This is my official blog where I share my news, opinions and insights into spoken word therapy, business intervention and coachings. From NLP, Sleight of Mouth, Hypnosis and many other disciplines. Check in with my blog regularly to keep up to date with what I am doing and to be the first to find out about exciting courses I will be running.
There is a remarkable fallacy that is prevalent among people considering using Hypnosis for losing weight. That fallacy is the Hypnosis will someone MAKE them lose weight without having to exercise, change their way of eating or even much THINK about the process of losing weight.
What is closer to reality is that hypnosis HELPS you to make exercising a new habit, helps you to be mindful of food choices and make healthy ones. Hypnosis helps you to WAKE UP and come out of the “everyday trances” you live in and become “mindful” of the process.
It’s a good thing. People should really think “a trance a day keeps the weight away.”
Last October I attended a workshop on a new therapy called “Havening” that just totally amazed me. I started using it immediately with clients and have gotten some spectacular results with it.
It is called “Havening” because, as I understand it, its first application was in the treatment of Trauma. According to the creator of Havening, Dr. Ron Ruden, one of the criteria for an experience to be classified in our minds as a trauma is it has to include a feeling of inescapability. The person feels that there is no “safe haven” where he or she can go to escape. The process of Havening, then, helps to create a sense of having such a refuge.
Here’s what author Paul McKenna has to say about it:
“Havening, also known as Amygdala Depotentiation Therapy (ADT) is going to change the face of therapy across the world.
What used to take months to cure can now be done in minutes in most cases: PTSD, trauma, pain, depression and many more disorders. The initial study recently completed by King’s College London shows the remarkable effectiveness of this extraordinary set of processes.
This is not to be confused with other psycho-sensory techniques, TFT, EMDR, etc. Whilst they are very good, Havening is light years ahead. If you want to be an excellent therapist, you can’t afford not to learn this breakthrough approach.”
I’m currently completing the process of getting certified in Havening because I’ve found it to be such an invaluable tool to make some very deep and lasting changes with my clients.
“Who you are being is so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.”
- Marc Anthony Yhap to Dr.Graham Dorrington in “The White Diamond”
Some of the more popular NLP classes I teach are classes on persuasion. The “Sleight of Mouth” class, “Belief Craft” with Jonathan Altfeld, “The Language of Change” (Ericksonian Hypnotic Language Patterns), and the new “Heart-Centered Sales System” all deal with persuasion.
That’s fine. It’s a useful study because everything requires persuasion… sales, doing therapy, relationships, pretty much every activity that involves humans interacting will require some form of persuasion. And it is useful to remind ourselves that persuasion techniques alone don’t make somebody persuasive. Sales techniques take a back seat to being able to relate meaningfully to another human being and being able to establish a deep rapport between you both.
Intention has a Scent
Have you ever had the experience of being with an experienced salesman who was doing his whole shtick and it just felt creepy? IF you bought anything from him, you probably questioned whether you really wanted it or needed it or if it really was what it was claimed to be. This would be because we pick up on non-verbal communication, at least subconsciously. He was probably a master of sales techniques and maybe even hypnotic language patterns, but your other-than-conscious mind saw through the act. You smelled a rat.
Rapport – REAL rapport – is the secret to being truly persuasive. Because real rapport flows, not from rapport techniques, but from actually caring about and actually connecting with another human being.
The Notes or the Music
I devoted much of my early years to the study and performance of music. I was a piano and composition major in college, attended a year at the Guildhall Conservatory in London and performed at Carnegie Hall, among other places.
One thing required of all instrumentalists is the practice of scales. Mastering scales is essential for any instrumentalist who wants to really get close to mastering their instrument. However, no one, no matter how good you are at your scales, will pay you to play them. They will come to the concert hall to hear Beethoven or Bach, but not scales. The MUSIC is not in getting the notes right, it’s HOW you play those notes. Music is the soul and sensitivity of the music expressed THROUGH the notes.
In the same way, if you have a real caring for the person with whom you are interacting and sincerely have their interests in mind, then the techniques will serve you. I’m reminded of Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street. It’s not about selling what Macy’s HAS, it’s about helping the customer get what they want… even if you have to send the to Gimble’s.
Think about it. Just like in music, you don’t want to have to pick between getting the notes right or being emotionally expressive, you want both. (And isn’t it nice to know that you can enjoy both at the same time?)
In my classes that I teach on Neo-Ericksonian Hypnosis we often begin
with a very simple trance experience. The participants in the class
divide up into pairs and sit facing each other. They keep their eyes
open and simply look into each other’s eyes. Then one of them asks the
other, “Who are you?”
The other responds in whatever way feels right at that moment. He or
she might say something like, “I am a Doctor,” or “I am a student.” Or
they might say something like “I am Sue,” or “I am Charlie.”
Whatever they answer, the person asking the question then affirms the
answer by saying, “That’s right. You are ‘Charlie’” (or whatever he or
she had said), while doing their best to really see that in them.
Then, after a breath or two, the asker asks, “and who else are you?”
In class, we usually do this for about ten minutes for each round.
Both participants usually experience various levels of trance in the
process and find it quite pleasant. What is particularly interesting
is what happens after the first few rounds and the person runs out of
the stock answers. Usually (sometimes at my suggestion, I confess) the
descriptions of which they are become far more metaphorical or
symbolic. Like, “I am a hungry Lion,” or “I am the night.” Any
response is perfectly fine, of course. The asker simply affirms this
definition, “That’s right, you are the night,” and goes forward from
there.
In his book, “Enlightenment is not the Tooth Fairy: Put your ego under
your pillow and Wake Up!” Dr. Robert Bays describes spiritual retreats
where this same exercise is done for hours on end – for seven days in
a row! The outcome, as I understand it, is to gently peel away the
many veils of ego overlaying who your really are at your core. In the
course of this discovery one might find that one has a lot of work to
do to transcend her or his stories – often of suffering – that are
attached to the various definitions of self unveiled along the way.
Revealing Words
Let’s look at two words: ”Ego” and “Transcend.”
Did you know that the word “ego” comes from the Latin for “I?” I’ve
always known it to be one of the three constructs in Sigmund Freud’s
structural model of the psyche (id, ego and super-ego), but it is nice
to know that it is quite simply a word that means the “self”, or
identification with your own individual existence. So when the
question is asked “Who are you?” The answers are self-concepts.
This word, “transcend,” is an interesting one. I have often said to
clients that I am not so much a hypnotist as a DE-hypnotist. That
their issues are a results of trances they have put themselves in. So
I wake them up from those less elegant trances and help them to
acquire more effective trances. Going further with this idea, when
successful in this pursuit, I have effectively helped them to “end the
trance” or “trance-end” the old habit.
So perhaps the notion of “Enlightenment” is just this… ending the
trance of the earlier ego-fixation and enjoying the freedom that this
awakening engenders. I would posit that it is in this way that
Hypnosis may, in fact, be a portal to a spiritual experience and a
deeper spiritual understanding. It certainly can be a transcendent
one.
How Many Sessions Will This Take?
People are attracted to short term therapy models like NLP and Hypnosis because of the promise of getting the change completed as quickly as possible. And why shouldn’t they? If you have a headache you want the aspirin to work quickly and make you feel better now, not spend for a few months talking about the pain. So a very commonly asked question is “How many sessions will this take?”
Of all the things I’ve learned about personal change in a therapeutic context, it is that everyone is different and there is no absolute answer to the question of how many sessions will be required.
After all, you don’t just want it done quickly, you want it done thoroughly and you want it done right.
However, there is some interesting data to be found on the subject. In Jonathan Alpert’s new book, “Be Fearless: Change your Life in 28 Days,” the author sites a 2001 study published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology that states that patients improved most dramatically between their seventh and tenth sessions. Another study, published in 2006 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that 88 percent improved after just one session but that the rate falls to 62 percent after twelve. The author concludes that, “The longer psychotherapy takes, the less likely it is to be effective.”
NLP, of course, is more than a simple style of therapy. In fact, it is only because the originators of NLP chose to model therapists that we have what many think of as “NLP Therapy.” Nevertheless, it works. in my practice, the use of NLP and Neo-Ericksonian Hypnosis help to make sessions goal oriented and solution oriented and facilitate getting the outcome the client desires as elegantly as possible.
Sometimes that is just one session. Often is it at least two sessions, because we want to make certain things are progressing properly. Sometimes I see clients for multiple sessions about more than one issue. Always we are seeking to reach specific goals and to build life skills that the client can apply in many contexts.
