Effectiveness of Personalised Induction

In the course of my life, I met different people and I remember how hard I tried to find a right way to communicate with some of them.

I used a lot of pictures, gestures and touch when I met a person with hearing impairment. I read many books for the girl that had vision impairment. I remember looking for even a little movement or gesture from a boy with speech problems and trying to predict his next move, or what he would like to say if he could. Finally, I remember using my body language, face expression and positive energy to help foreign person find her destination without being able to communicate in her language. When I did it, I never thought about the form of communication I have used, I just wanted to communicate or offer some help. Now I understand the mechanism, particular modality and sensory perception of each person I have met.

Person with hearing impairment - her modality definitely was not auditory (hearing sense), so I had four more senses that I could refer to sight (visual modality), feeling (kinaesthetic modality), smell (olfactory modality) or taste (gustatory modality). I chose sight and feeling.

Girl with vision impairment - her modality definitely was not visual. In her case auditory seemed to work just fine.

Boy with speech problems - his modality could be compound I was ready to accept any form of communication from his side.

Foreign person - I cannot say which modality was representing her, when I look at it now; I understand that I used kinaesthetic and visual as the most effective one (also my strongest one). We people use over 50% of our body language to communicate and only less than 10% of words.

All this information and some more that I will discuss later on, helped me to develop my knowledge about effectiveness of the PMR screed that I wrote for my partner as a part of my previous homework. When I look at the notes about Joyce, I can see that her modality is mainly kinaesthetic with a small accent of olfactory. She enjoyed all different sensations arising from roots that grounded her with the earth, energy that flowed through her body making her feel fresh and happy but also the smell of a bee wax. When I wrote the PMR screed for Joyce I was confident focusing on relaxation of every single muscle and including a feeling of different sensation in her special place. When I practised it, Joyce said that she liked it, but I could also see that her face was relaxed. When I met with Effie, I was very keen to practise this PMR screed on her. When I was about half way through, I could see how tense she was, I knew that if I want to finish it, I need to make it a lot shorter. I left all the muscles and went straight into deeper relaxation and after that into her special place. When we finished Effie was not relaxed at all. She could not wait for me to leave her muscles alone; she did not like the long pauses that I made and she was upset that I was with her in her special place not long enough, but .... there was one thing that she remembered from this screed even a long time after we done it... my spelling of word R -E -L- A -X when I was trying to deeper her relaxation state. She said that every time when she thought that she should relax there was only one thing popping into her mind - spelling of the word "relax". Effie said that it worked for her like one of this adverts that can stick into our head and be there all the time. After hearing the material from Module Two I can strongly say that Effie's modality is auditory. She felt left alone and uncomfortable when she could not hear my voice and one thing that she remembered from this screed was the sound of spelling a word "relax". Now, I understand why it did not work the same way on both of my partners. As Joyce's modality was mainly kinaesthetic, it did not include any of auditory modality, which was dominant for Effie.

I have learned very important lesson that if I would like to comfort my client in the future I need to make sure that induction in my screed is as much personalized as is possible. Very deep assessment is essential. I should analyze my client's according to his/her appearance, personality, behavior. I need also listen carefully to the language of their mind that is expressed through their modalities. Those modalities are referring to their senses, which are sight, hearing, feeling, smell and taste. Each of the modalities has representation in their physiology, language, behavior even the eye movement. I found in the Internet a very interesting illustration of the eye positions for different modalities.

The diagram illustrates where the eyes go when accessing different modalities and can be broken down by, up and down, and side to side. Up means Visual, down means Kinaesthetic and level, neither up or down, means Auditory. Left and right shows (and tell) whether the person is accessing the information or storing it. As we face the other person, Right means recall, Left means learning. This is an excellent way to tell if someone is lying. If they look to the right they are recalling (truth as they remember) and to the left means they are making it up (lying). This clue inspired me to run a new kind of observation of others and myself. I believe this will help me to become more familiar with all modalities and match them successfully with my clients.

I can also conclude that to lead an effective personalise induction that will achieve a deep hypnotic state in my client I should always try to employ all the senses, compound all modalities; as "Some schools of thought believe that increasing the use of our least favourite modality will enhance our experience of life and give us a more authentic representation of reality."

When I received a feedback from Joyce according to my PMR screed, I remember her saying, "I didn't like a word -now- at the beginning, but later on I accepted it." This made me think. I found an answer in this module: "There are two generally recognised styles of hypnotic induction: the permissive and the authoritarian".

Word 'now' is very common in authoritarian induction. Its screed is direct and logical often leaves no choices, does not include metaphors and always remains client in the control when