Is NLP Hypnosis?

Milton Erickson, who was a truly brilliant hypnotherapist, and one of the main inspirations for the original developers of NLP, said “We all walk around in a trance of disempowerment.” The implication is that our work as facilitators for personal change (for ourselves or for others) is to change that to a trance of empowerment.

Milton Erickson

Does that mean we have to be hypnotized, that we have to be in another sort of trance, to be ‘empowered’, and to live and operate at our best?

A trance of disempowerment is when you’re running on instinctual impulses, reactions, and habits that are unconscious and unconsidered. Now, running on habit is not always a bad thing. Imagine having to drive a car with the same conscious deliberation as when you first started driving! Fortunately your body (and your unconscious mind) have taken over, and look after many of the activities associated with driving. The same is true with everything we learn; especially our communication styles and our emotional responses. Perhaps we get into trouble because we never had to take a driving test for our emotions in the same way we did for a car.

The point is that you can learn to avoid emotional collisions, incogruence, and unhappiness. But there are a few things you will need to learn. You have to develop an emotional intelligence which parallels the intelligence of a good driver.

Emotional intelligence isn’t really intelligence in the cognitive sense. It is an inner transformation that has tempered and matured your emotional reaction to things so that you are more truly responsive (rather than merely reactive).

Understanding the nature of hypnosis is a key. Any effective learning environment (including the therapy office) has lots of hypnosis going on – inducing a receptive mental state, wonder, images to reinforce new ideas, repetition, minimal distractions, not to mention (hopefully) the clarity and eloquence and likability of  whoever is doing the teaching. It’s not ‘formal’ hypnosis, but it’s still trance.

A trance of disempowerment

is sedative, dulling, tending towards unconscious repetition, whereas a trance of empowerment allows you to gain access to your ability to discern, to navigate your state of mind. A lot of the misunderstanding of hypnosis stems from a misunderstanding of this distinction.

A trance of empowerment

is not being unconscious, or being asleep, it is a lively conversation between your conscious and unconscious mind, in which the two are congruent and aligned with each other. Incidentally it’s the opposite of ‘mind control’ ( a trance of disempowerment) and very similar to meditation practices of the highest order.

So, is NLP hypnosis or not?

Yes!

Because you can use it with or without ‘formally’ inducing the a hypnotic state. NLP is simply the most effective way of utilizing  your natural ability to learn. I say the best way, because anything that comes along that you discover to be a helpful addition, you absorb into what you are already doing. If what you are already doing is already part of the eminently flexible discipline of NLP, then whatever you add to it can become part of your unique synthesis.