NLP Training: Stephen Gilligan

I was particularly pleased to be able to take part in the first week of Dr Stephen Gilligan’s ‘Trance Camp’ starting on the 6^th July 2003 at the Quails Inn resort, San Marcos, nr San Diego. 

The reason was a mixture of simple curiosity and a desire to improve my hypnotic and NLP skills. Stephen was one of the  original group of Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Leslie Cameron, Judy Delozier, Frank Pucilek, David Gordon et al, who were around at the time NLP was born. John Grinder mentioned Stephen at his recent London  New Code NLP training. 

Stephen was one of people to model Milton Erickson and in fact left his NLP colleagues to become a true long term Erickson student. He comments that one of Erickson gifts was the idea of  utilisation -'that anything could be used for positive growth, no matter how sick, crazy and unaesthetic it may appear'.

Having fairly recently been to seminars with both John and Richard, I was again struck with the similarity of what they were all saying, albeit with different styles. If I had to compare the difference with a few describing words they would that Stephen was slower, deeper and more generative.

It's difficult to pick out specifics from the week however I was drawn to the to one of his basic concepts:

• Identity is the basic distinction of self
• Trance is the naturalistic learning state activated whenever identity is disrupted, and within which identity is re-generated
• Hypnosis and therapy are forms of ritual space that provide a container for trance experience to be useful

Also the basic energies (states?) for the practitioner to weave are:

• Tenderness
• Fierceness
• Playfulness

One example of a simple exercise that I found useful was this utilisation exercise. The addition of the feedback or receiving back step makes it significantly more effective.

• Pacing statement (“This is so” - eg "You're sitting in a chair")
• Pacing statement (“This is so” - eg "and you may have noticed the carpet is blue")
• Pacing statement (“This is so”  - eg "and you're listening to what I'm saying")
• Leading statement (“This can be so” - "and you're beginning to feel really comfortable")
• Receiving back (“And what are you aware of now”)
• Feeding back feedback (“And you’re aware of X”)
• Repeat!

I can report that I felt comfortable that I had clearly achieved by own objectives during the week. That I had both improved my own NLP and hypnotic skills, and thoroughly recommend 'trancecamp' to anyone with similar objectives.