Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 2.2

Past life regression today, the 2nd part of the regression weekend from back in February (it was delayed due to heavy snow). It was a very interesting day, although surprising underwhelming. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I'd thought that being on the clients side for past life regression would be a lot more impressive than it turned out to be. I ended up going back to being a hunter with a bow & arrow going after deer in the forest, no idea where it was (although it looked Scandinavian with all the hills, trees & mountains). I didn't get much more information than that, but some of the other people in the class had experiences with a lot more information (names, places, etc.). It'll be interesting to see what happens when they try and find more information about those people, and if they really did exist.

I still don't believe in past lives though, and I doubt whatever the other folks in the class find when researching their past lives will change that. My thoughts in this area are just that it's your own brain making up a story that fits in with your current life - e.g. if you have a phobia of water, you might find out you died from drowning in a previous life. Some people would say that's why you have a phobia of water, but from my point of view it's the phobia of water that caused you to have that past life experience not the other way around. As for what my deer hunting was all about, I've got no idea :)

Thankfully whatever my beliefs about past life regression are, it doesn't change the potential therapeutic value they have. E.g. with the water phobia, some people may 'discover' that's why they were scared of water and then no longer be bothered by it. Not that I'm going to start using past life regression for everyone that comes to me with a phobia though :) Just that it might be an option if my other usual approaches don't have very good results.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 5.2

More NLP on day 2 of this weekend, starting with 'eye accessing cues'. The theory is that by taking notice of the way somebody moves their eyes as they're thinking, you can work out how they are thinking. Which comes down to working out which rep systems (as mentioned previously) they're using as they're thinking.

We also covered, among a couple of things, anchoring. This one boils down to attaching a feeling (or 'resource' in NLP terms) such as confidence, haplessness, or anything else you might want to some stimulus, such as pressing your thumb and index finger together. In the same way that a specific song can make you feel a certain way (the song has been 'anchored' to that feeling), you can use the same principle to intentionally anchor any feeling you want. From a hypnotherapy point of view, anchoring can be useful for all kinds of thing - such as anchoring feelings of calmness to help with smoking cessation or stress management.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 5.1

This weekend isn't really hypnotherapy at all - it's all about NLP. That's not a bad thing though, NLP is really useful and I've already used some of the techniques to get rid of phobias. Today, we were covering the raport building side of NLP. Such as mirroring & matching and representational systems. Building rapport is pretty important for helping any clients coming to you for hypnotherapy feel comfortable, if they don't then you'll have a very hard time getting anywhere - no matter how good you may be at the hypnosis side of things.

It felt very odd mirroring & matching in the practice sessions when the other person knew that's what what I was doing. It feels fine during everyday life practicing this kind of thing, when the other person isn't looking out for it. But in this kind of environment it's difficult not to just start laughing when somebody is matching you in such an obvious way. It's all good practice though, but I'll definitely need to practice this kind of thing more often in the real world.

One of the most difficult things I found was matching representational systems with somebody else. I'm fine with visual or auditory (and I'm even OK with olfactory [smell] and gustatory [taste] as well), but when it comes to kinesthetic I'm just rubbish. So trying to hold a conversation mostly using the kinesthetic rep system is very difficult, but that's something else I want to get more practice with in the real world as well. I also have the same kind of difficulty when coming up with hypnotherapy scripts that use any of the rep systems other than visual and audio. Thankfully I am getting better though.

Update: I realized I never bothered to mention how we were supposed to work out what rep system somebody else is using in the first place when you want to match them. The way were doing it today was by paying attention to the language they used when talking about something. If somebody says "I don't see how that would work" then they're probably using a visual rep system, so you'll want to explain it in a more visual way if you can - such as drawing a picture. Similarly, if you're using diagrams and pictures to explain something, and somebody says "that still doesn't sound like it would work" then they're probably using an auditory rep system, so you would want to switch strategies to something that fits better for that person.

Smoking again

I've finally had my first failure with smoking cessation. I thought it would have happened before now - given that I'm only just starting out (and from what I've read & been told, doing it for free has a higher chance of not working as well). My friends mother, that I helped with some pain control recently, has started smoking again after having a couple of smoking cessation sessions. I've offered to do a follow up to deal with the parts she found difficult (and maybe try some aversion therapy as well). Hopefully, if she does decide to give it a go it'll be more successful this time.