You can allow that hand to go down, now, Sally, and congratulate yourself on a job well done.
Now, I know that each and every one of you in here can learn to go into a trance, and you can learn to get anything you want from trance states. But if trance states arc typically a time when you fail at things, that won't be the case. Traditional hypnotists have always done themselves a disservice in that they've asked people to do things that they weren't already doing. I don't do that, because I think it is unfair to them and it would make my work harder. I always allow people to do what they are already doing by giving them a lot of choices. I allow them to respond in ways that are most natural for them, and then slowly use that to teach them to do something else in an altered state. You can begin with simple things like movement, and extend that all the way to making pervasive personal changes.
OK.. Find a partner, induce an altered state, and set up a nonverbal yes/no signal system. The signals can be responses other than just movements. You might have her blush for a "yes" signal and pale for "no." Or she could relax for "yes" and tighten up for "no." If you try a range of possibilities and don't notice a response, say "I would request of your unconscious mind that it provide me with an obviously recognizable signal that I can use validly as a "yes" response. Would you provide that for me?" And then you sit back and observe. If you see it, fine. If you don't, you say "Please make it more obvious for me. Because I desire to be instructed by your unconscious mind and to be fully respectful of your needs, I need a signal system that is unequivocal and unambiguous." Your partner will generally come up with some responses that you can see. Take about twenty minutes to do just that much with each other. Then come back, and I'll give you more instruction.
*****
Many of you have told me that it was a lot easier than you thought it was going to be. Many of you, as I walked around the room, were succeeding brilliantly without noticing it. One of the problems with doing anything that deals with unconscious activity, is that very often things are really obvious. I noticed someone staring at his partner's fingers and asking questions, and the partner was nodding her head "yes" and "no." He was focusing on her fingers, and he kept squinting harder, as if somehow or other that was going to make the fingers lift higher. You have to understand that very often unconscious responses, since they are not meaningful, have a tendency to be very blatant. But if you look only in one place, you may miss them.
2) Identifying the Pattern of Behavior to be Changed. Now that you've established yes/ no signals, I want you to put your partner in an altered state again and have her identify some pattern of behavior that she engages in but doesn't like. Now, consciously she may think "Ah, smoking" but unconsciously she may identify something else. It doesn't matter what she thinks she has identified, because I want you to tell her unconscious to scan through all the things in her life that cause her problems and pick one that is of utmost and vital importance to her well–being.
When her unconscious mind has selected one, have it give you a "yes" signal. You will be guaranteed by these instructions that if she consciously picks something trivial like smoking, her unconscious can pick something more useful. Habit control is the most trite application of a learning tool. It's important, but it is not nearly as important to your well–being as other things. There are many patterns that occur in your life which prevent you from having intimacy with people, spontaneity when you are moving through the world, or the ability to learn from other people and enjoy them. There are patterns like that which are pervasive—throughout everything you do. A byproduct of that pattern may be that you can't control your smoking or that you wake up at four o'clock in the morning and have to eat pecans.
Once I worked with a man who did that. He woke up at four a.m., and if he couldn't get pecans, he couldn't get back to sleep. It didn't matter where he was; it didn't even matter if he changed time zones. It changed time zones too. It was a very sophisticated thing. This person, by the way, was a clinician.
The problem was that he would travel to places where you couldn't get pecans, he would take pecans along when he went to foreign countries, but sometimes he wasn't allowed to bring them in. And that meant he would wake up at four o'clock in the morning. Being clever, he learned to go to bed at nine o'clock at night and get up at four o'clock in the morning. However, his wife didn't like that much. It made life dull.
Now, I knew that the behavior he told me he wanted to change was only an example of a much more important and pervasive pattern. However, I know that working with an example is one way to work with the pattern, so I just went ahead with reframing.
So in the next piece, I want you to first put your partner back into trance, reestablish a yes/no signal with the person's unconscious, and then ask her to identify, both consciously and unconsciously, a significant pattern of behavior she wants to change. You can label this pattern X or Y or something arbitrary like that.
3) Separating Positive Function from Behavior.
a) Now you can go right through the standard refraining model. First you say something like "I want you, Joyce's unconscious mind, to turn the finger signals over to the part of her that makes her do X. And when that part has full control over the finger signals, both fingers will lift up so that I know." You always use the ideomotor signals as a feedback mechanism.
b) The next question is very important. You ask "Are you willing to allow her conscious mind to know what it is of value that occurs when she does X?" This is a yes/ no question. If you get a "yes" say "go ahead and let her know, and when you've done that, then allow that "yes" finger to rise, that "yes" blush to occur—or whatever the signal is—so that I know you've informed her." You are always monitoring things. Use the yes/no signals not only as answers, but as monitors.
By the way, it doesn't matter if you get a "yes" or a "no" response to the question "Will you let her conscious mind know the useful purpose?" It doesn't matter because you already have what you wanted to accomplish: communication on the subject. If you go in and ask "Are you willing to communicate about this?" it might say "No." And if it says that, then you are stuck. Then you have to come up with some other scam.
If you ask a father in family therapy "Are you willing to change your behavior in relationship to your son?" he might say "No." But if you say to him "Do you love your son?" he'll say "Yes." If you ask "Do you really love him?" he'll say "Yes" again. If you then ask "Do you love him enough that you would be willing to make changes in your behavior so that he could have a happy life?" you won't find many fathers who will say "No" to that.
The reframing procedure I'm teaching you is very similar to that. You make it very easy for the person to respond in the way that you want her to by presupposing everything that's important.
So I presuppose communication. If his unconscious says "No, I'm not willing to tell the conscious mind" it's already communicated with me. I say "Then are you willing to figure out for yourself exactly what you consider to be the most useful aspect of this behavior?" You see, all
1 want is the communication. It doesn't matter whether the response is "yes" or "no." Who cares if her conscious mind knows? Even if her conscious mind knew, it wouldn't help. Sometimes knowing gives an illusion of security, but informing the conscious mind is not profoundly useful in and of itself. What I want is communication.