A free 18-lesson course on Ericksonian and conversational hypnosis — plus an open-source AI agent you can install in 60 seconds that applies every technique you'll learn.
No signup. No email. No paywall. Apache-2.0 license.
Course, agent, and reference playbook — designed to work together but useful on their own.
From the first induction to running full therapeutic regressions. Every technique written in original language — not paraphrased for liability. HTML lessons that work on phone or laptop. Free forever.
igor)Claude-powered. Walks a session through 7 structured phases. Has a knowledge base of 37 techniques, 68 language patterns, and a browser-automation layer for embedding in chat UIs. Ships with a built-in safety escalation layer.
Decision tree, session timing, full technique catalog with notes on when to use each. The reference you'll actually open during a real session, not just read once and forget.
The course and the agent are designed to be used together. You can start in either order.
Or skim — each lesson stands alone. The material builds, but you can jump in at any part. Most people read Foundations first and then pick what's useful.
One command. You need Python 3.9+ and an Anthropic API key. The agent runs locally — no data leaves your machine except the API call you initiate.
Try igor chat and run a session on yourself. Or roleplay as both operator and client. The agent will walk through all seven phases and use the techniques you've learned.
git clone https://github.com/mikeeshattuk/igor-hypnosis.git
cd igor-hypnosis && pip install -e .
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
igor chatFoundations to deep therapeutic work, ending with the agent itself. Each lesson is a standalone HTML page — no app, no login.
I spent a long time with this material. The way Ericksonian hypnosis reframes language, emotion, and the unconscious as something you can work with rather than fight against — it changed how I communicate with other people and with myself. The problem was that getting to that point required expensive certification courses, a lot of gatekeeping, and the general sense that the good stuff was behind an NDA.
I'm a software person. The natural thing to do after understanding a system deeply is to build something that embodies it. The agent — igor — is the result of that impulse. It runs sessions through seven structured phases, uses a knowledge base of techniques drawn directly from this course, and has a safety layer that recognizes when something needs a human professional. It's open source. You can read every line, extend it, and publish your own version.
The techniques on this site are old. Milton Erickson was doing this work in the 1950s. Bandler and Grinder codified much of it in the 1970s under the name NLP. David Grove developed Clean Language in the 1990s. Stephen Gilligan, Michael Yapko, and dozens of others have refined the field since. What's newer is the synthesis — pulling these threads into a learnable sequence that a curious software person (or therapist, or coach, or just a thoughtful human) can actually absorb. This site is one synthesis among many. It isn't the canonical version and doesn't claim to be.
This is not therapy. It's training material. The agent has a safety layer that detects crisis language and escalates to professional resources rather than continuing a session. If you or someone you know needs mental health support, that's where it belongs. The agent is for self-exploration, for learning, and for practitioners who have real training to use as a tool.
If you study this, become good at it, and start working with real people — please pay it forward. Not money; just thoughtfulness. Ask for consent. Be honest about what you are and aren't. Point people toward professionals when the work goes beyond your scope. The techniques are powerful precisely because the unconscious is real and responsive. Treat that with respect.