chris mulzer.com :: Blog

Theatersaal Weisser Wind, Nov. 2nd 2006, 14:30 - 16:30

A few weeks ago Ronnie Amsler contacted me and asked me to work as an assistant for Dr. Richard Bandler during his workshop “Experimental Hypnosis” in Zurich. He asked me to go on stage for a “little thing” so that the participants would know, who I was. I agreed to both issues. After my presentation I was approached by quite a lot of participants who asked me what I had done and I also got many wonderful hallucinations of what I had done, I should or could have done and most of which I did not do at all. So I offered to put a recording of my presentation on the internet as a mp3 download and add some comments here in this blog. I would also like to point out, that my assistants are already very keen to transcribe the whole performance. So if you send me an email to: chris.mulzer@kikidan.com I will send you the transcript and further comments free of charge. The download of my presentation is also free of charge.

Listen to my presentation here:

DOWNLOAD: What I did on stage…

Should you have trouble, please contact holger.stephan@kikidan.com

I am writing this little article still laying in bed in my hotel room in Zurich. It is the morning of the next day and I want to recall everything while it is still fresh in my memory. I designed the whole performance in advance in my head. But as always, when I am on stage and sense my audience things change and shift around a bit. Therefore and for reasons of my imperfect memory please excuse if I forgot to point out some things you are interested in. I will of course listen to the whole presentation again and read the transcript. Then I can tell you even more - what I intended at any given moment… if not something else directed my brain in even another direction. I believe I was in a deeper trance than many of the participants…. Well no, I know that I was. Ronnie complained afterwards that I agreed to limit my presentation time to 90 minutes and I would have sold my mother for having professionally finished at exactly 89 minutes. Well - just that I forgot 30 minutes. So the presentation is now accidentally 120 minutes long and you listen to me while having severe time distortion.

Prior to my presentation there where a few things I thought I had to take into account.

My overall purpose of the presentation was to give you the feeling of as many different state shifts in your own body as possible in such a short time. Of course that alone is not enough. But there where some boundaries to take into account. First my presentation had to be a “standalone” as I did not know what the content was of what was done before and after my performance. Second I wanted to make my presentation easy to understand and so simple that a student of NLP or Hypnosis could easily follow most of the techniques I used. Therefore I choose a linear metaphor - a running story to carry through the whole time. As you easily will find out, this is the elevator story.

A good presentation - in my understanding - starts with the setting. People listening to me have to get used to my voice and settle in. I used the interaction with the many excuses, the dialog with the translators and the recommendation for using the headphones the right way as such.

I also believe, I need a good “lead in story” to start with the main metaphor. The point I make with how much I work to how much I travel to how I use a theme for traveling Is entirely this lead in - in an ambiguous sense because lead in also is lead in… to a trance state. Then the Bath (in England) story is an even more pointed metaphor for a trance induction. With starting the Bath story I also change my intonation pattern as well as my breathing.

When I come to the first digression from the main story - the telephone call from Ronnie, many of the participant where already quite in a deep state somewhere. So I thought to approach the issue of Experimental Hypnosis first from the “theoretical” background. What is it and how it is all around us. Even in the room at that present moment (recursive loop). THEN I started the main metaphor - the elevator story. Note how I slowly change the subject. I think that I gain more credibility from more subtle shift of subject.

In the beginning of the elevator story, there is a confusion technique which is ambiguous in several levels. It is the “level” discussion. Of course I use the “doors open” and “going down” thing as an excuse to elaborate a bit on analogs in Hypnosis like downwards inflection.

From that point on I use the structure of Milton H. Erickson’s “Life reframing in Hypnosis” and give it a more light and more ambiguous approach. Milton had one single person and could utilize his background. I have a multilingual, multinational, multiethnic and multi whatever Audience in front of me. The whole story about the pictures, about the internal dialogues and about the feelings - of course all submodalities to change - is around that subject.

The structure becomes best visible with the “pictures of your past” in the basement. The subconscious commands would need the use of a strategy which I don’t know, whether it is present or not. So I had to install it. That is the “Alte Pinakothek” story. Changes of submodalities in your past pictures…. Then the interaction with implementing the resulting feelings, making a point of manifesting changes and oh YES, I almost forgot, the lust and pain, the S&M thing. Well, to my amazement my audience parted into two sides. The ones who where in disgust and the ones which started to smile and vividly hallucinated. Quite a perception from stage I have to say. Please note, that the electricity anchor (visual and auditory and hopefully kinesthetically hallucinated as well) comes up in the very end again with the body guard. And I pleasantly overlap it onto Dr. Richards work with my transitional words.

So you get a little bit of everything in this presentation. Some direct and personal experience of state changes of various kinds. We are in a workshop of Experimental Hypnosis. Ronnie started in the morning to demonstrate on stage, what is possible. I wanted to demonstrate on your internal stage, what is possible. Then there are some hard facts about hypnosis I wanted you to know. And then of course there is the change work, the ever present work on improving your personality.

If you had fun I did my presentation well. If you had to laugh, you make me proud. If you thought about some of the stories afterwards, you give purpose to my life and if you dreamt about it at some nights thereafter, heaven will reward me. Thank you for your attention.

Für die deutschen Leser: Während des Workshops “Experimentelle Hypnose” gab ich eine Präsentation vor den Teilnehmern. Was ich in dieser Präsentation gemacht habe, beschreibe ich in diesem Blog. Unter obigem Link können Sie eine Audioaufzeichnung herunterladen. Die Sprache davon ist Englisch. Ronnie Amsler bat mich, hier nochmals darauf hinzuweisen, daß für den zweiten Teil des Workshops im Mai noch eine sehr begrenzte Anzahl an Teilnehmern zugelassen werden kann. Vorkenntnisse in Hypnose sind erforderlich.

Hier der Link: http://www.nlp-institut.ch/ausbildung/bandler.php