If you think of hypnosis as if it's a state of controlling someone or persuading someone, the loser is going to be you. You will limit the number of people you will be effective with. You'll also lose in your own personal life, because you're going to start worrying about who's in control of you. My experience is that people are much more respectful of themselves in hypnotic altered states than they are in the waking state. I can give someone a suggestion which is negative and harmful in the waking state, and she will be much more apt to carry it out than if she is in a trance. If you think about the things that people have told you to do which were unpleasant, but which you did anyway, you were probably in the waking state at the time you did them. In trances it's very difficult to get somebody to do something which does not lead toward something meaningful and positive. People seem to be more discerning in altered states. It's a lot easier to trick or take advantage of someone in the waking state than in any other state of consciousness I know of.
I believe that hypnosis is really biofeedback. However, a biofeedback machine does not tell you to slow your pulse down. It only tells you where it is now. You have to aim toward the outcome of your pulse being slower, or your blood pressure being different. The machine only provides the feedback. As a hypnotist you can do both. You can provide people with communications that match what's going on, just like a biofeedback machine. You can then start adding other things step by step that lead them to somewhere else, and they will be able to go along naturally and comfortably. You can create a situation in which all they have to do is respond—the one thing people do all the time, and the thing they do best.
It is a lot easier to make personal changes in an altered state than it is in the waking state. The fact that you don't have the choices that you want is a function of the state of consciousness that you're in. Your normal waking state, by definition, is a description of the capabilities and the limitations that you have. If you are in a state in which you are limited, and you try to make changes in those limitations with your normal state of consciousness, it's a "catch–22" situation. Those–limita–tions will constrain the way you try to deal with the limitations, and you're going to have a lot of difficulty. If you go into an altered state, you will not have the same limitations that you usually do. You will have limitations, but they will be different ones. If you go back and forth between altered states, you can change yourself so much that your waking state won't resemble what it was before.
How many of you in here are clinicians? How many of you at some time have changed so much that you never went back to who you were? … And how many of you have never done that? … I was hoping one of you would raise your hand so I could say "How dare you be a clinician!" An agent of change unable to change—that would be the ultimate hypocrisy. To me, hypnosis is only a way of expediting change. All we're working on here is learning to make natural transitions from one state to another.
Man: I keep wondering how you can tell when someone goes into a trance. You asked us to notice the changes, and I saw some, but how do I know if that means she's going into a trance?
OK. What kinds of changes did you all see when you did the inductions? I asked you to pay attention to what resulted in change. What changes did you notice?
Woman: Her face muscles seemed to relax, and her face got flatter.
That is characteristic. In trance there is a flattening or a flaccidity of the muscles in the face, and there is a symmetry which is uncharacteristic of the waking state. I've found that first there is an intensification of facial asymmetry as the person begins to enter a trance. You know you've got a fairly deep trance when you get symmetry again—a symmetry that is more balanced than the typical symmetry in the waking state. As a person comes back out of a trance, you can determine where they are in the process of coming back to the normal state of consciousness. They go from extreme symmetry in their face through a relatively asymmetrical state to whatever their normal symmetry is. What else did you see?
Man: There were little twitches of the fingers or other parts of the body.
Any unconscious movements—jerky, involuntary kinds of shudder movements—are really good indicators of a developing trance state.
Woman: The breathing really changed.
I'm glad you said it that way. People's breathing patterns vary considerably in their normal state, and when they go into an altered state, whatever breathing pattern is characteristic for them will change. If you have a very visually–oriented client who breathes shallowly and high in the chest in a normal state of consciousness, she'll often shift to breathing deeply from lower in her stomach. If you've got a very kinesthetically–oriented person who typically, breathes slowly from her stomach, she'll shift to some other breathing pattern. Breathing patterns are linked to sensory modes, and they will change as a person alters consciousness.
Woman: If you see a person who typically has an asymmetrical face, does that mean that there is a lot of polarity, or a lot of difference between his conscious and unconscious?
1 wouldn't draw that conclusion. If you see an exaggerated amount of facial asymmetry, you know something unusual is going on. I conclude that there's some imbalance: either chemical, or behavioral, or both. I wouldn't label this a difference between conscious and unconscious.
Man: I noticed that as people went deeper, their hands got warm and flushed.
Especially as you get into the deeper stages of trance, there will be muscle relaxation and an increased flow of blood in the extremities.
Man: What's the relationship between the eyes rolling completely backwards and altered states?
None that I know of. If the eyes roll all the way up in the head, that's a good indicator of a fairly deep trance. However, lots of people go into a profound trance with their eyes open, so it's not necessarily an indication of an altered state.
Man: What does it mean when you get eye movement?
There are two kinds of movement. One is an eyelid flutter, and the other one is seeing the eyeball moving behind the eyelid, but the lid itself is not fluttering. The latter is called "rapid eye movement" and is an indicator of visualization.
OK. There are these general signs of entering trance, and in addition there will be many other changes that you can observe which will be unique to the person you are working with. These changes will simply be indications that the person is shifting states of consciousness. When you ask what a trance state looks like, the question is "which state?" and "for whom?" If you observe the person's muscle tonus, skin color, and breathing pattern before you do an induction, you know what their normal state looks like. As you do the induction, when you observe changes in those parameters, you know that the person's state is altering.