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

In addition to that, as you bring her out of trance, overlap her into situations that will take care of all the physiological parameters of the cold. Overlap her into an environment where her cold symptoms would disappear spontaneously. If she has body aches, overlap into a hot tub or a whirlpool. If she has a drippy nose, take her into the desert where everything gets dried out. Find out what symptoms she has before putting her into a trance, so that you'll know where to overlap her to when you bring her out.

Woman: Where would you overlap her to in order to take care of a sore throat?

That's a good question. Where does a sore throat go away? What do you do to get rid of a sore throat? Woman: You gargle with salt water.

What are the odds of having a sore throat when you get out of the ocean after swimming in warm, tropical, salt water? About zero. If you actually went swimming there with a really bad sore throat, you might make your cold worse eventually. But if you go swimming in the ocean, especially if you go where there are some good–sized waves, chances are that all the salt water around will dry out all your membranes.

If you ever get a runny nose, and you can't get to the nose sprayer, or you don't want to get addicted to nose sprays, you can do something very simple instead. Nowadays there are some very addictive nose sprays on the market. They are more addictive than cigarettes. You can watch people in drugstores furtively going up to the counter and buying boxes of nose spray. It's really bizarre. All you need to do for a simple, non–addictive alternative to nose spray is to buy one of the nose–spray bottles and pour out all the nose spray. Then you make a salt water solution, put the cap back on, and spray the salt solution in your nose. That will work as well as anything else to dry out your nose.

Woman: Could you use the procedure you just outlined for a stomachache or any ordinary psychosomatic problem?

Yes. Put the person in a trance and do reframing first, to make sure that you give her alternatives if the problem is functional. Then do overlap for each symptom that the person has, as you bring them out of trance.

Susan: My cold is better–not entirely better—but while you were talking, it already started going away.

One time I got somebody's poison oak to go away on the spot as a demonstration. 1 put him in a deep trance and explained to him that poison oak is a mistake. "It's a mistake" I said. "Allow me to tell you the story of antigens and antibodies. Poison oak rash is a response to a plant to protect you from the danger of it, when the plant isn't dangerous. And then you get all this stuff over your skin, but it is your body responding. And it's just a mistake; and when you make mistakes, the best policy is always to go back and clear them up." Within two hours that person didn't have a trace of poison oak, except for little red marks on his skin in the places where there had been open pus wounds.

It is amazing what you can get away with if you are congruent. People frequently send us their "impossibles" to work with. We got one client who had neurological damage that impaired his ability to walk. We referred this man to one of our students, David Gordon, since we don't have a private practice anymore. The man brought lots of X–rays and records to his first session that "proved" that he was unable to walk normally. He hobbled in with a walker, sat down, and showed David all of his records. David did a few things, and sent him out.

The next time this client came in, David remembered something he had seen me do effectively with somebody, and tried it out. He told that man the story of the plasticity of the human brain. You should read neurology journals; they have the best metaphors of all. All of science is a metaphor. Plasticity means that one part of the brain is able to take over the function of another part. They've documented that this actually occurs. If a child learns a language, and then at the age of four gets his language hemisphere cut off, he will learn language again in the other hemisphere, even though that hemisphere wasn't supposed to be the one to learn language. If the part of your brain that moves your index finger gets destroyed, you can learn to move your index finger with another part of your brain. That's what plasticity is all about.

David put this man in a trance and explained how you could grow new pathways, and also use different pathways to recreate a function that has been blocked by injury. He told about studies which indicate that about 90% of the brain is not used. These are total lies, as far as I can tell, but he told them well. And since science documents that these lies are actually true, David referred to various journal articles while this guy was sitting there in a trance.

Besides direct explanations of central nervous system plasticity, he told more general metaphors about finding new streets to drive on when you're driving across a city and you come across an area where the streets are all torn up for construction. Then he gave this man's unconscious rather direct instructions to rewire: "Discover exactly where the damage has occurred, and check adjacent nerve pathways which are either uncommitted to other functions, or which may be recommitted safely without interfering with other functions, until you have restored the functions of the damaged area."

Whether that man actually grew new pathways or no., I don't know. But he got up and walked out normally after the session. Given the human being was to make whatever changes were necessary to be able to walk normally. Whatever that scientific metaphor was a metaphor for, the appropriate response was to get up and walk out. That's the way I think about designing everything that I do. We've also been successful in using this method with other clients who have standard medical evidence of neurological insult and trauma. Man: Is that what faith healing is all about?

I don't know. Is that what neurology is all about? You are asking me a question about verification of reality. It's probably all wrong. I don't know. Faith healers present a context in which the logical response is to change, and they do a much better job of it than most therapists do! They do a much better job than most of our students, because they have convinced themselves, so they are more congruent.

I did a faith healing one time. I walked into a religious meeting and looked holy. All the people stared at me; finally I communicated to them that I had this thing with God. I told them I'd had a moving experience where God had made me a healer with these hands. I convinced the people in this group, and healed some of them. I don't know how they .actually healed themselves. All I did was provide a context in which they could respond appropriately, and since I didn't point at them afterwards and laugh at them, they stayed healed and their lives were changed.

These stories are designed to show you that there is some mechanism within people that is capable of doing these things, but it needs to be convinced, it needs to be motivated, it needs to be communicated with, and provided with a context in which to respond.

Otherwise it won't respond, because it doesn't care. Whatever that part is, it doesn't limp, it doesn't itch with poison oak. If it did, it would go ahead and take care of the limping or the itching. But if you provide a context in which it can respond appropriately, it will.

This is what we accomplish with all our NLP tools. Reframing is just a context for people to respond to by changing themselves. That's all anything is, as far as I know.

Today we want to teach you other specific ways to utilize trance states. First we want to give you a very useful procedure that you can use for a wide variety of behaviors: the new behavior generator. You can use this for any situation in which the person makes some response they're dissatisfied with. That description could fit the major complaint of most of your clients. I'm going to assume that you've already put the person In a trance and established some kind of ideomotor yes/no signal system, either overtly or covertly.