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

Sometimes the unconscious communicates with the conscious mind by movement … . It might be movement … of relaxation. … It might be that your head nods … up and down … slightly … to communicate "yes," and back and forth … slightly … to communicate "no." …It might be that a left arm … very slowly … begins to lift up … as a way of communicating "yes" and a right arm … lifts up slowly to communicate "no." …It might be that your right foot twitches … involuntarily …to indicate "yes" … and a left foot twitches … involuntarily …to communicate "no." … It might be that you look to the left … to communicate "no" … and you look to the right to communicate "yes." … Only your unconscious mind knows which it will be… . And if it should be that one of your hands is going to lift up … or one of your feet is going to move …it doesn't matter which it is at all. … It only matters that the choice that you make …is appropriate …to you . , . because your unconscious mind knows more about you … than anyone else… .

Now, you can then ask the person to unconsciously choose … what she would like to use as a "yes" signal … and watch what happens… . If you don't see anything … take your time … deepen her trance … and suggest other alternatives … until you find one… . Because some people choose to say "no" by moving an index finger … and "yes" by lifting a whole arm… . And I know that someone who does that … can allow their unconscious mind … to lift a right arm … off their thigh slowly … perhaps all the way up to their face … so that the person who is working with them … could never miss that signal… .

Now, it requires that you be astute when you do this … because very, very often … the signals will appear to be incorporated … into a conscious movement … and when that occurs … you don't want to miss it … do you? It's so easy for people …to miss signals… .

Now, you may get a signal … that you see once … but it doesn't appear … to come a second or a third time… . Just because you ask

a question … doesn't mean that someone has a way of answering it unconsciously… . Because sometimes questions can't be answered "yes" or "no."' … So try to ask questions initially that you can be sure … there is a "yes" or a "no" response to.

I want you to pair up and try this. First induce an altered state, and then lead the person into answering questions with an ideomotor response. If the person literally does not give you any signal and has trouble doing ideomotor responses, you might want to help her. Remember, never define anything as a success or failure. Leave it ambiguous as to when you are asking her to use one channel as opposed to another, and leave it ambiguous as to which channels you are paying attention to, so that it's hard for her to tell where you are getting the signals from. If you set up something that is limited and she fails at it, it may convince her that she can't do it, when in fact she probably already has succeeded. But she didn't notice that success; she only noticed when you defined something as failure,

I would like to instruct every unconscious mind in here that if you get the idea from the person who is working with you that you are failing, you are wrong. It's the other person who is failing. The fact that you got that idea is an indication that she didn't give you enough choices so that you could respond easily and appropriately.

Sometimes it's very difficult for people to do ideomotor responses because it's a new thing for them. If they are sitting there and you are not seeing any responses, very often you can tell them (He turns to a woman in the audience.) "Sally, I'm reaching over and I'm lifting up your left arm. And I'm not going to tell you to put it down any faster than you really relax comfortably and completely and learn to allow your other hand to float up involuntarily. So that hand will go down slowly while you think pleasant thoughts … and allow all the weight to drain out of the other hand . . , so that one hand goes down … only as fast as the other one begins and continues to lift up . . , and no faster. That's much too fast—slow down. Only as fast as the other hand learns to move involuntarily… . That's right …. Take your time… . Let the other mind do it. … Slow down… . There it goes… . You are learning now … really learning… . Enjoy it. … That's right. … All the way up, let it … all the way up… . Learn to allow your unconscious mind to make the movements and the changes … and allow that to continue, one moving one way … and the other moving the other way… . And you can continue that until you've learned to do this perfectly."

Hypnosis is a learning process. There's no way to fail unless the hypnotist allows someone to define something as failure. If you define the situation so that failure is not possible, it won't be a problem. If you continually give people the experiences and the internal responses that can serve as the foundation to build learnings so that they can have choices, you will do them the most service. That's true of any learning.

You can allow that hand to go down, now, Sally, and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Now, I know that each and every one of you in here can learn to go into a trance, and you can learn to get anything you want from trance states. But if trance states arc typically a time when you fail at things, that won't be the case. Traditional hypnotists have always done themselves a disservice in that they've asked people to do things that they weren't already doing. I don't do that, because I think it is unfair to them and it would make my work harder. I always allow people to do what they are already doing by giving them a lot of choices. I allow them to respond in ways that are most natural for them, and then slowly use that to teach them to do something else in an altered state. You can begin with simple things like movement, and extend that all the way to making pervasive personal changes.

OK.. Find a partner, induce an altered state, and set up a nonverbal yes/no signal system. The signals can be responses other than just movements. You might have her blush for a "yes" signal and pale for "no." Or she could relax for "yes" and tighten up for "no." If you try a range of possibilities and don't notice a response, say "I would request of your unconscious mind that it provide me with an obviously recognizable signal that I can use validly as a "yes" response. Would you provide that for me?" And then you sit back and observe. If you see it, fine. If you don't, you say "Please make it more obvious for me. Because I desire to be instructed by your unconscious mind and to be fully respectful of your needs, I need a signal system that is unequivocal and unambiguous." Your partner will generally come up with some responses that you can see. Take about twenty minutes to do just that much with each other. Then come back, and I'll give you more instruction.

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Many of you have told me that it was a lot easier than you thought it was going to be. Many of you, as I walked around the room, were succeeding brilliantly without noticing it. One of the problems with doing anything that deals with unconscious activity, is that very often things are really obvious. I noticed someone staring at his partner's fingers and asking questions, and the partner was nodding her head "yes" and "no." He was focusing on her fingers, and he kept squinting harder, as if somehow or other that was going to make the fingers lift higher. You have to understand that very often unconscious responses, since they are not meaningful, have a tendency to be very blatant. But if you look only in one place, you may miss them.

2) Identifying the Pattern of Behavior to be Changed. Now that you've established yes/ no signals, I want you to put your partner in an altered state again and have her identify some pattern of behavior that she engages in but doesn't like. Now, consciously she may think "Ah, smoking" but unconsciously she may identify something else. It doesn't matter what she thinks she has identified, because I want you to tell her unconscious to scan through all the things in her life that cause her problems and pick one that is of utmost and vital importance to her well–being.