The Predictive Mind Blog

Past-life regression refers to a method used in hypnosis or guided imagery in which a person is led to imagine, remember, or experience as if they had lived previous lives. For some, it is a spiritual experience; for others, a therapeutic method; and for some, simply an interesting phenomenon of the mind.

I walk through a quiet hall and stop in front of a painting. The label beside it says NOW. I look at the painting, but I cannot see anything. My first thought is that my vision has not focused properly. I clean my glasses, adjust my position and look again. It does not help. There is no image on the...

In deep self-hypnosis, the process may be interrupted when the mind checks location, time and control. This text describes a dissociative "double" technique in which the controlling mind is given a task and a place inside the image — so it no longer needs to bring awareness back to the room.

I became interested in the systems-theoretical idea of the smallest change in the 1980s. The idea immediately struck me as significant: if a system is in balance, it does not necessarily have to be changed by force. Sometimes a small, precisely placed change is enough to force the whole system to reorganize itself. Around the same time, a handout...

Hypnosis, Erickson and Clean Language

Hypnosis can be understood as a skillful way of working with the mind's natural tendency to predict, adjust and reorganize experience. Through examples from literature, music, therapy and Milton H. Erickson's work, this article explores hypnosis as a precise use of expectation rather than a mysterious state.

Conversational hypnotherapy is not based on the client merely following the therapist's instructions. At its core is the client's gradual connection with their own experience: the body, emotions, images, pauses, and those not-yet-named moments in which a problem begins to take shape. This can be called inner rapport. When the client no longer...

Why do people become tense, stay awake, repeat old patterns of behaviour or begin to succeed only when their experience of their own possibilities changes? The Predictive Mind blog explores hypnosis, suggestion, mental coaching and interaction from a perspective in which human beings do not merely react to the world, but live continuously through...