Self Hypnosis Without Trance

1. Hypnosis is a Dynamic Natural Process

Due to its history and popular image, many people mistake hypnosis for something it is not a special altered state
that renders people open to suggestion. Modern research has shown this not to be so. Yet modern research also
verifies the phenomenon of hypnosis So what is it?

Well, formal hypnosis (the type you might see happening in a hypnotherapists office or at a stage show) is a process.
Its a process of harnessing a persons natural deeper neuro-cognitive processes through which they shape our
everyday experience. Here is a definition that serves:

Hypnosis is the use of language and communication to direct attention, lead cognition and seed ideas for the purpose of leading a
person into an altered perception of reality.
So this is what a hypnotist really does through their rituals and suggestions.

But what is really useful to know is that we are doing this to ourselves, all day everyday. Shaping our own perception
and experience through our internal communication and processing. Understand this and harness it and you can
transform your life for the better in so many ways.

Be careful what you say to yourself you might just be listening!

2. We Co-create our Experience of Reality

There is an old Zen Koan hat asks Who is the great magician that makes the grass green?

What we perceive as the world around us is not really the world around us, it is the world as it occurs to us. Sure there
is something out there an erratically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup but we do not get to
experience or know it directly.

Through our senses and meaning making processes we take the raw data presented to our senses and shape it into
experience. WE do this (albeit unconsciously). WE are the magicians that make the grass green as without our acts of
perception, there are no images or sounds, only light waves and sound waves.

If this seems a little abstract, remember our perceptions inform (drive even) our behaviour and responses, and that it is
not just our perception of the physical world we are are co-creating, it is also our perceptions of our social world.

Think about your emotions they are driven by your perceptions. Think about your reactions they are driven by
your perceptions. Think about the choices you see in life they are driven by your perceptions.

By coming to understand HOW you are perceiving, you can get begin to re pattern your habits of perception, leading to
new emotional and behavioural responses and new options and choices.

3. You are not who you think you are (you are who you are becoming)
People are patterned they walk the way they walk, talk the way they talk and think the way they think. Now, we end
up patterned for a reason so that we can get on with being and doing in the world without having to think too much or
expend too much time and energy on everyday living. So mostly, our patterns serve us.

The problem comes about when we find that we have developed patterns of behaviour and response that are
undermining us in living our lives as we would like to. Phobias, anxieties, overwhelming emotional responses, fears etc.
And we all do this We all end up having unconsciously (through our process of learning and growing through our
formative years).

Many people get hobbled in the process of re-patterning themselves because the fall for the trap of thinking that now
they are adults, theyre cooked theyre process of development is over. It isnt! Modern research is showing that the
brain continues to retain high levels of neuroplasticity:

Our brains can continue to grow at any age. One of the startling revelations of the 21st century is the improvement in our
knowledge of nerve cell development among older adults. Known as neurogenesis or brain plasticity, this new knowledge is
showing us that the brain has the ability to CHANGE throughout life by forming new connections between brain cells, and to alter
function. For a long time, it was assumed that as we become older, the connections in the brain became fixed, and then it was just a
matter of time that we started losing brain cells. However this assumption is being aggressively challenged by recent studies
showing that the brain never stops changing.
Brain Plasticity in Older Adults, Mario D. Garrett, PhD.

Realising this, it doesnt really make sense to carry an I am what I am or a leopard cant change its spots attitude.
You are not a leopard and spots are not perceptual or behavioural patterns. And you are not who you are, you are who
you are becoming.

One important aspect here, to free yourself up to change, is to STOP identifying with your personality and patterns
no more I am depressed/stupid/quick to anger/a slow learner or whatever and start identifying with the I that owns
and chooses. The I of consciousness.

This means shifting to become the owner of your patterns and responses rather than a victim to them. This means
becoming The Hypnotist in your own life, rather than the hypnotised. As the mystic Osho put it.

The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

4. Elevate Consciousness Become a Better Witness to Your Own

Processing
The first step in becoming the master of your mind through Hypnosis Without Trance is to switch up and start better
utilising your gift of consciousness.

Most of the time, in everyday life, we bring very low levels of consciousness to what we do. We carry out our habitual
patterning without even realising it or only being aware that it is happening but knowing nothing of how it is happening.
Often we find ourselves totally unaware even as to what mood we might be in (feeling grumpy but not realising so until
someone asks are you in a bad mood?)

We are, in essence, very poor witnesses to our own processes of perception, cognition and behaviour. What happens
here is that our consciousness gets swept up and swept along by our patterns. Pulled into our hypnotic loops. What we
want to master is the skill of disembedding from our patterns and loops so as we can shine our torch of consciousness
upon them.

This way, we can become better witnesses to our own processes and for the first time move ourselves into a position
where we can begin to re-pattern them.

5. Use Your Inner Dialogue to Influence

Our cognitive processes are like an ongoing cascade of words, pictures, sounds, feelings, emotions etc. Much of the
time this cascade is cascading outside of consciousness, and when we do become conscious of it, we are limited in
how much of it we can be conscious of (our flashlight of consciousness has a relatively narrow beam).

Whilst the linguistic elements of this cascade are only part of it, they are a very powerful and useful part of it for us as
they are a part that is most easy for us to consciously utilise.

This is because we are used to using words with volition in our everyday communications And we are deeply
conditioned to respond to them.

The words we speak to ourselves as part of our cognitive cascade are powerful self-hypnotising tools, whether we
choose to utilise them or not. If we allow them to just flow unconsciously, they will be spoken on autopilot from our
unconscious assumptions, and they will serve to reinforce those assumptions. Patterns will persist And well get more
of what we have always got (whatever than may be).

Through taking charge of our internal dialogue and using it with consciousness and intent, we find ourselves with a
means to steer the flow of our cognitive cascade in more useful directions, as well as a means to bring our own
consciousness and cognition back to bare upon our assumptions, and thus a means to re-write them.

6. Develop a High Quality Transformative Engine (Organic Transformation

beats Magical Transformation)
When people want to change, they often look for the quick fix. This is quite natural, but the quickest way to get change
happening is to engage our natural and innate learning and change faculties this means eschewing Magical
Transformation in favour of Organic Transformation (OT is faster than MT because MT is no transformation at all)

Effective, efficient OT is driven by what I call a High Quality Learning and Change Engine. This is a metaphor for a
collection and integration of mental faculties and skills essentially the ability to direct consciousness, make cognitive
adjustments and pay quality attention to feedback.

This last aspect is enormously important. In making change it is essential to be attuned to change to be able to filter
for it and bring it to the fore. Indeed, difference is the essence of change no difference, no change. Setting
consciousness to seek out difference creates feedback loops that drive further change. Most people who have trouble
changing do exactly the opposite they sort for sameness. This means they diminish and erase difference and amplify
what is not different. How we pay attention to difference and utilise feedback is essential.

7. Become a Semantic Engineer

Becoming a semantic engineer means becoming aware of the key operational concepts, beliefs, values, ego stories,
and power arrangements that sit within your semantic base, and underpin your thinking and responding.

To become a semantic engineer you must first become a semantic detective. This is a skill a way of using
consciousness to see/feel into the semantic base, as well as see/feel into the implications of the semantic structures.

This skill is one of the most valuable you can ever develop in terms of taking charge of your life. It is also a deep skill
you could spend a lifetime making it your art and still be learning and developing. Here, we will be making a solid start.

8. Make Use of Emergency Hacks

Emergency hacks are techniques and tools that can make a difference now. They are imperfect but often powerful inthe-moment interruptions to get change happening as and when needed. What you get is rapid but not usually
necessarily deep or lasting change just something to get you through a tough spot. We have 3 categories:

Interruptions

Manipulations

Collapses

Whilst these interventions are aimed at getting quick change now, they can also lead into deeper change when
combined with semantic work.

9. The 7 Step Self Transformation Protocol

We will be unpacking the following framework for self transformation through self hypnosis:

1.

Identification

2.

Dissociation

3.

Evaluation

4.

Exploration

5.

Re-creation

6.

Adaptation and Maturation

7.

Transcension

10. Engage with The Path of Mastery

Developing high level skills in these methods means walking a path of mastery. Note here a path OF mastery not a path
TO mastery. If you make this your art you will develop high levels of skill. Of course, you can just read through and
cherry pick the bits you can use easily this is one choice, but as with so much in life, you get out what you put in.

Additional Notes:
Reality Shaping We Co-create Our Experience of Reality

Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Albert Einstein

As human beings we co create our reality. What we experience as everyday reality is not really reality at all it is just
the sense we make of reality rather than reality itself.

The neuroscientist Sir John Eccles puts it like this:

I want you to know that there are no colours in the real world, there are no fragrances in the real world, that theres no beauty
and theres no ugliness. Out there beyond the limits of our perceptual apparatus is the erratically ambiguous and ceaselessly
flowing quantum soup. And were almost like magicians in that in the very act of perception, we take that quantum soup and we
convert it into the experience of material reality in our ordinary everyday waking state of consciousness.

To make a little more sense of this, it is useful to think for a moment about what is happening when we are dreaming. In
the movie Inception, the main protagonist Cobb describes dreaming thus:
In a dream our mind continuously does this we create and perceive our world simultaneously and our mind does this so well
that we dont even know its happening.

When it comes to dreaming, this is a pretty intuitive and uncontroversial description of what is happening, but what most
people assume is that when we wake up, we stop dreaming and, really, we dont! The same mechanisms of creation
and perception keep turning, only now with a live data feed the data that flows in through our five senses!

So your experience of these words you are reading is 100% created by your neurology to make sense of the data being
received by your senses about whatever form it takes in the real world (re read Sir John Eccles quotation again!).

The fact that we neurologically organise our reality into our moment by moment experience of life accounts for why two
people in almost identical situations can experience them very differently. E.g

Person A thinks their friends pet rat is cute, person whereas person B freaks out and screams.

Person A loves meeting new people, whereas person B feels self conscious and clams-up.

Person A loves travel and adventure, whereas person B cant leave the house without having a panic attack.

When it comes to using hypnosis and hypnotically delivered interventions to help people change their experience, it is
their organisation of reality we are influencing! This is what we do as hypnotists!

Hypnosis Without Trance Hypnosis Definition

Hypnosis Without Trance is an approach to hypnosis that is concerned with taking a functional view of hypnosis. For this
reason there is a strong bias towards process based descriptions over state based descriptions (because process is
about doing and happening, which is what we need to know about in order to do and make happen).
The most basic idea behind Hypnosis Without Trance is that, being as people are neurocognitively organising and
shaping their reality moment-by-moment anyway (in our ordinary everyday waking state of consciousness.

Eccles), all we are really doing as Hypnotists is hijacking those neurocognitive processes and directing them in
interesting and useful ways. It isnt really about trance, or special altered states, it is about:

The use of language and communication to direct attention, lead cognition and seed ideas, for the purpose of altering a persons
perception of reality.
Language and communication (including non-verbal dynamics) are our tools, altering perceptions of reality is our aim,
and hijacking mental processes is our method.

So, hypnosis is a way of altering a persons subjective experience through means of verbal and non-verbal
communication, and this could take many forms you may have someone experience:

Their hand as being stuck to a table

Their name as gone from their mind

A powerful emotion

The relief from physical cravings for cigarettes

A change in response to a stimulus

or whatever.

In Self-Hypnosis Without Trance, we are concerned with how we are influencing our OWN experience and perceptions of
reality through 0ur own internal communications. All experience is hypnotic we want to optimise our influence with our
own through becoming better, more conscious self-hypnotists.

The Three Levels of Mind

The three levels of mind model is a functional model of the human mind. Many approaches to hypnosis utilise the notion
of the conscious and unconscious mind Hypnosis Without Trance doesnt! Instead we utilise the ideas of Mind and
Consciousness, with consciousness as a faculty of mind.

As a metaphor, think of the mind in its entirety as a warehouse and processing plant full of cool stuff and machinery
but there are no lights! Consciousness is a torch (flashlight) beam it illuminates whatever it alights upon and nothing
else! Now remember that definition of hypnosis again remember the directing attention bit? A key part of what we are
doing is directing the torch beam.

So if the torch beam is consciousness, what is the stuff and machinery thats in the warehouse/processing plant?
Well, the stuff is your semantic material all the ideas and concepts you hold outside of consciousness (the torch beam
is rarely shone towards them) about the world you know and how it works. This includes all your ideas and concepts
about who you are (sometimes called the ego). The machinery represents your cognitive processes the
manipulation of data via thoughts, feelings, imagination, mental imagery internal dialogue etc. Most of our cognitive

processes take place outside of consciousness too, but consciousness tends to get more involved with that than it does
with the semantic material.
We can think of this as 3 levels of mind:

In this simplified functional model

Consciousness = Conscious awareness along with the sense of I and a sense of agency. I am and I can. In
our metaphor, it is the torch.

Cognitive Processing = the processing of visual, auditory, kinaesthetic/emotional, olfactory/gustatory and

semantic data. It is the internal theatre of the mind but only when your consciousness is paying attention!
In our metaphor, it is the machinery.

Semantic Base = all of your belief, ideas, concepts, stories etc. about how life the universe and everything works. This
semantic materiel essentially equated to the rules by which we operate and respond in life. It is the main operating
system, if you like. In our original metaphor, it is the stuff!

It is through the interaction and interplay of these three levels of mind, in relation to the world around us, that essentially
dictates a persons experience in life.

It is through the interaction and interplay of these three levels of mind, in relation to the world around us, that essentially
dictates a persons experience in life. And as hypnotists, we are aiming to influence on these three levels. Remember
the definition the use of language and communication

to direct attention influencing direction of consciousness

lead cognition influencing cognition
and seed ideas influencing the semantic base

One last detail to note here in the diagram you will see arrows going up and arrows coming down, and there are more
arrows coming up than pointing down! This represents the direction and magnitude of internal influence. Essentially the
semantic material the rules by which we operate has the most influence experience and behaviour, and the
consciousness and sense of I has the least, and this is important to realise in the context of changework, because..

In changework/therapy, if the client walks away from the intervention with exactly the same set of meanings and
understandings about the world they arrived with, they will continue to have exactly the same kind of experiences. This
is also true for ourselves in Self-Hypnosis it is important for real self-change that we develop the skill to uncover and
influence the meanings that we are referencing and making outside of consciousness (as discussed within the audios).

Now, although the semantic base is all powerful it is only ever written and re-written via cognitive processes. In
essence:

The semantic base has far greater influence over cognition and consciousness that cognition and consciousness have over
semantic base, but the only way to influence the semantic base is via consciousness and cognition!
If you need to read that over a few times to make full sense of it, thats fine! All you really need to understand right now
is that we re-write the semantic base through leading consciousness and cognition in useful ways to create a
transformative experience! Just to re-iterate:

In mastering Self Hypnosis Without Trance, we learn to re-write the semantic base through leading consciousness and
cognition in appropriate ways for doing so!

Consciousness and Generative Change

Using this model, we work quite differently from traditionally hypnosis. Traditional hypnosis wants to bypass the
conscious mind to work with the unconscious mind. With Self Hypnosis Without Trance we are interested in working with
ourselves as whole systems, understanding and utilising all 3 levels of mind.
Consciousness has a key role to play in experience and change, so we need to know how to lead it and why. In Self
Hypnosis Without Trance, we are often using consciousness as a conduit for transformative feedback. It is the channel
through which we connect the system back into itself so as to create an amplifying generative change loop.

People are Patterned

People are patterned they go through life walking the way they walk, talking the way they talk and responding the way
they respond. These patterns are cognitive-behavioural in nature (expressed at the middle level of mind) and will run the
way they run unless interrupted and redirected. This is what we do as self-hypnotists!

We hijack the processes and redirect it in self-transformative ways!

Thats the primary skill of self-hypnosis, and when you know how it is relatively effortless to do. Developing the skill,
however, will take some diligence and practise.
Cognitive-behavioural patterns are held in place by two factors:

1.

Habit Neurones that fire together wire together.

2.

Meaning The things we believe and our way of understanding (material within the semantic base).

We need to be aware of this and be simultaneously working at both levels. We work on the 1st level using emergency
patterns. We work on the latter through Semantic Engineering

Types of Problems and Types of Change

There are essentially two categories of problem that people will want help with:

The Essence of Change

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up, dust themselves down and hurry off as if nothing
had happened. Winston Churchill
Quite simply put, the essence of change is difference. And the essence of lasting change is difference that makes a
difference!

To illustrate this, it is worth taking a moment to reference the work of the psychologist James Pennebaker. Pennebaker
is an expert on trauma writing a therapeutic intervention whereby people are encouraged to repeatedly write about the
event that has traumatised them. Pennebaker noticed early on that some people seem to respond excellently to this
intervention, whilst others made no progress at all. So he and his team created a computer programme to analyse the
trauma writing essays of both the successful and unsuccessful changes, and draw out any patterns.

Essentially Pennebakers team found that those who failed to significantly change the impact of the trauma were writing
the same story in the same way over and over, whereas those who changed essentially re-told the story in a different
way each time, exploring new meanings, perspectives and interpretations each time.

The message is simple, change the way you make sense of something and you change your experience. Our primary
aim in facilitating effective and impactful self-change is to facilitate the writings of different meanings into the semantic
base.

Now, as mentioned above, getting change in experience is easy when you have some basic skills in using emergency
self-hypnosis. The trick is to manage meaning so as that difference makes a difference! We dont want to be creating
temporary shifts only and to borrow Churchills words picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves down and hurrying
off as if nothing significant has happened!