The Therapist's Trance

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Permalink Reply by Patti Hutcheson on April 3, 2009 at 9:39am

I do find I am in my own trance while working with a client. I have never felt comfortable while trying to read from a script. I scribble a few notes during the interview but once they are under I let my intuition take over. Before a session I always reassure myself that all the right words will come to me and they do. The session is equal parts client and hypnotist and whatever happens is happening for a reason I rely very much on trust.

Permalink Reply by Aino / Akpolarmom on April 3, 2009 at 8:40pm

Dan,
This really answers a question I wanted to ask .... I now have a name for what happened to me the other night while working in a great Skype session with one of our younger hypnotists. As he was getting ready to enter trance, I was intently watching my camera, picking up any cues I could and feeding them back to him. At the moment I told him to close his eyes for the last time (was doing "up and down time" for fractionation,) my eyes suddenly did this "auto focus" thingy....lol. It was like the picture on the screen got bigger, sucked towards me, and everything seemed to get clearer. Well one may think the computer was glitching, but the focus was mentally present too. I realized that it was at that point I must have entered trance myself. The rest of the session was great and I loved the whole thing. I found things seemed to flow, and I had no doubt where I wanted to guide my client at that point. It was indeed very enlightening and a big confidence builder for me!

Permalink Reply by dan jones on April 3, 2009 at 10:37pm

Cool, I find it odd to imagine how it could be possible to do hypnosis without entering into an externally focused trance, being 'one' with the moment, no thought of what you will do or what you have done, just doing...

Hypnosis becomes effortless once you enter this state. And it doesn't have to be in a 'hypnotist/client' situation. Even when you meet people and talk with people, if you show an intense interest and desire to know more...you begin to pay closer and closer attention to smaller and smaller minimal cues and enter an altered state where you just seem to have gained command of time and space, time slows down, things around you can go quiet, all that exists is you and the person you are communicating with (which can be a profound experience and often you know what they are thinking before they say anything)

Permalink Reply by Sophie Nicholls on April 3, 2009 at 10:56pm

What a lovely discussion. I was lucky enough to do some training with Ernest Rossi last year and it was fascinating to observe - from my externally focused trance state - how he works with clients using his very minimal and often content-free hands processes. He is in his seventies and has had a stroke - from which he has rehabilitated himself very successfully - and he is still working with people in such a beautiful, gentle and highly intuitve way.

Permalink Reply by dan jones on April 3, 2009 at 11:39pm

Hi Sophie,

I've unfortunately not had the pleasure of attending any of Rossi's live training but have had some contact with him and read most of his books and watched a number of his training DVD's. I love the Rossi approach and that is about all I do nowadays. Ernie's account of how he woke up and discovered he had had a stroke and his work with dreams etc on healing himself I found very moving.

One of my dreams is to one day have the opportunity to attend one of his trainings or Retreat.

Every time I think I have come up with something new in some way I always find a book that shows Rossi got there first...!!! :-)

I used to use hand movements (since the late 90's) then in 2006 found my first Rossi book to read since the book he did with Erickson, or specifically about Erickson's work (like the lecture... series) and saw in the book demonstrations of his hand movement thing. Up to that point videos of Rossi showed only ideo-motor finger signalling or just having clients focus on whatever comes up without any 'technique'

I've got a discussion on here somewhere about Ideo-Dynamic Healing unfortunately my experience has been that it doesn't look all dramatic like shock inductions and people can't see what is going on, it doesn't make sense to them, so they don't delve into it.

Permalink Reply by Blankfrost on April 9, 2009 at 8:13am

most or all hypnosis has the subject close their eyes but many hypnotists say that trance a natural state and most examples of natural trance your eyes are open like elevator, daydreaming, jogging,TV with all you have your eyes open. so why does the subject have to close their eyes? and have you maybe tried an induction doing the session with subjects eyes open instead of closed and see if you get the same results?

Permalink Reply by dan jones on April 9, 2009 at 2:06pm

Often people find they visualise better with their eyes closed. They also feel less self conscious. Most of my hypnosis has people not closing their eyes, just has them drifting off lightly into a day dreamy state while we talk. I usually only go for eye closer if the client is expecting a specific structure they call hypnosis that includes the eyes being closed.

In many cases without asking for eye closer people just close their eyes because it is comfortable and relaxing to do so. And as soon as you close your eyes you trigger a rise in alpha brain waves and a reduction in the other brain waves.