Is Clean Language A Kind Of Hypnosis?

Is Clean Language a kind of hypnosis? International hypnosis trainer Igor Ledochowski certainly thinks so. He also thinks it’ll make any hypnotist’s life much easier! Check out his views in the video transcript below.

Judy: With me today is Igor Ledochowski from the Hypnosis Training Academy – hello Igor.

Igor: Hello, it’s very nice to be here, thank you for having me on this call.

Judy: Thank you for coming, because I’m really curious… I know that you’re interested in Clean Language as a hypnotist and I just wondered if you would tell us a bit about why?

Igor: OK, so I got into hypnotism many years ago – maybe initially just to help myself with things and then later on to help others with their stuff as well.

And early on in my career I came across this fascinating man called Milton Erickson, many people have heard of him and he was he was just the this magical figure, like the Mr Miyagi man in The Karate Kid movie. He’s like Mr Miyagi, he did these weird things that really really worked and made profound changes in people’s lives. And I wanted to know how do you do that.

He was a big story teller, and part of what he did in the end of his career was tell a lot of stories that people would listen to and then ask ‘what the heck’s he telling me about this for? Pine nuts? What?’ But then weirdly their life would improve would get better.

And so I really had this big interest in and symbolism and metaphors and storytelling as part of that tradition of healing and and improving life. And I searched all round, looked at the different places that talk about symbolism, especially for therapeutic and influence purposes, and one day I came across the idea of Clean Language – actually a colleague of mine introduced me to it.

At first I thought it was just some rebranded technique or whatever so I wasn’t really, I have to admit, massively interested.

But when I actually first got to see it in action, and the questions that elicit the metaphors and bring them out, I was really blown away.

Because it is a really elegant model, really simple to understand, very easy to do especially when you have a bit more experience in this sort of change work field in general. And you get these wonderful symbols and metaphors and get to the inner life of someone, the inner landscape I like to call it, really quickly, really easily.

So my life as a hypnotist is much much easier understanding Clean Language, and the questions that get to these symbols because then my work as as a hypnotist is much easier down the road because of that. Does that kind of make sense?

Judy: It does. I’m curious about that ‘easier’ and – what kind of easier? In what kind of circumstances is your life as a hypnotist easier because of Clean Language?

Igor: Sure, I want for first of all I’d say its easier across the board. My initial interest was storytelling – how do I tell a story that is going to have this deep emotional impact on someone to help them transform? That was my initial interest and at first I went to I went to like all kinds of places, I went to improvisational theatre, I learned a lot of really important things there.

And I fell into the trap, initially, that I am the one that has to do all the work. I have to work out the metaphor, got to interview the client about their life, and figure out all the stuff is going on inside them, then write up stories that fit that life pattern, then translate those stories to disguise them a bit from the conscious mind… that’s an awful lot of work.

And it’s rewarding work, don’t get me wrong, it’s useful to do that and I’m not discouraging anyone from doing that.

But when you come across Clean Language – well, it just turns the whole equation on its head, because I don’t have to do the work any more. The client does it for me!

I just ask a few questions, I get curious, I persist a little bit and they’ll give me such rich material and it’s all there – symbolism and analogies and metaphors that then I can either take away and weave into my stories, because they actually construct the story right in front of me without me having to do any work.

Or, sometimes in the act of just asking about the stories I want to use for the hypnotic work later on, the problem itself shifts there’s something new comes in – and this is actually very often, you know, I’m sure you’re not surprised by this – so that I get a little disappointed because I don’t get to tell my stories anymore, they have already done it for me.

So this is the kind of easier I mean. I don’t have to spend hours ahead of time preparing the perfect set of stories and metaphors. I can let the live moment bring it out and just deal with what’s there in front of me.

And so its much more fun! It’s more like, you know, I don’t know if you used to do this as a kid but I used to love the Saturday morning cartoon shows that were on TV, because I could just plonk down, watch, be entertained and its just fun, right? And it feels a lot more like that doing work with people now I just get to sit down, instead of a TV I have a human face TV, and and when they bring out their stories like this, it’s interesting for me.

So it’s not like I have to force myself to do the work and that little nagging feeling in the back of my mind that says ‘what the heck do I do now?’ well that is not there, because I don’t have to do anything.

I just let them keep telling their stories, so to speak, and life just gets easier in that sense.

And that was a that was a huge shift for me.

Then the second stage from that is unexpected was a nice benefit shall we say, is it helps me with my own life as well, being more aware of my metaphors where, especially in times where I suffer where my life isn’t as as well the coin a phrase as clean or simple as I’d like it to be, it allows me to start questioning things along the lines of ‘how am I perceiving this?’

And I think metaphors are very powerful lens through which to evaluate your own life and see is this is this is the life I want or have I made a mistake and been caught up in, I don’t know, some media-induced idea of what life should be like, or someone else’s idea and maybe you know my parents said something to me when I was younger that I kind of assumed to be true and then I’m thinking well actually wait a second, is this really true or not? And and it allows me to kind of create more self-alignment.

And then again when I’m more aligned with the kind of metaphors that my life goes by, my life feels easier too, it flows more easily that the stresses that I have dissolve more quickly as a result.

So that was an ‘unadvertised bonus’ shall we say that I discovered whilst getting more curious about metaphors in general and Clean Language specifically as a tool for getting at that. Does that help?

Judy: It does, thank you And so for you, as an individual, for yourself, it makes life easier?

Igor: Totally.

Judy: And more flowing?

Igor: Yeah.

Judy: And for you as a hypnotist it makes change work more fun because it’s just like watching the cartoons on Saturday morning?

Igor: Right exactly. I mean, who doesn’t like to be entertained! And the idea that I don’t have to work really hard to get change with people but can just actually enjoy the conversation – that’s big. That’s actually a very big deal, I think.

And I think if if you’ll realize that doing change work can be a lot easier and a lot less stressful than people initially think I think the whole world would be a better place because more people would be doing it.

I mean, imagine a world in which having Clean Language conversations was just a social norm -wouldn’t that be much easier place to live in?

Judy: Absolutely, I know a couple of companies where that is the case and they sound like wonderful places to work.

Igor: Absolutely.

Judy: And is there anything else that you would like to say about the relationship between hypnosis and Clean Language?

Igor: Yeah, I think the relationship I think is a very deep one. I personally view Clean Language as a subset of hypnosis. It’s a specialty within hypnosis, right? Some people like instant inductions and something like stage hypnosis some people like Ericksonian style hypnosis something like Elmanian hypnosis. And I think Clean Language firmly belongs as one of those categories within that.

It does what I think all hypnosis does. My idea of hypnosis is a direct communication with someone’s unconscious so that you can then negotiate with the unconscious for a better life essentially. Right?

I think Clean Language fits that bill per cent, because whilst it looks like you’re talking to the other person on a more conscious level, they sound and act very much like they’re in a conversation, you hit these what I call unconscious moments, these moments where they suddenly go, ‘what did he just say?’ or ‘what did he just ask?’ and suddenly you see all the classic trance signals occurring their eyes may dart around, they may stare off into space, that the physiology gets more flaccid, their temperature goes up, they’re clearly processing stuff inside themselves so you just hit hypnotic a gold at that point, right?

So I think Clean Language is a fundamentally hypnotic process. I think it reaches unconscious territory very very quickly and much more easily much with much less guess work then some of the more classic hypnotic techniques have come across.

And again the the key thing is ease of use, right? It’s easy to use. I know there’s a lot of subtleties within it but within a couple of hours I think people get the grasp of the basics and maybe couple of years they can get the subtleties of a lifetime but this is what we like about any discipline it’s it’s something that’s easy enough to understand a 10-year-old should be able to understand it and a 100-year-old should still be fascinated with the depth and the layers that are within that. I think Clean Language really fits that bill.

And as part of the the category of hypnosis itself I think it’s a beautiful contribution to the field that I think will take it very very far if people pay attention to it.

• What do you think? Please comment below.

• If you’re interested in combining Clean Language and Hypnosis check out my workshop with James Tripp, details here: http://judyrees.co.uk/store/cleanlanguage4hypnotists/