First Online Hypnosis Session: Zooming Into the Unexpected

Field Notes from a Hypnotist Who Wasn’t Prepared

I used to think online hypnosis would be graceful.

You know - the kind where the client sinks back with half-closed eyes and a slow breath and later says, “That was incredible. I didn’t even notice where I drifted.”

Instead, I got: screens angled too low to see their face and too high to see their arm. Or the bonus level - a frozen video, from which I learned something important: it is entirely possible for a client to get up, talk to me, even start making coffee while I’m still staring at their unmoving body on my screen.

The first online hypnosis session started exactly by the book - and then the book closed.

She was sweet. Young. Suspicious, but curious. We positioned her laptop so I could see her arm. The table was small; the laptop couldn’t go even a centimeter back. So the whole scene shrank into a single frame: the arm. Just the arm. No face. No eyes. And we began.

I gave the usual suggestions - the lightness, the upward drift, the invisible string pulling the wrist gently up. But despite my initial instruction not to move it, she kept adjusting it every five seconds. Scooting. Repositioning.

That hand… wasn’t getting lighter. And it definitely wasn’t rising.

I panicked. Internally. My voice? Calm. But in my mind, a whole plan was already forming: “Abort. Save your dignity. End the call. Pretend the internet died. Turn off the camera and hide under the table.”

But then a tiny, faint, almost suffocated professional voice whispered: “Change tactics.”

So I switched midstream: “Maybe it’s not rising… maybe it’s sinking. Maybe it’s growing heavier, dropping down into your lap.” Except… her elbow was in the middle of the table. Gravity refused all cooperation.

Was she hypnotized… or bored?

I couldn’t see her face, so I imagined it. And of course, my brain chose the most dramatic version: while I stared at the screen, silently praying to the universe for her hand to react, she was watching me, smirking - a slightly raised eyebrow and a mocking smile saying:

“What exactly are we waiting for here, ma’am hypnotherapist?”

I abandoned the arm. Switched to eye catalepsy: “…and your eyelids grow heavy… stick… and you drop into deep comfort…”

I took a risk. Started the countdown. And with all the dramatic flair Zoom can offer:

5… 4… 3… 2… 1… deep sleep.

She collapsed on the table. Face down. As if someone had turned her off with a remote.

Just thump — folded over her arm. Strange. Clumsy. And in some absurd way… perfect.

That’s when my inner sarcastic commentator, the one who appears after the tension dissolves, whispered:

“Perfect. I broke a person.”

Because this is the moment. The moment when everything looks like failure, but something has actually worked.

Well… I had to.  Because the induction isn’t the hypnosis. It’s just the doorway.

The therapist recognises the signs: when the breathing shifts, when attention pulls away from the outside world, when the door to the subconscious cracks open.

But the client? They often need proof in the beginning to feel that “something is happening.” And people trust their own bodies more than your words.

Because the subconscious always hears. Even when the hand doesn’t move.

Later, she said: “It was strange… I couldn’t lift my arms.”

If that isn't hypnosis, then nothing is...