In other words, the latter part was tailored to the request that she had made of me earlier. As I told the metaphors, her conscious mind did not understand. However, I received signals that her unconscious understood the reference and was beginning the preparations that I had requested of it. Are there any questions about what I did?
Man: You decided not to pursue the hand levitation?
No, I offered her a choice. I always do.
Man: Didn't you get some resistance to levitation and then give her an alternative?
There was no resistance. Her hand began to lift. The movements in her fingers and thumb were already there. Then I offered the second alternative, and her unconscious selected that one. If I had not offered the second choice, her hand would have continued to rise.
I made suggestions about hand and arm levitation and got twitches, which almost always precede the actual movement. At that point I remembered I was supposed to be demonstrating inductions, not trance phenomena. So I made the suggestion about her bringing herself out with a sense of refreshment and renewal and delight that she had achieved so much so quickly.
A good hypnotist is like a good government. The less you do to achieve the outcome effectively, the better you are at your job. My way of thinking metaphorically about what Barb and I did is that she allowed me to enter a loop with her in which I could feed back certain parts of her experience which allowed her to alter her state of consciousness radically. But the entire time, she was leading in the sense that I was being responsive to the changes in her, incorporating those, and then making a suggestion about where we ought to go next. She accepted all the suggestions I made to her. If she had indicated at any point that I was making a suggestion that was not appropriate for her, I would have offered alternatives.
Man: How would you know when a suggestion was inappropriate for her?
A reversal of all the growing signs of trance would indicate that. Any reversal of the muscle flaccidity, the breathing changes, the lower lip size changes, or skin color changes would have indicated to me that I had just proposed something that was not appropriate for her.
Man: I was wondering what you thought of her nervous laugh at the very beginning when you said her hands were experiencing warmth. She laughed but you ignored it.
'That was when I interrupted and said "I hope you noticed that response." The response I was referring to was the muscle flaccidity, the pupil dilation and an immediate body sway. Immediately following my comments she laughed. She would not have laughed if I had gone on with the induction. Her laughter was a recognition that it was working. I had said only two sentences and it was already working and she detected a change. Is that true, Barb?
Barb: Yes.
So the laugh would never have emerged if I had gone on with the induction. Her response was so immediate and distinct that I wanted to make sure all of you noticed. Woman: What happened to me when you did the induction is kind of strange. I was trying to watch you, because that was my job, and instead I went through the whole thing myself. I was really embarrassed because my hand was coming up and—
Well, you had lots of company. About thirty other people sitting out Where did, too, so don't be too embarrassed.
Larry: Can you give us more words that you use for internal responses—things you were guessing she was feeling inside?
Well, I wasn't guessing. I was leading at that point, I was asking her to create those experiences. I didn't use the words "security" and "comfort" based on what I was seeing, because 1 don't know if the signs that she was offering me mean security and comfort for her. I just know those are general words that are often associated with muscle relaxation.
Larry: Right. I am trying to find out other words you would use for 'that,
There are lots. You can use words like ease, peace, serenity, calmness, or being centered. They are all just words. They don't have any intrinsic meaning. They are interpreted individually by each person for his or her own needs.
I'm insisting on making a clear distinction between sensory–grounded descriptions and non–sensory–grounded descriptions. The sensory–grounded descriptions allow me to get into synchrony with her. The non–sensory–grounded descriptions allow me to offer her very general procedures that she can use idiosyncratically. Her interpretation of these will be rich and meaningful and individual to her. I have no idea what they are, but that's fine. That's content, and that belongs to her. My job is to run the process.
This is a very simple word induction, and you can always fall back on it. It will work. It just takes longer than some of the other fancier ones. When you use it, remember to connect the statements about sensory–grounded experience to the statements about internally–oriented states. This is called "causal modeling." The simplest and weakest way to connect statements is to use the word "and." "You hear the sound of my voice and you feel the warmth where your hands are resting on your thighs and a growing sense of comfort and, …"In the induction I did with Barb, I started linking with the word "and," and then I moved to a stronger form of linkage. "The feeling of warmth and support as your body fits against the chair will allow you to grow even more comfortable."
There are three kinds of linkage. The simplest is "X and Y." The next stronger form is "As X, Y" "As you listen to the sound of my voice, you will become more comfortable," or" When I reach over and touch you on the knee, you will have a sense of dropping into an even more relaxed state." " While you are sitting there listening to the sound of my voice, your unconscious mind can prepare a particularly interesting recall of a pleasant childhood experience." The strongest form "X causes Y" uses words like "cause" or "make" "The lifting of your arm will make you drift off into a pleasant memory."
So the pattern is to say four things that are immediately verifiable, and then connect them with an "and" to an internally–oriented state that you are proposing. First you have the pacing and then the leading. As you proceed, you can gradually increase the number of internally–oriented statements, and you can gradually go from a weaker form of linkage to a stronger form.
Linkage can be very powerful. It's astounding how much linkage goes right by people's conscious minds, and yet has an impact. Once I literally had somebody go totally blind in a seminar. I was demonstrating something, and I said "All you need to be able to do is see in order to do this" I had linked seeing to being able to do the task. After I went through the demonstration, a woman raised her hand and said "I have a question." I asked her what the question was, and she answered "What do you do if you can't see anything?" I thought she meant she hadn't noticed the person change in my demonstration, so I said "You weren't able to sec any responses?" She said "No, it's totally dark."
She wasn't worried at all, but I was thinking "Hey, wait a minute here!" I went over to her and said "You don't have to learn this" and poof … her vision came back.
That woman's response was very unusual. For most people, the linkage will work the other way. Since they can see, they will be able to do the task. As long as you know what you're linking to what, you'll be able to deal with whatever impact it does have.
Nonverbal Pacing and Leading
All hypnosis can be usefully thought of as feedback. At this moment Bob is sitting in front of me. We are passing lots of information back and forth both verbally and nonverbally. Out of all the messages that we offer each other, some are conscious—that is, he and I know that we are offering them—and some are not.