Richard Bandler - Trance–formations. Neuro–Linguistic Programming™ and the Structure of Hypnosis

All that is "fluff" in the sense that it includes no content. Hut it is an appropriate and meaningful communication in the sense that you are telling her to do something with the experiences she is having in order to learn from them.

Woman: What do you do if the person doesn't come back out?

If you tell her to come back and she doesn't, that indicates that you've lost rapport, So you have to go back and get rapport. You might just pace her breathing for a while. Then ask her to gather up all the 'enjoyable, positive aspects of this experience, so that she can bring these back with her when she returns in a few moments. Count backwards slowly from ten to one, saying one number for every other breath that she takes. This will help insure rapport. Give instructions that when you reach "one" her eyes will flutter open as control is returned to her conscious mind, and she will be puzzled and delighted by the experience she has just had.

Woman: I've had clients who apparently go into physiological sleep. I have assumed that somehow the unconscious is still listening, but I'm not at all sure of that. There's no response to me at all.

OK. First of all, I don't believe the last statement: that they don't respond to you at all. I would suggest for your own learning purposes, that you use several simple nonverbal devices to find out if they are still responsive to you. The easiest way to do it would be to get in close enough that they can hear your breathing, and then breathe with them for several minutes. I assume that you have the internal flexibility not to simply fall asleep yourself. You can give yourself instructions that you are going to copy their breathing and even though that breathing is typically associated with physiological sleep, you are going to maintain a certain level of alertness. After a minute or two of breathing with them, change your breathing pattern very slightly, and they should follow at that point.

You can get rapport without running the risk of going to sleep by putting your hand on their shoulders and varying the pressure of your touch with the rhythm of their breathing. You can increase the pressure when they exhale, and decrease the pressure when they inhale. We call this "cross–over" pacing, because you pace with a different sensory channel–Do this for two or three minutes, and then change your pressure pattern slightly, noticing whether their breathing follows you.

Woman: What if they don't follow?

If they don't, then they are in a physiological sleep state, and you need to spend more time building rapport. You can still do it, but it takes more time.

We made up something called "sleep therapy" once when we were working at a mental hospital where people had access to their clients twenty–four hours a day. We had been there several times; this was our third visit. The staff members were delighted with the responses they were getting using our patterns, and dealing very effectively with all their patients except the anorexics. They were having trouble with the anorexics.

Anorexics are people who consider themselves grossly overweight. The perception of the rest of the world is that they are about to starve to death. They are extremely skinny, to the point that their health is threatened.

One of the things that we instructed the staff to do with the anorexics—which wiped out this last stronghold of unresponsive patients–was what we called "sleep therapy." If you live with someone for whom this is acceptable, you can try it out yourself.

Go into the place where she is sleeping and use one of the two techniques I just mentioned to you to get rapport. Breathe with her for three or four minutes to get rapport. Since she is in a severely altered state, it takes some time to get rapport. Or instead of breathing with her, you can touch her and use pressure differences. You could get rapport auditorily by singing or humming little soft notes with her breathing movements. You can use any repetitive pattern that you can control in your own output to match her breathing cycle. Then very carefully and very slowly change what you are doing, to find out if you can lead her. Don't change your breathing radically, because part of a person's ability to be asleep and to stay asleep without interruption depends on her maintaining that breathing pattern. Unless you want to wake her up, it would be inappropriate for you to change her breathing radically.

You then proceed to set up finger signals—something that we'll teach you tomorrow. "As you continue to sleep deeply and rest yourself completely, you can respond to certain questions that I ask you by lifting one finger for 'yes' and another for 'no.'" The person is in a severely altered state in which her normal conscious resources are not available, and therefore not in your way. You can now begin to access information directly by getting yes/ no signals, or propose changes and new behaviors. You can do all the work in that state without interrupting her sleep.

Woman: And what if her breathing doesn't change when I change mine? Does it mean she is indeed in a physiological sleep state?

No. You can gain rapport with people who are in a physiological state of sleep. The difference is that you have to spend more time following them before you attempt to lead. If you attempt to lead and you do not get the response, take that as a statement that you didn't pace long enough; go back and pace longer.

People who arc asleep do respond, but more slowly and less overtly. The same is true of people in an anesthetic sleep state during opera: lions. Many doctors think that their patients are completely out when they are on the operating table. It's just not true. People accept post–I hypnotic suggestions under anesthesia faster than they will just about any other way. Just because their eyes are closed and their conscious minds are zonked, doesn't mean their ears don't work.

Once I worked with a woman who was living a very wild and rowdy life. Some of the things she was doing were destructive to her, so I was trying to get her to change. I worked with her for a while and couldn't make sense out of what she was doing. Finally I turned to her and said emphatically "Look, you absolutely have got to stop living wildly like this. It's not doing you any good, and it's just a waste of time. And what makes you do it?" Immediately her nostrils flared dramatically, and she I said "Oh, I'm really dizzy!" I asked "What do you smell?" She sniffed again and said "It smells like a hospital." I asked "What about a hospital?" She replied "You know that ether smell?" It turned out that some time earlier she'd had an operation. She'd been anesthetized, and since the doctor "knew" that she wasn't there, he talked freely. He looked at her insides and said "It looks terrible. I don't think she's going to make it for very long."

She did make it. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong! However, somehow or other she got the idea that the doctor's statement meant that she wasn't going to make it after the operation, not that she wasn't going to make it through the operation. The statement was ambiguous; the doctor hadn't specified "If you make it through the operation, everything will be fine." His statement didn't get sorted out in any meaningful way; she just responded to it. She came out of the operation thinking that she wasn't going to live very long, so it didn't concern her that some of the things she was doing were self–destructive.

Martha: When we did the exercise, and I was going into a trance, some part of me wondered "Am I really in?"

Right. And now we are talking about the whole interesting area called "convincers." The thing that convinces Martha a bout the experience of hypnosis will be different than what convinces Bill or someone else.

Martha's Partner: I'm really curious about that. Her eyes dilated and closed, but later she said that she had an internal dialogue going on the whole time. So that's not a somnambulistic trance state, right?