Downtime

Most of us move through the day with our attention scattered. A little on what we see, a little on what we hear, a little on what we feel, and a lot on whatever is demanding our attention in the outside world. Very rarely do we deliberately direct our focus inward and truly explore our inner experience.

Downtime is the term in NLP for a light, inwardly focused trance state. It occurs when your conscious awareness is turned almost entirely toward your internal world – your images, sounds, sensations, tastes, and smells. It is not a deep hypnotic trance, but a gentle shift of attention that can be used to:

  • Initiate or deepen trance
  • Support transderivational search (those inward “searches” for meaning or memory)
  • Increase patience, introspection, and receptiveness
  • Help you manage an interaction as a brief, light trance

In contrast, Uptime refers to an externally oriented state. In Uptime, your attention is primarily on the outside world – what you can see, hear, and feel around you – while still being informed by your internal experience. Uptime is “out there”; Downtime is “in here”.

The pattern below is a simple way of learning to enter Downtime deliberately and to train your internal sensory awareness.

You can use it as a personal exercise or adapt it directly for clients.

Step 1. Restrict the Environment

Downtime requires concentration, especially when you are learning it.

  • Choose a quiet, distraction-free environment.
  • Turn off notifications, put your phone away, and minimise interruptions.
  • Sit or lie comfortably, in a position you can maintain without effort.

The aim is to remove as many competing demands on your attention as possible so that you can direct your focus inward with ease.

Step 2. Internalise Focus Using Representational Systems

In this step, you deliberately turn your attention inward and explore each of your internal representational systems in turn.

The invitation is to attend to each mode as fully and as separately as possible. You are training your ability to:

  • Notice inner sounds (Auditory)
  • Notice inner images (Visual)
  • Notice inner feelings and bodily sensations (Kinaesthetic)
  • Notice taste (Gustatory)
  • Notice smell (Olfactory)

Move through the following sub-steps slowly.

a. Auditory – Inner Sounds and Voice

Begin with your internal sound world.

  • Notice your inner voice – the sound of your thoughts when they “speak” inside your head.
  • Become aware of any remembered sounds or imagined sounds that arise – music, voices, background noises.
  • Now, deliberately recall a specific memory and focus entirely on the sounds involved in that memory:
    • What was being said?
    • What tone of voice was used?
    • Were there background sounds – traffic, birdsong, music, machinery?

Let your awareness fill up with the auditory aspect of the memory, as if the sounds are the main “channel” you are tuned to.

b. Visual – Internal Images

Shift your focus now from sounds to images.

  • Gently set aside your attention to sound and bring your awareness to your inner pictures.
  • Notice any spontaneous images, colours, shapes, or scenes that arise.
  • Choose a specific memory and focus all your awareness on the visual aspect:
    • What can you see?
    • Are the images bright or dim, near or far, moving or still?
    • Are you looking through your own eyes (associated) or seeing yourself in the picture (dissociated)?

Allow the visual component to become the primary focus of your experience for a moment.

c. Feelings – Emotional and Physical Sensations

Next, focus on feelings, both emotional and physical.

  • Take a moment to notice what you are feeling in your body right now: pressure, temperature, and contact with the surface you are on. For example, how hard or soft is the chair or bed beneath you? Where does your body touch it most clearly?
  • Now recall a memory and direct your attention to:
  • The emotional feelings you had in that memory (happy, anxious, calm, excited, etc.).
  • The physical sensations you had at that time (tension, warmth, movement, heaviness, lightness).

As you do this, notice three different layers of feeling:

  1. What you felt emotionally and physically in the memory itself.
  2. What do you feel now about that memory (your present emotional response to it)?
  3. What does your body physically feel right now as you recall it?

Distinguishing these layers begins to refine your awareness and gives you more choice in how you respond to past experiences.

d. Taste – Internal Gustatory Experience

Now bring your awareness to taste.

  • Think of a memory of eating something you enjoyed – a favourite meal, a treat, a particular drink.
  • Notice that the memory includes several senses – perhaps you can see the food, feel its texture, hear the sounds around you – but this time, focus your attention entirely on the taste:
    • How does it taste on your tongue?
    • Is it sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or savoury?
    • Is it strong or subtle?

Notice also that taste is rarely just a single sensation. Much of what we think of as “taste” is linked to consistency and texture – chewiness, crunchiness, smoothness. Attend to these elements as part of the experience.

e. Smell – Internal Olfactory Experience

Finally, shift your awareness to smell.

  • Using the same or another food memory, now focus on the smells associated with it.
  • Notice how you can separate taste and smell in your awareness:
    • What aromas can you recall?
    • Are they strong or faint, sharp or gentle, pleasant or unpleasant?

Allow yourself to notice that you can attend to smell as a distinct channel, even though it often blends with taste in everyday experience.

Anchoring Downtime

Once you have experienced Downtime and explored your inner senses, you can anchor this state so that you can enter it more easily in future, or use it with clients as part of trance or awareness work.

A simple way to do this is:

  • As you are fully engaged with your internal sensory experience (having moved through the representational systems), gently fold your hands together.
  • Gradually increase the pressure of your palms pressing together while maintaining your Downtime focus.
  • Hold this pressure for a few moments, then slowly release it as you come back to a more neutral state.

By repeating this several times, “palms pressing together” becomes an anchor for the Downtime state. You can then:

  • Use this anchor when you want to create a basic trance or meditation.
  • Use it in any pattern that requires internal awareness, introspection, or transderivational search.

For hypnotherapeutic work, this becomes a handy, portable trigger for helping clients return quickly to a receptive, inwardly focused state.

Developing Internal Sensory Awareness

You can refine your skill with Downtime and with your internal senses by turning this into a regular practice.

Two useful extensions are:

1. Rotating Through Representational Systems

  • Take a simple, familiar task – for example, walking from one room to another.
  • In your mind, run through an imaginary sequence of doing this task.
  • As you do, deliberately rotate your attention through the representational systems, one at a time, in a sequence:
    • First, notice what you see.
    • Then, notice what you hear.
    • Then, notice what you feel in your body.
    • Then, notice any tastes or smells that might be present, however faint.

Do this several times and notice which system feels least clear or least developed. That “weakest” system is an area for further practice. Repeat the exercise, placing deliberate emphasis on that mode until it becomes more vivid and accessible.

2. Integrating All Senses at Once

Once you are comfortable focusing on each system separately, you can enhance your ability to integrate them:

  • Begin again with a simple memory or an imagined activity.
  • First, rotate through the senses more quickly, reducing the time you spend on each one.
  • Then, allow your awareness to expand to include all of them at once:
  • Seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling as a single blended experience.

You might think of this in the same way you adjust sub-modalities – playing with brightness, distance, clarity – except now you are “turning up” or blending entire sensory channels together.

This integrated awareness strengthens your capacity to enter Downtime rapidly and to enrich both your hypnotic and everyday experiences.

Used regularly, Downtime becomes more than a simple exercise. It becomes a way to reclaim your attention, deepen your inner awareness, and give yourself (and your clients) a reliable route into calm, focused, receptive states.

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