You can also ask about music, especially if you know the person is very auditory. "When was the last time you heard a really interesting musical group?" You just lift the arm on the same side that he looks toward as he accesses.
Once you've got arm catalepsy, you just say "All right. Now close your eyes and watch the whole show in detail, with sound, remembering the most important thing is your favorite part, so you can tell me about it later. And your arm will go down only as fast as you see the whole show."
That has worked on every kid I have ever been around, except one who was the child of a hypnotist and had been programmed for years to be unhypnotizable. This child had worked with about twenty–five great hypnotists and had managed to defeat them all, Rather than bothering to attempt to play that game with her, I just congratulated her. I told her she was unhypnotizable and couldn't possibly go into a trance. Of course, then she had to try to defeat that statement, and she started to go into a trance!
After you've raised the arm and it is cataleptic, you can do the same thing you do with any leverage induction. You can say "I'm not going to ask you to put your arm down any faster than your unconscious mind can present you with a replay of that entire movie so that you can enjoy it now … watching and listening to each scene, one by one … in great detail … and it can be so pleasant to see parts that you'd forgotten you remember … now… ."
Woman: Which arm is the right one to use if they just defocus and look straight ahead?
The easiest response would be to lift both arms. There are only two. The one that falls wasn't the one.
Woman: Is it possible to look in one direction and have the other arm be cataleptic?
Yes, it's possible to do most anything. However, the explanation I am offering you gives you a principle—a way of deciding which one to use in order to be more effective.
Now let's go back and discuss the handshake interruption that I did with David. This is an example of the class of inductions called pattern interruption. If you can identify any rigid pattern a human being has—either as an individual or as part of the culture–all you need to do is to begin that pattern and then interrupt it. You will have the same situation of leverage that you have with arm catalepsy. The classic example is the handshake interruption.
A handshake is an automatic, single unit of behavior in a person's consciousness. If you and I shake hands and we ask somebody "What did we do?" he'll say "You shook hands." That verbal coding suggests that it's a single unit of behavior, and in fact it is. (He repeatedly reaches out his hand to Sue, then stops.) Even though Sue knows now that I am just playing each time I reach my hand out to her, that visual input stimulates her to extend her hand because it is part of a single unit of behavior that she has programmed in herself. If she had to consciously think about what my extended hand meant and then consciously respond, it would be extremely inefficient and clumsy.
Each of us has thousands of such automatic programs. All you have to do is notice which ones arc really automatic in the person, and then interrupt one of those. As I extend my arm to make the handshake, she will extend hers. Then I interrupt by catching her wrist with my left hand and moving her hand slightly up. She will be momentarily caught without a program because there isn't any next step. If you interrupt a single unit of behavior, a person doesn't have any next step to go to. The person has never had to go from the middle of a handshake to anything else. You are now at a leverage point. All you do is supply the appropriate instruction, which they will typically follow, In this case, it could be "Allow your arm to float down, but only as quickly as you sink deeply into a trance. , . ."
Sue: Can you give me a distinction between leverage and pattern interruption?
The distinction is more in the way you organize your perceptions than in the actual experience. Leverages create a situation in which a person is put in the unusual position of already exhibiting some trance phenomenon, for example, catalepsy. Then you use verbal linkage to attach that present behavior to whatever else you want to develop.
An interruption involves putting a person in a situation where he is engaging in a single unit of behavior, for example, a handshake. You interrupt that single unit of behavior, and he is stuck, at least momentarily. As far as I know, no one in this room has ever gone from the middle of a handshake to some other piece of behavior, because handshakes don't have middles. Handshakes did have middles when we were about three or four years old and we went through a complex perceptual–motor program of learning how to shake hands with adults. At one time there were pieces to that behavior, just as there were pieces to walking at one point in your life. However, those are now such well–coded and well–practiced unconscious behaviors, that they don't have middles anymore. If you can catch a person in the middle of something that doesn't have a middle, they are stopped. At that point, you can supply instructions about how to proceed from that impossible position to the response that you want to develop.
The distinction between leverage and pattern interruption is a perceptual distinction on the hypnotist's part. In leverage you create some unusual behavior by your maneuvers and then you attach the response you want to develop to this behavior, as a way for them to get out of that leverage position. Pattern interruption means finding a single unit of repetitive behavior in the client and then interrupting it in the middle. Since it has the status of a single unit in consciousness, they have no programs forgoing from the middle of it to anything else. I will then supply the program.
When I walked over to Al and said "May I borrow your arm?" I didn't wait fora conscious response; I just reached over and lifted his arm. He could have taken it down and said "No." That's a possibility. That kind of response isn't possible with interruption, and that's one distinction between interruption and leverage. With leverage, I create a situation in which I surprise a person by getting him into an unusual situation such as catalepsy. With an interruption, he doesn't exercise any choice, because it is a single unit of behavior; suddenly he is in the middle of it, and it's not going on to the end.
Kevin: It seems to me that one of the presuppositions that we have in this room is that sooner or later one goes into a trance. That is different in the external world. In other words, if I meet somebody on the street and go to interrupt the handshake, it's going to be a little bit more difficult.
I agree there are different presuppositions going on here than in the outside world. I would guess it would be much easier there. In here you are alerted that there will be some unusual things happening. Alerting your conscious mind in that way makes my task as a hypnotist more difficult. If you are alerted to the fact that we are going to do something like hypnosis here, it gives you choices about whether you are going to participate or not. I'll guarantee that if you walk out into the hotel lobby and extend your hand congruently and interrupt the handshake, the person will be totally stopped.
You can experiment with other patterns as well. The next time someone greets you and says "Hi, how are you?" try saying "Terrible, just awful. I'm afraid I may die!" and see what they do. In this culture the usual ritualized response to that greeting is "Fine." Most people don't have ways of responding to any other answer, and will experience an interruption. This is particularly true in a business or professional context.
For most smokers, the act of taking out a cigarette and lighting it is a totally unconscious single unit of behavior. If you interrupt that by removing the cigarette from their hands, you will get the same kind of response.