Written by Pamela Gawler-Wright 

Stephen Gilligan is the world's foremost modeller of Milton Erickson. A member of that hallowed circle of individuals who were in the original Bandler/Grinder set at UCSC, he soon departed from the pure structuralist approach of fledgling NLP to study with the man himself. Having received five years of free hospitality in Milton's house, he never paid a penny for the tuition he received. Milton Erickson asked for just one thing in return; "Pass on what you have learned here". Pamela was there when Stephen was doing just that.

As you read this, I'd like to let you know that I thought of you, whoever you are, as I sat in a warm, fragrant room in an old farmhouse at the foot of the Cumbrian mountains. I wondered how reading this could offer you a drop of the soul's nectar that I was drinking in at that moment. How to cup it into words and serve it with a good, belly-filling helping of the practical experience that accompanied it? I can only offer your imagination an invitation.

Stephen Gilligan begins and ends his training days with poetry readings from the likes of Rumi, David Whyte and Rilke. "The language of hypnosis is a poetic language," he says. It weaves betwixt the grammatical chains of thinking and the sensory forms of physical knowing. It can behold complementary truths as existing at the same time. It is born of a blending of perceptual energies that comes from the moment by moment attendance to another's unique inner being, expressed through the fluent non-verbal language of their somatic intelligence. It comes from accepting everything offered by another and gently entering into their system with love and wonder. As I listen to these descriptions, Stephen's voice seems to be resonating in my heart. It is a definite physical sensation. I feel my mind coming to rest as if from a long journey. It is the same feeling I had the first time I accidentally found an obscure tape of an American psychiatrist called Milton H. Erickson. It feels like coming home.

This is Georgina's house. When the history of systemic NLP is written in years to come, I believe Long Close Farm, Keswick, will be remembered and will acquire its own mildly legendary status. For the last eight years, psychotherapist Georgina Evers has been opening her home and her heart to small groups of people to study with the neo-Ericksonian masters of the hypnotherapeutic arts. She has invited Stephen Gilligan, David Grove, Ernest Rossi, David Calof, Brian Roet and, by fascinating contrast, Michael Yapko, who have presented many residential intensives here, to groups of 18 or less people at a time. Her mission, supported by her partner of 30 years, Clive Barnes, is to share the dictum "Know Thyself".

Our group is a good mix of therapists and business people and the event is co-sponsored with Willie and Gill Banks of Calabor Training. I notice the broad variety of disciplines represented here, though nearly all have some level of NLP training. There is roughly a 50/50 representation of men and women - a welcome and rare balance. Georgina, Willie and Gill are themselves here and active participants. Willie's sponsorship of this work over the years has contributed, among others, to the growth of Stephen's reputation within and outside of the NLP community, extending this vital testimony to the teachings of Milton Erickson.

From the moment Stephen begins to speak something uncommon is happening in the room. A charisma that requires no tricks but reaches out in humble warmth seems to instantly draw us together in some field of collective energy. I have watched shamans and spiritual leaders do this, but this guy is quoting the Grateful Dead alongside Sam Keane, Bob Dylan and "Mission Impossible"! This easy, irreverent charm is not just the result of years of trying to be Milton Erickson (a quest that lead him to ride round campus in a purple wheelchair) but the effect of a human being reaching out from his authentic centre.

Born to a Californian Irish/Italian family, Stephen learned about hypnosis as a child, like many using dissociative trance to cope, in his case with an alcoholic father and the silent grief of a family who had lost three babies. At the age of eight the boy had an early experience of spontaneous "Trance Identification", letting his consciousness leap from his body into that of another, perceiving the infinite subjectivity of multi-framed reality. Back in his own identity, the eight-year-old had made a decision. He wanted to give his life to explore the eternal wonder of human experience - so he studied psychology.

At University California in Santa Cruz, his proficiency and interest in trance work lead to much extra curricular research, including the work of Raikov, a Soviet psychologist who had developed a procedure that he called "Artificial Reincarnation" 1. Stephen proposed to John Grinder that he, Stephen, do this process, identifying as Milton Erickson. Stephen is surprised by some people's impression that it was Bandler and Grinder who selected him and trained him to be Erickson for their own testing of their modelling project. He is aware of how much was his own living process and how much of his learning came directly from Erickson. "That old man set my soul on fire and I have never been able to put it out - though I've tried many times."

Following doctorate studies and his own psychotherapy practice, Stephen wrote several of the books that have become classics in the field 2. A period of tremendous personal challenge, including the death of his father, mobilised Stephen to realise that the behaviour that had won him attention and respect, that of modelling his personality utterly on Milton, was in some way detrimental to his own personal development. Years after Milton's death, Stephen was browsing through a book that Milton had given him and found an inscription in his handwriting: "Dear Stephen, Does it profit that after I depart I shall linger on?". It felt like a letter had been posted to him through time, "Which is just the kind of thing he would do". Stephen accepted finally that he had to do more than merely copy Milton, but to dare to take what he had learned right into his own being and allow it to be spoken in his, Stephen's, own voice, from his own soul. Milton had never much liked people trying to be him. His consistent message was to be what you are and be all that you, and only you, can be.

So he began to rework himself and his approach to Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and to develop his own expression of psychotherapy, what he calls "Self-Relations". This work has influenced many of the key figures in NLP, especially Stephen's old UCSC pal, Robert Dilts, who centralises the concept of personal and self-sponsorship. "Sponsorship" means "to pledge solemnly" and in the case of Self-Relations is a vow to use each and every experience a person is given to awaken them to the goodness and gifts of their being.

Stephen's work honours the original values of Erickson, Perls and Satir, in that ecology of process is prioritised over brevity and uniformity of procedure. None-the-less, Self-Relations can spark momentous breakthrough in a moment, as we on the course experienced. Although it may only involve one therapeutic intervention, its aim is to activate an ongoing process for the client, changing their relationship with themselves and offering new conscious and hypnotic life-skills.

Stephen explains that Self-Relations encourages an end to what he calls "self violence". Violence against the self occurs when we label symptoms, behaviour or uncomfortable feelings as "negative", "irrational", "destructive" and when we offer attacks upon ourselves in demonising these aspects of ourselves, trying to "get rid of it" or make it "disappear". In alignment with Erickson's core principle and resulting presuppositions, Self-Relations regards symptoms as expressions of vital healing process, and sees more artful solutions than psychic amputation. The act of "acceptance" is not an analytical reconciliation to an inevitable dissatisfaction - but a psychic act, offering peaceful sponsorship to the isolated and banished parts of ourselves, and other people. If this seems akin to Core Transformation 3 or six-step reframing 4, yes, the presuppositions are similar and the approaches are highly compatible. Both these processes however concentrate on translating the somatic signals (feelings, behaviour, symptoms) into cognitively acceptable forms and values. Self-Relations works to create an energetic bond between cognitive self and somatic self, bringing acceptance and sponsorship to and from each to each. (See Fig. 1)

The "fressen" energy (German; to eat like an animal) of the unstoppable, integrity of our natural, somatic self will take life and love however it can get it. Sponsoring and nurturing this energy with our human presence into "essen" energy (to eat like a person), liberates these energies into a relationship that fosters "human, artful expressions" 5. This creates what Stephen calls the Relational Self, which is "the experience of both selves simultaneously, without an identification with either" 6. It is also "a shared field with other persons, so that the deeper unity with others may be sensed and realised in many ways"7. The basic sensitivities, tools and precepts of Self-Relations are compatible to almost any therapy model and, I believe, a deep enhancement to the practice of any therapist, trainer or manager.

The principles and skills of Self-Relations are at once simple and complex, weaving many aspects of healing tradition into a multi-coloured whole, offering specific and general enhancements to a person's relational skills, communications and choices. Stephen's latest book "The Courage to Love: Principles and Practices of Self-Relations Psychotherapy" 8 is both a practical manual and a moving testimony to what it is to be human.

One of Stephen's key learnings from Milton was the difference in the healing property of associated trance compared to the escaping quality of dissociated trance. Though vital as part of a set of psychic choices and perceptual options, dissociation can become detrimental if this becomes a person's default response to uncomfortable emotion. Milton himself always said that he learned about hypnosis at a time when he had lost all capacity for speech or movement, due to a savage attack of polio, that he miraculously survived only to be completely paralysed. It was through the process of re-embodying his consciousness that the young Milton honed his extraordinarily receptive relationship skills, his tangible connection with his and other's somatic intelligence and mastery of the poetic language of the unconscious mind.

So, what if you are not Erickson and you don't have the good fortune to catch polio? The "Erickson Function" is born of skills and values and can be learned, says Stephen. Stephen describes hypnotherapy as "a performance art" because it requires "a moment by moment channelling of life force through the senses, accepting all of one's own and the other's human presence", and respectfully engaging with it through "the skills of love".

This is not "fast food" training. Buddhist and Taoist concepts are interwoven into the training, not as a mere intellectual icing, but as tangible, nourishing practices, making the fruit, nuts and grains of the cake. It is a relief to find a trainer in hypnotherapy who grounds the work in developing the body as refined instrument, demonstrating and coaching the use of voice as a directing of vibrational energy. Entering another's field requires respect and sensitive placing of physical and mental energy, with skills and flexibility that take practice and experience. Holding another safely, "Not too tight, not too lose" is a dynamic, changing relationship, guided by kinaesthetic sensitivity. A disciplined cultivation of "the terrible, pleasurable intensity" of refined sensory channels is vital to be witness to unconscious events and communications and to utilise them in a shared (between client and practitioner and between conscious and unconscious intelligence) redirection of energy. The mastery of these skills rests in the authentic, individual journey, of practitioner and client, to embrace all of our emotional and psychic energy, balancing them in a dynamic yet solid triad of tenderness, fierceness and playfulness. This enables one to extend one's energy to embrace another while remaining in a safe, centred and embodied state.

Stephen's mastery of the peaceful martial art of Aikido (literally: the way of reconciling the energy of differences or opposites) grounds the work in physical discipline, training the body/mind to natural flexibility in yin (accepting and holding energy) and yang (penetrative and redirecting energy). It is a very intimate experience within the group, without drifting into "touchy-feely hippyshit". The opportunity to touch and embrace the physical and relational fields offers a vital chance to explore through test and feedback the appropriateness of connection. Using human presence responsibly to sponsor support and interaction within the individual's process, rather than to control or fix them, requires a courage to love that comes from a place of grounding our own being into a safe sheathing of awareness.

Milton taught Stephen that "not all trances are created equal". Some are restorative of the communication between cognitive (conscious) and somatic and intuitive (unconscious) intelligence. This fosters the flexible, infinite potential of wisely, comfortably "not knowing" (8). Other kinds of trances may be the very basis of problematic conditions, when the conscious mind loses rapport with the vital, non-linear, somatic multi-intelligences that can hold different truths simultaneously and thus open new possibilities that the conscious mind cannot make sense of yet. If separated from the creative and healing state of paradox, the cognitive intelligence gets boxed into "rational" either/or thinking, claiming alternatives "don't make sense". It gets confused by other complementary truths, banishing the communications of the unconscious mind ("symptoms") from the domain of what is considered to be useful and good.

Stephen asserts that operating as a therapist from the delusion of "objective", disassociated diagnosis, what NLPers would call "camping out in 3rd position", is unethical. Abuse can occur when a therapist, trainer or manager - self-identified as outside of the system (group or client/practitioner) - protects their cognitive consciousness in model and theory, from a rigidly dissociated place. From this position a person is separated from the emotional resources and other somatic intelligences that are the riches of the highly sensitive feedback machine that is our mind/body. It is worth considering how an NLPer can occasionally retreat into this dissociated state, from where they can mistake the labelling and procedures, that are the content of the NLP map, for the process occurring within the territory - the group or client's process. Thus separated and boxed in, the dissociated self perceives through a static set of thickly intellectualised filters. The response then received from the system may be confusion, conflict and an uprising of ecological resistance.

It has at times reflected unfavourably on NLP, and it frustrates many who identify as Ericksonian Psychotherapists, that some people have mistaken the surface structure language patterns of Bandler and Grinder's "Milton Model" for Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. This perception is a bit like believing that putting on a grass skirt will teach you all you need to know to be a hula dancer, or using trigonometry to dance a waltz. On reading the subsequent books Bandler and Grinder wrote on Erickson, Gregory Bateson, who had made the original introduction, said he regretted having done so9. Bateson believed that Bandler and Grinder had studied his friend Milton's work from a Western epistemology, of observer operating on the system from outside. It had been presented therefore as an external ego applying a bag of tricks onto a system (the client). Bateson observed Milton's work instead as entering so thoroughly and receptively into the client's system, that by the time he acted within it he was not an ego separate from the system but actually woven into the whole, part of its ecological complexity.

Thankfully for us in the NLP community, the modelling of Erickson did not end with Bandler and Grinder. Modelling itself has been greatly developed and refined beyond the, then fashionable, confines of structuralism and the opaque labels born of a hybrid of various traditional and radical schools of linguistics. We have so much to thank Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier for, and those who have since contributed to the cultivation of excellence in modelling. Modelling is a natural human behaviour that, previous to NLP, was largely instinctive and intuitive. Modern NLP has recognised that complex systems have dynamic and multi-levelled structures - and Erickson was a complex system. All the more so because of the dynamic system within which he joined, with each and every one of the unique individuals who were his clients and trainees, each one their own dynamic and multi-levelled system.

I sympathise with Bandler and Grinder's task. Attempting to transcript my tapes of Stephen's workshop defies the laws of punctuation and a voice that beat in my breast bone like a funky bass line is almost imperceivably soft on recording. Yet to be there was to feel like the listeners had become the melody and cadence of a song that each member of the group had a sense was being sung to them. Looking round the room of participants it is like a flashback to the shaky videos of Erickson's workshops. Each is in their own trance, some eyes closed, some prized open, some with tears rolling down their face and I don't think it's because they are unhappy. Stephen loves to talk and he talks well. As we listen we are not passive, but our activity is internal, individual and multi-layered.

Stephen offers cogent processes, self-monitoring tools and a wealth of exercises to develop self and to offer as interventions, suitable for work with individuals, couples and groups. This is process-lead training, where adherence to the course content comes secondary to the learning opportunities that come up through the issues presented by the group's exploration of the material. Demonstrations of electrifying hypnotic and healing intensity are offered and emphasise that Stephen's "Self-Relations" is more a process of activated principles rather than a scripted procedure. Extra-curricular videos (for the really keen) help to highlight the individualised response of each client and the flexibility required of the practitioner. For those who have a more procedural metaprogramme, a clear and comprehensive manual of processes is part of the package and I have found this to be a useful, cognitive reminder and a valuable workbook to continue my exploration.

A profound level of personal healing work was promoted through this workshop and Stephen served as an exemplar in his tireless demonstration of sponsoring the group members throughout the four days and nights. I feel rejuvenated with my work as a therapist, more deeply affirmed of my values and beliefs as a Hypnotherapist and NLPsychotherapist, and pushed through to another level of refining my skillsbase. In the last few weeks I've witnessed the breakthroughs of several clients using Self-Relations. To see some previously very stuck individuals be able to quickly absorb the skills of Stephen's processes into their own individualised method, with resulting breakthrough outcomes, convinces me that this is learning that can and will be passed on.

Pamela Gawler-Wright is a therapist, writer and trainer in Neuro-Linguistic and Ericksonian Psychotherapy and related subjects. You can e-mail her on pam@beeleaf.com or telephone BeeLeaf on 020 8983 9699 or visit www.beeleaf.com for seminar information.
For information on forthcoming seminars at Long Close Farm, telephone Georgina Evers on 017687 72851.
For information on events from Calabor Training, call/fax Willie and Gill Banks on 01228 599899, e-mail: 106162.1050@compuserve.com 106162.1050@compuserve.com
Stephen Gilligan will be hosted by the Northern School of NLP in May 2002, tel: 01254 824504

For a complete list of residentials, seminars, workshops, books and videos of Stephen Gilligan visit www.stephengilligan.com

I hope this article moves you to wish to explore more of Stephen Gilligan's work. You can call Georgina Evers on 017687 72851 to receive details of his next workshop in England. You can call the Northern School of NLP on 01254 824504. Please let people know, when you inquire about their workshops, seminars and other products, that you heard of the workshop through BeeLeaf and this article.