Applying Hypno-teaching

 Hypnosis is the art of communication to influence other by changing the level of consciousness. The consciousness is influenced by brain wave. There are four levels of brain wave; beta, alpha, theta, and delta. First is beta wave, we are in condition of alert and conscious. We are dominated by our logical thinking. Second is alpha wave, we are in relaxed condition. It happens when we listen to music, inhale fresh air and pray. Then, theta wave, we feel between awake and sleep like praying in the middle of the night in silent or deep meditation. The last is delta; we totally sleep (deep dreamless sleep). Can we combine hypnosis and teaching? Yes, we can. The combination of hypnosis and teaching are usually called Hypno-teaching. Hypno-teaching is an effort to decrease the frequency of brain wave into alpha or theta so that students will easily absorb the material and what we say because they feel relaxed and use their subconscious mind. There are six steps to apply hypno-teaching; setting goal, intention and motivation, pacing, leading, using positive words, giving compliment, and modeling.

First is setting goal, intention and motivation. Life without goal is nothing and even God has his own goal. In this case, we also need goal. We have to set what we want to reach. Then, we build our intention and make it strong because strong intention will emerge high motivation to concern and survive to reach our goal. For example, our goal is to make student understand the material and we have strong intention to do it. It’ll motivate us that we can do it. We must believe that we can do it. We must believe that our students are clever and we can do it. You are what you think so think positively.

Second is pacing. There are two kind of pacing; non verbal agreement and verbal agreement. In non verbal agreement, we can do matching and mirroring. It’s a kind of activity to match our posture and gesture to our student. For instance, teacher asks to students, “have you already eaten?” (She puts her hand up) and the students who have eaten will put their hand up. The teacher can also do pacing by verbal agreement like yelling. In pacing, we should use students’ language and connect the material with to the recent news or theme to make them enjoy with us. We also have to update information and knowledge about their language, theme and even gossip. In this case, the goal of pacing is to make their brain wave as same as us so that both teacher and students will enjoy teaching and learning process and what teacher says will come to their mind. So, we need pacing to change students’ perception.

            The third is leading. This is the step of transferring knowledge. As I said before, every word that teacher says will come to students’ mind and they will do it without pressure. How hard the material is, their subconscious mind will catch the material easily. Moreover, the memory that they get that day, will be in their long-term memory.

            Then, we have to use positive word in pacing and leading. We have to know that every word that we say will come to their mind so we must be very careful about it. If we want to say something that students may not to do, we must change the statement from negative to positive. For example:

            Don’t make noise!  =>  Keep silent please!

            The fifth is giving compliment. We have to realize that everyone loves compliment, so do they. Students need compliment. The compliment will encourage them to do more and better. For instance, after asking them to come forward to do task, we can say “thank you, you’re great!” or “very good, thank you”. They will feel more appreciated. Be careful to our compliment! We should give it appropriately not too much and we also have to avoid word “but”. If we use “but”, it means we do compliment and critic at the same time. It’ll ruin our compliment and it’ll be useless. We must change the statement if we want to critic them.

            The last is modeling. Modeling is a process of giving example through speed and act. Teacher must behave. What teacher says and what teacher teaches must be consistent with what the teacher does.

            Let me end by saying “the influence of good teacher can never be erased”. By hypno-teaching, we can influence our student directly to their subconscious mind. Remember, hypno-teaching just can be applied by intention at the first step and the next steps will arouse students’ motivation. Let’s be a good teacher and do the best!