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

Whatever chunk size you choose, when you are paying conscious attention to7±2 chunks of information, anything else will not be processed consciously. Anything beyond 7±2 chunks of information becomes overload and will be processed unconsciously.

An example of this happened in another workshop. I asked for someone who had a way of remembering names that worked exquisitely. A woman named Carla had one, so 1 had her come up to the front. Ann Teachworth was sitting in the audience, and I said to Carla "Do you happen to know this woman over here?" and I pointed to Ann. Carla said "No," When Carla was introduced to someone her pupils dilated and she made an internal image of the person's name on her forehead, Then every time she saw her again, her pupils would dilate slightly and she would see the name written there on her forehead. That was the way she always knew someone's name, and it worked very well. Since I know what she does, I know where in the sequence of Carla's experience she will be unable to consciously represent any additional input: when her attention is oriented inward and all of her 7± 2 chunks of attention are occupied with visualizing the person's name on her forehead.

I said to Carla "Look at the woman over there. Her name is Ann …"I paused, saw her pupils dilate, and then said "Teachworth." She heard "Ann" and visually wrote it on Ann's forehead. Then I asked her "What's that woman's name?" Her pupils dilated again and she said "Ann." I said "Do you know what her last name is?" She said "No, you didn't tell me." When your timing and your sensory experience are refined enough that you know when a person's attention is inwardly oriented and when it's not, you can introduce anything you want. When someone is oriented inward, she will respond appropriately to your suggestions because you bypass her conscious mind. There's no way for her to filter or defend against such suggestions.

At that point I said "Her name is Ann Teachworth" and Carla said "Oh! Now I remember." That was an elegant demonstration that although she didn't have it available in conscious awareness because it didn't go through her name–remembering process, it was there. She recognized Ann's last name when she heard it, so it had been processed and remembered unconsciously.

Whenever a person's conscious processing is overloaded, you can pass information directly to the unconscious, and the person will respond to that information. The easiest way to overload someone's attention is by having her pay attention to a complex internal experience.

I used an overload technique the second time I ever officially induced a trance. I'll demonstrate. Would you come up for a second, Bill, and stand here?

"OK, would you close your eyes? Now what I would like you to do is to softly, out loud, begin to count backwards from two hundred by threes. And as you do that, I'm going to put my hands on your shoulders and turn you around in circles. If at any point you discover it is more comfortable for you to simply drop into a nice deep trance, do so with the full realization that you are in good hands."

By doing this, I create an overload by occupying all of his representational systems. He's using visualization as a way of helping himself count backwards. Auditorily he's saying the numbers to himself. I disorient him kinesthetically by turning him in circles. He's now overloading himself with things to attend to, so I don't have to.

I could just as well have said "Now turn slowly in a circle." However, if I turn him with my hands on his shoulders, I get a lot of tactile feedback about when he's changing states and what kind of state he's going into. I also give him something else to attend to kinesthetically: the feeling of my hands on his shoulders.

To make sure that overload works, you make sure that all systems are engaged. If he's busy visualizing and counting off the numbers while he's being disoriented kinesthetically, I can offer suggestions which will go right past his consciousness into the unconscious. If I say something that distracts him from the task, I will immediately know it, because he's counting out loud. There's a built–in feedback mechanism in this traditional method. If he stops counting, I know he's either dropped into a deep trance, or he's shaken off the disorientation and is consciously listening to the suggestions I am attempting to pass to the unconscious. Then I'll either insist that he continue to count, or I'll notice that he is in deep trance, stop fooling around, and go to work.

This is a really traditional trance induction, by the way. I read this particular method in a book years ago, and having had no experience of it, just followed the instructions as if I knew what I was doing. It was only some years later that I figured out what the principle was, so that I could generalize from that specific method to overloading someone in a variety of ways. The way we teach in these workshops is designed to do exactly the same thing, because we arc interested in passing most of the messages to you at the unconscious level.

You can use any complicated task to occupy a person and distract his consciousness while you disorient him. Then you offer a very direct, immediate, and easy–to–follow instruction like "If at any point it is easier for you to simply drop into a deep trance, then do so and enjoy it with the full realization you are secure in your present position… ."

Here's another variation. I take Jack's hand here, and I want to overload him. So I say "All you have to do is sit here comfortably. I'm going to touch different fingers and your thumb, and I'm going to name the one I'm touching. Your job is to simply decide whether I'm doing this correctly or incorrectly."

Then I begin touching and labeling. "Forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, little finger, thumb. Middle finger, forefinger, ring finger, thumb." (He touches the little finger.)

Each time I "make a "mistake" he will do what he just did: his pupils dilated and there was a hesitation in his breathing. He had to take some time to compute. It took him longer to decide that I had made a "mistake" than it took him to decide earlier that I was correct.

If I were to continue, I would gradually become more and more "incorrect." Soon he would be overwhelmed by the complexity, and in defense, he would go into a deep trance. At that point I would say "As I touch your ring finger this time" — and I would touch the wrong finger — "you are more relaxed." I would continue to overload, and go on to introduce additional suggestions about the specific kinds of overt responses I want—those that indicate he is going into a trance.

I am giving the person input in all three channels simultaneously and demanding that he make a judgement about whether the auditory input matches the visual and kinesthetic input. He will soon give up, and essentially say "OK, tell me what you want me to do."

Instead of overloading all representational systems, you can give the person such a complex task in one or two systems that it occupies all of his 7± 2 chunks of conscious attention. You can ask the person to count backwards from a thousand by one–thirds, visualizing each one of the fractions with a different color for the top of the fraction, the bar, and the bottom of the fraction. Each successive fraction has to have a new color for the bar and for each number. Then you can add suggestions like "With each number you will go deeper." These are all ways of manipulating a person in such a way that you are overloading his input channels and thus his ability to make sense out of what you are doing.

Woman: Is the double induction that you describe in the book Patterns II an example of overload?

Yes, the double induction is a special case of what I've just been doing. That's where you use two people to overload one person. It works really quickly. You get a lot of overload, you get it quickly, and you get a very powerful response. We first began doing double inductions accidentally in workshops and noticed what a powerful response we got. So we started employing it in our private practice just to find out how we could use it.