Friday, November 28, 2008

Widdershins Spell

Hi Everyone

I'm back posting after spending time doing other stuff.

Here's a fun technique we were playing with last night at Practice Night at Melissa Tier's Center for Integrative Hypnosis. We hold biweekly Practice Nights for our past and current students from Melissa's Hypnosis Training in New York, and our NLP Training, and In-Depth NLP Training

As part of our In-Depth NLP we love to explore new techniques, deconstrct them to notice how they work, take out unnecessary pieces to make them more efficient, and add in other pieces to make them more effective.

I'm not sure what the technique is called, so I'll call it the Widdershins Spell because of a comment made by Charlie.

Widdershins of course simply means anti-clockwise. However, it has an implication of magik and spells. In particular a widdershins spell may be used to undo some other spell, a sense of unwinding. This widdershins spell is designed to unwind the power that a particular image may have on us.

In doing the technique we used Melissa's office chair which has rollers. This made it easy for the client to turn. If the client is standing you may want to stand near them to support them and keep them safe, although note that the turning is not intended to make the client dizzy and should be done at whatever rate is comfortable.

We will be writing a fuller post including details of the language patterns used, but here is a summary:

Summary of the technique
  1. Client picks an issue or problem they want to change
  2. Coach leads client to identify a picture associated with the problem
  3. Coach helps client to locate the picture in space (i.e. where is the picture located in the space around the client)
  4. Coach suggests that the picture will be changed when the client turns around and looks at it
  5. Coach guides client to all the way around (while the picture stays fixed in place)
  6. Coach asks client how picture is different
  7. Repeat 7 times (or until done)
Practice Group Demo
Desi volunteered to be the client (the exercise was done entirely content free). I asked her to sit in Melissa's chair. I then asked her to think of something, some issue, that she would like to change. 

When she had selected one, and was associating into it, I suggested that there was a picture associated with the problem, and asked her where this picture was. She pointed up to the right; the picture was perhaps 12 feet away from her, 3 feet square. We explored other submodalities, the one that seemed most significant was that the image was very bright, so bright it was difficult for Desi to look at.

I used some metaphors to suggest to Desi that when she turned around the picture would be different. I then asked Desi to turn in a full circle and when she was facing forward again, invited her to look at the picture and notice what was different about it. The major difference Desi reported was that the brightness had gone down and the picture was much more comfortable to look at.

We repeated the turning. By the time we had reached the fourth turn, the picture was entirely gone.

The plan had been to rotate up to seven times, so I suggested that Desi turn around once more and she would see a picture of an alternate outcome, some other state of being that she chose instead. She did so and accessed a positive state. We repeated this a few more times to build up the resource state.

How the Technique Works
Well, this is anyone's guess. But let's identify a few elements that are included in the technique:

Dissociation

Of course, using the visual modality tends to be dissociative, this after all is the whole basis of the V-K Dissociation ("phobia cure")

This technique takes the dissociation one step further: by fixing the picture in a certain location while the client rotates, it is made even more obvious to the client that the picture is "separate" from them.

Submodalities

By noticing the submodalities of the picture, and suggesting that they will be changed, the client is free to notice changes that do occur (and after all, all we are is change).

As with Desi, it is very likely that the changes the client notices will be in driving submodalities.

Change in Physiology

It is a truism that all trance begins with a change in physiology (after all what does "relax" mean?!?!). 

By using client rotation we are allowing the client to change their physiology and hence access altered states of mind.

Discomfort and Disorientation

Putting the client in a position of mild discomfort can also assist them in entering altered states. This is why, for example, Dr Richard Bandler,  will stare at his clients, he wants to make them sufficiently uncomfortable that going into trance is preferable to being stared at.

Hypnotic Language

Goes without saying.


1 comment:

Elizabeth J. Neal said...

Great! It sounds good. Thanks for sharing.. BioNeuroCoaching