Hypnosis -- Where is it not?

[Simple Guy]

At the heart or moment of any real change (outside of coercion), is
a hypnotic condition.

Comments?

[Don]

Depends upon your definition of "hypnotic condition."

[Simple Guy]

Hi Don,

Hypnotic condition: a situation where trance and/or unconscious
mechanisms is/are in play.

[Henrik]

Hypnotic condition: a situation where trance and/or unconscious mechanisms is/are in play.

Hi, Simple Guy.

When are "they" not?

Henrik

[Simple Guy]

Hi Henrik,

Yes, they always are. :)

[skip]

Yes it is a 'hypnotic moment', but there is more involved, IMO.

Erickson used to say, "Trance potentiates."

Trance itsself doesnt make change. You can be in trance and have work done and still not make any changes.

Change comes from what I call a cascade of transdiversional searches as a result of something that has occurred. Think of it as a series of dominos falling.

The cascade of TD's, results in trance, and you can observe the physical manefestations of the cascade.

When the TD'sCascade like that new neural pathways are created, and as a result you can automatically performe the changed behavior at an unconscious level.

Or so I surmise.

skip

PS Using NLP you can create the neural pathways in a slightly different manner, but transdiversional search is still vital.

[Merlin]

That's why I wrote a FAQ.
to hopefully make things a little more clear.

[Don]

Hi Don,

Hypnotic condition: a situation where trance and/or unconscious
mechanisms is/are in play.

Fair enuf.
Define "trance."
List the specific "unconscious mechanisms" you're describing.

Complicated, isn't it? ;)

[Simple Guy]

Hi Don,

Not really complicated, but the language on this can be variable,
with difererent words and meanings, equally right. How about
challenging? ;)

Trance -- a particular state that allows access and/or connects
to the unconscious in a way that is conducive to its cooperation for change.

Unconscious mechanisms -- the internal landscape that needs to
be moved about, left alone, or altered to accept or implement a
change. This would include an updating of knowledge, where necessary,
and avoiding/eliminating conflict (uc Vs. c).

Simple Guy, writing in a hurry. This might not be the post I'd make
upon further reflection. Good thing I'm among friends. :)

[Don]

Hi Don,

Not really complicated, but the language on this can be variable,
with difererent words and meanings, equally right. How about
challenging? ;)

Trance -- a particular state that allows access and/or connects
to the unconscious in a way that is conducive to its cooperation for change.

Sorta like being drunk or stoned

Unconscious mechanisms -- the internal landscape that needs to
be moved about, left alone, or altered to accept or implement a
change. This would include an updating of knowledge, where necessary,
and avoiding/eliminating conflict (uc Vs. c).

Fine, but I requested the "the specific "unconscious mechanisms" you're describing," and this is sorta generic, no?
:D :D :eek:

[Simple Guy]

Hi Don,

Drunk or stoned can be a capricious state. Trance is focused
and directed.

Unconscious mechanisms: emotional drivers put in gear, a values
allignment, a tailoring of change to fit the image and constructs
the person holds or desires to hold for him/herself, a proof-positive
that change is on the plus side of a cost/benefit scenario...
The list could resemble a training syllabus. :)

[Don]

Hi Don,

Drunk or stoned can be a capricious state. Trance is focused
and directed.

I dunno. I see a LOT of people in a trance who are neither focused nor directed.:eek:


Unconscious mechanisms: emotional drivers put in gear, a values
allignment, a tailoring of change to fit the image and constructs
the person holds or desires to hold for him/herself, a proof-positive
that change is on the plus side of a cost/benefit scenario...
The list could resemble a training syllabus. :)

You need all of that just to get a change??? Imagine that!

[Simple Guy]

"I dunno. I see a LOT of people in a trance who are neither focused nor directed.:eek:"
-- Among them, lurkers who could contribute to this forum and themselves
by de-lurking. Also, some school systems' students, some workers
at some agencies, some difficult to fire employees...

"You need all of that just to get a change??? Imagine that!"
"Imagine," mmmm, add that to the list.
:)

[Jack]

Putting aside the semantics for a moment and focussing on what you meant, I agree, SG. A client comes to see me because they have the unwanted result of a past 'trance' they cannot dump alone. Even thinking about it consciously causes another trance to prevent change. A useful trance guided by the therapist is necessary to assist change in the required direction. Of course an unguided trance might achieve the same effect and given time my dog's tail and several pots of paint could create a Pollock.

But I digress.

Jack

[Simple Guy]

Hi Jack,

I had a couple of reasons for starting this thread. I hoped to stimulate
thinking/participation from others, particularly those who aren't
regulars here. I also wanted to advance the appreciation that what
we focus on in practice and classrooms, is naturalistically occurring
everywhere else, despite the general public's lesser degree of
appreciation and knowledge of this. Everywhere would include
all modalities, i.m.o., whatever degree of efficacy or ineffectivenes
other modalities provide (talk therapy, EFT, pharmaceuticals,
chi gung, doing nothing, tiddlie winks...). Jack, you didn't digress.
-- Your point was precisely one that I hoped would be
made explicit (for possible benefit to some of the non-regulars). Glad
you made it.

[Terry]

Some try to make it simple by saying that all self probing that results in change is "Hypnosis", I choose to differ and say that only hypnosis is hypnosis however you describe it, ie, something done with intent, by a skilled person or by self when trained in the process. By doing this I place myself in a position were I am able in good concience to charge for my developed skills when and if I choose, and do it free if I so choose, knowing that I have something to give.....:D

It isn't the money you make in life, but the life you enjoy that counts..

[Simple Guy]

Hi Terry,

I don't doubt it. And if somebody should stumble onto a change via
self probing or even others' directed probing, the success there
would be, to use the phrase Skip put forth, a "hypnotic moment,"
nonetheless. Jack's Pollock painting analogy is a good one. "Even a
dead clock is right twice a day," would be applicable also.

[Jack]

I had a couple of reasons for starting this thread. I hoped to stimulate
thinking/participation from others, particularly those who aren't
regulars here.

Either newbies are incapable of thinking or there are none, judging by the reponse. Come on, you chaps and chapesses get involved! You might get shot down, true, but this forum does not actually exist except in the minds of participants, so if you do what does it matter?

You can say what you like as long as it isn't rude or defamatory and we may all learn something new and useful. Personally, I need to learn new stuff even at my advanced age - before I shuffle off this mortal coil, no doubt to learn more new stuff or not to bother about learning anymore.

Hello?

Hello?

Jack

[Terry]

Well Jack, when you take away the curious children whom we hesitate to tell anything to for fear of misuse, and take away the freebee wannabees, you are left with very little quality I'm afraid. I think many names have been removed by Mat because they had signed in but not posted just read, and now they are not sufficiently motivated to resign....

[Jack]

You may be right, Terry, but I fancy that the numbers of new posters dropped at about the same time the spam started in earnest, rather than when the new rules came in. Anyone with a serious interest in the forum's subjects would have been put off by the reams of spam.

Jack

[Simple Guy]

Hi Jack,

Unfortunately, it isn't only newbies. I've been at trainings where
some with 20 plus yrs. of experience aren't thinking much. Some
people really "get" this stuff; others never do. Yesterday, I did a less
than one minute intervention, successfully (not the first time), outside
of the office. So, for this and hundreds of other reasons, I remain
enthused about this material, but it isn't everyone's cup of tea.
That's okay. Bruce Springsteen is known to say, "Is anyone alive
out there?," at concerts. Similarly, I wonder how many people are alive
in a thinking/engaged sense here. I'm not going to detail
yesterday's intervention; that's the kind of thing
we who really know this stuff might banter about over a
cup of tea (don't put milk in mine!). This one really was very
easy and not life-shaking, though amazing to the appreciative
recipient. We're each responsible for our own enthusiasms; others
need not get on board.

[Jack]

The bottom line is that we cannot control the trances of others. All that we may be able to do is substitute a better trance so that communication can be enabled. But, there is a fine line between innocent enabling and not so innocent interference and control.

So when someone doesn't 'get it' SG, I usually shrug and walk away, having long ago realised that we each tread a unique path through this life and that change is a choice of that individual and not the mission of me or any other individual, unless asked.

It is tough not to interfere when one knows that someone's life could be made so much better, but perhaps that judgement of 'better' is not to be made so casually. If people are not thinking, then perhaps that is the trance they have chosen, but until asked to look we may never know.

Jack

[Simple Guy]

Hi Jack,

Yes, to the sentiment, observations and behavior in your "musing"
post. :)

[Connie]

I like your topic here, Simple Guy, and the various responses. As far as lurkers "decloaking," that would be fun. But if they want to learn by reading rather than engaging, that's good, too.

[KingHenrythe8th]

At the heart or moment of any real change (outside of coercion), is
a hypnotic condition.

Comments?

where is hypnosis not?... when we are asleep. dreams certainly appear as hypnotic conditions but we always call them dreams first and foremost. perhaps this life is all just a big dream itself. we like to think have a solid base to work from but eventually it comes apart. did hypnosis exist before mesmer or braid? in my view no. we all kick a soccer ball using the laces of our boot. did this techinque exist before a boot or a ball were invented? no, it required those things to come into existence.

hypnosis is so darn effective at change and the definition(s) cover so many bases that it is easy to believe it is in everything and changes things. but if it wasn't effective we would not be here talking about it. if we were living a hundred years ago we would be talking about sickman fraud because that was where it was at at that time. "and at the heart of every change is a fish" ???? we chose not to take on board the sickman fraud changes but obviously at some point he did get some changes in his clients. so if we do take on board his changes then we say "we can break this down into hypnosis" and we do that. but isn't that a kin to saying every spanish man isn't speaking spainish he is speaking english because we know how to translate his spainsh into english? he speaks spainish, we speak both, we have more flexability but that doen't mean our view should be imposed where it is not.

so my best idea is that yes i agree that now hypnotic condition is at the heart but in one hundred years time we will thinking differently and hypnosis will have taken a back seat to different types of therapy which will be more effective. therapies that solely evolve around chemistry, nanobots that regulate neurotransmitters and hormones so we never get hijacked by SEE. or anything. we might even be able to travel in time eventually, who knows; 'change history' could be a real event and not post hypnotic suggestion.

i hope that wasn't such an obvious line of argument as to sound totally uninformed :o on the debates of hypnosis.

[Poodle]

Hypnotic trance as we know it today goes back to ancient Egypt and Greece for sure and I highly suspect as far back as man on this planet.
You must have been listening to Bandler to come up with "Sickman Fraud". LOL! Yes, even SF went to the Nancy School in France but couldn't do it.

Just as science advances, so shall we too advance in our professions. There are various types of trance but hypnosis is strictly defined by:

By-pass CF= hypnosis I wrote a longer one but it still comes down to the same.

Freud came up with a talk therapy for the rich and I believe his theory is still alive and well in the world today. Some of these people have had the same patients for a good 20 years. Ego and Id are very common words in the English language and to think some people actually believe we have some strange words in NLP!

BTW, see thread about Mesmer. He did not practice hypnosis. He is well known for "magnetism" and is closer to energy work than hypnosis.

Stay well and keep learning!!
Pood :)

[Jack]

You know, one great fact about the English language is that it is so adaptable. It takes words and meanings from every culture in the world and incorporates them into the language. It is why it has been so successful as the world language, unlike French for instance which has refused to alter or incorporate and is consequently a dying language.

I see hypnotherapy as the corollary of English. It has adapted to changes in perception over thousands of years, it has been called many things in that time and it still exists.

Why?

Because the 'trance' state is inseparable from the human condition.

You cannot be human without experiencing an altered state of some sort every single day of your life.

So, even if nanobots are regulating hormones in a few years time or even creating various altered states on demand the altered state could not exist without the human being and the mental landscape needed to accomodate an altered state, and whilst there are human beings there will be requirements for change using those 'trance' states.

Hypnotherapy and NLP have the inherent flexibility to adapt to any useful ideas and to reject any ideas that do not work simply because they are both pragmatic and not, unlike many branches of medicine, dogmatic.

In 100 years we may not call it hypnotherapy or NLP, but I am willing to bet that both will still exist perhaps, as you suggest within the body of new technology, or perhaps as others have suggested within an amalgam of religious belief, although I hope that the latter will not occur.

Jack

[KingHenrythe8th]

jack imagine.....

my computer suddenly breaks and i rush to the computer store to get it fixed. once at the store i decide to buy a lottery ticket. that ticket then wins. when the paper writes up my story it reads "broken computer helps man win the lottery" when i tell my grandchildren my story it centres around the broken computer. the lottery win is a meaningful change it my life caused by a computer.

in my view this cannot be a change caused by a hypnotic moment. no matter how hypnotic i may be as a human, no matter that all of the changes will be operating within my mental landscape (i totally agree with you) the one piece to the story of me winning the lottery that springs to mind is the broken computer [forget the ticket itself]. thats the nautral focal point.

if the very fact of me being present could be seen as a cause for these events i think those causes fall outside the relam (of what i know to be) hypnosis and more into the relam of karma, God or whatever.

i have heard that computers can hypnotise; and looking at my colleagues at work it seems that altered states are glore around their computers especially in the middle of the afternoon but these altered states are a result and the cause is not known.... so i am leaving my chips on the example above.

"call" :)

[Merlin]

Hi Pood,
i'm in the hypnosis is young camp.
Egypt might have 'sleep' or trance, but bypassing the CF?
Suggestions?
how so?

[Jack]

I don't think I asserted that all change was caused by an altered state, only that we are all in one some of the time. I agree with you that all change of any kind cannot possibly be directly caused by an altered state of awareness.

Being run over by a train is a good example. There is change from being alive to being dead. You may have been in an altered state when you stood in front of the train, you would certainly be much altered when the train had passed over you, but there is no real connection with the fact of being dead to any hypnotic state.

I think what SG meant was therapeutic change, and there I would agree with him. We are so used to talking about change on this forum that sometimes we do not qualify what we mean by change.

However, leaving aside God for a moment, in the example you gave you are makiing the assumption that the computer caused the meaningful change in your life when it might have been buying the lottery ticket, rushing to the computer store, or even that you are telling your grandchildren the story.

It all depends what you decide to define as the causal moment. Ultimately, taking a reductionist view, the cause of your altered state of newly acquired wealth was being born and in a position to buy a computer that would eventually go wrong. And then there are your parents...

Jack

[Jack]

Perhaps all we can say about hypnosis historically is that brains have not changed a great deal over the last couple of thousand years or so, so it is likely that some old Egyptian was making a few quid sorting out the odd phobic fear of Pharoahs, scorpions or chaps with big whips.

And imagine how powerful Og would be as he hypnotised a hairy mammoth into the pot...:D

Jack