146388976-CHM-Manual

Conversational Hypnosis Mastery

TranscriptManual–Part2

ByIgorLedochowski

©StreetHypnosisAllRightsReserved

CHM Transcript Manual – Part 2

Contents

DVD 23: How to Access the Unconscious Mind by Hiding Metaphors & Similes in

Everyday Language...................... Language.................................... ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................4 ..............4 DVD 24: How to Use Universal Symbols to Directly Re-Program the Unconscious Mind

.......................... ........................................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ..........................34 ............34 DVD 25: Critical Performance Skills to Make Your Hypnotic Stories Totally Spellbinding

.......................... ........................................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ..........................56 ............56 DVD 26: How to Automatically Create Perfect Hypnotic Metaphors Using These Four

“Mental Machine” Methods ........................... ......................................... ............................ ............................ ............................ ........................69 ..........69 DVD 27: How to Turn Even the Most Boring Story into One Where People Hang on

Your Every Word .......................... ........................................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ........................102 ..........102 DVD 28: How to Use Compelling Jungian Archetypes to Add Dazzling Power to Your

Hypnotic Stories ........................... ......................................... ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ........................116 ..........116 DVD 29: 20 Instant Plotlines You Can Fit Around Any Event that People Find Utterly

Riveting................................ Riveting.............................................. ............................ ............................ ........................... ........................... ............................ ....................134 ......134 DVD 30: The Hero’s Journey Revealed & How to Put Any Story Together to Guarantee

a Total Hypnotic Blockbuster ........................... ......................................... ........................... ........................... ............................ ....................154 ......154 DVD 31: The Most Important Unique Story You Can Tell that Defines how Strongly

People will be b e Influenced by You................................ You.............................................. ............................ ............................ ......................179 ........179 DVD 32: Powerful Conversational Hypnosis Metaphors in Action & How to Make a Big

Impact on People Peop le at a Very Deep Level ............................ .......................................... ............................ ............................ ...............211 .211 DVD 33: The 7 Hypnotic ‘Super Stories’ of Influence and Exactly When to Use Them to

Get What You Want............................... Want............................................. ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ...............238 .238 DVD 34: How to Use Milton Erickson’s ‘Teaching Tales’ to Covertly Re-program

Anybody’s Unconscious Mind................................... Mind................................................. ............................ ............................ ........................269 ..........269 DVD 35: How to Bring to Life Your Conversational Hypnosis Storytelling Skills and How

to Hijack Other People’s Stories and Feed Them Back to Them ........................... .................................301 ......301

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DVD 36: The Secret to Combining Stories into Hard Hitting Hypnotic Code that the

Conscious Mind has Absolutely No Hope of Stopping ........................... ......................................... ......................319 ........319 DVD 37: Conversational Hypnosis Mastery – How to Put It all Together Quickly &

Easily ............................ .......................................... ............................ ............................ ............................ ............................ ........................... ..........................339 .............339

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Hi. Good morning.

Igor:

It was very charming. When I was in Thailand last year as part of a program, I was doing some volunteer work and they had all these little kids. In Asia the position of teachers are very high status positions. All the kids are sitting there going, good morning teacher Igor. I’m going, all right. It was a little unusual. Are you all good and rested? How many of you have been flashers? Did you enjoy it? Did you get some interesting results and responses? More importantly, did you notice how if sometimes you made the eyebrow flash but didn’t follow through and then it was just a moment of confusion. They’re like, I don’t know. Then other times you’ll do the eyebrow flash and you follow through, and that’s when it seems like a more instant connection is created and so on. Did you notice that in the live world and that freaky jungle of humanity? It’s important, the reason why we have those three key steps in the method – the inner smile sets the context, con text, the emotional thing. The flash opens up, it’s like an invitation to treat and saying hey, let’s have interaction here and then that mirroring part that you do at the end with maybe a friendly smile or something as well. That maintains the momentum so it clicks in place so it actually develops into something. You don’t just do the flash and hope for the best, right? Good. What I want to start doing now has nothing to do with that at all, something completely different, as Monty Python would say. I like to focus the last four days, so like the advanced portion of the advanced conversational hypnosis thing on something I think is very important. It’s one of the most fundamental vehicles in conversational hypnosis. Everyone knows about,

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everyone talks about it yet so few people can actually do it. Any ideas what that might be? Storytelling Hypnotic stories are incredibly powerful. Stories alone are incredibly powerful. The problem is most people teach you what to do, not how to do it. Oh, it must be the same structure and the same shape and you have to have these characters that mirror, but not too closely. Well, what does all that stuff mean? If you look at the academia around storytelling and so on you will see that there are literally, hundreds of categories that people have pulled up. In just metaphors alone there are extended metaphors, mixed metaphors, pataphors, dying metaphors, root metaphors. The list is huge. Then you have other things – allegories, similes, parables, anecdotes, this huge list of different vehicles that have story-ness to them and it can be overwhelming. By the way, it’s worth investigating all those things, but like anything else, it’s not worth focusing on all of it at once. Those things become useful once there’s a base skill through which it all feeds. The other thing you should know is that contrary to popular belief, storytelling is one of the most natural things in the world. Who here thinks they’re not a good storyteller? Anyone here think they’ve got issues with storytelling? If you don’t think you’re a great storyteller and incidentally, I would put myself in that category and have more many years, then it’s purely and simply because when you’re trying to tell your stories, you’re trying too hard. To the extent that you stop, you might surprise yourself with how much better your stories are then you first realized. To give you a very personal example, when I was in school, I was I don’t know, 13 or 14 or something like that in one of the English classes. It was, in fact, probably the only time in English class I was actually asked to write a story it’s kind of bizarre. In eight or nine years of education or pre-university education, I’d been asked to write one story, not quite sure why and I put my heart and soul into this.

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I was like, at the time, into the whole fantasy adventure genre, so I filled the next five pages with as many clichés as I could stick on a page. I guess looking back on it now it would be quite an embarrassing piece of work. It wasn’t good but, of course, I’m just putting the little favorite bits of all the things I’d read into one story, which probably made no sense and got a rather poor result. The interesting thing about that poor result is it destroyed my faith in the idea of storytelling. I thought I just haven’t got it. I felt terrible. The whole page was covered in marks and things like cliché, dull, boring and uninventive. I took all those things on-board and thought I guess that’s what I am. For the next, I don’t know, 10 years or so I didn’t really even try or attempt anything to do with storytelling. Jokes and especially storytelling jokes really didn’t take much either – I mean again, I kind of get carried away and so on. Then one night something very interesting happened. I’d been out with some from, you know, at university, some 15 years ago now I guess. I’d been out with some friends and we’d had a few drinks, so I was kind of feeling quite good and been laughing all night, you know those kinds of nights. I was making my way back to my apartment block and it was one of those beautiful nights. Where I went to university in Exeter is out in the west country of England and its the closest to the ‘Lord of the Rings’ country as you can get in the U.K. There are tiny little winding lanes, leafy farms and farmers with little haystacks coming out of their ears. So it’s a little picturesque scene. I’m walking and it’s late at night. There’s a little bit of mist on the ground, its England so there’s always mist. The moon is shining and for some reason there’s no one around. It’s very quiet, a peaceful quiet. I don’t know, maybe because I was a little happy, the whole scene sort of struck me a little more fully. I really liked it. I was inspired by it to some degree. When I actually got home and I went to bed, I just didn’t want to go to bed yet, it was too soon. I wanted to somehow capture that moment. Now maybe it’s because I was a little drunk, but I decided to write something.

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Only this time I wasn’t really focusing on writing for anyone. The only reason for me to write was to try to capture that feeling I had, because it made me feel good. I didn’t really care who would read this because I didn’t think anyone would. I didn’t care what would come of it all I cared about was that as I wrote, the words were actually making me feel more of what I had done a moment ago. I don’t know if that makes sense to you or not. Anyway, I finished it and I read r ead through it and, of course, c ourse, I had a little glow inside. Some might call it the alcohol. Then I went to bed and forgot all about it. I kind of went off the next day to lectures and stuff happened and all the rest of it. A few days later I came back and I see this thing. This is in the days before laptops were easy and cheap to get hold of, so I had written most of that by hand. I crossed things out and used another word because it just felt better and so on. I was going through my notes for the last few days, and somewhere in the middle of this stack I found these couple of pages. I read them and went wow, that’s pretty good I still like it. Then a friend of mine read it and said, this is pretty good. I went really? That started to change my opinion a little bit and then the same friend asked, can I borrow this, I’ll just type it up for you so you’ll have it nice and neat. I said that’s great, fine. They gave it back to me a few days later all typed and that was nice. Anyway, I forget all about this and life goes on as life does. At the end of the year, I get a little envelope through the post. I open it up it’s from the university, so I’m thinking did I do something wrong? Did they catch me cheating? I thought I was good enough that nobody noticed.

So this envelope comes through the post and I open it up. I’m kind of curious why the university would write to me? Inside is a letter and a check. I’m going money is good, but why? It turns out my friend had actually entered this little essay, story or whatever it was – it was actually written in verse because I couldn’t write stories so I had to write in verse, of course – had entered it into a literary competition that was held on campus. It wasn’t

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particularly well-known, but I think I won second prize. I had no idea. So I took the money, got drunk and wrote again. The interesting thing is even though that kind of experience was very positive and other things started happening, I still did not consider myself a storyteller. When I came across the whole idea of hypnosis and storytelling I went, how the hell am I going to do that? How am I going to tell a story to people? Then of course, I’d go around telling everyone stories about how poor I was at storytelling and the whole time I didn’t realize that it’s when I wasn’t paying attention to whether or not a story was coming out that they were all coming out. Does that kind of make sense? The irony is you’ve all told thousands of stories over your life. You’ve probably told dozens if not hundreds of stories just this week we’ve been together without even realizing it. Stories about who you are, where you come from, what you do, what you don’t like and what you do like. It’s just that we don’t recognize them when they come in. What I’d like to do today is to begin to do a couple of things. First, to stimulate your minds to understand what those unconscious building blocks are, from which stories emerge. A story, by the way, in terms of what we’re doing in stimulating the unconscious in these ways, can be expressed sometimes in three or four words. Was it Hemmingway who had the competition of a five-word story, I can’t remember. They slip out in all the things that we do, so what I’d like to do today is focus on developing that skill, just so you realize that you’ve been doing it all along, now you can do it on purpose and you can build on it to create what we more formally recognize as a story and so on. Does that make sense? The first thing we need to do is have everyone stand up and put all those delicate cups of coffee away to one side where people will not tread on them or destroy your lovely notes. Now, without really thinking too much about it, because as you may have noticed, thinking is our enemy right now. Thinking is a good thing to do, but thinking is something that happens when you’re not doing, right?

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Right now we’re going to be focusing on doing, so I would encourage you to save the thinking until after the seminar is over when you can reflect back on the experiences you’ve had when there’s actually something worth thinking about. The first thing I want you to do is walk around and chat with random people, just briefly little 30-second conversations. I’d like you to tell as many different people as possible in this room something that they do not know about you. It doesn’t have to be your biggest, darkest secret. I murdered someone last night and he’s in your sandwich. I mean a heads up would be nice, but you don’t have to give yourself away that much. It could be something as simple as I like to ski. Something trivial is fine. The point is to go around and start telling different people something they don’t know about you. If you want to use the same thing again and again, by all means do so, just please make it a little bit more elegant each time. Although, if you want to experiment with how many different things can come out without your realizing it, that’s fine too. Is everyone cool with that? All right guys, take a minute to do that quickly. Off you go. It’s relatively easy to do isn’t it? It’s easy to tell someone something they don’t know about you yet because let’s face it, you’ve lived with yourself all your life and they haven’t. One thing I want you to notice is who found the things that the other people were telling you actually relatively interesting? Who considered that what they were telling other people might be relatively boring, anyone? About half of the people in the room maybe. Consider this, everyone in the room put their hand up when asked if something they were hearing was interesting, only you put your hand up when you thought what you were saying was boring. So either you didn’t talk to anyone or you might consider that there might be something else going on.

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What I’d like to do now is do exactly the same thing again. You may reuse your secrets or you may come up with new ones. It’s up to you. Only this time if you haven’t done so already, I would like you to place your particular secret, the thing that someone doesn’t know about you, into a specific context.

For example, if you went around saying to people I like to ski you might say something like I like to ski. Last winter I was in Whistler and on one particular day, it was a beautiful sunny day, I went down the slope and I had a great time. It doesn’t have to be a story. It doesn’t have to be great. It just has to flesh out the secret and put it into some kind of a context. Does that make sense? So for a context, of course, we’ll need a location, we’ll need some kind of timeframe and we’ll need some kind of action. Those are the basic things inside of a context. Off you go. Just spend a minute doing that. All right, how was that? Did you enjoy it? Which one was more interesting, the first or the second exercise? The second. I wonder why. So, we’re going to spend some time focusing on some specific types of stories over the next few days just to focus your attention in terms of how to use them. Once you can understand the different types of stories, then when you get across all the other varieties, you’ll have more ideas of how to use them, how to actually do them and what they’re useful for. The kinds of stories I want to focus on right now over the next few days is anecdotes. An anecdote is essentially a story you tell about another person. It could be yourself or someone else. It’s a real story about a real person, something that actually happened. Then we’ve got the idea of analogies, similes and simple metaphors. These abound everywhere and we’ll be looking at those more closely today. They’re some of the most useful tools for persuasion, because they’re like

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little throwaway comments that actually just put a lot of richness into what we’re doing. Then there’s the fable or the classic story. These are stories that have, shall we say, formal story-ness to them. We know that they’re stories from the beginning or somewhere in the middle of it. We recognize the story-ness of it. We realize it’s not “supposed to be real,” so we forgive the story for, shall we say, violating some things about how the world works, how physics works and so on but, of course, the symbolic meaning still has a lot of impact on us. Finally, and this is what we come onto more towards the end of the whole advanced session over the next four days, is something called hijack stories. If the idea of hijacking stories sounds intriguing to you, you best stick around. There will be no Marshalls to protect you now. Don’t tell hijack stories in the airport you might get in trouble. I want to focus now on just the simplest building blocks of what is involved in stories that give story-ness to stories and make them feel richer and something you can slip into normal conversations. People won’t necessarily recognize them as stories, but they’re stimulating the same part of the mind that stories do. What I’m talking about is a category I like to call hidden metaphors. These are the metaphors used in everyday life, but we’re not really aware of it. The first of these hidden metaphors are classically known as dead metaphors. A dead metaphor is a phrase or an idea that has become so commonplace that people don’t even realize that a metaphor is being presented. Has anyone ever met someone who’s a real pain in the neck? Did they really have a big neck with pain signals jumping out or is something else going on there? How many people, when someone is described as a pain in the neck flash a visual image of someone’s neck actually hurting and then realizes oh, there’s an analogy here; hence, they make me feel as though someone was chiseling my neck or something? Has anyone here ever say something like, you know what, I can’t read that report right now that’s just going to give me a headache? Do you actually

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get a headache when you do it? Sometimes yes, but mostly it’s just too much information, isn’t it? Alex is saying that it’s very interesting when you learn a different language. Each language has its own dead metaphors they don’t translate. So as soon as you come across a dead metaphor in a new language, you will interpret it literally. It’s like, what the hell? Why should the shoes be on the wall? What does that mean? Then as you get the sense of it, when it’s used, how it’s used, and more importantly, sometimes people will actually be able to tell you why it’s used that way, what the bigger metaphor is, it’s kind of a sample of a bigger metaphor. Then it makes sense and then suddenly you start using it, and you stop thinking about the image. Does that make sense? Dead metaphors are bound. They can be useful, but it’s also very useful to know when they arise, because it tells you a little something about how the other person populates their unconscious realm. Remember, the unconscious mind works symbolically. So, if you imagine, the world we see out here is just a reflection of the world that’s inside of us. Their dead metaphors will tell you what that world looks like to some degree. What I’d like you to do now is get into groups of say five people, just take five minutes and come up with a list of common dead metaphors that we use in everyday life. That was a red flag. Do you see where we’re going with this? Find four or five people, get into a nice little group and just write down maybe a dozen or 20 or so dead metaphors that are used in daily language. We’ll come back and talk a little bit about it and go from there. Off you go. Was that interesting? Would it be fair to say there are quite a few dead metaphors in the English language? It’s probably easier to list what they’re not then what they are. What kinds of things did you find? Give me some examples of the dead metaphors you have? → →

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Dead as a doornail He/she is on the ball




→ → → → →

It’s like pulling teeth Shoe’s on the other foot now Crazy as a loon Tip of my tongue She’s a fox

Now, I’m guessing people aren’t saying they’re actually attracted to animals, right? What other things? → →

A shot in the dark Nerves of steel

Let’s keep that as a list for the moment. I know there are hundreds more of these. Notice how all of this is actually metaphorical communication. We know what it means and it has nothing to do with what they’re actually saying. When someone’s on the ball, they don’t literally have a ball and they’re not sitting on it going, mine! So something happens inside our brains that let’s us know what those things mean and they have cultural reference points. This is a cultural shortcut to a whole bunch of reference experience. Do you see how that works? It also tells us a little about what the mental movies are that are running inside people’s minds. Have you noticed how some people use a lot of sports metaphors? Other people use more military metaphors. Others will have artistic metaphors. It’s actually telling you how they live their life, how they view life and, believe it or not, it tells you a lot about their values, doesn’t it? What I’d like you to do now is, in your same groups, I’d like you to explore some of these things. I’d like you to explore from your own personal opinion, I’d like you to give me a metaphor for what life is for you, what business or work is like for you and just present it. For example, you might say life is like a bowl of soup. It’s warm, but sometimes something crunchy comes and surprises you. It really doesn’t matter what it is, the point is I’d like it to be something about how you genuinely feel about life, about love, about your work, about family or any of

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these categories. Does that make sense? The metaphor has to somehow resonate with how you perceive life. Cassie: ♦

Igor:

Does it have to be a dead metaphor, or can it be your own?

I prefer it to be your own. If it happens to be a dead metaphor, that’s fine. In other words, if it happens to be something that most people talk about like love is a battlefield, that’s a common metaphor amongst a lot of people. But it doesn’t have to be. You choose whatever expresses how you view life most naturally. Is everyone clear on that? All right, just pick a couple of categories like– love, life, work, play or family. These are big, broad categories and then as a group share what your own personal metaphors are that summarize your attitude. Off you go. This is still the warm-up phase we haven’t actually got into anything we can do with this stuff yet, but already wouldn’t you say it’s fairly interesting, the stuff that’s coming out? Who here was surprised by some of the life, love or whatever metaphors that other people were giving to them? Who here wanted to argue with them, anyone? No, you’re wrong it’s clearly not like that. You’re only going to get yourself in trouble that way. Don’t put your hands up because I know we all do this sometimes. So give me some examples of life metaphors that people had just simple little vignettes.

– Life is like a box of chocolates. Oh, the Forrest Gump one. There’s the box of chocolates. What other kinds of metaphors are there? Go ahead.

– A clown at a funeral. That’s what life is like? Wow, that’s interesting. Although to be fair, that can be taken two ways, can’t it?

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– Life is like an artichoke. Interesting. Okay, what other life metaphors are there?

– Life is like a bowl of cherries, sweet and juicy, but has the pits. Notice how each of these things extrapolate to something else. Go ahead.

– Amazing adventure or nothing at all. Notice how the quality of your life will change according to what you view life to be like. So I want you to explore that a little bit now. You can do this in a group if you like, and then you can start playing with them on your own a little bit. Let’s say that we had three different people with three different relatively common life metaphors. 1. One would be life is like a battlefield. 2. Another one might say life is more like an adventure or an explorer. 3. Another one might be life is more like a community or a builder constructing a house. How would each of those three people express that metaphor differently? In other words, what kind of language would they be using that fits the context that they have? For example, the war metaphor. What kind of language or phrases, do people who consider to be a battlefield or a war, what would they be using?

– – – – – –

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Strategy and tactics Struggle Take positions Weapons Win/lose Battles




Do you see the whole military metaphor here? It’s about winning and losing, it’s about breaking people, it’s about taking positions and it’s about annihilating, destroying or being destroyed. There’s not much room for things like mercy, fun and enjoyment. Let’s have a fun war. Yay! Let’s go to someone then who looks at life more like an explorer, it’s an adventure. What kind of vocabulary would that person be using?

– – – – – – –

Discovery Navigate Surprise Amazement Unexplained Twist Curiosity

Do you see how that creates a very different experience? I’m not going to say it’s going to be better or worse than the war ones, but if you tried that world on, doesn’t life look very different? Isn’t your reason for getting up or your motivations change quite significantly? Student: ♦

Igor:

Would this key into the 16 drivers?

I’m sure that at some level it might very well do, but there’s no research on it so I couldn’t give you answer either way, but it’s an interesting thing to experiment with, isn’t it? What about the community builder? What kinds of things do people who have building metaphors, what kinds of things do they use? What community metaphors?

– – – –

Sharing Together Planning Common good

What I want you to do now, this is still not necessarily part of the persuasion process. I’d like you to play with the idea of entering different realms,

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different psychological realities, just to that very simple vignette. Don’t people talk like this constantly anyway? They drop these little vignettes in everything they do? Writing a contract is like having a good meal. You have to make sure you pay attention to it or you’ll waste all the good stuff. What the hell does writing a contract have to do with a meal, but they envision or experience it that way. What I want you to do inside your group now is there will be four varieties we’ll do here. I’d like you to adopt a different way of looking at life, love, work and so on, than the metaphor that you carried into this room with you this morning, just to see what it feels like or to notice how it might be a little different. The first one we’ll do is just a simple simile. A simple simile is to use the Forrest Gump example is life is like a box of chocolates. You do not even explain it. You do not have to add on that, you’ll never know what you’re going to get. There’s no explanation necessary. Just say, life is like a box of chocolates just put it out there and notice what that feels like, for example. Then they have to explore a little bit. What kind of vocabulary might you be using if you actually believed that? If life is like a box of chocolates, what might I be saying well, that’s sweet and a little bitter? That’s not my taste. Overall, it’ good I’ll die nice and fat. Do you see where we’re going with this? I want you to just explore the simple simile level. You don’t need to explain them yet we’ll come onto that afterwards. I’d like you to add one more category into the ones that we’ve been talking about. We’re talking about life – everyone love, work– these are some big ones, family. I’d like to include the category of mastering hypnosis. What is your metaphor for mastering hypnosis and then try out different ones. No need to explain anything. Just throw out some vocabulary that will be a consequence of that, but no need to explain the actual metaphor yet. Make sense? Off you go.

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Was that enjoyable? I’d like to add an extra half to this exercise now that you’ve kind of warmed up into it. Now you have a sense of what it feels like to create a simile. In other words, life is like this and then some of the vocabulary comes out of it. The first question I want to ask you is, how much more real or how much stronger do you feel about that new reality when you start talking about the vocabulary that relates to it? Does it increase the sensation a little and make it a little bit more real for you? That’s how language creates realities. If you used a vocabulary that does not support your primary metaphor, it kills the metaphor. It pops out of it. This is how people, for example, create poor suggestions. Their phrasing of a suggestion does not live in the same world as someone who has a particular experience being suggested. Do you see how that works? You want to make sure that your language is always in support of the vocabulary that follows the hypnotic reality that you are creating. The second point is going to be made in a moment when you contrast the following. You’ve all hopefully, been using the formula life is like, hypnosis is like, or mastering hypnosis is like, work is like and so on. What I’d like you to do now is go from a simile to a true metaphor, and all you have to do to do that is drop the word like. Life is a bowl of cherries. Work is a walk in the park. Love is ice cream on a hot sunny day. Drop the word like and then I’d like you to compare how you feel when you drop the word like to when you actually had the word like in it. Is it the same or is it different? That’s the only question to ask yourself. So the question is as soon as you come up with a metaphor, just spend 30 seconds coming up with a vocabulary of that. To some extent you’ve already done it with a simile. All I want you to do is contrast the similes you already have, convert them to a metaphor and see if something changes when you do. You’ve already seen a change when you added the vocabulary, have you not?

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Now see what happens when you drop the word like and just present a genuine metaphor, what the impact is. The language is already there, and if you want to add the language afterwards to compare like to like, that’s fine, but the key thing is comparing what you already have, which is a simile, to a pure metaphor. Make sense? It’s easy to do, right? Off you go. How was that? Was that interesting? What happened when you dropped the word like? Did it get stronger or weaker? Students: Stronger. Igor:

It became more real. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Let’s turn this microphone on because I suspect you have some interesting comments or insights you want to make.

Student:

I think it depends on what it was because, if you said, mastering hypnosis is like climbing a mountain or mastering hypnosis is climbing a mountain, for us it got more real. But, if you said, life is like a box of chocolates or life is a box of chocolates, that didn’t make as much sense and it was harder to associate being a box of chocolates with like a box of chocolates.

Igor:

Did anyone else find that sort of thing as well? So, there will be things in each person’s mind that will be more attracted or less attracted to the reality you’ve created. The reality in which we become inanimate objects is harder for Westerners to accept; hence, it becomes less real. Does that make sense? That has to do with culture and indoctrination. If you go to some of the more Shamanic societies, especially like the jungles of South America, Peru and going through the whole Amazon Basin, the idea of becoming an object is very standard. So life being a box of chocolates– if they have boxes of chocolates in the jungle I guess– would not be that wild of an idea; hence, the impact would

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be greater. Do you see how these other things are going on, on the outside that will increase or decrease the likelihood that they can accept your metaphor, which is a very important question, can that person, given his cultural background, accept the metaphor, understand it? We don’t understand becoming things. Do you see how that works? That’s why we have similes as well as metaphors because sometimes we need to drop back to the like so people can accept it as something more distant as a reality that they could grow into, versus that they have to be inside of. Do you see the difference? It is a subtle point, but it increases the likelihood of something being accepted that might otherwise have been rejected. Is this good stuff? Student:

When I said life is a train with unlimited fuel, there was no expectation to explain anything else. When I said, life is like a train with unlimited fuel, it’s like the other person wanted to ask me more.

Igor:

Right and why do you think that is? Well, it has to do with levels of consciousness. Life is like, appeals more to the conscious mind. We’re not saying it is something, so consciously you’re going okay well, justify it. Life is a train is appealing more to an unconscious process. Remember, how does the unconscious mind reason? Association Life is a train. No need to explain. Life is like a train. Well, please explain. You’re talking literally to different parts of their minds. Let me ask you this. Did anyone here find it difficult to actually switch from saying, life is like a train to saying life is a train? Did anyone here feel like I can’t really say that? Do you know why you felt that way? That’s your conscious mind interfering. You’re switching across to a more metaphorical part of your brain and the conscious mind is interfering. Life clearly isn’t like that. That’s your reality strategy saying, it’s only like it. It isn’t it. But, of course, in order for it to be like it, at some level it still is it. So once again, we’re back to what Arthur discovered which is, if you need something to be accepted, although it might be a little bit more difficult for them to accept initially, you soften the blow, the conscious mind feels accepted because it’s like something it isn’t it. Then over time you can make

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it that thing, make it that reality and so it becomes more acceptable because they’re more used to it now. Does that kind of make sense? The comment there was to follow up what we’re saying, which is if you make a comment straight out, some people might reject it if it goes against a conscious idea that’s already in existence. But by softening, the simile is the metaphorical equivalent of a language softener, isn’t it? Do you get a sense of why some of the experiences you’ve been having were there when you were having them? Hopefully, that starts explaining some things. Student:

Just to go off the conscious-unconscious, what you were just discussing about, I noticed even amongst our group a lot when we were using the metaphors, people’s breathing starts to relax, people closed their eyes. It was as if we were all going into trance just by using the metaphor.

Igor:

Because metaphors are more about experience, aren’t they? They are a revivification of a symbolic reality, as opposed to a physical reality. Interesting? Notice how many people drop these little hypnotic realities around them in normal conversation without having any idea of what they are doing. Isn’t that something?

Student:

It was just interesting observing all the trance signals and signs just from a simple sentence.

Igor:

A great observation thank you for that

James:

It seems to be me that if I use the word like or as, I’m allowing the person to let me have that experience. My mind says okay, well that’s your reality and so it’s okay for me to kind of view it, but when I move to it is, that’s something I need to adopt.

Igor:

The like is the equivalent of saying here is a window into my world, have a look. The other one is saying, come into my world and experience it. Make sense? Hence, the softer version is something you present when it’s less likely they’ll accept it, but if your metaphor is so charming, they might just want to drive into it and say wow, I want that. Does that make sense?

Student:

Are you saying that the word like is a softener?

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Igor:

Yes. More importantly, it’s what the word like does. It’s the difference between a simile and a genuine metaphor. A simile is rationally more acceptable. A metaphor is experientially more concrete; hence, it has a bigger impact. Your choice points are; are they likely to accept the full experience or do they need a taste of it first before I can get them to dive in and have the full experience. That’s really the main question you have to ask yourself. Now remember the pacing and leading induction we did a few days ago? You should right now be having some thoughts around using similes and metaphors in similar ways, hopefully. Some sign to click there? Now I have an important question for you. It has to do with evaluating character. Let’s say I know someone who is in prison now and what he used to do with most of his time was go around with a razor sharp knife – and I apologize for the graphicness of this, but it will help you validate the character. He used to cut people open so he could reach in and take out their internal organs. Is that a nice person? Is that a good person? He’s a surgeon and he’s in prison for tax evasion. But notice something. If I change my vocabulary – why do doctors speak the way that they do? They’re not human beings they are patients. They don’t have a knife they have a scalpel. They do not cut they make an incision. They don’t open them up they open a cavity or they find a cavity of some sort. They have created a whole new vocabulary in order to create a reality, in which it’s okay to carve people open and take out their internal organs, something, which in normal society, is not allowed. Something that would make most of us feel squeamish, ill and emotionally upset about it or even contemplating the idea, yet they do it on a day-to-day basis. How can they do that? They have to have a vocabulary that puts them into a reality in which it’s absolutely okay to do that. They can never mix the two realities because the minute they mix the two realities, now they are butchers. Now they are

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harming people. Do you see the difference? Incidentally, those of you who want to work with people in hospitals preparing them for surgery, the same ideas – doctors do it to shield themselves and they don’t realize it. They don’t do it to their patients though. So a patient still thinks someone’s going to carve me open. Someone’s going to take something out, I’m going to bleed. That’s part of where the fear and the pain and the slow recovery comes from, because they’re in the wrong reality. So one of the things you do to prepare someone for surgery is to put them in a better reality, one where they’re not going to be cut open. Does that make sense? So hopefully, you’re beginning to understand that even though we started relatively slowly with some simple example’s these are things that happen in language all the time that actually, a lot more is going on underneath the surface than we care to realize usually. When you appreciate this, your power to influence others goes through the roof, because you can hear just in the way that they speak to you what their life is like. What is their internal reality that they’re operating from like? What are their values that allow this world to work, which means you no longer have to do a full value solicitation if you listen closely enough, you can take some pretty damn good educated guesses. Now until you get there, by the way folks, I’m not suggesting you go out there and make it happen straightaway. No. This is a process that will require do your classic value solicitation, ask the direct questions and you’ll get the feedback. Then do a normal conversation and what will happen is you’ll start to realize that people who value this sort of thing will speak in these kinds of ways. Suddenly, you’ll see the reality that’s there in front of them. It’s kind of like being invited into their mental movie. It will not happen overnight, but it might happen over a week. Who knows? Student:

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I do a lot of business and obviously, there are a lot of war metaphors at meetings. Our competitors were at war or even interacting with someone. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



♦

Igor:

How can you out-frame using a different metaphor to replace that?

We’ll come onto that as the course continues. Not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, if you don’t have a decent answer to your own question by say lunchtime tomorrow, feel free to ask me again, it’s just that we need some tools in place before we can do that. A very simple answer, by the way, on a very simplistic level is to go from simile to metaphor like we just did. We have to destroy the competition. Well, you know this project is like swimming on the lake or being in a lifeboat. Either we all drown or we all make it. You just throw that out as an idea and over time you evolve that into a metaphor, but we have different vehicles for doing that. Does that help you? Are you getting a little bit excited? When I started to get the sense of the stuff we’re talking about and by the way, it took me a long time to try to figure it out from a Jungian analysis and all kinds of other little bits and pieces. I got a little shiver, a little tingle of excitement down my spine because the potential here is huge and the beauty is, more so than the stuff we did before, the conversational hypnosis patterns and the classic things that people look for. This stuff is more invisible and potentially more powerful because it’s so invisible, and because it goes straight to that symbolic reality at which the unconscious mind likes to operate. You don’t even need any overt trance at this point. As soon as people accept the metaphor you’ve presented, they enter a different world. If they enter a different world, different rules apply which means their conclusions are met, which means different behaviors come out and different feelings come through. It can happen literally in a five-minute conversation, if you present the hypnotic reality in a way that’s acceptable to them. Isn’t that something? And you thought the highlight was over. What I want to do now is to see if we can breathe life into these similes and metaphors. You started already a little bit. How? Well, you started choosing the vocabulary that goes along with that reality, right? What I want you to do

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now is create what’s called an extended metaphor . In an extended metaphor, you take vehicles that sit within the realm you just created and you present them. For example, someone talked here about life is a train with unlimited fuel. You might extend that metaphor by talking about all the happy passengers get to see all the sights as they go by, and when they feel like it, they’ll just pull the stop sign, get off and have a nice day before they get back on and go somewhere even better. Do you see how we’re breathing more life into that reality by extending the mental movie it’s creating? The vocabulary is important because it will leak out in normal everyday interactions, but by designing that mental movie – it’s called the competency equivalent is made, which is life is the train. Then suddenly, everything that happens to the train will be accepted as something that happens to you in life. The beauty of this, of course, is it’s just a metaphor. You’re just drawing little mind pictures. They must be harmless, surely. Do you see how this works? So, we’re going to go back to the metaphors you had before – the similes and metaphors. Feel free to start with a simile; get the vocabulary and shape it into a metaphor. But then extend the metaphor so that more stuff is happening in that mental movie, supported by the vocabulary, but now rather than just having that train going down the tracks, you have all the things that happen on and off the train to make it more real. Just spend a few minutes doing that please. Off you go. Okay, I’m sorry I’m rushing you a little bit. I realize that, there is just a lot of wealth and depth that you can explore with these things on their own. We could quite happily spend the next two days just doing the exercises we’re doing now and letting them unfold. However, that wouldn’t allow us to do a lot of the other things I want to do with you. Is it okay if we rush through some of the things to get the core foundations that will allow you to do some pretty amazing things with storytelling?

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Let me ask you first, who is increasingly enjoying these exercises that we go through? Why do you think that is? Why is it more interesting? Because we’re going inside, because it’s stimulating the unconscious mind, because your inner blueprint is being enriched. Remember the five realities, one of which was a symbolic reality? In my opinion and it’s an opinion, there are no tests that I know of that have experimented with this. However, in my opinion, those people with the richest set of symbols, the riches symbolic reality, have the riches lives. They enjoy their lives most. Those people who have impoverished symbolic realities, for example, just purely intellectual realities or purely physical ones, they lead the most impoverished lives because the symbolism is what creates meaning out of life. By the way, I’m not saying that intellectuals are impoverished. A lot of intellectuals have a strong symbolic reality. Philosophy is a largely symbolic activity in many ways. So I’d like to add another layer in terms of what we’re doing. I’d like to introduce you to the concept I like to call miniphors, which is a mini metaphor that is disguised in language. Essentially, what we’re doing now is taking the part of language, the fundamental elements, which are nouns and verbs. I apologize if I sound like Mrs. Hildegard doing her little grammar lesson. Nouns are objects, things in the real world or ideas. Verbs are words about action, doing and so on. Words that describe nouns are known as adjectives, as you know. Words that describe verbs are called adverbs. So, we have adjectives and nouns. We have adverbs and verbs. All four of these can be replaced by metaphors. He was a flower withering under her burning gaze. Does that not become a much stronger sense or more emotive image than saying, she was angry at him and he didn’t like it. Do you see this?

Where is my metaphor? It’s a noun. He was a flower withering – which is the verb – before her burning gaze. Burning is an adverb modifying the word gaze. So we’ve changed the nouns, the adjectives, the adverbs and the

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verbs in that phase and it’s come to life for us, hasn’t it? Does that make sense? So we can use these things, sprinkled inside our vocabulary. Remember before we talked about when life is a battlefield, people go for strategy, for destroying our position and so on. If you then also include a vocabulary where you have miniphors within your metaphor or simile, it once again increases the reality tone of it. Why? Because you’re once again, populating the unconscious realm, that hypnotic reality with more stuff. See how that works? There are essentially, two ways to use miniphors and I’d like you to experiment with both right now. 1. The first one is to create a supportive miniphor. The miniphor, basically, enhances your message because it just makes more of it. The example we just gave you of the withering gaze and so on. It accentuates it by showing it more metaphorically. 2. The opposite is also the case you can use a contrasted miniphor. In a contrasted miniphor, you’re essentially using irony, maybe even sarcasm to make your point more strongly by combining two worlds that are not supposed to meet, and that forces a contrast that makes the world you want to show them that much more real and poignant. For example, he was as generous as a miser on a bad day. Do you see the contrast? Do you see how it has a greater impact on you now because of the contrast? So, miniphors can be used to increase the impact, either by supporting or by contrasting and maybe creating a bounce back effect where people expect one thing. It’s kind of like an agreement reversal, they expect one thing, but it snaps them right back the other way and now they are forced into an even more detailed version of that new reality, the miserly reality because of the contrast they can now make. Do you see how that works?

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Whose head right now is whirring away at 90 miles an hour? Don’t worry. We’ll start exceeding the speed limits very soon. I’d like to take just five minutes in your groups adding miniphors to what you have already done. Off you go. All right, are you enjoying that? Are you enjoying yourselves? Is this making you very thoughtful? Please come on up here. Is this starting to make you more thoughtful about how language works in some of the things you’re doing? This goes beyond how most people think about language, which is like what noun do I use and which nominalization and so on. It’s taken to a very different realm, and we want to start increasing that as we continue. I appreciate that we’ve got a lot of building blocks that we have at our disposal. The one thing I want you to realize is we have a lot of tools that we’re beginning to develop here. You do not have to use all of them at once, but you can. Sometimes you’ll find it easier to use a miniphor, it just fits into the conversation and it’s great. Sometimes a simile fits. Sometimes an extended metaphor will fit. You really don’t have to know ahead of time what it will be, as long as you’re familiar in navigating these territories on your own. Does that make sense? The other thing you need to know is that you can have something called a mixed metaphor . In other words, if your main metaphor is I think someone just came up and said, we’re learning hypnosis like exploring on an ocean, you can have a miniphor that fits it. When I do an exercise, it feels like I’m diving into this crystal clear ocean and discovering these pearls that no one’s ever seen before. I’m clearly running with the same metaphor, but I don’t have to. I can say something like I’m doing an exercise, its lying in a comfortable bed where thoughts and ideas just come to me. Notice I have changed metaphors, haven’t I? Yet somehow it could still fit within that reality. I could be in a cabin inside a boat or something like that. So the metaphor does not contradict the reality I’ve created it can enrich it in some way. Do you see how that works?

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Of course, I could also use contradiction, but the only reason I would use contradiction is to snap someone out of the contradiction deeper into that reality as we saw earlier on. So it just gives you some maneuvers and things to play with. By the way, you will notice as you have conversations throughout today that these things will stick in your mind more and more. You will hear someone say something and go oh, I just caught him. Chances are you will have caught them. They have no idea they’re doing it. That’s why they do. Of course, you can then start filtering more and more. Is this kind of making sense a little bit?

Scott:

We were having a great deal of difficulty understanding exactly what the miniphor was and how it worked in conjunction with the greater metaphor. So I was going to ask you to talk a bit more about that.

Igor:

Did what I just talk about help or is there a follow up on that?

Scott:

Well, I’m not sure.

Igor:

You’re not sure, all right. Well, consider a banquet and everyone’s feasting. Now if we had a very rigid banquet, then we’d have like a four or five-course meal with nice wine and so on, and everyone would be served the same meal. However, in the kind of banquet I’d like to invite you to, it’s one in which each meal can be different. There might be a certain standard. In other words, we won’t be allowing necessarily having McDonalds into the room, but you can still have a hamburger, as long as it’s gourmet. Is this beginning to help you understand how miniphors fit inside metaphors a little better?

Student:

Which were the miniphors? [Laughter]

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Igor:

If it’s going to help you out, the miniphors would be the meals. The metaphor is the banquet. By the way, that’s how metaphors can work. Do you see how much easier they suddenly become? But have I actually told you anything. You’re thinking hamburgers and pizzas. Yet now you’re better able at doing linguistic tricks because you’re thinking of hamburgers and pizzas. How does that work?

Student:

Can you use the word like in the metaphor?

Igor:

Well, consider this. At our banquet, you can either eat or drink. Sometimes there’ll be a simile and sometimes a metaphor, it doesn’t the feast. Oh my God, he’s good. Yes, I have my moments it’s true, but after all, I’m hosting the banquet. I want to make sure you’re entertained. Are you seeing the value of extending the metaphors now?

Student: ♦

Igor:

Is it just like a mini loop in a story, nested loops where you have miniphors and stuff?

We’ll come onto to nested loops and so on, but absolutely, you can extend metaphors into their own versions of nested loops and mini loops and so on. You can do a whole bunch of stuff, but a very smart thing to have made. After all, just to make sure everyone else understands, there’s more than one course at this banquet, isn’t there? [Laughter]

Student:

That means you get more value for your money, folks.

Igor:

No you charge extra.

Student:

I’m not going to touch that. Okay, so maybe to help break it down a little more because I get the feeling I’m not the only one that feels that boundaries between miniphors and metaphors, is still a little murky. You’d said earlier that he was a flower withering under her burning gaze. Let’s just break that one down.

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As far as I could tell, he was a flower is a metaphor unto itself. Igor:

Of course it is. So miniphors are mini-metaphors and that’s what miniphor stands for.

Student:

Sure. So in that case it’s embedded, and then a flower withering, that just continues to extend the existing metaphor, but when you say her burning gaze…

Igor:

That’s a new metaphor.

Student:

So it is a metaphor unto itself.

Igor:

Exactly, but they kind of fit. Now I create a bigger metaphor, in which there might be a source of burning – maybe the sun, maybe a fire – and a flower and it being affected by it; hence, you see the relationship between the two. That in itself may be the starter in our banquet. The banquet itself might be a completely different world yet again. The point is a metaphor is a metaphor is a metaphor in that sense. So you’re absolutely right, whether you replace or qualify a noun, replace or qualify a verb with a metaphor, you are still using a metaphor. So a miniphor is a metaphor and you can use a simile instead of a metaphor as well, so it would be a minime. [Laughter] The point I’m trying to get across is that you have a concept, a simple concept – similes and metaphors – that can be broken down. It’s kind of like a fractal, you’ve seen those little fractal pictures. It can be broken down in infinite sizes to a very large scale and down to a very small scale. At our banquet, I can focus on the meal and the constituents of that particular course or I can focus on the people around you and that little interaction. I can focus on the whole banquet, so I can scale the metaphor or the simile up and down and combine them accordingly. This is just another way of making sure your mind realizes you can go small scale, as well as large scale. Does that help you?

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Student:

Very much. Now you’d also said that there were two ways to use miniphors. One had to do with accentuating or reinforcing and the other we want to achieve maybe an unusual contrast and maybe irony and sarcasm are helpful.

Igor:

Well, irony and sarcasm are the key that creates the contrast because you don’t want the contrast for them to fall into the wrong reality. For example, if I was teaching a bunch of doctor’s surgery, I don’t want to start creating a contrast of a butcher carving up a pig. Why? Because that does not create a contrast, it sucks them into the new reality, and now they’ve got the image in their mind that they’re carving someone up, and that doesn’t feel so good, unless they’re a sociopath, in which case they’ll be there every time. Just to finish that little metaphor there. In terms of the contrast I need to create something else that’s so ridiculous, they won’t stay there. For example, when we’re going to make a delicate incision – and those of you who have worked on a building site, you may as well leave the room now. Do you see building site, heavy machinery, heavy lifting, delicate, there’s a contrast. It snaps people back over to the other side and makes them more delicate now, because the contrast is we don’t want heavy-handed lifting equipment hooking up a person. Does that help a little bit?

Student:

Yes. So our group came up with one and I’d just like to share it and see if it falls under the, accentuate reinforce or is it the unusual contrast. That’s that the hypnotist and ride a bike and pump air in the tires at the same time.

Igor:

Great.

Student: ♦

Igor:

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Is that more the contrast or more the, accentuate?

Honestly, it doesn’t really matter. Seriously, the first rule of thumb is that these categories are just there to peak your mind in terms of what you can do with it. There is no right and wrong answer. If you put the wrong label on Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



it, no one is ever going to care. I just want you to realize that. At the same time, that would be more of a supportive metaphor. You’re still staying within the same context. You’re creating more of the same, there’s no snap back type thing. So the contrast is just to show you that when you create two concepts that don’t fit together, they’ll snap out against each other and hopefully if you set up the contrast correctly, they’ll bounce into your reality more fully as a result. It’s like talking about a nun and her sexual fantasies. It’s a shocking contrast. It may lead further into the sexual reality because you’re bouncing off the idea of nun or, depending on your audience it may go back into a more innocent reality, because the contrast is snapping back the other way. It all depends on when you say it, what group you’re saying it to and so on. The thing about metaphors is you cannot leave the context, and the context is defined primarily by your audience. As you’ll see as we go through today, your content is going to become increasingly important when using metaphorical and symbolic communication. You cannot escape it in regular hypnosis, but you especially cannot escape it in metaphors. It is the most important thing of everything. Student:

Thank you.

Igor:

Has this been useful?

Student:

Not a question so much as an observation. A metaphor is like a simile. They both have a double meaning.

Igor:

Yes, absolutely. It’s just one becomes a little bit more. That was a nice simile, by the way. One just has a slightly stronger impact and the other one has a slightly easier acceptability rate. Who here enjoys the idea of metaphors and doing more of it? Good. In that case, let’s come back after the break where I will show you how to get inside someone’s symbolic reality and find out what’s actually there, so they’re generating the metaphor now automatically. Off you go.

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Igor:

Who here is enjoying this day trip through hypnotic and symbolic realities? Who here is already beginning to understand that if we just finished today this one session, this would give you the heart of Conversational Hypnosis in a very different way than most people think about it? Wouldn’t that be fair? You wouldn’t even have to pay extra for it. I made a promise which I’d like to fulfill now, which is, I’d like to show you how to not just take a day trip, but a full voyage through someone else’s unconscious territory. More importantly, as you do so, I’d like you to learn how to navigate your own unconscious territory so that all of this stuff around storytelling and thinking what do I say or do is not your responsibility. It’s not you. It’s the other you. To the extent, you let the other you do all the work for a change, you will. Everyone please stand up and put your notes to one side. The following exercise will be done in pairs with one person being the coach and the other being the voyager. The coach will get a hold of someone and spin them around a few times, gently and slowly. We're taking a little of their balance and orientation so their consciousness is not keeping track of this. We're trying to block some of their capacity to think and that thinking space out for a while. When you stop, they'll open their eyes and they're going to describe to you what I call a strange new world. A world that no one has ever seen before or an environment they’ve never been to before. They're turning and turning and suddenly they stop. I see a blue ocean with waves going off in to the distance. The sun is over there, I think it’s rising rather than setting and some clouds coming across the sky. There’s a steam train on the horizon, I’m not sure why and I can see the cloud of the steam train coming across. As you get closer we’ll see there’s a train track like this bridge across forever, the whole ocean has a train track on the top of it and the steam train is going across it. It’s red and black and inside it’s full of school children.

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Do not ask me where that came from. Please do not evaluate my personality by it. I’m sure you could. The point is you do not have responsibility for the imagery that comes out, you're just going to present whatever environment your mind gives to you. You’re going to start talking, keep talking and noticing things evolving. Is that easy to do? Do not think about this, do not plan and do not make a mental sketch while you're spinning around. I’ll put a tree over here and something, none of that. Just let it surprise you. Describe whatever comes to mind, whether you're thinking about it, considering or pretending I don't care. Find a partner, spend five minutes each way. Off you go. Let me ask you this was it easy or difficult to do? Easy, so the only thing that makes it difficult is you try to do it. The bit that makes it difficult is when you interfere with the signals the unconscious mind is giving you and that’s why storytelling is hard for people. It’s because they try. I’ll try to make it easy if you will let me. Before we do that, I’d like to show you how your unconscious mind allows you to direct it exquisitely. Right now all we’ve done is entered a strange new world. It’s something that could manifest as a hypnotic reality at some point. It could be our banquet to carry on from the metaphor from before. However, you may not know how to use it or what it means. So, this time I want to do the exact same exercise with a different partner or the same one. I don't care. You’ll sort yourselves out. Again, remember you go both ways so don’t spend a half an hour on one person. You want to start getting the flow going and when you find yourself in the flow, that’s it. Once you know you can keep going on almost forever and then you're fine let the other person go as well. This time, before you begin the spinning, you're going to ask your unconscious mind or your coach will remind you that you want to have a strange new world that somehow relates or is metaphorical for or has a story within it, relating to some area of importance to you.

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For example, if you're in business, it will be something to do with the business you're in. Or, if you need to influence someone like in a sales process, in this particular sale, the essence of a metaphoric story that could fit there. If you're in therapy, it might be a therapeutic thing. If it’s about something for yourself in terms of how to master hypnosis more easily, you can do that too. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


I don't care. Just think right now about a specific context in which you’d like your unconscious mind to provide you with a metaphorical environment. Can everyone do that right now? Here’s the key thing. Do not censor what comes out. It may make no sense to you initially. It may not make any sense to you for some time. Whatever comes out comes out. If it makes no sense shrug your shoulders and say thank you, I guess I’ll have to figure it out. If it makes sense for you say thank you. Wow, I’m good. Whichever it is, it doesn't matter. The key thing is, do not try and shape it, direct it, censor it or stop it. Whatever it is; is it. Does that make sense? The start is very simple. I’m going to play both roles myself. Okay unconscious mind, I’d like to have a metaphor for teaching this exercise a little bit better. I’m going to open up. There’s a race track and a car. I’m inside the car and it’s a Formula One, split screen actually. There’s a car here and a car here and I’m actually weirdly both drivers. I’m going to go around the corner with one car and the other car has a long distance view going down the same time. As you go around the corner, we have the stopping thing and the checkered flag. Someone is waving it and I’ve got both viewpoints back in one car. I’m going through. Someone waves the flag and I’m done. I do not know what that means yet. I have no idea how to use that yet. The point is I did not have to create it. I did not interfere. I didn't ask myself what the hell, has this got to do with teaching this exercise. I did not ask myself how I’m going to use this. I just presented exactly what came. Between you and I, please don’t tell anyone else, I have no idea what it means. None. Zero. But, I will know what it means and how to use it by the time the day is done. Do you understand the exercise? Off you go. Let me ask you something, that last exercise was it easier or harder than the one before? Students: Igor:

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Easier. As easy.

Did anyone find it harder? One or two people. If you find it harder, let me explain what’s going on there, the exercise is identical. The reason it’s Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


harder is because you’re trying harder. That means the wrong part of your mind is doing the work. You're doing the same exercise after you ask yourself the question, is the expectation of the answer not being good enough is what’s making it hard. For those who thought it was easy, you’ve gone beyond that already, which is excellent. You're starting to trust your unconscious, which is what we need, because that’s where storytelling comes from. It is not a script that you memorize. There is a way of telling stories where you memorize other people’s words and present them, it’s called acting. It’s a very respected and wonderful tradition. I cannot teach you that. I am not an actor. I cannot act to save my life. I don’t know how to present those things. Plus, it violates my idea of hypnosis, which is it should be spontaneous. It should be something you can do on the fly every single time so it fits in the context. I’m not saying there are not very successful hypnotists who memorize stuff, because there are, but I'm not one of them. If you want that sort of work, do not come to me for that. I could not help you. Student:

It’s mostly a comment because, this is an exercise I do all the time with my friends like the image streaming, but we also add elements where we’ll pick objects and you have to incorporate…

Igor:

We’ll come on to that stuff. We're just setting the foundations right now. We're starting to navigate inside people’s unconscious realities, so you're a little ahead of the game for that one.

James:

Both were difficult.

Igor:

That’s because in both of them you were trying too hard. Did you get anything at all?

James:

Very brief glimpses.

Igor:

Do you want a quick demo?

Students:

Yes.

Igor:

Come on up. [Applause]

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Have a seat here. Close your eyes. Ask your unconscious mind to present a strange new reality to you, some for or other. You may not see the image. You may just feel the image or just make it up as you go along. Right now, whatever the first thing is what comes to your mind? It could be an image, color, sensation, what is it? James:

Cactus.

Igor:

Look at the cactus and find some distinctions around that. How large or small is it? Where is it? Don’t think too much, just watch the cactus. How much of the cactus can you see or sense?

James:

Most of it.

Igor:

Describe it to me.

James:

It’s about four feet tall.

Igor:

How many prongs does it have?

James:

Three.

Igor:

Look around, what is there?

James:

Desert, sandy.

Igor:

Allow your field of vision to expand or your mind to perceive more of what’s going on around. What else is there?

James:

A little animal skull.

Igor:

Can you make out what kind of animal it is yet? You don’t have to.

James:

Something with horns.

Igor:

Something small with horns. How far is it in relation to the cactus?

James:

I can’t tell.

Igor:

Is it a long way or relatively close or somewhere in between?

James:

Relatively close.

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Igor:

Excellent. Can all of you see him building the hypnotic reality right now? Can you see that process occurring? Did that feel difficult James?

James:

Sometimes.

Igor:

A little bit. The difficulty is again the, trying too hard and interfering with the process. That scene was there all along, but did you notice we had to tease him through it, because at some level he’s trying to delete this thing. Maybe it’s not good enough, a cactus, what does that mean? I don't know. I don't care. You have to describe the cactus. Once you have that, create an environment around it, a sandy desert environment which had a skull in it as well. If we carried on, we might find other things as well, maybe living things, maybe the sky, maybe something that doesn't fit the scene. It doesn't matter. The point is you're doing it. Did you notice how you had to stop yourself from doing something in order to allow that to occur rather than actually doing something? It’s more like an allowing process rather than a forcing process. That is what we're looking for. That is when the unconscious mind is doing the work. To the extent you can train that, not only do you create a bigger rapport with your unconscious, which by the way, for you as an individual is a huge step to make in life. But your storytelling and hypnotic skills go through the roof, because you don’t have to do it anymore, your unconscious mind does it for you, but you have to let it. Does that help?

James:

Yes.

Igor:

Was that useful? Did you notice that as we continued with the questioning, it became easier for James to answer the questions and develop the environment? Why? Because the hypnotic reality is getting more real. The more real it is, the more it populates itself, the more it creates itself. How do we know what this stuff means? Racing car, split point of views, cacti, what does all of this mean?

Students:

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I don’t know that we know what it means, but we will attach meaning to it.




Igor:

You're quite right. At the same time, everything you have that comes from the unconscious will have a specific meaning, because it’s already attached to it, otherwise it wouldn't come. Your mind is anything but random. The images may start as shapeless. For example, at first, all he saw was a color. From the color emerged trees, from the trees emerged frogs and from the frogs, orange peels. That’s always what you see, isn’t it?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Even if it’s a photo simulation, in other words you have your eyes closed and because of the way you have your iris interact with the light you see a particular color, the meaning making machine inside of you will turn that into something, into trees, into blue frogs and orange peels that go with it. You cannot help it. All we need to know is how to attract the symbols and then later how to present those symbols when we want to or when we need to. Wouldn't that be something?

Student:

While you were talking with James, the image I had created in my mind, the meaning just clicked. It was all there, the total meaning, it was like, I know what that was.

Igor:

Did you know what you were describing in that scene, what it was meant to be?

Student:

No, absolutely not, I had no clue what it was. It was the farthest thing from what the intent was to help me do whatever. I’m like why am I seeing a tree with smoke coming out of the tree becoming a cloud, raining and it becomes a flood with a wave coming down, none of that made any sense. Then suddenly, I knew what the whole thing meant.

Igor:

That is why I know what my racing cars will mean by the end of the day. That is exactly what happens. Would you like to have some resources? One is for jogging your unconscious to create a symbolic communication with you so you can start understanding yourself better when these things come out. Also, so you have a good guestimate as to what symbols present to others so they have similar reactions.

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The way that your unconscious treats you may not be the same way as they will associate to that themselves. Does that make sense? So, we Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


don’t want to be able to create predictions in terms of, if I generate the story, how will it impact on the other person as well as how it will impact me. Let me ask you this, if I say to you that today I have a mountain to climb. What am I telling you? I’ve got a rough day, a big task ahead, something challenging is in front of me. If, at the end of the day I tell you, it wasn’t such a big mountain, it was more of a medium size hill. What am I telling you now? The tasks were less strenuous then I thought it would be and it was more under my control. I was able to manage the situation better than I thought I would. We're all familiar with the dead metaphor making a mountain out of a molehill. Aren’t we essentially using the same symbol to mean the same thing whether it’s a dead metaphor or the full version right now? You all understood me, didn't you? So there must be something, which is relatively universal around symbols or certain kinds of symbols that we can utilize. The key is to go right back to the very first lesson you learned on day one, the beginning of the whole process. How does the unconscious mind learn? How does it reason? It’s the law of associations. How do we know what the word table means? It’s through association of table like things through a whole lifetime of experiences, so we can recognize what a table is. Symbols work the same way. Symbols work through association of experiences. For example, has anyone climbed a mountain or rather large hill that could have been a mountain? Was it easy or hard? Hard. There was effort involved. Now we have a symbol of effort, don’t we? If I was to change the metaphor and say, I have a rather large mountain to climb I think I’ll just take the car instead. You’ll know what I mean by that, don’t you? Why? Because we have a point of reference throughout our lives that build into it.

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People who live on mountainsides will have a different, richer perhaps understanding of that metaphor than people that live in flatlands or cities. There is still going to be a common thread, because of the human experience of effort will still be common throughout, they just may have other associations that go with it too. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


So, when we present symbols, there is a universal element to them, to the extent that most people have had similar experiences to you in relation to that symbol. Secondly, there will be unique associations that they make. Thirdly, on occasion, that unique association will destroy the value of the symbol as a universal symbol. For example, this morning we started with a story that centered around storytelling didn’t it? We had certain symbols inside that taught you something and I’m going to break down the story a little bit even though normally I wouldn't. There were symbols inside that were a risk for me to take. For example, the symbol of alcohol- what does alcohol mean to the general population? Intoxication, which means lowering of inhibitions, acting a bit more wildly and doing things that we normally wouldn't do but kind of want to, those are the associations. What was I telling you when I said I got a little drunk? I was telling you, storytelling is about lowering your inhibitions and letting behavior come out that we normally censor. Do you see how that works? However, what if I try and tell that story during an AA meeting? Would that be a happy moment? What if I tell it to someone whose father was an alcoholic and beat them as a child? Would that be a good story to tell? Do you see how stories have universal elements and if you're reaching out to a larger audience you can use these symbols and you always run a risk. There is no way around that other than reading your audience or at least knowing some of their personal history. The more you know about the personal history, the more you can make predictions around their associations. Does that make sense? Incidentally, even with someone who had an alcoholic parent, they might still have positive associations to it so that it could still work, but you have to know that person enough to know. Hence, we started today talking about how you cannot get rid of the context. You can never ignore the context. The context is primarily created by the people that you're talking to. That is a key ingredient to any context. In certain groups, you're more likely to have one thing or another.

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For example, in a very fundamentalist religious group you're more likely to find negative associations to alcohol so the whole inhibition element will be lost by the judgment element. Do you see how that works? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


With more relaxed groups like a college audience, they’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. They may think in order to tell stories they need to be drunk. Be careful of how far they take this. Student:

I was questioning… ♦

Is it worth you to live without risk?

All the scientists actually discovered something sometimes helps too. Igor:

I agree. Taking risk is a good thing. It’s just that I have to warn you beforehand so that you know what risk you're taking. Then it’s your judgment. Do you take big risks, small risks or intermediate risks? That is a judgment call you and everybody has to make for themselves. I cannot make that for you. It’s your responsibility as a human being.

Student:

Personally, I’d feel confined to every time I think I might actually harm someone. You want to live more free you don’t want to think every time about …

Igor:

I see where you're coming from and I’ll agree with that in certain principles, but remember, you are still at some level limiting yourself. For example, do you go around stealing, murdering or hitting people because you don’t like them? Do you go around raping or kicking people’s doors in? That would be true freedom wouldn’t it? True freedom is doing whatever you want whenever you want to. It’s just a range. The question you must ask yourself is where on that range do you want to sit? Take higher risk, there would be consequences and that’s all. If you're happy to pay the price, by all means, take the risk. If you don’t want to pay the price, then you shouldn't be taking the risk. That’s as simple as it is that’s the equation. I’m not preaching or predicating how far on that sliding scale you go, that is your choice as an individual. Knock yourself out, whatever you want to do that’s fine by you. Does that make sense? I do need to make you aware that there are risks and consequences attached to those things. As an influencer, the more you influence, the more you’ll pay attention to these things. If you just want to experiment and do lots of crazy things, by all means, do so. Just realize there will be consequences attached and that’s your choice.

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Now I want to spend a good portion of time going through a bunch of symbols so you have a basic symbolic vocabulary at your disposal. You can use it to help you understand some of the hypnotic realities that your unconscious mind will give you. But more importantly, you’ll be able to use it to pepper your own conversations and stories with symbols that speak directly to the unconscious and do so invisibly. Who here, when I started mentioning being a happy drunk who could suddenly tell stories, thought he’s trying to influence me. He’s telling me I should lose my inhibitions and just let things come out? Yet the message was still carried across. Chances are you had that sensation or feeling of needing to let things happen more rather than forcing them to happen. Would that be fair to say? I never asked you to think that way. You concluded it based on the symbols presented inside the story. Do you see how that works? I want you to get into groups five or so. I’ll present you with three or four symbols. First, brainstorm your own associations in terms of the group so you’ll have personal associations and general agreement as a group. Then I’ll present to you my opinion and it has to do more with the psychological community’s research in terms of what people associate to these different things. If anyone is interested in the research for this, the Jungian archetypes are one of the key areas you can find information. Between that, we’ll have a good guestimate of what symbols mean and how we use them. I’ll also show you how we use symbols and load those symbols differently to load for one meaning versus another. Get into groups of five or so people and make it a different group. When you're done, please pay attention to me so I know you're ready. We’ll present the first few symbols, you’ll have a discussion, we’ll come back, we’ll add some things and we’ll keep going that way. Off you go. I have some notes on these, they are some of the bigger and random symbols to show you that there’s a huge scope. We could write a whole dictionary of things here, but they are some of the more useful symbols I’ve found and used. I’ll give you a handout with all of them with my interpretation of how they’ll be used functionally. But, I don’t want to give them to you until after you’ve done this exercise, because otherwise I’ll be imposing my fish into your dreams.

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These are alphabetically oriented. The first four symbols will be in the “A’s” so we have alcohol, alien or aliens, ambulance and ants. Let’s spend about five minutes discussing those. We’ll come back, have a group discussion and then go into the next lot. Off you go. There is a lot of association to these. You probably only got through with the first or second one and that’s fine. There is a lot of scope to go through these things. I want you to notice the first few things. Do you notice how rich each symbol could be when presented? Do you notice how each symbol also has the potential for being taken in different ways? Let’s take some of these symbols and ideas you’ve come up with to contrast and compare them in terms of what we can do. For alcohol, we talked about how it’s about a relaxed attitude, releasing inhibitions, going with the flow and maybe letting something that’s normally censored out. The flip side is the addiction element, the associations to violence or loss of control in a negative way as well. Those are the two signs of the coin we have to work with. Students:

A few people, when the word alcohol was mentioned felt a sensation in their throat or mouth.

Igor:

Those people are interestingly highly suggestible. Why? It’s like, if you describe to them a lemon and biting into one, that’s a classic suggestion experiment you can do with people. Just the idea of it is yuck. Do you notice how this is a nice invisible test? For Alien what kind of associations did you have to alien? Green, spaceships, illegal. Notice how the language could mean something different? Abduction. The unknown. I want to stick to that theme, because this is where you can use it. How many times do you say things like, I felt like an alien at that party. What am I saying? I feel like I’m outside, excluded somehow. Aliens are outsiders. They come from outside our social sphere, so far. In fact they're not even from the world. They don’t see things the same way, they don’t understand things. They're not included, they're excluded.

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It also is a useful thing in terms of something unimaginable, something very different. It’s such an alien concept to me. I’m not saying it’s a green concept. I’m not saying it’s a green concept that will splurge out with a little Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


mouth and suck my brains out. It’s just a strange concept, one I can’t understand. We don’t understand aliens; hence, things that are alien, are unfathomable, not understandable, they are a mystery in a strange sort of way, not necessarily a deep sort of way. What do you have for ambulance? Emergency. Fear, priorities, urgency. Do you notice there is a theme, urgency and emergency or action of some sort. It typically has to do with crisis, quick responses and quick action. I know no one here ever wants to motivate people to act quickly, right? So an ambulance will never be a useful symbol, when it comes to putting the pressure on and making sure people respond at a fast rate. If you ever find that rare occasion where that might happen, an ambulance might be useful. There is also the spin side, some negative consequences to ambulances. What might those be? Pain, fear, damage, frightening, stress, blood. These are all the negative associations with the same symbol. Notice how you can predict some of the results and then it’s up to you to frame the symbol to direct it to one result versus another. This is where we start playing with the symbols in a functional way. In the story I told you this morning, which is essentially true with some artistic license of course, how did I frame the idea of alcohol to avoid association to abuse, addiction, violence and so on? I was saying I was a little bit happy. What else? Initially, I was vague about the whole thing. I set the scene first. I said I was a little bit happy then later on, I completed the picture by hinting the idea of alcohol, you had a good time with friends and finally, I presented the idea of alcohol once I was sure that I had primed your responses toward the positive effect of it. I opened the story with happy experiences. I’ve refined it in terms of being with friends and having a good time so it’s benevolent. It’s an enhancer of experience rather than a detractor. Then I mentioned the alcohol by name to trigger the associations, but I’ve already opened up the right framework for it so it so we understood, or I’ve increased the likelihood that it will be understood in a positive way rather than a negative one. Does that make sense? Notice how all the frame control skills we talked about a few days ago not fit into the whole storytelling thing too? Nothing you’ve learned goes away, it just gets adapted and filtered in a little bit more invisibly.

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Let’s have more symbols and more interaction in terms of how to use them. The next four are going to be a baby, a backpack, a battle and builders. Spend a few minutes and we’ll come back to that. Off you go. Let’s start with baby. What kind of symbolic meaning does a baby have for us? Crying, diapers, innocence. Let me point something out and this is key to understanding metaphorical processes. Notice how initially we go to surface level associations like diapers, cleaning, crying and so on? Below that, there are more principled associations like innocence, freshness, newness, needs our protection, love and responsibility. Do you see how these are bigger level concepts than just crying. Crying might turn to vulnerable, for example. Diapers might turn to mess. We're looking at those higher level ideas that are represented by the symbol, because we’re transmitting those, not the physical reality that most people focus on. The beauty is, they will consciously intellectually look at the physical reality of the symbol and think it’s just a story, whilst unconsciously they’ll be responding to the symbolic reality, which is a much higher ordered principle. A baby in that sense is something new, innocent, in need of protecting, open- ended possibilities, loss of freedom. Notice how individual associations will skew it down one way or another. For different people in different stages of their lives, it will mean different things. However, if I say this is my new pet project it’s my baby, my little baby. Does that sound like a responsibility? I’ve skewed the associations, haven’t I? Some people refer to their cars as, that’s my baby. What are they telling you? They're telling you about how protective they are of it, how much they love, nurture it and treat it well. Nurture in this case will be polishing it and all the rest of it. Do you see how the whole system starts working? There are negative and positive associations to every symbol. It is our job to skew the association of our audience and people we're trying to influence, to take the meaning we need them to take make sense? Fresh projects, polished things and so on, on the positive side and of course, loss of freedom, responsibility and so on can be on the negative.

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Let’s look at the backpack, an interesting one, because it’s a low order symbol as compared to baby. Baby is clearly a hot word. It is pregnant with meaning. A backpack seems like a functional item. What are associations or possible meanings for a backpack? Travel, school, hiking, outdoors, storage. Notice how in different cultures it will mean different things. In North America and Canada where people have a lot of strong outdoor traditions it might mean more about outdoors, self reliance, about going your own way. People involved will be families in an urban existence it might be school kids, their little school satchel they have and their backpack. It would be more school things, learning, starting a new. Once again, we need to understand our audience to be able to skew it. I can still trigger the outdoor, the self-reliance imagery with a backpack. All I have to do is make sure it’s framed correctly in the story. I may throw in a woodsman and his backpack. That already skews it away from some of the school, urban or suburban interpretations. We’ve talked about the battle thing, which is a common metaphor. Let’s look at builders. What kind of stuff came up? Common vision, creation, skill, planning. What about the flip side? Permits, dirty boots, lateness, noisy. Do you see there is a flip side to both versions? I’d like to deal with a bigger important chunk, which will be a theme that will come through a lot of your stories. It happens naturally and you can’t help it. It will be in a lot of the metaphors you create, a lot of similes you give and a lot of the miniphors will have this built in automatically. You’ll be doing this all the time without realizing it, because it’s a very important part of human experience. Those are the symbols around the idea of family. In a family, the primary symbols are the father and the mother, the grandparents as a collective, there might be some subtle variation between grandmother and grandfather, but usually it is as a collective, a brother and a sister. I’d like you to discuss those five or so symbols and we’ll come back and talk about them.

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These are very rich symbols used a lot of times and so much that they're invisible. A lot of them are dead metaphors, but a lot can be introduced to create a very strong reaction. Some of these will also have personal associations. You’ve got to take care of both sides of the spectrum. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


Off you go. Let’s start with the father symbol what kind of content did you get out of that? Provider, protector, authority, teacher, abuser. These are personal associations. Someone had an abusive parent or a very angry parent, alcoholic parent. Those associations will come out. Here is the irony. All the other things you said as well will be tainted by the same father figure symbol. For example, take the idea of authority. If someone’s personal association to their father figure were abusive, how do you think they’ll respond to authority figures in general? It transfers. That’s the point. It’s all association. A police officer is like my father, because he’s the authority. That’s where a lot of this stuff comes from. If you know someone who has authority issues, I’m not necessarily saying that it’s just that they had a bad relationship with his parent, but they’ll be some kind of leadership or authority figure in that person’s life where it’s come from. It may well be the parent and ironically, if it‘s not the parent, his relationship with his father may change as a result of other authority figure issues, which will feed back in, because it’s all connected at the unconscious level. Does that make sense? Do you see what kind of a web we're navigating through right now? Are there any other big ones in terms of a parent? God. Interesting. A couple other common ones are role model, practical, so the father figure is more about the practical, sensible, get down and do it approach. Let’s contrast it with the mother figure? What kind of symbols do you have with the mother figure? Nurturing, comforting, peacemaker and then we have overbearing. Notice how that’s another personal association and relatively common. In different cultures, it will be more common than in others. There are some cultures where the mother figure is so dominant that they are overbearing. They do run their children’s lives especially when it’s the mother/son relationship. There are some cultures where it has become such a cliché, it happens over and over again. We need to be aware of these things, because our communication, I am the head of this household, I am the father of this company. Suddenly, I’ve turned at least three or four people in this room against me. I may have

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guided everyone else as a result, but I have polarized other people as well unless I frame it again. Luckily, even though the symbol may be tainted, unless someone’s had a really bad set of experiences, you can still out frame some elements and maintain the others, because they live in normal society and have adopted other people’s associations at the same time. It’s my job to make sure that if I’m going to present a father symbol, it’s the right kind of father. It’s very important, especially with family, because they are the ones that have all of our hot buttons. This one is going to be most loaded with negative associations as well as positive ones, so we’ve got to be very careful. They're very powerful. In terms of the mother figure, where as the father figure tends to be more about decisiveness, practical, sensibility and so on, the mother tends to be more about caution, considering, looking before you leap, about thinking things through careful, being safe. What about grandparents? Wisdom, spoiling, generous, kindness, smelly. Your grandparents represent old age to you. They're your blueprint for old age. This is not 100%, but there is a tendency that kids that were born when their grandparents were still young, will tend to live longer, because their perception of old age is more active, energized and healthy. If their grandparents were old, it’s the opposite. Hence, grandparents are often the symbol of age, or over age. In other words, things take too long. Even symbols of fragility and so on. There is the wisdom on the positive side and fragility on the other side. There is the kindness and generosity on one side, there is things take too long and have gone off their peak on the other side. You have again, a double-edged sword, which is another symbol. Do you see how you can’t escape these things? We're just at the tip of the iceberg so when you start using - it’s going to happen a lot. This is going to be a very strange lunch for you. It is. You're not going to be able to run a straight conversation without someone going ha-ha. Oh yes, I did it. It’s so woven into the fabric of our conversation. See, it’s happening already. You can’t help it, but it’s also part of what makes you a better communicator, because you're doing it on purpose now. You're influencing their blueprint, their inner world, which is another metaphor. Do you see how this is working?

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Can you start thinking of this as a practical tool that you might use right away if you had a phone call or something this minute? All right. What is brother all about? Buddy, partner, competition, big brother. There are two sides to this story. Has anyone called someone they're close to, he’s my brother, he’s like my brother, we are brothers. People who want to create male bonding will use brother imagery, sometimes in a healthy environment and sometimes non healthy environment. I believe the Nazi party used the idea of brotherhood as a very strong bonding element. Cults can use this or it can be a healthy organization that bonds people for the idea of brotherhood or sisterhood as many religions, for example. The Catholic Church has brothers and brethren as part of that symbol of unity, coming together. As well as the supporting side, he’s one who sticks up for you and is on your side. A brother stands up for you. A brother understands your point of view, sees things from your point of view. It’s a support. In times of trouble, someone that will help, someone you can turn to. What about a sister ? Nuns, that’s by the way, why Nuns are called sisters. What other things? Someone you must protect, nurse. Do you see how the nursing industry and the religious thing, the nuns are called sisters, because of the associations that come with it? As a rule, the sisters and this may change as society changes a bit, are the ones you turn to for more emotional support. You talk to them about emotional issues. It’s someone who helps explore emotional and internal ideas. You speak to your sister differently than to your brother as a rule. These are broad brushstroke things. It’s a symbol for opening up and exploring yourself, because if you talk to someone about emotional concepts, it’s a self-exploration. It’s an opening up. Sisters are great symbols for opening up, exploring yourself, exploring your intuitive, emotional side of yourself and so on. Do you see how much are in those symbols already? You should be thinking that families are fantastic symbols that you can weave into every day conversations and used quite naturally. I’d like to throw a couple more big guns at you.

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Quick question- what if the person is an orphan? There will be associations. Some will be skewed toward not being there, absence and Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


some will still be culturally conditioned. Why does an orphan miss their parents if they never knew them? It’s because everyone else has one and they know what it should mean. These things also have culture reference. We talked before if someone had an abusive father, it doesn't mean that the entire symbol is tainted unless it’s a really bad relationship. It just means that you have to separate the negative elements from the positive ones. Even orphans that have no personal experience of it will understand it from other people’s experiences, from the media or from people that became father or mother figures to them. We're just talking about relationships and the way that we are associating to other people and using those as symbolic representations of principles of experiences. Here are more which are very useful especially as hypnotists. If you have the Mind Game Magic Deck, a deck of cards that allow you to do a little profiling of people based on symbols like these and how people respond to them. You tell them a little story, at the end you ask would you do A, B or C? The result, they unconsciously interact with the symbol and say, C of course. Everyone would. No. they would so you understand some of their values, the way they perceive the world and so on. Some of these bigger symbols are the cave. It’s a very powerful symbol. Clothes, water, earthquakes, and a house. For time reasons, rather than going off and discussing and coming back, can we just discuss this as a group? As you are, right now, what kind of associations or ideas bring to mind with a cave? Exploration, darkness, wisdom, secrets, withdrawal. Traditionally caves, especially if you look at fairy tales, fairy tales are filled with symbolic logic, fairy tales, legends and myths. What does the hero normally do when he gets to the cave? He goes to the underworld. Caves are the gateway to the underworld. What is the underworld? The subconscious or the inner world. Caves are the meeting point where the cave is trance. Cave is the point where the conscious mind gets to go into unconscious territory and I mean all unconscious territory, not just a nice one.

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There can be fear involved. The darkness may see the shadow side. Caves tend to be dark places so the shadow side of people can often be encountered in caves. If you're doing an induction featuring a cave, good luck to you in terms of what comes out. There will be fireworks in most Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


cases. Not always, unless you pre-frame the cave as a different kind of cave. A cave is a great symbol for the journey into the unconscious. It’s one of the most common running themes in any Shamanic tradition. We’ve all heard of the Yogi’s that go sit in a cave for a few years. They don’t sit on top of a tree for a few years, it’s in a cave. Even in the physical reality, people move toward symbols to allow them to engage in some of the activity that they're interested in. in terms of sensory simulation there is no difference about sitting in a forest or in a cave, yet people go to caves specifically because, there is sensory deprivation, it’s the gateway to the unconscious. They're exploring the unconscious, both the negative and positive sides. What’s clothing all about? Protection, statement, image. Clothing is what we put on so that the world judges us. Clothing represents our image, our perceptions or identity we wish to project into the world. It is how we wish the world to judge us. A change of clothing in a symbolic form as in a story, symbolizes a change of image to the outside world. For example, someone has no social graces. They get in hot water, because they do things, which are socially inept. For someone who’s socially inept, you could talk about a story about someone who is running around in a gravy stained T-shirt, ripped pants, their bottom is hanging out and people are going, I don’t want to talk to him and it’s all grim. They don’t know. That’s always how they lived. How will they know any better? One day, they look around themselves and see how everyone else is dressed. They catch their reflection in the mirror and go, why am I so different? They start asking themselves, is this why people are trying to avoid me? Is this why I can’t make friends? Is this why the only people I can hang out with are my brothers and sisters who, basically, dress the same way as I do?

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He decides to do an experiment. One day he showers, shaves, everything. All the hair that was all wild, he cuts it down nice and neat. He starts copying what other people in his environment are like. He even buys a simple suit and a nice shirt. He feels weird. He’s not quite sure how he can deal with it, but he puts in on anyway. He walks out. People treat him very differently and he likes it. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


Can you see the metaphorical transition there? Just because you understand what a symbol will mean. Does that make sense? You can change someone’s identity just by changing a symbol in the same way. As long as they buy into the story, they’ll follow along with the logic of it. Let’s move on to water . Life, sex, purification, movement, spirit. Isn’t it interesting that water was the first symbol of all the ones we’ve covered so far where you instantly go to the deeper level principle rather than the surface level associations. It’s because water is one of the most powerful symbols that I’m aware of currently. Water represents our emotions, the way they flow. For a lot of people it’s the mystery of the unconscious, the other side of the cave. The cave will be more about the shadow, a bit more frightening and is the gateway to it. Water is what happens when you get through the cave and you're in that flow. You're experiencing the mystery rather than being afraid of it. Water, depending on the context that you set with it, will also define it more. For example, a pool means something different to an ocean. An ocean is unchartered mysteries it’s more represented of the unconscious mind. A pool tends to be something that’s still and has a reflection. A lot of people have the association of pools with their social interactions, their emotional element of social interactions. A kind of emotional intelligence is there. Take the idea of emotions, you're stealing it and letting people get reflections. That creates a whole symbol of how we interact with others, how we pay attention to their feelings, how we see what’s going on with them in that sort of watery realm. A river is about constant change, it can be a dangerous place but a place that brings life as well, its death and rebirth as a cycle. A river is often where people get symbolically baptized. Why? Because it’s a death of an old life, an old personality and the rebirth of a new one, that’s why a lot of times baptism happens in a river. Do you see how these things are rich in meaning and associations? It happens in our everyday reality. You guys experienced it, because you could go straight to some of the bigger, heavier meanings of it compared to others that we seem more distant or harder to get a hold of.

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Isn’t that a much nicer way of going there? It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. One isn’t better then the other it’s just what needs to happen. It depends on what journey they need to take at that point. I’m taking you through a five year post graduate course in symbolism in 90 minutes. I’m doing my best to keep you on track and make it function as well. Can you see how, that ties into stuff we did this morning and starts giving you many more choices in terms of what you do with your miniphors, metaphors, similes and all of that stuff you can structure around it? It gives you more ammunition. The last one I want to do is an important one, which is often overlooked, but very familiar in the whole psychological community. It’s the idea of a house. What does a house represent? Safety, self. The primary use of a house in terms of symbolism is self. It’s where we spend most of our time. It has all of these wonderful extensions in terms of metaphor. Inside and the outside of the house look different. The outside is about what we want other people to think. The inside is about us. A house that is pristine on the outside, but falling down on the inside, what does that tell us about a person? A house that is ram shod on the outside but comfortable on the inside, what does that tell us about the person? When I taught the advanced self hypnosis program, to begin to understand some of the symbols that we asked you to navigate through, because they become a vehicle for the unconscious mind to communicate with you about the state of your health, self-esteem and self. We had some interesting reactions coming out. We give none of this symbolic level. I didn't give any clues about what the house would mean. All I did was guide them through a process where they went into some place and there they would find a house. There were asked questions about that house, size, and so on. One lady talked about her house being like a hospital building like a building she was working at. It didn't take too much clever mind reading to ask her, do you work very hard? Do you sometimes feel that your work takes over more than the rest of your life?

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It’s easy to read because that’s the symbol the unconscious mind gave them when we understand the sense of symbolism. Again, these are general tendencies. These are educated guesses we're taking here. Please do not assume that just because you have a sense of what a symbol usually means that you understand it in that exact context. The Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


context can always redefine it and turn it completely on its head. At least we have tendencies within that. Has this been useful as a session? Students:

Yes.

Igor:

Has this given you food for thought? Now, while at lunch, I’d like you to consider the food for thought you develop so that you nourish yourself on more than one level. Thank you.

Igor:

Okay, what I’d like to focus on now for at least the first part of the afternoon, is a very important part in hypnosis in general, but especially important in the storytelling process and those are the performance skills. Very few stories captivate people when you speak like this and then they give them all the amazing language you can possibly want but something is wrong in the way you are delivering it, and people don’t quite understand what it might mean. I know it’s tricky to figure out what is going on there. However, it might shock or surprise you to realize that there is a performance involved in storytelling. The interesting thing is you’re all natural storyteller. So, it’s not a question of what you’re doing, it’s what you’re doing to stop yourself from doing the things, which occur naturally. Does that make sense? I want to spend some time going through exercises that will remind you to let yourself, shall we say, be more expressive in terms of what you’re doing. That way, if you do find yourself ever blocking, slowing down the process or censoring something, you’ll realize, this is one of those times where I step back and let things just happen a bit more.

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First, one of the most important things ever is the way you enunciate things or rather should I say the meaning that comes out of your tonality. The best way I can demonstrate this as the way it was told to me by one of my mentors, John Overdurf who work in a hospital back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, back when biofeedback was all the rage. There was a technician in the hospital who had the biofeedback machine back in the ‘70s, of course. The machines were very expensive, so they only had one for the whole hospital and only one technician that knew how to use it. It was a big hospital, so he was very busy. He’d be here one hour, and the next hour he’d be at the opposite end of the hospital, and then he’d come back here again and then he’d be on the 5th floor and then the 3rd floor, lot’s going on. Biofeedback, just so you know, is designed essentially in the hospital to teach people how to relax themselves on purpose, because a lot of health benefits are accompanied by just sheer physical and mental relaxation. So here’s how he’d come in with his biofeedback machine to teach people how to relax using the miracle of modern science. He’d come in and go, okay, I’m here to teach you how to relax. Okay, the first thing you have to do is just make sure that you relax the body all the way through. So everyone please put your feet on the ground. Now, go on, put your feet on the ground. Good. Now, take a deep breath in. In-in-in- hold it. Now breathe out and relax. Relax, relax, relax all of you relax now. The machine went bleep, and actually that was the hard way of it shutting off. So it’s very important that you do not become the biofeedback expert at this point. The kind of thing you will be doing is thinking about your language. The way you present the tonality has to exude the quality of the words that you’re presenting. Would it be fair to say that the person we just talked about, the way he used the word relax might not have been the most relaxing? When we say relax, we don’t want to say relax! We want to relax. How do we say excitement? Excitement! exactly. So the general rule of thumb is you have to go first. If you feel the feelings, then you only say the word as slowly

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or quickly as it accentuates the feeling inside yourself. If what you say seems to violate how you feel, changes and diminishes it somehow, then you haven’t used the right tonality. In other words, you have somehow suppressed the connection between how you feel and what you say. Hence, it won’t come out right. So you feel it first, and then you say it the way you feel it, and you listen to it and notice whether, or not it makes you feel more of it. If it does, you said it right. If you does not then I suggest you take a step back and allow something else to happen next time. Make sense? So we’re going to do a quick exercise just based on that. In the first level we’re going to take some simple words that have some nice states attached. → → → → →

Relax is a classic one, of course How about the idea of lovely? Comfort Excitement Happiness is always a good one, isn’t it?

Do you see how these are all a variety of different emotions? We can also tonally exclude qualities, for example, soft versus hard. The tonality will, of course, change when you’re talking about the quality of something. The best way to think about it is how does it feel when you’re touching those objects? How do you feel when something is soft? For example, the image that came to my mind was a warm, freshly laundered set of towels, still warm and soft. Hard – what does that feel like? Well, in my mind the image that came up was a cool marble surface, like in a kitchen, somewhere like that, that’s the image that came to mind. Then I feel that and I know how to say hard. It’s very different from how I say soft. Does that make sense?

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I’d like you to get into groups of five again. Different groups this time. Use these or any other words you want. All you want to do is present them the way that they feel to you. Check in yourself. If you feel happy think okay, this is good. This made me feel more of that. Tell the others and see if they concur. If it did not, just say, that was okay, but I could maybe do a little bit Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


better and see if they concur. Does that make sense? Easy, let’s just spend a few minutes doing that. Off you go. Okay, did you enjoy that so far? Interesting? Who finds this a little harder to do and who finds it a little easier? Harder? Anyone? Easy? I like you guys, you rock. This is good. All right, so easy isn’t it? It’s easy. Hello, welcome to the conversational hypnosis hypnotherapy training, what? These are not, of course, in any particular magical order for them they’re just simple words. You don’t have to stick to that list. You can make up your own list or whatever seems natural at that point is fine. What I’d like to do now is to go to the next step, whether it’s these words or similar words, again is up to you. I would like you to begin telling some kind of story. If you don’t think of a story well, it’s very simple. You told them this morning. Remember those events- skiing, little secrets they don’t know about you. Tell them about the vacation, tell them about the time, tell them about the action and the sequence going on there, and that will give you plenty of opportunity for mentioning more loaded verbs and nouns like this, which you can then perform properly. Let me emphasize something for you. The purpose of telling them about whatever it is they don’t know about you is not to entertain them. The purpose is not for you to have an engaging or interesting story. There is no need for an end. There is no need for them to even like it. The only purpose is for you to be able to use this kind of language, these kinds of words with full emphasis so that the quality of each word is squeezed through it, and you can do it consistently in the form of a normal interaction, like a story. That’s it. So you will be doing exactly the same thing you did. In fact, some of you were already doing it in this little group exercise now weren’t you? You were already starting to tell things because the only way you could get yourself into the mood is because you’re natural storytellers all of you. You naturally gravitated to starting to tell a story to be able to do a better performance,

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because that’s what your unconscious mind recognized instinctively as what you need to do. So whatever that was, do more of it. All right, take another five minutes doing that and just take turns. Don’t tell the whole story take a minute for each person, and then the other person gets a go and so on. Take turns to tell a part of your story. Okay, was that enjoyable? Do you notice how having an audience now actually makes it easier, rather than more frightening? Would that be fair to say? Because you’re working with reactions and you’re listening to their unconscious mind. You’re watching that and that’s what feeds back into your story. We’ll be developing that more. I did notice that one or two of you– it wasn’t that many– were more focused on your notes, however. Maybe you wrote down some things you want to say, some cool things in this performance. Let me encourage you to put your notes away. The words themselves are irrelevant. If you have an amazing phrase you want to get out there, it is unimportant. You’re putting too much emphasis on trying to entertain and be good. The key here is not that. The key here is can you talk, engage the group and perform it? In other words, when the moment comes, when the word just comes, you’ll feel it coming and you just add that little package of emotion inside of it so that it has more impact and it transfers. We’re going to do this same exercise one more time. Only this time the additional piece we’re going to add is somewhere in your story and again, this is not a full story. You can start in the middle, towards the end, at the beginning. I don’t care, because you’re not going to get a chance to finish it anyway. We only have a few minutes each, like a minute each, five minutes in total. This time what I want you to do, though, is somewhere halfway through your delivery – so you’ve been speaking for maybe 20 or 30 seconds – and you’ve had a chance to maybe enthuse about some words, I’d like you to simply stop. You don’t start talking and then suddenly stop. No, you talk to them, you tell them about whatever it is and at some point, there may be a

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natural point for it or sometimes it won’t even be that natural, but you decide what the hell I’ll experiment and you simply stop and see what happens. Off you go. Who’s enjoying themselves? Is this good? Let me ask you something. Do you notice that the more you are doing, number one, the easier it gets and the more interesting it is? Isn’t that weird? What’s that all about? It’s because the more you do, the less you’re trying to do, just consider that for a moment. Go ahead. Student:

Is what we’re doing now, basically, open loops?

Igor:

Please ask me again in three days. Anyone else? A couple of quick points here– Remember when I stopped, I didn’t just stop; I stopped. What’s the difference? My body language. What am I suggesting to you when I say and all the sudden it all just stopped? That I’m done, it’s finished, it’s over and it’s time for you to interact with me, isn’t it? What does it tell you when I say, stop? So body language is important, isn’t it? The irony is all of you were doing it already, more or less. Some of you – and it happens with intention. In other words, not on purpose, but where your intention goes is where everything else goes. The energy will flow there. So some of you told your story, you made your pause, you waited for a few seconds and then you kind of just retreated back in yourself and said okay its someone else’s go and they started talking. The purpose of the pause and especially the reason for doing it in the middle of it, rather than at the end of something, is can you maintain the pause without saying anything? You see one of the reasons people want to start talking is because they feel that if you don’t talk, someone else will. It’s not… Is it? But you have to let them know that it’s not time for them to interfere yet. That’s what your body does. So the next exercise is the same as before. Tell that story or any other story, I don’t care – beginning, middle, end – irrelevant. Somewhere in the middle of the story, you will pause again. With your gaze primarily, and

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with your gestures as well if you need to, you will maintain control of your group so no one starts speaking until you let them. The other thing I want you to do is make sure that your body language is congruent with how you happen to be speaking. If I tell you how frightened I was, does that fit? But it can, only if I’m trying to tell you something about fear other than how you normally perceive it, isn’t it? I was terrified so I just jumped. That’s very different from, I really felt like I was going to go for it. I can do it. Now we’ve talked about body language already, didn’t we the second day? And how open and closed posture, the things that it signifies, will ring, anything which is ring posh where you have a lot of skin contact, especially stimulation. The stimulation calms down the nervous system so that is a sign of stress. Anything that’s open and calm, where there’s an absence of stimulation or over or over-stimulation tends to be relaxed postures. So I want you to make sure that when you’re speaking now, you carry on with the tonality, you maintain a strong pause and speak up and speed up again afterwards. Only this time, pay attention to your mannerisms – what your hands do. Some of you I saw doing things like you’re flying around in terms of what you’re doing. Your hand gestures were open and your head was up sometimes. I could see your emotions being portrayed inside your body, which is great. If you feel it, you’ll do it. Allow yourself to feel something and you will do it. Just notice it when it does and if it only happens a small amount, then you know what you’re doing, don’t you? You’re interfering again so stop it! Then allow the full response to emerge and it’s a natural response at that point. It’s not an, oh, I must have open body posture, but I feel very nervous, so I’ll do this, which is what people do when they try to force an emotion, isn’t it? So the same exercise as before. You’re going to pay more attention to your body language. I would like, for you to put the pause somewhere in the middle of your story so that you can pick up again afterwards and test how long you can hold that gap open just with your body language, and if someone feels like it’s their turn to start speaking again, you know what to do, don’t you? You do know what to do, right? Make sense? Off you go.

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Are you all enjoying yourselves? Is this interesting? Are you all fellow hypnotists starting to become more interesting as we continue through these exercises? Remember the analogy, you have little sticks, little pencils that add on top of each other, each one on its own won’t necessarily do that much. But, when you add more and more and more, it doesn’t take many layers for it to become irresistible, does it? That’s what we’re doing right now. We are layering things on top of each other. Once again, these are lots of layers and we’re going them all at once. You do not have to do everything at once. It helps sometimes and sometimes it’s enough just to do one or two things. The next layer I’d like you to add, we’re going to add on top of what you already have. In other words, you’re going to tell your little stories again or a different story, you’re going to be using your tonality, your pauses, your body language to animate things or control things. The next thing I want you to add is your tonalities. You’re familiar, of course, with the three tonalities, are you not? 1. Question 2. Statement 3. Command Those are already very useful to have. The next kind of tonality we’ll have – and we’ll enrich these a little bit later on –are what I call the three rhythms. 1. You can speak in a slow, smooth, stately rhythm, can you not? 2. You can speak at a medium pace, which has just a little bit more going on in that whole process, right? 3. Or you can get a lot of stuff done in a very short period of time because you have a lot of stuff that has to come out, and it’s up to you to do it, isn’t it? Do you understand the three rhythms? Now, one of the keys to keeping a conversation interesting, especially a story, is that you vary the rhythms. The rhythms keep the emotions

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engaged. So, if you’re stuck on one wavelength, what will happen is the emotions will habituate and they’ll be no contrast left so they can’t experience things emotionally anymore. If there are no emotions in a story, it is not a story. We’ll come onto that more tomorrow, but if there are no emotions, there is no story. If there’s only one emotion in the whole story, there’s no contrast. If there’s no contrast, there’s no emotion. That’s why when you watch a Hollywood film, there are they almost make it, but then they lose it, but then they get it back. They have dramatic variations for the contrast principles, so that they pump your emotions in different directions so it feels satisfying. Even music does this, doesn’t it? For the moment, let’s just keep it simple. Slow, medium and fast-paced and you want to weave that into your oneminute story in some way, along with your squeezing the meaning, along with your body language, along with, of course, stopping from time to time. Is that easy? All right, another five minutes. Off you go. Who’s enjoying themselves right now? Excellent! That’s much better. Here’s something I like and enjoy watching in you. Do you notice how with each iteration, even though it gets more complex, you get more animated? Is it a little more fun this way? Storytelling is an immense amount of fun. Who has found their stories becoming more interesting by accident when you’re paying attention essentially to one thing? How it feels. Anyone notice this? That is the secret to telling stories. Storytelling is a state of mind and to the extent you try to tell good stories, you’re ignoring the state of mind and that’s what makes it hard. If you focus on just getting that state of mind, that sheer pleasure of telling something, it automatically becomes good. Who here noticed that whilst you were telling your story, suddenly you got a great idea of how to spin it this way or spin it that way, how to introduce a new character or end it a different way, anyone? That’s the state of mind because we’re all good at it.

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The thing we’re not so good at is getting into the right state of mind to begin with because we’re so busy trying to think about all the tricks, techniques, paradigms, archetypes, characters and the drama and it’s like I can’t do all this. You can’t. It’s not you, it’s the other you. Does this make sense now? Any comments or questions before we continue? Do you want to come on up? Student:

I was just going to say that in that state, you can really just make up anything on the fly.

Igor:

I would agree with you. What you make up will probably be better than the things you script out over hours of hard labor if you get the state right and you have a few grounding principles focusing your energy through in a good way. Does that make sense? Who here now feels more liberated in their storytelling approaches? And we haven’t even really started the true storytelling part yet. All we’ve done is we’ve set the building blocks. This is the scene. This is only the scenery. When the action begins, you better hold onto your seats folks, because it’s going to get interesting. But before we get there, I’d like to talk a little bit about moods now, if I may. For this exercise, I’d like you to get into groups of three just because that way you’ll have more time to play with the following exercise. We’re going to do quite a lot of iterations. In a moment, you’re going to break into groups of three. If you’re in a group of six, just go in half. If you’re in a group of five, two of you need to find one extra person and so on. Frank, can you help me with this one? What we want to do now is – if you could find the storytelling music I have on there. We’ve got some music prepared for you. For copyright reasons so we can actually include it in the DVD set and so on, the music I warn you now is not the greatest hits of 2010, because I can’t afford to pay the royalties on that essentially. However, the music itself should still be setting the mood, and you’ll see what we can do with this at that point.

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So, if we start playing some music at a medium pace – so he’ll start of off low. So we have this music right now, right? What mood is this? Exciting, medium-paced, you’re going to get in there, adrenaline, get something done. Do you notice how as I’m speaking about this, not only does my mannerisms change, but my voice changes with this too. I talked louder, have I not? And do you notice that I’m not starting to rap. There’s no rhythm in my voice. Does it match? You can all do this exercise at home comfortably. I used to do this and I still do. When you listen to your music in your music players, a great way you can do this is if you’re on a telephone conversation, for example, you can cycle through music, have one ear in the telephone and one ear on the music in the background. It sets your mood, and you have to maintain, match the mood of the music with it; otherwise, just put both headphones on and practice out loud. We’re going to do it in this room. Get in your groups of three so you can have more go’s at this, and we’re going to cycle through different moods of music. Each time we cycle, I’d like you to take another go. We’ll start with this exciting piece, we’ll recycle that several times – there’s only 30 seconds, so each time it recycles, please change roles so that all three of you get a go. Once it’s played three times, we’ll come back and we’ll introduce the next piece of music. It will probably be a bit longer, and then we’ll go off again, and we’ll do several moods this way so that you notice that everything changes when you allow your mood to shift. Who likes this? This is one of the best exercises, in terms of sheer performance values you could ever do. This will take you so much further in terms of being emotional, being dynamic, being interesting, being engaging and everything else. This will take you there if you’re willing to put the time and effort into it. The irony, of course, is it feels good because you get to feel cool stuff. Does anyone not like feeling good stuff? Just me, okay. Get into your trios, and then as soon as you’re ready, please look at me quietly. That tells me we can start the music going, which means you can do your stories again with everything, especially the mood. Off you go.

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Here’s what’s going to happen, in a moment when I’m silent, Frank will start playing that same music again. It’s only a 30-second clip. The minute it begins, so do you. The minute it ends, so do you. When it ends, the next person has a go, and the third time, the next person has a go. By the time we’ve played it a third time, we’ll finish and come back. So, if you don’t end, you’ll have taken someone else’s go. Does that make sense to you guys? Arthur: ♦

What do you do during that 30 second?

Igor:

You do exactly what we’ve been doing all afternoon. Only this time, you’re going to be listening to the music and feeling that rhythm. If you want to move with it, that’s fine too. Then you’re going to speak in tune with that so what you’re saying does not violate the rhythm, the music, the feel of that piece. Let me emphasize this? I am not looking for rappers. We’re not rapping here, this is not musical style. You’re still speaking it’s just that your voice tone will match the mood of the music that you hear, the energy, the excitement, the emotion of it.

Arthur:

Yes, but do you change your story then based on the music?

Igor:

No, you don’t. Your story could be made exciting, quiet or contemplated, depending on what mood you wish to project. You may accidently end up changing the language, because of the way you feel. That’s fine. But you do not have to change anything other than the mood. Sometimes it can be interesting. Has anyone here ever heard or seen a movie or heard a story about death that’s actually amusing? I know that never happens, right? Yet, when it happens, something about that contradiction makes it fantastic, therapeutic, funny and so on. So your ability to tell stories that actually express different emotions, even if they don’t necessarily gel with the content matter, is very important. Does that help you, Arthur? Do you have a follow-up?

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Is everyone clear on the exercise? Is everyone clear on what you’re doing? All right, turn to your partners. Make sure you know who starts, and please go ahead, Frank, and start the music. And stop– the next one ready to go. Give yourself a round of applause, folks. Good job. Who enjoyed the exercise? Didn’t that add an interesting new dimension to what you’re doing? This will drive more power to your storytelling than any gimmicks, any techniques, any character lines, stories and all the rest of it. This on its own can make a dull story incredibly interesting, as we’ll see tomorrow. Mickey:

It’s just an observation that I never noticed before and that’s that, a complete lack of body language is body language.

Igor:

Yes, this is saying something as well, isn’t it? It’s telling you something. So, you cannot, not communicate can you?

Mickey:

I never knew that until this last exercise.

Igor:

Excellent. Thank you. Are you ready for the next piece? All right, maestro, will you play the next track. Let’s see if we want to play with this one. This track is going to take a little bit longer, so I’m going to cut you off at about 30 seconds and I’m going to give Frank a wave. When the music resets, you need to reset yourselves as well. You’ll notice, this is interesting, because it changes the rhythm, in other words, the mood evolves as it goes through it’s not a steady mood. Could you rewind it again and start from the beginning. As soon as he rewinds, we’ll be resetting the groups so the next one goes in. Off you go. All right, give yourself a round of applause. [Applause] In the words of the immortal Joey, how you doin’? Good fun. Let’s try the next track. We’ll play with this one. This one will be interesting I like this one. You’ll notice it’s an entirely different rhythm now. All right, as soon as the music resets, the first one is up. Off you go. Reset please.

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All right, give yourselves a round of applause. [Applause] Who’s enjoying the exercise? It’s interesting, isn’t it? Let’s have one last one. Let’s see if we can get a nice slow one, like a nice even-paced one. Try the next track. Let’s see what else we have lined up for you. Wait a second. Let me just hear this one. Make it a little louder. Yes, this one. This is much more chilled, more relaxed and more even. Okay, as soon as it resets, the first one of you guys is up. When it resets, so do you. Off you go. Reset it please. All right, folks give yourselves a round of applause. [Applause] Take these feelings with you and have interesting conversations.

Igor:

Welcome back.

Students: [Yay!] Igor:

I like that that’s good. How are you doing? Having fun? Keeping up with the pace? It’s this a good pace? Not too fast, not too slow? Okay, good. You may have noticed on each one of your chairs, we had a little a white handout. Please keep it safe, cherished, love it and treat it like your own

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children. Not the kind that take away your freedom, but the kind that the government gives you subsidies for, because this list of children is going to help you be more influential. 1. It’s the list I referred to, earlier on of some of the more important symbols and some of the meanings that you can apply to them. Remember, this list is a starting point. It’s not an ending point. It’s just to get your ideas rolling. 2. Secondly, this is not a fixed thing. You must always apply it to the context, the people and the situation in an intelligent manner. If you don’t, you’re welcome not to. Seriously, you can do what you want. You’re all adults here. It’s just please don’t come complaining to me saying oh, I did this and this, and I don’t know why the results got there. If you want to do your own thing, then I guess you have to experience your own results and make your own conclusions from that. My opinion is that this is a starting point. It’s a good thing to get a sense of what symbols you can start using and framing fro which outcomes, for which unconscious maneuvers. However, we cannot get locked into them, that this must mean that. If someone talks about ants, it does not necessarily mean that they’re feeling controlled or stuck in a social role. They might just love ants. They might have studied them, and for them it means something very different, the fascination of them and so on. Do you see where we’re going with this? I want to make sure that is a clear disclaimer so that you realize this is not the Freudian thing of saying, cigars are other things that look like cigars and it’s always the same thing. It’s not, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to consider that, so it gives you more scope in terms of how to make it fit different contexts. Student: ♦

Igor:

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Is this derived mainly for Jungian archetypes?

Primarily, that’s a starting point, and then what we do is – and this is what I encourage you guys to do – the same thing you did in your groups. I sat Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



down and thought about what the cultural associations are to these things? If someone starts talking about this, how do they typically use these symbols in everyday language and what do they mean by them? When someone says you know what, I’ve been coming to this job in and out and I feel like an ant. What are they saying? They might say they’re feeling insignificant. They might say that they’re feeling the social control. So I’m mapping out those associations, those feelings that come with people and that gives me a richer sense of the symbols; hence, it’s a starting point. There may be flaws within it because they’re just my current perceptions of it and, hopefully, they’re relatively close, but they’re just educated guesses and your educated guesses are as good as mine. Does this help you? Student: ♦

Igor:

Do you recommend looking further into Jungian archetypes?

Absolutely, 100%.

Student:

More than Freud.

Igor:

Yes. Freud was interesting. He had a lot of things right, but the problem is two things. He had a lot of things wrong and because he did not like – he’d didn’t brook any arguments or especially his daughter, Anna Freud, someone who really messed things up. She idolized her father. He became a god, so that he could do nothing wrong and that, I think, destroyed the whole Freudian thing as far as I’m concerned because you couldn’t start sorting out the weak from a chaff. If all you get is whatever this person is doing is always got to be right, the sun shines from everything he says and does well, that person is going to end up doing some very weird things that have no bearing on reality, and you’re going to ruin the potential that was there. I personally believe that’s happened with Freud’s work. He had some real ingenious ideas around defense mechanisms and stuff like that, but then other things got over accentuated, because no one was

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allowed to question the church of Freud, so it got a little bit weird in my opinion and Jung was less cluttered. Jung was much more open about it. Do you want to know a little bit of Jung? He’s a very interesting character. Jung was Freud’s protégé and got his start in life in psychoanalysis and so on. Then, as he was going into his 30’s, he and Freud started having increasing clashes and Freud did not like people saying, no you’re wrong. Jung had to. His ideas were going this way. Something very interesting happened. Eventually, Freud kicked him out of the organization broke. There was a big – it was like a father denying his son and it affected Jung terribly. Before this big split came, Jung was your quintessential clinical cold professor. Very smart, very fast, he got all these concepts and connections, very logical and very left brained, but personal skills were very low on the scale of things. People respected him, but they didn’t like him very much. Soon after he split with Freud, he ended up having a psychotic break. He ended up for the next, I don’t know, four or five years having figures from Hell come up randomly and chat to him in his garden. Now most people would freak out at this point. Jung actually did something that is, I guess, very Shamanic. Rather than inducing more fear in himself because of the psychosis, the psychotic break that he had, he became very curious about this. He postulated that these figures from Hell were actually his own subconscious, his shadow self as he later called, teaching him things about himself, things that would free him, rather than all these insecurities that were keeping him all hemmed in as he had been before. So for those five years he kept a very detailed set of journals. I believe they’re called The Red Book. They’re a large collection of works over the period of four or five years and he documents these conversations with his own psychosis, which is really, when you think about, psychosis is talking directly to your unconscious mind with no social filters. Really, that’s what it is.

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The problem is, if you medicate psychosis– I’m not going to start preaching about this whole thing, but you’re welcome to my opinion, and seeing how I’m on my soapbox, I’m going to stay here for a little longer– you don’t have any chance to shift it, to shift the river somewhere else. It’s either on or off, and the message is this is bad, this is scary, so you increase fear, which now, of course, increases the fear feedback loop. Jung did something unique for Western society, something which is actually very common in older societies – the more Shamanic, native traditions – which is he embraced the psychotic break and came out of it a truly changed person. He was like this avuncular grandfatherly figure that people loved. They just wanted to sit and listen to him. They didn’t care what he said; they just wanted to sit and listen to him and they felt good. Young people idolized him as a true positive force in their lives. Old people respected him for his intellect and his way with other people. It was a truly remarkable change, all because of the psychotic break and how he interacted with it. Another way of putting it is it was all because of how he was willing to interact with his unconscious symbols, the messages that were coming out in a very powerful way, and how he interacted with them. So that’s one of the reasons, I think, Jungian psychology is a phenomenal place to start with this whole unconscious symbolism, but only start there. Please, like anyone else – and I include myself in this category – do not assume that it’s the gospel truth. James knows the gospel truth. Nobody else does. You share the gospel truth, thank you. The point is it’s a starting point, unless you do your own thinking. Unless you do your own experimenting, you come to your own conclusions and you try it out and notice different reactions, all this stuff will be to a certain extent hit or miss. It’s a great starting point. It’s a great way to feed your mind, but really you must engage in this yourself to understand this more. The process is very simple. It is to track your own associations. A great resource for this is dreams and so on. If we get a chance, we’ll show you how to do some kind of waking dream processes. You actually started

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already earlier on with the strange new world. Wasn’t that a form of waking dream? And you had to quickly interfere. You can build that up into something very profound, which incidentally to answer your question from earlier, is another one of the projects that are bubbling in the background. It’s kind of how to transform your own personal blueprint without having to have a psychotic break. That’s kind of nice, isn’t it? But that’s not ready yet. There’s a lot of work involved in that. Does that help you? So yes, I would recommend Jungian archetypes as a starting point, rather than an end-point. We may as well have a general Q&A session right now because we’re going to be covering a lot of content. Is everyone clear so far? Are you having fun? Who here feels that they have a better grasp of what we mean by the performance elements when it comes to storytelling now? You may have read a lot about this stuff. Hopefully, it has now brought it to life and it’s easy. It’s within each one of you. It’s not a skill that you have to learn from scratch and spend years mastering. It’s there; you just have to find how to uncover it. It’s actually about doing less, rather than doing more. It’s putting less effort in, rather than more. It’s still an effort in terms of it takes work and energy and commitment and so on, but less of this kind of effort. Does that make sense? It becomes easier and so you get better results. This is your starting point for the symbolism and you’ve already got your starting point in terms of the performance. Please don’t think that just because you did half an hour or an hour and a half of exercises around performance stuff that it’s there, it’s perfect and it’s going to be there for you at all times. Like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. So once again, consider those exercises as starting points. The beauty is every time you have a conversation, you have free practice time, and you have 100 hypnotists in the room with whom I hope you’ll have at least one more conversation before you leave in the next three days.

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Then you have a whole world of people out there who are waiting to hear things from you, so you may as well practice, right? The key is to always keep it simple. Just choose one idea, one concept, throw it in, and when it’s so simple that it’s easier to not think about it than to just do it, than you add the next principle and so on. Does that help? Yes/no? Get on with it? I’ll get on with it then. All right, what I’d like to cover now as the final portion of today is how do we create metaphor machines? How would you like to be able to build a machine inside your mind that automatically tells you or helps you find the perfect simile or metaphor for a situation to be more persuasive? Wouldn’t that be something? Yes? Well, actually there are about four of them that I have in mind, and I’m going to try to get through all of them if I can in the process of the next one and a half hours. Is that cool? It does mean; however, that we’re going to have to be strict on the whole timing to make sure we fit it in. Is that okay with you guys? Because personally, I’d rather give you more than less, that’s up to you though. The first metaphor machine I call the analogy machine. The analogy machine is very simple. We’re going to use the guiding principle – by the way, you know the guiding principle we’ve been using all afternoon, do you know what it’s called? It’s called the access state principle or at least, I call it that. Where you access a certain state and everything else – behaviors, abilities, skills, insights and memories – are attached to that state. We already spent 90 minutes figuring out how to find the storytelling state, and notice how your abilities grow with it, haven’t we? We’re going to use state– our emotional feelings and moods– as the engines or even maybe the fuels that drive these machines. Does that make sense? So the analogy machine works like this. I’d like you to start with a simple feeling and do your best to actually feel it. It could be something like feeling in love. It could be something more negative like an argument or feeling frustrated, feeling helpless.

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It could be something more positive like being excited, a sense of hope or the feeling of kindness towards another human being, whatever it is that you need to convey to the other person or where they’re starting from. Is that easy to do, to experience an element of that emotion inside yourself? Yes? Okay, now if you recall the strange new world, you opened your mind up and allowed something to come to you, rather than trying to force a situation didn’t you? Would that be fair to say? So it’s more like you open the gates and let a stream come out than you trying to drag something out from your unconscious. So when I say your next stream, a situation out of your mind, I hope you understand what I mean by this. It’s like that strange new world thing. What you’re essentially going to do is you’re going to feel that feeling and ask yourself, what other situations does someone or something feel this way? For example, let’s take the idea of frustration. Anyone ever feel frustrated? No one. Is it just me? My God, I must have something wrong with me. So when we feel frustration, ask yourself the question what is this like, what kind of situations? Well, let’s think about it. Anyone here ever stand in line like at a bank or a supermarket, and it’s slowly creeping forward? I had something like this happen to me during the last trip I came here. I was standing in line in the Immigrations going to the U.S. and all I have to say is the New York Airport, and I think most people understand what I’m talking about. So it’s slow. I get right to the front and there are two people in front of me. Closed! What? Oh, you’ll have to go to the back of that queue. Slow, slower, slower. Closed! Twice! How are you guys feeling, by the way? Is this a story happening? It happens to be true as well, and at the time I thought, at least I’ll be able to use this in a seminar. So do you get the idea of how feelings stream a situation to you? What if I did something completely different? Let’s think about a different kingdom, the animal kingdom rather than the human world. What if there’s a dog and it’s time for its walk. It’s been running around and it’s waiting and waiting and waiting, but the master’s not coming home. Now its bladder is starting to get a little bit full as well, and it

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knows that if it pees in the kitchen, there’s a newspaper going to come, so he’s got to hold on tight. There’s the door, its waiting and there are steps outside. Is it? Then they walk right past and the dog goes, oh Christ, I was so close– if dogs could talk, of course. Does that again evoke a similar experience? So it’s a very simple process. You start with a feeling and you allow that to evoke or stream a situation, a context that you can talk to people about. Now if you wish to – icing on the cake – if you wish to, you can then accentuate or even add some symbols to accentuate your message. Chances are, however, the situation you find will automatically have certain symbols in there that fit the context that you have. It’s just the way your unconscious mind works, it would rather have things fit and have meaning than not. It’s easier. Do you remember the language exercises we did on the first day? Which was easier, to not make sense and talk complete nonsense or to actually focus your language into making sense and connections and so on? Which one was easier? Honestly. The second, right? That’s because it’s easier to make meaning than not. It’s easier to find meaningful stories and examples than not, and the only reason people have trouble with it is you know why? Because you’re trying too hard, it’s not you. Student:

It’s the other you.

Igor:

Exactly. It’s the other you. Then it’s all easy. Does this analogy machine make sense to you guys? It’s very simple when you know how. This is the first one. We’ll come onto more. These are three steps of the first method. I call it the analogy machine because we’re creating an analogy. It’s just like when – that’s the magic word. Of course, once you have an analogy, you can always turn it into a metaphor. It is… I am a dog waiting for his master to finally let him out. I am waiting and waiting and waiting and its way past my walking time. Someone has to open the door or there will be a mess. Can you hear the metaphor developing? So it doesn’t matter. Of course, I call it the analogy machine just because it’s easier, but once you’ve got the core situation, you can run with it in many different ways.

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Groups of three please, and I’d like you to come up with at least one analogy each with at least two or three emotions. It should be a real quick process. Just choose a random set of emotions – love, argument, frustration, happiness or anything like that. Make a nice mix, find a situation each and then start playing with it. Does that make sense to you guys? All right, off you go. How’s that working for you guys? Interesting? How many analogies are you coming up with? Who has come up with like more than three on the same kind of rough theme, just like oh, it could be this, it could that or it could be this? Anyone? Is that about right? Good. The reason I’d like you to practice this, especially on your own time as well. This is one of the most useful tools for quick and easy influence, you can have. Student: ♦

Igor:

Can you give an example?

Absolutely. In fact, I’ll give an example of the next one, which I call the process machine. I used to focus on that one. That was my primary way of operating until I started evolving more ways of finding analogies and so on. This is actually an easier method that I came up with later. So my first process – I’ll give you the process first, and then I’ll show you how it works. Actually, I’ll give you the story first, and then I’ll give you the process. So this is when I was first getting into hypnosis and so on. Again, remember, I was a poor storyteller at the time, right? I can’t remember what it was. I was just with some friends at the time from the university, but I was already a lawyer, so it was kind of like a private part or something like that. I don’t know how the topic came up, but the idea of reading came up and how reading books – it might have been when The Lord of the Rings was just coming out, and everyone was going on about how it was a hard book to read because there’s a very complex within it. I said, oh yeah, it took me like eight months to work through it when I was teenager, but I was glad I

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did it. One of my friends looks at me, and he is what you would call in America more like a jock. He’s more physical. He went to the university and everything, but he’s not the most academic type. He’s a great guy. I don’t mean that as an insult. He was a great guy and I admire him to pieces. His people skills are amazing. Much of what I can do I’ve copied from him. So this is not a comment on his intellect. The guy was amazing in what he does. He just wasn’t a traditional academic, right? So, he then comes up at some point and says well, why would you put yourself through that? Why would you read stuff that’s hard? Why would you do that? You can see that he lives in a very different world from me, right? I did some thinking. I’ll show you how this thinking comes and this was literally a split second of thoughts jumping through my mind. I said to him look, you go to the gym, don’t you? He goes yes. Tell me, when do you feel like you’ve really done something worthwhile? When do you feel the most rewarded? Is it when you go to the gym and you do a couple of lifts or whatever and then go home? Or, is it the ones where you work out and at the end of it your muscles ache a little bit, and you know you’ve had a workout? Which do you think benefits you most? Which one are you most proud of? He looked at me and went, bastard and walked off. Do you think he got it? Would you like to know how I did that or how you can do that just as easily? Would you like to know that? This is what I call the process machine. It’s very similar to the analogy. This machine, by the way – the analogy machine is a lot easier to do, but the process machine is still easy. For the process machine, we’re going to get a couple of steps, and we’re going to do a little bit of a mental jiggery-pokery, which you’ll see in a minute. You’ll start as before with a situation or context. That’s your equivalent of the feeling. What was the situation or context in the example of my friend? It was reading is difficult, or why would you read difficult material? That’s the context.

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The next thing requires you to do a little process. We’ll have to practice a little bit here first, where you chunk up. Chunking up is an NLP term. I kind of like it. You’re going to elevate the whole concept by one level of abstraction, and the simple way to do that is you ask yourself, what is this an example of, reading difficult material? What is that an example of, anyone? It may be an example of many different things. Go ahead. A challenge Stretching yourself Exercising your mind in some ways Extending So you get the kind of themes that we’re going through here, right? For me, just recalling back to the way I was doing it, it was an example of a strenuous activity that has its own reward. You can see that it’s about the same thing you all were talking about, right? Once you’ve chunked up, the next step is to chunk back down, only this time you’re going to come down somewhere different. So if you started here, you chunk up to a general point, and then you chunk back down to something else. How do you chunk back down? Well, you reverse the question. Instead of asking, what is this an example of, you ask yourself what is a specific example of this? So, in my case, it would be a question of what is a specific example of a strenuous activity that carries its own reward? It could be also, what is a specific example of a challenge? What is a specific example of stretching yourself and so on? Do you see where we’re going with this? Now knowing that I know he’s more physically oriented and he likes going to the gym and sports and so on, is it that difficult to make a stretch of going from a strenuous activity to gym? I mean the answer is staring me in the face. It was literally a split second, and it’s like, oh, I get it. Do you see how that works? But I could have gone anywhere else, couldn’t I? Let’s take one of your examples. A challenge– an example of something challenging that’s worthwhile, what’s challenging and worthwhile doing? Childbirth. Yes, although that probably wouldn’t work with him to well. You

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know like well you give birth to children… like what? But yes, you’re quite right, and in a certain context, that would be absolutely perfect. What are some other things? Dating. Challenging, but could be very rewarding, yes. Cooking, yes. Nuclear disarmament. Actually, now you’ve gone way up and come back down to somewhere else, but that’s okay. We’ll come on to those thing’s later on that’s a separate machine we’ll talk about. What you’ve actually done is you’ve doubled up the sequence, and it takes you much further apart. It can still be used, by the way. I mean they can be some simple challenges. Like people who climb mountains. What other challenges? Playing an instrument. What about someone who’s been in a car crash and learns to walk again. Is that worthwhile, or should they just give up? Do you see how it’s the same analogy, just presented different, isn’t it? So, if my cousin or if I have an accident and I lose the ability to walk, should I not bother trying because it’s going to be hard? No, you should give it a go. Of course you should, but you see how we’re now finding lots and lots and lots of examples that actually tell exactly the same story but in a very different way? Make sense? All this is predicated by that little chunk up here. You chunk up and you chunk back down somewhere separate. That’s really the key to the whole method. Student: ♦

Igor:

Is it the closer you can get to something relevant to the person, the better it is?

As a rule, yes. At the very least, it has to be in the experiential reference points. Talking to a confirmed bachelor who’s just barely out of university, so he’s still in that student kind of mindset about childbirth is not something as important to him as a context. Does it invalidate the analogy? No. It’s just, not the most persuasive analogy for that individual because it doesn’t fit in his existing world view already. Does that make sense? Now with other people, it would be the perfect analogy. And for that individual, what we’re looking for in analogies – at the time I was looking for analogies that were more physical so he could understand it. Now of

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course, the opposite can be true as well. I could have an academic who says, why would I bother going to the gym? I can reverse the very same equation and talk about reading could I not? It’s just that reading is relevant to them, it fits in their existing world and what I’m basically doing is I’m using what’s existing in their world to expand their map of what the world could be. Does that make sense? Does that work for you guys? Once again as before, you can add if you like in symbols and so on, or you can just give it a straight metaphor or simile or whatever. Again, notice how the whole reframe – essentially that was a reframe, wasn’t it? It was a metaphorical reframe, and it all took how long? Less than a minute, seconds. This is the beauty of similes and metaphors. This is why we spent so much time talking about them today. We will develop more of the storytelling skills as we go through, but these things are the stuff of everyday conversations. I can’t begin to tell you just how useful they are when you do them regularly. I honestly find it more difficult to stop doing this than to try to think of how to do it. Honestly, if I were to make the effort to try to stop, it just feels as though I’m only allowed to use five words and express myself through those, and that’s it. It’s not easy. Do you see how this works? Any questions? Was that a question or are you just interested? The two questions are very simple. The question to chunk up is very simply to ask yourself, what is this an example of? Shall we play a chunking up game just to kind of play with this a little bit? Okay, a wheel for a car. What is that an example of? A component of a car. What is a car an example of? Transportation. What is that an example of? Movement for example or methods of motion. Getting around? What else? Freedom. Do you see how that goes up another one again? Transportation is one example of having more freedom, right? Let’s try something else. A pen. What is a pen an example of? A writing implement, right? What is a writing implement an example of? Communication tool. I like that. What are some of the other ones? Office tool. What else? A way to express yourself. Now notice, folks, how you’re all

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going to slightly different things up here, right? They will in turn bounce back to slightly different things down there. Does that make you right and me wrong or does it make me right and you wrong? Yes/no. The point is do you see how you end up having an infinite variety of scope? You can just create a lot of stuff. Do you all get the idea of chunking up? Let’s play with some chunking down then. What is freedom an example of? Sorry, let me say that again. What is an example of freedom? So let’s chunk back down again now. Having choice or freedom of speech, right? Let’s take freedom of speech. What is freedom of speech an example of? Sorry, let me say that again. What is an example of a freedom of speech? Let’s put it that way. A strike, right. Can you give me an example of a strike? An example of a strike? Or, you can give me a specific event, for example. So again, if you’re going to talk to, say, a business owner about that, would that be the right analogy to use? No. Why? It is not something that’s easily accepted in his world view, is it? But if you talk to a union worker about that, it’s like, oh, I get it. Yes, that makes sense. Or, if you’re talking to someone in France. Exactly. There are a lot of unions in France, right? Do you see where we’re going with this? Let’s try another one. Transportation. What is an example of transportation? Airplane, bus, train. Give me an example of a bus. A Greyhound. Give me an example of a Greyhound. It might be the New York to Chicago route or something. So now you can talk about the bus from New York to Chicago and how you were never able to get from New York to Chicago until the Greyhound came along and made it cheap. Now you have an analogy again. Does that make sense? Now at this point you notice how analogies started drifting in terms of practicality. How can you talk about a Greyhound bus as an analogy. It doesn’t really make sense. Do you know why? Any ideas? Because you have no context to begin with, and if you have no context, then this exercise becomes very academic and very impractical. If you start with the chunking

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up and down exercise and say, how do I use this, you’re doing it the wrong way. Why? Because you started at the wrong step. This tells your unconscious mind where to go with it, and if you recall from earlier on, if you ask your unconscious mind, if you set the parameters, it will fill in the blanks. Hence, the process machine as I call it is a process analogy versus a state based analogy. The process machine will work every single time provided you can get a sense of what is the process here in front of me? With my friend, the process was very simple, wasn’t it? The process was a challenging situation that was worth doing anyway. That’s the process. So I had to chunk up and find another example of that, and then really the whole thing took less than a second to come to the gym conclusion. It just flashed into my mind quite obviously. Do you see how this works now? It’s just two questions. What is it an example of? What is a specific example of this? That’s it. So with your same groups again, I’d like you to pick out a couple of situations, maybe even something that’s useful, something that bugs you in your work or in the things that you do, where you want to be more influential, you want people to understand you better, maybe even like shock horror, hypnosis. What’s hypnosis? Well, let me put it this way to you. Is there a process involved in hypnosis? If you can frame it as an analogy, would it be easier for people to understand? Oh, no one can hypnotize me. My mind is too strong. Do you see how you’re starting with a situation, and by analyzing it – by the way, let’s give an example of how we can turn that into a process? My mind is too strong to be hypnotized. What is that an example of? Hypnosis itself is an example of mental processing, and their mindset around that is what? Resistance. So it might be an example of resistance. Or how about even saying it’s an example of misunderstanding? So when you say, my mind is too strong to be hypnotized, couldn’t you say that that’s an example of someone misunderstanding a process and thereby missing out on all the fun?

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What’s another example of someone misunderstanding a process and, therefore, missing out on all the fun? The one about trees it sounds good. Let’s put it on the audio because it’s sounding pretty good all ready. Student:

There’s the opened willow. If there’s a tornado or some very windy event, it will snap. ♦

Igor:

Which ones will bend and survive?

Right. So now what has he just gone and chunked up and down on? It’s the idea of strength, hasn’t he? Strength being rigidity vs. strength being subtlety. They think strength is rigidity. We’re presenting strength as subtlety. So if you truly have a strong mind, then you’ll be a great trance subject, won’t you? A beautiful analogy. Go ahead.

Student: ♦

Igor:

How about the elephant and the three blind men?

The elephant and the three blind men. For those of you who don’t know it, of course, if three blind men are in a room and one steps on the trunk and says an elephant has this long thin thing that’s kind of flexible, the other blind man who’s touching the leg says no, no, no. An elephant is this big massive, solid thing that’s almost impossible to move. Of course, the third one is near the backside somewhere says no, no, no. An elephant is this tiny thin stick that smells really bad. Of course, those are examples of people misapplying or misunderstanding a situation. Do you see how easy this stuff becomes? Do you see how persuasive it is when you talk to someone whose saying I am too strong for hypnosis? Well, you know, you say that, but when there’s a storm, which tree will survive? The oak that’s strong, rooted, fixed and won’t bend for anything or the willow? So, as the willow bends and goes, it survives a tornado. Can you get a symbolism? Change. What am I saying? Hypnosis prepares you for sudden changes and makes you survive them, whereas the kind of thing you consider as strength will actually get you to fail during sudden moments of

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change. Therefore, true strength is about the flexibility to go into trance, isn’t it? Do you see how many concepts you are presenting in just a simple little analogy? I hope right now you guys are getting a little excited because this will make you more influential than everything else you’ve heard about in terms of values and putting these things together and so on. Those are great processes, don’t get me wrong, and they’re very valuable, but these things here are so invisible, they persuade. They reframe. They take objections away. They out-frame things before they even occur so smoothly and naturally that people just go, oh yeah, sure. Try it on me. Now you’re talking directly to their unconscious mind, in the language that it understands, which is symbolism. Are you getting a sense of where we’re going with this? Who understands the process machine and how it works? Just a few of you? Let’s try that again. Who understands the process machine and how it works enough to do the exercise? All. The exercise is very simple. Choose a couple of situation, a context, be it the hypnosis one or something at work. It doesn’t really matter what it is. Ask yourself what is the process involved, and then what is this process an example of? Then what is a specific example of this other thing, and then present that as an analogy to that situation. To make it easy again, just think of it in terms of reading is hard. Why would anyone want to do it? What is this an example of? The process is an activity that’s challenging but rewarding because of the challenge. What is that an example of? Well, a challenging and rewarding activity. A specific example of that is going to the gym. So the chunk up actually tells you what the process in that situation is. Is that easy to do? All right, same groups off you go. Just get lots of fun examples. How was that? Was that interesting? Who found that easy? Hands up. Let me just see. Who found that easy? Who found that harder than the last one to do? Let me explain. Would you like to know why that was harder? The

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reason the process machine is a little harder to do than the analogy machine is look at the structure of it. Where would you begin with this? What is that the domain of? Where do we begin with this? What are these examples of? Conscious activity. Consciousness is good at going through logical categories, jumping through it and so on. What we call this whole “De Bono” style right-brain thinking and all the rest of it actually begins with a left-brain process. The pure version of right-brain thinking is it happens; the strange new world that excited it before. So what this is making you do – this is useful for people who are more left brain oriented, but because it’s getting your consciousness, the kind of stuff that you normally do consciously activated a bit more, your interference patterns are more likely to run there as well. Make sense? So this is easier to do because there’s less for your mind to grab onto to interfere with. Whereas in this one, it’s still worthwhile doing, and in getting this one right, getting this one as natural will teach you a lot about how to work with your unconscious process, but what you’re experiencing, that sense of oh, it’s a bit hard and so on; it’s trying too hard again. Of course, you realize by now that it’s not about you, is it? Who is it about? The other you. It can do this even better than you ever realized. It’s just got to do quite a little bit of massaging to get to that point. Does that make sense? If you balance between these two, it will come to you. If you balance between just these two machines, this machine will educate that machine in becoming smoother. Did you know that? This machine right here will teach that machine on how to trust the other you and make it easier, quicker, more efficient and more natural. So it’s up to you. Do you practice more of this to get it, or do you practice more of that so it will teach it? One is easier than the other, isn’t it? It’s up to you to decide which one’s which.

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Some of you don’t understand the analogy machine yet? Oh, thank you. Arthur is saying the process machine is easier to understand than the analogy machine. The reason, of course, is the part of you that understands is the process part. That’s the consciousness. Who here finds the analogy machine a lot easier to understand? That’s because you’ve got that other part of your mind working, and I will explain the process of this machine for you to help. You’re familiar with – I know you’re a psychologist or a medical doctor, so you understand the concept of state dependent learning, right? So state dependent learning is that whatever state you happen to be in whilst you’re learning a new skill or activity, it encodes that memory, that skill, so whenever you’re in that state again, you’ll most easily access it. This is why a lot of sports people have pre-match rituals to find a state, in which their game is better. So, when you’re using state dependent learning for this, we’re going to start with a feeling. Attached to that feeling will be all your recollections, memories and experiences of other things that feel the same way. I’m giving you the conscious version of this whole one. As you get that feeling strong enough, these memories will come to mind – that’s the streaming process. You select one of them, one which fits the symbolic area the best and you go with that. The easiest way to do that is not. The question is, is finding a four-leaf clover like winning the lottery? Where is the emotion in that? So you don’t start with a four-leaf clover. You don’t begin with a four-leaf clover, you begin with a feeling. Just come on up here just so we can do this properly. When you think about finding a four-leaf clover and you want to create an analogy for it, what does finding a four-leaf clover mean to you? How does it make you feel? Does it make you feel happy? So, if you think about happiness, can you feel a little bit of that happiness now? You find a fourleaf clover, what memory comes up. I suspect, by the way, what you just talked about is perfect. Does winning the lottery feel similar to you? It might even be more so, right? It’s like finding a whole ton of four-leaf clovers. So it’s absolutely an

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appropriate example. Notice, however, we begin with a feeling. Even if you have a situation, you’ve got to draw the feeling out of the situation in order then to transform that into an analogy. Does that help you? Student: ♦

What did I say that is different from what you said?

Igor:

Oh, the main difference was you began with a situation – finding a four-leaf clover and you jumped straight to the outcome. By the way, if your unconscious made the connection internally, that’s perfect. In terms of the process, though, it’s the feeling that drives the lottery thing rather than the situation.

Student:

I looked for two happy situations.

Igor:

Or rather, you feel for two happy situations. You feel happy and ask yourself, what does this feeling remind me of? What other situation feels the same way? That’s the only question you ask yourself. The questions you’re asking up here are: what is this an example of or what is a specific example of this? The question you ask yourself here is very simply, what does this feel like? What else feels like this? It’s a really simple question, which is why for most of you it’s easier because it require less effort, less content, less consciousness. Are we cool with these two processes? Are there any other questions or comments?

Student:

Just a very quick question or comment. ♦

Igor:

Student:

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Can it be being versus doing?

Absolutely, provided there is a state attached the state that drives this. The whole machine is run by the feeling. If it’s a feeling of being something versus doing something, if you can distinguish that in your mind, perfect. Easy enough… You mentioned how this is going to drive that.




Igor:

That’s not quite what I was saying. I was saying this one will teach that one how to do it better. It’s kind of like having two kids in school both of them do different things. Well, one of them will show the other one how to do its job better because they’re friends, right? All right, so are you ready to try the next machine out? The next machine I like to call basketball stories. The reason for it is very simple. I was talking to a hypnotist friend of mine, and I was talking to them about how I find it incredibly difficult to do any kind of induction without a real person in front of me or, in fact, a real person and a purpose for hypnotizing that person. If someone just says, hypnotize me, I’ll go great, sleep. Now what do you want? But if I have a real person and something that drives it, whether they need to learn something or change something or experience something, I become very good at what I do. Why? Because that’s kind of how my internals are worked in. So of course, it makes it very difficult for me to do things like hypnotic inductions on tape because I don’t have anyone. He said how do you do it when you do it with real people? I said it’s very simple. I’m sitting there and they’ll talk about a problem. So the problem springs into my mind, and somewhere some random image or idea pops into my mind as well. Like a random life event like playing basketball or something like that, and I put those two together and it just fits. It might be like confidence. Let’s take the idea of basketball, which is the conversation we had. I might do the whole little hypnotic story, analogy around how basketball to create confidence. How a little kid who starts playing basketball and at first he’s awkward. He’s never done it before. He’s trying and he’s trying and trying. One day he says to himself, you know what? I’m just going to stop trying. I’m going to enjoy myself as much as all the other kids do. At that point, he just forgot about how to dribble the ball and how to run and do things. He just enjoyed himself with all the other people, all the other friends he had, and bit by bit his skill began to improve. He didn’t even know it. One day, of course, they have a big match, and they’re all a little bit afraid because the other school has got a good reputation. So, who’s going to be

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on the team? We’ve got to pick the best people? Guess who they picked first? Because confidence comes from competence, and competence comes from just doing what you know how to do and letting it happen because it’s not you; it’s the other you. Now to whom does that sound like a hypnotic metaphor? A proper, kosher, all the bells and whistles, right? Did I script it? Did I write it down? Did I prepare for it? No. The only thing I knew before we started today is that I’m calling this the basketball story, because that happened to be the conversation I had with a friend which came from itself. It just developed itself. You probably heard my voice switch within the first few sentences, didn’t you? That was the basketball story machine in my mind switching on and going, here you go. That’s how it goes. Honestly, I can tell you with 100% conviction, I consciously at least had no idea where the story was going to go or how it was going to end before I began. Not a clue. That’s what the basketball stories do, and I’ll show you how to do that in a moment. Go ahead. So he wants me to chunk up the basketball story so he can get the essence of it. Are you asking me to explain a hypnotic story, really? I can, however, happily show you the process I went through to develop that story. If you like, I’ll happily do that. This is the basketball stories. Let’s go through this step by step. Step one is you have a problem context, which means there is a state involved, a feeling – lack of confidence, insecurity perhaps – and an action. In this case, let’s say it’s performing of some sort. So we have a problem. We’ll it X. Next we need to have some kind of an outcome, in this sense, the idea of confidence. Remember, our conversation was about confidence, wasn’t it? We need to have a state and possibly some action attached, but that’s a little less important at this point. Third, we’re going to look for a random life process. Where do you find this life process, folks any ideas? Do you remember the strange new world? It comes to you in the same way. You can have people give you this and it will still work just as easily. I’ll happily have you give me a problem, an outcome and a random process.

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And, I’ll show you just as easily a story that creates out of it, but your unconscious will give it to you anyway which, is even better, because if your unconscious mind gave you that flash of an image of someone playing basketball, you can go, it’s like basketball. Why? I don’t know yet. But inside you part of you must know or it would not have given you that image. Remember, the unconscious mind finds making connections and meaning easier than not. Do you understand the first three steps? Those are the setup. The final step is you just find the formula – X, the problem, is like he said the random life process because – and then you do what you did on the first day. You start talking without any idea of where it’s going and allow it to unravel itself. This is a little harder yet again to the other ones. Why? Because it requires more trust and realizing that it’s not you. The moment you realize it’s not you, that’s when this becomes so easy. It’s easier to do it this way than not. Does the concept of this make sense? Do you want me to run through it again? We have a problem. In this case it’s the idea of insecurity or lack of confidence. Usually some kind of action might be attached, or they might go hand in hand. Secondly, you have an outcome. Again, you’re looking for something like confidence in this case. Then we have a random life process, like basketball, and then you just tie them all together. Shall we do a group exercise with this just to kind of get more of a feel for it? Someone give me an idea of a problem. Let’s write down this problem heresmoking. Let’s pick something slightly different for the moment. Let’s stick to a state-based thing. The only reason I’m saying this is because smoking has several things feeding into it, and I don’t want to have to deal with all of them at the same time. Does that make sense? I’ll happily take it if you want me to, but it will just complicate this model slightly. A bad memory- how do you feel about that? Or how does that person feel about it? So someone wants to improve their memory, so how do they feel about having a bad memory? That’s going to be important. Remember, its state and activity this is a key thing. The state is an important part. How do they feel? Insecure? Did someone say insecure? Thank you.

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So the problem is X is a bad memory leading to feelings of insecurity. Do we have an X? Is everyone clear that we have those two elements? What might be an outcome here? Confidence. What would be the action? A better memory, yes, give me an example of a random life process. Things people do, play and get involved in, activities and so on. Cooking or driving? Which one do you prefer? Cooking. Okay, so now the formula is X is like Z because a bad memory, feeling insecure about having a bad memory is a little like cooking. When people start out, they have all these ingredients, and really if you tried to eat them, it doesn’t taste good and it’s bad. If you thought that this is food, I mean you’d be a bad chef. See, every good chef knows that you take all the ingredients and it’s what you do with them that count’s. When you collect them at the right time and you prepare them properly, you can create an absolute feast, something that people will marvel about and something that you can be truly proud of. So it’s not a question of how good or bad your memory is. It’s how well you prepare yourself to remember better, isn’t it? Do you see the basketball stories and how it’s a very sophisticated vehicle and it can create very powerful metaphors just like that. Right now I understand that your mind’s a little bit challenged by, what’s going on with all these things and so on? It’s because it’s not you and as soon as you understand that it has nothing to do with you – it’s the other you – this becomes a lot easier. This believe it or not is easier to do than to think about. If you’d like to know what happened inside my mind as we went through this whole thing – cooking, what the hell, all right, fine. The first thing I saw, the picture I saw in my mind’s eye was an uncooked chicken and a whole bunch of vegetables in a pot. That’s what I saw. That was my starting point. So where did I go? I described what I saw. Feeling bad about a bad memory is just like cooking. That’s my linguistic cue. My picture is raw food. When you start with raw food, you can’t eat it maybe. It’s not a meal. It hasn’t been prepared yet. Do you see how naturally my

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unconscious mind filled in all the blanks to create the full metaphor? I had no idea what it was going to be. How could I? Did we prepare this ahead of time? No. So the only way I can create this is to not be here, to let someone else do the talking for a change. Then of course, whatever you do talk about will be for a change. Would you like to do the exercise now? Same groups. This time only do one of them. Go through the X, Y, Z process, these three steps, as quickly as possible. These are like no brainers. Then just spend some time – don’t think about the story. Do not think about the analogy or metaphor, just talk about it. You know what, folks? If it doesn’t go right, if it doesn’t feel great or fantastic and all the bits don’t fall into place, don’t worry about it. You can discard it and start again. These are training exercises and believe it or not, this is at the heart of everything. If you can do this, you can do the other one. If you can do the other one, you can do this one. They all evolve from each other. Make sense? So just enjoy it. Remember little Timmy with his basketball? You can do it one of two ways, right? You can try to dribble the basketball and remember exactly how it’s supposed to bounce and then run at the same time and forget about the ball and all those different things, or you can say, screw it! I’m going to have fun! If the ball goes out of court, who cares? Let’s face it you’re amongst friends, aren’t you? If you do that, and you do that a few more times, and a few more times still, and you laugh when the ball goes out of court and you enjoy yourself, then maybe, just maybe when it’s time to play a professional match, they’ll pick you. I know. Off you go. How was that? Did you notice how the less you think, the easier it gets? Would that be fair to say? Now would you like to have a quick trick on how to make this easier if you happen to be thinking too much and really trying to get it? Is anyone here really trying to get it and understand it and make it

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work and so on? Would you like to have a quick trick that will get you much better results much more quickly? I warn you, it’s going to require a few iterations of this for momentum to start rolling, shall we say, but if you are willing to do this with the right attitude, it’s virtually guaranteed to succeed. All that you do is two things: 1. You attempt to follow these steps reasonably closely. It doesn’t have to be identical, just reasonably closely. You attempt to do that. 2. Meanwhile, your real intention is to screw this up as royally as you possibly can, to mess up so totally that no one has any idea what the hell you’re talking about, only to amuse yourself, purely because it’s going to be fun to mess it up. If you do that, I’m afraid to tell you that chances are you’ll be disappointed. So you’ll just have to enjoy the fact that you’ve done a more elegant version than you thought you were capable of. It’s up to you guys. It’s only a suggestion. I guess I’m only the hypnotist. Notice how these machines are getting increasingly more complex now. Is that fair to say? The complexity, by the way, is not in the performance side of things. The complexity is here because you think there is more for you to do. You think there’s more for your intellect to try to grasp hold of and make sure you hold onto, and that thinking process is what’s getting in your way. The less you think, the more you do when it comes to this stuff. Each of these machines is kind of built on the framework of the last. So if you find it difficult to do this one for now, that’s okay. You don’t need it. The other two will take you a long way on their own and once the other two become sort of natural or instinctive, you’ll have another look at this one and you’ll go, oh, I get it. It’s just kind of like this with a twist. Make sense? So, whether you get it now or you get it later, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re going to get it later, you may as well enjoy messing it up now, right? Let’s face it, one way or the other, the only difference is going to be how much you enjoy it, right? I’d like to give you one more process, a process that I’ll talk you through and demonstrate briefly, but really I think tonight our brains have had enough in

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terms of challenging, of trying to use your conscious and your unconscious at the same time. So you don’t have to necessarily do it. I just want you to know about it so when these three basic processes become more natural to you, this is a nice process that you can get into and again, very conversational. Once you get it right, it becomes so invisible, even trained hypnotists will not know you’re doing it. Even trained Ericksonian’s, storytellers, etc. will have no idea what it is that you’re doing. Would you like that? It’s going to require a bit more of the logical side of the brain, which is going to initially, for some of you, make it a little less easy to do until, of course, you realize it’s not about you; it’s the other you. The sooner you can get out of the way and let the other you in and do the stuff, the easier it will get. Is that an arrangement we can make in terms of an understanding? This one, basically, requires a higher level of indirection. If you recall, the process machine is you go up one you come down one, right? In this one, you’re going to go up one and then you’re going to up another one, which takes you further away. Then you’ll come down one, and then you’ll come down another one. This creates a distance so that topically, they are difficult to reconcile, but in terms of process and structure, they will still be identical. This is something that you will try to do intellectually and please I encourage you to stop it! I call it the disguise process because we have the process machine, which is this, and we’re adding a layer of iteration into the process machine and it will do something very funky at this point. Now I’ll give you an example in a minute if I may. Something very important to realize about the disguise process is because your level of indirection is that much greater, you will probably need to give the unconscious mind several examples of the pattern in order for it to understand that it’s there. Does that make sense? Some people’s unconscious minds get it after two. Some people will require three. Some require five. It really depends on the individual. Make sense? So let’s just run through a brief example. Have you got that written down?

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Three to five analogies at the same time, it’s at the last point we just made. We need to present not just one little story, but one, two, three in a row. I’ll come to you in a minute if I may. The way it will sound is just like you’re shooting the breeze, and you know when you chat to people and you say I thought it was so and so and oh, there’s another thing. Oh, something else just occurred to me. It’s just like a regular conversation where people just jump topics, only you’re specifically jumping specific kinds of topics. Does that make sense? Student: ♦

Igor:

In the process machine you’re using more of the conscious mind and in this one, are we trying to not use the conscious yes and no?

With the process machine, this one here, the kind of work involved in this is something that the conscious mind is more used to, which means it’s more likely to interfere. If I could encourage you to not think about this and do it, I would, but I also recognize that a lot of you in not thinking about it to do it will accidentally end up thinking about it anyways. So, you may as well do it first, and then realize you’ve done it, and then it gets better. However, if you think about it too much, then you won’t do it. So you might as well just do it and stop thinking, right? With this one, you’re going to have to think more, which means you’ll do less. So you might as well think even less than before so you can do an even better job than you did. So it becomes even easier because there’s less thinking involved, right? But of course, if you insist on thinking, well, it won’t be as easy as if you don’t. So the less you think, the easier it becomes is really what I’m saying. By the way, everything I said makes absolute logical sense. It’s just mindbending because, as you can recognize, I’m using mind-bending language within that, right? So the process itself is very simple. It’s; go up two, come down two. That leaves you with one analogy. Then you do it again. You do it again and again and you have three, four, five little mini story vignettes that will take you 30 seconds to present.

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You just tell them one after the other in a row. They make no sense. It’s like you’re jumping the topic from cheese to apple cider to driving racing cars to being on the moon. They go, what the hell is he talking about? I guess he’s just making social chit chat. Okay, that’s fine. When will we start the hypnosis? In a minute, but before we do that… right? I’ll give you a couple of examples. I don’t want to do too many right now because, otherwise, you’ll end up thinking more about it and that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? But I’ll give you an example of this in action very shortly, or the thought process of it, which is more important. Student: ♦

Igor:

Do we start and do the one through five and then cycle back up again and get another analogy and so on?

Exactly. So you’re going to cycle at this point all the way through again until you have three to five different little mini scenes, mini stories, etc. that you can tell people. Let me just walk you through this process very simply, very quickly. Let us say that the problem here is something simple like fear of driving. If we were to chunk up one, we could go into lots of different areas, but let’s just talk about, say, a general fear of some activity. Fear of driving is an example of a fear about some kind of an activity. If we go up another level again, a fear of an activity might be an example of people hesitating. When they are afraid of an activity, they’re more likely to hesitate. Do you see how that works? So now we’re up here. We’re talking about a hesitation as a field. Now let’s think about an example of someone hesitating. What’s a specific example? How about someone paralyzed by choices? That’s an example of hesitation, isn’t it? Let’s think of a specific example of someone paralyzed by choices. What to cook for dinner, for example. What other analogy? What else could we have? So you’re at the top of a swimming pool ladder. Do you jump or do you come down the other way? Either way there’s a fear involved. There’s a

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social fear and a physical fear. What else? Getting married. All right, that might be interesting. We’ll come back to that in a second. What about someone standing at a crossroads, thinking do I go left or right? So it can be all kinds of different constructs. Make sense? And that is just working off this little loop here. We can come back up here again and change it, or we can come back to different places and change it again. It doesn’t matter. I’m just making it easy on us by just doing this last loop a few times. Now you have three to five stories to tell, don’t you? I have to say last night when I came home from work and I have all this stuff going on and I look in my cupboard and say what do I want to eat? There’s all this stuff in there. I don’t have any idea what I’m going to eat. I’m stuck. See the pattern? I haven’t resolved it yet. So I decided you know what, I’m just going to take the first thing in front of me and I’ll just start. So I just grabbed a few things, opened them up and somehow the meal made itself. It reminded me of a friend of mine who went on one of these holidays on an island. You know how you can rent one of these cool little, caravan type things, and you can have a little ploddy horse, cars and old women and bicycles can speed by you. He gets to a crossroads and the horse just stops, and he’s thinking to himself where do I go? He can go left, he can go right, but what do I do? One says County Kilkenny and one says County Kerry or whatever it is. He has no idea which one is which. He’s got no guide book. He’s just standing there going, where the hell do I go? For a while he just sits there until the granny comes speeding past him again on the way back and he decides you know what, I’m better off just taking one of the things. I’m sure to make the right choice. So he went left, of course. Do any of those stories seem to have anything to do whatsoever with the fear of driving? Do you see how much more divorced they are, and I can on and on and on about chickens, about food, about driving, about men on Mars, aliens and so on? If I want to, I can start massaging the content a little bit so I have some symbolic reference points too, if I needed or wanted to.

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But I don’t even need to go to that level. Provided I’ve told three, four or five little mini stories like that, there’s a pattern being set for the unconscious. Remember, I’m not stopping at the hesitation that’s the problem. I’m going to continue it onto some kind of solution, which is a simple one. I just grab stuff and it made itself. He decided to make the right choice, so of course he went left, or even right. It doesn’t really matter at that point. The point is do you see what the message at this point is? Begin. Don’t think about everything. Just think about what’s happening right now in front of you. That’s really the big message, isn’t it? People who are afraid of driving are afraid of everything that could possibly happen, rather than am I in the car right now? Am I safe? Yes. I’m driving down the road. Am I safe? Yes. There’s a car coming. Am I safe? Slow down. Now I am. Do you see how that’s been built into it? Now, I appreciate that it is tempting to make this more intellectual than the other ones because you have more little steps that your intellect likes to engage itself in. I’m going to encourage you to resist that temptation. The less you understand your own stories, the better they’ll probably work. Your desire to understand what’s going on in your stories, at least initially, is probably going to inhibit your ability to just do them and get the result. So to the extent you stop trying to understand your own stories, you might actually influence people a little bit better. Of course, then you realize that influence is not about you. It might be about something else. Who knows what that could be? I have a suspicion that you already know, don’t you? That’s where these things can take you. As a principle, is this making sense? Not as in what do I specifically do, but just as an overall principle, and how they all evolve from each other. Student: ♦

Igor:

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Can I give an example of weaving a symbol in?

Well, very simply just grab any of your symbols here. Let’s have a look here. The first symbol I see is the idea of a baby. We want to introduce the idea of fresh, of change perhaps, right? So the story might be – I don’t actually know anyone who’s gone to Ireland and done this. I don’t want it to seem like a personal story. Actually, it reminds me of a personal story. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



I heard a story about a man – I don’t know if it’s even true or not, but it was interesting. A man was recently divorced. He’s the one that kept the baby. He doesn’t know what to do with it, so he thinks to himself that the rational thing to do is, I know, I’ll go on a holiday to Ireland. That makes it a rational choice, isn’t it? Now I have the whole idea of baby, of freshness and newness, of nurturing something. He says do I go left or go right? He didn’t know. In which one would they welcome his baby most? Which direction does he take? Then suddenly he realized it doesn’t matter. The Irish are friendly. Whether he goes left or he goes right, ultimately they’re going to love his baby anyway, whichever county he ends up in. So now we have a symbol about nurturing and caring for something, and no matter what the choices are, they will maintain a theme throughout whatever the solution is. That’s an example of it. Does that help you guys? Don’t worry we’ll work more in terms of how to build these things into stories tomorrow. For now, I suspect that your brains have been fried sufficiently, haven’t they. The good news is if I’ve done my job correctly, the temptation tonight to think less is higher than to think more, is it not? Let’s face it, this is not a traditional learning environment, is it? Because I’m telling you, if you start thinking, you better stop it. Don’t think you can think in this place. No, no, no. Don’t think you can work out these answers because they’re not your answers to work out. All you need to do is think less and do more. So to the extent you guys enjoy your evening tonight, the less is going on in here, the more you get to actually enjoy the process of just doing this stuff and letting it surprise you. I mean who doesn’t like being pleasantly surprised by something – a birthday, Christmas, a wonderful time. Gifts come your way and what other gift do you value the most? Which ones surprise you the most? The one’s you don’t know are coming. So, why would you do this to yourself? Why would you possibly ruin the surprise by trying to figure out ahead of time what it will be? It’s so much

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more fun to stop thinking, starting doing and enjoy the surprise when it’s there. Don’t try to open the present until it’s actually in your hands because the present can only be opened when it’s right there in front of you. You can’t do it by telekinesis. You have to wait until the present is right there in front of you, and then you can open it and enjoy the surprise. Anything you try to do ahead of time, well, that’s just going to interfere with that present, isn’t it? So you may as well stop it. With that happy thought, I’ll see you tomorrow.

Igor:

How’s everyone doing today? Have you mended your broken brains yet? Yesterday I mentioned about doing some volunteer work in Thailand. It was part of a bigger thing, which I like to call affectionately, the Nazi Yoga boot camp partly, because I signed up for six weeks of Yoga. I had a stressful year with a lot of stuff going on so I thought I’d take six weeks off, do Yoga, it would be great. Stretching in the morning, a little bit of meditation, sleep, contemplate life that would be nice. I turned up for this thing in Thailand. It’s great weather and so on. At 5:30 in the morning we're up with running shoes on. We're running for an hour and a half. I don’t mean jogging or lightly walking, no, run for an hour and a half. At the end I’m exhausted. Now we do some Yoga. What? We had an early morning start to killing you and if you weren’t dead yet, then they’ll be exercise, stuff you learn on anatomy, physiology, metaphysics of Yoga and meditation. By the end of the day you were just exhausted. It took to the end of the week to climatize.

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Then they said we're going to do some volunteer work, which I think is a great idea. The true Yoga attitude is how to bring this stuff into community. The place we were volunteering at is a school where they had something called the Coconut Club. All the little kids had their heads shaven and looked like little coconuts running around and every other day we’d go to the Coconut Club after school. Do you remember the Tsunami a few years ago? Most of them had lost their parents and family in that Tsunami so they had no one. While their fellow schoolmates were being picked up at the end of the day by their families, these kids had to watch. It was not very nice for them so some of the volunteer teachers from America, Canada, England, all over the place, organized this Coconut Club to give them some fun activities to do instead of having to watch the others leave. We volunteered these things and they're just heartwarming kids. Invariably one kid takes a shine to someone and so on. In Thailand the names are very long so they like to abbreviate them to a syllable. You have Am’s, M’s, O’s. We're doing this for a couple of weeks and it’s all going great. You play games with them, run around and do all kinds of stuff. As the week progressed the program evolves more. The running gets harder and we go for longer distances up big hills, not a lot of fun. Then the Yoga program changes as well. We went from one style, which is a very soft and relaxing version to something called Ashtanga Yoga, which is very vigorous. It’s like running a second marathon after you‘ve finished your first. We had two, sometimes three sessions of that a day, plus we teach at night as well so it was a full day. On the first or second day we were doing this, we were just exhausted. At the end of the final Ashtanga session, we're all just laying on the mats. We had a half hour break, but the half hour break was on the mat, because no one was leaving.

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That night was going to be a Coconut Club night. The instructor looked at us, all of these shriveled up wrecks on the floor going please sir. Leave us alone. He took pity on us in the generosity of his spirit, he broke with the Nazi Yoga boot camp tradition and said, folks if you don’t want to go tonight to the Coconut Club, I understand. If you want to take it easy and rest, that’s fine. It’s up to you. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


We're lying there. What could we possibly do? We’ll just sit there and stare off into space like someone has just lobotomized us. That’s not going to be a lot of fun for the kids, is it? These thoughts are running around. One person gets up and I think oh bugger. Alright, I’ll go. No promises, but I make my way to the school. It’s exhausting with about five flights of stairs. We're all crawling up, pulling ourselves up with the handle bars, because our legs are not working so well. We get to the top and all the kids are there. The normal teacher is there as well, but I guess we're the celebrities, because we're not there very much. They come racing up. One little girl pulls me by the hand and drags me over to the table, sits me down and shows me all the pictures she’s been drawing, all the glitter she’s put on top. I’m not doing very much. I’m just sitting there going huh. She is as excited as can be. I guess that’s the point. I should have realized that sometimes you just have to show up. You don’t have to be anything special or do anything special. Sometimes it’s enough that you just show up. It’s kind of a theme for what we're going to be doing today. When we talk about hypnosis and storytelling and so on, some of the most powerful stories we’ll tell are personal stories, things that happened to you, things you did and so on. The beauty of our personal stories is that they will apply to anywhere you go. You can do them in business, with friends, when you meet new people, on holiday; they fit everywhere. They have a very important role to play in the whole influencing process. Influencing process aside, they're just part of humanity. How many have friends that have never told you a story, anyone? Stories is how we get to know people, it’s how we understand them and so on. A lot of people are hesitant about telling stories. They just give facts, because they're afraid that maybe the stories won’t be good enough. Today, I want to show you how anything can be turned into a fascinating story. The kind of story where if you stopped half way through, they will chase you down five years from now and say finally, I’ve got you, tell me how it ended that’s the kind of story I’d like to show you how to develop today. This will be a fast paced journey. It’s going to relatively easy to do to the extent that you don’t actually try and be good. You do realize it’s not you, don’t you? It’s the other you.

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I want to focus on the most mundane, insignificant, unimportant experiences that you could possibly have. If you can turn those things into fascinating stories, then you have a skill of a storyteller. When I talk about mundane things, I’m talking about brushing your teeth. If you can turn brushing your teeth into an epic adventure, would it be fair to say that you understand storytelling? Did anyone have a shower, bath or clean themselves in some way? Did anyone put on some shoes or get dressed? Did anyone change location to come to a crazy seminar where someone talks about bizarre stuff? If you can turn these trivial and basic activities into interesting stories, then you can turn anything into an interesting story. You call have a lifetime of experiences. Aside from the trivial ones, which we’ll focus on today, you’ve had fascinating experiences. The only reason you don’t think they are fascinating, the only reason you don’t tell them routinely to people you meet, strangers, clients, friends, associates and so on, is because you don’t think they are good enough. To show you an opposite point of view, I’d like to focus on you telling something that happened today, something that was mundane. We’ll develop that into a fascinating story of high adventure, deep emotion and drama, personal change just from a toothbrush. As we develop these stories I’d like you to put an idea in the back of your mind. The idea is you become good at telling stories by telling stories. Once we finish today, we won’t be addressing this particular topic again in terms of this seminar. It’s going to be up to you. If you can turn brush your teeth into high adventure that people find fascinating, if you want to become a great storyteller you will have events happen to you every single day that you can share with people just to amuse yourself and to amuse them. In the meantime, you‘ll master the craft of storytelling. If you do that, I will make you one promise, guaranteed. If you make a point of telling at least one, two or three stories every single day, even if they're just a couple of minutes and based on the most mundane experience, I guarantee you will surprise yourself at some point by coming out with a amazing, hypnotic metaphor that transforms someone’s life. You won’t even know where it came from.

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The one thing I can’t guarantee is whether you’ll make a point of telling a story every single day to someone. That is something you must choose. Please put your notes and drinks away and stand up. For the first exercise, I’d like you to walk around the room, meet five people and tell each person something different that happened to you today. I put on my shoes. I went to the loo, I had a shower, I brushed my teeth. Something mundane that happened to you today, at least five different things. You have two minutes to meet five people. Off you go. I put on my shoes. I had a shower. I got dressed. I went on my laptop and checked emails. We do not need the story yet. You guys are ahead of the game. Get into groups of three and make yourself comfortable. You should have five very simple mundane things you did inside your mind. If I told you today I put on my shoes, does that feel like a story? No. If I tell you something like last night I ate a burger. Does that feel like a story? No. Something is missing. If I told you I was hungry, I picked up the phone, I ordered room service. Half an hour later they brought a burger and I ate it. Does that feel more or less like a story than what I started with? More, but it’s not quite a story yet, right? I’d like you to turn whatever five mundane events you had into the beginning of a story. Select one or two of them. You’ll only have literally 30 seconds to do this, because it doesn't take very long. Choose one of those things and each one has a go. Turn an event, like a snapshot of eating a burger, into a sequence. I called, I ordered, I ate. Take a minute per group. Everyone turn one of their events into a sequence. Off you go. These initial exercises should be very quick. We don’t need to have the whole story. How many found themselves actually starting to tell a story already? It’s because the storytelling part of your mind is being triggered. That’s a good thing.

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Let’s go back with the same story and see what happens. I was hungry, so I called, ordered and ate. It’s more story-like, but not quite. How about this, last night after I finished here I went upstairs and started doing some work, Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


preparing the notes for today. Suddenly I couldn't continue. I was feeling weird and flushed. Suddenly I realized I am starving, so I called, I ordered and I ate. Does that feel more or less like a story than what we just did a moment ago? More. It’s not complete yet. It doesn't feel like a satisfying story, yet there is more storyness to it. The difference is we now have a break. When we present a sequence or an event to people it alerts them that a story might be forming. It’s just an event. The minute there is a break in that sequence, the unconscious mind perks up and says whoa, story happening. That is what happens when I talk to you about working late last night, trying to get something done, but I just could not continue. That moment, I could not continue. I was too hungry. That alerts your mind and says a story is beginning. It switches your whole brain around into story mode. Does that make sense? I’d like you to take your sequence again, it could be very simple. I do not need any drama or anything like that in it yet. Turn your sequence and have a break in it somewhere but keep it true to what you actually did. The simplest way to do that is to extend the time period. Remember, I was hungry, I called, I ordered and I ate. Here is my time period, from there to there. Now, I’m going to extend the time period so I can have a satisfying break in the middle of it. I was working before I got hungry. The break was the hunger. It interrupted my ability to work. If there is a natural break in your sequence already great. If there is not, extend your time period and there will be a natural break in the sequence of your events. Off you go. Who is starting to feel the storyness begin to evolve? Last night I was working, trying to get some stuff done and after a while I just could not focus straight. I suddenly realized I was hungry so I picked up the phone and called room service. I ordered, the burger came and it was delicious. It was just what I needed. When I finished, I just kicked my shoes off and said do you know what? I think I can finish work later. I’m not asking you to evaluate how good or bad the story was, but does that feel like a complete story to you now? Yes. What is it that I added? Somebody must have been altered, changed. I started in one state and must end in another state.

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It doesn't have to be me, it can be someone else. It could be the couch that changes its feelings. It could be the television or another person. Somewhere in this complex of activity, which we call a story, it has to have an emotional impact and be altered by it. Stories fundamentally teach us how to handle our emotions. I challenge everyone here to give me one story that does not have some kind of emotional shift somewhere within it. That moment of alteration that tells us now the story is done. Now it feels like its achieved a purpose. I’d like you to go back to the same story you told a moment ago. This time, have your sequence, have your break in the sequence and make sure that some object, player, character in that story is emotionally altered. Once you’ve done it once and everybody has a go, I’d like you to repeat the same thing with two other stories. You have to do three stories in total all from a mundane event just to build the pattern into yourself. Each one gets three goes. The question is, when I say mundane event, no adding Gnomes or fairies? You can add them if you wish, but we’ll be coming to that later on so you’ll just be ahead of the game. I want it rooted in reality. Something you actually, specifically did today. You can picture it inside your mind. You recall putting your shoes on, your socks on, the feeling of the shower, brushing your teeth. Off you go. As you are listening to other people’s stories, are they starting to get interesting? They may not be fascinating yet, but isn’t it weird how putting on your socks can be kind of interesting? I want to start to elaborate. This is the basic structure of a story. It’s only three things, an event or a sequence there’s a break that alerts us to storyness and then there is the release with an alteration of emotion that tells us okay there is a full story. It’s ending now naturally and this is good. It’s got everything we need in it. That on its own does not make a story and other things that can enrich the story in terms of how we deliver it. One of those things is the emotions.

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In your next exercise, I’d like you to spend longer on one of those stories but this time exaggerate the emotions. For example, last night I was sitting there, working away and suddenly I couldn't focus straight. I was wondering what’s wrong with me I don’t normally feel this way. I had little beads of sweat. I know I’m hungry. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


The moment I realized I was hungry, I was ravenous. I could murder a burger. I felt like going out and just killing something, putting it between bread and eating it. Instead of that, I just picked up the phone, called down to room service and said, give me your biggest, baddest burger. I want to eat it. I did. Then the torment began. That will be half an hour, sir. Half an hour, are you serious? I’m sorry, sir, we’ve got to cook the thing. I want it rare, make it in 20 minutes. I waited, waited. I thought at chewing furniture. I thought about maybe breaking the next door down and stealing their child. I waited. The burger came and when it came in, it was terrified. Quite right too. I had my knife, my fork and I said to the burger, burger, I’m going to eat you. I could see beads of sweat rolling down the burger’s face. I’m going to eat you. I stabbed it, I cut it, I bit it and it felt good. Would it be fair to say that there was a bit more emotion in that story? Isn’t it amazing how much fun you can have just by eating a burger? I’d like you to go back to one of your stories or one that you haven’t talked about yet, and focus on one thing which is exaggerating the emotion. If you end up doing other things by accident, I ended up doing that, that’s fine, but you're going to focus on how can I exaggerate the emotion. Remember the performance sequence yesterday? Feel it, in terms of how you describe it, what you do with your hands and body language and so on. You can have subtle breaks and big breaks but the point is you knew when the story was beginning, didn't you? You’ll still recognize it. I wouldn't worry about that so much. We’ll focus on the breaking mechanism later on. Focus on just one story so take two minutes a piece now. Start evolving the emotion of it. Go to town on it. Then we’ll layer on another piece. Off you go. How are these stories? Have you ever enjoyed someone telling you about their socks so much? Wouldn't it be nice if people instead of showing you their holiday videos, actually told a story to go with it? Are there any questions or comments? Student:

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It seems like when we started to put more emotion into the stories, describe more action and objects. Also, more natural metaphors and similes came out automatically.




Igor:

Did anyone get a hint here that emotions drive a lot of these? We're going to have a few more exercises around this in a minute, but please stay in your groups, because you’ll be doing more work in a moment. The key to storytelling is the emotion you put into it. The language and the script will come around it, but the emotions drive it. Remember, if there is one guiding theme in terms of my approach to Conversational Hypnosis, is find the right emotion, the right state. It becomes your driver, that little guiding light, on which you hang all of your other skills. It opens the right doors.

Student:

Igor:

The emotion makes it so you don’t care what the other person is talking about. Here is John and I listening to a woman talk about her clothes. At first, we didn't care. As soon as she added the emotion, suddenly it became rip. What guy wants to talk about a woman talk about what she chooses to wear? Suddenly we were sucked in and had to listen. Because this, altering someone, the emotion of a story is what sucks us in. This is what the story is about and the payoff that it gives. Everything else is just the scenery that allows us to present the story itself. Do you know what one of the largest industries is in America? The music industry is pretty big. Why do you think that is? Each song is like a little crack to the emotional buttons. They listen, they feel an emotion, they move on. Some people are addicted to a particular emotion, which means they're addicted to a particular kind of song. If the artist changes their song, go back. I’m addicted to the other kind of emotion. You feed the emotions into your stories and they become more interesting, more compelling and alive. That is one of the key secrets to storytelling. Now we’ll explore some of the other elements that are already emerging naturally. If you wish to drive an emotion, that’s fine, but I’d like you to focus less on the emotion now. If it comes out, that’s great. You can’t help these things; they're intertwined. I’d like you to place your attention now on the action or drama of what you're talking about. You may have noticed that the action and drama comes out by itself. For example, I’m going to deemphasize the emotions, but they're going to come through anyway, because you can’t help it.

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I was working last night and I was getting really hungry. I was looking at my screen thinking, I have to do something about this. The phone was all the way on the other side of the room. I was here and the phone was there. The menu was over there. I had a dilemma. If I went for the menu first, the phone may disappear. If I went to the phone first, I wouldn't know what to order. What would I do? I decided to play a little illusion. I said to the phone, wait right there. I ran to the menu, I ran to the phone. I dialed just as I was looking at the menu. The phone on the other end was room service. I said, one minute please. I went through the menu and decided this is what I want. This is what I need. Of course, she said, what is this? It’s a burger. It has peppercorns on top. Please bring it to me as quickly as possible before there is trouble. She said, okay sir. I said thanks. I hung up and then I looked at the wall. I looked and looked. I kept right on looking as though I could stare right through that wall at the person making my burger. I couldn't really see them, but my mind – I could see them. Eventually there was a quiet knock on the door, so quiet, I barely heard it. I jumped up out of my chair, I raced to the door. I tried to open it and forgot that I had the latch on. I closed the door, I tore the latch off, I opened the door again and I took my burger and I ate it with a little bit of ketchup. Do you see where we're going with this? Tell the story to amuse yourself. Focus on the action. Because the emotion was less, do you notice how your reaction was less? But the action still fits. It still makes part of the story go. Don’t focus on the emotions. It will come out naturally. This time focus on the action and see where it takes you. Action and drama. Off you go. Who’s noticed your stories are starting to evolve? Who feels like they're being more story like, more intriguing, more interesting, more stuff is happening? Are you still sticking to mundane events? Would it be fair to say that even though we haven’t finished the whole exercise on this yet, you can turn a boring, mundane event into a relatively interesting story? Is that fair to say? That people are engaged with, entertained and so on? You have no excuse for not telling stories for the rest of your life. We've not even touched on some of the things going on today. We're just setting up the ground work.

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Do you want to come up? Student:

I found that my partners were telling stories about stories and stories.

Igor:

They started nesting little realities within each other?

Student:

Yes. As he was telling a story he said, and that reminded me of and he started putting a story within a story, within a story. I couldn't keep track of where we were at in what story.

Igor:

Excellent. We’ll have him up here teaching on the final day, because that’s an excellent way of doing things.

Student: ♦

Igor:

Is that a part of this exercise?

No. It’s not a part of the exercise. If it comes out, it comes out. I’m not putting constraints on your unconscious in terms of how to express itself. I wouldn't dare to do that, because the backlash would be unbelievable. The point is that your unconscious mind only has to focus on one thing. Then you allow, to emerge whatever will emerge, you do not want to constrain it you allow whatever wants to emerge to emerge. As that happens, you’ll be building different levels of skill at the same time. On one level you’ll realize that emotion and action are important to a story. On another level, other things that create more storyness will come out, which we’ll more formally cover as we go over the next few days. It will make more sense and you’ll realize oh, I did that naturally. All the stuff we're doing is natural, unless you try and do it. You do realize it’s still not you, but the other you that does all the work.

Student:

I’m noticing as I’m telling my story, it begins to trigger my own drivers and values. That allows me to then build off the story with a lot more energy and emotional conviction.

Igor:

Do you enjoy the story more?

Student:

Absolutely.

Igor:

Storytelling should be fun. You should enjoy your own stories. They should be mini therapeutic things. Thank you for that.

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It’s funny you should mention drivers, because where are we going to next? With these drivers of emotion and action, I’d like you to exaggerate motivation. Why certain action is going on. You already have some good keys to motivation. Remember the sixteen drivers that we talked about before? How might we build in motivation? Think about it hunger, the desire to eat that’s easy enough. I was working away and I suddenly became really hungry. The motivation is building a little bit, but I’m playing it out. How can we exaggerate it? What if we create a contrast? I promised everyone that I would get the work done. I have to teach tomorrow and I don’t know what I’m teaching. I have promised them a great seminar so I have to get my notes in order, but I’m so hungry. I can barely focus. I’m trying to get the thought of food out of my mind, because I can see everyone, all of you guys and I promised to give them an excellent seminar. What if they're disappointed and I can’t do it? I’ll be all embarrassed. I promised and I have to keep my promise. But I’m so hungry. I need a pizza, burger, pasta. I’m trying to put it out of my mind and I’ve got this crazy countenance on my head, I’m clutching on to the table and I will type another word. No, must reach for phone. No, must type. No, must reach for phone. Then my girlfriend comes in. What’s wrong with you? I’m trying to explain. I must work, but I must eat, but I have to work, but I have to eat. She says, oh grow up. I thought to myself, I’ll show you. I will work and I will eat. I will do both at the same time. So I called with one hand and I typed with the other. I went yes, you’ll be sorry now. I said burger, as I typed burger. I went no, yes burger, but no, not burger. I can do this. I want a burger. Bring it quick. Okay. Typing, keep working. Time flew by, the burger came. I ate it with one hand, one eyeball on the screen as I typed on. I showed that person I can eat and work at the same time and that feels good. Can anyone spot a little motivation going on there? Was eating a motivation? Hunger? Yes. What about honor, the desire to fulfill a promise to carry on? How about vengeance? Do you see how our drivers will help us develop better stories as well?

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You don’t have to limit yourself to the 16 drivers. You can have other versions, but it’s an easy list for you to think about. It’s a universal list, because everyone understands everything on that list to some degree. Student: ♦

Igor:

Do you still want us to still stay mundane?

I want the theme to be mundane. I’m still talking about eating a burger essentially. Do you notice how the story has evolved far beyond that little nub of a burger? I’d like you to stick with the story that you’ve started already so you're retelling the same story over and over, emphasizing different things. You should notice it evolves in different ways. It gives you more scope as to what you can do with it. Does that make sense? Once you have worked through all of these different levels with one story, we’ll be able to go back to other stories, “interesting” stories, things you want to talk about and bring them to life this way. Let’s take three minutes a piece so nine minutes in total. Take the same story. We want to see how it evolves in different directions. Did you notice with my story and hopefully yours as well, it sounds totally different now? It should sound different. Off you go. How was that? What do you notice that motivation does to the story? It changes the story. You feel that it brings it to life more. Who noticed that the drama changes when motivation is introduced? Emotion grabs attention, but motivation creates more drama, more conflict, especially when you have conflicting motivations. With mundane stories you want to be able to spice them up a bit which is the whole pixie thing that Mickie was talking about. You can start anthropomorphizing objects. In other words, in my story about the burger, there could be a motivation of the burger for not getting eaten and my motivation for eating it. There is survival versus hunger, clashing with each other. You have freedom to do it, because it’s just an amusing story you're telling. In the meantime, you're developing all of these storytelling skills. We're going to do one last story before we break. Same story again. This time the focus is on the senses.

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You might think I mean sensory descriptions like I looked at the big telephone. It’s black, glistening plastic in the moonlight, glowing little red lights and that sort of stuff, but I don’t mean that. In terms of stimulating the senses, I mean the three tonalities. Remember the three tonalities? Questioning, statement and command inflections

How about the five moods? Exhilarated mood, quiet mood and you shift between them.

What about the three rhythms? Slow, medium and fast Figure out how you can stimulate their senses in different ways with the things you describe, the rhythm in which you speak, with emotional content or undertone with which you speak, because it’s very different if I say I’m going to murder that burger than if I say, I’m going to murder that burger. It’s a totally different emotional undertone. It totally changes the story and where it goes. Experiment with that and stimulate their senses in as many different ways as possible. Three minutes apiece. Off you go. Who’s enjoyed people talk about their socks and how they get dressed in the morning? It’s weird. Who feels they’ve learned something about how to make any story interesting? I hope you realize that there is no excuse for not having stories. You have stories everywhere you go, it’s just what you make of them. If you think about it, is this so difficult? You just have three rules to bear in mind, to alert somebody that there is a story going on, so it feels like storyness has occurred. Inside a story are four little things you can do to accentuate and make it more interesting. Who would like to learn how to make stories do something specific? For example, include some of the symbols that we talked about yesterday so you can start organizing unconscious experiences in a certain way?

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Igor:

Before we started the break, I made you a promise, did I not? I made you a promise that we can make stories do anything we want, but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that. What I’d like to do is introduce you to a concept that we opened yesterday in a slightly different manner, and that’s the idea of archetypes. As you know, Carl Jung made the idea of archetypes particularly famous in terms of psychological archetypes and so on. You’ll notice that a lot of these things here whilst we’re talking about them, especially things like motivation and action, start to pull out certain qualities of yourself or of the other people involved in your stories that are, shall we say, universal themes of human experience, they come through over and over. Archetypes, basically, are symbols for certain things. As we talked about yesterday, a cave is an archetype for that sort of threshold place and an ocean is an archetype for the unconscious and so on. Although, of course, the archetype is the unconscious, it’s the shadow, it’s these other experiences. The symbol is just a way of triggering the archetype. Does that make sense? Like a baby is not an archetype, it’s what babyness represents is more the archetype. So, what I want to do is start retelling the story, and this time sort of emphasizing the emotion, the action, the motivation and the senses and so on. I’d like you to turn some element of your story – a person, a character or a figure – into one of the archetypes. It can be an inanimate object, it can be an animal or it can be another person. So you have a lot of scope. Does that make sense? 1. The first archetype I want to play with is the idea of the hero.

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It’s the simplest one of them all. To some extent one might say that every story has a hero in one shape or another and the purpose of the hero, the role of the hero is to get people to identify with him or her. The hero essentially represents us and the point of being a hero is there is some kind of aspiration perhaps and at the end of the whole ordeal, there is some gain, some growth, some change. So a hero is about personal growth in many ways. Make sense? Student: ♦

Igor:

Are you going to go for a typical Jungian hero archetype?

The answer is, basically, yes. Just keep it nice and simple. We don’t have to overcomplicate it. We’re all familiar with the hero characters – the John Wayne in pretty much any cowboy movie, the person we want to identify with and the one we want to root for when we go through. Even anti-heroes to some extent are heroes, as long as we can identify with them. Make sense? Anti-heroes reflect to us the shadow side of ourselves, the negative consequences of what we might have been like or might still become if we don’t watch out, if that makes sense. I’d like you to go back to your sock stories and make something in your story a sock. Now it’s up to you what that something is. It could be you, it could be someone else or it could be your sock. Notice how each time you think about a different element of your story being the hero, it will fundamentally change the way the story flows. The action sequence is roughly the same. I’m still going to pick up the phone, I’m still going to call for a burger, but the emphasis; hence, the whole story will change whether the burger is the hero, the phone is the superhero or I am the hero. Does that make sense? So I’d like to spend literally just a minute or two just going through a real sharp quick version of your story. Find a different group of three just so you can get a little bit of variety and make something in your story heroic, so that it has a sense of achievement at the end of it and a sense of gaining something, a sense of personal growth through some kind of effort.

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Before we start, a quick thing- a couple of you have come up and asked me did we actually tell you what the five moods were yesterday that I want you to memorize and use every time. You may have noticed that the list of five was blank and that’s because the moods, like the power words tend towards infinity. There are a lot of different moods you can have. The idea of putting five in there is just to alert you to the fact that there’s more than one mood. With that happy thought, I’d like you to focus on making some aspect of your story heroic and see how that changes. Does that make sense? So just put yourselves into groups again please. Find somewhere to sit down or stand up as you wish, and literally just spend a minute making your story heroic. Off you go. Okay, did you enjoy that? Did you notice a different quality entering your story as soon as you start thinking in terms of heroes and so on? Well, the story with a hero becomes particular more dramatic when you have a contrast. What is the contrast of a hero? A villain. Well, we’re going to have villains; we’re going to have them appear a little bit differently later on. For the moment, we want to have the super-villain. What’s the super-villain? It’s the nemesis. The nemesis’s job is essentially to foil the hero in whatever he’s trying to do. So, whatever the motivation of the hero is, the nemesis’s motivation is to stop him. Now it might be because he needs to stop him to achieve his own motivation, or the motivation itself might just be to stop the hero no matter what. Does that make sense? Villains are slightly different. Villains can be like little sub-characters. The nemesis can be a person or it can be a thing. It can be whatever you want. It can be an object, it could be an animal or just circumstance, some invisible force that is constantly hampering the hero. This morning I went to have a shower. I really tried to get up. I was lying on my bed and I was thinking, I need to get clean. Clean is good, I cannot turn up and stink and be sweaty and have horrible bed hair. No, I must get up. But it was cold in the room. The air-conditioning was on, so I tried to take an arm out of bed. Oh my God, it’s cold. I had to go back and retreat. I thought, all right, if I sneak out

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gee, let’s get my fingertips out. Maybe if I could just pull the covers with me, I could pull the bathrobe up off the floor and put the bathrobe on and then the cold would have nothing on me. I peaked my hand right out from underneath the covers. I could see the robe was there. It was like, I don’t know, three feet. I could just about reach it, and I was just going for it and I was going for it, and then the covers started peeking out and my wrist got cold, so I started pulling the cover over again. Okay. My wrist is warm. I can do this. I reached down lower and lower and then I fell out of bed. It was cold! I wrapped myself inside the bathrobe, jumped back into bed and thought that was close, I almost got hyperthermia there, but I still must have a shower. You will not defeat me, Mr. Cold. Does that make sense? Student: ♦

Igor:

Can the nemesis be internal to the hero?

Oh, yes it can and that is an excellent way of thinking about it too. Can it be something inside themselves, like a little voice of doubt, an internal conflict or a memory from the past? Do you see where we’re going with this? The nemesis is an archetype. It can appear in any form or shape you wish it to. The only thing that defines it as a nemesis; hence, I want to stay clear of the idea of villains, a slightly different concept. The only thing that identifies a nemesis is, is he stopping – or she or it – is she preventing the hero consistently from trying to achieve his objective, his aim, his goal. Does that make sense? Everyone clear on the nemesis? Okay, off you go, let’s extend the story a little bit, a minute and a half each. You guys have been enjoying yourselves again. What’s going on? Well, what happened there? Let me ask you, once you introduce a nemesis, do you notice how it’s easier to develop a hero when you have a nemesis to contrast him against? Wouldn’t that be fair to say?

Student:

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I was doing the same story over and over, but when I created the hero, it just seemed that naturally a nemesis came up even before…




Igor:

We did the official exercise. Did anyone else notice this as well? How when you introduce one archetype, it almost requires the archetype – you automatically start thinking in opposite terms to help define your own version. What is the principle we’re using? Contrast, right? Do you see how the stuff we talked about all the way back on the very first day – which seems like forever ago now – still feeds into what we’re doing? The principles still apply. So you’re contrasting to the hero to the nemesis. There’s another thing you can contrast a hero against, and that is to the shadow. In archetype terms, a shadow – initially it will sound like its very similar to the nemesis, but it’s actually very different. The shadow is that part of ourselves that we fear, we repress, we hide from, we’re ashamed of and we don’t want to let out into the light of day. In turn, it’s also that part of us where most of our power rests. If we are feeling disempowered somewhere, it’s usually because we’ve locked it up somewhere in our shadow and we’re too afraid to go there. So the shadow can come out in lots of different ways. It can come out in terms of self-doubt or inner criticism and things like that. It can be represented by the various villains in a story. It can be represented sometimes even by the hero himself falling below his own standards, shall we say. Does that make sense? So the point of the shadow is to contrast the heroicness. The point of the nemesis is to make the hero’s life hard. It’s saying, whatever you do, I’m going to try to stop you. The point of the shadow is different. It’s a more soul searching kind of part. It’s like there is the temptation to go down one road, but he’s not. Or, there’s a fear that something is going to happen, but he’s got to go there anyway. It’s the job interview that you really should go to, but you’re afraid of how they might treat you. It’s standing up to your boss when really all you want to do is run and hide under your desk. Do you see where we’re going with this? The shadow side is going to ramp up your story even further because the emotions that come from those conflicts are very powerful, especially when

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you have this magic trio here of the hero, the nemesis and the shadow. They create a wonderful little trio that really enhances the heroicness of the hero because now the hero has stuff to overcome, pitfalls to bypass and so on. Does that make sense? Now some people might think the object of the shadow is to be avoided or defeated in some ways. I encourage you to think that there might be other ways of introducing the shadow too. With that thought in mind, please take two minutes apiece and tell your story again. Was that interesting? Is brushing your teeth getting more interesting now that you have the archetypes in it? Do you notice how all the stuff we talked about in the morning about emotion, action, motivation and senses kind of brings the story to life, it gets action and it’s visually more stimulating? It’s more stimulating I guess. But when you start introducing the archetypes, it becomes more meaningful. Are you starting to notice this? It’s kind of like you start searching for purpose within that story, right? So there I am I’m lying in bed with my bathrobe on. I’ve jujitsu’d it around my shoulders, but I’m cold. I’m lying under the covers, and I stick my head under the covers just to try to get my body heat to come back, and it’s so cold in the room. I’m thinking to myself, maybe I won’t make it. Maybe I can’t get to the bathroom. Maybe I can’t have that shower. Maybe I’m just not good enough. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to do this. I’m trying to rise, but I say no, no, I will get out. I will have that shower, but it’s cold! I peek my nose out. Oh, it’s cold. I’m on the verge of tears. I’m just about to give up. Then a light catches the corner of my eye. There’s the door to the bathroom, the light is on, the mouth of the door is open, ajar and it calls to me. It says Igor, and I listen. It says you can do this. I’m going no, I can’t. You can. But it’s too cold. It’s only cold for a little while. But I can’t do this. I can’t face the cold. It’s defeated me already. You can do this, just stand up, Igor. Get out of bed. Come to me. You can do this. You’ll be safe and warm in here. I don’t know. Do it. Just stand up. You can do this.

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I try. It’s cold. My skin begins to sting, but I stand up. I have my eyes fixed on the door. Come. Just take a step, take a step and another. I keep going. I feel like running back into bed, but there’s the door calling me. Just one more step, two, three, four, five. I’m past the threshold. I’m in the bathroom, out of the room, the air-conditioning is no longer operating in this room, but I’m cold right down to the bone. Maybe I made a mistake coming here. Its okay, Igor, just turn on the shower. It will keep you nice and warm. I listen to the door. Somehow I trust it. [Applause] All right, so we have given the hero enough problems, haven’t we? Now we need some kind of an assistant, an aide. One of the first archetypes, one of the most important assisting archetypes is the mentor. The mentor comes in the form of a teacher or a guide. The purpose of a mentor is not to do anything. The mentor does not do anything. The purpose of the mentor is to get the hero to do something. It is to encourage, it is to teach, it is to prepare. In the Star Wars saga, who was the mentor? Ob-Wan Kenobi, right? In the Arthurian Legends, who was the mentor? Does Merlin actually do anything? No, he just prepared Arthur to do stuff. Does that make sense? In Good Will Hunting, who was the mentor? Have you seen Good Will Hunting? It’s the therapist, right? Does he actually do anything? No, he just sits there and talks to him. The point is the hero is the one that does everything. He’s the one that has to face his demons. He’s the one that has to achieve an objective, despite the problems. He’s the one that has to confront the shadow. The mentor just helps him do it. The mentor is just a door inside someone’s mind. Do you understand the idea of the mentor? His job is to assist the hero. Especially, you can create a lot of tension there, can’t you? The nemesis is about to defeat it. It feeds into the shadow so maybe it’s self-doubt or maybe it’s self-loathing. It might be anger or it might be some anti-social tendencies. Then the mentor just about manages to turn the hero around

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when he’s on the verge of collapse or failure or something like that. There’s a lot of drama there. Can you hear that, or can you get a sense of that? Please take about two minutes apiece. Student: ♦

Igor:

Can the storyteller be one of these four things?

Absolutely. Anyone involved in the story can be any part of this. In fact, if you really wanted to, you could make one of your audience one of these archetypes. For example, there I am in bed. It’s cold. I’ve jujitsu’d my way to this robe and just fought my way in, but it’s still cold. Should I give up? Should I just lie there and stay dirty? Come on, kids. Help me out. Should I keep staying? Do I lie in bed? But it’s so far away. What do I do? Really, in terms of storytelling structure, it does not matter who takes which role; the roles just take themselves. What I’m not doing here, folks, just to reemphasize this. I do not want to give you a storytelling style, whether it’s a play style, or if it’s a playschool style with kids, or if it’s a more mature style or it’s a corporate style. The style you will evolve on your own, it will fit your audience and your personality. The point is that what’s inside a story that adds power to it. Does that make sense? So to answer your question more briefly, yes, anyone can take any one of these roles at all. Make sense?

Sean: ♦

Igor:

Would you like to tell about yesterday’s car?

Yes, if you wish me to, I’d be happy to tell you. The idea was in terms of teaching storytelling, I think of it like watching a car race. Whilst you’re watching the race from the point of view of the racing track, you know they have those handy-cams? It’s exciting, isn’t it? It’s like the car is switching and turning and you’re involved in the whole experience of it, and you can really enjoy the race. But there’s only one problem. You don’t where the race is going. You don’t know if he’s winning or losing. All you know is that guy is driving damn hard. So from time to

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time, you just split your awareness up and just check which way is this car going to go? Where is he? Where’s the strategy? What’s he going to do in order to get ahead? Of course, eventually you know your car is going to be right at the head of the pack. Once they’re all behind you, there’s no point thinking anymore, just race. Put your foot down and go as fast and as hard as you can until you get to that finish line and you, of course, are the winner. That’s maybe one of the possible ideas. Make sense? By the way I had that within I think before we finished that session, but it didn’t fit. Seeing as you asked, you may have it back. Go ahead and tell your stories. Feel free to use a shadow nemesis if you wish. The point now is to introduce a mentor to guide, help and assist the hero, but not do anything. Off you go. How did it go with the mentor? Everyone throw in a couple extra archetypes in here? 2. The next archetype I want to talk about is the threshold guardian. The purpose of a threshold guardian is essentially to test the hero’s resolve. You can’t make life too easy for him. The threshold guardian only exists at a threshold. In other words, when the hero is about to make an important turning point, a threshold guardian of some sort turns up to test whether or not he’s for real. Is he committed to this? Is he going to do this? Is he resourceful enough? Is he going to stick to it and so on? Does that make sense? For example, I’m there in the bathroom and I’m so cold. Turn on the shower! Once you’re inside the shower, you’ll be safe, you’ll be warm. So I go over and I reach up to the handle for the door. It’s one of these glass showers, and I push but it won’t open. So I pull, but it won’t open and I’m cold. Go back to bed it seems to say to me. You loser! There is no way you’ll ever have a shower now. I’m pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling, and nothing seems to work. Help me!

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I turn for the door. You know what to do. Just think. I’m pushing and I’m pulling, and I can’t get in. You know what to do. Just think. I’m pushing and I’m pulling. Just think. I took a deep breath. Calm your mind. The answer will come. So I start and for some reason the only thing I can think about is going skiing and the gondola that’s rolling us up hill to the top of the slope. What the hell is this about? Just think. My vision zooms in on one of those rolling pins on top of the gondola and I say what the hell? The door! It slides! I grab the door. I slide it open, ripping open its jaw like a lion. I’m saying yes! This is my shower, and I will not be denied! Do we get the idea of the threshold guardian and what it does? Okay, two minutes apiece. Off you go. Who enjoyed meeting the guardian at the threshold, anyone? Notice how your stories are continuing to evolve and create more depth now when you start focusing on these different archetypes. Wouldn’t that be fair to say? Now the key thing here is the archetypes are actually just forces that weave themselves through the story. They can be personified, but they don’t have to be. The reason for this is to realize that it’s so you can turn any story, even like a regular business story, into one that has this real gut wrenching drive behind it without actually breaking the context you’re in. When you’re talking about Hondo motorcars factory plant in Utah – I don’t know if there is such a thing – then you can’t suddenly start talking about and then the magic monkey came and put the feather in the wrench. We’re going to go right, what have you been smoking? You see what I mean, but the same forces can still weave their way through the story; therefore, be as captivating, engaging and speaking to them at their unconscious level without having to be as dramatic. Does that make sense? For the moment, I want you to exaggerate so that you can get used to these forces and use them and how they fit and so on. We have two more of these things that I like to play with together and they don’t always come together. It’s just that they’re more minor players, shall we say. So they might be useful for you to play with on conjunction.

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3. The shape-shifter archetype represents the forces of change, or how the world around us seems to keep changing, despite our best attempts to stop it. It’s often represented by people like the boyfriend or girlfriend of the hero or something like that, the friends that somehow change and he doesn’t understand them anymore. So, when someone changes in the story in a way that the hero doesn’t understand anymore, it’s a surprise. The shape-shifter thinks it’s coming in. In more classic fairytales and so on, you have of course things like werewolves and vampires. We’d have the prince, I guess, turn into an – I don’t know – a chicken, or the princess that has to turn herself into a fish to be able to escape. The shape-shifting metaphor really has two versions, to variants. i. On the one side, people shape-shift on purpose, so it’s an empowering thing, the princess that turns into a fish to escape or the prince that shifts into a bear so he can fight the whole army or whatever. ii. The other variant is the one that is about restraint, constraint, imprisoning; the shape-shifting that’s done without voluntary choice. In other words, the wicked-witch that puts the girl to sleep, the prince that gets turning into a toad. It goes against his choice. It’s against his free will and so on. Make sense? These represent the forces of change and give people a chance to cope with the idea of change without having to necessarily talk about it directly. 4. The trickster is one of my favorite characters and archetypes. Again, it’s one of the things that come up in any culture. In North America, there is, of course, the Native Americans love to have the coyotes be the trickster. It has nothing to do with the roadrunner movies from Walt Disney or whatever it was because in there is not the classic coyote.

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The trickster’s role essentially is to represent the benevolent side of your unconscious mind that pokes you, prods you and tricks you into some kind of positive change. So the trickster is usually benevolent, at least to the hero in the story. It might end up, if it’s like the wicked farmer is taking advantage of some poor little farm boy, the trickster might come along and trick the farmer so it’s still the farm boy that wins. Does that make sense? Of course, the farmer loses. The trickster represents our unconscious mind guiding us in surprising ways to positive change essentially. Usually it does it in a roundabout way through riddles or through putting us into impossible situations where only a Zen-like solution will present itself. Make sense? Student: ♦

Igor:

Can archetypes be combined, like you put the threshold guard and the shape-shifter together?

Absolutely. They can absolutely be combined. Remember, these are just forces that are represented in the form of a story, so you can put several forces into one person. For example, the shadow and the hero can fit nicely together. Some people have quite interesting novels where they put the mentor and the shadow together. This is where we have these ambivalent mentor figures who are like someone they trust, but someone who gives really bad advice and they go which is it? Sometimes, of course, this kind of creates a trickster character as well. So, do you see how we can start melding the archetypes together to create very interesting and fascinating characters? For the moment, though, I’d like to keep them relatively separate just so you get used to how each archetype feels, how it maneuvers, how it changes the nature of the interaction in terms of the story. Does that make sense? Can we contrast the mentor and the trickster? Sure. Help me, I can’t get it open. You know what to do. Just think. Clear your mind. So I manage to get the door open, I step inside. I may as well do both of them. We’ve got them both there.

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I’m in the shower. I am reveling in my glory. I have made it. Mr. Cold could not stop me. Mr. Sliding Door could not stop me. My ego is 10 foot high. I turn on the shower and a trickle of water comes out. How is this going to get me clean? I am too big for all this. My ego needs some deflating. So I hold my breath and I will myself smaller. See any shape-shifting going on? I step out of the shower briefly and eat a crumb of humble pie, not too much. My ego deflates even further. Now a waterfall consumes me, and it feels good. I start to scrub, but the dirt is not coming off. The water is not enough. I grab my bar of soap, but it’s all wet now. It’s slipping and sliding everywhere, and eventually it goes down the drain. What am I to do? Do you spot the shape-shifter and the trickster in here right now? The trickster is me trying to get hold of this soap and it’s going everywhere, and now I’m stuck again. The trickster is going to trick me into change. So right now I am doing all the logical things for washing. What am I going to do now? So then the trickster might force me down another adventure. Maybe now I have to go down the plug hole to find the soap. Maybe I’m going to sit down and cry until someone kicks me on the backside and tells me, you can do this anyway it’s been about you all along. The point is he’s taking me to a point of change where I have to depart from my plan because what I had intended, my vision is no longer working. Of course, if I have the trickster come up, I might even have the bar of soap ready. I get ready. This is going to get me clean. I might build up the soap as being the magic thing, so when I actually get into the shower, oh Christ, it’s gone. Then we have more emphasis on the trickster itself because I’ve set it up right from the beginning. Do you see how this stuff works? Student:

I just had a thought. I wanted to just run this by you and see what you thought of my thought. Maybe my thought is…

Igor:

I think that your thought is very thoughtful. Thank you for letting me think about your thought.

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Student:

That’s very thoughtful of you.

Igor:

Thank you. I think so anyway.

Student:

It seemed to me like I just had this flash that came to my mind that what you’re potentially doing from one perspective is you’re assigning energetically an intention to various elements or objects or parts of yourself, and those have these characteristics. So, even though you’re not saying it, that energetic intention and the otherthan-conscious mind is busy thinking because these are already pre-built into so many of us through so many interactions, stories and everything else in the world. Our mind’s continuously try to take whatever that is intention and put it in these categories naturally.

Igor:

I think that’s an excellent way of thinking about it. If it helps anyone else, then it’s a great way to think about it. They’re not necessarily characters. They’re things that shape the flow of the interaction, the flow of the story and so on, having it as an intention is a great way of thinking about it. So he’s thinking about it like frequencies, and you switch between different wavelengths and so on. I think of it in very similar ways. I think of these as forces. The personal metaphor I have is the wind is blowing in different directions, and our hero is caught like a leaf in the middle of it all, and that’s where the story unfolds. That’s just my mental metaphor. Does this help you? Shall we add one more to this list so we can just do the whole shebang in one big go? This is not, by the way, an exhaustive list of archetypes. These are just the bigger players and it’s preparing you for something we’ll be doing later on today as well. 5. The last major players are allies. An ally is different from a mentor in two forms. The first form is an ally is small. Remember, the hero has to do all the work, but the ally helps him to

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do some crucial part of it or bumps along the way. So the allies actually do things. Mentors only prepare for doing. So mentors can be very larger than life figures, but their actual action is limited. It’s relatively low. It’s doesn’t do anything. It just prepares the hero and propels him forward. Allies, on the other hand, can to a lot, but their power is relatively small, especially compared to the hero. They may be large figures – for example, it could be a business tycoon – but all a business tycoon does is open the door for him and creates a reference so he can speak to the Dean of the University. So his action is small, even though in terms of the relative status, his status may be high, the ally is still a small figure in the whole interaction. I watched recently ‘For Love or Money with Michael J. Fox in it. He played a hotel concierge with this big dream of building his own grand hotel and he’s always sucking up to some guy who promised him he was going to build his hotel. Of course, he’ll never do it because he’s just stringing him along. He’s kind of like a nemesis. He’s fooling him in every way, but getting all the favors in return because it makes his life convenient. Of course, at the end of the film, one of the guys he helped who seems to be like some poor little nobody ends up being some incredibly wealthy business tycoon who’s just very understated, accidentally gets his plans and goes this is great, I’m going to invest in you. So that’s the whole end of the story. That’s another classic ally. Do you see how that works? Let’s just take the example of the story that we’ve been creating together in terms of the crazy shower experience. I’ll tell you, I was traumatized today. What might be an ally? Now that the soap slipped through my hands, it’s forcing me to change in some way, right? So perhaps one of the things the trickster could be forcing me to do is to build alliances. Do you see how that works, so that I’m not always trying to think it’s up to me? Now I have to be resourceful and maybe an ally can help me along the way. What kind of ally might we have in terms of the shower, a toothbrush? I could use it to start scrubbing my back. I can’t get that spot and oh, there it is. What else? Shampoo. Exactly. What do I do? What do I do? Pick me,

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pick me. I look up and go, who is that talking? Is anyone watching? I don’t know. Pick me. I look up and there’s the shampoo, and right next to it is Dr. Bonner’s magic soap, 18 qualities in one. So now, of course, you have a replacement, something that will do what you had put all your faith in. The trickster has forced you to be more creative and to create alliances. Then, of course, you can be all washed up and you have your friends. You shoot the airconditioning and line up the shampoo bottle and say, you and me buddy, we’re going to go all the way. Do you see how that whole thing works? Does everyone understand these intentions, these forces that drive inside of a story? Student: ♦

Did you ever see ‘Horton Hears a Who’?

Igor:

Yes. I haven’t seen it all, just bits of it where he’s…

Student:

Everything in there is a metaphor. It’s really a great story.

Igor:

So, there’s a movie called, Horton Hears a Who! I guess it’s about an elephant that hears something of a whisper. Anyways, it has a lot of layers of metaphors, symbolism within it, and if you just look at it in terms of archetypes, you’ll probably – I’ve seen bits of it, so we’ll probably see a lot of things going on inside of that. Does that make sense? Is everyone clear with how this structure works? What I’d like you to do run your story through one more time to see if you can get as many of these different archetypes into your story as possible, and notice how it evolves, as a result, of these forces being included. Does that make sense? Okay, off you go. So there’s an awful lot you can do by just putting on a pair of socks in the morning, isn’t there? Did you realize this morning just how monumental your actions really were? I hope you have a larger sense of life now that you’ve realized that your activities this morning really had much more significance than you realized.

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What I’d like to do is spend the last eight or so minutes now doing one last thing in terms of what we’re doing with playing with the structure in terms of the elements that can build up story-ness for us. That is, if you recall, we’ve focused a lot on the sequence, the action and things like that. We focused on the emotion and how to drive that. So, we’ve got the performance elements of a story here, right? We’ve also got the forces inside of the story that develop depth, that hook us in terms of the human drama of it. Does that make sense? What I’d like to focus on now is something that I think was mentioned over here earlier on that is often overlooked, which is the break. I’d like you to get together in your group of three. Just turn to the group next to you and have a group of six so you have a nice discussion group. This is going to be more of a brainstorming session. What you’re going to do is take a different scenario, whether it’s cleaning your teeth or taking a shower or whatever it is. I want you to reduce the story again to simple elements, like this is the simple sequence that I had, and then start asking yourself where could there have been a break, although there wasn’t? What else could have happened to intervene and change the flow of the story? Does that make sense? Now you have all these things, all these forces that want to be expressed, don’t you? So your break might very well be one of these forces trying to interrupt on a sequence in order to start expressing themselves. Do you see how that works? Ask yourself, where else could there have been a break to interrupt that sequence to express one of these forces, for example. Then map out very briefly where that might have taken you. So let’s take the example of I was hungry and I called the burger. What else could have been a break? So I’m just calling the burger, when someone shoots the person at the other end of the line. Thankfully, it wasn’t me but notice how it totally transforms the story now, doesn’t it? It goes somewhere very different, doesn’t it? I could have gotten my burger and it starts talking to me. Maybe the mushrooms were more

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than I thought. So again, do you see how it takes me in a different direction again? Look at the sequence, the basic sequence of what your mundane event was, and start brainstorming what could have happened to interrupt the sequence? Maybe one of these things will express itself through that, and then just really some very simple plot lines in terms of where might that have taken you. Does that make sense? Get into your group of six. I’ll give you about eight minutes to do that and get some nice ideas. One second, before we go. Whoa, one second. Off you go. Student:

Break is, basically, another word for plot change, right?

Igor:

Kind of. We’re looking specifically for a point at which a normal sequence that is nothing. Last night I was hungry. I ordered a burger and I ate it. That’s a sequence, not story-ness, right? We’re looking for something to break or interrupt that sequence. Last night I was working. No interruption. Last night I was working, and I got hungry. Now we start being turned towards story-ness. You can have breaks happen later on and redirecting the story in different directions, but the key emphasis I want to have right now is the initial interruption from a normal mundane event into something abnormal or super-normal. Does that make sense? Off you go. Who enjoyed that? Can you feel the creativity flow and buzz around and so on? Was it easy to find a break in different places, and did you notice how these archetypes naturally just start weaving themselves into where the break occurs or suggestion themselves? Who had a good idea of what kind of story or what kind of plot would be developing, as a result, of the break? A few people. So how would you guys like to have a whole sequence of, shall we say instant plot lines that most stories will follow? Instant plot lines that most stories will follow, so as soon as you start a break, it pretty much maps out what kind of story this will be

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and what kind of feel, what kind of archetypes will express themselves and so on. Would anyone like that?

Igor:

Before the lunch break, we were focusing on the idea of breaking our action sequence in difference places and how that will naturally evolve different kinds of plot lines, different kinds of stories. What kinds of experiences did you guys have from that? Was it interesting? Did you actually do it, or did you just sit there and go, I’ll be very quiet and I’ll pretend something’s happened? So she’s saying it was hard to stop within those two minutes. Anyone else find this? Who’s starting to feel constrained by this two-minute thing? I want more time. I want to get some stuff done. Good. Let’s build up a little bit more pressure and then we’ll carry on with something.

Student:

It was also amazing how engaged and how much you could present in two minutes.

Igor:

Right. So the flipside is also true. Once you’re forced to do it – he’s saying he’s amazed by how much and how eloquently people can present in two minutes if they’re forced to. So a part of that’s about, by the way, is your stories should be scalable. You should be able to get a lot of stuff done in just a minute or two, or you can spend an hour weaving in elements and different things and expanding and contracting it as you need to.

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The old European storytellers back when it was still an oral tradition where a lot of the fairytales have come from typically will only have, I don’t know, five to 10, maybe 15 stories that they told. That was it. That was their repertoire, but they could tell the story in two minutes or they could spend an entire evening telling the same story, depending on the time requirements, the audience and so on. They could also change the nuances of each story to fit what’s happening at the time. So storytelling, just to give you a little background in terms of some of the tomology– hopefully it’s interesting to you. A lot of storytelling has sort of Shamanic or medicine man type roots where the Shaman, who was like the priest of the community at the time, would tell stories. Or, the same story in a different way each time, depending on what’s happening in the community to kind of heal rifts, to help a troubled youngster to get out of the problems they were in, especially if they were being blinded by what they were doing. So they would tell the same story over and over, but they would expand it and contract it. They would sometimes emphasize an element of the story that’s normally not emphasized and vice versa, just to be able to bring the message across. Does that make sense? Erickson did the same. Anyone who talked to Erickson or who knew Erickson would say that he would actually tell the same stories over and over. He only had maybe 15 or 20 stories that he primarily tell. He had a whole bunch of others things he’d tell from time to time, but he would repeat the same 15 or 20 stories very often. Only sometimes a minor character in a story would suddenly become the major character. Can you begin to see what’s going on here? A minor character might suddenly become a major character and all the things that revolved around that person, although it’s the same events. So essentially it’s the same sequence of actions, the same historical event, but different messages are coming out as a result. Do you see where this is going? One thing I want to focus on today is to be able to do that. To notice first, how the same story can be told in many different ways and many different styles and that there are many different plot lines that you can use. If you

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understand the plot lines, if you understand the interplay between storyness, performance, the forces that are circling this other story and the plot lines that give it structure, you have all the building blocks that you need to create amazing stories, don’t you? Before we begin, in terms of the whole plot line thing, I’d like you guys to give me 20 mundane everyday events because the way we’re going to work this is we’re going to get into a little storytelling circle again in groups of three as before. We’re all going to tell the same story totally differently. Does that make sense? So what is one mundane event? What about the alarm clock, some mundane thing. Getting up in the morning, shall we put it that way? 1. 2. 3. 4.

Showering Getting up Setting the alarm clock Picking up trash

Do you pick it up or do you just bring it out? Look, I picked it up and put it down. I picked it up and put it down. I picked it up. Sorry, sometimes I just amuse myself with the craziest things. Student:

You said mundane.

Igor:

That was exciting, wasn’t it? 5. Scratching an itch Oh, there’s a good one. You can just feel the need for a story to come out there? An epic, heroic adventure. 6. 7.

Feeding pets. Getting dressed.

One would hope that people do that. 8. 9.

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Falling to sleep. Serving your loved one breakfast in bed.




Okay, I think that’s a highlight. Not necessarily a mundane event. It’s like, oh, breakfast in bed. Well, it depends on who your loved one is. I’m very fortunate. That’s not a highlight. It’s an everyday event, but you guys unfortunately are not looked after as well. So that can’t go on my list. On your personal list it will happily go onto. I want normal boring events that people. Making breakfast is less interesting, isn’t it? 10. Packing for a trip. What else is there? Oh, here we go. You guys are on fire now, aren’t you? 11. Checking the mail. 12. Drive to work. Student:

Showering. Yes, I’m wondering how come showering is number 13 on this list? Someone didn’t like my shower story perhaps. Say again.

Student:

Showering was number one.

Igor:

Oh my God, it’s a complete loop. This is going off. I want another one. 13. Shaving.

Student:

Scooping dog poop.

Igor:

That may not be necessarily an everyday event for people, so we’ll pass on that one for now. 14. Making a phone call. 15. Getting coffee or some kind of fluids. 16. Turning the television on. Okay, there you go. Now you guys are really getting exciting, aren’t you? Do you like my dress?

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17. Getting a haircut. 18. Locking the door. 19. Putting on shoes. I like shoes. Shoes are good. One last one, make it good. 20. Yawning. I’ve never tried this one. Let’s try yawning. Okay. These are going to be the fuel for your stories for the rest of this next session. In a moment, I’d like you guys to get into groups. You know what, just get into groups of three again please, and then we’ll add this exercise. The following plot lines – they’re not my own. Everyone relax, sit, breathe and focus. Breathe and relax. Okay, good. So the following 20 plot lines aren’t my own. They come from a man called Robert Tobias. He’s written a book on 20 plot lines. It’s an excellent book. If you want to try it out, I would highly recommend it. We’re going to go with his essential plot structures so you understand it, but this is a good reference if you want to expand a little bit more in that direction. This is more for giving you maneuvering possibilities. Make sense? The author’s name is Robert Tobias and his book is called something like Twenty Plot Lines and How to Master Them, or something like that. Just put in Robert Tobias, and you will find it. I guarantee it. So the first of the plot lines is going to be about showering. Please base it on reality. Has anyone in this room never taken a shower, anyone? All right, we’re in good shape in that case. So consider a moment when you had a shower. The way I’d like you to tell it, or someone else actually had a shower if you were watching – that could be interesting – the way I want you to tell it is the plot line is called: 1.

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A quest.

Now the purpose of the quest is the hero has a purpose, a mission to achieve, an objective, an aim, maybe to find something, maybe to reach somewhere. You have a very clear objective, and they’ve got to get from A Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


to B. The thing that defines it as a quest rather than anything else is not the fact that he has a mission or an objective. It’s that the journey reflects that kind of inner journey. It’s a journey of growth, personal growth and change. So, as the hero gets close to their goal, they change as a person. So reaching the goal becomes symbolic of them having changed as an individual. Does that make sense to you guys? Do you get how that works? Good. Everyone, you have one minute to tell a story about showering in the format of a quest. Off you go. Who here feels a little pushed for time, right now, anyone? Excellent! You’re in a perfect position to do the plot line called: 2.

Adventure.

Now the adventure plot looks very similar to the quest. The main difference between the quest and the adventure is in the adventure, the main objective, goal, aim, chief purpose and so on is relatively unimportant. In other words, it’s just a vague purpose. The key thing is what actually happens in the whole thing. It’s the journey, rather than the result. In the quest, we’re constantly focusing on the end, the goal. In the adventure, it’s kind of a journey and we just have this vague goal to kind of keep cohesion there. The second thing that’s different about the adventure and the quest is that in an adventure, we honestly don’t care too much about how the hero grows. It’s really just an excuse to have lots and lots of action. You’ve already practiced the whole action stuff before, haven’t you? So this is all about developing action and if you want twists and turns in terms of what you’re doing. Now the story all of you are going to be telling is getting up from some kind of time when you were asleep. Maybe in the morning, maybe you had an afternoon nap, but your getting up is going to be an adventure. Ready, one minute apiece. Off you go.

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How are these stories beginning to develop? Interesting? Do you notice how you have exactly the same topic and exactly the same plot, and yet very different things are happening? Is that fair to say? Some of you are going, yeah, right. You are freaky, the stuff that’s coming out. We like that. All right, story number three is going to be about setting the alarm clock. The plot line is a perennial in terms of human experience. 3.

The pursuit.

Now the pursuit is not just a car chase in a big car movie. Pursuit is something that is kind of built into our DNA. Kids play cops and robbers, hide and seek, go and chase. We have dogs running for a ball, hunting for a chicken or a whatever. Cats running after a ball of string and so on, so this idea of pursuing is pretty much built into us. Pursuit comes out in many different forms. For example, how many romances have you read or seen that are about pursuit? So pursuit is really the drama between escape and evasion, versus the other person trying to trap. Will they get the prize or will the prize escape? It depends on whose point of view you’re looking at in terms of who people are rooting for and so on. Does that make sense? Any questions on that one? You have a minute each to tell someone a story about how you set the alarm and it was a pursuit. No, no, no, yes. Off you go. Good. Did you enjoy that? Did you have a little pursuit and chase going on here? Okay. Now let’s move swiftly onto the next one in the category. This is the idea of: 4.

Rescue.

Again, rescue is a perennial theme, shall we say, of human experience. In rescue you have someone going after someone else who’s trapped or stuck somewhere and pull them out. Typically, but not all the time, there will be a kind of action triangle between the hero, the villain and the damsel in distress, although it could be a

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damson in distress in the modern version. It doesn’t matter who is being trapped and who has to be rescued by whom. The point is that the hero is the one that has to go after the prisoner to somehow rescue them. Does that make sense? Of course, rescuing does not just have to be a physical rescue where someone’s trapped in a room or in an environment that they can’t get out of. There can be emotional rescues too – someone is trapped in their emotions, someone is trapped in their past, someone is trapped by social circumstances, someone is trapped by drugs. These are all stories of rescue, aren’t they? You have one minute to tell someone about an event where the trash got picked up, which of course turns into a dramatic rescue. Off you go. How are you enjoying these so far? Any interesting things coming out? Do you notice how different themes start evolving when you put your unconscious to creative use? You’re telling it I can only put these things together to make it happen. Does this start happening? I would like you to just realize this because this is where all your stories will come from. You’re building some very interesting inner muscles, shall we say, in the storytelling realm. The next one – and I find it ironic some of the situation you came up with because you’ll see they are very interesting in terms of how they match up. The next one is kind of related to the rescue, only you’re doing it in reverse. The focus is going to switch from rescuing something that’s stuck to: 5.

Escaping.

The great escape is a theme of scratching that itch. Now I don’t know what’s going to be escaping, but I have a feeling that it’s going to be a very interesting round of storytelling. You all have one minute apiece. Off you go. How are the great escapes doing? Interesting? Shall we carry on? Who’s enjoying themselves, by the way? Are you finding this a useful way of developing skills within this storytelling format? Rest assured all these things will come to a point very soon in terms of using stories for influence.

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However, before we do that, we want to talk about what feeding your pet is going to be around in terms of plot line. I have to say, you guys have chosen some of the most amusing pairings. I could not have come up with this if I tried to be as creative as you guys. The plot line that follows, the sixth on the list is: 6.

Revenge.

Now revenge stories hold a very important position in our psyche in our minds because it’s not just about getting your own back. Essentially, what a revenge story is it teaches people how to deal with anger. Think about it. What does it mean when someone gets angry? It means that your personal boundary or self-respect or distance or whatever it is has somehow been violated. Someone has attacked your personal boundary, either by attacking your property, attacking your personality, attacking your identity or attacking your family. Do you see where we’re going with this? Anger is designed to push them right back. So revenge stories aren’t just about getting revenge; they are ideally around the idea of restoring boundaries. Of course, some revenge stories go the other way. They show what happens when people don’t know where to stop. In other words, when they’ve re-established their boundaries or, when there’s such a small knick in the boundary it’s not worth engaging the whole revenge fantasy because they’re out of proportion and the consequences suck. There’s a very famous story, which I think was called Michael Kohlhaas, which is by one of the famous German authors. I think it was Michael Kohlhaas, but I could be wrong about the author. It essentially tells a story about a farmer who got wronged by the local Lord. I think it was a Duke or something. He gets so obsessed about getting justice and in the process he loses everything – his family, his children, his farm and respect. He ends up being condemned to death in prison because he’s just going nuts about getting justice out.

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Revenge stories hold a very important place because they teach people that importance of personal boundaries and the consequences of being too adamant about the whole thing. In other words, when do you stop? How far do you go? What’s reasonable? What’s unreasonable? All those things get explored in the storyline. Does that kind of make sense? Go ahead. Student: ♦

Igor:

Can there ever be a time when a revenge story is more like a vengeance story?

Absolutely, but remember, the main thing here is in order to be about revenge or vengeance, there has to be some kind of motivator, some reason. A lot of these will be positive. Anyone hear about this little thing called the Civil Rights Movement in America? Would it be fair to say that some kind of revenge or push back energy was included in that? We’re not saying revenge in terms of I’ve going to make you suffer. The revenge we’re talking about here is I’m going to make things right. You can’t stop me. Revenge stories really, the other way you could look at them is as justice stories, but justice doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s not like, oh, that’s not fair. Okay, I’ll change it. That’s a justice story, isn’t it? The thing that makes these stories more interesting is someone actually got wronged and the process of getting revenge, that’s where justice is done. Or, in the process of trying to do justice, they’re on overkill and there is too much revenge, which means it’s too destructive and that kind of gives people parameters within which to navigate. Also useful if you like are for revenge stories to give people an idea of where the limits are. In other words, this is the limit of what acceptable behavior is in these circumstances. Go beyond that and there will be trouble. Stay within that and all is good. Do you see how just what you have here can be used in many different ways? Everyone get the idea of the revenge story?

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Student: ♦

Igor:

Is it better to spin the revenge story as a positive or negative thing?

I agree with you, it is. You have a minute each. Off you go. All right, so has justice been done, folks? Have those pets been fed or been taught a lesson about feeding? The owner has been taught a lesson, interesting. Now something very interesting is starting to happen here. Either you guys read my notes before we started or I have a very selective unconscious. I only heard things that are going to have the most interesting pairing because dressing in the morning, of course, is a simple, mundane activity. The plot line that this happens to be paired with right now is: 7.

The riddle or the, who-done-it mystery.

So, we have the riddle that some people know as the, who-done-it. So it could be in the form of a detective story. It could be in the form of a ghost story, like – has anyone here ever watched the Scooby-Doo, the little cartoon when they were kids? That’s a classic riddle, who-done-it type story, isn’t it? Does anyone like Sherlock Holmes? That’s a classic riddle, who-done-it type story, isn’t it? Has anyone ever seen Twin Peaks? Another class riddle type story, except no one ever actually figured out what the hell was going on anyway. So the riddles what they do is as these little puzzles are presented, they stimulate the mind. People go, oh what’s this? The novelty of it stimulates, and then the satisfaction of solving the riddle stimulates again. Make sense? In a riddle or who-done-it story, you don’t have to resolve every mystery. However, if you don’t resolve the bulk of the mystery, people will feel cheated. Does that make sense? Is everyone clear on the riddle and the, who-done-it? So turn getting dressed in the morning, or some other time getting dressed, into this crazy, mysterious who-did-that? Off you go.

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So, in terms of the riddle, who found it a little bit trickier to deal with a riddle than the other ones? The primary reason for that is because we’re trying to create a mystery without actually having one. Would you like to have a couple clues, as to how to make the riddle easier or the who-done-it, easier for you to create?

So, the simplest way to create the riddle or the who-done-it is to do the same thing you do when creating a maze. You start with the solution first. Then you add layer to obscure it and misdirection. Then you add clues or you leave little clues out so that they have to figure out what’s the clue, what’s the misdirection or the red herrings, and what it does is it challenges the audience, can we get to the solution before the author does? Does that make sense? If you start with a solution in mind first and then you start obscuring over the top of it, you can kind of create all these blind alleys along the way so that it creates that bigger mystery and so on. Do you see how that works? So it gets a lot easier than that. All right, next we have falling asleep. That’s a wonderful activity. It’s true. It’s a wonderful activity, which of course lends itself to great storytelling and so on. In your infinite wisdom, you guys totally and spontaneously decided to pair falling asleep with: 8.

The Rivalry.

The Rivalry plot, there are many different versions of it. Two contenders with relatively equal talents or skills or whatever, competing for the same thing. It’s about competition. Now you can have a positive rivalry with like two brothers, two friends. Like, look, I’m better than you. No, I’m making more money. No, I make more money now. I’m happier. No, I’m happier. It’s kind of a friendly up-manship. Or it can be the enemy rivalry. In other words, I’ll show him, where you can have a little bit of revenge and stuff like that included there too. Do you see how that works? So you have a minute each to tell a story about how you or

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someone you know fell asleep. Again, base it on reality, but include some kind of rivalry. Maybe it’s you and your partner and who gets to sleep first. Maybe it’s you and your dreams. You don’t really want to sleep. I want to sleep. Maybe it’s you trying to fall asleep, but someone is preventing you. There’s a rivalry going on in terms of how you get there. Does that make sense? One minute apiece, ff you go. Still enjoying yourselves? Notice how it starts getting a little taxing to do these one-minute stories. You’re working your brains out a little bit. What you’re doing right now is you’re breaking structures inside your mind that will make storytelling easy to do. The other thing I want you to notice is how many of you have stopped thinking so much? Good. If I have to tire you out into compete catatonia, I will, but I will stop you from thinking. All that stuff you learned in school – no good. Stop thinking and you’ll do a lot better in life. The next one is preparing breakfast or having breakfast, whatever you’re going to think about it. An interesting plot line that’s been paired with this called: 9.

The Underdog.

In the underdog plot line essentially we have two individuals going after the same goal, one of whom is severely disadvantaged in some way. Typically, of course, the underdog, the disadvantaged one will win because of their tenacity, their determination or their sheer desire to succeed, despite the odds. Does that make sense? So turn breakfast into a real challenge. Off you go. How are you doing still with me? Who wants a little bit more? All right. Next, of course, we have the common everyday activity of packing. Now this lends itself perfectly for our next set of plot lines. The next plot line is all about: 10. Temptation.

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Temptation is essentially where, of course, someone is tempted to do something, but it’s essentially a moral lesson. So in other words, if the hero gives into the temptation, which they might, they are diminished in some way. Our respect for them diminishes. So we’re rooting for them to resist temptation, but at the same time we can see why they’re so tempted. Make sense? I know no one has ever been tempted by cheesecake in the fridge. It’s so good, but I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. That’s the dynamic of the interplay we’re playing with, basically, a moral exploration and, of course, as usually happens it centers around the idea of packing. Student: ♦

Igor:

Is there an upside for the hero to resist the temptation other than our respect for them?

It depends, really, on what stories you do and what you’re trying to deliver as a message. Remember, our stories also create and format the unconscious mind. They prepare the unconscious mind for, certain behaviors. You could, for example, have them fail so spectacularly that it becomes a warning – don’t do it. Or, you could have them succeed despite it, so that when someone faces similar situations they have a guiding path to say, I’m going to be like that person. I’ll follow along and resist too. I’ll do the right thing. So it’s really about – you know the definition of character? I can’t remember who came up with this, but I kind of like it. Basically, character or honesty is doing the right thing when you know no one’s looking. So that’s another way of looking at the whole temptation thing as well. Does that make sense? Everyone clear on temptation? Go and tempt each other. One minute apiece, off you go. So are you ready for another one? This one is an interesting one. This one is one that doesn’t work so well in terms of normal everyday storytelling, but it’s a very useful plot line anyway, especially when you have leeway for

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going outside of the relatively reality. It fits into the whole dream machine and things like that. Of course, checking the mail is a fantastic setting for this, called: 11. The Metamorphosis. In this story some transforms physically. Rather than being a metaphorical transformation in terms of they change the person and so on, they physically change from one thing into another. The most famous metamorphosis is, of course, Kafka, the beetle or something like that. I’m not sure what the English version or translation is, but Kafka wrote a very famous story about this. Most fairytales, of course, include some kind of metamorphosis. It could be a story about how people get into. It might also be a story about how people try to get out of it. Does that make sense? So turn your mail into some kind of metamorphosis, a minute apiece. It should be physical. We’re not talking about a personal transformation. That’s going to come later. So this is about a physical transformation, and that physical transformation can become symbolic for some other kind of transformation. Now we’re using a physical vehicle. We’re leaving the realms of reality a little bit here. We’re using a physical vehicle as a symbol for the personal transformation, rather than the other way around. Do you want some help on this one? The metamorphosis, although it focuses on a physical transformation, could still happen in the imagination. You know, you’re reading mail and it makes you so mad. It’s like the Green Hulk! You feel yourself expanding. You’re angry and then you evolve into this other thing. So you could use a symbolic version of the transformation, but you’re still focusing on the feature, which is the changing of its physical shape to symbolize whatever else is going on. Does that make sense to you guys? Remember we talked about the shape-shifters before? This is kind of like the shape-shifter story I more detail. Okay, one minute apiece, off you go.

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You’ll all like the next story. It’s a very simple one and one that has a very familiar theme. 12. Transformation. For hypnotists, of course, it’s known as Trance Formation. So the only difference between the transformation story and the quest is that in the quest, the hero has a specific purpose and personally evolves as he goes after his particular mission or goal and so on. In the transformation story, there is no quest, there is no adventure. It’s just life happens to someone and forces them out of their comfort zone, even though all they want to do is get back to their comfort zone. They’re constantly being forced out until eventually they are transformed and grow someone as a person. They’ve learned a bigger lesson and become a better person. Does that make sense? As a rule, it’s positive. It’s more aspirational, but again, you can have any kind of transformation. We’ll talk about the more negative transformations later. So does everyone understand that? So tell someone about a drive to work that is transforming. Off you go. How are you guys doing? Are you ready for the next one? The next one is very easy. It’s actually a special kind of transformation story. It’s called: 13. The Coming of Age or The Maturation Story. They actually matched up to a relatively easy one, shaving and maturation. That ought to be an easy one to do. So tell a coming of age story. Please again, base it on reality. One minute each and it’s all around the idea of shaving. It’s the transformation from childhood to adulthood, essentially. By the way, just so you realize, the maturation can happen at any age. It could be a teenager becoming an adult. It could be a 55-year old finally growing up or a business tycoon who’s a little emotionally abusive, growing up and transforming in that sense. So the maturation process can be more than just a childhood to adulthood, although that’s, of course, the easier story to tell. Easy? One minute apiece, off you go.

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Okay, so the next one’s a straightforward one. 14. The perennial love story that we all know and love. What’s the classic love story? Boy meets girl or boy meets dog, whatever. There is a spark of attraction, there is a separation and forces that keep them apart, but ultimately they’re reuniting and they live happily ever after. Let’s take about 50 seconds. So a phone call is your normal everyday activity. Turn that into a love story, off you go. Okay, is everyone good with that? Who feels all romantic right now? Let me ask you again. Who feels all romantic right now? Yes? Perfect time for the next story, which is: 15. Forbidden Love. Perhaps this is where the dog comes in, isn’t it? So forbidden love is stories about love in a context that is socially taboo. It could be a social taboo for our society, or you could place it in another society where the social taboo exists. For example, in our society an adulterous relationship might be an example. I guess a dog would be another example, unless you condone that sort of thing. In another society they might have a strict fundamentalist group, like maybe a cult or a strict fundamentalist sect, where it’s a premarital affair. Does that make sense? Of course, the context you have is your own life because this is still a mundane story, and you chose the most interesting of examples for it because you’re having a cup of coffee or some kind of fluids. You chose the scenario, not me. So I’m going to put it all on you. Just please do not make me blush with your stories. You have two and a half minutes as a group to tell a story each. Off you go. I am not going to ask you to tell me any of your stories. I do not want to know. I’m still innocent, and I’m keeping myself pure. The next story is about:

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16. Sacrifice. The context we have is a story about turning on the television. I guess that’s an interesting context for it. Sacrifice is really all about exploring the nobler side of humanity. It’s a kind of a form of heroic story, of course. Now there are essentially two kinds of sacrifices. The intentional one where people do it on purpose, and the unintentional one where the situation just happened and they have to choose. So the decisions and acts of people are something that’s put under the microscope. Really, it’s kind of a moral tale in terms of what drives human beings, what makes us nobler than sometimes we think we are. Make sense? One minute apiece, turning on the TV. Off you go. How are you guys doing? Are you still keeping up with it? All right, we’re working through these. We just have four more stories to go, and then we’ll have the groundwork set for most of the stuff that we’re going to do. So keep your enthusiasm up. You’re doing a great job right now. The next story plot is called: 17. The Discovery. The discovery is interesting. It’s a form of– the hero becomes a feature element of the story. In the discovery story line, something gets uncovered or discovered. It could be something great or something terrible. Now essentially one of two main things, and they can be intertwined, occur there. Either the hero is in some kind of a dilemma and he’s got to make a difficult choice based on the discovery, or he tries to bring the discovery out to the masses to expose some bad thing or to reveal some amazing truth to people, and there are forces preventing him or her from doing so. Does that kind of make sense? So it’s kind of like a mixture between the quest, only it doesn’t start off as a quest, and the riddle, only there are no clues leading up to the discovery. The discovery just kind of happens. It can also often have a theme of the

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revenge line because it’s about stopping an awful thing from occurring or bringing some amazing discovery to people, despite of course, forces trying to prevent that. Do you see how that works? This, of course, fits perfectly into the everyday activity of getting a haircut. It’s a gift. All right, just under a minute apiece, off you go. Okay, we’ve got the last few stories coming up, and these are all quite interesting. The first of the last trio is kind of a moral tale again. It’s around: 18. Greed and Excess.

Essentially, what it explores here is the difference between what people think they want and what they want. So typically the excess stories are about someone who goes far beyond the social boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of greed, excess, indulging and so on. The object of the exercise, of course, is to leave people absolutely horrified and glad that they’re not them. So it’s kind of like a cautionary tale about it you’re at the top, don’t lose your head when you get there. It’s also a cautionary tale, in terms of generally speaking, about the usefulness of boundaries. Does that make sense? Of course, locking a door is obviously a great context in which such a story would occur, isn’t it? You have a minute apiece. Off you go. So we have the last couple of stories now. The penultimate story is known as the descent. It’s the: 19. Tragedy Story (a.k.a. the Fall from Grace). Essentially, usually someone starts at a high position and everything is going well and so on. Step by step, they destroy their life, they erode and they end up somewhere in the gutter. It’s another cautionary tale. The motivation or causes can be anything from a tragedy in terms of they can’t help themselves, maybe stress and life comes on top of them and destroys it for them.

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Or, it might be just internally generated, as in they just stop believing their own height and start acting in weird ways and not realizing that there are consequences to be paid for their actions, which of course, then starts breaking them down bit by bit until they’re into the gutter. Of course, what a better way of telling a story like this then to talk about putting on a pair of shoes. We all know that it’s a risk we have on a daily basis that wearing shoes could really signal the beginning of your downfall, right? Everyone clear on the story? Okay, one minute apiece. Off you go. The final story in the sequence is the opposite, the reverse. It’s the ascent. It’s: 20. The Redemption Story. Typically, someone starts at the lowest of low and works their way up or redeems themselves somehow. Again, usually there is rather than the underdog story, which is about performance. This tends to be a character thing or a moral plot, that sort of thing. If you want to have a simple example of the descent and ascent stories, a very common example that a lot of people will be familiar with, of course, is the Star Wars saga. The descent and ascent being the first and the second lot of the films, the descent is like the fall of Vader going from a good person to a terrible person. The redemption being, of course, afterwards how he gets redeemed again by his son. Do you see how that whole thing works? I really can’t think of a better place to start with ascension or redemption story than a good old fashioned yawn. So, you have a minute apiece. Off you go. Okay, the first thing I want all of you to do is give yourself a great big round of applause because that was not an easy task. Who feels good about all this? Who feels like their storytelling muscles have really been stretched? Has this been worthwhile? I think you earned a break. Off you go.

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Igor:

So how are you doing? I appreciate your bearing with me. I know it’s been a hard afternoon. We’ve really been working it. The first thing I want you to realize – and I want you to give yourselves a nice big round of applause for this in a moment – is that you have invented over 32 stories like that. Who feels good about that? Anyone feel a bit stretched, a little used and abused right now?

Student:

Like an electric panel with fried components throughout.

Igor:

Is that a metaphor, I’m hearing? You should now be in a position to kind of notice that storytelling is relatively easy, isn’t it? Even telling good and interesting story’s is relatively easy. It requires energy. Would it be fair to say that you used up energy?

Students: Yes. Igor:

Would it be fair to say that I have proved my point along the lines of storytelling is a state of mind, and also that the more you practice it, the easier it becomes? I mean, sure, there’s fatigue involved in that too, but practice just makes it easier and more natural. Of course, the biggest one of them all, it’s not you. Who’s beginning to understand what I mean by that now, anyone? It’s not about you and as soon as you get that out of your head, the better it will be. So far we’ve got

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the 20 different plot lines. Do you remember them all? You’ve got them in your notes as well, of course. What I want you to think about in terms of those plots lines is you can use those things in many different ways. Just like the archetypes of forces that shape a story. And we have the performance element with four basic qualities that allow it to come to life in terms of the story. The 20 plot lines can either be the story or be part of the story. How many stories have a pursuit or a chase scene inside them, although the entire story isn’t just a pursuit? How many stories start with a discovery, which then leads to some kind of quest? Maybe there’s a love interest in there somewhere. So not only are these plot lines entire story packages, they also can be mini loops that can bring your story forwards. In other words, they can be used within your story as a sub-routine to enrich that as well. How would you like to have the story of all stories? As one would say one myth to rule them all and in hypnosis bind them. Yes, it’s the Lord of the Rings story. The story that I’m referring to that a lot of people are already familiar with or at least the concept of, and it’s been alternatively known as the monomyth or the hero’s journey. Who here has heard of Joseph Campbell? He’s an anthropologist or philosopher. He wrote a very influential book in the 60’s, maybe the early 70’s, called The Hero’s Journey . He made it his life’s work to investigate myths and legends around the world and began to notice there’s a theme, a pattern that all these stories go through. The word monomyth came from I believe James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake, but he borrowed the term monomyth to say there is one myth, one story that underlies every other story. From Aladdin and the 40 Thieves through, to the collapse, bearings or anything like that. So to the extent you understand the monomyth, you understand the things that the unconscious mind is responding to. When we talk about the monomyth, by the way, I want you to realize that you don’t have to have every single element in place. The sequence doesn’t

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have to be in exactly the same way, but there are kind of rhythms and patterns that repeat themselves a lot. Make sense? The first thing we need to look at – and as hypnotists, I think we’ll have a unique appreciation of what this is all about – is the idea of realities. In the monomyth, we have essentially two realities. We have the normal everyday world, the mundane, the world of socks and showers and feeding dogs with vengeance, and then we have the other world, the one where magic can happen, where amazing things happen and the world where we pause to answer the call. You should know that usually I answer those phone calls. It is a timer? That’s a shame. I could always call someone for you just as a little revenge plot line. No, I’m not your husband. Yes, he’s gone off with someone else. Well, something else at least. Okay, we have the normal world and we have the other world. Now typically what will happen in these stories – and if you think about it, most stories kind of work this way. There will be some kind of resistance as our protagonist, our hero and main figure makes his way from one world to the other. There’s inertia. They like to stay in the normal world. They want to stay there. That’s where all unknown is scary, it’s risky in some way it’s uncomfortable. So they have to somehow enter the new world, but there is some barrier or problem penetrating it. Does that make sense? Then stuff happens here. Usually, it’s good stuff at the end of which they’re going to have to come back in some way, even though they may not want to. Again, there’s going to be some kind of resistance of some difficulty making the transition back again. Do we have any hypnotherapists in the room? Does this look familiar to you? The hero’s journey is another way of understanding how hypnotherapy works. The PCAT formula is another way of understanding the hero’s journey. These are, shall we say, some kind of a fundamental cycle of how people work. I won’t go as far as saying, it’s how the universe works,

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because I don’t know. The day I’m God, I’ll happily tell you, but I’m not there yet. This is the essence of the monomyth. All the stories you’ve been telling today fit that category, don’t they. Essentially, at this point in the middle – isn’t that the break? Don’t we typically resist the break in some way? We try to pretend it’s not there or ignore it, and it comes snapping at our heels and it happens anyway. Does that kind of make sense? So the way Campbell calls it is he alls it the departure. We start here and we’ve got to separate ourselves, we’ve got to depart from normal reality, but there will be resistance. So there’s our opening act, opening scene. The hero has to start in a normal world. Otherwise, we don’t have a contrast. If there’s not a contrast, then we don’t know how amazing this world that he’s getting into is. Now, even if you’re starting with some kind of fantasy world, like a fairytale, the hero still starts in “normality” according to that world. Does that make sense? The next phase is typically called the initiation. When you actually get into this other world you’re initiated and invited into a whole new world where things happen. Finally, the return is called the return, where you have to be able to bring with you the new you and there will be resistance because the people that you meet when you get back home – you’ll be different and they won’t like it. Again, this is a perennial issue in hypnotherapy, isn’t it? Has anyone here ever tried to change themselves for the better only to find that their family and friends start saying, well, you’re acting weird? Anyone ever have that? They push back. You maybe start being a little more interesting or charismatic or you dress a little different and they start censoring you. Well, do you really think you can pull that off? Do you see where I’m going with this? People who don’t know you don’t offer any resistance because they’re not trying to keep you the same in order to make you more predictable and so on.

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So the monomyth really speaks to how we experience life in the form of a story. There are many ways you can look at this. If you want we can happily look at the Campbell version. But, the version I’d like to run you through is a reinterpretation of Joseph Campbell’s version, which is very useful and famous. There’s actually a book on this now by Christopher Fogel who actually came up with the reinterpretation. Christopher Fogel was one of the writers in lots of different studios, but the place where he came up with what’s now known as The Memo was when he was working at Walt Disney Studios. He was so enamored with this whole monomyth idea of Joseph Campbell that he wrote a summary of it in a memo, and it made it around to all of Hollywood, and people got very excited by it. Basically, a lot of movies are based on those principles. The classic one that everyone talks about, of course, Star Wars, is based on the monomyth. It has a lot of the classic maneuvers – pretty obviously on the surface, and that’s one of the reasons it works so well, or at least the first versions. I’m not going to talk about the second versions. At the beginning of the whole monomyth, we have to set the scene in the ordinary world. It sets the context so we can start identifying with the hero and we understand that some kind of story-ness is going on. Does this remind you of something? Hint - hint. We’re in the ordinary world right now. Typically, something will occur, a call to action, call to adventure, something that seeks to draw the hero out into the other world, which is, of course, in our example, it will be the break or the hint of some kind of break in our sequence. If it were that simple, in a lot of stories does he go straight after it? Well, is it realistic? Little Johnny, 12-year-old; the government comes knocking on the door and says, okay, young man you’re going to save the world. Okay. Does that feel like a story that’s going to be un-clichéd and full of depth and meaning?

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Or, is it more likely that the government man comes knocking at the door and says, we need you to save the world, and he goes, me? What the hell? Which is the more realistic story, or shall we say which I the story you’re more likely to respond to? The second, right? So part of what establishes the hero and as hero makes them a character that we want to believe in and follow and identify with is the very natural tendency to refuse the call. This on its own begins to build attention. We know there’s an ordinary world. We know that a different world is calling to him. The call to action, to adventure, to some kind of greater purpose and initially there is a refusal. The refusal is necessary to establish his humanity, the frailty, create a little bit of tension and suddenly unconsciously we’ll start thinking that could be me. How many times do we kind of want to change, but we kind of hold ourselves back at the same time? Then something happens that forces us to do it anyway, and then we actually arise to the challenge. Isn’t that a regular pattern in our lives? That’s being mirrored in the story. We’re being called to action to the greater versions of ourselves, but we’re afraid. It’s the unknown. We don’t know how to deal with it so we reject it initially. Make sense? The refusal can be overcome in one of many ways. Sometimes it’s just forced on the individual, but typically we’ll have some kind of mentor figure that draws the hero and encourages them. Remember the mentor archetype from before? The role of the mentor is to get the hero to believe in themselves, to take the necessary action, to move from one world into the next. Often it’s to prepare him for the rules of the next world. We’re giving him the tools he needs for that next world. Otherwise, how is he going to survive in that world? Does that kind of make sense? Let’s use some classic stories or films that we know about as an example of this. Anyone here know The Karate Kid? It’s a classic, isn’t it? Who would be the mentor there? How does he prepare? Notice how most of the film is

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about the preparation. Actually, the preparation phase is the new world at that point. It’s kind of like a quest kind of story where the growth is the preparation. Do you notice how each of these segments can constitute the greater part of the story? You can focus more on the mentor relationship, and in the other ones the conclusion of the whole story ends up being the tail end or something. Or, we’ll take something else. We just mentioned Star Wars a moment ago. Who is the classic mentor in the Star Wars Saga? Obi-Wan, right? Yoda in the sixth film, I guess, in the series or the fifth. I don’t know, one of those films for the wrong number. But notice how the mentor disappears very quickly in those films, doesn’t he? Obi-Wan is there for just a bit of brief screen time and then he dies. Yoda does a bit of cool training, feels like a real Jedi, and then goes off and starts fighting. The action is not with the mentor. The mentor only prepares for the action. Does that make sense? Now we’re in a position to let the hero loose in this other world. He’s going to pass the threshold. Now something like the threshold guardian is very useful because it is a test. The first test of the hero, the first real test is can he make it? Can he enter this other world? Again, a classic example, in The Karate Kid what is the threshold for the young kid? When he figures out when he’s waxing on, waxing off – that’s a little bit later. It happens before. The point of the threshold is, is to show determination. The point of the threshold is to test the hero’s character. In The Karate Kid, the threshold will be more the fact that he turns up and keeps training, even though it’s not really in his character. He’s kind of like this happy-go-lucky kid who you have a hint that he might not be the most reliable of kids, but suddenly he has discipline. Suddenly, he turns up day after day. How does he get tested? He doesn’t want to be there anymore. He’s just painting fences. What the hell’s all that about? So there is a test involved in passing the threshold. Do you see how that works?

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In our monolithic shower story, where was the threshold? The door, right? The door was the mentor and it was the first threshold that we passed that moved us out of the initial sequence from the normal world, the whole refusal and all the rest of it into the second world. The second world was represented by the bathroom. Does that make sense? The next phase is taking place. Now we’ve made the transition. We’ve made the transition now into the alternate reality, right? So, you could think of it right now as so far we’ve focused on the trance induction, the problem the person comes with. This is their inability to deal with the problem. The mentor, is that in the whole hypnotherapy process? Any ideas? You! Or, at least the other you. When they pass through the threshold that’s the equivalent of trance, I like this idea. I haven’t actually thought of this before. Let’s put this in the form of the PCAT formula. Would this not constitute the P of the PCAT formula? What would the mentor constitute? Here’s a hint. It’s in sequence. C. The mentor is the one that facilitates the passing through the threshold. So this whole area here, the passing of the threshold and the mentor is the critical factor bypass, isn’t it? Does everyone understand? What’s the next thing that happens in the PCAT formula? The A. We’ve got to access resources here. So, in terms of the monomyth, the big myth, what do we have? We have allies. We have tools or learnings. The hero has to collect skills. This is the phase, by the way, that you were referring to, Mickey. This is when he discovers that painting the fence, passing the threshold, actually gave him the tools he needed. Make sense? Now he’s collected the tools, but he’s not used them yet, has he? He has no need for them yet, but they’re kind of cool anyway. In Star Wars again, just to use it, what are the allies and tools and so on? It’s the force, learning to use the force and the handing over of the light saber. It’s a symbolic transition, but do you notice how he meets the mentor, he gets the tool, then he refuses the call by not wanting to go on the adventure, and then he actually enters the whole world wholeheartedly? So

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do you notice how these things can fudge a little bit, but the sequence is roughly linear? Does that make sense? The sixth is where he starts acquiring the tools. He’s just entered this new realm. In terms of a fairytale type story, he now enters the magic forest and instead of stepping on the caterpillar, it says don’t hurt me, and he goes oh, what’s this? Oh, I’m sorry, little caterpillar let me help you up. He’s just got a new friend, hasn’t he? He doesn’t need a friend. He’s just done it out of the goodness of his own heart, but you and I both know that, that caterpillar is going to save the day later on, don’t you? He’s going to need this one little thing to crawl somewhere or do something or transform at the right time to give him what he needs to have at the end of the story. Right now he’s collecting resources essentially. Make sense? Do you want to come up here so we can all hear you? Student:

So the ordinary world is Kansas. The call is, the storm itself lifting the house over to Oz. Refusal?

Igor:

That’s the fear. Let’s hide in bed. Let’s ignore what’s going on.

Student:

The mentor is the good witch.

Igor:

Absolutely.

Student:

Pass a threshold?

Igor:

That’s when they arrive in Oz. Notice how the mentor comes after she’s passed the threshold at this point, which goes back to what we talked about before that these are all rough structures. They’re not totally linear, but they will happen roughly in sequence or within short periods of each other. So in this case, in the Wizard of Oz, the mentor appears right after she’s passed the threshold to kind of prepare her for what this other world is like. Make sense?

Student:

Right and then allies and tools, she starts meeting all the other characters.

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Igor:

Right, it’s the lion, the tin man and the scarecrow.

Student: And the cowardly lion. Okay. Igor:

So far, so good, everyone? But now we need to have a second kind of test. We already have the test, which is the first transition through here, but there has to be a purpose inside here. In other words, the only reason for entering this other world is for something to happen. Something like they’ve come in here. They’ve learned the rules of the road there’s a new set of rules that govern this reality and so on. Is everyone okay with this for now? There’s a new set of rules. Now the hero has to be tested again. In common pilots or as Fogel would describe it and this actually may be Campbell’s term as well, he talks about the inner cave. What does the cave represent? The cave is the other threshold to the unconscious. Usually, they have some kind of a dark association, so there’s fear of the unknown and so on. So do you notice how now we’ve gone for a second here – what would this be, for example, in terms of an induction? Any ideas? The deepener that’s right. We’re plunging deep into the unconscious and beginning the exploration itself. The innermost cave itself is going to be another kind of test, because it’s kind of like – remember how you go through the boundary here? It’s going to prepare the hero to enter and have what’s called the ordeal. That’s the main climax of the event. So the inner cave is another opportunity for the hero to show his medal by carrying on this fight for circumstances. For example, to use your version with the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy gets kidnapped, that’s the innermost cave. She’s now kind of confronted with a worst case scenario, and in order to survive, she’s got to go through the ordeal, which in this case is an escape story, isn’t it? Does that make sense to you guys? Do you see how these things all line up together – the plot lines with this kind of monomyth to feed into what seems like a very natural story? Everyone clear so far?

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Student: ♦

Igor:

Can you label the steps more traditionally in the hypnotherapy process?

Let me emphasize this once again. These are not totally linear processes they can happen within each other, so hypnotherapy in terms of the allies and tools we’re talking about finding the good things. It could be positive suggestions, could be a revivification of a positive experience that they can use later on or could be a sanctuary, a place of safety that can later on be applied to a place of trauma or healing. They could be finding a symbol that later on will be used to be applied some kind of pain or trauma, etc. It could be a lesson or a learning that will later on, again, be applied to the problem at hand and so on. Do you see where we’re going with this? Does that help? So we have the kind of deepener and particularly the deeper is the preparation for the big ordeal and then there’s another test. Where was the inner cave in terms of the shower story we talked about earlier? You said it just then. It’s the shower door. Remember, I had difficulty getting into the shower, didn’t I? I was being tested again. This is a great place, where a threshold guardian typically turns up. The hero gets tested again to see if they really have the resolve to get through this or to turn away. Make sense?

Student: ♦

Igor:

Are you saying the past threshold isn’t where you usually see the threshold guardian?

Oh, you can see them at the other threshold too. Threshold guardians happen at every stage. Basically, the purpose of threshold guardians is to make passing through to the next phase difficult because if it’s easy to pass through to the next phase, well then there’s no drama for starters, and then we don’t feel proud of the hero for having done it. For example, let’s turn the myth into a classic story. I’m working for a charity. They’re running out of cash, they’re going to go bankrupt. Can I help? I don’t know. Maybe I can help. All right, I’m going to go to the bank

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and get some money. I walk in the bank and get some money – job done. Do you feel cheated as a story? Yes, because it was easy to pass the threshold. Now the first threshold might be that I have difficulty getting into the bank. I get into the bank, but I was in such a rush I didn’t put my suit on, and we know what suits mean, don’t we? So the security guard says, I’m sorry sir, you can’t come in. What? But I have an appointment with the manager. Well, I’m sorry sir, you can’t come in. You’re wearing the wrong shoes. Well, I’ll take them off. Oh no, sir. You have to wear shoes to come in the bank. Do you see how a guardian is preventing me from even beginning the transition? Once I’m in, there will be another version – the inner cave – where we’re going to be sitting with the actual bank manager asking for the money. Does that make sense? The ordeal is interesting. The purpose of the ordeal is to let people symbolically, metaphorically or directly confront what some might call the universal fear or the big one, and that’s the fear of death. In the ordeal, the hero gets close to death, actually dies or maybe kind of dies but then has a miraculous recovery and so on, depending on the version of the story and the type of thing and so on. The point is he has to be confronted with his own death. It could be the death of his image, the death of his dream, the death of his physical body or the death of a friend. In the film ET, where’s the ordeal? When ET appears to die on the operating table, right? Isn’t that the moment where people go, oh, I can’t believe it! The ordeal is when he hits the lowest of the low and really is confronted by this is the worst of the worst. In the shower sequence, it was the death of a dream in the sense that the soap was lost so now all hope of getting clean was lost, wasn’t it? Of course, it was a more amusing scenario, but you can see how it still fits the same kind of structure in a sense. Is everyone kind of okay with that so far?

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Student:

In terms of the PCAT Formula, number seven or eight, would that be part of the “Access Resources” or the “Transformation” part of PCAT?

Igor:

This is kind of the shifting into the transformation phase. This is the bit where we’re going into the transformation before the whole testing area, where we start bringing the problem up so that the resources can start fitting into it. All right, the purpose of all this – and this is why this is part of the transformation cycle – is purely and simply to set up what we’ll call the ascent for now. The ordeal brings the hero down, the lowest of the low. He loses his dream. Perhaps he loses a little respect. If he was about to make it on Wall Street, it’s the one trade too far where everything gets put at risk. For example, say the father that goes to Vegas, gambles with the house deed and loses. Do you see how that works? The purpose of that is to create the dramatic context in which the hero can actually show his stuff. That’s the ascent, where he starts using the tools, the resources that he found earlier in order to overcome the situation. In classic fairytales, it’s the sword that can reach the dragon or the helper that can do something. For example, in some fairytales, the helper is the mouse that can crawl in a space that no one else could, and because the little princess was willing to make friends with a mouse and everyone else wasn’t, she’s the one that actually gets the help when it’s actually needed. Do you see how that whole thing works? So the ascent is really about the reward. It’s about the triumph. It’s about getting something. I think Joseph Campbell talks about the elixir of life or something like that. So the idea is after all this effort, all these trials and ordeals and so on, he turns it around and he gains something. So, we’re right in the middle here, and he’s resolved this conflict. He’s moved beyond it now. This is the payoff of the story so far.

Student:

When Luke blows up the Death Star?

Igor:

It depends on how you look at the whole thing. But, in terms of the Death Star thing yeah, it could actually be the bit where the ordeal is the Death Star is coming around the corner. They’re lining up, about to be screwed

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royally and the ascent is the bit where he trusts the force enough to fire the magic bullet into the hole, which ends up having the payoff of the Death Star destroying. Does that make sense? The key here is, of course, it is the resources collected earlier. In this case, it would be, trusting the force and so on, that is being released as a mechanism to overcome the ordeal. All clear so far? Student: ♦

Igor:

In The Karate Kid, for example, where would that be in that movie?

The inner cave in The Karate Kid is when he actually has to face the tournament. He’s at the tournament now. But first, he may have a problem getting into the tournament. That might be a part of it, but the main ordeal comes when he has to face the kid that originally beat him up, and he’s not sure about it. He’s still got to get on the mat with him. What’s the ordeal there? It’s where his leg gets broken, isn’t it? His leg gets broken, and now he has to get up anyway. That’s when, of course, what would be the ascent in The Karate Kid? It’s his magic technique that everyone recognizes, isn’t it, which works so great on the playground. Does that make sense to you now? Is this helpful? Do you see how you can fit a lot of the plot lines you had before into this, and how you can actually tell a lot of stories invisibly with this as a guiding theme?

Student:

They feel they’re using the resources that they got earlier.

Igor:

So the inner cave could be like the deepener again or creating a more of a trance experience when we’re about to create the change work. The ordeal, in terms of hypnosis, would be the beginning of the transformation cycle, where you begin to remind them or revivify the problem experience precisely so you can attach the resources onto it. It might be in reverse. In other words, you may start with the resources and go hunting after the problem. Again, do you see how the connections don’t

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have to be entirely linear? You can kind of cycle through them a few times. Is that helping?

Student: ♦

Igor:

Is the ascent then equivalent to the person or suggestion?

Not quite. The ascent would be where the main work gets done. So if you’re doing, say, regression therapy, it’s when they go back to the past and clear it. If you’re doing some kind of anchoring process, it’s where they feel the pain and they feel great at the same time, and the pain disappears. If you’re doing something symbolic, it’s when they pick up their necklace of courage and walk into the room where they have to confront the symbolic beast – it might be their boss or whatever it is – and feel the courage to do it with it. It just depends on what kind of style of hypnotherapy you’re thinking about. So the ordeal and the ascent intermingle and they’re supposed to. You may have several cycles of this, where the hero is winning but then he’s losing, but then he’s winning, but then he’s losing. You may have just one cycle of it. It just really depends on how you want to stretch out your story. Everyone clear so far? Where are we here? One of the key features that happens at this area, especially in the ascent area – remember the whole point of the ordeal is that we’re going after the underlying conflict. He starts in a normal world oblivious to the conflict that exists, but it’s there anyway. He has problems getting into the world, then acquires help inside the world and then has problems accessing the ordeal so that he can start releasing it. Once he’s inside the ordeal, of course, he faces his death and so on and miraculously he then brings forward his tools, his resources, his inner gift, his God-given talent to resolve it, to resolve the conflict. That means the theme of resolving conflict is important, and one of the two big conflicts that people carry around with them that are really worth

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focusing on is a conflict with their parent figures – mother and father– so some will call it the animus and the anima. A great example of this, of course, is the Star Wars Trilogy where Luke, rather than killing his father, actually saves him at the end. So you have to – you don’t have to, but one of the key features that happens here is there will be some kind of resolution of a conflict with someone that represents authority – parental or that sort of thing. It may also resolve a conflict with the opposite gender, in other words, the love interest. So we have the authority figure on the one side, and the sort of shape-shifting woman on the other side. Those are the two key figures that will typically be included in the resolution of a conflict. To translate that into modern parlance, the hero gets his dad’s respect and gets the girl. That’s the clichéd version of it. By the way, notice how in that application of this, it does create clichés, doesn’t it? When I say to you the hero gets his dad’s respect and gets the girl too, well, we’ve all seen some pretty awful versions of that, haven’t we? So you want to be careful about how you present these things. You don’t just present the device on it’s own. It’s how the forces of conflict get resolved. That’s the key issue. If you force the resolution to something like, oh suddenly dad was happy again, there is nothing there is there? Because he didn’t do anything. There was no effort involved and that’s one reason why we have all these threshold places. The threshold to get into the special world and to get to the ordeal so when he actually resolves the conflict, it means something. If it was too easy, it doesn’t mean anything, does it? Isn’t that how we kind of think? Do you see how that kind of works? Next, where are we in our cycle right now? We’re about here, aren’t we? So we just resolved the conflict, the red has dissolved, but we’re still in the special world. The next level is called typically at least, Fogel calls it this. It’s called the road back. The road back is interesting because again, it could be a simple journey back, it could be a more a more complex journey. Remember, he’s about to

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transition back to the regular world, so there will be some kind of resistance that he’ll start to confront when he’s approaching again. The kind of resistance we’re talking about is sometimes the hero doesn’t want to leave. He kind of likes it there. Let me give you an example of this, how it matches your own life. Who’s enjoying this seminar? You do realize that at some point you’re going to have to leave, don’t you? What you’re experiencing right now is this. It’s the return home. You’re experiencing the thing of like I’d rather stay, but I recognize that I have to go home. Do you see how when we’re talking about the monomyth, we’re talking about fundamental human experiences, and the story is just a way of reliving them to help us transition between important life phases? Do you see how that works? The return home is typically either, the hero is not out of the woods yet or he wants to stay but he knows he can’t. There’s a little bit of conflict. It’s a lower order conflict. It’s kind of like anyone maybe banged their thumb with a hammer or something like that, and it hurts, right? Maybe you get your thumb jammed between a doorknob or something like that. What’s the first thing you do after screaming? You open the door to release the thumb, right? I presume you don’t leave it lying there, unless you’re very drunk, which I admit I have done once; never again. What happens as soon as the thumb is removed from the door? Well, the initial shock of the pain is relieved. You’ve relieved the conflict, haven’t you? But you haven’t entirely relieved the situation. There will still be like a throbbing pain that comes back and reduces and reduces and eventually it’s all gone, right? That’s the return home, so there could be more conflict to arise, but it won’t be as serious anymore. Still, if the hero doesn’t pay attention, he might still lose his way along the way. He might still get defeated at last because he got arrogant or whatever. Does that make sense? So either he’s too comfortable but saying no, you have to make it back. But I want to stay. But you have to make it back. Or, he may have gotten the prize, but now the big bad nemesis is after him to

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try to steal it back from him. So he still has to be careful to some extent. Do you see how that works? Next we have the final transition. Remember, we have some key transitions, don’t we? This is one. This is another. Here’s the resolving of the conflict, and here’s the next. The final transition is known traditionally as the resurrection. It’s where the hero makes the return, makes the crossing from one world back to the original world, but he’s different; hence, the resurrection. It might be that he dies and somehow metaphorically comes back. The point is to everyone who’s stayed the same here, he’ll come back looking different, and he has to somehow manage that transition. Does that make sense? Then the final bit, this is the big payoff. This is the happily-ever-after. The whole point of the cycle is that when he gets back here, he brings with him an elixir, the magic potion, an understanding, an insight, a wisdom, a skill, an ability, something that will make the real world a little bit better, as a result, it’s the scientist who comes back from the jungle after all his adventures. He has maybe a little bit of trouble with Customs getting back into the country. No one’s had that problem before, right? But ultimately, he has wisdom in his bag the cure for cancer or something. He brings a gift back to the world. The whole point of the cycle is that when he returns, he returns with a gift for the world, something that improves his life and the lives of the people around him. Do you understand the whole hero’s journey, the monomyth as a cycle? Now what I want you to do is consider for a moment how that fits into the stories that you’ve heard, the stories that you’ve told even today. Would it be fair to say that most, not necessarily all of these stages, were here in terms of the stories that you told? Would that be fair to say? I mean, you had at the very least a basic transition from normal world, into a different world – the adventure or whatever the story was about – and then some kind of a transition back to normal world where someone is altered. That’s the most basic version of the monomyth.

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Of course, to make it more interesting, it’s difficult to get into the other world. Once in there, stuff happens and it’s difficult. The hero is trying to avoid getting to this, but he has to resolve that conflict. Once he resolved it, it’s difficult to get back again somehow, but when he does, it’s all been worthwhile. So do you understand how that whole process works? Are there any questions or comments on this so far? Is this useful? The reason we spent all day working up towards this is because everything you’ve done so far – let’s have a look at all these things. It’s true, you are. This – is that not the monomyth in the most absolute basic, simplified form? This is what populates it. This is what brings it to life. These are what allow each of the phases to occur. Can’t you see yourself having a chase here? Maybe there’s a pursuit that forces him into the other world, when initially, he didn’t want to? So these things allow you to drive each of the phases from one to the other, although you can have that as a metaphase so the whole story could be about the same theme, with little sub-themes built inside of it. So if all you do is you maintain that diagram inside your mind, doesn’t that tell you how to tell a great story? Then, of course, all you have to do is add a couple of other things to the whole mix. With those four diagrams, you’ve basically encapsulated most of conversational hypnosis, haven’t you? These are easy to carry inside your mind, are they not? Who feels like they’ve learned something today? Who wants to do just one last little stretch before the evening’s up? Just one little stretch or do you think your minds need a rest and earned it quite wisely? I thought you might say that. So, I’ll present you the last exercise in the form of something you can do on your own time between now and our starting tomorrow. Is that okay with you guys? It’s a very simple exercise. Actually, it’s probably simpler than anything you’ve done so far today because we are removing the constraints. All I want you to do is to tell a story. It can be any story. It can be a personal story, something you’re proud of, something you’re not. It can be a

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mundane story, like your shoes being put on in the morning. It can be any story whatsoever, provided it follows the cycle of the hero’s journey and the 12 key steps within that. Does that make sense? Tell someone else that story tonight, over dinner. Call someone up and have a little two or three-minute chat and tell them the. Spend 20 minutes or a half an hour to really elaborate upon it if you want. Do it tomorrow morning when you get up. Meet someone outside for a coffee and swap stories. Make sense? The one thing I will ask you to do on top of that – and this is really easy at this point, it’s just to build a good habit – is tomorrow morning, tell anybody in the world. Again, I don’t care who it is a one-minute story about the most boring thing that happened to you that day, but make it interesting. That’s a lot easier to think about, isn’t it? Is everyone feeling good? Oh, there’s a question up here. Do you want to come up? Student: ♦

Igor:

I just want to know, where does this fall in the PCAT formula?

Oh, sure. You’re quite right. So this is the transform part and, of course, all this – very, very important – is the test. The test is what brings all the inside stuff back into reality. This, by the way, is where a post-hypnotic suggestion might fit in because a post-hypnotic suggestion is designed to bring what was inside into the outside reality. In other words, a post-hypnotic suggestion is something that happens in here that changes what happens out there, isn’t it? So that’s where a posthypnotic suggestion would tend to fit in, in terms of that cycle.

Student:

It would fit in up here?

Igor:

The post-hypnotic suggestion would fit in somewhere around here. It will probably be on the road back as you’re going back. Remember that you can feel this good every time you come through. So before you transition back out, this is, of course, the awakening process right there.

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So, before I count from one to five, realize that as the days and weeks and months go by, you’ll feel happier, refreshed, you’re a good person and you’ll know it. Every time you see someone else in the face, you’ll realize that you are a decent person and you can hold your head up proudly, etc., etc. These are all simple self-esteem boosting post-hypnotic suggestions, right? Then, of course, when they’re back, that’s the elixir. That’s when you make sure that they’re back and they’re proud of it, that they’ve brought all the good stuff out with them. Student:

Can you clarify the difference, I mean I know what the elixir is in terms of what it means. ♦

Igor:

What’s the main difference between the resurrection and the elixir?

The point of the resurrection is – I mean look at the diagram. Let’s just turn it this way so you can see. The resurrection is the transition from the inner world into the outer world, from the magical realm to the normal realm, from the special world of the story back to the normal world we began in.

Student: ♦

Igor:

That would be like where The Karate Kid goes back to his normal life?

That would be when The Karate Kid goes back. Yes, after the tournament is over, they go back into the parking lot and he’s now a normal boy again.

Student: ♦

Igor:

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Where is the elixir in that?

The elixir is who he now is, in other words, being able to be the different person. Perhaps it would be the scene where he – well Miagi, in this case, where he fights the big bad Dojo owner in the car park. It could just be what we anticipate now that – sometimes the story finishes as they sort of fade out here, like a fading out process and we anticipate that tomorrow when he goes back to school, he’s going to be the champ, Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


isn’t he? Because everyone’s going to know. So we anticipate that. It’s a bit of style in storytelling that we’re not told, but we assume quite happily. Student:

So the elixir is almost like a self-actualization.

Igor:

In this case it can be, but it might be something physical. The scientist who goes to the Amazon and brings back a cure for cancer, for example, or the explorer that finds the lost world, which then blows up, but they come back with a bag full of gold. So it doesn’t have to be a personal thing, although that’s one, I think would be a classic and good one. All it requires is that there’s a gain, there’s a net gain in the normal world. So, if you look at it more, shall we say, animistic terms, we’ve gone from the normal world into the spirit world, and we’ve taken something from the spirit world back to the normal world so the normal world has been enriched by it.

Student:

The way I would apply this in my life is if I was telling someone a story, like my niece or something like that and I wanted to have some kind of change within them. I could use elements that are based on reality and not reality to create some kind of hypnotic myth or fairytale out of it that has all these elements in there, to achieve the desired outcome.

Igor:

That’s one way to use it and if you want to figure out the multiple ways we can use this, this is like the key structure in the back of their minds, with all these little plots and things inside of it to make it work, the mechanisms inside of it. Tomorrow what we’ll focus on, if you’re interested, is the seven most persuasive stories you’ll ever tell. Would that be okay with you guys? They’ll follow the pattern. So far we’ve only been talking about structures, haven’t we? We haven’t talked about content. The content is where your meaning, your message and your symbolisms come from, the structure that allows you to hold the content safely so you can deliver it properly. Does that make sense? This is a structure. It’s something that the unconscious mind will respond to powerfully because it’s repeated in our lives constantly. It’s what’s

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happened here, isn’t it? I mean let’s trace your own life path in this seminar up onto this model. Is that okay with you guys? So, when you’re in the ordinary world, working at your desk, feeding your family, washing, getting dressed and so on – your normal everyday reality – has everyone here got one of those? Good. Did every one of you here at some point get a call to the seminar and get offered an opportunity to get to the seminar? Did everyone here have that? How many of you refused it when it first came? You didn’t click the email perhaps. You didn’t read it. You just thought about it and said, maybe I don’t enough time. You saw the price and went, can I afford this? You saw the time limit – 10 days. Can I take 10 days out? Anyone have that kind of experience? The mentor figure, did you then maybe either mentor yourself by talking about well, what if this actually turns out? What if I go and I get all the things I’m looking for? How many of you actually read a subsequent email explaining the first one saying, by the way, did you realize that if you do make the effort to come, here’s some cool stuff that you’ll learn? Or, perhaps you listened to the audio on the webpage that said, here are some of things I want to do with you guys so you’ll end up having this inspire you, and you went, you know what? It’s worth the effort. It’s worth coming. Anyone have that experience? Only three of you, how the hell did the rest of you get here? So far so good is that correct? Okay, and then let’s start passing the first threshold. Now we can look at this in different ways. The first threshold might have been just the rigmarole of actually booking the course. That might be one way of looking at it. The next version of it might be getting here. Anyone actually just wake up and go, oh, I’m here? How did I get here? Or, did you have to make some effort to get here? Was there something that happened that if you were a little bit more delicately inclined, you would have said, screw this, I’m going home? Anyone here fly? I know every single one of you had to pass a threshold. It’s inevitable nowadays, right?

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Allies and tools– At this point, you’ve entered the alternate reality. It may be a threshold, by the way. It could also be walking into the seminar room. Who here felt a little bit nervous on the very first day, walking into the seminar room? Or, you were just congregating outside. Maybe even had a fleeting thought of maybe I should go home. Anyone had a fleeting thought like that? You may have suppressed it, but it’s like, you know what? If I could go home now, I know I’ve paid for it, but you have to talk yourself back through that, right? So far, would it be fair to say that a simple act of coming to a seminar is actually a reenactment of the hero’s journey? Would that be fair to say so far? All right, let’s look at this again then. Allies and tools– Who here feels like they’ve gained something by being here? Skills, resources, friends, understanding, insights and abilities. Would it be fair to say that allies and tools have been collected? Inner cave– Has anyone ever come – I know this is really out there on a limb, but anyone here come across a point where they thought, I don’t get this? Anyone here come to the point where they thought, maybe I’m not cut out for this? Anyone here ever feel, even just for an inkling of a time that their brain has melted or exploded? Would it be fair to say that you had an inner cave that made you want to go away, but you still went through the ordeal nonetheless? Would that be fair to say? Did any of you apply some of the things you learned in here, some of the ideas, philosophies or the trance work you’ve experienced in order to help you to get through those ordeals and realize that you actually know more than you realize? That it’s not you. Yes? Would that be fair to say? Now at some point, are some of you guys going to go home? Is there any reluctance in terms of the idea of going home, even at some level? It’s sort of like the idea of maybe staying here and enjoying this sort of happy seminar vibe for longer periods. So, you’re going to have to take the road back, right and there’s a threshold to carry you back into the normal world.

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Let’s assume we’re not at the end of the training. Let’s just assume for the moment. You walk out of the hotel, you’ve got your bags packed and there’s a threshold. You leave, you know you’re leaving and you’re not coming back to the seminar. You can come back to others, of course, but this one is over, isn’t it? You feel that there is a death of some sort. In other words, this experience is now over for sure. You cannot ever have it back – unless you buy the DVDs, of course, but even then, this experience is going to be over at some point. It’s going to die. You have to resurrect yourself. In other words, it’s up to you to bring an element of this experience back with you into your home life and keep it alive or it will die. If you go home and you forget all about this and you never do anything with it, and you just get locked into your normal everyday reality again, guess what? You will have failed the final hurdle, won’t you? How many people want to do that? Is it just me? So, in order to pass successfully from here back into your normal everyday life, you have to have some kind of resurrection process. You have to keep some part of this experience alive inside of you in your behaviors, in the way you think, the way you feel and what you do, do you not? If you do that, if you successfully pass that resurrection phase, the transition from the seminar hypnosis world into the regular everyday world, would it be fair to say that you’ll have an elixir? That you’ll have a magic wand, a special power that other people in this world do not have that will make your life better and the lives of the people around you better? Guess what that does? That makes you the hero. So this story repeats itself in everyone’s lives constantly. With that understanding, do you now understand the hero’s journey better, and how you can tell mundane, simple and complex stories following the same pattern and really get inside of people and even use it as a therapeutic pattern, by the way? Would that be fair to say? With that final thought, I want to wish you a good night, I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Igor:

What I want to do today is, strangely enough, storytelling stuff. That’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? Again, I’d like you just to get yourselves into the state of it. If I asked you right now to go outside, find a stranger and tell them a story, how many people would be thinking something along the lines of this, anyone or would it just be me? All right, those of you that haven’t put your hands up, please stand up, go outside, find a stranger, tell them a story and then come back. Let’s try that one again. So now, it’s called performance anxiety, isn’t it? The easier version of that, of course, is to stand up everyone. That’s it. Find one other person in the room and spend one minute telling them something dull in an interesting way and then let them tell you their story, then come on back and sit down. Off you go. Who felt kind of a little bit like, I don’t really want to do this? Oh, are you going to make me do this? All right, I’ll do it. Anyone feel that? Well, guess what? That’s kind of what’s going to happen for a while until you kind of learn to just relax, let things go and so on. Make sense? The first thing I want to do today is I want you guys to set a context for your stories. In other words, I want you to think about where you want to use your stories for influence because there will be seven key types of stories for influence that we’ll be using. Does that make sense?

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The first thing is think about a key area in your life, maybe business, maybe studies and so on where you want to influence others. You know we’ve all had like turning points in our lives, haven’t we? Like experiences or highlights that kind of define us a little bit, if you haven’t had them, you probably wouldn’t be here today, would you? Does that make sense? What I want you to do is get into groups of five and spend about five, six, seven minutes just jotting down what those highlights are for you. Tell other people because you’ll find that when they say something, it will spark off something in you. You’ll go, oh, I had something like that, and you’ll write it down. I want you to collect at least five of these sorts of highlight experiences in your life so that we can start weaving them together later on. Does that make sense to you guys? No? All right, let’s start again. Student:

You lost me between context and highlights.

Igor:

Don’t worry about that. The context is just for the back of your mind. They do not have to be related. Let’s do this in two steps. 1. First, does everyone have a context in which they want to start their stories? Put that in the back of your mind and don’t think about it too much. 2. Step two, have you all had important events in your life that have occurred? Things that have define, shape and made you learn lessons and so on? I would like for you to start finding at least five of those and discussing them in a little group so that if someone else comes up with something that reminds you of something else, you can write it down or it might shape or change the way you consider your experience all is fallowed. Get into groups of five or so people. Six is fine too, so five or six people. Start discussing these highlights with each other. All right, off you go.

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Okay, so have you all got roughly five events from your life all lined out? You don’t want the stories. Let me just reemphasize. I don’t want you to tell the stories to each other yet. Oh. I’m in storytelling mode. No, all I want you to do is to grasp the essence of the event. If you want to think of it like a five or 10-second story, that’s fine. We just want to collect events for the moment. We’re going to go right back to the beginning of yesterday. Remember, we started an event like I ate a burger. That’s an event, right? The idea of it is to collect events first, so that you have them as a reference when you need stories. So I’ll give you another four minutes or so. Please collect as many events as you can. The story-ness will come out as we go along because there are other things we’re going to do first before we get there. Does that make sense? Everyone cool, all right, spend another four minutes doing that please. So do you all now have at least five experiences, five events that happened to you at some point that were significant in terms of your development as a person? How many of those experiences include some kind of mental teacher, guide? All, some? Just two or three of them? What I want you to do now is separate the mentor experiences from the others and create two lists. So you have five just experiences and you have other people in it, but it’s not really about the mentors as such guiding you along the way. And then, at least, five about people being mentors or guides or teachers. It could be a grandfather. It could be a parent. It could be someone that really meant a lot to you, someone who somehow guided your steps as you were growing. We want to have two separate categories of experiences. One might be just, I don’t know, the first day you were in writing and you just loved the experience it just broadened your life and you realized I want to do more of this sort of stuff. I want to do things I enjoy. Another one might be an actual mentor, like maybe you did something wrong at school. You got called into the principal’s office and rather being

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read the riot act, he sits down and has a real heart-to-heart and you realize this person really wants you to succeed. Do you see what I’m talking about? I need one that is mentor guidance with the other just raw experience, where maybe a life lesson is drawn out and we’ll start playing with those separately later on. Everyone cool with that? Spend five minutes just completely both sides of your list please. Off you go. How did that go? Was that easy? No/yes? Who’s having some issues in terms of figuring out how the whole mentor thing works? Where the mentor is a teacher or a guide and so on? There’s an old story about a young man who lives on a large farm with lots of brothers and sisters and so on, and he decides to make his way in the world. His parents give him their prize bull as a gift so he could take it with you as a traveling companion and hopefully, it will guide your way on safe paths. So the bull and the young man are making their way through the world, and really, you know life gets a little bit scarce and a little bit hard and over time, they start looking for a place they can settle down. They come up to a particular village and there’s a huge sprawling farm there and a very rich farmer there and he’s got acres of farmland and so on. So the boy turns to his bull and says well, maybe we can find work there. You could pull the plows, we could plow the field together and we’ll make something of ourselves. He talks to the farmer, who’s a little bit grumpy and harsh, but he accepts them, he accepts their offer of working for a fair day’s pay. Of course, it’s a farm. They are familiar with the environment, so they feel good about their decision. Without even thinking about it, he straps the plow onto the back of the bull and they’re plowing the field. They work hard all day long, and at the end of the day, they come to the farmer for their pay and the farmer says, you’re slow and you’re lazy. So all I’ll give you is a bowl of soup and some water and some hay for the bull, but you better work better tomorrow.

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They’re a bit shocked, but they’re hungry so they take what they can. The next day they work harder and they get the same treatment. Over time, the young man starts getting weaker. In other words, he doesn’t get enough food, and the farmer is being very harsh to him. One night whilst the young man is sleeping in the stables – he hasn’t even been given a proper place to sleep yet – the bull nudges the young man and says you need to eat. He says I haven’t got anything. The bull says, take one of my horns, pull it off and inside you’ll find all the milk you can drink. Pull off the other and you’ll find all the bread you can eat. So the boy pulls these off, drinks his fill, eats his fill, feels replenished and sleeps like a dream. The next morning, they’re working with renewed effort. They’re planting the field, and they’re outperforming everyone else. The farmer is amazed. How could he do this? He’s breaking down, he’s weakened like everyone else, yet this boy has renewed spirit. What’s going on here? That night the farmer decides to spy on him, and once again he only gives him a crust of bread, a little bowl of soup and a touch of hay for the bull. He hides in the barn to find out is this boy stealing from me? What’s he doing? Sure enough, that night the bull nudges the boy, the boy takes off the horns, drinks his fill and falls asleep rested. The next day the farmer is livid and says that bull belongs to me. You’ve been ruining my fields. I’m going to take that bull from you. The boy is confused and doesn’t know what to do. So, as he’s sitting in his confusion – because he’s being blamed for something he didn’t do, but maybe he did do it. Was he really working less than everyone else? In the midst of his confusion, the bull comes up to him and says it’s time for you to leave. Unbridle me, get on my back and we’ll leave. So he jumps on the mentor – on the bull – oh well. He jumps on his friend and they leave. They sneak away in the quiet of night. The farmer is enraged. He gathers a bunch of his workers and together they chase the boy and the bull across the countryside. Eventually, a fight breaks out and in the middle of this fight, like a little pitch battle, the bull is standing in front of the boy to shield him. He gets injured, wounded mortally. At this

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point, all the farmer’s helpers quit in disgust. The farmer is left on his own and he senses that the odds are against him so he sneaks away. So it’s just the boy and the bull left. The bull turns to the boy and says, my time is over soon, but I want you to make me a promise. Once I’ve gone, I’d like you to cut up my hide and make a shield from it. Now I want you to take it everywhere you go. It will protect you. The boy makes a promise and keeps it. It’s said that from that day on, nothing could harm him again. Who has a better sense of what a mentor is about? Five more minutes please. How did you do this time? Was it a little easier to get the list? What I’d like to do now is just have a couple of examples, if you don’t mind sharing these things, of the different kinds of experiences. The mentor experiences, just the general life experiences that became choice points for you, turning points, points at which your life somehow improved and allowed you to become the person that you are today to some extent. Does that make sense? What kind of experiences or mentors did you guys have? This is the interactive part, by the way. Just in case…Do you want to come up or is it just a quick one? Okay, so you have an author of a book. Let’s try keeping this in context for the moment, to create a little bit of reality around it. What kind of book are you thinking of, for you obviously? 1.

The Peaceful Warrior is the book.

Now a question to everyone else– is that a mentor or just an experience? The answer is yes. It really depends on how he interacted with the experience. If he goes back to the book over and over again, especially when life gets a little tricky, or if he asks himself, what would the peaceful warrior have done face with this situation, it becomes a mentor, doesn’t it? If, on the other hand, a book shifts his thinking and he decides you know what, this is a good path for me to take. I’m going to live my life in these principles and so on then it becomes a life altering experience, doesn’t it? It really depends on his interaction whether it’s a mentor or not. Make sense?

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What kind of other experiences did you have? 2.

Learning to drive.

What was it about learning to drive that was a life altering experience for you? It created freedom once he’s got his driver’s license. Who here thinks that freedom might very well rank relatively highly in his list of values? Anyone? How do we know this? Because of the story you told. Of all the things – I mean how many things are on your list roughly? A lot 10 – 20? Of all those things, why did he choose learning to drive to tell us about? Some he won’t tell us about because they’re too personal, and that’s understandable, but of the things that aren’t too personal, this is what he shared. That tells us it has more juice in it, doesn’t it? Because it doesn’t even relate to the other one in terms of content, so it’s not like he just followed the associational train. Do you see how this is working? Do you remember we promised you earlier on a few days ago that I would show you how to elicit people’s values conversationally without having to say, so what’s important about so and so? This is one of the ways that you do that. Is this making sense? 3.

The first public speaking.

What was important about that to you? Student:

It was important because not only did I come out in third place actually, but it gave me a sense of confidence.

Igor:

Okay, she came out in third place. It gave her confidence and belief in her voice. In terms of values, what do we have here? So when we talk about third place, what does that hint towards? Would it be something about status perhaps? Or, it might be something to do with power maybe, but probably more like status. There’s a hint in there already. Say again? It might be revenge, but if we hear more of the story we’ll know better.

Student:

It’s more for me, a sense of personal achievement.

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Igor:

Right, personal achievement. So we have to categorize that in terms of what does it mean? The next one is confidence. Then we have a sense of trust in your own voice, did you say? A belief in your own voice. Do you begin to see how we’ve already got some interesting drivers going through just this thing? Has this been kind of interesting so far? Let’s have one more and then we’ll show you what to do with this. Go ahead. 4.

Divorce counseling.

That’s interesting, right? Student:

You can only imagine the differences between how males and females communicate.

Igor:

He said you can only imagine the difference between how males and females communicate. So I take it you learned a lot from that interaction, right?

Student:

Vastly different.

Igor:

And you see his expression and the kind of irony with which he said that. So again clearly, this is a life altering event, right? Now why are we doing this? Other than it’s an interesting little tour through someone else’s life, which is nice, these things here are the key, or the keys should I say, to influential storytelling. I mean storytelling specifically to influence other people. One of the most important stories you will tell in any context is known as the story of you. The story of you tells other people what to make of you, what kind of person you are, what you value, what they can expect from you, and what they can’t expect from you. A good story of you will create massive trust, a lot of comfort because you’re now a safe entity, you’re predictable. You’re not some random person who’s going to do random things that might be unsafe.

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Two people, one is standing next to you at a bus stop going oh yeah and rapping crazily and all the rest of it. How much trust and comfort do you instinctively have? None. A person standing on a stage, microphone in hand, yeah, oh yeah, rapping like crazy and says, come on up, let me tell you how I got here. How much more trust do you have? Same behavior isn’t it? What makes the second person more trustworthy? What makes you feel more comfortable around him? What makes you even be willing to sit down and have a chat with that person versus the first one? Context and vulnerability. What does the context do for you? Allow me to present an idea. What of the contexts, the two different contexts, get down to predictability? Which one is more predictable, first or second? You know how he’ll behave. You know that all this is contextualized for the stage. The person sitting by the bus going, oh yeah, I’m rapping, you can’t contextualize it. You don’t know how to predict his behavior. Will he suddenly turn violent? Will he say something unpleasant? Will he take something that you say out of context and take offense, and then turn violent? Do you see where we’re going with this? These are the questions in the back of our minds because that person is not predictable. Now by predictable, I don’t mean boring. I don’t necessarily mean that someone’s going to go yes, I’ll just sit here and tomorrow I’ll be here and the day after I’ll be here and the day after I’ll be here too and then the day after I’ll be here. That’s a form of predictability, isn’t it? But it’s not particularly charismatic or even interesting, and you kind of numb out very quickly on that sort of thing. Predictability does not mean that you lose things like spontaneity and fun and drive and so on. It, basically, tells the other person the parameters within which you will operate, and you will not violate them at some level. The story of you tells you how you treat other people. If I told you about being invited to someone’s religious festival, I don’t believe in their religious, but a friend of mine invited me so I thought, yeah,

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I’ll go along. It’s going to be an interesting experience. So far, how predictable am I? How must trust or comfort do you have in terms of who I am? Medium level. I’m open to new experiences. I may not believe in it, but I’m willing to go. So I decide I’m going to go, I’m going to have some fun and just learn something new. While I was there, I was asking people, why do you believe in God? He doesn’t exist. He’s like Santa Claus. Do you believe in Santa Claus? Well, there’s as much evidence of Santa Claus as there is for God. What have I just told you about myself? That I’m what? Say it. It’s probably true. That I’m a jerk. That I’m disrespectful. That I will violate the way you wish to live your life. I’m going to attack you, not necessarily physically, but the mental violence is the same as if I’m punching you in the face, isn’t it? Give me your toy or I will hit you. Believe what I believe or I will damage you. Does that kind of make sense? So the story of you will bring all of that out. So you want to be very careful what you let people know. I’m not saying that you hide things, but what I am saying is you find those things that are worth knowing about you and let people know that, and that’s what’s on this list right here. If you look at your list of mentors, of life altering experiences, there will be certain threads inside of that, some values inside of that, some things of interest inside of that. If you look at that list, who here feels at least a little emotional about the items on that list? If your hand isn’t up right now, I invite you to rewrite that list because those are not life altering experiences. Every single one of these things should have a strong emotion attached, so much so that if I invited you into a world where this experience did not exist, you would refuse to come. Does that make sense? If you have experiences on your list where you would refuse to join me in a world, no matter how good it was, if it didn’t have those things in it, or at least the equivalent of them, then you have found the right things that will be the foundation of the story of you. Do you see the way this works?

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Everyone talks about, oh, Igor talked about stories. We feel comfortable. You like fishing and I like fishing too. Great, fishing yeah. It makes you predictable on a superficial level, doesn’t it? Then again, there’s nothing wrong with having these harmonizing bonding stories, but you should have a few stories of you that you present wherever it is that you go. Whether it’s a sales meeting or you’re a teaching introducing a new class, or you’re a student entering a new class, or you’re just a normal person at a cocktail party. There must be a story that’s going to come out, and there must be a way of presenting that story so that it’s actually permitted. Anyone here ever been forced to watch someone else’s holiday videos? The operative word here again is forced. Are we seeing a theme here? The violation occurs when you impose your experience on someone else’s, and that shuts them down. It sends all their defense mechanisms flaring, and your holiday might be the most amazing thing. Your lesson, what you learned might be the most amazing thing, but if you try to force it, you just shut people down and it becomes meaningless to them. Actually, it becomes negative to them. Does that make sense? It’s the force element that violates, so the first thing I want to do is see, if we can evolve this into a clean story of you, and then present it or rather have some devices that allow us to present it in a way that people ask for that story. Because let’s face it, in the same way as you remember this thing here, that’s inviting someone to engage in the rapport kind of process. If they do this back, what are they doing? They’re asking for an interaction even if it’s unconsciously. The same will happen with these things. People are constantly asking you your story whether it’s directly or indirectly, because they need to know in order to have a decent interaction with you at some level. Does that make sense to you guys? There are a couple questions. We’ll take yours first and we’ll come onto your in a second, Cassie. Do you want to come up here for this? Is this useful to you guys, by the way? Hopefully, this is a different way of thinking

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about social stories than you’ve come across before because this is where the juice is at. This is what makes them come to life and have real value.

Student:

You were saying that on the list it should be something that if you invite us into another world, we’d have to take with us, but what about if the experience is a negative experience that impacted us in a big way, but we would like to have not ever had that experience in terms of it being…

Igor:

I presume you have an experience like that in mind. You don’t have to tell me what it is. Did you become a better person, as a result, of that?

Student:

Yeah, I think so.

Igor:

If I were to take it away, would you still be you now?

Student:

I mean I think so. I’ll tell you what it is. It was my dad getting cancer, and I would like to not have had that happen, but yeah, it kind of taught me a lot of things.

Igor:

Right, so if I took those lessons away, would you be happy with that?

Student:

I mean the lesson part, the cancer part, yeah, but I understand what you’re saying.

Igor:

In the negative sense, as long as again you attach the lesson, the outcome of it then that’s the same thing. Does that make sense? Did that help? I’m not necessarily suggesting that everyone is sitting there going great, I want to have very bad things happen to me so that I have rich life. That’s not the suggestion. The point is we’re attached to the meaning of these things, and that’s why looking at the more positive side of things, the reason we would say we do not want a world without this author in it, without a car in it and so on is because we’re attached to the meaning of those things. Actually, when it comes down to it – and thanks for sharing that example – the event itself is irrelevant, what you got from the event is what matters. Let

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me ask you, for example – and I will come to you in a minute if I may. If you had two worlds to choose from, one in which you wrote The Peaceful Warrior and went oh, whatever and put it in a pile of trash. Or, it was at the same level as Mickey Mouse to you, an interesting story and that’s it or another world where this book never existed, but something else happened. Perhaps you saw a movie or met a person where your mind clicked in the same way as theirs. Which world would you enter? Number two, right? That’s really what we’re going towards. Make sense? Thanks for clarifying that because I think that’s very important. Student:

The first one is very simple, just going off of that. Everything on our list, no matter how strong, bad or good it is should be something that if we took away we wouldn’t be the same.

Igor:

You wouldn’t be the same, and you would not like the result. In other words, it would take something away from you that you now value. Let’s put it this way, if something bad happened to you and you wish it never happened because you still feel constrained by it now. That’s not the kind of thing we’re talking about it may have shifted your life, but not necessarily for the better. It’s the kind of thing that you are attached to the results of. That’s what we’re talking about.

Student: And, you were saying that take everything on the list and we put it into a

story. So, we take the values from everything and… Igor:

Not yet. Don’t worry about that. That’s skipping ahead. All we’re looking for is there is inside each of those stories, those things we collected, there’s going to be a handful of important things, shall we call them life lessons and values, things that drive you as a person. It’s another way of looking at the values thing, if you like. When you identify those things, if your story does not communicate those things, then it’s just an entertaining story at best. Then your story will be no better than my shower story yesterday. It will make people life, they may even wet their pants a bit with excitement, but beyond that there will be very

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little value in terms of persuasive influence. Does that make sense to you guys? By the way, there’s nothing wrong with just telling stories for their own sake. It’s fun. It’s a great thing to do, but if you’re telling the story of you, it’s a specific kind of story and it must be driven by a message. Do you see where we’re going with this? Student:

Does that mean that when we tell our story, we have to avoid topics of religions, spirituality and so on?

Igor:

No, not at all.

Student:

If you tell your story, the story of you and so on and someone says that’s connected to your religion; therefore, reject it.

Igor:

Well, then I would offer you the possibility that it’s not the religion or the value that’s the problem. It’s the way that you’ve told the story that makes someone else feel that they have to join your religion they have to have the same values as you. That’s the problem. There’s nothing wrong – I mean has anyone here met someone – is anyone here an atheist? One person, two, three, four, five, six, good. Is anyone an agnostic? They don’t really know what to think about it either way? Anyone here believe in a particular religion? Okay. Let me start with the atheists. Are there some atheists over here? Hands up who it was again, are you okay with talking with him about his religion? Have you any problem with that as long as he doesn’t try to convert you? Say again. Oh, you already talked about God and things like that, but you’re still friends. How does that work? The difference is whether, or not you’re imposing yourself on someone else. The imposing is the verbal or intellectual equivalent of saying, I have a gun, convert or die. Does anyone enjoy that kind of persuasion? I have gun, in that case, buy or die. Does that answer your question now?

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There is no problem with having amazingly bizarre world views. I know people who think about motherships out there coming down and projecting thoughts and so on, I know people who are totally mechanistic in their view of the universe and so on and all kinds of people in between. Ironically, even the ones who share very close points of view to me, those people can annoy me if they impose their point of view, and it’s still my own point of view. I agree with them, but I don’t agree with the imposition. That’s the violation. Does that make sense? To answer your question more directly again, it’s fine to talk about religion, it’s fine to talk about spirituality, about political groups and everything else, provided you do not force someone to your point of view. It’s just, as someone would say your truth. It’s how you see the world, and as long as you’re okay with that, that’s fine. Someone has to accept you like that because, otherwise, all you’re doing is hiding. This happens a lot in the – anyone here ever been on a date, anyone? I know no one here has done this, but you could conceive of a strange individual who on a date hears that the person that they’re kind of interested in, they like something. I don’t know, they like maybe opera and you’re suddenly going I hate opera, but you’re going yes, opera is great! Are you going next week? I’m going next week. Maybe we should go together. Now initially, it might seem like a good idea, might it not? It’s a little white lie to get the ball rolling and so on, but let’s say you guys like each other and you carry on. What’s going to happen a month, two months down the line when it’s like oh, we can go on an opera tour of Italy and this and the other, and you’re going geez, oh man. You set the wrong parameters for the relationship, haven’t you? So ultimately, whatever deceit you bring into it, even it’s just a question of like, oh, I don’t want to talk about this because I might get in trouble, it’s going to ultimately bring some kind of problem into the relationship because you’re going to break an expectation. You’ve actually made a promise in the story of you that you’re not fulfilling. Does that make sense?

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I’ll come to you in a second. There’s a question over here first. Does anyone here know any movie stars? We’re in L.A. - Los Angeles, and you may have heard that movie stars don’t like hanging out with their fans day to day, having dinner and calling up; hey Charlie, what did you think of my last film? Did you enjoy it? Oh cool, nice talking to you, and hang up. Do you think that’s a daily activity for a star, why? Because there’s an expectation, isn’t there? There’s an expectation that the movie star will act like their role in the film, but that’s only temporary. They’re still human beings. They are afraid that they will get bitten by the fan actually when they try to be themselves. Do you see how this works? Does it help you? Student:

In my opinion, it’s like they’ve been here in the seminar and they have common ground, and that’s why the context is different. It’s easy for them to talk about it.

Igor:

It’s definitely easier.

Student:

But outside in the real world, when people have two different religions, I mean I think they either avoid it, the topic in religious terms or you have to like build this ground so they can like open up.

Igor:

I agree with you. So the idea here is here it’s a little safer to talk about these more controversial topics because we have common ground. We’re all hypnotists here, aren’t we? We’re starting from a point of agreement, but think about what that means. Think about what it does in terms of the relationship. Isn’t there an implication because we’re all here and we’re all hypnotists, we can trust each other? If I tell you about my God or my absence of God, you won’t attack me for it. If you tell me the same in return, I will not attack you for it. There is an implicit agreement, isn’t there? Otherwise, you’re violating the social contract in here. Make sense? Now out in the “real world,” which is just as pretend as this one, the only thing that’s missing is that implicit agreement. As soon as you have it, you can have all these conversations. So then the question is, how do you develop that understanding that when I talk about something, I expect you

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not to attack me for it, and I’ll let you talk about whatever you want – in other words, be who you are – and I won’t attack you for it either. That’s again, where the story of you will be an important point. Does that make sense? Student:

Yes, but what I’m trying to say is there are certain people who are strongly religious and it’s better to avoid that topic because it’s too much.

Igor:

It can be, and then it’s a question of you really have to choose at what level you should interact with those people. Can you ever be truly friends with someone who won’t accept you for who you are? A mild interaction, like do you want a burger? Well, here you go sir. That’s an easy interaction. You don’t have to bring your fundamental truths into that one. You don’t need that. If you’re selling a car, again, you don’t need that. It’s just a question of what level of relationship are you getting into, and you can still give them clues as to what you will or won’t do. For example, let’s say you’re at a business meeting, and let’s say that your faith is Jewish, so you’re not allowed to eat pork or you’re very kosher and so on. Suddenly you’re doing business with someone who likes to eat, I don’t know, go to the bacon place. They say, I’m going to take you to lunch. Can you see a problem beginning to brew, unless there’s at least been a hint at the beginning saying, these are my values? This is what you can expect of me this is what you can’t expect of me. Do you see how that works? So absolutely, you always have to take the social context into account, but at the same time, I would encourage you not to deny who you are because ultimately for a solid relationship, that will end up coming out later on at some point. For a simple casual thing just a quick thing like hi, I’m a stage hypnotist. By the way, if anyone wants to give me a pork sandwich, I can’t eat it because I’m Jewish. That doesn’t fit. You don’t need it, but you can let it out in other ways. Do you see where I’m coming with this? So the context will absolutely be appropriate, which is why these stories must be scalable. In other words, you can have the long story of you, which is more appropriate for intimate relationships, or you can have the shorter

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story of you, the lighter version, which still has hints of your religious background, say, or your ethical or principles. Student: ♦

Isn’t it better to focus on values than social standards?

Igor:

What do you mean by values and social standards?

Student:

Like what you believe.

Igor:

Absolutely. Where do they come from? If I say to you right now, everyone, trust me. Do you believe me? I’m trustworthy, I am. My favorite one, trust me I’m an ex-lawyer. [Laughter] The problem we have is getting people to believe us, isn’t it? I’ll show you in a moment. We’ll come onto that. I’ll show you how to turn these stories so that the values that you talk about – and I agree with you – are believable because they come out of your personal history. Is this making sense? Is this useful, by the way, folks? Yes?

Student:

Yeah, just a quick question. ♦

Igor:

Why did you include the discussion of Socrates in your work because eventually they did kill him for his skills?

I did not include Socrates in order to condone murder. The only reason I included Socrates is because he’s very good at what he does. Incidentally Socrates, just to take the point in a very far direction, chose to allow them to force him to commit suicide. He had an out, but he chose for his own principled reasons to prefer drinking hemlock than taking them up on their offer to escape, which I think actually shows his value set pretty clearly, doesn’t it? But that’s not the reason I chose him, I chose him because he was very good at what he did, which is persuade people and in that case, win arguments.

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But let’s take Socrates out of this we’re here focusing on you and your stories. Are we all clear on how these stories kind of work? What I want you to do now, let’s just check the time here. I’d like you to get in your groups again. I’d like you now to start going through our lists of stories or events, and I want you to start pulling out some themes. Like life lessons, like values, like things that are important to you without which you would not live life. So, in other words, if you manage to maintain those things, you could happily let go of the events because you have what the events gave you. You have the gift, if you like, from them. Does that make sense? Spend about five minutes doing that. Please do speak aloud to the people saying, I think it’s this and so on because when other people say oh, it might be that or it might be this, you’ll feel different. You’ll go yes, that’s more like what I mean or no, that doesn’t feel right. Your feelings will be your guide to this. If you don’t have emotions attached to this, then the story of you won’t quite work right. Student: Are we going to share our own value, what we have gathered or are they

going to let other people interpret meaning into our event, just presented as a simple idea? Igor:

The answer is partly yes, but it’s primarily the former. It’s mostly about you and how you feel. The only reason you’re going to have other people reflect on this experience is to feel for yourself whether what they’re saying is accurate. Does it hit what you mean or not? If what they’re saying does not hit, it means that you haven’t quite presented the idea as clear as you’d like. In other words, you’re now sharpening up the idea that’s going to turn into a story. Does that make sense? Everyone clear on that? Let’s just spend about five minutes playing with that. Again, I don’t want you to do the whole list and get all the things – there’s a lot of stuff in there. Focus on one or two key ideas that really make you feel strongly about something and those events that somehow encompass them. There may be more than one event that talks about the same idea make sense? All right, off you go. Spend five minutes on that.

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Inside of your groups, I’d like you to please split off into pairs. If there’s a fifth man in the group, of course, just turn around and grab the fifth man in the group next to you so you’re all in pairs. Could you just do that now very quickly? You’ll stay in your old five groups, but we’ll come back and forth between pairs and groups. So, if you two connect, those two can connect and those to and so on. Make sense? So everyone just make sure you’re in pairs please. Here’s what I want to do. You have your key value or lesson, don’t you? Something that’s important to you in terms of what you learned from all these other experiences. I want you to select the most important one or one or two that is there. Now here’s the thing, you can’t necessarily tell a complete stranger straightaway about, I don’t know, whatever terrible thing, like nice to meet you my grandmother passed away from cancer. It doesn’t fit in terms of the context. It doesn’t fit you necessarily as a person, and yet there might be something very important, something fundamental about who you are that’s inside of that experience. Do you see what I mean? What I want to do is take the lesson and see how it fits into experiences you can talk to other people about. Make sense? So let’s take an idea of a key. What were some of the key values or lessons you guys took out of the list you’ve been creating this morning? Give me some ideas. Don’t give up. Is that a good lesson? Can you talk to pretty much anyone about not giving up? Now let’s say the place they found out about this was, I don’t know, let’s say in South America I was kidnapped by some guerrilla troops and for a year tortured and beaten and soon I realized I don’t give up. Do I want to break down in tears and talk about my trauma in front of people I haven’t met yet? There may be a time for it. There are certain groups where it’s appropriate to do that, but I may not necessarily want to do that. I might be able to hint at it, but until the relationship has evolved to a certain point, I won’t necessary present it that way.

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So what other experiences do I have in which that feeling of don’t give up were there? Well, let me give an example. If I survived that particular instance, it’s because the idea of not giving up was already inside me, wasn’t it? Maybe it’s because, I don’t know, I played sports at school and when we were losing the match I just kept going and going, even though we were losing. Would a similar emotional energy be involved, not necessarily the intensity, but just the idea of the lesson? Would that be similar? So the feeling is attached to many different life experiences, isn’t it? So now you get to do something that’s actually very safe and yet very powerful. You get to talk about that football match or that sporting experience with this kind of passion. If I then remember how important that match was because it prepared me to survive my one year of Hell, they don’t need to know about that year. All they need to know about is that somehow that match was really important to me, and they’ll feel it, won’t they? When I tell them, and we were losing and I said, don’t give up, you can do this, in my mind I’m in my South American Hell, aren’t I? But in my story, I’m on the football field. What is that called? Isn’t that a symbolic representation? The football now becomes symbolic of my survival of that unpleasant place. Do you see how that works? You do not have to give your most intimate secrets to people in order to show them what character you have, what kind of person that you are. Are you kind of getting where I’m going with this? If I have the same emotion talking about my football experience, that even though we were losing, I kept going, I kept going and at the end, you know what? It didn’t matter whether we won or lost because that lesson is something that’s kept me going ever since, and believe me, I’ve needed it. Do you see how that works? This is kind of an important point. We’re at a turning point of the seminar here. Do you see how that works? Do you see the analogy? Would it help if I draw you a little diagram to kind of give you a symbolic representation of this?

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You have your list of life events, some of the good, some of them bad. Some of these things have an emotion attached. In other words, you learned something and it was very important to you, but you can’t necessarily talk about the most important ones of them because it’s not appropriate. The things that happened in here, you just can’t talk to everyone about. It happens to me. It happens to everyone, doesn’t it? I’m not going to give my deepest secrets away, not unless I really know the person. At other events that have a similar feeling you can talk to people about it. The bridge is the emotion. The bridge is the lesson. So now you can talk about this, but mean this. They need never know about this, but they’ll know that this lesson here is of importance to you. So in this case, we have an unpleasant experience happening to me, I guess in South America. It didn’t, by the way, just in case you’re wondering, you need to know. Here we have a flatter experience that I have now brought to life more, because in my mind I’ve kind of connected this, which prepared me for that later on or there’s a similar emotion so that I can start giving you the lesson with fuller conviction. And even though the situation may not be as dramatic, you’ll still get, the sub-communications, the performance will still show you how important that lesson is to me, as a result, of the action here. Does that make sense? Student: ♦

Igor:

Can you give an example? I mean I understand what you’re trying to say, but I’m trying to picture something big?

Sure. I’m going to break my rule right now and actually tell you of something in here so that you actually can get the context. Some years ago now, I don’t know 14-15 years maybe, my grandmother actually did pass away from cancer. It was a very difficult time, especially watching her in the Hospice room wasting away. She was a very elegant woman and like the last few days, the person we saw on the bed and the person she really was – two totally different people. Emotionally it was very hard to take and I didn’t know what to say or do.

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When she passed away, again, I did not know what to say or do. When she passed away, some part of me needed resolution. I did not want to be in that position again where someone that I loved or cared for was going through a pretty major transformation, and I could not do anything to ease the process or make that whole thing okay. So the lesson here, as far as I’m concerned, was I needed to know more about how people work, so even if I couldn’t save or rescue her as I wanted to, at the very least I could have done something to ease the transition so that the relationship would still be intact, despite the fact she passed away. Now there are many situations in life I can talk to you about that will have a similar emotion, where I kind of got stuck. I can talk to you about one of my first coaching clients, who actually did lose his son, and he lost his son, as a result, of some – this, by the way, is absolutely true– really tough medical decisions that he had to make. His son was born with all kinds of special medical needs and– I think they had three children in the family. It was the youngest son or the middle son I think I can’t remember which. He was a very wealthy man who worked as an executive at a very big international corporation, but most of the family’s resources were dedicated to keeping the son alive just one more day. One of those decisions, an impossible one to call anyway, in terms of the medication to give him, ended up killing his son and it destroyed him. For a year he was drugged up to the eyeballs and a testament to his skill as an executive, despite being drugged and not being able to think very clearly, he managed to perform at a mid-level. Of course, that’s not very good as an executive. He still has to outperform or there will be trouble with the organization. So they gave him that year and then they needed someone to help, which was me. As soon as I heard about that, I realized this is not a small deal. I can’t just walk up and say hey smile, just think about the good times, and you’ll be good yay, yay, yay. That wouldn’t work. If nothing else, it would be an insult to him and it would be largely ineffective.

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So I needed to work out what’s going on there and how can I help him to transform what happened there? I spent the two weeks before I actually met him doing all the kind of research I could find in terms of people who are in the grieving process who have lost people, therapeutic processes that people apply to help people through the grieving process. I read everything I could get my hands on. I watched everything I could see just to be ready when I stood in front of that client. Even then, I wasn’t quite ready because the emotion that came up was strong, but I had to focus. I couldn’t join him in that maelstrom because I had to guide him through it. So even though my initial instinct was pull back oh, I don’t know how to deal with this, I could not afford to do that because my job was to help him through it. Does that make sense? The good news is that at some level I realized it wasn’t about me. It’s the other me. To this day I can only tell you two, maybe three things I did, that I kind of chose ahead of time that I’m going to try to fit in somehow, but beyond that I have no idea what I actually specifically did, what I actually specifically did or said, just two or three key little moments. The rest just kind of happened. All I could do, it was like riding a horse that’s going wild and crazy, was hold on and keep it going until it had run its course. Now, in terms of the two experiences, do you see the parallels? Do you see how the first, it is not appropriate for me to come up to a complete stranger or even certain groups and start telling them about it? It might be appropriate. In this case, this context made it appropriate, didn’t it? It’s a pretty heavy topic, and you still gave me the permission to do that, but notice that I’m not imposing my story. I’m not saying to oh, look how cool I am because I can deal with death. Do you see where I’m going with this? You have given me the context that allows the story to be told and if you had not, then I could tell that story instead with just as much emotion. All the feelings that I had in here fed through that, didn’t it? Would it be fair to say that, that came out in terms of how I spoke about it? Would that be fair to say?

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Believe me, I had zero schemes or plan going on inside my head, my head was blank. The only thing that was driving the whole thing was the emotion, and as I thought about him, behind him I had the memory of what happened in the hospice the day my grandmother passed away. That was behind it, and the emotion fed through it. All the things I wished I had said there, all the things I wished I had done there, I got to do and say here, which is what allowed me to take that step forward. Does that kind of make sense? I apologize for answering your question a bit awkwardly. These are, even for me, very new concepts in terms of how I teach this. I don’t think it’s really been broken down this way before, so I apologize if I sometimes fumble my way through it. But that’s one of the reasons; it doesn’t matter if it’s a bad experience or a good one. Do any of you think that I would live in a world where I would let go of the experience overall? I’m not talking about whether my grandmother passed away or not. I’m talking about this whole thing. Do you think I want to live in a world like that, where I let that go? No. If I could live in a world where my grandmother did not have to pass away in order for me to obtain it, would I? Absolutely! But I will not let it go because this is far too important to me and hopefully, that has been communicated. You all get an experience of that. You should all understand me better now, should you not? You understand my parameters better. You’ll know how to predict me better, won’t you, because of the story? So, would it be fair to say that in some respect, even though it has little to do with why I’m up here as a trainer, I haven’t told you that. Little to do in terms of what influenced me in getting all these hypnotic skills, language patterns and all the rest of it, would it fair to say that at some level you have a unique insight as to why I do what I do and why I do it so well? Would that be fair to say? I don’t have to sit up here and tell you, well, let me tell you why I’m so good at hypnosis. That, if nothing else, is just pure arrogance. This is what drives me, and that’s what the story of you will do. Does that kind of make sense?

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Even this second story is not one I can tell straightaway. I need an invitation. All stories need an invitation. So before we create the story of you, would you like to have an idea of how to create that invitation? The answer is right in here. What we need to do is alert the other person – remember the eyebrow flash alerts the person to social contact, doesn’t it? Not just a social contact, but a type of social contact, what you’re saying is, you’re one of us, fancy being one of us? I’m going to treat you well because you’re part of the troop. People we don’t like, people we want to exclude from our troop, people we will not treat well we don’t instinctively eyebrow flash to. So there are a lot of things going on in just that little movement isn’t there? We need to do a verbal equivalent so people get curious about our story, so they give us the space to talk about these things. The secret to that lies in here. Hi, my name is Igor. I’m a hypnotist. People think hypnosis is about power, but really it’s just a whole different world that people don’t normally realize. How do you feel right now? Tell me more. Let me ask you this.   

Who felt my key value, my key emotion as I was speaking about that, even though I wasn’t even talking about this? Did anyone here sense a similar vibe or tension in the air, would that be fair to say? There was a hint that there was an untold story, was there not?

There was a contrast. Well, people think it’s about power, in my mind this is where I went. I recall these experiences. This is what hypnosis is to me. So people that say it’s about power. Honestly, I’m not here to try to convince you either way, but for me it’s about something totally different. It’s about this. I can’t tell you that unless you ask, but how many of you, especially if you didn’t know me, were just at some social event say, oh you’re a hypnotist. Oh, look into the eye. Yeah, I know. If I had introduced myself in that way, how many of you would have asked for more? What do you mean?

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Let me put it to you this way. Years ago, I was an executive coach. Do I have permission to tell you a story now? Do I have permission to make that Conversational Hypnosis Mastery ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved


story more powerful, more emotive and more emotional? Will you be disappointed if it was not? The answer should always be yes because otherwise, I didn’t get that through on my initial hook, on my initial offer that there is more if you should want it. If I introduce myself in the same way – like my name is Igor and hypnosis, and power yada, yada, yada, it’s not what people really think, and you go, okay. Well anyway, I’m a business consultant it’s very nice to meet you. I say well, now let me tell you about a coaching client I had. What have I just done? I’ve imposed. I have violated that social contract, haven’t I? If I am adamant about telling this story, I have to be smarter, cleverer and more inventive in ways of intriguing you enough to want to hear this. Whether it’s the safe story or it’s the full version, at that point it doesn’t really matter. That’s just a question of degree, isn’t it? Is this useful to you guys? Yes? Mickey:

I just want to make sure I got this perfectly clear. So, the lesson or the emotion that you get from your key value is the bait on your hook.

Igor:

Exactly right.

Mickey:

That’s all I needed.

Igor:

But again, it’s not – here’s one of the keys to storytelling and this is something a lot of people talk about and hopefully, you will have a better instinct about what this means now than I did when I first came across it. Storytelling is not about telling; it’s about showing. If I tell you I’m a trustworthy person, how many of you believe me? If I show you I’m a trustworthy person, through my actions for example or through a story of how I kept someone’s trust, despite circumstances making it easier for me to break it, would you believe me then? Or, should I say would you conclude it on your own? See how that works?

Student:

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Repeat what you said.




Igor:

If I tell you, hey, trust me, I’m an ex-lawyer, the snickering you’re feeling right now is the experience that, basically, there’s an incongruity. If I am so trustworthy, why do I have to tell you? If I tell you, I’m really fun, why do I have to tell you? If am fun then I am it. You should experience it that way. If I tell you a story, for example, in which I am being fun, where stuff happens and I’m just a happy-go-lucky guy or if I tell you a story, in which someone places their trust in me, and it’s really tempting – do you see the temptation theme again, the plot line? It’s tempting to betray that trust because it’s more convenient. But I don’t, despite the inconvenience, despite a price I may have to pay. Who would trust me more? The first time hey trust me, I’m an ex-lawyer – or the second time when I tell you a true story of something that I did this way? Any ideas? So storytelling is actually story showing. You’re conveying your key value, your key lesson, your key driver, that key emotion, whatever you want to call it. You’re conveying it by showing it in action. Does that make sense? Who here, just to kind of unpack this thing a little bit – who here would say that as a result of hearing a story, would think of me as being slightly more – that if I did some piece of work – hypnotherapy or actually hypnotic in general – that I would take care of the person I’m working with? In other words, they are now my priority. Does anyone believe that? If I just told you, look, we’ll do hypnosis; it’s safe, it’s easy, don’t worry and you’ll be just fine, you might believe it. If I tell you with the emotion, you’re more likely to believe it, but if I tell you about my first coaching client, then it’s very unlikely that you won’t believe it. There are other ways to do this as well. There are other ways you can borrow these stories as well. Do you want to have a quick example of what I mean by that? I mean, we’re just throwing some of my concepts in here, which is a bigger grab bag because now we’re getting to the real meat of storytelling. Is this useful?

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Hopefully, you’re realizing that the way I’m talking about this right now is very fresh. I don’t think anyone’s really broken it down this way before. So I’m going to ask for your leeway to kind of meander a little bit because the structure is not full yet. I appreciate that. Thank you. Student:

I don’t really understand the hook that much and how you present that to make someone interested in your story.

Igor:

The key idea of a hook is curiosity. I have to make you curious. Don’t think about this in story format, I want to make you a visual demonstration of what I want. Let’s say none of you know me, the stage is empty and all you know is that something’s going to happen and maybe some entertainment or a speaker is going to come to talk about something. I come up. What’s going through your mind right now?

Student:

I’m wondering what that container is.

Igor:

Exactly. What is this? Why is this important? What does this have to do with the performance I’m going to watch or the speech I’m going to hear or the lecture I’m going to get? Are you curious? Are you mentally asking yourself? If I stayed here for too long, who is going to find it irresistible to go, what’s in the can or what are you doing? That’s the experience you’re trying to get people to come up with you’re giving them one of these so they go, what do you mean by that? They might not even ask for the story. They’ll go oh wow, that’s interesting. Tell me more. What do you mean by that? Or wow, I never thought of it that way before. What’s that all about? What they’re essentially saying is, tell me the story that you implied in your introduction. Tell me about that story. Now, in order to get that curiosity, there are lots of devices and so on that you can come up with, and we could list – I mean I think people have listed hundreds of these things, but they’re not important because the device is kind of like me coming up going like this. Do you see now how I’ve cheapened the trick? It’s a trick now, right? Is curiosity increased or

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decreased about that cup now? Decreased because of the way I’ve delivered it. Make sense? Student: ♦

Can you give a specific example of how you would…?

Igor:

I just did, in terms of meeting someone?

Student:

Yeah, I understand that I’m not dumb, but what I’m saying is like in a conversation, how would you say it?

Igor:

Give me a context.

Student:

Last night I was telling a story about how my razor broke.

Igor:

I want a specific context. Who were you with? Do you know them already? Did you engage them in conversation? Did they engage you? I want the scene.

Student:

Let’s say I’m hanging out with people in front of here on the first day of class and I don’t know anybody.

Igor:

So it’s the first day of class. I’m in the audience. I’m one of you and after the first lesson the first day, we’re all going to hang out or some of us are going to hang out in the bar and have a chat. Is that right? Great. What’s my purpose? Is it to tell this story? Is it so you know about my perception of hypnosis? Is that right? Great. So now all I need is that introduction. Where is the conversation going so far? I might introduce the topic and say hey, how did you enjoy the

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day wasn’t that something interesting? What I really like about Igor is that he looks at hypnosis very differently. Most of the people I’ve seen just talk about power and so on, but you know what? I think he really gets it. Do you know what I mean? Student:

No, what do you mean?

Igor:

Let me give you an example if I may. Is that okay with you all? I’m an executive coach and I’m kind of use hypnosis conversationally in terms of my coaching programs so that people don’t realize it’s happening, but I have the power of it. Some years ago – does that answer your question?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Well, that’s it. Now I can tell my whole story. Now it’s all come out, but do you see how I had to prime the pump a little bit. I had to poke you guys a little bit. I had to introduce a theme and induce emotion underneath the theme to create curiosity. So someone comes back and says oh, what’s that about? Oh, what do you mean? Oh, that’s an interesting way of looking at it. Then if I wasn’t sure – that was kind of a soft introduction so I wasn’t entirely sure I had full permission to tell a bigger story, so I asked for permission. I said, may I give an example of this? No one’s ever heard me ask that before, have you? If people say yes, well some years ago… Who now hears a story beginning? So you’re introducing it via the hook, through the permission. You’ve created a field in which people are willing to listen, rather than going, why are you telling me this? Does that make sense? It’s the storytelling equivalent of the hypnotic context, isn’t it? It’s like a magic moment you don’t just go hey guys, put your hands out like this. There’s no context there. You go I learned some really cool this about the power of the mind.

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Like what? I’ve opened the door. You have kind of responded by saying, all right then, the door is open, looks interesting show me more, and that’s when the magic moment comes out, which then creates the hypnotic context for more of the other stuff we did. Or in terms of the story, it opens the door for telling the story that you want to tell. It has to fit in the context, and they’re asking for it now, which is why it’s not a violation of them anymore. Otherwise, I’m imposing myself again, and there are times for that, absolutely, I don’t say that there aren’t. But that’s the more elegant way of doing it and ensuring that in most situations, you will get your message across with permission enough to have it accepted. Has this been helpful? Student: ♦

What was the metaphor that you used?

Igor:

The metaphor? Oh Mickey, what was your metaphor from earlier on?

Mickey:

The emotion that you get from whatever the value or the lesson is you want to get across the emotion, but it’s the actual bait you put on hook.

Igor:

There you go. Let’s take a quick 15-minute break. During that break, I’d like you to do two things please. I’d like you to focus on the key emotion behind your life lesson or value. I’d like you to think about – actually maybe three things. I’d like you to think about the main story that’s behind that key emotion. If you can tell that story great. If you cannot, think of it anyway until you have enough of the feeling that goes with it that you can find another story, an event that is similar enough that has enough of that, but on its own would be weak but if you then reinforce it with that emotion, now it becomes a stronger event. Does that make sense? So, think about the emotion. Think about the event. Then the story you actually want to tell and at the end of the whole process, start thinking about

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what simple one-liner, what topical introduction can you make that hints at this? That I can talk about, that I can present with the same emotion of this without actually saying any of it, so people go, what’s that all about? Does that make sense? Is this useful? Is it also clear? Again, I’m going to apologize one more time. I can do this stuff, but it’s difficult to break down into specific steps because it’s not really happened before. You and I are in a brand new territory. I’ve kind of walked around the bushes a few times, but I haven’t made a map yet. So shall we make the map together? Is that okay?

Igor:

Did you find this morning interesting so far? I realize that we’re getting into sort of murky territory to some extent. One of the reasons we have to get through this – remember, we talked yesterday about the hero’s journey. There comes a point where you have to penetrate into another reality, another world. That’s kind of where you are right now. We’ve talked about all the gimmicks you can put into storytelling, the performance elements – the voice, the body language and so on. We’ve talked about all the plot lines and internal forces, and you told lots of little stories and so on. So if you want to take it to the next level in terms of what stories to tell and how you tell them, we need to get more unconscious territory, which is by definition less definable. Now one of the ways to learn with unconscious material is, basically, by having lots and lots of experiences or examples of it. Make sense? A lot of you came up to me during the break and sort of gave me different aha’s you had from different experiences where it kind of clicked in and so on.

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Is it okay if I bring a few of you up so they can talk about their experiences to give you different points of view of how the same thing can fit in normal everyday life, because that’s really the key, where it’s invisible but very persuasive? Is that okay with you all? [Applause] Tim:

Thanks, Igor, for this last two hours.

Igor:

Thank you.

Tim:

It was an experience that had something shift within me, so I feel like I’m somewhere on this journey called being a hypnotist. What shifted was looking at being a hypnotist from a body of tips, techniques and things to do to a whole way of thinking, a way of being with people. So thanks.

Igor:

Thank you. Give him a round of applause for that. [Applause] I’m glad you’re saying this. Has anyone ever heard me say this phrase before– hypnosis is not something you do to people, it’s learning something you do with people in my opinion. It’s something that you become and other people respond to naturally. All these tricks, all these techniques and so on all they’re there for is to prepare you to make the kind of shift that Tim’s talking about. Wouldn’t it be fair to say that at this point, you don’t really think about what can you do? It’s more kind of what do you want to achieve and then you kind of know that stuff will come out? Would that be fair to say, Tim?

Tim:

Yes.

Igor:

That’s where I would like for you guys to get to. If not today, if not in this seminar, then at some point in the weeks and months to come, to make the transition from technique-oriented to just intention-oriented, where the techniques just fall out by themselves. They just free right and fit the context

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like a glove, and that’s when you’ll be invisible with what you do and very, very persuasive too. Student:

I found that this morning was a real mind-blowing experience. I felt like I was in a daze for quite a bit of it, but what it really made me realize – and I thank Igor for all the work that he did with us this morning– is I pop people’s circuit breakers easily when I start talking about my son and my war experiences. I always have a good lesson out of that. I always shift it over into a different area, but I go into too many details sometimes. So this allows me to reframe everything that I’ve been doing and I think make me a more empowered person to go ahead and affect change. Thank you very much.

Igor:

Thank you. Give him a round of applause. [Applause] Just to add something to what he’s saying there, I’d like you to realize a couple of things. Storytelling has essentially two purposes. 1. One is for self-therapy. In other words, when you talk to people about it, it releases stuff. 2. Another one is for, I guess, hetero-therapy. In other words, when you talk to other people, it releases stuff in them. There’s nothing wrong with doing both of those things, and sometimes you’ll do stuff for yourself, which happens to have an impact on them as well that is positive, so you both gain. Do you see how that works? There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you understand why am I telling the story? There’s no problem telling your story for yourself if you’re okay with the impact that you’re having on the other person being either neutral or okay, that’s interesting because you’re doing it for you. In In my opinion, one of the more elegant ways of doing it is when something inside you gets fixed, sorted out and rebalanced, whilst at the same time giving them an opportunity to do it too so both of you become elevated, which goes right

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back to the win-win scenario we talked about really at day one, wouldn’t you say? Do you get more of a sense of where we’re going with this now? Please carry on. Student:

Thank you. I have spent a lot of time reading books and trying to understand the aspect of drivers and what made me, who I am. I was speaking with a friend of mine here, like particularly certain cultures and environments they force you to succeed by revenge. It’s done, but it’s no a choice. There’s no choice. Somebody tells you that you’re bad, you’re good, you’ll be in jail, you’ll be a piece of this, of that and psychologically it’s amazing how we rebound but it is a sense of trying to show that I’m different. In my case particularly, I spent a lot of time in seminars and that’s probably why I got into hypnosis. I did it, I have two college degrees, but it still remains I have done wonderful things, but at the bottom I still feel a sense of sadness. I have no clue, but it’s amazing how all the pieces came together this morning. Still the question mark goes a little beyond that because up to a point, it’s not fair. I didn’t have any choice.

Igor:

That’s how it works.

Student:

But it’s probably the people did what they did. They did the best that they could with the tools they had. I understand that. Still the end reality is what I perceive is not what they did. ♦

Igor:

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How do I flip that unconsciously to make it flourish and make it feel good?

Technically, this is not exactly where I was intending to go with things today, but would you like to have an answer to that? It’s a very powerful answer, and worth exploring some time. Is that okay with you guys?




We’ve all had experiences in the past that we wish we could overcome they still have a hook in us today. We may not even have insight, intellectual understanding as to why they occurred and we may not even have any anger, grief or anything like that about people, individuals or situations anymore, because intellectually we understand it’s just what was. It’s not fair, but it’s okay. Yet emotionally, we’re still attached to that. Would that be fair to say? I think it’s the human experience and it’s a question of degree as to how much given an individual experience and that sort of thing. So then the question is how can we release that, how can we unhook those hooks from the past so that we are free to move on? This is actually what we talked about a moment ago in terms of storytelling can be for you or before others. This is one of the ways in which storytelling can be very powerful. There are other ways you can do the same thing, but the essence is it has to do with our unconscious blueprint. What is the landscape in which your unconscious mind is still living? If the landscape is one in which people are still telling us we’re not good enough – you’ll fail, you’re bad, you’re not worth it – even though we intellectually understand it – and neuroscience has shown us. It can take a lot of consistent effort for a consistent thought pattern to infiltrate down and change that blueprint so it’s in alignment with our intellectual insight and understand. Does that make sense? The other way around is to change the blueprint, to change the landscape. So the landscape looks different and feels different as a result, and stories have an immense capacity to do that, both for ourselves and for others. Now would it be fair to say that as you went through this morning’s experiences, a strong emotional response came up in you? Would that fair to say? Student: Absolutely. Igor:

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Would you believe him? That would be fair to say, right? So you’ve found a part of your territory inside where this stuff is still going on. Now if you recall Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



two days ago, it was the first day after the break, the first storytelling day, what were we focusing on– life metaphors, similes, the language and the metaphorical or miniphors as we call them, the metaphorical adjectives, verbs, nouns and so on. We also talked about how that fits into the bigger content, the whole list of different – I think it’s over there somewhere. Where is it on the list? Can anyone spot it over there? Where are the miniphors? There you go. So you got the whole different metaphors and all those different things. That’s the cement or the building blocks that create this internal reality inside of us, which leads to the emotion and so on. What if you created a world in which that could change? Thank you. Give him a round of applause. [Applause] What if in telling a story about something that happened, the emotion just drives it, and then the lesson changes the world that, that story occurred in so that when you reflect back on it, it’s okay? Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let’s just use what we talked about earlier today. What if I tell enough people about a person that I coached? Then initially, I make some hints about how it helped me deal with other things in my life, and in my mind, of course, I’m already going there, am I not? So maybe with some individuals I feel comfortable and have a special connection or friendship trust. In here there will be some. Not everyone. I understand. You just tell them this and how having had this experience, this is now different. As you tell a story, you feel the truth of it because you’re not talking about things that aren’t true. Now what’s happened is the emotion that you have here, which of course is actually this, creates the bridge that allows the insight to change the first story. Does it change what happened? No, but it changes how I perceive what happened because now this is not an isolated event, is it? This is a part of the whole context, and when the context changes, everything changes. This has allowed me to create the context. Does that kind of make sense? Let me put it to you another way, if I may.

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One of the ways that trauma exists is something bad happens here and there’s a time period in which it happens. Make sense so far? It might be like a car crash, let’s say. When people think about this event, what they do is they loop and each time they loop, they reinforce that event, don’t they? Now let’s make it more interesting. Let’s say someone gets mugged at knife point. It’s hostile. Well, to use a little genuine emotion. Yesterday evening we went to dinner, a gentleman approached us for money and when we politely declined his response was colorful and not very pleasant. Things like that happen to everyone more or less at least once or twice a month. Not necessarily the being mugged part, but people being kind of coldly harsh or saying things that you shouldn’t be saying to other human beings. What does the mind do? It loops around and around. Do you start feeling better each time it loops? Students: No. Igor:

No, that’s strange so why do we do this? The looping is creating a little mini reality, isn’t it? That’s why we feel bad. What if you put this in context? I spent a whole day having an awesome time with people who really value what I have to share and interactions and so on. In fact, let’s make this the whole week. Then I have a whole future ahead of me. I’m together with someone that I love. I have good friends. I’ve got a great business. These are all expectations I can have for the future, aren’t they? They feed me in that sense. Now, if I loop from having an awesome experience to having an awesome future and in between there’s a little blip where one emotionally-challenged individual vents his frustration on me by saying something that he thinks he means, but really is probably projecting more on himself than anything else, do I feel quite as bad about that now? No. Why? It’s the magic word we’ve been focusing on all week, isn’t it? Context, if we change the context, the meaning changes.

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Our blueprints may have little islands inside that are their own little mini contexts. If you enlarge the island, if you create a bridge between one island and the other, the whole context changes, which means your inner blueprint changes, and then everything is different. I suspect if I may use you as an example, that it’s already beginning right now, is it not? You can feel a strong emotion inside of yourself, can’t you? It’s all those things that happened but really shouldn’t have done. That you’ve understood intellectually for some time now, but haven’t managed to connect to other things. Now the rush of emotion that’s beginning really is all of your life experiences – your friendships, the amazing things you have done – and you can feel that, can’t you? The good things you have done? All those things need to be contemplated at the same time as whatever it was that happened back then, that small island as it reconnects, as I suspect it’s doing right now. You can feel that, can’t you? You can feel the process of the emotion draining away. It’s kind of like dragging a bucket of water around and it’s heavy. At some point, just drill a hole in it, let it all out and it can wash clean again, can it not? Then all the other experiences you’ve had in life can fill that same bucket, can be part of it. So you know stuff happened. Stuff always happens, but the way you feel could be transformed forever, can it not? So even now as you pay attention to your own sensations going on inside you, notice how those memories that you’ve been carrying around for all these years is not quite the same anymore, is it? It’s changing, isn’t it? That’s because you’ve allowed your unconscious mind to do what it does best– connect things. In doing so, your inner world has become richer, larger and more supportive of you. Doesn’t that feel good? I mean it’s just an idea, isn’t it? Seeing as we are in a hypnosis seminar, as you continue to contemplate those things and really that’s more important than anything I could say for the next well, good while anyways. For anyone who doesn’t want to continue on that journey on their own, which you’re welcome to, does anyone spot the hypnotic lecture in action?

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Students: Yes. Igor:

Can you see a lot of the maneuvers that we’ve done in terms of little techniques over the last week or two? And notice how they’re not techniques really, it’s just the way that I get to talk to you in a way that really matters, would that be fair to say? That’s the transition I hope every one of you make, because then all these questions about ethics and all the rest of it go out the window because you can’t help but be ethical, because you’re no longer doing it just for you. If you’re doing it at someone else’s expense just to be right, you’re not getting it. And it will happen, we all make mistakes. But, when you go beyond that and make that extra connection, where it’s not about the techniques what can you do and say to make someone want to buy something, to have something, you go that extra little step, not only do you become vastly more influential, but it’s actually easier. Believe it or not, this last little segment for me was a hundred times easier than teaching the entire seminar, all the content that I could map out for you and all the rest of it. Don’t believe me? Feel free to ask my girlfriend who will happily tell you about the moments of nerves and tension. I’m not sure if I should teach you this way or the other way. It happens. I’m still human. This is a no-brainer to me, because the context was presented to me. It’s just there, and all I have to do is something that I guess you could say my grandmother prepared me to do. That’s why this has changed. Does that make sense? By the way, this has changed a little bit more for me now because of you. Do you realize that? That’s kind of how it works. Do you appreciate everything we’ve been doing so far in a slightly different light now? Has this been useful for you?

Students: Yes, big time. Student:

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The deeper it seems that we get into storytelling; it seems it’s eliciting more real emotion, and it seems to be that way in fairytales. It’s very impactful in Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



movies, and this may seem like an inane question because we’ve been here for like eight days. ♦

Igor:

Is there something primal inside of us that stories are that impactful?

That’s a great question, don’t you think? Has anyone else noticed what she’s saying? Do you see why we saved storytelling for the end of the seminar rather than the start? Because all the other things fit into it at some level or not. Do you remember the five realities? The physical one is the one that we all think we live in. It’s the real world, isn’t it? Whenever someone says well, in the real world it’s different. They think they’re talking about this world. Of course, we have an intellectual reality as well. Are there any academics in the room? That’s the world that academia lives in. It’s the world that says only reason has value and with reason, we can understand the physical. There is some truth to that. I don’t deny it. It has huge value, but we’re missing at least two-thirds of our realities. We have an emotional reality, do we not? No matter how much we reason with it, it won’t work, it won’t change the emotions unless something else occurs. Would that not be fair to say? In terms of hypnotherapy, the simplest way to look at it is this. What we have just done, what we have just moved from is we’ve started with intellectual ideas. Actually, we started with the physical with the induction. We’ve gone into intellectual ideas to start maneuvering through people’s minds. We then focused on their emotional experiences as ways of creating leverage and more change. The place we’ve ended up in, though, is the symbolic reality. This is the reality that’s real to the unconscious mind. Who here has heard this before? Your brain cannot tell the difference between something you imagine – vividly especially – and something you actually do. Think about it. Just on a pure neurochemical level. The world you see outside right not does not exist it only exists inside your head. Even the vision through your eyes is not a tunnel of light coming in.

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It’s light hitting your retina, which is turned into a chemical signal, into an electrical signal, back to chemical, back to electrical and then perceived by part of the brain, which then converts it, turns it upside down for us because, of course, your eyes will invert light and we then think that we’re seeing this world. We think we see the physical, but actually it’s a symbolic representation of that. Does anyone here have the capacity to see ultraviolet light without assistance? Can anyone here see heat without assistance? I’m not talking about heat shimmers, which is, by the way, assistance, isn’t it? Yet it exists. They’re still part of the light spectrum, aren’t they? The reason you can’t see it is because your retina is not capable of perceiving it. Does it mean it’s not there? Does it mean the physical world is different? No. So really, this is the world in which we live, the symbolic one. Everything else is a way of understanding this one so we can function in this one. Stories live in the symbolic reality. If you tell stories just casually, well, you’ll get a casual reality, but what we’ve been proposing today is not to just tell – yesterday, you told causal stories, didn’t you? And you had people laughing and smiling. They got in an, aha moment yeah, I get you. All those have value, don’t they? But there’s a fundamentally different level at which those work to what you’re doing today, isn’t it? Because we’ve used the emotions as a bridge into a deeper level of symbolism and that symbolism is what defines our whole life, everything that makes sense to us, all the meaning. That’s why you’re having more powerful reactions today. The emotions are your bridge to that bigger world, shall we say, inside you, and that’s why stories are so powerful. They can transform the way someone thinks, the way we feel and, in terms of behavior, that’s really the easy part at this point. Does that kind of make sense? Does that help you? Was there a follow-up question or comment so far? The fifth one is attention. Attention on a light level is what we’re doing with language to shift attention and so on. But, believe it or not, of those five realities I think attention probably has the most significant. Honestly, right

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now, I have no idea how to really bring that across to you, but one day I may. Is this putting things in perspective for you? Student: About attention, I’m not quite sure I follow, but you said we’ve addressed it

at a light level using language. You said you weren’t sure how to convey this in the context of what we’ve just come out of in the symbolic. Igor:

No, the attention side of things, if you want to understand how attention can really work in terms of – would it be fair to say you made a shift in terms of what you did today versus yesterday? You’re still telling stories, but the impact is dramatically different today, isn’t it?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

So you understood symbolic reality yesterday because we were playing exercises with it, but we’ve shifted gears to a different place, shall we say, inside the mind so that those symbolic exercises have a bigger impact, a deeper meaning. My comment was an aside because we will not be exploring that here, largely because I don’t know how right now, is that attention can have a similar shift into areas that are even more profound than the symbolic stuff we’ve talked about, only right now I honestly don’t know how to demonstrate that to you.

Student:

The question and maybe we addressed it several days ago when we talked about the five realities is… ♦

Igor:

What really is attention?

See, that’s now getting much more into an area that I’m hinting at and I mean without starting a whole month of new training, let’s keep it simple, which is attention is whatever it is that you’re focusing on. It’s kind of your mental or psychological energy levels. You can put attention on your emotions and they’ll grab attention. You can put attention on your symbolism and that will increase your emotions to

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some extent. You can put attention on your physical sense of well-being and so on. So it really becomes the driving principle, the energy source shall we say, that operates all these other things. Beyond that, it’s really not a discussion I can get into right now because aside from not even having a full grasp of it myself, just kind of instincts or intuitions in terms of what it could be, it gets very thorny and trippy as well. Does that help? Student:

Yes, and I guess a little metaphor that came to mind as you mentioned things like energy levels, a sense of well-being and guiding principles is just maybe it’s how we go through life. The metaphor could be perhaps, I’ve heard some people describe the difference between the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious, you’re going around with a flashlight on your head in the dark and what you see, as a result, of the light is what’s in the conscious, and everything else is the unconscious. Maybe this attention is the same and the same metaphor could work, but it’s at a much more expanded level.

Igor:

I agree. You’d have to have someone like whilst you’re running around with your little flashlight on your head, there are other people running around with ultraviolet and infrared sensors in the same room and all the experiences they’re having plus the one you’re having. Plus a few more that you can’t even conceive of yet, that would be closer to the kind of world I’m thinking of, and even then, I might not be right. It’s not a topic we need to address here. It will take us off storytelling and will be an inconclusive loop. It would be majorly dissatisfying to you guys, unless we want to sit under a tree and contemplate our navels for the next couple of months. It’s not something that we can answer easily. Does that help?

Student:

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Is the attention connected to the intention and values thing?




Igor:

I’m not sure I understand the question oh, the attention thing. Please feel free to consider it anyway. I cannot give you a concrete answer in terms of what attention is and is not. Scientists themselves cannot. So you’re free to make up your own opinion. The only thing I can give you is an incomplete instinct and I’d rather not do that because: otherwise, I might be sending you down the wrong path anyway and it’s not worth doing it. You don’t require a, shall we say, a philosophical discussion of what attention is to be able to do what we’ve talked about. There’s not much point going down that road. If you want to have that discussion, feel free to grab me on a break or grab other people in the evenings and talk that through. It would derail the process of what we’re here to do and we can’t do that right now. It’s interesting, don’t get me wrong. It’s a very interesting field, but it’s not what today or this seminar is about. I promise you the moment I have a way of teaching it properly, I guarantee there will be a nice long course and you’re all welcome to come back.

Student:

Maybe I’m confused about what you mean by the attention reality because for me what you explained, for instance, with the example about the guy that gets rude and you put that in perspective, now you’re getting the attention, using the attention to reconnect things reconnect the different realities.

Igor:

Yes, you are and there’s much more beyond that too that’s what I’m saying. Let’s not get into the whole attention thing because we’re getting distracted from what we’re here for. Are we here to talk about storytelling? Would that be fair to say? Let’s stick to the storytelling side of things and let’s get our attention away from metaphysics for now. By the way, not to say that it’s not an interesting territory and a very valuable and rich territory to go into. It just isn’t for right now.

Student: ♦

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Are we talking about awareness?




Igor:

Yes, we are, but that opens the same kettle of fish again. I invite you to study the literature on this and there are lots of different opinions, but beyond that, let’s just move on from there. Anymore storytelling related experiences, just to load that one in your favor?

James:

It occurred to me that the process was similar to the disguised basketball stories process, where we have a problem or something that has great emotional impact, which also fits into our hero’s journey stories.

Igor:

Exactly. This is actually very insightful what he’s saying. Carry on.

James:

You chunk it up to get the life lesson, and then you’re going to chunk it down again to make it more appropriate to the context and apply it to the person that you’re interacting with.

Igor:

Right. What I would invite you think of is do you remember – I think it’s an excellent insight, James and thank you for sharing that. The only thing I would invite you to think of this is if you recall all those little machines – we had the metaphor machines on day one – what if you put them all together so that they work at the same time? That’s kind of what this is. You’re absolutely, right. It’s chunking up process; however, it’s done on the emotional level, which means the meaning or the symbolic element comes up, and then you’re creating or you’re finding, your unconscious mind shows you a strange new world, which is this but not. Does that make sense? It’s a lot easier to do than to talk about. It’s a lot easier to intuit it than to describe. My key concern is that you get what I mean in terms of I’m talking about a coaching client, but really you’re hearing about my grandmother. Of course, what you understand has something to do with your own personal history and nothing to do with mine. That’s why it’s so impactful. Does that make sense to you guys? Do you see the different levels we’re working through? Carry on.

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Student:

To the lady over there about attention, when I was living in Thailand, I went to a wat, which is a temple and asked to speak to one of the monks. I ended up with the head Abbott. We were talking about meditation, and what he said was – because they concentrate on the breath and a whole range of thousands of techniques. He said mindfulness. So I would suggest you contemplate on that word mindfulness and you might come to an insight about attention.

Igor:

Or, spend six months in a temple and almost lose your sanity if you’re really doing the full version. As I say, it’s a big topic so feel free to explore it on your own. I’m not going to put any shackles or shells on it. It’s just beyond what we’re doing here. Carry on.

Student:

My question is more practical maybe.

Igor:

That’s a good I like that.

Student:

That is, suppose we have these – we could come up with key events. ♦

How do we determine what the emotion associated with that event is?

Igor:

That’s a great question, isn’t it? Do you have a key event in mind that you can talk to other people about?

Arthur:

I’ve been through experiences where I start as a student say, go through medical school and become a doctor treating people. Then I go back to being a student working on a PhD. Then I grow up through that and then give lectures where I’m at the forefront of knowledge for anybody and then I go back again to…

Igor:

Let me pause you there a second. You’ve given me like three or four different experiences. I suspect that’s part of the problem you’re having, right now.

Arthur:

Well, but they repeat the same thing. It’s up and down. Life being a group of…

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Igor:

Let’s pause it there a second. Let’s just focus on one portion of that cycle, shall we? So you’re a student, you work hard, you reach the upper level and then you come back to student again. What part of that cycle is important to you? Is it being the student? Is it getting back to being a student?

Arthur:

Well, it’s the knowledge maybe that no matter what you do – say you work hard and you achieve something, but then you go back again and you start all over.

Igor:

So it’s the idea that no matter how much you learn, there’s always more you can learn and more you can refine it. Would that kind of be roughly what you mean?

Arthur:

I suppose.

Igor:

What’s missing? We seem to have a slightly different idea on this.

Arthur:

I’m not sure of the emotion part.

Igor:

I’m not asking for the emotion. I’m just asking in terms of the lesson. You were saying about the idea that you can get knowledge and then you go back for more knowledge and so on. When I tried to paraphrase and say is it the idea that no matter how much you know, you can always refine that and learn more? You said that’s not quite it.

Arthur:

It’s more that you’re going to a point where you’re the authority and the top of the thing, and then all the sudden you go back down to the bottom again, and you have to start all over again.

Igor:

What’s important about all that?

Arthur:

I don’t know if it’s important. It’s just a lesson that I learned from it.

Igor:

Well, it’s important to you. I mean when I said to you, for example, it’s about you can always come back and learn more something was missing from what I said, wasn’t there?

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Arthur:

Yeah. I guess it’s the feeling that – now I can’t…

Igor:

You can’t quite describe it, but there is a feeling, isn’t there?

Arthur:

Yeah.

Igor:

It’s a feeling, but you’re not necessarily able to describe it, but you can sense it and you know that you have it when you describe what you’re talking about and that I missed it when I described what I was talking about. Is that correct?

Arthur:

Yeah.

Igor:

That’s the feeling. It’s not something you have to tell people. You just show them.

Arthur:

I can’t even get it. I can’t crystallize it either.

Igor:

You don’t need to crystallize it. This is not something you need to tell people. You only have to show it, and that’s much easier because all you do is you tell them about the cycle and feel it. Then the story will take care of the rest for you. Does that make more sense? It is not an intellectual exercise because it’s not about you. You do realize this, right? It’s about them. Did that help you, Arthur? Right now, we’re at a point where we’re moving away from intellectual experiences into this other thing, which is why it’s having all these extra impacts. Does that make sense? I do not need you to crystal clearly define what all these answers or lessons are. If you can, that’s great it will help, but I’m looking for the experience and that’s what drives everything.

Student:

What I was grasping really well was the patterns you were giving earlier and things like that, and that’s what I was trying to frame my stories around. So I’m trying to plug this back in and I think the other gentleman made a good point that a lot of this relates to, for example, the basketball stories. So this here is kind of a way of doing covert hypnosis without telling someone what your intention is and trying to influence them, but using a

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different story. For example, like in the disguise pattern, you chunk up with a drive or an emotion, like excitement, curiosity. Then you attach that to a story, and then in that story you can give values, physical, emotional, symbolic, intellectual and direct attention. Then you can also keep looping those back around over and over. Is that kind of what you’re… Igor:

That’s the hard way of doing it, absolutely.

Student:

The hard way. ♦

Igor:

What is the easy way?

Start with something that’s important to you that you can feel. For example, the lessons that you learned when your father went through his health issues, they were important lessons, weren’t they? And you can feel those, right? As you think about just one of those things, or maybe is a conglomeration that attaches together, and you feel that, you know for a fact that you’ve had other experiences in life that have some of that. It may be earlier that prepared you to be able to deal with those things, prepared you to make those conclusions; or it might be afterwards where you actually used the lessons to have a better of life of some sort. Does that make sense? Can you give me one example of those?

Student:

Well, my dog died.

Igor:

Your dog died. Is this before or after?

Student: After. Igor:

By the way, how did the lessons that you learned help you to cope when your dog died?

Student:

To just be stronger when you’re faced with adversity or things that don’t feel good.

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Igor:

So it’s important to be strong when adversity hits and things don’t feel good, but life still has to go on in some way, right? What I’d like you to do is maybe spend, 30 or 60 seconds to tell us what happened in terms of your dog dying. But, as you tell us about your dog, I’d like you to think about the whole period your father’s passing and the lessons that you learned, but don’t tell us any of it. Only tell us about your dog as you think about the other thing.

Student:

Sure. My dog, Archie, was a pit bull terrier and I adopted him from a friend. He was the most docile professionally trained pit bull, and it was like love at first sight when I got him. He was my first dog that I had. He taught me a lot of things about having a close relationship with somebody. Let’s say a creature and having a connection. Then when he died…

Igor:

Let me pause you there for a moment. Were you thinking about your father whilst you talked about the pit bull just now?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

So when you talk about the pit bull, I’d like you to just think about how close you were to your father. I presume you were pretty close. Again, just how much you clicked, shall we say, with your pit bull just for that moment of the experience and really feel your connection to your father as you tell us.

Student:

Well, it was like when I would hang out with my dog, Archie, he was like my best friend.

Igor:

Can I just pause you there? Did you notice, everyone, how his language changed? Yes? His mannerisms, you see his hands come out of his pockets. He’s becoming a little bit more animated, not fully yet. The reason that’s happening is because Archie is now, for you, a personal symbol for your father. You just connected the two and there’s more reality behind it. We can tell that you’re not just talking about a dog. You’re talking about something bigger, a symbol, an archetype, if you like. Why can we tell it? It’s because you’ve infused it with the power of the relationship with your father. Does that make sense?

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Later on, when Archie passes away and you had to deal with the emotions of that, you don’t just talk about the emotions you had there, you can actually let slip some of the things that you felt during your father’s passing. Student: Igor:

My father’s still alive. No, it’s okay. All the fears you had about it.

Student: All the traumatic experience of going through that, feeling like I was going to

lose him and all those things. Igor:

All those things then fit into that, and it brings that story alive. So you tell it almost like Faulkner was talking about where in the telling of it, you are cleaning up the old memories so that it no longer has that impact on you in some ways because you have that lesson at the end that just feeds through something else. Then the story becomes more real. Would anyone want to interrupt someone who’s talking about how connected they were with their dog and how devastated they were with their passing? If he only says, I was devastated that he died, he was my best friend. Is there any emotion at any level? Am I in any performance that’s actually enhancing what we’re talking about? No. So the story isn’t – do you believe me that I was traumatized by that, that I was really affected by it? How can you because I haven’t shown any of it?

Student:

Yes, and to add to that, honestly, I’m not really affected by the dog dying anymore. I mean it’s more fond memories.

Igor:

Right, and that’s why, depending on what you want to do. If you want to present the lessons that you learned with your father, then for a moment you will feel the passing or the loss of your dog whilst you tell the story. Then afterwards, as it clears up again, of course, this clears up. You can turn around and say, now when I think back on him, honestly, all I can think of is how much of a friend he was and how glad I was that he was in my life. Meanwhile, what is the unconscious mind doing to that original memory for you?

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Student:

It’s reformatting it.

Igor:

Yes, it is. Meanwhile, of course, your audience is being affected by the charm of that story, plus the lesson, plus the happy conclusion at the end as well. Notice how we got the hero’s journey again, don’t we? The trauma, the whole thing that happens in the middle of it, that’s the climax, but afterwards when he returns back to normality, now when I think back on my dog, that’s the elixir, isn’t it? Do you see how this works? Is this useful, by the way? Does that help you?

Student:

Yes, it does. I’ll just add this last point. The reason I mentioned about the dog not affecting me anymore is because a lot of times when I’m talking to people about my dog or I’m out and someone else has a dog, I’ll say, oh yeah, my dog died. Now I realize…

Igor:

That’s a very different story then isn’t it?

Student:

Yes, exactly, and now I realize how I can change that and not they’ll take it so casually if I want to make a point with something.

Igor:

We talked about this before. The great storytellers only have about 10 stories that they tell. This is what I suspect, I don’t know, but this is how I suspect is how they changed it, because the story they were telling was not the story that they were telling it just sounded the same. That’s where the big difference is. Does that help you?

Student:

Yes, that’s where I think the covertness comes in.

Igor:

Exactly. The other thing that will help you, just to emphasize this point, how much easier was it doing that than to work out upper loop, another chunk, and another chunk? Then we’ll have this direction, we’ll come down, we’ll add all these little things. Then I’ll get this symbol and this archetype and this symbolic cave and the train. The train will represent this, and then we’ll put it together and how the hell do I tell the story okay and we’ll get a plot line of a chase. Do you see

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how much effort all that is? You can do it, by the way. You can absolutely do it, and there’s a time when it’s useful to do that, by the way. The time to do that is after you’ve told the story of your dog that really isn’t, and then you look back at your story and go, what’s in it? Can I add something that’s missing? Can I polish something that’s not quite there yet? That’s when all this intellectual stuff becomes interesting and becomes useful and helps you, but it is not how the great storytellers create the story. They start here, they find this and they give you that, but it’s not that, that you’re hearing; it’s this. Does that make sense? Student:

Yes, it does. You’re saying create basic stories that are based on feelings and real values, and then later on we can keep refining those for different purposes.

Igor:

Exactly. That’s where the intellect becomes useful. Not before, which is why I said to you, you can do it the way I described it. It’s accurate if you want to do it the hard way. Do you understand that in more detail now? Does that help you guys? Does that put it more in context? Does that help you?

Student:

Yes, thank you.

Igor:

Thank you.

Student:

Very quickly, for the basic stories, you’re talking about how a dog and having the sickness come out from behind it and all the feelings that sickness brought. ♦

Igor:

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Can we also have basic stories where we have as much as two, three, even four personal stories coming at it in different ways? Like if it was about triumph, like three different times we had triumph?

Absolutely, as long as you can keep those other events in the foreground or mid-ground of your mind, shall we say. Whilst you speak about that more trivial story, you can think of all three of these. If you can’t if somehow they don’t quite gel because there’s a different vibe to them or whatever, then I




suggest you drop one of them and focus on the two that actually are in harmony with each other that feed. They don’t have to all be in total harmony, but the bits that you want this story to do, these two stories also do. So you absolutely can do that, and that’s powerful. This is how I do it sometimes. Are you interested; otherwise, we’ll just skip along? What I’ll sometimes do is I’ll have three stories. This is the beginning of the story. Then as I get to an important part of this story here, I’ll switch to this story because it better represents, this event better represents what the meaning is coming out through this. When I conclude something, maybe this doesn’t end so well. Did my experience with my grandmother end so well? I’ll give you a hint. No. I need maybe something else that completes this, which I can then put onto here, and in doing so, by the way, it does complete this for me as well. Then the missing piece in my memory with my grandmother passing that gets completed because of some other experience I’ve had and the unconscious mind just likes putting things together. Does that help you? Student:

Yes.

Igor:

That’s a very insightful question to ask, so thank you for that. I mean you get how that works now, right? So we’ve kind of gotten into slightly deeper territory today, haven’t we? Do you want me to continue a little bit in terms of the sort of mini coaching and question session like this or do you rather get into some experience and some practice of this? Which would you rather do?

Students: Practice. Igor:

Would some practice now be useful? Let’s do some practice now. By the way, I want to thank all of you for doing this because you’ve helped me a lot in being able to bring this out in an

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intelligent way, without having to describe it too linearly, which would, of course, destroy the whole process in itself. What I want to do now is go back to where we started from this morning. Remember, you chose a bunch of life lessons, events that move you and that you’re glad you experienced or at least the lessons that you got from them were important to you. You also have a bunch of mentors, teachers, guides and friends that nudged you in the right direction just when you needed it, did you not? What I’d like you to do is, as you go through that list, find where the juice is. Find which of all of those little emotions, those lessons, those ideas, those values is a common theme there. There probably will be a few. Is there a feeling that repeats itself in different places? You got a piece of that from your Uncle Jim, another piece you got when you climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, another little piece of that came from when you just figured out that you can draw a bad picture and it’s okay. Can you take those elements together? I don’t need you to actually be able to give a specific lesson of it. In other words, say okay, the lesson I learned is everyone should be happy now. We do not need to give it a pithy meaning yet. All I want you to do is can you experience that totality, that feeling of like yeah, this is an important lesson. I can’t quite tell you what it is maybe or maybe you can but I feel how important it is. Does that make sense? I suspect just even thinking about it like that now you’re doing it to some degree right now. You’ve just identified this top circle. You have some events in here that have developed for want of a better word an emotional feel for you, a general life lesson. Would that be fair to say? You might not be able to define this. Just like it’s difficult to define a magnetic field, but you know when it’s there and when it’s not. Use this as your guide called an affect bridge. When you feel this, ask yourself what other situation feels like this, even if it’s on a smaller scale. It might actually be one of these, by the way. It could

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very well be one of these and that’s fine, but it might be something different, something that is a smaller scale but has the key qualities. Like if I took you to a scrap yard and had one of these big industrial magnets, like I could just lift up a car, you’d get the idea of magnetism, would you not? If I pulled out a tiny little pocket magnet like this and picked up some iron filings, you’d get the relationship, would you not? I’d like you to find either, if you’re okay with it feel free to use the big fat electromagnet from the scrap yard. Or, if you want to preserve some more privacy, give them a small little pocket magnet, but infuse it with the power of the electromagnet, with the importance of it so that you’re not just talking about your dog; you’re talking about your father. Are there any questions on that as an exercise? No. I want you to get into pairs, please. Find anyone in the room that you feel comfortable with because this is about getting a level of comfort, of course. I’d like you to just go through that whole process. Get the life lessons. Feel that emotional feel that comes around with it and let that remind you of other events that felt similarly. It’s up to you what you choose, whether you tell one of these events or one of these events, it doesn’t matter provided it has that emotion behind it. That drives the way you frame it and present it because it’s not good enough to say, yeah, my dog died, I didn’t like it very much, because that’s not how you felt about your father or whatever. Do you have a quick question? You look like you really need to ask something. Student:

I’m going through this and there are events in my life that I’m thinking of that are terribly loaded with emotion but seem insignificant when…

Igor:

Presented to others.

Student:

Yes.

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Igor:

So one of two things you can do there, either you use those events and this is an interesting experiment to do. You talk about them but with the actual emotion allowing emotion to change the way you present the event so it becomes more, or you find other moments that to other people might seem more significant that had a smaller charge, but you speak about those as though they were significant. Either way is fine. At one point, you should be able to talk about having a shower or tying a shoelace with this. That’s what makes you an amazing storyteller. But we’re not there yet, so just choose some events, tell these if you want. If you can’t quite speak about the events in a way that allows this field to keep its integrity, choose something else that matches, but infuse it with this. This whole field is what puts the power into the story. It’s what you guys experienced all of today when you said, we’ve just gone to a very different level, a much deeper level. That’s why it’s happened. The symbolism will naturally pop into this. Even if it’s a tiny event, you’ll start having archetypes coming through. You’ll have mental figures. You might project mental figures or nemeses or other archetypes into your story. Has anyone ever had something very small happen to them that really just blew their top? For example, in one of the seminars when I turned up at the hotel, it was late at night. I’d been flying for, I don’t know, 30 hours. I walked in and the staff was just pathetic. I’m doing my best to be reasonable, but I have to stand in line at like 2:00 in the morning, and I don’t want to. I’m bringing 100 or so people to this place – by the way, it’s not this place just so you know. I’m bringing 100 or so people to this place, and they don’t even have the decency to have my room ready for me yet because they made a mistake. I get to a room when they finally sort it out, and it’s cold, bitterly cold. So let me just take a step back from that. It is, by the way, a true event. Am I really talking about the hotel right now? Am I really talking about that particular event? It’s a tiny frustrating event, right? Yes, I was annoyed at the time, but that insignificant level of annoyance is actually letting me speak about some much bigger issues.

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In dealing with these bigger issues, I can resolve the whole hotel thing, and the story will come out differently. Does that help you? Does it help everyone? Does it make more sense now? Student: ♦

Igor:

Don’t people do this unconsciously all the time?

Yes, although mostly unfortunately, it’s over the wrong things. You eat wrong. That just annoys me. Really, what they’re saying is, you don’t pay enough attention to me, and I’m going to take it out on your eating behavior, for example. Does that make sense? But we can do the reverse as a very healthy thing as well. Enough questions for the moment I think. Let’s just get into practice. Find a partner, someone you feel comfortable with. Please spend 10 minutes apiece doing this. Off you go.

Igor:

All right, how was lunch, everyone? Did you have some real food for thought? All right, does this whole thing make more sense to you now that you’ve done it a little bit? Who actually enjoyed the exercise that they did before lunch? Who found it to be hopefully close to one of the more powerful things you’ve done whilst at this seminar? Would that be fair to say? Do you get a sense of how you could have this same impact and really feed it through any of the techniques, whether it’s the dream machine or the “IGOR”™ method? I wonder; what we would call that? The key thing for me,

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though– this is one of the driving ideas for the whole seminar– and really for how I do hypnosis and that’s really all I can really teach you guys. I wanted to give you a very different perspective. Hopefully, it will be a richer perspective on the idea of the H+. Would it be fair to say that faster doing this exercise, you understand what I mean by H+ in a very different way? Students: Yes. Igor:

It is what drives everything else we do the techniques at some point become redundant. If you’re still focusing at the level of technique and by the way, there’s a time when focusing on technique is appropriate because that’s when skills come, build and so on. In terms of actually doing conversational hypnosis, if you’re still focusing on techniques, then I would suggest you reconsider how you’re looking at things because it’s very difficult to do techniques in a conversation. It is very easy to do this the H+ thing is a conversation. In fact, it’s one of the most natural things in the world when you can create the right context. Does that make sense? Is everyone happy? Are there any questions or comments on what we’ve done so far, by the way?

Student:

Having this experience allowed me to get a new hit on this, which is probably redundant at this point. But to the degree that I can hold the experience is the degree that they have permission to hold the experience themselves.

Igor:

Exactly.

Student:

When Arthur was up here sharing, even though I would have an equally difficult time articulating what the experience was that he was trying to describe. I very much, had a sense already of what he was talking about, which is in line with what Tim said this morning about not what we’re doing as the where we are being.

Igor:

You see, now you guys are beginning to sound like master hypnotists to me. It’s taken a while, but now you’re actually starting to sound like master hypnotists. Rather than saying the technique or the principle, it’s just about

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these are all things that are important. Would that be fair to say? But you don’t focus on them anymore. They’re just assumed, right? Student: And it really is – if I have that experience – and here’s something else that

occurred to me. We don’t all have the same experiences, but we do all have the same emotions. So the experience might be hard to engage someone with, the emotion is natural. Igor:

And that’s why people will respond to your story when you’ve got the right driving fuel thing behind it. They’re responding to the things you’re not saying, rather than the things that you are.

Student: And it really feels like when I was telling the story, it felt like an invitation.

Like opening up, and this is an invitation to share this. However they respond, that’s fine and when the story was being told to me, it felt very much the same way. Igor:

Right, and that’s kind of the respectfulness we talked about. I mean there are two points and I can address them. The one is, do you recall I think it was day one we talked about how people focus too much on the language in conversational hypnosis. There’s nothing wrong with the language. Language is a great thing to focus on, to polish. We’ve spent a lot of time on language, haven’t we? But if you think conversational hypnosis is about language, then you’ve missed the point. I hope now you’ve got an actual visceral experience of that. The other one is something I heard one of Erickson’s daughters actually talk about, which I think was excellent. It’s this idea of what drives interactions. If I want something from you, I’m again demanding, I’m imposing and that creates defensiveness. If I want good things for you whether or not you accept them that’s your choice. I still want them for you, but at this point I don’t need you to respond to me for me to feel good, to feel okay with this whole thing. Hypnosis is something that’s what the H+ is. It’s the intense desire to hypnotize and for them to experience something positive, but I don’t expect anything from them. If they want to not have an experience, that’s all right. I want it for them because I know the minute that they do, they’re going to join

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me in a very happy land. Does that make sense? Thank you, that’s an excellent observation. Give him a proper round of applause. [Applause] Do we have a new appreciation of the power of hypnosis, everyone? Now I’d like to talk to you about the seven most influential stories you’ll ever tell. They’re really going to be a variation of what you’ve already done. These seven stories, incidentally, come from a very good friend of mine, Robin Manuell, who is probably the best hypnotic storyteller I’ve ever come across. He beats everyone I’ve ever seen or heard of absolutely in terms of what he does. Robin Manuell. One of the master interviews we did was with him. I think it was the third or so one in the series. He’s an exceptional storyteller. I’ve had the good fortune of doing a co-training with him where we were copresenters. I had a great time, and we shared a lot of ideas over the years and so on. So these seven stories are something I talked to him about a while ago. I really have to agree with him in terms of these are possibly the most influential ways that people will use stories if they use them well. The first story is something we’re already familiar with, which is: 1.

The Story of You.

The purpose of the story of you is to let people know who you are. Not your name or the country you’re from, but who you are. What is it you stand for? What does that bring to you here in life? It’s of course going to be context dependent. In a business setting, you need to tell a different story of you than in a personal setting or on a date. Does that make sense? Unless you start dating your customers, in which case that will be interesting. So you need to think about the context. If you’re in business, for example, what things do people need to know about you? Maybe that you’re honest, you’re professional, you’re trustworthy, you care about the customer, they know how they’ll be treated, as a result, of working with you. So I’m going to give you an example.

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Some of these other examples that we’re going to put in categories will feed into the story of you. It’s just there will be a part of the focus on you, whereas sometimes you’ll just focus on the individual elements on their own. The next story is usually a part of the story of you, but can stand all by itself or have its own thing. 2.

The Story of Your Values.

In particular, what your values are in a specific context. Your values, again, let people know how they can interpret or what they can expect from you. If I told you about a fireman whose being taken into tribunal, by the city and will probably lose his job. Initially you might think well, that’s not the world’s best fireman, but this person has been taken to the tribunal in order for the city to be able to fire him because he ignored his line officer’s instructions during the middle of a firefighting process. There was a building burning and he ignored the instructions. As a result, of him disobeying a direct order, two people are now alive that would not otherwise have been. Does that not tell you a lot about his values? Would you want him to be your fireman? Again, do you see how powerful stories can be when you express – you don’t say, this person prefers life over an order. You can say it, but it doesn’t have the same impact does it? Another related sort of story – and this is very useful in many cases – is: 3.

The Purpose or Intention Story.

It basically tells people indirectly what you intend for you interaction to be about, what they can expect from you in terms of what you want out of this, your motivation, shall we say. Of course, all of us when we’re in a store and a sales assistant comes up and says, can I help you, we’re all thinking, oh, this person’s really in it for me and they’re going to really help me get the best that I can, right?

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I know this may sound shocking to you, but occasionally there are one or two human beings out there who translate the request can I help you into how can I make you buy as much as possible so that my commission goes up? I know it’s crazy, but some people might consider that. So a purpose or a motivation story can very easily help deflect an attitude or a negative attitude that may already be there. The most important thing about the whole idea of purpose is everyone has purpose. There is motivation for every action, no such thing as randomness. Even a so-called random act of kindness is driven by motivation, isn’t it, a purpose for a better world or a world where people do these sorts of things or whatever So, if you don’t give your motivation, your purpose to people for doing things, they will assume one for you. Sometimes it’s a good one, and sometimes it’s not, but it’s nothing that’s inside of your sphere of influence if you let them decide for you. Or, you can demonstrate a motivation in the form of a story or actually also in the way that you behave, your actions. Does that make sense? If you give them a purpose, then they can see oh, I get it. This means that now. Two identical activities– 1. One might be from someone who wants to manipulate you against your best interest. Let’s say it’s something like getting you to join a cult so that you can be locked away from your family and have your life slowly destroyed and eroded by the Kool-Aid guy. 2. The other person is a genuine caring person whose motivation is that people shouldn’t suffer the way maybe they did when they were young or maybe a member of the family did, and they wish that someone had been there for them. Two very different motivations, right? If I now call you up and you don’t know which one I am and I say to you, hey, I’m just calling to make sure you did okay and everything’s going well with you and if you need anything, I’m

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there for you. Depending on what you project onto me in terms of my motivation, that phone call will either feel very sinister or very heartening, wouldn’t it? So purpose is everything. You need to be able to give people stories, examples of how your purpose is genuine H+, it is genuinely for the other person, you’re in it for them rather than just for yourself because if you don’t address the idea of safety, people will shut down for you. Has anyone here ever made the old mistake in life where they’ve maybe violated a person’s trust or a group of people’s trust? I know it doesn’t really happen very much. You weren’t necessarily proud of it, but as a result, how did the other people respond? Did they avoid you? Yes? If you tried to have a normal social contact, not anything exceptional, just a normal social contact, were they hesitant about even that level of engagement? Would that be fair to say? This is what happens when you break trust and when people aren’t feeling safe around you because you violated something in this line. They think I can’t predict his behavior anymore. I will be damaged somehow if I assume that I can believe what he’s telling me and so on. Does that kind of make sense? So your story of purpose is not just about giving your intention, your motivation for doing things. It’s also making a promise, isn’t it? It’s very important that you keep your promises, especially the ones you make to the unconscious. Does that make sense? I can say, let’s meet up on Tuesday at 5:00 p.m., and I might be there at 5:30 or I might not even show and you’ll be disappointed. You’ll be upset because I made a promise and I didn’t keep it, right? If I continue that over time, your conclusion might well be that I have a really bad sense of time and you might either stop agreeing to meet with me somewhere and say, if you come, great. If not, I’ll be somewhere else. Or you might do what my father said to my aunt who has no sense of time, which is he said that we’re all meeting two hours before we actually do

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because she’d always be exactly two hours late, so she’s just on time. Perfect. On the other hand, if I make an unconscious promise, especially like an implied thing – I’m trying to think of how I might deal with the whole idea of time – let’s say you’re meeting someone after class and you say what time is class finished by? Oh great well, just wait there and they don’t show. That feels very different, doesn’t it? The reason for it is because I haven’t said I’ll be there at 5:00. Will you be there at 5:00? Let’s agree. It’s not a conscious promise I’ve made at this point. It’s an assumption, and assumptions or unconscious conclusions, shall we say, have more power over the person, especially over their emotional experience than a conscious one. So you always want to make sure, especially when you make an implication, where you make an unconscious promise that you fulfill it. If you made an accidental implication, an accidental promise and you didn’t really mean it or you can’t really fulfill it, you’d better make sure that before that interaction finishes, you address it and clarify when I say this, I actually mean this, just so we’re sure. When I say wait for me, what I mean is I’m going to do my best to be there at 5:00 p.m., but I might be there at 5:20, depending on the traffic. Now, the conscious promise has – yeah, I’ll be there, but maybe at 5:20, because if I’m not there at 5:00 otherwise, I’ve reneged on a promise to the unconscious and that makes me less and less reliable. That’s a new story that’s being told to you, and the last thing I can do is lose trust for your unconscious. Does that make sense? So the question is does that hold true for promises we make ourselves? Yes. Has anyone ever broken a promise to themselves? Has anyone noticed how after a while when you say I’ll do this but you don’t - I will do this, and you don’t – have you ever noticed how it gets harder to have discipline, achieve goals or focus and get your way through life, anyone notice that? That is breaking your own connection.

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That’s breaking your own connection to your unconscious because you are violating the trust. Just to use a therapeutic example, there are many times when you’re doing a bit of hypnotherapy, for example, let’s say regression that’s a nice easy one to do. You have the whole – there’s that little kid over there and he has a problem. It all gets resolved, fantastic, right? Now of course, in terms of the whole parts conflict, the more mature part of the mind needs to make sure that the more vulnerable part gets looked after. One of the things that you can do is ensure that the part with all the resources says, you know what, the deal we’ll make is I will make sure that I never get put in the same position again. You’ll never be treated this poorly again and, as a result, you can now let go of all these negative emotions and the stuff that’s holding you back and so on, so everyone wins, right? Now occasionally what will happen is as soon as you make that deal, they’ll go okay sure, I’ll do that and then go, why do I always have to feel that. I always hated that about myself? What have they just done? They violated a promise, haven’t they? They are the very people who are now fighting themselves. They’re harming some part of themselves, but they just promised to protect it. How does that work? So that’s one thing you really have to look out for because that’s one of the things that can unwind a huge amount of therapy if that’s the model that you’re applying, if you remember. A lot of people have great self-discipline, and I’m talking about not necessarily just the harsh version, but who just gets things done, who aims to achieve something and they do. They stick to their promises to themselves even if it doesn’t make sense. If they say tomorrow morning I’m going to get up and do five minutes of exercise, they do it, even when no one’s looking – because someone’s always looking, and it’s not you. Does that answer your question? Cassie:

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I just wanted to bring up an interesting point I actually read about on the airplane here about the mental promises that we make to ourselves. They found in a study that people that said I will do something and made that sort Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



of promise without realizing it, actually didn’t do as well as people who turned around, will I do this same something? Because by the will I, they didn’t make it promise, they made it more an exploration, but with the, I will, it was a very unconscious promise, it was a very tough thing for them to keep, and was very important for them to keep. So it’s just interesting how our unconscious really is important like that, and it reacts differently. Igor:

One of the big differences in terms of the formulation of that – and I think that’s absolutely, accurate – is the unconscious mind likes answering questions. So you can ask yourself, how well will I do in, say, this presentation? Versus I’ll do well in this presentation. I’ll do well says I’m going to drive this consciously. How well will I do in this presentation allows unconsciousness to come through and fill in the gaps for you as well? So I think that’s an excellent observation. Thank you.

Student:

I want to ask a question or a piece of advice. When you meet a person or you know a person in your life – I can think of someone – who’s very much like that. If they say they’re going to do something, they do it, which I think is very powerful. It allows that person to achieve quite a lot. However, it also is a detriment because sometimes they say things that are irrational or make no sense. They’re like, I said I was going to do this, and then later you’re like, I know you said you were going to do that, but do you realize that given the current circumstances and where you are, what you said before isn’t really valid and it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve struggled with that because the person is so determined, and it’s like they’re sabotaging their life in a way sometimes.

Igor:

They’ve got a good pattern in terms of achieving things, it’s just they’re setting the wrong goals, right?

Student:

I suppose so, but once the goal is set, then it’s like their brain – not only have I told myself, I’ve told other people is part of their argument.

Igor:

That’s that social commitment and so on. The first thing to realize is some people in that kind of context just need to learn to be more careful about

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what promises they make to themselves. Hence, as it was said before, what are you going to promise yourself and what you don’t, if they just learned to realize, okay, I’ve just made a promise? Do I really mean this, so there’s a pause button before they commit? That’s actually a very healthy thing that they can do. It doesn’t mean that they’re incapable of committing now. It just means that before they commit to something, they’re going to make sure that it’s something worth committing in because otherwise they always have like these little yapping puppy dogs running around going, be my master, be my master. Whatever you do, I don’t care, that’s fine. The loyalty of a little puppy dog that will basically be affectionate to no matter who it is or how cruel they are is not something that we’ll go, oh, it’s like Lassie. He’s so faithful. The faithfulness part is actually the other side of the coin actually earns it as well. The other possibility is – and this is more in terms of the influencing process – has to do with, for example, the objection buster. The key thing is to realize that if I make a promise, the promise is in a context. It’s something that logically they’ll get. The objection buster needs to have a little bit more openness and so on, but if you can open their mind and then create the reframe so they understand that the situations that originally allowed for the promise to be made no longer exist, then it becomes impossible or it becomes counterproductive. They’ll be going against the spirit of the promise by following on the word of it than by doing it. A nice example this brings to mind is just a legal example. If there’s a law about is it all right to kill? No. Fine. Well, if a mother is defending her baby, is that all right? Yes, but the law says it’s not right to kill and she’s done that, well, there must be an exception, there must be some circumstance, in which it’s okay. Student:

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Plenty of them.




Igor:

Exactly. So it’s like, oh unless it’s self-defense, that’s different. This is different too. See how you just shift them across the world.

Student:

That was my tactic. My tactic was – I didn’t frame it because I understand the language, but the only way I could deal with it because it was important for me that they change their perception, so I was changing the context. That’s how I approached it, and the thing that I noticed that I really struggle with a lot is that I do that, and then later I go away, come back, and it’s like okay, we’re back on the old track again.

Igor:

Of course. That’s a question of re-conditioning. That’s a very different story. If you can create a change in behavior once, it doesn’t mean it will always be the same unless they make a promise. So now you can use the pattern to reinforce a better pattern, or you can reinforce it again constantly with small things, little stories that you tell with little promises they make with things where they learn to do it that’s part of the learning process. That’s going more towards therapy and so on, but if you can change it once, then you can change it more than once if you have enough examples of them having made this more flexible type of change where they can keep their promises because it’s important. But they also have the freedom, when the environment may no longer be the same, which means the promise has vanished with the environment, shall we say. Then, over time, they’ll make a generalization as part of the learning process, and they’ll go, oh yeah, I said I’d do that, but now the whole purpose is gone. So the promise shifts away from the context to the purpose. The purpose of my promise is to make you feel good. If you’re no longer around, there’s no point in my doing the content anymore because the purpose has been lost. So my promise was on a purpose level rather than on a content level. But that may take a little time to install. However, some of the stories we’ll come onto, probably this one right here will help you a lot with it.

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Student: Appreciate it. Thank you. Igor:

Does that help? All right, the next story is particularly useful in a business context or any kind of – wherever you take a leadership role. 4.

The Vision Story.

The vision story is kind of like a purpose with a nice big purple robe and a hat on top. It’s a mixed metaphor. The vision is what is your big drive? What is the whole purpose behind everything? Why are you in business? A small purpose might be, why am I talking to you right now? Am I trying to sell you or am I trying to help you? That’s a small level purpose. The vision is the large level purpose from which we derive the smaller level purpose. I’m in business, for example, to change the world. Or let’s say I run a health food company. I’m in business to make sure that people can live healthier by eating healthier, and giving them the choice of something good and nutritious and something they’ll enjoy, but it will be good for them versus all the over-processed rubbish that is available to them in the general stores. If my vision is that and my behavior is, here is now an organic apple, it changes what that apples means, what I’m offering you now means. If I offer you shampoo, there’s an expectation because my vision that the shampoo won’t be based on petrochemicals for example or anything like that. Does that make sense? So, the vision is your global purpose, the big picture through which everything else is filtered and understood as well. Does that help, guys? Of course, you can see how all these three are kind of intertwined in some respects. You might end up telling the same story that does all three of them or emphasizing aspects of the story to bring out different elements of it, and in some respects, depending on the context you’re in, elements of that will also reflect in the story of you. Do you see how that works? Where are we next? Oh, this is a big story. Between the story of you and this one, these are the most powerful versions of augmenting rapport that I currently know of.

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5.

The Empathy Story or The Mind-Read Story

Mind read. You’re reading someone’s mind. Let us assume that you are a host at a party, and someone comes in who’s a little shy and nervous. Do you punch him on the arm and say, hey, are you a nervous one? It’s all right. I’ll take care of you. Is that socially polite? Would that help them very much in terms of feeling at ease at the party and so on? Occasionally it might, depending on how you do it. It could work. If on the other hand, you told him a story of how you entered a situation where you felt maybe nervous, shy or withdrawn – perhaps your first day at work or perhaps it was your first day with adults other than your parents. Maybe you were left alone with your grandparents or so bigger sort of context like that, and how grateful you were that your grandfather looked after you, introduced you to everyone and made sure that they treated you with respect and that you weren’t in an awkward situation. Or, the first day at work and your boss comes in and says, let me show you around everyone, and don’t worry, I’ll make sure that you’re integrated into the team properly so that you’re part of the whole thing. After all, we value that you’re here and how grateful you were to your boss to make you feel that comfortable. How do you think that person will feel now in relation to his own shyness? You said, I understand the pressure or the fear and concerns you have right now, and unconsciously I promise to make life as easy as possible for you, to not manifest your fears. Does that make sense? Remember, you just made a promise as well. If you fulfill that promise, the respect and rapport and trust you get from that will go through the roof. Does that make sense? Everyone get how that one works? Student: ♦

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Do you find it more difficult to deal with people who typically don’t keep their promises, like they often break their own promises?




Igor:

The question is in what context? If it’s in terms of just hanging out being social with people like that, I have no issues with that. If it’s a question of needing to rely on them, then yes I do have more of an issue with that.

Student:

From a therapeutic sense, if you were to get them to promise something.

Igor:

You can turn that whole thing into – the question is, in a therapeutic sense if you can get them to promise something – we won’t deal too much with therapy right now, but to answer your question briefly, you can turn that into part of the therapeutic setting. For example, and I’ll put this in the general category of an uncommitted client, one of the most valuable things I believe you can do with most clients – some contexts don’t allow for this. But with most clients, the most valuable thing you can do is fire your clients. That’s especially true of anyone who does a stop smoking session. There’s one thing you do that will get your success levels up higher than anything else. Its fire your clients because it will polarize them. They’ll either fight to be in the session, which now has a very different mental energy involved, or they’ll leave, in which case they have a perfect record. More importantly, you’re not wasting their time or your own. Now that’s not probably in every context. There are some contexts where people require more help because they’re more fragile – before you can get to such a hard line choice, but for the kind of stuff that the average hypnotherapist deals with, that’s one of the easiest ways to fix a big problem in the whole process. Does that help?

Student:

This example you gave of the nervous guest at the party.

Igor:

The example of the nervous guest arriving at the party…

Student:

Since you can feel their emotion and know what emotion they feel...

Igor:

So, as you can feel what the emotion is, like the shyness or the nervousness, yes?

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Student: ♦

Igor:

Using the example from your own experience in a different context, does that make it like isomorphism?

Is what we’re talking about right now the basic structure behind isomorphism? Everyone know what we mean by isomorphism? Okay, isomorphism essentially is a hypnotic technique where if someone has a problem or in some cases an influence thing you want to do, then the story that you tell them has to follow the structure. To give you a very crude version – I recommend you never do this, but it will illustrate the point nicely – is say you have a family issue. The father is ignoring the kids, the son, and mother is just pretending that nothing is happening. You might talk about papa bear and mama bear and little baby bear. Little baby bear is out in the woods and everyone’s ignoring him. Papa bear is always shouting at him, but mama bear doesn’t see anything. You can see it’s kind of a very crude. You’re changing and putting fur on that family and then you’re pretty much done, right? It’s a crude version. There are more elegant ways of doing the same thing that actually work well, but it’s easy for making the point. It’s called isomorphism because the structure of the story has the same structure as the problem, and as long as you attach an appropriate ending, a resolution at the end where everyone’s happy and hugs and realizes certain things. Provided the story flows smoothly – there are no jumps in the logic of the story, the flow of the story – then the unconscious mind will usually map the solution onto their own problem and change the dynamic. Do you see how that works? We will focus more on that more fully later. Do you remember this? We have one situation told as another. Who actually did this? Who actually thought about one situation but talked about something different? Who found that the elements you were emphasizing in this other experience ended up actually being identical to that, and all you had to do was plug out the name dog and put in the name father, plug out the word – I don’t know – lost and plug in the word died?

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Do you end up having more or less a story that you didn’t tell? Did anyone find that kind of happening? It’s because isomorphism is absolutely natural to the unconscious. It’s part of the association principle, isn’t it? This is a much easier way of doing isomorphism without teaching it because the way it’s traditionally taught appeals to the intellect and, of course, the more you know, the harder it gets to do, doesn’t it? So, if he keeps doing this kind of story style and just get used to that as a process, you’ll find that you automatically will tell isomorphic stories with great therapeutic endings or change-oriented endings without even realizing it. You’ll do actually a better job than most people that talk about it who might be able to describe it better than you, but can’t do it anywhere near as well. Does that help? Is this useful? The sixth one is, again, one of my favorites if done well. 6.

The Emotional Story.

Essentially, the only purpose of this story, the only purpose of it is to elicit a state. The state can then later be applied as a resource to some other situation. I appreciate that no one in this room has found any part of the experience you’ve had over the last eight days as maybe amusing or exciting or funny or anything like that. I really do understand that, but assume I was a slightly better presenter and you did laugh from time to time. Let’s go crazy on this one and assume that if on the occasion that you laughed, I actually presented to you a context that you might actually find threatening. So you’re contemplating a context, a situation that you would otherwise find threatening, but you’re laughing at the same time. What does that do to you? It changes the association that you have. It breaks a certain pattern. So instead of going, I’m going to do conversational hypnosis, the minute you start thinking about doing conversational hypnosis, you also have another way of doing things, which is the one that is more resourceful, where you’re laughing, where you’re going oh, that’s so silly. You have a pathway to it. Does that make sense?

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I believe Dave Dobson worked this way, and again this is just reading between the lines. He told lots of jokes. He just loves jokes, but one of the main things he does is when someone has a pattern, for example, they have some kind of problem. Have you noticed when people fall into their negative problem patterns that they’ll adopt a certain mannerism? They change physically. Have you noticed that? All he did was he told these jokes and then just when he got to the punch line, he’d adopt someone’s physical behavior just as he delivered the punch line, and they’d start cracking up. The two go hand-in-hand. He blew up a huge amount of patterns this way. At least this is my best reading between the lines of what people have talked about and so on. I’ve never met him in person. David Dobson. He’s now passed on. But do you see how the emotional stuff will work very well? Some other hypnotists do this again – there are a couple of hypnotists out there who have a very strong reputation in terms of being like, wow, amazing wizards and no one can track what they’re doing. One of the reasons no one can track what they’re doing is because they’re all so busy focusing on the language. Oh, the language pattern and cause and effect, and oh, what’s he doing there? By the way, he’s using all these things and they’re working great, but the primary reason they cannot figure out what he’s doing is because he’s doing lots and lots of emotional stories. Essentially, he’s creating a chain of states to move people through to drive behaviors with those states. They’re looking for the wrong thing – they’re looking for what’s the reframe, what is the language, what is the embedded suggestion? He doesn’t care. He’ll happily tell you a story about someone’s granny being knifed as easily as about a little baby falling asleep on a soft pillow. He doesn’t care what the story is. What he cares about is your emotional reaction and that’s what he uses. Does that kind of make sense? Now I know none of you ever want to motivate someone to do something, but if you did, then wouldn’t it be useful to be able to move people through an emotional state, like say excitement or motivation or enthusiasm? So just

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as they’re thinking about how motivated they are and so on. You say well, let me show you something we’ve got here. This is the one in blue or red. Do you think the two might attach? They’re more likely to, aren’t they? Especially if you can recreate the emotion over and over and find different binding points. Do you see how the emotional ones work? Everyone clear on that one? The final one is probably one of the biggest categories. This is, in my opinion, one of the most important categories, although it’s relatively small in the story of you. The final, the seventh story in the series is known under various different names. I want to introduce them as: 7.

Teaching Tales.

These are stories that teach the unconscious mind something about themselves, about life or about the way to be and so on. When Eric was talking about the isomorphism, he’s essentially thinking about teaching tales. You’re talking through a story in order to change an attitude or behavior, a pattern, a belief, an experience and so on. Teaching tales have so much scope. I think we may end up spending the afternoon session just talking about those on their own just because there’s just a lot of stuff you can do with them. For the moment, are you kind of roughly clear with the seven styles of stories? What I’d like you to do now is just to start getting used to the strategic use of stories, and I’d like you to get into groups of, I don’t know five or so people, different groups. Just mix it up. Try to be with people you haven’t been with before. If you like hanging out with certain people, just split up a little bit because you want to have different points of view for a while. What I’d like you to do is just talk them through these seven styles of stories, and discuss inside your group the kind of context that you are interested in, in using this stuff, and how these different stories might be useful in that context. Does that make sense? Is that easy to do? Student: ♦

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Can one story consist of all the different seven stories?




Igor:

Of course. One story can do many different things. We’re just pulling the different focal points out because they’ll have different applications, depending on what you’re focusing on. For example, the story of you is very likely to have at least your values in there, if not your purpose. A lot of people may even put their vision in there as well. Does that make sense? Are we clear on this? So I’d like to spend maybe, I don’t know, 10 minutes as a group really kind of figuring out what are the different places I could use these different types of stories and have a different kind of effect? Mix and match your groups up please and 10 minutes starts now. An interesting exercise…Did you get a sense of like the different types of stories and how they fit in different places? What kind of uses have you guys come up with for these different stories? Give me some examples. You can feel free to come up if you want.

Student:

Do you want me to come up there?

Igor:

Sure, unless it’s a quick one and then I’ll have to repeat it. So for the vision story, a CEO or a parent are the same job functions just in a slightly different organizational unit, right? The vision story gives you the big picture, the big purpose of the whole thing. Don’t families do this where we instill family values? Our family’s been around for 500 years, and we’ve always eaten cabbage, and you better be a cabbage eater too. I came from a Polish family, what can I say? So the vision can fit inside of the corporate arena too though. Isn’t that what the difference is between say, Steve Jobs from Apple computers is versus some other technical company where we all go, who? What? What did he say? I don’t know. The difference is he can communicate a vision in the form of stories, in the form of metaphors and similes, and he can bring them to life, can he not? Carry on.

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Student:

I was considering a string of applications. For example, in a sales process the, you and value stories could be used to establish trust with the customer. The purpose story and the vision story could be used to help the customer understand why they were interested in this product in the first place, what they’re going to do with it, what the product is going to do for them. Then the empathy and mind-read stories can be used to help a customer overcome their objections, and the emotional stories could be used to help bind the product to the customer.

Igor:

Create motivation and fuel to drive them, yes.

Student:

Yes, at approaching the closing. Then the teaching tales could probably be used to help the customer figure out ways in which they could afford the product and pay for it.

Igor:

Yes, or you can get them through the whole buying process with it, or even to give them a future memory about how they’ll be using it so they make sure they don’t have buyer’s remorse and so on. I think that’s an excellent, very elegant use of the whole lot in a whole sales cycle. Wouldn’t you say so? Yes, I think that’s worth a round of applause.

Student:

Just the one on the, you could help to frame you more as the authority figure and build hope.

Igor:

Yes, especially in different contexts, right? If a doctor gives you the right you, how much more faith can you have in the process, for example, is anyone here in the room a hypnotherapist? Consider the possibility that given the right you story as you’re setting the client down and getting to know them – you know the chit-chat thing – just three minutes of the right story might totally transform the way therapy works at that point, might it not? Incidentally, you saw the power of the right you story earlier on with I think was Faulker who, the way it opened up things with him. The right you story will do the same thing. You could be in the middle of therapy within two

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minutes and be done three minutes later if you get the right context set up ahead of time. Does that make sense? Student:

Igor:

You and values stories are both the kinds of stories that you tell when you’re doing a job interview also. Absolutely. So someone was sharing with me earlier on – I can’t remember who it was now – that they’ve been doing these kinds of stories without thinking about it, like intuitively at job interviews for most of their life, and he’s pretty much gotten every job he’s gone for. Does anyone here like the idea of getting pretty much every job you go for or is it just me again? I seem to have been in my own little category all along. Carry on.

Student:

In the context of the vision, these can be extremely small and the reason why – my sister, she lives in the Midwest. She buys houses and she fixes them up. She’s a bit of a slave driver in my opinion, but her last name, she got remarried, so her last name is Walker, and her thing is Walkers work.

Igor:

I like that.

Student: And she makes her family work. They buy these houses that are run down

and they fix them up and rent them out. Igor:

Perfect, but you see again, similes, metaphors, all these little things fit together, and that is actually what in a traditional corporate environment will be called a mission statement. A traditional corporation will probably pay somewhere between $10,000 and maybe a half a million dollars to get a mission statement. The only problem is the mission statement that they usually get is: 1. Are unintelligible to anyone other than the person collecting the half million dollars; 2. Are uninspiring to everyone that’s supposed to be inspired by them.

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And really it ends up being, in fact, if anything creates a counterproductive element, because people are going, what? We are going to be customer providers of the future by assessing the needs of everyone. Yay, I think. The concept of a mission statement is amazing. The problem is, very few corporations know how to translate it so people will buy into it. Or, in my opinion, the way I used them much more effectively I think when I worked in a smaller corporations is to take the people who are in the organization and chunk up from all of their purposes, their values and then create something that is much more grassroots. Incidentally, any consultants amongst you or wanna be consultants? You can charge a lot of money for just that idea on its own, and this one will work because now the mission statements – Walkers work – means something, and it’s demonstrated every day by what people are doing. It creates a whole different culture out of it. Does that make sense? I would go up and maybe buy him a beer tonight because he potentially has just made you a million dollars, if you work in the corporate field that is. Does that make sense? Student:

So with empathy, you can match the patterns and say hey, I’ve gone through this. Then you can start leading the person as to what the better solution is.

Igor:

Right. What you’ve just described is what I would call the mind-reading induction. You start by empathizing, by mind-reading the context and the problems that they’re having and really getting into it with your stories and so on. Then those stories can be chained out, or the ends of those stories can chain out into a solution, into action steps, into some better world. Think about it. Anyone here ever get a good pep talk by a, shall we say, a father figure, not necessarily your father. Like a mentor of some sort. Wouldn’t the nature of that pep talk normally be I feel your pain? Maybe I’ve been there myself. I’ve seen enough people go through this, and there’s hope.

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Isn’t that essentially the structure of a pep talk? Only now this would be more a hypnotic pep talk, and you’ve already seen one example of what it looks like today. Do you see how this works? Who likes this stuff? What I’d like to spend the next half hour or so on now is a particular one of these stories – the emotional one – because once again, this is something that a lot of people misunderstand and misapply. A lot of people think when you say, oh tell an emotional story, they’ll say and the train was coming and I was so scared. I was frightened. You know, really frightened, scared you know, like not happy. I’m hamming it up a little bit. So naming the emotion, for example, describing it and so on, especially in a hypnotic context, can work very well. However, there are more powerful ways of getting emotions out, especially the unconscious ones. The key to emotions – would you like to know how to do that, tell emotional stories that elicit states? The key to doing the whole thing is: 1.

Realizing that emotions are created or flow from character.

If there’s no character, there’s no emotion. If you don’t like the hero, you don’t care about him, you don’t care what happens to him. So at some level, people need to identify with the story, and character is part of what happens with that. The next part of the triangle is: 2.

Action.

Character flows from action, doesn’t it? There’s an old saying. There are various versions of it, which is something along the lines of, sew a thought, reap an action; sew and action, reap a habit; sew a habit, reap a destiny. Or, change your thought and an action, change your actions and you change a habit, change your habits and you change your destiny. There are variations of the whole theme. Student:

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Could you repeat that? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

Do you want the sewing version or the changing version. It doesn’t really matter. Sew a thought, reap an action; sew an action, reap a habit; sew a habit, reap a destiny. Or there might be a character in the middle of that. Sew a habit, reap a character; sew a character, reap a destiny. That’s how it works. So thoughts deliver actions, actions create habits, habits form your character and your character defines your destiny. That’s kind of how I think about it. Is this useful? So character and action on their own are of very little value unless there’s a situation or a context in which they all occur. I stood up to a person. Am I a person of character? That person is a little four-year-old child who doesn’t even know me from Adam. Okay, I’m standing up to you now. I stood up to a man with a gun threatening to shoot me. Is that a different scenario? Yes. So the action within the content of the context will define your character.

Student:

Igor:

To clarify to make sure. Action can mean anything as simple as just the way you interact within the context. So an action can be anything of how you interact with the context. Absolutely, freezing in an action and I froze. That’s still an action. Between the action and the context, we get a glimpse of the character, and that in turn gives us emotion. Now the whole thing that fuels this chain, of course, is the stuff that we’ve been talking about already, which are the archetypes. 3.

Archetypes.

Archetypes really are what characters are all about, but you can’t just say, oh, this is the mentor. I was being the mentor type function. Once again, you can’t tell; you must show. If you are advising someone and they end up improving their life, you have become the mentor, have you not? You have adopted the characteristics of a mentor archetype and therefore, the values and the story of you are about your role in the world, shall we say, as being a mentor. Chances are I can be a mentor to you too is kind of the implication. Does that make sense?

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Does everyone know what YouTube is, the tiny little small website that one or two people have heard about. There are all kinds of video clips. I saw an original of this on one of the news programs, but it’s actually on YouTube and you can check it out for yourself. It’s something I saw I think it was last year, and it’s stuck with me since. I couldn’t even believe that I saw this on a public TV station. It was like NBC or something like that. I can’t remember now. Essentially, when the news flashed up, all you saw was a scruffy little dog, happily trotting down the highway. It was like one of these big seven, eight-lane highways with trucks thundering down and so on. You know the kind I mean? He’s just happily just on the hard shoulder trotting along and so on. I’m going, why are they showing us that? Anyway, as he trotting along, within literally seconds the traffic flow is heavy and you can see the dog kind of getting a little bit skittish because it could feel the cars get a little bit close. It was like you look at this and go I hope this is not what I think it is. Sure enough a few moments later, the skittishness comes a little bit too late. The dog gets hit, he spins out and ends up somewhere in the middle of a seven-lane highway and cars are kind of swerving to get past him, but you can see he’s in trouble. He’s not moving particularly well. I think he’s still breathing. You can kind of see a little bit of it, but he’s out for the count and now I am shocked because I don’t think I want to see what happens next. The cars are still going past him and big old trucks. You can see the fur ruffling as the traffic just starts zipping by, and really it’s only a matter of time and then it gets worse. Another dog comes past on exactly the same hard shoulder and sees the first. I’m going, I don’t want to have this – I like animals. I do not want to see this happening again. The dog looks over and sees, of course, the dog in distress, the other dog in distress. It’s kind of weird. You could almost watch his thought process from his actions. He walks, he looks, he turns, he looks again, he turns and then he watches the traffic. At this point part of me is thinking be sensible, don’t do what I

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think you’re about to do. Sure enough, my powers of prediction are kind of pretty much up there. He starts to cross the lane, one lane. Cars are zooming past. His tail’s hit by one car, but he’s still okay, two and three lanes. He’s right next to the other dog standing there in the middle of this flow of traffic. Remember, the dog is in the middle of a highway, and cars, trucks and everything are going past. I can’t help but ask myself at this point, what would I have done if I was there?

The dogs are roughly equal size. He grabs the other dog by the throat where the collar would have been, and he does it in a way that looks gentle. Then he begins to drag it, one or two lanes. Cars are still zooming past, and a few times he almost gets hit. In fact, I think you can actually see his tail being spun out a second time, three lanes. Eventually, they get to the hard shoulder. He pulls him clear across the motorway or the highway as you’d call it, and saves the other dog. You can check this out on YouTube if you want. If a dog can act that noble, when it really shouldn’t then perhaps we can learn something from that too, isn’t there? Would it be fair to say that an emotion was experienced in this room? Yes? Would it be fair to say that, that dog probably had more character than many Hollywood films you’ve seen? Isn’t it the action combined with the context that makes all the difference? Most importantly, when you think about why you felt the way you did, it’s not so much the action and the context, although those are the vehicles that allow things to come together, what those things did is create a force inside your mind, much like two magnets coming together or two flows of water coming together. It creates a flow, a force, a mental force, which is the archetype of the helper, the rescuer or the good Samaritan, to use a popular label for the whole thing. Does that make sense?

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The reason we look at a mammal, an animal and, let’s be honest, how many people here at some level wished that you could be just as noble as that dog was? I certainly did. The reason for that has nothing to do with the dog. It has to do with the archetype that, that dog represents inside you. The only reason, by the way, that you could be moved by that story is because you have those forces inside you. In other words, you’re capable of it. Whether or not you live up to yourself is another question. So, do you understand how emotional stories work a little bit better now and that whole dynamic there? Student:

Igor:

The archetypes don’t have to be specific ones we dealt with yesterday, like the shape-shifter, the mentor and so on they can be things we experience inside. I agree with you about that, yes. The point of the archetypes is the label does not matter. It’s the fact that you can recognize them. It’s, shall we say, a universal human experience, and people will recognize them because it’s just part of our makeup. Now if you want to label it one thing or another, I mean that’s really that Jung did was, to identify patterns or psychological forces, shall we say that everyone has. Has anyone here ever listened to a fairytale and liked it at some point in their life? It’s because we’ve identified those very same archetypes and responded to them. It’s just part of how we work. So, can you intuitively choose these things? I think you should. Much more so than following the categories I gave to you yesterday because if those labels don’t mean anything to you, then they will mean nothing. Notice how any story that I’ve told hasn’t – except for the one I made slight mistake in – hasn’t actually labeled the figures as to what they’re supposed to be, right? Except for the one, and I apologize. It won’t happen again. Well, it might. The point is you start, like everything else, like what we’ve been studying all the way from day one, you start right here. This is the archetype. This is what will tell you what it is. If you need an emotion – for example, in this,

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how would you categorize the emotion you guys just experienced? It’s difficult to put a name on it, right? Courage has something to do with it, but it’s not everything, is it? Relief is partly to do with it. There’s suspense, empathy and tension. So there’s a whole list of emotions going on, isn’t there? Pride. I would think that’s a huge component. Wouldn’t that be fair to say? When you listen to that word pride and your association to it, doesn’t it match very strongly the experience you guys had? Once again, notice how the labels and explanations came afterwards. The only thing I knew is first, that when I watched the story it affected me. When I first told the story, it affected me more. Each time I’ve told it since, this bit here has gotten way stronger. That tells me that I’ve plugged into a major archetype. Can I name it? Maybe if I think about it long enough. Nobility might be something close to it, but do I have to name it? No. Did you all get it? Did you feel it? That’s all that matters, isn’t it? Does that kind of make sense? So I’m going to ask you guys to do a little exercise on emotional stories or stories that are emotional amplifiers. The one thing I want to add onto this whole thing here – this is good for all emotions. There is one particular category that I think is very useful when it comes to changing minds in particular, and that’s largely because it’s, well, we’ve talked about it already. It triggers the right parts of our brains, the amygdala. Anyone here heard the expression breaking the ice? That’s, of course, we recognize now as hypnotists that the amygdala is being triggered and resetting a lot of neuro-pathways so you have a chance to introduce something new, right? Has anyone ever heard of the idea or the crazy concept of using humor to break the ice? I know it’s a crazy concept. So humor triggers the amygdala because of the way fundamentally it works. This is just the way I kind of conceptualized the idea of humor. The idea of humor is you’re leading the mind down a particular path. There is an expectation that we’ll reach somewhere. To use a very corny example, just for the sake of obviousness, if I tell you a man walks into a bar, it

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already sets a scene. You expect something to happen. If I say a man walks into a bar and says ouch – cheesy, I know, a little bit. There are a few snickers, but you realize that I’m talking about a very different bar now, don’t you? I have taken away your expectation, and I’ve suddenly ended up somewhere completely different. This is what was expected. This is not expected, but relevant. You just have to make an instant shift inside your mind to understand what this is. Does that make sense? So this is the essence, and the essence of what I call an agreement reversal. You’re getting them to agree to go down one lane to have a certain set of expectations, then you violate those expectations in such a way that they realize that all along you were going down this path, and they thought you were going down this one. So you can’t just violate randomly. That’s kind of absurdist humor. I mean have you ever heard of it? I saw this humor as something like this. The French used to love this one back in the ‘60s when they were all going weird and whacky. So an absurdist joke would go something like, why did the chicken cross the road? A fish; it’s French I don’t know why. It’s absurdist humor because it breaks expectation, but in a way that does not relate to the expectation at all or the way the expectation was set. That’s why most people don’t get it. It’s just like it has nothing to do with it. Most jokes break the expectation, but in a way that’s actually relevant to the initial buildup. Do you see how that works? That’s what makes it funny. That’s why we end up laughing. Of course, it helps if you enjoy the joke yourself because otherwise there’s not much H+ going on, is there? You’re not going first yourself really, are you, otherwise? So, do you understand the essence of humor in terms of at least how I conceptualize it? What I’d like you to do is to find a partner, spend five minutes apiece telling each other an emotionally charged story. Use contrast of context to create more emotion out of it, and if the situation should allow, by all means feel free to release the tension with humor if it’s appropriate, although

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sometimes, like with the story that I just told, really you don’t want to release the tension, do you? In fact, your audience might feel cheated if you release the tension. That, by the way, is called a gag. A gag is a cheap piece of humor that doesn’t lead anywhere because you release tension that actually was valuably building into something else, but we don’t need to go down the whole performance element. That’s a completely different kettle of fish there, and that’s not a chicken joke, all right? Do you understand the nature of the exercise? What I want you to do is begin at the place we’re always beginning. Begin with a state inside yourself. If you want to hypnotize – do you remember the irresistible induction? Where do you begin the irresistible induction? By going there first, by introducing trance yourself first. So, in terms of your emotional story, can all of you think of an emotion that is relatively easy for you to access that you would like someone else to experience right now, anyone? Five people- getting there slowly, good. I’d like you to think about that emotion exactly as we did earlier on today. It’s the same pattern really it’s just the purpose changes slightly. Think about that emotion, and when you have it strongly enough, allow your mind to start roaming through contexts, situations that may be personal to you, something you actually experienced. They may be personal to someone else, something someone told you or you may just get a flash of the situation. The image I just got in my mind was like a clearing inside a forest with a nice polished silver armor. I guess it was the flashing, maybe that was what it was, but you have a situation that will be your context, and you weave your story around that, but the emotions will drive the content, just as with all your other stories. Does that make more sense? Does it make it a little bit easier to do? Yes or no? Maybe so? Student: ♦

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Should the story be true that we’re telling?




Igor:

Right now it does not matter. We’ll talk about truth value to the story after the next break, if that’s okay with you. Please remind me because it’s an important question to ask. For the moment, I only care about the emotion. I don’t care about the truth value of it, but we will come back to the elements of truth shortly, five minutes apiece. Find a partner and just make them feel. Let’s just take a very quick break. Just like 15 minutes so you can chill out, clear your heads and so on, but maintain the atmosphere, the vibe you just created so when we come back, we can talk a little about that and see how we might use that in an influential process. Would that be nice to do? Let’s be back in 15 minutes please.

Igor:

Before the break, you all had a chance to adapt our, shall we say, deeper level storytelling process to tell different kinds of stories. You should at least have told one story of you today and one story that’s emotionally charged, that gets strong emotional reaction out of people. Would that be fair to say? Did you enjoy that? Did you notice how essentially the same dynamic is at play, it’s just your intention changes, and so that changes the formulation, the things that end up coming up? Did you kind of notice how that works? We didn’t exactly give you a lot of time to think about it, did we? So one of the things that people might ask is, does this stuff work in real life? I mean it’s all well and good to give people a nice emotional experience, and let’s go hug a tree and I love you, man. It’s great. What about the more hard

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bitten, hard-nosed people out there, the practical, sensible types that couldn’t tell a metaphor from a door? Will it work on people like that as well? Consider this, I mean ideas, we live in a world of ideas, and some are attractive ideas, some are inspiring ideas and so are ugly ideas that somehow have a strange way of drawing in people anyway. For example, as you’re all aware, Germany went through a rather ugly period of history not that long ago. I mean some 60 or 70 years ago, preWorld War II, the whole Nazi Germany. One of the things that they were doing, of course, is they were destroying literature, books that essentially represented ideas that might be threatening to the ideology of the time. The whole regime was a very bad regime. Bad things happened. Wars started. People got killed and slaughtered and, well, we all know history, right. So we have a nation that is destroying art or literature in order to preserve an ideology. They’re hard bitten. They’ve been showing they’ll be ruthless and go to any extent to fulfill their ideological outcomes, right? Of course, at the end of World War II, there was a big push of the allied forces; people come up through Italy, through France and so on, pushing Germany back. Hitler had this whole crazy policy. Let’s destroy everything. If we can’t have it, no one can, you know, that kind of thing. A nice, happy, let’s love the world type of mentality, of course. Something that a lot of people don’t know occurred in the middle of that war. Some 700 years now, some 600 years then, there was a little part of Italy that you may have even heard of called Florence. Outside of Florence there’s a bridge called the Ponte Vecchio. It’s famous because one of the most famous Italian poets had an experience there when he was a young man. As he walked past the Ponte Vecchio, he saw a girl crossing the bridge. Her name was Beatrice, and this was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was a little younger than him, and he fell in love with her. He only saw her three or four times in his life. Then she was taken by the plague, which

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was making its way through Europe at the time, and it really affected him. To him it felt as though a gateway to Heaven had shut. Years went by and he forgot about this vision of beauty, and he married and had children and so on. Then he fell into a depression, a kind of a psychosis almost, when he actually wrote his own story out of that Hell. You may be familiar with the idea of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which starts with inferno, his descent into Hell, which is really a description of his inner world, is it not? His personal blueprint at the time. Now he was a very honest man in terms of his poetry, at least as best we can tell, because as he documented his journey into Hell, at one point he needed someone to help guide him back out into Heaven, to make a divine comedy, not a tragedy. That person was Beatrice. She came to him at the lowest point in his journey, at the point when despair had taken over beyond anything else, and he saw her in this metaphorical world standing on that bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, in such pristine perfection. He captured the mood so perfectly because he felt it. For the next 600 years, people could not stop talking about that, but it’s just words, isn’t it? How could an idea like that stand up to a brutal regime like Nazi Germany? In 1944 – maybe 1945, I’m not entirely sure – allies are pushing through Italy, primarily the Americans. Germany is fiercely defending every inch of ground. They are destroying every single landmark that could be of use to the allied forces. They’re destroying weapons that they leave behind. They’re destroying buildings that could be used as fortification. They’re destroying food and fuel supplies. Very importantly, they’re destroy bridges to prevent them from crossing, to delay them enough that maybe that can rally and have a pushback. But the allies keep coming. They get up to Florence. The German army has no problem destroying these ancient bridges, these ancient constructs, monuments and so on until they get to the Ponte Vecchio. Because Beatrice had stood on that bridge once, and because one man was so moved by it that he wrote about that bridge when he was at his lowest point.

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Because so many people drew comfort from that image, the Germany officers got on the radio, talked to the Americans and said, if you promise not to cross this bridge, we promise to leave it in tact. The bargain was made. No one crossed that bridge. Of course, symbols don’t work, do they? Stories can’t work in the face of brutality, can they? What I’d like to explore as our final point for today is the seventh kind of story – the teaching tale. Teaching tales can be used for many things. They have also been abused in many things, but really the ethics is what you carry along with you. Essentially, it follows the same pattern as this. It’s really what you have been doing all along, only this time you’re using an external projection to drive the field of emotions, which will drive the story. This stuff used to be your own personal experience, did it not? What if this stuff becomes someone else’s experience now, a buyer that just can’t make up his mind, a family that’s dysfunctional in some ways or a boss looking to hire an employee? These are all situations, and all of them have needs and desires, do they not? There is an archetype or some kind of force influencing that person’s choices, whether they be good or bad. We all have enough capacity to empathize to understand the situation and get a sense of what that field of emotions might be like can we not? So, if we were to enter this reality for long enough to sense this, to give us a sense of a different context where something similar enough is occurring in which there are parallels, could we not talk to the unconscious mind directly about what it’s experiencing to what you have? Would that not be fair? Could you not then, for want of a better word, build a bridge that the unconscious mind is so inspired by that it will not break it down no matter what? That will stay there for it no matter how bad things seem to get, and be the very thing that allows this situation to resolve differently. Wouldn’t that be something? The only difference from what you’ve done so far – and actually, I suspect you’ve already done it without really realizing it – is instead of just having a situation that mirrors this, even though of course it won’t necessarily be a

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one-to-one relationship, there’s an outcome at the end too. Something has changed. You’re not running the old loop anymore. If you recall our basic trauma model here, this is how problems loop as well, isn’t it? Whether it’s traumatic or just a minor problem, they still loop, don’t they? To release the problem, we need to change the way it loops, from solution to solution, rather than from problem to problem. So, if our stories lead somewhere other than the loop that it normally runs – so this is the loop that it normally runs, but if it now leads somewhere outside of that loop, it presents a pattern that the unconscious mind can follow. You’ve taught the unconscious mind how to be different, how to behave different, how to feel different, how to move different, how to think differently. Does that make sense? All it requires, really, is exactly the same process you did with an intention for something to move forward one step. Does that kind of make sense? Let’s take some examples of the kind of situations where we wish to have influence, where we can relatively easily identify what the situation is. The context we find ourselves in, so we can see really just how easy it is to create this whole metaphorical resolution whether it’s a sales or a leadership or a learning issue, it doesn’t really matter. What kind of situations spring to mind, folks? What kind of situations would you like to help others overcome or get through? Bring a project? Bring a project home to get it accepted or to just get it to fruition, to completion? So we have a situation where the project has begun already or that is running through, like people are running out of energy, or is it that they’re just running in circles but not really achieving much? Give me a more concrete version of the problem. Okay, so we can all imagine a situation where there are several players. How many people would be involved let’s say? Let’s say 10 people, all in a group, all working on a project, but somehow they’re all basically, to use a metaphor, cycling on cycles without wheels. They’re just pedaling and pedaling and pedaling, but it’s not going anywhere.

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Can you all envision that scenario inside your minds? As you put yourself into it as, say, one of the players in that drama, what feelings emerge? Hopelessness, frustration and despair, remember this is a work project. It’s not like your whole life. Like, oh my God, my life is over. So, we’ve got to put it into context as well. This is a work project, right? Frustration I would think would be more prominent. Stuck might be another one– stagnating and fatigued. Would it be fair that anger maybe is a little bit as well? Could be anxiety, in terms of the quality of the outcome, we have a sense of what makes this up. Now the more we know about the context, the more we’ll know which one will be accurate. Let’s choose a simple theme for now just for the sake of argument. Is that okay with you guys? Let’s go with frustration, because I think, that’s the one we can mostly agree on. Would that be fair to say? There will be some frustration. So you’re in this context. You’re working with 10 other colleagues. Everyone is doing different things. Everyone is busy, but nothing is happening. It’s almost like the thing that you’re doing he’s undoing and so on. You feel that. Now as you take that feeling, go back to the strange new world exercise and let your mind start scanning, or shall we say images arise, or ideas arise. Feel that feeling and ask yourself either, where have I felt this before, or what else feels like this frustration? That specific kind of frustration and by the way what kind of thoughts arise? What kind of images or ideas arise? A hamster running on a wheel. Great! What other kind of images arise? He’s making a model car and he can’t find the right part to go into the car to complete it. What else? A long highway running off into the horizon. Now does it match the experience? Let’s take the long highway one. Does it match in terms of how it feels to you? The frustration of not getting anywhere, but you’re working, working, working? What would have to happen to that highway so there is hope for it ending, even though it doesn’t? Like maybe someone getting lost on the highway perhaps. So there’s an idea of circularity in some sense, right? Do you see

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where we’re going with this? We’re adding an element to match the experience. Now, if I start talking about taking a road trip in the U.S. on a highway somewhere and getting lost, I’m thinking I’m sure I’ve been here before, I don’t seem to be making any progress and I’m starting to run out of gas. Would it be reasonable to assume that the average human being would say, hey, are you talking about project X? No? If I started talking about how I kept hamsters or a pet when I was young and it was running around in its cage until one day I started realizing there was something kind of weird going on with it. It was kind of getting less and less energized and it just didn’t like it. I thought, is it sick? I took it to the doctors. Can you see where the story is going? Again, does it match the project on a neurological level? Do people say oh, are you talking about my project? Is it the same as saying, oh, when papa bear smacked mama bear around because he was drunk, that’s a very different kind of story that’s trying to be – you see, that’s the kind of story the conscious mind comes up with when it’s trying to create the same structure. The kind of stuff you came up with, like this, without even thinking about it, those are the true isomorphic metaphors, the true teaching tales, and you came up with them in seconds, right? There’s only one piece missing so far, isn’t there? We have the frustration, don’t we? We have the activity – and if we know more about the project and the kinds of things that are going wrong with it, we can refine our story, our idea to match, but what’s missing? It’s the happy ending, right? Every fairytale has a happy ending, doesn’t it? It doesn’t lead anywhere. If you’re just driving down the highway and that’s it, you’re going yeah, the drive was frustrating. That’s it. I just kept driving. I’m still driving there now. Wait a second, right? The hamster could be running today still, or the hamster gave up and died. Are these all happy endings? Does this help the unconscious mind resolve the issue, the conflict?

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Then we must do something to find that resolution, must we not? Let’s go back to the project again. Let’s say a miracle occurs. Somehow everyone just something clicks and they finish the project. It gets done. How does it feel from the moment of it clicking to the moment of it getting done, and how do they feel when it’s done? Any ideas? Pride? What about in the process of it being done? Accomplishment? How about maybe energized? Enthusiastic? Anyone see like you’re running the race and you see the end, you’re almost there and suddenly you have that extra burst of wind? By the way, do you notice how in trying to get you to feel what they need to feel? I’m already making up the end of the story, aren’t I? Or, I’m having support metaphors that can fit into the story. Remember when we talked about this before the reference metaphors or the miniphors that fit inside the other metaphors, right? So let’s take this idea of energy leading to pride and relief. Would that be a good way of finishing this cycle of a project failing? Yes? So go ahead and think through that as an emotional chain of frustration. You have that image of like a road or a hamster or I can’t remember what the other thing was. Just make a mental skip towards something clicks, there’s an excitement. There’s a conclusion. There’s pride and there’s relief at the end of it. Just run yourself through that loop a few times. Feel that more extended loop of emotions, and ask yourself, what images come up? What thoughts? What ideas? You don’t have to make them up, by the way, folks because it’s not about you. Just let something come and just notice what it is. What springs to mind?      

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Hamster growing wings is one thing. Good. Training for a marathon. Sign on the road that says next exit. Stopping to check the GPS. Crest of a hill followed by a beautiful lake. A hitchhiker that knows the way.




Now think about it. Just to use this as an example, any consultants here? You should be laughing inside right now. Do you see how quickly you came up with a way of adapting the core idea that just matched the experience, told about the experience and allows you to just tweak the story slightly to create an actual resolution to it? Student: ♦

Igor:

If you’re telling a hamster story with a hitchhiker and a boardroom, now that sounds a bit like a Quentin Tarantino story, doesn’t it?

I am not suggesting, by the way, that we follow all these threads at once. We just follow one. If we’re going to follow the road story, we may have the exit sign, we may have the hitchhiker. The point is you can just cycle through these things until something comes. Your final story may have nothing to do with it, by the way. The point is as you’re developing that you suddenly go, you know what? It’s this. Absolutely! He’s saying in a corporate context, in a boardroom, metaphors are very, very common, and I agree with you. The hamster one might not fit the context of a boardroom as much. It can be pulled off, but then it does violate a little bit of the vibe slightly because of the associations to hamsters, right? Whereas the road trip, the sports car and so on, they’ll go yes, I understand, I see where you’re going with this, and they will enjoy it. One of my cousins is a management consultant, a partner at one of the big firms here in the U.S. He used to tell me about another partner they used to call Yoda because he would turn up and he would say nothing. People would argue and argue and argue and he would be very calm, pleasant and listen. He would have a lot of these authority signals without actually imposing himself on anyone. Eventually, they’d stop and say, what do you think, Bob? He’d go, it’s kind of Toyota. They’d all look and they’d look at each other and then go, he’s a genius. Of course, it’s like Toyota. They’d all be ending up finding out their own solutions to it.

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Now the thing is in order to get to that kind of level, you need to have a very powerful confidence in what this chain does. I don’t recommend you begin there. Occasionally, you will have a good hit and you’ll seem like God to people. That’s great, but you will have a lot of misses along the way too. The easier way of doing it is to start with that emotional field that we talked about, the problem or frustration in our context, followed by some kind of something changes, the dynamic gets switched around, you feel enthused, you know where you’re going and then the relief of actually achieving it, the pride of getting there. So, to run with the kind of metaphor that’s building here, the driving, the frustration and so on. Do you see how easy it is to start developing these metaphors that have a structure? You can see the structure mapping across quite easily, although your average person won’t say, oh, is the project a car? Am I the driver? Are you the co-driver? Who is the passenger? They don’t think in these ways. If there’s a fear of them or there’s some kind of a threat that someone might start going, oh, I get what this is going to, would you like to know a very simple way of making it more difficult, making it less likely that they do so, that they penetrate the symbolic reality consciously? The answer is very simple. It’s called details. Irrelevant details. This car had the most bizarre gear stick I’ve ever seen. It had like this turning knob thing and it had like stitching on the sides. I’ve never experienced one. I put my hand on it and it felt weird. It’s irrelevant, but it seems relevant, doesn’t it, to the story at least? So it distracts the conscious mind. Details distract the conscious mind. Hence, less analysis will go on and so on. Does the idea of how to create these things make sense, just the general idea? What I’d like to do with you now is I want you to have an experience of doing this teaching tale process twice. The first time we’re going to do it like this with relatively little instructions. It’s about the emotional field, and you’re going to extend that field to encompass some kind of resolution and the

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emotional vibe that brings with it. Let that generate an image, and then create the story. I want you to get together with a partner. Remember the strange new world exercise where you just close your eyes and you start describing stuff? Actually, why don’t you just do it as a demo? Would that be easier? All right. Can someone give me a specific context in which they would like to come up with a teaching tale to resolve a problem, a conflict? Learning how to have fun, that’s one example I’ll need something more specific than this. It can be therapeutic or business-oriented. It doesn’t matter. A client with three potential career choices. Are you thinking of someone specifically? What’s the dilemma? Choose. So it’s just the ability of making the choice. He doesn’t know which one’s which. Do you want to use this one as an example, or should we try a few more just to see which one. We’ll just try a few a more to see where it goes. A client that’s very discouraged. What kind of client and what kind of discouragement? Someone in therapy who’s discouraged, because he’s not making progress. Someone looking for a job and is discouraged because he’s not finding a job. Is that correct? Okay, that’s getting more specific. That’s good. A basketball player who can’t make free throws, in other words, he chokes when it comes to that pressure point. That would be an excellent one just for teaching purposes because, you see, that’s a little bit more clear than the others in terms of the situation. I’ll happily take the other ones as well, and you can use them in your examples. It’s just that I want demonstrate something very clear to make the principle obvious. I think that’s my favorite one so far. A company that wants to connect with their customers on an emotional level, but doesn’t want to pay the money that it takes to get there, or the market research they need to get there. In a therapy situation, someone wants to quit smoking but hasn’t been able to. One more.

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A person who refuses to buy a car without the approval of his wife is a relatively common problem, by the way. A kid having problems learning at school because everything is boring or not interesting enough. Of those, which do you collectively find the most interesting? Is basketball the strongest emotion or did something else have more energy for you? Show me a show of hands. Who likes the basketball idea over anything else? Baseball, right. All right, do you want to come up? Give him a nice round of applause. It’s your example, right? You need to be familiar with the example. Come on up. Take this. Have a seat please. You need to be familiar with your own examples because, otherwise, you don’t have unconscious instincts as to how to resolve these things. Does that make sense? So all we’re going to do is get in touch with the emotional field, an extension of the field and the imagery that comes out of it. I don’t care if the story is true or not yet. That’s a sophistication we can add later. Does that make sense? Describe the scene to me again. Do you actually know someone like this? Student:

Yeah, Shaq.

Igor:

Okay, I have no idea who that is.

Student:

Shaquille O'Neal.

Igor:

He’s an actual player. So, we’re going to imagine that you’re his coach and you’re going to help him through this. You seem to know this player. How is he feeling about the whole thing in terms of like every time – how is he feeling when he comes up for a free throw and just before he starts missing and choking or whatever?

Student:

Just frustration. He can’t make it. He sees it, knows what he’s supposed to do. He’s done it a thousand times, and he can’t get it to do it.

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Igor:

So he can’t get it to do it. Before he can’t get it to do it, how is he feeling inside his body, for example? What are the emotions going through?

Student: Anxiety, frustration. Igor:

Anxiety, frustration, what else? Or are those pretty much the main ones.

Student:

Yes, simple.

Igor:

Okay, good. So we have a performance context, someone feeling frustrated and anxious, and now that they’re in frustration and anxious, of course, that’s a fantastic state of mind to be in to make the throw, right? What might he feel like if he was doing a free throw and absolutely nailing it every time? What would be going on at that point?

Student:

Confidence.

Igor:

So there’s confidence. Anything else? How would he be thinking? How would he be feeling?

Student:

He’d be happy. He’d be feeling accomplishment.

Igor:

So after it would be a kind of accomplishment afterwards, and whilst he’s doing it, he would be confident, maybe a little focused. Think about it in terms of your own life. When have you been in a high performance state – you felt confident, your mind was kind of clear and you were focused on what you were doing? Go ahead. And not trying. Exactly. Do you see where we’re going with this? You get a sense of what that emotion would be like. Here’s what we want to do. First, just close your eyes. Just put yourself in that place of the anxiety and the frustration, as though you were Shaq. It sounds like an Irish bar. So you’re in that place, you actually put yourself in the activity so you’re anxious and afraid and the shots are missing. Run that loop a few times so you feel that emotion, shall we say.

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Then allow the scene to fade and ask yourself, what else feels like this? Just notice things coming up. Just name them as they do. You don’t have to be right or wrong or make any sense out of it yet. Just name what else feels like this. It might be personal things, and you don’t have to share all those if you don’t want to. It might be just random scenery. What comes up right now? Just notice the feeling and ask yourself, what else feels like this? Student:

Deciding whether to take a course in hypnosis.

Igor:

Excellent! So someone deciding should I take this course? I don’t know. What kind of thoughts are going through that person’s mind.

Student: ♦ ♦

Igor:

Is the cost worth the benefit? Do I have the money for it?

Okay, so it’s kind of a pressure there, like making the right choice rather than wasting the opportunity and so on.

Student: And the time. Igor:

There’s the time, of course, because there’s only a window. Otherwise, the seminar is over and you can’t make it, right?

Student: And the time that it takes to take the course. Igor:

Right, so there’s energy invested in the whole process too, so you’re exposing yourself in that sense, and it will be very disappointing if you fail as a result. I like that. Now notice how it may not necessarily hit straightaway with everyone yet, because that’s a symbolic representation he has. This is why it will work so well if he invests the story with actual emotion because then the connection gets made unconsciously. Does that make sense? So now what I want you to do is just jump forward to the scene where Shaq is actually coming up.

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Normally, he would feel anxiety, the pressure and the fear and so on, but this time for some reason he doesn’t. He’s calm, he’s focused, he’s confident and honestly, it doesn’t worry him. He doesn’t care too much either way. He just knows he’s going to make it, so he doesn’t even consider the other possibilities. Can you feel that as a vibe? It’s actually a pretty good vibe, isn’t it? So now let your mind continue to scan and think about what else feels like this, especially in the context of hypnosis? Something else might pop in, by the way, which has nothing to do with hypnosis, which gives you the back end to it too, which is fine. Just let things come up. Student:

Trans-meditation.

Igor:

Trans-meditation and so on.

Student:

Waking up from a deep sleep, going to sleep.

Igor:

Who already has a story that he’s telling? Who already knows what it is? Let me lay out the pieces here. Do you recognize the story already, by the way?

Student:

No.

Igor:

Let me lay out the pieces for you guys. A person is making an important decision about going to a hypnosis thing. Like hey, I have this hypnosis course coming up. It’s a great opportunity, but it’s a great expense, great investment in time. I don’t know if I’ll make the right choice. Will I miss an opportunity, but I have to go there and do this, and all these doubts are running through your mind, right? Then somehow magically trance or meditation happens, which has nothing to do with hypnosis, of course, and what happens to the experience of that person whist in trance meditating?

Student: Igor:

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Calm, relaxing and emptiness. An emptiness, calm, relaxing and so on and, as a result, of all this what happens to his decision, to his choice? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Student:

It sort of flows.

Igor:

It sort of flows. Does this person, or maybe even it’s yourself I guess, do you or this person make a specific choice about the way it flows?

Student:

Sure. Yes.

Igor:

Is it the right choice?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

How does do you feel about that? How does that person feel about that choice? He feels very good at this point.

Student: Igor:

Very good. Do you begin to see the story a little bit more clearly now? I kind of almost connected the dots for you, but I didn’t really do it. He said it. He just didn’t recognize it. Are you recognizing the situation a bit more clearly now?

Student:

Some.

Igor:

That’s fine. By the way, this will happen. Remember when the car thing came from me yesterday. I didn’t know what it meant at first. How many people here already in terms of you guys already know what story is going to resolve the problem? How many people here? Put your hands up if you know what story to tell right now that will resolve the choking and anxiety during basketball? So, only three or four of you well, let’s try this. Feel free to come back again. What about telling about – let’s say it’s my experience, I was Shaq. I was going to hypnosis and you know hypnosis is important to me. See the analogy? To be honest with you, I don’t have that much time to waste because I’ve got these clients and so on. I really want to learn new things. I want to make sure I make the right choice about where to go and what to do. I don’t really have that much time to waste on the wrong kind of courses. I have to make sure I make the right choice and that’s a problem for me.

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I’ll give you an example. I’ve just come back from this amazing 10-day conversational hypnosis course in Los Angeles, USA, and if I ever get a chance to buy the DVDs, of course I will. Here’s the crazy part. I was thinking about coming. I got this email saying, do you want to come to this course. Now is the time. Places are limited. They’re starting to sell out, so just by getting the email, I was excited and at the same time I felt this huge pressure because it sounded like the kind of thing I wanted to do. I really wanted to do this thing, but at the same time, there was a lot of pressure because places were selling out and so on. The question is can I make up my mind in time to make it? Or, is that kind of pressure the wrong thing to respond to because I might buy a ticket to a seminar I don’t even like and I’ll have wasted my cash and, more important, I’ll have wasted my time, and I don’t have much time to waste here. I really don’t have much time. So the more I thought about it, I started getting the feeling of kind of really kind of nervous about the whole thing, and then my thoughts are racing. What if I make the wrong decision? Maybe I should go and then I’d learn some things. But maybe I shouldn’t go because I’d be better off doing the work and then I thought well, maybe it’s the money. Maybe I could find the time, maybe I don’t have the time, but I could make the time if it was worth it, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. You’re just going through, oh man I was confusing the hell out of myself. Luckily, I love hypnosis. I really love hypnosis. I really love it because it’s there for me when I need it. Do you know what I mean? I don’t know if there’s any situation where I need it more than when my mind is going stir crazy. I need that kind of stuff, right? I don’t know if you know this, but when someone goes into a trance – let me help you with this one. When someone goes into a trance – or the more subtle version, when someone goes into a trance, the first thing that occurs is that all the kind of mental pressure just starts to calm down. That’s why I love hypnosis because my thoughts calm down, but it’s not like I get all spaced out and ditsy. It’s actually really focused.

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People don’t realize how focused you get in hypnosis, but it’s calm focus rather than stress. People always think this is focus. No, this is calm, and I have been there many, many times. So many I can’t even count because normally I go into hypnosis, this calm focused place when I don’t really need it. It’s just a good chill out time. There’s not much pressure in life. It’s just a good way of making a mental break. Do you know what I mean? This time I really needed it because the dilemma was huge. It sounded like exactly what I wanted, and yet I wasn’t sure was this the right choice to make? Do you know what I mean? The opportunity was starting to slip. I got a second email. The course was half full. I was starting to – I was risking missing out. Let me help you once again, folks. I was risking missing out. Did you get that? I was risking missing out. I’ve got to tell you, it didn’t make my choice any easier, but just at that point I remembered what it felt like to be in trance. I’ve done it a hundred times, a thousand times before, and I know it feels good. I’ve done it, right? Do you know what I mean? I’ve done it loads of times, and you know what happened? Exactly at that point, it was there for me. My mind calmed down and my doubts evaporated. My focus was like a laser, but it was easy, like it wasn’t me doing it. It wasn’t me. It was the other me. I tried not to think about the seminar because I was enjoying clearing the space, but actually, all that came to mind was a very clear vision of me being there. This is what I had been waiting for all this time, and really the only thing that was going on, the only doubt was really more about me than anything else. So I may miss out more by not going than by going. Do you know what I mean? This became so clear. It wasn’t like I was working this out inside my mind. It’s just I looked at the situation, and I saw exactly what action was required. I just knew it. Do you know what I mean? I just knew exactly what I had to do. In fact, even thinking about doing something different felt so wrong I couldn’t do it. It was like, have you ever been convinced that this is just the right thing to do? This is the right thing to say. Do you know what I mean? I absolutely knew what I had to do. So I did

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it, and do you know what? I was right. I felt great. So good, in fact, I’ll buy the DVDs when they come out. Do you now understand the story? Can you see the levels that automatically match? Automatically. Can you see how he had the answer before he actually understood it? Do you know why he had the answer before he understood it? Because he was still trying to make sense of it, rather than just going with it. He was still trying to construct a story, rather than realizing the story is there, let it emerge, and primarily – and correct me if I’m wrong – because he wasn’t attaching the feeling of being on the basketball court being called Shaq, and standing on the free throw line. He wasn’t feeling standing on the free throw line with a ball in hand whilst he was talking about someone making a decision about a hypnosis program. That’s the bit I was missing. In other words, he wasn’t here whilst he was talking about that, and that’s why he couldn’t make the connection because the bridge hadn’t formed yet. Does that make sense? It is actually very easy when you allow that bridge to form. Does that help you? Was this helpful to you guys? I will come to you in a minute. Was this helpful as a demonstration? Yes? Do you have a question or comment? Let’s give him a round of applause, by the way, just to thank him for that. Do you want to come up just because it’s a longer question? By the way, as he’s coming up for this, one thing I want to try to encourage you guys to do, the process, each of the steps was easy, wasn’t it? The only bit that might be a little bit of a sticking point is the connecting point at the end, right? The thing that makes that easy is can you feel it? That’s it. Can you put yourself into the other person’s shoes and feel what they’re feeling whilst thinking about the new situation that just came up? That connects the dots for you because that is what your unconscious mind does best. Please. Student:

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Really, you just said what I wanted to say, but maybe one thing that might be helpful for getting one’s words where they need to be once they’ve made the bridge, I thought that this targeted innuendo. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

Yes. It’s like a nonsexual innuendo.

Student:

Exactly! In fact, as I was watching this conversation transpire, I thought to myself, we do this all the time and especially comics and people laugh a lot when we use sexual innuendos. This is no different from sexual innuendo, only applied to some other purpose, innuendo nevertheless.

Igor:

Yes, the only difference I would say in terms of the analogy you’re giving us here is we don’t want to be anywhere near as obvious as an innuendo because you don’t want to alert their conscious mind to what’s going on. Does that make sense?

Student: Absolutely. So when you said things like risk, missing out or I know exactly

what to do, I’ve done this many times before… Igor:

The ambiguities, exactly. Can you see, I’m actually talking about playing basketball. I’m actually talking about that, it’s just the nouns that are coming out are about deciding to go to a hypnosis program, but I’m actually talking about throwing a basketball from the free throw line as best I can, not being a basketball player. So thank you. That’s a great idea. Now bear in mind – please come up. Bear in mind, you realize that my little aside – let me help you out, missing out – that’s not how you do it, right? You realize that was more for your benefit than what you actually do in practice. The way to do it in practice is seamless, it’s virtually invisible. So they just think that you’re sharing something about yourself, which you are, but in the sharing process, they’ll get to thinking and connecting, very much like – sorry, I forgot your name over there. Hello. Hi. What was your name again? Richard, thank you for remind me. Very much like Richard came up this morning. Remember, he shared his charming story about how he connected. What we did this morning in terms of storytelling with years of tough situations to deal with, and it just connected for him. The dots just clicked; a mixed metaphor actually. The

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dots connected, the moments just clicked. But that’s exactly what’s going to happen inside the other person’s mind. They’ll go, oh. Has this ever happened to you, by the way? You just talk to people and they say something completely random, and for no reason that you can kind of figure out, you suddenly go oh, I know what to do and it has nothing to do with what they said? Then you say, thanks for helping and they go great, what did I say? I have no idea. All right, off you go. Chances are they accidentally gave you one of these without realizing it. Please carry on. Student:

Well, you kind of answered my question because…

Igor:

I’m good today, aren’t I? Two for two.

Student:

I have two questions, but the question…

Igor:

Tuesday’s the other one. No? Carry on.

Student:

Well, I mean my question is this. ♦

Igor:

How do you make sure that the person doesn’t relate the story you’re saying to what they just presented to you so they don’t start to pick it apart?

That’s an excellent question. The whole point of this – I mean initially the exercise, it doesn’t matter because we’re just doing an exercise right now. This is why it’s called conversational hypnosis. All you’re doing is you’re getting chit-chatty, and your chit-chatting is you might throw in – remember those random analogies. The fourth machine, which they sound like they’re totally something unconnected, you’ll throw three or four of these things out so it kind of misdirects their conscious mind. They just think you’re chit-chatting. Of course, those already have built into them, those analogies to do with performing under pressure, which is the higher level, and performing under

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pressure is an example of maybe people succeeding, and then you chunk it down the other way again, of course. Then you present your metaphor as another one of these little chit-chat like stories but now, of course – first of all, it’s coming at the tail end of some preloading with these other little mini similes or metaphors, and secondly, it just seems like another chit-chat story. It just happens to be something very personal to you. That’s when they’ll switch into it unconsciously rather than consciously because the emotion is what they’ll recognize. If you want to accentuate it, you also include their behavior. So when he’s taking to you about, man I couldn’t make that shot – I’m trying my American best. Man, I couldn’t make that shot! Do you like my American accent? Is it good? It didn’t fool the immigrations either. Then you can actually borrow the mannerisms as part of your story as well and say, you know what? Man, I just couldn’t make up my mind. That’s another layer, at which the unconscious mind recognizes I know what he’s talking about. The emotional one I think is the more important one, but the physiological one is equally – I’ve seen it work equally well. If you just put the two together, I think it seals the deal for you. Does that kind of make sense? Student:

It does make a lot of sense. So this is kind of like nested loops.

Igor:

This is exactly what we’re coming onto, but we’re not talking about it yet. If you want to know about nested loops, by the way, tomorrow is going to be a nice day.

Student:

So my next question is this.

Igor:

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♦

When you were telling the hypnotic story, were you mirroring a different experience as you were telling that story, because I know he was mirroring him missing the basketball with him not being able to go to the seminar or whatever?

♦

Were you mirroring a different experience to get those emotions because I thought that’s kind of how I was supposed to do it?

Sure. I guess the easiest way I can describe what was going on inside me is, back in my mind, I needed to get enough of the emotion of what’s going Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



on to understand it. I put myself into a pressure situation where I didn’t have much time to make the correct choice, and I felt pressure, as a result, of it. I felt that a little bit. Once I had that, I actually consciously forgot about it, and all I thought about was what would I feel like standing on the basketball line having the same sort of thing? The little loop inside. Who here felt a strong emotion where one dog was helping the other across the highway? Have you ever taken a dog’s collar in your mouth gently and dragged him across a highway with four lanes of traffic zooming past you? Yet you could feel it, right? Because the situation was enough to trigger all the other associations to create that. That’s kind of where I was. In my mind I was on the basketball court feeling that kind of pressure and so on, and superimposed on that, it’s almost like watching two movies at the same time, I was sitting in front of my laptop getting an email with an offer to go to a seminar that I really wanted to go to. I was telling both stories and the same time. Does that kind of make sense? Has anyone here ever seen a TV show called Battlestar Galactica? Not the old 60’s show the new weird twisted sci-fi version. The reason I bring this up is because there’s an excellent demonstration of this in the first few episodes where one of the characters – the doctor in it – has kind of a psychotic friend. We’re not even sure if it’s spiritual or psychotic or some implant in his brain. Essentially, there’s someone there that only he can see and no one else can. She talks to him, and he ends up having two conversations. The President is talking to him and saying can you do this? The other person is asking something, and he answers in an ambiguous way that answers both questions correctly. Does that make sense? That’s kind of what’s going on. It sounds a lot more complex than it really is. I’m just going by I feel the ball and I’m watching my emails at the same time, trying to make a decision, they match the feelings and, therefore, they can be the same reality for me. Then what I want to do is only describe one of them.

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Student:

So you took his problem and mirrored that off of something you could experience, and then projected that back with your own…

Igor:

Once I get the emotion, I’m good. Then I only need the two realities. One is the problem reality and the other one is my metaphorical reality, but the emotions are already primed and ready to roll at that point.

Student:

Got it.

Igor:

Of course, he generated the metaphor for me in the live setting. I may have to make this metaphor up as I go along, but I’m still using the feelings to do that. Does that help? Thank you.

Student:

I just want to point out one thing that I noticed during this set.

Igor:

So something you noticed.

Student:

You created a yes set just prior to the suggestions.

Igor:

Probably.

Student:

That was very distinct in my mind. I saw the yes set. I saw it building and building, and then I looked for what’s coming after the yes set and my God, you just threw the suggestions out there.

Igor:

I wouldn’t be surprised, but I couldn’t tell you if I did that on purpose. I’d like to tell you I was smart enough to do it on purpose. All I can tell you is it’s what we talked about earlier today. There should come a point where all this stuff is so instinctive to you, you will naturally choose the right tools without thinking about it. All I was thinking about – I promise you on anything that I can promise you that’s worth anything worth making a promise, all I was thinking of was what was I feeling being on that free throw line and seeing that email and having that conflict going on. Those are the only things I was aware of, and then some words like missing out and so on just became obvious to me. Hence, it may have been more obvious to you. Does that kind of make sense?

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I would totally – I mean I’m sure if you rewind the tape – rewind the tape at home and see if he’s right. It could be an exercise, although you don’t have one yet? Oh, you’d better the tape, hadn’t you? Student:

So buy the tapes.

Igor:

Exactly. No seriously, in terms of what you spotted, I would not be surprised at all if that’s exactly what I did. It sounded like something I would do only I didn’t do it on purpose. Sorry. You just have to accept the fact that you’ll be better than you realize sometimes. Does everyone understand the idea of the exercise? It’s pretty much what we did right up here. The only difference is he’ll be the one ending up telling you the story. You’re just going to coach him to the point where he can tell the story. Does that make sense? Because it’s his story after all, his metaphor and his unconscious that developed the symbols in the first place. Let’s take 10 minutes apiece because I think it’s going to be a little bit more of an involved process. Ten minutes apiece, in pairs, and then we’ll come back here again. It appears that my instructions were less than crystal clear. So in the interest of not embarrassing Swarovski, allow me to add some more crystalline instructions to this. Very simply put, the coach’s job is only to assist the hypnotist in finding the story he’s going to tell. So I’m going to be the hypnotist. We have an invisible coach right here. The coach asks me, Igor, tell me. What is the problem you want to help someone resolve? Well, thank you for asking. The problem I’m thinking of is a little child has ice cream. He drops the ice cream and starts crying, not very happy. Coach goes, great. Igor, close your eyes and put yourself in that scene. Feel what you would feel like if you were that child. How do you feel? I feel upset. I feel like I missed out, and I feel like a little kid throwing his toys because the world’s not fair. Great! Now let that image go and just keep those feelings for a moment, and let whatever thoughts, feelings, sensations or images arise, let that come up. Whatever comes up, what else feels like this sort of situation, and

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the images you just had, of course, a bit of a cliché right now is the idea of don’t cry over spilt milk. I have a sort of milk bottle here. I don’t know what it means yet. So I had an image of a fridge with a milk bottle inside of it. So I guess it’s got to do something with don’t cry over spilt milk, but I don’t know yet, right? Okay, so you had this image of the bottle of milk in the fridge? Yes. So how would you like this kid to resolve the problem? How would he be if it was resolved? Well, either he buys an ice cream and he’s happy again, or probably better still for him there’s a life lesson. He looks at it and goes oh it’s not a big deal. I’ll enjoy the day instead. So he looks at it and he feels different. Put yourself there. You’re looking at it. What would have to happen inside your mind for you to feel different? Well, I’d like to see the whole thing differently and maybe find it funny. A laugh. All right, a laugh. So what else is funny? So now I have an image of a friend of mine going to the fridge to get a glass of milk. He decides to drink from the carton just because he can’t be bothered with a glass and the whole thing just tips all over his face. It’s the funniest thing ever. Now honestly, I had no idea that the image would develop to that point when I asked it, but that’s what came out. Now can you see the message coming through? At first he’s shocked. It’s like the milk’s all gone, but then he realizes what’s happened and it’s just the funniest thing. He’s just laughing and he’s laughing. Of course, you can develop the metaphor that way. Then your coach says, great. Now come on back. Tell me the story. Well, little Johnny, one day my friend and I were at home and he wanted some milk. Do you see where we’re going with this now? Student: ♦

Igor:

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Who tells the story?

Me. It’s always me. The only role the coach has is to help you find the story, find the emotion of the story, find the story and then be someone that you can tell the story to. So I’m doing all the work throughout. He’s only a coach. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



He doesn’t do anything other than assist you get to that point. I confused matters, and I apologize by not letting him tell the story. I just did that more for the sake of speed rather than teasing the story out of him so he could understand it himself, but that if he had told the story that I told, that would have been the complete exercise at that point. Does that make more sense to you guys now? Student:

Would you just tell the story in the way that’s unrelated to the ice cream in terms of what you’re saying?

Igor:

I would imagine that my coach right now is little Johnny who’s dropped his ice cream, and I’m not going to say never mind about the ice cream, let me tell you a story. The context would probably shift, but eventually I’d get around to the story about how my friend and I messed around with an ice cream joke and it was the funniest thing. Now depending on his reaction, at the end of it I might well bring his attention back to the ice cream and say, look, doesn’t that look like milk, but only if he’s already laughing because he’s part of the story. Does that make sense? If he isn’t already laughing, my story hasn’t made it. I need a new story and then it’s just a nested loop, but of course you haven’t covered that yet. Does that help you? Everyone clear on that? One more question over here. Oh, I see. The question is, why do have to have someone else’s problem rather than using ourselves as hypnotists with our own problems? You can tell yourself stories. The only thing is if you already know what the problem is, you’ll be able to see through your own metaphor, and it can still work but it won’t be as clean as what we’re doing here. Right now we’re working on an influence process to influence other people, so you’ll be doing it with other people. This is not a self-hypnosis group. This is not a self-development in that sense. Hence, the exercises are focused on how can you influence others and help them transform, rather than tweaking the exercises to help us transform.

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Student:

Igor:

If in the future I have someone who’s got a problem and I want to help them through that problem, do I do the same process? Amongst other things, yes. This would be something that I would very commonly use. Absolutely. This is just a way of overcoming problems, whether it’s a sales objection, a project problem, an emotional problem, a therapeutic problem, a teaching or learning problem. Have you heard me tell one or two stories whilst we were here? I might have to make a few up as we go. Excuse me, once upon a time, there was a prince, no princess, no a prince of non-gender specific, there you go. All right, let’s do the exercise. Ten minutes apiece please. Who enjoyed the exercise? Interesting? Any questions or comments before wrap things up?

Student: Igor:

No amount of thinking would have gotten me to come up with what I did. So he’s saying that no amount of thinking would ever have gotten him to come up with the story he ended up finding. Would that be fair to say that’s kind of close to where you guys are at? That’s why I keep encouraging you to please stop thinking so much. Will you cut it out? There’s a time for thought. Absolutely! I think it’s an excellent thing to do, but honestly there’s a time when you need to move beyond thought. I’ll give you an example if I may. Years ago as a student, I took up jujitsu lessons as part the university sort of club and so on. They had a unique way of teaching things. As you know, jujitsu is all about taking people’s balance and moving and so on. The irony is when you move slowly, you can take someone’s balance easily because you’re cooperating and it’s easy to do and so on. You find this sweet spot where just doing these crazy ass throws, it’s easy to do and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a pleasure to do. We used to do these things and then just when we started getting comfortable and getting to where now I know how to do this, they’d start putting the pressure on. Maybe there was speed involved or more people

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coming in and so on and it would start getting very messy and start falling apart. Now the most interesting bits come during the grading, the examination, the test because they really like to pressure test to make sure that you know what to do before you go to the next level and so on. So they like to throw everything and the kitchen sink at you. So there I was, I think I was going for my blue or brown belt. I can’t remember which one now. Anyway, these people were running at you, and they were yelling go and there’s people coming here and people coming there, and there was like music in your ears. It’s very distracting, right? You’re trying to get like a good grip and a good throw or a good arm bar, so that you just take this person down and so on. Really, like all Hell is breaking lose. You’re trying to keep track. You’re trying to see people out of your peripheral vision, and saying like if I go for this person, and at some point your mind just goes poof. It’s a little bit like when I was 13 probably, something like that, I was taking French classes in school. I was getting my little je suis un pomme. In case you’re wondering, sometimes they’re called English applies for whatever reason. Anyways, so my father sent me to this French summer camp just to improve my language. It was a great thing. It was based on water sports. You’d paddle during the day. Sometimes you’d like climb a mountain and then the next day you’d take a canoe trip back down the water and so on. On one of these excursions, we got to this little kind of peninsula and it had this huge elephant like rock going over the top. So the instructor said, who is feeling a little adventurous here? So I’m like all right. I think I put my hand up more because I didn’t know what they were asking, but it sounded interesting. So like about a half a dozen or a dozen of us kids followed these guys up. We climbed up this whole mountainside and it all felt very special and

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exciting. They put hard hats on us and a life vest, and one of the instructors there said, okay kids, do you trust us? What’s the answer? No. They said, if you trust us, you can do something that you will remember for the rest of your lives, but you have to do exactly as we say. You see the ledge her? You need to trust us on this. Don’t walk up to it, just stay where you are right now, and when it’s ready one at a time, we want you to run as fast as you can go and when you get to the edge, not before, but when you get to that edge jump as far as you can go. Don’t think, don’t look, just jump and you will remember this for the rest of your life. Who wants to go first? Eventually, one of the kids puts his hand up. He runs and jumps and there’s this scream that is somewhere between terror and delight. He disappears from view. Don’t look. The next one comes up actually, a similar squeal. I’m thinking maybe it might be a French word. I don’t know. Anyway, somewhere in the middle I decided I better do it now. Otherwise, I’ll chicken out and that would be really too embarrassing. So it’s my go. I run, I run, I run, I run. It’s such a long thing. I’m almost running out of breath before I get there, but I’d be too embarrassed to stop and go again. So I keep going. I get to the edge. I jump as far as I can go, and just as I’m in the air and it’s too late to do anything, I looked down and I’m going oh fuck. It’s a little whirlpool. It’s collecting right underneath the rocks. It’s like a little maelstrom. I jump out and I don’t know if I hesitated. I think maybe I was too tired to jump or whatever it was. When I land, I’m right at the edge of this whirlpool and it’s starting to suck me in. I’m getting a little bit frightened at this point. I’m like, oh, this is a little too exciting. So I start to swim like crazy. It’s like a magnet is pulling me back. Really, at one point, I’m not analyzing, I’m not thinking, I’m swimming and paddling. People on the shore are going, keep going, keep going. I’m going like this. I’m going like crazy. There’s a sense of overload that occurs. It’s kind of like when my cousin took me racing driving for the first time. Actually, we borrowed someone’s Porsche 911. Lovely. They actually loaned it to us. Can you drive? Yes.

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Have you been on a track before? No. So the way it works you have a racing instructor and you have like these helmets with microphone things so they can speak to each other, and they give you instructions. So we’re going around these little winding tracks and so on, and I’m like a granny going, okay, very correctly, just make sure I’ve got careful turns, and at some point they start to get frustrated and said, look, the next time around I want you to floor it. She was one of our friends. She kind of knew us and she wanted us to have more of an exciting experience. So she said, okay, for the next track around, I want you to keep your foot on the gas pedal unless I tell you to break. It’s on the gas pedal constantly, and you will not turn the wheel until I tell you it’s time to turn. I’m going, all right. So we’re going. It’s picking up speed and it’s picking up speed, and I’m thinking now? Keep going. Keep going. I think the idea is in racing terms, the idea is you wait until way after you’d normally feels like you turn, so that you have a much smoother corner. It’s a much easier way of cornering. It’s actually safer than it looks, but really the way it feels is that you’re about to run into a wall. So I’m going and I go okay, one after the other. By the time we’ve made one track around, I am sweating like something that sweats a lot and, honestly, I can’t even see the road anymore. All I can see is stripes and turns. I’m just hearing instructions. That night was interesting because I was half convinced when I left the racetrack that I’m not sure I’m cut out for this whole racing thing, right? I thought I was a decent driver. I mean I’ve driven for some years, and occasionally I’ve driven a little faster than I’m allowed – its okay, not in the USA – and I’ve done so very safely. Suddenly, I’m in this place and it’s all just whoosh. So I’m talking to my cousin saying, look, I’m not sure. Maybe tomorrow I’ll just watch or something like that. He goes, you know, just sleep on it and we’ll just see what happens in the morning. So I went to bed. I slept. Then you know how it is after a long day, you’ve worked hard and all that sort of stuff, I slept like a baby. In fact, I didn’t even recall what I dreamt.

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All I know is I woke up the next morning and I felt pretty good, but I’m still having some doubts because I’m still remembering kind of the whole experience of kind of fear, panic, mind switching off and, honestly, just road. That’s all. I can’t make sense of where the turns are, where’s left, where’s right. All I see is road and car and that voice shouting turn or go or sometimes even holding the steering wheel so I couldn’t go where I wanted to. I come back and I’m still a little unsure. Do I? Don’t I? So the instructor that had been in the car before, she’s very good at what she does. She said, look, you know what? Let’s just do one lap just to warm up and see what happens. Night and day, I get in the car. I do not know what happened that night, but as I’m going around the track, I can already see the second corner I’ll be taking after this one. It no longer feels like I’m running into the wall. It just feels like the right place in time. It’s obvious. How could I ever have mistaken this place? I go around the whole track and I’m going, okay, so can we try one now. I feel a little more confident. Can we try one more like the speed we did yesterday? They said, you’ve already gone faster than that. When I finally got out of the maelstrom and got off the bank, I was panting hard. For a while I just, I don’t know, I was in a little bit of shock and people were coming over saying, look, are you okay, are you all right, I looked up and said, no. I’m great! Are you kidding me? I felt like Indiana Jones had just swum out of the Temple of Doom. I’m going like, can I do that again? They were absolutely right, it is one experience that I have never forgotten since then. Of course, it feels totally different being in that eye of the storm at some point kind of like being at that grading it’s thinking that got me in trouble there. At some point, really it wasn’t even a choice. I just didn’t have enough time to think about what’s going on anymore. All I could do was, I guess the word would be, feel. I just let go. I stopped thinking. The weirdest thing is that at that exact point, everything that looked like such a crazy mess, overwhelm and I’m totally getting swamped and so on, it

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was like is that all? It’s just four? They lined up literally like chess pieces. I go, okay, this one. Shield. This one goes flying through the air and whilst he’s still in the air, I already know how to go for his friend to attack at that point. It was crystal clear. Not a single thought necessary. Tonight of course, you have some interesting processes left, and tomorrow we’ll come back here and we’ll do some more work. I do encourage you, however, to at least contemplate the idea that you might want to stop thinking so much. Wouldn’t that be something? All right, I’ll see you in the morning.

Igor:

Good morning, everyone or should I say good morning, everyone. Is that a little bit more like it? This is the voice of God. We’re a little bit light here, as a shipload of people had to leave early yesterday, or rather at the end of yesterday, but I think we’re in good shape. Who here feels good about everything they’ve done so far? Excellent! I’m glad it’s not just me this time. So, we’re really at the last day of the training, and today’s an integration day. You guys get an opportunity to just see how much you already know. Anyone ever see the old version of The Karate Kid? I used to love that when I was a kid like back in the 1980’s. One of my favorite scenes, of course, is when the little kid is like waxing floors and polishing things and so on. He’s getting really frustrated and then, of course, he just gives up and then Miyagi shows him that he’s been learning karate all the time, and it’s like it’s so cool.

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I’d like you guys to realize that you’ve been doing and learning a lot more stuff than you may even realize. I mean if you look around the walls, it’s just a visual representation of just portions of what we’ve done so far. So what I want to do this morning is really absolutely nothing new. What I’d like you guys to do is just tell each other lots and lots of stories, and in order to make life easier for you guys, I’m just going to give you some themes that you can play with. At this point, there’s a general rule of storytelling that I think is very valuable, which is more is better. So it’s not necessarily just the quality. The quality stuff comes as you mature as a storyteller. Initially it really is just quantity because you’re switching on that part of your brain. So as long as you can tell lots of stories and enjoy them, you have the primary drivers you need to become an exceptional storyteller, an hypnotic storyteller. Does that kind of make sense? What I want to do this morning, really it’s going to be fast-paced once again, but really it’s going to be nothing new. We’re not going to introduce you to any new concepts or anything like that. I just want you to start integrating and let all the things you’ve done so far come in, and we’ll give you some guidance for that. Cassie: Igor:

Are you going to talk about Nested Loops at all? Maybe, I don’t know yet. We’ll see how you do. Let’s start in the way we mean to continue by everyone standing up and putting your drinks to one side somewhere safe. You can do these exercises standing up, sitting down and lying down, on your head. Really, I don’t care, but I’d like to do these exercises now one-on-one and maybe then spend like a minute or two on each one because we’ve got a whole bunch of things that we’re going to start building up on. Does that make sense? The first exercise is go around the room. I know some of you have done this already, but you may as well do this again today. Just tell someone a mundane story about something you did today, but make it interesting. Off you go.

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Was that an easy exercise to do? Hello, everyone? Yes? Easy exercise? All right. The next one is going to be pretty much just as easy. I’d like you all to right now select a pleasant, positive, maybe empowering emotion that it would be worthwhile for other people to experience. Can anyone think of something like that? Like optimism, hope for the future, confidence, a sense of excitement about things coming. Stuff like that. Just choose one emotion for now. Can everyone think of at least one emotion like that? There are only half the hands going up. Let’s try that again. Can everyone think of at least one emotion like that? Okay, good. What I want you to do is find a different partner and between now and finding that partner, I want you to mentally just enjoy the emotion. Get into that state yourself. By the time you meet your partner, you’re going to do a little unconscious rapport, thank you, and you’re going to start telling them a story that is generated by that emotion. When you finish your first story, you’re going to smile and you’re going to tell them another story because you’re going to feel so good, you may as well do that. At the end of the second story, you’re going to go, you know what? Third time’s a charm, isn’t it; may as well tell another story. The thing is though, you don’t need to know what the second or third story are going to be until you’re coming to the end of your first story, or even when you’ve finished it, and it’s actually quite okay to finish your story and say, and that’s just how it went. And that reminds me of another story. Does that make sense? Student: ♦

Igor:

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Is it better to do a made up story?

At this point, made up or true is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter for now. Okay? Right now we’re just going to go with surfing that emotion and let stories evolve around it. Find a different partner. You’re going to stay with the same partner for all three stories. Once you’ve told your three, they’ll tell their three. You’ll have about two minutes per story, so six minute in total, 12 minutes as a pair. Off you go. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



How was that? Was that interesting? Who here enjoyed themselves? Who felt like they had all the time in the world just now? Anyone feel like they had lots of time to go through this stuff and so on? Well, that’s how much you can do in just six minutes, where you had six minutes each on that one. So a quick 10-minute chat with someone could actually contain a lot of other stuff, can’t it? So I just want you to recognize that because stories can be small and impactful or very large and impactful. It really doesn’t matter. It depends on the context and what you’re trying to achieve and so on. The next thing I want you guys to do, again, is just to build up on the same kind of process you’ve been going through. We’re going to tell three stories. Again, emotional stories, only this time I’d like you to tell an emotional story throughout. Here’s what I mean by that. You’re going to start with some kind of a negative emotion. Perhaps, I don’t know, fear or doubt or anxiety. Like I went to do something, but I don’t know, I can’t do it that sort of thing. Like Shaq throwing his basketball at the free throw line, right? Then we have a second emotion, which is kind of like more positive, but not necessarily positive yet. For example, like frustration. Why am I not getting it? There’s more energy in it, it’s just a little bit more positive, but it’s moving away from the original bad place. Does that make sense? The third story I want you guys to have or the emotion that I want you to express is a positive emotion of some kind of success, the sense of achievement, confidence maybe determination to get things done, the drive. Do you see what I mean? The different kinds of emotions will apply to the same sort of thing. The key here is the three stories have got to have nothing to do with each other. They do not have to be a continuation of the same story. They can if you want to, but I recommend that they don’t. I recommend that they’re three totally different stories on different topics about different people and different places, and maybe even different times.

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The thread connecting them will be the story of the emotions going from negative to slightly more positive to actually being positive in the background. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? Student:

I was discussing this with my partner just a minute ago…

Igor:

He was discussing this with his partner. Are you reading my mind? Did you look at my notes? Are you cheating?

Student:

So, he started his story out with a really negative emotion. I was telling him that sometimes – and correct me if I’m wrong – you can start a story with a real negative emotion, maybe someone’s problem, and you can use that to build up the energy, and then almost like a jujitsu move, you flow that into a positive emotion and it charges it up even more.

Igor:

Really, you can? That’s an awesome idea. Who’d like to do something like that? I agree.

Student:

My main point is like I guess the negative emotion doesn’t necessarily take away from the positive. It can compound it.

Igor:

What matters is really where you leave people. It really does not matter where you begin its where people end up that matter’s. Absolutely right. Was there another question over here somewhere? Great. So yes, three stories. Story number one has a negative emotion. The story you tell, I don’t care what it’s about. It could be the most charming happy fairytale you want as long as people really feel bad at the end of it. I recommend you use something like a performing anxiety, fear, doubt or hesitation, something that’s relatively familiar to us. Story number two needs to be a little bit more positive so that’s moving away from that emotionally, but it doesn’t have to necessarily be positive. I’m talking about things like frustration. I’m talking about things like people going, I’ve got to do something about this or the angry mob starting to rouse that sort of stuff.

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Story number three has got to be absolutely positive. So again, the story itself will probably be positive, the content is irrelevant. What matters is how people feel. Now for example, one thing you might want to do is you might make the third story so ridiculous that people roll on the floor laughing. Is that a positive emotion? Do you notice how the theme’s of the stories, the content does not matter. They are irrelevant. What I want you guys to start tracking is the emotional experiences as they evolve through stories as they get stacked on top of each other. Does that make sense to you guys? Are those three things going to be complete stories? Well, that’s up to you. If you want to finish it, feel free. If you don’t, then they’ll just have to curious some more. Okay, another question? Can you go back and finish them if you want to? Well, we’ll talk about that later. So we have three different emotions, and if you want to think of it this way, you can think of it as a chain. This is a little chain of emotions from negative through something positive flowing through. Does that make sense to you guys? Everyone clear on that one? All right, guys. Let’s take two minutes per story, six minutes in total, 12 minutes as a group. Who enjoyed those stories? Anyone? Interesting stuff? Good. Again, notice how you’re making this stuff up as you go along, aren’t you? That’s where I think, in my opinion, that’s what it takes to be a conversational hypnotist. You have an intention, and just in the moment, it’s like oh, I know where to go with this now, and you’re starting to develop that skill now. Its spontaneity, it’s creativity, it’s just right there when you need it. So give yourself a pat on the back. Go ahead and do that. There you go a nice little pat on the back for having integrated this stuff so quickly and so easily. Student:

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I find that it’s much easier to do nested loops. You start with the first story first. Then you tell a few sentences of that and then you cut into the second story. Then you cut it into a third story and then close the loop on the third story, and then the second story and then the whole point in the first story to wrap it all together with a moral. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

Oh wow, that’s an interesting way of doing things. I like that, more of that after the break. Hey look, you guys are all hypnotists. I can’t stop you from doing stuff, right? If you really insist of having elaborate structures within your stories, well, who am I to try to stop you, right? The next sequence of stories I’d like you guys to tell will be a little shorter. They just can be little examples or demonstrations or little mini stories, if you like, but really what I want you to start playing with now is – let’s put it this way. How many people here found that not thinking helps? Isn’t that useful? Great! It’s kind of weird. I’m the anti-school. What I want to do now is we’re going to go through – remember the disguise process from a few days ago? I want you to go through it, but as thoughtlessly as you just did with these stories. Okay? Let’s take a simple example. I’m going to help you in terms of the logic part of it so you can just get on with the doing part of it. Let’s take a simple example like someone who wants to, I don’t know, master conversational hypnosis in the real world and taking to the real world and start using it. You know, a crazy out there example. If we’re going to chunk up from this, what’s this an example of? Someone who wants to master conversational hypnosis in the real world, what is that an example of? What kind of situation? Quickly, anyone? Don’t think. Just let me know. What springs to mind? Universe. Playing piano. Oh, I don’t want a context. Mastering a skill, right? So this is an example of mastering a skill, right? Now what is mastering a skill an example of? Quickly, just tell me. Shout it out, practicing or learning, right whichever way you want to prefer it, that’s fine. We’ll have practice here or we’ll have learning here. Now you guys can all think of lots of examples of something people can practice, and lots of examples of something people can learn, right? When you have a specific example of these, you can give a specific example of either one of those, right? I don’t want you to think about this too much, folks. Literally, you’re just going all the way up here and now you’re going to chunk from that down to

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one, down to another, or down to one, down to another. It’s as simple as that. The less you think, the easier it gets. Can all of you understand what it means to have something that is learned, an example of learning? Yes? Do you understand what practice means? An example of something that people practice. Yes? Give an example of something people practice. Quickly, an instrument and tennis. Great. Give me something people learn. Quickly, language, karate, excellent! Then all we’re going to do is give a specific example of that or a specific example of this. Is that easy? Excellent. What I want you to do is find four things to fill either this or this, or two and two. I really don’t care. Four examples. I do not want you to think about this. I want you to get up, find a different partner and I want you to start talking. Oh yes. The only thing you’re thinking of is learning or practice or then getting that chunked down naturally and then that chunked down. It will remind you of a specific context, of a specific story, of a specific example. Just say it. It might take you 30 seconds. It might take you a minute. I don’t care. Does that make sense, guys? Four in total. So I want these holes here filled in with four different examples, and you will tell those four little stories as four little examples in a row, and then they’ll have a go after. Student:

Context and mastering conversational hypnosis.

Igor:

You don’t care about that. We’ve already done this bit. We just did this for you. From conversational hypnosis, we’ve gone up for you to mastering a skill, which has gone up to either practicing something or learning something. We’ve done that bit. Your thinking time is over. I made it easy for you guys. I know. You can engage your brain later. It’s okay. All we’re going to do is just chunk this down naturally in the process, and one of these things will remind you of another and another and another, and I just want you to zip through these without too much thought. Anything else real quickly?

Student:

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What do you mean when you say the four little stories? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

Right here. Do you see where we put those in here? It doesn’t have to be. It could be a story of someone who learns Karate. It could be an example of a Karate master that went from zero to hero. Practicing an instrument. It could be when you learned an instrument and how you were practicing your instrument as you go through.

Student:

Can you go through a story with a specific example – like Learning Spanish?

Igor:

Learning Spanish. Give me a specific example of learning Spanish. Learning is one. Language. Well, let’s give a specific example. I want something specific. That’s not specific enough. If I was going to make a movie of learning Spanish, do you know what I’m talking about? I want a specific, concrete example of learning Spanish. Give me one quickly. Give me one quickly. Don’t think about it, Arthur. I’m making a movie about learning Spanish. Tell me, what’s the opening scene? Someone’s reading a children’s book. Who’s reading the children’s book in Spanish? You are. Great! That’s the story. Do you follow those? Everyone good? Off you go. Okay, how did you guys do with that? Yes? Do you notice how even the disguise process, which kind of blew a few fuses on the first of the storytelling days, is actually straightforward now, isn’t it? Of course, the less you think, the better you are, given in context. We’re talking about a performance context rather than a preparation context. Preparation is all about thinking; doing is all about not. What I want to do now is move to the next level, which is teaching tales. Teaching tales are identical to your emotional stories, identical in the process. The only difference is now you’re going to feel for the general situation, including a solution. Does that make sense? Let’s take the kind of thing we’ve been talking about – the conversational hypnosis and mastery in the real world. I know it’s not interesting for anyone in here, but someday you might meet someone who really wants to master

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hypnosis and use it in the real world. So you may as well come up with some ammunition that you can use and fire away at the right time. Remember the steps for this are very simple. Feel what they feel like. What’s the problem of someone who wants to master hypnosis in the real world but something’s holding them back. What’s that problem? Get a sense of that. How would they resolve it? What does someone who wants to master hypnosis, kind of gets hesitation, something happens and they resolve but feel different now and so as a result, they are a true master hypnotist? What is that process? Really, it’s an emotional change. That’s like what you already practiced, isn’t it? Within there will be some symbols that will naturally pop up, which you’ve already practiced. So just see what comes up. The easiest thing is close your eyes and think of something. Oh, here’s a situation. Then elaborate on that. I would like for you to do three teaching tales about someone that centers on the same theme that’s almost a master conversational hypnotist but has some hesitation, has some problems around it, and of course the teaching tales have nothing to do with hypnosis, do they? Make sense, guys? The less you think, the easier it gets. So get into the whole process. Find a partner, two minutes of story, six in total, 12 as your diad, okay, guys? Off you go. How do you feel about that? The first thing I want you guys to recognize is that in the last hour you’ve each told at least 14 stories. Is that something? Not just 14 stories, but 14 brand new stories that did not exist before you got up this morning. You gave birth to them, folks. Without you, there would be no life in these stories. So good for you that’s the couple, the you and the other you, that’s the divine couple. Who’s enjoying yourselves? Yes? Isn’t it interesting, the more you work, the more fun you actually have. The last set of stories I want you guys to do is actually not a story as such; it’s a preparation for one. What I want you to do is literally spend 30 seconds or maybe a minute with someone else. What I want you to do is pretend for a moment you don’t know each other. You’re going to meet, eyebrow flash, a little of mirroring, smile, have a little

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chit chat for 20 or 30 seconds, and then I want you as the hypnotist to introduce a hook to be allowed to speak about the story of you. Does that make sense? So you’re going to have a little chit chat. How’s it going? Are you enjoying the course? Yeah, it’s a great course. Then you introduce a hook, a oneliner throwaway statement, something where they’ll go, really? What do you mean by that? Well, let me give you an example. Then you tell the story of you. Well, you don’t actually tell the story of you; we’ll do that later, but I want you to have that hook ready so when the time comes to tell the story of you, it’s there for you. Does that make sense? Do you want to have a quick example? Okay, chit chat, hello, how’s it going? Fantastic. Oh, yes, fantastic. Are you enjoying the course? Yes. It kind of answered a lot of questions that I’ve had ever since my grandmother passed away. Really, yeah I mean, let me give you an example. Does that make sense? By the way, I had no idea that was the hook that was going to come out until I just stood here and did it. It might be a different hook on different occasions because it’s going to fit the context of the conversation. You may have a couple of favorite ones that are kind of there because they’ll hang around and you can reuse them. They’re your buddies, but for the most part, you’ll just fit something into the conversation. It’s the intention, of wanting to tell a story that will allow you to create the story context, which is really the hypnotic context in another form, isn’t it? Let’s just spend a minute or so having a chit chat, throw out your hook, and as soon as they go really, or wow tell me more, you’re done. You’ll switch roles and the person has a go, and then we’ll come back for the next piece. So it’s a real quick piece. A minute each. Two minutes in total. Off you go. So the first thing I want you to do before we carry on is I want you just to recognize something in terms of what you just did. I mean you recognize the list of things you just did in the course of an hour or so, right? If someone had asked you to do this before you started the course, what would have said to them? Are you kidding? Let me get a book and read.

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But now you’re doing it just off the top of your head, off the cuff, in the middle of a conversation and so on. I just want you to once again, recognize the amount of skill that you’ve developed in a very short period because really, that’s all you or at least the other you. Does that make sense? I want to introduce you to one final concept in the form of storytelling. It’s very easy. You’ll enjoy this, but it kind of completes the picture for us, and then we can start using this very strategically. It’s call the hijack story, or at least I call it that. The process for this is very simple. The first step is really you’re just going to find an experience in the other person’s life that’s worth revivifying. So we’re talking about pleasant experience – holidays they’ve been to, activities they like, hobbies or special moments in their lives and so on. I mean that’s easy now, isn’t it? Compared to what you’ve been doing, isn’t that a no brainer because that’s not just you or the other you, it’s the other them. Number two, I want you to treat whatever experience you’re revivifying for them as a metaphor, and I want you to extend it. Let’s say someone is talking about how they like sailing. So you’re revivifying sailing, and you’re on the boat and the sun is on his face, and it’s wonderful and it’s so warm, isn’t it? So warm yeah, now you’re going to extend the sailing metaphor and add things into it. In fact, positive ideas, positive symbols and so on. And then as that sunshine is warming you up as though you’re on the journey of your life, comfortably drifting along, knowing the boat will carry you there. Do you see what we’re doing right now? We’ve hijacked their own experience in order to turn it into a metaphor, and we’re going to flash between the actually experience – and there’s the sunshine and the people on the deck, and you’ve gone to this island and so on – and you’re going to flash between that and the metaphor, but really they’re the same thing to the person. You’re just extending the experience and what it means to them. Does that make sense?

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I’ll give you an example of what I mean in a moment. Would you like me to do a particularly involved version of this in a moment? Just because we can, right? Finally, as a part of the extended metaphor, of course, you’ll be including your symbols and so on, but now finally we get to the idea of embedded commands. They are I think taught in a very poor order normally because people think that just presenting an embedding command, like buy now, you must be wondering how wonderful this course has been, it’s kind of a little bit on the pathetic side in my opinion, and I don’t think it works so well. I’ve seen bad, cheesy versions of this, and it really doesn’t fit in the way it was actually being used or was discovered in the first place. Embedded suggestions add great depth to your communication. Sure, you can give a sublevel meaning to what you’re talking about that the conscious mind doesn’t get, but that’s what you’ve been doing metaphorically anyway, isn’t it? Now what we’re going to do in terms of embedded suggestions or embedded commands is as you extend the metaphor, all you’re going to do is pick out trance works, trance phrases to emphasize. They’ll give you some already. It was a beautiful sunny day, and it’s just nice and calm. You already practiced doing this, haven’t you? That’s right, nice and calm. Nice and calm on that day that’s nice and calm. You know how you emphasize those words because they have a stronger meaning for them, you’ve already been doing embedded suggestions, and you’ve realized, of course, that saying it once, no, maybe it will work, maybe it will not work it’s the repetition, the continuance of the theme over time where it really develops a powerful impact. Does that make sense? Of course, you get to introduce new suggestions this way. You saw it yesterday, didn’t you? Missing out, you’re afraid of missing out. So we emphasized elements of his actual experience in terms of what I was talking about and so on. So you’re really using Command Tone Down to emphasize something and enhance the message.

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Here’s example of what I mean. Let’s say that what you’re revivifying is a sort of a thoughtful moment someone had. Let’s call her Martha. She’s in a new house in a new place and so on, and for some reason, just that process of leaving house was a wonderful moment of closure for her. It’s an interesting atmosphere, and emotional atmosphere in which to extend a metaphor, isn’t it? So you might start with a revivification. Martha, as you recall going through your house all those weeks ago, making sure that you tidy up loose ends, perhaps you can go back there now and remember how good it feels to really tidy up loose ends so that you are free to start the next phase of your life. There’s the kitchen, the bedroom. Really look around and remember all those wonderful memories. Remember looking out the window as the seasons changed – spring, summer, fall, autumn. Remember watching the children outside wrapped up nice and warm, playing in the snow, as though they were playing out old memories for you, reminding you of a younger time, better times, interesting times, reminding you that the future can be just as positive again all those young people with bright futures. No real difference there. Then you went up to your attic and for a moment you were shocked. Look at all that junk, that garbage in there. You can’t take this with you anymore. It’s not time. It’s time to sort things out. Weed things out. Perhaps you made a list of all the things in there. Sort them out into different piles. One pile is just for the rubbish, the garbage. Stuff you don’t need, stuff you can get rid of, stuff that’s just a burden. Stick it all in one pile. Another pile is old stuff that you don’t need any more but others will cherish and find useful. Take it all and stick it in that pile. You don’t need it any more. You can feel so much lighter as you sort the items between the garbage pile and the pile you’ll be giving away as gifts and all that’s left, that’s for you to keep. That’s yours the special memories, the highlights, the good times, things to remind you to bring the good times with you into your future, your new beginning. It’s important to remember to do that and its okay to get lost in your memories for a while.

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That photograph that reminds you of such a wonderful day bit by bit each of the piles keeps growing. The garbage pile you’ll be getting rid of soon, the gift pile, things you no longer need and your pile to remind you to bring the best things into your future, your new beginning. When you’re done, what did you do with these things? Of course, the rubbish, you just got rid of that. Big plastic bin liners, stick them all in there outside. Leave them outside. At night the garbage disposal people will come and take it, remove it, no concern of yours any more. Just take it and leave it outside. In the morning it will be gone. And your gift pile, start to think about who you can give these things to and how they’ll light up, how good they will feel. No need to carry it around forever. Just hand it out and forget about it. Let others have some enjoyment from this for a change. But your pile, make sure you pack this carefully. This is becoming with you wherever you go so that you know where you’ve been and you have a positive roadmap for where you’re going and how you can have so many charming memories, the knick in the corner of the door. That stain on the carpet that used to annoy you so much, but now it’s just another sign that you lived here. May as well go around and just say goodbye to all the things in here. The things that other people will get to enjoy. Just take the memories, the lessons and take them with you when you begin your new life in your new house. Of course, whenever your thoughts go back from time to time to the old place you used to live in, you realize you’ve cleaned it all up now, haven’t you? So you may as well just reflect on the happy memories you had back then. That might be a good way to remember that better times are still to come because that’s the foundation on which your future is built, isn’t it? It’s just an idea. Let’s take a 15-minute break and be back here for more exciting mayhem. Overall, any kind of questions or comments of the stuff we’ve been covering over the last 10 days?

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Student:

I just wanted to make a comment because I’m really enjoying these exercises. The thing that I really liked that you said yesterday is I like focusing on the irrelevant details that confuse people, and they think they’re so important. In the last exercise or second to last one, when we had to do a bad feeling to medium, I actually started my story out making it sound like it was going to be a story. Going fishing and we’re getting ready and we’re all excited, and then it turned into sea sickness. So it really threw them off. Then I was throwing in all these irrelevant details to not let them know what I was actually going to say. It was cool.

Igor:

So you’re becoming a real master. People keep asking me how do you do this critical thing, bypass the critical factor? It’s actually easy when you think this way, isn’t it? Of course, you notice that when you start doing these things – and I really appreciate you coming up here to talk about this. I mean can you see how easy it is to trigger the amygdala, to switch off the critical factor and all these little thought loops people have? It’s the agreement reversal. We do, oh, what happened? What happened? Wow, what a good storyteller. I feel – what’s going on? It’s fantastic. Good job. Well done.

Student:

I’ve noticed that when I tell the stories and the people who are listening are totally engaged through the performance and every aspect of it. My question to you is that when we tell these stories, it’s to affect change or influence. I know out of those five realities I could see the physical. But in terms of like emotional, I could probably see at a symbolic level to affect that kind of change. ♦

How do you calibrate or even realize how that change happens?

Sometimes I notice the suggestions that go in, it could be the first second it affects them, it could be a day, it could be a month, it could be a year. Igor:

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There are two answers you’re looking for…




1. The first one, the easy answer and the one that will require a little bit more effort, although it’s not necessary this way you’re always looking for the mixture between state and behavior as your cue. You’re reading body language. Body language is linked to their internal experience and their internal experience – in other words, when something shifts in their internal experience, their emotion will shift, which will shift their body language. That’s how you know when things are working. So, if you recall when we did the dream machine, what we were focusing on is we’re not leaving one part of the sequence, let’s say the problem part of the sequence, we’re not leaving it until we see them doing these sort of things, which tells us they’re now getting into the problem at some level. Make sense? 2. The other way to think about this – and this is more, I guess a little more strategic and you have more time as an element, is it doesn’t matter as long as they can’t think of things the same way as before. I’ll give you an example, if I may. There’s a story one of my mentors told me. He used to work as a family therapist, and he worked with one of the kings of family therapy at the time. I forget his name, unfortunately. He had this wonderful habit of when he was doing his family therapy he’d fall asleep in the middle of the session. People were arguing and talking, and he’d fall asleep for a half an hour and then say, I’m back. Oh, I had this dream. Literally, he would just tell them the dream, and he would just trust that his dream would be relevant to the family thing, and even if it didn’t start that way, eventually those dreams became good therapeutic processes, and you can imagine why, right? As hypnotists, he was doing conversational hypnosis without realize it. On one occasion, he had a lady coming in – I can’t remember what the problem was – but she came in with her son, and every time her son tried to talk, she talked for him. He noticed a strange dynamic going on between mother and son here, right? So he had his session, things are going on, and they’re arguing and they’re talking, and they’re blaming the whole world. Of course, the whole drama of

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blaming the father and then the issue of living through the son, and they said all kinds of complicated stuff. You’ve got to get a picture of this guy. He’s like a little monkey. He’s kind of like the scatter-brained scientist who’s very clever and one thing, but kind of loses the pot a little bit on other things. So at the end of the session when they’re agreeing about the next appointment or whatever it is, he kind of casually smiles at them and they start shaking hands and he goes, so it seems that your second relationship – pointing to the son – your second marriage is working out better than your first. With that, they left. Of course, all the students are kind of watching this in the background are coming in and saying what did you do? What was that all about? He smiles and he laughs and says I just set a slow burning fuse. That idea is going to stick inside that person’s mind, and she will never be able to look at her son in the say way again. So of course, what’s going to happen? You can imagine this, right? Over time she’s going to try to reestablish the old relationship, which is trying to return the son into her perfect marriage figure or whatever, but she can’t do it anymore because the comment will stick, and then over time the behavior will slowly start shifting. He’s put a block on the old behavior. Will it happen instantly? No. But as I say, it’s a slow burning fuse and eventually something’s going to give because you can never go back to the way things were. Pandora’s Box is open now and you can’t stuff it all back in. So that’s the other way you can think about your stories and so on, which is as long as you light a little fuse, a little crowbar inside of the machinery so that they can’t view the whole context quite in the same way again, well, at that point you sit back and wait, if you have the time. That’s the slowest and like an invisible process because people don’t even realize. They just heard a story and it just kind of in the back of their mind it keeps going, it keeps going, and it grows over time. That’s kind of the essence of the distraction method in some respects. Student:

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Thanks for implanting all that suggestion to us with this material. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

You’re welcome.

Student:

You’re becoming more like Erickson planting the seed and letting it sprout into a beautiful flower.

Igor:

Well, I take that as a great compliment. Thank you.

Student:

Thank you.

Igor:

I appreciate that.

Student:

I woke up at 4:36 this morning, and the first thought that I had in my mind was the exercise that we did yesterday of just letting our unconscious go. When I first saw that little image of the little scruffy dog behind that chain link fence I thought, what the hell am I going to do with this? Until it started running just frantically back and forth, back and forth, panting, just panicked panick ed across acr oss that chain link fence until u ntil it was completely co mpletely exhausted and fell to the ground, and it was only then that it could see that the fence was bent up a little bit in that corner. An interesting thing is that little YouTube time bar at the the bottom of this whole picture that was running as I was telling the story, and the time relates a little bit to how we view time. Thirty years ago, a gentleman told me a story about his time. He and two other of his friends took a fishing holiday and it was off the Coast of Mexico someplace.

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Some friends had drawn a little map, just a hand drawn map, not particularly detailed but enough to get them to the right spot. We don’t always need all the details in our map to be able to have a perfect adventure, do we? They made it out to this location, and it was perfect. In every way that a holiday and a fishing vacation could be perfect it was. So much so that they really didn’t begin to see the storm that was starting until their drinks were spilled and their cigars were wet. That got their intention, and in almost no time at all, it changed from perfect holiday to terror. The swells were twice the size that they were, and they weren’t in a large boat. On the map, it showed a safe harbor but it was crude. They had some idea of where they were headed, but they couldn’t be sure. It showed a lighthouse that was drawn on the map. They really didn’t have any choice. If they stayed where they were at, absolutely peril. They would lose their lives. So they headed in the direction that they thought was on the map, looking for that lighthouse, looking for that safe harbor. In the distance, by this time the skies had turned from perfect blue to clouds to charcoal grey to almost pitch black midday. Through the black sky, they thought they saw a light. If it was the lighthouse, it was a fair distance. They headed in that direction. As they got closer, on a hillside as they were close enough, enoug h, they could see a lantern. It was directing them to the safe harbor. Not a lighthouse, a lantern. I wonder how many times as hypnotists, as coaches, as partners, as friends we think our light isn’t big enough. When we’re in the right place, it doesn’t matter how big we think our light is. It’s that we’re there. We’re in our place at our time, and it does save lives. [Applause] Student:

I saw a motivation speaker from the Philippines. I think the benefit that I got here is going to revolutionize the way I conduct my training seminars now, because I always want great training that makes a lasting impact to anybody who attends. Somehow I’ve been figuring out how I’m going to really make sure that the key points that I’m stressing in our seminars gets past the critical factors.

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Now I have more tools to do it by telling stories and all of the other methods you have taught us and now I know it’s not going to be a skin deep – like all these things we’re trying to impress upon them really goes very deep into their unconscious and that hopefully, will make it more it effective. At the same time, you’re just conversing with them. You have a more relaxed way of doing things because in motivation or success seminars that we do, we question a lot of limiting beliefs that people have about money, about success, about your health and so on. Immediately, once I give a limiting belief that most Philippinos have, they already have your conscious mind. Your barriers start activating, so now I guess this is really very, very helpful. I think this will really help us help more people in the Philippines. Igor:

Thank you very much I appreciate that kind of an emotional Q&A session. I like this.

Student:

I’ve got a question and a comment. I’ve noticed this before but not to this extent. When I was working with one of my partners, I was being very descriptive about how I was gardening and I found an earthworm, and then I dropped down to dig the worm out of the ground, and he followed me down as I bent all the way down. So is that really a form of deep rapport?

Igor:

Yes, it is. It’s what people try to achieve with the whole matching and mirroring thing. It’s just that you do it in a better way. Rather than doing the kind of conscious version of matching and mirroring – and so I got the worm, okay – and it just breaks that natural flow. It shows you that they are so deep in rapport that they’re following you on every level, which is perfect.

Student: And that’s really what we want. That’s a form of trance, right? Igor:

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That is what you will get when you use the whole hypnotic rapport technique in totality, with the instant sort of inner smile, with the eyebrow flash, the little bit of mirroring. The way I like to think of it is more you’re mirroring the emotional undertones, and your body just fits the emotions along with it because then it comes much more natural again. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Then, as you go into the storytelling or the language and all this other stuff, it creates this wonderful atmosphere that people can’t help. Want to step into that world, and that’s when you bend over and try to pick something up, they will follow you right back down with it because they’re in that deep kind of rapport place. It’s an excellent place to be. isn’t it? Student: And so that’s a form of testing too as well, isn’t Igor:

It can be. Absolutely! Bear in mind some people will be so tranced out that when you go down, they’ll carry on watching the wall as if you never left. So there are different responses. You don’t only look for one response, but if you happen to get a response, you know you’re in very good shape.

Student:

Thank you.

Igor:

Come on up.

Student: Are there any better tricks for the hooks to better hook them and can you

hook someone so that they would want to come find you to finish telling their story of something that you asked? Igor:

That’s an interesting comment. Well, shall we do an exercise around that? Everyone stand up a minute. What I’d like you to do is – now one of the reasons that putting the hooks in is a little awkward – well there are two main reasons. If there’s no context, it’s very hard to fit something in that draws people in. So you need to set a context in terms of having a conversation and having a purpose. In other words, where do you want to take this whole thing to? What I want you to do is spend three minutes apiece, so six minutes in total, having a simple conversation with people. Start with the hypnotic rapport. Why? That’s beginning to open the whole story up, the whole loading things up. Then really spend for a minute or two having a chit chat like you did before, but make it a normal chit chat, the kind of stuff that you normally have on your breaks.

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Do you notice how when you do a chit chat in here, it’s kind of weirdly loaded, but when you go on breaks it’s very different? Just imagine you’re on a break. Have a chit chat for two or so minutes. Then at some point you’ve decided what your chit chat is, make sure you know who the hypnotist is first because if you both try to do this, it can be interesting. In other words, don’t think about how I do this, just go with the emotion. You go with the intention. I want to tell someone the story of me. I want to tell them that and be aware of that story. Remember you had that guiding point, that overall feeling, the main value that you’re going to try to convey, get into that emotion as you’re still having normal chit chat. You’ll notice having normal chit chat will be a little difficult to do at this point because you’re thinking so much about that main emotion. Then at some point, they’ll say something and you’ll go, you know that reminds me of something. That in itself is enough of a hook if the emotion behind it is right. Or you might say you know it’s kind of like this. What do you mean by that? Well, let me tell you a story. The hook itself is a minor point, the vibe behind it that people respond to and the way you bring it into a normal conversation. Once you’ve presented your hook and people have genuinely responded to it, just tell the story of you, but like a real short, cut down version, like a 30-second version or so. We’re not there to tell the whole story of you. It’s more to put into the context as a social context. Everyone clear on that? So, find someone in the room, for three minutes – you’re going to have from start to finish three minutes. Have a little chit chat and get into the vibe of the chit chat, and then switch your mental energy, switch your emotional state into that feeling you have in terms of the story of you, and watch how it’s actually harder to not hook than to hook. Does that make sense? Off you go. Spend three minutes apiece. How did you enjoy that? Was that good? Do you notice how now first, a social context, a conversational context actually makes this stuff easier than an exercise? Wouldn’t that be fair to say? The key that drives all of your skill sets is your intention. Your intention switches your state and your state

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drives the behavior. Do you see how that works? If you have no intention, it’s harder to do hypnosis. Remember, when I told you before that I had this problem recording hypnotic audio tapes and so on? It’s because there’s nobody there. It’s very difficult to create the right intention. I have to sometimes hallucinate someone before I can actually do the induction. I’m serious. It’s the way my mind works now. Student:

We went from sort of a banal conversation to deep quickly.

Igor:

Isn’t that interesting?

Student:

The conversation was so deep and it happened within maybe 30 seconds. Then I got to some of his core values and realized that we had a lot in common, but it all happened like that.

Igor:

Yes, and that’s because – who did the switch? Was it you or your partner? Who made the intentional switch in terms of I want to have this other – the hook? Who presented the hook?

Student:

First I did, and then he did.

Igor:

Excellent. So here’s what happens, and this is normally the typical pattern. Remember the reciprocity? People respond in kind. This is something that I got once ages ago from one of Erickson’s stories that said if you want someone to tell you about his brother, tell him a story about yours. So, when you switched and gave your hook and presented your story, it opens for that level of communication and people tend to respond in kind. That’s why you can go so quick, deep and wouldn’t it be fair to say it’s easier to tell people’s values now without saying, so what’s important to you about cars? What else is important? You can do it that way and, mechanically speaking, it’s very useful, but when you do it this way you will have more of their values and their genuine unconscious responses within a couple of minutes

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than most people get after hours of grilling interviews. Does that make sense? Excellent! Thank you for sharing that. Student:

I just want to check. So I know that a lot of hooks, like you were saying, are getting people to say really or tell me more? But is it also a hook if you tell them something, and then from there they grab it and start talking as well?

Igor:

It can be, the only difference is, if they’re doing all the talking unless, of course, you want them to talk to get a value elicitation or something like that. Then they’re doing the talking and unless you’re good with the whole psychic hypnosis thing, you need to pull the conversation back in order to be the one doing the talking. Does that make sense? Hence, the interruption stuff we did before and how to bring it around and how to borrow the thread and carry it on somewhere else and so on. Make sense?

Student:

I was just wondering if hooks work both ways in that.

Igor:

Hooks can work that way because they just trigger something in their mind. It’s just if you want to hypnotize, you must be the one leading the interaction.

Student:

Got it.

Student: ♦

What do you do when you try to do the hook and they don’t really respond that interested?

That’s perfect. That means you haven’t quite hooked yet. I’m serious. It will happen, and it’s something you have to get used to because you may have misplaced your hook. It’s kind of like what do you do when you go fishing and the fish don’t bite? You change your bait.

Igor:

Student: ♦

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So, you just kind of roll with it and keep trying?




Igor:

You just throw the hook out, they ignore it, you chit chat some more, you throw a different hook out, you roll with it, you chit chat some more. The thing you may want to check as well is how strong is your emotional response? If you emotions are kind of like yeah, I kind of feel this. It’s easier to roll over. It’s like this is the most important thing ever to me and the world and the universe and existence. That will be sub-communicated by how you present the hook, and if nothing else you’re shift in attitude will hook them. If you’re talking to someone and you’re having a little chit chat and then suddenly go like this, they’ll go what? What is it? Is there something in my nose? Because your sudden shift captures their attention dramatically. So it is also included in terms of what are you doing inside yourself. Does that make sense?

Student:

It does, and I’m thinking about, because there are a lot of people I meet that are total strangers in my life and you have to build rapport with them. You come across some people that are so cold and they’re very introverted and they don’t want to reveal anything of themselves, and I have a idea that just came to my head just now and correct me if I’m wrong. You could say something that has nothing to do with maybe what you’re trying to talk about, that’s neutral, like I just saw the most horrible accident. That’s not anything they have to get involved in, and I could start telling something about that and then roll that into something else.

Igor:

Then you could hijack your own story into something else. Yes, absolutely. The key thing to realize here is – and I’m glad you brought this up – some people are more emotionally closed off than others, and some people will feel threatened if they’re moved into too deep a conversation too quickly. They can’t even have deep conversations with their intimate friends, let alone with a stranger. At that point, you need to fractionate the rapport. You fractionate the intensity of the conversation by going a little bit intense and just before they start getting uncomfortable, you back off again. Then you repeat and you repeat and you repeat again.

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If you want to enhance that even further, then you use a mechanism to trigger the amygdala, whether its mind-bending language or humor or jokes are fantastic for this, or magic moments. So, just when they start getting uncomfortable it pops the discomfort through use of the objection destroyer type principle. That will accelerate the fractionation process because they’ll start getting used to their positive emotions more easily because their normal defenses around it are being rewired. Student:

That is wicked, man.

Igor:

It happens. [Applause]

Igor: Student:

All right, yes. Why not? Go on. This is just in response to what he was talking about. If you’re just talking to somebody off the street, somebody you’ve just met, you don’t know if they have to be somewhere unless you’re watching that body language. So if you’ve caught somebody at a bad time, it’s not you. It’s possibly possible that they have to get somewhere. They just might not have the time to be able to spend with you, so don’t think that it’s inside of you because we have everything that we need because we’ve been here for these days. They just might not have that time, and you just have to watch that body language, like I’ve got to get out of here.

Igor:

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Right and just to add onto that, we’re all human beings here. I hope you realize that. There is nothing in this training that makes you God-like, other then how you’ve already been. I’ll make mistakes with the best of them. I’ll get into arguments and then go oh, what the hell am I doing that for? There are people I fail to influence. It’s just part of life. I do not want to create this idea that everything will work out perfectly from this moment forward in time. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



You have the toolkits to resolve situations, and if problems start arising and there’s a pattern you go, okay, great, now I know how to break those things down, but just give yourself permission to fail from time to time, folks, because it’s kind of part of life. How else would you learn to exceed this skill set unless you’re willing to fail a few times and actually take lessons from that that will catapult you to the next level? Does that make sense? What I want to do now is I want to spend a couple of minutes on a very important topic, which we’ve kind of skirted around a little bit over the last few days, but really actually might be very important, and that is whether your stories are true or fake. When you’re presenting a story, you’re inviting people into a kind of reality, and there will be certain expectations. If you break some of the expectations, you’re making an unconscious promise. We talked yesterday about fulfilling your unconscious promises, right? The most important category of stories that really should be true, are personal stories about you. I know storytellers that will stand in front of an audience and tell them, the following story is made up. I created it at such a place at such and such a time as an enchanting tale and so on, but I will present it as though I was the person it happened to. Is that okay with you? Everyone goes yes. They tell the story, it’s emotional, it’s powerful, it’s moving and at the end of it people go oh, that’s amazing, I’m so sorry it happened to you, etc. He goes, I didn’t do it. Then they get angry. What? You lied to me? I told you this was going to be a story that I made up. So the fact that you can suck people into a personal story at such a deep reality that people think it’s real is basically making a strong implied promise that there is truth in that story and that it’s actually about you. So if you’re going to tell a story in the first person, I encourage you to make it absolutely true or make it so obvious that it couldn’t happen in real life that people realize it.

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Some of the ways you can do this, basically on the fake side of the equation, there are storytelling forms that tell people that this is not true in the physical world sense, although the truth in it may be more important than the physical truth. Does that make sense? When we tell a fable, a parable and allegory, these stores, it has it built into it. A parable, by the way, is a story about human beings that has a moral lesson. When someone tells you about the Good Samaritan, for example, a classic parable, you don’t honestly think that a guy was walking down the road and all this stuff happened to them. You know there is a story-ness about it, right?

A fable is interesting because a fable is similar to a parable, only it’s set in the natural world, the animal kingdom where plants can speak, where animals can speak and move and so on. Then it’s pretty obvious that unless everyone is eating a mushroom pizza, that this is not a real story. Allegories, once again, are similar to that where you’re using – it’s kind of like a metaphor where you’re using one context to talk about another. Often there will be violations of the natural world in an allegory in order to be able to make the transition and make it less likely to be analyzed. Myths, legends and fairytales, those are things that we have all grown up with, right? The boundary between them is relatively flexible. Some people say that myths are locally based, and legends are more global. Some people will switch it around. Honestly, I don’t think it matters. The point is you recognize that this is a made up story, although there will be some truth – a cultural truth, a person truth, a moral truth or something else – inside of that story despite its unreality. Make sense? Jokes are interesting because jokes can start off very often - and some of the best jokes start off as though they were real events, but when the punch line comes, people sudden wake up, oh, this is all made up and that adds to the humor.

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Jokes are the one exception, where you can say something actually happened to me because, as long as the punch line is strong enough. It will pull them out of that reality in a fun sort of way and they realize, I get it, this is humor, and your normal stories are still sacred, shall we say, are still respected because they don’t finish with that kind of punch line. Does that make sense? There are some other kinds of stories that look more like personal stories or other sort of stories, and I call them the classic stories. They still have story-ness attached to them. We still know that these aren’t real, but we don’t even care. As a rule, these kinds of stories do not identify details too much. For example, two men are standing on the mountainside lost. Do you think this is a real story that happened to me or someone I know? Okay, Jack and Jill went up the hill. Jack’s climbing a mountain and suddenly discovers he’s totally and hopelessly lost. Is that a real story beginning or a fake story, a made up story beginning? Probably made up, but you’re less sure now, aren’t you? In the mountains of Ohio, there is a large mountain called, I don’t know, Twin Peaks. People like to climb this mountain, but every year hundreds of people are lost. For example, there’s a man called Jack Daniels who climbed it. Do you see where I’m going with this? The details – do they make the story seem more like it actually happened than not? Exactly, those kinds of details, these that are rooted in reality imply reality. Details that are not necessarily rooted in reality – for example, trees and plants, those that can be metaphorical too – don’t imply reality so much. You want to be careful with your classic stories of how you frame them so that you don’t accidentally imply something is real that isn’t and so on. Make sense? I know hypnotist’s who don’t care to make the distinction between the two – the real story and fakes. I also know, especially from personal experience, when I discovered that the bulk of their stories were really not true or basically had a tiny grain of truth and everything else was made up around it, I lost a lot of trust in that person.

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Most of their stories really have no impact on me now. It’s like, yeah, that’s interesting. I start analyzing the story for the frames and the emotions and all the rest of it, but I’m not sucked into them anymore. Why? Because he violated my trust by pretending something was true that was not. Does that make sense? So I’d encourage you not to make that mistake. The three kinds of stories that people will assume to be true are: 1. 2.

Personal stories that we talked about. Factual stories that are rooted in reality.

For example, did I tell you about Johnson and Johnson? Ah well, maybe at the next seminar. But if I were to tell you the story about Johnson and Johnson, they’re a real company in the real world, and it implies reality, doesn’t it? 3.

Historic things.

Again, history – if we talk about George Washington and stuff like that, we imply reality because it’s a real historical figure. It’s kind of like a personal story in time. Make sense? With these stories, you want to be very careful. What you can do, however, and we did I believe, at the end of the first portion of this training and this is a very nice device. You can begin with a story that has a ring of truth, and then whether or not it’s actually a personal story, it morphs into something that you created; or actually starts as a story you created and then morphs into something more traditional, shall we say. The key is if your story morphs halfway through into a clearly identifiable make up story, then the beginning will be forgiven. Whether you start it as a true genuine story – like I was in the supermarket the other day and this thing started to happen, and suddenly it becomes more and more unreal and suddenly people realize, oh, I get it – then we’re not in a normal story anymore. That’s kind of what happens in jokes when the punch line comes. It starts in the real world, but then it pops into the special world. As soon as that

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demarcation makes it obvious, people will forgive wherever the start came from. Let’s put it this way. How did you guys feel when I told you about my friend, Stan, in Pasadena the minute that the hawk started speaking to him? It was a slight break in reality, wasn’t it? I imagine that a lot of you would have tried to rationalize it at first, like maybe he was hallucinating in the heat and all the rest of it, but as we progressed in this extra reality, you suddenly switched and just went with him. Oh, I get it, it was a device and I understand now that we’re in a different reality. Does that make sense? The reality of Stan, whether or not he existed, whether or not he got beaten up by bikers, it becomes less important. Make sense? If all I had told you about was Stan and his experience with the bikers, then it’s very important whether, or not he exists and had that experience, right? Do you see how that works? So now that you can create or generate stories that are true, that are a part of your life or that are fake but are important and educational, I want you to be very aware of this dynamic here so that you don’t break implied promises to other people’s unconscious minds. Everyone clear on that, everyone cool? If you do, by the way – I mean it’s your choice. You’re adults and you’re responsibility for your own lies. It’s just I have warned you of the consequences, and I wash my hands clean as of this moment. What I want to do now and the rest of the afternoon is basically show you that you’ve been doing a lot more with hypnosis than you realize. Some of you have already jumped the gun on this one. You know the idea of nested loops. Anyone here know what nested loops are? About half, maybe threequarters of you. Again, nested loops are normally taught in my opinion the wrong way around. They give you wonderful complex structures, and by the time you understand them deeply and fully and the conscious level, most people are incapable of doing them because they seem like such an amazing thing that’s unbelievably good.

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The fact is we all nest loops. We all nest stories without realizing it. Essentially, a nested loop is when you tell one story, two stories, three stories in a row. It could be anywhere up to 21 stories. It gets very cumbersome at that point and really is not worthwhile. I think around about seven stories, you start having diminishing returns, but I know people who go up to 21 loops if they want. You don’t quite complete any one of these. So has anyone heard of 1001 Arabian Nights? It’s the way that she kept alive was by telling stories and not finishing them. So instead of executing them in the morning, it was all right, we’ll have to wait. All right, tell me the end of the story. Great! Then she’d tell another story. Now of course, she leaves that one off and then, of course, he can’t execute her in the morning again because then there will be no end and he’s curious. It goes on and on and on. What loops do if you leave them uncompleted is they create massive curiosity, in most people anyway. It’s called the Zeigarnik effect. If you incomplete a process, the mind wants to complete it and so that curiosity keeps spinning throughout. Make sense? So, in the classic nested loop, you’ll tell one story and don’t quite finish it. Then you’ll tell another story and don’t quite finish it. A third story and don’t quite finish it. Then you do your main hypnotic process, and then you finish the third story first, the second story second, and the first story last. What this does is by completing a process, it creates a closed loop. Each of these closed loops makes it harder for consciousness to penetrate. Does that make sense? Now believe it or not, you’ve done the essence of this actually quite a few times already in the 50 or stories you’ve been telling over the last few days. If nothing else, most of you did this when we told the emotion stories. How many people didn’t a chance to finish all of their emotional stories and had to just go onto the next one because there wasn’t quite time to finish it?

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How many people were listening to someone telling an emotional story that they didn’t quite get finished, and you’re thinking I want you to finish that? You had just experienced the Zeigarnik effect, the effect of a nested loop. Plus, of course, the more layers you have, the more unconscious the stuff in the middle becomes because it gets sealed off more and more. Let me give you an example. Any here ever have a dream? When you wake up in the morning, you can remember it and you say, oh, that was so vivid there’s no way I’ll forget it. Five minutes later you’re in the shower going, what the hell was it again? That’s because you’ve got a nested loop in terms of state. Your sleep state as it evolves back to the waking state shifts so dramatically that it’s like shifting up layers of your onion, so the memory of the dream really is accessible only in the dream state because that’s where it was encoded. Has anyone ever had a repetitive dream that you know you’ve had before? Only in the morning when someone asks you about it, you know you’ve had a dream that you’ve had before, only you have no idea what it is, but you had it before. Same process again. What I want to do now is I’d like you to spend an exercise just playing with this. Essentially, we’re going to go back to the very first set of stories you told today – the three emotional stories – and like you did earlier, you’ll have one, you’ll have two, and three I guess – you won’t finish them. You’ll bring them to some kind of dramatic place – so in other words, people are sufficiently interested in them that they’ll want them to continue – and then you can break from there. Make sense? Now the thing is traditionally you go about three-quarters of the way, and sometimes you go almost to the end but you don’t quite finish it. The point is there is going to be enough momentum in the story that people do not want you to break the story there. Has anyone here ever read a novel that follows several characters in different directions of what they do? Have you noticed how they don’t break? When they’ve just finished something and you go great, that’s it. The story’s over. They break just about when they’re about to start something

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new, like at a crises of some sort and then they move to the other characters and you go, oh God, I wish they would carry on with these guys. By the time they come back to that story, of course, they’ve told a little bit more of a story about the other characters and so on. So they’ve nested loops inside of a story to be able to tell multiple stories at the same time, right? So tell your three emotional stories –one that has the same emotion, be it optimism or happiness or whatever it is. At this stage here, just very simply do a dream machine. It can be in the form of a story, like a teaching tale. It can be a classic dream machine as an induction. I really don’t mind. When you finish your dream machine, you don’t want to talk about the process inside that. Just finish your stories in reverse order so you can create that looping effect. That’s easy to do, isn’t it? The theme I’d like for your dream machine is someone who wants to master conversational hypnosis but has some kind of impediment, whether it’s emotional, a belief about themselves or something like that, some kind of impediment that they have to overcome in the real world to be able to do so. Is that easy to do? Yes? Don’t think about it, folks. That’s the point. The more you think, the less you do. So stop thinking about it and start enjoying it. Here’s the thing. You do not need to know what the dream machine will be. As you tell your three stories, if you wish to, you may retell the stories you told this morning. I don’t mind. If you want to challenge yourself, you can just come up with three new stories on the fly. That’s fine too. It’s entirely up to you. The point is as you tell these three stories this will create itself for you. Why? Because you need it. Because you intend to do it and, therefore, it will construct itself. It’s how your unconscious mind works. Make sense? Student: ♦

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Does it have to be dream machine or can it be any classic induction and so on?




Igor:

You can do anything you want to do, honestly, especially in the real work. My advice here is – because we are practicing conversational hypnosis – is that this is a pattern of conversational hypnosis; hence, the dream machine or a teaching tale, rather than an instant induction, which is more of this. You can introduce it anyway you want. As long as this bit here is still conversational, so to someone who’s eavesdropping, it sounds to them like you’re just having a deep conversation, that’s all cool with me. You can do whatever you want. You can do a blitz in here if you want. Make sense?

Student: ♦

Igor:

Is the purpose of the dream machine to elicit a trance state?

Well, if you’ve done your job correctly here, you already have a pretty good trance state. It will just be a very emotional one. Emotions are linked to the unconscious, so the stronger the emotion is, the less they’ll be thinking. So the dream machine doesn’t have to create a trance. It can if you wish it t, considering there’s a deepening process. The main point of the dream machine is to create change. That’s it. What proportion of the story gets told up from in the loop as opposed to the end of the loop? Why don’t you out what’s satisfying? My instincts tell me that too much thinking is going on in this room and it smells bad. It’s an offensive smell. Let’s stop thinking. Just start – seriously guys. Just start with your first story, the emotional story. Get into it, enjoy, enthuse with it and it will take you all the way through. It will lead to the next story, and that will lead to the next story, and then the dream machine will become obvious or whatever process you want to use and you can just close one story, you can finish up the other story and so on. I’ll give you 10 minutes apiece to do this. You won’t need 10 minutes, but you may as well have 10 minutes so that you don’t feel rushed. Make sense? Everyone clear? Off you go. Who here is beginning to realize that your skill set is actually a lot bigger than you might have at first realized? Isn’t that pretty impressive?

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What I want to do before lunch is very quickly we’ll do an exercise that will lead into lunch so you can carry it on over lunch if you like. We’ll just take the same essential skill and add something with a little bit more hypnotic juju into it. Would you like that? Would that be useful to you? So, very simply you’re going to follow the same structure. You know, the three stories with an emotion, we’re going to have the dream machine or some kind of hypnotic process in the middle, and then the three loops out. That’s easy enough to do, isn’t it? This time what I’d like you guys to do is your first story focuses on emotion one, which is part of your dream machine, like a problem emotion. Story two starts taking you out of that problem with emotion too a little bit, which will be kind of the C part of the PCAT formula. It’s going to be a little different, it’s not quite the same as before, but it’s necessarily totally resolved. Emotion three is going to be the final part, which is the resolution part of the emotion. So how will they feel once they’ve resolved the whole process? It’s the transformational state or the access resources state and put it together. Does that kind of make sense? Of course, as you bring them all out, these are all celebrations at some level. Easy to do? Now if you’re already thinking I can’t think of any stories to make that happen, that’s right. You can’t think of any stories to make that happen. I’ll come to you in a minute. Do you want to know how to cheat with this one? Would you like that, guys? Just use the three stories you had earlier. That’s already been set up for you so you already have the three stories if you want them. But if you want to challenge yourself, first stop thinking. Step two, start feeling something, like a problem, and let that begin to evolve the three stories for you. Student: ♦

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The one, two and three, do we include these in the dream machine?




Igor:

No. Oh, can if you want to. You really don’t have to. This is the dream machine. You can think of as a process steps that you will go through, and you’re going to mirror the process emotionally. So you tell an emotional story first, which is going to mirror the experiential journey it will take later. Think of it like the hero’s journey. In the hero’s journey, there’s a call to action and a resistance. There’s like, I don’t want to go but I’m kind of being invited, but I don’t want to go. Then they go through this other world and stuff happens. Eventually, there will be a climax at the end of which they get the gold, they win and they slay the dragon or whatever it is. So, they can emotionally have those experiences before they actually go through the official journey as an experience so that the emotions reflect the experience that’s going to come later. Does that make sense? There’s a concept. Now it won’t make sense to use an experience until after you look back on what you’ve already done. Keep it simple. Don’t try to connect these things at all. You’re going to do exactly what you did a moment ago. It is identical to the process you just did. The only difference is you’re going to have three different emotions here, and that’s it. That’s the only thing you need to figure out. Three different emotions, that’s it. The problem is, is something which is more positive than the problem, but it doesn’t have to be actually positive. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. The third one is actually a positive emotion. Again, if you cannot think of one, go back to the three stories you told earlier today. That’s already set up for you. So this is not about thinking right now. This is about getting used to a process.

Student: ♦

Igor:

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Doesn’t this mean that you’ll be closing the loops in reverse order positive emotion, okay emotion, negative emotion?

No, it doesn’t because every story can have a happy ending, even the bad ones do. I’m hanging off the cliff, I’m about to die and a helicopter saves me. Yay. So if you want to make sure you have all the bad stuff out in here, so Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



by the time you get to here, all you have left are the lessons and the learnings and how it’s encouraged you in life, that’s fine. Remember, these are your stories, folks. You are the story God. That means you get to tell the story what to do. Doesn’t that feel like real power? No? Was it just me? All right, it’s just me. Again folks, do not over-think this stuff. The point is you want to make sure the exit here is positive, or at least neutral. If you can’t think of it in emotional terms, make sure there are three lessons to be learned at the end of this so you don’t even involve the emotions anymore. The first three stories are just emotional ones, three different emotions and a dream machine in the middle. That’s the only thing consciously that you have to think about – three emotions that are different and a dream machine in the middle. Can everyone think of three different emotions? Let me try that again. Can anyone here think of three different emotions? All right, close enough. Can everyone here think of at least three different emotions? Tell a story about one here, a second one here, a third one there. Can you all do a dream machine type induction? You can tell that here. Then you just finish your stories off at the end and you’re done. It’s easy. The less you think, the easier it gets. So you want to make it easy. Who would rather have it hard? Find a different partner, 10 minutes apiece. Off you go.

Igor:

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How are you guys doing? Did you guys have a nice lunch? Are you guys enjoying the day? Has it been easy? Are your minds starting to calm down Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



and let things settle in? Good, because you all have worked hard over the last 10 days and really you’ve done some pretty cool things. Really, there’s nothing else I really want to say. We’re going to be finishing up today shortly. We’ll do that last set of question and answer session so if you have any burning questions or a burning desire to tell people how amazing this course has been, there’s an open mic there for a testimonial. We’ll happily accept those too. Before we go down that whole road, we’re going to do one last exercise today, which is going to be very easy just to get you guys to really own the skills that you’ve been sharpening over the last 10 days, and then we’ll be finished a little early. Around 3:00 we’ll have a little sort of awards ceremony, and then we’ll finish up bits and pieces, and then there will be a photo opportunity. Photo-op, does anyone like the photo op? So stick around. I know some of you guys have to head out early. Some of you have already headed off to the airport because of their flights. So if you can just stick around for a little bit afterwards for the photograph so I can get a big group photo. It’s usually a nice thing to do and if you have to rush off, I understand that too. That’s fine. Before we go into the sort of tail end of the whole process, it would be useful I think to have like one last Q&A session for you guys to present general comments. If there’s a burning question we haven’t addressed yet, this would really be the time and allow me to say well, that’s for the next seminar because some questions are bigger than one particular seminar can handle. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? For the most part, if it has to do with what we’ve been doing here, I’ll happily do my best to answer your questions and help you apply things and so on. I really want you to leave here having all these things, not just as an understanding or even as a skillset, but as a practical skillset that you can use in your day-to-day lives. Make sense? Student:

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I just want you to know that you’ve seriously interfered with my ability to mess with my wife. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

That’s good.

Student:

We were at lunch and she said, you know, this doesn’t really feel like Sunday and I said well, what part of Sunday does this not feel like? Perhaps tomorrow or maybe it’s the thing you thought of yesterday that is today and she said yes, that’s right.

Igor:

It’s a beautiful thing. Consider the possibility that it’s not that the messing part is not working, it’s just the resistant part has gone away. 00:03:40 it better. Thank you.

Student:

Hi, Igor. I was wondering if you would just briefly review that last exercise that we did, explaining which emotional content was going with which piece and how it related to the dream machine.

Igor:

Sure. So very briefly, really the idea of relating to the dream machine was just an added bell and whistle. You don’t even have to do that. Essentially, what you’re doing is – has anyone here ever been in a bad place, stuck in a problem of some sort and eventually resolved it? Now if you think back to such an example, you may notice that you went through a chain of experiences, a chain of emotions. Maybe you were frustrated or a little depressed and then you got angry at life or someone for putting you there. You just God damn well did something, and then afterwards you went hey, that wasn’t so bad and you felt the relief of overcoming it and maybe even some pride at having succeeded. Would that be fair to you guys? What we’re doing is forget the dream machine element. If you just scrub the dream machine out and all you do is take people on that emotional journey, that’s all that you’re doing with these loops. Then the purpose of having the loops at the end here is just to seal in the good stuff at the unconscious level so that it maintains. Does that make sense? So there’s no need for any particular emotion at the ending part. They can just have lessons or interesting things that happen and so on, but the emotional part of the journey really is taken care of here. The dream

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machine itself well, that’s just an added bonus on the cake. Now that they’ve gone through the emotional version of the journey, they may as well go through the hypnotic element in terms of actually associating symbols or linking to experiences and so. Make sense? So you prime them with one set, and then you just take them through the same journey again, but on a different level of reality. This is the emotional reality. This could be an intellectual reality in terms of just direct suggestions, for example, or it could be a symbolic reality in terms of a more classic dream machine and so on. Do these things have to tie in one for one? No. They often will, just because you’re thinking along the same lines and your unconscious mind can’t help making those links for you. But honestly, if you can’t find it straightaway, you’re doing yourself a disservice trying to think about how to do it because thought is the enemy of progress, or should I actually say to make it more accurate, thinking at the wrong time is the enemy of progress. Thought itself, is very useful and analysis. When you go home, I would encourage all of you to go through everything you’ve seen here, all the notes that you’ve taken, all the flip charts that we’ve created together and really think about them and consider them fully, weight them up, dissect them and pull them back together again and so on. It is just that when you get to the point of actually doing something and then forget about it all. Don’t think about it anymore. Just do whatever comes out, and whatever it is that comes out will be the right thing. Sometimes something will come up that isn’t on one of these flip charts that we haven’t covered here, and when that does happen, please send me an email and let me know exactly what you did because that will be about an advanced course is about. Where do you think all this stuff came from, guys? Would you like to know where it began? Do you remember the power words? Traditionally that’s known as the milk model. I’ve changed them around a little bit to make it easier to learn, but traditionally it was the milk model. When I started as a coach, all I knew is how to ask a good question. I was a lawyer and I knew how to use the milk

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model. That’s it. That’s all I had. Bit by bit, partly by reading Erickson and thinking about it and applying it in different situations, all this kind of stuff started evolving. Along the way, of course, I trained with some great hypnotists, and I watched some of the patterns. Sometimes they taught it overtly, which was great. Sometimes I had to back over it over and over again to just tease something out that they were doing, but that’s where all this stuff came from, which means that if all you’re doing is this 10 years from now, you’ve missed the point. Hence, stop thinking so much. The time to think is when you’re not doing, when you’re sitting at home and you’re contemplating the future or working some ideas out and so on. For the moment, you need to influence. The moment’s someone’s in front of you, stop all that. Your thoughts are only there to kind of keep an overall track of things. What story am I on right now? How are they responding right now? Those are really the main things that are going on inside your mind they’re going on inside my mind whilst you’re doing it. Is that useful? Student:

Other than to overall just thank you for the entire week and being able to master a skill set that I didn’t even think I could actually master in a practical way. So thank you for that. I do have a question. The question has to do with framing actually. ♦

Igor:

Can you just offer suggestions for going out in the real world about some practical ways we can start practicing pre-frames, de-frames and reframes?

In terms of frame control, really, we’re doing it all the time anyways. So the question you ask yourself is, when you are presenting some information, what is it that they’re relating that information towards to make sense of it and then change it, and you can do it with stories. So, you can tell a story and then give them some information and see how they respond, or you can actually give a pre-frame along the lines of, hey, here’s what I think. Let me give you an example, and the example will

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actually be information you’re trying to present, the pre-frame that says here’s what I think. So it’s actually a lot easier than most people realize. The harder part comes in when there’s an existing frame and you want to change that, and that’s where the whole value stuff and the value leverage is about. As far as I’m concerned, the idea of frame and frame control is more being attuned to the social vibe or the expectations people have, and when you get a push back realizing, okay, it’s time to do some reframing. In terms of reframing, it’s very easy. The reframing, just use the objection destroyer. That’s what it’s there for. There are many other ways to reframe too, but in terms of what we’ve done here, in my opinion the objection destroyer out of all the years and stuff I’ve done is the most simple to understand, distilled version of the whole reframing concept. So just do it. Student:

So, any sort of social situation really?

Igor:

Everywhere you go. When you have normal conversations, just start presenting frames and see how people react. Like the Cialdini laws, nine out of ten people say this. What do you think? Well, I agree with the nine. Does that help?

Student:

Yes, thank you.

Igor:

You’re very welcome. Go ahead.

Student:

First thank you, Igor.

Igor:

Thank you.

Student:

I noticed that when I went to Seattle for the hypnotherapy training, when we got out of it, a bunch of my buddies and stuff like that felt that very high H+. I mean it was H+++ and stuff like that, but I also noticed that after maybe six months later, that H+ started to go down. ♦

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What would your suggestion be in terms of how do we keep that high H+++?




Igor:

Well, the first thing to realize is life is cyclical anyway. So you’ll never be on a constant high. The second thing to realize is it’s really the hero’s journey all over again, isn’t it? Who here is feeling some resistance at the thought of leaving here in a few hours’ time? You do realize those thoughts will be locked. In other words, you stay on the inside for a long time or you go back to the outside. Of course, the resistance is in bringing the elixir back into the regular world. Once it’s in the regular world, there will be some resistance in the regular world accepting it. What happens is if people stay stuck in the regular world for too long, there’s a danger that they’ll forget about the elixir and they go back, which is when the cycle over here of his journey begins. Now by that I’m not suggesting, of course, that you go to another seminar for a top up, although you’re welcome to come back. I love you all. But you need to realize that the cyclical nature of that, if it starts ending it’s because part of you has accepted the mundane. The normal world again too fully and you need to do something to get yourself back out into the special world long enough to return with a refreshed elixir. That’s traditionally, in normal everyday society, that’s called a holiday. Well, that’s why people go, isn’t it? They’ve had too much of mundane-ness, too much of normal humdrum, and they need to go somewhere that isn’t that to recharge their batteries and so on. When they come back, they come back full of life and so on. Consider the possibility that you can have little mini hypnotic journeys, little hero’s journeys in your day-to-day life, and then that keeps your H+ strong. If what you’re doing is in absolute alignment with your values, your life’s vision and mission and so on, then your H+ increases over time, but you have to make that active connection. I’m doing well; therefore, my H+ is higher; therefore, I’m doing better, and that’s the whole being a force for good in people’s lives, isn’t it? The more you’re a force of good in someone’s life, the more it pumps up your H+. It’s just a natural self-fulfilling prophecy, a cycle.

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When people act more selfishly – and I mean that not in the sense of, I think selfishness is actually a very good thing. I like the idea of enlightened selfinterest. So my idea is that you do H+ or you become a force for good for other people, if for no other reason than just because it pumps up your own hypnotic abilities because it increases your H+, plus you end up living a happier, healthier life as well. So essentially, when people start getting derailed too much into the mundane, then it erodes those things that are going on in the background so you need to step things up, either by being a bigger force for good or by challenging yourself or by taking another little heroic journey in different places. Go somewhere else to do something. Start up a new hobby perhaps to re-stimulate yourself. That newness of going to that special world has to happen again, or you won’t be charged. Does that help? Student:

Yes, and I can’t speak for everyone, but I talked to a lot of people at this seminar, and everyone agrees that this is one of the best trainings. Let’s give it up to Igor. [Applause]

Igor:

Thank you, but we’re not there yet we still have an exercise left.

Student:

With respect to the last question, after you attend a seminar like this and you go home, a few months later there’s a natural tendency to feel a little drop off from the high that we’ve all experienced here. The best way that I found to avoid that is practice, practice, practice. What we’ve all learned here is a skill set. If you utilize these skills on a daily basis, and the more you use them, I promise you the more you will find ways to use these skills. The more you use these skills, the more enhanced they become, the more engrained they become, the better you will get. You will not only maintain the high that you’ve had here, you will literally surpass it because you’ll have a tremendous sense of achievement in being

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able to put into practice everything we’ve learned here. So, if you walk out of here and say, I’ve been to a seminar, it felt great, I’ve got the piece of paper, that’s fantastic; but if you want to really maintain the high and get the true value out of what you’ve learned here, practice, practice, practice every day in every way. I cannot encourage you enough to do that. Igor:

That’s worth a round of applause. Thank you.

Student:

I’ll just say thanks for everything. It’s changed my life tremendously.

Igor:

Thank you.

Student: And if this is not appropriate to answer now, I apologize, but can you go

over the objection destroyer on last time. I understand pretty much 99% of everything, but I want to make sure because this is the last time I get to ask you, and I want to make sure I got it. Igor:

Sure. The objection destroyer is surprisingly simple. Step one is – we’ll assume we have a problem or an objection that kind of is creating the breaks already. The first step is you’ve got to join it. You can’t push against the objection because all the does is it creates more reactants and more resistance as a result. So you acknowledge it. That’s the simplest way of doing it. Anyone here ever upset at some customer service type thing and turn up and they’ll say, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. All the policy says is this. That, of course, calms you own immensely, doesn’t it? Occasionally, you have a bad employee, who sits there and goes oh, that’s terrible. I’m sorry you went through that. That doesn’t make you feel at all better, does it? So, acknowledgment is a good way of deflating the emotional pressure that builds up with whatever objections or problems start existing. The next thing – I mean you can look at it in different ways. Well, I’ll just use the word amygdala for now because that’s essentially what we’re triggering. You need to have some kind of mind-bending moment, whether it’s a magic

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moment or some mind-bending language. These are the two main ways we’ve covered. There are other ways – jokes, humor can do it too. Essentially, what you’re looking to do is to trigger that part of the brain called the amygdala, which can short circuit the regular thinking process because you need to create a space into which your ideas are presented, right? Whether you really are worth an upgrade at the airport or that my name might not be on the list, but I am really coming into the club, it doesn’t really matter. The point is you need to reset what the pattern is that’s inside that mind. Finally – this is the easy part – is you offer your reframe framed in a way, sugar-coated in a way that’s easy to accept. Some people require a little flash with it. Some people will require a link to their values for some extra leverage. Some people just require it to be a simple idea that’s socially acceptable, shall we say. As a rule, this reframe must be simple and clear. If a five-year-old doesn’t get it, chances are they won’t either, simple and clear. The rule is on the amygdala, you want to have – well, the amount of stimulation, in other words the amount that you want to bypass critical thinking, you want to warp their brain, shall we say has to be in direct relationship to the level of resistance that they have. If it’s a big idea they’re holding onto, you’ll need to have quite a shift here, and you may need several rounds of it. If it’s a minor idea, then having a big shift, all that’s going to do is it’s going to create a mental gap into which your reframe gets swallowed and they’ll forget about it. They don’t even realize it’s happened. Has anyone sort of stared off into space and someone speaks to them and you go, huh, what, huh? You have no idea what they said, right? You haven’t even processed it probably because your mind was processing fully on other levels. So you want to make sure the triggering process is not too large if their problem isn’t too large. If it’s a big problem, you may have to have a bigger gap. And, whilst they’re in space you realize that the stuff that you say at that point is only half getting through, so you may have to repeat the reframe or

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gently guide them into the reframe with regular language until they kind of end up in this wonderful garden, which is the new point of view. Although the simple way of looking at it is just acknowledge the problem, create a mind-bending moment, whether it’s a magic moment or mindbending language or anything else you want to you use – stories. I know stories don’t really work, do they? And then offer a reframe. By the way, you can do all these things with a story because, remember, stories are magic moments too. So your story could begin by acknowledging the problem, be so charming in terms of it switches off the regular way of thinking, and have built into it a framework that they understand the situation differently and say, you know what, come on in. In stories, what you need for this element here is a strong emotional trigger. That’s essentially how you use them. The rest, of course, is it must fit into the social context that you’re in. I know people who can break the social context and get away with it, but honestly that’s much more complex because you have to start juggling other features as well, and that’s something I don’t know how to teach at the moment. This is a much simpler way of doing it. Does that answer your question? Sure, the dream machine can go in here. Anything can go into this element here. The point is you are switching off the critical factor and so on, and sometimes you don’t have time for the dream machine. Hence, you just have a quick magic moment, a quick story, a quick mind-bending language moment and they’ll go what? What are you saying? Reframe and very often that’s all it takes. What I want to do now is a final exercise to kind of have some fun with your hypnotic skills. I’d like you to step into your own as a hypnotist here. So number one, you’re going to have a little hypnotic rapport with people. You’ve already done that a few times, haven’t you? Two, I would like you to have a regular chat. Imagine that the training course is over, and you’re just having a normal chat about what you’re going to do next and where you’re going to go from here and so on.

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Literally, feel the vibe of a normal chat existing. Do not go on until the conversation has become normal, not the, oh what’s he going to do? Okay, yes, yes, yes, I’ve enjoyed the course. Yeah, yeah, I’m going to go home tomorrow. Yes, 7:00 p.m. thank you. That’s not a normal conversation. It’s just a normal chit chatty thing. Once that flow is there, what I’d like you to do I want you to get into the, that’s right mindset only. You do not have to say the words. That’s right. All I want you to do is as the chit chat begins or the chit chat’s kind of flowing nicely, you switch internally and you kind of imagine, what if I start saying that’s right really hypnotically? Of course, you still have to engage with them in a normal conversation, but the switch has already occurred and it’s only a matter of time until that conscious mind is going down into the unconscious and experiencing a charming moment. Really step number four – this is the bit that is going to be, I don’t know, hopefully it won’t overwhelm you too much because there’s just a lot of stuff going on here. Step number four – are you ready for this, or shall I maybe just skip this for now? Because it is the end of the training and I wouldn’t want to kind of blow your fuse too quickly. Can I take a little risk here with you guys? Is that okay? Okay, step number four is do whatever the hell you want. Step number four is once you’re in the, that’s right feeling and your instincts are attuned, do whatever seems right. Now that might be a yes set. That might be a dream machine. That might be an objection destroyer. That might be a story. That might be a magic moment. That might even be an instant induction. Who knows? The only thing I know is that you will not know or you should not know what step number four is until you’ve hit number three. It should be as much a surprise to you as it is to them. You’re allowed to do anything you’ve learned in our 10 days together. Anything at all and, quite frankly, anything else counts too provided its hypnotic in nature.

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There’s only one purpose to this whole thing. You have to have an intention or a purpose in step number four. Otherwise, hypnosis is not a painting; it’s a tool of purpose. It achieves things. Without purpose, it doesn’t switch on. So you need to have a clear intention here, and I’d like to offer you a very simple intention here. The intention is that you can take the best parts of all the experiences you’ve had here over the last 10 days and take them home with you, make them part of who the other person is, how they communicate and how amazing their life is, essentially, kind of a future memory. Now, the future memory can happen symbolically, it can happen to their past, it can happen just because you give them a pep talk, it can happen in a million different ways, as long as it’s not the way that you’re thinking of right now. That’s good. So that gives you more choices. She saying she’s not thinking. So the smart ones amongst you, it’s like this is the moment in Ghostbusters where you’re about to create Mr. Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. If you do not think you have much more choice open to you, start thinking now, oh I could use this, oh I could use that oh, well roll out the list now. Do you understand the exercise? It’s very simple and easy. I’d like you to take 15 minutes apiece, so it’s half an hour in total. Fifteen minutes is just a normal conversation. It should give you plenty of time to get into a regular chatty sort of conversation, so there’s no hurry on when you begin the whole influencing process. Does that make sense? Student: ♦

Igor:

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Should we decide who the hypnotist is or can we just drop each other?

I think for the sake of fluidity, let’s just choose a hypnotist ahead of time. However, once the seminar formally finishes, I encourage you to have the dual of the hypnotists. Who’s going to talk to me now? Is it going to be? Is it going to be you? All right. I’m going to get in there first. That’s a good suggestion. Now let me turn around on you. So that’s quite fine. Yes, it’s like snap-on hypnoids. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Do you all get the exercise? It’s simple. It’s easy. It should be a tremendous amount of fun because there are no constraints on you. If you’re starting the dream machine and a story comes to mind, do you know what you do? You abandon the dream machine, and you go with the story. Seriously, you do whatever seems right at that moment in time, and if the moment changes, so do you. Find a partner. Fifteen minutes apiece. Off you go. How did that go? Did you enjoy it? Aren’t the people that are hypnotizing you awesome in what they do? Well, just remember, one of them was you. It gets a little dangerous now when we have a room full 100 hypnotists or so, right? So really what you’ve just done is you’ve joined, if you like, a tradition I guess or a network of people that, in my opinion, has spanned back as far as human history goes. You know, of course, that the first hypnotists were the medicine men, the Shaman, the people with special powers way back when, and many societies still have them. It’s interesting because we may look down on more “primitive” societies in many ways, but actually when we take a moment to look, we’ll find that they have a lot of things right in the sense that they’ve developed intuitively over time things that just work. I find it particularly interesting in terms of things like Shamanism and all these traditional healing methods that – I’m not talking about the ones that have been around for like 20 years or 100 or years. I’m talking about the ones that have been around for 5,000 years in different shapes and forms. If we take out the overt structures, the feathers and the shaking stuff and so on then something in there speaks about the human spirit. For example, in the Hawaiian Islands you have the hunas and the kahunas. Do you know what the kahunas are? So, the Hawaiian word huna means a secret essentially, and a kahuna means a keeper of a secret. Technically speaking, a kahuna is someone who’s just a master of their craft. You could have a kahuna of table polishing or table making. It’s just a master of their craft. They have the secret of the craft.

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Secret is not necessarily a secret in terms of I shouldn’t tell anyone. It’s just secret in terms of the inner workings of something that most people don’t take the time to work out and discover. So you have kahunas of massage, you have kahunas of table making and painting and so on. Of course, you have the kahunas that I would call the kahunas of the mind that work with people’s emotions and their spirit in different ways. There’s an old tradition in huna, in this mental form of it shall we say that human beings wherever they go, they leave a thread. So whoever you meet and whatever experience, you touch also touches you and leaves a kind of an invisible thread that follows you throughout your life. Now some threads, of course, are not necessarily healthy to have these ceremonies about cutting threads of relationships that aren’t serving you anymore, but many of those threads are worth enhancing and growing over time. I think it’s a nice concept to think about all the experiences that ever touched you, all the people that you’ve ever met have left a kind of imprint on you, a thread, and to some extent you’re connected mentally, maybe emotionally, and there’s a little piece of them that travels along with you. Of course, there’s a little piece of you that travels along with them. In Canada there is a very famous set of youth leadership camps, and I was recently told a story about some of the things they do there. One of the most important elements of the whole camp is literally the last session, the final session before everyone goes home. One of the things they do is they take a big ball of string or wool, and someone will just wrap a little bit of wool around their wrist and they’ll look around the room and they’ll throw it at someone that made an impact on them. As they throw the ball and the person catches it, they will tell them how they made an impact on them, what they appreciate about them, how they helped them change or grow as a person. That person will listen and then they’ll wrap the string around their write, and then they’ll throw it to someone else and the whole process continues, sometimes for hours because these people really have affected each other in a very important, very significant way.

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These traditions of, shall we say, keeping memories I think is part of what makes us human. Thousands of years ago, there was a Viking nation as many people know, explorers, people that went to the ends of the Earth to discover. Some say that they found remains of Viking long boats on the shores of North America, so they could have been here centuries before Columbus ever discovered the continent. One of the things that in Viking tradition is of special importance was someone’s name. By a name, we just don’t mean the letters, the sounds that made their name, but it was everything that made that person. You see, the Vikings believed that the stories that people tell about you after someone’s passed on, those are the things that keep that person alive. That’s one tradition that made the Vikings so fierce and brave in many ways and adventurous because these adventures created stories. These stories built the name and the name could last forever. It is the name that got you into Viking mythology– Valhalla– the promise land where people would have a big Viking party for all eternity. So people really made an effort to make a name for themselves because it meant something and because it meant that their legacy would live on and would continue long after they had passed on. The ceremony for a Viking burial was particularly interesting. If someone was important enough, they would build a long boat just for that person. Into this long boat they would place all the objects that represented important stages of their journey, treasure they’d gathered, swords, shields, but really the objects were not important. The importance was the symbols that these objects represented. Every Viking aspired to collecting enough of these symbols that when it was their time to move on, the boat could be loaded with treasures. Not the physical things that they would take to the afterlife, but the things that they represented. We’ve all been here in a kind of long boat of our own, have we not? We’ve been on a wild adventure on the high seas. Sometimes chaos reigned and sometimes re-imposed order.

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At every ever y step of the way, nobody no body was quite sure sur e where wher e we were going go ing and yet there was a point, there was a destination in mind. Isn’t it interesting to know that you can have a destination in mind and not have any idea where you’re going consciously? The adventure begins inside. Setting a direction somewhere worth exploring and inside some part of each one of you answers the call by heading in the right direction, trusting that the destination will become clear as you continue without any need to know where you’re going. All you need to know is where you’ve been, and that inside you have a compass, an emotional compass that points the way, and that’s all you need. Set the compass right, and the whole boat will drift in the right direction and will feel right, and you will know it. In the process, you’ll be collecting stories, things that have meaning, important symbols along the way that will change, who you are becoming, that will change the lives of the people that you touch and that will change your name. Not the sounds or the symbols, but what it means, what it means to you and what it means to others so that one day someone will tell the story of you, maybe to their friends, their children or grandchildren. They will tell the story of you and how important it was that your paths should have crossed, that they should have discovered your name because without that, they could not have become who they did. Amongst the Vikings that was the greatest honor, to have a name worth remembering, and a name worth remembering, of course, meant deeds worth remembering, stories worth telling. All of us have the capacity to do that now. Whilst we may or may not have this ball of string that we throw from one person to another, part of everyone in this room will continue to go with you. In this leadership camp, once the ceremony is completed, often over several hours they will tie off the strings of wool and cut the cords so that they can go home with a new bracelet, a covering on the arm to remind them of all the lives they touched. Then return with all the lives that have touched them because there’s no real difference is there.

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The Kahunas knew something about how people work, which I think one psychology could really learn from because these invisible threads do make a difference. You’ve spent 10 days building connections in here that do make a difference, and you should be proud of that because if nothing else, someone in this room will be speaking your name outside of the context of this place to someone who’s never met you, and in doing so it will be worth hearing the story. I encourage you to live up to your name in the days, weeks, months, and lifetime to come. To remember that even though you might not be able to see it, a little part of you is going to move away with everyone in this room, and a little part of them is going to remain with you. So, if nothing else, you can treat that with respect and do something worthwhile with that, can you not? Of course, the formal part of this journey is now over, but with every beginning there’s an ending and vice versa. So I encourage you not to treat this as an end of this seminar, but really the start of what it is you’re going to do with all the newfound threads you’ve found in your life, all the stories that are just beginning to start right now. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? Whilst we won’t have necessarily string to tie around your wrist to take home, we do have something else that you might enjoy just as much. That’s a beautiful little piece of paper. Now in our industry as you may know there are many pieces of paper, some of which aren’t really worth anywhere near as much as the price you pay for it. This is I think quite a charming looking piece of paper, but to me really the importance is not what’s printed on it or what it’s made of. To me the importance of this is all the effort you put into this over the last 10 days because you’ve earned this. It says on here, Master of Conversational Hypnosis. Personally, I think you’ll all live up to this. So give yourselves a nice round of applause, and in a moment before we start the whole photo opportunity and all the rest of it, you’ll see in the back of the room on the table we’ve put them all out in alphabetical order. There will be little piles according to your sir name.

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So, rather than spending the next two hours just handing out bits of paper, it might be easier if you guys grab your own certificate. Then we’ll come back here, we’ll have a nice big group photo and one thing that I thought would be very charming to do is you might see around the room we have lots of posters that represent our journey here. Students:

Thank you Igor! What I’d like to do if you’ll permit me is take a few moments to take photographs of different people in front of different stages of the journey, and then we’ll create a kind of little photo album that we’ll send to you guys afterwards, little postcards of your experiences here. Would that okay with you guys? Before we formally break, there are a few thank you’s that we have to make. The first thank you, of course, is in absentia is our good friend Clifford, without whose hard work none of this would have been organized, none of you would know this exists, and none of you would know I existed. So this is only a partial thanks to Cliff. For the camera and Cliff, give him a nice round of applause. Next we have Frank and Obi, the power punching duo that have been faithfully recording and preserving all this stuff. So give them a nice round of applause for doing such a good job. Then in the back of the room we have Shawn and Sara who have invisibly helped the whole thing become smooth, streamlined and jumped in when people needed help and all that sort of stuff. Thanks to you. Then possibly most important of all, we have Megan who actually makes everything possible. Oh yes, its Megan’s birthday. Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday dear Megan, happy birthday to you! Last but not least, I’d really like to thank all of you for turning up in the first place and putting yourself on the line. Because, without you making an

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