Time Distortion

What is time distortion?

Time Distortion is a deep trance phenomenon in which the individual experiences time in different ways; our perception of time either slows down or speeds up.

Examples of unconscious use are when we're stood in a line at, say, the airport, and it feels like it's taking forever to get anywhere. It feels like hours have gone past, only to look at your watch and see that it's been merely minutes! Time almost always feels slow when we experience something unpleasant, and almost always fast when we experience pleasure.

Fortunately for us this is a skill that can be learned consciously and then used unconsciously to our advantage.

Some examples of people using time distortion for their own benefits include: racing drivers, and jet fighter pilots. Could you imagine anyone in a similar position not using time distortion? There's just no way they would have control over their super fast machines, so the goal is not to slow the machines down, but to speed your perception of time up. The result is more control, just like if the thing was going slow. Because you see, speed, as we all know, is relative. Something is only fast or slow in relation to something else - us! Or rather how we perceive it, and we can certainly change it. Indeed we have to in some situations, like the ones mentioned. It is often a matter a life or death when dealing with the speed of our reactions. In any kind of life-threatening situation the ability to control one's sense of time is vital, it's an absolute requirement. Martial Arts and combat also utilizes techniques in speeding up or slowing down time, responding to punches and kicks, dodging and weaving fast enough to avoid getting a battered face. And in martial arts, speed determines the winner, so control is a necessity. Or how about if a car comes speeding down the road at you? Fortunately most of the time our unconscious responds using time distortion alerting us to get the hell out of there, saving our lives. Some people aren't so lucky, though.

Now, I'm not saying this will prevent any and all accidents, because accidents happen all the time, and unfortunately the outcome is not always the one we want. But it can definitely help, and to me any help with saving mine or other peoples lives is very important. If only we could install our reactions before the thing happens, kind of like a pre-cognitive protective reaction that automatically happens!

In less serious situations, though, it's also used by baseball players, speeding up their reaction to the oncoming ball travelling at 90mph. Meditation, where the world seemingly slows right down to the point of being able to hear one's own heartbeat, and even the faintest sounds one wouldn't normally hear. And just watching as life floats by so slowly.

Can it be used consciously?

Yes. If Muhammad Ali didn't go into a state of time distortion, he wouldn't have been throwing such fast punches because nobody learns to throw fast punches by moving their arm quicker and quicker... they do it by changing it in their mind, their imagination.

 Look effortless, doesn't it?

Ali's secret, though, is not that he was so fast, but that his reactions were much faster and controlled than his opponents. He slowed his opponents punches down, and sped his up. What he did - in his mind - was complete the full punch or manouvre before his opponent even began to move! Bruce Lee was also well known for his speed. I’m sure if you put a brain scan on Muhammad Ali before these fights and during them, he doesn't seem to be getting amped up. He actually becomes calmer as they go along. Part of the reason he won fights with people that were bigger, stronger and faster than him, he would figure out I've got to get the guy to wear himself out a bit. So he taunted them and told jokes to them and made fun of them and pissed them off because the angrier they got, the slower they got. The calmer he got the faster and more controlled he was.

Time Distortion is also particularly useful for business; getting as much done in the shortest time possible; for finishing within deadlines, for example. It's pretty fun for reading too. Imagine being able to read twice as much in half the time?

How do I use it?

In our visual field we have peripheral vision, the outside, which everyone has heard of, and we also have what's called fovic vision or center of gaze, which is of course what we see right in front of us, what our eyes focus on. With time distortion we slow down or speed up (in our imagination/during trance) our peripheral vision, and then do the opposite with our fovic vision.

When we do it consciously, we do it before the thing we want to alter our responses to. You've seen bobsledders do it before they set off, visualizing the course, changing the pressure of their body against the sled in relation to the oncoming corners, anticipating each and every bend... but in a calm, relaxed and controlled way.

You could exercise your muscles ‘till you're blue in the face and some old Tai-Chi guy will come and poke you in the eye and knock you out, who hasn’t exercised in years because he has control over time. He can move so fast because, to him, it’s moving normally. Now you drive down the motorway and you’re going 70 miles an hour, you pull off into a 30 mile an hour zone, you feel like you're crawling, you feel like you’re going 2 miles an hour. It’s not because the world is moving faster or slower, it’s because you’ve mentally adjusted because you’ve got used to it. Now this, neurologically, by the way, is based on the difference between peripheral vision and fovic vision. You have three kinds of receptors in the eye. You have ones that do shade, ones that do colour and ones that do movement. In the peripheral vision, they’re mostly designed to notice movement. When you’re driving down the road and everything is going through your peripheral vision very fast but the road looks exactly the same because you’re just looking ahead of the car at the road, that stillness here and the movement there creates the state of time distortion. So when you start to drive at 25 miles an hour you don’t feel like you’re going 25.

So, once you've learned how to go into a trance (which you should by now, first by identifying trance states, and then becoming aware of it happening in you), visualize doing the thing you want to change your reactions to, and for speeding up reactions: imagine the central image, the thing you're doing, going really really fast, and your peripheral image going either normal speed, or slower. One good trick to use is having a clock in the image, with its hands going super fast or super slow. You can also use a digital clock, such as on a laptop, watch, or the screen in front of you on a plane, and so on. Adding people or traffic to the image is helpful too.

Try this. Stare into each of the images for a couple of minutes and see how things change for you.

If nothing happens for you, don't worry. You can use these images in your imagination. Just remember to use both peripheral and central vision when speeding up or slowing down images.

As with everything it does take a bit of practice, so keep at it until you get the hang of it and it becomes automatic, and remember it only really works while in a trance, so if you're doing time distortion while fully conscious, then the thing you want to change your reactions to probably won't be much different than usual, and if it is, then you were probably in a trance!

Another extreme example from The Matrix again (see Synesthesia)...

Keep in mind that the average bullet travels at 1700mph (2.5x faster than sound), so if that image played at full speed, you wouldn't see a thing. All of it happens in a blink of an eye, but obviously his reactions sped up to the point of dodging bullets.

And last but not least

(Consult your doctor or physician before attempting to dodge bullets. But seriously, don't try this at home, or on a rooftop in New York.)

I recommend reading Time Distortion in Hypnosis: An Experimental and Clinical Investigation by Milton Erickson for more insight.

“If your world isn't moving a hundred times faster than your client, then you’re not going to see the other person’s patterns. You won’t have the time to observe them or replay their behavior to detect their patterns.” - Richard Bandler