Belief Craft – with Jonathan Altfeld and Doug O’Brien

Charlie’s pretty amazing.
NLP and Hypnosis Trainers from John Grinder to Steven Gilligan have recognized his unique talents.

I’ve only worked with him once when he came to New York to offer a free intro to Seishindo. Seishindo is a Japanese term which means “the cultivation of a pure heart and simple mind” or “the cultivation of the whole self”. To me it felt like the physical embodiment of many of the principles of NLP. We did activities like Tai Chi’s “push hands” that allowed us to really feel the interplay between the two people in this physical “conversation.” We did some basic Aikido, stopping short of throwing each other to the mats, that seemed to be the physical embodiment of pacing and leading in NLP. But what was really cool was how much better our pacing and leading was after having done it physically like that. It’s like we understood things at a much deeper, subconsious level than we had previously.
For Jonathan Altfeld’s and my upcoming NLP Master Practitioner Training we are additionally excited because Badenhop’s Seishindo also seems to mesh perfectly with many of our approaches to modeling and even Belief Craft.

As an example, in other trainings, I’ve heard beliefs described as “viewpoints accompanied by a feeling of certainty.” They are asserting that all one really need to do to believe something is to create that feeling of certainty. This leads them to repeating statements they want to believe while firing certainty anchors.
Well, Belief Craft – the melding of Sleight of Mouth with Knowledge engineering – allows us to much more precisely unpack and appreciate the nature of beliefs. With Belief Craft you discover that that feeling of certainty arises automatically once a set of logical conditions have been met.

Now see how elegantly one of Charlie’s principles of Seishindo addresses this:
“Logic and emotion are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.”

I wish I’d said that.

Did you ever meet somebody who expressed a belief about something and you thought, “Can he really BELIEVE that?” You may even have been left speechless.

Have you ever been in a situation – maybe as a salesperson or as a therapist – where you are diligently trying to get your client to loosen their hold on an old, stuck way of thinking and to persuade them of a better, healthier viewpoint and they JUST WON’T BUDGE?

These are examples of where REALLY understanding the nature of beliefs would save the day.

“BELIEF CRAFT” is a merging together of two disciplines, “Sleight of Mouth” and “Knowledge Engineering.” Basically taking the most useful understanding of how beliefs are structured (derived from the computer science of Artificial Intelligence, “Knowledge Engineering”) and combining it with the most sophisticated understanding of how beliefs are changed (“Sleight of Mouth”).

The results are game changing.

When you really get a handle on Belief Craft there will be times where you COULD do Sleight of Mouth with a person in a particular circumstance, but instead you’ll use Belief Craft and just “wire around” the problematic belief so that it never gets triggered in the first place.

It is awesome stuff.

I think Belief Craft started when Jonathan Altfeld attended a Sleight of Mouth training I was doing down in Florida a few years ago. I’d be teaching Sleight of Mouth for many years even then, but he was asking questions about the structure of the beliefs and came up with insights about different beliefs we were eliciting that were wonderfully challenging.

Honestly, part of me was a little unhappy about this because you always like to appear to be the uber-expert when you’re training something like NLP.  I was becoming afraid that maybe I wasn’t as expert as I thought I was. But fortunately it all worked out well and everyone learned a lot that day.

The other part of me was thrilled because it really felt that there was something new being discovered here. Jonathan and I started some private conversations based on the realization that we both looked at the structure of beliefs in the same way – the “Normalized Belief Structure”. He gave me his outstanding CD/workbook set he called “Knowledge Engineering” which is all about this.  I devoured it.

I was blown away because I could easily see where this would interface so seamlessly with Sleight of Mouth and make it much better because we’d first start from a more complete understanding of precisely what the belief is that we’re dealing with.

Jonathan Altfeld and I will be presenting a three day certification class in Belief Craft July 7, 8 and 9, 2011 up in Burlington, Vermont as the kick-off to our summer NLP Master Practitioner Class (July 7-17, 2011)

Read more about it here: http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/seminars/desc-belcraft.html

Join us in Vermont. You won’t believe how much fun learning can be.

- Combining Sleight of Mouth with Neo-Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

Why take a class called “THE LANGUAGE OF CHANGE?”

Because Language does our thinking for us.
Most people think its the other way around – that we have a thought or a feeling and then we find the language to express it – but research shows us that that is very much the other way around. The language, or the question that we have in our mind, frames the experiences we have.  Therefore, to the extent that we can sculpt the language that our clients use, we can drive their conclusions and influence their behavior.

You could easily witness this phenomenon with the political advertising that has recently filled our airwaves. Competing political camps emphasized certain words over and over again that helped to frame the questions voters ask themselves. As an example, the Tea Party folk used the word “change” (the classic mantra of the challenger) consistently and in every quarter.  And gosh, it’s been a tough couple of years – who doesn’t want a change? So, if you walked into that voting booth on Tuesday thinking, “do I want to continue on this tough road or do I want to change?,” odds are good you wouldn’t be voting for the incumbent.

What I find fascinating is that, while most people insist that those annoying commercials are not influencing them, they use the very language of those commercials to explain their vote. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center put it, “if I can control the question that you ask when you walk into the voting booth, then I have your vote.”

APPLICATIONS TO PERSONAL CHANGE
If you are an influencer in any way shape or form, this applies to you. And, by the way, everyone is involved with influence, aren’t you? Whether you influence professionally (as a therapist, coach, political strategist or some other kind of salesman), or non-professionally (parent, spouse, or regular person), your ability to influence – or to recognize when you are being influenced – is directly equivalent to the quality of your life.

As a hypnotist and coach, I use these skills constantly. Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone being a coach or a hypnotherapist without a thorough grounding with these skills.

SLEIGHT OF MOUTH + HYPNOTIC LANGUAGE = INFLUENCE ON STEROIDS.
This class offers a presentation of Sleight of Mouth (each participant will get a free download of my new “User’s Guide to Sleight of Mouth” e-book to help reinforce these skills at home) AND Neo-Ericksonian Hypnotic Language patterns. Then we practice weaving them TOGETHER for a remarkably effective result.

ONE MORE THING
We also explore what happens when you take Robert Cialdini’s “Six Principles of Persuasion” from his ground-breaking book “Influence,” and use them as added influence power.

As an example, let’s imagine you’re a life coach and you have a client who is stuck and can’t get themselves to the gym regularly. Imagine that they say “I can’t go to the gym, I just have way too many things I have to get done.”

Using Sleight of Mouth you could use a pattern like the “Redefine” pattern and say “It’s not that you have too many things to get done, you’re just not prioritizing properly.” If you add Ericksonian Language patterns you could change that to: “Abraham Lincoln once said ‘It’s not that you have too many things to get done, you just need to… prioritize properly.’” (Said while shifting your voice tone to mark out the command). If you then add one of Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion, you can add a “because” on to the end. “…it’s not that you have too many things to get done, you just need to… prioritize properly, because when you… do that now, you’ll find there are plenty of hours in a day.” (adding another embedded command in there for good measure.)

Then you could do an Ericksonian metaphor and tell them a nice story about putting big rocks in a jar first, followed by smaller rocks, followed by pebbles, to illustrate your point. You could fill your story with more embedded commands and other language patterns to really help them to make rapid change in their life.

It is powerful stuff.

A CONCERT PIANIST PRACTICES HIS SCALES
Artur Rubenstein, even at the height of his career, practiced scales every day.
He said if he didn’t practice one day, he could tell. If he didn’t practice for two days, his wife could tell, if he didn’t practice for three days, his audience could tell.

In the same way we, as change agents, must practice and master the techniques of our craft. Of course, learning mere techniques alone won’t make you a great change artist, but not mastering your art’s techniques may well stop you from achieving the goals you desire.

WHAT YOU WILL RECEIVE:
In addition to your free download of the new “User’s Guide to Sleight of Mouth,” you will also receive a printed manual with all the Sleight of Mouth patterns, Neo-Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns and the six Cialdini principles.

If you are a hypnotherapist or use language in any way for persuasion, you’ll want to be there. This class is fun. This class is hard. This class is both at the same time.

It offers tons of information in far too short a time and gets you working hard to really get some of these skills under your belt. AND it also shows you how you can take all this stuff and practice it at home and “out in the world” so that you can integrate the power of language into your real life.

The tuition to this class is only $397.
The value is priceless.

Join us!

You’ll be glad you did.

THE LANGUAGE OF CHANGE

- Combining Sleight of Mouth with Neo-Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns

Why take a class called “THE LANGUAGE OF CHANGE?”

Because Language does our thinking for us.
Most people think its the other way around – that we have a thought or a feeling and then we find the language to express it – but research shows us that that is very much the other way around. The language, or the question that we have in our mind, frames the experiences we have.  Therefore, to the extent that we can sculpt the language that our clients use, we can drive their conclusions and influence their behavior.

You could easily witness this phenomenon with the political advertising that has recently filled our airwaves. Competing political camps emphasized certain words over and over again that helped to frame the questions voters ask themselves. As an example, the Tea Party folk used the word “change” (the classic mantra of the challenger) consistently and in every quarter.  And gosh, it’s been a tough couple of years – who doesn’t want a change? So, if you walked into that voting booth on Tuesday thinking, “do I want to continue on this tough road or do I want to change?,” odds are good you wouldn’t be voting for the incumbent.

What I find fascinating is that, while most people insist that those annoying commercials are not influencing them, they use the very language of those commercials to explain their vote. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center put it, “if I can control the question that you ask when you walk into the voting booth, then I have your vote.”

APPLICATIONS TO PERSONAL CHANGE
If you are an influencer in any way shape or form, this applies to you. And, by the way, everyone is involved with influence, aren’t you? Whether you influence professionally (as a therapist, coach, political strategist or some other kind of salesman), or non-professionally (parent, spouse, or regular person), your ability to influence – or to recognize when you are being influenced – is directly equivalent to the quality of your life.

As a hypnotist and coach, I use these skills constantly. Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone being a coach or a hypnotherapist without a thorough grounding with these skills.

SLEIGHT OF MOUTH + HYPNOTIC LANGUAGE = INFLUENCE ON STEROIDS.
This class offers a presentation of Sleight of Mouth (each participant will get a free download of my new “User’s Guide to Sleight of Mouth” e-book to help reinforce these skills at home) AND Neo-Ericksonian Hypnotic Language patterns. Then we practice weaving them TOGETHER for a remarkably effective result.

ONE MORE THING
We also explore what happens when you take Robert Cialdini’s “Six Principles of Persuasion” from his ground-breaking book “Influence,” and use them as added influence power.

As an example, let’s imagine you’re a life coach and you have a client who is stuck and can’t get themselves to the gym regularly. Imagine that they say “I can’t go to the gym, I just have way too many things I have to get done.”

Using Sleight of Mouth you could use a pattern like the “Redefine” pattern and say “It’s not that you have too many things to get done, you’re just not prioritizing properly.” If you add Ericksonian Language patterns you could change that to: “Abraham Lincoln once said ‘It’s not that you have too many things to get done, you just need to… prioritize properly.’” (Said while shifting your voice tone to mark out the command). If you then add one of Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion, you can add a “because” on to the end. “…it’s not that you have too many things to get done, you just need to… prioritize properly, because when you… do that now, you’ll find there are plenty of hours in a day.” (adding another embedded command in there for good measure.)

Then you could do an Ericksonian metaphor and tell them a nice story about putting big rocks in a jar first, followed by smaller rocks, followed by pebbles, to illustrate your point. You could fill your story with more embedded commands and other language patterns to really help them to make rapid change in their life.

It is powerful stuff.

A CONCERT PIANIST PRACTICES HIS SCALES
Artur Rubenstein, even at the height of his career, practiced scales every day.
He said if he didn’t practice one day, he could tell. If he didn’t practice for two days, his wife could tell, if he didn’t practice for three days, his audience could tell.

In the same way we, as change agents, must practice and master the techniques of our craft. Of course, learning mere techniques alone won’t make you a great change artist, but not mastering your art’s techniques may well stop you from achieving the goals you desire.

WHAT YOU WILL RECEIVE:
In addition to your free download of the new “User’s Guide to Sleight of Mouth,” you will also receive a printed manual with all the Sleight of Mouth patterns, Neo-Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns and the six Cialdini principles.

If you are a hypnotherapist or use language in any way for persuasion, you’ll want to be there. This class is fun. This class is hard. This class is both at the same time.

It offers tons of information in far too short a time and gets you working hard to really get some of these skills under your belt. AND it also shows you how you can take all this stuff and practice it at home and “out in the world” so that you can integrate the power of language into your real life.

The tuition to this class is only $397.
The value is priceless.

Join us! Go to the Training and Events page and join us for this weekend’s class.

You’ll be glad you did.

Stories from the Outside Inn sprang from the kind of late night discussion you’d expect if the participants were ingesting some sort of inebriant. Nick Kemp and myself, however, were quite sober, I assure you. Nick had been telling me about a book he’d discovered called “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure,” in which people wrote six-word stories – entire lives summed up in six words – that were remarkably wonderful. It was inspired by a literary legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged in a bar to write a story in only six words, and he wrote, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Then I told Nick about an interesting experience I’d had while jogging recently while listening to my iPod. For fun, I’d put the iPod on the “shuffle” mode where it plays songs from you entire collection at random. My ipod had a wide variety of music but not all the tracks played at random were music. I’d be listening to a selection from a Beatles album and the next track would be a section of a Hypnosis seminar by Stephen Gilligan. This would be followed by a movement of a Brandenburg Concerto by Bach, followed by a Frank Zappa tune, followed by a trance induction by Richard Bandler. It was wild.

So we started thinking about how we might record a bunch of very short trances that would have nothing to do with each other, each with a precise time limit. We thought we might create musical intros and outros for each piece and put them together where a person could just listen to them randomly, like I had done on my iPod. We imagined that we could create a web site like a big house and each room would contain different stories, so when the visitor to the web site explored the house, they’d come across these different stories in different orders depending on which room they entered. We imagined that we might have a library within the house who’s books could be animated icons for the different stories. We thought that the house could be a hotel or an Inn where people would come and visit.

We thought this was such a fun idea that we actually did it. He and I both created several 5-minute trances – exactly 5 minutes – and recorded brief musical intros and outros for each. We enlisted the aid of a graphic artist to create image of an Inn and a web expert to make it functional. You can go there and explore it yourself. It is at http://www.storiesfromtheoutsideinn.com.

STORIES FROM THE OUTSIDE INN  - The Seminar

Stories from the Outside Inn became a seminar last year in Leeds, England. It’s basically a story telling workshop. It helps people to create good stories or good trances (5 minutes total, of course) and then helps people to get better at telling them. We teach about metaphor construction and Hypnotic Language patterns, we teach about vocal inflection and dramatic tension. We also teach about recording techniques and introduce the use of video as well.

Of course, everyone knows that Milton Erickson famously used stories and metaphors therapeutically in his hypnosis work, so we expected we’d get some hypnotists who wanted to improve their skills. But people from many different backgrounds attended – therapists, teachers, seminar leaders, coaches, actors and writers – and it was delightful! It was, perhaps, about the most fun we’re ever had in a seminar weekend. People created wonderful stories and were going far beyond what they ever thought they could in this arena. Many of the stories students wrote and recorded have been added to the Outside Inn Website. They’re in the guest house attached to the main building. (You have to enter through the window.)

STORIES FROM THE OUTSIDE INN – Coming Soon

Nick is sailing over from Leeds to join me in presenting a PREVIEW evening in NEW YORK CITY on October 22nd. Why don’t you join us and see for yourself what its all about? It’s only $22. We’ll be offering the full scale weekend seminar in New York in March of 2011.

If you’d prefer to get a jump on the New York and event and join us in Leeds, we’ll be in Leeds, UK, on December 4th and 5th, 2010.

To join us in New York on the 22nd, click here> http://www.ericksonian.com/?page_id=16
To join us in Leeds, England in December, click here> http://www.nickkemp.com/spartcart/product/stories-from-the-outside-inn-with-nick-kemp-and-doug-obrien-dec-2010.htm

The correlation between sleep deprivation and its effect on a person’s health is well documented in studies and articles. The importance of a full night’s sleep (defined as at least 7 to 8 hours of continuous sleep) it touted as a remedy for everything from loss of energy to gaining weight.

When asked, people who have difficulty obtaining these golden hours of remedy may say that no matter what they do, he or she can never get more than 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night, if he or she is lucky. They go on year after year fighting sleep disruption, a lack of energy, mind focus, weight gain and deprecating their self -image with feelings of inadequacy. Well, obviously, there are avenues that have not been explored by these people.

This is exactly why I created the “SLEEP” CD. Many of the barriers to changing a person’s sleep habits can be addressed through hypnosis. Hypnosis can be used to change eating habits, calm the mind to induce sleep and reprogram your thoughts to accept sleep without disruption. The result of placing a specific trigger in your mind to keep you from grabbing that cup of coffee or some snack in the evening eliminates your body’s need to digest through the night and allows it to do its work in returning your body to its neutral state by balancing hormones, developing muscles, reducing stored fat and increasing metabolism.

Hypnosis with repetitive calming sounds such as listening to the ocean surf or some type of ethereal music lets your brain focus on falling into a deep sleep quickly, resulting in a more satisfying and rejuvenating sleep. This process can be utilized over an extended amount of time, changing the sleeping process naturally without creating a dependency on pills or other chemically-induced, mind-altering drugs.

Did you ever think that your partner’s snoring could actually benefit you? By using hypnosis to train your mind to hear the snoring as a repetitive calming sound, you can turn a sleep disruption into a sleep inducer and save not only your sleep, but reduce stress on your relationship.

One of the largest benefits of using hypnosis to benefit your sleep patterns is its effect on weight loss and weight gain. According to recent studies men, women and children who slept 7 to 8 hours per night were 32% more likely to lose weight than their counterparts who received less than 5 hours of sleep per night. This is without regard to the fact that they may have eaten more than the sleep deprived. A recent article in the New York Times documents a small study that indicates not only does sleep assist with weight loss, but it also does this by reducing the amount of fat in the body, instead of attacking muscle.

People who slept less were also more likely to gain weight, regardless of the fact that they may have eaten less. These findings have opened more questions about hormone imbalances and metabolism rates, and other possible causes. Right now experts are simply saying that if you want to lose weight, sleep more.

Sounds good to me.

NLP Practitioner Certification

Price: $3,495.00

$3,095.00 IF PAID PRIOR TO SEPTEMBER 15TH!!!

Visit http://ericksonian.eventbrite.com for more information and ticket sales!

When it comes to shifting one’s sleep patterns here’s a method that has worked for many people over the years. It is very simple and is also very challenging for many people, and it works.

First, decide you are going to really do it. Determine that you are really going to make this change happen for your self.

Then, decide what hours you believe would be ideal for you to be sleeping. As an example, you might know that for you, 6-7 hours of sleep really work for you to be rested and rejuvenated. Maybe you require more, but whatever it is for you, make that evaluation.

Next decide a time that you can consistently go to bed to catch those hours of sleep.

A full hour before that time, turn off all electronic communication devices (TVs, Computers, etc) and get ready for bed. Maybe have a glass of sleepy time tea. Brush your teeth, get into your PJs, whatever your bedtime ritual may be, do it. Also, set the conditions for your room for your optimal comfort… darken the windows, turn on a fan, whatever is ideal for you.

30 minutes or so before bedtime, read a book that is something you’ve been meaning to read. Something that will be good for you.

When it is your time for sleep, close the book and turn on a hypnotic sleep induction. I, of course, recommend the “Good Night’s SLEEP” CD available here on this web site, but you can use whatever you like.

The induction on our SLEEP CD is specially designed to gently guide you into a deep and natural sleep. It also offers positive suggestions for sleeping restfully and throughout the night. This allows you to awaken at your appointed hour, feeling good.

Follow this method for 14 days. Everyday for 14 days.

Then do it for another 7 days.

Then do it imagining the induction for yourself.

Enjoy your new patterns.

Then continue doing it as long as you like.

What you may not know is that my neighborhood, Park Slope, Brooklyn, was one of the hardest hit. I was out doing some errands…picking up laundry, grocery shopping… progressing from one store to another further away when the storm approached. It was really eerie – like a movie scene when some evil force is coming. The sky was constantly electric – not just a bolt of lightning followed by thunder, but constant smaller bolts, one after another, high in the sky. I started jogging with my bags of laundry and groceries (even though it is seriously not cool to run to get out of rain. I didn’t care). As I got close to the corner where the grocery store is located, I noticed the sky had turned a weird green color. I’d read about how tornado clouds can look that way so I picked up my pace. Just across from the store the storm hit and I was drenched in seconds. I raced the final 20 feet into the store and turned to look back and it had turned black out there. The wind and rain were unlike any I’d ever seen. Within moments trees were down, blocking the streets, store signs and garbage cans were blown away. A store across the street from the grocery had it’s plate glass windows blown in.

A minute later it was virtually over. It was still raining a little, but almost nothing. It was amazing to me how quickly people started moving tree branches and even whole trees, if possible, out of the streets. I helped replace garbage cans and bags as I made my way home.

Thank heaven for cell phones. I called my wife, Jean, to let her know I was OK and make sure she was. She, as everyone did, had her own story to tell of what happened back at the apartment, but the big news was our beloved old Summac tree in the back yard was gone.

This is a picture of our backyard – or what’s left of it.

This is a white oak I had planted in Prospect Park back in 1986. Hopefully they can just trim it without having to remove it.

And this is, sadly, a common sight through out Brooklyn and Queens. In this case a rare American Elm in Prospect Park. Probably 80-100 years old.

Still, over all, amazing that two, count ‘em, two tornados can touch down in a major metropolitan city at rush hour and “only” one person was killed. Clearly that is a tragedy, but it could so easily been a whole lot worse.

So – OK. I’ve seen my tornado up close and personal. I don’t need to see anymore. Thank you very much.