Depth and Somnambulism - who cares :-o

Hey all,

My good friend and business partner, Randy Shaw, posted a wonderful post on a yahoo board and I just had to share it here.

It's in regards to a thread about somnambulism and it's "importantness."

Enjoy,
Matt


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I love these kinds of open-minded discussions!

With respect and gratitude to my teachers, they taught me to use structured tools to achieve states of mind, that acutally, we experience every day without having to go through any of those structured tools. We are going in and out of hypnosis every day and many times each day.

We are taught that to help someone change their subconscious programming, that we must do this -and do that- to get into that same place where the program
lives inside their body-mind. And yet if you just think about it, that program/feeling/belief was installed in a "natural" setting, not in any formal or structured hypnotic manner. The client was justliving life, at home with mom, at school, wherever,
and was not tested for any somnambulism. So that problem (trance/program/belief) was installed as the person's guard was down, or in childhood where the
guard was not yet in place.

That guard, critical faculty, we discovered, and needs to be openned up to influence change at the subconscious level of mind, but it's been there and has been there long before any hypnotist or scientist "discovered" it, described it or made
any money off knowing about it, just as Newton did NOT create gravity or mathematics, but used conscious awareness to begin, begin, to understand
it.

Human beings are in hypnosis, hypnotic states,the guard open, so much, and we are usually so unaware of it, because it is experienced so much,so often and feels so natural, that we're not even aware when we are, just as fish are unaware they
are constantly living in water.

Remember, you are just as much in "Hypnosis" when you are doing something automatically, as you are when you are "automatically" being "reprogrammed"
in formal hypnosis. This is the two sides of the same coin.

As for somnambulism and the tests...
As a little boy I was taught how to walk home safely. I had to go up this street, take a left
and go down that street until I turned right and then walk until the street turned left again.

In my child/mind this was mapped out for me so I wouldn't get lost/ be safe. But one day I looked across the field (Alfalfa) and saw - a short cut.

In 1st grade I was ready to just cut through the field and get home in 5 minutes, instead of going through all the streets my mom taught me to walk to get home, safely. I found an easier way. Faster too. And my personal intelligence and confidence
expanded.

I've found that same lesson in working with Human beings. It is good to provide some standardl essons to help clients get into that place where changes are available, the subconscious mind, but... everything we do can be improved upon. There are
things we learn to do that are mechanical as we learn them, but the more we do our intelligence provides more effective and faster ways to accomplish those things and also provides quantum jumps in comprehension so that we are blessed with much higher understanding of the processes --- so much so we can completely leaveour original methods and progress into much more advanced and productive processes.

When I first started I used the Elman, and it seemed to work, .. except when I needed to
help a client regress into a bad feeling. As the Elman - the way I was taught - is focused so much with relaxation, some clients simply did not want to bring up any bad feelings. I knew that to heal the bad we just had to bring it up to the surface, and by so doing so let it release out of the body.

So I experienced myself, and then had to relearn how to help my clients get into that place, but not tease them with relaxation first and then expect them to just
jump into bad feelings.

So, the quantum, yet simple answer was: just jump into the bad feeling and we had bypass. Emotion bypasses the CF like a hot knife through butter.

Imagination and emotion are so much faster and "funner" than the structured and rigid tests I was taught for induction.

Now, I love the Elman because it taught me the steps, but it was the goal I want, not the steps.

The Elman taught me to FEEL when the client is in the labeled stated called somnambulism, and to feel it is to know it. Then I let the Elman go, because
I knew how to cut across the field and get home in a fraction of the time.

On the other hand, last year I pulled the Elman out of my back pocket and used it with a client that was not respondeing to my usual methods, and thankfully that "structured" induction worked great - with that client.

I do not like some stage hypnotism as it is quite disrespectful to the participants. Yet I see some stage hypnosis and it is respectful and I watch... and I learn, thankfully.

How does a stage hypnotist get the participants to do things that they could not
do normally? Those stage hypnotists are not doing any formal ELman induction, yet producing astounding results. Maybe... bypassing the CF is an easy thing, instead of a hard thing? (Once we understand it, know what it feels like.) Maybe all the lessons
and steps we are taught are the pioneering constructs of good people, but are really only the beginning?

Maybe too many streets? ;-)

If we had to stay with horses and wagons, as they were the first and most commonly accepted methods of traveling from the east to the western USA in the 19th century, would it just amaze those pioneers to learn that we can fly from the east coast to
California in 6 hours? And it's all simple stuff, no magic, and no heresy. Just physics and implementation achieved by minds that could see that field, and wonder why not just cut accross the field? ;-)

Randy Shaw

http://www.regression-hypnotherapy.com