On the last day of my NLP Practitioner Certification Course, my participants read each other trance scripts which they prepared during our work on conversational hypnosis. And after they were done, they proclaimed it was the best exercise they had done with the most impact.
Here’s how to create your own:
Start with a goal. What do you want to achieve in a few months time? Make sure you SPECIFY your goal.
S – Make it sensory specific – what will you see, hear, feel when you’re achieving your goal?
P – Make it positive – write what you want rather than what you don’t want or what you’re trying to avoid.
E – Make it ecological – does your goal effect anyone else? Does it have any impact on your environment (people, places, things)
C – Make your goal choice increasing – there are more options for you when you achieve your goal. What else can happen when you achieve this?
I – Make it initiated by you – your goal needs to be about you and not about other people.
F – Make sure you know the first step you can take to start moving toward your outcome.
Y – And lastly, you need to identify your resources – ones you have and ones you need to achieve your goal.
Also, you’ll want to determine some milestones or steps in your goal. These are things you can say to yourself that will guide you from one step to another to another and so on until you reach your goal. You don’t start at the bottom of the mountain and then suddenly appear at the top. There are steps you must take, levels you must achieve before you get to the summit.
Next, you’ll need to create a few minutes of relaxation for yourself by writing an induction. In NLP, we use certain phrases and words and ways of speaking to allow someone else to relax. We are basically inducing a relaxed state. What would you say to yourself to create feelings of being relaxed? Here are some ideas to get you started:
“As you sit there, with your eyes closed, listening to the sound of my voice, breathing as you do, in and out, you’ll find that you’re relaxing already.”
“You can notice any tension in your body start to slip away as you bring your focus to the top of your head and like a wave of tranquility, the relaxation flows from your head down your head through your neck, relaxing each muscle along the way…”
“Allow the conscious mind to wander as it does your unconscious mind listens to the rhythmic beating of your heart as you relax even more deeply now.”
You’ll need about 2-3 minutes of relaxing phrases like these to help you move from a conscious state of awareness (beta brain wave) through a relaxed state of awareness (alpha brain wave) to a meditation or trance level (theta). For some people, an even longer induction is required to calm the mind and body and induce this trance state. The more you use these techniques though, the faster you’ll be able to relax completely.
You’ll also need something to bring you back to conscious awareness at the end of your trance. Here are some ideas:
“As the unconscious mind allows the conscious mind to become more aware of the sounds in the room, the sound of my voice, the sensations in an arm or a leg…”
“A variety of thoughts and feelings drift through the mind while some are left behind to be remembered later on.”
“The mind drifts up to conscious awareness and the eyes are allowed to open now.”
Your reorientation to wakeful awareness should also be around 2-3 minutes.
Lastly, you’ll want to create a metaphorical story about achieving a task like the one you have set for yourself. You can use fairy tales, stories from your culture, morals, or just something you make up. The idea is that the character in the story goes on a similar journey and is successful in obtaining his/her goal (you can even use an animal as the main character). This story should be about 4-6 minutes long.
Now, all you need to do is draft the trance script for yourself in this order:
- Induction
- Steps to goal and achieving the goal – remember to include all the elements of the SPECIFY model
- Metaphor
- Reorientation
Now, record your script on your phone or other device so you can listen to it. Find a quiet place to listen to your trance and just relax!
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