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

This is another example of a process instruction. 1 said to have a dream and learn something from it. However, I also added specific instructions about how the unconscious is going to learn it. I said "Go back, review your past experiences, extract the difference between when you do really well and when you do only a mediocre job, and present this new perception in a dream."

However, if I were to just say those things directly, I wouldn't be as effective. It wouldn't work as well, because it wouldn't have the color or the punch. It also wouldn't have the artful vagueness that allows the unconscious to respond in a way that's natural to it. Dreaming is a very natural means for the unconscious to present material in a way that the conscious mind doesn't understand, and then to have it slowly evolve into something which is more meaningful consciously.

Man: What can IdoifI want to come up with a solution to a problem that has so many factors I can't compute them all consciously?

What would be a way of going about that? Let's do it this way. Let's go back to the dream. This is one of my favorite instructions. Let's have him dream six dreams, and each one will be the same dream, but will have a different content and different characters. However, he won't understand the first dream at all, because there will be too many things going on in that dream. He won't really understand the second dream either, but unconsciously, with each dream, he will begin to collect and distill the meanings and understandings of all the factors involved into a more and more coherent package. In this manner, by the sixth dream even his conscious mind will be able to understand what is going on. The first dream will be totally confusing. The second dream will be a little less confusing. The third dream will be even less confusing than that. The fourth one will begin to become clear, but he won't quite grasp it. And the fifth one will feel like it is on the tip of his tongue. But in the sixth one, the meaning will suddenly burst fully into consciousness. This is a pretty direct way of going after it—indirectly. It's a great instruction.

Now I want you to pair up and try one of these utilization methods. You've been practicing inductions quite a bit already, so don't spend much time on that. Just tell your partner to close her eyes and relax and pretend that she is in hypnosis. That's always a quick induction. Then either give her a process instruction, or give her an instruction to use hypnotic dreaming to learn something. If you give her a process instruction, make it a more involved one than you used when you practiced inductions previously. Give her a sequence of steps that can lead to learning. Use everything else you've learned up to this point too. If something unexpected occurs, you can incorporate it into what you are doing, and what you want to have happen. OK. Go ahead.

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Dorothy: What do you do if the person is in a trance and the hour is up before you've finished working with her? What if she's right in the middle of something?

You need to have a way of dealing with that kind of situation in many contexts. I call such methods "clean–up routines." You might be a family therapist, with mother here, daddy here, and baby Joan over there. They've all just gotten into a disagreement, and it's two minutes before the arrival of your next client. In any situation like this, you ought to have two–minute "tape–loops" — absolutely meaningless content–wise and absolutely meaningful process–wise—to put everything together.

"We've worked very, very hard and a lot of things have been stirred up at the unconscious level that are extremely useful in a positive way. Over the next days and weeks, you will notice understanding emerging from your unconscious. As a result of beginning to put things together here, you will notice changes, alterations in your behavior that will delightfully surprise you. And now, as you gather all the parts of yourself that have expressed themselves today, once again into yourself, you can sense the energy that they represent made available to your unconscious mind, to continue these processes which we have begun here, in a meaningful way. …"

This is another example of a process instruction. You stay entirely at the process level and say "Put yourself back together." You include post–hypnotic suggestions that their behavior will continue to change as a result of many of the things that you stirred up. The instructions essentially say "Continue this process even though I won't be here." You can suggest that her unconscious will continue to search for an optimal solution which it will reach sometime before she awakes the next morning.

"During the afternoon, as your unconscious mind continues to work hard to find and test the various possible solutions, in order to find the one which most uniquely fits your needs as a total organism, leaving you free at the conscious level to go about the rest of your day in safety and perform adequately any tasks that you intend to. So as your unconscious mind continues this work, your conscious mind will attend to the tasks of the day and your own safety." Doing this kind of thing is important as a close. It's an integration; it's reassembling the person.

I remember once when I first started doing gestalt therapy, I was working with one person as a demonstration in a group. I didn't have the faintest idea of what I was doing, and as far as I could tell, nothing happened. So at the end I said "Now Irv, we've worked hard here today, and we've stirred up a lot of things inside you. So I want you to be particularly alert and sensitive to those behavioral changes which will occur over the next two–week period until we get together again, which are the direct result of the marvelous work that you've done here today. And don't be too surprised to discover how radical these changes are — but appropriate to your particular needs." That's saying nothing, but it will work. It's a post–hypnotic suggesion.

If you're doing trance work as a part of an exercise in this workshop, and you want to end things quickly because we've called you back, first spend a few moments pacing your partner's breathing. Then you can say "Now I would like the opportunity to join you once again… . Allow yourself to finish … those important and meaningful things … that have been made available to you . , . during this process… . Draw from your experience any … sense of refreshment … and renewal available … and return here … at your own rate … rejoining me here in the room … to begin the next phase of this seminar."

That's a cleanup that is particularly appropriate for what you are doing in this workshop. The principles I used to construct it are the same ones I used to make up the other examples I just gave you.

The next question we want to pose to you is "How do you take a series of experiences and build a learning from them?" If I gave you a magic wand that would allow you to tap someone on the head five times and give him five experiences, what five experiences could you use to change somebody? Pick one client that you have and decide how you would like him to be different. Think about it more specifically than "having higher self–esteem." What would be really different about him in sensory experience? How would he act differently? … Now, what experience would he need in order for him to act that way?

You see, having experiences in a sequence is what served as the basis for you and everyone else to build old generalizations. No matter what content your generalizations have, the processes people use to create generalizations are similar. People who have phobias have generalizations about elevators, closets, water, or something else being dangerous. You all have generalizations about learning that are having an impact on how you are learning hypnosis right now. Some of you might have a generalization that you can do anything that you try. That generalization may be based on several examples of having succeeded in the past. Some people form generalizations based on only one experience; most phobias are created that way. Other people require more examples of the same thing before they form a generalization.