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Reviews and Articles
Multi-Evocation Hypnosis Cassettes
The
Software Legacy of Milton H. Erickson An Interview
with Carol EricksonAbout
NLP Back
to Reviews and Articles, Part 1In the last issue I enthusiastically reviewed
Thomas Condon's tape series, Expanded Intuition Training.
I am just as excited about the Multi-Evocation hypnosis tapes
which are put out by his company. I have used many hypnosis tapes
and I can say without hesitation that none of them match the production
quality, hypnotic expertise and effectiveness of these tapes.
The tapes are among the first to effectively use Ericksonian Hypnosis,
based on the work of Milton H. Erickson who is largely responsible
for reviving hypnosis as a legitimate therapeutic tool. Erickson's
life work (he died in 1980) has spawned a large following among
psychotherapists and his long range influence is already being
compared to Freud's. The Multi Evocation tapes also feature Condon
and Carol Erickson, Milton's eldest daughter.
Ms. Erickson is increasingly well known in
her own right. She leads hypnosis workshops in the US and Europe,
is reputed to be a wonderful teacher as well as therapist. She
demonstrates her obvious independent mastery of hypnosis on the
tapes.
Ericksonian Hypnosis is distinct from classical forms of hypnosis
in that it is gentle and indirect rather than authoritarian. The
Ericksonian hypnotist assumes that it is your unconscious mind
that has the power not only to go into a trance at "just
the right time," but also to make positive changes in your
life. The hypnotist's role is that of a guide, someone who uses
hypnosis to help you get connected to your own latent resources.
Multi-Evocation tapes do this very well, using
Ericksonian Hypnosis in expert and subtle ways. First, the hypnotists
are very open-ended and indirect, inviting you to relax in such
a comforting way that trance is inevitable. They also take you
into metaphorical environments that are worlds within themselves.
One tape, Natural Self Confidence, never once tells the
listener to be more confident; the tape consists entirely of metaphors,
puns, and allegories about trees, supported by superb natural
sound effects. Thus the purpose of the tape is stated indirectly,
allowing you to make your own unconsious associations and responses
without ever dictating what your hypnotic experience should be.
Each tape features at least two voices speaking simultaneously
during hypnosis. The process, called double induction, was originally
inspired by Carlos Castenadaís Don Juan books. The two
voices, one female and one male, are localized - one in each ear.
There is a stereo effect as the voices weave together, creating
a harmony of contrasting images, each voice speaking to a different
hemisphere of the brain. It's too much for the rational mind to
keep track of. After some time spent initially trying to hear
what each voice was saying, I just relaxed, went with them, and
enjoyed myself.
Each of the tapes is unique with different
purposes and offer different metaphorical environments. Here's
are two examples:
Self-Hypnosis - features
two voices and has a number of uses. Principally designed for
stress reduction, it teaches you how to go into a trace and then
offers you a variety of ways the trance can be used. This
is done through a metaphorical journey to the "Center of
Time," where you gradually arrive in a place where "there's
all the time in the world." In the trance state you are offered
choices: you can relax and enjoy yourself, relive some pleasant
fulfilling memories, have your unconscious mind solve a problem,
or focus on goal setting. I have used the tape for each of these
things and find it very calming, effective and fun.
Natural Self Confidence - For confidence
building and integrating the conscious and unconscious resources
of the listener. As I mentioned, the text is about trees. You
begin on a hillside next to a tree. As the tape progresses various
things happen: it rains, the sun comes out, night falls, the tree
falls asleep and has a dream before the sun comes back up again.
It is poetic, vividly beautiful in its imagery, and creates an
involving, womb-like atmosphere. With repeated use, I find I feel
more secure in myself and my actions. The imagery from the tape
comes to me in my daily life in really useful ways. Of all the
tapes this is the one to start with.
Multi Evocation tapes are the state of the art
in hypnosis tapes. They have been a major personal resource for
me and continue to hold value through time. I keep discovering
new levels of meaning and deeper dimensions of experience."
Click here for Multi Evocation Tapes
Back
to TopThe
Software Legacy of Milton Erickson
Multi-Evocation Hypnotic
Cassettes with 3-D Sound
by Carol Erickson and
Thomas Condon
Megabrain Report Product Review by Terry Patten
A revolution has transformed Western hypnosis
over the past 50 years. Earlier in the century, hypnosis had been
pushed to the fringe of mainstream medical and psychological circles,
and was in danger of being relegated to the status of a vaudeville
act and psychological curiosity. Today, hypnotherapy is widely
accepted, and ranks as one of the most dynamic fields in psychotherapy.
Contemporary hypnotherapists proudly claim that they possess profoundly
powerful "technologies for personal change."
In this time hypnotherapy has been transformed
by a number of important innovators, but no single individual
is more responsible for this transformation than Dr. Milton H.
Erickson, the pioneering intuitive genius of modern hypnotherapy.
However, "Ericksonian" hypnosis is taught only to therapists.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), developed by Bandler and Grinder
via Ericksonís inspiration, is a complex system of specific
subconscious communication techniques which takes years to master.
Thus, until recently, an individual wanting to make use of Ericksonís
insights into personal transformation had to choose between an
expensive course of therapy and a much more expensive, time-consuming
course of professional training.
The audiocassettes reviewed here attempt to put
Erickson's magic within the reach of any curious consumer. They
are produced by practicing professional hypnotherapists and educators
who claim that using these tapes can catalyze major lasting positive
changes in people's lives by using Ericksonian and NLP techniques
for engineering subconscious changes.
Most of Carol Erickson's and Tom Condon's tapes
begin with a single comprehensible voice inviting you to take
a break and get into a comfortable position. But soon you hear
Condon talking in one ear and Carol Erickson in the other, each
pretty much talking about the same subject, trees for instance,
or a big nice house. You hear two animated, poetic monologues,
spoken in a relaxing and intimate fashion, as though you are overhearing
two people talking to a close friend about something they really
enjoy considering. And they keep expanding on that conversation
in amusing new ways all through the program. Except you dropped
deep into trance soon after they began and the next thing you
knew the tape was over, but youíre feeling relaxed and
confident, creative, intuitive, or maybe humorous.
The specific intention of these "dual induction"
tapes is to use Erickson's "confusion" technique to
induce trance and bypass conscious resistance to transformative
suggestions. Erickson himself didn't use dual inductions, which
are only possible via tapes (or using two hypnotherapists) but
it has arisen among Ericksonian and NLP practitioners (who trace
their roots to Erickson) and it certainly fits his definition
of his own technique: "The presentation
to the subjects of a series of seemingly but only loosely related
ideas actually based upon a significant thread of continuity not
readily recognized, leading to an increasing divergence of associations
..."
Erickson himself presumably would not have approved of audio tapes
- in principle. He taught that hypnotherapy should be highly individualized,
directed very specifically to each client's idiosyncracies and
constantly responsive to the client's changing states, receptivity
and responses. On the other hand, as Tom Condon says, "He
never heard tapes like these."
At the end of his life, Erickson spent most of his time training
therapists in his back yard. He did this by telling stories, by
working on his students as they, ostensibly, were studying his
technique. And, working intuitively, he found ways to offer effective
therapy to the whole group.
Condon, working with Erickson's daughter, Carol,
locates his work in the Ericksonian tradition, despite Erickson's
theoretical objections to tapes. "(Erickson) told the same
stories again and again. He used metaphors in a broad way so that
they offered a lot of positive choices, allowing a range of different
people to respond according to their individuality. After sessions
in his back yard, people who were there would sometimes disagree
about exactly which of them Erickson had been working with. The
reason was, he was offering something universal, and it felt to
more than one person as if it had been personalized for them.
As we've worked on tapes, we've drawn on that example."
Condon says he and Erickson are not trying to tell stories but instead are working with "embedded metaphor." The result is complex and interesting. He says they attempt to "build metaphorical environments which operate on as many levels as possible." Thus, after listening to Condon and Erickson talking about trees, in which you have richly enjoyed considering trees, feeling how strong and tall and rooted they are, how they give shade, how they draw from both earth and sky, water and sun, you notice that you feel very ... well, good -- or "naturally self-confident."
Condon says a "metaphorical environment"
consist of an ostensible topic with several subtexts. "The
reason we don't use stories is that they're limited. You can't
listen to them as often. We want to build as many levels into
our tapes as possible. I'm interested in richness, in people still
finding new levels of meaning after years of use. So we the environment
as a metaphor.
"These are tools for repeated use, so they have to address
various changing needs. We want people to be able to continue
to use them while they are growing and still find them keying
new areas for change. The tapes are more like a literary form
that facilitates change. But you don't do that by taking control
away from the client. You offer them new options, new choices,
and you have to do that in a way that appreciates the complex
variety of people who may eventually listen to the tape."
I asked him about the commonly used metaphor "reprogramming the subconscious" and he elaborated, "It's a naive, simplistic metaphor that doesn't adequately address the complexity of human beings. Reprogramming requires permission on a variety of levels. It's not even therapeutically advisable to cancel programs and replace them with new ones using an audio tape. You don't know what place the so-called program has in the ground of the person's life and experience ... On a tape you need to offer enough levels of meaning, enough choices to allow for almost any contingency. You need to allow many optional ways to respond to the metaphors offered. The mind is not a computer. That's really just a marketing metaphor."
Condon and Erickson are masterful practitioners
of Ericksonian technique and highly creative as well. Paul Scheele,
the creator of Paraliminals, offered a tribute to Condon in my
interview for this review: "The Changeworks tapes were an
inspiration to me to make my own tapes, but not just consciously.
I loved some of Tom Condon's phrases so much, they wrapped around
my brain. After I finished my first few tapes, I found that I
had borrowed a number of phrases from him without realizing it.
Tom called me up and pointed out what I had done. When I took
a specific look, I agreed with him: I had borrowed too much! I
actually went back and re-recorded my own tapes!"
Changeworks tapes are packaged beautifully
and priced substantially lower here, at $12.95 per tape. Also,
I was delighted and impressed when I began listening seriously
to them. I enjoyed listening to a man's voice (Condon's) through
one ear, and a woman's voice (Carol Erickson's, daughter of the
great hypno-progenitor) through the other. I also loved the way
they talked. They had such soothing, really intelligent and soft
conversations; listening to them felt so good! And I felt good
after listening to them.
With the Changeworks tapes, I feel comforted,
but without any perceptible shift to a childlike status. I feel
like my adult self, listening to someone chat in a soothing and
sympathetic manner about some ordinary aspect of my world. And
I find it very comforting to listen to this small talk, until
it begins coming to me through both ears, which feels kind of
fun, and gradually I get pleasurably lost in a whole environment
of conversation about the ocean, or trains, or trees.
The Changeworks tapes have soft, melodic music,
usually created on synthesizer or piano. The voices frequently
develop a soft, relaxing rhythm, with short pauses after each
phrase, creating a sensation not unlike the lapping of water at
a lakeshore. Listening to them, I find myself drawn into a dreamy
reverie where I feel comforted, safe, amused and entertained.
The whole series deserves to be explored, but I can particularly
recommend Natural Self Confidence (it's a beautiful, multidimensional
literary achievement!)
Click here for Multi Evocation Tapes
Back
to TopMilton Erickson gave his name to a particular method of hypnosis. His daughter Carol has taken up the family torch and today manages the Erickson Institute in Berkeley, California, USA.
Psychologies: What is the difference between
"classical" hypnosis and Ericksonian hypnosis?
Carol Erickson: In "classical" hypnosis,
suggestions are made directly to the subject. The therapist asks
you to stop smoking and induces several key phrases to make you
feel disgusted with smoke, to stop you from buying a pack of cigarettes,
to make you lose your habits. He or she gives you orders. In Ericksonian
hypnosis, the injunctions are indirect. You use little stories,
tales, metaphors, comparisons or images.
Why?
The therapist cannot know what is good or bad
for the patient. Therefore they mustn't chose for the patient.
If told a few little stories, the patient's unconscious can choose
for itself what is suitable. The choice is practically unlimited:
mythology, folklore, films, novels, children's stories, all offer
situations in which each of us can recognise ourselves and find
a solution. The evocative power of a story or a tale has a much
more profound effect on the unconscious: they offer us a new understanding
of ourselves, give us new perspectives on life. Letting the unconscious
choose also allows us to bypass resistance and patients take part
in their own therapy. The patients will be the ones to heal themselves.
My father developed his technique along these lines because he
had total confidence in the unconscious capacities of human beings
...
Do you practise a particular induction technique?
Here too the technique is different: patients
participate in their own hypnotic trance. They listen, and if
their therapist is interesting enough, they focus their attention
and cooperate. In fact, the therapist is a guide who helps subjects
direct their attention onto themselves.
Usually, when people talk of hypnosis, they
think that you are put to sleep completely and are at the mercy
of the practitioner ...
No. For us, hypnosis is a modified state of consciousness
in which you allow the unconscious to speak. In the United States,
the word "hypnosis" doesn't really have the same connotation
that it has in France: it's known that the subject is not asleep
and remains conscious. You could say that you give yourself over
to a sort of directed reverie. Our technique is natural submersion
in a natural state in which people direct their attention onto
their inner world. And then you find yourself in a "creative"
state.
Can the different levels of consciousness
be defined?
There are many different states. From a slightly
modified state to the state that we call "deep trance."
These states allow a dissociation from parts of our psyche, for
pain control, for example. It's up to the practitioner to perceive
which level of consciousness his or her patient is in.
Apart from actual therapy itself, what are
the exact contributions of this method to our daily lives?
As it is a holistic practice, that is, one that
will take into account all the aspects of a human being, all areas
of life can be touched upon: pain control, help with healing,
dream control, developing intellectual faculties. I have been
working for a long time with Thomas Condon, and we have oriented
our work above all around awakening creativity. Writers with problems
will find themselves in a certain state which will permit them
to write without thinking, without going through intellect and
reason which are blocking them. They won't think about what they
are doing and all they will have to do is read what they have
written! It's a little like automatic writing. That's only a glimpse
of what can be obtained.
Can this give new meaning to life?
Yes, if you really want it to. Ericksonian hypnosis
is a way to help us discover for ourselves our unconscious desires,
that is, what we really need, what we want to be, the way to change,
and the strength to carry it through. Changing your life and your
behavior is like changing the information on a computer. I have
noticed, by the way, that more and more people are wanting to
change their life no matter what their country. And these transformations
are happening more and more rapidly. In the United States, we
say that this is a "sign of the times"...
In a hypnotic state, can we discover things
that are truly new to us, that were completely unknown to us ?
Yes, when you develop your intuition. Intuition
is knowing something, but without knowing why or how you know
it. Intuitive knowledge comes spontaneously and directly without
using reason or logical thought. It is intuition which will give
you information about your future possibilities and the way to
change. Intuition can be defined as the faculty of synthesising
and making deductions out of what our unconscious has accumulated.
This faculty can be trained, just as we can develop the memory
or the physical body.
You produce many auto-suggestive cassette
tapes. The problem here is that the relationship with a cassette
recorder is not the same as one with a therapist!
There are many people who can't consult a therapist
because of lack of money or time, or because of fear. These tapes
help them to confront their problems more easily. Obviously, when
we produce a tape, we are very aware of the problem of rapport
with a machine. And it's a kind of challenge! We use the principles
of Milton Erickson, the metaphors, and we have developed what
we call "Multi-Evocation:" this is a stereophonic system
which creates an environment of music and sound in which the evocations
and suggestions occupy the space in three dimensions. This environment
means that the listener is plunged into a reverie while remaining
quite conscious and free to choose whether to continue the session
or not. I know that for the French, this system must seem very
American, but it is effective.
When you give workshops for French professionals,
do you adapt your technique to our country's mentality?
No. Firstly because there is never just one single
way to practice hypnosis, including the Ericksonian method: therapists
must each develop their own style. Secondly, because I think
that our technique is universal, just as the thirst for love is
the same whether you're American, Italian or Swedish, we all have
the same desires and the same needs: to study, evolve, create,
communicate better... The goal of Ericksonian hypnosis is to be
in harmony with our desires and to let each person find his or
her own individual identity.
Click
here for Carol Erickson's InstituteMulti Evocation Tapes Back
to Top"NLP cannot be dismissed as just another hustle. Its theoretical underpinnings represent an ambitious attempt to codify and synthesize the insights of linguistics, body language, and the study of communication systems." - Psychology Today
"(NLP) does offer the potential for making changes without the usual agony that accompanies these phenomena... Thus it affords the opportunity to gain flexibility, creativity, and greater freedom of action than most of us now know." -Training and Development Journal
"While, for the most part, NLP has been applied to psychotherapy, new applications are being explored... Work of this kind with school children has proven to be very successful. In fact, these approaches have been successful with students who have been labeled "learning disabled." - Data Training
"Business people use Neuro-Linguistics
to enhance their communication and provide them with more choices
when working in a difficult situation ... it shows how we make
sense of the world around us and communicate."
- Real Estate Today
"NLP is not snake oil; it could be the most important synthesis of knowledge about human communication to emerge since the sixties." - Science Digest
"Any integration between clinical skills and basic sciences must include Neuro-Linguistics ..." -Dentistry Today
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Evocation Tapes Back to Top Back to Reviews and Articles, Part 1 |
