An article in this Tuesday’s New York Times Science section was absolutely fascinating in a variety of ways so I felt I had to bring it to your attention.

First the skinny - a recent paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association calls into question the long held belief that cancers move linearly; that a cell acquired a mutation and little by little grew from there. Mutations are not supposed to revert spontaneously. But apparently, they sometimes do. Patients sometimes have spontaneous remissions - they get better when they “shouldn’t” and sometimes without medical intervention - and this is blowing some doctors’ minds.

I’m wondering if this isn’t the first glimmer of a real sea change in our understanding of how healing happens. There have been many moments like this throughout history. Like everyone knew the earth was flat until everyone knew it wasn’t.

So it’s a very cool, very momentous development, but what’s also wonderful is this delicious moment in between paradigm shifts. . . this transition time when people’s minds are in the process of being bent and molded into new shapes - metaphorically speaking, of course.

I love it particularly from a Sleight of Mouth/Polya Patterns standpoint. How is it that people believe what they believe? At what point does a stack of evidence finally convince someone of the alternate viewpoint?

Just get a load of this amazing quote of Dr. Robert Kaplan, chairman of the department of health services at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“At the end of the day, I’m not sure how certain I am about this, but I do believe it. The weight of the evidence suggests there is reason to believe.”

Isn’t that great? How equivocal can a person be in one sentence? Is he running for office?

Maybe Dr. Kaplan needs heavier evidence. But truly, it’s probably just a matter of time before he’ll completely shift from one belief system to another. In the meantime, I hope he enjoys this remarkable, in-between, state as much as I do.

Quantifiers are words that presuppose more than one thing or idea is at play here. (only, even, except, just)

It’s not only about quitting smoking, it’s about exploring a whole world of possibilities.

With even one look at dougobriensblog.com you’ll be glad you did.

It’s not just polite that you acknowledge the sources of your materials.

Neo-Ericksonian Approaches to Psychotherapy & Hypnosis

Wherefore “Neo-Ericksonian” Hypnosis?

One of my favorite things I get to do each year is to teach Karate-style wood-breaking to an assembled group of high school juniors at an annual Rotary Club Youth Leadership Camp. It’s called RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) and I’m privileged to offer a two-hour long presentation both on how to break wood and, of course, the metaphorical value of what doing it means. The wonderful people at RYLA flatter me by saying that it is one of the high points of the kids’ experience each year, but it is certainly a high point of mine.

Now, to successfully break a board with your bare hand requires several things. One of the most important of these is to follow through. To do this you aim past the board. You imagine that your target is a few inches on the other side of the board. So, when the time comes to break it, you are not punching the board, you are punching through the board.

I call it creative lying. (It is also an integral part of my E.A.S.E. model of goal getting. If you’d like to read more about that you can find an article about that on my Ericksonian.com website.)  I call it that because, in a way, it is exactly what you are doing… you are lying to yourself. The goal is actually to hit the board but you tell yourself, and act as if, your target is beyond the board. The radically improves your chances of succeeding.

Well, in the same way, attempting to emulate or model Milton Erickson and be as effective with our clients as he was is well and good. I can’t imagine any better role model than Dr. Erickson. But what if we dared to imagine going further and aimed just a little bit past that goal? What if we strove to follow his lead and actually improve upon it?

This is the goal of creating the label “Neo-Ericksonian” Hypnosis. I believe in many ways it is the world many of us are living in already. To give it a name allows us to ask important questions and to define and refine what is actually meant by the term.  My hope is that, perhaps paradoxically, this will help clarify the original vision Milton had and create even better practitioners of the art.

Another category of presupposition, Repetitive Verbs and Adverbs are verbs and adverbs beginning in “re.” Some examples include repeatedly, return, restore, renew. If you “return” something, it presupposes you borrowed it in the first place.

And you’ll discover that trance helps you restore  your whole body.

John was going to renew his subscription.

If you repeatedly do that, it might get stuck that way.