Milton Erickson
Milton Erickson lived between 1901 and 1980 and is widely regarded as the grandfather of the use of hypnosis in psychotherapy. Erickson's use of permissive language in hypnosis was revolutionary, and has been studied in great depth by many people, including Richard Bandler, Michael Yapko and Bill O'Hanlon amongst others. Below you will find some sentence structures based on Erickson's work.
Why use these sentence structures in hypnosis?
These sentence structures are a useful way to make language more hypnotic. They do this in a number of ways by building encouraging a positive response from a person and therefore gain rapport. You can use them like pieces of a puzzle to add into your scripts to make them hypnosis even more hypnotic. These sentence structures are commonly known as the YES set. Here are some examples that you can use:
I don't know ....
I don't know whether you will drift into trance reading this, or even whether you will spot the embedded command, and because you know that I don’t know, this statement must be true. Statements that contain truisms are useful because they build confidence and rapport with the hypnotist.
I don't know whether you will notice any positive outcomes straight away or whether you will notice them in a few days.
.... can you not / .... is it not
"can you not" or "is it not" is a great way to end a sentence or statement because it makes it much more complicated, and therefore much more difficult to argue with does it not?
And you could, could you not, use it in the middle of a statement or question.
You could use the YES set in scripts that you have already written could you not?
Someone once told me....
And because someone else told me it makes it much more difficult to argue with.
Someone once told me they were able to feel much more confident and relaxed in social situations after using hypnosis.
You might be interested to know....
You might be interested to know, but then again you might not, and because I’m not telling you, you cannot argue.
You might be interested to know that you will become much more hypnotic when you use the YES set.
I wouldn't want you to ...... right now
I wouldn't want you to give you a suggestion to carry out right now, therefore there's nothing to resist.
I wouldn't want to relax too deeply right now because I would rather you focus your attention on my suggestions.
Exercise four
Rewrite the script so that it could apply to anyone using all of the techniques discussed in this lesson.
Example
Perhaps you could imagine being in a relaxing place .... somewhere where you've visited before .... or even somewhere where you would like to go to .... And even though at some point while listening (or reading) this you could drift away .... perhaps into a comfortable trance .... I wouldn't want to tell you when or how to relax because I appreciate that you can decide when and how to do that by yourself .... often people think about enjoying the calmness that a beach on a warm beach can bring as you allow yourself to begin to relax .... and you could, could you not, imagine the way that sand feels between the toes .... and the faint taste of sea salt on the lips .... and the sensation of a warm breeze on the face .... as you imagine the gentle sound of distant waves to wash a sense of tranquility around you allowing you to relax a little deeper .... noticing how the thought of clouds gently drifting by in a beautiful blue sky as you drift into a comfortable trance .... and I don't know whether you have started to go into trance and experience what it is to allow yourself deep calm .... or even how deep you could allow yourself to go .... imagining getting a sense of calm from other people around you in this place as you become curious about how deeply into hypnosis a person can go .... noticing how time seems to take on a different meaning as you relax very deeply ....
Practising using the yes set will improve your hypnotic skills
The best way to improve using the yes set is to come up with more examples by yourself and practice. Many years ago there existed a card game called ZEBU. This card game consisted of fifty two cards with different examples of the yes set on each. Unfortunately, the cards went out of print, and the only place that you could get them was on ebay, where they were sold for extortionate amounts. However, we have found a company where you can buy these cards very reasonably here: ZEBU cards.
Hypnosis Downloads is an excellent resource that use the YES set in their hypnotic downloads. Try listening to some of their downloads so that you can hear them being applied. Click here to go to their site now.
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