John Burton - Hypnotic Language: Its Structure and Use

Imagine meeting someone on the street or in a coffee shop, or at your office tomorrow who whispers something important to you. They take you aside for just a moment and say,

You can, by just saying some words, send people into wild and wonderful places and give them altered experiences, and possibly change their lives, empower them with new abilities, and much more.

Would you believe that person? Would such magic and power seem possible? By just talking?

There is a language that makes this possible. We call it the language of trance. Such language invites us out of any present moment and into a state of the mind where we go inside and see, hear, feel, smell, taste and experience an altered reality. Did I say, altered? Thats probably over-stating it. Different may be more accurate. We call this state hypnosis yet that too miscommunicates more than it communicates. Because, as Dr Burton will show in this book of language patterns, we cannot not experience trance-states . To think about another time and place is to transition out of this moment and to hallucinate another time, whether past or future.

That language hypnotizes, you know well when you think about it. Any good storyteller, minister, mother, novel, etc. can invite us out of the present and into a world constructed in our mind. From the outside all of this seems mysterious. Even spooky. From the outside the person seems to be asleep (hence the word hypnotism ). But from the inside, ah, from the insideyour mind is never more alert and awake, more in control and expansive. And it all occurs upon the wings of language.

But how does language do this? Wherein lies the magic? What kinds of words facilitate this near magic-like process? This book will first of all give you an extensive understanding of some of the mental or cognitive processes that make it so and then will put into your hands some of the most powerful hypnotic language patterns. In this work, John uses his extensive knowledge of Neuro-Linguistics and Neuro-Semanticshis field of expertisechild developmental psychology, Gestalt psychology and even Meta-states.

Meta-states? You know, a state of mind or emotion that relates to another state as when you begin to feel really curious about learning about hypnotic language patterns. The learning state is one thing, feeling excited and full of anticipation about your learning is a higher state. And now that you can go in and make sense of that, Im sure that you can just as easily appreciate your skills at feeling excited as you expect to expand your skills in the process of this learning, can you not?

If that doesnt invite you to trance out, we only have to add another level, or seven more. Each shift upwards invites you into a hypnotic state as the referents do not exist out there, but in there (imagine me pointing to your head, ah, another invitation to trance!). See, its inevitable. Accordingly, Dr Burton along with Dr Bob Bodenhamer have taken Meta-states as the newest NLP model and used it to articulate many new language patterns in the context of assisting people to make the kind of transformations in their mental maps that will give them a new lease on life.

Should you buy this book? Yes, of course, if youre interested in how language works its magic. Yes, if youre interested in becoming more playful with your language skills. Yes, if youre interested in inducing powerful states that can enable others to become more empowered and skilled, buy this book. In fact, it seems to me that from psycho-hypnotists, psychotherapists, coaches, consultants, to teachers, writers, trainers, marketers, advertisers, parents, lawyers, politicians, many will want to get their hands on this volume. But thats just a suggestion.

L. Michael Hall PhD
Colorado