Rapport

Everyone experiences some degree of anxiety when they come to the edge of their comfort zone. The first experience of seeing a Hypnotherapist may sometimes be an additional cause of anxiety in itself.

One way to reduce anxiety is to create good rapport with the Client. Rapport can be achieved quite quickly if we observe and match the clients preferred modalities, i.e. visual, auditory or kinaesthetic. The dominant modality can be found by noticing the kind of words they choose and by the eye movements they make in response to certain questions. When we look down we are usually retrieving sensations ... kinaesthetic information, when we look up we are usually reconstructing a visual image, glances to left or right indicate the use of auditory information.

We can try to include more visual imagery for the visual client, who would respond to the question "Does that look right to you?". We refer to sensations with the Kinaesthetic person, "Does that feel right to you?" The auditory person would respond best to "Does that sound right to you?"

From a therapists viewpoint it is useful to become familiar with the modalities we don't use so often in order to step out of our own habits and stereotypes and improve our dynamics in each area.

We could take up an activity or hobby related to the modaliteis we use less frequently. If our kinaestheic awareness is not so well developed, we might try Sailing, or Diving for example, which would help to develop an increased awareness of the sense of balance or a sensitivty to the wind direction.

This can be useful if we are constructing a guided visualisation, a situation in which an awareness of the Clients primary modality and the use of the preferred words for that modality would enhance the experience.