How to develop Micro Trance Awareness and Learn Conversational Programming Naturally

Hi All,

Thank you for your fantastic response to my first article on Conversational Hypnosis & Programming last week. It does help to know how you are going to use these skills to be able to tailor-make this series of articles specifically for its current readers.

In this article, we are going to focus on some prerequisites to conversational programming and also learn one of the quickest and smartest way to learn this. Why am I doing this? Because I want to help my own participants – people who have learned from us, to have a refresher, a reference. We have tried to source books but most of the useful books are not anymore in print. And secondly, I want to know what happens when this is available to a select larger group of audience. And finally, I think people are exploited everyday without their knowledge because someone out there is giving suggestions and is planting beliefs that no one catches. And I intend to at least provide an armor for the reader with these skills. There are some influences that you want to just let happen and some that you need protection from. To have that choice requires that you know when it is happening.

And that brings us to the topic of – What’s the smartest way to learn this fast?

NLP Modeling, however that is a skill by itself. So, I am not going to describe it or attempt for this article to make that possible. Instead I am going to use the other Alternative (Or arguably the subset of NLP Modeling).

Micro-trance Awareness

The alternative that I propose is that you begin your training by catching micro-trance states. What is a micro-trance state? You may remember moments when you are driving and suddenly your mind begins to drift. And you are still driving. You reach the signal. You know when to stop. And you know how to park. And suddenly your consciousness returns.

My questions to you are – When you are engaging in this behavior, in this altered state, how would you look to a director filming you? What would your eyes look like? Would the pupils be dilated? Were there any moments when your hand was just suspended in the air (for a couple of seconds) without your awareness?

This is what I call a Micro Trance, a state when someone surprises you. When someone asks you to spell a loooong word and you look up and go.

See, the truth is, people are moving in and out of trance all the time. Chances are even when you are reading this article or any other article, you shifted your consciousness several times, and quickly enough for anyone including you to pay significant attention to those shifts.

The secret of conversational programming is to identify these trance states. Because if you know when they happen and how they happen with each individual, then you can move people in and out of trance now and notice it.

This is important for you to know before you learn to give suggestions (verbal and non-verbal).

So, this is the FIRST exercise.

Notice people’s eyes as they go in and out of micro-trance every day. This can be at the vegetable shop. It can be between negotiations. It can be when listening to music.

Watch out for catalepsy. Catelepsy is a phenomenon that conventional hypnotists use to test if a person is in whatever they call as ‘hypnotic state’. If you watch carefully, people will demonstrate catelepsy during conversations, when they are interrupted, when their attention shifts, and a hundred other moments.

Why is this important? Because you got to learn to eat and taste cake readily served at your table first before you dream about baking your own!

Once you know when people are moving in and out of micro-trance states, you can engineer suggestions that makes wonders. And by the way, conversational programming is everywhere.

Consider for a moment this beautiful video by Guy Kawasaki on ‘Art of the Start’. It has good tips for entrepreneurs. But more deadly and more useful in my opinion are his conversational programming skills here. From a conversational programming perspective, every story there has a purpose. And what you may not notice unless you are trained is also the embedded suggestions both direct and metaphorical.

But do you know what would make those suggestions actually work? What would drive the influence? It is not the suggestions or the stories as much as how they are delivered as a consequence to how the listeners react. And that is conversational programming. And there is no way I can teach you that, unless you develop an intuition by yourself for such kind of stuff first.

And here is one way to develop such an intuition. Watch people as they go in and out of micro-trance states. 

In the next article we will focus on delivery of suggestions – ‘that works’. And before then do comment on some of the instances in your life when you remember watching people go in and out of micro-altered states. And how they look, sound, and move when they do so.

Antano