Through the Wall
photo by Immanuel Giel, Wikipedia Commons
Her name is Bojana, which she tells me is as common in her homeland of Serbia as Mary or Jennifer would be in the US. Her English is quite good but she apologizes for it anyway with a nervous laugh.
We talk for a little bit to help settle her down. I keep an eye on the Skype window, though, to remind myself that while it may only be early evening for me it’s well after midnight in Serbia. Soon enough Bojana seems to be relaxing a bit. It’s time to begin.
The induction goes well. I can hear her breathing slow and deepen and her verbal responses take on that dreamy tone that confirms she’s making good progress. We transition into a brief deepener, a countdown disguised as a walk down a corrider inside her mind (an image I shamelessly borrow from Terence Watts). And then, because Bojana had asked for this session because she was having difficulty reaching beyond a moderate trance depth on her own, I move on to my favorite deepening exercise, which I learned from Brian David Phillips. The method involves having the client imagine a control panel with three large knobs or dials, each of which is set to zero now and has 10 positions. The client turns the first knob him/herself, going twice as deep with each click; I turn the second, sending the client three times deeper with each click; and we turn the last one together, going five times deeper with each click.
We get as far as the sixth click on the first dial, then suddenly Bojana stops me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I hit the wall again and came out.” She sounds frustrated and apologetic at the same time.
“It’s perfectly okay,” I tell her, staying in voice, and before she can pull herself out completely I talk her back into trance. She wants it, so it’s not very hard to get her heading back down, but obviously a change in tactics is in order.
Erickson teaches us to use what the client brings to us. Bojana had brought a wall; okay, why not? I tell her to gently allow herself to approach the wall, close enough to touch it, and describe it to me in detail. It’s old, she says. Huge. Made of big, rough stones, like the wall of a castle. Which gives me an idea.
Every castle, I explain to her, is equipped with secret exits so that the ruler can escape in an emergency or sneak soldiers in to recapture a fallen stronghold. I suggest that she feel around the wall, looking for that faint seam or loose stone that, when pressed, causes the secret door to open. We’ve already established that this is her wall, her castle, so she has every right to enter. Bojana feels around for a minute, poking and prodding the wall, and sure enough she discovers a small hole concealing a button. Pressing the button causes part of the wall to open.
Bojana steps inside. Today’s goal has been achieved.
October 28th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
i told you not to use my real name - i really hate it.
oh c’mon, was it that easy for you?
October 28th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
You also said it was very common, so I figured it would be less distinctive than your preferred nickname. But now that you’ve outed yourself, as it were … ;^)
Thanks for letting me share the story.