Remember that unconscious movements are slow and relatively jerky. If you are using finger signals and your partner lifts her finger up quickly, the way she would if you just asked her to lift her finger, you say "That's the wrong mind. I am not interested in that mind."
The conscious reframing model that is in the book Frogs into Princes is designed to use the client's conscious mind as a messenger.
She notices responses internally and reports what they are to you.
Rather than using the client's conscious mind in that way, this afternoon I would like you to go through a procedure of learning to set up ideomotor responses so that you can see the "yes" or "no" responses. The way you are going to do that requires that you first substantially alter somebody's state of consciousness. You can alter her state in one of the ways that you have already learned. You figure out what would be a sequence of experiences that would lead your partner to be in a very altered state.
When you are working with the person, you might tell her to sit there and as she sits there, remember a time that she took a long trip in a car. She was driving down the highway—perhaps it was nighttime, perhaps it was daytime. Perhaps it started in daytime and worked its way towards evening. And as the dusk began to fall and she moved down that road, she began to notice the vibration in the steering wheel, the hum of the engine, the repetitive movement of visual objects rushing past her. The din of experience … as you moved on … and on … through the evening. And as you did so … you became more and more relaxed … and you told yourself you had to stay awake … this was very important… . But you felt very tired … and you might look at a clock … once … and look at it later … and feel as if an hour should have passed … but only minutes had gone by. … Sometimes you would appear to daydream for a second … and twenty or twenty–five minutes would have gone by. …
All of these descriptions … that you can use … will lead your partner more and more into an altered state… . And as she goes into that altered state … and begins to relax … and become even more comfortable … then I want you to begin …to suggest to her … that she can use her unconscious mind … as a resource … a resource that she can learn from … and communicate with … and really have an experience … which is one that will be satisfactory to her… . And that the only thing which is necessary … to build good rapport with her unconscious … is to have a channel of communication… .
Sometimes the unconscious communicates with the conscious mind by movement … . It might be movement … of relaxation. … It might be that your head nods … up and down … slightly … to communicate "yes," and back and forth … slightly … to communicate "no." …It might be that a left arm … very slowly … begins to lift up … as a way of communicating "yes" and a right arm … lifts up slowly to communicate "no." …It might be that your right foot twitches … involuntarily …to indicate "yes" … and a left foot twitches … involuntarily …to communicate "no." … It might be that you look to the left … to communicate "no" … and you look to the right to communicate "yes." … Only your unconscious mind knows which it will be… . And if it should be that one of your hands is going to lift up … or one of your feet is going to move …it doesn't matter which it is at all. … It only matters that the choice that you make …is appropriate …to you . , . because your unconscious mind knows more about you … than anyone else… .
Now, you can then ask the person to unconsciously choose … what she would like to use as a "yes" signal … and watch what happens… . If you don't see anything … take your time … deepen her trance … and suggest other alternatives … until you find one… . Because some people choose to say "no" by moving an index finger … and "yes" by lifting a whole arm… . And I know that someone who does that … can allow their unconscious mind … to lift a right arm … off their thigh slowly … perhaps all the way up to their face … so that the person who is working with them … could never miss that signal… .
Now, it requires that you be astute when you do this … because very, very often … the signals will appear to be incorporated … into a conscious movement … and when that occurs … you don't want to miss it … do you? It's so easy for people …to miss signals… .
Now, you may get a signal … that you see once … but it doesn't appear … to come a second or a third time… . Just because you ask
a question … doesn't mean that someone has a way of answering it unconsciously… . Because sometimes questions can't be answered "yes" or "no."' … So try to ask questions initially that you can be sure … there is a "yes" or a "no" response to.
I want you to pair up and try this. First induce an altered state, and then lead the person into answering questions with an ideomotor response. If the person literally does not give you any signal and has trouble doing ideomotor responses, you might want to help her. Remember, never define anything as a success or failure. Leave it ambiguous as to when you are asking her to use one channel as opposed to another, and leave it ambiguous as to which channels you are paying attention to, so that it's hard for her to tell where you are getting the signals from. If you set up something that is limited and she fails at it, it may convince her that she can't do it, when in fact she probably already has succeeded. But she didn't notice that success; she only noticed when you defined something as failure,
I would like to instruct every unconscious mind in here that if you get the idea from the person who is working with you that you are failing, you are wrong. It's the other person who is failing. The fact that you got that idea is an indication that she didn't give you enough choices so that you could respond easily and appropriately.
Sometimes it's very difficult for people to do ideomotor responses because it's a new thing for them. If they are sitting there and you are not seeing any responses, very often you can tell them (He turns to a woman in the audience.) "Sally, I'm reaching over and I'm lifting up your left arm. And I'm not going to tell you to put it down any faster than you really relax comfortably and completely and learn to allow your other hand to float up involuntarily. So that hand will go down slowly while you think pleasant thoughts … and allow all the weight to drain out of the other hand . . , so that one hand goes down … only as fast as the other one begins and continues to lift up . . , and no faster. That's much too fast—slow down. Only as fast as the other hand learns to move involuntarily… . That's right …. Take your time… . Let the other mind do it. … Slow down… . There it goes… . You are learning now … really learning… . Enjoy it. … That's right. … All the way up, let it … all the way up… . Learn to allow your unconscious mind to make the movements and the changes … and allow that to continue, one moving one way … and the other moving the other way… . And you can continue that until you've learned to do this perfectly."
Hypnosis is a learning process. There's no way to fail unless the hypnotist allows someone to define something as failure. If you define the situation so that failure is not possible, it won't be a problem. If you continually give people the experiences and the internal responses that can serve as the foundation to build learnings so that they can have choices, you will do them the most service. That's true of any learning.