnosis. And this can happen in regular conversations as well as using the written word when communicating with someone. Skeptical? I don't blame you. But what if I told you that we are influenced by words all of the time, and that many of these words that are 'hypnotizing ' us are happening right under our noses without us even knowing it!

Does this seem too far fetched to even consider? Psychologist John Bargh developed a simple experiment where he asked subjects to make a four word sentence out of five words as quickly as they could. Give this a try:

1. sheds old my fur dog

2. sunny gray is always Florida

3. learn tricks dogs old wrinkled

Not very difficult, is it? What the subjects didn't know was that the researchers weren't really measuring the subject's ability to finish sentences. What they were measuring was whether or not certain words would the affect the subjects in a certain way. The results of the experiment were that the subjects walked out of the testing room and down the hallway much more slowly than when they entered the room.

Now consciously the subjects probably didn't even pay attention to these words, but subconsciously some of these words had a huge impact on the way the subjects behaved. These particular words basically put the subjects into a state of feeling old and the subjects responded by acting this out through their slow walk out of the office. (For an excellent resource on how the subconscious is easily influenced on a day to day basis, check out Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink).

What's interesting about the study is the fact that these words were hiding in plain site- they weren't disguised or in some way manipulated to get the attention of the subjects. As a matter of fact just the opposite occurred- the 'hypnotic' words were blended right in with 'regular' words. Now, I say the "hypnotic words" meaning "old, Florida, gray, wrinkled' but these words are no more 'hypnotic' than any of the other words on the page. I'd even be willing to bet that you've probably used the words "Florida, gray, wrinkled, and old" before!

Dr. Milton Erickson, generally regarded as the father of modern psychological hypnosis, developed a conversational style of hypnosis that was based on simply talking to people. Erickson was a master, possibly the first person to really incorporate the traditional techniques of hypnosis but use them in a conversational way. He could literally hypnotize anyone just by talking to them, using hypnotic suggestions that bypassed the recipient's conscious mind and cut right to their subconscious.

Chances are you already know and use the words that you would use to start to hypnotize someone subconsciously. How can I know this about you? Well, have you ever used the words "gray, old, wrinkled, Florida" as in the example above? Of course you have!

It's not about learning new words or 'hypnotic words'; it's about using the words that you already know in such a way as to engage the conscious mind so that you can deliver a particular hypnotic suggestion or command to the subconscious mind. Once you master this skill then it is only a question of practice until you can hypnotize anyone just by talking to them.