When I first set myself the task of reading Richard Bandler’s book “Guide to Trance-formation†I allowed myself a week to read it. Big mistake. This book is full of information, comment, case history and exercises in personal development. I mean FULL!
So I re-timetabled, and I’ve been reading for weeks. Now - maybe it’s a mistake to try to be doing the exercises as I go, but I would feel only half-hearted in my review if I hadn’t made an attempt to do at least some of the exercises too.
The thrust of the book is the power of hypnosis, both of ourselves and others, to help create change for the better. Before you say you don’t like hypnosis, or you don’t trust it, or you once saw a show where the guy made people squawk like a chicken - don’t kid yourself - you’re being hypnotised all the time. Don’t look around to see who’s doing it. Look in the mirror.
We are hypnotising ourselves and others all the time, with our repeating patterns of words, actions and beliefs. In effect we “programme†ourselves. As Bandler says “We are the only machine that can program itself. We can set deliberately designed, automated programs that work by themselves to take care of boring, mundane tasks, thus freeing up our minds to do other, more interesting and creative, things.â€
“Guide to Trance-formation†is both a textbook and a workbook for self development. The first section of the book “Patterns of Process and Elicitation†deals with how to discover the way in which we (and others) map our world, i.e. how we represent the world to ourselves through our senses. This is how we have set up all the programmes we run in our lives, the ones that work and - just as importantly - the ones that don’t. Bandler‘s book is seasoned with references to Milton Erickson, Gregory Bateson, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir - all renowned therapists with whom Bandler worked to discover how they achieved the successful results they did.
In Bandler’s opinion there are three steps to “making enduring change: (i) People must become so sick of having the problem that they decide they really want to change (ii) They have to somehow see their problem from a new perspective or in a new light (iii) New and appealing options must be found or created, and pursued.â€
The text will be equally intriguing for those who have studied Bandler previously and those who are new to him. It sparked my curiosity, so that I felt like finding out more and reading books Bandler referenced in “Guide to Trance-formationâ€. Even though I have no formal training in hypnosis, the exercises are simple and straightforward and I found myself wondering whether it was possible to be hypnotised just by reading it! I’m guessing Yes, since we are often influenced by what we read, so why not in this instance?
The exercises in this (first) sectionof the book are:
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· Changing Feelings by Dissociation
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· Identifying Your Sensory Preferences
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· 2 exercises each on the Meta Model and the Milton Model
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· Stealing a Skill
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· The Visual Squash
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· Foolproof Planning
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· The NLP Spelling Strategy
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· Getting Things Done
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· 2 exercises in Submodality Change
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· Swish Pattern
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· Belief-Change Pattern
The second section of the book “Patterns of Induction†is about developing and improving the skills of hypnosis. It gives examples, stories and exercises on how to use language very specifically, how to use the voice - tone, depth, rhythm etc. , stories-within-stories and other skills to induce an altered state in the subject (yourself or someone else), a state in which you (or they) are more open to change. In Bandler’s words “Whenever you are communicating with other people, be aware that words are power, and the way in which you use words has to be as precise as the results you desire.â€
The exercises in the second section are very specific to inducing, deepening and maintaining trances or altered states.
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· Using signs of developing trance
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· Creating Inductions
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· Toning Inflection
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· Using Truisms to Induce Hypnosis
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· Overlapping to Increase Skills
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· Overlapping to Induce Trance
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· Previous Trance Induction
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· The Handshake Interrupt
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· Stacking Realities
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· Nested Loops
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· Hot Button/Cool Button
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· Advanced Synesthesia Change Pattern
In section three “Patterns of Utilization†covers the uses of the skills learned in the book, to create a better way of thinking and being in our lives, in short - to make us feel better. According to Bandler “you just need to know how to get good feelings to replace the old ones - or, even better, to drop them in to what happens just before you feel bad, so you start to go down a new pathway.†The chapters of this section deal with creating a better reaction now, to events that caused us trauma in the past. If we are still suffering from issues in our past, it is not because the problem keeps happening, but because we have formed a response to it that keeps us stuck in that negativity. Using the exercises in this section can help us change the way we feel about past traumas, overcome our phobias, stop blocking ourselves and start taking positive action.
Exercises in section three:
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· How Much Pleasure Can You Stand?
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· Fast Phobia Cure
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· Putting a New Spin on the Past
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· Overcoming Hesitation
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· Going over Threshold
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· Installing Positive Memories
Section four is a set of transcripts of client sessions with Richard Bandler. The text of the session is printed on the left hand side of the page and the analysis of the language patterns is printed on the right. I found it too confusing to try to read both together on my first reading of this format. So I read through the transcript of just the dialogue, as it would have flowed in speech. I found it was worth reading the script through first, before reading the analysis, partly to see what patterns I could identify myself and partly to let the script flow as it would have done in the live session.
Overall I found the book a very useful combination of textbook and workbook. It is something worth reading once for interest, a second time to try out any/all of the exercises and, after that, any time you want to reference Bandler’s work on trances, their analysis, uses and effects.
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on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Beliefs & Values, Creativity, Human Behaviour, NLP, Self Development.
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October 24th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by MegaPotential: Finally - my review of Richard Bandler’s “Guide to Trance-formation”. Enjoy. http://bit.ly/5pkE...
July 22nd, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Wirral Hypnotherapy…
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