http://positivenews.org.uk/2012/wellbeing/body-mind/6131/transforming-hypnosis/

He will be teaching these methods in a 6-day intensive course held in Central London from Monday 12th to Saturday 17th March – Hypnosis for Therapeutic Transformation.  For more details go to:

www.hypnotherapytraininginstitute.org

Hypnotherapist, Dr John Butler

In human experience, the inner journey is a concept of great transformative power. Whether they intend it or not, even those who undertake journeys in the outer world encounter not only the ‘other’, but also themselves – resources and potentials within them that are drawn out by the need to respond to something new.

Visually, we tend to see a significant learning journey, such as a pilgrimage or a quest, as lateral; our movement is ‘along’. Time, the fourth dimension, is typically represented as a horizontal line and even the least adventurous of us are nevertheless shunted along the timeline like a conveyor belt, experiencing challenge and change as a result.

Most of us cooperate with time, seeking out experiences that we need to develop and mature at different periods, from pulling ourselves upright and walking as toddlers, to seeking and making a place for ourselves in the world as young adults.

So, if the most common direction of progress is lateral, in what circumstances would we need to consider journeys of the ‘vertical’ kind, specifically delving beneath the surface?

Traditionally in human history, turning to the depths is done to access additional resources that enable us to overcome challenges and obstacles that threaten to block our lateral journey on the surface. In the outer material world, we go below to bring to the surface metals, precious stones and other substances to use for tools, fuels, weapons and trade. It is a laborious but rewarding process.

Many people who experience using hypnotherapy for in-depth inner journeys describe it as like mining underground or diving underwater. Whether we are seeking to replenish exhausted creative energies, find the stamina to motivate ourselves through challenging times such as pain, illness or loss, or to pick up the lost threads of our own story when we find ourselves somehow stranded in life, what we need is not apparent on the surface, so we dig down.

The method provided in hypnosis for this purpose is the trance. This is, of course, a natural property of the human central nervous system, and it can and does occur spontaneously. I often find that rather than introducing trance to a student as a completely new experience, I am giving a name and a structure to something with which they are already familiar to a greater or lesser extent.  What is new and of great benefit to them is that the techniques of hypnosis enable them to use trance with purposeful direction, and also in a partnership.

Hypnosis can be experienced as a solo operation, as self-hypnosis. However, for most people it is much more easily developed in partnership with a co-operator, the hypnotist. Using the knowledge and skills accumulated in over 200 years of clinical and experimental hypnosis, it is exciting and illuminating for people to discover that they can gain control and direction within the trance and use it to tap resources that they need.

Trance is achieved through a combination of mental focussing and redirection of attention, with many different techniques being available which can be selected and adapted to suit the individual. When guided and directed appropriately, trance increases receptivity, so that your mind will accept communications it might otherwise block – such as positive and healing concepts which might be counteracted by doubts and negative preconceptions.

Trance also creates disinhibition, which means that you can gain access to mental resources which are present or potentially present in your mind, but are not usually active and available to you. These resources include memories, emotions, learning abilities, creative thinking and solution-finding.

The most profound activities which are facilitated by the receptivity and disinhibition in trance are the making of transformational choices. These include: choosing to let go of the past – including resentments and attachments to versions of events that might have happened but didn’t; reviewing our values and being prepared to change them; and creating inner space for voices and desires within ourselves to be heard, which may have been denied up until now.

These and other inner changes are, of course, common goals of many philosophical and self-change systems, but in trance the experience of making these choices is extremely vivid and real and so makes a deep impression.

In the creative inner space of trance, increased receptivity can be used to reinforce and stabilise change processes. Through self-hypnosis and recordings, this can be repeated and extended to support a new regime as it takes effect in our real-life environment. This is often a testing time for new insights and resolutions, when they compete with the forces of old habits.

One of the most rewarding features of teaching hypnosis is how rapidly most people learn to use it and to enter trance. I never get tired of seeing the look of amazement on people’s faces when they dive into their inner depths, and come up again having found that there is, in fact, treasure there.

Learn dynamic hypnosis to effect personal change in yourself and clients. The course introduces the students to the exciting world of hypnosis and the phenomena of hypnosis and suggestion. It teaches how the power and potential of hypnosis can be used to create change in human nature. Successful completion of this module enables the student to practise hypnotherapy effectively to address common problems with many individuals, including smoking cessation, weight loss, unwanted behaviours, stress management, performance enhancement, teaching self-hypnosis, etc.

Outline of the course:
The course provides a comprehensive overview of hypnotherapy giving a thorough grounding in classical hypnotism and incorporating foundation training in Transforming Therapy. The course teaches the induction of demonstrable hypnotic states, deepening procedures and trance terminations. Students learn rapid and instantaneous inductions and how to use them most effectively in therapy. The use of hypnotic and suggestibility tests and their applications in clinical practice are learned. Students are taught how to safely and effectively produce and utilise various hypnotic phenomena in hypnosis and self-hypnosis. Cautions or contraindications for various hypnotic procedures in specific circumstances are taught. Students learn neurophysiological principles of hypnosis and acquire scientific understanding of hypnotic phenomena. Students learn principles of communication and persuasion and the development of vocal skills for hypnotherapy. The phenomena of suggestion and mental programming are studied and experienced. Concepts of semantics and other important aspects of language use in hypnotherapy are taught. Students learn observation, listening and consultation skills. Comprehensive and competent assessment of clients and their problems are taught. Trainees learn how to develop rapport in and out of trance; they learn fundamental principles of creating the therapeutic relationship and healing environment necessary for effective therapy.

Understanding the nature of the subconscious mind and how to access this level of mental functioning through hypnosis are taught to students as part of their personal development and to introduce them to basic clinical applications of hypnotherapy. Students are taught principles of effective suggestions and programming for the subconscious mind. Students learn basic principles of how psychological problems are formed in the subconscious mind and how they are overcome through hypnotherapy. Specific fundamental principles and methods of Transforming TherapyTM, a most effective and rapid method of analytical hypnotherapy, are taught on the module. This stage of training provides an essential preparation for the advanced therapeutic skills that the student will be taught in-depth in the subsequent courses.

The student learns to use hypnotherapy skills at a foundation level to address a variety of problems safely and effectively, for example, certain psychological and behavioural problems, stress management and various performance enhancement applications. Students learn dynamic self-hypnosis and autosuggestion for personal development and individual goals. Personal qualities of a successful hypnotist and how to develop them are communicated at a foundation level to students.

The supervised practice includes coaching in successful delivery of hypnotic techniques, use of the voice and speech patterns, physical gestures and movements, observation and listening skills.

6 days intensive training providing 50 hours of classroom tuition: Cost: £695 (includes over £100 of course materials)

Major topics in course 1 include:

• Understanding the subconscious mind, its power and influence
• Programming the subconscious mind and the role of hypnosis
• Hypnotic inductions, including instantaneous and rapid forms, testing the hypnotic trance
• Using hypnosis for therapeutic change, health and well-being, performance enhancement and personal development
• Effective self-hypnosis

The course venue is in Central London

Date:12 – 17 March 2012
Cost: £695.00

For further details please contact:
Tel: 00 44 (0) 207 385 1166
Fax: 00 44 (0) 207 385 1166
Email: enquiries@hypnotherapytraininginstitute.org

Published: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 8:25 PM – Updated: Wednesday, December 14, 2011, 6:05 AM

The volume of the pain is hard for Randy McAllister to describe.

“You get to the threshold where you can’t stand it, then find out it can hurt a lot more,” says the 60-year-old farmer from The Dalles. He was severely burned while trying to save equipment from a fire in wheat field in August.

During five weeks at the Oregon Burn Center at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, McAllister needed repeated rounds of wound care to remove dead tissue from his extensive burns.

“It’s just the most painful thing,” he says. “More painful than the fire.”

He was ready to try anything when a nurse told him about SnowWorld, a computer game designed to help burn patients escape from agonizing pain. During his next wound care session, McAllister wore headphones and looked through virtual reality goggles. He found himself floating through an icy canyon rendered almost three-dimensional by the wrap-around goggles. By tapping on a computer mouse, McAllister fired snowballs at animated penguins, snowmen and dolphins in the canyon to a soundtrack of upbeat Paul Simon songs.

Strangest of all, the virtual world made his real world pain less overwhelming.

It’s one of the most successful examples of non-drug pain management techniques to emerge from the work of psychologists and neuroscientists. The search for non-drug options has gained urgency amid a worsening epidemic of overdoses linked to prescription opioid pain relievers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, which killed 14,800 Americans in 2008 – more those killed from heroin and cocaine overdoses combined.

In clinical trials, burn patients using SnowWorld reported 35 to 50 percent reductions in pain. The system was developed at the University of Washington by research scientist Hunter Hoffman and psychologist David Patterson, with input from burn care experts at Harborview Burn Center in Seattle.

Virtual reality therapy isn’t a substitute for opioids and other pain-relieving medications, but it can boost the effectiveness of drugs – and possibly reduce the dosage. Researchers who developed the technology say it may also help people with chronic pain syndromes, although those clinical trials are incomplete.

Theresa McSherry, burn and wound care coordinator at the Oregon Burn Center, says burn patients desperately need more options. Pharmaceutical research has provided safer and more effective anesthetics and opioid pain relievers, but drugs have limits.

“You just can’t safely give burn patients enough to provide adequate pain relief,” says McSherry, a registered nurse who has worked with burn patients for more than 10 years. A grant from the Legacy Foundation allowed the Oregon Burn Center to buy the $66,000 virtual reality system in August. About a dozen are being used worldwide.

Preventing pain not only relieves immediate suffering, but also seems to help burn patients weeks and months later. Patterson, the UW psychologist, says the amount of pain during treatment is a stronger predictor of depression, anxiety and distress six months to a year later than the extent of burns or the length of hospital stay.

“If you can control more of the acute pain, it can result in better long-term outcomes,” he says.

Scientists have known for decades that the human brain can interpret the same signal transmitted by a pain receptor as painful or not, depending on what a person is thinking. During World War II, a physician named Henry Beecher observed that soldiers seldom required morphine despite horrific combat wounds. Civilian patients with comparable wounds were much more likely to require morphine. Beecher concluded that there was no direct relationship between the severity of the wound and the intensity of pain. He was among the first to propose that the meaning our minds give to an injury greatly determines the level of pain. For soldiers, he theorized, the wound meant surviving combat and returning home.

Mood and expectation also play a big role. German researchers recently showed that a sad mood consistently makes people experience more pain. In another recent experiment, tricking people to think time passed more quickly reduced perception of pain

Hoffman reasoned that entering a rich, three-dimensional and sound-filled virtual reality could command so much of the brain’s attention resources that less would be available to process pain.

“We’re taking advantage of the malleability of human perception to deliberately divert mental resources away from the pain,” he says.

Pain by association

Burn patients come to associate the sights and sounds of the wound treatment room with excruciating pain so that just entering the room can amplify the suffering, Hoffman says. Putting on headphones and goggles blocks the anxiety-stirring sights and sounds.

But distraction of attention appears to be the main way that virtual reality reduces pain. Hoffman’s team has compared differing gear and found that the more realistic and “immersive” the gear, the greater the reduction in pain reported.

That matches McAllister’s experience. His burned fingers made it difficult to hold the computer mouse during his SnowWorld experience. When the mouse slipped from his hand and he lost engagement with the snowball throwing, the pain of the procedure immediately intruded.

“Oh boy, yeah,” he says. “Absolutely.” McAllister expects to continue intensive physical therapy for several months to regain more use of his fingers and hands. He may need additional surgery to remove scar tissue and increase joint mobility. But he’s optimistic about returning to work next year.

Patterson believes virtual reality can help treat chronic pain, too. The UW researchers also developed a virtual reality program that induces hypnosis. The goal is to use post-hypnotic suggestion to change the way the brain handles chronic pain signals long after therapy sessions.

In the virtual world, subjects descend through the air, viewing a series of numbers, until they find themselves floating over a lake in a hypnotic state. Some people are resistant to hypnosis, and Patterson speculates that virtual reality systems may help overcome that resistance. Use of virtual reality could make hypnosis more standardized and accessible, he says.

“Chronic pain is a much bigger challenge than acute pain,” Patterson says. His group has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a controlled clinical trial of virtual reality hypnosis for chronic pain.

– Joe Rojas-Burke

© 2012 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

Monday, 6 June 2011

The use of hypnosis as a medical therapy is being undermined by cowboy practitioners with little training who have caused serious harm to patients, specialists say today.

Hypnotherapy is a proven treatment for irritable bowel syndrome, approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), and research has shown that it provides effective pain relief to women in labour.

But the extension of the technique to other areas of medicine is being hampered by its misuse by inadequately qualified practitioners.

Specialists from the Royal Society of Medicine’s Section of Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine meeting in London tonight are to discuss ways of combating the threat and increasing the medical use of hypnosis which they say could save the NHS millions of pounds. Peter Naish, senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University and president-elect of the hypnosis section of the RSM, said many lay hypnotherapists were using techniques which induced damaging “false memories” in the belief that current traumas stemmed from episodes of abuse in the past which were so terrible the memory of them had been suppressed.

“Thousands of people offer hypnotherapy – you see the advertisements everywhere – even though they may have had scant training in dealing with psychological problems. A high proportion of lay therapists have this belief [that problems are caused by abuse in the past the memory of which has been long suppressed]. They use techniques [to elicit them] that can cause serious harm.”

Dr Naish described the case of “Anna”, a patient whose hypnotherapist had steered her over a series of sessions to name a relative who had sexually abused her.

He said: “The hypnotherapist said, ‘You must tell me the one most terrible thing you’ve been involved in and are too embarrassed to talk about.’ Her reply was, ‘Well, I haven’t murdered anyone!’ His response: ‘Oh no, much worse than that’. These so-called therapists induce a completely false memory in a vulnerable patient which is of no therapeutic use whatsoever and can cause very serious harm. I’ve treated patients whose lives – and those of their families – have been devastated by the induction of a false memory of sexual abuse. They’ve paid a lot of money and all they get is additional emotional trauma, while still suffering from the condition for which they first sought help.”

Jacky Owens, president of the RSM’s hypnosis section, said: “If doctors were able to refer patients to properly trained hypnotherapists, it would save a cash-strapped NHS a great deal of money.

“Making hypnosis a standard part of the NHS toolbox would also lead to the public becoming better informed about the procedure and mean that vulnerable patients would be less likely to turn to hypno-cowboys. The Government needs to look at this again.”

Sex abuse ‘memories’ were false

In a court case in Northern Ireland last year, a middle-aged man accused the neighbour who had lived next door to him when he was growing up of sexually abusing him up to the age of 14.

He persisted with the allegations even though he and his family had moved away from the area before he was 14. He claimed he had slipped and cut himself while climbing over a fence to get away from his abuser but declined to let a GP examine him for signs of scarring.

During the case it emerged that the hypnotherapist who had elicited the “memory” of the abuse had done a distance learning course lasting less than a month to obtain his qualification. He had previously been working as a plasterer and had no other qualifications. The judge threw out the case for lack of evidence.

The Royal Society of Medicine’s hypnosis section is setting up a training programme for medical students with an interest in hypnotherapy. Peter Naish, president-elect, said someone seeking treatment should choose a hypnotist qualified in medicine or psychology and trained under the auspices of the British Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis.

The American Council of Hypnotist Examiners is pleased to announce that their 25th International Hypnotherapy Conference will be held in Pasadena, California on May 4-6, 2012, with pre-conference workshops on May 2 and 3. Register early for huge savings!

Details: http://hypnotistexaminers.org/PDF/2012EarlyRegister.pdf.

http://www.hipnozturkiye.com/