Unconscious mind experiment
As an unconscious mind experiment, I decided to put myself into a gentle trance. The object was to ask my unconscious mind what the subject of my next blog would be. I settled down in the chair, and just willed myself to go into trance. Within a few seconds I got a twitch in my hand. This is my personal indication that I'm going into trance. I got various images, none of which stayed very long, or led to anything much. I was actually sitting quite uncomfortably. As I felt myself relaxing deeper into trance I was worried I would fall out of the chair. So I brought myself out of trance. Maybe I just wasn't ready for it at this time.
And that got me thinking about how deep I had gone. That made me think of how would I know how deep a client had gone. It is always a problem to know how deep a client is. How can I get the client to tell me how deeply relaxed they are?
How to measure hypnotic depth
There is no point in just asking them. The client would have no way of knowing, would have nothing to measure it against. Which made me think of using a ruler. I could tell the client to visualize a ruler. Tell them that one end was zero, fully awake, and the other end was ten, deeply relaxed. Then ask the client to visualize where they were on that ruler.
This led me to the idea of an ever extending ruler. I immediately thought about a measuring tape. One of those things where you pull the tape out from a case. This would have the advantage of going far beyond ten. The client could envisage the tape being as long as they want. Even endless.
A new induction from my unconscious mind experiment?
And from that, the germ of a new idea arose from somewhere. If I could get the client to imagine where they were on the tape, then I could get them to imagine moving further along the tape. And if the tape went on forever, then I could suggest to the client that as they went along the tape they got deeper and deeper, more and more relaxed. And so the idea for a new and original induction emerged.
So perhaps my unconscious mind experiment worked. It is strange how the unconscious mind works. My unconscious mind experiment did allow me to find something totally new and unexpected to write about.