Matching someone's breathing with anything in your behavior—whether it's your own breathing rate, the tempo of your speech, or anything else—has a very powerful impact. Try it and find out what impact it has. I want you to use the same experience and keep the same groups. Take two minutes apiece and don't talk about it. It should take eight to ten minutes at most for everybody in your group to do it. Notice if it feels different this time.

* * * * *

I'd like to ask you if you noticed any difference in your own experience, even with just that small amount of instruction. Was it different at all for you? Some of you are nodding. Is there anyone here for whom it was not different at all? … One person. Even with just that little bit of instruction, that little bit of change, the experience changed for everyone but one person in this room. That difference to me is a profound one, because the instructions I gave you are just a tiny bit of what's available.

Hypnosis itself, asfaras I'm concerned, is simply using yourself as a biofeedback mechanism. You were doing that when you matched the other person's breathing rate with your voice tempo. Your behavior became an ongoing feedback mechanism for his behavior–Whether you're going to use altered states for inducing personal change, for some medical purpose, for the purpose of relaxing, or as a form of meditation, the things that allow you to be able to respond to another human being by going into an altered state are not genetically predetermined. They're simply the mechanisms of communication.

If I tell you that I want you to think about this (speaking rapidly) "very–slowly–and–carefully," the incongruity between what I say and how I say it gives you two contradictory instructions. But if 1 tell you I want you to stop … and consider … very … slowly , . . just exactly … what the change … in your own experience … was … then … the tempo … the rate of my speech … the movements of my body (he has been swaying to the rhythm of his speech) don't interfere with the words that I'm saying. In fact they embellish them and amplify their impact.