The Transparent Hypnotist

Photograph by unrelaxeddad(cc)

The morning greeted me harshly. Cat yowled a little too loudly, eye felt scratchy from allergies, and the headaches have returned. Yes, I know, I know, the latter means I am probably not handling my stress as well as I should and so I am working on relieving it. After I finish writing this, I will take my own advice and work on a little self-hypnosis to relieve the pressure.

With all that and an already empty coffee pot, I am thinking about the word snarky. Do I feel snarky or perhaps frowsy? Do I feel the effects of someone else’s snarkiness (leaving me with an empty coffee pot and no refill)? Is it because I am visiting a topic today that some might view as snarky?

The topic? Embedded commands in hypnotism. Jake Shannon mentioned this technique in his answers to the 10 Questions, so I though it would be something else to add to the tool box. Jake – I am not saying you are snarky in the least (unless you want me to ;)), but embedded commands, at least in my mind, are often the black sheep in the NLP world. These are the hidden words in a sentence that make you want to do something you might not normally think about doing. They are often used in sales to influence you to buy something you might not otherwise buy.

However, in the hypnotic realm, they can be especially powerful and helpful. Embedded commands are instructions that bypass the conscious mind and go straight to the subconscious. The interesting thing is to utilize the commands, the person you are trying to influence does not have to be induced into a state of hypnosis. It is used conversationally.

How does it work and how do you use it?

• First, think of something you would like someone else to do (I want you to relax now).

• Make that into a command statement (Relax now).

• Now create a statement that includes those words. The words do not have to be together in the sentence, though I believe they must be chronological (if someone knows otherwise, please let me know) (It would be so nice to relax just about now).  Notice how the words relax now are embedded in that statement.

• Here is where the art of embedding commands comes into play. The command is all in the phrasing of the seemingly innocuous statement (It would be so nice to relax just about now). Whether you lower your voice or make a gesture, when the words “relax” and “now” are spoken, they should feature the same voice tonality or expression. This tonality or expression is different than the rest of the sounds in the sentence. Both words are emphasized. The art is the subtly - how naturally you can pull off the sentence without raising someone else’s conscious awareness to the commands.

Let’s just go with this for now. There is more, but I will save that for part two.

I must go and relax and will leave you with this for now.

Sources:

• Hypnotic Embedded Commands - How They Work
• Using Conversational Hypnosis
• Embedded Commands in Hypnosis

Photograph by linh.ngân

 I am going to take three puffs on this cigarette. With the first puff your eyes are going to get tired, the second puff you’re going to want to close your eyes, but wait until the third puff, at which time close them – from Dave Elman during a teaching session (pre-1967).

Well, I could not really let this week go by without providing you with a few more hammers, screwdrivers, and saws for the old hypnosis tool box. As Ramone reminded us last Friday in his answer to the most fabulous technique that he uses, we must consider the work of hypnotist Dave Elman. Elman is a magic work among hypnotists because he pioneered inductions or ways to help clients access a state of hypnosis.

I am having some trouble actually finding a link to a pure Elman script (I have them in my records, but I must respect the copyright on them). Instead, I though it would be useful to bring back Ellie’s Favorite Five and share with you some decent adaptations of the Elman inductions.

1. David Mason, a transparent hypnotist guest blogger and 10 Question alumni member, has a delightful and concise version of a multi-stage trance induction.
2. Howard Hamilton’s Two Finger Elman Induction (on Joseph Bennett’s web site).
3. Donald Robertson’s Elman Induction.
4. Zali Segal’s The Modified 7 Steps Dave Elman Induction.
5. James Ramey’s Subconscious Override and Complete Anesthesia (I cannot find where I found it, but I read that this induction is based on an Elman). This is a PDF file, by the way.

*Elman quotation from daveelman.com.

As he spoke about the break-up, he looked off into the distance, eyes looking a bit upward to the right. Before his eyes began to leak with painful tears, I handed him a tissue and let him talk.

“Why did she leave me?” he asks, “Why?”

I pause and let the silence speak for me. He blows his nose.

“Why do you think she left?”

What followed were actually a few words I would rather not repeat on this blog. They were mean, showing the rough edges of his anguish. That alone spoke volumes. The amount of blame that issued out of his statements was hard to hear, even for me.

Once that tirade had petered out a bit, I asked, “What was your role in the loss of that relationship?”

His eyes again looked faraway, this time focusing toward a point to his upward left, “My role was that of being betrayed. She was sleeping around with other people.”

Before he could launch into another diatribe, my inner adviser suggested I ask, “Did you ever sleep with anyone else during your relationship?”

He shifted in the chair, again looked up and left, finally denying it. I even detected a slight nodding of the head during his denial.

He never saw it, but I actually smiled inwardly at this, realizing that indeed there might be something to NLP eye cues. These are based on the difference between memory and what is created (the right is remembered, the left is created). Notice the chart above. The eyes look one direction when remembering and another direction when creating content. But the truth for me was not in whether he was lying about his faults in the break-up (we would explore some of that during his hypnosis experience), but in how he processed information.

This is what Mark Pummell was talking about in his answer to his favorite techniques:

…always try and ally to patient’s dominant sense modality…

Why is it important to know about a client’s way of processing information? Well, if a person is not visual and you use guided imagery, well, the client is left behind and usually frustrated. You need to know if a person is more visual, auditory, kinesthetic so that you can help them process the information you give them during the session. If you want to take a client to a pleasant day at the beach, if they are visual, they will get more out of visual descriptions: you see the waves lapping against the shore. If they are auditory: you hear the sound of the surf as it comes and goes with the tides. Or if they are more kinesthetic: you feel the warm of the sand under your feet and the coolness of the water as it playfully laps against your toes. Also, kinesthetic is interesting because it can also encompass thinking. This would be: you think about what it is like being on a beach. Think about the experience of sand, surf, and sunshine.

In early NLP (neuro linguistic programming) circles, the above eye cue chart was thought to help practitioners understand how their clients accessed information - visually, audibly, kinesthetically. However, several studies have been done that seem to show this methodology is not completely accurate. But it is fun to play with (codicil here - this method is for entertainment purposes only).

Now the question becomes how do you tell how a person processes information. Stay tuned. We will continue this discussion in a day or two (after tomorrow’s 10 Questions).

Sources:

Eye Cue Chart
Kevin Hogan’s NLP Research Project

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door - from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven

That line (along with the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells) runs through my mind whenever someone refers to hypnotism techniques that involve tapping. For just a moment, I am not so far removed from that Victorian poet. I can almost feel the black wool of life upon my skin. I can see sitting with pen in hand, the tapping, the knocking of my subconscious mind wanting audience in the form of black bird symbolism.

And then I am drawn to the present as my hand brushes against the heat of my tea cup, and my hands, once tapping upon the keyboard come to rest. The Poe scenario suddenly seems most appropriate for discussing the use of tapping in hypnosis. Last Friday in answering her 10 questions, Rebecca Lauer mentioned using a form of tapping as one of her favorite techniques. She also tied this in with some Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) - the Godiva Chocolate Pattern.

Let us look at the NLP portion first. Basically this allows you to reframe or rethink something you find unpleasant and replace the unpleasant parts with something more pleasant. In this, things you normally put off or do not enjoy can be rethought of as more pleasant. It is like Mary Poppins would say, “A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.” The sugar replaces the unpleasantness of the medication. The new way of thinking helps what was unpleasant seem more more positive.

The video at the beginning of this post explains the Godiva Chocolate Pattern (or if you are more into cut and dry and want the formula, visit icmspak.com). The video is by hypnotist Shlomo Vaknin.

Rebecca took the pattern a little bit farther by adding in the concept of tapping. Tapping is literally tapping. The hypnotist taps on one part of the client’s body (the wrist in Rebecca’s example). This is done to anchor positive or negative feeling to that point in the body. Then another area is chosen (the shoulder), again anchoring another feeling to that spot. Whenever the hypnotist taps on one spot, the idea is that the feelings associated with that area are felt. When the hypnotist stops tapping, the feelings go away. Then there maybe some future-pacing (having the client imagine a time in the future). The hypnotist taps on the spot with the issues, and then taps on the spot with the positive associations asking the client to imagine in the future that the issue feels like the positive association. Then the tapping between the spots goes a little quicker until the client feels the issue is resolved or replaced totally by the positive association.

I first became aware of the tapping idea through articles written by Don Mottin in The Journal of Hypnotism. I have not actually ever used a tapping technique, so, if anyone has anything to offer on this, please share your thoughts. Otherwise, to learn more, I would suggest looking into Don. He has a web site at www.donmottin.com.

This maybe ringing other bells for some of you out there as well. Sounds a bit like the Emotional Freedom techniques, does it not? Guess what we will be discussing in the near future.

 
Photograph by perreira

The library quiet has always been a sanctuary. On the days when I need human contact but do not have the mental energy to truly engage with humanity, the library has always provided a way to meet both of these conditions. There is something wonderful about surrounding one’s self with written words, the smell of printer’s ink and paper. The quiet murmurings of other patrons, the rustle of pages being turned, and now the clicking away of computer keyboards is so very soothing. 

In Friday’s 10 Questions with Paul Nguyen, Paul listed his favorite hypnotic technique as being one that utilizes a library of encyclopedias to discover past lives. To get a feel for how he uses this, I will just quote him:

Basically, I ask a deeply hypnotized client to imagine their entire history as a vast library of encyclopedias, where each volume represents one lifetime. If they are able to see more than one volume (indicating that they have lived many lifetimes), I can ask them to proceed backward from the volume that represents their present life to any previous lifetime. When they open a specific volume, they will be able to see all the important events from that lifetime.

This is a handy tool that is quite valuable for any hypnotist. It can be used for many different issues such as finding any answers to questions as well as potential solutions. Just look have the client look it up in their own encyclopedia.

As I read Paul’s words, I revisited my own library tranquility and felt an instance of recognition. This technique also speaks to a theosophical idea (1). The Hall of Akashic Records. I recently read an article by Peter Russell who describe the word Akasha as a Hindu concept meaning the source of everything (2). For those not familiar with the Hall of Akashic Records, it is reported to exist on another level of consciousness and is a vast, never-ending library of all that was, is and will be. Edgar Cayce fans will recognize the Hall of Akashic Records as where he gleaned all his information to help find cures to peoples mental, spiritual, and physical ills (3).

Sounds very much like Paul’s library, does it not? But…I think Paul is quite brilliant for not using the words Hall of Akashic Records because I can think about several clients I have encountered who would not really appreciate the “New Age” feel of Akasha. It would have put them off a bit and may have even caused a block of some sort. But the flip side is that I have also had several clients who have asked specifically to experience the Hall of Akashic Records. To each his own, I suppose.

Also, for those interested in a journey through the Hall of Akashic Records, regressionist Henry Bolduc, who is a student of Edgar Cayce, has a wonderful hypnosis script to help you appreciate and experience what Edgar Cayce did in his hypnotic journeys. The link is http://www.henrybolduc.com/cayce3.html. If you try this, let me know what you think.

Sources:

• Besant, Annie and Leadbeater, C.W. Man: How, Whence, and Whither? Adyar, India:1913 Theosophical Publishing House
• Russell, Peter. “The Primacy of Consciousness.” Peter Russell: The Spirit of Now. Nov 2004.
• There Is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce

 
Photograph by you-did

Somewhere on some bookshelf of my past, there is a NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) handbook. It is a hardback, well-kept, and treasured. I can see it sitting on the bookshelf and could walk right over to it, coffee in one hand, and pull it out of its resting spot with the other hand. I would like to do that now so I can have a lucid discussion of another handy tool called Eye Movement Integration(tm), but alas, the book is not on my current shelf. I move my eyes up and over as I recall that the bookshelf was in a totally different location from where I currently live or work and that book, where is that book? It is not in the box sitting next to the bookshelf, the one with all the books that will not fit. And for this moment I am desolate. 

Anyway, no point in dwelling. Someday the book will show up again, but that does not help me with today’s posting. Yes, Eye Movement Integration(tm) is indeed the theme, so I will have to go it alone without the book. Are you finding yourself looking back to the 10 Questions with Rebecca Batts and wondering where the reference to EMI was mentioned? No, it was not from Rebecca (whose favorite technique is progressive relaxation and visualization - we can talk about that another time if you would like). I was reminded about EMI in an article I mentioned yesterday on overcoming fear.

EMI as defined by the Free Dictionary (medical) is:

therapy in which the practitioner directs a client to recall a traumatic event, while leading the individual to move the eyes in a particular set of patterns to bring about healing and release from the trauma.

EMI originated in the work of Connirae and Steve Andreas in 1989 and has its foundation more in NLP than hypnosis. It continued in its legacy with the help of Danie Beaulieu, who wrote a book called Eye Movement Integration Therapy: The Comprehensive Clinical Guide. When thinking about eye movement in relation to NLP work, many of us tend to think of it more as a way to monitor another’s thought process, using it an an evaluation tool, rather than as one that is more therapeutic. EMI is the later and is based on the idea that eye movement accesses all the various sensory systems (could we call this reflexology of the eyes?). Guiding the eye movements of the client, the practitioner is able to help the client connect all the senses. With traumatic events, EMI practitioners believe that such occurrences are isolated in a person’s life, which causes all the problems both in actual neurology and thoughts. By incorporating eye moments, all the sensory systems are accessed. Though the event remains in the mind of the client, the goal is to lessen the emotional impact of it.

So how does EMI work?

The client thinks about the fear and responds to it by creating a statement that is the direct opposite of the fear, a statement that encompasses feelings of safety and security. Then the client thinks about the the source of the trauma (the event itself) or the root of their anxiety. As the client thinks about this, the practitioner slowly moves their fingers in front of the client’s eyes and has the client follow the slow movement (2).

The process has been well-described on Interlink, the National Board of Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists:

Finally, change occurs during the EMI procedure because there is a five-way division of attention as the client is being asked to concentrate on the numerous facets of the intervention collectively. First, the client is being encouraged to wrap him/herself in a sense of competence/security which is remembered, accessed and anchored from a past personal experience. Second, he/she is being asked to watch an imagined “younger” self going through a representation of the problematic experience on an imagined movie screen. Third, to bear in mind a desired positive belief and any positive learning the client discovers and wants to preserve into the future. Fourth, the client is being instructed to follow the therapist’s finger, or target, as it is being moved across the plane of the client’s face. Fifth, the client is being asked to scale his/her level of discomfort as a Subjective Unit of Distress (SUD) repeatedly.

Sources:

• Eye Movement Integration Therapy: The Comprehensive Clinical Guide
• (1) NLP Comprehensive book review by Dr Graham Dawes
• (2) NV Daily