However, the meaning of any communication—not just in hypnosis but in life—is not what you think it means; it's the response it elicits. If you try to compliment somebody and he's insulted, the meaning of your communication is an insult. If you say he's insulted because he didn't understand you, that's a justification for your inability to communicate. The communication itself was still an insult. You can either justify things and explain them, or you can learn from them. My preference is to learn from them. So if I communicate and someone takes it as an insult, next time I change the way I communicate. And if in the future I want to insult that person, I know exactly how to do it!
While transitions are not the whole ball game, they are a useful tool. There's no set formula in hypnosis. The only thing that you can count on is that when you communicate with people, they will respond. If you provide them with enough different communications, you can find what they will respond to appropriately.
What I've told you so far is just the beginning. I also want you to pay attention to your tempo. Tempo is very, very powerful. A rather traditional hypnotist named Ernest Hilgard proved after forty years of research that there's no relationship between a person's ability to alter his state of consciousness and the hypnotist's voice tempo. He has statistical proof of this. But if you pay attention to your own experience as I am talking to you right now and when … I change my tempo … to another tempo … which is distinctly … different … and slower … it has a noticeable impact. As long as it has a noticeable impact, I don't care what "science" says.
Now, I said in the beginning that I'm a modeler. A modeler only builds descriptions. The descriptions are only ways of getting you to pay attention to things. Right now these descriptions are designed to get you to pay attention to your voice tone and tempo. The first hypnotist I ever met was sitting down trying to put someone in a trance when I walked in the room. He was going to teach me how to do hypnosis, and he was talking in an unpleasant high nasal voice saying "I want you to feel very relaxed." Even recognized that I couldn't feel relaxed with a whining person talking to me. But he "knew" that all you needed to do was have one tone of voice, because it says in all the books that you're supposed to use a monotone. He "knew" that it doesn't matter what tone you use, as long as it's the same one.
Now, talking in a monotone is only a way of avoiding being incon–gruent, as far as I can tell. If you use the same tone of voice all the time then you probably won't be incongruent. If you are incongruent, no one will notice it, because there's no variation in your voice. However, the variation in your voice can also be a vehicle that will add to what you're doing.
Man: I noticed that when you were giving suggestions, you sometimes used words that imply control; words like "you will feel" or "you are feeling" versus "this is something that may happen." Do you differentiate between when you choose controlling versus non–controlling words?
Yes. The guideline I use is this: I don't want anyone that I do hypnosis with to ever fail at anything. If I'm making a suggestion about something that can be verified easily, I will probably use words such as "could" or "might" — what we call "modal operators of possibility." "Your arm may begin to rise… ." That way, if what I've asked for ' doesn't occur, the person won't have "failed." If I'm making a suggestion about something that is completely unverifiable, I'm more likely to use words that imply causation: "This makes you sink deeper into trance" or "That causes you to become more relaxed." Since the suggestion is unverifiable, he won't be able to conclude that he's failed. . If I've used five or six modal operators of possibility, and the person responds to them all, at that point I'm probably safe switching to words that imply causation. However, if my next suggestion is very critical, I may continue to use modal operators of possibility. The basic guideline is to make sure no one fails at anything.
Many hypnotists push people to the limits of what they can do by giving them what are called susceptibility tests. These hypnotists put their clients in an altered state and attempt to do a series of graded hypnotic tasks, and the clients accomplish some and fail at others. What usually happens is that somehow or other both the hypnotists and the clients get the idea that there are things they can't do.
When I was teaching at the university and was running hypnosis courses in the evening, a lot of people would come to those courses and say "Well, I've been in lots of trances, and I can only go to a certain level." I don't know where this idea about levels came from. Somehow or other the quality of your hypnotic trance is measured in height— self–esteem goes up, but in hypnosis you go down. It takes a really altered state for some people to see a positive hallucination. Other people see positive hallucinations all the time; they call it thinking. If I'm a hypnotist and I push someone into a position, it sets him up for failure. If I say "You will open your eyes and see a six–foot French poodle" and he opens his eyes and there's no French poodle, he may think he can't have positive hallucinations. If he takes that instruction as a comment about himself rather than about that particular hypnotist, he will probably believe that he can't do it.
Typically, clients will come in and say "Well, gee, I've always wanted to be able to have a positive hallucination, but I can't." I know that everybody is capable of it and has probably already done it a number of times. When they tell me they can't, it's an indication that something has convinced them that it's outside the range of their capabilities, which will only make it that much harder for me to be able to do it. I have to sneak around their beliefs in order to get them to have that experience. Alternatively, I can simply accept this belief and say "Well, you know, it's a genetic limitation, but it isn't a necessary phenomenon to be able to accomplish things, unless you're a civil engineer."
That's what civil engineers do for a living, you know. They go out and look at valleys that have nothing in them and hallucinate freeways and dams, and then they measure them. They just have to have certain hallucinations and not others. Seeing a freeway where there isn't one is "natural," it's called "work." If they see little blue men walking up and down the freeway, then they're in trouble.
Since I don't want people to fail and make generalizations which are not true, I proceed very, very slowly in producing verifiable effects like the classic hypnotic phenomena. I haven't known many people who have a great need to have arm levitation or negative hallucinations. Most people have those all the time and don't know it. Those phenomena don't have any value in and of themselves.
What I'm concerned about is that I lead people through experiences that convince them they can get whatever changes they want for themselves. Whether they want to be able to control pain when they go to the dentist, to change their sleeping habits, or to make very pervasive psychological changes, I want to help them get those results, because hypnosis. can be a very powerful tool to expedite psychotherapeutic change.