With many types of hypnosis work, visualizations are a core aspect of what we hypnotherapists do. While you might occasionally get away with, “Imagine you’re in a beautiful place”, most clients will want a few more clues! So how can you make the visualizations you use more powerful?

How can you make it almost impossible for your client to resist the pull of the image you’re creating? You want them to become completely immersed in their inner world, so what can you do to make it as real for them as possible?

Some therapists make the mistake of trying to describe every little detail of whatever the client is meant to be experiencing in visualization. I say “make the mistake” because it’s an incredibly difficult thing to get every detail right for that particular client. Let’s take an example. Suppose I suggest to a client that as they’re walking along the sandy path through a meadow, they can hear the sound of running water in the distance. They follow the sound, and it brings them to a small river. They walk along the river bank for a few minutes, with the river on their right, enjoying the sound of the water and the warmth of the sun on their skin. After a short distance, they come to some stepping stones, that lead across to the other side of the river…

At this point, half of you might be thinking, “OK – what’s wrong with that?” because my description will have fitted accurately what you were imagining. But the other 50% of readers will have experienced at least one moment of difficulty within that simple paragraph. Firstly, as you imagined following the sound of water and stumbling upon the little river, what if in your mind at that point the river was on your left? The next thing you’re told is that the river’s on your right. It can jar and irritate that you’re being told something that doesn’t match with what you’ve already imagined. The second point of difficulty… what if in your mind there were shady trees lining the riverbank? But the therapist tells you that you can feel the warmth of the sun on your skin.

Now in reality, if you have a good relationship with the client, and they trust you, and they’re willingly trying to make the hypnosis work well, they’ll probably just do a mental shrug and think, “Oh, ok, so the river’s actually on my right…” and carry on. But it’s not ideal, and for clients who find it difficult to visualize clearly, it makes it even more difficult. Also, if we can easily find two jarring moments in a short paragraph like this, just think how many there might be in a whole visualization, especially if you’re trying to be really detailed. One or two you might get away with, but the more often it happens, the less deeply your client will be able to immerse themselves in the visualization.

So, without going into huge detail, how can you make your visualizations as powerful as possible for the client? Here are a few key pointers to help you:

• Allow the client to picture everything for themselves, by being non-directive. Rather than telling them, “the beautiful staircase is made out of intricate, wrought iron, with delicate carvings of plants woven throughout the balustrade”, you can direct them to notice the details for themselves: “As you get closer to the bottom of the staircase, take a moment to look carefully at it. Notice what materials have been used to construct this staircase. Is it intricate or plain? Does it have open sides, or is there a banister or balustrade of some kind?” This way, whatever the client imagines remains “right” and can’t be jarred by your suggestions of something that doesn’t fit with what they’ve already pictured. You’re helping them to build up a detailed image of their inner world, and you’re giving them the key components that are necessary for whatever intervention you are using, but you’re not telling them exactly what it should look like. Later, an analysis of what they created can lead to interesting insights as to the symbolic nature of the different objects in their inner world. This wouldn’t be relevant if you told them exactly what to picture. This technique is particularly important and effective if you’re asking them to visualize an event or experience that they’re preparing for or dealing with. Only they will know what the relevant details really are

• If your client prefers a more directive, authoritarian approach, be really careful about the order of the descriptions you give. If we take the original example about the river, you can circumvent trouble by stating where something is, or is coming from, before saying what it is, so it arrives, fully formed and in the right place in the client’s inner world. So if the river being on the right, and the sunshine were both in some way important, our example might look more like this:

As you walk along that sandy path through the meadow, some distance away to your right you can hear the inviting sound of running water. You follow that sound, and soon you discover a small river running through the open, sunny meadow. Notice how the sunlight dances on the water. Turn so that the water is on your right, and walk along the river bank for a few minutes, enjoying the sound of the bubbling water and the warmth of the sun on your skin. After a while, you notice some stepping stones that lead across to the other side of the river…

Can you see how there’s far less margin for error here than in the original version? It takes a bit of thought and care, but is far less likely to cause the client irritation, or get in the way of their becoming fully immersed in the image.

• Use all of the senses. This is critical for really immersive visualization. Not everyone is particularly visual. In fact some people find it really difficult to conjure up a strong, visual image. But if you involve all of the senses, then it doesn’t matter whether you have a predominantly aural, visual or kinaesthetic client, you will have satisfied their needs, and you will be giving them the information or prompts they require so they can imagine the details vividly in their own way. So as well as talking about what they can see, get them thinking about what they can smell (the warm damp earth? The heady scent of flowers?), what they can taste (the salt of the sea on the air?), what they can hear (the singing of birds? The light bubbling of a stream? The hum of insects on a summers day?) and feel (the polished smoothness of a marble floor? The dry, powdery sand running through their fingers? The cool breeze against their skin?).

By including all the senses, you make it difficult for your client not to let themselves drift deeply into the place you’re creating with them.

• Give them time to explore for themselves. Once you’ve established the “place” that the client is visiting in visualization, giving them a few moments simply to explore and discover this place will help them to sink even deeper into the “reality” of the visualization.

• Ask them what worked. Feedback is such a useful tool. If you plan to re-use the same or similar visualization with the client, ask them what worked well, and whether anything got in the way. If it’s appropriate, ask them to describe some of the details they noticed within the visualization. You can mention one or two of these the next time, knowing that they will be consistent with the client’s image of this “place” or experience.

So there you have it. In short:

• Let them picture everything for themselves
• Be careful about the order you say things in – give locations and directions before giving detailed descriptions
• USE ALL FIVE SENSES (if you do nothing else, do this!)
• Give the client some time to explore their inner world for themselves
• Get feedback. Find out what worked for them, and use it again next time!

It’s a controversial area of hypnosis, this idea of traveling back in our minds to previous lifetimes. I find it fascinating, yet I’m also something of a skeptic. There are those who swear by it and those who swear about it! Many people who are otherwise great proponents of hypnosis, will state that past life regression is utter nonsense, only practiced by quacks. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly many people who have used past life regression to successfully heal issues in their current lives. So is it real? When you take a client back in time to visit previous incarnations, are they really remembering things from a past life? Is their imagination just making stuff up? And how much does it matter which is really the case?

I love thinking about this stuff and having discussions about it. You can usually get a really good debate going if you lob this into a conversation, although it can get a bit heated if you have people who feel really strongly one way or the other.

The evidence for past life regression is mainly anecdotal. The problem is that, in spite of what many people think, and some high profile (and what I consider rather dubious) cases of re-incarnated Cleopatra’s and Priests from the lost city of Atlantis, most clients in regression remember previous lives that are of very little significance to the time that they were set in. Very few people remember being well known figures of history. And of course the details of ordinary people are not well documented in the records of the time, making it difficult to confirm or refute the information that a client recalls in such a session. So we’re left to ponder over whether Mary the scullery maid in a fairly ordinary household somewhere in England ever really existed.

Also, in regression we rarely ask for or hear specific historical details. The purpose of regression is usually linked to current emotional and psychological issues the client is trying to resolve. So in fact it’s usually powerful emotions that people experience in these regressions, rather than detailed recollections that would be useful for verification purposes.

So perhaps our imagination just makes things up for us, when we go into past lives. Let’s say a client has an unexplained fear of water which they would like to overcome so they can enjoy boat trips with their family. In a past life regression, they “discover” that as a child in one of their previous lives they were playing on a river bank, tripped and slipped into the river. They couldn’t swim (as most people couldn’t in the past), and drowned. Often simply discovering the root cause of fear can diminish it dramatically. So the client leaves, feeling much more positive. They feel they now know where their fear comes from, so they naturally feel more in control of it. They know that so long as they learn to swim, there’s no longer any reason to be afraid of being in or on the water.

So does it matter whether their imagination pulled that “past life” out of nowhere, or whether that really is the root of their fear? Personally, I don’t think it does. Our unconscious minds are incredibly resourceful and creative and can help us to access our natural wisdom. So if that unconscious mind creates a metaphor, wrapping it up in a personal story from an imaginary past, who cares so long as it brings about healing and allows the individual to move forward in a positive way! And who are we to judge if the client involved is totally convinced that they have visited a real memory or not?

Perhaps one day we’ll know for certain whether past life memories are real or imagined. My own experiences of being regressed I found intriguing. It leaves me feeling open-mindedly sceptical if that’s not an oxy-moron! It also leaves me with mixed feelings if a client asks if I do past life regressions – am I being professional if I offer this service that many people find genuinely helpful, or am I colluding in promoting a delusional fantasy? Definitely food for thought.

I’d love to know what you, my readers, think on this controversial topic. So do please write in or use the comment box below.