There's an artistry to choosing these statements. "Until I say this sentence, you will be unaware of the temperature and feeling in your left ear" and suddenly you are aware of that. If I say to Ann "You can be aware of the feeling of warmth where your hand touches your chin" she was probably not aware of that before I made the statement. But when I said it, she could immediately verify that my verbalization was in fact an accurate representation of her experience. I come to gain credibility, and I also begin to amplify things that are true, but were unconscious in her before I mentioned them.

If I continue with kinesthetic statements and then say "And you can be aware of the sound of people shuffling paper in the room" she will again shift consciousness in order to determine whether my verbalization is accurate for her experience. I'm feeding back things that are a part of her experience, but are normally outside of awareness for her. So I'm building rapport, and at the same time I'm already altering her consciousness by that maneuver.

Today we're only going to explore the principles for inducing altred states. What you do to utilize an altered state after you get it is a separate topic, which we'll get to tomorrow.

For a long time hypnotists have worried about how "deep" you were. They used depth as an indication of what you could and could not do. AsfarasI can tell, depth is not a meaningful way to think about trance; in some altered states some hypnotic phenomena are possible, while others are not. But hypnotic phenomena per se are not that valuable. Being able to have positive or negative hallucinations is not something which is really that valuable in and of itself. Hallucinations can be used as tools to accomplish other ends, but they are not themselves that valuable. .