What is the difference between stage and phone hypnosis?
Stage hypnotists are performing for an audience and are there to ENTERTAIN people and make them laugh, cry, and be dramatic.

Phone hypnosis personal between a hypnotist and subject and is not about entertainment but about reaching the goal of the subject. The goal may even to have a sexually climactic experience.

What happens in stage hypnosis?
I personally do not perform stage hypnosis, I WANT to but I have never done it before. So I'm not qualified to talk about it on a clinical level but Michael Streeter sure can. Here he talks about stage hypnosis in his book "Hypnosis: Secrets of the Mind":

"For many people, their only contact with hypnosis may be through the entertainment business - via stage hypnotists. Hypnotic entertainers have been around since the days of Mesmer in the eighteenth century and their popularity is as great as ever. Nowadays, hypnotic entertainers appear frequently on television shows as well as on tour with their stage productions or at fairs. These shows are usually very entertaining and top performers in the United States and elsewhere have lucrative careers.

A stage performer puts members of an audience into a hypnotic trance, bypasses the conscious mind, then uses the power of suggestion on the unsconscious mind.

The key difference, of course, is that on stage or television all this is done purely for entertainment and NOT for therapy, so the kinds of suggestions a performer will put to a member of the audience will be very different from those sued by a clinical hypnotist. Stage-show participants might be told to walk or quack like a duck, flap their "wings" like a bird, dance like a ballerina, confront "aliens" or swat at an imaginary fly. Or volunteers might believe that they have just won the U.S. Masters golf tournament, climbed a mountain, or just trashed their new Cadillac without insurance. There are countless different suggestions that stage hypnotists might put their subjects, very few of which would be used in therapeutic work.

Another important difference is in the speed and depth of a trance. In therapy, the hypnotist will often take a while to induce a trance in the patient. Some individuals are less easy to hypnotize than others, and the therapist will establish which induction techniques are best for a particular client. The therapist will also perform quite a lot of work using a relatively light trance.

By contrast, the stage hypnotist has to work quickly. If he or she takes too long to guide someone gently into trance, the audience might soon be heading for the exists. Also, the entertainers usualy put their subjects into a deep trance, so they can induce phenomena such as amnesia; therefore the stage hypnotist has to make sure that only the MOST hypnotizable members of the audience are used as participants.

This is why performers study their audiences carefully, including during the warm-up. They will be looking for the signs that a person is particularly open to being hypnotized and might use suggestibility tests to see who responds best. Such tests might include asking members of the audience to close their eyes and imagine that one arm is attached to a balloon filled with helium. They are asked to imagine that the arm is getting lighter and lighter, until it starts moving upward, apparently without conscious effort. Anyone whose arms starts moving in such a test is likely to be a good candidate for hypnosis.

The performer will also be looking for a volunteer who shows interest in the subject of hypnosis and is a willing partiipant in the performance. Such enthusiasts are far more likely to make good stage-hypnotic subjects than someone who is skeptical or plainly unenthusiastic.

The need to select the most suitable members of the audience is also the reason why in shows you see a hypnotist choosing far more volunteers than he or she really needs for the act. This allows the performer to reject those who do not subsequently show they can easily be put into a deep trance. None of this happens by accident; stage hypnotists are taught the techniques of choosing the right subjects for hypnosis.

The selection process also helps answer one of the key questions raised about stage hypnosis - can they make the audience perform acts against its ill, against what it believe in, or against what it would normally do? Most, though not al, hypnotists believe that people cannot be made to act against their will, So in the case of stage shows, the fact that the audience participates are already anxious to take part in the show means that they have already agreed to go along with the act. It is true that in usual circumstances they might not normally run around a theater clucking like a chicken. But they have come to a show, they want to take part, and are therefore willing to have some fun in accordance with the nature of the routine.

A good stage hypnotist is no less skilled at trance induction and suggestion than therapeutic practitioners, even if the techniques are used for different purposes. In bygone ares, it is true, fakes sometimes conned the audience into thinking they were putting people into a trance, when in fact the "volunteer" was a stooge of the performer. This no longer happens, because there are so many genuinely talented hypnotists around. Some are, in fact, brilliantly skilled, able to induce a deep trance very quickly and use suggestions swiftly and effectively. Moreover, a number of stage hypnotists have previously been therapists, others go on to become therapists, and some do both at the same time. So the gulf between those who perform stage hypnosis and those who use it for therapy is into as huge as it may seem.

However, stage hypnotists do have different requirements and priorities. First they need to be good entertainers with stage presence. They have to enjoy performing. Also they need to be quite dominant personalities, at least in their shows. In therapeutic hypnosis, the hypnotist and patient are a team, working together. On the stage,the performer is firmly in charge. The suggestions he or she might make are one of the permissive kind where the subject's mind is slowly guided in one direction. The stage performer uses direct, authoritarian suggestions, "You WILL quack like a duck."

The atmosphere of the show is also important. The stage hypnotist wants to encourage a group atmosphere, an excited expectation among the whole audience about what is going to happen. This helps get the volunteers in the mood, as they feel they are truly participating in the show. If the mood is right, the audience participants are already on their way to being hypnotized even before the formal induction process starts. " -- Michael Streeter

What happens in phone hypnosis?
This is the area where I specialize. I perform hypnosis on the telephone to subjects all over the country and throughout the world. My method of induction is more therapeutic than entertaining, as well it should be.

The first thing I like to do is ask the person on the phone what kind of hypnosis they want. The most COMMON thing I hear is "I just want you to have complete control of me" and in that case, I get more creative freedom to do and say whatever I wish. Most of the people who say this have little or no intention of having an orgasm. Some might but for the most part, they just want to let go of their control and let me control their minds.

Some people say "I want to be turned into a woman" and in that case, I specialize their hypnosis into an area that will certainly make them feel more feminine.

Others might say "I've never tried erotic hypnosis and want to see what it's like" -- in this instance I just go for a generic type of erotic hypnosis that involves teasing, arousing, exciting, and relieving their sexual pleasures.

But for the most part, it's a lot easier for me as a hypnotist to know ahead of time what the subject likes. For instance, if the subject likes looking at asses and long legs, it can be of great benefit to both of us if I kinow that ahead of time to be able to throw that into the hypnotic induction.

I spend around 15 minutes or so inducing a light trance and depending on how deep you allow yourself to be, I spend the next 15 minutes making your body feel aroused with sensations aimed to please and cause excitement.

Sometimes the very mention of an arousing situation such as: "Imagine yourself on a red velvet bed in a dark room surrounded by three Brazilian women wearing only think slinky fabric over their hips" can induce a daydream-like state that lets the subject focus on a visualization that helps them get rid of environmental distractions, such as a barking dog in the other room.

Unlike stage hypnosis, I cannot see you. I cannot use visual responses such as watching your arm raise up and down. All I have is your breathing. I listen to your breathing throughout the call to tell how deep you are and how much deeper to take you. The louder and slower your breathing, the more I assume it is working. In that case, I make it more and more intense. If I hear nothing, then I assume I may not be doing something right (when in fact you feel wonderful) and will repeat the same things over and over. So don't be afraid to put the phone to your mouth! Breathing heavy is a good thing!

Most hypnotic phone sessions last between 30-60 minutes. Thirty minutes is recommended for first-time callers.