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

Now, I don't know … whether or not … you could begin to dream a dream … which has within it the solution that your unconscious knows … will give you what you want. But I do know that if and when you do begin that dream, it won't make any sense at all. And it's not important that you understand… . It's only important that you learn … and you learn … exactly what you need to know… .

Every night … Liz … you engage in the natural process of dreaming… . Some of those dreams you're aware of … and some you're not aware of. … That's right… . And I'm going to reach down now. . , . I'm going to lift up your arm … and I'm not going to tell you to put it down … any faster … than you take all the time that's necessary … to begin to build a conscious understanding … of what it means … to use your unconscious creatively. And when your hand touches your thigh, you will slowly awaken … and you will take that new understanding with you. In the meantime … there'll be no need to listen to anything … else… . But it is so pleasant to eavesdrop in a way that you learn. …"

Now, can you tell which of her movements were conscious movements, and which ones were not? If you're going to work with altered states, it's very important to be able to discern that. In the beginning, there were many, many movements that she made with her body. Some of those were movements that she made in relationship to her own conscious responses to what was going on, and many of them were not.

Woman: When she turned on the chair, that seemed like it was a conscious movement.

OK. When her left hand lifted up off of her thigh, was that a conscious movement?

Man: I would say no.

What leads you to say that? What about the movement was different?

Man: It was flowing. It seemed smooth.

Can you be even more specific about exactly what you observed? When she moved her feet, she made a perfectly smooth movement, but it was a very, very conscious movement. Liz, did you know your hand was going to lift up? …

Liz: I'm not sure of that. {Her hand lifts in a gesture, responding to the embedded command.)

It just did! Her hand lifting just now was a very unconscious movement. One of the characteristics of unconscious movement that you can notice is that at the beginning, the movement is often very small and hesitant.

Pick up your hand —deliberately pick up your hand. When you pick up your hand consciously, do you begin with your wrist? … No, you don't begin with your wrist. You begin with your elbow, or possibly your shoulder. Martial arts masters begin with their belly—their center. That's really different than starting to lift at the wrist.

Even if she were to begin with her elbow, the quality of movement is very different when it's unconscious. I would have the tendency to call it jerky movement. It's a more graceful kind of movement in one sense, but it's more hesitant; there are lots of pauses. Conscious movement is more like a whole program, and as it begins, you can see where it's going to end. It's all one piece.

There's a real difference between the kind of movement that you get when a person is in an altered state, as compared to a familiar suite. There's a real difference between the way her hand lifted up off her thigh when I gave her the instructions in trance, and when I asked her to lift her hand deliberately. If she decided in her mind "I want a Kleenex" and reached for one, it would look very different than if iinstructed her to do it in trance.

It's really important to recognize these differences if you want to know what state your client is experiencing. When I lifted up her hand and I told her to allow it to go down and so on, it began to move down very slowly with small pauses, like a leaf from a tree. That was really good unconscious movement. Then it began to go down more smoothly and faster. Her conscious mind had interceded. Her arm began to have weight again. I said "Slow down!" and it looked as if her arm hit something, or as if it were on the end of a string. It stopped as if a string held it there, and then it went down with the same kind of movement as before. Being able to discern the difference between the two kinds of movement allowed me to be able to amplify one and diminish the other. That allowed me to boost her more and more into an altered state.

Now, what about the handshake movement? When I come over here and I put out my hand, what kind of movement does she respond with? When people engage in automatic unconscious programs like shaking hands, or perhaps taking out a pack of cigarettes, their movement usually looks more like conscious movement in that as it begins, you can see where it's going to end. It has a definite direction. There are still ways to distinguish this kind of movement from conscious movement, and if you watch examples of both you will know what I mean. When people engage in automatic programs like shaking hands, they perform the motor activity smoothly and easily, but without focusing their attention on their movement. It looks automatic.

OK. What 1 just did with Liz was another example of a process instruction, with some other things added. First I spent a little time developing a trance state, amplifying unconscious responses. Then 1 began to instruct her to have "new understandings" and to use them in a "beneficial way." I didn't say what the new understandings were, or even what they were about, and I didn't mention what the beneficial way would be. I didn't mention that because I had no idea what they were. I left that entirely up to her unconscious mind.

Then I asked her to dream a dream in which she will learn what it means to use her unconscious creatively. Again, I'm not saying anything that means anything in and of itself. I'm allowing her to make the most appropriate meaning out of it for her. And then I equate completing that task with allowing her hand to come down.

When you give process instructions, you use a lot of words like "understanding," "resource," and "curiosity." We call these kinds of words nominalizations. They are actually process words that are used as nouns. If you turn a word like "understanding" back into a verb "You will understand… , " you realize that a lot of information is deleted. You will understand what? If someone uses nominalizations when they're speaking to you, it forces you to go inside and access meaning. If a client says to you "Well, I'm looking for satisfaction," you can turn satisfaction back into a verb and ask "You are trying to satisfy yourself how?" or "You would like to satisfy yourself about what?" But if you don't do that, then you have to fill in the missing pieces yourself. That's what most therapists do with what their clients say. They hallucinate what the person means. If all I say is "I'm looking for support" you have to go inside and get your ideas of what it means for someone to support someone else.

Each time I select verbal patterns that do not refer directly to sensory experience, I'm calling upon you to be active in the process of understanding them. Each time you do that, you're doing a process which we've named, incomprehensibly, "transderivational search." People take the words that you offer and relate them to their own personal experience. As a hypnotist I use the fact that people do that naturally. I begin to generate language that is stuffed full of nominalizations. I have no idea what the meaning of those nominalizations is, but my client will fill in what's most relevant for her. (See Appendix II for more details.)

Woman: Several times during the process instruction you said "That's right." What was your purpose in saying that?

Saying "That's right" is one of the simplest ways to amplify whatever response is occurring. For example, if I'm giving her process instructions to make some learning, and I see rapid eye movement or other changes indicating that she is processing material internally, saying "that's right" is an instruction for her to do more of it, It's a pace of any experience, and allows me to amplify her response without having to describe it.