Trance-formations
John Grinder & Richard Bandler
Real People Press
This is one of the classic books of NLP, a book about hypnosis by the founders John Grinder and Richard Bandler. Like many books in the field of NLP, it has been compiled from live seminars, but in this case the editing and ordering of the material has been much better carried out than in similar seminar-derived books. The editor, Connirae Andreas, is herself an important figure in the NLP community and has developed important processes such as the Core Transformation.
This team succeeded in producing one of the best NLP-related books on the subject of hypnosis. Even after reading many more recent books on the same topic, I always find that returning to Trance-formations is a rewarding experience.
The book is based roughly on a three-day seminar on hypnosis – how to induce it, recognize it, and utilize it. The exercises are exploratory in nature. Rather than telling the participants (and the reader) how to do things, the exercises are designed to allow the participants to learn the concepts experientially as they carry them out in small groups. Because of the experiential nature of this book, it is definitely better to read it and carry out the exercises with another person. Every person enters trance and altered states in their own unique way and it is really only through extensive practice that a person can learn to be a competent hypnotist in any situation.
The book/seminar is primarily based on the authors’ modeling of the highly regarded hypnotherapist, Milton Erickson. Bandler and Grinder wrote several books about the linguistic patterns of Erickson, the patterns that are known in NLP as the Milton Model. The Milton Model is given at the end of the book in an appendix along with other useful information such as eye accessing cues. But the book also goes far beyond the linguistic patterns of the earlier books by offering exercises and information on how to use your sensory acuity to notice the signs of trance and how to utilize it.
This book is now quite old, about 30 years old, and Bandler and Grinder have long since gone their separate acrimonious ways, but Trance-formations still stands as a fine testament to the rich collaboration that they shared, and it is a fine addition to the collection of anyone interested in NLP and its strong roots in hypnosis. It is generally available at a premium on Amazon or other book markets because it has become quite a collector’s item.
