Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

In a moment, I’m going to offer you an example of increasing response potential that will make it all perfectly clear to you.

When doing a Hypnotic induction it is useful to occasionally create a sense of anticipation and curiosity in your listener by using sentences like the one above. This serves to hold their attention even more strongly onto what you are saying. To capture their imagination.

I’ll give you an example.

When we do the main induction during the group hypnosis sessions with the John Morgan Seminars for weight loss or smoking cessation, we do a variation on Dave Dobson’s Beach Trip induction. Towards the beginning of the induction I’ll be talking about beaches and using VAK imagery to appeal to at least 4 of their 5 senses when I’ll then say something like this:

…and, if you want, 

you can also imagine something I’ve 

often fantasized about but 

never really experienced in real life

and that is this…

you can imagine 

you’ve got the beach

entirely to your self…

In traditional hypnosis inductions you can say things like,

In a moment I’ll count down from 7 to 1, and as I do, you’ll find yourself drifting deeper and deeper into a trance.

Then, of course, you do the count down.

These are just little hooks but they work really well to keep your client absorbed in what you’re saying.

Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

This language pattern is one of the most simple yet powerful patterns you’ll find.  They are “if-then” statements where the “if” part is either something they are already doing or are likely to do (and can do easily), and the “then” part is what you want them to do.

“If you can hear my voice, then you’ll relax deeply.”
“If you close your eyes, and listen to my words, then you can go into a trance.”
“If you uncross your legs and you unhold your hands, you will be ready to go into a comfortable trance state.” (notice the implicit, but unstated, “then”)

And, if you write out many examples, then you’ll become remarkably facile with these patterns. And, if you become facile with these patterns, you’ll be happy and wealthy.

Tuesday morning I was traveling from New York to Indianapolis to present a seminar. The plane was delayed and I finally arrived at the Indianapolis airport at 11:59 AM.

As is probably obvious to you, Tuesday was Barack Obama’s Inauguration and it was scheduled to happen at Noon. Fortunately for me, the TV monitors in the airport were all showing the broadcast. I stopped to watch and listen to Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma play a musical selection. The musicians finished playing and Dianne Feinstein asked everyone to rise for the Swearing in ceremony. Then, as Chief Justice Roberts and Barack Obama approached the podium for this historic inauguration, the most amazing thing happened.

Every person in that part of the airport, people who might have been there for hours, just waiting there watching the TV in that airport stupor, EVERYONE STOOD UP! Right there in the terminal! I was shocked. I quickly took out my cell phone and snapped this photo. It’s not the best picture but it shows a few people gathered around the TV set. I was going to take another but the moment was over before I knew it and people sat back down again.

I admit I teared up a bit. That spontaneous act of respect and pride in their country by everyone in the terminal, both Democrat and Republican, at this historic moment was a rare and beautiful thing. I have no doubt we all wish him every success. We need it bad.

Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

They were speaking ambiguities
So far we’ve covered three of the four different categories of ambiguities. We have looked at phonological, scope and punctuation ambiguities. Today we examine the last category.

Syntactic Ambiguities are sentences in which it is unclear who refers to what. What is the modifier modifying? There are actually two types of syntactic ambiguity.

The first type is when is when you add “ing” to a verb and put it in front of a noun. (verb + ing + noun)

Milk + ing + cows … “They were milking cows.”

The sentence, “they were milking cows,” could be understood to mean that those fine animals over there are a particular type of cow. They were milking cows. Or the sentence could mean that them thar farmers were in the act of extracting milk from their domesticated bovine… “They were milking cows.”

“Running lights can be hazardous.”

“They were inspiring musicians.”

The famous example from Bandler and Grinder’s book The Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., vol I.: “Hypnotizing Hypnotists can be tricky.”

The other form of syntactic ambiguity arises with nominalizations.
Some words can be used as a verb or a noun.
“…the touch of her hand…”
To touch is a verb. Putting a “the” in front of it nominalizes it into a noun. Add it to another noun and you have a delightful ambiguity. Is the speaker referring to the act of touching a woman’s hand or a woman touching someone’s hand?

“…the feeling of leather…”
Is the speaker referring to the act of feeling leather or to the emotions leather feels. (If so, that would make this a Selectional Restriction violation, too, a pattern we’ll cover more later. Selectional Restriction violations are phrases like “the happy chair” or “the proud gates.”

Finally… 
Ambiguities can be quite humorous and humor has great theraputic effects.
“After the Novocain took effect on his infected left molar, Bob was feeling all right.”
“It was Christmas Eve and we were all feeling Merry.” (How did she feel about that?)

Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

A scope ambiguity is a sentence in which it is unclear and, therefore, open to interpretation, how much a verb or adverb or adjective refers to; what is the scope of its reference.

It is very often a sentence with an “and” connecting two objects, where the first object has an adjective and the second one does not.

modifier object 1 and object 2

“Look at the nice men and women.”

Does the adjective “nice” refer to the men and the women or just the men? Maybe those particular women are less than nice.

She was quickly showering and dressing.

Was she showering quickly and dressing quickly, or was she taking her time dressing?

They were captivated by the brilliant lecture and illustrations.

Robert found the meal perfectly seasoned and cooked.

When doing hypnosis carefully speak and listen to your clients.

In the sentence “I wonder how soon you’ll discover that you are sitting, listening to the sound of my voice, relaxing in the chair and drifting deeply into a trance?” the verb “discover” could refer to the whole sentence or just what comes before the “and.” (If it refers to the whole sentence then everything before the “and” is presupposed.)

And, if a person claims, “I am a Certified Master-Practitioner and Trainer,” be wary. They could mean they are certified as just one or both. And by the way, I am a certified Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP.

Really.

Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

More Ambiguities
Ambiguities are words or phrases that can have more than one meaning. The mild confusion that results is conducive to developing trance. There are four basic categories of ambiguities. In today’s post we’ll look at the type that has already been talked about in comments about phonological ambiguities…Punctuation Ambiguities

Punctuation Ambiguities are Siamese sentences…sentences that are joined at the hip. They rely on “pivot words.” Words that function as the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next sentence.

Look at the following example.
“Many People wear a Watch how easily and quickly you can go into trance.”
Here we really have two sentences:
“Many people wear a watch” and
“Watch how easily and quickly you can go into trance.”
We just join the two together via the pivot word, “watch.”

It is also an ideal way to deliver an embedded command, because the second sentence can be a directive, as in the above example. Therefore, when speaking the sentence, remember to shift your tonality… “Many People wear a Watch how easily and quickly you can go into trance.”

“In addition to a watch many a man will wear a Tie in this idea to the others that came before.”

“She sold sea shells down by the See how comfortable you can be at the sea.”

Please note: there is nothing necessarily special about pivot words. In our examples above the word functioned as a noun for the first half of the sentence and as a verb in the second half (which made it very convenient for embedded command use), but it doesn’t have to be that way. Essentially, any word can do the job. It doesn’t even have to make sense, logically. Remember, confusion is conducive to trance. As for instance - the following example: “The director shouted at the actors to take their Place for everything and everything in its place.” No embedded command there, but certainly it would be confusing to the listener. It could work nicely as part of a larger trance induction.

Here is a small list of words easily used as pivot words because they can act as both a noun or a verb. Notice how many of these pivot words are also Phonological Ambiguities.

Watch, Tie, Sea/See, Hear/Here, Feel, No/Know, Through, Bye/By/Buy, Change, Bee/Be, Break, Coast, Move, Change, Believe, Crave, Decide, Experience, Drape, Frame, Places, Realize, Respect, Feedback, Think, Bank, Cast

Exercise: It may seem harder than it actually is. Here’s a way you can practice getting good at it: Take the words in the above list one by one. Write a sentence that ends with one of the words. Could be about anything at all, but it ends with the word you’ve chosen. Then write another sentence that starts with that same word. Then say them together, but only use the word once. When you get to the pivot word, pause ever so slightly before the word and then just speak as if you are saying the second sentence naturally.

I’ll do one more right off the top of my head here. No editing.

Take the last word on the list, “cast.”

1st sentence: The aspiring actor hoped to join the cast.

2nd sentence: Cast off those old beliefs that have bound you to the past.

Together: “The aspiring actor hoped to join the.. Cast off those old beliefs that have bound you to the past.”

Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

Ambiguities
Ambiguities are words or phrases that can have more than one meaning. The mild confusion that results is conducive to developing trance. There are four basic categories of ambiguities at which we’ll be looking starting with…

Phonological Ambiguities
Phonological ambiguities are words that sound the same but have different meanings and can be used in very different ways. 

Here are some examples: not/knot, here/hear, see/sea, right/write.

Here are some examples of how those examples might be used in sentences:

“I have a knot question. Will you not progress faster by sailing at 20 knots rather than railing about how you should not sail at all? Do you know knots or do you know not?”

“I can hear the sea in this shell. Can you see this shell here?”

“… and as you listen to my voice… and relax your thoughts… exercise your right… to just listen… right here… right now… to that that is right… for you… too… hear… the words that… it would be all right… to write down… all those thoughts… that are all right… for you… right down to your bones…” (etc.)

And, you know, it would be all right for you to write and practice these patterns every day, because you want to master these skills, right?

Now you can really have fun with these “funny-logical” patterns, won’t you? 

How will you FEEL in 2009?

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”                                                                      - Abraham Lincoln

In Dan Millman’s book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, the character Socrates teaches Dan that a Peaceful Warrior learns to be “unreasonably happy.” That is, he masters the ability to be happy without having to have a reason for it, just because he knows how and makes the choice.

NLP provides us the same ability… but I’m jumping ahead here.

Most people go through life in exactly the opposite way. They  think to themselves, “if only I had a million dollars, then I’d be happy.” Or “If only I was successful, then I’d be feel good about myself.” So they buy lottery tickets, they strive for the next, best new thing, a bigger boat, the fanciest watch, the hottest girlfriend, whatever. But a curious thing happens, when they get that thing, oft-times their happiness is fleeting. They are happy for a while, but soon return to the level of happiness that is normal for them. It is even common, in fact, for lottery winners to become less happy after the initial surge of happiness wears off than they were before winning. 

Seems most people operate at a certain baseline of happiness and they tend to come back to that baseline, no matter what it may be. Some people even seem incapable of happiness, almost like they are only happy when they are unhappy.

So what I’m suggesting is that we take a tip from ol’ Abe, and make up our minds to be happy… or to be content or proud or passionate or whatever emotions you would choose. I’d like to propose that, this new year, we make a different sort of resolution, not to resolve to DO something (like finally lose that weight) but this year resolve that you’ll FEEL differently.

Remember the story of The Christmas Carol, and how Ebenezer Scrooge became such a happy and loving, generous man? Why did that happen? Because three NLP experts  visited him in the middle of the night and assisted him in seeing things differently. Nothing had changed for him in his external circumstances. The ONLY thing that changed was his viewpoint. He was given the gift of appreciating what he already had.

Joni Mitchell once sang “Don’t it always seem to go, that we don’t know what we got til its gone?” We don’t have to let that happen, do we Ebenezer?

What are some of the skills NLP offers us to feel good now? I’m confident most readers of this blog are well versed in all the different means at your disposal to accomplish this, but just in case you stumbled onto this page and read this far without a full complement of NLP skills at your fingertips I’ll name a few.

Clearly, anchoring is the primary skill you’ll find useful for this purpose. If Pavlov could create a stimulus-response relationship in dogs between food and a ringing bell, we can set anchors in ourselves to feel good at the drop of a hat. And you could make it so you feel even better when you pick the hat back up again. 

Ever done a firewalk with Tony Robbins? When’s the last time you made your powermove? Ever done a “Circle of Excellence?” When’s the last time you stepped into that circle? 

What if you stopped to realize that you can feel like a million bucks ANYTIME at all and all you have to do is DECIDE to do it now? Would you? What stops you?

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

If you were to decide, nay to RESOLVE to feel good in 2009, what would that mean to you? Would you resolve to be happy, no matter what? How about blissful? Centered? Grateful? AND, by the way, how will you feel ABOUT how you feel? Will you be grateful that you are happy? Passionate about feeling centered? Hmmm… ever think about that?

In addition to anchoring good feelings, NLP also offers the ability to reframe events and statements. It’s been said that “nothing has any meaning except for the meaning you give it.” So one person can look at a glass and say “that’s half empty,” and another person says “Hey, I ordered a milkshake!”

Seriously though, we can look at things in any number of ways, can’t we? NLP refers to this as “reframing.” The quickest way I’ve found to do this is to ask a better question. As an example - if something happens that’s less than desirable, you could ask “What’s good about this?” Or “what could be good about this?” Or “what’s another way of looking at this?” Or “how could this benefit me in the future? Or “what is here to learn?

Questions determine what we focus on, so if you ask a better question you’ll get a better answer.

Simple stuff? You knew this already? Excellent. Resolve to actually do it more often this year. Resolve to be happy. Resolve to be resolved. Resolve to be resolved about being happy. Richard Bandler has asked, “How much pleasure can you stand?” I wonder.

Ironically, shifting the New Year’s Resolution from “Doing” to “Feeling” might help us to finally accomplish those other resolutions that seem to evade us year after year after year. Albert Schweitzer once said, “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”