Chapter 16: Hypnotising Your Audience 261
Experiencing everyday trances
Throughout the day you move through a series of trance-like experiences,
naturally going in and out of a trance several times a minute. Humans have a
fantastic protection mechanism to cope with the overload of information!One upside is that your trance allows you to meditate, plan, rest, and relax.
Daydreaming lets you open your mind to new ideas. It also enhances your
natural creativity – the trance state is when you make new connections
between ideas and solve problems for yourself.The downside comes when you constantly replay anxieties and aren’t
reacting healthily with the external world. Perhaps you need a break or some
outside help if this situation applies to you. Therapy helps people break
negative trances. In fact, often hypnosis work is about bringing people out of
a trance and back to reality.What do you do to truly relax? To get yourself into that comfortable, easy
state where all is well with the world? Ask the same question of any number
of friends, family, and colleagues and you get quite different suggestions.
Relaxation is a light, everyday trance that gives you some downtime to
balance out the highs.
Here’s a simple way to induce a trance in yourself and others. Get with a
group of people. Spend 20 minutes telling each other of all the things you do
to relax. As you explain what you do, speak in a calm and gentle voice,
consider what you might like to try yourself from other people’s suggestions
and notice that just talking about relaxation in this way creates a light trance
in the whole group.Our challenge to you is to ask yourself whether you’re spending time relaxing
and allowing yourself to daydream. Building relaxation time into your diary
each day and each week is a vital life-giving tonic. Become aware of your own
trances and make a choice not to get drawn into the negative ones.When Kate asked a friend, a teenager with a strong away from meta program
(you can read more about meta programs and how those with ‘away from’
tendencies talk more about what they don’t want than what they do want in
Chapter 8), what he most likes to do to relax, his response was as follows:
I just find a good book and escape to somewhere pleasant and private. It’s
great when you’re annoyed about something, because you’re distracted by
what you read, you get involved with the characters, and then you forget
what you’re angry about.