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I recently wrote a weekly article on my website about Milton H. Erickson, systemic thinking and the predictive mind.
My starting point is the idea that a psychological problem is not just a symptom, but a stable predictive construction. The person wants to change, but the system maintaining the problem has already learned to resist familiar attempts at change.
This is where Erickson becomes especially interesting. His interventions often look strange on the surface: amplifying a symptom, accepting resistance, giving the symptom a time or a task, or moving the problem into a different frame. From a systemic and predictive-processing perspective, these may be very precise disruptions of the old model.
I am less interested in Erickson as a legend or personality than in the deep structure of his language and methods. His work suggests that change does not always require a large intervention. Sometimes the smallest well-placed difference is enough to force the old predictive model to reorganize itself.
In the article I also connect this to imagery work, NLP submodalities and the idea that a problem construction can be “contaminated” by adding an element that creates a contradiction with the old stored pattern. The added element does not always have to move directly toward the desired goal. Sometimes going sideways, or even amplifying the symptom, bypasses the resistance that a direct change attempt would immediately activate. / Lauri Tiikasalo - Hypnosis, Trance and the Predictive Mind

If so, how do you relate to it? Is it useful or harmful?

Trance running is a way of entering an endurance state where the body seems to run almost automatically, while the conscious mind steps aside. It is not magic, and it is not simply “zoning out.” It is closer to a trained dissociation from ordinary bodily sensations during sustained movement.

Finnish distance runners such as Paavo Nurmi and Lasse Virén seemed to understand this kind of running very well. I’m Lauri Tiikasalo from Finland, and I have used similar methods both in my own training and later when coaching athletes in different sports, including team sports.

I’m now retired from coaching, but I still write about these themes and teach hypnosis and self-hypnosis methods alongside my cognitive therapy practice. One reason I keep doing this is to maintain a living connection with mental coaching in sport.

A simple way to experiment with trance running is to choose a safe route where you do not need to constantly monitor traffic or obstacles. While running, practise moving your sense of awareness: imagine it shifting behind you, then beside you, then ahead of you — alternating between these positions as you run.

This usually does not happen immediately. But with practice, some runners may begin to experience a state in which the body keeps running with less conscious interference, and ordinary sensations of effort, heaviness or discomfort become more distant.

Older literature sometimes describes similar states in connection with long-distance “Indian running” or Native American endurance running traditions. A more precise modern description might be: an endurance performance in which the runner becomes dissociated from ordinary bodily sensations while remaining functionally engaged in the activity.