The Importance Of Rapport In Covert Hypnosis

Covert hypnosis articles > The Importance Of Rapport In Covert Hypnosis

Covert hypnosis is in my opinion heavily dependent on rapport and that's why I've decided to write about it some more here. If you haven't yet listened to the third issue of my covert hypnosis newsletter, don't worry, you will get it soon enough. If you're not yet a subscriber, I suggest you go do that now and come back here to read the article...

So... is rapport really necessary to get people to do what you want? No, of course not. In fact, Richard Bandler, co-inventor of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) says that in order to influence and persuade people, you don't need rapport at all. He even says that rapport is overrated and that many courses on persuasion put too much emphasis on rapport.

This is where I strongly believe that covert hypnosis differs from other influence and persuasion models because of the very nature of elements used in it. Many things can be done without rapport even in covert hypnosis, but the most powerful techniques are heavily dependent on rapport.

Take anchoring for example...

Elicitation of a proper state in a person is hard enough without rapport, but anchoring it is even harder. Sure, it is possible. In fact when you anchor one person, you usually anchor pretty much everyone that are able to see and hear you clearly. But with proper rapport, you can elicit far more states, do it faster and anchor all those states much better and faster.

What is rapport anyway?

Well, like I said in the newsletter, rapport basically means “increased unconscious responsiveness”. This simply means that if two people are in rapport, when one gets excited, the other one gets excited, too. They are “unconsciously linked” and they tend to synchronize not only their state of mind, but bodies too (mirroring).

Don't get rapport confused with trance, though. When people are in rapport, there is a certain degree of trance present, but if you remember from the newsletter, in trance the critical faculty of the conscious mind is suspended to some degree, which isn't necessary in rapport!

OK, so why is rapport so important?

Covert hypnosis is a delicate balance of calibration and leading. Even before you use a technique, you must know what your prospect will most likely respond to and at what level of progress you are with her. After using a technique, you must always know if it “hit” or if it had no effect whatsoever. You do both things with calibration...

Now... you have two choices:

You can consciously be aware of all the body language cues she gives you
You can simply feel her response

Without doubt, the second method is not only easier, but also much better as you can use your conscious mind to prepare for the “next three moves”.

And how do you feel the response?

Easy, you get in rapport with the person (= unconscious connection) and simply notice how YOU feel about it. What's even better, the person will also unconsciously pick up your intentions and will respond even stronger! This is why anchoring works much better when you're in rapport with a person. Their unconscious mind picks up your intent to anchor and responds accordingly while the prospect's conscious mind doesn't have a clue of what just happened – they just feel good about it :)

So... hopefully you now see that rapport isn't only important for the techniques to work properly, but also for you to be able to better coordinate your persuasive messages. If you learn to get in rapport with people, you'll be much more successful with covert hypnosis.

One more thing before I finish... Most beginners think that they have to establish very deep rapport with people they want to persuade. The fact is that it's not really important. Sometimes establishing deep rapport can even be bad for persuasion. So, get used to establishing some rapport with people – just enough to get them to respond to you and to be able to easily detect what's going on inside their mind...