This Week's Tip...

"These movements are not the random movements of a leaf on a tree. They are expressing something. They carry meaning."
- Norman Vaughton
 

Last week we started looking at some of the things people communicate unconsciously through their gestures. Today, I'll reveal how you can use gestures as a direct line into the unconscious for building rapport, making rapid changes & doing other valuable things.

Just a quick reminder: I work on the basis that the unconscious mind has been around for millions of years, & often communicates through the body. For this reason, I invited you to pay attention to the 'non-verbal' aspects of communication, particularly gestures, & to ask yourself the following questions:

· "Which aspects of this communication are from the unconscious mind?"

· "I wonder what this gesture is about? What are they expressing?"

One of my fellow presenters at the recent Hypnotherapy Association convention was a hypnotherapist called Norman Vaughton, who gave a brilliant demonstration of communicating with a person's unconscious mind via their hands, & who spoke the words at the top of the article.

Our hands speak our first language
Before a child ever speaks a word, they begin using the silent language of gestures. Gestures are symbolic in nature (words are symbolic too) & express meaning. Just like the word "lion" refers to a type of large cat, & the word "running" refers to a type of experience, gestures refer to things & experiences too.

"What do they stand for?" I hear you ask.

It depends.

The meaning of gestures ranges from the universal (eg. instinctive defence gestures) to the cultural (eg. the hand signals used by angry drivers) to the professional (eg. the racetrack betting code known as "Tic Tac") to the individual (eg. the unconscious gestures you observed people making during conversation, & the unconscious gestures you responded with).

Take people literally
Mind and body are one system, and the way people describe (in their words, gestures, movements etc) their problems, goals and desires can reveal the structure of how they think about them. Take people literally, and they will give you information about exactly what's going on inside them. For instance, people who say:

· "I'd really like to do X, but something holds me back [holds hands up in front of their chest, as if pushing at a locked door]"

· "I want to move forward, but I feel like there's something I need to let go of [left hand clenched as if holding something]"

· "On the one hand I want X [gesturing with their right hand] but on the other hand I want Y [gesturing with their left]"

As I mentioned last week, people don't tend to be consciously aware of their hand gestures, or those of the people they're communicating with. You can think of these gestures as coming directly from the unconscious mind.

A direct line to the unconscious mind
This provides you with an amazing opportunity. Because these gestures tend to be unconscious, you can 'borrow' them & communicate directly with a person's unconscious mind.

This can create a very deep level of rapport.

And because gestures tend to be out of consciousness, people don't tend to notice when you borrow them!

When I'm training people, I am incredibly overt in mirroring people's gestures. I'll often do it in front of the group, then ask the person whether they were aware of me mirroring them. 95% of the time they say no, but even when they say yes, they also say it seemed almost as though I was letting them know I understood.

Usually, as long as you mirror people respectfully (rather than mimicking them), you will deepen rapport by borrowing gestures.

Instant updates
The amazing thing is, you can use gesture to help people make "instant updates" to their perceptions. For instance…

· With the person who said "I'd really like to do X, but something holds me back [holds hands up in front of their chest, as if pushing at a locked door]", I asked "What happens when you knock that out of the way?" & moved her hands to one side. She suddenly moved into a confident posture & took a step forward saying "then it would be easy"…

· With the person who said "I want to move forward, but I feel like there's something I need to let go of [left hand clenched as if holding something]"I reached out & gently grasped their clenched hand, then asked "What happens when you slowly turn this hand over as you release it?" They turned their hand over & suddenly things changed!

· With the person who said "On the one hand I want X [gesturing with their right hand] but on the other hand I want Y [gesturing with their left]", I'll save that for another time - it deserves a whole tip of its own.

People's unconscious gestures tend to refer to their "inner landscapes", the model of the world they carry around inside them. When you interact literally with their gestures, you can create powerful effects.

1) Start interacting with people's gestures a) for building rapport and b) for influencing them in positive ways.

In fact, if you want to see me utilising people's unconscious gestures, I urge you to check out my new DVDs. There are some things which can seem difficult to do when you read about them, but that become simple when you see them demonstrated. This is one of the reasons why we've invested thousands of pounds in creating high quality DVDs of "The Secrets of Hypnosis". We've had a great response to the audios, but you need the visual component to take your skills to the next level - you need to see what I'm responding to, so we've included more than 20 live demos (as well as hundreds of covert examples) to ensure that you'll be discovering things on the third viewing that were invisible the first time through.

Discover how you can start watching them within days, & take advantage of our special launch offer & instalment plan so you can afford them easily by clicking here


Have a great week!

Best wishes
Jamie