My Genius Subconcious Mind

A couple Mondays ago, I went to the LA Sleepwalker meeting in Long Beach. (The Somnambulistic Sleepwalkers is a Hypnosis/NLP practice group.) We practiced the Elman induction that night.

When it was my turn to be hypnotized, after the induction, my partner was saying something about my genius subconscious mind. He talked about walking down some steps and at the bottom of the steps would be a door. On the other side of that door was my genius subconscious mind. When I imagined stepping through that door, I saw a room full of beautiful women. For each trait of my subconscious mind that my partner described, I imagined a different woman in that room (in my mind). Funny, huh?

After a little while, my partner told me to return from that room and close the door and when I was finished closing the door, lift my finger. Once I imagined closing the door, my finger lifted. And I didn't lift it consciously. It was the first time I've experienced any unconscious movement during a formal hypnotic trance, suggested by a hypnotist other than myself. My eyes were closed. I could feel my finger lifting, but it was as if it wasn't my finger. It felt weird. Cool, but weird. I'm glad my partner made that suggestion. The other people that have conducted a formal hypnotic induction while I was the subject didn't suggest anything that convinced me that I was in trance. That convinced me because my finger moved and I didn't try to move it. It was as if it lifted on its own. Well, I guess, my genius subconscious mind did it. That bastard.

Hip knows his is all around us

Hip knows his is all around us. Hip knows his is all around us. Hip knows his is all around us. Have you noticed?

Today's blog entry is just a ramble. I really should catch up on the Field Reports, there're a few more that I want to write about. But today I'd rather just ramble...

As I learn more about NLP and Hypnosis, I begin to notice how bits of both occur naturally all around. I remember when I was back in college, I thought about buying an Infiniti G35 coupe once I could afford it. After I started thinking that, I began to see a lot of G35 coupes everywhere I went. Maybe everyone began to, like me, want to buy a G35 coupe. I can also remember when I first wanted to be really generous to others. It would be nice if everyone began to be like that, too. We'd all help people and everyone would feel better every day. Can you imagine that? Now... I'm not sure if that would happen and, anyways, it probably wasn't more people wanting a G35 coupe, like me, so much as it was just me noticing the existing G35 coupes on the road more often. (Ever had that experience? Not necessarily with G35 coupes, of course.)

Well that's how it seems to be going with hypnosis and NLP. I've begun to notice it all around... While talking to friends, a guy zones out for a few seconds seemingly gazing at nothing, and when he returns to the conversation he can't remember what his friends said to him (that's what some people would call spontaneous post-hypnotic amnesia. Ever experience something like that yourself?) A husband demonstrates how effective a hypnotist he is (though he isn't aware of it) by acting a certain way (the trigger) and his wife immediately responds in a patterned, predictable way (like a hypnotic subject following a post-hypnotic suggestion.) A friend unknowingly drinks a diet soda and thinks it tastes like regular soda, until he looks at the can and realizes it is in fact a diet soda. Then all of a sudden, he notices how it tastes like a diet soda.

It makes sense, though. Hypnosis wasn't invented. Somewhere, back in the day, people just began to take notice of it. Somebody noticed it, and eventually learned to recognize it. Then somebody found out how it occurred and figured out how to induce it in a targeted and precise fashion. Some people would refer to somebody like that as a hypnotist. Some people might refer to that somebody as a friend... or a co-worker... or a person with a blog...

Field Report: Office Demo

Summary: I demonstrate to a co-worker some NLP stuff, lead him to different emotional states, and ultimately help him feel a little bit better about a past experience.



This one happened last month. One of my co-workers was in my office and we got to talking about hypnosis and NLP. He asked me what NLP was and so I explained it to him. Then, I decided to give him a little demonstration of some of the techniques.

I asked him to think of a mildy unpleasant experience - like taking out the trash, or cleaning up dog poop, etc. But for some reason, just like a few other people that I've asked that same question, he came up with one that elicited strong unpleasant emotions.

He decided to think of an experience he had the night before at a club. I guess he got in an argument or almost got into a fist fight or something. Whatever it was, it got him pretty angry. As he thought of the experience, his emotional state went from curious and interested (about NLP) to upset (about the last night's little situation).

Anways, I decided to work with that one and did some sub-modality stuff. As we played with the sub-modalities of how he represented his experienece, his states changed pretty dramatically. At one point, he was so infuriated that he was sweating and moving all around the room. After taking him to that extreme, I went the other way and got him to be completely relaxed.

Before going into it, I didn't expect him to experience such a wide range of dramatic emotions. I asked him to think of a mildly unpleasant experience, not an infuriating one. It might have worked out for the better, though, because within the span of about 5 minutes, he went from a little upset, to really mad, to completely relaxed and then even indifferent about the last night's upsetting experience. Nice.

All in all, I think that the demonstration went pretty well.