The User's Manual for the Brain Volume I

by Bob G Bodenhamer

Now another factor about the conscious mind—if you have limiting beliefs wherein you fear yourself, you fear your emotions, you fear your experiences, you fear what you might do, you fear what you might feel if you do wrong, etc. (again, all Meta-states of pain!), you thereby train your brain to become a master at keeping unconscious parts repressed. Think about it. We have a level of consciousness that radically differentiates us from all of the animals—so that we can wake up to reality and live consciously.

  But if we fear or hate consciousness, if we don’t know how to handle it, if we anger at it, guilt over it, etc., then we condemn ourselves with our active consciousness. The solution to this problem? To repress awareness. To shove moral values into the unconscious, to deny reality, to repress the truth, etc. When we do so, we condemn ourselves to darkness, to living life on the surface, to living with a seething world of unresolved issues inside, to psychosomatic illnesses, etc. Not a pretty picture, huh? If the conscious mind, by such limiting beliefs, can become the master of repression, then how can we undo repression (un-repress)? What tools provide us with a way to open ourselves up to the unpleasantries that we often form and store inside? Obviously, we have to make an approach— and it takes a lot of self-esteem and self-dignity, safety, and assurance to face such internal “demons.”

  10.5 Trancing Ourselves To Face The Inner Darkness

  Once occupied, the conscious mind permits the unconscious mind to provide it with information.

  The beauty of trance lies in how this state enables us to focus completely, in our conscious mind, and experience a total occupation with something. Once occupied, the conscious mind permits the unconscious mind to provide it information. Thus, anything that allows you to function internally at the unconscious level causes trance.

  Actually we all go in and out of trance several times every minute/hour. Trance simply describes the ability that we have to keep us from going insane. Without trance, we would see and hear and process every word and stimulus around us! By trance we develop an intense focus on something and shut out other things. Daydreaming offers an excellent example of trance. Have you ever driven several miles and not remembered passing certain landmarks? Or, have you ever started out driving to a familiar place only to end up somewhere else? Once you came to yourself, you wondered how you got there? Welcome to tranceland!

  In contact sports, injured athletes sometimes become totally unaware of their injuries until afterwards. They concentrated so intensely on the game that they remained unaware of the injury… of the pain. Trance.

  Soldiers sometimes report of getting injured in battle and yet not feeling the pain until afterwards. Their conscious mind became so concentrated on the battle that they had no awareness of pain. They also had entered into a trance.

  These examples, in fact, describe hypnotic pain control. In NLP, we think of hypnosis or trance as simply a form of intense concentration and therefore a shift of consciousness. Biofeedback operates as a trance. What does a person learn in biofeedback training? To focus intently on their body functions, especially their autonomic functions. With the use of monitoring instruments, the patient monitors how their consciousness effects or controls their body (breathing, temperature, blood pressure—things we once thought that we could never learn to control). Using the external feedback processes, the patient learns to control their blood pressure and heart rate and they do so by the trance phenomenon of concentrating on some “thought” that then lowers pressure and reduces the rate. When they do this, they have accessed a deep trance. Nothing mysterious or occult—but a part of the wonder of our world. In fact, many of the stress reduction techniques on the market today base their effectiveness on trance.

  We can even plot trance on

  the EEG

  (electroencephalogram).

  We can even plot trance on the EEG (electroencephalogram). The EEG divides among four different wave lengths: beta (12-25 Hz), alpha (9-12 Hz), theta (5-8 Hz) and delta (0-4 Hz). When the EEG prints out beta waves, this indicates active thinking in the brain. Alpha waves indicate relaxation. Theta waves mean a trance state. When one falls asleep the EEG print out will show delta waves.

  10.6 The Feeling Of Trance

  What does it feel like? Most people thoroughly enjoy getting into a trance simply because it feels so good. On the EEG, trance lies below relaxation. Actually, trance describes a deep state of relaxation, comfort, focus, control, etc.

  Trance, as a receptive and internally focused state, can greatly enable a therapist or communicator to communicate ideas. Since the recipient will have accessed a most receptive state—relaxed, open, thoughtful about the ideas—it empowers him or her to take what makes sense and make it a deep part of one’s reality. Now could anybody find that useful?

  Further, given that the unconscious mind, once open and accessible, tends to accept suggestions uncritically, when we have rapport with someone, their focus will more easily follow and receive our communications. So we say, we have en-tranced them with our words and stories.

  Trance also greatly helps to move the critical and argumentative conscious mind out of the way.

  Trance also greatly helps to move the critical and argumentative conscious mind out ofthe way. Our conscious mind tends to operate in a highly egotistical way. It wants to have its way! When it doesn’t get its way, it goes on the warpath. It then may block out communication from others, from your unconscious mind, from useful and creative ideas, etc. Not exactly a smart thing for the “mind” to do!

  Trance enables us to nudge the conscious mind out of the way so it doesn’t intrude with defenses, cynicism, etc. Then we can hear the wisdom and concern of our unconscious mind. Then as our conscious mind realizes the value and power of the unconscious mind, it can even consciously communicate and cooperate with it. Here Time-Line and other relaxation and NLP processes can help us tremendously to bring healing to people.

  Consider the hypnotic effects of stories and metaphors. A therapist who uses therapeutic metaphors designs them to have an isomorphic (similar) structure to the client’s experience. Because of the similarity, their unconscious mind can interpret the metaphor in relation to their own needs. The client will take what they hear and represent it in terms of their own experience.

  When we read or hear a story or metaphor, our conscious mind occupies itself with the details of the story—the content. But at unconscious levels, our deeper mind interprets and hears a story behind the story and it goes to work applying its lessons. Sometimes we can recognize this when we or another says, “I just don’t know why, but that story really touched something deep inside me.” By occupying our conscious mind with the unrelated story, the therapist/communicator can thereby put us in trance in order to get to our unconscious mind with his message.

  Our challenge as therapists will involve getting the person’s conscious mind out of the way so we can assist them in fixing problems stored and coded in the unconscious mind.

  In Time-Line and other NLP processes, we deal primarily with unconscious behaviors. In reframing these behaviors, we first establish a communication with the part producing the unwanted behavior. We then tap into other parts (the creative part, for example) that can produce alternative behaviors. All of these parts will lie primarily at the unconscious level. Establishing communication with these unconscious parts requires trance. Our challenge as therapists will involve getting the person’s conscious mind out of the way so we can assist them in fixing problems stored and coded in the unconscious mind. Indeed, most clients experience their distress precisely because their conscious mind has gotten out of rapport with their unconscious mind. Trance simply enables us to re-establish such rapport.

  When people ask me (MH), “Where did you first learn hypnosis?” I say, “At church!” When I later sought out additional training, I already had the skills of a good hypnotic subject—I could take that trip inward and create wild and wonderful worlds, ideas, abstractions, etc., in my mind! I also already had the art of casting a spel
l with words. I just had never thought of it that way (a new frame of reference)! Nor did I have the art very refined.

  Stories, as a form of hypnosis, “sneak around our left brain mental blocks. Stories inform us indirectly, which means the static of cognitive dissonance is avoided to a great extent.” Stories feed the imagination and right hemisphere of the brain with pictures and dramas (Hall, 1985, pp. 151-155).

  If we naturally use stories to so define ourselves, then by hearing and experiencing new stories we can redefine ourselves. This describes the psychodynamic power within any story from a piece of gossip, to a movie, a fairytale, a life script, etc. What story would you like to begin to use which would make your life bigger, better, and grander?

  10.7 “Hypnosis” As Poetry

  If you believe that “real men don’t read poetry,” skip this section. But if you have an appreciation for the wonder and magic of poetry, then it probably will not surprise you to realize that poetry and poetic language patterns function in an inherently hypnotic way.

  The language causes ideas to take a back seat to emotions, moods, states, and experiences. The experience becomes central. Poetry evokes us to do more right-brain thinking than left. Thus, the content of what they say (trees clapping their hands in joy) doesn’t have as much importance as the manner of how they say it. Here a literalist truly goes astray, for we cannot take this language literally without erring!

  Poetry calls us to deep emotions and therefore enables us to do the emotional work of grief, anxiety, anger, joy, calm, excitement, etc. This kind of hypnotic literature can change a person. It provides one with an opportunity for catharsis, for cleansing, and for renewal of vision.

  10.8 Defining The Conscious/Unconscious Facets Of Mind

  Bandler and Grinder (1979)—edited by Steve Andreas—wrote the following in Frogs Into Princes:

  “Don’t get caught by the words ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious.’ They are not real. They are just a way of describing events that is useful in the context called therapeutic change. ‘Conscious’ is defined as whatever you are aware of at a moment in time. ‘Unconscious’ is everything else.” (p. 37)

  In thinking about these terms and using them to help us to effectively navigate the territory of human awareness, being “conscious” provides the more focused definition while “unconsciousness” conveys a very broad labeling. Here it stands for “everything else!” Accordingly, we need to distinguish between various kinds of unconscious awareness. Thus, minimally we have at least the following facets of the unconscious mind:

  1) Consciousness that has become unconscious

  2) The autonomic nervous system that remains “out of conscious awareness”

  3) Subconscious information—below the threshold level for consciousness

  4) The forgotten mind

  5) The repressed mind

  6) The Meta-levels of awareness

  10.8.0.40 1. When Consciousness Goes Unconscious

  George Miller (1956) wrote his classic paper, “The magic Number 7+/-2”, at the beginning of the Cognitive Psychology Movement. This distinction enables us to recognize our cognitive information processing in terms of “chunking.”

  Thus we say that we order and structure information in terms of 5-to-9 “chunks” of information at a time. We all did this when we first learned the alphabet. We went to school and saw the “A a” on the blackboard as a “chunk” of information that the teacher wanted us to learn. When we got that one down, in terms of visual and auditory recognition, and had progressed to kinesthetic reproduction (actually writing it)—a major task in those days!––then we went on to “B b.” Eventually we got numerous “chunks” represented and stored … and as this habituated, it became less and less at the front of consciousness. In other words, it became more and more in the back of the mind. And as it did, it became increasingly less-conscious.

  As we keep learning the alphabet, we kept adding “chunks.” Eventually we got up to the 5-to-9 “chunks” of information limit (A/a to I/i). But then another process kicked in. As our “chunks” habituated—they began to “clump” (another technical term?!) together so that “A/a, B/b, C/c” became a “chunk.” Then, “E/e, F/f, G/g” became a chunk, etc. Eventually, the entire list of 26-letters became one chunk. And after that all of those learnings themselves (clumping, chunking, and how to chunk!) became one unconscious chunk.

  Figure 9:1 Levels of Learning

  In other words, “chunks” grow. They clump together to form larger and larger self-contained sequences of anchored, or linked-together, pieces of information that then function as single units. In this way we move through the conscious/unconscious levels of learning:

  1) Unconscious incompetence—incompetent and ignorant of it!

  2) Conscious incompetence—intelligent enough to recognize our incompetence!

  3) Conscious competence—learnings that develops more and more skill and understanding.

  4) Unconscious competence—the learnings clump together and drop from the front of the mind, go to the back of the mind, and then “out” of conscious awareness.

  5) Conscious competence of unconscious competence—the trainer’s (or expert’s) state of mind that allows him or her to teach and train others in a skill by having conscious access to unconscious materials.

  This developmental process from unconsciousness to consciousness describes the stages of the learning process. It indicates that when we learn something consciously, and over-learn it so that it habituates in our neurology, it becomes “installed” in what we call an “unconscious part of the mind.” At this point, we truly and deeply “know” our stuff! When our learnings reach this stage, they comprise our in-tuitions. This term literally describes our “in”—“knowings.” We have an intuitive knowing about the describes our “in”—“knowings.” We have an intuitive knowing about the subject. For instance, we intuitively know how to drive, how to skate, how to read, how to do mathematics, how to play the guitar, etc. As an aside, Daniel Dennett (1991) says that we better describe the “unconscious driving” phenomenon as “a case of rolling consciousness with swift memory loss.” (p. 137)

  This also illustrates one “royal road” to the unconscious—conscious learning. We can put things into our unconscious mind via learning and overlearning.

  10.8.0.41 2. The “Unconscious Mind” Of The Autonomic Nervous System

  One facet of “the unconscious mind” (or facet of “mind”) involves the “mind” (intelligence) of our autonomic nervous system. This “mind” keeps our heart beating, regulates our neuro-transmitters, hormones, neurological bio-chemistry, governs our breathing, internal organs of digestion, endocrine and immune systems, etc. This “mind” obviously receives input from outside the body about temperature, pressure, oxygen, smells, gravity, balance (the vestibular system), etc. In response to such “messages” (information), it processes that information in terms of its internal own needs and wants. Then it acts upon that information in its outputs in neurological responses and behaviors. It does all of this apart from any of the human symbolic systems (whether of propositional or non-propositional language, music, mathematics, etc.).

  And yet, while we have begun to learn some of the mechanisms that allow us entry into this more “hard-wired” part of human neurology and experience, this world runs primarily in an unconscious way. Or, we could say, our “unconscious mind” runs it.

  We now know that by directing and activating the right hemisphere of the brain to vividly experience and feel images, scenarios, and metaphors, we “hypnotically” produce such an inwardly focused concentration that it activates autonomic nervous system processes. From this we can control blood pressure, the experience of pain, heart rate, etc.

  We also have a “genetic mind” as Noam Chomsky pointed out in his classic research in linguistics that defeated the Behaviorist Model of Skinner. We do not and cannot learn language as merely a stimulus-response, associative conditioning. Rather we have some kind of a l
anguage generator and language acquisition mechanism within us that comes as part of our species heritage. This allows us to unconsciously produce word-strings and to understand word-strings—even those that we have never heard before.

  10.8.0.42 3. The Subconscious “Mind”

  Another facet of our unconscious consciousness involves that information that exists below the threshold level, and therefore prior to consciousness. The signal value of this information occurs below a level that we can “sense” consciously. Robert Dilts described such facets in Roots of NLP (1983). Here occurs such subconscious elements as light outside the ultraviolet electromagnetic range that our eyes can see, sounds/vibrations beyond what our ears can hear, etc.

  The existence of a “mind” within our Mind that can over-hear (so to speak) data from the outside and which does not emerge into consciousness—speaks about a second “royal road” to the unconscious part of mind. Namely, it speaks about apart-from-consciousness learning. Many things seem to get into this part of “mind” without going through consciousness. We pick up tidbits of information, and little side-pieces of data. Such information gets in “unaware.” Here we learn but don’t know that we learn—let alone what we learn.

  What kind of information specifically gets in in this manner? We believe that what gets in is structured as embedded commands, tonal shifts, connotations, suggestions, presuppositions, meta-level framing, etc.

  Such “learning” seems to operate as a spill-over effect from being alive. That is, we pick up on things, but don’t “know” (consciously) that we do. We especially recognize this in our dreams. Frequently we will incorporate the sound of water, an alarm clock, someone speaking, a dog barking, etc., from the outside—but continue dreaming all the while making that stimulus a part of the dream. Once, while lost in thought while rocking in a chair—I (MH) suddenly “woke up” from the reverie to notice that I had somehow unconsciously synchronized my rocking with some background music.