THE TRANCE CALLED A COACHING CONVERSATION

“Any conversation that is really absorbing can entrance people without them necessarily recognizing their own trance state.” (Hypnotic Realities, Rossi and Erickson, p. 308)

When you coach and when you initiate a coaching conversation as a highly focused conversation that engages a client’s focused attention— you have simultaneously initiated a trance state. After all, that’s what trance is— a highly focused internal state (inwardly focused). In most trance states, you turn inward to your meanings, beliefs, understandings, expectations and it is to those things that you get lost in. There are some trance states where a person turns outward and like a laser-beam focuses on a single object— playing tennis, climbing a wall, reading a book, etc.