Igor Ledachowski Power of conversational hypnoasis - Transcript Manual

The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis Video Training Program

Transcript Manual

By Igor Ledochowski

The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

Table of Contents The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis .......................................................................... 4 DVD 1 – Conversational Hypnosis Foundations .............................................................. 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 4 Conversational Induction ............................................................................................. 9 Warmup Exercises ..................................................................................................... 14 Fundamental Hypnosis Exercises ............................................................................... 16 DVD 2 – How To Be Naturally Hypnotic In All Your Interactions .................................. 25 Enhancing Hypnotic Effects ........................................................................................ 25 Language Softeners ................................................................................................... 28 Authority Principle ..................................................................................................... 30 Hypnotic Language .................................................................................................... 40 DVD 3 – Hypnotically Leading Others & The Power Of “Yes Sets” ................................ 50 How To Go First ......................................................................................................... 50 State Dependant Learning ......................................................................................... 57 The Power of Smooth ................................................................................................ 59 “truth” Is A Habit ....................................................................................................... 70 DVD 4 – How To Use Strategic Hypnosis To Get People To Adopt New “Truths” ......... 72 How To Create “truth” ............................................................................................... 72 Persuasion Ethics ....................................................................................................... 76 Creating More “truth” ............................................................................................... 80 Hypnotic Principles .................................................................................................... 83 Universal Experiences ................................................................................................ 90 End of Day Summary.................................................................................................. 95 DVD 5 – The Instant Rapport Technique & “Hypnotic Eyes” Revealed ....................... 100 Hypnotic Eyes .......................................................................................................... 100 Instant Rapport Technique ...................................................................................... 106 Exercise Debrief ....................................................................................................... 109 DVD 6 – How To Hijack A “NO” And Turn It Into A “YES” ........................................... 114 Hypnotic Context ..................................................................................................... 116 Using H+ Hypnotically .............................................................................................. 123 H+ Yes Set ................................................................................................................ 129 Hijacking “No” ......................................................................................................... 132 DVD 7 – Trance Rhythms That Put The “Critical Factor” To Sleep & A Hypnotic Revivification Demo .................................................................................................... 138 H+ Trance Rhythms .................................................................................................. 138 Demo – Revivification .............................................................................................. 143 Revivification ........................................................................................................... 146

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Exercise Debrief ....................................................................................................... 150 DVD 8 – Advanced Conversational Revivification Demo & The Little Known “Previvification” Technique ........................................................................................ 154 Demo – Conversational Revivification ...................................................................... 154 Conversational Revivification ................................................................................... 165 Hypnotic Summary .................................................................................................. 174 Demo – Gift Of PMA ................................................................................................ 177 Previvification .......................................................................................................... 185 End Of Day Summary ............................................................................................... 188 DVD 9 – Freestyle Conversational Hypnosis & How To Amp Up Your Hypnotic Influence .................................................................................................................................... 191 Q & A Session .......................................................................................................... 191 Skills Review ............................................................................................................ 201 Yes Set Training ....................................................................................................... 204 Freestyle Conversational Hypnosis .......................................................................... 214 DVD 10 – Hot Words & How To Use Conversational Hypnosis Immediately In The Real World .......................................................................................................................... 216 Conversational Hypnosis Training ............................................................................ 217 Hot Words ............................................................................................................... 229 DVD 11 – Framing, Re-Framing & “The Unconscious Blitz”......................................... 234 Frame Control .......................................................................................................... 234 Unconscious Blitz Training ....................................................................................... 243 Final Freestyle Exercise ............................................................................................ 252 Final Hypnotic Comments ........................................................................................ 253

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis DVD 1 – Conversational Hypnosis Foundations Introduction So, welcome everyone to the Conversational Hypnotherapy Live Training. I want to welcome you to the extended version. This is the three-day version. We have a lot of ground to cover, but I’m very excited because as many of you know, the Power of Conversational Hypnosis, the audio Home-Study Program was our first main program that we ever launched as a company, and secondly it’s the one that put us on the map in terms of a hypnosis training business. This is a special performance, shall we say, so thank you for coming. Before we launch into it, there are a few questions that I need to ask just to get a sense of where we are as a group and to set some expectations in terms of what we’re doing here. The first question is: → How many people in the room were already hypnotists and knew it before you came into this room? In other words, you’d successfully hypnotized some people before this. → How many have done some reading and some listening but not really done much about it? → How many of you have no idea what you’re doing here? You were told to come in the room and you’re hoping it will be fun. (laughter) Yes, that includes me as well, right? This just gives me a sense of the breakdown in terms of the room. Don’t worry in terms of skill levels. I expect no skill whatsoever before you sit down in the chair. We’re going to start everything from scratch, from first principles, from first set of experiences and so on. By the end of today, it will be very difficult for most people to tell who’s had experience before and who hasn’t. By the end of tomorrow, it will be almost impossible to tell. By

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual the end of our final day, it will impossible to tell. In fact you’ll probably think someone has had no experience but they’ve been doing it for 10 years. The reason I say this is because we’re going to be working at a different pace and a different level than a lot of people are used to. How many people here have trained with me before at a live event? Put your hands up. That’s about half the room or so. For those of you haven’t put your hands up, please look to the people who did put their hands up for confirmation of some basic facts that I’d like to present to you right now. I’m going to predict a lot of what’s going to happen to you in your experience over the next three days. The first thing you’ll notice happening pretty quickly today is that the pace is going to move much faster than you’re comfortable with. In other words, your intellect and ability to keep up with everything that’s just happened will be almost impossible for a lot of you. Some of you will keep up for at least a day or so, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you have no idea what’s going on. I can virtually guarantee it. One or two exceptions always arise, but for the most part you’ll come to a point where you think you have no idea what’s happening. For the people who have trained with me before, would that be a fair and accurate summary of how this training works? Because of the way you were taught things at school - I’m going to get up on a little bit of a soap box here - there’s a certain paradigm that the current education system instilled in us, which basically creates panic or fear at not knowing something. In school we’re taught that you have to know something before you can do it, but actually that’s not how it works. You have to be able to do something before you can understand it. You need some reference experiences to have inside of that. You need to have unconscious learnings before the conscious ones can arise. Luckily the unconscious part of the learnings happens much more quickly than the conscious ones. This training is specifically designed for you to be able to learn more quickly and, more importantly, to be able to actually do something practical with it, which means for the most part of today and a lot of tomorrow you will probably be consciously lost about most of what’s going on here. You won’t really know how it fits together, you won’t know what to do with it and you won’t know how to apply it in the real world. If you’re willing to suspend your judgment until at least the final day, I promise you that it will all come together. By the end of our time together here, everything we will have done will make sense. You’ll know how to do it, why to do it, when to do it and where to

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual do it. More importantly, it will come out naturally when you need it to and you’ll only realize after you’ve done it that actually, it was the best thing for it to have happened. Once again, for those of you who have trained with me before, is that a relatively accurate reflection of your experiences with me? I just want to prepare you for this. There will come a time when you’re totally lost and you think this is happening too quickly, you can’t make sense of some of these things, there’s a lot of ambiguity and you’re not quite sure what I expect from you. By the way, that’s on purpose a lot of the time and I’ll explain why as we go along. You will at some point be tempted if you’ve been really locked into the current version of the academic paradigm to start feeling afraid. You’ll blame yourself. You’ll think you’re not good enough or smart enough or that everyone else is better than you. These are thoughts that are likely to occur from time to time. Once again for those of you who have trained with me before, would that be an accurate thing to say? Don’t believe yourselves when it happens. We’re doing something very different from the way you’re used to. This is not school learning. This is adult learning. There are some expectations that you can have of me and there are some expectations that I’m going to have of you to help assist that process, which I’ll talk about in a moment. One of the keys things is don’t believe yourself if you think what you’re doing isn’t good enough. Here’s one really good reason why. I want you to really think about this. Maybe write it down, or tattoo it on your forearm if you need to, to remind yourself of this because I can also guarantee that at least one or two people in this room will forget this at some point. And I’ll remind you, and you’ll go “Oh, yah” when I do. Most of the things you’ll be asked to do in here will be very easy, very simple things to do, very simple steps. If for some reason you finish an exercise and you feel that what you did wasn’t good enough, the only reason it can happen is because you’re trying to do something other than what I’ve asked you to do. The reason for this is because the exercises are designed to get you to do one thing, and the primary thing that you’ll be focused on doing is not actually the main thing that you’re supposed to be doing. So you really won’t know what you’re meant to be doing. That’s going to be something that’s going to happen unconsciously. It’s been loaded so that your unconscious mind spontaneously finds certain patterns of interaction.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual You won’t know what those are ahead of time. You’ll know by the end of our time together. Looking back you’ll be able to reflect on those things, but you won’t know ahead of time. If you have no idea what the exercise is supposed to help you understand, or get, how on Earth could you possibly know whether or not you did it right? Does this make sense to you guys? I understand that as a theory right now this makes sense, and in practice there will be a number of you who will say I wasn’t very good at this. I’ll ask you, how do you know, and you’ll say it didn’t come out the way it was supposed to. Well what was supposed to happen? The fact is if you think something isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, it’s only because you’ve added something to it and you think something is expected of you that is not. At this point you have two choices. The first choice is to continue thinking in those ways, beat yourself up, become an emotional wreck, and do your very best to continue learning despite all that. That’s the traditional academic approach to learning method. You’re welcome to engage in that if that’s a paradigm that you enjoy. Fine. The alternative is that you just stop it. You stop beating yourself up and you stop making judgments about whether or not what you did was good enough. The only thing that you need to know ahead of time is do you understand what is expected of you in the next exercise – in other words, what is the next little piece that we’ve done? If you don’t understand what that is, feel free to ask me and I’ll clarify. There will be some occasions where I’ll have the exercise be purposefully ambiguous, at which point you’re welcome to ask for clarification but just don’t be surprised if the answer is this. (silence) This is not a very usual type of training. Having said this, there are certain responsibilities that you have as part of our training program here. This is not school learning. This is adult learning, which means that you’re responsible for your own learning process. That means if you need to take notes, take notes. If you are better off paying attention, by all means do so. You do not need to take notes. I have my little screen of happiness here, and I’ll write down all the major points, all the exercises and all the key ideas that we’ll be talking about as we go along. At the end of our time here together, you will all be emailed a copy of these notes. They won’t necessarily be written in volumes. I’m just going to literally write notes as we go along, but they’ll help remind you of our time together here. You’ll be sent those

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual in an email, so you’ll have at least a skeleton set of notes of what’s going on here. If you want to take more notes than that, by all means feel free to do so. If you need to stand up and get a glass of water, there are some water stations at the back, so by all means feel free to do so. If you prefer learning on a yoga mat or on a nice little duffle bag or something like that, by all means do so. Just make sure that whatever you do to make it easy for you to learn doesn’t interfere with other people in the room. If the best way for you to learn something is by yelling at the top of your voice, that’s not a good thing. You can yell as loud as you want inside of your mind. Just don’t let your vocal cords take part in that action. If you need to have a chat with someone, please be respectful and go outside. Have a chat with them and then come back inside afterwards. Again, it just means that we can keep the whole process rolling as smoothly as possible. Other than that, you’re responsible for your own learning process and that means you’re also responsible for your emotional state. If you’re happy to be frustrated, suffer and be fearful about how badly you’re doing in the old system of learning, by all means do so. However, if you do ask for help, expect the nature of the answer to be along the lines of, oh, what have you just added in terms of the exercise that I didn’t ask you to do? You’ll say I thought you wanted this, and I’ll say no it wasn’t. Now you can stop it. That will be the extent of my assistance to you. You are responsible for getting yourselves back into a balanced state of mind, if for no other reason than when you go out there and start using this stuff with other people, you can’t call me up and say I’m in a really terrible state. I did this and it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. Please help me. That’s not going to happen, so you may as well start here as you mean to continue, getting yourself into the right state of mind and getting yourself into a position where you can do the exercises. If you find that an exercise is difficult to do, realize that you’ve added something that you needn’t have, at which point either enjoy the fact that you’ve added it or stop it. Just enjoy the process as much as you can. It will be a fast paced thing. The next thing you should know is that part of the way this program is designed is that for at least the first few days, you’ll feel like you don’t have enough time to do anything. All the exercises will start, they’ll be very quick and they’ll be over before you know it.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Again you’ll be tempted to say there wasn’t enough time to do the exercise and I need more time. Once again I’ll smile and say great, if you felt you didn’t have enough time, you’re in exactly the right place. I have taught this seminar in exactly this style for the whole of last month. I went to three different venues, so I’ve probably put 400 or 500 people through the program so far. Rest assured that I know exactly what’s going to come up. You will feel pressured for time and that’s just fine. Your task is to do as much of what I’ve asked you to do in the exercise as possible, given the limited amount of time you’ve been given. That means for many of you that you’ll have to get out of your comfort zone and mentally speed up in a way that you aren’t necessarily used to on a day-to-day basis. Rest assured that by the time we finish the whole program on the final day, we’ll have plenty of time to slow things down. By the time you leave here, you can do things at any pace that you wish to. However, my preference is to teach you more rather than less. I want to teach you in a way that’s easier for you rather than harder, and I’d like to help you get to a standard that’s higher rather than lower. You get the idea? To do all these things, I have to be able to work with you in a way that you’re not used to, otherwise you’d be doing it already. If there’s one person in the room that says this is easy and I do this all the time anyway, welcome to the club. That’s the easy way to do it. We’ll add a few more ideas around that as we launch into some of the exercises, but I think that’s the core of what we’re doing here.

Conversational Induction I don’t know if you’ve come across this idea before. It’s not quite presented this way or as categorically as this in the neuroscience literature, but when you actually look at the studies in terms of what’s implicit in what they’re doing, I think it’s a very reasonable conclusion to make that all learning, all behavior and all change happen unconsciously first. All learning, all behavior and all change happens unconsciously first and then the conscious mind catches up to it somewhere along the line. As hypnotists, our job is to communicate with the unconscious mind and to basically negotiate with that part of the mind that’s responsible for all learning, all behavior and all change so that we can get the results that we’re looking for more easily. Would that be fair to say? The learning process you’re about to engage in has been designed around

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual the same principle that all of your learnings, all of your behaviors and all of your personal transformations have and will continue to occur at the unconscious level. For those of you who are interested in looking this up, the term for this in neuroscience is called implicit learning. There are a couple of variations on this as well, but that’s the mainly researched part of the field. That means that you’ll all be learning things that you’re not aware of. In fact in order to be aware of something that you’ve learned, you’re going to have to have learned a lot more than just that in order for your conscious mind to catch up to some part of that, that you think you will have learned. All the real learning, behaviors and changes are occurring outside of your conscious awareness. The more comfortable you become learning outside of the conscious awareness and trusting that process to continue, not only the easier this whole process gets for you, but the faster your learning becomes. Some of you may have heard of something called accelerated learning have you not? I’ve been asked a lot about the idea of accelerated learning. Personally I don’t believe that it exists. What I believe exists is natural learning. Your natural ability to learn far exceeds anything you’re currently able to conceive of yourselves doing. Far exceeds that. It definitely exceeds anything that you’ve done in school. If you think about your greatest achievement in traditional academia – school, university and so on – that’s an example of what you can achieve when your natural learning process has been retarded. I use that word very much on purpose. I don’t think it’s so much an idea that accelerated learning exists. I think it’s more of an idea that natural learning exists, and the methods that we’re currently using to try to stimulate the learning process or the traditional methods that you’re familiar with tend to impede learning. We learn despite our school system and not because of it. This gives you a lot of freedom. All learning, all behavior and all change happen unconsciously first, and all you have to do consciously is show up long enough and get out of your own way long enough for it to occur. Of course, if you want to slow down your learning process, you can do certain things like feel bad and tell yourself how things aren’t working, and maybe even get to the point where you try so hard to do something that you just blank out and do nothing. Those are great ways to really slow down the learning process. Because implicit learning happens outside of your conscious awareness, doing anything even if you think it’s the

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual wrong thing is better than doing nothing attempting to do the right one, because you’re creating the context for your unconscious mind to learn. There are many things that happen in that learning process. There are many ways that we can reach the unconscious mind to stimulate the awesome power that you have to increase your learnings, to change your behaviors and to transform as an individual so that you can become healthier, happier and more successful in your life. Think back on human history or even through human pre-history. A tribe trying to survive along the plains of Europe, Africa, America, or wherever they happened to have settled, they’re still hunter-gatherers. They haven’t even gotten to the farming stage. Their livelihood depends on the animals they catch, does it not? What did they do to become better hunters? One of the rituals that pretty much every single society that hunts has gotten into has acquired is a variation of the ones where you dress up in the wolf skin, the bear skin or whatever animal you wish to be able to track better or embody better. They dress up in these things and dance around and sing. They meditate and do all kinds of different versions of this, at the end of which strangely enough people become better hunters. They achieve more somehow. We might look back with the advantage of time and say how primitive, they think there are spirits and demons that they can possess and use the power of. Maybe there’s something in that and maybe there’s not. However, every single one of you has done something similar and learned from it without realizing you were doing so. Does anyone here have children? Of course you’ve never caught your children wearing your clothing and look in the mirror trying to be you, have you? No one in this room has ever dressed up as a cowboy, an Indian, a policeman or something else in order to engage your imagination as a child and really engage that role. Think about what children are doing at those times. They’re developing a mental map, a full and rich sensory experience of what it is to succeed in a particular type of role. To this day, you all still respond to the same kind of ideas without realizing it. Some of you would feel naked if you turned up at your office without wearing a suit. Some of you would feel overdressed and awkward if you are wearing a suit. Some of you still dress up to go to the theater and some of you do not.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Think about this. How does changing your clothing change your behaviors? When you go to an interview, do you just wear a T-shirt and jeans, or do you attempt to dress up to play the better role? Don’t you feel more professional when you dress a certain way? Take a police officer and remove his uniform, and all you’re left with is a regular human being with the same kinds of problems that you and I have. Dress them up in a uniform and they start adopting characteristics that go with their profession. They’re more confident and more authoritative. There’s something that occurs at the unconscious level when we adopt a role of some sort, something that shapes all of our lives. The way you are right now, the way you dress, the way you behave and the way you interact with others is a set of choices that you’ve made, as a result of seeing the people around you in your environment and mentally taking on only those roles that have something of value for you. To this day, you’ll still adapt or adopt certain mannerisms, physical gestures, articles of clothing and so on. If we ran this seminar in Saudi Arabia, do you think I would be seeing as many T-shirts and jeans, suits as I do in here, or would I see more longer flowing robes? Would I see more headdresses? Why is it so different there if not because they’re looking at different role models than you? They’ve become who they are in the same way that you’ve become who you are by adopting an attitude first inside your mind. There’s a very strange phenomenon that happens in a particular niche of the acting field. Are there any actors in the room? You may have come across this before. There are various versions of this but it’s essentially called mask work. The actors put on a mask. The trick to mask work is they get out of their own regular personality long enough to look in the mirror and look at the expression on the mask. It’s happy, it’s sad, it’s angry or whatever. After a period of doing this, if they can get over their own insecurities about letting go, something very strange happens. Very powerful emotions begin to arise, powerful emotions that are in direct relationship to the mask that they’re wearing. If they’re wearing a mask that’s bright and smiling and full of fun, they start laughing and having a great time. If it’s a different mask, they may break down and cry even if they’re the happiest person in normal life. All learning, behavior and change happen unconsciously first, so really it’s your job whilst you’re in here to create the right mental environment inside yourselves to ensure

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual that your unconscious mind gets the hint as to what kind of learning is worth focusing on in here, is it not? I know that you came here for a specific reason. Some of you will actually be aware of what some of those specific reasons actually are, and of course you realize that whatever you think you came here for, your unconscious mind has other ideas too that you haven’t realized yet. Whatever you think you came here for and all the other things you really came here for but haven’t realized yet, all of those things begin to add up into kind of a mental picture, an image of something, someone who for lack of a better description is a great hypnotist, a great hypnotist who has the power to influence others in their lives. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? The one thing that I don’t know is what that hypnotist looks like to you. For some of you, they may be wearing an old Victorian suit with a top hat and a monocle. That’s a nice cliché but it will work. Others of you will have a different version of it in mind. Some of you will have a great covert hypnotist in mind who’s so great that no one other than them knows they’re doing it. The one thing that I could never possibly know is what that idea of a great Conversational Hypnotist is, that you have right now. I suspect that most of you have at least an understanding of what that is even if you don’t have a full appreciation of it yet, would that be fair to say? Just like those masks, it becomes easier for you to understand exactly what that role will be for you, not before you begin but after you’ve started the role and played it for long enough for it to actually come to life for you. Think of it this way. Let’s assume that at the end of our three days together you’ve achieved every single thing you came here for, both consciously and unconsciously too. Let us assume that beyond that, some time has passed and you’ve been practicing diligently and getting great results to the point where you have truly mastered every nuance of this field and know it. You have full confidence in your abilities. Is this an assumption that we can make for the moment? If you’re not there right now, there may be a time in the future that you can predict that you could get somewhere close to that. I know that you don’t know what that path may look like yet. How could you? It’s in the future. However, you have a pretty good idea now what the end of that path might be.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

What I want to ask you is if you were this tremendously gifted hypnotist who’s acquired all these skills through practice, experience and many, many learnings, how would you hold yourself? How would you carry your physical body? That would be a beginning. How would you be breathing differently if at all? Now of course, you’d think along different mental pathways than you were used to before you became this great hypnotist, would you not? You’d literally see the world differently through a different pair of eyes because you would be different. Would you not? Which means that when you’re talking to people, you’d talk differently. You’d use different words. You’d speak in different rhythms and different manners. Now of course many of those things will be things that you’re already doing, just enhanced shall we say, would that be fair to say? As you think about what that version of you might be like, or if you prefer, think about someone who has achieved all those qualities that you wish to one day achieve once you’ve gone down this path yourself.

Warmup Exercises The question that I have for you is, do you know enough about that kind of person to – just like a child – pretend, for a period of time at least, that you are them for long enough to at least have a brief chat with someone else? Can you do all that? It’s not a difficult thing that I’m asking you to do. I’m only going to add two things to this. Be prepared to start off wherever you’re at and let it evolve. For those of you who really want to accelerate this process, I’d like you to take those qualities that we’ve just been talking about and accentuate them into a caricature almost. The way we’re going to do this is very simple. Just to experiment with this a little bit, stand up for a moment and put your pens and papers down. If you look around, we’ve got about 200 people in the room here, and they’re all fascinating people because believe it or not they’re all world-class hypnotists in their own right. And of course, seeing as you’re one now as well – at least we’re going to be pretending and playing that game for a little while – wouldn’t it be fascinating to find out what another world-class hypnotist in your field happens to be like? Wouldn’t that be

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual interesting? What do people normally do when they meet each other? They ask certain questions like: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Who are you? What do you do? Where are you from? Why have you come here?

To make life easy for yourselves, you have four questions that you can ask each other already, so it’s not exactly difficult. I know that you’re used to answering these questions in a particular way. You’ve done so before. Which means that if you were a true master of your craft and a masterful hypnotist, you’d probably be answering those four questions in any way but those that you’re used to, wouldn’t you? Exercise Seeing as there are 200 people in the room, I think if I give you about nine minutes you should have enough time to meet every single person and exchange some chit chat. Your job is to see if you can play or ham up this role of a masterful hypnotist far beyond your comfort zone. See if you can spot whether or not the person in front of you has actually reached their comfort zone or if they’re holding back a little bit. You have nine minutes to meet everyone in the room, playing the masterful hypnotist that you want to be one day. Off you go. Let’s talk a little bit about this last exercise. First of all, I take it that it was a lot of fun to just talk to people in a slightly different role or state of mind. Did some of you notice that it was fun to step into it, and some of you felt a little bit awkward, I’m normally not like this? That’s exactly why you’re doing it, because you’re normally not like this, and you want to be something that you’re not normally like, whilst doing this. The question that I have uppermost in my mind is, even though you haven’t managed to meet everyone in the room yet (laughter) – tut, tut, try harder next time – you’ve met enough people to get a sense of what their responses to these kinds of questions were and, more importantly, you got a sense of how they were answering them rather than how they were asking the questions. Did you notice that you liked some of those answers better than others? In other words, there were certain things they said or certain ways that they said it, and you said I kind

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual of like that. That stuff’s pretty good. It fits with what I think a great hypnotist should be like, would that be fair? All I’m going to ask you to do is when you come across a mannerism like that, a phrase, a word or an idea like that, steal it. Make it your own. Add it into your own mental profile of the role that you’re playing to enrich it. When you recognize it in someone else, it’s only because it’s already resonating with one part of your own internal model, the unconscious part at least anyways. You may as well adopt it and enrich it further. Let’s give you another three minutes so that you can finish off the last few people you haven’t met yet (laughter). Make sure that you adapt and take as much from each person as you go along so that each time you repeat these questions they should not be coming out the same way anymore. Does that make sense? Off you go.

Fundamental Hypnosis Exercises We’re about to start doing a series of very fast paced exercises to get you rolling with a lot of Conversational Hypnosis stuff. Initially it will look nothing like Conversational Hypnosis, bear with me, we’re just doing some training wheels now before we take them away and run with the more conversational stuff. There will be some fast-paced exercises. This is going to very quickly come to the point where it will be too fast for you. Remember when that happens, feel free to tell me and I’ll say well done in response. Because the exercises are this fast, I’m going to ask you to not bother too much with the social niceties yet. I’ll let you know when normal social context starts applying again. For the moment, each time that we do an exercise I’ll add one key piece that I’m going to ask you to focus on. Whatever else you do, make sure that that’s the piece that you focus on most of all. If you want to add anything on top of that, that’s on you. In other words, if it’s taking away from that, you’ve just had a different learning experience than everyone else has. This other part won’t be as relevant for the first exercise, but here’s a nice little clock and I’m going to give you a countdown. Typically I’ll be giving you between 30 and 60 seconds to do an exercise. Don’t worry. The first one is a lot easier. You only get 10 seconds for that one.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Because you’ll be switching around with your partners, please keep an eye on the clock because if you go over your time, you’re basically taking time away from them to do their part of the role. If that happens to you two or three times in a row, the solution to that is to be the hypnotist first the next time we do an exercise. Those are the main logistics bits to make sure that it’s done smoothly. Now let’s get back into some hypnosis stuff. Notice that when you were doing the exercise where you were meeting everyone, you were doing it out of character. In other words, you were doing it in a new character rather than an old one. Did you like the character that you were becoming whilst doing that overall? Yes? I’m going to encourage you to go to the point where you’re feeling a little uncomfortable playing that role. In other words, it’s too exaggerated and it’s too much because by coming back from that exaggerated version, you’ll find a more comfortable middle ground that will work for you. If you never approach the edge, you’ll never know where that comfortable middle ground is for you. This is going to be true especially for the next few exercises. The exercise will be really simple and it’s a no-brainer. It’s really more about getting you to step into the role as fully and completely as possible. Here’s how you know that you’re doing it right. If at the end of the day I remind you about the role that you’re playing and you say yeah I’ve been doing it all day, but what role are you talking about? Then you know you’ve done it right. If you say oh I forgot to do that and I just went back to the way that I normally do things, then you’ve missed out on a chance to accelerate some of the learning processes. That’s fine but it changes things a little bit for you. You get the idea? The more extreme you can be here at the beginning, the faster you’ll progress and the easier the later exercises will become for you. It’s your choice how much easier you want the harder exercises to be for you. Exercise This first exercise is very simple. Remembering that you are the world’s greatest hypnotist, I want you to do something that’s going to be ridiculously easy. I want you to turn to your partner and meaningfully ask them to close their eyes and go into a trance. They, being the world’s greatest hypnotic subject - it’s true, did I not mention that part yet - they’re going to know exactly what to do and they’ll go into a wonderful deep trance.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Once they’ve had about a second or two to enjoy the amazingness of that trance, you’ll just ask them to come back, have them open their eyes, tell them well done, at which point you’ll switch roles. If this takes any more than five seconds apiece to do, you’ve added some amazingly extraneous thing, which could be very interesting but that’s entirely on you. You understand the nature of the exercise, yes? So literally five seconds apiece. Off you go. Did you enjoy that? Was it fast paced? Did anyone here not have enough time? Stop it. You’re adding stuff. This will become increasingly important for those of you who have more experience rather than less. The temptation will be to do all those things that you already know about. But given that you already know about them, why spend time practicing those? You’re better off putting all your time, energy and attention into those things that you don’t normally do. That way you’ll grow further here. Then when you reintroduce those things that you’re aware of doing well, your repertoire will be that much better, won’t it? For those of you who have more experience, I’m going to challenge you to use as little of it as possible at least for the next day. Restrain yourselves if you can. For those of you who have no experience, you’re in great shape. Let me ask you this. How convinced were you as a hypnotist that your subject was: a) The world’s greatest subject, and b) Was in the most wonderfully profound trance where basically any hypnotic suggestion you made would be totally accepted and acted out on? On the flipside of that, how many of you were a little unconvinced? It was like yeah they could be doing better. They did all right but they weren’t the best subject ever. I’m not going to put them in my suitcase and take them on my traveling show to see how good a hypnotist I am. Put your hands up if you had someone like that. In other words, it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t necessarily great. Here’s what I’d like you to do now. There was something that you were seeing that made you think there was something decent going on here. It’s better than nothing. Would that be fair to say? There were some things that you weren’t seeing that if you had seen them you would be more convinced. Would that also be fair to say? You may or may not consciously know what all those things are. However, in the next exercise, with the same partner, it will be a 20 second exercise, all I want you to do is have them close their eyes, go into a trance and then help coach

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual them. In other words, all the things that they could be doing to be even more convincing, tell them to have a go. Give me an example of something that you saw your subject do that convinced you that yes, they’d altered their state somehow, or at least they were mimicking it rather well. Student:

Their face muscles relaxed.

Let’s say that you asked me to close my eyes and go into a trance. A simple little coaching might be to say now just relax your face muscles. It’s as simple as that. There’s a very long list of things that you could coach people into doing so that they look like a more convincing hypnotic subject. Would that be fair to say? Exercise With the same partner, I’d like you to do the same thing, but now add another five seconds of coaching where you just tell them a couple of things that they can do to improve or have a more convincing performance. And of course as the subjects listen, these coaches are here to help you, so mimic it better. Off you go. Was that interesting? Who was more convinced the second time around? Who as the subject enjoyed that coaching – in other words it helped you? We’re all happy winners this way. You let them know what to do, they do it and we’re both very happy. Exercise Very quickly do the same thing again with a different partner inside your group. You’re going to do the same exercise. You’ll say close your eyes and go into a trance. You’ll do a little bit of coaching in terms of what they can be doing better. However, what I’d like you to include is your memory of your previous partner because something that this partner will be doing will be missing out on what your other partner already taught you was looking good. At that point just say great, the other guy did this, so offer it to them as a coaching piece as well and see if it takes. Does that make sense to you guys? Easy to do? So 20 seconds apiece, off you go. Did you enjoy that, yes? It was quick, simple and easy to do. Let me ask you this. As the subjects, was there something that your hypnotist did that made it easier for you? Yes? What kinds of things?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

When my partner was coaching me, it was like a feedback letting me know I was doing it correctly. That allowed me to go deeper and quicker, and reassured me.

Igor:

So what you’re saying is when your partner told you, not just new things to do, but actually reinforced old things you were already doing well, that actually enhanced the process, right?

Student:

That’s right.

Igor:

Thank you, very good. You’ve done this before. Close Your Eyes Coaching: Trance Signals Ratifying So we’re saying that Ratifying what they’re already doing well helps enhance Trance Signals as well, correct? Who’s next?

Student:

I found that taking authority, taking command, not giving me room for error helped me.

Igor:

You’re actually a little bit ahead of the game here, which is great. So there’s something about being authoritative in what you’re doing that makes it work much better, correct?

We’ll have to talk a little bit about what we mean by authority. Our culture has a bit of an ambivalent or a little bit of a schizophrenic view of authority. In some respects, it’s like you do this! and you’re going, yah, go ahead and make me. Versus there’s a kind of competence version of authority, which is like go ahead and do that, and you say sure, why not? So there’s a style, you can be authoritative without necessarily being tyrannical, does that make sense to everyone? We’ll talk more about what that is and how it works after the break. For the moment, however, notice the difference between this. Everyone close your eyes and go into a trance. Now come on back. That’s it. Everyone’s going ‘I’m going to get an Igor induction!’ No, you have to work for your inductions! (laughter)Now try this one. (very meek and insecure) Um, um, could you c, c, close your eyes and um maybe go into a trance now, please? Close your eyes everyone. Everyone please close your eyes. No? All right, I give up.

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I’m hamming it up a little bit but you can clearly see that often when people think this isn’t working, all that’s happening is that they’re not working it properly. Do you understand the difference? After the break we’ll look a little more at how we can develop that sense of authority. For the moment, if your particular mental role model of a great hypnotist does not include some kind of air of competence, at the very least, if not authority, as in I know what I’m doing, and ask for instructions because I know what I’m doing, then please add that into your mix because it will definitely help. I wouldn’t be in the vaguest sense upset if in the next moment you overdid it and became a little tyrannical with it. It is okay with everyone if your hypnotist is a little bit tyrannical for a few things, just to find their swing so to speak, that you won’t take offense? Is that all right with everyone? You all have permission now to be tyrannical once. Thank you for that, that was very good. Student:

When we were doing the induction their voice tone became lower, and slower.

Igor:

So something is happening with the voice. In this particular instance, is it the voice becoming lower that somehow was more pleasant to you?

Student:

It seemed more deepening.

Igor:

It was more deepening, so it enhanced the experience for you in some way.

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Beautiful, thank you. What else did you guys notice?

Student:

For me it was a shoulder touch. It relaxed me really, really fast.

Igor:

A shoulder touch. Having a bit of physical contact at just the right time can enhance whatever experience you’re having. Is that correct? Of course there’s touching and then there’s touching. If you find yourself in a prison cell, you’ve probably chosen the wrong one. It’s a bit late at that point. Let’s face it. You’re all socially responsible people. You realize

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual that there are certain types of touches – shoulders and arms tend to be okay. You have to know someone pretty well before you touch their thighs. You understand that there are different versions of that. As a rule, if you’re going to go down that road especially in conversations, you can start with touching often but lightly and see how people respond to that. Then decrease or increase it as you need to. You’ll find your own particular style over time. The rule with touching by the way is, if you feel uncomfortable about doing it, they’ll feel doubly uncomfortable having it done to them. If you’re actually very natural about it, most people who think they’d be uncomfortable with it will be okay with it, but again not all people. Student:

Should you ask permission before you touch someone?

Igor:

We’re not teaching hypnotherapy here. We’re teaching influence hypnosis. If you’re talking about therapy, then yes it’s a very wise thing to ask permission both consciously and unconsciously. However, outside of that context, especially for Conversational Hypnosis, you kind of defeat the purpose by saying welcome stranger, I’m going to be talking to you for a while and from time to time I may touch you. Is that okay with you? You’ve kind of broken the social contract a little bit at that point. Hence, for the moment, just get more used to idea of touching in general, and if you don’t like it, don’t include it. It has some very enhancing effects. Remember, all this stuff will ultimately be done inside of a very social context. If you’re comfortable inside of that context touching the people that you’re with, or if you’re comfortable with certain kinds of touches, do those. If you’re not, either increase your comfort zone or don’t do it. Does that help? By the way, you’ll tell very quickly whether or not you’ve made an error, would you like to know how? You’ll have people tensing up, pulling away or frowning. These are subtle cues. So far would it be fair to say that most of you focused on physical processes – relaxing, changing your breathing, a postural change and so on? He’s just introduced a new element.

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Student:

The way he was hypnotizing me, he was better helping me flowing away, like a river, from my own conscious thinking.

Igor:

What was he doing that made it more easy, or enhanced the flowing away like this?

Student:

He was adding a little bit more, little things to go with my mind so I was going away.

Igor:

Thanks you. So far would it be fair to say that most of you focused on physical processes? Relaxing this, changing your breathing here, a postural change there and so on. Would that be fair to say? So he’s just introduced a new element here, has he not?

Let’s call these cognitive processes, having hypnotic thoughts. Close Your Eyes Coaching: Trance Signals Ratifying Hypnotic Voice Cognitive: Hypnotic Thoughts There are certain types of thoughts that if you engage in them will tend to accentuate the general flavor, shall we say, of hypnosis. I invite you to experiment with what those may be. I’d rather collect them from you rather than giving you a long list of them because you’re generating those experiences at that point. We’ve got the idea of developing a characteristic in your voice that makes it more hypnotic and more engaging as a result. We’ll evolve that process over time. We definitely have the idea that Ratifying something they’re doing well already tends to enhance the experience overall. You can Ratify things that they’re already doing and you can add things that they’re not doing yet, and finding the right balance will help you to get the most out of it. Finally we’ve got the idea that adding certain kinds of hypnotic thoughts and certain things that their minds can do along with the physical stuff help them to get into it. In terms of the acting world, this is called method acting, isn’t it, where you get into the role even further.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

We’re going to have a break in a moment. Whilst you’re having a break, I would like for you to think about some thoughts that you can invite people to engage in as part of this little coaching process that you’ve been doing already, that if they did that, if they followed those mental, or hypnotic thoughts that you’re going to ask them to think about, it would tend to enhance their experience even further in the same way as the touching did, the voice did and the Ratifying of the experiences you’ve already been talking about did, also. Do you get the idea of this? It’s a simple thing. I don’t know what answers you’ll have. You’re better off coming up with several of our own. By the way, the more you find the better and you get to experiment with different versions of this.

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DVD 2 – How To Be Naturally Hypnotic In All Your Interactions

Enhancing Hypnotic Effects Welcome back everyone; I hope you had a nice break. Before the morning break, we started exploring some simple things that you can do to step into this role as an excellent, exquisite, masterful Conversational Hypnotist a bit more. We picked up a whole bunch of things. You got the idea of talking with a bit more authority, and you got the idea that coaching them to become physically better trance subjects had an enhancing quality to it. There’s some idea around doing something similar with their mindset that you’ve been thinking about over the lunch break. You’ll get to jump into the deep end and get creative in a moment. Definitely the idea of altering your voice qualities has something to do with this enhancing effect that we’re looking for. Ratifying and letting them know that they’re doing a good job and pointing out things that they’re doing well already is also pretty useful. Exercise So we’ve collected a number of things. What I’d like you to do now is do the same thing again with a partner. I’d like you to fill in as many of those things as you can in 20 seconds apiece. In other words, focus primarily on the idea of hypnotic thoughts that you’ll be introducing, but carry on coaching them with some physical characteristics. Keep reminding them that they’re doing some good things as they go along. See if you can alter your voice quality and make it more “hypnotic,” whatever that means to you. In other words, what can you do to enhance the experience that’s anything but the actual words that you’re using? Focus on the Trance Signals and the hypnotic thoughts and we’ll see where that takes us. I’m going to be kind to you, we’re going to take 30 seconds apiece, it’s the longest time you’ve had so far. Find a new partner. Off you go.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual So how was that? Was that interesting? Was that fun? Not too taxing I hope, except that there was not much time, was there? It’s going to get worse, don’t worry. So you’ve started to put everything together and it’s starting to have an enhancing quality. Who here as a subject, that’s pretending to be the world’s greatest subject, is starting to feel a little bit good now actually as a result of them talking? Who here, even in those 30 seconds, when it’s time to switch roles is starting to say no, no, let them carry on a little bit, this is nice. Anyone getting to that point? Of course you’re just doing that because you’re pretending really well, aren’t you? Or does something else happen when you pretend a bit too much? Just an idea. Now the next question I have for you is, whilst you were doing all this coaching and talking to them and presenting some hypnotic thoughts, did you notice them doing something which may have looked more hypnotic, but that they might have difficulty doing on purpose? So for example, did anyone see their eyelids fluttering wildly or did their eyes start spinning around, like they’re part of the Exorcist or something? Did you notice little things like that happening? You might see a pulse on their neck slowing down. Some people see it on the arms or the ankles, something like that. These are things that people can’t control consciously. These are not inside of their voluntary control are they? There are some things that are occurring that are involuntary, but it’s kind of nice to be able to coach them to do that too, right? I’d like you to have the experience of doing that, except we’ll see how easy it is or how hard it is to do. Exercise For the next one we’re going to take your time back a little bit to about 20 seconds. You can do as much of this stuff as you want, but there’s one thing that I want you to actually focus on, and please don’t do any of the other stuff at the expense of this. Close Your Eyes Coaching: Trance Signals Ratifying Hypnotic Voice Cognitive: Hypnotic Thoughts Voluntary v Involuntary

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual When you’re coaching them on their Trance Signals – relax your shoulders, which is something that they can consciously do; change your breathing, which is something they have conscious influence over – but if you’re going to add something that would make them look more hypnotic, that they have no conscious control over, like eyelids fluttering, eyes maybe rolling up or going through REM movements, pulse changing, temperature changing and things like that. Go ahead and suggest that anyway as part of the coaching and see whether it helps or takes away from the experience. Very quickly, 20 seconds apiece, off you go. Was that interesting? Student:

For the first time I let go. When you said, right, that’s it and he said to me up, up, up, I went no, no, no. I enjoyed it, which I didn’t think it would happen and it did.

Igor:

We haven’t gone onto Conversational Hypnosis yet. We’re just building some basic building blocks, but this is exactly why Conversational Hypnosis can be so powerful, because they’re not expecting it. They’re not trying to help. They’re not trying to resist. They just let it happen, what naturally happens, and it makes your life so much easier. I got this idea from a book that I was reading about a therapist. It could have been Grinder and Bandler but I’m not quite sure now. They talked about a lady who comes into their therapy clinic and sits down and starts sobbing. This is terrible. My life went to pieces. People hate me. She starts sobbing. He turns around and says I’m sorry we haven’t started yet. Just give me a minute to get my desk ready. She says oh I’m sorry doctor, stops crying immediately. People have an immense capacity to pull themselves together in the right context. Although we won’t be focusing on therapy here at all and this is more about influence and persuasion in life in general, a lot of crossover of course exists there. My preference is to get it done before they know you’ve started because if they know you’ve started, they’ll start doing things to make it harder. Why not be done before it gets hard? Not a bad idea.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Are there any other quick comments in terms of what you experienced there? Student:

I found that when I mentioned the eyelids fluttering, the eyelid fluttering stopped.

Igor:

Thank you very much. This is getting curiouser and curiouser, isn’t it? There’s something very interesting going on there, and it’s something that as hypnotists we need to take into account. Did you notice anything else?

Student:

What I noticed is my thumb started flicking involuntarily.

Igor:

Thank you.

So you’re starting to collect things that are happening outside of your conscious involvement. Are you starting to get a little bit of this? Did anyone here have the opposite effect when they heard the idea that they can flutter their eyelids or have something happen that they don’t have any conscious control of did anyone have a sense that it detracted from your experience, took away from it? That’s a lot fewer people than I expected, but well done. You’ve obviously pretended to be greater hypnotic subjects than I thought.

Language Softeners Let’s do something to soften things up a little bit. If I tell you that your eyelids will start to flutter and they don’t, maybe you’ll be kind enough to ignore it, or maybe you’ll try really hard and then something else happens, or maybe you’ll just get cross with me and say how am I supposed to do that, you idiot? Who knows, right? We want to introduce a very simple kind of language. I think most languages that I’m aware of have a version of this that helps us to deal with these situations. It’s basically moving from the language of certainty – which uses words like will or must or do this now, the imperative – and we move to Language Softeners that are more about uncertainty. If you’re uncertain about something, what kind of language do you use? Maybe, possibly, you can. Which is the quickest way to Heathrow Airport? I don’t know which

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual way is the quickest, but you could try this route or maybe that route would be better. You definitely wouldn’t go this way, but you might possibly find that this is the route that you’re looking for. You get the idea? Throw out some words like that: Language Softeners: Maybe, Perhaps, Possibly, Could, Might, May, Now or Later, Suppose This could be a very long list and different languages of course, will have different versions of how long that list is, but for now let’s take this idea and put it into what we’ve been doing. Exercise Now I’d like you to take 30 seconds apiece and do as much on that list as possible. The thing that I want you to focus on most of all is introducing the idea of Language Softeners. However, I do not want you to use them exclusively. I want you to switch between the imperative and the softened or conditional version of that. In other words, tell them what’s going to happen – you will experience this, you will do that, I want you to do this now – and then you’ll switch and somewhere along the lines you’ll say maybe you’ll do this or maybe you’ll do that, and possibly this and possibly that. Do you get the idea? I want you to be able to switch backwards and forwards between them a few times to notice two things in the 30 seconds that you’ll have. First of all, how do you feel talking in these different styles? Secondly, as the hypnotist what are you perceiving in terms of how your clients are reacting? When you’re the subject, notice how the different styles impact on you. You can do as much of the rest of this as you want, but focus on the idea of Language Softeners and particularly turning them on and off within that 30-second window, and notice how that impacts on you and on the session that you’re beginning to develop. Start now. Interesting? What did you notice as either hypnotist or subject when those styles were switching, put your hands up.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

When I got told to feel my feet, I thought no, I don’t want to, it was a bit like a teacher or somebody telling me what to do. But when I just got the suggestion to feel my hands, I thought yes, he’s actually right, I can feel my hands.

Igor:

Was it the way they presented it – you must notice your feet now and you didn’t want to, or you could feel your hands, and you went yah, I actually can, is that the sort thing? So there must be something about the language that goes between the people being told what to do, which very few people like, and the more permissive style. So this is a very crude sort of way of experiencing what people call direct and indirect hypnosis, or more accurately, permissive hypnosis that gives options. The direct, or more authoritarian does not give options. Both have their value. Let me ask you this, did anyone here have the opposite experience, in other words, they liked it when the person told them, do this, do that and when it started going into you could to this, you could do that, they thought, just stop washing around like an idiot and whatever? So if one of you want to stand up and tell me about that.

Student:

For me it is better if someone is more direct because I don’t have to wait. For me this is faster and it feels better.

Igor:

So you preferred it, in other words it enhanced the experience when someone was more direct about things, right? So what’s going on here? We have two different styles and we have two different reactions to each of those styles. Why is that happening?

Authority Principle Well let’s think back. We talked earlier about the idea of authority, yes? I don’t know if you’re aware of this but our state of mind is linked to our vocabulary. Let me give you a quick example of this. Has anyone here ever been angry, I mean really furious with someone in their life? I know you guys are too Zen like for this, but you can imagine someone behaving like that, right?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual And of course when you’re angry or furious with this particular person, you’ve gone up to them (sweetly) “I don’t think that what you said was very nice, let me just help you move on a little bit.” That’s the kind of language that you used, isn’t it? Or did you do something along the lines of “You bleep, bleep beep, ever, bleep, bleep, bloody bleep, bleep, bleep again then bleep.” Is that more the sort of language that would have come out? Your state of mind selects your vocabulary. In other words, your vocabulary expresses a state of mind. They’re linked, does that make sense? So you can often tell how people are feeling from how their talking, especially if you pay attention to their nuances. One of the things that could have happened, we’re going to experiment with that right now, is that when you’re switching from the authoritarian, the direct style, which is the language of certainty, do this and do that, and you switch to the more permissive style, language softener, which is the language of uncertainty, you may have accidentally switched into a more uncertain state of mind as well. Which is what you’re referring to when you say, get on with it, I just want to have the result. You see it’s one thing saying, well, let’s just experience this for a moment. Close your eyes and go into a trance. And open them again. (spoken with confidence and authority) Now, c, close your eyes now, and go into a trance, please? (spoken timidly and uncertainly) Same language essentially, but my delivery has switched. So now you’re probably feeling, get on with it, right? Now let’s switch it around (speaking timidly and uncertainly) you could feel your left hand. Once again, you’re feeling a little unpleasant about that, I should imagine. I am again exaggerating this a little bit. As opposed to (spoken with confidence and authority) you really could feel the temperature in your left hand, could you not? Did that trigger the same thing inside you? (student said no) The second one was a lot better, was it not? (yes) So, the language was still the same, it’s still the language you said you didn’t like. Now let’s try your version here (points at first student) – just close your eyes and go into a trance. Was there any resistance there? Come on back when you’re ready. Did you say No, I’m not going to do it!? Why? My language was the same, it’s still the teacher telling you type language, the difference is in the delivery of that language. Remember, we’re coming back to this point again. We talked about it earlier. What most people think is authority is tyranny wrapped up in

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual a nice package. It’s typically when someone who is uncomfortable with authority gets put in a situation of having to have it - like a teacher - that the only way that they can try and get control is to overdo it. Most people think of authority as those instances of someone who’s been inept enough at trying to do it, that you’ve noticed. And all those other times when you haven’t noticed, you’ve responded to it quite naturally. So I need you to separate the idea of authority from the caricatures that you may have had in the past, because authority, all that is, is a sense of – competency is part of that, is a sense of, this is just natural, why wouldn’t you do this? Right? Why on earth would I waste time saying, um, maybe, possibly, you could see it inside your heart to find a reason to really stand up and go over to the light switch and turn it on. Life would be very long, if that’s how things happen. Or you could say, it’s a bit dark in here, why don’t you switch the lights on? That doesn’t feel the same sort abusiveness, shall we say, there. Do you get the idea here? So something in your tonality. Something in your state of mind. Something in your mannerisms will change the way that your language is perceived. Exercise To do this I want you to do another exercise. I’m going to give you 40 seconds just to have a little bit of more play time with this. I know it’s a crazy, long time. It’s all right, 40 seconds apiece, you know. I want you to switch between imperative language, you will experience this, you will experience that and using language softeners, the language of uncertainty. There are basically four mixes that you’ll have. 1. You can use the imperative in a confident tone or in an authoritative tone. It doesn’t have to be overbearing but there’s a sense of why wouldn’t you? 2. Then you can do the same kind of imperatives with some hesitation or some uncertainty, you don’t know how they’re going to react.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual 3. Then we’ll do the same again with the Language Softeners. You’ll say could you feel this, or maybe you’ll feel your left foot different from your right foot. You’ll do one hesitantly – maybe you could feel that foot now. 4. Then you’ll do another one as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, which it really is, so you might end up noticing your left foot more. Do you understand the difference? We’re going to cycle between the idea of authority and uncertainty as a mental attitude and between imperative and the more conditional sense as a linguistic attribute, and see how those effect things. Find a different partner inside your group. Let’s start now. How did that go? Was that interesting? What did you learn from that? Student:

I found that when I was working with my partner, that I would say ‘there will be an indication somewhere in your body, you will start to feel sensations’ and that was my positive, that was my telling them what to do. Then I followed up by saying maybe in your fingers, maybe your eyes, maybe your shoulders.

Igor:

You found that you could mix and match the styles and they both enhance each other, right?

Student:

Yes, and I think my partner would agree with that.

Igor:

By the way, that’s a very natural way of speaking to people. The more natural you can make it, the more real this stuff becomes for you. Right now we’re still doing training exercises. We’re not into Conversational Hypnosis yet. If you start doing clunky stuff in a conversation, people will know that you’re doing something. Before you can be subtle, you have to do general maneuvers before we can start reintroducing it into your language. Who here is beginning to notice that there’s something about your state of mind whilst doing all of this that’s pretty crucial to the whole process? Are you beginning to get this realization folks? This is very important. There are many schools out there – luckily fewer as time goes by – that focus on scripts. If you know me, you understand that I have come to loathe the idea of scripts.

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I have nothing against the idea of scripts per se in the sense that it’s useful to study other people’s performances in exactly the same way as someone would study a great musician’s performance, but to be limited to reading it doesn’t make much of a hypnotist. There’s no skill involved. You’re just buying someone else’s ideas and using them. More importantly, it doesn’t adapt to the person in front of you. Most important of all for our purposes here, we’re doing Conversational Hypnosis. How many of you have ever scripted a conversation with a friend? It doesn’t really work in real life, so why on Earth would you get stuck at that level? Who here found themselves stuck for words at any point so far? Why do you think that is? It’s because your state of mind switched. Typically your state of mind switches because you’re trying to do more than the simple thing that I asked you to do, which is switch between Language Softeners and the imperative and be uncertain or certain. As soon as you start adding other things, that’s the point at which your mind switched and started getting awkward and aaaagh, I don’t know what to say. At that point, congratulations. You found out what happens when you lose your hypnotic mindset. Feel free to carry on exploring that for a while longer if you want, or if you want to go the comfortable route you may decide that now is a good time to stop it. It’s your choice. Do you have any more comments so far? Student:

With the language softeners, when I was the hypnotist I felt more comfortable. But I was not when I said, you have to do this, I was wondering, will she do this or not? But now you could do this, or you could do that, I was feeling far more relaxed and then I think I have better energy and they are feeling it.

Igor:

Did anyone else have the same sort of experience when you went the Language Softener route that you felt like the pressure was off as the hypnotist and you didn’t have to perform as much?

What you’re experiencing is a natural reaction to performance pressure, which is one of the reasons why I invited you to stop it, because you’re adding something to it.

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There is some value in terms of what you’re experiencing in the sense that whenever you make an imperative statement you’re taking a risk that they’ll say no. Whenever you use Language Softeners, that risk is significantly diminished because there’s nothing to say no to. There are a couple of mistakes that happen in the hypnosis industry in general, and I’d like to emphasize them here because we’re at that point. The first mistake that people make is to believe that one style – for instance the direct versus the indirect – is better than another. They just have different impacts. The level of hypnosis research is not great, so take everything with a pinch of salt, but I think in terms of my anecdotal experience it bears out also, as a rule of thumb the direct style or the more imperative style works more quickly, however, you can run into more problems. In other words, fewer people will respond to that or you’re more likely to get some kind of a reaction that you didn’t want and then have to work around it. On the other hand, the indirect approach tends to work more slowly, but if you do it well ‘resistance is futile’, to show a little bit of geekyness in my background. People have these huge running battles about which one is better, direct or indirect. I think the answer to it is that it doesn’t matter. Choose what fits the situation that you’re in. If you’re incapable of making imperative requests of people – in other words, do this now – that’s a gap in your personal style. I strongly recommend that you do more of it in here to get used to being able to do it on purpose. Then you’ll be able to go back to the other style and mix them together so that you have a blended effect of going through both. The other big mistake that I see happening in this industry – and this is specifically for the indirect hypnotists, and we’ll evolve this style more because it’s very functional in Conversational Hypnosis – but one of the things this style allows you to do more of is to diminish the risk factor of not being wrong. It really attracts a mindset that’s insecure. There’s a long list of possibilities, which linguistically are great, but there’s no power behind them. By power, I don’t mean power over someone. It’s just your own personal power, your sense of authority, your sense of just sheer credibility. Milton Erickson, who was a hypnotic genius whose foundation basically formed most of what we’re doing here, had no problem with the idea of authority or this idea of power.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual In one of the books of one of his students, he talks about a board of people and Milton Erickson said “how do you find these people?” He looked at him with a little twisted gleam in his eye and said “the problem with these people is that they had no power behind them.” What he was talking about was that they were spineless. Spineless hypnosis does not work very well. Indirect hypnosis is something that attracts spineless hypnotists a lot because they can’t be wrong, but you still won’t get any results. The results come from exactly what you just experienced doing. When you’re going for the direct approach, you can soften your delivery a bit so that you don’t get the resistance as much, or you can go for the indirect approach and still have enough authority in what you’re doing that they’ll skip the choice element and go straight to the instruction part of it. Do you understand the essence here? The problem happens when you’re outside of the bandwidth and you’re just being directive like the caricature school master that is too stern and too tyrannical because they don’t understand authority; or on the other side of it when you’re spineless essentially and you give so many options hoping that one of them will come true somehow, but you have so much doubt in yourself that you’re riddled with insecurity, which gets very nicely transferred as an indirect suggestion itself for them to do nothing with it. There’s another hypnotist named George Estabrooks, who was kind of the bad boy of hypnosis. You can look him up if you want. Not a very nice man but he did some interesting things. One of the things that made him less of a pleasant person was that he openly bragged about working with the CIA, trying to create hypnotic assassins. Luckily he failed but it went down a very twisted path. One of the things that he said – and I think this is very true of hypnosis – is that your subjects will absolutely decline to respond to any suggestions that you don’t believe in yourself. Is there some kind of mind juju going on there, or is it that your tonality and your voice quality changes as a result of your mental shift, which suggests to them enough doubt that they won’t respond to it? Ultimately it doesn’t matter for our purposes. What we know is happening is this. If your state of mind is out of place, all the language in the world will do absolutely nothing for you. If your state of mind is in the right place, having the wrong words will still have a tremendously positive impact and you can be a great force for good for people.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual If your mindset and your language are both in the right place, you’re virtually unstoppable. Does that make sense to you guys? A lot of people come to something like this trying to learn the language. What shall I say in this situation? What do I do in that situation? Sometimes the answer isn’t what you say or do. It’s who you are in that situation that counts. Do you understand the difference? Are you beginning to get a sense of this idea of the mindset being so important? It’s one of the reasons why I like to tell people that hypnosis is not something you do to people. That’s a very old model. It’s not even something that you do with people, which is a more modern idea of the hypnotic relationship. In my opinion, hypnosis is something that you become. It’s a mindset that just permeates everything that you do because it’s the mindset that you’re in. Sure you’ll fall out of it from time to time, but if it’s a mental habit, you’ll find yourself doing it when it’s useful and not doing it when it’s not. Would it be fair to say that this might be an important point to rehearse, this mindset that we’re getting into? We’re going to do something around that, but before we get into this let’s talk more about this authority thing because that’s really tied into this mindset that we’re talking about. We’re starting to get this idea that being tyrannical is not what we mean by it. • What is authority and how does it work? Technically speaking you can do hypnosis without authority and make it work very, very well. The problem with that approach is that it requires so much subtlety to nudge someone the opposite way by purposely failing. Basically by failing with them, you’re actually getting them to the place where you want them to be anyway, but it requires some subtlety and at this level there’s really no point going down that route. The authority version is much more reliable and useful in many more contexts. What do we mean by authority? Let’s look at the idea of relative status in groups. All human beings at some level are mammals. In other words, we share a huge amount of our genetic codes with them. When it comes to our brain structure, a huge amount of our brains are very similar to mammals and we act exactly like mammals for a lot of things. There’s one thing that is true of all mammals beyond what your biological textbooks told you, which is the whole idea of nurturing their young, and that is that all mammals form hierarchies. They’re territorial and they form hierarchies.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

You may live in the most benign hippie commune that’s all about loving the world and hugging trees, and believe wholeheartedly that every person in your community has an equal voice and uses it equally, and I will guarantee you that behaviorally there will be a huge difference. There will be people who are naturally more dominating in those groups and people who naturally will follow those leads more often than not, and those relationships can change over time as well. Let’s have a look at what the values are of being in a different point in the pecking order just to get rid of this idea that a particular approach is better than another, it only has an impact. Let’s take the idea of a pack of dogs or wolves, because it’s a simple metaphor to think of. What is the advantage of being the alpha dog or the leader of the pack? What does he get out of the deal? He gets the status. He gets to eat first. He gets to make the decisions about where to go and everyone else has to follow. What are the downsides? There’s much more pressure. He’s subject to constant challenge. He’s got to make decisions for the group, and ultimately if danger threatens the group it’s his or her primary responsibility to protect the group and lead the defense. Let’s contrast that for the end of the pack – the runt of the litter so to speak. What’s the advantage of being that? There’s no responsibility at all. But you’re still part of the pack, which means that even though you have to eat last, you still get to eat. You won’t be on the frontline when your pack is attacked, you’ll be at the back going help me, help me, so it has its value. By understanding that, you can understand human relationships much more because there will always be some kind of dominance and some kind of submissive elements to it. I hesitate to use those words because they’re very loaded in our culture and I don’t mean them in the same loaded way, in the same way authority is loaded in our culture. Being the stern school teacher is not authority. That’s an abuse of authority. The same thing is going on with the idea of status. Status and authority are linked to each other. What’s my current status? (sits hunched over, head down) Is it high or low? (audience – low) I’m telling you with all my mannerisms that what I’m saying is really not worth paying attention to. (sits up a little straighter, head up) Is it getting better? Has my status increased? (yes) What about now?(sits up very straight, looks at the audience very directly) (yes)

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Are you beginning to get a sense of what’s going on here? I’d like you to be aware of these things that you’re doing yourselves. As a rule, all of us do this. It doesn’t matter how bullish, dominant or tyrannical you may be, everyone has moments when they go to this, (hunched over, head down, subservient looking) and everyone has moments when they can have that. (body straight, head up and direct) The mix may be tilted to one end or the other, but we all do it. I want you to be aware of it because those signals are telling others how to respond to your suggestions. It’s much more important in Conversational Hypnosis because people’s eyes will be open, but even here where someone’s eyes are closed do you think they can tell the difference between this and that? (hunched over, head down or sitting straight, head up) They can, because if nothing else your voice projects differently. Unconsciously they’ve only heard that style of projection before when people were doing this, and it all ties up together because it’s part of the implicit learning cycle. How does the world’s greatest hypnotist sit in his or her chair? How many of you switched positions in your chair? I would encourage you to think of it this way. If you didn’t shift your own position when I asked that question, you haven’t really enriched your model of what’s possible for you sufficiently. Exercise In the next exercise, I’d like you to make a caricature of this authority. In other words, overemphasize your openness because that’s an authority signal, overemphasize your tonal qualities and notice what happens inside your brain when you’re doing that. What’s going on inside your state of mind? How comfortable can you be doing these things versus these things? See if you can track your state of mind and how it reflects inside of your physical body and inside of your tonality. Do you get the idea of this? Find a new partner inside your group. We’ll keep it short, just 20 seconds apiece. I don’t care how good a job you do with this. I just want you to get used to being able to speak while simultaneously giving them a sense of where it is your mental state is. Can you shift up or down a gear mentally, and how does that affect your tonality and your body language?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual With the aim of being the world’s greatest hypnotist – not the world’s second greatest or even the world’s best beginner – cycle through all three so that you get a sense of what they feel like inside your body so that you’ll learn to recognize when you’re not there. Off you go. Was it fun to do? Yes? Who here is starting to get more of a sense of how they’re feeling inside as they’re going into the actual doing stuff? Ultimately the point will be not that you notice when you’re in the right state. The point is to notice when you’re not in the right state. When you are in the right mindset, you should be too busy doing stuff. If you find it somehow awkward, or something is going on, check your mindset. Oh yes, I better switch my mental gears up a step or two. I’ll make you one promise, one guarantee. You’ve got some glimpses of this mindset that we’re beginning to develop – and we’ll evolve it – but to the extent that you stay inside of that mindset unwaveringly, you will never run out of things to say, and the chances that you’ll get the exact right thing at the right time, for the right moment are several orders of magnitude higher than doing it in any other way.

Hypnotic Language In other words, you’ll find the words more easily, you’ll find the relationship easier for you to develop, and you’ll find opportunities arise that would otherwise not come for you, so I personally would encourage you to do more of it. With that thought in mind, we’re going to do something completely different now. I want you to do two things. The first thing I want you to do is if you have any personal belongings, I’d like you to move them all to one side. If you have any drinks, I would like you to move them to the back of the tables. Please keep them away from the electronics. The third thing I’m going to ask you to do at the same time is I want you to move all the chairs to one side of the room so that we have a big empty space inside the middle. Make sure that you know where you put your personal belongings because there are a lot of people in this room. Off you go. A lot of you will have seen this already, especially if you’ve trained with me before, so bear with me and have fun. If you’ve done these exercises before, I want you to push yourselves further. In other words, how much of this mindset that you’re starting to get

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual into right now can you add onto the exercise that we’re about to do. If you haven’t seen this before, it’s irrelevant. You’ll have your hands full with the exercise. Exercise Power Words: X Because Y Everyone knows the word because. All I want you to do is very simply come up with two random concepts, ideas or statements and link them with the word because in any way without any rhyme or reason. They have to be as completely and utterly illogical, unintelligible and nonsensical as possible. The ideas themselves might be just fine – for example, there’s traffic outside because I have a potato in my room. You may have noticed that each of those ideas make sense. If you put them together with the idea of because, and suddenly the only people who can make sense of that have been visiting Amsterdam or not taking their medication. You get the idea? I want you to go around like a meet and greet that we did earlier. Don’t worry about social niceties. Just go up to someone and say something like there’s a carpet in the room because God has blue nostrils. Then they’ll say something equally unintelligible to you and then we’ll move on, then we’ll move on to meet someone else. There are no social niceties. This is just training of complete insanity. What I’m looking for are enthusiasm and speed. I want it to be so fast that the only way you know what you’ve said is if you listen to what you’ve said just afterwards and then ask, did I just say that? Does that make sense to you guys? Mentally you should feel like you’re right on the edge of some platform and about to fall off. From time to time, I fully expect a couple of you may get stumped. The way out of that is to go faster. Off you go. Did you have fun with that? Was that easy to do? Exercise In that case, it will be much easier to do two versions at the same time. I don’t care if you run one as a long sentence or if you have two separate concepts, one with because and one with which means.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Power Words: X Because Y X Which means Y I’ll give you an example. → There’s a fire burning in Madrid because my shoelaces are undone. Now I’ll give you an example of the long version now: → There’s a fire burning in Madrid because my shoelaces are undone, which means that there is a cop with gangrene in the leg. The alternative version would be: → There’s a blue car driving down the road because there’s a giant with a grey hat on. → There’s a chair with a king on it, which means tomorrow is Tuesday. You have a choice of styles. I don’t care which one you use, but I do want you to use because and which means as often as possible in this completely random way of linking things together. Off you go. Was that easy to do? It gets a little more challenging with more things. Exercise 12 The next one will be easy. We’re just going to have three now. You’ll do the same exact pattern. This is easy because you just have and so that you have more random stuff to put in between them. Use all three of those – either in one long sentence or in three individual ones. Power Words: X Because Y X Which means Y X And Y It’s up to you. Off you go.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Was that fun? Is it getting more interesting? Who’s ready for a challenge? Exercise Let’s do five at the same time. The same pattern is following – because, which means, and. Now add as soon as X, then Y. Power Words: X Because Y X Which means Y X And Y As Soon As X… Then Y Whenever X… Y…

→ As soon as my feet are large enough, then I will walk all over the world. Then add whenever X, Y. → Whenever a sparrow flies from the south, then the north goes up. This is not a mind bending language thing, it’s just a fun game. Do you get the idea of that? I want you to use all five with one person, then get all five back and whilst you’re reeling like a drunkard, go to the next person and do it again. Speed, enthusiasm and volume are the keys here. Off you go. How was that? Was it fun? A little bit confusing but overall fun. Let’s start making it a little bit easier on you. It’s going to seem more constrained, but you’ll actually find it a lot easier. Have you noticed that it’s difficult to come up with random meaningless stuff? Exercise In the next exercise, you only need to come up with half the amount of random meaningless stuff. The rest of it can be quite meaningful. The kind of meaningful that we want to have specifically though, is something that basically approximates the qualities that you’ve experienced when you were pretending to go into these wonderful trances earlier on today. Trance Themes: Relaxation, Peaceful, Smooth Flow of Ideas, Inner Focus, Awareness, Tuning Out, Comfort

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Would it be fair to say that whilst you were being the hypnotic subjects and pretending to go into a trance that you felt yourselves having certain experiences that are different from when you’re normally chatting with people? For example, how many of you started to feel a little bit more relaxed even though you only had a few seconds to do that? That’s most of the room. Would it be fair to say that relaxation, although not an imperative – in other words you can have hypnosis without relaxation – having relaxation makes it easier to go towards a hypnotic condition? It’s not necessary but it helps. What other kinds of themes did you notice happening inside your mind whilst you were pretending to go into a trance? → → → → → →

Peaceful It’s a smooth flow of ideas Inner focus Awareness Tuning Out Comfort

Who found their awareness increasing overall? That’s about half the room. Who found themselves tuning out – in other words their external awareness generally disappeared or dissipated? That’s the other half of the room. Notice how we have two competing ideas – the idea of awareness increasing and the idea of awareness decreasing in terms of tuning out. Both are characteristic of the mental changes that can go into hypnosis. It doesn’t matter which route they take, but one of the routes will definitely be helpful. Whilst technically it’s possible to suggest two mutually contradictory ideas like this, I recommend that you stay clear of it for the moment. Exercise There’s a nice list of things going on here but the list could be bigger. I’d like you to do is choose one simple one – for example, comfort. I’d like you to choose one of those themes and stick to it. It could be any of them – calm, comfort, peacefulness, inner focus, smooth flow of ideas, awareness and so on. I don’t care which it is but choose one, and that’s the one you’ll be sticking with.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Now what you’re going to do is go back to our crazy talk with Power Words. The X part of the equation will stay the same, still as random. There’s a crane lifting a block of concrete in London because – the Y portion of this equation is the one that I’m interested in right now, but all I want you to do here is introduce your Trance Theme in any way that you wish to – because you can relax. The ideas are totally unrelated but I don’t care about that right now. → There’s a tomato plant with pink dots on it in Syria, which means your relaxation can grow now. They’re totally unrelated and yet it’s starting to make sense. Isn’t that weird? I’d like you to explore that with people. I’d like you to do it with all five statements – because, which means, and, as soon as, whenever and so on – with the same person. Go through all five. They don’t have to flow them. You can just have one after the other. Once you’ve done all five, they’ll have a chance to do all five with you, and then you’ll move on. Basically you’re collecting five random ideas. You’re attaching the same Trance Theme five times, although you can change the way that you deliver the idea. Relaxation can be talked about in many different ways. You’re linking them with these Power Words in between. Do you all understand the nature of this exercise? Yes? All right folks, off you go. Was that fun? Who is finding that coming up with the Trance Theme is actually easier than it is with the random stuff beforehand? Isn’t that interesting? Your unconscious mind is designed to make meaning of things. We’re meaning-making machines if you like. That means that it’s actually easier to talk sensibly and to give meaningful suggestions to someone else than not to. It’s easier for you to start talking about something randomly and for it to start making sense automatically than not to. That means that you should have absolutely no need to try to sound logical or sensible in any of your suggestions because that will happen anyway. It’s in the act of searching for it that you engage the Law Of Reverse Effect, and you inhibit the very thing that you’re trying to create. I’d like to demonstrate that to you now. Exercise Now we’re going to do the same exercise again, only this time we’re also going to change the X into a separate Trance Theme. Let’s say that you chose relaxation the last time. Relaxation will still be the Y, but the X will be a separate trance them – like a

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual smooth flow of ideas, or peacefulness, inner focus or awareness, you get the idea – but just use one. Then you’ll go back to your language. For example, let’s take peacefulness and relaxation. Power Words: X Because Y X Which Means Y X And Y As Soon As X… Then Y Whenever X… Y… → You can feel peaceful because you have the capacity to relax and that peacefulness which means relaxation is occurring naturally and bringing further peace of mind to you, is something you’ll discover as soon as you physically relax your body. Then you’ll have inner peace start to develop. Whenever you relax yourself, your body and mind become more peaceful. Does that make sense to you guys? Now what did I just say? All I told you was peacefulness relax, relax, relax, feel peaceful, relax, relax, feel peaceful. That works too, yet somehow with these Trance Themes, with these Power Words in between them, it flows more smoothly as an idea doesn’t it? That’s what I want you to do with as many people as possible. You’ll go through the five items. I don’t care about the order. The order is now irrelevant as long as you get the idea of the language. Then choose two Trance Themes that you’ll have in the X and Y positions, and just flow through it. I don’t care which way around they go. Just go naturally with it. The point is that you’re going to be rifting around the idea the two Trance Themes with those Power Words all as one simple unit. Off you go. Did you enjoy the exercise? Who here found that using this smooth hypnotic language that we’re starting to develop now was easier when you had something purposeful to focus on like the idea of relaxation and peacefulness than when you were being random? Once again it has to do with your mindset. There are only two reasons why you could ever get stuck in terms of what to say next, especially in hypnosis and suggestions. Would you like to know what those two reasons are? You already explored the first reason earlier this morning, which is:

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1. You’re trying too hard. You’re trying to do too much or you’re thinking too hard and you’re blocking yourself. You’ve activated the Law Of Reverse Effect. The second reason – and strangely people don’t realize this one – is: 2. You have nothing to say. You have no purpose. If you have no purpose or if you have nothing to say, how on Earth are you going to say it? All words are is your mind trying to bring up little vehicles of ideas that are doing the best thing to demonstrate to another human being what’s going on inside your mind. It’s an awkward and relatively clumsy system, but it’s better than the alternative. If you have no idea that you’re trying to communicate, it’s no wonder you have nothing to say because you literally have nothing to say, so you’re doing it right. Do you get the idea? As a default idea, in other words when you’re stuck between ideas in terms of how to develop things, there are two things that you can explore, and I’m going to ask you to explore them now before we have our lunch break. We’ve added the idea of Power Words and we can add the idea of Trance Themes. You realize of course, that the list of Power Words and Trance Themes that we’ve created together is only a small sample of what’s possible. You can generate a huge variety of these things just using the same basic idea. Close Your Eyes: Coaching: Trance Signals Ratifying Hypnotic Voice Cognitive: Hypnotic Thoughts Voluntary v Involuntary Language Softeners Power Words Trance Themes Fundamentally Power Words work on the idea of conjunctions – because, and, which means, and so on, including and so on. You’ll be able to collect more Trance Themes as you have more trance experiences, and you’ll have more qualities that you can talk about. For now you have a nice little handful of things.

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1. If you’re ever stuck in terms of not knowing what to say because you have nothing to say that’s worth saying in a session, just go back to your Trance Themes – relaxation, focus, awareness, feeling good, peacefulness. These are generally nice things to have in life anyway, so you can always fall back on them. They’re not necessarily as appropriate conversationally. The idea doesn’t necessarily translate as easily to conversational stuff, but the principle does. You just have to have conversational themes that you can talk about. That’s the first thing. If you’re stuck because you have nothing to say, then choose a Trance Theme to fill that gap for you, and then really go for it and that will open up new ideas. 2. The second choice that you have, which is equally good at the right time, is (silence) that one - to pause. A lot of people try to fill silences because they think they’ve got to say something. They’re just trying to fill up the space whilst searching for something to say. It’s much more powerful when you’re going to present suggestions, especially if you’ve just given them some idea, you just (pausep let them do it. Right? Notice what just happened inside you when I started saying less. Who here is starting to feel like their mind is slowing down a little bit? Who feels like their body is getting more comfortable? How did that happen? Without pauses, you have no time to actually experience the suggestion. One of the greatest concerns that most hypnotists have is solved by two tools that actually makes what you’re suggesting more powerful anyway. It’s great because anytime that you get stuck in the future, you know you’re about to do something more powerful than you were about to, which is that you either pause or you go back to your Trance Themes. Either way you win, don’t you? Exercise This will be a very quick exercise. Start with asking them to close their eyes. You can do as much of these other things – the coaching, the Trance Signals, Ratifying you’re your authority is going to be part of that. Your hypnotic voice is going to be part of that. You want to give them some hypnotic thoughts to mull over.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Close Your Eyes Coaching: Trance Signals Ratifying Hypnotic Voice Cognitive: Hypnotic Thoughts Voluntary v Involuntary Language Softeners Power Words Trance Themes It’s very similar to Trance Themes at this point but actually it goes in a slightly different direction. It’s a little more symbolic. You can suggest voluntary and involuntary things. Use your Language Softeners and Power Words. There’s a lot of stuff that you can do here isn’t there? The keys ones that I want you to focus on just because we’ve been using them are: 1. Power Words 2. Trance Themes You can use as much or as little of the previous stuff as you wish, but just focus on the Power Words and Trance Themes in this little exercise. And just remember from time to time (silence) to pause. Off you go. How’d that go? Was that fun? Hopefully you’re learning something as hypnotists right now. Hopefully you have a lot of food for thought. So you may as well add something else to your palette so you’re digesting more than one thing at the same time.

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DVD 3 – Hypnotically Leading Others & The Power Of “Yes Sets”

How To Go First Okay, so before the lunch break we covered a lot of territory. We started talking about closing your eyes and doing a little bit of coaching on the Trance Signals you’ve been seeing. You found some principles like the Authority Principle, the Hypnotic Voice that tends to accentuate things, some hypnotic thoughts you can present to them that will make them more trancy. That evolved into creating Language Softeners, Power Words and Trance Themes, all of which is the linguistic aspect that will allow you to have more of an impact. Would that be fair to say? Then before the lunch break the last thing that you did is you did a quick exercise where you kind of did all of it, or as much of it as you can, focusing particularly on the Power Words and the Trance Themes, right? So you probably recognize if I say, you can all relax and feel comfortable and there’s a difference between relaxing and RELAXING!!! Because you can feel calm, or CALM!! So again, it’s not the words, although it is the words, isn’t it? Exercise What I’d like you to do now is choose a simple Trance Theme, something like relaxation, calmness, peace or something like that. You’re going to do the same exercise that you did before the lunch break, only this time before you begin, I’d like you to reflect back on your life. You’ve had a life. Some of you have had more than one, who knows. Most of you have had a life that’s lasted longer than a few months. Some time in that period that you’ve been alive, you’ve felt comfort, calmness and relaxation have you not? If you were to cast your mind back to through the annals of your personal history, it shouldn’t be anything but easy to find at least one example of an experience that you had when you actually felt calm, peaceful, relaxed. I’d like you to select one of those that you find particularly relaxing, peaceful or calming. Raise your hands up in the air and put them down only when you’ve actually got a

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual specific memory in mind. As soon as you have a specific memory in mind, you can put your hand down so that I’ll know we’re ready to continue. You’ll know that you have the right one because when you think about it now, you should feel more relaxed. In a moment, you’re going to be with your partners and I want you to just take a moment to close your eyes as the hypnotist, and recall the feeling of that memory in detail. Then I’d like you to open your eyes, look at your partner and ask them to close their eyes and go into a trance. Do as much of what you did this morning as you want, focusing again particularly on the Power Words and the Trance Themes – relaxation, peacefulness or anything that fits that memory that you have. Do not talk about that memory. It’s going to be just like you did before the lunch break. The only difference is that you will be feeling differently because whilst you’re talking, you’ll be remembering that pleasant experience. Do you understand what I’m asking you to do? It’s a bit of multitasking. Here’s the only caveat, the only thing that I want you to think about, because it’s the only place it might go wrong. If you find yourself in this wonderful pleasant memory, start talking about it and it’s great, you still feel that memory exuding whilst you’re talking about whatever else you’re talking about, if at any point you do something that jars the memory inside you, then stop it. Go back to only talking as slowly and comfortably yourself as it resonates with the memory that you have. I’m going to give you 45 seconds apiece, which is insanely long. Begin now. Was that more fun? Did you enjoy that? Who here was reluctant to change roles, like no, you keep talking? Think about it. Have you forgotten to pretend to be a great hypnotic subject and just ended up enjoying it? I guess you’re ahead of us. That’s Day 2 material. Who’s finding themselves really enjoying these experiences when your eyes are closed? If we can call that hypnosis for now, that makes you a hypnotist doesn’t it? Can you get better at it? Of course, but are you getting a positive result so far? Yes. Is it really that difficult? No. People are responding to your suggestions aren’t they? It’s an interesting thing to keep in mind.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual We’ll call this little memory that you had a Personal Trance Theme. It’s a personal memory that you have and you can have several that evokes the qualities inside of you that a hypnosis experience has. I call this whole thing the idea of Going First. In order to be a hypnotist, there’s a certain element of performance that we have to deal with as well. The simplest way of performing at what you’re doing is to just live it. It’s kind of like method acting. Now I’m going to ask you to do the same exercise again with a different partner inside your group. This time you’re going to start off with your personal trance. Did you notice how it changed the quality of your language? Who found themselves using more of this hypnotic voice that we talked about earlier today? Who found those voice qualities becoming more accentuated? If you haven’t found them becoming accentuated, spend more time in your Personal Trance Themes and really feel the emotion, and your voice will follow. You’re going to have your hypnotic voice increasing. As the hypnotist, who found themselves being sucked into your own trance a little bit more as well? Put your hands up if you found that coming up with the right things to say was easier and easier as you went along? Who didn’t find that? Whilst you were finding it difficult to get the words out, how were you feeling at those points? Were you feeling the thing that your personal trance theme was around? Were you feeling that? Were you still having a problem with it? Student:

Being so nicely lost in trance, I was lost for words, I couldn’t get the flow of words.

Igor:

What were you doing?

Student:

Being in trance myself, being relaxed and calm, and asking the other one to go into his memory and image and become relaxed.

Igor:

At which point did you run out of words?

Student:

I didn’t use the right flow of vocabulary with all the Power Words and the Trance Themes…

Igor:

So it’s not so much that you ran out of words. It’s just that you don’t think you used the right ones?

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Student:

No there were less words.

Igor:

That’s fine, who said anything about having more words? For the rest of you who had difficulty, would it be fair to say that the difficulty with finding the words wasn’t so much a question of doing it right with less words? It was more a question of your mindset was in a different place. Either you get to continue to do the learning on one of two paths. Either you continue to explore how difficult hypnosis is when your mindset is in the wrong place, or you stop it and discover that it’s easy. The way that you stop it is by starting with your Personal Trance Theme and really engaging in the feeling that that memory brings up inside you, and then letting that evoke the language that follows as much or as little as it seems appropriate with your partner. Get the idea?

Exercise This is going to be a little bit more conversational. You can use your Power Words and Trance Themes if you want as part of that conversation, but just have a little chat with your partner. I want you to use two types of Trance Themes, although we haven’t talked about one of them yet. Relaxation, peacefulness and so on are the ones you’re used to. These are more relaxed and comfortable. You can feel that general ambiance. The other one that I want you to switch to is one that feels more powerful, invigorating, enthusiastic. I’d like you to choose a more powerful, invigorating or enthusiastic memory that you will not tell them about and you will not ask them to think about. You’re just going to talk in general about anything, horses - but whenever you come across a Personal Trance Theme like the word relax, I want you to imbue it with more of that quality of that sound by accessing the feeling of that memory. It’s the same with power. Power does not sound like relax does it? Part of your skill as a Conversational Hypnotist – and that includes whether their eyes are open or closed – is being able to switch your tonality to match and imbue each word with a life of its own. Your Personal Trance Themes are a gateway for doing that. Does everyone have a powerful or invigorating memory inside your mind? You’ve had lots of highs in your life, a success of some sort, passing an exam you didn’t think you’d make and you did, achieving something, the thrill of going on a date with someone that you didn’t know before, or maybe you did and that’s why it was thrilling, or the birth of

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual a child. You’ve all had experiences in your lives that are somehow empowering, thrilling or exciting. Now you have one calming Trance Theme and one invigorating Trance Theme – or Personal Trance Theme. Now just have a normal chat and try to steer it towards words – not concepts but just words – that match the memory. The calming one might be relaxing, peaceful and so on. The invigorating memory might be excitement, energy, power, enthusiasm and so on, but don’t talk about your specific memory or their specific memory. Just talk. Does that make sense? If you’re more comfortable talking at someone when they’ve got their eyes closed, tell them to close their eyes and just talk at them. If you want them to keep their eyes open, ask them to keep their eyes open. They’re going to have no response verbally. They’re just going to listen. This is just a little ranting session here, but one where you get to ride the roller coaster of language and experience combined to assist each other rather than to detract from each other. Because this is a bit of a novel thing, I’m going to be really generous and give you a minute each, my God, this is like crazy time. Find a different partner in your group and begin now. How did that go? What kinds of things did you notice? Student:

It’s a fantastic exercise. I noticed that what I was saying had so much more power. I could see it in the other person and I could feel it in myself. It was much easier than expected.

Igor:

We tend to be in such a rush to say things that we forget to make a point of how to say them. Anything that’s worth saying is worth saying well. Not necessarily right, but well. Do you understand the difference? We rush things in our culture a lot, which means that we focus on saying things so right that we don’t say them well. You’re better off saying them well than saying them right. Do you understand what I mean by that? Yes? Hopefully this experience is starting to bring it up to you. This is where less is more syndrome comes in. You can actually get away with saying a lot less because a lot more is packed into the things that you do say because you’ve said them so well. That’s how certain literature works and poems in particular. They say more with less because they’ve taken the time to say them well, not necessarily right though.

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Student:

I find it really beautiful having these exercises, especially you can see the pregnant words that you just want to send it through to the other person, and you can catch them back as well. Which is something we take for granted, but when you do these exercises, it clicks back, you always hear them.

Igor:

It does click right in. The beauty of every single exercise that you’ve done so far, and to those folks at home, hello, you’ll hopefully be doing these as well, is that you can do it at your leisure anytime, anyplace or anywhere, especially with friends. If you have no friends and no life outside of hypnosis, that’s fine if that’s how you want to encapsulate your life. You still have people in this room that you can call up and do an exercise with. Nowadays with online programs like Skype and whatever, it’s even free. All of these exercises themselves develop a certain skill and a little talent, which on its own is very simple to do. Have you noticed already since this morning how far you’ve come and how much you’re doing, but how relatively simple it feels to do it all? I appreciate that from time to time it may seem like a lot of moving parts are going on right now because they are. We haven’t even finished Day 1, and look at all the content that we’ve gone through. Yet you’re all doing it relatively naturally and spontaneously. Why? It’s because every single one of you has done this already in your day-to-day lives. You’ve had many conversations where you’ve said things well and had exactly the impact you wanted. You’ve had many conversations where you seamlessly and naturally flowed with ideas, where you managed to excite someone or relax them. Spaced out between them – sometimes more and sometimes less – you’ve had all the other conversations that were a little more frustrating and didn’t quite work out the way that you wanted them to. What we’re doing here is not so much training you in something new, but actually teaching you what those old things are that you already know that are worth emphasizing so that you can get rid of everything else because less really is more at that point. So you get the idea?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

For me it was a surprise that when I changed when I got prepared to do the emotions, it was really easy for me to change the state. And then, I was surprised because the content just go out of me, I didn’t even think about that, it was flow. I just felt the way I should speak. Okay, thank you.

Igor:

Thank you. Did anyone else have that same experience where you no longer have to pay attention to the content as much because the right thing seems to be there? This is where the mindset thing is really important. We’re really taking apart the machinery impact, the rocket fuel that makes hypnosis work. This is what some people call Hypnotic Intent. People who have trained with me know it has H+. We’ll develop this idea further and further, but notice how even as the day has progressed, the more we get into the mental aspect of what we’re doing here – not what we’re doing to someone else, but what you do for yourself inside your own mind as a hypnotist – the more powerful your communication style has become has it not? It’s because you already possess all the tools that you need to become exquisite communicators and exquisite hypnotists, suggesters. What you need is the right mental machinery to select only those experiences and only those abilities that you happen to need at that point in time. Does this make sense to you guys? This is what we’re doing here. You’ve just experienced for yourself Jakub, this whole idea of going first. When your mindset is in the right place, you can’t run out of words. You don’t have anything to say until you have some kind of purpose that you’re trying to achieve, which is what the emotional game does, and you’re willing to go first, to switch your own mindset first. Everything else becomes natural. The only challenge is can you continue this process, these mental games that you’ve been playing with yourselves in here, and take them out there in the real world with real people? If all you did was what you’ve learned so far and none of the actual bells and whistles that we’ll be layering on top of this, I suspect that virtually everyone in this room should at least double their ability to be influential and impactful on others. Do you get the idea? So thank you for that. Are there any other questions or comments?

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Student:

I don’t know if anyone else felt this way, but for me what surprised me was that it almost doesn’t matter what you say to me, I could go into a trance very easily. You could read me a soup can, it doesn’t matter. It’s about the sound of their voice or something, it was really exciting. Everyone is very predisposed to speak this way and I am very predisposed to go into trance.

Igor:

Great. Let me pause you there, that is the key factor right there. You spent more time today getting to the right state of mind than being stuck in the wrong state of mind. All the technical skills that we’ve been talking about are natural. They feel natural because they’re natural when they’re in the right place in the mind.

State Dependant Learning This is as good a point as any to talk about places in the mind. Imagine that your mind is like a big mansion full of rooms. Each room we’ll call a state, an emotional way of being, although it’s more than just emotional content. Whenever you’re in a particular state of mind, you’re in a particular room inside your mansion. Whatever experiences that you have whilst in that state of mind get stored as memories inside of that room. In psychology this is called State Dependant Learning or State Dependant Behavior. Feel free to look it up. It’s a bigger topic, this has been researched, especially in the 1970’s. When you’re in your happy room – in other words when you’re feeling happy – you have easy access to all the memories that you were happy in. Think about your own life. It’s easy to recall successes, good friends, good times and all the rest of it. If someone tries to be a party-pooper and remind you of something unpleasant, you’ll say I don’t really remember it. On other days, you’re in the sad room, the unhappy room or the, I’m upset with people room. No one else has an I’m upset with you room in their house have they, I guess I’m unique in that one. When you’re angry with someone or when you’re sad, what memories do you have access to then? Is anyone here in a relationship with someone? I know that you’ve never had the experience of getting upset with them for something they just did. Suddenly you remember all the 15 years of mistakes they made before then, right? That’s state dependant learning.

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Hypnosis works the same way. Right now what you’re doing is you’re building a Hypnosis Room inside your mind. We’ll call this the H+ and I’ll explain tomorrow why. It’s essentially a Hypnosis Room and you’re going to store all your skills, your abilities and attitudes about hypnosis in the Hypnosis Room where they belong so that when you need hypnosis, you know exactly where to find it and when you don’t, you don’t have to go there. Is this making sense to you guys? Right now all that the exercises are doing is allowing you to visit all your other memories and all your other experiences and collect those specific memories – those little trophies and pictures and so on – that relate to the Hypnosis Room so that you can relocate them. If you do this thoroughly – and we’ll be spending a lot of time over the next few days doing this – you’ll find that as soon as you even think about your Hypnosis Room, everything starts coming flooding back, which makes life a lot easier for you because you don’t have to remember millions of scripts and all these different principles. It’s literally like switching on a light. Oh here I am. I know what to do now. The only time that you won’t know what to do is when you’re not in that room. It’s your choice. Leave and go into the Hypnosis Room so that you can get good at it, or wallow in the, I’m not good enough room for as long as you want, realizing that it’s a personal choice you just made. Does this make sense to you guys? So thank you for that. There’s a hand over here. Student:

Two things, I was playing the role of the hypnotist I felt like I had clammed too much, too much information in. But when my partner played the hypnotist, I felt that she had as much content, but there were pauses that I was aware of that had a beneficial effect, and they’re deepening as well. Just two different experiences.

Igor:

So, if I understand you correctly, when you were the hypnotist, you felt a little rushed and you were saying too much, and when you were the subject you found that although they were saying just as much, they seemed to have more time to take pauses and were more at ease. What are you going to take from that?

Student:

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Igor:

So it wasn’t really what you were saying. It was something going on inside your mind, wasn’t it? If you’re feeling clammed, or cramped up inside your mind, it’s not necessarily going to help you as a hypnotist, is it? You have a choice. You can continue to explore that as a phenomenon or stop it and make your life easier. I’m serious.

Remember, whilst I’ve given you a lot of possibilities to do, I am very much aware that there’s not enough time to do them all. I’m also very much aware and you should also be aware that you’re only being asked to add one little thing to focus on. You can do as much of the other stuff as is relevant, which means that you don’t have to do all of it at the same time. You can if you wish to, or not. Okay?

The Power of Smooth All right folks, it’s time to move on a little bit. You’ve been using Power Words this morning. Who found themselves doing Language Softeners, Power Words and Trance Themes by accident in the last exercises? See what happens when you go to the Hypnosis Room? This stuff starts naturally coming out automatically. Does anyone who hasn’t trained with me before have any idea what the principle is that makes Power Words work? They link two ideas. What is the principle that expresses? This is the Law of Association. The fundamental building block of how your unconscious mind reasons is through associations. If you asked psychologists and neuroscientists, that’s one of the philosophy of psychology questions is how do we learn things in the first place, one of the key ideas is usually we associate this to that, to this to that and so on. There’s a kind of logic that the unconscious mind has as well, but the primary core basic function is through the Law of Association. Think of the dreams that you’ve had. You’ve had dreams that may be very short but were very full of content and meaning. It might be something as simple as seeing a shoe and that shoe meant so much. It meant growing up, your family childhood, being the third in line which means you got all the hand-me-downs, but actually kind of happy because you got to kick the football a few more times.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Everything is in that one little shoe. There’s a host of memories, and all you had was a split second to think of that shoe and it all came flooding back. You’ve had experiences and dreams like this. The Law of Association can be very efficient and very effective. → Power Words link two ideas that weren’t necessarily linked beforehand. Hence, if I say to you go into a trance, your conscious mind might say what the hell, how? However, if I say to you close your eyes and you’ll go into a trance, you consciously know how to control one and you’re unconsciously more likely to respond to the other. It’s only a probability, but if you stack enough probabilities, you get as close to a certainty as is possible in this life. Do you get the idea? → The other thing that Power Words do is they create a smooth chain of ideas. Everyone close your eyes for a moment if you would. Igor in a hypnotic voice: If you and I were to go to a beach, I would probably show you a particular beach on a beautiful sunny day that was beautiful white sand and a blue turquoise ocean. Now, if you and I were on this beach, you’d probably be able to sense the temperature of the sand. If you were wearing shoes at the time, you could take them off at any point and feel the sand between your toes. There might even be a mild breeze, so whilst the sun is warm but it’s not too hot. I wonder if those waves would be rolling in and if there was a sound attached or associated to that. You could look at the ocean and even get a sense of that briny, salty sea air. As you turned around, you saw an elephant staring down at you with his trunk held high. Come on back and open your eyes, with that last bizarre image there. What happened there? Hands up, when I mentioned the elephant, who here got a little bit annoyed with me and kind of lost the experience? That’s about a third of the room. Here’s the interesting part. Who here when I brought the elephant in said all right and just went right along with it? That’s most of the room. I’ll explain this phenomenon in a moment. Who here changed the beach to somewhere where an elephant would be relevant, like Africa or someplace like that? In other words, you did something in order to make the image permissible. Notice that we have a couple of things going on. About a third of you

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual felt the jarring effect and weren’t happy with me. It detracted from your experience, would that be fair to say? At least some of you were unhappy enough with me that you opened your eyes and were going, what! what did you go and ruin that lovely little experience for me for? What’s going on there? How can most of you, at least about two-thirds of the room have a really pleasant experience despite this weird imagery, and about a third of the room get upset with me about it? What I’ve done is I’ve violated the Law of Associations. In doing so, I have activated a different mechanism inside your mind by jarring it. The elephant did not fit that scene. I invited you to a sunny warm beach. What things, just by your lifetime of experiences, what fits? Waves, sea, in America talking about the ocean didn’t help because he was thinking about one of the Great Lakes. It’s not salty. Birds, sand, warmth, wet and dry sand. Elephants do not sit in our typical folder of things that we associate with beaches, unless you grew up in India or Thailand or somewhere like that, in which case elephants fit pretty much anywhere. By violating your expectations with your associations that you already have built up over a lifetime, I triggered a mental mechanism. In those of you that I triggered a mental mechanism, it basically spoiled the trance for you to one degree or another, or at least it diminished it. The rest of you however despite the break, the rest of you were willing to go along with it anyway, weren’t you? It was like elephant, I could get upset about this but who cares, elephant sure, why not? It’s too nice to argue over this one. What’s happening there, any ideas? Student:

Some people have a structured idea of how it has to be, not how it is, but how they think it has to be. But when you can just let go and yah, why not, that’s my way, how I do it. Maybe some other people do it different.

Igor:

The concept of letting go is correct. In fact your whole idea is pretty much on the button, but I want to look at it more functionally. What is being activated inside the mind when that’s happening? You’re very close to the answer.

Student:

I’m not sure something is being activated but it seems that it’s the trust thing partly.

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Igor:

The trust thing is exactly the mechanism that activates it, it’s one of those things. I’ll give you the answer in a minute. I don’t expect you to read my mind. I’m just teasing you a bit.

Student:

I’m just wondering, the likes of a really comfortable chair in the countryside, would that be classified as the same things, would that dissociate them from the scene.

Igor:

It breaks the expectation that the Law of Association has already set up, and something happens in that break. It introduces something else and that’s what we’re interested in. The thing that it introduces it, since we may as well go down that road now, is what different hypnotists call different things, but it’s essentially called the Critical Factor. What is this Critical Factor? You’ll find many different definitions of the Critical Factor. In fact you’ll probably find a few more definitions of the Critical Factor than you’ll find of hypnosis, and you’ll find about as many definitions of hypnosis as there are hypnotists. I guess a few hypnotists were schizophrenic enough to come up with several versions of the Critical Factor. I’m not going to try to get too technical about the whole thing. The way I look at the idea of the Critical Factor is in a very simplistic way. It goes back to the rooms in the mind. We have a Yes Room and a No Room. Inside the Yes Room, people look for any reason they can to agree with you, to accept something of what you’re saying. Even if 99% of it is BS and useless and they’re going to get rid of it, they’ll focus on the one thing of value to keep. You’ve all done that before, right? Are there any parents in the room? Your kids come in all proud and say look what I’ve created. You look at it and think I have no idea what this is. It’s great. It’s this beautiful tall thing. What is it? You found the one thing that you could agree with; yes it is tall, isn’t it, even though the rest of it makes no sense. Inside the No Room the opposite effect takes place. It depends on how deep into the No Room you go, but the No Room is where people start finding any reason to reject it even if it’s the tiniest little thing, and that’s what they focus on.

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These are the kind of people who when you say it’s a beautiful sunny day, they’ll say oh I’m going to get cancer. You might say congratulations on your new pay raise, and they’ll say I’m going to have to pay more to the tax man now. These naysayers are a joy to behold and work with aren’t they? The reason I make this distinction is because a lot of people – hypnotists in particular – have made the mistake of believing that someone with an analytical mind or someone who is very smart, is someone that can’t really be hypnotized, has low hypnotizability, because they’ll over-think it, but that’s not the case at all. The only thing that destroys the hypnotic process or inhibits it is this Critical Factor. It’s the room inside your mind that chooses to say no. Can we have a mic over there? Student:

I was wondering how specific one should be because of that, should one leave it rather nebulous so that the client can make their own interpretation? I worked with somebody once who had a phobia of sharks and it didn’t go very well when we were walking by the sea.

Igor:

Sure. First of all, remember that we’re doing Conversational Hypnosis, so this won’t really come up as much. You say I went on a holiday, I went to the beach the other day, and they say yah, but I prefer the woods, don’t you? You basically switch on a dime because you can do that in a conversation, so we’re not going down the therapeutic path. The answer to your question is you simply ask them upfront. If they don’t like it you’ll probably see one of these things, so you just switch directions straightaway. Don’t leave it too abstract because if it’s too abstract, there’s no content at all. If you say I’d like to take you to a really nice place that you’ll really like, are you there yet – for some people who are in trance, more in that Yes Room, they’ll say great, tell me about it. For the most part you’ll find that both approaches have their value. It’s just a question of where on that sliding scale you wish to stand. Okay?

Exercise Coming back to this idea of the Critical Factor, I’d like you to experiment a little bit with these Yes and No Rooms. You can do as much or as little of all this stuff that we’ve been

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual doing this morning as you wish, honestly I don’t mind. I will encourage you to continue to focus on those portions of what we’ve been doing that are just performance related: Authority Hypnotic Voice Go First: Personal Trance Theme Squeeeezzzeee The Meaning (from your words) I strongly encourage you to make these your staples because it’s a great thing to just internalize and they’re easy to do. Next when you talk about your Trance Themes – relaxation and comfort and all that stuff – I want you to precede it with just a simple litany of facts. Those facts don’t have to have any rhyme or reason. The only thing that those facts have got to have is that they’ve got to be true enough that the person will absolutely agree to them. For example, if I said you’re wearing a shirt, you might think no, that’s a blouse. I don’t know if you make the same distinctions in your mind. However, I can definitely say you’re wearing a top, or you’re clothed. No, I’m naked! All right, just back away slowly from the crazy lady. But you get the idea here, yes? I’d like you to spend 45 seconds apiece. Just say close your eyes and go into a trance. Do some Trance Signals or whatever and then just list random facts that you know they must agree with, at the end of which just spend a couple of minutes doing your Trance Themes and Power Words like we did before the lunch break. Basically it’s exactly the same. We’re doing less than before. It’s just that in order to warm up the Power Words and Trance Themes, you’re going to give them a random set of facts in your hypnotic voice and rhythm and all that sort of stuff just to see what impact it has. Then we’ll come back and do another exercise to compare it to, and then we’ll have a chat about that. Off you go. Was that interesting? Was that fun? Notice the experiences you had as the subject versus the hypnotist.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Exercise To contrast this now, I’d like you to do this with a different partner in your group. I’m going to give you slightly longer, a minute apiece. In that minute, you’re going to be doing two things to contrast them now, this is the warm up act. You’re going to start off by saying close your eyes and go into a trance and whatever warm-up you want to do. Then I want you to collect five or six simple facts that are totally wrong, something that they’re clearly not going to agree with – for instance the moon is made of cheese – it isn’t. You’re sitting here naked and loving it. Stuff that they’re clearly not going to agree with. This is the important part. Spend about 10 seconds finding five or 10 of those things. Then spend a few seconds going into Trance Themes and Power Words cycle again. That will take about the first 30 seconds. In the second 30 seconds, I want you to move smoothly into collecting facts that are actually true, or at least true enough that they’ll agree with them, just like you did in the previous exercise. At the end of collecting five to 10 facts that they’ll absolutely agree with and just listing them out as clunkily as you want, I want you to go back to this idea of hypnotic Trance Themes and the Power Words. As the hypnotist I want you to notice the difference that you can observe inside your subject, and also as the subject how you felt throughout those two processes inside of the same hypnotic induction. Do you all get the idea? Off you go. Stand up if you have something to compare and contrast. Student:

Actually, I was actually in a very deep trance and so when my partner told me that this room is windy, I actually felt it.

Igor:

You actually felt it. Because you’ve already been in that rather nice trance space, when she said close your eyes and go into a trance, you went into a trance.

This is interesting, isn’t it? Something that she attempted to make wrong was actually accepted as correct. What’s going on here? Which room was he in? He was in the Yes

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Room. This brings us to something very important. If you take nothing else but this away from here, this will stand you in great stead for the rest of your life. Go First: Personal Trance Theme Squeeeezzzeee The Meaning (from your words) Yes Sets True v “true” Not everything that we think is true is really true. Most things that we think are true are only true because we think they are so. We believe it but you have absolutely no way of actually knowing it. Let me give you an example. How many of you think that the world is flat? It would be generally acceptable that the planet we’re on right now is relatively spherical. How do you know? Have you measured it? Have you done the mathematics to prove the curvature of the Earth as a global phenomenon? Are you an astronomer who can deduce it from the planetary motions and so on? Have you actually done any of the work to prove it for yourself? Have you physically gone into outer space to see the planet turning enough to be able to figure out that this is actually one big round thing going around? No. Where you got the idea from is because it wasn’t even books, someone told you in school or maybe your parents told you and you just believed it, and you were ridiculed if you even considered an alternative point of view or if you insisted on proving it to yourself. Why would you bother doing that? Everyone knows that it’s true. We look back on a period of our history where we think others were foolish for thinking the world is flat, but we’ve chosen to believe this as blindly as they did. It’s very important that you don’t fool yourself about this Truth with a capital “T.” Things are only true with a little “t” to the extent that we believe them. Even if it happens to be wrong and the real truth is something totally different, it’s irrelevant for that human being until you can make something that was wrong into something that is true, just like the windiness in the room. Do you get the idea? If you examine most of the things that you’re holding as true inside of your life from the laws of physics to relationship issues and all the rest of it, I suspect that a preponderance of what you hold to be true is only true with a little “t.”

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Most of us don’t make the effort, and it takes a lot of effort to think things through fully to even approximate what might be a more universal Truth with a capital “T.” We’ll save this one for later, but that’s another little rant but actually it’s a very useful one for hypnosis. What happened to make something that was false into something that was true? What happened in this situation? He moved rooms. He went from the No Room, or at least from the corridor where he could have gone in any direction, into a room where he was willing to accept ideas, not without analysis but without criticism. There’s a difference between being critical in your thinking and being critical as a person, or using criticism. Do you understand the difference? It’s a nuance that we’ve kind of eroded in our culture. One looks at information and finds out, is there a logical flow to this? Is there actually value to these ideas? Do they flow conceptually? The other is looking really from the No Room to break something down and show its valuelessness. It destroys. That is the Critical Factor in action. We make the mistake in our culture to think that analysis equals criticism. It does not. They used to, but the word criticism was corrupted over time to become more critical in this sense. Has anyone here worked in a corporation? You’ll appreciate this one. It’s the same thing that happens when someone walks into your office and says let me give you some feedback. The reason they’re laughing is this was introduced in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and then it got adopted more in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a tool for people to be able to exchange ideas without feeling threatened. It got corrupted into basically an unbridled tongue-lashing under the acceptable framework of it’s just feedback, I was only doing what you told me, so it destroyed the spirit of the tool by abusing it in action. You get the idea? If you get someone to the right room inside their mind, things that weren’t true will become true. Their mind will make it true because it needs to be able to accept it. That’s the essence of hypnosis right there, isn’t it? The skill becomes how do you move someone into the Yes Room, especially if they started in the No Room? With that question in mind, what other experiences did you have in that last exercise? Student:

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For me the biggest difference was the contrast, going from the No or the disagreement that Jakub was doing, it was almost like a deep sea diver POCHV

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual falling off a shelf. The first suggestion of Yes took me really deep, really good. Igor:

There are a couple of things going on here. Did anyone have the opposite experience where you had all the No’s, and you had the Trance Themes like yes I’m already into this, and then it was only when they started going to Yeses that it started warming up? Did anyone have a more gradual version of that? There are two different things going on here. It’s really the same principle in action but in different directions. In your version of it, the no’s weren’t keeping you in the No Room enough. It was like someone was trying to drag you out of the Yes Room to the No Room, but because you already know – at least unconsciously – that the Yes Room is where it’s pleasant, your mind wants to stay there. It’s like this is the happy room. I want to stay here. When he’s forcing you out of the Yes Room by giving you incorrect facts, you’re tolerating it and it’s basically building frustration so that when the frustrator has been removed, it’s created more impetus. Right? Has anyone here ever been house-bound for a long period of time, either because you’ve got a project that you’ve got to finish or because you’ve been ill? It’s the idea of cabin fever when you’re stuck in a place for too long. How do you feel when you suddenly get out? It’s like oh I’m here baby and I’m going to party tonight, yah. Bring out the milk and cookies because I’m staying up late. That’s an example of using frustration as an anticipation builder because you couldn’t, and then when you can, you do more. Has anyone here ever been on a diet? That’s one of the reasons why diets don’t work. If a diet is based on denial, all you’re doing is building psychological energy to do more of the bad behavior when the diet is “finished.” By the way, that’s one of the secrets of dieting. Diets do not exist. Diets make people fat, full stop. There’s plenty of research to demonstrate this. It’s not because they won’t necessarily lose weight in the moment, but it’s the fundamental attitude that’s the problem.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual A diet has an idea of a conclusion. It’s a goal or a destination. To stay slim or fit is a lifestyle. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Those people who make it about the destination will yoyo at best for the rest of their lives. Most likely they’ll yoyo for a while, give up and then balloon out and basically roll for the rest of their lives. I’m sorry, but that’s the nature of how diets work. Psychologically they don’t work with human beings. The ones that do succeed are the ones that turn it into a lifestyle, which is something where they enjoy the whole journey. It becomes just how they are and part of what they’re doing. By denying Kieran the ability to go into the Yes Room, he created enough frustration that when he was allowed, it was deep sea diving right off the shelf, but that was only because you had the pre-prepared context of having had all these other little pleasant experiences here that set you up for that. Others of you had a more frustrating experience, a less pleasant one. Once you lost the trust it took longer to build it back up again, didn’t it? Go ahead. Student:

It was just something I was wondering, when you were talking about someone who was in the No Room, if you were with somebody who is clearly resistant, does it also work in the opposite direction? If you started off giving them things that plainly were not true, then you could move them from no, no, no to maybe, then that could be a yes to a yes, to a yes.

Igor:

You’re ahead of yourself. I’ll just address that briefly and we’ll cover it more when the time comes. What you’ve just discovered is how to Hijack resistance. Remind me about that tomorrow. This is not for today, but that’s exactly how to Hijack someone’s resistance. There are lots of eloquent ways that you can do that, but the essence of it is exactly what you just said there.

Coming back to the idea of no’s and yeses, who here noticed that when you got your initial no’s as the subject and then the Trance Themes were pulled up, you were more resistant towards those ideas – the pleasantness, the relaxation and the comfort? Even though you wanted to accept them, it just felt wrong somehow. Put your hands down.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual For those of you who put your hands up, who found that once the yeses started coming in, it took a little while but eventually when you came up with the second set of Trance Themes, they were much more pleasant than the first set?

“truth” Is A Habit So moving someone into the No Room or the Yes Room is a habit. I’ll say this in a crude way but there’s a refinement that we’ll come onto. This is not as black and white as it may sound, but when you move someone into the No Room and get them to reject ideas constantly, they’ll get to the point where they’ll reject more ideas. That’s what happened when you got some no’s, you did some little Trance Themes and then it was like I kind of like the idea, but it’s not working for me. The reverse is also true. When you get people more into the Yes Room and you present your suggestions – in this case in the form of pleasantness, relaxation and so on – they form that mental habit of saying yes. They go into the Yes Room as a matter of habit or routine, and then it continues in the relationship. People will find that they’re looking for the opportunity to say yes even though they were being forced to say no, which is another little psychological paradigm that you can then use as a lever. This is where it gets very important. If being in the No Room makes things false, and being in the Yes Room makes things true even if they weren’t true to start with, just like the wind phenomena that we talked about, and if our experiences are actually not to say that getting someone to agree will build agreement, so that the Yes Room gets built up more and more, and this is the important point. Truth, at least the way most people think about it, is a mental habit. It becomes true because they’re used to thinking of it as true, or it’s in a context where enough other things are accepted as true that it slips right along with it. Truth becomes more of a question of mental habit than truth in the way most people think of it. Do you get the idea? This is the important thing. There’s a difference between what’s True with a capital “T” and what’s true with a small “t.” This is truth with a small “t.” That’s because the nature of how most people make things true is through the Law of Association. They’ve been told it often enough by the right people in the right context that it becomes true because of that.

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That means that we can change virtually any reality because most of the things that people think are true have no capital letters in them. Do you understand what I mean by this? This is very important if you want to become an influencer. Notice that I make a distinction between those two kinds of truths. The reason is because I’m not a big believer in the sophism which is basically yeah, make whatever true that you feel like; it’s no big deal. It is a big deal. If you just make things true that are convenient to be true for that point in time, you’ll do a lot of damage in the long term either to relationships or to a group of people or society in general. There’s a huge amount of philosophy behind this, but essentially if you keep changing what’s true, to make what’s convenient true, you’ll eventually lose trust because when people are looking for truth, they’re looking for a measure of certainty, or at least longevity within it. Does that make sense? Just because they’re looking for it doesn’t mean that what they found has a capital letter in it. This is particularly important for something that we’ll talk about after the break.

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DVD 4 – How To Use Strategic Hypnosis To Get People To Adopt New “Truths”

How To Create “truth” Welcome back. I hope you had a nice break. Before the break, we started getting into some pretty heavy concepts didn’t we – this idea of what is true versus what is really true. If there’s such a thing as ultimate Truth with a capital “T” and we can actually get at it, then most people don’t in their day-to-day lives. We may be able to approximate some more Universal Truth, which is great, but that’s more the domain of philosophers, etymologists and people like that, but it’s not something that we need to concern ourselves with so much as hypnotists, except to realize that what most people think is true and real, is only true or real because they happen to believe it’s so. By mimicking the same life processes that created that belief in the first place, you get to not only dissolve what was true, but you could also recreate something new that hasn’t been true yet. Do you get the idea of this? We’re going to do a series of exercises towards this point now to make it a little bit practical. I’m going to let you be a little creative with this. There are lots of ways of getting to a yes and we’ve only really uncovered a crude one so far. We will evolve this as a style, don’t worry, but before we do that I want you to get a little bit creative. Exercise With your partner inside your group, I’d like you to ask them to close their eyes and then just present to them things that are true, but the things that are true will be of a specific quality or a specific kind. I’d like you to start off with the mindset that you’d like to have your partner drink more water in general. You all realize that drinking water overall is a good thing, yes? There are very, very, very few cases in our historical timeline where people drank too much water. It’s usually an accident like falling off a ship. As a rule in our culture, we tend to be dehydrated more than anything, so everyone as a rule tends to do well with a bit more water.

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Are these things true? In terms of the current status of medical science, they are true with a medium-sized “t.” Whether they’re true as absolute facts, who knows? Nutritional science is constantly changing, but I think it’s true enough that we can accept it as useful. Yes? The more important issue is, did you all accept these ideas overall? Did anyone disagree and think water, it’s not true, never touch the stuff myself? Not unless it’s competently diluted with alcohol, preferably no water, just alcohol. Essentially, I just want you to get them to close their eyes and talk about anything that relates to the idea of water and the idea of drinking water in a way that you will collect Yeses in any way whatsoever. It’s totally up to you how you do it. You may just want to list facts, like water exists and your body needs water and uses water. I think we can get close to a capital “T” on that one. Human beings don’t survive long without water. Maybe your spirit can but your body definitely will not. That’s pretty much as close to a capital “T” as we can get so far, right? I want you to list out as many things that are related to water as you can in 30 seconds that you know they will absolutely accept. Then they’ll have a go at it and then we’ll come back and talk some more and add something to this. Note that I do not need you to actually persuade them that drinking water will be a good idea. In fact I strongly encourage you to not even attempt to get them to accept the idea that they will be drinking more water. That’s not the purpose right now. All that we’re doing is collecting yeses in relationship to water. Have them close their eyes, go into a trance and listen, and then just list yeses at the end of which you’ll bring them back and then it’s your turn. This is only a fragment of where we’re going with this. Off you go. So we’re exploring this idea of trueness. Did you come up with some interesting ways of talking about water, or at least something associated with the idea of water, and list true “facts” that are true with a small “t?” What kinds of truths relating to water did you come up with? Student:

Just that the body is comprised of mostly water.

Igor:

Excellent. People may or may not know the exact number, but they’ll be close enough to believe it.

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Student:

We’re immersed in water from the second we’re conceived, before we’re even born.

Student:

Water cleanses you.

Igor:

Let me ask you this. Is that a truth that most people will accept? Maybe or maybe not. It’s more of a risky one, specifically to do with the language because cleansing could mean different things to different people, like a spiritual cleansing, etc. However, most people wash in water. That’s true enough that everyone will accept it. Notice that I didn’t say everyone washes in water because not everyone washes. If you have someone who wants to be very precise, they’ll say there are some people that don’t really wash at all. Do you see where we’re going with this? However, you just hit on exactly where we’re going to next. You talked with your partner about things in relation to water that are absolutely correct. Overall did they have more of a positive slant or more of a negative slant overall? Positive, so I want you to encourage that aspect of it.

Exercise Now you’ll ask them to close their eyes and then list some facts about water, something that maybe you heard from them, some that you heard from others or something that you came up with yourself. List a few facts about water, but especially those that are positive in nature, like you’re made up of water, most people use water to wash and stay healthy with it, from the moment you’re created you’re surrounded by mostly water and so on. This is the interesting part. I want you to start shifting to ideas that are not necessarily going to be accepted as true, but they’re plausible enough that they’re less likely to argue over it, but it’s not necessarily true enough that most people will accept it without question. Do you all get the idea of this? Do you all have something like this in mind? Examples: I’ll give you some examples, but only with the understanding that you can’t use them. Is that okay with you guys? Because it’s more important that you start thinking about this

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual rather than just copying me because this is an exercise designed to get your thinking in the right place more than it is about just listing stuff out. Anyone can read lists. This is not the operative element here. Did you know that most people are dehydrated? Is that true or not? Depending on who you talk to, it may be medically true or true enough but it’s plausible enough that most people will not argue over it. Does that make sense? Notice how you’re sitting there thinking maybe or maybe not. Compare that to, you know that water exists. Why not go for easy wins? When I talk about water, I mean more than just things like rain or the ocean. We all need water to survive, don’t we? Even those of us that don’t really drink much water are drinking water in other forms – sodas or fruit juice or even just fruit. Did you know that most people are chronically dehydrated? As a result of dehydration, your brain power actually slows down and your body’s ability to cleanse itself and rid itself of toxins and stuff like that is diminished, which means that most people are unhealthier and less intelligent because they don’t drink enough water. Did you know that? Do you feel something happening inside you right now, a little pressure developing? I haven’t done anything with it yet, but would it be fair to say that a certain amount of pressure has started to develop inside you somewhere? Do you understand the nature of this exercise? Remember the deal that we made. You may not use any of the examples that I just gave you. It’s much better if you find your own ideas. Remember, it doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be plausible enough that tagged onto the end of things that are absolutely true – or at least are going to be accepted as true by these people – it will have a certain effect. That’s the more important part. I’m going to give you 45 seconds apiece. Off you go. That’s just an idea or, as we like to say in the hypnosis community, it’s just a suggestion. What did you notice happening the second time around when you started going from true to more plausible, but not necessarily true? What kinds of things happened? Student:

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One of the things I noticed is that it’s much easier to invent the paces if you already have the outcome, so you can build up to it if you know where you’re going. POCHV

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Igor:

Thank you.

This goes right back to the two reasons people blank out. They either try too hard to do too much and become self-critical in the Critical Factor sense, or they have no purpose in mind. It’s very difficult to be persuasive when you have nothing to persuade them about. As soon as you have a purpose in mind, notice how it’s easier to find things that fit. Why? That’s because your mind is a meaning-making machine, and as soon as you have a purpose in place, things will be slotted in by it. It’s not 100%. Nothing is 100%, but it’s good enough that you can develop it over time and become really good at it. Does that make sense? What other things did you notice, both as the hypnotist and as the client?

Persuasion Ethics Student:

As a hypnotist I felt incongruent, I didn’t really believe in what I was saying myself. Felt fake.

Igor:

I agree. As the client, who was the client? Did you hear it or did you just go with? You went with it. This is an important aspect.

Whilst overall as hypnotists our material, the subject matter that we work with, the idea of reality is true. We turn things that were true into untrue and things that were untrue into true, or at least true enough to be useful. One of the dangers that we run into is becoming what’s called a sophist, which is someone who will argue anything that’s convenient, who even wins arguments because they’re convenient but they don’t really believe in anything. That’s a very dangerous thing to do. This leads us to the idea of ethics in the influence game in general. You’re here in the UK, who here was around in the 1980’s when they had the double glazing salesmen? There were a few groans in the room. Why are you groaning? For those of you that don’t know, especially if you weren’t in the U.K. in the 1980’s, there was a phenomenon here, one of these little weird bubble things.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Double glazing was these double panes of windows that were both very good at heat insulation and sound insulation, and they became chic to be mass produced in stores. A bunch of companies came over, cowboys who would promise you the sky but delivered absolutely nothing and had very bad service. They would use very poor sales tactics and very unethical sales tactics to get a signature, and then it would be impossible to get out of these contracts that you were basically forced into signing. It was a long and unpleasant story. The trend rocks on, it works for a while and some people make a killing and then as an industry something very strange happens, suddenly no one wants double glazing anymore. As soon as someone comes in and says how about double glazing, the next thing that happens is they hear the sound of the door slamming. They look up and sure enough there’s a door standing right in front of them where a person used to be. Why? They’ve lost trust. Whilst you can get to short-term gains with unethical means, in the long term sophism destroys any form of credibility and trust that you have, which means that it destroys your relationship. Given that anything that you do that’s worth influencing, whether it’s a personal relationship or a business relationship is something that becomes more useful to you over time and more profitable, both in the emotional sense and in the business sense, why on Earth would you go through all the trouble of finding someone to have that relationship with only to systematically destroy it by essentially lying to them, or being inconsistent in some way? Do you get the idea here? The price that you pay for unethical behavior in general is very high. A friend of mine did a study for a while where he followed a troop of con men artists doing their thing. It’s fascinating because they kind of liked each other, but the weird thing is that amongst each other they had this almost blood oath that they could not cheat each other because they need some friends. Outside of their own community, they have no one. They’re like locusts. They go somewhere and they really burn up all their bridges and have to go somewhere else and so on. It’s a pretty awful life if you think about it. The irony is that if they actually followed up and if there was more truth in what they were saying and doing, they’d be very happy people and they could carry on for a lifetime doing great things. This is an important thing because as a rule there is a price that you pay for abusing your skills. This is especially important in hypnosis. There’s an old saying. I’m not entirely sure

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual who came up with this idea, but it might have been Milton Erickson. I heard it from my mentor John Overdurf. Which is that: Hypnosis is anything but a casual relationship. Has anyone here had a very deep and meaningful relationship with another human being? Imagine if that person betrayed that trust and did something awful. Would you say oh, don’t worry about it, it’s all right, we’ll get past it, no big deal? Would you do that? No. For the most part to get someone’s trust tends to be relatively easy. To get a lot of trust takes a little more effort but it’s still relatively straightforward for most people. Some people have more issues with the idea of trust. To get someone’s trust back is very hard. As a rule the deeper the relationship is, the harder it will be. Not only is your payback 10 times worse, but to repair any damage that you’ve done is 10 times harder. You get the idea? Hypnosis is a double-edged sword. When you’re using it as a force for good, your relationships will blossom. People will like you more and they’ll want to hang around you more. If you’re running a business it’s a good thing, charge them. There’s a great book by a guy who’s a little kooky. The book title alone sold me. It was called The Trick to Money is Having Some. It’s all about wealth-building and using some spiritual means and so on. One of the ideas that I really liked about it was that there’s a really simple formula to becoming wealthy. Would you like to know what it is? I really like it actually. It kind of has informed most of our business believe it or not, and that is you work on yourself as a person until you’re just so cool that people want to hang out with you. They just want to be near you. They just like your vibe and when they show up, charge them. It’s very funny. The flipside of this is equally important. You have this tremendous tool that enriches the relationship. It can build a lot of trust because if you’re influencing someone in a way that’s going to be positive for their life as well as yours, so much the better. Who wouldn’t want to shake someone’s hand saying thank you so much for changing my mind about such and such if it made your life better than you could have considered before? The opposite is also true. If they start to regret what you have done or regret listening to you, you now lose trust rapidly. If you use hypnosis and abuse the nature of the intimate

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual relationship that’s been built by it, the payback will be equally severe. There’s a kind of built-in ethical safety check into what we’re doing. I personally believe that hypnosis is a tremendous force for good. I also know for a fact that everyone in the world has used Conversational Hypnosis at one point or another with another human being without realizing it. You all have. You’ll see this as we develop some of these skills more, especially when we get into the more conversational type of trances. The problem is that they’re random, so when you want them to be there, most people don’t know how to make them be there. The other problem is that because they’re random, sometimes they’re being used as a force for good and sometimes even with the best intention in mind they’re being used as a force for harm. It’s kind of a hypnotic curse. That’s where a lot of unpleasant things happen. Think of the classic motivational speech from a parent or a teacher. If you don’t get your homework done, you’ll never amount to anything and you’ll be poor. Your life will suck and it will be terrible, so you better do your homework, right? That’s a very useful set of ideas to help someone, isn’t it? Ideas like that, especially if they’re reinforced over time, have destroyed many lives. People don’t realize that given the right set of contexts, which is what we’re exploring right now, what you say and how you say it can totally transform a life for good or ill. If you don’t know these skills or if you don’t know what we’re talking about right now, the risk that you run is that unintentionally you can do great harm at a point in time when you don’t even mean to, you were trying to help. Ethics has multiple aspects to it. Burying your head in the sand won’t help because at one point or another you’ll use these skills. If you don’t know that you’re using them, it’s very hard to know whether or not you’re using them as a force for good or not. If you’re using them as a hypnotic curse by accident or on purpose – but I’ll assume that most people will do it by accident – there will be a terrible price that you pay. You have no idea the amount of people that contact me telling me sob stories about how they destroyed their family, and they’re trying desperately to get them back again after having some great argument, not realizing that the very thing they’re trying to do to get them back is destroying it even further. Do you understand what I’m saying here?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual They ask me, what is the one thing that I can say to fix it all? The answer is, that’s not the way it works. It’s about who you’re becoming and how you’re engaging with people to allow this stuff to evolve. Right now it’s a training exercise, no problem. If you don’t really believe it, just do it for the practice element. However, in time you’ll develop a very fine sense of what is it that you think is actually true and valuable and enough respect for the other person’s point of view about the world – that’s something that we’ll develop more as we go on – that you’ll find enough of a higher version of truth that fits into the kind of processes that we’re talking about here that will lead to the kind of outcomes that we want to have – in this case that someone ends up drinking more water, although you realize that it’s just a simple construct to develop a skill that’s actually practical. Does that make sense to you guys? Does that sort of address some of your concerns there? That’s an important thing you pulled up. I hope you’re beginning to realize that the potential of what you’re capable of is vast. The influence that you can have over other people is huge and with that kind of power comes with a great responsibility. Abusing that responsibility will mean that you end up paying a price, and the price is one that you probably won’t want to pay in any relationship that is worth investing these skills into in the first place.

Creating More “truth” Now let’s move onto happier themes. We started off with a simple trance induction. Whether you need it or not is another question. You’ve listed out things that are true and you’ve started going onto things that are plausible. Exercise I’m going to give you a little bit longer now. I’m going to give you a minute apiece. I want you to start talking about things related to water that are positive that are absolutely true. Begin to intersperse inside of those truths ideas that are plausible enough that they’ll be accepted, and then go back to yeses. Just mix them up a bit. True, plausible, plausible, true. As you continue, go towards more plausible and less true. Your aim by the end of this particular version of the exercise is again, not to persuade them of anything yet.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual The aim that you’re looking for is the final step in this process, which is to lead them to something that had they heard it without anything else going on, they would have thought it was highly improbable. Example: Allow me to give you an example, but only with the understanding once again that you won’t use this one. Is that okay with you guys? Should I shut up and have you get on with the exercise? An example of what is quite improbable is the idea that you can drink eight large glasses of water every day and love it. In fact if you weren’t drinking two to four liters of water a day, you would absolutely miss it. Who here is thinking I’m not buying it? I specifically chose it because it’s counter to your experience. Your job in this exercise is to cycle through what’s true, start seeding in ideas that are plausible and end up with an idea that would have been highly improbable and would have been rejected had you presented it outside of the context of what we’re doing, and just notice what results you get. Do you understand the nature of this exercise? You only have 60 seconds, so it’s not like you have loads of time for it but it should be enough time to get that cycle going. Off you go. How was that experience? Just give me some results. How was it as the hypnotist and, more importantly, as the subject hearing these ideas? Student:

It’s funny just how much more plausible something that seems ridiculously implausible sounds after something else that’s more plausible than not.

Igor:

Once again very eloquently put, you’ve discovered the power of moving from the corridor that’s yah, maybe into the Yes Room. Notice the truth is more a question of a mental habit, at least in the way that most people understand it. It’s just how we operate. Does it make it truer? No, there are things that can be truer. Other elements are required for Truthfulness with a capital “T” to be present. However, we don’t have to concern ourselves too much with that when we’re talking about the influencing game, provided that we keep this idea of ethics that we’ve just discussed in the back of our minds. What else did you notice?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

I realized that I had the end idea and I had the beginning idea, I didn’t really have anything to fill in with, so I was kind of improvising. What I noticed was that by the end I’d managed to do a really good job of convincing myself of what I’d said, and I’m not sure about my subject, but that was something I was thinking about after and it was a bit odd.

Igor:

It is odd.

Let’s put it this way. You’re going first. By the way, this is a two-way street. When we get to the more conversational element, you’ll be influenced as much by your interactions as they are, and that’s exactly how it should work. We’re not quite at that stage yet at this point. In terms of what Chris’s experience was, you’re finding a middle ground between what could be true and what would be very useful to be true in order to have certain results arise, and having enough truth value to it in terms of your own belief in it that you can’t be accused of faking it, lying, or any of these other things that are socially inappropriate. You won’t necessarily fall into sophism. You actually will end up believing these things yourself. It’s part of what makes the process of living so interesting. In attempting to persuade someone else of something, you should be getting closer to a higher order of truthfulness yourself, so both of you win. Isn’t that kind of an interesting way? Another way to think about this is how could you come up with something you found so convincing if it wasn’t already formed as a raw idea inside your unconscious somewhere already? After all, you only had 60 seconds. This is another way of actually getting at stuff that you already have half formed in the back of your mind but it hasn’t fully emerged yet. That’s another way of getting to more truthfulness within yourself, but that’s something that evolves. Well done. Can we accept this idea now that truthfulness, or reality, at least the way that most people experience it, is more a mental habit than anything that’s “immutable” and real? We’re getting closer to that idea at least. Notice how what would have been highly improbable or unlikely before we started this course, is starting to get more acceptable as we go along. How many of you are firmly convinced of this idea already? How many of you find it plausible, interesting, you’re not rejecting it but you’re not sure about it yet?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual By the way, this is as it should be. Give yourselves time to experiment with this. Whether you believe in this idea fully yet or not is neither here nor there at this point. I’m going to encourage all of you to do the same thing. Whilst you’re here, I’d like it to be true enough to carry on with the exercises that we’re doing. At the end of our processes here, when you go back into your daily lives, please reflect back on your experiences here and decide again. So that whatever decisions you make are outside of the process of influence we’re having here. Allow me to influence you enough to have experiences for which you can make your own mind up at the end of this. Is that okay with you guys? See what you agree with and what doesn’t fit and hopefully it will be somewhere in between. Okay?

Hypnotic Principles Now we’ve got this idea that truth is more of a mental habit. Principles: Authority Go First/H+ Agreement Piggy Back Principles We started off with the Law of Association. We have the Authority Principle. We’ve got the idea of going first or the H+ and lots of other stuff that we’re developing, but it’s all kind of linked to the idea of authority. We’ve got this idea of agreement – the Yes Room inside the mind. These are the principles that we’ve been working with so far. We’ve done something new now haven’t wer? We’ve left the general sphere of agreement and moved into something else with those last few exercises. What have we moved into? We’re still looking for agreement but not necessarily in the same way. This principle we’re looking for now is what I call the Piggy Back Principle. Basically we’re using the Law of Associations in order to make things that weren’t true before true now, by associating them to things that were true. Think of it this way. Imagine that you’re a guard guarding an old-fashioned castle and there’s a big gate. There are people passing in and out constantly, and your job is to keep certain ruffians and people out. A farmer comes in and he’s got a cart full of

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual cabbage, but what if this cabbage happens to be poisoned? You start investigating and testing it and you say should I reject this guy or not? It’s a very different thinking style than if another farmer comes along with carrots or turnips are even better. Every loyal soldier knows what a turnip is. You know this farmer because he’s been in and out lots of times, so are you going to spend as much time checking his cart as the other ones? He comes along and the guard says, all right Bill, go on, off you go. Isn’t that the nature of things? The Piggy Back Principle basically says if we’re going to have agreement anyway and if that cart is going to roll in anyway, add something to the cart that isn’t going to be looked at too closely because it’s going to go in right along with it through the Law of Association. You get the idea? You have a couple of ways of doing it. One simple way is simply through the Power Words, by linking ideas to things that they weren’t necessarily linked to before. Another way is to use this Piggy Back Principle to attach it to things that they’re already agreeing with, to go from true to include plausible ideas, and then start including improbable ideas that are now becoming more plausible as agreement is cycled through. You get the idea here? Note that we haven’t finished yet. We haven’t gotten to the point of really convincing someone that they’re going to drink more water and they’re just going to say yes, I want more water, but we’re beginning to break down those mindsets. Hypnotic Laws: LoRE – Law Of Reversed Effect Law Of Associations Law Of Successive Approximations Here’s another law that we want to play with here. It’s the Law of Successive Approximations. It sounds more complex than it is. It’s the idea of taking baby steps. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. If you try to stuff the whole thing in your mouth at once, what’s likely to happen? You won’t get very far will you? By consistently slicing a little bit off at a time, a couple of things will happen over a period of time. 1. More and more of the elephant will disappear inside of you. 2. Your capacity to eat more elephant in each go increases, doesn’t it?

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The Law of Successive Approximations basically is talking about using baby steps, but simultaneously built into this idea is that as your baby steps progress, they can become increasingly large steps. Half of you experienced this when we did the little beach trip thing and the elephant turned up. That was a big step wasn’t it? Half of you accepted the idea. A third of you rejected the idea and the rest of you weren’t sure about it. As a rule of thumb, this is a good heuristic to think about, the deeper in trance they are, the less active their Critical Factor will be – the No part of the mind. The less active their Critical Factor is – the No part of the mind – the lower the plausibility element of your suggestions have to be in order to be accepted, which means that when you begin an interaction with a highly critical person, you virtually have to focus exclusively on things that are absolutely true for them. When I talk about truth, it has to be truths that are true for them. Otherwise they’re not truths anymore. Slowly you segue in with little hints of things that are plausible, but they’re still highly probable so that they don’t even notice that you’ve departed from the truth to high probability. That begins to erode the Critical Factor even further. You can go from high probability to mere plausibility to low probability to improbability to downright unlikely to just plain wrong, but it still becomes right. Do you get how this whole process goes? It’s all directly related to two things: 1. How switched off is the Critical Factor? It’s never on or off. It’s just more on or more off over time. 2. How much agreement have you been collecting along the way? Exercise Let’s do another exercise now. I’ll give you a long, long, long time now. I’m going to give you two minutes apiece. That’s crazy long. You’re going to think what am I going to do with all this extra time? I want you to go to town on this. It’s the same exercise as before. We’re sticking with the idea of drinking water. Start off with what’s true and start weaving in ideas that may be plausible but still true as a general theme. Then go from plausible to more improbable but still true as a

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual general theme and so on. Get the idea? That’s your warm-up act. That’s the first minute or so. Please remember to go first, your Personal Trance Themes and squeezing the meaning. How many of you forgot those elements in the last few rounds? It’s all right. Just think about water. What are you going to say about water? Is it relaxing? Is it exciting? It expresses the emotional undertone of the idea. We all want to drink water don’t we? What am I thinking of? Is it something pleasant? It’s a good idea to drink water isn’t it? My expression and tonality start showing a little dislike. Compare that to I know that most people think that water is a little bit dull. Did you notice how it’s mismatched? Am I’m saying it’s dull or am I saying it’s dull? Are you beginning to see that something else is going on? You’re now beginning to get to something very sophisticated where you’re beginning to switch your communication. You’re talking to the conscious mind one way and the unconscious mind in another way, and that creates a whole picture that’s something completely different. I want you to emphasize this idea of squeezing the meaning from your words by going first with Personal Trance Themes and so on, with the end goal in mind that at the end of this process they’ll want to drink a glass of water. I don’t care whether or not you succeed. It’s only two minutes, but that’s the end goal that you’re beginning to build into your mind. The success factor is irrelevant, but it will help you to choose an appropriate emotional content to the words and suggestions that you’re making. Feel free to use your Power Words, Trance Themes, Language Softeners and so on. In the last minute or so, when you do your Power Words – because you can relax and feel more comfortable – I want you to select Trance Themes, emotional states that if they were experiencing them whilst drinking water, it would make them very likely to want to have more. Example: Does anyone here enjoy feeling mucky, dirty or unclean on a hot sweaty day? By the way, notice that my tonality has already helped you decide that for you? Or do you prefer it when you actually finally get a chance to do something as simple as washing your hands in a sink? Notice the association beginning to

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual develop? Isn’t that a relief? Or better still having a hot shower or a bath so that you can get rid of all that grime. See where I’m going with this, beginning to develop something here? Wouldn’t it be great if you could feel as clean on the inside as the outside whenever you drank some water? Just think about it. Water exists doesn’t it? Do you see the cycle I’m going into? Water exists does it not? We all know that water is good for you. You’re made of 70- 80% water and some people say 90%. You’re a big bag of water and bones. Without water you won’t exist very long, at least not in this physical form. Most of what needs to work inside you needs water to be able to do that work, which means when you drink more water you’re actually cleaning out the machine on the inside so that it works better. Notice how I’ve just made the link for you? You get the idea? I don’t want to do too much of this right now because I’d rather you be creative about it than just copy something else. You have two minutes apiece. Start off with the general cycle that we did before, which is true, plausible, implausible. Then start rifting around Power Words and Trance Themes in relationship to water, and specifically the idea that they will enjoy drinking water one way or another for whatever reason you’ve decided. Off you go. Welcome back. How did you do? Did anything interesting or surprising happen in your experience, both as the hypnotist but more importantly as the subject, what kinds of things came up? Student:

I can’t actually remember a lot of what was said, but I’ve got a dry mouth. It works.

Igor:

Don’t worry, we’ll be having a break soon where you can quench your thirst!

Did anyone else notice something like this happening? Put your hands up. Who else feels like this idea of water is beginning to get kind of appealing to you right now? Notice that what we haven’t said yet is, is this going to be a permanent thing or is this going to be something that he does for life? No. There are other things that need to happen here.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Notice how we spent about five minutes in terms of actual trance time talking about water. Within five minutes, we’ve got at least half the room already wanting to drink some water. Or maybe there’s more, but they’re thinking I’m not going to put my hand up until I get some water at last! Isn’t that interesting? What’s happening here? Why does talking about water make you want it more? On one level we’ve got this idea of the Law of Associations. You’re beginning to associate the idea of water and drinking it to a very desirable thing, positive emotions and important life functions – in other words the absence of negative experiences. Hypnotic Laws: LoRE – Law Of Reversed Effect Law Of Associations Law Of Successive Approximations Law Of Attention (A=E) On another level – and this is another thing that Trance Themes work on in particular – this is what I call the Law Of Attention. The way that a lot of you will come across it in terms of what we’ve done before is the idea that where attention goes energy flows. By energy I don’t mean some strange spiritual energy, although that may be true also. I’m talking about a purely physiological effect. You’ve all had days where you’ve done nothing physically but they’ve been very mentally demanding because you’ve just been thinking a lot. You’re physically drained at the end of that day, so clearly there’s some form of energy system going on that allows you to think, you have a limited capacity of this energy. It can grow in time but you still run out of it and you have to replenish it. Whether you want to think of that as glucose, synapses firing or whatever else you want to think of it as, it doesn’t matter. The point is that for want of a better expression or a more accurate description, there’s some form of psychological energy going on that’s involved in our psychological experience. When we put our attention on something, that energy goes towards that thing and tends to increase it. The quality of the attention that goes towards it is part of that, which is why people who are in pain become more painful because they bring negative attention to it, yah, I don’t like that, as opposed to more positive attention. For example, mindfulness works along with pain control precisely because the quality of attention going to the pain has changed.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual I don’t want to turn this into a pain control seminar. That’s another specialty area but you get the idea. You experienced this for yourselves earlier today when we were doing all the Power Words and the Trance Themes. Just by talking about comfort and relaxation and using the tonality of comfort and relaxation – which has the associations attached to it also – you started feeling more comfortable and relaxed because that’s where all your psychological processes were being oriented towards. Get the idea? We’ve just taken the next step. We’re now orienting them towards the idea of water being healthy, good and desirable in whatever way that you’ve been doing, and we’ve used everything else as a supporting act – the Piggy Back Principle and the Agreement Principle. These are all mechanisms that are supporting the main idea, which is activating the Law of Associations and the Law Of Attention. Put attention on water in a positive way, link it to positive things that the person finds desirable, and suddenly you start creating a self-running machine, a mechanism that will turn towards that goal automatically. Most of you in this room are beginning to experience that in yah, just shut up Igor, I want to drink some water. Student:

What I wanted to say was that when people say the truisms about water, I understand everything they say and I agree with it 100% whether it’s absolutely true or slightly true. It doesn’t really make me feel a lot thirstier like I want a drink now. However, I know on many occasions people talk about salty or hot spicy stuff … so maybe truism is about stuff that makes you feel thirsty rather than truism is about thinking water is good for you.

Igor:

That is another way of enriching it. We haven’t actually come onto the additional associations. Absolutely. You’ve just figured out another way of creating conditions. Remember, the key here was what will make water desirable? I suppose your partner may have focused on the idea that water is good for you and it’s healthy and so on. That may not be a desirable property for you. It may not be something that has leverage. It’s not motivating for you, but avoiding the pain of thirst, of suffering from a dry and parched throat or that salty taste in your mouth that you just want to get out, you’re going to have a drink now.

Student:

Yah, like eating salty peanuts, how does it make you feel?

Igor:

You’re going to have a drink now. Exactly!

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Notice what’s going on here. Whether or not you succeeded with the last set of processes is irrelevant. The point here is important, which is that you need to have some leverage that motivates them. If you want to have short-term success, pain can be very motivating in the short term. For long-term, people can escape it long enough that they’ll oscillate and vacillate, but having both ends, enough pain to get them started and enough pleasure to keep them going is a very useful thing. They fall back a bit, there’s the pain to start them off again and when they keep going there’s enough pleasure to keep them going and so on. It can get very tricky in terms of those principles overall. What I’m more interested in right now though is just the raw mechanics and can you engage in those things? In doing so, you’ll discover – just as you did there – that this is really working out but it’s missing something. As we start adding those missing elements, your machinery of persuasion becomes more and more robust. Again we’re still on training wheels right now. It’s a good thing to notice these things and we’ll continue to evolve it as we go along. So you get the idea of the Law of Successive Approximations and the Law Of Attention.

Universal Experiences Exercise What I’d like to do now, let’s do one last exercise before we finish up. Let’s take this idea of the Law Of Attention and the Law of Association. What was your name? Nigel? Okay, Ni. So Ni noticed that there’s more than one way to skin this proverbial cat. There are many things that will create desire other than just directly going after the desire, which means that you’ve discovered another element to this idea of indirect suggestion. The heart of indirect suggestion is not so much the permissive language that we’ve been focusing on, but it’s actually using the Law of Association wisely. Just ask yourself a question. What things are associated to the actual outcome that I want so that by talking around the outcome enough, it triggers associations so that they spontaneously have the experience that Ni did, which is to say if I thought about peanuts I would get thirsty right now. Do you get the idea?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual So the challenge for you is, sticking within what you know, squeezing the meaning from your words, who here is remembering to have a personal trance and something very pleasant or something unpleasant when you talk about salty peanuts and so on? Power Words, Trance Themes and so on. We’ll have another two-minute process here. Start off with this idea of close your eyes and go into a trance. Then a minute or so of things that are true. By the way, have you noticed how your things that are true have started evolving? They’re not quite as clumsy anymore are they? Anyone notice this? They’re getting a little bit more eloquent and a little bit more conversationally adroit? How did that happen? Or is it just the fact that you were so busy doing something new that your unconscious mind just made it better, because it fit better? Do you get the idea of how unconscious learning works? Continue with the same sort of process, and then at the end of it we’re going to go back to this idea of Trance Themes and Power Words and talking about the idea of water and so on. Only this time I want you to precede it, go between one and the other, and somewhere in that middle stage I’d like you to talk about another kind of Yes Set, which we haven’t really addressed but you’ve been starting to play with, which is in the category of Universal Experiences. They’re experiences that pretty much everyone has had. Anything salty is one of them, right? Everyone has had the experience of being dehydrated or being parched, either because it’s a hot day or they’ve exercised too much or a little bit of both. I want you to go through a sequence of true, plausible, improbable all mixed in a little bag. Then somewhere along the line, tell a little story. It doesn’t have to be a proper story, just a little anecdote or a simile about when you or a friend had an experience where drinking water was of great value, typically because you were thirst, but leave it hanging. Don’t actually make anything of it. Then go back to the idea of Trance Themes and the idea of drinking water and all the positive things that come. I’m going to give you two or three minutes apiece. Then I want you to jump back and forth between the experiences – the little mini stories – and the Trance Themes and the cycling. Just go backwards and forwards. It doesn’t have to be the same Trance Themes. It doesn’t have to be the same experiences, but you’re going back and forth between those different styles of thinking about something, and notice what impact that has on you.

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If you wish, you may include the idea of alternative things that make water desirable, like you notice it when you have an absence of it, being in the desert with no water and also making it desirable just in terms of can you describe it in a way that it’s purely delightful? Then maybe even combine the two together. That delicious sense of having crisp cool water that seems to have no taste at first, but then suddenly you realize that it tastes like pure satisfaction. Doesn’t that sound a little bit like a marketing spiel? By the way, this is why a marketing spiel like that works. When people are watching these adverts on TV in particular, they’re going into a hypnotic state, or hypnoidal state. The flicker rate of the TV and all the attention gathering. Have you ever noticed that when you’re watching a show on TV and someone comes in and talks to you, and talks to you, they’ll say did you get that and you go huh? What, what? When did you come in? Or even better, you’re watching TV and someone comes in and puts something right in front of you and then leaves. After a while, maybe the break comes on or you’ll turn the TV program off and you’ll look down and say where did that come from? Anyone notice these sort of things happening? TV is deeply hypnotic. That’s one of the reasons why paying for adverts, especially on big shows is so expensive. It’s because they work through the Law of Association. When you’re in a trance, your ideas or your way of accepting ideas tends to be much more enriched. Let’s spend five minutes in total doing the whole piece. What we’re adding in the middle are these Universal Experiences related to the pleasures of drinking water or the undesirability of not drinking water. That’s about as broad as we can make it. Then oscillate between those Universal Experiences and the general Trance Themes – water is good, you’ll feel this way when you drink water, because water does this you will feel that. You want to link emotions to some kind of plausibility logic to the idea of water. Do you see the little scenario we’re creating here? Don’t worry too much about how much of this you’re doing. You have two and a half minutes. 1. Step one – the first minute or so is true, plausible and probable. It’s the same thing as you did before. Easy? 2. Step two is some kind of Universal Experience, either about the pleasure of drinking water or the pain of not drinking it. For instance, salty things would

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual be the pain of not drinking it. Drinking it when you haven’t had a chance to, or you’ve had too much chocolate in your mouth is the pleasure of having it. 3. Step three is to cycle between the Trance Themes and the Universal Experiences. When we talk about Trance Themes, I want you to cycle between three ideas – water, a logical reason why water is good for you, and an emotional factor that makes it emotionally appealing. For example, it’s healthy and it feels good. It makes you think better. It makes you smarter and it will make you feel stronger and more energetic. Those are totally different reasons and different emotions, feelings, yet they still have that desirability to them. Quick question over here. Student:

I’m a bit worried that we are doing all these exercises in trance because I’m a hypno junkie and when somebody tells me, close your eyes, go into trance, I’m already in deep trance in the yes room and I don’t notice the contrast of being in the no room.

Igor:

Is that as the hypnotist or the subject?

Student:

As the subject.

Igor:

In that case, you’re doing a great job being a hypnotic subject. If you really want to have a contrast of what happens when those come in, you’re welcome to ask your hypnotist if they’re willing to just throw in a few things that are just going to mess it up on purpose so that you can have a contrast. You have a choice. You can do this exercise in any way that you wish. One way is you’re developing certain patterns that will help you to be more influential. With the other one, you’ll develop contrast to what happens when you don’t have those patterns in place well enough. It’s your choice which one you choose. Remember, when we finish up here you can grab any hypnotist in the room and say let’s practice some more, and you can do all the things you haven’t had a chance to do here yet. Off you go.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual How did that go? Did you enjoy it? How was it different by including this idea of Universal Experiences and contrasting, going from Trance Themes and Universal Experiences? What did you notice? Student:

Hi, I just noticed that he felt so real, it felt like it was really there.

Igor:

So when you were the subject, it felt much more real, right?

Student:

Yes. In fact, it made me notice that I started licking my lips about 10 seconds in and I really did want that drink of water.

Igor:

Good job hypnotist!

Student:

I would like to add that the Universal Experience also creates sort of a mini-bond with the other person because you can feel their thirst and their feeling of relief when you finally get water. You go with them so you’re more willing to listen to them.

Igor:

Absolutely. It makes it more real, right? Notice how there are different qualities of Yes Sets, which have different levels of realness. Who here is still pretending to go into a trance, anyone? Or have you given up on that idea long ago because it’s much more fun doing it? The other thing to ask yourself is how natural does it feel being in this state that we’ll call a trance for now? Pretty natural isn’t it? For those of you who weren’t hypnotists before you came here, aside from the fact that your eyes were closed, and may feel a little lethargic with it, would have said you were in a trance if something like that happened in a regular conversation? Would you have said hang on a second, was I in a trance just now? Or was it just a very engaging conversation and it became very real for you? This is one of the ways that we can use the very problem that most hypnotists and hypnotherapists in particular run into – I heard everything you said there, so it can’t have worked – and we can make it serve us as Conversational Hypnotists because they’ll never know that it’s happened. If you do something that gives them an idea that something has happened, you can still do good work with it but the chances are that they’ll say something’s happened and they’ll be more on alert for it. If they have no

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual idea that something’s happened other than you’re just a fascinating person to talk to, that’s great. Carry on and have a long healthy career as a covert hypnotist. Student:

Before this exercise I was afraid. There are a few things to doing that. When I was doing this it was like where you just finished a story, because of the emotion, the story, the emotion which means it was easy. [laughter}

Igor:

I agree. Are you beginning to develop your own personal metaphor for what it feels like to do hypnotic work, especially in this style? There are a lot of little moving parts, isn’t there, but when you let go of them for long enough to actually do it, how easy it is, especially when you get that mindset first? Isn’t it pretty easy and straightforward?

End of Day Summary Just think about the stuff you’ve been doing. Look at what you’ve done in one day. Close Your Eyes Coaching: Trance Signals Ratifying Authority Hypnotic Voice Cognitive: Hypnotic Thoughts Voluntary v Involuntary Language Softeners Power Words Trance Themes Closing their eyes is easy. Trance Signals and Ratifying things that are happening. You’ve got the voice of authority and the H+. Your hypnotic voice is starting to develop more and more. You have some hypnotic thoughts that we’ve developed as we go along. We’re getting some involuntary and voluntary responses – and we’ll talk more about that tomorrow. Your language has improved significantly – your Language Softeners, your Power Words and your Trance Themes. You have a much richer sense of what Trance Themes to use.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Go First: Personal Trance Theme Squeeeezzze The Meaning (from your words) Yes Sets -Simple Fact -Universal Experiences True v “true” This idea of going first and getting more out of your language is getting increasingly easy now. What’s True versus what is merely almost true is starting make much more sense to you now as well. We have lot of ways of getting a Yes Set. We have a simple one. We just played with Universal Experiences, which is kind of the opening framework for a story. We haven’t really gone into storytelling fully but it’s the opening gambit for a story. That’s pretty easy to do. Hypnotic Laws: LoRE – Law Of Reversed Effect Law Of Associations Law Of Successive Approximations Law Of Attention (A=E) You’ve covered a lot of different laws, principles, language and all kinds of stuff in a day. Does it feel like you’ve only been here a day so far? A week, right? No time distortion there right? You’ve done a lot of work. Assuming that you decided not to think too much about it, I suspect that each step along this path was actually very easy for you to do. It’s simple. From time to time, you fell off the path by trying to do too much and you confused yourself by thinking about it. That’s really just the wrong mindset. As soon as you remembered that you were in the wrong room inside your mind and you left, coming back to the agreement room – the Yes Room – something else began to happen didn’t it? Not only did you start feeling better, but words would begin to come that you didn’t even know you had inside of you. Once we took a few of the training wheels off and started working with something slightly practical – by the way, it’s still impractical for now but it’s getting more practical is it not – you started having some very interesting impacts: 1. The general thirst level in the room has risen dramatically has it not?

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2. You discovered how doing a lot of these things that you’ve been learning about today starts coming out naturally and automatically when you give it the right context. 3. You’re starting to get more strategic about it. You’re developing strategies that you didn’t even know you had like using salty things as the association to thirst, as opposed to just the association to water. Notice the distinction that is there. More importantly, you’ve had a lifetime of experiences working with people, talking with people and interacting with other human beings. Whether English is your first language or not you do understand the general language of conversations and the give and take. You’ve had many experiences with people, both experiences that you find satisfying, rewarding and useful and the other kind. If you were to close your eyes for a moment and really think about it, really think about it, I’m sure you would discover more inside of you than just comfort. As deep as that comfort can get, the thing that’s more important than that is the fact that you can learn comfortably. In a strange way, you can feel comfortable learning something even if in that one brief moment there is some momentary discomfort that you overcome comfortably to get to the other side. I realize that not all your learning experiences in the past have been this comfortable. The best ones have and better ones are yet to come, because as you study and practice hypnosis with the principle of going first, your ability to access things like comfort, relaxation and inner peace, qualities that are of great value to experience in a trance, you not only enrich your own life but you enrich your capacity to learn more things, more comfortably. Some of the most comfortable learning you’ve ever experienced happened when you didn’t even realize you were learning. The kind of unconscious implicit learning that happens automatically. You may have a favorite piece of music, a favorite walk in a favorite park, a pleasant activity that you enjoy just for the pleasure of doing it – reading, writing, painting, singing. How did you learn to enjoy those activities? Where did the comfort and the pleasure of those things come from if not from your unconscious mind? You just did it. And because you enjoyed doing it, you did more, so you enjoyed it more. In enjoying it more, weren’t you deeply motivated to keep doing it again and again?

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So your capacity to have enjoyment increased. That wonderful piece of music that you really listened to became something you could appreciate on many more levels. The walk that you enjoyed taking now becomes your refuge, something that you can return to time and again when you need a resource in your life. This is a great example of unconscious learning in action. Today, as hectic as things have become and as tired as you may have been throughout the course of the day, you’ve been learning consistently. You’ve acquired skills that you did not have before you came here, or you’ve understood aspects of them and you’ve deepened those skills, making you a better hypnotist and a better person. Now, the most important part of the learning cycle is embedding unconscious experience into unconscious memories that become the source of all true unconscious learnings. You’ve had many experiences here today, and because you’ve had these experiences I wonder just how it will affect your dream time tonight. All of you will dream whether you remember it or not. It’s a physiological fact that human beings dream. They must dream to stay sane, although many people are convinced that they have no dreams because they forgot about them. I don’t know if you’ll remember your dreams or not, or if you just remember having had dreams without realizing the content. What I do know is that whatever dreams may come for you, it will be an opportunity for your unconscious mind to process experiences into memories and learnings that will be the foundation on your path to mastery of hypnosis and influence and being a force for good in the world. The thing about dreaming is that it can only happen if you’ve been awake long enough beforehand to go to sleep. Ironically, you’ve got to wake up now in order to be able to enjoy the dreams then. As soon as you’re ready to do that now, feel free to bring yourselves back. Is anyone driving a car today? The rest of you can feel free to ignore this. Wherever your car happens to be parked right now, you realize that as soon as you go from this room outside, you’ve already changed atmospheres, right? The more important thing about changing atmospheres is not so much the one between here and the outside corridor or even the lobby. The really interesting one is what happens when

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual you go outside and you go from the temperature in here to that really cool brisk air of London which goes oooh, I’m invigorated. I don’t know if your car is going to be cool enough when you open the door that you’ll be able to start your engine and drive totally confidently and comfortably and fully alert on the way home, or if you’ll feel like the car window is open whether it is or not, just so that you have that fresh breeze blowing through mind all the way until you get home, and then you get to decide when is the right time for you to sleep, the one that has the dreams that you’re looking forward to. Does that make sense to you guys? Have a good night.

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DVD 5 – The Instant Rapport Technique & “Hypnotic Eyes” Revealed

Hypnotic Eyes Did you have a nice evening yesterday? Everyone starts laughing. Did you do any damage to people’s minds yesterday? Is your family feeling thirsty right now? Yesterday we spent a lot of time focusing on the mindset that makes hypnosis more powerful. Would that be fair to say? You noticed that your performance changes as a result of the mindset. I think of the mindset as both a sword and a shield, or you can think of it as a hammer and shield if you like. It’s a tool that will help you to be a better hypnotist by influencing others more easily, but it’s also a shield that protects you from your own insecurities, nerves, performance anxiety and so on. When you’re using this shield, you become a better hypnotist because you get out of our own way enough to do what you can do anyway, plus the other person responds to you more powerfully because you’ve gone first and so on. Have you all had an experience of how much easier it is to do hypnosis when you’ve turned this mindset on than when it’s off? That’s important. This morning I want to go back to the H+ idea and really elaborate on it. I want to give you some more ways of looking at it and more ways of experiencing it so that we can enrich this whole process. Exercise Please go ahead and get into different groups of roughly 10 people, different groups than yesterday and then turn your chairs around so that you’re together. I’d like you to identify a partner and square up your chairs so that you’re facing each other straight on. I’d like you to make eye contact with your partner and do not look away. Begin. All right, folks, just relax for a minute. How was that? Was it interesting? Who had some interesting reactions, particularly emotional reactions whilst you were doing that? Student:

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I just started to laugh.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Igor:

You started to laugh. Did anyone else have a sense that you couldn’t resist laughing, a little giggling fit started to show up? Very good, thank you.

Student:

In the beginning it was uncomfortable but after a while I was like okay, I will survive. Then I relaxed and it was easy.

Igor:

Thank you. Did anyone else feel some pressure developing that might have been uncomfortable, and at some point that pressure may or may not have popped? If it did pop, you relaxed into something else. If it didn’t pop, you maintained that sense of tension. Would that be fair to say?

Student:

A hazing over.

Igor:

You looked at the eyes and their face and it started distorting in some way. Did you get visual distortions happening already? Did anyone here notice their partner’s face start looking older or younger? Or if it was a woman she started having a beard, which was really weird? Anyone notice those sort of things showing up?

Student:

I found it quite easy, but I started going into trance as I was looking.

Igor:

In other words, when you went into a trance, you didn’t feel all this stuff that we’re talking about. Thank you for that.

Student:

In the beginning I found it a little uncomfortable and embarrassing, looking so intently at a gentleman that I had only met two seconds ago. Then I said I’m a master hypnotherapist and I played that role and then it became easy.

Igor:

Very good. I like that very much. That’s a great mindset.

Student:

Normally I’m not allowed to look at a beautiful lady, but I found I was staying and looking at her very good.

Student:

May I respond to that? I see the most beautiful person in the world that I love the utmost, it gives me good feelings. That’s it, really.

Igor:

Let’s have a chat about what’s going on here.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Eye contact is something that is built into our biology. Believe it or not, the eyes are the only part of the brain that are visible in the outside world. If you look at a fetus developing, these little tentacles come right out of the brain when it starts developing. Those are the optic nerves, and the end of those tentacles becomes the retina, which then turns into the whole eyeball. When you look at someone’s eyes, you’re literally looking at their brain. Whilst you’re looking at the eyes, you’ll also see a lot of information about how their brain is processing things. Who noticed that some people had the tendency to look away whilst you were staring at them, even though the instruction was to not look away? When the mind is erratic, the eyes will be erratic. When the mind is calm, the eyes will be calm as a general rule. You can actually see a lot of people’s mental states from their eyes. Another thing that the eyes do is they’re very important to us as a biological being. Most of our processing space in the brain is dedicated to visual processing. I think something like 60 or 70% of the sensory processing in your brain is visually oriented. Even blind people who have been blind from birth will use the visual processes, but to process the other senses instead. Hence, they become a lot sharper and more acute with their other senses because they’re using the same brain power for another sense now. There are some interesting experiments with eye contact in general. One of the ones that I really like is where they had a group of monkeys and they had a box with two circles painted on it. Inside each circle was a little dot kind of like the equivalent of eyes looking up. What they found happening was that if they left this box there, the monkeys would play around and check out the eyes, and they’d look up to see what they were looking at. If you think we’re any different, go up to a busy street in some town, stand there and look up for about five minutes. Notice how many people join you. I had friends at school who loved to do this. They’d all stand on a street corner looking up. Soon this big crowd would gather around them. It was very amusing to them. More important to us is that eyes absorb attention. What our eyes do is give everyone else important information. If you’re looking fixedly at something, eventually others will look there too because it might be something that they need to take into account. It might be important, it might be dangerous or it might be interesting.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual In our culture when we make eye contact – in other words eye-to-eye – typically there are only two times when we make prolonged eye contact. One is a pre-fight ritual. That’s when you’re feeling aggressive. The other time is also a pre-something ritual but this one is a lot more pleasant overall for people. The only times that people in our culture will do this is when they either have lustful or loving thoughts, or when they have aggressive thoughts. We’re not really used to prolonged eye contact. It develops a lot of emotional pressure in both situations. In one it’s more welcomed than in the other. We’re going to use exactly the same system as part of our hypnotic process, only we neither want to start fighting people nor do we necessarily want them to follow us around like lovesick puppies. The difference is if eye contact was present in both situations – both the aggressor and the lover – how is it that someone knows how to respond to them? It’s because their mindset changes and all their mannerisms change. Their breathing rate changes. Their physiology changes. Their facial expressions change and usually their wording and language change as well. The pre-fight ritual tends to be very short, bleeped out language. In the other ritual, you may have similar language but the tone is very different. You get the idea? We’re going to be using the hypnotic mindset and attaching that to this eye contact and the pressure that it creates. The reason the hypnotic gaze is interesting, in hypnosis literature, the Hypnotic Gaze used to be called things like eagle eye, or the evil eye and all kinds of different things. They used to ascribe all kinds of metaphysical powers to the eyes. That may or may not be true. I don’t know about that side of things, but I do know that on a purely psychological level we respond very powerfully to the eyes and eye contact. As we said, we can arrest their attention. The other thing that it does – and you all experienced it just now – is it elevates emotional pressure. Would it be fair to say that before you went to that surrender point that some of you talked about, you felt a significant elevation in emotional pressure, right? This is very interesting. Where is that pressure coming from? Are they choosing it consciously, or is that an unconscious activity going on? It’s unconscious, so we’ve got some of the key elements for the hypnotic process present.

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ABS Formula: A – Absorb Attention B – Bypass Critical Factor C – Stimulate The Unconscious Are you familiar with the ABS Formula? This is a way that I look at the hypnotic process. It’s my own version of it. You’ll find millions of different versions depending on the hypnotist that you talk to. I find this a very useful functional description of what context you need to have present for hypnosis to occur. This is not the only definition. It’s just a nice simple working definition and it helps us to develop very interesting hypnosis processes. The first step is to absorb attention. A = Absorb attention. Did the eye contact do that? Did you absorb someone’s attention or have your attention absorbed by them when you made prolonged eye contact? Yes, so eye contact has already got the first part of our induction ready for us. The next thing that we need to do is to bypass the Critical Factor. B = Bypass the Critical Factor. Remember yesterday we talked about the Critical Factor – the No mind, the mind that rejects ideas? We need to bypass that factor. One of the roles of the Critical Factor is to keep things the same. In order to keep things the same, you’re rejecting ideas. Do you see how that works? That’s why the Agreement Principle and the Piggy Back Principle work so well because you’re using agreement, which basically keeps things the same, and then you’re subtly piggy backing in something that is almost agreement, but it’s too small for the Critical Factor to bother activating and so you slowly start eroding its function. Do you get the idea of that? Anything that disrupts the normal thought processes or the normal thought loops will tend to disrupt the Critical Factor also. Have you ever been hopelessly in love? Of course you act totally rationally and logically at those times don’t you? When people tell you stuff, you process it in totally normal and logical ways don’t you? Has anyone here ever been deeply afraid or close to panic? Of course at those times you act equally rationally don’t you and you respond to rational

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual ideas very simply and naturally as you do in everyday life don’t you? Or is something else going on? Would it be fair to say that your normal thought processes are disturbed every time you have a very strong emotional reaction? It basically overloads that part of the brain that includes the Critical Factor. So, the emotional pressure that some of you were feeling in this little Hypnotic Gaze exercise – when it’s elevated enough, will bypass the Critical Factor. It switches it off because it can no longer cope. A few people talked about this pressure arising and then however you did it, surrendering to something else. Someone talked about thinking they’re a master hypnotist. Another person went into trance. Another person just relaxed into it. These are all different ways of describing the same thing. That’s what happens when they bypass the Critical Factor. They let go and the Critical Factor is no longer holding on. It’s just given up. Then we get to the final stage, which is present at the same time, it stimulates the unconscious process. S = Stimulate the unconscious mind. Where do emotions come from, the conscious or the unconscious? If you have a strong emotion present, do you have the unconscious mind stimulated? With the Hypnotic Gaze, you’re simultaneously doing all three steps of the ABS Formula. Do you see how that works? Let’s talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you saw happening – blinking, looking away or giggling. Did anyone notice that their blinking rate started increasing? These are all known as defense mechanisms. These are attempts that the mind is making to shut the world out. If you’re a student of body language – which as a hypnotist it would be worth your while doing – you’ll notice that when you present an idea to someone that they don’t like, they’ll blink over it. They might have a prolonged blink or they’ll turn away. They might wrinkle their nose. These are all unconscious reactions that they have. That basically shows you that this person has a clash with whatever idea you just presented at that point, so you may as well start looking at it a little bit more. Those exact same defense mechanisms were arising here: • The emotional pressure. • Looking away.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual • Increased blinking reflex or prolonged blinks. • Maybe some wrinkling of the face. • The desire to pull away. How many people had some variation of that? If you get too much of this, the person will be tipped into a fight or flight. If you have just enough of this, it will overload the Critical Factor. It will overload the conscious loops that normally run, and you go straight into the gateway of hypnosis. The secret then is how do you create that context in a way that’s friendly enough that the other person doesn’t get scared and run away or punch you in the nose? There are two things that we need to do. 1. We need to give them an unconscious context. 2. We need to give them a conscious context to allow them to interact with you in a way that is going to be beneficial to them. We’re going to start off with the unconscious context. Ninety percent of the time this will be enough. On occasion, you’ll also need to create a conscious context, which we’ll come onto in a moment. Get the idea?

Instant Rapport Technique Exercise I’d like you to face the same partner that you started with. We’re going to begin this exercise by having one person in your group being the hypnotist. The other person will be the subject and then you’ll switch roles. I’m going to guide you through the same process twice. Hypnotists, please close your eyes. The other person will do whatever you want. Silence is going to be important in this one. I’d like you to just take a few moments to allow your attention to settle in. I’d like you to have a realization, and that is to say that you’ve had many important relationships in the past – friendships, close family members and even pets that you’ve loved and had a good relationship with – someone that you can clearly say

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual was a friend, or even an animal or a pet that was a real friend, and you had an emotional attachment there. Of all those people or pets in your personal history, I’d like you to select one that was a particularly close friendship, but importantly not one that was a personal relationship – in other words not a husband, wife or lover. In other words, one that was more platonic. Of all the people in your life that you’ve been close to and had a good friendship with, I’d like you to select one that was clearly just a friendship with no romantic interest there at all. I’d like you to recall this person or pet and the relationship that you had, and notice that as you think about this person, this pet, this relationship you begin to feel a certain way. It’s that feeling of friendship, is it not? As you feel that friendship, I’d like you to immerse yourself in it enough that it begins to grow as a feeling, a glow inside your body. Because when it is strong enough, you’ll be able to let go of the memory and allow that feeling to continue to grow. That feeling might even have a color associated to it, something that makes the feeling more intense. Whether it does or not, allow that feeling to continue to grow so that it’s filling up your whole body and spreading to your arms and your legs, and maybe even your head, your throat and your eyes. Eventually you’ll be able to let this feeling grow strong enough that it kind of projects out of you, as though there was a happy glow of friendship around you. When that happens, allow that glow to expand forwards to encompass the person in front of you so that it moves through them and around them, so that you can attach the same feelings of friendship towards that person as well. When you have a sense of that, open your eyes only as slowly as you can maintain or intensify this glow of friendship that you have, and make eye contact with that person. Feel the intensity of that emotional friendship growing and projecting through them as you make eye contact with them. Open your eyes and look at your partner and do not look away, but beam with the delight of that friendship. Feel as though something inside the person in front of you is as good and positive, as friendly as that friend you had long ago. Perhaps you’ll even wish kind things, good things for the person you’re looking at now, in the same way as you wished good things, kind things for your friend back then.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Feel that kindness inside you moving through you, around them and through them, so it’s as if all that existed now is just that friendship that encompasses both of you, and enjoy it. Now whatever intensity arises merely make this glow of friendship even stronger now. You can breathe. It’s alright to smile if you wish to. Notice how much more kindly your eyes feel. Now I’d like you as the hypnotist, I’d like you to just close your eyes again and memorize this feeling you had. Memorize it so that it will be with you whenever you will need it again, so that you can access it thoroughly at any point you wish, so that it’s as easy to turn on this feeling of friendship as it is to make eye contact and continue to hold it. When you have a sense of that, allow the sensation to drift away and bring yourselves back to normal or as close to normal as you wish. Was it good for you too? Exercise Now we’re going to do the same thing again in the opposite direction. The other person is now the hypnotist. Hypnotists, please close your eyes. Take a few moments to gather your attention in, and already you can anticipate how good this next experience will be because you’ve seen the other person do it, and you felt the positive impact that you can have when someone does this with you, which means that you’ll probably find it very easy to recall all kinds of pleasant friendships from your past. Select from those only one which has no romantic overtones whatsoever. It can be with a human or with a pet, someone or something that you really cherished as a friend. You’ll notice when you think about this person that already that glow of warm, good feelings is there. I wonder how much it will grow, before, you can allow the memory to recede and have that feeling continue to grow, that growing glow of comfort. Notice that as soon as the memory goes, the glow can continue to spread throughout your body, your arms and legs, up your throat and into your head. Eventually, it will feel so good it’s as if it could just burst out of you, surround you in a happy glow of friendship. Maybe there’s a color associated with it or not. It doesn’t matter so much. This feeling will continue to spread out through you and

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual over the person opposite you so that a happy friendship glow surrounds them and moves through them as it does through you. Really feel that. When you really have a full sense of what that is and how that feels now, you can open your eyes only as slowly as you can maintain or increase this feeling. Make eye contact with your partner and do not look away. Feel this feeling of friendship intensifying, this happy glow. Feel it projecting out of you with a joy or happiness, a real sense of connection. Feel it moving through you and through them. It’s as if all that existed was this friendship. Notice that with eye contact, this happy glow, this feeling of friendship just increases. Perhaps you’ll even smile or have some other physiological shift that is just pleasant for you. As with any friendship, it’s okay to wish good things, kind things for them. Any true friend would want good things to happen to their friends. They would never think of forcing it on them. Good, kind things. And you can feel that as part of that glow of friendship, can you not? When you have a full sense of that, then you can close your eyes and fully memorize this feeling. Fully memorize it thoroughly and completely so that you have access to it anytime you should wish, so that you can turn on this feeling of friendship, rapport, connection and it’s as simple as making eye contact with someone else and maintaining it in a friendly, relaxed fashion. Isn’t it interesting that this kind of intensity can still be relaxed? Intensely relaxed and yet friendly. As you memorize that fully, allow yourself to just drift back to a normal state of consciousness or as much of it as you wish. Then just turn your chairs around so that we can have a little chat.

Exercise Debrief Okay guys, so how was that? Was it interesting? Was this one significantly different from the first version that you did? Yes? How was it different? Student:

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Igor:

The first time it felt like you were taking away, it was more challenging, shall we say.

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Where the second one was more giving? Very good.

Student:

The second time was much more comfortable.

Igor:

Why do you think that is? It’s something in your attitude once again translating in terms of what you’re doing. Notice how important your attitude is. I find it perplexing that many hypnosis courses focus so much on technique and so little on attitude when attitude is actually so much more important than technique. Put together they’re a power punching duo, better that Batman and Robin, another little geeky reference eh, but if you’ve got to choose one of the two, I would choose the attitude hands down.

Student:

It was just something I noticed. You prompted it on the second time when the other person was the hypnotist, but I was the hypnotist first, I was very much aware when I was looking at him thinking, do you know, you’re a really good bloke, I really wish you a long and happy life. Then the second time you said you might really want to do that, but I’d done that automatically on the first one.

Igor:

Yup. Actually I suggested it on the first one as well, just not as elaborately. But that’s okay it’s all your idea.

Student:

It shows how into it I was.

Igor:

It just means you took the suggestion more fully.

Student:

What I noticed was the breathing, they seemed to match so we had a good connection.

Igor:

Thank you.

Did anyone start to notice this? Did you notice that parts of your behavior were starting to get in sync and your breathing was matching up? Did anyone notice that they were

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual leaning at the same angle or at complementary angles, or maybe a head tilt in a certain way? As the hypnotist, did you notice that you started smiling and the other person started smiling unconsciously? What’s going on here? In the psychological literature, we know that there’s this thing called matching and mirroring, where we basically copy someone else’s physical mannerisms and it creates a lot of rapport. Here’s the problem with it. Most people who are trying to do matching and mirroring do it like this (very obvious and stilted). Kids love to do this. They mimic everything that you do and especially everything that you say. After about five minutes, we wish those laws around beating children were no longer there. [laughter] How then can they say that people in rapport have these same mannerisms? It’s because it happens unconsciously. Once again, if the conscious mind tries to do something, we have the Law Of Reverse Effect. It does it in a clumsy, clunky way that it becomes mimicking, not matching or mirroring. What you’ve just done is what I call the Instant Rapport Technique. We added that to the idea of the eye contact just to give it the extra bit of juice, but notice how by doing that you automatically start this matching and mirroring process. As far as I’m concerned, matching and mirroring is something that you don’t practice. You just spot when it happens and it’s a signpost that says well done, you’re here. Do you get the idea? Thank you for that. What else did you notice? Student:

I was surprised because I had an expectation that I’d have some kind of feeling. In fact with a friend, 350 phrases using trance… last trance for you, etc. We made no trance for old men and we made that phrase and started laughing hysterically. I saw her in my mind driving in the car saying last trance for old men, so through the whole thing I kept repeating that and it kept growing. I realized you could also use words, I didn’t know that, I thought it had to be some kind of feeling as opposed to words.

Igor:

Ultimately what matters is the result.

Are you in the right mindset? In fact in one of the personal power Master Classes we talk a little bit about this. I call these mini scripts, not in terms of hypnotic scripts but

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual you have these little ideas that you loop inside your own mind and you project as part of it. These are all different ways of getting at the same point, which is, to convince the unconscious mind that this person in front of you is a great friend because if your unconscious mind is convinced, their unconscious mind will be convinced too. I’ll give you an example. Years ago now, I was at a hypnosis seminar, and there was this little old lady there who for some reason – I can’t even tell you why – she just reminded me of my grandmother. There was something about her that reminded me of my grandmother. Every time I spotted her, I had this little jolt. I didn’t talk to her because I was an anally retentive lawyer at the time, so I couldn’t talk to people that I didn’t know. Do you know the old joke about the two Englishmen, the two Irishmen and the two Scotsmen? They’re all stranded on a desert island and after 10 years a ship comes to rescue them. They find that the two Irishmen have made whiskey out of coconut juice, so they’re having a party on the beach. The two Scotsmen are slugging it out and they’re stripped to the waist in the middle of the beach. The two Englishmen are standing awkwardly on the beach waiting for someone to introduce them to each other. That was me, right? Then the weirdest thing happened. It was a five-day program and on about day three she came up to me and said have we met before? I said I’m sure we haven’t. She said did you go to this other seminar? I said no. She rattles off a 10-year history of places she’s been and said you must have been at one of these places. I said no I’m sorry but I wasn’t. She was convinced that we knew each other. I think the reason for that is because I had this sense of connection because she reminded me so much of my grandmother that unconsciously she was convinced that we must know each other because she had the same sense of familiarity. We’re sending out these unconscious signals constantly. We kind of sub-communicate them kind of like how a submarine sends out those little sonar pings. You might not be able to see them consciously, but there’s instrumentation that will be aware of them. What pings come back will depend on what pings are going out.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual As hypnotists, we’ve got to be very careful about what we’re pinging out from our submarine because that’s how the environment around us will respond to us as well. So the Instant Rapport Technique does many things. Of course it builds an instant rapport, but also as we looked at over here, it automatically actions the three stages of the ABS Formula – the three stages for creating hypnotic context. Rather than triggering them down the fear path or the romantic path – neither of which are appropriate for any kind of hypnotic context – you’re just triggering this whole sense of friendship and so on, and that gives them an unconscious cue that it’s okay to relax and it’s okay to just fall back and enjoy this trance. Wasn’t that much more pleasant for you as subjects this time around compared to the previous time? It still felt intense, didn’t it? But it was a more pleasant version of intense. Now that you’ve done this, you should realize on a different level what I meant yesterday when I said that hypnosis is anything but a casual relationship. The depth that you go to with this will really depend on the situation you’re in. If you’re sitting at a bus stop and a little old lady or a little old man sits next to you and you look at them and say ahhh, is that appropriate? No. There are some people who have more issues about personal contact with others, and again it can be very invasive to do too much too soon. Just because you have the tool doesn’t mean that you have to use it all the time everywhere. A hammer can whack a nail in or it can just tap it in as well. There are gradations and there’s also the choice to not use it at certain times as well. It’s the same thing that we talked about yesterday in terms of the ethics. It can be as abusive to try to force rapport on someone who’s not emotionally ready for that sort of thing as it can be to actually do something in terms of influencing them in something that is not in their best interest. Let’s take a little break.

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DVD 6 – How To Hijack A “NO” And Turn It Into A “YES”

Student:

I’d like to share something from the last session with Angela from when we were doing the exercises. I was quite overwhelmed, really, because I was thinking about a pet that’s very special to me who we lost, a dachshund who died quite tragically. He would have made a great hypnotist, he loved to look in your eyes. What was amazing is that the lady that I was working with had this image of an animal and I couldn’t even describe it. Angela, can you describe what you saw?

Angela:

Well it was just his dog’s face appeared right in front of my eyes as I closed my eyes. It faded quite quick, it had floppy ears and everything so I had to check to see.

Student:

I’m constantly finding amazing things happening to me since I arrived here. I just found that incredible, thank you.

Igor:

Thank you for sharing. (applause) By the way, notice the emotion; there’s clearly a lot of emotion behind that. Thanks for sharing that. Do you see what kinds of things hypnosis can stir up and what doors it can open inside the mind? This is why I’m going to ask you to be extra careful because this isn’t a toy you’re playing with. Be respectful of what you’re using. Are you beginning to get a much finer appreciation of what I mean when I say hypnosis is anything but a casual relationship? When something is as important as this you don’t want to be abusing it, or using it everywhere you go because you could leave a lot of emotional shrapnel behind which isn’t very useful. If you do it in a traditional manner in a way that’s helpful to people around you then it can be a real force for good. Then, by all means be the masked stranger that rides in and crazy stuff happens and they ride out and go who was that masked man? Wow, I’m so glad he came, like the TV show back in the 80s, I think it was Canadian,

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual The Littlest Hobo, the dog that solves all problems. The point though is you want to be careful about how and when you apply this. It’s useful to be influential with it which is the purpose of being here, but this is when it’s important to think about what the win-win is here. Are you doing this because you want something at their expense, in which case I strongly recommend you rethink things, because the penalty you’ll pay for that will be very steep? Or, are you doing it because you’re really helping them to get unstuck from something so they can start accepting the idea of a way of life that would be of real value to them? In which case what you’re doing is getting them unstuck and then making offers. If your offer is good enough they’ll take it. If your offer is no good then they shouldn’t be taking it. So if you’re trying to sell some type of dodgy business scheme where they sell their life savings to you and you run away going ha-ha now I’m rich and you aren’t, well I won’t be visiting you in jail, let’s put it that way. Thanks you for that, I really appreciate you saying that. Student:

When we finished the last induction there, it made me think, hypnosis is something you’re doing to someone, it’s something you’re doing with them. It was very profound.

Igor:

Yes, and I’ll go one step further. Hypnosis isn’t only when you do something with someone it’s something you become and then it just happens naturally. Imagine what the world would be like if you’d mastered this Instant Rapport Technique to the point where, whenever you needed to really be friends with someone or to open them up, it just naturally turned on without you even having to think about it. It was just there and people open up to you in a way that you’ve been experiencing so far. There’s not much you have to do at that point, you simply need to be as respectful and kind enough to point out some ways of being different, opening them up and so on and the magic almost happens by itself at that point. It’s a great insight to have that it’s something you do with people and the next step on your progression will be to realize it’s something you become, something you are.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual People will naturally respond this way to you and that’s really the heart of charisma, influence and so on. Do you get the idea guys? Student:

I just want to say thank you, I think it’s important to create an environment like this. I’ve been using hypnosis myself with clients and I think the root of most problems is just loneliness and people are just dying for intimacy sometimes, a safe intimacy. I just think it’s lovely meeting all you fabulous people as well and knowing that there’s good people out there, you know, so thank you.

Igor:

Very nice, thank you for saying that and just to add something to it, although we won’t go down the whole therapeutic route here, there’s one really nice description I heard once of hypnotherapy which is when you’re thinking of therapy - your job as a therapist is to take that part of the other person that they themselves can’t accept by themselves and has mistreated - they think it’s ugly, bad, disgusting or whatever - and treat it with enough respect for long enough that they can learn to accept it. In accepting it, they get to transform it, which is another aspect of the same thing you’re talking about. Although we won’t be going down the therapeutic road, because that requires another skill set on top of this.

Student:

I just wanted to say something unexpected happened, I haven’t been to one of these seminars before and I’m not in hypnosis myself, but I found that in spite of being very reticent yesterday, and I didn’t make any effort to socialize guys, I made some really good friends in the coffee cue, so something is going on.

Igor:

Something is going on, I agree.

Hypnotic Context All right, let’s see if we can take this going on and intensify it some more. What I’d like you to do is get back in the same groups you were beforehand. I think we’ve had a slight reshuffling, so return to your groups and recount and let me know if there’s an odd number by having one member stand up. Now everyone should be in an even numbered group. Please choose a different person inside your group to do this next exercise with.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Exercise This exercise is just to do some skill building. I’d like you to have one person in each pair to put your hand up, you’re the hypnotist. In a moment we’ll start the exercise and I’ll give you two minutes apiece to do this one. As the hypnotist I’d like you to start off with your eyes closed. Take yourself through the Instant Rapport Technique and remember the process is very simple, think of a person or pet that you really had a close connection to, not romantic. Anyone know why I want you to avoid any romantic memories? It’s because you don’t want to make the person think you want to sleep with them, because either they might agree with you and then you’re in a pickle, or they don’t really want that and then their resistance goes even higher. So please keep the romantic elements out of this one. Stage 1 – Instant Rapport Technique - When you feel the feelings allow them to grow and let go of the memory. Once you have enough of that feeling being strong enough allow it to surround you and then move through the other person and then you can open your eyes and look at them. Stage 2 - You’ll be doing the same looking process that you did a while ago and hopefully that will take less than a minute to warm up on. Stage 3 – This is the important part. At some point once you’ve opened your eyes and made eye contact I’d like for you to begin talking with them. For this exercise I don’t care what you say. You can repeat a word, start talking randomly and if you need something to say use your Power Words and Trance Themes. I don’t want you to have you think of what to say. Saying anything is appropriate at this point. Here’s the trick. Only start speaking as slowly and gradually as you can maintain or increase this feeling of rapport you’ve been developing. If your rate of speech somehow diminishes that then stop, reconnect – Instant Rapport Technique and so on, and start again. You’ll start with the Instant Rapport Technique, you’ll open your eyes, maintain eye contact and at some point you’ll begin talking about anything. For all intents and purposes the content is irrelevant. You want to talk as slowly, smoothly and with whatever tonality will continue to maintain that feeling you have inside. You might erode it a little because you’ve gone from non-verbal to verbal which is okay, but if it gets eroded more than a little bit then pause and reset. The key is maintaining the state of mind whilst engaging in speech and maintain eye contact throughout the entire process.

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Now, two minutes apiece starts now… This is our special fitness program for assistants. (running the mic around) Student:

As a subject I noticed that I was immediately very interested in everything he had to say. I really wanted to hear it instantly.

Igor:

Did anyone else notice this? This is one of the ways you can make really boring things sound great. (laughter) I’m serious, it’s strange, but it’s true.

Student:

My hypnotist gave me a hypnotic gift, she’s really good, learned it from you, a precious gift.

Igor:

Gift giving is good, especially when hypnotic gifts don’t cost you anything. Excellent, thank you.

Student:

I think it’s interesting how powerful that connection is. When I was doing this one I was thinking about my last partner from the last exercise, then this one completely filled my brain.

Igor:

What’s happening is that you’re developing more and more reference experiences. It started with a friend but now you’ve had some cool inductions you’ve been doing and all that is adding up. Who here feels the Hypnosis Room is becoming decorated nicely, some cool furniture in here and good memories going on in here? This is how it should be. That means the more you do this, not only does it become more pleasant but the better you come at it because it’s all nicely located in the right place. The next thing you’ll find that is, as you live your everyday life and you accidentally fall into a hypnotic context or situation which everyone does even if they don’t recognize it - those memories then will automatically be stored in the Hypnosis Room and it will still enrich it. Because the same mechanisms are being activated, only now you know how to enter that room on purpose, which is a good thing.

Student:

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It seemed very strange and it’s the first time it’s happened; I don’t know if anyone every watches Sci-Fi or Star Trek, the concept of the retractor beam, I was very aware and could almost picture this line, this ray that POCHV

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual came from my heart right to his for the entire duration. When you said change places I felt it go right back again. It’s the first time it’s happened in the weekend, very strange. Igor:

It’s powerful. What you just discovered is a hypnotic unconscious symbolism in action. It’s one of the ways you can use the Dynamic Imagery Induction. When I first taught instant rapport and I believe on the original Power of Conversational Hypnosis audio home study program I still taught in that way - was this idea of a hand reaching out and touching the other person, because I had a very similar version of that. Now I just give you more general things and let people find their own metaphor because after all what is a meta for? (laughter)

Student:

It’s a question really, Igor. I normally speak quite loudly, project quite well. During the second process when I was the hypnotist I just felt I needed to speak softer for the person I was with. It was absolutely natural and wasn’t my pitch or tone, it was a lot lower, a lot slower, a lot softer.

Igor:

You can hear it now, can’t you guys? You’re developing a range which is important, and more important than that, you’re starting to develop the ability to match your ideas to your language to the emotional context that’s wrapped up in it. In our society we don’t really pay attention to the emotional context of things, we just react to it, which means half the time we don’t know why something failed. Whereas if you were looking at it from just a purely emotional filter, it would be obvious without even looking at the content of something, why things are failing. Let me give you a quick example. In the medical industry there’s a guy who now specializes in predicting which doctors will be sued often from being played a two minute audio clip of random bits of conversation within something like 99% accuracy. He can still be 80-90% accurate with a 10 second audio clip. What is he listening out for? Is it all the words? No. He’s learned to put on this emotional filter and as soon as he hears that someone is being emotionally harsh, dismissive, or anything like that, then he knows that doctor is getting sued. That’s just how it works, not necessarily by that patient but that’s the kind of doctor that gets sued by patients. So, if you think about the emotional things like oh, it’s this frilly, fluffy let’s go hug a bunny thing, there’s serious cash involved in this whole process as well. If our society

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual understood it better we’d not only be wealthier but we’d be a lot happier, because there would be a lot more seamless interaction. Congratulations on discovering that. Student:

I find it very beautiful how here, while I was talking, before I wasn’t so good at talking to groups or so, I am a musician, I can play for hours, but speaking is very difficult for me, but now that the building stones are already laid there, when it gets a good feeling, I can be creative and pick up those building stones and build a beautiful house where we are living in.

Igor:

Perfect, I like that. By the way, if you’re a performer like a magician, if you start bringing language like this into your act it works very well, oh, a musician, oh well forget it, but if you’re a magician this stuff really works well.

Student:

I just wanted to agree with my hypnotist. I just wanted to say yes, yes, yes.

Igor:

Yes! I don’t know what you’re saying, but yes! I’ve been there. Are you guys beginning to see the value in what you’ve done? You haven’t even been through a day and a half of training yet. We’re in the first morning of the second day. Look what you’re already achieving. Who here feels if you left right now not only would you have gotten your money’s worth but you would be insanely more influential in your life using the skills you’ve already learned? Hands up please. And we’re only half way through the program.

Student:

I just wanted to say that I’m glad you said what you said, say anything it doesn’t matter, talk rubbish. I actually found that I couldn’t talk rubbish, the respect was there, the feelings were there, so I couldn’t have. I’m so glad you said it because that brought it to mind.

Igor:

Yes and this is important. We’ve done a few versions of this already and I’m glad it triggered here, so I’ll reiterate this principle. We are meaning making machines and cannot be incoherent. Even incoherent people aren’t incoherent they just work on a very different logic. The point is though, when you’re trying too hard to do something it will all come out wrong.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual By not trying so hard all the useful things start coming out and ultimately when you’re using Conversational Hypnosis all you know is here’s a person in front of me, here’s the place we want to end up in, let’s find out what happens in between and all these tools will then apply themselves or disengage, depending on what needs to happen at that point and time. Student:

Something just clicked in my head as we did this exercise. I’m a coach, so I use some of these techniques every day, but when I was talking to my partner, I was saying, I was feeling happiness and that’s what we’re for. We’re here to sell happiness and if we feel it inside we sell it.

Igor:

There you go. I think that’s a great way of looking at it.

Student:

We made an extra try with my partner here. We are from different countries, she is from Holland and I am from Slovania and we tried to speak in our languages and it was funny, I didn’t understand no word from her, but I agreed totally with her.

[laughter and applause] Igor:

It’s funny, one of the assistants here did the same thing. We had a chat once a long time ago about the problems of hypnosis and the right words and I was attempting to show him a much cruder version of H+ stuff because it wasn’t as evolved back then. I sat down and started talking to him in German and he had no idea what I was talking about, but within a few minutes he came back saying what the hell did you just do? I said it was good wasn’t it? So, you understand now that creating this hypnotic context is what we’ve spending most of our time doing and yes we have some interesting gadgets we can use inside that context, but if you don’t set the context up correctly none of the gadgets will be of value to you whatsoever. Let’s develop this particular part of the skill and everything else just feeds on that. This is the spine on which the whole animal is built.

Student:

As we went into that exercise I heard from you two minutes apiece. Two minutes of peace, which is another example of how we can play on words and put meaning on them.

Igor:

Yes, you’re ahead of the game on that one.

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Student:

I’m curious, some of us have done this before, some of us are brand new, but all of us are developing a receptivity for becoming hypnotized. We’re not going to find that out in the rest of the world.

Igor:

You won’t find it in the same way, you’ll find something different.

First, we’re still doing training wheels to some degree here. In here you have both an advantage and a disadvantage, especially when it comes to Conversational Hypnosis. The advantage you have is you’re right, people here will be more compliant and more willing to forgive mistakes and go with things, etc. That’s why this is training. The disadvantage that you have here is that everyone in this room knows exactly what you’re doing, which means the unconscious mechanisms - defense, resistance mechanisms and so on that are unconsciously driven, they can’t bypass them because they’re unconsciously driven. So you’ll get to a certain point and then you can’t get much further here because they know what you’re doing. Out there it’s a very different story. Yes it’s more live and yes, you may have to work a little harder to arrest that attention in the first place that’s true; although with some people it will be much easier, that’s just the range of humanity. The big advantage is that they have no idea what you’re doing, which means you get to work with genuinely true unconscious moments. They aren’t being nice to you, they’re just being themselves, so when an unconscious moment arises that hasn’t been offered to you on a plate with semi-caution saying okay, I’d like to play with this now, it’s okay as far as I’m concerned. It’s the actual real deal, which means the trances you have in regular conversations can be more intensely powerful than this because you have the right context. For example, believe it or not this actually happened in a training context, which is I accidentally did it, it was back in my earlier days when I was starting to learn better versions of hypnosis and I was at someone else’s seminar. It was advanced hypnosis seminar so you expect that everyone there is already a hypnotist, right? The first exercise we were given was a warm-up. He said go find your partner put them in trance and create a learning trance for them so when they come back and do some work they’re ready to go with trance, learning and so on. It seemed like a no-brainer for me because no one was going to work against me in this venue.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual So I thought I might as well go out on a limb and play with an Instant Induction I once saw. At this point I was very afraid of Instant Inductions because I didn’t understand them. I did the classic handshake interrupt and said are you ready, okay good, bam, I did my thing and she was out. Five minutes later she came back and she is dazed, staggering, blinking her eyes going what the hell just happened. I said we just did the exercise. She said I’ve never been in trance before in my life and it was only because I assumed that everyone was a gifted subject, because it’s an advanced hypnotist seminar. I had no concept at that point that someone could be an advanced hypnotist without having ever gone into trance, that I had the gumption to do all this stuff. I did it with such flare that it worked. I was gob smacked and went back that night and said what the hell happened there? That’s one of the things that influenced me in terms of the kind of work we’re doing. So will it work the same way out there? Not at all, it will work better. There will be situations where you’ll have to work harder through the initial stages but the same is true anywhere. Let’s move on to the next exercise. You can switch partners for this one. Face this way quietly if you will.

Using H+ Hypnotically We started this morning off with H+ right? Then we added to it just some conversation which invariably became more hypnotic in nature whether or not you were officially trying to do anything hypnotic, is that correct? H+ - Instant Rapport H+ - Conversation (random) H+ - TS + Ratify + TT + (Hijack) [TS = Trance Signals] [TT = Trance Themes] Exercise Now I want to get into something semi-conversational we aren’t going to do full conversational yet, but I want to go to the halfway house between what you know which is more obvious trances and Conversational Hypnosis which has been more live. I

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual want to go to the hybrid between the two. This is a semi-convert kind of trance, what we’ve been doing so far is overt. I’d like you to begin doing the same thing as earlier on and start talking as you did earlier on to see if you can get that warm-up routine a little faster than before so this will give you a little more talking time. But don’t rush it either, just go to whatever level works for you but attempt to shave a few seconds off your time like an Olympic athlete. When it comes to the talking stage I’d like you to do three things you’ve already done and all three are very simple. 1. First, I want to ask you to make sure your partners keep their eyes open for this process. If at some point they have to close them because it feels so good that’s fine, but you aren’t overtly looking for eye closure, they’re more useful if they keep their eyes open. 2. Next, remember the coaching you did with the Trance Signals, where you said to relax your shoulders a bit and your neck, etc? Do the same coaching except for the eye closure parts. So do your Trance Signals and then in the same kind of hypnotic-rhythms as we talked about a moment ago you’re now going to use some useful stuff like relax your shoulders a bit, that’s it and so on. You’re going to Ratify what they’re doing correctly. Like your shoulders are nicely relaxed. 3. Remember the Trance Themes… relaxation, comfort and so on and with the Power Words rift around that, rift around those. So you’ll be doing Ratifying, that’s it, your shoulders are relaxing, now relax your arms a little more and, because you’re relaxed you can find that comfort developing inside you and so forth and your breathing will change, change your breathing now. For those of you who want an additional challenge you don’t have to do this but it will be fun. Hijacking and Ratifying are very similar processes, it just looks a little different to the unconscious. When you Hijack something you’re actually going to take something they’re already doing and suggest it. When you Ratify something you’re just going to say well done, your shoulders are relaxed.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual When you Hijack something, you see them relaxing their shoulders and change their breathing, then you Hijack it and tell them and now change your breathing, well done, they just did it. If you catch the timing right what will happen is they’ll feel like you just suggested it and they’ve responded to the suggestion, so you basically Hijacked an unconscious response. This is a preliminary version of this because Hijacking becomes very useful for you later on. I’m just throwing it in for fun if you want to try it. I don’t care whether or not you do it’s not important, all I care about is that you go from random conversation like earlier towards the specific hypnotic elements we’ve been playing with, which are the Trance Signals, Ratifying a trance response and then some basic Trance Themes to rift around so you’re getting more technically hypnotic in your trance process. Does that make sense? Student:

Do we skip over the conversation and go right to Trance Signals?

Igor:

Absolutely, in last trance you did the conversational element and here you’re replacing that with these three more hypnotic elements. TS stands for Trance Signals - coaching element - Ratify TT stands for Trance Themes – things like comfort, relaxation and so on Start in silence… because you’re going to start with the H+ exercise the Instant Rapport Technique and from there your time starts now… How did it go? Was it interesting? What kinds of things happened?

Student:

One of the great things that Kevin just did by noticing some of the micro movements just brought more focus and attention to them so they exaggerated them, so it felt like going deeper, but there was an element of the Hijacking going on.

Igor:

Remember the Law Of Attention where attention goes energy flows? His paying attention to an unconscious signal can either bring in the Law Of Attention, which in this case can deepen it so you can have a more powerful experience. On occasion it can bring in the Law Of Reverse Effect where the conscious mind starts analyzing and tries to control it and then stops.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual If you have the other things right, the hypnotic context and so on then you are more likely to go down the Law Of Attention route than Law Of Reverse Effect as some of the people did yesterday. Well done. What else did you notice? Student:

I just want to share two quick thoughts with you. One is that it compounds the suggestions at quite a profound level. I found that when the girl was making the suggestions that they had a much, much deeper effect and that’s been happening consistently throughout the exercises, so that’s one element.

Igor:

Absolutely. So what you’ve discovered there and I’ve been waiting for someone to say this is the Law Of Compounding Effect, which is actually a principle in hypnosis that was discovered some centuries ago, around Braid’s time, when they started looking more at the idea of suggestion as a linguistic thing. Essentially what it means is if I make a suggestion A and you accept it and then I follow up with suggestion B and you accept that. Responding to suggestion B will automatically reinforce suggestion A. You’re going to make suggestion C and responding to suggestion C will reinforce suggestion B and suggestion A. Get the idea? This brings up a good point which is, even if you think your suggestions have failed don’t assume so, they may well have just been burning as a seed in the background if I can mix my metaphors. For example, my sister a while back told me once about a party she went to that had a hypnotist who was a friend that was an amateur. One of the little things he tried to do was put someone in trance and tried to give them a post hypnotic suggestion that when I scratch my ear you’ll have an irresistible urge to go to the table, pick up the vase of flowers and smell them. The person comes back, he tweaks his earlobe, nothing happens. Does it again and nothing happens, does it several times without result. It’s okay, it’s all good fun. She sees her friend again after a week or so and she asked how she’s been doing and she says great only the most bizarre thing, since

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual the party the other week I’ve been having these weird dreams about flowers everywhere, they just keep coming out of everywhere. Even when a suggestion doesn’t seem to have had a response it may have and anything you do after that can continue to reinforce it. That’s another reason why we do the Trance Themes in those little cycles and you go round, because each time you cycle through it you get something more and more acceptable happening. Remember we talked yesterday when we did the Yes Set and the Piggy Back Principle. You keep coming back to the yeses being between the plausibles and implausibles and so on, because by responding to the yes and saying yes, the Law Of Compounding Effect makes it more likely that retroactively they’ll look favorably on the plausible idea. Do you get the idea? There’s a lot of relatively sophisticated psychology involved in this process and I’m glad you discovered it. Student:

I just want to share one other thing, which is there’s a lot of conscious/unconscious stuff happening as well, so I found myself with my partner very much, not just going deeper, but I actually wanted to close my eyes, whatever it may be that specific phenomena is for that person, that’s what I wanted to do. And I felt the same for my partner. There’s very much the ‘juice’ if you like happening as well.

Igor:

That’s where the magic happens at, right? We’ll do more with the Conscious/Unconscious Dissociation tomorrow, but excellent, thank you.

Student:

What I found was that there were certain words like comfort, relaxation, themes that were just boom-boom-boom that I was reacting to without thinking, the words linking them up, I really don’t know what they were or what he was talking about, but every time he said like, relax, comfort, that kind of theme, it was like I was tuned into that theme and I was just kind of reacting to them automatically and that’s how it stuck in.

Igor:

First of all welcome to my world, that’s kind of how it works. Secondly, once again this is the Law Of Compounding Effect and Law Of Attention combining to give you this profound and engaging process. Notice how you said less in terms of social interactions, it was a little more rigidly defined this time, but you still had a very powerful effect as a subject.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual How many people here managed to keep their eyes open? How many actually shut their eyes? That’s fine. The reason I ask is, how many conversations do you have with people where you’re like half open, half closed? For the most part of the rest of the course we’ll be focusing more and more on open eye trances because as soon as someone eyes start closing in front of you, unless you set a very specific context to make it permissible, and there are a few versions of this, they’ll know you’ve done something. Student:

A question about the Ratification. Why, for example we’re doing the trance and we can say to somebody relax, you can go deeper. My question is, within a practical context, how do you use this Ratification to get someone… could their eyes close?

Igor:

Here’s two different contexts, one being the hypnotherapy context, the overt hypnotic context, all you say is well done, your shoulders are nice and relaxed, done. The other is how do you do it in a conversational context? We aren’t there yet.

Who noticed that now with their eyes open you’re still seeing the same Trance Signals as before it’s just that eyes closing isn’t one of them? Who’s beginning to notice more and more subtle stuff, like twitches, pulse change, change in movement, breathing shifts and you notice it? How do you get good at that? How do you do that? We didn’t talk about that yesterday, we just talked about big stuff, yet today you’re seeing those little nuances, the subtle stuff, like the twitch in the eyebrow and shift in breathing or moving of the shoulder, the twitch of a finger. How did you get good at seeing all these things if not for an unconscious learning process? You’ve been so busy tinkering in your Hypnotic Room that you’ve paid no attention to the man behind the curtain, who was doing things which were much more sophisticated and much more important. This would be a good time for you to reflect on a simple idea. Most of you probably feel that you’ve achieved a lot already in the last day and a half right? And you’re aware you’ve achieved that because you’ve done the exercises and have seen the results, correct? So knowing what we know about implicit learning, about unconscious learning, however much you think you’ve achieved in the last day and a half, think about all the other things that you have really achieved and you have no idea about doing so yet.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Isn’t that something, and we haven’t even finished yet.

H+ Yes Set The next exercise is going to take this idea the next step forward. H+ - Instant Rapport H+ - Conversation (random) H+ - TS + Ratify + TT + (Hijack) H+ - Yes Set We’ll start the same way with H+, it will be our starting position for everything now. If you wish to do any of the Trance Signals, Ratifying, Trance Themes, Hijacking and so on, you’re more than welcome to do that, I don’t care. You can do it or not, it’s entirely up to you. The thing I want you to focus on right now exclusively is the idea of a Yes Set. We haven’t really elaborated on the Yes Set yet, made them particularly conversational, trust me, we will and you already have a couple pretty decent ones that you’ve played with. You have the simple facts, you can list random facts. It’s not very conversational but it can fit sometimes. You have the Universal Experiences which you played with last night with the water and so on, so I’d like you to play and collect a bunch of yeses. This will be an easy version of it so I’m going to give you less time and then we’ll come back and do a fuller version of this for a little more time. Very quickly change partners before we get started. Exercise I’m going to give you three minutes, that’s a minute and a half each and all you have to do is start with your H+ and collect an insane amount of yeses. Off you go… How was that? Was it fun? What kinds of things did you notice? Student:

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One thing I noticed is that Daniel didn’t really give any suggestions but just yes after yes after yes I could hardly even listen to what he was saying anymore. I had no idea what he was talking about. POCHV

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Igor:

So you got into trance but you were waiting for him to do something, give you something to agree with.

Student:

One of the things I learned because you usually say some phrases and then you give a suggestion but actually the kinds of phrases you do can actually contain suggestions as well.

Igor:

Yes, so now you are starting to combine the Yes Set with the Piggy Back Principle, and we’re going to go into that a little more in a moment.

Student:

This was really fun because we just did it so fast. So I take my minute, Cindy take her minute and after that we start to Yes Set each other. I make one sentence, or two, then from the gun, she comes back Yes Set, Yes Set with each other so it’s really fun after that.

Igor:

When I was starting to learn hypnosis I played a similar game to this, it’s kind of like the dueling hypnotist’s. You can play this yourselves later today, we might have some time. The game was called Dueling Hypnotists which is done more with Power Words and Trance Themes and I actually use a Street Hypnosis Deck for this because it’s fun to do with cards. You each have a deck, flip a card over, that’s your Power Word and you have to have your Trance Theme. You basically do two or three cards, then they do two or three cards and you just keep talking backwards and forward and the aim is the last man standing. Your goal is to get the other person to zonk out on the table, drooling like an idiot. If you succeed then you win the game. Usually what happens is somewhere halfway through the deck you’re both holding cards and looking at each other dazed going, what’s happening, I have no idea. It’s great fun.

Cindy:

I just wanted to say that Jakub has such an excited yes already so it was easy to work with him. The experience was completely natural. It really just flowed so easily with him.

Igor:

Thank you for that.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

I noticed my hypnotist was getting me so much into this yes mood that, for my own awareness I have no trance or anything, where on the contrary I was getting yes, more enthusiastic and more activated rather than relaxed and limp.

Igor:

Let me ask you this, what makes you think that a trance has to be like this? (Igor has his eyes closed, head flopped forward, leaning to the side)

Student:

I felt sucked in with what he was saying.

Igor:

I’m glad you said this because now you’re learning that there are different types of trances you create for people for different things.

Let’s imagine you’re a sports coach and you’re about to give your football team a nice pep talk before they go out on the pitch. Relax, you’ll hit the goal each time and they all come out like zombies… oh no we lost. [laughter] It wouldn’t be the most useful thing to do, right? Because we’re going towards more Conversational Hypnosis now, be aware that the emotional energy in terms of how energized the person is, is irrelevant in terms of hypnosis. There’s a misconception in a portion of the hypnotic community who thinks that relaxation plus imagination equals hypnosis, but it does not. Plenty of people have been relaxed and imagined stuff and nothing of value has happened as a result. There are plenty of people who have been hypnotized without any bit of imagination being involved either. What relaxation and imaginings do is to stack the deck to make it very likely for hypnotic context to occur. When someone is relaxed enough the tendency is for the Critical Factor to be shut off and then the imaginings, which are more the symbolic domain of the unconscious can have a deeper impact. Get the idea? So, just because we spend the early portion of our training focused on relaxation as the Trance Theme, what it does is to slow things down enough for you to see them. Now that you can see them you can start speeding them up again or have them relaxed, depending on the context you’re in and it won’t matter because you’ll still have the same thing. You were eager to hear the next yes, right? (Yes) And you were eager to agree with it, weren’t you? Am I doing it right now? (Yes) So thanks for that. Let’s move on to the next exercise.

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Hijacking “No” You received a lot of yeses and it was fun and you started discovering there is more of a rollercoaster ride when it comes to Conversational Hypnosis. H+ - Instant Rapport H+ - Conversation (random) H+ - TS + Ratify + TT + (Hijack) H+ - Yes Set H+ - Yes Set + No + Hijack + Yes Set Exercise Now I want you to put some of the things we’ve been playing with together. How many of you did the Hijacking thing in the previous exercise? If you haven’t done it yet that’s fine, because you’re about to do it. We’ll start with the H+ of course, and a few simple Yes Sets. In fact, just to make it interesting let’s go with the theme of drinking water again. You don’t have to do the water thing, I just think it’s interesting to have an actual outcome in mind. The interesting part is that after collecting only a few yeses, I want you to purposefully collect a no and by that I mean an actual disagreement. You realize that people can agree with you and still say no don’t you? Do you think it’s a good idea to kill a baby? Are you agreeing with me? There is an overall kind of agreement in the background, I’m not suggesting you kill a baby I’m already implying in my question that no is the appropriate response. It’s a different kind of Yes Set we’ll come onto later. The kind of no I’m looking for here isn’t a secret yes, no; one where they actually say no you idiot, that’s not true. Make sense? So a Yes Set and then get an actual no, a disagreement. The more intense you can get the disagreement the better, but please don’t start a fisty cuff thing over it. The reason you want the no is because you’re going to train something interesting which is, I want you to then Hijack their no. How are you going to do that? You’ll do it the same way you Hijacked the trance signal, you’re going to suggest their resistance. Let’s say and you really want a drink of water now don’t you? And you go no. Then my response is that’s right, you really didn’t want that drink of water at all did you? In fact, not drinking that water is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Where have I just gone to? The Hijacking has just started my next Yes Set sequence. Do you get the idea and understand the value of Hijacking? Yes? I’ll give you two minutes apiece. Once you have your simple Yes Set, the no and you’ve Hijacked it back to a Yes Set don’t spend the next two minutes running the Yes Set again, go back to a few no’s and get used to the idea of getting a no, automatically Hijacking it and then going back to the yeses again. You get the idea? Off you go… How was that? Student:

It was fun because my first no set was not caught, but the second one was and stuff like that. You can even go to someone who doesn’t want to speak with you and train with them (nodding his head yes). The Yes Set is becoming so natural that you just go with that.

Igor:

Yes. There are two things to be aware of. One is when you use Yes Sets, it’s natural in situations whereas a lot of things that would otherwise be problems just get ignored. The one down side from that can be that they will basically ignore the fact that you said something in the first place, like the gentleman here who didn’t hear me say anything about projecting kindness and good things to their person, although he did it anyways. Some people will just blank out the suggestion as a way of deleting it so it doesn’t interfere with them. An example is yes, do you remember the elephant on the beach? A lot of people came up to me afterwards and said I heard the weirdest thing, elephant, what are you talking about, I didn’t hear you say anything about an elephant. How many of you had that sensation and there was no elephant on your beach because you didn’t hear me say it? A fair number. What’s going on there is that the unconscious mind is deleting the suggestion because it’s interfering with all the other pleasantness. The only slight danger you have with getting too crazy with the Yes Set is that they’ll delete the idea without you knowing about it, so you don’t know if you’ve made progress or not. Luckily in a conversational context, especially with things that are of more importance you can hang around long enough for them to realize, now they have to pay attention to this and decide whether or not they agree with it. Either way, whether they agree or not is irrelevant, we’ll have tools to deal with the matter whichever way it happens.

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Student:

Is this conversational fractionation?

Igor:

In a way it is yes, because you see you don’t have to have constant agreement for a conversation to run smoothly, but you do need to know how to smooth it out eloquently and then when people know they can have disagreement and it won’t detract from the smoothness, but will get even smoother because there’s a fractionation process that goes on, absolutely.

Student:

I was particularly interested in trying this exercise because it required my mind to be clear and to do first one way and then change gears to another way and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do it. But, with all the preparation that came up and the H+, I just thought I’m not even going to think about it, I’m just going to hopefully let my mind take over. It was really clear and I could do yes and then make the no, then Hijack it and make a yes again. I was very pleasantly surprised at how flowing it came and how the mental shift could occur.

Igor:

Thank you. That mental shift is part of what being in the Hypnosis Room is all about. If you’ve got the right mindset, the H+, it will be a lot easier to do. If you’re not, you’re doing some very sophisticated things, some complex things according to some, but really, isn’t it easy guys? Wasn’t it easy overall? Do the mindset, get that right and everything else becomes easy.

Student:

I actually found it kind of difficult to stay in H+ while I was trying to say something that he would disagree with. I had to shake myself out of this weird thing to get it right, to say no, you don’t agree with it, do you?

Igor:

Remember, what we’re doing right now is training wheels. It’s designed to help you understand something. There will be times, but not often, when you will purposely look for a no in the conversation. The only time it’s useful to flush out the no’s is so you know what no’s are ahead. Right? What will usually happen in a conversation is you will say something expecting a yes and it gets rejected and that’s what we’re preparing you for. There are a couple other things we can do with that as well, but now you have the basic pattern.

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Student:

So you’re saying we’re being prepared for a situation where no comes up and I feel that it’s difficult at first to actually head for a no and feel all right with getting a no. What I’m learning here right now is to feel comfortable with getting a no…

Igor:

Let’s face it, life happens, stuff happens and nothing is going to go perfect for us all the time. You’re better off having a way of dealing with things like no’s when they happen. If you can avoid them and prevent them from happening in the first place great, but I don’t think anyone is that good that you can avoid every problem every single time, so you need to have tools for when it happens so you aren’t phased by it. Why should you be phased by it, it’s just part of life.

Student:

As the subject I was faced with thinking water is the same as drinking water is it not? I felt the battle in my conscious mind saying no and my unconscious mind saying yes it is, of course it is, and I thought who’s going to win here? And my unconscious mind ended up saying yes, I’m sure it is.

Igor:

It’s interesting when you feel your own conscious/unconscious dissociation occurring isn’t it?

Student:

Yes, it was really an experience.

Igor:

Good. I’m glad you had it.

Student:

I was just going to say almost the same as our friend a few minutes ago, it’s that it’s the reframe that got me a little bit ago, that I kind of interpreted the no to yes to be. Obviously you’re in the middle of that flow, they then break rapport if you like, or present something that’s going to lead to disagreement, and you in effect reframe them, it’s that reframing task that I also found difficult to stay focused upon because at that moment I had to effectively take what they had and re-word that if you like, in a way that it would be accepted again.

Igor:

Congratulations on doing a little something extra. The simple version of Hijacking is simply agreeing with them. You really don’t want that or you don’t really believe that at all do you? If you want to make it more complex by adding a reframe to it, and we’ll talk about reframing in due course, then do so.

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I’d like to tell you a little about a friend of mine who I think is in this room right now, who likes to do something similar to this as a way of building deep rapport very quickly with people. He will purposely upset people mildly, or sometimes less than mildly, to spike their emotional thing and then he will do a Hijacking of the emotion and turn it into something positive. He’s basically broken through all the social veneer, social safeguards and all the rest within seconds. I had breakfast with him the other day and we walked into the restaurant, first time I’ve seen him do this, it’s like a diner or café and the owner walks out and gives him a big hug. I said that’s unusual. He said that’s what he did, he came in the first time and he likes to have fun with people. He walked up to him at the end of his meal and said I don’t usually complain and I don’t want you to feel upset about this, but that was the most awesome meal I’ve ever had. Can you feel the emotional rollercoaster he’s taking him through? Bursts right through all the social veneer and now they’re like best friends. It’s part of what’s going on here, but we don’t have to think about it too much. If you are afraid of getting a no in terms of any conversation, it will invariably taint that conversation one way or another. It may not matter, but it might be that little bit that does matter. Make sense? If you get to the point where it’s irrelevant whether it’s a yes or no because either way you have somewhere to go with this, then you come from a stronger position which they will sense and then they will be more okay with being honest with you, a), as well as b), you becoming more trustworthy. You become more trustworthy because they can be honest with you because they know you won’t fall apart at the seams and so on. That’s one of the reasons we don’t get through people’s social veneer because they’re afraid if they say what they really think they might upset you and then there’s no more social interaction. See how that works? We’re getting into some really deep stuff now, which is interesting. Student:

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I just want to echo one of the earlier comments made. I thought he was really genius. I’m a corporate coach and do a lot of mind reading and POCHV

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual sometimes you only get five minutes before you get kicked out, or what’s the value you’re going to add. Just as a way, if you get the mind reading slightly wrong or can’t quite recognize the patterns yet, of being able to Hijack it and get back to Yes Set. Genius, just genius. Igor:

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Thank you. You’ll love the next version even more. My magic senses tell me it’s time for lunch.

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DVD 7 – Trance Rhythms That Put The “Critical Factor” To Sleep & A Hypnotic Revivification Demo H+ Trance Rhythms Before the break we did a lot of work around the H+ mind set. Who’s understand the H+ mindset more fully? Who feels it’s getting really enriched now? We began putting together the language you already know and the techniques or methods you already know with the mindset in putting it together. How many of you forgot to put the H+ in place in the last exercise? I want to encourage you whenever you do an exercise going forwards from now, to spend a few minutes closing your eyes to get ready to do it. It will be very useful for you, because you’re making a habit out of the mindset and then the skills will flow very easily and natural from there. What I want to do now is look at the idea of the H+ from a different angle. You already have at least two, the Personal Trance Theme where you have this pleasant calming, relaxing experience and that changed your tonality and rhythm a bit, did it not? Then you had the Instant Rapport Technique and Hypnotic Gaze which really amplified the whole thing, did it not? What I want to do now is add another nuance to that very same process and in time we’ll be able to combine them to create interesting hypnotic cocktails. Begin by sorting yourselves out into new groups of 10 people so we have the afternoon to work with that group. Make sure everyone has groups of 10. If you have an uneven number stand up and we’ll sort things out. Exercise Here’s what I want you to do. We’re going to do the same Hypnotic Gaze style exercise as before, only we’re going to change the content. Remember the Instant Rapport Technique? One person in each pair, please lift your hand. You’re the hypnotist. Face your partners.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual As soon as you’re ready, hypnotists please close your eyes and find yourself drifting inside as you’ve done before only this time rather than recalling the fact that you’ve had friends in your past, I’d like for you to begin to recall some other kinds of information. You’ve all had pleasant experiences, experiences that made you feel a little or a lot like the way you feel when you’ve been in trance here, comfortable, relaxed, that sort of thing. The kind of experience I would like for you to really consider right now is the one where there is some kind of natural rhythm involved. For example, you may have enjoyed falling asleep to the sound of rain on a tin roof or window pane. Hearing that natural steady rhythm made you feel comfortable as you fell asleep. Perhaps it was the sound of a breeze stirring through a tree, the rustling of the leaves and of course when a wind blows like that, the rhythm is a little different, less predictable and when it comes it comes, it comes, and you can really hear it and it has a very soothing quality to it, does it not? Some of you may recall pleasant moments by an ocean or the sea, hearing the sounds of waves and that rhythmic washing. Some of you might actually remember pleasant mechanical sounds, the hum of a car engine late at night as you’re driving or being driven. The sound or hum of a machine at work, there are certain rhythmical sounds that you’ve experienced that have helped you to be deeply comfortable and relaxed. I’d like you to select a specific one of those, some instance, could be a natural sound, natural rhythm or another. As you’re thinking about this particular natural sound, natural rhythm I’d like you to notice what that rhythm is, because in a moment I will ask you, as the hypnotist, to open your eyes and start talking to the person in front of you. It doesn’t matter what you say or what you talk about, all that matters is that just like with the Hypnotic Gaze induction, the Instant Rapport Technique, that you speak only at the rate and pace and tonal qualities that allow you to enhance the quality of this memory. That means you’re speaking in the same rhythm, the rhythm of the rain, the rhythm of the wind, the rhythm of the waves, the rhythm of the car. When you’re ready, open your eyes as slowly as you need to, to maintain a sense of that rhythm. When you can, begin talking with your partner about anything you wish, making sure that you’re only speaking in complete harmony with that internal rhythm now. Go ahead and do that.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Just pause what you’re doing now. And the other person, the one who was not the hypnotist before, gets to close their eyes now. The hypnotist can now relax because they are the subject while their partner has a go. As your partners did a moment before, begin to recall any memory you wish that was pleasant, comforting, easing and peaceful. Focusing particularly on one that had some kind of rhythmic sound… the rain on a window pane, the soughing of the wind through a tree, the rhythmic sound of surf on a beach, perhaps the chirping of grasshoppers or other insects outside. It might have even been some kind of mechanical rhythmic sound, the sound of traffic outside, the engine on a boat. As you select that memory and feel that rhythm inside you, your task in a moment will be to open your eyes only as slowly as you can maintain that rhythm inside so that you can look at your partner and speak with them, only as slowly and rhythmically as is in harmony with that internal memory. You can choose any topic you wish, but speak in harmony with an internal rhythm. You can begin that now… All right. Who enjoyed that? Was that an interesting process? What kinds of things did you notice from it? What did you learn and what did you take from it or find interesting? Student:

As I listened to Michael, I was also aware of the rest of the room and the sound this time of the rest of the room was very different to any other time we’ve had breakout sessions. It reminded me to a certain extent of a ritual we have in Ireland when someone dies. Everyone goes to the house to wake the person and they say the decade of the rosary and I’ve always thought it was kind of hypnotic, when you have a whole lot of voices going along like that. That is what I took from it.

Igor:

It definitely is a hypnotic thing. Who here felt a rhythm developing both inside yourself and what you’re experiencing as a harmony in the room as well while people pick up on each other’s rhythms. How did it feel being the subject listening to that kind of rhythm without any kind of hypnotic content in the conversation, just having the conversation itself be flowing in that hypnotic or rhythmical way?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

For me the rhythm this time was inside me. The amazing thing was that for the first time since we started all the exercises, I didn’t hear anyone else in the room. For me I was totally, completely with Pamela. It was absolutely infectious and the more I was talking to her the more excited I was getting, I was really enthusiastic and I was really enjoying it. It was the most amazing sharing experience.

Igor:

That’s what’s called going first, where you’re consumed by the experience. Well done. Excellent!

Student:

You won’t be able to shut us up now, Igor, the Irish are all out. I just think… I just have to keep coming back to the same thing, so I think there’s just one pulse, just one beat and I’m really loving that.

Igor:

Very nice.

Student:

It’s occurred to me before that all these traditionally soothing sounds, like rain on a tin roof, or rain on a car roof, or mechanical engine noise, waves on a beach, they’re all kind of white noise. And furthermore the pulsing would be roughly analogues with alpha waves, alpha rhythms. Taking that back, that basic whoosh, whoosh noise is what you would have heard in the womb and that’s basically, that’s the primordial root of what’s relaxing about that specific… what’s the word I’m desperately fumbling for… it’s basically a root feeling, a universal oceanic feeling.

Igor:

I have a friend who had a premature baby, she was born early. One of the things she did was to insist the hospital let her come in and play a tape of a heartbeat. I’m not sure if you’re aware but premature babies are prone to a lot of stress because they aren’t used to this environment and her child was good as gold. A lot of these issues were bypassed. More importantly, rhythm has been the most basic method that human beings have used to go into trance since before history. Even now, a lot of the more Shamanic societies will use drumming, dancing, singing, various instruments which has always this sort of hypnotic rhythm to it. If you can tap into that and make yourself go first with it, that’s one of the things that will create the atmosphere, shall we say, within which your language which actually has a stronger impact.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Another little piece that we actually haven’t gone into yet, but you can see how this transfers. If you combine this now with the Personal Trance Themes you talked about before and you start changing or switching the emotions up you can have high energy and low energy and so on. We live in a society right now, for example, where people buy little crack hits of emotions with something called a song. Think about the music industry. What they’re selling is little three minute sound bites, little three minute hits of emotion and you have to play again and again and again to keep feeling that emotion. Some people of course like the words. Some people just like the sound. If you have the sound and the words then you’re considered a particularly gifted person, right? As hypnotists why not do the same thing. You don’t have to sing them into trance, you can I guess, but if you create a rhythmic thing and put the language on top of that then you’re creating a very powerful context. It’s funny the Irish would be the one standing up because you have a tradition, stronger in Ireland than the rest of the British Isles, although the British Isles still had it quite strongly and that’s the Bardic Tradition. Bards were people who would walk around telling the old stories, but they had a particular sing-song quality to the way they would tell the epic tales. They were designed to be an oral thing to suck people into it. It was the original movie theater, right? When cinema didn’t exist, the cinema was inside the mind, which is where it always existed and it required extra skill for someone to be able to open up that mental movie screen to have people really live these epic adventures and so on and that’s one of the things as a hypnotist that we have to do, we have to bring experiences to life. If you aren’t paying attention to the rhythms you’re creating or the emotional content that you’re creating, then the words alone won’t do it. That’s why it’s so difficult to read a book out loud, a novel out loud and have the same impact as when you’re reading it, because what you’re responding to when you’re reading it is the mental imagery and when someone reads it out loud, unless they’re a really well trained actor who’s thought through the actual words and how to bring it to life, it just doesn’t come to life in the same way. Do you get the idea?

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Student:

It was strange because for us we have very different rhythms. For me it is something going faster, and slower. My partner had pulses every few words. I was first and then he used my rhythm with his rhythm, and the same as the other lady, I didn’t hear anything else.

Igor:

Absolutely. It’s a very powerful thing. Is everyone enjoying this idea of rhythms? Remember, we’re exposing you to certain ideas, you don’t have to do everything at once, if you do people’s heads might pop, but if you remember what you’ve learned and the key moments you’ve had, making a concerted effort to introduce them more and more into your daily conversations you’ll just become more interesting as a person and easier to listen to. Then, of course, as soon as you start switching it into something more hypnotic, then off they go, back to the land of the fairies.

Did you enjoy that?

Demo – Revivification Let’s go here first, I think I have enough time for that. Could I have a volunteer please? How can I refuse that? Enthusiasm helps, right? Igor:

Jakub, you’ve had some fun times here I presume. Have you enjoyed some of the trances you’ve been going through?

Jakub:

Yes. Every exercise has zoned me out more, I can say.

Igor:

So every exercise zones you out a bit more, is that right? Can you give me an example of an exercise that zoned you out really nicely?

Jakub:

This one with the waves because I had to imagine the waves when I was speaking and after that when Sven was talking to me I was again here.

Igor:

Very good, can you see it happening already? So there you are with the waves and then Sven is there and you have to listen to the waves. That’s right. You have to listen to the waves with Sven’s voice. That’s right, all the

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual way now. The waves, Sven’s voice, listening, all the way now. All the way now. All the way now. All the way. That’s right. That’s right. Whilst you’re there you can really enjoy this state as I speak elsewhere for a while… Jakub there’s something that happens all the way in here that goes beyond any rhythm you’ve known. Whenever you learn something the knowledge comes in waves and your skills comes in waves and I wonder when you’ll discover those waves of learnings that you’ve been making here… Will it be when you wave hello to your friends back home? Will it be when you wave goodbye after having had a most pleasant interaction? Will it be when you just have a sense of being carried on the crest of the wave throughout your life, especially in important times? I’d like you to sit here for a while and really learn from this wave, wave after wave. So that you know that hypnosis and Conversational Hypnosis will be easy for you and you really won’t know that it’s time for you to come back until your eyes tell you by fluttering open by themselves, getting you ready to enjoy and experience other waves in your life. Meanwhile, you just get to sit there and enjoy this wave of learnings being integrated into you. Hello… rock n’ roll. How are you doing? Jakub:

Excuse me.

Igor:

Thank you very much for coming up here it was a real pleasure.

Jakub:

For me too.

Igor:

I believe that. Do you have any questions before we release him into the wild? Do you mind just sitting here for a moment?

Student:

Did you just get a double arm catalepsy before you even went into trance there?

Jakub:

Yes, because it’s the easiest phenomena for me. When I was working with Sven I was using a lot of body language about this wave is going to the

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual beach faster and then slowly going back. When someone is speaking to me and I’m concentrating on another person then usually my hands tend to just stop. Student:

I thought you might like to give us a wave.

[laughter] Igor:

If there are no more questions we’ll release him into the wild. Thank you very much. That was a fun little demonstration. You have a question?

[Applause] Student:

Is there an ideal or optimal pattern to that rhythmic speech, because the one I heard was advised was like 45 rpm on a metronome to develop that rhythm? I don’t know if that’s right, I’m just asking you a question.

Igor:

We get all kinds of weird over technical specifications in our industry. If you are focused on the left earlobes upper quadrant and whatever, I don’t know.

Here’s my take on these things. 1. First, as far as I know there’s no research whatsoever to justify anything like that on. It’s just a bias someone came up with. 2. Second, why on earth bother with something so complex when you have something much more sophisticated inside you which is called an unconscious mind. Your ability to check in with the other person to see the result is so much better than anything else machines can do at this point, so you should be able to find the rhythm that they will respond to the best. If you’re willing to speed up and slow down, etc. then you’ll find the sweet spot where they are and that’s where you stay. I don’t think you have to artificially force yourself to go down a particular rpm. It might be interesting to train yourself to do that just to have the skill of doing it. Like when I was practicing these trance rhythms I used to listen to music, and I still do sometimes, sometimes stirring, sometimes quiet, other times classical or head banging

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual rock just as long as it had emotional content for me I could get in sync with the music and then I would attempt to speak over it having a normal conversation like if I was on the phone or something, whilst maintaining that rhythm. So they can’t hear the music but they can hear me and I can hear the music and so I can speak in the rhythms of that. Make sense? It’s one of the exercises we have in the Conversational Hypnosis Mastery DVDs. This is just a simplified version of that. In time you’ll have a repertoire of rhythms you like using which will work for you in different contexts. I don’t think you have to limit yourself to one particular rhythm but it’s probably worth playing with to see where it takes you. What we just did there is another part of bringing experiences to life, it’s called Revivification which means bringing back to life an experience. It’s not a particularly complex idea. The way we’ve done it just now doesn’t fit into a conversation, you realize that, right? Having people do this in the middle of a sales meeting doesn’t really fit, but it’s a useful skill to have and I can show you how to use it in a regular conversation in time.

Revivification In a moment you’ll find a partner inside your group, we’ll have one person be the hypnotist, one the subject and so on. I want you to do several things. Revivifications: 1. Orient: Hypnotic Experience 2. Key Phrase (Personal Trance Word) 3. Echo Key Phrase HYPNOTICALLY 4. Close Eyes & Enjoy It! Exercise Firstly, find out what ballpark are we in. Ask them about a specific hypnotic experience. Has everyone here had a very pleasant hypnotic trance in the past two days? Has anyone not had a pleasant hypnotic trance? Great. Ask about one of the ones they’ve had here. Why? Because it will make your life easier. You can use other experiences that are hypnotic in nature but that makes your life more complicated and we don’t want to go there just now. Just a simple hypnotic experience. Easy?

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You’ll have two kinds of answers. There are people who are motor mouths who keep talking and then those who will talk about it. Could you see with Jakub, he was pretty much going into trance just talking about it, but because he’s in a social context he can’t allow himself to go into it too much, because otherwise he can’t continue a conversation on his own consciously and it will conflict at that point. I want to go here but I can’t go too much because otherwise I won’t be able to talk. You saw that happening and him not wanting to close his eyes. Let them talk about it and here’s the key, whenever you get a key phrase that they’re really talking about that, pause them and repeat it back to them. In terms of phrases or words, you could hear Jakub’s… wave. As soon as he heard the word wave we just needed to repeat that a few times and off you went. The other was his partner’s name, Sven. He said Sven in a particular way that tells me that at least for this period in time it was also a trance word, because it was a marker of an experience for him. So then all you’re going to do is repeat it back to them, the key word or phrase but doing it in a hypnotic sort of way. For example, if it’s wave… if I say like there’s this wave then I could keep him at the same level, as opposed to, there’s this wave… Notice how I’m taking the same qualities but being a little more hypnotic with it. I’m totally okay with you being a little exaggerated at this point, because it’s better to go extreme for now and then we’ll show you how to take it back a little in terms of conversation. Now you’re just going to echo those phrases back. They will want to continue their description, pause them and check in with them. So you’re saying there’s this wave, is that right? Yes. There’s this wave. Repeat it several times, there’s this wave and there are many ways you can repeat something without sounding like you’re repeating yourself. You do want to repeat it several times, whether it’s the wave or just the fact that they’re repeating something several times. Do I have to repeat myself again to repeat it several times or do you get the idea that you can actually repeat something several times without sounding like you’re repeating yourself several times, but you really are repeating something several times whilst still semi-conversationally not seeming to repeat something several times but you are repeating it, several times. [laughter]Do you get the idea?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Of course, usually you’ll get three or four of these key phrases and you’ll repeat them one set of phrases at a time. Once you collect a few more you can repeat more and you’ll see eventually these Trance Signals are really accumulating. At the final point you can go very directly. When you see enough Trance Signals stacking up, just tell them to close their eyes and really think about it, enjoy it or whatever. Then at that point give them a few seconds to enjoy it, bring them back and then we’ll switch roles around, right? I did something slightly different. I will happily talk about that after the exercise if you remind me about that, but for the moment I want to keep it simple for you guys. Student:

When you were looking at Jakub going in and out of trance, weren’t there, like the eye flickers, do you notice that and you go for that, don’t you? Could you expound on that, Igor, I found that very interesting.

Igor:

Sure. After the exercise.

Student:

The question is echo key phrasing hypnotically can we use what you did, the wave, or waving goodbye?

Igor:

Those were extra things and if you want to do those do it after they’re in a trance. Before they go into a trance keep it as clean as possible, keep it in the context. All you’re trying to do is bring that experience to life for them, which means it’s that experience. Later you can shift that experience and do other things with it, but let’s stick with the actual experience first. Once they have their eyes closed, do anything you want within ethical reasons, but before that, stick relatively close to their experience and just emphasize those portions of it that were particularly hypnotic. You’ll be starting with a relatively simple idea because they’ve already been in a trance and had a hypnotic experience; hence, it’s already set up for success. Later I’ll show you how to use this principle for other things as well, but let’s get this sorted first and then the other things will be easier.

Student:

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It’s very difficult for me to understand, but do you mean when people are telling you something, do you mean you repeat something they’re telling you? Then they tell some more and they’re getting more excited by telling their story and they go into it.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Igor:

That’s one example and that’s way more than you need to do here right now. Simply ask them about a hypnotic experience, echo the key phrases they talk about… I was there, I took a deep breath, my eyes closed and I felt great… those are key phrases. So you were there? You were there. You were there and you took a deep breath is that right? Yeah. Deep breath. So keep it real simple.

Student:

Does recalling a mesmeric performance of a singer count in a hypnotic sense?

Igor:

They all count, just stick to a specific hypnotic experience. They know its hypnotic because we’re doing an exercise and it will make your life easier. Everything you’ve asked about absolutely works, but that’s the next step. If you want to do that do so, just realize you’re making life a little bit more tricky for yourself. Have you been here? Have you had any hypnotic experience in here?

Student:

I believe I have.

Igor:

Were they pleasant?

Student:

Yes.

Igor:

Give me an example of one. That’s the one. Did you see how quickly it worked guys? Give him a round of applause.

[Applause] The problem is everyone does this every day, they just don’t realize they’re doing it so they miss the moment. Did you all see the little unconscious moment when he went right into it to think about it and he popped back out to talk about it? All I have to do is keep him there long enough for it to take over, that’s it. It’s really, really simple, unless you complicate it for yourself. Doing an overt hypnotic experience is the easiest starting point, all the other things you’re asking about absolutely work it’s just because it’s more conversational it just adds layers of complexities to it. Now find a partner and then sit quietly till we get started.

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I’ll give you four minutes apiece. Off you go…

Exercise Debrief How was that, did you find it interesting? Who found it easier to do than to just think about? Stop thinking. Thinking is something you do after you’ve had experiences of something worth thinking about, thinking is something you do after you finish doing it. Don’t try to think and do it at the same time, those are two opposite dichotomies that interfere with each other. The best doers have done all the thinking before they started doing or after, so that the next time they do something it gets better, that’s how we learn. We do and think about what we’ve done and we think about what we will do and then we do it. Whilst we’re doing it we’re not doing much thinking. We are to separate or at least use our mental mechanisms in the way they were designed to be used. Student:

So my partner seemed to be having a little bit of trouble getting into H+ at first and then one of the things I said was talking about a previous experience and how I shut down. Right at the very last second I was dazing out and all of a sudden she said, down. And I went (dropped to the floor). It was great. So I just wanted to say awesome.

Igor:

Great job, well done. [applause] Yes, give them a round of applause for that.

Student:

I just noticed when I was doing it with Mattias that he talked about feeling his shoulders and the tension just drifting away, so that was what I used to talk him through the trance. I’ve had a problem with my shoulder, it’s been sore all day, it’s from an old football injury and I just realized that it’s gone at the moment.

Igor:

That’s actually a wonderful benefit of being a hypnotist, you can do a lot of self therapy. If you’re doing this by going first, how can you not become a better person, see how the influence process is supposed to alter you just as much as it does them. The good news is, provided you have your ethics screwed on right, the gift you get will be just as good as gifts you’re giving.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual It’s an extra little incentive to do a good job and being a force for good in the world. Hypnotherapists in the room have two choices, and I’ve been through both versions of them, at the end of the day you can either take home all your client’s problems and be miserable as a result of which, it isn’t a pleasant way of doing it. I’ve done that, it’s empathetic with emphasis on pathetic. The other version is where you grow right along with your clients because you’re so absorbed in the session you’re doing that the catharsis they’re getting, the emotional release and change is something you’re getting as well. You’re actually being paid for personal therapy, which is nice. Congratulations on discovering a little hidden perk of hypnosis. Student:

When I experienced this trance with Kevin, I think the most effective thing he’d done was about half way through where he just changed his tone and became quieter and it just had a significant effect that I haven’t ralized before, how much I just wanted to hear his voice and I just relaxed.

Igor:

So when he switched on this trance rhythm, his hypnotic voice then suddenly everything else he was doing became more powerful. Excellent. Well done. Now you can begin to understand why we spend so much time focusing on the H+ and mindset, because it changes your whole performance qualities which then creates this wonderful context, the scenery in which your play is set and when the scenery is good enough then even bad acting is forgiven somewhat.

Student:

I just wanted to say that I wanted to thank Allan. I don’t know if he was a hypnotherapist before he came here. I’m very easily hypnotized but I’ve never gone as deep as I just did a few moments ago. He just picked up my rhythm, and he really brought me down, so thank you for that.

[applause] Igor:

Thank you Allan for that. A lot is possible in a relatively short time, isn’t it? That was four minutes. Did it seem like forever? Do you understand now why we spend so much time pushing you at the beginning?

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One of the first schools of hypnosis I went into I spent a good 40-45 minutes just doing a relaxation induction… relax your eyes, relax your head, relax your shoulders, relax your fingers, relax your legs… and by the end I think I bored them into trance more so than anything else. There’s nothing wrong with a Progressive Relaxation Induction, by the way it’s just that you don’t need to take an hour to do it. You can do a perfectly adequate job in 3-4 minutes. You all have some additional priming going on, but even so once you know what you’re doing and you can create that context it’s virtually instantaneous. It’s all about creating that context, which is what we spent so much time here developing. Student:

What I find is when I’m doing an induction with somebody is that I forget about them and go into it myself. Then I end up having to pull myself back to keep an eye on them, or whatever.

Igor:

Yes. That’s useful. So you’re good at going first which is excellent. The second part of that is performing with it, keeping talking, observing, etc. If up to this point you’re only used to going to the Hypnosis Room when you’re in a deep trance yourself then you need to start storing more things in there, skills… being able to talk, maneuver, have a certain type of thinking, not the normal thinking you’re aware of so you can actually do your job as well and have the impact you want.

Student:

I feel when I actually do go, I end up coming back and I keep forgetting where I am.

Igor:

Provided you are (a) still talking with the person and (b) getting the result you want, does it matter? No. If you aren’t getting one of those two then you need to pull yourself back enough that you have enough consciousness left to steer yourself down the path you want to go in. There are a number of conversations I’ve had where during it, I know just what’s going on, literally the second it’s over and someone asks me what happened, I don’t know. It’s like sometimes you wake up from a dream which is very vivid and whilst you’re lying there you know exactly what it was but when you open your eyes and go this is an amazing dream.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Someone says what happened? You say I don’t know. It was an amazing dream just seconds ago and you don’t remember? It can happen.

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DVD 8 – Advanced Conversational Revivification Demo & The Little Known “Previvification” Technique

Demo – Conversational Revivification Before the break, we went through a Revivification Process, right? Who enjoyed that? Was it relatively easy? It wasn’t the most conversational thing in the world though, was it? Can I have a volunteer please? Give him a round of applause. What’s your name? John:

John.

Igor:

I presume John that as a normal human being you do things from time to time to relax, chill out and have fun.

John:

I have a wide range of hobbies and activities.

Igor:

Wide range is a good thing. If you were to narrow that wide range down to things that are particularly pleasant, what kinds of things do you enjoy?

John:

Scuba diving.

Igor:

Scuba diving. You enjoy scuba diving. What is it about scuba diving that you enjoy?

John:

The womb-like feeling of being in zero gravity.

Igor:

I haven’t actually been scuba diving, I’ve been snorkeling. When you’re scuba diving…

John:

One of the key aspects of it that I like is being weightless.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Igor:

Being weightless, being weightless. You said something charming, which is the womb-like sensation. Womb like. But it’s the weightlessness that you enjoy is it?

John:

Exactly. That’s one of the aspects.

Igor:

What is the other one?

John:

Seeing wrecked battleships.

Igor:

Give me an example of one.

John:

The best dive I ever did was Thistle Gom in Egypt that went down during the Second World War and was only recently rediscovered. It was a supply ship.

Igor:

Walk me through it. There’s a ship there of course, but you haven’t seen it yet because you’re above water or something. So how does it work, what happens?

John:

I rolled off the boat.

Igor:

So you rolled off the boat.

John:

Dropped down into the water.

Igor:

Is that the bit where you had that weightless feeling as soon as you rolled off the boat?

John:

Pretty much yeah, as soon as you hit the water, once you get to the depth you want to be at, then you stabilize your buoyancy.

Igor:

Let me just understand this a second because I haven’t really been scuba diving. You’re in the boat and you roll off the boat.

John:

And then you’re into the blue.

Igor:

And then you’re into the blue. You’re into the blue. That sounds like something really charming being into the blue.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual John:

I love it.

Igor:

At some point you descend and you say something about buoyancy, I’m not quite sure what that means, but more importantly it sounds like that’s the point at which you become weightless.

John:

You want to be neutrally buoyant.

Igor:

Neutrally buoyant. That’s when you get weightless. Is that when you feel like you’re in this womb-like thing?

John:

That’s right, yah, absolutely.

Igor:

So you roll off the boat, you’re into the big blue. Then suddenly you’re weightless in this womb-like thing and that’s when you go exploring, is it?

John:

Yes, I’m trying to stay conscious here for the moment.

Igor:

Notice there’s a conflict there can you see that happening? Every time I’m describing it and get more hypnotic, he’s trying to stay conversational but he’d like to go into that. This is the important thing. Inside of a regular conversation, you can’t just say go into a trance because specifically it will break the social contract and he’ll know that something’s going on. So if I’m going to be semicovert, I can happily switch tracks. There are two variations of this. I’ll give you a simple way to actually allow him to do that without actually seeming to do anything overtly hypnotic. Would you like to see that? It’s very easy. So you’re rolling off the boat and you’re into the big blue and that neutral state kind of like a womb. Just close your eyes for a moment if you could. I know it’s a little unusual but really think about that – the big blue, the weightless womb-like thing and the exploration. There’s a battleship somewhere over there. If I was going to go into regular hypnosis, I could do something as simple as I’d like you to really enjoy that battleship whilst I talk to the other you. You can see how we can get into a Conscious/Unconscious Dissociation. That’s not very covert at this point though is it? The idea of him closing his eyes and thinking about that is something different, it’s more covert.

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I can be more covert and say just really think about that. That’s a really pleasant experience. When you’ve been in touch with that for a while, come on back so that we can talk about that. That was something wasn’t it? It really was something, wasn’t it? See how he’s still in there, in that glow of trance? Now notice how, if I didn’t put that overtly, I’m going to talk to you elsewhere thing in, this could be part of a normal conversation, just a very interesting one. I’ve done this in a coaching context and it works very, very nicely there. Even over the phone I can say just close your eyes for a minute and really think about what you just said. Who’s to say that you can’t use this without him actually going into a fullblown trance? The interesting thing I find John, in terms of the big blue, it’s a little bit like, have you heard of this thing called Conversational Hypnosis? John:

It’s crossed my radar.

Igor:

It’s crossed your radar every now and again. I don’t know if you realize this but every time you have a chance to talk with someone, it’s almost like when you make eye contact with them for long enough, a sense of the big blue, that same sense of weightlessness and being in the womb – that’s part of what that interaction starts feeling like, do you know what I mean? Just imagine for a moment that you’re talking to someone who you need to influence, and you want to be a force for good in their life. Everything else that you’ve done hasn’t worked for whatever reason. All you have to do is just stop and recall that big blue, long enough for both of you to be weightless in terms of this heavy issue that they have so that they’re safe like that womb-like feeling. Suddenly all the constraints you had before start dissolving, don’t they? It’s just you and another human being, being human beings and you get past all the stuff that normally keeps people stuck somewhere that they don’t want to be. To the extent that you can help them find their own big blue, their own weightlessness, wouldn’t you be a great force for good in their life?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Wouldn’t that be something? Isn’t that a good idea? Do I sense any hesitation in the background, or is it just a question of this is something that you like the idea of? John:

No, I’m good with that.

Igor:

You’re good with that. For $599, you could sign up for the program.

[laughter] John:

I think I did.

Igor:

You really did, did you.

John:

I bought the ticket and I’m taking the ride.

Igor:

Good. Is it a big blue ride?

John:

Yes it’s got God beams coming out through the water.

Igor:

Love it. Notice how this is almost a very gentle conversation. If you hadn’t had any idea of hypnosis or Conversational Hypnosis or anything like that, would this have sounded unusual? It would just sound like an intimate conversation between friends, wouldn’t it? That’s the point. If you try to get them to this, (eyes closed, deep trance) it’s no longer Conversational Hypnosis. Yes there are some cheats like close your eyes and think about it, but notice that he’s still sitting there. He’s still in the big blue, aren’t you?

John:

Pretty much.

Igor:

Notice how once you got there, you can really talk about anything in a very open and honest way and be a real force for good. You can do almost anything. I’ll give you an example, you won’t have to do this, it’s only for example. Are there any situations in your life where you would want to be a better version of yourself because you get stuck somehow? Don’t choose anything big, something you can talk to strangers about.

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John:

I’ve been doing this a little while with you now and I’ve kind of addressed a lot of the things like smoking and stuff like that. I’m pretty unstressed as an individual.

Igor:

You’re un-stressed as an individual. You’re done.

John:

Nothing really springs to mind. I’ve probably got major traumas. Nothing really springs to mind.

Igor:

In which case, I won’t show him that part. There’s actually a better version of this that you haven’t even considered yet. Do you realize that? There’s a bunch of things in your life that I bet you wish you could be much better at. Like what?

John:

I’d like to be a better hypnotist.

Igor:

When you think about how good a hypnotist you think you are already at this point, how’s that? What is it like being that hypnotist that you think you are?

John:

I’m not sure I understand the question properly.

Igor:

You clearly have an idea of what being a better hypnotist means. What is that that you’re not already?

John:

Earning.

Igor:

Oh, it’s about money. It’s about income, is it?

John:

I haven’t made the switch from basically, I’ll get up in the morning, I do some online work and I make a living, but when I get back, I’m going to Thailand next week to go diving and when I get back, I’m going to apply all the techniques from the hypnotherapy business course which I’ve invested in. That’s going to mean actually keeping, clearing my desk of everything else and not just going back to the same old pattern.

Igor:

Just think about this for a moment. You come back from Thailand, you’ve done your dive trip and you had a great time and so on and you’ve just come back from this whole big blue experience. I don’t know if you have

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual some interesting dives already sorted out, but whatever it is you know you’ll have the weightlessness. You may even have the time in the sunshine, those God beams that come down. It’s a pleasant experience to take back with you. When you think about being at home or in your office or wherever you do your work, there are all the old ways of doing things, but then there’s this idea of your own business method, running your own business of hypnotherapy and making some money doing those things. However you feel about that right now, just consider that by the time you’ve done certain things, you’ll have that same kind of big blue experience, that weightlessness as a hypnotherapist that you’re having as a diver as well. John:

Unconscious competency.

Igor:

Right. Is that something you would like?

John:

Yes.

Igor:

When you’re at home and you’re thinking about it – and you can think about it right now – all the things that you’d need to do to just begin the business side of things. It’s going to sound a little strange but think of it this way. Imagine that you had these God beams coming down on you just as you started doing things, little things like picking up the phone to talk to someone about doing a lecture demo for example, or booking a client or even organizing office space or something like that. Do you get the idea of what I mean? When you think of it like that, what happens?

John:

I’m pretty weightless at the moment.

Igor:

You’re pretty weightless, right? I want you to do me a favor for a moment because this is important to you, right, to start your own hypnotherapy business. I’d like you to just close your eyes for a moment, and I know you can recall the big blue easily and the weightlessness of that. The God beams are really making it a magnificent experience. What I’m curious about is all the little tasks you will have to engage in to just start your hypnotherapy business. The emotions that you have right

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual now, I wonder if they’ll attach to those automatically, do you know what I mean? Just really think about that for a moment. When you think about it, it’s only natural to attach all those wonderful feelings to the work of beginning a hypnotherapy practice because this is something you really want to do, isn’t it? So why wouldn’t you feel the same kind of weightlessness, the same kind of protection or safety of being in a womb, that same splendor of the God beams, and even have a sense that what you’re doing is as important as the mystery of the big blue? Do you know what I mean? So why on Earth wouldn’t you feel this way when you’re beginning your business? Surely that’s the most natural way of starting, isn’t it, because then you can look forward to the future. Think about all the people that you’ve helped, and all the skills you’ve built and the income you’ve generated whilst doing that. Doesn’t that make the feelings you had even more profound? Right? Take your time to really consider that now. There are some important things going on. Above all else, somehow you learned to really love scuba diving. You’ve learned there are moments in it, like the big blue and the weightlessness and the God beams and the shipwrecks that you can explore that were just very rewarding to you, very rewarding for you. I wonder what the equivalent will be in your business that will be equally or even more rewarding for you than the big blue and the weightlessness, the God beams and the exploration you make. The thing is that you and I don’t know. How can we know until you start doing it to find out? Do you know what I mean? It seems you’re doing quite a bit of thinking there. It’s important to do that. I’ll happily wait here patiently. When you’ve finished thinking, just go ahead and open your eyes and talk to me again. It seems like you did some thinking there. John:

Some thinking and some linking.

Igor:

Thinking and linking.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual John:

Linking up some ideas.

Igor:

Wow. That’s good.

John:

I was away with faeries don’t mind me.

Igor:

Notice that we went a little bit off script there. Technically there was a little bit of therapy I guess you could call it, but that’s not the important point. Notice how very quickly by revivifying something pleasant – the scuba diving – he was there in that glow anyway, so then attaching that to something else is very easy. In this case, it’s starting a business. How do you feel about that?

John:

It’s something I’ve done before, so I know I can do it. It’s the idea of being unconsciously competent which I was unconsciously competent in my diving and it took a while, so I’m linking that.

Igor:

Are you glad you did it?

John:

Hypnosis is something you are. A diver is now something I am. I went through the process of learning it and then I became it.

Igor:

You had to go through some effort for that, right?

John:

Yes. It wasn’t arduous, it was a pleasure.

Igor:

No, but it was work.

John:

It was a process.

Igor:

Is that what you’re saying about your business you have to put some work in?

John:

That’s exactly what I’m saying about my business.

Igor:

It would be an interesting journey it sounds like.

John:

See you in a couple months.

Igor:

I look forward to it. All right, give him a nice round of applause.

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[Applause] I’m not interested in you doing anything like this. I just wanted to show you some of what is possible with it. Notice how we went from very conversational to something that’s not necessarily appropriate in a pub. You just catch the moment and importantly you give them an opportunity to do what they want to do in a social context. In this case, he wanted to just drift off and get into his ideas, so give him permission to do that. It seemed like he had an important thought. Why don’t you think it through fully? Just close your eyes and think about it. I’ll just do something else. Then suddenly he’s got permission to do exactly what the conditions have already set him up to do. Who wants to have a go at something like that but a lot easier? A lot simpler. Student:

When you were working with him at the moment you were talking to him about the big blue, I had this epiphany that you can use this on yourself.

Igor:

Yes, why not.

Student:

I’m not being silly. You could use the Power of Self Hypnosis, which I did. This to me, since you’re always talking to yourself constantly...

Igor:

It depends on who you are. [laughter]

Student:

I’m always talking to myself and I just realized I could talk to myself like that.

Igor:

Oh, for sure. Do you want to know one of my personal insomnia cures, the one that I use on myself? I’ll imagine that I’m my own client and I’ll just talk myself into a trance. Before I know it, I give up because it’s too comfortable and I’ll fall asleep. It’s the perfect resource. You’ll never have insomnia again in your life.

Student:

I just wanted to say that although it wasn’t done to me today, when you echo key phrases, I’ve had that done before in other sessions, at some stage if they overdo it, your conscious mind just says, oh, you’re repeating

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual everything I’m saying and that’s it, it’s dead and buried from then on. It can be overdone. Igor:

For sure it can. Everything can be overdone. What they’ve done is they’ve broken the social context. They’ve become basically clumsy with it. The point is that you do what’s necessary and no more. Here I’m happy for you to overdo it, because it’s better to overdo it in here than to under-do it. In time you can scale it back to fit the social situation or you do just enough to get what you want, just enough of what you need.

Student:

I just thought I’d make the point that it can be overdone.

Igor:

I absolutely agree with you. Again, it goes right back to the idea that hypnosis is anything but a casual relationship. You can overdo putting people in trance.

Let me give you an example of this. Who doesn’t know who Milton Erickson was? Dr. Milton Erickson was a psychiatrist in America and an absolute genius at hypnosis. He did things for hypnosis that I think were phenomenal. Most of the stuff we’ve been doing here is based on his work as a hypnotherapist. His genius goes way, way beyond anything that we’ve been doing here or that I’m even capable of. Here’s the thing though, Erickson was a bit of a practical joker. He loved hypnosis as well. He did the famous Erickson handshake induction. You’d shake his hand and three hours later you’d come to thinking what just happened? Where am I? He was famous for it. The problem is that he did it a little bit too often, to the point where after a while all his colleagues refused to shake Erickson’s hand because they had no idea when they’d be coming to again. As a result people admired him, respected him and loved him, but they were a little bit afraid of him. Aside from his family and his students who came to his house, he didn’t have a huge amount of friends. That’s the price that he paid for that. It’s not a judgment call by the way because I think the man was tremendous and did some phenomenal things, but there’s a price that he paid. He might have been happy to, but anything that you do will have a price. Sometimes it’s a price that you’re happy to pay and sometimes it isn’t. Think ahead in terms of whether you’d want this happening to you, and if you don’t, why would you do it to someone else?

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Conversational Revivification Let’s do an exercise now. Exercise Inside your groups, I’d like you to find a partner that you haven’t worked with yet. I’m going to do this in nice simple steps. Conversational Revivification: 1. Introduce Topic The first part is going to take literally a few seconds. All I want you to do is introduce a topic. Have a little chit chat. One person will be leading the interaction and you’ll be the hypnotist. It’s kind of like you saw me doing earlier. You’ll introduce the idea of the general topic of a Trance Theme in a socially non-awkward way. You can say something like everyone likes to relax. What do you do to relax? What do you do for fun? Is there anything that you do in your life that makes you feel peaceful? Here’s what not to do. Don’t pressure them too much. You want a kind of casual relaxed pressure. If you were paying attention, did you notice any Yes Sets happening at the beginning? Everyone likes to relax, right? I like to relax. I’m sure you’re the kind of person who’s got at least a few things that you like to do to relax and feel at ease. Like what? Then they’ll give me a topic and that will be my opening gambit, shall we say. I’ll know what kind of territory I’m in. You don’t have to do it exactly this way, but I do want it to be more conversational than the direct FBI interview approach, which is the tendency that most people have when jumping into an exercise of this nature. Keep it in the context of a normal chit chat sort of thing, but within 10 or 20 seconds find out one context, one hobby or an activity which for them has the experiences of a Trance Theme. Here we had scuba diving. Because I’ve worked with scuba divers before, I immediately knew that there would be some kind of peacefulness, some kind of relaxation or some kind of spaced out mindset associated with that. As soon as you have a topic, pause and let them ask you the same questions. Then we’ll come back and do the second step. Off you go.

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Did you all have a chance to get a topic or theme that the other person’s engaged in? I suspect that some of you went a little bit deeper and that’s fine. Conversational Revivification: 1. Introduce Topic 2. Explore The Underlying Value - Yes Sets - Echo to get them more involved in the questions We’re going to do the exact same conversation again, so you might get a different nuance out of it. You’re going to introduce a topic. What do you like to do? I like riding my bike. What else do you like to do? I love reading. Reading versus riding a bike – which one is going to be more hypnotic? You don’t know is the answer. Reading might be a little bit more hypnotic because there’s less activity involved, but I know people who are runners for example, who go into this huge trance when they’re running and it’s a phenomenal resource. It doesn’t really matter too much. We just want to explore a little bit around that. You want to explore the underlying value of that experience to them, it’s obviously important to them. Why is it important? What is it about that experience that’s important? Here we had scuba diving. I can’t remember exactly how I phrased it, I said something like, you like scuba diving. What is it about that that you enjoy so much? What do you like? What’s the big deal about it? How does it make you feel? Notice how these are all different versions of the same essential question. I’m trying to figure out, this is an experience that’s obviously valuable to them, so what’s the value in it for them? If they say it’s not a big deal, then maybe it isn’t really a big deal. Just explore a little bit around it and find out. If that isn’t the one, maybe there’s something else that they do that’s going to be a bigger deal. Find the underlying value. I’d like you to begin again with the same conversation. Once you find a topic, you can start echoing it back. That’s the beginning of the revivification. What is it about scuba diving that you enjoy so much? What is it about scuba diving that’s so special? Notice that by the time I’ve asked that question, I’ve used the Personal Trance Word – scuba diving – enough times that the experience has started to revivify already, so he

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual can give me a better quality of answer. You don’t want your questions to sound awkward. You’re just double checking. You want to build a Yes Set into it. (To a man in the audience) What is it you like? Student:

Drumming.

Igor:

So you’re a drummer? Do you see how I’ve taken the pressure off of him? So, you’re a drummer, what is it about drumming that you like? Do you see that now? Did my questions start to sound awkward, or over-doing in any way? No. I’m just double checking. So you like drumming. Yes. So you’re a drummer. Yes. Have you been a drummer for a long time? I don’t care if he says yes or no. If he says no, what am I going to say? Oh, so you haven’t drummed for awhile. Do you see what I mean? I’m just Hijacking his no. So if you haven’t been drumming for a long time, how come it’s so special to you? Same question, do you see the Yes Set built into it? Yes? Do you get the idea now? Start again from scratch. Introduce the topic again and then start exploring the underlying value, and listen out for those Personal Trance Words like the big blue, the weightlessness, the womb feeling and the God beams. In fact the whole hand motion was part of that too.

Student:

Do you have to continue the topic with them you had last time?

Igor:

It’s easier but don’t have to continue it. Start again. Partners, be nice to them and just reintroduce the same topic again. I just want you to get used to having the conversation all over again. Off you go.

How did that go? Was it fun? Who’s starting to get a little animated by the conversation, like ooh, this is getting a little interesting? Have you started hearing them coming up with certain words or phrases that seem special to them? We’ll call these Personal Trance Words. Things like the big blue, weightlessness, womb-like feeling and God beams. These were things that seemed particularly important to him. Conversational Revivification: 1. Introduce Topic 2. Explore The Underlying Value - Yes Sets - Echo to get them more involved in the questions

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual 3. Collect Personal Trance Words (PTW) Next I want you to go through the first two stages again but very briefly. It’s just good to get used to that process. Remember you had that little mini revivification cycle, you’re a drummer, right, yah, you’ve drummed for a long time, right, yah. So what’s so special and they’ll go it makes me feel alive, like I’m in the zone or whatever. Alive – in the zone – would be the Personal Trance Words. Next is the fun part. I want you to just summarize everything that they’ve told you so far. Conversational Revivification: 1. Introduce Topic 2. Explore The Underlying Value - Yes Sets - Echo to get them more involved in the questions 3. Collect Personal Trance Words (PTW) 4. Summarize (HYPNOTICALLY) Example: Let me get this straight. There are lots of hobbies that you have, right? Yes. In particular one that you really enjoy is scuba diving, right? Yes. So you’re a scuba diver? Yes. You’ve scuba dived for some time in different places, correct? Yes. On one particular occasion, you were on the boat and you rolled off the boat. Is that right? Yes. So you rolled off the boat, right? Yes. You descended to a certain place and then you became weightless, right? Yes. You became weightless? Yes. I don’t know if you had God beams, but there was that big blue. Yes. Do you see where we’re going with this? All you’re doing is summarizing the experience for them hypnotically. In other words, you’ve switched your own mindset. You go first in whatever way that you wish to and you summarize their experience for them. Then just watch what happens. Is that easy to do? Then show me. Off you go… How did that go? Was it good? Who enjoyed it? Student:

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Hi. I was doing a trance with him and I kind of put him in a trance, just made him get a vivid picture of his relaxation, his meditation, he likes meditating, and I tried to anchor it so he has it whenever he wants. He actually went very deep into it. Everything changed.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Igor:

Excellent. Give him a round of applause for that. [applause] What else did you notice?

Student:

I’d just like to add, I’m a little bit speechless at the moment. Up until now I haven’t gone into a really, really deep trance. I was quite blown away. It was his idea to try to anchor that feeling of relaxation when I do meditation and I just went there and yah, awesome work, so thank you.

Igor:

Fantastic. That’s excellent, you’ve actually gone to the next step, so I’ll show you that as well in a minute. What else did you guys notice, anything else?

Student:

I found when I was working with Carson here, he said something about drumming. I’m not a drummer, I’m a musician, but not a drummer, but I actually got a sense of what it was to be a drummer. I could actually feel when this guy described to me, I felt like I had a drum kit.

Igor:

In order to do a revivification properly, you have to go first. This is technically known in hypnotic circles as a Deep Trance Identification and it’s one of the quickest ways to learn anything, especially a skill. If you ever come across a real master hypnotist whose work you like, do a revivification. How come you’re a hypnotist? What is it about hypnosis that you really like? Oh, I really enjoy this. When this situation happens, what do you do? Oh, I remember this one person…..and off they go. If you can ride their trance with them, you’ll learn a lot about how they do their work. That’s one of the ways that I used to work with other hypnotists. Has anyone here got the Hypnosis Masters Interview Series? That’s one of the ways that we got those interviews done. I just revivified the best part of their work. As a result we all learned something together. It was just a little mini revivification in those interviews. You learn more and, importantly, if you get to experience their life along with them, your unconscious mind is getting formatted for being good at that sort of thing as well.

Student:

So Igor, what is it you like….. [laughter]

Igor:

I knew that was coming!

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

Hi, we had a really interesting experience, while Barry was being the hypnotist, he hypnotized himself. The amazing thing was that I learned more from it than I think I’ve learned in the last two days because I was watching somebody hypnotizing themselves. Seriously, I’m laughing about it, but it was a real experience for me to see his facial expression change. It was like looking at someone in the mirror. I wasn’t being the hypnotist trying to find something, I was totally relaxed because I was the subject, while I was watching this happening. It was absolutely fantastic.

Igor:

What you discovered is the ultimate H+. No effort. That’s exactly how H+ feels. It’s no effort. You’re just watching them do stuff. If it starts taking them away from trance, you switch to a different approach. Eventually you’ll find one little doorway and you’ll say oh this is it. Let’s stick around here.

Student:

Barry said I’m really sorry, I’m getting more out of this than you are and I said no, no, no, you’ve no idea what you’ve just given me. It was a great gift. Thank you.

Igor:

Beautiful, beautiful. Over here. Yes, give him a round of applause [applause]. Barry can be the world’s fastest self-hypnotizing hypnotist. Watch this, all of you sleep! (Igor goes to sleep)

Student:

I was exploring here, one of my hobbies is that I love reading comic books and she was the hypnotist and I said something like I like to imagine that I have the power to help people. All of a sudden it pops out – oh, that’s why I’m a hypnotherapist!

Igor:

What Jakub just did. Did you notice a pattern between what he just did spontaneously and what these two gentlemen over here did earlier on with the meditation? Is there a pattern beginning to develop here? I’m glad you’re getting it before we go down that route because that’s what the fifth step is about.

Student:

I just experienced something rather strange here with Donald, one of the activities my partner likes which is swimming. Swimming is not an activity that I like, in fact I’ve got a phobia about swimming, but it was quite interesting when he was talking about swimming and telling me. I asked him about a better experience in swimming and he was telling me about swimming in Cape Town and describing how it felt. I actually found myself

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual having a nice experience about swimming and actually going along with it like I was almost being hypnotized at the same time. So it was quite an experience, made me want to go swimming. Igor:

This goes back to what we talked about before. First of all, in hypnotherapy if you’re doing your job well, you should be getting as much therapy out of the process as your clients do. Secondly what you just did there is called a Deep Trance Identification. You’re basically surfing on the back of their experience, and that’s how most real deep learning takes place, which is why if you try to learn a skill from someone who’s relatively incompetent at it, all the information in the world will be no good. You can get that from a textbook. What you need is someone who’s actually good enough at it so that you can ride on the coattails of their skillful trance. In this case, the skill is enjoying swimming, a skill that you haven’t developed yet. Now that you have a pattern in there, are you going to instantly be the world’s best swimmer and the happiest swimmer? No, of course not, but the potential has just been placed inside your mind as a seed. Just like the potential of being a great drummer is in Allan’s mind as a seed. Have you ever wondered why when musicians hang out with good musicians, they become better? Or when painters hang out with good painters, they get better? It’s partly because they challenge each other’s skills, but it’s partly that just hanging out with other people who are great plants other seeds inside your mind, and the bits that they’re good at suddenly become bits that you’re good at in your own way, and that comes up with a new dynamic, which they then look at and say oh I can learn from that. That’s how we learn from each other, so congratulations Karen.

Student:

It was quite interesting for me because I had this feeling that Karen was really having to work hard, but I thought, we’ve got a commitment to be great hypnotherapists and great subjects. So I went into the exercises we did this morning and became really connected with friendship and really feeling emotion and so that is probably part of it.

Igor:

Absolutely.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Do you want to know a little secret about this whole exercise? We haven’t finished the whole version of it yet, but would you like to know a little secret about how this works conversationally? I don’t know if there’s a technical name for it, but let’s call it a previvification. This is how you can create experiences that never existed before. In the revivification, you were asking them questions about their experience in such a way that they came back to life again. In a previvification, you describe your own experience as though they were revivifying it for you, and provided that you keep them engaged enough in a hypnotic context through Yes Sets and things like that, you’re going to basically create a Deep Trance Identification in them merely by recounting your own experience. You have to have an open mind for that – in other words a receptive mind – which means all your trance building context, you don’t launch into it with this, is something that you do at the end of the context. Remember yesterday we spent a lot of time doing Yes Sets and Piggy Backing and so on? We’ll come back to Yes Sets in due course. What if you spend all that time doing Yes Sets, your Power Words, your Trance Themes and all the rest of it and build a nice little context, and then you say by the way I was on holiday recently and I’ve got to let you know that I was swimming in Cape Town, actually swimming in Cape Town. It was the most wonderful experience because there’s the water. All you’re doing now is you’re creating a brand new experience that they’ve never had before but as long as you’ve gone first properly – in other words the positive emotions and all the rest of it that comes with it – you’ll get pulled into it. This happened to me, this ruined my life in some ways – not really. This happens to us all the time. Why do we get inspired to certain professions or to do certain things? I remember when I was growing up, there was a TV show in the UK, it was actually an American show, called L.A. Law. I don’t know if you remember it, way back in the 80’s. I loved that show. What did I become? A lawyer. Being a lawyer is nothing like the show. That’s why I’m not a lawyer anymore. That was a previvification for me. They created an experience that was so appealing to me that I decided to do it. There’s a dark side to this as well. There’s a famous German book The Suffering of Young Werther, which basically is about a depressed young man who commits suicide. It’s a great book.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual The problem with this great book is that it described his suicide in such beautiful terms that there was a spate of copycat suicides all across Europe. They actually had to ban the book to prevent people from killing themselves. There were still people who had to read it, especially if the professors didn’t like them, here, read this. [laughter] And that question you had, ask me about it in a month’s time, okay? It’s a very powerful book. Unless you put some hypnotic filters in place to filter out certain parts of the message, it can have a negative impact as well. As hypnotists, you understand why, because that book pre-vivified the experience of suicide in a way that was so appealing that people started doing it. Not a healthy thing by the way, just in case you were wondering. Just imagine if you took the unhealthy context of that out and replaced it with something crazy, like drinking water. [laughter] Do you begin to have a sense of the value of the tool that you have here folks? It is very, very powerful. You only had a few minutes of this experience, and already you notice as hypnotists that you’re being sucked into their trance and experiencing that as well. Now taking the same skill the other way around and introducing it to other people, can you see yourself being very influential this way? We’re not at that point yet. We still need to finish off the actual full-blown conversational version of revivification. Now what I’d like to do is, rather than go through the first steps again – which is introduce the topic, explore the value, collecting the personal trances and so on – I’d like you to jump straight into Step 4. This is a very useful skill to have. If you get interrupted in a process, all you need to do is summarize hypnotically all the events that happened up until the point of your interruption, and you will usually have the revivification right there within seconds again. For hypnotherapists, this is particularly useful if you finish one session and the next week they come back in again. A really nice way of re-inducing trance at that point rather than just starting a brand new trance induction is to say last week where we left off with was this. Then you just list it out hypnotically. The key here is. This is one of the reasons I introduced the revivification now instead of at the start of our work. We could have done it equally as well at the start, but you wouldn’t have understood the value of the mindset and the hypnotic qualities to the revivification. It’s not just a shopping list.

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Hypnotic Summary Can I have John back up here for a second? I may as well just show you. Give him a round of applause. Luckily John won’t have to talk in this one. Hey John, how’s it going? The last time you were sitting in this chair, you had an experience didn’t you? In that experience, we were talking about your scuba diving and I know that you enjoy scuba diving. You’ve gone scuba diving in different locations. If I understood you correctly when we had that chat, you talked about what you really enjoyed was when you rolled off the back of the boat and you hit the big blue. There came a point when you had that weightless feeling. You felt like you were floating in the womb or something like that. Sometimes you even had the pleasure of the God rays that really created a spectacular scene, and then you got to explore something, right? Just close your eyes for a moment and think about that. Are we there? The only reason I’ve asked him to close his eyes is so that I can talk to you without interrupting that too much for him. Do you see how quickly he went there? I don’t need you to do the closing eyes part. I want you to do something else. I’m not going to do it as a demo right now. I’d rather you just work the process out for yourself and then I’ll demonstrate it afterwards if you want me to. Whenever you’re ready, come on back. Was that good, were you there? Can you see his refocusing going on? John:

I was just going to say that you anchor those words so effectively that while you’ve been talking for the last half hour to everyone else I’ve been sitting there going zonk, zonk. Even in the middle of a conversation with Rita, while we were talking I’ve heard you mention it and zonk. Thanks for that.

Igor:

You’re welcome. You can go now. Give him a round of applause.

[applause]

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Did you notice how this hypnotic summary is a revivification all by itself? As long as you keep hold of these Personal Trance Words – this is why we call them Personal Trance Words. As long as you summarize it like that, you saw the impact straight out, right? It didn’t take very long in the same way that I don’t want you to take very long with your partner. Just summarize everything that’s happened hypnotically. When they’re there, I want you to use this. Conversational Revivification: 1. Introduce Topic 2. Explore The Underlying Value - Yes Sets - Echo to get them more involved in the questions 3. Collect Personal Trance Words (PTW) 4. Summarize (HYPNOTICALLY) 5. PMA is JUST LIKE… BECAUSE… You have a choice on how to use it. Let’s go with this. This is the antidote to PMS, a Positive Mental Attitude. You all know that, right? I want you to basically create a link between them experiencing a Positive Mental Attitude on a day-to-day basis and whatever their experience was – in this case it was scuba diving or drumming or whatever it is. This is the magic formula. The words themselves are not the most important thing. It’s the concept. You summarize all this. Now I’d like to talk to you about having a Positive Mental Attitude in your day-to-day life. Would having a more Positive Mental Attitude in your life be useful overall? Of course. Basically knowing all the stuff that you know about the hypnotic summary, you remind them of that. That’s your induction. Then you say having a Positive Mental Attitude in day-to-day life is just like scuba diving, just like drumming because…. Now you have to justify it with something that is plausible enough not to trigger their Critical Factor, you know all about this from yesterday, and it allows you to weave in their Personal Trance Words constantly in the context of talking about a Positive Mental Attitude. I’ll happily demonstrate this to you after you’ve done the exercise. But I want to give you a round of that first. I’ll give you three minutes apiece. I think the challenge will be useful. The first 20 seconds at best is the induction, and then after that you can just go rifting around a

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Positive Mental Attitude, their Personal Trance Themes and how they relate to each other. Off you go… How was that? Was it fun? What happened? Tell me. Student:

It’s interesting because I think Allan and I had the same experience that we were listening to the other person and I could see him speak to me. I tried to grasp the words he was saying but I couldn’t really understand anything. I only felt the feeling he was feeling and he attached it to the feeling of the positive mental attitude and that was all I had left.

Igor:

That’s perfect. Give him a round of applause for that. [applause] Think about it. How much more motivating is it to actually engage in a Positive Mental Attitude when you’ve Hijacked something they’re already highly motivated to do and engage in to something new? Do you see how that works? You now have something that’s invaluable in any form of influence. Would you like to know what it’s called? It’s called leverage. Right? Congratulations. Well done.

Student:

It was very funny. I was telling her something about – I play the violin – so we were talking about music and she was trying to say to me about the music, but then when she was coming in her own world, rather than I was coming there, she was drifting away and trying to imagine something, but not totally, and she was drifting every time more away in her own world. Not I, but more she was.

Igor:

So when she was the hypnotist, she was drifting off in her own world. That’s fine. Barry’s the expert in this one apparently. [laughter] In terms of being influential, you want to be firmly planted in their world rather than in your own. It may be very comfortable in your own world, which is great. If you want to be the master of self-hypnosis, that’s definitely one of the ways to do it. You’ll loved the Advanced Self Hypnosis Course. I don’t have to do anything now. In terms of the influencing process, the biggest mistake that I see people making is that they try to force others to be in their world rather than joining the other person’s world and finding ways of helping them to reconfigure it so that their world fits the new context, the new behaviors and feelings and so on that they’re wanting to have.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Most people’s idea of influencing is just be more like me and it will be okay. When you try to give someone advice for something that’s a problem in their life, you’ll say what’s wrong with you. That’s not a problem – just be more like me and you’ll be fine. That’s exactly the problem. They haven’t had your lifetime experiences, attitudes, insights, conclusions and so on, so they can’t be like you unless you previvify something for them like that. The simplest skill to previvification is to Hijack the revivification and attach that to the new idea, which is kind of what you’ve been doing there. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? Student:

I was just going to share very quickly that the level of time distortion that went on there, because there was no way that was three minutes, that could have been like two or three hours in terms of my experience of it. I think you could quite happily with what you did with John on stage basically experience that, go back through those memories and within ten or twenty seconds they could come back to the room, and they could have gone through ten years, for arguments sake, or recollections. So I just wanted to share that.

Igor:

It’s very, very possible. You’re getting some really interesting deep trance phenomena spontaneously now. The interesting part is doesn’t it feel natural? It’s not like oh my God I suddenly had a deep trance phenomena. It’s almost like it’s just natural.

Think about this. Look at what you’ve achieved in three minutes. How many people are staying here at the hotel? Just think about what you could achieve in an elevator ride? I’ll say no more on that point.

Demo – Gift Of PMA Igor: All right folks, you have a choice. I can either do a demo of what you just did, if you want to see something like that, that’s fine, or we can do another exercise.. I’ll show you how to turn a revivification into a revivification, but we don’t have time for both, or plan C we just work later. Do you want to work later? Okay, John, would you come up for this? Give him a round of applause. [applause]

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John:

I’m going to sleep tonight! Hi.

Igor:

You will be. [laughter] John, the last time you sat in this chair, we had a little chat about your scuba diving. You’re a scuba diver yourself, correct? (Yes) And you enjoy scuba diving. (Yes) I know that you shared with me that you’ve been scuba diving in many different places, including this place in Egypt. Typically what happens when you go scuba diving is you’ll be sitting in the boat in your gear, and eventually the time comes when you get to roll over and go into the water and the big blue is there. You get into the big blue and then you sink for a little bit, and then you stabilize so that you can feel weightless. You feel weightless. It kind of feels like you’re floating in the womb or something like that. That’s a charming thought isn’t it? From time to time you’ve even had the pleasure of that sort of God beam that really brings things to life and it’s great. Then you explore stuff. The thing that I want you to think about is something that’s actually very closely related to scuba diving, although it may not sound like it at first. It’s this idea of a Positive Mental Attitude. You’ve heard of a Positive Mental Attitude haven’t you? (Yes) It’s the idea that you say kind things to yourself and expect good things. You look at the bright side of life. Whenever something happens to people who have a Positive Mental Attitude, they find the more positive side to things so that they can be happy about it and more optimistic and so on. I don’t know if you’ve realized yet that scuba diving is very much like developing a Positive Mental Attitude. Think of it this way. When you first learned to scuba dive, there was effort involved wasn’t there? It was pleasurable effort but it was effort. Aren’t you glad that you made that effort (Yes) because then you got to enjoy the big blue, the weightlessness, the womb and the God light and all that stuff, right?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual A Positive Mental Attitude is exactly the same thing. Once you have that Positive Mental Attitude, your whole mind and everything that you’re feeling is like the big blue. Diving into a Positive Mental Attitude is like rolling into the big blue. It’s easy and it’s effortless. When you’ve really developed it, you will feel that light, weightless feeling like you’re in a womb. That’s happening all inside your mind. That’s what it means to have a Positive Mental Attitude. But the thing that you need to realize is that just like scuba diving, it takes effort to develop this skill. It takes some effort. It’s very worthwhile and it’s enjoyable effort, but it takes some effort before you can get into the big blue or a Positive Mental Attitude. Because you see life happens and stuff happens in your life, and some of that stuff is not necessarily always pleasant. That’s when you’ll be tempted to let go of your Positive Mental Attitude and get upset, frustrated, annoyed, all that sort of stuff. It’s happened, it’s happened to you before. With a little bit of effort you can correct your thinking. You can find those things in every experience that are worth finding. It’s important because it keeps you safe, just like your equipment checks keep you safe before you roll backwards into the big blue. Now, a Positive Mental Attitude is nothing like the Pollyanna Syndrome, where you pretend that everything’s okay and it’s not really. That’s not at all what we’re talking about. That would be like diving into the big blue with an empty tank. That would be a very silly idea and you know what I mean by that, don’t you? (Yes) It requires adequate preparation and the full knowledge of those elements of the experience that are truly worth being positive about, the ones that you can do something about and something with. When you go scuba diving, you’re aware of the potential risks are you not? (Yes) But you’ve trained to know how to resolve them. So you get to enjoy the big blue, the weightlessness, the exploration and the God beams in the safe knowledge that if something did go wrong, you know how to handle it. That’s why a Positive Mental Attitude is exactly like scuba diving.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual It takes effort to learn the skills of handling those more problematic parts of life, it does take effort, but once you’ve done that and you’ve made the effort to do that, then you can enjoy the big blue of a Positive Mental Attitude, safe in the knowledge that if something does go wrong you’ve prepared for it, you can deal with it. Your mind has all kinds of safety valves, just as your scuba equipment does. There are all kinds of warning signs just like your safety equipment has that tell you that maybe now is a good time to exit the experience because something needs fixing. So it’s absolutely appropriate and safe to have your Positive Mental Attitude and enjoy that wonderful big blue experience that it brings, the weightlessness. It takes a lot of weight off your shoulders, doesn’t it, because you’re absolutely aware that your unconscious mind – that inner part of you – will act like your safety warnings, your dials, your divers watch and all the other equipment that tell you when it’s time to take a break so that everything happens as it should. You know what I mean, don’t you? (Yes) I don’t know this for a fact, but I have a suspicion that you’re developing a plan of action on how to best go about acquiring a Positive Mental Attitude. It’s kind of like going to the scuba school and learning how to put on your gear and learning how to use your gear, and that first little dive that was exciting and seemed so much back then, but doesn’t seem so much right now. All those experiences prepared you to just be able to roll off the back of the boat and enter the big blue, the God beams, the weightlessness, the exploration and all those wonderful things. I really look forward to finding out how you’ll be using the Positive Mental Attitude. I don’t know about you, but isn’t it an experience worth making the effort for? (Yes) What do you reckon? John:

I’m feeling pretty positive right now.

Igor:

What a surprise.

John:

Why would I not?

Igor:

Why wouldn’t you? Do you have any questions for me?

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John:

No, I’m good actually.

Igor:

I bet you are. Thank you very much. Give him a round of applause folks.

[applause] Do you get the idea? It may or may not look anything like what you did. It doesn’t matter how I do it. What matters is how you do your own version. Notice how because this is a slightly different context in here, he was very happy to end up closing his eyes and actually have the full trance experience. Did you notice how before that happened, he found the halfway house, which is very typical in conversations, did you notice that? What was the halfway house? He stopped engaging eye contact, which requires interaction. He stared off. Typically when people do this, they’ll stare downwards. I’m not quite sure why, but they’ll stare down at the floor at some angle. Some people will look up, but most people end up looking down in my experience. I think the direction is irrelevant, at least for my purposes. The point is that he’s locking his gaze somewhere static, somewhere where nothing’s happening. If I’m looking at the carpet where nothing is really happening, I don’t need to be stimulated by it. Does that make sense? By the way, this is the beginning of a negative hallucination. John, were you aware of the rest of the room at any point? He was looking at one of the rivets on the stage and he pretty much ignored the rest of the audience, right? This is very typical. This is the way the mind begins a negative hallucination. If you’re looking at one point fixedly, you don’t have to see anything else, which means that you’re technically having a negative hallucination by avoidance. Do you see how that works? It’s the first stages of one. It’s a very common thing in Conversational Hypnosis. They’re not aware that they’re doing it because they’re in it. Typically that’s where they’ll stay in the context of the conversation. They won’t necessarily close their eyes, unless you give them a reasonable cause for it. If your reason for it is not plausible enough, it will just trigger their Critical Factor and they’ll pop out of it and go what do you mean? Then you have to start all over again. Do you get the idea? Do you have any questions about that little demo?

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Student:

It’s just that you went straight into Positive Mental Attitude without any lead or anything. You just said, have you heard about Positive Mental Attitude and it’s quite blunt…

Igor:

It depends on the context. In this case, the bluntness was interesting because I actually set it up in the sense of the last time you were here, we chatted about this, this and this and I got the trance experience into it. What does it mean when he’s in trance? It means that he’s more forgiving of harsher breaks. He’ll smooth them over naturally, which means that I can make a blunter break if I need to. Introducing the idea of a Positive Mental Attitude was relatively easy. The reason that I mentioned all that scuba diving stuff is because I’d like to talk to you about something else that is exactly the same thing, only it may look a little different when you first hear about it. You may have heard me say something along those lines as well. I think that’s exactly how I introduced it. Then I said what I want to talk to you about is the Positive Mental Attitude. I realize that it may not sound like it has much to do with scuba diving, but here’s the thing. Then of course I run off onto the next thing. I’ve actually Hijacked his possible exception ahead of time by saying that it might not seem like it. It might seem like it, in which case I don’t need to, but not knowing ahead of time, I just put in my Language Softeners and that means I Hijacked that possible objection, which gives me long enough to build up a Yes Set, which will give me long enough to start linking the revivification of scuba diving back to the actual Positive Mental Attitude so that they’ll link up naturally. Notice how in scuba diving, your revivification essentially becomes symbolic of whatever influencing process you’re trying to give them. It’s a Dynamic Mental Imagery Induction in a different form. Are there any other questions? You get the idea?

Student:

182

One thing I noticed that stood out very, very clearly in my mind was the way you not only did what you did, but you also Hijacked and took in and injected specific things from scuba diving. You for example said, there are

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual safety valves, so you brought in specific images to reinforce the DMI component. Igor:

I just extended the metaphor further. I’m doing something that we’ll come onto more tomorrow. I’m out-framing a possible objection. The possible objection might be yeah, but people with PMA are just unrealistic, and it’s dangerous to do that because you might get yourself in trouble. I’m making sure that I’ve built in a little safety valve so that that doesn’t happen. I’m out-framing a possible objection, plus also it’s a good precautionary measure that they realize that part of building a Positive Mental Attitude must include some safety checks so that they’re not ignoring reality. They’re actually getting the most benefit out of it. Does that make sense to you guys? Of course, if I was doing this in the context of a coaching practice for example, or a longer interaction, I could teach him the steps for a Positive Mental Attitude, always referring back to a symbol or a metaphor for scuba diving for him so now I’ve customize the whole learning process. Is this beginning to open some options for you? Does anyone here have children? This means less in the U.K. than it does in the U.S., but it’s still relatively prevalent here. Does the word mathematics strike horror into your children? But then again, do video games strike joy into your kids? Once you have revivified the idea of video games sufficiently and you’ve sidelined their objections around mathematics sufficiently, can you see an instant resolution here? I warn you that you have to do this a little bit subtly because if they already hate math, you have an extra bridge to cross. How might you do that in terms of the toolkit that you already have? You can reframe it – that’s not a tool kit we’ve dealt with yet, that will be tomorrow. You Hijack their dislike of mathematics. You can say I want to talk to you about something that you think you hate, and the only reason you’re convinced that this is a terrible thing is because you don’t understand the secret behind it. There’s a secret to this thing that you hate and once you understand it, it will mean that you won’t only love it but you’ll be great at it when everyone else will suffer.

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Have I built up enough interest here? Do you get the idea? That’s part of Frame Control, which we’ll come onto tomorrow, but the idea is that I’m still out-framing. I still have to sideline an objection that I know will come, which is related to what we did with the safety valves and so on in the scuba diving metaphor. I just put them in there at that point in case it started sounding too much like all you have to do is say rah-rah-rah and it will be great. I want to have some realism put in there too. You get the idea? What I want to do now is I want to have one final exercise on the idea of previvifying something. Oh, please, over here. Student:

I think we’ve done something – I think we’ve accidentally anchored a Positive Mental Attitude to bursting out laughing. I had to physically control myself from not laughing while you were working because every time his head falls down with the positive mental attitude I want to laugh.

Igor:

That’s a great combination to have. Why would you want to get rid of that?

Student:

Because it’s kind of difficult.

Igor:

Think of it this way. Think of all the times in your life when you had difficulties where you could have used a Positive Mental Attitude more. Really think about them. (Student laughing) You’ve had problems in your life, right, where it would have been really useful to have a Positive Mental Attitude, right? Give me an example of one.

Student:

When I had cancer.

Igor:

That’s a pretty big thing, right? It would have been very useful to have a Positive Mental Attitude. Just think about what just happened there. Notice that when you’re thinking about the cancer and the Positive Mental Attitude that you could have with that, you’re not really laughing now are you? Are there other things involved in that process? How do you feel about the Positive Mental Attitude now?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual There. It took a little while didn’t it? Notice the inappropriateness that you were talking about before has diminished, but it’s still as powerful, isn’t it, because now you’ve attached it to something real and important. Think about all the other aspects in your life, some of which really are worth laughing at and some of which, exactly are worth taking seriously, but still with a seriously Positive Mental Attitude, right? Isn’t it good to know that you have the choice? It’s a wonderful resource to have. Student:

Absolutely, thank you.

Igor:

You’re welcome. Seriously, it’s a great little resource, whoever did that job for you, it’s a wonderful resource to have. There’s nothing accidental about it, if you happen to be laughing out loud whilst it’s happening, you’re creating a hypnotic trigger automatically. That’s how simple it is. When I first learned these concepts, nothing was happening because I was making it awkward. The more natural and conversational it is, the more natural it will occur for you. You noticed how quickly it was, right? The only thing that was missing by the way, was choice, which I think you have now, right? By the way, the choice came from context, just so you know.

Previvification Now let’s do the previvifying. I’d like you to work with the same partner just because it will be the easiest way of doing this now. You’ve already revivified each other’s experiences. I’d like you to start off with a simple conversational little trance induction. I don’t care what it is. In fact it doesn’t even have to be conversational. You can get them to close their eyes if you want to. It’s just to make it easier for you guys, all right? I want you to get them to the point where they’re already receptive to ideas. You’ve had a number of Yes Sets and maybe some Trance Themes. I don’t care how you do it, but spend no more than 30 seconds getting to that place. Then I want you to teach them a skill or something enjoyable – in other words whatever your experience was. In this case it’s drumming, in this case it was scuba diving. I just want you to say I want to share an experience with you that I think you might find of value. I really enjoy drumming. I really love scuba diving. You may not know anything about scuba diving, or about drumming, but I’d like to explain to you what it really is

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual about scuba diving that’s important, or about drumming that’s important, or about swimming that’s important, and so on. Essentially you’re just going to revivify your own experience whilst talking to them about it. It’s very simple. Would you like to have a little twist that you can put on this that makes it really powerful? It’s a very subtle twist, and you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to or if it gets too complex for you, but it’s very easy to do once you just let it happen. Initially you talk about your own experience. For example, I love hypnotizing and I love putting people in trance, especially when they go into a trance so easily. See what’s happening here? One of the secrets that I’ve found about hypnotizing someone else is that I have to go first because when you’re going first, something happens. You begin to feel differently as a person, as a hypnotist. Did you notice what I just did? I switched the referential index. I switched from the first person to the second person. In the English language it’s a very natural thing to do. In many languages, it’s a very natural thing to do. I can’t guarantee it for all languages because I don’t speak all languages- yet, ha-ha. The idea is that by switching referential index and by going from I to you, it still sounds like I’m talking about myself but of course you have the ability to give a very direct suggestion to them in the context of talking about your own experience. Do you get the idea here? Here’s what not to expect from a previvification of this type. They won’t suddenly get up and start drumming like crazy, yeah! No. What you’re doing is setting the unconscious context for which they will be more predisposed to acquiring that skill more easily. Everyone think of something that you love doing that you were introduced to by someone else. Weren’t you previvified by them? Didn’t they talk with such enthusiasm about it that you thought I’ve got to get this a go? I found out about this when I was a little kid, we had a surrogate grandmother. She was a friend of the family who adopted us when my father went on business trips. She was being a typical old age pensioner in England, she was a knitter. She was the classic stereotype of a grandmother. There’s absolutely nothing appealing in terms of knitting to a 12 or 14-year-old boy in terms of knitting, but I loved knitting, I don’t know why. The thing is that she enjoyed it so much that just talking about it and doing it, I started to enjoy it. I have no idea why. I have no reason for it. I had to make up a lasso to have a reason because that’s the only

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual way that I could think about knitting in a boyish sort of way. The fact is that I just enjoyed putting the things together and that’s it. It can be a very natural thing. We’re going to do it slightly artificially here because of the context, but it’s a very natural thing. I’m going to give you three minutes apiece to talk to your partner about whatever they revivified in you because it’s already active inside you. I want you to do it in a way where you switch the referential index. The idea is that at the end of it, they should have some kind of enthusiasm or interest in, or a sense of how easy it would be to engage in whatever hobby or task that you spent so much time revivifying. Does that make sense to you guys? Remember to begin with your H+ and putting them in trance for about 30 seconds before you touch on the topic. Off you go. How was that? Was it interesting? Who enjoyed the previvification? Whenever you have any kind of teaching role, whether you’re a salesperson – which is teaching people how to buy a product – or whether you’re an educator – which is different from being a teacher – unfortunately we have more teachers than educators at the moment – but in any kind of educational process, you should always begin with a love of the subject. Otherwise there’s no motivation for it. That’s your preframe, how you prepare someone to introduce them to the subject and then everything inside of it becomes, let’s put it this way. Let’s assume that John hated mathematics or had the potential for disliking it. What if I think of mathematics in the same way he does with the big blue, and I talk about it in the same terms, so he gets inspired? This is amazing. What is this strange thing? Now he’s willing to make the effort that’s required to get through the process. You’ve prepared him for success ahead of time. You’ve formatted them for success ahead of time. Isn’t that a much better way to start something when they’re prepared for success, when the unconscious mind expects success rather than failure? Isn’t that an interesting idea? When you get really smart with this, you can revivify, Hijack that, previvify your own thing and just as we did earlier today, your previvification links into their revivification. Do you see how smoothly that would happen? My Positive Mental Attitude and talking about it, revivifying it myself and linking it to his scuba diving experience suddenly creates a volcanic explosion of happiness, isn’t it? Do

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual you get the idea of how to apply leverage? We’ll address that idea a little bit more in due course. The last idea that I’ll leave you with is one that you really should contemplate with your eyes closed.

End Of Day Summary Each and every one of you has had some important experiences in here today, have you not? If you go through the highlights of today, the things that you really enjoyed learning, I couldn’t possibly know which ones they were. You spent a lot of time focusing on different aspects of the H+, instant rapport and rhythms, and you really enjoyed at least some portion of that, whether you were the subject or the hypnotist. You learned to Hijack negations – no’s – and then you went into the idea of how to revivify experiences. You really learned to revivify experiences. Wasn’t it a pleasure, a gift that someone gave to you, to revivify your own pleasant experiences? If you ever want to give someone a hypnotic gift and you don’t know what to give them, isn’t this an instantly easy solution, to give them back a gift that they’ve already had but didn’t know they could appreciate as fully? The gift of revivification – wasn’t it a gift to you? As you recall the experience revivified inside of you today and all the highlights of that, that were of particular importance to you, I’d like for you to know that mastering hypnosis is as pleasant as experiencing a revivification in the way you did today. It’s a natural process, provided you allow yourself to enjoy the hypnotic journey. Didn’t you enjoy the experiences you talked about today? Wasn’t it a pleasant way of doing things? When you’re with a hypnotic subject and you begin your hypnotic session, it can feel as pleasant as being revivified inside yourself because all that you are doing, all you ever need to do to be a masterful Conversational Hypnotist is to revivify your own Hypnosis Room, your H+, and then that magic flows, the words are there, the movements are there, the techniques are there and the processes are there. How can they not help but go into a trance with you when you already are there in such a pleasant way?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual You revivify your own Hypnotic Room by going first, so that you can then previvify their own trance experience in whatever way you wish to help them to do that. You can coach them on their Trance Signals. You can Hijack their Trance Signals and suggest them. You can give them hypnotic thoughts or ideas. You can use your Power Words and Trance Themes, your Language Softeners to give them choices as to the experiences they’ll have. You can collect Yes Sets upon Yes Sets upon Yes Sets and then Piggy Back your own suggestions and ideas on them. And you can revivify any experience you wish, allow them to really enjoy a powerful trance experience. Isn’t that a nice gift to give to someone? Every time I get to work with a hypnotic client, a subject, I think to myself, you’re about to give to someone a wonderful gift, a wonderful gift they really get to enjoy. How could you not be anything but enthusiastic in that trance induction when all you’re doing is giving them the gift of hypnosis? I know how good it feels and you know how good that feels, and the subject gets to find out. When you have as many choices as you do, one of them is bound to work and it doesn’t matter which one. You get to give the gift of trance and be a real force for good in other people’s lives. I don’t know how you’ll feel going home, what you will do, how often and where you will revivify your own Hypnotic Room in order to allow yourself the freedom to hypnotically interact with those around you, but you know you can and you know you will at the appropriate time. All you really need to know is you don’t need to feel like hypnotizing someone before you begin, because that’s how you begin once you’ve made the choice. You just prepare yourself by revivifying your own Hypnosis Room, and isn’t it nice in there? Don’t you enjoy being there? When you are there, why wouldn’t they want to join you? If it’s so pleasant for you, surely it can be equally pleasant for them. That’s one of the secrets for having enthusiastic, compliant and wonderful hypnotic subjects. You go first, which is really why now would be the time for you to go home so that you get to practice going first in an environment that is not this room. Doesn’t that make sense?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Going first in here is easy now, which means that going first out there when you get to choose the time and the place, and when you do, all you have to do is recall being in here and how could you not go into enough of a trance to do hypnosis? Isn’t that something? You’re in a Hypnosis Room right now, so I’m wondering how many of you will be curious enough about what will happen to you when you go home or wherever else you’ll be hanging out today and merely thinking about this room, whether that’s going to be enough for you to activate your own Hypnosis Room. Then you can just talk to people and find out what happens. Isn’t that a strange idea, an interesting idea to contemplate? With that thought, you might as well open your eyes and be alert enough to make your own way home or wherever you’re going today, whether that’s in the hotel room or you’re driving. You can safely reach your destination before you get to really think about this room won’t you? I’d like to thank all of you for your extra time and attention today, and I’ll see you again tomorrow morning. Thank you very much. [applause]

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DVD 9 – Freestyle Conversational Hypnosis & How To Amp Up Your Hypnotic Influence

Q & A Session Igor:

Good morning, how is everyone doing? There’s a couple of things I’d like to do this morning before we get back into some content. The first thing I’d like to do is throw the floor open in terms of any questions you might have in terms of any material we’ve covered so far or anything like that. Anyone have any questions, comments, anything like that?

Student:

Will you be handling the technique of confusion and fractionation today?

Igor:

No, it goes beyond what we’re doing here. What I’m trying do here is create a simple and as robust a process of influence using Conversational Hypnosis as possible. It doesn’t mean that confusion is not a good thing, it’s a great thing and fractionation again is a very useful process and believe it or not you’ve been doing it throughout. I’ll give you the quick version of fractionation. Instead of doing one big thing where you’re trying to fix everything at once, just do lots of little ones. You know how you have lots of little one minute trances, you’re better off doing five one minute trances than one 10 minute trance, especially if you’re doing them over a period of time as well. That’s the fractionation side of it. The confusion side, unless it’s handled properly it will confuse you more than them. I’d rather focus on something you can take home and be totally clear on and we’ll leave things like confusion for some more advanced course.

Student:

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Yesterday you said you could use Conversational Hypnosis and direct hypnosis in stage shows. Can you give us a demonstration with that? Of Conversational and direct hypnosis, mix them together.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Igor:

Oh, I see, because I didn’t know what you were referring to. The direct version is basically where you tell someone, you give an instruction. Would you all stand up for a moment please. There you go, now sit down again. Happy now?

Student:

I was thinking using Conversational Hypnosis and do a pattern interrupt.

Igor:

I’m not sure what you’re thinking of. The way I think about this whole thing is Conversational Hypnosis, direct hypnosis or any other form of influence is a tool. You use it when you need it. I’m not an entertainer, I have done some Street Hypnosis, I have done a stage show or two, not for any particular reason except that I’d done it, but that’s not really my area of interest, shall we say. So yes you can be entertaining with this stuff and by all means do so because that’s what the Street Hypnosis and Stage Hypnosis DVDs are all about. If you want to be influential, which is what I’m more interested in, then use a tool that’s appropriate at the time. If something as simple as saying please stand up does it, that’s pretty straightforward, pretty direct, then why would I do anything else?

Student:

So just build on it.

Igor:

Yes, build on it; otherwise, I would do exactly what you’ve been doing so far, which is to realize that there are a lot of things you’ve learned, hopefully you’ve enjoyed some of them and they’ve been of use to you. So why on earth would you not just want to use those and then give them something direct to do and say, you can do this now. It’s a much simpler process. I’m not entirely sure what you were thinking of when you asked the question in terms of what you were looking for.

Student:

I was thinking more of the training I did in Mind Bending Language which is where you said you can use it like in Stage Hypnosis.

Igor:

Oh, oh, oh, I see. So you’re asking more about how to create the more instant spins and get people into these quick trances, is that right?

Student:

Yes, covert and then direct hypnosis.

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Igor:

That’s going more towards the first question, which is how to use more confusion language. Mind Bending Language is a specialty, so if I started opening that can today then I would be doing a huge disservice.

Student:

I’ve been entranced with that for weeks. You look at features of the person to use direct or not.

Igor:

Okay, I don’t think of it in terms of looking at a person and saying oh he’s someone to be direct with, oh, he’s indirect, to me it’s one simple question and the only question I ask myself is this. How active is their Critical Factor? If their Critical Factor is pretty open and accepting then I’ll be pretty direct about it. I’ll say something as simple as, sit down for a moment, close your eyes and feel good. That’s pretty direct right, and look at the smile on his face. Do I need anything else? Do I have to do something complex like, aside from all the ways you’ve been feeling before go inside and feel even better than the stuff you haven’t done yet and go into the past and the future, if you look back on yourself being the most amazing person and bam!

Student:

That’s the one.

Igor:

But it’s useless in this context because it’s a tool designed to fix a certain context that isn’t present. Think of it this way, if I tried to hammer a nail into my wall so I can hang a picture up using a sledgehammer I can do it, but it will be more effort. It’s a tool designed to do a certain job. What Mind Bending Language does, is it very quickly gets people unstuck when they’re stuck in a mindset. If you don’t have that mindset can you use Mind Bending Language? Clearly you can, but you may end up making things worse for yourself. For example, hopefully you’ve all had the experience where you’ve gone into a store and you want to buy something like a toaster, a TV, an item of clothing. You know exactly what it is you want, where it is, you know what the price is and you’re happy with it, all you want to do is pick it up, pay for it and take it home. Done! You walk into the store and an overzealous salesperson comes up and tries to help you, asks you have you thought of this, these colors, and you get

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual so annoyed with these people that you walk straight out again. Basically this person has taken an absolute sale, guaranteed and talked you out of it, because they’re trying too hard to do it. Does that kind of make sense to you guys? So, the danger of what you’re asking for then is if I’m using it randomly because it makes me feel good… if it’s fun and amusing I guess that’s one thing… but if you’re using it when it’s not necessary, is that you’ll be less influential because you’re using a tool that doesn’t fit. Student:

So the way I see it, you see how far the subject’s critical factor is and then less is more.

Igor:

Yes exactly. My general paradigm is, what is the least I can do to get the result I need? That means sometimes I spend longer with them to warm them up gently and that’s what all the H+ was about, the Yes Sets, Piggy Backing, etc. Maybe what I need to do is a revivification, go into that and then I’m done.

Student:

That’s why I think you’re the Bruce Lee of hypnosis.

Igor:

The Bruce Lee of hypnosis, hayaaa! [laughter] Really that’s the answer. Yes there is a lot to know about hypnosis. As you’ve seen we have a lot of products here, so there is a lot of content to be covered and that’s because… to use your Bruce Lee analogy… there’s a famous little quote he has which I believe he took from a Daoist saying. Before I came to martial artist a kick was just a kick, a punch was just a punch. Then I studied the arts and a kick became more than just a kick, a punch became more than just a punch. Now that I’ve mastered the arts, a kick is just a kick and a punch is just a punch. So the reason for having all these different things isn’t because you want to use them all at once that’s overkill, it is… 1. First, you have the choice. 2. Second, the principles that are elucidated by all these different tactics, approaches and so on, you can build into a 60 second conversation.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual It doesn’t look anything like those things but because you’re familiar enough with them than you can achieve a lot more with a lot less, so then you go back to minimalism again. Do you get the idea? Here today, what we’ve been doing during this weekend together, we’ve been focusing on is, if I had amnesia and forgot everything else I know what are the few things, if I had a grab bag of hypnotic tools that I could take before the house burns down what would I choose? You’re getting them right now. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

H+ To be able to read where the Critical Factor is at Opening the yes mind so we can shut the Critical Factor down Dealing with no’s – we’ve got a little more to do with that still Once the mind is open, how do you lead it somewhere? Which is the Piggy Back principle

Student:

I’m afraid that I just overloaded myself trying to learn more than I need to and you just answered that question. If you go back to the basics the rest is easy.

Igor:

Go back to the basics, always go back to the basics. In fact I’ll give you a general bit of advice if you are interested in this. You’re better off doing something very simple every day than trying to master everything at once. Carry on listening to the other things because there’s something called the Priming Effect, unconscious priming. I’ll give you an example… a bunch of students are invited to go into a room, they have to read through a bunch of sentences, maybe make a report and then they leave again. What they don’t know is that the speed they take to traverse the corridor to get to the room is being recorded, so they measured how fast it was to get in and how long it takes to get out. So, two different groups, group A enters and let’s say it takes 10 seconds to go down the corridor and enter the room and 10 seconds to walk it on the way out. Group B it takes them 10 seconds to walk in and takes about 14 seconds to walk out. What’s going on here? Group A were reading through these words, sentences that weren’t loaded and had nothing was going on. Group B had sentences which seemed innocent but every sentence had one word in it that was associated with old age.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual That’s my wrinkled coat It’s my old hat I’m going to Florida on holiday (for Americans) you get the idea, right? On the surface there’s no sense of talking about you’re an old person, but because each sentence had one thing, the only common theme throughout them was old age. What’s happened is that those people who had been primed were young students 18-20 years old and they’ve been mentally primed with the concept of old age, so unconsciously they started behaving older. How fast do old people walk? Do you get the idea? So they physically slowed down, at least temporarily, whilst the Priming Effect was in place. Now, how might we use this as hypnotists to accelerate our learning process and make it easier? Any ideas? Consider this, let’s say you have a simple hypnotic process you like, an Instant Induction and you did it every day with like five people. It takes you five minutes, one minute a person and that’s it. Whilst you’re doing this throughout the day you’re listening to more advanced concepts, Storytelling, Frame Control, Mind Bending Language, Conversational Hypnosis and so on. Meanwhile you’re still doing your Instant Inductions. This information is in there somewhere. You’ve been primed in exactly the same way as those students have been towards old age, only you’ve been primed into having a masterful toolkit of hypnosis. It has to come out somewhere, provided you don’t try too hard because when you try too hard, you engage the Law Of Reverse Effect. So just by enjoying the simple induction you know how to do you will automatically start adding preframes in without realizing it. You might throw in a story or two because you happen to be in the storytelling section and then again you might even throw in some Mind Bending Language and they get all twisty, they go what? without even realizing you’re doing it. That’s exactly why you should be doing it that way. Student:

I call that the Florida effect. I just want to be a Bruce Lee like you.

Igor:

That’s exactly how I did it. Honestly, I studied the people who I thought were great hypnotists and I didn’t try to analyze them too much until I got

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual in sync with what they were doing. Yes I did think, sitting down and filling up notebooks with ideas, notes and so on, but after I’d been doing things. If there is a choice between doing hypnosis or studying it, I guarantee doing hypnosis will get you a lot further. If you’re doing something simple everyday and studying it on the side, not trying to make the study fit, but letting it hang out in your mind somewhere, it will come out inside what you’re doing. I’ll share another more personal example. Last summer I did a private training for Mind Bending Language for our trainers, we have 24 trainers worldwide who are teaching our courses now. To get their standard up to basically a very high level, I decided to do a private training for Mind Bending Language, which is a very advanced style of hypnosis. As I was doing that particular training for them I was also preparing for the Advanced Ericksonian Hypnotherapy Training, which I did later in Amsterdam at the end of the summer. So my days were filled with studying Erickson to get that program into fruition and then I took three days out to have my trainers come in so I could work with them. Now remember I’m teaching them Mind Bending Language, which as you know seems nothing like Ericksonian Hypnosis. Guess what happened in the training? Half of them were spacing out, having deep trances, hands floating in the air and the Erickson stuff was coming out and I didn’t even intend it. So your best bet if you want to make life easy is to listen to the different products with enthusiasm because that counts. Think about it. Fantasize about it and let your mind run away with you, but don’t attempt to do it. Do something you’re comfortable doing and the Priming Effect will automatically ensure that elements of that come through. Now, once you have similar elements coming through consistently then you can start trying to do it because you already have Unconscious Competence. You get the idea? Student:

That’s what happened when I got your other courses just in conversations with people I happen to meet. So many times it’s unbelievable.

Igor:

Exactly. What happens often with these courses is people who have the products and come in, especially when it comes to the language training

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual and so on there’s been more than one occasion where I’ve had people come up during breaks and say it’s the weirdest thing, I’ve been struggling for months with your DVDs and I had a chat with someone in here today and suddenly it’s all coming out I don’t know what happened. I know what happened, they’ve been primed to the hilt but as soon as I took their conscious mind away from trying too hard, I gave them something simple to do so it can’t help but come out. Student:

I think as soon as you have a conversation with somebody you relax, and you go first and then everything just flows out..

Igor:

That’s why we have the H+. Do you get the idea of this folks? Was this useful to you, by the way?

Student:

So previvification, if you look at this like you said before, to get into the mind, bypass the critical mind, previvification is something you do yourself, like H+. So you do bypass the critical mind.

Igor:

Previvification is just something you do in order to create a context in someone else’s mind. When we just talked about priming, in a way those Florida statements were previvifying old age, although in a very subtle way. So previvification itself isn’t necessarily an H+ thing, H+ is what you do with yourself to get yourself into the Hypnosis Room so it’s all easy to do, and there are many versions of it. Instant Rapport is one The Natural Rhythm Method is another The Personal Trance Theme is another So we’ve dealt with at least three so far but there are more. Then when you do a revivification you’re helping them re-experience an experience they’ve had themselves. You can use it as a resource or Hijack it so they can attach it to other things they’re not so good at and so on. A previvification is essentially a revivification of an experience they haven’t had yet.

Student:

It’s not yourself that you’re doing it to then?

Igor:

It’s not something you do for yourself.

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Student:

So like we did yesterday with the exercise or as a hypnotist you do the previvification for yourself and then you changed it in the you form so that you get the positive mental attitude …

Igor:

The only reason for doing that was to make the previvification easy for you to do. You see, if you’ve already got the experience, let’s say I love swimming and I know what loving swimming is like, it’s a lot easier if I go first and know what it’s like. Strictly speaking it’s not necessary, but it will be much harder if you hate swimming to talk about it in a way where you can enjoy it. So another way of thinking about previvification is have you come across the term or the concept of future memories? I’m giving them a memory of something that hasn’t happened yet. Now, if I happen to have that memory already inside myself it’s a lot easier, because by describing my memory and doing some subtle changes like the I to the you and so on, it will also feel like their memory also. In a sense they’ve been primed to respond in a certain way. I’ll give you some examples now of how this is useful. Some of my students who are good friends of mine now in the U.S. teach firearms handgun training. They teach all kinds of people including Special Forces, to the people in the Air Force who jump behind enemy lines to rescue pilots that have crashed, so it’s very risky, as you can imagine, they train those people and they train the public too. What he does is he gets someone within five minutes of never having held a handgun in their life walking on the range and put 10 bullets through the exact same hole on the target; within five minutes, the exact same hole. It takes an hour or so before getting on the range to use Conversational Hypnosis to previvify the experience enough that the unconscious mind only expects to shoot a certain way. Do you get the idea of this? Do you see how what you have may seem very simple, but you have some very powerful tools. Does anyone here shoot handguns? Three or four people? That’s a good skill to have isn’t it, from five minutes of never having touched a handgun? Most people wouldn’t even hit the target let alone the same hole. So now

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual you get the idea of what I mean? It’s one of the interviews I did on the Master Hypnotist series. Student:

It’s just interesting, I can see absolutely how the H+ is a good tool to influence people in a face to face situation. But if you need to influence somebody over the phone, like someone in tele-sales, how are you able to transfer that?

Igor:

Sit down for a second and close your eyes. Consider the possibility that you have an important question in your mind and there are all kinds of areas in which you want to use it, are there not? There are some things you know how to do and some you don’t really know how to do yet and yet you’ve had a whole bunch of experiences here that have helped you be a great hypnotist. The interesting thing is that you can’t see me at all right now and yet you’re breathing is changing, your shoulders are relaxing and you are starting to feel good aren’t you? How did that happen? Of course if I don’t do the H+ quite the same way you can feel it changing. How does that happen? It’s not just about how you look, do you understand?

Student:

So is it like I have to do a presentation for a whole room full of people, so I do a previvification before to see how everything goes well, is that how you do it?

Igor:

That’s how you do previvifications for yourself. Before I begin a seminar I will usually revivify previous seminars because they’ve gone well and then project them into the future to previvify for myself an expectation of success, absolutely. Then that’s something I’m doing for myself so it’s no longer Conversational Hypnosis it now goes into Self Hypnosis.

Student:

Is previvification the same more or less as preframing then?

Igor:

No we’ll come into preframing later today and if the difference hasn’t resolved by then ask me again.

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Skills Review Now what I want to do is have a quick review of some important things. First of all, this is a standard way of looking at any hypnotic induction process. Induction Process: 1. Induction 2. Deepener 3. Suggestion 4. Ending We’ve spent the last two days doing this, but I’d like your conscious mind to have a sense that there’s a relative order in terms of what we’re trying to do. Typically speaking, whatever style of hypnosis you engage in you’ll start with some type of induction, the purpose of which is really to bypass the Critical Factor and access the unconscious mind in some way, which is the ABS Formula. Then there will be some kind of deepener and in my opinion the induction and deepener are the same thing, I’ll explain why. All the deepener does is to make sure the person stays in the induction and makes sure the Critical Factor is more offline than it was before, which is really what the induction has done too, just more of it and it stabilizes things a bit. Any process you can use for induction you can use for a deepener. Any process you can use for a deepener you can use for an induction. So if you’re ever stuck for a deepener just do a different induction again. Simple, right? Most people spend their time focusing on this step, induction and deepener. What do you do when someone says this or that? The most important or interesting phase is the suggestion phase, which is why you’ve done this. Hypnosis is a tool and you could have the most glorious toolkit in the world and a toolbox full of shiny hammers/nails, etc. but if you never use them then you’re just a slightly eccentric collector, right? Finally, the end of the trance process you have to have some kind of way for the person to know it’s time to go back into normal reality, so in terms of what we’ve been doing, the induction and deepening process, you have a bunch of stuff here. You’ve learned how to use the Trance Signals, to Hijack, suggest or Ratify them, all of which has both induced and deepened the trance.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Deepener: Trance Signals Ratification/Hijack Trance Themes Trance Experiences You’ve used the conformational Hijacking which is the idea of ratification, which is really the same idea but now we’re looking with what’s already present, and here we’re just seeing about what could be there but isn’t there yet. You use your Trance Themes to build up the experience for them and you use trance experiences, either formal like being in hypnosis or informal experiences like scuba diving, drumming and so on. So you can use these things to bypass the Critical Factor and get people absorbed in a more hypnotic state. In terms of language you have for that, you have Power Words, Language Softeners and we haven’t dealt with Hot Words yet but that will come with time. So the language we’ve been developing based on these two core principles has been using the language you’ve been using your whole life to achieve these things, because hypnotic language other than a few specialty things, is just normal language. Language: Power Words Language Softeners [Hot Words} The Power Words give you the language of conjunction, of association which is how the unconscious reasons and Language Softeners give you choices essentially. Other than that you want to use your normal everyday language otherwise it’s not very conversational. In terms of performance elements, which is the thing that makes all this stuff work, we really put it all into this idea of H+, the Hypnotic Room in which all these skills are easy for you, correct? Performance Elements: H+ Personal Trance Theme (Soothing Experience) Natural Rhythm (Friendship) You learned the value of the Hypnotic Voice and that’s a side effect of being in the Hypnosis Room. If you’re in the Hypnosis Room and use a different tonality or rhythm it

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual kicks you out of the room again. We enhance that quality with the Personal Trance Theme, as a soothing or relaxing experience and you notice that automatically enhances your hypnotic voice qualities as well. That’s one aspect of the H+. Another aspect of H+ was developing a natural rhythm, the rain, the wind, waves, car sounds, etc. Then of course there was the Instant Rapport Technique which was another way of looking at the H+, another aspect of this Hypnosis Room we’ve been developing. There are more than this of course, but this is a nice solid core that you can take home and practice, get skilled at and make natural and automatic. In terms of principles, really working with three core principles is what we’ve been doing here and these in my opinion are the most important principles in hypnosis but not the only ones. We’ve got the Agreement Principle, which we primarily put into effect for the Yes Sets. It’s not the only way to do it; we’ll actually be expanding on the Yes Sets later. We have the Piggy Back Principle, which is a way of attaching things to a Yes Set so that things that were improbable start becoming true over time. Then we have the Authority Principle which is linked with the idea of H+ and really is the root of having people have faith in your competence in terms of what you’re saying, have trust in what you’re doing. Laws: Association Successive Approximations Compounding Effect Attention (A=E) Reversed Effect Then we had the idea of the hypnotic laws, which are some of the more important hypnotic laws… Law of Association, Law of Success of Approximations, Law Of Compounding Effect, Law Of Attention – where attention goes, energy flows - and the Law Of Reverse Effect… or depending on which school you’ve gone to Reversed Effect, I’ve seen it both ways. Again, all those make sense to you now, right? ABS: Absorb Attention Bypass CF Stimulate The Unconscious

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Finally, we have the ABS Formula which is not the only way to do hypnosis, there are lots of different definitions of hypnosis. By my experience and the way I tend to work, if you have these three conditions present then you have the hypnotic context you need. So by attempting to achieve these three things you will automatically achieve a hypnotic condition, a hypnotic potential in the situation you’re in. Does that make sense to you guys? So you’ve covered quite a lot in just two days. Who feels like they’ve learned something, anyone? Who would like to learn more? Let’s do that then. Now I’d like you to start by getting yourselves into groups of 10 with new people.

Yes Set Training Up to this point we’ve had two simple ways of dealing with Yes Sets. You’ve had simple facts, like you’re wearing shoes, there are planes, the sky exists, stuff like that. Not very exciting, not particularly conversational, but they have their place. Then we played a bit with the idea of Universal Experiences, things we’ve all had. For example, you’ve all had a childhood have you not? If any of you were born a full adult we have some strangeness going on there. [laughter] You’ve all made friends at some point or maybe lost friends. Everyone here has been in love and out of love. You’ve all had good luck and bad luck. You’ve made money and lost money. You’ve all bought something that you regretted buying after, etc. These are universal human experiences. Exercise Right now to warm up I would like for you with your partner to… Yes Set Training:
H+ ptt – Simple Facts
H+ ptt – Universal Experiences [ptt=Personal Trance Theme] …remember the Personal Trance Theme like something that makes you feel relaxed? We’ll call this H+ Personal Trance Theme. I’d like to use the simple facts and Universal Experiences but begin with the Personal Trance Theme as your H+ and we’ll be switching through different styles of H+ as we go along. Do you get the idea?

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Remember something that made you feel relaxed and then look at a person and all you’ll do is list facts or Universal Experiences, nothing else is required right now, this is the warm up act. Easy? Let’s spend one minute apiece doing that. Off you go… Was that fun and interesting? We’re going to do a whole bunch of these things so you can get some Yes Sets in there which will be more conversational and useful. The simple facts will fit some situations but not most. If you’re a lawyer, accountant or medical doctor simple facts can work, but in a normal casual conversation a little less so. Universal Experiences tend to fit in most cases, especially if you make them fit the context you’re talking about, correct? Exercise Yes Set Training:
H+ ptt – Simple Facts
H+ ptt – Universal Experiences
H+ ir – Recent Event & Actions [ir = Instant Rapport Technique]

For the next round I want you to focus on the Instant Rapport Technique version of H+, remember that one, your pet, good friend, a non-romantic friendship that was strong friendship, feel and project that and when you have that sense make the eye contact and keep going. For this one what I want you to focus on is recent events and actions and by recent events I mean things like, this morning you got up, you probably got cleaned, you probably had breakfast, you came here, walked through that door and eventually sat down in a chair and got into the groups you’re in right now. Aren’t those all recent events? Notice how it all fits, what we’re talking about right now. If I started off today saying okay this morning you got up, probably brushed your teeth or something like that, got dressed, came down here, walked through the door, sat down and after a period of time you ended up in the groups you’re in right now. Is that correct? Now I just got a nice natural Yes Set that fits the context we’re in. Again, recent events won’t fit every context but it will fit many.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual The other one is actions, what have they been doing is kind of part of recent events. Here’s a classic one from hypnotherapy, you’ve been blinking recently. There you go. Some of you are smiling now. A number of you have put on coats because it’s cold in the room, some of you don’t care. These are recent actions that have been going on as well, you get the idea? So they’re somewhat related to each other, hence, I put them in the same thing and again I don’t really care how good they are, clumsy they are or how conversational they are I just want you to get used to doing them. Please focus on the Instant Rapport Technique version of H+ on this round. One minute apiece… off you go. How did it go, was that fun? Any questions or comments so far? All right. Exercise For the next round I would like you to go with the natural rhythm version, the rain, sound of the wind or surf whatever you like. You can actually select several different types of rhythms as well and cycle through them if you wish, just keep one for this particular version. Yes Set Training:
H+ ptt – Simple Facts
H+ ptt – Universal Experiences
H+ ir – Recent Event & Actions
H+ nr – Ratify & Hijack [nr = Natural Rhythm] On this round I want you to Ratify or Hijack something. Ratifying is if you see something they’re doing you can say that’s right, this is going to be more useful initially in overt inductions. That’s right, your blinking is going on. Your shoulders are relaxing and so on. How might you Ratify something in a more social context? Student:

Say oh, I like how you’re sitting there…

Igor:

I like how you’re sitting there. It depends on the context right?

I’m thinking more along the lines of, when you’re in that kind of relationship where you have some type of guiding roles, like if you’re a parent or teacher helping someone do homework saying that’s right you’re doing that right. That’s a good thing there, what do you do here? That’s right the thinking is correct here. How are you thinking about this? That is also correct. Do you see what I’m saying?

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Just by finding out how they’re thinking and what they’re doing you can Ratify that, so to a certain extent do you see how recent event and actions and ratification can overlap at points? I’m pulling out different nuances of similar themes. I don’t care how clunky you do them right now, if you want you can pretend they’re in a context that you won’t be using Conversational Hypnosis in and then start Ratifying things you would do there naturally. The other version is to Hijack and Hijacking is the same as Ratifying. In other words, you’re taking something that has already occurred but instead of Ratifying it and saying you’re doing it right, just suggest it. You can put this number down there and go that’s right, now you’ve done it. So you can Hijack it and Ratify afterwards what they already did, having Hijacked it before hand anyways. Do you see how that works? So you can have fun with that. One minute apiece, remember the natural rhythms on this one. Was that fun? Did you enjoy that? Some people were having too much fun, but that’s okay. Exercise The next one will be more fun, it will be a little bit of a stretch for you but will be fun. The Yes Set we’re going to look for is something a lot of people don’t even think about and that’s memories. Yes Set Training:
H+ ptt – Simple Facts
H+ ptt – Universal Experiences
H+ ir – Recent Event & Actions
H+ nr – Ratify & Hijack
H+ (ptt) (nr) - Memories

You’ve all had thoughts and experiences in the past and I know some of the memories you’ve have are actually really pleasant, aren’t they? And you can think about all the pleasant memories you’ve had, some with friends, some family or even on your own. How many of you are saying yes to me right now? So you can take an entire trip down memory lane, it’s related to the Universal Experiences, isn’t it? Notice how all these categories overlap, but I’m looking at different qualities of them just so you have a

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual wider range on how to apply these things. Because memories are such an easy one to play with although lots of fun, I would like you now to put two different styles of H+ together… the Personal Trance Theme and the natural rhythm. You might ask yourself how to do that. All you need to do is think of one of them. Take the Personal Trance Theme, it’s a comfortable, relaxing memory, do that now and you have that feeling being developed inside your body as you recall that. As you have that you can let that Personal Trance Theme recede to the back of your mind and hover there, whilst you focus more of your attention on that other memory on the natural rhythm, the sound of rain, the wind, the surf, etc. So whilst you’re still feeling the relaxation of the one you also begin to have a sense of the rhythm of the other and you can go between the memories from relaxation to rhythm, from rhythm to relaxation or you can use them both at the same time. I don’t mind how you do it as long as all that you do in the next minute or so with your partner is to remind them of all the kinds of memories that they’ve had. Off you go. How did it go? Was that fun? It’s like oh yah, all these nostalgic things. Exercise We’ve spent some time together here and over the last two days you’ve either learned everything you wanted to, you’ve learned some of the things you were coming here for or you may think you haven’t learned anything at all. Now, it is true that you will either be successful at this or you won’t, or something in between of course, right? Either you know exactly what I’m doing right now or you have an inkling or you have no clue at all. Who’s beginning to spot a pattern here? Who’s not? Who thinks they are but they aren’t sure? Do you have a sense of what I’m doing here? I’m doing something called covering all possibilities. Yes Set Training:
H+ (all) – Cover All Possibilities [all = use all 3 styles of H+] It’s an Ericksonian thing where you suggest basically everything possible, the classical one in hypnosis where either your arm will lift or stay comfortably right there. What choice do they have?

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Either way there’s a suggestion that’s been accepted which means the Law Of Compounding Effect has been activated hasn’t it? Get the idea? So seeing as covering all possibilities is so easy, you can do it in terms of an overt thing, either your eyes will close in a moment or it will take some time or they’ll stay open for the entire trance process. The thing is, you either know what’s going to happen or you don’t. Do you see where we’re going? Your variety is relatively infinite here right in terms of the H+ I’d like you to use all three styles at the same time. You noticed earlier on you did the relaxation version, soothing experience and Personal Trance Theme and you put it in the back of your mind and felt comfortable, did you not? Then with that in the back of your mind hovering around you could think of the rainfall, wind, surf or anything like that which developed a rhythm inside you where you could switch between one and the other or use both at the same time. Would that be fair to say? Now, if you let that settle somewhere else in the back of your mind you can also think of someone you have a special relationship with, a pet, a friend, someone you’ve been very close to and you can feel those feelings of friendship, whilst in the background you have a sense of a certain rhythm going on and a real comfort and relaxation. You can switch between those feelings by switching between the memories or you can allow all three to arrive at the same time, a friendly rhythmic relaxation. You get the idea? I don’t mind which way you do it, but I would like for this next experience to have as much of all of them as you can comfortably do now, whilst of course covering all possibilities, or not. Spend a minute doing that now please. How was that, was that fun? In a moment you will do an exercise and I suspect you’re curious as to what that will be. I know that you know it will at least include a version of H+ and I suspect that you will probably guess that you’ll have to use one of all three styles of H+ at the same time. Now, I know you’ve enjoyed some of the exercises you’ve done so far, which means you’re going to really love this exercise and the reason is because some of you are already figuring out what it is. Some of you will recognize it once you hear it.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Exercise This one is going to use something called Mind Reading and Predictions. Mind reading is basically when I purport to know what’s going on inside your mind or I know what you’re thinking. I know you’ve enjoyed some exercises. I know you’ll enjoy the one coming up. I know you’re looking forward to something. With mind reading I’m taking certain risks, which is sometimes why covering all possibilities is useful to combine with mind reading but is something you can do on your own time I guess. In terms of predictions, they don’t have to be just mind reading things they can be any event, but the point is that you pretty much know it’s going to happen. I’ll give you the classic prediction. In a moment you’re going to blink. That’s right. I know some of you are trying hard not to, that’s why you will as soon as you forget about it. You laugh now but you’ll secretly kick yourself for having given in, which is why you’ll know it’s really working. Yes Set Training:
H+ (all) – Cover All Possibilities
H+ (all) – Mind Reading & Predictions [all = use all 3 styles of H+] Do you see where I’m going with this? Do you have a sense of the infinite variety and richness that mind reading and predictions allow you to do. A prediction is basically something about the future, it can be mind reader or a physical event, it doesn’t matter, just as long as you know it’s going to happen. Very subtle and useful predictions can be, if you spot something about to happen before they’re aware of it. For example, if you see that (yawn) you might starting yawning too. If you see them having a response before they’re consciously aware of it and you predict it then you’ve basically Hijacked something before it’s occurred, so you’re now a time traveling Hijacker. Do you get the idea of mind reading and predictions? So use all three styles of H+, get yourself in the mindset and off you go.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Who’s having fun with that? Who’s starting to realize that you have a lot of tools in your Yes Set that actually fit into regular conversations, much better than just the simple clunky facts? Yes Set Training:
H+ ptt – Simple Facts
H+ ptt – Universal Experiences
H+ ir – Recent Events & Actions
H+ nr – Ratify & Hijack
H+ (ptt) (nr) – Memories
H+ (all) – Cover All Possibilities
H+ (all) – Mind Reading & Predictions Let’s have a check in terms of what we’ve done so far. We went through a bunch of things but in terms of Yes Set training you’ve done the simple facts, gone through Universal Experiences and have seen how those fit in normal everyday situations. You’ve also started working in different styles of H+ have you not? We went on to recent events and actions and again started switching to a different style of H+ again so you started getting versatility in terms of how you switch on your H+ and what kind of H+ you switch on, because different ones will be appropriate for different context. Then we went into Ratifying and Hijacking it with again a different style of H+ and then we started combining them which was interesting. It took a little bit of a mental leap did it not, to combine the different styles simultaneously, but you did it quite adequately and then we went through the memory style of the Yes Set. Then we covered all possibilities, although some of you may not have, whilst of course covering all possibilities and that version of all styles of H+ stuck as your basic theme, you went on to mind reading, predictions and so on. The final kind of Yes Set I’d like you to do is the one we just did, because it fits pretty much anywhere, doesn’t it? You get the idea? Yes Set Training:
H+ (all) – Cover All Possibilities
H+ (all) – Mind Reading & Predictions
H+ (all) - Summaries

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual So use all styles of H+ and summarize anything that’s worth summarizing. Spend a minute each doing that now… How was that? What kind of experiences did you have? How did that go? Student:

That was really good, going into the future and using the suggestion. I want to be careful because I usually make a suggestion and I anchor it. Sometimes there’s a word I want to say and it just disappears. I get stuck and I want to call it back. It’s on the tip of my tongue, I can’t recall it and then I get stuck on what I want to do further.

Igor:

The reason for that is that you’re stuck on a particular way of doing it. If the one word you’re looking for isn’t there just do another one, move on.

Student:

Nobody will know, will they?

Igor:

This is the whole point. It’s a very flexible system if you’re stuck on one word then you basically have a very short script inside your mind.

Student:

It’s like before I tried to do something I’d picture myself doing it, and then I’d stick to it…

Igor:

And that’s the problem.

Student:

And sometimes I go into all of it…

Igor:

The purpose of preparing for something isn’t so you can duplicate it, it’s so you can get the general same outcome. If a boxer is going to visualize their boxing match the purpose isn’t to tell the other person what are you doing jabbing with your left hand, we practiced it in my mind with the right so start off properly. It doesn’t work that way, it’s a conversation, things will change so you’re absolutely correct in terms of mentally rehearsing something to prime yourself, but then let go. Deal with what’s there rather than what isn’t. That’s why you go blank because it’s no longer there.

Student:

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Thank you very much.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Student:

I really like the last exercise because in previous ones there was some kind of tension, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this. In the last one I just flowed with it and it was natural. I can just hear myself in my head, that was a memory, that was a mind prediction, this one, this one, great stuff.

Igor:

You’ll have fun with the closing exercise we’ll do before the break, so thank you for that. What other things have you noticed or learned?

Student:

I just wanted to say thank you to my partner, I’ve always believed that you can’t influence unless you’ve been influenced, so I believed you have to experience it first. Remember yesterday Igor, I asked you about the eye blink. I actually got to feel it. It was beautiful. So thanks to my partner, that was amazing.

Igor:

Well done guys.

Student:

My partner did absolutely fantastic. She relaxed me because I’m a very tense person. She’s given me the confidence to actually speak. [applause] She’s reminded me of good memories instead of bad and I actually learned to listen, not to talk, so I was actually taking in what she was saying and I think I’ve learned a lot from her.

Igor:

Fantastic! I’m glad to hear that. Give them a round of applause for that guys.

[applause] Do you see how much leverage you can get out of a very simple tool? We introduced the Yes Set right at the start of the first day and now look how much you’ve done with it. It’s quite a sophisticated tool now isn’t it? This by the way is just the starting point, there’s much more besides this, but this is a great skill you can start mastering now and you’ll discover more versions of the Yes Set as you go along, so don’t think it’s the end all and be all of it, but it’s a good enough thing that will keep you going for quite some time. We’ll do one final exercise before the break and for this one please change partners inside your group briefly.

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Freestyle Conversational Hypnosis When you’re ready please sit quietly. Exercise Are you ready? I’ll give you two and a half minutes apiece. I’d like you to start with the H+ overall and all I want you to do is have a little chat with them, start with the H+ and chat about any random topic you want. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is inside of your casual chat to weave in as many Yes Sets as seem appropriate. I don’t care what they are, how they fit, what it has to do with anything, just have a chat about any topic you wish… horses, sailing, sewing, knitting, lassoing, taping your hand to the wall, whatever you want… and during your two and a half minute chat weave in as many Yes Sets as seems appropriate. Make sense? I don’t need anything overtly hypnotic, just switch on your H+, get your Hypnotic Gaze locked on, tell them about whatever you want to talk about and then start collecting yeses. One person with their hand up, you’re the hypnotist, off you go… How did that go? Was it fun? Who found it really easy to get yeses in a normal conversation? Wasn’t that something? Any comments or questions before the break? Student:

I think I’m seeing now something very Universal. When I was trying too hard to do it too well I was blocked, most of you were blocked, what do I have to do? When we just let it go and just do it, it will flow normally. It was very beautiful, thank you.

Igor:

You’re welcome, thank you.

Student:

You can actually feel everything that’s happening.

Igor:

Yes and what makes you think he’s not a real person?

Student:

He is a real person.

Igor:

Out there are many more.

Student:

I can’t wait for it! Thanks.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Igor:

Thank you.

Student:

I just wanted to thank Beswick for asking the question earlier, because he said what do I do if I’m stuck for words and in the middle I started to get stuck and it came straight into my head. It just shows there’s a circularity, where one person asks a question and the answers you give them can help someone else.

Igor:

That’s why we have Q&A sessions. So thank you for that.

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DVD 10 – Hot Words & How To Use Conversational Hypnosis Immediately In The Real World

Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a nice break. You had a question or comment? Student:

Something quite amazing just happened. I went to get a coffee. This is my first seminar so there is an element of resistance in whether I believe in the ability that it’s possible to go into trance, although it’s getting lower and lower and lower, trying to get rid of the analytical side. I just sat down next to Alexander, just because I didn’t want to stand in the queue for another ten minutes and we started chatting and I was explaining to him how difficult it’s been for me to sleep this last couple of nights. Usually I put my head on the pillow and I’m out like a light, it’s usually not a problem for me, just these last few nights. So these last few nights there’s something going on and suddenly he said to me, close your eyes and the rest is history. Thank you.

[Applause] Igor:

Thank you for that, that was a very powerful moment wasn’t it?

I’d like you now to pick someone else in your group to work with for the next few rounds. Once you’ve selected them look this way. What we’re going to do now is to go into the drilling cycle. We have a lot of skills now with one last set that we’ll talk about in due course, but before that I want to put everything together in a nice package so the new stuff can go around that.

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Conversational Hypnosis Training Exercise Let’s go to some Conversational Hypnosis training in terms of the skill pieces. What I want you to do the first time round is very simple. For literally 20 seconds have a Chit Chat with the other person and they’ll have a chit chat back with you. I’m going to give you 40 seconds and I won’t call time as you’ll both be talking as in a normal conversation. Off you go… that was easy to do right because you’ve been doing it most of your lives. Exercise This is where it gets interesting. Conversational Hypnosis Training: 1. Chit Chat 2. Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat I want you to start off with that Chit Chat the same kind of vibe you have now and somewhere in that process I’d like for you to turn on your H+, either of the three styles that you know. Then carry on having a chat which would now be an H (hypnotic) chat instead of a chit chat. Whoever put their hand up will be taking the first round as hypnotist. You’ll get 40 seconds for this, not very long so spend a short time in Chit Chat but as soon as you can get into your H+ get into your H-Chat after to get the sense of distinction and feeling a difference between normal conversation and a hypnotic conversation. Do you understand the difference? The interesting part will be how the conversation goes after you’ve switched. Off you go… How was that did you find it interesting? How do you cope with going from normal conversation to the hypnotic conversation, what happened? Student:

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Igor:

Good. Well done. What else did you notice?

Student:

Even though I’m invisible, what I noticed was that I slowed down and was more observant. Immediately, those two things. Neither of them exists in reality, so that’s good.

Igor:

Excellent.

Student:

I find it’s very nice, I’m saying less and slower. I can see that he wants more of it. So he’s asking with his eyes more.

Igor:

Let me ask you this, in terms of summary so far there’s not a huge problem switching rhythms is there? In some conversations you have to slow down into it a little more gradually and ease into it, I haven’t given you much time for this, but overall people kind of naturally respond to your change in rhythm don’t they? As long as you don’t make it too crazy you should be okay.

Student:

I just noticed that when I changed into H+, Sue was in the middle of saying something and suddenly her eyes popped open and she changed her tone and changed what she was going to say into a happier memory. It was really lovely.

Igor:

Yes, people respond to each other. Remember the little subcommunications, submarine pings we talked about? When your H+ gets turned on, the whole nature of your conversation changes. It won’t always be perfect or this simple but at least you’ll know how to gradually move from one to the other whilst setting up the right atmosphere up.

Student:

When I turn on the H+, my waves come, and I started to move, to speak in waves. Wave, pause, wave, pause.

Igor:

Perfect, beautiful, I’m liking what I’m hearing.

Exercise For this round we’ll go a little longer, we’ll do a minute apiece.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Conversational Hypnosis Training: 1. Chit Chat 2. Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat 3. CHC – Y (crude) [CHC = Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat We’ll start with the same chit chat, H+ and then hypnotic chat sort of thing. Once you get into your hypnotic chat I want you to start collecting yeses, but the kind I want for now are crude yeses. The reason I call them crude is because you’re actually looking for some kind of conscious response and a yes, I agree with you, an actual um hm response, that they know they’ve given to you. To make it clear, the crude ones will be easier to distinguish from the subtle ones. The crude ones are when I’m actually looking for a response. Stay with the same partners because we’re going to do some fast paced rounds and then we’ll switch around a bit again. Off you go… Was that fun and easy? Was that a crude yes or a subtle yes? Conversational Hypnosis Training: 1. Chit Chat 2. Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat 3. CHC – Y (crude) 4. CHC – Y (subtle) [CHC = Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat Seeing that you have the crude yes, next time we’ll do the same exercise and you can get any crude yeses you want but I want you to focus on subtle yeses. A subtle yes is the one that people will agree with but you have to check their body language as to whether or not they’re agreeing with you. Whatever you’re saying as long as they’re relatively happy with it then you’re okay. So, some of you will be happy with that, some of you may be puzzled about that and that’s okay as long as you do the exercise. Are you guys ready to do the exercise now?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Exercise So we have subtle yeses, the ones that are just part of the conversation. You’re looking for them to not have to voice the agreement but to agree without realizing it. Get the idea? A minute apiece and off you go… How was that, was that fun? Are you enjoying yourselves? Are you appreciating the difference between a subtle and crude yes? The reason this is important is because if your conversation is yeah, yeah, yeah, ah huh, yeah, yeah, oh no, yeah, yeah… you’re likely to trigger a recognition inside them that something is going on. If they’re like keep going, what happened next, oh yeah, yeah, yeah that’s it, oh no, no, no, no… yeah… there’s a very different mindset that happens with that. So if you want to keep it conversational then many of your yeses need to be invisible too. Exercise The next one is something you’ve already done but again we’re going to drill it in now. Conversational Hypnosis Training: 1. Chit Chat 2. Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat 3. CHC – Y (crude) 4. CHC – Y (subtle) 5. CHC – Y – N – Hijack - Y [CHC = Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat Start with a normal chit chat, H+ switches on somewhere along the line so you can create your hypnotic chit chat. You’ll start collecting your yeses crude and subtle, whatever mix comes out. At some point your partner is going to give you a no, and it can be a random no, it doesn’t matter the content is irrelevant right now. As soon as you get a no, Hijack it as you’ve done before and get back to yeses again. You’ll have a minute apiece. Off you go… Who’s having fun with this? Who’s starting to feel that this is getting quite practical and something you could do in your day-to-day life in the kind of place you want to do it?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual By the way, I saw that some of you have neglected to get your hypnotic eye lock going on, so remember when you turn on your H+ part of what helps you maintain and intensify that is locking eye contact. When you’re using this however in regular conversations you may purposely want to break eye contact in order to diminish the intensity of what you’re doing because it may become too intense, in terms of the nature of the interaction you’re having. Does that make sense? Then you’re doing it on purpose because you want to avoid going too far. For now I’d like you to go as far as possible with it so you know what the outer edge looks like and then come back from that will be easier. Make sense? Student:

I actually found it a bit of a challenge to maintain H+ when my partner was saying no to me.

Igor:

Good. I’m serious. That’s where you have to learn. There’s something going on inside you that doesn’t like the no’s and until you know how to handle that you won’t feel comfortable getting no’s. The whole point of H+ is that the no’s become irrelevant, not because they’re unimportant because you’re going to ignore them, but irrelevant because no matter what’s happening it’s just the next step forward. If you are afraid of any kinds of no’s, rejections or disagreements in your conversations then you can’t solve problems because you can’t get up to the things, the precise areas where people are actually stuck, which means you can’t influence them. So the next time you do that with your partner ask them to give you several no’s just to get used to it until you think, I don’t care. After all this is just an exercise, so it’s not like they’re saying no to you for real. Therefore it’s something you’re doing and whatever that is you might want to stop it.

Student:

By establishing eye contact then breaking it, then establishing it again and breaking it, will that cause fractionation?

Igor:

Yes.

Student:

I found the no’s very challenging, so I wanted to persuade the person to say yes to me but in a very subtle manner so that they didn’t actually realize they were now agreeing with me.

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Igor:

What did you do?

Student:

I just kept going.

Igor:

Did you Hijack the no?

Student:

Sort of, yes.

Igor:

In other words, your idea is correct and there are many ways to do it. A simple way is to start agreeing with them and then moving in a different direction. Does that make sense?

Student:

Fantastic, thank you.

Igor:

Over here.

Student:

I noticed my partner when we were having the chit chat we had a very beautiful eye contact, but then when I was putting the H+ in it she was more drifting in herself, she broke the eye contact, she was searching in her own little world.

Igor:

All I can say is congratulations; that’s what it looks like. That’s exactly what happens. Do you remember when we talked about this yesterday when he’s trying to find a way to be sociably, responsibly, access a trance state, what did he do? On occasion they’ll gaze off in the distance, but very rarely will they keep eye contact. Some people will actually sit there and go yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah... and totally lose the plot with their head nodding. At some point you might be afraid their head will fall off because it’s being over used. The more typical response when you’re getting this right, especially when you’re getting the trance rhythms sorted out is that they will often look into the distance or more typically downwards in the distance and this will be their response. They might nod and go yeah. That’s pretty much what happens. Well done.

Student:

What happens if you’re actually bored with the person?

Igor:

Then you haven’t got much H+. That’s called H-.

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Exercise This will be something a little new but should be relatively straightforward. Conversational Hypnosis Training: 1. Chit Chat 2. Chit Chat– H+ - H-Chat 3. CHC – Y (crude) 4. CHC – Y (subtle) 5. CHC – Y – N – Hijack – Y 6. CHC – Y- N – Q- Hijack – Y This is for what happens when you can’t quite Hijack the no because it’s too serious or there’s too much attached to it. What you’re going to do now is go through the same cycle to the no. You’re going to chit chat, get H+ to get hypnotic chit chat going, collect some yeses and somewhere along the line they’ll say no to you. When you get the no, just get curious about that and ask them why, what’s that about? What’s going on there, tell me more? Get them to give you information about what their objection is actually about. Once you get their reason for saying no, Hijack that. You get the idea? Then get back to the yeses. You get what we’re doing here? It will take more time for the chit chat part so we’ll double the time and do two minutes apiece. Start now… How did that go, was it fun and interesting? What kinds of questions did you ask? What kinds of responses did you get? Were there any difficulties at all? So it was relatively straight forward. Let me ask this, did anyone here ask the question why? What kinds of answers do you get when you ask the question why? Reflective, people rationalizing and reasoning it… Let’s do it this way. Exercise Conversational Hypnosis Training: 7. Test: Y-N-Why-Y-N-Q?-Y

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual I’ll give you a minute or two for this and I want you to jump right into the middle and go straight to the Yes Sets forgetting the chit chat for a moment. So Yes Sets, get a no and what I want you to do is ask why, so you can Hijack it. Go back to Yes Sets, get another no and this time ask anything but the question why. How come, what’s that about, tell me more, can you explain that, etc. and then go back to Hijacking and back to Yes Sets. Let’s do just a minute apiece so you won’t have much time to do it. I just want you to contrast how why works versus the other questions. Off you go… How did that go, was that interesting? How did the why answers compare to the other question’s answers? What kinds of things did you get? Student:

I changed why to how come and it made them go more inside to give me more information to try to ratify it.

Igor:

So when you asked how come they gave you more answers in terms of what’s going on?

Student:

It made them think more to ratify and go deeper inside to ask for answers.

Igor:

Good.

Student:

I found it appropriate to ask how come there were more choices for them. When asked why, they are stuck in only this meaning; there’s no choices with why.

Igor:

You guys are very close to the mark.

Student:

When I got the answers to why, I got an answer I couldn’t really do anything with, I didn’t feel anything and didn’t know how to continue on that one. With the other one I got more emotional responses and something that actually connected with me.

Igor:

How many people had a similar experience? This is the general rule of thumb and this is an English thing so I’m not sure how well it translates to other languages, but in English in particular, the question why is usually met with a rationalization. In other words, I’m going to commit to this position. Why are you so messed up? Oh, because of my childhood or whatever. The problem is why tends to make things more real because you’re rationalizing them. It cements them in and holds them together.

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So as a general rule, there are always exceptions to this, ask people a why question when they’re doing well. Oh yeah I’ve overcome that. Really? What are you talking about, I don’t feel like that anymore? Why? I just feel better. Why do you say that? Because every time I do it I naturally feel better. What are they doing now? They’re cementing in reasons for being different. You see the idea? You don’t want to cement in reasons for being in the problem though. What how come, and other questions like this tend to do is find out what their reasoning behind it was or what their thought process was. No, I don’t believe that. How come? Because people who believe that end up getting in trouble doing such and such. That’s something you can work with versus asking, why? Well because it’s wrong. Do you hear the difference? I’m overemphasizing it a little bit, these are tendencies, but it’s a strong enough tendency that you want to be careful when you ask why and when you ask something different. Make sense to you guys? Student:

Why is more in your face and demanding.

Igor:

Yes, that’s the nature of our culture. We tend to use why, usually with a gesture that involves a finger (pointing a finger at them). Why are you doing this wrong thing? Why often has to do with blame. Of course when you were young you never heard anything like this, why can’t you do what I tell you? Why can’t you get simple things like homework done? Why are you always making such a mess? Why are you always late? You get the kind of ideas here? There’s basically a little blame thing going on there, which adds another negative thing so people feel they have to be defensive, which is another reason why they get more locked into it, because now they’re defending a position which means they’re committed to it. Do you get the idea? Again, these are general tendencies not absolute experiences but they’re strong enough that you’ll be careful of when and where you ask a question like that. Is it making sense to you guys? Who found it more natural Hijacking the answer to something like how come, than going straight to Hijacking the no? There are times when

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Hijacking the no is just simple. In classical hypnosis, Ericksonian hypnosis the classic one is, the right arm is going to lift. That’s right I want that right arm to stay right there comfortably nestled on your lap. That’s a simple way of Hijacking it. In regular conversations you can get away with that in certain circumstances when there are looser objections, but when there’s something meaty behind it, a real reason, real experience or real objection you need to uncover that first before you can destroy the objection. You can Hijack it and then move on from that. Does that make sense to you guys? There are many ways to demolish objections this is just one. It’s simple but it’s not the only one, I’m just offering it so you have some fluency. Hopefully it will help you stay in H+ when you do get a no, because then all you’re doing is finding out information and that information will lead you to a yes because there will be something within that information that you can agree with quite happily. Do you see what I mean? In this round I’ll give you two minutes apiece again. Exercise Conversational Hypnosis Training: 8. CHC – Y (N) – LS & PW [CHC = Chit Chat – H+ - H-Chat] [Y(N) = Yes Sets, IF you get a “No” then Hijack it] [LS = Language Softeners] [PW = Power Words] You’ll start the same way with chit chat, at some point you can switch on your H+ and go into more hypnotic conversation like before. Then you can start collecting your yeses. At some point, which is going to be interesting for you, your partner may or may not say no to you. If they do say no, default into your Hijacking process whether you’re asking a question or not. It doesn’t matter, it depends on what seems natural. If they don’t say no then there’s nothing to Hijack so just keep collecting yeses. Make sense? The thing I want you to weave into this as well is your Language Softeners and Power Words. You’ve already been using them in the exercises anyway so now I want to emphasize that a little more. Language Softeners – perhaps, maybe, possibly, Power Words… because, and, therefore, and so, which means, etc…

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We’ll be loading it up with our language. In that case let’s add one little thing to make it more interesting shall we? I’d like for you to start your chit chat on the topic of how confident they will be when they go home, using hypnosis in their daily life. Wouldn’t that be an interesting chit chat to have? Off you go… How did that go, was it interesting? Who’s starting to feel that there’s some juju happening in the room? Who’s finding their hypnotist is pretty engaging, like wow I like listening to them? Student:

I was asked if I would use all the techniques I learned here in normal life and there was this shot in my head like, oh, oh, oh, oh, yes.

Student:

Just an observation… I’ve noticed no matter how hard I try I can’t get a no and I’m doing things completely off the wall to try and get one but it’s not working. I’m getting agreements all the way through. It’s bizarre.

Igor:

I guess you’ll have to look forward to going home again and actually going with real people saying come on people stop me, somebody stop me, I’m unstoppable.

Student:

The thing about this is it’s starting to be lots of fun. I’m enjoying the exercises, which I think means we’re getting better at them and relaxing.

Igor:

You’re really starting the get the gist of these things. That’s the whole idea of this.

So that wasn’t anything particularly new except for adding the little how part into the equation, but we’re just recapping all the stuff you’ve already done and drilling it in. Notice how much simpler it seems now compared to a few days ago. Doesn’t it seem like, oh yeah, straightforward, no big deal? That’s because you both have options and unconscious learnings. Isn’t that interesting? Exercise The next one is simple, same as you did before…

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Conversational Hypnosis Training: 8. CHC – Y (N) – LS & PW 9. CHC – Y (N) – LS/PW – TT [TT = Trance Themes] chit chat, H+, hypnotic chit chat, yeses, possibly a no if it comes up or not it doesn’t matter, Language Softener and Power Words. In this exercise I want you to add in lots of Trance Themes around confidence and using hypnosis. Just emphasize the trance theme element and how they will feel apart from being confident as a result of being able to have all these skills. Get the idea? Off you go… You seemed to be having a good time with that. Isn’t it getting easier? Think about how much you’re doing, you’re having a chit chat, using different styles of H+ to switch on inside yourself. You’re making eye contact, using Language Softener, Power Words, Trance Themes and collecting all kinds of different yeses. You’re prepared for a no to turn it around and Hijack it. It’s a lot of stuff you’re doing isn’t it? Doesn’t it seem easy? Exercise Let’s add another one, which you’re already doing anyway, we’re just going to formalize it. Conversational Hypnosis Training: 8. CHC – Y (N) – LS & PW 9. CHC – Y (N) – LS/PW – TT 10. CHC – Y (N) – LS/PW/TT – PB [PB = Piggy Back Principle] All this here is the same as you did a moment ago. The only extra bit we’re going to add here is the Piggy Back Principle. Move them towards a more improbable idea around the idea of being confident using this stuff than where you started from. You’ll start with little things they’re more likely to agree with and then you’ll go towards plausible things where they go yeah I can be confident there and you’ll end up with absolutely improbable things they’d normally say no to but today seems like yeah you’re right, I don’t know why you’re right, but you are. Again, two minutes apiece and focus on the Piggy Back side of things, but everything else still counts. Off you go…

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How did that go? Student:

It seems in the last few exercises I’ve had to make no conscious decisions whatsoever in attaining H+, I just started talking and it just appears.

Igor:

That’s how it’s supposed to happen. If you have to make too much of an effort it won’t happen because you have to actually think about it and by the time you’ve done it, it’s like oh, where’s he gone?

Student:

And I don’t even have to think about adding what you said to add, it’s just going outside from me, just like that. Before, about 3 or 4 exercises ago it was like thinking oh, if I’m able to add this and add this and add this and now it’s just flowing.

Igor:

Perfect.

What you are beginning to discover is another little secret, which is when you’re in the Hypnosis Room your conscious mind does have an involvement and a purpose. Your job is to merely intend an outcome and your unconscious minds job is to select the correct tools and the correct sequence to make that happen. So, if you have to think about what to do then you’re missing the point. If you are busy doing stuff and you think, you know what, this is going down the wrong path I need them to agree with me a little more and suddenly off you go down the path of Hijacking or asking questions or whatever. Do you get the idea? So the tools you’ve been developing over the past few days you’re now actually using more fluidly.

Hot Words Before we go to the next round I’d like for you to add one more piece to your language that will be useful to you. I’m going to present this to you in a way that’s harsh because it allows you to really sense a contrast more clearly, is that okay? So I warn you I’m going to present to you an idea that’s unpleasant because it will help you to make a contrast. What is the difference between these two ideas or statements?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual 1. The baby burned to death. 2. The infant perished in the flames. What’s the different? Is there any difference in the information for starters? No. It’s the same. The emotion has changed. The impact has changed, hasn’t it? Your reaction to it has changed, hasn’t it? I have more leverage with one than the other, depending on what type of reaction I need to have out of you. Would that be fair to say? What is different in my language between the two? How blunt I am. Both are pretty blunt. I’ve described the scene, saying the words that are common to most people. Emotive words. You guys are all right, let me present the idea to you this way. I call the first set of words Hot Words because they’re emotive and have a lot of emotional energy, they’re very charged and loaded. What makes them so loaded? Think of it this way, who uses a word like infant, a five year old or fifty year old? A 50 year old, right? Who will use a word like baby, a five year old or a fifty year old? Both. So Hot Words tend to be those words that you learned earliest and as a result two things have happened. 1. A word is just a sound and means nothing until you’ve associated meanings to it. Does that make sense? You’ve had longer to associate meanings to the word baby than to the word infant, there’s just a lot of big history there. 2. As a rule children tend to feel more intensely than adults. We actually have emotional shields we’ve built as we grow up. It’s now always the case. As a general rule children feel more intensely than adults, which means the associations they make to words at that age tend to be more intense also. Make sense? 3. Third, we tend to emphasize the emotional aspects because of the first two reasons, we will unconsciously select words like baby when talking to each other when we want to evoke an emotion and we’ll unconsciously use words like infant when we are wishing to protect ourselves from an emotion. There are certain professions that specialize in this like the medical profession. Do they take a knife, stab it into someone’s chest and cut them open? Essentially they do don’t they? A surgeon gets a saw and just breaks in, sometimes even using a hammer to chip away at the breast plate and yanks it open. Think about the images I’ve left inside your

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual mind right now, as opposed to - a skilled surgeon making an incision with a scalpel or using a surgical instrument to spread the chest cavity. Right? You feel very different to both types of language don’t you? Hopefully this makes you very sensitive to the idea of language. The one I want you to get particularly sensitive to, to start using now is the idea of Hot Words. Where are you most likely to find Hot Words in America? The tabloid press, in particular the lower end of the tabloids the better. Here in the UK we used to have a great 80s headline, Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster, remember that one? Children’s books is another one because they’re written with a vocabulary designed for the younger age group. In the U.S. as well as here, there’s a magazine tabloid thing called The National Enquirer and it only uses Hot Words, which has one of the highest circulations; it’s because it’s easy to read. As a rule if it’s easy to read then it’s written in Hot Words, which is why books written for younger audiences tend to have a simpler vocabulary. I believe the guy who wrote Dr. Seuss, Cat In The Hat wrote it because he had a challenge with his editor to write a book using only 150 words to write an entire story. There’s another one that was a follow up, which he wrote on the challenge that he couldn’t write an entire book using only 50 words, but he did. I want you to think about Hot Words like baby, words like love, words like want, versus desire. Kids say I want this they don’t say, oh mother I desire another thing to play with. Some kids might but not most. So you get the idea of Hot Words? Exercise So for this exercise C to B basically means everything from chit chat to H+ to hypnotic chit chat, to getting your Yes Sets, getting a few no’s if they come up, to your Language Softeners, Power Words, Trance Themes and finally your Piggy Back, which is what the B stands for. Conversational Hypnosis Training: 11. C-B – Hot Words [C-B = Chit Chat, H+, H-Chat, Language Softeners, Power Words, Trance Themes, Piggy Backing]

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual All this is extrapolated in our C to B, we’ll forget A for now, and then I want you to focus on filling your two minutes with as many Hot Words as you can come up with. Some of you are like what do I do now? Hands up if you fall into that position? It’s understandable. May I give you a secret Jedi mind trick that will make this easy for you? Yes? About four people said yes, they can just come up and the rest of you can go do the exercise. The secret to this is your Personal Trance Theme, the more emotion you can generate with that the more naturally you will select a vocabulary that will match it. Does that make sense? The other version of this is, imagine there are two people sitting in front of you in the chair. There’s an adult person in the chair and if you look deep enough inside of them you’ll see a little five-year old boy or girl there, talk to that one and you’ll find your vocabulary automatically adjusting. Note: I don’t mean that you talk baby talk like this… (talks baby talk) that would be one year and below, [laughter] we’re looking for the age range of 5-10 years. Do you understand the exercise? Two minutes apiece. Off you go… Did you enjoy that? Do you notice how the emotion spikes more when you change your language like that? It’s useful to be able to decipher between different language styles but I find particularly the Personal Trance Themes when you get very emotional, your language changes and the other one, imagining the child version inside them is useful as well. In particular, when current thinking at least, assumes that the reasoning levels of the unconscious mind is roughly that of a 7-year old child, which is when Critical Factor type thinking begins forming. Exercise The final exercise, before we do the final exercise [laughter] is very simple. Everything we’ve done so far including the Hot Words, just throw in a revivification, and all within two minutes - each. Conversational Hypnosis Training: 12. C-B-HW – Revivify [HW = Hot Words]

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Are you ready? Good. Off you go… How was that folks? Interesting? What have you learned from this session? Have you learned anything from this session? Student:

I just want to say thank you, really, because for me it’s a little bit like jazz or jamming. Just knowing that you have all the pieces and new stuff comes up, ideas, metaphors, stories naturally flow in amongst the other components. So really, I’ve really enjoyed both giving and particularly receiving it. It’s like being in a mind spa, wonderful.

Igor:

That’s awesome. Yes, give him a round of applause.

[applause] Student:

Yes, it’s getting really easy to do everything.

Igor:

Is everyone else finding it easy to start doing this stuff, you don’t even think about it anymore, you’re just having a chat, your intentions start with doing H+, your Hypnotic Room starts filtering in all these tools and you just do what’s appropriate given the conversation and where it’s at.

Student:

Everything just slides in like numbers, all by itself. There’s becoming a couple of more Bruce Lee’s around here. Thank you very much.

Igor:

I look forward to it.

Student:

I’m thinking about what I’ve learned and the metaphor about the jamming was just great because what I got is that if you’re trying to get through to somebody, you can force it through like dynamite on a log jam, or you can just start pulling pieces apart and doing it a different way and let the river flow and take it through.

Igor:

I think that’s a great metaphor. Why put the effort in of trying to move the whole log jam at once when you can let it dissolve bit by bit. Thank you for that. Let’s take lunch.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

DVD 11 – Framing, Re-Framing & “The Unconscious Blitz”

Frame Control Welcome back everyone, how was lunch, good? There are a couple of things I want to do before we finish up today. The first one is to talk about the idea of Frame Control. There are essentially three kinds of frames that I want to talk to you about today. There are lots of different ways of dealing with Frame Control, but the three that I want to talk about are: Framing: 1. Preframe 2. Reframe 3. Deframe First of all, let’s have a little chat about what I mean by Frame Control. How do you understand what something means? I’ll report to you the content of a conversation and see if you can make meaning of it. Will you? No. Do you have any idea what’s going on there? There’s no context is there? Without knowing the context, you have no idea what it means. Let’s imagine that we have two guys standing in a bar, one is holding a bottle and shaking it a little bit and saying will you, and the other guys says no. Do you understand what’s going on now? Let’s try another version. Let’s say there’s a couple in a restaurant and the dessert trolley comes past and the waiter says will you and they say no. That’s a different scenario. Here’s another scenario. There’s a man on his knees with a little box opened and says will you? Heart breaking, isn’t it? [laughter] Just think about this. The exact same conversation means totally different things based on what context, what frame you put around it.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Here’s another example, this is from the home study course. You’re driving a car and you’re at a red light, and you hear a siren and in your rearview mirror you see an ambulance with its lights on. It goes zooming past you right through the red light. How do you feel about that? You feel normal. To contrast this, in the wake of the ambulance, the wake made after the ambulance drives through there’s a guy in his red Ferrari with his trophy wife sitting next to him, blonde hair streaming in the wind, rock and roll playing on the car stereo, and he goes through the same red light right behind the ambulance. How do you feel about that? Good, right? It’s like good on you, well done, that’s it, break the law. It’s the same event but a different interpretation. Let’s see if we can do some Frame Control about those events, and see if we can change your emotional reaction. The ambulance as it’s speeding through the light and you see the back door swing open and there are a bunch of students in the back getting drunk and partying. They just stole the ambulance for fun. Does that change your reaction? What if I tell you that the wife of the man driving the Ferrari is pregnant and she fell down some stairs. He’s rushing her to the hospital to save the baby. Have you changed your opinion of the whole thing? Who’s getting a sense that controlling the frame in a conversation might be of importance? The three kinds of frames that I’d like to introduce you to here today are preframes, reframes and deframes.  A preframe is basically a frame that you present before the information so that the information itself is interpreted in relationship to it. When I gave you that little scenario of the man on his knees with a little box in his hands that’s open, that’s creating a frame for you isn’t it? It’s a cultural frame. If you say that to someone who grew up in the jungles of South America, it might not mean the same thing to them, but you’ve made a leap, a conclusion as to what the context of that situation is and so the actual words mean something different. Preframes are anything that you say ahead of time to color or transform the way that someone will understand something.  A reframe is something that you do after the effect when it’s already gone wrong.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual  A deframe is particularly interesting in my opinion because you make the problem irrelevant. It’s kind of like a reframe but rather than actually changing their opinion of it, it just becomes irrelevant. I’d like to give you some examples of this. Let’s take the idea of a preframe. Let’s say you’re selling houses. Here’s an example of a preframe: What kind of neighborhood are you looking for? Are you looking for something for a budget but not necessarily too nice, or are you looking to spend some money for the quality of place that you’re looking for? They’ll say we’re on a budget today, or I’m looking to spend money for a quality place. Whichever they choose, they’ve preframed themselves haven’t they? If they now go into a house and say I don’t like this very much, you’ll say you chose the budget for it. This is what comes with the territory. Similarly, if they go to the nice area and say this is a great house but it costs too much, you’d say I thought you said you wanted to spend money on a nice place, or do you want to go to the other end of town? Do you get the idea? In a reframe, you’re going to change their perception of the event. This is something that NLP has a nice description of. There are two reframes that NLP likes to make a distinction of: 1. Context reframes. 2. Meaning reframes. There are different ways of doing this, but these are very useful ways of looking at it. You don’t have to remember the labels. What’s important is the general idea. In a context reframe, you basically change the context to find out, where would this actually be useful? Here’s an example of a context reframe. This is from one of the NLP books: A father comes in to see a therapist and says you’ve got to change my daughter. She’s far too willful and stubborn. The therapist says you’re right. You should bring her here straightaway so that we can fix her so that when she’s 16 years old and

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual sitting in the back of a car with a young man, she’ll do exactly what she’s told. [laughter] You can hear the reframe there, right? He can’t quite look at her stubbornness in the same way anymore, can he? Here’s an example of a meaning reframe. Again this is from the Annals of NLP, which again is a very nice example of it. This was back in the 1970’s when they had shag carpets that were a pain to maintain. A woman is obsessed with having the perfect shag pile carpet with all the strands going the right way, and she’s getting infuriated when her family walks on it and leaves footprints on it because she’s spent hours hovering this thing. She’s infuriated by it. The therapist leads her through a nice visualization – you see the perfect house and there’s your carpet and it’s beautiful. Every little hair is in the right direction and it’s all perfectly angled. There’s not a footprint in sight, and that means that everyone you love has gone. (Ouch) So why not put a few footprints on there to let you know they’re home? Can you feel the impact of the reframe? Do you understand the nature of reframes? A deframe basically makes the objection of the idea irrelevant. It’s very useful in therapy but it’s actually useful in everyday life as well. It’s just that a therapeutic example came to mind. How many therapists are in the room? You’ll probably come across this. Here’s an example of a deframe: What’s the problem? I have a fear of heights. Great, tell me a little bit about it. Then they kind of go off on a diatribe about their grandmother. In a deframe you say what is it you’re trying to work on here? Are you trying to work through your fear of heights or being more assertive with your grandmother? Which is it? I’m here for my fear of heights. So can we put the whole idea about your grandmother to one side so that we can focus on this, and then maybe come back to that at another time? You can deal with that now or you can deal with this. Which do you want? I want to deal with my fear of heights. So are you telling me that we want to put the idea of your grandmother to

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual one side so that you can actually deal with this now and then we can focus on that another time? Yes. Now they can no longer bring up the grandmother issue. Do you see how that works? You can deframe equally well in other situations. Here’s a sales example: The house is too expensive. You realize that in the neighborhood that you’ve asked for, this is the only neighborhood where you can guarantee your children’s safety. It’s up to you. Do you have a price tag on your children’s safety? It’s a harsher version, I understand, but you get the idea. The idea of price becomes irrelevant at this point doesn’t it? Do you get the idea of these three different types of frames? Exercise I’d like you to get into different groups of 10 and we’ll work on Frame Control. Inside of your group, I’d like you to take turns coming up with a ridiculously extreme and totally implausible scenario of doom and gloom. For example: My entire family just got wiped out by pygmy monkeys. That’s an extreme situation, right? The job of the other people in your group is to reframe that in as ridiculously extreme a way as the actual problem was. For example: That’s great. At least you’ll be saving a lot of money at Christmas. [laughter] Now please, when I say extreme scenarios of doom and gloom, I mean totally unrealistic ones. Please do not have any real content in there from your own life. I want something extreme like aliens ate my hamster. Off you go. How was that? Was it fun? Was it easy to do? Are you getting a sense of the principle behind this? Not all reframes will happen instantly and be instantly accepted, but what if you were to produce the reframes as part of your Yes Sets and your Hijacking process when the word no comes up? When a problem comes up, isn’t that an indirect way of saying no?

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Exercise What about this idea of preframing? What I’d like you to do now is take one of those scenarios that they gave you, and knowing that someone is likely to bring up that objection or that problem, I’d like you as a group to brainstorm. How can I present my reframe before they even say anything about this crazy situation so that they can’t even bring it up because it just becomes almost irrelevant? Think about what you can say to introduce the topic so that if someone did have their family tragically massacred by pigmy monkeys, they wouldn’t bring it up. Allow me to give you an example of this in a more mundane sort of way. I learned this from a stage hypnotist doing a talk on hypnosis some years ago, and he had a great opening presentation where he said something to the effect of: You know folks, people have all kinds of strange ideas about what hypnosis is and what suggestions are. Many are surprised to find out that the ideas they cherish the most are absolutely wrong. Just take a step back. Think about what I’ve just said. Basically I’ve said, I’m about to say something about suggestions. If you agree with me, you’re wise and you’re correct. If you disagree with me, you’re incorrect and a little bit stupid. Who wants to take the risk of disagreeing with me now? That’s essentially the frame that he presented. Do you understand the idea of preframing? Pick one of the more extreme scenarios and brainstorm how you can introduce the topic where if someone did have that problem, you’d present it in such a way that they can no longer bring it up. Off you go. That was an engaging activity to think about preframes wasn’t it? Let me give you two methods for preframing. One is easier but not as eloquent. The other one requires more thought but it’s actually more eloquent and more effective because of it. The first method of preframing is: 1. Reframing before it’s happened. The idea is that you basically bring up the objection yourself so that you can handle it in a way that you need to.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual The classic one is: I’m about to take you to a very expensive area here. Tell me now if you can’t afford a house in a nice area. I’ve put it a bit more bluntly so that it’s more obvious, but the idea is that once we get there it’s too late for you to start moaning about the price, essentially. Let’s talk about the Christmas presents example. The blunt version of it might be if you happen to not have a family because they got murdered by pygmy monkeys, just consider the fact that Christmas will be a lot easier for you now. I’m literally reframing it before they have a chance to actually bring it up themselves. Remember, we’re doing this in the context of a ridiculous scenario. Hence, we’re trying to make it funny. Someone give me a problem. Let’s take the idea that a meteorite hit my house and my whole family is dead. Great, not only will you save money on taxes on your house but money on Christmas too. That might be the reframe. If you’re going to use that idea as a preframe, you might say something like: Welcome to the meteorology association. If you’re lucky enough to have had your house destroyed by a meteor, just consider the fact that (a) you’re going to be in the records books because it happens very rarely; (b) you’ll save a ton of money on taxes; and (c) if your family was inside, you’ll be saving a ton of money at Christmas too. Realize that we’ve chosen an extreme situation in order to be able to give an extreme and ridiculous reframe so that it requires very little skill at this point. I wouldn’t ask you to do this in the real world. When someone’s family gets wiped out by a meteorite, you’re not going to go into an instant reframe like this. I hope you realize this is not how it works. This is purely an exercise to get you thinking along the lines of how to take a situation and turn it on the other side. For real issues, it will require a little more subtle thinking, but how on Earth are you going to get to the point of refining it to subtle thinking if you haven’t grasped the concept on a more gross level? Do you get the idea? I encourage you to take a problem that is ridiculous to the extreme. 1. If you’re not laughing at a problem because of how ridiculous it is, you haven’t got the right problem.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual 2. Your reframes should be equally ridiculous. Earlier on you were laughing quite happily about them. That’s exactly the way it should be. 3. Your preframes should be just as ridiculous as your reframes were. In fact you could be using them. In other words, if there’s no amusement value in terms of the exercise, you’re missing the point. You’re just getting used to the structure in terms of how to move frames from one reference point to another whilst you’re totally finding the content irrelevant. Otherwise you’re asking yourself to do too much to start with. Do you get the idea? Exercise In your groups, I’d like you to come up with a ridiculous idea again. Take turns coming up with ridiculous reframes, and once you find one that you find particularly enjoyable, see if you can convert that reframe to a preframe by bringing up the objection yourself and reframing it before the other person has a chance to do it. Off you go. Who’s having a good time? Did you enjoy that? Having fun with this is going to get you much further than taking it too seriously to start with. You just want to get used to the feel of maneuvering around different ideas like this. Exercise The final exercise in this series that I want you to play with is this. This is deframing. Remember, in deframing we’re making the problem irrelevant. I’ll give you a real world scenario. This happened to my brother some years ago. He was driving along and got into a minor traffic accident, like a fender bender. The woman whose car he hit was furious. She came out with fire spitting out of her mouth and claws ready to scratch. She was ready to really do some kind of emotional damage. Quick as a flash, he gets out of the car and he looks at her all concerned and says oh my God, are your children okay? She stops in her tracks, looks in the car, looks back and says, yes they are thank you. They exchanged details and it wasn’t necessarily a pleasant situation, but all the furor that was about to ensue was totally diffused. Do you get the concept of a deframe? You’re making the problem irrelevant.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Spend two minutes in your groups with a ridiculous problem, but figure out a way to essentially deframe it so that the problem is irrelevant, but not that its context or its meaning has changed. Off you go. Who has more of a sense of how Frame Control works now? Have fun with this. Play this game on your own. Take the time to play the ridiculous version of this game because what you’re doing is you’re creating a mental mindset that starts switching information around to look at it in other ways and also anticipates problems and figures out ways ahead of time to deal with those problems before they arise in order to inoculate against them. This is a very useful thing. Preframing in particular is one of the most useful tools in your toolkit as a Conversational Hypnotist because it allows you to avoid problems before they even begin. It’s totally invisible if you do it well. To finish up the training, I want to give you one last hypnotic process that I think you’ll enjoy. In order to do this, I’m going to ask you to find one person in your group to work with, and you’ll be working with them for several cycles. Think of deframing as a special kind of reframing in which you’re making the problem basically irrelevant. In reframing you’re looking at the problem in another way, but still within the context of the problem. In deframing, it no longer exists. The masters of deframing are politicians because they’ll never answer the question you’ve asked them. They’ll answer the questions that they wish you had asked them. Let’s say someone has an agenda of pushing education and during an interview you ask them what are you going to do to fix the economy? They’ll say what you need to understand is that the economy is made up of people, and we need to fix our educational system because then we’ll have the right kind of people doing the work, so let’s address the educational system because that’s really where the problem is at. He’s basically reframing the idea of the economy going to pot by deframing it and making it irrelevant and refocusing it on something that’s more relevant in his eyes, which is education. It’s just another type of reframe, but it’s important enough to separate out because you’re really making the objection irrelevant.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

Unconscious Blitz Training Exercise So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to spend literally 10 or 20 seconds chatting to each other, just as we did before lunch. Off you go. Easy to do, right? You’ve been here before. Exercise Now we’re going to be moving the Yes Set’s around a little bit. I don’t want you to switch your H+ on yet, although you can start doing a little bit if you want. Whilst you’re having a chit chat, I want you to test the mindset of your partner by looking for unconscious yeses and how easy they are to get. Not the conscious ones, although you can throw in some of those as well. You’re testing for compliance. How willing are they to follow along with you when you give information? Don’t make the information extreme. Just get a sense of whether this person is being a little bit cantankerous, a little bit resistant or a little bit difficult to talk to; or is it smooth and easy and are they generally an agreeable person. You’re testing their mindset to see how active their Critical Factor is. In here after three days of hypnosis, chances are that they’re going to be pretty compliant. However, you still want to get used to this idea of doing these tests as part of your conversation so that you’ll know what you’re going to focus on. Does that make sense to everyone? Let’s just spend 30 seconds apiece. You’re still engaging in chit chat, so you’re going backwards and forwards. It’s just that you’re the one doing most of the testing right now, and after 30 seconds the other person will be doing most of the testing. Off you go. Are you noticing relatively subtle things as to whether or not they’re agreeing with you? You might notice a change in their facial expression, a little change in terms of their tonality or how easily they let you interrupt. These are all compliance tests.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Exercise The next level is, once you’ve got enough compliance and you’re satisfied that their Critical Factor is not at a high level, you can switch on your H+. Unconscious Blitz: 1. Chit Chat 2. Test (compliance/CF) 3. H+ Gaze – H-Chat At this point, I want you to lock eye contact and keep eye contact. If they look away, that’s fine but you’re still looking at their eyes even if they happen to be looking up. After that, continue with the H-Chat, it’s still Chit Chat but with a more hypnotic quality. I’m going to give you a minute apiece for this. Off you go. So far it’s still easy, right? The question is what happens if your compliance tests fail? What do you do then? Are you going to switch on your H+ straightaway? You can do little bits of it, but if you do too much they’re going to critically analyze it or figure in the.. What are you doing? Why are you looking at me? That’s a risk that you run. You can turn on the H+ a little bit and kind of fractionate it; however, the thing that I recommend you do is something that you already know how to do, which is collect yeses in different ways. If someone’s Critical Factor is high, you can still come up with information that they have to say yes to because it’s something they can agree with already. Unconscious Blitz: 1. Chit Chat 2. Test (compliance/CF) - Yes - Q/Hijack - Preframes/Reframes 3. H+ Gaze – H-Chat You also have the questioning Hijacking cycle. It works really well with a very small amount of H+ in terms of you’re still keeping the conversation going. You ask them about that and you find something within that to agree with, and then you go back to the yeses. The other thing you can do, which is part of what we just did a moment ago, this is where preframes and reframes become very valuable.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual Let me give you a classic example: Someone says, I can’t be hypnotized. How come? Only people with a weak mind can be hypnotized. Then you can start doing the idea of reframing or preframing. Did you know that it actually requires more intelligence to be hypnotized than not? That’s a little mind bending reframe there. Another version is if they feel a little bit cantankerous, before you start the hypnosis session you can say: A lot of people come in here and they think they can’t be hypnotized. What they don’t realize is that it happens every time. Unless you’re incapable of falling asleep and learning anything, you’ll have been in a trance before because that’s the only way you can assimilate information. Do you know what I mean by that? Did you hear the preframe going on there? In terms of reframing, one of the things that I really love to do, and it works especially well as a hypnotherapist – hence, I’ll share this one with you – is to take advantage of an incongruity in the context. Let me give you an example: You’re a hypnotherapist, a client comes in and sits down and you say, what’s the problem? They say I’m a smoker for 30 years. So are you ready to quit? Well, I don’t know if I can be hypnotized. Oh, that’s wonderful. Why on Earth did you book a session with a hypnotherapist for if you can’t be hypnotized? Can you hear the incongruity there? Well, I thought maybe it could help. Well, that part of you that thought it might help, what is the thinking behind that? If I could get to that part where I could make all these changes, it would be great. Excellent, so let’s [deframe] put the rest of you to one side for a moment and focus on that part of you, the one that made you come in here. Obviously despite the fact that you don’t believe this will work, you’re still here, so it must be pretty powerful. Do you see how we’re working with this? Can you understand the importance of preframing and reframing, and in this case deframing the incongruity of a situation? You have enough stuff there to get things going to basically start eroding the Critical Factor enough that when you get to the H+ with the more overt intense gaze but with a very

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual friendly mannerism, the less likely they are to pop out and say what are you doing? Why are you looking at me like this? Exercise Next we’re going to go right back into collecting some yeses, why, because the more the merrier. The more yeses you get, the better it will be. When I say this, you can still use all of your language skills – your Language Softeners, your Power Words and your Trance Themes. All of that will fit very nicely with the Yes Set area. Get the idea? Unconscious Blitz: 1. Chit Chat 2. Test (compliance/CF) - Yes - Q/Hijack - Preframes/Reframes 3. H+ Gaze – H-Chat 4. Yes (Language) One minute apiece, off you go. So far, so good? Exercise For the next cycle, we’re going to start at the beginning with the Chit Chat all the way through to these things. I want you to choose a specific context, a specific idea in terms of influencing. Unconscious Blitz: 1. Chit Chat 2. Test (compliance/CF) - Yes - Q/Hijack - Preframes/Reframes 3. H+ Gaze – H-Chat 4. Yes (Language) 5. PB – Preframes (confidence) [PB = Piggy Back]

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual For now, let’s make it the idea that you want your partner to feel confident to use Conversational Hypnosis when they go home. This is a simple framework. If you’d rather do something else, by all means do so but use that as your default if you can’t think of anything else to do right now. You’re going to start with the same Chit Chat and you’ll be testing for compliance but also getting some information about how they’re feeling in general. Switch on your H+, lock your gaze and start getting some yeses from them. Use your language and so on. Next I want you to work your way into the Piggy Back Principle. In particular you want to Piggy Back in ideas or preframes around the idea, in this case of confidence or whatever else would fit the situation that you have in mind. The reason I’m giving you a context is because otherwise you have no idea what preframes to make, because preframes relate to a context. I’ll give you a minute and a half for this one. Off you go. So far, so easy. Exercise I’m going to give you a little bit longer now – two minutes apiece. Have the same conversation again and go through the same steps. Still hit those steps but move through them a bit more quickly this time. This time what I want you to emphasize is I want you to revivify some positive emotion that could be of use to you in this context. I’ve given you the context of being confident with hypnosis, so the idea of confidence in general is useful here. What are they already confident in? Playing tennis, scuba diving, swimming or whatever it is. Maybe it’s to have enthusiasm and enjoying of something, or whatever emotion would support them here. However, you don’t need to make any attempt to use it yet. All you want to do is revivify it so that you can collect the Personal Trance Words, so you collect those for later use. The use of Hot Words as part of your revivification process, especially in the beginning to get them in the swing of things, might be of great value to you; or you might use the Hot Words earlier on during the preframes to kind of warm them up to the idea of more of an emotional experience. Two minutes apiece, off you go.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual We’ve done quite a bit of stuff here so far, haven’t we? Realize of course that we’re putting this together as a system for you as another way of seeing all the skills you’ve done so far. You don’t always have to use everything, but it’s another way of putting together what you’ve done in a very conversational sort of format. The bit that I’m really interested in as far as this last little piece goes is the next step. Exercise I want you to introduce the idea, just the concept of a conscious mind and an unconscious mind in a way that does two things: 1. It does not use those words. 2. It fits the nature of the conversation that you’re having with this person. Unconscious Blitz: 1. Chit Chat 2. Test (compliance/CF) - Yes - Q/Hijack - Preframes/Reframes 3. H+ Gaze – H-Chat 4. Yes (Language) 5. PB – Preframes (confidence) 6. Revivify + Hot Words - Personal Trance Words 7. Intro: Con/Unc I’ll give you an example, provided that you won’t use it. So the more examples you ask of me the less choices you have. We’ve been talking about confidence. It’s almost like there’s something in the front of your mind that wants to be confident but doesn’t know how. In the back of your mind, you’ve always had that confidence in certain places. When you’re playing tennis,[revivification] you felt the confidence that you wanted there, but it’s always in the back of your mind, isn’t it? The front of your mind and the back of your mind are metaphors to symbolize the conscious and the unconscious and there are a million others. Do you want another

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual example you can’t use? You can do this exercise and then afterwards we’ll come up with a list of things that you can do here. In order to be able to emphasize this element, I’m going to ask you to do all these other parts more quickly because you don’t have to spend as much time on them now. To ensure that you focus on this rather than the rest, we’re going to give you a minute and a half each. Off you go. How did that go? Was that easy? Was it fun? What kinds of metaphors did you get for the conscious and the unconscious minds? Consious/Unconscious: Front/Back of Mind One/Other Part Inside/Outside Awareness/Non-Awareness Logic/Emotion Knowing/Not Knowing (you know) Thinking/Knowing or Being Parts of the Brain Do you see that we’ve got a really long list of possibilities here, and there are lots of other things you can do. You have logic v intuition, you have instinct v thinking. It’s less important that you memorize this list. It’s more important that you understand the concept of how the list is created. Then you can create these metaphors that will fit any conversation that you have so that they get the sense of the idea of conscious and unconscious minds without directly having to address it. By the way, talking in terms of conscious and unconscious minds is appropriate in many contexts, but not all of them. Exercise What are we going to do with all of this? We’re going to go through this again. Unconscious Blitz: 1. Chit Chat 2. Test (compliance/CF) - Yes - Q/Hijack

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

- Preframes/Reframes H+ Gaze – H-Chat Yes (Language) PB – Preframes (confidence) Revivify + Hot Words - Personal Trance Words Intro: Con/Unc Con = Problem; Unc = Solution

You’ll Chit Chat and do some testing. Go straight to the Hypnotic Gaze, lock eye contact, and use your language, your Yes Sets and your preframes about confidence. Revivify it a little bit and introduce the idea of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind just as you’ve done. What I want you to do now is rift around the idea that the conscious mind, or whatever you had for that, is where the problem is at. The unconscious mind, or the back of the mind or whatever you use, is where the solution or the resource is. Here is a little secret that will make your life easier. Are you interested? All the stuff you learned here, is that conscious or unconscious? They may be aware of it, but they don’t know how they do it. Do you get the idea of this? It makes your life easy because the problem is already there. They’ve told you in the Chit Chat phase what the problem is. The revivification helps you with the solution. If not, you can actually throw in some other things on top of that. The last thing that you can do as part of the same step here is actually easier to do than to think about. It’s to realize that there are things you can do and there are things you can do. Sometimes you try doing things properly and they don’t come out the right way. Sometimes when you don’t even try it just happens. Isn’t it strange that sometimes just letting go makes it easier? I’m not saying that you can’t think about stuff. Thinking is an important point but when you’ve thought about it enough, that’s when it’s time to start doing something properly. You don’t really know you’re doing it properly, unless of course you just engage completely in the task that you’re doing. I realize that you may have some concerns about can I do all this stuff, keeping it organized and all that stuff. Just realize that you don’t have to do it. You can do it

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual when you don’t think. To the extent that you try it, by all means you can play with the Law Of Reverse Effect if you like, or you can enjoy it and just notice what comes out. You get the idea? I’ve overemphasized the dichotomy but you understand the pattern, don’t you? This is kind of a triple layer hypnotic voice. You have your regular Chit Chat voice, your general hypnotic voice and then you have an extra little layer on top of that, which is reserved for special instructions to the unconscious. Do you all understand the nature of the exercise? I’m going to give you two minutes apiece. Off you go. This is the final step, and this step is true of pretty much any influence process. You’ve got to check whether it worked or not. Unconscious Blitz: 1. Chit Chat 2. Test (compliance/CF) - Yes - Q/Hijack - Preframes/Reframes 3. H+ Gaze – H-Chat 4. Yes (Language) 5. PB – Preframes (confidence) 6. Revivify + Hot Words - Personal Trance Words 7. Intro: Con/Unc 8. Con = Problem; Unc = Solution 9. Expectation/Action (Small Step) You either want to check if they have some kind of a positive expectation of what’s going to happen or some kind of action. This is one of the big mistakes that people make. They ask for too much. Get them to just do a small step, something simple, something to get started with. Once they get started consciously, their unconscious mind can fill in the rest automatically. Here’s an example: Most people hate doing the dishes, washing up and so on, but if you ask them to do something simple like can you just organize the dirty dishes so that there’s a stack of plates here and forks there and so on, that’s an easy thing to do, isn’t it? Once they

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual start stacking things, they might as well start wiping them down. Now their hands are wet, so they might as well wash a couple of plates. That “might as well” factor can continue to grow, especially if you’ve been using some kind of previvification in your process to prepare them. Do you get the idea? I’d like you to quickly change partners inside your groups.

Final Freestyle Exercise Here’s the last thing you’ll do, it’s an easy one. I’d like you to spend about four minutes apiece chatting with the person. Just talk to them about what they plan to do when they go home, and then just see what happens. Off you go… How did that go? Who had fun with that? What kinds of things did you do, what kind of things did you experience, what were the surprises? Student:

I don’t know what I was doing.

Igor:

What was the result?

Student:

Really good. I was working with him and it was my interpretation it was really good, but...

Igor:

Was he good?

Student:

He was fine. He was good. He was just going through the experience that we had here and the personal experience I felt privileged that people could share with me. It was that part that I think I enjoyed the most.

Igor:

Awesome. Fantastic. Congratulations. What else did you guys notice?

Student:

I don’t want to hog the mic, but I feel this has been very, very significant and there may be certain sisters in the room that have been through a similar experience. I realized that I’ve been self hypnotizing myself in the last probably year, very negatively so. I had a very profound experience with my husband Barry down in Wicklow and I had this just expansive shift in consciousness and everything, I’m very grateful for, but the side effect unfortunately has

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual been, and I copped it when I was working with my partner, that I’ve kept using words like massive, expanding, big and I’ve been putting on weight – eating - at an alarming rate. It’s been freaking me out. And it was like ‘boom’, like oh my God, I’ve literally been making space in my body for the profound experience instead of realizing that that’s been a virtual thing, not a reality. It’s been very strange. I don’t know what to do with it yet, I’m hoping it will make a difference, but it’s been massive. Again, sorry. [laughter] It’s getting smaller, in a good way. Igor:

Good job.

Final Hypnotic Comments Whose feeling a little bit cooked now? Who enjoyed that last session by the way? Who surprised themselves with how much hypnosis came out without even trying? Do you now understand the importance of a small step rather than a large one? I could ask you to do all of this and you could do it, but if I’m just asking for a small step, you go in with the expectation that you can do it. Then all the stuff that you know will come out. Consider what this means for you when you go home. Sooner or later you’ll be going home, and probably sooner than later. When you do find yourself at home, you might reflect back on all these things that you’ve learned. Look at all this stuff. This is all in just one day. Doesn’t it seem overwhelming when you look at it consciously? But of course, you’ve been doing all this stuff without having to think about it too much, and didn’t it all come out when you had to do just one simple thing? You have a chat. Intend for something good to happen, which switches on your H+, does it not? Your tonality shifts. Your voice shifts. Your ideas shift. Your language shifts. Sooner or later you find yourself in a very intimate kind of conversation where you’re doing things and saying things that you’ve done in here and said in here, but have no plan to do so ahead of time because they fit now, not then. People are often in too much of a hurry to say what’s on their mind, instead of being now enough to use what’s on the other person’s mind as the raw materials

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual to shape a wonderful trance process, something that will influence and change them for the rest of their life. You’ve all had many interactions in here. At least one of those interactions was so pleasant or profound, or delightful or insightful that you’re happy the person influenced you in that way, are you not? You’re grateful to the person for taking the time to influence you. That’s what real influence is. When you are a force for good in the world and you help people achieve what they are trying to achieve, and if in the process you get more of what you want also, isn’t that what a win-win is all about? Isn’t that what all the people that you influence will be deeply grateful to you for having taken the time to do also? Why wouldn’t you want to influence more people if you really are this force for good? Just consider all the people that have touched your life or whose lives you have touched. Consider all those people whose lives you have yet to touch and be touched by. Realize that all you need to do is intend for something really positive to happen. That intention turns a light on inside of your Hypnosis Room – your H+. Isn’t that when your magic flows? You don’t need to know exactly what to do before you start it. It’s enough that you begin with your H+ and just have a chat, a simple conversation, like conversations that you’ve had throughout your lifetime. You can trust that your unconscious mind will find the right words, phrases, techniques, frames, tools, suggestions to transform the situation into something better. A person who uses hypnosis like that will surely look forward to each and every opportunity for them to use these skills again and again in an appropriate way, which is to say as a real force for good in other people’s lives. Really look forward to that, because when they transform, you’ll transform right along with them. That is the nature of relationships, is it not? By helping those around you lift up to the next level, you’ll be following right along with them. So by all means allow your mind to wander through the last three days that have felt like so much longer than that. The simple things: • The Trance Signals • The Language Softeners

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Power Words Trance Themes The interesting things The H+ Your Personal Trance Theme The natural rhythm The instant rapport The Hypnotic Gaze Your hypnotic voice The principles like the Agreement Principle The Yes Set The Piggy Back Principle The preframes The authority The techniques like the revivification Or the Conscious/Unconscious Dissociation you just practiced

And realize that you have a very rich repertoire of tools, techniques and abilities inside of you. Even if you were only going to use a small portion of them, your ability to influence will go far beyond anything it was in the past. Of course, you and I both know all those tools are now at the unconscious level. You’ve experienced it, have you not? Which means that just using one of them – any one, no matter how small – will throw the unconscious doorways wide open to allow everything else to come out. The only question that you need to ask yourself is, which of all these tools, techniques or ideas is the simplest or the easiest one for you to remember consciously as the door handle that lets everything else out? Doesn’t that make your life easier? With that happy thought, the only thing that remains for me to do is to thank each of all of you for taking the time to come here, and taking time out of your busy lives and busy weekends to take part in all these exercises. It’s been a lot of work you’ve done here. To actually use your enthusiasm and your energy levels to do all this because let’s face it, you’ve been working hard haven’t you? You felt your brains kind of growing. You’ll definitely feel them growing over the next week or two as things settle into place.

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The Power Of Conversational Hypnosis–Transcript Manual This seminar couldn’t have been anything near as much fun or as transformational as I hope it’s been for you if it hadn’t been for your willingness to take part in it in the way that you’ve done. I want to thank all of you for turning up. Before we go, we have a couple of other people to thank. In the back of the room we have Megan, without whose constant supervision, nothing would work. We have our assistants Steve, Jakub and Eric in the back. For the people at home, they wouldn’t have been able to watch this without the camera crew. Thank them at home too. The last person that I want to thank in absence is Cliff of course. Without his overnight, long haul marketing efforts, there wouldn’t be any seats in this room, let alone people in those seats to do a seminar with. So thank you, Cliff. Thank all of you again. Goodnight and I’ll see you next time. [Loud Applause & Standing Ovation]

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