HPC - Transcript-Manual - DVDs - Part 2 (1)

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By Igor Ledochowski

Hypnotic Pain

Control

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3 DVD #6 – Pain Control Demo – Russ - 6 Month

Old Groin Injury

Demonstration 1 – Russ – Without Commentary

Igor: How are you doing, Russ?

Russ: I’m doing great.

Igor: Great. Can you all hear him okay? You may want to stand sideways a little bit so they can see you a little bit too and I can see you a little bit. It’s just makes it more personal. Plus you may spot things in terms of how Russ answers, but you can direct your attention here in terms of what we’re doing. It just means that it’s a little bit more engaging. There you go.

So tell me, Russ – apart from carrying out this brief two-minute conversation with you before we began, I have no idea what’s going on with any of these people. So I need to have a normal conversation like I’d have with any other client to find out what’s happening. So what is happening?

Russ: Thanks, Igor. For six months or so I’ve had trouble getting my leg out of the car and back into the car, and I have a doctor who’s actually my friend and he finally said it’s got to be slow-healing or an injury just like the Cowboy defensive back has. It will not heal.

I have a lower back injury that’s chronic. It’s not bothering me today but I was almost crushed in an accident when I was a laborer actually. Also in my upper back – back to 1958, I remember when that started. It comes and it goes.

Then as we started, I hadn’t thought about this but I approached you with a question. When I’m in the courtroom where I am quite a bit and even here, I

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved worry about my bladder because it’s possibly just age, but that would be something that I would want to see whether that could be improved.

That’s my aches and pains.

Igor: Let’s take the idea of the bladder to one side because that’s really not germane to what we’re doing here.

We can absolutely work with it, but that’s not the main purpose we’re here. Tell me the experience right now. There are three main areas. You have sort of the leg/groin injury. You have something going on in the lower back and something up on your shoulder. Is that correct?

Russ: Right.

Igor: Very good. How do you experience this now? Are any of them uncomfortable right now? Are they okay? How are they going?

Russ: The groin thing manifests itself on the inside of my thighs, and last night even when I sleep, when I try to roll over I can even get a hip pain to where I think someone else would say gee, I might want to think about a hip replacement. It’s not a whole lot of fun.

Igor: Can you experience it right now?

Russ: I can’t feel it here, but if I get up on the stage I’ll feel it.

Igor: What about in the lower back?

Russ: No problem there at the moment.

Igor: And your shoulders?

Russ: No problem at the moment.

Igor: Excellent. Very good. What is it you’d like to see, as a result, of all the work we’re doing today?

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wonderful.

Igor: Excellent. Have a seat again for now. This is a kind of introduction. One thing just as a general comment, just as an aside that I would definitely make to the client here is, you realize that – actually you may as well keep this because I’m going to have a quick little chat with you as well.

You realize that the sensation you’re having in your leg, in your groin area, it has a function. You’ve possibly injured yourself in some way and your body’s telling you that there are certain ways of moving that you don’t want to be doing or engaging in because it’s going to prevent your body from healing properly. So it has a purpose.

Therefore, removing it entirely or removing it without leaving something in its place to remind you of keeping yourself healthy, that’s not necessarily a good thing either, right?

Russ: So they say, but I don’t really care about what the true medical problem is. I’ll live with that.

Perfect. Now a lot of clients will have that because when they’re in pain, they just want it gone and that’s exactly why the pain is still there. That’s exactly why the pain is still there, and I understand why you’re saying that. I really do. I really understand why you’re saying that because it’s not a nice thing to be walking around with that kind of sensation.

Russ: That’s correct.

Igor: It makes the smallest things difficult – coming up stairs, sitting down for breakfast, going to bed at night, getting up in the morning, going to the toilet in between. Every single action, you have to be more cautious, more careful, slower. I can understand that it’s really an unpleasant way to be living your day-to-day life, right?

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Russ: That’s true.

Igor: So, aside from all the reasons you have, for it to disappear what are all the reasons for it not to?

Russ: The reasons for it not to? Oh, I’ve considered well maybe I’ve got lung cancer or some such thing. I don’t think so but if I do, okay so be it.

Igor: Your doctor’s already checked those things out. You’ve got a medical referral right here.

Russ: I have a medical referral.

Igor: So would it be fair to say your doctor has checked all the possibilities out?

Russ: He doesn’t think there’s any chance in the world that that’s it.

Igor: So if I understood you correctly, the diagnosis from the doctor – not from me – was that the mostly likely thing is you strained a muscle and it requires time to heal. It’s just taking extra time to do that.

Russ: It’s his opinion it’s a groin injury of some sort.

Igor: So to the extent that you keep pushing that particular muscle, its ability to heal will be slowed down or retarded or even prevented. Would that be fair?

Russ: That’s fair. That’s fair. So here’s something for you to think about. Just consider this now. You can have anything you want in life provided you pay… attention. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll pay with pain. It is a simple signal to remind you to pay attention, and to the extent that you haven’t, I am not surprised… that you have.

Now I have a feeling that something’s already beginning to shift inside as you make that realization, because to the extent that you pay attention and make a genuine commitment to yourself to pay attention, to take it a little easier for a while, will there be any reason left for that pain?

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Igor: Much less, right?

Russ: Much less.

Igor: You can teach your body to move in slightly different ways that will accommodate the healing of that particular part of the body, right?

Russ: Right.

Igor: And in doing so, aren’t you paying attention?

Russ: I’m paying attention in that way.

Igor: How is the groin doing now?

Russ: It’s not bothering me at the moment.

Igor: It’s not bothering you at the moment, is it? Was it a moment ago?

Russ: It was sensitive.

Igor: It was sensitive. So you’re telling me it’s already changing.

Russ: I would say it might be changing. I think it’s changed.

Igor: So it’s already changing, but you don’t quite know how it changed, do you?

Russ: No.

Igor: Yet there it is, right?

Russ: Right.

Igor: The only thing you do know is that you did one thing differently in the last five minutes that you weren’t doing before, right?

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Igor: And what’s that?

Russ: Paying attention.

Igor: That’s right.

Russ: Focusing upon it so I can alleviate it.

Igor: That’s right. You’re learning to focus on yourself in a new way, in a very important way. In the past you were focusing on the sensation because you wanted to get rid of it and your body increased the sensation because there’s no way it wanted you to ignore it.

But now that you’re paying attention, now that the message is being heard, there’s really no need for it anymore, is there?

Russ: No need.

Igor: Now I realize from time to time the sensation may return. It may return as just a sensation or as a mild experience of pain and you know why that would happen, don’t you? To get your attention. To remind you that what you’ve just engaged in is something you should probably not be doing for a little while, right?

Russ: Right.

Igor: So you’re maybe lying in bed at night, you feel like turning one way and suddenly you have a sensation. Nothing unpleasant but something that reminds you that you best keep lying the way you are or maybe turning a different way and you know what I mean by that, don’t you?

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how it feels different. How is that?

Russ: Feeling comfortable.

Igor: It’s feeling comfortable already. How do you do that?

Russ: By telling it I’m paying attention.

Igor: That’s right. That’s right and it feels good to pay attention, doesn’t it?

Russ: It feels good to have a different approach.

Igor: That’s right. It feels a lot better than trying to ignore it, right?

Russ: I can see the insight.

Igor: And it’s not just the insight that’s important. It’s the experience that counts, isn’t it?

Russ: The experience.

Igor: I would like you to try a little experiment for me. Is that okay with you?

Russ: Sure.

Igor: What I’m going to ask you to do is I would like you to experiment with organizing your body in a way that you don’t normally do. Here’s what I mean by that. I’m going to ask you to get up in a moment’s time. However, I want you to experiment with getting up in a different way, paying attention to the sensations in your groin area so that you get up in as comfortable a way as possible.

If you begin to feel a sensation, change your approach. Does that make sense?

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved Igor: Now, it may take you a few minutes initially to work the approach out. I’ll happily coach you along with some ideas if you would want that, but if it’s okay with you right now I would like for you to start being curious about how your unconscious mind can show you other ways of moving your body so that you are paying attention in the right way again.

Is that okay with you?

Russ: That is fine.

Igor: So go ahead and give that a go now. Notice for example, do you notice the speed with which you were getting up there?

Russ: Yes.

Igor: So before being in a hurry, right now it’s an exploration stage. What I’d like you to do is just first of all get in touch with all the different parts of your body that you need to be aware of in order to move. For example, you have feet, don’t you?

Russ: Yes.

Igor: Now you can have your feet out in front of you and experiment with that. Getting up that way might seem a little bit more tricky right now, right?

Russ: Right.

Igor: You can have your feet right underneath your chair. Something interesting happened there, didn’t it? That you can have your feet somewhere in between, so just shuffle your feet around until your groin feels the most comfortable, and let me know when you’re there, with the anticipation that you’ll be getting up at some point, of course.

Russ: Okay.

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Igor: They could turn to the left – both of them – or they could turn to the right. As you pay attention to slowly moving from the left and right repeatedly, ask yourself the question where would they be most comfortable if I was to put enough weight on them to be able to lift myself up? Where might you end up?

Russ: Probably to the right.

Igor: I would agree. I can see it. Now of course your knees can’t lift your whole body. You need to shift your balance to allow the whole process to occur. That involves moving your torso, doesn’t it?

Russ: Yes.

Igor: Now you can move your torso forwards and backwards. You can move it side to side. I’d like you to very gently go side to side, forwards and backwards, whilst getting those knees into the position you had a moment ago until you find a place. Feel free to use your hand by the way as well as support, until you find a way where getting up is just a natural step forwards from where you’re already at.

Just do that now. Go ahead, just slowly. How was getting up like that?

Russ: That was much better.

Igor: Much better than usual?

Russ: I concentrated on not putting pressure on that main area and I got up without the pain.

Igor: Exactly, so your body’s teaching you how to move to allow it to heal, isn’t it?

Russ: Yes.

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Igor: Are you?

Russ: I’m paying good attention.

Igor: That’s right. Now I realize initially it will require a little more effort because you’re moving things more slowly. You’re learning about yourself in a slightly different way, but then you have lots of signals that will remind you of that, right?

Russ: That’s right.

Igor: So is it okay, will you spend maybe just a day exploring those different things?

Russ: I’d be glad to, sure.

Igor: In exchange for which you no longer need to have the painful sensations you used to. Would that be a fair trade?

Russ: Fair trade.

Igor: Feel good?

Russ: I feel good.

Igor: Congratulations.

Russ: Thank you.

Igor: Thank you, Russ.

Russ: Thanks, Igor.

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13 Demonstration 1 – Russ – With Commentary

Igor: Hello and welcome to this bonus set of DVDs. In these bonus DVDs we’re going to be breaking down those four pain control demonstrations that you’ve seen in the main program so that I can walk you step by step through all the things that I’m doing while I’m doing them and what I’m observing and so on. It’s kind of a little tour inside my mind.

This first demonstration is with Russ. You will recall that all four demos – this one included – have already started with step one of the seven-step pain control model, which is with a medical referral. Everyone brought their medical referral letters in and everything checked out, so it’s fantastic.

You’re about to see me launching into the rapport stage where I am starting to get a sense of where he is and how our relationship is. One thing you should note is that whilst we’re in a seminar and it’s all fantastic and it’s all very well, because we’re in a seminar rather than a one-to-one session, I already have a different relationship to the client – the patient – than I would normally have in a therapy room.

The reason for this is because he’s already spent time with me. He’s actually gone through a six-day hypnotherapy practitioner program with me, so the rapport has already been built. Hence, the rapport stage here is relatively perfunctory. It’s pretty basic and all I’m really doing is I’m looking to check if there’s anything I need to fix before I begin, which in this case as you will quickly see there is not.

I’ll stop as we go along on this as well, but notice I throw in a couple of tests along the way partly for the convenience of filming and so you can see it properly, but it’s also partly some covert tests to see how well is he responding to me?

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved How open is he to these ideas? Do I have to work harder or do I have to build more rapport, comfort and trust and so on, before he’s ready for me to suggest something that’s going to be crucial in the whole pain control movement? Watch that as we begin and I’ll pause as we go along to point a few of those things out for you.

How are you doing, Russ?

Russ: I’m doing great.

Igor: Great. You may want to stand sideways a little bit so they can see you a little bit too and I can see you a little bit. It’s just makes it more personal. Plus you may spot things in terms of how Russ answers, but you can direct your attention here in terms of what we’re doing. It just means that it’s a little bit more engaging. There you go.

Let’s pause for a moment. Nothing really spectacular has happened so far but you will have noticed that I’ve done a couple of sort of covert tests as to how my relationship with Russ is doing. The couple of tests were basically, asking him to move over here, stand facing the audience, and then he turns around and faces me and talks to me directly.

Really these are partly so that you get a better view watching the DVDs – I’ve got you in mind as well – but it also gives me a sense of how well is he responding to me? What’s he doing when I’m asking him to do these things? Is there any kind of resistance? Are there any questions in him?

You can tell he’s very open about this whole thing. He flashes a lot of smiles. He’s very open about whatever’s going on inside him and so on. He’s happy to respond to these requests to kind of stand over here, turn this way and face me and so on.

It’s pretty much like doing a stage induction in many ways – an instant induction. It’s just I’m looking once again to test the nature of the relationship because that rapport stage is important.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved Note however that because of the relationship we’ve already built up, I’m not going through the classic three conversations that most pain control clients will need you to go through.

That’s something that’s of course covered in the DVDs overall, but it doesn’t fit here in this context. We will be having some of that conversation as part of step number three, which is the pain scale, but you’ll see that as we go along now.

So tell me, Russ – apart from carrying out this brief two-minute conversation with you before we began, I have no idea what’s going on with any of these people. So I need to have a normal conversation like I’d have with any other client to find out what’s happening. So what is happening?

Let’s just pause it there once again. We’ve clearly now gone through the first two steps. The medical referral was dealt with right at the start of the seminar. That’s pretty much just making sure that it’s dealt with.

We’ve tested the rapport stage. Of course there’s some rapport building going on right now as part of step three, which is the pain scale, but that’s kind of what we’re getting into now.

Remember, the importance of the pain scale is not just to have a sense of where is the pain from 1-10 so that you know when it’s diminished. It’s also to establish what kind of pains or quality of pains. What’s actually going on? Are there any physical elements that you need to take care of?

In this particular demonstration you’ll see that the pain is actually directly linked to an injury. As a result, I know that just taking the pain away is not going to be enough. We’ll talk more about that when we get to that point. However, there is no way I would ever know that unless I let him just talk for a few minutes and kind of let me know what’s happening, where it is and so on.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved If you want to think of this in terms of the PCAT formula, we’re still firm in the P stage. In other words, the part where he presents the parameters and tells us what the problem is. He tells us what he’d rather have and that sort of stuff.

Just listen on as Russ gives us his description, and ask yourself what bits of information are you going to hold onto? How would you work with this? Where would you jump in or be tempted to start introducing some of the ideas that you’ve already learned about him?

Russ: Thanks, Igor. For six months or so I’ve had trouble getting my leg out of the car and back into the car, and I have a doctor who’s actually my friend and he finally said it’s got to be slow-healing or an injury just like the Cowboy defensive back has. It will not heal.

I have a lower back injury that’s chronic. It’s not bothering me today but I was almost crushed in an accident when I was a laborer actually. Also in my upper back – back to 1958, I remember when that started. It comes and it goes.

Then as we started, I hadn’t thought about this but I approached you with a question. When I’m in the courtroom where I am quite a bit and even here, I worry about my bladder because it’s possibly just age, but that would be something that I would want to see whether that could be improved.

So those are my aches and pains.

Igor: Let’s pause the discussion here a moment. We’ve got a nice clear sense of what is happening to Russ. The kinds of things that I’m already picking up here on are number one this is a six-month thing. It’s not a massively chronic thing. It’s not a usual thing.

Normally pain will last for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on how serious the injury is. Six months is not shall we say excessively chronic. It’s not to the point where it would necessarily be diagnosed as a chronic thing and so on; however, it’s serious enough that it’s definitely going in that direction.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved The thing is we’ve got a doctor’s diagnosis, which is this is a groin injury that’s having problems healing. This is important to me because it logs in the back of my mind the importance or responsibility that I have to educate the client in some kind of movement therapy whether, I’m asking him to go to physiotherapy or to just relax for a while to let the physical body heal.

Maybe it’s a question of doing something else, which in this case, we’ll come onto the idea of the Feldenkrais Method. The point is I can’t just do the pain control. I have to give him additional tools to take care of the cause of the pain as well.

The second thing that’s going on here or the next thing that’s going on here is he’s got additional pains. He’s got a pain in his lower back and in his shoulder. Remember, he’s mentioned even the shoulder is going back over 50 years – back to 1958. These things have been going on for a while, but because they’re not present right now I’m not going to focus on them. Here’s the reason for that.

1. The pain is not currently present. 2. The pain in the groin is.

So I’m going to go after the pain that’s actually physically present because that’s going to be much more shall we say dramatic or more impactful on him. When that diminishes or when that is even overcome, it creates a wonderful moment for him to learn something about the power of his mind.

The lessons he learns when he learns to shall we say shut down the pain in his groin injury are the exact same lessons he will need to deal with his lower back and his shoulder injuries as well in order to overcome whatever pain might be there.

The chances are pretty high that given that those are pretty intermediary pains – in other words, they come and they go – they may well just disappear entirely from now on as he learns to pay more attention to his body.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved If he gets this pain in his shoulder, rather than trying to get rid of it as he has done in the past, he’s going to be more likely to pay attention to it and reorganize his body, especially if he’s gone down the path of the more physical therapy stuff that we’ve talked about.

He’s much more likely to use those things he’s learned in order to readjust his body so that the pain disappears, which basically means he’s no longer putting strain on a weak part of the body.

The final thing that he says is a complete irrelevancy. He’s talking about a concern he has about his bladder, about going to the toilet and so on especially when he’s in the courtroom.

The reason I say this is an irrelevancy is not because I can’t work with that. I absolutely can. However, this is a pain control seminar. This is a pain control session.

If I’m going to work with the bladder and if this is a one-to-one session in a therapy practice, I would take the bladder at the very end of the process – in other words, once we’ve proved everything has gone well with the pain and all the rest of it. Then if there’s spare time, I’ll deal with the bladder, or I’ll invite him to come back for a second session to deal with the bladder because we want to focus on one problem at a time and resolving one problem at a time.

It’s fine to go forward with the other stuff as well, but you want to have some small wins, some small successes. It’s particularly important with a new client who is naïve about what hypnosis can do and so on because the confidence that they have in their mind in themselves is going to be a tremendous part of the healing process. It opens a lot of doors to the unconscious mind.

Hence, I want to focus down to one simple easy to achieve victory. Once those victories starts coming, you’ll see very quickly they start snowballing into bigger and bigger ones.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved Please carry on watching in a moment as the tape continues and watch just how conversationally I separate the issues. I’m not allowing the issue of the bladder to become a part of the issue concerning the pain so that I can have that freedom to work with the pain and get that easy victory I just mentioned.

Igor: Let’s take the idea of the bladder to one side because that’s really not germane to what we’re doing here.

Allow me to just jump in here very briefly and just point out the very subtle or natural shall we say conversational thing we’re doing. We’re moving the pain to one side or rather we’re separating the pain from the bladder issue.

The thing I want to draw your attention to is also watch my hand movements. They’re every bit as important as part of my communication as what I’m saying. I’m taking the idea of the bladder, which I’ve just represented by placing my hand somewhere in space, and then I just casually dismiss it.

I just throw my hand to the side, which tells his unconscious mind to do the same thing. Take this issue of the bladder and just put it to one side. It’s something separate to what we’re doing here.

Then of course we’ll focus much more onto what we’re here to do, which is to deal with the pain at hand.

We can absolutely work with it, but that’s not the main purpose we’re here. Tell me the experience right now. There are three main areas. You have sort of the leg/groin injury. You have something going on in the lower back and something up on your shoulder. Is that correct?

Russ: Right.

Igor: Just notice how I’m constantly referring back to the client. I’m feeding back or creating a feedback loop here in terms of what he’s saying. This is for two reasons.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved He’s got his pain in the groin. He’s got the lower back and he’s got that shoulder issue as well. That allows me to know that I’m actually working on the right stuff.

2. It does something for him also. It increases the rapport because I’m acknowledging that this stuff is going on.

A lot of other people might dismiss his pain, or they might say oh, that’s not a big deal or just take a pill. They go straight into resolving it, which means he is probably feeling very not heard. It’s kind of like the rest of the world moving on by whilst he’s suffering, but no one actually is empathizing with his suffering, which isolates him more and so on.

I’m not saying this is entirely the case because he’s very socially well adjusted and so on, but there’s going to be a tendency of that. With a lot of pain patients, pain tends to be very isolating because there’s only so much grumbling they can do before people start getting turned off and stop talking to them basically, or stop talking to them about that sort of thing because they don’t know how to deal with that.

By feeding back to him – I hear you, this is where the pain is, this is where the uncomfortableness is and all the rest of it – I’m creating a feedback loop where he’s feeling heard and that relieves that pain of isolation.

Another thing that happens at that point is that feedback loop starts cementing in. He likes what he’s hearing. In other words, he’s going to allow me to carry on saying these things and accepting them. It also creates an opportunity for me to begin to create subtle changes, which will happen in a few moments’ time as I start introducing some of the reframes in a couple of minutes’ time.

By establishing this feedback loop of him giving me information and me returning the information, I’m creating a kind of yes set. It’s an opening for a piggyback set of suggestions and it takes care of the clients psychologically in the rapport stage. It enhances the rapport because finally the client is feeling that he’s being heard and understood by someone.

How do you experience this now? Are any of them uncomfortable right now? Are they okay? How are they going?

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved Let’s just pause here very briefly and just notice how we’re now firmly in step three – the pain scale. What I’m trying to establish here before we get into the pain scale is what pain is actually currently present.

He’s told me a lot about how his shoulder and his back hurt and so on. A lot of times a client will come in and they will tell you I’ve got all these different aches and pains and so on. They’re usually at a level of seven and so on.

When you ask them what it’s at now, they’ll go it’s only a two right now. You see, this is part of how they create the pain, or should I say how they create the suffering element of the pain.

They’re remembering how bad it used to be and forgetting to experience the actual moment where it’s a much lower level of suffering; hence, a much greater level of relief. Hence, it becomes more and more chronic because when the physical pain is not high, the remembered pain is. So they’re suffering just as much.

Then of course when the physical pain is just up there, they’re still suffering and then of course when it diminishes again, they’re remembering it again. So they’re still suffering.

Basically, they never have a respite. They never have a time to pause and recover their strength and so on. What I’m doing here is once again I’m kind of checking in to see where we’re at. I’m going to go after the pain that’s present always as a starting point versus pain that’s absent. Partly because it’s very easy to test how the work is doing then.

I’m getting his mind to start making the distinction and it’s also setting up certain ideas for the reframe later on, which is for example that the pain is only temporary. What’s happening right now? Well, right now these things aren’t troubling me.

He’s already told me that the pain is temporary, even though his intellect may or may not have caught up to that idea yet. It’s offering me a lot of opportunities by asking that kind of question.

Russ: The groin thing manifests itself on the inside of my thighs, and last night even when I sleep, when I try to roll over I can even get a hip pain to

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Igor: Can you experience it right now?

Russ: I can feel it here, but if I get up on the stage I’ll feel it.

Let’s pause here again for a moment and notice how he’s focused on the first set of the pain. We’ve got a little bit of extra information in terms of how movement causes the pain to intensify. We’re also learning that the pain is changing. In other words, when I’m asking him how is it feeling right now he says well, I can sense it but if I got on the stage I could really create it.

Really he’s saying that the pain is actually at a relatively low level at this particular point in time. This is going to be important when we get to the actual solution part because we need to have a reference point. If what we’re doing works, then he must diminish the pain.

If we want to prove that it works – which we need to especially with a chronic pain person; otherwise they’ll go home and they’ll recreate it again. If we want to prove that it’s working and create that faith and confidence in the client that’s going to allow them to have the relief for longer periods of time, then once again we need to have a reference point against which he can compare it. That’s what we’re doing right now.

You’ll notice that as we carry on in a moment, we’ll do the same with the shoulder and back pain only as these happen to be currently absent we’re not going to be focusing on them particularly much because right now we’re going for that easy victory which is, the pain that’s present and making it become absent.

Igor: What about in the lower back?

Russ: No problem there at the moment.

Igor: And your shoulders?

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work we’re doing today?

Let’s pause again briefly and let me just point out the importance of the question I just asked there. Those of you who are familiar with the PCAT formula will of course recognize the parameters being sought after here.

We know what the pain is – the problem – and now we’re looking for the outcome. What is he looking to do?

The second thing about this is not just about what does he want out of this, which of course is to be pain free. That’s going to be a pretty predictable thing that people are going to ask.

I’m also testing to find out part of what the problem is. You see, this is an old idea that the solution is the problem or rather his attempts at resolving the problem are causing it to get worse. I’m actually kind of testing a little bit about what he’s done to try and resolve this. What’s his mindset about?

As a rule if he’s kind of denying the pain, pushing the pain, pushing through the pain, ignoring the pain, trying to overpower the pain, drug the pain and so on, it’s telling me that his mindset is trying to ignore the unconscious message. That’s going to be part of the work that we’re doing here.

Also what if he has unrealistic expectations? What if there is some issue and he says ideally I’d like to be able to run a marathon tomorrow? Well, if he’s got a groin injury that might be a really bad idea.

Once again I need to find out where his mind is at because there may be other things I have to correct in order for the pain control work to not only be effective, but also for it to be ethical – in other words, I don’t create a bigger problem by resolving the smaller one, in this case the pain. Typically, you will hear chronic pain control clients – in other words, clients who have chronic pain – use a certain kind of vocabulary. I want to get rid of it, destroy it, cast it out and be free of it and so on.

This is an important element because they’re disowning a part of their own experience. To the extent that they disown it, it triggers the old adage what you resist will persist. What you accept you gain the power to transform.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved Right now in a few moments’ time as we actually launch into the actual pain control methods – the reframes and all that sort of stuff – you will see exactly that process happening. Part of the reeducation process, part of the reasons for our three key reframes is so that we can get the client to stop resisting the pain but accept the pain, and in doing so gain the power to transform it.

That little question I just asked is going to flush out some more of those ideas that are cementing the pain in that there’s something they need to suffer from. Just listen to Russ’s answers and see how much of the kinds of things we’ve just talked about that you can spot for yourself.

Russ: If I can get rid of the pain in my groin area and the hips; that would be wonderful.

Igor: Excellent! Have a seat again for now. This is a kind of introduction. One thing just as a general comment, just as an aside….

I’d like to jump in here and point a few things out. Because of the nature of seminar, I’m actually teaching as well as demonstrating and so on. My initial intention has only been to interview the four clients, get a sense of where they’re at and once I’ve interviewed all four of them, just basically demonstrating the first three steps, then coming back to them in turn and doing the three reframes and then the actual hypnosis technique and so on.

As it happened in the event in the live moment, I kind of got a little carried away and ended up doing the whole pain control demo in one piece. It was appropriate of course as well because people got to see the whole thing in action.

The reason I’m pausing here though is because the comments I’m about to make as an aside are not an aside. This is an important principle as a hypnotist, and particularly as a conversational hypnotist. There are no asides in hypnosis.

Even if you’re talking to two people and you turn to one person whilst the other one’s in trance and start talking to them about the person in trance, the person in trance will still hear you. They’ll hear every word you’re saying. They’ll absorb it and they’ll accept it as part of a suggestion.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved In the guise of teaching the group something about pain and the nature of pain, I’m actually already beginning some of the reframes that I will be doing. This is something you can use very handily if the client comes in with a helper or a supporter to comfort them.

A lot of clients, especially with things like pain and so on, may not want to come in on their own. They may want to come in with a friend, a partner, a loved one, someone they can feel safe around whilst the hypnotist does something to them because hypnosis can still be a little scary for some people.

If they do that, it’s a great thing because then you can turn to their friend – their protector shall we say – and in educating their friend, they’re of course getting the education too. Or in other cases if there’s only one person in the room, you can say the same kind of things directly to the client and they’ll still have a similar impact.

It’s just in the context that you’re seeing it now, please don’t assume that the aside is something that’s aside from the therapy. The aside is part of the pain control therapy. It’s part of the beginning cycles of reeducating the client in terms of how his thinking is going so that his thinking is no longer promoting the suffering or the pain. It’s opening the mind up to the transformation that’s about to happen.

… that I would definitely make to the client here is, you realize that – actually you may as well keep this because I’m going to have a quick little chat with you as well.

You realize that the sensation you’re having in your leg, in your groin area, it has a function. You’ve possibly injured yourself in some way and your body’s telling you that there are certain ways of moving that you don’t want to be doing or engaging in because it’s going to prevent your body from healing properly. So it has a purpose.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved Let’s pause the recording again for a moment and just point out that we’ve now moved onto stage four of the seven-stage pain control protocol. We’re now into the reframing stage.

Notice that the first reframe I happen to be using in this particular instance is the idea of purpose. In other words, the pain has a purpose and that purpose is positive.

From everything that he’s said so far, to him the pain is meaningless, it’s pointless, it’s just harmful so in other words, it hurts him and he wants to get rid of it. In order to not want to get rid of the pain and to be able to accept the pain, I need to reframe the idea that this pain is bad for him, that it’s harmful to him. I have to show that it has a positive purpose because when he has a positive purpose, we can explore that as the point of transformation.

This is a very important thing and I want you to watch this as it happens live in the moment. As I present the general idea that pain has a purpose, which is to protect the body from harm and so on. It’s accepted. You can see him very happily saying yes, that’s right, this is true, this is so.

As soon as I want him to accept that it’s true for him right now with this specific pain. His mind has actually made an exception to the general rule that pain is a useful signal from the body to protect it from harm. He’s made an exception from it and you can clearly hear him coming out with it in just a few moments’ time once I switch from the first level of the reframe, which is the purpose of the signal is positive, which he accepts quite happily, to can you accept that this is true about this particular pain?

Watch what happens when I make that switch of ideas or shall we say I am part of the idea of the reframe. Watch him reject that out of hand at first, and I’ll show you how we deal with that in a moment when we get to that too.

Therefore, removing it entirely or removing it without leaving something in its place to remind you of keeping yourself healthy, that’s not necessarily a good thing either, right?

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I’ll live with that.

Igor: There we have it. Here we have the root cause of his mindset, which is allowing the pain to become more and more chronic. The whole cycle is now becoming clear. The signal is there, he’s ignoring the signal, he’s doing things to put strains in the wrong parts of his body as a result of which of course is that he now is increasing the injury so that there’s a bigger pain signal and the whole cycle continues.

We need to be able to break that cycle somehow, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing here. That’s the whole purpose of this reframe as the purpose of the pain is a signal. We need to get him to understand that, because as soon as that happens you will see the transformation actually beginning at this point.

The other two reframes – the idea of time and the idea of the sensation – are relatively minor and I may even skip one or two of them at times because at this time the idea of the purpose of the signal is the key one that is really causing him to develop the more chronic set of symptoms.

Perfect. Now a lot of clients will have that because when they’re in pain, they just want it gone and that’s exactly why the pain is still there.

This is a very important phase in the whole pain control moment right now. In fact this is the turning point. We have found the main problem, which is the idea of how he relates to the purpose of the pain signal, and he’s rejected our initial attempts at reframing it. He’s accepted it as a general idea, but he rejected it specific to him in this situation.

I need to basically, get him to the point where he can accept it, so I’m using a little tactic here from the Rapid Reframing Master Class, if you’re familiar with it. I’m turning the objection on itself. In other words, his objection is I don’t care about that. I just want the pain gone.

My reply is that’s why the pain is still there. In other words, because you don’t care about that, the pain will not go. The formula in his mind is I don’t care

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved about pain, I want it to go. My formula here is when you care about the pain, it will go and because you’re not caring about the pain, it can’t go yet.

That’s the kind of mindset behind it. I want to be very careful about these sorts of things. The problem here is what I do not want to be doing is suggesting that he’ll be in pain forever unless he does what I say. That’s a terrible thing to suggest to someone.

What I want to do however is give him a reason for why he’s been in pain up till now. By changing whatever he’s been doing up until now, he gets the chance to create some freedom for himself to move beyond the pain, which is exactly what starts happening.

I would like you to observe a few things happening, as this happens.

1. I want you to notice just how Russ’s behavior changes. Watch how his eyes get more fixated, his breathing shifts and you can almost see his focus internalizing as he starts processing these ideas.

He’s now as far as I’m concerned deep in trance, in a remedial trance that will help him resolve the actual pain control. As soon as I see that expression and that contemplativeness and that quiet accepting of the ideas I’m presenting – and remember it took a little bit of shock to push back on his rejection of an idea to get to this point.

It’s kind of like an instant induction in some ways but as soon as I get those signals, I know that my doorway is open. I know that what I’m saying is starting to have an impact, so I’m running on the right course.

2. The other thing I’ll be doing is I’ll be very careful not to close that door by accident.

How might I do that? Well, in one word arrogance. If I say ha, ha, ha, I know it all so much better than you, you silly man, you’ve been doing all these things and you’re wrong – no one likes to be wrong. No one likes to have their face

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved rubbed in how wrong they are. No one enjoys having someone else loitered over them telling them how much better they can do things and know things.

If you want to do it that way well there’s a huge rapport breaker there. Can you work that way? It’s possible, but you’re adding obstacles that really aren’t necessary.

What I’m doing here at the same time, as reestablishing my original reframe, the idea of the purpose of the signal is positive. In order to reestablish that reframe and I’m already beginning to induce that trance and so on, I’m also throwing in some ideas that are going to be platitudes, that are going to be placaters, that are going to be saying I’m with you on this.

It’s rapport building stuff – I understand why you want this. I understand why you would think that. It’s very natural to think that. It’s very common to think that. You’re not wrong or bad or stupid to come to that conclusion, even though it’s not helping you or serving you.

These are all shall we say emotional get-out clauses. It shows that I’m not attacking his self-esteem. I’m not attacking him as a person when I say that the idea is wrong. It allows him to separate his identity from the idea so that he can let go of the idea and preserve his identity.

If on the other hand I make the mistake of becoming arrogant, then the idea will tend to collapse into his identity – that’s my idea, you’re attacking my idea, you’re attacking me – and now I have to work through all the defense mechanisms designed to protect the identity, which I do not want to do.

To sum up, as we carry on with the video clip, please watch all those things happening.

• Watch the response that Russ is giving us when he goes into a trance and starts contemplating these things.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved • Watch how I’m throwing out these placaters to make sure that he separates his identity from the idea so that he can change the idea without feeling that I’ve attacked his identity.

• Notice how smoothly he accepts the ideas now because they don’t feel like an attack anymore. They don’t seem to be impinging on him that much anymore.

• At that point you’ll also notice the first shift occurring in the nature of the pain itself.

That’s exactly why the pain is still there, and I understand why you’re saying that. I really do. I really understand why you’re saying that because it’s really not a nice thing to be walking around with that kind of sensation. Right?

Russ: That’s correct.

Igor: It makes the smallest things difficult – coming up stairs, sitting down for breakfast, going to bed at night, getting up in the morning, going to the toilet in between. Every single action, you have to be more cautious, more careful and slower. I can understand that it’s really an unpleasant way to be living your day-to-day life.

I’d like to jump in here again and point some things out that I already mentioned to you a moment ago and you see them in action right now.

Do you notice how, for the last 10 or 15 seconds or however long it’s been, that I have given him a litany of rapport building yes sets? You have this I understand how it’s painful to do this. I understand how it’s painful to do that. I understand how you get to this conclusion because of these things, and these experiences and these experiences.

This is a technique that I call hypnotic mindreading. I know for a fact that pain is going to be very debilitating in many different ways, and I’m throwing those things out because they’ll build rapport and because they establish a yes pattern in the mind, which will counteract his earlier rejection of my idea, which is that the purpose of the signal is something useful.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved I’m throwing all those ideas out and of course by saying I understand how terrible it is the position you’re in, by empathizing with him as a person, I’m acknowledging and accepting him as a person. In other words, his identity is safe and yet I’m still challenging the idea that he presented.

It’s a very emotionally binding way of challenging an idea whilst standing on the side of the individual. It’s a very powerful place to be because it’s you and me against the world. That idea by the way is the world harming you versus it’s me against you, and that idea is something that you have got wrong, it’s bad, you’re bad for even thinking it and I’m going to fight you for it until I win. That’s a very different mindset.

I know people who can work that way and I’ve seen tremendous work being done that way. However, you are stacking the odds against you, making life a lot harder.

Because we’ve had this crucial rejection a moment ago, I’m doing a few steps backwards in terms of I’m backpedaling to reestablish the relationship, reestablish the acceptability mindset – the yes mindset – to establish a deeper rapport by going on the identity level – I understand you, I empathize with you, I’m with you.

At the same time I’m slowly leveraging towards the idea that just because all these things are painful, all these things are bad, all these things are debilitating and all these experiences are there does not mean you need to conclude whatever it is you’ve concluded. In fact when you conclude something else, you’ll have the freedom to do all these other things.

That’s kind of what is subtly being implied here and that’s what I’m slowing build up towards.

Which is why you’d just rather have it just disappear.

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reasons for it not to?

I’d like to jump in here once again and just point out the turning point here. Up until this point – because we’ve found the key thing that we need to work through, the key issue that’s going to allow us to now easily resolve the pain with virtually any technique.

Notice how I’m throwing in some Mind Bending Language now in support of the rapid reframe that started this whole thing earlier on. Just to remind that change has happened, we’ve had an idea – the idea that the purpose of the signal is positive. The idea in general was accepted but then rejected on the specific level of the pain or his specific pain right now.

So, we did some backpedaling. I threw in a rapid reframe, which got him thinking, it got his mind opened, it stopped his thoughts for a little while that opened the mind up a bit. Then I softened the blow a little by throwing in all kinds of rapport building statements and hypnotic mind reads.

All this leading towards an implication that even though all the information he used, to come to the conclusion that he just wants it to end is correct and useful and right and so on, there is another way of approaching this whole thing that he hasn’t considered yet. That’s kind of the implication there.

Now comes the point of transformation. In other words, now that we’ve established or stabilized the mind and got a yes pattern again and his emotions are stabilized so that he doesn’t feel any threat in any way. I empathized with him to do all that, now I can come back to my original idea and I’m using mind bending language here in order to do that.

What is the idea here? Well, you have all these reasons to reject what I’ve said, but of course you have all these reasons for accepting it as well. Now I can’t say it quite as directly as that because if his logic kicks in, chances are I’ll kick start again the old logic circuit that says I don’t care about that; I care about not having the pain anymore.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved What I need to do is create a new kind of logic, a new thought pattern that is going to allow him to interact with his own body in a new way, which is going to allow him to diminish or completely remove the pain. That’s kind of what the mind bending is starting to do.

Please watch Russ’s response. I also want you to notice that technically speaking my little mind bending language trick failed. In other words, he contemplated the idea so briefly that he came straight back with a pushback. The original pattern failed in terms of causing a change.

However, it doesn’t matter one little bit because in order for that little attempt to fail, the way he’s pushing back is going to give me more material to make it succeed. How does he push back? Listen on and think to yourself how would you deal with the kind of pushback that he’s giving me right now?

Russ: The reasons for it not to? Oh, I’ve considered well maybe I’ve got lung cancer or some such thing. I don’t think so but if I do, okay so be it.

Igor: Your doctor’s already checked those things out. You’ve got a medical referral right here.

Russ: I have a medical referral.

Igor: So would it be fair to say your doctor has checked all the possibilities out?

Russ: He doesn’t think there’s any chance in the world that that’s it.

All right, let’s jump in here again and notice this is his second attempt at rejecting the idea. We’re getting closer to the hub now, but he’s still defending his original position.

His defense has now become relatively spurious. In other words, he’s going on about I was thinking about maybe I have bone cancer and so on. If I allow his thoughts to continue down that path, it’s a very slippery, sliding slope. There are so many what if scenarios. I mean the mind can generate a billion

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved different what if scenarios, all of them disastrous, all of them destructive and all of them are going to increase the pain in some way or another. It’s a bad place to be in.

I need to be able to out-frame that idea as quickly as possible. This is where the medical referral becomes a great handy piece as well. Aside from the ethics of needing a doctor to check a person out for health reasons before you work with them, the medical referral also gives you the right to appeal to a higher authority – in this case the doctor.

The doctor’s checked you out. Did he say you have bone cancer? No, in fact the opposite – it’s almost impossible that I have bone cancer. Now I have the weight of science my side, as well as the weight of the reason that I’m beginning to present, which is slowly but surely diminishing the strength of his own argument.

Notice that all these things may sound like very logical arguments like a debate in school and so on, not the kind of debate you have in a politician’s platform or something like that where people are preaching to convert you in some respects and it’s not a debate of logic. This is a debate of pseudo logic. His defense was I might have bone cancer. It’s not logical. It’s basically, a rationalization of an irrational thought, which in some respects all thoughts are irrational, I guess.

It’s him trying to defend his position as to why he’s holding onto the pain the way he does. Because I know that it’s not rational, I know I can’t just point out that it’s irrational. Once again that might be a personal attack, which will be taken emotionally with the appropriate defense mechanisms. I get to appeal to an external authority – the medical doctor here – to say you realize that what you’re saying is not relevant here.

Then he says yes, I realize it’s no longer relevant. Hence, all that he’s said there and the strength behind his argument starts to diminish.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved So if I understood you correctly, the diagnosis from the doctor – not from me – was that the mostly likeliest thing is you strained a muscle and it requires time to heal. It’s just taking extra time to do that.

Russ: It’s his opinion it’s a groin injury.

Notice how we’ve developed that idea here. I use a little trick here where I say look, this is not my opinion. This is the doctor’s opinion. Once again it’s a great way to appeal to authority saying I have no interest in this argument. I have no interest in winning. I just want to understand the situation, and the situation is the expert opinion, the scientist in the room says that this is going on.

Notice also how I’m kind of appending something to that. I’m actually teasing it a little bit. Up until now the conversation was the doctor has said you don’t have bone cancer, which is out-framing his objection that he might have bone cancer.

What I’m also doing is I’m then attaching onto that general idea the confirmation that this is just a small thing. It’s only a groin injury and if it’s only a groin injury, well what does that imply? Number one it’s resolvable. Number two it can be healed. Number three whatever he’s doing right now is not allowing it to heal and that happens to be my best guess at what’s going on right now.

By getting him to accept that medical opinion, shall we say, I’m opening the door once again to go right back to the original purpose reframe, which is the purpose here is to protect an injury so it can heal. As soon as you accept that, the pain will disappear.

Russ: … of some sort.

Igor: So, to the extent that you keep pushing that particular muscle, its ability to heal will be slowed down or retarded or even prevented. Would that be fair?

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Notice how I’ve used a much milder form of mind bending language here. It’s actually almost invisible at this point and it sounds very logical because in the way I use mind bending language it’s always very logical.

Once again I’m still reframing this core idea, and he’s slowly maneuvering himself into a position where he’s accepting the idea that by ignoring the pain, he’s doing behaviors that are making the injury worse, which means it can’t heal, which means there will be more pain that’s the chain that he’s beginning to accept now.

It’s taken us a long time to get to that point, but very slowly it’s dawning on him the idea that it’s okay to accept the pain long enough for it to disappear. That’s the kind of idea being presented to him but we’re taking it step by step because we can’t let any objections stand between that and his pure acceptance of the idea.

So here’s something for you to think about. Just consider this now.

I want you to notice how in these last few seconds he seems to be calming down again. He’s not pushing back as much. Again his breathing has shifted a little bit downwards. He’s a little bit calmer, so whatever emotional stuff we stirred up when he started pushing back has started to recede.

It’s not gone entirely yet, but it’s flowing in the right direction. Let’s put it that way. Now is the time that I’m going to present my next major move or reintroduce the idea of the reframe in a kind of mind bending way. It’s a bit of a classical standard reframe that I learned from John Overdurf I believe. It presents the same idea again in a slightly more hypnotic mind bending kind of way.

What I want you to pay particular attention to though is the way I have just set that up. I’m not just presenting the idea to him casually because I’ve already seen him casually dismiss something.

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Hypnosis Pain Control Demonstrations ©Street Hypnosis All Rights Reserved What I want to do is to have him really think about it because if he’s really thinking about it, it already forces his brain into a different gear, which allows me to create a little bit more hypnotic kind of context.

Before I present the idea I say first, there’s nothing I expect from you. I don’t expect you to agree or disagree with this idea. What does that do? It turns the critical factor off a little bit because it says I do not need a conclusion from you. All I require from you is a contemplation of the idea.

This is a very roundabout or slightly sneaky way of saying I need you to accept the idea without rejecting it because the analysis factor hasn’t been there. If he can contemplate the idea for a while without rejecting it, shall we say, as a knee-jerk reflex, that’s a tremendous victory because now the information has gotten past the critical factor and a true analysis can take place?

He might still reject it by the way. It’s still very possible but now if he’s going to reject it, he will either reject it for sensible reasons or because there’s some other unconscious conflict going on, so either I uncover the unconscious conflict, which is great, or he has a genuine concern so there’s an ecological issue there, which is also great.

Either way, that’s information I need to know if it exists. As it happens, it does not. Just watch in a moment’s time as I present the reframe to him once again in a different form, and in a form that is a very standard form for myself.

Particularly, I want you to pay attention to the pauses because I’m actually saying many things to him at the same time, and the pause allows several layers of different meanings to emerge and allows his mind to almost be kind of caught up. It’s another way of creating a mind bending moment by presenting information that seems to have one thing being said and then right after the pause. It’s called on run-on sentence.

HPC - Transcript-Manual - DVDs - Part 2 (1)

By Igor Ledochowski

Hypnotic Pain

Control

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Table of Contents

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DVD #6 – Pain Control Demo – Russ - 6 Month

Old Groin Injury

Demonstration 1 – Russ – Without Commentary

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Demonstration 1 – Russ – With Commentary

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