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CreativityTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:19 That used to be my utility piece, my utility opener. Thank you for the card.
00:25 You'll notice I bring that very quickly to a pass/fail, what's sometimes called a digital or binary test.
00:32 I say go ahead, you can try and drop that, find that it locks and sticks more.
00:36 There's only one of two things that's really going to happen there.
00:38 They're going to drop the card or they're not going to drop the card.
00:42 Now that's not a problem. It's not a problem because there's always a manoeuvre you can put in place at that point.
00:50 However, I like to monitor a process and get...
00:59 This is just talking about very quickly something that's part of the broader hypnosis without trance approach.
01:05 I'm constantly doing what I call flag testing, looking for green flags, looking for red flags.
01:11 When I get green flags, I know I'm getting good responses and I'm likely to be able to escalate to stronger effects,
01:18 stronger phenomena more quickly.
01:20 So the hand stick has more flag tests built in, more points at which I can go, "Hmm, this is going nicely,"
01:27 and then gently escalate.
01:29 So I escalate from something very small by stages to something quite big.
01:33 This jumps from nothing to something in a big leap. This is why I do this less.
01:38 [SILENCE]
01:43 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
02:01 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
02:11 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
02:21 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
02:50 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
03:14 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
03:34 [SILENCE]
03:37 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
04:03 [INDISTINCT CHATTER]
04:05 Now, I don't expect you to have got that and gone, "Right, I can do that now."
04:09 I just wanted to show you the logic behind it, how it builds from a soft test through to a medium test
04:15 through to a strong hard test, three layers of escalation.
04:18 All the time you're getting this commitment and consistency, you're building in.
04:22 But there are also three failure points.
04:24 The first one is extremely unlikely to fail, but it could.
04:31 So if you turn over, let's just look at the manoeuvres.
04:35 Now, I want you to know that these are manoeuvres that I use.
04:37 They're not necessarily manoeuvres that you would use.
04:39 You may come up with better manoeuvres.
04:41 I love some of the stuff people were coming up with this morning.
04:44 Let's examine the manoeuvres.
04:52 The first point on here is the reality transition and the soft test with the binding pattern.
05:00 Just to remind you of what that was, it's after I've done the imagination bit.
05:04 I'm saying imagine your hand, imagine the glue spreading between your hand, absorbing into your hand.
05:09 And as you imagine that now, setting, locking your hand in place, sticking your hand in place,
05:14 as you imagine that, what's more stuck, your fingers or your palm?
05:18 The binding pattern.
05:20 Here's scenario A, which has happened to me one time only, just so as you know how rare this is.
05:31 They lift their hand.
05:35 First rule of manoeuvres is you pace the experience.
05:42 So if their hand lifts, you say, that's right.
05:45 And your hand lifts, or that's right, and you can lift your hand.
05:51 Something that paces it.
05:53 Or as I've put here, and you've lifted your hand, is the pace that I've put.
05:59 And at this point, remember one of the manoeuvres you can make is to exit, is to terminate the process on your terms.
06:10 Now if they've lifted at that point, I would suggest, for me, I'd just be out.
06:14 You know, Mike was saying ahead of time, knowing when not to proceed can be a useful thing.
06:21 I'm not a big country music fan, but my mum was a fan of Kenny Rogers,
06:25 so when I grew up, I grew up listening to The Gambler by Kenny Rogers.
06:29 Some of you will know that, some of you won't.
06:31 But the line in that, you've got to know when to hold, know when to fold, applies here.
06:40 Knowing when to stick with it, and knowing when, phew, the game's up.
06:45 Now right here, if they have lifted at this point, for me, way too hard work.
06:50 That's what my little daughter says if something's too difficult.
06:53 Too hard work, she says, and then gives up.
06:55 So for me, it's too hard work at that point.
06:58 So you've just got to exit gracefully, with dignity.
07:03 So I've put here, and you've lifted your hand, because you don't have to play the game.
07:07 We all have a choice, and that was the moment of decision for you.
07:12 Now of course, think about the context, the way you set this up, it's the not-hypnosis frame.
07:17 We talked about imagining, it's just a game of imagination.
07:21 We're not doing hypnosis. We never said we were doing hypnosis.
07:25 I've got here, you know, I said if you're going to exit, have a frame that you're going to operate by.
07:30 The frame here is this was not hypnosis, it was just a game of imagination, that the subject decided not to play.
07:37 Or has decided to play differently.
07:40 So does that make sense?
07:42 You've still not lost any face.
07:45 You set something up, they didn't want to play.
07:48 They made a decision, that's how you frame it.
07:50 That's okay. You don't have to berate them for it, you don't have to badger them for it.
07:54 That's okay.
07:56 I'm not even saying, it doesn't mean we can't play this game another time, and you can't have a wonderful time playing it.
08:01 But I'm guessing that for whatever reason, now isn't the right time for you.
08:04 And that's what that becomes an indication of. Yes, Mike.
08:07 Something I've done, although I don't know what you think about it, but it is slightly badgering them.
08:13 Is when I think, right, this is really not going how I expected, they don't seem to be in the right frame of mind for it.
08:20 Or I get the hand lifted at a completely wrong moment.
08:24 Sometimes I will always pitch it as, oh, no, no, hang on.
08:28 I didn't want you to do that yet. Oh, we've sort of come out of the moment.
08:32 It's always like, and I get them to almost feel, oh, sorry, sorry, oh, whoops.
08:37 Okay, that's interesting.
08:39 And when they do that, two things seem to happen.
08:41 Either they then give it a much better go the next time and really do think, oh, sorry, I didn't realise.
08:47 When I have pictures, you mustn't lift your hand.
08:50 That's something I think a lot of people don't want to happen.
08:52 I will try and pitch it as, oh, that's not quite right.
08:55 I can either bail out at that point or almost in a small way make them feel guilty about it.
09:01 And then we let it go back into it again and then it really seems to work twice as strong.
09:06 They really try to do it properly.
09:08 Or if it's a group, someone else will go, oh, let me have a go.
09:11 I understand what you've got to do now.
09:13 It is blaming them slightly, but it's something I've used and found is a good thing.
09:19 I think that can kind of work.
09:21 It is a little bit of a blame thing, but it's quite soft.
09:24 It's just like, oh, I didn't want you to do that yet.
09:28 It's a bit sort of like you're the kind of wounded party somehow,
09:31 and you can use that as a sort of coercive element.
09:35 That can work, that kind of thing.
09:37 I remember one time setting this up not that long ago with somebody in a pub,
09:42 and it was very early on in the set-up, and I got a failure point, I suppose,
09:47 even before any of these ones.
09:50 I'd done the witchdoctor thing.
09:51 I said, can you place your hand on the table and just pick a point on the back of your hand
09:55 that you can look at?
09:57 And he said, what do you mean the back of my hand?
09:59 Do you mean on the other side of the table?
10:03 Now, that was what I call a red flag at that point.
10:07 So I said to him in a sort of semi-accusatory way, I said, I'll tell you what, let's just not do this.
10:13 And he went, well, why?
10:15 I said, you know where the back of your hand is.
10:17 Now, which is very kind of--it's taking a particular authoritarian frame.
10:22 People who know about transaction analysis would probably say I was a critical parent or something.
10:27 I don't know anything about transaction analysis.
10:30 But it's taking that kind of role, and it is a badgering technique,
10:36 and you can use badgering techniques to great effect, some more subtle, some less subtle.
10:45 I'm not going to talk about badgering techniques today because it's a different thing,
10:48 and you don't need to use them, but they can be something that you can use.
10:51 So I can give you another choice at that point.
10:56 But if the hand does get lifted, it's no biggie.
10:59 You haven't gone anywhere.
11:00 You started to play a game they didn't want to play.
11:03 That's it.
11:04 He never said it was hypnosis.
11:06 So you get like a bailout at that point.
11:08 I will say this has happened to me once that that hand has got lifted, one time only.
11:16 Scenario B here is the subject says neither is stuck, but they don't jump out of the whole process.
11:23 So they're going to continue to leave their hand there.
11:25 They're going to continue to look at their hand so all is not lost.
11:29 They're just going to say neither is more stuck.
11:34 And I'm going to go straight in with a pace.
11:36 So this is my first response.
11:38 I'm going to go neither is more stuck, and you're still looking at your hand.
11:43 So anyone who knows about yes sets and pacing, in their mind, they're going to go yes.
11:47 So now we're back on track.
11:49 At this point, I can side shift into softer phenomena.
11:54 I talked about soft phenomena before.
11:57 I just want to do this experiment quickly with everybody, particularly people who have not done any hypnosis before.
12:06 I'd like you to just pick a point somewhere up on the wall above the level of my head, a point that you could look at for a moment.
12:13 You can just look at it.
12:14 You can allow yourself to focus on it so your attention becomes absorbed.
12:23 And as you look at that point, you can be aware of other things you can see without looking at them.
12:28 You continue to look at that point, but you can still be aware of being able to see other people in your peripheral vision, see the light coming in through the windows.
12:37 Maybe see me and hear the sound of my voice as you continue to look at that point.
12:44 That's right. And you become less aware of your breathing.
12:47 Now, as your state shifts, your breathing will shift.
12:50 You'll notice that now. Your breathing just changes.
12:55 And you'll notice a tendency for your lips to become dry, maybe for you to want to swallow.
13:01 That's right. And a tendency for your eyes just want to blink.
13:08 That's it. It's not like they want to close fully, necessarily.
13:12 So just take a breath in and breathe out and become fully aware and go back to normal consciousness.
13:21 Did your state shift when you did that?
13:26 Please put your hand up if you didn't notice anything different from your normal everyday waking state when you did that.
13:33 Honestly, please put your hand up if you did not notice.
13:40 I know there's a half and half there, but still that's as bad as it gets.
13:44 And I'm doing this with a group, not personally pacing you at this point.
13:49 But here's the truth. Normally, you don't pay any attention to your breathing.
13:54 So if I ask you to pay attention to your breathing, your perception shifts from an everyday state of perception.
14:00 It's different now.
14:02 When you pay attention to your breathing, because it's normally outside of consciousness, the conscious attention changes your breathing pattern.
14:10 So I can safely say. And as your state shifts now, there's a tendency for your breathing to shift.
14:20 And just nod your head when you notice that.
14:24 That's a no. You cannot lose with that.
14:27 You cannot lose because breathing is normally outside of consciousness.
14:32 When you pay a conscious attention, you interrupt that unconscious mechanism that runs the breathing.
14:39 But the implication there is that that's happening because of whatever the unspoken process is that you're doing.
14:47 Do you see what I mean? So it's not like a radical bit of hypnotic phenomena, but it is something different.
14:52 A change has taken place. This is what I call soft phenomena.
14:57 Now, after that, you can go as you continue to look at that point.
15:00 Just notice your level of relaxation, maybe in your shoulders, maybe in your hips, maybe in your whole body now.
15:10 Now, when you draw somebody's attention to their relaxation, sometimes I will say there's a point within you that's more relaxed than anywhere else.
15:16 People go to look for that point. They cannot not do that unless they refuse to partake in the process.
15:22 So they will start tapping into the relaxation within them, which will maybe even only on a very small level, increase their level of relaxation.
15:30 So you get another change that happens.
15:34 It's almost impossible for this not to happen.
15:39 It's almost impossible for this not to happen.
15:42 If I draw attention now to your foot, and I don't mind which foot you pay attention to,
15:49 but as you notice your feet, you now notice the sensation of your shoe around your foot.
15:57 You weren't noticing that before.
16:01 So I can draw your attention to more and more detail about that sensation, and it is a shift in your perception in reality.
16:08 So that's soft phenomena.
16:10 And as long as I keep talking and keep getting buy-in that something different is happening, then something different happened.
16:16 So soft phenomena is somewhere you can always go.
16:19 It may seem unspectacular, and it is.
16:24 But depending on your initial frame at the beginning, it doesn't really matter.
16:30 Because all you said was about shifts in reality, shifts in perception, all that vague kind of stuff.
16:38 All you do is you could get confirmation that they've noticed a change, a difference.
16:42 I don't care which. I use the contrast principle a lot.
16:45 How is that different from your normal state? More relaxed? Yeah.
16:50 Do you enjoy feeling relaxed? Yeah.
16:53 And this is how, and I'll say at that point, and this is how hypnosis can be a powerful thing.
16:59 I never was showing them hypnosis.
17:02 I just showed them a little bit of something, got them to commit to it being something that was nice and pleasant.
17:09 And then I say, and this is how hypnosis can be a powerful thing.
17:13 Ah, what does that mean?
17:16 And they go, oh, right. You know, we're only tickling the peripheries of it there.
17:20 It's going deep. And then you get to exit at that point with your integrity.
17:29 The egg landed somewhere else. So you can always shift to soft focus.
17:34 I know for people who want to go for dramatic phenomena, that may seem like, like, oh, what a disappointment.
17:39 It doesn't matter. There's somebody else a few feet away that you can do some stuff with.
17:44 If it's a client that you're working with in a hypnotherapy context, it's good to know that you are in no worse a position than you were in before you did the whole thing.
17:55 You haven't put yourself in a weaker position by doing hypnosis and failing.
17:59 It was just part of your explanation as to what hypnosis is about.
18:02 Is that making sense? Does that make sense? How you can always shift to these soft phenomena?
18:08 If you get that, just nod your head or say yes or something like that. That'll be cool. Thank you.
18:20 So I've said here, neither is stuck and you're still looking at your hand and then follow on.
18:25 If they say no, you go straight back into that thing. Go. That's right.
18:31 Because you have a choice. You don't have to play the game.
18:36 So with this very first test, any very first test can always be a sort of something around playing an imagination game and then making a choice about whether they want to play or not.
18:47 Same with the fingers. It was just a game. You made a choice about whether you wanted to play or not.
18:52 And you are entitled to make that choice. Everybody is.
18:55 At that point, early fold, you terminate the process, but you do it on your terms.
19:02 It's not, oh, well, that works for most people. Oh, it's your fault because you weren't concentrating. It's not getting into that.
19:08 Oh, I didn't mention that point. Never argue. Never argue. Never try to apportion.
19:15 If you're going to apportion blame on them, some hypnotists will do this.
19:20 And this is kind of a bit like what Mike was talking about. Do it subtly. Never overtly go, oh, well, you know, obviously you just don't have a powerful enough mind.
19:30 You can do that. I guess it gets you out. But I don't know. I don't think there's any necessity to do that, to do people down.
19:37 So it doesn't have to be their fault. Doesn't have to be your fault. It could be anything. Now is not the right time.
19:42 It's another thing. It's not me. It's not you. It's the timing's not right. It's the environment's not right.
19:48 Maybe you're not ready to do this now. You're perfectly capable of doing this. Everybody is.
19:52 But now isn't the right time.
19:55 So. That's covering some of the outside, the medium test bit with the divide and conquer pattern.
20:03 Let's say we've already said what's more stuck the fingers or the palm.
20:07 They've said the fingers. Let's imagine this. So we've passed test one. Everything's going fine.
20:12 Number two, this time you say go ahead, try and lift your finger. Find the palm sticks even more.
20:17 So here we have a scenario where somebody lifts a finger.
20:26 Well, you never said they couldn't lift the finger. You never said that. So you haven't lost anything.
20:31 So you can always side shift into soft phenomena as well.
20:36 So the example I've given here is that's right. And your finger lifts. And as that finger lifts, notice how your breathing changes.
20:45 Again, that works on the principle of when you pay attention to your breathing,
20:48 it goes from being an outside of consciousness process to an inside of consciousness process.
20:52 So it's natural pattern gets interrupted. So as the fingers lifted, I'm going to go, that's right.
20:59 And your finger lifts and notice how your breathing changes. Now, I want to see them go.
21:04 Oh, yeah. And then I might ask a question. And as your breathing changes,
21:08 are you more relaxed with your finger lifted or would you be more relaxed with your finger rested back down?
21:15 And they put it back down again. Let's just carry on the flow. I go into the soft phenomena stuff.
21:21 Often when you go around the soft phenomena stuff, you can go back round again and get the hard phenomena that you missed the first time.
21:28 So does that make sense how you can use that soft phenomena?
21:31 Always a great out early on. It's a great out before you've done anything else. The hard challenge.
21:38 The hard challenge where you've got you've passed on the other stuff. You say, go ahead, try and lift it.
21:42 Find it sticks even more solidly, locks even more solidly in place.
21:46 And they go, right. There's a couple of things that are going to happen here.
21:50 The first thing that happens and this happens can happen reasonably often.
21:56 This is a reasonably often thing. They've got their hand there.
21:59 You say, go ahead, try and lift it. And people start to do this. It starts to lift, but really tentatively.
22:07 So they don't go. They go like this and they're lifting it very tentatively.
22:14 Now, that's not normal. That's not normally how you would lift a hand.
22:20 So you can draw attention to the oddness of the whole thing.
22:23 So as the hand starts to lift, you go that's right.
22:26 You can lift your hand, but notice how stiff and rigid it is as you're lifting it.
22:33 Now, if their fingers are like this. Those fingers are stiff and rigid.
22:38 There's no question about that. I may be wording this slightly different on the paper because I don't always do this.
22:43 Does that make sense? If you look and you see the fingers being stiff and rigid, they're stiff and rigid.
22:48 You can say that you can paste that. That's right.
22:51 And the hand lifts and you can lift the hand and notice how stiff and rigid your fingers are.
22:56 Now, I do touches. And then I often draw attention to the heaviness of the hand.
23:03 And notice how heavy the hand feels. Do you get how that works?
23:09 If you lift your hands out in front of you now.
23:13 And I say to you, and I really do just pay attention to this for a moment.
23:18 Notice how heavy your hand feels out in front of you.
23:25 Now, I don't know if you can feel that heaviness really clearly.
23:30 But it's interesting, isn't it?
23:34 You feel that heaviness. Who doesn't feel the heaviness in their hand?
23:38 Anyone, you can put your hands down. I appreciate your compliance with that.
23:41 Does anyone not feel the heaviness in their hand?
23:47 Everyone feels the heaviness in their hand because the hand has weight.
23:51 The hand has weight. Now, the thing is, all this seems quite trite.
23:55 Yeah, OK. So what? My hand's heavy. Doesn't matter.
23:57 But if they're lifting it like that and you go, that's right.
24:00 And paste the stiffness, the rigidness, the wristiness.
24:03 And as you see your hand there, it's lifting, but it's heavy.
24:08 Now, that's a pretty safe bet because they haven't gone like this, but it's heavy.
24:13 And as you feel that heaviness, what is that like? That heaviness.
24:19 What's that hand like now stuck out there in front of you?
24:22 You can still say that stuck out there. I elicit that report and they'll go,
24:27 I don't know. It's weird. As long as I get that. Bingo. That's it. Thank you.
24:33 Got my, I don't know, it's weird. It's not perfectly normal.
24:37 Otherwise they would be moving it like this. Something is different.
24:41 So you just paste that and you just draw their attention to that.
24:44 And you go, that's right. It's weird. Very different from your other hand, isn't it?
24:48 Contrast principle. Yes, you can move that other hand easily, can't you?
24:52 Yeah. Go ahead. Move your other hand.
24:55 All the time implying and reinforcing the idea that this one is different.
25:01 Now, often at that point, if I get that heaviness and I get them responding there,
25:05 I'll go in fact, feel that heaviness grow stronger and stronger,
25:09 pulling your hand back down to the table.
25:11 If I see the hand respond and go back down to the table,
25:14 I know we're back on track because they're now responding and manifesting hypnotic phenomena.
25:19 This time I won't go for the sticking again, but if I want to get the same effect,
25:22 I'll say and find that hand becomes so heavy now.
25:29 You find that different people respond to different things.
25:31 One person may not be able to do stuckness. It may not fit with their model of the world.
25:35 But heaviness, extreme heaviness, they can do.
25:39 So you can always experiment with different phenomena and get back on track.
25:42 All the time looking and checking responsiveness.
25:45 So if when you're carrying a sack, you said about thousand raises with the stuffing and the locking.
25:49 Yeah. If you just stand by chance, lots of the people you do this with struggle with that.
25:54 Would you say, you know, feel that heaviness, feel that sticking and that locking.
25:58 Yeah. I'd like to go somewhere else.
26:01 I did a video post about this. Maybe the last one on the blog or the one before.
26:07 A couple of weeks ago I was in a pub in Hitchin, local town.
26:11 And Lee, who I was talking about earlier, who tells people how great my hypnosis is,
26:16 had set me up again with a couple of people.
26:19 Oh, this is James talking about the hypnosis.
26:22 So I played it cool. I don't dive in straight away.
26:24 I go back a bit and wait to get asked because when they want it, it's much more powerful than if I go, right, let me do this hypnosis thing.
26:33 And there's a couple of guy and a girl. Now, the guy I did the hands to, it was full on brilliant response.
26:38 Got the other hand on, which is I haven't shown you that bit, but it's just a natural escalation.
26:42 Get them to use that hand to try and remove it.
26:45 And it's much more compelling that way.
26:47 Then you can stick that hand on and find how easily you can transfer the stuckness.
26:52 I was actually doing that earlier on, just transferring stuckness about from place to place.
26:57 Again, I talk about that in other places, so I'm not going to get into that now.
27:01 But it was absolutely fantastic response from this guy. Couldn't have been better.
27:07 It was a class one top quality response.
27:13 And then I was asked to do the same thing with his wife, which I didn't really want to do.
27:22 Because, of course, I can't be flexible in what's going to happen if she's already seen it.
27:28 I would have rather have done something else.
27:31 And probably at that point, what I should have done is said, I'll tell you what, I'll do something else with you.
27:38 But I didn't. I did the same sequence.
27:42 However, it still wasn't a problem because she had the slow lift thing. It started to move.
27:47 That's right. You can lift your hand and I paste the other stuff.
27:50 And when I was asking for the reality reports, what's that like now?
27:56 She said to me, she said, it's really weird.
28:00 Like it doesn't feel too strange, but it's like it's melting out across the table.
28:06 It looks like melted Play-Doh melting across the table.
28:10 So she's gone straight into the category of strong visual hallucination.
28:15 So I said, that's right.
28:20 And then the whole thing became about the visual hallucination.
28:24 And then I could use that. And when I went back into getting the starkness, I said, and as you watch that spreading out across the table, like melted Play-Doh.
28:33 Sticking more solidly in place.
28:38 What happens when you try and lift it now?
28:42 Back on track, got the stick. But even if she'd have lifted it, I could still have riffed on the visual hallucination.
28:50 You still an amazing thing has happened, particularly if I hadn't been in the situation whereby I'd been tied into doing a specific thing.
28:58 So I could have gone anywhere at that point. So there are always places you can go.
29:02 This routine. If you want to see this routine done, look on the blog early on on the blog.
29:09 You can see me doing this hand stick. You will hear the words that I use.
29:13 You have instructions here. You know the different manoeuvres you can make.
29:18 You can look at it. You can think of your own manoeuvres.
29:20 But if you go out, you know ahead of time the manoeuvres you can have.
29:24 You can play around with this in all kinds of contexts and you get to know that you cannot fail.
29:35 There is no way that this can be framed up as a failure unless you stepped in at the beginning into some kind of challenge frame where someone's going,
29:43 "You can't hypnotise me." And you go, "I bloody well can."
29:46 Then there's a problem at that point. But if you set it up right, you cannot fail.
29:51 Does that make sense? Could someone tell me how you can fail at this point?
29:55 Honestly, please, do be challenging. Do be difficult.
29:58 If you think I'm talking rubbish and you think, "No, that's rubbish. You can fail."
30:02 Honestly, let me know. Because I want to know.
30:06 Because I think this is pretty watertight. Pretty watertight.
30:13 After the break, we are going to do this hand stick.
30:17 Everyone is going to go through this process, keeping in mind those failure points.
30:22 I do not want you to try and get this to work. I want you to just look for the failure points.
30:26 So let's sit down.
30:28 Just let your head stick even more.
30:31 Until we've had that, we're going to try to lift it up.
30:34 Probably the process is quite instructive.
30:37 You know, like, "Okay, so in a moment, I'm going to tell you which one comes first."
30:44 Then you do it.
30:46 Probably still this one.
30:49 That one's still tough.
30:51 [unclear audio]
31:19 [unclear audio]
31:35 So did anybody-- just out of curiosity, did anybody accidentally succeed at any point?
31:44 Could I get you to really put your hands up if you did?
31:47 Oh, dear.
31:49 Did anyone intentionally succeed as well?
31:52 Now, did you succeed in actually getting the phenomena, or did you succeed in doing the outs, the maneuvers?
32:01 Both. Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.
32:06 You didn't get a chance.
32:09 It just worked.
32:12 You know, isn't that terrible when that happens?
32:15 That's what happened to me this morning when I was doing the demo.
32:17 I didn't get the chance.
32:19 But isn't that an interesting shift of focus?
32:22 Because if you went out thinking, "I really want to practice my no-fail maneuvers,"
32:28 you might end up coming back all dejected because everything worked,
32:32 and you got all the hypnotic phenomena you went for and didn't get the chance to practice the no-fail maneuvers,
32:38 which is so much more of a pleasant experience than going out and thinking,
32:43 "Oh, I've got to get this thing to work because if it doesn't work, I'm going to look like an idiot," or whatever.
32:50 So do you get how that can be such a useful thing, how that can be so much more of a pleasant place
32:55 to be experimenting and playing and developing hypnosis approaches from within?
33:00 Right. Now, you all got the chance to do some sticking.
33:08 You all got the chance to play with the opportunities of failing or not failing.
33:15 Are there any experiences that anyone would like to share?
33:21 Should we just talk about what I said to you earlier?
33:23 Yes, do. Yes.
33:25 So we're going through the process and checking as we went along.
33:29 We got the hand and stick working successfully, arm and fingers and everything.
33:34 As I tried to extend that past the elbow up into the shoulder, a strange thing happened.
33:41 The arm stiffness occurred, but the actual sticking of the hand suddenly disappeared,
33:46 but not in a slight way like James had mentioned before.
33:50 The arm actually repelled straight away from the chair with the arm still being locked in it.
33:57 I was kind of like, "Whoa." That's not like a little movement.
34:01 So that was, I guess, slightly unexpected because it isn't what's discussed before,
34:06 something I've experienced where everything's working, textbook,
34:12 and then all of a sudden you get a very big difference in response.
34:18 So it was the unexpected, and you're a bit, "Oh," thrown for a moment with that.
34:23 But it's interesting. You said something weird happened or something strange happened.
34:27 I can't remember the words you used exactly, but that's the point.
34:29 Something weird happened. It's not a failure. Something was happening.
34:33 It may not be exactly as you planned, but when that happens, if it throws you off,
34:39 you can go, "Whoa, that's interesting." You can even ask, "What just happened?"
34:46 "What just happened?" is a great question.
34:51 And the answer to that would have been--that was you, that was--
34:54 what would your answer of, "What just happened?" have been?
34:57 What would you have said at the time?
34:59 I don't know. I was quite surprised.
35:01 You were quite surprised? So it was an unusual thing?
35:04 Yeah.
35:05 It wasn't quite what you expected?
35:07 No.
35:08 A little bit different from your everyday, normal experience?
35:12 I don't know where else to put my hands to those things.
35:15 That's right.
35:16 I don't want to do any races, but yeah.
35:18 And it's weird, and that's what hypnosis is about.
35:20 It's about that shift in reality, that shift in perception.
35:22 So there you go. You take the information--
35:25 da-da-da-da-da--yes, yes, yes.
35:27 And that's what hypnosis is about.
35:29 It's about--duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.
35:31 So instantly, you did experience things that were going on there.
35:35 So you can also ask--the other thing that you can do--
35:38 I will share with you something.
35:40 My utility termination maneuver.
35:46 I use a lot of points.
35:49 Don't try and read that.
35:51 I'll tell you what it says.
35:54 If you're doing hypnosis or a hypnosis process,
35:57 at some point it has to come to an end.
35:59 Yeah? Is that fair?
36:01 Can't go on forever.
36:03 It has to come to an end.
36:05 So at some point, you're going to end it.
36:10 How do you end a hypnosis process?
36:15 Well, it depends on your ideas of hypnosis.
36:19 So, conventionally, there is a chance.
36:22 So you need to bring someone back from that chance.
36:25 But obviously, with your methodology, there isn't a chance.
36:29 You're not in something to stop.
36:31 Even though you are experiencing something,
36:33 how do you cease that experience?
36:35 Exactly. How do you cease that experience?
36:37 You know what I find?
36:38 I find the best way to bring someone back from hypnosis
36:40 is to challenge their reality to the point where it flips back the other way
36:44 and pops them out.
36:46 So maybe that's kind of what happened.
36:48 Oh, do you think that could have been what happened?
36:51 Do you think?
36:52 Do you think if earlier on when we were doing the invisibility,
36:56 if I'd have gone, "You can't see me," and I'd got the reply,
36:59 "Yeah, I can see you."
37:00 I'd go, "That's right. You can see me.
37:02 "And you can move your legs now, can't you? Yeah?
37:04 "And you can move your hands now, can't you? Yes.
37:07 "Brilliant. Perfect. Everything is back to normal.
37:09 "Just take one more breath and just let that go."
37:11 You know, the best way to bring someone back from hypnosis
37:14 is to challenge their reality to the point where it just flips back the other way.
37:19 And then that whole thing suddenly becomes framed
37:22 as what I was doing on purpose.
37:25 I was deliberately pushing that to the point of failure.
37:28 That's what I was doing because that's the best way to end hypnosis.
37:35 I'd like you to just reflect on the significance of that for a moment.
37:39 Because you said, "I have my brain." Could you just explain that again?
37:42 Yes. Yes, I can. And I will happily explain it again.
37:46 Hypnosis has to come to an end, yes?
37:49 How does it end?
37:51 There needs to be something that finishes the whole piece.
37:55 For me, that could be anything.
37:58 The person who's being hypnotised or experiencing hypnosis
38:01 doesn't know how hypnosis ends.
38:04 They don't know it's a count-out.
38:06 Often I'll end with, "Take a big breath."
38:08 And just release everything so you can return completely to normal everyday reality.
38:12 However, if we imagine for a moment that the best way to bring somebody back from hypnosis
38:18 is to challenge their reality to the point where it flips back the other way and pops them out.
38:25 Those are the same words you used before. What do you mean, "challenge their reality"?
38:28 By "challenge their reality," I mean push the phenomena to the point,
38:32 something that's so far outside their reality,
38:36 that they're going to go pop and return to reality.
38:40 What's the advantage of using that approach of bringing them out
38:43 rather than just saying, "It's hard for you."
38:46 Oh, I don't use that approach to bring them out.
38:49 It's a no-fail maneuver.
38:52 So if I challenge, I go for invisibility,
38:55 I say, "In a moment, I'll touch you on the shoulder. You open your eyes.
38:58 You will be unable to see me. I won't be there. You'll look right through me.
39:03 You'll be able to hear my voice, but you'll be unable to see me or the clothes I'm standing in.
39:07 Go ahead, open your eyes, and I'll do my step away to one side.
39:10 If they look at me and keep following me, I'll say, "What's happening for you now?"
39:13 They go, "I can still see you." I'll go, "That's right, you can."
39:17 If they were stuck before, I'll go, "You can move your legs now, can't you?
39:21 You can move your hands. Everything's free now and returned to normal."
39:27 So I frame what's just happened as an intentional act to bring hypnosis to a close.
39:33 So this is what you might say to them or paraphrase that.
39:36 You're not saying that that is the best way to bring someone out?
39:39 Oh, no, no, I'm not really saying that. I'm just getting you to play with that notion.
39:44 I was confused. I thought, "This is a no-fail thing, and now we're adding in failure?"
39:49 I wanted to put it that way, so it would embed.
39:52 I wanted you to imagine that literally as a reality.
39:55 If that were true, wouldn't that be so cool?
39:58 Because wouldn't that give you so many choices?
40:01 You can push something and get as grandiose as you want,
40:06 and know that if it doesn't work, the only reason you ever did it was because you needed to end the process.
40:12 And the best way to do it was to push their reality to that point.
40:17 So I might have got all kinds of sticking phenomena.
40:21 I might have got all kinds of amnesia phenomena.
40:24 I may have got anesthesia phenomena.
40:26 I may go for hallucination, some wild hallucination that they're seeing an elephant or a rhinoceros or whatever.
40:32 And if it doesn't work, thank goodness, because I've been trying to get to that point for so long.
40:38 I've been trying to end the process.
40:41 Do you have people that don't buy into some of the frames that you put down?
40:45 If they don't buy into the frames, no.
40:50 Because if you think of it like you're making up some excuse, they won't buy into it.
40:59 What this is about is delivering this stuff congruently.
41:03 So I mean, I know that you do impro stuff like that.
41:09 I'm not a big student of acting technique, but I do act when I perform.
41:15 It's a performance. I make it true inside of myself.
41:19 So I feel what I'm saying is true. I believe it 100 percent.
41:23 I'm as congruent as I can be.
41:26 Now, if I doubt it in my own mind, then it's going to start crumbling.
41:31 But you can you can say whatever you want in this situation because you are the authority.
41:35 And if you deliver that message congruently, if inside of yourself, you say it like it's totally true.
41:41 And the way I recommend doing this is you practice these frames.
41:45 You go there in your head. My dark secret is that I'm an NLP trainer on the side.
41:52 So a lot of that's about managing your state, about going there, about using as if frames.
41:58 I will go into my mind and feel what that would be like if that was true.
42:03 I make myself in my internal state be as it would be if that were true.
42:08 So I know how to step into that and deliver a frame from that point of certainty.
42:14 So I can say that and feel certainty. Sometimes I feel it creeping in a little bit of doubt.
42:19 Sometimes sometimes I think, oh, they're on to me and they know.
42:24 But even for one second, if that comes in, I push that right out.
42:27 I know that I have nothing to lose, but to go ahead.
42:30 You know, the art of the con. It's all about the confidence trick.
42:35 And the confidence trick works.
42:37 The basic premise of the confidence trick is that person is so confident in that situation that people buy into it.
42:44 Whoever has the most certainty, usually people by default will drop in line with that.
42:49 So when you have that certainty, when that frame, this is the frame that sits underneath the surface.
42:54 This is the frame that guides. It's not necessarily the words that I would say, though I could say some of those words.
43:00 That is the belief that I choose to hold in that moment when I deliver my no fail maneuver.
43:09 And I'll pace and lead and affirm. So I'll say, you'll open your eyes, you'll be able to see me.
43:13 They watch me. I say, what's happening now? And they say, well, I can see you.
43:16 I affirm. I say, excellent. Perfect. Brilliant.
43:22 And I mean it 100 percent.
43:25 And then I'll lead and I'll say and just to make sure, take a big breath in and breathe out.
43:31 After I've after I've closed, just to make sure, because you can move your feet, you can do all of this.
43:36 Everything's back to normal, isn't it? Just to make sure. Breathe in. Breathe out.
43:38 Just to make sure that's clear all the way through. Then highlight the hits.
43:42 Highlight the stuff that worked. So now some pretty weird stuff, pretty far out stuff going on there, wasn't it?
43:48 You had you had six fingers or was it the number six was missing?
43:52 You had you were stuck to the spot. What was that like when you were stuck to the spot?
43:56 I go back over the experience. That was quite, quite strange, quite far out, really, wasn't it?
44:00 That's how hypnosis works. So we're highlighting the hits.
44:04 And I've written there some pretty weird stuff. So that's what comes to the surface in their memory.
44:09 So even if for a second they weren't buying your frame about it closing,
44:13 hopefully that's just disappearing into the depths of their memory.
44:17 And the stuff that's rising to the surface are all the hits or the stuff that was far out.
44:22 Tell them what you want them to remember. A friend of mine who used to do door work said he was working on the door with this bouncer
44:31 who'd been experienced in doing door work for a long time.
44:35 And he had a situation where he had a tussle with this guy outside the club and he ended up throwing him into the road.
44:42 And the guy got hit by a car. Now, it wasn't serious, but the guy was hit by a car,
44:47 which would have been bad for the bouncer because he'd thrown a guy in the path of a vehicle.
44:53 This would have been a bad thing. Quick as a flash, the bouncer who did this turned around and went,
44:59 "Is everybody all right? Is everybody all right? Did you see that? Did you see that?
45:03 The guy was freaking out and attacking everybody."
45:07 Now, my friend said when the police got there and started taking witness statements,
45:11 the thing that people were saying was, "Well, the guy was just attacking everybody."
45:15 So my friend asked this bouncer about this afterwards. He said, "Whatever happens,
45:20 always tell the witnesses what you want them to have seen afterwards.
45:27 And do it again with that absolute congruence." Is that hypnosis? I don't know.
45:35 It's certainly interesting. It's interesting when you look at memory and how memory works.
45:39 So people who are magicians, mentalists, performers here know that people remember the things they did
45:44 very differently from how they ever happened and will capitalise on that a lot,
45:49 reconstructing the memories you want it to be. Part of this is when you close it,
45:53 highlight all the stuff you want them to remember, go back over it,
45:59 and then you frame the event at the end. You can say that bit literally.
46:04 "I was starting to think you weren't going to come out of it there, but the best way to bring somebody back."
46:11 Even express that concern at that point. So when you think about it like that,
46:15 you know that you can just keep going to bolder and bolder and bolder things
46:19 and know that the only thing that's going to happen is the process is going to come to an end,
46:22 which it has to do anyway. But you just get to make anything that you want
46:28 the official and intended ending of the process, which in some senses is the ultimate in manoeuvrability.
46:38 Ultimate because it's the last bit of manoeuvrability you're going to do.
46:43 Is that useful? I think that's really useful. That's really, really helped me out.
46:47 I don't do far out stuff with clients. I just do a bit of sticking and that kind of thing.
46:51 So I rarely have to do this. But if I'm in a situation,
46:55 if that had been what happened when I was doing my demo up here,
46:58 that would have been the end of the process. That would have been the intended end.
47:05 So I think I've covered most of what I wanted to say about this, and I'm hoping,
47:18 I'm hoping that there are enough seeds planted that I can get my outcome,
47:34 which is to eradicate fear and anxiety from your hypnosis equation,
47:39 from whatever you do hypnosis wise. Now, whether or not that fear, that anxiety is already eradicated,
47:46 whether or not it's vaporised away, or whether or not you're just at the point where you can see a process,
47:51 where you can start looking at things differently, start approaching things differently
47:56 when you structure your material so as you can build in the manoeuvres.
48:03 And I'm hoping that what I've given you here is I didn't want to give you a load of preformed manoeuvres.
48:08 I've given you some stuff as well as examples. What I wanted to give you was a strategy
48:12 to develop your own no-fail manoeuvres. So we've got the role, we've got the goal.
48:18 We've got the role, the goal, we've got the context that it all sits in.
48:23 We've got the rules for the manoeuvres themselves. You know about either side-shifting or terminating the process.
48:32 On your terms. So those are simple models you can apply.
48:39 But remember that you can apply them and you can apply them in designing stuff that fits you,
48:44 fits your style and fits your context.
48:50 And maybe on the way you've got to learn some other stuff that would be useful as well,
48:55 like the handstick routine, the footstick, fingers.
48:59 I did magnetic hands earlier, though, not as an explicit teaching thing.
49:03 And you've got to see some other things. So hopefully you've learned some other stuff on the way.
49:09 Has today been good? Yeah.
49:13 Have you got some of the things that you wanted to get out of it and not just the things that I wanted to get out of it?
49:19 OK. Thank you very much for being here because you've helped me out as well by being here,
49:25 giving me some people to explain this stuff to so I can get onto the cameras.
49:29 So thank you very much. I'll be around for questions, but give yourselves a round of applause.
49:34 [Applause]
49:40 [Music]