HYPNOTIC COACHING— I

Questions: Can a Coach use hypnosis while coaching? Is that allowed? Is it ethical? If a coach uses hypnosis, does he or she need to let the client know? Does hypnotic language patterns count as “hypnosis?” How should a coach use hypnosis, when, and why?

Well, to begin with, from the NLP perspective about hypnosis (which you would have learned in NLP Practitioner course), all communication is hypnosis. It is? How is it? What does that mean? It reveals part of the essence of communication, of conversations, of how we use language and what language (linguistics) does to us (in our bodies as our neurology processes it).

The very nature of words and language is such that when you talk about something and it is not immediately present where you are with your client (for example, when you talk about your client’s job, spouse, children, boss, future, home, money, etc.), to “make sense” of the conversation, your client has to “go inside” his or her mind and see, hear, smell, taste, and feel those things. Your client transitions from the outside world to the inside world. That’s a trance; that’s hypnosis.