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Hypnotic Language

Shortcut System

DVD Transcript Manual

By Igor Ledochowski





The Hypnotic Language Shortcut System – DVD Transcript Manual

3 HLSS – DVD Transcript ©Hypnosis Training Academy All Rights Reserved

The Hypnotic Language Shortcut System

V Transcript Manual

Introduction To The Colored Suits

Igor: Welcome to the Hypnotic Language Shortcut System. I’m here with Donna

and Janet, and we’re going to go through some of these cards in the

Hypnotic Language Deck to show you some of the exercises you can do in

order to get your hypnotic language up to scratch.

The first thing I want to show you are two sets of suits. There are thecolored suits over here. Do you see they’re all colored? We have the black

suits. The first thing I’m going to encourage you to do is take the black cards

and put them away for now. We don’t need them for now. These are special

modifiers that will improve, shall we say, the kind of language that you use.

For now we’re going to stick to these things here. When you go through

cards, you’ll see each one has a little phrase here with a blank side. I’ll give

some to you guys so you can play around with them.

The idea for this is for you to practice presenting a suggestion just using

these phrases and the suggestion goes into the blank space. The very first

thing I’m going to do just to get you used to it is if you’d just grab a couple of

cards over here and you just grab a couple of cards over here.

All we’re going to do is choose a simple hypnotic theme. The one I’d

encourage you to start with is the idea of comfort and relaxation. Who can’t

do with more comfort and relaxation in their life after all? It’s not that

hypnosis requires comfort and relaxation. It’s just a nice pleasant way or a

general atmosphere to create for someone so that they can go into a trance.

What we’re going to do is take one of these cards, read the phrase which is

on the card. So, in this case Imagine and then we’re going to find any way

that seems appropriate to talk about the theme of comfort or relaxation.





So, mine would be very simple. Imagine that you’re feeling comfortable

right now. Simple?

Notice right now I’m not putting any hypnotic elements in – no language, no

rhythm, no tone, no voice, no eye contact. It’s okay, I’m just getting used to

playing with these cards right now. Do you want to have a couple of goes?

Donna: So, I’m reading my card?

Igor: Read what’s on the card.

Donna: What would it be like if?

Igor: Then just fit the idea of comfort or relaxation any way you want at the end

of that.

Donna: So, what would it be like if I were comfortable and relaxed?

Igor: Perfect. Now let’s phrase it around so that it’s an actual suggestion to

someone.

Donna: What would it be like if you were comfortable and relaxed?

Igor: Perfect. Simple. Easy, right? Do you want to give it a go?

Janet: Mine is and you can experience [blank] as if [blank].

Igor: So, just fill that in with the ideas of comfort or relaxation.

Janet: And you can experience comfort as if it were a blanket.

Igor: Wonderful. It’s a very simple concept, right? So, let’s choose another card.

Just pull another one up from your little slideshow there.

Donna: What’s it like when you’re comfortable and relaxed?

Igor: Beautiful.

Janet: Just pretend you’re comfortable and relaxed.





Igor: Now do you get a feel for this? It’s simple. It’s straightforward. It’s relatively

easy. So, what we’re going to do now is take the same idea and see if we

can just add a little bit.

So, instead of just using one card, you’re going to just present several cards.

I’ll give you an example. I’m going to use the orange suit because we’ve run

out of the red ones for now. So, I’m going to choose two cards. You really

should discover for yourself that; and I need to tell you. So, I need to tell you

that you can relax, and you really should discover for yourself that that

relaxation can lead to comfort.

It’s the same thing we did a moment ago. We’re just going to roll on, shall

we say, with two cards to get more of a feel for it. Do you want to give it a

go?

Donna: So, I want you to suppose that you’re comfortable and what would it be like

if you were relaxed?

Igor: Beautiful.

Janet: And you can experience comfort as if it were a blanket. Just pretend you’re

covered in that blanket.

Igor: Wonderful. Now notice how it starts stimulating your mind, your creative

unconscious shall we say, to find some logical connections between theseideas. The trick here is, don’t try too hard. If you try to make sense, you’ll

stymie yourself.

The next thing I’m going to encourage all of you to do is turn the cards over

so you don’t actually see what’s on the card before it comes, so then it

comes as a surprise to you. I’ll make it a little more difficult for myself. I’m

going to use a whole new suit right here.

Sooner or later you’ll find yourself relaxing comfortably. Now will you

experience that comfort now or will you find yourself relaxing even more

comfortably later? And how will you know when you’re relaxing now?

Do you get the idea? I’m specifically or purposely trying to not second guess.

I want the moment to kind of stimulate my mind into kind of forcing a little

bit to be spontaneous, and it’s very important because hypnosis has to be





spontaneous. That’s why people memorize scripts and they have very large

limitations. So, who would like to give it a go first?

Donna: I’ll try. So, suppose you’re comfortable and relaxed, and what is it like when

you’re that comfortable?

Igor: Beautiful.

Janet: And you can experience comfort as if it’s a blanket. It’s as if you’re covered

comfortably in that blanket.

Igor: Wonderful. So, here’s the next idea then. The more you practice something,

the more it engrains inside you. Now what’s more useful to practice at

something that you want to be more conversational in, especially in

something therapeutic of course as well where you need to match themoment – when you have a pre-created idea or one that actually fits the

moment?

Which one do you think would be more useful? You’re a social worker,

right?

Janet: At the moment I’m thinking.

Igor: I would tend to agree with you, absolutely.

Janet: Joining where the client’s at.

Igor: Right, because if you come with a pre-created idea and try and force them

into it, they might resist because it might not actually fit them. So, to make

sure we do that, whenever you come across a card that you’ve already done

– I’ve already used this one over here – try and stretch yourself a little bit to

not use what you’ve already done before.

In that way, you are adding richness to your communications, rather than

just memorizing one way of doing something. Do you get the idea?

Janet: Yes.

Igor: There’s no problem with actually repeating yourself. In fact hypnosis is the

idea of hypnotic repetition, but at the same time if you stretch yourself





towards the idea of not repeating yourself, to come up with something fresh

each time, you’re doing two things.

Number one, you’re being more spontaneous each time because it’s forcing

you into your unconscious much more; and number two, you’re creating the

right kind of connections inside your brain that when a moment presents

itself, you get to use that moment in a way that’s useful rather than ignoring

it and trying to force what you had in mind already onto the situation, which

never works quite as well. Do you get the idea?

Donna: It’s being in the moment.

Igor: It’s totally about being in the moment. So, let’s help you out with that a little

bit. We’re going to keep the same cards because that’s going to force you

into something a little bit, and then we’ll throw some more things out there.Are you ready to give it a go again?

Donna: Upside down?

Igor: It doesn’t matter which way you hold it as long as you surprise yourself with

what you’re going to say.

Donna: I don’t know how to do this one.

Igor: Wonderful. The answer is very simple. Do exactly what you did the last time.So, you weren’t repeating yourself there. The themes of relaxation and

comfort are still there. So, if the last time you said suppose you relaxed,

then you need to put something slightly different there. Suppose you felt

more than relaxed.

Donna: Oh, got you. Okay.

Igor: It’s just a slightly different way of presenting it. Of course with an idea like

suppose, it doesn’t give you as much leeway. The idea of relaxing like a

comfortable blanket is across you – that metaphor is a little bit more

obvious.

So, some cards will naturally lend themselves to that stretch more easily

than others, but still challenge yourself a bit.





Donna: Okay, suppose a place and a time when you felt comfortable and relaxed,

and what would it be like if you were comfortable and relaxed in your own

home?

Igor: Wonderful.

Janet: It’s as if relaxation comes to us on a daily basis, and you can experience

relaxation – I totally lost it. It’s spontaneous combustion.

Igor: This is exactly why we’re doing this drill because this is the time for you to

struggle – your brain right now is working out how to do this, especially

doing it whilst you’re just playing around with some friends, then when

you’re stuck in the moment going what do I say now – exactly.

So, the whole purpose of this training is to get you to the point where younever run out of things to say. All you need to do is have a theme,

something you can talk about – comfort or relaxation is what we’re using as

a default right now – and you should never run out of things to say because

you can trust your mind to always present the right thing at the right time,

and that’s what we’re doing right now.

Janet: Excellent.

Igor: So, do you want to give it another go?

Janet: We will trust my mind.

Igor: Off you go.

Janet: Just pretend today is a day full of relaxation and comfort.

Igor: Good.

Janet: It is as if your entire day is comfortable and relaxed.

Igor: Beautiful. Notice how you shifted gears very quickly inside your mind.

Janet: I did.





Igor: And you almost got caught again with a little freeze, but rather than going

down that path you switched down a different path and your mind went oh

I know, this is easy. And it should always feel easy. Any questions so far?

Janet: No. It’s awesome.

Igor: Are you having fun?

Janet: Yes. It’s great.

Igor: Okay. So, I’ll take this back for a moment. What we’ll do now is I’m going to

mix all these cards up. Now that you’ve got an idea of how the general cards

work – we limited it to one suit just so you can get a feel for it – we’re just

going to mix these up a little bit kind of crudely because I’m unfortunately

no magician that can do all the fancy card tricks.

Then we’ll just give you a couple here and some there and some over here.

And some colors – we’ll do a little bit of color therapy here. There you go.

What we’re doing now is we’re seeing if we can expand our repertoire.

Each of the different colored suits are based on a different psychological

principle. It’s doesn’t matter if there are two colors in a row or not. The idea

is basically that you have a mix so you can’t quite predict which way it will

go. I’ll join you guys for a little bit.

So, now we’ve got the same thing, and now we want to turn it to something

more, shall we say, conversational. The more conversational you can get

with this, the more people kind of fall into the rhythm of what you’re saying.

Generally speaking when you talk to people they pay attention to you, don’t

they? That’s kind of what a conversation does.

If they’re not paying attention to you, you have a bigger problem and

hypnosis is the step after you solve that particular problem.





The ABS Formula

Igor: To help someone enter a trance, there are basically only three things that

you need to keep your attention on:

1. Absorb their attention.

Are you absorbing as much of it as possible? The more attention you have,

the more the window of opportunity into trance opens up. That’s the key.

Without attention it’s impossible to induce a trance.

Technically speaking you could have someone distracted and still induce a

trance, but at that point you’re still having their unconscious attention. So, it

gets a little bit more elaborated with more advanced things. That’s not the

kind of attention we’re interested in here right now because we’re just

getting into the beginning phases to get good at something. So, you know

for a fact that when someone’s conscious attention is on you, so is their

unconscious attention.

There are times when their conscious attention is elsewhere, but their

unconscious attention is still on you, and there are times when it’s not.

Knowing when the difference is, is a much more delicate of a thing to be

able to see, so we’re not going to worry about it right now. We’re just going

to try and get as much of their attention as possible. That’s the first thing.

2. Bypass their critical factor.

It’s that part of the mind that actually rejects ideas and says no to things.

Basically it’s there to keep the person the same as possible. They know how

the world works. If you tell them something that’s contrary to that, they’ll

reject it out of hand.

Some people have almost a chronic illness with their critical factor. You say

it’s a beautiful day and they’ll tell you you’re going to have cancer or it’sgoing to get cloudy or it’s going to rain, because they’ve forgotten how to

agree.

Other people are completely the opposite. They will just agree with

anything and just find any way possible to agree with you just because of





the harmony that they experience internally is something they appreciate.

Most people will lie somewhere in between.

3. Stimulate the unconscious mind.

You need to get some kind of an unconscious response. The beauty of these

cards, or rather the language on them, is that they do all three things at

once. You will be speaking in a way that is naturally engaging.

As a result of the way you’re speaking, because of the psychology based

inside each card – and of course the audios that go with the deck will

describe the actual psychology behind each one in a little bit more detail –

that tends to bypass the critical factor.

Then finally the idea of stimulating their unconscious – that’s what yoursuggestions do. If they were tense a moment ago and suddenly they feel

more relaxed, did they do that consciously?

Chances are they didn’t because they’re just listening to you and they just

felt better afterwards. I just felt better is another way of saying consciously I

have no idea what happened, but unconsciously something positive did

occur. So, all three things happen at the same time? Do you get the idea?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: We’re going to start weaving in our ability to activate those three core

principles as we do these exercises. Keep that in the back of your mind. Now

we’ll do the exercises again just as we did before, and start weaving in some

more nuances to make that happen.

Hypnotic Circle – One Card Draw

Igor: So, the idea of comfort and relaxation is still the same. Now we’re just goingto do a little bit of a fun game. We’re all going to just do one card. We’ll call

it the one-card draw if you like.

I’ll start off by saying something like you really should discover for yourself

that you can relax. As soon as I’ve said my piece, then you’ll take over. You’ll

turn over your card and you’ll try and fit whatever you’re saying onto my





sentence. So, we’re just making one continuous loop of ideas. Do you get

the idea?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: I’ll start off with this one. Just focus your awareness on any area of comfort

inside your body. So, forget the [insert name] part. That’s an interesting

one. A person can, you know, [insert name blank]. This works very well

when you’re doing it one-to-one.

So, a person can you know, Donna, relax. That makes it a little bit more

personal.

Donna: Oh, okay. I wasn’t sure of the context.

Igor: Absolutely. Now because we’re doing this in a group right now, the idea of

inserting someone’s name is irrelevant because you’re talking to the whole

group, so just delete the square brackets for now to allow the group

exercise to work out.

Donna: I’m still not sure. Sorry, I’m not understanding this card.

Igor: A person can, you know, [blank]. It’s a normal conversational postulate. You

can say to someone relax or a person can, you know, relax comfortably. A

person can relax in many different ways. A person can feel comfort in allkinds of different situations. Do you get the idea?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: Off you go.

Donna: Can you say what you said first again? Because I want to add seamlessly

onto it.

Igor: I think that’s a great idea. I’ll start with a new one just so we’re always fresh.

Just notice whatever comfort you feel right now.

Donna: And a person can, you know, feel very comfortable and relaxed in many

circumstances.





Igor: Beautiful.

Janet: Realize comfort and relaxation are right in front of you.

Igor: You must find comfort in whatever way seems right for you.

Donna: And when you do that, every time you find comfort and relaxation you’ll get

calmer and calmer.

Igor: Now you’re getting it.

Janet: It is as if comfort and relaxation is right in front of us.

Igor: Now I want you to really enjoy that comfort.

Donna: And while you’re enjoying that comfort, just suppose that you’re the most

comfortable and relaxed you’ve ever been.

Janet: While we’re on this, what’s it like when it is comfortable and relaxed for

you?

Igor: Now I know you want to relax.

Donna: And I know that you want to be as comfortable and relaxed as you have ever

been.

Janet: You really shouldn’t be in a tense state right now.

Igor: Okay, let’s pause right here. How do you feel? Did you enjoy that?

Janet: That was a challenge.

Igor: It’s a little bit more challenging because you’re now having to be more

smooth with the ideas, but the flow is starting to come out a little bit.

Donna: I felt the flow.

Janet: Yes, that was very enjoyable.





Igor: So, one of the principles for the way these things work is the priming

principle. A very quick background on that is priming is where you have

people read like a list of words and then they do a task, and the list of words

they read a moment ago will influence how they do that particular task.

Or you give them a list of ambiguous words – like the word bank, which

could be an airplane maneuver, it could be somewhere you put your money,

it could be somewhere which contains a river – and if they play a particular

word at a very low level, so they’re only just about unconsciously heard –

for example, talking about water – the person will automatically interpret

that word bank as meaning a riverbank as opposed to any of the other ones.

What we’re doing here is we’re trying to present these hypnotic themes – in

this case the idea of comfort and relaxation – to trigger as many associations

to comfort as possible.

This brings us to the idea of positive language versus negative language. If I

say to you, you don’t have to relax and you don’t really need to feel

comfortable, but the more comfort you feel and the more you relax, even

when you don’t know how you’re relaxing now – notice how you’re feeling

right now. Do you feel a bit of a relaxation beginning?

Notice if I switch the priming, the themes become something other. It seems

like I’m saying the same thing. You don’t have to get rid of tension. Now

everyone knows how to get rid of tension when they want to, but you don’treally have to get tension out of your body now. How did that feel different

to you?

Donna: I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and I don’t think it’s filtering it in

the way it should. Try it again.

Igor: I’ll give you both versions, so you can have a contrast. I’ll start off with one

and then the other.

You don’t have to get rid of tension in your body. Now the more your body

gets rid of that tension, the more you’ll feel a sense of that tension

releasing, and you don’t have to relax because the more you relax, the more

your body will feel comfort and you don’t need to feel comfort any more

than you want to.





Overall, which ones did you prefer – the beginning of that or the end of

that?

Donna: The beginning.

Igor: The beginning one? The tension one?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: That’s interesting. It just goes to show that when you match people in terms

of their mindset, it can have an interesting effect. Overall, if you talk more

about tension, people will become more tense. If you talk more about

relaxation, people will become more relaxed. Do you get the idea?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: I’ll give you a quick example of what I mean by this. Whatever you do right

now, don’t think of a purple cat. Don’t think of a purple cat drinking a little

purple soda.

What is being stimulated inside your mind? What is the key idea, the

concept? The image of a purple cat. So, whilst you can negate ideas, it’s a

two-step process. If I want you to fundamentally relax, then the more I talk

about relaxation, the more your body will remember times you’ve relaxed,

other times you’ve heard the word relaxation, other contexts and so on.

You had an interesting reaction because you preferred the idea of tension

initially over the idea of relaxation. The reason for that would be – again,

without further exploration, I wouldn’t quite know – but it might be that

you’re feeling some tension already maybe because you’re here and you

have a little camera in front of you and so on.

Donna: I think that’s it.

Igor: So, it’s speaking to you where you’re at in terms of I’m a little tense right

now and he’s telling me I don’t have to be tense. Okay, I’m actually here

right now, and maybe the idea of relaxation is a step too far for you at this

point. Do you get the idea?

Donna: Yes.





Igor: For the purpose of these exercises now though, I’m going to encourage you

to stick with the positively phrased ideas – so talk about comfort and

relaxation rather than the negatively phrased ideas like the ideas of tension

or stress and so on.

Donna: Okay.

Igor: Knowing of course that both are appropriate depending on the context that

you’re in, and ultimately you may even want to take people on a journey

from tension to relaxation depending on how stressed out they are, but

we’re still in the very early stages, so let’s keep it nice and simple. Shall we

do another round?

Donna: Absolutely.

Igor: Okay, who wants to start off?

Donna: I’ll start.

Igor: You’re very brave. I’d choose another one because and is a very difficult one

to start with. Okay, this is an interesting card. Fact one, fact two, fact three

and [blank].

For this one, to explain it a little bit more, you’re just going to list threethings that we have to agree with. We’re in this room, we are sitting near

each other, we’re talking and then you bring in your theme – we can relax.

The idea is that because we’re agreeing to three things already, it tends to

create an avalanche of agreement for our suggestion at the end.

Donna: So, it seems to me that something has brought you here to want to learn

about this topic. We’re all here together. We have this opportunity and the

time just feels right for us to learn this comfort and relaxation technique.

Igor: Wonderful.

Janet: You really should take a moment while we’re here together to find comfort

and relaxation.





Igor: Just pretend you’re feeling comfortable right now.

Donna: I wonder if you realize how differently and how wonderfully your world will

look when you’re comfortable and relaxed.

Janet: When you’re comfortable and relaxed, you can continue right on getting

deeper into comfort and relaxation.

Igor: To the point where that comfort develops automatically.

Donna: What would it be like for you if 24/7 you felt comfort and relaxation?

Janet: You really could feel so deeply comfortable and relaxed, couldn’t you?

Igor: You really don’t need to be aware of that comfort and relaxation that’sdeveloping now.

Donna: And remember that you have the tools in your hand to find this comfort and

relaxation.

Igor: All right, let’s pause there. How did that feel? Did you enjoy that round?

Donna: I really did.

Igor: Did you notice how there’s a difference in that round we did to the previousone? What would you say that difference was?

Janet: Relaxation.

Going First

Donna: For me though it’s attaching a deepening meaning to comfort and

relaxation.

Igor: Absolutely.

Donna: So, I could actually feel myself being it and wanting to convey it in a deeper

way.





Igor: So, you guys have discovered a couple of very important principles here. The

principle you just discovered right there is called going first. In other words,

if you want someone to be relaxed and you’re telling them RELAX NOW,

RELAX YOUR SHOULDERS! BREATHE! it’s not a very relaxing way of

communicating.

I’m basically being incongruous. What I’m saying and the meaning of what

I’m trying to convey are clashing. Because of that, you pay more attention to

my tone and my mannerisms – in other words the more unconscious part of

my communication – than what I’m trying to convey.

A lot of people do this. You see this particularly in academia at schools when

the teacher doesn’t really know the subject. They’re just reading the

textbook. Well, anyone can read a textbook. It doesn’t require a teacher to

sit up there and read to you.

If they don’t understand their subject, it comes out because they can’t go

beyond the confines of the text on the page, but those teachers who really

know their thing, and more importantly those who really love their subjects,

ironically have students who love their subjects too because they’re

communicating – or rather sub-communicating – that affection intent and

so on.

So, you experienced that going first because you really meant the idea of

relaxation. Because you really wanted to convey the idea, you automaticallyswitched into it.

You did the same thing but from a different perspective shall we say

because you felt comfortable and you felt more relaxed, so then it became

more natural to speak about comfort and relaxation.

These are basically the same ideas. You did it with intent, you did it through

experience, but really when the two meet together, you have a much more

powerful style of communicating. Do you get the idea?

Donna: That’s wonderful.

Igor: So, let’s see if we can embed that idea further in our exercise. It’s the same

one-card draw. We’ll still go through the hypnotic circle so to speak, and





now we’re going to focus on really meaning what we’re saying, and the

easiest way of doing that is experiencing it first.

So, when a card comes over – it’ s not necessary to relax – that’s just me

saying it, but if I really think about it and I really mean it, now I’m going to

present the meaning like I want you to relax but I don’t care when that

happens. That’s the meaning we’re trying to convey.

It’s not necessarily for you to relax comfortably now. Notice how that

paused the moment much more and there’s much more of an experiential

moment occurring. Do you get the idea?

Janet: Yes.

Igor: Are there any questions on that?

Donna: I had one question. May I draw a little from my personal experience?

Igor: You can do whatever you want with this.

Donna: All right.

Igor: Absolutely. In this case it’s a group, so it’s just an exercise, but the key is

always to make sure that your experience matches what they’re having. If

you went to an elite boarding school and they flunked out of high school,that wouldn’t necessarily be the biggest match, but other than that,

whatever feels right in the moment tends to be right in the moment.

Donna: So Janet, you can begin to have comfort and relaxation when our hearts and

our minds come together.

Janet: Imagine if at this moment we took a deep breath and our hearts and our

minds came together.

Igor: Now the more your hearts and minds come together, the more comfortable

you’ll feel.

Donna: Have you ever been in a place where the room was filled with tension and

yet you were able to find comfort and relaxation?





Janet: I don’t know if you can find that deep, deep place of comfort and relaxation.

Igor: Beautiful. Notice a different quality in the exercise developing now as you’re

putting more of yourself into it? Incidentally we had a third hypnotic theme,

as you would call these, slip in there – the idea of hearts and minds coming

together.

I’m just pointing that out to you, because it’s actually a very good thing to

have, but just so you realize how simple it is once you have an actual idea

you want to communicate through suggestion. It becomes very simple to

put it in here.

We only started with the idea of comfort and relaxation because it’s easy,

but as soon as you have something that’s more important, then you start

talking about those things.

What I want to do now is let’s see if we can get a little freestyle with this.

We’ll do the same kind of circle. We’ll generally stick to the idea of comfort

and relaxation. Again, this is a nice general atmosphere for other things to

happen, but then you can introduce any generally positive theme that you

wish alongside it.

So, it could be the idea of learning, hearts and minds coming together,

having a wonderful life. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever moves you. If you

can’t think of anything in the moment, rather than just saying uh,uh,uh, Ican’t think of something really exciting, don’t go down that path.

Always default back to the idea of comfort and relaxation because it’s a

generally positive place for people to be in anyways. Shall we begin?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: Off you go. So, will you [blank] now or will you [blank] later. The easiest

version of that would be will you relax now or will you relax later? Of course

you can elaborate any way you wish.

Donna: Will you relax now or will you relax later in the context of challenges at

work?





Janet: There’s no need to relax now. You could decide to do it later. Wait until

you’re in a place where you have lots of things around you, until you have

the time to relax and find comfort.

Igor: Very good. Let’s just pause there. Let’s go back to that one again just to play

a little bit. It’s actually easier than you think.

Janet: Okay, good.

Igor: The reason it seems hard is because you’re trying to be logical with certain

things. I’ll give you the simplest version of it just so you get an idea of it and

then you can elaborate again in other ways.

There’s no need to relax until you take a deep breath. Do you get the idea?

That negation is actually doing a couple of things. One is taking the pressureoff through negation. Again, the audios will describe more about the

different suits and the psychology behind them.

The idea of until is basically creating a time-based bind. In other words,

something that you can control – like taking a breath – or events will occur.

For example, I know someone will come in through the front door in half an

hour.

I know it’s going to happen and I’m going to attach something to it – the

idea of relaxation. So, there’s no need for you to relax until the door opensup and so and so comes in for your interview. Do you see how naturally that

fits into normal language as well?

Again, the psychology inside is important. As you start breaking these

phrases apart, then you lose a little of the cohesion because the things

they’re designed to do are no longer as streamlined, shall we say.

Janet: I feel like I just was stumbling.

Igor: Absolutely. Now the reason we’re doing these exercises precisely is for that

reason. You want to get stuck and have to think your way through it, and

then the next time around it gets easier and easier and easier still.

It also brings me to another point. There will always be some cards that are

more difficult for you to deal with than others, and for each person it will be





a different set ironically. It’s not that some language just is harder. It’s just

your mind naturally gravitates to certain ways of communicating over

others.

So, those are the ones you spend more time with – in other words the ones

which are your weaknesses. Initially you’ll focus on your strengths just to

get used to it and then you build on your strengths, and then you challenge

yourself on your weaknesses to expand your vocabulary or your range of

communication and so on.

The last thing I’ll say is on the back of the cards you’ll also see lots of

examples of that particular language pattern in action. So, if you’re stuck,

you can always just flip the card over, get a quick idea and then go back

onto using it. That’s just a nice little study aid, shall we say, prepared for

you. Again, it’s not necessary. The idea that you’re actually thinking yourway through it is the important part. That’s what builds the connections

inside your brain. Let’s start again.

Igor: Now as you feel comfort, so you can relax.

Donna: Sooner or later you’re going to find yourself in a situation where you haven’t

felt comfortable and relaxed, and these skills will help you understand

comfort and relaxation.

Janet: And you can experience comfort and relaxation as if you are covered in yourfavorite blanket.

Igor: As you feel that comfort developing, so you might relax into a profound

state of comfort.

Donna: So, you should remember the techniques that we’ve talked about today and

you will find comfort and relaxation more easily.

Janet: Because these techniques are so easy.

Igor: As soon as you find how easy they are, you’ll find that comfort developing

inside you as well.

Donna: And how will you know and remember to find this comfort and relaxation?





Janet: Consciously you’ll be comfortable and relaxed, whilst unconsciously you’ll

deepen that comfort and relaxation.

Igor: Beautiful. Spoken like a true hypnotist. Do you get the idea? Notice how

you’re being challenged more now because we have a much wider variety of

expression, shall we say, but also you’re catching up very quickly.

Hypnotic Voice

Igor: Now one thing I want to point out – which is what’s starting to happen with

us here now, which I really like – is as you’re going first, notice your tone has

changed. It becomes softer, more in keeping with the communication that

you have.

Of course if we were going for a motivational hypnotic language – for

example the idea of energy or power – let’s say you were a personal trainer

and you’re telling them as you lift that dumbbell you can feel full of energy –

that doesn’t really fit the context, but then going first takes care of that

because if you’re trying to convey the idea of energy, you have to feel that

energy first to be able to convey it.

Pauses & Timing

Igor: So, the next thing I want to do on the next round is I’d like us to focus now

on the idea of pauses or the timing of what we say. Pauses have several

values. One of them is just to give you thinking time. More importantly,

however, it gives the other person thinking time.

If I went through a list of 100 different experiences for you to have and I just

rattled through them – you can relax, you can feel comfortable, you can go

deeper, you can have this – your mind doesn’t know how to catch up.

I can use the same list and give you time to actually think about it or reflect

on the experience and start internalizing it, and you suddenly have the

experience. I can say you can relax [pause] and you can feel comfort [pause]

and you can go deeper. It’s the same exact words, absolutely identical.

Donna: It has more impact.





Janet: Yes.

Igor: And the impact is what we’re looking for. Why does it impact? Because they

have time to change. They have time to process it and have the experience

of it. Do you get the idea?

Janet: I found it drew my attention more too.

Igor: See, how we go back to the ABS Formula? The cards on their own are

wonderful, but the language on its own will do nothing for you unless you

put it in its proper context – the idea of going first, the idea of the ABS

Formula, getting the attention, bypassing the critical factor and so on – and

very importantly leaving time for them to respond to each idea.

Sometimes you’ll run on a little bit. Sometimes you’ll back off, letting them

have that particular experience.

Hypnotic Circle – 3 Card Draw

Igor: So, to aid us in that, I’m going to encourage you now to use two or three

cards in a row. We’ve done a one-card circle. We’re now going to do a

three-card circle.

Don’t turn them all over at once. All we’re going to do is when the time

comes up, you’ll flip one over, rift a little on that, the next one again, the

third one again and then the next person has a go. Do you get the idea?

I’ll give you a quick demo of what I mean. It’s a good thing you’re able to

relax. Now you don’t have to relax comfortably right now because when you

feel relaxation coursing through your body, you’ll feel comfort

automatically.

Notice how that’s really forcing me to up my game a little bit more. Now to

some degree, I’m being a little unfair to you guys because this is the very

first time you’ve ever even thought of hypnotic language, and already we’re

doing some very sophisticated things.





Just remember, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. The more pressure

you put on yourself, the more likely you’ll blank, especially at the early

stages. Pressure is for more advanced times when you can rely on yourself

more and then pressure really engrains certain practices. At the beginning,

just take it easy.

The second thing is you can take your time. Remember, you say one thing

and they’ll have time to respond to it, whilst you then allow another thing to

come out afterwards. Are you ready for the three-card draw?

Janet: Yes.

Igor: Who wants to start?

Janet: I’ll try starting this time.

Igor: I like that. Very good.

Janet: If you begin to take deep breaths, then you will begin to relax. Realize

relaxation is simple. It is as if you’re already breathing in a relaxed way.

Igor: Now you can find yourself relaxing in that comfort in all kinds of ways. Now I

know you’re wondering what those ways of relaxing comfortably might be,

and you really should discover for yourself all the different ways that you

have, relaxing deeply, comfortably and profoundly inside yourself.

Donna: Comfort as well as relaxation brings such quality to life. Just suppose that

you’re sitting by a pool of water when you’re thinking of being comfortable

and relaxation. Every time you do this, you’ll find that your comfort and

relaxation will deepen.

Janet: Think for a moment what it’s like when you’re by that pool fully and

completely relaxed. You really shouldn’t take the time by that pool and

relax. You can do it another time. You really should think deeply, breathe

deeply and relax.

Igor: Excellent. So, just a quick note on the negatives there.

Student: I shouldn’t have...





Igor: I know. I can tell because it’s not part of your mindset. So, I’ll explain a little

bit about it just to help you out there. The idea of negation there is actually

what I call a positive negation. I can say don’t relax now and that’s an

instruction to basically increase your tension to some degree, right?

Or I can tell you don’t, relax now . I’m purposely mismatching my tonality

with it, but I’m also emphasizing the idea of relaxation. So, your conscious

mind has the pressure taken off.

The whole point of negation is to remove pressure. So the conscious mind

thinks oh I don’t have to do anything right now, and the unconscious mind

actually responds to the purple cat in this case, which is the idea of

relaxation. Right?

So, if I say to you, you don’t have to think about a comfortable place for youto relax in, well then you might think of other things. But if I say to you, you

don’t have to think, really think of a comfortable place, it’s that mismatch

that the unconscious mind has freedom to respond to, whilst the conscious

mind is trying to work out what she’s saying. Is she saying should I or

shouldn’t I? Do you get the idea?

Janet: I do.

Igor: Good. You’re just starting off and we’re going through some pretty

advanced exercises pretty quickly. Now let’s take a little pause there and getsome feedback from you guys. How are you guys doing? Are you enjoying

yourselves?

Janet: Yes.

Donna: I just find it’s a fascinating process, and I think it’s something without

training that a lot of us do very naturally.

Igor: Absolutely.

Donna: And what I find interesting about it too is I think you probably get to a point

where somebody could sit down and just begin talking and you kind of intuit

which one of these techniques is going to be helpful for them based on very

rudimentary beginning information that they’re giving to you. So, it seems

like a very helpful tool.





Igor: It’s a wonderful tool and it will fit into all kinds of situations. Of course the

primary purpose right now is for hypnosis. You can do it in formal

hypnotherapy as well, but the point of it is it makes you into a

conversational hypnotist.

You can do this in pretty much any setting with pretty much any theme now.

I mean you can already think about your own lives where communicating

more eloquently and getting a better response from people would be of

value to you or of use to you and adding more of these things in.

Remember what we’re doing here, the of the ABS Formula – attention,

bypass the critical, stimulate the unconscious – the real purpose of it is the

last stage, the S, stimulating an unconscious response.

Donna: Yes.

Igor: We focused here on the idea of comfort and relaxation as the unconscious

response but there can be many. It can be a behavioral response, an

emotional response, an intellectual response. The point is, now you start

having the tool to directionalize their minds towards where they need to go,

somewhere healthy, rather than where it tends to go around and being

often with people you’re bound to go somewhere less than healthy,

especially if they need help in some way.

Any other comments or questions on what we’ve done so far?

Janet: You mentioned motivational speaking and I can just hear the infomercial

about motivational speakers.

Igor: Totally.

Janet: And get that you really can count on this diet plan to…

Igor: So, you’re 100% correct in terms of the way you’re beginning to make the

connections here. If you look at any influential communicators – and the

three top categories that are in our everyday lives are salespeople, and

infomercials are the classic ones; TV evangelists are fantastic at this sort of

stuff as well; and politicians.





One of the greatest ones of recent times of course is the American President

Obama. He speaks purely in hypnotic language. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever

heard him not speaking in hypnotic language. So, these are wonderful

models and you can see how it affects huge amounts of people as well.

What we’re doing with these tools here is learning to be more masterful in

our communications and, importantly, because then we can actually use it

with purpose. A lot of people do this without even realizing it and a problem

comes with this.

I was teaching this to a business school in Chicago. I was brought in as a

guest lecturer and the next day one of the students comes in with this crazy

grin on her face and she says this is crazy.

She said I was on the bus home last night and I couldn’t help hearing peopletalking like this to each other, but they were talking like this in negative

terms. In other words, you really shouldn’t do that because you can’t, you’re

too stupid for this and all the rest of it.

So, they’re really bringing each other down constantly, and they don’t

realize that they’re creating a little reality in their own groups, which pulls

each other down. So, whether or not you use this language is not the

question. You will use this language at some point in your life.

The question is can you be aware enough that when you’re about to abusethe language accidentally, you can rein yourself in? It won’t always happen,

but hopefully more often than not, and then when you want to use it more

positively, it’s there for you rather than you blanking out. That’s really what

we’re designing to do here.

Donna: And I love that it’s in keeping with a lot of spiritual practices around

intention and sort of it really is pretty magical to help someone feel

comfortable sooner rather than later, when you’re dealing with them and

you just want them to know that they’re in a safe place.

Igor: Absolutely.

Janet: Yes.





Dueling Hypnotists

Igor: Absolutely. So, let’s play another hypnotic game here. The value of the

hypnotic circle – in other words with more than two people in it – is that

you get a lot of different type of language to come out because the way youcommunicate and the way you communicate and the way I communicate

will be very different, and by hearing each other it expands our reference

points as well. Do you get the idea?

Both: Yes.

Igor: What I want to do now is if you guys switch cards so you have a little bit

more variety here, I’m going to step out for a second. Just mix them up a

little bit so that they’re in a different order.

For this next exercise – I call this the Dueling Hypnotists. We’ll start off with

just the one-card draw on this one. It’s basically the same exercise as the

circle, only this time we’re going to go right to the center of what you just

talked about earlier. It’s this idea of the intention.

We’re going to amplify the general impact of what we’re doing here, and

you’ll see what I mean in a minute. I’d like for you to stick for the moment

to the themes of comfort or relaxation. You can if you wish include the idea

of eye closure, and you’ll see why in a moment.

I’ll give you a quick example. May I borrow these cards a second? So, if

we’re doing the exercise together, then I want you to lock eye contact in a

friendly way, not in a combative sort of way. Lock eye contact and then of

course you have to briefly look away to actually see the card. Otherwise,

peripheral reading is definitely not a skill that I have yet.

You’ll see the card, you’ll lock eye contact again and you’ll present your

suggestion, but you want to make it so meaningful. The idea you should

have inside your mind is you want your partner to melt into a puddle of blissin front of you.

Donna: Relaxation?

Igor: Right.





Janet: I think I’m going to like this part.

Igor: This is a great version of the exercise, and you want to keep that idea inside

your mind. People often ask me who’s the winner – the one that’s left

standing or the one that’s drooling on the floor? And the answer is yes,

because both have something from this one, right?

Again, just to give you a demonstration of what it will look like: what’s it like

when you really relax comfortably deep inside? Then you’ll wait for an

awkward moment and then they’ll take their turn.

Janet: What would it be like if you had a moment to close your eyes and relax?

Igor: See how my mind’s already going like yeah, I kind of want to close my eyes,

so now I’m resisting a little bit, gonna keep myself out. It doesn’t take manyrounds before you literally are drooling and disappearing. It’s a wonderful

game, and remember to take those pauses so you have an impact on each

other, that’s why we’re just doing a one-card draw for the moment. We’ll go

for the more technical three-card draw after this.

So, whenever you’re ready…

Donna: Janet, realize how beautiful you are and your ability to comfort and relax

will just make you a magical person in this world.

Janet: Donna, take a deep breath. You can begin to relax and be comfortable.

Donna: It’s as if you’ve gone to that place, that most beautiful magical place that

you know deep in your heart.

Janet: I wonder if you realize that relaxation, that comfort yet.

Donna: What I need to tell you is that every cell of your body deserves deep comfort

and relaxation.

Janet: Sooner or later, Donna, your eyes will get heavy and you can close them.

Donna: Close to puddle…





Igor: Okay, we’ll pause it there. We’ll declare Janet the winner on this one. I can

see you hanging on by a fingernail right there. Fun game?

Janet: Yes, it’s awesome.

Igor: Notice how it didn’t take many rounds to get to that point, right? Of course

you could do it more blasé and just raffle through cards and that’s good for

just general linguistics type exercise, but really it’s the way that you focus

your attention as the hypnotist, as the communicator, that gets the impact.

The reason we waited until this point to play that particular exercise is –

normally we would just start off this way just to kind of warm up and people

just talk, but now that we’ve had all the other warm-ups already, you have

the sense of really focusing on the other person, showing them how to

experience your idea, and then importantly you start feeling it insideyourself as well. Do you get that? Did you like that?

Donna: I love it.

Janet: Absolutely.

Igor: So, any feedback in terms of what your experience was for that?

Janet: I would like to give a wee bit of feedback from one step past.

Igor: Sure.

Janet: When we first began, I was quite nervous. I felt like I was in a television

studio and very internally and mentally nervous, and I’m much more

comfortable and relaxed.

Igor: Funny that, isn’t it?

Janet: And very confusing.

Igor: So, you’re experiencing example what the purpose of hypnotic language is.

We have spent so long discussing the theme, the idea of comfort and

relaxation that you are. I could equally spend time discussing the idea of

tension and stress or fear, and there are ways to soften that but overall it

tends to increase tension and comfort and fear.





There are times when it’s appropriate. I’ll give you a quick example. In a

typical counseling group, there will be people sharing whatever point or

problem they have, whether it’s alcoholism or some trauma or other, etc.

Now in the initial phases, that can be very, very healthy because people will

suddenly realize that they’re not alone, they don’t have to be ashamed, they

can get it out rather than contain it in, repressing it and letting it bubble up

inside.

So, in the initial phase, it’s very useful but some counselors get stuck in that

phase and they keep talking on about that same trauma one month, 10

months, 10 years later and all it ends up having as an effect is people get

stuck in that mindset, shall we say, and we’re trying to get them unstuck.

So, it’s good to join initially, but ultimately you want to lead towards that

positive language, the one that actually gives them the experience you want

for them rather than the one you don’t.

Is there anything you want to add to how you experienced that last

exercise?

Donna: Well, I just found it a very powerful experience, how it deepened both my

saying what I wanted to say to Janet, but how very powerfully it deepened

the impact she was having on me, so it’s a very powerful tool.

Igor: It’s a very, very powerful tool and the important thing here is – and I like the

way you demonstrated that – is hypnosis creates a feedback loop and we

need to be able to respond to the response of the response and so on.

If you break that feedback loop – and this is what people typically do when

they internalize too much – then you start forcing things, and it can work up

to a point but the problem with that forcing style of communication is that

as soon as you’ve got your back turned, everything you’ve done will fall

apart again. If you create a feedback loop, over time of course, you create a

system which self-regulates. In other words, it keeps going on its own. You

don’t have to be there anymore to make it happen.

If you’re refusing to be impacted by the person that you’re talking to, then

you’re refusing the feedback loop as well. By this I don’t mean if someone’s





having a psychotic episode that you join them in their psychosis and feel

equally stressed and so on, but you’ve already experienced yourself when

someone is very stressed or very upset, it affects you emotionally also.

That’s part of that feedback loop going and if you reject your own emotion

at that point, well it’s much harder to talk to that person, right?

Donna: Absolutely.

Igor: At that point, this is what I guess therapy is all about, or self-change. You

need to work on yourself enough to be able to deal with that emotion inside

you because otherwise how can you expect to deal with it inside them

without doing the same damage to them that you’ve already done to

yourself in your own emotions?

Donna: A lot of practices believe that very thing. If it’s just coming from your head

and on automatic pilot, it’s not going to be as meaningful for the person as if

they get the feeling that you’re joining them.

Igor: Exactly, and that’s a key part of – shall we say the invisible part – of using

these cards. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking the magic’s in the

language – and there’s a lot of psychology and magic in that language,

absolutely – but the real magic is in the person. It always was.

The language we’ve created is the equivalent of a lens. What does a lensdo? It focuses light. If you have no light, it doesn’t matter if you have the

best lens in the world, it still becomes essentially useless. If you have a weak

light, sure the lens can maybe magnify a little bit but it still won’t get the

result.

You’re better off having a powerful light, like a powerful flashlight or

something like that without a lens – that’s what I guess a natural charismatic

might be – than having a very weak light and a powerful lens, or worse still,

if you have the wrong color light and a powerful lens because you’re just

amplifying something less than positive shall we say. Do you get the idea?

Both: Yes.

Igor: Any questions for me so far?





Donna: A comment more than a question. It strikes me as well that when that

person senses you joining them in that way, that again a lot of their

attention. They feel like they have an ally. They feel like they have someone

that’s really there and like a sacred witness – again in spiritual terms.

Igor: I think that’s very important because you’ve just basically described the first

two stages of the ABS Formula. The more attention you’re getting, the

bigger that window of opportunity for trance happens to be. Pure attention

on its own doesn’t necessarily guarantee trance but it gets very close to it.

Then that sense of being safe, being respected by the other person – that’s

one of the maneuvers that will allow someone to quiet down their critical

factor, the idea of rejecting ideas out of hand. So, once you’ve got those two

barriers out of the way, that last step – the idea of stimulating the

unconscious – becomes easy. It’s just directly asking them to do X or feel Y.

You may have noticed that with some people they just ask you to relax and

you go yeah thank you, that’s right. Other people ask you to relax and you

want to smack them, because one person had all three ducks in a row – the

ABS Formula – and the other person did not.

Shall we have another game, another round?

Donna: Absolutely. If I can just say one more thing.

Igor: Sure.

Donna: It also strikes me that this is a beautiful tool that carries with it tremendous

responsibility.

Igor: Oh, it does at that. To quote our friend Spiderman – actually Spiderman’s

uncle – “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Donna: Absolutely.

Igor: And this is a very important point. Hypnosis I believe is a force for good.

Because it is an amplifier it intensifies things. Can you abuse it? You can

abuse anything, right? You can abuse medicines. You can abuse your car.

You can use anything in a way that it wasn’t intended to, but with hypnosis

you pay a particular price and that is it amplifies responses.





It not only amplifies the response that you were using this way abusively; it

will also amplify the reaction. So, let’s say you go into a shop and someone

kind of strong-arms you into buying something. Afterwards you get the

classic buyer’s remorse. You feel a little soiled and you go oh, like I don’t like

that person very much.

Now compare that to your best friend for the last 30 years doing something

horrible to you – stabbing you in the back, running off with your husband

and your fortune and shooting your kids at the same time. Very unpleasant.

Of course that betrayal is much more significant than the one from the

stranger precisely because the relationship was much deeper beforehand.

We don’t even have to have that extreme of an example. If your friend – or

in this case your supposed friend – forces you to buy something that’s goodfor them but not good for you, and a salesman does that, with the salesman

you can go well, alright, he got one over on me but that’s his job. I don’t like

it very much but I’m okay with it.

If your friend does the same thing, your reaction is going to be much

stronger. So, just as there’s a much higher responsibility – which is correct –

with that is also a much higher risk of shall we say the punishment in return

if you abuse these skills, precisely because you are reaching much deeper

inside someone’s mind, which means respect is not just something you do

because you want to be a more respectful person.

It’s also something you do to actually protect yourself to a certain degree in

a certain sense because once you abuse that, it gets very, very difficult to

relate to that person again. So, thank you for that.

Dueling Hypnotists – 3 Card Draw

Igor: What we’re going to do this time around, just to get another little exerciseand see if we can intensify the intensity that’s already starting to build, is

the same game, the same Dueling Hypnotists so to speak, but this time

around we’re going to go for a three-card draw.

You’re going to have the cumulative effect of several things, so let’s sit back

and watch the fireworks on this one.







Janet: Is our familiarity with each other, being that we’ve known each other – is

that a factor?

Igor: Absolutely.

Janet: So, if we were complete strangers, it would still have an impact?

Igor: Absolutely. It just requires a few more rounds. Think of it this way.

Remember how nervous you were at the start of this whole little session?

Janet: Yes.

Igor: That’s really an example of how a stranger might feel around you. Not

necessarily that they’re all kind of stressed and tense and so on, but there

will be a level of tension or stress or wariness because they don’t know you.Just in the same way as it took you a little while to kind of warm up and feel

more comfortable, and of course in each round that you’ve done – it’s called

fractionation – you became increasingly more comfortable as well.

This is called the Law of Successive Approximation or actually the Law of

Compounding Effect. These are two slightly related principles. You know the

old saying success breeds success? Comfort breeds more comfort.

Relaxation breeds more relaxation.

If you want someone to feel relaxed or deeply relaxed, get them to just relaxa little bit. In some of the more classical psychology research – this is also

partly physiology – there’s the old progressive relaxation. If someone

doesn’t know how to relax, they need to tense up first so when they let go

of that element of tension, it already gives them a direction.

I can’t relax, I can’t relax. Okay, then tense. Now relax. They can

comparatively relax and that already gives them some direction to go on.

Now that you’ve done that, do that again without tensing your muscles. Oh,

I get it. Bit by bit they go towards the success.

You’re also compounding the impact. In other words, the more you do it –

it’s kind of like if you have a particular sensitive area of skin, if you get it

brushed once or twice it’s not nice but it’s okay, but the more someone

pokes it, the more discomfort is going to be there because the accumulation

of the sensation increases your sensitivity to it.





That’s kind of what we’re doing here as well. Does that answer your

question?

Janet: Absolutely.

Igor: Of course remember with strangers you may also need to go a little bit more

slowly. Why? Because they may not feel comfortable about being

comfortable around strangers. If they start getting to that too quickly, that

can actually create, ironically, discomfort.

It’s not true of most people but some people really have problems with

strangers or just with the idea of closeness in general, and forcing that on

someone is not okay, because they won’t be okay with it. You’re actually

harming the relationship. So, just because you think a particular experienceis positive and because maybe most of the world would agree with you

doesn’t mean a particular individual will agree with that.

You never know. That relaxation might have been an onset signal for them

for a panic attack in the past, or it may have happened before they were

attacked in the past and so on, so now you asking them to relax is being

equated by the unconscious as you’re about to be attacked.

This is an example. I’m not saying everyone’s like this, but that’s part of

what the feedback loop is about. If relaxation doesn’t work, if you can seerelaxation developing more tension, then you go into other areas that are

more safe. Maybe nice thoughts or positive thoughts or it could be more

energy or something like that.

Always take the person at what they’re at, but that gets much more

advanced. Right now we’re just really getting used to the language here. Did

you have anything to add to the experience you had?

Donna: Much more powerful doing the three, but I noticed that when you did the

one that really got me the last time, I recognized it and I didn’t let it go

deeper, but then there was something you did this time that just had me in

a puddle again. I really thought okay I’m good to continue, and I turned the

card over and I couldn’t even read the words.





Igor: What you just described, by the way, is called a conscious/unconscious

dissociation – when your conscious mind thinks it’s having one experience

but really unconsciously you have a completely different one, and where the

conscious and the unconscious mind conflict, the unconscious always wins,

as you noticed right there – yeah I’m good to go; all right maybe I’m not.

Donna: I think I’m the puddle.

Igor: Good.

Janet: I was just reflecting again on the actual experience with those three cards.

The one card that took a little bit more effort and you gave an example and

then Donna got right back into it – I only remember that that happened just

now. It had no impact during the game.

Igor: Absolutely because you’re still in that trance glow. It gives you a lot of

leeway. The point of this language is it gets the conscious wheels spinning a

bit so they don’t actually bite too much and start running off in a million

different directions.

People of course who run in a million different directions habitually, will be

a lot more difficult to get to that point. They may require several

conversations before they calm down around you, but that’s okay as long as

you’re not in a hurry. If you have to do it right now, then – I think it was

John Grinder, another speaker once said, the only way you can fail is if yougive yourself a time limit within which you have to success.

Dueling Hypnotists – Two On One

Igor: So, let’s do one more variation of this game, which I think you guys will

enjoy. In this variation, one of you will volunteer to be the puddle ahead of

time. Does anyone want to volunteer for that role? You both are very close

to it.

Janet: I’m pretty much there. I can be the puddle.

Igor: So, what we’ll do in this one is – I’m just going to get up. We’re going to

switch chairs for this one. Okay, so we’ve reset the configuration a little bit





here. This works well with any group of three plus. It can actually work with

one-on-one as well, so maybe we’ll try that in a minute as well.

We’re going to do basically the same – the idea of Dueling Hypnotists – only

rather than us dueling this time, we’re going to all focus our attention on

you. For this one, we can do the one-card draw or three-card draw as well.

We’re going to just focus on the three-card draw just to save a little bit of

time on this one.

In a moment what we’ll do is I’ll start speaking with you. You have a choice.

Would you like to start with your eyes open or closed? I’ll explain the

difference.

If you do it with your eyes open, you’ll get the pleasure of discovering that

they’ll close by themselves at some point. If you do it with your eyes closed,then you will just drift into nirvana without even knowing when it hit you.

So, either way you win. It’s our choice.

Janet: Let’s do open because I often do things with my eyes closed, so this is going

to be very exciting.

Igor: Sure. If you’re going to do this with your eyes open – we can do it with eye

contact and so on but because there are several of us, the easiest way of

absorbing attention so you don’t keep constantly changing direction is I’d

like you to focus anywhere, maybe on a light over here or over there or outthe window.

Just find something you want to look at comfortably and keep your

attention on that, so you can hear us without having to look at us. That’s the

main key here. Would you like to begin or shall I begin?

Donna: You go ahead.

Igor: Do my cards or your cards. I don’t really care.

Donna: It doesn’t matter.

Igor: Okay. Now will you find yourself comfortably relaxing now or going into a

deep and comfortable trance later on? And you might find yourself drifting





deeper and deeper. That’s right. And I know you’re wondering how those

eyes could close so quickly as you enjoy drifting even more inside.

Donna: And Janet, you can experience this deep level of comfort and relaxation as if

it’s been with you your whole life, since the time you were born. Because

you were put on this Earth to feel so comfortable and so relaxed, you really

shouldn’t ever worry about not feeling comfortable and relaxed again.

Igor: And you really should discover for yourself that comfort can take you

deeper and deeper into a wonderful place, because when you find that

comfortable place, you’ll experience so much more than just relaxation

now. Suppose your mind drifted into some eternal place of comfort.

Donna: You really should sink as deeply as you need to into this comfort and

relaxation. As soon as you do, you’ll find a deep well of peace and comfort.

Igor: I think we have puddle.

Donna: I think she’s lost her ability to sit up.

Igor: We’re going to let her just rest for a little bit here.

Janet: You guys are really good.

Igor: Just take your time, and when you’re ready you can bring yourself back, but just enjoy it for now. Take your time to enjoy it and then bring yourself back

whenever you’re ready.

Janet: Does Monday sound good? Oh my, that was so fun. Oh goodness.

Igor: So, let’s switch chairs around again and we’ll have a chat about that. Okay,

so we’re back to our configuration. Our star puddle of comfort – what would

you like to say in terms of your experience of that?

Janet: You were exactly right, I had that conscious and unconscious was

completely spoken to. The unconscious part of me is ready to lie down and

the conscious part of me is no you’re being videotaped you should stay

erect and the unconscious part won, because yes, I was a puddle of mush

and had there been more flexibility in the chairs, I would have puddled

much sooner, my body just took over.





Igor: Of course. If we had you lying down somewhere.

Janet: Oh my gosh, yes.

Igor: Notice it didn’t take very many rounds, did it?

Janet: You said three words and my eyes were ready to close. It was remarkable.

Absolutely remarkable.

Igor: The other thing that I want to mention as well – again thank you for the

wonderful experience you had there. That’s a great demonstration of it. The

beauty of this one is now you can team up with someone else and again

have the same experience of the circle, have the same experience of the

Dueling Hypnotists, but seeing it with an actual individual.

The particular thing I’m really happy happened here, which a lot of novice

hypnotists are afraid of – and I don’t think you particularly will ever be

afraid of again if you ever were in the past – is the idea of what happens if

someone laughs in trance. My God, I’ve just ruined it. Did it just destroy this

wonderful thing?

Donna: That went through my head.

Janet: No, no, not at all.

Igor: So, what the laughter really was – and please correct me if it mismatches

your experience – is basically the conscious mind thinking oh my God I can’t

believe this has just happened to me.

Janet: The gig is up.

Igor: Yes, it’s like come on the rolling chickens because I thought it was all fake

and here I am desperately trying to be mature sitting in my chair, and I can’t

do it.

Janet: An absolutely perfect description on what the laughter was. An absolutely

perfect description. My mind was blown.





Igor: And it’s important because people do fear laughter because they think oh

they’re making fun of me, or they’re laughing at me because I’m not good

enough, this isn’t working so they’re laughing at this whole thing and so on.

And of course that can happen. There are some people who come

specifically to prove that they don’t go into hypnosis and they can laugh at

the person and so on. Does that happen? On a stage show, very

occasionally. Usually the stage hypnotist, if he’s properly trained, will stop

those people and get rid of them so they can actually have a show rather

than a duel of… a conflict of wills, which brings nothing.

In a therapy practice, does that happen? In my experience no. Not to me at

least. I’m sure it can happen from time to time. Some people do want to be

curious about going to a hypnotist to see if they can be hypnotized and so

on but they’re very, very rare.

Can it happen in a normal kind of conversational setting? Again only if they

know. The beauty of conversational hypnosis is, if they don’t know you’re

doing it, they just feel really wonderful in your presence. Now of course at

that point things like eye closure aren’t desired.

Let’s put it this way. If you had a friend and every time you went to visit this

friend you just woke up half an hour later and went goodness I’m sorry I fell

asleep in my tea, you’d start to wonder after a while, wouldn’t you? That’s

not very covert at that point, which is fine.

If that’s your intention, that’s fine but there are certain situations like if

you’re a social worker and so on where it’s not appropriate to get your

pocket watch out and put them in trance, but it is very appropriate to

communicate with the unconscious mind, to help put the person at ease

and to leave them with ideas that overall will help them become more

healthful as an individual.

It’s very, very appropriate at that point. So, if you want to frame it as the

idea of let’s do a guided visualization or let’s do a guided meditation – which

are very popular nowadays – those really are hypnosis by another name.

Or, if you just do it conversationally, in which case you’ve got to start

spotting the point at which they’re really going there, and then back off a

little bit because if you do too much at that point, then they’ll have your





experience, which is I just can’t, I’m really sorry, you’re not boring me but I

just can’t keep my eyes open.

That’s literally the kind of experience people will have because in our culture

if you close your eyes and fall asleep while someone’s talking to you, it’s

considered rude. But of course as a hypnotist, it’s considered a success. Do

you get the idea?

Both: Yes.

Igor: So, any feedback in terms of your experiences there?

Janet: You have described exactly what happened. The laughter was also joyful too

because once it started, then it accelerated this place of nirvana – or I forget

what word you used because my brain has not held onto it – but there was asuggestion that there would be a very blissful state.

So, for me very blissful states are very happy and laughter is something

that’s very much a part of who I am, so yes, my conscious mind was also

battling, but I was also just experiencing joy, which was very beautiful.

Igor: Good.

Donna: And from a practicing standpoint, it was very helpful albeit you’re the

teacher, but you could have been anybody. It was very helpful to have thetwo of us doing it in a practicing situation and just found that just like the

three of us working together, there’s something building.

Igor: Exactly.

Donna: So, in a learning way, it was very helpful for me to have the two of us, and I

could feel the impact myself of what was transpiring.

Igor: Well, it does a lot of things. First of all, it takes a lot of the pressure off you

for having to get it right. That’s why group work is very useful. Secondly, it

helps you to learn because as each person will naturally interact differently

with these hypnotic phrases, you hear different ways of doing things and

you go oh, I like that, I’m going to steal that, I’m going to use that myself

next time.





The third thing it does is – remember priming doesn’t care about whether

you’re supposed to be primed by it or not. In other words, if an unconscious

stimulus is there, it will happen whether it’s intended for you or someone

else.

So, whilst I’m saying something to put you in trance and blissing out and so

on, as long as you’re hearing me, it has the same impact. So, you’re mutually

reinforcing those trances, which helps you go first even more because whilst

you’re listening to me, yeah it’s nice. It’s my turn. Sure, I’m in the right place

now, right?

Of course you can have the anti-hypnosis circle where one person gets more

stressed than the next person, and before you know it everyone is there –

you know exactly. And at that point, the language will be absolutely useless

to you because you’ve lost the experiential part of the moment.

So, remember these are tools. These are not magic spells that just make

stuff happen. They are tools, lenses to focus an experience through to

amplify it, but your responses will create that experience and I think we’ve

spent a lot of time now building those things up.

Donna: It’s also very helpful for me to witness you using the pauses the way you

were. Extremely effective.

Igor: Thank you.

Donna: Had you been saying the same exact identical words a bit quicker, I just

knew they would not have been as impactful.

Igor: Right.

Donna: But you were in the zone and it’s like okay, I can learn from slowing down

when I speak.

Igor: And that’s the other reason why we have all the different positions. The

person who’s here will have the most dramatic experience of the language

in action, and you’ll probably have the most dramatic version of why pauses

were so important, right?





When you have two people doing it, you can even have differing styles and

you can say oh I like that, oh that’s taking me away, that’s taking me closer.

So, you’re learning. You’re creating your own instincts, which is why it’s

useful to take every part.

Again going back to the Dueling Hypnotists, who’s the winner – the puddle

on the floor or the last man standing? Well, really both are winning because

both have learned something of tremendous value. So, yes the power of

pausing is very important there.

Black Suits – Language Modifiers

Igor: So, let’s do one more exercise here. I’ll give you some cards here. I’ll give

you some cards there. I’ll give you a couple more. This time we’re going to just take one of the black suits.

Let me talk a little bit about what these black suits do. These are

fundamentally different to the colored suits. The colored suits are about

hypnotic language. At the most basic level, it’s about flowing smoothly with

ideas.

If I interrupt ideas, I create barriers to understanding and each little barrier

may be nothing on its own, but the more barriers that are there, the harder

it is for the ideas to be accepted.

The smoother my ideas are, the fewer the barriers. The smoother the road

is shall we say, the more momentum you can build up so that ultimately

even so-called more difficult experiences will be easier to access. That’s just

a really over-simplified idea but that describes one of the levels at which this

kind of language works.

These black modifiers do something extra. On their own, they don’t do very

much. They’re designed to go with your regular language to enhance theirimpact. So, just as these enhance your communication generally, these will

enhance what these do.

It’s like having a magnifying lens with another lens on top of that. That’s

how a telescope works or binoculars. You have two sets of lenses, each of





which amplify what the other set has just done, and that’s what the

modifiers do.

We’re going to just take one. There are three suits of black cards. They’re all

black because they all accentuate, but they all do it in a slightly different

way. We’re going to use the simplest one of the three, which is the

language softeners, and these are usually the most useful.

So, what we’ll do here is I’ll give you three, I’ll give you three and I’ll keep

one for myself just to demonstrate what I want by this. The way to use

these is to put them to one side. Don’t keep them actually with the actual

colored cards.

We’re going to use the colored cards in exactly the same way as before. At

some random point, you’re going to turn over two cards. Let’s say I’veturned over this one here. Actually I’ll use another one just because this is a

mid- phrase idea so I won’t use that one.

So, let’s start with this one: You can continue right on relaxing. A very simple

suggestion. What language softeners do is they take the edge off an idea or

a suggestion. If you’re very tense and I tell you that you can go right on

relaxing, your mind’s going to think the idiot, I’m not even vaguely relaxed.

How can I go right on relaxing when I’m not even vaguely relaxed?

I’ve mismatched what you’re doing, right? So, if I use a language softener atthe same time, it softens that. I’ve got the idea of you might . You might like

the idea of continuing right on relaxing. It just takes the edge off and people

go yeah I might like that, but it doesn’t force you into something yet.

The other cards do something slightly different, each one, but you get the

rough idea.

Language Softeners

Igor: So, here’s how we’re going to do this. We’re going to go back to the idea of

a hypnotic circle. You’re going to have your modifiers sitting on your lap or

somewhere close to hand, and we’ll do a three-card draw.





At any point, especially if you feel like this doesn’t quite flow right – so you

can carry right on relaxing – you could relax deeply, couldn’t you? Let’s say I

feel like I’m not quite sure they could relax deeply, so I don’t want to take

that risk yet.

So, now I take my language softener and go all right, you might relax deeply,

mightn’t you? It will soften that a little bit more. Let’s take another one here

just so I can give different examples. If you [blank], then.

If you breathe regularly, then you might find yourself relaxing even further.

Do you get the idea? It takes the risk away from you from the suggestion

and it gives them more permission so that they don’t feel like they have to

respond straightaway, which could sometimes cause a little stress in the

person. Do you get the idea? Any questions?

Donna: I do this very often when I send emails to soften the intent of the emails.

Igor: That’s why it’s called the language softener, right?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: We can look into the psychology at another point. The main thing here right

now is we’ve got the general idea of what we’re trying to do.

Donna: Absolutely.

Igor: The key thing is you don’t have to use them every single time. Just pick them

up randomly just to add some spice, or if there’s a card where you think

what I want to say doesn’t quite match the moment yet, then you can pick it

up to help you soften the way that you – it’s kind of like a gear that lets you

bring it in more gently.

So, we’ll do a round of that and then we’ll see some other things you can do

with this afterwards. So, I’ll kick off. Actually we’ll do a three-card draw.

If you relax comfortably, then you’ll find yourself drifting deeply inside. And

you don’t have to drift deeply inside in order to feel comfort and relaxation.

What would it be like if you did feel that comfort now?





Donna: Notice how your muscles feel the deeper you get comfortable and relaxed.

Consciously you might feel one thing while unconsciously you go deeper and

deeper into relaxation. Allow yourself to know that it is not necessary to feel

comfortable and relaxed at all times.

Janet: You really should discover for yourself that comfort and relaxation are very

beneficial. When you relax, you breathe much deeper and your tension

drifts away. Suppose maybe, comfort and relaxation are a possibility every

day.

Igor: Okay, let’s pause there a little bit. Okay? How did you find that? Was that

interesting?

Both: Yes.

Igor: Now it’s a little more demanding, I realize, because now you’re actually

having two concepts trying to meld together rather than just the one that

you were working with before, but notice how it also gives you a little more

freedom.

The other thing you can do – and this is just as an exercise for yourself. This

is not necessarily something you want to do in terms of actually using it

every day, but as an exercise to kind of stretch your ability to add these

different nuances in, you may actually want to try doing a round where you

use as many of these as possible.

But I want to caution you. This is not like you want to speak like this all the

time. Otherwise you’ll be talking very long phrases and people won’t wait

for you to get to the point, and that’s not always a good thing to do. So, I’ll

just give you an example.

I’ve got the idea of remembering and I’m not sure. I’m not sure if you

remember how comfortable you felt before. I’ve got the idea of have you

ever and would you. Of course have you and would you contradict each

other in language, so I just replace one with the other.

Would you ever consider the possibility that you can relax comfortably and

deeply in places you haven’t been before? I wonder if you realize – allow

right? I wonder if you can allow yourself to realize that comfort inside you is





growing now. The idea of maybe; I know you want to: I know you want to

maybe feel a little more comfortable now.

So, you get the idea. Notice how it does make it a little bit more verbose, a

little bit more chatting going on, and that’s not always the right thing to do.

Hence, I present this to you as an exercise for skill building generally. You

know, the way that some does pushups. You don’t do pushups so that you

can do more pushups. You do pushups to build strength.

Then one day when you’re carrying something, those pushups will have

been of value to you, right? In the same way, you don’t do these so that you

can do them all the time. You do these so that they’re there for you when

you need something like that. Do you get the idea?

Both: Yes.

Anticipation Builders

Igor: So, let’s take the next round and then we’re almost done. These are called

anticipation builders. Language softeners are about taking pressure off.

Anticipation builders are all about putting pressure on subtly, beginning to

get the idea of action going. So, you’re basically warming up their nervous

system.

Those are things like I’d like you to do something but not yet. So, let’s have

an example of this. I know you want to relax comfortably but not yet. Notice

how that feels inside? It’s like yeah, what do you mean not yet?

It creates more desire shall we say to ultimately have that experience.

Hence, the anticipation builders because you’re denying them and so it

takes the edge off, etc. Do you get the idea?

In exactly the same way as the language softeners worked, so do theanticipation builders but where the language softeners soften language and

they take pressure off, these put a gentle pressure on in a particular

direction, so they can work in harmony.

You can take the pressure off one way and then relax a little bit in the other

way, and then of course we’ll come to action accelerators afterwards and





you’ll see how they all fit together more in a systematic sort of way. Do you

get the idea?

Both: Yes.

Igor: Shall we do another round just with the anticipation builders, and again like

the other ones we’ll just throw them in as we feel that we might want to

create a little bit of anticipation with people?

Both: Sure.

Igor: Now remember that you’ve relaxed many times in the past. Have you ever

felt so relaxed that comfort started seeping up from your toes all the way to

your head – but not yet? I wonder if you realize that you can relax this

comfortably in all kinds of ways.

Donna: Comfort and relaxation can become the hallmarks of how you live your life. I

need to tell you that gradually you can learn this whenever you are needing

it. Notice that you can move as slowly or quickly as you want into comfort

and relaxation.

Igor: Let’s just pause there for a second. By adding slowly or quickly, you’ve

negated the idea of anticipation. It’s still a useful thing. Slowly or quickly

gives them a choice. It’s actually called a bind – will you relax slowly or will

you relax quickly?

So, on that level it’s useful, but if I want you to build anticipation for

something like Christmas and I say hey Christmas can come quickly, does

that build anticipation? When I say Christmas will come slowly this year…

Donna: I got you.

Igor: So, the whole idea of it is to build that sense of someth ing’s going to

happen. That’s something good and I want it but I’m not allowed it yet. I

can’t have it, yet. That’s the anticipation we’re trying to build up.

Donna: Okay.

Igor: It’s not that slowly or quickly doesn’t work. It absolutely does, but it works

in a different direction.





Donna: It’s not the intent of this exercise.

Igor: It doesn’t build anticipation. It actually just builds a bind, which in itself is

useful but what we’re trying to do here is become very masterful in why

we’re doing things, so we can actually have the impact that we’re wanting

rather than just wondering why we didn’t have the impact that we desired.

Do you get the idea?

Donna: Yes.

Igor: Go ahead.

Janet: Focus your awareness on relaxation and comfort. Soon we’ll really get there.

We’re here in this room together. We have the time together. We have theintent together, and comfort and relaxation are close at hand. In a moment

you’ll go to comfort and relaxation.

Igor: Let me just pause you there a second. So, in a moment – you’re using cards

independently. It’s a modifier. Do they work on their own? Absolutely. As a

pure language pattern, it can have its own effect.

Let’s just take one of the ones you just used there so we can get an

example. So, we’ve got the idea of soon and focus your awareness. Just feel

the impact. Focus your awareness on some area of comfort in your body.Now I’m going to anticipate it. Soon you’ll be able to focus your awareness

on some comfort in your body.

Do you see the difference? In one you’re doing it, and the other one is like

why can’t I do it now? Again, it is not that using them differently is incorrect.

What matters is the impact that you’re having. The point of these is you’re

trying to target a specific effect inside their mind, and the effect we’re

looking for right now is anticipation.

If you build enough anticipation, then they will run ahead of you and really

releasing that anticipation builds their response potential. They’re ready to

go, and once they build up enough response, then you can release that and

have a much more dramatic response. Do you get the idea?

Both: Yes.





Igor: Shall we do one more round just to get the feel for it?

Donna: Yes, I think so.

Igor: All right. And you can begin to relax comfortably now because sooner or

later that comfort will increase, and you should remember that you can

relax anytime you wish, just not yet.

Donna: Eventually you will be able to consciously relax while unconsciously – I’ve

lost it.

Igor: Just say anything – you can go deeper, relax even more, have more comfort.

Donna: And go deeper and have more comfort. I don’t know. This one’s got mestymied.

Igor: So, you’ve got an interesting combination there. It’s not necessary – which

through negation takes the pressure off – and slowly is trying to put a little

bit of pressure on, so they kind of countermand each other a little bit, but

just notice this. Just close your eyes for a moment. Now it’s not necessary

for you to relax all the way, slowly now. Right?

Donna: Yes.

Janet: As you relax, so you will gain deeper comfort. It’s a good thing. You’re soon

going to be deeply relaxed. In a moment because you’re deeply relaxed, so

will comfort go deeper and deeper.

Igor: Very good. So, did you enjoy that so far?

Janet: Yes.

Igor: Notice how because this one’s a little trickier to get your heads around,

you’ve popped yourself out of the moment more. You didn’t go first as

easily, and so the language didn’t flow as smoothly, right? Again, usually I

recommend people do several hours of practice just with the other

exercises we’ve done before we go to this point.





You kind of jumped right into the advanced exercises here. If you’re doing

this at home as well, please bear in mind that if it starts getting a little tricky,

it just means you’re taking on too much.

If you enjoy the challenge, by all means carry on; or simply put these to one

side again, get more smoothness out of using the regular colored deck, and

once that becomes a no brainer to you like an easy thing and you need a

challenge, then start introducing the modifiers again. Do you get the idea?

Janet: Yes.

Donna: Can we do one more practice?

Igor: Of course we can. Absolutely. If you want, I can actually do the whole set of

anticipation builders in one round as well, so you can hear them in action.Would that be of value to you?

Janet: I think it would be valuable.

Donna: Yes.

Igor: Okay, so let’s take all of these. I’ll put myself on the spot. Again, this is not

because we want to do all of them all the time. I’m just going to do them all

just purely for my mental exercise.

And how slowly do you find yourself relaxing more and more deeply now?

Every time you gradually find that comfort develop, you’ll find your body

relaxing even more gently.

A person can, you know, eventually relax all the way, which means you’ll be

relaxing completely and profoundly, just not yet, because in a moment you

can continue right on relaxing, all the way to the place you need to go and

you could begin to relax right now, couldn’t you? If you relax right now, then

you’ll soon find yourself drifting even more deeply than you’ve yet to

experience.

So, with those, I’ve gone through all the anticipation builders but with

different language cards again. Notice how it sounds actually very smooth as

well, right? So, again they’re very, very useful but the key once again is to





understand why you’re trying to do this. What are you trying to achieve

inside their mind?

What were your experiences of me running through the anticipation

builders in that way? How did you feel when I was speaking in these ways?

Donna: Well, it had the effect that you’re speaking of, especially the not yet one.

Igor: That’s pulling the candy away from the baby, like ha-ha you can’t have it yet.

Janet: Yes, I absolutely agree. That was the most profound.

Igor: That’s the most blatant one of them. The other ones are creepers, so they’re

slowly, soon, gently , etc. The not yet one is much more in your face. It’s like

you can’t have it yet, so it’s actually kind of a little reverse psychology. Itbuilds a lot more umph very quickly.

Donna: Definitely, yes.

Igor: Then again, having felt the experience yourself, you know what situations

are appropriate. Maybe I do want you to relax and you’re a more fragile

person, so I’m not going to just pull it away from you. I’d say you can begin

to relax now.

That’s still a very slow gradual progression. It just builds up. Let’s do anotherone randomly – because eventually you’ll relax a lot, but not yet. Do you see

how they start coming together as a very strategic sort of thing?

Both: Yes.

Igor: But you can’t get to that level until these colored cards are smooth for you,

and the way you understand the strategy, the tactics of how to use these

and when to use these, is to be the subject. Hear it. Feel it inside yourself,

and then you’ll know yeah, I really like that; or no, that one didn’t work

quite so well for me.

And of course when you’re doing this as a group – and this is very

important. At home if you’re doing this with other people – which I

encourage you to do – get feedback afterwards. How did you feel? What did

you like? What didn’t you like? Other people may have what you might not





like they might like and that gives you a bit of a repertoire of the kinds of

things you can do. Any questions?

Janet: Not a question just a comment. I noticed no development of physical

tension, but a mental anticipation and a little edge of tension, especially

with that not yet, but it was that desire, that heightened desire but no

physical height.

Igor: That’s what it’s designed to do. If I became more harsh with anticipation

builders you’d feel it physically as well, but I’m being softer with it right now

because I want you to have, the mental image in my mind is of a dam

beginning to fill up, so when it’s full enough of water I go open the flood

gates and a huge flood will come pouring out. That’s what I’m trying to

achieve usually when I do this.

Janet: Eventually.

Igor: Eventually. Any other questions or comments?

Both: No.

Action Accelerators

Igor: Let’s turn to the last of the modifiers. These are fun. These are also the most

risky of the three suits. The language softeners are the least risky.

Anticipation builders increase the risk a little bit, but also the reward ends

up being a little higher in terms of the power of the response. Action

accelerators tend to be the most rewarding in terms of the response;

however, they’re a little more risky and you’ll see what I mean.

What action accelerators do is they’re basically the go or release button.

Think of a racing car. You know how a racing car will gun the engine whilst

the brakes are on so when the brakes get released it squeals off because theengine is already running. That’s essentially what you’re doing with action

accelerators. It gets people into action now and the action can be

psychological, emotional, etc. as well.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. We have here, you don’t have to,

which is interesting because it’ll actually countermands. The negation will





countermand the action accelerator a little but we’ll play with it anyways.

You don’t have to relax immediately. Do you see how that puts a little more

pressure there? This one here, the imagination will give you much more

natural feel for how the action accelerators work.

What would it be like if you relaxed immediately? So we start off gently

what would it be like if, you relaxed immediately? It sets the go button

going inside you. Do you get the idea?

Both: Absolutely.

Igor: Do you have any questions on that one or should we just do a couple rounds

to see how that works out?

Donna: A couple rounds.

Igor: Same rule as before you don’t have to use them all the time, but try and use

at least one per three cards. If you want to go more that’s fine too. Would

one of you like to start?

Donna: Do you want to go?

Janet: Go for it.

Donna: Will you relax now or… this is a tough one…

Igor: Or feel comfort later?

Donna: But all of that together.

Igor: Oh, you want to do them all together? Sure, if you want to challenge

yourself. Will you relax all at once right now or will you feel that comfort

developing later?

Donna: Gotcha. Yeah.

Igor: An alternative just so you can have some other alternatives… will you relax

comfortably now or will you relax all at once later.

Donna: Gotcha.





Igor: See how it puts it all into one moment.

Donna: Yes. You will find yourself more deeply relaxing when you instantly wrap

yourself in that warm blanket.

Janet: As you relax so you will find comfort. It’s a good thing you’re rapidly relaxing

and diving into comfort. Because you are fully relaxing, so comfort flows

over you like water.

Igor: Beautiful. And I know you want to relax immediately now.

You can feel the impact of the action accelerators. You can see how it

really…

Janet: Yes, I’m in a puddle of water again.

Igor: … amps up the drama. I mentioned before that of the modifiers this is the

riskiest one. Why do you think I said that?

Janet: If you use it at the wrong time it would not have the impact.

Igor: Exactly, because if you force them into having an experience too quickly

they have a weak experience but they expect through the language a big

experience, so what could have been a win and experience is a loss becauseit wasn’t big enough.

Donna: Could be performance anxiety.

Igor: That’s the other one.

Donna: It’s like I’m not there and I need to be there.

Igor: She told me to say it and I’d feel it and I can’t quite do it… and then oh my

gosh, stress. Absolutely. This is why you want to be again, with more

experience you’ll be able to read the person and know.

One thing that works well is the three step approach. Let’s play a little game

with this one and I’ll give you a little strategy that works well and again,

we’ll do this by the numbers. This is not how conversations or inductions





work, we’re doing this as an exercise so you can experience a strategy in

action, but then we’ll come back and talk about how that works in real life.

So we’ll do the anticipation builders again, here’s three. Keep these

separate, you can balance them on your legs. And we have the language

softeners and you’ll get three each. Do your best to balance to balance

them on your legs. Here’s what we’ll do now. The modifiers can actually

work well in a sequence. In other words, you start with language softeners

and then go to anticipation builders to build more momentum and then you

release it with action accelerators.

Donna: So softener, anticipation and then action?

Igor: Exactly. We’ll do a three card draw only this time we’re going through each

of the three modifiers in sequence. Should I do a quick example of what Imean?

Janet: Yes please.

Donna: I love it.

Igor: I’ll have to change the language a bit because would you and you don’t have

to doesn’t actually work. Some will naturally clash; if that happens don’t

worry about it just skip over it.

Would you like the experience of relaxation? You don’t have to feel that

relaxation deepening soon. Because I know you want to feel that relaxation

immediately now. See how that works? You’re building a little bit of the idea

of relaxation and building some anticipation around it and then you’re

releasing it with the action accelerators.

Notice, there are some of course in the colored deck that will naturally clash

with a concept of one of the modifiers. Don’t break your head over it if it

happens just move on, switch cards, adapt it or go with whatever you’re

spontaneously thinking at that time. These are training tools not gospels.

You don’t have to read them exactly as they’re done. They’re designed to

train your mind to think in certain ways and enhance and increase your

range of experiences.

Shall we do a little three card draw cycle?





Both: Absolutely.

Igor: Who wants to start?

Donna: I’ll go. So, will you relax now or later? You might find that doing it now will

really serve your purposes. And you can experience deep relaxation and

calmness as slowly as you need. Just pretend that suddenly calmness and

relaxation are part of your daily life.

Janet: As you breathe, so you allow yourself to relax. It’s a good thing. You’re

eventually going to find that place of deep comfort and relaxation. Because

relaxation is something that you desire so deeply, rapidly let yourself get

there.

Igor: Beautiful. How do you guys feel?

Both: Good.

Igor: Did you enjoy that?

Janet: Yes.

Igor: All right let’s put these away again.

Janet: It’s a different challenge in those. You can feel the difference.

Igor: Yes. It’s a kind of trickle effect, like you have a little stream that goes into a

river that becomes a raging torrent. That’s the metaphor that I have in my

mind. Again, we’re doing it by the numbers right now just to build the

experience of something, but it’s not how it has to happen. You’ll be much

more free style and flowing when you’re doing this in a real setting.

The other thing I want you to again be very aware of is that last exercise we

just did in particular, because it’s a very sophisticated one. In other words,

it’s actually very demanding of you. You have to think about your language

cards, your general phrases and ideas, hypnotic themes and then you’re

going to modify them and modify them in a certain sequence on top of that.

There are a lot of moving parts going on in there, so please don’t push





yourself to that place too soon lest you feel like, oh I’m inadequate I didn’t

quite get it right. I can’t do it properly.

If you enjoy it do it. If it starts becoming a hassle don’t do it you’re not there

yet. The whole point is, even if, like the original version of these cards only

had the colored deck in it, that’s all and on their own they are very useful.

They have a powerfully dramatic effect. The point of the modifiers is, once

these on their own are no longer necessary for you they’ve just been

internalized and they’re just there for you, then where do you go from that?

That’s where you go from that. That’s what the modifiers do for you. They

enhance what you already have. So rather than trying to eat the whole cake

at once enjoy it, anticipate it, eat the cherry, eat some cream and then eat a

little of something else and by the time the cake as it is, is no longer

satisfying to you then you start adding sprinkles on top, a little chocolatesauce or something else which the modifiers allow you to enhance with. Get

the idea?

Donna: Yes.

Janet: Fantastic.

Igor: What we’ve just done in the last few hours, a couple of hours or so, is

something I’d normally encourage people to spend about a month or so

building up to in terms of their training. Because, you’re better off having, asmy martial arts instructor used to say, I’m not afraid of the man who knows

100 techniques, I’m afraid of the one who knows one really, really well.

So you’re better off having just one of these cards really down in the entire

deck and if that’s too simple for you you’re better off having an entire suit

down than the entire deck. Then you’re better off having an entire deck

down than trying to use the modifiers. Then you’re better off having the

language softeners and the entire deck than fumbling with the other two

modifiers. Etc.

From language softeners to anticipation builders to action accelerators is a

slightly increasing level of difficulty, partly because you have to be able to

read the person better, so give yourself time. Explore it and have fun with it

and of course, you’ve both experienced how wonderful it feels being the

hypnotic puddle on the floor that you end up becoming. You’ll notice how





you didn’t puddle very much in those last few rounds of exercises and the

reason is that you’re so engaged in trying to figure out how to use this and

your stress levels went up, your thinking increased, so that blocked the

experiential part of it.

Whereas, if you go back to somewhere in the middle of what we’re doing

once you’ve warmed up and actually gotten used to the colored deck a little

more, then you had the actual experiential part of it as well. Both have

value, because you’re stretching yourself with modifiers at this point, but

ultimately the greatest value is when it’s actually having an impact on you.

Your unconscious mind will map the language you are hearing to the

experience you’re having, which means you can then extrapolate to the

experience you want to give people and they’ll be there in your intuition a

little more, which is exactly how normal language works. Why does a foreignlanguage student have more difficulty than a native English speaker? It’s

because they don’t have those intuitions or instincts that tell them this word

here doesn’t quite mean what you think it means.

That’s because you haven’t had as many experiences in that language as

someone else has had. For example, my father is a little reserved so he

doesn’t like swearing, that’s very bad, but in English he’ll happily swear like

a sailor. I’m Austrian so he grew up with German and German swear words

mean something very different than English ones. For him English ones are

fun while German ones are very serious.

We need to have the same fine feeling for our language. These are filled

with very sophisticated hypnotic ideas in them. I could spend weeks going

through each one and describing to you what the psychology behind it is

and some of the research that’s gotten behind some of the cards and others

are just from an experiential point and so on, and you get overloaded and

feel afraid.

You can spend an hour or two practicing with these and having the

experience and you’ll know, even though you won’t necessarily be able to

describe what you know you’ll know anyways. Then when someone turns

around and explains to you exactly why a particular card works you’ll go

yeah that’s exactly what I was having, which is why I could predict your

experience so easily, because I’ve been in the same place. I know both

intellectually what should happen but more importantly, I know





experientially what does happen. Those two give me a lot of confidence in

my abilities.

Donna: Awesome.

Igor: Get the idea?

Janet: Yes.

Igor: Do you have any comments or questions before we finish up?

Donna: This has been such a rich experience and you’re an amazing teacher,

because you go slowly and gently on each concept so that we could bring

forward the newer concept inside. Very well done.

Igor: Thank you. By the way, for folks at home, that’s a really useful strategy for

learning in general which is to get just one concept down, even if it’s just

one card and get comfortable with it. Then, get comfortable with two

because that amplifies the challenge a little more. Then sooner than you

think it will also come together very smoothly and naturally, which is what

we want so thank you for that.

Janet: When we first sat down and I saw the cards on the table I didn’t know what

they were for and didn’t realize how incredibly simply they would help us

step into a new experience, both at the learning as well as personal physicaland mind level. Thank you for this simple and yet powerful experience.

Igor: Thank you for coming. I’m sure folks at home will be happy that you took

time to work with us. I want to emphasize to everyone at home, neither of

you have had any formal training before this would that be fair to say?

Both: None. Not a bit, none at all.

Igor: I know you are already good communicators, that’s part of your jobs, you

have to talk to people and get them to trust you and so on, but the

important thing I want you to realize is that it doesn’t take very long to get

good at this. We’ve spent just a couple hours here. It doesn’t take long at

all, as long as you’re willing to build progressively and you don’t beat

yourself up about it.




Have fun with it. Did you have fun and enjoy yourselves?

Both: Absolutely! Very much.

Igor: That’s the key to learning. If you had these decks and went home, what are

the chances you’d go home now and carry on practicing with each other,

high or low?

Janet: Very high. In fact, I might even phone her later.

Donna: We’re leaving with a deck.

Igor: There you go. This is important. Some people think they have to push

themselves to learn and that’s fine and if that works for you great. But,

anything that takes away from your motivation to keep doing it that doesn’thelp. If pushing and challenging yourself does it for you great do that.

If, on the other hand, you find that pushing yourself makes you anxious and

nervous where you start avoiding it, as soon as your mind says I’ll do it later

you know that you’ve put something in there that’s a prohibitive element.

As soon as you think, I’ll get a quick five minutes in before going to work

that tells you you’ve been practicing it correctly, because you’re building a

lot of positive associations and motivations to what you’re doing.

So please, work at your own rate and pace. The rate and pace that you needto work on is the one you enjoy, just like we’ve been enjoying ourselves

here.

Donna: Thank you so much.

Igor: Thank you very much guys. I hope you enjoy the Hypnotic Language

Shortcut System.

Donna: Awesome!

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