One of the most exciting and stunning skills any hypnotist can acquire, and, to be certain, one that made Milton Erickson stand out in his day, arguably the very cornerstone of his legendary status, is the ability to induce trance in anyone, without any apparent induction. Imagine being able to, in any interaction and without any apparent effort, induce a trance in whoever you are talking with. Think about just how you will feel, knowing that you’re most casual interactions can entrance those around you. Anyone who has read about masters of the conversational, indirect style that Erickson developed can recall accounts of this seemingly magical ability, and has probably wondered how they can learn this skill, let alone cultivate it to the level of mastery where it can be accomplished through the simplest interaction, as with the wordless handshake induction so many seek to understand.
Understanding Trance:
Now, before we begin to really discuss the art of unannounced induction, I want to discuss my perspective on trance. If you look around at hypnosis texts, you’ll find a whole range of different perspectives on trance; today, many hypnotists will say that trance doesn’t even exist, that it is just an illusion used to convince the subject that they are experiencing something and is not necessary for successful suggestion, to others who propose that hypnotists have to cultivate trance for success, even to the point that you can find lists describing just how deep a trance you need for achieving specific phenomenon. My own view is somewhat different. Trance, in my mind, is real. It is something that people can experience, and they feel it as distinctly different from other states of mind. However, it is also true that you can achieve almost every phenomenon in the normal waking state, if you understand how. I’ve had people experience almost every type of hypnotic response without trance, but I still prefer to use trance most of the time. Why? Well, perhaps you will better understand the answer to that question once you understand just how trance works.
Years ago, when I was a young boy, I recall learning about Native American tribes hunting buffalo. It may be that you are familiar with this story, or this may be the first time you have learnt it, but in either case, you will likely be wondering just why I would talk about their strategies here, and I promise to reward that curiosity very shortly. For now, let’s imagine the great herds of bison, wandering across the wilderness. These are giant beasts of great strength, and you might easily imagine how difficult and potentially dangerous the hunt could be, especially without modern weaponry. So, in many cases, the tribes worked out a very clever strategy. Upon finding the animals, they would herd them, luring them to a specially selected hunting ground, a natural shoot. The bison would be spooked into a stampede and corralled through a narrow corridor that ended in a cliff or overhang. Of course, the speeding animals would not be able to stop, and many would be forced over the precipice.
How is this, you wonder, related to the art of inducing trance? Well, the fact is, it is actually very similar to the process that we will be looking at. The thing is, intellect, what we often call our conscious mind, is capable of processing only 15 or so bytes of information per a second. On the other hand, the unconscious receives more than a million times as many bytes of information a second. So, imagine that the information here is like the buffalo, and we are pushing it through the conscious mind, overloading the landscape with too much data, pushing all that information over the cliff at the edge of intellect, into the great plains of our unconscious?
When we induce trance, we are essentially forcing the conscious mind to deal with too much information. We are overloading it, creating the need for reliance on the far more powerful resources that hide beyond awareness. When we do formal trance work, we do exactly this, though the method may be a bit different. Most inductions rely upon distracting the conscious mind, perhaps by relaxing it to the point where it does not notice all of the information entering. The relaxed brain drifts into daydreams, and trance arises as our suggestions slip past it. In the case of the informal induction, the process is different, in that it does not generally rely upon relaxation or obvious distractions like counting or observational tasks, but we are still exploiting the same process: pushing information past the conscious mind to the point where the unconscious has to take over processing.
How to Induce Trance in Anyone, the Ericksonian way:
Let’s look at what we need to do in order to create this response. We’ll start with an example within a verbal context, but the aspects work the same way even if we are going to use other forms of communication. Now, the first thing we do is direct the conscious minds attention. In formal inductions, as you probably already realize, this is usually the first step of the actual induction. The subject might be asked to look someplace specific, or perform a specific mental or physical task, but it’s directly told to pay attention to a specific task. In conversational inductions, you do the exact same thing. The practice of directing attention is one we are all fluent with, as it is part of most any conversation. When you ask a person a question, point at something for them to look at, or even just lock eyes with them, we are directing their attention to some degree. In conversational hypnosis, we begin just as simply.
Of course, just directing the conscious mind is not enough. We need to keep that attention focused, just like herding bison through a narrow passage. Instead of just distracting the mind, we are going to focus its attention more and more narrowly. We might tell a story, or talk to them about something they are interested in, but we are going to keep directing their attention. As we do so, we will work to make their focus narrower and narrower, in effect pushing them down that corral. This is very easy to do, and is, again, something we’ve all done. If you have ever described a broad topic and used it to introduce a specific example, you’ve narrowed the field of focus, as you might have done while showing a person a picture of a group photo and then showing where you are standing in the crowd. It’s nothing more than this same process.
Up to now, we haven’t really induced the trance yet, but this is the point where that process starts to happen. As we have narrowed the focus, and directed their attention, we now have an idea of what they are focusing on consciously, so now we have to create that stampede effect, pushing too much information through the mind for the intellect to handle. There are many ways to do this, but they are all aspects of the same process. Basically, we are going to start adding layers to our meaning that are extraneous to the conscious minds focus, and which make it impossible for the conscious mind to understand the communication’s meaning any longer.
Okay, to understand this, let’s describe how we add meaning to the conversation the conscious mind will not understand. There are many methods for this, and the specifics here are just examples of a process you can apply with many other techniques. To understand how this works, let’s imagine that the communication has more than one layer. First, we have the conscious layer, the meaning that the conscious mind is focused upon, then we have separate aspects to the communication which are not meant for the conscious mind. Imagine that you were sending a coded message. That coded message might be hidden inside a letter that anyone could read, but that letter’s content is not where the real meaning hides. Instead, the letter is just being used for cover so you can send that coded message. Now, the thing is, the person reading that coded message probably can’t read both the coded message and the letter that it’s hidden in at the same time. They can only focus on one or the other at a time.
The conscious mind is still focused on the overt message, but the secondary level of meaning is going to become bigger and more important, and it will not be able to understand it in terms of the message it’s focused upon. This sounds complicated, but really it’s very simple. If you are talking to a person, you can do this with words that have two or more meanings, and, in many cases, you’ll be able to easily find words that have contradictory meanings. Take, for instance, the word still, which can mean not moving (the water is still), or continuing (the water is still moving). Or you add information to a comment that has no context, like mentioning a new character in a story, but referring to them as if they were already present. Basically, you are adding information that the conscious mind cannot understand, but which it will try to give meaning. If you are familiar with the handshake induction, the process is obvious here as well, where they expect a normal handshake and attempt to understand what you are doing as a fulfillment of that expectation. By getting them to expect to understand what you are doing and then throwing information that does not make sense in that context, you are making it impossible for them to understand the communication consciously, and they will go into trance so the unconscious’s vast resources can take over processing.
Taking a deeper look:
Now, let’s look back through this same process again more closely. First, we are focusing their attention, and that focus is maintained and narrowed as we continue. Now, in doing this, we are building a set of expectations in the conscious mind. The subject expects everything that happens to fit into the context of this focus, and they will work to understand our communication in terms of the expectations that context creates. To go back to our metaphor of the Native American hunters, the bison have the expectation that they can escape by running through the corral. In our inductions, the process of narrowing the focus is a process of defining those expectations more and more specifically.
Once those expectations are established, and the conscious mind is kept focused upon understanding what we say in that context, we push them into trance by offering information that they expect to fit that context, but which does not. We talked briefly about showing a person a photo of a group and then pointing out where we are in the picture. Now, imagine that someone showed you such a photo and pointed towards where they were, and got you really intrigued in finding them in that photo. Now, this photo has a lot of people in it, but they point towards a certain spot, and tell you too look closely and find them right there. You become focused on finding them, but you can’t. You look more and more intently, expecting to find them in the picture. Now, what if they were not even in the picture at all? You expect them to be there, but it’s a trick. The photo, though, has enough detail in it that you don’t realize this, and so you keep looking, and focus on that task. This is a perfect example of one way to create a trance without any formal induction, and provides a perfect model to exemplify how this process works. They have created an expectation that they are showing you a picture they are in, and provided focus by getting you to search for where they are. In order to meet that expectation, they have to process the photo, but the conscious mind can’t process the information in a way that makes sense. No matter how long or hard you look, you won’t find them in the picture, and the conscious mind becomes overwhelmed and lets the subconscious take over.
So, all you are going to do is build an expectation that what you say fits into the context of what you are discussing. Then you provide overly rich details, like the photo of a large crowd. They are certain that information has meaning and is relevant, but they cannot find the connection, so they turn to the unconscious and its powerful resources, creating trance. The conscious mind gets stuck trying to understand, and maintains that focus, but it needs to process so much information in order to understand the communication, too much information, and that is what pushes them into trance. It is a very easy thing to do. In language, you can do it with just a few words, for example saying something that is ambiguous or does not quite fit into the narrow focus of your communication. In Milton’s handshake induction, the expectation is a normal handshake, and the overwhelm is the attempt to recognize that what you are doing as fitting that pattern.
Putting it into Practice:
But, how do we make this into a practical skill, not just a theory? How do you go from understanding how it works to being able to really do it? Well, take it one step at a time. The first step in the process is focusing attention and building expectations in the subject. So, start out by looking at the this aspect of your communications. Think of some specific conversations you’ve had with people and write down the expectations that developed as you talked with them. When you are in conversation, try to observe what types of expectations people develop as they listen to you. Just pay attention to how that process of assumption works. Just be aware of it, and you will quickly start to understand just how you can actually control those expectations. It’s not difficult to learn this skill, you’ll find that it’s actually something you are already doing, you just never recognized it consciously.
Now, once you are comfortable with the first step of building focus and creating expectations, you are going to start learning how to exploit those expectations to create trance. The key here is in balance. You want the subject to consciously accept the statement as meaningful, and to assume that they just haven’t understood it. Now, to do this, you are going to have to practice, and at first you will find you may overdo it. But the good news is, people will easily dismiss this, they will just think you made a mistake, or they misheard you. Success in this step comes when you keep the conscious mind moving forwards while adding that secondary layer that requires deeper processing. Again, it’s just a matter of practicing. I might suggest doing this in a very simple exercise. Standing someplace, you start looking out at the street as if you notice something. Don’t say a word, just look, and let your friends look too. Then ask them a question about a minor detail. You can start with something real, perhaps, pointing out a tree, perhaps, or a flag. Then you ask them a question about something that isn’t there, “what color is that bird?” Just point towards it and get them trying to notice it. The key is first to build an expectation, point at obvious things and ask about them, making it easy for them to match what you say with an answer, and continue making it easy. Then do the same thing with the false detail, and notice how they start to stare to find the bird that isn’t there. Practice this with different people. Sometimes, do it without even adding a false detail, so they get used to it. Try to make it really interesting for them, and soon, you will find that just by this simple exercise you will learn all you need to build a trance without trouble.
This exercise will teach you the balancing act; simple as it may sound, you will rapidly understand just how you can build a context, and will notice how easy it is to convince the conscious mind that your comment fits those expectations. You’ll see people striving to understand something, certain it is merely a matter of discovering a hidden connection, and will find them drifting into trance in order to find the meaning when the conscious mind can’t capture it. In no time at all, you will be using this skill with all sorts of different forms of communication. You’ll soon find that you naturally discover these opportunities, and will notice more and more ways to use that same process. Very rapidly, it will be second nature to trance people with just a short sentence or two, or even without words at all. Of course, you may not believe me yet, but fortunately, you don’t have to be sure it works when you start out, and even just a bit of practice will certainly demonstrate how easy it really is.
) the easiest way is to suggest it like I do below: