Ainulindale

Our mind is basically divided into two main parts (actually in NLP there's four parts, but I want to keep this simple). That would be conscious and subconscious mind (the other two would be critical factor and unconscious mind. Though, critical factor is more of a threshold between conscious and subconscious mind). Our conscious mind processes what we want it to. Whenever you see something (for example, let's just take this text you're reading), your conscious mind acknowledges it and interprets it so that it would be understandable to you. It tells you what color are the letters, what is the meaning of a word, connects the words into a sentence and then summarizes it and gives you a picture of what you are seeing. I think the conscious mind is boring XD. So lets move on to something more interesting - your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind processes everything. Oh, I really do mean EVERYTHING. If we were to take this text, for example, unlike you conscious mind, that would only be reading these letters, your subconscious mind sees this whole page. It sees the calendar on the right, it sees what I wrote about my songs, it also sees the address bar of your browser and all those buttons you have near. It also sees outside your monitor. Whatever you may have within your visual range your subconscious mind sees it and believe it or not...it remembers it. So basically, if I wanted to study for an exam for which I have to learn say...two pages (wishful thinking), all I would have to do is take a glimpse look at those pages, I don't even have to read the words, and my subconscious mind memorizes it. Now, I know what you're thinking. If that were so, then none of us would ever have to spend a lot of time learning. But that's where the tricky part comes into play. If I were to put away the pages that I just looked at and then tried to recall them, of course, I wouldn't be able to. Now, that's because it's pretty hard to access our subconsciousness. If I were to read those pages for two hours straight than that would be another story. I think that's the way photographic memory works. People with that kind of memory have the ability to easily access their subconscious mind. This is where hypnosis comes into play. If say, after a had a look at those two pages, I were to be hypnotizes by someone who knows how to do it and if he (or she) guided me well enough to those pages, I'm pretty sure I would be able to read them from within my mind. Hmm...that's strange...I'm not sure if this is true, and even though everything I read about this says that it could be done...no experiments were made, or none that I could find. Anyway, more of the powers of hypnosis later.
This also works with an auditive sense. And now that we're here let's talk suggestions. Everything you are and everything you know and believe is stored in your subconsciousness. It all got there while you were little, back then you were very suggestible. When your parents told you - "No, you can't throw rocks at cars!" you immediately accepted it. If not, it was beaten into you (I guess that's one way to bypass the critical factor - more later). Anyway, it became a part of who you are and to this day, you still know you're not supposed to throw rocks at cars. As you grew older, you became more resilient to suggestions and you started questioning them. If you weren't told not to throw rocks at cars when you were young but when you got older then you'd say - "Why shouldn't I? I've been throwing rocks at cars for so long and why should I stop now." That's because it became a part of you. It became your routine (routines are stored in your subconsciousness as well). You reject this idea because you think about it and then you dismiss it because you know that to you it's wrong. So your conscious mind thought about it, rejected it and the suggestion did not pass that critical factor mentioned earlier and did not enter your subconsciousness and therefore did not become a part of who you are. Now, if you're reading this, I guess you're old enough to be questioning everything. Little can be done about your routines and beliefs (unless you use proper procedures).
Let's talk patter interrupt! Yes, I just remembered it. So like I said, inside your mind there are routines that you do everyday. One of such routines, for example, is the one that we all have and that's exactly why it's most commonly used in pattern interrupts. It's a handshake. When someone stretches their hand toward you as if they're going for a handshake you automatically move you're hand to do the same. This is a routine or a pattern. It means that we do it without thinking. If such a pattern is interrupted, that means that somewhere within the act of this pattern you break it or change it, the subconscious mind becomes confused because of the change. You're conscious mind goes like - "What the...this is not in the manual...!!!" And in that moment you are quite open for suggestions. This backs up the fact that you are very suggestible when you are young...because you don't know how to do anything, it's not in the manual...back then your very life was a BIG pattern interrupt, hehe. So, anyway...once you interrupt a pattern, like the one described up there, you are able to say almost anything to that person you interrupted and they will automatically accept it because the suggestion goes around the critical factor, that was weakened by the interrupt and goes straight into your subconsciousness. This can also be used for inducting trance when you want to hypnotize someone but more about that when it's hypnosis's turn.
The method described above is just an easier way of making a suggestion acceptable to someone. I'm sure you've all had pattern interrupts in your life, but no one really used them to this purpose. I had one of my patterns interrupted recently...and that's the first time I actually knew what happened, because I read about it. But there are other ways of suggesting. One of them is persistence. If you repeat something over, and over, and over to someone or to yourself, your body will begin acting according to that suggestion. That's called autosuggestion, which I discovered quite recently and I didn't waste any time, I got right on it! I'll talk more of autosuggestion later if you want me to.
Oh, God...I could go on, and on about this...I'm not even sure what I wrote up there...but there are a lot of words so...I guess I said enough.