SHM-Special-NLP-Manual.pdf

(TM)

For The Next Generation Of Hypnosis Masters

Street Hypnosis

SHM

Discover How To Really Use NLP In Hypnosis For Amazing Results

Table Of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS

2

FOREWORD BY STEPHEN BROOKS

9

INTRODUCTION

10

YOUR GUIDE, CURIOUS?

11

NLP AND THE MIND

12

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND COMMUNICATION – BIRDWHISTELL STUDY THE UNIVERSAL MODELLING PROCESS PREMATURE COGNITIVE COMMITMENT WHAT IS NLP? PROCESSES –V- CONTENT LEARNING STRATEGIES NLP MODELLING MECHANICS , ENGINEERS AND MAGICIANS

12 13 14 16 17 18 19 21 23

RAPPORT

27

TRUST & COMFORT MATCHING & MIRRORING UNCONSCIOUS RAPPORT MATCHING EXPERIENCES MATCHING LANGUAGE VOCABULARY SLANG REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEMS – PREDICATES BIG PICTURE –V– DETAILS (CHUNK SIZE) EMOTIONAL –V– FACTUAL BACKTRACK FRAME (THE ECHO EFFECT)

27 28 30 32 33 33 33 34 35 35 35

The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

2

BREAKING RAPPORT

35

CALIBRATION

36

PRIMARY EXPERIENCE BMIRS CALIBRATION EXERCISES CALIBRATION EXERCISE 1: LIKE/DISLIKE VISUAL CALIBRATION EXERCISE 2: LIKE/DISLIKE AUDITORY CALIBRATION EXERCISE 3: LIKE/DISLIKE KINAESTHETIC CALIBRATION EXERCISE VARIATION 1: TRUTH/LIE CALIBRATION EXERCISE VARIATION 2: YES/NO CALIBRATION EXERCISE 4: MIND READING –V– SENSORY BASED DESCRIPTIONS MINIMAL CUES IMPROVING VISUAL ACUITY IMPROVING AUDITORY ACUITY IMPROVING KINAESTHETIC ACUITY EYE ACCESSING CUES EYE ACCESSING ELICITATION QUESTIONS PRIMARY SYSTEMS , LEAD SYSTEMS AND SYNAESTHESIAS PRIMARY SYSTEM LEAD SYSTEM SYNAESTHESIA HAKALAO

36 38 39 39 40 41 42 43

OUTCOMES

50

GOAL SETTING SMART GOALS SPECIFIC MEASURABLE AFFECT REALISTIC TIMED WELL FORMED OUTCOMES – CONDITIONS STATED IN THE POSITIVE SENSORY BASED

50 52 52 52 52 53 53 54 54 54


44 45 45 45 45 46 47 48 48 48 48 49

3

INITIATED AND MAINTAINED BY INDIVIDUAL ECOLOGICAL PRESERVES THE POSITIVE BY-PRODUCT OF THE PRESENT STATE SPECIFIC AND CONTEXTUALISED INCLUDES: INTERNAL PROCESS, INTERNAL STATE AND EXTERNAL BEHAVIOUR WELL FORMED OUTCOMES – ELICITATION QUESTIONS TRADITIONAL GOAL GETTING STRATEGIES AFFIRMATIONS VISUALISATIONS

55 55 56 56

LANGUAGE PATTERNS

61

PRESUPPOSITIONS LINGUISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS PRESUPPOSITIONS EXERCISES PRESUPPOSITIONS EXERCISE 1: IMPLICATION PRESUPPOSITIONS EXERCISE 2: PRESUPPOSITIONS –V– MIND READING THE META MODEL HISTORY THE META MODEL – SHORT FORM THE META MODEL TABLE RE-CHUNKING QUESTIONS INTENTION CLASS THE MILTON MODEL HISTORY THE MILTON MODEL – SHORT FORM ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE PATTERNS CONGRUENCE LANGUAGE FLOW CARDS (4 WORDS OF POWER) EXERCISES: CONSTRUCTING LANGUAGE PATTERNS EXERCISE 1: CREATING PRESUPPOSITIONS EXERCISE 2: STACKING PRESUPPOSITIONS EXERCISE 3: PREDICATES AND LINGUISTIC BRIDGING EXERCISE 4: META MODEL EXERCISE 5: MILTON MODEL EXERCISE 6: META MODEL CHALLENGE EXERCISE 7: DECONSTRUCTING AND INDUCTION EXERCISE 8: POLISHING PRESUPPOSITIONS EXERCISE 9: META MODEL CHALLENGE OF A LIMITING BELIEF

62 63 67 67 68 69 70 73 74 75 75 76 77 79 81 83 84 84 84 84 85 85 86 86 87 88


56 57 59 59 60

4

EXERCISE 10: TRANSFORMATIONAL LANGUAGE EXERCISE 12: TRANCE FORMING ABILITIES

88 88

FRAMES

89

SETTING THE CONTEXT FOR MEANING REFRAMING USEFUL FRAMES THE NLP PRESUPPOSITIONS CAUSE – V – EFFECT BLAME – V – OUTCOME FEEDBACK FRAME ASSOCIATION – V – DISSOCIATION PERCEPTUAL POSITIONS NEGOTIATION FRAME TROUBLESHOOTING

89 90 91 91 92 93 93 94 95 96 97

ANCHORING

98

STATE DEPENDANT LEARNING NATURAL STATE GENERATORS ELICITING STATES REVIVIFICATION PROCESS LANGUAGE GO FIRST! USEFUL STATES TO ELICIT CONDITIONS FOR ELEGANT ANCHORING BASIC ANCHORING TECHNIQUES BASIC ANCHORING STACKING ANCHORS SLIDING ANCHORS

99 100 101 101 102 102 103 104 105 105 106 107

SUBMODALITIES

108

STRUCTURING INTERNAL MAPS MODALITIES, SUBMODALITIES AND NEURO-DRIVERS SUBMODALITIES CHECKLIST

108 109 110


5

CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS SUBMODALITIES ELICITATION HINTS SUBMODALITIES EXERCISES EXERCISE 1: FEEL GOOD EXERCISE 2: FEEL BAD EXERCISE 3: KINAESTHETIC EXPLORATION EXERCISE 4: SYNAESTHESIAS TIMELINES SUBMODALITIES EXPRESSED IN LANGUAGE CHANGING SUBMODALITIES MAP ACROSS DIRECT SUGGESTION PRESUPPOSITIONS & HYPNOTIC LANGUAGE BUILDING POWERFUL INTERNAL REPRESENTATIONS CONFUSION TO UNDERSTANDING MAP ACROSS ENHANCING EXPERIENCES HAVE A GREAT TIME … NOW!

111 112 113 113 113 114 115 116 117 118 118 119 119 120 120 120 121

NLP PRACTITIONER TECHNIQUES

122

GUIDELINES FOR CHANGEWORK ANCHORING COLLAPSE ANCHORS CHAINING ANCHORS CHANGE PERSONAL HISTORY RE-IMPRINT METHOD THE CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE SUBMODALITIES SWISH TECHNIQUE THE FAST PHOBIA CURE VISUAL–KINAESTHETIC DISSOCIATION VISUAL SQUASH HYPNOSIS SIX STEP REFRAME THE NEW BEHAVIOUR GENERATOR TIMELINES – CHANGE PERSONAL HISTORY TIMELINES – CHANGE LIMITING DECISION TIMELINES – CREATING A FUTURE GOAL

122 124 124 125 127 128 129 130 130 131 132 133 134 134 135 136 137 138


6

STRATEGIES

139

STRATEGIES DEFINED THE TOTE MODEL UTILISING STRATEGIES WELL FORMED STRATEGIES STRATEGY ELICITATION ORIENTING QUESTIONS ELICITATION OF THE TRIGGER (ALSO THE FIRST TEST IN THE CYCLE) ELICITING THE OPERATION ELICITING THE TEST ELICITING THE EXIT GUIDELINES FOR STRATEGY ELICITATIONS STRATEGY INSTALLATION REHEARSAL CHAINING ANCHORS SUBMODALITY SHIFTS METAPHORS

139 140 142 143 144 144 144 145 145 145 146 147 147 147 148 148

HYPNOSIS & TRANCE

149

WHAT IS HYPNOSIS? THE PURPOSE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS TRANCE INDUCTIONS GO FIRST! 10 SECOND HYPNOTIST LINGUISTIC BRIDGES (4 WORDS OF POWER) PACING & LEADING SENSORY RICH DESCRIPTIONS METAPHORS AND NESTED LOOPS THE STORYTELLING TRADITION NESTED LOOPING – THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF STORYTELLING HYPNOTIC METAPHORS TRANCE TONALITIES EMBEDDED COMMANDS IDEOMOTOR SIGNALLING UNCONSCIOUS FINGER SIGNALS ENDING TRANCE

149 150 151 151 151 152 152 153 154 154 155 157 158 159 160 161 162


7

CLOSE LOOPS CANCEL SUGGESTIONS SELF-ESTEEM BOOSTING SUGGESTIONS FUTURE PACE RESULTS THE META-PATTERN OF ALL CHANGE A BASIC STRUCTURE FOR HYPNOTHERAPY THERAPEUTIC PREPARATION MEET AND GREET INTERVIEW CLIENT IDENTIFY WHAT CHUNK TO WORK ON INDUCE TRANCE CHANGEWORK PATTERNS TEST & FUTURE PACE END TRANCE TASK & DISMISS

162 162 163 163 164 165 166 166 167 167 168 168 168 169 169

NLP COACHING

170

COACHING – V – THERAPY THE ROLE OF THE COACH A BASIC STRUCTURE FOR COACHING PREPARE MEET, GREET AND REVIEW THE COACHING QUESTIONS GENERAL INFORMATION GATHERING SMART GOALS HONING THE CLIENT ’S THINKING TASKING GETTING COMMITMENT FROM THE CLIENT END SESSION

170 171 172 173 173 174 174 175 175 176 178 178

ADDITIONAL SUBMODALITIES CHECKLISTS

179

CONVERSATIONAL HYPNOSIS

183


8

Foreword by Stephen Brooks When I discovered that Igor Ledochowski had managed to track me down to my home in the jungles of Northern Thailand I felt instant panic. Why would this somewhat over enthusiastic man, trek through remote tropical jungle, with his backpack, cassette recorder and no financial incentive, to try and persuade me to write a foreword to his book? After he had finally coaxed the village Shaman to point the way to my home (turn left at the waterfall – second cave on the right), I realized that this remarkable young man had a manner that was highly infectious, somewhat similar to my own, and that he was a man of commitment to his purpose. He claimed to practice something called NLP, it sounded a bit weird to me but I accepted his grubby manuscript never the less and then sent him packing. Well it’s not a bad read, in fact it’s quite good, possibly the work of genius. So this is my foreword to his remarkable book. Igor modestly made me swear that I would not praise him too highly, so I am not going to. But I will say this - if you want a book that is written by someone with total dedication to helping people achieve what is best, that is concise and precise, and that teaches you how to put into practice the core skills of what NLP is about right now, then this book is it. There is no better book available, apart from any that I might subsequently write myself. Stephen Brooks – Thailand. www.waterheart-foundation.com Stephen Brooks was a pioneer in the field of indirect hypnosis and personal development in Europe in the 1980’s and 90’s. His work had a major influence on the way that hypnosis was used in the caring professions. At the height of his career he quit his western lifestyle and retired to the jungles of Northern Thailand to lead a reclusive life studying Theravada Buddhism and Shamanism. He is a folk hero to many young therapists now practicing NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis.


9

Introduction Welcome to the companion manual for the “How To Really Use NLP For Amazing Results” course. This guide is not meant to be yet another definitive textbook on NLP and its applications. There are all too many books like that in existence already. Rather its purpose is to serve you in your exploration of NLP and to act as a reference guide for you to dip into time and again after your initial steps down a very interesting path. Now, allow me to congratulate you for taking your first steps down that path at this time. As you learn, you can expect to take change of the way you think, feel and behave. This will give you more freedom and success in the way you communicate and move through life. In the modern world there are countless opportunities for people to live their dreams. NLP is a discipline whose specific purpose is to enable people to acquire the skills and access the resources you will need to achieve the things that you want. Whilst this manual does cover all the elements a NLP practitioner should know (and a few more things), it is not meant as a substitute for a live training programme. NLP is not an academic discipline. NLP is a practical set of attitudes, understanding and skills. Like any skill, much insight can be gleaned from a book, but to truly learn it you need experience. The hard way to get experience is to use trial and error over extended periods of time to work out what works and what does not. The easy way to do it is to go to a skilled guide. Such a guide will help you to condense many years of experience into a short time frame. He can help you to avoid the blind alleys so you can concentrate on the experiences that create true insight. On the spot feedback and elegant demonstrations are things that you can only get from a live, interactive environment! Having said that, there are still many useful things that you can glean from this manual. You are about to embark on a fascinating adventure. This companion guide will reveal to you some of the vast treasures that NLP has to offer. Beyond that, the audio seminar that comes with this manual is specifically designed to bring the heart of NLP to life for you: the attitudes and understandings that will allow you to weave your own magic in the world. I wish you much pleasure and amusement on your own journey of discovery. Feel free to begin in the middle or anywhere else that you wish to. It will all come together in time anyway.


10

Your Guide, Curious? Igor Ledochowski is a certified Trainer of NLP, HNLP and Hypnosis. He has helped countless people to release remarkable abilities. As an Executive Coach, his main focus was on working with senior executives at some of the world’s leading blue chip corporations to help them realise not just their own potential but to show them how to harness and grow the dynamic abilities of the people that they lead. Igor began his career as a lawyer with the international law firm Linklaters. After several years with them, and following extensive retraining, he decided to launch his own training and executive coaching organisation, iledo. iledo soon became very successful and he started to collaborate with a diverse group of interesting and dynamic people to offer organisations wildly different solutions that no one else could offer. In late 2003 that group of people decided to come together officially, and they created the Curious Company. Since then he has taught at many hypnosis conventions and AGMs in the UK, he has presented special seminars for his Fortune 500 clients and been a guest lecturer at a business school in Chicago. Igor also runs the unique Private Hypnosis Club (www.PrivateHypnosisClub.com) where novice and experienced hypnotists get to participate in unique hypnosis masterclasses. He created the concept of Street Hypnosis, a unique concept akin to Guerrilla Kindness (random acts of kindness deliberately calculated to spread 1 pronoia through the population.) Street Hypnosis (www.StreetHypnosis.com) is about using skills such as NLP and Hypnosis in ordinary everyday relationships in such a way as to positively affect the realities of all the people around you. This is also where people who wish to deepen their learning will find most of Igor’s books and other products online. “Igor is the definitive expert on the mind, on fast results, and a genius in the field of subconscious influence and change. He influences you consciously and subconsciously to release an impressive potential in people. Its like magic: he gets absolutely amazing results! If you want to work with the best work with him!! But be warned: he gets exceptional results by doing exceptional things... sometimes unusual things happen when you are around him.” David Taylor, author of “The Naked Leader”

1

Pronoia is the unshakable and irrational suspicion that everyone is out to help you! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

11

NLP and the Mind The Unconscious Mind Human consciousness is a strange thing indeed. We like to think of ourselves and our intellect as being at the top of the food chain – after all look at all the things we have accomplished. To a certain extend we might even be correct. But there is an error that most people (understandably) make: they confuse what they are aware of with who they are/what they are capable of. Allow me to explain: the mind functions in different, simultaneously processed streams. On the one side (to use a basic model) is the conscious mind, which is that part of your thinking that you are aware of right NOW! On the other side is a whole collection of processes that happen outside of your ordinary awareness. So when you heart keeps beating, or your breathing continues at night, or you go to sleep with a problem on your mind and you wake up with a solution – at these times something clearly happens outside of your ordinary conscious awareness. That something is incredibly powerful, and we will call this set of processes the “unconscious” because you are, not conscious of it. Studies on preconscious learning have suggested that ALL learning, behaviour and 2 change occur unconsciously first ! In fact there is a noticeable time lag between being unconscious in your learnings and realising you know it. Often you will have 3 learned something and you might never actually realise that you have done so . This is important, because it shows you that it is natural to learn with your unconscious. In fact, your unconscious mind has been estimated to be processing somewhere in the region of 2.3 million – 2.3 billion pieces of information at any given moment. By way of contrast, your consciousness has the ability to process only 5–9 pieces of 4 information at a time. Trying to learn things one little piece at a time is not only boring, it actually inhibits the brain’s natural way of learning (unconsciously) – the mind needs 5 multiple inputs . That is why NLP is something that cannot be acquired from dusty old books. It only comes to life when you use it in the real world. NLP needs to be learned initially in a live class where you can see it, hear it, experience it and do it – maybe even all at the same time! 2

E.g. Pfurtscheller G. & Berghold A. in “Patterns of Cortical Activation During Planning of Voluntary Movement”, Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 72, (1989): 250-258. 3 E.g. Berry D. and Broadbent D “On the relationship between task performance and associated verbalizable knowledge”, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 36A (1984):209-231. 4 Goerge Miller's 1956 Essay, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.” 5 Caine R. and Caine G. “Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain.” Addison-Wesley. Boston, MA, 1994. Botella J. and Eriksen C. "Filtering Versus Parallel Processing in RSVP Tasks." Perception and Psychophysics 51.4 (1992): 334-343 The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 12 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Communication – Birdwhistell Study Dr Ray L. Birdwhistell was an anthropologist who specialised in studying nonverbal communication. He spent his lifetime studying the way that people 6 communicate using all channels. He is famous for suggesting that in a general context, the meaning of a communication is transmitted by: 7% 38 % 55 %

Words Tonality Non-verbal cues

By non-verbal cues we mean signals such as facial expression, eye blinks, breathing rate, skin colour, and posture. Tonality refers to the pitch, rhythm, voice tone, timbre, tempo and the like. This concept is incredibly important when you communicate with others. When people send mixed signals – known as incongruent communication i.e. when their non-verbal cues or tonality do not match the actual words they are using – then they significantly impact how that message is received. Humour, sarcasm, lies, dishonesty, ironies, disdain, scorn, approval, admiration or agreement are all perceptions suggested more by how you say something than by what you actually say! This is not too surprising when you remember how the unconscious mind prefers to process many things at the same time. The really interesting thing is how we all naturally convey messages within messages within messages every time we communicate. Most of us are not aware of the subtexts that we are signalling to others, or indeed how we unconsciously respond to the sub-communications that others are sending our way. These subcommunications profoundly influence the way we think, feel and behave and ordinarily lie outside of our conscious perception. Part of your NLP training will focus on sensitising you to the sub-communications so that you can begin to communicate with people on multiple levels in a congruent way. An expert communicator can offer several parallel layers of meaning to her audience. The renowned (and deeply respected) psychiatrist Dr. Milton H Erickson developed a whole new paradigm in the fields of hypnosis and therapy by doing exactly this. Near the end of his life, Dr. Erickson would conduct workshops for small groups (15-20 people) in which he would tell many seemingly unconnected stories. Yet he would tell these stories in such a way that everyone would think “he’s talking to me!” and would derive some secret therapeutic benefit from it. Uncannily, Dr Erickson later admitted that he was offering sub-communications tailored to each unique individual! 6

In his book “Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body-motion Communication”, University of Pennsylvania Press (1970). The original study was in Mehrabian, A., and S. Ferris. 1967, “Inference of attitudes from nonverbal communication in two channels”, Journal of Consulting Psychology, 3: 248–252. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 13 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

The Universal Modelling Process Internal Representation

Sensory Input (VAKO/G) State

Behaviour Physiology

There are many philosophical schools debating what is True, Good or Real. I don’t want to open that intellectual debate. What I will assume however (and it is only a small assumption), is that we have no way of knowing what is in the world “out there” apart from through our 5 senses. When a stimulus activates one of our senses a process is kick started that ultimately ends up in some kind of sense being made of things. For example: when a photon (light) strikes the retina, a chemical reaction starts a chain of electro-chemical signals that pass along special nerve cells to the brain (primarily the visual cortex). It is only in the brain that these signals are translated into something meaningful that we can understand as a picture. That picture is in turn processed again so we can attach some kind of meaning to it: mother, danger, food, sex etc. The pure, unprocessed “picture” is known as Primary Experience (or First Access) because we have not “coloured” its meaning with our own personal history. Secondary Experiences result when we make some form of judgement about that picture. This is how we know what that picture means to us. Now there is too much information in the world out there for our minds to take in and remain sane. So our brains filter out bits of information considered irrelevant or not useful to lighten the load. During this filtering process we will delete information, distort it or generalise from it. A deletion occurs when you take something away. So right now there are parts of the experience of the environment you are in that you have deleted out of awareness: maybe you “forgot” about the ceiling or the floor, perhaps you “ignored” the view of the sky outside, or the background noises in your building. Until I drew attention to them, these were all deletions from your present experience. Deletions keep us sane! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

14

A distortion occurs when we change our basic perception of something. If you have ever seen faces or shapes in cloud structures, then you have distorted information. Likewise you can pick out your name spoken softly in the middle of a gathering because it “seems louder”. Distortions underpin our creativity – our ability to take one thing and create something “new” out of it. A generalisation is the ability to take one experience and apply it to similar experiences in the future – as a general rule. You know how to open doors because you have opened them in the past and have “generalised” that knowledge to anything that exhibits door-like qualities. Putting the door handles on the wrong part of the door (i.e. on the inside, next to the hinges) will throw most adults who expect the door to work differently and so get stuck pushing or pulling the wrong part of the door. Generalisations are the basis for our ability to learn. Now, over the years our minds develop a series of filters that make it automatic for us to know what information to delete, what to distort and what to generalise. These filters are made up of our beliefs, the things we value in life, previous experiences and conclusions etc. As an event in the world stimulates our senses, the Primary Experience of it gets filtered and leaves inside our minds a representation of what is happening “out there”. Much like Plato’s cave analogy, we have a kind of map inside us of what we think is going on. This map is made up of pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells that are meant to represent what is happening “out there”. This is called an “Internal Representation” or IR. Our IRs are what tell us how to feel about something and how to behave towards it. So our IRs (or internal maps or our model of the world) tell us how we should feel at any point in time. Our feelings (our psycho-physiological state – i.e. how we feel in mind and body) in turn affect our physiology (how we stand, move, breathe etc) and both in turn influence our external behaviour. So if we want to change the way we feel or behave in a given situation, we need to change our internal maps, the IRs we carry, and the rest will flow from that. Likewise, if we change our behaviour or posture, we will in turn affect our state, which can in turn influence our internal maps that make sense of the world for us. It is a two way street. NLP communication is all about how we influence those IRs inside ourselves and in other people!


15

Premature Cognitive Commitment As you know, the information our senses draw in as Primary Experience get filtered down to something manageable and meaningful (our Secondary Experience – our IRs). The filters that do this are incredibly useful – when they work properly. The trouble is sometimes we outgrow these filters or adopt unhelpful filters from our environment as we grow up (from parents, friends, school society in general etc). If we get stuck with an old, unhelpful, filter it can severely restrict how we lead our lives. In mainstream psychology this is called Premature Cognitive Commitment. As an example you might try the following experiment: get a large jar and fill it with flies. Cover the top with a plastic lid or cling film, leaving enough air a food in the jar for several days. Typically the flies will buzz around bouncing into the “invisible ceiling” for some time. After a few days you can remove the cover. Very few flies will escape. They have created a limiting belief – a cognitive commitment – about what is possible in their little world and so they stop trying to get out. Human beings do exactly the same thing. Often we continue to engage in limiting patterns long after the conditions that gave rise to them disappeared. Take a phobia for example. As a child, Bobby was bitten by a dog. He was frightened and hurt. This experience generalised over time (maybe even outside of conscious awareness) to a general fear of dogs. All dogs. Bobby may be six foot four and built like a tank, but he still goes to pieces when he is near dogs. Even Chihuahuas. He has no “choice” in the matter because the filters in his mind turn any encounter with a Chihuahua into something of life-threatening proportions. Bobby’s phobia is not a bad thing per se. It served a useful purpose when he was young, allowing him to remain safe from a specific hazard. However as conditions changed – Bobby becoming larger, tougher and he met other, friendlier dogs – this filter became outdated software. And like regular software, unless it is deleted or upgraded it continues to run, even if it messes up the rest of the system. The good news is that these filters can be changed. The software can be upgraded. In changing the filters (the software), the meaning of an encounter (with Chihuahuas in the above example) can be changed. So you will naturally feel and respond differently. Creating elegant change will make feeling good as automatic as feeling bad used to be!


16

What is NLP? This is truly the million dollar question. There can be as many definitions of it as there are people in this world. The quick answer would be to look at the words that describe this discipline: Neuro: from the Greek neuron, referring to your neurology. Linguistic: from the Latin lingua, referring to language. Programming: how components of a system are organised to create a predictable pattern of behaviour. So Neuro-Linguistic Programming is the study of how language affects your neurology and your behaviour. Many people have defined NLP as the “Psychology of Achievement” or “Software for the Brain” – as it allows you to run your own mental processes more effectively so you can consistently get the kind of results in the world that you want. In fact John Grinder, one of the two Co-developers of NLP, defined NLP as: “NLP is the study of excellence, specifically the difference that makes the difference between the excellent and the average performer in any field”

Many people, however, mistake NLP with the information that NLP has generated about people. There are many techniques that have been developed to allow you to run your own brain or do therapy with clients. But these are not NLP per se. They are applications of NLP in a specific field. NLP itself is more a state of mind and an approach to learning. Richard Bandler, the other Co-developer of NLP, puts it like this: “NLP is an attitude and a methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques”

The attitude is one of curiosity and wanton experimentation. The methodology is the art of modelling, the process of extracting and replicating excellence/elegance in any given field. The techniques of NLP number in the hundreds and are specific applications for the fields of therapy, sales, coaching, teaching etc. Such NLP applications focus on communicating influentially and on creating behavioural change within the context of their field. We will be covering all of the practitioner level patterns as well as additional materials in this Companion guide.


17

Processes –v- Content There is a psychological game we engage in that is called Backwards Rationalisation. In essence you make your mind up about something or do something for non-logical reasons, and you later rationalise the decisions as being logical. One neurologist at the University of Iowa claims that every decision we 7 make is an emotional one; one which we later rationalise . In fact, in some cases 8 trying to exclude emotions from a decision can actually lead to irrational behaviour ! This means that people rarely appreciate consciously why they do something – like have a problem with something, or make a given choice (even a really good decision). In fact there is other evidence to suggest that all our decisions are made unconsciously a fraction of a second before we think we have made a conscious 9 (rational) decision . People’s descriptions about their own behaviour can therefore often be misleading. Such descriptions are meant to create the kind of reality in which the problems they have are totally “logical”. But that is precisely why they are stuck with them. One of the unique things about NLP is that we do not concern ourselves too much with what appears to be true for someone. These justifications, pseudo-reasons and rationalisations are the content of a given discussion. However, the way they talk about something, their tonalities, non-verbal cues, the patterns and repetitions often provide a separate unconscious message that tells us far more about what is really happening. So in NLP we will look at patterns of behaviour, the processes people run. Paying too much attention to content can lead you to become locked into (at times fascinating) wild goose chases! This preference for processes over content has led to a unique creation in NLP: content free therapy (CFT). In CFT you help someone make therapeutic changes without ever knowing what the problem was! Just remember John Grinder’s words on this: “There’s no content in content worth knowing!”

7

Antonio Damasio, “Descartes’ Error”, G.P. Putnam's Sons, (1995). Ibid. Benjamin Libet actually recorded the time differential between the desire to make a spontaneous (i.e. unplanned) movement and this preconscious readiness potential. On average the nervous system was ready for the activity 550msec. before the subjects experienced even the wish to move! See “The Volitional Brain - Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will” Edited by Benjamin Libet, Anthony Freeman and Keith Sutherland for more. 8 9


18

Learning Strategies Whilst many of the materials in this manual are set down in an orderly, seemingly linear fashion, NLP is not a linear discipline. By that I mean that NLP is not like a story that has a definitive beginning, middle and end. Consider NLP to be more like a picaresque adventure: though there are guiding themes, it is the detours when the story branches off to the left or take the right path time and again – then you notice the really interesting things happening. You see the mind prefers to learn quickly and all at once. Classical education tries to chunk things down into small, dull pieces that can be understood thoroughly before they are digested. This is like eating a meal one pea or grain of rice at a time and never mixing things up. Or like reading a book and restricting yourself to reading only one word per week. That is dull and boring. As Mark Twain put it “I never let my schooling interfere with my education” and neither should you! Learning is a fun activity. If it is not you are not doing it right! Learning should also happen in complex layers. The fact is all learning (and behaviour and change) occurs unconsciously first. This is a tremendous thing because it means you can let go of making any real effort and let things just happen at their natural pace. It is just like watching a great cartoonist such as Rolf Harris at work: you see the lines going on the page and try to guess what he is drawing. You fail time and again to see what is drawn until finally with the addition of a small dot here or a tiny line there the cartoon figure is revealed. It jumps out at you so obviously that you wonder how you might have failed to see it before. That is the true process of discovery – to enjoy sitting in the dark, engrossed in the experience of something, knowing that any moment now illumination will strike you with the twin thunderbolt of clarity and understanding! For some of you, perhaps, I am advocating something a little radical here. In the western world we fear confusion and uncertainty. In school confusion was equated with being slow or stupid. It was punished either directly or indirectly. These “Punishments” inevitably had their impact on our self esteem. The spark of creativity, the willingness to embrace the unknown, slowly dies. It is ironic to see the ingenuity that people demonstrate in order to avoid situations that will put them on the spot, where there is a risk they might not know “the answer”. It is so sad to see so much potential routinely blocked by senseless fear. By contrast, look at almost any ordinary preschool child and you will see them take great delight in failing time and again. Children question everything. They do not realise that they are meant to feel bad about the fact they don’t know something before they experienced it. They live in a world they do not understand. They know they are ignorant and they have the affront not to care. Until they are taught to feel bad about not “getting it right”. Then they learn to be afraid. Then they take that fear and grow up with it, thinking it is normal to be uncomfortable (read “fear”) with The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

19

the unknown. That is when people start to crave rules, order, predictability. Small chunks they can digest slowly before they are willing to do anything with them. I would like to invite you to revisit that kind of childhood only long enough to realise that your mind has continued to learn countless things, most of which happened when you were not paying attention. It is a fact. Everyone has had an experience of surprising themselves at one time or another, when you forgot to inhibit yourself! The ability is still there. Just as the childhood rebel is who likes to break all the rules, on purpose, just to find things out for yourself! Imagine that, breaking the rules just because you were curious. Wantonly Curious?! Watch children at play and you can only marvel at how adaptive they are. Most of the most fantastic discoveries made by man happened as a result of an accident – an event most adults would be embarrassed about. NLP is not a traditional discipline, and I would encourage you to not-learn it in the traditional way. That leaves you free to discover other ways. Take everything and test it. By all means learn the individual pieces thoroughly, but enjoy the process. You cannot fail, you are gathering experience – more information, more feedback! In fact you will get more out of traditional failures than success. So remember to fail for success. There is even a formula for success: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Know your outcome (Purpose) Be flexible (Adapt) Use your senses to gather feedback (Calibrate) TAKE ACTION NOW!!! (Engage!!)

Remember to PACE yourself. PACE your learning and learn to trust that your unconscious, those 2.3 billion bits of processing power, is doing its job. Just get out of your own way long enough to let the real expert run the show. Your job is to smell the roses. Enjoy the experiences. The lid is off the jar. Unlike the flies you have a choice. You can choose a new way! I once taught an advanced hypnosis class to a group of professional hypnotherapists. On the second day a lady joined us. She had never even seen hypnosis before. She was late, overwhelmed by everything and felt intimidated by everyone else’s skill. She was ready to quit. I convinced her to stay a while and just have a bit of fun – after all she’d paid her money. I started her on a few unusual exercises. She enjoyed herself and decided to stay. By the end of the day she not only hypnotised dozens of people (several times), she was eliciting hypnotic phenomena from them as well! She had no idea how she got there: after a day of crazy games, it just all seemed to fit. It always fits.


20

NLP Modelling NLP has a very valuable perspective to add to learning. John and Richard actually first developed the NLP skills and techniques by using this non-traditional methodology. It is a very human way of learning – children do it instinctively. So do adults when they are not paying attention! I am of course referring to the art of Modelling. Modelling is this “methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques” that Richard talked about. It is a systematic way of learning a skill that someone has ingrained so deeply that even they do not know what they are actually doing. Remember that what people do and what they think/say they do are often totally different things. This is just as true when we do things right as when we do things badly. Modelling not only avoids learning the wrong thing because you were told to, it completely bypasses traditional, slower learning methods. Modelling slip streams straight to where things really happen: the unconscious! Modelling is not necessarily something you learn to do. It is more something you 10 have to remember. Children learn this way all the time. A study in Tanzania showed that children learned to perform all the tasks of living in a village (foraging for food, maintenance and repairs etc) at least as well as the adults by the time they were seven year old. How did they do that? They simply copied the adults until they got it right. However, there is a problem with simply copying an expert. At least there is a problem for most adults. The problem is that we unconsciously filter what we experience and reinterpret it in our map making process. As a result we do what we think our model is doing or what we believe our model should be doing, instead of repeating what she is actually doing. This slows down our progress immensely! The strange thing is that learning is actually easier when we cannot interfere. The unconscious mind has a vast capacity to tease out the most remote patterns from 11 events in the world. As an example, studies on implicit learning have put people into environments in which they have to learn to do something based on a complex 12 pattern. For example you play the role of a production manager of a factory replicated by a computer programme. In order to get maximum output with 10

Reported in the New Scientist in 2003. Implicit learning is the kind of learning that happens by accident rather than by design. These are the skills we pick up along the way but never quite know we can do. Most of people’s social skills are learned this way. Some people call it learning by osmosis! 12 Berry D. and Broadbent D. “On the relationship between task performance and associated verbilizable knowledge” Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 36A (1984):209-231. See also the useful overview of these results by Berry D. and Dienes Z. in “Implicit Learning” London, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 21 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved 11

problematic resources (raw materials, staff shortages etc) you have to juggle elements that feed into a very complex formula. No one is given the formula, you just play the game cold. Over time, people start to make the right decisions consistently. When asked why they are doing it, they make replies such as “it was a guess”, “it felt right”, “no particular reason”. They had no conscious insight into what they were doing and so assumed that they were just “getting lucky”. In fact they were getting smart. Modelling relies on our ability to get smart in this way. So the first step is to get your conscious mind (and the various internal filters) out of the way. You need to enter a happy “know nothing” state. You put your expectations and prejudices on hold. Do not analyse or seek to understand anything. 13

Then you keenly begin to observe the model . You want to identify as keenly as possible with this model. You want to observe the way he stands, moves, breathes, talks and interacts with others. You need to keep right on observing him until you find a set of behaviours to copy. Do not analyse or seek to understand anything. Merely observe keenly. Then you go off and you copy everything you observed. You stand in the same way as the model, move in the same way, breathe in the same way and then observe whether or not you are getting the same kind of results. Do not analyse or seek to understand anything. Merely repeat what you observed. By now it will be time to go back to the observation stage to tinker with what you are doing. Keep observing, adjusting and then testing what you are doing until you start to get the same kind of results consistently! Do not analyse or seek to understand anything yet. Only once you get consistent results is it worth analysing things. Now you can bring your conscious intellect on line and seek to understand. This is where the western method of dissecting a field of study is highly valuable. You start to test each of the behaviours you have been unconsciously copying to see if you can still get the same result without that specific behaviour. If you can then you don’t need to do that bit any more, it had nothing to do with the skill. The purpose of modelling is not to create carbon copies, but to create an elegant, streamlined way of doing what the model can do. If you do this final stage thoroughly, you may even find yourself getting better results than your model can, because you will have thrown off all unnecessary baggage!

13

Making such keen, and clean, observations is a skill of its own. Look at the Calibration section in this manual for some exercises on how to sharpen up and clean up your perceptions! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 22 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Mechanics, Engineers and Magicians Both NLP and Hypnosis (and related disciplines) are based around the simple fact that what we think is reality (our maps or IRs) is malleable. Change the way we think and perceive it and we change the entire world we live in. The result is that you are left happier and more successful in your endeavours. At least that is the theory. Now when looking at the malleability of reality, Change is one extremely useful unit of measurement. So realities can change quickly or slowly. They can change by small or large amounts. The changes can be temporary, semi-permanent, eternal or not take place at all. In each case we judge the proficiency of the practitioner, by his or her capacity to induce the desired amount of change for the desired amount of time. A practitioner of NLP, hypnosis or any other change-work technology (e.g. meditation, psychotherapy etc) stands or falls by her ability to manipulate realities at will. The acquisition of any skill usually involves a progression through distinct levels of ability that the earnest student must travel through in order to achieve mastery. The student must learn to manipulate his chosen medium - be that wood, metal, food, medicine or realities - in ever more powerful and refined ways. The old system of apprenticeship recognised this transition formally in the roles of the apprentice, the journeyman (or craftsman) and the master of his craft. I believe this kind of distinction is a useful one to draw out for reality manipulators in order to give us all an understanding of where we still need to grow and evolve our skills. As a slight aside, I of course presume a desire on the part of NLP practitioners and hypnotists to improve their skills and I do so quite deliberately: NLP is after all (inter alia) the study of Human excellence. It is not the study of human adequacy. Hence there is a built in presupposition of a never ending (yet highly rewarding) quest for increasing levels of elegance, excellence and effectiveness. And it is with this in mind that I present the following models of development for you. It is in order to assist you in escaping certain traps in your thinking and perceptions that I have (unfortunately) seen many NLP practitioners and hypnotists fall foul of! Before I go on let me make a general disclaimer: what I am about to say is just one way to look at things. It is not the truth, it is not necessarily even 100% correct. It is merely a useful description of something that is a bit larger than we can currently comprehend without the use of convenient metaphors. As such just treat it as food for thought to help you go off and make up your own mind about how to look at things. Many NLP practitioners and hypnotists make one fundamental mistake when it comes to hypnotic processes. It is a mistake that I believe all the greats in this field have avoided in one way or another, and this was one of the reasons that they became The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

23

great! The mistake is a simple one: they get caught up with and are stuck at the level of technique. To get stuck at the level of technique is to confuse the content with the process. When you do this you are basically saying: NLP is the Swish technique, a Collapse Anchors or a Visual Squash. This level of thought (which, by the way, is a useful one to go through in your evolution into a NLP practitioner/Hypnotist!) is what I like to refer to as the level of reality mechanics. A Reality Mechanic is someone who has a bag of tricks, or a toolkit. Every time she meets an unpleasant reality she pulls out the appropriate tool, follows the step by step instructions on the gadget and somehow, inexplicably, magic happens. When magic does not happen she merely blames the tool and says "IT must be broken" or "IT doesn't work". Because she only has predetermined patterns to run, she can only tinker with realities. She needs to rely on the robustness of the gadget she is using to be enough to meet the situation she faces. The problem with Reality Mechanics is that they are stuck. They cannot generate patterns because they have not studied the mechanisms inside the gadgets they are using. If they meet a situation they have not encountered before, they may not choose the right tool to meet the problem - either because they cannot match the dynamics of the tool to the problem or because they simply do not have a pattern designed to meet that kind of situation. Reality Mechanics are powerful people who can do a lot of good, but they have to rely on someone else to develop new techniques and technologies. Their personal development is thus dependant on "greater" minds spoon feeding them with new content. To burst through the bubble of limitations inherent in being a reality mechanic, you need to elevate yourself to the next level. This is what I like to call the realm of the reality engineer. A Reality Engineer works not on the level of technique, but on the level of principles. He understands what makes a process work. He has seen the clockwork that makes the machine do what it does and understands why it has been put together in that way. This means he is free to make up his own techniques on the spur of the moment as the situation requires. He can flip into seemingly contradictory positions and still get the results he wants because he can see the process that is at work and leverages off that to get a result. A Reality Engineer can confidently meet entirely new situations and know that all he has to do is gather enough information in order to start selecting the appropriate principles with which to engage. Whereas a Reality Mechanic can only tinker and tune an engine or apply prepackaged solutions to "common" problems, the Reality Engineer can take the entire mechanism of reality apart, clean it up and put it back together in a more useful and efficient way. A reality Engineer has more choice and is therefore more powerful as an individual. His scope for personal growth is self reflexive - he applies the principles he has mastered to himself to reinvent himself as time passes. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

24

A Reality Engineer is free to explore the world with new eyes and to choose how the world should respond to him. As he gets better with this process, he internalises the principles that form the stuff of his magic. What once required a conscious choice to engage begins to be turned over to the vastly superior resources of unconsciousness. At that moment a magical door opens to him. When he steps through that doorway he will have become a reality magician. This level of being is the most difficult to describe. It is an incredibly powerful state in which you stand beyond the self imposed limits that holds back even the Reality Engineer. I am not suggesting that the Reality Magician operates at a level beyond principles. That is kind of true but also quite inaccurate. Principles are absolutely important at this level, it is just that you can go beyond them to either discover new principles or you bend the boundaries within which Principles are thought to operate. This is the level where you don't TRY and do something - apply a principle or a technique - you merely INTEND something and it occurs. When you get here you have internalised so many experiences, you literally BECOME the process. You unconsciously apply hypnosis/NLP in everything you do so that magical things just seem to happen to you and around you. As the great master of change, Milton Erickson, put it: you become the scenery to which the other people NATURALLY respond in the way that you intend them to. That is a very powerful place to be in. It takes a very special way of thinking to appreciate what this means and to operate at this level. It is NOT an end point, but a beginning of an incredibly fruitful experience. This special Mind Set is an incredibly important thing to understand and internalise. At some point I may write more about that kind of mindset. But to be honest you really need the power of a live, hands-on training – i.e. personal experiences – to truly internalise the understanding. 14

As an example, during a Street Hypnosis training in Bangkok an interesting question came up when we examined Embedded Commands in action. There was a segment which appeared to give contradictory suggestions "You cannot feel... now feel comfort..." How can someone both feel and not feel at the same time?

14

NB Street Hypnosis can easily be misunderstood as a quirky branch of the entertainment industry stage hypnosis with a twist or maybe a hypnotic magic act performed on the street following models like David Blaine. If that is your understanding then I have failed miserably in what I set out to achieve. Street Hypnosis is not a bunch of tricks to entrance innocent members of the public. Street Hypnosis is about creating powerful people. People that live in a personal world that is so rich that it spills out of them and colours the realities of all that come into contact with them. That is one of the structures of charisma: people that live such compelling versions of reality that they draw you in and make you want to live in the same world! For more information about this check out www.streethypnosis.com. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 25 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

That is in an interesting question. It is pointless intellectualising about such questions: it is absolutely a complete paradox when judged from a segmented mindset. There was really only one way in which I could answer such a question: I put the student in trance. I led him through an experiential process culminating with that exact same set of contradictory suggestions. When the student emerged from trance he had a little glint in his eyes and simply said "I understand!" - he had had a glimpse of how a Reality Magician thinks. And that is something you must experience for yourself. Or to put it more accurately, it is a way of thinking that you have to remember all over again. Although NLP is renowned for its techniques, such as the Fast Phobia Cure, it is important that you remember not to get too caught up inside them! In fact it is useful to remember that nothing works for everyone 100% of the time. What is much more powerful, are the principles and the mindsets from which these techniques evolved. The NLP Practitioner intensive programme we run through the Curious Company will teach you the Attitudes and the Methodology that underpins NLP. You will get the chance to experience the NLP mindset as well as the techniques in action. You can also check out the “NLP – An Unconscious Review” CD set available on www.streethypnosis.com. These CDS are designed to help you enter the NLP mindset more easily and understand the inner workings of many of the NLP techniques by understanding the NLP principles they are made up of. So, whilst you will invariably begin your NLP journey as Reality Mechanics, I urge you to ensure that over time, and with experience, you keep moving on to the other stages of Reality Engineers and Reality Magicians. Reality is a malleable thing. Learn to experience it just so and magic happens.


26

Rapport Trust & Comfort Many people see rapport as a relation of mutual understanding or trust between people. Some see it as a feeling of sympathetic understanding. Everyone agrees that it is one of the magic ingredients that allow people to forge strong relationships (whether business, personal or otherwise) that last in the long term. Rapport is a vital ingredient in the artful communicator’s skill set as it allows you to connect with another human being in such a way that many of the natural defences people carry around to protect their self esteem are spontaneously lowered. Whilst building rapport has an infinite level of complexities and subtleties that a person could spend a fruitful lifetime exploring, it is also (fortunately) something that you can learn to do very simply. At the most basic level, rapport can be boiled down to two concepts: Trust and Comfort. Building Trust & Comfort are the essential elements that you must look for in any encounter that you wish to prolong, harmonise the communication or create a connection with someone else. In this section we will be exploring several processes that human beings naturally engage in which result in a natural rapport. Please bear in mind, whilst we may be addressing many behavioural structures that “mimic” rapport signals, it is always best to be genuine about your communication. Much of the non-verbal subtext that you will be broadcasting will be unconscious. So communicating with integrity and an aligned set of internal maps will be the best way to ensure you broadcast only congruent rapport signals to others. As Trust and Comfort are at the root of this set of experiences, you would do well to project precisely those qualities. This is much like the approach taken by the famous psychotherapist Carl Rogers. He simply advocates that you have a “high unconditional regard” for the other person! Finally, what you project (i.e. the conscious and unconscious signals that you send out) when building rapport is only one half of the equation. Rapport is a feedback process between two or more entities. In order to feed back something to another person, you need to be able to receive – rather perceive – the changes that occur in a live interaction. The ability to refine your senses to perceive such signals will be dealt with under Calibration. But just because that “topic” is covered elsewhere does not mean that it does not have great value here!


27

Matching & Mirroring People like people like themselves. It is a simple concept with a vast potential depth. Behavioural scientists have noted that people seem to “spontaneously” strike up a rapport with people that have similarities. At the most fundamental level it is similarities in our non-verbal behaviour that develops profound rapport. This is largely because these tend to go unnoticed in western cultures. This behavioural similarity goes far beyond crude mimicry. In fact mimicking a person’s behaviour is a sure-fire way to quickly loose rapport (and, incidentally, it is also a great way to get into a fight!) This is because mimicry draws conscious attention to the act, which triggers most people’s personal insecurities. The power of matching someone’s behaviour comes from avoiding conscious detection but ensuring it is perceived unconsciously. Many long-standing couples are said to resemble each other. This is because over time they begin to subtly match each other’s behaviour such a facial expressions, posture, breathing rates etc. When you begin to do the same, i.e. when you begin to subtly copy the unconscious mannerisms of those around you, they will begin to respond to you as literally “one of their own”. If you cross over into mimicry, however, then please pretend you never heard of NLP – and if anyone asks, you certainly did not read this manual! When you Match someone, you do the same thing they do. When you Mirror them you become like a mirror image of their behaviour (so left becomes right). Matching & Mirroring is a form of Pacing someone. When you Pace someone it creates a feedback loop which, if recognised unconsciously, creates a very deep connection. It is a way of subtly signalling “I can work from the same map that you’re working from – we are the same”. Whole body matching (or mirroring) occurs when you match or mirror larger structures like posture, breathing, arm or leg movements (crossing, uncrossing, foot tapping etc). Remember that the key here is to do it subtly. You need to maintain a sense of “naturalness” about what you do. You do not have to match them in every detail and you do not have to move at exactly the same time. In fact watch natural matching and mirroring occurring, perhaps amongst old friends in a coffee shop. You will see that when one person shifts position, the other one will follow – but not immediately. Usually there is a few seconds gap and the following motion will seem a totally natural part of their conversation. This phenomenon is called “Leading” – because one person had enough rapport with the other that when he changed position her friend followed. A good way to test you have rapport is therefore to “Pace” the person (in this case through matching and The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

28

mirroring) and then to “Lead” by changing something. If they follow, you have a good level of rapport! If they do not, you simply have to do a little bit more! Now the interesting thing is that this pacing and leading phenomenon works as well in the conceptual realm of ideas as it does in the physical realm of postures, breathing rates etc. When you have rapport with an individual you will, as a general rule, find that they are less argumentative, less prone to take offence and more likely to indulge you. All useful things in certain contexts. Here are some additional Matching and Mirroring style manoeuvres: Cross over matching – this is where you slyly match one behaviour from the person, e.g. their tapping foot, with a totally different behaviour of your own. In this case you could match the rate of the tapping foot by drumming your fingers, tapping a pencil, blinking (if you can do it without looking like you lost a contact lens!) etc. Movements – match or mirror their expressions, gestures or gesticulations. You do not have to repeat the whole motion (that could become obvious mimicry and get you in trouble!) but you can definitely pick up the gist of their motion. A man stroking his beard can be matched by a woman touching her mouth “pensively” etc. Breathing – this is actually a subset of matching movements, but is so powerful that it deserves to be marked out. Matching someone’s breathing either with your own or by cross over matching (e.g. by blinking at the same rate), you create an incredibly powerful feedback loop. It can create very deep levels of rapport. Tonality – remember that Birdwhistell’s study showed that beyond non-verbal cues, 38% of the sub-communications are carried by voice tones. These are as open to matching as the non-verbal behaviour. You can pace people by matching their voice tone, speed, rhythm, pitch etc. Micro-matching – this is the same ordinary matching only this time you do not engage in the full behaviour that you are matching. You actually tone all the behaviours way down. Actually this is the secret to successful matching and mirroring. A certain amount of “gross mimicry” is a stage most people go through to learn the process. In time you want to adapt so that the minimum amount of effort gets you the maximum result. Micro-matching is important as it allows you to use your space more freely whilst still creating the connection.


29

Unconscious Rapport It is all very well discussing the merits of subtly matching people’s behaviours in order to create rapport. But that takes quite a bit of work. When we start looking at additional rapport builders such as conceptual rapport or using language to build trust and comfort, there will soon be too much going on for you to keep track of consciously. So having put the groundwork into understanding matching and mirroring, it is time to let it all go. You can achieve the same results better by leaving it all up to your unconscious. The fact is that almost every human being has grown up knowing how to build rapport intuitively. Think about it – you have done it thousands of times in your life up until now: with close friends, family, the odd stranger that you just clicked with etc. The only problem was that these times seemed to happen randomly. You did not know how to repeat the process. The fact is that you can. The principle that you must remember is Go First! By going first I mean entering the state you want to project so intensively that other people pick up the natural signals you unconsciously broadcast and respond to it. As an example, everyone can recall at least one event where you felt a little down and you bumped into a friend bubbling over with enthusiasm. Soon enough that enthusiasm seemed somehow to affect the way that you felt too and before you knew it your whole mood shifted. Well this works with rapport too. Think back to a person that you have a strong rapport with. When you recall how you feel when around this person – the same sense of comfort and trust – you begin to slip into the same state again. People have different ways of knowing they are in rapport. For some it’s a warm glow in the chest or the solar plexus. Others feel it as an easing of tension around the chest, making it easier to breathe and smile. Others still may get an intense fluttery feeling inside their bellies. Whichever way that you do it is fine, the important thing is to get into that state intensely, until it almost seems to leak out of you. You might even associate a colour with it. The strange thing is that if you take that colour or the sensation and expand it throughout your body, it intensifies even more. The more it intensifies the more it will expand. Eventually it kind of leaks out of you, surrounding you – in kind of a glow or “aura” you can sense around yourself. It may or may not be real; but it is something that you can be aware of. Well when you take that feeling that surrounds you and “project” it towards another person, it will expand towards them. Then you can allow it to surround that person, like a warm comfortable blanket that links the two of you together.


30

Now what this does is trigger your unconscious to begin broadcasting rapport signals to the people around you. You will naturally tend to engage in matching and mirroring behaviours as well as communicating rapport on many other levels. All the things you have learned so far (and will learn later) still count, so do as much of that as you can comfortably keep track off, and allow the rest to take care of itself. This concept of altering your state in order to build rapport and trust your instincts to guide you in an interaction is nothing new. Two of the oldest fields that need to specialise in rapport building for success are psychotherapy and sales. The greatest exponents in both fields end up saying very similar things about building rapport. 15 Take this excerpt from Carl Rogers for example: “An empathetic way of being with another person has several facets. It means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive, moment by moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this person to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion of whatever that he or she is experiencing. It means temporarily living in the other’s life, moving about in it delicately without making judgements; it means sensing meanings of which he or she is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover totally unconscious feelings, since that would be too threatening… To be with another in this way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another’s world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish.”

Notice how Carl talks about putting your own mental maps on hold in order to travel along the maps made by other people for a time. Natural sales experts echo this belief when they talk about “getting into the mind of the prospect” (prospective customer) or “walking a mile in his/her moccasins”. This acceptance of another person’s model of the world discussed by Carl is pacing in the extreme. You may have observed that this level of “empathy” relies on highly fine tuned sensory awareness – Calibration of the other person. This takes much practice in live situations. Luckily for non-clinical interactions, a much less intense level of rapport will be more than adequate. However do always keep in mind that your aim is to enter the other person’s reality as much as you can, and respecting it (though being aware that it is no more than a helpful/unhelpful fiction).

15

From Rogers C., “A way of being” Boston, Houghton-Mifflin 1980 pp142-143. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

31

Matching Experiences We have spoken a lot about the non-verbal approaches to matching. These are very powerful, but they are not the only ones. When asked, most people will tell you that to build rapport you must find common areas of interest: going to the same school, sharing a hobby, having similar life experiences etc. All this (good!) advice shares a simple characteristic: matching people’s internal maps of the world. Strictly speaking you are violating one of the tenets of NLP here, as this kind of matching involves going into content. However it is an effective way of building trust and comfort when used to complement the other more process based approaches. Do remember that if you match experiences but mismatch at the level of process (tonality, non-verbal cues etc) then you will be breaking rapport. There are several different categories of experiences that you can match: Personal History: if you come from the same home town, went to the same school, knew/know the same people or do the same things (hobbies, business etc), you create an area of commonality that is a doorway into genuine rapport. However this is the weakest method for building trust & comfort! Values: Values are semi-unconscious filters people use, and are therefore a stronger way to create trust & comfort between two people. A Value is something that a person invests time and effort to have in his/her life. It is usually an abstract concept like Fun, Love, Happiness, Friendship, Trust etc. You can build rapport when you share a Value, but it is more powerful to actually satisfy it (e.g. by having fun with someone). Beliefs: Beliefs are another type of semi-unconscious filter. These are the things we hold true about the world and ourselves. Most westerners do not believe in ghosts. Go to Thailand however and the belief is reversed. Sharing and validating close held beliefs can build rapport – you are just pacing an important element in their model of the world. Emotional State: this is a much more subtle rapport builder. The old saying “misery loves company” is true because being in the same state as another builds rapport – it paces their experience. If someone is angry, it is hard to be reasonable with them. Matching their state however, by increasing your volume, pitch etc (though not necessarily their intention – i.e. do not get angry back (causing a clash) but do “get angry” in a way that diverts it elsewhere!) you pace them. This allows you the opportunity to slowly lead them into a calmer state by gradually shifting your own.


32

Matching Language Creating rapport can also be done linguistically. You can use language in a variety of ways to promote the growth of trust & comfort:

Vocabulary Language has a profound impact on our nervous system. Certain words are more loaded with meaning than others. For example, the words “baby” and “infant” can be used interchangeably, but “baby” is a more loaded word – people respond to it more powerfully. “Baby” is said to be semantically packed. The meaningfulness of a given word will vary from individual to individual. If you listen to them speak, you will hear which words have more meaning to them. These words will be emphasised, used more frequently and provoke a stronger non-verbal reaction. When you reflect these words back (using the same tonalities) you are reactivating the same part of the nervous system and creating a more powerful response. In simple terms, if you start talking like someone, you will be perceived as being like them and chances are that they will start to like you! Do be careful to not fall into the trap of mimicking someone. If you try and copy their vocabulary, reflecting back words, phrases or even the slang that they use, but you get the tonality or the associated non-verbal behaviours wrong, it will sound weak or like a parody. This tends to break rapport – it shows you are different and are either trying too hard or are mocking them. If you imagine the Queen of England trying to do a “gangsta rap” – it is precisely that incongruity that makes this a ridiculous thought!

Slang Understanding and using slang eloquently can however send out very powerful signals. By slang I do not mean simply cursing. Each subculture develops its own set of slang terminology over time as a shorthand method of talking about commonly re-occurring experiences. The legal profession has huge amounts of private slang (dressed up as “legal terminology”), as do bankers, doctors, accountants, school children, soldiers, drug dealers, singers etc. By understanding slang and using it appropriately you are indirectly stating “I am part of the same subculture; I share the same set of experiences, values and beliefs as you; I am like you.” Because this is a sub-communication, it tends to bypass conscious/critical thinking and creates a powerful unconscious response. This is much like scientists attracting birds to a concrete replicas by playing a sound recording of the appropriate mating call. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

33

Representational Systems – Predicates You will remember that we make sense of the world by processing information from our five senses and creating mental maps of our experience. Whenever we speak, we are in essence describing one of these maps out loud – that is how we know what we want to say. When you listen to people’s language, you will either see what they are saying or you simply will not grasp what they are trying to get at. You will notice that the predicates underlined above make reference to a sensory modality. That is because I was describing what portion of this mental map I was paying attention to whilst communicating with you. People will have a preference for paying attention to/processing visual (see), auditory (hear) or kinaesthetic (feel) 16 information . This will come out in the predicates they tend to use most often. When you reflect these predicates back to them (i.e. start talking to “visual people” in visual terms like “I see what you mean” or “let me paint you a picture”) you will not only be understood more easily, but you will also promote the growth of rapport between you. We will come back to this concept in more detail in the Calibration section. For the moment, look at the sample predicates/phrases below that show a preference for each Representational System (or sensory modality): Visual

Auditory

Kinaesthetic

dim, foggy, hazy, gaze, see, imagine, look, clear, watch, outlook

hear, tune, listen, say, talk, cry, voice, call, sound, silence

Touch, feel, grasp, rough, solid, soft, flow, tremble, hard

• I’m drawing a blank… • Let me draw you a picture… • See the light at the end of the tunnel… • Not a shadow of a doubt… • I take a dim view… • The future is bright… • Clearly…

• It rings a bell… • I hear what you’re saying… • I like the sound of that… • Get in tune with it… • It’s as clear as a bell… • Let’s get in synch… • Ding, dong!

• • • • • • • •

16

Get a load of this… Hang on a sec… Get in touch with… Tough luck! Go with the flow… Pull yourself together! Let’s touch base… I need something concrete…

Olfactory (smell) and Gustatory (taste) modalities are underdeveloped in western culture and occur infrequently. Certain professions, like chefs, will have these modalities developed more strongly and may actually reflect that preference unconsciously through their language. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 34 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Big Picture –v– Details (Chunk Size) Another useful filter to be aware of is what type of information a person tends to sort for. Some people like to get an overview, the big picture. If you start to give them too much detail they overload and shut off. They stop listening. By contrast someone who is driven by detail will get frustrated with all the wishy-washy big chunk pieces. They need the nitty-gritty details. Trying to force the wrong information chunk size on someone is as frustrating as trying to force the star shaped piece through the round hole. Whilst people can sit in between these categories as well, it is worth finding out what kind of information a person needs to get. An easy way to find out what preference someone has it to simply listen to the information they are giving you. People tend to communicate by giving the kind of information chunk size that they want to be getting back!

Emotional –v– Factual The final distinction I will make on these filters is the difference between people that respond well to emotional language (I did this and felt… it was an amazing sensation…) and those that prefer factual or procedural information (I went there, did that, and took this). When you start to talk their language, you will again be building rapport. As a general rule women tend to prefer emotional descriptions and men more factual ones. Like all generalisations, this is not always true, so take it with a pinch of salt! If you want to learn more about these kinds of internal filters that people use, you can look at personality profiling or the NLP Metaprogrammes taught at Masterpractitioner level.

Backtrack Frame (The Echo Effect) The specific words and phrases that people use activate certain portions of their neurology. They have a unique meaning for that individual. Backtracking is a way of demonstrating you “understand” or are in rapport by repeating the last few words of an utterance. It puts you firmly inside their map. This is in stark contrast to “active listening”, which recommends reflecting back what was said using different words. This is weaker than backtracking because you are activating different neurological networks by using your own words! Breaking Rapport Though we have focused on how to create rapport (that sense of connection with someone else) do remember that there are times where it is useful and desirable to break rapport. At such times you can simply systematically break every single recommendation I have made in this section! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

35

Calibration Primary Experience There is an old saying “People don’t see the world as it is, they see the world as they are!” There is a lot of truth to this saying. The problem is that our internal filters have a habit of deleting, distorting or generalising the information from our senses to fit what we expect/would like to see. This leads to all kinds of problems. When we base our decisions on faulty information, reality will crash in on us time and again and leave us disappointed. The main reason we get ourselves in difficulty is because we insist on attaching meaning to everything. For example: you see a man sitting in a chair, alone, with a smile on his face. Some people would interpret that scene as sad – a lonely man sitting by himself. Others may call him devious, as the facial expression seems “fake” to them. Others still may admire the man for being so happy and carefree. But these are all interpretations forced on the scenario. The only facts we know are true are that there is a man, sitting on a chair, alone, with a smile on his face. Everything else is a (poor) attempt to Mind Read! Our almost obsessive desire to label things creates other limitations. Take for example the common chair. By accepting the description of the item, we pigeon-hole it so well we eliminate other perceptions of it: the fine wood, its unique molecular structure, its use as a table, a toy, a weapon, fuel, raw materials for another project etc. This form of thinking is nothing more than a bad habit caused by lazy thinking. Limiting the scope of the chair means we don’t have to think about it any more or even truly perceive it. We can turn our minds off and stop responding to it. It happened to the flies in the jar when they stopped trying to get out (see Premature Cognitive Commitment above). We know that we are often caught out by this – we have sayings like “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and “don’t judge a book by its cover” to remind us that all is not as it seems. This desire to label everything around us is largely responsible for creating misunderstandings, inappropriate responses, disappointment and many neurotic 17 conditions .

17

Neurosis is a mental or personality disturbance, not attributable to any known neurological or organic dysfunction, manifested by symptoms such as insecurity, anxiety, depression, and irrational fears, but without psychotic symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations. Neurosis can be said to arise out of a dissonance between what is and what we believe should/might be. It is largely our desire to live in a fantasy world dominated by the past, alternative presents or a hypothetical future that causes people to ignore the actual present reality and leads to such mental anguish as anxiety, depression etc. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 36 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

So what is the solution? Retrain your perception to get as close to the Primary Experience as you can do. This is an important point. Pretty much every neurotic condition (insecurities, phobias, depression, guilt, low self esteem etc) that we have been forced to endure will disappear as soon as you stop making assumptions about life and only pay attention to what is happening in the here and now! Think about it. People love to “get away from it all”. Amusement parks, cinemas, the excitement of a sporting event or the serenity of Mozart’s Requiem all do the same thing: they stop us from worrying about the past, or fearing the future and arrest our attention so firmly in the living moment, in direct and enjoyable sensory experiences, that for a time you feel happy, satisfied and fulfilled. Paying attention to our sensory experience is something you can do anywhere. It sounds simple. But it takes effort. A great deal of effort. To stop roaming around in our own heads, talking to ourselves and jumping to conclusions takes a very intense kind of attention. That takes mental effort. And most of us don’t yet have a strong enough mental muscle to do this for any extended period of time. The good news is that building this kind of mental muscle is just like building any other kind of muscle. We practice, get tired, rest and grow stronger! There are additional benefits to paying attention to the world without judgement. As your unconscious intellect, with its superior processing ability, comes more directly online, you begin to sense the situation more accurately and respond better 18 “intuitively”. Take this example from Carl Rogers : “I have come to value highly these intuitive responses... they are almost always helpful… In these moments I am perhaps in a slightly altered state of consciousness, indwelling in the client’s world, completely in tune with that world. My non-conscious intellect takes over. I know much more than my conscious mind is aware of. I do not form my responses consciously, they simply arise in me, from my non-conscious sensing of the world of the other.”

Learning to use your perceptions well is one of the most important things you can ever learn to do. A lifetime spent on refining your perceptions, is a lifetime filled with increasingly rich rewards!

18

Extract taken from Rogers C., “Reaction to Gunnison’s article of the similarities between Erickson and Rogers”, in the Journal of Counseling and Development, (1985) 63 page 565. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 37 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

BMIRs As you know, every Internal Representation will affect your nervous system. You subtly change the way you feel, carry yourself and behave. These subtle external cues in posture and behaviour can be read by a skilled practitioner and give strong clues as to what is happening inside at the level of mental maps. We call these cues “Behavioural Manifestations of Internal Representations” (BMIRs for short). When you get good at reading these cues people are constantly broadcasting, you will get very good at reading people – even to the point where you might appear to manifest psychic abilities! It is vital in Calibrating (i.e. reading) people’s minimal cues that you open yourself as widely as possible to unadulterated Primary Experience. This will allow you to pick up on subtleties that you might ordinarily ignore, delete or even distort out of awareness. The renowned psychotherapist Milton Erickson, MD was so good at reading minimal cues he could tell when a woman became pregnant from the slight shift in the position of her hairline (a reaction to the new hormones in her system) and if a man had had an affair from the way he chose to sit in Milton’s office! Erickson would even, during an ordinary conversation, monitor people’s heart rate from their pulse in the ankle! The most accurate information a person will give you is behavioural. It will be a direct, unconscious response to the IRs that person is making at that moment in time. So it is vital to pay attention to what is happening without falling into the trap (described in Primary Experience above) of interpreting those BMIRs to mean one thing or another. To do so would be to try and read someone’s mind. Whilst it is true that with experience you will be able to make very accurate guesses as to what is inside someone’s mind, Mind Reading per se is a dangerous activity prone to mistakes! It is better to stick to “clean” sensory based descriptions. For example: the person you are with does something you think she is embarrassed by. This is a Mind Read. What you can observe is that the skin in her cheeks flushes, she draws back her lips to expose the upper teeth, bows her head forward at an angle, drops her gaze to the floor, shifts her breathing (higher in the chest and more rapid), the pulse in the side of her neck has sped up and the muscle in her jaw has tensed up. Now you have a basis from which to calibrate! You do not yet know the meaning of these responses, but you can find out. She might be embarrassed. She might also be angry, upset, frustrated, secretly pleased etc. In future when you see the same set of responses in her, you will know she is having the same experience again. Like a fine instrument, you have calibrated your senses to her responses!


38

Calibration Exercises Calibration Exercise 1: Like/Dislike Visual19 This exercise is the foundation for calibration. Practise it well! Remember, everything you have done to this point still counts: so build Rapport, use your Personal Power and Expand your Senses. 1.

Clear your mind of any thoughts.

2.

Expand your Senses and notice everything about the person in front of you. Let go of all your preconceived notions about them.

3.

Ask them to think about someone they like. Observe what you notice about them. Note any changes: e.g. in facial expression, breathing, skin colour (are they blushing slightly), pulse (see side of neck out of the “corner of your eye”), posture, their overall rhythm, movements, eye patterns.

4.

Now ask them to clear their mind.

5.

From a neutral state ask them to think of someone they mildly dislike. Observe what you notice about them here. Note any changes, in particular those that contrast with what you saw in step 3.

6.

Ask them to clear their mind.

7.

Repeat steps 3-6 until you think you can spot the difference between when they are thinking of each person.

8.

Ask them to clear their mind and think of either person. Then notice whatever you notice about them. Do they look more like they did in step 3 or step 5?

Check with your partner if you are right. Do this 10 times in a row and keep track of your accuracy. Variation A variation of this exercise is to ask your partner questions, such as “which person lives closest to you” or “which person is taller” and then calibrate the non-verbal responses to your answer.

19

This exercise is reproduced with permission from Ledochowski I., “The Deep Trance Training Manual Volume 1”, Crown House Publishing, 2003. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 39 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Calibration Exercise 2: Like/Dislike Auditory This exercise is similar to the first, only this time you will be using the auditory channel to calibrate. 1.

Clear your mind of any thoughts.

2.

Turn your back on your partner. Do not touch them.

3.

Expand your Senses and notice every sound in the room, especially those coming from your partner. Let go of all your preconceived notions about them.

4.

Ask them to think about someone they like. As your partner does this she will count out loud from 1-10, or speak in gibberish (to keep you out of content!). Note the voice qualities: volume, rhythm, pitch, speed, tone, pauses.

5.


6.

From a neutral state ask them to think of someone they mildly dislike. As your partner starts to count again, listen to what you notice now. Note any changes, in particular those that contrast with what you heard in step 3.

7.


8.

Repeat steps 3-6 until you think you have tuned into the difference between when they are thinking of each person.

9.

Ask them to clear their mind and think of either person. As they count out loud once again, notice whatever you notice about that. Do they sound more like they did in step 3 or step 5?

Check with your partner if you are right. Do this 10 times in a row and keep track of your accuracy.


40

Calibration Exercise 3: Like/Dislike Kinaesthetic This exercise is similar to the first two, only this time you will be using the kinaesthetic channel to calibrate. 1.

Clear your mind of any thoughts and close your eyes.

2.

Place your hands on your partner’s chest/shoulders for one minute to feel their breathing. This will sensitise you to the kinaesthetic modality.

3.

With your eyes closed, hold hands with your partner palm to palm. Feel the weight of their palms pressing against yours.

4.

Expand your Senses and notice every feeling and sensation, especially those coming from the contact with your partner. Let go of all your preconceived notions about them.

5.

Ask them to think about someone they like. As your partner does this, note the feelings you have – both the sensations in your palms and in the rest of your body (your “gut instinct”, so to speak). Pay attention to such distinctions as: weight, temperature, sweatiness of palms as well as internal sensations (i.e. feelings in other parts of your body).

6.


7.

From a neutral state ask them to think of someone they mildly dislike. Again, feel for what you notice now. Note any changes, in particular those that contrast with what you heard in step 3.

8.


9.

Repeat steps 3-6 a few times. It does not matter if you don’t feel you have acclimatised into the differences between when they are thinking of each person.

10. Ask them to clear their mind and think of either person. As they do, notice whatever you notice about that. Then simply take a wild guess. Keep guessing until you start to guess accurately. 11. Make a note of how and where you were feeling something when you knew the right answer.


41

Calibration Exercise Variation 1: Truth/Lie20 This exercise is almost the same as Like/Dislike. It builds on the skill you started learning there. You can use this variation to systematically train up your visual, auditory and kinaesthetic channels of perception. Remember: this is only an exercise. It does not matter if you get it right or wrong straight away. With time and practice you will improve! 1.

Clear your mind and Expand your Senses as before. Let go of all your preconceived notions about your partner.

2.

This time ask them a question, which they will answer truthfully. You can ask any question you like, but keep it emotionally neutral, e.g. are you wearing shoes today? What is your name? Etc. Observe what you notice about them.

3.


4.

From a neutral state ask them another question. This time get them to lie when they answer. Look and listen to what you notice changing here. Note any changes, in particular any differences from what you noticed in step 2.

5.


6.

Repeat steps 2-5 until you think you can spot them lying.

7.

Ask them further questions and get them to lie or tell the truth at random. Notice whatever you notice about them. Then guess whether they are lying. Go with your first impression!


20

This exercise is reproduced with permission from Ledochowski I., “The Deep Trance Training Manual Volume 1”, Crown House Publishing, 2003. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 42 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Calibration Exercise Variation 2: Yes/No This exercise is almost the same as Like/Dislike. It builds on the skill you started learning there. You can use this variation to systematically train up your visual, auditory and kinaesthetic channels of perception. Remember: this is only an exercise. It does not matter if you get it right or wrong straight away. With time and practice you will improve! 1.

Clear your mind and Expand your Senses as before. Let go of all your preconceived notions about your partner.

2.

This time ask them “Yes/No” style questions, which they will answer truthfully. You can ask any question you like, but keep it to closed yes/no style questions, e.g. you are wearing shoes today? Your name is Fred? Etc. Keep asking various yes/no questions and observe what you notice about them.

3.


4.

From a neutral state ask them another yes/no question. This time calibrate their non-verbal response. Are they signalling yes or no?

5.

Repeat steps 2-4 until you can accurately read a yes and a no response.



43

Calibration Exercise 4: Mind Reading –v– Sensory Based Descriptions Below you will find a list of statements. Decide which statements are Mind Reads and which statements are in fact clean Sensory Based Descriptions: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

He was happy to be alive. She frowned with displeasure. He sighed, picked up the suitcases with a grunt and left. He leant across the chair to read the letter. She cried tears of joy. She shouted loudly at me and furrowed her brow. I asked the question and he raised his eyebrows at me. His shoulders were tense and his fists clenched. She breathed deeply with even rhythmic breaths. She was so arrogant and dismissive. Coldheartedly she brushed of his advances. He leaned back in his chair with disinterest. He smiled deviously. She laughed out loud. She smiled invitingly. He had a fantastic day. It was written all over his face. He cut me off impatiently. He looked at me with hatred. He thinks I am stupid. She cried and sobbed for hours. She loves to dance. She moved gracefully across the dance floor. He had a cold, hard look on his face. He stared at me without blinking, with a slight tremor around the eyes. He looked relieved to finally see her. He spoke quickly and used short, choppy hand gestures. She flew into a rage when she heard the news. She saw his eyebrow knitting and knew she was in trouble. After the accident he was still breathing quickly and shallowly – he was still in shock. He sweated profusely.


44

Minimal Cues Now that you have had the chance to experience calibration in action, you will have paid attention to a collection of tonal and non-verbal signals in the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic channels. You should have noticed that the following are particularly useful clues to pay attention to: Face – the expression, muscle tension, skin colour, eye movements (see also Eye Accessing Cues later), mouth position, lips swelling. Body – posture, gestures, arm/leg movements, head tilt. Breathing – location (high, mid or abdomen), pace (fast, slow), rhythm (regular, erratic). These are all important. The question is how can you improve you attention paying skills? You can play with the following exercises. Then make up your own!

Improving Visual Acuity 1. Close your eyes. 2. Open your eyes for 10 seconds and closely study your partner (posture etc) 3. Close your eyes. Your partner will change something. The better you get at this the more subtle the change your partner makes. 4. Open your eyes again. Physically demonstrate the difference. Improving Auditory Acuity 1. Sit back to back with your partner. Do not touch. 2. Have partner say something. 3. Repeat it using the same rhythm, pitch, tone etc. 1. 2. 3.

Close your eyes. Partner A claps his hands then says his name. Then Partner B does it. After Calibrating, A or B claps, you decide who was clapping.

Improving Kinaesthetic Acuity 1. Close your eyes and lightly place your hand on top of your partner’s hand/wrist. Do NOT grab old of it. Just rest it lightly on top. 2. Your partner gently guides you around the room, whilst moving his hands high and low. 3. With eyes closed, you have to follow your partner’s lead without breaking contact.


45

Eye Accessing Cues For a long time now it has been an established fact of neuroscience that how your eyes behave is directly related to how your mind is processing information. This fact has passed into popular sayings like “the eyes are the window of the soul”. For the purpose of Calibration, it is interesting to know that people will look in certain directions consistently in order to access certain types of information. Examine the following diagram:

VC

VR

AC

AR

K

Ad

The diagram above indicates what it means when a normally organised right handed person moves their eyes (as you look at the person). The eye accessing patterns are indicators of what Representational System is being accessed. As with all other generalisations, this one does not hold true for everyone, so test it out and let experience be your guide! C

Visual Construct (V ) – the first direction marked indicates that the person is creating visual images. They are imagining something. R

Visual Remembered (V ) – looking in this direction indicates that the person is remembering a visual image. So it is something they actually saw once. C

Auditory (tonal) Construct (A ) – this direction indicates that a sound is being imagined. For example how two instruments might sound played together. R

Auditory (tonal) Remembered (A ) – looking to the side horizontally like this indicates the person is recalling the sound of something they previously heard. Kinaesthetic (K) – looking down in this direction implies the person is getting in touch with a feeling (either physical sensation or an emotional interpretation). Auditory Digital (Ad) – this direction suggests the person is listening to internal dialogue – i.e. he is talking to himself! Forward Defocused – sometimes people will simply stare straight ahead and defocus their eyes and/or dilate their pupils. This is a sign that they are accessing information in any of the Representational Systems, though it would most typically be the visual system that is accessed in this way. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

46

Eye Accessing Elicitation Questions To check how a given individual’s eye accessing patterns are organised, simply ask them questions that require information from a specific Representational System and observe where their eyes go to answer the question. Here are some sample questions you might ask. Try them out. Then make up your own questions following the same structure. C

Visual Construct (V ) • What would a Tiger with a Giraffe’s head look like? • What would you look like with short/long/purple hair? • What would your house look like covered in pink fur? Visual • • •

R

Remembered (V ) What does your living room look like? Does your father have a beard? What room is the largest mirror in your house in? C

Auditory (tonal) Construct (A ) • What would a whisper sound like in space? • What would an elephant trumpeting “God Save the Queen” sound like? • What would a choirboy sound like singing AC/DC’s greatest hits? R

Auditory (tonal) Remembered (A ) • Listen to your favourite song in your mind. • Which door slams more loudly your bedroom door or the kitchen door? • Just hum your national anthem for a moment. Kinaesthetic (K) • What would it feel like to stroke a lovely Persian cat? • What does it feel like to float on water? • What does the warmth of the sun feel like on your face? Auditory Digital (Ad) • Say to your self “The moon is green on the Ides of March!” • Mentally recite your favourite poem. • What do you say to yourself to get yourself motivated for something? TIP: if the person’s eyes do not respond clearly to these questions, ask them a detailed question requiring a comparison between two similar things. •

Which is more X, A or B?


47

Primary Systems, Lead Systems and Synaesthesias Primary System Most people will prefer to process information using one Representational System over another. You can tell this from several clues: their predicates (see Representational Systems – Predicates above), from their eye accessing cues (does looking in one direction seem to occur a lot?) and from other non-verbal cues. This preference is said to be the Primary System.

Lead System A Lead System is the Representational System that someone has to go to first in order to access information in another system. It is like the key code in which all the other information is stored. For example, you might ask someone what the sound of her father’s voice is like. In order to answer she might have to first remember a picture of her father, imagine him speaking and then pay attention to the sound of his voice. In this case the Lead System would be visual as she had to access visual information before she could access the auditory information you asked about. You will detect a Lead System most easily by observing their eye accessing cues. R Typically the eyes first go to one location (in this case V ) and then move on to R another location (here it would be A ).

Synaesthesia A synaesthesia occurs when information in two separate Representational Systems overlap so closely that they seem to merge. Typically the person’s eyes will go to R one location (for example A ) but their answer will be in a different Representational system (e.g. talking about their feelings - K). Synaesthesias are very useful patterns to have in high performance situations, like sports which require the ability to make virtually instant decisions and act on them. But they can also be the cause of problems. For example a simple phobia is a synaesthesia combining the stimulus (seeing a dog, for example) and a feeling (the sensation of fear). So a phobia is a V/K synaesthesia: see the dog = instantly feel fear.


48

Hakalao21 This exercise is useful to learn how to open your filters and perceive more of what is happening around you. It is taken from an ancient tradition known as Huna. In that tradition, the old masters would live in a very calm yet alert and aware mind-body state giving them direct access to Primary Experience. These masters where not only renowned for being highly perceptive and intuitive people, they also led very rich and fulfilling lives. 1.

Find a comfortable position, either sitting or standing.

2.

Fix your attention on a single point slightly above eye level. Focus on that point exclusively for a few moments, making fine distinctions in what you see.

3.

Then relax your eyes and notice the tendency for your vision to expand. You can see the floor, the ceiling and the sides of the room at the same time. There is no need to focus in on any particular thing.

4.

As you notice your breathing beginning to shift, become deeper and calmer, take this sense of visual awareness and wrap it around you and behind you like a velvety cloak. You may not be able to see what is behind you, but you can get a sense of what that would be like.

5.

Now focus on your hearing. Imagine your ears to be like a bat’s sonar device. Imagine your hearing stretching out in wider and wider circles. Become aware of the things you hear: people talking, the hum of the heating, traffic outside.

6.

Then move to your feelings. Imagine your feelings to be centred in your belly. Push your feelings out around you into the room like a sphere radiating from your belly. Get a sense of almost touching the walls with this felt-sense and everything in between. Know what that would feel like.

7.

Finally become aware of all three senses radiating around you like interlocking circles at the same time. Rest in this expanded awareness for a while, then come back to your ordinary state – if you wish it!

21

I adapted this exercise from something I learned at a workshop with John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn. This exercise is reproduced with permission from Ledochowski I., “The Deep Trance Training Manual Volume 1”, Crown House Publishing, 2003. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

49

Outcomes Goal Setting Outcomes and Goal Setting are about the same thing: getting results. In my capacity as an executive coach for many senior figures at international organisations, I have had the good fortune of meeting many hugely successful people. The interesting thing is that the areas of their success, without a single exception, where the areas in which they knew what they wanted and went for it. Think back to the PACE formula for success: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Know your outcome (Purpose) Be flexible (Adapt) Use your senses to gather feedback (Calibrate) TAKE ACTION NOW!!! (Engage!!)

The very fist thing you have to do is to know what you want. This is nothing new. 22 There is a well known Urban Myth about a Harvard/Yale Business School study on the setting and achieving of goals. It is supposed to have found that 83 % of people in the study did not set goals; 14 % did have goals, but did not write them down; and only 3 % had goals, wrote them down and followed a daily plan of action. The follow up study years later showed that the 3% that wrote down their goals, were now earning more than ten times more than the 83 % that did not have any goals. People who don’t know where they want to go, end up going nowhere. The mind is designed to be goal oriented. That means that whatever you focus on will tend to become real for you. There is a theory that the act of writing down (or otherwise committing to) a goal engages the reticular activating system (RAS) in the brain, honing your awareness to the natural opportunities that we otherwise delete out of our awareness. Everyone has had the experience of buying a car or learning a new word, or something similar. All of a sudden, for the next few weeks, that type of car or word seems to appear everywhere. Coincidence? No! That is the RAS honing our

22

Many self-improvement authors cite this study, sometimes as coming from Yale, sometimes from Harvard. Sadly neither university has any such study in its records, it appears that this is just an urban myth – though a might inspiring one! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

50

awareness and drawing our attention to information that we used to delete up to that point. There are rules for engaging our natural goal achievement mechanism. Your mind is an information processor and the kind of information you put in will dictate the kind of results you get out. Over time hundreds of methods have developed designed to harness that goal-getting system and focus the mind on what you want. We will be addressing two of those systems later in this section. Remember however that the fundamental structure behind all of them is the PACE formula you are already familiar with. Whatever goal-setting and goal-getting system you decide to use for yourself, will ultimately be a refinement of those four simple steps. It is also worth re-emphasising that whatever happens on your journey is probably the right thing. Life has a habit of not taking the straight path. But if you are willing to take the picaresque adventures offered, you can often be delightfully surprised by those detours. Sometimes the detour ends up being quicker or getting you 23 somewhere even better. In a book by Henriette Klauser there are dozens of examples of people writing down a goal, losing the paper it was on, only to find it again years later and discovering they had achieved that goal already. This is an important point. Just as we can consciously interfere with our natural ability to learn, so we can “try too hard” to achieve our goals – leaving us with nothing. Sometimes our unconscious steps in and takes a hand. In the same way as the unconscious can “repress” traumatic memories, it can also cause us to “forget” about our goals. We misplace our paper and get sucked into life, leaving the unconscious mind free to navigate the channels of opportunity that life creates. We will be addressing those unconscious mechanisms later in this section. Before we get there though, it would be a very good idea to make sure that you actually want whatever it is that you set out to get/achieve. I am reminded of the old proverb: “Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it!” Finally, remember that the PACE formula begins with a purpose, but ends with you engaging in action. The biggest difference between a Walter Mittey figure and a… (insert your own role model for achievement here!) is that willingness to engage – to take action NOW!: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now!”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

23

Klauser H. “Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want - and Getting It!” (2001) Simon & Schuster. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 51 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

SMART Goals SMART is a simple acronym for the rules for setting goals. There are many others. It is neither the only one formula nor the best. But it is useful and serves as a great introduction for goal setting. As you know, the brain needs certain types of information in order to kick start the goal getting process. These are summarised in the SMART formula: Specific, Measurable, Affect (with emotion – so it affects you), Realistic, Timed.

Specific Many people make the mistake of wanting something vague. They want to be “better” at something or have “more” of another. Well if your goal is to have more money, then finding a penny on the street will have achieved that. Job done. The mind can then turn on to other things. So be very specific about what you want. The easiest way to do this is to make sure the goal is measurable. Measurable How do you know when you are done? A goal is all about achieving something. Winning a race is about being the first across the line. What is your goal about? How will you know when you are done? You need to be able to measure the goal in some way. The best way to do that is to make sure that you define your goal in sensory specific terms. What will you be seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling when you are done? Feelings are particularly important. Your feelings about the goal will provide the motivation to do something. No motivation, means no engagement! In order to have motivation, you need emotional content, or affect.

Affect Affect, or the emotions you feel when you think about your goal, is the fuel that drives the engine. The stronger your emotions, the higher the motivation. The higher the motivation, the more resources your unconscious puts at your disposal. That way if it can be achieved, it will be. So you do need to be realistic.


52

Realistic All goals need to be rooted in the real world. They have to be humanly possible, and possible for you. This is a tricky area to judge – many people hide behind the idea that something is impossible as an excuse for not aiming too high! Timed Finally you need to set a timeframe for your goals. If you have no deadline, then you could spend a lifetime working towards it and never quite getting there. Exams have a way of focusing people’s minds – because of the deadline. Harness that power by committing to achieve your own outcomes!


53

Well Formed Outcomes – Conditions This is the traditional NLP model for setting goals – or outcomes. Outcomes need to be well formed. The SMART formula is a simplified example of the wellformedness conditions in action. The advantage of this longer formulation is that you automatically clarify whether or not you actually want what you think you want. Checking that out in advance can save you a lot of time and aggravation later! There are seven conditions you need to fulfil when creating any goal:

Stated in the Positive Any outcome that you plan needs to take you towards something not necessarily away from something. The problem with many people is that they are very clear on what the do not want, but have no idea about what they do want. There are two problems with this. First of all, there are a thousand ways of not getting something. The end goal is still unclear and there is still nothing concrete to aim for. Secondly, at the level of our Internal Representations there are no negations. You cannot not think about something, without thinking about it first. Try this: do not think of a red cat. Do not think of that red cat sitting in a red tree. Now don’t picture that red cat, sitting in that red tree, flicking its little red tail… What happened? You had to think about the red cat before you could negate it. It dominated your perceptual focus. Now remember that your focus determines your reality. If you keep focusing on what you do not want, your mind has a tendency of giving it to you. It is like sending an instruction to your unconscious saying “make me fail”. Obligingly enough it will respond along the lines of “you want failure? I can do that! Have an extra generous helping on me!!” So when creating your outcomes, be sure to plan for something you do want not something you don’t.

Sensory Based This condition helps to make sure your goal is rooted in reality and is measurable. When setting goals you must avoid abstractions – they are by definition unclear and possibly unreal. Whatever you can imagine in all your senses, on the other hand, tends to become more real, more tangible and more motivating for you. So make sure you aim at something you can see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Create a vivid mental reconstruction of what it will be like when you get what you want. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

54

Initiated and Maintained by Individual Another trap that people fall in to is absolving themselves of the responsibility to make something happen. They do this by including elements into their vision, their goal, which they have absolutely no control over. Typically this will include someone else doing something or making a change. Some examples of this mistake are: a wife setting a goal for her husband to pay more attention to her. A student planning to win the lottery. An aid worker setting a goal for world peace. Now the above goals are not all fatally flawed. It is possible for a wife to get the attention she craves from her husband. But she must be the one that changes. She needs to start asking herself “how do I have to start acting for him to want to be as attentive as I want him to be?” That is something she can initiate. You should also take care to ensure that whatever actions this goal demands of you things you can maintain. If you are like the student who wants to be a millionaire, and your solution involves working 18 hour days for 365 days in the year, please think again. This thought trap is one that almost every single person that goes on a diet falls into. The typical pattern for dieters is: imagine and ideal weight, start the diet plan, do well for a while and get to the target weight (or close to it). Then it all falls apart. The behaviour they engaged in to get to their outcome stops. They change their diet and, surprise, surprise, the weight comes piling on again. This is a classic example of someone neglecting to include and element of maintenance into their outcome!

Ecological This is another facet of goal setting that is rarely talked about. By ecology we mean, how does this goal fit into the rest of that person’s life? Does it fit with his own personality, his family relationships, values and life goals? Is the goal worth the price you have to pay to get it? In the example of the would be millionaire, working hard may be fine per se. But let us imagine that he has just married and has children on the way. If he has to work all hours of the day, his goals for creating wealth may clash with his relationship with his wife. He may (as so many workaholics find out) loose his family that way. If the whole point of creating wealth was to support his family, he has totally blown it. Often the unconscious will sabotage attempts to achieve such goals because in the wider context of that person’s life it would simply be un-ecological!


55

Preserves the Positive By-product of the Present State This condition is related to the ecology check. It refers to what psychologists call a “secondary gain”. Very often the side effects of problems we have or the positions we find ourselves in in life are highly desirable. The net hidden gain this condition may give us outweighs any drawbacks the problem may have. For example: a beautiful, young girl gets subjected to a sexual advance she does not know how to handle. Unconsciously she comes to the conclusion that she must become sexually undesirable in order to avoid such problem situations. So she feels compelled to eat until she reaches gargantuan proportions – she has achieved her unconscious aim, she is left alone. But now she needs to slim down for health reasons. This creates a dilemma: if she slims down, her social protection will go; if she does not, she may die… Any outcome that included her getting slimmer would also have to include an element dealing with the feared sexual advances or the goal will simply get sabotaged. The outcome needs additional elements such as assertiveness training, or enhanced self-esteem. NLP is about giving people more choice!

Specific and Contextualised This combines the specific and time elements of the SMART formula. The goal needs to sit within a context of the person’s life tapestry. Making sure that the goal is sensory based will ensure it is also specific. But, she will need to make sure she considers such questions as where, when and with whom does she want this outcome (and where, when and with whom does she not want it!) Includes: Internal Process, Internal State and External Behaviour Achieving a goal will mean that you have to think in certain ways (your mental maps have to be changed), you have to feel certain things (remembering how state drives your behaviour) and finally you have to do certain things. The other six steps will have gone a long way to influencing your internal processes. The NLP change techniques were created to influence your internal processes through reframes, submodality shifts and altering strategies. Your outcome will also have to define how you will feel, both before and after you achieve it. It would be a hollow victory to get your hearts desire and be totally disappointed by the whole experience. Anchoring will help you find the states that motivate you and attach powerful feelings to your achievements. Planning without action is like trying to drive a car without an engine – it might be fun for a while, but is completely pointless. So make sure you include behavioural elements in your goals. You will have to do certain things both to get what you want and to keep it. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

56

Well Formed Outcomes – Elicitation Questions 1. Stated in the Positive What do you want? State it in the positive! 2. Sensory Based What will you be seeing, hearing and feeling when you have achieved this goal? 3. Initiated and Maintained by Individual Is this goal within your power to achieve, or even achievable at all? How much effort would you have to put into i. making the change happen and ii. keeping it going? What would motivate you to put that effort in? What might de-motivate you? 4. Ecological What will change when you have your goal? Who will be affected by this change? How might others benefit from your achieving this goal? 5. Preserves the Positive By-product of the Present State What won’t happen any more after you’ve changed? How has the problem been useful for you (NB you can ask this question sometimes, or ask yourself the question given your understanding of the whole situation!)? 6. Specific and Contextualised Where and when do you want it? 7. Includes: Internal Process, Internal State and External Behaviour How will you be feeling when you are being this new way (state)? What will you be doing (behaviour)? How will you be thinking (strategy)?


57

Transformational Questions

24

1.

What do you want

2.

How will you know when you have it (keep it sensory based!)?

3.

When and where do you want it?

4.

What will happen when you have it?

5.

What will happen if you don’t have it (ecology check)?

6.

What won’t happen when you have it (ecology check)?

7.

What won’t happen if you don’t have it?

8.

What resources do you have to achieve this outcome?

9.

What are you going to begin to do right now! To achieve this outcome?

10. How has your outcome changed (from question 2)? Basic Outcomes Interview 1. Elicit Present State • What feelings/behaviours don’t you want anymore? • Context Where and when is the problem occurring? • Trigger what are seeing, hearing or feeling just before the problem starts? 2.

Elicit Outcome State • What do you want? • How will you know you have it (what will you be seeing, doing, feeling etc)?

3.

Elicit Resource States • What resources does the person have that can make a bridge from the Present State to the Outcome State.

24

My thanks go to John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn for this formulation. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

58

Traditional Goal Getting Strategies Affirmations An affirmation is a positive statement that you repeat to yourself in an effort to persuade some part of you that it is true. Typical affirmations would be statements like “I love and accept myself”, “I am a successful…” and the classic “every day in every way I am getting better and better”. Affirmations were the brainchild of a French pharmacist and psychotherapist called Emile Coué. Dr Coué was influenced by some of the early pioneers of hypnotic 25 techniques in France . Coué began to adopt hypnotic process in his work with people and he achieved some remarkable success. He later became internationally famous for preaching a form of self hypnosis, or autosuggestion. In this system he encouraged people to train their minds and use them more effectively to overcome illnesses, neuroses and other conditions. It was Coué who first came up with the self suggestion “every day in every way I am getting better and better”. He would train his patients to enter a hypnotic state, build their belief system and have them repeat these suggestions. After the initial 26 training regime these patients would respond tremendously well to self suggestions. Coué was also one of the first people to make a personal development film and cut a “self help” record. His popularity spread across the globe. This is where things went slightly awry. The public only got half the message. People started to believe that all they had to do was repeat a positive statement to themselves a few times each day and all would be well. In some cases that was indeed enough. But not in all. What is missing from affirmations is the suspension of the critical factor. That is key. Even Coué emphasised repeatedly that the autosuggestions must completely fill your mental perceptions. You cannot have a little voice in the background saying “that’s rubbish… of course its not true…etc”. One way to accomplish this is to go into trance. In trance the critical factor of the mind is suspended. That is why suggestions have a greater impact – they are accepted without being trashed on the way in. So affirmations will work, but you must suspend that disbelief as you use them, or they fall apart! 25

Dr Bernheim and Auguste Liebault founded the Nancy School of hypnosis and psychotherapy. Freud later briefly studied with them as well. 26 This is a very interesting regime training people to respond to “waking suggestions” like the Postural Sway, Full Body Catalepsy or Locking Hands. For more information on hypnotic techniques such as these see Ledochwoski “The Deep Trance Training Manual, Vol 1”, Crownhouse Publishing, 2003. For more information on the work of Coué, see Coué’s “Self mastery through conscious autosuggestion”, reprinted by Sun Publishing in 1981. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 59 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Visualisations The same mechanism that can make affirmation so powerful also makes visualisations work. A visualisation is an internal representation of something you want. It has been called guided meditation, guided fantasy, metaphorical processing, constructive daydreaming, imagineering and a host of other things. In essence, a visualisation is creating an experience inside the mind (in any sensory channel – so something you hear, feel, taste, smell and see inside your mind) that leads you towards a desired outcome. In that sense you could say that affirmations are type of visualisation. Visualisations do the same things, they just have a greater selection of senses to work through and choose from. But visualisations are prone to the same Achilles’ heel as affirmations: belief. If you can totally immerse yourself in a visualisation, to the point where you have not a scrap of attention left to doubt the content/process, your mind will tend to accept it as true and make it so. It is the element of doubt which destroys the efficacy of this system. This is why there are so many Walter Mitty figures out there. These are people wracked by self doubt busy trying to “programme” a better future, but self sabotaging it the moment they begin. Unfortunate to say the least! The solution, as with affirmations, is relatively simple: trance. In trance, we have an ever increasing suspension of the critical system – that part of our minds that analyses information and makes snap judgments about whether or not to believe the information. When the critical factor is asleep, information that was routinely being rejected or distorted has a chance to make an impact on our neurology, and change can occur. This is a good thing because visualisations, when used well, offer us a very powerful tool for personal change and for enhancing our present experience. In later sections of this companion book (e.g. Submodalities or Hypnosis & Trance) you will find many refinements to this simple concept which will allow you to transform the way in which your future unfolds. For the moment, however, there is an old adage amongst hypnotists which I would like you to remember: where the will and the imagination conflict, the imagination always wins. If you're going to be thinking, you may as well think big. Donald Trump W ithout dreams, there is no reality! Luis B. Couto


60

Language Patterns Language is at the heart of NLP. It is also at the heart of how people create the realities they live in. The ability to use language with elegance and sophistication in order to influence people in positive ways is one of the hallmarks that sets NLP aside from other disciplines. It is worth getting to know this section very well. The use of “language patterns” is nothing more than consistently using certain methodologies in your communication style in order to enhance the impact. Everyone knows that there are people who are influential and charismatic (as therapists, businessmen, politicians etc) and people who are not. The fact is that everyone can be charismatic and influential if they communicate in charismatic and influential ways. That is something you can learn, as surely as you learned your native language. The study of language patterns can be said to be synonymous with studying the actual language of influence. Language is incredibly important as it has the power to simultaneously trap us and 27 liberate our thinking : “The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive… The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful… To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbolsystems and implicit philosophies that we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic traditions into which he has been born – the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated record of other people’s experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual thing.”

Language is an incredibly powerful tool. When used well, it can liberate the mind, affect people’s health and create wonderfully rich experiences for people. When used negatively, it can hurt, inhibit and in extreme cases even kill.

27

Aldous Huxley, “The Doors of Perception”, New York, Harper and Row, 1954, pages 22-23. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

61

Presuppositions A presupposition is a linguistic assumption, usually implied, that something is true. As an example, if I tell you the “the chair is in the back of the room”, I am presupposing an almost endless set of things: • • • • • •

There is such a thing as a room. There is a larger structure to which the room belongs (rooms don’t exist by themselves!). There is a “front” and at least two “sides” of the room. The item identified as “chair” is separate from other items and from the rest of the room. I am aware of the chair. You understand the English language.

The list of presuppositions that can be inferred from the simple statement can be extended from the pedantic to the bizarre. And yet these assumed meanings still guide our thought processes and can lock up our thinking. As these assumptions work outside of conscious analysis, we do not even know that there is an assumption being made which we might want to challenge. This makes presuppositions a very powerful way of communicating influentially – be that in education, therapy or business. Presuppositions are much weaker when they are stated deliberately than when they are implied. This is because stating the assumption out loud draws conscious attention – and thereby critical analysis – to it. Consider the following statements: •

Just sign on the dotted line and you can take your new car home today!

•

I assume that you want to buy this car and that you want to take it home right now, so go ahead and sign on the dotted line and a binding contract will exist between us so that you can do just that.

Both statements say essentially the same thing. However by implying the desire to buy the car, an automatic process is engaged. It is harder for someone to break through the implication, analyse the underlying assumption and the decide whether or not to reject it, then to just go along with things. You should remember that people can and do break such presuppositions on a daily basis. It does happen, particularly when people grow wise to such tactics (many people will be more wary when interacting with a sales person than in other situations). All that presuppositions do is stack the deck in your favour!


62

Linguistic Presuppositions Presuppositions can be classified in all manner of ways. The labels of the classification are not important, it is the ideas that they represent that matter. By understanding different categories of presuppositions, you gain more choice both in the way you communicate and in the way you respond to other people’s communications! 1. Existence Presuppositions of Existence suggest that something exist and something else does not exist. It creates a duality in reality. If I say “the chair is here” I am implying that a thing called a chair exists and that there are such things in existence that are not-chairs. Similarly saying “John is here” implies that there is a (person) thing called John and that other things are not-John. So existence can be implied by names, pronouns or descriptions (generic or precise). Likewise both adjectives and adverbs imply the existence. Saying that “there is a blue dragon” is more persuasive than simply “there is a dragon” as we assume that dragons exist, and the point of analysis is whether or not it is of the blue variety (NB notice that we are implying that other colour dragons also exist!) These are key presuppositions to master to present elegant and persuasive suggestions! 2. Awareness Presuppositions of awareness direct attention without requiring a direct request or an order. If I were to ask you “did you notice the pressure of your shoes against your feet?” you have to put your awareness on your feet in order to answer that question. Chances are you were not aware of your feet until I made that statement, just as you were not noticing the sensation on the top of your scalp… but you do now. So we can direct people’s experiences directly or through negation. “Don’t think of a red cat. Don’t notice that red cat slinking around a red tree…” becomes a very leading statement – you have to think about it because you cannot not think about something without thinking about it first. This can be used to your advantage in a very powerful way when we delve deeper into hypnotic language. The key words here are things like: notice, aware, sense, realise, think, consider, feel, hear, see, observe… in fact any word that engages one of your five senses will focus the awareness as you wish it.


63

3. Modal Operators Modal operators imply either a need (modal operator of necessity) or ability/desire (modal operator of possibility). This is implied by the language people use: Necessity: I need… we should… you must… they have to… she ought to… I am supposed to… (Im)Possibility: I can… we are able to… you will… you want to… I choose to… he decided to… she intends to… Necessity or possibility sends out strong messages on motivation. “You can’t do that!” is a controlling statement calculated (unconsciously) to imply impossibility and inhibit the likelihood of someone engaging in the activity (and finding out for themselves whether that is true!) 4. Temporal Time is an interesting phenomenon. It only exists in our minds. When you think about it, all that exists is the present moment. When you think of the past, you are experiencing a memory construct in the present. When you plan the future – it happens in the present moment. Temporal Presuppositions play with people’s understanding of time to imply all kinds of things: Conditional Time If John becomes a fireman, I’ll eat my hat. John is not a fireman now. Similar phrases are: if, when, as soon as, once. Tense When I was a young man… I am not a young man now. This is the normal declension inherent in almost every language: I am, I was, I had been, I will be, I will have been. Change of time I am already here. Similar words are: begin, yet, stop, start, proceed, continue, still, anymore.

already,

Putting these together you can create a real time-warp in a mouthful: Once you begin to understand what you have not yet grasped you will stop worrying about what you cannot do and start to anticipate a time when you will have looked back at all this fondly and get on with learning just one thing at a time.


64

5. Ordinal Ordinal Presuppositions imply a certain order or sequence of events. The second thing you should note is that you will only understand that last point when you examine it with the very first thing you learned about. Thirdly remember that implying an order also implies a flow of time, so in some ways these presuppositions are linked to Temporal ones. Also look out for words like before, earlier than, ahead of, in advance, previous to, during, throughout, for the duration of, in the course of, after, following, subsequent to, later than, next, prior to. 6. Binds Binds and double binds are a very peculiar type of presupposition. Whole textbooks have been written on double binds as they are very powerful ways of constraining thoughts and understandings. This can be useful (as when applied therapeutically) or unhelpful (causing people to have problems or be inhibited in a negative way). A bind in essence creates a dichotomy: it is this or that. This can be an unfair division as in “who do you love more, your son or your daughter?” or a helpful way of making distinctions. A double bind is a bind presented in such a way as to give the illusion of choice. The overused sales line “would you like to sign the contract out here or in my office?” illustrates this illusion clearly. The choice is not about whether or not you sign the contract (that bit is presupposed) but where that will take place. We will cover more convoluted examples of double binds in action in the Milton Model part of this section. 7. Cause-Effect Cause-Effect presuppositions assume that one thing caused another. Some of the other categories of presuppositions often have the effect of implying that one thing caused another: as soon as you close your eyes, you will feel more relaxed. This implies a clear relationship between eye closure and relaxation. The interesting thing is that when the statement is accepted without too much critical thinking, it will become accepted and unconsciously every time you close your eyes, you will automatically begin to relax more fully! Words to look out for are: as… then, causes…, because…, makes…, if… then, since…, … so…, etc.


65

8. Complex Equivalence This is another powerful presupposition implying synonymity. When two things are equated in the mental maps then they become the same experience for us. Take “The ice cream is cold” we have linked the ice cream and the state of being cold. They are the same thing. Ice cream = cold and cold = ice cream. Complex equivalence is the glue that holds our internal realities together. This category will be examined more fully in the Meta and Milton Model sections. Words to look out for are any variation of the verb “to be”. 9. Comparison “If you loved me as much as you love your pets, we would be happy!” A comparison can imply things whilst diverting attention away from the suggestion. In this example, the implication is that the person loves her pets. That is not “at issue” here. If something is going to be analysed (and argued) it is more likely that it will be how much she “loves me” or how happy the two would be together. 10. Repetition Any word the begins with the prefix “re-“ has embedded the suggestion that the action has already occurred at least once. “He returned to the lake” can only mean that he was at the lake at least once before and that he left the lake before coming to it second (or third etc) time. This repetition can also be implied by other words that have a similar effect: “He walked to the lake again”. Look out for words such as again, once more, for a second time, another time, also, too, as well etc. 11. Other Classes Presuppositions can arise in any context. The above are just some common examples. More sneaky ones exist: “The teacher is pregnant” clearly suggest that the teacher is a woman (unless you are reading a science fiction novel). Likewise “If he talked to the police, we are done for!” shows how presuppositions can be created by something as subtle as a change of intonation. This last example, without any emphasis being placed, would imply that “he” may or may not have talked to someone. However as soon as “the police” is emphasised in a given tonality, there is no doubt that “he” did talk to someone, it is just a question of who that someone might have been.


66

Presuppositions Exercises Presuppositions Exercise 1: Implication What is the implication of the following statements: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

If he says that again, I will hit him. The next thing to do is whip up the egg. I had a crush on him. He moved to the front of the room. He spoke slowly and deliberately. She is more competitive than her sister. He likes to remember the good old times. If only the firemen had come sooner, the house would still be standing. As soon as you’ve turned over your papers the test begins. His smile made her feel weak. Shyness is caused by fear. He is frowning, which means he is unhappy with me. You need to pay more attention to details. Have you seen that sunset! Did you know that your hat is on your head? Either he goes or I quit? Have you stopped beating your wife yet – answer me Yes or No?! Sad films make me cry. Dogs frighten me. Turning the alarm on is the last thing you should do each night. Talking to her is the last thing you want to do! He has to find a job before he can respect himself again. John broke the chair over his back. Notice the film beginning to grow over the liquid. Can you hear that? Don’t look at his eyes, it only makes him angrier! Only you can learn this. You can only learn this. You can learn only this. I wanted to talk to her, but I did not have the time. You can jump high, but you can’t run far. You can jump high and you can’t run far. You can jump high even though you can’t run far. Have you understood it yet?


67

Presuppositions Exercise 2: Presuppositions –v– Mind Reading There is a difference from what a sentence implies must be true and what it implies could be true, though it need not be so. “I love big planes” presupposes that I have a strong positive feeling for planes. You might think that it also implies that I dislike small planes. This may or may not be true. I t would require a mind-reader (or another question) to know for sure. Notice how the boundary between truth and fiction (presuppositions and mind reads) is not always clear cut: •

I don’t 1. 2. 3. 4.

know if I should stop beating my son. He has a son. He is a bad father, and should be shot. He currently beats his son. He loves his son.

•

I don’t 1. 2. 3. 4.

see why I can’t do it. All my friends can do it! He feels he’s being treated unfairly. He wants to be more like his friends. His friends do something he does not do. He is an incompetent fool, and should be shot.

•

He thought it was better to try and fail than not to try at all. 1. He was afraid. 2. He failed. 3. He tried to do something. 4. He is a looser trying to make himself feel better, and should be shot.

•

If the cat does not stop meowing, I will have to shoot it! 1. The cat is meowing. 2. The cat was meowing. 3. The cat will meow. 4. He wants to shoot the cat. 5. He is a cruel man (who should be shot)

•

I have to set up unrealistic expectations. 1. She feels trapped. 2. She has expectations. 3. She knows when she’s being unrealistic. 4. She is obsessive about making unrealistic expectations. 5. She should be shot.


68

The Meta Model History The Meta Model was born in the mid 1970s when the co-developers of NLP, John Grinder and Richard Bandler, undertook a very interesting project. They realised that there were two leading therapists, Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir, who were getting consistent and exceptional therapeutic results with their clients, at a time when other therapists had at best haphazard results. They decided to model these therapists using an intriguing approach: language. First they became good therapists themselves, so that they could share the same intuitions as their models. They both ran group therapy classes to practice their skills. Once they could both get consistent changes with the people in their groups, they began to analyse the language they were using and compared it to transcripts from Fritz and Virginia. Patterns began to emerge. It appears that the same type of questions were being asked time and time again immediately before a client made an important shift. The rest of the time seemed to be spent on fluff talk. John and Richard began to experiment with their findings. They would restrict themselves to asking only one type of question for the course of a session. Everyone that came to their group that week would be asked the same question over and over again, to test the results. Slowly but surely they teased out a set of patterns that allowed them to perform verbal miracles: they had discovered a language that had “magical” effects on people with problems. The Meta Model was born. The Meta model is a way of analysing the things that people say in order to see what kind of mental maps they are making – including the all powerful assumptions that they have made about life, the universe and everything. As you will recall from the Universal Modelling Process on page 5, our experience gets deleted, distorted and generalised before we can create a more simplistic and workable map of the world. When people speak, they are indirectly describing the building blocks of their mental maps. They are telling you what they are paying attention to and what they are ignoring. The Meta model allows you to recover deleted information, so you have more to work with. It allows you to challenge rigid mindsets, to open the doorway for more flexibility and better choices (the holy grail of therapy!). Finally it stops you from making your own assumptions about what is going inside someone else’s head. Instead it compels you to ask meaningful questions so that you can understand what is actually happening inside someone else’s mind, as opposed to hallucinating how you think they should be thinking! N.B. Use this model carefully. The wrong tone could make you seem hostile!


69

The Meta Model – Short Form 28

The Meta Model is an application of the work done by Noam Chomsky . Grinder and Bandler applied Chomsky’s ideas to therapeutic conversations – later extending 29 it to any kind of communication. It first appeared in print in the mid 1970s and forms the backbone of NLP. In fact it was around several years before the Milton Model and the now infamous “NLP techniques” were developed. The following is only a working introduction to the Meta model. For a deeper understanding, I strongly recommend that you read Grinder and Bandler’s original books on this 30 topic . 29

According to Chomsky , language exists on two levels: the surface structure and the deep structure. Surface structure refers to the words and phrases people use to represent their experience (their mental maps) to others. Deep structure refers to the underlying mental map, the full linguistic representation of the experience inside a person. If the surface and deep structures match, they are said to be “synonymous”. If, however, they do not match, they are said to be “ambiguous”. The purpose of the Meta model is to gently probe for and retrieve from the source of any ambiguity so that the surface and deep structures match each other again – they become synonymous. Distortions Cause-Effect “You make me feel inferior.” A cause-effect construction exists where a person incorrectly assumes that someone or something outside of themselves is to blame for causing them to feel or behave a certain way. The fact is that the individual causes themselves to feel or behave in a particular way. At some level they have chosen to respond to that someone or something as they did. The Meta Model challenge here is designed to recover that choice! Complex Equivalence “ When he looks that way, he hates me.” A complex equivalence is the interpretation of one experience meaning (i.e. being synonymous with) another experience. In fact the two may not actually mean the same ting at all. In the above example, “the look” may be simply be a genetically accidental arrangement of his features, which is being misinterpreted. The Meta Model challenge provides a counter example to balance out the deep and the surface structures. 28

Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures. 1957, Mouton de Gruyter; Reprint edition (June 1975). Chomsky later changed his theory, but the basic structure is still highly enlightening. 29 Grinder J. and Bandler R. “The Structure of Magic: A Book About Language and Therapy” Volumes I and II, Science & Behavior Books; (reprinted 1990 and 1980 respectively). The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 70 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Mind Read “She fears me!” A mind read is a statement claiming to know what someone else is thinking or feeling, without identifying the basis for reaching that conclusion. Whilst reading people’s minimal cues can give you an accurate understanding of what someone is thinking or feeling (see Calibration), that requires a sensory based source of information that has been checked for accuracy. Often people distort their perception and forget how they know what they think they know! The Meta Model challenge recovers this source of information. Lost Performative “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” A lost performative is a value judgement about something without any further information. The person who made the original judgement gets deleted and the client ends up acting as if the statement were true. Old truisms like “a stitch in time saves nine” and “many hands make light work” are classic lost performative. But so are more subtle statements like “that’s not possible”. These are statements of belief that may or may not be true. The Meta Model challenge recovers the source of the belief, so that the person can decide on a more rational basis whether or not it is actually true! Generalisations Modal Operators There are two kinds of modal operators: necessity and possibility. Necessity “I have to win!” These verbs assume a need or requirement to do (or not do) something. This assumption deletes the ability to select from other choices that might be available. The choices that are left might be unpleasant or limiting, leaving the client nowhere to go. Trigger words for this pattern are: I must, should, need to, have to etc as well as I must not, shouldn’t etc. The Meta Modal challenge recovers consequences and possible outcomes. Possibility “I can’t do it!” These assume certain things about what choices are available and what is possible, rather than what is necessary. Trigger words are can, might, could, can’t, won’t etc. The Meta Model challenge recovers the cause or the consequence of breaking through the limitation presupposed by the statement.


71

Universal Quantifier “I can never get it right!” These are the ultimate generalisations. They presume the extreme in a very black or white kind of way. They assume that something is always true or never true, and thus cut out the possibility of having shades of grey! Trigger words include never, always, all, everyone, nobody etc. The Meta Model challenge recovers alternative possibilities. Deletions Nominalisations “My decision is final!” Any abstraction is a nominalisation. So if you cannot put it in a wheelbarrow (albeit a very large one) then it is a nominalisation, a figment of our imagination. It is an attempt to turn a process into a thing. A “decision” does not exist because a constant choice has to be exercised to maintain that “decision”. Similarly, “love” does not exist. It is a process – a way of feeling about someone and interacting with them. It is not something that you have, like a vase; it is something you do, like breathing! The Meta Model challenge transforms the concept back into something you do! Unspecified Verbs “I can’t learn” An unspecified verb refers to any verb (i.e. action) that is not properly described. In a certain sense you might say that ALL verbs are unspecified, because you could always say more about how specifically someone is doing something. The Meta Model challenge recovers information about the action. Simple Deletions Simple Deletions

“I’m not sure”

The Meta Model challenge recovers the portion that was deleted. Lack of Referential Index “It’s not safe” Here the person or thing doing something is deleted. The Meta Model challenge recovers the subject (i.e. the person doing it) Comparative Deletions “It is better there” Here a comparison is made, but without saying what it is being compared to. The Meta Model challenge recovers the person or thing that is being used for comparison.


72

The Meta Model Table Meta Pattern Distortions Cause-Effect

Example

Challenge

You make me feel inferior.

How does X [do I] cause you to choose to Y {feel inferior]? How does X [him looking that way] mean Y [he hates you]? How do you know? Says who?!?

Complex Equivalence

When he looks that way, he hates me.

Mind Read Lost Performative

She fears me! Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Generalisations Modal Operator: Necessity Modal Operator: Possibility Universal Quantifier

I have to win! I can’t do it!

I can never get it right!

What would happen if you didn’t? 1. What would happen if you did? 2. What prevents you? 1. Never ever?!? 2. What about time X? 3. What would happen if you did [get it right]?

Deletions Nominalisation

My decision is final!

Unspecified Verb

I can’t learn.

How are you X-ing [deciding] that? How specifically do you X [can you not learn]?

Simple Deletion: 1. simple deletion 2. lack of referential index 3. comparative deletion

I’m not sure.

About what?

It’s not safe.

What specifically [is not safe]?

It is better there.

Compared to what?


73

Re-chunking Questions An important influence on the way people think, feel and behave is the level of abstraction that they like to think in. It seems obvious that giving lots of detail to a “big picture” thinker would be a lesson in creating frustration, but what can be done about it? The ability to recognise the level of abstraction that a person is operating from will allow you to match your communication style to that of your audience. These levels of abstraction also contain the key to creating agreement (as in conflict resolution and other negotiations) as well as creating a valuable tool for creativity. Re-chunking questions are a series of questions that will allow you to climb up the ladder of abstraction into global concepts, or climb down into detail, as well as allowing you creative lateral leaps. Re-chunking questions come in two forms, intention and class. Before we get into those concepts, let’s have a look at logical levels: Let us take a tree as an example. A tree is an example of a plant. A plant is an example of a life form. But a tree can also be specified into type (oak, hazel, ash) or into parts (branches, twigs, leaves). Each part can in turn be broken down further into minute details, ultimately reaching the subatomic level. Plants

Tre e

D o w n

U p

Branches, Twigs, Leaves

The questions that we ask will allow us to navigate up and down this “scaling” mechanism to find the right level of abstraction for the situation in hand. To climb up the ladder, we simply ask “what is this an example of?” To climb down the ladder, we ask “who, what, how, when, which… specifically?” We can also chunk laterally by chunking up and back down one step. So an Oak is an example of a tree. An Ash is a specific type of tree. So an Ash would be a lateral chunk from an Oak. This is the basis of lateral thinking! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

74

Intention Human beings can not be random. Every act, thought or feeling is a consequence of some process and some form of evaluation occurring. When there is a conflict, either internally in the person, or externally with others, there is a lack of agreement or harmony in the detail. The traditional solution is to compromise. That way nobody gets what they want. But there is a better solution: chunking up on the intention. You see, every behaviour is motivated, ultimately, by a positive intention. Sometimes you have to look for a while to get to something positive. Persist, because it is there! When you find that intention, you can chunk down from that intention to alternative behaviours, which still satisfy the intention. If you have two people and chunk up high enough on their intentions, you must eventually come to a point of contact. That is your starting point for a solution (see the negotiation frame under Framing later). To chunk up on an intention, ask questions like: • • • • •

What is the purpose of doing X? When you get X, what does that give you? What does that allow you to do/feel/have? What is important about that? What is your intention?

Class Chunking up and down on class is the conventional way to use of logical levels of abstraction. The example of the tree above is an exercise in chunking up and down on class. This is a very useful exercise to create freedom in the way you think and express yourself. Creativity relies heavily on your ability to chunk laterally (which is nothing more than chunking up a step, then chunking back down to an alternative at the original level). Practice climbing and descending this ladder of abstraction until you can navigate it fluidly in any direction. That will serve you very well in the future when you want to communicate with certain people (who prefer a different chunk size to you), when you wish to solve problems or when you need a little more creativity.


75

The Milton Model History After Grinder and Bandler had cracked the Meta Model, they felt very pleased with themselves. They thought they had found the “universal solution” to helping people make positive changes in their lives. All they had to do was to get very specific with people and use carefully honed questions to let people rediscover that they had a choice in life. They went to their mentor, Gregory Bateson, and revelled in their cleverness. Bateson was suitably impressed. Then he turned the tables on them. He told them of a remarkable man, a Dr Milton Erickson, who achieved what appeared like miracles on a routine basis. He worked with psychiatric patients no one else could get through to, as well as with ordinary people. But Erickson was not being very specific with his language. In fact he was quite the opposite. He had turned being vague into a true art form – a therapeutic art form! John and Richard were intrigued. They had to meet this man and unravel the enigma. How could he systematically break all the rules they had so carefully laid bare, and yet achieve even better results than they did?!? So they travelled to Phoenix, Arizona to discover things for themselves. What they learned completely altered the course of their research. NLP was finally born. What John and Richard discovered was that Milton was inducing trances in people by using a very respectful and elegant form of language that violated everything the Meta Model did. In fact Milton used language construct that did not even exist in the Meta Model. All of his language managed to be very vague, whilst it sounded completely specific. Dr Erickson’s patients would unconsciously fill in the details with their own therapeutic content and thus overcome their problems quickly and in a manner that uniquely fitted them. Richard and John studied Milton’s technique intensively, and finally managed to 30 distil it into a simplified model – the Milton Model . The Milton Model simplifies the genius of one of the best hypnotists and therapists in the western world. It is a powerful model for influential communication in general – not just therapeutic trances. Elements of the Milton Model have made their way into fields like sales, motivational speaking, story telling and education. I will not go into great detail with the Milton Model in this book. It is already covered by me in the Deep Trance Training Manual. Instead I will give examples of the Milton Model in action, with only a very few additional explanations. 30

The Milton Model was first published in Grinder and Bandler “The Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M..D.” Vol 1 & 2 (Vol 2 with Delozier, J) Meta Publications 1975. Reprinted by Metamorphous Press 1997. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 76 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

The Milton Model – Short Form Cause - Effect Because you have taken time to read this section carefully, you will find it easier and easier to understand these language patterns. As soon as you close your eyes and consider what you have learned, all will become very clear for you, which will cause you to feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction NOW! Complex Equivalence Reading this means that you are absorbing all kinds of things unconsciously. Any unconscious activity you have means your body can relax more fully. Now as you’re relaxing now, that means that you are going deeper and deeper into trance… Mind Reading I know that you’re wondering how to make sense of this all. You will be feeling a sense of curiosity about the Milton Model, and that curiosity is making you wonder about all kinds of things… Lost Performative And it’s a good thing to wonder about things. Wonder leads to learning and it is important that you learn things now… Modal Operators of Necessity/Possibility And you must not relax too much, although you can relax as much as you need to learn what you have to learn and absorb only as much as you can do so comfortably… Universal Quantifiers (Generalisations) Because you have all the knowledge you need. Everywhere you turn there are new things to be discovered, you can never not learn or discover something. You must always remember that you have everything you need to achieve all the things you want to… Nominalisations And your learnings will grow into new heights and grow to new depths as your curiosity propels you into the future where all the happiness and satisfaction that your achievements can bring you to, increase your education, and leverage off the understandings you have acquired over time so that they reorganise into the perfect structure to attract wealth, happiness, health and love into your life… Unspecified Verbs You can do this, by simply allowing the sensations to intensify, you learn, grow and transform… Lack of Referential Index one can learn to transform and grow in this way… The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

77

Comparative Deletions You simply learn more and become better at using your internal processes to give you the quality of experiences you really want more of. Because it is good to strive to have more good things in life, better relationships, happier times, greater resources… Tag Questions And you know what it is like to have such resources, don’t you? You’ve learned many things in the past, haven’t you? Which means you can continue to learn the kind of things you need to learn in order to achieve the things you want to achieve, don’t you? Pacing Current Experience And as you sit there, reading these words and allowing the sounds of your environment to continue without disturbing you, you can enter a deep state of reflection. This reflection can intensify as you breathe in and when you breathe out you can notice your breathing as you continue to ease deeper and deeper into a very pleasant state of comfort… Conversational Postulate and could you feel more relaxed and absorbed in these ideas I am presenting you? Would it be possible for you to enjoy a deepening sense of comfort and tranquillity? Would that mean you are learning things at a deeper unconscious level? Double Binds So, do you want to go into a deep trance now and learn, or would you prefer to learn about the right level trance for you right now? Extended Quotes (Stacking Realities) As Milton Erickson used to say “it is important that you learn to trust your unconscious mind implicitly… it is a hell of a lot smarter than you are! Ambiguities Phonological - homonyms create mild confusion and hence trance: "here (hear) now, what's going on?" Punctuational - a run on sentence: "use your head… right into trance now" Syntactic - the syntax is not immediately clear: "Hypnotising hypnotists can be tricky" Scope - the scope of the context is unclear: "Speaking to you as someone fascinated by hypnosis…"


78

Additional Language Patterns Truisms about Sensations "Most people experience one hand to be warmer than the other." "Most people enjoy the warmth of a summer’s day." "Many people feel good, as they recognise certain facts about themselves." Truisms utilising Time "Sooner or later, your eyes will close." "As soon as you’re ready you can go into trance now...." Not Knowing, Not Doing "And there’s no need to talk or move or make any effort." "You don't even have to think about that now." Open-ended Suggestions "We all have potential we are unaware of, and we usually don't know how it will be expressed." "He doesn't know what he is learning, but he is learning. And it isn't right for me to tell him, 'You learn this or you learn that!' let him learn whatever he wishes, in what ever order he wishes." Covering all Possibilities of Responses "Soon you will find yourself really understanding this. Perhaps that will happen quickly, or perhaps it will take longer and perhaps you will not think you’re understanding anything at all. Let that be your sign that you’re learning at the deepest unconscious level!" Questions to Facilitate New Response Possibilities (TDS) Focus Attention "How do you know when you are truly motivated?" Facilitating Internal Change "And what will be the effective means of improving now? Will it be because you simply remember to do all those little things you need to first because they make the big tasks really easy?" Compound Suggestions Yes Set "The sun is shining, its warm, it is such a beautiful day, let's go swimming." Associations "With each breath you take you can become more aware of the natural rhythms of your body and feelings of comfort that develop." Opposites "As the door closes feel yourself going even deeper into trance now." Negative - Tag Questions "And you can, can you not?" "You can't stop it, can you?" The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

79

Negative - Until "You don't have to sign the contract until you are ready." "You won't do it until you’ve seen how easy it is." Shock, Surprise "Your sex life… (Pause) just what you need to know and understand about it… (Pause) Secretly what you want… (Pause) is more important to you.” Implication and Implied Directive “If you sit down then you will learn this more easily.” "If... then" statements Binds and Double Binds Approach – Avoidance “Would you like to sign the contract now or later?” Conscious – unconscious “your unconscious is the storehouse of all your memories, skills and resources, so your unconscious mind knows more than your conscious mind does, and if your unconscious mind knows more than your conscious mind does, then you really know more than you think you do.” Multi-Level Communication (What is a Meta for?) As the Unconscious mind responds strongly to symbolism, very often an anecdote or seemingly unrelated story can be used to get the point across. Metaphors can be used directly and indirectly and are a specialised form of language pattern all of their own. In brief however, an easy metaphor can be constructed using an isomorphic structure: that is elements in the metaphor represent and mirror events being experienced by the person in the real world. An example of a metaphor for getting the best out of people can be taken from Dr. Milton Erickson’s work: One day an unknown horse strayed into the yard of the farm where I lived as a child. No one knew where the horse came from, as it had no markings by which it could be identified. There was no question of keeping the horse – it must belong to someone. My father decided to lead it home. He mounted the horse and led it to the road and simply trusted the instinct of the horse to lead itself towards its home. He only intervened when the horse left the road to eat grass or to walk into a field. On these occasions my father would firmly guide it back to the road. In this way the horse was soon returned to its owner. The owner was very surprised to see his horse once more and asked my father, ‘how did you know the horse came from here and belonged to us?’ My father replied, ‘I didn’t know, the horse knew! All I did was to keep him on the road.’


80

Congruence Language patterns are powerful, but only when they are supported by the right setting. As you recall the Birdwhistell study from the beginning of this manual, you will remember that only 7% of the meaning is conveyed by the words that you use. The rest is transmitted by your tonality and you body language. Whilst much can be done to improve these (and I’ll make a few suggestions shortly), the most effective way to communicate is to actually mean what you say. Your unconscious will then be free to transmit the appropriate non-verbal signals to support your message! Non-verbal cues Non-verbal cues are very important, as carry approximately 93% of the meaning in any communication you make. To be influential, your voice will be the tool of choice so you must learn to play it like an instrument. At advanced levels of communication your voice and tone will allow you to communicate with someone at several levels at the same time. This is one of the primary skills of influential and charismatic people. Tonality can be honed by paying attention to some basic concepts. Posture It is important to have a balanced and aligned posture in order to give the vocal chords sufficient room to vibrate and to use the whole chest cavity to create depth and volume. Your posture will also affect the state of mind you are in, which in turn will affect your BMIRs. The best way to stand is relaxed, with a straight back, your head balanced lightly on loose shoulders. This way you ensure that your spine takes all of the weight of your head and back as opposed to forcing your muscles to do that. Breathing Deep breathing is essential to projecting your voice and increasing volume without strain. All singers know how vital it is to use your lungs fully in order to get the most out of your voice. As a rule you should be breathing from low in your belly as opposed to high up in your chest. Emotion/Enthusiasm Enthusiasm comes from the Greek word “Entheos” – meaning god-like – because it has a god-like effect on other people. When communicating, learn to squeeze the meaning out of words so that the very sound of them conveys your message. The easiest way to do that is to actually feel the excitement, love, or danger of the situation you are describing. Your state will then invariably affect your tonality.


81

Inflection In the English language, we have three primary inflections for conveying different messages. An upward inflection usually suggests a question, a flat/even inflection is used for statements and a downward inflection is reserved for commands/instructions. People tend to respond to these inflections instinctively without analysing them. By using them with precision, you can cast doubt on an idea, get people to ask questions of themselves and have people follow instructions without overtly having to do any of these things. Inflections and tonality are also crucial when it comes to Embedded Commands (see Hypnosis & Trance). Pauses Although not strictly a part of tonality, pauses can have a powerful effect when used at the right time. They can be used in multi-level communications (e.g. to mark out embedded commands), to build response potential from your listener when making a point or to gain an advantage in negotiations (most people cannot leave a silent gap beyond a few seconds and will begin to provide alternative options to fill them if left too long). Be aware however that pausing at inappropriate moments can make a person appear slow witted, incompetent or unsure of themselves. Exercise 1 1. 2. 3.

31

Stand with your back and head up straight. Breathe deeply from your belly. Look at the list of words below. Think of what each word means to you, the emotion associated to it. Ask yourself: what sound best represents that meaning/emotion? Say the word out loud to your partner using that sound.

Curious Huge Amazement Comfort

Love Powerful Relax Peace

Playfulness Tiny Calm Delight

Exercise 2 Read excerpts out from a book, a poem or a hypnotic script to your partner. Take your time and make sure that you pronounce each word meaningfully so that it sounds like the message you want it to convey.

31

These exercises are reproduced with permission from the Deep Trance Training Manual Volume 1. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

82

Language Flow Cards (4 Words Of Power) The cards below contain pre-packaged language patterns that you can use to make fluid links when you use the Milton Model. Start off with a simple word, like “Relax” and practice flowing with that: As soon as you relax, you’ll feel the comfort of relaxation growing. So will you relax deeply, or will you simply relax comfortably now? The more you relax, the easier it is to relax deeply… etc.

As soon as…, you’ll… As soon as you discover the ease with which you can use this model, you’ll feel great about the fact you put in so much effort to learn it now.

The more… the more… The more you absorb yourself in the experience and are willing to get it wrong a few times, the more quickly and easily you’ll learn now.

Will you… or…? Will you practice them daily and enjoy the learning process you go through, or will you just be implementing these patterns completely unconsciously so that your skill improves before you realise it?

Most people can, [NAME]… Most people can, Jane enjoy the process of communicating with more subtlety and clarity.

… to the point where…

Notice…

Its only natural to practice each step one at a time to the point where you’re improving your language skills without thought.

Notice how a single word will define your focus. You could try to resist it, but to listen even halfway you have to notice first. Notice how your thoughts can be lead in any direction quite innocently.

What would it be like if… What would it be like if you found yourself absorbing these patterns naturally? I’m not suggesting that you can do that, I just wonder what it would be like.

You don’t have to… You don’t have to be able to use these patterns naturally right away, its only natural that you progress as easily as seems right to you.


83

Exercises: Constructing Language Patterns Exercise 1: Creating Presuppositions In groups of 3 (a triad), person A generates 5 simple statements. B and C tease out the presuppositions that the statements contain. Then rotate roles.

Exercise 2: Stacking Presuppositions In a triad, A now creates a complex statement stacked with as many presuppositions as possible. B and C unpack it. Repeat 5 times, then rotate roles.

Exercise 3: Predicates and Linguistic Bridging a.

In a triad, A makes a statement using visual language. He includes a link (like the ones in the Language Pattern Cards) and looks at B meaningfully. B then completes the sentence using visual language and generates his own visual sentence for C to complete. A: “I see your shoes AND…” B: “… the colour is nice BECAUSE…” After a few cycles, change to auditory and then kinaesthetic predicates.

b.

In a triad, repeat exercise a. only this time A will make TWO sentences. The first sentence will be visual, the second auditory. Everyone cycles through as before. A: “AS I look at the clock, I hear it ticking AND…”

c.

Repeat exercise c. above, only this time making THREE sentences: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic before handing over to the next person. A: “WHEN I saw his face, I heard the anger in his voice AND felt very afraid BECAUSE…”


84

Exercise 4: Meta Model In a triad, person A checks the Meta Model Table and creates a “problem” statement in each of the categories. A presents these to the others in a random order. B identifies the pattern. Then B and C then take turns challenging the “problem”. A gives feedback on the impact that each challenge makes (harsh, respectful, insightful, funny etc). Rotate roles. Exercise 5: Milton Model a.

Individually generate 10 examples of each of the Milton Model Patterns around the themes of relaxation and learning. Write these down: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

b.

Cause - Effect Complex Equivalence Mind Reading Lost Performative Modal Operators of Necessity/Possibility Universal Quantifiers (Generalisations) Nominalisations Unspecified Verbs Lack of Referential Index Comparative Deletions Tag Questions Pacing Current Experience Conversational Postulate Double Binds Extended Quotes (Stacking Realities) Ambiguities (Phonological, Punctuational, Syntactic, Scope)

In a group of 4 or 5, A reads a few to B making sure to include LINKS. B then carries on with a few of her own before passing things down the circle. You do NOT have to present the Milton Model patterns in any particular order! A: “Blinking will make you feel more relaxed WHICH means you can feel more comfortable AND…” B: “I know you are thinking about all the things you learned here today… AND it is a good thing to learn… JUST NOTICE…” etc

c.

Write down all the Milton Model patterns the other people in your group thought of. Write each pattern on a separate sheet of paper. You should have 30-50 examples of each pattern now.


85

Exercise 6: Meta Model Challenge In a new triad, take each of the Milton Model patterns created in Exercise 5 and systematically challenge each statement using the Meta Model. Exercise 7: Deconstructing and Induction Read the following hypnotic induction. In groups of 3-4 analyse the patterns that you find in it. Then have one person read the whole thing out loud and simply listen: I would like to invite you… to close your eyes and relax… because.. with your eyes closed… you can awaken to… an internal awareness that is of great importance… right now… you are sitting down… hearing the sound of my voice… and feeling more and more relaxed… and my voice can travel right along with you… wherever your mind decides to wander (wonder)… and it does not matter where your attention goes… because your unconscious mind continues to hear my voice…just as it continues to make sure your heart keeps beating…and your breathing… how is your breathing?... more comfortable, is it not?... I know that you’re curious about trance… forming your life… in a very important kind of way… we each have something of importance… that we wish to achieve… in life… or at particular stages in life… so we can later look back at them… and feel good about what we achieved… and so… I’d like your unconscious mind… to pay careful attention… as you simply go deeper and deeper into the trance… experience… -ing yourself getting more and more comfortable… more and more relaxed… and the sound of my voice… going with you… wherever you wonder… about all the possibilities… that your unconscious has yet to explore… in your life… out there… in here… the sound of my voice… and go deeper and deeper into that very pleasant… hypnotic state… of relaxation… like travelling on life’s highway… your mind can pass this scene… or that scene… charming memories from the past… pleasant… and how long was it since you last thought of remembering something like that?... so pleasant to look back… and remember… remembering something pleasant from the past… a sense of achievement… a wonderful experience… to feel the satisfaction… of having done something well… everyone deserves to feel that way… at least a few times… every week… every day… doing the things that must be done… and enjoying the rewarding experience of completing them… the pleasure of a task well done… pride and satisfaction… NOW… I’d like you to take these feelings… and travel into the future… the future you… and you can experience yourself now… in this future… feeling a sense of pride… satisfaction… achievement… only you don’t know what it is you have achieved yet… and you really shouldn’t concern yourself about that… because your unconscious knows.. better than you do… the things that are of greatest importance.. that thing you really should have achieved by this future point… and your unconscious can take great delight… in hiding from your conscious mind… exactly what marvellous thing.. it is you have achieved… so that as you return to the present… you will have to wonder… about what the good thing will be… that your unconscious will be achieving… and you’ll keep right on wondering… as the days and the weeks go by… and good things happen to you… always more to come… now its time to come out of trance… in your own way.. take all the time you need and do that… The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

86

Exercise 8: Polishing Presuppositions The following exercises will polish your ability to presuppose things elegantly: 1. Time Design 3-5 sentences that presuppose the acceptance of an idea: a.

Use tenses and tense based nouns to imply learning in the: • Past: old, yesterday, was, did, had, again • Present: now, am, have, today, new • Future: will, shall, might, tomorrow, new, forwards

b.

Use Tag Questions to imply a temporal shift from: • Past <–> Present: “You used to feel good, aren’t you now?” • Present <–> Future: “You can do this, won’t you?” • Future <–> Past: “You will enjoy that, haven’t you?”

2. Space Design 3-5 presuppositions playing with the idea of space, and move things around: • Location Proximity: Here/There. This/That. • Relative Positioning: Above/Below. In/Out. On/Off. Left/Right. • Quantifiers: Some/Many/Few. More/Less. Better/Worse. 3. Awareness Design 5-10 presuppositions directing someone’s awareness: • Sensory Based Terms: see, hear feel, look, touch, taste. • Abstract Terms: realise, think, notice, aware, know, sense. 4. Importance Design 5 sentences shifting the importance of what you say: •

But, And, Even Though: I love you BUT I have to go – negates what came before it. I love you AND I have to go – equal value given to both. I love you EVEN THOUGH I have to go – negates what comes after it.

•

Old, New: can suggest time, value or a sequence.

•

Try and If: both these words imply failure.


87

Exercise 9: Meta Model Challenge of a Limiting Belief In a triad, A states a simple limiting belief like “I can not understand X”. a.

B and C question A using the Meta Model with charm and elegance. B and C calibrate changes in A’s BMIRs.

b.

B and C see if they can alter A’s belief purely by asking Met Model questions and feeding back the missing information they received. A reports back his experience.

c.

B and C generate presuppositions that imply the belief is changing/has changed. Intersperse these whilst asking (or in the form of) further questions.

d.

B and C now generate hypnotic language patterns (Milton Model) to suggest a change of belief. B and C do a double induction on A which include: hypnotic language, presuppositions and any information gained from the Met Model questions above. Rotate roles.

Exercise 10: Transformational Language a.

In a group of 5, each person creates 10 sentences stacked with presuppositions and Milton Model language about relaxation and learning. A reads a few sentence to B, using a hypnotic tonality and linking the sentences as you did with the Language Pattern Cards. B then continues using the same rhythm, pace and tone. C takes over and the whole thing continues around several laps of the circle.

b.

In a triad, repeat Exercise 10, only this time A and B will be speaking simultaneously and use all of the patterns they have generated. Remember to us: a hypnotic tonality, slow pitch and rhythm, Linking words, presuppositions and Milton Model hypnotic language patterns.

Exercise 12: Trance Forming Abilities a. Write 10 inductions using every pattern you have learned to suggest, presuppose, imply, hint, insinuate, intimate, evoke, assume or state directly that someone is learning more and discovering wonderful things that give them a thoroughly rewarding life. b.

Record the inductions on tape, MP3, minidisk – whatever you can find.

c.

Listen to these recordings often!


88

Frames Setting the Context for Meaning Everything you say is open to interpretation. There is a duality of meaning in everything. So to determine the “true” meaning of something we need to look at the context in which it exists. Take the following example: •

You are standing at a set of traffic lights. They are red. Suddenly you see an Ambulance speeding past you, through the red lights. How do you feel about it barging past you and running a red light? Most people will find this completely acceptable behaviour. Ambulances can do that kind of thing – in fact it is important that they do so.

•

Now what if you then saw a red Ferrari slipping into the opening created by the Ambulance and also running the red light? At this point most people would be annoyed at the “liberties” this driver is taking.

•

But what if I told you the driver of the Ferrari was the husband of the pregnant woman in the Ambulance. She was being rushed to hospital to try and save their baby. He was following the Ambulance to hospital to be there with her.

Suddenly our understanding changes completely. The same set of events is totally transformed by the context. Our feelings are totally changed by the context. Every communication appears within a frame. Just like a picture frame will enhance certain features of the painting and de-emphasise others, so you can colour the effect a communication has by changing the frame that you put around it. The frame becomes a reference point for understanding what is said and done. You might happily accept a naked person in the context of a theatre production or a nudist beach. However the same naked person in a library, cinema or at a bus stop would at the very least make you raise an eyebrow! Control the Frame and you control the meaning that people will make of something. Unless the person manages to break your frame and tries to substitute their own. This type of Frame War is often seen during political debates or in business when two departments clash over a business decision. Knowing how to substitute frames and spotting it when others attempt to do it to you will give you much more effectiveness as a communicator.


89

Reframing Reframing occurs when we change the frame around a situation to change the way the event impacts on others. In essence you are saying to someone: try looking at things this way instead. There are basically two kinds of reframes in NLP: meaning reframes and context reframes. A meaning reframe will keep the context in which something happened constant, but change the meaning that it has. There is an excellent example of this in the book 32 Reframing . In the example a woman complained that she could not stand it when her shagpile carpet was looking less than pristine. Unfortunately this meant having to hoover it constantly and she kept moaning at her family for leaving footprint patterns on the floor. The therapist put the woman in trance and then took her time to describe an idyllic scene in which the carpet looked absolutely perfect in every detail. Just when the woman was beaming with pleasure she added “and all this means that none of the people that you love are home!” The woman’s face fell. From that day forward she felt very comfortable about her carpet having a “lived in” look – because it meant that her family, the people she loved, were close at hand! A context reframe will maintain the situation or the behaviour, but will seek out a context in which the problem behaviour suddenly becomes an asset. For example, a man dragged his daughter to a therapist complaining wilfully and obstinately about how wilful and obstinate she was being. The therapist took time to build rapport and ask a few questions. The he said to the father: “Your daughter is a wilful and obstinate child, and you want something done about that, so that she does what she is told. Now she is almost 16. Soon she will be going out on dates and it strikes me as rather fortunate that she will be obstinate and wilful enough to resist if a boy tries to pressure her into sleeping with him! Do you really want to stop her being so powerful?” The father suddenly changed his mind about changing his daughter and instead focused on creating a better and more respectful relationship with her.

32

Grinder and Bandler, “Reframing Neuro Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning”; Real People Press 1984 The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 90 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Useful Frames The following are a series of frames that you can try out for size and see how they affect the way you interact with the world. These frames were designed to help you live in happier and more successful ways. To the extent they allow you to do that, embrace the frames. To whatever extent they might hinder that, simply ignore that frame and get on with enjoying a happier and more successful way of living!

The NLP Presuppositions The following beliefs are core to NLP. If you treat them as being true, you might find that you have more choice and more freedom. The map is not the territory. This frame was first posited by Alfred Korzybski in 33 the 1950s . As Huxley pointed out, many people confuse the things that they speak about with reality. They think that that is simply the way things are, rather than realising that it is just a description of their internal maps. They are a guide to the outside world and not to be confused with the real thing. To do so would be like going to a restaurant and trying to eat the menu – it is only a guide, not the actual meal! The meaning of your communication is the response you get. Poor communicators blame their audience for misunderstanding what they wanted to say. It is convenient to do so. But by taking responsibility for your communication, you regain the power to direct the flow of things. If your message is arriving in a warped state, change the outgoing message so that something more pleasing reaches your listeners. You are back in charge! Individuals have all the resources they need to achieve their desired outcomes. People have a remarkable capacity to learn and change. If someone is stuck in their life, even if they have a skills shortfall, they ultimately still have the capacity to go out there and learn. That way they can acquire the skills that they are missing. People who are in flow always find a way to achieve what they want. It is when they get stale, dried up, fearful etc that they stop progressing. NLP is all about reempowering people to achieve their dreams. There is no failure only feedback. You can either learn from your mistakes or be paralysed by them. Self recrimination, fear, doubt, guilt all achieve one thing: you stop moving forward. Often this can leave a person doomed to repeat the very same mistake! By learning something from an experience, you have the capacity to let it go, get over it and move on. Just improve. 33

Alfred Korzybski, “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics” Reprinted in 1995 by the Inst of General Semantics. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

91

Every behaviour is motivated by a positive intention. People make the best choices they can with the resources they have available. This is an interesting belief to have. It requires the ability to separate intention from behaviour. Very few people do unpleasant things simply to be unpleasant. They do them because it is the only way they can think of of satisfying an important internal need. By discovering what that need is (chunk up on intention) you can get to more suitable behaviours (chunk down from that intention) that will actually get them better results and stops them doing unpleasant things! Effective communicators accept and utilise everything. Resistance is a sign of insufficient pacing. If someone resists you, consider the possibility that you have not respected their model of the world enough for them to feel safe to follow you into new and unknown lands. Go back, build rapport, pace their reality and then lead them one baby step at a time so they can follow you easily. The element in the system that has the greatest flexibility will be the catalyst of that system (and control it) [the law of Requisite Variety]. Behavioural flexibility is a key attribute to have in NLP. This does not mean that you bend over backwards in order to try and please everyone. Sometimes the person that is willing to be stubborn and not budge an inch, is actually being the most flexible! Respect each person’s model of the world. This is about as personal as it gets for people, especially the one’s that still believe that their model of the world is actually the real world! If that reality is threatened, people will fight tooth and claw to preserve it. This is why some people have difficulty changing – it might involve a leap into the unknown. That is frightening for people. Also bear in mind the following: how do you know that your version of reality is any better for that person than their own one is?! Treat people with respect and making changes becomes much easier!

Cause – v – Effect This frame marks the end of innocence, the death of excuses: There are two kinds of people in this world, those that are at cause and those who are at effect. People at cause delude themselves to think that they can make a difference and that if they do not like the things going on around them, it is up to them to change it. People at effect think that the world just conspires against them, and that all would be fine if the world would just change and be different. Both kinds of people are right. You have choice of what kind of person you would like to be. I know which I would rather be. Here is a hint: it is a lot easier to change one person (and be happy) than to change the whole world!


92

Blame – v – Outcome The Blame frame is one that the western world suffers from a lot. At the heart of our way of thinking we like to hold people accountable for their actions. A good thing on the whole. The problem occurs when people get more attached to finding who is at fault about something than to actually fixing it! The other problem is that a witch hunt forces people to become very defensive as a self protection mechanism kicks in. By pointing the finger of blame and trying to force someone to be accountable, you make it harder for them to take responsibility. A vicious circle is formed where one person tries to blame and the other to protect themselves. Or perhaps the blamer revels in his righteous wrath, whilst the person at fault is paralysed with guilt. What a great model for progress that is! Now, by focusing on the outcome instead on who you can blame, things start to get done. Mistakes can be rectified, solutions can be obtained. There may well still be a case for blame, but always consider first: will that actually achieve something or is it a witch hunt designed only to make someone else suffer?

Feedback Frame It is a sad fact that our culture has created a deep seated fear of receiving feedback. Most people give feedback in a very poor way. The effect of constructive criticism is often more “criticism” with very little “constructive” left over. The problem with this is that it threatens people’s ego: being told what a miserable failure you are is not very healthy for our self esteem, so people switch off unconsciously. Some people manage to dissociate from the criticism and learn something. But why not make it easy on everyone to start with? The following is known as a feedback sandwich. It allows you to present feedback in such a way that the mind doesn’t have to turn off to protect itself: 1. 2.

3.

4.

Positive specific: start off by telling people in very specific terms what it is you liked about their behaviour, performance etc. This makes the mind more receptive – it wants to hear more nice things. Challenge: this is the feedback bit. Rather than telling someone everything they did wrong, it is better to set them a challenge which will mean they are improving. Instead of “you’re too distracted” a challenge might be “focus on the people you are talking to more fully”. Positive general: sugar-coat the whole thing with general positive remarks. It leaves them with a better memory of the experience. Future pace: now paint them a picture of how great the future will be once they have changed and incorporated your feedback.


93

Association – v – Dissociation Association and Dissociation are two fundamental ways that our minds are hardwired to perceive the world. Both will give you a very different experience and both can be tremendously useful when applied in the right context. Association puts you into an experience. It allows you to experience it fully and completely. When you are associated, you see things through your own eyes, hear things through your own ears and feel things inside (and on the surface of) your body. It means you are fully engaged, so that you totally feel the emotional impact of that experience. This is true whether you are in the middle of some live experience, you are remembering a past event, or whether you are anticipating (or mentally rehearsing) something happening in the future. Being associated is tremendously good when you are involved in a pleasurable activity and want to enjoy the experience more. Some examples of activities where you would really want to be associated into your experience might be playing with your children, falling in love, enjoying a piece of music, eating a fine meal, reading a good book etc. Likewise there are bad times to associate. For example if you are being given a hard time, receive bad news, get criticised, or getting depressed – that would be harder to cope with whilst associated. Dissociation is the polar opposite to association. In dissociation you are one step removed from your experience. It seems that things are a little distant. You are not really affected by what is going on around you. It is like stepping out of your body and looking back at it like a third party. When someone suffers a shock (whether physical or psychological) the body/mind tends to respond automatically by dissociating you from the experience, in order to protect you from being overwhelmed. In the short term this is a good solution. But in the long term it is a terribly sad way to live a life: disconnected, unenthused, alone… So there are obviously times when you really do not want to be dissociated: e.g. when you want to make love to someone it is not good to be totally disconnected. However, dissociating from your experience can have its plus points. All the scenarios in which you really would not want to be associated are much easier to deal with when dissociated. Soldiers in a dangerous situation often spontaneously dissociate from their experience so they can get on and do an important task without being paralysed by fear. Remember when dissociated you are shielded from your emotions!


94

Perceptual Positions Changing perceptual positions is a powerful way to change your point of view (or someone else’s) by the way that you change your frame of reference. Changing perceptual positions allows you to get multiple perspectives on something that is happening. Too many people are stuck in one mode of thinking. Some can only see things from their own point of view (first position) and cannot empathise with someone else perspective – especially if the topic is a charged one like politics or religion. Other people can only ever see things from someone else’s point of view (second position). They become martyrs that spend their lives trying to make other people happy or rescuing them from one thing or another and never have any time to lead their own life, to be happy in themselves. Imagine what it would be like to experience every interaction from three unique points of view. Your own (First), the other person (Second) and a fly on the wall watching the scene impartially (Third). Everyone is capable of doing this. It does help to practice. Some remarkable insights can be gained from doing this. Changing your perspective in this way allows you to check how your own behaviour impacts on other people, so you can get a more accurate sense of how they may be feeling about you. Switching your frames of reference frees your unconscious to present you with information which simply did not seem “relevant” when viewing the world exclusively from one position. Many people spend their lives ignoring things either by accident or on purpose because they simply have not fine tuned their neurology in a way that will allow them to access information about the world that is open to us all. Becoming adept at switching between the various positions is also an invaluable skill to have in the context of conflict resolution. The three positions are to explore are: 1.

Position 1: the first position is yourself. Seeing things fully associated to your own body, experiences etc. You know you are doing this when you pay full attention to what you are feeling, hearing and seeing out of your own sense organs.

2.

Position 2: you get to the second position when you step into someone else’s shoes for a while. Seeing things from that perspective, including the internal filters that you know/guess that person has. You want the experience to be as realistic as possible, so you will need to account for their beliefs, values and life experiences when stepping into their shoes completely.


95

A highly developed form of second positioning can be done in trance and is called a deep trance identification. This happens when you temporarily suspend your own personality and completely assume that of the other person. For a moment in time you literally become that other person. Children do this. They learn by literally putting their own personalities on hold and becoming the adult they are imitating. The same is true of certain rituals found in hunter/gatherer cultures. The ritual dancing with the skin of animals on is a primordial effort to enter the animal’s world so fully that you understand it’s behaviours. Later when you hunt you can instinctively “outthink” the animal. 3.

Position 3: in third position you play the role of a fly on the wall, or a wise mentor watching the situation without being involved in it. It is a way of accessing an internal wisdom innate in everyone which allows you to make better choices without being blinded by the emotional charge of situation. It allows you to be at a little distance, whilst remaining concerned/interested in the best outcome. Third position is a form of dissociation.

Negotiation Frame The secret to successfully negotiating through conflict is to satisfy people’s highest intention and not necessarily what they say they want. As an ex-lawyer (I have almost recovered now) I remember many situations where a client would ask for one thing, but it was clear that he needed or even wanted something else. He just asked for what he thought might get him to where he wants to go. People do this all the time. Then they get stuck on the details. Part of your job as a skilful negotiator is to separate what they ask for from what they actually want or need. Finding a win : win solution is actually easier than you might think. At higher levels of abstraction people will almost always find agreement. If you focus only on what people demand, you end up negotiating on the minutiae and getting bogged down in conflict with every step. People unconsciously habituate to the conflict and soon start objecting to irrelevancies. They are looking for conflict! But if you start from a point of agreement and keep moving only as quickly as you maintain that agreement, it gets easier to resolve a situation. Starting a negotiation from that assumption, and maintaining a certain momentum with that agreement, makes it easier to challenge people’s objections as negotiations develop. People have habituated to agreeing and will focus on finding that, rather than conflict. Setting up an agreement frame might look something like this:


96

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

Stated outcome for A: ask the first party (A) what they actually want to achieve. Do not let B challenge any part of this yet! Stated outcome for B: ask the second party what they want to achieve. Do not let A challenge anything at this point. Separate Intention (A): now we get to the real story. Asking A what the specific outcome will achieve or do for him will get you in to the realm of intentions, which is where you want to be! Separate Intention (B): repeat for B Chunk up to Agreement: now you chunk up on both A and B’s intention until you reach a point of agreement. Now they want the same thing, its just a question of how to make that happen concretely – but they are pulling in the same direction! Chunk down: now it is just a matter of finding the details that will make the common intention concrete for both parties.

Using this kind of format you eliminate an adversarial framework and subtly force both parties to join the same side. When they essentially become one “team”, they will find it easier to agree on a common set of details to make their intention manifest in concrete terms.

Troubleshooting If the parties become deadlocked again at some stage, it is paramount to return to appoint of agreement. That may be difficult to do with both of them present – if they have slipped into an adversarial frame of mind, they may feel compulsed to find fault, criticise and disagree in any way they can. The following strategy might help in that kind of scenario: 1. 2. 3.

4.

Separate Parties: put them in separate rooms to “cool off” and to take away the stimulus that is causing them to conflict. Re-establish Agreement Frame: chunk up again to a common point of interest. They have to concede that this is something that they want! Social Constraint: make the parties publicly commit to the “joint” outcome in step 2. There is tremendous pressure instilled into people to conform with their public commitments. This is a well researched phenomenon. For example, during the Korean war the Chinese developed a very subtle brainwashing method for use on American POWs. It was based on creating a public persona of the POWs, which they in turn felt that they had to live up to! Relevancy Challenge: dismiss irrelevant, counterproductive or petty points as irrelevant and unhelpful for the proceedings.


97

Anchoring In 1902 Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Russian researcher at St Petersburg University, 34 began work on an interesting phenomenon: the conditioned reflex . He noticed that he could train dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. He did this by ringing a bell just before feeding them. Soon the dog’s autonomous nervous system learned that bell = food and would begin to drool at the sound of the bell alone. 35

This discovery helped to nurture a growing new field of psychology . But whilst many experiments were carried out on the conditioned response phenomenon, it made a very small impact on therapeutic or educational techniques. This was partly due to a perception that it took countless repetitions to properly install a conditioned response. Meanwhile hypnotists around the world had been using the phenomenon for centuries in order to induce trances in the subject more quickly. They would use simple things like finger clicking or eye stare or “sleep NOW!!” suggestions to trigger trances instantly. The thing was that nobody had bothered to tell the hypnotists that they needed to spend hours and hours conditioning the response. So they did it in a matter of minutes with great success. Later this principle was developed for therapeutic application by such pioneers as Dr. Milton H Erickson. Anchoring was born. An anchor is a conditioned response. It is possible to anchor pretty much anything that an organism can do. So you can anchor a behaviour, a feeling, a mind-body state, a memory, something you learned or even (if you are perceptive enough) a thought. The interesting thing is that it happens automatically all the time. It is the mechanism behind recognising the face of a friend. It is the reason why you can sit on a bicycle, or a horse or get in a car after many years, and discover that your body remembers how to do the activity. The feeling of the saddle was an anchor – a cue to 36 your body – to remember how it is done. It is also how people create true phobias . NLP adopted and developed anchoring as a core approach to change. This is because it allows people to make dramatic shifts quickly, easily and without any cognitive interference. This means you can change for the better without having to know what was wrong – your unconscious can sort all of that out. Indeed your unconscious has been doing precisely that throughout your life. You just never noticed it because your unconscious was doing such a great job!

34

In reality he was beaten to the punch slightly by an American Dr Twitmeyer who studied the knee-jerk reflex in human beings, conditioning them to jerk the knee at the sound of a bell. Unfortunately his research fell on deaf ears, whilst Pavlov became a star (Pavlov received the Nobel prize in 1904). 35 Known as “Behaviourism”. 36 NB there is a difference between a real phobia and what many people think is a phobia. A phobia is an instant reaction: see the stimulus, get the bad feeling. It is automatic. Everything else is a fear. Fear is something that people build up inside their minds and maintain by the way they choose to think. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 98 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

State Dependant Learning In the early 1980s a range of interesting experiments were carried out on people’s 37 ability to learn . They took a group of students and divided them into two groups. Both groups had to memorise a series of nonsense syllables. Group A was given a few shots of alcohol, group B remained sober. They were given some time to memorise the content. Then they were given a few hours (to allow the mild effects of the alcohol wear off) before being tested. Unsurprisingly group A underperformed. Then they repeated the experiment. Only this time BOTH groups were given a measure of alcohol before being allowed to answer the test. Group A did better this time. Why? State dependant learning. Imagine that your nervous system is like the lights that decorate a Christmas tree. Every time you are in a particular state (mood, feeling etc) a unique pattern of light lights up. Whatever you learn whilst in that state is stored in that part of the system. That means that it is easiest to access that information (memory or behaviour) when you are in the same state again. So the students in group A had a better access to the memorised list when they had alcohol in their system because that is where the list had been stored in the first place. The implications of this are huge. Every behaviour you engage in, every memory you experience can be enhanced or inhibited by the state that you are in. So for example, when someone is feeling a little low, even depressed, they find it almost impossible to remember anything pleasant that has happened to them. Even if they can drag up the memory, it seems “distant” and unreal to them. They cannot get the feelings associated – because they are in the wrong state! Athletes have known this instinctively for centuries. This is why they develop many pre-match rituals – they are anchors to put them back into a high performance state in which they have access to all their skills and abilities. Anchoring is a powerful way to create a shortcut back into these states. It can be used 38 to learn more, perform better, overcome problems or install new strategies for living. Anchors will allow you to enter any one of an almost infinite range of mindbody states to greatly enhance your choices. Because the state is the gateway to the stored memories and behaviours, NLP anchoring focuses on working with the states. 37

Eich, J.E. (1989).Theoretical issues in state dependant memory. In H.L. Roediger & F.I.M. Craik (Eds), Varieties of memory and consciousness (pp. 331-354). Hillsdale, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 38 If you always bypass the neurological circuits of the problem state, you will never have that problem again. You simply don’t have access to it anymore – a very good thing, I think you’ll agree! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 99 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Natural State Generators Human beings are walking, talking and breathing state generators. It is what we do. Our neurology is so complex that we can create an almost infinite series of states to live through. Lets go back to the fairy lights on a Christmas tree analogy. Every set of connections that your nervous system makes, i.e. every unique pattern of lights lit up, is a mind10 11 body state. Now your nervous system can create approximately (10 ) different connections. That is a vast number. It is more than every single grain of sand that is to be found on this planet. It is greater than the number of stars that we know exist. We have a vast amount of choice! The interesting thing is that some people have deluded themselves to believe that they can only have a small range of states from which to function. They spend many years practicing feeling depressed, frightened or frustrated. Eventually they come to believe that that is all that they are capable of experiencing. But the odds are stacked against them. Their neurology is designed to experience so much more. They just need to exercise their neurology to discover how much more choice they have than they thought they had. The more you practice something, either through intensity or repetition, the easier it will be to find that state again in future. It is like beating a path through a forest, in time the path becomes easy to spot. Anchoring speeds up that process so that you can design the paths you want so that they lead you from wherever you happen to be to the kind of destinations you want to go to. In this way you can circumnavigate all the worn out paths you no longer enjoy using and build brand new ones (or rediscover old ones) that bring you more pleasure and enjoyment.

The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 100 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Eliciting States Before you can anchor a state, you must have something to anchor present. You can only anchor an experience that is live in the moment. You cannot anchor something abstractly – you need to have an actual response in order for the nervous system to catch on. So we need to address the question of how to access a particular state (and later what kind of states are worth eliciting). Sometimes a state will arise spontaneously – i.e. unconsciously. These states are the best ones to anchor. You can also evoke a state through the questions you ask and the language you use:

Revivification A revivification occurs when you bring an experience back to life for someone. If you have ever been on a holiday with a friend and later decided to talk about it, you may recall how your experience changed. You began to feel how good it felt being on holiday, just by speaking about it. So anytime you ask someone about a memory and get their attention immersed in it, it begins to intensify, become more real. The same is true when you look at an old photograph album (the photos are actually naturally occurring anchors!) or when you hear a special “holiday tune” (yet another naturally occurring anchor). You can begin a revivification by asking innocuous questions like “What do you do to relax?” or “When was the last time you were completely excited about something”. Whatever they respond is fed back to them along with more questions to intensify the experience. Then you can even add sensory rich descriptions (language filled with words about what they can hear, feel, see, touch, taste or smell). A “typical” elicitation might go something like this: A: “what do you like to do to relax?” B: “I like to read.” A: “You like to read! What happens to you when you’re reading? B: “Well I can loose myself in the book. I get so absorbed by the characters that it all seems to become real for me.” A: “So as you’re reading, you loose yourself in the book and become totally absorbed. The experience becomes real for you.” B: “That’s right.” A: “So where do you feel the relaxation the most, when you’re absorbed in a good book?” B: “It starts in my chest and spreads. Its just very comfortable.” A: “So you get a very comfortable feeling in your chest that spreads when you’re absorbed in a good book. A very pleasant way to loose yourself… and your breathing rate changes… and you feel totally relaxed inside…” The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 101 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

This is a powerful hypnotic technique for re-activating experiences. Sometimes you will not need to go beyond the first question. What you have to do is pay attention to the person you are with so that you can see when they alter their state and shift into the new one. Then you can anchor it.

Process Language Another way to revivify an experience to induce a different state in someone is to present them with a description of the state you want them to go into, without directly asking them to have the experience. In order for someone to make sense of what you are saying they HAVE to sample the experience themselves first. This can be great fun whilst sitting on a busy train or airport lounge. Talk to your friends about some very pleasant experience and watch how everyone within earshot naturally responds by feeling that way. A good friend of mine Stephen Brooks, one of the leading hypnotherapists alive today, did this quite by accident one day several decades ago. He was sitting in a train reading his son a Mr Happy story. Being a great hypnotist he did so hypnotically to give his son a very pleasant trance experience. Now as he told his hypnotic story, he noticed every newspaper in the carriage slowly being lowered as the people holding them went into trance themselves! Use all the skills you learned in the Milton Model and Presuppositions sections to create a vivid experience for people to respond to. The richer and more compelling your stories are the more profound the experiences that people around you will have. This is a good thing no matter what the context!

Go First! People are unconsciously very aware of, and attuned to, people. We are constantly scanning people for the tiny unconscious, non-verbal signals that they give, and we respond to them. When we meet someone who is nervous or edgy, we start feeling a little ill at ease ourselves. When we meet someone who is happy and relaxed, that attitude seems to rub off on us as well. It is a natural thing that we do. In fact you cannot not do it! So another powerful tool for eliciting a state is for you to GO FIRST. Have the experience yourself and others will follow. A happy, smiley person can brighten up your day and a gloomy miserable person can depress you. You are responding to their state. You can use that to your advantage. If you want someone to enter a particular state, have the experience yourself first. They will unconsciously pick up on it and respond to it too!


Useful States to Elicit Whether you are coaching someone, teaching them, building a relationship (business or personal) or doing therapy, there are certain types of experiences that are to be preferred over others. As a general rule, pleasant experiences are good: people will like you more, want to be around you more, find making changes easier, access internal resources effortlessly etc. At times unpleasant experiences can be useful – mainly to keep people away from dangerous things. The good thing is that people have a vast capacity to feel good things. These states can be mixed up to create wonderful new hybrid states that may be completely new to someone, like relaxed anticipation or deeply comfortable concentration. The building blocks from these states can be taken from the person’s own wealth of life experiences. Take these examples: • • • • •

Experiential Absorption/Trance: What kind of activities allow you to be pleasurably absorbed? Reading books, movies, sports, work…? Relaxation: How do you like to relax? Age Regression: What were your favourite games as a child? Confidence/Security: What kind of things are you good at? General: Can you remember a time you felt really XXX? Where was that, what was that like?

Later on, in the Stacking Anchors or Chaining Anchors section you will learn how to combine such naturally occurring states to create designer cocktails of experiences to propel people into the future. For the moment it is enough that you remember that you want to find states that will allow the person to perform better and access internal resources that they would otherwise be blocked from. A little common sense and exploration of the client’s model of the world will tell you what they need and what they have to satisfy that need! You can then use anchoring to do things like: • • • • •

Induce/re-induce Trance Give a sense of security Dissociate from/reintegrate experiences Change or stabilise an internal state Cross-contextualise changes


Conditions for Elegant Anchoring The process of anchoring is relatively simple. But it requires a little understanding, careful observation and good timing! 39

In order to set an anchor you need to meet the following conditions : 1.

2.

3. 4.

Pure Access State: the state you want to anchor must be strong and clear. If you have conflicting states or weak emotions then you don’t really have anything worth anchoring. You need the experience you are anchoring to be prominent in the client’s mind. The more intense the state is the better. Remember that a phobia is an example of a naturally occurring anchor! Timing: emotions and other states have a natural rhythm. They will swell in intensity, peak and then become weaker. The anchor should be set as the state is in the process of intensifying, before it has peaked. Calibration is a key skill to use when deciding when to apply anchor to create an associational bond. Unique stimulus (anchor): the anchor needs to be unique so that it does not get fired off constantly and randomly. Also certain actions, e.g. shaking hands have other strong responses/meanings associated to them which may interfere. Easily duplicated: if you cannot repeat the anchor, you cannot fire it off. If the trigger is watching a full solar eclipse, for instance, it will take you a long time before you can fire that anchor again, making it practically worthless. Intensity

Release Anchor Set Anchor

Time

39

Reproduced with permission from Igor Ledochowski, “Conversational hypnosis Vol 1” 2003. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 104 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Basic Anchoring Techniques Basic Anchoring Remember to use every tool you have at your disposal (hypnotic language, revivification, client’s natural responses etc.) to make the experience as intense as possible.

40

1.

Rapport: anchoring is easiest when you have rapport and experientially absorb all of the client’s attention. This tends to intensify her experiences, which makes for a better access to states.

2.

Go First: Enter the state that you would like your client to enter. If you have build good rapport (pacing them) this will amount to an unconscious lead making it easier for them to follow you and enter the same state. To go first direct your intention, focus and energy into the new state and into the desire to have the other person join you. Enthuse them with your state!

3.

Access: the next step is to access an intense state in the client. Revivify an experience and intensify it if necessary. Ask them questions, use hypnotic language and project your own state to influence them. Later, when we cover sliding anchors, stacking anchors etc. you will have additional ways of intensifying the state.

4.

Calibrate: as you are doing all this, remember to keep a sharp eye out for the BMIRs that tell you that they are shifting state. The anchor needs to be set just before the state peaks and released just after. You judge this by observing the client carefully!

5.

Anchor: now it is time to set the anchor. You can use any experience in any sensory modality that you wish. A facial expression (V), a gesture (V), 40 a word (A), the sound of a bell (A) or a touch (K) . Just touch them as the experience peaks, and release the touch as it starts to ebb.

6.

Break State & Test: now distract the client’s attention. Refocus their mind on something unrelated, like thinking of the colour white. You want to break their state so you can test the anchor. Fire the anchor when they are in a neutral state and see if the state you anchored spontaneously re-occurs. If not just repeat the steps to condition the anchor.

Of course you could use the channels of smell and taste as well, its just harder to set the conditions. It can be done though. Aromatherapy practitioners work with olfactory (smell) anchors all the time. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 105 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Stacking Anchors Stacking Anchors is a way of intensifying an anchor by layering on several different states onto the same trigger. You can also use this to create a cocktail blend of states which gives someone a unique resource they may never have experienced before. 1.

Select States: before you can anchor anything you have to select the states, or combination of states that you want to anchor. A simple stacked anchor might just be for relaxation. So you find three or four different experiences of being relaxed – like reading a book, a favourite holiday, talking with a friend and walking in the park. All of them may have the same quality of relaxation but they are different experiences.

2.

Anchor First State: next you take one of the experiences in step 1 and anchor it as outlined in Basic Anchoring. For this example, lets imagine you choose to anchor the relaxation of reading a book by touching the client’s left shoulder. Anchor it and test it. When you have a good anchor, proceed to step 3.

3.

Repeat for Each State: now you can repeat step 2 for each of the other experiences in turn. Always use the same anchor (in this case, the touch on the client’s left shoulder). That way you are stacking the states one on top of the other like sheets of paper. Then test it to make sure it works before you proceed to add the next state to the mix. With each additional state, you should notice the client having an increasingly intense experience.

•

Variation: instead of selecting three or four different examples of the same experience, you can also stack three or four different experiences on top of each other. This is one way to create designer states. Mixing relaxation, alertness, focus and energy will create a unique state with unique properties which are different from simply relaxing or being focused on their own.


Sliding Anchors A sliding anchor is a non-verbal suggestion to increase or decrease the intensity of a state. Like ordinary anchoring, a sliding anchor can be used in any sensory modality. A simple way to use a sliding anchor is to go through the ordinary anchoring process. Then you fire off your anchor, wait for the state to “ take” and then you add an analogue signal that intensifies/diminishes the state. Here are some examples of analogue signals that can be used as sliding anchors: Kinaesthetic Assuming you touched their arm, you could increase the pressure (to intensify the experience) or decrease the pressure (to diminish it). You could also slide your finger up and down the arm like a volume control. Auditory Let us assume now that your anchor was the word “relax” said in a particular tonality. You could intensify or diminish this experience by saying the word more/less deeply, add/reduce the timbre, speed up or slow down, say it harder or softer or even saying it more loudly or more quietly. Visual Suppose we used a gesture like a pointing finger. We could change the intensity of the anchor by moving the finger closer or further away from the person. We might raise or lower the hand or even turn it like a volume control to suggest the increased or decreased intensity we want. Hypnotic Language Hopefully you will have worked out that sliding anchors are a form of non-verbal suggestion. If the unconscious understands it can respond appropriately. To increase your chances of success, you can add some direct suggestion to intensify/diminish the experience: “Now as I slide my finger up your arm [slide it] the feeling can get stronger... stronger... and stronger still” “Notice how curious it is that that feeling gets weaker and weaker as I pull my hand away…[draw hand away, but maintain the gesture]… that’s right, weaker and weaker and weaker still…” “ Well you know how to relax… so you know how to relax more deeply… and RELAX… RELAX… R – E – L – A – X!”


Submodalities Structuring Internal Maps You will recall that we make sense of the world by creating little mental maps, copies of the world out there, inside our minds. These Internal Representations of the outside world are the way in which the brain knows how it should be responding to certain situations. Change the maps and we literally change the world we live in. These maps are made up of the bits and pieces that we absorb through our five senses. Each one of our senses, known as a sensory modality, adds information to the map. After all, each internal representation is made up of a mixture of pictures, sounds, feelings even tastes and smells. Change a unit of that information and we change what that information means. In the past, many “visualisation” techniques have evolved. In these techniques you are asked to imagine something pleasant and to focus on it until it happens for real. There is a lot of merit in this method. But there is also something missing. Visualisations tend to focus on the content of a given image – perhaps you are looking fit and healthy, wearing an expensive suit, sipping champagne, whatever it is that motivates you. So far so good, but what is missing? Lets look briefly at the history of the cinema. The very first version of public cinemas arrived in the form of shadow puppets. These were replaced by photographic images lit by a lantern. In time these static images evolved into the first moving images. The first moving pictures were dull and grey and with a low optical quality. Over time that improved as advances in technology allowed more pictures to be taken, smoothing out the motion and focusing each image more clearly. Then sound arrived, marking the end of such artists as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Despite their obvious talents, people craved the additional stimulation that sounds had to offer. Advance after advance continued to come: better sound, colour film, larger screens, clearer pictures… Yet the stories were much the same. What changed is how the stories were delivered. Each new advance “made it” because people wanted the experience it offered. Something about the quality of the experience had improved. Watching a film on a small black and white TV is totally different to watching it on a giant IMAX screen. Listening to a rock song quietly is nothing like feeling it roar as you crank up the volume. Intensity and meaning are linked not just to the sensory modality – what you can see, hear or feel –, but the building blocks that make up each of those sense modalities. The difference that makes a difference is in the submodalities!


Modalities, Submodalities and Neuro-Drivers A modality is the sensory channel through which our nervous system gets information: sight, sound, feeling, taste and smell (also known as the 4-tuple: VAKO/G). Each modality is made up of finer distinctions that define its qualities. So you can see something which is sharp or defocused, colour or black and white, near or far away, large or small etc. Likewise your hearing can be broken down into pitch, rhythm, sound direction, volume, timbre etc. These finer distinctions are known as submodalities. Just like watching a film on a small TV set is different to watching it on a big screen or even a giant IMAX screen, so our internal realities will change in intensity as we alter the submodalities that we place an event in. As an example, imagine something pleasant. Maybe your partner saying or doing something nice for you, perhaps you win the lottery. Simply imagine something nice. Notice how good it makes you feel. Now take that picture and move it away from you, until it is small and dark, way off in the distance. Then see how you feel. Did the feeling get stronger or weaker? Now reverse the process, bring the image closer and closer. Make it larger, brighter, fuller colours… and ask yourself, did your experience of it change? Most people, though not all, will experience the intensity of emotions associated with the picture I asked you to make increasing as the image comes closer, larger, brighter etc. When the image moves away, becomes smaller, darker the intensity also tends to fade. This is why film techniques have evolved in the way they did – they are mimicking the way the brain naturally experiences reality in order to make one scene more intense and another softer, quieter, duller etc. Every experience you have, every urge and every feeling, will have an internal representation (IR) at the root to let your brain know how you should be feeling. The clever part is that by changing the submodalities of these IRs, the way you experience that event changes. Frightening things can become dull. Interesting things more fascinating. You might want to create a compulsion to study, so that the more you do it the better you feel. All this can be done when you use submodalities. As you begin to experiment with your subjective experience, you will notice that many submodalities have a slight effect on how you feel about something. But one or two completely change it. It seems these special submodalities drag all the other ones along with them. These special submodalities are known as neuro-drivers, because the drive your whole nervous system to experience things one way or another.


Submodalities Checklist Visual Motion/Still Colour/B&W Location Associated/Dissociated Framed/Panoramic Large/Small Near/Far away Focused/Blurred Bright/Dim 3D/Flat Auditory Location of Sound Tone Tempo Volume Duration Pitch Pace Rhythm Kinaesthetic Location (in body) Breathing Rate Shape Size Temperature Movement Weight Pressure Texture Olfactory/Gustatory Sweet/Sour Salty Bitter Aroma Intensity The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 110 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Contrastive Analysis The only way that we can experience something is by making a contrast of it with something else. If you look at a fixed point in space, your eyeballs are actually continuously moving a tiny fraction from left to right in order to create a contrast that lets you see. If a contact lens with a spot on it is placed on your eye, so that the spot remains stationary relative to your retina, within a few seconds that spot will disappear! When you want to find out what a submodality does, or you want to make changes, it helps to have something to compare it to. If you ask someone if their mental picture is large or small, it is a nonsense question unless you are comparing it to something, like another picture. If you want to find out what makes you like chocolate so much and why you are indifferent about carrots, it helps to compare the two pictures to each other. It gives you that crucial contrast that allows you to see differences. Now when you look at two pictures or listen to two different sounds, or even compare feelings, you are doing something called a contrastive analysis. The purpose of a contrastive analysis is to find out what changes you need to make in your IRs in order to experience some aspect of the world differently. In the above examples you could transform the way you feel about chocolate and carrots, so that you end up craving carrots as much as you used to crave chocolate whilst chocolate becomes something that you are indifferent about. The ability to do this offers you tremendous freedom. You can run your own brain so that you can feel the way you want to about things. If you listen to people’s language, they are often unconsciously describing exactly what is happening to them when they change: “she just turned me off”, “I cannot see a way out”, “it all seems like gibberish to me”, “the future is getting brighter” etc. Doing it with conscious volition can be as easy as every unconscious change (and there have been many of those) that you have experienced. In order for a contrastive analysis to be effective, you need to be very systematic in your explorations of the effect a given submodality has on a person’s experience. Change one thing at a time and find out what effect that had. Then return it to normal before trying out another submodality. Later you can go back and change all the submodalities that gave you a better, more enjoyable experience.


Submodalities Elicitation Hints The following are a few guidelines that should make your exploration of submodalities a little easier (especially if you want to practice with a non-NLP trained subject!): 1.

Be conversational: the best submodalities to examine are the ones that arise spontaneously, i.e. unconsciously. If you try too hard to elicit something, you may lead some people to interfere with their natural processes and give you a misleading/confusing result.

2.

Avoid Jargon: this is true of anything that you do. Your job is not to educate the outside world in the methodology of NLP (unless you are a NLP trainer, in which case it is your job!)

3.

Know the Checklist: you need to know your way around the submodalities checklist so that you can engage someone conversationally. If you refer back to your notes constantly it can be distracting.

4.

Watch the Client: it is vital that you watch the client when they are speaking. You must catch the non-verbal cues that something is changing. Clients who are used to ignoring their feelings will usually be the last to know that something has changed! Do not watch your notes, watch the client!

5.

Use Clean Language: we have many idioms that actually alter submodalities. “it’s a grey area”, “pull yourself together” or “get a handle on it” all of these are instructions to change at the level of submodalities. Later on we will explore how you can change people’s submodalities (and thereby their reality) just by the way you use language. For now keep your language clean and ask only for precisely what you want.

6.

Go Quickly: a typical novice mistake is to take forever. The mind learns quickly, changes quickly, does things quickly. Asking someone to hold firm an internal image is like reading a story to someone at the rate of one word every week. It looses all cohesion. So go reasonably quickly – a normal conversational rate is perfect.


Submodalities Exercises In the following exercises, focus on just one sensory modality at a time. So you might start with the visual system and explore that one. Then you could move on to the auditory system to find out what you can discover. Finally you might try the kinaesthetic system. Pay particular attention to any cross-system shifts, i.e. if you make the picture larger, do the sounds improve or if you shift the location of the feeling, do the pictures move automatically too.

Exercise 1: Feel Good 1.

Find a partner.

2.

A thinks of something that makes her feel good. You will not have to discuss what you are thinking about, so make it really good!

3.

B goes through the Submodalities Checklist and changes one submodality at a time. Remember to return the submodalities back to normal before experimenting with the next one.

4.

A changes her submodalities as slowly as she can remain engaged in the exercise. A reports back to B the effect this is having. If A finds a Neurodriver, tell B what it is. B takes careful notes.

Exercise 2: Feel Bad 1.

Do this with the same partner as Exercise 1.

2.

A thinks of something that is mildly unpleasant, frustrating or annoying. Do NOT choose the biggest life trauma you can remember, this is not the time for that yet.

3.

Repeat Exercise 1, changing each submodality one at a time and returning it to normal before moving on. B takes notes for A

4.

Compare the results from Exercise 2 with those from Exercise 1: do the same set of submodalities affect both set of memories in the same way?

Change roles and repeat both exercises for B.


Exercise 3: Kinaesthetic Exploration41 This exercise is particularly useful for people that have “locked themselves away” and are “not in touch with themselves”. It allows you to access your body and its signals once again.

41

1.

Create an anchor to return you to the outside world. You will only need 1015minutes for this exercise. Arrange for someone to fire you “come back out anchor” at the end of that time.

2.

Sit or lie comfortably and close your eyes.

3.

Notice whatever sensations you become aware of in your body. Whatever sensation you notice, say to yourself “Now I am aware of… XXX.”

4.

Start with directing your attention to external tactile stimuli. The feeling of your clothing against your back, the pressure of the chair/floor, the temperature in your hands, the feeling of your breath going in and out of your nostrils/mouth etc.

5.

Slowly begin to notice more internal kinaesthetic responses: tension in your shoulders, a tingling in your hands, a gurgling in your stomach. Keep pointing things out to yourself, “Now I am aware of… the pins and needles in my legs… Now I am aware of… a pressure in my gut…”

6.

Notice if you are equally aware of the sensations in every part of your body, or if some areas are easier to access than others.

7.

At the end of your time, fire off the alertness anchor and reorient back to the outside world.

This exercise on body awareness can be found in many different systems from Gestalt therapy to Yoga, Zen Mindfulness and even some hypnotic exercises. It can lead to very profound (and pleasant) hypnotic experiences, which is why an “alertness” anchor will help you reorient to the outside world more easily. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 114 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Exercise 4: Synaesthesias42 This exercise is a great way to explore your internal realities and the natural associations your mind makes. Milton Erickson once ran a series of research 43 experiments in which he hypnotically induced colour blindness . In one such case he reports a man who spontaneously forgot the number 3 existed as soon as he lost the ability to perceive the colour red. In his mind the link between the two was that strong! 1.

Set an anchor for reorienting to the outside world after the exercise.

2.

Select a colour, like blue, and mentally immerse yourself completely in that colour. Imagine you were in a place where the only thing that existed was the colour blue.

3.

When you have a full sense of the colour, allow your awareness to drift into the auditory channel. Notice what sound you spontaneously hear accompanying that colour. Let the sound become as loud and clear as it needs to.

4.

Then turn your attention to your kinaesthetic experience. Start to notice what body sensations accompany the colour and the sound. Where in your body do you feel it? Is the feeling moving or still?

5.

Repeat steps 2-5 with a different colour. Keep choosing a new colour until you have explored at least six colours.

A nice variation of this exercise is to pick an object, like a leaf or a stone, and examine it thoroughly – get a good feel for it. Then close your eyes and go on an imaginary journey into the object. Shrink yourself down to size or enlarge the size of the object so you can step inside it. Then just notice the things your imagination allows you to see, hear, feel and even taste and smell. Build up the senses slowly, 44 one at a time. If you have a copy of the Deep Trance Training Manual Volume 1 , you could ask someone to guide you through this with the Sensory Overlap induction (on page 81).

42

I first saw this exercise in Bandler and MacDonald, “An Insider’s Guide to Submodalities”, Meta Publications 1988, although I have seen many variations on this theme in non NLP fields as well. 43 Erickson, “The Induction of Color Blindness By A Technique of Hypnotic Suggestion” reproduced in Erickson and Rossi, “The Collected Papers of Milton H Erickson Volume II – Hypnotic Alteration of Sensory, Perceptual and Psychophysiological Processes” Irvington Publishers 1980, pp 18-32. 44 Igor Ledochowski, “The Deep Trance Training Manual Volume 1”, Crownhouse Publishing 2003. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 115 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Timelines Time is something unique. It is a complete fabrication of the human mind. Time as such does not exist. All that exists is the present moment. When you think about the past or about the future, you are doing so in the present moment, because that is all that really exists. However, we have as a society learned to organise ourselves around a concept of time, and that has its uses. As a mental construct our concept of the past and the future will be represented by our submodalities. Try this experiment: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Close your eyes and think about something that happened yesterday. Notice where you perceive that image to be. Now think about something that happened to you last week, month or year. Notice where that is located. Now think about the future. What is something you know you will be doing tomorrow – brush your teeth, have breakfast etc. Notice this third location. Now think about something that will happen in a few weeks or months: your birthday, a friend’s birthday, Christmas, Easter any event like that. Notice where you perceive that plan for the future to be.

Now, if you connect the dots between distant past memories, recent past, near future and distant future, you will see that a line is implied. Some people have their line in front of them going from left to right. Others have their timeline going from front to back. In Japan, I am informed, many people have their timeline going from beneath them to above them. These timelines are the way in which we organise time to allow us to experience what is happening temporally. Our language reflects many of our submodality biases on time: “just put it behind you”, “lets keep things moving forwards”, “turn to face your future!” You can change your perception of time in the same way as you change any other submodalities. For example, some people put their past right in front of their eyes, obscuring the future. These people are prone to be “haunted” by the past. They keep reliving their past mistakes! Other people might repeat the same mistakes again and again, and seem unable to learn from the past. Often this is a result keeping the past directly behind them and out of sight – they literally cannot see the mistakes they made before and so repeat them again! Navigating your timeline is useful for creating futures (goal getting), learning from the past and letting go of old baggage! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 116 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Submodalities expressed in Language The way we express ourselves tends to be a literal description of the thought patterns and internal maps that we are functioning from. When you listen to your own and other people’s figures of speech, they are actually telling you exactly how they have created problems or discovered solutions in their life. The following list is just a sample for you. With each description, get a sense of what submodality shifts are literally being described: Visual • • • • • • • •

He’s got a colourful past. The future is bright. I take a dim view of that. Its all a bit too hazy for me. Life is so drab. Don’t blow it out of all proportion. When he told me, I could only see red! We really see eye to eye.

Auditory • • • • • • •

He’s just asking for trouble. The obvious choice was just screaming out for attention. I get you loud and clear. We came to a screeching halt. I keep telling myself “That’s no good at all!” We’ll have to fine tune the situation. I just want a bit of peace and quiet!

Kinaesthetic • • • • • • • •

He’s far too slimy! She is so hot! Ease up on the pressure, will you?! Keep a lid on it! That’s a real weight off my shoulders! He’s a real pain in the neck. We started off on the wrong foot. Its all off kilter.


Changing Submodalities Map Across A Map Across is a way of transforming your experience. When you recall the submodalities exercises you did earlier on, you will remember that your experiences changed as you altered the submodalities and then returned them to normal. In a map across you will alter the submodalities and leave them altered for a change. But what should you change them to? A simple formula for this kind of change is this: a. b. c. d.

Think of something you want to change, maybe you like it a little too much. Call this A. E.g. A could be chocolate. Think of something that you makes you feel the way you would like to feel about A. Call this B. E.g. B could be carrots. Do a contrastive analysis of the submodalities in A and B. Which ones are different? Change all the submodalities in A to those in B, but keep the content of A, to the extent that you can.

A

B

A This is a very simple a direct way to make changes. To install the change you can make the Map Across by using the Swish Technique (see NLP Practitioner Techniques), Direct Suggestion, Presuppositions or Indirect Hypnotic Language. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 118 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Direct Suggestion In direct suggestion you simply tell the person what to do. That could be a simple as saying: make all the submodalities in A the same as in B. Or you could specify each change more fully: move the image of A to the same location B was in… now change the sound, make it softer like in B… now make it louder… etc.

Presuppositions & Hypnotic Language You can (in fact you should!) use all your language skills presuppose, suggest, imply and assume that the change is happening/has occurred. This can be done at any stage of the process. You have ample opportunities in which to stack presuppositions in the favour of change. For example, during the test phase you could ask your client “can you get the old picture back?” or you could say “now I want you to try to get the old picture back, and see what happens.” First off, remember that the word “try” implies failure, so you have sneaked in one presupposition already. Then there is the “and see what happens” part. Why would you add that unless something unusual was going on – like someone making an internal change. Tagged on after the “try” there is a snowballing effect and the implication intensifies. Of course you could get a similar effect from the straight question if you modulated your voice and changed your facial expression as you ask the question in such a way as to imply doubt. Barristers and other skilled courtroom lawyers are experts at casting doubt with every part of their communication (especially their subcommunications!) Other aids to change might be to use the power of the imagination to change the submodalities. For example: You could make strange statements like “well of course your second picture is lower, so all you have to do is give it a nudge, like so, and whoop… there it goes, it just slots neatly into its new position” This may not make logical sense, but in the heat of the moment the unconscious goes along with the metaphorical suggestion and yes the picture just seems to move all by itself! This is one of the reasons for using your analogue signals (like making the “woosh” noise with a swish pattern) – they add a non-verbal suggestion to the proceedings to make them more persuasive.


Building Powerful Internal Representations45 Confusion to Understanding Map Across This is the classic exercise in shifting Submodalities: 1.

Pick a confusing subject: ask your partner to pick something she is confused about. Make a distinction between confusion and ignorance. Ignorance comes from not having sufficient information about something. Confusion arises when you have all the information you need, you just don’t know how to put it together!

2.

Choose understanding: now ask your partner to choose something she understands just fine.

3.

Contrastive analysis: use the Submodalities Checklist above to contrast the submodalities of the two experiences. Record her answers.

4.

Map Across:one by one change the submodalities of the thing she is confused about into the same submodalities of the thing she understands. On each shift ask her if she is still confused. Notice how subtly the change begins.

Enhancing Experiences This is a valuable way of enhancing any experience in the moment. It is a great way to train your neurology to start having more fun and look for more the interesting things in life! 1.

Select a lacklustre experience: ask your partner to select an experience in which he simply “made do” or “did the best he could” with the situation.

2.

Select an interesting experience: now ask him to select an experience in which he managed to turn things around so that they became better than he had anticipated.

3.

Contrastive analysis: now do a contrastive analysis between the submodalities of both experiences.

4.

Enhance the NOW: as soon as you know what your partner does to make things more fun, get your partner to make the experience he is having RIGHT NOW to be more fun and exciting. Make them enjoy the moment RIGHT NOW completely!

45

These exercises have been adapted from Bandler and MacDonald, “An Insider’s Guide to SubModalities”, Meta Publications 1988. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 120 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Have a Great Time… NOW! This is yet another exercise designed to get your neurology to “be in the moment” and really appreciate every second’s worth of experience for the fun and excitement it has to offer! It utilises the SWISH Technique, which we go through more formally under the NLP Practitioner Techniques: 1.

Internalise NOW: ask your partner to close her eyes and see exactly what she was seeing when she had her eyes open. She may have to open and close her eyes a few times to get it.

2.

Prepare for SWISH: ask her to put a tiny picture in which she sees herself having a FANTASTIC time, right in the centre of the NOW image.

3.

SWISH: now tell her to explode open the tiny picture until it takes over her old NOW picture completely. Make a great big WOOOSSHH!! Noise to add a little effect. It is just like going to the cinema and watching one of the special effects change all the action on the screen. Make sure the new picture completely replaces the old.

4.

Associate: get her to step into this new picture so instead of seeing herself in the picture, she is seeing out of her own eyes, hearing with her own ears etc.

5.

Intensify: as soon as she is fully associated to the new NOW in which she is having a fantastic time, put another tiny picture in the middle of her NOW, in which she is having an even better time still. Then WOOOSSHH!! Open that one and step inside to associate into the new NOW!

6.

Repeat: repeat these steps up to ten times (or until she cannot stand the amount of fun she is having!)


NLP Practitioner Techniques Guidelines for Changework Personal change is a complex field. The NLP techniques do not sit in a vacuum. They have to be applied in a context. The techniques require someone’s cooperation: clients have to be willing to follow the steps suggested. You also need to make sure that you direct the client’s attention to those portions of her experience that will allow her to change. Attention and energy are the basic currency of change (whether that change is to take place in the context of education & learning, therapy, coaching, sales, leadership, business relationships or parenting). You will see later (when we cover the Meta Pattern of ALL change) that states are everything. If you create exquisite states for people and attach them to the right things (yourself, your products, a task, a new way of being, a new behaviour) change will happen automatically! But remember that “states” are a nominalisation: they do not exist. They cannot be put inside a wheelbarrow. States are not things, they are processes. States are something that people do. The following guidelines are designed to help you put a context around the NLP techniques. That way you can tailor your approaches to each unique situation of every individual client. 1.

Clear your mind: you will need to calibrate the client exquisitely. If your head is full of other things, that will be difficult. Remember the NLP presuppositions – they are frameworks that influence what your mind will let you see. This is invaluable when it comes to creating change!

2.

Maintain rapport: keep the client on your side. Use your language carefully to be respectful of the client. If you are pushing hard (like when you use the Meta Model), make sure that your tone is soft. Use softeners like “maybe… I wonder… etc” to take the edge of suggestions and challenges. Take your time, don’t rush through the processes!

3.

Go First!: by now you should have learned to enter your own altered state in which you are more alert to your client (calibration), you have access to all your NLP learnings and experiences and have learned to trust your unconscious mind’s ability to find solutions. Use it! Another essential part of going first relates to states. States are everything when it comes to change. If you want someone to get excited, get excited first! If you want someone to calm down, join their excitement and then calm down yourself. Go First! People will follow.


4.

Don’t change their mind, change their mood: decisions, beliefs and behaviours occur within states. Change the state and the decision, belief or behaviour no longer exists (for that period of time). That is one reason for using trance: it’s an altered state in which the problem does not really exist! Change their mood (state) and all else will follow!

5.

Know your outcome: always communicate with an outcome in mind. If you don’t know where you are going, do not be surprised if you go nowhere very fast! How will you be able to judge if you are “on track” if there is no track you want to be on. Your unconscious gives you what you want, but you have to want something before it can give!

6.

Everything counts: everything you have ever learned still counts. Use it all to get to the outcome you have in mind. Just because you think you want to do a SWISH, does not mean that you can not use reframing, language patterns, Meta Model questions, submodality adjustments and anchoring to make the effect more powerful. Use everything you have to get the change and make it last! Change the technique if you have to, just make it work!

7.

Utilise everything from the client: everything the client gives you is useful. If he “resists” there is something useful within that process that can be turned to help your cause. Resistance is a sign of insufficient pacing. Sometimes resistance is the client’s unconscious telling you how he wants to change! Listen!! Remember: what you resist will persist; what you accept you gain the power to utilise and transform.

8.

Move from the least intrusive to the most intrusive: if doing something subtle and indirect can create the change, do it. One reason for using the Meta Model first, is that the challenges “loosen the concrete” paving the way for other things to work better. The same is true of the Milton Model, presuppositions etc. Whenever I work with a client I will do my best to get the change through conversational hypnosis language patterns before it looks like we have begun. It makes life so much easier for everyone!

9.

Under pressure the mind reverts to base experience: when you (or a client) are under pressure, you revert to doing what you have practiced. That is one reason for having the client rehearse and condition a technique several times (including during the Future Pace). The good news is that intense visualisations are real experiences. The brain, under pressure, reverts back to what you rehearsed in your mind too. So you can practice many things through full-sensory visualisations!


Anchoring Collapse Anchors A collapse anchors is the basic therapeutic technique. In collapse anchors you take a problem trigger and transform it so that instead of it triggering the problem reaction, it instead triggers the solution. It is a very elegant way to do Changework. When your nervous system tries to access two conflicting states, the strongest of the two will prevail. So if your resources are stronger than your problems, your problems simply disappear – they cannot compete! 1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

Anchor the problem state: the first step is to elicit and anchor the problem state. Lets call this Anchor A. You will be using this later. Break state: next you need to get the client out of the problem state. You need a neutral state so that he can begin to access solution states without getting that mixed up with the problem. Typical break states might include distracting attention, thinking of a white canvass, getting the client to stand and “shake it off” etc. Identify resources: now you can get the client to search for solution states. How would he have to feel or be in order for the problem to simply not exist anymore? NB the solution states must be stronger than the problem state is. Anchor resource state(s): next you elicit the resource(s) the client needs and you anchor them. Make them really juicy – they have to be stronger than the problem state is. If you want to you can stack several resources together, pump them up with a sliding anchor and adjust the submodalities to really make it a humdinger of an experience! Lets call this Anchor B. Break state, Test and Break state: to make sure you have a good resource anchor, then clear the slate so you can do the real work. Collapse Anchors: tell the client to go to the problem context in his mind. As he does this, fire off the problem anchor A. Watch him closely. As soon as he starts to go into the problem state physiology, fire off the resource anchor B. Hold both together. Integrate: watch the client as both states battle it out. This is the integration process. Eventually they will come to rest. When the client’s physiology settles down, you can release both anchors. Test: fire the problem anchor A and watch. If he goes into the solution state physiology, you are done. If he starts to go into the problem, fire Anchor B again and allow the integration to occur again. You may need to condition this process up to 5 times. Future Pace: send the client into the future to the same problem context and see if he can get the problem back. If not he’s done!


Chaining Anchors Chaining Anchors is a way of installing a strategy or a sequence of states in someone. This is particularly useful when the jump from the problem state to the solution state is too large to manage in one fell swoop. Chaining Anchors has two distinct stages: chain design and chain installation. Chain Design 1.

Elicit Parameters: elicit the problem state (state 1) and an ideal solution state (state 5) as you would in a simple collapse anchors. There is no need to anchor these yet (though you can do if you wish).

2.

Bridge the gap: decide on the number of steps it would take to get from the problem state to the solution state. Consider the size of the gap between the start and finish points and how much movement is in each state, i.e. do you have to move from a fast state (e.g. panic) to a slow one (e.g. calm) or from a very slow one (e.g. depression) to a fast one (e.g. excitement).

3.

Elicit intermediate states:

4.

a.

Lets assume you chose to have three intermediate states (five in total, including the problem and solution states). Ask yourself: what state is halfway between the problem and the solution that would cause the client to move towards the outcome? This is state 3.

b.

Repeat the question to bridge the gap between state 1 and state 3, to give you state 2.

c.

Repeat again to bridge the gap between state 3 and state 5 to give you state 4.

Check States: now that you have all the states in the sequence, try them on for size on yourself and ask yourself: would it work for me? Would it move me to move from problem (state 1) to solution (state 5)?

State 1

State 2

State 3

State 4

State 5


Chain Installation Now that you have the sequence of states that your client will need, it is time to install the whole chain. The sequence in which you anchor the states is important as you want to allow the client to unconsciously rehearse running the chain before officially doing so – you want them to succeed before they even know there might be a chance to fail! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

Anchor state 2: anchor state 2 first of all. This is will be the first step in the solution sequence. You do not want them to go into the problem until you are ready to obliterate it! Test it and Break State. Anchor state 3: anchor, test it and Break State. Anchor state 4: anchor, test it and Break State. Anchor state 5: anchor, test it and Break State. Anchor state 1: anchor the problem state last of all. You want the client to have had an experience of the chain working to some extent before you start them down the problem path. Break State. Install the Chain: Fire state 1, as it starts to come up fire state 2 and allow a moment for integration. Then fire state 3, and wait for the integration. As the integration peaks, fire state 4 and wait for the integration. As the integration peaks, fire state 5 and wait for the integration to complete. Condition the Chain: repeat the process once or twice to condition the chain into their neurology. Break State and Test: from a neutral state, ask the client to associate to the problem context, fire the anchor for state 1 and tell him to “ run the rest of the chain on your own”. Make sure it happens automatically. Future Pace: ask the client to associate to some future context in which they would have had the problem in the past, and notice what happens. To be really rigorous ask them to try and get the problem back. The harder they try, the more they fail. The change will last! Installing a Chain

State 1

State 2

State 3

State 4

State 5

I I I I R R R R Sn Sn Sn Sn e e e e et e e e t t t lT lT lT lT te t t t e e e ei ei ei ei n n n n m m m a a a am A A A A s s s s e e e s s s se ni ni ni ni e e e e ct ct ct ct hy hy hy hy A A A A o accompanying oaudio seminar The materialsoin this nmanual and the are ©oStreetnHypnosis™ 126 n n r r r r www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights c c c Reserved c h h h h o o o o r r r r

Change Personal History Change personal history is a way of using anchors to free people from being haunted by the past. 1.

Anchor problem state: find the problematic feeling and anchor it. This anchor will be P1.

2.

Follow the feeling: let the problem feeling take the client back and remind her of other experiences in the past in which she felt the same way.

3.

Anchor the past: Calibrate their physiology, when exaggerations occur, she has hit on a significant event. Stop her and ask her what age she was during that experience. Anchor this event as P2.

4.

Repeat: using P1, keep the client going backwards in time (its OK if she regresses). Each time a significant event occurs, ask for the age and anchor each event as P3, P4, P5 and P6.

5.

Break State: clear the air, reorient her to the present and distract her.

6.

Access resources: back in the present ask the client what resources she would have needed in that earliest event (P6) to feel good about herself. Elicit this and anchor it as R1. Then Break State.

7.

Collapse the past: starting with event P6, do a collapse anchors with P6 and R1 until the client is totally resourceful and happy with that past event. Then move on to P5 and collapse again with R1. Repeat one by one with P4, P3, P2 and P1. If there is a problem, find a more powerful resource state and start again (from where you left off).

8.

Test: have client remember the past events to see how she does naturally.

9.

Future Pace: If all is well, orient her into the future into contexts in which she would have had a problem in the past and see what happens.


Re-imprint Method This is similar to change personal history, but has a much wider scope for the client’s personal development and learning. 1.

Identify problem: find a recent experience with negative feelings that keep coming back in different contexts.

2.

Find imprint event: Follow this feeling back to the earliest memory, like in change personal history.

3.

Dissociate: ask the client to float out of the body of that younger him so he can view it all like a fly on the wall or as if he were in a cinema.

4.

Find Intention: for each of the players in that scene, get the client to chunk up on their intention for behaving in the way that they did. Find the highest positive intention for each person (including the young client).

5.

Identify Resources: from the dissociated position, ask the client what resources each person in that scene needed in order to properly satisfy the positive intention.

6.

Anchor the child: anchor the resources the child needed. Run through the scene first dissociated and then again associated. Notice any changes.

7.

Anchor other players: take one of the other players in that scene and anchor in the resources that that individual needed. Then run through the scene again dissociated followed by associated. The client should experience this from the new player’s point of view!

8.

Repeat for the cast: repeat step seven for each of the other people in that scene, one by one.

9.

Associate: finally run through the scene once again, with the client associated into his younger self.

10. Reorient and Break State: bring them back and distract. 11. Test: ask the client casually about the situation in step 1. Notice the natural response. 12. Future Pace: orient the client to future scenarios.


The Circle of Excellence This is a wonderful technique to practice feeling great at any time of day. It is particularly useful for energising yourself before an important meeting, date, competition etc. In many ways this is a stacked anchor that you can take anywhere you want to re-experience whenever you want or need to. 1.

Identify state of excellence: choose any state that you find appealing and particularly resourceful. It could be a time of great energy and enthusiasm, or time when you had real insight and clarity of thought. It might be a time in your life when you felt completely happy, fulfilled, confident, loved, unstoppable…

2.

Create the circle: imagine a circle out in front of you.

3.

Dissociate: see yourself standing in that circle buzzing with this state you have chosen. See yourself standing, moving, breathing and behaving the way you did back then. Notice the expression on your face which tells you exactly how good it feels to be that you!

4.

Associate: as soon as you step into that circle, you will step into that happy, energised, confident you. See through those eyes, hear through those ears, and feel the feeling that being this you brings.

5.

Anchor: at the peak of the experience, anchor the feeling to a gesture (closed fist) or a word (“YES!”). As the feeling starts to fade step back out of the circle leaving all those feelings inside the circle.

6.

Condition: repeat steps 3-5 three or four times to condition the experience.

7.

Future Pace: suggest that you can take this circle anywhere you go and place it in front of you, so that anytime you wish or need to feel this good again, all you have to do is step inside the circle and let the magic begin!

This is a great way to exercise your neurology. Feeling great and resourceful is a habit just like any other. Why not make it as natural to feel great and be resourceful as it is to walk, talk or breathe? You can use this equally well on yourself, with friends or clients.


Submodalities Swish Technique The swish technique is another one of those NLP classics. You can use it anywhere where you want to change habits, install a new strategy or to make a map across more fun. In essence this is a map across using Neuro-drivers and some contextual suggestion in order to replace an unwanted internal representation with something that is more desirable. 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

Identify trigger: find whatever trigger sets off the unwanted behaviour. Often it will be a mental picture of something. But it could also be something as simple as a smoker seeing/feeling a cigarette in his hand. Make a still picture of the trigger. Break State Create an outcome: find out how the client wants to be different. If you really want to make things juicy, enhance the submodalities so that it is really appealing. Begin Change: ask the client to temporarily shrink the picture so it is a tiny dot in one corner of the old trigger picture. SWISH!: ask the client to simultaneously shrink the trigger picture into nothingness and enlarge the outcome picture. Let the outcome picture become bigger, bolder, brighter and better. Make the final picture really attractive. As the pictures change, make swishing noises for added effect (and to amuse yourself!) Break State Condition: tell the client to go inside and repeat it five times to condition it. Each time will be faster and remember to put a break state in between each cycle! Test and Future pace: ask the client to try and get the old picture back. Really push them so that they know they have changed when they fail. Then orient them into the future where this change can occur automatically.

The Swish outlined above uses size as the Neuro-driver for change. There may be other Neuro-drivers that you may have to use. Distance (slingshot the trigger away as the outcome explodes towards the client) is an important alternative. You can also experiment with combining several elements at once: as the picture goes into the distance, it fades out, shrinks in size and is blacked out until it is gone. The outcome, meanwhile, can come closer, grow larger, brighter and have increasingly vivid colours. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 130 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

The Fast Phobia Cure This another one of those classic NLP techniques that have made NLP famous. This technique was designed explicitly for dealing phobias, i.e. there is no huge underlying trauma that needs to be dealt with. 1.

Security anchor: the first thing to do is create a security anchor to bail the client out in case it all gets too much for her.

2.

Identify phobia: calibrate to make sure that she can reproduce the feelings! Trace the feeling back to an imprint event.

3.

Dissociate: get her to “step out of the picture” so she sees her younger self in the first frame of a black and white movie. The start of the movie is before the problem began, i.e. the client is still safe and all is well.

4.

Fast forward: now get the client to run the movie forwards at super high speed, in black & white.

5.

White out: at the peak of the event, just at the critical scene, have the client white or bright out the entire scene.

6.

End the film: after the “white out” allow the film to carry on to the end, still in black & white and at super high speed. The film does not stop until it is all over and the client is safe and calm again (in the film)

7.

Associate & rewind: at the end of the film have the client step into the film and assume the role associated again. Then run the film backwards at triple speed. If you want to add some humour, add a humorous soundtrack like circus music or the theme tune from the “Benny Hill Show”. Play the film and everything backwards (with the client associated, i.e. inside the film, where the action is).

8.

Condition: when the client is back at the start (all is well, nothing bad has happened yet), get the client to dissociate herself by stepping out of the picture again and viewing herself on the screen. Repeat steps 3-7 until the client cannot get the feelings back.

9.

Test and Future Pace.


Visual–Kinaesthetic Dissociation This technique is one of the more heavyweight therapeutic procedures. Use it whenever a client experiences overpowering negative emotions, such as when dealing with a phobia or trauma. 1.

Security anchor: the first thing to do is create a security anchor to bail the client out in case it all gets too much for her.

2.

Dissociate: have the client enter a cinema or theatre with curtains closed. Behind the curtain will be the traumatic scene they want to work through. The scene will begin before anything bad starts to happen, so the client is still safe. Anchor this state (this is the first dissociation, D1).

3.

Double dissociation: have the client float out of his body and back into the projectionist’s booth, so he can see himself sitting down there in the theatre, the other him is watching the screen where the action is about to begin. Anchor this second stage dissociation (D2).

4.

Observe event: have the client watch his other self (D1) watch his younger self going through the traumatic event on the screen. The film finishes only after the trauma has ended and the young version of the client is safe again. Freeze the film here.

5.

Release double dissociation: have the client float back into the body of the self that was watching the film (D1).

6.

Reframe: have the client walk up to the younger self on the screen and talk to him. Here it is time to comfort, reassure, support the younger self. The therapist should use his/her skill to suggest that the client is learning, healing, accepting, moving on, comforting and safe & secure. Overload the moment with positive suggestions and experiences.

7.

Integration: let the younger self in the screen step out and merge in with the older self that was watching. Let the two integrate together so that the younger version grows up protected, comforted etc. Fire the security anchor at this point to add that resource into the integration process.

8.

Reorient: bring the client back, giving them plenty of time and space.

9.



Visual Squash The visual squash is known in other circles as a parts negotiation. It is used in circumstances when a person seems to be split in two – part of him wants one thing, and another part desires another. This is known as a towards-towards conflict (the client is torn between two good things). It is also very useful if the client keeps sabotaging himself (a towards-away conflict). 1.

Identify parts: clients will often do this spontaneously when they say things like “on the one hand there is X, but on the other hand I want to do Y”

2.

Anchor parts: have the client create a visual image to represent each of the parts. Place one of the parts in each hand.

3.

Separate intention: remind the client that there is a difference between what each part is doing (behaviour) and what it wants to achieve (intention). Even the most destructive of parts (e.g. responsible for anorexia, self harm etc) is trying to achieve something positive (create a place of safety or control etc).

4.

Chunk up on intention: take the “negative” part first. Chunk up on the intention until you reach the highest level of abstraction you think you can get to (e.g. to be happy, to be loved etc). Now chunk up on the intention of the other part, until you get to the exact same highest intention. It is vital that you chunk both sides up to absolutely the same highest intention.

5.

Reframe: point out that both parts actually want the same thing. They are just going about it in different ways. Of course they would do far better if they both worked together!

6.

Harmonise: identify unique resources from each part which the other part could use to achieve its highest intention better.

7.

Integrate: using general hypnotic language, let the hands come together automatically only as quickly as the two images blend and merge into one unified, integrated new vision. Then bring the hands up to the chest to allow this “new part” to slip inside and integrate with the rest of the person.

8.



Hypnosis Six Step Reframe This is a powerful pattern for generative change. It was originally developed to teach therapists resistant to the idea of using hypnosis a formidable hypnotic technique in disguise. This process can be used either in conjunction with a formal trance induction or “conversationally”.

46

1.

Identify problem: identify an unwanted behaviour or feeling.

2.

Communicate with the unconscious: check inside to see if your unconscious mind is willing to communicate with your conscious. Whatever internal signal the client gets, ask the unconscious to intensify it 46 for a “yes” response and diminish it for a “no” response .

3.

Separate intention from behaviour: ask the unconscious to communicate its highest intention behind the behaviour. If it won’t play ball, negotiate!

4.

Generate alternatives: remind the unconscious mind of its boundless creativity (dreams, problems solved in the past, general life learnings etc) and ask that the: unconscious mind searches through all your memories, experiences, learnings and creativity to come up with at least five alternative behaviours that will satisfy the intention at least as well as… [the unwanted behaviour]. Ask for a “yes” signal when the five alternatives have been found.

5.

Ecology Check: get the unconscious to go into the future and try these behaviours out for size. Have it make any adjustments it needs to to ensure the change succeeds.

6.

Future Pace: is your unconscious willing to take responsibility for implementing these alternatives instead of [the problem]?

7.

Reorient and integrate: end the trance experience and make sure that the person comes back with everything back to normal, looking forward to discovering the changes his unconscious has made.

You can also use Ideomotor signalling if you are using trance formally. See Ideomotor signalling in the Hypnosis & Trance section. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 134 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

The New Behaviour Generator This is a great process for accelerated learning, particularly for picking up new skills quickly and easily! 1.

Identify model: the first thing you must do is find a model who is exceptional at the behaviour you want to acquire. A real model is ideal, though a fictional one can also have interesting results.

2.

Dissociate: create a mental movie and watch your model engaging in the behaviour you want to have. The more precise and detailed you can make that movie the better. Make sure this is still the right model. If you’re not happy, find a new one!

3.

Morph: now watch the film again, only this time putting your features on the models face. Gradually transform the model to look like you and to sound like you, but still performing the behaviour excellently.

4.

Ecology check: check you are happy with all the consequences of behaving in this way. Are there any situations where you do not want to have this behaviour? How will it affect the rest of your life?

5.

Associate: step inside your image and associate fully. See through your eyes, hear through your ears, feel what it is like being you and engaging in this behaviour fully. See the people around you, add a soundtrack if necessary. Notice how you think and feel, how you talk to yourself and what your expectations are.

6.

Future Pace: go into a future where this behaviour is natural to you. Pick a specific situation. Notice the cues that naturally trigger the behaviour. Flow into it effortlessly and enjoy it.

7.

Condition: repeat steps 5 and 6 with a new situation until you are sure it has automated.

8.

Re-orient: come back to your present context and environment and look forward to the good things the future will bring!


Timelines – Change Personal History Timelines can be walked physically (in real space) or manoeuvred metaphorically in the imagination. Both seem to work for different people at different times. 1. 2.

Identify problem: identify a feeling the client wants to change (P). Establish timeline: elicit the client’s submodalities for time (see Timelines in the Submodalities section) and ask him to set it out on the floor in front of him. 3. Navigate Timeline: ask the client to walk backwards on the physical timeline into the past. 4. Root cause: at each point the client feels P, he should make a mental note of the location on the timeline (points 2-4 in the diagram) and continue to drift/walk back to the very first experience. You can mark these out for him with pieces of paper if you like. 5. Dissociate: when the client reaches the first event, he steps off the timeline (to point A in the diagram) and looks at his younger self in the event (point 1). 6. Learn: the client reviews the event and gathers every learning he can in order to enable him to let go of the emotion attached to that event. 7. Resource: from that vantage point (still point A), pump in all the resources the younger client needs. Fill him up with good things. 8. Dissipate emotions: walk back to just before the initial event and look into the future – the actual present day – (from point B). Make sure the client notices that the emotion has vanished. 9. Associate & Test: step into the actual event (point 1) to make sure that the emotion has become “flat”. 10. Change history: now, dissociate again and walk forward next to the timeline, back to the present day, stopping briefly just before each sensitising event (points C) to make sure that the emotion has drained from all those events as well. 11. Re-orient to present. A

C Future

Present

4

C 3

B

C 2

1

Past


Timelines – Change Limiting Decision This timelines pattern works particularly well in trance, getting the client to imagine floating above her timeline. 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

Rehearse: this is quite an intricate process, so talk the client through it first so she knows what is expected of her! Induce Trance: either formally or informally (see Hypnosis & Trance). Dissociate: ask client to float up above her timeline and backwards in time to the initial point when the limiting decision was made (point 1). Along the way she might note other events in which she continued to accept that limiting decision (points 2-4). Associate & dissociate: when the client gets to point A, above the initial event, ask her to dip into the event to get the feelings and then to float back up to point A. Make sure she takes all the learnings from that situation. Remove emotion: next, have her float back to the moment just before the whole set of events at point 1 began (maybe 15 minutes earlier – this is point B), and ask: “now where has the emotion gone?” Remove decision: if the client agrees that the emotions have evaporated, then ask: “and the decision, did that disappear too?” [Troubleshooting: if the emotions do not disappear, or the limiting decision remains stuck, it is because the client has not taken on board everything that she needs to learn from that event. Go back to point A and gather those learnings. You might also want to incorporate other techniques here, like Reframing, the Re-imprint Method or a parts negotiation.] Return: ask the client to return to the present only as quickly as you allow the events between then and now (points 2-4) to re-evaluate themselves in light of the new choices and let go of all the negative emotions. Stop in position C as you come back, so you can absorb the learnings and let go of the emotions and allow each event to be re-evaluated automatically as you come back to the present… NOW! Reorient: let her have time to come back and reorient herself. A C

Future

Present

4

C 3

B

C 2

1

Past


Timelines – Creating a Future Goal Timelines can also be used to project a future goal and creating an unconscious propulsion to achieve it. 1.

SMART: construct a well-formed or SMART goal.

2.

Outcome picture: make an image of the outcome you want. How will you know that you have achieved it? What will you hear, feel and see?

3.

Associate: step into the IR, see what you see, hear what you can hear and feel what you can feel. Make sure it is what you want!

4.

Emotion: adjust the submodalities to make the internal representation of your goal as appealing and intense as possible.

5.

Dissociate: step back out of the IR and float above your time line with it.

6.

Energise: take three deep breaths to energise the internal representation. Fill it with desire, emotions and vitality.

7.

Future: now float over into the future and drop the representation into your timeline.

8.

Return & evaluate: now have the client return to the present as she notices how the events between the future goal and the present re-evaluate themselves to support the goal.

9.

Reorient.

A IR

A IR

Future

IR

4

3

2

1

Present

Past


Strategies Strategies Defined Human beings cannot be random. Every behaviour that we have is the result of some internal programme: we have to know when it is time to engage in that behaviour, how to adjust the behaviour mid-stream to achieve whatever purpose it is for and finally we have to know when it is time to end the behaviour. The programmes that do this are known as strategies. You have a strategy for everything you do: from scratching your head in the morning to making a fortune in business. Some strategies are simple, involving only a few steps. Others are vastly complex and may include a meta-strategy that that triggers off a whole plethora of sub-strategies under different conditions. Strategies run our lives and dominate our ability to learn. Yet there are very few disciplines in which you will learn to do something better by redesigning the strategy that is running that behaviour. NLP is one such discipline. In NLP you learn tools for discovering what strategies run you (or another person) and for changing those strategies to make them more useful. Strategies were borrowed from the work of some of the leaders in the field of 47 experimental psychology, Miller, Galanter and Pribram . These researchers were dissatisfied with the Stimulus-Response (S-R) theory of behaviour that evolved from the seeds of Pavlov’s initial research on conditioned responses (remember Pavlov’s dogs?) The S-R model suggested that every behaviour was simply a response triggered by a specific stimulus. So there was a unique set of triggers that would make you scratch your head in the morning and another unique set of triggers that triggered you into making a fortune in business. Miller et al. thought the S-R model simply did not explain complex human behaviour well enough. They thought the model too simplistic – it broke down in situations where the behaviour was constantly being refined to meet a situation. That was something that the S-R model could not comfortably explain. Miller et al. wanted to find a better explanation of how people engaged in complex behaviours. Their research led them to the creation of what is known as the TOTE model of information processing theory. In time the TOTE model was accepted as a general theory of human cognition. It lies at the heart of the way NLP conceptualizes and uses strategies.

47

Miller, G.A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K.H. “Plans and the Structure of Behavior”, Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1960. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 139 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

The TOTE Model TOTE stands for Test – Operate – Test – Exit. In a T.O.T.E. a person has an internalised goal she wants to achieve. This is tested against the results that she is getting. If the goal has not been achieved, the person will go into an operations phase in which she engages in a behaviour designed to achieve that goal. The new outcome is tested again to see if it measures up against the goal. If it does, the strategy exits and the behaviour ends. If it does not, the strategy loops back to the operations phase and a new series of behaviours is engaged in. This loop or cycle continues until the goal is either achieved or abandoned. The T.O.T.E. model is traditionally represented as follows:

Trigger

Test

Exit

Operate In NLP the T.O.T.E. model has been adapted to incorporate some of the understandings we have gathered from the Universal Modelling Process and experiential observations. When the idea of strategies was being investigated by John, Richard and their team, they wanted to know what was happening inside the “ Test” and the “Operate” phases of the model. The first question is: how does someone know whether the Test should lead to an Operation or to the Exit? In order to test an outcome, a comparison has to be made internally. The person will compare the Internal Representations of the goal they have in mind against the actual information their senses are feeding them about the outcome they have just achieved. If they match each other, the strategy exits. If they mismatch, the Operation is triggered. Test 1 Internal Representation of the desired Goal

External Input from Event

Operate

External Input from Event

Exit

Test 2 Internal Representation of the desired Goal


The operation phase is made up of a series of external behaviours (EB) that are triggered by internal representations (IR). The EBs and IRs should link together in a finite chain or sequence with the purpose of gathering, organising and modifying information in order to attain the desired goal. At the end of each specific chain lies a new Test phase. The Test phase simply compares the information (which was gathered and organised) against that desired goal. Then a decision is made to: • • • •

Exit, loop back into Operate, Exit into a new strategy, or change the parameters of the desired goal (and restart the test/operate sequence.)

This is a typical structure for an operation:

IR

EB

IR

IR

EB

To see what an operation looks like in action, lets imagine a simple strategy for negotiating a raise. That strategy might look like this: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Ask for a raise (EB – A) Listen to reply (EB – A) Imagine what you are offered (IR – V) Talk to yourself about the offer – mull it over (IR – Ad) Accept (EB – A) 1

2

3

4

5

A whole TOTE sequence for that negotiation would look like this: TEST

Trigger

Desired Goal

Event

Exit

OPERATE 1

2

3

4

5


Utilising Strategies All of our decisions, behaviours and plans are created using strategies. If these strategies are working for us, then all is well. If they are flawed or cumbersome, it can make life difficult. For example, many poor spellers are not poor at spelling 48 because they lack intellect. What they lack is a good spelling strategy . This kind of problem can be resolved relatively quickly with a strategy intervention. After eliciting someone’s strategy and subjecting it to a logical analysis, you will often see quite quickly whether there is a flaw in the cycle. Eliminate the flaw and you get a better result. In this respect you can either adjust a strategy (to streamline it) or simply replace it with something more fitting! We will look at how to install a new strategy a little later on in this section. There is another very valuable use for strategies: influence and persuasion. By influence and persuasion I do not mean to suggest that strategies only have applications in fields like sales or public speaking. Strategies can be used to help people learn or make decisions much more quickly. As an example, imagine you were helping me book a holiday. You know that my decision strategy for that process is to: look at a brochure, see an image that is attractive, imagine myself being there, say to myself “would I like to do this?” and finally get a good feeling that lets me exit the loop. By presenting me with information in that exact sequence (i.e. in the sequence that I need to process it all in), you instantly streamline the speed at which I can make a decision. If, however, you first talked to me about the holiday, then asked me what that would feel like and finally you showed me a photo album of your trip there, you would be slowing things down: the information is coming in in the wrong order. I would have to collect it, then back track one step at a time until I have processed it all in the sequence I need to do it in! By working out people’s strategies you know how to motivate them, inspire them, educate them, build trust and comfort (another strategy!), sell things to them or simply help them improve the way in which they do things.

48

Spelling is a visual process. Good spellers will visualise the word internally or out in front of them and then “copy” what they see. Over time this strategy naturalises and they cease being aware of the internal images. A poor speller, on the other hand, made the mistake of buying into the presuppositions embedded in the “phonetic” spelling system – which attempts to sound out the sound of words as a means of getting the correct spelling. But English is not a phonetic language (if it were it would have to be a “fonetik” language!) and so, many good listeners (who have done what they were asked to do!) are falsely labelled as being learning impaired! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 142 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Well Formed Strategies Just like outcomes, strategies should conform to certain rules in order for them to have been well formed. If the well formedness conditions are not met, then you may well have a problem. A flawed strategy can be cumbersome or even destructive. 1.

Strategies need a well defined representation of the outcome.

2.

They must include information from the three major representational systems (VAK).

3.

There are more than two points in the loop.

4.

There must be an exit (after a certain number of cycles through the loop or after a certain amount of time).

5.

A strategy should use the least number of steps to get to the outcome.

6.

Every cycle should have an exit point.

7.

The flow of Internal Representations and External Behaviours should be logical.

8.

The structure must follow the TOTE model.

9.

The strategy must be ecological.


Strategy Elicitation You can elicit people’s strategies through the questions that you ask. Remember that only a part of the information you need will be known by the client on a conscious level. So when eliciting a strategy you have to pay very careful attention to • •

Eye movement patterns: the eye movement patterns tell you what information they are accessing and in what sequence! Predicates: whilst observing eye movements, listen to the predicates that they are giving you. It is only through these that you will discover if there are synaesthesias (e.g. they are aware of seeing something but unaware that it makes them feel a certain way at the same time).

Orienting Questions The first set of questions to ask a client is needed to associate the client into the experience. You want the client to actually have the experience as you talk to them so that you can see the strategy run its normal course. As a general rule maintaining the present tense will help the client stabilise the association as though it were happening now. • •

Think of a time when you learned something easily [or made a good decision, or bought a car, or fell in love etc]… just go be there NOW! What happens to you when you’re learning something easily?

Elicitation of the trigger (also the first TEST in the cycle) The strategy has to start somewhere, so some event in the world must trigger it, or the person would not know it is time to run it! You want to elicit the trigger that fires the strategy in the same was as you would want to elicit triggers for anchoring. The trigger in a strategy is actually the first test: the client has checked the input to the desired goal and realised that he has not achieved it yet, so the Operate phase is started up. • • • •

How do you know when it is time to learn something easily [or buy a car or fall in love etc]? When did you begin to do X? What lets you know you are ready to start Xing? What is the very first thing that causes you to totally X? Is it something you see, hear or feel?


Eliciting the Operation Once you have the trigger, use it to stimulate the Operate phase of the strategy. Then follow the sequence along until the strategy has completed itself. • • • • • • •

As you see (or hear/feel) A (the trigger), what is the very next thing that happens? What steps do you go through? What is the first thing you do? What happens as you begin? What do you do when you are not sure if you have achieved goal X yet? What happens next? After you do A, B and C what happens next?

Eliciting the Test As soon as they have run through the whole Operate sequence, you need to find out what criteria they are using to test against (i.e. what is the internal goal, how closely would the external event have to match the idealised internal condition). You may have discovered this during the trigger phase (which was the first test), or you may not. • • • •

What comparison are you making? How do know when you have satisfied your criteria? What lets you know you are not yet finished Xing? How do you evaluate the alternatives?

Eliciting the Exit Once the cycle has been run, something has to occur for the person to know that the external event matches her internal goal so she can stop. If a strategy has no Exit criteria, it is seriously flawed and the person will be compulsed to cycle through the operate cycle more and more intensely (as happens with many obsessive compulsive disorders). • • • • • •

What lets you know you are done? How do you know when you are done? How do you know that you have made a decision? What lets you know you are ready to move to something else? What lets you know you’re successful at X? How do you know when you have ended the process?


Guidelines for Strategy Elicitations In order to elicit strategies elegantly, you have to be alert so you can spot eye accessing cues and predicates in the language whilst engaging them in meaningful questions and paying attention to their verbal answers. It helps tremendously if you are in rapport with the person. This makes it more likely for them to enter and do the strategy in front of you. Next you should set a framework around what you are doing. Get the client associated into the context first. You need to make sure that the eye accessing cues are steps in the strategy you are interested in, instead of the strategy the client uses to remember a past event! Once the client is associated, anchor the state to stabilise it. It will make rooting around in there much easier. Also use the present tense, it makes the experience more “here and now”, enabling the client to actually experience the strategy in front of you. Keep asking small questions like the ones suggested above. Back up a step or two if necessary. For example if there seems to be a logical jump between one step in the sequence and the next, you have either discovered a flaw, or missed the cue that there was an intermediate step. Check it out! Make sure that you catch all the main pieces that allow the strategy to run effectively. Pay attention to the client’s non-verbal cues. They may mark out predicates or other words as they say them and they should definitely be demonstrating natural eye accessing cues. Get as much information as possible, then test it. Feed back the sequence you think you have discovered and see if that hits home. The strategy should produce the same feeling or behaviour when you fire it artificially as when it happens “naturally”. That is how you know you have the full sequence.


Strategy Installation A strategy can be installed in any number of ways. We will briefly look at some of the tools that you might like to use.

Rehearsal Remember that under pressure your mind gives you what you rehearsed. The more you do something, or the higher the intensity associated with it, the more it tends to “stick”. A rehearsal of a new strategy can take place physically – by actually running through the process several times (as you did when you learned to read and write). You can also rehearse a strategy internally, by associating into the experience and running the new sequence several times. The key piece in either event is to TEST your work. Fire the trigger and wait for the strategy to run all by itself. If it does not, then more installation is required.

Chaining Anchors The astute reader will have noticed that a strategy sounds remarkably similar to the process that someone goes through when you install a chain of states through an anchor. Chaining anchors is a means of installing a strategy. You can anchor internal states as well as the external behaviours that accompany them. Then fire the sequence and let the chain run itself. To install a new strategy, simply anchor each part of the chain up to the decision point (exit or loop back). Then follow the ordinary chain installation procedure. For example, a simple strategy to change a habit might be: 1.

trigger,

2.

see the worst case scenario of the consequence of the habit,

3.

feel the negative emotion,

4.

reject the habit,

5.

see the positive consequence of rejecting the behaviour,

6.

feel good and exit.

Now simply create six anchors, one for each of the steps, and chain away! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 147 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Submodality Shifts Another way to install or change a strategy is through a submodality intervention. You can take any step within the strategy sequence you elicited and change the submodalities of the experience so that it flows better. You can also install a whole new strategy by manipulating the internal representations that chain together to create a strategy. For example, a SWISH technique is in fact a strategy installation: the trigger instantly runs a chain that creates the solution. Instead of feeling bad, you now feel good. Lovely! The Fast Phobia cure is another example of intervening on a negative strategy through submodalities. In that sequence you are actually altering the strategy behind a phobia. A phobia is in fact one of those two point loops (see the spider, feel the fear) that I cautioned you about. The Fast Phobia cure simply interrupts the strategy, adds a few steps in (like the circus music), and changes the submodalities other steps (e.g. “whiting out” the traumatic event).

Metaphors Metaphors are powerful constructs. We will cover them more fully in the next section on Hypnosis & Trance. For now it is enough that you know that inside a story you can embed all kinds of messages. Some of these messages can install new strategies. If you tell a story of someone rehearsing a new strategy and getting it right, the person listening has to at some level experience the same rehearsal (in order to understand what you are saying). This is why sporting metaphors or success stories can inspire others so well: when done adroitly, they are actually installing the strategy! Another way to use metaphors is to indirectly create a chain of experiences that are subtly anchored (visually or auditorily). Once the series of steps has been anchored, the chain can be conditioned by simply running the chain in the story! You can be even more subtle in that the story might be completely unconnected with the problem strategy. Its sole purpose is to install a series of states. These are then chained together at the end to create a powerful new strategy. There is a great example of this in action by the stand up comedian Eddie Izzard. In one of his shows he tells elaborate (and very funny) stories about a number of creatures. Each one is anchored with a certain mannerism or voice by the comic. At the end of the show he tells one final story in which each of the previous characters plays a role. The audience are in stitches as anchor after hilarious anchor is fired off in an intense sequence that brings the house down. What if you could laugh at all your problems like that!?! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 148 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Hypnosis & Trance What is Hypnosis? Hypnosis is a completely natural phenomenon. A hypnotic experience is simply an altered state of consciousness. In some ways you could say that any altered state is a hypnotic one. Every time you shift someone’s mood, let your mind drift off and daydream, become absorbed in a film or are mesmerised by the numbers in a lift (elevator for our American friends) – you are going into trance! Human beings need trances in order to survive. The renowned hypnotic researcher 49 and therapist Ernest Rossi suggests that we naturally go through 90 minute cycles ending in a very naturalistic trance experience. During this “ ultradian rhythm”, our body/mind takes the time to reorganise itself and the most recent set of experiences. This is a vital process. It is as detrimental to our health to negate these “natural breaks” as it is to deprive someone of REM sleep. Hypnosis has received some very bad press in the past. Partly due to the “evil powers” of dark Svengali-like figures in books and films, and partly from an illusion created by stage hypnosis shows. What you see is definitely not what you get! A hypnotist does not stare deeply into your eyes (though I guess she could if you really wanted her to!), steal your mind and turn you into a robotic slave that can be programmed to do her bidding. If that were the case, believe me, I would now be sitting on my private island in the Bahamas, generously “sponsored” by the world’s banking consortia. Sadly I am not. Hypnosis is however incredibly powerful. In hypnosis a mind/body connection can be established that allows you to do seemingly impossible things. There are countless examples of medical doctors performing full blown surgical procedures without anaesthetic, with the patient calmly watching the operation and feeling no 50 discomfort at all . Hypnosis can stimulate the body’s own natural genius for healing – something that western science still does not yet comprehend properly. As well as an increased physical well being, hypnosis can offer you an expanded set of mental functions. In trance you can study faster, remember more clearly, increase your reactions and become more creative than you ever imagined. It is a very powerful discipline with many things to offer. Study it well!

49

Ernest Rossi, “The 20 Minute Break: Reduce Stress, Maximise Performance, Improve Health and Emotional Well-being Using the New Science of Ultradian Rhythms”, Zeig, Tucker & Theisen, Inc, 1991. 50 Dr Escudero (a modern day Spanish doctor) has created a whole wellness programme “Noesitherapy” based on thousands of cases of live operations using no anaesthetic other than the mind! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 149 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

The Purpose of the Unconscious The unconscious mind has a certain mandate to carry out. These are the unwritten rules by which it functions. Knowing these is essential when negotiating with the unconscious. These directives are leverage points for persuasion, therapy and change! Body It is the unconscious mind’s task to run and preserve the body. It keeps your heart beating, regulates your blood-flow, sugar levels, hormone secretions, body temperature, digestive track and runs a thousand other tasks all at the same time. The unconscious also generates, stores and distributes your energy levels. It appears that evolution has left our unconscious minds with a bias towards an economy of effort to conserve that energy. Emotion The unconscious creates all emotions. Every emotional response you have is unconscious. You cannot will yourself to have an emotion. You can only go through a process to which your unconscious responds emotionally. Congratulations, you are communicating with your unconscious mind! Your unconscious also takes everything personally. Whatever you say about others will in some way be taken as a self suggestion. This is one of the reasons that people who complain, whine, fear or hate others are left with a much poorer quality of life. Memory The unconscious organises and stores your memories. It will also repress negative emotions to protect your conscious mind from emotions it cannot process yet. The unconscious only presents negative memories to your conscious mind when it appears ready. Communication The unconscious is the place where the “raw data” that creates perception is analysed. It is the place where your internal maps are generated. Also, the unconscious works symbolically. It cannot directly process a negative statement. Ultimately, the unconscious must serve your conscious mind. Performance Your unconscious creates and uses “instincts”. It needs repetition to achieve this. The unconscious is highly goal oriented and functions best holistically, i.e. likes to see the bigger picture and work towards a goal that fits that bigger picture.


Trance Inductions Go First! In hypnosis, your clients will become highly sensitised and responsive to your minimal cues. You need to ensure that all your non-verbal communication is aligned to the purpose you have in mind. The easiest way to do this is to make sure you Go First. This holds particularly true for the trance induction itself. If you Go First, that is enter your own trance state during your induction, you are sending powerful signals to the client on how to access trance, how to behave and that this slightly weird 51 thing occurring is quite natural and quite OK . Going First will also activate your trance learnings more fully (remember state dependant learning). Your own personal trance experiences will feed into your trancework and you will discover that you can do amazing things you did not know you could do, just by trusting your unconscious. As the unconscious takes everything personally, you begin to benefit from whatever therapeutic work you do with someone else. So a side effect of doing this work well is that your own life improves too! I am very sorry, that is just something you will have to learn to live with, NOW!

10 Second Hypnotist I first developed this exercise in order to teach people hypnosis quickly and easily. I wanted to remove the performance anxiety most novice (and too many experienced!) hypnotists had when faced with inducing trance in a real live person. In the following exercise, I want the hypnotist simply to pretend to hypnotise the client and I would like the client to simply pretend to be in trance. That is something anyone can do comfortably: 1. 2. 3. 4.

51

Close your eyes and go into trance Every time I do XXX…, you go deeper and deeper As I do YYY… your mind opens ready to learn easily and respond to my suggestions [now do whatever YYY was!] In a moment I will count to 3, at the count of 3 you will open your eyes, alert out of trance feeling fantastic! 1. feeling good, 2. feeling great and 3. open your eyes feeling fantastic!!

Some people who have not experienced trance formally before may feel very self conscious about the process of accessing trance and inhibit themselves because of it. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 151 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

I can teach someone the basics of hypnosis in under an hour just using this exercise! There is a lot in there. Remember that hypnosis is natural. Most people can access it in seconds. So why take half an hour or more when you first learn to induce a trance? Do it more quickly and you get to practice it more often!

Linguistic Bridges (4 Words Of Power) A linguistic bridge is the kind of linking words that you learned during the Milton Model and other language pattern exercises. If you look at the 10 second hypnotist again, you will notice that the flow of language comes from these linking words. They also carry the force of suggestion as they naturally create complex equivalences, cause-effects and other Milton Model constructs. Have a look at the Language Flow Cards in the Language Patterns section above. Repeat the exercise of simply using the natural flow of language to suggest things like relaxation, learning etc. Only this time blend this together with the more formal 10 second hypnotist approach. This will allow you to flesh out the structure and create several minutes of soothing trance experiences. Have fun with it – get as outrageous as you can allow yourself to be! For those of you who would like to hear these two exercises in action, go to www.streethypnosis.com and get a copy of my “Introduction to Conversational Hypnosis” CD. It is not expensive and has examples of both of these exercises in action!

Pacing & Leading This is one of the fundamental patterns behind elegant hypnosis. It should be adopted into the core of your approach because it is so versatile and useful. A Pacing 52 and Leading induction follows a simple pattern : 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

52

Pace: say three or four things that are true and verifiable: you are sitting there, hearing my voice, being aware of that hand touching there... Lead: next add one leading statement with a link: and you can relax… Repeat: gradually use less pacing statements per lead: 4 paces 1 lead… 3 paces 2 leads… 2 paces 3 leads etc. Tonality: as you progress, gradually shift your voice into a trance tonality. Reverse: to end the trance simply reverse the process, or count up again.

For more information on the Pace & Lead construction, see either “the Deep Trance Training Manual Vol1” or the “Conversational Hypnosis Vol 1” CD set available from www.streethypnosis.com. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 152 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Sensory Rich Descriptions Our internal experiences are made up from piecing together different bits of the experiences that our five senses have absorbed over our lifetime. In trance you merely suggest an experience for the client to have. If you do it well, the person will have the experience. To assist you with that, you can use language that is rich in sensory descriptions. Rich sensory language forces the listener to activate that very experience: Compare the following two experiences: Imagine standing on a beach… you can see the beach and the ocean… and notice all the things around you… you can hear the water of the ocean… and maybe a seagull up above… Imagine standing on a warm and sandy beach… the sand is so fine and warmed by the sun… you might even be tempted to take off whatever you are wearing on your feet… so you can feel the fine texture as the sand sifts between your toes… the temperature of the sand against your skin… if you dig a little deeper with your foot… you’ll reach a cooler, damper layer of sand.. how curiously pleasing it is to feel that warmth and coolness… as the sand mingles like that… and over there is the ocean… the colour is so soothing as you watch the waves roll in one by one… the whiteness of the surf… the hissing of the water as it dissolves onto the beach…hmmm… what a wonderful sensation to watch the surf come sweeping up the beach… and gently roll back… the sound of the ocean… perhaps there is a gull up ahead… can you see it circling… round and round the blue sky?... can you see the markings… white wings…a little tip of black… yellow beak… and the sound that it makes… as it cries… so much a part of the seaside… as that rolling expanse of ocean… Of the two descriptions, the second is more compelling (for most people!) because it carries much more sensory information for the mind to process. The experience is simply more real because each sensory description has to be processed and experienced in order to be understood. That is not to say that the more vague experience cannot be hypnotic also. It can and absolutely has a place in the trance process. What I would like you to understand however, is that you have a set of tools and skills that you can apply to enrich any experience. Sensory rich descriptions are just on such tool. Now it is your turn. Describe a pleasant scene to someone using detailed sensory language. You should try to be vague enough to allow them some scope to interpret the experiences you are describing.


Metaphors and Nested Loops The Storytelling Tradition Storytelling is an old tradition. It predates the oldest civilisation and is so fundamental to our nature that it continues to exist in the modern era: books, films, plays, musicals and the news all offer us an unending flow of stories. These stories shape our perceptions, change our lives. Tribal witchdoctors, medicine men or shamen have used stories for millennia as a way of keeping the tribe together, resolving conflicts and overcoming difficulties. Modern dictators have known the value of storytelling: Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and countless others kept a careful eye on the news, theatre and films being broadcast because of their power to make or break an empire. Even modern therapy has come to accept the power of storytelling in influencing the unconscious. Milton Erickson pioneered a whole therapeutic system based on telling hypnotic metaphors – stories that spoke directly to the unconscious mind and had a powerful therapeutic effect. From there a new breed of storytellers has evolved. They have spread from the therapy clinic to the sales room, the corporate boardroom, the classroom even the sports field with great success. Stories are here to stay! Stories appeal to us in many different ways. For a start there are very few children in any culture that are not weened on bedtime stories. Once upon a time… has become such a powerful phrase because it regresses us to childhood. It gives permission for us to (in fact it demands that we) suspend our critical thinking and just accept the story as it is. Meanwhile all kinds of unconscious connections are being made. Most of the western fairy tales (stemming mostly from the stories collected by Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm brothers) are actually teaching tales. They suggest solutions to common life problems, embed a moral code and administer harsh warnings to people who wish to step outside of certain social constraints. As children we absorbed and were shaped by these stories more than we realise. In hypnosis we also like to use stories because of the way that they appeal so directly to the unconscious mind. A hypnotic story (officially known as a metaphor) is particularly useful because you can embed several different layers of meaning inside it. Such stories can be deeply transformational. I would strongly recommend that you invest time and effort in mastering the art of 53 hypnotic storytelling . 53

For those interested in exploring this further, look at my course “Improvisation and Storytelling” www.curioustraining.co.uk. This is a unique course designed to create charismatic and influential people. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 154 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Nested Looping – the Basic Structure of Storytelling NLP is all about teasing out the structure that makes things work. Many people believe that they are uncreative because they tried being creative in the wrong way. By understanding how a story works it becomes relatively easily to create your own. Before we have a look at the construction of a hypnotic metaphor, let me say that a metaphor or story does not have to follow the “fairy tale” construction of “once upon a time there was a little prince(ss)…” Any anecdote, joke, story, memory, experience, tale, fable, film, play or real life event can serve as a story or metaphor. The story is just a vehicle for the other message that you wish to embed. Now a story is a little like an elephant: we can recognise one when we see one, but it is hard to describe it. Stories are so much a part of our psyche that we will instantly recognise them when we stumble across them. So, for example: I walked through the forest and arrived safely at home on the other side. This is an event, a routine and not a story. Everyone would recognise that something is missing. So we have to add something: As I walked through the forest, I found a piece of an old mirror on the floor. I picked it up and went home safely. This is getting better. The routine has been interrupted. It has the makings of a story. But even a five year old child (or should I say, especially a five year old – she is the expert at this after all!) will tell you that the story is incomplete. We want to know what the mirror is for. So it is a good act 1, a beginning of a story, but still incomplete. We need an act 2: As I walked through the forest, I found a piece of an old mirror on the floor. I picked it up and carried on walking. Then I entered a clearing. I saw a large spider frantically looking for something. It seemed to be trying to replace something in a hole on its side. When I looked more closely, I saw that the whole was the same shape as the mirror. So I put the piece of mirror in its side. Instantly the spider calmed down. It decided to become my friend and accompanied me all the way home, where I arrived safely! Now we have a story. It may be simple, but it is complete. It feels complete! When you look at the examples you will begin to see that the story has been made up of a few layers. There are three essential layers that you can track. These three layers form the essential structure of all stories: The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 155 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

1.

Routine: The first layer of a story begins with a routine. In the example, the routine was walking through a forest. It could equally have been climbing a mountain, going to work or ploughing a field. A routine is an event with a beginning and an end. And it is totally uninteresting as it stands.

2.

Break Routine: in order for a story to be born, we have to break the routine that we established at the beginning. This is what makes it interesting. This is what sucks in our attention. Finding a piece of mirror was the break in the routine. The story was still incomplete, but it was far more interesting than just the routine.

3.

Close the Loop: every story must end by looping back on itself. It has to reincorporate the elements introduced, or there is something missing. In our example the mirror had to serve a purpose. A mystery had been offered. Until that mystery was unravelled the story could not end. So we gave it a purpose by “fixing” the giant spider with it. Notice how we did not have to explain absolutely everything. We could have deepened the story by finding out why the spider needed the mirror or having the spider protect us from a later event (a second layer of re-incorporation). But we did not need it for the story to complete.

This re-incorporation is known as a nested loop. It is the meta-strategy for getting and keeping attention, particularly unconscious attention. It is phenomenally useful principle in all kinds of situations. This phenomenon is closely related to the 54 Zeigarnik effect . When you combine the Zeigarnik effect with storytelling, you get 55 something very powerful . In hypnosis, Erickson pioneered an approach in which he would tell a series of stories, 5 or 6, in a row, without finishing any of them. In the middle of these stories he would weave hypnotic suggestions. Then he would close his loops. This way his clients consciously forgot the therapeutic suggestions in the middle of his stories and somehow, magically, got better. This worked so well that most of Erickson’s stories (told as hypnotic multiple embedded metaphors) served as the trance induction, therapy, instruction for change and resolution all wrapped up in one very clever package!

54

Bluma Zeigarnik (b 1900), was the Russian psychologist who first described the effect in 1927. It refers to the psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task rather than a completed one. 55 Take for example Shahrazad’s tales in “One Thousand and One Arabian Nights”. Shahrazad cleverly employs the Zeigarnik effect to stave off execution for the 1001 nights by starting a story each evening, but not finishing it until the next. Curiosity kept the sultan from executing her like his previous wives. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 156 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Hypnotic Metaphors The Greek root of the word metaphor means “to carry over” or “transfer”. In the dictionary the description is even more interesting. In a metaphor one object is used in the place of another by way of suggesting a likeness between them. This is the power of a hypnotic metaphor in a nutshell. A metaphor is a story with an implied relevance to the client’s problem. So to create a hypnotic metaphor with a persuasive character (whether for coaching, therapy, sales or leadership) the story must in some way parallel the experience of the listener. 56

Volumes have been written on the construction of a metaphor . To simplify all these models, a hypnotic metaphor must be isomorphic. In other words the structure of the metaphor must parallel what is happening in the client’s life and have a solution attached at the end. It is like a giant pace & lead construction. Pace the problem, then lead to a solution. A classic example of this is the story of the tortoise and the hare. Telling that story to a pupil that is falling behind at school might motivate her to keep at it. A business man having trouble with a project in light of steep competition might decide to be more persistent. The story speaks to the individual in accordance with his/her needs. Turn back to the heading “Multi-level Communication (What is a Meta For?)” (under the Milton Model of the Language Pattern section). How many hidden “meanings” can you find in that? To make metaphors even more powerful we can follow Erickson’s example of creating nested loops – or stories within stories within… To do this is easy. Choose 3-5 stories on a theme. Tell the first story, but don’t finish it. Move on to story 2, but never quite finish that. Keep going in this way until all your stories are “open” (i.e. you have told maybe 80-90% of each story). Now you can either layer in more therapeutic content or begin to close your loops one by one. If you really want people to be curious, you could always “forget” to close a loop or two, thereby keeping the Zeigarnik effect activated.

Story 1 Story 2 Story 3

56

O P E N

Multiple Embedded Metaphors Therapeutic Suggestions

C L O S E

Story 1 Story 2 Story 3

Lankton & Lankton “Tales of Enchantment: a collection of goal-oriented metaphors of adults and children in therapy” , Brunner/Mazel 1989. Gordon “Therapeutic Metaphors. Helping others through the looking glass” Meta Publications 1978. Battino “Metaphoria: Metaphor and Guided Metaphor for Psychotherapy and Healing”, Crownhouse Publishing 2002. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 157 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Trance Tonalities In days of yore, hypnotists noticed an interesting phenomenon: when they talked to people they had hypnotised before, they started to go into trance, even if the hypnotist was speaking about the weather! Over time hypnotists developed a “hypnotic voice” – a strange sounding monotonous voice, that more often than not would bore people into trance. But it solved their problem – subjects would only go into trance when they started talking in their strange monotonous voice. They were free to discuss the weather at liberty once again! With time new hypnotists learned from the old sages. They heard these strange monotonous voices and thought that there was some kind of power in it. They imitated it and taught their students to do the same in time. A pattern was set. Luckily we now know that you do not need to bore people into trances. You can use any voice tone that you like (though a smooth and pleasant voice is to be greatly encouraged). What had happened to these hypnotists of yore was nothing more than auditory anchoring in action You will recall that anchors can be set in any sensory modality. So you can anchor things with, amongst other things, the sound of your voice. So what did happen to our delightful hypnotic subjects when they are in trance? In trance, they would have heard the sound of the hypnotists voice, over and over again. They may even have heard suggestions like “the sound of my voice will help you go deeper and deeper in to trance…” Of course they were anchored to the hypnotist’s voice! Every time they heard it they would go back into a trance! It is strongly recommended that you develop your own range of trance tonalities. Otherwise you might find all the people you hypnotised kind of fading away during the course of a conversation with you. This might be fun at first, but it does get rather tedious after a while. It might even be a little dangerous, if the person you are accidentally hypnotising is driving a car – and you are sitting in it! To begin with I would recommend that you develop a slow, melodious voice for the trancework that you do. That way you can distinguish between talking to someone whilst “awake” or helping the go into trance. In time you can actually develop a whole range of different tonalities which are tonal anchors for them to access different types of trances!


Embedded Commands The unconscious mind has a tremendous capacity for recognising patterns. In fact studies suggest that hidden patterns receive a greater amount of attention when they 57 are processed . Milton Erickson used this to very good effect with his patients by marking out certain words and phrases in a seemingly innocuous communication. Once the unconscious detected the subtle pattern, he could directly communicate with people’s unconscious whilst completely by-passing their critical system. You can embed suggestions in a number of ways. Any consistent change in inflection, tone, pausing, or non-verbal cue (like an eyebrow lift or a hand gesture), 58 will eventually be picked up by the unconscious . An easy way to embed suggestion is to simply pause briefly before and after the phrase you wish to mark out: Now… I know a lot of people who cannot… relax fully and completely… it appears that something about the way that they think and live simply will not allow them to… relax fully and completely… Now… they might be able to… relax… just slightly. But it appears that… complete relaxation… eludes them! The same phrases could be marked out by slowing the pace of speech or lowering the voice tone slightly as you get to the suggestion: Now I know a lot of people who cannot relax fully and completely. It appears that something about the way that they think and live simply will not allow them to relax fully and completely. Now they might be able to relax just slightly. But it appears that complete relaxation eludes them! This is where hypnosis gets very interesting. With experience and practice you might find yourself consistently embedding several different layers of suggestion in the simple act of telling a story. If you mark different words and phrases out with different features: one with a lowering of the voice, another with a slight quickening of speech, a third with a hand gesture, a fourth with an eyebrow lift… you have the opportunity to pack a huge amount of suggestions into a relatively short, but very intense, period of time! 57

Although the principle being engaged is not entirely clear, it appears that the brain detects the incoming information as being significantly different from that which immediately preceded it. This triggers a core brain orienting response (see Pribram, “Languages of the brain: Experimental paradoxes and principles in neuropsychology”, Prentice Hall 1971). In this model, the core brain (specifically the hypothalamus, thalamus and amygdale) is constantly sampling the environment. When something novel occurs, like a change in tone or patterned behaviour, the brain “dumps” all preceding data and places all its attention on the new stimulus. It therefore has a more powerful impact (see Glass, Holyoak and Santa “Cognition”, Addison-Wesley, 1979). 58 Provided the person is capable of detecting it. Hand gestures will have no effect on a person with their eyes closed! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 159 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Ideomotor Signalling Most people have had the experience of falling asleep and having a vivid dream/daydream about some physical activity, like playing football or running down the street, only to discover that a limb – an arm or a leg – suddenly jerks in response to the dream. The dream was so “realistic” that it fooled your body into responding. Any thought that is focused on exclusively has the ability to affect our bodies so. In fact a routine aspect of an athlete’s training regimen might include a process of visualisation that is so focused that the same kind of micro-muscular movements happen spontaneously. This is called an ideomotor response. Michel Eugene Chevreul was the first modern scientist to "discover" the ideomotor response. At the turn of the 19th century there was much interest in dowsing pendulums for finding water. This interest was taken to one extreme by a Professor Gerboin of Strasbourg, who attempted to use them to analyse chemicals. In 1812 Chevreul researched this phenomenon and discovered that suspending a pendulum over a bowl of mercury would indeed cause the pendulum to move "spontaneously". This reaction was absent when a plate of glass was placed between the bowl and the pendulum. To eliminate operator error, he conducted a double blind trial, where an assistant would remove and replace the glass plate without his knowledge. When he did this, there was no reaction at all in the pendulum. Thus Chevreul concluded that the phenomenon was caused by involuntary muscle movements of the hand induced by the operators own mental processes. This simply means that a thought or idea will cause the tiny micro-muscular movements to occur. This is picked up and amplified by the pendulum (or dowsing stick or any other device you happen to be using) to produce this astonishing effect. In hypnosis we can use this effect to interact with the unconscious mind. Whilst it is possible to suggest to a person that they talk whilst deep in trance, there is something about the process that makes speech a little more difficult and hypnotic subjects often need to be taught how to speak in trance without reorienting to an ordinary state of consciousness. To bypass this inconvenience, you can allow the unconscious mind to express itself directly through non-verbal signals such as the pendulum, head nods or finger signalling. In time such signals become a little more obsolete because you learn to read the spontaneous unconscious BMIRs more accurately. Until then using finger signals is a good way to make sure you have unconscious cooperation!


Unconscious Finger Signals To establish unconscious finger signals is quite straight forward. It is a little difficult to demonstrate this in a written context, but most people can produce unconscious signals within a few minutes. The following process should help with this: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Induce trance: lets assume that you have hypnotised your client to a reasonable level. You want to make sure that his conscious attention will not interfere by either trying to hard or actually responding with a conscious movement of the finger. An unconscious movement is quite distinct from a consciously lifted finger. Those of you who have already witnessed the slight jerky motions the unconscious tends to create will know what I mean. Revivify unconscious motion experiences: remind the client in trance that she has had many occasion in the past where she experienced unconscious movements: avoiding an accident, catching a falling object, jerking the hand away from something hot – like a pot or a cigarette. In all these situations something moved the hand before she even knew what was happening. The unconscious needed to do that to protect her. Now would be a good time to do something similar. Set up instruction: give the unconscious a choice as to which finger it wishes to move, spontaneously, unconsciously, to signal a “yes” response. It could be any finger on the left hand or the right hand. And you can be curious about which finger will be chosen by the unconscious to do that. Suggest action: tell the unconscious mind to “go ahead and move that “yes” finger NOW!” It is important that you phrase this carefully, particularly when you get to asking for a “no” response. Observe the client carefully for where the motion might be. On a few rare occasions, the unconscious decides to play a different game and signals using a different system – a change in breathing, flushing of the skin, a movement of a foot. If that happens, take it in your stride. When you get a response THANK the unconscious for doing so. Be polite! Repeat for NO: repeat the process to get a no response. When asking for the no response it is vital that you are careful with your language. Saying “go ahead and lift that “no” finger NOW” would work fine. But if you say “could you please lift the “No” finger now?” – the literal answer might be YES, I can move it! The unconscious takes everything very literally, so it is important to be precise about what you ask or suggest. Otherwise, you can see how a novice might get a little confused by what he thinks is a strange response. End trance: before you end the trance make sure you cancel all suggestions, like that the fingers can talk to you on their own!


Ending Trance When you end any trance experience there are certain things that you should always remember to do in order to ensure that your client has the best possible experience with you.

Close Loops If you used Multiple Embedded Metaphors in your trance process, do remember to close all your loops in order to give someone a “complete” experience. Whilst it might be OK to leave certain loops open, thereby creating an unconscious drive to seek something more (more fun, more enthusiasm, more pleasurable things… those are nice things to keep your mind on the lookout for), there are certain loops that should really be closed. I know of at least one person that left a hypnotic seminar (not mine) early without saying anything. He felt a little “unusual” for some time. One day he decided to have an existential crisis, left town and sat on the mountain for a month to find himself again. It appears that he left part of himself behind in that seminar (luckily he is fine now).

Cancel Suggestions This is particularly important if you are doing experimental hypnotic work, if you are utilising deep trance phenomena or work with parts therapeutically. You have to make sure that everything you suggest is reversed (apart from the therapeutic effect if you are doing therapy!) even if it seems like the client did not respond to the suggestion. Sometimes there is a significant time lag between suggestion and the activation of that suggestion. You do not want someone to be driving home and suddenly find their arm becoming paralysed! If you are working with parts, then remember to re-integrate them into the complete personality. Otherwise the splintered personality can begin to create all kinds of strange side effects (like my friend who had to go and sit on a mountain to try and “find himself” again).


Self-Esteem Boosting Suggestions At the end of the trance experience, as the person is emerging from trance and particularly just after they have emerged and are still reorienting themselves to the room, that person is hyper-suggestible. This would be a very good time to make all kinds of general suggestions about their life improving, them having a fantastic time, learning new things, finding things are getting easier and easier etc. The traditional hypnotic patter for awakening someone might look something like this: in a moment I am going to count from one to five… at the count of five you will return to the room… you will feel refreshed, alert and simply fantastic.. you will feel like you have taken a bath in a cool, crisp, fresh mountain stream… completely invigorated from head to foot… so as I count from one to five… you’ll get more and more alert with each number… one, more and more alert… two your mind feeling refreshed, your body relaxed and more alert… three, and all the wonderful things you have to look forward to.. four, almost there now your unconscious is doing a wonderful job of helping you develop and transform… so as the days and the weeks and the months go by you feel better about yourself… about the people around you and the whole world… in fact things that used to be a problem… just won’t seem as big a deal any more… so ready to meet that future FIVE… eyes open, wide awake, ready to rock and roll!

Future Pace Results During this emergence process it would also be a good idea to future pace the results of whatever therapeutic or goal getting kind of work you have done. So as part of the process you can describe the kind of good things that they can expect to experience in the future as their lives improve and all manner of positive things seem to occur. Feel free to go to town on this one. It is a lovely parting gift to give to people and can only do them some good.


The Meta-Pattern of ALL Change59 There is something that occurs in every change technique, whether or not that change process is a formal pattern of NLP. This process of change mirrors the way in which people naturally overcome problems – usually so easily that they are not even aware that they are doing it! This is called the Meta-Pattern of change. It is very useful to know this pattern, because once you understand it, you will not only understand all the NLP “techniques” far better, you will have the freedom to create your own techniques to fit the requirements of the situation. The pattern is this: 1.

Associate to Problem: the first step is to associate the client into the problem. You have to activate the problem neurology so that the solution has somewhere to attach to. Having a solution free floating in space in of little value because it does not “kick in” in the problem context!

2.

Dissociate: next you need to dissociate the client from the problem. Remember state dependant learning? If the client stays “in the problem”, he will block himself from his personal resources. Without access to resources he is stuck with the problem. Catch 22!

3.

Associate to Resource(s): now that the client is free to access resourceful states, strategies and harness the creative genius of the unconscious, it is time to access a powerful state that will overload the problem neurology and blow it out. Associate the client to it fully.

4.

Collapse Anchors: the final step is to do a collapse anchors between the resource and the problem. This blows out the problem neurology so that the same triggers that used to set off the problem, now fire off the solution instead.

That is it! When you think about it, the visual squash, swish, 6 step reframe and all the other techniques all boil down to these common elements. The visualisations, frames and processes are just ways of achieving an association, dissociation, collapse anchors etc. In fact, John Grinders formulation of the “New Code” for NLP strips everything down to these essential elements and gets rid of all the padding, posturing and framing that has been placed around the “old” or formal NLP patterns.

59

My thanks go to John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn for teaching me this most insightful of patterns. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 164 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

A Basic Structure for Hypnotherapy A therapy session can, and maybe even should, take on an almost infinite amount of shapes and guises. Sessions are there to achieve a result and anything that will allow that to happen (within a framework of ecology (i.e. the study of the consequences) and ethics) is to be encouraged. This does not help the novice therapist much. She does not necessarily even know what a therapy session should look like. Whilst she might be familiar with (and be convinced of the power of) the therapeutic patterns, it all has to happen within some kind of context. What should that context be? The following basic structure is designed to act as guide, especially for those that are still new to the experience. This guide is not set in stone. It is not sacrosanct. It should be used insofar as it is useful, and ignored if it gets in the way of creating a therapeutic benefit. Never sacrifice the reality of a situation to a given theory or dogmatic expression! The basic structure of a therapeutic session is: 1.

Therapeutic Preparation

2.

Interview Client

3.

Identify what Chunk to work on

4.

Induce Trance

5.

Changework Patterns

6.

Test & Future Pace

7.

End Trance

8.

Task and Dismiss

I will discuss each of these headings more fully in the next few pages.


Therapeutic Preparation The therapist is the tool through which the process of therapy is expressed. As a therapist, you need to make sure that you, as a tool, are ready for the task you are about to perform. A surgeon will clean his tools after use, store them well, sharpen and hone them and disinfect them before using them again. As a therapist you should be doing the same thing with your own mental processes. After each session you must clear your mind, break your state so that you do not carry around with you your client’s problems. Taking on board their problems is not only unhealthy for you, it can also contaminate what you do with other clients. Not only should you take time to “clean” your tools, they also need to be stored away – so do not overanalyse your practice. It is good to learn from mistakes and take time to review your caseload from time to time to spot patterns. That way you can do more of the impactful stuff and less of the things that hinder progress. But do have a life outside of your therapy clinic! Your tools should also be kept honed. That means using your skill sets regularly with clients (and yourself!). It means remembering the NLP presuppositions and other frames that allow you to view the world in a unique way that makes you a better therapist. It means living by the four keys to excellence (PACE) so that your own skills continue to grow and you enhance your impact on the clients. Finally, you must manage your own state! If you have learned hypnosis or NLP from a reputable trainer, you should be able to enter a very special state of awareness in which you are observant of the client, are respectful of his model of the world and trust your own unconscious signals about what you should do next. You need the state to access your therapeutic own insights and resources!

Meet and Greet Meeting and greeting your client well will allow you to do many things at once. This is the stage in which you get to build rapport, trust and comfort, with your client. You need to be comfortable within yourself, be in your “therapeutic state” and project a sense of warmth and confidence that the client can rely on. You also have a chance to spot patterns of behaviour that occur naturally, before they get too absorbed in “telling you about their problem”. It is a very useful time to get a feel for the client. At this time you get to make an impact on the client as well: are you an expert in what you do. Some people like to fill their office with certificates and awards to create “social proof” for the client to believe in. Erickson would often have patients The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 166 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

wait for him extended periods of time so that they could observe, and be influenced by, other patients emerging trance-formed from their experience inside his office.

Interview Client The formal interview can now begin. During the interview you will be doing several things: gathering information about the problem, investigation possible resources you can utilise, spotting patterns and challenging presuppositions that are limiting the client’s choices. Some of the skills you will be employing time and again are: 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

Calibration: you will need to be very aware of the client and her responses. You will be testing both conscious and unconscious responses so you have a rich tapestry of the client’s IRs in front of you. Rapport: this is something else that is ongoing throughout the session. Investigate Problem: when does it happen, where does it happen, what triggers it, how did it start, what other events occurred around the time the problem first started, how often does it occur, how long does it last, when does it NOT occur, what strategy are they running (TOTE). Use the Meta Model to get a very specific and clear understanding of what is happening. Challenge Problem: it is a good idea to start to challenge or bring into question (seeding doubt) the presuppositions and beliefs the client has about the world. Your use of the Meta Model as well as of therapeutic presuppositions and Milton Model language patterns here means that you might “accidentally” blow out the problem there and then! Even if you do not you will have achieved two things. Firstly, you will have “loosened the concrete” by sowing doubt about problem beliefs and attitudes which later on can be turned into full blown changes. Secondly you will have more information about the problem to work with. Formulate Outcome: at this stage you also need to get an idea of what the client wants. Use SMART goals and/or the well formedness conditions to construct therapeutic outcomes with the client. Investigate Resources: get a fuller picture of the client’s life and what resources she has that could be useful to make the changes she wants. This includes finding potential leverage points as in the clients positive beliefs, values, commitments, experiences, support groups etc.

Identify what Chunk to work on The next step is to sift through all the information you have gathered and decide what you can usefully work through given the time you have available and the client’s current capacity for change. Some client’s are capable of making tremendous changes in one sitting, others need to take baby steps until their neurology feels “secure” with the process of change itself.


Induce Trance Next you either formally or informally induce a trance in the client. Hypnotherapy, by definition, is done in trance. However on some occasions you might actually prefer to keep the client out of trance – or at least out of a formal trance – in order to take the next therapeutic step that is needed. Changework Patterns Some of the fundamental Changework patterns for hypnotherapy have been covered in the NLP Techniques section. These are by no means the only processes open to hypnotherapy. All of the NLP techniques (anchoring, reframing, submodality interventions etc) can be used just as easily during an official trance process. In fact I believe (but you don’t have to agree) that all NLP techniques presuppose trance anyway. The fact that your client is engaging in the process will actually induce a trance all by itself! So technically the NLP techniques are hypnotherapy techniques! You can also use stories, metaphors and strategy interventions during your trancework. These stories can reframe the problem, create metaphorical resolutions, anchor or collapse anchors, shift submodalities indirectly or install new strategies. Metaphors are very versatile vehicles for therapy and change! Other patterns of hypnosis are constantly being invented and discovered. In time, I hope that you will discover your own patterns and approaches. It is always good to take a field forwards. That can only be done through the efforts, insights and experimentation of the practitioners in that field. Remember that you now have the Meta Pattern of all change. That means you know the “well formedness conditions” for creating new and effective therapeutic patterns of your own devising!

Test & Future Pace Testing your work is important. If the therapy is to fall apart, the best place for that to happen is in the session with you. That way you can do something about it. The more rigorously you test it the better. Encourage your client to try and have the problem again (be careful that you avoid using language the actually re-installs the problem though!!) if they can. The ultimate test, of course, is to put the client in the actual situation that was a problem in the first place. If someone has a fear of heights, take them somewhere high up to see their reactions! If you cannot do it in real life, at least test it in their imagination! Future pacing is simply rehearsing future contexts in which the problem would have arisen in the past. You want the natural anchors of the situation to spontaneously trigger the solution. Future pacing allows that to happen. You can also encourage the client to generalise the change by the use of language and suggestion during a future pace. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 168 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

End Trance The mechanics for ending trance have already been covered. Do however remember that the client is most suggestible immediately before and immediately after emerging from trance. So it is a good idea to make general positive suggestions throughout that entire period! As a rule it is good to compliment the client on how well she did whilst in trance. Clients who do not know what to expect from hypnosis may not know that the experience they had was the right one. You want to avoid the possibility that they self suggest failure because they did not have the “hypnotic experience” that they think they “should” have had! You should also avoid suggesting problems to the client. A typical mistake from a novice hypnotist is to end the trance process and then look at their client with an air of concern (a non-verbal suggestion that something went wrong). Sometimes they even ask a leading question like “Was that ok? Did it work for you?” etc. The client needs to have faith in the therapist. After all, it is the therapist’s job to believe in the client unconditionally in contexts in which the client has forgotten how to believe in himself! Finally, you do not want the client to unpick the therapy, so it is a good idea to distract her at the end of the session. Some distractors include talking about the weather, commenting on some general event that is happening in the world at that time or pointing out a feature in the room. These can be introduced completely randomly, without explanation (the slight confusion this might induce is actually useful). Alternatively you could start a thread of conversation before the therapy and finish the same thread at the end of the session as though nothing had happened in between. This approach often leads to the client becoming totally amnesic of the entire session. They only remember the brief conversation they had before leaving. The unconscious will then have a free hand to put the therapeutic suggestions into action!

Task & Dismiss At the end of the session you may want to give the client certain tasks to do in order to assist whatever therapeutic approach you have decided on for her. These tasks can be the same as the ones discussed under “The Structure of Coaching” in the next section. The principles discussed there apply equally in the context of hypnotherapy. Finally it is time to release the client back into the world. The end conversation is also an opportunity to check the client has emerged fully from trance so that she is capable of functioning properly and safely in the outside world! You do not want a client who is half asleep in trance driving away from your practice!


NLP Coaching Coaching – v – Therapy Coaching and Therapy are both activities that take place in the same general territory. Their mandates intertwine and, whilst many coaches would deny this, many coaching situations have a therapeutic effect or enter therapeutic territory. Likewise many therapeutic techniques will make use of coaching practices as a tool for change. The purpose of both coaching and therapy is to make positive changes in the way the client feels, lives and interacts with others. That is the bottom line. In the past one might have said that therapy looked backwards (into the past and the causes of problems), whilst coaching looked forward into the future. But that is no longer the case: therapy has branched into the future with such approaches as brief therapy, goal oriented therapy, the solution focus paradigm etc. A good therapist will also be a coach to her clients. A good coach will simply help the client transform situations that are not overly complex and uses certain tools to do that. A coach without any therapeutic training simply lacks other, deeper tools for personal change and so cannot engage in dealing with more serious problems like drug/alcohol abuse, emotional trauma, depression etc (and probably would not want to anyway). The distinction between the two categories is almost moot. Whether you are a coach or you are a therapist you are ethically constraint to only take on clients with problems that you have the knowledge and/or experience to help with. Anyone else should be referred on to a coach or a therapist that specialises in that particular area. Most coaches could not help a person overcome the fear, trauma and self-esteem issues created by bullies (either when they were younger or in a current context like the workplace). Likewise, most therapists would be quite useless if they tried to help a young entrepreneur start a successful business or rescue a failing one. Their areas of specialisation are simply different! Having said all this, there is a simple way to distinguish between therapy and coaching. It is a historical fact that the field of “coaching” has developed an almost unified technology or paradigm for coaching. Just as the “Meta Pattern of Change” can be found in all therapeutic techniques, so you will find a common structure to all coaching models that are currently in existence. This section will explore the role of a coach and the structure she would use which is distinct from the therapeutic process we have already examined.


The Role of the Coach A therapist is a guide for his clients. A coach, however, is a facilitator more than a guide. That means it is the coach’s responsibility to not-solve the client’s problems for him, but to trust sufficiently in her creativity that the right kind of questions will lead him to find the best possible answer for him. A coach’s role is to believe in and support her client. The coach will need to create a relationship of trust and mutual respect, because at times she will have to be blunt with the feedback she gives. The client has to know that that feedback is in his own best interest. He will also have to trust his coach enough to be open about things going on in his life which have an impact on the coaching process. The client is responsible for creating the change he wants. The coach knows that the client has all the resources he needs to get the results he wants, so it is the coach’s role to focus her client’s mind on what he is experiencing, thinking and feeling in such a way as to lead him to generating the ideal solution. This is a very evenly balanced relationship: a partnership in change. The coach ends up acting a little like a mirror reflecting the truth of the situation back at the client so he can recognise what is happening without distorting the image in his own mind. One of the most fundamental skills in coaching is the ability to ask questions. An elegant coaching session might involve the coach asking only a handful of highly focused questions, and the client doing all the actual talking! There is an infinite variety of the kinds of questions you can ask. As a rule questions should either empower the client or challenge a rigid mindset. The Meta Model is ideal for that latter function. Questions are very powerful. Your mind cannot help but answer a question. But your mind will answer the question you asked, not the one you should have asked. The questions you ask will presuppose either an empowering or debilitating reality for you. The direction a question focuses your mind in is crucial. The Meta Model is so powerful because the underlying presupposition is: “you are at cause, you are doing this so you can change it!” Likewise a debilitating question assumes that you are stuck: “why do I always fail?!?” will get you an answer that increases the likelihood of failure. As a coach you must learn to understand and to use questions elegantly. We will look a little more at the core coaching questions later on.


A Basic Structure for Coaching The basic structure for a coaching session will have many similarities with the structure of a therapeutic session – they are both about creating change after all. Whilst therapy branches off into therapeutic patterns of change, coaching specialises in asking powerful questions. These questions help the client construct new realities (through goal setting/challenging rigid mindsets), create personal transformation and task him to engage in the process of working toward that reality (remember the PACE formula). The following structure is yet again just another guide, a useful tool for a coach to try on for size. If it helps to make a session easier to run and/or more impactful, then it has served its purpose well. If it does not discard it and find a better model/guide. The basic structure for coaching is: 1.

Prepare

2.

Meet, Greet and Review

3.

The Coaching Questions

4.

General Information Gathering

5.

SMART Goals

6.

Honing the Client’s Thinking

7.

Tasking

8.

Getting Commitment from the Client

9.

End Session

We will look at each phase a little more closely in the next pages.


Prepare Like a therapist, a coach relies heavily on his ability to calibrate the client and see what is happening in the moment. This means that he has to have his perceptual filters open and “clean”. The NLP presuppositions we covered under Frames are just as valuable here as in the therapeutic context. They help the coach keep his belief in the client and flag up potential areas to challenge the client on (directly or indirectly). Also, as with the therapist, the coach should develop a special state of awareness for use during his coaching session. This state will allow him access to his own resources, to a deeper form of listening and to the wisdom and creativity that the unconscious has to offer.

Meet, Greet and Review The coach will be meeting with her client regularly, either in person or on the telephone. This is a good time to establish or deepen rapport and to create a “coaching space”: a time marked out from the daily routine as uniquely dedicated to the client’s development. The additional step that a coach will be taking during this phase is the review. Clients that are in the middle of a coaching relationship will have committed to doing certain things as a way of creating stepping stones into the future or a way of increasing skills, knowledge, experience or insight into their situation. It is the Coach’s responsibility to check with her clients that they did in fact follow through with their commitments. The review format can follow the PACE equation: • • • •

make sure the client knows what they are trying to achieve (Purpose), check the client is not getting stuck in a pattern (Adaptable) ensure the client gets appropriate feedback about his performance and learns from it (Calibrate) confirm that the client has taken action (Engage)!

The review phase is also an opportunity for the client to give feedback on how the coaching process is working for him and bring up any areas of concern so that adjustments can be made.


The Coaching Questions At the start of each session, you must make sure that you set up a context for that session. At the very first session with a client the coach will want to set up parameters like: • • • •

what can the client expect from coaching/her coach, what the coach expects from his client. how, when and where the coaching sessions will take place, getting some background information on the client and her situation.

Then near the beginning of each subsequent coaching session (after the Meet, Greet and Review has been done) the coach should ask the two golden questions of 60 coaching : What would you like to work through today? How will you know when you are done? The first of the two questions sets up the Coaching Frame, the context in which the session will be played out. The second question creates an exit strategy: clients need to know when they are done so they know when to have a feeling of accomplishment. It is also useful so you, the coach, know when you should stop.

General Information Gathering Once the Coaching Frame has set up the parameters for that session, it is time to explore the territory you have agreed on. The Meta Model will be an invaluable tool here. You can hone into specific details, challenge presuppositions, help the client empower himself and recover choice. At the same time it is useful to explore potential resources the client has. Find out if they have faced a similar situation before – or if they know someone that successfully navigated a similar stretch of water. Also find out what, if anything, they have tried in the past to resolve the problem (including their internal strategies). This will tell you a lot about what the client should no longer do! Finally a coach can help her client to analyse and dissect the situation so he fully appreciates the potential obstacles in his way. This will also generate useful information so the client can better grasp the consequences of any action agreed on later. 60

Again my thanks goes to John Overdurf & Julie Silverthorn for showing me these questions. They are a very elegant way of setting up a session! The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 174 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

SMART Goals The next step is to help the client create some goals for her to aim for. Goals can be broken up into different chunk sizes: • • •

small immediate goals that can be accomplished between sessions, slightly larger, intermediate, goals that may take a few weeks or months to complete, and an overarching long term goal which sets the context for the whole coaching relationship.

These goals can be formulated using the NLP Well Formed Outcomes conditions or the condensed SMART goals covered in the Outcomes section. As a reminder here is the SMART formula again: • • • • •

Specific Measurable Affect Realistic Timed

Honing the Client’s Thinking As soon as you have agreed on a game plan, whether it is short term or a longer term thing, the client will have to start thinking about the implications of that goal and the kind of behaviours she will have to engage in to get a good result. In the process of doing this the client may come up against personal barriers, limiting beliefs, self doubt, thinking blocks and misinterpretations of what is happening. It is the coach’s task to focus the client’s mind and have hear think more clearly. The Meta Model is again a great tool for this. Challenging the assumptions the client has made can go a long way towards creating a positive frame of mind and generating better solutions that will help the client achieve her goals. Another useful tool is that of “reflecting back” to the client the things she is saying. This kind of reflection gets the client to look at herself and her situation again and see whether or not she has been distorting things in such a way that she created many of the obstacles she thought she was facing! This is also a good time for the coach to encourage and support her client. She can help her client to think big when she needs to, and bring her back down to earth for the details when that is appropriate. The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 175 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

Tasking Tasking is a method that coaches can use in order to help the client take steps in the right direction. Tasking is all about giving the client experience in some way. A typical task might involve breaking a goal down into manageable stepping chunks which you ask the client to work through. It might also include getting the client to learn new skills that she will need in the days ahead. The more experiences the client has to draw from, the more resources she has to throw at (and ultimately solve) her problems! There are two kinds of tasks that a coach can set: linear and non-linear. Each type of task has a different purpose and gives the client a different kind of experience. At the heart of tasking lie two questions: Where are you now? Where do you want to be? These give you a start point and a destination. You can help the client fill in the space between these questions with stepping stones that will safely get the client from A to B. Linear Tasking Linear tasks are quite straight forward. The client usually generates these himself. Once you have asked the two fundamental tasking questions, you can challenge the client to create bite-sized stepping stones that will get him from the beginning to the end. Here are a few example of what such stepping stones might look like: •

Make 10 calls to clients just to “catch up” in the next week – purpose: business relationship management.

•

Call printers and get quotes for a print job by Tuesday – purpose: breaks down larger task, like marketing a new course, into manageable pieces.

•

Play exclusively with your children for 30 minutes each day – purpose: create work/life balance and nurture a healthy family.

•

Take John aside on Friday and talk through/settle the argument from last week, being respectful of both his point of view and your needs – purpose: conflict resolution.


Non-linear Tasking Non-linear tasking is a form of tasking that comes close to being a therapeutic technique. Whereas linear tasking is all about conscious insight and control, nonlinear tasking focuses on unconscious learning. In fact the idea is to make it so that the conscious mind is left a little in the dark as to the ultimate purpose. This is particularly useful in cases where the client has rigid opinions or beliefs that prevent her from moving forwards or recognising the essence of a given type of situation. Non-linear tasking is very valuable in situations where the client gets in her own way constantly, for example if she keeps trying too hard and failing as a result. It is also useful for secretly developing a skill or resource in the client which she can use to solve a particular problem that has persistently “stumped” her. The key question to ask yourself in non-linear tasking is: What experience(s) does the client need to have in order to create the Resource of Belief she needs in the current situation? Here are some examples of non-linear tasks in action: •

Go and write the report (or do your homework etc) but when you do it make sure you make as many mistakes as possible! Purpose: this is a paradoxical task to alleviate performance anxiety (fear of making mistakes!) and create a context for natural learning.

•

Go and sit in the park and watch the way dogs play with each other. Pay particular attention to the way they behave when they first meet and consider how that applies to this situation. Purpose: to create an appreciation of the importance of social cues in interactions – some create conflict others trust and comfort. Also good to teach playfulness!

•

Here is a questionnaire. Go and interview 100 women and ask them these questions. [The questionnaire asks questions like “do you prefer it when a man smiles, frowns or has a neutral expression when you first meet him?” and “do you prefer it when people make eye contact when they talk to you?”] Purpose: for a shy man that wants to get into a relationship. He needs to learn to approach and talk with women in a natural way. The questionnaire achieves a few things. Firstly it gets him doing the behaviour he was afraid of without drawing attention to the fact (he thinks he has to do a social study). Secondly, the questions can be about the kind of communication errors the man makes so that he learns to adjust his behaviour without having to be told explicitly.


Getting Commitment from the Client Getting the client to commit to and follow through on his allotted tasks is a vital step in the coaching process. Almost every society conditions its members to honour their public commitments, i.e. if you say you’ll do something you must do it as others may be relying on you. It is a deeply ingrained psychological factor in us. This is useful in the coaching context. The mere fact that your client is promising you to do something, means that he is more likely to do it. It is much harder to break your word to someone else that it is to break a promise to yourself. If you think the client might refuse a certain task, but it is clearly something very important for his continued development, there are a few tactics that you can employ to get that commitment more easily. The first thing you can do is leverage off an important value (towards motivation) or jump to a negative consequence of not doing something (away from motivation). For example, a client has to do his tax returns but keeps delaying it. If you ask him to commit straight away, he may go into a kind of denial where he simply does not want to know. In that case you might challenge him to follow through to the consequences of that action, to the worst case scenario. He will naturally arrive at a very unpleasant situation. There are strong emotions involved, which can be harnessed for motivation. When he rejects that worst case scenario, he can orient into the positive consequences of completing the task (peace of mind). After running him through this chain his mind will be more open to accepting the task. Another way to find leverage is known as the contrast principle. If I ask you to give me £10, you may refuse because it is a lot of money. But if I ask you for £1000 first and then settle for £10, it is much more likely that you will agree. It is a significantly smaller loss to you, in relative terms. So when tasking someone, you can sometimes ask them to commit to an extreme task, just so they refuse. When you ask them to commit to a lesser, though still tough task, they are more likely to agree!

End Session When the session comes to an end simply recap the highlights and maybe get the client to recap what he has taken from that session. Then future pace him to look forward to your next meeting.


Additional Submodalities Checklists Visual Motion/Still Colour/B&W Location Associated/Dissociated Framed/Panoramic Large/Small Near/Far away Focused/Blurred Bright/Dim 3D/Flat Auditory Location of Sound Tone Tempo Volume Duration Pitch Pace Rhythm Kinaesthetic Location (in body) Breathing Rate Shape Size Temperature Movement Weight Pressure Texture Olfactory/Gustatory Sweet/Sour Salty Bitter Aroma Intensity


Submodalities Checklist Visual Motion/Still Colour/B&W Location Associated/Dissociated Framed/Panoramic Large/Small Near/Far away Focused/Blurred Bright/Dim 3D/Flat Auditory Location of Sound Tone Tempo Volume Duration Pitch Pace Rhythm Kinaesthetic Location (in body) Breathing Rate Shape Size Temperature Movement Weight Pressure Texture Olfactory/Gustatory Sweet/Sour Salty Bitter Aroma Intensity






Conversational Hypnosis

"Rebel Psychiatrist’s Amazing Secret Lets You Put People Under Your Spell Quickly and Easily … and Get Them to Do Anything You Want!" Now you can unleash your natural ability to... • • • • • • •

Influence anyone to follow your lead Get clients and customers to happily buy more Negotiate with stellar success Compel colleagues to do what you suggest Get just about anyone to say “Yes” Convince children and teens to obey your instructions Keep your lover(s) eternally loyal And best of all, they will thank you for the opportunity to do as you say.

Dear Reader, If you want to take your hypnosis skills to the next level then this may be the most important quick letter you’ve ever read… Milton Erickson was the greatest hypnotist of all time. What made his hypnosis so powerful was that he had spent almost 60 years learning to hypnotize his subjects without them knowing it…. and hypnotizing them inside of a normal-seeming conversation.

You may ask, “Why would a psychiatrist spend his entire life learning how to hypnotize people without them knowing it … by using normal conversation in hypnotic ways?” It’s because…. It Was Illegal For Doctors To Use Hypnosis… Even though Milton Erickson had been a college professor, doctor, and psychiatrist…. it was still against the American Medical Association rules and regulations to use hypnosis with patients.


Everyone knew that hypnosis had amazing power. Erickson thought that it was just this power that made the establishment ban its use. So Milton Erickson spent a lifetime perfecting the skills that allowed him to take hypnotic control of his patients by just “talking to them”. It was the only way he could keep his license to practice medicine!

arranged to fly out with both the president and another board member. The atmosphere was strained and difficult for the first moments of the boarding and the flight. But soon the two board members started to have strong feelings of rapport and respect for Dr. Erickson.

There are literally thousands of stories of what Dr. Erickson accomplished through conversational hypnosis, but I’d like to tell you just one.

And the more he “talked” …. in that special way of his …. his companions got more comfortable …. and more relaxed…. and more relaxed….. and still more comfortable … until…

How Conversational Hypnosis Saved A Maverick Doctors License And Changed The USA’s Laws About Hypnosis

The Two Grey-haired AMA Officials Just Listened With Glazed Eyes And Agreed To Everything...

In 1953 the American Medical Association caught wind of the fact that the renegade psychiatrist Dr. Erickson was doing hypnosis with his patients. They scheduled a “disciplinary hearing” in New York where he was to be stripped of his license, his livelihood, and send home in shame.

By the time the 3 doctors got off the plane, they were all fast friends. The hearing, instead of being a professional massacre, had all the charges dropped against Dr. Milton Erickson. The Very Next Year, The AMA Reversed Itself And Allowed Doctors To Use Hypnosis!

Milton Erickson knew that the president of the AMA lived in Los Angeles.

That’s the power of Conversational Hypnosis.

He found out when the president would be flying to New York, and he

And when you learn the same simple but powerful techniques, you


will be able to put people under your spell, and easily get them to do what you want too! That’s why I’m very excited to announce my brand new and

revolutionary 16 CD “Power of Conversational Hypnosis” program. This program is the most advanced conversational hypnosis program currently available in the world!

See what this senior member of the Ericksonian Foundation says about my groundbreaking work… “Even after 40 years of studying hypnosis, I am impressed with Ledochowski’s contribution to the field.” Dr, Daniel Araoz, American Board of Professional Hypnosis, Professor of Mental Health Counseling at long Island University Director Emeritus of the Long Island Institute of Ericksonian Hypnosis

The Course Contains:• • • •

The 12 CD Main Program 4 Bonus CDs 4 Special Conversational Hypnosis Blueprints The 600+ Page Manual & Complete Transcripts "Igor Is A World Class Hypnotist"

"Igor Ledochowski is a world-class hypnotist, coach, and NLP trainer. "He has greatly helped my company using cutting-edge models of language and behavior to take our live programs to the next level." Nick Kho President of Real Social Dynamics Los Angeles , California , USA The materials in this manual and the accompanying audio seminar are © Street Hypnosis™ 185 www.StreetHypnosis.com -- All Rights Reserved

"Its Like Magic...Absolutely Amazing Results" “Igor is the definitive expert on the mind, on fast results, and a genius in the field of subconscious influence and change. "He influences you consciously and subconsciously to release an impressive potential in people. "Its like magic: he gets absolutely amazing results! If you want to work with the best work with him!! "But be warned: he gets exceptional results by doing exceptional things... sometimes unusual things happen when you are around him.” David Taylor, Global Leadership Expert, Author Of The Bestselling “The Naked Leader!" www.nakedleader.com

Get Your Copy Here…

www.conversational-hypnosis.com You’ll find more information on the course there as well. I’m looking forward to hearing about your success with NLP & Hypnosis, Igor Ledochowski


SHM-Special-NLP-Manual.pdf

Recommend Documents