CHM Manual Pt1

Conversational Hypnosis Mastery Transcript Manual – Part 1

By Igor Ledochowski

©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved

CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1

Contents DVD 1: Conversational Hypnosis, Conversational Inductions & Instant Inductions ........4 DVD 2: Conversational Hypnosis Mastery Principles....................................................32 DVD 3: Conversational Hypnosis Language Foundations ............................................66 DVD 4: The Power of “Hypnotic Circles” .......................................................................93 DVD 5: How to Read Other People like an Open Book ..............................................111 DVD 6: Hypnotic Rapport & New “Magnetic Charisma” Techniques ..........................144 DVD 7: Revivification & How to Lead any Conversation to Get Your Desired Results ......................................................................................................................................176 DVD 8: How to Take Control of any Conversation Without Anyone Knowing What You Have Done....................................................................................................................216 DVD 9: How to Isolate the Conscious Mind & Access the Unconscious Mind Directly ......................................................................................................................................242 DVD 10: Secrets to Naturally Using Conversational Hypnosis in Normal Conversations without Sounding Weird................................................................................................266 DVD 11: The Surefire Irresistible Induction & how to Powerfully use “Magic Moments” ......................................................................................................................................286 DVD 12: Strategic Conversational Hypnosis & How to Use the “Dream Machine” for Maximum Effect............................................................................................................314 DVD 13: Frames, Re-Frames & Unstoppable Frame Control .....................................337 DVD 14: Super Persuasion - How to Lock People into Your Frame and Make Them Feel Good at the Same Time .......................................................................................363 DVD 15: The 16 Hot Button “Super Drivers” that Force People to Act and How to Push Them ............................................................................................................................383 DVD 16: How to Get Even More Leverage so People Feel Compelled to Follow Your Suggestions..................................................................................................................403 DVD 17: How to “Reboot” any Stubborn Mind with the Objection Destroyer Method .431

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Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 DVD 18: Simple Hypnotic Persuasion Tactics You Can Easily Slip into Any Conversation ................................................................................................................463 DVD 19: Persuasion Principles & Foundation Strategies to Weave into Your Master Plan for Hypnotic Influence...........................................................................................484 DVD 20: How to Covertly Hijack Other People’s Conversations and Take them in the Direction You Want Them to Go...................................................................................506 DVD 21: Getting Agreements, Getting Favors & Getting Sales – How to “Close” Absolutely Anybody ......................................................................................................529 DVD 22: The I.G.O.R. Method – How to Destroy Resistance to Your Influence for Guaranteed Results......................................................................................................550

The Conversational Hypnosis Mastery Seminar is the sole property of Street Hypnosis Publishing (including, but not limited to text, content, graphics, video and audio) and is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws. You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained in this law. YOU MAY NOT POST ON A WEB SITE OR CREATE A WEB FRAME AROUND ANY PART OF THIS SERVICE (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, TEXT, CONTENT, PHOTOGRAPHS, VIDEO AND AUDIO). YOU MAY NOT COPY, REPRODUCE, DISTRIBUTE, PUBLISH, DISPLAY, PERFORM, MODIFY, CREATE DERIVATIVE WORKS, TRANSMIT, OR IN ANY WAY EXPLOIT ANY PART OF THIS SERVICE, EXCEPT THAT YOU MAY DOWNLOAD MATERIAL FROM THIS SERVICE FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL, NONCOMMERCIAL USE AS FOLLOWS: YOU MAY MAKE ONE MACHINE READABLE COPY AND/OR ONE PRINT COPY THAT IS LIMITED TO OCCASIONAL ARTICLES OF PERSONAL INTEREST ONLY. WITHOUT LIMITING THE GENERALITY OF THE FOREGOING, YOU MAY NOT DISTRIBUTE ANY PART OF THIS SERVICE OVER ANY NETWORK, INCLUDING A LOCAL AREA NETWORK, NOR SELL NOR OFFER IT FOR SALE. IN ADDITION, THESE FILES MAY NOT BE USED TO CONSTRUCT ANY KIND OF DATABASE.

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DVD 1: Conversational Hypnosis, Conversational Inductions & Instant Inductions Igor:

Look at all these bright breezy faces. Good morning everyone.

Audience:

Good morning.

Igor:

How are we all doing? Is anyone excited? This is the whole stage hypnosis group, what’s going on here? We had a stage hypnosis training this year in Vegas and I see a whole bunch of you in the room and I’m a little scared now. Someone might take over the stage. It is dangerous when there are hypnotists in the room when I’m actually teaching. At the Vegas event during one of the exercises one of the guys comes up and his personal suggestion is to go up and try to hypnotize the trainer, so I’m going like this and he’s going like this and we’re both going into trance, it was very embarrassing. It sounds like we’re onto a rock and roll start already. Let me formally say welcome to everyone. Welcome to – what town are we in today? I think we’re in Los Angeles, right? This is a great place to do what we’re about to do over the next few days. Why? L.A. is kind of a social place, people like the whole connecting and networking, they never know who is going to be able to help them and how – my point is it’s a very social city and the things that we’ll be doing here are very social skills. Does that make sense? There are a couple of expectations I want you all to take with you. First, the stuff we’re doing here should be practical. You should be able to do it in public without embarrassment, and without getting caught. If you do any hypno-weirdness like and now, when, are you, sleeping deeply…whilst they’re writing out a ticket for your car, I will disavow any knowledge of you, exactly. What we’re looking for here is – the elegance in conversational hypnosis comes in its subtlety. The problem with subtlety is if you’re too subtle, nobody gets it, right? If you’re unsubtle, then everyone gets it and they don’t like. It’s a question of finding that perfect balance in between.

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The beautiful thing is every one of you knows how to do this already, because you’ve had at least one conversation in which it’s worked. You’ve had at least one conversation where you felt yourself clicking and connecting with another person, have you not? Where it seemed like everyone else in the room drifted away, you had your private bubble and you talked about whatever it is you talked about. Has everyone had at least one conversation like that? Audience:

Once.

Igor:

You have the capacity, you can recognize it when it happens, and you’ve done it before. The point of this training is not necessarily to teach you anything new as such, which is kind of weird because you paid a lot of money to be here, it’s more to get you back to that place consistently whereas in the past you may have gotten there accidentally. Does that make sense to you all? I had a chat with a whole bunch of you earlier on, as you were registering and a question that comes up a lot is this. Finally, why did it take you three years, four years to go and put on this course? The answer is very simple. There are a couple reasons. Number one, The Power of Conversational Hypnosis home study course was what launched Street Hypnosis, it’s what made us famous, it’s our flagship course, it’s still our best selling course. I’ve wanted to teach this course, believe it or not, really from the first day. The problem we had was number one it’s a 10-day course. I didn’t want to just give you a two day bit. I tried recently to teach the essence of Conversational Hypnosis in one day, and I just blew a lot of fuses. There are a lot of little bits that have to get involved, otherwise people go the inelegant route which is obvious and crass, or they become ineffective and either way it is not very useful. I needed extra time to get you to the point where you can do this stuff subtly, and it’s easier, it’s natural enough to do it that way. Does that make sense? That means we needed some momentum. There are a lot of people in the room and we need a certain amount of people because you need to talk to different kinds of people. If you only have three people to work with, you’re going to get very used to a certain style and that’s not very useful to you.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The other reason is we’ve already got the home study course, and I thought – what’s the point of doing it all over again? Just listen to the tapes. What’s wrong with you? Just listen to the tapes, its fine. What I wanted to do is teach similar material, there’s going to be a whole bunch of new stuff we’re going to do here as well, but teach similar material in a very different way. How many of you, just out of curiosity, have the home study course already, the Power of Conversational Hypnosis? That’s most of you, that’s good. I don’t want to necessarily bore you and say here’s tape one, I’ll press play and come back in an hour, okay? Everyone got that? Okay here’s tape two, I’ll come back in another hour. That would be quite pointless and you’d probably feel cheated, and rightly so if that’s what we did. I want to teach the same core ideas, principles, in a very different way. Sometimes it won’t even look like the same thing. In that way, by getting different angles on the same concept, you’ll begin to understand it more clearly. Does that make sense to you all? Even if you’ve listened to it thoroughly, hopefully you’ll see, "Oh I recognize this, but it’s not the way I did it or it’s not the way I’ve seen it or thought about it before." That’s kind of my aim for you over the next few days. The final thing we want to be doing here is this is a Conversational Hypnosis mastery course. For me, mastery is all about being able to do stuff, not talk about stuff. I’m going to strip out as much of the theory as I can and I’m going to give you enough to get your intellects engaged and doing the right things and getting the results. In other words, this is all about what you do, it’s how you behave, it’s how you apply the skills and if you want to have more theories or more insights into some of the ideas that we start developing here and take it further, that’s really what the audio CDs are for. They’ll be compliments to each other. I don’t want to waste your time talking about ideas here that we won’t necessarily put into practice. I’d rather give you a foundation so that when you hear another idea you say, "Oh I get it, I can adapt what I can already do and add that piece in there too." Does that make sense to you all? That way it’s much more useful to you, it’s a way of you taking these skills and actually using them and then having this other stuff around the edges you can add, kind of like for kids. I think Pokémon is the big thing, you can

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 add bits on top of each other. You have your base onto which you add whatever you want. You can take it whatever direction you want to take it. Does that make sense to you all? There are a couple of expectations I’d like you all to have over the course of our 10 days together. The first one is, this is not therapy training. I mean that on both senses of the word. This is not necessarily an opportunity for you all to say I’ve had a really terrible childhood please help me. This is not an opportunity for free therapy, that’s not what we’re doing here. You can expect a lot of personal change to occur, it’s just the nature of what we do, but it’s not necessarily that I’m going to sit up here and say, "Let me show you how great I fix people." Because that’s not the purpose of what we’re doing here. On the flip side, this is also not hypnotherapy training. How many people here are hypnotherapists? Excellent, a nice mix. I teach hypnotherapy, I love hypnotherapy, I think it’s a fantastic force of good in the world and what you learn here will help enhance whatever you do anyway, in terms of your natural practice. We’re not certifying hypnotherapists here because that requires a specific skill, a specific focus, and certain ideas and concepts we won’t be touching on just because it would be beyond the scope of what we’re doing here. We could have this for six months and just get it all done, but I don’t think most of you have six months to just sit down in a room in L.A., no matter how nice it is, and do that. Does that make sense? If you have some questions about how to apply a particular idea or principle or something you’ve just done to hypnotherapy, if I can give you a quick answer I will happily do so, so feel free to ask it. If it’s more complex, is it okay if I just tell you that’s more complex, perhaps come to me on a break and I’ll do my best to elaborate on it, but it’s really beyond the scope of what we’re doing here. Is that okay with you all? Is that fair? That way we can keep rolling, because believe it or not I have a lot of stuff I want to put into the next 10 days and I’d rather not keep any of it out. The other side in terms of what we’re doing here, everyone here is an adult, right? We have no toddlers in the room, or at least people with the emotional maturity of a five year old?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The reason I say this is this is an all adult learning environment and you all do what you need to do to get the best out of this training. My job is to facilitate that, to make it as easy as possible to answer your questions, prepare experiences for you, and put them together in such a way that it all makes sense at the end of the day, or actually not necessarily at the end of the day sometimes it’ll be a few days before it makes sense. In terms of how you get the most out of it, that’s really something that you know in terms of personal style. Are you a note taker? Take notes. Are you more into absorbing the moment? By all means, absorb the moment. If you need to go to the back of the room and have a stretch because you’ve been sitting down too long, by all means, get up and stretch. If you need to get up and get a glass of water there’s lots of water in the back of the room, help yourself. If you want to buy any product fine, knock yourself out. Go to the back of the room, beat the rush. The point here is, do what you need to do to make this the best learning environment for yourselves. Does that make sense? But please do it in a way that’s respectful of other people. If your best way of learning is to stand up here on stage and talk to everyone then it’s going to be like hello, that’s very nice of you, but can I teach now? We need to make sure we don’t necessarily interfere with other people’s learning styles as well. I think it’s pretty straightforward that way. Take care of yourselves, do what you need to do, please don’t be shy about it. I quite like having people just hang around the back, having a drink – I’m very relaxed about those sorts of things. As long as you’re respectful of other people, come in and go out quietly if you need to go out, you don’t suddenly get on your cell phone and start shouting at the back of the room, that sort of thing. Speaking of cell phones, does anyone have one of these weird and strange futuristic gadgets? Can I ask you even if you’ve already turned it off to pull it out and check it, look at it and push buttons to check what status it’s in? Sometimes our minds have this way of telling us something has happened that hasn’t. It makes the training much easier, airplane mode is good. Some people’s learning styles – they like to have a manual they can flip through and look at and so on – this is a very cutting edge course in the sense that I’ve rearranged all the things and put them in a different order and so on, the hard part is there is no manual as of yet.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 What you will have is, by the end of the week, I’m going to give you my lecture notes, in other words the very things I use to keep myself on track as to what I’m going to teach you. They are basic notes. They should remind you of the highlighted experiences you’ve had. If you really like an exercise or an idea really strikes you that you want to remember it and so on, I strongly encourage you to write it down. Notes might be enough for you when you get them, and you might as well capture it on your own as well. If you haven’t brought anything to write with we have pens and paper at the back there. We’ve got lots of pads, got lots of pens so there’s lots of resources there for you all, there’s no reason you should miss out on anything. Is everyone cool with the general learning and training environment thing? Trainings will start at 9:00 am. each day, so I almost, always recommend people turn up early, half past 8:00 and so on. The doors usually open around quarter to 9:00 or something like that. I strongly recommend that you take your skills and you practice with the people in this group. Even if the doors are closed you’ll notice we have a nice foyer outside with nice comfy seats and sofas and so on, you can grab your coffee and sit there, chat, have a conversation – need I say more? It’s a great opportunity for you all to get warmed up into the spirit of what we’re doing here. Use your time here as best you can. If I was in your shoes then I would take every moment that I have here and invest it in increasing my skills. The more you do that the easier the next set of skills comes, and we’re going to do a lot of layering here. Conversational Hypnosis can look complex, because there are lots of little things that you do, but let’s put it this way. Does anyone here walk down the street? Have you ever walked down the street? Is that something you’re physically capable of? Do you have any idea how complex that is as an act? If anyone here has a question – sometimes that happens – does anyone have a friend in robotics? If anyone has a friend in robotics or you can go to You Tube and find out, it is incredibly difficult to create a robot that walks because there are a lot of things going on, and yet you do it without thinking about it. We want to make sure that each individual skill in Conversational Hypnosis becomes as automatic as the skills that you require for walking;

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the balancing point, the different muscle groups that are being engaged, the counter engagement, the vision – all those things get pulled in together to something that’s automatic to you now. Conversational Hypnosis will become automatic to you when all the pieces it’s made out of have been practiced to the point you don’t have to think about them anymore. Does that make sense? If you want to leave as a true master, and then take the time you’ll have here to re-practice the skills so they are automatic. Otherwise you can leave as an apprentice master that just has to do some more practice and then you get there. Make sense? We’ll work from about 9:00 am. to about 5:00 pm., that’s the official timing. Sometimes I’m going to reserve the right to run over a little bit too about half of five, something like that, if we need to spend a little time to finish something off. Like I said, I’d rather give you a little extra and make sure we finish all the pieces than you miss out on something. If you have other engagements please build that into your time so you have an extra half hour of practice time, a half hour to chill and let your mind settle down, or a half hour in here because we’re working on stuff here and you’ll still make all your appointments. Make sense? As we talked about a moment ago, this is the Conversational Hypnosis mastery program. The things I want to focus on here are really where the name Street Hypnosis came from, before Street Hypnosis became what now Street Hypnosis is, which is hypnotizing people on the street by making people’s hands stick to fridges and God knows what else. The idea came to me about 10 years ago, the idea that hypnotherapy is a great tool, I think it’s a fantastic thing that exists in the world, and it’s a tremendous source of good for people. Stage hypnosis, which is very entertaining – it can be very inspirational, a lot of hypnotists don’t realize that they live off of marketing done by stage hypnotists, because people see the show and say wow, that’s amazing! I wonder if hypnosis can help me through this? It’s a great proof of concept thing. We’ve got hypnotherapy on one side, we’ve got stage hypnosis and entertainment on the other side, both very valuable, I think, uses of hypnosis when applied well, but most people don’t spend their lives in therapy. Some I guess do, but most people don’t.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Most people don’t spend their lives in a theater. Again some people do, but most people don’t. Most people spend their life on the streets doing day to day things, going to work, having a family, going to a restaurant and so on. I thought it was a tremendous shame that we couldn’t apply the power of hypnosis to all those areas in between as well. That’s really where the name Street Hypnosis came from, as well, the idea that you could use it in a bus, in a car, on a plane, in public or in private. Wherever you are, as long as there are other human beings around, you can do a form of street hypnosis; not necessarily to stick people’s hands to fridges, although we’ll teach you that too if you want, but this is more about making your way through life. You can walk through life with your head held up high so you can be an influence, a force of good in the world. You can influence others and leave them a little better off than before they met you, so that everywhere you go in the world you just left it a little better, people are a little bit happier, problems are a little bit harder to come by and so on. You have the capacity to do that. You all, of course, have probably met somebody at some point in your life that has been a turning point in your life, maybe a mentor, a teacher, a parent, a family member, and a friend, someone who maybe believed in you just at the right time you needed the believing in. Maybe someone who gave you a stern talking to just at the time when you may have been starting down the wrong path, or someone who gave you a second chance when really you didn’t deserve one, but you grabbed it with both hands anyway. Do you know what kind of things I mean? We’ve all had people like that in our lives, and if it hadn’t been for those people our lives would be impoverished right now, would they not? My hope is that at the end of these 10 days you choose to become a person like that. I can’t make you. It’s not my job to tell you what to do. Hopefully, as you see the kinds of things we’ll be doing here, as you get used to these hypnotic gifts you can give and the interactions and nature of the interactions you can develop, I’m hoping that will inspire you to want to do it for yourselves, just because you can. If you need an extra little carrot, it’s also a way that you can get more out of things in your own life. You see, there are two influence models out there in the world, there’s the win/win and the win/lose model, you may have heard of these.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The win/lose model is you have some and I don’t, and I’m going to take it. The win/win model is there’s plenty for everyone so if I help you get what you want, you’ll help me get what I want. It’s kind of how societies are built. The problem with the win/lose model is it only ever works on a trial basis, it’s far too small a scale for people to look forward to. Let me give an example that might bring it to life. We know the stereotype of a used car salesman, right? Is he a friendly professional person, he’s got your best interest at heart, he’ll sell you the best vehicle and if it really doesn’t match your personality or what your needs are, there’s no way on earth he’ll let you walk away with that particular car, right? That’s everyone's mindset when we say used car salesman. Yes, that’s right, there is, by the way. Of course you recognize that there will be many used car salesmen who will fit exactly that profile, right? Yet we don’t have that as a stereotype in our mind. Why? It’s because there are so many out there who are willing to make a sale, or put your interests at stake in order to get their own interests met first. The problem with this is its very short term thinking isn’t it? Once that one transaction is done, what happens next? Are you going to go back to that person who sold you the car whose engine fell out on the way home? No. The kind of influence that I’m going to propose over the next 10 days is the kind that takes a longer term view. The kind where you build up a relationship where people just want to do things for you because they know that the more they do for you, the more their life improves. Whether it’s emotionally, physically, intellectually or politically whatever it is, somehow things will improve and that’s why people like hanging out with you, and like helping you out as you go along. Does that make sense to you all? Hopefully by the end of the next 10 days you’ll also have this appreciation of the win/win model, actually it’s a much easier way of moving through the world. The other version just gets you into a world of trouble. Has anyone see that famous hypnotic thief, he’s been all around the internet – if you’ve been to our website you may have seen it. It’s a guy, I think in Italy, who grabbed fistfuls of cash from a supermarket and ran,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 because he used his hypnotic powers to put someone in a trance and they didn’t know what happened until the end of the day, right? Sounds like wow – this guy has amazing powers, he must be really smart and good at what he does, right? I’m sorry, but that’s a little bit retarded. How much is he going to get from a supermarket till, and now he’s on the run from the police through the whole nation? How far is he going to get on $200? He’s going to really live the life of luxury isn’t he? Buy a private island, get security guards…do you see where I’m going with this? The reason I think it’s particularly insane what that person did is because the very same skill set could make him a six figure income easily, and ethically in a lawful way, either as a top class salesperson or as a hypnotherapist, I have a whole bunch of hypnotherapy friends that make a six figure income. It’s actually very straight forward to do once you switch your mindset into creating the whole system and things around you as well. My hope is that, at the end of these 10 days, you’ll have the skill to realize how silly someone would be to grab a handful of cash, because your capacity to produce income just goes through the roof by applying these skills of influence in an ethical way. You’re actually building a relationship that will be more than just a one trial event. Does that make sense to you all? With that as a backdrop, we’re going to start taking all your life experiences and reshaping them in a way that’s going to make this easy for you. Let’s face it; you all have been around for awhile, right? You didn’t suddenly appear, walk through the door and say, "Oh, where did I come from?" It’s important that whatever we do in here matches the experiences you’ve had over a lifetime, because then what we start doing becomes easy. I want you to realize that Conversational Hypnosis is both easy and natural when you do it your way. We all have a lifetime of experiences that show us exactly what we’re capable of. The irony is, sometimes the things we value the least are what teach us the most. As you know, I’m not an American. You may have noticed by my accent. I don’t live in the states. In fact, I flew all the way here from Asia a few days ago, that’s a long flight. When you have a long flight ahead of you and you have a security guard and there’s a queue of about 50,000 people in front

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 of you and you’re thinking; I’ve got to get through this before flying for 15 hours? It’s not the most motivating or inspirational thought, you could say. I’m sitting there in the queue thinking, "Oh man, they’re moving across really slowly. They’re doing a thorough job of whatever it is they’re doing, maybe they’re making a cup of tea between each one." It’s really slow, and my mind is starting to go down in a, not so pleasant place, like I could do this. This is going to be boring and tedious, they’re going to ask these questions, I’m going to have to take my clothes off and put my clothes on, go through the metal detector and back again, take my shoes off and go back – man it’s going to suck. Somewhere in this whole process I started asking myself; what happens? See, I used to love flying. I used to adore flying. When I was a little boy, probably, from the age of five upwards, my father used to take us on a plane. Back in the day you had those plastic wallets with all your stuff in it and you were desperate to get onto the airplane – it was great, because you got to get through all the security gates without having to go through queues, it was like – I’m a VIP, a very short one. I used to love flying because to me it was exciting, it was adventure, I’m allowed to go to my grandmother’s house or an uncle’s house and spend the summer there – it was fantastic. Just getting to the airport might be a challenge because I had to jump out of the car three times to go to the bathroom because this is the journey, this is it. Of course you get to the airplane and the stewardess puts a little plastic bag around you and holds your hand, and you’re like, oh this is great. You walk through security and everyone else is unshaven trying to haggle with the security guard to get that pocket knife through and I just breeze through – goodbye. You see, the whole mindset was different inside. I was beginning to anticipate that things were about to come. We all the capacity of anticipating things that are going to come, don’t we? Sometimes it requires us to search our experience. For me it’s remembering my grandmother’s house in Austria, a huge garden. The best time to see this garden was in the mornings, just before dawn. It would be so quiet, not a soul would be around. The whole ground would be covered in dew and the crows would just be waking up.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 There’s a scent in the air, it’s almost impossible to describe but it was very pleasant. A peaceful scene no matter what age I was remembering it from. The funny thing is I almost didn’t know that the garden looked so different in the mornings, because I’d been to my grandmother’s house several years before I discovered it. One day I was playing in the garden, it was summertime, a bright sunny day, and noticed in the back of the garden, it was a big garden, that there was a big row of trees growing across right before the fences. I always figured the fence grew into the trees, but no, there’s a little space behind where these trees were, hidden away and sheltered. Being a little boy and curious of course, I had to find out what’s behind those trees. Of course, this is the age, in which you’re being told all kinds of myths, legends and fairy tales. Maybe there’s a cave that leads to that other land or a hole inside the tree; I wonder what I’ll find on the other side? When I turned the corner and looked I found this huge mound of Earth, but it wasn’t normal dirt. It smelled kind of like the way a forest smells when you walk off the path. It was a rich smell, this huge mound of dirt. I thought I knew exactly what it was I’d just discovered and I was excited. I ran up to my grandmother and said do you know you have a baby mountain growing in the back of your garden? I thought I knew what it was, but she had no idea what I was talking about so I had to drag her out and show her. She said, "No- no, that’s a composting heap." I said, "What’s that?" She said, "It’s the place that keeps this whole garden growing the way that it does." How does it do that? Do you really want to know? Well you better come out tomorrow morning and I’ll show you. That night I was very excited to discover what a composting heap would be. What would it do? It sounded kind of magical. I feel asleep and had a dream in which mountains became molehills, in which gardens flourished. In the morning I still was in that sort of hazy, warm, sleep place and my grandmother came in. I didn’t really fully wake up, even going outside, and that’s when I saw the garden for the first time. The crows were crowing. The sky was beginning to change color and there was a fresh smell in the air. My grandmother was going around

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 collecting weeds and slugs that had come out for the day, and then she put them on the compost heap and explained what it was. In here goes all the stuff, the stuff that would otherwise prevent a plant from growing. Over there we have herbal garden with berries and herbs, a few vegetables, got to keep it clear of the weeds or they won’t grow. It won’t bear the fruit we need it to. Most people throw away the weeds, try to destroy them, think they’re bad. They don’t understand. Weeds can make the bushes grow if you treat them in the right way. Let me show you. With that, we walked into the herbal garden and she showed me how to distinguish from the berry bushes and the weeds, how to pull them out by the roots. In time she taught me the uses of special tools, special tools to dig up the weeds without harming any of the other plants, letting them grow. That’s when the real magic happened. The weeds would go in the compost heap, the worms would eat the weeds, turn them into soil, rich fertile soil. The soil would go back on the bushes and they’d grow taller, faster, and straighter. People don’t often realize how they can use weeds to make their garden grow. I used to enjoy getting up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning, before anyone else was up and just watching the garden. In my mind I imagined that I could almost sense it growing, feel it, changing, and developing, something occurring inside the garden that I couldn’t quite grasp. All I needed to know was the air was cool and fresh and the birds would sing, and in time the sun would rise on a beautiful summer’s day. Perhaps the rains would come, feed the garden in a different way. All the time my eye would catch a glimpse of a weed here or there and I’d get excited, because now I knew what to do with it. Of course, summer time was filled with many things. It wasn’t just weeding the garden I’m sure, though most children would enjoy doing that all the time. There are many fun activities, we’d do. sometimes we’d go skiing at Easter or we’d go watch a music festival – I don’t know if you know this, but Salzburg in Austria has the world’s biggest music festival, all the big names from around the world come there. It’s particularly interesting because, as a kid, I never knew that was there. It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized something was there all the time that I didn’t even know to appreciate.

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Standing in the queue of the airport lounge and thinking about those things, it was an important moment for me because it reminded me that we can kind of lose our own focus a little bit, can we not? When we focus our mind on one path or another, funny enough you tend to get what you focus on. Have you ever noticed that? You tend to get what you focus on. If we only focused on a few more things that we needed to focus on rather than the things we wanted to focus on, it’d make life a lot easier. Take for example, I don’t know, someone who goes to hypnosis training. Bear with me on this one I know it’s a little out there. If someone were to go into hypnosis training, what would they want to focus on? Their improving skill perhaps, something they did right? Perhaps they’d want to focus on their identity as a great hypnotist so even if they mess one or two things up along the way, that’s not a big deal, they’re too good for that. It happens. You know that even the greatest performers in whatever field, they have their off days, and they make mistakes. It’s not really a question of whether they make mistakes; it’s a question of what they do with them, how quickly they recover and what they learn from them that makes them great. Does that make sense? I’m going to encourage you to take on that mindset, that mindset of greatness which is not so much about making mistakes or not, because let’s face it I can guarantee you one thing – you’re going to make mistakes, a lot of them, over the next 10 days. I’ll guarantee you another thing; once you leave here you’ll make even more mistakes. The real issue really isn’t whether, or not you make mistakes, it’s what you do with them when they come. Does that make sense to you all? What we need to find out or what to do with them is to create a contrast. Contrast is a great way for the mind to make sense of things. Did anyone here ever see Jurassic Park? You have the big dinosaur that can only see movement? We’re actually pretty much the same in the sense that we can only distinguish things by distinguishing it from something it’s not, it’s contrast that’s going on, whether it’s on a subtle level or not. The contrast I’d like you all to make over the next few days is just from what you’re doing now, and what you want to be doing now. That’s it it’s as simple as that. To help us make the contrast we’ll start slowly and build up.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The way this morning is going to go is – how many people have trained with me before? You’ll be relatively familiar with the process we’re going to go through. We’ll start with some instant inductions and so on, so you’ll be relatively familiar with that already, and we’ll use that as a baseline. We’re going to start putting things a little bit different in there as well that are going to allow us to use our skills differently later on. Once we start evolving it we’ll start building the skill in a slightly different direction so by the time we come onto tomorrow and the day after you’ll be in a completely different country, let alone city. Does that make sense? Will that be fun to do? As always the first thing we need to do is get ourselves into the right mental space for being great hypnotists. To do that what I’d like you all to do is just stand up for me for a moment, and in the great tradition of hypnosis trainings, I’d like you to go around and meet everyone in the room. Be friendly, be conversational. You might even want to be a little hypnotic. When people meet, they ask a couple of normal questions – who are you? That’s a normal question people ask each other. What do you do, where do you come from, that sort of stuff – why are you here? Those are standard questions people ask each other. You can understand these questions many different ways, who are you is more than just your name, right? If you feel like exploring those other levels then, by all means, do so. The key thing I want you to focus on though is watch people as they answer. Just notice what you notice. Notice how the person you spoke to first is different from the person you speak to second. See if you can notice those differences. In other words, what is the contrast from one to the other? How are they behaving differently? How are they answering differently? The other thing – can you keep up with more than just two things like that? The other thing I would like you to do is also focus on what their reasons for coming here are. The reason for that is, you may realize, I’m a big believer in stealing, right, stealing in the sense of stealing people’s inspirations, aspirations. Someone might be here for a reason that’s just so amazing you say, "Oh my God, I’ve got to take that." Even though we’re in L.A. and this is the heart of the music district and all the rest of it, believe it or not you will not get arrested for stealing someone’s inspiration, it just goes. The CD set –

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you might get in trouble for that, but as long as you stick to their aspirations you’re in good shape here. I’d like you to go around, I’m going to give you all – there are about 100 people in the room, so it’ll probably be enough with eight minutes to meet everyone in the room, right? Eight minutes to meet them all? Let’s take about eight minutes to meet everyone, ask them these questions, and spot how they behave differently, how they sound differently as you come across different people and notice if there’s anything they have you’d like to steal; not physical objects please. Off you go. The good news is you’ve passed the first test for whether or not you’ll be great conversational hypnotists; you can all have a conversation. That’s a good thing. I’d like to have a volunteer please. Who likes hypnosis? Anyone? Come on up. That’s it; just ask one of these guys to hold onto your bottle for you. Just come on up here. Raymond – is it Raymond? Ramon:

It’s Ramon.

Igor:

Are you Spanish?

Ramon:

I’m Australian, from London.

Igor:

You came all the way from Australia to here?

Ramon:

No from London.

Igor:

London is a good place, I’ll take that. Look at me a second. That’s good. Take a deep breath, breathe out – sleep. All the way deeper, that’s right. Deeper, deeper still, all the way down. That’s it, you’re doing great. Deeper and deeper. Settling back in your balance you’ll go deeper and deeper in trance, that’s right, getting more and more comfortable, feeling your own weight, feeling your own balance, going deeper into trance as you continue. That’s right, deeper and deeper still. As you continue to go into a very pleasant, comfortable hypnotic trance I’d like you to know that your unconscious mind is there for you, helping you to learn things and enjoy things, make the most of things.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Because you came up here and did a fantastic little demonstration with us, your unconscious mind is going to make this so easy for you; you’ll wonder how other people could ever have difficulty with hypnosis. You’ll know that’s happening right now because a good feeling will begin inside. When that feeling is strong enough, you’ll smile. It’ll spread across your face. There you go that’s it. It feels pretty good, doesn’t it? That’s it. On the count of three coming all the way back, one, two, three eyes open, feeling great. How are you doing? Ramon:

Good.

Igor:

Good. Everyone give Ramon a round of applause. Stay here for a second. [Applause] Now, I know a lot of you all have done this already because you all have been to the stage hypnosis training or something similar, so we’re going to go through similar steps but we’re going to start tweaking a few things along the way if we can and moving onto other things. What I need to know right now is how many people have not done any hypnosis before or any instant inductions before? Put your hands up – very good, thank you. What I want you all to do, and those of you who have done instant inductions before, especially this type, put your hands up for a second. Those who haven’t done it before look around. Make sure you partner up with some of these people at least once or twice through the course of this morning, because your progress will be that much faster when you do it with people who are familiar with it. You’ll also be able to partner with people who haven’t done this before to get a sense of how the inexperienced as well as the more experienced people operate, and that will give you more of a contrast to work with. Make sense? The very first thing we want to do as always, whenever we do hypnosis is we want to create the hypnotic context. We have the ABS formula which we’ll expand on a little bit more as we go along but the first thing we need in the ABS formula – we may as well write this down, just bear with me one second and we’ll use a little more time before releasing you into the wild. The A of the formula stands for absorb attention, right? We need attention in order to do hypnosis. We need attention to do conversational hypnosis

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 because when someone is having a conversation with someone else and they’re not listening to you, it doesn’t work so well. There are ways around that but really we’re not going to be focusing on that here. Initially we’re going to find ways of getting attention so we can do the work we want to do. Make sense? Right now I want to teach you very formal, direct simple hypnosis because if you understand the principles doing it overtly, then doing it covertly and conversationally becomes that much easier because you know where you’re heading with it. Does that make sense? By the way, it is a simple rule for all conversational hypnosis; in order to make something new simpler and easier to do, do it directly first, do it overtly first and then later on when you’re doing it conversationally you’ll find it much easier to navigate through and get the same kind of results. Make sense? The first to do is I want you to grab someone’s attention. The way we’ll do it is you notice how I’m touching his body physically? I’m invading his body space a little bit which puts his mind a little on alert. If I’m over here, this is a little bit distant for American or European standards but if you don’t know someone at all you’re a little bit distrustful, this would be kind of the distance people are at. People who you have a decent level of interaction with probably would be here with a comfortable space, friends might be a little closer here, and already you can feel a little – maybe even an emotional pressure. The minute I do this you’ll notice that and you’ll feel it inside yourself, something switches on. Your mind is saying; what’s going on? That’s the attention switching over, isn’t it? What I want you to do is focus all that attention on a simple activity so that he doesn’t have a filtering off down the wrong direction. The way I’m going to do this is just – look at me – very good, thank you. What I’m looking for is his gaze, you felt that right? I’m looking for his gaze to settle down. At first it’ll bounce around a little bit and eventually it kind of settles down, you might even see a slight pupil dilation but it’ll kind of become more steady, he stops wanting to move his eyes as much. Does that make sense? That’s the only thing I want you all to look for. You’ll find a new partner, you’ll actually find several, you’ll say just look at me – there you go. You’ll

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 just notice that settling down process. As a rule when the mind is sort of hyperactive the eyes will be hyperactive. When the mind is calm and focused, the eyes will be calm and focused. It’s a general rule of thumb. It’s not 100% true, but it’s true enough that we can use it as a very good guideline. Do you understand the first exercise? Is that easy to do? Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

All right, off you go. Thank you. Is that easy to do? That’s easy to do right? I want to ask – can I borrow you since you’re close? Come on up. You’ve got the first step which is the looking in the eyes and so on, what I want you to do now is add something in called compliance. You want to test; how responsive is this individual being? If, for example, I ask what’s your name?

Rohad:

Rohad.

Igor:

If I ask Rohad, would you stand over here for a moment – is he being compliant? Is the mind generally accepting of what’s going on or is it going to be more rejecting or cautious and so on? Which is it? More accepting, you can see that, right? I want you to imagine I’m a typical used car salesman, you think I have not got your best interests at heart with what’s about to happen. Will you come over here for a moment? Do you see that? The hesitation – he’s complied, physically it’s happening, isn’t it? But do I have him where I need him to be yet? No. I need him to be more open, so that tells me I have to do a little bit more work. I want you to start looking out for these things. At this point we’re only going through the mechanics of an instant induction, so I’m not so concerned about what to do and how to solve it, but I want you to be able to spot it nonetheless. What we’re going to do now is we’re going to put the compliance and attention things together. As you go around the room with the same exercise, you’ll meet someone and say, "Hey, how are you doing; stand over here for a moment."

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You’re going to watch for their level of compliance. Mentally what I want you to do, for three partners I want you to be compliant and nice. The fourth partner I want you to be skeptical or not too sure about – not like I don’t trust you, not acting obvious, just think about someone you don’t quite trust and bring that feeling out, but still try to be socially polite. You’ll still come stand over there and so on but you’ll have that feeling inside, does that make sense? To mix it up a little bit you can choose at what position you put that distrust. You can start with that and then do three trusting ones, you can mix in the middle, but the pattern I want to have is three trusts and one distrust, kind of mixing it up so no one knows what to expect but they start looking for it. Does that make sense to you all? Very simply you’re going to ask someone to – stand over here for me, would you? You’re going to watch – what was that? You’re going to watch and then go to the exact same place, hands on his shoulders, invade his body space just a little bit – it’s not like we’re up here going, hello… Audience:

You need to buy him a drink first.

Igor:

Exactly. That’s the wrong kind of hypnosis, right? Apparently I think the ladies are particularly harsh about that stuff. You do invade that person’s space, but not too much, then eye contact, thank you very much, then you wait for that moment when the face settles, the eyes settle in, and you know you’ve set the context well enough for what we’re about to do. Does that make sense you all?

Audience:

What I like to do is put just one hand on the shoulder, it feels more organic.

Igor:

The question over here is he prefers to have one hand on the shoulder because it feels more natural, more organic as he would say. I’m finding with that, I really have no problem with that. I like two hands purely because I really like to take charge of the person, I want to see where their boundaries are, but in certain situations I’d agree, I’d just be one handed. Although we won’t be using this mechanics, at times I’ll even go to a slightly different style of doing the induction just because it fits the scene, but for the moment I want to keep it very clean. If you feel more comfortable as a hypnotist doing it one handed that’s fine, I don’t mind. The key thing is do you have all of their attention? Not some of it, but all of it? Does that make sense?

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Is that easy to do? Off you go, just spend a minute doing that. Thank you so much. So was that easy to do? Did you all spot the person when they’re being a little bit skeptical, a little bit cautious, and a little bit hesitant? Can you see these things happening? It’s not rocket science. This is important because when it comes to conversational hypnosis these very same signals will be occurring, right? You’ll need to know when it’s time to present your ideas and they’ll be accepted, or when it’s time to do a little bit more work before you introduce your idea because they’re not there yet. Anyway, let’s just keep that in mind. We’ll keep that three cycle on, one cycle off routine for the rest of the morning, just to keep you sharp and on your toes, to keep your eyes open for that, but we’ll still carry on practicing mechanics. Is that okay with you all? I’ll need another person, can I borrow you? Give him a nice round of applause. We’re in exactly the same boat as before – would you stand over here for me please? It’s the same thing again, just look in my eyes for a moment, that’s it just focus all the way, there you go, good. Now why did I have to say that? Those in the front of the room will most likely be able to tell. I’m getting a lot of shifting going on, he’s not naturally settling down so I need his mind to settle down more so I’m just saying that’s right, just focus on me fully, or something along those lines. Do you see how you really begin to read the person’s signals very clearly? Once it’s pointed out to you it seems like a no-brainer, but a lot of people miss this stuff because they’re trying to rush to do the induction, the hypnosis, and they miss the very things that tell them whether the person is ready for it or not. Make sense? You make sure you have it, and then very gently – this is just mechanics for now – what I want you to do is take the back of your hand, cup it on the back of her head, and then just bring it into your shoulder. I want you to test it for balance when it’s here. Do they give you the balance? If I go back here I have the balance right? Do your own balance for a second – if I step back I don’t have the balance. Do it very gently, you don’t want to have too much disorientation going on. If you suddenly whip back and they’re on your balance they’ll say, "Oh my

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 God what’s going on here?" – great induction, not so good for the insurance people. Audience: ♦ What if you’re extremely short and they’re extremely tall? Igor:

The question is; what if you’re extremely short or they’re extremely tall? For the moment just find people you can work with in terms of their size in the room. There are solutions in terms of doing instant inductions, personally just so you know I’m not teaching instant induction to do instant inductions, I’m using this as a vehicle to teach you hypnosis, right? If you want to have a solution to that I’ll happily add one on, if we have time at the end. It’s very easy, but the primary reason for doing this is for you to become a better hypnotist, not for you to go out in the streets and do this stuff, though you could very well do this at lunchtime if you wanted to. Maybe get a little reduction on your bill? Did you have a follow up?

Audience:

No.

Igor:

Very good. When you work with someone wearing glasses like I am right here, the glasses have a tendency to be crushed against the shoulder or chest or something like that, so ask them to take them off or take them off yourself, that’s just a little safety tip. The speed we’re going right now it really won’t matter that much but if you’re actually going to do an instant induction for real, it’s really important little bit of safety in terms of what they’re wearing. Make sense?

Audience: ♦ Right now are we just walking through the physical motions? Igor:

Yes, right now it’s just walking through the physical motions. Once again if you would step over here for me please, just focus on me – that’s right all the way, focus, and that’s it. All you’re doing now is notice how I’m just doing a slight rock back to test whether or not she follows, do I have her balance or not? That’s all I care about. Why, incidentally, do I care about the balance? Any ideas? Trust, right? It’s trust and compliance again. It’s a second test. Do you trust your balance with someone you don’t trust? Would you give your balance to

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 someone if you didn’t like them or you felt they would be abusive in some way? No. That’s why all these little corporate trust exercises have people falling backwards and so on and the rest of it. Balance is a great indicator, a great litmus test, for trust. That’s exactly what I’m doing here. It’s not the only one, of course, like anything it can be faked, but it’s a very good one, especially, in a more impromptu situation where people haven’t prepared something. It’s a good rule of thumb, again. Do you understand the exercise everyone? Easy to do? Another follow up? Audience: ♦ Could you maybe just explain so they don’t yank on your head? Igor:

Yes this is just to explain about yanking on someone – we’re not doing anything other than gently guiding their head into your shoulder for now, we’ll talk about the mechanics of why we’re doing this later. Right now all I care about is as gently as possible guiding their head to your shoulder and then testing for balance, that’s it. Easy to do? One more thing…

Audience: ♦ How do you deal with resistance? Igor:

What if you have that third person that is now resisting for whatever reason, because it’s part of the exercise? This is just an exercise right now so ignore it, carry on through to the shoulder and if the resistance is still there in the balance you’ll notice that too. You’ll carry on exactly the same way whether or not you have full compliance, all I want you to do is observe that you don’t have it and that it feels different and that different things are occurring as a result. Does that make sense? Let’s go and do that now and spend a few minutes, off you go. Thank you so much. Do we have everyone back? Okay. So far we’ve been playing with attention, would it be fair to say that there are a lot of nuances to what kind of attention you have? Would that be fair to say?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 We’ve only begun to skim the surface of this. We’ll be looking at this sort of thing a little more fully as the days progress. The next part of the ABS formula in terms of creating hypnosis easily is B which stands for bypass the critical factor. The critical factor is just that part of the mind that likes to reject ideas, say no, and shut off. It keeps the person safe, it helps them analyze certain events, but it also keeps the person limited, it keeps them the same. Make sense? This is the nutshell version; there are other nuances of it too. There are other ways to bypass the critical factor; we’ll be looking at most of them over the course of the next 10 days. There’s language, frame setting, interactions and so on. The simplest, quickest, and in some respects the easiest, the one we’ll be focusing on right now, is shock or surprise. Basically, the mind does not know what to do with the new information for awhile so the filters go off, they pop into a little trance for awhile to figure out what’s going on, and when they’ve made up their minds they come back out again. You can help them make up their mind in the process. Does that make sense? What we’re going to do now is we’re going to practice the shock, but we’ll do it safely. Can I borrow you another second? You’ll be the right height for me. The reason I used Alex here is because I don’t want you to shock Alex this way. He’s come a long way to see us, and it’s just not nice. Did you like that? A little bit of a shock, wasn’t it? Hopefully, that is the only time you’ll ever see something like that being performed. When I talk about shock all I’m talking about is when you have the hand on the back of their head, maybe just a tiny little thing. All I’m going to do is just tap – you see there’s the tiny little nudge, nothing more than that. I do not want whiplash. That was a little more dramatic than I thought it would be, right? What we’re going to do now is once you have the compliance – stand over here for just a second. At this point you should be distrusting me. I negated it. You go through focusing and so on, all you do now is you just practice a few times. You don’t even have to guide it all the way through, you just practice tipping the head forward. You notice how on its own it doesn’t go very far, all I’m doing is using my middle finger, you can use any finger, it

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 doesn’t matter which one it is, the point is I’m just moving it forward, I’m just tapping it, I’m just giving a tiny jolt. Let me just emphasize the smallest of the jolt that’s involved. The more fragile the individual the less is required of you. Especially the more fragile they are and the bigger and heavier you are, the less is required of you. Let me just emphasize that for safety reasons. We had one gentleman in one of the mentoring groups who was huge and he said I can’t do these inductions – that’s because he usually tore people’s heads off in the process. I had to fix that but it worked out pretty well. From here, just a tiny little thing here. Just do it three or four times so nobody feels bad, on the fourth or third time just guide the head in and notice – I am not forcing his head in on the initial go, I’m not going like this and making it come all the way down – no. I’m providing the jolt, and then I’m just steering his body into position. Does that make sense? That’s a very important thing. It looks – do you want to see what the whole thing looks like? Just stand over here a second. Look at me. Sleep – all the way – deeper, that’s right. There you go, deeper, deeper and deeper. Now it looks like I forced his head onto my shoulder, doesn’t it? I did not. Let me reemphasize that – that is not what I did, I created a slight jolt and whilst in that state of what the hell is going on, I guide his head. In other words I create like a funnel and I gently guide into the shoulder. You can go deeper still. That’s it – all the way back- one, two, three- wide awake. Nice job, well done. Alex:

Thank you.

Igor:

Give him a nice round of applause. [Applause] Do you understand the mechanics of that? The way I’d like you to practice it is the way we did it here a moment ago. The set up is the same as we did before, we still have a few people again being non compliant, all I want you to do is have that little tap on the back of the head, do it three or four times so you’ll see them readjust their balance slightly.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 It should not be a massive shift; it should just be a little jolt. Once you’ve seen that three or four times, then time it so that as soon as that jolt occurs you just gently continue that momentum toward your shoulder, and it is gentle. Is that easy? Do you all know what you’re doing? If people have eye glasses on, now would be the time to ask them to remove them. If you want to leave them in your chairs that’s fine, otherwise its good practice when you meet someone to say, "Let me just take care of these glasses." Put them in your pocket whilst you do this, hand them back again afterward. Easy everyone, off you go. No need to use any words, just for right now we’re practicing the physical motion. Off you go. Okay. We have one more little thing to add onto here, so we’ll be back to this in a second. Before we do that though, some of you all are already getting ahead of the game and just going straight into the induction. The mechanics – you’re not used to doing the mechanics, right? By the way if you want to jump ahead and do the instant induction I really don’t mind, you may as well, right? I can’t stop you from being faster than I’m capable of teaching. What we’re going to do now is just do the full thing in a whole package, in other words a simple instant induction that goes from A to Z and basically does all of this. What’s the one thing that’s missing here in the ABS formula? Actually S stands for sleep. Yes I know. Can I borrow a volunteer again please? Anyone will do. Just pick on you, just take a chance. Oh this one has glasses, what do I do now? May I borrow your glasses? Thank you. I’ll put them here for the session. Always when you’re borrowing someone’s eye glasses make sure they know where they go so they know it’s going to be safe, no one is going to sit on them, they’re not going to get lost and so on. It’s a pre-occupation that people like me have. You don’t want them thinking about the safety of their eye glasses while you’re trying to do your induction. Audience:

Actually, I’m more comfortable with them over here.

Igor:

That’s fine. I like that. Actually this is important. Why? It creates a clear slate for us to do what we’re about to do. The eye contact isn’t as important, what’s important is can you see them settling down?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 If they can’t make out your face even this close distance, just say that’s right just look in the general direction and focus your attention on that general image. It just takes the pressure off them. You just want a focal point of attention; it doesn’t have to be specifically the eyes, although as we’ll come onto, there are reasons why that can help too. We’ll have him stand over here for a moment, thank you very much. All we’re going to do is – I wonder if you can spot the difference between what we’ve been doing up to this point unofficially and what we’re going to be doing here now. Just look in my eyes. Sleep, all the way. That’s right, all the way. Deeper, deeper, that’s right you’re doing great. As you go back to your own balance standing on your own two feet you’ll go deeper and deeper now, that’s right. As you stand on your own two feet, balancing deeply in trance, balancing deeply in trance, balancing properly in trance that’s right, very good. As a result, of you entering trance so quickly, easily, naturally and with so much enthusiasm your unconscious mind already knows what to do. It’s the same thing you’ve seen other people do up here and that is to make this easy for you. As easy as it’s been for you to experience hypnosis, you can make being a hypnotist just as easy. Your unconscious mind can go ahead now and formulate your own perceptions in such a way that will make picking this stuff up so easy, a breeze. You’ll know its happening because you’ll have a really good feeling. When that really good feeling gets strong enough your whole face will smile. That’s it, there you go. One, two, three wide awake. Good job, well done. Give him a round of applause. Just stay here for a second. Audience:

I have a question. The question is, we watched your instant inductions that you sent out and I attempted it on my wife – she did. I got her down but she immediately rebounded.

Igor:

Yes. We’ll talk about that right after this commercial break. We’ll talk about that exact same situation. If I haven’t answered you after the break, then please ask it again. For now though does everyone understand the mechanics of what we just did? Is that clear? What I want you to do is exactly that. What were the two things I added?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 One was the word sleep, and the other one was I kept talking to him afterward. There’s a reason for both those things. Sleep is very simple, it’s a stimulation, and it’s telling the unconscious mind what to do at that moment of what’s going on. The next thing I want you to do very simply is just repeat the word deeper. Is that easy to do? Can you all remember two word; sleep and deeper? If you’re really advanced you put them together, sleep deeper, deeper sleep. Is that easy to do? I just want you to note the experience on both sides of the fence when you do it that way, and after the break we’ll start looking at the mechanics, the principles included in that, and how that might start being relevant for conversational hypnosis. The question he just asked is especially important for that. Give him a nice round of applause and then go do that. How was that? Good fun? Work well? I had a quick break, we just ran over a little bit but I thought it would be better to just keep that piece together. Is it alright if we have a 10 minute break rather than a full 15 minute one? There’s water in the back and of course all the comfort breaks you need. After the break what we’ll do is we’ll start breaking down the principles involved in what you’re doing so you can start applying them outside of an overt hypnotic context. Does that make sense? Before we do that, are there any urgent questions or can we just handle that after the break? Urgent questions come on up… Audience: ♦ What do you mean by stimulate the unconscious mind? Igor:

The question is; what do we mean by the S part of the formula – I did not write the phrase completely – stimulate the unconscious mind. We have to give the unconscious mind some kind of instruction, something to activate hypnotically, otherwise all this stuff is just a party trick, right? Great question. Unless it’s a quick one regarding what we just did, let’s just save those questions until after we come back and I’ll give you a proper question and answer then. Sound good? All right, let’s take a quick break.

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DVD 2: Conversational Hypnosis Mastery Principles Igor:

Welcome back everyone. Who has any questions or comments on what we’ve done so far, anyone? Everyone is too shy. Come on up.

Audience:

One thing I noticed when I was doing the resistance part, it’s something that occurred to me, and I was wondering about your take on essentially resisting hostile hypnosis, if you will. When I would visualize the person in front of me that was going to do the induction, even though I would let them follow through I would automatically in my own sense of feeling it out, I would view them as predatory. I mean they’re working on the mechanics so I let them do it, but I was totally not under. ♦ What would your perspective be on this?

Igor:

If I can work the question through, are you saying that would thinking of someone else being more predatory be a shield or defense against being hypnotized by someone you don’t want to hypnotize you? Is that kind of the question?

Audience:

Absolutely!

Igor:

Really, the key to not being influenced by someone else when you don’t want to be is your critical factor it’s the very thing that allows the influence factor to break down. There are again sneaky ways around all that stuff, everything has a counter shall we say, but in general terms if you activate your critical factor – however you activate your critical factor – that’s what prevents the whole transition from occurring. You can do it through breaking trust, you can do it by analysis, you can do it by asking questions, you can do it by rejecting ideas out of hand and so on. How you do it is really up to the individual. I could conceptualize an individual for example who has shall we say such a terror of predators that the idea of being a predator puts them more under their spell than less. It could be also the opposite. In other words for you clearly thinking someone was a predator clearly crossed that trust boundary and at that

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 point your critical factor comes up and says nope, nope, nope. Make sense? Audience:

Absolutely.

Igor:

The key isn’t how you visualize the other person, in terms of it has to be a predator, it has to be this or it has to be that it’s whatever you need to do to view the other person as no longer a valid source of information or a healthy method for you shall we say. Does that answer your question?

Audience:

Definitely, thank you.

Igor:

Thank you, that’s a great question. Any other questions? Come on up, you can come either side that’s fine. I will walk with you and we’ll see who gets there first – oh man you’re fast.

Audience: ♦ I was just wondering in what context would you go ahead and start this? Igor:

The instant induction? That’s another great question, how and when do we use instant inductions? I think that’s an awesome question. I’m going to give you two answers. Feel free to hover around because you may want to have a follow up. The first answer I’m going to give you is a cheating answer which is, it doesn’t matter in the sense that we’re not teaching instant inductions to use instant inductions, they are going to be a way of understanding principles that we’ll later be able to do conversationally. Make sense? The second answer, which is really the answer you’re asking for, is really you use it anytime that you require hypnosis to occur, and the context allows for a formal induction. You could use it for example in a hypnotherapy session. In our hypnotherapy trainings we teach instant inductions first thing. Why? If you’re going to do things semi formally then it saves time, you have a 10 second induction versus a 10 hour induction, you actually get to do the work more quickly. If you’re doing walk up street hypnosis and stuff like that, again if you have permission and the context allows for it you can do that. I even know people who will do instant inductions on unsuspecting people, either people they know or strangers. I would be much more wary of doing that

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 though, for several reasons; one it’s disrespectful, you’re forcing an experience on someone that they haven’t acceded to, and number two it can get you into a lot of trouble. There is one hypnotist I know out there, who likes to do these things, puts people in weird statue positions and so on. It’s very entertaining and inspirational, but he has no permission to do so, which means from time to time he gets into fisticuffs as well and has to run like crazy to get out of the situation. People do strange things. My rule of thumb, which you’re welcome to follow, is do you have permission for an overt induction? At which point go ahead and do an instant induction and you’ve got a great context and so on. If that permission hasn’t been formally presented then consider covert hypnosis being more appropriate for the venue, because it’ll be more respectful of allowing the person to find their own solutions or answers to things, or just not doing it – how about doing something radical, I apologize for this crazy notion – how about we ask for permission? Audience:

What a concept.

Igor:

I know. Would you like to be hypnotized? No. Okay. Does that answer your question?

Audience:

Yes, thank you.

Igor:

Thank you that was a great question. Any other questions or comments on what we’ve done so far? Come on up.

Audience: ♦ For the instant induction that we did just now, it’s a physical shock, is there a conversational equivalent that does an instant without using body shock? Igor:

Yes. There’s several ways of doing it. We may get a chance – the quick answer to that is use surprise rather than physical shock. We won’t be covering things like mind bending language, although that’s exactly what it’s designed to do among other things, that would be a great road to take it in, but anytime you have some kind of surprise present you’ll have the same context and you can run it in the same direction. The other answer to that, which we’ll get onto on I think the third or fourth day, when we come to the concept of magic moments, magic moments aren’t quite as fast as instant inductions, they may take a whole of like two

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 minutes, but they again create the exact same context as a shock induction would do. The way I view magic moments is it’s my indirect, covert, shock induction. Audience:

Thank you.

Igor:

The same rules we just talked about apply to those as well, but we’ll come onto that more. Any more questions, comments, praise, gold nuggets, cash? I collect gold. Currencies are a little bit dodgy right now. If you have any spare gold or silver I’m not going to be picky, right?

Audience:

Just no Euros.

Igor:

No Euros, they’re going down the tubes baby, oh no. Does this make sense as a concept, the ABS formula? Did you all get a chance to experience it, even if it was in a mild form, either as the subject or the hypnotist and see different things? You already noticed that when this starts breaking down, that’s when the problems start coming in. If you for example have someone who is a little distrusting, a little skeptical, a little bit too critical of what’s going on, if you don’t get to bypass the critical factor properly you can sense it. Your hypnotic session is going to be unsatisfactory. If you spotted it ahead of time you’ll know what to fix, if you didn’t, then you’ll go – what did I do wrong? Does that kind of make sense? Two reasons I think this is important – 1. One, there’s a lot of hypnotists out there that miss these obvious signals, they’ll see them but they ignore them because they’re too busy thinking the induction is magical and will do it all for them, or they miss it because they’re so wrapped up in doing the induction they delete the clarity of what’s going on. 2. The other thing that can happen is people will see it, but it doesn’t really trigger them. Meaning they don’t know what it means so they’ll ignore it. It’s actually straightforward we’ll find out, right? You have now a contrast to fit it against. There are a couple other things we’re doing in fact you’ve been doing which are just as important as this. These are some of the fundamental

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 key principles in conversational hypnosis and everything you’ve been doing physically will translate to a conversation in some way or another, we just have to find the right mechanisms for doing that. The first principle we’ve just been covering is the agreement principle. Agreement–think of the mind as having two basic functions, two formats essentially, which are mutually contradictory, when one is on the other one is off, and vice versa. One is the mind that says no, that rejects information, one is the mind that says yes and accepts information or looks for reasons to accept it. Someone can present you with a car or a new dress or a shirt and say do you like it; if you’re picking out things to like, well the buttons are good – right? You may not like the shirt but the buttons are good, you may not like the shirt but you’re looking for things to accept, you have the yes part of the mind switched on. Does that make sense? If you’re saying oh the shirt has got a little smudge on the corner, this shirt might be perfect except for that smudge – you’re looking for rejection. The mechanisms are fundamentally different. We want them to be in agreement mode, because when they’re in a yes mindset the critical factor is pretty much being bypassed, it’s looking for reasons to accept rather than reject or deny ideas. Does that make sense? In terms of how we’ve been doing it physically, this is called compliance testing. We’re looking for physical compliance and the quality, the nature of that compliance will give us a clue as to their mindset. You saw quite clearly when Rohad was a little hesitant you saw the hesitation, right? You saw the slight stiffness in the way he was walking towards it compared to the way he got up on the stage. Why? We were missing the agreement or we had partial agreement and we had too much of the negative mindset, and it just told me the critical factor is still active. It’s not a bad thing, right? It can be overcome, we can do things to soften the situation and make it easier and more acceptable and so on, but we have to do them or else we’re taking our chances. In other words we’re stacking the deck against us rather than for us. Does that make sense to you all? This is going to happen in every conversation that you have. There are many different ways of building agreement, whether it’s yes sir, whether it’s physical motions, whether it’s agreement, whether it’s universal

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 experiences – lots of little tactics and techniques, we’ll cover many of them here, some of them are on the audio program as well. The point is; this is a fundamental principle without which it starts going pear shaped, it becomes very difficult to predict whether, or not something will work. This is especially true of a conversation. It’s truer, of a conversation than with more overt hypnosis, because the physical stuff in the overt hypnosis can sometimes override some of these mechanisms. In conversations you do not have that luxury so you want to be sensitized to what kind of compliance am I getting? Are they following along smoothly, or am I getting some kind of resistance? Make sense? Are there any questions or comments on that so far? The next thing is authority, this is another important principle. This is a strange one because we both need it and don’t want it. Authority comes in many packages. The problem is that some of the packages that authority comes in have a strong polar reaction by people. The classic authority thing might be the uniform, the police officer, the person in charge, the principal, the father figure if you want to use more Jungian archetypes. The advantage of that type is if someone responds very strongly in a positive way to an authority figure, that’s great, you’re straight into the mind, they’re responding to you; it carries with it a lot of this opening up of things. The problem is, if you have these classic mannerisms of authority and the other person has a polar response, they don’t like authority. They feel oppressed by it, their personal perceptions of like are that authority is out to harm them, over control them and so on, then the very thing that could open the doors for you could very well shut in your face. Does that make sense? The interesting thing about authority though is that authority does not have to be the classical type. It can be. I don’t know if you know this, there’s an isolate study where they had a person wearing a security uniform in a shopping mall who would walk up and down the streets telling people to pick up random bits of litter. They found that when a security guard was doing it, I can’t remember what the percentage was, but a reasonably high percentage of people, like 60%-70% of people would pick up the litter and put it in the bin, even though he’s outside of his jurisdiction and has nothing to do with anything. They’re responding to the uniform, as compared to say, a guy in jeans and a t-shirt.

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The interesting thing is; if a person in a suit says the same thing, he has exactly the same reaction. The percentages don’t vary very much at all. People say your dress doesn’t matter and so on, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and so on, well it turns out that’s not the case, people will judge you by how you’re dressed and how you present yourself in that sense. The authority of course will switch according to context too. If you’re with a bunch of skateboarders dressed like this, you may well trigger an opposite reaction like we just talked about. You need to be viewed as an authority of some sort with the other person. You are a source of information, of facts and of experiences that are valid, but you want to be careful as to understanding what context you’re in again. What the person that you’re facing, what their associations are, what culture they’re facing and so on, because you may end up adopting something that looks like a stereotype of authority, but doesn’t actually work for that particular individual. Does that make sense to you all? The reason I’m spending so much time talking about authority is because let’s face it; when I was up here asking people to stand over here and move and so on, it’s very clear who the authority in the interaction is, right? Does it mean I’m lording it over someone, that I am imposing my will – oh you slave you will do what I say? No, and it’s important you understand the distinction so you don’t start coming across that way. You can still have the respect that comes with authority. People will still follow even though you don’t have any of the overt trappings. A lot of people will hide behind overt trappings rather than just stepping into the genuine thing. What is genuine authority then? If not the suit that you’re wearing, although that’s something people will instinctively respond to in our culture, what is it that is authority, any ideas? We have personal values between other people I think that’s part of it. Confidence – that’s going to be a very important thing, but what do we mean by confidence? Two people are lying there sleeping, which one is confident? The way they’re standing, right? Am I confident right now? I’m kind of faking it a little bit. There are clues in how people move and stand that will tell you as to what their confidence is; is that fair? Audience:

Authority is really what you know about yourself.

Igor:

So authority is what you know about yourself?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Audience:

Like, in certain situations I know I am the authority.

Igor:

In certain situations he knows he’s the authority, in other situations who knows. What’s going on here – whoever has the strongest frame. These are all true, by the way, you’ve all identified aspects of it. I’d like to offer you a very simple way of looking at it that will hopefully, make it very clear. You’ll be able to tell across the board whether or not someone is formally the leader of a group, you’ll still be able to spot the authority, and you’ll be able to switch it on and off whenever you need it. Would that be something worth exploring? This is just how I look at it. The very simple way of looking at it is, recognize that at some level, as sophisticated as we’ve become, we are still mammals, and we share the same trait as mammals. Mammals have a hierarchy. You’ve heard about the alpha dog in the pack, the alpha wolf, or the alpha male I think is the classic version of this, right? There are signs, in terms of every mammalian group, that will be a hierarchy that emerges, one will be at the top, some will be at the bottom, and everyone else will shuffle somewhere in between and it’ll be very clear levels in terms of. For example, wolves and dog packs, there’ll be a pecking order of who gets to eat first and who has to wait until last and so on. Without going into this in too much detail, this is a useful thing. First, it will always happen. Every group that you’re in, no matter how let’s hug the world they are, how open and flat their structure is, a natural leader will always emerge, someone the other people will look toward for leadership, for direction, for approval; even if it’s not acknowledged consciously. Does that make sense? It will always happen. You will always see the same kind of signals occurring. The second thing to realize is, it’s not always important to be at the top of the pack. There are advantages to being at the bottom, or somewhere in the middle too. It’s a question of understanding where you need to be given the level of interaction you’re in. Does that make sense to you all? What are some of the advantages? We can clearly see the advantage of being in the top, people do what you say, you’re the alpha male, or female in this sense. What’s the disadvantage of being at the top?

Audience:

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There are more expectations.



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Igor:

A lot of attention, there’s always expectations, pressure and responsibility, so that kind of goes with authority as well. The flip side, when you’re at the bottom of the pack part of the reason people choose that position is there’s less pressure, there’s less challenge, but they’re still included in the pack so there’s more safety than being on their own. Some people would rather be on their own than at the bottom of the pack, other people will quite happily go to the bottom of the pack because it’s less responsibility, less effort involved and so on. The other advantage is that knowing the difference in terms of behaviors and so on, if you’re not challenging someone’s authority you can borrow it. This is what for example the – let’s use the word captain I guess – in a particular group, whether it’s monkeys or dogs or human beings – there will be a second and third in command. Again, it can be totally unacknowledged consciously but that person will draw their authority from the main leader, and not have to have the same pressures as that person. Does that make sense? Do you see how that works? How do we recognize it in the animal kingdom? What kind of traits would you see? A pecking order, so when something gets done one person gets to go first, one person has to wait until the end – it’s usually the pleasant things, right? What else will you tend to sense? The way they behave, so specifically what kind of things would you see?

Audience:

Posture and tone.

Igor:

Right. Shall we talk about the person who is at the lowest end of the pecking order in a pack? Will be stand in the middle of the pack and shout out loud and make crazy movements? No; as a rule space will define, space and volume will define what level someone is at, as a rule. In human society we’ve evolved to other things as well. For example, if I’m sitting here now I can talk to you very confidently right now. There’s nothing changed in terms of my voice, has it? No? What am I doing? What is my body language trying to do? It’s trying to avoid using up space. It might be that I’m just cold. This is the position that some people try to conserve use as well, but the message that’s coming across is this person is not in his territory, or he’s not confident, he feels somehow threatened; versus if I’m a little bit more relaxed.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 This is, by the way, you’ll see this happen a lot more in the teenage circles, and that’s because when people go through their teenage years they become very, very sensitive to ideas of status, they don’t necessarily think about it, it’s more of an instinctual thing. You’ll see a lot of teenagers do something like this, have you seen that happen? This is an overcompensation of status signals, isn’t it? When they’re not feeling it internally they’re trying to show to the world oh, I’m kind of in charge of this whole thing, and they’re overcompensating. We need to be aware of all these things. Why? It lets us read a person. It doesn’t necessarily let us read a room very easily, but we can get a sense of what are the dynamics at play? If you don’t know the dynamics it’s very difficult to join them or reshuffle them. If you don’t know that someone is – let’s say you’re doing street hypnosis, there’s a very simple concept, right? You’re doing some stuff, you’re doing inductions and whatever, and a person walks up and says do that with me. He might seem very friendly. Do you have the person in the right place? No, because he’s saying I am going to run this interaction. You can’t do that as a hypnotist, you can’t lead their attention somewhere unless they’re following. Does that make sense? Do you see why it’s important to understand these things? At the same time, let’s say you have the same group and the person is saying like – hypnosis is cool. Do you want to try it? Okay…who do you hypnotize? The second person. You just got authority from the group’s leader. I could come in, standing there and say hypnosis is a cool thing, you’d really enjoy it, let me show you something here. Do you see the change in my mannerisms? Over here I’m showing I’m not going to challenge authority, why would I? All I need to do is get my work done. As I move across I’ll change slightly. It’s only a slight opening, but you notice how now the signals are going across? Am I going to be challenged over here? No, because by challenging me he’s challenging the acknowledgment of this person, right? Do you see how that works? It’s a relatively sophisticated idea but I’ve seen the word authority being bandied about a lot in the hypnosis circles, and it’s usually a very primitive thing which is, basically, point your finger and say sleep. I’m hamming it up a little bit of course you realize. The principle is very important but I’d like you all to start thinking about it in a slightly more three dimensional way with more depth, because you don’t

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 have to be at the top of that pecking order in order to get the job you need done, done. Does that make sense to you all? Sometimes it’s actually more useful to have lower status than a higher status. When might that be, any ideas? Audience:

You’re not seen as threatening.

Igor:

You’re not seen as threatening, right? Let’s think about this in terms of sales. We have the chief honcho, the CEO or something like that; are you going to threaten or vie that person for leadership? No. You’re going to have to join that person because otherwise, you may win the argument and not get anywhere. Having said that, with certain individuals they won’t respect you unless you win the argument; do you see how it starts getting more complex? The point is now you can start looking for these things, you can start judging them and if one approach hasn’t quite worked out, you turn to the other approach and see how that one works out. You have things to test, which brings us – this is not directly a hypnotic principle but it very kind of is, this is very important, we started the day with this. It creates contrast. It’s through contrast that you’ll know what impact you’re having. If someone just shows you a photo and says this is the reaction you got, it’ll mean very little overall. You can make some educated guesses but the thing that will tell you what it is, is the contrast. If someone is like this in a photo, is he in trance? If a second ago he was like this and then he’s like this, is it more likely he’s in trance? It’s either that or he has narcolepsy. The contrast is going to be a really, good friend to you which means from the moment you start an interaction you need to be looking at what’s the general thing? You can’t be looking at every little thing because your mind would keep track of all those things, but you will notice shifts, things that are occurring. We’ll work more on that as we go along. As we do some exercises in a moment’s time I want to be aware of how much agreement you’re getting, how much compliance, and what are your relative status levels? It doesn’t matter what they are, just spot what they are. Incidentally you can still be the authority without being the top dog in the pack. Just sya let me show you some things that are very cool, you’ll really enjoy this, and then you slowly bleed into a point where you are the authority, where

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 they’re following what you’re doing and the status symbols are switched, but you’re doing it step by step in a non threatening manner. Does that make sense to you all? We will get a chance to practice all this, be assured. The part about assuming authority will be built into the exercises. What I want right now just as a simple idea is can you get this as a concept? The concept is straight forward, yes? The second thing is what I’m going to have you focus in on the rest of today. Before you do anything with it I want you to just be aware of it. Without awareness it’s very difficult to do something because you haven’t got a context to put it into, right? Context provides a contrast that tells you what’s going on. You’ve heard me talk about hypnotic context a lot if you’ve got any of her products and stuff like that. But in context there’s no hypnosis, because you do hypnosis differently in a hospital than in a bar room or on a street than with your friends than in an airplane – physically they might look very similar but there will be slight shifts that happen. True masters of hypnosis will typically make the adjustments unconsciously. They’ll notice – I’m not quite ready to do the induction yet – so you’ll hear them chat a bit more or talk about this stuff or do this other thing; why? Because their instincts are telling them the context isn’t right yet. They’ve spotted certain things but they’re not aware of it, it’s just experience has given them that pattern. I’d like you to start getting that pattern right now. In conversational hypnosis the biggest thing that goes wrong is people focus on the language, the words that they’re saying, and then they go blind or deaf and they don’t know what’s going on. It’s impossible do to do anything with the language unless you have somewhere to put the language, right? Like, it’s impossible to have a meal unless you have a person there, or a mouth to put the meal in. It’s impossible to store a bit’s just an empty space, what put it in. If it’s just an empty space, what do I do with it? There’s no container, it doesn’t make sense. We will come back to this. If by day three we’re not answering that question more fully, please feel free to ask again. Are we all good with the authority strategy so far? It’s just a strategy so far. Who here feels confident that they can spot at least some of these things going on in regular interactions? Not fully

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 analyze exactly what’s going on, just spot that there’s something going on and a relative shift going on and changes happening. In terms of the induction you just did a moment ago, I’d like you to just take these principles so far and mentally run yourself through the instant induction you did. You saw agreement and compliance being present did you not? You saw it more importantly when it was absent, did you not? Think about the authority. You notice that some people that approached as hypnotists had more of this than others, would that be fair to say? If you can spot this in others the next step is can you spot it in yourself? Can you think back on some of the inductions you did, perhaps with some people you felt more comfortable for whatever reason? I’m assuming there’s an answer to that we’ll come onto and you had more of this with them than with others. Can any of you think of that when you were doing inductions? Some people you felt more authority with than others? Through the contrast we get to feel that out. The next principle again, something we’ve been covering just now in the instant induction, is the idea of overload. Remember, we want to bypass the critical factor right? One of the things the critical factor cannot do is to think of too many things at once. We’re going to put a lot of concepts in a simple box, so in one respect the critical factor can be part of your attention span and that can only handle seven plus or minus two bits of information. If there’s too much stuff going on, you cannot do that consciously. Driving a car is impossible to do while conscious, did you know that? That doesn’t necessarily mean you get drunk to drive a car, but it’s all happening outside of your awareness. If you’re from Europe – I’m from Europe – so you have a manual gear shift, you have the pedals there to maneuver, you have the mirrors, you have to check where you are in relation to other cars, speed and speedometer – there are a lot of things going on. If you don’t think it’s happening just recall the first time you ever drove a car and the bucking bronco that resulted. That’s an example of trying to do something consciously that should be occurring unconsciously, and that’s what we’re aiming to do, get all these skills unconsciously, and in terms of overloading this is a great method of bypassing the critical factor. Again we’ll come onto this conversationally, but how did we overload the person here in the physical inductions?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 We used shock and surprise. We used loss of balance, even though it was only partial and possibly, depending on how well you set it up, a lot of instructions that needed to be followed. Stand here just like this, look at me, take a breath, look here, focus clearly – there are a lot of instructions that have to be followed, make sense? Versus for example stand over here, look – am I using overload at that point? I can still be hypnotic, overload is not necessarily a universal principle, but it’s a very good one and one we’ll be using in conversations too. Let’s see what other things we did. Let’s look at the actual induction we did in terms of its mechanics, in terms of what’s going on. Those of you who have seen the instant induction videos will already be familiar with this, but this is in answer to your question. When you do the instant induction you’ll notice that normal regular consciousness is here. Let’s say this area down here is unconsciousness – for want of a better word we’ll call it trance for now – when the person is overloaded or receives some kind of shock or surprise, something that doesn’t fit its normal pattern, it’s going to do something with it. Because there’s no pattern up here to be able to deal with it, the person will dip into trance for awhile. Trance is basically, amongst other things, a vehicle that allows us to open up realities and test other ways of being things and seeing things and so on. That’s why we learn quicker in trance than out of it, because we’re open to newness versus trying to fit it into oldness. Does that make sense? It spikes into trance trying to make sense of this all. If nothing else occurs at that point, the person will naturally return to regular consciousness. The whole thing might take up to a second, two seconds at best; it’s very rare that it goes beyond that and it’s usually less than that. People will spike into a trance and then slowly emerge, which is exactly what it is you said you saw. You saw them going down and coming back. In the absence of anything else this is how 90% of the instant inductions will go. Occasionally, someone will formulate an idea of what hypnosis is about, either because they’ve already experienced it with other people, they’ve been preconditioned, or they’ve seen other people do it so they’ve been prepared in other ways, so they’ll stay in trance all by themselves because it meets an internal expectation.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 For most people however, in order to keep them in trance you will have to do something to prevent them from popping back out. What do you think that might be? A deepener, exactly that’s what deepeners are there for. Deepeners are there to stabilize the trance experience, to prevent the emerging phenomenon. As a rule, trance is not stable. It goes in little cycles. If left alone, that cycle might cycle back up. Suggestions might allow that cycle to go further down, or intensify the state. When you said the words deeper, deeper, deeper; who here noticed it had more of an effect on them as a subject than if someone didn’t say that at all? That’s not particularly elaborate suggestions is it? The rule of thumb is, with any kind of instant induction, with any kind of shock, surprise, or overload if you’re using that principle, they will return back to their regular normal state of being unless you do something to guide them deeper into the experience. Does that make sense? That’s the part you missed out on you didn’t deepen. Deepening is very simple, that’s right, just go deeper, deeper, deeper enjoy it and so on. You may need to put a reason in there for keeping them in there, because the other thing that will happen here is if they don’t want to accept your suggestions because they don’t feel safe for example, up they come again. Does it kind of make sense in terms of the experience you just had this morning if nothing else? Would that be fair? Is there a way to put deepening on autopilot? Yes there is, would you like to explore it? We’ll do that in a moment. We’ll come onto that literally after we finish this segment here. Audience: ♦ Is there a way to put this on autopilot? Igor:

Sure. We’ll actually come onto the whole process we’ll do something physical in a moment. The purpose of what we’re doing right now very simply is I want you to recognize that even though you only spent half an hour doing the mechanical bits around hypnosis, do you recognize that there’s a lot of content in terms of the principles you’re applying? Would that be fair to say? Can you actually see yourself, when you review the performances you had here a moment ago, can you spot when you actually applied one of these principles? Importantly also, when you did not, and hence didn’t quite get the same kind of result as other people?

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Again, we need to have those contrasts so you know which direction to head in, because I’m not going to be there forever holding your hand saying let’s do it this way, let’s do it that way. You’re going to be able to develop your own experiences and in conversation contrast is what keeps you on track. Make sense? Good. There is going to be one more principle that we’ll throw in, do you want to do that now? We’ll do that in a minute. Let’s go to your question in terms of creating deepness. Before we can make deepness automatic, we need to know what a deepener actually is, in other words experience different ways of doing deepening, would that be fair? Then you’ll have control of one skill you can put on autopilot. What I want you all to do is very simple, put all your bits and pieces down and stand on up. I’d like a volunteer if I may. Thank you for volunteering. Stand over here John, just look at me. Take a deep breath in- breathe out, all the way and sleep, that’s right. Deeper, deeper and deeper still. As you maintain your own balance you go deeper into trance. That’s it. Every time you feel this, I’d like you to go deeper and feel more comfortable. That’s right deeper and deeper. In a moment I’m going to move you around slightly, you’ll be perfectly on balance and you’ll be totally safe. Just follow along as you move your arms slightly, totally safe, totally on balance. That’s right. Deeper, that’s right. Deeper, there you go, deeper still. Because you’ve come up here John and you’ve volunteered you get a gift. Everyone gets a gift. I’m Santa Claus – only a little bit less in the middle. What I’d like you to do is have your unconscious mind go ahead and search out all the experiences where learning something was easy, because it was fun, because you forgot that you were learning something just because you wanted to do it. You did it again and again and again, and each time it became easier and more fun. At some point you kind of mastered it. Other people thought; how do you do that? It’s easy you just do it. You’ll know you’re finding those experiences because a good feeling develops inside. Do you feel that good feeling? That’s right, there you go. That feeling is going to be your guide throughout the course of this

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 seminar, making sure you master conversational hypnosis. Each time you’re going to get better. You don’t know necessarily how or why you’re getting better, but you’re going to enjoy it in the same way you did back then. It’s just going to be fun, all that’s going to be a resource to you in helping you understand this. You don’t need to know how it’s going to happen you just need to feel good whilst you’re doing it. You can do that, can you not? That’s it. There you go, there it is. There you go. I’ll turn you slightly. You’ll be nice and deep in trance. There you go, very good, a little more than that, there you go, very good. Is that difficult to read? I’m going to count from one to three, and on the count of three you’re coming back fully alert and these suggestions going even deeper as you continue to jump to the next exercise. To give your unconscious mind a real chance to prove to you that it exists, which by the way it does, allowing you to do things that will amaze you – you get to look forward to that now, can you not? One, two, three wide awake. Good job, well done. Thank you so much give him a nice round of applause. [Applause] You don’t have to do a bit in the middle, that’s just a freebie because he was being so kind. Once they’re in trance and you keep them for a bit, just make some general suggestions about learning. I’m going to give you advice now though – keep them very short. Why? The exercise will be very short and if you’re halfway through when I call you back the other person doesn’t get a chance to have a go. Does that make sense? Just keep it very short, some general things about learning, if you’ve learned things in the past you can learn things in the future, easy as that, and you can do it. The key thing I want you to focus on is number one; did you see some kind of agreement or compliance going on, yes? Let me get some feedback here, did you see agreement and compliance? Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

Was there a clear distinction in authority, in terms of someone being more in charge of the process than someone else? Not in terms of value of the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 individual, not in terms of who is more important or anything like that, just in terms of who is directing the interaction – would that be fair to say? Was there a context in which the hypnosis could occur, in which it was appropriate to do what we were about to do? Did we see some kind of an overload? Did we see deepening maneuvers? The deepening maneuver itself is very simple, we’re using another hypnotic principle, it’s called the law of associations. You may have to bend sideways to read that. The law of associations is, basically, the primary level at which the unconscious mind reasons. If two things happen at once, they are the same thing, they become bonded. Think of your unconscious mind, your experiences, as being sticky. When something happens to touch onto it it’ll stick, it’ll stay there’ll be a bond. It might be a weak bond or a strong bond it doesn’t matter there will be a bond at the unconscious level. You can exploit that bond. You can enhance that bond and make more of it. What was the association? What was the bond we did with John? The touching and deeper, right. Does touching people mean they’ll go deeper into trance in normal everyday world? No? You’ve touched hopefully hundreds of people in your lifetime without them zoning out to the floor and you’re saying what the hell is going on, am I Midas? Yet, did it feel pleasant? Did you see the physical changes as a result of a touch? Is this beginning to answer your question yet – not entirely, but beginning to? We associated one event to another and the unconscious mind ran with it because it already had an experience of both occurring at the same time. Does that make sense? Audience:

Just a comment. I’ve had this done to me before…

Igor:

Do you want to get on the microphone? Then everyone else can hear you as well.

Audience:

I’ve had this done to me before and the person kind of – and it was so hard, it put me to the ground.

Igor:

Can I just borrow you? This is kind of an important thing. Normally this comes out after the exercise but we may as well deal with this. Let’s imagine that James is in trance, and the way you put him in trance is whatever put him in trance.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Now I’m going to say deeper, deeper, deeper. Is that the same experience he had going into trance? No. By the way you can actually do deepeners that way, but it requires set up because the association isn’t there yet. What association is normally there when people do this sort of thing to you? It’s jogging, it’s alerting, it’s putting more energy into your system which is precisely the opposite of what we want. Now, if I’m doing a hypnotic blitz in a normal conversational setting I might well do that – you’re a great person, you can really do this – you’ve seen coaches and other speakers do this, give each other a pep talk and almost beat each other up while they’re doing it – it works there. Why? The context allows it. The association is already predisposed over lifetimes of learning. Don’t violate the associations you can pretty much assume are going to be there. A gentle touch will usually be enough. Why? Because that’s how people normally respond and relax in these open minded sort of ways. Recognize by the way that there will be an occasion where a more vigorous sort of association and a more vigorous sort of tap might be the right thing. Let me give you a hint – it’s not now. Does that make sense to you all? John: ♦ Can you do another association?

Igor:

You said as you find more balance you’ll get deeper. That’s another association. Yes. John was saying the second thing I did was say as you find your own balance you’ll go deeper, which answers your question even more fully before I was ready to do it – you’re too good. That was a second deepening mechanism as well, and that was more out of laziness for me because I didn’t want to hold your weight up the whole time. Does that make sense to you all? Is the exercise very clear? You’re going to do the exactly same thing, while they’re in there make them feel good, say something general around learning, nothing too long, and then a gentle touch. As a rule the more in trance someone is, the more sensitive they become in terms of physical experience, hence a very slight touch will usually be more than enough. Do I have a quick question here?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Audience: ♦ When you were inducing John, what was the overload that allowed you to tap him on the back of the head? Igor:

Let me make it a little easier for you; the touch on the back of the head was the overload. I was overloading him a little bit with locus, focus, breathe in- breathe out and sleep. There were a lot of instructions going on there. I knew he was going to slightly expect it, so I didn’t want him to know when it was going to happen. It’s a question of timing on the overload too if you want a complete answer, but the major portion of it was the tap, the shock is the overload. Is everyone good? Another quick question? Give John a nice round of applause in the meantime. [Applause]

Audience: ♦ It’s just something I noticed; so in other words overload happens while you’re setting the hypnotic context, it’s interwoven within, correct? Igor:

Yes. The main thing we want to do here, and this is something we’re going to get into more and more as we go along, nothing is done individually. We’ll do these things individually to get used to them, to create a contrast so you know where they’re at, but conversational hypnosis is everything happening at once, there is no difference. When someone is watching it they should be going I don’t see it, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s all blending together. The analogy I like to use is the idea of pencils – this is not a pencil but if you imagine a nice thin pencil, I could probably snap it in half, right? If I had two or three of them could I snap those in half? It’d be a little more effort but I’m strong like bull, I can do it 5, 10, 20 of these things in a stack? No. You have enough pencils you can have a tank roll over them and they’ll carry the weight. Does that make sense? That’s what we’re looking to do here in conversational hypnosis. Each one of these elements is a pencil you put through your conversations. It’s very simple to weave in, it’s invisible, but when enough of them have been stacked up together it’s irresistible. But hey everyone, you haven’t even finished the first morning yet, so take it a little easy on yourselves, will you?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Let’s just do the exercise, instant induction, go with a deepener, associate a touch to the deepener to see how easy it is, give them something nice at the end and bring them back. Do two or three people if you can, you’re not going to have very long. You’ll have two minutes to do three people, so speed will be of the essence right now and then we’ll come back. Off you go. Was it fun? Were your hypnotists relatively competent? Did you enjoy being put in trance by someone else? So I noticed something else happening, and I wanted to point it out because this is what I hoped was going to start happening; who noticed as a subject when someone was saying deeper, deeper and that sort of stuff, who noticed that the hypnotist just knew exactly when to say it? You said that’s it, that’s exactly when I needed to hear it. Why this half of the room? What were you all doing over here? What’s happening right now is something called the reinforcement or the feedback loop. Whenever something occurs in hypnosis, you want to jump in it. You’ve heard of the hypnotic triple, when you repeat something three times it’s the magic number in conversations but in terms of trance you really have much more leeway to go beyond that. You’re reinforcing a particular response by putting more attention on it. You know the old saying where attention goes energy flows? By putting attention on something you’re reinforcing it, you’re feeding a loop back into it. What a little more than half of you were doing, and you may not have noticed this, is you’re saying deeper as their balance is shifting more, as they’re relaxing more. It’s actually augmenting something that’s already occurring. The reason I mention it now, rather than before, is now that you’ve done it I want you to start paying attention to it, so you’re spotting it as it occurs and creating this whole feedback message. They respond to you somehow, you latch onto it, you do more of it, it happens again, you do more of it, it happens again. Does that make sense? Repetition and reinforcement are keys in all forms of hypnosis, especially conversational hypnosis. The question will be; how can you then repeat certain ideas so it doesn’t break the conversational context? You want to be able to repeat yourself without sounding like a broken record.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 When you repeat yourself in the right way, it won’t sound like a broken record, and they’ll still get the message. It’s just a question of figuring out how do you repeat yourself so it’s not too obvious. Of course sometimes you’ll repeat yourself more obviously than others, it’s just a question of how can you repeat yourself so it’s not too obvious? Do you see what I mean? Can I have a volunteer who likes to be in hypnosis, anyone? I’ll use you for a second. Have we put you in trance yet? Not officially. There we go, we may as well complete the circle we had from before. Look at me, take a deep breath in, breathe out, sleep, all the way down, deeper, that’s right, deeper still – you’re doing great. Finding your own balance will help you go even deeper now, more relaxed. The more relaxed you feel the deeper you go, the deeper you go the better you feel. The better you feel the deeper you go, the more you relax. All of you can relax but this one part here, just put this one hand up there and make a fist, nice and strong. That’s it, nice and strong. The more strength that’s in that arm the more you relax. Locking this arm straight, locking it out rigid like a concrete bar, like an iron bar, steel that will not bed. You relax and you feel better in here the more this is stiff, tense, and rigid, stiff, tense, rigid, feel it happening now. Very good. When you feel that hand being so stiff, so rigid that it will not move no matter how hard you try, feel it, bring a life of its own becoming stiffer and stiffer, just go ahead and test it. Try to bend that up and notice you cannot. Stiffer and stiffer; feeling better inside. Stiffer and stiffer; feeling better inside. Come on, you can do better than that. Really try, come on. Try and bend it and find that you cannot. Relax it all the way. You did a great job. An example of how your unconscious mind can operate outside your consciousness. Another way to do this is by learning, by making it easy to become a great hypnotist. You’ve already seen some people up here discover how learning occurs. You know what’s happening, don’t you? That good feeling will come inside you as well. That’s it, you can feel it now. When it lights all the way so that you can’t help but smile, you’ll know you’re ready to come back out because your unconscious mind, that’s right, has prepared you to make it so easy to become a hypnotist its unreal.

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There you go. A little more than that – then your eyes will flutter open all by themselves. That’s amazing, isn’t it? Good job. Well done, thank you. Give him a nice round of applause. Was there any repetition involved there, any reinforcement, feeding back things that were going on there? We’ve added a few more little things now. Remember, the law of association works in many different ways. One of the ways that it works, and this is something you’ll be practicing in a minute, and this is going to be one of the most crucial things in conversational hypnosis, we’ll show you tomorrow how to work with it, is to develop a reference experience. Reference experiences are experiences people have had, and you’re going to use them to build a different experience for them through the law of associations. For example, has anyone here ever fallen asleep and had their arm go numb, anyone, maybe a leg or something? I had this once, I was sleeping on a sofa, it was a couple of years ago now, I feel asleep, my leg fell asleep right along with me, had a knock on the door and I woke up but my leg didn’t. It was the most interesting experience getting from my couch to the front door. My leg wasn’t working. I could kind of walk on it because part of it was working but the knee wouldn’t lock so I had to hobble. It was very interesting. Now that you have that experience as an idea, if someone needed to perhaps develop pain control, isn’t it easier when the unconscious mind already has an idea of what kind of things it can do to get there? Wouldn’t that be fair to say? In terms of fear, has anyone here ever touched something concrete? Has anyone here ever tried to bend an iron bar, even on a door or something like that, you feel the solidity of it? You’ve felt the solidity of an iron bar, you’ve felt the un-bendingness of it as opposed to a piece of paper? Strong like a piece of paper doesn’t quite cut it, does it? We’re using natural associations as reference experiences to enhance the effect that we want. Does that make sense to you all? It looks like we’re doing a few trivial things really, right? But there are already a lot of layers of principles involved in that. Those principles are

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the key things, because if you can translate those principles into a conversation then you will be unstoppable as a conversational hypnotist. If you have the illusion that it’s all about what you say, then you’ll be very confused because you won’t know why it works sometimes and it doesn’t others. Does that make sense to you all? The words are just a way of putting the principles into action, and that’s it. There are a couple other things we did there which we’ll talk about afterwards but I think it’s more important you all have an experience of this. The steps are very simple. You can all do an instant induction, is that correct? You can all do some kind of a deepener, whether it’s a touch or counting something out for them and so on, would that be fair to say? Actually, would you like to have a new deepener that’s a very important one for hypnosis in general? We may as well throw it in there because otherwise it’s just a nice little parlor trick, would you like that? The principle is very simple. Can I have a volunteer, anyone? Look at you. Do we have agreement here? Me! Come on up, give him a round of applause. We’ll keep this short and sweet because I just want to get the principle out very quickly. The idea is very simple. The more someone goes into the trance the easier it gets. They’re learning, their bodies are climatizing, it’s adjusting, so it’s easier to get them deeper by bringing them out and then back in again. Make sense? Let me show you what I mean. Have a look at me, and sleep, all the way, deeper, that’s right, deeper still. The deeper you go the better you feel, the better you feel the deeper you go. In fact the deeper you go the better you feel, the more you go into trance. That’s right. In a moment I’ll count to three and on the count of three you will open your eyes feeling alert, feeling fresh. When I say the word sleep you will close your eyes and drop into a state as deep as this and even deeper. This will happen every time. At the count of three your eyes will open, you’ll feel alert. When I say the word sleep your eyes will close and you’ll go even deeper than this each and every time. That will continue to happen every time we count. Bob your head if you understand. Very good. One, two, and three. Very good. You enjoy that? And sleep. That’s it, very good. Deeper and deeper still. You’re doing great. This time you go deeper. Your unconscious mind will naturally start finding resources to make learning hypnosis a real breeze for you, which means you will feel even more wonderful as you go into a trance.

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Consciously you have no idea what’s going on other than that you feel good, unconsciously you can start to find all the resources you need to truly master hypnosis in ways that will surprise even you. One, two, three eyes open – and sleep. All the way, that’s it there you go, finding your own balance each time. Deeper and deeper each time, one, two, three. Very good. Are you enjoying that? Very good and sleep. All the way, that’s it, deeper each time. Find those resources, getting stronger still. By the time we count to three a few more times you will feel so good inside you’ll take that feeling right to the outside and you just can’t wait to get a hold of someone and do some hypnosis because it feels right, this is natural. One, two, three eyes open – and sleep. I like that. That’s almost there. Third and last time, this time’s the charm – one, two, three wide awake. Good job, well done. Let’s go find him a partner. Off you go. Give him a nice round of applause. I kind of over repeated a little bit. Could you see the clear distinction of each cycle, coming back and going back into trance a little deeper? Did you notice how he was also responding to suggestions? When I changed the suggestions about deepening, now it’s no longer about a deeper experience but actually about other stuff happening as well, did you notice him coming back differently also? Was suggesting working at some point? Was something beginning to work? This is the kind of stuff, we’re starting to get into now and what I’d like you to do is very simple. 1. Number one; find a partner, put them in trance, instant induction – easy to do, right? 2. Number two; deepen in whatever way you wish to for a couple of seconds to stabilize the trance. 3. Number three; I would like for you to repeat a fractionation at least three times, no more than five just for time reasons. You can go all day if you want but it gets very tricky at that point. Do it at least three times, no more than five, just get that process of in and out, in and out. The key things are, when you count or whatever the signal is, eyes open out in the room. Now, it’s a slight nuance I put in there, you’re welcome to put it in there if you want to – you will feel alert, or you feel awake.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’m not saying you will be alert or you will be awake, but you will feel it. What that allows for him to do – it won’t always happen – but what it allows him to do is rather than popping back into consciousness before he goes down, is to hover around or even stay just off the mark of it. This allows you to do all sorts of other interesting things later, but no need for that now. You’re welcome to use it, and if it’s too much to think about don’t worry about it, a simple induction, a simple deepener, fractionation– so far so good. Once you’ve done your third round of fractionation just do something simple like the steel bar. Once again there’s no rocket science, we’re just using reinforcement, repetition and a reference experience. That’s easy, isn’t it? Get them to test it and when it’s been tested – just a little trick, when you say okay forget about it and relax, shake their arm out a little bit because sometimes the muscles will actually lock and they’ll find it a little difficult to figure out how to relax it again. So, a little bit of movement by shaking it out will help their muscles remember how to relax. Does that make sense to you all? Any questions on the exercise? Audience: ♦ What’s fractionation? Igor:

When Lester was up here just now and he was going into trance and out of trance and into trance and out of trance, did you see that bit? That’s fractionation. It’s very simple. We’ll talk about what’s happening there and why after you’ve done it, but we don’t want to talk about it too much we just want to do it and get the feeling of it and then we’ll throw the principles out some more.

Audience: ♦ What stops that…post suggestion? So like, if you were to say sleep again now, would he go into trance? Igor:

Nothing unless you suggest it. I left it ambiguous in that this time it’s for real, so coming back out, but we can find out, are you willing to play? Sleep – I guess its working. Because you’ve gone as deep as you have, and thank you Lester for really letting us play with this – that’s right, all the way now Lester – I’d like your unconscious mind to find an even better gift for you right now. That feeling you had a moment ago, you may as well double or triple it so that you feel it so strongly that when you come out of hypnosis in a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 moment you can’t help but bring that into every interaction because it’s just so good. One, two, three – wide awake. I guess it does. Don’t worry about it too much this is not what we’re looking for right now, that was just to answer your question. Right now we’re developing principles and the principles will be used in conversational hypnosis in time. Make sense? Everyone cool? Find a couple partners and let’s just do it. Who enjoyed that by the way? Was that good? No? We’ll come back to you in a minute. Can you see these principles beginning to work in practice? Can you start seeing them interacting, playing out in front of you in little gestures and little things they say or do, or even things you feel and experience yourself? Would that be fair to say? The next thing to do, if you want to think like a true master hypnotist, is what happens when you start combining the principles? For example, a couple of you pulled me over for problem clients – what if you combined the contrast – contrast is how we can tell what’s happening in the world. If there were no contrast we’d be deaf, dumb and blind and we’d be without sensation, so its the contrast that allows you to have something. If you doubt me, who here has a wristwatch? Who here feels their wristwatch during day to day activities? Who here feels it when they take their wristwatch off again after awhile? Doesn’t it feel weird and empty? The contrast you’re feeling because your body has become acclimatized to something. Doesn’t that make sense? What if the contrast that someone is making is what’s in terms of what’s not working? I’m not really that relaxed, I’ve got pain – what are they looking at for contrast points? Is that going to enhance the trance experience or not? It may be discomfort. Basically, you’re contrasting against the critical factor, against things to reject experiences. You mix the contrast principle with the critical factor, what do you have? You’ve got a great block to hypnosis, which kind of answers your question once again from earlier on. What if, however, and by the way, there’s a reasonable portion of people who will do this instinctively it’s their learning style. It’s not a bad thing, it’s

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 they learn by contrasting against information on what’s not working and what’s wrong, and what isn’t right and so on. Is that going to help you put them in trance? What would you want to contrast against? Would it not be fair to say that if they’re contrasting agreement against what they can accept that suddenly the whole thing turns around? As a rule if someone comes up to you and says it’s not working or I can’t be hypnotized, someone has tried before and it hasn’t worked. A few things can go wrong. i. Number one, probably the context wasn’t set in the first place. They had a poor hypnotist that did a rush job. ii. Number two on the list, is they’re contrasting they’re looking for the wrong information. They’re having an experience, it’s just every time they have the experience because they’re contrasting against what’s not working they’re using their trance to reinforce not going into one. Do you see how that works? How might one switch that principle around so it’s working in your favor? Audience: ♦ Can you make an association? Igor:

An association to what?

Audience:

The more you focus on the problems the deeper into trance you go.

Igor:

It can do it, but even if you get over the critical factor the association might not take. Does that make sense? It’s something worth playing with absolutely and I’ll show you how to elaborate that which is a lot of fun, but as long as you keep that in the back of your mind it’s worth a test and if it doesn’t work out you’ll know where to go next.

Audience:

Re-direct their focus to something they have to agree with, such as breathing or blinking.

Igor:

Oh she’s a quick one – you have to redirect their experience to something they have to agree with, in other words breathing or blinking or that sort of thing. I’d like to go one step further. Why? If all you’re doing is redirecting to something they have to agree with like blinking they’re short. Mentally

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 they’re adding something but it doesn’t mean anything, it’s that but we have to get rid of somehow. Does that make sense? What if we get them to contrast against something that is working, no matter how small? There’s one thing we know absolutely for a fact, there is no homeostasis in terms of an absolute experience that is unfaltering and unchanging. We are constantly in flux. We are constantly relaxing more or creating more tension. It cycles. Even in trance remember, the trance is not perfectly level, it’ll cycle even though it might trend towards a direction. Does that make sense to you all? The answer is; if you get them to contrast against that portion of the cycle where it’s already working, they can’t deny that experience of it having worked a little bit. Does that make sense? Of course, if they’re really true hard core testers, which is again a good learning style, it’s a useful thing in some environments - they’ll say yes, but it’s not enough. If that happens, what might you say at that point? How might you handle that just using the principles we know so far or any other principles I really don’t mind. Audience:

This is increasing.

Igor:

You’re very close I actually would go with that first and see if it takes.

Audience:

Agreeing with them it shouldn’t be enough.

Igor:

You’re so close. This is coming into what we’ll do later with frame control. I might as well give you all a chance, go on.

Audience:

Beyond enough, what would be enough?

Igor:

Going on to mind bending language, that would work great at that point but we’re not handling mind bending language here so I’m going to use a slightly different approach.

Audience:

A little takeaway.

Igor:

Right, like you just can’t have it?

Audience:

I guess you can’t feel that sensation, the comfort of trance and so on

Igor:

That will work great with certain personalities. You have to read the person. Some people will feel dejected. If there’s dejection, they don’t feel

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 good enough, that’s part of the pattern that’s creating the contrast. You don’t want to use that because you’re going to feed into their pattern of I’m not good enough. If on the other hand they’re challenge oriented, they’re going to say I’ll show you buddy. Again, do you see how you have to be able to read the interaction very carefully to see where we’re going with this? Audience: ♦ Couldn’t you integrate it by telling them the discomfort is part of the process? Igor:

Integrate it so the discomfort is part of the process absolutely. Allow me to just put you out of your misery to some extent. By the way this is great, the ideas you all are coming up with, all of them will work in a certain context. The key idea we’re trying to get towards is, what’s the key problem when someone says, I feel a little bit but it’s not hypnosis, but it’s not enough, but – what’s the key problem there? It’s not good enough. They’re denying their own experience as being the right experience. We’ve got to switch that key idea around. I really like where you were going with this, you were so close. What if you said it’s not enough yet, or we’re not there yet. What does the yet allow them to do? Right, so it allows them to delay the testing, the contrasting with the failure, until later. Something happens with time. There’s a nice little bit of research when it comes to time which is that when things happen in the present moment, people look for effort. They look at how much it would cost them to do this particular thing. For example, if I said to you all who wants to buy my new course right now? You’ll say how much does it cost? That’s probably utmost on your mind. Next year I’m going to release a course on making hypnosis 10 times easier, it’s not ready yet. Who would be interested in that? What’s happening right now is by projecting into the future people tend to focus on the benefits of something. Make sense? Now is the cost, future is the benefit. It’s just part of how most people tend to think. If you can delay their testing to the future that’s what the word, yet, is doing it’s not the word that’s all powerful it’s what it does inside the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 person. If you can delay them testing it until afterwards you’re doing two things; number one they’re no longer looking at the present cost, the present cost being this is not working, the effort involved, what do I have to do to make this work? Number two you’re switching their yes mind on, because in the future you’re looking for benefits. You’re switching it on in the present moment, which means now the contrast is more likely to work. These are all of course tendencies, we’re stacking the deck, but do you see where we’re going with this? Do you see how mixing principles together can give you a hell of a lot of leverage when doing hypnosis? Does that make sense to you all? This is important because when doing formal hypnosis you will come across people who have those very mindsets, and you need to get through that. In a conversation it might be easier to put someone in trance because they don’t know that it’s not working, right? You’re not doing anything, so they can succeed before they know anything has happened. But even then, if you spot the same pattern, you need to know how to break it. The way you break it is very simply by getting them to contrast against success, and if you need to project them into the future where they’ll put their testing in, and that way you’re setting them up to look for benefits, look for successes rather than failures. Does that make sense? Do you see how that cycle works? It’s kind of involved, but the good news is, there are people in this room that will think hypnosis isn’t working for them. Please try to find them, and be gentle when you do, you don’t want to break them straight away of that habit, someone else might want to have a go too. Be polite. Audience:

If they’re contrasting things, are you really bypassing their mind?

Igor:

There’s a difference between analysis and contrast. You can’t experience anything without contrast. If you put for example a dot right on the pupil of the eye where the light goes in, within 30-60 seconds, your brain will no longer see that dot. Why? Because the image moves with the iris, so it just deletes it. You cannot have that sensation, that’s what sensory deprivation tanks do and all that stuff. The unconscious mind still needs contrast, it’s just we’re not evaluating the contrast, we’re not analyzing it.

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The second thing you need to realize is that trance isn’t an on or off switch, it’s a sliding process. At the beginning, you’ll have a lot of conscious activity and some unconscious activity suppressed to the conscious stuff. Then you’ll have the next stage will be conscious activity slows down, unconscious activity is enhanced. But, it’s more by permission of the conscious mind, and over time the roles reverse; consciousness is at some level absent, the experience is still there, they may still have memory, but they’ll go with the experience more smoothly, the sliding scale they’re going through. In a conversation it’s rare you’ll reach that bottommost level where everything becomes absolute reality, and you don’t want it to either because it skews the conversation in ways you don’t want it to. It’s a sliding scale and you want to be able to work at each level of that scale, rather than just at the end of it. Does that make sense? Everyone cool; are you liking this? Do you notice how the exercises are straightforward, pretty simple, right? Do you notice how there’s a lot inside them in terms of anything you do that’s hypnotic is packed with principles, and those are the things I want you to pay attention to, because the principles make hypnosis actually, and the principles make conversations hypnotic. Make sense? There’s one last thing I just want to add very quickly, we don’t need to spend much time on it, but now is the time to do it before we come back after lunch. Stuff has to happen in the brain in order for anything to occur whether, its hypnotic or anything else. Hypnosis is not an automatic formula, hypnosis is not instant success, hypnosis is a process and it has to be processed by something. You have to sometimes give them time to process. Ironically, it depends on what you’re doing. The mental processing principle shall we say, says you’ve got to just pause and give people a chance to absorb the suggestion, absorb the idea. All too often I hear people rushing through suggestions and none of it sticks because there’s just too much. But of course you can see clearly that this will go against another principle we’ve already talked about, haven’t we, the overload principle? So which one is right? Exactly; it’s just a question of when. It goes right back down to what is the context? What’s going on right now? What do you want to go on? You overload primarily to bypass the critical factor. You allow mental processing time primarily to stimulate the unconscious.

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Sometimes you’ll start by overloading and once you’ve got to the right point there’s this beautiful moment of pause where suggestion just rests and it sinks in. You might go back to overloading again just as consciousness becomes more active and you can repeat the cycle, you can fractionate those cycles just like anything else. Does that make sense to you all? This is very important because we are moving at a relative pace here. I don’t’ want you to think it’s all got to be speed hypnosis, now, because conversations do take their time and there’s some things you’ll have to place in very carefully in one conversation that you won’t even play with until maybe a few weeks or months have passed. We’re looking at the long term here right now. It just depends on what the relationship is like, what the situation is like, what you’re doing, and so on. Does that make sense to you all? Principles work, sometimes certain principles when put together will make it work less, for example the contrast versus the critical factor, and if that happens just find out what is the dynamic going on inside that person and then you can start switching it around. Does that make sense? Any questions on that as ideas go? The important thing is; these principles I want you to refer them back to something you’ve actually done or experienced. Has anyone here actually presented to you even just today a suggestion that came too soon, like you didn’t quite know what to do with it? Did anyone have that experience? That’s the mental processing part. Some people – by the way, sometimes resistance is just the hypnotist going too quickly. Anyone here have a sense at some point that you were thinking too much and that you’d followed too easily and they weren’t really leading you all that well, anyone? That’s the absence of overload. There’s a balance point to be found for each individual at different levels. That’s what we’ll come onto tomorrow when we start talking about reading people and so on. You all felt yourselves being led by someone, you felt competent or you wanted to follow along, right? And you felt some people that you didn’t feel safe in their hands, didn’t really know what they were doing and thought, I don’t know about this stuff I just make it up and pretend to go along with it but nothing is really going on?

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That’s the authority principle. I want you to take all these principles and take it back to something that’s occurred to you, something you’ve actually done, because after the break we’re going to come onto the language. We’ll play lots of different language games, and initially they won’t have much purpose other than to get used to the language, but the important thing is when we start applying the language, the language is absolutely irrelevant. Let me reemphasize this – the language is totally irrelevant. In fact, it’s counterproductive unless it’s expressing these principles for you. If it’s expressing these principles then the language makes sense, because whether you’re using power words or trance words or whatever words you’re playing with, it’s doing something for you now, something very purposeful. If on the other hand you’re just throwing those words out because that’s what the course said you should do and you’re just reading the script out and all the rest of it, then sometimes it will work and sometimes it will not. The times it will work is when you’ve accidentally got the right context and all these things are working for you – beautiful. The times it will not is when somehow accidentally you have violated an important principle and you can’t fix it until you start looking at the interaction and asking yourself; what principle is missing? Does that make sense to you all? As you go to lunch I’d like for you all to do two things if we could; number one, reflect on your experiences here this morning and see how you can attach one of these principles to at least one experience you’ve had so far. This was an example of someone having good authority, or this was an example of when I had good authority relative to the person I was working with. Here’s an example of when I got good compliance or when I didn’t; contrasting the things. Go through the list and find at least or two reference experiences. The next thing I want you all to do is think about; how might I try and do this in a normal conversation? Don’t try to do any of it, I mean if you really have to I’m not going to stop you, I’m not going to be there at lunch looking over your shoulder, but observe normal conversations. Have a chat with someone and say wait a second, was that a bit of an authority thing going on here? Am I agreeing with him? Is this agreement going on well? Is he agreeing with me? Am I complying with his ideas?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Did I have it for awhile and then lose it? That would be the contrast principle alerting you to what’s going on. Do you see how that works? I’d like you to take the time to have conversations, to get to know each other over lunch but in the back of your mind, I want you to filter for these principles, because you’ll see they happen – they cannot, not happen. If there’s another human being present, it will happen at one level or another, does that make sense? We’ll come back from lunch and we’ll start playing with the language, but it’ll be a context that is, actually useful. Thanks everyone, off you go.

DVD 3: Conversational Hypnosis Language Foundations Igor:

Welcome back everyone. How was lunch? Do you feel nourished and nutritionized? It’s a word – not a good word, but it’s a word. Who had fun this morning? Did you all learn some things this morning in terms of the hypnotic process and so on? Hopefully, I’m sticking true to my word that I’m teaching you things you’ve already seen before. If you’ve been to a course before, or if you have the home study course, there shouldn’t be that much that’s new in terms of what we’ve done. Do you see it from a different perspective? Can you see it from a different angle now. Would that be fair to say? Hopefully, you see much greater detail in how hypnosis works and how it’s put together. I’d like to do that and start getting into the hypnotic language a little more today. We spent some time on the mechanics and the principles. And language is a very important tool that we have because it allows us to express the principles. Does that make sense? More importantly, words will direct the mind in a way that will allow a principle to be activated or deactivated, depending on what you’re doing. I guess the easiest way of doing this would be the fun way. Everyone put your pens and papers down and stuff like that. If you have drinks please put them somewhere safe. I recommend putting them on the side of the room rather than on your chair because they might get

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 bumped. At least put them under a chair rather than on a chair or next to a chair. If you do put them on the side remember which one is yours, because a lot of coffee cups are very similar and you may like each other, in which case feel free to swap fluids, but otherwise make sure you know which yours is. Everyone please put your cups to the side and make sure it’s out of the way so people don’t knock it. Then stand up please. Make sure you have that over there otherwise, it gets knocked into the microphone and won’t be such a healthy thing. What I’d like you to do is just warm up, get yourself into the whole mood. We need to start being able to use language in a way we don’t think. The problem about using language on purpose is that we start thinking too much about it and it starts sounding awkward or stilted or scripted or fake. Has anyone here ever been called by a tele-salesperson? Has anyone ever had a call like that? Can you tell in the first five seconds that this is a telesales person? Audience: Igor:

Within the first word. Within the first word right. What tips you off?

Audience:

It’s robotic.

Igor:

Exactly, it’s something about the voice. The rhythm is wrong. The tone is wrong. The emphasis is wrong. It’s not how normal people speak and it’s not how natural people speak. Once we start playing with the language, we can’t do it in a way that isn’t natural, because then you’re practicing the wrong thing. Does that make sense? We’re going to start playing with something. Get yourself in a state of mind where it’s almost impossible to think, which means your conscious mind is not interfering anymore. To do this we’re going to play an age old favorite game a lot of you have played this with me before. I’d like you to walk around the room, point at things in the room and with full conviction say what they are not as though they were the thing they are not. This is not an elephant, I hope you’ll agree – this thing is not an elephant? So I hope you’ll not go, "It’s an elephant." There’s no conviction there.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I need you to say it loudly and proudly, and move from object to object in a way that you don’t really have time to think about it. This is an elephant. This is a cartoon. This is an airplane and here we have some swallows. Point at them. Name them things they are not as if they were those things, with absolute and full conviction. Make sense? Hopefully not too much – off you go. I love what you all are doing. This is a, let me think, priceless painting. That’s the wrong way of thinking. We’re trying to develop a mindset where you don’t have to think too much about what you’re doing. What we want is three things; we want conviction, we want volume and we want you to speak before you know what’s going to come out of your mouth. If you say the wrong thing and accidentally name it the right thing, fine. If you say the same thing twice because it just slipped out, fine. This is not about being right it’s about doing it the right way. Does that make sense? I want to hear volume. I want to hear you all walking around. I want to see you all pointing as soon as one thing is out of your mouth. You’re already pointing at something else and forcing yourself to go a little bit faster than your brain can keep up with. Does that make sense? Off you go. Whatever it is you’ve just been doing to get that pace going and get that volume up, notice how the room got louder? That’s because you’re doing it the right way. Do you notice how your brain feels like someone put a spinner into the works. And it won’t quite spin the right way? Did everyone notice that? You want that because, at that point, the only part of you that can respond is your unconscious and that’s the part that we need to respond, is it not? Would that be fair to say? What we’re going to do now is we’re going to start playing with language, but again we don’t want you thinking about this. We want it to be part of the natural way you’re speaking. Whatever you did inside your mind to do this, you’ll be doing it the same way in this exercise. Make sense? What we’re going to do now is – remember the law of association? One of the basic fundamental principles in the way the mind reasons and the way the unconscious reasons? What we’re going to do now is we’re going to start activating the law of association using what I call power words. Power words do many things at the same time. For a moment, at the simplest level, it activates that law of association by combining two things that are not necessarily the same.

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In order not to tax your brains with trying to be hypnotic and doing it all in a scripted, fake sort of way, I want you to be totally irresponsible. I want you to combine things with absolute abandon that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, because you can. All you’re going to do is, we have two parts, x and y, that need to be combined together. This carpet is here because God made me. Hopefully you will sense there’s a slight flaw in my logic, yes? If you do not, then I have something to sell you which is going to be very expensive, and I think you will like a lot. I want you to walk around the room and have half conversations with people. When you meet someone say anything that comes to your mind. The rule is the first thing that comes to your mind, whether internal or external, you’ll say. Well I noticed your t-shirt so I’ll say, That t-shirt has writing on it because and you can attach anything else in. I saw blue, I thought sky – so because the sky is blue. I’m not analyzing it, I’m just having something trigger straight into it and I’m not even thinking about it. The key here is it should not make sense. It should be as random as possible. Your brain should be strained and hurting thinking what’s going on here. I don’t know what to say. You should feel like you’re about to put your foot in your mouth and say the wrong thing. In fact, you should from time to time be saying the wrong thing because that’s part of the way the unconscious works. Does that make sense? In time you’ll be able to navigate through that. We’ll talk about that in a moment. In the meantime walk around the room, meet people, and I want you to trade. They’ll say something because something, you’ll say something because something, and then you’ll move on and do it again. Do you want to have another demonstration of what I mean by that? I’m standing here because the ceiling is humming. There are people in the background making noise because the camera is turning. The sky is blue because there’s a heaven underneath the carpet. Honestly I have no idea where this comes from. Do you get the idea? This is random and the idea is to not make sense? Yes? Easy to do? I’d like you to literally trade sentences with someone. They come back at you, "Oh, that’s interesting thank you very much." Move on to someone else, as many different people. You’ll have two or three minutes.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I want speed. I want conviction again, so that it’s coming out with full energy. Not, "Hmm, the carpet is here because….there’s tape on the floor." Can you see that I’m completely violating the mental state we’ve spent so long developing? Would that be fair to say? I want conviction, I want volume, and I want the same enthusiasm. If you’re rolling in the aisles laughing, you’re in the right place. As soon as you’ve said your piece, they’ve said their piece and move on and do someone else, as random as it gets. Was that an easy exercise to do? Did you enjoy that? Now we’re going to add another one. We’re going to go with the same principle only this time we’ll go with the word as, x as y, or sometimes as x happens, y happens. As I’m standing here, you’re over there. I’m so sorry. I’ll try harder. As the pixies ate my brains… As a tree in the back of the room, it’ll rain tomorrow. Do you see how it’s the same kind of thing? As can be used as a because. It can be used as an as, soon as, as you’re doing this, this will happen, as you’re looking at me your brains will start melting, a little bit, maybe. It’s the same idea as before. You’re just using a different bridge to link the two together, so the effect will be slightly different. Make sense? Are you ready to play that game? Is that easy? Add a little just to make it more interesting, just because you can, would that be fair? I want you to use both at the same time. Because the carpet is here, and as you’re listening to me, the sky will continue to turn greener as the day goes on. That was two as’s, I’m good. The key here is to not make sense, to be as random as you can. Let the world around you inspire you or random thoughts inspire you. You’re going to use one because and one as in the same general flow of the thing. Once each person has one of each out, then you go. Then you go on and talk to someone else. Easy to do? Off you go. I’m going by the general volume in the room and the difficulty of getting you back, this has been easy so far, right? Let’s add one more, x and y. It’s very simple, the word, and, is a natural linkage – the carpet is there and there is a room.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Again, it doesn’t have to be great. It doesn’t have to be clever. It doesn’t have to be funny. Whatever occurs to you just say. I want it to have one of each thing. Because you’re listening to me, outside there is a car in a traffic jam and he doesn’t like it. As you’re listening to that traffic jam sound, everything else becomes smaller than it was. Again, we don’t care about what the content is, we care about using because, and, and as, as a sense of linkage and flowing through different things. The place your mind should be feeling, is like at the edge of a precipice and you’re about to fall over at any point. If it feels more like you’re sort of chilled out and going yes, because the room is dark…and the sky is gray…as you hear me…the world will fall apart…that is way too casual. You need to be at a point where you really cannot think and you do not know what is going to come out of your mouth until it’s out there and it surprised you. Does that make sense? You may be thinking you’re training language but there might be something else going on too. You can decide. All three easy – is that too easy? Do you want to have something a little bit more to spice it up a bit? Yes? No? Maybe so? All right. Just throw in, at any point that you want, the word imagine. Again, you see where this is going? You have four ideas that you’re presenting. Is that easy enough? Off you go. Good, are you all enjoying yourselves? Is it interesting stuff? We’ve got the basic four. These would be the power words, in case you were wondering. They do a lot of things but above all else, they allow you to sound hypnotic, which is kind of nice, right? We have one more to throw in there just so you’ll have five to start with. The word 'means' or 'which means' is the same principle as the others, x means y. You’re listening, which means you are really interested. Although, I’m sorry, that made sense. We’re going to make life a little easier now. We’re going to start using this a little more purposefully than to just sound like you’ve taken a little bit too much acid in your youth.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The way we’re going to do that is to talk about something called trance scenes. Remember, one of the core principles we’ve been talking about this morning is the idea of associations or reference experiences, right? How do you know what a table is? You need to, when you hear those sounds, you need to make a connection, and you need to open a filing box inside your mind where all your experiences of tables are included. It just says that this isn’t a table until you start putting things on it, and then it becomes table like, because I’ve just put a table like feature on it. Does that make sense? I’m using it as a table. The word itself, the sound is just a sound. That’s why someone could swear at you in Japanese and you’ll say, "Thank you very much. That’s very kind of you to say." It’s just a sound. If I start cursing at you in English you’ll be offended, but it’s just a sound. The offense comes from all the associations you’ve built up over time, including people’s reactions to them – like oh, that’s a bad thing, I wouldn’t take that if I were you, and so on. Does that make sense? We want to start using those reference experiences hypnotically, especially in a conversation. Those are the building blocks of their experience and if you can pull the right building blocks together you can recreate a different experience, one they may not have had before. We’ll keep it very simple at first, the trance themes are themes. They’re ideas that are loaded with, shall we say, experiences or reference experiences that are trance like in nature. If you have enough of these trance theme experiences at the same time, the person is more likely to be in a trance or more likely to slip into one by accident. Does that make sense? Let me ask you this in terms of your own experiences. What kinds of things did you experience when you started slipping more towards a trance? I’m not even saying you had to be in a full deep trance at any point today, but when you were more towards it, closer to it than not, would it be fair to say that you were relaxed, or more relaxed than before? Would that be fair to say? Yes? No? Maybe so? Does anyone disagree with that one? Okay. Now I want to make a point here; relaxation is a trance theme. It is not a trance prerequisite. You can do amazing things in hypnosis without any relaxation existing whatsoever. It's just a theme that makes it more likely and easier to achieve. Does that make sense?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Who here found their mind getting a little more focused on what was being suggested or what was being done? Anyone? A little more focus, a little more honed in on the individual or the suggestions? Did anyone feel more comfortable or calm? Yes? These aren’t the only trance themes, but are four simple ones we can have. If someone is feeling relaxed, focused, comfortable and calm, do you think it’s going to be easier to switch them into a trance than when they’re in a normal day to day state, or whatever they’re doing? Would it be easier to do that? We now want to start using our power words, our language, to start moving them in certain directions specifically and on purpose, which is the direction of trance themes. The way we’re going to do this is very simple. We’re going to start and use the x part of the equation here with any experience. It really doesn’t matter to me what it is right now, that is verifiable to them. It could be something they see, something they hear, something they feel, it might be as cheek as saying you can feel my touch. Of course you can, because I’m touching. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, the point is it’s got to be something they can verify for now. Then you’re going to use your because, your and, imagine, whatever it is, and you’re going to somehow plug in a trance theme. If it doesn’t happen to be too eloquent, I don’t care. It could be something as simple as, the carpet is lying on the ground because it’s time for you to relax, and the humming of the lights can make you relax even more. As you’re starting to relax – the words are starting to happen, so you may as well use it – feel the comfort that it brings. Imagine that comfort growing even more, which means you get to focus in on your own experiences for awhile. Is this sounding a little more hypnotic? But this is easy to do, isn’t it? Actually you may find this easier to do than coming up with random stuff, because that’s what your mind is designed to do, to make meaning out of things. Is this an easy exercise? The only thing you want to keep in mind is the x should be something they can verify reasonably. If you see them already relaxing you can use that as part of the x, and the y is just going to be one of the trance themes. You’re going to keep going and going and going, as long as you feel good. Go ahead?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Audience: ♦ Can we switch the order of the words? Igor:

Absolutely. You can use them in any order you want, and you can use them as often as you want. You can use them twice in a row, three times in a row – if it fits I don’t care. There are no constraints on you all now.

Audience: ♦ Do you have to do all five and then move on? Igor:

For now yes, and then we’ll go from there. For now we’re going to do the same exercise, so you want to get these five in somehow. Once you’ve said your piece with these five and somehow got at least some of these trance themes in, they’ll do their piece and you’ll move on to someone else. This is still training wheels for now but we’re building up towards something more practical. Easy to do? Any other questions? Very good, off you go. Easy to do? Notice how that was actually easier to do, although you were doing more than being totally random and trying not to make sense. Would that be fair to say? That’s because your unconscious mind is on your side. It knows how to make meaning of things, so though it should be more difficult to stay within the parameters of meaning, it’s something so natural to you it’s actually easier to do than not. We’ll be using those same parameters as we go into conversational hypnosis. I want to do a slight tweak on this exercise, just add a little bit more to make it more interesting. Would that be all right with you all? So far we have the X's representing one thing, which is something they can verify like something they can hear, feel, sense in some way, and the y is being a trance theme – anyone of these. It doesn’t matter if it’s those. It can be anything really but the point for now, it’s something sort of hypnotic in nature. Make sense? What would happen if both the X's and the Y's were a trance theme? People would be relaxed because they want to relax, don’t they? And when they’re relaxed don’t they feel more comfortable? As there is comfort included in relaxation, just imagine how much more focused people can get on relaxing deeply, which means relaxation is more than just comfort, it’s a natural sense of focus that anyone can do, is it not? Does that make sense? Easy exercise? Off you go.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 How was that? Are you having fun with this? Even though it’s just an exercise right now and not an induction, who is starting to feel a little more relaxed? Anyone? Who is starting to feel a little more comfortable in general? We realize we’re only doing an exercise here. There’s no hypnosis yet, right? Is it me? We’re just chatting with people. We’re just playing with language. I think, whatever effect, it isn’t that you’re not having yet, would you like to have a little bit more of that effect you’re not having? Only if it’s possible, because if it’s not you may as well just do it and pretend it hasn’t happened. That’s the advanced seminar. What I want to introduce to you now is another concept. We have the idea of power words, and this is simple, right? There are many different power words, these are just simple ones I’ve brought out for you to get used to now. We’ll talk about how to find more in time. Then we have some simple trance themes. Again, there are lots of trance themes, but these are simple ones you can start getting used to. Then we can start applying more and more trance themes as we go along. What I’d like to do now as a way of enhancing trance themes that a lot of people don’t think about, and it’s something by the way that your very portion of the country in the USA is exceptionally good at. I call these reference similes. They’re similes that enhance whatever it is you’re talking about. Of course in the Southern USA, part of everyday speech is to use a lot of these kinds of similes. He was more careful than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It’s a very vivid metaphor and presents a vivid picture. The kind of similes I want you all to use now are the ones that basically have reference experiences that match these trance themes as closely as possible. For example, with relaxation if you talk about a wet dishcloth, that’s kind of relaxed, isn’t it? If you want to have someone be as loose and limp as a wet dishcloth, that has a very vivid picture which has or incorporates the idea of relaxation within it, does it not? Let’s take some other type of things. That’s an object, what about a situation? Has anyone here ever lain in bed in the morning and it’s time to get up and you’re so comfortable you don’t want to get out? Has anyone ever had that, or is it just me? I know it must be just me.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Again, it’s a simile. You can listen to me because it’s easy to relax, just like when you’re lying in bed in the morning and it’s so comfortable you don’t want to get up, and all your muscles just relax like a wet dishcloth. Do you see how we’re augmenting the reference experience by providing this vivid mental picture, or vivid experience they can build up inside the person? Does that make sense to you all? The kind of categories I have in mind, and these are more for helping you think about it, it really doesn’t matter what category something belongs into. We can talk about certain objects. Shall we write these down so you have something to think about? We can talk about objects, right? Relaxation, the dishcloth is an object that has a quality of relaxation, does it not? If we had calm, what might be an object or a scene? What about a sunset? That can be calm or calming, can it not? Do you see how it augments the whole thing? We have a scene or a situation which could also be used as a reference simile. Lying in your bed, that’s a situation, a scene you can draw for people which will bring the idea of relaxation, calm to them. How about certain activities or actions? Again, they’re like similar situations, in a sense, that you could have someone lazing by a pool, floating down a stream, like a leaf being blown through the wind. Do you see how these are all metaphors or similes that still incorporate the essence of the trance theme, the essence of the experience that you want them to have? It augments the word on its own, and brings it to life even further. Make sense? Of course, you have personal experiences, so if you know something about the personal experience or their personal history, you can throw those in as well. Let’s just play a little game before we do this as an exercise, shall we? Give me some kind of simile or metaphor or situation, an object or an experience, an activity or something that is associated with focus, where the reference experience of focus would be coming out. Any ideas? Laser, somebody is talking about having a laser like focus. That’s a simple simile. What other things? Sitting in a cinema? When people sit in a cinema you focus in on the screen. It’s like sitting in a cinema, it’s comfortable, it’s relaxing, and yet you’re totally riveting to what’s going on, right?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 What other things or situations can get you focused? You’re flying the plane, so you’re the captain? Provided it’s in someone’s reference experience that would be a great one, if it’s not in their reference experience they might say oh. What you could do is you could switch around, "It’s like you’re the captain of an airplane and everyone is relying on you." Do you see the difference here? In one, it’s like flying a plane, well if I haven’t experienced flying a plane I might not know what it means. If I want to elaborate the situation, and everyone is relying on you, that already implies a higher care, a higher focus and so on. Do you see how that works? You can also go to other things. What about focus like a tiger stalking its prey? You have a whole world of experiences to choose from. Does this idea of similes make sense and how these similes are going to augment your trance themes to build up a richer experience for them? Does that make sense? Any questions? We’re going to make the exercise a little more interesting now. We’ve had the trance themes on both sides of the equation. We’ve had the verifiable experience on the x side and a trance theme on the y side, right? What we’re going to do now is for the x side of the equation, you can use any experience that they will have to essentially accept or agree to in some way, which could be something that they’re sensing right now, it could something they’re feeling, something they’re seeing, or something they’re hearing. It could be something you know they will believe. It could be something you know is going to happen, like the sun rising tomorrow. It could be anything that is acceptable to that person, including a trance theme, because who doesn’t like to relax? Which means the relaxation becomes easier when you focus on the comfort that it brings. It’s just like a tiger stalking its prey, only the prey you’re stalking will be increasing comfort and relaxation, the inner calm like a monk that’s been meditating for years. Do you see how much richer your whole interaction now becomes? Can you feel that? If you look around the room, you’ll actually notice that everyone has become a lot quieter just by talking about these things. It’s opening up these reference experiences inside of us and we can’t help but recreate the same experiences. It’s a lot of fun and it’s very interesting. To make life easier or more interesting, this time I want you just to choose a partner and go through

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 two or three cycles of these things. The order is irrelevant, two or three cycles so you get to do it longer now. Because you’re doing it longer, you also have more things you can do. You have more variety to play with as well. Does that make sense to you all? Any questions about this? You can do it standing up, sitting down, walking around. I really don’t mind which way you do it, as long as you have those key elements; the reference similes, the trance themes, the power words, and you’re mixing it all into a nice, simple, hypnotic interaction. Well, pseudo hypnotic, since you’re not really putting them in trance yet, are you? Off you go. Are you getting used to this language stuff? Is it coming out a little bit more smoothly now? Here’s the irony, have you found that the more of these things you’re doing at the same time, actually the easier some of it gets because you have more ways of expressing yourself? Would that be fair to say? The key here is, it is something you have to practice, you have to do a lot of to have all the different directions to go in. These are exercises to build your confidence and build your ability to do this up so the more you do it the easier it becomes. It’s as simple as that. You should also find that it’s relatively natural the way you’re doing it this way, rather than trying to memorize some phrase or throw it in there from time to time and so on. You should be able to generate these things spontaneously as the situation demands. I’d like to focus on a couple more things. They’re kind of technically power words but a little different. I call these modifiers, they’re also from the street hypnosis deck for those of you who have it or are interested in it. Basically, if I say to you, "You will relax." I’m taking a bit of a risk there, aren’t I? For example, part of the risk might be that it’s too authoritarian. We talked about the wrong kind of authority might set people off. It might be a question of I don’t know how to relax – you will relax – but I don’t know – and you have that interplay going on. It becomes easier to suggest something if it’s done in a way that they can’t really disagree with, and then as the unconscious mind starts responding to suggestion you can make it more and more firm like that’s what you were talking about all along.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The ones I’m going to focus on right now are called softeners, or language softeners. We’ll do an exercise in a second. So we have five softeners here, just to give you some variety. These are words that take the certainty out of what you’re saying and make it a little more difficult for people to decide whether or not they can disagree with this yet. In other words, softeners – kind of imagine it this way. Remember the critical factor is a guardian standing at the gate, stopping people from coming in? A language softener is the equivalent of someone rubbing themselves in baby lotion so when it tries to grab him, they’re going to slip out and still get through. Kind of a kinky graphic metaphor, you’re welcome to it. At least you won’t forget it, right? I could talk to you about how everyone likes to relax, because relaxing is a wonderful thing, and as you relax and feel more comfortable, it’s like just drifting on a comfortable day. It’s as easy as a cloud drifting across the sky. If I add some language softeners though, your critical factor gets switched off all that much more because it’s harder to argue with it. People might like to relax. If they could relax deeply and experience that relaxation thoroughly, then perhaps they’d gradually feel the comfort that relaxation can bring, just like drifting on a lake on a warm summer’s day. Gradually people respond with relaxation. Maybe you could relax in a way that finds its own rhythm inside of you and you can be to experience that relaxation whenever you need to feel comfortable. Now wouldn’t that be an interesting way of speaking to people? You’re not really forcing any experience onto them, and yet the likelihood is, it’ll happen anyway because you’re opening up all those reference experiences and it draws inside their mind. Wouldn’t that be fair to say? Do you like that? Is that a nice little thing you can throw in? I kind of overused it a little bit just to show you what you can do. You don’t have to use them but you could use them, whenever you might think there is a usefulness for them. Gradually introduce them into your vocabulary wherever you think it might be useful. Could you do that? Perhaps. That is the right answer, very good. That’s a simple concept. You can just add that onto whatever we’ve been doing so far. Let’s just keep track of where we’re at.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 We have power words. The layers run smoothly, right? We have the idea of trance themes that give us something to focus the mind towards, to bring experiences to life inside people so you can start shaping their inner experience for whatever purposes you need, whether it’s therapy, relaxation, influence, persuasion, it really doesn’t matter for now. We have the reference similes which actually make these so much more powerful. They bring them to life. It’s like an iron bar, a bar of steel. Do you see why we said that earlier on before when we did the demonstration this morning? Now we’re introducing the idea of softeners to make the message more acceptable. Especially when you think you’re in front of a critical audience or an audience more likely to reject ideas. You load up on the softeners in the beginning and gradually ease out of them as you continue. Make sense? Shall I add one more thing in there because that’s an easy thing to throw in? Would you like that? The final concept I want to talk about in terms of language is the idea of hot words. Remember, how do we understand what a particular word means? We have to build up associations around it, right? It would be fair to say that the words that have been around the longest in our own lives are the ones that have built up the most reference experiences, right? It’s kind of like the pearl that’s been in the ocean the longest is the largest, because it’s collected the most amount of shells over time, as time went by. Make sense? As a rule, hot words tend to be those words that you first learned as a child. They tend to be shorter and smaller. I assume that none of you the first word out of your mouths was something like antidisestablishmentarianism, maybe. It will be simple concepts like me, you, baby, cry, happy. Do you see how they’re much more loaded? For example, this is kind of a grim example but I kind of like to use it, maybe because I’m a bit grim. What’s the difference between saying the baby died or the baby burned to death. That’s harsh; do you feel the emotion of that? What if I say the infant perished in the flames. Consider; I’ve said exactly the same thing haven’t I? Content wise it is exactly the same thing. The information is the same isn’t it? And yet you respond more powerfully to one than the other. Why? Because baby has stronger associations, has richer associations, has more emotional associations than infant.

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Infant is a word we use to dissociate from the baby-ness of it. We describe it as a smaller version of whatever that race is. It has fewer associations, less emotive associations. It’s more dissociated and more distant. We can handle the concept of an infant perishing in flames than that of a baby burning to death. Do you understand what I mean by this? I apologize for the grim metaphor, but I like to use it because it just really demonstrates powerfully what I mean by hot words. Does that make sense? Luckily, you can use this in the reverse as well, in terms of the positives you put inside people’s minds. The baby lived forever, yeah! Phew, got out of that one. I am not teaching you anymore. I’d like to introduce you to a couple of universal hot words, that you can kind of pepper into anything you do, on the understanding of course that this is just a tiny example of a vast vocabulary. If you want to pick up more hot words, do you know where you go to find them very easily? Talk to children. They’re the ones using them. They’re the ones who have the most sensationalism built up to them. The other place you can go are the places we normally don’t want to go because we consider ourselves too good for that, we’re talking about the lower brow press, like the National Enquirer which is, of course, the font of all wisdom and has a great deal of truth inside it. The way it’s written is almost exclusively using hot words, so it’s easier to read. Have you ever noticed that certain articles, like Cosmopolitan for example, for the ladies in the room, it’s easy to read because they focus more on the hot words than the longer more erudite words which are harder for us to read because we have less facility with them, we’re less used to them. Of course, certain circles like academia, they’re used to these words more. They’re used to speaking with these words more easily than with hot words, because they stopped using them, felt they were too dumbed down. Again, your audience will require different language as you go through it. Do you have a question? Audience:

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I was just going to comment on that.



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 ♦ So, we can go from maybe short like powerful hot words to more eloquent longer words, depending on the audience? Igor:

The answer is yes, although you still want to be using both. Remember as a rule, hot words will have a stronger emotional drive behind them and if you want to have a stronger emotional drive, even a 60 year old academic will respond to them because they’ve still built up all those reference experiences. The way you might want to use it though is you may want to change the mixture of them. Even though you’re talking about academics, you might start talking about the intellectual rules of a friendly interaction are vastly superior to the uninitiated examples of small children. I don’t know. The point is, I’m using primarily the vocabulary they’re used to but I’m then weaving in simple words like friendly, easy, natural, and so on. That fits that context as well. The experiment was performed using natural reagents so that we could easily tell which group would respond more fully. Do you see how I can still weave those in? Is it all one or all the other? What blend or mix do you use? The blend fits the audience. Does that make sense to you all? By the way, if there are any teachers in the room, it’s a great way of teaching as well. You start with a simpler vocabulary and over time you gradually introduce a more complex vocabulary so it kind of transitions naturally from one to another. It’s just a simple teaching point if you are teaching languages. If you’re not, then it’s free anyway. The kind of hot words you can start playing with, you’ve heard me use quite a few of them, and again please bear in mind these are just really simple examples. There’s no magic in them. They’re not any better than anything else you might use. They just fit the kind of themes that we’ve been talking about today. With all of these you can add the ‘ly’ and make them more useful, like friend and friendly, wonderful and wonderfully, gentle and gently, soft and softly. That gives you a little more scope on how to use them. Does that make sense to you all? Now we’re using our more emotionally loaded vocabulary. And by the way, where do emotions come from? The unconscious, right? Do you choose your emotions on purpose? Today I’m going to be very happy – yes I’m happy now.

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Some people can do that by the way, but it’s only because they’ve created the same internal reference experiences and when they say today I’m going to be happy, their unconscious mind says well okay. It becomes a self suggestion. Most people have to do something to be happy. For example, think of positive memories, recall when they have good experiences, talk to a friend they like. In other words, you’re self simulating your own association on that word to feel differently. Ultimately, it’s your unconscious mind producing or generating the emotion. Does that make sense to you? When you start using hot words, this vocabulary here, you’re triggering those associations straight away. Culturally speaking, in terms of people who speak English versus people who don’t, you can have a pretty good idea of how people will respond to these. Now these aren’t universal. Someone who has been jilted and been stabbed in the back by a friend will probably respond toward friend very differently because that’s been mixed into the associational set. Make sense? I’d be lying to you if I said this was a universal, always perfectly true every time and so on. We are stacking the deck. It’s another little pencil in our set, it may or may not be the one thing that makes a difference, but at least you’ll have more choices. Make sense? Here’s the exercise. What I want you to do is again go back, use the power words as a base. Use the trance themes as a base. Use your similes to enrich those two things. And this time add into the mix modifiers to soften it and make it easier to swallow, sugar coat the pill, and hot words to bring more emotion into it, to make it more impactful in the way the message is received. Make sense? Would you like an example of what I mean? Only listen to me gradually. As you relax your mind enough to feel this wonderful sense of knowing what’s going on, because everyone knows how to relax and make connections easily. Now, gently allow your mind to feel whatever relaxation begins to occur now, so that you can easily turn that relaxation into enough comfort that you might gradually begin to feel good. It’s a friendly sensation, relaxing; and feeling as though you’re drifting on a cloud. It’s like waking up in the morning and feeling that warm glow of lying in bed and knowing you can stay there as long as you wish. It’s easy,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 a gentle feeling of relaxation, focusing your mind on how easy all this stuff is. That makes sense doesn’t it? Do you understand the exercise? Don’t think too much though. Find a partner and let’s spend a few minutes apiece. Let’s go through a couple of those cycles. Then we’ll come back and we’ll finish up before we have a break. Off you go. All right everyone, did you enjoy the exercise? Who here feels that they sound a little bit more hypnotic now? Anyone? Thinking about the person you just did the exercise with, did they not sound like a genuine, qualified good hypnotist just in terms of the language that was coming out? We haven’t even done any formal hypnosis yet as far as language goes, but already you’re flowing more smoothly, right? You should also find that this stuff is coming spontaneously; just the ideas are flowing by themselves. Would that be fair enough to say? It’s actually easier to do it this way than that random pointing exercise we did earlier on, right? It should also be easier to do this than trying to memorize a script or even read a script. I don’t know if you know this, but reading a script is something that takes a lot of training. Hollywood actors spend years developing the skill of memorizing and reading scripts. What makes us think, as hypnotherapists, we can just sit there and say all right, now you’re relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, all the way now. I mean isn’t that how we read unless we’ve prepared ourselves for something or we know the script already? I don’t like scripts and the reason I don’t like scripts is partly because it becomes cheesy, playschool acting, and partly because it limits your scope. In conversational hypnosis it is impossible with a script, it is downright impossible, because there’s no conversation. You can give someone a lecture, maybe a hypnotic lecture we’ll come onto those things, and you can memorize that lecture. That will work, but a conversation is impossible to run hypnotically because it requires interaction and that’s going to destroy your script like that. I’d much rather have you understand the principles involved and do it anytime, anyplace, anywhere, and fit it right into the conversation. Isn’t that a much more sensible way of approaching things?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you get a sense that you understand the language now? There’s a lot of richness here. There’s a lot of depth and exploration, and I strongly recommend that you do explore this. This exercise in itself is the core of what we’ll be doing here in terms of this style of conversational hypnosis. This is another style we’ll talk about in the advanced section. Essentially we have a guiding theme. That’s the power words. That’s what pulls everything together. It’s the cement that holds the building together. Make sense? Around that cement we’re going to fill that in with the trance themes. The trance themes are the purpose of your communication. In this case, it’s something simple like relaxing, feeling good, focusing and so on, but it could be to improve learning, and it could be to motivate someone towards something. It could be to excite someone about a vision of the future, it could be anything. For the moment though we’re focusing on relaxation and comfort because we’re still finding our feet when it comes to the whole trance thing, make sense? We flesh the very same things out with the reverse, the mirror image of that, which is the reference similes, the similes that breathe life into your hypnotic themes. You can sit there, and it’ll work – you know the old school hypnosis? Relax, relax, relax, sleepy, sleepy eyes, heavy sleepy droopy – it works. I’ve done it and it works pretty well. It’s very boring, but it works. It has its place. I strongly recommend that if you haven’t done so already, you go and hypnotize at least one person just through sheer force of repetition. It’ll teach you a lot of valuable lessons. This makes it much richer, and this allows it to start becoming more conversational. It begins to get more conversational, doesn’t it? Then you use things like your language softeners, your language modifiers, and that kind of creates more acceptability in terms of what you’re doing, right? Then you make sure you include your hot words. Your hot words create another context which fills a whole thing up and now every part of your communication is going in one direction, which is whatever your hypnotic outcome happens to be. Does that make sense? This is going to get the heart of the kind of conversational hypnosis we’ll be focusing on over the next five days. Another kind will be in the advanced program, which is different, but this is the heart of it and this is what’s going to make it conversational and very, very powerful.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 We’ve got the power words which run through the center, right? The power words; because, and, which means and so on, right? Then you have your trance themes which give those power words purpose. You don’t just glue, glue to itself for the hell of it – maybe you do – but the point of glue is to put things together. That’s what the trance themes are about. The reference similes are just a way of enhancing the trance themes, to bring them to life more, to make them more potent. Then we have the language modifiers. In this case, we just focus on language softeners to make it more acceptable, to soften the impact of the message. Finally, we complete the picture by adding more emotion by focusing more on the hot words that are more emotive, that are responded to more powerfully at the unconscious level because it just has more reference experiences. Make sense? Those are the key maneuvers that I want you all to understand, and if you learn nothing else in the next 10 days, this on its own will make you more influential, more persuasive, more charismatic than really most things that you’ll come across out there, this on its own. It is really worth spending the time and the effort to make this an absolute natural way of communicating for you. For me it’s harder to turn it off than to turn it on, it just feels natural to speak this way now. Does that make sense to you all? Once you’ve got this, then we can start learning more complex structure and that’s what tomorrow will be about. So you can make these things more powerful, have more impact with them still, and maneuver things in different directions. In other words, the thing that’s missing here is a process. That’s what tomorrow is going to be more about. For the moment, you get this idea. It’s straight forward and with practice you’ll get better at it. Audience:

He found himself, as the hypnotist, speaking this way would zone him out as well.

Igor:

You’re just ahead of the crowd. Do you want to come up since it’s a little bit longer so then everyone can share in the bounty of your experience?

Audience: ♦ Is that less likely to happen with something that’s not so focused on relaxation, calm, comfort and all those sorts of things?

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The answer to your first question is, really it depends on not the focus of the trance themes, that’s not the important element. The important element is your purpose. In other words, what are you trying to achieve? If your purpose is you need someone to be more in this sort of trance, then it’ll happen more. If you need someone being more like, "Yes, I’m going to go for it." – then it’ll happen less. In other words it’s called going first. We’ll get into that after the break. And you’re putting yourself in the position first psychologically, physically, emotionally and so on that you need the other person to be in so it’s easier for them to follow in.

Audience:

That’s much more important than the actual language patterns that you’re using?

Igor:

Absolutely.

Audience:

Okay, because that’s what I found even after a sentence or two. I felt myself almost really zoning out and then I could see him doing it and then I kind of lost track of what I was saying.

Igor:

Later in the week when we get to the irresistible induction, this will make a lot more sense, and there’s a reason it’s called the irresistible induction – here’s a hint – because it’s hard to resist. What you’re talking about lies at the heart of that, yes.

Audience:

Great, thank you.

Igor:

Thank you so much. All right everyone, let’s have a quick break – okay go ahead.

Audience:

You were mentioning before that with a hot word, for example, let’s say you say friendly to someone who had been back stabbed and they would react negatively.

Igor:

They might, it depends on if they associated it with friend and now it becomes a tainted concept and so on, but yes.

Audience: ♦ If they have that sort of counteractive reaction, what is something, as a hypnotist, you can do to counteract what they’re going through? Igor:

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That’s an excellent question. Basically, you used the wrong word you should notice you’ve got a reaction. We’ll get more into how to spot reactions as we go through, it just tends to tell you that whatever you did was not quite right. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



The simple answer is you switch. You cycle through a different vocabulary. In other words you start using different words. If you spotted the actual thing or phrase or word that you used that made them react so badly, then you just drop it from your vocabulary and use other phrases. Guardians, people assisting, people who assist – you might use metaphors or similes to do that. You can still go down your original track you just avoid pressing the hot button. Sometimes you want to press the hot button on purpose it’s a way of deflating. In other words, taking out the taint or the original sting. That’s something we’ll talk more about in therapy and so on. There’s ways of doing that as well. Ultimately the simplest way of doing it is when you spot the phrase that’s causing problems, stop using it and focus on different language that is being more emotive and so on. Does that make sense? Audience:

Yes, thank you.

Igor:

That was a good question.

Audience:

Another way to diffuse the situation would be an objective, trustworthy friend.

Igor:

It can work great, and again it’s just something you can experiment with. There’s no hard answer to this. It’s a simple question of, you know what the problem is and you know what to avoid, which is that particular problem. Now you can go down the irresistible suggestions route where you start stacking other associations around the term to make it more acceptable. For example the happiness of a trustworthy friend – now you have happiness and trustworthy worked in, but if trust is still part of the issue that might still reinforce. You can go wrong with everything you do, but you’re more likely to go right. What we’re trying to emphasize is this is about stacking the deck. This is not about absolute 100% sure fire guarantees because if you believe in those things, unfortunately that’s just not how life works. Plenty of people will promise you this one thing will always work 100% of the time, guaranteed and so on, but it doesn’t really exist in the world. What you can get to is very close to that, and that’s what we’re doing right now.

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Audience:

Thank you, Igor. I just wanted to comment on what you said a second ago. My wife and I are relatively new hypnotherapists, we were trained initially in directive script-driven hypnotherapy.

Igor:

Get out!

Audience:

We’ve been studying the mind bending language and the conversational hypnotherapy course, as well.

Igor:

This is like alcoholics anonymous for script readers. My name is James; I haven’t used a script in 10 weeks. [Applause-laughter] Hi, James.

Audience:

A quick couple of points. One, I wasn’t taught your H+ in my original course. I find that as I go into trance, as I’m working with somebody and I have been very distinctly, that I’m much more effective.

Igor:

I agree. We’re coming onto that after the break by the way.

Audience:

Secondly, I hit hot buttons all the time and have negative reactions. That usually helps me help them better.

Igor:

Sure. As a hypnotherapist it is your job to find the hot buttons, right? In ordinary conversations it may be the polite thing to do to avoid the hot buttons. It really just depends on context again, doesn’t it? You’re absolutely, right. I don’t think having hot buttons – even if they’re negative – is a bad thing. You just need to know what they are and what the consequences are. Do you want to come up?

Audience: ♦ Can we think of that as a distant relative to fractionation? Igor:

Are you talking about the hot buttons?

Audience:

Yes, hot buttons.

Igor:

The idea of going back to a hot button which is negatively charged or even positively charged, and coming back to it and cycling back to it over time, could you think of that like fractionation? Yes, I encourage you to think more of those thoughts. They are very good thoughts. For conversational

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 hypnosis you’re in exactly the right place. In fact, you’re probably in day four already, so you may as well take a break for a while. Audience:

I’m having more like an ethical question about hypnosis, because the way I see it you teach the good side of hypnosis.

Igor:

Then there’s the evil top hat wearing, monocle, sleep now…

Audience:

No, not like that. It’s more easy what I found out to, for example, scare people or draw a negative picture of something and then say well if you’re scared don’t do that and make them follow you.

Igor:

Let me address that first, I’m sure there’s a follow up question. The idea that fear is easier to achieve than something like confidence or courage or something like that, as a rule it’s true, and I believe there’s a survival reason for that. The species that was more cautious was less likely to jump out and go, "Oh, what’s this thing with big sharp teeth?" Fear kept us alive more, so we tend to respond to fear. You can see this a lot. For example, I don’t like this a lot, it’s a personal opinion. You all can make up your mind as you wish – I don’t like the news, especially the TV news, because they use a lot of fear to create drama. They use the fear drama to drive ratings so people actually watch the news, because they need those ratings otherwise they don’t make their cash. Over time the news has evolved into an increasingly fear based messaging service, make sense? They need that attention and fear is a great attention grabber. In normal everyday life many people find exactly the same thing. They get a strong reaction with fear, and because it’s easy, or relatively easy to fear monger, to grab attention with fear and attach things onto it. It becomes a tool like, don’t do that behavior or there will be fear attached to it. The up side to it – and this is going back to the win/lose win/win model, is that over time we tend to avoid people that scare the bejesus out of us. It’s not a healthy way of creating long term interactions. Even though in the short term they can do damage, or in an enforced situation like for example a family situation or you’re in a cult and you can’t leave physically, it can do a lot of damage I agree. But the good news is switching to the other version, the light side might feel like it takes longer initially, but actually its staying power is much longer. Actually, I feel it’s a much more valuable and productive tool overall anyway. Does that make sense? You have a follow up anyway?

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Audience:

I completely agree with that. We’re actually colleagues. I’m doing international law, but toward the end of the course you find out there’s only evil people remaining and you actually see that the world is ruled by evil people and that’s the whole thing. If you want to get to power you get in bed. I actually want to do it through the good side, but if that evil side is stronger…

Igor:

To use a quote from Star Wars; is the dark side stronger? No, quicker, more seductive. It’s true, it’s easier to get the hang of controlling people through fear. It is a lot easier. People instinctively develop these skills. Is it better? No, in the long run it’s actually a lot harder to do because that fear will come back and bite you as well. Yes, I can’t force anyone to behave one way or another. I can tell you though, and hopefully, the experiences you’ll have here over the next week or two will demonstrate to you that it’s more effective and in the long run you will be more effective when you go down a different route. The win-win model versus the win-lose model. You have to carry your own ethics. Ultimately you’ll make mistakes along the way too, everyone does, right? You may mean to do something really nice for someone and then you’ll do something accidentally, which is not so pleasant and you’ll learn from that and you’ll move on. Maybe you’ll do better as a result. That’s just part of being a human being. Thank you for addressing that. One last thing then we’ll have a break. Did you want to come up?

Audience:

I was going to make a comment that like my niece, she doesn’t listen to anything when you tell her don’t do this, don’t do that, so I actually wanted to tell her when she boils water in the microwave that you have to be very careful because it will explode in your face. The way I told her was, I said, "Do you want to hear a story about a man who melted his face off?" She said, "Oh my God, what happened?" I said, "Well, he put a Pyrex dish to boil water in the microwave, pulled it out and it exploded in his face." Then I had her attention and she was completely absorbed, but then I took the negative and turned it into a positive. I said, "So what you want to do is

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 put a wooden spoon or something in the water and that will dissipate the heat to a point where it’s not going to explode." Igor:

Giving the mind somewhere to go, that is other than the fear, an escape from fear. This is actually a very valuable point. We may as well address this although we’re coming more into this later in the week, and it touches the same point. As a rule, and actually research backs this up, if all you have is a message of fear and a general instruction like, for example, don’t do this, people ultimately will be afraid and will fail. It’s not very motivating. If you give someone an initial message based on fear but then you give some very clear action steps out of that, people will be very strongly motivated and actually complete the action sequence if the steps are clear and precise enough. Does that make sense? What you were doing there again, it leaves a clear view inside the mind. It’s not like I’m stuck in fear and I’m going to be afraid of boiling water for the rest of my life, which is what the original message is – it can explode in your face – it’s actually creating a chain of action out of it so there’s safety again. How many people here are afraid of crossing the road, anyone? Just me? Exactly, that’s the point – why aren’t we as a rule afraid of crossing the road? Because we have a chain of action that allows us to control the situation. The fact is though, we do feel fear. On the roads out here which aren’t really designed for people to cross them, you stand at the edge going, "I want to cross this thing, but I don’t know." Somehow I have this little angst thing going on. That’s because part of your mind is telling you, we don’t have a process for this road. I have no wooden spoon to lead me out of this one, so you’re stuck in that loop. Does that make sense? This is just as a general aside; if you are going to use fear then you want to create a simple loop out of it so it leads to a better place rather than keeping them stuck in that one. That’s the biggest problem I have with fear mongering, it doesn’t really lead anywhere, and it just leads to more and more and more. Do you ever see these pity fests where someone says, "Oh my life sucks.", "My life sucks more, my life is so terrible."? These are loops? We have a habit of getting into loops no matter what we do.

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Rather than having fear or misery loops, how about creating different kinds of loops? Happiness, motivation and success loops. They’re just as powerful loops. We’ll come onto loops later as we go on. Right now we’ve overstayed our time for the break and I can see a lot of people need a few minutes just to chill, so let’s take a 15 minute break and be back here at – we’ll be starting here at 5:00 on the dot, so be back here at 10 till, would you please.

DVD 4: The Power of “Hypnotic Circles” Igor:

Let’s start launching into this and getting a little bit more hypnotic with what we’re doing and creating some performance skills. The language that we have is hopefully starting to flow reasonable well now. Is that fair to say? What we’ll be doing now is, I want you to think of this as the base. This is the foundation on which you build your house. You do not need to build a conversational hypnosis house on this specific foundation, but it happens to be a very good one, a very solid one on which you can do so. Does that make sense? I’m going to ask you all to try to remember five or six key concepts and introduce them as richly and distinctly as you can over the next few days so they become second nature to you. In fact, I would encourage you to overly use them. Overdo them initially so that when you stop doing them as intensely, they’ll still be part of a natural conversation and they’ll be there for you when you need them. Does that make sense as well? The one thing you’ll find is that in here, it’s relatively easy to be obvious. In other words, people will realize you’re doing something because they’ve had the same training as you. However, here’s an idea I’d like you all to just contemplate, which is, how far would you have to go out there with normal people, that don’t even know that you’re hypnotists, before they realize something actually is going on? It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? Do you think it’s going to be further than it would be in here, or less far? You don’t need to answer it right now. Don’t answer it now. Keep it inside

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 your mind. The real reason I’m saying this, by the way, is because it’s not important what we think right now, it’s when we go out and experience it that matters. Isn’t it? So if you go out and you really try – I mean I’ve had people really try hard to get people to notice something weird is going on, and they found at one point they hammed it up enough that people noticed. I wonder where that point will be for you in your interactions. That’s the main question I have. What I want to do now is start ingraining this and started adding some more performance themes. I’d like you to get into groups of five or six people. Grab some chairs and create a circle. It’s called a hypnotic circle because it’s a circle of hypnotists. That’s a circle. Not a square. We’re not doing hypnotic squares again, all right just so you know; triangles, stars or any polygonic things. Grab four or five other people. Get yourselves in a nice circle and as soon as you’ve done that, please keep the volume down and tune back in because I’ll show you what we’re going to start doing with this. We’re going to start building things up, but let’s get ourselves into formation first. Do that as quickly as you can so we can actually do the exercise. Off you go. Here’s what we’re going to do as a warm-up. We’re going to start putting more things into this now. I want you to start off with where we left off, which is, we’ll have some power words, some trance themes, throw in some reference similes, add in some language softeners from time to time, sprinkle in some hot words to build up the emotional content and so on. Make sense? You can have the words we’ve been talking about here. Just throw them in and ingrain them so they’re natural to you. The way we’re going to do this is, we’ll have one person – so right now, let’s say it will be James. He’s going to speak to the group as though it was one individual. He’s going to present a string of hypnotic ideas to his group. It might be two, three, four. It really doesn’t matter. The one thing he’s not going to do is he’s not going to hog the time and spend the next half hour waxing lyrical. Literally, it will just be, you know, "It’s funny how people can relax because relaxation is as easy as

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 watching clouds drift by.", all right? That’s a nice simple little hypnotic idea he’s presented there. When he’s made a few of these things, not too many, he’s going to pause, look significantly at the person to his left. In this case, it’s Arthur. Arthur, of course, when he stops drooling from his own trance process, will notice he’s being looked at by James and he’ll go. "Oh, gotcha." Then he’ll pick up where James left off. He might present something along the lines of, which means – now he’s talking to this group as being the subject – which means you can relax even further, only begin to feel the comfort as you focus like a laser on how good it feels. All right, can you hear all the things we’ve talked about so far? He’s only made two or three hypnotic ideas and presented them. Then once he’s done that, he’s going to look significant at Yuichi, who’s going to go, I know it’s my turn. You’re going to keep going around and around and around, and I wonder who is going to last the longest. In case you’re wondering, the inner ability to speak shows that you have won. So when you’re just sitting there going, "I’d really like to say something, but I feel far too good to speak." You just won the game. Of course, the next person gets second prize and so on. Just keep going around and around and see what happens with that. Is that easy to do? As a hypnotic circle, you’re doing everything you’ve done so far, but now you’re going to start listening and interacting with other people as they present their ideas, too. And it’s going to keep going around and around, but you’re not going to stop until I bring you back. Okay, everyone, off you go. How was that? Did you enjoy the exercise? Yes? Remember everyone, all we’re looking for right now is only two or three hypnotic phrases before the next person because the flow of ideas around the circle is going to be part of the important thing. So it’s not how long can you go on your own, although we will come to that, believe it or not. It’s what’s happening. Let me put it this way. How many people here notice other people presenting, suggesting and you thought. "Wow, I like that, I’m going to

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 write it down and put it in my script."? This is one way we learn as hypnotists. We begin to glean ideas or presentations or suggestions from other people. To the extent that you let other people have their time there as well, it allows you to start borrowing their ideas. Borrowing something that they throw out like it’s not even interesting, but to you it might be that one phrase, like wow, that’s so good. Does that make sense? Once you can do it here, then what happens is out there you’ll see hypnotists, whether it’s a stage hypnotist or you buy a home study program from someone (hint), you see a hypnotherapist or you have other hypnotic friends, you watch them work and you’ll begin to start lifting elements of what they’re doing because you’re already spotting patterns, awarenesses and so on. Does that kind of make sense to you all? You’ll start hearing these things. You’ll hear the patterns going on, the processes, power loops and all these things that become very clear to you when you have both. Outside, you can learn how to receive it, so you’re going like, "Okay, I get this; this is good." So you learn how to evaluate it from experience, rather than from the intellect. Not this should be good, but rather this shouldn’t work, "But wow, it works good." At the same time, you can reproduce it with other people and that creates a really powerful circle of improvement. Do you like the exercise so far? Would you like to learn how to improve it a little? Most of you, believe it or not, are already doing this, which is what makes me very happy. It makes me very happy because you’re doing it automatically, spontaneously, unconsciously. In other words, you’re already twigging into the right part of your mind to make this stuff happen. We’re going to do exactly the same exercise again. This time, just for variety’s sake, let someone else begin and maybe go in the opposite direction. Just so that you have a little bit of variety going on. As you’re going through the circle, you’re going to do exactly the same exercise, only you’re going to add one thing or one performance element. I want you to start paying attention to what’s called the hypnotic voice. You have your normal everyday speaking voice. It’s how you speak to your

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 friends. You also have, shall we say, the bedroom voice. The one you use for that significant person that lets them know that they better stop writing in their report. Hypnotists have a voice like that too, only it doesn’t enter the bedroom. Just so you know. As a rule, it’s important to have a different voice because it creates a different set of associations, so that ultimately just switching your voice tone will already let people who know you go, "Oh, now I’m going to start going into a trance." Hence, the relationship of trance becomes cemented over time. Here, the simplest way of doing that is simply learn to speak slower, lower, in a sort of rhythm. We’ll accentuate each of these things as we go through – and pause. This is why it was important in the previous exercise that you don’t just stop speaking and let that be the person’s cue. You stop speaking and you look at the next person. Otherwise, you’ll pause and they’ll start talking over you and you’ll go, "Damn you, curse you, next time I’ll talk fast enough that you can’t put anything in there." This is not a competition like that. You’ll say your piece. You’ll be brief, but you’ll say your piece. And you can pause in the middle of it if you want and then carry on a little bit more. Then you’ll turn to the person next to you and you’ll look – actually in this case, you’ll look this way because you’re going the other way. Does that make sense to you all? So we’re looking for the same elements, just slower, lower, some pauses and if you can do this, this is the idea you’re trying to create. The things that you are saying are more significant. They’re more important than anything you normally say. The things that you are saying are more important than the things that ordinarily are said. Do you hear the difference? So slower, lower, maybe a little deeper if you can get your voice deeper. I know some people, it’s just the way your throat is shaped you have higher pitches. That’s fine. But slower, lower, a little deeper if you can do it and try to give a sense of urgency, that sense of importance, a sense of significance into what it is that you’re saying. Does that make sense?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You’ll hear it in different ways from people around you. So listen to how they do it because perhaps they’re doing something that you could add to what you’re doing, to improve it. Make sense? Any questions? All right, everyone, off you go. I like this part of the day because it’s a lot quieter. It’s a lot calmer. No need to shout to get everyone’s attention. It’s important that we can develop different rhythms in the way that we speak to people. The reason for that is because you need people to go through different emotional experiences. If all you have is one simple rhythm, then all you’ll get is one type of response. To the extent that you can enhance your rhythms and change the tonality of your voice, people can begin to respond to you in a different way. It’s like going to a zoo and seeing all the different sights. Some will amaze you, some will make you laugh, some just make you smile. The key to being a great hypnotist is the ability to help transition people through experiences because when they have the right set of experiences, they will always be influenced by you in a positive manner. That makes sense, does it not? Now the interesting thing is, as a hypnotist, you need to be able to spot when you’re having the impact that you desire, do you not? To the extent that you can see people going into trance, you know that you’re doing the right things. You’re saying the right things and they are responding by experiencing a trance. Whether it’s an overt, deep trance or more conversational trance, it does not matter. What matters is that you can begin to direct their experiences through pleasant experiences and know that it’s occurring. That the outcome you have in mind is continuing to happen. It’s easy to do when your eyes are open and your ears, and to some extent even your feelings. Now that we’ve spent the greater portion of one day focusing on language and things you can do, I’d like you to experience something different on how little you need to do to get more results. So that less creates more impact, not more, less.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 To do this is very simple. In a moment, but not yet, I’m going to ask you to find a partner, someone that you do not know. I’d like for you to silently, without any words, sit down opposite your partner, decide who will be the hypnotist first.

Then all the hypnotist is going to do is observe the other person studiously, whilst maintaining this internal sense of calm equilibrium. Whenever this other person does anything that looks even remotely like trance, you’ll say the magic words "That’s right." Have you done this before? Now you might not think you know all the signals to look out for yet. And it really doesn’t matter because whenever they do anything that looks even remotely like hypnosis to you – and the operative word is remotely. You can just say, "That’s right. - That’s right. That’s right." Just notice what happens. Now you’re all feeling a particular way right now. I’d like for you to only stand up and make eye contact with one other person as slowly as you maintain the feeling you have inside right now. You can’t move too quickly. You must maintain what you already have and build on that. So with that thought in mind, stand up slowly, find your partner, choose a hypnotist to go first, sit down and then just observe. Sit down and then just observe. Whenever you see anything that looks remotely like hypnosis, then just look at them meaningfully and say, "That’s right. - That’s right. That’s right." How was that for you all? Was that interesting? Who enjoyed themselves? Exactly, that’s right. Who wants to come up and just share a little bit of your experience and what you noticed was going on in terms of what happened there? Who noticed how this had a bit of an effect on you when you were the subject, just a small effect? Yes, so what kind of things happened to you all? Audience:

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I was matching and mirroring his body language and his breathing, which I noticed deep in his trance but also deep in my own trance as well.




So you’re skipping ahead to tomorrow. Curse you! Good job. I like it, yes, very good, kind of a profound interesting experiences, right. Come on up, and we’ll come onto you in a second.

James:

I was gone totally.

Igor:

Anyone in the same place James was? Hang on a second. You were saying less. You’re not speaking to people. How does this work?

James:

I noticed very clearly both – I’m certain mine were, but his eyes glazed, which to me is a clear sign of trance.

Igor:

Exactly. Did anyone else notice these things? So where were we this morning? That’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? Oh yeah, but it’s not this. Maybe I’m over here. I could be looking for this, but I don’t think I am. Well, maybe – no, maybe not. Well, this was certainly interesting, but that can’t have been it. I might be thinking of this. Do you understand the idea of the feedback loop and the reinforcement of an experience at a different level now, more than this morning? Would that be fair to say? All you did just now was the feedback loop, was it not? All you did was reinforce in as minimalistic a way as you could, a trance experience, did you not? You had a more profound impact by doing less. Why? Because you’re focusing on one principle and doing it thoroughly. Now I’d like you to get hopefully, a new appreciation for these principles. Everything we have talked about so far can be taken to this extreme and further. You have a lifetime of exploration just in what we’ve done today, and this is only Day 1. Isn’t that something to think about? It was a profound experience, wasn’t it? Go ahead.

Audience:

My partner, right when I was hitting a perfect spot, instead of, "That’s right." she went, "Hmm." And I dropped all the way. It was the first time a trance has felt delicious.

Igor:

I wonder why? Good, top of the class. Notice how much of your suggestion is coming out of the thing you’re not saying. Would that be fair to say? People rush to get clever with the language, and you can do great

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 stuff with the language, but do not be in a rush to do that because in doing so, you will miss everything that hypnosis is really about. It’s kind of like having an amazing horse, and all that people are focused on is what an amazing mane this horse has. Then they shave off the hair and they make a mane and they run around town, look, I have a horse. You can’t ride it anywhere. The thing that made it interesting to look at, the thing that made it powerful as a symbol, is the horse. The mane is just that little part of the horse that people focused on, that grabs their attention, but without a horse, the mane is useless. Does that make sense? So only explore the language as quickly as you’re doing everything else. So with that thought in mind, I’d like you to rejoin the circle. I would like you to begin the circle by recalling the experience you’ve just had. When you feel the way you felt, then you begin to speak. You can use your power words. You can use the trance themes. You can use your reference similes. You can even use your language softeners and your hot words. As much or as little as you like, but only as slowly as you do this. If from time to time someone does something vaguely hypnotic, that’s right, you can write the script. That’s right. For those of you who wish to be a little more advanced, there’s the advanced version called very good. Your circles should be fundamentally different this time around than the last time around. If they’re not, then you need to go back to basics. Is that fair? So find your way back to your original circle, but only as slowly as you maintain this stately, calm, focused feeling you have inside. Then begin the circle again. Off you go. May I add one more thing to this? We may as well, seeing as be fun. As you sit down in your circles, I would like for you more thing. Is that okay with you? Remember, you’re only extra thing as slowly as you have everything else in place. icing on the cake.

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it’s going to to add one adding this This is just


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’d like you to give your group a hypnotic gift. I’d like for one of the trance themes that you have to remind them of someone that they love, some thing that they love and some experience that made them feel good. It does not matter what it is, provided you feed it into your trance themes at some level. Now different people will have different ones. You will hear a lot of variations. Just notice what happens as the circle continues. Is that okay? Begin now. I have a couple of questions for you before we begin the final exercise of the day. The first question I have for you is, how was that exercise different from essentially doing exactly the same thing just moments before? Anyone? Audience:

As a hypnotist, I’m always concerned with my clients, what I’m saying to them and getting their eyes closed. It was interesting in the other exercise how it was just the opposite. Having my eyes open and saying nothing was more. Therefore, how that reflected here was I really wasn’t concerned about what I was saying and if there were pauses or spaces, which normally I’m just like, I don’t want so many pauses.

Igor:

So that shows that you’re doing hypnosis from the right place. Incidentally, you’re about 90% to what we’ll end up calling the irresistible induction, but we’ll come onto that in a few days. Good job. What else did you all notice? Do you want to come up? We’ll go over here first. So what else did you notice?

Audience:

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I think, in our group at least, you helped us change our belief system. The belief system was that hypnosis is about language and is about leading somebody. What we all found was because of previous exercise, we in fact, many of us had closed our eyes and even put our heads down, and we had instigated the same level of trance and the same influence over the other person.



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So just sitting there, even as a group, even when we had those pregnant pauses, even as we handed off between the four partners, the trance state didn’t really dissipate. Igor:

No. In fact, it probably got stronger.

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

Now – where were we again? Do you feel a little bit of that?

Audience:

Fractionating.

Igor:

Well, kind of. That’s what the pauses do. What you felt during the pauses, especially in conversational hypnosis, you will need it.

Audience:

To create the space.

Igor:

There is no problem with being paused or silent inside of a conversation, provided it’s flowing correctly. There are many conversations you’ve had that were just thoughtful, I think is the word. So let’s make people more thoughtful, shall we? Good job. Thank you.

Audience:

Also, just outside of even the pauses and the fractionation, I think I found within our group that after we had experienced the sensation ourselves of the calm that we’d just done with the partners, that having that calm being within everyone within the group just made it easier to do everything in general. Like the going first thing.

Igor:

Did anyone else notice this? This is – and I’m very glad you all are starting to bring this up because this is the beginnings of the whole H+ principle. Who here is familiar with the idea of H+? I’ll detail it very quickly anyway just in case there are a few newbies, fresh faces. You may know this is a significant theme of my work. Seeing as we have a nice circle, we may as well put it in there. H+ essentially is the intense desire for the other person to experience something hypnotic, to induce trance, coupled with the intense desire for that person to have a significant positive event, to experience something positive.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Now you’re not expecting it from them, like you need it to feel good about yourself. You just really want it for them. You know the difference because you’ll feel different inside. What you just described is that feeling. You don’t care. In fact, you described exactly the same thing. You no longer care about their response in terms of - are the eyes open, are the eyes closed? Are they doing this, or are they not? It’s irrelevant. It is all irrelevant. H+ is both a shield and a sword. It’s a shield in the sense that it protects you from your own performance anxiety, from trying too hard, from thinking too much. It’s a sword, in the sense, that it allows you to influence the other person more profoundly because all your sub-communications, all your nonverbal behavior, your tonality and so on – which we’ll come onto more tomorrow – are aligned with a simple message. Have this experience now, and that’s all there is. Does that make sense to you all? We will be evolving this concept through the 10 days together. If you take nothing else but this, this is what makes great hypnotists. In fact, the one hypnotist I really got this from was someone that, honestly, was a terrible hypnotist. His language was awful, pacing, tonality, everything just terrible, but he got amazing results. He got results he should not have been able to get. I was sitting there going, "How the f—k did you do that?" He got amazing results. The difference is that he was just there. He was one of these people who just had this expansive, positive feeling, and he just knew he was going to get results. He just wanted it, and there was no doubt in his mind. He just felt right about it and he got it. He got amazing results. This is the key to everything. Going back to the point from over here earlier, your ethics is built into that as well. It’s all one big happy parcel. You’re more successful when you are more ethical because it comes from the same place. Does that make sense to you all? Let me see if I can get this hum down. Is this hum from the speakers or the lights? That’s weird. It’s my hypnotic hum. All right, go ahead.

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I think I’m going to say something that’s very much with the H+. I found myself more trusting of me and the others. The rest of it didn’t matter. What I said didn’t matter it was going to happen, period! It just was there.

Igor:

That’s what distinguishes the nervous, shy, I’m not so confident in myself, I’m the beginner at this, please be nice to me, hypnotist and really the old hands experienced one. They just know it’s going to happen. It’s easy to say, "Oh, I just know it’s going to happen.", but that doesn’t help you. Now you have a reference experience. Who here thinks they can find their way back to this? Not necessarily every time, not necessarily instantly, but someday, from time to time, and maybe increasingly if you keep looking for it. That’s a good proportion. For the rest of you, keep tuned because there’s a way of accelerating that. Sound good? One last thing, go ahead. Let me just double check that this is on. There you go. Just take it. There you go.

Audience:

I’m probably saying the same thing that’s been said, but differently. It’s almost like creating a sphere of trust through the H+ that my experience was whatever is going to happen is going happened over there already, and I’m just there helping support the space for it to occur naturally.

Igor:

Thank you. That’s exactly right. I think Erickson had a great quote for this, which I really love. Your job is just to provide the scenery in such a way that they’ll naturally respond with whatever phenomena, results, etc. that you would like them to respond with. That’s it. Your job is not to force their acting. Your job is just to provide the scenery.’ They’ll do the rest, and they’ll do it quite spontaneously. Do you like that idea? So what we’re going to do now is I’m going to give you a little bit of homework. Oh no. Notice what things got loaded into that word, right? How about some home play or some hotel play? Although that has different benefits doesn’t it?

Audience:

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You have our attention.




Remember the H+, I really want something good to happen for you. The homework, the home play, hotel play, whatever it is, whatever you want to call that, I don’t mind, it’s going to be very simple. It’s, basically, to reproduce something you did in here today, but outside of this seminar room so that this does not become the space in which hypnosis occurs. Does that make sense? It could be something you do in the lobby. It could be something you do just outside of here. It could be something you do in the streets, in someone’s car – with consent, if you please. For the moment, feel free to stick to people within the seminar. Just find someone and tonight and tomorrow morning – preferably both – just do a simple induction on the person. That’s going to be very straightforward. You’re going to start always with the H+, that feeling you created. If you have to spend some minutes just going, "That’s right." for a while, that’s okay. Then I’d like you to do the instant induction we did earlier today. Grab their attention and look at them. If you want to throw in a few, that’s rights, in there just to build the atmosphere, that’s good. Sleep, deeper and deeper, fractionate if you will. It’s pretty much what we did this morning, only this time I’d like you to pay extra attention to the principle’s you’re employing. Like a good cook, I want you to enjoy the feast of hypnotic principles that you’re including in whatever that you’re doing. Don’t rush it. There is no rush. There is no time limit on this. Make sense? Once you have them in trance, I’d like for you to give them a gift. It’s a very simple gift. It’s an easy gift to give, and it’s one that you’ll be giving each other over and over again. I would like for you to get them to recall a person that they are close to, someone that they love. It can be a friend, a family member, a lover, a husband or wife, a spouse, a child, a pet, but a individual that they are closely connected to in a very positive way. Does that make sense? You will know that the person is thinking about this person sufficiently because something very subtle will begin to occur. It’s something in that direction. Once you have that, then just maybe put in a simple suggestion

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that they can have this experience again anytime they wish to. Something general like that. Memorize it, remember it and come back to it anytime you want. Bring them out of trance, and you’re done. If you wish to repeat it a few times just for practice sake, fine. By all means do it, but I’d like you to do it at least once between now and us coming back tomorrow and doing the training. Does that make sense? I’d like for it to not occur inside this room. Does that also make sense? Let me explain why. Some time ago in China, a young man moves to Beijing, the capitol city. He’s the new boy in town, and as would happen, of course, he gets bullied. He’s the new one. He’s got all the mannerisms of someone who’s coming to new territory. Bullies look out for the weaker members of the pack and that’s what they prey on. Luckily for him, one of the other students sees what’s going on and it’s too late to stop it but afterward, he says, "You should come with me to the Kung Fu school." Luckily, he’s in China and there’s a lot of it. He introduces him to the school and life transforms for him. He learns how to kick, how to punch and how to move, yell and shout. He feels good about himself. In fact, he feels so good that he practices diligently every day. He’s at the school, he’s doing his things, his school grades and confidence improves. The bullies are outside of his mind now they never come back, because he’s different now. He’s different purely and simply because he’s putting his energies into other things. Time passes, he grows older, grows strong, faster, better at what he does. One day he comes home from school to his parents who run a small store in the outer district of Beijing. As luck would have it, this particular day they had become the target of a local gang for extortion, money to maintain their store, you know, protection and all that. The boy, now a young man, thinks he knows what to do. He says I’ll take care of this. The two thugs are in there, so he kicks them around a bit and throws them out. He thinks he’s resolved the problem. Of course, two

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 hours later, they turn up and it’s bigger boys this time, more of them, so he can’t resolve this problem. The shop gets damaged and the protection money goes up. He doesn’t know what happened. I mean think about it. He spent years training to kick, to punch, and he can’t deal with this situation. Now many people at this point would be despondent and might give up, but he didn’t understand. He went into this sort of spiral of thoughts. He turns to his instructor and says, "What happened? What can I do?" The instructor is a wise man, and he says, "The problem is that here you learned how to build your confidence. That’s what this school is about. You know how to kick, you know how to punch, you know how to move well, and to be fair, you’ve done really well because you practiced diligently. You have built your confidence and that’s great. You can take care of yourself. But this is something different." "In this kind of situation, there are times in life when it’s not about how fast you move, how hard you can kick or how high. It’s about how invisible you can be. Now I can’t teach you to be invisible. For that, you need to go to my trainer, my master. Now I warn you, he doesn’t take many people on. He doesn’t take people on who are just here one day and off the next. He is a hard taskmaster. You think you have trained hard with me, you will train harder than you’ve ever trained before, and it will be worth every single moment of it, if he accepts you." So he writes down an address on a little bit of paper, a small letter of introduction, and full of hope this young man goes to the streets of Beijing in a rundown area, but it’s okay because he has the skills. He’s okay walking down the street. He knocks on the little door. In time an old man, a little disheveled, opens the door and asks what he wants. He presents this card very politely. He explains that he’d like to learn to train with him. In kind of confusion he says, "I was told that you can show me how to be invisible." He still doesn’t know what that means. It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it to be invisible? But he respects his teacher. Especially in China, the relationship from pupil to teacher is very important. He respects the teacher. He trusts in him enough that he’ll try this out.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The old man reads the card and slams the door in his face. He knocks again. No answer. He comes back the next day and knocks on the door. The old man opens the door, takes one look at him and slams the door in his face. He comes back a third day, a fourth, a fifth. He loses count of how many days he comes back, every day after school. It becomes almost like an obsessive ritual. Knock on the door, slam in the face. Oh well, come back tomorrow. One day he’s just getting ready to knock on the door, when who would be walking down that street? The thugs that broke up his family’s shop, and there are a few of them. He’s a little afraid now. He doesn’t know what to do. Whatever he could do, they know where his family’s business is. Plus there are more of them this time, and they’re pretty big. Can he move quickly enough, fast enough, strong enough? Can he do it? He’s kind of paralyzed with all these thoughts and ideas. He doesn’t know what to do. Of course, they spot him a mile off and they still remember the cheek that he had, so they pin him up against the old door and things are starting to look a little unpleasant. The door opens and the old man smiling says, "Oh, you found my student." Of course, they can’t resist. Here’s an old man. They start jabbing him and poking him, and he’s apologizing. I’m very sorry, very sorry. He tries to come outside to show them how sorry he is, and wouldn’t you know it, being an old man he trips over his own feet, falls down right into one of them. He goes rolling on the ground. He tries to grab onto them. He falls down and accidentally pokes him in the eyes. He gets up and says, "I’m really sorry." He stands up a little bit too quickly and the other guys are coming in to push him out of the way. He gets cracked on the nose, and it’s bleeding everywhere. Next thing you know, he’s apologizing to that person. He accidentally bumps into the other person and he’s just apologizing everywhere. Eventually, the thugs get a little embarrassed. He’s an old man, he’s being awkward, and they’re just fooling around. Eventually, they throw a few more jabs at him and say, "You’re a crazy old man. Ha, ha, ha."

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 He goes, "Yes, I’m sorry, I’m so clumsy. My mother didn’t really like me as a child. I’m very sorry. I’ll make it up to you, but I have no money. I’m just sorry." So they poke him a few more times and throw a few more insults and then they go. The boy is totally confused. What just happened? He looks at the old man and says, "You know, thank you for coming out, but really you shouldn’t have." Right now he’s having a few doubts, right? He’s an awkward old man. What the hell could he teach him about Kung Fu, right? He thanks him for trying his best, but he really wants to learn about how to have the invisible Kung Fu. He doesn’t understand how that’s even possible. And they start walking and he says, "Just follow me." They start walking down the street and he says, "You know my teacher is very good. He’s fast, powerful. Maybe he can move so fast that no one can actually see you move. I guess that would be the secret technique. No disrespect, but you’re old and you don’t really move that well anymore. What’s this all about?" The old man listens and nods his head and says, "The secret to invisible Kung Fu is not that you cannot be seen. It’s that people don’t understand what it is that they see. I can show you how to do this, but you’ll have to practice and you’ll have to have dedication. Are you willing to learn?" The student says, "Yes. I will learn." He still doesn’t know what it is, but it sounds interesting. "Practice begins every morning at 9am sharp. I expect you to be here at 8:30. I will not brook lateness." The boy says, "Okay, very good, anything else I should know?" He goes one more thing, "Let’s go have a drink and get to know each other properly, a non-alcoholic drink because there’s training tomorrow." So in the spirit of the wise old man, I’d like to invite all of you to have a non-alcoholic drink, a few snacks and get to know each other. As you walk through these two doors in a moment’s time, you’ll find there should be a nice spread of things that we’ve prepared for you as a gift.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Don’t expect it every day. It’s a gift from me to you, but it will be a nice way for you all to get to know each other. Have a chat. Have, dare I say, a conversation and we’ll see you all again tomorrow. We’ll start at 9am sharp. If you wish to be here at 8:30, well, who am I to stop you? Thank you very much.

DVD 5: How to Read Other People like an Open Book Igor:

Good morning, everyone. How are you all doing? Who had fun last night? Anyone starting apply this stuff outside there somewhere? I hear that someone did a particularly interesting thing yesterday. They started to run with their skills, and rather than just doing the exercise we did yesterday with bringing someone they love back and so on, I call this the inner smile. Rather that just doing this with people in the seminar, which is safe and it’s good to do out there, this person started to do it with complete, random strangers. Would you come up here for a moment please? Give them a round of applause. [Applause] Your husband and the team that you were with were so impressed, that they got you a little gift. So give her a round of applause, everyone. Great job! Seriously, I think it’s an awesome thing when you all start taking these skills and using them. It’s a risk, isn’t it to go up to a complete stranger. Come on up. Do you want to tell me the story because I think people will be excited by it?

Audience:

Right here?

Igor:

Yes, there you go.

Lori:

Actually, I had two opportunities. We took the trolley to Manhattan Beach. A whole bunch of us did and there were some ladies there that were also

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 doing a 10-day seminar on something with educational testing, which I think is folly anyway. Anyway, they weren’t real impressed with hypnotists, so on the way back we ran into them again. I had a couple of them. We were just chit-chatting so I went ahead and did something from New York with the fingers crossed. I did that with them. Then later Shaun, my husband and I went to the grocery store to get some meat. The gentleman and I were talking and, of course, when I ordered the salami, he said, "This is a whole bunch." I said, "That’s okay, I’m in town for two weeks." He said, "What are you doing in town for two weeks?" Well, that opened up the door. I asked him, "Have you ever had any experience with hypnosis?" He said, "No." I said, "Well, do you have a moment." And he said, "Sure." So I pulled him out from behind the counter and did the instant induction on the shoulder and then the arm straightening out. His buddies in bakery were sitting there going, "What the hell?" He got done and he was like, "Man, can you come back once a day and give me just a little…?" It was kind of interesting. It was kind of just a joke because I’m so shy. Igor:

You kind of got carried away with the moment, right?

Lori:

That’s right.

Igor:

Do you see what you all can pull off isn’t that amazing? Give her a round of applause. [Applause] So now that you’ve done your first couple of instant inductions in the wild, did you enjoy it?

Lori:

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I did enjoy it. I’m real excited about it. I’m like a big sponge right now, just kind of soaking this all in.




The last question – because I’m sure everyone here is wondering this as well is - did it work. I mean on real people who didn’t know it was coming?

Lori:

Yes, the gal couldn’t get her hands apart and she was like, "Whoa, that was something else." Then he just went out. He went right on my shoulder. I got him to balance. Even when I woke him up, he was like, get this arm down. I’m like, take a deep breath, relax and shake it out. He was like, "Come back once a day. I’m here Monday through Friday. Show some more stuff."

Igor:

That’s amazing. That’s a great story. Now that we’ve had that little warm-up, did anyone else do anything exciting last night? Do you want to come up and tell everyone? Are you allowed to tell people without getting arrested?

Audience:

Someone puked seven times, but it wasn’t me. We went out to West Hollywood. One of our friends who isn’t here today, he puked seven times, but we were out in Hollywood.

Igor:

What did that do to you?

Audience:

We only had two hours’ sleep, but that’s okay. We didn’t really follow your suggestion, so that was bad of us.

Igor:

What are you doing up here then? So you went out to a bar?

Audience:

We went out to a club in West Hollywood, Cassadra. They had the backup singer for formerly known as Prince. One of our friends’ friends’ friend was there.

Igor:

Is this an induction?

Audience:

Yes, it is. Sleep! Then we started talking and she was asking what I did. I didn’t tell her my real job. I said, "I’m a master hypnotist." She goes, "Really" and got curious about it. I told her a little bit about hypnosis. She was curious about it. Then I said, "Hey, do you want to try it?" She’s like, "Yeah sure."

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The sound was blazing because the people were loud and stuff like that. I started having her comply. I said, "Move over here so you can hear me.", and things like that. So I got the compliance. Then I did the five-word induction. Some people know it; some people don’t. Then I dropped her instantly. I said, "The deeper you go, the better you feel; the better you feel, the deeper you go." Then I gave her some general suggestions because she wanted to have more motivation, more passion and all that stuff. I also gave her other suggestions like you’re going to have a wonderful night tonight. Maybe I shouldn’t have. She was smiling the whole night and things like that. She was wonderful and she was dancing and all that stuff. That’s why we didn’t get home until 4:30 this morning. Igor:

It was a wild and crazy life. I won’t even ask. We did say hotel play, didn’t we?

Lori:

Yes.

Igor:

Great job. Well done. Give him a nice round of applause. Thank you. [Applause]

Alex:

My name’s Alex. I don’t have my name tag today. This is not something that happened last night. It’s actually something that happened in London when I took Igor’s Street Hypnosis course actually. A friend of mine, Bob Cobb, who I’m sure you’ve seen in some of the videos. We went out for a night of being a force for good and I approached three women at a fairly noisy bar. It was a patio actually. I asked if they’d ever been hypnotized, if they wanted to get hypnotized and if they were interested in the power of the mind. They all pointed to one woman. In this group, there was a medical doctor, an accountant and a scientist. Very much critical thinking type people obviously. The accountant said, "Well actually my friend, the scientist, has an extreme phobia; claustrophobia, so bad that she can’t ride elevators or go on subways."

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So Bob and I, basically, tag teamed her. We did a double induction. He did most of the therapy side. I just came in and out whenever I felt it was appropriate while I was talking to the medical doctor and the accountant. About 10 minutes after Bob had finished up, she said, "Do you all want to go for a ride on the subway?" We were blown away by how easy it was and again, the context was a bar, so no one’s there ready to get therapy for a serious condition like that. By learning how to create a context and the frame for them to be involved in this process, you can do amazing things in the most amazing places. This medical doctor, it was great for her to be there because here’s a person who, firsthand, realized the power of hypnosis in a non-clinical place. Nothing up your sleeves, but impromptu- bang- bring your tools with you and you can change people’s lives in 10 minutes. Igor:

Good job. Thank you. Hopefully, some of these stories are giving you all some ideas of what to do with this stuff. I’m not the school of hard knocks. I’m not going to force you to go out there and do anything in particular, but I would encourage you to put yourself in a position where it can happen. How many of you actually did an instant induction with a little hypnotic gift that we talked about last night, out there somewhere, maybe in the lobby, maybe in the street, in the restaurant or something like that with other people, maybe about half of you? Let me ask you, who actually did the exercise, how did it feel to do it outside of the training room? A little awkward at first, would that be fair to say for some of you or was it pretty straightforward? Excellent!

Lori:

For me, I think it was almost easier because everybody in this room has some experience, probably a lot more experience than me, so I feel somewhat judged. Whereas this deli guy, he’s just a deli guy. It’s either going to work and he’s going to be thrilled or it’s not going to work and he’s going to go, "Well, so much for hypnosis." and I’ll never see him again because I’ll go to a different store next time.

Igor:

If nothing else, yes, it worked. Come back, please.

Lori:

Exactly. So for me, it was kind of just throw caution to the wind, just take a deep breath. Your voice is going through my mind. I think what really

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 clicked, yesterday was the one where it really doesn’t matter what you say it’s more your demeanor, just be patient, make the eye contact and get them to focus. I was able to do that. It was weird because you said out in the bar, at the grocery store, there are people walking around, the lights are on, his buddies are right over next door, so it’s not like you have to be in a dark, quiet corner or something. Igor:

Right. You can just do it normal everyday life. This is something very important. Thank you for bringing that up. Both Alex and Lori did exactly the same thing. The words really weren’t the important part of the process. The context that you’re creating is the important part. How do you create the atmosphere? How do you create that situation where people can step out of normal, everyday life into what we’ll call a hypnotic reality, in which unusual things can occur. Where they can relax deeply and have wonderful experiences. Where they can overcome a lifetime of phobias in 10 minutes? You have to create that context, and the place that comes from really is you. It comes from inside of you. Who would like to learn or find shortcuts to make that whole thing happen more quickly and more easily, anyone? I mean otherwise, we can get the coloring books out and have like the evil top hat and monocle hypnotist. There’s a great little picture. The first thing we’re going to do is I want you all to find one other person in the room at least, maybe two if you have time, but it will be a real quick exercise. I want you to give them a hypnotic gift – the inner smile. Remember, the inner smile is an instant induction, a couple of fractionations or a couple of deepeners so you can have a nice deep thing. Only take a minute or two at most. Really, it doesn’t take very long at all. Once you have them there, I want you to get them to recall or remember or have an experience of someone they love. A person, a close friend, a pet, something that makes them feel like they’re connected to the other individual. Make sense? You’ll know that you have it right because they’ll be smiling from ear to ear. You want to build it up, whatever you do, with your attitude, with your

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 language, with everything you have until they are smiling from ear to ear. Then remind them that they can have this experience any time they want. Then bring them back. Then it’s your go. Easy to do, off you go. Good. Who’s smiling from ear to ear? Anyone? Is that good? Let me ask you a question. What did you notice about the person that you’re about to hypnotize before you actually went over and shook their hand and met them to do your induction? Anything? Now the reason I ask this is because it’s pretty common. We blank out portions of our experience because we only focus on what we think is going to be important, maybe the handshake, maybe the actual induction, the setup and so on. Does that kind of make sense to you all? What I’d like you to do is to get sensitized to what happens before the formal hypnosis begins. 'Cause that’s going to tell you where their unconscious mind is at. Does that make sense to you guys? Now, I don’t know about you, but when I first came across the idea of calibration – people have different names for it. I like to call it unconscious signals. So when I first came across this idea of unconscious signaling, I was overwhelmed. I mean, how am I going to read all these things? What does it mean? The tiny little flick of a finger, maybe they had an affair when they were four years old. Right? How am I supposed to make sense of all this stuff? It took me a while to start figuring out. And there is a couple of things you should know, the first thing you should know is whilst people – and this is absolutely true - different people will have different behaviors which are idiosyncratic. And that will tell you how that person’s thinking at that point in time and how they’re feeling and that sort of stuff. However, the thing that very few people in the hypnosis industry talk about – I don’t even know if they know it – is that there are a lot of very standard signals that are just part of human nature. In other words, whether you’re sitting in the jungle or you’re in New York or you’re in Paris, you will get the identical self same signals unless their culture suppresses them for cultural reasons. Does that make sense to you all?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So the easiest way to recognize these things is to know what to look for. One of the ways to do this is called cementing. You just, basically, chop their body parts up – not physically please. No blood in the room. You just spend some time observing different parts of the body and how they behave. It’s actually very easy when you do it this way. So rather than trying to see everything at one, which is quite difficult, you just kind of focus on different parts and then you’ll notice – it’s kind of one of these weird things. Like when you buy a new car or a new dress or something very important to you and it suddenly pops up everywhere. Wherever you’re walking, it’s like, what the hell? Why are all these people wearing my clothes? It’s because your mind’s become sensitized to it. It needs to look for information now because it’s important. The same thing will happen to body language. So I’d like to spend some time, if it’s okay with you all, sensitizing you to body language so you can start finding out what things mean. Would that be okay with you all? So here’s what we’re going to do. It’s going to be very, very simple. We’re going to move around and these are going to be quick exercises, so please keep your ears attuned so I can move onto the next phase each time. Essentially, all you’re going to do is you’re going to move around and you’re going to meet someone. Shake them by the hand. Say, "Hi. How are you doing? Great to meet you. Nice talking to you." and then off you go. The content of the conversation is actually relatively unimportant, and it should be brief because you want to meet as many people as possible to get a pattern developing. Does that make sense? The first time we do this, I’d like for you to focus only on their legs, so everything from below the torso, the legs and their feet. It’s going to be a little bit weird to go up to someone and say. "Hi. How are you doing. It’s very nice to meet you." I’m actually really okay with that. It’s going to be a little bit artificial, but I want you to look only at their legs and feet and notice whatever you notice. It depends on far we can take it in terms of what we do, but their legs will tell you a lot about a person. You may not be able to make sense of it yet,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 and that’s fine, but at least you’re starting to notice things. Does that make sense? All right, stand up and find some people. All right, this is great. We’re going to carry on the same exercise, only this time I’m going to make a little refinement, if I may, which is I’d like you to watch what happens, the difference between when you first approach someone in terms of what their legs do, when you’re actually meeting that person, and when you’re about to leave that person. So I want you to notice if a change occurs in any of those phases. If it does, great! If it doesn’t, that’s fine too. Just observe what occurs. Does that make sense to you all? The important times are the approach, the duration whilst you’re doing something and the exit. Make sense to everyone? Carry on please. Did you notice some interesting things? Any kind of patterns? Did you notice how when you approach someone, there’s a little difference when you’re actually talking to them? Did anyone here notice that when the person’s about to leave, their legs leave first? Did anyone notice that? So before they say, goodbye, they’ll do something along the lines of, well, it was nice talking to you, and their feet are already moving towards somewhere. This is going to be very important. Unfortunately, today we don’t have – I mean we could spend literally a few days just showing you the standard body language for different kinds of responses. Today, I just want to get you sensitized to get the feel for it, and then we’ll start using that in a very practical way to actually set the hypnotic context. However, beyond what we will be able to achieve today, I want you to really pay attention to these things because over time, you will notice these patterns. You’ll go, my God, this is so easy. Does that make sense? You’ll know what’s going on at that point. So we’ve got the legs relatively sorted. Is that fair to say? We can see things happening with the legs. Let’s pay attention to the torso. The torso can rotate. It can flex, I guess, forwards and backwards. It can have all kinds of different things. So again, I’d like you to pay attention to the torso as you approach the person, as you interact with the person and as you leave, and notice if there’s any particular pattern that you can start detecting.

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They won’t be identical with everyone because their emotional state will be different on the approach, interaction and exit, but there will be certain things that will start coming out. Does that make sense? Approachinteraction- exit and off you go. Just a quick question and then we’re going to carry on with the same exercise in a moment. How many of you are noticing the legs just by accident, even though you’re actually looking at their torso? Hands up. Good. That’s about half of you in the room. Excellent! Those of you that are not noticing the legs, you don’t have to make an effort to do it. But as you’re looking at the torso, if your eye happens to catch a glimpse of the legs and you see the same sort of patterns as before. Well, your ability to see things or recognize unconscious signals has just become a little richer. Don’t try to force it, but if it happens, smile to yourself and know that you’re doing the right thing. Make sense? Off you go. Excellent! Are you enjoying that so far? Did that make it a little bit more interesting? All right. The same exercise, if you happen to catch the legs, that’s fine, we’re going to focus on the torso a little bit more. This time I want you to randomly, inside your mind, switch between the person that’s in front of you, is someone you really like and someone that you really dislike.

The important thing here is that it’s the emotional feelings. Now socially, you’re still going to be doing the whole shaking hands and being polite and so on, but mentally, emotionally I want you to either like or dislike them as you begin the approach. Decide before you see that person how you’re going to feel next. And notice if anything happens differently now as you do the same exercise. Is that okay with you? Off you go. Was that interesting? Are you seeing a bigger difference now than a moment again, than in the previous exercise, yes? So it’s not a big difference, but people still act friendly. Are you seeing more of a different now though than in the previous exercise that we did pretty much exactly the same way? Just very little? Okay, fine.

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For some people it will be more obvious than with others. Remember, we’re looking for the contrast principle. It’s when things change that they tell what’s going on. It’s not about what’s happening in the moment. It’s when it changes that it tells you, "Oh, this is a little different." There’s a question over here. So when he thinks about a person he really doesn’t like, his smile tends to go away. Yes? Or sometimes people have a forced smile or something like that. We’ll come onto the face and those areas later. Right now, we’re still focusing on the torso, the body as the main part, and we’ll build up these other parts as well. It’s a good thing to spot inside yourself. Go ahead, Cassie. So Cassie is finding that when she approaches someone that she didn’t like, or was thinking that she didn’t like, the torso starts turning away. It’s almost like you want to have as little exposure to them as possible. Like, hello nice to meet you over there. Did anyone else find that sort of thing happening? It’s a very common thing. Torso and feet will tell you much more about what a person generally feels than their facial expression as a rule, and actually their words and their tonality because these things we have more awareness of and, therefore, we tend to control more. Does that make sense to you all? Do you find these things interesting and useful? All right. Let’s do the same thing again now, but let’s focus on the arms. Let’s make it actually the arms and hands. When you’re doing this in terms of real life, I encourage you to treat the arms and hands separately. The hands – I don’t know if you know this – have you seen that little homunculus brain model? It’s a little picture of a man, and it’s in proportion to how much area of the brain is dedicated to processing information from that. For example, the eyes have a lot of information, so the eyes are huge, the face is huge, the lips are massive, but their hands are enormous as well. Arms are quite skinny. The back and the torso are relatively small. So the arms and the feet have a lot of receptors in there. A lot of the brain is linked to these things.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So the hands will give you a lot of information about someone, as well as their feet. Does that make sense? For the moment, I want you to just pay attention to their arms and their hands, just in general. This is something that will become even more obvious to you when you’re sitting down, when you’re having casual conversations. You can see it right now as I’m talking to you. Do you see how my hands are doing things as I’m talking? These will all tell you some things. For example, if I’m talking to you and I’m not going to change anything about my posture or about my tonality, about my rate or anything like that. Do you notice how you perceive me differently just because of what I do with my hands? So would you say I am confident right now, or less confident? Less, but nothing’s really changed about me. Now have I become more confident or less confident in the last few seconds? More. Do you notice how instinctively, you can already tell a lot about a person? It’s just that we don’t pay attention to these things that consciously. So now we want to create more awareness of these things so that it becomes more of a factor in how we evaluate what someone’s doing. Does that make sense? All right, everyone. So same exercise again. Pay attention to arms and hands. If you happen to catch a glimpse of the torso and the legs, that’s fine. Remember, you’re going to mix and match people that you like and dislike. Don’t tell them which they are. Just project someone that you like or someone that you dislike onto that person so they can see different behaviors and mannerisms. Make sense? Off you go. How was that? Interesting? Are you noticing certain things with the hands and the arms again? Go ahead. Do you want to come up? It makes it much easier because then everyone can hear as well and we don’t have to repeat everything. Audience:

I was noticing that it was hard for me not to mirror the other person. So if they seemed to not like me, I didn’t like them. If they liked me a lot, I liked them more.

Igor:

I want you to just really pay attention to what she was just saying because this is really important. Did anyone else notice this? When someone really likes you a lot, you can’t help but like them back. I’m talking about the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 emotional stuff. The physiology just comes out, as a result of it, versus if someone really doesn’t like you, you kind of like give them the cold shoulder. Do you realize where that expression comes from? People know it’s the cold shoulder. The shoulder of the person you don’t like. Let’s say I don’t like Emma, I’m going to turn my back to them. That’s an example of someone I don’t like. It’s a physical expression of it. The emotions drive this whole thing. This is what we’re coming onto in a very short moment of time. This idea of matching and mirroring, who has come across this? You want to adopt similar body language. We’ll come onto that in a second. We adopt similar body language to people that we’re in rapport with and so on. So to get more rapport, we’ll adopt their body language. The problem is if the emotions aren’t in the right place, the emotions drive behavior. If you really dislike someone, you’re like okay, I’m going to mirror you now. It comes out so forced and awkward and weird that there’s a miscommunication there, and people actually will take a greater offense at inelegant matching and mirroring. Does that make sense? So we need to let the emotions drive the behavior, which is what we’ll be getting into with the – who’s heard of the instant rapport technique? We’ll come onto that later on today, and it’s really built into the whole concept of H+. When you have the emotions in the right place, then your physiology or behavior will go into the right. When your behavior is in the right place, then everything is locked into position where you have what Emma just talked about which is, people can’t help but like you. All I want to do this morning is do those three magic things. How can you create the right mental state, the emotional state to make it happen? What are you going to do physically to ensure it happens? How are you going to cement the whole process in so it’s a natural part of the interaction? Those are the three key things so that ultimately, my aim is that you all can do something that, for me, used to be a myth. It took me years and years to figure out how to do this. Then I promise we’ll come to you in a moment.

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Audience:

No problem.

Igor:

Back in my early days of training hypnosis, NLP and stuff like that, I used to hear this myth that one trainer was out there somewhere, who could walk into a restaurant or crowded room, mind his own business eating his food. Suddenly, people from across the room would come over and start talking and chatting with him like they were his best friends and he did it just by matching and mirroring their body language. So I tried it and it didn’t work very well. However, there is a way to make exactly that happen. And once we finish this segment here in terms of getting used to the body language, would you like me to show you how to do that? It’s not a cure all. In other words, there are certain types of people that it will not work with – and we’ll talk about that when we get onto it – but with maybe 80 or 90% of the people you meet, it will work, and you’ll have more friends than you can know what to do with. Sound good? So let’s just get onto your question or your comment quickly, and then we’ll carry on with this.

Audience:

Just a quick comment. I would find that what would happen to me when I ran into somebody that didn’t like me, I would actually do some things with my hands that would change their whole attitude. I’ve caught myself doing it unconsciously and I’m going oh, that’s interesting. I’m actually changing their attitude toward me.

Igor:

So you have a behavior that’s designed to, shall we say diffuse whatever tension is between the two of you. That’s very true. Do you see how useful this stuff is starting to become? Again, we’re doing conversational hypnosis. Why are you talking about hands and feet? Look, I’m doing conversational hypnosis with my foot. But all these things are part of how you have a conversation. This is how you converse with people. So if you don’t have these things aligned with what you’re talking about, well then, you might be a snake or a salesman who people don’t trust because there’s something not quite right about what they’re doing. You may mean very well, but if things are

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 not quite lining up, well the whole message becomes awkward. It doesn’t become very impactful. Does that kind of make sense to you all? So we need everything to come together. This is just another one of those pencils we’re going to be into our set so that when we have the whole package, it becomes just really powerful. So go ahead. Audience:

Thanks. A quick comment. I just noticed that people that I knew or had a relationship with usually grip my hand harder, but I was noticing the difference of people from different countries or even regions of the U.S., even people that I already have a really good relationship with that are not exactly American, not to grip as hard. It was odd how I think some bigger men treated me more daintily, even though I saw them grip other people’s hands more hard. I was just noticing the difference of southerners versus northerners.

Igor:

Just to point something out, which is actually kind of important, a handshake is not a universal signal. In other words, it’s a socialized signal, which means you’ll get a lot of social varieties. Different regions will be using a more firm handshake. Maybe like in farming country, people are used to working out, so their handshake becomes firmer. In other areas, it might be less so. In Asia, they don’t shake hands, so you’ll get some dead, limp fish kind of handshake. It’s a cultural thing. People tend to judge other people by their handshake, and believe it or not, that is the worst thing to judge another person by because that has something to do with their culture. And it has nothing to do with their inner state, their emotions, or their mindset and so on. Does that make sense to you all? So that’s an excellent thing to notice that the things we actually put most attention to in terms of how we evaluate the other person, when we’re first meeting them, very often are the worst things to evaluate them by because they have the least amount of information about that person. Make sense? Excellent spot! Thank you. Go ahead.

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What I’m finding is that I see a lot of individual variations in what’s happening, or I don’t see any variation at all. I’m having trouble discerning patterns.

Igor:

So give me an example of what you mean by no variation at all.

Audience:

Well, when we were doing the arm exercise, it seems to me that everyone pretty much holds the left arm straight out here. I don’t really see much variation in what’s happening with the shaking arm either. Similarly, with the legs - well actually, the opposite problem with the legs. You’ll see this pattern, you’ll see this pattern and it seems like there’s too much variability for me to discern a pattern.

Igor:

Great. This is, by the way, true with the whole body. It gets even worse like that. If you get overloaded with patterns, then you just go down and focus more on the smaller elements, like foot position and so on. Something that will make your life easier and, by the way, remember we’re just walking around shaking people’s hands, so not all the natural signals will come out at this point. This is more to get you all sensitized to seeing things, so we can start pulling out patterns as we go along. Do you all want to have a quick example just in terms of the three things we’ve dealt with so far? The legs, the torso, the arms and hands, simple patterns you can start spotting. You’ll see them more when people pay less attention, and you’ll probably spot them in yourselves as well as you do that. Would that be useful to you? Let’s run through them very quickly. Again, as I say, we could probably spend three or four days just talking about body language and universal patterns. You can sit down if you want, but honestly, this is going to be a very quick thing. You may as well just wait then. By the way, notice this is also a pattern right here. There are people who are willing to wait it out and there are people who want to sit down. There are people who want to take notes. So the patterns are constantly flowing, and I’ll just wait. All right. So here are some very common patterns that you can just have off the top of your legs. Not your legs. That’s a nice Freudian slip off the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 top of your head. The first pattern is leg position. The legs will tell you where the mind is going. Has anyone know someone who when they’re driving a car and they look at something else, their hands go towards – like say there’s an accident or something like that or there’s a cute little puppy on the side of the road – their hands go towards it and so does the car? The legs do the same thing. The legs will show intention. So in terms of meeting someone, if someone’s legs start pointing away from you, what that’s saying is the person wants to leave. If they do that on actually meeting you, they’ll have an uncommitted foot, for example. That means that either the person wants to stay a short time for whatever reason. If they want to stay for a short time, it might be because he’s in a hurry, or it might be because he doesn’t like you. Now the key is you can’t tell the difference yet. It’s only the beginning of an indicator. There will be other things you have to look for to add onto it to be able to determine it’s more likely that they dislike me than that they want to leave because they’re in a hurry, or vice versa. Does that make sense? When someone’s got an uncommitted foot, basically, what they’re doing is mentally they’re already leaving. So either you can shorten your interaction or if you determine from the other signals that they don’t like you, you have a little bit more work cut out to make them comfortable. Make sense? That has to do with distance. If they stop at a further distance, they tend to feel less comfortable around you, but this also has a lot of cultural variation. For example, in India, they have almost no concept of personal space. When I used to do coaching, this used to be a very interesting thing when we worked with international executives. There used to be a lot of cultural issues to do with, basically, just body language. People didn’t realize it. Imagine this. I was doing this in Malaysia. You have a Malaysian woman who’s Muslim, with the full shard and everything, so a very traditional Muslim. You have an Indian gentleman. Very smart in what he does, but has almost no awareness of personal body space. So he’s touching,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 hugging and invading that person’s body space. For her, the comfortable distance was probably twice of what it would be for a Western person. Can you see the working relationship breaking down just from that level alone? So personal space is a very important thing, and it tends to be cultural as well. Everyone has some level of personal space, but it tends to be cultural. As I say, the Indian thing tends to be more of an extreme case. In Muslim cultures, like Arabic cultures, the personal space is much closer, but there is a defined space between friendship and distance. Incidentally, things like men holding hand’s is perfectly acceptable in the Arab world. It’s actually quite natural. Whereas, of course, in Europe and North America, as a rule, you’d think, why would you all hold hands? Okay, fine. It’s very progressive. But it means very different things. So again, notice how things we would spend most time focusing on – the hand holding – actually tells us the least amount, unless we know the cultural background. So distance and leg position will tell you how they’re feeling towards you in terms of territory. The body from the neck down to here is mostly soft stuff. So when people try to protect this it’s because they’re unconsciously feeling stressed or threatened in some way. So you’ll notice something, for example, happening at a party. When someone enters someone else’s space – say you’re throwing a party. You’ll notice something very interesting happen, especially if it’s a guy on guy because of the whole mammalian conflict thing. Guys typically, when they come in, you know, you knock on the door, you open the door, you go, "Hi and welcome. I’m the host." The other person will typically say something like this, "Hi, thanks for welcoming me." What they’re doing is unconsciously, they’re acknowledging this is not my territory. Allow me in. So the torso does that. The thing that we’re most familiar with, of course, if we don’t like someone is we’ll turn our back onto them. Part of the reason for this is we’re protecting the vital organs. So if you’re talking to someone, the more their torso is turned away from you, the less committed they are to the interaction. In other words, this has to do with

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the foot thing. They might be getting ready to leave. The other thing that could be happening is they’re protecting themselves. They feel under threat and so on. You can see this a lot, for example – is anyone in here a parent, has teenagers or kids and they tell them off? Have you ever noticed that when you start telling your kids off, they’ll do something like this? They’ll become very protective. Again, they’re protecting those areas, or they’ll turn away, they’ll shield. Make sense? Do you see how the torso tells you a little. It can happen very casually. If I’m having a normal conversation and you say something I don’t like, I might say, "No, I don’t agree with that." Did you see what happened there? It can be very subtle. It might just be that they’re raising the shoulder, I’m protecting myself. Eye blinks still happen the same, but we haven’t gone into eye blinks yet. With arms, again, it’s more to do with the motion of the arms. If I’m taking up very little space and I’m doing everything else quite the same way, what is this telling you about who I am and what I’m doing in terms of my stress versus comfort levels? If my arms are more open and relaxed and expansive, versus my hands are everywhere. Do you see how each of those things – you can already read those signals. I mean I’m exaggerating them so you can see them, but they give you some very valuable information. Now here’s the key thing when reading body language. The main thing you can focus on when it comes to universal signals are basically stress and comfort. It’s not truth or lies. It’s not agreement and disagreement. It’s stress or comfort. Now stress tends to accompany certain things. For example, if someone lies, they tend to be more stressed because it requires more energy, more effort and they’re afraid of being caught. It’s not universal. Some people are very good liars. In fact, they believe their lies themselves and it makes for even better lies. Comfort, someone may be telling the truth and be stressed just because the situation makes them stressed. For example, in an interview. if you ask a tough question, they give you the truthful answer, but they feel stressed by the emotion of the situation so

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 they might be giving you a stress signal, which you would be making a mistake to interpret that as a lying signal. Does that kind of make sense to you all? Another thing you can see in the torso, especially when people are sitting, is tension. Body tension is accompanied by stress. So if you start talking about things that someone finds, shall we say, is a vulnerable spot for someone, long before they push back, you’ll see something like this. Either they will tense up and the motion will stop. This is where arms become very useful. When the arms stop moving, when the arm starts freezing, then you know something’s going on. Again, I’ll give you something; this is heuristic rule of thumb but again, this is not a universal thing, just to give you an example. If you ever see – this is something I got from a guy named Joe Navarro, who’s an FBI agent. He’s very well known and knows body language very well. If you ever see a child doing a normal children thing, an adult walks into the room and suddenly this child becomes very still, you know that there’s some big problem between that child and that adult. I’m not saying it’s necessarily abuse, although it may well be. It may be emotional abuse. It may be physical. The child might be terrified of the adult. That’s again to do with motion. We are programmed as fight or flight. It’s actually incorrect. It’s actually fight, flight or freeze, of which freezing is the first response. Fleeing is the second response. Fighting is the last response. So when you see people suddenly freeze, you know that you’ve hit something that’s threatening to them. This is a great thing to do say in a negotiation or as a hypnotherapist. You’re talking about different topics this, that and the other. You might be making a point in terms of, let’s say, the cause of something and everyone’s chatting away, and suddenly the motion slows down. If you’re not looking for it, you might just carry on because they didn’t say anything. But you can see, suddenly, they’re stiffening or you’ll see them drawing back slightly. Is this useful for you?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’ll give you one thing in terms of the head, than I’d rather you all just experiment with the head and the other features a little bit before we go into that. So with the head, a nice little signal for comfort is the tilting of the head.

People who tilt their head to one side as a rule are kind of comfortable. They’re relaxed and so on. Usually when people are listening, "Oh, that’s interesting." That’s fine. The minute they start getting stressed, their head will straighten out again. In terms of other tilts, as a rule, head down protects the throat, so that tends to be more of a stress response, a fear response and so on. Head up exposes the throat. People tend to be more confident. It’s a signal of status of and so. There’s a slight – and again, it depends on what else is going on at the same time. For example, if I’m doing this, you can all clearly see that this is a lower status response. I’m saying, I’m more meek, I’m not challenging. I can do exactly the same thing and just a shift in my expression, for example, will mean something very different. If I do the same thing but I lean forward and I frown, do you see how that has a very different effect. So the head tilt on its own doesn’t mean this person is feeling frightening, shy, stressed or whatever it is. It could also be a sign of aggression. Partly because this is the hardest part of the head, so they’re exposing the hardest part of their head before getting into conflict. Again, do you notice how these signals come with other things combined? Does that make sense? So you can’t just look, aha, I saw their fingertip moving; therefore, he is not memorizing the alphabet. You can’t do that. You have to first, take a whole class of responses together, and then put them in terms of these are universal kind of responses. Then each individual has idiosyncrasies. Some people prefer to do some things than others. For example, a big difference between men and women, a big sign that people are getting stressed is they’ll touch their neck area. As a rule, men will play with their collar or if they have a tie on, they’ll play with their tie.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Even just preening is often a sign of stress. Actually, it’s not a preening, but again, that’s why you have to have the whole thing. Women will very rarely touch the back of their neck. As a rule, women will touch the front of their neck, right just below the Adam’s apple, that little dimple there, or they’ll tend to touch over here, unless, of course, they’re pregnant, in which case the hand will go down here. Do you see where we’re going with this? Again, it’s where the mind goes the body has certain ways of following along with it. Is this useful to you? I wish I could spend more time with you doing this, but hopefully, that’s going to get you started on the whole journey of reading people more clearly. Being able to see the difference between these universal signals across cultures, and these are cultural signals. Like the handshake is a cultural signal, and those Idiosyncrasies. In other words, an individual has their own behaviors and so on that will, again, form patterns that allow you to see where that person’s at. That last version will take time for you to discover. That first version you’ll get instantly within making eye contact with the other person. Is that useful to you? All right. Let’s stand up and carry on. All right, everyone, so now what I’d like you all to do is very briefly – we’ll just very briefly, because we spent more time talking about body language, I’d like you to go around and do the same meeting people drill. Only this time I’d like you to focus on head tilt and head rotation. Where is their head rotation? Where is their head tilted? Up, down, side to side, left to right and so on. Does that make sense? Off you go. All right, everyone. Great. Are you ready to move onto the final one? The final one is actually, again, two separate areas. Again, when you have time, I would encourage you to explore on your own. So spend maybe a day just focusing on one of these areas, and then the next day on another area and so on. It’s a great way to get sensitized to this. The two areas that I want you to focus on finally are the lips and the eyes. Basically, 80% of the expressions that you have on your face will come

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 from either the lips and the eyes. They provide a lot of information. There are other places, like the forehead and the jaw and so on, and they are important. But really if you’ve got the lips and the eyes, it gives you a very clear, very quick picture of the other person. Once you have more time to develop this on your own, spend a day just focusing on the eyes or the lips on your own. Again, you’ll start seeing very interesting things coming out. Easy? Again, when you’re looking for the lips, when you’re looking for the eyes, see if the peripheral vision, the rest of your sight will still capture other things. Where are their foot positions? Where is their torso position? What’s the rotation of their head? What are their hands doing? What is the quality of the movement that they are expressing? Does that make sense to you all? Off you go.

Audience: ♦ Do you have any tips in terms of, I guess, how do I put it, basically, cleaning up whatever your own projections might be onto a person so that you can read their calibrations? Igor:

Oh, your projections. In other words, how you’re seeing the other person?

Audience:

Yes, exactly. Because I notice that as I’m shifting states, I’m having trouble actually picking up someone else because what I’m projecting, whether it be friendliness or whether it be the other way.

Igor:

This is where the particular version of this exercise will make it a little bit harder because if you’re feeling friendly, you’ll start ignoring certain things. When you’re feeling unfriendly, you’ll start ignoring other things. That’s just part of human nature. You encoded some behaviors into those two states. So, when you want to have a real clear sense of how people are responding, neutrality is the best state to have. The difference here, in terms of the exercise, the reason you want to have those emotional states is partly so that you’re giving other signals to people as well and that helps there. Does that help, somewhat?

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All right, so it’s part of the drill that there’s a little bit of confusion so that everything else…

Igor:

It will happen. Yes. Hence, the idea of if you still have the emotional thing, but all you have to do is focus on one thing, you’ll be able to bust through that fog and still see it. For example, with the legs, if you find that you can’t see their legs in general and then just focus on his left foot. Everyone you meet, even though I don’t like you, I’m only looking at your left foot. That’s interesting what he’s doing with his foot. Oh, you’re great. I like you. Well, that’s nice. The more you zero in on one simple activity, the more your mind can have that through whatever emotions you’re projecting. Does that help?

Audience:

Yes, actually it does.

Igor:

Great.

Audience:

Thank you.

Igor:

There was another one.

Audience: 1. How much of the body language is universal? 2. How much is it specific to the individual? 3. How much of it is dependent on the context? Igor:

Yes, it is. That would take us literally four or five days to talk about, because there’s a stock of standard behavior’s that are human trait. In other words, you’ll see a lot of these in – if you want an interesting place to study these things, look at monkeys, apes and their standard behaviors. A lot of them have carried on through to us. Those will be standard behavior’s, that are just biological, unless they’re suppressed and we’ll talk about that later. Then you have cultural behaviors, and the easiest way to tell those is go to an alien culture, like Asia or India or some of the Arabic nations or

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 maybe Africa. Go to a culture that’s so totally different from your own that you’ll have what’s called culture clash. You’ll see that things mean different things, and they’ll be very confusing at first. Then you suddenly realize, hang on a second, I made all these assumptions and they’re cultural assumptions. That’s the second answer. Traveling really helps you with that one. I know you like to travel. The third one is in terms of idiosyncrasies. Whatever’s left will tend to be an idiosyncrasy. There might be something that you’ll notice happening a lot, and then you might ask yourself is this a cultural thing or is this a biological thing? Then traveling will help you build a bigger profile. Does that help? Audience:

Yes. One follow-up, for example, if I’m doing this, I’m not necessarily defensive. It’s just very comfortable posture for me.

Igor:

This is a classic one. Arm crossing can be a sign of defensiveness because you’re shielding, but it doesn’t have to be. If the temperature is cold, it’s contextual. People are keeping warm. It could be habitual. In other words, it’s an idiosyncrasy when someone gets, for example, into lecturing mode. Okay, let me tell you about so and so. In that case, it’s a habitual thing. As I say, the things that most people pay attention to – this is why I have problem with many body language books because they’ll tell you things like, this person is closed. Actually, no crossed legs are a sign of comfort. Someone who is stressed will tend to have legs open and maybe even hide their legs behind their chair. Think about it. Which looks more relaxed to you right now? Where do I look more at ease? Like this, or like that? Of course, if I’m doing this, that’s another thing. Do you see how you can’t pinpoint one behavior and say that’s what it means? It’s qualities being expressed amongst other things.

Audience:

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So the point is, my understanding is that when you’re calibrating, you just can’t make an assumption that’s general for everyone. The crossing the legs may be defensive for that particular person.




Igor:

Yes. The thing you can make a general assumption about is, stress versus comfort. That is the only level you can make a universal judgment on. Stress versus comfort. There are a couple of other signals. We’ll talk about one of them in a moment if we, hopefully, get to it. But as a rule, that’s the baseline of human experience. Stress and comfort, that’s the parasympathetic nervous system versus the sympathetic nervous system. Beyond that – and even within at, you don’t know what that stress means. Is it a stress or dislike? Is it the stress of a threatening idea? Is it the stress of their own pressure or just are they just a stressed person? It becomes a more complex game. All I can do right now – because otherwise we’ll take time away from the conversational hypnosis, which really is our focus here – is to introduce you to these ideas, give you some tools for getting sensitized to it. My recommendation is do not label these experiences yet. Just notice them. Right now just notice that some people have their legs back and some have them forward. Some people meet you like this, and some people meet you like this. Some people will meet you like this. Just notice these things, and over time those patterns will start making more sense to you because you’ll have larger reference experiences. Does that make sense to you all? That will take time to build up. Either that, or I’ll put on another seminar for four or five days to do these things, but that will not be now because that’s not what we’re doing here. Does that make sense to you all, there’s only so much I can fit into one particular thing? Very quickly now, let’s just move around. Just two minutes to check eyes and lips, and then I’ll show you how to use that and put it all together. Okay, off you go. How did that go for you all? Interesting? Does anyone want to come up and tell me what kind of things you spotted with the eyes and lips?

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The thing I noticed on the eyes is that initial eye contact, you do whatever you do, and if you take a moment and maintain a little bit longer contact, people kind of go like this.

Igor:

Excellent. Did anyone notice this? If your eye contact is a little bit longer, there’s a social norm, and by the way it will change across cultures – not nations, culture. The North America and South America will be a little different and vice versa and so on. Has anyone here heard of the hypnotic gaze induction? We’ll be using that later on. This is exactly the effect. Did you notice if someone looks at you for too long, you have that little sense of like being a little startled, like a rabbit in the headlights? What’s going on here?

Audience:

What’s interesting is what happens even after that startled thing. They’ll either come back with a smile or they’ll...

Igor:

Or, they’ll pull back even further, right? This is very important. Its one way you can do an instant induction, without doing an instant induction. You can do it conversationally. That little startled effect is the equivalent of pulling someone on their head, pushing the hand out or yanking their arm or whatever kind of instant induction you want to do. Of course, what matters is what you do at that point. When that little startled effect, is you can give them a non-verbal suggestion of friendship. For example, would you like to know how to do that? Come back quick after the break because that’s exactly what we’re doing. Before we do that, however, let’s just take a few more comments or things you all noticed. What other things did you all notice or questions you have? Come on up. Did anyone read that body language? I think that’s one of comfort, isn’t it?

Audience:

You didn’t talk about breathing at all. I personally use it as a huge indicator. Like I listen more than I watch. I can feel a lot of tension in people’s breathing. Where they hold their breath and when they feel comfortable just breathing normally.

Igor:

I agree.

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I was wondering why you didn’t bring it up at all.

Igor:

Partly because it’s part of the torso and partly because breathing tends to be more idiosyncratic, especially if they have breathing patterns that they fall into. As a rule, breathing will be against stress or comfort. Stress breathing is tenser, shallower and tends to be faster. Comfort breathing, you’ll have more like a sigh and tends to be a longer exhale and so on. These are things that we’ll start looking at more when we do more inductions as well. I’m just separating them for a little bit later, but it’s something you’ll start noticing as you look for torso rotations because the shoulder will lift and move with their breathing. A little hint by the way everyone. If you are checking for people’s breathing and the person is a female, please don’t do this. Nice lungs. Unless you’re married to the person or maybe dating them. Does that help you?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

We’ll come onto breathing as we deal with more formal inductions as well. Come on up.

Audience: ♦ If you’re not going to be looking at their lungs, especially on a woman, can you look at the collar bones? Igor:

Yes, but again, it depends on how they perceive your line of sight. If they think it’s dipped a little bit, then you have the same issues. My preference is to catch the lift in the right of the shoulders in the peripheral vision. So as I’m looking at you, I can still see the right of her shoulder. It can be a little trickier sometimes, depending on clothing, but as a rule it can be done. Sometimes you can spot it from the belly. Some people breathe very clearly from the belly, but again, you have the same sort of issues. If you start staring at someone’s belly, they might think you’re staring at their crotch and you might have an interesting evening. Does that make sense? Come on up.

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I found this before in different events they were kind of looking at you, or even look past you. ♦ Is there a way to bring the attention back?

Igor:

What would be the purpose of getting their attention back?

Audience:

Just to engage in a conversation to move into a process of…

Igor:

Sure. What requires you to have eye contact in order to have a conversation?

Audience:

I don’t know.

Igor:

What he’s describing is actually a valid point. We talked about idiosyncrasies before and cultural norms. Eye contact is another one of these eye cultural norms. A lot of people will judge other people by eye contact they’re supposed to look away and so on. Believe it or, the reverse is the case. When someone is lying to you, they’ll probably usually lock eye contact for longer precisely because they believe that liars don’t make eye contact. So if someone is normally talking to you like this and suddenly they carry on like this again, did you see how the contrast of behaviors? That means something rather than anything else. Does that make sense? Turning back to what he was talking about, a lot of people require eye contact in order to make a conversation. It’s just how they grew up. Parents might say, look at me when I’m talking to you and so on. But a lot of people don’t. A lot of people will turn their head and listen. So when you’re saying something important, then you might find people looking away, just glancing down slightly and really listening, and maybe do something like this. So they’re processing what you’re saying. The reason I’m mentioning this is, it’s an idiosyncrasy. It is not a barrier to communication. If you require it for communicating, it diminishes your ability to interacting with people. Can you force eye contact? Yes. By the same token, a lot of people find it uncomfortable maintaining eye contact, which is exactly why we use it

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 hypnotically to lift the levels of discomfort to destabilize the critical factor. Does that make sense? Audience: ♦ How would you more internalize the skill of reading body language? Igor:

Excellent! The first thing I would recommend you all do is break the body down into parts like we’ve said. Start with the feet - Go on the Internet to see if you can find it, there’s a little picture called the homunculus. Although it might get a cross from esoteric arcana as well, it’s a different kind of homunculus, no magic involved. It’s basically a figure of a little man and the limbs are drawn in proportion to how much brain area is dedicated to processing that. So they’ll have large feet. They’ll have skinny legs. They’ll have a skinny torso. They’ll have a rather extended phallus. It’s true. Their hands will be huge. Their lips will be massive. The eyes will be massive. The ears will be large and the rest will be relatively small. This is going to give a good sign of where to find signals. So if you break the body down on those things, you’ll have the feet, then the legs you’ll spend separate time. Torso will be separate time. You may want to even separate the shoulders from the torso. Their shoulders will give you some information, too. Arms and movements as well, so you can spend some time looking at positions, but also at some time looking at the motions, hands, face and so on. Initially, you’re doing that, and your aim is to do it with no judgment. In other words, just notice how people move, how people stand, how people sit, how people behave. Stay out of judgment. Don’t say, this person is shy, this person is in love, this person hates me, this person likes me and so on. Stay out of that. An easy way to do that is for people watching, sit in a café somewhere, sit in a restaurant and just watch people. Make it your mission of the day to watch different parts of their body. That’s the first way. Next the only question to ask yourself is instinctively, do I think this person is comfortable or uncomfortable? When I see that foot, does that tell me

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that they’re comfortable in the interaction, or someone who’s uncomfortable? Not that it means anything in terms of whether they like or dislike the person and they agree or disagree with a statement. It might be they’re in a hurry or whatever it is. These things aren’t important. You just get used to judging levels of comfort based on behavior. Then over time what happens, is its kind of like, have you ever heard of the Italian film director, Fellini, basically, 90% of his films is just eyes. The whole film is – he really likes eyes, and that’s a great film, by the way, to watch to get used to eye behavior. How can you tell a film that’s almost silent, just by how people are glancing at each other? It’s because you’re already an expert at reading that kind of body language. Does that make sense? So once you have your clear filter and you see the different behaviors that are available, and then you start evaluating whether it looks more comfortable or less comfortable. Then you can start going to the area of making some judgments, some test judgments, shall we say. I think this person’s more this or more shocked or more surprised or enjoying it or not enjoying it and so on. But then always test it. So you keep watching to see the other things that are happening to confirm it. Does that make sense? So if you think that person is having a great time, but you start seeing signals of stress and then you think, why are all these stress signals coming on? It just becomes an instinct over time. Either that, or come to my next course. I tell a lie. I haven’t actually got one ready, but I’m beginning to feel that maybe I should make one ready. Right? Does that help you? Thank you. Go ahead. Audience:

I want to make sure that I’m coming away from the exercise with the correct takeaway. What I’m gathering is that it’s important for us to isolate the body so that we become aware and sensitized to those particular movements, but then really not to draw any conclusions until…

Igor:

I would stop you at that point. The purpose is absolutely correct until you got to the point until. The rest is actually to me irrelevant. I just happen to answer the question because he wanted to progress it. There’s no other

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 purpose than that for me in terms of what we’re doing here. I will show you how to use the stuff you’ve done so far after the break. Audience:

I just want to make sure that…

Igor:

You’re in the right place. What I’m trying to avoid is getting into the idea of judgment or what things mean, specifically because it’s more complex than initially meets the eye. All right?

Audience: ♦ Do you have any tips in terms of focus of the eyes, whether it ‘Y’ division, diffused vision or specific sort of tight vision? Igor:

Absolutely. The answer is experiment.

Audience:

Okay.

Igor:

Of course, peripheral vision, seeing things from the corner of your eye and so on is my preferred status how I do my H+, how I’ve developed my ability to do hypnosis and it allows you to capture more of the general movement. But specific vision is useful too because then you can see small changes, especially if you’re looking out for them or you expect them because you know the person relatively well. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other. Experiment and have the flexibility to go through the range.

Audience:

Thanks.

Igor:

Has this been useful to you? Has it been interesting at least?

Audience: ♦ What about hands in the pockets? Igor:

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Hands in the pocket. All right, very quickly, as a rule – and you can see for yourself. Am I more comfortable right now as I’m speaking, or more comfortable now? What about this? What about this? As a rule, hands in pockets are a sign of discomfort, as a rule. Again, there are exceptions to every rule. Thumbing – having your thumbs inside your pockets, this is a low status signal as a rule. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Again, you see a lot of the skateboarders doing this, so it could be a cultural thing too. But as a rule, these are signs of lower status, unless of course – this is a very male thing – if you’re a male, and you have your thumbs tucked into your belt, this is a pointing at a certain area of the body. At that point, it becomes a dominant signal. So as a rule, if people have thumbs in their pockets, it tends to be more lower status, so more stress response shall we say. Hands in pockets in general, give or take, it tends to be toward that direction. It’s very rare that people have their thumbs out and their hands in. So it’s really about what the thumbs are doing rather than what the hand is doing except, of course, for the thumb tuck, which has a slightly different interpretation. By the way, don’t think it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that people walk around like this. Look at me. They might go through and go, yeah. Do you see what I just did there? It looks like a casual movement. This is the thing about body language. A lot of these things look causal. They don’t just sit there going, no, look I’m doing this. It will be just a casual thing, like I’m just going to tuck my pants up a little bit, but really it’s an unconscious signal to get attention to a certain part of the body. Make sense? The same thing we talked about the neck touching. They’ll be going like "Robin, Hello." (Igor over obviously touching his neck) It will happen sometimes when someone’s really stressed. They’ll be more like, they’ll be talking and laughing and it will be a fleeting gesture. Which is why we want to get used to just observing before we do anything else. If we rush into judging and evaluating, then it just becomes a lot more difficult to do anything with it. Does that make sense to you all? Audience:

This is not so much a question per se. It’s just something that just popped into my head that I was going to offer. There’s a TV special…

Igor:

Lie to Me?

Audience:

No. It’s actually Desmond Morris, the human animal.

Igor:

I haven’t come across that. Desmond Morris, the human animal apparently talks about these sorts of things?

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Audience:

Yeah, he’s an anthropologist, and he actually, I guess, traveled the entire world. It’s produced by the BBC. I guess you can find it. I watched it. It’s pretty old at this point, but it’s interesting because he goes throughout the entire world, he shows animals and people in different parts of the world and one of its hand gestures. In Europe or in Italy they do this. It’s the horns of the bull, they don’t do that. Then he goes to Venice boardwalk, shows people walking around and then he shows people in the supermarket, so I guess men will do this if they’re interested in women.

Igor:

Hence, you can’t get a clear signal of what exactly it means.

Audience:

It’s an interesting thing that I guess if you’re more interested in this topic, I found it really fascinating.

Igor:

Great. Thank you. Check him out. I haven’t heard of him, but it sounds like exactly the stuff we talked about here. If you’re willing to troll through it, there’s a lot of research and academia about exactly these sorts of things. Anthropology and sociology are the two places to look at it. As I say, it’s a bigger field. So it’s not something we can cover in just a couple of hours. Hopefully, this gives you a sensitization for it, and more importantly an awareness of things that are happening so you can spot those things. Is that fair to say? If you’ve got that, then you have exactly what you need from this morning’s session. Let’s take a 15 minute break now. Let’s do it anyway. Let’s be back here at 10 to, I think it’s 11 to start again. Thanks.

DVD 6: Hypnotic Rapport & New “Magnetic Charisma” Techniques Igor:

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All right, everyone. Welcome back again. Did you enjoy the morning session in terms of just opening your eyes up to how people move and behave and their body language and so on? Just to emphasize, in terms of unconscious signals, these things can mean a lot of different things. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 We’re going to look at some of the very robust ones that you can actually use now. The most important thing right now is can you observe these things happening? During the break, for example, did you notice people more fully? Did you notice their movements? Did you notice how they were standing? How they would hold themselves in relation to you or in relation to other people? If you can start just observing those things, even if it’s in piecemeal, like okay, I’m going to focus on legs and feet today or arms and hands or torso, head, shoulder and that sort of stuff, it begins to sensitize you. That’s really all we need for the purposes of what we’re going to be doing here in conversational hypnosis. Does that make sense? So don’t think that you have to do something to get into this whole, I must know what it all means and so on. Is it useful? Absolutely. Do you need it for what we’re doing here? No. It’s enough to get a general sense of where they’re at and notice that someone is making shifts, changes. Make sense? Those changes will alert you to what’s going on. It will make more sense as we go into the more conversational hypnosis. The key thing here is, can you observe changes, and can you observe them specifically? It’s not like something changed, but I don’t know what it was. You can say, "Oh, his leg moved. " And you can show that sort of thing. As a rule of thumb, which part of the body do you think is the most honest? Legs, eyes, face, feet, pupils? As a rule of thumb, actually it’s the leg. The further away it is from the face, the more honest it tends to be. Why? Because it’s more unconscious. We’ve been socialized. You go to Auntie Ethel Beard, who has a full beard, you’re a little five-year old, you have to kiss her on the face, and you’re like, I won’t do it. What do your parents say? Well, put a brave face on. Smile at your aunt. So we put this big smile on and say, "Hello Auntie Ethel, it’s so nice to see you." We’re socializers. So whilst all these signals are unconscious, the thing to realize is we can consciously interfere with them as well. If we know that hand wringing is a sign of tension – which, by the way, it is – then you find yourself doing this

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 in an interview. All right, I must put my hands down and relax them. We can interfere with the signal. Does that make sense? The thing is though, if you interfere in one area, it will pop out somewhere else, like in the legs or something like that. Does that make sense to you all? So as a rule, the legs and feet will be the most honest. Then there’s the torso, arms and hands and finally it will be the face and the head because that’s what we’re most used to putting a social veneer over, shall we say. Having said that, the face and specifically the eyes – like a lot of you were saying – have a lot of very valuable information. It’s very important. The way we navigate through the world is through our senses, but we’re also navigating through a social world. In order to understand how the world works, unless you’re living alone in the jungle, in which case it’s just whatever you project onto that jungle, as soon as other people come in, you need to have a relationship with them. Whether it’s 'the' relationship or it’s a relationship of friendship or any other kind of relationship, you are relating to those people at some level. It’s part of being a social animal. So what we end up doing is we send out these little signals, very subtle signals. I like to call them pings, like a submarine sonar device, and that little ping, to get a message back so you get a sense of what’s going on right now. You walk into a room and start acting weirdly, what do people do? They give you a social signal that you’re misbehaving, that you’re awkward or that they’re being distrustful in some way because maybe you’re on drugs or something like that. These are the social signals, the stigmas, that we’re afraid of when we do something a little bit more outrageous. We’re afraid of violating that social code. Does that make sense to you? So these signals are very, very important because they let us know what’s real and what’s not real. Of course, it’s real in the hypnotic sense. It’s real because we believe it to be real. It can be by the constraint and it can be something that enhances us in terms of society and so on. There is a specific signal that I think is incredibly important, and I really don’t know why more people don’t talk about this. It’s relatively well written

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 about in the academia. It’s a universal signal that is something you’ll see, basically, in every culture around the world, except one, and that’s because they suppress it on purpose. We’ll talk about that in a moment. It is a signal that you’ll see in colonies of monkeys and apes. So it’s a mammalian signal. It basically separates us and them. It is a signal that says, you’re one of us, or are you one of us? Presenting the signal at the right time begins that pinging process where people get to test each other out unconsciously to find out is this person a friend or a potential threat? Would you like to learn what the signal is and how to use it? Or shall we go back to our coloring books? Before we get into the signal, there’s something very important, which is, there are different kinds of people out there in the world in terms of who you may want to have an interaction with. And the signal is not magic. In other words, it will work with some and not with others, and I’ll show you what I mean by that. There’s a group of people out there, believe it or not, who are totally and utterly oblivious to you. They don’t even notice you. Unless you do something to draw attention to yourself, they don’t even see you. So all the signaling in the world will do absolutely no good at all. You can’t start the pinging process unless they’re actually aware of you. If you’re walking in a crowd, the only way they’re going to be made aware of you is if you do something to grab attention in some way. So the oblivious people can be converted in some ways. We’ll talk about some sneaky ways of doing that if you want. As a rule, unless they’re somehow like half aware of you, there is no interaction going on at that level, as long as you perform within social boundaries. As soon as you break social boundaries, it pulls awareness. Other people’s awareness will pull their awareness and so it goes in that direction. Do you see how that works? Remind me later to talk to you about how to make oblivious people aware of you. The second type of people you’ll come across, I’ll call these open. These are people, who don’t know you but are open to knowing you. I other

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 words, you’re walking down the street and you will exchange signals. They’ll test - do I know this person well enough to stop and have a chat? They don’t know they’re doing this. It’s not a conscious thing. Some people are more open than others, of course. In other words, they may actually actively seek to engage with you. Other people will be more reserved. They’re open to an interaction, but they don’t know you. So they’re not entirely oblivious to you. They’re kind of half oblivious to you. They walk in their own little private trance, but as soon as there’s a signal of that whole rapport pinging process starting up, they’ll go, oh, all right, sure. Make sense? There’s a third type of people. These are a lot tougher to work with, although there is something you can do here as well. They are specifically closed for whatever reason. For example, they may not like you. They may know you and they may not like you, and they may not want to know you. It happens. Not to me, but it happens. Other examples of this might be an attractive woman in a nightclub or a bar will tend to be more closed. Why? Because people are constantly coming up to her, do you see how that works? A reverse situation, of course, if you are a celebrity, for example, male or female. Again, they tend to be more closed in certain circumstances because they don’t want people coming in crowding them. In other circumstances, they have to be open because otherwise they’ll get bad press. Do you see how that whole thing works? So in terms of closed individuals, let’s think more about people who are either personally so inhibited that they’re afraid of making contact with others. For whatever reason they already don’t like you, either because they know you already or they made a prejudgment about you. Or, the social circumstances dictate that they put a barrier up between themselves and other people; otherwise, they’ll get swamped by attention that they don’t know or don’t know how to cope with. Does that make sense? Those tend to be the three reasons why people are closed. Finally, we have the group of people who – I’ll call these active people. They’re actively seeking to engage you in some way. It might be because they’re trying to sell you something. It might be because they know you and they’re friends and they’re just being friendly. It might be just that –

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you find these people – they’re friendly, social people who just chat to strangers because they like doing it. As a rule, these are the four basic scenarios, you’ll fit into. Active people are very easy to engage with. Why? Because they’ll find you, in fact, sometimes ignoring eye contact is not enough. Closed people are harder to work with, precisely because they’re closed. As a rule, the way to work with closed people is you have to break their patterns. It’s a loop. There’s a pattern. Their minds are spinning through their patterns, and whilst that’s active it’s very difficult to get inside. The simplest way of opening up closed people is through; you stimulate part of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is part of the emotional center and attention centers, and essentially it decides should you panic or should you feel bliss right now. Should you be happy or fear? It’s a primitive part of the brain. I think its part of the mammalian brain if I’m correct. I’m not sure. What the amygdala does is it shuts down with increasing intensity the neocortex, which is the thinking part of the brain. It breaks your thinking loops. One of the ways to activate the amygdala is with mind bending language. It’s great for that, but not something we’ll cover here. Humor is fantastic. Have you ever noticed how a joke at the right time totally transforms a situation? Why? The amygdala is primed, it’s triggered, by the unexpected shocks, surprises, etc. Are you beginning to understand what we did yesterday a little bit more now? It’s the amygdala being triggered, which short circuits the neocortex, the normal thinking loops, which allows you to present different ideas that are accepted and become the new reality. In instant induction, of course, it’s called trance. Does that make sense to you? So the amygdala can be triggered with anything that causes surprise. Humor works on this. There is no joke that does not cause surprise. Otherwise, it’s called a bad joke. It’s true, isn’t it? Other ways would be surprise. For example, by stepping out of the social norms, breaking expectation, pattern interrupt. The classic pattern

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 interrupt, of course, is the handshake. Someone comes up, you try to shake hands and then you refuse, and they go, what’s going on? Depending on what happens at that point, will trigger either fight or flight. They’ll either get angry because they feel that they’ve been taken advantage of in some way, or they’ll smile and laugh because the pattern interrupt has been amusing in some way. With closed people, you need to break the pattern. You somehow trigger the amygdala and surprise, the unexpected is your route into doing that. Open people. This is people in their little private trances who don’t seek to disengage and aren’t seeking to actively engage either. That’s probably the greater part or the majority of people out there. Open people will respond to a cycle of that sort of popping. It’s like a little social ritual that happens unconsciously. Every human being has their own unique way of greeting someone else. Some will tip their heads, some will smile and some will shake hands. Those are all idiosyncrasies. I don’t know if this is a fact, but I know there used to be a great hypnotist out there called Dave Dobson. Have you heard of the 'unconscious hello'? I believe this is what the unconscious hello is, but I can’t say because I never saw him do it or seen someone else do it, but I believe what it essentially is as you meet someone, you reflect back onto them whatever nonverbal behavior they’re making as part of the greeting gesture. Hence, it feels like, oh, great, there’s a friend coming my way. Note it happens before the formal greeting, the formal touching of hands in the Western sense, or they give you the formal bow in the Eastern sense. It happens before all that. The evaluation has already occurred at that point. Does that make sense? Something happens before even that, something that allows that whole ritual to even begin. You can try this if you want. If you’re sitting in a restaurant and you’re looking around the room – I’ve tried it. They ignore you. They think that’s a little weird. Why? Because you’re not reflecting back onto them they’re greeting behavior. You can’t engage the greeting behavior unless you trigger it somehow. You’ve got to fit the greeting so they can engage that whole process so you have something worth reflecting back. Do you see how that works?

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Would you like to know how to engage that greeting behavior? It’s so easy, it’s unreal. Most of you have done it already and didn’t even know it. I was kind of hoping that someone might spot this during the exercise earlier on. It’s so unconscious that most people don’t know it’s happening, but once you know what it is, it’s impossible to ignore. It’s called the eyebrow flash. Essentially, when two people that know each other meet, they’ll do something like this. Their eyebrows will raise. Typically, a smile will end up in the corners of their eyes as well. It’s not 100% correlated, but it’s a very typical add-on. Monkeys do this, apes do this and human beings do this whenever they meet someone, that’s part of the pack. Think about it. How many times have you walked down the street and someone goes like this and you go, "Me? Hi!" Of course, they’re waving to someone behind you. What you’re not responding to is this? Do you see how that’s very different? I’m putting on a little bit of poker face on purpose, versus this. Do you feel the difference? Do you see how it’s a lightening of the expression? The smile happens to be part of it as a result. As they’re lifting the eyebrow, that engages the greeting behavior. At that point, someone else will typically do the typical behavior. They might go like this, or they might go like this. It doesn’t matter what it is. The point is you’ve set the pattern going, so now you have a stage approach. Please understand that when I say flash, I don’t mean in the tradition sense. None of that please. It will get attention, but not the kind you’re looking for. So when you have the eyebrow flash, it engages the greeting behavior, and as soon as you get the greeting behavior, you can mirror it, as they call it, or reflect that behavior back onto them. That kind of solidifies it. They go, great, I somehow know this person. I feel close to this person somehow. Do you see how that works? You have to somehow trigger the greeting behavior so you have something worth reflecting back. Now if you do nothing but this – if you want to try this, feel free to do this. Go sit downstairs in the lobby for an

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 hour and do nothing but when someone comes in, you don’t have to put the hand up, you just go like this. I’m teasing. Come on up. You’ll be amazed how many new friends you make. People will come up to you and they’ll go, "Hi, how do I know you?" They’re responding to the eyebrow flash. They’re responding to the behavior - I’m part of this pack. I’m part of this group. Does that make sense? Go ahead. Audience:

Might that be misinterpreted though. I don’t know if somebody’s like this.

Igor:

Yes, thank you so much. Did you all catch that? This is what the question mark is here about. This is, by the way, why there’s one country, in which the eyebrow flash is actually suppressed. If you do this in one particular country – and I’ll reveal the secret shortly – it will be taken as a crude sexual gesture, and you’ll be treated accordingly, either with great delight or great frustration, depending on if they like you or not. The country, by the way, is Japan. In Japan, eyebrow flashes are considered sexual. So it’s suppressed, although they still use them. The only people that eyebrow flashes are culturally acceptable with are children and very close friends. In the rest of the world, as far as I know – and this is people in jungles in Borneo and Africa or in Berlin and New York and everywhere – the eyebrow flash is a standard greeting behavior. There’s a difference though, and this is why it’s very, very important that we start with something before the eyebrow flash. You see, your eyebrows do more than just lift and return. They’re very expressive. For example, if I just lift one eyebrow or the extended eyebrow flash, which is really what you’re asking about, do you notice how it’s something very different from my doing this to my doing this? Do you see the difference? It’s still my eyebrows lifting; however, there’s a difference, in the quality of them lifting and my expression that goes with it. That creates a different suggestion and atmosphere. Eyebrow flashes in most cultures that I’ve come across can also be sexual. They can also be invasive. Typically, in a conversation, people will lift their eyebrows when they want the other person to answer a question.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you see what I mean? So eyebrows mean more than one thing. It’s the quality of the eyebrow. The context, then the quality and the expressions that go with it that will define it, whether it’s a greeting ping or something else. Just like maybe a submarine might have different tones to distinguish between different types of things. I don’t know if they do or not, you get the analogy. It’s very important that we do something before we engage in the greeting behavior or the greeting ping, the eyebrow flash, in order to ensure that it’s taken the right way. That it’s not a sexual signal, it’s not an aggressive signal. Although I’m not sure if that’s particular aggressive, but it’s not misunderstood. This is where your H+ comes in again. This thing here I like to call the inner smile. It’s kind of charming, isn’t it? You may have noticed that you spent some time today reminding people of people that they feel close to or connected to. Not in a sexual way, just in a friendship sort of way. Make sense? The reason for that is because state drives behavior. Your emotions drive your behavior. If you’re looking at someone and you go, "Whoa, I like that person.", it will change the quality of the eyebrow flash and it will be taken as a sexual come on. If you don’t know the person and you feel a little inhibited and you do your eyebrow flash, it will come off as incongruent. What’s this person doing? I don’t trust that person. There’s something weird about them. They may not even notice the eyebrow flash because believe me, very few people do. You got flashed, believe it or not, quite a lot today, but especially when you were doing that last exercise when you were looking for the eyes and lips. You still didn’t see it, right? It’s that unconscious. Yet it occurred at least half the time. It occurred when people were being friendly. It occurred virtually all the time when they’re really going into the role, but you still did not see it because it’s unconscious. So, we need to make sure that the state that we are in has none of these, shall we say, contaminating desires or intentions that would otherwise signal the wrong thing. Does that make sense to you?

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So here’s what we’re going to do in terms of an exercise. I’d like for you to experience this for yourself in a fun sort of way. We’re going to split yourselves into four groups. Can the front two or so rows go into this corner for me? Two and a half rows maybe. Then we’ll have another group over there by the tables, a third group by the water table there, and a fourth group over here. Just make it roughly equal numbers and turn your attention towards me, and I’ll show you a very cool exercise that you’ll enjoy. Just split yourselves up into groups. In a moment, we’re going to go through the mingling exercise again. You are free and welcome to say hello and meet and greet anyone in this room, anyone at all. Same group, different group, it doesn’t really matter. I would like for you to pay attention to two things. To how you feel when you meet these people and what expressions you’re seeing in terms of what body language you’re getting. This group over here, mostly gentlemen, but one or two ladies, I’d like for you all to be totally poker faced when meeting people. You can do everything expressively with your body that you want. You can be friendly, social and very nice, so nice to meet you. It’s really nice to see you. But your expression should be as deadpan as possible. Do you think you can do that with every single person, no expression? It’s like someone switched off your face, and all you can do is speak, you can be social, you can be nice, but be as deadpan as possible. The next group, you all over here, you’re going to be cool. You’re going to do the inner smile. Inside of you, I want you all to think of people you really like, people you’re really connected to, and just feel that. Whatever you do, whenever you meet people, just make sure you keep feeling that feeling as you’re meeting them. That’s all. Easy to do? You all, yes, you’ll like this. You all are the flashers. Please do not take any clothes off. The only parts of you I’d like to see flashing will be your eyebrows. Again, try to keep a neutral state so that literally the eyebrows are doing the thing, and just be normal, social, whatever it is.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The only thing you’re doing differently is you’re making a concerted effort to raise your eyebrows – and this is important – before you touch the other person’s hand or anything like that. In other words, the minute you see someone, those eyes go up. Simple, good. The final group over here, you all are going to have something very interesting to do. I’d like you all too just mirror the other person’s behavior. If you find it difficult keeping track of everything, the main things, the usual suspects and the big ones are head tilt – that’s a big one. It includes things like nodding behaviors so there’s rhythm and movement involved. Of course, the eyebrows are going to be a big one, and the lips. Eyes, lips, head are going to be the big ones you’re going to get information from, but it might be shoulders. It might be arms as well. It might be the legs. There might be a torso tilt. Some people give a little bow as they meeting someone. It’s just part of their greeting behavior. Whatever you do, you can meet them in a normal way, whatever you normally do, but as soon as you see their body language, I just want you to mimic it slightly or in a casual way. So it’s not like you’re going, I am now mirror man, which is very odd. The idea is to be very casual. You’re just going to have a little gesture there so it’s a natural movement to you. Does that make sense? If you have difficulty keeping track of everything that these people are doing, the usual suspects, the big three are eyes, lips, head tilt. Easy? All right, everyone? I want you to spend a few minutes now just meeting everyone in the room, and just noticing how you feel about meeting different people. If you wish to, at the end of the interaction ask them which of the four types they were so that you can get a sense of how meeting different types of people has affected you. Off you go. All right, folks, so as the last few people are sitting down, how was the exercise did you find it interesting? Do you want to come up? Audience:

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May favorite were the eyebrow people. I thought it would be disconcerting, but it’s very warm.




Igor:

Was that whole sexual thing an issue at all?

Audience:

Not at all. It felt just very welcoming.

Igor:

Right. This is weird, you know, its coming, you know, it’s a manipulation. Well, not really, because people like making contact. The point is even though, you know, its coming, it’s an instinctive reaction, isn’t it? Our brains recognize the signals because our brains give these signals. So we can’t help but have that same sort of reaction. Now can you imagine – I’ll come to you in a second. Can you imagine doing this in a restaurant or in hotel lobby? If nothing else, just doing the eyebrow flash at the right time, and then we’ll add some behavior on top of that to enrich it. You’ll make more friends than you can count. They’ll go, "I don’t know this person, but oh my God, it’s like we knew each other forever."

Audience:

The pale faced fellows just felt so lifeless and dead.

Igor:

So this is the poker faced guys, right?

Audience:

Yeah, the poker faced guys. They were just so dead. It’s like; I don’t even want to talk to this person crawl out of your coffin, please.

Igor:

Right. Part of this is when people don’t like this, especially in a social setting, they’ll school their expression. They’ll be very reserved. It’s hard to read people. We feel insecure around them and so on. That’s part of what you’re experiencing there. It’s part of the signals of distrust or dislike. Does that make sense?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

So, we do not want to be poker faced when meeting people. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the social context. It’s actually giving the wrong signals out. Does that make sense? Thank you. Go ahead.

Audience:

Well, I was going to comment both about the inner smile and the eyebrow groups. The eyebrow group without that inner emotion, it was quite affecting. Like one person, I actually just completely turned away from. I

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 was like, whoa, a complete threat. It was just very interesting all the confused signals you got amongst all of them. It was also funny that, with being the inner smile myself, that when you go up to someone with it, even people that weren’t part of the group, you could see the inner smile come out on them too. Suddenly, it just completely changed what they were doing in the first place. Igor:

Right. You notice when she’s talking about the inner smile, did you notice her eyebrow flash in the middle of that? That’s why we do it. That’s why we have it. That’s why it’s called the instant rapport technique. It’s really the inner smile. It kicks into gear our own greeting mechanism, and we can’t help but do it. So thank you. That’s an excellent observation. Go ahead.

Audience: ♦ For the inner smile, were those the people who were flashers; or something else entirely? Igor:

No. The inner smile is, you think of a person that you’re connected to. It could be a parent, a child, your children or a good friend. It might even be a pet, someone that you feel an emotional connection to, not a sexual one, but an emotional one. All you do is, as you approach people, you maintain that feeling inside yourself.

Audience:

So the key is to be able to summon that at will.

Igor:

The key is being able to summon that emotion at will, exactly right. Because that creates the emotional context, which will drive the behavior. Which is the eyebrow flash. Which will put the behavior in a correct context so the other people can actually read the signals congruently, as opposed to the mixed signals that she was referring to.

Audience:

So then all of the things being equal, the same eyebrow flash, whether given from that positive state that we should learn how to summon or given without it can have markedly different responses from the other person?

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Does that answer your question?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

Thank you.

Audience:

The last thing is we’re doing this with people that we’re meeting for the first time. We’re trying to simulate that here in this room. ♦ What about doing this with people that we see in the workplace on a regular basis?

Igor:

You’ll do this automatically. Do you want to know who likes and dislikes you at work? Yes? When you walk into work and say, "Hi, John.", "Hi, Jack." and so on, watch their eyebrows, seriously. The people that actually like you will go, "Hey, Jack.", "Hey, John." The people that don’t like you will go like this. Nothing in this world is 100% guaranteed, but this is about as close to a cast iron guarantee as you can get.

Audience:

It’s almost as if the first time you meet someone, it’s almost like a cast has been set.

Igor:

Yes. The first time you meet someone there’s a lot of research that shows that the first impression people have, their first opinion they form about something becomes very difficult to change subsequently. It can be changed. Absolutely, but it requires more effort. Once you set that initial eyebrow flash, the unconscious is, basically, saying you’re part of my group, you’re part of the pack, you’re accepted. The unconscious mind expects that so it acts accordingly. I’ll give you an example, if I may. Some years ago, I was at – funny enough – hypnosis training. There was a lady, who for some reason reminded me of my grandmother. There was just something about her. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Consciously, I did nothing and had no interaction with her. I didn’t talk to her or anything like that. At the first break, she comes up to me and says, "Hi, have you been to this course before? Have we met before? I just feel so familiar." By the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 way, this is what turned me on to the idea of the inner smile, or what we used to call the instant rapport technique. That’s what turned me onto it. It was my feelings – she looked like my grandmother. My feelings changed my sub-communications, my unconscious signals, and she responded to them. It was that initial moment – because I didn’t make eye contact with her at the time. Maybe I did something funky with my shoulder, I don’t know, but really it was just that one moment of recognition. Then I went, that’s weird, and carried on with what I was doing and just sat there quietly listening to the seminar or whatever. She came right up to me. So that first moment can have a huge impact. Does that make sense? Audience:

Absolutely.

Igor:

That’s why we want to do this before the hand touches the hand and the handshake in the Western sense, or in the more Eastern sense, the more formal bow and so on. Why? Because as you’re approaching the person, they are evaluating you. It happens before the handshake, which is why a lot of the rapport techniques are problematic because by the time they get to using them, it’s already happened or it hasn’t. Does that mean that you can’t shift things around? Of course, you can. There’s a lot of scope with this stuff, but the pattern has already been initiated. It’s more effort to move the river once it’s flowing than before it comes out of the shoot. Does that make sense to you? Does that answer your question?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

Thank you. Those were a great set of questions. Let me just go over here, and then I’ll come back to you. Do some of you want to come this way? No, you can stay there, that’s fine. It feels unbalanced, like I’m pulled this way.

Audience:

We don’t want you to feel unbalanced.

Igor:

Thank you. See, there’s a reason I like you.

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I was noticing with some people that their facial expressions and the way they held their bodies was almost choreographed, while other people were given the assignment and it felt natural. ♦ What’s the distinguishing choreographed?

Igor:

characteristic

between

the

Did you all notice it as well? Some people looked more unnatural than others? Some looked like they were forcing the behavior more than others. The key difference is state. How they’re feeling. If I’m feeling kind of neutral, like hi, I’m going to meet you now, my state is not aligning with my behavior. Feelings drive behaviors, we know this. This is one of the few golden rules that you can come across in psychology. Feelings drive behaviors. It doesn’t prevent behaviors from occurring, but it drives behaviors. So if you want to do this naturally, so you don’t come across socially awkward or weird or I don’t kind of get them, like a mixed signal thing, your feelings must support your behaviors, and this is a behavior. Does that make sense?

Audience:

Absolutely.

Igor:

By the way, you should have also noticed that the inner smile group – I think it was this group over here – were eyebrow flashing you without even realizing it. Did anyone notice that? That’s what we want to do. If you know it, if you’re aware of it, you can allow it to emerge more fully. You can encourage it because then your unconscious mind goes, "Great, I’ll do some of that stuff too." Do you see how that works? Please, go ahead.

Audience:

Yes, I was in the mirror group and one thing I found is that it felt like I was in the lucky group because it felt all natural to me. So I’m wondering if mirroring might not be like a first defense, survival strategy for me to blend in.

Igor:

It might very well be. Absolutely. You’ll find people who are very good at this tend to have a reason for being good at it. For example, someone during the break asked me who are the best body language experts?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 As a rule, what I found in terms of the people I’ve met and I’ve learned from – and I mean formally as well as informally – those people who had a reason when relatively young to become sensitized to non-verbal communication, to body language, will be the best at it. I’ll give you some examples. Milton Erickson is a classic. He developed polio and was paralyzed from the neck down for about a year of his life or six months of his life. So he could barely speak to people. All he had left were his observational skills, and he became really good at that. That’s the only way he had of connecting with people or interacting with them was to observe them. Another example might be someone who grew up in a violent area or a violent household because their self-preservation instincts are now kicking in to figure out when is violence going to occur. When do I need to start protecting myself? When is it okay to just be relaxed? So those people will tend to have a stronger appreciation for nonverbals. Another class of people – this is part of what happened to me – will move to a new country where they don’t speak the language, so all they have to evaluate what’s going on around them is how people are physically responding to them. Does that kind of make sense? The people who are very good at this tend to have had a reason for developing this as a skill set and it’s just naturally gone through into adulthood. What I would like for you all to do is to develop it now. There’s no difference between now and earlier on. It’s just that earlier on you were guided more by your instincts because you had less thought going on. Whereas now, you might have thought interfering with it. Which is one of the reasons we talked about not judging or evaluating what it means for some time at least. You want to develop experiences first. Does that make sense? Does that answer your question? Audience:

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Yes. The other related thing, as I was just speaking to Victor at the break, explaining that calibration, if anything might be my weakness, but after this exercise, I consider it to be my strength. Perhaps I was doing it so naturally, I was just oblivious to the fact that I was doing it.




Absolutely. Here’s the other thing. The strange thing is people think this should be more complex than it really is. They over complicate it and then it becomes unnatural again. As the gentleman who was here a moment ago was saying, "Oh, you’re hiding over there." As he was saying, it starts becoming unnatural when you start trying to do too much with it. This is a very natural function. It’s inside every single one of us to be able to do this and read the results of this. The problem comes when we think too much. It interferes with our signaling device. If I may give you an example of what I mean by this. Has anyone here read the book called, The Gift of Fear? It’s a very interesting book. It talks about how people’s survival instincts are good. There are two kinds of fears. The kinds of fear where you’re like, "Oh, I don’t know if I can do this." And the fear, which is so terrifying that you’re almost compelled to act in some ways. The second kind of fear typically happens when your unconscious mind has read a situation and something is terribly wrong with it, even though your conscious mind can’t accept it. An example is a lady got attacked in the stairwell of her home. Before the whole thing happened, she knew there was something wrong with this person, but he was being charming, he was being polite. So she felt kind of like well, socially I can’t be mean to this person because he’s so charming, he’s polite and he’s helping me out and so on. Of course, that’s part of what predators end up doing. If you look at the profile of serial killers and so on, a lot of them are very charming people. They are exploiting the social contract to cause people to ignore their defense or their warning signals. If you talk to people who have escaped or survived some unpleasant situations, most, if not all, of them will tell you that at some point, they felt something was wrong or not quite right, and they ignored it. They trivialized it, like, "Oh, it’s just probably me." Does that make sense? We have that inside of each of us. We have the ability to read people exquisitely well inside each one of us. The problem is our thought patterns get in the way. Our social construct, our social programming prevents us

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 from listening or interpreting the signals correctly because we’ll tend to ignore it. Now some of us are better at ignoring it than others. We spend a lifetime going, "No, I won’t listen to that. I’m not very good at this. I’ve probably got it wrong." Of course, at that point, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Does that make sense? So if nothing else – and thank you for bringing that up – if nothing else, I’d encourage all of you to just observe. Break it down if you need to so you have something worth observing, contrast one behavior with another, and not evaluate. If an instinct comes up about something, then go, "Oh that’s interesting." But do your best not to evaluate it. Don’t feel the pressure of having to evaluate it because that’s your cognitive processes. That’s all the stuff you already think you know interfering with the process. Does that make sense to you? Is this useful? Students:

Yes.

Igor:

Thank you very much.

Audience:

I think you almost answered this. I just want to verify. Can you change the nature of the response by the nature of the inner smile that’s behind the eyebrow raise? In other words, if I’m thinking about my friend who I’ve known since we were kids. We stole cars together. We joined the Marine Corps together.

Igor:

Of course you did, as we all did.

Audience: ♦ So if I’m thinking about him with my inner smile, is that going to change the response if I’m thinking about Jack Nicholson, who I’ve always wanted to meet? Igor:

Yes, absolutely.

Audience: ♦ So that will change the response?

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Remember, what we’re doing here is we’re sending signals of recognition, of greeting and so on and being part of the group. The more connected you can be to the person that is driving your inner smile, the more realistic, the more powerful, the more natural your greeting signals will be, and the better this whole thing will work. Why? Because you’re signaling intimacy. If you have a casual friend that you kind of like, you’ll give a more casual signal, shall we say the intensity of the signal reduces. I can’t give you anything hard in terms of the science of it because I’m not sure anyone’s really tested this, but my instinct would say that the weaker your connection is in terms of the emotions, the less meaningful the signal will be. Remember, it’s not just the eyebrows. It’s what happens with the eyebrow flash that designs it. It tells it whether it’s sexual or its greeting. Also, the intensity of that, I suspect, will also be altered by your emotional state.

Audience:

Okay, so if want to make somebody feel like we’ve know each other forever, I could think about my friend, Ron. But if I wanted to make somebody think I really want to meet you, I could think of Jack Nicholson?

Igor:

Yes and no, because it depends on how. Personally, I’d recommend you use your Ron signal because it says we’re good friends already. It presupposes the relationship. As opposed to the Jack Nicholson thing because what if you’re – and I’m not saying that you are – but what if someone was star struck. Yeah, Jack Nicholson, I’d really like to meet you. This is something we talk more about in the audio course, which I don’t want to spend too much time on here because this fixes the problem. These are rapport mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes people make in rapport is trying to get the other person to like them because now you’re expecting something from them. "Oh hi, are you okay, it’s all good, right?" You just did a great example of that. Do you see the non-verbals? "Leave me alone." "I’m being friendly, aren’t I?" We’ve all had this. We all have friends or acquaintances, shall we call them, who are so eager to please that they annoy us. They want to do you favors. You’re like, just leave me alone. Think about it. Isn’t that insane? If someone’s

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 going out of their way to help you, to do stuff for you, to make your life easier and you get annoyed by it? The thing that you’re getting annoyed by is the expectation. The loop is a self-esteem loop. They need your approval to feel good about themselves, so they need something from you. What you’re responding to is their wanting something or needing something from you. That’s what you take offense at. In the same way as a homeless person asking for money. They need something from you, and that’s what you feel imposed upon by. Or, the poor salesperson who’s trying to sell you something, rather than just letting you buy something. They need something from you. They expect something from you, and those, are the signals you’re responding too by being put off, by it. Of course, stars get the same thing. Think about it. It makes sense. Their fans need them to respond with affection, with love or whatever it is, and it’s imposing upon them. That’s the only reason I would use as a caveat with that because you don’t want to send signals of need, of expectation because that tends to turn people off. That tends to break rapport because people feel put upon. My recommendation is find someone inside your own experiences or a group of people. By the way, pets work as well. I often use one of my pet dogs from when I was a kid. It was a great dog. It was one of my best friends. Use that emotional connection because it presupposes a warm, intimate relationship. Sometimes people can’t handle that kind of warmth because they have personal issues as well. That will bump them into the closed category. In which case, it tells you something as well, something very valuable. Does that make sense? Audience:

Yes. Thanks a lot. That took care of it.

Igor:

Thank you.

Audience:

Actually, it was just an observation but it ties in. I was in the eyebrow group. Whenever I ran into someone from the poker faced group who I

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 had met before, and they didn’t flash back, I was like, "What the hell did I do?" Igor:

Like, what the hell’s wrong with you, right? Schmuck, God, come on. Absolutely. May I do something a little mean to you just to demonstrate something? You all will see this as well. Come on up and just imagine we haven’t met in a long time, and go, "Hey, John, how’s it going. Good to see you again.", a normal friendly greeting, right? Notice the eyebrow flash and so on. Now I’ll ask you the same thing again. We haven’t seen each other for a while, we walk up to each other and we’re going like this. Did you see his reaction? I apologize for doing that to you because it’s not a nice thing to do, but you saw it coming. You knew it was a setup, right? There’s no person or a monster or anything like that involved. Yet he still responded. That was a powerful feeling, wasn’t it? You can tell it’s a powerful feeling. I didn’t even see what he did because I was looking the other way, and I know for a fact that his response would have been very strong, a strong physical gesture of shock, surprise, probably a little bit of disgust, body turning with like a quizzical look, maybe even a little slight sense of hostility. Would that be a relatively accurate read? I didn’t see any of that. Why? Because we might call this snubbing someone. It’s when the signals get reversed and we’re saying you’re not important enough. You’re not good enough. We’re directly attacking someone’s self esteem at that point. Does that make sense? I want to thank you for doing that because I know it wasn’t pleasant. Give him a nice round of applause for that. Is this stuff useful to you all? Sure, come on up.

Audience: ♦ What do you do when you approach a group of people, like three or four people, versus one person who are doing the exact same thing? Igor:

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Yes and no, because you can’t. Watch when people approach a group of their friends. The eyebrow flashing and that sort of stuff happens as well, but what tends to happen is – not so much with large groups because Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that’s a very different dynamic - I’m talking about a group of three or four friends. What will tend to happen is they’ll flash across the group, and usually in the pecking order. In other words, they’ll flash across the group leader first, and then onto someone else, and then the last person will go, "Hi, it’s good to see you, too." In some social groups, it will be according to connection. So people will go with the person they like best first, and then the other people are more marginal, but it will tend to be around status or connections. Those are the two main things. If you don’t know the group already, then as you approach the group, what will happen is the group gets interrupted and they’re going to start turning towards you, like what is this interruption? Who dares to interfere with our group? Again, it’s a social, pack animal kind of response. At that point, again, one of the people in the group you’ll notice kind of takes charge of the whole thing. Other people will refer to him or her to find out how to respond to you, or they’ll take a slight dominance posture. In other words, they might take a step forward. They might be the one to raise their eyebrows toward you whilst everyone else kind of waits a little bit more passively. That’s the person you begin with and then you can again, flash the rest of the group and build that rapport with them. Does that make sense? So with groups, especially social groups, you want to play with the leader first and then the rest of the group. Do you want to know what to do if you mess that up and the group gets a little bit cold on you? Audience:

Sure.

Igor:

You change the group. No, I don’t mean by leaving it. You change the group you are with. The way you do that is very simply. You all come on up here for a second. So let’s assume these guys are a group. Do you want to come up with them as well so we have nice little group? Stand over here so we can have the camera see your expressions.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Let’s say they’re having a nice little chat. You’re a group, you know each other. You three know each other. There you go. That’s much better. Wow, friends? Oh yeah, all right. So they’re a group and you’re standing there talking. Let’s say we’re doing some street hypnosis or something like that, and for whatever reason, I get a sense of maybe I messed up my timing, maybe I wasn’t quite feeling it, or maybe they’re all closed. What I need to do now is change this group dynamic. Every time a group changes – in other words, there’s a reassignment of roles. In other words, people will start looking at who is now the group leader. If you want to be the group leader, the easiest way to do that is to say, "Hey, have you met my friends yet? Come on up and meet these guys, they are amazing." Now, I might not even know these people, but if I introduce them, here are my friends, "Say hello, don’t be shy, come on." Look at what just happened. Do you see how the group is starting to break up? "Go and say hi. These guys are really nice. You’ll enjoy this." Folks, turn this way a little bit. Let me show you something about what hypnosis can do. Did you see where their attention has just gone? Do you see how it automatically directs towards me? What I’ve done by bringing in a new group is I’ve broken down the old group’s social boundaries. I’ve increased their anxiety levels, because now they have to fight for status again. It’s just part of how a new pack merges. Whilst they’re busy trying to figure out where they fit in that pack, I now have the ability to take control of the group. I have now put myself in a leadership position by saying, "Everyone, come with me, let me just show you something." This is me now creating a new group.

The other thing is I’m the one who’s put the two groups together. Provided I keep my mannerisms in the right place – in other words, in a high status and not offensive. Not like ha, ha, you all are schmucks and I’m the best, but high status. So I’m still polite but high status, and I begin to ease the social tension that meeting new people has. Now they’re looking towards me for guidance because I’ve just eased the tension that I actually created in the first place. Do you see how that works? You saw this happening instantly. Even though these guys know

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 each other to some extent, the minute I changed the group dynamic from where their minds were, where did they start looking? They started looking towards me for leadership. Why? Because they’re so busy trying to figure out what the pecking order is. And they need some guidance that will assist the whole process. This is kind of like doing an instant induction, isn’t it? There’s a little bit of shock, a little surprise, a little bit of, what’s going on here? A little bit of evaluating going on, and then I am presenting a very clear suggestion, a very clear message of how to understand this whole thing. You can call this an instant group induction, if you like. It’s really the same process, it just looks different. When you do this in a natural way – this is very important – you have to be very natural. If it’s forced, it looks a little awkward. Nobody even knows it’s happened. It’s just invisible because they feel one way and then they feel another way, and it’s just part of the interaction. Exactly. Does this make sense to you? Do you find this useful? Thank you. Let’s give these them a round of applause. Come on up. The question here is what happens if you leave the group after you’ve joined them? One of two things, groups go through phases or cycles. If you have allowed the new group to establish itself as a group, if you leave, the group will remain. In other words, they’ll remain as a group, and then you can rejoin them as part of that group as well. The natural pecking order will just shift to the next person being the natural person in charge. Whilst you’re gone, number two becomes number one and so on. If, however, you leave the group before they’ve had a chance to bond, connect as a group – and that can be anywhere from seconds to minutes to sometimes hours or days, depending on how you manage the group dynamics – then they’ll naturally separate again. They will go back to their original groups. Usually what will happen is, unless there’s a very dominant personality who will either take over the group or typically will just take over his group, he’ll say, "Nice meeting you.", and goodbye. The other thing that will

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 typically happen if no natural leader emerges straightaway is, they’ll be like a little socially awkward pause. Then they’ll have a chat amongst themselves and they’ll start chatting amongst themselves, and slowly they’ll drift off and there will be two groups standing next to each other very clearly. That’s what tends to happen. Make sense? Think about it. In terms of your own experiences, isn’t this the kind of stuff you’ve experienced for yourselves, you felt yourself, you’ve seen yourself, you’ve watched interactions and gone oh that’s interesting. Let’s do something practical with all this. How much time do we have? What I’d like you to do is two things. The first thing I want you to do is to walk around the room, and you’re going to do your three-step hypnotic rapport technique. You’ll meet someone new, eyebrow flash, greeting and all that sort of stuff, but what I want you to focus on in terms of what you’re doing right now is, I want you to do again, the inner smile induction, the hypnotic gift. So, instant induction, a couple levels of deepeners and then help them find a person. By the way, if you want to help them do an unconscious search to find someone they haven’t even thought about to be more connected to, even better. Let them find someone they’re really connected to, build it in, and then remind them that they can feel this way, have that connection any time they want or need to. Then, of course, someone will do that to you, and you might do that two or three times so you’ll have time to really ingrain that. A useful suggestion to present to people is to memorize the sensation, memorize the feeling. Memorize the sensation. Memorize the experience. You will need this reference experience. Without this reference experience, some of you will naturally be able to activate it, which means the whole hypnotic rapport technique is very easy. Others amongst you, though, aren’t that way. I’m not that way. I’m not particularly a social person. I’m actually relatively reserved in terms of my personal day-to-day life. It takes a lot of effort for me to switch on the inner smile to be able to engage and be social and so on. So it’s very useful to have someone be able to present you with a switch, so that when we get

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 onto doing the full method, it’s there for you. Does that make sense? Remember, like any hypnotic switch, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. So do you understand the first part of the exercise? We’re just going to go around and do one or two, maybe three if you have time, just quick inner smiles with people. You, of course, will get them in return. Once you’ve had them done a few times, we’ll come back again and then we’ll add this into the full hypnotic rapport technique and, hopefully, you’ll see that this is actually a very powerful thing that you can walk out there and do instantly. If you did nothing but this and this was the only thing you got from the entire course, I personally think you got your money’s worth because it took me a long time to figure this stuff out. It is really, useful in terms of any interaction you have. Just to give you an idea of what this does, the power of conversational hypnosis course has been out for some years now, right? So we’ve gotten hundreds of emails, possibly thousands by now, of people asking, what about this problem and this problem? I’m trying to do this, but I’m getting this result and I don’t understand. I would say that in the region of somewhere between 80% - 90% of those questions people ask will not arise if you do this right. 80% to 90% of resistance, of frame wars, of status issues, of hostility, of all this sort of stuff does not even come up if you do this step right. Hence, we spend a little more time on it, and hopefully you’ll find that this is a valuable thing to spend time on. Would that be fair? Any questions before we start the warm-up exercise? All right, everyone, off you go. Warm yourselves up, and then we’ll come back and actually do the full hypnotic rapport technique. If you’re hypnotists, then just let them stay in trance a little bit. Just to clarify because I don’t think I made this clear completely. Right now all that you’re doing is: 1. Instant induction. 2. Deepeners, preferably the fractionation deepener.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 3. The inner smile as a gift. Bring them back. They’ll do it to you and then you find someone else and go through those same three steps again. We’re not doing the full hypnotic rapport technique yet. We’re just building it up. We’re just warming up the inner smile so that it’s there for you when you need it. Off you go. How was that? Did you enjoy it? You should be thinking about happy people all the time. It’s great. The reason we spent more time focusing on the inner smile than the full technique is because this is what drives the whole thing. If you can get the inner smile right, honestly these two things will probably happen by accident, by default, if you get this part right. Even if it doesn’t happen by default, it will be so natural to do these things, that it will be part of the natural interaction, rather than a forced interaction to have these things. So it’s important and I really would encourage you to focus on this, and then these things will come through. Does that make sense? So when you go to lunch in a few moments’ time, really focus on this and see how naturally the eyebrow lift comes for you, the eyebrow flash. If your eyebrow flash is natural, you’ve got this right. If it feels awkward to you, chances are you’ve let go of this at some point. Does that make sense to you? This is a litmus test for you, and then it’s just a question of practice. Just put yourself through that routine and actually it will make you a happier person anyways. Think about it. If you spend most of your days thinking about people you really like versus all the stuff that pisses you off – where attention flows, energy goes. Which are you going to do? So you had a quick question or comment? Do you want to come up here? Audience:

It’s actually a quick question. ♦ The inner smile isn’t that the same thing as H+ or is there a difference?

Igor:

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Yes, it is. It’s just another way of looking at the H+ thing. The H+ is slightly tweaked in the sense that I really want you to have a positive experience. And it’s going to be hypnotic. So that’s the spin, shall we say, to it. Think of it this way. It’s the same creature with a different mood. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Now one of you just reminded me that there’s this one little group of people we haven’t talked about yet, the oblivious ones. How do we force enough attention so we can get our greeting signal out to them? Would that be interesting to know? The answer is really it depends on the kind of context that you’re in. Are you in a large social context? Are you in a small social context? What kinds of tools are available to you? The two main things that you can focus on – we won’t have time to practice it. So if it’s okay with you, I’ll just tell you about them and you can play with it as you wish to. It’s not really part of the program here, but you may as well have it. The first one is if you’re in a social context where there’s a larger group of people, for example, say a golf club or a nightclub or a bar, or you’re at a cocktail party or something like that, the way to get their attention is very simple. It’s by getting the rest of the room to put attention to you, and it will naturally draw their attention. It’s kind of like have you ever done this when you were kids. You’ve gotten in the middle of a busy street and you go like this. People will pass and they’ll go like this. Eyes have a very strong effect on people. Does anyone here write sales letters or adverts in the paper or something like that? Would you like to have a way that would increase the likelihood that your letter will be read? If this is advert or your letter, put in the top corner a pair of eyes that are looking down at your text. You might even put a smile or a funky device here. If the eyes are angled to look at the text, it naturally draws attention towards it. We respond very powerfully to eyes. So if you can get the attention of everyone else in the room on you, then people’s attention will naturally turn towards you. Now you can do that through some antics, like a magic trick or whatever it is. Like a magic moment that draws attention. Like in street hypnosis, for example, the people who are too shy to go up to strangers and ask them if they want to do hypnosis. One simple trick for doing that using this principle is you do it with a friend. Like say, Tim and I are going out to do some street hypnosis. I’m too afraid to talk to everyone else so I’ll say, "Okay, Tim, let’s go do some

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 street hypnosis stuff." As soon as I do that with him, it’s only usual that everyone’s eyes get drawn to me. Here I can throw in my eyebrow flash and say, come in, watch this, and we’ve already engaged the whole process. Does that make sense? Another way you can do exactly the same thing is by being just a social, friendly person. Let’s say at a party, you’re the one that everyone knows. How do you do that? Well, you go up and you eyebrow flash them all because they’re the ones that are already open. You go to all the open people. You do your little eyebrow flash, your hypnotic rapport process. They think you’re an amazing person even though they’ve only spoken to you for about two seconds. It’s like, "Oh, it’s good to see you again." "I’ll see you in a bit." Then they’ll go, "Who the hell was that? I don’t know." Of course, then they’ll start following you around the room. He knows everyone here. You’re going off and meeting everyone else and they’re like, "God, I must have met him someplace." That is part of the context that you’re creating, isn’t it? Eventually, it’s just a matter of time that whatever group of people that are oblivious to you will notice because there’s an energy that will follow you as the attention follows you through the room. At some point, all they have to do is see attention gravitating somewhere, and they’ll naturally do this. At that point, as long as you’re aware of them, you can engage them in the full signal because now they’re open. Does that make sense? The final version is a little bit sneaky? Do you want it? It’s kind of sneaky though. I’ll warn you. Can I borrow you for this? This is particularly for strangers. Let’s say again you’re in a public space and this person’s totally oblivious to you. You can force a rapport ping from this person. You can rob them. You can throttle them. Yeah, that’s close. Violence helps. No. It’s to do with our social distance. This works better in an environment where space is okay. In a two hour metro, it can still work, but you have to understand what the social space divide around you happens to be. Right now, I’m outside of his social space. So let’s imagine you’re just watching some artwork or something like that. Excellent!

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Now watch what happens when I come close enough. Did you see what happened just then? Even though he’s trying to ignore me, what happened was this, as soon as I step inside his private space bubble, his eyes shifted for a moment and then looked back again. He has to shift because he’s sensing someone has just invaded my space. Is this a threat? Is there something I’ve got to do about it? He instantly gets alerted and pays attention. As soon as he pays attention, he goes into the open category. Now I can do the whole eyebrow flash. Still, he’s a little hesitant, but as soon as he looks towards me, I can always look like oh, he’s engaging me and I’ll go, hey. Do you see how that works? So you’re actually forcing him to engage in greeting behavior with you. He’ll look to make sure that you’re not a threat and then he’ll go like this because he engaged me at this point. Do you see how this works? It is very sneaky, but it’s kind of fun. Thank you. Give him a nice round of applause. Did you like that? Was that kind of fun? So again, notice how we’re working at the same level as the hypnotic principles that we started playing with yesterday, and how on the surface level, everyone goes, yeah, sure. The idea of matching and mirroring makes sense, or the idea of nonverbal communication, that makes sense, but there are so many more layers to this. There’s a lot of depth to everything that we do. As soon as there’s a human being involved, there is a huge amount of depth that you’re capable of reaching, even with simple devices. All these little core techniques, like the rapport ping force or the group rapport thing that we talked about, and all these things. They’re just an extension of a very simple principle. The simple principle is this. We’re all mammals. We all belong to a group and whenever someone else comes along we’ve got to decide are they with us or are they with them? Our unconscious mind will send signals out to test to find out. If you pass the test, then you’re with us. If you do not, then you’re with them. Being with them is not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be hostile or anything like that, but you’re just not one of us. When you want to develop hypnotic rapport, you really want to be one of us.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So that’s the idea I’m going to leave you with as we go off to lunch. I can imagine that there will be some fascinating stories coming back after lunch, can you not? All right, everyone, did you enjoy this morning? Audience:

Yes. [Applause]

Igor:

Thank you very much. I think you’ll enjoy this afternoon even more. It’s now a quarter past 12. We’ll be starting again at 1:45 on the dot. Please try to be here a little early, like, say, 1:30. We will start at 1:45 on the dot. Thank you very much.

DVD 7: Revivification & How to Lead any Conversation to Get Your Desired Results Igor:

Did you enjoy this morning’s session on, I guess we’ll call it hypnotic rapport and the unconscious signaling system. There are some fascinating things. Who here had a chance to play with this over lunch? Do you want to come up and talk? We might as well have everyone queue up on this side; otherwise, we’ll have weird things about who does what.

Audience:

I think this is the stuff I was doing anyway just working behind a bar. I was doing it anyway, but I never paid attention to the reactions. We went into a café, and there was a young lady sitting at a table. I gave her the eyebrows. I didn’t think anything about it, but then I sat down and something I never would have done before was pay attention to her after I had done that. Sure enough, she couldn’t stop staring at our table.

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Igor:

Right and by the way…

Audience:

I guess I wasn’t paying attention before.

Igor:

If you followed through, by the way, this is something very important. I remember when I first discovered the whole eyebrow flash. It was like, as I told you, I was going for the myth of the Master Hypnotist who can sit in a restaurant eating his noodles, and people walk up to him going, "You’re cool. I don’t know who you are, but your cool. I like you." Right? I couldn’t do it. I tried everything. I tried mimicking people’s posture, and I sat on the train until I got a crick in my neck. I tried rhythms, if someone’s got a movement, especially when they’re walking, that actually will still get a bit of attention, that’s quite good, But everything else, I just couldn’t do it. They were oblivious to me. Then I came across the whole eyebrow flashing thing. I was in a restaurant in London. It was Wagamama's, a Japanese noodles style restaurant. Big long benches and I’m sitting there eating my noodles. I did the eyebrow flash and someone like three feet across made eye contact, eyebrow flash and she eyebrow flashed back. I went, "Oh my God, this is working!" I ate my noodles and refused to look up. So if you’re going to do the eyebrow flash and you’re going to follow-up with this stuff, please do maintain contact to some degree. You don’t have to keep staring, but a friendly contact. That’s the follow-up. Remember, the eyebrow flash is just the invitation to treat. It’s the invitation for a greeting. The mirroring part – and that means you have to have some kind of non-verbal engagement. Maybe look at them and have a non-verbal conversation going on, if you like. That’s what continues this. This opens the door, but this keeps the door open. Does that make sense? If you think all you have to do is sit in the hotel lobby and go like this, did they see it? Tell me, are they looking? Then you’ve missed the object of the exercise. Great! What you’re saying just reminded me of that. Especially those of us, who are a little shyer, will be prone to do the thing, and that’s my technique, done, I’ll forget about it and hope that they come over and talk

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 to me. It doesn’t quite work that way. It doesn’t work that way for you either, does it? Normally, if you keep engaged after you’ve done the initial thing, that’s when they come over. By the way, you get great service like this in restaurants if you want to. It all comes down to again the purpose of the inner smile, is about intention. It is communicating an intention. The intention is I’m friendly, I will treat you well. You’re one of us, which means we’re going to protect you. You’re part of our group, and that gives you privileges. Does that make sense? You have to follow that up in terms of the intention. This is not a device to get people to like you and then go ha, ha, I’ve got it now. Now I’ll move onto something else. If you break the very intention, the very thing that got you there in the first place, well, you’re not carrying through. You’re not fulfilling on your unconscious promise. Does that make sense? Did you get the idea of what I’m talking about here? This is actually kind of important because really what you’re doing here is you’re making promises. And no one likes a person that breaks their promises, even if it’s an unconscious one. They come in with a certain expectation and now they’re being treated harshly. It’s kind of like what happened over here with Mike, is it? John. Close, sorry. What happened with John? You may have noticed I cheated a little bit as well because we had a friendly greeting first. The second time, I began a friendly greeting to make sure that he was in the program, and then ignored him. It’s actually worse than just ignoring him. I opened a promise, and then I canceled my promise. I didn’t fulfill my promise. Do you see how that works? That’s the other reason why I got a stronger reaction. I did that to cheat so I’d get a better reaction. Sorry. You have to fulfill on your promises, especially to the unconscious mind because that’s where, all the juju is. Does that make sense to you? Do you mind turning around sideways a little bit so we can actually get your handsome features? Wave hello to the camera over there, there you go.

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So our server was just walking across the restaurant, she looked our way and I gave a little flash. She stopped dead in her tracks and made a B-line for the table.

Igor:

Right.

Audience:

Then the woman who was serving water, I gave her a flash and every time she came back to serve water, she lit up like a Christmas tree when she looked at me. It was fun.

Igor:

Its powerful stuff, isn’t it? It seems like a small throwaway thing, but honestly, if you do this and carry through, follow through on the implied promise, shall we say, this stuff will take you a long, long way. I wish I’d been sitting in a chair like you are right now and got it this easily because it took me a long, hard road to find this out. The irony is academia has know this probably in the ‘60s or so. Maybe even the ‘50s. Maybe even earlier, but those are the earliest references I found for it. It’s just that it’s buried away in some little archives. Someone thought, oh, this is interesting. Let’s move on. I’m going, WOW. When I found it, it was like I had found the secret Bible. The gold is all mine and I’m keeping it! Then you all had to go and take it off me.

Audience:

I made two observations. Dave and I went down to the Daily Grill downstairs. When I did the flash with the hostess, the first time she didn’t respond. She just had a poker face. The second time when I did the flash, all the sudden she lit up like a Christmas tree. That was the first observation.

Igor:

Can I just pause you there before you make the second one?

Audience:

Sure.

Igor:

What would your reading be of what happened there? She was what?

Audience:

Oblivious.

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She was oblivious. Actually, I’d say the first time she was somewhere between oblivious and closed. So oblivious, she didn’t know how to react to it. It caught her by surprise so she’s a little bit closed. Maybe she’s just in that humdrum, boring work mode and life’s getting on top of her and all the rest of it. She’s oblivious, maybe a little bit closed because she’s not engaging so much. She got the signal, so it works back in the unconscious. The unconscious is going, "Oh, hang on a second. This person just told me I’m part of his tribe, so I better pay attention here." The second time he did it, he confirmed. Remember we talked about fulfilling promises? He fulfilled on his promise. He followed through on the promise he made to her unconscious saying, "You’re still one of us, even though you were a little bit poker faced earlier on. Its okay, I still love you." That’s when she lit up. Does that make sense? So this comes down to trust. Some people need a couple of tests before they’ll start trusting. It seems like you had a little test that went there before the trust came through. Or it burst through that shell that she’d built up around herself for whatever reason. Excellent! That’s a nice observation.

Audience:

The second time was when our waitress came, I flashed her but Dave had a poker face.

Igor:

That’s interesting.

Audience:

Exactly. So when she was serving us, when she looked at me, she was lighting up. When she looked at Dave, she had a poker face.

Igor:

Right.

Audience:

Dave noticed that too. It was like, wow. It was night and day. It was like when she looked at me, she was smiling and all that stuff. When she looked at Dave, she was poker faced.

Igor:

It’s intense stuff. Do you see how powerful this stuff is? This is really the juice. I mean everyone – I’ve had hundreds of people talking about how do

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you build rapport and what’s the secret technique? What do you say, and what stories do you tell? It’s like, I flash the eyebrows. It seems ridiculously simple, but hopefully you understand that the behavior may be simple, but the context you’re embedded in is not. The intention has to still be there. The emotion that drives it still needs to be there. Once you get it right, once you get it natural, it’s pretty damned dramatic. You can’t miss it once you start looking for this. Did anyone else notice that sort of thing? It’s pretty obvious once it starts happening, right? So thank you. That’s an excellent observation. Audience:

I think it’s terrific that he had the persistence to do it a second time when not being reciprocated on the first.

Igor:

Absolutely. I agree.

Audience:

I think there’s always a tendency to not want to try again because they didn’t reciprocate.

Igor:

Because then your own feelings are hurt. It’s like you better like me or screw you buddy. I’ll burn your house down.

Audience:

Exactly.

Igor:

I haven’t, yet. That’s why I have no house.

Audience:

I went to Subway for lunch and I made eye contact with the person that would prepare the sandwich. I flashed the eyebrow because I think I saw her do it first, or tried to do it in the way that was similar to how she did. I didn’t ask for it, but I think she gave me four extra slices of Swiss cheese.

Igor:

So cheese lovers amongst you… the eyebrow cheese flash. Thank you.

Audience:

Real quick, yes. So I went up to the front desk to ask a few questions about where some things are located in the area here, like banks and Internet and all that kind of thing. They saw my badge and the woman says, "Hey, are you with the hypnosis folks?" I said, "Yeah." "Oh, can I try it?" I was like, "Sure."

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Igor:

Let me pause, you there one second. Was anyone else here already a hypnotist before they came today? When people first meet you, how often do you normally get asked or get people to volunteer and to say, "Can you hypnotize me when they first meet you, as a stranger." It is very rare. What you just experienced is something that a lot of people doing street hypnosis, that’s their biggest fear. It’s like, what if they say no? Because a lot of people do say no, what did I do wrong? How can I get past this? How can I make them want to do it? All right, sure I’ll do hypnosis with you. Why? Again, do you see what it means? You’re one of us, or one of them. As soon as she was one of us, well, then it must be interesting to do hypnosis. Hypnosis is an interesting field, but you’ve taken care of trust and comfort, the whole background to rapport, in one fell swoop.

Audience:

These people work here. They see that there are 100 people attending, so they must be figuring that there’s got to be something to this.

Igor:

Right. Which of these other 100 people did they approach? The one that flashed the eyebrows. Seriously, they know you’re a hypnotist. Did anyone come up to you and say, "Oh, I hear you’re a hypnotist and you’re in that whole convention thing. Can you hypnotize me, please?"

Audience:

Actually, it’s interesting. There were two people at the desk. The first one is the one that got talking to me. I was definitely flashing eyebrows back and forth with her. She was telling me about how a friend of hers quit smoking through hypnosis. The person next to her is the one that said to me, can you hypnotize me? She was not the one that I had any eyebrow interaction with. She just saw the two of us.

Igor:

Because you just created a sort of a group.

Audience:

Exactly.

Igor:

Remember what we talked about yesterday in terms of authority? When you have the leader of the group on your side, the other people in the group automatically will adopt you as well, which is precisely what happened.

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Audience:

That’s what happened. So then I said, "Why don’t you come out from behind and we’ll do this." I’m thinking to myself, "Okay, I’ve never done an instant induction with a stranger. Even if I did that with you and I never met you before, we were here in this context. This context doesn’t apply out there."

Igor:

So you think.

Audience:

Sure enough it went easily. I actually had her look in my eyes and I put my hands on her shoulders. I started to tell her to breathe more easily and all this. Then I reached behind her head. I asked her for permission actually. I put my hands on her shoulders. You don’t even have to ask for the permission to put the hand on the head. Once they’ve given okay to some kind of physical contact, virtually anything within reason is within reason. So she went straight onto my shoulder, and I started taking her to a nice place.

Igor:

Let me just emphasize something here. A complete stranger put their head on his chest like this and closed her eyes in public. That is not normal social behavior. Do you see the – it’s very difficult for me to really emphasize just how dramatic what it is we did this morning really is. Hopefully, these stories are bringing some of this to light because if you haven’t done it the hard road, which I have, you won’t necessarily know just how significant and how much easier this makes your life.

Audience:

Exactly. I don’t know about the effect of words, but for whatever it’s worth, I’m telling her the deeper you go, the more relaxed you feel; the more relaxed you feel, the deeper you go. I said, "I want you to go to a place where everything was right and everybody was getting along, and you felt perfect and everything was just going swimmingly and blah- blah- blah." Then when she came out and I asked her, "Where was that place." She said the beach. I never mentioned the beach. I never asked her to be that specific. I think I used swimmingly and that’s what triggered it, for whatever that’s worth.

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Do you see going back to reference experiences like, words through association. They have all these associations attached. When he said swimmingly, of course it opens that category, which includes beach and that becomes a natural reference point to cross-reference into. Do you see how now when you know these little principles – and they are straightforward to understand – suddenly, it opens up your whole capacity of indirect hypnosis, doesn’t it? It’s your ability to talk about one thing, but really something completely different is happening at the same time. Doesn’t that open it up to you all? Good job. You just did a whole little conversational covert hypnosis bit within regular hypnosis, and they never even knew it. Good job. Thank you. Give him a round of applause. Do you want to turn sideways a little bit so that the camera can see you as well?

Audience:

Sure, I can turn sideways. We had a number of things to do, so I didn’t actually do a lot of specific interaction, but it was very interesting. I don’t generally like security people and police officers. I just don’t like them generally. They’re okay, but they have this authority thing that I don’t care for. I did it to several of those security officers, and I got more smiles coming back at me from the security officers and eyebrows raising back. I thought, ooh, that’s cool. The reason I’m up is because I did it to somebody that didn’t do it back to me. We were rushing up here. We were running late. We were in the elevator, and he was just sitting back. I didn’t do it back to him a second time. I guess I was the one that didn’t do it back, but he just kept looking at me out of his eyes, which was kind of interesting.

Igor:

Notice, you got someone who was slightly closed off. You might have just needed more of a surprise to open that person up. But the eyebrow flash itself might be enough of a surprise. What you’re describing, again, is probably similar to what happened over here with, was it Mickey who did it the second go? I can’t remember. Anyway, whoever did the double eyebrow flash thing and he’s sitting there going, "Do I know him? I don’t know what to do now. I feeling socially

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 awkward now because maybe I know this person and I’ve blanked him, which is not allowed." All these things are going through his mind and I don’t know this for a fact – who knows – but I suspect if you had done it again or given another friendly gesture, he might have lit up and gone, "Wow, I guess this guy’s really cool. I like him." Again, there are no guarantees because if he’s really stuck in his closed loop, it’s his personal issue and you may need more to break through that ice. To be fair, people who are that closed are relatively rare in the world. So are you enjoying this? Was this a useful start to the day? Let’s see if you can take all this stuff further and go to a slightly different area. This is going back to what we talked about over here with swimming and so on. As hypnotists, we’re working with experiences. Those are our building blocks, right? You build the right sets of experiences, emotions, behaviors and all the rest of it flow out of that. Where do people store their experiences? In their unconscious in the form of memories. A memory really is a, shall we say, a conglomeration of experiences stuck together into a ball saying, that was a specific event and there were sights there and sounds, feelings, tastes, smells even. They’re all bunched together into this “memory.” When it comes to memory, there are three kinds of memories we can work with hypnotically. In conversational hypnosis – and this is different from hypnotherapy – we’re only interested in two of them primarily. ♦

The first type of memory is called hyper-amnesia. Hyper-amnesia is, basically, recalling something very vividly. It’s increased memory recall. Those of you interested in forensic hypnosis and things like that well, hyper-amnesia is where all of that occurs.

♦

The second level is called the revivification. The difference between hyper-amnesia and a revivification is hyperamnesia is increased recalled, but there won’t necessarily be that much affect. In other words, they won’t be feeling that much; they’ll just be very clear that it happened.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Let me give an example, if I may. Can anyone here recall something that happened to them when they were younger, maybe in their childhood or in their early adulthood that was, at the time, pretty traumatic, pretty intense? When you think about it now, you know it occurred but it doesn’t really bother you? You might even laugh at how silly the whole thing is now. Does anyone have something like that in mind? Think about it. You can probably quite clearly recall the event, the details of it. Maybe the people involved, maybe even to the point where you’re pretty clear about who said what to whom or who did what to whom, but you’re missing the emotions of it. So you may have a clear memory, you may have hyper-amnesia in terms of the memory is very clear and the information is very clear, but the emotions have detached from it so you’re not re-experiencing the moment. You’re not reliving the moment. Does that make sense? In revivification, on the other hand, you’re actually reliving the moment. You’re being put back inside it. Who here enjoyed the inner smile? If you enjoyed the inner smile it’s because it wasn’t hyper-amnesia. You weren’t just recalling it factually. You were reliving it at some level. You were having the experience again. If you imagined your neurology being like lights on a Christmas tree, more lights were flashing up now. Make sense? ♦

The final one is called the regression. To take out analogy to an absurd degree, in a regression you become the Christmas tree. In the regression, you go back to that age and you have no recollection of the future. In other words, you’re having that experience as if for the very first time, which brings up some very interesting paradoxes. Just a quick story– Everyone here know who Milton Erickson was, a great psychiatrist and doctor. He brought the field of hypnosis forward by immense degrees. There’s a great story of him doing one of his workshops with psychiatrists. This is in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and he has all these big-bearded psychiatrists crawling around on the floor being 5-year-old children because that’s part of his therapy for whatever reason. He decides to amuse himself so he’s

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 talking to one of the guys with a big bushy beard. He talks to him and he’s like, "What’s your name?" "Johnny." "How old are you, Johnny?" "Five." He goes, "Johnny, what’s that on your upper lip?" He’s got a big mustache, right? Johnny goes, "Its hair." He goes, "How did it get there? What is that? I mean do 5-year-old boys normally have hair on their lip?" "No." "So how did you get that hair on your upper lip?" Little Johnny thinks and he thinks, and suddenly it dawns on him and he goes, "I know! It’s from when I was older." In a regression, you don’t just have the experience, you actually have the full mental, shall we say, processing capabilities of a 5-year-old, a 10-year old, a 20-year old or wherever you were at that time in life. Does that make sense? If we were talking therapeutically speaking, we’re interested in these two: vivification and regression. That’s where we can create very powerful changes in people. In terms of conversational hypnosis, we’re interested in hyper-amnesia and revivification. We do not want regressions because really it’s too intense for a conversational covert environment. It’s pretty obvious when it happens. Did anyone ever see someone throw a temper tantrum? Don’t they look like a 5-year-old when that happens? Guess when they learned it? That’s an example of a partial regression. Part of their psyche, shall we say, regresses to five years old, and they behave that way. They feel that way. Then if you have that intellect stuff on top of it, and the intellect can’t explain how they’re feeling. They can’t explain their behavior, which is why you’ve got this weird disconnect. Does that make sense? That’s just a little aside. In terms of what we’re doing, in terms of conversational hypnosis, we’re interested in this. Now this is all a sliding scale. It’s not to say the phenomena in front of me, right now is a regression. It’s not a revivification

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 because his eyebrow is arched by 30 degrees to the left. It’s a sliding scale. Start with regular memories. Then they become very clear memories, hyper-amnesia. Those memories become so clear that you start to feel them. That’s a revivification. Then they become so real as you feel them, that it sucks you into it and all your experience, is that which is a regression? So it’s a sliding scale. A mild regression can look like an intense revivification, and so on. Do you see where I’m going with this? So we’re interested in hyper-amnesia and revivification, depending on the kinds of things we want to do. Whether we want to build experiences up, or if we’re going to have all the intellectual start-up things engage. hyperamnesia will be more intellectual because they can appreciate and evaluate the experience. Revivification will be a more emotional thing, because they can feel and engage or take the resources from that time. Make sense? What I’d like you to do is get together with a partner, and I want you to talk to them about a pleasant trance experience that they’ve had recently. You’ve been here for a day and a half now. You should have had at least one such event. Everyone here has had at least one trance-like experience that was pleasant. I’d like you to talk to your partner about that. Now as the hypnotist, whilst you’re talking about this, what I want you to do is take note of a couple of things. Take note of their body language. Head tilt, shoulders and so on, especially if it makes a dramatic shift. They might eyebrow flash in the middle of something they’re saying. They might suddenly go from talking about it to leaning forwards. Maybe their movements become more animated. Do you see where I’m going with this? So you’re looking for a sudden shift within that and their tonality. They might stress a certain word. They might lean on a certain word. They might emphasize something. When that occurs, I’d like you to listen for the word or the phrase they were using at that point in time. For example, I might talk about walking on the beach in Thailand. The sun was just so warm. What was it? So warm. By the way, it’s just because I recalled something there. When I recalled the actual sensation of walking

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 down that beach, my hands naturally just wanted to open up. It’s just a physical expression, and my tonality shifted naturally. That’s called a personal trance word or at least I call them personal trance words. They are little handles that people have screwed onto their experiences, which connect straight into that. Make sense? So I’d like you to collect their personal trance words and, if you can, the mannerisms that goes with them, too. That’s it for now. Stick with that partner, then we’ll come back and we’ll talk a little bit about that. Then we’ll throw in another round. Does that make sense to you? This whole thing should only take about, I don’t know, a couple of minutes each. So if I give you three or four minutes in total for both sides to do it, it should be plenty. You’re not interested in a whole dialogue about the whole thing. Just get a little bit of a description. The question you want to answer in your own mind is, can you mentally put yourself in the place they were at? Can you put yourself on my beach in Thailand right now? The answer you’re looking for is really actually no. All you know is one element of it. That it was warm. What do I mean by warm? Is it hot like an oven? Are we talking about a little bit warmer than in here, which is chilly? What do I mean by warm? Do you know the color of the sand? What kind of surf was there? Was the tide in or was the tide out? Were there people there, or was I on my own? You don’t know any of these details. So you need to find those out so you can create a mental picture of what I was experiencing. Does that make sense to you? In the process of doing so, just listen out for the personal trance words and see what comes out. Easy, off you go. So you’ve both had a chance to have a chat about the other person’s trance experience. Did you spot some personal trance words and mannerisms? Yes? I apologize. I thought you were asking a question there. Good. Actually, we’ll do that. We’ll go with you. Put your hand up if you spotted personal trance words and the themes and so on. Only half of you did? Go on now let me see those hands. Probably a lot of shy ones

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 are going, "I didn’t put deodorant on today. Don’t make me put my hand up." Good. So now that we have that, what are we going to do with this? The first thing to realize is that was a relatively normal conversation, wasn’t it? You could spot the same kind of things going on in an average, everyday conversation. If someone comes back from a holiday and you go, "Oh my God, how was it? Tell me about it." This is important to note because this is where we can start creating revivifications or hyper-amnesia conversationally, which is kind of the point of this whole training seminar. What I want you to do now is, let’s see, what’s the best of way of doing this? Okay, what we’re going to do is, you’re going to start assuming you haven’t seen each other for a while. It’s the same partner that you just worked with. I just want you to make the assumption so you can practice your whole hypnotic rapport technique. Make sense? We’ll start – this is not Human Resources – kidding. You’ll start with your inner smile. You’ll eyebrow flash. You’ll watch – very important – you’ll watch what happens right after the eyebrow flash, how they respond. Did they have a smile? Did they tilt their head? Did they do something with their hands? You’ll mirror that back as you’re sitting down and maybe shaking their hand as part of greeting. Make sense? So this is your starting point. Step two is you’re going to repeat essentially the same conversation you just had. Let’s call this exploring. We’re going to get some details from them. Really, you’re going to repeat what you just did, but we’re going to do it more purposefully so you can, shall we say, role play a regular kind of meeting. This time putting in all the things you want to be putting into practice. Does that make sense? All right, this is going to be fun. Step three I’m going to call H+. They are related, but they are different. Remember, it’s the same creature; different moods. All I want you to do – and in order for this to work, let me just emphasize, this is just a training exercise. This is not anything that you’ll necessarily be doing in real life in the real world.

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You’ll see why in a moment. It sounds like you’re a little bit strange if you try to do it in the real world. It could work, but it’s also got a good likelihood of just embarrassing you. So I’m just warning you right now. Once you’ve identified their personal trance word and some mannerisms that go with that, what I want you to do is mentally make a switch inside yourself. Go into your, what I would call H+. Intend to hypnotize them. Really want them to experience how good trance feels. Start feeling a little of that yourself. Do you remember yesterday when you did the, 'That’s right' exercise? Who recalls that one? That’s all you’re going to do right now. Remember that feeling you had yesterday and once you’ve had a chat with them about their trance experience and once you’ve got the information you want, switch yourself. Remember how you felt yesterday doing 'That’s right'. All you’re going to do is look at your partner and go,"That’s right, that’s right, there you go, that’s right, there you go, very good, that’s good." Is that easy? This is just the warm-up to doing a proper vivification, which will also work in the real world, in the real streets. For now I just want this as a warm-up to get you ready so you’re performing the vivification easily. And it’s going to be a lot easier for you this way. Does that make sense to everyone in terms of the exercise? You had a question? Audience: ♦ Do you both tell a story and then do this afterward, or is it one way? Igor:

All of this is going to happen with just one person. Let’s assume that Tim and I are working on this exercise. Is that okay with you, Tim? Do you want to come up just so we can show them a little bit of what I mean? So Tim comes up. I’m seeing Tim. How’s it going? Notice a little eyebrow flash and all the rest of it. Tim is sitting down. So tell me, "Have you had a trance lately?" The answer you’re looking for, of course, is yes. "Tell me a little bit about that." So now I’m asking him about the experience, right? Once I’ve had this conversation – he’s not asking me anything. I’m just talking to him and I’m

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 being fascinated by that. Once I’ve talked to him about his experience, what I’m going to do is go, "That was interesting. Thank you. That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s it, that’s right, all the way, all the way there you go that’s good." That’s it. Once he’s finished his little cycle – we’ll give him a few minutes to enjoy that. Hello. Welcome back. Once he’s done that, I want you to pretend that you haven’t met yet, so you’ll both turn your backs to each other a little bit to break the social contact. Then it will be his turn as the hypnotist. So as soon as he sees you, it’s his turn to do the, there you go, eyebrow flash and all the rest of it. Now he directs me through the same experience. Does that make sense? So it will be entirely one-sided, you’ll break contact, go back into the same pair only this time the other person will be the hypnotist. Is that clear? Does that make more sense? All right. Thank you. Give him a round of applause. All right, everyone, off you go. Feel free to come up here. I’ll turn these things on. What kind of things did you all notice during that exercise? What happened? Anyone? Do you want to come up? Audience:

One of the things that I noticed and I kind of have a question about, is how easily that just - slips into. My question is: ♦ Is the trance that we’re in, in the trance of the class, make that more available?

Igor:

Yes.

Audience:

Okay.

Igor:

Let me just put a caveat on that. There are two reasons for that, just so you get the whole picture. The first reason is because you all have been in and out of trances a lot today. Actually in the last two days.

Audience: ♦ Which is similar to like, if you’ve got somebody and you’re bringing them in and out? Igor:

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Exactly. It is a fractionation. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



The other thing is you have a social context here that allows for people to slip into more overt trances more easily. Make sense? The corollary to that though is – and this is what we’re developing here is – you’re creating the kind of context where you will absolutely get very profound conversational trances. They may not be like this, but people will be like this. Audience:

In both cases actually, they were like that.

Igor:

Of course. Here they will be because, as I said, this context allows for it. A normal conversation doesn’t, so it’s relatively rare that will happen. We’re just taking each of the pieces and we’re polishing them, so you’re aware of how each piece feels in an ideal situation. Then when we put it together in a more live situation, little bits will go wrong here and there, but overall, the tendency will still be towards trance and have the same impact. Does that make sense?

Audience:

It does. Then the other thing that I noticed was the inner smile. To share from that place with the person you’re with, it’s like you just fall in love with them.

Igor:

Right. I agree. Actually that phrase falling in love with them, is actually very close to the term. In the old school, hypnotic rapport – what was it they used to call it? It was like infatuation or a seductive term. I can’t remember what the actual term was, but it’s a very intimate sort of feeling. Hence, I strongly recommend that if you’re going to take it – I mean we’re taking right now, the whole thing to the extreme. In normal day-to-day interactions, you’ll put a little bit of that charm on it and a little bit of that glamour, but not too much because it’s overwhelming for a lot of people. If you do too much of it, some people just will feel uncomfortable because it just seems like this is weird. Every time I go there, it’s like this crazy world I go into, and they can’t handle it yet. Over time, you may be able to fractionate them into that experience. But again, you want to see how much the individual, in the real world, in that context can handle before

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you up the ante a little bit. That’s just part of your responsibility as, I guess, an ethical human being. You don’t push people too hard because if you do, by the way, then you’ll go down the other road where you’ll have no friends because they’ll be afraid to hang out with you. It actually happens. Erickson – as much as I admire the guy – towards the ends of his days had very few friends. People were terrified of going to dinner with him because they’d find themselves passing the salt and pouring him some water without him ever asking for anything. He was using these non-verbal influencing skills. To him it was just fun, like a prank, but he was overdoing it and they were frightened by it. This is the other side of what you’re learning to do. You must understand that whilst it might seem tempting right now to make everyone in the world love you and you’re the best thing ever and so on, sometimes the best thing you can do is not. Does that make sense? It’s a balancing act. Sometimes you turn it on a little bit and that’s it. Sometimes you turn it on a little bit more. Sometimes you don’t do it at all. It’s a real balancing act, depending on who you are who you’re with, what the context is, your relative needs and so on. Make sense? Audience:

It does. Then to be on the receiving end of that, I mean there was a real gentle sweetness and there was a little bit of – even in trance – a consciousness, like a choice point of how much permission am I going to give here.

Igor:

Right. That choice point is always there. Some people have learned to ignore it for whatever reasons, but it’s really inside everyone’s mind. Hence, you want to always treat your people with respect. You need integrity because when you violate integrity, at some point that choice point will go against you. It will automatically switch against you. You might get away with it once or twice, but after a while, as with Erickson for example, the choice point switched against him. The defense mechanisms people ended up having was, I’m just not going to hang out with him anymore. Does that make sense? Does that help?

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Yes.

Igor:

Thank you.

Audience:

Well, I was working with my exercise partner and I described my experience to him. He smiled and looked in my eyes and all the sudden, his eyes seemed very wide to me. Fascinating! I just felt myself going into a trance. My eyes closed and as I exhaled, he said, "That’s right." As he did that, I went into this expansive space that was all pink and blue lights. Diffuse light, not glaring, but very pleasant, it felt like a huge space and momentarily all the voices in the room went away.

Igor:

Welcome to hypno-land. What have we got here? We’ve got a visual hallucination and we’ve got a negative auditory hallucination, and this is just a normal conversation. It’s just part of normal everyday interactions, folks. It happens. It’s just that people don’t ascribe the same meaning to them when it happens normally. Thank you. That’s an awesome experience to have had, isn’t it? By the way, who here wants to know how to be able to achieve that within just a regular induction by saying actually very little? Anyone? On day four or five, I believe we’ll be coming onto that. So you better pay attention.

Audience:

Natalie had a physical experience in that she experienced warm energy running down both of her arms. I hadn’t heard that yet. I mean she felt it in my presence again just relating it. So I thought that was extremely interesting.

Igor:

Oh, the things that I found particularly interesting – apart from the little boogie I’m about to make for the phone – is the fact that you have now become associated to that experience enough that just by telling you about it, the experience happens again. Isn’t that interesting how that works? Because now he’s part of that whole conglomeration, so by talking about it, it reengages the same pattern, the same mechanism and, again, out comes that sort of energy type feeling. Awesome! Thank you.

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Audience:

I had a new experience with this one too, or maybe I’m just first aware of it. Mine involved going back to a time when I was riding horses. I was aware of the noise, but soon the noise was taken up by the sound of horses hooves and the horses huffing and puffing as we’re chanting.

Igor:

So it switched a meaning in your mind and became something else.

Audience:

That’s the first time I’ve noticed something like that.

Igor:

Do you all see how flexible the mind is? Everything you think is real, I’m sorry to tell you all, it’s like the blue pill from The Matrix. Everything you think is real is not. It is a hallucination generated by your brain. If for no other reason, think about it. Your senses – sight, sound, touch and so on – are converted to electrochemical signals to come up in through your nervous system and so on. Its electricity or chemistry depending on which part of the spiral you look at. Then it hits your brain and your brain has to make meaning out of all of this and give you something, an experience, that allows you to navigate through the world and survive and reproduce and do whatever people do. Make sense? But it isn’t real. If ever you’ve seen an optical illusion, it’s something that tricks your brain to see something that’s not there, that’s one of the reasons we can't quite figure it out. We know it’s not real, and yet somehow it still works. Does that kind of make sense? Hypnosis allows you to create different realities. Now we’re getting into some really kind of tricky stuff here because it really is. It allows you to do the kind of things that other people go to jail for and not even risk that because it’s all produced inside the brain anyway. Does that make sense? This also means you have a great responsibility. You don’t just mess around with people’s realities just for the hell of it. You’re doing it in an ethical way. In other words, in a way that is a genuine force for good for those individuals, in a way that frees them up to be a better human being, to achieve more things and so on.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 If along the way you happen to get something of what you want as well, it’s a win-win as far as I’m concerned. Everyone gets something positive. That’s where your integrity and your ethics are important, because you’re walking around in someone else’s mind and there’s a responsibility that comes with that. Does that make sense? Do you like this so far? Who here realizes that you’re not even at the end of Day 2 yet? Isn’t that something? Audience:

My question is – my ultimate goal is the same thing that you were just talking about H+ essentially. What if freeing them up and giving them more choice actually destroys whatever their secondary gain was for having been limited?

Igor:

Then that’s something you need to give them a choice for. You can give the unconscious mind a choice before that happens. It’s like saying should people know what happened to them in their past? Well, that’s really up to them because some things they can’t handle yet. If you start freaking them out and causing them to have reactions, that’s not very healthy for them. If they ask for it and they know how to get through it, I see no problem with that. They’ve asked for that, they’re trying, they just don’t know their way around it. That’s a very different scenario to people just happily going on with their lives and then suddenly, life explodes in their face. And they go, I don’t think I want to live in this world. They might not emotionally be able to cope with that yet. You can, of course, massage things along a little bit by preparing someone to be ready for a bigger world, so to speak. But then it still takes them to a choice point where they decide - I now feel safe inside myself safe enough that when I see or feel or experience the limits of the world I’ve built around myself, that I feel constrained by it and I wish to get beyond it. You can’t push them outside of those boundaries because then you are, in my opinion, doing quite a bit of violating in terms of their own mental experience.

Audience:

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Agreed, two things. Number one is you said they make a choice. Sometimes when I’m watching people’s body language, often times they’ll



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 go no, which means their unconscious mind is saying yes. I’m willing to make a choice, but the conscious part of me is not willing to make that same choice. Igor:

You’ll get to realize this as well. When you say to people, "Are you willing to change?" They’ll go, "Of course." You’ll get both. Again, don’t stick with head nods and head shakes as an expressed meaning. You need a little bit of testing around those areas as well. Take everything as an indication, and then test it a little bit. Yes. You absolutely, get that and usually I’ll go with the unconscious response because it’s the one that has kept them safe, their entire life and will continue to do so.

Audience: ♦ And you’re going to show us how to do the testing and all the rest of that sort of slow movement into those areas? Igor:

Yes. That’s where I need you all to keep your eyes open in terms of their calibration and stuff like that. When there’s a dramatic shift, either they’ll increase tension or decrease tension, or stress response or something like that. It’s not all about tension. Sometimes it’s about stillness and so on, but then again, stillness is not the only thing. For example, when people go into trance, they tend to have less movement. Now do I look particularly stressed right now? Hopefully, the answer would be no. As opposed to – let’s say that we’re talking about something that is somehow psychologically threatening to me. Now I’m still moving less, but there’s a different quality to it. Can you see that? Those are the things you pay attention to. If you’re not sure, you reintroduce the same idea again, and if you get the same result again, then after two or three times, it’s like, all right, I get it. Let’s leave that one alone for a while. Does that make sense? In fact, I know one hypnotist, the aforementioned Dave Dobson, who is now passed away, sadly - that’s how he’d judge whether or not he’d work with a client. They’d come in for a session and he’d say, "Are you ready to make this change that you’ve come here for?" He’d check them out ahead of time and talk about things that they agree with and disagree with to get yes and no signals and so on.

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Let’s say their head nod was a yes and the shake was a no – it doesn’t have to be, but let’s say that’s what it was. Then he’d go, "Are you ready to make this change?" They’d go, "Sure, absolutely." Or they would go, "Yes." So he goes, Great. Well, I have a sense that you really enjoy the marina. If you walk down this road for like half an hour to all the boats and so on, just go and hang around there for the next hour or two, and then come on back and we’ll have a chat." They’d come back and consciously they’re totally confused because they think they just said, "Yes, I’m ready to change." and you send them off to watch the boats. What the hell. Then they come back and he’d say, "Are you absolutely ready to change right now." They’ll go, "Yes." He’d say, "By the way, have you seen the flower garden over in this direction?" He might even do it two or three times. Eventually, they’ll come back and, of course, things are happening at the unconscious level right now. They’re here for a reason, so it’s percolating stuff. We’re talking more about therapy right now. Eventually, they’ll come back and he’ll say, "Are you ready to make this change?" They go, "YES, already!" He goes, "Oh good, come on inside. Let’s have a chat." Audience:

Got it.

Igor:

Does that answer your question about testing?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

Thank you. It’s actually very straightforward. By the way, do you see the congruity in his response? That’s how you test. It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. Hence, we’re not going to be spending too much time on it. But if your field’s so closed, you can’t test. It’s as simple as that. Make sense?

Audience:

Yes. Can I ask my second thing? It’s quick. It’s easy.

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Absolutely.

Audience: ♦ That’s right, when you’re saying that to the person, this works conversationally? Igor:

No. Well, yes and no. If you’re doing it conversationally, then you’re moving, in my opinion, into an area of what I would call semi-covert hypnosis. In other words, people know you’re doing something, but they can’t figure out what it is. If they know you’re a hypnotist, they’ll probably have figured out that you’re hypnotizing them somehow. It’s just they don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s nothing they can resist. Make sense?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

So it would take you out of the covert category because, well, people know that you’re up to something, even if they can’t quite figure out what that something is. If you try to do it totally covertly, then you just come off a little odd because, why is this guy going 'That’s right' constantly. That doesn’t make sense. If you’re doing it on purpose, of course, and you’re fine with them realizing that something is sort of up, then that adds fuel. It becomes a frame, like something’s happening only I’m talking to your unconscious not your conscious. When we get to the conscious unconscious dissociation, that on its own can have a profound hypnotic effect.

Audience:

So it changes the context.

Igor:

It will change the context significantly.

Audience: ♦ Is there a classification of that type of 'That’s right' that works conversationally? Igor:

How do you mean? You mean like saying okay, have I talked to you about your holiday? Okay, etc.

Audience:

Yeah, you see an unconscious response to something you are doing with them conversationally. You don’t have to say, 'That’s right', because it’s going to move them less covertly.

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Igor:

If you want one of those things, the simplest thing you can do is to mirror the non-verbal trance response. Let’s say the thing you’ll be saying 'That’s right', to is that they’re blinking more often.

Audience: ♦ So you just blink more? Igor:

Exactly. You’ll talk and as soon as they start blinking more often, you’ll talk about I was tying my shoelace and it was a great day because I just figured out how to tie my shoelace for the first time. Then maybe they’ll take a breath in, and you’ll smile and go, and it took me forever (inhale) just to figure out how to tie a shoelace. I don’t know why. I was maybe a bit slow as a kid, who knows.

Audience: ♦ So you’re communicating on the non-verbal channel? Igor:

Exactly. You’re reinforcing what they’re doing that’s moving them towards trance.

Audience:

Awesome! Thank you.

Igor:

You’re welcome. These are great questions, everyone. Thank you. Give everyone a round of applause. Those were awesome questions. Do you want to come up? Come up on this side if you want, or that side, who knows?

Audience:

Hey, Igor. It occurs to me looking back on stuff that I’ve conversationally done revivification, but I did it for things that were unintentional. I did this…

Igor:

For negative things?

Audience:

Yeah, absolutely and I wound out getting a total…

Igor:

Have you ever heard of the term a pity fest?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

That is called a revivification by lots of very good hypnotists, who are both in lots of H- because they’re going, "Oh my life sucks." "Yeah, I had that

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 happen to me to." They’re constantly sucking each other down to a negative thing. They’re reinforcing the negative experiences. In some families, you’ll get a lot of these loops happening where people are reinforcing – see, you failed, and here’s another example of how you failed, and here’s another example of how you failed. So they’re revivifying failure. Not intentionally, not out of desire to harm. I guess the best phrase would be out of ignorance because they don’t realize the harm that that’s doing. Their intention is good in the sense that they want to protect, say, their child from making a mistake by reaching too high. They’re warning them like, you know that will go wrong. Then, of course, they’re creating a selffulfilling prophecy by revivifying and putting their attention more and more on failure, so that’s the cycle that gets reinforced and so on. Does that kind of make sense? Audience:

Absolutely.

Igor:

But now, of course, as a great hypnotist, you have the power to change all that. Do you not? Oh, come on everyone, let’s try this again. You have the power to change all this, right?

Audience:

Yeah, right!

Igor:

That’s much better. You all were worrying me there for a moment.

Audience:

Here’s my question. ♦ How would one deal with like an accidental abreaction? I mean in terms of say, I’m talking about a thing that may have happened, like a street fight or something along those lines. Someone’s listening to my story, and they’re envisioning a moment where they may have experienced a thing…

Igor:

Ask me again after the break, because we’ll need to do another couple of processes before I can answer that question properly.

Audience:

Cool.

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Okay?

Audience:

Absolutely.

Audience:

So basically, you’re saying my father and step-mother were great hypnotists when they told me repeatedly about the things we did when I was with them. And my mother would get upset, because I could never remember the things that I did with her that were fun. Because they kept…

Igor:

They created a memory block on the fun experiences and a hyperamnesia of the not-so-fun experiences, if I understand you correctly. A lot of parents are very good hypnotists. There are people who are fortunate enough to have very positive hypnotists in their life. They’re a force for good, but let’s face it, in some families, the hypnotists aren’t the most eloquent with the way that they enforce or reinforce positive characteristics. Is anyone in here a hypnotherapist? That’s where you get your income from, right? Undoing the work of the accidentally negative hypnotist. Hence, the more people know about this stuff, the less likely it is that we’ll need a job. Sorry everyone, our job is to put ourselves out of action. Is everyone cool? Let’s do another exercise. Let’s just fulfill the promise that we’ve been building up. This is going to be a lot of fun. Let’s see how much for time we have. Okay, good. This is going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to start again with the hypnotic rapport. In other words, the inner smile, have a little eyebrow flash, a little bit of mirroring depending on what happens next. Again, explore the same scene with this person. For now you can kind of rush this step a little bit because you pretty much know it’s coming already. Now in Step 3, when we’ve got the H+, it’s not just going 'That’s right, that’s right', which would be in the real world a little bit obvious or a little bit freaky, like what’s going on here? We’re going to use the same energy, shall we say the same emotional state, the same mindset. So mentally, with your intention, you’re intending to start going 'That’s right, that’s right.' That’s what you’re mentally intending to do.

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What you’re actually going to do is you’re going to use what I call the echo effect. You’re going to echo back their phrases. You’re going to echo back their phrases in the order they came. Now if you’re familiar with the idea of actively listening, do not do that. Actively listening is where you re-interpret someone else’s words and stick your words in there. Instead; hence, opening completely different folders, shall we say, inside their mind. Different associations, you use their words, their phrasing, ideally their tonality and pacing if you can do that too. What is it you reflect? Well, let’s say that my experience was well, I was in the seminar room yesterday and John came up and he made me look at his eyes, and he said sleep and then I felt really, really comfortable. Do you see that if I were scripting out a movie, there are different little sequences going on in that movie? Does that make sense? Each one of these is something that you can echo back at them. So you were here yesterday, and there’s John. He asks you to look in his eyes. Has anyone noticed what I just did, by the way? I echoed, but I made one subtle change. I moved from the past tense to the present tense. So you were in this room yesterday. There is John. He asks you to look in his eyes. Do you see what we’re doing here? Present tense is more likely to revivify. In the past tense, you’re more likely to create hyper-amnesia. Does that make sense? Is everyone clear with that? If your language sticks in the present tense, you’re making the experience more immediate. You’re more likely to revivify the experience, bring it back to life for them. If your language remains in the past tense, even though they start recalling the event, they’re more likely to stay in hyper-amnesia. So, they’ll have clarify of recall, but the experience won’t be as intense for them. It’s a rule of thumb. It’s not 100%, of course, because different people will react differently in terms of how strong their memory is for them anyways. Does that make sense to you? So I’m going to echo these things. Then I’m going to echo them as though I’m still doing my explorer phase. I’ll say,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 "So, you’re in this room and John is there. He asks you to look into his eyes. He asks you to look into his eyes. So what happens next?" "I don’t know. I just kind of close my eyes and feel great." "So you’re in the room. John is there. He asks you to look into his eyes, and then something happens. You don’t know what it is, but you feel good don’t you?" Can you all hear my tonality shifting into that right kind of gear, shall we say? Can you all hear the language being reflected verbatim more or less? And then shift from the past to the present tense. It’s a straightforward process. The key here is to keep control of the conversation. To direct it yourself and to become very hypnotic in terms of your mannerisms and so on. So we’ll have the echo effect here, and tense refers to time rather than physiology. Audience: ♦ So you start echoing right away? Igor:

Typically, I’ll do a quick example of this. That will probably be easiest. Who here likes to do hypnosis? Who enjoys a good trance? Anyone who wants to do it? None of us, yeah. Come on up. Give him a round of applause. Have a seat. [Applause] How are you doing? Having fun? - I don’t know what I did. I volunteered. I know it’s crazy, isn’t it? Who’d do anything like that? Can you think about a particular experience, like a hypnotic experience that you enjoyed? Maybe here recently?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

Like when? Oh, you know what? Can we get a microphone? Can I have a hand-held? I’ll just take this one. I just turned the other one off, so there should only be one on right now. Are you still with me? I’ll hold it for you because you’re not going to have much chance to hold things very long.

Audience:

That’s nice.

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Sorry - There’s a presupposition, isn’t it? So where was this experience? What happened?

Audience:

It happened just yesterday in the lobby.

Igor:

Hold on a second, you’re in the lobby? In the evening or in the daytime?

Audience:

It was light and then..It was night.

Igor:

At night. So it was yesterday evening, and you’re in the lobby. So what happens?

Audience:

I was the hypnotist.

Igor:

You were the hypnotist.

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

You were the hypnotist last night, and you had a profound hypnotic experience. Is that what you’re telling me?

Audience:

Definitely.

Igor:

Wow! How did that happen?

Audience:

I find it so funny, but when you’re doing hypnosis with somebody, you start entering a deep, profound state of trance yourself.

Igor:

So you start entering a deep, profound state. What actually happened in the lobby? Tell me about that.

Audience:

I was sitting with this guy.

Igor:

You’re sitting with someone.

Audience:

Yes. I was doing some word stuff with him.

Igor:

You were doing some word stuff with him, right.

Audience:

Finally, I noticed that I’d calmed down.

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Igor:

You noticed that you’d calmed down.

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

You calmed down.

Audience:

My voice changed really much.

Igor:

And you voice changed really much. Wow. You calmed down. Your voice starts changing. What else happens?

Audience:

I noticed not only his body was settling down, but I followed him in this manner.

Igor:

His body settles, and you start to follow him. You start to follow him. Let me just pause you there. Can you see the changes already occurring? By the way, as far as the conversational trance goes, I really don’t need more than this. I don’t want more than this. I mean we can take this further. I can break cover, shall we say, and go to semi-overt and with that, of course, get more eye closure and strange phenomenon and so on. But as far as a conversational trance goes, that’s all we really need. Did you see his breathing shifting? When he talked about the breathing shifting, he actually became more steady and deeper. Did you see the glazing of the eyes? Did you see the locking expression? Did you notice how his physical movements reduced to practically zero? That’s all we’re really talking about. Thank you very much. Give him a nice round of applause. So, that’s all we’re doing. Did you see the hypnotic rapport? Right? It’s a quick thing. It’s invisible to most people because it’s that quick, but hopefully it’s pretty much a no brainer to you guys, right now. I explored a little bit about stuff. Notice how, at one point, he was starting to take control of the conversation a bit too much,right? He was making a meta-

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 comment. He’s talking about what it’s like to go into a trance, which would have been a great conversation induction on me. Like, you know when you go into a trance, you have these experiences. I’m going, "Yeah, I actually do know that. That’s kind of nice." Right? It’s a great conversation induction, but then suddenly I realized, "Hey, I’m supposed to be the hypnotist here." - No.- So you have to take control of the conversation, and we’ll talk more in later days about how to control and direct the conversation. Then did you see me making the switch? You should have sensed it. I did it relatively overtly, so I didn’t try to subtly move into it. I pretty much switched over. Did you all see the switch happening? Did you all hear me echoing and reflecting back more or less verbatim what he was saying? Occasionally, I made a few switches, especially in tenses. Did you hear the tense switch as well, and the consistency of the tense switch? It’s straightforward, right? Come on up. It really is quite straightforward. Audience:

You mentioned switching tenses, and it seemed like you switched back and forth on them a few times.

Igor:

I didn’t switch too much. He actually kept himself in the past tense more or less continuously. So occasionally, I switched back to the past tense just to catch him in the same place, and then go back to the present tense.

Audience:

Just to say, "Oh come on."

Igor:

Exactly. That’s exactly what it was. Okay? Is everyone clear with that? All right, so just spend five minutes apiece doing that. Really, you only need five minutes so you get a feel for it. Then we’ll have a break, and then we’ll come back and do some more hypno-magic. All right, everyone, off you go. Did you all enjoy that? Was that interesting? Now a couple of people have been asking me things like, what is the purpose of this, how are we going to use it in the real world and so on? The simple answer to that is we’re not there yet.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Remember, we are building reference experiences. We’re building skills. Until you have a skill of being able to put someone in a trance in a conversation, there’s no point in trying to do something with it because otherwise you’ll rush ahead and try to do the thing. You’ll miss the thing that makes it work. Does that make sense? So right now, just treat this as a skill-building exercise, and note the trance responses you’re getting. As long as you get that, you’re in good shape. Easy to do? Other then that, are there any questions or comments on what you’ve done so far? Do you want to come up here? Audience:

A minor question about HR. Let me direct this a little bit differently. In more overt rapport skills, if you’re already in rapport with somebody and you already have a relationship with someone, I know for me if someone is trying to be clever and get rapport when they already have rapport.

Igor:

Then they mess it up.

Audience:

It’s clumsy. It’s awkward.

Igor:

I agree.

Audience:

It’s irritating.

Igor:

I agree.

Audience: ♦ Is there ever a time when HR would show up like that? Igor:

No, because you’ve taken care of that with the inner smile. The inner smile, basically, is the fuel that drives it. What you’re describing is when people are consciously trying to do an unconscious activity. That’s what’s awkward. That always feels awkward or feels wrong and so on.

Audience:

Almost the opposite, like insulting.

Igor:

Exactly. Because then it becomes mimicking rather than mirroring, and people really don’t like that. If your intention is clear – your intention is not to get one over on the other person. The intention is to just have a good interaction and your inner smile is strong.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 In other words, you just feel that connection yourself and then your mannerisms will automatically be natural and correct. Your eyebrow flashes will come in. You might do a little bit of a little head nod or whatever it is that’s part of the interaction, and it will be natural. Your consciousness will be able to check them and go, "Oh look, I just did an eyebrow flash. That’s cool." We might even initiate or say, "Oh, it’s time for an eyebrow flash." But you don’t have to do it. It will do itself. If it feels awkward, it probably is awkward, in which case you’re not doing it the right way. You’re signaling awkwardness. You’re signaling fakeness rather than naturalness. Make sense? Does that answer your question? Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

Come on up.

Audience:

We were doing the induction, and we got to a point where we were trying to bring her to the present, and it kind of went back and forth and then transitioning from past to present, and then transitioning to – instead of using 'That’s right', just using the words that she was using.

Igor:

We’re not using 'That’s right' exactly.

Audience:

Right, but I couldn’t do it. I mean we did everything, and she just wasn’t responding because she was excited about the discussion.

Igor:

All right. This happens. Who were you working with?

Audience:

Alma.

Igor:

Do you mind if we use this as an example? Do you want to come up here just so we can have a demonstration of this? Basically what you’re describing, if I understood it correctly – we’ll see in a minute if I was right or not – is what happens if your partner is taking control of the situation or conversation for you. When you’re doing this, you must be running the conversation and they’re responding. It’s the verbal equivalent of the compliance thing. Does that make sense?

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If you’re doing a street hypnosis thing and you say, "Stand over here." And they go, "Oh, I’ll stand over here for you. How about if I stand over here?" Are they in the right place? No. They are eager and enthusiastic, which is great, but they’re not following, they’re leading at this point. What you’re describing I suspect is an example of this. We will get more into how to do that, but I’ll show you a quick example of what I mean. Is it okay if we talk about this? Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

What kind of situations were you all talking about?

Audience:

We were talking about yesterday and when we were doing the eye exercises.

Igor:

So this is yesterday, right?

Audience:

Yes.

Igor:

So this is yesterday, and you were doing the eye exercises.

Audience:

Right. Where we were just staring at each other.

Igor:

Did you see what happened right there? Did you notice how she wanted to run on? It was yesterday, eye exercises, more and more and more. I did not allow that. I took one unit – and I like to use my hand as part of it. It’s kind of like a little stop signal. It’s not like, stop! I am now going to talk! It’s a more subtle version. It’s like, "Oh, let me just check. This was yesterday, is that right?"

Audience:

Yeah, it was yesterday.

Igor:

It was yesterday. Cool and what happened yesterday?

Audience:

We were doing the eye exercise…

Igor:

It’s the eye exercise yesterday, right?

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Yeah, and we were just staring into each others eyes…

Igor:

Staring into each others eyes, right.

Audience:

Yeah, and we weren’t saying anything.

Igor:

You weren’t saying anything.

Audience:

No, but it was really relaxing.

Igor:

So it was yesterday, right? And who were you with?

Audience:

(Pointing.) What's your name?

Igor:

Oh, this person.

Audience:

Yeah.

Igor:

And you were looking into each others eyes.

Audience:

We’re staring into each others eyes.

Igor:

You’re staring into each others eyes. (By the way, do you see how we’re starting to switch now to the present?) We’re staring into each others eyes and it’s relaxing.

Audience:

It is really calming.

Igor:

Really calming; really calming.

Audience:

Yeah.

Igor:

Do you see those changes, the shifting already happening? Does that make sense to you now? The reason that it doesn’t happen otherwise is because if I let her run on with it, she’ll tell me about it. That’s more hyperamnesia, and then she can get excited about the fact that it happened. What I need is for her to really experience it; hence, a revivification. So I must take control of the conversation.

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The first few seconds pretty much told me what was going on. The very first few seconds told me, "Okay, I need to control it right now before this freight train starts taking out of the station, and I’ll be waving going, wait for me, please." Also, you should notice that as soon as that happened, I only did it two or three times, a very small amount of times and then Alma’s unconscious recognizing the suggestion goes oh, I get it. No pressure. It’s the other way of doing this. Already, Alma started slowing down, the signals started coming through and the induction almost happened by itself at that point. Does that kind of make sense to you all? Do you want to come up and ask a question? Thank you. Just give her a nice round of applause for doing that. Audience:

Something interesting that we found, me and my partner, was actually when I was telling my story, he was having a bit of trouble imitating and actually getting into my mode because he thinks in a different way. Like he’s very visual, and I was doing very auditory.

Igor:

So the trouble was in him reflecting the same language or sounding the same way?

Audience:

Yes, like reflecting the same language and sounding the same way both. It was kind of like he was interpreting it into himself and coming out of himself.

Igor:

May I ask who the partner was? Is that okay?

Audience:

Sure, it was Michael.

Igor:

Sure, so really the simple answer to that, in case it will help, is rather than reinterpreting the thing is literally take the words and imagine they’re like a magic spell. You’re just going to reflect them right back. Literally, the same words. It’s okay if you have difficulty with it initially to just say exactly the same thing. Here’s the secret, and this is actually where it helps you deal with situations like what just happened with Alma. If they’re saying too much

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that you can’t actually recall the words, so you have to start paraphrasing, then they’re running the conversation. Audience:

I think that happened too, with us, actually.

Igor:

I strongly suspect. It’s one of the most common things that make this difficult to do. If they have said so much that you can no longer remember everything that they said and you have to paraphrase it, then they’re in charge of the conversation rather than you. You have a more fundamental problem to fix on the echoing effect. Does that make sense to you? Does that help you out as well?

Audience:

Yes, that makes it much easier.

Igor:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Audience:

I had just one more question. ♦ So it’s all right to cut off after three or four words. It’s not too choppy?

Igor:

So is it all right to…

Audience:

To cut off after three or…

Igor:

So you want to cut someone off after three or four words. Is that what you’re saying?

Audience:

There you go. I guess that’s the answer.

Igor:

Thank you. That’s a great question. Thank you. Come on up. Yeah, go on and give her a round of applause.

Audience:

When you did the demonstration with Alma, in order to take control – I just want to be sure that I am correct. You’ve been echoing her and stopping her gently.

Igor:

I’m stopping her gently from adding more words.

Audience:

Right.

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So I can echo what she’s just said. Exactly.

Audience:

That’s what you’ve been doing?

Igor:

That’s exactly right.

Audience:

That’s all?

Igor:

That’s it. I mean, really, that is the secret to the revivification. If someone’s trying to take over, they’re not doing it on purpose. It’s just that they’re getting carried away by the thing. You’ll find people who are very descriptive, who like talking. That’s how they socialize. They get carried away by their language, by what they’re saying, by the description they’re giving. They get excited by it and so on.

Those people in particular you have to just pause and almost like they can reflect on what’s happened. It’s kind of like someone who’s gobbling up a meal. You say, no, just taste it. The pea itself is really nice. Does that make sense? The responses are straightforward. Did you want to do something quickly Mark, before we carry on? Audience: ♦ How do you take control of the conversation where you actually aren’t the dominant party you’re not alpha in the relationship? Igor:

Day five. Actually, the whole idea of how to take control of a conversation and interrupt them and so on, really, we’re going to focus on, on Day 5 more. I hope I’m just giving you enough here to fix the most common issues here and then in the real world, there are many different reasons and many different ways why people will hijack conversations or take them over and so on. There are many different ways to fix that. And we’ll cover the more significant versions of those on Day 5, if that’s okay with you; otherwise, we’ll be doing too much at one point.

Audience:

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I’m just trying to confirm, huh, to have this fit in my brain a bit. So if we were doing this in an overt way, we might just directly say, so you’re in



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 trance. I want you to step back into that earlier version of you or whatever and actually become that person and use the language. But we are in conversational language to re-associate... Igor:

In NLP, they’ve minimalized this right down to a single phrase, which when done correctly is fantastic, but most people just think it’s magic words and they miss the nuances of it. The phrase itself is pretty smart. The phrase is, see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. That’s the magic phrase. When you’re feeling confident, just go back to that day and just see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Some people just go bang, instantly to it. A lot of people are all right, fine, I’ll do my best, but they’re not really re-experiencing it. Essentially what we’re doing right now is a conversational way of getting someone to see what they saw, hear what they heard and feel what they felt. Then the experience comes to life inside them again. Okay?

Audience:

Thank you.

Igor:

You’re welcome. Useful stuff… All right, everyone, let’s take a quick break. We’ve run over a little bit. Let’s take a 10 or 15 minute break. All right, everyone, off you go.

DVD 8: How to Take Control of any Conversation Without Anyone Knowing What You Have Done Igor:

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Welcome back. How are you guys doing? Are you enjoying yourselves so far? Good stuff? Let’s start taking this a little bit forward. I would like for you to start using this skill, to be able to revivify experiences you don’t even know they’ve had. Wouldn’t that be interesting? We’ll build a certain skill set that you’ll be using later on in the week. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



For now we’re going to start this very softly. Remember when we talked about the trance experiences. They gave you personal trance words and so on? Well, what I’d like you to do now is get together with someone else and we’re going to start the same way. We’re going to start with the HR, the hypnotic rapport. This time when you explore, I would like for you to ask them about a pleasant activity that they have done or would like to do. The kind of activity we’re looking for is something that is calming and soothing, rather than energizing and exciting. I mean things like maybe reading, relaxing on a beach, going for a walk, climbing a mountain – although that can be a little bit of both. So it’s a soothing, calming thing, a pleasant scene. They may have had the experience or they may just want to have the experience but they haven’t actually experienced it themselves. Does that make sense? We’re looking for something that a lower, calmer energy rather than a high and more excited energy. Although we can work with both, it just makes it a lot easier for now. Do you get the kind of scenes I’m talking about, or the kinds of experiences? Shout out some examples of the kind of stuff we’re talking about. A massage would be great. A vacation. What kind of vacation? A vacation to the beach, for example, to the Bahamas on a sailboat, chilling on a sailboat or scuba diving, excellent! So you’ve got a good idea of where we’re coming from with this. The key here is – this is the interesting part – it does not matter whether or not they’ve actually had the experience. What matters is that if they’ve had it, they’ve enjoyed it and it was pleasant. If they have not had it, they would like to have it and it’s something they could imagine what it might be like. Does that make sense? Now when we get to this area here, you will have really nothing to echo because they haven’t told you anything other than just the big picture. So now it’s up to you to create the experience by talking about things that would normally be there. Does that make sense? Here’s where you have to be subtle. Remember the language softeners?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 If the item or the experience that you want to talk about does not absolutely have to be there as part of the experience that they are mentioning, then you need to soften them. Here’s what I mean. For example, on a beach, what would absolutely exist on a beach? Water. A beach without water is called a desert. So you’re pretty sure that there will be some water there. If there’s water there, what is likely to be there? Sky waves. There will be sounds of water. It may be a rushing of or quiet lapping of the surf. You don’t know yet. Do you see the difference? Will there absolutely have to be a breeze? Have you ever been to a beach that has not had a breeze, anyone? So breeze is where we go onto the next step, which is very important, so thanks for bringing that up. If you want to introduce an item that is probably going to be there – we’re talking about things like a breeze, like sand, like sun. It’s very likely going to be there, but you’re not absolutely sure. Then you’re going to throw in your language softeners to make it more acceptable. Make sense? You can do it anyway you want. You can actually talk about it in the second person. Put yourself there on a beach. You’re in the present tense. It’s a beautiful day yada, yada, yada. Or, you can talk about your own experiences as though they’re having it; it doesn’t really matter so much. Let’s go with a simple version describe the thing to them. You’re at the beach. Perhaps there is sand there. Now watch their reaction, if they’re sitting there going like this, do you think they’ve accepted the idea? If they go like this, are they accepting the idea? Or, perhaps there’s something else. It is something else, isn’t it? Yes. What is it? Pebbles. Do you see where we’re going with this? Now you’re starting to combine all the skills we’ve been putting together so far. You’re using your language eloquently to describe a rich scene. You’re using your language softeners to offer possibilities and let them choose something, and once they’ve selected something, you’ll watch their body language to see which one they’re selecting. If you’re offering a possibility and you can see they’ve actually for it and you go, I think it might be pebbles, don’t you? They’ll go yes, that’s right. If they

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 say no, then go no, of course not. It isn’t pebbles. So whatever it is, you’re right. Make sense? If you’re not sure, then just ask them. Well, what is it? Well, it’s sand. It’s yellow sand. Great! Do you see where we’re going with this? The air has a certain temperature. Would I be right about that? I wonder if it’s warm or cool. You may even pause. I wonder if it’s warm or a bit cool? Which one is it? So, whenever there is a possibility that you’re wrong, you’ll throw in a language softener. Make sure that you stack the deck in your favor. Don’t start putting rhinos on the beach. Unless you’re going to Africa, it’s probably very unlikely that’s going to happen. Stick to things that are likely to be there, like warmth on a beach, like sand on a beach and so on. In a woodland environment, you’re likely to have green stuff, like leaves. You may have some fruit on the trees, maybe not. You may have some animals going by and you’ll probably have some dappled sunlight, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It could be winter, and it could be fir trees with needles rather than leaves. Do you see where I’m going with this? Every time that you’re not entirely sure – in other words, you can’t read the signals in terms of what they’re agreeing to, just ask them, which is it? Or is it something different? Smile and say, you can tell me, what is it? Its fir trees, that’s right. All those fir trees and there’s a smell, isn’t there? Other than that, you’re doing exactly the same thing. Present tense, the echo is now replaced by a description. You’re only ever going to offer one description at a time so you get to observe their reaction to see whether they’ve accepted the description or not. If it absolutely has to be there, like temperature absolutely has to be in the air, then throw it out there and the air is a certain temperature. If you’re not sure what it’s going to be, but it’s likely to be one thing over another – for example, it’s likely to be warm rather than cold or cool rather than warm – then you can put in a language softener. Maybe it’s warm. It could be warm. Perhaps it’s warm. I wonder if it’s warm. Do you see where we're going with this?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Then watch their reaction. If you still can’t tell, ask. Is it warm? No. Of course it’s not. Whatever they say then, you agree with. Of course, it’s not it’s cooler, isn’t it? Yes. It’s a cool temperature. Now I wonder if there’s a breeze there as well. Yes, there is a breeze, isn’t there? A cool breeze. How pleasant to have a cool breeze. Do you see where we're going with this?

Student:

So really all we’re doing is we’re tying together a whole bunch of stuff we’ve been doing over the last few days and putting it together in one. Do you think you can do that? Do you want to see a quick example of the setup for it? I won’t do that whole thing because I want you guys to discover a little bit of it. Who would like to come up here and volunteer for the setup, anyone? You’ve already been up here. Come on up. Give her a round of applause. Have a seat. Are you good? Yes.

Igor:

HR check? Yes? So, is there a scene or a holiday or some experience you’ve had that’s pleasant or something you’d like to experience that’s kind of pleasant and soothing?

Student:

I enjoy the mountains here in L.A. I enjoy the mountain views and standing on them.

Igor:

The mountain view in L.A. Have you been to the mountain view in L.A.?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Excellent. Which mountain view have you been to in L.A.?

Student:

Off in Bel Air.

Igor:

Thank you. That’s all I need. I don’t want too much because otherwise I’ll accidentally go into revivification. Now I’m going to take the concept and I’m going to take it out of L.A. why? Because I don’t want to revivify too much of her experience, so I want to start creating new ones, so I’m going to stick with the theme of mountain experiences. So close your eyes and just experience something on a mountain, with a view. Perhaps it’s day time. Is it day time? And there’s that view. It’s so far, isn’t it? That’s right. That’s a pleasant view, isn’t it, on that mountain?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 There’s a certain temperature in the air. I wonder if it’s warm. Oh, it’s cool, isn’t it? Did you see the reactions? The question was I wonder if it’s warm, and the response was a very tiny slow shake. We’re doing what we just talked about. We’re just watching the nonverbal signals. They have a vested interest in telling you because the experience is quite nice. Whenever you’re ready, feel free to bring yourself back. Does that answer your question? Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Thank you. Let’s give her a nice round of applause. I don’t want to do too much of it because otherwise I’m sitting here doing all the work, and I’d rather you guys explore different ways of doing it for yourself. As a rule, if you see too much it stifles you, because you’re trying to do what you saw rather than what you should be doing, which is doing it your own way. The keys are very simple. You saw the HR, the meet and greet. You saw a simple exploration. We’ve got a theme. This is a mountain theme in this case. An experience, shall we say. I’ve removed myself from the actual memory of the experience because I want to actually create an experience. You heard me switch scenes, switch pace, shall we say. In terms of the exercise, by all means, tell them to close their eyes and experience this. You can do it overtly, because these are just training wheels to something else right now. So I don’t mind if it’s not conversational. If you want to do it conversational, that’s fine too. Instead of echoing, now I’m describing. You heard the language softeners when I wasn’t too sure. I’m paying attention to their reactions so I know what’s wrong. If I’m not entirely sure, I ask a question and get a clear response. Does that make sense? Is that easy to do? Yes? No? All right, find a partner and spend about five or six minutes apiece because we want to take this further later on. Off you go. How was that? Did you enjoy that?

Students: Oh, yeah.

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Igor:

Good experience? So you notice how now you’re taking more of a leadership role here. You’re starting to take risks when it comes to the suggestions you’re giving. Before it was pretty much risk free because you were working with their experience. Now you’re working through their experience. In other words, you’re using elements of their experience. Everyone has experienced coolness and warmth, right? Everyone has experienced a breeze or an absence of a breeze. Everyone has experienced comfort or discomfort and so on. So now you’re taking these building blocks of experiences to recreate something new, which may be related to something they’ve already had or something they wished they’d had and so on. Does that make sense? Now what we want to do is we want to start taking it a little bit further in terms of how much control we have of their inner environment. Do you have a quick question? Do you want to come up?

Student:

I had a little trouble. When I was asking the questions, I found myself going into interrogating mode, and I wasn’t doing the practice because it’s new to me. I’m learning to use a new tool and I’m using it all.

Igor:

I understand. What do you mean by interrogation mode?

Student:

Well, instead of asking him questions to get clues and observing him to see if the beach were warm or cold, and he gives me a physical or visual response that’s it’s warm. Instead of asking questions that would lead to getting the information that I was looking for, I started asking questions just to question him, to interrogate.

Igor:

Give me an example.

Student:

The water is cold. Then his response was no, it’s not. So it became a conversation, rather than an exercise covert. That’s what I’m saying.

Igor:

So you know when you ask those questions, right? So all you need to do at this point is throw in a language softener. Do you remember the language softeners from yesterday?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Student:

I wasn’t here yesterday. I think that’s what it is. I just got here today. Hi everyone.

Igor:

Hello. Say hello everyone. What we’ll do is we’ll put you together with one of the assistants to catch you up. This is where some of the language exercises we did yesterday were all about. There’s something we call language softeners. I’ll just go through it very quickly now. It will be a good reminder for everyone.

Student:

Okay. Thank you.

Igor:

You’re welcome. This is interesting, isn’t it? Is this the page we’re looking for?

Students: No. Igor:

Okay, better carry on then. Are these the experiences needed? No, but we do know what this means, right? I’m just checking. Did we cover this yesterday, yes? Hold on a sec, what about this, is that what we’re looking for? Do you see these words: maybe, begin to, could and so on? I would call these language softeners. They make things less concrete. So perhaps you can look at this thing and begin to make sense of it. Perhaps, begin to. You could look at this stuff and start introducing it into your questions, and that might help you to get a less, shall we say aggressive response. Maybe if you did that, they would start having an experience and evaluating for themselves, and then gradually you’d be able to actually read the signals rather than having to demand a respond. Does that make sense to you?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

We’ll make sure we catch you up on this stuff.

Student:

I promise to catch up.

Igor:

It will be easy. Believe me. Any other questions or comments? Come on up.

Student:

I’m just full of questions today.

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Igor:

That’s a good thing.

Student:

This is more out of complete curiosity, and I think I already know the answer myself, but anyhow I just want a confirmation of it.

Igor:

Sure.

Student:

When you’re going into trance and you’re going through the visualization, but you might find that as you’re going into trance you actually go completely off topic in your mind. Like you completely lose everything the person is saying. Can you still get hypnotic gifts within that completely losing everything that they have?

Igor:

And what do you believe the answer to that might be?

Student:

I believe the answer is yes, but I just wanted to confirm that.

Igor:

I would agree with your answer. I would agree with it quite extensively in fact.

Student:

So it’s still a good sign of trance even if you just completely – your mind just completely erases all from it.

Igor:

What you are describing right now has to do with consciousness, rather than with experience. In other words, you’re quite capable of having an unconscious experience of one thing whilst consciously you’re in a completely different area, having something completely different. For those of you who want to have a daily example of that, have you ever felt really happy or really upset for no reason that you could figure out? It’s like I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just feel bad. Or I feel great! Why? I don’t know. I just feel great. That’s when your conscious attention and your unconscious attention are on totally different things. That’s a classic example. In hypnosis, in fact we’ll be getting onto how to do exactly that later on tonight. So it’s very good. Go ahead.

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I had quite an amazing experience when I was trying to talk about floating, the warm water, and Sean told me that I have to imagine something, like imagine that I have a suit that makes my body warm no matter what. It doesn’t matter what the water is. Then he asked me what I want and I said I want safe float. He said your suit will protect you no matter where you go. It was a total different meaning to the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what’s going on, I’m protected. I’m safe and comfortable and at ease. So he didn’t go for water cold or warm or breeze or no breeze. He just…

Igor:

So he’s gone the other direction, which is like, let’s not take any chances here. Let’s just give you what makes my reality real for you too.

Student:

Exactly and it worked too.

Igor:

Exactly because, again, you gave you an option in terms of, here’s a suit and, by the way, it can do this. Are you cool with that? Sure. If he had said, here’s a suit and you’ll be warm whenever, and you’re like I don’t like suits, at that point, I hope a hypnotist should be able to go, hang on a second, there’s something not quite right here. Or it could be something else. Like what? I don’t know. What is it that keeps you warm and safe? Oh, it’s like a blanket. That’s right, an underwater blanket. So you still have that negotiation going on. You have a lot of scope with this stuff, don’t you? That was an excellent experience. Thank you for sharing that. Come on up.

Student:

Well, we have a very nice experience. I’m just not 100% sure that we did what we were supposed to do.

Igor:

It happens.

Student:

It seemed to be that he kept going to his passed experience, as opposed to my creating a new experience based on an older experience.

Igor:

That’s fine. That will happen sometimes, especially if they’re so closely correlated. They’ll take themselves to that, as an example of what you’re talking about. There’s no big deal with that. The bigger issue is, have you

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 been able to create an experience inside their mind that they really haven’t told you much about? That’s the key thing. Have you all done something like that? Have you created an experience inside their mind that wasn’t there before and that they haven’t told you about. You’ve only gotten some loose, general directions about. In time you can actually do this where you just select experiences for them. Be it a mountainside or swimming in the water or whatever it is, and you give them enough selection and you observe which one they respond to best and go, I think today if I were you, I’d go to the mountainside. Inside they’re going, yes, I wanted to go to the mountains! Do you see where we're going with this? What I would like to do is explore some ways of making that a little bit more powerful if we could. Really, one of the main things we’re doing here is we’ve been taking their attention and moving it through the senses, haven’t we? To use the beach, for example, because that’s what we started with, at the beach we’ve got temperature of the air. We’ve got the sight of the ocean waves, the sound of the ocean waves. Perhaps we have some birds flying around, maybe some seagulls. Who knows? If there were some seagulls there, perhaps they would make some sounds, those cries that they do. Incidentally, do you notice what’s happening right now inside your minds? Who here is kind of experiencing a little seagull swirling around somewhere in the back of their mind? Do you see how subtle it can be? I’m just talking in theoretical terms, hypothetical terms, which are very difficult to resist. Does that make sense? Here’s what we started playing with the language of attention. Where attention goes, energy flows is the basic principle here. Where attention goes, energy flows. If you can move their attention onto something, it becomes real for them. If I can move your attention to the possibility of a seagull, it becomes more real, the possibility that you might consider a seagull somewhere floating over some beach. Perhaps that seagull becomes more real when you consider its wing span opening up, so it floats in the breeze.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You can consider that seagull in comparison to any other seagull you’ve seen in your life. Notice its graceful movements. Notice what just happened there? How much more vivid or real did that seagull become inside your mind in just that short little segment, anyone? Did it increase or decrease the, shall we say, reality tone on that idea of the seagull? Increase. Why? Did you notice how I’m cycling through their attention and focusing it back on the seagull in different ways over and over. Each time a little bit more energy goes into this mental seagull so it becomes a little bit more real. Do you see how that works? How can we grab their attention? What kind of language gets their attention? What kind of language moves direction? Notice. If I tell you to notice a seagull or perhaps you can notice a seagull, if I want to hedge my bet a little bit. Notice directs the mind, doesn’t it? What other words direct your mind? Imagine. Student:

Compare.

Igor:

That’s a sneaky one. I like that one. Compare. Consider. Realize, that’s a good one too. Think.

Student:

Feel.

Igor:

Thank you very much. Now we’re going through the senses. See an experience.

Student:

Taste.

Igor:

Taste, of course, and then we have smell too.

Student:

Remember.

Igor:

Thank you, that’s an excellent one, very few people actually come up with. Remember. Recall. Remember some seagull that you’ve seen in the past. Remember that seagull and then compare it to the one that we might be seeing on this beach. Aside from whatever this seagull might be on this beach, consider the possibility that it’s floating on the breeze. Just think about what that would look like. Could you hear it crying? As you think about

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that seagull, can you just realize that it’s got a wide wing span? Notice how calmly it floats. Do you see how it just starts cycling through the same experiences and it begins adding more and more layers of reality onto it each time? Would it be fair to say that you got a sense of that? Yes? Notice, consider, realize, think, feel, see, really these words are not the important things. They’re just what we came up with here. What matters is the principle. These are all words that direct attention from one place to another. Make sense? So I’d like to experience a little bit with attention of language. Let’s not stick it into this induction just yet. The thing I want to do is, just go and find a different partner and just spend a minute or two moving the direction around. You can use these things nakedly if you want. Like notice the sound in the room. Feel the backs of your chair. So there’s an actual experience they’re having right now. You can also add your language softeners for more extreme experiences. Perhaps you can remember another time that you sat in a room. Maybe you might begin to smell or remember the smell or the taste of a favorite meal. Do you see where we're going with this? All I want you to do is cycle through their experience in terms of something they absolutely have to agree to, or will agree to in the softened form. That’s pretty much it. You can do sensations, things they feel here in the room, see here in the room, hear here in the room or even smell in this room– sniff, sniff. You can take a walk through their recollections, their memory and their thoughts. How might you do this? How will turn attention to their thoughts? Interesting idea, isn’t it? You can consider that idea for a while, can you not? Perhaps you can think about something that’s important to you. Maybe that’s something like the way people should be treated or should treat you. Most people think that it’s important to treat someone else well. I think you’re that kind of person. Of course, whilst you’re doing this, watch the other person. See if they’re agreeing with you. If you say, most people think that other people should be treated with respect and they go, ah well, then maybe this person doesn’t think that. Maybe some people deserve it and some people don’t. Who

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 knows? Just observe. You’re looking for a mental yes constantly, as you’re cycling through these things. The easiest thing to cycle through is the physical experience – see, hear, feel right now in the room. Then you have memories and recollections. You have universal experiences. 4. How many people here had a bike when they were young or have been on a bike at least once in their life? 5. How many people here learned to drive a car? 6. How many people here went to school? 7. How many people here made a friend when they were young? 8. How many people here lost a friend when they were young? 9. How many people here had an argument with a friend that they then made up with later? Some of you have never had an argument with a friend that you made up with again? Let’s try that again. How many people here had an argument with a friend and made up later? All right, I was just making sure about this. These are universal human experiences, aren’t they? So they belong on our list. We’re moving their attention to something, and they’ll agree to it. Does that make sense? So, the canned version of this is what people talk about. Oh, you’re sitting in the chair, you’re breathing, you’re feeling the sensations of this and you’re hearing my voice. All very well and good, but not very conversational, is it? We’re sitting on a bus and your shoes are untied, and one of your socks is rolled down. I mean at this point, you’d be forgiving the person for thinking that you’re a little bit autistic. You’re just listing facts that are apparently to everyone. It’s not a very conversational thing that you can do. To make it conversational, it’s okay to include some things that are in their current environment, but you want to go beyond that to mental experiences, to things they’ll agree with in terms of this, is how the world is and how the world works, recollections, universal experiences and that sort of stuff. Do you see where we're going with this? I’d like you to get really creative with this. Really have fun with this. The intention is not to create a trance – although it you want to get into the whole H+ thing, by all means, experiment to see if you can put them into a trance

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 just by having a lot of H+ and talking about experiences that they have to agree with and just see what happens. But that’s not the main purpose. The purpose is just that you’re using the language of attention to navigate their attention through their experiences. And just notice that you can do that and how rich a variety of experiences are available to you. Does that make sense? Go ahead, a quick question? If it’s not a quick question, do you mind coming up here so that we can all hear properly. Otherwise, I’ll just have to repeat it for everyone. Just come up front. That’s fine. Student:

As we use this intentional language and the exercise is to first engage their senses about things that are in the room, and then we can expand beyond that and talk about these universal experiences. I thought that was a third category that you thought we could catch onto.

Igor:

There are many different categories and I invite you to find them all.

Student:

Okay.

Igor:

And then you can tell me afterward what it is I missed.

Student:

There’s something to be said for improvisational jazz.

Igor:

I agree with you. I think that’s a great metaphor. I’d stick to that one, or not. Okay, are you ready for the exercise? Just spend three or so minutes apiece one way. Just roll with it. You should find that at some point it might get a little awkward, and there comes a point where it just clicks, and it’s just impossible to not have something to say. See if you can find that point. Off you go. Did the exercise go well in terms of you guys responding to things like a bit of animation? Interesting stuff, right, do you notice how after a while you have an infinite variety of responses? The reason why people sometimes don’t know what to say, really has to do more with, that there’s so much choice. You don’t know where to begin. Not really what to do because there’s not enough choice. Would that be accurate in terms of your experience?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Now I’d like to turn this into something a little bit practical. I should turn these things off actually so they don’t interfere. I’d like to turn this into something practical so we can finish up on something a little bit more practical at the end of the day. You’ll be familiar with this in different guises. Some of you have come across this as the concept of a piggyback suggestion or a piggyback induction. Some of you will come across this as a pacing and leading induction or something like that. The basic idea is this. You want to get them to a yes. Remember the compliance stuff we did at the beginning of Day 1? Can you stand over here please? Can you stand over there? You’re trying to get them to a yes to see the quality of the yes that you’re getting. Plus if they’re saying yes to these things, it creates an avalanche of agreement. So that when you start suggestion things like, their hands are stuck and they cannot move, their mind’s going to go, okay. Everything else was true too. Does that make sense? That’s a classic example of pacing and leading. So you had to pace. Can you stand over here? It’s a little bit of a lead, but an experience they can refer to. You’re here and you’ll do this and these things are going on and that sort of stuff and so on, and now your hands are stuck. What the mind is doing is it’s going yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. The momentum has been built up. Over time, you’ll need less of these to get one of these. Eventually, all you’ll need is these. Does that make sense? Let me give you an example of the early days of where this came from. Again, Dr. Milton Erickson, a great hypnotist and an amazing hypnotherapist and psychiatrist. If you read his papers, there are huge volumes of them, but one of this favorite approaches to doing stuff is he’ll take a very detailed interview, like a personal history. What order were you born in terms of your family relationships and how many brothers and sisters do you have and that sort of stuff? The situation, the problem, and he’d take the shebang. Then he’d sit there and he had the time and could afford to do this. He’d sit there and sometimes up to a half an hour or an hour, he’d rattle just a list of facts that they told him. So your name is John. You live in so and so. You have a brother. He’s older than you by two years.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The person is going yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s just moving his whole mind down that one direction. Then at the end of this spiel, he says now you’ve come to me for help and I’m going to help you. What is that? Students: Yeah. Igor:

Right. Can you see like a massive expectation? Now, there’s stuff he will do at the end of it. Sometimes he’ll put some shock in there. I can help you, but it’s going to be shocking, and when you hear it, you won’t want to hear it, but then you’ll think about it and you’ll really have to do it. These are all classic suggestions, and he’s built them on the back of a yes set. Make sense? The classic pacing and leading induction is normally when people say, okay, you’re sitting in this chair and you’re breathing in and out, and you’re blinking, so you’re going into hypnosis. Can you hear the yes, yes, yes, yes and one little lead? Then over a period of time, he can say, "And as you hear the sound of voice and the air conditioning humming in the background, you can feel even more comfortable as you continue deeper into trance. ", fewer of these, more of these. So the pictures starts slowing becoming more like this. Eventually, it’s like this, and then eventually it will be like this. You can keep cycling back to things they’ll agree to, especially if you’re not too sure of how they’ll respond, then you’ll do a couple of safety hedges and so on. There’s only one problem with this induction, as far as conversational hypnosis is concerned. Any guesses what that might be? Too long is part of it, but it’s pretty obvious. You’re sitting in a chair. You’re listening to me. We’re going back to the autistic induction from before, right? Not many conversations go this way. However, hopefully you’ll have discovered by now that with some of the intentional language, you can navigate through all kinds of experiences that people can have and must agree to. Consider the fact that you’ve been in here for at least two days, right? In those two days, you’ve had many different experiences. Some of them

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you’ve understood instantly. Some of them took a while in developing and understanding. Some of them you might even be a little clueless about. Perhaps you don’t quite know yet what it’s all about. The interesting thing is that you’re still here and you’re continuing to want to learn more. Now it’s not always been easy, but you’ve persevered enough to be here. Today, at the end of the second day, which means it’s going to get easier as time goes by because all the pieces are going to start to come together. Right now, you’re still collecting the pieces. The more those pieces come together, the easier it will start to be for you. Now I know you’ve had experiences of learning something in the past. Some of those things were very easy. Not because the subject matter was easy, but because your interest was high. You enjoyed it. You wanted to learn, and you learned, did you not? So learning is easy when you want it. I believe that you really want to learn hypnosis, maybe. Maybe enough to make it easier than you thought it would be. So as time goes by, you begin to find yourself doing hypnotic things and not even realizing until afterward just how good it was. Let’s face it, you all have a lifetime of experiences that you can remember, especially the enjoyable ones, and know that the more enjoyable things will come. Everyone knows that the difficult times are merely lessons waiting to be discovered. So whether you’re having lessons being discovered right now or some part of your mind is going to the past to relieve you of the burden of whatever happened back then, a lesson can be learned that makes your life easier, doesn’t it? Now you don’t need to know what that is yet. After all, you have an unconscious mind, do you not? It’s kept you safely protected from so many things. Some of those things you really didn’t need to think about and you still don’t, until your unconscious mind has taken those memories of difficult times and learned something. Learned enough that you can let it go and just feel good. Good enough to learn more. Make life easier. One of the greatest lessons that you can learn is that you have an unconscious mind. And your unconscious mind is great. It’s protected you all these years. Those accidents that could have been so serious, but you

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 survived. It healed you when you were sick or injured. It protected you when you didn’t know what to do. When you didn’t have the skills to cope with something, it made sure that you acquired them as time went by, and it’s continuing to do so right now at this moment. You’ve all come here to learn something, and yet, you never thought about why you were driven to learn hypnosis, of all things, that your unconscious knows an opportunity is here to grow as a person. When you grow as person, you connect more fully inside yourself, becoming more real as a person, a human being and the way we’re supposed to be. Confident, calm and strong, vibrant and charismatic, and above all else we have the capacity to learn so much. Nothing else comes close to the human capacity for learning. You’ve had a lifetime of lessons that you’ve learned. Some of them you didn’t like to learn. Yet you learned them regardless. Others you were thrilled to learn. The more you learn and grow, the safer life becomes because you have the capacity to take any situation and master it now. Things are happening inside, aren’t they? Perhaps your thoughts have slowed down, calmer inside. Maybe you even have a good feeling. That’s right. It’s good to have that good feeling. A sign from your unconscious mind that something good is happening, and you can feel that, can you not? Because something good is happening. I’m sure you’ll realize just how easy it is to trust your unconscious. Make positive, healthy changes. Grow as a person and learn. Think about it. You can’t, not learn. Even if you think you’re not learning, you’re learning something. You’re discovering something, and there are many ways to do this. The memory is a funny thing. Did you know the memory changes? Recalling an event from the past now is different to when it happened. Many people have found the joy of discovering the problems from the past change each time they recollect them because you change. So your relationship to the past changes now. I wonder how much better you can feel as you contemplate only enough of your past to feel good. How much better can you feel right now? To change the past by recollecting some of it with a quiet, calm, good feeling inside and all the time, things continue to occur outside of your awareness. Isn’t it nice to know that you get to enjoy it by a comfortable nap, a daydream, a night

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 dream, a dream in which a new personality emerges? The person you’ve always known you could be. You might not be aware that baby’s sleep more than they’re awake. Young children sleep less than babies but more than adults. In that special state, they get to dream themselves into being, making important connections in the brain, in their minds. It happens automatically. Each night when you dream, I wonder how often you’ll dream something that helps you grow and change, that makes you feel better and more capable? It’s happened before. You’re no longer the same person you were when you were five years old or two years old or 10 years old or 20 or any age. You’ve changed. You don’t know how most of those changes occurred. That’s a good thing because those changes can continue to occur outside of your awareness. All you need to notice is how good it is. How positive. How much better you feel and how much more of your past is different now. That kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? So I have an idea that you can talk about more experiences than just about their toes wiggling in their shoes or the seat of their pants touching against their skin. Not that these things are invalid. Like in a hypnotherapy clinic, they’re valid, aren’t they? You can do it quite easily and its great induction to use, but we’re here to use conversational hypnosis, aren’t we? Who here could imagine themselves having a pep talk with someone, someone they care about, in ways that are not dissimilar to what you’ve just experienced? Would there be two out there in terms of a normal conversation? It would require that I context. You don’t necessarily walk up to a stranger and do this, would you? But given the right context, the right setting and the right relationship – which is, after all, what we’ve spent so much time developing so far. Would this not be an absolutely appropriate conversation to have with someone? Is this making sense in a very different way to you right now? I know you have some questions. Some of you might not even want to ask them in public. So the only question I have is, do you want to ask the question first and then do an exercise, or would you rather just dive in whilst it’s all fresh in your experience? Do it and save all the questions until afterward? That’s what I thought.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So find a different partner. Maintain the state you have right now because that will help you do this. Then just see where it takes you. Remember, all you’re doing is getting some absolute yeses and adding some suggestions to the end. I’m not going to give you any more guidance on that because you know much more than I do about how you need to speak to people about this, don’t you? Off you go. Was this easy? Folks, was this easy? Students: Oh yeah.

Igor:

Easy to do? How do you guys feel so far? Who here feels like a good hypnotist? A competent hypnotist? Consider what’s happened, folks. How many days have we been together? Two days? Would you have guessed that you’d get this far after just two days of conversational hypnosis training? First, I would give yourself a round of applause, for you, because you guys did this. I can only work with what you guys have got. I’d like for you guys to really appreciate how far you’ve come because really it’s a little bit more interesting than you think. For example, who here knows how to do an instant induction? Instant induction is pretty straightforward. I mean if you don’t, please come and see me because we’ll fix it up pretty quickly. Sleep! Who here has a solid grasp of hypnotic language? Power words, hypno themes, some language softeners, some hot words. I’m not asking for an expert level or a mastery level yet. We’ve got a solid grasp and then that evolves with practice and experience. So we have hypnotic language. Who here thinks they have, again, a reasonable grasp of the hypnotic qualities? Things like H+, the ability to speak in a hypnotic voice. We call these performance skills. You know, pausing at the right time, letting them process stuff and so on. Yes? Who here understands? Again, the core hypnotic principles that we’ve been talking about in terms of the, well, I may as well show it. The ABS formula agreement, compliance, authority, contrast and context all these things,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 who’s got a reasonable grasp of these things? So we’ve got some hypnotic principles. Who here understands how unconscious rapport works? Do you understand that? Who here is reasonably confident that you can do it, not necessarily all the time, every way you want to, but in enough places that you can grow that skill? Yes? Let’s face it, we still have eight days to keep growing that skill, right? Who here has the ability to recognize unconscious signals and are starting to recognize what some of these things mean? Again, you don’t have to be an expert at this yet, but enough that you see more now, more of the world opened up to you now than it was before. Yes? Who here feels that they can just do an induction just by talking to someone, or even not even talking, but just by creating a feedback loop, anyone? Who here feels reasonable competent to bring back to life pretty much any experience someone’s had just by talking to them about it? So you can revivify, plus you can do it conversationally. Wouldn’t that be reasonably fair to say? Which is an extra skill by the way, that’s actually an extra complication. Who here feels that they can control or direct people’s attention to different things and hence, enhance it? You can even put that into a whole induction sequence so you can have what seems like a regular pep talk, but really it’s a whole pacing and leading thing. Yes, a reasonable control or grasp of the pacing and leading induction. This is just a summary of what we’ve been through so far. I mean there are a lot of other things I haven’t put on that list. How to create hypnotic phenomenon, like a stiff arm and locking that out. With the nuances within the hypnotic principle and so on, within the performance skill, the H+ and the unconscious rapport and so on, there are a lot of nuances within that as well. So this is just a little summary, but doesn’t it look like an impressive list? If this was the list of things you signed up for, for this course, wouldn’t that be pretty much like, well, that’s ticked off what I came here for? Guess

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 what? We have eight days left. This is only the foundation on which we will build all the stuff I actually want to do with you all. Personally, I really hope you’re excited because we’re going to go very deep down Alice’s rabbit hole starting tomorrow morning. So with that happy thought, I strongly recommend the same exercises you did yesterday for tonight. Do an instant induction and give someone an instant smile or an inner smile. Tomorrow morning do the same thing. The more we practice the inner smile it drives your hypnotic rapport. If you have hypnotic rapport, it’s the thing that creates the hypnotic context that allows you to do all this wonderful hypnotic juju stuff. If you have that, then honestly, all you have to do is look at someone and go 'That’s right'. The rest is history, personal history. So it’s really in your interest to take time and the effort to do this. I know you’re getting a little bit tired. It’s been a long day, but really this is a good time to do it. Drill it in and make it such a natural part of who you are, that switching it on is second nature to you. After all, let me ask you this. Is it pleasant having someone give you an inner smile? Is that a pleasant experience? Why not do more of it? It’s just an idea or one might say, just a suggestion. All right. I’ll see you bright and breezy tomorrow morning. Thank you very much. Is there a question related to this? Come on up. Student:

The question is after building up some yeses, by using the notice and tension things, I took a chance, took a risk and just asked the person to sort of do the stuck feet induction. It kind of worked, at least from my perception. It worked because when I asked the person to move his feet, he didn’t move the feet, but after maybe five seconds he said, should I? ♦ What do you do in this case?

Igor:

What’s the purpose? I mean if you’re talking about street hypnosis, there are a lot of things, which we’re not really talking about here. If you want, I’ll have to answer that separately because it’s not conversational hypnosis. Essentially, what’s happened is, as you said, you took a risk. You moved too fast. Another principle that may come in here is the Law of Success of Approximations. You just move across things bit by bit by bit. Now the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 chances are that you probably succeeded. One of the ways a suggestion can be taken is, that he forgets to move his feet or even forgets how to move his feet temporarily. We’ve all had this. I mean I had this once when I was driving a car and I forgot which one is the brake and which one is the accelerator. It was a very interesting moment. Luckily, my foot remembered at the last moment, so that was a very happy time. That’s a typical way people can respond, just a very quick rule of thumb on that sort of thing. I call it the wash, rinse, repeat formula. If a suggestion doesn’t take, wash your hands of it – in other words, let it go – rinse – so let them forget about it and go back to something that already worked to get an agreement again. So let’s say they felt good, so you go back to them feeling good and reinforce that. Then slowly build up to the repeat. So build up other things to repeat. We will talk about things like dissociation and imagery and all these other things to make it more vivid so the suggestion takes more fully so it becomes a stronger experience. Then that’s more likely to take as well. Student:

Right, but I attached this thing to the emotion side of him. I sort of gave him a choice. If you want to break this nice feeling being grown inside of you, just move your feet, and he didn’t move his feet.

Igor:

So he succeeded then.

Student:

But then he said, should I? If I said try it and then my expectation is that he would have actually moved his feet.

Igor:

Honestly, it’s impossible to tell without actually seeing what’s happening at that point. Now we’re getting into little minutia. In terms of principles, you got a good result to start with. You can reverse it in terms of should I? Do you want to? No. Well, then don’t. That’s a simple way of dealing with it. You can enhance a suggestion by saying those feet are getting more and more stuck. Try to move them, but really the more you try, the better you feel and the more they get stuck. Then you just enhance that separation. You can put in a conscious/unconscious dissociation. So you think you want

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 to move those feet, but really your unconscious mind is going to keep them firmly stuck. Experience yourself watching you body and not moving your feet but wanting to. The more you try to move them, the more they don’t. Do you see there are a lot of places you can go with this? If you want to know more about that honestly, come to the walk up street hypnosis training that’s what we’ll be focusing on there. This is conversational hypnosis, which has more to do with the influencing, the being a force for good and that sort of stuff. I apologize and I’ll happily talk to you more in private about that, but it’s not part of this. Student:

That’s fine. The memory of the walk up hypnosis course in London, I saw fresh today and I just couldn’t resist trying that.

Igor:

I understand that. As I say, I’ll happily talk to you about how to tweak that on that side, but it goes beyond the scope of what we’re doing here.

Student:

All right. Thank you.

Igor:

No worries. Any other quick comments or questions before we wrap up?

Student:

I have a question about trance. I once heard a stage hypnotist say that a strong mind goes into trance easier than a weak mind.

Igor:

That’s a re-frame.

Student: ♦ Do you believe that it’s a trick? Igor:

It’s a re-frame. It just makes people more likely to respond. They think like, I’m not feeble-minded. No. The fact of the matter is what you require is their attention. If someone has good attention, then the chances of trance occurring are high. There is a mild correlation between intelligence and trance. That’s true, but beyond that, really it’s more a statement designed to motivate people to respond well, rather than anything else.

Student:

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All right. So it doesn’t matter actually. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

Yeah, I mean what’s a strong mind? What’s a weak mind? What the hell does that mean? Think about it.

Student:

When you go into your frames, for example, if someone is really confident and sure of what they’re doing, and he doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone.

Igor:

Excellent! You ask that person if someone is really confident and sure of what he’s doing, are you confident enough to enjoy hypnosis now?

Student:

All right.

Igor:

Right. So I think this idea of a strong or a weak mind doesn’t fit with what we currently know about how the mind works. It’s not like a muscle in terms of you have good or bad memory. You have strong or weak attention. You have better or worse decision-making skills and so on. You can’t say a mind is strong or weak. It just doesn’t exist. Make sense?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Thank you. That was a great question. Sometimes we have to hand these things out, don’t we?

Student:

I have one very brief question. We were doing the redirection or the directing of somebody, I was taught that most people don’t visually imagine things. I’m fairly auditory, so I tend to go to that direction and afterward the person asked me directly. He said, "I’m more visual."

Igor:

In terms of visualizing, I’ll give you this very briefly. We’ll cover this more as we go into other things tomorrow. Everyone visualizes. You cannot, not visualize it’s just that some people are aware of their imagery and some of them are not. So, to take it all out of the equation then there are two things you can do. ♦

One is perhaps you’ll even see the bird over there.

♦ The other thing is just to take it out of the sensory realm and say, just consider your kitchen for a moment, consider your living room or consider your friend.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Think about that person. You know what they look like. Perhaps if you were there, you might even touch that person and notice a sensation of the contact with their coat or something like that. So you can describe everything you want in visual terms. It just doesn’t seem visual because you’re talking about thinking, memory, considering and so on. As long as you take the pressure off them actually having to recognize a visual input, most people will visualize it without realizing it. Make sense? Student:

Yes. Thank you.

Igor:

In conversations, it happens all the time. Can you imagine that? I was there and this guy was standing here, and this other person was standing there. Then the person goes, what did you do to him? They’re seeing the same person, right? It’s just that unconscious mind is filling in the gaps. That’s pretty much how it works.

DVD 9: How to Isolate the Conscious Mind & Access the Unconscious Mind Directly Igor:

Good morning, everyone.

Students: Good morning. Igor:

Who here feels good? How many of you did the inner smile yesterday or today? Okay, a few more of you. Those hands are starting to come up. That’s good. Remember, the inner smile is, apart from the fact that it’s fun and easy to do in terms of the induction itself, it is going to be the foundation of getting the H+ right, the hypnotic rapport right. That in itself, will take care of so many problems. You saw the gentleman who, basically, just with his hypnotic rapport had people asking to be hypnotized. Complete strangers. Now in the normal hypnosis world, that’s relatively rare, unless they’re like high school kids that just want to try things out, that people ask you for that. I strongly encourage

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you to really train that into you because whilst you’re here, you may as well use a room full of hypnotists to help you out with that. Are there any interesting stories from last night? Did anyone do anything interesting? Student:

Good morning. Something interesting happened. I have no clue what it is.

Igor:

That’s always a good start.

Student:

I woke up this morning and felt like a different person.

Igor:

No, I hope it has nothing to do with me. Who are you? Did you pay for this seminar?

Student:

Yes, but I have been into hypnosis for a while. I’ve been in NLP a few times, but something clicked last night. I like to sleep and I wake up and go back, but something told me to just wake up and do stuff. I felt like a completely different person.

Igor:

Good for you. I think that’s worthwhile. Good stuff. [Applause] Anyone else?

Student:

I had a strange experience where I was sleeping, my beeper went off on vibrate and it was right at my belt, except for I didn’t have any beeper there. It was clear as day. I must have hallucinated a beeper that went off. It buzzed for 10 seconds or so. I figured well, I better go look at it and answer the call. I got up and went around and found my phone, called my wife and she said she has just started reading a book and was thinking strongly about me.

Igor:

Wow interesting! Oh good we have some more people. Come on up.

Student:

The strangest thing happened yesterday while you were talking about the seagull.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Several decades ago, when I was a much younger man, I was able to visualize. I used to get auditory as well as pictures. Well, I haven’t done it in a great while. Yesterday you were talking about the seagull and I was sitting in the back listening and all of the sudden I’m seeing the seagull, total wing span outstretched and soaring, just gliding on the currents of the air, tail feathers rippling and guiding it. Then I hear the bird making a little sound. I’m hearing it several times over and over, I was dumbfounded I could not believe it. Igor:

That’s awesome. See your unconscious has been able to do this all along.

Student:

Yes, but it hasn’t done it in a very long time. I was totally amazed.

Igor:

Great job. [Applause] By the way, this is one of the reasons I like the indirect method. Sometimes being direct is fantastic and it’s the right thing to do, but then as we get more and more into indirect suggestions, you’ll find that you can evoke these experiences. It’s very low risk in one sense, but the unconscious mind goes I’ll give you the pictures now, I’ll do this now. So it allows people to get an experience without having to feel the pressure too much over what if I can’t do it, which, of course, could interfere with the whole process. Does that make sense? Good stuff. Well done. Go on.

Student:

Igor:

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So I’m staying at that place – I don’t know if anybody’s from Los Angeles, but Englewood is a very interesting area here. It’s like Compton. Last night I’m going to the only grocery store that’s open and available for me to get cough stuff because I have bit of a sore throat. I’m coming out and there’s an older homeless woman standing there and she comes up to me and asks me for $3. I said, "I don’t have $3, but I can give you something better than that." She said, "What do you do?" I said, "I’m a hypnotist." I did the entire instant induction in the middle of the parking lot at Ralph’s with a homeless lady. Good job.



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 [Applause] Homeless people of the world beware. All right, I like what I’m hearing. This is great stuff. Hopefully, you’re getting the sense now that the seminar room is just preparing you for something. It’s when you take it outside and you do things out there. That’s where it really counts otherwise you’ll be coming back to seminar after seminar after seminar – which I have no problem with as long as they’re mine. But it’s really about you developing your skills. It’s about you making this a part of how you communicate, how you do things, so life gets easier for you and it gets easier for the people around you, too. Does that kind of make sense? So what I want you to do now is just spend a few minutes looking at what we’ve got so far. On the first day, we really focused on hypnotic language. We’ve got the idea of the power words. Then we had the language softeners and we had the trance themes. We had the similes to really enhance the trance a little bit as well. So we’ve got the core of the language that takes people from one experience all the way to another experience. Make sense? This is very important. We’ve put our performance elements, which are like your H+, your tonality, your rhythm, your pauses, it kind of breathes life into what you’re doing. Otherwise, you’re just reading a script or reading from a book, which sometimes has an effect absolutely because the language can still work, and people can let themselves go into the ideas and so on, but you’re still taking a bit of a risk because it may or may not work the way you want it to. Then we’ve had two major inductions so far. The first one was the revivification and the second one was the pace and lead, if you recall. Now, do you recall the 'That’s right' exercise? That’s right, you do, don’t you? Essentially, what that is called is the utilization principle. The way I like to define it – it’s just a little easier for me to think about it – is the no fault/no failure. In other words, whatever happens is exactly the right thing. You’re encouraging what is already trance like and what isn’t trance like gets re-framed, it gets redirected into being trance like. Do you see how that

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 works? So, the utilization thing, the whole 'That’s right' response and so on only really works if you have the right context. That’s what your performance is about, your state, H+, hypnotic rapport and all that sort of stuff. Does that make sense? We’ll be coming back to this diagram and adding more things as we go along. I just wanted to give you a sense of where we’ve gotten so far. Do you notice how we talked about layering together different skills and creating this bundle that becomes very robust. If you start doing all these things at once, already you’ve got a pretty sophisticated hypnotic process for conversational hypnosis, don’t you? You can sit down and have a chat with someone and really blow their mind just with this alone. Now we’re going to add more things. We’re going to make that diagram look more complex, more sophisticated and so on. You can do all of these things at the same time. Just bear in mind you’re going to start getting to a point soon where you don’t have to do everything at the same time. I think the language and this core thread in the middle will always stay, but then you might spend more time utilizing whatever has happened. Or you might focus more on pacing or something. Or you might focus more on a revivification to get an experience up or whatever else we’re doing. Just because it’s on the diagram, just because you’ve learned it doesn’t mean you have to use it every time. Is that fair? We’re going to be adding more stuff today, If you want to use them all at the same time, great. Knock yourself out. It will be a lot of fun, and people will be puddles of consciousness on the floor, but you don’t have to. You’ve got to be able to grade it according to the situation that you’re in because not everything requires a shotgun. Make sense? What I want to do today is – let’s start it this way. Everyone stand up please. Put your pens and papers down. I think this is a good way to start the morning. Go around and find one person. Do the inner smile with them and then come back. You have two minutes to go both ways and be sitting in your seats again. Off you go. You should be on the second person by now. So is everyone smiling? Is anyone frowning in here? No? Good.

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Yesterday we talked about the whole pacing and leading construction. You get them to acknowledge or agree to something. Yes, yes, this is true, this is true. Then you can add a suggestion, which they’ll kind of follow-up on. Did you enjoy that induction yesterday? Remember, the construction starts with mostly things that are absolutely true and verifiable to some degree. It’s true for them in their reality. Then just a few little suggestions that move them a little bit in one direction. Over time, you need fewer of these, and you can do more of these and they can be more dramatic. Eventually, you can be leading all the way, and they’ll pretty much just following along. We have a lot of different ways of doing this, don’t we? There are a lot of different things you can do it. You can pace some memories on experiences, universal experiences, on hopes and dreams, on values and beliefs, on current physical experience. All kinds of stuff, right? What I’d like to do now is for you guys to experience with something. The same exact construction, only now you’re going to go from normal experience, which will be the X, through the trance themes, which will be the Y. It’s really actually simpler than what you did yesterday because you have less things to think about. What kinds of things constitute normal experience? Things you’re seeing right now, doing right now, thinking right now. But you can also go beyond that, of course, into things that are normal, everyday awareness. We get up in the morning. We do our chores. We get dressed. We shower. We have normal, everyday realities. You talk to your friends. You go to work. You come back from work. You eat. What are some trance themes that might fit into a normal day but are a little different? Driving back from work and just being on autopilot. What else? Being deeply concentrated on something, like reading a book or a report of some sort. What else? Watching a movie. Exactly, do you get the idea that is coming through here? So what I want to do now is, again, this is not necessarily something you’re doing to conversation. You might even start weaving in a conversation if you want. I guess I don’t care too much if it’s a little overt so that you can get

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 used to the ideas. Or if you want to be more covert and just give somebody a little talk about some interesting things. It doesn’t matter to me. The point is I’d like you to just speak about normal experiences and moving towards trance over time, and you’re speaking mostly about trance themes rather than anything else. Does that make sense to you? Of course, whenever you switch to the X or the Y side of the question here, so the red side, you’re also going to switch mentally into your 'That’s right' experience. That’s our H+, shall we say. Make sense? So here, you can speak quite normally about normal things. Here, you will speak more hypnotically, more meaningful, more significantly about things that are more hypnotic in nature. The easiest way to do that is if you physically change your own state, the way you feel. Now remember how you felt yesterday or the day before while saying, that’s right, and now that feeling slows down a little bit. Does that kind of make sense? This is a practice vehicle for switching backwards and forwards between being in a normal state and being in a kind of hypnotic state in terms of being the hypnotist state. Make sense? That’s easy, right. So, just to make it a little more interesting let’s start the whole thing off with the hypnotic rapport, the inner smile. You just started it so you may as well use it, right? Eyebrow flash, mirror whatever they do right after the eyebrow flash to maintain that. Then just launch into your monologue essentially. They don’t have to do much other than just sit there and listen and go, "Yeah, I think its right." The key thing here, of course, is watch their body language. If you say something that does not match their experience or their way of processing reality, you’ll notice something. Maybe stiffness, maybe all the nodding they were doing up until that point suddenly stops. Something will change, and using the contrast principle you’ll know, hang on a second, I’ve just dropped off the map slightly. If that happens, just cycle back to two or three things that are safe, absolutely true. Then you’ll just pick it right back up again. Does that make sense? Can I show you? Should I show you how to make a mistake, or how people will respond?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’ll show you what happens when someone’s making mistakes. You’re talking about stuff – did you see it? That’s how he looks. All right, I’ll try it again. Did you see it? It can be subtle. Can we have a volunteer please, someone who hasn’t been up yet? Come on up. There you go. Give him a nice round of applause. [Applause] Have a seat in the magic chair. How are you doing, Ralph? Ralph:

Good, how are you?

Igor:

Fantastic! So are you enjoying yourself?

Ralph:

I am.

Igor:

Now we’re going to do just a very simple version. You know there are all kinds of things you do every day, right? You got up this morning and you probably washed, got dressed. Those sorts of things, right? But there are times when you feel comfortable too. Like a bed when you’re falling asleep at night. Of course, in the morning it’s time to get up again and get on with your dayto-day stuff. I guess you start thinking about what be happening in the seminar and perhaps even thinking about the future. Was he thinking about the future? No, he was not. Do you see where I’m coming from here? We’ll try this again. Just to show you again, we’ll see if we can get the same reaction. So you got up this morning, you got dressed, you probably thought a little bit about the seminar and the stuff you were doing. Maybe you even thought about stuff that you might do in the future or something like that. Did you notice how – although he went yes to the general whole thing, he did a little head nod with everything, except thinking about the future? When you think about the future, you went very still. Then when I said right or wasn’t it something like that, overall I was correct, but I missed on the future thing because he probably wasn’t thinking too much about the future. Does that make sense?

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At that point, I just cycle right back. You know most important of all, it’s like normal day except, of course, you’re coming to a seminar, and you’re looking forward to learning some things. I guess yesterday you had some very pleasant experiences. Some of them were on your mind while you were relaxing as well. Not all pleasant experiences lead towards trance. That’s right. Do you see where we’re going with this? It doesn’t matter too much how you frame it, if it’s clunky or if it’s very conversational. It doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that you’re talking normal everyday experiences and then you make a switch towards more hypnotic experiences. Then you switch back for a little bit, switch forward again, back, forward, back, forward. Eventually, you’ll just stick with the trance experiences, and they’ll have a fantastic ride through the whole thing. Does that make sense? It can be subtle, but if you notice the sudden switch though, there’s a pattern that develops, if that pattern suddenly stops, chances are that you’ve missed a little bit in terms of what you’re saying. Make sense? At which point you cycle back to other things, but that doesn’t matter. The point is you just recycle whatever you just said beforehand, except the thing that didn’t quite work out. Honestly, even if you went past that, if you went through it, you still have enough momentum going. Ralph wasn’t particularly disappointed. I didn’t hit a really bad spot or anything like that. I could probably ignore it and carry on anyway, but you may as well train your perceptions and work with them. Does that make sense in general? Go ahead. Student:

When you said to Ralph, "Not all pleasant experiences lead to trance.", that was like a deliberate sort of flub right, just to see if we can get a reaction from him that would deviate from the kinds of agreement-oriented reactions he was already giving. Is that right?

Igor:

No, that was just a statement. It’s just that the reaction was interesting. In fact, the reaction was particularly interesting because I’m guessing for Ralph most pleasant experiences will lead to trance. In which case I’ll go, "Of

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 course, for some people, all pleasant experiences lead to trance, don’t they?" Then it just intensifies because the… Student:

It’s like a little fractionation.

Igor:

Yes.

Student:

That’s the thing. His face seemed to get surprised at that moment. When you said that, I actually started to think about it. I wondered about that. ♦ Is there a trance reaction, a little trance induction from every pleasant experience? It’s possible there is.

Igor:

As I say, you’ll never know ahead of time how people will reaction, right? Everyone is different. Everyone thinks differently. The point is you’re getting very sensitive reactions now, right? You can always check. If you’re not sure, do you know what you do? You go, it seems like something surprising just occurred to you. What was that?

Student:

Well, what you said made me think about it because I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t know whether I should say yes or no. I had to think about it.

Igor:

So you don’t know whether all pleasant experiences lead towards trance? That’s interesting.

Student:

It is.

Igor:

I wonder if all pleasant experiences do lead towards trance.

Student:

I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Igor:

You wouldn’t be surprised by that, would you?

Student:

No, I wouldn’t.

Igor:

Pleasant experiences…

Student:

It seems so.

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Leading to trance.

Student:

Yes. It seems natural.

Igor:

That’s an interesting idea, isn’t it?

Student:

It is. That’s right.

Igor:

Very good. [Applause] That’s the danger of having a trained hypnotist on stage. Do you understand the drill a little bit better now? Is that clear to you? Are you ready to do it?

Students: Sure. Igor:

Off you go. Okay, let’s have everyone back. Good. How was it? Did you enjoy yourselves?

Students: Yes. Igor:

Do you have a question? Come on up.

Student:

Hello.

Igor:

Hello.

Student:

I had this discussion yesterday. It’s about basic values, which are given to us during our primary socialization, like belief, religion, whatever. ♦ Is it possible to change those values in a human being?

Igor:

Absolutely.

Student:

For example, is it possible to convince someone not to believe in a god because those basic values you learn when you’re little.

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Let’s put it this way. Everything is possible. The question is whether, or not it’s ethical. Who am I to tell someone what they should believe in, in terms of religion or things like that? If they problems with it, for example, if someone’s in a cult and you want to help them out of it or if they ask for help out of it, that’s something very different, but other than that, if someone wants to be a Mormon, Catholic or Muslim really, it has nothing to do with me. It’s their choice.

Student:

It’s their choice.

Igor:

Absolutely.

Student:

The continuation question, not only in religion but, for example, in relation towards property. Like you had the picture of the full world where everyone can share and the shortage. Sometimes you come across these people, and these values are so deep, often provided by religion or whatever, that you cannot convince them. They are completely contradictory. ♦ What do you do then just avoid them?

Igor:

Let’s put it this way. First, it’s a question of judgment in terms of how is it affecting your life. If it doesn’t really affect you, then let them get on with it. It’s their thing. Fundamentally, everything is changeable. The brain is one of the most flexible things that we have. So, even deep-seated ideas and beliefs and so on all can be changed if – and this is where the ethics come in – if it’s appropriate, if it’s ethical for you to do so without imposing your view of the world on someone else. After all, why would my view of the world be better than anyone else’s. It’s not something I can impose? On the flip side is, it’s a question of how much effort you may have to put into it to make it happen. Someone who’s been in a cult from the day he was born and has all these things imposed upon him, and those thoughts are hauling him in, well, that’s going to take a little bit more effort than someone who’s just been to a weekend seminar and goes, well, that’s kind of interesting, but maybe, maybe not. There will be more effort involved. As to how to do that, well, that’s what the seminar is about. We are going to build the skills up towards this. So just give us some time, and we’ll start building some skills towards that. Then it’s just a question of:

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1. Is it ethical for you to interfere in the other person’s life and beliefs and so on? 2. If it is – like for example, they’ve asked for help but they don’t know how to help themselves – then how do you go about doing it, how do you set it up, how do you go from there and so on. Student:

One last thing.

Igor:

Sure.

Student:

In my point of view, it would be ethical, for example, to help people to get rid of their fear.

Igor:

Oh, sure.

Student:

For example, fear of death.

Igor:

I agree absolutely! It’s a whole range of possibilities. I honestly can’t tell you what’s right and wrong. You’re all adults, right? All I can tell you is what my belief is, my point of view, and that is in terms of if the other person isn’t somehow self-harming or something like that, then it’s probably interesting to do something at least so they can find their own path. It isn’t being imposing and saying this is how you have to be. Its more, look, why don’t you find other ways of being? So they can find their own path and their own direction and so on. In general influencing circles again, if it’s a win for me and a win for you, everyone wins. That’s a great thing again. Beyond those things, though, well, it does get into very sort of tricky things. Religion especially is one that is especially tricky because if you have two people believing in two different religions that may be fundamentally different. Who am I tell say who’s right and who’s wrong? It’s not my job. If it interferes, I can take those things into fear with the things I’m doing and maybe put them to one side so that we can have a decent interaction, a quality relationship and those sorts of things. But that’s very different from having someone change fundamentally the way they interact with the world. Does that kind of make sense to you guys?

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If there is consent, of course, a lot more is possible and it’s easy to do. It might not be unethical because they’ve asked for it. Good luck to them. There was a hand over here somewhere. Student:

In my opinion, I think that it would be easier to build within us flexibility to build the belief on our own that we can accept others the way they are. And they can change when they want to change because they’re living in their own ecological system and they have to deal with them. From my point of view, I may want to change them the way I think would be good for them, but unless they perceive the change being good for them, you wouldn’t have any value in my opinion.

Igor:

Right because you don’t know how it fits into their world. It might actually destroy their family relationships, and their life gets worse if you interfere too much in how they’re doing things. We’ll come more onto those sorts of things, especially on the more advanced part after we’ve had the day of rest. Just remember, the first few days – we’re in phase one right now - we’re building the core skills, the core ideas, the core maneuvers, the core foundations we want to use. Then we get into more of the advanced stuff and you start using those core ideas, those core skills in a way that’s hopefully going to be ethical and influential. So we’ll find the balance point. Now, going back to the exercise, do you want to come up?

Student:

Can you just clarify for me. Step one you’re pacing undeniable experiences, more or less. Anything that’s a bit, I guess, a judgment you’re softening with a softener. ♦ When you kick into the trance themes, is it a quasi-pace, quasilead? So, you’re calibrating, your jogging, it’s nighttime and it’s like oops. I mean, its daylight so you catch a reaction, which you’re trying to pace their reaction, but then are you trying to move them into a newish reality of leading?

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Absolutely. Again, in terms of what we’re doing here in the exercise itself, we don’t have to focus so much on the nuances. The key is, are you primarily focusing on normal experiences and are we focusing more on sort of trance or hypnotic kinds of experiences? On this side of the fence here, it has to be accepted. So having a, as you call it, quasi-lead, things they said like, for example, we’ve all lied in bed and not wanted to get up because its so comfortable. It’s warm between the sheets and you think, I should get up, but I’d rather stay here for a while. It’s a universal experience. It happens to be a trance theme, but it’s a universal experience, and I’m getting agreement from you guys. I know that you’re accepting the idea. If you accept that idea, you might accept other ideas as well. The rule of thumb is this. The more in trance someone is, the less logical your conclusions have to be. Now in the initial phases, logic has to be part of what you’re doing because they still have an active conscious mind, or at least it’s active enough. Until you’ve bypassed that critical factor enough, you need to stay within the realms of reason. As you go through here, you become increasingly – or you can – you have the freedom to jump increasingly across topics. Does that make sense to you guys? Remember, right now we’re just doing some practice exercises, some practice wheels to build up towards something much more interesting later on. Sound good? Shall we do something more interesting with it?

Students: Sure. Igor:

All right. Believe it or not, we’ve actually done the hard version here. We’ve talked and we paced about normal experiences. Then we’ve started pacing trance themes. So really we’re separating different kinds of experiences that people can have. Would that be fair? Did you notice how, as you speak more about trance experiences or trance themes, well, it tends to revivify trance. It tends to bring them more into that sort of experience. So what if we switched it around and we did exactly the same pattern, but now we start speaking about conscious experiences and unconscious experiences? Isn’t that essentially the same pattern with a different flavor, shall we say? Wouldn’t that be fair to say?

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What I’d like to do is just spend a few moments looking at that. What kinds of experiences are conscious? Give me some things. What does the conscious mind do? Eating? Sure. What kinds of things are obviously conscious? How about thinking? People think when they’re conscious, right? Analyzing. I’ll put that in brackets because a lot of writers – there you go, a to-do list. It uses a different way of thinking. What else? Reasoning. Absolutely! Problem solving, although I haven’t said that. Does the unconscious mind solve problems? It’s a specific kind of problem solving, right? Considering? Is that really a conscious activity? Learning it or trying to learn it? Do you see where we’re going with this? What other kinds of functions does the conscious mind do? By the way, are there any scientists amongst us here? So in terms of the mind, what does the conscious mind to? For example, it’s capable of processing seven plus or minus two bits of information. Has anyone heard that before? ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Choosing Deciding Logic Planning Measuring So you’ve got a good idea of what conscious functions really are, right? There are many more, but this gives you a good starting point. Let’s turn over here then and look at the unconscious mind. What kinds of functions does the unconscious mind perform? 10. [Breathing] (although you can breathe consciously as well, so I’ll put it in brackets) 11. Body functions (heartbeat, blinking, etc.) 12. Dreaming 13. Emotions 14. Eyebrow raises (I like that) 15. Body language 16. Instincts 17. Imagining 18. Habits 19. Memories 20. Autopilot (which is like habits but a little different)

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 21. Reactions So you can see we’ve got a full list of things that can happen here. Now we’re going to do the same induction process again. Again, it’s up to you how you deal with it. The simplest of all ways of doing this is you just list. Your conscious mind does this and this and this. Then switching your tone meanwhile, your unconscious mind is running your body. Your heartbeat, your blinking, even your body language, the way it expresses itself without your knowing anything. Of course, your conscious mind is logical and reasonable. It solves problems with logic and reasons. The unconscious mind has imagination. Do you see where we’re going with this? You can have a very simple list that way. If you want to elaborate on it a little bit more in terms of making it more conversational, then introduce it in terms of like, allow me to tell you a little bit about how the conscious minds works and the unconscious mind. You’ve heard about the unconscious mind, haven’t you? Do you see where we’re going with this? It’s a very simple thing. It’s actually easier than the previous exercise you just did because we’re now focusing on conscious and unconscious activity. Easy to do. Make sense? All right, find a partner and spend five minutes apiece. Off you go. Who enjoyed the induction? Was that good? Can you begin to see how easy it is to slip this into a normal conversation? Yes, hopefully, because this is what it’s about. I’d like to talk to you about dissociation. What you’re seeing here is called conscious/unconscious dissociation. It’s a very famous induction made famous by Milton Erickson again. He made a lot of things famous. It essentially works this way. Our minds can either put things together or split them apart. Is anyone here good at taking things like criticism, for example? You’re good at taking criticism? You listen to it and you don’t get too emotional about it, right? So that’s a classic example of a useful form of dissociation. In other words, whilst being criticized, you dissociate from the emotional element of the message, and you only listen to the intellectual part so your intellect and your emotions are separated. Would that be fair to say?

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Those of us who do not separate intellect and emotions during a moment of criticism, what do we experience? "Oh, my God, am I that bad?" Why? Because the message is impacting us on two different levels at the same time, do you see how that works? We can dissociate anything from anything else. We can dissociate an arm away from the body. That’s great for things like pain control and so on. We can dissociate concepts so they’re no longer the same. If you remember the fundamental way the unconscious mind reasons through association, in other words, putting things together. If it can associate, then, of course, it must be able to dissociate – move things apart again. Make sense? What we’re doing here is we’re dissociating the conscious mind from the unconscious. Of course, you realize when I talk about the unconscious mind that it’s just a story we made up. All that exists really is you. When we talk about the unconscious mind, it’s just a convenient label to lump together a whole bunch of concepts so we can handle them and work with them and so on. The unconscious mind is true because we make it true through suggestion and so on. Do you get where I’m coming from with this? The reason for that is just because the mind is much more complex than this simplistic model. But viewing it in this simplistic model gives us a lot of scope in terms of how we work with people and so on. So the conscious/unconscious dissociation is designed to take those parts of the experience that are the conscious reality, that little fence they put around reality, and what’s allowed to be true and what isn’t allowed to be true. We’re taking everything else and we’re separating them out so that one can sort of go to sleep for a little while and disappear for a little while or be put on hold for a little while and the other one can be explored more. That’s one way of describing trance, isn’t it, or hypnosis? Your normal reality is put on hold and you have the capacity to experiment with new realities and find out if one of them is better than the old one. Then you re-associate (also known as re-integrate) the two so that the new reality now makes the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 old reality a little bit bigger, a little bit better, a little bit more enhanced as far as that individual’s life is concerned. Make sense? The conscious/unconscious dissociation allows you to do that. But I’d like to think about this idea of dissociation in a more in depth sort of way. Let me give you an example of what I mean. It was in the summer and we did the first 'Walk-Up Street Hypnosis' event in London. It was a lot of fun. It was interesting. This kind of answers a little bit of the question that you had yesterday about the legs being stuck to the floor. One of the students was doing one of the stiff arm things with someone and the guy was saying, "But I can bend my arm, I can bend my arm. Look, I can bend my arm." So what do you do with that? That’s right, you can bend your arm, well done, for now. Then we have the whole pacing and the time thing so we’re looking for benefit rather than risk. We’re not there yet. That puts his mind on hold for a little bit. But why is he still able to bend his arm? What do you think is happening? He’s thinking about it. His arm is still associated with his intellect and his normal reality, and in normal reality, he can bend his arm. He’s got to be able to somehow dissociate some part of him, whether it’s the arm or something else, so that it’s no longer functioning in ordinary reality. Does that make sense? How do we do this? In this case, it was very simple. We created multiple things for him to focus on. So the first thing was, all right, there’s the arm and it’s doing its thing. Don’t worry about testing it, yet. We’re not there, yet. So the suggestions are beginning to start working. Meanwhile, I’d like for you as a mind to observe the body. You feel good inside as the arm gets stiffer and as the mind, just watch the body feeling better. Can you see what’s going on here slowly? We’re now separating the mind – his intellect, his normal way of functioning – from his body so we now have a mind body dissociation. The body can feel good and comfortable, but it’s now observing the effect.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 What happens if someone is observing something else happening? It’s dissociated, right? Plus this other thing is now no longer in his control. It has its own processes, right? If you watch a train going by, who here can stop a train with their mind, anyone? If you can, then please show me how you do that because that’s a very cool thing. The train runs on its own, it has its own momentum. It has its own mechanism. All you can do is watch it. So if he’s watching his body, what else is going on? If he’s dissociated from his body, his body can then run itself. Of course, at that point, their suggestion had the freedom to take. He started feeling the arm locking without him trying to do anything. You’re just observing the arm locking now and, of course, you’re stuck. At some point he just broke up and said I can’t believe this. Now you can accelerate the dissociation. So you’re watching that arm and it’s locked and you can’t bend it. Is that right? Yes. Do you normally do that? No. So that now accentuates the dissociation because it’s kind of a test for them to go, wow, this is not normal reality anymore. Do you see how that works? The conscious/unconscious dissociation – well, it’s just a very simple way of doing it, is actually a very versatile tool. It can be put into anything, whether it’s instant inductions or street hypnosis or overt hypnosis, or if it’s more covert hypnosis as well. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? We want to start using this because now we have the three fundamental processes that we’re going to be using. Well, maybe four actually. How about five fundamental processes? ♦ We have the revivification induction. That’s a process for bringing things back to life, revivifying experiences. For example, if you want to create anesthesia, you can bring back to life experiences where something was numb, whether it’s someone going to the dentist and getting Novocain or someone falling asleep on an arm or a leg and end up going numb. Do you see where I’m going with this? ♦ We have the pacing and leading construction where we’re slowly guiding someone towards a particular outcome.

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♦ We have the, 'That’s right' induction. The idea is utilizing whatever happens. Whatever happens is the right thing. It’s the right stepping stone for the next thing to occur. ♦ Now we also have the conscious/unconscious dissociation. These are your primary tools. We’re going to be reorganizing them one way or another in order to create our inductions. Does that make sense to you guys? How might we take this basic principle and turn it into a more everyday sort of interaction, something you can talk to people about every day? Let’s face it, you’re not going to go and hang out with your friends and just say, "Okay, your conscious mind is this, your unconscious mind is that. Conscious this, conscious that. Unconscious this, unconscious that." Yes, we already know that. You talked about it last week, the week before that, the week before that, the week before that, the week before that and the week before that. You need to have some variety. Otherwise, it’s not very conversational. So do you have some ideas? We have an analogy. Excellent! Talking about a story and we’re about to come onto both of those things as we get to more of the advanced stuff. I want to stick to something very simple now. Really the same pattern we just did – the conscious/unconscious dissociation – it’s just we want to change the pattern a little bit in terms of changing the mood slightly. Notice how these two things are actually the exact same pattern. This is still conscious/unconscious dissociation, isn’t it? It just looks different. This is a more class conscious/unconscious dissociation. It just looks different from what you did before. So what other kinds of poles or bipolar experiences can we introduce that essentially have to do with consciousness and unconsciousness? Let me give you some examples. If you’re having a discussion with someone about the difference between being awake and being asleep, between how you process the information

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 whilst awake or whilst dreaming, about waking reality and how it works and dreaming reality and how it works, isn’t that a perfect vehicle for putting a conscious/unconscious dissociation? Doesn’t that fit? How about this? When you plan for something, you’re preparing inside your mind. You’re using logical steps. You think about it and so on. When you do it, how many times do you do things exactly as the plan requires, especially if other elements are involved? In other words, it’s a live interaction, like a conversation. Has anyone here ever planned a conversation they’re going to have? You think about conversations, right? You think about here is the message I want to get across and the things you want to say and so on, but the conversation never goes the way you kind of planned it out inside your mind, does it? You have to kind of make it up as you go along. So we’ve got planning versus doing. Spontaneity versus, I guess, preparation or scripting of some sort. By the way, this is one of the reasons that I don’t like scripts. Where do scripts belong? Where does hypnosis belong, especially conversational hypnosis? It’s got to be live and interactive. I have no problems with scripts as a concept because it allows you to prepare. It allows you to learn things and maybe take some ideas out and so on. It’s if you try to use scripts when you’re actually performing something, that’s when people get in trouble. Do you see where I’m going with this? So what other kinds of dichotomies are there that could be used for conscious/unconscious dissociation? By the way, a lot of the stuff that you talked about in this list here, rather than just throwing them out as a list, you can go into depth into each one of these things. Let me give you some examples of what I mean. Are there any people here in business? If you talk to people about different ways of solving problems, you can analyze a problem. Just find out all the different elements that are inside it and put them together in a list and weigh them and all the rest of it, versus creating or creativity. Ultimately, solutions have to be created. It something that happens that goes beyond all that analysis.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The analysis is important, but when you start creating solutions, that’s when it gets interesting, isn’t it? We’ve all been creative, have we not? We’ve had something come up and suddenly we just know what to do. There was no analysis involved. You just know what to do. Can you hear the switch happening? Can you feel the switch going between conscious and unconsciousness? Should we go on with this? Do you want a couple more? Students: Yes. Igor:

All right. Let’s get a little bit more esoteric here, just to show you that we can have many different categories. In other words, this list could potentially be infinite, or close to infinite, in terms of how we split the world up- medicating versus healing. When you take pills, when you do things, we do them on purpose. You are medicating on purpose. You are consciously trying to influence how your body operates. Has anyone ever had a cut or a bruise? Has that cut or bruise healed? How do you do that? Antibiotics. That’s the medicating side right, but the antibiotics don’t heal the cut, they just prevent it from infecting. Do you see where we’re going with this? So pretty much in any profession, any social sphere that you’re in, anything like that, you can create a conscious/unconscious dichotomy. So what I would like you guys to do now is I’d like you to get together. Get yourself in groups of five or so. I want you to start brainstorming dichotomies in the field that you are interested in. If you’re in sales, then find out what kinds of dichotomies fit in your particular sales program. If you’re in therapy, well, the conscious/unconscious dissociation, of course, fits quite classically, but what other things will fit into that? Does that make sense? Out of curiosity, how many people here are in business? Okay. How many people here are in therapy? How many people here are primarily interested in some other ways of influencing people? What kinds of things? Just give me an idea. Computing stuff, is that what you do in terms of business? So it would be more like a business thing, like a sales cycle for computing is that right? Okay.

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What else? Entertainment. Teaching. Preaching. Teamwork, so like in a management and leadership sort of thing? So they’re co-workers. Anything else? Breaking into companies? Are you like getting a crowbar or do you mean like getting accepted by a company in terms of social engineering. Thank you. Seduction. Just so you know, we won’t be covering that as a topic itself here just because it tends to derail things, but if that’s of interest to you again, all these things can be used in these different areas. So I want you to find a group of like-minded people. Let’s put it this way, let’s have over here people who are more interested in business, sales and that sort of thing. Let’s have people over here who are into more social and more informal contexts, like social situations and so on. Go ahead. Student:

(Person is too far from microphone, unclear.)

Igor:

Law? In terms of what, are you talking about advocacy, like standing in front of a judge and persuading. Or are you talking more about giving advice and having people take it? I’ll put that into a consulting model. Is anyone here a consultant who has to have people accept their ideas? Again, do you see how the different models apply? I’d like you to get into groups of about five or so people, and then start pulling out these dichotomies and what themes are within the thing that you do that have consciousness and unconsciousness already built into them, so that as you talk about them to people, you’re actually inducing a trance. Does that make sense? Yes? Go ahead and find some partners, and let’s just spend about 10 minutes doing that, and then we’ll go into a break.

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DVD 10: Secrets to Naturally Using Conversational Hypnosis in Normal Conversations without

Sounding

Weird Igor:

How are you all doing? Did you have fun with that? Did you come up with some interesting, shall we say dichotomies that you can start using, which would be conversationally appropriate given the context that you want to use it in, whether its classroom or it’s a boardroom or it’s a coaching consulting sort of relationship or a sales meeting? Really, it fits pretty much anything. Would that be fair to say? I was talking to a friend of mine named Russ. Some of you may have heard the interview I did with him recently. I guess you’d call him a Shamanic Yoga or Yogi. He’s an interesting character. He’s Canadian, living in Peru right now. He’s got a school out there. As you’d imagine a Yogi would do, he does an awful lot of meditating. I did a course with him at one point, and his whole thing about meditation is very simple. It’s about expanding your consciousness. Normally, you would have separation going on. Here’s me and here’s a chair and here are the other people in the room and so on, and we’re different. Of course, when you begin to meditate, you’re expanding your consciousness so that there is no difference between you and the chair. You feel differently because your ability to perceive the world is different. Of course, many people will experience this transformation as a kind of euphoric sensation. Bliss is often described when people enter this state. One of the simplest ways of doing this, of course, is when people stop their normal sort of thinking processes. This is me and this is the rest of the world and all the rest of it, and just allow a different part of the mind to take over. It’s a very interesting process. Some people require a lot of activity before they can get there, so that’s one of the reasons that yoga can be so useful because it physically tires the body. And the mind’s too tired to just hold anymore. It just starts to let go. We’ve all had this, haven’t we? We’ve all had the experience where we’ve

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 had a hard day at work, maybe. Or maybe it was on a holiday and it was a physical day. You know, you did some sports or climbing or a lot of walking. When we get home, what do we want to do? We just want to sit down somewhere. Lie down. It’s not even that, we just want to rest. You simply don’t want to think anymore. It’s more comfortable not thinking because then your mind and body can rest. What most people don’t realize is that they’re so close to one of these moments of bliss or euphoria. This oneness with the world around them, because when the mind stops making distinctions, it all becomes the same. That’s a very pleasant experience, when everything becomes an extension of you. People can have the strangest kinds of experiences when they’re resting this way. They can catch a glimpse of something – a carpet, a wall, a chair, another person – and as the boundaries become blurred, they can experience that differently. Maybe even as though it’s a part of themselves. It’s not such a crazy idea when you think about it. Children do it all the time, don’t they? They dress up in mommy or daddy’s clothes and make believe cowboys and Indians. Little do they realize that they’re learning, they’re growing as individuals. Children learn so quickly, in part because they can identify with something and for a while become it. Something inside them can make the learning process easier because there’s no need to think about it. And we all know that there is such a great capacity inside the mind that we can access when we think less. Isn’t that ironic? It’s not that thinking is not a good thing to do. Just like eating, there are times when it’s appropriate and there are times when it’s important to stop. So, Russ and I had a conversation. He said, "For me, when I begin to meditate, a calmness begins that makes me feel good. It doesn’t always have to be a pleasant feeling or sensation, but this time and usually it is. "When my thinking slows down, there’s a sense of expansion inside. It’s as if my brain had been kept inside a small jar and now the lid was off, the jar was gone and I was in a vast room, a real sense of freedom. There’s nothing in particular that you need to do in that room other than simply appreciate the freedom.

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"Then something interesting happens. Thoughts come and go, all thoughts, but they simply don’t appear to be yours anymore you can recognize them, but they’re somehow different now, new thoughts, fresh ideas. Other things can be just as appealing now." In this state, Russ reminded me, "You really can experiment with all kinds of ways of being or seeing the world yourself, all of us. "If you like it, just a little of that will come with you when the meditation ends. Someone who’s been to this other place cannot help but bring elements of it back to their normal, shall we say, everyday reality and look on the world differently because it’s not so much that the world has changed. It’s more that they’ve changed on the inside. That kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? "We all know that as we grow up, we go back to the same environments, the same things, the same habits and somehow they’re a little different now. The things we used to like doing really aren’t that enjoyable anymore. Things that we used to find difficult are just easy now. Do you know what I mean by that?" I always like talking to people like Russ. He has some very interesting frames of reference; shall we put it that way? He makes me think a little bit, or not, as the case may be. I apologize for digressing a little bit. I just had a little thought about Russ and I thought I’d share. We’d like to do some hypnosis now. Shouldn’t we? Who recognizes the process that we essentially went through just now? A few people. If I said the 'My Friend John' technique, would that be relatively familiar to you? In this case, it’s actually the advanced version, its call 'My Friend Russ'. If I catch you using My Friend Russ, then you’re in trouble because that’s only for meta-master, uber-chief hypnotists. In fact, I like that. I said it first. So the My Friend John (or Russ) technique is very simple. What we’re doing now is we’re beginning to introduce vehicles through which we can express ourselves hypnotically. Make sense? In a social context, we can’t suddenly break frame and go, "Okay, now I’m going to do something that is really weird and crazy, but you’re not going to notice because it’s kind of weird and crazy."

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 However, there are certain social acceptable vehicles or things that exist in normal interactions or conversations that we can borrow and transform into hypnotic vehicles. One of them is the anecdote. An anecdote is when you tell a story about someone else. Do you see how that works? My Friend John (or My Friend Russ TM) technique is essentially I’m telling an anecdote. I’m telling a story about a friend of mine. Now the experience my friend has or the experience my friends puts me through, in order for you to understand the experience, you have to follow along with it. Does that make sense? The classic way that the My Friend John technique is used is like well, I had a friend called John, and he went into hypnosis. At first he breathed more easily, and then this happened. It’s a great induction. It’s a fantastic induction. It will work in most social settings as well. It will work great in therapeutic settings and so on. The only problem I have is you’re actually overtly mentioning hypnosis, hence, it might trigger a train of associations, especially if people know that you’ve been to a covert hypnosis seminar. Don’t listen. Don’t look. As soon as you trigger their associations, then they’ll think, is he up to something? The answer, of course, is yes he is, but you don’t want them to know that. So what I’d like you guys to do is to do essentially the My Friend John technique, only we’re going to go back to what we just did a moment ago, and we’re going to start introducing our main patterns in the form of an anecdote, in the form of the experience someone else had. Did you all notice a revivification occurring in that induction? Yes? Did you guys notice a little bit of pacing and leading in terms of experiences that our normal everyday experiences and experiences that are a little different? Yes? Did anyone here notice utilization? In other words, when there are reactions occurring, that start being fed back in. In other words, when the room started getting calmer, a lot of you already had your eyes closed because you enjoy it. Some of you had your eyes glazed and looking forward like in a trance state. Then we started using that and talking about calm experiences and folks experiences and those sorts of things.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So, we’re using the experiences that we see. With a group, it’s a little harder to get feedback because there are a lot of you. So I have to wait until bigger shifts occur overall. Did you, of course, spot the classic conscious/unconscious dissociation as really the main theme running through all of that? Would that be fair to say? So you can do all these things, or you can do just some of them. It’s really up to you. What I’d like to do now though is find a partner and spend maybe five minutes apiece, seven minutes apiece talking to them about a friend of yours, about an experience that you can weave these things into. Now you can do this one of two ways. The first way you can do it is you can just make something up. You can make up your friend, John. Apparently, John knows a lot of people and has some really freaky experiences, given how many stories have been told about him. So you can actually do that, it’s a lot easier. It’s nice to get all the practice wheels and so on. However, I would recommend that if you can think of someone, that you use an actual person that you know. If you use a real person you know and an actual experience that person has had, you just accentuate the hypnotic qualities of it. Does that make sense? Go ahead. Student: 22. Can you be involved in the experience? Igor:

So, the question is can you be involved in the experience as well? Absolutely. I was involved in the experience in terms of what I was talking to you guys about. Sure. In fact, your friend John might as well just be your friend me, right? It works just as well. The beauty of having it someone else’s experience is that if that person is not present, then for some reason – have you ever noticed that when an author is dead his books become better? When a musician has died and especially in a violent car crash or in a drug-fueled binge, his music somehow gets better. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I guess as soon as that person gets removed from daily life, their status in our minds lifts up. We look for the better quality in them. They no longer have to be normal human beings. Hence, the My Friend John talks about another person who can now be flawless and you don’t have to treat him as a real human being.

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Does that kind of make sense in terms of that? Also you can actually be included in that anecdote and be part of that interaction so that he said this to me and I felt this way and he said, "No, but I feel this when I do these things." So you can have that interplay. Absolutely. Does that make sense? Student: 23. Could this be a time, when you hypnotize someone else and put them through trance? Igor:

Absolutely. That’s the classic way that the My Friend John technique is being used. For the purpose of the exercise though, I’d like to get more conversational, more covert, so I’d like you to avoid the concept of hypnosis. If you avoid the concept of hypnosis, it doesn’t trigger a set of associations that makes people think, is this person possibly hypnotizing me right now? Do you see where I’m going with this? Now does that make talking about hypnosis a bad thing? Heck no. Especially when people hear hypnotist, well, what’s hypnosis about? Well, let me tell you about my friend John. When he goes into a trance, he does it this way. Then you do your induction that way too. So it’s just giving you more flexibility in terms of when and where you use it. Does that make sense to you guys? Now going back to the idea of why I’d like you to think of a real person to the extent that you can, first, your nonverbal signals will become more natural because if you think of a real person, it’s easier to describe them, their mannerisms and so on. Second, the story begins to flow a bit more because you know it already. You know what’s already happened to that person. You’re just accentuating the hypnotic qualities of that. You’re just taking a little bit of artistic license, shall we say. That’s actually very important because it brings the experience a little bit more to life for you and for the other person too. Thirdly, you can add details easily, that trigger a person into accepting that as a normal anecdote. So that they’re not over analyzing it. So they fall into anecdote listening mode and, hence, it opens up the whole, let’s fall into trance thing.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you remember some of the details I told you about Russ? They’re true by the way. He’s Canadian. He’s a Shaman. He does a lot of meditating. He now lives in Peru. He has a school there and we talked about things. Doesn’t that make him more real than if I say, I have a friend called Russ, and he goes into meditation this way? Do you see there’s a fundamentally different setup there? Does that make sense to you guys? The final reason, and possibly the most important reason why I would encourage you to use a real person rather than a made-up one is because if they ever find out what the actual story was, you don’t lose trust. If you make up a story and at some point they go, hang on a second, he was never there. He never did that. There’s a lot of trust issues involved there, and if they lose trust with you, especially if it’s in a conversational setting, then, honestly, it’s very difficult to get trust back afterward So my preference is to stick to things that are real, absolutely happened, true anecdotes. Accentuate the hypnotic qualities of it so if people ever should come across Russ and say. "Hey, are you Russ? Are you the one that Igor talked about? Well, he said that you did this." He goes, "Yeah, I guess I did." Versus, "No, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Igor? Who’s Igor?" "Huh?!?" Can you see what I mean in terms of the trust issues that it might evoke? In some context, it’s less important because people won’t expect it. For example, in a seminar, you don’t necessarily expect every story to be true, although my preference is that when I tell a story that isn’t true, I’ll make it obvious that it isn’t. Like on the first day, remember the invisible Kung Fu master. You realized that that was not something that actually happened to me. I did not move to Beijing. You realize that, right? Students: 24. What? Igor:

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Have I lost trust now? This is very important. If I had pretended that it happened to me, then at some point you call bullshit, right? I lose a lot of trust. If I lose a lot of trust, then it kicks in your critical factor because now you’ve popped out of the story reality, and you’re starting to destroy the Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 story because your integrity’s been violated. Let me put it that way. Does that make sense to you guys? You can move out of rapport and a lot of things are happening at that point. Now it won’t always happen this way. I’m just giving you my preferences and the reasons why I do it this way. You have to choose what’s appropriate for you and the context that you want to do it in. So you can either make up stories or use the My Friend John. Both will work. I’m just laying out to you my reasons for choosing one over the other. Does that make sense? Do you want to come up here? You may as well come up as well. Student: 25. What about borrowing the story? Like, my friend Igor told me about his friend, Russ. Igor:

Oh, absolutely. That’s a great one. In fact, I do that all the time.

Student:

Okay.

Igor:

In fact, you’re welcome to it.

Student:

I’m just worried about the TM thing.

Igor:

Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s just there’s a license fee. You have to pay me to use it. Did you have a follow-up as well?

Student: 26. What do you want to achieve with this exercise? Igor:

So the question is, what do you want to achieve with this exercise? Right now it’s building skills still. We’re still on the skill-building stage. Up until maybe later on today or tomorrow, all we’re interested in is, can you put people into trances and maybe do some pleasant experiences with them conversationally, so they don’t realize what’s happened. They just feel like they’ve had a good conversation with you. In terms of using it practically, we’ll need to have things that we do within those conversational trances to be influential, persuasive and helpful and so on. Does that make sense? We’ll come onto those. We can’t do them all at once. Otherwise, we’ll overload. So we’re building a foundation, the skill set

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that allows you to put people in trances, and then you can start doing things with it. Make sense? Student:

My question was, I’m not sure, I guess this kind of goes more maybe back to a story. But what if it’s like remembering a movie or a character in a movie that even they may have seen before, but you’re talking about an experience that character had.

Igor:

Sure. Everything works. It’s just a question of how you present it. In fact, we’ll come onto more things like that even as we go through. These are just variations of themes. We’re just starting a whole concept of how to create hypnotic vehicles right now. My Friend John is the classic one. It’s the simplest one to start with and as you get used to that, we’ll start evolving that into more interesting and unusual vehicles. Let’s just put it that way. Is everyone clear on that? Does everyone understand the exercise? Let’s take about five, six, seven minutes apiece. Put someone into a nice, pleasant trance. If you happen to use something like, I don’t know, the inner smile within, it’s not going to harm you, is it? So whilst you have them in trance, you may as well give them a little gift. The inner smile is the one we’ve been focusing on. You know how to revivify it in a smile, right? You may as well throw that in there as well somehow. Does everyone understand the exercise? Off you go. How was that? Did you enjoy it?


Wasn’t that something? Now notice how it’s ironic that you’re doing a lot of things at the same time, aren’t you? Look at this little diagram here. It’s kind of like a confusing bad hair day, and you’re doing it all at the same time. Ironically, isn’t that easier to do or feel easier to do that than some of the exercises you did in the first and second day? That’s because a lot of things like this thing here, the language is becoming intuitive. Now you don’t have to think about it too much.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Who here is still thinking about what power words, what hot words and similes and so on to choose? Is anyone thinking about that? A little bit? Yeah, but you missed the first day, so you’re going to catch up a little bit. You’ll catch up and it will become easier. The point is the more you do this, the easier it will get. All the extra layers you put on top of it well, they start getting more and more natural. Then its a question of, which one is going to be useful, given the interaction you have right now. So is there anything you want to comment on before we start elaborating on what we’ve done so far? Come on up. Student:

Ralph and I were working together, and I was telling him about my own private hypnosis practice and describing Nicole and things like that. What was really interesting is that as I was describing it, at one point it became direct hypnosis. He said, "Hey, what’s the five-word induction that I did on Nicole." I said, "Oh, let me show you." I did the induction, and he fell right in and then did the deepener.

Igor:

It’s very naturalistic, isn’t it?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

This is something very interesting. I mean this is what I would call a semicovert induction. Everyone thinks that Milton Erickson was a covert hypnotist, and in many respects he was, but most of his work was actually semi-covert. In other words, people knew something was happening. It’s just they had no idea what it was. That’s exactly what you’re starting to do now. You’re blending covert hypnosis and overt hypnosis. One makes the other one easier. The other one’s a little faster. So you tell a story about someone doing an induction on someone and having a great trance, and then you do that with them and then it’s a lot easier. Why? Because they’ve already done it once.

Student:

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Exactly. I believe I planted the idea at the beginning. I wasn’t planning to do a formal induction with him. But I said that Nicole was interested in hypnosis and hypnosis induction. So later on in the middle of the story, he said. "Oh Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 really, what’s that induction?" Then he could just naturally flow into it seeking the ideas. Igor:

What he just did there – and this is something that is very useful for you guys – I call unconscious formatting. Think about it. If I tell you about a hypnotic process and I tell it to you in such detail and I’m observing you so I’ll know that you’re going through each step kind of with me as you’re thinking about it, at the end of it you’ll have the experience at least once already, will you not? So, when we do it again, you’ll know what response to give. If I talk to you about someone, "Oh, we did this instant induction and it’s great. This guy was there and he was keen. He’s a great subject because he was doing exactly what I was asking of him." Then he says that he waited patiently and I said, "Okay, look at me." And he focused on me intently. Then when the magic happens, you can always tell because people do this. It’s true. You’ll find out in a minute, but he did exactly the same thing as everyone. Now of course, what am I doing? I’m showing his unconscious mind how I expect him to respond. I learned this trick from a stage hypnotist, believe it or not, who did a TV show once and he told me about this. He did a TV show and did an instant induction on a person, a lady I think, I’m not sure, when he came on screen first. She was such a flop. I mean she just crashed out. He grabbed her and gently let her go down to the ground. Of course, the whole audience was stunned. Now after that pattern has been set, how do you think every other person responded with his trance inductions? As far as they were concerned, he was a hypnotic god at that point. Why not? Because they’ve seen one example, this must be how it happens. That’s how I’ll go with it. They have no other concept of how to respond. It’s not like they’re choosing to do it. It’s just that that’s how their mind is being formatted. In the classical literature, it’s called subconscious priming. You’re priming the mind, preparing it for a certain kind of response. It feels natural, intuitive and so on, but it’s being preselected ahead of time. Make sense? That’s a great example of priming, so thank you for that. Come on up.

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Student:

I actually found that exercise to be a great experience because not only - it wasn’t so much like we did touch on the theme and such, but not a lot of power words came out. It was like they weren’t needed because there was a lot of H+ going on. So, it was almost as if being in a regular conversation and it slipped together like a regular conversation, the whole thing, but it was like the feelings usually with the story were intensified and that was it. It continued itself even after the story was finished, you could still feel that emotion through the interaction.

Igor:

The afterglow. What she’s describing, by the way, that’s exactly how conversational hypnosis feels. That’s how most people would describe it. It was just like a fascinating conversation. It was great. Notice the other thing, which is important and I’m glad you’re saying this because this is what we talked about on the very first day. Most people think that conversational hypnosis is about the language. Now the language is important. It has a very important function and role to play, but it’s not about the language. It’s about the context that you create. The language is a tool to help create that context. Does that make sense? So just memorizing the magic words will not do this for you. It’s creating that context and starting with the H+ and so on that does that. So thank you. That’s a comment to make.

Student:

No problem.

Igor:

Come on up.

Student:

What I noticed actually, last night, I was with my buddy, Tom, and he was actually describing to me an experience of him working with someone in trance. Obviously I’m aware of how you can talk about trance. It was the first time really that I profoundly felt myself going into trance, and being a hypnotist, I caught myself. Is he trying to induce me…

Igor:

Or, is it just a great story?

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Yeah. I don’t think he was. I think he was describing it to me and then the realization I had, is one of the things about telling a story about someone else. My Friend John is that it actually takes your conscious mind away from analyzing what’s going on. It’s a way of opening the gates to allow the suggestions to go right in, because I was so focused on the story, I actually caught myself going into trance. He said, "You’re getting more relaxed." He didn’t say I was. He said the person is getting more relaxed.

Igor:

He’s relaxed and he’s breathing.

Student:

Then I said, Dude, are you trying to hypnotize me?"

Igor:

That’s awesome. Again, this is a great example of how natural this stuff is. Does this feel natural to you guys? Yes, it is absolutely natural when you put all the pieces in place. If it was just saying, okay, tell a story and then just use your power words. Great! Then people would be going, "Okay, I had a friend called John and can you imagine John going into a trance now?" You can hopefully, hear that that’s not the way that people normally speak but it’s the way people normally speak when they’re focusing on structure in language. What part of their mind is focusing on that? It’s their conscious mind. Of course, their unconscious mind is the one that actually does the work. It’s how we speak. We don’t choose our words consciously. They just happen. Of course, you all recognize the conscious/unconscious dissociation beginning to occur here just as I’m explaining it. That’s the whole point. It should be so natural, so seamless and fluid. It’s just a fascinating conversation. By the way, this is why, what you were talking about again, which is, you’ll find people are doing this to you by accident quite often. You’ll ask yourself, "Are these people trying to hypnotize me right now." Or, is it just like, no, they’re just telling you something with such engagement themselves, that they’re accidentally creating H+. That’s sucking you into the whole thing. Make sense? So now you get to use it as a force for good whenever you want to, which is nice. Go ahead.

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I didn’t think about any of that stuff. The only thing that I thought about is, I had an experience that I wanted him to convey with my story, which was the experience that the person had that I was telling about. I became so engaged in the story I was telling, but the one thing is I had the intention of the H+. The rest of it was out the window for me, and I really do think he was tranced, and he was experiencing what I wanted him to experience.

Igor:

You’re describing exactly the thing that we’re talking about. It sounds a little bit blasé when I say this, but when I say, I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing up here, I don’t mean that in the sense of I’m a fraud, ha, ha, ha. How foolish do you feel now? It’s more that I’m really not conscious of what I’m doing. My intention is, all right, I want to demonstrate a particular kind of induction and I’ll just deal with it. Sometimes the middle of an induction I get so carried away with it, I have to stop myself because I’m going somewhere completely different. I’m going, "Oh no, no. I meant to be showing them this. Oh, that feels really good there though." It’s just naturally taking me down one road or another. So you need to let yourself be carried away by your own processes. That’s what makes it easy. Do you recall that we talked about the H+ as both a shield and a sword? Well, this is how it works for you. When you create the H+, you’re kind of so carried away by it, it is easy. Now after the break, how would you like to discover a very simple induction, one which is so simple it actually requires no thought on your part whatsoever? It’s very enjoyable to do. It’s easy. You will never forget it. You will always know exactly what to say, and it will probably take people into deeper trances than they’ve ever experienced before. Would you like to discover that?

Student:

Oh yes.

Igor:

It’s something I call the irresistible induction, but before we get there… Does this sort of make sense? Yes? So what I want to do now is spend a little bit of time seeing how we can tweak the structure of a My Friend John technique until we have more vehicles, because we don’t want to be sitting there just talking my friend Jack, and here’s my friend Jill, and here’s my

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 friend John, and here’s my friend Bob. Do you know what I mean? The pattern becomes a little bit too easy to recognize over time. This is not to say that’s not a good pattern, it’s a fantastic pattern and I know people who use that, that do fantastically well. But, I like to have range so that you can express yourself hypnotically in many different environments. Then, when you don’t happen to have a real friend called John who happens to have had the experience you want to put other people through; you’ll be able to develop other vehicles and anecdotes that can still be used in the same way. Does that make sense? Here’s what I call hypnotic lectures. There are two kinds essentially, that I want to focus on with you guys. ♦ Direct lectures ♦ Indirect lectures A direct lecture is very simple. If you think about My Friend John, basically, you’re telling someone about an experience. In a direct lecture, you’re finding a topic that also allows you to give someone an experience. So a direct lecture, basically, allows you to find a topic that has a kind of a natural trance theme embedded within it. For example, does anyone here know who Franz Anton Mesmer was? Yes? Franz Anton Mesmer is the grand-daddy or the great-grand-daddy, if you like, of hypnosis. He develops what’s called Mesmerism. At the time, he thought some kind of magnetic fluid of influence passes between people. But really it’s the forerunner of what we now know as hypnosis, of course. Mesmer thought just by looking at an individual, something would begin to happen inside them, a transference of an experience. Do you see where we’re going with this right now? What other kind of topics would lend themselves to this sort of thing? Anyone heard of the Egyptian sleep temples or the soothsayers in Ancient Greece like, the Oracle of Delphi? These places are where people would predict the future or give advice. In order for the priests to be able to do this, well, they went into a trance. In the sleep temples, guess what they did?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So if you want to talk to someone about solving problems in sleep, do you think that might be a useful historical fact to discuss? Or, if you want people to have inside inspiration, talk about, "Hey, if only we could go to the Oracle of Delphi." "What’s that?" "Well let me tell you." Do you see where we’re going with this? What other kinds of topics would lend themselves to a direct lecture. Which have embedded within it a trance theme so that you can just talk about hypnotic experiences without being so obvious about it or overt about it? The great psychiatrist, Milton Erickson - there’s a reason why a lot of hypnosis and NLP trainings talk about Milton Erickson all the time. Why? Because it allows them to put people in trance, it’s a perfect vehicle for it. Go ahead. Practicing Tai Chi, right? It’s an inner art and there’s a bunch of internal experiences happening and, as a result, of those you can talk about the shift to unconscious experienceness. Go ahead. Student: 27. Can you use legends? Igor:

I hope you do. They are some of my favorite things. In fact, after the break, if you like, I’ll show you how to use legends to give people amazing hypnotic gifts. By the way, legends, I don’t know if you realize this, legends and fairy tales in particular, are loaded with unconscious communication. There is actually one individual, one psychotherapist who argues, and I think quite persuasively, that one of reasons that teenagers nowadays feels so much angst compared to yesteryear is that all of our fairy tales have been cleaned up. Have you ever read the original Grimm’s Fairy tales? There’s a reason they’re called Grimm. But the theory goes like this. Inside of the story, which bad stuff happens, children get a chance to experience the world being messed up in a way that’s safe for them so they can process it. So when

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 their emotions actually come and meet them in real life at some point, they already know how to deal with it. It’s not the first time they’ve come across these things so they’re not as threatened by them. Does that make sense? As a hypnotist, I find that argument very persuasive, so please go out and scare children, with stories only. Legends are excellent. A sensory deprivation tank was all the rage in the ‘70s and still the subject of studies. Again, you can talk about scientific studies and research in this area, a phenomenal vehicle. He’s just stolen something from Ralph; music. Music is a great one, especially for people who are music lovers. Talking about how people get carried away by it or by great composers, like Mozart, who would hear music in his dreams. Or Bach, I think it was, who said that the problem isn’t coming up with new symphonies, the problem is having enough time to write them all down. Gypsy magic, absolutely. Especially if you have experience of what people actually do, the actual rituals and so on. Phenomenal! Straight-up hypnosis, we don’t want to use that word. That’s devil’s work. It’s been pointed out that some people will live their lives in accordance with their favorite children’s stories. I wouldn’t actually be surprised by that. We know that we have unconscious blueprints that define how we lead life. For example, did you know that most people – it’s not true of everyone – but you can tell how long someone will live often by the age of their grandparents when they were born? Grandparents become a blueprint for old age. If they were significantly older, like in their 60’s and 70’s when the child was born, old age looked really old and frail, so people tend to live less long. If you had young grandparents, in their 40’s say, then the mental picture of old age is a lot younger and a lot more vital, so people tend to live a little longer. That’s just an unconscious expectation, and I can actually see children’s stories setting up an expectation. What is not, if unconscious formatting, exactly as we talked about a moment ago? Can you tell me how that works? I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 universal thing, but I absolutely see that being a relatively influential part of how people make up their reality. So we have some more suggestions in terms of direct lectures? Sports and athletics, especially people in the zone and all that sort of stuff. So we’ve got a good handle on how a direct lecture works. Yes? So let’s have a look at the indirect lecture. The advantage of an indirect lecture is you can absolve yourself of responsibility. For example, let us say that we took Mickey’s suggestion and we were going to start talking about gypsy magic. Let’s say our audience is a corporate audience or a academic audience. Their initial impression might be, "Oh, gypsy magic, it must be all fakery." The critical factor may well switch on, so you don’t even have the ability to go through the process of influencing because the very topic might switch them off. Do you see how that works? What if you could distance yourself and your audience from the topic somewhat so that they have the freedom to not have to over analyze and reject the idea? Wouldn’t that be interesting? In an indirect lecture, essentially what we’re doing is we’re going to be using the same themes as in a direct lecture, only we’re going to put it into a secondary vehicle that talks about the indirect lectures. It’s not you talking about gypsy magic. It’s not you talking about athletics. It’s not you talking about sensory deprivation tanks. It’s a TV program you viewed that talked about this. It was an investigative report about gypsy magic, a film that centered around legends or maybe an article that you read about Egyptians’ sleep temples. There was this crazy seminar you attended where the lecturer decided to talk about this weird stuff. Do you see where we’re going with this? You’re now putting responsibility for the statements into somebody else’s mouth so if the credibility is at risk, it does not reflect on you. That extra level of divorce says they won’t have an argument with you whether or not that’s right. It’s just what other people believe; hence, there's no real argument to that. Sure if they believe that.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 How can you argue whether or not a TV program may report on gypsy magic or not? Does that make sense? So it allows the mind to have that extra layer of dissociation, and if they have a little layer of dissociation, they won’t need to argue with it as much. Hence, the critical factor won’t be engaged as much and so on. Do you see how the indirect lecture works? Student: 28. Is that the equivalent of using the softening language to some extent? Igor:

Yes although, of course, you can use the language throughout everything, but it has something similar. It’s also similar to using the My Friend John versus this is what happened to me. If it happened to me, you might argue and say, "Yes, but my life’s different." "Well, this is what happened to John." For some reason, people are less prone to argue with you. I think it’s because they’re more dissociated from the experience, so their intellect is less likely to engage critically with it. But there’s no research I’ve seen that will back that up, its just my personal theory on that.

Student:

Obviously, the feedback mechanism that you’re using to decide or differentiate between using direct and indirect comes from the person that you’re discussing with. So, as you begin to use a direct story, you can look at them and watch their body language and decide for yourself if it’s too conservative. Maybe going with gypsy magic directly was…

Igor:

Sure. Although personally, honestly, I think I’ll intermix those two quite happily. If I think that the topic I want to introduce is a little more risky, I’ll dissociate myself. I’ll distance myself by making it more indirect. On the other hand, a lot of times I’ll just give it up and present it directly, because I really don’t mind assuming the responsibility for it. It’s just giving you that choice. I guess you could do it the way you suggested, but personally the way I’ve just used it in the past has been, if the topic I wish to introduce, I have a feeling given the context I’m in, would be more risky or more apt to be criticized or analyzed, then I’ll indirect it one step by saying. "Oh, there’s a seminar or an article I read...", and so on.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 If the context is appropriate and I know the audience is warm to a particular theme – let say I’m speaking with a more New Age audience - and I’m talking about sleep temples, it fits their criteria, the way they look at the world quite neatly, so I’m happy to talk about it, because I know it will be accepted instantly. Student: 29. Is there something more powerful about using the direct versus indirect because if there isn’t then why, not just always indirect? 30. What are the benefits of using either one? Igor:

At that level honestly, I’m not sure there is a big difference. It just gives you more variety. Sometimes it’s nice to actually be the author of some ideas.

Student:

Naturally.

Igor:

It’s more a question of you having choice and range. If you want to be indirect each time and just talk about things you’ve read and seen and so on, by all means, do so. I don’t think there’s going to be any big difference in terms of the impact it has on people.

Student:

Thank you.

Igor:

You’re welcome. All right, you can see how the hypnotic lecture is just a variation of the My Friend John technique isn’t it? We’re now, not talking about individuals. We’re talking about ideas or historical facts or psychological facts or scientific facts or anything like that and at various levels of indirection. Now, we’re going to do the same exercise we did a moment ago. Find a different partner, only this time I’d like for you to present them with either a direct or an indirect lecture. If you want to mix the two by the way, you’re welcome to do that, too. Anything we’ve talked about so far – the legends, the sleep temples, anything that come to your mind feel free to explore it. Your overt purpose is just to inform or educate. The, this is something crazy I found, or this is something interesting or that reminds me of, I just heard or something I just did. Then just educate them or inform them in terms of the theme that you’re using.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Of course, your main purpose, your intention is to switch on your H+ and allow the revivification, the pacing and leading, the conscious/unconscious dissociation. All these things to weave through what you’re doing so you create a nice pleasant trance experience for them. Make sense? Now, if somewhere in the middle of that, you happen to slip into how connected people can be and how they can have people they love in their love and develop an inner smile. That might be okay. I can live with that, can you? Go ahead and have six minutes apiece, we’ll come back and then we’ll have a lunch break.

DVD 11: The Surefire Irresistible Induction & How to Powerfully use “Magic Moments” Igor:

How are you guys doing? Good lunch? Are you ready for the irresistible suggestion? Who’s ready for the irresistible suggestion, anyone?

Students:

Yes.

Igor:

Before we get onto that one…No, it’s true. I’d like you all to go around, put one person in trance, instant induction, really just for a minute, in a smile then come back. Off you go. Is everyone smiling here? Don’t worry, tomorrow we’ll start on the inner frown. Who wants to see the irresistible induction? Just you over here, if you guys want to have a break I’ll just chat with them, its fine by me. I’m building this up. Hopefully it’ll live up to it, right? Let me tell you a little bit about where this came from. Some years ago, as you know, I was going all around the world doing all kinds of crazy stuff to figure out how this little thing called hypnosis works. I was reading a book by Emile Coue about Emile Coue, who was one of the people I was looking at, at the time. Do you know who Emile Coue is, anyone? It has an accent, because it is French, yes?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Emile Coue was a French doctor at the turn of the last century, so the 19th century going into the 20th century. Just a little bit of trivia – he created affirmations. He recorded the very first self-improvement audio program. It was on one of those disc things, not a compact disc, before vinyl even existed. It was one of those wax phonographs. It’s very old. He used to work in a very interesting way. He had a ramshackle farmhouse in France and when patients would come to him, he didn’t just treat them in a modern version of the 50 minute hour where you come in, talk to you and off you go. He had a much more eclectic holistic way of dealing with people that I think was very interesting. One of the things, we have people do, is they turn up and have to wait around for a day to see the big doctor. Meanwhile, whilst they’re waiting for the big doctor, there’d be about a dozen or 20 other people running around in deep trances. I’m talking about people who would be sitting there like this all day, and other people doing post hypnotic suggestions, all kinds of stuff. Of course the atmosphere, it creates its own little H+, if you like. People are sitting there and they’re having their own reality, in terms of what is real and possible. It’s kind of eroding around their ears and they’re like, what the heck is all this stuff? It’s only a matter of time before they are perfectly primed for being great deep trance subjects too. Does that make sense? In fact a lot of the old hypnotists, and what is now called faith hypnosis, started as parlor shows. People would come in small groups of 20-30 people and demonstrate the power of the mind. It would be all kinds of cool and mesmeric things and so on. What a lot of people don’t know is, when they did these little shows they used to bring their favorite subjects with them to demonstrate stuff. They didn’t take people out of the audience. They just took their favorite subjects with them. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we had that double whammy? Nothing induces trance as well as somebody who is already in trance, like in a deep trance. It just affects other people. It’s kind of impractical to have your personal trance monkey and have to cart them around everywhere. It doesn’t work so well, right? If nothing else there are problems with the visa’s and the vaccinations – it’s horrible. It struck me–there’s one trance monkey you can take anywhere you want. You can’t take me everywhere, but you can take yourself. The same thing

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 happens when you’re in a deep trance it has the same impact on other people. Here’s where the irresistible induction comes in. The irresistible induction is actually so simple it’s unreal. I kick myself sometimes for not having thought of it earlier. Essentially, you’re going to put yourself into trance. You’re going to recall how good trance feels. Then all you need to do is describe to other people what it feels like to go into trance, what changes are occurring inside yourself. Here is the bit that makes this super secret. You change the first person to the second person and now it becomes a suggestion. I’d like you to just put your feet flat on the ground and your hands in your lap so they’re resting comfortably. You might find a comfortable position that you’re resting in. Perhaps you’re aware of your breathing. Your arms have a certain sensation and it can change. Perhaps a little motion developing somewhere or even just the feeling of motion and all the time something comfortable begins to grow inside and you can relax and feel good. Your vision can soften, even behind closed eyelids. Your breathing is just so comfortable, deep, more even. It’s quite easy to breathe without any effort. Meanwhile, your mind calms down. An ease and peacefulness settling across your mind. Your thoughts quieting down, the strain of thinking drifting away, of course, thoughts can come but they’re not important now. You feel far too comfortable for that. That’s it, right there. Perhaps a sense of expansion begins, your mind extending as though in infinite space. Your breathing continues, and the comfort continues. You can consider something that makes you smile; a person you know and love, are connected to, a friend, family, child, parent, you know who. Recollections come to mind, it feels good. Wanting to smile and remembering how easy it is when you are with this person. How good you feel when you are there. How natural it all seems when you’re talking or just being around each other. Have you noticed your breathing yet? How comfortable it’s become? How good it feels inside? The quiet that you can experience now, where there used to be noise, and there it is again that memory, that person, that feeling of being connected to someone. It’s natural, no effort required. It’s just a good feeling, an easy feeling. Things feel right. You might as well remember it. Might as well remember it, so you can recall this feeling anytime you need to, anytime you want to.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You might consider a situation in which you wish to hypnotize someone overtly or covertly in a conversation. Just considering that and notice how easy it is to smile, remembering, how good it feels to be connected and everyone has that inside. It’s such an ease, so easy to do. That’s it, allowing your mind to drift wherever it wants to knowing the glow of your inner smile is natural now. You can bring you back anytime you wish to. If you were to come out of a trance, you could do so only as quickly as that smile came with you, could you not? It’s important to bring whatever we have inside of us, out, so we can use it when circumstances require it of us, don’t you think? Here I go again, drifting off on my own ideas, when all you want to know is how do you do the irresistible induction? Once you’re all back again, how are you doing? Did you enjoy that? The induction is very simple. Let’s just give a couple pointers before you do it. ♦ Number one, first and foremost, go into trance. By now you’ve had three or four days experience doing this, so just go with it, enjoy yourself. ♦ Number two, track your own experience. You don’t suddenly just go from alert, awake and normal everyday consciousness, to being in deep trance. It can happen but we’re not looking for that right now. It can evolve. You’re kind of using that principle on yourself, aren’t you? You’re allowing it to begin, you put more attention on the things that are working, it works a little more and you go, "Wow, this is great." The irresistible induction is fantastic because you get paid by someone to do hypnosis, and then you get to do it on yourself. If you’re a therapist, this is a great way of doing it because they think they paid you to overcome their fears and pretty soon they’re going, "Wow, I’m afraid of that." – but not for long. You’re going to track your own experience. The important thing though is you’re going to describe your experience to someone else but in the second person as though you’re offering a suggestion. Make sense?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 For example, the first thing I felt when I sat down here was my breathing, so what did I say to you guys? You might be aware of your breathing. Then my arms had a light tingly sensation, so I started talking about that. There’s something very important you want to do here, there’s actually two things. ♦ The first thing, this is how you can measure your delivery. In other words your performance is going to be very important, to the extent that what you’re saying helps you maintain or deepen the experience you have, that’s a good thing. If however you find yourself having to kind of rouse yourself out of what you’re doing or what you’re saying feels like it’s violating the feeling you’re having. In other words, it pulls you away from that, then you’re not delivering it correctly. Does that make sense? You have an in-built thing. For example, I’m going to do this incorrectly. You can feel a comfortable sensation in your chest. Can you hear the disconnect between how it should feel and what I’m saying? It actually forced me. It jolted me out of the experience. As you’re describing the experience in the second person as if it’s a suggestion, you want to do so only as slowly, deeply, smoothly – whatever verbal qualities you want to put onto it – that enhances it for you. It does not take away from it, it does not clash with it, it doesn’t wake you up or whatever it is. Does that kind of make sense? ♦ The second thing you want to do, the next point here, is very important that you include language softeners here, for obvious reasons. Not everyone’s hands are going to start tingling just because yours did. You’re using language softeners to offer possibilities, and if they’re not accepting the possibilities – in other words when my hands tingled I don’t expect that all of your hands tingled. They might start tingling when I suggest it, but even then in a group like this it won’t happen for everyone. So I’m offering it as a possibility. I can build on the possibility in different directions. Does that make sense? Really, that’s all there is to it its four simple steps. There’s an advanced version, do you want to know what the advanced version is? I don’t want to overload you with details, it’s kind of tricky, but I’ll tell you if you want me to. Would you like me to do the advanced version?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 All right, but I warn you, you asked for this, so if you can’t do it, don’t add it on. In the advanced version you’re doing all of this plus – this is where it gets a little bit tricky – it’s tricky. I apologize. Oh, there’s a meta advanced version that makes it – actually beyond very good. This is very sophisticated, do you want that? Student:

Of course.

Igor:

I warn you, you may not like this. Only speak on their exhale. Oh, that’s new. Only speak on their exhale. You’re creating a feedback loop now. When people exhale they tend to relax more so you are indirectly increasing that. Does that make sense? Is that an easy set of things to do?

Student: 31. Does ‘that’s right’ mean that I say ‘that’s right’ to my partner or only that I embody the attitude of ‘that’s right’ whilst I’m doing the induction process and so on? Igor:

Honestly, there’s only one way I can answer that and that’s by saying, yes, it is. It’s a good question, thank you. Both, is best.

Student: 32. When you did it with us, were your eyes open or closed? Igor:

They were mostly open but they were partially closed.

Student: 33. When you say mostly open but partially closed, do you mean that maybe your eyelids were drooping slightly at some point? Igor:

Let me ask you this way; does it really matter? What matters, is that your eyes are open for long enough, that you can see responses in the subject. That’s the only thing that matters. If, along the way, your eyes are closed for a period or drooping along the way, whatever floats your boat. Honestly it does not matter, as long as you haven’t lost contact with the subject. That does matter. Who wants to have a go at the irresistible induction? Don’t everyone jump up at once after all this build up. What I want you to do is find a partner, and then quietly find your way. You may as well start the irresistible induction as you walk toward your exercise space, because you may as well start building that momentum inside yourself, might you not?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 By the time you’re sitting down, they think you’re about to start but you’ve already got a head start on them. Wouldn’t that be something? Find a partner, find somebody to work with, and spend maybe five or six minutes doing the induction then switch around. While you’re in there you might as well give them a gift. Whatever you want to give them is fine by me, whatever comes to mind right now. Are we good with that? Off you go. Okay, judging by the difficulty of getting you guys to come back again, I’m presuming that went pretty well. Who enjoyed that? Who had a good trance experience as a subject in that? Isn’t it amazing, hypnosis? The best part is you don’t have to think about anything, you don’t have to remember any vocabulary, you don’t have to remember any trance processes or any complex equations or formula. You just have to bring yourself along and have a good time. The rest just happens by itself. Isn’t that pretty cool? It’s irresistible. It’s true, right? This is really the best way I can come up with for describing the power of H+. This is about creating the hypnotic context. This is one method of creating the hypnotic context. But do you see how this changes all your mannerisms, it changes the rhythms you speak in, it changes your pausing, your tonality – it even changes the vocabulary you select, right? If you’re doing it here in one induction, honestly, you should be doing it in all inductions. This is really part of this middle piece here. You know these little red circles? That’s really what you’re doing in those red circles. Do you see how that augments your performance much more? Do you see what I mean by that? Student:

So, I’m kind of starting to plug this into how I would use this in the context of an interaction in business or any other situation where hypnosis is obviously not going to be talked about. I’m starting to realize for example if I’m trying to make a sale or a proposition to somebody I would go there first as if I was the one who wanted the product and describe to them in an indirect way how I would feel enjoying buying the car or the house or whatever.

Igor:

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Let’s say you went for a simple ‘My Friend John’ technique. By the way we’re not even into the influencing processes, yet. We’re about to start that phase, but even if you just did a ‘My Friend John’ technique about how exciting it is to have this car. For example, say look, "Our last client, he wanted pretty much what you want. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



"When he looked at this car he was so excited. He could just – look at the leather. He saw the leather and his hand on he steering wheel and he knew when he was driving down the road, he’s got a real car on his hands." The language, the descriptions, the similes, they all come out of you being excited, doesn’t it? It’s congruent. It’s not like you’re just trying to get one over. If you can’t get excited about what you’re selling, then you really shouldn’t be selling it. Honestly, just find something else to sell or find a different career to get into. There are plenty still out there. That’s where the ethics of what you’re doing comes in as well. If you really love your product – have you ever noticed this? The people who love what they are offering, sell the best without really even trying, right? Student:

If you believe in it, yes.

Igor:

You believe in it and that makes the congruency flow right through, it makes it flow naturally.

Student:

I really just wanted to make a comment. I just wanted to say how incredible that actually was for me, probably one of the best things we’ve done so far. Just having that sensation of completely letting go of everything you’re saying and feeling that absolutely fantastic with another person. It makes me realize what a fantastic thing we’re doing here. I really hope that everyone else experienced that too or will. It’s just that great.

Igor:

Give her a round of applause for that one. [Applause] Don’t worry, after this everything else is a disappointment. Anything else anyone wants to say or add?

Student:

It’s simply fantastic.

Igor:

Where have I heard that before, I don’t know? We’ve got a great tool for creating the hypnotic context, isn't that fair to say? It’s the whole going first principle and so on. I’d like to offer you a couple of other ways of doing it. Can I have a volunteer up here for a moment? Anyone will do. Give him a nice round of applause, would you?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You’ll enjoy this, its lots of fun. Just face the crowd over here. It’s funny you should ask that, because that reminds me of something. Let me just show you something really cool. Put your hand over there for a second, just point out, to twelve o’clock. Imagine that’s twelve o’clock. What I’m going to have you do is just start pointing around to – you know what? Use your other hand, it makes it easier. Point over to one o’clock, three o’clock, and so on and keep going around as far as you can until your body won’t turn any further. Feel free to turn your body with it. Oops, keep your feet locked on the ground, turn around and see how far you can point without actually moving your feet. Make it smooth, there you go. It’s going to about 8:30, almost 9:00. Go ahead and close your eyes now. What I want you to do is just imagine pointing out the same way, your fingers pointing out in your mind’s eye, and it’s going to go to 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock or 3 o’clock and so on. Keep going past 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00– all the way back to 12:00. Once you’ve done a complete revolution, come all the way back again. Once you’re back to the starting point do the whole thing again, only this time when you get to 12:00 keep going as though your back was double jointed and you could go around a second time without unwinding. Of course you’ll have to do the double unwind back – nod your head when you’ve done that. All right, and do it again. The double wind up all the way through to 12:00 and then back all the way through to 12:00. Once you’re there just feel that stretch, like, "Oh, that’s pretty good." Then come back twice until you’re back to your starting position. Then nod your head. Do it a few more times and nod your head each time for me. One more time, good, now open your eyes and do it for real. Student:

Do it for real?

Igor:

That’s it, do it for real. Just keep going as far as you can go. Keep going around as far as you can do. Look at that – give him a round of applause. Isn’t that something? [Applause] That, my friend, is the power of your mind. Just by using your mind a different way you’ve already found out about your flexibility. Let me show you something you can do now, that will allow you to achieve all your

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 goals and dreams, all kinds of interesting things. Wouldn’t that be something? You know you have a conscious mind. You know you have an unconscious mind. What you just did of course was talk to your unconscious mind indirectly, through the images inside your brain to tell it to become more flexible. To the extent that you can tell your unconscious mind to become more flexible in other things, wouldn’t that make it easier to achieve your goals, your dreams, and your ambitions? Do you see where I’m going with this now folks? Give him a nice round of applause. [Applause] While we’re describing it – do you want to come up? Let me just say this first and then I know where you’re going with this hopefully. Student:

Maybe not – I was just going to say thank you for deconstructing that because I’ve seen those same kinds of things used to sell water that’s infused with this or that and bracelets that have such and such – and they’re plastic. I know they’re doing something like that, and my friends are like, 'Oh my gosh, it’s a great product." And I’m like, "No, it’s in your head." Thank you for that because now I can do that to them. That’s all I wanted to say.

Igor:

I may call on you later, on about the stuff you talked about in terms of the bar work, because this fits in perfectly. You’ll get your clients. We’ll talk about that in a minute if I may because it actually fits perfectly into what we’re doing. The concept we’ve got right now is called a magic moment. Remember right now we’re talking about. Or rather in this session we want to focus on how to create a hypnotic context. A context in which an ordinary conversation can become hypnotic. If you’re anything like me or if you're like me, exactly, I know that’s good. You probably have had conversations in the past and you’re trying to edge something in and it just doesn’t quite fit because the whole mood of the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 interaction does not allow for that intimacy, that slight change, shifting gears and so on. Make sense? We need methods for shifting those gears that will allow us to become more hypnotic and as a result start doing conscious and unconscious dissociation, 'My Friend John', revivification, or any of these other things we want to do. Make sense? Of course, the irresistible induction or the principle behind that, the idea of going first, is absolutely crucial. You have to be able to enter the magic of what you’re doing, otherwise why would they believe it? It’s not congruent. Magic moments are great because they demark a type of reality. In other words, it says normal everyday life does not apply here anymore, at least not for awhile. The way magic moments work is essentially by stimulating one of three emotions. I call it three A’s. It’s either the, aha, "So now I get it. I realize what, kind of like, Nicky, just said. Now I finally understand why this works. "Right? It’s like, aha, that’s so cute. That’s so amazing. That’s so nice. Have you ever walked past an artist in the street that’s doing caricatures or painting these amazing things and you stop, look and go, "Aha, that’s amazing." It’s an emotional response. Of course, the third is one we all know and love, is the ha-ha response which is of course when people are laughing. Ever notice, how, when people tell a joke the atmosphere just changes everything? It’s like a demarcation. What went before, now we can wipe the slate clear and start again from scratch. Have you ever noticed that? We’re looking for the three core emotions in a magic moment. The way we can achieve it is, and again, there are three categories I have. But really, the categories aren’t important. It’s just that you do them and that’s important. You’ve got a visual, an auditory and a kinesthetic. The visual is, basically, when you draw stuff, right? This is kind of a magic moment because it starts to reveal in visual form what you’ve been doing. It puts it in concrete form. You can then take this away with you and go, "This means something. This is now a symbol of something." Does that make sense? As long as I infuse this with enough emotion, then it starts becoming meaningful. An auditory one might be something as simple as a story. You

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 can tell an anecdote. We’ll come into story telling more fully later and when we do you’ll have lots of opportunity to do this. A story is really one of the most wonderful vehicles for shifting realities, for shifting gears from normal hum-drum conversation to an amazing conversation, to something that’s really just out of this world. The stories don’t have to be particularly crazy or intense or anything like that. They can be, but they don’t have to be. They can be just personal stories and things like that too. The third one is what you saw here, you can call it kinesthetic or a physical demonstration. You’re, basically, getting people to walk through an experience, at the end of which there is an insight. The key thing to magic moments is number one, the performance. If you just give it a hum-drum point, turn, point, turn, all right now do it for real, thanks. Do you see how if my attitude is deflated the whole thing gets deflated? I can cheapen it with my own attitude or I can inspire it with my attitude. Secondly, the magic moment has to have a point. It has to have some kind of an idea or concept that brings everything that has happened together in a meaningful way. If I just left it there and now you’re at point. You’ve stretched a bit further and you say, "Wow." And he says, "Wow." "All right, see you tomorrow." I’ve just wasted an opportunity. All that energy has been built up and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not filtered into anything. It has to have a point. I like the point of how powerful your mind is. The point might be if you’re in business or sales, for example, when we’re working with an international accountancy firm that specializes in audit’s and wants to start getting work from Fortune 500 companies. The ones listed on the stock exchange, that typically only go for the big five international firms like KPMG and so on for safety reasons, they know they can tell the shareholders we went for the best. It’s not our fault. It’s very rare that they pick someone, other than, the top five. I think now, they’re four because Anderson decided to not work so well anymore. This

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 is exactly one of the things we taught them to do in order to get the business. They end up creating a magic moment and saying. "Look, we really believe in the relationship of working with you to get the results." and so on. A magic moment, and then at the end of the conference they’re saying, "That’s great. That’s what we want to have. We want to work with people like this." It really brought the experience to life for them. Anyone can just say we work with people and together in unity and harmony, we’ll master the world and all the rest of it – it doesn’t mean so much. But the experience does. It has to be focused down on something. Does that make sense? Those are key things. You can use an infinite variety of things for magic moments, like magic tricks. You can do what you just saw there. You can do psychological things. We have a whole deck of cards with examples for these things. I’m sure all of you know some versions of things you can do with people in order to arrest their attention and go wow, "This is kind of cool. This is unusual and different." Make sense? We’re going to have a chance to practice in this one particular moment and use this as an opening door towards conversational induction. Before we do it though, do you mind talking about how you get business using magic moments? This is not just a little parlor trick to open things up. This is honestly, how I first started filling my own business practice as a hypnotherapist, totally by accident. Before I tell my story you might as well tell yours because I think it’s amazing. Student:

I’m down to two bar shifts a week. I work two shifts in the bar, the slowest days, Sunday and Monday during the day. By happy hour, I’m out of there. By the end of those two shifts my books are full, I’ve got clients for four more days, and I do it using magic moments. I of course started with the cards and got a few of them. Then I got interested in mentalism. I use another trick, too. I’ll walk up to a table or a group of people and while they’re looking at menus, I’ll just tell them what they want and they’ll look at me and say how did you do that? It’s the embedded command CD. They may not want that, but they’re going to have it. If you want to study the embedded commands thing, that’s a good one. They say how did you do that? Now I’ve got a conversation and I tell them this is a second job for me. They ask what do you do? I get inside your head.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 They’re like. "What?" Wait a minute, then I’ll do a mentalism trick where I’m also doing a hypnotic gaze induction on them. They don’t know it, and then they’re like. "What are you, a psychic?' I’m like, "No, I’m just a hypnotist." I downplay it. "Do you have a card?" "Sure" – bang. Then I walk away and without fail – Kristin watched me do this like twice in 20 minutes – they’re up at the bar saying, "When can I set an appointment? What can you fix? What can you do?" Igor:

Would it be fair to say that when you use magic moments properly, that it’s just night and day. It totally transforms the interaction and the results you get as well, right?

Student:

Yes. The best thing about a magic moment is, once you know how to do it you’ll go, "Oh really? That’s all it is?" If you do the stage part right, if you do the – what’s the word – the setup right, the theater part right, it can be the easiest trick in the world and you’re going to get a huge reaction. Most mentalism tricks, when you learn how the trick is actually done, you’re like, "Really that’s it?" They’re really simple to learn but if you do it right you blow people’s minds and all of the sudden they’re asking for your business card. "Can you make me quit smoking?" "Can you make me lose weight?" "Well, yes. Yes I can, as a matter of fact.'

Igor:

Who would like to learn how to do that? Give him a nice round of applause. I’ve been teaching magic moments pretty much since we started teaching live courses. I really love to hear when people actually use it. A lot of people think, "Oh, it’s such a simple thing, it looks charming." – and then they forget all about it. When you actually use it you get amazing results. I had the same thing. The place I discovered magic moments was, out at a party with friends, back in my early days of hypnosis. I was trying to do the networking thing. Bugging everyone saying I’m a hypnotist, I’m a hypnotist. And they said, "Yes, we know already, whatever."

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We were at some kind of bar or club type thing, with loud music, but more like a bar. There was a big table of us. Everyone was saying what about this – they were all ignoring me. One of my friends then turns around and says, "Oh, I saw this thing in a stage show with people whose hands were stuck or arms were stuck. Can you do that?" This was in my early days, so I was less confident about the whole hypnosis thing. I was kind of like, "Yes, sure, of course, I can. I’m Hypnoman." We went to a little corner where the music was playing loudly. I had to shout in his ear. I did eye catalepsy – so eyes locked – and then we did the arm bar. Of course, with eyes locked, it just looked like I was whispering in some guy’s ear. So that was not probably as dramatic, but with the arm bar suddenly people noticed. Before I finished the whole arm bar thing, I had, I don’t know, about five or ten people hanging around just watching. This is the interesting part – by the time I got from the area I was standing in, back to the table, where everyone was sitting at, I had a whole queue of people queuing up around the table. And half of them weren’t even with us. They were all saying, "Oh, can you cure insomnia?" "Can you deal with smoking?" "I’ve got a chocolate fetish and this won’t come off my hips, can you help me with that?" – all kinds of stuff. I filled up my book on that one night. It is very powerful. Ironically people think, "Oh, it can’t be. It’s just an easy gimmick." If you treat it like a gimmick it will be. When I was a kid there was a magician in England called Paul Daniels. Is anyone here from the UK? Paul Daniels was a famous TV magician who had a show every week for years. It takes a lot of inventiveness to be able to do that. Anyway, I loved that show. One Christmas, I might have been 11 or 12, and got a Paul Daniels magic set for Christmas. I thought this is fantastic. I’m going to be like Paul Daniels. His catch phrase was, "You’ll like this, not a lot, but you’ll like this." I practiced my catch phrase. He was going a little bald on top – I didn’t quite go as far as that but I was doing my whole Paul Daniels thing.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Then something happened, I opened the box up and there were these little cheap plastic balls and slidy things that made things happen and all the rest of it. After about five minutes I’d get bored of it. I wish it had written on the box in large letters across the side, magic not included. The magic is not in the trick. If you just treat it as a trick, it’s a trick, and really after a few like, "Oh, that’s interesting." It just gets tedious. Does anyone here have a friend that’s into magic, like an amateur magician, and they just keep doing the same thing over and over to the point where it just annoys you? I had a few friends like that. The thing they’re missing is the performance element. The magic that comes from you. It’s back to the H+ again, isn’t it? I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t emphasize that, because just doing a trick about people pointing around the room isn’t enough. It’s what it evokes in people. That creates magic and that shifts peoples’ gears from normal conversation to like, eyes open wonder, where you have them. It’s the window of opportunity where you have them. Give them this little nudge, and off they go into la-la land. Does that make sense? Who wants to have a go of that now? Here’s what I’m going to do. We’re going to start with a magic moment. Do you want me to go through what we just did a moment ago, again, just to describe it? I’ll describe the magic moment again in a second, let me just give you the whole process in a minute. ♦ Find a reason to introduce the magic moment. Of course, we had a lovely long in-depth conversation before the magic moment. Sometimes you can say, "Oh, this reminds me of something. Let me show you this." You just bring it in casually in the conversation. If you want to pretend you had a conversation first, that’s fine by me. Just bring in the magic moment. It’s very important at the end of the magic moment when something has happened, which is kind of interesting, it’s emotionally stimulating – remember the amygdala gets triggered by something novel, something unusual, something unexpected – well a magic moment is that. Would it be fair to say you felt your amygdala being triggered? It was novel, it was unusual – who came up? Student:

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Igor:

You felt like, "Wow, what is that?" Especially when you went to turn around normally. Just so you know, when people turn they’ll go to six, maybe seven o’clock. That’s about as far as they go. When you went to nine, I thought I hope he’s double jointed; otherwise, I’m going to be embarrassed. At the end of that, there’s that emotion that’s running around, but it has nowhere to go. There’s no purpose or point it can come down on. Sometimes people automatically latch onto a point, so they’ll sometimes ask. "Oh, wow. Is that how goals work? Is that why when people believe in themselves it’ll work?" And all that sort of stuff? It’s relatively rare. You have to give them a meaning. You have to draw it all into a point for them. Your point really should be related with whatever kind of influence you create with people. In other words, it’s creating a frame, or a suggestion of some sort. We’ll talk about frames more tomorrow, make sense? 2. You have to make a point. The point I was making here, was, the power of the mind. I just like that because it fits my job pretty nicely. It can really be anything. It can be about how your corporation is different from other people’s corporations. It could be about why it’s important to learn history rather than not. Why it’s important to overcome points and stuff, like that. The thing about magic moments though, the magic moments should somehow be able to be framed in terms of, or in reference to, whatever point you’re trying to make. For example, the pointing game we just played, it was trying to convince 100 pupils that history is important to learn. How does that fit? How does pointing around fit history? I may have to tweak it. For example, imagine there in front of you, is 12 that’s the 12th century, the 13th century and so on. By the time you get to the 20th century or 21st century which is 9 o’clock and then go back past and let’s see if we can predict the future. We just talk about how – you can imagine how the whole story gets evolved now, right? You go through the centuries all the way up to the present day, which is of course the 21st century. That’s 9 o’clock. Then, as a lot of people realize the future is always built on the past, so keep going. Keep going. See if you can tell the future. When they actually do it and they actually go past the 21st century, past 9 o’clock, into the future, they say, "Wow, I’ve got to study history."

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Notice how the association, the link, is not logical. Being able to point has nothing to do with predicting the future or even learning history. Because your story is smooth and because the experience is emotive, in other words, it has emotions attached, and it’s engaging, those three ideas somehow get associated. They get collected at the unconscious level and they will accept the idea. Does that make sense to you guys? Do you see how magic moments have a lot of scope? It’s just that you have to bring it down to a point. And the point has to fit the context you’re in, in other words, the message you’re trying to provide. Make sense? At this point you have an opportunity for trance. The first thing I want you to do at this point, is, what we call the hypnotic gaze. Do you recall on day one, when you put your hands on someone’s shoulder and stared into their eyes? You watched for that moment, when their eyes stopped shifting, when it settled down and the focus locked in. Did you all notice that? As you’re doing your instant inductions now, you should still be looking for that. That’s still part of the instant inductions. You’re going to do the same thing, only this time it will be conversational. They’ve just had an amazing experience, which means you can arrest their attention. Do you remember when Johnny as up here a moment ago and he just went way past 9 o’clock? He went an extra couple of inches on top of that. He went to ten or eleven, something like that. Do you recall how at the end of it he was like. "Wow. What did we do?" I just put one hand on his shoulder – I like touch because it arrests attention as well – and I had eye contact with him. I just started speaking. Did you all see that? Really, it’s like, shall we say, it’s a more socially acceptable or conversational version of look into my eyes and do not look away. I’m not actually saying it, but in my attitude it’s still there. Make sense? It’s important that you’re doing this stuff with your inner smile, your H+. Why? Because normally when people stare at each other, especially males staring at other males – but then again males staring at females might be interpreted a different way. Do you see where I’m going with this? You have to set the context with your own emotional state as well. At that point, you have the perfect context for trance. Do you have attention? Yes. Do you have a bypass of the critical factor? The answer is yes. You have

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 a strong emotional event which is already starting to bypass the critical factor. Your arresting their attention with eye contact. Eye contact is, as a rule, if it’s prolonged, it makes people uncomfortable and that tends to derail the critical factor, so you’re pretty much there. You can slip straight into stimulating the unconscious mind. How did I start doing that with Johnny? We did exactly what we’ve been doing all day today, wasn’t it? Yes, conscious and unconscious dissociation, pacing, leading and, if I should need it, revivification. This time, I’m not going to be down like, "And now Johnny, you can remember…" It doesn’t fit the context I’ve created. I can do it more conversationally, though. I can still change my tone. But, it will be a subtler change because it’ll fit the context more. You all had a demonstration of what I meant by that. Do you want another demo so you can see it? Can I have a volunteer please? You keep putting your hand up. All right come on up. Give him a round of applause. Come on up. It’s not that I have anything against you, it’s just everyone should have an opportunity to come up here. Otherwise, they start thinking I just paid him to come on stage. Let’s assume, we’ve just done the magic moment, and he’s going, "Wow, that’s amazing." "That’s just the power of your mind. Did you know your mind can do amazing things? Just now your body turned further than you thought you could, just by how you used your brain to give the right information. "You know you have a conscious mind, right? You also know you have an unconscious mind and that’s the part, we’re interested in. Your unconscious mind can make amazing things happen, heal cuts and wounds, without you having to think about it. It’s made you turn further than you even realized. "Of course I know there’s many things you wish to achieve, are there not? All you have to do is figure out how to get in touch with that part of your mind and almost anything becomes possible. "The interesting thing is, you’ve been doing this all of your life without even really realizing it. Do you recall the first time you learned to ride a bike, for example? Wasn’t it an interesting moment the day you actually managed to stay balanced and just, smooth ride? That feeling of excitement, that you actually did this.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 "I’d like to show you how to do something now. I’d like to show you a way you can have that same sense of excitement, again. So you can realize that it’s so much easier once you get the knack of it. Would you like to do that now?" Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Do you believe him? Do you see how the whole process is actually very smooth? Did you hear the hypnotic language in action? I’ll come to you in a minute, if I may. The conscious/unconscious dissociation occurring, the revivification occurring – did you all hear that? I did a little bit of pacing, not too much at this point, because I was getting a lot of agreement already, so I didn’t need that much. Do you see how all the tools you’ve been using so far come together in a very nice package and it’s almost invisible? It’s almost just like a friend giving someone a pep talk, isn’t it?

Student:

Yes definitely.

Igor:

Give him a nice round of applause. Thank you. Do you want to come up?

Student:

It’s just about the next exercise we’re doing.

Igor:

Just ask quickly then.

Student:

For the next exercise I was wondering, is there going to be more talk about the actual…

Igor:

You know what come up. It sounds like this is a longer question.

Student:

I don’t mean to make it long. I just sometimes use a lot of words. What I was saying was there was more talking about the conscious and unconscious processes to get the magic moment.

Igor:

Just now?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

No that was after the magic moment. I just skipped the stage, to not have to do it again, that’s all. We went straight to this area here.

Student:

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 34. What I was going to ask was, I know you were using that, at that point, but when we’re doing this exercise now, can we use either a 'My Friend John' story to create the magic moment? Igor:

Absolutely.

Student:

Can we do, basically, anything we think will…

Igor:

No, for the magic moment, just stick to the physical thing we did a moment ago and I’ll explain why in a minute. For the actual hypnotic induction, which happens here, you can use 'My Friend John'. You can use a hypnotic lecture, anything you want, just not in this point here. Although you can use it there, I’d like your mind to be able to separate the two for a moment, so that, you know when you’re using what, strategically. Does that make sense? You can absolutely use lectures here, no problem at all. What I did with him, I missed out this part. We just missed that in the demonstration.

Student:

You missed the magic moment.

Igor:

I missed it out. I skipped it. I cheated. I went ahead without doing the whole thing. I only wanted to show this part, That’s the only part I showed because I only needed to show the hypnotic gaze and how you take it forward from there because you’d already seen the magic moment itself. What we did with him was not a magic moment. It was just going straight into what I call the hypnotic blitz. This bit here was the blitz, because I’m overloading his whole mind with positive suggestions. Does that make sense?

Student:

I see. 35. Are we allowed to put the magic moment into the exercise?

Igor:

You will be doing the magic moment.

Student:

Okay perfect, sorry.

Igor:

Next time I’ll do the whole version so you can see the whole thing from start to finish. I just didn’t think you’d want to see the same thing, again, twice.

Student:

Okay, I just now realize exactly what you were aiming at. Thank you.

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Igor:

Thank you very much. We’ll start with a magic moment. You can use the pointing one and a couple others. I can show you, if you want. Importantly, you bring it to a point. You have to make some meaning out of it. Just when that point comes out, you’ll put a hand on their shoulder, maybe even both hands, depending, maybe, you just put your heads together, depending on the context you’re in. You’ll lock eyes, and then you start your induction. Your induction is all of this stuff, any way you want. You can just talk about it directly, as we did with the conscious/unconscious dissociation. You can use 'My Friend John'. You can give them a hypnotic lecture directly or indirectly, S,o you already have four different vehicles in which you can do this, don’t you? The key here is you’ve got to keep it inside a context, that, if anyone outside the room were to see it, they’d think you’re just having a pep talk or just giving someone a good talk. Does that make sense? If you had to say to someone, I just hypnotized that person. They’d say, "No, way. That’s not hypnosis. Where’s your pocket watch?" Do you understand the exercise, the four simple steps? Is that easy to do? It’s just putting everything you did together up to this point. Let me just walk you through very quickly the magic moment I used on the stage here. So you have something to begin with. It uses something called the idiodynamic response. All that means is when you have an idea and you focus on it with sufficient intensity it will affect your body. It will affect your movement and so on. We know this already because if you think about people you like and care for, what do you do? If you’re thinking about people or situations that make you feel upset – well I already gave it away on that one – people you don’t like or stressful situations, then you feel bad. A thought, an idea has changed your body, has changed your feelings and emotions. The same goes with this. Have you ever noticed how sometimes when dogs are sleeping, they’ll twitch and people will say, "Oh look, he’s dreaming?" They’re acting out their dreams to some extent. We’re going to do the same thing with this magic moment. They’re going to start off – it’s important, I missed the instruction and you saw what happened – that you ask them to plant their feet on the floor and keep them stuck there.

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Get them to point out toward 12 o’clock. I just like the clock system because it’s very clear which way to go. Start point towards one, two, and keep going until you go as far as you can go. It will go something like this. Typically, it’ll be somewhere between, just before six. And typically, this angle here, is where people end up. If they go further than that, you’re in trouble, although it worked out just fine. So, thanks, Johnny for being extra flexible. Then you close your eyes and focus on the same thing. The first time, mentally speaking, you want to really talk them through it so you’re really getting them to get involved in the whole process. Do you remember, was it yesterday, when we did the revivification and you started describing a scene they’d never seen before? You’re using the same kind of language. Going to 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00– and then all the way beyond that back to 12:00. The second time they go through it, I like to make them go through 12 twice. And it becomes very unrealistic because no one has that kind of double jointed back, but it really emphasizes that idea of stretching. I want to over emphasize that so that person really gets the idea that this is going way beyond where they’ve been before. I do that several times to condition it in. After a while, I tell them to just keep doing that and give me a head nod every time you’ve unwound, so I can see that you’ve done a few iterations of it. Eventually, I’ll say, now, just open your eyes and do it again. This time, they’ll find themselves going a lot further, right? That’s the point at which you need to make your point. If they just go okay, "I’ve gone all the way up to here – yep, so?" You’ve lost the whole momentum you’ve been building up. Just as they get past and they go through all the way again, and get all the way up to there, you go, "Look how much more you achieved." or "Look how much further you got. That’s the power of your mind." Do you see how you’re cementing in? Make sense? Then hopefully, if you’ve performed the whole thing well, they’ll be a little star struck and say, "Wow, that’s amazing." Now you have your window of opportunity in order to lock contact with the eyes and begin the whole conversational induction. Does that make sense to you guys? Student:

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In his case, after you gave him the hypnotic blitz and said to him, "Wouldn’t you like to learn more about this?" Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

You mean in the second case, here? I had to figure out a context I might want to do a blitz in, so in my mind, I just put myself in a position where I wanted to teach someone something. I want to teach them a skill, so I’m now getting him to a position where I’m revivifying learning, to make it easier. Then, I’m offering the motivation. Can I show you how to learn something, so you can feel that feeling again and be so excited to succeed? I can teach him a skill with that, as a resource. Now he’s going into it, looking forward to being excited.

Student:

Now he says, "Yes, I’d like to learn that." At that point, you want to induce him?

Igor:

Oh no, I’ve already done the induction. That was the induction. Let me just do the whole thing again so you can see it from start to finish. How’s that?

Student:

I mean the first person that was here.

Igor:

The first person, Johnny? I can’t even remember what I did in terms of the blitz. I only did a very short blitz. The blitz was very short. I just gave him…I just did a little conscious/unconscious dissociation with him and left it with that. I didn’t actually use it for any purpose.

Student:

You asked him, "Would you like to learn more?"

Igor:

Learn more about the power of the mind or something – that might have been it. In that case, probably, the context I put myself in, is something where I have to motivate him to want more. Maybe coaching or to come to a seminar or something like that.

Student: 36. You don’t need to induce him anymore? Igor:

That is the induction already. The conscious/unconscious dissociation is the induction, very simple. Magic moment, is the pointing. Hypnotic gaze begins the induction. As soon as you lock eyes with someone, as soon as you look eye to eye with someone, at this point, the whole process of the hypnotic gaze begins. Of course, you’ve been paying careful attention over the last few days, have you not? You’ve been taking lots of notes. Another part of you has not been taking notes because it’s been busy listening. That part of you that was busy listening, is already, right now, recognizing something. Something that is not in your notes, something that makes you so much better at hypnosis than you realize.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 To the extent that you stop thinking about everything you’ve written down, you begin to remember everything you’ve experienced. Not just today, but in a lifetime of learning, a lifetime of having conversations with people, a lifetime which makes life easy for you to interact with others. Already you have a sense, you have an instinct about how to do this, to talk to people in a special unique way, in a way where their inner mind begins to open up and trust the whole process. You can feel good about that trust. You can begin to trust that now, can you not? You feel a comfortable sensation, can you not? That’s the beginning of your unconscious mind showing you how easy it really is to do conversational hypnosis. All you have to do is trust that. You can do that, can’t you? Remember. That’s right, just remember. That’s an easy thing to do, isn’t it? Does that answer your question? All right, find a partner. Just go through the magic moment, hit the point, lock eyes and run through an induction. Once you’re doing the induction, you might as well revivify things. If something comes to mind that’s worth revivifying - I know, give them a little gift that might make their career as a hypnotist a little easier. Who am I to suggest you shouldn’t do that? You may as well enjoy yourself and do whatever comes natural. Is everyone cool with that? Off you go. Before we start getting into today’s content, a bunch of you asked more about magic moments and so on. Normally I’d show a couple things I like to do, but Nicky has actually volunteered to show you some of the things he does in his bar, which has been getting him all these clients and filling up his hypnotherapy practice. With your guys’ permission, would you like to see some of what has made him a wealthy and successful man? Come on up Nicky. Nicky:

Nice. Rule number one – never tell the trick. Rule number two – don’t tell the trick, I’m going to break rule number one and two, I’m about to tell you how to do the tricks. The best way to start, really, is with the mind game magic deck. That’s where I started. You can go from there. Right here, Lori. Just stay right there. I want you to look right into my right eye. Stare right here at the triangle, stare at the circle. Okay, stare at the square back right here.

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Which one do you like? Lori:

The square.

Nicky:

The square? You like the square, really? Where did I put it? Pretty cool, right? What if you’d have said the circle? I would’ve said, "Wow. We really have a connection. Look behind my name tag." If you’d have said triangle, what would I have said? I would have said, "Wow, look underneath your chair – there’s something taped to the bottom of it." Rule number two with good mentalism – when you find out how it’s done, it should be a letdown. That means it’s easy. The easier it is the more you can pay attention to performance. You notice, I’m saying look into my right eye – what am I doing? Hypnotic gaze, right? Do you see how I’m starting to build context already?

Lori:

It’s so easy to do.

Nicky:

If it’s easy, you can pay attention to performance, which is where it’s at, right? You’re a good subject, come up here. Let’s have a round of applause for Lori. Let’s do something. Have a seat. Let’s do something weird. Oh, am I not talking into this? Is that better? I think I had the same problem when I was doing stage hypnosis. How well do you get along with your husband?

Lori:

Since he’s sitting right there, I’d say pretty good.

Nicky:

You pretty connected to him?

Lori:

Yes.

Nicky:

Really connected to him?

Lori:

I think so.

Nicky:

Really?

Lori:

Yes.

Nicky:

You’re sure?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Lori:

Yes.

Nicky:

Just hold this in your left hand. Don’t open it, don’t look at it, just hold it there. Be very aware that it’s in your hand. See what I’m doing? I’m directing attention. Let’s just do this. Some of you might have seen this. There’s a red pen. There’s Igor’s little thing. There’s a deck of cards. There’s a ballpoint pen and here’s my thumb.

Lori:

What’s in here?

Nicky:

I don’t know, it’s not mine. Its scotch– one, two, three, four or five things. Just stare into my right eye. As you stare into my right eye think about that piece of paper that’s in your husband’s hand. Make sure you’re aware that that’s in your hand, really kind of feel it. Really quick, stare at the red pen. Stare at Igor’s thing. Stare at the mind game magic. Stare at the pen. Stare at my phone. Back up here really quickly. Point at any three of those items, just point at them, that thing – two more, what else? That thing and that thing. Okay, we’re just going to get that out of the way. Pick those two things up. Put one in each hand. Hand me one of them. You want to keep the red pen, are you sure?

Lori:

Yes.

Nicky:

Open up the piece of paper and read it.

Student:

Red pen.

Nicky:

I used to screw this thing up because I’d write things like; you will pick the red pen. Once again K-I-S-S, keep it simple. It’s got to be easy. If I wrote you will pick the red pen, what if she’d handed me the red pen? I wouldn’t have been able to say, "Really, you want to give me the red pen?" What if she’d left the red pen? "Really, the red pen is the only thing left?" It doesn’t matter where it goes, because what I’m saying, hypnotic language folks, kids, the red pen – I can say whatever I want after that. Does that make sense? It’s called a force. Once again, it’s very simple. It doesn’t matter where the red pen ends up, in my hand, on the table or in her hand. I’m going to say, "The red pen, really? The red pen?" People won’t question what they assume. Do you

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 see how easy that is? The simplicity of it makes it work. The simpler it is, the better it is. If it’s simple you can pay attention to performance, does that make sense? Really quick, this is where I started. Everybody kept asking me, where’s the mentalism thing? This is where I started. There are seven suits to this thing. I’m done – you can sit down. Can we give Lori a hand? Lori:

Thank you.

Nicky:

There are seven suits. There’s mind reader, brain games, think yourself better, the mind’s eye – those are kind of fun. These are great in a party also. My suggestion is pick one of each suit. Memorize it. Practice it. Go to a party or go to a bar. Do one at a time. Don’t try to memorize them all at once, one thing at a time. There’s self discovery, power habits and unreality testing. They’re all a lot of fun. They will make you the life of the party because people will go, "Who is that weirdo in the corner?" They won’t be able to help but to come talk to you. Another thing you can do is cold read. Anybody want to cold read Igor really quick? So Igor, there’s something that everybody notices about you. You don’t have to come up, I’m just going to go quick because I’m going to get off the stage. The thing that everybody notices about you is your ingenuity, your ability to take something complicated and make it simple. You might want to just be a little bit careful that you go to the expert in something that’s not your field. Don’t try to do your own plumbing or your own car, because you are ingenious. Do you see what I just did there? I gave him something. I gave him ingenuity, and then I took it away. I’m kind of getting a picture of a s’more. I don’t know why – a really gooey s’more. I think I know what it is. You’re kind of like a s’more. You’re kind of crunchy on the outside. That’s the way you go most of the time. But inside, you’re kind of gooey. There’s somebody special who you’re really gooey with and you don’t show it all the time. Somewhere in your life is an octogenarian, someone who’s in their 80’s – alive or dead– that meant something to you. They taught you something,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 something important. I don’t know what that thing was, but you might want to revisit that lesson. I don’t know why I keep going back to the camping thing. Now, I’m looking at a tent with duct tape on it. I’m seeing your resourcefulness. Okay, my only thing is – it’s great that you’re resourceful, but you need to remember to also be prepared so you don’t get caught with your shorts down. That was just really quick and simple. All I did was to take the first letter of his name Igor, and gave him ingenious. The second letter was G and I gave him gooey. The third letter was O, I gave him an octogenarian. The fourth letter was R, I gave him resourcefulness. Give it and take it away. All you need is somebody’s name and an adjective to go with each letter and you can cold read somebody. I suggest – this is just my opinion – you don’t pretend to be a psychic. Don’t do it, unless you really are. I have no opinions either way, well I do, but don’t pretend to be something you’re not. When people say, "Wow, are you a psychic?" I say, "No, I’m just a hypnotist." Bang, I have a client. Anyway, that’s about it. This I showed you. Get started, folks. Everyone who was asking me how to get started, this is it. Go to the internet and do a search for mentalism. If you want to do some more heavy handed stuff, look up mentalism. There’s a book – The 13 Steps to Mentalism. It’s an old, old book. If you watch Darren Brown, if you watch Kris Angel, if you read that book you’ll find variations of those tricks. All those things come from that. You can look up mentalism. There’s a guy, Mr. X. There’s a lot of marketing hype around his product, but Mr. X has got a pretty good product out there if you want to learn some mentalism. Did that help?

DVD 12: Strategic Conversational Hypnosis & How to Use the “Dream Machine” for Maximum Effect 314




Who enjoyed the magic moment? Isn’t it a great way of opening the door and doing a conversational trance?


We have two interesting ways of creating hypnosis context. Of course, H+ is underlying the whole thing. But, the irresistible induction creates that sense of flow and harmony of what you're doing. You create a context that people naturally fall into. You can do the irresistible induction within anything else that you do. You just start with yourself first. By describing your own experience, it will help you keep track of what it is you're suggesting to others. This is true of anything you do, whether it’s story telling or sales approaches or anything else. If you go first, it’s easy to remember what to do, because you're doing it. The magic moments allow you to shift the nature of interaction, so you can do your blitz, other techniques and so on. It opens a door for you. It doesn't mean you have to do magic moments every time. You may have noticed, when Arthur asked his question, there was no need for the magic moment because he was already there. I just had to take the opportunity that was being presented. You’ve got a great foundation. You can do some sophisticated inductions. You can take people in and out of trance, conversationally, overtly and instantly. You span the whole range of what’s possible with hypnosis. It’s time to focus on what we do when you get them there. It’s good to put people in trance, but then your hands are stuck, great. Other than a bit of showmanship, it doesn't take you very far. Direct suggestions can work fine when the context has been created for it. But, you need to understand how to create that context within the induction itself, so that when you present a suggestion, it takes. If it’s in a conversation, so you can set up, so the conversation lets them naturally conclude something.

I want to introduce you to a concept I call “Power Loops.” A power loop is something people want from a script without a script. What is a script trying to do when you read it? It’s trying to move people through a sequence of experiences, at the end, of which, you can hopefully predict a reliable result.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 For example, if someone has a phobia, I lead them through the phobia and they have an interaction with it, which is totally abnormal for them. Then include some positive emotions at the same time, so when they go back to the phobia, they are now feeling these positive emotions. Will it be fair to say, that I can reasonably predict that the phobia will be gone? That is an example of a power loop. I would like to give you the power loop of all power loops. The basic process from which you can create anything else. It doesn't mean that everything has to go through the same steps, but it’s useful when we're talking about the influencing model, the sales model. Those who have trained in hypnotherapy with me, will see the same model coming out repeatedly. It’s robust and works with the mind. Are you interested in that one? If you’ve trained with me before, you’ll be familiar with this. It’s the PCAT formula. How many know this or have heard of it? P starts with the problem or the parameters. Here’s the reason we need to start with a problem. Imagine that, a problem is, as a raft or a boat in a lake and all the wrong stuff is in it. You need to paint this raft a different color so it will be more attractive. If you go out to the lake and start splashing paint around, you're adding resources. You're creating changes and it’s fantastic. But it doesn't change much, because when the raft finally comes around, it’s still the same color and nothing has changed. This is one of the problems, when people try to create change. They create change when they're feeling good or when the problem is absent because they're empowered. But, it doesn't attach to anything. When the problem comes again, all they’ve done is create a greater disassociation between the problem and the solution. They have a great solution as long as the problem doesn't show up.

We want to start with a problem so it’s there. You have a grasp on it so you can do something with it. You can change that. You don’t want to over traumatize people with the problem. You don’t want to beat them over the head with it.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 This can happen in some counseling groups, encounter groups or self-help groups where people sit there and talk about their problems. By the way, talking about your problems can be a tremendous relief and a great thing up to a point. There comes a point where it stops being therapeutic and becomes training to maintain it. Does that make sense? You have to be careful. You don’t want to take away, for people, the ability to talk about something, because that can be therapeutic on its own. But, you don’t want to encourage it beyond a certain point because, then, the problem becomes larger and larger. They're feeding more energy into it. The same is true when you're solving problems. Whether the problem is a clause in a contract, or a therapeutic issue, or they don’t want to go to the movie theatre with you tomorrow night, because they're too bored or whatever it is. You don’t want to over step the problem. You want enough of it so they feel it. So, when you start adding solutions, it attaches to the problem. But, not so much that the problem looms up inside their mind, because then it’s a lot harder to change. C is, bypass the critical factor. Sometimes if you're doing this within hypnosis, while the critical factor is already absent, you consider this as a clearing the slate or clearing the mind, so, they're not stuck in the problem. You're saying that, we will put this on pause, for a moment. Let’s go somewhere fresh and different. That allows a fresh canvas to occur so you can bring something in. It’s like emptying your bucket you so you have space to put new stuff in. If it’s full of other stuff it’s difficult to add good stuff in there. You're not getting rid of the problem, you're just putting it on pause for a moment, so you can do something else, so you can come back to it later on. This is what most people focus on when it comes to the change process. Access resources, that’s how most people conceptualize change. Motivational speakers say, "You can do it. Yes, go for it." Fantastic stuff as long as it attaches to something. Most people start here on the influencing process and they usually miss on this point here. What is a resource? It can be anything. Who is familiar with the five realities? This gets more involved. We think we live in a physical world. This is the world of science, action, reaction, cause and effect. Car slams into

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 wall, wall breaks, car breaks, that sort of stuff. It’s true. There is a strong physical component to how we live life. It’s not the only thing that drives our life. For example, we probably live more in a world of ideas, an intellectual reality, than in, we live in a physical one. Why? Some things mean things to us. We’ll try and work things out. We try to predict what’s going to happen. It may cause an impact on our physical reality. It may change our behavior and so on, but they're still ideas. When we talk about things like love and excitement and nation, they're all intellectual concepts. We might think they're our physical restraints. For example, when moving in and out of a country, you have to show your passport. Some people need a Visa, some don’t. They seem like physical constraints but they're actually intellectual constraints. We’ve constrained the physical space, because some people decided this is ours and this is yours and you can’t come into ours unless you have a bit of paper that says you can do so. Do you see how that works? There are a lot of intellectual things going on that are interfering with our physical reality and vice versa. The emotional reality is one that drives states, emotions and so on. This drives our behavior. Anyone here, ever do something they don’t want to do but they can’t help themselves? For example, let’s say you want to go on a diet but you find yourself in that fridge eating a chocolate cake anyway. No emotions are involved, are they? No. It just seems like a good idea at the time, right. Our emotional realities drive our behaviors, which in turn changes our physical environment. Do you see how that works? Emotions work on a different set of logic than the physical reality does. The law of physics does not apply to our emotions, do they? No. The same is true of intellectual concepts. Logic does not apply to physics unless you're using that as your basing. Then we have a very interesting one, the symbolic reality. We might not think that we're very symbolic as a people, but I would encourage you to think again. We're surrounded by symbols. Religion is surrounded by symbols. The Christian faith with the cross or the Jewish faith, we have a Star of David and other symbols that represent things. If a nation is patriotic, for example, in the USA, they're very proud of their flag. They fly it everywhere. It means something. If you think about it, it’s just

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 a piece of cloth, just paint on a piece of cloth. Same as the suit I’m wearing essentially. No one would think, people would be willing to die to protect a suit. Yet, they're willing to die to protect a flag. It’s not the cloth they're protecting. It’s what it symbolizes and what it means. The symbolic reality affects your emotional, intellectual and physic experience as a result. Attention is like, if there is such a thing as pure reality, I suspect attention would be it, because it’s not influenced by the other ones. It influences the others. Without attention, physical reality doesn't have an impact on you. It might indirectly, but it only impacts on those things which you have attention for. If you had no way of sensing the outside world, unless something made you feel uncomfortable, in which case, your attention is on the discomfort. That is what you're sensing and that’s what affecting you. Does that make sense? Same thing with intellect. If you have an idea that there is no attention on, whether the attention is conscious or unconscious, of course, that will make an impact too, then it has no bearing on you. There are millions of ideas out there, that you don’t even know about and they don’t impact you. What impacts you are the things that you do know about, that you are aware of. It might be a consequence of something else that you're not aware of, but it’s attention that decides if something is working for you or not. Your attention can cycle through any of the other realities. The physical reality can only indirectly affect the intellectual. And the intellectual only indirectly affects the emotions. Most people don’t reason themselves out of emotion, or if you do, it will take a longer time to do so. Your attention fits into every single one of those realities. Attention is the core thing that we work with as hypnotists because it allows us to construct all the other realities and take from one and move into the other and so on.

For example, when we were dealing with pain control, you’ll be moving out of the physical reality and working at the symbolic or emotional level. These things have a lot to do with pain control.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The intellectual level, you only work enough to neutralize this, and prevent the pain from maintaining, because this is what maintains the pain. It’s real. Your intellect tells you it’s real. Until people give up the idea that the pain is real, they can’t have pain control or the numbing of the limb. When they do give up the idea, they can have pain control that exceeds even what the strongest medication can currently do. Does this idea of different realities make sense to you? You can influence people on any one of the five levels. Typically, you’ll use attention to influence the other four. In terms of the influence game, you can use influence in all of these areas. Right now we're going to focus on the emotional one, because emotions drive behaviors. Emotions will change the way people think so it’s an easy one to change. Do you know how long your emotional states last? Between 60 and 90 seconds. That has to do with the neurochemistry that runs through your body. If someone is in an emotional state for longer than 90 seconds they are doing something to recreate it or intensify it. In other words, imagine a castle where they're pouring boiling oil over people. Someone has to fill the pot up again, so you can pour more down the wall. Once that pot has been poured, it’s over. It takes an amount of time for it to drop and then that’s it. Meanwhile someone else is busy filling the pot up again to have another go. In that moment, is your moment of opportunity. Emotions can change very quickly, as a result, if you catch the right moment. That is when all of these traumatic things can happen and so on. We're going to focus on the emotional level because it’s the easiest to focus on. Tomorrow we’ll talk about some of the intellectual things. Realize that you can do this stuff at any of the levels. We're just going to focus on one of them to make a point more easily. Get a grasp on the fundamentals of it and expand that skill to other areas. A is for accessing resources.

For the moment, let’s think of it as evoking a powerful, emotional response that will help you to make whatever change it is, whether it’s a behavior, idea or whatever. It doesn't have to be. It can be a physical resource, a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 symbolic resource or all kinds of things. We’ll make it easy and think of it as an emotional or state based resource. The final T, depending on which part of the influencing process you're on, is called test or transform. In a sales cycle, you want to test before you close a sale to avoid transforming the whole deal. In therapy you may want to go straight to the transformational stage and test whether or not it’s worked. In other areas, you may test how people are doing first. It’s like hasty construction, first, to see where I’m at. When you have enough of the resource, enough momentum going for you, then you’ll apply back the problem. Essentially all you're doing in transformation is applying this on to this. That changes the original condition. The resource gets applied to the problem, soothed problem changes. It’s no longer the same. Think about it in terms of cleaning your house. If you have a dirty kitchen, you don’t start scrubbing the bedroom. That is not where the dirt is. You have to go to the kitchen, where the problem is. If you are over loaded by all the grime, you have to move things around so you’ve got some space to start cleaning. Then you get your cleaning products out and apply them. You have to transform the kitchen by applying the cleaning products to the dirty surfaces. Do you see how the analogy works? The bypassing might be moving things around the kitchen so you can get access to the dirty area. You’ve got a pile of dirty dishes and you may stack them up on one side so you can start cleaning them rather than them being everywhere. You're organizing your space so that you can efficiently work with it. If every time you had a plate clean, and put it to the side. Then put on it, another dirty plate, it gets dirty again. That would be an infinite loop.

This prevents the thing from looping so you can organization the space for cleaning things as you go along. This analogy will give you a vivid representation of the kind of thing we can do.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you understand the idea of the PCAT formula? Maybe looking at it this way, will help you to understand how the PCAT formula works. You have ambitions, things you want to achieve. For example, who wants to be a master hypnotist? Who thinks they’ll achieve it no problem at all? I like that. Who is going to apply these skills tonight in the real world with real people just because they can? I had an interesting dream last night which relates to this. It was a bizarre dream. It didn't start pleasant. Do you know when you have a recurring dream that comes back over and over; it tends not to be one that’s nice. I don’t know why. It felt like a recurring dream, but it was not. The theme that kept recurring was a similar theme like one that I had in school. Did anyone have those dreams where you have to take a test in school and you haven't learned anything or studied and you don’t know it? It felt like I was in this space with all of these people around and I didn't know any of them, I had to do something. The problem was I could not remember what it was. I felt this need to do something. I need to do this thing now but I don’t know what it is. What if I do the wrong thing? What will they think about me? All these thoughts started going through my mind. Meanwhile the pressure is building. There is an expectation, something I have to do and I don’t know what it is. Luckily, the dream continued. One of the figures turned around and it turned out to be an old mentor. One of my teachers from school, who had taught Latin and Greek. He was there in his full Master’s robes and took me to one side. He asked me what was wrong. I told him I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do here. I feel like I’m supposed to do something. Like something has to happen and I don’t know what it is. I’m afraid I might do it wrong. He listened patiently. He smiled in that way that I recall when I was at school. He was an Irish master, so you know the Irish twinkle? He had a little twinkle in his eyes. You couldn't tell if he was being serious, playful or both. He told me I didn't need to remember anything. All you have to do is trust, because inside you have a feeling that you wish to do something. I couldn't help but agree with him. He asked me where I thought that feeling comes from. It can only come from some part of you that knows what to do. I started thinking about that.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Intellectually I realized he was right, but I still didn't know what to do. He smiled and said, “That’s right. You don’t need to know what to do yet. All you have to do is follow that instinct, that feeling, that sense that’s inside. Let it guide you toward what needs to be done. Don’t rush it. There is no need to be in a hurry to get it done. Let it guide you. “When you follow that feeling, what is the first thing that you’d like to do?” The answer was simple for me. I’d like to go up to one of these people and start talking. There’s something I need to do or find out. “Well, let’s go and find out, shall we?” "You mean you're coming with me?" “Why not, it’s your dream after all. You can bring along anyone you wish.” It’s kind of comforting having an important figure from the past come with you on an important task. We walked up to a large lady who had a big pearl necklace around her neck, wearing a blue dress. I don’t know, if the fact that she was wearing a blue dress means anything, but it seemed somehow significant. I started talking to her. The interesting thing is I really enjoyed the conversation. So much, that I forgot to think about what I was saying. It just flowed. It felt natural and good. Out of the corner of my eye, in the back of my mind, I could sense my old tutor smiling and nodding like everything was going just right. It felt good. It felt really good. It felt so good in fact, that when I woke up at the end of the dream, I just had this little glow left over. Do you know what I mean? When you wake up from a good dream, it’s a glow. Usually I forget my dreams. It’s true. Sometimes I remember the important parts of it, those elements of the dream that are worth remembering just so you can walk around with a quiet smile and you know that life is good. Sometimes I come back, forgetting the dream so thoroughly. I have no idea why I’m smiling, but it feels good anyway. I apologize for digressing a little bit, because we're talking about the PCAT formula, weren’t we? It happens from time to time. It’s difficult to describe how you might use the PCAT formula in action, but, my sense is that you probably have a good instinct about it by now. You can use any vehicle you want. I like this one. I call it a 'Dream Machine'.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I like it because in a dream anything can happen, no matter how bizarre it may possibly be. People accept it on face value without questioning in it. If you said you had a dream where a rhinoceros was wearing a pink Tutu and eating oranges, you wouldn't tell them that no one dreams that. A dream allows you to put any reality you want and people won’t question it. You can over use this. I had a dream, then another dream, then another. It can become over used, but use it at just the right time. Who is not fascinated when someone says they had the strangest dream last night. Not many people turn around and say “Yes, I had a really dull, mundane, boring dream last night. Let me tell you all about it.” Or, “I had a common dream that everyone has and you’ve probably been having every day of your life as well. Let me tell you about it.” What do people say? I had the oddest dream or the weirdest dream or the most bizarre dream. The beauty is you can put anything you want inside of that. You have absolute freedom to do an induction. In terms of the PCAT loops, did you notice we were going from the problem to clearing a state? Finding a resource. Transforming it. And, applying it to the problem. The key is, at each stage, you want to watch your subject, or, if it’s an audience, you want to make sure that the bulk of the audience is with you. You’ll never get everyone in the group, that’s just how it works. Make sure they're plugged into something at each level. When you're talking about a problem, how can you tell if someone is plugged into the problem? Yesterday, when we talked about the signs of stress, people’s emotion freezes a little bit, they’ll hold their breath, they’ll pull back a bit, they might have nervous mannerisms like nervous movements and so on. You look for these things. Does the other person feel for you? At that point, even if they're not consciously aware of it, some part of them is plugged into the problem enough that you can start doing something with it.

Here’s a secret for you and we’ll come on to this, probably, the day after tomorrow. The beauty of doing this, in any kind of influence, in terms of sales, a business meeting or anything like that is, that you won’t need to start the influence process until there is a problem. This means they’ve already done the first step for you.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Is anyone here in sales? Or tried to sell something to someone at one point in their life? Have you noticed that occasionally it doesn't quite go the way you want it to? And they go, "But, I can’t because..." Traditionally, that’s known as an objection. An objection is a problem isn’t it? It’s a problem in their mind otherwise they wouldn't raise it. If it’s not a problem to them, they could have a question. You answer the question and it’s no big deal. If they say they can’t do it because… it’s a great mechanism. The way he views it is, when people have an objection, he sees it as them asking for more information. It’s just a question and you may as well answer that question. Personally, I agree with you. The point is they're bringing something up so they're already there. It kicks off your influencing cycle. Critical factor bypass, that is straightforward, especially in a dream. You can do anything that is bizarre. Ultimately, once you elaborate on the problem, you can make bizarre stuff happen in the dream. They’ll ask, "What the hell that is all about." You can say you don’t know. The next part gets interesting and then you access the resources. They're no longer focused on the problem. Does that make sense? Accessing resources, it’s straightforward enough. Change the way they feel and it will change the way they think. Change the way they think and feel and you’ll change the way they behavior. It’s not the only way to do it, but it’s a very simple way of doing it. Finally, you apply that to the original problem or question at hand and everything like magic transforms itself. It’s easy. You can do it all within the context of a dream you’ve had. Who would like to give that a go? Find a different partner than before and tell them about a dream you’ve had. If in the course of the dream you happen to mention that it starts with a bit of a problem, you don’t even have to set the scenario. You can have the problem being a state. How many people here usually feel exactly how they want to feel, like totally empowered and so on, when something traumatic occurs. In other words, they're on a diet and they eat that cheesecake they shouldn't be eating. Or, they're in a business meeting and they don’t know what to say next, or you're trying to do a hypnotic induction on a complete stranger, out there in the real world and for some reason you can’t get yourself to do it?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Of course, everyone here feels totally empowered at those moments in time, don’t they or is it just me? Problems don’t have to be just situations. It could just be an emotion, a feeling. The feeling of being inhibited, being afraid despite wanting to do something. Does that make sense? The key is you want to see the other person react, to empathize enough that they are feeling something too. Now you have something worth changing. Then you can clear their mind, access the resources and transform it by applying that to the original problem. It gets very straightforward at that point. Student:

I just have a basic question, in terms of when you're telling the dream to the other person.

37. What is the context you're saying it in? 38. Are you trying to fix something with the other person? Igor:

For the moment, we don’t need a context, because this is the training phase right now.

Student: ♦ What would the problem be? Igor:

That’s a good question. You don’t have to have the problem in mind. They will find one. What you have to do is, make sure they plug into something negative and minor. You can give them examples and offers. In the dream, different states, there I was afraid and here I was this.

You’ll notice one of them, they’ll respond to more than the others. You can say funny enough, that one sucked me in. Student: ♦ Are you saying that we just describe our dream in a general term to, hopefully, bring up something that we notice through their physical reaction. Or, do we actually ask them about a problem?

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Igor:

For the exercise itself you can do it either way. Whichever you find is easier. If you find it easier to say, "Here is something specific to include in this." Great. If you want to challenge yourself a bit more, throw out different ideas. Dave Dobson used to start his seminars off, just by talking about different situations. He had a list of a couple of things that he would cycle through. He’d tell a few stories and watch the audience. Wherever people reacted Okay, these people have an issue with this idea, this problem or that problem. There are only four problems he focused on, a general fear, rape, family/marital problems and something else, I can’t remember. Anything that wasn’t in the main category went into the general fear and he’d deal with it that way. He’d just observe. He’d tell a story and see which one reacts and off he went.

Student:

That is like what you were doing. You were telling your dream to the general audience. You didn't ask every person what they're problem was, but you have an idea what the general theme of people here is, which is fear and changing and all of that.

Igor:

Right. Everyone took something for themselves and who knows what that was. The problem was essentially, inhibition, the desire to do something but being inhibited from doing it at some level. If you don’t want to do it the hard way, just ask them if there is something that will make your life easier in terms of your training here. For example, some situation that you're having a problem with. I’m having a problem with this or I can’t apply that. The pace is going a bit too fast for me and I’m not sure if I can integrate the whole thing or keep up with it. Igor has a motor mouth and speaks way too quickly and I’m afraid I’m going to miss something.

They can tell you whatever they want. You can say it’s funny you should say that, because I had a dream about that just recently. It reminds me of a dream I had. The simple answer may seem a bit vague and hazy to you and that is kind of on purpose, because I don’t want to give you too much structure. The point is that you create your own.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The first thing you do is go back to this. I know nobody here has ever had a problem. I understand that. You have had friends who have had problems in the past. I know being the great hypnotist that you are, that you have enough empathy to step inside the shoes of a friend and maybe feel what it might feel like to have a bit of a problem for a short period of time. If you were to describe a dream in terms of how you happen to be feeling, a dream that evokes those emotions inside you, it would be the start of the whole PCAT loop inside the dream machine. Beyond that, I want you to start building your own constructions, just following the simple instructions of power loops. Use this, if it helps you to construct something and then see where it takes you. Easy enough? The question is, isn’t it easier to put them in trance and give them a suggestion that tonight, they’ll have a dream which will resolve whatever problem it is. Sure. That’s an easy way to do it, but it’s not conversational hypnosis. Although in conversational hypnosis you could suggest a particular dream for them to have to resolve the problem and so on. You can do that any time you want. The purpose of this is not to resolve the problem. If you think we're doing this exercise in order to resolve someone else’s problem, then please reconsider. There is another very important reason to do this exercise. If you are considering asking me what that question is, I invite you to wait until I’m willing to answer it. Is that okay with you guys? With that happy thought, please find a partner and spend a six or seven minutes telling each other about a dream. Did you enjoy it? Comments or questions…?

Student:

I didn't know how to make the break from the problem, going into the emotions and into the resources.

Igor:

What did you do?

Student:

I described that my attention was brought to something else.

Igor:

When you watched them, did you see whatever mannerisms that were frozen or pulling back? Did you see those mannerisms easing off?

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I did not notice too much. I was not focusing enough on that.

Igor:

What you did was perfect. The way you can tell if you put enough in it, or to add something extra or different, is by watching the person. This is interactive. Even though they're not necessarily saying anything, you must watch for their reactions. That is the key thing. You can make it metaphorical, someone coming in totally different. You can be in a dark room and someone throws the curtain up and a breath of fresh air comes in and that started you thinking about something else. That is the symbolic version of clearing a state. It can be confusional. You might say some things that people don’t quite follow along. You're in this long corridor and first you turn left and then right. You knew how to turn the first left and the second right, but you weren’t sure if you should turn left first and then go right after to the second left you’ve taken. Do you see what I mean? It was a confusing dream, but the thing I did realize was, then you use confusion as a clearing of the slate. The process doesn't matter. The key thing is, how you pulled them out of that problem enough, that you now can start adding other things instead. What you did was perfect. Come on up.

Student:

The problem I am still trying to figure out is, how do you integrate the whole PCAT formula in describing the dream? I was going with the flow of the dream and I was trying to be very descriptive about it, but it felt like I was describing it and not achieving much. I’ll tell you the dream. You wake up and don’t have any clothes on. I’ve had those dreams growing up and no one notices until you notice. I tried to think of how I’m going to make a theme about this.

Igor:

Excellent. It’s a good way to think about it.

Student:

So then, I needed to embellish the dream a little bit.

Igor:

Just let me pause you there. What was the problem in the dream?

Student:

A feeling of insecurity. Everyone is staring at you.

Igor:

Thank you. The problem was insecurity. No one here has ever felt insecure before, right? You can talk about the dream. I was there and I wasn’t sure if

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 something was right or was it something wrong with me. Then I realized I didn't have any clothes on. Suddenly everyone was looking at me. Do you know what I mean? When everyone looks at you and you think, "Oh, my god, I don’t know what I’m doing or I must be doing something really wrong. I’m standing there completely naked. I felt so exposed." Do you see how I’m rifting around the emotion of the problem? It’s the emotion of it at this level. Right? What you did was the right thing. You rift around what the elements of that dream were. Make sense? Student:

Then I transformed it through me being...You know how the dream can shift like a movie? Like, you know the scenes are about to change but you don't know how.

Igor:

Can I pause you there for a second? What would that be in the PCAT formula? What stage is he describing? Isn’t that a perfect transition for clearing the slate or bypassing whatever just happened? Do you see how the dream naturally lends itself to this?

Student:

I ended up being in a field of daisies out in the open and I felt very peaceful, relaxed and I was by myself.

Igor:

Let me pause you, is he doing a good job? It’s like you’ve blocked yourself off, of, just how good, what you did was. All you have to do is accentuate the emotional element of that. In time you’ll be able to accentuate all the different elements of it, in terms of the emotional element, as you’ve been describing. You can have some intellectual elements, in terms of, and this means, I was a descent person and I realize, I can do this and so on.

Student:

I did that.

Igor:

Perfect. We have an intellectual resource there. Then you have symbolic resources. Already the green field, freedom, you can stretch out any way you want. No one is there. No one is going to do anything to you or impose upon you and so on. Those are symbolic resources as well. Now you're working on the symbolic, emotional and intellectual levels all at the same time. Do you see how easy that becomes?

Student:

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Exactly. I was in this field and I began to describe how the feeling changed. How no one was staring at me anymore and it was about how, when you change the scene in your mind, it will change the feelings that follow it. Then Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the dream came to where it taught me how to realize, that all I have to do to change a feeling is to change the images in my mind. Igor:

Where is he right now? At the transformation stage. You can see the natural flow of that. You did a great job. It might not have felt as smooth as you’d like initially, but that’s why this is called training. It’s the first time you’ve done this, so it might not feel as smooth and natural as you’d like. After a while it becomes a process. You’ll probably end up enjoying doing this more than anything else, because it is so natural. It gives you so much scope and freedom of what you can do with things. Does that help? Are there any other questions or comments on that or useful stuff? Are you beginning to feel like real conversational hypnotists now? I want to recap. You have five covert inductions. There are more you can do, but we focused on these five.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Blitz, The Magic Moment, The My Friend John or Rusty M, The Hypnotic Lecture– there is a direct and indirect version. The Dream Machine, which is kind of like a hypnotic lecture with a little bit more scope.

You also have five core tools of influence. ♦ Revivification, which brings experiences to life for people. ♦ Pacing and Leading, allowing you to nudge people in one direction or another. ♦ The Conscious/Unconscious Disassociation, so you can separate experiences out, put them in different places and do things with them. ♦ You have the Utilization Principle, which is when anything useful happens during the process you jump on it, ride it and transform it with one of these other things into something you can actually use. ♦ You have the PCAT formula, which is a simple power loop that you can make very sophisticated to very complex or very simple to transition people through different mental phases and experiences that will end up with a change of some sort.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 We’ll show you how to use this stuff in sales cycle as well as doing other things too. I’d like to put these core tools into creating new things, to invent hypnosis methods. You’ll invent them for yourself by the way, so you have the freedom for being creative. You can be the creator of new tools, techniques and ideas based just on these principles. You’ll be able to adapt everything you do to any situation you come across and make it work. It’s the second type of hypnotic lecture, the indirect lecture so it’s the idea of indirection. The five covert inductions we’ve covered so far are the Blitz, the one which we did in the Magic Moment, where you lock eye contact and then you launch into a hypnotic rant. Keep going and going. As long as you have the context right they're already there. You saw a great example of that with Arthur, where we just let you jump into it, at the end of which he was able to do the whole exercise. The questions or concerns had dissipated. When I worked with Johnny, the first one with a twist, and had him do the circling around in his mind, that’s the magic moment. What I did afterward was a Blitz. I started talking to him about how his mind is capable of a lot of things. He can achieve greatness. All he had to do was focus his mind and talk to the unconscious in the way he just did now, that was a Blitz. The Blitz is essentially a direct suggestion done conversationally. That’s all we're doing. You can say to someone in trance, you have a great unconscious mind. I want you to feel confident. You're doing great. Or, you can take someone in a non-overtly hypnotic context, but you created a hypnotic context conversationally. You can look them in the eye and say you're an amazing person. You have ability inside you that you have not yet tapped. To the extent that you find your path there, right now, you can feel something happening can you not, something pleasant, something interesting. That is the potential that you have. It’s no different than a direct suggestion. Because the context is different, it sounds like I’m just giving him a pep talk. I haven’t done any watch swinging. I left my top hat at home. My evil monocle is being fixed right now

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 so I’ve been stripped of my evil, hypnotic powers and yet I can still give a pep talk. Does the hypnotic blitz make sense to you now? Do you understand the five core inductions and the five core processes we’ve been covering so far? Around all of this, you have your H+. The irresistible induction, where would that go? Six covert inductions. It can go in here as well, because you're talking about a method for yourself to guide yourself through a trance process. You can take yourself through a PCAT loop, which is exactly what you're doing with your dream and by describing it the other person, they come along with you. The irresistible induction, done the way we did it originally, is more overt. It’s very direct. This is what trance feels like and so on. If you put another vehicle around it, again, like a hypnotic lecture or 'My Friend John' and so on. You can still use this as a principle that lets you fill in the content on these quite easily. Is everyone clear on these things? Hypnotic lectures 1 and 2. This is direct and this is indirect. How do we put this all together to create our own stuff? Wouldn't that be an interesting question to ask? I’d like to introduce you to the concept of giving people gifts. Many have done so. What is the hypnotic smile, if not a gift? It is an experience they can take away with them that will improve that quality of their life somehow. If nothing else, as a charming experience, it will stay with them. You’ve been doing it for each other, partly because it’s functional, but partly, just because it’s a nice thing to do for someone. That is not the only kind of gift you can give to people. You have heard fairy tales, as a kid. That little fairy that saves whoever it was. If you imagine you were one of these fairy godmothers who had the gift of the magic wand, at the end of the magic wand the person has some traits or ability. Life is somehow different. What kind of things would you want to be able to give people? Think back to self-confidence, as an example– confidence, inner peace and calmness. How about making good decisions? Is that a nice thing to give someone? Creative, excitement– how about loving life and being excited? Appreciation, for having a good life. Sense of humor. Being decisive. The

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 release of inhibitions. You can do a bunch of things. Wisdom. The amount of gifts you can give people is about as limited as human creativity, isn’t it? Let’s take wisdom. Making better choices is, perhaps, part of being a wiser person. Being a better person is included in the idea of wisdom. How might you give someone the gift of wisdom? I’m not suggesting that one induction will make them the wisest, but you can increase the potential. How much they do with it, access it and so on. How might you increase someone’s wisdom? Think of it in terms of a power loop of some sort. Better concentration. Let me help you with this. Has anyone here ever heard a fairy tale, legend or a myth that revolved around the idea of wisdom? Give me some examples of fairy tales, legends or myths that revolve around wisdom? Jack and Beanstalk is about developing wisdom. Don’t go climbing strange things that go up in the sky. Don’t mess around with GM crops because the giant can come and get you. The Ugly Duckling is more about self-confidence and self-esteem. Crying Wolf. King Solomon is a classic story about wisdom. Yoda, in Star Wars, is a modern legend. Three Little Pigs, could be. There is an old story in the Norse legends, the Vikings, of one of the Gods called Odin. He was the king of the Gods. He is famous, because he only had one eye. The reason is because he wanted to drink from the well of wisdom. That was being held by an entity called Mimir and he wouldn't let anyone touch the well of wisdom. It was reputed that inside this well was the answer to every question someone could ask. There is a well and anyone who drank from it would have the answer to any question they could ask. The problem is, it was guarded by Mimir. He wouldn't let anyone drink from it. Odin didn't like this. Think about it. You were supposed to be the king of the gods and you know that there is a well out there somewhere, which if only you drink a sip from, you’ll have answers to questions that have been bugging you your entire existence.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Someone out there won’t let you drink from it. It’s kind of frustrating isn’t it? Odin, being the persuasive one that he was, asked, "What would it will take for me to be able to drink from this well?" Without pausing, Mimir told him it requires a sacrifice. You must invest enough of yourself to be allowed to drink from the well of wisdom. Then you’ll have your answer. Without thinking about it, Odin traded an eye. To him it was a fair trade, because he could see more clearly once he had drunk from that well. The bargain was struck. The deal was made. Mimir allowed him access. He drank from the well. It’s said that, anytime that Odin was confronted by some problem or situation, something tricky, you could see him closing that eye. Somewhere inside him an answer came. I don’t know if you realize it, but we all have access to something like that. Something inside each one of us, that gives us answers. Think about it, you’ve experienced this before. Who hasn’t been in a situation which was a little dicey or tough? You're up against the wall and just at the right moment, without any intellectual overthinking, you just knew what to do. You knew the right thing. You had it in sight, but it required a sacrifice. You were in a tough situation and then you started to listen. I’d like you to know that if you’ve done it once, you can do it again. Go ahead and try for yourself. Ask the question of yourself and then just notice how you feel, what shifts occur. The interesting thing is answers don’t come as direct as people think sometimes. If you're willing to invest in yourself enough to really listen, you too, could count yourself amongst those people that seem to just see life a little differently. Who see life differently enough, for anyone else looking on it, would be just as if you’d gone inside and drank from Mimir’s well, too. Do you know what I mean by that? It’s an interesting idea. Of course, you should never use legends when presenting hypnotic lectures, because they don’t work. I’d like you to spend a few minutes, find a partner and give them a gift in whatever way strikes you as appropriate. You can use a legend to talk about it, a dream or a hypnotic lecture. You can use facts from the real

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 world that you know about, whether it’s about the dream temples, Bali trances, Shamanism, neuroscience, a business secret, it doesn't matter. The point is, do you see how easy it is to talk to someone and present them with a simple gift? Do you have any questions? Let’s go out there and find out that you know more about this than you realize. Spend five minutes apiece and see where it takes you. I’d like you to recognize something. I gave you virtually zero guidance on that last exercise. I told you to go off and invent a complete hypnotic technique all by yourself and use it on someone else and make them feel great in doing so. You all, in three days, have developed enough tools, skills, insights, understandings and experience, that you had no trouble making something up on the fly, something advanced. How do you feel about that? I think you should give yourself a round of applause for that. It’s impressive stuff. [Applause] If this was the end of the course, wouldn’t this be worthwhile? You can go out and start giving people gifts and being a force for good in the world. Wouldn't it be easy to do from this point onward? I encourage you to go out there and do this with other people. If you're still shy about doing it with people outside of this group, then do it with people inside this group, but outside of this training. That starts breaking the barriers between the inside and the outside. Today’s homework or exercise is, tonight or tomorrow morning, preferably both, find someone, anyone and give them a gift. It’s as simple as that. Find someone and give them a gift.

If you want to do a little extra, then find someone in this room and give them the inner smile as well. Reinforce that, because that one is always worth reinforcing. It will make you a way better hypnotist. If you give another hypnotist a gift, they are duty bound to return the favor. You’d better make it good. Okay, I think that’s a good place to leave the evening. Let the hypno-magic flow. Thank you very much.

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DVD 13: Frames, Re-Frames & Unstoppable Frame Control Igor:

Good morning everyone, how are you doing? Any interesting war stories to report from last night?

Students:

When I got back to dinner, down in the lobby, I noticed that a few of the guys were hypnotizing one person. One person was down in the lobby in a leather chair and there were a couple of people around them hypnotizing them and then it kind of grew, then there were two, three, four, five, six people hypnotizing one person.

Igor:

Lucky person.

Students:

When it was my turn to get hypnotized, it was really incredible to have six or seven people. It felt like I was being massaged and I on drugs, all kinds of amazing things at once. I would suggest we continue that trend.

Igor:

What we’re going to be focusing on today is this idea of frames and frame control. Who has heard of frames and frame control before? Really this is a fundamental thing as to how we understand things. Remember we talked about the contrast principle the first day? This is really where it comes into its own. We cannot understand anything unless it’s in relation to something else. Let me give you an example. An old man is sitting in a restaurant eating his soup. Something like this is he happy or sad? Is he fortunate or unfortunate? We don’t know. It all depends on what just happened, what the frame around it is. Some time ago an old man was living in the woods with his son just outside a village and one day his son is out in the woodlands. He manages to capture a prize stallion that’s been roaming the countryside for years. No one has been able to capture it. He captures it and brings it home. The villagers are ecstatic. They say, "Oh my God, you are so lucky." He’s got the prize stallion. It’s worth a fortune. It’s strong. It’s virile, all those sorts of things. You must be very happy. You’re a lucky man. The old man just shrugs his shoulders and says, "Maybe."

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The next day the boy is getting on the horse to try and tame it. In the course of the whole breaking of the stallion and so on, the boy falls and breaks his leg. The villagers rush over to the old man and says, "You poor man. We’re sorry to hear about your son. You’re so unfortunate." The old man shrugs his shoulders and says, "Maybe." A few days later Napoleon’s armies are pulling through Europe and they need to recruit young men to be able to fight his wars. So, they drag along every single young man of fighting age. Of course, the old man’s son has a broken leg. He’s useless to them, so they leave him behind in the village. This time the villagers all come running up to the old man and say, "You are so fortunate that your son broke his leg because now he gets to be safe from the wars." Of course, the old man just shrugs his shoulders and says, "Maybe." Frames let us know what things mean by giving us a context to refer things toward. The interesting thing about frames is we have biases around what certain things mean. Let me give you an example of what I mean, a lot of you will have heard this before. You’re driving your car. You’re at a traffic light. It’s red. You hear the sound of a siren and an ambulance goes speeding past you and goes through the red lights and drives on. How do you feel about that ambulance? Good thing, bad thing? Were you annoyed by it? It was doing its thing, right? Let’s compare that. We have right after the ambulance, in the space it’s created through the cars, a Ferrari. It goes driving by and a man is in there with his girlfriend, he’s playing the music, and he just goes straight through the same traffic light. How do you feel about that car, about that guy? Idiot, annoyed, general sorts of things, right? When you consider it, the event is the same. A vehicle is going through the intersection with a red light. It’s the same event, the meaning you ascribe to certain things, whether it’s an ambulance or a red Ferrari whatever it is, that’s what creates the contrast for you. To illustrate this, let’s have exactly the same example but we’ll just change the meaning a little bit. As the ambulance goes squealing by, one of the back doors swings open. You see a bunch of frat boys who have stolen the ambulance for fun. They’re getting drunk and having a party in the back. Do you feel the same way about the ambulance now?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 What if I told you that the man driving the Ferrari, actually the woman next to him is his wife, she’s fallen down some stairs. He’s trying to get her to the hospital in time to save the baby. The music you heard is just an old song from childhood to calm her while she’s on her way. Does that change your opinion? This is the power of frame control. If you’re not aware of what frames are in existence, of what frames you’re presenting and what frames you’re walking into in a situation, you have no way of predicting exactly how your message will be accepted, will be interpreted, and what meaning it will provide. Does that make sense? In other words, if you change the frames you will fundamentally change the meaning of something. And there will always be some kind of frame present, that’s what people do. We create frames in order to make meaning. The two things we want to be looking for are, overt frames. People do this all the time, they say this is not a shop, this is a full service establishment. You know that kind of stuff? This is not a janitor, this is a hygiene engineer. You know what kind of things I’m coming from? These are more overt attempts. If they’re overt, they’re more open for critical analysis. Just like you snickered with the hygiene engineer frame – it’s true right? But the reason you snickered is, because you analyzed it and you re-framed it inside your mind. You’ve put hygiene engineer, of course engineer is high status and so on, and you put a janitor which in most peoples’ minds will be a lower status thing, you’ve put them together and, "Oh, I get it. It’s an attempt to change categories." That’s what’s causing the snicker or the humor. The actual value of the individual is irrelevant. The person is still worthwhile, whether, or not they’re a janitor, an engineer, or the pope I guess. The point is – yes, I’m sorry about the pope comment. Students:

He liked the janitor better. Frame control, we’re near the airport.

Igor:

The point is overt frames can work. They have their place. This is where most people try to create the meaning out of something, but really these ones, the covert implied, the assumed ones, those are the ones that have real power. They have real power for us because we don’t even know they’re occurring, we just assume. They have real power in terms of any interaction because again, by presenting something in a certain way, so

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that the critical factor again, the analysis doesn’t focus in on it. It’s just assumed. It creates that environment. There’s a variation of this where you get people to choose one of the three, circle, square and so on. The frame is set. So, think of a simple shape, like a circle or square, but not those two. Well what’s left? A simple shape really is in most people’s minds a circle, square or triangle. Those are the fundamental shapes we have. You’ve already negated two of them, so there’s only left. Do you see how that works? Again, it’s an implication. I’m not saying think of a simple shape – triangle, triangle, triangle, think of a triangle now, Do you see how that’s a more overt frame and wouldn’t even be vaguely exciting because you can see right through what’s going on there? What I’d like you guys to do now is just as a warm up, get into groups of five or so and have a little discussion about different contexts you might find yourself in as a hypnotist. Choose what kinds of hidden frames, what kind of assumed frames are there. Let me give you an example. If you were to enter a hospital in a white lab coat, what kind of assumptions would people make? What kind of frame is that projecting? A doctor, so what does a doctor mean? You’re going to kick him out because he’s going to ask for money? Students:

He’s got authority.

Igor:

Right. What else is there? A sense of belonging, hospital - doctor, they fit right? He’s not going to be challenged for why he’s there. What else?

Students:

Education and knowledge.

Igor:

So we ascribe a high level of understanding, knowledge and wisdom, if you like to that person. What else is there?

Students:

Healer.

Igor:

Go ahead?

Students:

What kind of lab coat is it?

Igor:

It’s like a lab coat or a doctor’s coat, something like that. It might be an orderly, right? That’s the whole point – the assumptions that come through.

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Let’s put it this way. If you’re a hypnotist, and you go into a hospital and say, "Okay, I’m going to prepare you for surgery so you can do it pain free with less anesthetic." What is the likelihood that the patient is going to assume you’re a doctor versus if you go into a bar and say I’m going to make your arm so numb – don’t do this by the way, probably for legal and health reasons – that I could stick this pin through your arm. It can be done. You’re offering the same thing. You’re offering pain control and anesthesia, but because you’re in different environments people will see you as different. In one you’re a performer, you’re an entertainer perhaps or just a weird strange person who comes in to offer to do strange things. In the other one, you’re a professional, equated with a doctor. When I used to run my clinic in London, because the officers were very smart people, assumed I was a doctor all the time. They said doctor, and I said I’m not a doctor, but they still assumed it. Even in the back of their mind that bias was still there and that helped me mentally. I made a point of reminding them I’m not a doctor, but unconsciously they didn’t care, they still ascribed the same meaning to it. Does that make sense? I’ve got a couple of environments I’d like you guys to play with. Just put yourself in the role as a hypnotist, just to start getting used to these hidden implications, these hidden frames of reference that people are working with. One of course would be the hospital we just talked about. Another one would be a stage hypnosis show, a slightly different environment. Then we have the idea of a business meeting. What kind of assumptions are there in a business meeting? What about a lab, a science lab during some kind of experiment? Those are four relatively common environments people might find themselves in. The fifth one will be of particular interest to you, because it’s an environment or scenario you’re interested in. In other words you’ve come here to learn conversational hypnosis, is that correct? If you haven’t, you’re probably in the wrong room, you may want to go next door. You don’t just come here to learn conversational hypnosis because it amuses you. It’s probably because you find it’s going to be a useful tool in your life, whether it’s as a therapist, a salesperson, a parent, a teacher, a manager, a leader, a professional influencer, a coach – do you see what I mean?

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I’d like you to choose the top context that is of importance to you. That could be a hypnotherapy room. That could be a sales meeting or that could be a coaching process or a consulting process. It really doesn’t matter what it is. I’d like you to choose a specific environment and maybe think of specific people who are there. Then with your group again, describe the environment and see if you can pick out what are some of the key hidden frames, key implications, hidden assumptions that exist there? Does that make sense to you guys? Let’s just take about 10 minutes to do that and we’ll come back. Off you go. Welcome back. How was the exercise? Did you enjoy it? Was anything surprising in terms of what you found was an assumption. Or, perhaps, did anyone here have an assumption that other people did not share about a certain environment? Did that happen or did you all have the same assumptions about the environments you were talking about, either slightly different but more or less the same. What’s happening here has to do with cultural biases. In every culture there will be different assumptions about what certain things mean and what happens there. As you move across cultures, of course, a lot of these assumptions will fall apart. That’s why things like culture clashes and all these things happen. Does that make sense? Remember we keep talking about how you have to set the hypnotic context. The hypnotic context is a frame. It’s letting people know on an unconscious level what the expectations are. It’s kind of like a stage show. What are some of the assumptions of a stage show? Number one, the hypnotist has some special power. Isn’t that an assumption? It’s implied. Very rarely do hypnotists, nowadays say it. But people go there and think, "I wonder what he’s going to make me do?" If they accept the assumption that someone can make you do something, well, he can make you do something. Does that make sense? There’s a great example of this in a film that came out recently. Has anyone here seen the movie ‘Dinner For Schmucks’? It’s hysterical. There’s a classic scene in there that describes exactly what we’re talking about. One of the characters believes his work colleague can control his mind. Of course the guy is sitting there going, "Perry, tell me…" Of course, Perry is saying "No" But he ends up telling him. Why? The pressure is coming from inside himself, he’s fighting his own expectations. Does that make sense?

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Our job is to understand. What are the expectations that are present, when we enter an environment, so we can utilize those that are in our favor, and we can neutralize those that are not? Make sense? Here are some of the classic strategies for doing that. First, we have the idea of a pre-frame. A pre-frame sets the context up front, so that the assumption is already changed before you begin and the difficulties don’t begin to run from that point forward. Here’s an example. You’re sitting at a table with friends, discussing a problem with the water supply. You’re sitting at the table with enemies, discussing a problem with your water supply. How does that change? Do you see where I’m going with this? By the way, this is very important because our pre-frames can happen unconsciously. In other words, we will project certain qualities into others and unconsciously reinforce them. Remember the feedback loop that happens unconsciously with a lot of people. An example of this would be, back in the 1970’s – these studies can’t be done anymore for ethical reasons – the researchers went into a school or a university and they gave a bunch of students a fake aptitude test for whatever subject it was. They didn’t score the test properly they just gave them random results. They didn’t even give the students the results. They only gave them to their teachers and their principals. They said, "These kids are geniuses. They’re going to fly, don’t take any stick from them. And these kids are really no hopers, do your best but don’t expect too much." The kids never found out their scores. At the end of the year the results that came in – not all of them of course – but the results that came in were mostly in correlation to the fake aptitude test results. Why? The teachers’ expectations set a pre-frame in the classroom. They taught differently. They interacted differently. They marked differently. They corrected differently. They assumed different things so the behaviors they got back were different. Does that make sense? Let me add the idea of re-framing. Reframing is what you do when a problem comes your way and you need to change it. In other words, suddenly, you realize, there’s a frame here that is not really working. Typically, it's when somebody has an objection of some sort and you present an alternative point of view, so that it changed it.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 For example, these are not your enemies sitting at the table, these are your friends. You all have the same problem right now, with no water. You’re all screwed, pretty much. You may as well work together. That’s an example of a re-frame Do you see how that works? We’re switching enemies to friends because you have a common goal, a common good you’re working towards. We’ll talk about each of these in more detail as we go through. Then we have the out-frame. It's a pretty sneaky thing that you’ll see happening a fair amount in politics. Believe it or not, but it can happen in any other place as well. Basically, an out-frame says, whatever problems you’re bringing to the table really aren’t the real problem. There’s a much more important thing at hand. You’re trumping it. A classic example, and this has happened throughout history, is when the economy fails, start a war. "We’re at war folks, so don’t pay attention to all the mess that’s happening at home." "We’re at war, we’ll need your support, you’ll be unpatriotic not to support us." and so on and so forth. Can you see the frames that are being created at that point? Do you understand the basics of frame control; pre-framing, re-framing and out-framing? Those are the three core ideas. Of the three, my preference is the pre-frame. These can be the most invisible and the ones that will tend to cause you the least problems over time. The problems don’t arise. If you can have a reasonable guess, as to what assumptions, expectations, what frames people are walking into, in a particular meeting or event with, then you can pre-frame them in such a way that those assumptions are no longer there. In other words they adopt a new set of assumptions before they even realize it. All the classic problems start to disappear. This is true in sales, in teaching, in relationships and everything. Make sense? Students:

Are you saying we re-frame the pre-frame?

Igor:

The question is; do you re-frame the pre-frame? The pre-frame is kind of like a re-frame, done before you need it. You’re basically – I know, it gets a little mind bending right? Let me give you an illustration. Of course, Nicky and I talked about this before.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You see this magic box? This is the frame of reference people are coming in with. Either you can enter the frame of reference, and because there are corners here, when you get to the corner, you may have to do something to break through – that’s called a re-frame If, however, before any of this happens, you realize that a box exists. So, before you even enter, you do something to neutralize that. For example, you start here and you make a big circle out of it. These corners have now disappeared. When you get to this corner here, there is no resistance. There is no push back. There’s no rejection. Why? Because this corner no longer exists inside their mind. You have pre-framed. You have created something ahead of time to take care of that. Does that make sense? In any situation you’ll find yourself in, and we’ll get into this more as the day progresses, you’ll find there’s usually only, four or five major assumptions or concerns or needs that people have that you will need to address. You don’t have to know everything at once, just the major things. For example, when you’re in a hospital, when there’s a patient in a hospital, what kind of things are their major concerns? Life. Am I going to be healthy at the end of this? Am I going to survive this? Possibly cost, are they going to have to sell their children to be able to afford this? Pain or inconvenience things like that, how long, how much effort, that kind of stuff. Beyond that, there’s not that much else. What’s wrong with me and how can I fix it? Those are the main ideas that are driving them. If you’re a doctor and the idea of the patient is, what pill can you give me to fix this? And your idea is, the pill isn’t what you need, what you need is a particular exercise routine, you might turn around and say you need to exercise more or you need to eat less or else your heart will explode. Doctors say that kind of stuff, right? The problem is the patients don’t follow the advice. Why? They’re sitting there with a set of assumptions already. They’re already thinking, "But food is good.", and so on and so forth. He has to be able to build up to the advice that you need to stop eating as much or eating different food and so on, so they can live longer and healthier. Does that make sense? If he sets that advice up ahead of time, the expectation that people who change their lifestyle don’t need surgery, they don’t need these strange machines to keep them alive and all the rest of it. Then, this is accepted already. That is a pre-frame. They’ve accepted the idea that a lifestyle

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 change needs to occur long before he even introduces the idea that you specifically have to adopt the lifestyle change. The likelihood that they’re actually going to adopt the lifestyle, change themselves, exercise and change their diet, are much higher. Does that make sense? Do you get the idea of pre-framing versus re-framing and out-framing? There are different methods you can use for each of those stages. I’ll give you some of the different categories I like to think about. The first one in terms of pre-framing is what I affectionately call the inept pre-frame. Those are the ones that people usually try to throw out there. They’re just so obvious it’s like, "Come on. Do you really think I’m that stupid?" I’ll give you a classic example of an inept re-frame. It’s the sleazy guy in a bar twirling a set of keys saying, "I have a Porsche, baby, outside. Mine, I own it – almost." What is the actual pre-frame he’s trying to present there? What are the ideas or the understandings he’s trying to convey with that, although in a very inept way? Status, right? He’s trying to say, "I am of importance. I have status, therefore, you can be attracted to me." Perhaps it’s wealth; I have wealth, I can treat you well. Power perhaps, I have power. Powerful car, you can be excited, life with me is exciting. This is what he’s trying to convey, but, he’s doing it in such an inept way, that it’s actually doing the opposite. Does that make sense? You want to be careful about how you set your pre-frames, because if they’re done ineptly, you may as well be shooting yourself in the foot. You may as well be better off not doing anything at all than presenting an inept frame. The next kind of frame is a pretty direct setting of a re-frame, and that’s where the more eloquent speakers or people who in everyday life tend to do this. It’s not this, it’s this. It’s a very straight forward. There’s no bones about it. Most people think that only some people can be hypnotized. They’re usually shocked to hear that pretty much everyone can be hypnotized, if they want to, if they can focus properly. My pre-frame there, it’s pretty open, it’s relatively overt, it’s pretty direct. You can analyze it and decide whether or not to accept it. But, the logic within it seems reasonably persuasive. So, you’re more likely than not to accept it, especially if you accept the other pre-frame which is, I am the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 hypnotist. I know more than you because you’re just a layperson and I’m not. Do you see how that works? I’m using an implied pre-frame of authority to impose a direct frame that the ability to be hypnotized is very different from what you might actually have in your mind. If you accept that, if I actually set that simple pre-frame ahead of time, then, we come onto doing some kind of hypnotic thing, and you say, "I don’t know if I can be hypnotized." Is that more or less likely to happen, when I’ve said the pre-frame, even if it’s direct? It’s less likely to happen, isn’t it? If you’ve accepted it, it won’t happen. If you haven’t accepted it, it might still happen, but I’ve hedged my bets a little bit better at this point. Make sense? Then we have the implied pre-frame. I like this because it’s more subtle. It kind of comes in at the sides. As a rule, if people think you’re trying to influence them or manipulate them, especially against their own interest, clearly the defenses come up. The power of implication is people don’t realize it. They just assume it as they go along. Here’s an example; years ago one of my cousins, his stepfather is a doctor, he’s in Germany, he’s driving down the road, and he gets stopped for something. I think one of his lights was out, I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, the policeman had given his stepfather a stern talking to and was about to write him a ticket. My cousin, he’s about 12 at the time, starts complaining and saying, "Dad, your medical kit is bugging me." You should know that the word for medical kit in German is, Die Koffer von einem Arzt, which specifically means ‘the suitcase for a medical doctor’. It, basically, tells them this person here is a medical doctor. So, it’s saying your medical suitcase is digging at my heels, I don’t like it. The instant the officer heard this, the frame switched. In Germany, doctors still have a very high status. His whole manner changed. Suddenly, he started being more polite. He told them. "Well, you know, really, I should be writing you up. But, I understand. You’re on important business, so, please, take care of this as quickly as possible and drive safely. Thank you very much. Goodbye." It wasn’t that he said, "Oh officer, I’m a medical doctor. Please treat me according to my station." Maybe 100 years ago that might have worked,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 but in modern society that does not work, because there’s a different set of assumptions now around status and so on. Does that make sense? But, the implication still worked, right? Student:

I shared this with the group, but I’m setting a deliberate pre-frame and I didn’t realize it.

Igor:

Everyone, this is where he lives.

Student:

This is where I live. Do you see the pre-frame in it?

Igor:

No, I haven’t really seen it.

Student:

In the picture, I’m wearing a clerical collar in my driver’s license picture. For those in the U.S., there is still a fairly high opinion, at least to a degree, of clergy. So, in my driver’s license picture I have my clerical collar on, so, when a cop stops me and I hand them my driver’s license, they realize I’m a minister.

Igor:

It already has a bunch of assumptions about honesty, about reliability, about safety – right? Do you see what I mean? Do you see the power of the implied pre-frame? That is a beautiful pre-frame right there. Do you want to come up? Everyone is in these dark suits, either that or a white suit with a stethoscope around the neck. This is my driver’s license.

Student:

Actually, this is very funny and it involves my driver’s license as well, which doesn’t say much of anything. In fact, I’m wearing a t-shirt. However, the interesting thing and I discovered this by accident, but I’ve been using it and I’ve gotten out of a couple tickets at least so far. Once I discovered that it made me really think that. A few people here know, because I took them to the market, I have this crappy old van. Like, somebody sold it to me for $1. It’s that crappy. It’s rusty and stuff but I like it because I carry stuff in it. Especially if I go to my friends. Obviously, you don’t know the area, but if I go to Irvine, which is kind of a higher end area, I won’t get stopped in the day but I will get stopped at night. I will consistently get stopped at night. I will always get pulled over. The other day I got pulled over on the freeway and I was speeding. He told me, "You are speeding." I get stopped and I have crap in the back of my van. I don’t really care right now. I get stopped, he looks at my driver’s license and he's like, "This is Santa Barbara." "That’s right."

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I say, "I’m not going to change this because I own that house. I’m just here working right now. I’m really kind of tired and that’s why I’m doing this." Meanwhile, I’m wearing a nice watch and they run my record. I have no record, nothing. They come back, "Alright sir, just slow down next time." I’m like, "Alright. Thank you." Igor:

The thing that’s happened here is, and this is something we’ll come to this afternoon, is remember when we talked a few days ago about triggering the amygdala through surprise and the unexpected? What are the expectations when they come to the window of a beat up old van, especially at nighttime in a nice area?

Students:

That he’s a robber.

Igor:

He’s there robbing. He doesn’t belong there or he has some kind of criminal intent or something like that. The moment they come up to the window, they see someone who is polite, is well dressed and has status symbols like a good watch and all that sort of things, who talks about the house he owns. What does house ownership imply? Status, wealth, security, probably middle- class, there are other liability factors that go with that. Notice how these are natural prejudices people have today in our society. Just because people are poor, does not make them unreliable, untrustworthy or criminals or have criminal intent. Yet, those biases still exist to some extent. Does that make sense? The reverse biases exist as well. Just by having that little interaction, he’s triggered the amygdala. The old patterns are frozen. The new pattern is introduced and he has to try to evaluate that. How do I deal with this new pattern? The only way he can do it, at speed, is to go to old prejudices, which is middle-class, relatively wealthy, he’s in the safe category, alright we’ll let you off this once. Do you see how that works? If he was stopped in a nice car, in a nice area and he came from that area, in other words everything fit the picture, do you think it would be more likely or less likely that they’d let him off a speeding ticket? Less likely, because he already knows how to deal with that situation, he’s already prepared for it. Does that make sense? Thank you, that’s a great example.

Student:

I had an example where in Pennsylvania I went to get my driver’s license renewed.

Igor:

We have all the driving examples here. Can I pause you there a second – notice what frame are we in right now? What frame have you set by bringing out your driver’s license and your driving stories? Getting out of

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 tickets frame, driving licenses, as an example, so where do our minds go automatically? Does that make sense? Do you see how this is happening, invisibly, as we’re operating. It just makes sense. It feels natural, but I’d like you to observe it because this is exactly how peoples’ minds work. I apologize for doing this. It’s an interesting phenomenon worth pointing out. Student:

Normally, I sign my name with MD after it. I did that and went to get my driver’s license. The person there said, "You can’t do this. You can’t have an MD after your name." I said, "Why not?" He said, "We don’t allow any clergy or doctors or anything to put that after their name. You just have to have your regular name on your driver’s license."

Igor:

They’re doing that very specifically for the same reason, so you don’t use status to do that. Again, do you see how, for every point of influence, someone will try to create a safeguard against it? We have to be aware of what these things are so we can move through them smoothly.

Students:

Yes, in terms of wardrobe. We all have implied assumptions that come from the way we dress, obviously. Sub-culturally, there are a lot of different youth cultures that rock different kinds of outfits. For example, a skateboarder might look different than someone who is into Mod or into hip-hop, which is very different. There are assumptions that underlie all those things as well.

Igor:

Each culture is context. Each subculture has their own set of reference points. Things that work well with one, don’t work so well with the other. For example, I think we mentioned this previously on another day, remember the study, we talked about where someone in a suit will have the same authority as someone wearing a uniform, who has the same authority as a police officer more or less because it triggers the same association inside peoples’ minds? If someone in a security uniform – not a police officer – tells random people to pick up a piece of litter on the floor and throw it away, it’s not their own, it’s just lying there – in fact he’s put it there himself beforehand for the purpose of the experiment, a lot of people will go and pick it up. If a person in a suit does the same thing the results are virtually identical. Of course, what if he was to walk into a different area with a different assumption about authority? For example, maybe a skateboarding community – although I’m not saying they all have authority issues – or what if he walks into a biker bar or Nicky’s bar, which apparently is a little bit more challenging?

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The suit now has a different meaning. The assumptions, the frames have changed because the context has changed, which means our study about wearing a suit is invalid. Does that make sense? It’s actually going to be damaging. I would love to be able to give you – here’s the universal golden rule, just do this and you’ll be influential every time, but it doesn’t happen. The one golden rule, I would say would be; understand the context you find yourself in and the hidden frames that context implies. Does that make sense? Is this useful? Students:

Just a comment in support of what you’re talking about here. I have a friend who is a security expert in London and he says you can rob any building in London simply by walking into the building wearing a neon high vis vest and a hard hat.

Igor:

Apparently, if you want to have criminal intent, you can walk into any building and rob it if you’re wearing a neon vest and a hard hat, like one a maintenance worker for the city council would have.

Students:

The reason for that is every contractor in London wears those high vis vests and hard hats.

Igor:

Right, every contractor in London – I would say probably in the UK – wear these high visibility neon vests and the hard hat, it’s kind of like their uniform. People expect to see it in those buildings.

Students:

The most difficult thing in training security guards at the building is, if you walk in looking like a contractor, the security guard automatically assumes you are a contractor and you’re just there to work on the building.

Igor:

He’s saying, when his friend trains security guards, one of the hardest things is to get through to them that someone who looks like a contractor – in other words has the hard hat and the vest – need not necessarily be one, because they’re assuming and just waving them through without too many checks.

Students:

The pre-frame in the security guard’s mind is, that that individual is simply there to work on the building.

Igor:

The assumption the security guard has is oh, this person is just here to work on the building. He belongs here.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Students:

The people that they stop are people who walk into the building wearing a suit. They want to know what floor they’re going to, who they’re there to see. They see that as the danger.

Igor:

Of course, they look at the people in suits as the more dangerous people because they want to make sure they’re going to the right floor, especially in buildings that have segmented corporations inside them. They want to make sure they go to the floor they belong to, rather than any old floor.

Students:

The difficult task in training building security guards is to pre-frame their way of thinking. To consider everyone a danger, to stop and question everyone. But he said literally, you can walk into any building in London and rob it just wearing that vest and hard hat. Once you walk outside, there are 100 of guys wearing the same vest and hard hat so you can quickly disappear.

Igor:

Remember, there are legal implications to robbery and theft. However, for information purposes only… It just illustrates this whole idea about wearing a vest and jumping into people’s assumptions. It just illustrates how people’s assumptions are active every day. Honestly, we need those assumptions because we can’t think about every single thing fresh, every single time. It frees us up to be able to focus our energy and attention on other things. When these assumptions are problematic to us we need to be able to find them and change them. If they’re problematic in terms of the context we enter, we definitely have to recognize them so we can change them ahead of time or during the moment of problems. Make sense?

Students:

I just want to share a very interesting re-frame experience I had when I was a young man. There were four of us, two couples, and we went into a bar. There were a few motorcycles outside, choppers and such, we didn’t think too much of it. We walked in the door and it was filled with all these rough looking characters and we thought maybe we’ve made a mistake here. Then we noticed the sign above the bar. It said, "The nicest place with the nicest people in town." They were.

Igor:

Excellent.

Students:

I have something along the same lines. Has anyone seen the movie – you can rent it if you go to your video store or Netflix, they can probably find it – called 'The Battle in Seattle'? Here’s someone who knows it firsthand, then.

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It’s a fantastic movie. Rent it. It’s all about the big WTO fight in Seattle in 1999, where the World Trade Organization, an unelected body, was going to make all these new rules about trade in the world economy. There were a lot of people from environmental groups and from progressive religious organizations and labor groups who felt like, well, these rules are going to satisfy maybe 1% of the world and screw everybody else. They organized a tremendous march. Unfortunately, there were a few hooligans who smashed a few windows and suddenly the news went gaga over all these hooligans and vandals. It cast a bad name for all the other people who attended who had very good intentions. I had this vision that one day these folks – let me just take a step back and look at the picture. You’ve got all these police. They’ve got helmets. They’ve got clubs. They’ve got body armor. They may even have gas masks and they are out there in force and in big numbers. Then you have all these people who are just like everyday folks, unarmed and everything. What if all those folks showed up in three piece suits? I would love to see what would happen. Then the enforcers would be acting violently or trying to rein in people who look like the people who give them their orders in the first place. Igor:

What I find interesting about what you’re saying there, political idealism aside, is the thing about in terms of what is this is doing here, in terms of the frames? He’s mixing two frames that in our minds don’t really come together. It’s kind of like saying, what if you had two police forces have a go at each other instead? It’s something that’s so weird inside our minds we can’t even contemplate it. Although, it’s really no different than war or anything else. It is possible at some point, something weird happens and two police forces clash this way. The point here is you need to be very aware of what those frames are so you can then create the kind of frames that allow a different kind of inference to occur. The scenario you just described, again, is a great example of a pre-frame. It uses the expectations people already have to send a very different message, right? Thank you for that, I appreciate that.

Students:

This thought occurred to me. ♦ Would you say that the use of the 'Yes Set' is a universal preframe?

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It can be if you do the 'Yes Set' like we have it in the 'Yes Deck', which is loaded with frames. If it’s just yeses, I can say, you’re in shoes and jeans and playing with your glasses. The 'Yes Set' itself must have a frame built into it and if it’s accepted, then you have a form of pre-frame. It’ll probably be more of a direct pre-frame, unless your assumptions are very clever in terms of what you’ve pulled into them. But, absolutely, it’s a form of pre-frame.

Students:

When you start working with a group, I’ve noticed, that you’ll ask certain questions, which obviously the answer is yes. You’re all here to learn conversational hypnosis…

Igor:

Just to accentuate that, for example, I’m asking you guys, you are here to learn some hypnosis, right? Otherwise, go next door, please. You’re here for conversational hypnosis in particular, right? You’re here to learn and master something new right? What I’ve just done there, is, I’ve got a 'Yes Set'. I’ve, of course, paced there, so I’m actually focusing the frame around the idea of hypnosis. So, trivial things, I have the ability to dissociate, other ideas that don’t fit into this thing. I can cut them off. I’ve also – and this is where it’s a more implied frame – I’ve done a little lead. You are here to master something. You never said you were, but I’ve assumed that. By the role of the 'Yes Set', it creates a new frame about mastery and that allows me to do several things. It allows me to move faster. It allows me to push you more, and it allows me to maybe force you back from exercises a bit more. If something is going down the wrong track, like right now we’re asking too many questions, then I can say, do you want to ask more questions or do you want to learn more conversational hypnosis? Which is it?

Students:

Learn.

Igor:

All right, let’s do it. Do you see the example of the re-frame that I’ve set up by establishing a pre-frame ahead of time? Do you see how that works? I now have a frame of reference which is, you’re here to learn conversational hypnosis. You’re not here to chat. You’re not here to present your own opinion about the world, philosophy of life and so on. You’re here to learn conversational hypnosis. That’s what we’re doing.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 While it’s great to have these discussions, if they go too far, I have an ideal setup, pre-frame, which will allow me to cut those things short and refocus onto what we’re here for, which after all, really, is what we’re here for. That illustrates another point, which is, pre-frames are not necessarily at someone else’s detriment. If I allow the conversations to run in any old direction constantly, ad infinitum, at the end of the 10 days, how satisfied will you feel with what you’ve gotten out of this 10 day course? I would have failed on my promises to you because I didn’t allow the group to be focused in on what I promised I would be focused on. It’s not that pre-frames are like a manipulation. I’m going to force you to do stuff. It actually, sometimes, allows you to let people get what they want when they’re actually fighting themselves without realizing it. Make sense? Is everyone good with the idea of pre-frames so far? There’s a couple of other things I want to say in terms of setting a preframe. We’ll cover this more in the advanced section. It’s that stories are one of the best ways of setting pre-frames. You can tell a story about how I was at a seminar once and people were asking way too many questions so the head of the seminar said shut up, stop it, leave me the hell alone. I learned a valuable lesson. I would put that kind of story in the inept category, and not highly amusing. When we get into storytelling, we’ll focus more on how to be a little more suave, a little more smooth, a little bit more indirect and elegant about what we’re doing. The final thing in terms of pre-frames and this is the most important thing for you to remember when it comes to frame control, remember frames produce a frame of reference with respect to the value of whatever message or behavior that’s going on. I’ll give you an example of what I mean in terms of sales and how to change the meaning of something. I think it’s Sonoma that makes a bread maker. You know, those little machines you put flour and water and stuff like that in. You push a button in the morning and you have a lovely loaf of bread. It's not the most inexpensive of machines. Sales are okay. A few years down the line they introduce a new bread maker. It has extra buttons and things that spun and turn. You can put nuts and bolts in it and all kinds of stuff. It’s true. It’s apparently better and it’s a lot more expensive.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 This comes out, what do you think the expectations are for the sales team in terms of sales of the new machine, given that the older machine was doing okay, but it wasn’t doing great, not crazy sales? Any ideas? They probably think the older machine will die out. No one will want it because the new one is on board and it will make similar sales as the new one. No, in fact what happened is the new machines sold virtually nil, sold a few, but very few, and the sales for the old machine went through the roof. Think about it, you have two machines. They essentially do the same thing. They make bread. One costs you $600 and the other costs $100. If you have no frame of reference, $100 to get a loaf of bread. What are you comparing it to? You’re comparing it to a $2 loaf of bread you get at the supermarket. That’s not worth it is it? Now you have a $600 machine that does the same thing. Now, it’s a bargain, it’s only $100. Do you see how that works? The contrast frame is very important. You might think that you’re a little smarter than that. You wouldn’t be caught up that way. Allow me to offer you a scenario and see how this works for you. Anyone here ever buy pants, like jeans or something like that? How much are they, $50-$100? Something like that? You walk into a jeans shop, you find your favorite pair of jeans, let’s say they cost $80. You know that across town another store sells the same jeans for $60, $50, something like that. Where do you buy those jeans? Students:

The one across town.

Igor:

The one across town, would that be fair to say? That seems like a sensible choice, you’re saving $30. You’re going to buy a flat screen TV that costs $1,000. You know, for a fact that across town right next to the jeans store, in fact, is a store that sells the exact same TV for $9,900 (Igor got his numbers mixed up.), so you save a whole $100. Where do you buy the TV? The store you’re in because it’s easier. What is it that you are referring to? Not the $100 or $30 you’re saving. What you are choosing or using as your criteria to buy, you’re contrasting the price of one TV against the other, at that point $30 is nothing, $30 compared to $1,000 is barely anything, it’s pennies. Thirty dollars compared to $80 is huge, that’s almost half the value of it.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you see how contrasting dictates meaning much more than objective fact? When you’re setting your frames, it’s very important that you choose the right things for people to contrast, your ideas, your product or your services and so on, against. Does that make sense? If they make a different comparison, there will be a different conclusion at that point. Do you like that Cecil? Let’s have a chat about re-frames Cecil:

Yes, I do that, what Igor just mentioned about contrast. There’s a time to use a percentage as the contrast mechanism and there’s a time to use a dollar amount as a mechanism. It’s very important that you choose the right one, otherwise, you get this kind of thing. Thirty bucks to go across town and pay for parking and gas, and you think it’s a bargain. Thirty bucks in a TV store and you won’t even think about it because the percentage of difference is so minute, even though the dollar amount is the same.

Igor:

It depends on what is the message you need to get out there? Make sense? Re-framing is what you do when either your pre-frame hasn’t worked or you’ve forgotten to pre-frame properly. Maybe you missed something or maybe you forgot to set it up. Maybe, you were pushed into a situation before you could pre-frame it, so now you have to re-frame it and so on. The problem with the re-frame is, if it’s presented ineptly again, it actually reinforces the original frame. Do you have a question?

Students:

Perhaps about the pre-frame, wouldn’t it depend on the person you’re with? Some people would just be amazed by the suit of the specialist and it would be enough.

Igor:

That’s exactly what we’ve been saying. It depends on the context and the context includes the people who are there. If you’re in a crowd of bikers, the suit will not be very impressive; in fact it might be the opposite. If you’re in a crowd of bankers or police officers the suit is much more impressive. In fact, the absence of a suit is less impressive. The people that you’re with and the context that they’re in; the people are part of that context. In fact, they are the primary factor in the context, and will be absolutely crucial.

Students:

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If someone has a therapist and they go to him, one person might be impressed by his cabinet and his things. But I would personally analyze



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the person more himself. How is he? If I have problems with smoking, if he smokes himself or is jumpy… Igor:

Exactly, they’re all part of the frame you’re setting up. I absolutely agree with you. Remember frame is not just one little thing. Let me reemphasize this in case you misunderstood. I’m not saying go out and wear suits more, not in the least. What I’m saying is, understand what is the context you are in. What are the expectations people have in that context, what do they need to see to have trust and comfort? What do they need to not see? Make sense? What is it they’re going to come with, what expectations are they going to come with that are problematic, that you have to break before you can even begin? I’ll give you a quick example of what I mean. In hypnotherapy for example, a lot of people come in hoping for a magic pill. They’ve tried everything else and it’s failed. Now they want you to control their mind and make them do something they can’t do for themselves, or at least they think they can’t. That’s not a very useful frame for making change, is it? Now it’s up to you to do all the work. The other problem with that frame of course is, the expectation doesn’t allow them to actually engage. They just sit there and you talk to them, and there’s a great fail rate – like I tried my best. You need to switch that mindset around so they’re now choosing to be there. So now engaging, they’re going to work for the outcome. So there’s mental activity going on and you can create change. Here’s a great example of how – do you guys understand re-framing since we did pre-framing already? The key to re-framing by the way is not to explain things. If someone comes in and says, "Alright, I can’t stop smoking I’ve tried everything else. You’re a hypnotist, do your hypno-magic and make me stop smoking." You can hear the frames, the assumptions in that; can you not? The key to re-framing is not to turn around and say, "Well, I can’t really make anyone do anything." What’s he going to think inside his mind? You’re useless. What kind of hypnotist are you if you can’t make people do stuff? That is a lot of people’s expectations. Just telling them that’s not how hypnosis works, hypnosis is gentle and it’s loving and it’s good for relationships – they don’t want to hear that

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 because it’s not their expectation. You’ve got to change the expectation differently. Because there’s a thought loop running around, logic will not do that, or will do that very rarely. What you need is to break the thought loop so you can replace it with another one. How do we break thought loops? What is the primary thing we do? Students:

You could use some mind bending language.

Igor:

He’s talking about mind bending language for example. Yes, what does mind bending language do? He’s talking about opening up the transmitter for possibilities. You’re close. I’m going to steer out of the idea of mind bending language purely because we’re not focusing on that on this seminar, and secondly because it just does something. Mind bending language isn’t the important part; it’s what it achieves that’s important.

Students:

Pattern interrupt.

Igor:

Pattern interrupt yes, but what does a pattern interrupt actually do?

Students:

Bypass the critical factor.

Igor:

Bypass the critical factor. How are we doing this? There you go, you’re stimulating their amygdala. The amygdala is the part of the brain that’s stimulated by novelty, surprise, unexpectedness, and so on. What does the amygdala do? Three things… ♦ Number one, it sharply focuses attention. Do we want that as hypnotists? Yes. ♦ Number two, it releases a strong emotional response, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, depending on what conclusion someone is coming to. Do we want a strong emotional response? Yes, that’s called S, stimulating the conscious mind. ♦ Number three, it short circuits the neo-cortex to a certain extent.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 In other words, classic thought loops can no longer run for a period. That’s what a pattern interrupt does. That’s what mind bending language does. That’s what the critical factor bypass really is. Do you see how that works? You’re cutting the thought loops through from the neo-cortex, which is where the thought loops run constantly in the same sort of patterns. For a moment, people literally don’t know what to think. That’s the point in which a suggestion can be presented. Let me give you an example. Anyone here ever do an instant induction? What happens during instant induction? When you do, maybe, a little jerk of the neck, remember the gentle jerk, or the hand whatever form you want to use. Would it be fair to say there’s a little bit of surprise going on there, a little bit of shock? So it would be fair to surmise that the amygdala has somewhere been triggered. What do you do at that point? You present a clear, simple, unambiguous suggestion. In the instant induction, of course, it’s sleep. In conversation, it’s your re-frame. Does that make sense? We’ll come onto how to do that later on today but I just want to present that as a principle later on. Would you like to learn? Students:

Yes.

Igor:

Good. We’ve already talked about out-framing, where you’re changing the context. Imagine someone sitting in a room and saying there’s not enough food on my plate. That’s a complaint. You want to add frame and say, "Hey, the whole city is starving and you’ve got twice as much as anyone else in the city." Do you see how that’s an out-frame? You’ve changed the scene and now by reference to a bigger scene, the problem isn’t a problem anymore. Here’s another example I like to use sometimes. Imagine you’re watching a movie and you see these twigs and logs and stuff like that. And it’s like, Christmas music and there's a lovely little fire burning. How do you feel about that? Pretty good, right? You see the logs are, actually, branches of a tree. It’s a Christmas tree decorated with lots of little lights, and it’s blazing quite happily. All the presents underneath are catching fire. How do you feel about this? Do you see how by changing the frame, I’ve changed the meaning? Let’s step back. If you step further back, because I don’t want to leave a negative image in your mind, and it turns out there this corner, there’s this studio, there’s lights and cameras, there’s security personnel with safety

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 equipment all around – they’re making a movie. How do you feel about it now? Do you see just by changing the frame, you change its meaning fundamentally? It’s kind of a pre-frame maneuver if you wanted to call it that, but it just allows you to change the topic in some respects. This is what happens, classically, when nations go to war to avoid internal conflict. Your concerns are petty, look at this, enemies are all around, better pull it together or we’re doomed. All the same situations are still occurring but by looking at the bigger picture changes people’s attitude. Does that make sense? Have a quick question or comment? Students:

You used an out-frame at the tail end of the discussion about re-frames.

Igor:

He’s mentioned that I used an out-frame at the tail end of the discussion on re-frames? Care to elaborate?

Students:

Essentially the discussion of re-frames was drifting off topic and you wanted to bring everyone back to topic.

Igor:

When I talked about people drifting off topic and I wanted to get people back to topic.

Students:

Therefore the out-frame was presented and it was generally accepted by everyone.

Igor:

The out-frame was accepted by everyone, which is stop asking silly questions. Classic. Do you see how just talking about it, and of course I had to do it with a sense of humor, why? You’re not children. I can’t just say, oh, naughty children talking too much. It’s implied more in terms of the story. I’ve changed the frame of reference, so, let’s focus on what this whole training is about, not the individual ideas or stories that are occurring to you. By the way, I still encourage you guys to ask all the questions. It’s just, please don’t be offended if I tell you to shut up. Is that okay? By the way, notice, why did you just laugh? Because your amygdala was triggered. Why did it get triggered? It was a surprise. Did you expect me to be rude to you, to tell you to shut up at just the point where I was being very polite about, and I hope you’ll forgive me, when I tell you to shut the hell up?

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Do you see the contrast? Again, the contrast principle is what creates the surprise and that’s what triggers the amygdala. Which in turn, allows the re-frame to actually set in without being over analyzed, without it bouncing into existing thought loops that might say, oh, I don’t think I like being treated that way. That’s not a very nice way to talk to people. Do you see where we’re going with this? Does it make sense? Is everyone good? Is everyone happy, or should we do the inner smile again? Let’s see how we’re doing on time here. Excellent! What I’d like to do now is just give you guys an experience of the mindset that allows you to find frames that are worth presenting to people. Does that make sense? For the moment you can be very overt about it. We’re not asking for the proper re-frame or pre-frame or anything like that. I just want you to get into the mindset so you can find frames that are of use to people. To do this is very simple. Who here is familiar with a book, Pollyanna? I think it’s an American classic, 1913, what’s her name – Eleanor Potter wrote this. A story about a little girl called Pollyanna, an orphan, who goes to live with her very strict aunt called Polly – very imaginative there. Essentially, you’ve got a strict aunt and this exuberant little girl who is overly optimistic. Because she grew up very poor with her father, he invented a game with her called 'The Glad Game'. One Christmas they’re going to the mission to get spare things for toys for Christmas, and she’s really hoping for a doll. Of course when they look into the barrel the only thing that’s left over is a pair of crutches, a great gift for a five year old girl, right? To avoid disappointment her father invents a game called 'The Glad Game' and they start coming up with reasons why it’s a good thing there’s crutches in there for her. One of the things they come up with is, I don’t need them and that’s pretty damn good. Do you see where this goes? I’d like you to start playing 'The Glad Game' with each other for a little bit, but I’d like you to play it in a special way. I’d like you to find the most messed up scenarios you can possibly think of. We’re talking about the world is burning, your cat has been nailed to a tree, your whole family has been sacrificed on an alter and that’s good because…Do you see where we’re going with this? Let me emphasize something here. I would like you to specifically avoid anything that is actually happening in your life, for now. I want you to be able to find 'The Glad Game' in the most extreme of scenarios. Then,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 when we rein it back a little bit, it’ll actually be a lot more natural and easy for you to do. Make sense? Get into groups of five. Maybe go back to the old groups you were in a moment ago. Someone throw out a really messed up scenario. Really get colorful with this. Then everyone else start finding reasons to be glad for that. Off you go. Who here enjoyed 'The Glad Game'? Was it kind of funny? I recommend strongly that you keep playing this game. We’re about to go into a break, if you want to talk about some crazy scenarios and come up with all sorts of crazy ways of looking at it, that would be acceptable. If from time to time, you were to slip in something that might sound like a crazy scenario, but it’s actually real…I can’t stop you. I mean, how would I know, right? Do you get a good concept of what frames are and how frames work? What they do and how you can start beginning to use them? After the break we’ll focus a little bit more on how to use them specifically to motivate action. To actually get someone to do something, think something, feel something. To really motivate action and get people excited and enthusiastic about something. Is anyone here in sales, getting people to accept ideas or influence them in some way like that? It fits that whole model particularly well. Thank you very much.

DVD 14: Super Persuasion - How to Lock People into Your Frame and Make Them Feel Good Igor:

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at the Same Time

I want to take this idea of frame control and focus it on something that’s going to allow you to motivate people. Whether it’s motivating a sale, getting people excited about an idea, about doing something, a behavior or even to



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 accept new ideas that might otherwise be challenging to them, because they are motivated to accept them. Does that make sense? Let me give you an example, of how that works in terms of ideas. When I started as a hypnotist, coach and so on, I came from a legal background. I worked for one of the top law firms in the UK. My perception was if you are the best in your field, clients will come knocking on your door. Then reality set in when I sat in my office, twiddling my thumbs wondering where my clients were. I realized, who knows that I exist? Even though I knew that intellectually, it took me the best part of a year or two to accept that I had to do some marketing. I did a little bit here and there but I didn't accept the idea until I had issues paying rent. This motivated me to find a better way of running my business. It was a business. Running my business wasn’t just delivering the service I’d promised. It was getting the people to deliver the service to. Does that make sense? I’m not exactly a slow individual. I’m not mentally too challenged. Yet, it took me a year and a half to accept the idea that I have to do marketing. Isn’t that weird? The thing that got me over the hump, of course, is I had a reason to accept that idea. More importantly, I had to accept marketing that works rather than marketing that I thought I should do, which clearly wasn’t working very well. I want to focus this session on ways of getting people to accept ideas, or be motivated to accept ideas, to accept behaviors, to engage in behaviors and do so enthusiastically. Would that be useful to learn? This training relates to frames because these are part of the invisible frames that will come into any interaction. It’s been called several things by different people and people have different categorizations of hierarchies and so on, but essentially we're talking about something I like to call 'Values' or things that are important to people. We are not random creatures. We're goal oriented. I suspect that there is no one in this room who woke up one morning, got an email saying, fancy coming to a seminar and then responded with, why not. Who is it? I don’t know, just sign and off you go. You had a reason for being here. Chances are you had to make sure that what was being offered in the email and the sales page matched what you wanted to get. There is a contrast

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 always occurring. We're always comparing things to our internal goals and to the extent they get us closer or make us achieve those internal goals, we’ll be motivated. Something that gets us closer is a little motivational. Something that helps us achieve it or makes us think we’ll achieve it is hugely motivational. This is where values come in. One way to look at values is what we hope that goals will give us. When someone wants to have a fast car, do they want to have a lump of metal that hurdles down the road at high speed? What is it they're really buying? It might be status. It might be the excitement of driving, a sense of power. It might be the freedom. One of the classic rights of passage for teenagers in the western world is that they get a driving license. Why? It represents freedom to teenagers, especially in North America, where you have lots of distance between things. In Europe you can walk around places. Hop on a bus or something and it’s a five minute journey. It’s not possible in most North American cities. Having a car is huge freedom. The motivation to getting a license is huge, provided they want that freedom of course. If they're afraid of the outside world or comfortable and want to stay at home and never leave, is there any motivation to drive a car or get that license? If they have a private chauffeur, mommy and daddy will come and pick them up or drop them off any time they want, is there any motivation to get a license then? Do you see how, if we can find people’s true goals, the values behind the goals, we know how to motivate them. It becomes a very simple equation. All you have to do is make sure that whatever you're offering, the idea, service or product gets married up with whatever that feeling is, that value or goal. When the two come together, by getting that car they will get the freedom, they will get that thrill and status they're looking for. Values must have a strong emotional component or they are not values. I could ask each of you what’s important about life and so on. You might get socially polite responses, such as, it’s important to treat people well, this and the other. Somewhere on that list, you might throw something out that is actually important to you. Like, they just leave you alone when you ask for it. Do you

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 see a bit more emotion coming in there? I want to see how we can explore people’s values. Find them and find which are worth working with. I’m going to give you a caveat before we begin. Human beings are state based. That means that when your state changes, your values will change. Let me give you an example. Do you think it’s acceptable to hit other people? Just pummel them in the face? No? Okay. Someone is about to harm your children, loved one, someone close to your family. Is that acceptable? Yes. By changing the context, we change what is acceptable, what is important at that point. If someone is feeling calm and comfortable, life is going well and they're living in a decent part of the world and so on, and you try to sell them an alarm system, do they need it? Do they want it? They live in a neighborhood where their doors are unlocked. Half the time they're left open. No one steals anything. They're neighbors. They feel safe. This same person goes somewhere else and maybe gets attacked there. Now they feel insecure. They feel unsafe. Will they leave their door open? No. Are they more likely to buy a burglar alarm? Yes, with a panic button. They're still in the same place, same neighborhood, same context. What’s changed is them. Now that they feel insecure. Safety or security goes up in their goal system, needs, and value, in their estimation. They’ll start buying things that aren’t even necessary, because it’s satisfying an internal need for safety, comfort and so on. This will happen across contexts. It’s important you know this, because you might be able to find someone’s values out. But if they switch, go into a different emotional state, you’ll have to do the work again, just to find something else to come out there too. Don’t think of these things as absolute. They're close enough to being absolute in terms of that context, that setting, that state, but they’ll be variations that go with it. How can you find people’s values? It’s very simple. Can I have a volunteer? Do you want to come up Ralph? Let’s put you over here so you can use the microphone and people can hear you. Ralph, why is it you came to this course? Ralph:

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To learn conversational hypnosis. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



This is a relatively common response. I know why he’s here. The context has defined that. If this was a used car lot and he told me this, I’d be a bit perplexed. If it’s a used car lot and he says he’s here to buy a car, it’s like, well, of course, it’s a used car lot. This doesn't give me much information in terms of his values and how to motivate Ralph. I need to find out more. We're going to do this initially directly and then we’ll see if we can get more indirect about this whole thing. The simple question we're going to ask to get a set of values out is, what’s important to you about, and variations of that. After a while, you may want to vary for the sake of not sounding like a broken record. Let me ask you, what’s important to you about conversational hypnosis?

Ralph:

Being able to interact better, being able to do something good for people.

Igor:

Okay.

Ralph:

Save the world.

Igor:

How much emotion was there in Ralph’s responses? By the way Ralph, I apologize for talking about you as if you weren’t there. This is a useful way of getting through to what we're looking at.

Ralph:

No problem.

Igor:

Thank you. Was there a huge amount of emotion in what he’s saying here? No. Would it be fair to say there was a bit more emotion than when he talked about learning conversational hypnosis? Yes. We're getting a bit closer to his values, but we're not there yet, are we? We have to take one of these things here and focus on that a bit more. When you talk about interacting with others better, what’s important to you about that?

Ralph:

For me, getting out of the cave that I live in as my home office, and being out among people more.

Igor:

If you're out of your cave and amongst people more, what does that do for you?

Ralph:

It gives me an opportunity to have an effect.

Igor:

Do you notice again the emotions are starting to rise again. There is a stronger focus on the language. He’s emphasizing a bit more. It’s not a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 huge shift, but it’s getting there. You should probably be feeling more emotional about the question and not intellectual any more. There are a couple of things interesting here. First, have an effect, do good, save the world, are you beginning to notice a pattern developing here? Notice these patterns because these things are important. In a normal conversation they’ll throw these out again more randomly. It’s your job to spot them as they become more invisible. The second thing is he wants, to get out of the cave so he can interact with more people or something along those lines. Basically, he’s telling me the same thing again. He’s giving me the same logical level in terms of information. Interact better, get out of my cave and talk to more people. It’s on the same wave length, isn’t it? I’ve got to bump him up a little bit in terms of the idea. Remember with the five realities? We want to get to something symbolic, something that symbolized the whole of his life, his purpose for being here and so on. It could be something like freedom, being a force for good in the world. I’m having a suspicion it’s going to go in that direction somewhat, but we’ll see. If I ask what’s important about getting out of your cave, I’m likely to get another version of that again, because he’s already given me one version across in the same way. What I do at that point is collect things. When you're interacting better and you're getting gout of your cave more, you're meeting more people, what does that do for you? Do you see how that sets a variation of asking, how is that important to you? If I collect them altogether, I’m asking him to jump up and summarize. Give me something that is present in all those things for him. Does that make sense?

That happens to be - to have an effect. What’s important to you about having an effect on people? Ralph:

It’s important that it’s a positive effect.

Igor:

Clearly you don’t want to go around shooting people.

Ralph:

That would only add to the discord.

Igor:

Yes. Notice what he just said there. Notice how in casual conversation stuff comes out? That would only add to the discord? Who thinks that harmony of

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 some sort was going to be an element of whatever values we end up with? Chances pretty high? So, what’s wrong with discord? Ralph:

It’s not pleasant.

Igor:

What would you rather have?

Ralph:

Pleasant environment, pleasant community situation.

Igor:

Notice how having a positive effect, doing good and saving the world, initially they sound altruistic elements and there is that sense of altruism, but notice how we're going somewhere different. Until it has a personal impact on him, there has to be some kind of selfish element for everyone, then this stuff is just the icing on the cake. It doesn't devalue the desire to do well and be a good force in the world. In my opinion, it enhances it. Here, we're getting a hint. We haven’t got there yet, but having a pleasant environment around him is something he enjoys. In helping others have a better life and being more harmonious, there’s that discord thing again, he’s helping himself to live a more pleasant life. Do you see how that’s starting to work out?

Mickey:

Would this be a good way to help somebody get rid of or find a dirty goal?

Igor:

A dirty goal is when consciously and unconsciously you want different things. They conflict. For example, anyone here want some money? Okay, just a few. If your unconscious mind happens to think that people who have money, more than a certain amount, more income than $100,000 a year, are somehow bad, have tricked others, manipulated them in some way, they are somehow unethical and it’s important to be ethical in the world. What are the chances of you reaching high levels of income? Relatively low. If someone says they're going to be wealthy, they're going to be wealthy. They're going to start creating an internal conflict. Your unconscious mind is saying, no, you're better than that. The harder they try, the bigger the conflict. That is called a dirty goal. You need to release the unconscious drives in order to be able to clean that up. Does that make sense?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 In the process of doing this, you may well come across a dirty goal and you’ll come across something to give you leverage to clean it up. So, value is all about leverage. Leverage for motivation, leverage for change, for whatever. Let’s explore this a bit. Ralph:

I’d like to give a little insight into save the world motive, which goes back to being a selfish component. I would like this world to be more enjoyable, more fun and more pleasant for myself and everybody in it. I think, in order to be more pleasant for me, it needs to be more pleasant for others, too. The save the world idea is that, the more each of us, as individuals, spreads the good feelings, the better the whole world will be.

Igor:

I agree. It’s a great sentiment. It’s important for people and yourself to enjoy themselves and to be pleasant to each other.

Ralph:

Right. To enjoy life, let go of the stress. You open the newspapers. Who can read the newspapers anymore?

Igor:

What do you think the driving value is right now? We’ve pretty much found it. Enjoy life. Did you see him animate? That was the first time in front of the whole group that he started using his expression more openly, putting more emotion behind the whole thing. It’s important to you to enjoy life.

Ralph:

Definitely.

Igor:

Here is the equation in his mind. When other people are enjoying their life, it’s easy for you to enjoy yours.

Ralph:

Quite so.

Igor:

Again, do you see the enthusiasm with which he’s responding? I have a little product that will help people enjoy their lives even more.

Ralph:

Can I get that?

Igor:

Absolutely, buy all of them and you’ll enjoy yourself way more than by just buying one.

Ralph:

I already have them.

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Do you see how we’ve navigated through the lower tiers and ultimately we're coming down to a single motivating hot button. It’s enjoying life. You can create a context in which people are enjoying their lives so that you can enjoy your life. Would you like that?

Ralph:

Yes, and you know, it’s a lot of fun to light people up. They love it.

Igor:

They do and do you enjoy it when other people lighten up?

Ralph:

Oh yes.

Igor:

Yes. I want to show you something in a minute, how to use values to make people really light up so not only are they enjoying themselves, but you can have a lot of fun doing it too. Would you like that?

Ralph:

Yes.

Igor:

Give him a nice round of applause. Do you get an idea of how this hierarchy thing works? Notice how it gets a bit messy. There will be a few distractions as you go along. Follow the emotion and constantly try to get something which is the bigger picture. What is the bigger picture? It’s interacting with others. It’s a decent chunk. What is a bigger picture behind that? What is driving that? It’s getting out of your cave, being pleasant with people and so on. What’s the picture behind that? It’s to have a pleasant world to live in, to have a positive effect on people. What’s the bigger picture behind that? It’s so that there is enjoyment and fun so people can enjoy their life and so I can enjoy my life. Then, all you need to do to motivate someone is to go in a different direction. Here is something that people who really enjoy life usually like or enjoy, not only because it makes their life so much more pleasant, but because it makes it much more pleasant for everyone else. Did you see how we just framed something, in a way, that is uniquely presented to them? For example, let’s say we're talking about the hypnotherapy training? Hypnotherapy is a way of showing people how to enjoy their life more so you can create a more pleasant environment around yourself. It’s an enjoyable way of doing it. Rather than having to take on other people’s bad and negative experiences and so on. You're not only showing them how to enjoy their life more, you're doing it in a way where you're actually enjoying the interaction better.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you see how I’m hitting all of these things that I'm talking about at that point? Do you find that vaguely motivating Ralph? Do you see his reaction? He’s lit up and his emotions are up, because we're hitting his emotional hot buttons. This is what his mind is contrasting against when making decisions specifically in the field of hypnosis and so on. This is not necessarily his biggest life value. I suspect it’s very close to it, but it’s enough for what we're doing here. Does that make sense? Let’s say I was doing some kind of coaching with him, or there was a problem in the sales process, all I’d have to do is demonstrate that what he’s doing right now or thinking about is in contradiction with his value. Then I have leverage. For example, Ralph came to me and we’ll go back to the money sample. He would like to have a bigger income to take care of his family and friends, but for some reason, every time he gets close to that magic six figure income, something goes wrong and he’s back at square one again. That is a classic tell tale sign that unconsciously there is a conflict going on. As I’m chatting with Ralph, I ask, what’s important about money. It’s so I can do this, that and the other. We get this idea that it’s about enjoying life and so on. Great! "How much less do you enjoy life when you don’t have the money to do anything that’s of value to you and others?" "Well, I’m not." "So, to the extent that you can change how you view money, you’ll be able to enjoy your life more and help others to enjoy their life, too. Is that what you're saying?" "Yes." "So, it’s not that you want to make more money, it’s just, that making more money means that you can enjoy our life more, help others enjoy their life more so the whole world becomes more pleasant. Is that what you're telling me?" Do you see how I’ve just reframed his internal conflict using the leverage of his value? He can’t fight his own value. It’s so emotional. It’s like having a big, red hot button to one of the biggest resources inside of him. The conflict

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 with the money will evaporate at that point, or is likely to, or it will bring up something else for you to handle. Either way, it has to emerge from unconsciousness. Does that make sense? If it does, if he says, only bad people make a lot of money. My grandmother always used to tell me this and I can’t shake the idea somehow. Great! You still have your leverage. "Do bad people help others enjoy their life more or make it more pleasant for them?" "No." "So you're telling me you want to use your money to help others enjoy their life more and have a more pleasant time, right?" "Yes." "Does that make you a bad person?" "No." "To the extent you’ll make more money, you’ll be a better person. Is that what you're telling me? Is that right? Have I understood you correctly?" "I guess so." Do you see the internal conflict evaporating at that point? The logic is not mine. The logic has to be his. These are leverage points to get him there. Do you see how this works? Is that almost a form of a 'Yes Set'? I’ll go a step further. It is a very elegant form of a 'Yes Set'. It’s a 'Yes Set' loaded with a frame, like a frame controlled 'Yes Set', like the 'Yes Deck' is a frame controlled 'Yes Set'. It’s all about how to learn how to create 'Yes Sets', and how to have frames built into them to make the interaction easier, only this time, you're using the same principle and personalizing it to the individual. Student:

I took a negotiation course and it was massively beneficial to me. The technique I learned was simply a thing called opening and confirming questions. It’s the same thing as that but was a little different. People would say things to you and you’d say, oh, and you’d repeat back to them. You leave it open, because it then allows that person to expand their deeper need.

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He’s reflecting their own statements back to them with a general openendedness so people start adding more to it. For example, we’ve got products in the back of the room. You may think it’s too expensive. We're now in a negotiation. Borrowing the pattern you’ve told me, so you think it’s too expensive? What do you feel like doing right now? Justify something, add something, explain it and give more information. That’s a classic way you can do this indirectly. For the moment, I don’t want to confuse the waters too much. I’d like to get a very clear sense of getting values, getting it overtly so you can get the process inside your mind. When you want to get more covert, for example, with these questions or listening to these stories and so on, it becomes more intuitive. Here is a quick exercise I’d like you to do. I’d like you to get into groups of two. Ask each other why you came to this course. You’ll probably end up with an initial reply very close to this: to learn conversational hypnosis. I want you to navigate your way through to the true value, the big value at the end. You’ll notice some people have a lot of these and some have a few focused ones. We’ll talk more about that after we’ve had some examples. The way you’ll do it is very simple. What’s important to you about X? If they're running a loop, in other words, they're talking about things that are similar, collect them together. When you have X, Y, Z, what do all those things do for you? It forces them up to another level. Does that make sense? It makes them go more abstract. Go where the emotion is. If they throw out a casual statement, but there is more emotion in it, follow up on that and see how it ties in with the other things they were saying. With Ralph, we got enjoying life and enjoying fun, pleasant things that was a side comment he made. Did you notice that? He didn’t answer that as a direct answer to my question. There was enough emotion that we decided to run with it and that gave us the big value.

Student:

Is there a list of what you consider the big values? Where do you stop?

Igor:

Yes and no and we’ll come to that later. For now, the place you want to look for in terms of stopping this exercise, find something where they really get

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 animated. They're significantly more animated than when you started. That will be enough for now, and then we’ll start refining as we go along. Spend five minutes apiece and we’ll be back in ten. Student:

Wouldn't you say it’s everyone’s goal to enjoy life?

Igor:

No. Honestly. It depends what you mean by enjoying life. For some people, it’s just having peacefulness and tranquility. I you want to reframe that as meaning to enjoy life, sure. What is it that enjoying life means to them? You can’t put your label on someone else’s experience. Someone enjoying life is about doing the right thing by your family. That’s how they enjoy their life. You're right, but I don’t want to get confused with the labels otherwise you put your fish in their dreams. The question is, isn’t the ultimate emotion to enjoy life? Different people will have different labels attached. For someone whose association is around the area of enjoyment might mean things like fun, bouncing up and down, but what they really want out of life is peacefulness and tranquility. You and I might say that person is enjoying life by being peaceful, but that label, that word, enjoying life might mean something different to them than it does to you. Their associations are different to it. It’s not the idea, it’s more the label. Oh, I just have to find out how someone is enjoying their life more. That won’t necessarily be it. Another thing you have to bear in mind is, because these are context dependent, you're looking where the things are inside that context that they want. You might miss the idea of a fast car, an elegant car or a racing fire red car, because you're too busy looking for something that will already be there at some level. Does anyone know why we're looking for the actual words? It’s their hot words. It’s their personal trance words. It has special significance to them and points into this huge well of positive emotions for that person. So their phrase is going to be very important.

Student:

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What I noticed when eliciting these values and asking the questions and listening to the responses, you can sort of hypnotically guide the person and make them go where you want them to go and make them believe that some of the ideas are their own. You can slowly meld them into a new way of thinking. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



You guys are way ahead of the game. What you're describing is what I would call installing values or massage values. Is anybody here an expert in their field, anyone? Do you ever notice that clients will come to you for your expertise, but then tell you how to resolve their problem in a way that actually won’t resolve their problem? Ever notice that? As a lawyer we’d get that all the time. People used to come in and say, I want to have this special purpose vehicle for launching my whatever and we could say great, we’ll do it. Then they get annoyed that we’ve done it, but we did what they asked us to. What they're thinking of is this, will be a tax saving device, for all of these different reasons? What they haven’t realized is, those rules do not apply to them. So now they’ve created a tax burden when they were looking for a tax break. Your job as a lawyer would be to ask them, what are you trying to achieve by that? Does that question sound familiar? Once you know what they're trying to achieve, then you can ask what’s important about that? Saving taxes, oh, so what's important is saving taxes. Did you realize that this, this and this, means that this will cost you more than that? This will actually be more effective for getting your taxes cut? This will increase taxes for these reasons. They’ll say, "Wow, no." Here is a tip for how to create this installation. in other words, to reframe people’s values. Essentially, you tell them an insider secret. If you tell someone an insider secret, something that will probably not be told by others, the trust level for you goes way up. In doing so, the reliability of the new value goes up too. I’ll use the used car example. It’s an easy environment for people to navigate through. If someone buys a used car, and let’s assume that a classic thing that goes wrong with a used car might be the brakes. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but let’s assume that for the purpose of this illustration. Someone says they want to buy a car. What’s important to you? Well, it’s got to be cheap, economical, but it’s got to drive. Great! We have some things that would fit that bill. One thing you should know and my boss doesn't like me to tell you, and you’ll probably never hear this in another used car place, but you seem like a decent person and you really should know this.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The biggest problem with a used car is the brakes can fail. Whatever else you want to have in a car, we’ll find the right thing for you, but please, make sure you have a special warranty for the brakes, because without it, your car is useless. If it’s fast but doesn't stop, it’s not the best car, is it? Do you see how I’ve just installed a new value in him now? If your shop or center happens to have guaranteed brakes with extra national certification and so on, does that not lift your cars way above the crowd of all the others? You just installed a new value. He has accepted it and you happen to be able to provide it to. Do you see how that works? Do you see how this becomes very malleable and useful as well, especially when you leverage values on themselves? For example, if he wants to buy a car just to be able to get out there and enjoy life, and I need to introduce the idea of brake safety as a value, how might I do that? Any ideas? Student:

You want to make sure that you're going to be safe so you can reach the people you want to be in touch with, yes, like to leverage values together. I say, "Listen, how much are you going to enjoy life and how much of a force for good will you be in this world when you get somewhere where you can start interacting with people, and you start running them over because your brakes have failed?" Do you see how I’m creating a vivid mental picture where he’s violating his highest value, because he hasn’t considered a new value that I need him to consider? It’s like someone saying to me, when I am starting as a hypnotist, why are you in this work? So I can have a better lifestyle. So I can do something where I feel I’m making a difference in people’s lives and I can control my own hours. It’s the reasons I went into hypnotherapy, plus it’s a fascinating field. If someone had said to me, tell me, how much value are you offering to people’s lives when no one knows enough about you to come and see you? Huh? Think about it. If your marketing sucks, no one actually knows about you. They're not going to come and sit in your chair so they can have the wonderful effects of hypnotherapy. How do you feel about that? Not particularly good. So, you're telling me that the idea of marketing is important enough to find out how to do it properly? So you can do something positive in other

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 people’s lives, so you can be proud of the work you’ve done at the end of the day? Hell, yes. Do you see how, now, that we started having the higher values, we can use them to leverage in new values that they may not have considered, but have to, because you know in your field that people will typically ignore them but actually, they're more important. Does that make sense? This is how you overcome the typical objections. Has anyone heard the objection, it costs too much? Let’s say someone’s value is their family. I want to protect my kids. They need to have a good future. Let’s say, they say, it costs too much. I understand the safety of brakes and so on. I understand it costs too much, but tell me how high a price are you willing to put on the safety of your children? You can get a normal car with normal standard and they're good. This car has everything. Side impact, so if that drunk driver comes and hits you on the side of the road your children are safe. It has the whole braking system so that even in bad weather conditions, if you have to stop on a dime, it makes your children safe. You are leveraging their values to introduce things that they need to be considering, because if it’s not part of their mental map, they're missing out. You will probably be doing them a disservice by not doing so, because you’ll give them what they want, what they’ve asked for, but not what they actually need, what they’ll come back to you for, is, as a trusted adviser or source of valuable things. Does that make sense? I’m not suggesting the abuse of this, so that you're selling someone something totally ridiculous and unnecessary just because you can. Where is the trust going to go when they come back and start reasoning through all the gadgets that aren’t necessary to keep my children safe? Who needs a flashing light bulb inside the car? How is that going to keep them safe? Especially when other people start talking to them about things, if they suddenly realize you sold them something which they do not need, where is that trust level going to go? Up or down? It’s going to go way down, way below anything you’ve had before. The rule with trust is this, for most people, it’s relatively easy to get trust. Some people had trust issues and we can understand that, but for most

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 people, it’s relatively easy to get trust. Once you lose trust, it’s very hard to get it back. Never violate someone’s trust whether it’s an implied promise, in fact, if you think you’ve made an implied promise by accident, make sure you clarify that you are or are not making that promise so it’s above board. Get a commitment up front from them so they know this is what I’m signing up for and nothing else. Does that make sense? It keeps you ethical, but also keeps your relationship alive. Most interactions you have with people are about the relationship. If they like the one car, they’ll send friends to buy a car. They’ll come back and buy a new car. They’ll get upgrades from you. If you have a repair service as well, they’ll trust your repair service more because you sold them a good car. Do you see how all of that escalates? If you only think about the one car, get this, get this and get this, your ability to influence actually decreases significantly. Has anyone here been in a shop wanting to buy something? You knew exactly what you want, a pair of shoes, a dress, a TV set. You knew exactly what it was, you went in, wanted to buy it and had a sales person talk to you so much about stuff you did not care about, you felt so uncomfortable you went next door to buy there instead? Anyone ever done that? It’s a common thing, because they had their agenda too strongly inside their mind. This allows you to put their agenda in. What do they need? What do they think they need versus what they actually need? You can put the two together and build a proper persuasive piece of communication. Your frames flow from this. Here’s the good news. In virtually every field you go into, these values will be patent. In other words, the individual expressions may be slightly different words, but they're still worth finding them. The things people are looking for will be four or five types of things. And there are four of five types of people in the world that will come back repeatedly and ask the same questions, have the same objections, same needs or wants, think they want one thing, but need another. Does that make sense? In virtually every field there will be certain kinds of personalities. It won’t be more than four or five and they’ll all be in the same group and share similar

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 things. As soon as you can identify what kind of person it is, your sales process becomes that much quicker, because you already understand what kind of person they are and so on. You can guide them through the questioning process more easily to confirm. And you already know how to reframe and how to pre-frame things so they don’t become a problem. In other words, the problem evaporates before they’ve even thought about it. It requires experience. If it’s the first time you're in that context, you're just going to have to make your mistakes and learn as you go along. The longer you're in the field, the easier it is to figure out what these things are. Student:

From my experience, if a person has an emotional attachment to whatever, they easily depart with the money, because it’s very important.

Igor:

Exactly.

Student: ♦ If you increase the value, will it be easier for them to pay for it, they already have the value? Igor:

They already have the value, but they haven’t attached to the product yet. If you attach the value to the product, does it make it easier for them to buy it? Is that what you're asking?

Student:

Right. The simple answer is that emotion sells; nothing else. If they feel right about that product, they will buy it pretty much no matter what. They’ll make sometimes stupid decisions and that is not something you want to encourage.

Igor:

The reason for having logic and all of these other things around it, is to give their minds enough reasons to feel good about that sale, in other words, avoiding buyer’s remorse afterward. First, how many people here have bought something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you’ve never used it. You put it on the back shelf, look at it and go, what the hell was that all about? What was I thinking? That is called buyer’s remorse. You bought it, because at the time, it felt right. Then you got home and that feeling evaporated, because there was no logic or reasons in your mind anymore so the feeling disappeared.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You also all have something in your house that honestly, has no actual practical value in your life whatsoever and you are dead proud of it. You love this thing to pieces. It could be your favorite collection of match stick men, the flea circus you bought for $9.99 at the local dollar store, or that map of Atlantis someone just made up, but looks nice. These things you do not need. They don’t add a value to your life, but when you look at them, you feel good. I’m glad I have this. If anyone took that map of Atlantis down off your wall, you’d say. " No. You put that thing back there. It’s valuable. One day I’ll go to Atlantis and I’ll find that gold." The point is the emotion sells. Emotions people need to drive the behavior and the sale. You must also have enough logic in there, so afterward, when they look at it, they can justify the emotions. It’s the framework they keep in their mind that allows the emotions to arise. Let me give you an example of how frameworks work with emotion. What is anger? What causes anger? Anger is caused when a boundary you have has been violated. It is designed as an emotion to push people off that boundary to reestablish it. What if you have in your mind the idea that no one is allowed to chew gum? It’s a bad thing and people who chew gum have insulted you personally. Is that going to make you a very happy, tranquil person, especially in the USA? No. Why? Because you're going to have your boundary violated constantly.

It’s an idea. Think about it. The boundary was set by a framework, an idea. People that chew gum are chewing out of respect, because they're not going to take their gum out and just spit it at you. That’s kind of nice. That is an idea, isn’t it? It’s a reframe. Why? Because now when you see someone chewing gum, is your boundary being violated? No. Was your boundary ever violated? The violation incurred inside your mind as a result from an idea interacting with your environment. Does that make sense? This is how the intellectual and symbolic reality can affect your emotional reality. When we talk about frames, we're talking about a bunch of sophisticated things at the same time. The values have huge emotions attached to them.

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The logic that you have in your sales presentation, or whatever other persuasive influence you present people, the reframes and pre-frames, etc. give them enough logical anchor points so when they reflect back on their decision, they realize it was a good one. They continue to feel and maintain the good feelings just like your favorite pair of shoes versus that fashion mistake.

Some people wear real fashion mistakes and love it. They don’t care. I know people hate them, but I love these shoes or whatever. It’s because they feel good about it and they have enough reasons to carry on feeling good about it despite what the world is saying.

Versus someone who has the very same pair of shoes and says they don’t like them because of what the world is saying. Secretly, they still like them. When they bought them in the shop it was great, but the environment changed their mind and now they regret it. Do you see how important values are, because values already pre-exist. These emotions are already there, they're looking for this. You may have to add values into the hierarchy to help them make better decisions, or it’s enough to just attach this to your product or service and then it’s worthwhile to them. Make sure you give them lots of reasons, interesting reframes or pre-frames so when they think back on the decision to purchase, to take part in it or adopt your idea, they have plenty of reasons for feeling good. Does that make sense? The question is can you reverse it? Can you go from emotions toward values? They're the same thing. With Ralph, we had to find the emotion to know what the value was. This is just an intellectual construct around a feeling. This frame, and the pre-frame, allows Ralph to feel good. It’s not like it’s one or the other. If I find him feeling good and ask what’s that? Oh, I’m enjoying life. If I say, do you want to enjoy life and he starts feeling good, it’s a chicken and the egg. It’s the same thing.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Does that make sense? Is this proving useful to you?

DVD 15: The 16 Hot Button “Super Drivers” that Force People to Act and How to Push Them Igor:

Go ahead.

Student:

This subject is totally practical and at the same time it feels, maybe from a left-brain perspective, it’s a lot to get your arms around.

Igor:

Yes and this is where experience is useful. Let me put it this way. Did you all enjoy the exercise you just did with people going through the hierarchies?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

You saw the emotions rising, did you not?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

You can see how you can just, very simply, attach the frame of reference they’ve given you, whether its enjoy life or something else. You can play 'The Glad Game' or the Pollyanna game as cement that links the enjoyment of life to whatever problems you have. That’s really what 'The Glad Game' does, isn’t it.

Student:

That’s what I do for a living as a copywriter.

Igor:

Right, exactly.

Student:

Even then I feel like I’m still kind of swimming in a great deal of, you know…

Igor:

Thank you for that. That’s a great segue. How would you like to have a series of frames that are universal? Although, not everyone will have all these frames, in other words, these as values.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Everyone will have at least one or two of these things as very high in their value tree? In other words, they will be constant. They may not sound the same to people, but it will be the same thing with maybe just a different label. Would you like that? Student:

I would love that. What prompted me to come up here is, you said earlier, in any field people seek the same needs, wants and objections. Then along those lines, there will be, maybe four to five different personality types seeking those needs, wants and objections.

Igor:

I wouldn’t say necessarily personality types, it’s more certain types of needs. If you categorize people according to needs. There are people who need this budget versus people who need luxury versus people who need that. There will be about four or five people who are interested in your field and they’ll have a preference for this, that or the other and there really won’t be much outside of that.

Student:

So ultimately, what I was going to ask is this. ♦ Is there some kind of, even maybe a diagram or something, that kind of collapses all this into some nice little pocket reference?

Igor:

Yes, would you like to have that?

Student:

Absolutely.

Igor:

If you make your way down back to your chair, I will happily give it to you. Would you be interested in that?


What I’m about to go through now is nothing on my research. This is actually from Dr. Steven Rice. He’s a professor of psychology and he went round interviewing some 6,000 people to try and figure out is there any kind of common theme or thread in what people want and need. It turns out, at least according to his research, there is. I’m going to offer it to you in with a caveat, which is these are broad-brush categories. The individual manifestation of each category will be different. In other words, two people can be driven by the same drive, the same need,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 desire, but they can look fundamentally different on the outside. So it’s about what’s going on in the inside rather than the outside. Does that make sense? That’s just a question at what level do you switch them. For example, enjoying life could come down in a very brutal way. For example, well, I like to hunt people with my shotgun as the way to enjoy life. That’s fundamentally different behavior to what Ralph was talking about, isn’t it? I hope. That’s the caveat. The caveat is, whilst the drive will be the same, because the frames that fall underneath it are different, the behavior may come out differently. The conclusions will be different. Does that make sense to you? I can give you that frame, I can give you the emotion, I can give you the drive and then you can massage the frames underneath it, or the values that flow from that in a way that will allow you to alter behavior and so on. Does that make sense to you? Here are the 16 drives according to Steven Rice. We’ll talk about each one of them in a little bit. The first three I like to call them a trio. They are obvious and are to do with our survival mechanisms. You’ll know these already, but the manifestations will look different. ♦ The first one is the desire to eat. ♦ The second one is romance. ♦ The third one is tranquility. Romance is a euphemism for sex, right? He’s an academic and I guess he can’t say the word sex, because it’s a bit too scary. How do these things come out, for example, the desire or the need for food? Do you think that only the people who are overweight have this as a drive in their life? No. It can come out, for example, in the health food fad. People who only eat good food, healthy food or people who only go to expensive restaurants for the cuisine, the enjoyment of the cuisine or it could be just volume. So the expression of the desire could be very different amongst different people. Does that make sense?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The same thing, as Rice would call it, romance. The sex drive can come out in many different ways. It may be the sleazy guy at the bar that just wants to sleep with anyone. It may be the desire to get contact or intimate with a specific partner or person. It may be the stalker that is so in love with a celebrity that they hang around their house waiting for the one opportunity. Do you see how these vastly different behaviors are driven by the same basic need? If that need is met, the behavior changes somehow. Make sense? If you change the unconscious logic, the frames that they’re using to express the need it will also change the behavior, right? Tranquility again, that’s the need to be safe, to be at peace, to be left alone, tranquility and so on. I’m going to take a stab at saying that a large portion of this is driven by the need for tranquility, for peace, right? Thank you for nodding like Ralph, because that confirmed it for me. How do I know this? Well, there are a couple of clues. One was the idea of discord that he just threw out there. Remember? The other one is to do with the way he talked about when other people have a pleasant life it makes my life more pleasant and so on. All these things indicate tranquility and peace of mind as being the core driver, but I still have to frame that in the words of enjoying life. I’m not going to talk to Ralph about enjoying life by jumping out of an airplane going, wow, what a rush. It’s not as interesting to him. Whereas, if I talk to Ralph about enjoying life in terms of just, you know, the good life, where you can just kick back, your friends and neighbors around you and it’s just easy. Do you know what I mean? That’s the kind of life people want, isn’t it? That’s going to be more motivating to him, because tranquility or the desire for tranquility, for inner peace, is part of what this value of enjoying life is made up of. Does that make sense? Everyone clear so far, useful? Shall I continue? Students: Yes, please. Igor:

The next three, again they’re in no particular order here - let me just emphasize - not everyone is driven by all of these at once. Typically, people will have two or three that really drive them in different patterns in different situations. But it’s useful to know them so you can start looking out for them as part of your investigation. Make sense? ♦ Fourth is acceptance.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 ♦ Fifth is curiosity. ♦ Sixth is family. The desire for acceptance is really, basically, for approval. We want other people’s approval. We want them to agree, to say, well done and so on, praise, that kind of stuff. Again, it doesn’t come out as obviously sometimes, as you might think. For example, your hard-nosed scientist that publishes a controversial paper may only be interested in approval from a certain select group. He’s willing to take the flak of this approval from, say, the masses for that specific kind of approval. Make sense? Or, it might be the opposite. He might be willing to alienate his colleagues for mass approval, because the general population is more important to him than his specific peers. Do you see how the behavior, again, can look differently, but it’s driven by the same basic behavior? Make sense? Curiosity – that’s the need to learn. Some people are very curious. Some people are less curious. Dr. Rice would suggest, for example, that there’s no point in trying to motivate kids that are not curious to learn stuff in school. I think that’s taking it far too far. I think his conclusion is poor. Curiosity may be enough to satisfy someone on its own. Do you want to know (x) or do you want to know something that other people don’t know? A lot of people will go, yes, I do. Some people will go, sure. You may have to frame it differently. In other words, you may create curiosity by framing it by, would you like to find out how to be more tranquil and peaceful, even if things start blowing up all around you? Do you see how you can still create curiosity? It’s still a driver, even though it’s not a driver on its own. Do you see the distinction? One is curiosity on its own. That’s enough. I am excited by just the ability to learn something new. That in itself is satisfying. The other one is curious to learn for a different purpose. He needs another purpose in order to motivate the curiosity to want to learn. See how that works? Then, we have the need for family. The desire to raise children, the whole family life, protecting the family and so on. This is something which is a huge drive for a lot of people. I mean, you’ve heard people who changed their life around for their kids. You know alcoholics who stop drinking

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 because of their kids. People who pull themselves out of the gutter to give their kids a better life. You see this, a lot in third-world countries, where parents will work themselves to the bone, to send their kids to a good school so their kids can have a better life than they did. Would you say that these people are driven by the desire for family and nurturing their family? This kind of comes back to the question you had earlier on. They are, in some respects, enjoying their life because they’re achieving their drive, but at the same time they might be working really tough jobs and suffering through that process. But, they can still be happy with that because they’re achieving their drive for nurturing the family, building the family and so on. So, in some respects, you can say they’re enjoying their life, although it won’t necessarily look like it from the outside. Does that make sense? ♦ Seventh is honor. ♦ Eighth is idealism. ♦ Ninth is independence. Honor is about, I guess, being true to the ideals of your traditions, your values or your group. So honor is always in reference to a certain group. It could be a family. It could be your clan. It could be your religion. It could be your field of work. Whatever group you identify with, there will be an honor with that. For example, you know that a community of magicians exists, you know, the tricks, sleight of hand and so on. It’s a very honor-bound society, in that, if magicians steal someone else’s tricks, there are very few law suits. Magicians don’t sue each other, but they’ll have lost their respect of their peers and that magician gets marginalized in the community. There’s a price to pay, of course. So it’s a very honor-bound community. People don’t steal material or give away material that someone else made up. If they do, they’ll have to adapt it and say the original is from so and so. Here’s my adaptation of so and so. If you want the original trick, please go to so and so for that. They have to acknowledge that way. It’s part of the honor code within the magical community.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Does that make sense? It’s worked great. It’s worked great for the last, I don’t know, 200-300 years that they’ve become an official community as such. So honor is a very strong driver for people. You just have to figure out what community are they being honorable towards. What are the values that they are referring to that tells them whether honor is being satisfied or not. Make sense? For example, there are some cults that within the cult, of course, there’s a strong honor tradition. You protect your own and so on, but then outside this you can lie to them, cheat them, steal from them, you can even use violence if it forwards the needs of their community. You may think, oh, this person is honorable. Well, honor is still a driver for that person, but it’s in reference to a different community. Hence, again, it can look like they are engaging in dishonorable behavior, but it’s because their honor code is not to your community. It’s to someone else’s. Does that make sense? Is it useful? Students: Yes. Igor:

All right. Idealism – Idealism is interesting. It’s basically the need for social justice. It’s kind of like the honor drive, it’s just you’re adopting society as a community to which honor must be satisfied. If you see someone else acting dishonorably, in other words, presenting an injustice to another member of the society, then that person’s drive gets kicked in to fix that. So it’s similar to honor, but it’s more at a social level. Again, it depends on the individual. Some people, it will be their nation is the reference point. For some people, humanity is their reference point. For some people, actually, it might be the animal kingdom or the planet, the plant kingdom to which an injustice has to be redressed. You can easily think about people in these groups, can you not? Animal activists, are they interested in social injustice towards people or animals? I don’t mean to say this as a broad-brushed term. I’m not saying that all animal activists will harm other people, but some of them are willing to harm human codes of justice in order to protect the animals themselves. Do you see how that works? Now, I don’t mean to say, by the way, that’s all activists. Some activists are fantastic people who do great jobs and so on. It’s more to illustrate how one driver can manifest itself in many different ways. Some ways it may look logically inconsistent with what the driver is, but actually when you follow the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 logic through, it’s actually very consistent. It’s just a question again of the frame -- what is their reference point. Make sense? ♦ Tenth is order. ♦ Eleventh is physical activity. Their desire for independence is particularly strong in the Western world. You go into the Eastern world, Asia, India and so on, individualism is almost an offense. It depends on how intense the community is you’re in. Like a Western audience says, be your own man. Do your own thing. It’s a very Western value that we’ve encompassed or accepted, but to a lot of more Eastern audiences the idea of individualism is affront to the social unit, to your coworkers. A great story was of a management consultant brought over to Japan to help an ailing sales team. They do the analysis and at the end of it they present the findings. They say look, we’ve found what’s going on here. You have a sales team of about 30 people strong. Now the interesting thing is one of these people is selling more than the other 29 put together. So it’s clear what we need to do here, isn’t it gentlemen? All the Japanese were nodding their heads, yes, yes, yes, yes. We must fire the over performer. To us it seems funny because we’re individually oriented. We’re success or results oriented, but that person was violating the social norm, shall we say. He’s making the other members of his team lose face. Do you see how it’s a different mindset? It’s not more valuable or less valuable. It’s just what is valued in that particular culture by those particular individuals. Does that make sense? So the need for independence can again, manifest in many ways. Some people will sit out in the woods because they want to be totally selfsufficient. For some people it’s enough to get that car so they can have that freedom to do things. See how freedom is more about independence than about freedom? Order – Again, this is about things being predictable and organized, basically, a trial set against the idea of chaos. So the need for order is really the need for predictability, for knowing what’s going to happen next, for knowing where things are and so on.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 An extreme version of this is, of course, the people who have everything all straight down their desk. You move their little pencil and they look at it and start sweating and they have to move it back. Then you move it over again and they're sweating again and move it back. It’s an extreme version of what I’m talking about, but there are all kinds of things. It might be that people who are driven by a high need for order, are great in companies, in the logistics division or the admin department. It’s what keeps things together, in that sense. So it’s a tremendous and useful need to have and a useful drive. Can you all see, by the way, how in terms of social units or organizational units, having a mix of different drives can be very useful? It allows people to specialize in things that they are instinctively good at because their minds are needed to be satisfied. Physical activity is really the need for exercise, for physical movement. Again, it can manifest in many different ways. It could be because someone likes running. It might be a particular sport. It may be that anything will do, you know, be it a mountain climb, extreme sports person or something like that. It may come out in more gentle things like Tai Chi, Chi Gong or the desire to paint, but they need to physically express themselves in some way. Then we have a next set of things that are quite interesting. ♦ Twelfth is power, ♦ Thirteenth is saving. ♦ Fourteenth is social contact. ♦ Fifteenth is status. ♦ Sixteenth is vengeance. Student:

Khan!

Igor:

Yes, Star Trek. So, power. What is the drive for power? A lot of people have issues with the idea of power, but power can be a very useful thing. In some

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 instances, power is expressed as power over others. I can express my will by making people do things. That’s the thing that a lot of people take offense to, but in the right context, that’s very useful. Churchill saved a nation, as a result, of his need to express power. In a different time, not very useful. At that particular time, it’s a great drive to have had. Make sense? Power can also express itself with a self-reflective frame. In other words, it might not be power over others, but your power over yourself. That’s the people again, the Yoda’s of the world who sit in the mountaintops and meditate and want to have their will imposed upon themselves so they have the discipline. They have the mental capacity sharp and clear and all these sort of things. So again, the drive for power does not necessarily have to be power over someone else, it can be over self. So, power is about expressing your will over something or someone, whether it’s self or other. Riders, for example, may well be expressing a desire for power, but then again it may also be expressing a desire for acceptance by getting in harmony with a horse and so on. It may be a desire for tranquility. So do you see how the same behavior can be driven by different needs? Does it make sense? Students: Yes. Igor:

So, we’re not looking at the level of behavior. We looking at the level that drives those behaviors. The good news is, if you fit these things in, you can fit any one of these drivers into any kind of behavior. It’s just finding the right road map that links the drive to the behavior. Saving is interesting. This is the need to collect, to not lose things and so on. To illustrate this, by the way, this is a nice little bit of research on saving, how you express the desire to save will have a significant impact on someone. For example, if I say to you, you can earn $100 by doing something, I don’t know, buying a product; it’s motivation for some, not so much for others. If I say to you, you can save $100 by purchasing the product; believe it or not, more of you will be influenced by it. More of you will be willing to go off and buy that.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I can reframe that one more way, which, if I do it this way will take even more of you along with it. In other words, it’s much more persuasive than the first two. Would you like to know what that is? Students: Yes. Igor:

You’re losing $100 unless you do (x). By far that formulation is the most persuasive for people. People hate to lose things. Saving things is an example of not losing things. You’ll see a lot of advertising out there saying, save now and all that sort of stuff. The idea being expressed is great, but the mechanics of expressing it is a little bit on the weaker side. It will still work, but instead of saying save $100 and do this - I mean, how many people have clicked an advert, maybe some guru that says you could be losing $100 if you’re doing Y. You go really? Oh, my God, I’ll have to check it out.

Student:

It’s just a punishment.

Igor:

It’s kind of like a punishment thing, right? It’s just that people respond to it more fully. Go ahead.

Student:

Like the things you get in the mail, where you may have already won?

Igor:

He’s saying it’s like the envelopes you get in the mail that say, you may already have won. The idea is the same, but it’s going in a different direction. You may already have won, is about what you’re gaining. Open this to insure you don’t lose out or miss out. It’s going in a different direction again. Do you see the difference? It’s the same idea being expressed, it’s just the formulation of it will be more persuasive or not. So you get the idea of the desire to save and collect things? Then social contact, again, I’d say Ralph’s enjoying life is a mixture of tranquility and social contact. Can you see how we came to that conclusion just from how he was talking about things? This is the need to talk to other people, to interact with other people, be with other people and so on. For some people, by the way, this is the last thing they need. For them tranquility and peacefulness is when they’re away from other people and their demands and so on. So social contact is not a universal driver, it’s just a very common driver for a lot of people.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The same is true of all these so-called universal drivers. I don’t think there will be anyone driven by all of them at the same time. There will be two or three of these things that are really dominant in their personality. When you find them, you’ll find them being expressed in their values in different ways, in a different kind of context. Make sense? Status is the need to have importance, to have social value and so on. Again, a political office is usually driven by a couple of combinations. Status is clearly one of them, power is the other one. Depending on the individual there might be something else, but those two are, I think, the big drivers in a lot political offices. Finally, we have the idea of vengeance. Now, vengeance actually is not as negative as people initially think. Vengeance is really a desire to win, to strike back. So what, for example, of the child in school that’s told, you’re no good. You’ll never make it and they’ll think, I’ll show you. Or, someone who’s been told you’re just a bad person. You just harm people and they say, I’ll show you. I can be a force for good in the world. So vengeance is not necessarily a destructive or harmful drive. It can just be expressed as being harmful in some instances, but it can be a strong and positive motivator as well. Go ahead. Student: ♦ Would it not be that justice is vengeance? Igor:

So the question is - would it not be that justice is vengeance. Again, it depends on the individual. Do you see how this same behavior can be motivated by different things? For some people justice is vengeance. So the vengeance is - you’re going to prison, buddy. You’re going to suffer for what you did. For other people justice is about social harmony. So you’re going to prison to protect the rest of society, because it’s the right thing to do. So, yes, justice is vengeance, but it depends on your point of view. By the way, this is important, because this is one of the fundamental debates that has been raging in the legal community for the least, I don’t know, 100 years or so. It’s a fundamental debate. Let’s face it. Those people who are vengeance driven say, no, it’s about social control. It’s about payback and people have to feel like justice has been done. And, of course, the people driven by social justice say, no, it’s

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 about building a better society. It’s about rehabilitating the prisoners. It’s about being fair and making this world a better place. What they’re telling you is not an argument based on logic. Actually, they’re expressing a personal drive in a very eloquent way. Do you see how that works? Student:

So, all of these things are subject to framing, right?

Igor:

All these things are absolutely subject to framing. This is just the pure drive. The frame is like the colored lens through which you shine the light and that will alter the behavior or the result of it. So we have the drives. We then have the frames that people perceive those drives through and that leaves us with some kind of a value, which then engages them in behaviors and certain fall patterns and certain emotions resulting from those high-level conditions. Does that make sense to you guys?

Students: That’s perfect. Igor:

Thank you. Do you want to come up?

Student: ♦ Isn’t this a modern version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Igor:

He’s asking if this is a higher version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Yes and no. The idea would be the same, but the content is fundamentally different to Maslow’s hierarchy. If you actually read Maslow himself, he himself said, this has never been tested. This is just an idea folks and I’m putting it out there. For some weird and bizarre reason the whole psychological community accepted it and adopted it wholesale as the truth. To my knowledge it has never been tested. This has actually been tested, which is why I prefer presenting this than Maslow. I’m not, by the way, negating Maslow in truth value. It’s just that it’s untested and so I can’t put anything behind it, whereas these things are tested and you can very easily, of course, find reference experiences to back these up as well. Everyone clear on that. Do you guys want to come up? You can come up after him.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Student: ♦ Things like empathy, compassion, love, where do they come? Igor:

First, you can have a whole bunch of emotions without having them to be driven by something. Secondly, if they are driven by something it depends what it is. For example, some people might have empathy, but it’s driven by the idea of vengeance. You might say, for example, you don’t understand other people. Watch me. Look. I really get these people. I really feel for them and so on. Empathy might be a form of social justice. I really feel for these people and I want the world to be a better place and so on. So these emotions still fit in. They just go hand in hand with these other things. They are expressions. Let’s put it this way. They are conclusions that people draw as a result of the interplay between a drive and a framework. Just like anger. Anger is an interplay between a drive, which is the desire to maintain a boundary and a framework. People chewing gum are violating my self-respect. So when they chew gum it leaks out in the form of an emotion – anger. Empathy would be the same thing. Given the right mix of frameworks and drives, it manifests in the form of empathy. Of course, assuming there’s no biochemical imbalance and so on which has its own issues as well. Remember, all these things are just little pieces of a puzzle and other pieces will fit into it as well. Physical reality can interfere with all this stuff. If there is a biochemical problem, let’s say, someone got a rod just whacked through their brain, and it destroys certain areas of their brain, all this stuff changes because the physical reality won’t let them process things the same way anymore. Does that make sense? By the way, there’s lots of research like this. There’s a gentleman back in the 19th century who was a perfect case of this. He was working the railways. Long story short, he got a big metal pole rammed through his brain as an industrial accident. Miraculously he survived. He went to the hospital. They managed to pull it out, patched him up. Physically fine, but it destroyed a certain area of his brain. From that day on he was a miserable, sour, nasty person. Remember, just before that he was a happy-go-lucky, friendly, everyone

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 loved him. He, unfortunately, ended his day’s miserable, alone and without any friends. That was the first time that people started looking at the brain in terms of areas of the brain being responsible for certain things. He could not control his moods any longer. They were always on a negative spin. So his life ended up having an unpleasant ending and that had a physical cause to it. Do you see where we’re going with this? What we’re talking about here is, all things being equal, this is one way to look at people. But you can look at them physically as well, or emotionally as well, or intellectually in terms of the frames that they operate through. Does that make sense? The question is, if there’s a conflict of values, is it a conflict of actual values or drives. Really, at this point we’re talking about semantics. What it really comes down to is, we have some kind of psychological energy, which needs to be expressed in some way. If you have a conflict between the two, one of them will be the dominant one and will alter the other one until there’s harmony again. The unconscious mind is very good at creating harmony with two concepts that should not match. Hence, the desire for vengeance could be expressed in the form of love and empathy. Make sense? They’ll just harmonize. It’s like, if you imagine two rivers clashing together. They’ll end up flowing down one direction. The more dominant river will more likely take the direction, or most of it, but the other one will probably be shifted across it a little bit as well. So these things have interplay and it’s very complex. I can give you the basic map to look out for and, more importantly, when you’re looking for these values in people’s lives, the map I just gave you, the Rice Model, the reason I like it is because it allows you then, to have a good instinct about where you stop with this. I think it’s answering your question from earlier on. What are you looking for? When they just give me this verbal stuff around interacting better, doing well and so on, what kinds of things are already being expressed just by that? That could be a driver. So this already, on its own, tells me it’s possibly something around social contact, acceptance or social justice. I don’t know for a fact yet, but these are all things that are coming to mind. As we go down towards this area

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 more, the pleasantness and so on, well now we’ve got the idea of tranquility coming in as well. It clarifies this a little bit more. So I’m less inclined to think it’s about social justice and more around tranquility and social contact being combined and expressed in this way. Do you see how that works? Students: Yes. Igor:

I’m sorry, Cassidy had a question first and then we’ll come on to you. Are there other drives like the drive to build? Let’s put it this way. We can cut the pie up in many different ways. Make sense? According to the Rice Model, the drive to build is a result of other drives. For example, to save things or for social justice or for getting respect or something like that.

Student: ♦ Is it true? Igor:

Well, none of this is necessarily true. I hope you realize this. Nothing that we’ve been talking about here is actually true. It’s only true enough to be useful. So what I’m presenting to you right now are just ways of looking at the world that can make you more influential. Please do not make the mistake of thinking this is an absolute fact and this is how people are and how the world works. Even when I talk about the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, please realize, that is also a lie. It’s a useful one. It is a useful way of looking at people, but it is not the only way of looking at people. If the only thing you do is look at people as a conscious and unconscious being, you’ll miss a whole bunch of other things. For example, the vast advances we’re making in neuroscience tells about different areas of the brain and what they do, how they work and so on. Does that make sense to you guys? So please don’t do not have the idea that anything I say right now is true. It’s only true enough to be useful in terms of how you influence and engage other people and so on. Make sense? So we had a couple more questions up here before we go do lunch. Let’s start over here then, and we’ll come back here. Go ahead. Do you want to come up here? You guys may as well just line up behind him. That way it

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 will be easier to get the microphone afterward. There you go, start forming a cue. Well, you can see that people are really interested. Come on up. Student:

I don’t think I really have a very well thought out question, but this really brought something to my mind. Except for iron things in your head, there are clearly people in the world that are really motivated, that I’m kind of interested in. I’m not deeply interested, but certain things really intrigue me like hoarders, people that collect and save things.

Igor:

The desire of saving, exactly.

Student:

They have this TV show and they have these crazy people who have houses full of nonsense. They have people trying to explain to them rationally that this is a bad idea.

Igor:

It doesn’t work.

Student:

I yell at my TV.

Igor:

Because that’s rational, isn’t it?

Student:

Well, no, but you know what I’m saying.

Igor:

I’m teasing you.

Student:

It’s like, my God, the lady has an emotional thing with this.

Igor:

Exactly.

Student:

But I’m just curious with this. If you explain to someone, okay, look, there are these needs. ♦ Can we shift some of your needs to other needs?

Igor:

Here’s one way to look at it. I’m not sure, but I can tell you what Professor Rice would say. He’d say that you cannot shift someone’s needs. They are, in his opinion, biological. I would disagree, but that’s an opinion. I don’t think that can be proven, yet, anyway.

Student:

I would actually agree with you.

Igor:

Right?

Student:

Yeah.

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The point is you don’t necessarily have to shift the need or the drive, all you have to do is shift how the drive is understood. How it’s perceived, so that you change its behavior afterward. For example, the chewing gum version, you don’t change the need to maintain a boundary for personal integrity, all you shift is the perception of when a boundary is being attacked and when it’s not.

Student:

Okay.

Igor:

So chewing gum is not an attack on your boundary. It's actually, people respecting your boundary. That’s a good thing. So the same behavior, instead of triggering anger in one sense, now triggers compassion or thankfulness that people are being respectful.

Student:

So you’re shifting the meaning of the action.

Igor:

Exactly, which goes right back where we started off this morning, which is the idea of reframing.

Student:

Exactly.

Igor:

The point of reframing is that you channel the ultimate frame, the big one, the Kahuna that’s just moving all this energy through and saying, okay, let’s just change the filter on this one. Let’s change the color of the lens so instead of everything looking black it now all looks nice and pink.

Student:

Okay. Just quickly, not that it’s an area that I’m particularly interested in dealing with specifically, but if I was to deal with hoarder, or you were to deal with a hoarder, what would you think would be a best or a better way of shifting someone’s perception of that.

Igor:

We’ll come on to that when we talk about the whole objection-destroy later. The quick version of that is, what we did here a moment ago, which is find out the value behind hoarding, which is, basically, then telling you, here are the frames that I’m using in relation to my need to save that are being expressed by hoarding activity.

Student:

And then reframing.

Igor:

And then you present another frame where the behavior changes but the desire is being expressed the same way. For example, to some extent I am a hoarder, but I don’t have physical objects. I hoard nonphysical objects, because I travel a lot and there’s no where to put them. Now if someone

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 gives me a little gimmick like a duck-shaped thing going quack, I’m going like, what the hell do I do with this? Thank you very much. I hoard information, for example. I hoard experiences. So I have just shifted my mindset in that sense, so the driver is expressed in a very different way. That would be the quick version of it. Student:

I understand. Thank you.

Igor:

Do you want to come up? We’re not taking who was up here before. We will have a lunch break, we’ll finish this off and then we’ll have a clean start for the afternoon.

Student: ♦ Is this list presented to us in a kind of hierarchy or a level of universality? Igor:

Absolutely not.

Student:

If it’s a driver like vengeance, how do you reframe it?

Igor:

That’s, basically, what he was talking about as well.

Student:

I’m just trying to make sure I understand for my own clarity and hopefully for others. If we understand the underlying driver – sex, family, hoarding, savings, all of those things – that will better help us to reframe the value to change the behavior.

Igor:

Yes, exactly right. You will understand, to use the Ralph example, enjoying life is more about tranquility and social contact than it is about say physical activity, which might be like a thrill and the rush of something and power; the expression of will. For some people the idea of them enjoying life is, I’ve got to jump out of an airplane. Why? It’s physical. It’s active. It’s an expression of will. I have to master my emotions. I have to master my fear to do it and so the rush becomes such a thrill. Those are fundamentally different ways of being a force for good in the world or enjoying life and so on. So this will help me shape my frameworks to make them more acceptable when I’m going through the whole influencing process. Okay?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 All right, let me run you quickly through that list again. Rest assured we will make you a complete set of notes. I’ll give you my teaching notes before the seminar is over. They will be basic notes, but it’s really what I’ve been working from and I’ll have all the 16 drivers for you on there as well. I’ll give it to you again now so you’ll have it. We have: 1. Eating, which is the need for food in some way. 2. Romance, the desire for sex. 3. Tranquility, the desire for peace and tranquility; the need to be safe, essentially. 4. Acceptance, which is a need for approval. 5. Curiosity, which is the need to learn or discover something new. 6. Family, which is the need to raise children. 7. Honor, which is the need to be loyal to a certain tradition, value, group and so on. 8. Idealism, which about social justice. 9. Independence, which is the need to express your individuality and being self-reliant, in some respects. 10. Order, which is the need to be organized, stable, to have life be predictable in some ways. 11. Physical activity, that’s the need to exercise or move your body; use your body in some way. 12. Power, which is the need to be able to influence something with your will, to express your will, whether it’s on yourself, someone else or some objects. 13. Saving, which is the need to collect. 14. Social Contact, which is the need for friends and relationships. 15. Status, which is the need for social standing, social hierarchy and being relatively high on the social hierarchy. 16. Vengeance, which is the desire to strike back or win in a particular context. So we’re all good with the idea of values and the drivers that are behind them and the frames. How those things kind of work together as the light that shines through a frame or spectacle glasses and at the end of it you get a very different picture, depending what’s on that frame and how strong your light is or what your light source is. Make sense? That’s kind of how I conceptualize the whole thing. This is a very simple model of getting through the values. If you think about those drivers in the back of your mind as you talk to people it becomes easier to spot the values and which things they’re saying that are worth following.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Always follow the emotion, because that is where the real juices are. That’s how you know it’s a real driver rather than just an intellectual construct or something that they say because it will be socially acceptable rather than what they truly want or need. Everyone good with that? Students: Yes. Igor:

We’ve run a little bit over today, but I thought it was worthwhile spending an extra half hour doing this. I hope you’ll agree. Thank you.

DVD 16: How to Get Even More Leverage so People Feel Compelled to Follow Your Suggestions Igor:

All right folks, I think it’s time we started getting a little more practical. Before the break we had a little play with the idea of values. How they’re expressions of frames and how values and frames relate. Here’s the thing, in some respects, we are all playing on a football field covered with mist. It’s very difficult to see what’s going on around us. But, if, we can create mental categories where all the different yard lines are and so on, we can get a sense of where we’re at, whilst we’re navigating through conversation. Does that make sense? It doesn’t mean we’re absolutely right and you have to be willing to be wrong. In other words, treat these things as experiments, as tests and if your influence rises, that’s great, you’re in good shape. If you don’t seem to be influencing them consider that you’ve either missed something or misread something. That way you become more influential with it. What I want to do right now is to focus on the ideas we started playing with this morning and turn the ideas into practical exercises, something you can actually use. To do this in a significant and meaningful way, I’d like to take us out of the normal context you find yourselves in and put us into a context which requires influence, which all of us will be familiar with in one aspect or another. It doesn’t matter whether or not you become the greatest operator in this context, just to give us a context to work with to get used to these things.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 It should be a simple context. One we all understand. One, where we can work both sides of the influence equation, of being influenced and influencing, so we have instinct about it. Once we can navigate through these kinds of ideas and that context, we start applying it to more practical context in terms of what you want to have influence in. Does that make sense? The first context I want to play with is the idea of a car showroom. People coming in to buy a car. You’re going to sell someone a car, essentially. I’m not interested in the sales process. In other words, whether or not you sell a car at the end of this and the person drives it – wow whatever car you drive I want one too. That is unimportant for what we’re doing. I hope there’s nobody here that actually sells cars for a living. You actually sell cars for a living? Well, you might enjoy this in that case. The deal though is to get a little bit away from what you do for a living so you can experiment with the flow of ideas a bit more. Make sense? What I’d like you to do is get into pairs. One of you is going to be the showroom salesperson and the other person is coming in to buy a car. We’re going to take this in several steps, so please go both ways and we’ll come back, talk a little about it, add the next step and so on. The first step, as in any influential interaction, is you have to establish the ground rules. Basically, do you want to have rapport or not? I would recommend that you go for the rapport route, but if you want to go for the novel version to make them hate you and buy the car anyway. It works great with vengeance people maybe, I don’t know. The idea here is you’re really starting to use all the behaviors. Remember, the hypnotic rapport, the eyebrow flash, the slight mirroring, the inner smile, all those sorts of things. You start at that level. Then you’re going to start to elicit these values and the frames that are present. I’d like you to elicit these in an indirect way, conversational sort of way. You’re just having a chat. A chat that’s appropriate for that context. Does that make sense? The starting point – I’m just going to throw in an idea here, I call this a hypnotic reversal, which allows you to switch the assumptions people come in with. If you go into a car showroom, especially if it’s a used car dealer, what assumptions are you going to be carrying with you? You’re here to buy a car, that’s a good assumption to have. What would not necessarily be useful to you as a salesperson in terms of assumptions people come in with?

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Students:

They’ll think I’m a scam artist.

Igor:

They’ll think you’re a scam artist. That you might try to sell them something – of course, you’re here to buy, but the idea of pressure, scamming and so on. We’ve got to neutralize these negative frames in some way, make sense? Here’s a little piece of what I call hypnotic reversal that might be useful to you. When the person comes in, you can reverse the frame very easily saying, "Look, can I help you in terms of what you’re looking for?" Could you tell me a little about what you’re looking for, because I’d like to save you some time? And, if, we don’t have it I’d rather let you know so you can go on your way and find someone who has got it, rather than waste your time and create frustration and so on. Is that okay with you? Cool, let me know what you’re looking for, to see if we’ve got it and if I can help you in any way. Notice what we just did at this point. I’ve indirectly acknowledged the fear of pressure, the fear of being sold something they don’t want, the fear that I’m going to make them buy something that might not be useful to them, by doing what; number one, my attitude. It’s not – tell me what you want, so if we don’t have it I can send you out. That’s very different the attitude is much more aggressive. I’m relaxed, I’m getting used to my attitude. I’m letting them know up front that if I don’t have something that fits their needs, then I’m not going to pressure them or sell to them. I’m going to let them get on their way. That should already start building me more trust and comfort with a person. Make sense? You can use it as a piece on the side, given the context. It would be appropriate, but again, start thinking about what the assumptions are and hidden frames in place and how can you start playing with them ahead of time. That’s an example of an indirect preframe, is it not? Wouldn’t that be fair to say? The next thing you want to do is just right out ask them, what is it you’re looking for? They’ll say something like, a car. Of course, I thought you came to a car showroom to buy a glass of milk, silly me. The point is that’s the opening of the negotiation. When they say I want to have a car – great. Remember, the principle utilization, whatever they’re saying is absolutely right. Great, we’ve got cars. What kind of car specifically? I’m talking about what size? Is there a budget in mind? What kind of things do you want to use the car for? What

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 does this do? It begins the conversation to allow them to give you context, which will allow you to establish the values within it or at least ask about the values. I think we’ll do that for the moment. I’d like you to write down the thing that you get back in response. You ask them what are you looking for today? They’ll say a car. Well, what’s important about a car or what kind of things were you looking for in that car? There are different ways of phrasing this. Feel free to play with this. Sometimes they don’t really know what they want. They just know they need a new car. If that happens, you’ll still be able to get values, because they’ve still been motivated to come to your showroom. You still have a set of values, it’s just they’re more unconscious. You can ask them, okay, fine, no worries, let me ask you guys – how might you start establishing their values and more importantly their drivers from a statement when you say, what are you looking for? And they say I’m not sure? What kind of things can you ask? Mickey: Igor:

Do you have family? How many people do you have driving around? What is he trying to do right now? He’s establishing a context of use, isn’t he? How about going straight forward and saying, where do you plan to use it? You might give them hints, is it with your family? Is this for work? Is this for business? Is this to relax as a pleasure vehicle? Of course, those of you who are a little sneaky here, I hope its all of you, will start to observe their behavior. If you say, is it for your family, is it for work, is it just to relax in and cruise around, or is it something else? Any ideas which one that might be? I have an instinct that you might be looking for something that’s just going to be good to drive, something to cruise around in and have fun. Would I be right in that? Yes, I thought so. Do you see how that establishes a lot more trust? How you get a sense of wow, this person really knows what they’re talking about. The other thing might be if they say, I don’t know, the context is one thing. You might also ask, why have you come here? What made you want to come here today? Well, my car broke. Now you’re using the contrast frame. What were you using your car for? What did you like about your car? What didn’t you like about your car? Values are not all positive. A lot of values are away froms, like I want to stay safe. Safe is away from harm. Do you see where we’re going with this? Whether they give you a lot of information or they start hedging information, you have some conversational avenues you can go into,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 which will give you more information. Your job is very simple. Your job is to find a word or a phrase that is lit up with emotion, like enjoy life. That’s their value. Start jotting these down. You have your list of 16 drivers. Start asking yourself, what did it seem to me that this person might be driven by, in relation to buying a car? That might be expressed in terms of enjoying life. That might be expressed in terms of safety, but what is it they’re actually being driven by, in terms of what they’re looking for in a vehicle? That will be more of their hidden needs at that point. Make sense? Let’s see what you can collate and see if you run into difficulty. If you run into difficulty, again, just make a note of it. That’s what we’re here for. This is part of the exercise process. Does everyone have a list of those 16 drivers to navigate through as you’re going through? You’ll be prodding to check which direction their values fit in. Find another person and take maybe five minute apiece. We just want to have a rolling start to get into this whole thing. Find their values. Find the drivers behind it, and do it all very conversationally, just having a chat. Off you go. Welcome back everyone, how was that? Did you enjoy that? Let me ask you this; now that you’ve done this exercise, we haven’t finished this exercise, we’re just setting something up. How much clearer are you about the idea of values and these drivers that line the shadows, the hidden values behind it? Is it beginning to get a little bit clearer now? What kind of things did you notice? What kind of things did you get from people in terms of buying a car? What were the values? What were the drivers behind those values and how did they mix? How did you get a clue about a driver from what we were talking about in terms of what they want and what they need and so on? Student:

I found it was a nice trick to make a contrast between what they didn’t want and what they did want and push.

Igor:

Do you see the law of contrasts at work here, going from what they don’t want, what they do want and that creates a drive in one direction, which helps you then attach whatever you want at the end of that, right?

Student:

I’m already orienting them against and towards something. Then I sell the trip not the car.

Igor:

That’s exactly what we’re coming onto, this is excellent good job. We’ll be coming onto that in a little bit. So well done, you’re ahead of the game.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 He sold the trip not the car. It’s not the car; it’s the experience of having the car, the value of having the car rather than the four wheels and a bit of metal. What else did you discover? First, as you’re coming up, was it easier than you thought it would be once you got into a conversation? The point of all these values and drivers and so on is to give your mind reference points for things to look out for. It’s kind of like being a captain on a ship in the middle of waves and you’re looking out for anchor points, like, oh, there’s a lighthouse, there’s a land mass and now you can orient amongst the ocean. If all you’re looking at is the choppy waves, it’s like, where the hell am I? I don’t know. Does that make sense? Student:

One thing I found interesting was the dichotomy between what my partner came in to buy and the kind of car he felt he ought to buy versus what he was telling me really lighted up his emotions.

Igor:

This is typical. Remember we talked about before, as a lawyer and a lot of consultants have this too, what people ask of you isn’t really what they want or need. It’s what they think they need. They’ve already concluded, but they’ve not necessarily come to a good conclusion. The same is true in terms of what people come and buy. They’ve concluded somehow, with lots of interference – it might be their family tells them one thing and someone else tells them another thing and another thing is happening here, maybe a TV show that says, oh, maybe that’s the kind of thing I want – but they don’t necessarily know themselves exactly what it is they want or need. One of our jobs, whether you’re selling officially or you’re selling an idea or like a hypnotherapist sells the principle of change, whatever it is, you’re selling something and our job is to find out what’s going to fit their life. Then they’re making a good decision, they’ll like you a hell of a lot more for it, which means, the chances of repeat business or referrals and so on are great, and buyer’s remorse goes way down. It’s also actually important though, to make sure that you find out; what is it in their original idea, they came with, that was driving them thinking that? How did they come to that conclusion? There might be something in there that isn’t in the lighting up process but it is of importance.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Let’s take an example. Someone comes in to buy a nice family car, you offer him a Porsche and he says fast – great. But, if you’ve got a family and he comes home with a Porsche, "Hi, honey, look what I got! No, it’s okay, if we squash the kids together tightly they just fit in the boot and we can strap them on the roof, too." There is a check that has to occur to find out how they came to that conclusion. There may be another set of values, another set of drivers in action that you haven’t hit on. Does that make sense? Do you see where we’re going with this? That’s an excellent observation. What other kinds of things did you notice? Student:

You are familiar with the Cayenne, right, the sport Porsche SUV? You might want to see that.

Igor:

I prefer the old 911's. Sell me a 911, I’ll say yes. Very small, compact, I can put it in my suitcase.

Student:

He had just bought a car recently. That was a little easier so we went off that. But I was still able to elicit all the touch points and all the things that were valuable for him in purchasing that. One of which was, that he has kind of a contrarian attitude, just something to be distinct. Porsche probably wouldn’t have worked, nor Mercedes – too common.

Igor:

You had to find something that was a little different, whether it’s in the color tone or the make. It could be a unique niche brand or something like that.

Student:

Exactly.

Igor:

Did all of you notice a couple of things? First, there are things people light up for and there are phrases that accompany those things. Would that be fair to say? Yes, no, maybe so? Would it be fair to say that when you’ve talked to them, just conversationally, it’s actually easier to find those things because it’ll be flat, flat, flat? When you explore things that light them up, have you noticed they light up even more? They get more enthusiastic. They offer you more information than they were previously willing to give you? This is very important. When you’re in the whole negotiation process and stuff like that, sometimes people come in all cagey saying, what do you want – I’m not going to tell you, you might sell me something. I wouldn’t say this happens in most cases, depends on the industry, the field, and the individuals as well. In some cases it’s more prevalent than in others.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 In the car sales business, it’s more likely to happen. But again, it also depends on the niche, like high end car sales are more likely to be open, because it’s a much different sales process. Within your niche, you will know whether people are going to be more distrusting or not. You now need to hit these buttons, if nothing else to get more information, so they’re more willing to share that information and give that to you. Does that make sense? As they get motivated by their values, as they get excited by it, they’ll want to offer you more. It’s just part of how it works. Has anyone here ever been excited about something? You’re going on a trip or you just bought something new that’s cool or you’ve seen a film that really inspired you. Has anyone ever had an experience like that? Just one or two of you. Let me try that again. Those of you who haven’t had this experience – seriously, anyone ever had that experience where something very exciting happened? How many times, when that’s happened, do you want to go out and tell everyone about it? You tell people, oh, this is great film, you’ve got to watch it, it’s amazing. Or I’m going on this holiday, it’s the best thing ever, I’m so excited. Why? Our emotions or enthusiasm about it makes us want to tell more people about it, because then we feel it more. You want to hit those buttons to get more information as well. So far, we’ve got a sense of the values and the drivers. Did you notice how some people will have several values and it’s difficult to sort out which ones are key. Especially if they conflict, like fast car, family and other stuff. How many people have had a bunch of things going on and you're not sure what to give a priority to? Would you like to know a simple way of organizing that, in a hierarchy, so you know what you absolutely have to offer them, without which they cannot live, and what they’d like but if you can’t offer it, it won’t be a deal breaker? Would you like an easy way of finding that out? You're going to use the contrast principle again. Let’s take two values. Let’s say we're going on a job interview and you ask, what’s important about your job - its respect, money and interesting work. These are common values in finding a job. How do we find out what will motivate that person and what they need? Let’s say your job doesn't pay so well, but it’s great in every other respect. Or, the job sucks, but it pays very well. How are you going to find out who is appropriate for that role?

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The simple way is to contrast things. For example, let’s say, you had someone who says its money, career prospects, status and interesting work. Tell me, if the job we're going to offer you had lots of money, but not much of a status, I mean, it seems a bit low end, but you get paid a hell of a lot, would that be okay for you? Let me put it another way to you. If we found something else for you, where people really respected you, looked up to you and it’s an amazing job, but it doesn't pay so well, would that be okay? If they say, yes, it would be ideal, which of those two values is more important to that person? Status. Does it mean money is unimportant? No, but they will take status over money, which means, if you need a leverage point, you leverage on the fact that your job has real status even if the money is only going to be okay. You can contrast any of the values against each other and find out which ones they cannot live without. You can say if I can offer you two things, if I can give you status or money, which one would you choose? You can give it to them directly or if you had this, but not that, is that okay. Or, if you had that, but not this, is that okay. There are different ways of formulating it, but you have the principle. There is another thing you need to know, in terms of your fact finding mission, and it will give you a lot of information, especially in those contexts where people are not willing to give precise details - let’s say you were selling to corporations. You can ask them what their budget is. That is a classic sales question. We're moving into a little bit more of a sales thing, because it’s the easiest lead demonstrated influence process. How many think that the person buying is going to say that it’s this much? You’d be right. It doesn't happen. You still need to get all of that information to get a sense of what you're playing with. This is where metaphors become interesting. I got this from a salesperson friend of mine called Shawn. His question is ingenious. He says “Look, give me a ball park figure. Are we talking about Fords, Hondas or Mercedes?” Think about the class we're in. A Mercedes is the upper end of the scale. He has a bigger budget and quality is already implied in that so you can start testing for things like quality versus cost, which are more important. If he says Ford or some lower brand, now we have an idea that cost might be an issue and they will be happy to trade quality for cost.

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You also have leverage. When you bring out your package and they think it’s very expensive, you can say, that they did say, they wanted a Mercedes, right? This is not a Mercedes; it’s the Rolls Royce of the IT world. If I misunderstood you and you really wanted a Honda, please let me know and we’ll see if we have a different package. Do you notice how I’m now leveraging against his values? No, I want the Rolls Royce. If you want the Rolls Royce, you're going to have to pay for a Rolls Royce. They don’t come in Christmas crackers. Do you see how that works? If a person is reluctant to give you information directly, put them in a scenario, a metaphor that will still give you the information in a more indirect sort of way. Does that make sense? Let’s go back to the same partners again. Assume the conversation where you were at. Have a few chit chats to get back in the conversational frame. I want to start taking all the things you heard them say, all the values, especially - you organized the values in a hierarchy and the drivers. But use and present the drivers in the language of their values. The drivers of, let's say, tranquility and social contact - I'm not going to say, you want tranquility and social contact. I'm going to have to frame that in terms of pleasantness, enjoying life and so on. A pleasant peacefulness, the shared fun of being with people that are pleasant and peaceful, who are enjoying themselves. Do you see how I’ve had to offer the driver in the context of the values that were presented? Does that make sense? The example was Ralph. We have someone whose drivers are tranquility and social contact. That is our guesstimate at this point. We have a value which is enjoying life, having pleasant surroundings, having fun and enjoying stuff. In terms of the list, you will offer them the driver, which is social contact and tranquility. But you can’t just say we’ll give you some more tranquility and social contact as well, because those labels may not mean very much to him. We need to frame them in the language or vocabulary that he’s giving us. For example, here is something which allows you to hang around with pleasant people. Hang around, social contact, pleasant people, the idea of tranquility and peace. You can ease back, kick back, enjoy yourself and have fun with good people. That is something everyone wants, isn’t it? It’s not necessarily something everyone wants, but, of course, it’s something

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that person wants and that will be good enough for everyone as far as he’s concerned. You're, basically, echoing back to them their values and drivers as a summary. You want this, this and this. Is that correct? Any ideas why you're doing that? There is a Yes Set. You're pacing them. That’s part of the Yes Set, absolutely. You can watch for a response for each one to make sure that you're still lighting him up. So you're accessing the resources, a little revivification. You're reinforcing those things. These are all correct. There is one more thing I’m looking for - inducing them in terms of the state, yes, you're revivifying the experience. There is a rapport, because this person feels that you know what they want. You're looking for values in terms of which ones contradict each other? Hopefully, you will have done that before you do this list, but if you haven’t found it yet, this might help you spot a conflict if there is one. You lock in the commitment before you make the offer. This is a very important principle influence. We’ll talk a bit more about Cialdini. Has everyone heard of Robert Cialdini’s The Six Laws of Influence? I’ll give you the six laws a little later so you have them. Essentially, one of the principles is called consistency and commitment. When people make a commitment in a social context, in other words, to other people, they have to conform if they remain consistent to that. For example, one of the tests was, if you ask people to put this great big sign about slowing down traffic on their front lawn, they’ll say no. It’s ugly and it’s on my lawn. But, if one week, someone comes around and asks if you are civically minded. "Yes" "Well, do you mind putting this little civic sticker on your window?" It’s a tiny thing about a pleasant neighborhood; keep your neighborhood clean or something like that. Then, the week after that, someone completely different comes along and asks about putting up that great big board about slowing the speed down, they’ve already committed to being civically minded in public. Now they have to be consistent with that, so they're more likely to let the board be put up. This is very important in the whole influencing process. You may have noticed that whenever I talk to people in terms of some kind of a change process, especially those who have seen me do hypnotherapy, I always

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 check back with them. Are you telling me it’s this, this and this? Is that correct? Yes. So it’s this, this and this. Have I misunderstood you? Yes. I’m locking them into that position. Now I can apply leverage and they can’t move. If I ask, "What about that?" "Oh no, what I meant was this." "Now you're confusing me. A moment ago you said it was this, this and this. Is it or isn’t it?" One of two things will happen. The consistency will either force them to stay consistent and that leverage allows you to break through to that point of change, or it will force out new info that was unconscious in them before, that they weren’t aware of and by exposing the conflict it actually exposes the thing you really need to know about. Either way is better as far as I’m concerned. Consistency is absolutely crucial. You're looking for A, B, and C, is that correct? Have I understood you correctly? If I have a car that does A, B, and C and makes you feel like this and looks like that, then you have to buy it on the spot, because it’s exactly what you're looking for right? Well, yes. What have you noticed? The hesitation. What’s happened? What does that tell you about me? There is something missing in terms of what I’ve told you, either those values aren’t enough and I haven’t told you about something or you have a concern that hasn’t been handled yet, that you need to handle before you offer the end of the deal. This is very simple when you start paying attention to people. Student: ♦ Do say we want to elicit their prime values and then anchor those values to the product or vehicle? Igor:

Absolutely. That will be one of the things we do, amongst other things as well. But the core idea, we're going to bring up the emotions of the value and attach them to the product or service. So, now, they feel that way about the product or service. In other words, that will give them that value. Whatever it is they're looking for, they will get it by having this. Those of you who know my background, I went from law to being an executive coach. Typically, I would coach people twice my age, because they were in their late 40s or early 50s. I was about 27 when I started. There was a bit of a contrast there. I remember one of the first people that I coached was someone who was doing so well that he almost got fired. The reason was that he was burning out his team. In terms of results, fantastic, but his team was being burned

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 out and he had a huge issue in terms of retention and so on. We worked on leadership coaching. One of the things we worked on was for him to find out the values of his team members and to the extent that he could, make the job satisfy those values in them so they couldn't burn out. Because, now, the harder they worked the more they achieved their life purpose. There was no burnout rate. The retention rate was sky high. People started volunteering to come back to the same department. By the way, they were working just as hard as they were before, but rather than being driven by someone else’s value, which is what happens when people say our mission is to achieve superiority by complex suppositions of interesting managerial double talk that no one really understands. You are now plugging into an individual and what they need and want out of life and that becomes super motivating. Do you see how that works? Do you see how this is a useful model for pretty much any context? Any comments or questions on what we’ve done so far? In a moment you're going to go back to the same partner. Have a little chit chat. You're going to offer them a summary of what they told you, in their terms or words. You're going to say, so what you want is to really interact with others so you can get out of your cage and have as pleasant a life where people are enjoying themselves, having fun and enjoying life - where they're enjoying life and you're enjoying life? Is that what you're telling me? Is that what you want? You're going to weave in your drivers as well, so it fits that kind of language. Once they’ve committed to that, you may even throw it in a few more just to make sure they’ve committed to those principles. I’d like to create a future memory. Do you remember the revivification exercise where you painted a picture for them on the mountain, a beach or somewhere they haven’t been yet? I’d like you to conversationally paint a picture for them, of a time in the future, where they have two things, your service, product or idea that you are hoping they will accept and the other is all of those values and drivers woven together. I can see you driving this car down the highway. It’s exactly what Shawn was talking about. The freedom, you’d be the envy of everyone. What drivers am I using right now? Vengeance to some extent, status,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 independence, possibly power. You're painting a mental picture for them using their values, their drivers as benefits, as a reason for them being in there. The car becomes a vehicle for experiencing their values. That’s all you have to do. It’s very simple. Summarize their values so they accept, this is what I want. Then paint them a picture where they have those values through the vehicle, of in this case, a car, but it can be anything, an idea, a service or product and so on. When is it time to make those tradeoffs, do you want this over that? By the time you come to that future memory, you describe that picture, it should all be totally clear. When it gets to summary, you want to be totally clear on exactly what it is. Let’s go back to the employment example. The trade off was they’ll trade off money for status. They want status more than money. They're okay with having a lower income if they have a high status. You might say to them, "Let me get this straight, you want to have independence, status and people looking up to you. You would quite like the cash, but you’d rather have people respect and admire you. Is that correct?" If I had a sense that there might be a problem with this, I would commit to the following. So, what you're telling me is, you would rather have the status than the cash. You’d be okay with a lower income, provided the status was high enough. Is that right? Do you see how I’ve increased the clarity and the separation and got them to commit to that? I want that before I do my summary so when I do, it’s a sense of saying, okay, so you want to have independence, status. You’d like to have the cash, but honestly, it’s not that important to you. Then I’ll paint the picture. You know, "I can see you a couple of months from now being the mayor of this town. The money might not be great, but the way that people look at you, that’s worth every moment of your time. You get to be your own boss, do what you want, and honestly, people will invite you to functions, because you're the mayor. You deserve to be treated with respect, don’t you?" Do you see how I’ve built into the future memory the idea that cash is unimportant to them now? I’ve gone from, you want the cash, but you’d rather have status, the cash is less important but status is very important. So status is everything and cash really is not important. I’ve installed a different set of values at that point, by removing the thing we can’t offer, which is the cash, but offering them what we can offer and what they do want, which is the status. Is this useful? This is a very

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 different way of looking at the frame control and reframing than traditional, well, look at it this way. There is a lot more power in what we're doing this way. Student:

I almost hear you giving a false dichotomy between one and the other. ♦ Are we looking at a broader, because it’s not going to be just one or the other?

Igor:

If there are several things going, you're going to create a hierarchy. The dichotomy comes from what you can and can’t deliver. If you can’t deliver a high income and status, but you can deliver on job satisfaction, interesting job and social contact, then you need to create a dichotomy between social contact and interesting job versus cash and status.

Student:

We are trying to drive to a dichotomy, one over the other…

Igor:

Only if it’s necessary. If there is no conflict and you can offer them everything they’ve asked for, then there is no need. You can give them everything they’ve asked for. The only reason for doing this is, if you can’t deliver on some of the things they think they want. For some people, the idea of cash and status will be more important than the interesting work and social contact. Which means, they're not the right people to be working for you, same with the car. If your cars are all Ferrari’s and they're looking for a safe family vehicle, they are not your idea client. Your best bet is to say to them, here is an address of someone who does exactly what you're looking for. They’ll take care of you. Tell them I sent you. I would be wasting your time trying to sell you one of these cars, because it doesn't do what you need or want it to do. Who is more likely to refer people to you to buy a car, especially if it’s a Ferrari? The guy that bought a Ferrari and is asking what the hell he bought this thing for? Or, the guy that didn't buy the Ferrari from you, but went down the road to your recommendation and is perfectly happy with the station wagon? Now when his wealthy friends say they should get a car, he’ll tell them to talk to this guy here. He’ll give you the coolest sports car ever. Who is going to do that for you?

Student:

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That and the other dealership too when they say the Ferrari guy sent me down here.




You’ll have a deal with the other dealership. If you're sending people to someone else’s business, they’ll have to send people to you if they don’t have the right thing. Now we have one of the other Cialdini laws and it’s called reciprocity. I do you a favor you’ll do me a favor. I did you a favor not selling you the car you don’t want and by telling you where you can get it. I did them a favor by sending them a client. What are they going to do? They're going to send me a client back if they can’t service that person. What is that person going to do? They're going to send referrals to me. Do you see how this becomes a win-win all around when you look beyond the initial transaction? Let’s spend another 10 minutes doing this. Get into the same group. If you need to restart the values, that’s fine. If you want to do a bit of fine tuning in terms of contrasting the different values to find out which ones you can drop, that’s fine. You're aiming to get to a very clear acknowledgment of the values in a row. That is, what you want in a car. Is that right? You want a clear committed yes. If there is any hesitation, pauses, tension, lack of movement suddenly, is there a shift that does not describe somebody who’s getting enthusiastic and animated by something, then you need to go back and find out what that is. Assuming everything is good, once acknowledged, and they’ve accepted the summary you’ve given them with all of the emotions and they’ve lifted up appropriately, you will create a future memory where they have all of this linked to the car and you can leave it at that. We’ll talk more tomorrow about creating the final closing process. Off you go. Is this useful? Who can see themselves using this stuff at home to make their life easier, more fun and enjoyable?

Student:

It’s not just, more fun to be able to present, interact or connect, that way it’s a lot more fun for them too. They're engaged, they're understood. They get to buy from somebody that likes them.

Igor:

Right. How many times have you bought stuff from your friends, not because they're trying to sell you something, but they got something cool, look how amazing it is and you ask where can I get one of those? They sold you based on their enthusiasm, which is much more fun. Remember the irresistible induction? They’ve just done the irresistible induction equivalent of a sales process. They’ve given you their values,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 how they feel about it, so much so you’ve adopted their values and just went ahead and bought it. Student:

I want to point out something that helped me in this exercise. At one point I started to veer off and go more into features versus benefits.

Igor:

Features is, basically, saying the car has wheels, a tiny stick and a shiny belt buckle on the front. That’s what it has, but it doesn't mean much, whereas benefits are things it can do for you. The shiny belt buckle is going to save your life. The nice little twiddly bit means you can turn the radio on without thinking too much about it. It makes your life easier.

Student:

Even though the features did have to do with his values, I wasn’t putting it so much in a benefit term. It still felt like I was doing an intellectual list.

Igor:

Right. This is a key thing. This is not about the intellect. What sells? What persuades? Emotions. That is a key thing. This is why we're looking for emotional language. Values are based on goals, on what they're going to get. We don’t want a box full of stuff. We want to know what the box full of stuff will do for us. It’s an excellent point to make. Thank you.

Student:

Even though this was an exercise, it was amazing to have somebody listen to what I wanted and to understand what I wanted and needed and looked to provide that. Here is somebody who really wants to help me. My partner turned around afterward and we talked about that. He said if he could only find a real estate agent that would do that.

Igor:

Any real estate agents here? He’s looking for you. Let me ask you a question. Those who have been the subject, the person doing the buying, would you agree with the observation there? That it’s pleasant to be finally understood by someone? They get it? It’s nice, isn’t it? Let me ask you a question. Who is in a relationship? Do I need to say anything else? Can you see a sort of benefit emerging from this? That is, maybe, a little unexpected but it could transform your life in a significant and very pleasant way?

Student:

My enlightenment was, while conducting the exercise with my partner, darn it, I could apply this to myself, which I will be doing this evening.

Igor:

Yes. This is how you can sort your own priorities out and your own motivations. Does anyone here suffer from procrastination? What if you could guide yourself through a list distinguishing between what this thing is going to do for you in the end.

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If you find enough juice or value in the exercise, you’ll end up doing it. If there isn’t any value, you may as well realize that it’s something you're never going to do. So why torture yourself about it? Student:

I encountered the classic conundrum when doing sales where I met all of his values and I seemed to have everything he wanted for the vehicle. He agreed with all of that, and I tested all of that again to make sure he was 100%. I asked if he was ready to make a commitment to buy the car and he said, well, I want to look around. You're the first place I came to.

Igor:

You missed one thing.

Student:

I said the classic thing you hear in sales which is the pressure. We say this is our most popular model. It’s going to be the last one we're going to have on the lot.

Igor:

First, do you remember before the exercise, I said I don’t care whether they buy or not. That is not the purpose of the exercise. Seeing how it came up, we may as well deal with it. The rejection had nothing to do with the stuff you talked about. One of the ways you can test before you get to that point, by the way, is you can do an X, Y and Z - is that right? Of course, you did it. One thing I like to do at that point is repeat it again, but add another criteria. So you want X, Y, and Z and if you had X. Y and Z that means you will be so happy you’ll be getting it right now? Isn’t that right? One of two things will happen. They’ll say yes. It’s exactly what I want. I found what I want and it’s got X. Y and Z. I’m going to buy it right away. Or, they’ll go no.

Student:

That's the most likely response.

Igor:

I wouldn’t say it was the most likely. It depends on the individual and the context. Let’s always figure out the context. In your field it may be a very likely response. You talked about having certain types of problems coming up repeatedly, so you may well be right about that.

Student:

I’m very suspicious when I go to dealerships.

Igor:

The way to neutralize it up front, say, if you find something that had X. Y, and Z, that’s what you're going to buy. There is no going any further at that point, is that right, as long as it has X, Y and Z, you go and look for it. If they hesitate, ask what the hesitation is about. They may say something about not looking around and making sure they get the right deal. Oh. So

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 it’s important to you to get a good deal, is that right? How is that important to you? Well, I don’t want to waste money. I don’t want to feel like I’ve been had. I understand. You want to make sure that you're not taken advantage of, is that right? Student:

I want to look around and see if there are any lower prices.

Igor:

Right. You want to see if there are any lower prices. Was price part of X, Y and Z? No. You're telling me if you have X, Y and Z and it has the right price for you, that's what you're looking for? Is that right? You can handle it in a couple of different ways. One is a guarantee. How about this, if we find you something with X, Y and Z at the right price range for you and you get it right now and sometime in the next week or two, I mean how long will you be looking for these things? The next couple weeks? Yes. If in the next couple of weeks, you find something at a better price somewhere else, come back and we’ll refund you the difference, how is that?

Student:

It sounds excellent.

Igor:

Then you don’t miss anything. You can even have the ease, let’s say peace and tranquility is part of this thing, you can know and have that peace of mind, you don’t have to have the hassle of searching around the place. You can just look on the Internet or drive around and if you glimpse something, you know you can take advantage of the offer. All we ask is that if you find something, you show us some proof of the price and I’ll refund you. No worries. Most people will not follow up on that, because they’ll feel good now that they’ve done it. By the way, if they do, you have to be good to your guarantee. You’ve made a promise so follow up on it. Personally, I have no issues making that.

Student:

If they haven’t seen other deals, 90% will go out to check anyway. Having a guarantee inoculates them. The question is, they’ll look around, but the same car at probably the same price, maybe a little more expensively, because it’s not worth the $100 to go back. It comes down to the price and the values again, not price as a value. It’s getting a good deal that’s a value. If you can make sure they feel they're getting a good deal right, they’ll buy right now. What is it that makes you want to look somewhere else?

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I want to make sure there is nothing cheaper somewhere else. Oh, so it’s about not spending more on this car than you have to, is that right? Correct. Excellent, so if you had a guarantee that this is the absolute lowest price anywhere for the next two or three weeks, however long you’ll be looking and then you’d get it right now, would you? The only reason for going somewhere else might be price. It might be something else. It’s part of their values. If you take care of that value, they’ll buy right now. It’s what we did with Eric. We’ve taken care of the problem. The value is, can I get this cheaper somewhere else. Great, if you find it cheaper someone else, we’ll refund you the difference so you’ve not lost anything. That was the guarantee we just talked about. The point is you need that commitment. If you have X, Y and Z is that everything you need to have to get this right now? If we don’t have it by the way, I’ll happily send you away. But if we do have something that has X. Y and Z, is that all you need? No. What else is there? I want to check around for price. Great! What will that do for you? It ensures I have the lowest price. Fine. If I can ensure, in a way that will satisfy you, that this is the lowest price, will you be happy with that? Yes. Of course, I still have to make sure that you're totally comfortable that there is no way you can get it cheaper than this somewhere else. Let’s not get stuck on the whole thing too much. The point is, if you have the value, the value is price and the guarantee will take care of it. If the price is not that important, you can lift and elevate other values. Say, you have things here you can’t find anywhere else. The more unique your business is, by the way, the easier it is to do that. Student:

I’m a big fan of Robert Cialdini’s work as well. The marriage of his work with conversational hypnosis, if you keep it within his research, the six automatic responses from the old part of the brain, to me that is called bypassing the critical factor. As long as you look for- social proof, reciprocity, authority, commitment and consistency, etc.

Igor:

Let’s do these quickly- reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity.

Student:

The liking and the authority is covered with the H+.

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This is how you present yourself in terms of your non verbal movement and mannerisms. Are you more the Alpha male? Liking, we’ve taken care of with the H+ and the hypnosis rapport. Social proof, you can take of with things like demonstrations. Even in a therapy session, why would Erickson get someone’s arm to levitate in the air? It’s proof. What if someone has this amazing thing and says you’ve got to go see this doctor. It’s proof again. It’s built into the whole model. What are we doing right now? We're talking about an ethical model of influencing. Where you will send people away if you cannot give them what they want or need. Over time, your reputation, your social proof becomes stronger for you. Commitment, did anyone hear any elements of commitment in what we just did? Yes. You're looking for X, Y and Z. That’s everything, yes? Absolutely! So if you saw X, Y and Z on the street right now, you’d buy it on the spot, is that right? I don’t know. What’s missing? I have to shop around. What would that do for you? Well, it will make me feel like I haven’t been taken advantage of. Great! If you had X. Y and Z and you're not being taken advantage and you absolutely know it, you would get that, on the street, on the spot, is that right? Yes. Check. Now all you have to do is fulfill your promises. These two here haven’t been built into the model so much, although they're useful. Reciprocity, basically, I do something for you and you do something for me. It’s the essence of how societies work as well. That is part of what we do in terms of sales by sending people away or taking the time out to actually understand them. Who here felt good when someone sold to your values, listened to your values and what you want and tried to fit it in? And was respectful enough of you to fit what you want and how you feel rather than giving you whatever it is they can knock off and quickly sell out? There is a kind of reciprocity in there, because they're now in it for you. Let me give you an example. You know when restaurants bring a check and bring a little mint or candy along side with it. Do you know why? It’s reciprocity. If they give you a candy, we're more likely to see them better and that’s proven. Imagine a restaurant in four sections. In section one, when the check comes nothing. You just get the check and that’s it. On table 2, you’ll get the check and a candy as well. On table 3 you get the check and get two

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 candies. On table 4 you get the check and a candy, only this time the waiter starts to leave. Just as he’s leaving, it’s like he mentally shrugs himself, smiles at you, acts like he’s thinking what the hell, winks, puts another candy down and walks off. Which table do you think got the fewest tips? ♦ Table 1, absolutely. Of the rest of the tables, which was the next to lowest? ♦ Table 2. Next. ♦ Table 3. Actually tables 2 and 3 were virtually identical. Table 3 was barely more than table 2. ♦ Table 4 had a massive change in terms of uplifting the average tip to tables 1 and 2. Why? The reciprocity was more personal. It wasn’t an automatic thing. It’s now about you as an individual. When you're spending time getting through to people’s values this way, listening and matching what you can offer to what they actually want and need, is that personal? Yes. Do you think you’ve switched that on? Scarcity is another one. We can talk about that more as we go along. Essentially, people like most the things they can’t get a hold of. As soon as you hear you can’t get it, you’ll want it more. As soon as you're denied, it becomes more valuable. You can see that most of these principles have already been built in to what you're doing. It’s just that I’d rather do it invisibly so it’s just a natural part of what you do than talk about this too intellectually, because then you start thinking about it more than doing it. Does that help you? Student:

Yes. The big aha for me, is that with the drivers, which are these universal things people desire, you marry with these components here whether their responses are automatic for the first time. I think I understand what conversational hypnosis is, in terms of keeping it in the automatic area of the brain and not through the neo-cortex part of the brain. It’s not about relaxation. It’s about keeping the critical thinking part out of it, by keeping it in the area of the brain it actually loves. It doesn't want to think. Just give me the stuff that’s easy for me to process and I’ll do it all day long.

Igor:

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We’ll throw a couple more models that will make that easier for you as we go through. Thank you.




I’m glad Alex brought this up. At the moment, where it came down to price, the person doesn't want to spend any more than they absolutely have to. Meanwhile, we went through the trouble, eliciting their values. We said if it was X. Y and Z, you can do this. Then it surfaces that it’s X, Y, Z and a prime. A prime in this case is price. What we were trying to do or did for a while is bypass the critical factor with X, Y and Z. However, if price now comes up to the foreground, the critical factor is essentially re-engaged, isn’t it?

Igor:

It may be, unless you utilize it. What happens when you're doing an induction and someone suddenly opens their eyes? Do you say, oh, I messed up I’m sorry, let’s start again. Or, do you say, that's right and with your eyes open you can go into an even deeper trance can you not? If they say, "Isn’t there something else going on?" "Well, what’s that?" "Well, I wanted to look at other places?" "What is that?" "It’s price." "That’s right. Because price really is important to you isn’t it? It’s important to me that we found that. I want to make sure we checked, because it usually is important to people and I’d feel terrible if you ended up getting this car and we didn't take care of everything you wanted. Thank you for bringing that up."

Student:

I was thinking of price as a proxy for risk in general.

Igor:

Exactly. When they say price, it’s often not about price, it’s about something else. In this case it could be about risk, being taken advantage of, status, self-esteem, trust and these things. Oftentimes, things that come disguised as price and they even think it’s price, because remember, we're rationalizing how we feel, but it has nothing to do with price. Has anyone here ever overpaid for something that you know you can get cheaper somewhere else, but you're quite happy you paid extra, because there was something else you liked, more reliability, you trusted the person more, they were nicer, they look after you if something goes wrong? Price is not really the bottom line that people make out that it is. You say, but it’s not true. There are so many things when you're buying a car. Who here would buy a cheap car at $500 less or one you know will not blow up on you on the freeway? Which one would rather pay $500 extra and not get blown up on the freeway? Price is not the objection here. It’s something else. By the way, I’m not trying to change your mind on this. You're welcome to believe what you want. It’s just that in my experience, you can get through the whole price

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 objection relatively easily most of the time. The thing is, if you believe price will be an objection, it’s called a Pygmalion Effect. Remember the kids whose teachers believed they were going to do well or do poorly? Guess what those teachers got? I invite you to consider a world in which price is not the most important thing. It is sometimes and you will find it by testing for value, but it will not always be the case. I offer to you the possibility that it’s usually not the case as long as it’s within a range. In other words, if you're buying a Ford, as long as it’s in the $10,000 range, then you're okay. If the car you're offering them is $20,000 - $40,000, you might be outside of the price range, which is a very different kettle of fish. If we're talking about $100 saved here or $200 there; there will be other things more important that they're willing to pay the extra $200 for, to have those. You don’t have to believe me. I’m only offering you my experience. You have to go out and test it. The mindset that you carry into it will absolutely make a difference. Student:

I was thinking, okay, if price is a proxy for risk, can be addressed in terms of value. The example you said was, would you pay $500 more for a vehicle that won’t blow up on the highway. I was thinking it could get to the point where you have to get into the weeds about the guy across town that has a guarantee or warranty that is a year and a half. We’ll give you an extra six months for the same outlay. It comes down to these kinds of things.

Igor:

It can, but sometimes it’s not even about that. Values are big things. It could be that sometimes they just like you.

Student:

There is a different meaning to the word value there. The value is how much are you getting for your money.

Igor:

Yes, but that’s one possible thing of what they want. Let’s say that one of their drivers is tranquility. We can do this easily, you’ll be chilled out and there is no hassle on paperwork. If there is a problem, bring it back, especially in six months. We’ll fix it. It’s going to be easy. Or, it’s up to you. You can spend the next two weeks fighting through the weeds. Going to every single place to see if you can save yourself a couple extra bucks. Then you still don’t know how well you can trust the person you're meeting, because you’ll have to go through the whole rigmarole again. What if you make a mistake and misjudge a person’s character?

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I like how you're handling this, because it’s still keeping the critical factor bypassed.

Igor:

Absolutely. You do not want to get into horse trading, which becomes an analytical process. You want to keep them happy, but you don’t want to start horse trading or saying this versus that and making him think about these things critically. You want to give them their values, fulfill on your promises, give them enough reason so they can feel good about it afterward. So they can justify it to themselves. It’s an ethical thing. They can walk home thinking, I have this thing and I’m happy about it. I knew the risk I was getting into. By the way, you can tell people what’s wrong with your product and still sell it. They will respect you more for saying this model of car, over 80 miles an hour becomes a gas guzzling freak. It will eat up more fuel than you can probably put into it. As long as you don’t go over 80 miles an hour, you’ll be fine. That honesty will get you more trust. You know the old saying, if you can’t justify it then feature it. If there is a problem that you can’t hide or get rid of, feature it and people will go, "Wow, at least I trust this person." Now they know what they're getting into. It’s not just a question of pulling the wool over someone’s eyes. I want to make sure that you don’t believe or get the impression that this is how to hoodwink people. It’s not. The critical factor bypassed is to ease the decision making process, not to switch off their mind to make a bad decision. Does that make sense?

Student:

The people, who buy cheaper used cars, are not the richest people and for them the price is really important. You don’t have high margins. At the moment, when you're convincing someone, you may have the best car, but the dealer down the road can sell the same car for $500 cheaper because it has two painted doors or whatever - and you will not explain it to him at this moment. He will not understand it, especially if he doesn't notice it. You will have the cheesy car salesmen sell a car, preferably to him and the person will never come back to either of you, but you lose in that case. It is often, just the price.

Igor:

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You have more experience in that. I work with people in the printing industry for example, and there, it’s just about the price. It’s paper. How much can paper be, but it’s never just about the price. Why? Because the



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 people who come in will think it’s about the price, because that’s inside their mind. Remember we talked about what hidden frames there are when they come in? They will come in with a hidden frame, perhaps. It’s going to be $500 or whatever it is and the extra $10, I’ll go down the road for the $10. It’s your job to change their values as you go through that process. Do you remember we talked about that? Changing values? Oh, you know you say it’s about a fast car and so on, but did you consider the safety element that has to come in with a fast car, because of this, that and the other? If you haven’t done that part of your job, you haven’t reeducated them outside of the whole price thing. Let’s face it, even for a cheap car, they're going to have a budget. Even if its $500 and I can’t spend over $500. They can still spend $500. The thing that’s missing is, if all you do is take them at face value, they will run the program inside their mind. The purpose of what we did this afternoon is to find out what that program is, and if it needs tweaking, it will be tweaked or changed. Let me ask you this, do you believe that you're selling decent cars? Do you believe that your cars are better than the cars on the road even though it might be $100 more? They are more or less equal. So why should someone come to you and not someone else? If you don’t have an answer for that, then it’s no wonder you can’t sell it. If you, in your mind are absolutely identical to the person down the road and the person down the road from there, you have nothing to distinguish yourself. Then I would invite you to find out something about what you have to offer that is of value to people. It can be anything. It can be in how you treat the people. How you help them through the process of buying it, with the government registrations, making it easier for them. It could be in the way you help them deal with problem after it’s happened. You have special deals or whatever it is to make it easy for them afterward. It can be, because you can throw in extra things that other people can’t. Anything in any industry can be changed. However, if your mind is stuck in thinking, I’m the same as everyone else then you can sell nothing. All you can do is hope for the best. That someone lands in your place and that's it. Your job, specifically as a sales person, is to find value and offer it in any way you can.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The minute your brain starts thinking about how you can add more value to this, you start rising above the pack and your success rates go through the roof. Why? Because no one else is doing that. I’ll give you a personal example. Remember, I told you I used to be an executive coach. I started when I was 27. My first client was 49, I’m half their age, what do I have to offer? Other coaches have more business experience, more actual experience, people with better credentials, in terms of PhDs, psychological degrees and so on. Why the hell would they come to me? Any ideas? What if I’m good? They don’t know that yet. I can say I’m good. So what? He’s got a PhD. That makes him better. The difference is, it’s in the ability for me to transfer to their mind that I have something of value to offer them than can’t get anywhere else. That's where the scarcity comes in. I can offer something that they cannot get anywhere else. Whatever preconceptions they had inside their mind, I can bring them out and change them. The very things I have are the very things they need. And, of course, I get the results. I have to fulfill my promises. It would be no good if I persuade them to take a risk on me and I’m so pathetic at the end of this thing that they have no change and they wasted all of their cash. Hopefully, you're beginning to get this whole feeling for this right now that there is no industry, there is nothing where there are other human beings present, where you cannot distinguish yourself from other people in a way that makes you and what you have to offer more valuable. It is a mindset. If your mindset is that I’m the same as everyone else, I offer to you the possibility that you have the wrong mindset. And that a different mindset will make you wealthier and more successful than ever before. By the way, if you don’t want to experiment with it, you're welcome not to. It’s your life. You’ve come here for me to show you what it is that I do and what I believe. Take what you want. Take what’s useful and the rest, feel free to ignore it. Is that useful to you guys? Student:

Everything you’ve been saying can be summarized in three words in the marketing world which is unique selling proposition.

Igor:

Exactly.

Student:

If you're having trouble figuring out what makes you different from the guy down the street, there are books on USP, but if you want to take a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 shortcut, think of what people don’t like about the guy down the street. If you can say I’m not that, that’s the fastest way to get a USP. Igor:

Right. Amen to that. It’s all about value. It’s what they value and what they should be valuing and that creates more influence than is possible to even appreciate without actually having experienced it.

Student:

I like that. On the other end of the car spectrum, I bought an SL550.

Igor:

A Mercedes.

Student:

Right. The car had an advertised price. I went down to Santa Monica, looked at the car and did a test drive. I come back in with the salesman. I said the price is a bit beyond me. I don’t want to pay that. I gave him an offer for what I wanted to pay. He says, "I don’t think so. Let me go to my sales manager." He came back and gave me their counter offer. I didn't quite like that. Then I showed them my bank statement previously. I said I can’t do this deal. I got up and started heading for the door. The sales manager ran out of the office and stopped me. He took me back to the desk, started throwing in all of this other stuff. I’ll give you the pre-owned Mercedes certification. This was my first Mercedes and I asked, what is that? He says it adds an extra year to your warranty. I did a quick mental mind check and said okay. He said he’d give it to me, for free because you have to buy it otherwise. He gave me a few other things. I said fine. What I wanted to address, for this example is, as far as risk, its way down on the list as far as I’m concerned. I wanted to make sure I didn't get screwed over on the deal.

Igor:

Right. That goes back to the values. Remember, the values will be different with every person. In each industry the values will be relatively similar. I agree with you. Probably in the lower budgets in the car industry, price will be of a significant importance. It doesn't mean you're stuck with that though. The whole point is that you can reframe things. They reframed you. You paid more for the car than you offered them right, but you got other things?

Student:

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When I added all the other stuff they added, the low jack, tinted windows, I paid more than what they were asking, but I paid less than the unit price of the car.




Right, but do you see the justification process going on here? I don’t mean this as a bad thing. It sounds like you got a pretty good deal. The point is he has enough stuff to rationalize paying more. More money came out of his pocket than he had originally intended, but he’s got reasons to justify doing so. He loves it, he’s happy with the deal, you got more value out it and that’s the whole point. You have more value and therefore, you're happy. You’ve had your values satisfied in terms of, you haven’t been screwed over. You got a good deal. You got good stuff out of it. This is from a bunch of sales people that were not doing what you were doing. They were not getting inside his mind the way you will get inside his mind. They were horse trading, which is more of an analytical process, which honestly, kind of cheapens the whole interaction in my opinion. He still feels good, because they did enough right to make him feel good. You now have the capacity to do way more than that. Hopefully, you're feeling good about your skills right now, because they are a very impressive skill set, so impressive I think you deserve a break.

DVD 17: How to “Reboot” any Stubborn Mind with the Objection Destroyer Method Igor:

Hopefully, we’re now moving down this whole idea of frame control in a very systematic way to get solid skill sets that you can apply in real-life scenarios. Would that be fair to say? You can see yourself using this stuff alone as we’ve been going through so far and we’re applying some pretty, shall we say, abstract ideas hopefully in a very practical sort of way. I’d like to go one stage further now and come up with something which I like to call the Objection Destroyer. What is an objection, anyone?

Tim:

A resistance.

Igor:

Go on.

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A valid concern that they have.

Igor:

It’s a valid that someone has. I think that’s the best way of phrasing it. You’re in this to influence someone else to change the way they think, feel and behave. That’s pretty much it, isn’t it? Now, if they have no concerns do you need any of this stuff to do it? You say look, here’s something. It’s better than that? All right, I’ll take it. It’s really that simple, isn’t it? Just to use the tried and tested car and salesman thing, because we’ve been playing with that for a while, if there is no problem you say here’s the car. Do you want it? Yes. Great, off you go, done. There’s no need for anything else. Of course, life usually isn’t that simple. Why? Because they have valid concerns, they have needs and things that have to be satisfied before they know it’s the right decision, before they can go ahead with it. Does that make sense? Those are objections, essentially. Now, a lot of these things you can address very easily, very directly, but some of them are about thought loops running their mind. For example, when I was coaching my average client was twice my age. There is a thought loop, a preconception, a frame that I have to neutralize before I can begin. Any ideas what that might be?

Student:

Age before beauty?

Igor:

Age is an experience. What can you do that I can’t do? I am older, wiser and more experienced than you, essentially? You can see how that’d be pretty obvious, right? So I have to somehow get through that point and I can’t just say to them oh, my youth is an advantage. I know more than it looks like I know and I can get results honest, governor. Now, would you like to sign up on the dotted line for a coaching contact please? Is that particularly persuasive? But the logic of it is true, isn’t it? I’m using my age as an advantage. I have ideas or if I’ve been exposed to concepts that other people are unaware of and I can get results that other people cannot. Yet just saying it like that, listening out loud won’t cut it. Why?

Student:

It’s not related to their values.

Igor:

An idea that it’s not related to their values.

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Emotions?

Igor:

It doesn’t address the emotions. Absolutely. What else?

Student:

It hasn’t aligned with their objections.

Igor:

It hasn’t aligned with their objections. You’re really close to what I mean. Essentially their objection, their valid concern and it’s a valid concern, is a thought loop running through inside their mind. I must stop that thought loop somehow. Just telling them stop the thought loop is not going to cut it. Now there are many ways to cut that thought loop out. You can give massive amounts of evidence. That’s the whole social proof thing, right? Here is a testimonial. Each one erodes the thought loop a little bit until there’s no juice left inside of it. That’s one way to do it, but it’s long and slow and I don’t have the patience. Another way to do this is to use basically the way the brain works and here’s the beauty of it. The very act of me breaking through one of these thought loops proves to them that I’m exactly the right person to do the coaching in the first place, because I’ve already done what I said I can do. Doesn’t that make sense? Do you see how that works? Believe me, I’m about to show you something which may seem relatively small and actually we’ve already done the essence of it already without realizing it yet. It may seem relatively small, but the impact it can have is huge. We’re talking about hard-bitten executives. Does anyone here work with executives like board of director level? These people are pretty hard-bitten. Wouldn’t it be fair to say that it’s hard to get through? Once you’re on their inside, in other words, once they trust you it’s actually really easy to work with them, but getting there is a real struggle. You have to work quite hard to get through. You just take an average half an hour to do that using what I’m about to show you. Would you like to see how that works?


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You already know the secret to some extent. We have an autopilot response. It’s automatic. It’s looping. It’s the expectation they’ve come with, the framework, the hidden framework that is there, but no one really talks about. Does that make sense? It’s what we talked about all morning really. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I know it’s there, because partly I feel it too. It’s like what have I got to offer or partly because people ask me or partly because I may have already failed with previous incarnations of this, depending on what my level of experience is. Does that make sense? As it happens I was lucky. I had worked with that level of individual before as a lawyer, so I already understood the mindset to a greater extent. That was just fortunate for me; otherwise, it would have been a much harder way of figuring this out. So that’s the first thing. I know there are expectations and I can pretty much guess what they will be. There’s a thought loop and I have to interrupt that thought loop somehow. I want to present a reframe. In other words, this is good because… I want to play the Glad Game with them in some respects, right? I mean the Glad Game is easy to play, isn’t it? The essence of the Glad Game, though, is not the reframe portion. The essence of the Glad Game is having someone accept the reframe portion. So what do we already know? What mechanisms do we have that will allow us to stop thought loops, to stop automatic ideas from circulating round and round? The amygdala, right, that’s what it does. Anyone here ever been in love? Anyone or is it just me? When that happens, how straight do you think? Your powers of critical analysis, how sharp and crystal clear are they? How logical is your behavior? Has anyone here ever been scared or is it just me? When you’ve been afraid, how easy is it to make sense? When someone tries to calm you down with logic, you can recognize the logic of it, but you still don’t care. Isn’t that right? Have you ever been so stressed, tense or afraid of something? Not like a physical fear of like an exam coming up or something like that, but you try to read something like a text, perhaps you’re doing a revision at school and you just can’t make sense of it. You read the same paragraph five times and you know it should make sense, but somehow you don’t know what the words mean. Anyone ever have that experience? What’s going on here is the amygdala is short circuiting your neo-cortex. Your neo-cortex is where language occurs or the greater portion of it. It’s where the logic occurs. It’s where your ability to read and comprehend occurs and it’s one of the first things that shutdown when the lower more

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 primitive parts of your brain like the mammalian brain -- the reptilian brain -start to take over. The amygdala is at the lowest part of the brain – the reptilian brain – and it can switch off your neo-cortex like that. Now what I’m proposing is not that we swatch people off and turn them into lizards so they can start licking walls and sunbathing, right? It would be amusing for a short period of time, but your career prospects aren’t really that good at that point. However, you can stimulate the amygdala to a certain extent to cut through the thought loops and then present an idea. Here’s how this works and there is actually research that backs this up. Imagine you’re in a supermarket and you’re selling little cheese and wine niblets like any other cheese and wine niblets anywhere in the country. Supermarkets do it everywhere, right? People come up, they’ll taste the little cheese niblet. At the end of it they’ll say well if you want some they cost $10. Now the people will take the cheese and buy it or they won’t. It’s a very simple test. It’s very black and white, isn’t it? So in the first trial people will taste the niblets, this little gift, this little sort of reciprocity of course and you say oh, this is a great cheese it’s only $10. Of course, their contrasting it to other cheeses, the $5 cheese, the $2 cheese. They’ve got nothing else to contrast it against. Ten dollars? Well, my autopilot says I don’t buy $10 cheeses or maybe they do buy $10 cheeses so you have your baseline response. Some buy it and some don’t. Where’s the reframe in that by the way? Only $10, right? It’s a great cheese, only $10. So now another group comes along, another day happens. People test the cheese and then say, how much is it? They say oh, it’s 1, 000 cents. That’s only $10 to you and me. Do you think the sales went up or down on that second occasion? The sales went up. Why? Consider it, one thousand cents. Do you think about $10 in the units of cents? You get the principle here, right? What’s happened is it’s an unusual number for the mind to manage when it comes to cents. That is enough of a surprise to trigger the amygdala mildly. You see, you don’t want to trigger it intensely like with a shock induction, because then everything is deleted for a while and you have to work much harder to get the message across; plus, it’s more obvious and the whole point of Conversation Hypnosis is to not be obvious. Does that make sense?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 If you’re too obvious you can actually trigger the opposite effect. If people think they are being influenced you can create resistance to the fact that they feel like they’re being influenced. Do you see how that works? This is why you walk out of a store where the salesperson tries too hard, because you feel like they’re trying to influence you, which of course they are, every salesperson has to, but you don’t like it. You respond against it and that’s why you leave or why you shoo them away. Make sense? So the secret is you trigger it mildly and then offer your reframe. Let me give you another example. A university campus people are selling these little cupcakes. You know the little cupcakes, the little cakes in a cup? What do you sell? We sell cupcakes, only $1 a piece or whatever, right? A certain amount of people buy cupcakes. They’re tasty. They’re nice. Next day or next campus, you come along and there’s a big sign up. Half cakes only $1 each. What’s a half cake, any ideas? Student:

Half a cupcake.

Igor:

It’s actually a cupcake. It’s exactly the same product. Let me reemphasize this. It’s exactly the same product, but it’s given an unusual title. It stops the thought loops for a moment, half cakes, what’s that? It allows a fresh evaluation of what this is. In other words, the autopilot response to cupcakes – no thanks or yes please – has been shutdown. Now you have a chance to influence, but it’s only a small thing. Let me explain what I mean by the small surprise or novelty. In another little bit of research, people go round from door to door collecting money for a local charity, a nice thing, unless, of course, the charity is the let’s shoot dogs charity, in which case if you like dogs it’s not such a nice thing. In this case it was a nice charity. So they knock on the door and ask, would you like to donate some money for charity, $10 is the usual amount? They got some. They didn’t get some. It’s all good. The next time they went round and said we’re from such and such a charity. We do such and such a thing, exactly the same initial process. Would you like to donate money sum to this charity? You just switched the words around, right? The donations went up.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Then they went round again to see hey, can we accentuate this effect, all right. Would you like a money sum donate to this charity? Way down in response to almost nothing. Why? The final version was so awkward it almost sounded like a clear attempt at influencing. It was like what the hell are these guys doing? That’s kind of weird. Are they trying to play with my mind? Are you amusing my mind? All of a sudden you close the door and go leave me alone. So the key to triggering the amygdala is it has to be a small novelty if you’re going to break through a thought loop. Now there are times for large novelties, big surprises, big shocks like an instant induction, but those are in context where people will accept it. In other words, you’ve already worked to create a context where a bigger surprise is appropriate. For example, once I got into the coaching work I had a much more leeway to do more outrageous things to shock the pants off them, not literally, and get a better reaction as a result, but I don’t have that leeway when I first meet them. Do you see how that works? I need mild surprise. I need something mildly unexpected. Is this making sense to you so far? There are many ways to achieve this. One of my friends is a charisma coach in London. He takes people out in the streets of London or sometimes they fly him out to exotic places to work with them there. He just shows them how to have more fun in life, meet people, hang out and get free pizzas, all kinds of stuff like that. He’s just a fun, social guy and one of his favorite games is he’ll come up to random people, maybe it’s in a shop, and he sees a shirt he likes. He’ll call over the sales assistant and says um, please don’t think I’m racist. I’m not being racist, but how much does this shirt cost? It’s a complete non sequitur and of course it’s a surprise. Some people look at him and go ha? The surprise is too much for them. You’ve probably fried a few circuits there. Most of them just look and suddenly they start laughing. You’ve just reset the interaction. So rather than just being from clunky store clerk mode they’ve gone into social normal human being modes and the interaction becomes much more genuine and much richer and more fun for everyone. Do you see how that works? Again, it’s context dependent. You don’t walk into a hundred million dollar company and say hey, don’t think that I think that you’re ugly, but would you like to sign this contract? It would not necessarily work in that context so

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 well. These things are context dependent, right? The principle though is the same. Do you get this? Would you like to know how I use to do this with my clients? The answer is very simple. It’s a magic moment. It’s actually on the Magic Moments Master Class. Remember the magic moments? What does it do? It triggers the amygdala, doesn’t it? It triggers it. It hones it down to a point. The point is my reframe. The point is I can work with the mind. I know things about the mind that most people don’t, even the PhD’s, but I can’t say it. I have to let them conclude it. Does that make sense to you guys? So the magic moment I used to use was a mind read. It was easy for me because I knew the industry and I knew the executives. I knew that there were certain patterns – remember those five clients -- they would fall into. So at the meeting I’d list their values: what’s important to them, why is it you’ve become a coach now, what’s this, that and the other. So the values were already making them feel very in there and one of two things would happen, either they gave me their values and I’d feel this is good and I’d just run with it. Great, job done; sometimes it was kind of 5050. You have people turning round and they wouldn’t want to answer the value questions. They’d be more cautious. It would be too personal for that point. Does that kind of make sense? So I’d say look, let’s do this another way, let me just take a guess and see if I understand your position correctly and just please correct me if I misread the situation. You’re an executive, you’ve got a team and you’re probably finding these problems. You’ve probably tried these things and they’ve failed and you’ve now got this situation and these kinds of situations here and, honestly, you probably don’t know what to do about it. You feel like no one has prepared you for it and you’re probably right, because it’s not in any MBA program. It’s not any management school thing. It’s something that’s outside of that. The irony is you probably know someone who could probably deal with that situation better, but you don’t even know how to ask them for help. Would that be fair to say? They’re sitting there going how do you know me? Would it be fair to say that the amygdala has been stimulated to some degree? At that point my reframe is very simple. My job is to help your mind to figure out the answers so you can do these things. You see, there are things that you cannot learn from books, MBA programs or any other thing,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 but the irony is you have the answer inside; otherwise, you would not be able to recognize those problems yourself. My job is to help you find those answers so you can bring the same genius that made you reach the top of the organization and apply it those situations so you can solve those problems just as efficiently. That’s really all I do. I think only one person I can recall currently, who signed up for a coaching contract with me, once I sat down with them over the course of an hour and had like a pre interview. Sometimes it’s between half an hour to an hour depending on the individual. Once I actually sat down face to face with someone, I believe there is only one person I can currently remember -- I could be wrong, it’s been a while now -- that did not sign up for a coaching contract there and then. There were a few others who didn’t sign up, but their values were in the wrong place in terms of they didn’t care about a coaching thing. It was just recommended to them by someone else who thought to ask. They really didn’t care, so we just cut the meeting short and left it at that. So that’s just to give you the parameters I was working in. So this is kind of powerful stuff, right? Who here would like to learn how to do that any time, any place, any where? Would that be of interest to you or should we just skip it and just have an early dinner? Students: Let’s do it. Igor:

All right. So the first thing I want to do with you is I’d like to give you a very simple system to create little moments that trigger the amygdala. You know the money sum example, things like that that you can do. You already have one whole class of things that will do that. Do you know what those are?

Students: Magic moments. Igor:

Exactly. I’m going to assume that you can work your magic moments into different settings, whether they’re corporate settings, educational settings or therapeutic settings. Really there is enough in those things that you can adjust them and find ones that are relevant for different settings. We’re not going to necessarily cover that as a unit, just because you already have that as a resource. There’s another thing that you can do, which is more down the money sum kind of route. That’s where you use what I call Mind Bending Language. We’re not going to give you the whole Mind Bending Language Course,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 because that’s a four-day course. Whilst this is a long course going from 10 days suddenly to two weeks, it just adds more and more and before you know it you’re here for the entire year going when can I go home and actually use this stuff. So I’ll just give you the quick nutshell guide to mind bending language. Essentially what you’re going to do is you’re going to use adjectives and adverbs to change the way people perceive what is normally being said. ‘Would you like to donate some money’ is understood as a phrase. It’s a common phrase. It’s easy to understand, isn’t it? ‘Would you like to donate money sum’, there’s something not quite right with it. You can’t quite put your finger on it at first. It calls more attention to it, because the amygdala, of course, is triggered by its novelty. Do you see how that works? We can create the same novelty with any other kind of linguistic construct if we change the way the words are phrased or introduced so they’re not done in an ordinary fashion. Here is simple vocabulary that you can start practicing that will do that. These are some of what I would call Mind Bending Power Words. Remember the power words from the first day? This is the mind bending language equivalent of power words and they do for mind bending language what power words do for regular hypnosis. These are just some simple phrases. On their own they don’t really seem that unusual, do they?     

Other than More than Aside from Only All

They’re pretty standard, normal everyday words, aren’t they? It’s how you use them to modify a normal sentence or a normal idea that makes a difference. Other than all the things you think you know about running a business, what’s more than you’ve done already that will make you more successful, any idea? Do you notice how your mind is already spinning a little bit into like, what? I didn’t even consider that. That, my friends, is the amygdala being triggered.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Aside from all the things you’ve already tried, what are only all those things that you’ve yet to do that you can’t even consider property, which when you do will help you solve that problem easily. Whose mind is starting to spin a little bit already? Think about it. No, we’re not going to make it that much worse. We’re going to keep it at a simple level. Just think about this. We’re using normal phrases. These are natural ways of using language and they’re not presented in a weird, convoluted like ‘donation money sum make’. That’s just like either I have an incomplete grasp of the English language or I’m trying to do something and I’m very inept about it. The ideas I presented to you are absolutely logical and when you hear them you think yeah, they’re supposed to make sense, but it takes a little bit of time for your brain to catch up. This is important. When you use mind bending language, the more of these phrases you put in to put more spin on the more time you have to allow them to recover so that they can mentally process what you say next. If you have too much of this that mental process could create a mental gap where the information doesn’t stick to anything, because they just haven’t a chance to process it. Does that make sense? So this is a balancing act and we’ll get to play with it a little bit. You have a question. Do you want to come up for it or is it just a quick one? Student:

Sure. I guess it was along the lines of what you just said like overriding the brain, for example. So let’s say I was to say the money sum thing to someone when I’m collecting charity. ♦ What if someone, especially someone more linguistically forward or something like that, were to challenge the grammar or the language that you’re using?

Igor:

Right. In that sense if it’s the money sum example, of course most people don’t do that, but if you ask somebody, for example a school teacher, it might trigger their critical factor because they’re used to looking out for these things to correct them, right?

Student:

Yes.

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In which case that particular maneuver hasn’t worked. Now, when we come on to mind bending language, the beauty of this is the phrases or the statements you make will be grammatically 100% correct.

Student:

Oh, they will be.

Igor:

Did I say anything which was grammatically incorrect just now?

Student:

I guess not.

Igor:

Aside from everything I said, what are all the things I haven’t said yet that are only making sense when you consider them?

Student:

Yeah, I guess you have a point. ♦ Most people won’t question them, right?

Igor:

Well there’s no reason to. If anything I’ll sit there and go what did he say? You have to match it to the personality. Someone who is mentally more alert, you can put a few more spins in. People who are like just don’t make me think, man, then you put next to nothing in, because it’s more than enough already. Does that make sense?

Student:

Okay.

Igor:

See, you have to judge the context very clearly. Plus, if you overplay your hand a little bit, what I said a moment ago, you must give them processing time. They’re going like… If I see someone doing something like what the…? I say look, let me make this easy. I hope you make better choices. Do you hear the reframe? But, of course, now the reframe has somewhere to go, doesn’t it? Are there any thought loops fighting my reframe? No. I don’t have to stop the train anymore. It’s already stopped dead in its track. I can change the passengers out and say off you go and start the loop running again. Does that make more sense?

Student:

Yes. Thank you for clarifying.

Igor:

You’re very welcome. Do you want to come up? Is this useful? Do you like this? The Objection Destroyer.

Student: ♦ Can you do that in the context of writings too?

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Igor:

In writing, absolutely. It’s just in writing you don’t have the luxury of feedback so you cannot as easily amend mistakes if you’ve gone too far. So in writing I would suggest that you tone these things down significantly so you’re erring on the side of caution other then that, of course you can. Make sense everyone?

Student:

I, fortunately, have the DVD set and was with you in New York when we had two days of NPL.

Igor:

Pretty trippy, hey?

Student:

Very trippy. I’ve used it. I’m still learning it, but I’ve used it in therapy and the worst thing I’ve gotten is, I don’t understand. And my response is that’s right. I have to say my experience has been phenomenal using the mind bending language.

Igor:

Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, give him a round of applause for doing good work. Bear in mind this is the real executive summary or the short version of mind bending language, but already you can see, just with these little power words, these power phrases or mind bending phrases, that you can start creating these little spins inside people. Wouldn’t that be fair to say? Let’s go through the whole process very quickly that we do in that case. So we’re having a conversation and in the context of the conversation a problem comes up. Would that be fair to say? So you’re going to now acknowledge the problem and you’re going to add some kind of mind bending language or a magic moment, because a magic moment can be used in exactly this same way. A lot of times it will come up in this sense. A lot of times when people ask a question you can say let me show you something. You do something and they go oh, I get it now. You’ve said the exact same things afterwards. In other words, after this process here, you’ve offered the reframe or the explanation and suddenly it makes more sense. Remember, magic moments can be anything from a little anecdote to a little story through to drawing a little picture or doing a more elaborate thing like a magic trick or something like that. Does that make sense? This is an Objection Destroyer. It’s very simple and it’s very easy to do. Does anyone recognize a pattern here by the way?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Students: Yes. Igor:

This is really the reframe. The “t” stands for test. You actually might as well throw it in there. The test is check with them that they’ve understood:    

Do you see what I mean by that? Does that make sense to you? Is that the kind of thing you’re looking for? What do you think about that?

This is kind of your test here. We’re checking did the reframe settle in the place you needed it to. Does that make sense? So that’s that PCAT Formula in action. It also, by the way, happens to be the ABS Formula. You acknowledge it. The problem and the acknowledgment get their attention. This is the bypassing of the critical factor and the reframe and checking. That’s when you stimulate the unconscious mind to make sure it’s all worked. Whether you want to think of it as ABS or in the terms of PCAT it really is the same process. Does that make sense? I’d like to spend a little time now to really make something of this. Each one of you has a particular area in which you wish to be more influential. Is that not so? I mean one which is more important than anything else. I know we want to use this in general life and so on, but there’s one area that if you’re influence increases even by a small amount, it will make your life easier, better, you’ll be a lot happier and it will be worthwhile you having come to this whole course. Would that be fair to say? Students: Yes. Igor:

I’d like you to think about that particular area and aside from all the things you’ve already done with it, I would like you to consider it in only one way at this time and that is consider yourself to be some kind of a coach or consultant in that process. If it’s sales, you’re a consultant to help them make a good decision when they’re buying. If it’s therapy, you’re coaching them through a process of change. If it’s some kind of consulting process like they need to change managerial structures, then you’re coaching them through that process of change and consulting with them to help them get the right decisions again at that point.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you see where I’m going with this? If you’re teaching, you’re really coaching them on their understanding so they can go step by step through to the understanding of whatever the topic at hand is. I’d like for you to think of your particular field in those terms, if you could, just for a moment and an interaction that would typify what that context is like. A one-to-one interaction would be ideal right now and we’re going to play this in an interesting way. I’d like you to get with a partner. I would like for you to coach your partner in terms of what that field is or what the industry is. Your partner then is going to play the role of the coach, consultant or whatever that we just talked about. You will be your own client or worst client. It wouldn’t necessarily the worst. We’ll just have someone who’s just a little bit tricky. Your job, as the client, is to role play someone that you’ve already met; someone who typifies the people’s reaction in that area. For example, if I am a hypnotherapist, okay, I want to think about smoking clients. Great, my interaction is going to be a smoking client coming in saying, make me stop smoking, which is not very useful for me as a hypnotherapist. Now I’m actually going to play me, the person saying make me stop smoking, and the coach – the hypnotist – is going to go through the entire influence model we’ve built up so far, which means:   

He’ll develop hypnotic rapport, He’ll get your values, and Read into them whatever the drivers might have been.

If there’s a conflict:   

He’ll test for conflict, Clash, or Something missing along the way.

Of course, something will arise. There’ll be some kind of objection. So as soon as an objection occurs you’re into the Objection Destroyer. This, the objection they give you, is the starting point that sets out the Objection Destroyer. They’ll acknowledge it. They’ll go oh, I understand. So this is a problem or something that you need to have addressed, is that correct? Yes. So aside from all the things that you think this thing will do for you, inside of this context have you considered that it could be all these

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 other things? For example, using the car thing again, the safety of the brakes and whatever it is. In other words, you’re going to start by acknowledging it then you’re going to move into either a magic moment or a mind bending moment using the mind bending language or a magic moment you already know. Then you’ll offer your reframe, your Glad Game version of it which lets them see the world differently, either to see that the objection really is not that important or to train them so there’s something of more importance that they haven’t considered yet. You sort of add value into the whole mix that diminishes that or to resolve the objection so they realize that hang on a second, I thought this was a problem, but actually I misunderstood, the situation is actually very different. Does that make sense to you? Then they just check in with you. So then the hypnotist will check in and of course you’ll be reading their reaction more than what their response is. Make sense? That’s all. I don’t even care if you follow through with this all the way to the summary or you can do the summary and the future memory. I don’t care if you get all the way through to that. I’m happy if you just get to this point here. Make sense? Now you’re going to be the client, of course, because you’re going to role play the scenario that you know best. If you’re a hypnotherapist, you’ll know hypnotherapy clients pretty well. If you’re a corporate consultant, well you’ll know corporate executives pretty well. If you’re a car salesman, you’ll know car buyers pretty well. If you’re a nurse, you’ll know patients pretty well. Do you see where I’m going with this? What I want you to do as they’re taking you through this process is I want you to notice how you feel. If they make a mistake, please don’t tell them about it. It doesn’t really matter. The point is I want you to spot and think to yourself, if this was going for real I would want him to go in this direction now rather than that. Does that make sense? You’re going to contrast their behavior. If they’re doing a great job go great, that’s what I needed and make a note of what it is or a mental note of what it is they’re doing right. If they make a mistake, contrast against it and go to yourself, great. I’ll make sure not to do that when I am in front of my own clients or go to this direction because I

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 feel intuitive that’s where I want to go or I need someone to go for me. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? This is why you’ll be playing the client in that role interaction first. We probably won’t have time today, but if you want to do this on your own time or if we have some time we’ll do this tomorrow, you can be the person coaching someone through the buying process, the learning process and through the change process, but you need your instincts in place first and the best way to get instincts is to be the client. Does that make sense? Student: ♦ So, if we role the client who is going to be the coach? Igor:

You’ll switch roles.

Student:

Oh.

Igor:

Right. So you’ll have two people, one will be the coach first and the client only that coach will not choose the field. The client will choose the field. I am a business executive and you need to treat me in this way. Then the coach will go okay, I don’t know much about executives, but I’ll give it a good shot. It will be 15 minutes apiece. Once you’ve done your piece you’ll switch roles. Now he’s a coach and he’s a client. The client might say okay, in my example I’m a hypnotherapist and you have to motivate me for change. So he goes okay, I don’t know much about hypnotherapy, but I’ll do my best. Does that make sense?

Student:

I’m just having a hard time wrapping my mind around what that looks like.

Igor:

Do you want to have a quick role play of it, a really brief one? Do you want me to role play the role of a client or the role of a coach?

Students: Both. Igor:

Of course. All right, can I have a volunteer to just do it quickly? Can I borrow you then? Come on up. We’ll do this very quickly. I’ll do a two minute version of it otherwise we’ll go forever. I’m going to play the client first. I’m going to choose something which is of importance to me, which would be hypnotherapy. I like teaching people hypnotherapy and doing zone. So I’m going to tell my coach, okay Eric, I don’t know what your profession normally is, but this is going to be therapy.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’m going to be a smoking client and your job is to make me want to quit smoking and realize that I’m going to have to do all the inner work myself. It’s not going to be all up to you. Eric:

In that case can we switch chairs?

Igor:

Are you going to be the coach?

Eric:

Well, the guidelines are there.

Igor:

Oh, you want to see the guidelines. Sure.

Eric:

Yes.

Igor:

Do you want to turn that on and sake sure you get it close to your mouth so people can see you. Now we’re putting Eric on the spot a little bit here, so I’ll play both the client and I’ll coach him to coach me as a client as well so you get a sense of it. Are you good?

Eric:

I think so.

Igor:

Okay. Actually the first thing you’ll be looking at is hypnotic rapport.

Eric:

Sure. It’s all good.

Igor:

Okay, so we’ve got a little rapport. There you go, done. Thank you.

Eric:

Check.

Igor:

Values and drivers. What happened was I did a little eyebrow flash, just in case you were missing it. I’m hamming it up a little bit.

Eric:

Your issue is what?

Igor:

I want to stop smoking. Make me stop smoking.

Eric:

Okay. So you want to stop smoking. I’d like to know why? What is it about stopping smoking that’s really important to you?

Igor:

Great. You see how he’s straight into the values? Well, I don’t know. It’s just that it’s healthier for me and it costs too much money.

Eric:

It’s healthy for you and it costs too much money.

Igor:

Does he have my values yet?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Students: No. Igor:

Not yet, but he’s getting close.

Eric:

So it costs too much money, it’s unhealthy, why now?

Igor:

Okay, let me just pause you there for a second and just give some coaching there. You can go for why now, which is excellent. That’s a possibility or you can just bounce up on what I’ve just said. So when you’re not spending money and you’re healthy what does that do for you? That’s the easiest way of climbing the ladder.

Eric:

Okay.

Igor:

Why now will give you more information and you’ll get there eventually. It’ going to take a little longer that’s all. So we’ll just keep the simple version. We may as well just bounce me up.

Eric:

Okay. So if you could walk out of here knowing that you’ve stopped and that you won’t start again what would that mean to you? What would that be like?

Igor:

Great. That’s a great. Well, I’d be just so much freer and I’d feel really proud of myself for having done it. Do you now have something worth playing with?


Right. What is your mind read of the possible drivers, power possibly, independence possibly, acceptance possibly; although that’s more about other people. Do you see where we’re going with this?

Student:

Tranquility.

Igor:

Tranquility, a piece of mind thing possibly. These are all things you can test out in the process. We definitely have a set of values, which is feel proud of myself. That’s definitely a value there and something for you to utilize. Do you see how that works? So far we’re at this level here. We’re going to assume we’ve done a good job of that now. Is that okay with you?

Eric:

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Okay, sure. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Igor:

So let’s see if we can get some objections round. You can do two things. One is you can pull objections out on purpose like what prevents you or why haven’t you stopped already or why have you come to me? That will bring objections round. Or, you can go straight to the testing area, which will bring it out. Like, so if you have a method that will make you feel respect of yourself and you can finish it and stop it and so on, would you sign up on the dotted line? Sure I would. Does that make sense? So choose whichever you want to do, it doesn’t matter.

Eric:

If you found that you could feel great pride knowing that you can walk away from this habit and feel healthier and save all that money you’d sign on the dotted line, wouldn’t you?

Igor:

Ah, yeah.

Eric:

I take it that you’re almost sure of that.

Igor:

Great. So carry on with that thought.

Eric:

What else do you think you need to do that now?

Igor:

Exactly. Very simply he’s like what is it you’re missing? It seems like something is missing there or, have I misunderstood this? Well, I’ve tried in the past and I’ve failed. I just want you to do it. You’re a hypnotist, just put me to sleep and make me do it. Now you have an objection, don’t you? Isn’t that an objection?

Eric:

An objection to?

Igor:

It’s a problem. My problem is I don’t have faith in myself because I’ve failed in the past. The second problem is I want you to do it and I don’t expect to do it myself. It is a particular one for therapy in the sense that I have to take responsibility for the change or I can’t do it. Make sense? So now you’re on that side of the ball there. Let’s just work with the first one, which is the idea that I fear that I’ll fail again. Is that problem?

Students: Yes.

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What’s the first step on that? You acknowledge the problem. So go ahead and acknowledge it.

Eric:

Is it so that you feel that you’ve failed in the past and this is something that you’d like to make a change about?

Igor:

Right. So, essentially, all you’re doing is you’re going to echo back his concern. So you’ve tried to quit in the past and you failed. You’re not sure you can do it. You’d rather have someone else do it for you. Is that what you’re saying? Do you see where I’m going with this? He’s reflecting exactly my concern at that point, acknowledging it and that makes me feel okay, someone understands me now. Now I’ve got something that I can start reframing and so on. Does that make sense? Is everyone still with us, even around the corner there somewhere? Does that make sense?

Eric:

Yes.

Igor:

So if he throws that at me, I’m going to like it and go yes, that’s exactly it. So my loop is basically I can’t do it, you make me do it. I can’t do it, you make me do. I can’t do it, you make me do. That’s my thought loop, basically. You must interrupt that somehow, whether it’s a magic moment like the Pointing Game would fit perfectly here or it could be some mind bending language, which would be some of these things here, followed by a reframe – change comes from within. This is something happened in New York when we were doing the New York Seminar. Actually, I live in Thailand a lot of times and I actually saw a couple of Thai priests. They’re all Buddhists in Thailand of course and they were doing the whole New York thing. They go up to one of the hotdog vendors and say make me one with everything. They get their hotdogs and they give him the $10. Then their waiting and waiting and the hotdog vendor is just ignoring them. They turn around and say excuse me, where’s my change. The hotdog vendor says the change comes from within. Did we have a magic moment folks?


Is it appropriate given the problem I’ve just described?

Students: Yes.

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Right. Do you see where we’re going with this? I want you to understand there’s lots of variety. Whether you want to do mind bending language or a magic moment and so on, you have lots of choice it’s just you have to fit it into the social context of the interaction. Is it making sense so far?


At the end of that really that joke was both a magic moment and the reframe was in there already, wasn’t it? The change comes from within. Then he might make it a little joke and say, but seriously, you realize that the change comes from within. All we were doing is making sure that that change gets accessed easily. In the past you tried to make the change from without and that’s why you were without results. Now we’ll go inside and help you to get to that place where you can make the change and it will be easy. Would you like to do that?

Eric:

Yes.

Igor:

Yes. Does he now have me?


Has he broken my thought loop?


His job is now very easy or relatively speaking very easy, because most of the problems that would otherwise have to be dealt with in therapy have been taken care of before we started. Do you see how that works? This works the same whether it’s a corporate meeting, a coaching session, or you’re teaching someone something, mentoring them, selling them something or you’re getting your friends to come to the cinema. The same process fits everywhere. Is this helping? Was this a useful demonstration for you, yes?


Thank you. Give Eric a great big hand for doing such a good job. Thank you, Eric. I don’t know, Eric, I presume you’re not a hypnotherapist. Is that correct?

Eric:

I’m in training.

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You’re in training, excellent. Please notice that your partner may well not know anything about your industry, which means they’ll probably make blunders, right? If you wish to whisper in his ear and say take it this route just to help you get more of the kind of picture that would normally develop, by all means do so, but the purpose we use to observe oh, I know what you could do at this point. This is what I would do. It’s a lot easier to see it from the inside than from the out. Does that make sense to you guys? Everyone clear on the exercise? Honestly, going back to this thing here, if you just get to the Objection Destroyer and you do one round, you clean up one objection and you don’t even finish the whole transaction that’s fine. That’s all I care about, because you started at the right place: You’ve gone through a systematic place of looking for the values and the drivers. You’ve tested for a conflict or an objection and when you’ve received one you’ve managed to resolve it. At that point it’s just a question of can you do that same process enough times to take care of everything, really. Does that make sense to you guys? So I’m going to give you guys 15 minutes apiece. That’s half an hour in total. Please keep track of your own time so that I don’t have come in halfway through and disturb people when they’re doing things. So in half an hour we’ll be back here and we’ll finish up for the day. Has this been useful so far? So, please, keep that motivation going and really engage yourself in the process. Be a good client and spot the places in which the other person could really have made a difference for you, because that’s what you will need to do with your clients, subjects, students, etc. Make sense? All right guys, off you go. This room is starting to look like some works been done in it. Do you feel like you’ve been doing some work?

Students: Igor:

Yes. Good. How do you feel about the exercise you just did? Did you enjoy it? Was it interesting?

Students: Yes.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Eric:

It really crystallized.

Igor:

You really crystallized. Wasn’t it interesting being your own subject, your own client and experiencing the influencing process the way they will be experiencing it. Isn’t that a really useful way of doing things?

Students: Very much so. Igor:

Do you want to come up?

Eric:

No.

Igor:

No. Is it a quick one?

Eric:

I can’t stand right now.

Igor:

You can’t stand right now.

Eric:

That was the single best exercise I’ve been through and I’ve been training for 16 years.

Igor:

So he says in 16 years of hypnotic training that’s the single best exercise he’s ever been through. Please say that on the testimonials when it comes time. That will really be worthwhile, right? So go ahead.

Eric:

Okay.

Igor:

Stand to the side a little bit. That way the camera will be able to catch a shadow and your beard will be full-faced.

Eric:

I really enjoyed this exercise and I believe that I understand more than I actually think I do.

Igor:

Always good.

Eric:

So what I was doing is we were identifying the problem and then I was using some mind bending language to try to weed out exactly how I can illicit some values and to get her in that trance state. Once I would start to use the mind bending language, I would go into some ‘yes’ sets to try to direct her, because the problem is people will get stuck in the loop if you just keep asking questions. They’ll just keep saying well I’m not sure. I don’t know. I think so, yeah. Correct me if I’m wrong, my question basically is this. The point is to kind of guide them to a solution-oriented thing where they don’t really have any other choice except to say yes, I want to feel better about that.

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Igor:

Right. In terms of them not having the choice, it’s the question of resolving the conflict they’ve created by being like I don’t know. There’s this problem, but I can’t really tell. The bit where I wouldn’t say you don’t give them any choice is what conclusion they land to. You can offer them reframes, but that’s really more a test to see how well it suits that person and if they come back with another objection great, because they’re telling you more about how they need to resolve whatever concern they have. That’s the main thing. Now, the simple way of doing that is very simple. If you want to have a simple, quick formula it’s:      

They have a problem. You acknowledge the problem the way they present it to you. You create a little mind bending moment, whether it’s a little bit of language or a magic moment; something so they no longer think in the same loops like they used to. That you’ve already spotted that loop happening. Immediately afterwards in that processing space, if it’s a crazy processing you need to let them come down a little bit. Before the intellect kicks in again in normal mode you present to them the reframe. It’s a very simple reframe. What happens is they’ll latch onto it as a new thought or idea, because it’s easier than trying to figure out what’s going on.

Now rest assured, if it’s not appropriate to them they’ll latch onto it, but then another objection will arise because it hasn’t quite satisfied the concern that they had. Especially if you know the industry you’ll know the concerns, which means you’ll know how to resolve those concerns ahead of time, that’s part of your job about knowing your field, you can offer them valuable reframes. That takes care of these things automatically, at which point they’ll go oh yeah. Yeah, fine. I get it. Then it’s done. Eric:

The problem was, wanting to change, but not being able to stick to a program.

Igor:

Right.

Eric:

So I said well what about change that might happen to you that would happen before you’re able to change. She kind of just said ha? Then I said that’s right. What about change would make you feel really good?

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Excellent. Do you see the beauty of what he just did? That is exactly what we’ve been talking about. There’s a mind bending moment which actually has logic within it, if they got to think it through, then the reframe is very simple. We’re going to find a way that you can change so you can feel good. It’s like yes. That’s what I want.

Eric:

Right.

Igor:

Shall we begin? Beautiful. Give him a round of applause because that was a beautiful way of doing it.

Eric:

I just have one more real quick. So then at that point is when you kind of start to use more language patterns to structure a more concrete change as opposed to just leaving it at that. Then I went into a future memory and created…

Igor:

Exactly, because now you’ve just gone back to this bit here where you summarize their values, including whatever they just said, which is like the idea of feeling good about change. Then you go the future memory of how good they’ll feel once they have change and so on. If it’s a change work process then you just go straight into induction. If fact, the future memory will be the beginning of the change work. You’re already into it. You’re now rolling up your sleeves and doing the work. You’re done.

Eric:

Exactly.

Igor:

Excellent; beautiful.

Eric:

Thank you.

Igor:

Thank you. Give him a round of applause before the next one comes up.

Student:

I’d just like to ask, Igor. So you have the problem and you’ve acknowledged that already, so you have the choice to use mind bending language or a magic moment.

Igor:

Absolutely.

Student:

My understanding of a magic moment is you can give maybe an analogy, a fact, a testimonial as you said. I don’t have any background on mind bending language, actually. ♦ Can you give a clear example?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You said there’s a shock moment there when you give the other than. Igor:

The simplest way of doing it is do you remember what Eric just said a moment ago? That was a mind bending moment. Did you follow all the stuff he was saying about changing before you’re ready to and considering things after that’s done so by the time you realize what’s going on it’s just about changing and feeling good, isn’t it.

Student:

All right. Okay. I got it.

Igor:

Do you understand?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Thank you. By the way, please give him a round of applause. Thank you. The reaction you just saw is what happens when you offer someone the objection. It’s exactly that yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but…all right. Thank you. How many of you guys have done something similar to this outside of the context of this training? Have you guys used it in this way before, anyone? Would it be fair to say that that’s actually a pretty standard response? Whether it’s a magic moment or mind bending language it doesn’t matter so much, the point is you’ve shocked their brain a little bit through novelty surprise. It goes out of gear for a second. You present a simple reframe for them to latch onto and then suddenly oh, all right. This is the new reality I guess, fine. It has to be a simple reframe. You can’t have a complex system of levels and gears and anarchy and hierarchy and so on, because then that just creates another level of confusion and that’s not what you want. It’s got to be a very simple, precise, clear message that they just get. Does that make sense?

Students: Yes. Student:

Igor:

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Hi. My partner, Mark and I, both wanted to go through the avenue of getting a client for therapy. The problem we’re addressing, and I’m sure you can apply this to different avenues of business whatever field you’re in is this. ♦ What if they’re having a problem with not seeing themselves having any value that’s worth changing or the thing that they want is…? I’m not worth changing and so on, right? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Yes. That or it’s just not worth it.

Igor:

Fair enough.

Student:

Like they’re feeling numb, almost even suicidal.

Igor:

Sure. The first question is, what kind of clients are you seeing? If they’re already calling you, well there’s already a motivator there and that’s what you end up using. If it’s a question of going to someone who doesn’t really consider change and you want to motivate them to want to change that’s a much bigger deal, because now you have to tread careful territory about how much you impose and so on. In that case, the first thing you want to look for is can you find anything of value in their life. Be a lever. You need leverage; otherwise, they’re nothing. The leverage might be they might be very down on themselves, but it’s all about others.

Student:

Okay.

Igor:

So to the extent you can be more of a force for good in life, doesn’t it make sense to change yourself too? How else are you going to help others? So that’s the leverage. Do you see how I’ve contrasted a conflict, which is I’m not worth changing, but I want to help others live in a better world. Well how can you help others until you have the capacity to help yourself enough that you can do something worthwhile for others too?

Student:

Just another question.

Igor:

Let’s pause there because the question you’ve asked is actually a lot bigger than you may have initially indicated, that’s just a starting point, right?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

The next thing is, especially when we come to the story telling thing, I would do a lot of storytelling to give their unconscious mind directions to head in. This will be a longer process; I did not expect that to be a one-shot deal. I do not expect something as extreme as what you’ve talked about to be a one-shot deal. You’re especially talking about doing an intervention. Has anyone here seen an alcoholic’s intervention or something like that?

Student:

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They’re intense scenarios and they’re pretty 50-50. Some people will go and some people will go the other way. So we want to stack the deck in our favor before we start apply the strong arm, because we want to make sure we’ve primed them to go the direction of health, change, becoming a better person and someone they can be happy with in themselves. Does that make sense?

Student:

Yes. We were thinking story telling or Dream Machine would probably be one way to covertly start going in that direction.

Igor:

Absolutely.

Student:

So I was wondering, going down that road do you have any maybe more specific tips to help the person subconsciously realize that they are excited about something, maybe through the story telling and the Dream Machine and then connect it to the value of the therapy or whatever the item that you want to give them?

Igor:

The answer is very simply yes. If they have a value for something, that is it. As long as they value something there will be some high enough level behind that that is valuable. Whether it’s they have a little pet mouse and they love that mouse, there is a strong emotion there. You can use that as leverage, right?

Student:

Okay.

Igor:

If they can care for that mouse then they have the capacity of caring and how much more can they do for that mouse if they can care for themselves in the same way.

Student:

Right, so just building off of something, the nugget that you’ve found.

Igor:

You build, exactly. The point is you want to get a little foot in the door and then slowly eek it open a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further. That’s really where things like the Distraction Method and Master Class comes in, the stories and so on. You build a little bit at a time. I’m serious, because this is a big topic, right?

Student:

It is, yes.

Igor:

It’s not something you can expect to solve in the first hit. If you do you’ve got lucky and well done. If you can do it consistently please tell me how, because I’d really be interested in finding out. As far as I’m concerned this is not a one-shot deal. You just position the idea of change and that just slowly

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 evolves as they can accept it more and more because they’re lower than low at that point, right? Student:

Right.

Igor:

If it’s a normal, everyday individual the process is much faster, because they’re already actually in a pretty good place. We’re talking about building someone up to be in an okay place, if you see what I mean.

Student:

Yes. Thank you very much.

Igor:

You’re welcome. Are there any other comments or questions? Let’s have one last one then we can finish up for the day.

Student:

You know I was working with Australian Alex in the corner over there and what’s funny is the importance of hypnotic rapport and just that intensity. We wound up going beyond the exercise and just starting to talk about our lives. We wound up actually getting into some really cool places. We did some good stuff, yeah?

Alex:

Definitely.

Igor:

Like it.

Student:

Yeah, kick ass. That’s all I have to say.

Igor:

So this stuff kind of works, right? It opens people up. You notice that? It would be fair to say that you’re opening people up in a way that normal conversations usually do not. Would that be fair to say?

Alex:

Absolutely.

Igor:

That’s kind of what we’re aiming for, right? That’s exactly what we’re aiming for. So what I want to leave you with today is just kind of shorthand of how far you’ve come. I mean do you realize you’ve only been here four days. Does it feel like four days?

Students: No. Igor:

It feels more like four months, doesn’t it? Get on with it. Give me a point. This is a diagram to illustrate how far we have come so far. You should recognize all the features of it. We’ve got the language stuff here, including the power words, the trance themes, the reference similes and the language softeners and all that sort of stuff. We’ve got our performance elements here

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 in red, which is the hypnotic rapport, the inner smile, the H-Plus, the tonality and the rhythms. All these things are actually are actually occurring relatively spontaneously by now, aren’t they? Think about it. How hard did they seem just two days ago and how much of a no-brainer are they now. We’ve got our core inductions, the Utilization Principle, the revivifying inductions, the pacing and leading construction and the conscious and unconscious association. These are our core processes, our bricks to build our hypnotic house. We’ve got the PCAT Formula encapsulating all of this stuff inside of frames to give a process that people can go through for change and we’ve used that essentially to create two vehicles, two, for want of a better word, techniques that have lots of different varieties or variations that you can apply in different places. The first I the Dream Machine, so the Dream Machine has the same construction, frames and so on within the context of a conversational trance. The second is this Objection and Destroyer Right Now, which means you’ve reached the objection. Then using the same principles, the same PCAT Formula and so on, you’re applying the leverage from the frames, in this case the value, in order to destroy the objection so you can handle the concern that they have so that it gets neutralized and so on. Does that make sense? Students: Yes. Igor:

Now the reason we’re doing this is because really, consciously, this is all we have to think about. Oh, time for Dream Machine. There’s always an objection there. I’ll handle that. You don’t need to think about all the things inside, because it’s already there. It’s kind of like a car. Do you think about all the gears, the wheels and the mechanics inside that? No. Someone’s built the car for you. You’ve already built your own car. You’ve built your own machine, your own devices. You spend time tinkering and playing with these concepts so that your unconscious mind can use your instincts naturally and apply this stuff when you need to. When you consider even this last exercise and how well it went, you realize you were doing so much more than asking a few simple questions, were

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you not? Where did all that come from? Did you have to keep track of all the principles, authority and scarcity, reciprocity, feedback loops, utilizing things, that’s right, revivifying experiences? No. Those things were just there for you, were they not? Because they were there for you now when you least expected them to you didn’t have to think, all you needed was a genuine desire to use a simple technique. In this case it was the Objection Destroyer, but it could equally have been the Dream Machine. And, perhaps, tonight as you dream you’ll have a machine that helps you sort through your own experiences and memories and apply the very process of influence that you’ve just been using with others on yourself so that as you dream you dream a new you into existence. It’s easy to do, just close your eyes and go to sleep at night and dreams will come. You can’t help it. Now you might not remember them all, but dreams will come. And if only one of those dreams is a dream of power, a dream of change, a dream of healing, you can sort through your memories and experiences in a way that is appropriate for you, safe for you. For your own values become the frameworks that allows you to clean up your own personal history, where your own experiences become the teachers and the guides that allow you to reach greater heights comfortably, easily, naturally. And if you dreamed it just once you can do it again on another night and another night and one more and again and again in a different night so that days and nights blend into weeks and months. And as the years roll by and the seasons change inside good things happen. Things clearing up, feelings, becoming calmer and more resourceful, more energized. Your own unconscious can, you know, make changes positively and easily in a way that is suitable for you as an individual and you don’t even need to know what is being resolved in order to enjoy the fruits of your labors, the results of just being the better you. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty good deal, don’t you? Good to hear that. For your unconscious mind is there for you. It can make changes, heal the past and prepare you for a spectacular future. I find that quite an encouraging thought, so I thought I might as well share it. I’ll see all of you tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. sharp. Please be here at 8:30 outside. You can chat to your colleagues, chat to your friends and if at some point today you wish to do a little inner smile with someone, maybe

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 tomorrow morning, who am I to stop you? After all, I’m only a hypnotist and you guys know more than I do by now, don’t you? Thank you very much and goodnight.

DVD 18: Simple Hypnotic Persuasion Tactics You Can Easily Slip into Any Conversation Igor:

So are your brains feeling nice and fresh after some evening of relaxation? No, we’re still all over the place. Today will be a little easier day. We’re going to start bringing concepts together. I’m going to throw a whole bunch of little techniques at you today. In terms of the bulk of the method of what we want to do you have the core skills already. What I’m going to focus on today is showing you different ways that you can take the principles that we’ve already heard about – the Hypnotic Principles, the Influencing Principles – finding different ways that we can put them together into persuasion Power Loops. Do you know what I mean by Power Loops? Power Loops is a system I have for hypnosis where we create little experiences so that at the end of the set of experiences people are changed or have some of that kind of effect. You have, for example, someone who wants to feel confident. You don’t just say be confident, be confident, yeah, because that doesn’t necessarily work or people don’t necessarily know how to get there straight away. You may, for example, get them to recall doing really well, drawing a lesson from that then going to the future and having that lesson become even more so, so they can anticipate even better things in the future and coming back to the present with that sense of anticipation in the future now they can feel confident. Do you see how we’re moving through a range of experiences -- the past, the lesson, the future, the future successes, back to the present, expecting the future -- and so on? Do you see how each one of those is a little set in

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the process at the end of which someone will become more confident? It’s not the only way to create confidence of course. So we have the concept of Power Loops in hypnosis, what I’d like to focus on today is some examples of Power Loops; processes you can take people through invisibly in a conversation that are persuasive. You can think of them as little tactics or strategies you can just throw out there. They going to be like the colorings, the things you put around your core influencing processes to help enhance them, make them more useful and so on. Sometimes you’ll throw one of these out just because it’s easy and that’s all you need to do. You know the old saying; you don’t need a hammer to crack an egg shell. The same is true in hypnosis. You don’t have to go through this whole huge thing of values and secret hidden drivers and then discovering what their real passion is and then putting a future in and adding this on top and then going underneath. You can do those things, but honestly, if you just want someone to give you a piece of chewing gum it’s a little bit too much effort to go through. Does that make sense? We’re going to focus on things they can do on their own or they can add into your general influencing process to enhance it or to maybe fix something that might be going a little astray in the middle of the whole process so you have a little more option. Do you see what I mean by this? Remember, the two core influencing processes that we have so far are the Dream Machine, which you have variations of with the blitz, the hypnotic lecture and all those things, but they are essentially more overt hypnotic processes. These require more of a monologue. In other words, you’ll create the context in which you can talk and keep on talking and we’ll show you how to do that later on today. Then we have the Objection Destroyer, which is, essentially, when someone has a concern, some kind of push back or they’re not quite there yet, there’s a hesitation for some reason, it’s a way of handling that very quickly and elegantly. Make sense? Then you have some steps for something else, but we haven’t covered that yet. So we’ll just talk about that later, if that’s okay with you. Right now what I want to do is I’d like to start getting you having some practical experiences of just little bits of influence you do every day. Now, a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 lot of the things I’ll talk about you will already be familiar with in one way or another, because chances are you will have done it. However, the way I’d like you to address it at this point is for you to do it on purpose. In other words, you’ll know the impact that you’re having so that whenever you need it you’ll realize oh, I can get my little toolkit out and go ah, which manner fits, this one here. Let’s put that one to the mechanism that we need to change. Make sense? These are going to be very quick exercises like one minute pieces, because I’ve got lots of little things to do. So I’d like to ask you guys, if I may, to keep your attention again on the sound in the room so that I can pull you back, add another exercise, then you go off, come back, another exercise and so on. You are welcome to stack the exercises so you can do several things at the same time, but the key thing to focus on is whatever the new thing is that we happen to be focusing on. Does that make sense? All clear all right. Also, all of you please consider the area which you want to influence people in. If it’s business of course it’s the business meeting. If it’s sales it will be the sales meeting. If it’s therapy it might be the things you do in the middle of therapy or it might be something you do in the beginning to prepare people to want to change. It’s up to you. Make sense? Think about your context. As we do the mingling exercise again you’re going to have literally about 30 seconds or a minute to engage the particular process we’re going to be talking about and I’d like you to pretend that you’re in your particular arena. Just tell the person hey, you’re a businessperson, just go along with it. Then they’ll say okay, now you’re a client in a hypnotherapy practice and play that role as well. It’s more about you getting a sense of how do I frame this; how do I present this in the environment that I want to use it in. The first step is everyone please stand up. Remember to keep your things nice and safe. If you have any liquids, please make sure they’re at the edges or underneath the chairs. This will be very active so we don’t anyone bouncing in and when we pause if you want to come in close that’s fine, but please leave this corridor here so we can get a straight line for the camera. 1. The first thing I want to do is start off with what you know already, which is the Hypnotic Rapport.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’d like you walking around the room and just give your little flashes to people, but here’s the key thing. I would like for you to follow through on the flashes. So it’s not just like… Where’s my nice smile? Where is the sort of mirroring effect afterwards? Remember, the purpose of the flash is not that it creates instant rapport. The purpose of the flash is that it begins that rapport mechanism going. So when you do your little eyebrow flash then someone else will do something, nod something or smile. They’ll do some kind of behavior which you need to reflect back to maintain that contact going. You don’t want to be doing like… That kind of destroys the whole context you starting creating. Does that make sense to you guys? All right, let’s start with that. Off you go. [Exercise] All right guys. That’s easy, right? So the first thing I want you to do now is as soon as you meet the next person you’ll do the eyebrow flash, the mirroring and all that sort of stuff. So the first thing I want you to do in terms of influencing someone is go through a routine of asking for a very small favor or an act of compliance and I want you to acknowledge the favor when it’s been done. In other words, thank them for doing it or give them a little compliment on how well they’ve done it and then ask for a larger favor straight afterwards. It’s something that seems a little counterintuitive for people. It’s like I’ve just asked a favor I can’t ask it again. Actually the best time to ask for another favor is when they’ve agreed to do one or they’ve just finished doing one. Does that make sense? So it’s up to you. You can upscale it. You say can I have a favor? They’re just about to go off onto it and then say oh, could you just add this onto it as well? Or, they’ll do the favor and you say thank you. That was really well done. I really appreciate this, by the way… Then you add a bigger favor. Does that make sense? Off you go. Go ahead.

Student:

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A favor they can actually do in this room, right?




You want them to be able to act it out in this room, yes. In public would be good. We are in public, so please remember that. Yes, absolutely. All right, off you go. [Exercise] Good, I like this. 2. The next one is very similar it’s called the Salami Tactic. This is predicated on the old thing that if you want the whole salami you can’t ask for the whole thing. No, it’s mine. You can ask for one slice and then come back and ask for another slice and then for another slice and eventually the whole thing is yours. There is one problem with the Salami Tactic, however. If all you do is keep asking and you never give it breaks the reciprocity cycle and you start losing the emotional investment from other people. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? So one of the keys to the Salami Tactic is not to constantly keep asking, it’s to keep asking them periodically. So you ask for a little bit more and a little bit more, but periodically give something in return, something of genuine value. Now in this room you’re not going to start exchanging cash, favors or something like that because it’s a quick exercise. The way you can give something of value back here is in terms of acknowledgement, compliments, praise; in other words, a positive emotional vibe that you present to people. Does that make sense? Out in the real world, of course, you’ll be able to do other things like doing little favors for people or doing little tasks or chores for people and so on. It’s kind of a give and take thing. Meanwhile, of course, you’re systematically building up towards the bigger favor or the bigger thing that you wanted to. The way to think about this is there is a big behavior or a bigger thing that you wish to have done or created. Break it down into steps. What’s the smallest step you can ask someone that leads in that direction and then what’s the next smallest step and the next one and the next one. Each one of those is a slice of the salami. Make sense? Easy to do? Off you go.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 [Exercise] Was that fun? Remember, it’s very important if you’re going to use the Salami Tactic you cannot violate the Reciprocity Rule; otherwise, you start alienating the relationship over time. People will think they’re being abused and actually they will be. You’re abusing the relationship by asking for more without ever giving anything in return. Does that make sense to you guys? 3. For the next exercise I will need you to present some level of resistance back. In other words, you’ll ask for something like a small favor or something, perhaps to initiate one of the other tactics, but they’re going to resist and go no, I don’t want to do that or they’re going to be hesitant in terms of how they do that. At that point I just want you to give them a simple simile or an analogy to motivate them. The easiest way of getting some resistance is to say why should I do that? You say well it’s like…and then you just give them any random analogy or simile that fits the context. So, for example, a simple favor might be can you get me a glass of water. Why should I do that? Well, it’s kind of like when a patient is lying in a hospital and they can’t get out of bed. Someone has to help them. Please, be a nurse for me. The point is the analogy is not that important. There will be more analogies and similes, that will fit the context more easily, but you’re asking for exactly the same favor again, only this time you’re using a symbolic representation, a symbolic reality rather than a direct intellectual request. Does that make sense? Do you want another example? Students: Yes. Igor:

All right, give me a context of a kind of favor that you might ask someone.

Student:

Someone is coming up with stupid excuses not to do whatever it is you would like them to do.

Igor:

What specifically? So someone is coming up with stupid excuses.

Student:

Specifically, well I don’t know that I could do that because…

Student:

It’s Wednesday.

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Because it’s Wednesday, okay. Right, and what is it you asked them to do?

Student:

Give you your wallet.

Igor:

Give them your wallet or give you back or own wallet?

Student:

Give them your wallet or give you back your wallet.

Student: ♦ How about email? Igor:

Okay email. Let’s give them something really simple. Someone is going to send you an email and they give you some silly excuse like oh, I can’t do that. I don’t have time where it’s Wednesday or something like that. So you say look, all I’m asking for is an email. It’s kind of like if you think of someone who’s been in prison all their life and no one is actually writing to them. I just want a little message of hope, just to know someone is out there listening. Do you see what’s going on here? You’re building the emotions into the actual symbolic version, the simile or analogy. Just ask yourself this in terms of creating the simile. We’ll work more on similes and stories a little later on. The thing to ask yourself is the emotional space, how do you feel when they’re refusing your request. Make sense? It’s like I need help and you’re not giving it to me and what is that like. It’s like a little bear cub trying to get some food and mother is going no. Do you want to be like that? No, I’m so sorry. Or, it’s like someone who’s been hungry all day and they’ve been looking forward to a great meal and now they’ve found the frig is empty. Well at least we can go out or do something with it. Do you see where we’re going with this? You want to create something in your mind that follows the emotions. The emotions are the key to get an unconscious response for yourself. So if you put yourself into space of what it’s like for the request to be fulfilled or what you feel like when the request has been denied and then you put another scenario in that kind of expresses the same emotion you’re pretty much there. Does that make sense? Everyone clear on that? One more question, go ahead.

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I just have a question. So is it just simply a matter of thanking the person, showing appreciation, because sometimes it seems a little weak?

Igor:

It can be. In here it will be and sometimes just giving positive attention is a good payback as it is. In here that’s pretty much all we’ve got to go for, because it’s only a two-minute exercise. In real life it means a lot more things. Sometimes just giving thanks constantly isn’t enough, because you will go well he’s just thanking me, but it just sounds a bit rough, he doesn’t really mean it anymore. He’s not demonstrating the genuine value that’s being exchanged in some other ways.

Student:

Okay.

Igor:

Make sense?

Student: Igor:

Yes. So for here and in a lot of situations a heartfelt thank you, a positive emotion that’s transferred is enough of a gift in return, but you’ve got to put it in the social context so don’t think that just saying thank you is enough. Thanks... You’ll need more. In here it’s enough to give you the foundation, so that later on, when you start using it in real life you’ll realize oh yeah, I’ve got to do stuff back. I’ve been asking for quite a lot now and unless I do something in return, something maybe unasked for or something that’s of genuine value for the other person then they’ll start feeling all abused and so on. 4. All right, let’s go back to the analogies and similes. Give that a go and whatever comes out of your mouth is fine, by the way. If it’s a really bad analogy or a bad simile it doesn’t matter right now. It’s just to force your brain into starting to think about this so when we get onto it it will be easier to do. Off you go. [Exercise] All right guys, did you enjoy that?

Students: Yes.

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Don’t worry; we’ll talk more about analogies, metaphors and all these things in much more detail so you can develop that skill more fully. This is kind of warm up phase. So the next thing is I’m going to actually give you two little influence tricks at the same time, partly because one of them you can’t really do so well on the fly. You need the context to do it properly, it will make more sense; but you can use both and if the situation arises, you can just throw the second one in there as well. The first one I call the Value Challenge. If you know someone’s value in terms of why they’re here and what it’s doing for them, for example the enjoying life and so on, you can simply challenge them if they resist something or if you’re having problems getting through or getting some kind of an agreement. You can challenge them on their value. You can challenge them on their reason for being there. Does that make sense? So, for example, at the customer service desk you can always ask them look, what is your job function. Why do you answer calls? It’s to help people. So your job is to help customers, is that right? Yes. So I’m asking for your help right now. How helpful are you being? Think about it. I’ve asked for this, this and this and you can’t do anything. All I’m asking for is for your help and that’s what you do, isn’t it? Do you see what you’re doing here? You’re challenging them on the very value they presented to you, but it’s important that you get the value first and you lock it in before you challenge them on it. Does that make sense to you guys? It’s not something you can necessarily practice in this kind of live environment here because you’d have to set up the whole value exchange and so on. If you want to and you can think of something, a context that fits, very quickly say it then. You’re this and this. Ask a good question like I did with the customer service thing and then challenge them on the value and they’ll be like uncomfortable. Two very important things in that…

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 → First, when someone is being uncomfortable the most common response that people have is to want to take the pressure off them and say look, don’t worry its okay. Don’t do that. The pressure is the very thing that creates change; that creates some kind of extra thing. The best thing to happen at that point is to be silent. Now, if they’re silent for too long, in other words, it starts turning a little bit more gloomy shall we say, you can kind of feel the atmosphere changing a little bit, then you have to step in and give them an out and the out of course is to assist you in some way. In the customer service example it might be, for example, to put you through to their boss or someone who can actually deal with the situation. You might start throwing out some suggestions of look, isn’t there somebody? You can go along these lines or along these lines or along these lines, because I know you want to help me. I can tell you want to help me. Of course they do now, because they feel that pressure and they don’t know how to release it. Does that make sense? You want that pressure to build up, because often they’ll just present a solution if you’re silent. If you’re not silent it can help them take the pressure off, because now they’ve got something to fight against. If you have pressure and you’re saying well you can do this, you can do this, you do this, now they feel pressure on the inside and pressure on the outside. They know how to deal with pressure on the outside, it’s by saying no. By saying no, of course, they’re relieving their own internal pressure too, because they’re dealing with both pressures at the same time. Does that kind of make sense? So, if you’re doing a Value Challenge remain silent. Let the pressure build until either they respond with a solution or an offer of some sort and then you can work with that or if it starts turning a bit sour, because they’ve been feeling that pressure too long. It’s a feeling thing you’ll get, it’s a fine tuning thing you’ll get, then you present them with options or general possibilities so they can start selecting or getting more creative about how they can help you, assist you or do whatever it is you’ve ask of them.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So is the first one clear, the Value Challenge? Do you like it, by the way? It’s good. → The second is to work with purpose. It’s similar to the idea of value. You’re basically going to ask people what is their intention. What’s their purpose for whatever behavior it is or the resistance is. Let me give me some classic examples. In a hypnotherapy office why are people there? Well, they’re there to change; so that you can start finding other ways that they can do that. Now all behaviors are driven by a purpose. They’re trying to achieve something, right? Let’s say someone is being really nasty or being unpleasant in a meeting with you. You can call them out in public, although that’s a little bit harsher or you can call them out in private and say listen, I notice you keep doing this in the meetings. Can I just ask what’s it all about? What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to get? I think it’s important that people hear the other side too. Great, so to the extent that we make sure people hear both sides can we get on with the meeting in a smoother manner? Sure. Now you can start negotiating about other ways of doing that. For example, you could have a meeting where you say okay, here are all the options. Now we’ll turn to Harry for the opposite view. Thank you very much for the opposite view Harry. Let’s carry on. Now it’s contained within an agreement frame rather than just constantly chipping away at whatever it is you’re suggesting. Does that make? So when you get resistance as you go round now and you can actually practice this, ask for a favor then you get resistance, ask for the purpose. What’s that about? It’s only a simple favor so clearly there’s something else that’s going on. What is that? He goes oh I feel like I’ve been doing too much or, I don’t know it seemed like a lot of effort. Oh, I get it. So if we can make it easier for you it’d be a no-brainer to do the favor, right? Sure. In that case, you can explore. Do you realize when I asked for a glass of water I just mean from that tank right over there whilst I’m fixing this. I don’t mean for you to go out to the store, down the street, get in your car, drive,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 get me a big bottle of water, polish it up, freeze it and put ice cubes in. We don’t need any of that. Just grab me a glass of water over there whilst I finish this so I can focus on what I’m doing here. Do you see how you’ve just taken care of the intention straight away? Does that make sense? Everyone clear on the Value Challenge and getting the purpose so you can create a new behavior out of the end of that or a new conclusion from that? All right, give that a go. [Exercise] Was that interesting? Now, what is the general principle that’s beginning to emerge from all these little tactics that we’ve been playing with, anyone care to guess? Student:

Emotions are involved.

Igor:

Emotions are involved, absolutely. Go ahead.

Student:

It’s like an agreement.

Igor:

So we have an agreement set going on, absolutely. What else?

Student:

Compliance.

Igor:

Compliance, the best part of the agreement set, absolutely.

Student:

You got people’s attention in putting pressure on.

Igor:

That’s the magic word. We’ve got people’s attention and you’re getting pressure. Now, we mentioned this a moment ago and I want to emphasize this right now. There are two kinds of pressures that you can use in the whole influence cycle. One is external pressure. One is internal pressure. The problem with external pressure is people know how to deal with it. They know how to fight back, how to avoid it, how to escape it and so on. Now sometimes it works great. It’s the absolutely right thing to do. Just put a little pressure on them and it’s done, but if people are good at escaping external pressure, if you tried using pressure and it’s not working, then you internal pressure. The beauty about internal pressure is that it’s self-generated. What happens with internal pressure is the pressure builds and builds? When they do the favor or the activity you’ve asked for the pressure releases and they will feel

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 good. If the pressure is external, once you leave the pressure is gone and they can forget about it or they engage in the activity but afterwards they still feel used and abused somehow, because they were forced into doing it, right? If I put a gun to your head and said, get me a glass of water or I will shoot. Well you probably wouldn’t take me seriously, but if you did you wouldn’t exactly be particularly happy about doing the favor for me, would you? The thing about internal pressure is once someone releases the internal pressure by, for example, doing a favor for me, getting me a glass of water or whatever it is, they’ll actually feel pleased for having done so because it’s internally generated. Does that make sense? Hence, when you give them a compliment or a little thank you note at the end of it, it augments that being pleased and makes it more likely that they’ll respond favorable to you in the future as well, so you’re building a healthy relationship rather than destroying one. Go ahead. There’s a question here. The question is if someone says no, how do you reframe that without asking why and so on? Really, that’s what we’re doing right now. The bigger issue is how and when are they saying no? No on its own does not exist. It exists in relation to a context, a person, the behaviors that preceded it, a certain kind of request that you’ve asked of them. There’s a whole bunch of things going on at the same time, right? So one of the things you can do is what we’ve already talked about. You can leverage on their value. Well, you know when you say no, I thought you were the kind of person that did “X”. It’s their value. I thought you were the kind of person that enjoyed life. I’m just talking about going out and having fun. Isn’t that enjoying life? Do you see how they get it? Bit by bit we’re going to add extra things. Another thing you can do, which we’ll be coming onto right now, if someone says no sometimes it can be because there’s no accountability. There’s no consequence. So if you can make someone accountable the chances are they’ll take the request more seriously. Does that make sense?

Now, if you’re working with an organization like at the customer service desk or so on, you may need to do kind of a double whammy. Find out if they will take responsibility, which a lot of people aren’t willing to do, or get someone

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 that has responsibility. In other words, pass the buck, but you want to make sure that they pass the buck to someone where the buck actually stops so they don’t just keep sending you around in a circle. If you end up back with the same person then you basically have to lock them in and say look, you’ve already passed the buck once. You can’t do that. Either you send me to someone who’s actually authorized to do this or well you’re going to be responsible for this, essentially is the message you’re giving out. Does that make sense to you guys? So especially when you’re working with big organizations, Kevin Hogan has a nicer way of phrasing this, which I kind of like, which is asking something along the lines of do you have the authority to do “X”? It’s kind of a challenge to their self-importance. If they say no, well then the implication is that someone out there does have it. So I go great, well who does? Please go and get them. Now they are personally responsible for bringing to you the very person that can fix your problem, so they’ll start searching for someone better rather than someone just to pass the buck to, right? If they say yes, what have the just agreed to? Well, they can decide on your issue. They can’t say anymore oh, I’m sorry, company policy says no. I thought you had the authority? So, if you don’t have the authority, who has the authority to make an exception here? Something like that. Do you see where we’re going with this? Everyone clear on that? Do you want to play with that one and we’ll a few more? All right guys. Just spend a minute or so finding someone, get some resistance and then ask them do you have the authority to do this? Let me just check before we go any further. Do you have the authority to get this result? No, I don’t. Oh, great. Could you please put me in touch with somebody who can or could you bring the manager so I can speak to someone who can? If they yes, you go great, what I need is this. They’ve already accepted the role that they’re the kind of person that can make an exception and so on. Do you see where we’re going with this? There’s a kind of a strange little consistency and commitment thing going on. They’ve already told you that they can make the exception, which makes it more likely that they will. Do you see how that works? Go ahead, quick question.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 He’s asking would it turbo-charge it more to ask do you have the experience and authority? Sure it might be, I don’t know it depends on the context perhaps. Student:

I’ve heard you use that phrase, I just forget. There’s another word in addition to authority, I just can’t remember what it is.

Igor:

I don’t know. I can’t help you with that, but play with it. I mean it’s the principle that’s most important than anything else. Incidentally, if they accept the authority to be able to help you, even if they don’t necessarily want to help you, there’s a nice little bit of research that talks about people who put little stickers in their houses like civically-minded messages. If you come back the next week and say would you put this great big cardboard poster on your front lawn to stop people speeding they’re more likely to say yes, because mentally they’ve already entered the role of a civically-minded individual. Does that make sense? It’s a percentage you’re playing here of course, but you’re increasing your percentage constantly and that’s what we’re looking for. Easy? Off you go. [Exercise] Did you enjoy that?


I want to give you one quick caveat in terms of using the authority the way it’s been phrased like that. It’s also culture dependent, in other words, if you go to somewhere like Asia. In Asia there’s a lot of face value to be taken care of. People don’t want to be embarrassed in public. If you ask someone in Asia do you have the authority to do this, you might be challenging their self-worth, if you like, in public. That’s a very bad thing to do. The whole system might shut down then in order to protect that individual. Does that make sense? So you want to be careful about the context you’re using this in so that the phrasing doesn’t accidentally trigger a cultural backlash in that sense. The next two are interesting as well. ♦ Can you in that context turn them around so that you need to save face and recruit them to help you save face?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 You can do that, but again you have to do it eloquently so that they want to, because if there’s a risk to them they won’t do it. They’ll say oh, so sorry. They don’t want to take the risk of losing face along the way. The next one is kind of interesting. There are actually two bits to it, if you like, that are related. It’s to do with reasonableness. Now, remember, reasoning or logic won’t necessarily by convincing; however, it can be used to create pressure, the internal pressure we talked about, right? So if you’ve gone through a process of, shall we say, denials and you tried it this way and you tried it that way and you tried it the other way, you can then kind of list out a set of steps. You can say look, I’ve been the one that’s been reasonable here. I’ve been doing this and this and this, your turn, essentially is what you’re saying. You can say it sometimes directly and sometimes implied. Look, I’ve been doing all these things. I’m trying really hard. What else could I possibly do? The second part we just heard there is we start turning the frames around. What would you do in my shoes? So once you’ve shown yourself established as being reasonable and their response is being very unhelpful and hinting, of course, that they’re unreasonable, you can then switch the frame of reference around and say what would you do in my shoes or how would you feel in my shoes. A lot of time it switches people around and they’ll go actually, there’s not much I can say to that. It’s like I feel pretty bad. Well good, because that’s exactly how I feel right now. There’s a very simple way you can deal with this. Now, I don’t know if you’re the one who has the authority to change this, but… Do you see how you start stacking these things together? Let’s spend a minute or so walking around getting some resistance. When you get resistance be reasonable about it. Be polite and say okay, how about trying it this way? How about trying it that way? Trying it this way? Get resistance a few times then pause, back off and say look, all I need is this. It’s not an unreasonable request to make. I’ve asked you this way. I’ve tried it this way. I’ve tried this way. I’ve made everything I can think of to make your life easier, what else is there to do? I mean think about it. How would you feel is you were in my shoes and you got the same responses? What else could I possibly do? Tell me. Can you feel how the pressure now starts building inside again? You reversed the whole pressure thing. Rather than being able to do a whole

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 broken record they now have to take responsibility for the result, which is kind of what you want. Do you get that? All right off you go. [Exercise] Are you enjoying yourself so far? Is everyone enjoying themselves? I’d like to put everything we just did this morning into context so you can see how these things add up on each other. About a month or so ago I was on a set of flights. I was going to Thailand this time. You may as well sit down. We’re going to add some more things after this. Are we all ready? Then let us begin. Once upon a time there was a weary traveler flying through business class. The problem was that he wasn’t allowed to check in on time. Why? Because he arrived at the airport far too early. He was being reasonable. He said no problem. Instead of waiting in the lovely, delightful, relaxing business lounge, I will wait in the restaurant upstairs to make your life easier. Off he goes. Several hours later he comes back and wants to check in. This time they can’t check him in. Why? Well, because the business credit card on which he was checked wasn’t there. In other words, he had to wait for his business partner to turn up. Basically, Cliff had the business credit card and they refused to check people in without the credit card on which the whole thing was booked, which is really ironic given that I have a passport, which is probably a bit more of a serious document reflecting who I am. That’s where the whole saga starts beginning. They can’t check me in, because I don’t have the credit card, the passport is not enough and so on. So I have the check-in girl in front of me. I pretty much realized it’s not up to her whether or not she can check me in. I asked her look, is there anything you can do? Can you check me in manual because the system won’t let you? Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m allowed to do that. So I know there is a possibility, it’s just that she hasn’t got the authority. Do you hear that? I said okay, I understand. Don’t worry. So who can help me? One of the customer managers, he’ll be down in 10 minutes. No worries, I’ll just wait

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 here. So I’m being very reasonable, very calm, building my ammunition. Eventually the customer service manager comes down. I talk to him and he goes oh, I can’t help you I’m afraid. So he sends me off to the customer service desk. You can see the chain beginning to happen, right? I speak to an older gentleman there who is probably in charge, but refuses to acknowledge it. So I’m going this is interesting. Fine, he can’t do it. He send me right back to the customer service manager again. So I’m now a full buck in return, right? So I come back to him and he says oh, you have to go to so and so. I said well, he just sent me back to you. I guess you’re in charge, right? What have I just done? Students: Gave him the authority. Igor:

Gave him the authority. I labeled it, right? At this point, he’s a little overloaded. He feels the pressure and, honestly, he’s not the best customer service representative. He doesn’t really know how to deal with people. What does he do? He shuts down and walks off, right? Shocking. My ammunition is building. So I’m thinking this is interesting. At this point, of course, I’m not the happiest of campers. So I grab him again. This time I am now going to force responsibility. I said okay, I’d like to have a copy of complaint procedure. How do I spell your name again? It forces responsibility, doesn’t it?


So, of course, he has to comply. I get all the details. So there’s already some pressure building in the system, right? So I’m hanging around again and eventually I get to speak to another customer services rep at the main desk. He’s present, but he’s not there. I explain the whole thing again and say look, is there anyone else that can help you that has the authority to do this? Essentially, their problem is the person without the card can’t check in. I think this is about whether or not the person has paid for it, which is weird because it’s their bank and they should know, right? So they have bad systems in place. So I’m being very reasonable saying look, I came here like five hours ago. I waited for three hours to be able to check in and that’s fine.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 There’s no problem, because they couldn’t take my bag. Instead of being in the nice, comfortable business lounge that I did pay for I had to sit upstairs in the little dingy restaurant and that’s not a big deal. Then I had to wait for the manager and the manager sent me here and they sent me back and this, that and the other. What would you do if you were in my shoes? She’s kind of like… The pressure is building. She didn’t know how to respond. I don’t think she had the authority to actually do anything there. She doesn’t know how to respond. She says I’m sorry. I can’t do anything with this. I can’t check you in because the system requires the credit card. So you’re going back to the excuse, which is of course the credit card. I said look, what’s the issue here? Is that you need to know who I am or is it that you’re not sure the whole things been paid for? If you need to know who I am it’s very simple. Here’s my passport. That’s pretty much if the U.S. Government will let me into the country with this thing, I think they have a slightly higher security protocol than you do, right? This is me. Secondly, I’ve flown with you lots of times before, look at your records. Here’s my frequent flyer card and so on. You can check me out. You know that it’s me. I think their first excuse was we’ve got to make sure that this is the actual traveler that’s bought the ticket. I said look, you can check me out. You have all the things there. Am I being reasonable? Students: Yes. Igor:

Who’s now being unreasonable?

Students: They are. Igor:

Right. How? I’ve broken their frame. They said we need to identify the passenger. Well, here’s my identity. Here’s another identity. Here’s another identity. Check your system, you have even more identity. Then of course the real objection comes out, the one they can’t tell the public, which is they have to be sure that I’ve paid for the flight, which basically means that they have bad credit control systems because they should know as soon as they’ve taken the payment, right?

Students: Yes.

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Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. So the thing about the issue of the payment comes up and I said oh, is that all. Well here’s my credit card. Feel free to take the details and if my business partner doesn’t turn up with the credit card just bill that. So they said oh, I don’t know. What we have to do is we’ll have to charge the card for the full amount and then refund it afterwards. I said fine, no worries, but – this is important, of course – will you refund it to me as soon as my partner gets here? She says oh, no, no. You’ll have to come back on your return flight, which of course is next year. At this point, the next tactic starts coming in, it’s called anger. Notice, though, it’s not just random anger. It’s not just frothing at the mouth. This is kind of a justified anger. So I said look, I’ve been here, you’ve messed me about. You’ve sent me around this place and I’ve been nothing but reasonable. I showed you my ID. I’m even willing to pay for the flight again. All you have to do is promise me you’ll refund on the spot. I mean hotels can do it. Anyone can do it. It’s just reversing the transaction like that. You can’t have my money for a whole year. That’s just outrageous. Now, of course, the pressure is really built. She doesn’t know what to do with it. What does she do? She disappears into the back room. I wait patiently. Out comes the original gentleman I spoke to. He is the manager, shielded by all these little soldiers and staff who are supposed to take the flack and die for him. Now they can’t take anymore so it’s up to him, but of course the pressure is already built. My ammunitions dump is ready to fire, because they’ve given me lots and lots of things to present. So I run through the whole spiel again and now I’m being very, very reasonable again. I’m very calm. At the end of which I let a little bit of anger, a little bit of frustration creep in and say look, you can tell why I’m kind of frustrated about this, right? Now tell me, I’ve bought a business class ticket, what’s the point of buying a business class ticket if I’m going to be treated poorly? Isn’t the whole point that I have a smooth, elegant flight so that I don’t have to get stressed about the whole thing? You see where I’m coming from, don’t you? How would you feel if you were in my shoes? The pressure is building, pressure is building.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 What can I do to get into the lounge now? All I want to do is be able to relax in the lounge, get some work done and when my business partner comes it will be fine. Oh, we have to wait for him to turn up. He’s not turning up until the last minute. I can’t wait out here all this time. Think about it. So the pressure is building some more. Then I run through the whole thing again. Look, here are my identity cards. Here’s my thing. Look in the system. He starts typing out the numbers and sees that I’ve taken other flights before. I’ve offered to give you my credit card so you can take payment. You must return the payment as soon as you get what you want, which is you see the credit card on which it’s been taken. You cannot keep my money for a year. It’s only reasonable, right? Pressure is building. Pressure is building. What can you do? It’s building again. No, I can’t do it. So what do I do? The next tactic is you just cycle. Look, I’ve been here for five hours. I’ve talked to so and so. Then I spoke to so and so. Then this happened. Then that happened. I’ve given you my ID. I’ve given you my visa card. I’ve given you this. What else could I do? Think about it. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? What else is there? Eventually he’s cracking and I’m wondering will he run away as well? Then he does something very interesting. He looks up and says do you promise that your business partner will turn with the credit card? Now he doesn’t need a promise. If I promised him beforehand would it have made any affect? Students: No. Igor:

He needs the promise to justify to himself why is he going to break the system or ignore the normal rules. Make sense? As soon as I heard that…of course I do. You know what? If he doesn’t show up you know exactly where I am. Here’s my credit card. You’ll be able to take the payment no problem at all. I’ve just given him an extra justification for allowing me to check intap, tap, tap, tap- here you go sir, this if for your bags. Have a nice flight.

Now notice it took a fair amount of effort to get to that point, right? To be honest with you, at this point I was in kind of an interesting place because I thought either I spend the next three hours arguing with these people and that’d be kind of enjoyable or I get on the flight, either way I kind of win.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The point is, though, can you see how there’s a system and, by the way, do not normally break the protocol. They normally cannot break protocol. I know this because it’s happened to me before and it’s pretty much systematic. Only this time I had time to spare, so I thought I might as well go for it, right? The key thing here is how do you build the internal pressure? What does the pressure do to the critical factor in particular? Student:

It obliterates it.

Igor:

Exactly. Eventually the critical factor is moved to one side, the amygdala is getting enough stimulation that they can’t think through their old thought loops. All their excuses have been destroyed, because I’ve countered every single one. They have nothing left. One of the most powerful words in the English language and if translated in a lot of other languages, too, is the word “because”. If you cannot rationalize something it’s very difficult to maintain the behavior. He could no longer rationalize the protocol. That’s why eventually he had to go through with it, but notice how there’s a lot of pressure that has to be built up to get into that point.

DVD 19: Persuasion Principles & Foundation Strategies to Weave into Your Master Plan for Hypnotic Influence Igor:

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What I’d like to do now is run you through a whole bunch of extra strategies that can fit in different context. We’re going to just lay them out in a list form. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I hate giving lists, because I want people to actually get a chance to experience them as well. So, we’ll just go through a whole bunch of these at first then we’ll go back to the exercise process with the understanding that you can have your little list and you can see in the interaction I have right now what will fit. Does that make sense? It might be stuff you’ve already done, it might be some of the new stuff that we’re doing, but you now have some choice in terms of what’s the most natural entry point in terms of what we’re doing. Make sense? Some of this stuff has to do with framing and frame control as well. The first one, again depending on the context, is very good for when you’re the purchaser is basically knowing your bottom line. One of the reasons people get sort of strong armed into making poor decisions is they don’t know when it’s time to get out. It’s called the Sunk Cost Phenomenon in business. If you imagine a business that’s starting to fail so the business owners throw more money at it. They say I’ll make it any minute now, so they throw more money after it and more money after it. Eventually, they’ve invested so much money they think I may as well throw more in because I’m already sunk in. Gamblers do this a lot. You know they lose one round then they say okay, I’ll make it up on the next round. I’ll make it up on the next round. Eventually they’ve lost so much money it’s like, you know what, I’m in so much debt anyway I may as well go to the loan shark, just go crazy and this will be the one. So they start taking crazy risks because they’ve invested too much in it. Student: ♦ What’s that called? Igor:

The Sunk Cost Phenomenon. You’re sinking your cost into a sinking business or in a gambling thing. One of your greatest protections from that is to know what your cutoff rate is. In other words, I will go in for this. If I do not get this that’s it, I’m willing to walk away. If you want to practice this, the best place is like in the third-world countries where people still barter and haggle over goods, because the easiest way to go sell is to be interested. They give you a price and you go oh, well, and walk away. They go no, no, no, make me an offer. Then it comes a lot

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 easier because they know you’re serious about walking away. What you can’t do is pretend to walk away. Any ideas why? Students: Mixed responses. Igor:

Right, for two reasons. 1. Number one, if you’re not congruent with it, it doesn’t trigger anything off in them. They’re going ah, a city bugger. He’ll be back. 2. Number two, if you are back who has the stronger position?

Students: They do. Igor:

This is something where you know absolutely I’m going to walk away and at that point it creates a lot of, again, pressure to the person, depending on how much they want to have that sale. Does that make sense? It’s kind of like what happened to Gregory who bought the car.

Gregory:

Yes.

Igor:

That’s kind of what happened to you.

Gregory:

I was going forget it. I’m done with this place.

Igor:

Absolutely. He was done. He was literally finished. You can see the emotion when he’s talking about it. It was clear and they saw we’ve got a big fat paycheck walking out the door. Well, we can do something. We can throw in extra pieces and whatever and it works out for both parties that way. Make sense? That’s just kind of a general strategy to have in the back of the mind. Again, you’re using this now primarily to build pressure on the other people, but of course it can be used as a defense mechanism too. In terms of the offers you’re making, you know the Scarcity Principle. Think about ways of making it scarce. In other words, it could be limited in time, there could be limit in quantity, it could be limits in access or it could be limited by price. In other words, they can only have this price for a certain time or it’s so expensive that only a few people can have it. Someone the other day mentioned to me that a friend of theirs used to sell to the Amish community and if you give them two virtually identical

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 machines and one is like a $100 and the other one is $500, they’ll buy the $500 machine because they think price is quality. Actually, it can bear out. There was an interesting thing like that that happened as well I think in the UK. A guy makes a new perfume. He used to work for one of the big perfume manufacturers and decided to do it on his own. His strategy is I’m going to beat them on price. So they go into the supermarkets and his perfume is half the price or a fraction of the price of everyone else’s, but no one buys it. They’re about to take everything off the shelves, because a supermarket’s shelf value is prime real estate. So he says no, no, just give me one more week. He takes all the items off, repackages them and gives it a new name. The scent is the same; the only thing he does different is he triples the price or something like that so it’s on the same league as the other ones. The sales go through the roof. So price and the whole scarcity thing evolves value, which means that you want to be very careful with that really dirty four-letter word beginning with “f” – free. Free tends to devalue things. Now free has other advantages, it can create attraction and people can get a taste of something, but they will de-value whatever it is they got for free. It will suddenly not be worth very much anymore. By extension you risk having your own ideas or things not being worth very much anymore. So sometimes, even if it’s not a money tree value in terms of what you’re doing, you may want to put a price or a worth on what you’re offering in terms of effort, commitment, what it takes to get the secret and so on. Does that make sense? Here’s another way of using social proof as a way of kind of formatting people’s minds. It works best when it’s mentioned casually rather than too obviously because again, if it’s too obvious it gets analysed, but if you mention at how other people respond. Like someone in the class went into the car showroom and they notice he’s looking at a car. They go oh, yeah, I see you’re looking at this car. A lot of people have bought this car. They love it. We can’t keep it on the lot. They just keep driving out. So what does that imply? There is a sense of scarcity, a sense of social proof. In other words, other people are doing it.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 A great example of this was one of these infomercials late at night. They used to say something like call now. Our operators are standing by. Call volume was okay. Then they changed the saying. Call now and if you don’t get through please call back, because an operator will take your call as soon as they’re available. Student:

Scarcity.

Igor:

There’s scarcity and social proof, isn’t it? In one what’s the mental picture? There are all these people with phones twiddling their thumbs while tumbleweed starts floating down the benches. In the other you’ve got people crazily picking up phones going oh, my God, I better call before they’re all gone. Or, everyone is doing it, I better be one of those people too. I mean who’s seen those adverts, nine out of 10 cat owners prefer this and all that sort of stuff? They’re all social proofing. They’re all saying this is normal. This is customary. This is important. This is to do with the mental picture that you’re painting for people and you have to be very careful what that mental picture is, because that will be the social proof element that people will follow along with. Here are some examples. If you present an advert, your message can be in spoken form too, which is in the negative, for example, there’s an ad in one of the national parks in the U.S. saying please don’t steal parts of the Petrified Forest, giving you reasons and so on, when they presented those plaques in the Petrified Forest theft actually went up. Think about it. What’s the mental representation? What is the picture put inside someone’s mind? It’s people taking stuff. Oh that’s a good idea. All right then. It gets worse. I’m not sure if it was a power company or a water company, but anyway they decided to reward people who were consuming energy efficiently versus over consuming energy. So to the people who were over consuming they’d say you know you’re over consuming. You should consider maybe cutting down for the environment and so on. The irony is the people who were consuming economically they’d send them a little thank you note saying you’re in the most thrifty category. Well done. Congratulations. You’re saving the planet. You’re using a lot less energy

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 than anyone else. Guess what happened? Their energy consumption went up. Think about the mental image that they put inside their minds. Other people are using more than you. That’s essentially the message that they’re saying, isn’t it? Other people are taking stuff. They’re getting an advantage. All right, I’ll take some too. Everyone else is doing it, I’ll do it too. Do you see how that works? So you want to be careful with social proof. You want to make sure that the mental picture you paint inside of people’s minds is that the behavior you want is something that most people are adopting. Does that make sense to you guys? Student:

It’s really true. As a minister and I’ve had other ministers come to me, they’re preaching on the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not steal Thou shalt not commit adultery. What happens is within their congregation those behaviors actually increase and come out. It’s really bizarre, but it’s the truth.

Igor:

To some respect the rule is very simple to follow; when you present a message, present the message in terms of behavior. You want to paint a word picture of how you want people to respond not how they should not respond. If you say don’t steal from the Petrified Forest what are you really saying? What is the image? Take stuff and walk away, right? If you say thank you for conserving the Petrified Forest, thanks to people like you the forest can remain in pristine condition for eternity, do you see what happens? Go ahead.

Student:

I just thought of this funny thought, because of the Petrified Forest example and taking things. Apparently in the Volcanic Park in Hawaii, maybe it’s true, but maybe it’s just a rumor they use, because they tell you if you take the rocks then something terrible happens to you eventually and people send the rocks back continuously. The rangers tell you this and I assume it probably stops people from taking the rocks.

Igor:

I pretty much would agree with that. I mean there may well actually be a local legend about that, but I can also see people taking it back. Think about it. You just taking a little bit of rock and you’ll have an accident for whatever reason. You’re like maybe it’s the rock. Quick, send it back, back to Hawaii, because people have the association inside their mind, right?

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This brings up a real important point. I’m a military guy. I’ve been a squadron commander and work a lot with kids 12 to 18 and other people. How many times do we always say now don’t forget… Okay. So what I’m constantly saying is put your commands in positive vocabulary, because we don’t hear the word “not”. We have to think of that item first before we can negate it. So I’m always saying okay, what do you really want them to do? Remember. So remember to pack your lunch. Remember to do this and that rather than to forget things. It’s a pet peeve, positive vocabulary.

Igor:

Right. Do you want to come up here as well? Whilst he’s coming up, the rule actually goes a little bit further than that. Well, actually, I’ll add something in a moment. Let Jeff do his little thing.

Jeff:

I was just going to add a point, which is on these topics of social proof and scarcity. A friend of mine who’s a therapist has an online profile and every time you send him an email you get a response that says I get a lot of emails every day, but I do get to my emails and every email is very important to me. It creates this frame of not only scarcity and social proof, but when you get that response back you place a value on it which is higher as well.

Igor:

Exactly. In fact, this is one of things we talk about when we train hypnotherapists in terms of filling their practice. It’s something I used to do as well. When people ask for an appointment it’s like all right, come in a little bit later in the day, because that day is already starting to fill up pretty quickly. It’s just one of these things to create the perception of scarcity, the perception of desire and then people start coming in as well. Think of it in terms of our seminars here. We sell out our seminars. It happens, by the way. It happens easier each time or more quickly each time, because people know that once the seminar is sold out that’s it. You’re not coming to the seminar. We’re not going to put an extra chair in the back. We can’t, partly because of space reasons, but what’s the expectation? They’re busy. They’re popular. You better book it as soon as you get it, which means the next time the seminar is presented people will sign up more quickly.

Jeff:

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There’s an added benefit, which is when I send emails out to people that are discretionary I won’t include him on that. So he gets less junk mail as well. It keeps his inbox being very efficient. It’s pretty neat. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



Perfect. The general principle here and the way I like to think of it is just paint the picture in the mind that you want them to act out. Whether it’s a feeling, a behavior or a thought, you’ve got to paint that picture in their mind. Let me ask you this. Let’s say you’re using fear as a motivator. That’s not necessarily the most ethical one, depending on how you use it, but sometimes it’s actually very useful. Some people need to be pushed away from something, right? There’s actually a little research here. You’re a student and you get a flyer about tetanus vaccination and all the evils of tetanus and how terrible it is. On the back of it there’s a little coupon so you can go to your local medical office and get yourself a vaccination, but all the flyer is talking about is the evils of tetanus, how bad the disease is, how dangerous it is and so on. What do you think the response is?

Student:

Low?

Igor:

It’s pretty low. The problem with fear is people shut down. They’ll start having defense mechanisms. Oh, that won’t happen to me. That can’t be it and so on. The only time it’s useful to use a negative propellant, whether it’s fear, anger or something like that is if you build into it specific steps to get out of it. In other words, they’re left in a place where the fear is no longer necessary. The anger is no longer necessary and so on. So, for example, the one where the response rates went through the roof is the same flyer with the same message about how bad tetanus is, but at the end there was a section that talked about the steps you can take to prevent it. Step one, call this number. Make an appointment. Have a vaccination. At the end of the vaccination you’ll be safe, basically. Now it’s nothing that people couldn’t conclude for themselves, is it? It’s talking about the evils of vaccination and at their back end there’s a little number to vaccine control center or something like that. So they could have worked that out for themselves very easily, but by giving specific steps it allows the fear to channel through into actual action. The same is true of any internal pressure. Do you recall the airline example I just gave you? Remember, I’m building the pressure. If I just leave the pressure there sometimes a resolution will pop out, but if it doesn’t I have to give them specific steps of how to resolve the pressure. They pretty much realized after an hour or so of bouncing around there’s only one way to get rid of me, right?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I wasn’t being obnoxious so that they would ignore me on principle. I was being very reasonable so they can’t just ignore me. They can’t justify saying oh, that was a bad person. We’ll get security on him. That’s one of the airlines favorites currently. Oh, I’m sorry sir. You’re violating airline security. You can’t come on the airplane. I’m angry? All right. Thank you for making me this way. It’s a very standard approach, by the way, right now; hence, you’re being very reasonable though. There’s no justification for that. They can’t bring their one ace in the hole out. The pressure is still building. They know I’m not going to go away, so either their going to have to spend the next three hours dealing with the pressure which they don’t want or they let me through. I’ve given very specific clear steps. All I want is for you to go into the system, manually check me in, give me a luggage tag for my suitcase so that the lady at the counter can take it and then I can go through and we’re all happy. It’s a very clear set of steps, isn’t it? Do you see how that works? Again, notice how there is a representation inside their mind. There’s a mental picture I’ve drawn which is very precise. I may even have had somebody to look, all you have to do is get on your machine, manually check me in, print me a boarding pass, give me a tag for my luggage, then I can give the suitcase to the lady over there, I’ll walk through and we’ll all be happy. Notice how I’m acting out their behaviors for them as well. So, I’m really building up a representation inside them of what they need to do to resolve the pressure. Go ahead. Student: ♦ Were you wearing a suit? Igor:

I was actually, yes. Is this useful stuff?

Student: ♦ How do you feel that would have unfolded if you were not wearing a suit? Igor:

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How would I feel it would have unfolded if I was not wearing a suit? Well, it’s hard to say. If I was not wearing a suit, I was doing this anyway, I would Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 have to with my mannerisms still portray that I belong in that section. I think it would have probably gone in a similar way, but it would have been a little bit harder at first to be taken seriously. Luckily, I wear suits a lot so I didn’t have to think about that. Student: ♦ Could you have gotten there any faster? Igor:

Possibly, if I had found the person with the authority quicker. My mistake was I had an inkling that the person I was sent to originally could help me, but there was a bit of an obscurity around who could actually do the work and no one was really talking that much. I guess if I was doing this whole thing again, I would initially create more leverage to get the person who can actually do this and then once I had that then I might get a quicker response, but I don’t know. Honestly, who knows, right. Let’s go over here first then we’ll come on.

Student:

I had a similar problem.

Igor:

Is it a longer one?

Student:

No.

Igor:

It’s good exercise for all of us.

Student:

I had a similar problem. I live in Marina Del Rey and I work from home. I went to the counter at a gourmet hamburger place there. A lot of high-end people go in there. This is an area with movie studios and so forth who go there. I come in there. I dress casual. I won’t go near a suit anymore. I have my jeans and a nice colored shirt on. I have my keys on my ring. I go in there, sit down, place my order and I’m waiting for it. They have two TVs in there, one is on the sports channel and one is on CNN. I’m watching CNN and I’m really into what the guy is saying. I can’t hear anything, but I’m just reading the closed captioning. All of a sudden this girl comes over and she has this shirt that says the counter. This guy comes over and I’m thinking he’s a patron. I could catch him out of the corner of my eye and he starts moving stuff on my table. He’s

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 encroached onto my territory. Hello! I got pissed, okay? I just said excuse me what are you doing this is my table. Then he comes out, straightens himself up, stands up really tall, because he was bent over before and said I work here. I said well, I’m a customer here. I’ll bottom line it for you. I said look, I don’t know who you are. I’m thinking that you’re going to move tables together, because the tables were really small tables. You’re moving salt shakers and other stuff on my table and you didn’t say excuse me? The first thing is you didn’t identify yourself. So I’m thinking it’s a customer. Igor:

Do you notice the reasonableness? He’s building up the whole sense like I’m being reasonable. I’m being reasonable. I’m being reasonable. You’re not. Do you see the pressure building there? Carry on.

Student:

So every time he would pass by he would give me a look. Later on he comes over to me. Sir, is there anything I can help you with? Do you need anything else? By this time I have my order, I’m working on eating my burger and sweet potato fries. He’s being really nice. But, when I left, because there are a lot of big windows, I took the way so he could see me drive by in my SL and I had my top down.

Igor:

Right.

Student:

So the next time I go in there…

Igor:

You reframed the whole situation.

Student:

He’s like the manager there, the day manager, next time he’ll remember me and attach me to the car.

Igor:

Right and give you extra service.

Student:

It shouldn’t be a big deal, you should treat everybody the same. He should identify himself if he’s going to come up and start shuffling tables and stuff.

Igor:

Remember we talked about this the very first day? Status makes a difference, right?

Student:

Yeah.

Igor:

All these symbols of authority they make a difference. They shouldn’t, I agree. But they do, it’s the world we live in and if you’re going to stack the deck in your favor then use these things. If you don’t want to stack the deck in your favor you can do it, absolutely, you just know that you have to do

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 other things to make up for potential losses in people’s perceptions, shall we say. Make sense? One last one and we’ll just carry on then. Student:

This is a comment not a question. That’s for you, actually.

Igor:

All right.

Student:

I just want to share. You triggered something for me about, were you wearing a suit; that question. I saw a study and it’s all about frames and frame control and how automatic our responses are. It’s insidious. You think you’re thinking clearly, rationally or unbiased, but we are so biased it’s incredible. In Toronto, my home town, there was a study where they took a gentleman, very good looking, very fit, in an athletic outfit where they were able to see his physique. The trick was he forgot his glasses. He tried to get a phone number from his cell phone. He couldn’t see the number and he was to ask women if they would help him. When he was wearing his athletic outfit the compliance was about 90%. Nine out of the 10 said yes, sure, I’ll help you find your number. They then put a fat suit on him like one of those Samaria things with a constructions worker’s outfit and the compliance dropped down to three out of ten, three percent. The content was identical, but the context and frame was different. Then they kept the fat suit on and put him in an Armani suit with a gold watch and the compliance jumped up to 80%. That was a shocker for me, but the frame control and just how if you’re not getting the result you really do have to check in. What are the loops and the programs running? They’re insidious. It can be devastating at times.

Igor:

Really, the best place to find where these frames or these hidden frames occur is inside your own mind, right? When you see a certain type of individual without even knowing them, say a construction worker is a little over weight. Ask yourself, if he came up and talked to me right now, how would I feel about that or if he asked me for a favor versus that person in the suit over there or the police office or someone else? You can kind of test your own biases that way as well and hopefully overcome some, but, by the way, some of these biases are also useful. Some of these biases can save your life. So I wouldn’t necessarily say you challenge everything. You just go with where you go and then if it becomes

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 a problem you get to challenge yourself to I guess, become a better and so on. Make sense? All right, let’s get back to the list. Is this useful, by the way, guys? The thing about these things is they’re little mini strategies you can just weave into other things that you’re doing so they’re easy to get through. So we talked about the whole idea of reinforcing the positive messages. Another corollary of this idea of the mental picture you’re putting in people’s minds is how many choices do you give people? If you give people a vast amount of choices what’s the mental image? Is there a specific behavior they need to engage in? Student:

No.

Igor:

Right. If you give them one choice or a small selection of choices it’s a lot easier for them to understand. Oh, I get it. This is where I need to go. It choices become easier, depending on the individual. Some people like more choices, some fewer, but as a rule the fewer the choices the easier it is to create persuasion.

Student: ♦ Can you give an example? Igor:

Sure. You can do this if you go online, for example. Go online for like a product search. You’ll see some Websites that have millions of products and you’re just going through them going which one do I go for? Some Websites will have one or maybe two versions of what it is you’re looking for. They’ll have a nice clear representation. It’s like oh, that’s exactly what I want. Click, bye. Otherwise what do you normally do? This one has like 50 different versions. I’ll click on this and I’ll click on this one and I’ll click on this. Oh, my God, there are so many things. I don’t know what to do. You know what, I’ll think about this tomorrow. Has anyone done that before?


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Did that help you? This is not just an online thing. This works in terms of interaction as well. You know, what would you like to do? Would you like to eat here? Would you like to eat there? Would you like this? Would you like



CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 to see this movie or see that movie? We can go to the theatre or we can do this. Do you see how giving too many choices is like it gets overwhelming. So the simple answer is to give a simple choice like would you rather have this or that. Remember the contrast? We work great on contrasts. Would you like to go to an Italian restaurant or a steak place? Would you like to go to the movies or the theatre? Would you like to watch this movie or that movie? Those are very simple choices, which also set you up of course for a double bind very naturally. See how that works? That’s, incidentally, one of the reasons why double binds work so well, because to break the double bind requires more mental effort than is often worth investing at that point in time. All right, let’s cover the other principle now, the idea of contrast. We’ve already talked about frames are the reference points against which people will contrast things, right? Fair enough? So what are you contrasting a product to when it’s free? You’re contrasting it to things that are free. What things are normally free? Student:

Cheap stuff.

Igor:

Cheap stuff, worthless stuff.

Student:

Low quality.

Igor:

Right. You can go rummage in the bins and get stuff for free all you want. But, seriously, that’s the category you just opened up, isn’t it?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

I’ve seen some people do this. I’m not sure if there’s any research on this, but I’ve seen people put a dollar value on something and they say for you zero dollars. So it’s not free, it just cost you zero dollars. Let’s say the real price is $100, we’ll discount $100, price to you zero dollars. You’ll see this a lot, for example, on things like Amazon and stuff like that. When there’s shipping it comes free. It’s not free shipping. You’ve paid for the shipping, but they’ve given it back to you. Isn’t that nice of them?

Student:

It’s rebated.

Igor:

It’s rebated, exactly, but now the shipping is worth something, isn’t it? You don’t expect the shipping. It’s like well of course it’s free shipping. It’s free. You’ve paid for the shipping. It’s just they were so nice to you, because you

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 did a good order, you’re a good customer, they’ve rewarded you for being a good customer by paying you back. Do you see how that works? Student:

For $25 you get the super saver.

Igor:

Right, but then when you actually get the receipt it does not say free.

Student:

Right.

Igor:

It says you’ve paid for it and then we’ve paid you back. It’s a specific point that’s being made. They may have done it out of accounting purposes, but actually, psychologically speaking, it’s very sound. What else can you contrast things against? If you’ve got a product or service that is difficult to contrast, you’ve got to find something else to contrast with it so, for example, the paper industry; the printing industry. Well, one printer prints, the other printer prints. They’ve got the same kind of paper, the same kind of card. They print. You’ve got to find something else to contrast it against. It might be something symbolic. For example, you do it faster, you did it better or that the service is somehow better. It’s a question of what you contrast. Now this is where it starts getting to a very interesting territory. For example, if I showed you, maybe online somewhere, a perfume that costs $1,000, who here would be interested in buying it? A thousand dollars, who’d actually pay for that, anyone? What if I could show you a place where for the next couple of weeks only you can buy exactly the same perfume, same make, same model, everything, for $10? Who’d get that one? But you don’t even know what it is. You don’t even know if it smells any good or what it looks like, right? Why has that perfume become more valuable? Who here is in the habit of buying a $10 perfume box by the way, anyone? On the streets there’s a little…Yeah, good. Armani $10, you know this $10, Polo $10, right?

Student:

Igor?

Igor:

Yes.

Student:

In downtown LA they have the garment district. They have the merchants and they’re carrying name-brand colognes. They all have like a sampler bottles, smaller bottles for $10.

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They sell little sampler bottles for $10, right.

Student:

So they sell the top fragrances for $10 along with the bigger bottles.

Igor:

They’ll sell sampler bottles for $10 along with the bigger bottles too.

Student:

So you know what you’re buying when you go in, because I’ve bought those. I’ve bought the $10, but I know I’m buying quality because they also have the regular size.

Igor:

So he’s buying the $10 little bottles, because he’s comparing it to the $100 big bottle. Do you see the contrast that’s going on here? A normal sized bottle of perfume if it’s $10, the contrast is what are other things that are $10? What are other perfumes that cost $10? Well it’s very low quality or at least that’s our perception. We don’t even know. We haven’t tried it yet, but it’s a nice eristic, which more often than not might be true. As a rule things that are cheaper tend to be low quality, as a rule. It’s not always the case. I’ve paid a lot of money for shirts and suits that are made really poorly and very little money for things that are of amazing quality. Do you want to come, if it’s a little longer thing? So the key we want to be thinking about here always is what are you comparing and contrasting to. Do not let the customer or the person you’re influencing create the contrast themselves. Give them the contrast that they should be referring against. Go ahead.

Student:

When I lived in Thailand you’d go into the tailor and you’re buying topquality cloth for your suits. The price compared to the currency exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Thai baht. Then you come back home and people are like where’d you get that suit? Now I mean you’re talking about a $500 suit and you paid almost next to nothing compared to the Thai currency.

Igor:

Yeah. I’ve bought better suits in Thailand than I’ve paid, I don’t know, $800$900 for in the UK Absolutely, right?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

So, again, does it devalue it? No. So, again, it’s a question of the contrast that you’re creating. Is it starting to make sense a little bit now? Let me give you another example of how contrast can work. Are there any real estate agents here? This may be of use to you guys.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’m going to be moving to the Bahamas for a while, for three months or so, and I’ve been looking for a place to stay. The first place I’m looking for is maybe some hotels that have long-stay arrangements and the price category is pretty high. We’re talking about $6,000 to $8,000. So I’m going like that’s a lot for a month, right? Then I say okay, I’ll look at more of a budget accommodation and suddenly I’m finding these really fleabitten hotels for like $2,000. It’s like I don’t know. So what are my expectations right now? It has set a contrast, hasn’t it? In other places I wouldn’t even consider anything like that, I’m thinking like wow, maybe I have to bump up what I’m expected to pay. Finally, I find an apartment in a complex. It’s gorgeous. It cost just a little bit more than the flea-bitten motel. I’m thinking like wow, that’s a bargain. It still costs around $2,500-$3,000, but now it’s a bargain because I’m referring it or comparing it to other things. Make sense? One of the classic contrasts that people make in terms of like the real estate thing might be, you take them to a really expensive house that no one will ever buy and it looks okay. Then you take them somewhere which is worse. Then you take them to the place they really want and it’s like I love it. I have to have it. Do you notice the internal pressure again being built up by contrast? Always consider what is it you’re contrasting to what, right? When you buy one of my courses what is it you’re buying? Is it the course? No, because that’s just a number and then you’re comparing that number to someone else’s courses number. What you’re comparing it against is the, I don’t know, over $100,000 that I spent in learning how to do this stuff. Who here wants to spend $100,000 on becoming really good at hypnosis, anyone? You’d pay $100,000? All right. Guys, we’ll have a chat afterwards about the lovely mentoring program, the extended version. But, seriously, if you can get access to similar knowledge in a shorter timeframe isn’t it worth paying $1,000 for or $2,000, depending on the amount of content? So again, we’ve got to present the contrast, otherwise what are we justifying? Another way of doing a contrast is the results. How many of you, for example, have been on a diet plan of some sort like Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers or something like that? You pay tons of cash to eat these special

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 foods and so on and the minute you stop you go right back to where you were again, right? Now, if I was a hypnotherapist I could say right. You can do one method, the Jenny Craig method, which is not just the price you pay to join the program which is a couple of hundred dollars, but then you have so many food things which on average a week is this much, per month is this much. So over the next six months you’ll probably be paying, I don’t know, $2,000-$3,000. Or, you go into our weight control program for $1,500. It’s over a six-month period. You have so many sessions and we’re going to build your selfesteem. We’re going to do your history. We’re going to do this. You’re going to feel fresh and new and you can eat whatever you want. You’re body will naturally go ideal. Suddenly, $1,500 is not so much for a hypnotherapist is it? But if I started off by saying, if someone says so how much is your weight loss session cost, $1,500, ha. Do you see what we’re doing here? That’s one of the reasons why, as a rule, when it comes to things like price you never represent the price on something until after you’ve established the value and the contrast points. Student:

It wouldn’t work on me if the hypnotherapist himself was really overweight.

Igor:

So he’s saying it would work on him unless, of course, the hypnotherapist was overweight, in which case it wouldn’t. Then it goes back to what we talked about before, right? What are the hidden assumptions people come in with and we have to know it. I know hypnotherapists that have been chain smokers and do stop smoking sessions and I’ve asked them the exact same questions. How can you be congruent with that? They go oh, well, you know it’s a personal choice thing, yada- yada. He did okay. He’s done quite a few stop smoking sessions and I’m sure he lost quite a few as well, because of the incongruity that was there. Does that make sense? So the rule of thumb is the more congruent you can you can be the better and I agree with you for that. Remember, being incongruous doesn’t mean that you’re doomed. It’s just that you’ve taken one of your advantages away. Just like not being in a suit doesn’t doom me in terms of getting what I need at the airport, it just diminishes my odds somewhat, so I’ve got to make it up in some other way. Does that make sense?

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Igor?

Igor:

Yes, sir.

Student:

Can I share just one quick thing?

Igor:

Sure.

Student:

It’s funny, one day I was at my dad’s shop. My dad has a car stereo shop and people come buy and he fixes things. He was there and this guy shows up in his brown truck. My dad tells me oh, could you help me? Could you go fix this thing? I’m a software engineer. I used to do that a long time ago, I don’t do that anymore. I’m like okay, fine. So, meanwhile, I start talking…

Igor:

Of course, he’s very enthused by the whole thing as you can clearly see.

Student:

Yeah, this is not really what I want to do. It’s like this young guy, so I start talking to him. Meanwhile, I’m setting the frame. I’m like okay, before I start on your car I want you to understand this is going to cost you something. We’re going to charge you this much an hour and I don’t really know what it’s going to take yada, yada, yada. Meanwhile, I’m thinking I don’t really know what I’m going to do on his car. I’m thinking I’m going to have to walk out there and try to figure this out. My dad has these expectations.

Igor:

Right.

Student:

I’m like okay, fine. So I go out there and meanwhile this other guy who works for my dad runs up there and he’s huffy. He gets under the car and he does whatever he does and he fixes the problem. It takes like no time at all. He gets up and he huffs and puffs and he leaves. He mostly did that because my dad was moseying over. My dad was going to do something and so they kind of wander off. They figure that’s the end of it. The guy is standing there and I said well, we fixed your problem really quick. Normally, we would have charged you like $85 an hour or something, but I will cut it down to like half an hour and, you know, just roll it down to like $40. Is that okay? He went oh yeah, that’s great. Thanks.

Igor:

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He thinks it’s a great favor, right? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery



I go inside and I take the credit machine, swipe the card. They never quite figured it out. They were like miffed. I’m thinking yeah, I made money yet you did the work.

Igor:

Right.

Student:

It’s because I set the frame.

Igor:

Absolutely and the expectations. This is a very clear thing, right? So it’s really important. Remember, we talked about framing a lot yesterday? We’ve got to set the expectations. We’ve got to set where the value is. Who established the value, him or the person that fixed the car? You did, which is why he’s the one that gets paid. The person that fixed the car just did the work and that’s the key thing. Now doing the work of course is valuable, but then what’s the person who came into the garage going to think. Well, I guess the guy is just working there so I’m going to pay the guy who’s running the place, which of course is you because you’re the one that the same up very reasonably and so on. Do you see how these things work? Is this kind of useful? I don’t want you to think of it in terms of sales context; although, we’re going to be focusing on sales as a key influencing cycle today. It works the same way with ideas or getting your teenagers to do their homework, getting the little kids to go to bed, teaching something new or motivating someone to get up and sort their life out. The same principles constantly apply, which is what are they contrasting against. What is the framework that is the reference experience? What are the mental pictures they have inside their mind and what are they telling them in terms of what they should be doing. Where are the drives? Where is the pressure, that’s building up inside to drive their behavior and is there something in place for them to go towards? You know the saying someone is all dressed up and has no where to go? That’s the classic example. A lot of people I’ve seen are great influencers. They build the motivation and then go… Then people are all excited and they’ll go… You have to channel all that energy down somewhere. Magic Moments, what do you do with it? You’re building a lot of energy with it, emotional energy. If you do not channel it somewhere it dissipates. It disappears.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Has anyone ever done a little magic trick or a card trick or even a Magic Moment and then just left it like that? People will go all right… Wouldn’t that be fair to say that’s pretty much what happens? It’s your job to harness that mental energy and focus it on something and actually then it increases. When it’s focused it’s kind of like a flowering happens and people go wow, that’s really extra amazing, because now they have something inside their mind to cycle that into. Remember, emotions last 90 seconds maximum. So now they have something to cycle those emotions, to build it even further. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It becomes self-maintaining. Student:

I’m a businessperson and so as you were talking about the concept of contrast and free, I think of industries like the music business and the newspaper industry where there’s a constant tussle to figure out how do you continue to charge people for something that they can now get for free.

Igor:

Right.

Student:

So there’s the proposition of how do you establish a value proposition and, to some extent, the music business is defaulted to trying to enforce this legal or moral obligation.

Igor:

Which can’t last forever, because basically you’re punishing your clients, right?

Student:

And it doesn’t work, yeah.

Igor:

Exactly. I mean if all you’re doing is punishing your clients well, it’s not great. I’m not saying that you can’t stop people stealing stuff and whatever, I understand that, but if everything is going down one road… A classic one is the music industry. Back in the beginning of the 20th century the original model for making money was people got up on stage, performed and you had some guy with a big cudgel standing outside the door and saying pay money if you want to hear. If you don’t then go away or you’ll get little Mr. Wood on your head and you won’t be very happy about the whole thing. Yes, it hurts, right? Then radio comes along and people are listening to music on the radio for free essentially. That starts destroying the whole live music venue thing and people are going oh, that will never take off, because they’ve got to come to

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the venue and so on, but then of course you have the performance rights societies, record sales are making it back and so. So you hear something on the radio, you want to buy the record so that you can listen to it at home and a new model emerged. Now, of course, they’re in the same tension area again. They’ve got to figure out a new model and it might be something like being part of a fan club, for example. That’s a great way of establishing value, isn’t it? Your favorite artist, the music is free, but you get to be part of this whole organization, this whole movement and that’s where the money is or something else. I don’t know. I’m not suggesting necessarily the result. The point is where is your thinking going? You’ve got to put your thinking in terms of what’s the contrast, where is the value and what are the behaviors that people are constantly have to reinforce inside their minds, right? Student:

Yeah like bonus features on a DVD for instance. ♦ Can we create value by adding something?

Igor:

For example. That’s exactly the right thing, right?

Student:

Yeah.

Igor:

You see any conundrum I think can be resolved as long as human beings are involved within it. It’s just a question of can you use the principles well enough so you don’t have to get stuck in the old. If the old model is not working, you’ve got to change it. If your sales process is okay, then there’s something there that you need to change and fix and the principle will show you how to evolve that. Hopefully, what we’re talking about now is just the same principles in action; contrast, the clear mental image, the different motivators like reciprocity, social proof and so on. We’re just finding different ways of tweaking it so it looks different, but it’s actually the same thing in action, isn’t it? The main reason for this is not just so much to have a huge lecturer like oh, here are 101 little bitty things you can do. It’s more so you start thinking about how can I structure my communication, how can I frame it so that it’s more persuasive. So we have some powerful tools for framing things, right? We’ve got the idea of values and using that as a leverage point. We’ve got the idea of

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 contrast so people understand the value of what you’ve got in a different way. We’ve got the idea of social proof, which is a kind of contrast, isn’t it? We’ve got the idea of reciprocity, which builds the desire to return. We’ve got the idea of the…what are the other influence ones. I’ve forgotten them now. Anyway, they’ll come back to me. The point is, you start focusing on these and saying how can I apply this and what is a principle that’s working here.

DVD 20: How to Covertly Hijack Other People’s Conversations and Take them in the Direction Igor:

You Want Them to Go

What we’ve been focusing on today in some respects is, shall we say, how to control conversation and how to direct it in a purposeful way. Think about it. We start off with things you can do inside of a conversation to build the pressure up so that the result you’re looking for will come out of it. We’ve just looked at a few ways and we’ll look at more later on, on how we can deflect the pressure. If someone is trying to control a conversation by imposing it on us the pressures respond to them and hence sucking us into their frame, their reality, their conversation rather than ours. Does that make sense? So there are many ways that we can do that in terms of breaking it down. We’ll look at it a little bit more as we go along. So at this point, let me ask

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you this first of all. How does it feel as the influencer to have someone interrupt you this way? Is it pleasant? Interesting? Different? We’ll start with Mickey. Mickey:

I was going to say it reminds me of a sales book I once read The Power of a Positive No. It’s empowering when you get that no, because you don’t have to waste your time. You can move on to the next person. You don’t stand there and try and push through, you just move on.

Igor:

So the influencer is actually kind of useful, because as soon as you get the no, you just get okay, great. I haven’t wasted my time for an hour on someone that’s essentially not interested. I can move on, right? It’s excellent. I agree with you, by the way. You may as well get your biggest things out of the way earlier on so you actually spend your time on the people that are worth spending the time on. You only have so much time in the day, why waste it on someone that you could probably beat over the head and maybe give them a noogie just to get them to sign on the dotted line. Aside from the unethical business maneuvers that you have there, it’s not necessarily a healthy thing. If anyone offers you one, don’t take it. There are lots and lots of people that are perfect match for you, why waste your time on the others? You’re better off actually spending time finding people that might be interested than spending an hour on person that is more or less not. Do you see how that works? Go ahead.

Student:

And every time you say no you fall into a deeper and deeper hypnotic sleep. Every time you say no, deeper and deeper…

Igor:

It would definitely be interesting. I think he got me on that one. Do you want to come up as well? That’s pretty good. But isn’t that the Utilization Principle nicely and classically presented there?

Student:

I think that would solve the problem, which I have the question on.

Igor:

Okay.

Student:

It seems very difficult sometimes to break through the obstinacy that people set up. ♦ In this exercise is that kind of the point?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I mean, at some point, no matter how much hypnosis you do if someone is totally just going to put up a wall you can’t really get past that. Igor:

That’s the power of the positive no. The purpose here, aside from learning how to safeguard your own self in terms of not being put in a position where you’re being manipulated in a way that’s not useful for you, there are a couple of things here. First, you do not have to influence everyone you meet and you should not be in the mindset that you have to get everyone you meet. That is only going to lead you down that model, that road where you try too hard and all those things that have been working for you all week long go out the window. So you may as well start learning to differentiate between people who are just clearly not interested. Maybe you’ll get them some other time when they’re more open to the whole influence process. There are people who might be interested who just need a little bit of tweaking and let’s see where that goes. Maybe after a little bit of tweaking they fall into one way or the other and that’s fine or people who are interested it’s just they’re getting in their own way because of fears about making a bad decision, fears about if this is the right thing for them, not knowing what they really want. I mean these are the kind of people you really want, because there you’re really consulting them through an influence process where it’s like great, you’re looking for this sort of thing. It fits your life, it’s just you don’t necessarily know how to make that choice or make that move as easily and quickly as possible. Then you’re away. So being able to accept and know and go great, saved me a lot of time, is a very good thing to have.

Student:

For example, when we were in Seattle at the training last year. A buddy of mine lives there, so he was in the training. So, I and one other person were in his car in the parking garage where he had parked in the hotel. He lost the ticket to get out so they were going to charge him a lot more than it would have been if he had the ticket. We were trying to think well how can we get out of this so we don’t have to pay $30? Now the point I’m mentioning this is we were still kind of learning how to do this and we’ve seen some Darren Brown stuff so we kind of threw the whole shotgun effect at the parking attendant.

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He’s still there like this…

Student:

He pulled out some ticket that had nothing to do with the parking garage. It was from the hotel and he said well this is the one you’re looking for. He ended up saying well I’m a little confused. I don’t know what’s going on and we just kept bombarding him with different things. Then he ended up letting us go without paying anything. ♦ The reason I mention that is how can we use a situation like that where you have the PCAT formula where it’s very step-by-step? ♦ How do I approach a situation where if I want to get reservations at a restaurant and they say it’s full?

Igor:

The first thing you have to realize is you have to weigh the cost and the benefits. In terms of a $30 parking ticket, I wouldn’t spend the next three hours to build the pressure and put all the things in the right place so that you can avoid the payment. Or, you pay the $30, go home and make $1,000 by ringing up a few clients and booking them in. That’s a decision point you have to make. It’s kind of like do you save $10 on your TV set by buying it here or by going across town and buying it there. So there’s an equation there as well. Secondly, you’ve got to think really importantly about the ethics. For example, in this case it’s funny. You did a lot of distraction and confusion, which is fantastic, but you were justified. It wasn’t like you were trying to skip out without paying the ticket. It’s just that the ticket wasn’t there. It wasn’t like you were trying to pull a fast one. It’s just you’re getting something that would be a fair thing to do anyway. The key thing here is this. The method you kind of mentioned there tends towards, as you can see, could be used in an unethical way. Someone just signed on a contract or something, for example, that they’re really not interested in and so on. In the parking garage it’s a one-shot transaction anyway. No big deal. No skin off his nose. No skin off your nose. There are no consequences, but you want to be very, very careful about where you use these things when there is a consequence.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 In the UK double-glazing salesmen have a worse reputation than used car salesmen have in the US, for example. Double-glazing for windows is like when you have two panels of windows to keep the sound out and the heat in. One of the reasons for it is in the ‘80’s they used all kinds of confusion tactics, strong-arm tactics, really bad shall we say processes to get people to buy these windows at inflated prices. Then, of course, they provided a shoddy product because it’s just basically a cash cow for them. The problem then is that the whole industry has distrust written all over it, so the ethical performers in that industry are screwed even nowadays. It’s left in the cultural psyche of the English people right now. Secondly, it’s a one-shot transaction. Once you get beyond that there is nothing left and that’s a consequence that you want to be very, very careful about. That’s just kind of the framework to put it within that. As for how to apply it in specific circumstances, what we’ve been showing you. I gave you the example of the airplane. You can use it for a simple way to get an upgrade, if it’s possible. Usually it’s the simplest things that will work. It’s ask for a simple favor, as it’s being performed tag something else on and wrap it up with some kind of justification that makes it easy and so on. Student: ♦ Would the PCAT Formula be something you could apply to those situations? Igor:

Of course, it is and that’s kind of what we talked with the Objection Destroyer and what we’re coming onto later on. The only reason for having these little piecemeal things today is sometimes it’s just too much effort to go through the whole process, you know the problem and creating some confusion or distracting the mind, then finding the resources and transforming it. Those are a lot of the processes that are involved. It’s great to have the sledgehammer, it’s great to have the shotgun, as you say, but you don’t want to be shooting everyone with a shotgun because sometimes just a water pistol is enough.

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I mean, I understood everything and now a lot is starting to come together and I’m getting confused about when I go on a situation what do I really do first. I’ve heard everything you’ve been saying it’s just not absorbing in.

Igor:

Don’t worry about that for the moment. As long you can understand the things as separate entities we’ll start bringing it together later on today, okay?

Student:

All right.

Igor:

Does that help? We’ll come back to this idea of how to break the influence cycle of you again later on. This is more an introduction to get your mind rolling in this way, partly because we want to figure out how we can direct the conversation. We need to be in control in order to do the conversation hypnosis, right? We all know, again, the stereotypical salesperson that goes yada, yada, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, chewing your ear off. Question…ah…maybe? Ah, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha. Well yeah, I guess cha, cha, cha, right? You’re not in charge of that interaction or that conversation. How are you going to introduce yourself in a way that you can maintain the contact so you can actually introduce your Dream Machine so that when the objections arise you have the space to destroy the objections and so on, wouldn’t that be interesting? Believe it or not, you have the essence of it in terms of what we just did. How did the transaction change when instead of being shall we say socially compliant so they are running the frame, they’re asking the questions, they’re asking for the favors and so on? You changed the frame yourself. In other words, you had the broken record or you set your own conditions like a pre-frame before you engage and so on. How did the interaction feel different or change compared to how you did it earlier on, any answers? Was it different?


Speaking to you as the subject, the person being influenced at this point, would you say you felt more empowered or less empowered the second time?

Student:

More empowered.

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More empowered. Would that be fair to say? Would it be fair to say then that once you introduced your own defense mechanism, whether it’s like saying not interested, not interested, not interested or presented your pre-frame sure, on the condition that…and so on, that something changed in your part as well as the influencer? Did you notice that for a moment they went…? Even though they know it’s coming, there was a moment where they had to reevaluate what’s going on. You’ve broken their script so to speak. Did everyone notice that? If you really want to notice this, this works great and is a lot of fun. Those annoying phone calls you get at night sometimes become a lot fun. The telesales people that call you up, I like to think of them as practice fodder. They’re going to annoy you one way or the other, so if you haven’t got time, fine, just hang up, it’s all good. I just remember one guy and I decided to try all kinds of these things out. I annoyed him so much he ended up doing crank calls for the next hour. He’d call, do some heavy breathing. I knew exactly who it was, because the timing wasn’t actually that distanced. So, rather than engaging; back to the whole idea of the broken record. Hello, wait, wait, wait I get it. I didn’t say anything. Click. Hello, wait, wait, wait. Click.

I figured eventually he’s going to get bored and he did, but the point is you need to know a little bit of these things because if you go a little bit too far someone’s ego might get involved too. On that note aside, telesales people are great people to start playing with because they have a sales script. Often, if it’s a good sales script, you’ll recognize a lot of the patterns we’ve talked about already. More importantly, their mindset is fixed. Because they are stuck on a script, they cannot interact properly. The good ones will dissect the scripts and know how to feed it back and feed back into it smoothly and conversationally, but most people don’t stick around long enough to get good. All they can do is read and when you ask a question and say oh, hold on a second. A few minutes ago you said this. Could you remind me about that again? They’ll go ahh. Well, no. Actually sir, what I wanted to say was this. No, no, but you told me about this. That’s very interesting, tell me more about that.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 They’ll go ahh. But, sir, they’re really… They’ll try to get back onto their broken record constantly. See how often you can interrupt them until they give up. They will give up, by the way, eventually. They’ll go have a nice day sir. Click. The reason for this is because in order to direct the conversation, you need to be able to direct it. In order to direct it when you’re not in charge of it, you have to be able to interrupt it. Does that make sense? A moment ago you practiced interrupting a conversation, didn’t you? It was a more hard line to interrupt because we’re basically showing you how to not be caught in a social contract, but what if you are in that social contract, it’s appropriate to be in that, whether it’s a business meeting or you’re talking to your kids and so on. You don’t want to break the social contract at that point, but you still need to be in charge of the interaction, what do you do then? Isn’t that an interesting question to ask? This is where interruptions become important, but doing them elegantly is also important because when you interrupt you run the risk of being rude. When I say being rude I don’t mean just violating the social contract. You could harm someone’s self-esteem and then their self-defense mechanisms flair and that’s where the problems occur. The problem is not the interruption. The problem is if someone’s ego is bruised as a result of the interruption. Does that make sense? You’ve been interrupted a thousand times and haven’t cared. Some people are more robust than others so they can be interrupted more robustly than others and they won’t care. So the skill then is how do we start interrupting people and make it smooth and make it elegant so that people will just let you do it. It’s just a natural part of the conversation and then they realize that they’ve handed over the reins. Wouldn’t that be interesting? The first thing we want to do is we need to figure out how a conversation flows. Here are the three tonalities. Are you guys familiar with the idea of the three tonalities? Students: No. Igor:

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I’ll show you right now. This is true of the English language and most of the Western languages. This is not true of, for example, Asian languages which are tonal. Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 In most Western languages we have essentially three tones. A questioning tone, which tends to go upwards and when someone talks upward with a questioning tone what does it do when someone has an upward tone at the end of each sentence? Student:

It creates an expectation of response.

Igor:

It creates an expectation of response, does it not? It does two things actually, especially if it’s coupled with something nonverbal like a raised eyebrow. Do you see what I’m saying? Do you see how that puts the pressure on you now to respond? The other thing it can do is it could also make you sound as though you’re unsure of yourself. Or we could do this, or we could do that. It’s up to you really. Do you see how that works? So questions can put things into question or it can also signal to others that you are not sure about something or it can signal to others that you’re handing the responsibility over for the conversation. There are a couple of cultures, for example, New Zealand has a tendency to have an upward inflection at the end of their sentences. They’ll still have the three core tonalities, it’s just the statement charge, which is the second one, will tend to have a slight upward inflection. So the questioning tonality will be more emphasized in New Zealand. It’s just these little cultural things you have to get used to. A statement is usually a flat tonality. In other words, it begins and ends and all the way through, stays in the same place. Make sense? It’s just imparting information. Think of it this way. Think about reading a shopping list. I’m buying apples. I’m buying pears. I’m getting shoes. I’m buying a dishcloth. It’s not I’m buying apples I’m buying pears? Dishcloth. Are you crazy? Do you understand the statement tonality? The final one is called command tonality. It’s the tonality we reserve exclusively for giving instructions, orders or commands. Would you all stand up for me now please? Would you all stand up for me please? Do you see the difference? So, if I’m standing up here saying everyone please stand up? Please, stand up? Do you see how my questioning tonality fundamentally changes what I’m expecting? If on the other hand I’m saying everyone please stand up now. You feel that sort of oh, it’s time for me to do something.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So we want to be aware of these basic tonalities and then there are things we do in our interactions which do the same things. If I make a command or present a command who’s running the conversation, who’s in charge of the flow of it? Students: You are. Igor:

I am, right, the person making the commands. If I present a statement, who is in charge of the interaction?

Students: You both are. Igor:

I’m still in charge whilst I am talking; however, if I present a command I can stop talking and I’m still in charge. If I present a statement I can stop talking and the other person is free to pick it up. Does that make sense? Do you see how that flows? If I ask a question, who is in charge of that interaction? The other person. You just handed the ball over to them and said you now take over for a while. Now, of course, in polite conversation we do this, don’t we? We involve people by saying I’ve played with the shinny ball long enough, you take it for a while. If they’re a polite conversational partner they’ll hand it back to you after a while, but if they’re impolite they will hold onto it and if they hold onto it, who’s in charge of the conversation?

Students: They are. Igor:

They are, right? So the rule of thumb you want to be following is if you’re just having a normal conversation, have the conversation. Hand it over. Ask questions. Go backwards and forward. It’s all well and good. However, if you that you’re about to start some kind of influence cycle, you want to be starting to get wary of the questions that you ask. Now, you can still ask questions, it’s just the nature of the questions need to change so that you’re not handing the responsibility over to the other person. You’ve all had experience of a conversation, haven’t you? Yet, you’ve been in charge of that conversation. Did I ask a question? Who answered it?

Students: You did. Igor:

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I did. Who has ever been to the cinema? I love going to watch the movies. So, notice, I’ve asked the question, but am I expecting you to fill in yes, yes, yes, I’ve seen the film and I liked it. No, it’s very clear that when asked the Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 question I’m going to fill-in the blanks myself. It’s called a rhetorical question, right? So if you’re going to start the influencing cycle and you’re asking someone a question, fill it in for them or if you’re not sure what the answer will be, give them options to select from which clearly still shows that you’re running the interaction at that point. Do you have a question? Student:

Yes. ♦ Would you ask a question with a downward tonality?

Igor:

Would I really ask a question with a downward tonality?

Student: ♦ How does that influence someone? Igor:

How is that influencing you now? So yes, I would. But it would be relatively rare. I’d be more doing something else like embedded suggestions or something like that, okay? You have a question?

Student:

Yes, I do actually. What it seems to me, correct me if I’m wrong, when you ask a rhetorical question you’re asking a question, but it’s more in a statement frame.

Igor:

So the question here is if you ask a rhetorical question it seems more like you’re making a statement. You’re phrasing it like a statement, although you’re asking a question.

Student:

That sends a meta message to the other person.

Igor:

Which sends meta message or what I would call a sub communication to the other person.

Student:

Right and that kind of gives the clue to that person that it is a rhetorical question, at least that’s what I think. Also, the other thing I noticed earlier is talking back. Like when you have a child and the parents say don’t talk back to me, it’s because they issued a command. Instead of the child doing what they should have done they decided to continue with the statement. They didn’t get the meta message clue.

Igor:

Right. The second part of the thing is like sometimes, for example, an adult tells a child to do something and the child starts talking back. It’s almost like

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the child has missed that meta communication or the sub communication that says this is an instruction, carry it out and they’ve just carried right on the conversation frame. In other words, they’re trying to break that framework. Make sense? I agree with you. It’s either because they haven’t learned the tonality thing yet, because it is a learned response -- other cultures don’t have it – or they are trying to control the interaction again. Anyone here have children? It would be a big mistake would it not to believe that children are not very good at controlling interactions? You would be a parent at great risk to make that assumption. Do you want to come up, because these are good questions? Student:

That was a command, right?

Igor:

Remember, I phrased it as a question, but it was an instruction, wasn’t it? Do you want to come up, because these are good questions?

Student: ♦ When you’re asking the rhetorical command if it’s a yes answer, is that also building the agreement frame? Igor:

If you ask a rhetorical question yes, absolutely. So if you ask a rhetorical question and you’re expecting a yes, you’re basically sending out yes messages. You’re still looking for a nonverbal acceptance, except that, of course, you’re now running the interaction more. Something else I want to point out before the question comes. Just take your idea of the rhetorical question, you can still ask questions with questioning tonality provided that you run on again and change the tonality afterwards. A great example is what just happened here. Would you like to come up? That gives them a choice, doesn’t it? Because your question is great, it leaves no room for doubt that instruction has been given, hasn’t it? So, even though it sounds like a polite request, which by the way it is, I’m still following through with command tonality which then gives, as you would call it, a meta message saying an instruction has been given, please carry it out. When your mind is searching for the instruction, where is it going to go? It has to go to where the question was, because that’s the only instruction

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 which had a behavioral component. See how that works? Is this a good pace we’re working in at the moment? Student:

You just answered my question. I was curious about doing that. ♦ Are we really doing conditional statements? You know if you would do this, then whatever.

Igor:

You can do conditional statements, but it doesn’t have to be conditional statements? Would you give me a glass of water? It’s time to get to work. It’s not really a conditional statement. There’s no condition. I’m just making sure that my tonality is making it very obvious what’s just happened. Does that make sense? There is also something that happens when you present two ideas at the same time. The first one doesn’t get analyzed as much. It will tend to be accepted more directly. Do you want to come up for this? These are things you’re doing with your tonality, so in the written word and so on it’s not going to be quite as easy to follow through on that.

Student:

I’m trying to find ways to take notes and remember this easier. You’ve got the situation where you gave an instruction, that had the rising inflection and that all seems as normal. Then you follow with another portion of the verbiage that is what I call a justification. At this moment, you said can you get me a drink of water. Can you get me a drink of water? It’s time to get to work. ♦ Is that also what they call a complex equivalence, because really those two things have nothing to do with each other?

Igor:

They have nothing to do with that. It will end up being either interpreted as a complex equivalent or a cause-affect. This means that or this because that. That will how it will be interpreted, but again, we’re not making a big deal out of it so it won’t as analyzed. The point they’ll be getting is like behavior is expected and then we’ll be getting to work as well. It doesn’t get analyzed that much.

Student:

Okay.

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Does that make sense?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

The easiest way to get used to this, by the way, is just to do it. So what I’d like you guys to do is again just spend two minutes walking around and I want you to talk to each other. Ask the other person for a behavioral response of some sort with a questioning tonality and then just follow it up with an instruction tonality but a neutral statement. For example, it’s time to get to work. The walls are gray. The light is dark. The room is big. These are just neutral statements and then the behavioral response like can you life you hand up? This room is big. They don’t have to be related. Of course, in normal conversations there has to be some semblance of relate in terms of topic. For example, get a drink of water. It’s time to work. If we’re going to work together, the context allows for it, right? So, for the moment, we’re not going to take the context into account, but of course in normal conversations you always take the context into account. Does that make sense to you guys? Do you want to come up first and then yourself? Okay, quick one.

Student: ♦ Isn’t that just piggybacking suggestions? Igor:

That’s exactly what it is. Now you’re using the Piggyback Principle to add your tonalities as well, so the question then becomes an instruction and you don’t lose control of the conversation. You’re not handing the ball over conversationally to someone else.

Student: ♦ It’s command tone or a statement, the second part? Igor:

A command tone. It’s a command toned down. All right guys. Let’s spend a minute doing that just to get the feel for it and then we’ll come back. Off you go. [Exercise]

Igor:

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Would it be fair to say that was relatively easy to do? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Students: Yeah. Igor:

Right. It was quick. It was easy. It’s a no-brainer. It takes longer to talk about it than to actually do it. Did you feel the impact? You feel how you weren’t losing control of the conversation and vice versa. You weren’t being offered the control of the conversation. So what I want to do now is to start going through a couple of simple, but relatively sophisticated ways of interrupting a conversation that will allow you to take control of it and then start doing these things. If you’re aware of these things then you just continue talking. In other words, you start the talking and you carry on talking, you carry on talking. You ask a question, but then you answer it yourself. So you carry on talking. In other words, the continuity means you’re in charge for that conversation. If you have enough authority within that group, then your authority, the power you have in terms of your body language and so on, means that you can be silent…and people won’t interrupt…because they’re waiting for you to continue… Did you just see what happened there? That’s exactly what the whole Authority Principle is about, isn’t it? We had an interruption. By the way, thank you for doing that, because that was actually very useful. The whole point of the authority principle is like if someone interrupts you and you go ah! Who’s in control now?

Student:

They are.

Igor:

Right? Because I have reacted to it versus he said something. Now I could either override it like I haven’t heard it or I call it give them the look. Did you also notice the response I got, which was a classic appeasement gesture which is no, no, no, it’s okay. What is that doing? In terms of the social context, it’s re-establishing the relative relationships, which tell you again what’s going on. Is it a challenge happening or not? Do you see how that works? It’s just a natural response. However, if you’re not the authority figure then you can’t assume those pauses as much. You will do it in time. Initially you may have to run a little bit and then you can slow down a little bit and then you can take your time and then, of course, you’re letting people realize that although you’re taking your time it really isn’t their turn to talk yet. Do you see how that works?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Now we want to start interrupting their conversation so you can start that pattern moving. Does that make sense? The first method is very simple. It’s virtually invisible and it fits very neatly into the conversation. I call it the Agreement Extension. So you’re going to agree with whatever they said and then run on that theme further until you can start taking any direction you want. Does that make sense? So if someone is talking about sailboats and how wonderful it sounds then say you know you’re so right. You want to agree with enthusiasm. You’re so right! A sailboat is the most amazing thing. It’s line of racing. You see, now you can go in any other direction, but I’ve agreed enthusiastically.

It’s kind of like the Yes, and Principle. You using whatever they’ve talked about and you’re going to build on top of that until you’re in charge of the conversation enough that you can start introducing any topic that you want. Does that make sense? Can I give you another one and then you can just practice in alternation. Is that okay? Students: Sure. Igor:

The second one is very similar. It’s called the Agreement Reversal. It’s the Yes, but Principle. So you start agreeing. For example, they’ll talk about sailboats and say, yeah, sailboats are awesome, but do you know what’s really cool? Cooking, food, you’ve gone somewhere completely different, haven’t you. At this point, you may have a slight power struggle in terms of, you know, like but really man, we’re talking about sailing. If you do it with enough authority, with enough enthusiasm and the right mannerisms people will just go ah, ah, all right. You’ll see them kind of deflating into the new conversational thread. If they do start challenging, you’ll do what you kind of just saw happening here. You might give them a look or, really, as long as you keep talking and there’s a little more energy in what you’re saying then what someone else is, people go where the energy is in a conversation. If I interrupt like this and I say yes, but cooking so much better and the cheese on a sandwich is really good. There’s no energy in my interaction, is

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 there? Whereas, if I put more energy into it and said yes and do you know what’s even better than that? It’s cooking. I love to cook. Who doesn’t? I mean let’s face it. You’re creating something. You’re like a God in the kitchen! Notice how I’ve put more energy in it, more enthusiasm. It’s a lot harder. On which one would you rather interrupt me on, by the way? The first one, right? On which one would you find it easier to sensor me for trying to take over your conversation? Student:

The first.

Igor:

The first one, right? So energy and enthusiasm kind of protect you. They keep you going. Does that make sense? So it’s called the Agreement Extension. You build on what they’ve said until you have enough control over the conversation that you can change the topic or you have the Agreement Reversal which has a little bit of a kind of mind bending moment. People will go where the hell do you go with that? It requires a little bit more energy to pull off, but it’s very eloquent when you do and it’s very easy to get into conversation. Are you cool with those two?

Students:

Yes.

Igor:

Quick question over here.

Student:

Just a quick add on to the Agreement Reversal. Some speakers say, if it’s possible, to avoid the but, because the but could create a defensiveness, but to say I agree with you and from this other point of view.

Igor:

Sure. So, when I say yes but, I don’t want to suggest that you have to use the yes but, as their words. It’s the principle there, right? So you can use yes, and something else. Here’s a classic way of creating the Yes, but Principle totally invisibly. Would you like that? Someone talks about whatever it is, let’s say sailboats again and you go do you know what? That’s just like cooking. It’s a classic Agreement Reversal, isn’t it? Just like…it’s agreeing, agreeing…cooking. What the hell? But as long as you carry on at that point, they’re going to give you a few moments to make your case. Like cooking, I don’t know. It has sails and wind going through it, who knows? But of course you’re not going to do that. Their mind is going to search for, what’s the relevance here? What’s the relevance?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Now if you want to be really sneaky, we may as well throw something out if you want to be really sneaky at this point. If you want to be really sneaky, change topic about three times. By the time you’ve changed to a third topic they won’t know how to get back to the original conversation. Student:

You’ll forget what it was?

Igor:

Most people will forget what it was. Let’s put it this way. Have you ever been at the edge of a conversation and people are talking about stuff? Then they talk about something that you know about like a movie you’ve been to or something like that. You want to say your peace and you’re just waiting for the time to say it and the conversation moves. It moves on somewhere else and moves on somewhere else and then suddenly it’s your turn to talk and you’ll go ah, I’ve got nothing to say. Because my mind is still on the thing I wanted to say but the topic is totally different now. I know it’s going to sound awkward if I bring it back up again. Have you had that experience? Well that’s what you’re creating by changing topics relatively quickly early on in a conversation. Make sense? I think that’s enough for the moment. Just go out and have a conversation with people. Walk around; just twominute conversations. The initial person starts the conversation as having chat and whatever. Your job is to agree and extend, agree and reverse and, if you want, then you can just throw a couple of different changes of topics in there as well to cement in the fact that you’re now running the conversation. Easy. Okay, spend about three or four minutes doing that. Off you go. [Exercise]

Igor:

Did you enjoy that?

Students: Igor:

Yes. Isn’t it easier to take charge of a conversation then we originally thought, right? Would you like to have a way of actually increasing the effectiveness and the power of that? Would that be useful?


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Only two of you want to do that? I can do that at lunchtime if you want. Would it be useful to have some methods to make that increasingly effective and powerful, yes? Conversational Hypnosis Mastery


CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Students: Yes. Igor:

Can I borrow you as a volunteer seeing you’re up here already? So we have the idea of the Agreement Reversal or the Agreement Extension. So he’s chatting way and my job is to jump in and go oh, that’s right, absolutely and so on, right? What if you started using your body language to help with it? At the low level we have signals that it’s my turn to talk. Those signals are things like if you just start talking about your topic, it doesn’t really matter. People don’t need to hear you.

Student:

You know I really like going for walks. It’s so nice out there in the breeze.

Igor:

What am I doing? Hands opening, eyes opening, I’m leaning forward. These are all preparatory movements that are basically showing I’d like to add something to that. Does that make sense? In many conversations that would be enough. He’s talking about something and he’ll go…and he’ll probably pause and look and then it’s my turn to talk, right? It’s just a little nonverbal signal. It’s my turn. The problem is if someone is in their gear just running and running and they’re enjoying it, they like the sound of their own voice and oh, man, I’m the marathon man, I can keep going forever, this turns into…then it’s like…all right, keep talking. I’ll just wait here. You can start this one. If this is enough that’s fine, but you need to be able to increase the intensity of the non-verbal’s to make it more likely that you’ll get the desired response. So from the classic it’s my turn to talk, you can then start going to the more authority body language, which is open things up, you might even pull back a little bit. So you notice now I’m kind of like pulling a little away from his conversations like I’m creating physical gestures of authority, the pointing finger or, more extreme, I might have open palms like stop, right? I might have something which softens it in terms of my language. It might sound something like whoa, you know you said something interesting a moment ago. Notice the hand again. Physical touch gets attention. If he’s so stuck in his own stuff in terms of what he’s talking about and so on, he might literally delete the fact that I’m there. He might negatively hallucinate me. It happens more commonly than you think.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So, if I’m going like…and then the train went faster and the wheels went round and round…hello? A touch, can often their attention and what a touch allows you to do, nonverbally… This is quite invasive, isn’t it? Student:

Stop!

Igor:

It allows you to do that in a socially-acceptable way, because he’s talking, he’s talking. Just talk about anything.

Student:

The movie was really cool last night.

Igor:

You know what’s really interesting is…? So you can give him the same nonverbal gesture, but on the way it’s just to touch shoulders like a friendly tap or a chat. So it doesn’t get registered consciously like he’s told me to stop. That’s rude, right? It’s just like, you know, it’s really interesting you should talk about the train’s wheels, because it reminds me of…cooking. Do you see where this goes? So, as a rule, you may want to start off with the low version of the body language which is just opening up, hands open, eyes open, mouth might be open like you’re about to say something. We’ll do this instinctively anyway, by the way. When we want to say something, we’ll lean in a little bit. If he ignores you, you want to pull back a little bit in kind of a power gesture. If he still ignores that then you might just come up with a physical touch and, personally, I’d like to have a little stop sign and go you know, that’s really interesting you should say that, because…and you just keep running with that. Make sense?

Student:

Yeah.

Igor:

Do you like that?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Yes, no, maybe so?

Students: Igor:

Yes. Do you want to practice that or do you want to have another little extra thing you can do and you can just mix them up?

Students: Extra.

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All right. The next thing you can do as well, which will soften… You may as well stay here.

Student:

Stay, okay.

Igor:

Thank you. Stay! You may not leave this stage! Did I say you could go? Why are you going? So the next thing you can do and this is especially if you want to do something more dramatic. Let’s say even this didn’t work out. The subtle gesture didn’t work out. If you want to do something more dramatic, you may have to take this thing out a little bit more with what you’re saying. So you can always ask for permission to interrupt, whilst at the same time non-verbally being very direct about things. So he carries on talking it’s like, I was going to go and talk and he carries on talking any way. Let me interrupt you for a moment. Do you see how that’s much more direct, much more in his face? I now have much more control of the physical space and everything else, but I’m asking for permission to interrupt, which takes away this thing of kind of arresting control away from him.

Student:

So you said you were asking for permission to interrupt and the phrase you used was ‘let me interrupt.’

Igor:

Yeah. Or, can I interrupt you for a moment or let me interrupt.

Student:

Okay. I took it literally. ‘Let’ is a very mind command.

Igor:

It might be. If someone says let me and he says oh, would you allow me to interrupt for a moment. The language is not so important. The point is that you’re asking for some kind of permission for interruption and it will fit. Can I interrupt? Yeah. Can I just interrupt you for a moment? Or, I like what you’re saying, can I just interrupt something? You have a really good point? When you think about this, the wheels of the train going round and round, it’s kind of like cooking, isn’t it? You notice how my gestures have become more dramatic to take more control of this. I’m being more invasive to prevent him from re-interrupting here. Make sense?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Meanwhile, of course, my job is now to talk with a little bit more animation, a little bit more volume and a little bit more energy and to keep talking long enough for him to settle down in the new interaction which is I’m doing all the talking. Now he’ll try and interrupt me and my job is to do what he did to me earlier on and that is carry on, but now that I’ve got this hand here he can’t do it back. Put your hand up here for a second and do some gestures with the hand there. It’s very awkward for me to go….jujitsu, now it’s my turn! If that happens, your conversation has a bigger issue than who’s actually doing the talking. Does that make sense? Do you like that? Is that useful? Students: Yes. Igor:

We may as well throw the last one in there as well, just because we may as well deal with them all at the same time. The last one really is to ask a question of the person. You can do it in conjunction with all the body language stuff we talked about or you can just ask on its own. The point of the question is it’s filtered. It’s kind of like a yes, and or a yes, but, because it accentuates whatever message he was developing, but then of course it gives you the control again, unless you let him answer the question fully. So the kinds of questions I’m talking about are known traditionally as Closed Questions, yes or no questions. For example, did you just say that was Mary, as in Mary from Newport? It’s interesting, because Mary told me something really interesting important about cooking. But do you see how I’ve now hijacked the question? It’s a closed question. He’s going, oh, he’s interested in my thing. Yes, it is. That’s so cool, because Mary…Now I’m going back to my Agreement Reversals or my Agreement Extension, right? Do you see how that works? You need, really, a closed question because you have an open question. It’s like did you enjoy that? Oh, it was wonderful, the wheels of the bus went round and round and they kept going around, right? You don’t want to give them too much to go on. A simple closed question, yes, no, what did you say your name was again? Mary. Oh, wow. Now you’ve got the interaction going again. Does that make sense? Do you like this? So they’re very simple mechanisms and you can escalate them. In other words, you can just join the conversation. You can have some simple body language. You can extend the body language. You can be quite invasive;

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 although, you can still be respectful of the person and you can add a few extra things in there to make it very simple to do. Do you like that? Is that useful? What I want you to do is, spend three or four minutes having the battle of conversation. What’s going to happen is this. You’re going to get thinking. [Applause] What’s going to happen is this. You’re going to start a conversation, right, and they’re going to give you a couple of minutes to just keep throwing. They go aha, hum, just like normal conversational stuff. Then it’s your turn to take over and when it is, you’ll try any of the ones – Agreement Reversal, Agreement Extension, the body language, the escalation, the question, the asking for permission and all that sort of stuff. As you battle your way through, you’ll have control of the conversation. You’ll rest it back. You’ll change topics three or four times and then you’re in your groove. Yes, the wheels of the bus are going round and round. After a while they go hang on a second. What just happened there? So they’re going to go is that Mary you’re talking about? No, because Mary is talking about cooking! You go back to your cooking thread and they’ll listen intently and go yeah, yeah, what the hell just happened? A scheme will develop in the back of your mind. That scheme will include something like really? Do you see where we’re going with this? Have fun with this. I think the easiest way of doing this is to spend about five minutes doing it now. So everyone, when we start again just do your own thing. We’ll leave you to your own devices.

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DVD 21: Getting Agreements, Getting Favors & Getting Sales – How to “Close” Absolutely Anybody Igor:

What I want to do now is have a little bit of fun. So far we’ve focused a lot on what we can do to influence others. Now we’re going to go to war. What we’re going to do is you’re going to carry on with these influencing tactics we’ve talked about. There are many more, but hopefully, you just got the ball rolling inside your minds. Meanwhile, I’m going to present to you a few ways of breaking people’s influences so that you don’t feel imposed upon. Remember the emotional energy we talked about? It will capture just as much as anyone else. How can you defend yourself from an unethical influence, wouldn’t that be something? The way we’ll play with this is very simple. We’ll do the whole thing again, one of you will be the influencer and you’ll use all these things to try to get the emotional energy built up and start focusing down one channel or another. The other one will cut it flat and you’ll switch roles so it’s just as fair. Then you’ll move onto someone else and find a creative variety of ways of trying to influence and of cutting short so they don’t influence you when you do not desire to be influence. Does that make sense to you guys? Would that be useful? The first few I have here are actually very simple and kind of fun. The first one is present your pre-frame before they start the influence cycle. What do I mean by this? Well, there are many contexts, in which you pretty much know that an influence cycle is going to occur. You walk into a shop and you know someone is going to try to assist you. If you call someone up to inquire for information, it’s reasonably sure, it’s reasonably likely that they’re going to involve you in some kind of sales cycle.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 One of my favorite examples is do you know what a chugger is? It’s an English expression, neologism, which stands for charity mugger. They are the people who stand on the streets with their clipboards of those poor people who have been decapitated, their feet have gone gangrenous and life is terrible and look, we’re here to save them. Yay! Only a really person wouldn’t help to save these people. Are you a bad person or are you the kind of good person that will give us $10 a month? Do you see where this is going? I have no problem with charities. I think charities do a wonderful job. I do have a problem with the way they recruit for payments like that because it’s an unethical influence. It’s actually guilt-tripping people into handing over money, and I don’t think that’s very ethical. In my opinion, it’s one step down from begging. So, two things I like to do. One actually I picked up from a friend of mine called Anthony Jacquin. He likes to do instant inductions on charity muggers. I kind of like that. The last time he did that it was fantastic because he does an instant induction and then tells them, whenever you see me walk by you won’t recognize me. You’ll forget about this interaction, but when I wave my hand like this, whatever I say, you’ll repeat and it will become your reality. So he goes off, picks up some friends and they’re walking and sure enough, there’s the charity mugger going, gentlemen this is this, whatever it is. He waves his hand and says we do not qualify for your survey. He looks up and goes you don’t qualify for my survey. He says we should leave now. You should leave now. He walks off. His two friends are standing there going, what the f---? If that doesn’t give you a reason to learn walk-up street hypnosis, I don’t think anything will. Amusement sidebars aside, if I’m in kind of a hurry and I don’t want to mess around with it, but I want to give these people my time, I’ll say sure, I’ll have a few moments with you. I’m giving them a favor so I can then call on a favor, right? Just one thing please, if you could. I just want you to promise me one thing. Sure, what is it? At the end of whatever you tell me, you’re not going to ask me for any money. Some people will try to rally back and say that’s kind of the whole point of this thing here. I say oh, I thought you believed in what you were doing.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Aren’t you just here to inform me about some situation whereas that could be helped? Well, that’s fine in you believe in that, then I’ll happily listen as long as you promise not to ask me for money at the end. Do you see how that works? Oh, only one person this has ever happened to me with. They had gone through the whole spiel and at the end he falls into his whole close and asks for money and so on. Then I turned around and said, well, what happened to your promise? We’re going to have to ask for it. No you don’t you promised you wouldn’t, I don’t think I trust you anymore. Do you see how setting a preframe resolves all that emotional angst they try to put on top of you because now, essentially, what you’ve done is it’s not me it’s you, which by the way is the next tactic. It’s crazily called out-framing. You’re switching the roles of responsibility. You’re no longer the one that needs to start responding. They have to be the one that starts to respond because remember, most influence cycles, especially the more unethical ones like con artists or even people who kind of strong-arm you into a sales cycle of some sort, requires your response. It’s all built around building pressure inside of you for you to be forced to respond in some way or another. Recall that our sales cycle is not about forcing, it’s about building more positive emotional things so they make good decisions. They may look related, but we’re also willing to let people walk away. I assume you realize that, right? So if someone is using more strong-arm tactics trying to enforce things and so on, one of the simplest ways of turning this around is to make it about them. One of the ways you can do this is kind of evil, but why not? I call this the paranoia defense. Why are you saying that? Why are you doing that? Are you trying to influence me? Are you trying to sell me something? Are you trying to influence me? I have a feeling that you don’t have my best interest at heart. No-no, I do because of this. You see, if you didn’t have my interests at heart, that’s exactly what you’d say. Do you see where we’re going with this? It’s not me, it’s you. I am a reasonable person, but you are trying to take advantage of me. No I’m not

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 I’m just trying to show you. You see, you’re doing it again. Denial is proof that you’re trying to influence me. You can have a lot of fun with this. The next thing is a more invisible kind of principle and this is never agree to something as a specific thing. Only ever present your agreement in principle and leave enough room to wriggle out. Ideally, don’t even agree to anything at all, only position. Are you the kind of person that thinks that this is a good idea? Usually I am. Do you think it’s good to do this? Well, it’s often the case, yes. Or, if I’m already sensing where it’s going, well, often that’s the case, but not always. Do you see what we’re doing with this? You’re not giving a black and white response, which means they can’t use consistency or commitment against you. You’re presenting yourself. Then they say is it yes or no, because you want to have a clear answer? Well no, life is much more complex then that. Does that kind of make sense? The last one is actually very useful. It’s called the broken record. It’s especially useful for you girls if you’re getting pestered by the wrong kind of attention. The broken record, basically, the premise behind it is you’re not adding any justification and you’re not varying. Whenever someone varies their response it allows a foothold for something to change. Oh well, you said this. Well, I’ll fit myself into that. If the response is always no thank you, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you, it’s a broken record. It’s like a wall that cannot be gotten through. Make sense? They can try the kind of thing like oh, you’re not being social. The answer is no thank you. Well, that’s not how you treat normal people. No thank you. Everything else is an attempt to engage you in a social interaction to be able to leverage off social principles. The broken record says I’m not going to socially interact with you; hence, there is no leverage. Does that make sense? This is very important especially if someone’s pestering you over something, because interacting with them adds nothing to the interaction. Has anyone here ever stood and argued with a wall for an hour or so? A real wall? No? Why? Because there’s no feedback. Has anyone here had an argument with someone else for an hour or two, just an argument? Why? Because there’s feedback.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Remember the feedback principle from day one? The broken record cuts the feedback loop so there is nothing to escalate, nothing to build. Initially there might be an escalation, like people might be a little bit more like hey, why are you saying no thank you all the time? Of course, that is an attempt to get you to engage and create feedback. The response to that, of course, is again no thank you. Does that make sense? Students: I was just going to say I’ve used that before. Of course, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was extremely effective because they can’t – I mean after a point they run out of things to say and they realize that’s all she can say is no thank you. Igor:

Right and they might even try. Is that all you can say, no thank you? No thank you. You do not vary one iota. If you say yes, you’ve just engaged in a social contact and you cannot do that. Does that make sense? Is that fun? Interesting stuff? What we’ll do very quickly is spend about five minutes practicing the closed doors. We will do more of this later on, especially when it comes to the whole closing cycle. I just want you to get used to this. I think there are five or so things we talked about here, very simple and easy to do… – Get them inside your mind, – Get a feeling for how to do them – Later on we’ll get to closes, which is how people get to the point where you’ve transformed them – The influence cycle, – The actual behavior, like signing on a contract or changing a belief – How we can expand those same ideas in those contexts so we can go despite the pressure that’s been built up. Does that make sense? Spend five minutes now. The exercise is very simply you’re all going to go around and with any interaction, one of you will be the hypnotist first and then you’ll have a switch over in a second. The hypnotist is going to start by trying to influence the other person with any of the things we’ve talked about, the little mini cycles, like a small request or a larger one and so on. Your job is very simply to pick one of the four or five breaks, the defense mechanisms against influence that we just talked about and present it.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Then the influencer is going to try at least twice to break through, and you will present at him more. You can do the same one or you can cycle to another one. It’s up to you. The only caveat is, if you decide to use the broken record, do not cycle from that, that has to stay the same constantly or it will not work. Have fun. Did you enjoy yourselves? Was that interesting? Remember, we’re just warming up on this. We’ll come back to this later on. I just wanted to get that sort of in there so that you don’t just have the one side of the influence cycle. You realize there’s an interplay going on here as well. Let’s the session formally, how are you doing? Are you guys having fun? Who here had interesting conversations over lunch, anyone? Did you notice there’s a power play going on, like when it switches one way and you go oh I’m going to get you back, and it switches the other way, and I’m going to get you back, and it switches the other way and so on? Do you notice that whole backwards and forwards flow? It’s important to appreciate that flow because it will tell you where you are in the influencing process. Are you leading the way or are you being lead? I can’t remember what the film is. It’s one of these poker playing films where one of the lines in it is, at every poker table there is a – I can’t remember what the term is, like a stooge or there’s someone who’s being taken by the rest of the table. If you look around the room and you can’t figure out who the idiot is that’s being taken by the table, it’s you. In some respects, influence works the same way. Someone is always influencing someone else, and that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It’s just an effect. If you’re wondering whose doing the influencing, then chances are it’s not you. One of the reasons for the exercise we did early on is to get you used to that interplay and what happens when someone takes you too far out of your influence zone and how you can start pulling it back. What I’d like to do now is, take that process a little bit further and play a couple games. These games will be interesting. Do not take them to heart in terms of like oh, what if this actually happens to me in real life? I will show you a way of making sure these things that we’re about to talk about do not happen to you in real life, but they’re interesting to experience anyway so in

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 case it does happen, it should be a warning sign to you that you’ve missed a step somewhere along the way. Plus, it’s also a good way of defending yourself from, shall we say, more unethical forms of influence. Does that make sense? Essentially, I call this the closing game. What we’re going to do is we’re going to put everything we’ve done together so far into a process where you’ll swap roles, of course. You’ll be closing someone on some pretend product. You can invent something – a widget, a car or a magic sponge. I don’t care. I’m going to give you specific closes, which are particularly common and quite useful, which will have principles built into them, like the scarcity principle and so on. What your partner is then going to do is they’re going to break your frame. In other words, he’s going to destroy your close. Make sense? The reason this won’t happen to you necessarily in your real life is because we’ll show you how to go through it so that it’s unlikely to happen, but it’s also a useful skill to have when someone’s giving you a sales spiel and you think all right, I’m feeling myself put in a corner here. It’s a great way for getting out of the corner. It’s kind of like a continuation of what we did early on today. Who wants to play that game? Everyone stand up please. What we’re going to do is very simply you’re going to walk around the room, make contact with someone, you have a little chat for like 10 seconds or so, and assume that this is the end of some kind of sales process. At the end of the sales process, you’re simply going to close them, and I’ll show you the different kinds of closes that I’d like you to practice. As soon as you’ve done the closing, you’ll go how about it? The other person is going to break that close in a specific way again. The first one is probably the most unethical ones I’ve come across and one of the reasons I hate the chuggers we spoke about before, not the individuals, just the way that they ask for money. It’s the shame or the guilt close. In this one, your job is to make the other person feel guilty about saying no or shame or embarrass them if they did try to say no.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Classic ones are, for example, oh you’re wearing last year’s fashions oh, this is all new now. So you embarrass them like, oh my God, maybe I better buy. That feels so wrong. Or maybe you can’t afford this. Do you see how this is all about shaming or guilt-tripping people into saying yes? You’ll like the defense. By the way, these defenses are not matched, they’re not paired in terms of… this is not the only thing you can do at this point. You can use this defense anyway they’re nice matched at this point. The defense for this that I’d like you to use is to flip the script on them. You’re going to our frame them essentially and you’re going to blame them for something. You might even get a little bit angry. Oh, you can’t afford this. Then you might turn around and say its people like you that make all the girls anorexic and give them complexes, how dare you promote such behavior. Do you see how I’ve kind of broken the frame? You’re going to blame them for something, and right now I don’t care what it is. Just find something to blame. It’s kind of like the glad game with a really evil twist. Student: ♦ Would you characterize it as chunking up? Igor:

That’s one way you can do it and if you want to go random, that’s the most fun one because they go, where the hell did that come from? The key here is to notice what happens in the interaction when blame gets introduced. Please listen now because I’m going to be rolling through these relatively quickly. If I pause you, just stay where you are and turn your attention quickly so we can add the next one, and we’ll go from there. Off you go. All right, was that fun and interesting? Are you going both ways? Make sure you do go both ways. All right, so we’re going to go onto the next close and defense. This one’s called like the quality close or the arts and crafts close. The idea is, basically, you’re going to show the quality of your product. Get people involved, enthusiastic and accepting how wonderful this is and how high quality it is so by implication they’re accepting the idea that this is a desirable thing to have that is better than anything else.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 They can’t say oh I don’t really want it. But I thought you liked it, look how wonderful this feels and so on. They’re trying to get you involved in the experience of it in the sales process. Again, you can break it from many different ways, but the one I think is going to be fun is you’re going to prevent them from sealing the deal. In other words, before they get a chance to say, you can buy it now, it’s just fantastic quality and for you it’s only $10. Yay! Before they get to that point where they make or break the sale, your job is to interrupt, pull the conversation back and just keep talking no matter what. Change the topic and as they try to bring it back so they can kind of get back on topic and get the close, you go oh yeah, that reminds me and then you go to another topic. Of course, after a few minutes just throw your hands up in the air and say great and then just switch roles, because otherwise you can go on forever with this one. This one is great, especially when you have people in a store showing you how amazing the dress is and so on, like do you want this, because you’re just being social. You’re just chatting and they never quite get the point of urging you and then suddenly they do this stuff, like how about you just think about it. I’ll come back later. Then they’ll leave you alone, which is kind of nice. Off you go. All right, for the next one, this one is again fun. The initial version of it seems a little direct and not quite as devious as our usually defense mechanisms, but we’ll make it more devious, rest assured. So the first one is you know that assumptive close, when people say oh, do you want the red one or the green one? Or, as soon as you’ve signed the paperwork, this car could all be yours. Or, this will be all yours you’ll take it home, you’ll be proud and all that sort of stuff. Again, these defenses, let me just emphasize, they’re not one for one. You can use these defenses anywhere and vice versa they’re just fun pairings for the purpose of the exercise. The defense I’d like you to use is denial. Of course, initially the denial will be very simple. I didn’t say I wanted it. Then I want the salesperson to come

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 back with some point of fact that the other person’s already agreed to. For example, but I thought you said you like Volvos and it’s fast and this is what it is. At that point, you’re going to have a lot of fun. You’re going to deny that you ever agreed that you wanted something, some quality that’s in it. You may have actually have said it, but just lose your memory about it. I never said I wanted a Volvo. You said you wanted a Volvo. I never said I wanted a Volvo. Yes you did. No I didn’t. Yes you did. Are you telling me you know better than I do what is this? Are you trying to manipulate me? Do you see where this is going? It confuses the hell out of the salespeople because they, basically, have to start from scratch, only this time you know exactly what they’re up to. Do you understand the denial and how sneaky it can get? Also, it just absolves you of responsibility. You just keep getting put backed into the corner and backed into a corner. They say well, you said you want this. No I didn’t. Yes you did, I just heard you. No, I didn’t say that. You misheard me. What do you mean? What did you say? I don’t know. What part are you talking about? You know what let’s start all over again. Sure, why not? Do you see where we’re going with this? A quick couple questions… Student: ♦ Can we do it in Monte Python accents? Igor:

It works better in Monte Python accents, for sure.

Student:

I have two questions. The first is one thing I noticed is that when like let’s say someone breaks your frame, they take over and they start talking about something, what I found is another way you can take it back is if you start talking about what they’re talking about, you roll with it and it allows you to get it back.

Igor:

Exactly.

Students: That’s interesting. The other question I had is everything we’re learning right now is more about how to just get out of the situation completely.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 ♦ Are we going to go into something more where we can actually use the situation to where we can, as opposed to just breaking the relationship, use it more to kind of get what we want? Like with a car dealer, we don’t always necessarily want to walk out of there. Will we go back into the objection destroyer or something like that? Igor:

We’ll put the whole thing into a system first, in terms of influence that you can ethically influence people very well. Remember, what we’re doing right now just to kind of give you like a framework to get these fields in, we’re creating black and white reference points so you can get the extent as you can do. You can also just do small versions of this. For example, denial, you know the assumptive close as soon as we’ve done the paperwork we’re ready to go. Well, I never said I wanted to do it. What’s missing? I thought you were going to give me a bonus. I never said anything about a bonus. I’m sure you did. I’m sure I remember your saying something about a bonus. I never said anything about a bonus. Well, could you throw one in anyway? Do you see how it works? In order to get to that, we need to get a contrast and that’s what we’re doing right now.

Student:

Perfect sense now.

Igor:

Any other questions or shall we just go into the next one? All right, what was the next one again the assumption and denial. Off you go. Okay, so are you enjoying that? It’s kind of fun? What I’d like you to notice please is the nature of the interaction and how it changes. How do you feel as the influencer, the salesperson in this case, when everything’s going swimmingly, you’re about to close and suddenly, something happens like, what the hell is this? How do you feel about that? Confused, frustrated and so on. Would it be fair to say that internal pressure’s building up? That’s where you start using, to answer your question, in order to start presenting your frameworks and so on. We’re giving you lots of different defenses to build up pressure– notice how each time you have a different defense, whether

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 it’s blame or it’s denial or something else– it actually opens up a different set of responses or a different set of possibilities. If you deny that you said something, well, once you get past the little tassel thing, they’ll try to reiterate what it was so you can re-open negotiations at that level. When you create blame, they’ll either apologize or be confused, at which point, of course, you can introduce new things. For example, do you know what would make me happy is if you give me this, this, this and this that’s the very least thing you could do. Then the blame turns into a bargaining, shall we say, because they need to modify that. Do you see how this is working? So please pay attention as the influencer or the salesperson here, how it feels when different types of defenses are presented to the close because those will open up different types of bargaining positions afterwards, which is kind of where you were coming from before. Student:

It seems like the denial frame only works if you’re deeper into an interaction, because you have to have some kind of a context.

Igor:

Absolutely. Right now we’re just role playing something. Imagine you spent like an hour in the car showroom, and he’s showing you all kinds of stuff and he says well, let’s just do the paperwork over here and you can drive off with the car. I didn’t say I wanted this car. Well, we just spent the time looking at it. No we didn’t.

What do you think we’ve been doing for the last hour? You’ve been showing me cars, but that’s not what I want. What I want to see is this, that and the other. Then that’s where your bonuses come in and so on. Do you see how that works? Because you’ve thrown him for a loop, notice the surprise that suddenly comes. That’s your opportunity to reframe the situation again in your favor because you’ve just triggered the amygdala at the point where they think it’s all secure, it’s all ready to go. I think it’s particularly useful when they’re employing an unethical sales close because it’s like, all right, if you want to take the gloves off, off they come. Does that help? Are there any other questions?

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Let’s try another kind of pairing. The calendar close is a classic variation of the assumption. The calendar close is basically, well, is Tuesday or Wednesday better for you? You could, of course, go down the denial route. We’ve done that already, so let’s just play with something different. This is the confusion defense. Say I feel really confused and go like, what? I’m not sure what are you talking about? Well, do you want to come in Wednesday or Thursday? Notice how they’re now feeling a little bit more insecure like, are you coming to hypnotherapy? I’m sorry I’m not quite sure what it is that you want to sign me up for. What is this all about again? Remember, you called me for hypnotherapy. You wanted to come in for a car, remember. We showed you these cars. Oh, yeah but you forgot – and now you can start reopening negotiations again. Do you see where we’re going with this? Act confused and see where it takes you. Is that easy? Off you go. Are you beginning to notice how different ways of presenting a push-back at the end of the close will actually open different possibilities to you, and really the easiest way of finding out what all the possibilities are is to be the salesperson and have someone push back on you and go oh, what’s this? Because then you’re actually experiencing it and that’s really how other people will experience it too. Make sense? Are you ready for another close? This is the flattery close. Basically, you’re going to flatter them into submission by saying oh, you’re such a smart person this is a great thing. All the smartest people get this yada, yada, yada, 9 out of 10 Mensa graduates prefer this. Your response to that is, keeping with that flattery approach, let’s ask for more data and more data and more information and some more, and some more. Are you done yet? No, some more. Is that everything you need? A little bit more and some more and some more. Do you see where we’re going with this?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 It’s a variation of the broken record, exactly but, of course, it’s getting more and more information out and one of the reasons for this being useful is because the more information that’s present, the more you’ll have things that you can use for leverage. Something will slip out or might offer you more in frustration or say well, what about this? It’s a way of collecting data so you have something for more leverage later on. Does that make sense? Do you have a question or comment on that? Student: ♦ Are you asking us to provide more information about whatever it is I’m trying to sell or is the person asking to have their ego stroked more? Igor:

Well actually, I never thought of the second version, but that’s a good one too I like that.

Student:

You’re busy telling them how smart they are or whatever, so that’s…

Igor:

Right, the proper version of the defense is to ask for more information on the product, get more details and more details and more details, although I never really considered saying well, if you just flatter me enough I might get this. You’re not doing a good job right now. No, I’ve heard that one before, a little more originality, please. That’s another version of close that we’ll come onto, which is the calling on it. One of the simplest ways of breaking a close, when someone’s trying to leverage you into position, is to describe to them what it is they’re doing. Oh, you’re doing this, this and this. Let’s say someone’s doing the objection destroyer on you and you have a genuine objection and for some reason they’ve used it in a way that doesn’t quite work, it hasn’t resolved. You go oh, I get it. Do you know Igor, you realize that you messed up on the H+ part, but other than that it was pretty good. Did you see how that works? It’s kind of fun. I kind of like doing that again with people who are standing on the streets asking for things and so on. With one guy I ended up saying look, you’re doing this all wrong. What you need to do is ask them this. You’re standing wrong. Look, this is how to do

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 it. They’re like can I learn this from you? Do you want to stay here and help me out? No, that’s okay, thank you. For the moment, let’s just stick with asking for more data. You want to have more facts. The more facts you have, the more you have at your disposal to point out a contradiction and say well, hang on a second, you said it does all these things, but now you’re saying this. How does that work? So it allows you to find more information for bargaining, plus it delays the pressure for the close. Make sense? Off you go. All right, are you ready for the next one? For the close, we’re going to use scarcity or whatever you want maybe exclusivity, like this is only available at certain times. Or, it might be scarcity in the sense of oh, this is our last model, our last example and we already promised it to someone else. No, no, I want this and so on. You have the classic ones. In Thailand, of course, they have these wonderfully really, I can’t believe this actually works in closes where you’re brought to one of these jewelry stores, which are normally just for trade, but today and today only how lucky are you that they have this sale to normal tourists as well. One day of the year. I must be the luckiest person because I keep bumping into this one day of the year sales. I must be really lucky. Of course, you realize that there’s a scarcity being created here that’s trying to drive you into buying because you’re not having that much time to make a decision and so on. The simplest defense for that, you can use any of the ones we’ve used so far, a useful defense to have in general is doubt. Just doubt them. Remember the glad game where you find reasons for why things are going well or why life is good and so on? You’re going to now play the doubt game. You find reasons to doubt. Oh, I’m sure I’ll find it somewhere else. Or I’m sure I’ve seen exactly the same thing in another place. Oh no, this is exclusive to our thing. Really, I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere else, maybe it was something similar. Yeah, it might have been cheaper as well I don’t know.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Do you see where I’m going with this? You’re beginning to doubt the exclusivity or the scarcity of it, which instantly negates their bargaining position. Everyone clear on that? Off you go. Ready for another one? All right, we’ve got two more for you. These again are fun ones. The first one is the ownership close or the future memory. Essentially, you’re going to describe to them what it’s going to be like to actually own it. You’re going to assume that they already own this product and just enthused about how great life is. For example, this is really the car for you. When you take this home, your family is going to love this. Your neighbors are going to come around and ask you, where did you get this? Just make sure you mention my name because we’ve got other things for other people as well. You’re building up the whole future memory for them, right? The defense I would like you to use is a beautiful one, and particularly frustrating in this case, it’s called splitting hairs. Oh, I’m not married. I don’t have kids. Okay well, when you take it home your neighbors… Oh no, I’m not going to take it home. I’m going to drive it straight to the office. Well, your colleagues will probably really appreciate it? Oh, they don’t know much about cars. Do you see where we’re going with this? You’re splitting hairs, its tiny little things o like, when you sign this contract… Oh, I’m not sure I can sign it. Can I just email you something? You’re, basically, splitting hairs about little things that are unimportant, but that just prolongs the whole interaction until something gives again. You’re just building pressure with it. Off you go. Is this useful stuff so far? Yes? Okay, let’s have one last one so you can get used to this whole process. Before I give the last one, again, are you noticing again differences in terms of how you feel when someone’s pushing

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 back on your close? Are you noticing how it puts you in different positions, which open up different possibilities to the other person? Good. What I’d like to do now, the last close is the classic close. Everyone’s heard of the yes set close. You want this, you want this, you want this and you want this. Let’s check it off the list. Look, I’ve got this. This car’s got wheels. This car’s got brakes. This car’s got a wind screen. My God, it’s a real car. This is kind of a fun close. Basically, the defense to this is giving yourself permission to be totally and utterly illogical. The way you can do it in this one is very simple you’re just going to agree with everything, except the close. So you like the car? Yes. The color’s great? Yes. The price is great? Yes. Are there exceptions? No. Are you ready to buy the car? No. What? But you like the car, right? Yes. You like the color, right? Yes. The price is right, isn’t it? Yes. You want it now, do you yes? Well, are you ready to buy the car now? No. Why not? What’s missing? I don’t know. Student:

But you said you wanted all these things why not?

Igor:

I do want all those things. Did you hear the question over there? What else do you want? Do you see what it naturally starts bringing up? So you’re not going to ask for anything. They’re going to offer. Yes, yes, yes, or no. Huh? It’s a lot of fun. Just spend a few minutes doing that. Off you go. Very quickly let’s go over the list again. Remember, the defenses are not linked to any particular close. I just matched them together in an amusing manner. Let’s put it that way. Any one will kind of work with anything else. I’ll just give you all the closes first and then all the defenses second. 1.

Shame or the guilt close.

2.

The quality close. (You look at the quality, the craftsmanship and that sort of stuff.)

3.

The assumptive close. (You assume the close in some way.)

Students: These are actually defensive closes, right?

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Igor:

Say again? No, no, no. These are all the closes and then we’ll show you the defenses about how to break them all open again. So when someone’s trying to railroad you into a close to make a decision now, you get to open it up again, have a new bargaining position and get more. 4.

The calendar close, which is very similar. (It’s a very common one so you may as well get used that one too. Would you like to do it on Wednesday or Thursday? I’ve got an appointment on the 15th and the 17th. Is morning or afternoon better for you?)

5.

The flattery close, which is usually linked with things like how intelligent you are or what a smart buyer or fashionable or whatever relates to the product in some ways. (It’s essentially flattery.)

6.

The ownership close, which essentially is a future memory. (You assume that they own the item or the service already. They’ve already bought it, it’s already theirs and you just go straight into the benefits and how much they’ll enjoy it.)

7.

The yes set.

Again, these are not all of the things that are possible. I’m just trying to get you guys to have a sense of how rich a variety of responses you can have. It just gives you much more choice, doesn’t it? So the first one is: 1.

Blame them for something.

It has a real way of just redirection the whole energy of the interaction. A lot of people end up getting into the appeasement mode, and the way to appease you is, of course, to make up for it in some way, which is, of course, when you get extra bits and pieces. 2.

Keep talking and change the topic.

So the idea of keeping talking is you quite let them finish the whole close. It’s amusing and sometimes in frustration, they’ll offer something more or they’ll want to show you something more. It just changes the dynamic a little

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 bit, plus it gives you more opportunities for laying foundations, like preframes and so on as they’re talking innocently, it seems. 3.

Denial.

That’s a funny one. Just deny that you agreed to something or said something or locked yourself into a position. Say no, I didn’t. I heard you say it. I’m not sure what you heard, but I didn’t say it. It’s a little sketchy on the ethics, but again, it comes back to, in my opinion, it gives you as good as it gets. If they’re really trying to railroad you, then you may as well railroad right back. Of course, this is not something you do at McDonald’s. Here’s your Big Mac, sir. I didn’t order that. You choose your venues for these things. 4.

Act confused.

Acting confused is great because it gets them to elaborate and introduce information. It gives you an opportunity to really remember that you didn’t do something. Even when I’ m not doing mind-bending language, it’s still bending your mind! So he’s asking if the confusion can be mixed with denial. I think they’re very good partners, absolutely. So you confuse them at first, and they turn around and to the offer again. Some part of it you don’t really like so you go, I didn’t say that. Yes you did. No I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t say that. Let’s just start from the beginning again, just talk me through this once more. That gives you an opportunity – now you know what the whole thing is to object at some point or not accept something or ask for something more and so on. Now they’ve already placed all their cards on the table. You already know what pretty much the whole deal is. 5.

Doubting.

Doubting them in terms of, when they say oh, we’ll do this, we’ll do that. Well, what if you don’t deliver? What if it’s not there on time? What if this is the only the left, and you go, oh I don’t know if it’s the last one. I’m sure I saw something down the road somewhere. I’m sure I can get this on the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Internet or something very much like that. So doubt opens the bargaining table again. 6.

Keep asking for more data, more facts and more information.

Data is very useful because it allows you to then find a frame of reference in what they’ve said that allows you to leverage something else. Oh, well, you know you said this and this, and it’s this. Really I wanted this. Or I thought you meant that, but really it’s something different. That’s not really what I was looking for. Do you see how that works? 7.

Splitting hairs.

Again, it’s a way of prolonging the information until something can happen. Also, it’s particularly useful if you’re in a position where you feel you’re being socially railroaded into something, but you don’t want to have a hard close, just say simply no, I’m not interested. Splitting hairs is a great way of making it impossible for the person to close. What about this? What about that? It’s not this. The yellow’s not quite right. Have you got a different yellow? No we don’t. Well, I’d like this in yellow anyway. It’s a way of delaying their ability to actually close you. If you’re in a situation where you can’t just say, no I don’t want it, flat out.

For example, can you get the milk out of the fridge? Well, what kind of milk were you thinking of? I don’t know. Which frig and how long do I have to do this? Oh, I don’t know if I can do it instantly, but maybe a little bit later on I can do it. So you’re splitting hairs in terms of the delivering of some sort. 8.

The irrational defense.

Who says you need to be rational? So yes, yes, yes or no. Huh? That goes kind of into the whole idea of the broken record, which is the idea of just closing off. You just create a closed loop and nothing comes in at that point. It’s very difficult to influence someone who has created a closed loop essentially, who is no interacting with you anymore, who is rejecting all information that’s coming from you whether it’s good or bad or indifferent. Everyone clear on those?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Students: ♦ Irrational or rational? Igor:

Irrational. So they’re saying you want this? Yes. You want that? Yes. You want this? Yes. It has this? Yes. It has all these little features that you want? Yes. So are you ready to buy it? No. Huh? Why? It doesn’t have to be just the yes set. We’re just using the yes set in that sense, but it can also be totally irrational like, are you ready to buy this car? No. Why? The wheels aren’t shiny enough. Do you see what I mean? You’re throwing irrationality into the mix, which is very confusing like oh, that’s not very sensible, sir. Well, I want it anyway. If I can’t have shiny wheels, then I’m sorry. I think I’m not interested. How are you going to make up for the lack of shiny wheels to me? Do you see where we’re going with this stuff?

Student:

This defense is so effective that when I was doing the exercise, I couldn’t win any of them.

Igor:

That’s the whole point.

Student: ♦ How do we win? Igor:

That’s a good question. When we are faced with these things, how do we win anyway? Would you like to know how to do that? Are you sure about this?

Students: Yes.

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DVD 22: The I.G.O.R. Method – How to Destroy Resistance to Your Influence for Guaranteed Results Igor:

So, we spent a lot of time doing some interesting things today, haven’t we? All right, if there was going to be one theme that would be a guiding thing throughout the whole of today, what do you think that would be? If there was one theme that was kind of behind most of the stuff that you did, any guesses on what that might be?

Students: Reframing and reversals? Igor:

That’s close.

Students: Conversation awareness? Igor:

That’s absolutely important, but it’s not quite what we’re looking for.

Students: Feeling the emotions? Igor:

Again, it’s getting very close to what we’re talking about, but it’s not quite there yet. Flexibility is part of this whole thing. Yes! What did he say? You missed it you should have sat down earlier. He said resistance. Think about it. All we’ve been doing today is we’ve been playing with different types of things that are traditionally known as resistance, have we not? One of the reasons I do this is because most people who think about the influencing process, think about motivation. How can I motivate someone? If only I motivate someone enough, then there’s no resistance. Isn’t that the logical thing most of us think about? Actually, as it turns out that’s not quite the case. We have two separate systems in our brain that actually get triggered at the same time whenever some kind of influencing process goes on.

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i. One is all about approach and opportunity. ii. Second is all about avoidance or it’s about inhibition. The approach frame is– let’s look at the right one. Here you go. It’s the part of the brain called the basal ganglia and the drug of choice is dopamine. This is what gets people motivated. It makes them approach things, makes them interested and curious, and it’s a wonderful part of the brain to have, isn’t it? The problem is if all you have is approach – oh, look at those shiny teeth on that saber-toothed tiger – you can get into all kinds of trouble. To balance this system, we have the hippocampus and our good friend the amygdala. Remember the amygdala, what does it do? It inhibits things. It breaks the process of the circling thoughts in the neocortex and so on, right? I believe I’m correct when I say that serotonin is the drug of choice of the inhibitory system. So as influences, I’d like you not to focus just on how we motivate people to do things, but I’d like you to think of it as a sliding scale. How do we decrease resistance as we increase motivation? It’s not either/or. The Cialdini Principles, for example, are primarily about motivation, aren’t they– authority, social proof and so on. There is another researcher called Dr. Knowles, who looks at the other side of the equation. What happens when people are resistant, and how can you break that resistance down? Wouldn’t that be something worth looking at and building into our model of influence? So I have to say I like that Dr. Knowles presented as he’s got and then we’ll see if we can use our tools to solve these problems. He’s got three kinds or three main reasons for inhibition for resistance. The first he calls the reactant, which is a reaction to the influence process itself. You’re trying to influence me, and I don’t like it. Who here likes being told what to do? Who here likes it when someone sneakily makes them do stuff that they didn’t choose to do? Anyone enjoy that? A classic example of this is a lot of the subliminal studies with images. Images actually will work much better than sounds. If you flash an image of a certain kind of water, for example, and at the end they have the boss

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 playing video games, at the end they can choose from a whole bunch of different waters as a drink to take and then go home. Some people have the visual acuity to perceive, shall we say, consciously even a tiny flash at a hundredths of a second. The people that did not perceive the flash of a particular water bottle – I don’t know what it was– I think it was the water from the Coca Cola Company they would automatically take the water bottle, more or less. However, the people who perceived the water, to a person, excluded that from their choices. That is a classic reactant and you feel the same way, don’t you, when you feel like someone’s trying to manipulate you, trying to do something to you, what do we do? We shut down. We go no, I don’t like this. We fight back. So the first hurdle we’ve got to do is be aware of and think about what’s going on is what happens when people think they’re being influenced and it’s to their detriment, so we’ve got to take care of that. The next one is the idea of skepticism. It’s just plain old doubt and finally, is the idea of inertia. We tend to like to preserve things the way they are, and it takes effort to change or add things. So sometimes people are ready for everything, it’s just like, I just can’t get the drive going to get this done and those are three main causes of resistance. Think back to the previous exercise that we just did, where people were just putting a stop to things and so on, those are all examples of one of those three things in action, wasn’t it? Some skepticism – was that like maybe the doubt thing? Inertia – yes, yes, yes, yes, no. Why not? I don’t know. It’s too much effort. What we want to do is make sure that in the process, when we’re listing the values and getting the drivers and so on, these are all motivators. We also want to make sure that we’re testing for the resistance, for inhibitors, so we can take care of them as part of the natural cycle. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? So should we have a look at some ideas of how we might do that? Let’s just run through some of things in terms of the principles. Let’s look at the idea of reaction, the idea of people not wanting to be influenced. What’s

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the primary reason why people don’t like being influenced? Fear absolutely, afraid they’re going to lose something. It’s the fear that something to their detriment is going to occur. So our solution somehow has to take care of that fear process, doesn’t it? Now one of the simplest methods of taking care of fear and the whole trust concern really is rapport. Do you have a relatively powerful method for building rapport now? Something that’s a little bit unusual compared to what most people normally talk about? Do you now realise why we spent so much time in the last five days practicing the inner smile and everything that’s built up on top of it? Because a lot of the problems that you guys are talking about – like oh, what about this? I don’t like this – they’re taken care of with rapport. I mean real rapport, not like yeah, he’s okay. We’re talking like, this is an amazing person. Do you remember how you felt yesterday when you went through the first half of the influence process? In other words, the proper value, elicitation, they’re really listening to you and you had a little bit of an objection, but they busted through those in a way that was very respectful of you. How did you guys feel? Did you like it? That’s a very different type of influencing process then when someone just goes yeah, that’s very nice. Yeah, I like holidays too. Yeah, it’s cool. That’s a much lighter level of rapport. We’re talking about the more the depth the rapport, the more trust. That’s why friends can sell each other things very easily; because they don’t try they just demonstrate the value of it. I found this cool thing, it’s amazing, do you want to try it? Sure. Oh, wow, it’s amazing. Where do I get it? Oh, it’s in the store over there. Because they’re not selling it, unless they’re into the whole multi-level marketing which is a different story, of course, and your friends become like sales monsters. Not all the time, of course. We trust our friends. That trust, that rapport and respect is already there. If you can establish that right up front, it takes care of a lot of the reactant issues.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The next thing is something that is perplexing to me why a lot of people don’t notice this – is what happens – let me try it this way. Could I borrow you for a second? Just come up here. I just want to show you something. What if I was going to try to take more restraint – resist. What do people normally do? One, come on. Do you see the reaction there? That’s typical isn’t it? The harder I pull, the harder he’ll pull back. Yet strangely enough, when we get into this whole tussle thing, we start wanting to pull harder. When we’re doing these little practice closes with the resistance, how many of you felt like, if only I pull hard enough, I’m going to get this bastard to come with me? With emotion rising up, it’s that conflict interaction. All that’s going to do, of course, is build or increase resistance. So as a rule, if you get a little resistance here, just back off and let it go, say that’s all right. Now he’s back in his space. He’s maintaining his integrity and so on, but any time you should want to come, it is kind of fun. I’ll show you something. Come over here a second- wash, rinse, repeat. You want to back off, let him have his thing. It’s like okay, I’m safe. This is good. Then you might just increase some motivation, decrease some of the inhibitions. I’ll show you something else if you like that actually quite straightforward and people love this stuff. Do you know how much they love it? Let me show you. Come over here. So he’s saying that he feels like it’s more his choice as well and that’s the whole point, isn’t it. Aren’t reactions about choice, about not feeling like you’re being influenced and so on? [Applause]

Wash, rinse and repeat instead of just pulling harder, it’s not about pulling harder. The one thing I will say in terms of caveat, there are occasions when people are just, its not reactant that’s the problem. It’s like they’re not resisting because they’re not sure about the influence process and so on sometimes it’s just inertia. It’s like well, I don’t know. It’s effort, there’s a different quality to that.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Isn’t there so if its inertia, the putting more pressure on can actually work and we’ll come onto that in a moment. Just want to make sure you understand that it’s not a black and white sort of rule. Hypnotic reversals are great. It’s kind of little bit like what we’re doing here. It’s, when we start reversing the scene of them. Here’s a classic example. Those of you, who’ve got the 'How To Make A Lot Of Money', please don’t answer this because it’s already revealed there. How would the rest of you deal with a situation where say a smoker comes in and you say are you ready to smoke? They go yeah, well, my family wants me to stop. How will you deal with that? Would you say well, hypnosis can do great things, and it’s very important, let’s find some way for you to stop smoking and so on. Would you do that? How many people would do that? No? How about say, well, it seems like you don’t really know why you’re here. So I’m not going to waste your time, and honestly I’d rather see other clients instead. So why don’t you go home and really think about it and then come back when you decide that you really want to make this change. Any of you actually tried that approach when it comes to especially smoking sessions and so on? What are your percentages in terms of people who stay despite your kicking them out? For me, it was around about 70% of the people stayed. Would that be fair to say that it’s 70%, maybe a little bit more? Set up correctly, most people stay, and they don’t just stay. They stay! They’re now in the program. You’ve reversed the whole script on them. Does that make sense? So you can take the resistance and flip it right back round on them. Sometimes acknowledgment is enough. Have you ever been to maybe like a family function and nobody speaks about Uncle Harry? It’s like a big elephant stuck in the middle of the room, and everyone’s trying very hard not even to bump into the elephant. Has anyone here ever tried – of course, done tactfully – acknowledged the fact that it’s there? Sometimes just acknowledging it – and actually the research shows this – when someone is feeling resistance, just acknowledging it – look, you might not like this, I understand. Sometimes if you can anticipate the resistance you say, you might not like this, but here’s the product, and then actually have the reactions the opposite way.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 The problem with that, by the way, is that you want to make sure that you know the person ahead of time because if you say, you might not like this to someone who has no reactants, and then they probably won’t like it because you just suggested it. The research backs it up. People who are introduced with this might not like it, and if they were normally just easily persuaded, you’ve diminished their response rate. You increase the responses of the reactives, but you decrease the responses for everyone else. So as a rule, I’d say reserve that for when there’s a problem. Just say look, I understand. You don’t want to be doing this. You feel rushed and the rest of it. I get it. Here’s the crazy part. You don’t have to do anything else. Just acknowledging it is enough. Does that make sense? Let’s have a look at some other little choice tidbits here. Another thing you can do is to start depersonalizing things. Part of reactants is all about what kind of framework happens when people get reactive or resist? It’s kind of like a “its them v us” thing, isn’t it? Oh, you’re not one of us. You’re not in my best interest. So the two things you can do is one is to do joining. It’s about us. So rather than blaming and saying, you need to stand up here, well let’s stand up here together. That’s joining and becoming joining forces, rather than opposing forces. The other version is the same idea essentially. It’s to depersonalize it. Most people find that standing up here is actually quite comfortable and it’s easy to do. So I’m not really asking you to do anything other than what I’d ask anyone else to do. It’s not about you. I ask everyone this. Who here gets offended when you’re in a doctor’s office, and he touches you in more intimate areas? If it’s part of the examination well, it’s not personal. It’s not about you it’s just how the work gets done, right. But if it ever was personal about you, even in that environment and you got a sense that it was personal, wouldn’t that be a completely different story? Same activity, if you think about it. So depersonalizing something can be a very powerful way of diminishing resistance. Stories are something we’ll come onto more as we get into the advanced part. It’s an excellent way of getting through most kinds of resistance,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 whether its inertia or reactants or even skepticism, but we’ll talk more about those as we get into that fully. You can minimize the request as well. You can diminish the importance of it, right? The study for this, by the way, was would you like to make a donation. People think oh, I don’t know. Anything will do, just pennies will be fine. Every little bit helps. On average, people would donate just as much, in other words, the people would otherwise not donate, are donating just as much as everyone else does. They’re just being given the freedom to respond only a little bit, in other words, you’re diminishing the request. It’s enough freedom to feel, I’m not being taken advantage of here. By the way, do you notice how a lot of these things you can just weave into your normal presentation, normal interaction? These are not little power moves and so on, they’re subtle, invisible things you can weave into how you present everything else, when you talk about values and all the rest of it, right? This is quite a sneaky one now. I came across his originally with Grinder and Bandler. Knowles actually did some research on this as well. The story that Grinder tells is kind of funny. They had some clients come in for a period and decided to go with hysterical clients just because. So they come in all hysterical. Hold on a second, we haven’t started yet. Just give me five minutes to get ready. They go okay, sure. They pulled themselves right back together again. If you haven’t started yet or if you’re already finished those are the times when people are most open to influence because nothing is going on. So before we begin, let’s just get some ground rules out of the way so we can get the interaction done properly. You can do most of your influence cycle in that segment. Let me get this out of the way. Let’s talk about you or about what you want to do and all the rest of it. Do you see how that works? Whew, we got the hard part done. Well, at least that’s over now. So now that we’re done, let’s have a little chat about life in general or something. Do you see how, again, you’re diminishing the importance of what’s going on, and that’s the point where the defenses come down the most? Again, do not abuse this because if you abuse this once, once trust goes, it’s very difficult to get it back.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Another one – and this is a classic one from the whole Ericksonian school – is redirecting resistance. Bandler did it to the point where if someone is sitting in the wrong chair, you just move them across the chair in a way that it stays in that place. I like to move people to physical locations. Sometimes I move them across rooms. A lot of people find that getting someone into a different office for the actual signing of something will diminish the resistance in a way. Right along with that could be to redirect the resistance in a way of giving them something to fight and win over. You can introduce ideas that they’ll object to, and you’ll fight back a little bit and they’ll object even more vehemently, and then you say, all right, you’re right, you can have it. Of course, now they feel like they’ve won, they’ve got their trophy, and to you really it’s a no brainer, but it feeds their need to win. It feeds their need to have pushed back on something. Make sense? The next one is a classic routine – the good cop, bad cop. Someone puts pressure on you and then the other person becomes your saving or shining white knight. Suddenly it builds more rapport potential and so on. People can be a little bit clued into that one, but it can still work in situations where that would not be expected, in terms of like a sales thing where someone says, oh, I can’t do this. This can’t be done. We don’t have these things in stock. Then the next sales person comes in and says, look, why don’t you go and deal with this over here. I’m sorry about that, he’s new here. He’s right that we’re low on stock and so on, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll do my best to find what it is. What was it you were looking for? Do you see the whole switching thing? You create pressure and then you release the pressure and, of course, that accelerates the bonding process. Finally, the idea of removing the strings, if people feel that there are strings attached, just to give you the quick study on that one. If you’re in a hotel and they say, please reuse your hotel towels and so on. On one card it would say if you reuse your towel, if you don’t get us to wash it again, we will make a donation on your behalf to such and such a charity. That’s a nice thing, right? Another version said we have made a donation for such and such a charity on your behalf already. So whether or not you use the towel is irrelevant. It’s

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 already been made. More people at that point decided to actually go ahead and reuse their towels. So by taking the pressure off and by taking off the strings, so to speak, it gives them freedom to respond socially, and that’s, of course, what we want to be doing. Finally, in terms of reactants, sometimes it’s enough to get a little bit of momentum going and then redirect it in any direction. Oh, that’s more important really for the inertia. Do you get the idea of how to deal with people who feel like they’re being manipulated? They’re resisting the process of influence, so you stop that process of influence. You make it more transparent and invisible you back off and let them have time to find their own way. Let’s talk about skepticism. What’s the purpose of skepticism? It, basically, is doubt, isn’t it? That’s the basic thing there. I’m not sure if this is correct. One of the simplest ways of taking care of skepticism is a guarantee. The question is; is skepticism related to the critical factor? It can well be. So people who have got an overdeveloped critical factor in terms of they analyse everything, they’ll tend to be more skeptical. True skeptics, in my opinion though, are open to experiences rather than rejecting them all. It’s just that they won’t accept the conclusions. So they’ll accept the experience but not the conclusion. What a lot of people call skeptics, of course, won’t even accept the experience in the first place. For example, if you went to a true scientist who’s supposed to be a skeptic and say, I can read minds. If he laughs in your face that is just someone who is closed off. They’re actually close-minded. If he says all right, prove it, show me. Then he’s open to the experience although he’s pauses his conclusion about it. He doubts the conclusion, although he’s happy to have the experience of what that might be. Do you see how that works? A guarantee is one good way of taking care of skeptics because essentially it’s about avoiding risk. A large part of doubt is about avoiding risk. The reactant is a fear of being manipulated. Skepticism is the fear of making the wrong choice essentially. Another thing that works fantastically well with skeptics – it will take a little bit more time and it depends on what kind of situation you’re in, but this is where hypnotic gifts, for example, are wonderful. If you can teach someone how to make a better decision, how to sort the genuine offers from the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 snake oil salesman, the irony is there will be no difference in how much or little they get influenced by a snake oil salesman. However, their rate of response, the way they get influenced by the genuine article – goes up. So the way they did this was, basically, by teaching a bunch of students how to recognize websites and analyze them critically in terms of what’s a genuine offer in terms of if a sports star is talking about toothpaste, well, that’s not a genuine testimonial, shall we say, because what does he know about toothpaste? He’s just another human being. If it’s a doctor talking about it, that’s much more genuine. That has more weight in terms of the argument. Do you see how that works? So they had them being able to analyze websites to figure out which ones were just blowing smoke and air and which ones actually had genuine offers on them, and they found that with the smoke and air ones, the influence rate stayed pretty much level, but the genuine ones, they ended up buying way more on those. Why? Because think about what’s happened. They’re now confident in their decision-making abilities, so they’re more willing to make a decision. Skepticism is often a defense against making a bad decision. Do you see how that works? Another couple things like contrasts. Skeptics are contrasting against something. Can you change the contrast? Can you figure out what the contrast is they’re having and give them a different contrast? Change their frame. For example, you could get one of the DVD sets – let’s say the Advanced Covert Hypnosis. You can get the DVD set I’m selling for – I don’t know what the price is, so let’s make it up. Let’s just say its $500. You can get the cards on their own for $300, or you can get the cards and the DVD set for $500. Which one would you like? Do you see how we’re changing your contrast points and making something more appealing as a result? We’ve played already with contrast, so I won’t mention too much about it, but it’s one other way you can play with skeptics by changing the reference experience that they’re using.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Next we have the objection destroyer. That’s a classic way because the critical factor is a part of the whole skepticism thing. So when you trigger the amygdala, short circuit their thinking and present a clear reframe for them to latch onto, it can sometimes really easily short circuit the whole process. Finally, future memories are great for skeptics. I’m not sure if we talked about this, but do you understand the difference between how people process information in the present versus the future? Do you know what the fundamental difference is, other than it’s not now? Cost-benefit. In the present, people focus more on risk, what it costs them and what the risk is. So if you are giving them, for example, a bet to make. I think this is how they tested this. You can make a bet, and here are the odds and how often you win and so on. They’ll bet on the deal that gets them smaller wins but the odds are stacked in their favor. If you offer them the same selection of bets but say it won’t happen until the future – next week it will happen – people will usually or typically go for the future benefit. In other words, they’ll bet more on a higher risk thing because when we contemplate the future, we’re contemplating benefits. One way to get people out of skepticism is to give them a future memory. Focus on the benefits by going into the future, and the risk element disappears, or it diminishes at least. Do you see how that works? Is everyone clear on the idea of skepticism and how to play with that? Finally, we’ve got the idea of inertia. Inertia is it has a lot of possibilities. One is again a fear-based thing. I’m going to try to stay steady because I know what’s here. So in that case, simply building someone’s self-esteem usually can build a lot of momentum. Other reasons are just because they’re kind of stuck in a loop. So again the idea of teaching them to make better decisions works just as well here. You can kind of give them the poisoned well. You can make it more difficult to stay in inertia than to get momentum. So if it’s more painful – let’s put it this way just to give you a random example. Let’s say someone wants to get motivated to go to the gym, but they’re sitting there and they’re watching TV, and it’s all kind of nice. It’s easy to do inertia now, isn’t it? What if the other people in the house – let’s say he has

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 roommates – what if they’re now having this huge argument and the vibes in the air are just bad juju? You say I’m trying to watch TV. What’s the likelihood they’ll go well, the TV’s not working. I need to get out of here. Now he’s got momentum, hasn’t he? Where is that momentum going to go towards? Well, it’s probably going to go towards what’s already there at some level, which is well, I thought about going to the gym, and the gym is better than this. So you’re poisoning their ability to maintain inertia at that point. This is, for example, where the negative emotions become very useful – anger, fear and all that sort of stuff – but let me give you a great big caution on those. If you over-stimulate them or you only use these things, then it will very often blow up in your face. Remember, when you’re using their emotions as stimulants, you must give them a very clear exit strategy or way out. In this case, he’s uncomfortable because people are arguing around him. The way out is to go to the gym and clear the air. Now he doesn’t have to deal with it and now it’s all clear and its fine, same thing with fear. The tetanus injections, remember? If you get the vaccine, the fear gets removed versus there’s no clear steps, in which case, they’ll just go into denial. Do you see the difference? So it’s very important you give them an exit strategy so they don’t get stuck there. I think one of the most elegant propellants for people in inertia is you begin with a negative propellant – like fear or anger or something like that – but you end it with a positive – something that draws them towards it. So I create a smooth chain through the whole process, and if nothing else, they don’t get stuck in the negative state. By the way, we’ll have a chance to practice this stuff, especially when we get into the more advanced things. These little things you can build into your stories and all kinds of stuff. Objection destroy, of course, fits in there as well. The last thing that works really well with people with inertia is binds and double binds. Remember, inertia is about making less choice, less activity. One of the things that make a bind work is its more effort to figure out what

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 the other things in the bind are – in other words, what’s not included in the bind – than just to go along with it. So you’re actually using the pattern of inertia on itself where you’re using a bind. Do you see how that works? Do you want an example of a bind or an example of how it might work? Well, let me put it this way. If I give you a selection of choices and there are too many of them, you have to analyze it all. I think the study was in terms of giving people insurance policies or retirement plans, and you had lots of choices of about how much percent you should pay in and who pays in extra stuff, and there were all these numbers. People were paralyzed, right? Then they said okay, here are your choices. You put in a small amount or a large amount. The small amount ends up this way; the large amount ends up that way. Very clear choices. A lot more people invested in those plans than in the complex choices where you can do this, you can do that, or you add this, this, and so on. But consider this. When you had all the extra choices so you can create a bespoke plan, fewer people purchased anything. When you had just the two choices – invest a small amount, invest a large amount – more people purchased one. I can’t remember which of the two was more attractive. I can’t recall that, but more people actually invested in that insurance plan or that retirement plan. Does that make sense? It’s clearly a bind, isn’t it? Do you want to invest a small amount or a large amount? Good? So a double bind is when you give people two choices that seem different but actually are the same. As I said, you can use binds or double binds. So I just get you an example of a bind. Is it this one or that one? You could also think of it as a double bind because you haven’t given them much choice, it’s just invest small or large, right? Which color do you want? Do you want t have it red or green? That’s another bind, double bind. The whole area gets a little bit fudged, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that whole thing. The idea is you want to make the choices themselves simple, and things outside the choices complex. Can you come over here? It’s probably easier to capture the whole thing. Otherwise, I’ll have to chat later with you.

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Student:

All I was going to say was one year when I first started working for corporate America and invested in a retirement plan, it was PIP or something like that – Personal Investment Plan – but you had three choices low, medium and high-risk. It didn’t get any more complicated than that. So a lot of people pretty much – I think 85-90% of the company – invested in some fashion. Then later they decided in their infinite wisdom that they would extend that so you could buy company stock and you could invest in this other thing. They gave you like five or six choices and the number dropped.

Igor:

This is a classic example of what we’re talking about. Too much choice creates inertia.

Student:

I actually wanted to give a very inspirational example to me of the last three things you were talking about, the future memory, the double bind and the risk thing. One time I was working with a counselor. They drew out a chart of the bad behavior and the good behavior, short-term, long-term, and they showed under the long-term all the risks down of what you were doing and you wrote all the benefits down of what you were doing. Then after you wrote and saw like physically the risks and the benefits, which kind of gave you the motivation and where to go from, they took you through a future memory, through the benefit chart. Like imagine all those happening right in front of you, close your eyes. Then they ended it with a double bind of you can either choose now or later. If you look at the shortterm versus the long-term, what do you think you’d like to do?

Igor:

Now let me just pause you there and show you that this is a great example of the kind of question you’re asking for. Do you notice how much more complex it is to go beyond choose now or later? What? What am I choosing? Is it like the bad, the good or what? Especially on the back of a future memory where they’ve had pleasant experiences, now really where’s all the energy going towards? It’s, basically, you’ve got to choose now or you’ve got to choose later? You’re going to choose a little change or a big change? Those are easy choices to make. To break out of the frame requires mental effort, and it’s a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 lot easier to just go along with it. Of course, once you’ve started on that path that can get accentuated. It’s the salami tactic in reverse at that point. Do you understand? Thank you. Student:

I thought it was great because it was triple-layered, and it’s good for any therapist in the room because I know it worked wonders with me.

Igor:

Beautiful. That’s an excellent demonstration of it. Did that help you?

Student:

[Applause] There’s a certain burger chain that has a double bind and they leave out one choice.

Igor:

Oh really?

Student:

So you have the burger and you have the meal. The meal is small and it’s the lower price and so when you ask for it, they say do you want that in medium or large? They don’t give you the choice of the small. That increased their sales by not giving you the choice of the small one. I think it’s kind of unethical, but they seem to do it quite well.

Igor:

Right and it goes right back to that same thing again. You’re there, you order, and it’s like, yeah, it seems like a good idea. Even if you have a small appetite, you’ll go for a lower version. I’m sure people will break through and say no, I just want a small meal, I just want the burger. Do you see how these things are abounding in all our everyday lives? So it’s not a question of – the key here is the delivery, which is just natural. Do you want the medium meal or the large one? Will he get it? Will he get it? Then you’re putting them on notice that something weird is going on, and that’s a very different kettle of fish. Did you get the idea of the principle of what we’ve just been talking about? That’s really all I care about. We’ll have lots of opportunities to put it into practice. I want you guys to just think about the terms of motivating people. We want to put everything we can into one basket so that as we’re negotiating through our conversations, we’re looking out for is this a certain kind of resistance so we could build something in here? Is this enough in terms of the leverage we’re going to get, the motivation we’re going to get

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 out of the values? Is that enough for the motivation? What else can we build in here? Does that make sense? Now we’re going to do a quick exercise that is going to give us everything and put it into one simple kind of cover-all technique for almost any circumstance, and you can scale it up or down, depending on how you need it. Would that be kind of interesting? Yes? Everything put together in a very simple formula for you guys to follow. 1. The first step as always is HR, H+ and hypnotic rapport. You want to get into a decent interaction based on trust and comfort where you are making promises that you’re constantly keeping, you’re not breaking your own promises and so on.

2. Step two you want to make sure you’re in control of the conversation. A lot of times I find that people when they go through the rapport phase, they lose control of the conversation. They let other people get so animated and excited that they don’t want to interfere with the process, and they’re afraid of interrupting to re-direct the conversation. I know some therapists who will spend two hours taking a personal history, not because they want it, just because they’re afraid of interrupting the client because they might miss something important, or we might mess up the client relationship and so on. Don’t be afraid of controlling interaction. As long as your H+, your HR is in good shape, the interaction will be accepted. I mean you’ve accepted all the interruptions early on with good grace, didn’t you? So long as it’s done respectfully, then you can intrude even someone who’s in completely one train of thought, although bear in mind with some people you’ll need to repeat your interruption several times. This can happen throughout the phase. For example, we need to be asking questions as part of the process. So if you lose control of the interaction during the question because you need information, once you have the information you can interrupt and then redirect it again somewhere else. Do you see how that works? So we need

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 to have these control mechanisms so that you really have the direction of the conversation. 3. Step three is all about questions and fact-finding. The kind of questions you’ll be looking for – of course, you’ll let them tell you what it is that they think they want or need, but you’re listening for, you’re looking for information about what they really want or need. One of the things that’s going to give you a clue to that is going to be their values and drivers. What is it that’s going to help them achieve at the end of the whole day. Another thing you can look out for that is related to values and drivers is purpose. What do you want to use your brand new car for? What is it you need over time and plan to do? What is your purpose for looking for this item right now or asking for it? The next thing you want to do is flush out resistance. This can be in the form of hidden fears, objections. Remember we talked yesterday at some length about the idea of what if money becomes an issue? Money is rarely an issue. Money will be an issue within a price range. Within that range, it’s rarely an issue unless you haven’t flushed out all the other resistances. Then, it becomes the focal point of the issue and they’ll actually believe it because, basically, what’s happening is they feel like something’s not quite right. So the price then becomes the, oh it must be the price or maybe I won’t get the right price, but you have to flush out the resistances to figure out what it is. In that process, of course, you now have some tools to diminish resistance, don’t you? So your value and your purpose allow you to raise the levels of motivation. Flushing out the resistances allows you to diminish resistance or if you need to, which is kind of the next stage, or if you need to start the objection destroyer to reframe those objections using what we did yesterday. So now you have some places to go. Now at this point here, things start getting a little less linear. I’m going to put this down as a linear process, but you’ll probably find a resistance, you’ll run through a little objection destroyer, you’ll come back on the loop and you’ll carry on another thread, and you’ll do little mini loops and start all the stuff that you’re doing. Does that make sense? I’ll just give you the whole thing as a linear process so that you have a nice overview.

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Actually, you know what? Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we just start this as an exercise? Go up to this point here, and then we’re going to add a couple of things that are going to make this more interesting, and then we’ll just wrap it all up as a whole exercise. Does that make sense? Find a partner and remember yesterday you were being the subject for your own field? Today, I’d like you to be the actual hypnotist, the influencer in your own field. If you’re a hypnotist, then be a hypnotist. If you’re a stock broker, be a stock broker. If you’re a teacher, be a teacher. Tell your client how you expect them to respond to some degree. If their reaction is unrealistic, just tell them that normally they’d respond like this, give me that, and you have that interaction. What I am looking for is very simple. You’re going to build that strong hypnotic rapport, which takes care of a lot of the resistances up front. Can you control the conversation when it starts going a little bit one way or another? You can let it wander for a little bit, but then can you reign in back in and focus it on the questions you need to ask, which are essentially what do they really need? What do they really want? Not what they say they want, which is also related to what are their values? What’s driving this whole thing? What is their purpose? What are they trying to use this stuff for? Finally, you’re going to see if you can flush out resistances as you go along. Resistance to the process, resistance to answering the question, skepticism, inertia, are they a little slow in answering, all these things you want to flush out. You do not have to do anything with them yet. Just know that they exist or maybe take a note of them. We’ll come back, we’ll add something more and then we’ll go from there. Does that make sense, is everything good? Let’s take about seven minutes apiece and then we’ll come back. Stay with the same partner for the whole exercise, and when you come back just remember who your partner is and we’ll add some more. Off you go. Welcome back. Did you enjoy that? Was that useful? Was that easy to do? So by this point, it should be relatively easy to do and so on. Remember, at any of these points you can launch into little mini hypnotic things, a dream machine or anything like that. The main thing is this is your fact-finding

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 machine here, what gives you the information that lets you know what kind of territory you have to navigate. Some of these things you’ll do kind of informally, you’re just having a chat and so on. Some of these things you’ll do more formally, depending on the context and what it requires. The next thing you have is the idea of the objection destroyer. I hesitate to put it in as a step because really it filters in. It’s kind of like a light bulb that flashes on and off as things arise. Does that make sense? So if something is there and you can’t quite reframe it, just throw in an objection destroyer, have the whole cycle, acknowledge the problem, a little bit of a magic moment or something like that and out it comes. He goes oh wow, that’s amazing. When we come onto the more advanced things, we’ll show you how to create more similes, analogies and all these things that can be used as impromptu magic moments too. Then when you start focusing on something that is very interesting, which is we’re going to add problems into the mix. That sounds a little weird to do that. Essentially what we’re doing here is, well, we’re doing two things. The first thing we’re doing is we’re educating our clients by adding problems. We’re making sure that they have understood all the ramifications, all the consequences of what they think they want. For example, let’s say someone wants to have a safe family car and is looking for a Porsche, like a 911. You say well, have you thought this through properly? How big are your children? Will they fit in the back? Are you going strap them to the hood? How do you plan to do this? It’s an extreme example, but a lot of times they haven’t necessarily checked all the options that are available, especially think about it this way. You’re an expert in your field. I’m just thinking about in terms of the mind as well, not in terms of the sales process. Sometimes just in terms of the conversation, you may know more about something than they do. Sometimes it’s as simple as have you considered this? What about that? Essentially what you’re doing here is you’re going to start expanding their options and their values. You’re going to add more. Now what this also does is it adds a massive amount of trust because how often does someone

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 who’s trying to influence you give away a secret that actually you may not have considered all the problems? Normally, don’t they try to sweep the problems under the carpet to get you to say yes or buy as quickly as possible? So it creates more acceptance, it creates more honesty, more trust and meanwhile, of course, you’re potentially flushing out if there’s anything left. If you start mentioning problems and, of course, problems that you know how to handle as well– you’ll show them how to deal with them – they might start coming back saying, what about this and what about that? So now their hidden concerns are more likely to come out as well. See how that works? Of course, you’re going constantly through the reframing process and the objection destroyer if you need it as an extra thing. You’re adding in all your persuasion mechanisms. If resistance goes up, then you can figure out if its skepticism, in which case you might throw some guarantee type things in or other work. If they feel more like they’re being pressured, you back off and then you let them come back on their own time. A classic example of that is if they say I want to think about it, say that’s fine. Take some time to think about it. Shall I get you a coffee whilst you’re thinking? Do you notice how you’re giving them time, but at the same time you’re still containing the space to some extent? Do you see how these things are working? Very importantly throughout this whole sequence now, you’re introducing your yes sets. You’re constantly checking that you have them on board, and you’re checking especially their nonverbal responses. So we’re doing this and that and the other. Yes, happy. What does that tell you? You missed something? This is where you have to explore. This is where that anything left has been left over. Now this looks like a little complex process so far, but really a lot of these steps might be just a one-liner, if that. We’re just putting it out here for thoroughness. This is a scalable process, you can do this whole thing in two minutes as you chat with someone or you can do it over the course of two months as you go through a whole sales process. You’re constantly testing to make sure they’re still on board with something.

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If incidentally you have to break the influence cycle and come back maybe a day or two later, you summarize – and again, you go straight back to your yes set to make sure that all the conditions are still the same because some of their values may have changed. They may have learned something new and the conditions may have changed. Make no assumptions at that point, right? Once you’ve gone through this whole process, you’ve added extra problems and, of course, you’ve resolved them again, you want to start attaching their values to whatever it is that you’re offering – an idea, a project, a product, a service, it really doesn’t matter. You somehow have to get them to get a sense that what you’re offering, the world or the hypnotic reality that you’re offering is one in which their values are going to be increased. In that case, of course, life will be more enjoyable and his ability to help others make a more enjoyable life for themselves is going to increase as well and so on. Do you see how that works? A simple way of doing that and one that I would encourage you to do anyway even if you’re doing this with some other means, whether it’s hypnotic language or reframing or frame control or pre-frames, is to also include a future memory. Now we’re doing this for several reasons. One is because of the cost-benefit thing we know about futures. The other is because they’re now already developing a sense of ownership over the whole thing. They have an experience of it. The third is, of course, the experiential thing. Experience is what persuades. Remember the emotions? They have to have the emotion of what it’s like to have their value satisfied by having this new idea or belief, by having this new product or service and so on. The future memory is a simple, elegant way of doing that. You’ve got to give them experiences. Then you do another set of yes sets for testing, of course. You can still do the indirect yes sets or the future memory to see if they’re along with you and so on, but then at the end here you’re going to summarize the whole thing. So you came here looking for this, this and this and really it’s because it’s going to give you this, this and this.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 We have something here, which is this and this. That’s a very formal way of doing it. You can also do it informally in terms of it’s an idea.

Look, you used to believe that Santa Claus existed. Yet you’re also the kind of person that really wants to know the truth about things. I admire you for being able to take it like such a big adult, you 35-year-old person. The idea that Santa Claus may just have been an invention is an admirable trait, that you can really focus on the truth and accept it. See how we’re going for the yes sets here, and we’re checking through? The point of the yes set is it’s kind of – some people call it a trial close. You’re constantly checking if there’s anything missing. Is there anything I’m missing? Is anything else missing? So we have this, we have this, we have this, we have this. Then, depending on the context, you’ll have a kind of open-ended yes set. Is that what you’re looking for? Is anything missing? Does that seem right to you? Does that feel natural now? It depends on the context. Ideas will seem right or feel natural. Products will be what they’re looking for or what they’ve been hoping to get or get their hands on or something like that. So you can flip this around a little bit. Finally, in terms of closing, I really don’t care what kind of closing method you use. Very often they’ll close themselves. They’ll go yes, and they’re pretty much done. The key thing I usually look for right at the end is the next small step. I want a physical or symbolic activity to show that they’re in this new reality now. For example, smokers usually bring their last pack of cigarettes with them, and at the end of the session they throw them in the bin. It’s a symbolic act that cements in everything else. In coaching, it used to be the handshake and a firm date. Now, the firm date might not have necessarily been when we do our first coaching session. It might be so I will call your secretary tomorrow to put a date in your diary and we’ll go from there. Is that right? Yes. It’s a simple step, but it’s gone to that next level of commitment. It might be a signature. There’s an old saying, signatures make long memories. The purpose in my opinion of a contract is not to prevent litigation. If you don’t trust someone,

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 you don’t start a contract without somebody you don’t trust because you know you can force them and win in court. It’s expensive, guys. It takes forever and it’s a hassle. It’s a pain. As an ex-lawyer, I’m not giving you legal advice. I’m not allowed to anymore, but if I were to give legal advice I would say the purpose of a contract is not, win in court if you need to. It’s to make sure that everyone is very clear about what they’re getting into. If you’re not sure about getting into something with that person, well, a contract is not going to fix that. It’s just going to make sure that your litigation becomes more interesting. It’s just a personal opinion. You’re welcome to take it or not. So a signature might be that symbolic act. It might be handing over the keys. It might be taking a formal payment or whatever. The point is it doesn’t have to be a large act. It’s got to be something that cements them in that social commitment of this is my new role. This is how I am now. Does that make sense to you guys? Are there any questions on the process? I think the best thing to do now is for you guys to practice that. So take it from where you left it and jump straight back in. Assume you’ve just flushed out their problem, their resistances; you’ve got their purpose, their values; you’ve got a good sense of where they’re going with it; and then just run all the way through to the end in a full complete cycle using the objection destroyer whenever it’s appropriate. Seven minutes apiece is enough? Off you go. That was interesting. Was that fun? Who enjoyed that? Who realises that this whole thing can be scaled up and down. In other words, you can have like a two-minute conversation, you can have a 20-hour conversation, depending what depth you go into and so on. It’s just that now you’re looking out for key features that you’ll either enhance or skip over. Does that make sense? Sometimes you can rush the process because it’s not that big a deal. Other times you have to go more step-wise and really build up your foundations so that you have a solid outcome. Other than that though, it’s a solid process. I think it pretty much encompasses everything we’ve done so far, does it not?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 So who feels good about this? Good. I think you really deserve to. You really should. I’ll try to clear something up in terms of a lot of people asked me about this yesterday. Remember we had the three diagrams? We had the dream machine, which looks something like this. Then we had the objection destroyer, which looks something like that. Do you remember these? Then we had the big influence cycle, which had all the things built into it together, right? A few of you have been asking, what does this whole thing mean? Well, we didn’t really give a label, so I thought we might come up with something interesting. It’s about influence, of course. I always liked the idea of guaranteeing some things, so there are influence guarantees, but then I’m practical minded so I thought maybe we should say what it is, which is all about only getting results. So I thought maybe we’d call it the influence guaranteed – only results method. If there was only a way to really remember this easily, as a way to just wrap our minds around it so that it would be easy to recall. I don’t know because it’s a bit of a mouthful isn’t it? Student:

Just a touch.

Igor:

Yes, so I’m sure you will come up with a method to remember this easily like a little mnemonic device, you know like an acronym but, of course, EEYS won’t really work so I don’t know. I’ll leave it in your hands. Is that okay? Do you all get the idea of how this one works? So when you look up at words that have gone on board here. You look at the four main diagrams. Those are essentially the four big pieces that you’ve been learning over the last eight days or so. Does that make sense? If you just remember those four diagrams, you should be able to remember everything you’ve done so far because it’s built into them. So make sure you take a little note of them. Take them home and tattoo them on your forearm, your toes or your eyelids. Oh yeah, I remember now, wherever you want. Is that helpful? As you know, we’re going to have a break tomorrow to let a couple of things happen. One of them, of course, is your minds, your brains will require a

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 little bit of detoxing after five days of intensive effort. I have learned in the past by trying to run courses over an extended period, that around day five, it all starts going a little bit hot and hairy up in there. Day six a good day for you guys to just decompress a little bit. Have a late night tonight if you want. Have a late morning tomorrow if you want. I will, however, ask you not to waste the time you have tomorrow. You can absolutely decompress, chill out, hang out with people and go to the beach and all that sorts of stuff. However, whilst you’re there, this is a conversational hypnosis course after all, isn’t it? So whilst you’re there, you may as well start applying some of these skills, sometimes invisibly, sometimes more visibly in different areas to get used to doing it not in here. Does that make sense? So here are some of the things I would recommend. These are recommendations, folks. You can take them or leave them as you wish, but they will definitely help you to do certain things. First and foremost, really, this is the most fun thing. I’d like you to go around and flash some people. I, of course, don’t mean for you to take your clothes off in any way or leave without any clothes on. Just in case you mistook my meaning there. We’re talking about the whole hypnotic rapport thing. Remember, it’s three phases. The inner smile is what drives it. You have to have that feeling inside of you. If you find it difficult finding that feeling, do you know what you do? You talk to one of these other hypnotists in the room. I’m sure they’ll be happy to sort you out. So find that feeling, intensify it and then just flash a couple of strangers, and importantly keep observing them. So whatever they do next, you mirror in a friendly disposition. If they happen to come over, don’t go oh Jesus, they’re coming over. What do I do now? What do I do now? Think quick! Well, why not, right? So at that point, if you want to get into a conversation go, do I know you? I don’t know. Do I know you? Have we met before? I don’t know it feels kind of weird, doesn’t it? Yeah, it does. So that’s probably the way the

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 conversation will end up going. What do you do? I’m a hypnotist, which could be another way it could go. At some point, I would like you to do an instant induction somewhere in public. It’s fine doing it in here. We’re all amongst friends now, right? But doing it in public, well, if people can watch and observe that’s going to add a little bit more of an edge to it. Now to make it easy on you, I’m not going to ask you to do street hypnosis and do with a stranger and so on. If you want to, if you feel up for it, it’s kind of fun to do, then do it. It’s going to be a lot of fun. However, if you’re not quite there yet, then just find someone else in the room and say do you if we do that tomorrow and j do it with each other. There’s a couple thing’s I want to point out as you do that and I’m going to encourage you not to do it outside of the hotel even, because you’re now very familiar with the hotel it’s home territory. I’d like you to go out of home territory, maybe on the beach, there’s a shuttle that goes to the beach or the airport that would be kind of interesting but it doesn’t matter where it is but if you feel up to it, do it with a stranger if they offer. If not, do it with someone from this room, but out there somewhere else where other people can observe. Typically, something will happen whilst you’re doing this in public, something like this. If the induction is happening over here, people won’t just come up and stare this way. They’ll feel afraid. They’ll watch from a distance, right? Do you know what you do as soon as you spot someone watching from a distance? Any ideas? That’s right, you flash them. Then you can wave them over and just say, look, watch this and if they want to have a go afterwards well, who are you to deny them the wonders of hypnosis. In correlation to that, I’d also like you to do a magic moment at some point in public, one magic moment. It can be in correlation with the instant induction. So you could use it as part of a setup for the instant induction. It’s a nice way of doing it, or it can be separate and different scenarios, or just in normal conversation because it just happens to fit. That’s fine. Is that all cool so far?

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Then next one can also be combined if you wish. The next one is, again, very, very simple to do. I like to do this primarily with someone who’s not in this room, although if you feel like warm-up with someone here, you can do that too, which is you can just have a chat with someone. Can anyone have a chat with someone? Is that possible to chat to people? It can be people who have been with you in terms of like, if your family has come over here, it can be strangers or people you just meet hanging around and so on. My preference is not someone in this room, but if that’s the way you need to warm up, that’s fine. The key distinction I want to make in terms of this chat is somewhere in the middle of this chat, I’d like you to shift your inner state as though you were doing the, that’s right exercise. Now you don’t even have to change your voice all that much. Just change your feelings, and make sure that the way that you speak does not change the way that you feel. They’re in sync, and that’s it. That’s easy to do, is it not? Now should the little devil on your shoulder be whispering in your ear saying go on, do it, do it, the it that it’s referring to is, of course, the dream machine, isn’t it? Now far be it for me to suggest that you use the dream machine in normal conversation with an unsuspecting member of the public and give them a hypnotic gift, and even if I were to have the audacity to suggest that to you, then it would only be a suggestion, wouldn’t it? I’m only a hypnotist. So you get the idea of how you can fill up your day tomorrow, these are easy things you can do as you’re going about your day, as you’re chilling out and relaxing by the pool, going to the seaside, hanging out in a restaurant or something like that. If you want to hang out in little groups for moral support, that’s fine too. The one thing to not do is go out in the streets and go okay, ooh, okay, uh, want to do hypnosis? That’s probably, not the most convenient way to do this. You can if you want to. If it amuses you, by all means do it that way, but there are much more relaxing and easy ways of doing it. I recommend you start there at least. Does that make sense for tomorrow? One thought or an idea that can still kind of arises – I mean would it be fair to say we’ve covered a lot of territory just in these five days? Would that be fair to say? And would I be close to having an approximation when I take a wild guess that your minds are feeling a little bit full right now? Would that be close to a wild guess? Just a little bit? Perhaps – I mean I could be

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 stretching things a little bit, but perhaps some of you are kind of wondering; how do I keep track of all this stuff I’ve learned? Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know. One of our students who couldn’t be here, unfortunately – he lives in L.A. and his name is Dan. Pasadena is part of L.A., isn’t it? He’s in Pasadena, and he’s been through a lot of the home-study courses and the master classes and so on. He asked a question that I suspect is kind of somewhere in your minds as well. How do I put it all together? How do I use all this stuff? I mean think about it? It’s not a small amount of stuff and even keeping track of it alone is kind of a bit of a headache, right? So how do you keep track of all this stuff? How do you make sure you use it and implement it so you become a persuasive individual and so on? I told him something very simple. Of course, you realize that you need to trust your unconscious, right? You need to let it do the work because that’s where it’s going to happen. Of course, he’s in a rush. I just want to get it all now, now, now. It’s going to happen. So the first thing is just slow down. What’s the rush? Think about it. What is the rush? If you want your unconscious mind to integrate all this stuff and start using it, you just have to give it an opportunity for it to happen, to allow it to happen, not to force it through. So I made a simple recommendation to him, which is why don’t you just change your day around just a little bit, nothing huge or dramatic? Just change something in your day so it’s different. If it’s different, you don’t have any thought loops and patterns running around with it. If it’s different and you don’t have those patterns running around, you could fill it up with something else. Now, your unconscious mind is pretty creative about filling stuff up, so it might fill it up with something that is a little bit more hypnotic, a little bit more of the things you’ve been learning, and if it happens to come out then enjoy it. Just don’t be in a rush to get there. So he took my advice at face value, and the next day he decides to walk to work, which is interesting because that’s not quite what I meant, but fair

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 enough. He’s in Pasadena and L.A. is kind of really stretched out and so on. So he gets up an hour earlier because it’s a bit of a walk, and actually he enjoys it. He’s a little overweight so it’s actually good for him to get movement and motion and so on, and he’s walking out – and I don’t know Pasadena that well. He’s walking down the street and it’s just a little bit after dawn, so it’s before most people are up. The sun is shining a little bit; it’s just come up on the edges. It’s actually not that much of a bright morning because it’s L.A. and it’s all kind of smoggy, but we like to believe it was a bright, fresh morning, right? He’s walking down the street and something happens. It’s kind of like a weird spider sense tingling thing. Something just doesn’t seem right to him, although he feels great and fresh and so on. He eventually figured out what it is. It’s kind of this rumbling noise in the distance. Sure enough, over time it gets louder as he’s walking. He starts to recognize what this is. This is the sound of engines, motor bikes. He starts to think, well, who the hell is going to be on a motor bike at this time of morning, and by the sound of it, a lot of them? So he starts getting a little bit nervous. I don’t know if you know that L.A. has all kinds of biker gangs in the peripheries. So he starts getting a little bit nervous and starts looking around to see where he could take a little detour for a bit, but there’s no way. There are these huge blocks and it takes a while to get to the end of the block. Before he can get to the end of the block, just take a detour and let things pass by. This wave of biker’s catches up to him and now it gets a little bit serious. They see a man on his own, in the morning and they’re going to have some fun so they stop their bikes, surround him and he’s terrified. What the hell do these people want with me? So they have all these leering faces, and then the worst thing you can possibly imagine starts happening. They grab him, they stick a bag over his head, they get those plastic cuffs and tie his arms behind his back, his legs as well, throw him on one of the vehicles and off they drive.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Right now he is very nervous. He’s not, the happiest of chaps right now. They’re driving and driving and driving, and he’s nervous and his breathing shifts as it would normally do and he’s thinking, what the hell do they want with me? Now I don’t know if you know this, but when you get kind of nervous about things, it requires a lot of energy, doesn’t it? I hope this never happens to you and that you never have a chance to experience the truth of what I’m about to say, but he discovered that if you’re nervous for long enough – because time kind of distorted for him – but there came a point where he got so tired, he either fell asleep or he passed out. He doesn’t know which. He wakes up with no sense of time. It’s all gone. All he knows is its hot. He’s lying on the ground and he’s very hot. He’s sweating and the first thing he does is his survival instincts kick in and he starts really listening. He wants to get a sense of where are they? Maybe he can get a hint at what they want because up to this point, nobody said anything to him. They’ve poked him and jibed him a bit, but they haven’t actually said anything. He wakes up and he’s listening, but he doesn’t hear much. So he starts shifting around and the strangest thing happens. His hands – the cuffs have been tightened, they’re still and he can still feel the marks, but they’ve been cut. All right. All you do when you’re not sure of the environment, he makes his next move very carefully, very slowly. Hands come out and he just tips the edge of the bag over his head, puts his hands back in case someone glances over and just looks around from underneath. He can’t see anyone. In fact, the weirdest thing is he’s outside. He takes a few moments – actually, a long moment because he’s still not too sure what’s going on. He builds up the courage eventually, he’s still pretty shaken, but then he kind of peeks under the bag and takes a 360 and looks around. He can’t see anyone anywhere. There are just tracks of wheels that were around him, but essentially he’s lying in the middle of the desert. He takes off the bag. Same thing with his feet – the cuffs are still on, but they’ve been sawed through so he can just snap them open. At first he just takes stock of himself. There’s initially a wave a relief. They’ve gone, right? Then of course, a wave a panic – they might be back. There’s relief, and then he starts trying to talk to himself – oh no, it will be fine, it’s good, it’s all good.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Eventually, he goes backwards and forwards on this whole thing, and he realises he’s just really, really, hot. He’s sweating and the sun is hot, and he starts to get concerned. He’s looking around for landmarks, but he doesn’t recognize anything. There are no roads, and he’s in the middle of the desert. There are no street signs, no roads, no signs of habitation, just him and dirt, a few cacti and the sky – lots of sun. So, he thinks, the first to do is just move. Leave here and if nothing else, because if they come back he doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. So he starts walking. He doesn’t know which way, he just starts walking. He’s a little bit dazed still. Then suddenly, he starts getting a little bit concerned. The fear starts rising, and he starts wrestling with his own mortality at this point. He’s thinking, maybe I won’t make it, maybe I won’t get out because I’m walking and walking and I don’t see anything, I don’t recognize anything. He’s actually very afraid and all these thoughts about the end start coming to him. Here’s the strangest thing. The thing that dominates his mind as he’s walking through this desert and he’s starting to kind of come to grips with the possibility that maybe he might not make it, the thing that dominates his mind the most is I don’t want to die in the sun. It’s hot, it’s uncomfortable. Please God, at least let me just find some shade, somewhere that I can just crawl under a rock or something. Let me die with a little bit of dignity if it’s going to happen. He walks a little bit more and it seems that someone is listening. He notices a cactus with all kinds of weird bushes and things, and I’m not sure if he was a bush or a cactus, but it had these big spongy leaf things. It was like a cactus bush. I have no idea what it was. Anyway, he spots one of these things, and it’s got these huge fleshy leaves coming across, and he notices that there’s this little crawl space underneath and the leaves are crawling over the top of each other, so there’s a little bit of shade but not much. So of course, he just crawls under there and it’s cooler now. There’s a little bit of a breeze that comes through, like a little tunnel, like a wind tunnel and it cools him down a bit and he feels more comfortable. He closes his eyes, and maybe he falls asleep I guess. The day has pretty worn him out.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 When he opens his eyes again, it’s a strange scene. A hawk has landed out in front and it’s just watching him, staring. It’s a little unnerving at first. The hawk says what are you doing? I’m hiding from the sun. Why? Well, because I don’t want to die in the sun. What makes you think you’re going to die in the sun? I’m in the desert, I’m lost, I can’t find any landmarks, I don’t know how to get out and it’s hot. I’ve probably lost half my moisture all ready. It’s only a matter of time before I die of thirst. I don’t know how to survive this place. Follow a coyote. Sure enough, he looks over and there’s a little coyote there and it’s kind of wiggling its way through the underbrush. He crawls out and starts jogging after him. Through the journey, he stops at certain places, bushes and shows him how to dig for certain roots that have moisture, which you can split open cacti and basically eat the flesh or drink the juice inside. It’s kind of like a little feast for the man right now. He’s going from place to place, and he’s feeding himself and drinking all the juices. He’s satisfying his thirst and eventually he’s sitting there and he has a root in his hand and he’s got this fleshy weird thing in his other hand. He’s sitting there and he’s drunk his fill, and he feels good again, for a moment at least. He sits down and when the coyote sees this, he turns and he leaves. The moment lasts for a while. He’s sitting there, not wanting much, he’s drunk and at that point, drinking was pretty much a major deal. But then the thoughts start again. I may be able to drink, but I’m still hungry. I don’t know how to feed myself here. Eventually I’ll die. This is water. This is not going to keep me alive for very long. If anything, it’s worse now because it takes like a month to starve to death. It only takes a few days without water, especially in the sun, right? So he starts getting afraid again. He gets up and he starts running the way he came until he finds his little bushy cactus thing, and he crawls underneath and shuts his eyes. At least he’s going to die in the shade. What are you doing? He opens one eye and there’s the hawk. I’m hiding from the sun. Why? Well, because I don’t want to die in the sun. What makes you think you’re going to die? Well, I’m in the desert and I don’t know where to get food. I’m going to starve to death here. I don’t know where to go. Follow a rattlesnake.

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 Sure enough there’s a little snake making its way through the desert. The man crawls out and follows the snake just as before, and it stops at different places. It shows him roots he can get. It shows him bugs that are actually edible and nutrition. They taste kind of nuts and peanuts. So he’s going around collecting little berries that are hidden by bushes. He collects these roots and the insects that are surprisingly interesting in taste. He’s eating as he’s going along. Kind of I guess how a man did it thousands of years ago. Eventually he’s got his pile, he’s got his pockets stuffed, he’s got a pile in his hand and he’s been eating. He sits down and munches some more, and eventually he just takes a big heavy sigh. He breathes out and he’s satisfied. He feels good. The rattlesnake is watching him and when he sees this, he turns around and leaves. The man feels good for a while and then the thoughts come. Sure he knows how to eat. Sure he knows what to drink. He doesn’t know where he is. He’s still going to die. The sun is going to get him or some animal is going to get him, some creature. It’s the desert. It’s a hostile environment. He’s going to die here, and if he’s going to die, he’s God damn well going to die in the shade. So he races back through the desert, back to where he started from. Only this time when he reaches there, the bush has been destroyed. There are just shreds of leaves everywhere. In this middle of this whole mess stands the hawk looking at the man. What have you done? Why have you destroyed the one little comfort I had, the one piece of shade? Now I’m going to have to die in the sun. What makes you think you’re going to die in the sun? Well, this is the desert. It’s hot and it’s got all kinds of creatures and so on, and then he kind of runs out of words. The hawk says look. The man turns to one side and he sees that the whole day has already passed and the sun is starting to set. It’s quite a sight. The colors are changing – the gold, the oranges, deeper purple is starting to develop. There’s a ridge, maybe hills or small mountains in the distance, and the sun has just been tucked away, and it looks like they’re shining like they’re alive. On one side the moon has already started to rise. He begins to hear the sounds of the air just drifting through. The little sounds that insects make at nighttime as they come out. He breathes and it actually feels good. The

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CHM Transcript Manual – Part 1 hawk sees this and says why don’t you go home? How do I know which way is home? It’s that way. Walk for about an hour and there will be a road. Follow the road, and it will take you to a town and you can call someone from there. It’s easy. The man thinks about it and looks up. His senses are starting to come alive. He can smell the dust in the desert and its not, an unpleasant smell, a sort of earthy smell. The sounds are beginning to pick up, and now the darkness is starting more, the stars are starting to come out and he’s looking at them. The hawk says, go home. You can go home now. The man looks over at him. He looks back at the skyline and just directs his attention to the sun. It’s almost gone. There’s just a tiny strip of light and the stars are coming out. My God, he’s never seen such stars. They’re bright, beautiful and there’s a peacefulness. The sounds are intense in their rhythm. Go home now. It’s that way. The man looks up and says no. I think I’ll stay here for a while. After all, what’s the rush?

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