[img]560|left|Nicholas D. Pollak||no_popup[/img]As a hypnotist, when clients call to book a session, they always ask how many session will a resolution require. My answer never varies — minimum of three, maximum of six. I qualify this by saying that if the client is a somnambulist, we may only need one to two sessions. Somnambulists seem to quickly settle their issues.
Why?
A somnambulist outside of hypnotherapy is one who walks in his/her sleep. Within hypnotherapy, it is a person who will go rapidly to the deepest area of hypnosis. One person in five is a somnambulist. Those are the people a stage hypnotist seeks out. Generally, there is no shortage in an audience.
I have mentioned before why I think that stage hypnotism shows cause more harm than good to the skill of hypnotism. Afterward, the crowd commonly leaves with the impression that the hypnotist can take over a person’s mind and control him/her. Completely untrue. Unless you are willing to be hypnotized, no hypnosis takes place. When asked to do something while hypnotized, unless you are willing to do it when in a waking state, you will not do it.
Tracing It to Mom
Suggestibility is learned from our primary caretaker, generally our mothers. A hypnotist uses suggestibility to hypnotize and to offer suggestions to resolve whatever an issue. Suggestibility is the way we take in information and the way we speak out information. We all speak in a combination of two ways — one is literal or direct, two is inference or indirect. A direct statement: “No food or drink permitted in the store.” To the point and not open to interpretation. Here is an inferential statement: “Thank you for leaving your food and drink outside.” You see how you were not told to leave your food and drink outside? It was implied that you had already done so.
Two more samples –you decide which is which.
“Take the dog for a walk as he has been inside for three hours and needs to go potty.”
Second: “The dog’s been inside for a couple of hours.”
Hardly an Exception
In 23 years of practicing hypnosis, everyone I have met, with three exceptions, speaks in a combination of both literal and inference. One was 100 percent literal, the other two 100 percent inferential.
Somnambulists have “perfect suggestibility pitch.” They take in literal and inference in equal measure. A somnambulist accepts all information both literal and inference, walking around in a state of hypnosis. This is because the conscious mind can become overloaded with information too quickly. The conscious mind shuts down because there is too much information to process, leaving the subconscious wide open to suggestion.
I had two cases of where someone was “caught” by a suggestion he acted on. Only later did she realize what she had done was not what she wanted to do. A woman who bought a 25-pound bag of Miracle Grow when she did not have a yard or plants. The other was someone who had been jokingly hypnotized by a friend who did not know how to hypnotize and suggested that this poor religious young man lust after young boys and girls. When he found that he was doing that, he was extremely upset and came to see me so that I could de-hypnotize him to the awful suggestion that he had been given.
When a person does not have 50/50 suggestibility, he is not a somnambulist. So he does not respond in the same fashion as a somnambulist would to the suggestions offered.
To totally confuse you, however we take in information, we speak out information in the opposite way.
I encourage you, as I do all clients, to listen to how you speak out and listen to how others speak to you. When you have a clear grasp of suggestibility and communication, your communication with other people – and from them to you — will be far more effective.
Do not hesitate to contact me by telephone, 310.204.3321, or by email at nickpollak@hypnotherapy4you.net. See my website at www.hypnotherapy4you.net
