Lost Performative 

“Lost Performative” is a category within the meta-model in which evaluative statements (where something is judged as “good” or “bad”) don’t the identity the person doing the evaluating. A natural Meta-model response would be “Says who?”

As a meta model example, if someone said, “It’s good to eat pizza.” You might respond, “Really? Who says so?” or “According to whom?”

For our purposes as hypno-guides, when we reverse the meta model and purposefully violate the rules, we can say things like, “That’s right, trance does feel good.” The client is left to challenge the statement (”Who says trance feels good? Let me see the data supporting your claim.”) but they usually won’t. Therefore they are accepting your suggestion, expressed in the form of a presupposition.

“It’s so nice to relax, let go and let someone else do the talking for a while.”

“It’s not imperative to keep your eyes open, and you can close them, now.”

Or in a business or sales situation (you see, I haven’t forgotten you), you could say something like,

“It’s good to feel secure in a new car.”

It’s best to practice your own patterns to really own these skills. I’d strongly suggest you stop, write out several of your own that you could use this week, and use them. Use them with your clients, of course, and also throughout your everyday activities, with co-workers, friends, news boys (It’s good to stay off the grass), etc. And listen for the meta model violations in other people’s language. It’s fun!

Reverse Meta Model
In NLP the “meta model” is Richard Bandler’s and John Grinder’s name for the wellformedness conditions of the surface structure of the English language*. (*- for more on this see their book “Structure of Magic.”) It’s based on the recognition that all language has presuppositions, deletions, distortions and generalizations. The meta model was employed to expose those and enable the listener to discover the deeper structure of the sentence. The astute listener would utilize directed questions to derive the more specific meaning the speaker intends.

In Hypnosis we sometimes chose to deliberately violate these wellformedness conditions in order to be purposely and artfully vague. This enables the listener to fill in the blanks themselves and creates a more seamless and deep trance experience. Over the next few weeks we’ll examine how we can employ this “reverse Meta model” to deliver these meaningful sounding and purposely vague statements. Note that in many of the examples it would be easy to also mark out an embedded suggestion or two.

Remember: “The client must always be specific. The Practitioner? Never.”

Reverse Meta Model: Mind Reading
Mind reading is acting as if you know the internal experience of the other person.
It is often easiest and most effective to be nonspecific. For example, say “I know what you’re thinking” rather than “you are thinking about how you lost your father’s car keys when you were in the second grade.” Or “You are feeling some tension” rather than “your lower left abdominal muscles and your right adductor is in spasm.”

“I know you’re curious about hypnosis. At first people always wonder how deeply you will go into a trance now. Then they realize that however it works for you is perfect and you can just relax, and enjoy the process.

“You’ll be delighted to discover you can let that feeling of excitement spread to the far corners of your body and your mind.”

“That’s right, you’re really learning rapidly and well, deep inside.”

I can tell that you are really beginning to have fun with language, aren’t you?

Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns
We all know that words alone are only a small fraction of communication. The way those words are said constitute a much higher percentage of the communication received. In the same way, Hypnotic Language Patterns are hugely effected by the way they are said. The tonality with which they are said and the tonal shifts used to emphasize particular words or phrases (as addressed in a previous Blog post) are crucial. Also vital is the pacing and tempo of how you speak.

In today’s Blog Post we’re going to take a look at the use of…

PHRASING
In our last post we touched on Christina Hall’s exquisite use of punctuational ambiguity, but I’d like to also point out her brilliant use of phrasing.

Below we have the complete statement we quoted last week that Ms. Hall attributed to Richard Bandler. However, in the first example, we’ve altered the phrasing to be more the way most people would say it. Each phrase is essentially a complete sentence. 

Read these two examples out loud to yourself noticing what happens with the difference in how they’re phrased.

“Well, you know that you can sometimes feel confused and not know…

yet continue to learn…

because your conscious mind is very smart…

and your unconscious mind also learns in a variety of ways…

so why not let it do the work for you for a while?”

- or-

“Well, you know that you can…

sometimes feel confused and not know…yet…

continue to learn   because…

your conscious mind is very smart   and…

your unconscious mind also learns in a variety of ways  so…

why not let it do the work for you for a while?”

NOTE: Chris will vocally emphasize the conjunctions and always pays exquisite attention to the inflection of her voice. (Remember the upward inflection implies questions, a downward shift is congruent with a command, etc.)

To me, when I read the first paragraph, at the end of each line my brain gets to agree or disagree; the speaker has offered a complete thought or suggestion that I get to vote on. In the second paragraph I have no such opportunity. My imagination is captured by the speaker throughout because I’m continually wondering what’s coming next.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to experience first hand the importance of this. The issue of using Hypnosis for Pain Management was to become very personal to me, as I had elected to undergo surgery without anesthesia. In preparing for the operation my colleague and I discovered that when the suggestions were delivered as in the first example below it was less effective than when delivered as in the second.

Imagine yourself in the Operating Room, all prepped and ready to go. You hear the voice that says,

“You are deep in trance.
You will experience nothing but comfort.
You will breath easily and normally.
You will experience no discomfort.
You will have minimal bleeding.
You are floating in the middle of nowhere.

Well here’s what my brain would say at the end of each line:

“You are deep in trance. (No, not that deep really.)
You will experience nothing but comfort. (OK, I really hope you’re right about that.)
You will breath easily and normally, (Doing my best! In…out… in… out)
You will experience no discomfort, (OW! What the hell was that?!)
You will have minimal bleeding. (I’m bleeding?!)
You are floating in the middle of nowhere, (I wish! But right now I acutely aware I’m in a nightmare.)

Fortunately it didn’t come to that. While I can’t quote exactly what was said because I was in a pretty decent trance, I can tell you my experience of what was said was more like this;

“And, as you float gently down
into a deep and comfortable trance
you might find that you can
follow your breath in…and…
out. That’s right…
relaxing deeper
because you know a lot about how to
go into a trance… and
you don’t even have to try…to
listen to every word  I say…
You don’t
even have to be   here
You can go…in your mind’s eye…
To a beautiful beach… with many
beautiful… people and things
to   focus your attention
there now

Another great advantage of shorter phrases is you can create a nice rhythm with your speaking that itself facilitates trance. (This is especially true if you time the pauses to your client’s breathing.) 

Here’s an Idea:
For practice and for the fun of it, write out a script of your own and use all the different language patterns we’ve learned up to now. Now, of course, this is just for practice. You would never really do this in real life. These patterns are best used when you have a good reason to use them in the service of your therapeutic goal. But you know that, I’m sure.

In classes that I teach, I recommend to my students that they fold a piece a paper in half vertically and write your script in phrases down one side of the sheet of paper first and then down the second half.

Maybe you’ll want to do that too. Won’t you?

By the Way: We highly recommend the NLP work of Chris Hall. 

You can reach her here:  www.chris-nlp-hall.com