keystothemind.com -

>Have you ever listened to one of those pre-recorded ‘self’ hypnosis CDs?
You can probably find some free online some places, but the really good ones tend to cost upwards or $50 or $60.

And of course, when i say ‘good’ I really mean terrible!

Instead of actual effective and useful hypnosis you empty your pockets for a 20 minute monotonous progressive relaxation induction which very occasionally succeeds in boring you into trance, but more often than not leaves you sitting there wondering what possessed you to invest $60 in this rubbish!
After the ‘induction’ you get one or two scripted and weak suggestions with all the emotional powerful and hypnotic brilliance of a broken twig, and are instructed to spend an hour every night for a month boring yourself stupid just to give the feeble suggestions a chance of working!

It seems today that the average visit to a hypnotherapist is just a much more expensive version of the same thing! You pay your $200 to stop smoking; you sit down in a rickety garden chair whilst the “hypnotist” reaches in the filing cabinet and begins to vomit to you a script which he or she probably just downloaded off the internet! Not surprisingly, such a process seldom works in the first one, two or even three sessions, so the client ends up paying a fortune to be read a generic, impersonal and ineffective downloaded script!

Shall we blame the training? A London hypnotherapist once told me that he paid over 1000 pounds for a year long weekend course basically to be told ‘print a script off the internet and read it to the client.’ One thousand pounds and 52 weekends to be told how to fail at hypnosis! That, my friends, is what many certified hypnotherapists are made of these days!

These relaxotherapists don’t seem to realize just how powerful hypnosis is, and what a personal and individual process it should be!

Of course, it’s not all bad news, there certainly are many phenomena hypnotists out there, people who actually understand just how powerful hypnosis really is. Think about this: i was talking to Jeff the other day he’s a clinical hypnotist and the kind of guy who likes to play with hypnosis, to just have fun messing with people’s minds. (In a safe and positive way.)

He told me of this one time he was hypnotizing a woman who had a serious phobia of dogs, she couldn’t even look at a dog without panicking and passing out, and despite all the ‘professional therapy’ she never improved at all!

So when she asked him to hypnotize her he did some normal fun things, just basically playing with the power of the mind with no specific ‘intention’ other than just to have fun, and at the end of this, just before he emerged her he said one sentence which changed that woman’s life, it went like this ‘oh, by the way, that whole problem with dogs, that over now, that’s gone, you are not afraid of dogs anymore.’ Then he woke her up.

A few months later the woman’s husband called up Jeff. He told her of how the week before they were out and about together and a huge black dog had walked right up to them. When his wife’s old reaction would have been to panic to the point of collapsing unconscious, now she just walked calmly up to the dog and patted it. Her husband said he almost collapsed from shock!
And all that just from one simple sentence!

Now will that work on all of your clients or subjects? Of course not!
Every person, every problem and every situation is unique, so every hypnosis session should be unique. (Before you ask, yes. it is certainly possible to do this with pre-recorded hypnosis sessions, but we’ll get to that soon.)

Some people will respond best to indirect hypnosis, metaphors, stories and NLP style mind programming techniques, others will respond fine to straight forward direct suggestion and in my experience nearly everyone will respond best to a combination of everything.

it’s time to stop thinking in terms of direct vs. indirect or sticking to the old alliances of Erickson Vs. Elman, it’s time we as hypnotists, we as the leading edge of what should be among the world’s most popular and respected of medical fields, start thinking about what gets the job done, and leave the politics out of it!

Go into every session with the intention of fixing the problem and creating the improvement your client wants with, as little B.S, time wasting and unnecessary space filler as possible. It’s just good ethics!

Now, onto the Hypnosis CDs while this rant is still full of steam… (oh, and even if you are not a hypnosis CD maker keep reading, you’ll soon realize how this can give you a huge advantage in your clinical and street hypnosis!)
When you make your hypnosis CDs or just do hypnosis in any situation, instead of giving very rigid and solid suggestions and adhering to a dry and lifeless one size fits all approach it’s time to make them unique per client. How do you do this even when you don’t meet or even talk to them?
Simple.
Let them do it! Tell their unconscious minds to do what’s needed for them to make their problems go in the most healthy, efficient and ‘ecological’ way.
Every person is different, and with this approach you can make sure your every hypnosis session, even via CD, is geared directly to the client and will fit in perfectly with their life style and their unique needs.

You can easily utilize this powerful approach when having fun or out on the streets, tell the person in hypnosis ‘and whatever will have to happen for you in order for your hand to become stuck to that pole and you to feel absolutely wonderful about it is happening now!’
This way they not only practically do your job for you, but as they know their own mind much better than you do (no matter how many PHds or certificates you have!) they will nearly always do a brilliant job!

As I said above though, remember there is no one size fits all approach so when you are there, in the moment, your client or subject before you, remember you do have it in you, trust your unconscious, start talking and you will use the right approaches, sometimes you’ll use metaphors, sometimes you’ll use direct suggestions, other times you’ll get them to go inside and do the work themselves, other times you’ll do all three and maybe even something else entirely!

It’s just like when you have a conversation with someone, when they ask you ‘how was your day’ you don’t feel nervousness, your stomach drop and start wishing you had a script, you just open your mouth and trust your unconscious to create the perfect reply!

From now on endeavour to become a great hypnotist! Don’t just be a run of the mill script reader, do what’s best for your clients, do what’s best for hypnosis and learn how to trust your unconscious, and be a spectacular stage, street or clinical hypnotist.

This is how you truly master hypnosis!

Thank you!
Nathan Thomas

PS
To become truly skilled at anything we must keep learning, and make sure we learn from the best, so remember to sign up to the new free street hypnosis newsletter and get spectacular hypnosis lessons from the worlds most skilled and renowned hypnotist delivered straight to you!
go here >>> Learn Street Hypnosis to learn more.

• Posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008
• 3 comments