Major Mark Cunningham - Advanced Hypnosis 2000 Notes - Go into trance regularly, to gain familiarity with the state and to establish control. Obviously this is useful for yourself and your personal life, and it's very important to be able to serve as a guide to others in the trance state/world. – The more you go into trance, the more you can guide yourself through deeper and deeper states effectively. – Using a tape you record can be a great way to go just as deep as a client would. – You want to be lucidly dreaming, essentially, where you have full-bore positive and negative hallucination and the other effects available to you, but you're also selfaware and directing it. – Use these abilities to game out situations, circumstances, environments, etc. you'd like to try out. – Game out what would it be like to be an immensely powerful hypnotist? – What would it be like if those things you saw as challenges didn't even exist anymore. In fact, they were laughable. What if your life's greatest challenge turned out to be something you could easily view as a rookie mistake? – The real purpose of self hypnosis is to get hooked up: to get everything firing in the right sequence. - hypnosis and change are essentially about re-structuring a person's belief system. If you can do that, you can have them do just about anything. - you need to test shit out to know for sure if it works. – the highest level of control is being able to let go. In spite of whatever is going on, dedicating this moment to experiencing something different, confident that you have the ability to pick up whatever level of control, or appearance of control you might want after the experience is over. – When working with a client, make sure they do the steps right and pass each test. If they don't, stop and correct them. Say something like: Ok, fine, you've proved to me that you can do that, now let's do it my way. – Or stop them and say: "No, no, the actual instruction was to allow those muscles to go loose, limp and relaxed..." Have them pick up your arm and demo for them: "See, this is what dead weight feels like. See? That's what we wand your entire body to feel..." – If they don't pass it, do something else. Another technique. – Mark might do a progressive relaxation with a mind machine, and the next session work on a direct induction again. – Once someone has experienced hypnosis, they've got it all, at that point it's just a matter of finding out what are the variations of this state.
– So control issues are critical. They're critical within your subject; they're critical within yourself. Do you have a sense of control that is strong enough and yet flexible enough, so that whatever happens during that session, you just keep rolling, as though this is what I expected, everything is wonderful? – People really may scream, weep, literally pee their pants, become enraged, overcome with fear, etc. (Not common, but they do happen.) – Everything from your first to your last interaction with a client should be under your strong, flexible control, leading them to a benevolent, positive outcome. – You are an actor; a guide. You don't inject your emotions or judgment into the session. – Mark believes hypnosis should start as soon as someone enters into sensory perception range. Everybody is up for grabs. This means that sense of control is very important within yourself. – Sense of control means: 1) You know where you're going/what you're going to create. 2) You know how you're going to do it. 3) Knowing and having the attitude that no matter what happens, it's all there for a reason, and it's all there to assist you to take that outcome farther. Period. – There's a wide range in people's responsive amplitude. For some people, a profound response is as light twitch. Others may flail an arm of cry out or something. – Mark advises doing your Elman Induction and work mostly on the person's right side. His reasoning is that: – Idio-motor responses cross, and the intuitive right brain will respond with the left side. One time in the emotional heat of the moment, he got whacked by a guy accidentally while positioned to his left. – hypnosis is like riding a bike. When you start, it can take all your conscious attention, and you might get something wrong because you're confused, you're over excited, etc. but after a few tries you're riding like the wind with no conscious attention needed on how you're doing it. – Working "blind". Blind therapy (or hypnosis period) has s powerful, paradoxical advantage. The more you know about the specifics (thoughts, sensations, memories, etc.), the more likely you are to interpret what the subject is giving you. The more you interpret what a subject is giving you, the more chances they have to reject what you're saying, and think "No. That's now what I'm experiencing." – "What do you suppose it would take for you to let go and go into somnambulism?" – the faster you give suggestions and induce, the more they try to focus and the better it works. – Change cannot happen without conviction. A person must be able to clearly have or imagine the better alternative, and to be convinced that it can and will happen. It's only at that time that their unconscious mind will let go of the old belief or pattern
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and adopt the new one. It's not enough to just take something away, there must be a positive exchange. – Mark creates something called "The Dream Machine" for subjects, designed to get them to feel a lot of pleasure going into that comfortable, dreamy state where they can comfortably imagine experiences vividly. He starts with fun stuff, like imagining going to the local store first thing in the morning to buy batteries, dressed in a pink bunny suit with a blinking red nose. What would it feel like? How high would you have to lift your legs to get those long bunny feet off the ground? If you turn around rapidly do you hit someone with one of your ears? – Really get them into it. – Then move on to: What would it be like to walk into a room, and have people look up and smile? – What would it be like to walk into a party, and as you walk in, you realize the party's getting better, because now you're there? – What would it be like if... – Continue getting closer and closer to things that actually will occur in their life once they embrace generative change. – IT'S ALL BASED ON CONVICTION. To what extent do you believe and imagine vividly that you can do this? – Adding conviction to impossible states makes them change to possible states. – CONVICTION is a predicate of possibility. You won't experience possibilities that you don't believe are possible. PREDICATE STATES for the client or subject: – PREDICATE STATES are simply states that have to exist before something can happen (i.e. change). – You've got to be open to change. – You've got to be open to free play. – You've got to be willing to believe totally impossible things. – You've got to be willing to believe that hypnosis can, in fact, work. – Willingness to accept instructions in order to find out how the story comes out. – A deep and abiding interest in change as a good thing. – THE PAST IS OVER. THE PAST IS GONE. The past is over, the future is expectation. The only thing that is real is right here, right now. – The fact that you couldn’t do something in the past doesn’t mean anything meaningful. It definitely doesn’t mean you can or can’t do something right now. – The only thing that counts is right now. What can you dream up? What can you literally dream up (not fantasize) with sufficient clarity of detail, and sufficient energy in your conviction that you can actually make it real—If only within the bounds of that particular experience? PREDICATE STATES for you, the hypnotist: – You have to believe and be open to the possibility that this person WILL change for
– good. — That IT IS POSSIBLE. – You have to believe that it is possible for it to occur through you. — That YOU CAN DO IT. – You have to believe that you can do it here and now. — YOU CAN DO IT RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE. – You have to believe that it’s going to happen. — IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN – The ability and willingness to invent yourself on the fly to get the desired results with your client. – The ability to take anybody anyplace.
LEVELS OF TRANCE: One way of thinking of this scale might be overall level of physiological arousal, with the highest at the top, and the lowest at the bottom. One thing to keep in mind is that trance is not a one-dimensional continuum. 1. Hyperempiria — This is a state of profound body and sensory awareness, unlike the “lower” ones below where bodily and sensory awareness in many case lessens as you continue downwards. This state is excellent for conditioning someone to profound, wild, extreme sexual responsiveness, you take them to Hyperempiria. Hyperempiria is great for physical things like sports, because you become acutely aware of how your musculature is working, where you’re noticing resistance, balance, tension, or damage, etc. This is also a great state for study skills, because when you become hyperaware, you learn the information vividly and it becomes stored in priority memory with more emphasis. 2. “Normal” waking state — Key rhythm is Beta — This is the usual, analytical, having conversations, learning, etc. state. Learning probably switches between this and sometimes lower states like daydreaming. 3. Daydreaming/Light Trance — Alpha — A state of light trance where you can visualize and make more diffused connections. We test this in the Elman Induction with eye catalepsy. 4. Somnambulism — We test this in the Elman with large muscle catalepsy and things like positive and negative hallucination, anesthesia, analgesia, amnesia. This is the great state for more hypnotherapy work, stage work, and for things like hypnotic analgesia for surgery or whatever. All of the common “hypnotic effects” are accessed in this state. The hypnotist can give positive suggestions which tend to become the subject’s vivid reality. In somnambulism, you have direct access to a person’s unconscious responsiveness and to their belief system, which is why it’s so good for most of the typical “hypnosis stuff”. The subject can lose track of their body and surroundings in this state. They can, of course, still open their eyes and have conversations and such in this state, but they will be trance-y in their thinking. Mild to stronger amnesia in subject, unless given the command to remember everything. 5. Coma State — Not related to an actual coma, just unfortunately named. Much more powerful physical effects such as spontaneous healing becomes possible
5. here. The hypnotist may or may not be able to lead the subject in this state, and in hypnotherapy sessions it’s very possible to lose the subject. The subject is much less likely to respond to you or external stimuli—they don’t really register or give a crap about you. 6. Ultra Depth — Hypnotist has no real control here, it’s just that deeper, innate “self”. Deepest access to all the healing responses and other really peculiar mind-body stuff we still don’t fully understand. The subject might be in this state for 5min or 8 hours—it’s up to their mind, not the hypnotist. They’ll pop out when they’re done. You, the hypnotist, guide them down here, you give them instructions on how to get there, you test them every step of the way, and by the time they are down to Ultra Depth, they are on autopilot. This is not under the hypnotist’s control. Off of this main continuum: 1. Ultra Height — Mark considers this potentially off to the side of the continuum, but which Gerry Kein puts on the top here. It’s a state of hyperawareness in which you transcend 2. Hypnosleep — This is a state that Mark considers “off to the side” of the continuum above, in which the mind puts of no defense whatsoever—so you need to be very careful with who you guide into this state and train to do this. The unconscious mind is fully active, and the conscious mind is simply not present. In most of the other states, the conscious mind is still there, it’s just on vacation, chilling off to the side somewhere—but if you try to give a suggestion that is potentially harmful or severely violates their values, morals, ethics, etc., they’ll not only pop out of trance, but they’ll pop out upset and focused on you. In Hypnosleep, you can have people do whatever, no problem. The defense mechanisms are simply not present. Mark doesn’t believe in this “height-depth” model. He believes that each state has defined access points and replicatable effects, and are very predictable. In reality, you tend to go from one state to another in a non-linear fashion, because each state is a predicate state for another (especially in an unconditioned mind).The Elman Induction, while very effective and rapid, is linear. For example, if you want to guide a subject into a Coma State or Hypnosleep, you can start by getting them into Somnambulism. Not because you’re “going down the ladder”, but because a main characteristic of somnambulism is that you tend to accept suggestions without criticism to find out what it feels like, and then you make up your mind whether it’s a good thing or not. Therefore, Somnambulism is a predicate state to other states. It’s not “climbing down the ladder”. This is a very good way to think of sessions: What are the states, or the steps, you need to guide the client through to get the outcome YOU need? Or if you’re doing selfhypnosis, that you need to guide yourself through. If you can get them into somnambulism, you’re golden. It’s a great switching station. And if you can build your own entry point into that state from “wakefulness”, you’re really golden. The sound of my voice… the snap of my fingers… when I say “sleep now”…
etc. This also works going the other way. From somnambulism you can build entry points into hyperempiria. You can take your subject/partner and say, “No, when I touch your earlobe, and go ‘Oh, baby,” you’re going to feel the most intense physical pleasure you’ve ever felt in your life…” Boom. It’s a trigger; an entry point. Normally to go to Hyperempiria you go down to somnambulism and work your way back up, but this way you can bypass all the predicate states after taking them there and installing your own access points, using anchors. You can go anywhere you want. Your job as hypnotist is to know the characteristics of these states and to know where you want your subject at any given time. Then you can install any entry points you desire. We humans all do this all the time anyway. – All states are accessible from any other after entry points have been introduced. – It's just about knowing how to get there and what to expect. – Your expectation is going to condition the response of your subject. – Throw in a suggestion like: "So long as you accept my suggestions and obey my commands to the letter, you can feel this good, or even better." – This allows them to get an immediate benefit and immediate gratification from every suggestion or command that follows. – You only want to do this when you're sure they're relaxed and happy, and feel good. – This tends to drive them deeper. "The deeper you go, the better you feel, the better you feel, the easier it is for you to go all the way down..." It's a recursive, selfreinforcing loop. – Every word I say... – Every breath you take... – Every thought you have... – Every beat of your heart... – Every sensation you feel in your body... – Every sound you hear... – ...can take yourself deeper and deeper... – Mark ALWAYA deepens, CONTINUOUSLY; he never assumes they're "deep enough". In general, deeper is better. You lose awareness of your body and feel better. – When wanting to talk to a subject in conversation, or whatever, you can say, "Now go ahead and open only your eyes." That gets interpreted as a command to open their eyes, but to stay in trance. – One of the characteristics of the somnambulistic state is endorphin release. So people feel good. – They also tend to want to please you, feel accepted, feel good, etc., especially since you told them to. – It's much easier to get someone to not be able to say their name than to completely
– forget it. AGE REGRESSION: – Doing age regression, you normally don't tell them you're going to do it, because otherwise the conscious mind overthinks it "is it happening now? Is it working now? Am I doing it right?" Etc. – Full age regression tends to happen when you go back to the age when the specific event took place, and no subsequent memories have occurred. – It's easy to find the moment where the first sensitizing event happened, and to change a misunderstanding of look at it differently. It tends to be like a house of cards that collapses. – You DO NOT want to inject your own meaning into the client. That's how you create false memory syndrome, and it's one of the dumbest things a hypnotist can do. – In PARTIAL Age regression, you suggest to them to go back to that age and time but with the eyes, mind, and wisdom of an adult. – snappy and cool hypnosis techniques tend to be problematic in the real world when they're too formulaic, because every one and every situation is different. – The key is knowing the outcome you want, and having the flexibility to figure out how to create it. – You have to be comfortable with power, and taking the lead. You have to be feel as though you ARE going to do something profound and amazing for them that is going to positively change their life forever. – Many people in the hypnosis and NLP worlds are too pussyfooty or trepidatious. It puts the judgment in the hands of the hypnotist, instead of the client. Find out what they want, and give it to them. – You must be comfortable with power. You are already more than capable of creating profound experiences and changes in people. – In Mark's experience, no hypnotherapist has ever screwed anyone up from the hypnosis. If it happens, it's because the therapist introduced elements of themselves into the clients' mind while they were in deep rapport in the session. – In deep rapport, you'll do two things: – 1) You will instill in your subject everything you're thinking or feeling. This means you have a tremendous responsibility to keep your states clear. Treat your own emotional states like primary colors. No shades, just brilliant, clear states, so there's no confusion, you know what you're doing, and your client is going, ok, this is a good thing. – 2) Whatever kink you have buried in your own psyche is going to come out. Every profession has its wackos, but hypnotherapy has more than its share, like many psychology professions. For example, if you've got some kind of hidden list for power, you're going to confront it very early on in the work. For example, if you're a heterosexual male, it won't be long before you have gorgeous women coming in, going into trance at the drop of a hat, and seemingly wanting to do anything you tell them to. If your concept of power is power over someone else, that's going to come out, it's going to come out strongly, and it's going to be to the detriment of the subject, and it's going to be to your detriment as well. You may end up in a REALLY
horrible situation, or even jail, and have blood (even if figuratively) on your hands. – Another version of this is ideological power—people who are obsessed with their absolutist personal ethics, and instilling them everywhere. This can also fuck people up, and is incredibly selfish. – Also with metaphysical or personal belief system things, like trying to push metaphysical crap on someone who just wants to lose 20lbs. That stuff is just another kink in the hypnotist's psyche. – People don't come in to have you imprint something on them that's totally alien to their experience. – You, as a hypnotist, are an enabler. – You are a reality technician. – You are a fantasy technician. – In order to not be trying to impress people with your ego, your Jeffness, you need to have a strong, powerful enough sense of yourself, confidence in yourself and and a positive, strong image of who you are, and how you move through and interact with the world, that when you go through life, and are doing your hypnotherapy sessions with clients, there's no need for you to take anything personally. There's no need for you to get emotionally attached or involved with the people you're helping. – You're not a therapist. – Tell your clients "This isn't therapy, this is training. I'm your coach. What does that mean to you? Well, what that ought to mean is that A) there's nothing wrong with you, you're not broken, you've just been doing some things that haven't been leading to your goal. We'll teach you how to do things that will lead to your goal. The second thing is that I don't have to take any excuses or rationalizations anymore. Ever have a coach before? Was he real big on accepting excuses? I don't think so! – In reality you remove the conditions that require therapy. Which is one reason why psychologists tend not to be fond of hypnotists—we specialize in rapid change. – Doing sessions and creating profound change is a hell of a lot of work. When you're in that deep rapport, and they go to a strange place, suddenly you're there too, feeling all kinds of toxic thoughts, toxic emotions, toxic feelings in your body, etc. – And it's your job to be in charge of the session. If it's not you, you're in trouble, because the person who doesn't know what's going on is now leading the session. – You have to put out a lot of emotional energy. – You've got to have it under control. Energy is like electricity, and it will arc out of you aren't careful, like when a person vampires your energy, and you get drawn into the bad state. – One of the best ways to do this is to work on your self-hypnosis skills, especially where you can sit down and do highly detailed, directed daydreams. Just get relaxed, dreamy, and start to construct something. – Mark starts with a geometric shape, and then spins it, changes its color, moves it, etc., then wraps a room around it, adding more and more detail, until eventually
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he's got a whole scene with people laughing, talking, and interacting and all kinds of things going on. Being able to create that vivid a reality is really useful. Being able to go into trance at the drop of a hat, direct the experience, and do something useful while you're there. Accepting the full range of human behavior as OK. Sense of self independent of circumstances, that you can be in any and all situations at any and all times.
– Use and practice hypnotic influence with everyone around you. Find the switch for hypnotic influence inside yourself, jam that fucker on, and go out into the world with that being part of who you are. It's ok to turn it off at times of course, but it's your job to be comfortable with this kind of communication and influence. – You need to be accumulating more and more power in your own life, so that its there when you need to use it to help others and yourself. You need to be comfortable with that power. – Paying attention and being awake all the time. "What's going on here? What can I learn from this? What's the opportunity floating around right here that no one else is aware of because they're in their heads and asleep? – The last step to becoming a hypnotist is to give up becoming a hypnotist. Or a master hypnotist. – So long as you are becoming, you are not being. It's Xeno's paradox. – So long as you're trapped in the paradox of achieving the goal, you cannot achieve the goal. – What if I actually were a master hypnotist? How would I know? – Mark found that he had based this achievement on assumptions of what he would have to know and how people would respond to him. It was all internally generated, from his belief systems. NOT BASED IN REALITY.
