“I want you to picture your mind in four parts, but
we are only going to talk about two of them.”
(Leave them questioning.) “The first part is the
conscious mind. That is like an office, and you are
in your office from the second you wake up to the
second you fall asleep. This is where you do your
thinking, analyzing, worrying, creating, evaluating
etc.
Now, during the day, you have many experiences.
Imagine an experience comes in and you have a
thought about it. This is good, this is bad, this is
right or wrong, I like this, I don’t like this. Now
imagine you can take those particular thoughts out
and staple them to that experience. In the future, if
another experience seems similar, it will trigger this
memory to come back up, and you will have the
exact same thought because the mind isn’t going to
do the work twice.
Now, not only do you have a thought about an
experience, but you also have an emotion that goes
along with it. This experience made me feel happy
or sad, or not good enough, not lovable, abandoned.
(Hint: Whatever emotions they said when they were
talking are the same ones I use here.) Imagine taking
that emotion out and stapling it to that experience,
or shall we say file. Now, if a similar situation
comes up, your mind will trigger. How does it
trigger? It can be triggered by a thought, a smell, a
time of day, a similar situation, and even a
commercial can call back this memory file, and you
will have the same thought, the same feeling, and
the same action.
So you can see how important these files are to us
living life. Driving a car, tying a shoelace, making
coffee. We have millions of these files that help us
navigate life without having to learn everything
over and over again. To prove my point, if you get
into somebody’s car, you know how to drive
because the driving file will come up. Conversely,
if you got into the cockpit of a plane, you aren’t
going too far. (N.B.: This analogy works if they are
not a pilot.) But they always get the point.
BUT, what happens if one of these files is corrupt?
It wasn’t a good experience. It didn’t have a good
thought. It didn’t have a good feeling or a good
action. Guess what? When something triggers it, up
comes the icky file. Now everyone has icky files,
but nobody wants to feel icky, so what do we do
with the icky file? We push it down like a ball in the
ocean. What does a ball in the ocean like to do? It
pops up. Just like the icky file does. So we push it
down by drinking, drugging, over eating, over
working, gambling, etc. We would rather do
anything else other than look at the icky file. But
here’s the thing. When you have an icky file, your
body senses it popping up, and this is what causes
anxiety and stress because your body is aware a fear
or icky feeling is coming. Another interesting point
to mention here is that when you suppress a negative
emotion, it becomes a magnet. This magnet attracts more people and situations into your life to get you
to finally recognize it is there. It wants to be
acknowledged, honored, and released, and until you
release it, more similar situations and people will
enter your life.
So, what do we do in hypnosis? We turn it around
and look at it. And once we look at it, we honor it
by feeling it, and then we release it and it floats
away like a balloon. We cut the cords to it, and it is
gone forever. Now there is no reason to look for a
cigarette, a drink, a snack, etc. because there is
nothing to push down. Nothing is popping up for
you anymore.
Now, when you are not using the file, the files can
not stay in the conscious mind. They have to go into
the file cabinet room. That’s your subconscious
mind, and that part of your mind holds every file
you have with your thoughts, emotions, and actions
attached to them. This file room holds everything
since your conception.
This room is very organized, and I can to prove it. I
want you to picture an elephant. Can you do that?
Of course you can, because one time in your life you
colored and elephant, learned about an elephant,
saw one in the zoo or in the movies, but you can’t
be walking around every day thinking of an
elephant. So when you are not thinking of an
elephant, he goes back into the subconscious mind’s
file room.
But now that you have the elephant in your mind, I
want you to turn him pink. Put white polka dots on
him, a blue bow on his tail, and a funny hat on his
head. Got that image? Good. Now your
subconscious mind believes you just saw a pink
elephant with white polka dots, a blue bow, and a
funny hat on its head. And in ten minutes, I know
you won’t be thinking of a pink elephant, but in ten
hours or ten days, when you think of an elephant,
guess which elephant will come up? The pink one
because there is no garbage can in the mind and
your mind believes you just saw a pink elephant
because it cannot determine what is real and what is
fake. You have an image of a pink elephant, and
now it believes it to be true.
N.B.: The next part of my pre-talk will give them a
sample of hypnosis. It will also allow me to see how
well they hypnotize. Anyone who answers right
away is always easier to work with than someone
who is slow. It also gives them a chance to
understand what it is they should be experiencing.)
Now I would like you to close your eyes and
describe for me your pink elephant. Is the trunk up
or down? Are the spots the same size or different?
Is the tail curly or straight? Describe the funny hat.
What color is it, and does it fit properly?
Now imagine the elephant is moving. What is it
doing? Ask a few questions here.
Now I want you to imagine you can communicate
with the elephant MENTALLY. This is so
important because this is how they communicate
with anyone once they are in a trance state. Ask the
elephant if he likes being pink. What does he say
mentally? Go with the first thing that comes into
your mind without questioning it. Now ask if its
parents and or siblings are pink. Ask if other
elephants make fun of it. How does that make him
feel? Does he have any friends? Good. Now thank
the elephant and open your eyes. You were just
hypnotized. That is how it feels. Hypnosis is
focused concentration. You were so focused on the
elephant that nothing else mattered. That’s how it
will feel when I hypnotize you.”
“Now that you know how the mind works, how
hypnosis works, and how it feels, I want to describe
the process. We are going to start with a guided
meditation to relax you. Then we will go to either
the garden or the beach, whichever you feel you can
imagine better.”
If they say garden, then explain, “We will be going
through a small forest and down the stairs to a
beautiful garden.”
If they say beach, explain, “You will start with an
overlook of the beach, then walk down the stairs to
the beach and, once I get you to the beach, then you
can describe the beach to me just like you did your
elephant. Remember, it is all in your mind. Use your
imagination.”