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

Different people have different understandings of somnambulistic trance. There isn't any way I know of defining it for all people. Generally people are convinced that they are in a trance when they experience something very different from their normal state. One person's normal state may be another person's trance. For a person whose consciousness has been specialized into kinesthetics, the con–vincer will probably be a set of visual images that are vivid, colorful, and stabilized. A person who hasn't had a body sensation in thirty years will probably be convinced by an experience of detailed and strong kinesthetic sensations,

Man; I heard you say earlier that if someone has been in a somnambulistic trance, she will not have any conscious memory of it.

Right. Typically when you alter a person's consciousness that radically, when she comes back somebody in the audience will ask "Were you in a trance?" and she'll say "Oh, no! I knew what was going on the whole time." If you then mention some specific activities she carried out, she will say "I didn't do that! You're kidding!" That is, she has complete amnesia for a large segment of that trance experience. To assist that person in being subjectively satisfied that she was in a trance, I often set up a post–hypnotic suggestion that I will trigger by kinesthetic cueing. I'll have it be something obvious and inexplicable like taking one shoe off. That way she will notice that something has happened for which she has no explanation.

You can also find out in advance what a person's "complex equivalence" for trance is: what specific sensory experiences would constitute proof to her that she was in a trance. Then you can develop that kind of experience for the person.

Actually, for the purpose of personal change, it's irrelevant whether the person believes that she has been in trance or not. If you can achieve an altered state and use it to help the person make appropriate changes, that's all that matters.

When you have thoroughly learned about hypnosis, you will find that you will never again have to do any "official" trance inductions that your clients will recognize as such. You will be able to induce altered states naturally, and you will be able to utilize them to achieve changes without the person consciously realizing that anything like "hypnosis" has ever occurred.

For those of you who are not familiar with the term "anchoring," we want to give you an idea of what it is and how you can use it. Anchoring is already written up in detail in our book, Frogs into Princes (Chapter II), so we won't repeat that information to you now. However, we do want to talk about anchoring as it relates to hypnosis.

Every experience includes multiple components: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. Anchoring refers to the tendency for any one element of an experience to bring back the entire experience. You have all had the experience of walking down the street and smelling something, and then suddenly you are back in another time and place. The smell serves as a "reminder" of some other experience. That's an anchor. Couples often have a song that they call "our song." That's an anchor too. Every time they hear that song, they re–experience the feelings they had for each other when they first called it "our song."

Many of the inductions you just did made use of anchoring. When you helped your partner access a previous trance experience, you were making use of anchors that were already set up in that person's experience. If you asked your partner to assume the same body posture she had during a trance experience, to hear the sound of the hypnotist's voice, or do anything else paired with trance, you were using naturally occurring anchors.

If a person can tell you what her experience of trance is in sensory–based terms, you can use anchoring to construct that state for her. All you need to do is to break down her experience of trance into its component visual, auditory, and kinesthetic parts.

If you start with visual, you can ask "How would you look to other people if you were in deep trance? Show me with your body here. I'll mirror you so that you have feedback about what you're doing, and you can adjust your body until what you see looks right." When she tells you it's right, you anchor her with a touch or a sound.

Next you find out if she would be making internal images, and if so, what kind. If her eyes are open in deep trance, ask her what she would be seeing on the outside. As she accesses the answer, you anchor her state.

Then you go on to feelings. "How would you feel if you were in a deep trance? How would you be breathing? Show me exactly how relaxed you would be." When she demonstrates how she would feel, you anchor that state.

That leaves the auditory component of "deep trance" to be anchored. You could ask her if she would be aware of the voice of a hypnotist, and what that would sound like. Then find out if she would have any internal dialogue or sounds in deep trance.

As you systematically go through her visual, kinesthctic, and auditory experience of trance, both internal and external, you can anchor each component of "trance" with either the same anchor or with different anchors. If you use different anchors for the different components, you can then trigger all the anchors simultaneously to "remind" her of what trance is like. That's another way to use anchoring to induce a trance. By using anchoring in this way, you can even build an experience that the person has never had previously. You simply anchor the component parts of the experience together.

Once you've induced a trance state, you can set up anchors so that you can quickly reinduce a trance whenever you want to. Whenever I do hypnotic inductions, I always change my voice tone, movement style, posture, and facial expression so that one set of my behaviors is associated with trance, and another set is associated with a normal state of consciousness. Once I have induced an altered state, this gives me the ability to reinduce one quickly simply by beginning my "trance" behaviours. Those behaviors will serve as unconscious signals to go into a trance. The "reinduction signals" that hypnotists use are a special case of this kind of anchoring.

Effective communicators in many fields are already using this kind of anchoring without knowing it. On Sunday morning I turned on the television and watched one of the preachers. This preacher talked very loudly for a while, and then all of a sudden he said "Now I want you to stop, and (softly) close your eyes." His voice tone and volume changed entirely, and people in his congregation closed their eyes and demonstrated the same behavior that I see in people who meditate, people in deep trance, people who sit on trains and airplanes and buses, passengers in cars, jury members, patients in group psychotherapy, or psychiatrists who are taking notes about what a client is saying. That preacher had paired one tone of voice with his usual talking, and another tone of voice with the altered state he called "prayer." He could use that tone of voice to quickly induce an altered state in his entire congregation.

If you change your tone of voice slowly when you notice somebody going into an altered state, the change in your tone of voice will become paired with going into an altered state. If you maintain that changed tone of voice when she reaches a state that you want to keep her in, she will tend to stay there. Your voice tone anchors that altered state.

If a client walks in the door of your office, and you seat him and immediately do a trance induction using your normal tone of voice, normal posture, and normal movement style, you will be in trouble the next time you want to talk to his concious mind. The experience he has of you and your office will be a "reminder" to go into a trance. The next time he walks into your office, when you seat him and begin to talk, he will automatically begin to go into a trance.