I am a huge fan of ancient and historic building and have been a member of the National Trust for some years now.
One of the many thing I love about these buildings are their staircases: massive and expansive main staircases made of ancient oak that has been beautifully polished over decades of occupants and visitors alike treading the stairs one step at a time, running their hands up and down the rails and before that the years of servants polishing and caring for all that wood until it is all but black. The feeling of all the ‘life’ that they have experienced only adds to the feeling of majesty that they generate and even the creak of each uneven board and that wonderful ‘old house’ smell in my nose helps complete the experience.
The grand staircase at Longleat house
There are even a couple of truly magnificent servants’ staircases that I can think of and one in particular that we found on a trip to Normandy, France last year that is made of pink brick (although originally it would have been plastered) which spirals down some four floors with the bricks so beautifully spiralling and arching over the head of the visitor as it traverses each floor of the châteaux that it’s quite breath-taking (see the photo I took of it below):
Some staircases are truly magnificent!
I think that it is because of my love of old houses and their staircases that my preferred deepener for hypnosis is the use of the classic ‘staircase’ deepener and I draw heavily on my personal library of magnificent staircases in order to help my hypnotic subjects create a suitably comfortable and feature-rich imagining which can lead on to whatever is required next.
Why don’t you take a moment now to go inside your memory and find a staircase that you remember well. Spend a minute or two to remember what it looks like looking down the stairs… Why not remember walking down it and the feelings you experienced as you took each step… What was the flooring like to walk on? Is there an echo in the space or just the gentle sound of your clothing rustling? What’s on the walls? Is it paint, wallpaper or are there even pictures? Can you remember running your hand down the hand rail as you descend?
As the hypnotist, I take the trip down the stairs with my subject every time, and every time I find I’m in a relaxed and clear headed state of mind ready to guide them on the next part of their hypnotic journey. I even use it myself on those nights when I’m struggling to get to sleep.
If you’re a fan of stairs, why not checkout the dubiously titled (although perfectly “safe”) www.stairporn.org. I’s not known about it before this post (I was looking for suitable staircase pictures), but it does seem that there are others out there like me who enjoy a good staircase.
If you want some help with anxiety or would just like to relax more, then checkout the linden Method here.
Great Post Ben,
It’s a great way of firing peoples patterns that hypnosis is ‘going under’ or getting ‘deeper and deeper’, there’s a book called that somewhere.
I guess we can’t move away from it now, nor should we if it works, even though intensifying the experience would be a more accurate way of looking at it.
Love the stairs pictures.
Thanks Jon. I know what you mean about intensifying the experience: one could just as easily use an upwards journey to intensify the experience. As you say: If the client expects hypnosis to involve “going deeper” why fight it?
You shouldn’t.