Calibration

Next we'd like to spend some time teaching you what we call calibration exercises. Calibration refers to the process by which you tune yourselves to the nonverbal signals that indicate a particular state in a particular person. Throughout this workshop you have all been calibrating yourselves to recognize the signs of altered states in another person. Some of those signs will be fairly universal, while others will only be useful with a particular person.

In a way everything we're teaching you in this seminar can be summed up in three statements. To be an effective communicator you need to: I) know what outcome you want, 2) have the behavioral flexibility to vary what you are doing to get the outcome, and 3) have the sensory experience to know when you've got the response that you want.

Most of what we've taught you so far is designed to give you specific ways to vary your behavior in order to get the results you want. We suggest that you think of it in this way: The meaning of your communication is the response you get. If you use this as a guiding principle, you will know that when the response you get is not the one you want and expect, it's time to vary your behavior until you get it. We teach many specific ways to do this, and when those don't work, we suggest you try something else. If what you are doing is not working, then any other behavior has a better chance of getting the response you want.

If you don't have enough sensory experience to notice the response that you're getting, you won't have a way of knowing when you've succeeded or failed. You see, sometimes people ask me if I ever work with the deaf and the blind. I tell them "Yes, always."

We use calibration exercises to increase your sensory acuity. Your ability to notice minimal nonverbal responses will dramatically increase your ability to be an effective hypnotist in particular, and an effective communicator in general.

When Frank, a friend of mine, was about eighteen or nineteen years old, he was a very good Golden Gloves boxer. He was also supporting his family by working as a janitor at a state mental hospital. As he walked around on the wards, he would shadow box just to stay in shape for boxing.

On one ward there was a catatonic who had been in the same position for two or three years. Every day the personnel stood him up at the end of his bed and locked him onto it. He had catheter tubes and feeding tubes and everything. Nobody had been able to make contact with this man. Once as Frank walked by on an errand, shadow boxing as usual, he noticed that this guy responded to his boxing with little flinches in his head and neck. This was a major response for this guy. So Frank ran down to the nurses' station and pulled out the guy's file. Sure enough, he had been a professional prize fighter before he became catatonic.

How would you make contact with a prizefighter? Any professional has to make certain motor programs automatic, just as most of you have automated driving a car until it functions as an unconscious program. In the boxing ring there are so many things you have to do that you need to make most of what you do unconscious. Your conscious attention can then be used to notice what's going on in the situation. My friend went back and started shadow boxing with this guy, and he quickly came out of the catatonic altered state that he'd been in for some years.

Woman: Did he start boxing when Frank started shadow boxing?

Yes of course. He didn't have a choice, because those were programs that he had practiced for years and years.

The main point of this is that my friend was able to notice the responses that he was getting. That made it possible for him to use his behavior to amplify them. If you don't notice the responses you are getting, everything else we're teaching you will be worthless.

Exercise 8

We want to start with a fairly easy calibration exercise to increase your ability to make sensory discriminations. Pair up and ask your partner to think of someone he likes. As he does this, watch for small changes in his breathing, posture, muscle tonus, skin color, etc. Then ask your partner to think of someone he dislikes, again watching what changes occur. Have him go back and forth between thinking of the person he likes and the one he dislikes until you can clearly see the differences between his expressions.

Next, ask a series of comparative questions in order to test your calibration. Ask "Which one is taller?" I don't want him to tell you the answer. Your job is to watch his response and then tell him which one it is.

Any comparative question will work for this: "Which one have you seen most recently?" "Which one has darker hair?" "Which one is heavier?" "Which one lives nearer to you?" "Which one makes more money?"

When you ask a question, your partner will go inside to process the question and get an answer. He may first consider the person he likes, then consider the person he doesn't like, and finally think of the person who is the answer to the question. So you may initially see some back and forth responses, and then you will see the response that answers the question. The answer will be the response you see just before he comes back out and looks at you or nods his head to indicate that he has determined the answer internally.

When you've guessed correctly four times in a row, switch roles with your partner. Take about five minutes each.

*****

As I went around the room, I noticed that most of you were doing very well. In fact, for some of you this was too easy. This will vary considerably from person to person, because some people are much more expressive than others. If you round your task too easy, there are several things you can do to make this something you can learn from.

One thing you can do is to artificially limit the information that you are receiving. If it's easy for you to discriminate differences on the basis of facial changes, use a notebook or something else to cover your partner's face. See if you can make the same discrimination by watching changes in his chest or his hands, or some other part of his body.

Another thing you can do is to ask about more neutral subjects.

"Think about a chair that you have in your home." "Mow think about a chair that you have in your office." This will also make the task a challenge again. Another way is to find someone who is generally less expressive. His responses will be less obvious.

On the other hand, if you didn't notice any differences in your partner when thinking about the two people, you can do something to make the task easier. Ask him to think of the most obnoxious, disgusting person he has ever met in his life. It helps if you do this with a congruent tone of voice. Then ask him to think of the person whom he loves most dearly in the whole world. This will exaggerate the differences between his responses, and make it easier for you to detect them. You could also find someone who is more expressive.

The point of this is to do whatever is necessary in order to make the task difficult enough so that it's just beyond what your capabilities were in the past. If you do that, you will learn the most, and increase your sensitivity most quickly.