Stephen Gilligan – Ericsonian Hypnosis & Generative Trance 12-Day Workshop, 2010 [MP3 Audio Version, 12 MP3s]

An 12 day Intensive in Generative Trance Work

Generative Trance is an experiential workshop for those interested in exploring trance and its relevance to creativity and change. Colloquially known for years as ‘Trance Camp’ this is a fantastic opportunity to work with people from a variety of backgrounds and professions; coaches, therapists, business leaders and people using the tools for personal growth and Transformation

This comprehensive training in Generative Trance is one of our core pathways to certifying with the IAGC as a Practitioner of Generative Change

Trance is seen primarily as a naturalistic learning state that occurs from within, not an artificial state created or controlled by an outside “hypnotist”. Generative Trance teaches skills for cultivating these higher states of consciousness for purposes of improved health, happiness, healing, and helpfulness to others. Generative Trance is open to those seriously interested in generative personal change and altered states of consciousness. It is not a workshop for receiving personal therapy or learning to do therapy with others; it is an experiential community for learning how to experience and utilize generative states of consciousness. It sees each trance as an experiment in consciousness, and shows how trance skills can allow those experiments to lead to many new patterns. The goal is to learn how to create a Generative Self capable of transforming one’s life in many powerful ways.

The Experience of Generative Trance has many dimensions. The course usually runs from 9 – 6 pm each day. Each day is filled with Dr. Gilligan’s talks, group trances, Dr. Gilligan’s work with volunteer clients, generative trance exercises with partners, and group discussions. The trances start out simple and short, and progressively deepen and extend into core pieces of transformational work. A group of experienced assistants is there to help as needed, and we all work to ensure that the group space is safe, intimate, and lots of fun. In addition to the main course, there are optional early morning chi Gong classes and optional evening events ( a 45 Minute movement practice „dance journey to self as well as presentations on related topics, and the last evening “trance follies” talent show).

Generative Trance is also known as ‘Trance camp’ which was aptly named by previous participants on Stephen’s summer residential programme. They felt the training to be a like an amazing and timeless “summer camp” where people gather to enjoy a safe and intensive transformational community experience.

Participants report profound and meaningful changes that extend far into the future!

Generative Trance Module 1: ‘A Process for Sustainable Creativity’

(6 This week focuses on Dr. Gilligan’s Generative Trance work as a way to deeply awaken creativity—in reaching goals, transforming problems, being “in love” with your life, and opening the imagination. The course is practical, stimulating, deeply experiential, and transformative. There will be many demonstrations, group trances, and practicing with partners. You will learn new ways to help yourself and others to live a successful and fulfilling life, to release long-standing limitations, and to move through each day with wonderment, awareness, and connection. It is based on Dr. Gilligan’s 40 years of experience in hypnosis, trance, meditation, martial arts, and creative change work. It is original, practical, transformative, and lots of fun.

Generative Trance is not the traditional trance where the conscious mind is “put to sleep” and the unconscious is programmed with external suggestions. A core underlying idea is that creativity is a conversation between two worlds—the “dreamer” or “visionary” world of the creative unconscious, and the “realist” and “practical” world of the conscious mind.

Each requires and completes the other, and Generative Trance helps you to forge the integrated consciousness that “includes yet transcends” both minds.

During this week, you will learn how, why, and when to use Generative Trance to create change in the three general life areas: professional (work) life, personal relationships (intimacy, family, friends), and self-relationship (body image, emotional history, “negative parts”).

In the Generative Trance model, we see how human realities are created through “identity maps”, and how generative trance can deeply change these maps for the better. In this workshop you will learn how to:

1. Identify the most important “dream life” or “positive goals” in a person’s life;

2. Identify the core “identity elements” that are needed for making that positive change;

3. Open a generative trance state that provides safety and high quality consciousness as a working base;

4. Connect to each experience, especially persistent “problems,” as a “resource” and “competency” that plays an integral, essential role in creative change;

5. “Download” the identify elements into the generative trance field, like a “quantum soup” holding many possibilities;

6. Activate the “creative self” to transform these elements into a generative map, so that the dream can be achieved;

7. Carefully ensure that the deep trance changes translate into the actual life reality; and

8. Apply Generative Trance work with individuals, personal relationships, and groups.

This is the newest development in Dr. Gilligan’s work. Come with a commitment to deep lasting change, and learn how to make your dreams come true. The training community deeply supports you in integrating this into your daily life. We hope and expect that you will come away from the training with an amazing sense of what’s possible for you and others in life.

Generative Trance Module 2: ‘A Method for Deep Identity Change.’

(6 Days)

This course explores how to use generative trance to make deep and lasting identity changes in individuals and relationship systems. GT sees creativity as the core dimension of human being and looks at how reality is created through filters (somatic, cognitive, and social). In this process, (identity) systems are the prototype filter; that is, we generate our realities via the (mostly unconscious) maps of who we are, and what the world is. These systemic filters can be held negatively (in neuromuscular lock) or generatively (in creative flow), resulting in either problems or positive solutions.

In the Generative Trance model, an Identity system has six dimensions:

(1) the present state;

(2) the intention or desired values;

(3) resources;

(4) obstacles;

(5) action ideas, and

(6) the underlying context in which all these dimensions are held (COACH or CRASH

We will see how Generative Trance can open a fluid and positive underlying conversational space, so that each identity dimension can be welcomed and moved into positive, fluid, and relationally connected constellations. The resulting generative state allows deep and sustainable identity changes to be made.

More specifically, we will see how each identity dimensions can be used in three general ways. First, a deeply each dimension can be used to develop a unique and client-based trance. Sensing these multiple entryways for trance development allows tremendous freedom in creating many different types of learning states and creative spaces, thereby enabling deep and meaningful changes.

Second, we will see how trance phenomena—age regression and progression, deep trance identification with another person, time distortion, somatic changes—are the generative versions of the underlying psychological modalities of identity construction. Thus, we create our reality through our relationships to time, memory, body, personal identity, etc.; when each of these dimensions is fluid, new realities and transformation of long-fixed realities can occur.

Third, the fluid connection to each dimension, as a “part and whole” of the identity matrix process, allows the development of specific transformational work that is deep and lasting. IN other words, we will see how a trance session can be used to realize major identity changes.

Taken as a whole, the Deep Identity Change model provides an in-depth exploration of the incredible positive changes that we human beings can make. You will learn a general framework, specific methods of generative trance, and numerous methods for transformational change (e.g., creating positive futures, transforming negative habits and addictions, pain control, positive intimacy, healing childhood wounds, and self-love).

The training is intensive and deep. You will learn a general framework, specific methods of generative trance, and numerous methods for transformational change (e.g., creating positive futures, transforming negative habits and addictions, pain control, positive intimacy, healing childhood wounds, and self-love)

Generative Trance sees life as a great journey of consciousness. Many people say this is one of the deepest life experiences they’ve ever had. We welcome you to such a process.

IAGC Certification in Generative Trance

This workshops is a certification course in Generative Trance certified by the IAGC.

On successful completion you will gain a certification as a ‘Practitioner of Generative Change in Generative Trance’ and be able to join the IAGC as a Professional Member

 (Additional requirements include testing and completed session work.)

The IAGC is the organization developed by Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts.

It should be noted that the requirements for licensing (and advertising) one’s self as a hypnotherapist vary by country and state/province.