Becoming a hypnotherapist

Now that I've managed to actually find some interesting hypnosis related web sites and a few mailing lists, I've noticed a fairly regular stream of people asking questions like "how do I become a hypnotist?". Well I'm not quite there yet, but I can strongly recommend a good hands on course. It is more expensive than a few books, but you definitely need the practical experience and being able to talk to real people in person helps a hell of a lot. I tried the book-only thing for a while (partly because of the complete lack of anything useful online), and after reading my first ever hypnosis book (which I wouldn't recommend these days, but at least it was easy to read), I managed to induce one of my friends into trance and get him to enjoy drinking coffee (he never used to like the stuff). That was about all I did manage in the few years since, apart from buying more books that is. It wasn't until one of my friends saw a hypnotherapy course being run locally, and I signed up, that my learning went at any kind of pace. I only started the foundation course in the second part of 2004, and I've already helped people for real. The diploma course has just started, and I'm working my way though a list of my friends that want help with various stuff (mostly smoking cessation). The books are still useful though, but I've found them to be much more useful after doing this course than they were before. So all in all, hands on learning with experienced hypnotherapists works really well (for me at least) and I'd definitely recommend NCTH. I'm sure it's not the only good one, it just happened to be the closest to me.