To my delight, he’s also included a whole load of free audio, video and PDF resources to go with it, including his “Hypnosis Without Trance” audio book. Now, I’ve been dying to get my hands on this for some time, so, with a couple of longish train journey coming up, I was relishing the thought of plugging in and getting to grips with hypnotic loops, the hypnotic partnership and the whole HWT thing.

I’m writing this on one of the said train journey’s (thanks to WordPress for iOS) and I have paused the book after only a few chapters.

Why? Because a throw away comment has completely changed my thought and frame of hypnosis and I am brimming with excitement at what this new understanding might mean!

James says that with the idea of traditional hypnosis comes the requirement to have a trance state that you must “deepen” and that this idea limits what hypnotic phenomena you can achieve because certain phenomena require a certain “depth”.

I think that any hypnotist who has actually hypnotised anyone will agree with me that some people don’t need as much depth to achieve things like hallucination while others can’t achieve the relatively simple phenomena of arm levitation despite great depth of trance.

The thing that has got me all excited is the idea that maybe the trance itself is a hypnotic phenomena.

Let that sink in for a moment…

When I consider that as a possibility all sorts of doors that I didn’t know were even there open up!

If trance is a phenomenon, then when we achieve other phenomena, we are actually stacking them together? What if some people can’t stack like that?

What if achieving trance is a convincer for the subject that they’re hypnotised? Or how about the other way round: that because they’re not feeling “tranced” that it’s not working…

If we dispense with the idea of trance as being a required milestone on the way to hypnosis, then engaging in what James calls the “Hypnotic Partnership” with the subject (although clearly I’m going to have to find another word to describe them now) becomes so much easier!

I bet that if budding hypnotists started with this as the frame around which to learn hypnosis, they’d find learning, practicing and engaging people in hypnosis sooo much easier!

I really can’t wait for the course and might have to start practicing this stuff before the date!

Right, I’m nearly back at Gravesend and I still haven’t gotten past chapter 2!

“So What.” you might ask.

Well…

As a change worker (it’s not entirely clear whether I can call myself a “therapist” under the new regulations), I need to make sure that my web based marketing material is accurate and truthful and does not mislead anybody who may read it. There are several pieces of guidance that may make you raise your eyebrow.

On Smoking Cessation Hypnotherapy

Holy smoke! So we can’t actually claim that someone has given up smoking even if they’ve told us that that they have. Seems like they don’t even want to believe the customers they’re so desperately trying to protect!

On Hypnotherapy

I have to say that this part I agree with and I’ve always maintained and included in my pre-talk on every hypnosis session that regardless of what we do in hypnosis, you will still need to make the conscious decision not to smoke. I don’t believe that hypnosis can help with the chemical side effects (cravings/withdrawals), it will help you deal with them when they occur, but it is not an effort free process on the part of the client.

On Weight loss through Hypnotherapy

And as an added extra, they immediately follow that with:

Interesting stuff. I wonder what that means for EFT and tapping…

If you want to read the full text on Hypnotherapy on the CopyAdvice (part of the ASA) website, then head to the CopyAdvice website though you’ll need to sign up (it’s free) to read it.

As I read this on the train from Gravesend to Durham the other day, I had to   re-read this sentence several times. Was it saying that the character was beset by dust and as a result considered it his enemy or was it that his enemy had been destroyed and was now dust and that he didn’t need to worry about them any more?

Putting aside the fact that there could well be some poor punctuation in the sentence, much like the classic description of a Panda “Panda: Eats, shoots and leaves”, it got me thinking about the importance of emphasis on our words and how that emphasis can   completely change the meaning of what we’re communicating.

In hypnosis and NLP, this is called “marking” where we deliberately embed suggestions in what we say and write by using things like pauses, punctuation and putting emphasis on specific words of phrases within an otherwise normal piece of speach or text.

In IEMT (see the glossary), one of the sentences I use regularly to help a client elicit a certain feeling is “When is the first time you can remember that feeling?” What I do is “mark” some of the words with emphasis in order to embed a command and what I actually end up saying looks more like “When is the first time you can remember that feeling?”.

Can you   see the difference? In asking a question, I am actually delivering a suggestion or embedded command that the client’s unconscious mind will pick up and act on (in order to make it truly effective I combine this with other subtle communications but that’s the art and science of psychology and one of the reasons I love it).

Returning to my example at the start of the post: “his enemy was dust.”

Now say the sentence out loud with the emphasis on each word in turn:
- HIS enemy was dust
- His ENEMY was dust
- His enemy WAS dust
- His enemy was DUST

Doesn’t the emphasis on the different words completely change the meaning of the sentence!

How much does the emphasis, be it pronunciation, punctuation, tempo, pitch, spelling, font etc. make on the interpretation of YOUR communication? Next time you’re in a public place and you can overhear people talking, why not listen out for those markers and see how you could have changed the meaning of the communication simply by stressing the same words in a different way or in a different place.

Whenever we learn or are taught something new, we often try it out and indeed most any form of training will have you do exercises to practice the new skill. What I find interesting is that, as someone who does a lot of self-learning, I am often testing out things I learn or theories I concoct in real life and I have to be extremely careful when I consider something a success or something a failure.

Most of us, at one time or another, have tried something new and we’ve fallen at the first hurdle, thrown our hands in the air and scoffed at the so-called experts who were clearly wrong as it demonstrably doesn’t work! I watch my daughter do this regularly and it is both challenging to encourage her to have another go and delightful to watch her eventially achieve it (normally after walking off and only coming back when she thinks I’m not watching). 

As adults while we are aware of the concept of perseverance and not judging a book by its cover, I still regularly see both clients and myself making these same mistakes. What is also fascinating is that we also do this in reverse:

We give something a go and when it works first time: pronounce it incredible success and champion whatever it is to any and all who will listen.

So when we fail at something, we have learnt by now that we should give it a few more goes before writing it off, but do we do the same when we succeed?

I wonder how many times we have succeeded the first time we tried something new, pronounced success and then had a series of failures and rather than criticise the new thing, we assume that we are doing something else wrong and embark upon some detailed analysis of everything except the new thing? After all: you clearly demonstrated that it works… didn’t you?

Food for thought and it certainly made my conversation companion go “hmmmm” yesterday.

Now as you read that previous sentence you may or may not have noticed that it seemed to have a rhythm and flow in the words and statements because I was employing the use of the words of power which means that after a while of listening or reading these words, the conscious mind starts to just allow the words to flow through from one side to the other without getting the full scruitiny enjoyed by a normal sentence which doesn’t employ these words in this way because the natural and continuous flow of the language and words in this way is much easier to allow the unconscious mind to process them because  our short term memories which is of course a function of the conscious mind can be commanded by your unconscious mind to change and as the words continue to flow from conscious to unconsious because your unconscious is capapble of processing an amazing amount of information without needing the imput of the conscious mind and I wonder if your conscious mind is starting to wonder which words in this text are the power words and perhaps what happened to all the punctuation.

The hmuan brian is aslo albe to udsenrtnda colmpex pasasges of txet lkie tihs.

And because we are able to process this kind of language where the letters are not necessarily in the right place it means that we are also capable of understanding and processing the meanings and understandings from entire paragraphs and literature where words are missing and in the wrong order and the wonderful thing about your unconscious is that you’re able to process both the surface meaning and the subsurface or unconscious meaning and whether you choose to consciously or unconsciously allow that flow from conscious to unconsious can happen because we are programmed this way to benefit the most from being able to do things consciously and unconsciously.

Now we’ve all heard of the four stages of learning from unconsciously incompetent, to unconsciously competent which means that if we are able to learn new things and make changes on an unconscious level because we evolved this incredible ability I wonder just how limitless our power really is.

Just a few conscious and unconscious thoughts. Enjoy.

Ben

There is a kind of standard statistic in hypnosis that (whether through suggestion or genuine experience) most hypnotists will agree on:

About 20% of the population is highly susceptible

About 60% of the population can be hypnotised

About 20% of the population cannot be hypnotised

Of course the actual numbers change by 5% or so depending on who you ask and which text book you’re quoting, but there is definitely agreement that some people are highly hypnotisable and some people are simply not worth the hours and hours it would take to create hypnosis making them, to all intents and purposes: un-hypnotisable (one of my early hypnosis subjects took 10 sessions before he was able to exhibit trance phenomena!).

This new research by Peter Naish of the Open University in Milton Keynes suggests that those people who are highly susceptible to hypnosis have a tendency to use the right side of their brains more than their left. The right side of the brain is the side that is typically associated with creativity, imagery and and the left with analysis and logical thinking. If you’re interested in what this might mean in other parts of your life, try a quick Google. I found this article which is very interesting (albeit somewhat student orientated), about how we should learn to study using the right (sorry) correct methods to match our hemisphere weighting…

This would agree with my experience that creative people tend to better at hypnosis than those who are more analytical and logical in the way they think and act. I have learnt that someone who comes to me for help (or while I’m doing street hypnosis) with colourful clothes or hair, an interesting clothing style or generally seem like they are happy to see where the wind takes them that they’re going to be great at hypnosis

My friend Parkey is an excellent example of someone who struggles with hypnosis because of his “analytical” brain and you can read the highs and lows of his journey to achieve hypnosis on his blog here. There is some good news for analytical people though: Find yourself someone able to do some transcranial magnetic stimulation on your left hemisphere which (temporarily) reduces left hemisphere brain activity. Apparently you’re much more likely to experience hypnosis.

One thing that amuses me about this is that scientists by their very nature, tend to be analytical people and this may explain why hypnosis research is not as frequent as it might be. After all, why research something that you can’t experience? Or at least not in the way that some of the highly susceptible people can…

I have added a page with my YouTube channel embedded in it so you can now watch the videos that I’ve recorded. You will see the page link at the top of the site next to the link to www.PractitionerOfTrance.com

If you want to find me directly in YouTube, search for “nedbloggs” and you’ll find my videos.

Have a good one.

Ben

Being a cold December evening, the place was not quite as busy as it was at the last meet, but it soon filled up once the evening kicked off. As with last time, there were a good mix of magicians and hypnotists and one chap who specialised in balloons and arrived carrying a balloon man which instantly got the attention of all the people in the place! (tip: balloon man = people come to you)

I arrived a little early and wasted no time in getting chatting to the chaps running a little BBQ stand in the corner and lo-and-behold I had my first subject. Sadly though the English – Italian language barrier was I think, just a little too much to get any good phenomena out of him, but he said he felt wonderfully relaxed. Scratch one and on to the next.

Of course, no hypnosis course is complete without at least one somnambulist and this one had two! needless to say they had been thoroughly enjoying being on the receiving end of heaps of suggestions and fun all day and moving from the hotel to the bar was no excuse to stop. Soon there were guitar heroes and X Factor finalists in our midst as well as some fantastically crafty “magic” tricks.

As all the visitors to this bar had to walk past us where we were in the garden, we were able to open every group of people coming in and let them know that we were here if they wanted to go and get drinks and come back for some hypnosis experiences all completely free, safe and fun. Once we started doing this; like a conveyor belt, more and more people were coming outside to experience a little hypnosis and I think at one point I counted five separate inductions happening at once!

It was great to meet a few new hypnotists and see some cool stuff in action and I was even able to have a go at James Tripp’s “Hypnosis Without Trance” stuff also known as “waking hypnosis”.

Sadly, I had to head off before it got too late as it takes me an hour and a half to get home from the bar, so I left the team in full-swing with more and more people coming forward for an incredible experience. Next time I shall have to book myself a hotel so that I can properly enjoy it as reports afterwards say that it only got better after I left! I hope that’s not a reflection on my presence at the place

“STOP LISTENING TO THIS CON-MAN AND OPEN YOUR EYES OR I’LL F@#&ING HIT YOU!”

This (along with several other choice sentiments) were aimed, not at me, but at my excellent subject and his friends by another friend of theirs while he was thoroughly enjoying a great hypnosis experience that I’ve already written about (here). I should point out that this person was not hypnotised at any point during the evening.

This is an abreaction.

Many in the hypnosis community won’t agree with this statement believing that, as is taught by most hypnotherapy courses and books, an abreaction has to happen while IN a state of hypnosis.

“A physical movement or an emotional outburst as a reaction to a suggestion while in the state of hypnosis.” www.hypnosis.edu

During my hypnosis training I was taught all about hypnotic abreactions – occasions where the hypnotised client spontaneously experiences an incredibly intense negative emotional state. This might be caused by a sudden regression to a past event or simply an overwhelming negative emotion. Either is easily dispelled by following carefully practiced and delivered suggestions easing the client away from or out of the horror they are experiencing/re-living.

Since my IEMT training with Andrew T Austin (the technique’s creator) I have had to revise both my definition and my approach to abreactions. Andrew taught all of us on the course about the three stage abreaction which is detailed below and since I also practice IEMT as a treatment it became important that I learned how to deal with kind of non-hypnosis abreaction.

3 Stage abreaction

In a therapy setting (not necessarily using hypnosis) the three stage abreaction is generally experienced as an escalation of emotion by the client following (roughly) the stages below:

1. Verbal warning – “I don’t like what you’re doing“
2. Emotional threat – “You’re making me upset!“
3. Physical escalation – [pokes you in the face] “OI! I SAID F@*&ING STOP IT!”

These abreactions can and should be used and those who support the provocative therapy approach actively seek to create these situations. From my IEMT point of view, I love this as you can immediately launch in to a “so on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being really bad, just how strong is this feeling you are experiencing now?” and then quickly help them overcome it and expose whatever it is that is causing the problem underneath. Dealing with it when you’re in the middle of a bar with loads of people watching on and enjoying seeing someone being (and also enjoying) hypnotised is quite a different matter and I have to say that in the end, closing time and generally leaving the bar was the only way to sort out the situation.

It was certainly very interesting to experience an abreaction (albeit unpleasant and slightly embarassing) so strong in a public place, and I hope that the person involved felt better about it the next day. For those hypnotists who read my blog, I hope that you will realise that abreactions do not just happen when your subject is directly in hypnosis in front of you and that it can take many forms and manifest in many different ways. The rote 9 word abreaction fix is not going to cut the mustard in all cases and indeed in some, it is to be actively managed in order to HELP the therapy!

http://www.benwhite.me/glossary/

Its by no means a full list, but it should get you started.