The Transparent Hypnotist

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.