HOW TO STUDY HYPNOTHERAPY Recommended introductory reading for the Post Graduate Diploma in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and NLP
Stephen tephen Brooks B rooks
The British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute 2013
Preface by Igor Ledochowski Milton Erickson MD was a genius. Many believe that he was the greatest hypnotherapist ever to practice. He inspired the creation of many therapeutic disciplines like NLP, Time Line Therapy and Brief Therapy. Erickson developed a rich style of therapy and created long lasting, deeply rooted changes in people. Even when he taught hypnosis people made remarkable transformations. He is still a legend and an inspiration to countless therapists today. Every budding hypnotist must have wondered at some time what it would have been like to get the chance to train with the old master of hypnosis. Can you imagine entering Erickson’s private study, where only a select group of people have been invited? What would the atmosphere have been like: the hush of anticipation, the excitement as the old master entered the room, bathing you with his presence. Suppose you had been invited to a private seminar. Imagine having the opportunity to experience deep trances that allowed you to absorb therapeutic patterns, experience personal change and see remarkable demonstrations of therapy. What would you give for the chance to learn directly from such a master? In the 1970s hypnotherapy was virtually unknown in the UK. Most of the practicing hypnotherapists used old and rigid models of direct hypnosis adapted from stage hypnosis courses. Nobody had even heard of Milton Erickson. Nobody, that is, except one man: Stephen Brooks. Stephen Brooks was trained in and began to practice hypnotherapy in the 1970s. He quickly became disillusioned with the therapeutic models on offer in the UK and he started to search elsewhere for answers. He found them in Erickson. Brooks contacted Erickson Erickson and soon was being guided by the old master in his own therapeutic approaches. Brooks was the first person to introduce the powerful new form of indirect hypnosis to the UK and he got results. Fast! His clinics filled to capacity: he was treating 8 to 10 patients per day, in 6 different towns for 6 days a week every week of the year! He worked with every problem imaginable and, under Erickson’s careful guidance, developed his own unique approaches of powerful indirect hypnosis. His patients made miraculous transformations. People across the country were stunned. Demand for Brooks continued to grow as he learned to master these powerful new skills. Brooks was in great demand. Soon he found himself teaching across the UK. His own innovative indirect therapy techniques had a major influence on the health professions both in the UK and Europe. They forever f orever changed the perception of hypnosis and how it should be used within therapy.
In the 1970s Brooks founded British Hypnosis Research (1979) and the British Society of Clinical and Medical Ericksonian Hypnosis (1995). Both were major training bodies for the caring professions. As the UK's foremost hypnotherapy trainer, his Diploma courses became the standard training for thousands of health professionals. Over a period of 15 years Brooks taught indirect hypnosis courses in over 27 major British hospitals. His Diploma courses also became the standard training for hypnotherapy associations and organisations in France, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Canada and Malaysia. In 1991 he was awarded special acclaim when archive recordings of his work were preserved in the British National Sound Archives. Brooks was widely acclaimed as the new standard for innovative, quick and long lasting indirect therapy. There is a twist in the tale. Brooks’s reputation and success continued to soar. Many believed his skills had outstripped even those of his o ld mentor, Milton Erickson. The demand for Brooks’s talents was greater than ever. Then one day, in the mid 1990s, at the height of his fame and success he decided to go. He retired from British Hypnosis Research and the British Society of Clinical and Medical Ericksonian Hypnosis and vanished without a trace. Nobody knew what had happened to him. Everyone was puzzled. No one could find him. Like Erickson, Stephen Brooks’ name simply faded into legend. He became a folk hero to many young therapists now practicing hypnosis and NLP. The only access they had to him were through Brooks video "Training in Indirect Hypnosis" and the once numerous video and audio training programs that were becoming rarer and harder to find. So when we heard that no one could resolve the mystery of his disappearance, I decided that it was time to find him. It took me a while to do it. He was a hard man to trace. But finally I did it. I managed to track him down. Stephen Brooks had retired to the jungles of Northern Thailand, of all places. He had been spending the last six years studying Theravada Buddhism and Shamanism there. But we were curious to know: could Brooks still hack it? Could he still perform personal miracles with people? Or had h e lost the magic touch? We talked to him and, in our arrogance, demanded a demonstration. With a mischievous gleam in his eyes he agreed. We brought him a patient, someone he had never seen before. Then we sat back and watched him go to work. We could not believe our eyes. We watched as Brooks weaved the magic that had made him famous. Not o nly had Brooks not lost any of his “edge”, if anything his awesome skills had improved!! We were completely blown away. Brooks approach to hypnosis and indirect therapy is unique. A common thread in his work is his humour, compassion and creative approach. He also has this deep respect for the unique needs of the patient. For the first time since his disappearance in the 1990s people now have the chance to study the work of this undisputed master of hypnosis. Brooks is already a legend in his own time. Now you have the opportunity o pportunity to study his work as it forms the
basis of the British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute’s Post Graduate Diploma course. And, if you wish to also train with him personally, you can still learn directly from him on his annual Master Class Retreat that he runs from his b ase in Chiang Mai Thailand. Imagine that: the anticipation and the excitement as you prepare to learn at a private seminar directly from Stephen Brooks. This is an experience like no other: you will learn by doing, enter deep trances as your unconscious mind learns exceptional things and observe live demonstrations from Brooks as he weaves his magic. Stephen Brooks emphasises the need for his students to see his magic in action. He insists on doing many demonstrations with real patients - people he has never met before with real, deep seated problems. Brooks works with patients and volunteers live during training courses by way of example, something that many trainers are still afraid to do. And he gets results. Fast! Igor Ledochowski – founder of Conversational Hypnosis
Contents PART ONE
Using Concepts and Contexts In Indirect Hypnosis
Understanding The Nature Of Reality
Hypnotic Trance and Becoming One with Reality
A Brief Introduction To The Six Stages of Indirect Hypnosis
Rapport
Information Gathering
Identifying Resources
Trance Induction
Therapeutic Interventions
Motivating Your Patients
The Meta Components of an Indirect Hypnotherapy Session
Approach, Technique, Strategy and Skills
Approach
Technique
Strategy
Skills
Learning All Of This
Overlapping
PART TWO
Example of a live tutorial - The utilization of ideo-motor responses in accessing unconscious information, memories and resources as a primary treatment modality in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy
Live audio course – Link to an audio course of a therapy session with subtitled commentary
Appendix
Five Eminent French Doctors talk about the work of Stephen Brooks
Dr K Axon Interviews Ericksonian hypnotherapist Stephen Brooks
The Unconscious Mind of a Master Therapist – research project at Roehampton University London based on interviewing Stephen Brooks while in hypnosis.
Stephen Brooks Biography
Introduction So often in psychotherapy, problems remain unexplainable and solutions elusive. This can happen despite all effort on the patient’s part to explain the events and patterns that have led up to their symptoms developing, and de spite the therapist asking the most pointed and searching questions. In such cases, where no concrete answers present themselves, hypnotherapists often ask patients to “trust their unconscious” and to allow therapy to happen all by itself. Trusting the unconscious is of course the stock in trade of the Ericksonian Hypnotherapist, Hypnotherapist, and while this is often a powerful tool for inner healing, it can also be a dangerous weapon in the hands of a new, if enthusiastic therapist. The reason for prescribing this form of DIY unconscious healing is often the therapist’s ignorance about what to do next, so this approach to therapy can sometimes deliver unpredictable results, especially if the therapist does not have a basic understanding of how patients experience reality, the effect of trance states on that reality and vice versa. Knowing that anything is possible when the unconscious decides on its own therapy, without guidance, you might understand my concern about the way that many therapists practice indirect hypnosis or the Ericksonian approach. Many trainees try to “model” established therapists in the hope that they may acquire some of the therapist’s skills. This concept has primarily developed from the field of NLP. While this is positive in principle it can be misleading if the trainee then believes that he can then install the therapeutic strategies that will allow him to replicate the excellence of the therapist. Take for example the innovative work of some eminent Ericksonians like Dr Ernest Rossi. Dr Rossi appears to work with minimal verbal intervention or patient guidance. His therapy sessions seem to be the closest thing to non-verbal he aling you might find in psychotherapy, so much so that it might be easy to discount his contribution to the talking therapies. Yet behind Rossi’s approach lies a complete model of psychotherapy that not only respects the integrity of the unconscious mind but also understands the dynamics of how problems develop and are maintained by patients. Yet to see him working it would be all too easy to model mode l what one sees and hears, believing that by replicating his minimalist approach, the same results could be achieved. So easy would it be to model in fact, that you could do it after watching one session, and it would most likely look and sound the same. Yet it wouldn’t be the same because you would not have his unique life experience or the same understanding that lies behind the approach. Modelling is a good way to learn, but only if supported with a detailed and precise analysis of the strategies being employed by the therapist being modelled. Sadly, not many great therapists allow us the opportunity of watching them do therapy, and of those that do, not
many have the additional skill to accurately communicate what they do at an unconscious level as they demonstrate their art. So we are left to model well known therapists only on video and usually without any on-going commentary from the therapist themselves as to what they are doing. Whenever possible, therapy trainers should walk their talk and demonstrate therapy in real time, ideally with a running commentary to the audience or at least a blow-by-blow analysis afterwards. Trainers should demonstrate why they believe that they have the authority to teach what they teach. Trainee therapists are often let loose on the public p ublic with only a brief experience of modelling so-called excellence, when in reality what they are modelling is their own limited perception of excellence. What they really need is to get their hands dirty on courses and take the therapy trainer, demonstration patient and themselves apart piece by piece to analyse the structure of how it all works. Regrettably this rarely happens as many courses are no more than the rote learning of inflexible techniques. So where do you start when there is just so much going on? Isn’t it just easier to sit back, trusting your unconscious to learn by going into trance and modelling what you think you see and hear? Sadly no, this isn’t the way, although it can be a useful way of filling in the gaps in your learning that you may have missed consciously. I always try and give my students a multi-dimensional learning experience when I teach, and this applies to the courses I write for others to teach. There is no point in holding back and keeping strategies to myself. I am not happy unless unle ss I too have learnt something from my own therapy demonstrations and have been able to empower others by discussing those demonstrations in full with my students. I have taken Erickson’s approach to hypnotherapy and developed it in my own unique way st
to hopefully be more appropriate for practitioners and their patients in the 21 century. Back in the 1940’s when Erickson was at his pe ak, psychotherapists believed that their job was to help patients get back on track and meet the expectations of society and family. Being seen as normal and conforming to the American dream of a good education, early marriage, 2 children and a respectable job with promotion was seen as the goal, and Erickson designed his therapy sessions around helping his patients achieve this by easily moving through each stage of the process from birth, school, socialising, dating, parenting and aging. These days, while these are still important, our patients have more individual needs with their own goals and dreams. So Erickson’s criteria for successful therapy does not apply in the same way anymore. His techniques, skills, strategies, approach and therapeutic principles are still just as valid however. And it is this aspect of Erickson’s work that I have been most interested in developing and applying to my own patients over the past 40 years.
And it is my application of these that I have taught to my students on the British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute’s courses since the 1980’s.
The Structure of Indirect Hypnotherapy Sessions – An Overview Using Concepts and Contexts In Indirect Hypnosis Over the years on my training courses I have been asked one question over and over again “How do you know what to do first, next and last?” Of course there is no simple answer, but most recently I have been telling students that there are two simple concepts that you can apply that will enable you to see yourself, your patient and their problems in perspective and therefore see how you relate to one another within the context of a therapy session. If you learn these concepts everything else will start to fall into place, often without too much effort.
The first concept relates to how we experience and maintain our relationship with reality, and the second to what we choose to include in our reality. Behind any kind of therapy there should be a basic understanding of how people experience reality. Without this understanding, therapy will be a shot in the dark. Yet rarely is the nature of reality taught on therapy courses. Most course participants are hungry for “techniques” and pursue the learning and practice of these techniques without realising that a basic understanding of the nature of reality will itself enable the trainee to develop their own innovative therapeutic techniques.
Understanding The Nature Of Reality A topic such as “Understanding the Nature of Reality” may sound a bit daunting and a bit like a hefty PhD thesis but this does not have to be the case, as it can easily be learnt in just a few hours of training. Even given that the practice of this knowledge may require several sessions of concentrated effort and on-going on -going application of this understanding, it is still relatively easy to understand. To know how a patient relates to his problem and how the problem is maintained, you also need to understand how you relate to your own experience of life events e vents and how you maintain an interest in these events. By understanding the interaction between yourself and events you will also understand how hypnosis plays a p art in your own experience of everyday reality and be able to see how hypnosis also can also play a part in resolving
problems for patients. Understanding reality will help you understand hypnosis and vice versa, because they are very closely linked.
Hypnotic Trance and Becoming One with Reality The above title may sound a bit esoteric but any hypnotherapist knows that if you look at a spot on the wall for long enough, en ough, your eyes will de-focus and your visual field narrow, leading to eye fatigue and possible internal imagery, but why does this happen? There are many explanations, and all may play a part but by far th e most important reason is that we cease to connect with reality. We are still looking at that spot but that spot is static, as are our eyes, so there is no movement and without movement we have no way of measuring our relationship with the spot. When reality fails us externally we seek it internally and so we start to experience internal imagery, or at least some kind of connection with our inner absorption. Our internal reality becomes more real than our external reality, because it has more movement in terms of internal imagery and / or thoughts and feelings, by which we can measure our relationship to it. If we cease to experience movement in our internal reality we become one with it and dissociate from all conscious thinking or way of comparing or judging. Everyday we continually test and measure reality by adding to it and observing it’s response to our contribution. If you have an itch you scratch it and then you wait to see the result, if it’s still there you scratch some more. If you do not scratch it in the first instance, there comes a time when it ceases to itch, not because the itch has gone but because you have stopped interacting with it and stopped knowing that you are separate from it. If you merge with the itch you become part of it and no longer feel separate from it and so no longer feel it. People naturally fidget when they are sitting still, talking, sleeping or watching TV. Every movement is a deliberate, albeit unconscious, mismatching with reality, a deliberate attempt to separate the self from reality in order to relate to reality. As contradictory as this seems, people try to feel part p art of reality by separating themselves from it and comparing themselves to it, moment by moment. While this doe s confirm that they are part of reality it also prevents them from becoming one with it. This is one of the reasons some people have difficulty going into trance. They are simply too keen to go into trance, and continually keep checking back with reality to see how they are progressing. If you stop fidgeting, you blend into reality, you become one with it, but it is difficult for you to tell this is happening because you are no longer separate from it. So your instinct to survive tells you to keep checking to test te st that you are still independent, alive and part of the living world.
When we touch things we tend to incorporate movement into the touching and this increases the tactile sensations. A touch without movement gives you limited information. Likewise, the first thing you do when you look at something is to look loo k away so you can see the difference between what you are looking lo oking at and what you have not been looking at. By comparing the two you give solidity to each. e ach. You continually test reality to know your relationship to it. Your patients do this too. They do it to you, to everything they experience and especially to their problems. The more you appreciate this simple concept the easier therapy will be. Patients check how well they are doing in order to know how good their therapy is, but their observations can sabotage the benefits of the therapy. If you can get your patients to let go of needing to know how well they are doing then your work will be more effective. There are two fundamental ways to stop your patient from continually checking how well they are doing; by de creasing how much content they have in their reality (by limiting how much access they have to their reality) and by increasing how much content they have in their reality (by getting the patient to see their problem in other contexts). It is your understanding of how these two concepts work together that will give you the therapeutic edge as a therapist. Profound hypnotic trance requires a reduction in the need to compare oneself with the external world and an acceptance of the state of uncritical acceptance, in other words, a merging of the self with reality, initially by merging with external reality (de-focusing, immobility etc), and then by merging with internal reality (eye closure, visualisation, dreaming, states of non-self etc). When the patient has truly merged with their reality their problems can appear to cease to exist as they no longer feel themselves to be separate from them and so can no longer be critical, objective or governed by the rules of their external reality or everyday conscious ways of thinking. However, while this is an ideal state in which to work therapeutically during therapy sessions, it is not a practical state for patients to maintain in the real world. In the real world, patients usually try and stay out of trance by fidgeting and doing anything that prevents a merging with reality in order to check how well they are doing or otherwise in therapy. Reality contains events, behaviours and many shades of experience, which act as reference points by which people measure how they feel. Patients can be both limited and empowered by the amount of reference points po ints they hold in their reality. And this is why by decreasing how much access they have to their reality and by increasing how much content they have in their reality we can break patients out their current rigid ways of thinking about their problems. When the patient enters therapy he brings in a fixed number of reference points. He refers to these continually, usually throughout the first interview. Your job as therapist is to use a combination of techniques and language patterns to help the patient increase and decrease
the number of reference points available to him at given times during the therapeutic process so as to steer him, albeit indirectly, across the map of his recovery. The less information patients have in their reality, the less reference points they have with which to assess the state of their problem, so the harder it will be for them to make conscious decisions. This is often useful when they are ove r active consciously and want to manipulate the treatment in some way, even with the best intentions. Some patients however need more reference points, po ints, not so much to assess their own progress in therapy, as this would not be useful, but to help them see their problem in a new light. This is where the concept of contextual change comes in. Shifting the problem to a new or different context, either by transforming the context through expansion to include more reference points or by moving the problem to a new and novel context for example by seeing the problem as if embedded in a different time frame, the patient can gain insights that can then be applied therapeutically to the problem when in trance. If reference points are removed with hypnotic trance, either formal or indirect trance, a patient can often reach the point where they lo se awareness of their problem. At this stage they are “ripe” for change. Armed with the insights from the prior contextual shifts they can enter the world of hypnosis, often without bias or interpretation and apply their insights unconsciously to resolving their problem without the contamination of conscious interference and with a sense that they no longer need to check their progress, as they sense that it has already started happening anyway. Your job as a hypnotherapist is to open up u p new worlds that have remained elusive until the patient enters therapy with you. These new worlds require the patient to be active both consciously and unconsciously, but for different reasons and at different times and within a safe and caring environment. It is your responsibility as a therapist to provide this environment, to know how to affect the patient’s awareness of their reality and to know how and where you can learn to develop your skills to do this.
A Brief Introduction to The Six Stages of Indirect Hypnosis • Rapport • Information Gathering • Identifying Resources • Trance Induction • Therapeutic Interventions • Motivating Your Patients
Rapport The first time someone telephones for an appointment, and if I get the chance to speak to them personally, I will start work right there on the phone. Part of this chat will be based b ased on building rapport and part will be based on offering hypnotic suggestions. I will start with something very simple. A woman phoned me because she was pregnant and wanted to know if I could te ach her self-hypnosis for pain control. To build rapport and to insert some pre-session suggestions for pain control I told her this story: “I had a woman telephone me recently who wanted the same thing and all I did was, ask her to come into my office and sit down and listen to me. I told her that her hand was getting very, very numb and I allowed this to happen over the next few minutes. I then I taught her how to do this for he rself. She then just placed her hand wherever she wanted and she was able to anaesthetize that part of her body. It just happened all by itself automatically.” After this story, my new patient booked an appointment and when she turned up I started talking to her and she started to go into trance, she just drifted off, and I said, “What’s happened to your hand?” and she said. “I can’t feel it”. The indirect pre-session hypnotic suggestions were given on the phone, and as she’d had a few days to allow them to become integrated and fixed in her mind, so the trance and anaesthesia just happened by its self without me having to suggest it directly. This is where the science of hypnosis becomes an art. By being indirect and implying the therapeutic
outcomes we want, we can bypass any resistance the patient might have to hypnosis or change. So the work starts right at the very first contact with a patient. In this case it was on the phone before we had even e ven met. The first step is to build rapport and prime the patient for the session. Unless you have that, nothing will happen. So rapport is the prerequisite of successful therapy. I always stress the importance of learning how to build rapport on my courses. Rapport is like the foundation of a house, without it, everything falls down.
Information Gathering The next step is Information Gathering – questioning and observation. If you pay attention with your eyes you will pick up a different class of information from when you only listen. You need to use all of your senses to pick up information because you are looking for a mismatch in the way that the patient communicates. Every mismatch will give you valuable clues about what to do next with your patient. p atient. You are looking for incongruity. For example, if you ask your patient the following question; “How are things with your mother?” and the th e patient answers “Fine” but at the same time shakes her head as if disagreeing with herself, she is demonstrating incongruity. If you then ask; “How are things with your father?” and again the patient answers “Fine” but then digs her heels into the floor as if she is uncomfortable talking about her father, she is again demonstrating incongruity. The patient’s words sound positive but there is a mismatch between her positive verbal responses and the negative non-verbal communication, and these are the things you need to watch for. Think of them as opportunities to identify areas of inner conflict. You ask; “Can you remember what it was like being a teenager?” The patient answers “Umm yes” and the heels dig in again. When you see a simultaneous positive verbal and negative non-verbal behaviour repeated as a response to further questions you can be sure that your line of questioning is evoking important clues about the source of the patient’s problem. The patient’s non-verbal behaviour is a running commentary on what the patient is thinking unconsciously. For example you may again ask; “Please tell me about your relationship with your father”, and the patient replies, “Oh we don’t see each other much anymore”, and as she replies, she unconsciously massages the back of her neck as if experiencing tension there. So you notice a physiological non-verbal ideo-motor response accompanying her verbal response. You might even in some instances interpret the non-verbal response as a kind of non-verbal metaphor, implying that she feels that the father is a pain in the neck. Look for verbal and non-verbal incongruities and this will give you valuable information.
Identifying Resources I believe that every patient has within them the unconscious resources necessary for solving problems, but that usually they don’t know they have these resources, or, they know they have them, but are unable to access them. Most psychological problems require more than just everyday rational thinking thinking but because most most people have no conscious awareness of the unconscious mind’s ability to solve problems effectively they only use their conscious resources. The patient’s failed conscious attempts at problem solving usually increases their anxiety. So when a patient comes in to see you they usually come with two problems. Firstly, they come in with their actual problem and secondly the problem of not being able to resolve their problem. Everyone knows how hard it is to try and do certain things which really ought to be done unconsciously, like tying shoelaces, tying a necktie or driving a car. All of these things can be best performed at an unconscious level and once learned are really difficult to manage consciously. If I asked you to explain e xplain how to tie a shoelace, your fingers could p robably show me a lot faster than you could tell me. This is because, be cause, by letting your fingers demonstrate how to do it, you would be letting go and allowing the unconscious part of you to do it for you. So Indirect Hypnosis is about teaching the patient how to go inside, say hello to their unconscious mind and getting it to heal them. You, as a therapist do not do any healing, you only help the patient open up the channels for their own self-healing and you do so with as little visible intervention as possible. You should never give your patient the impression that you are doing the therapy - it is always the patient who does the work. You should be empowering them by acknowledging their ability to heal themselves, not disempowering them by claiming to be the supertalented therapist. With your help the patient is taught to go inside to gain access to their natural ability to heal themselves with the resources that they have at an unconscious level, and they should be encouraged to realize re alize this so that they feel an active part of their success. I am often asked about the therapeutic benefits of healing with unconscious resources in hypnosis, compared to the benefits of meditation or the positive effe cts of placebo, where the patient’s belief that they will get better actually stimulates the healing process. I believe that if the patient can get better with the unconscious mind utilizing inner resources, by meditating on candle flame or through the placebo effect then all of these approaches are viable and should be classed as successful techniques or approaches. Therapy can only be said to be successful if it gets results, so as long the success as can be reasonably measured and then replicated in others they are all viable approaches to therapy. I am always amazed
(and disappointed) when a patient gets better because of a placebo and the medical profession don’t consider it as a valid or successful intervention. The placebo effect is very active in psychotherapy, maybe much more than is given credit. If I could teach therapists to be charismatic enough to just sit in front their patients, and have their patients get better, without them having to say anything, then I would do it. I think that although you are being taught therapeutic structures as part of your training in hypnotherapy, sometimes, the less you do, the better. This is the origin of my Non Attachment Therapy, something that I developed as a result of my work with Buddhist monks in Thailand in the 1990’s and something I hope to teach and share more fully in the future. Your patient’s needs will determine the direction of the therapy. If you force your patient to match your model of how you believe therapy should be done then you will severely limit your patient’s ability to get better by themselves. The more open you are in your yo ur approach and the more flexible and non-authoritarian you are with your language, the more successful the treatment will be. So rather than forcing your patient to follow a particular therapeutic model I suggest that you sow the seeds of therapy indirectly and then step back two or three paces and just watch your patient get better. It can work all by itself, on one condition; that you work from the heart, but more about that another time.
Trance Induction People go in and out of trance on a day to day basis. Your role is to evoke these naturally occurring trance states indirectly in a conversational and naturalistic way that respects the patient’s integrity. The actual art and science of evoking these trance states is a lot more complicated than it at first appears, and you should set your sights on mastering this particular stage of the therapeutic process. If you are unable to put people into trance simply by your presence in the room with them then you haven’t been studying hard enough. Keep this in mind as you learn everything and put it into practice. Trance is both the vehicle for the therapy and the adhesive for making it stick. It is your means of accessing the patient’s unconscious mind which holds the memories and resources required for problem solving. Successful trance induction is based on two things, your ability to induce an appropriate trance state and the patient’s ability to experience it. There can be many variables and no two trances are the same, so it’s a little bit like juggling with reality. Successfully trance induction is contingent on your ability to master hypnotic language and to do so with integrity, understanding of unconscious processes and compassion for other people. Hypnotic language can be highly manipulative in the wrong hands but is rarely successful in these cases because it lacks the integrity and compassion to have deep lasting meaning for a patient.
Therapeutic Intervention Therapeutic Intervention is where you actually step in and do something when you have to. So far I’ve been talking about stepping back and being as visibly inactive as possible but of course there are certain things you need to do more directly sometimes in order to help he lp people, especially in the field of couple or family therapy, so I often give people tasks in order to bring about outcomes. The indirect therapeutic skills you will learn are multiple, that is, there are many skills you’ll take away from your studies and training, and of course you can use skills in different combinations, which is why it’s neve r the same set of skills for each patient. For example, one day you may have a particular patient, and you will suddenly decide to reach into your box of skills and pull out a skill that you have never used before or a new skill that is an integration of several others. Once you have learnt how to use each of these skills, and to create your own by combining the principles behind each skill, you will be able to be very creative. Good therapeutic intervention is based on your ability to be observant, innovative and flexible in your approach and skill development, most of which then happens spontaneously as you work.
Motivating Your Patients Regardless of how well you progress through the various stages of a therapy session there is one deciding, and in many cases, elusive factor that will determine your success as a therapist. This concerns the patient’s degree of motivation. There seem to be two common patterns that often prevent patients from getting better. Patients are usually confused about how to help themselves so they consistently repeat failed attempts at problem resolution, thereby increasing their anxiety and frustration, which often aggravates the symptoms. Secondly they consistently apply these failed attempts through conscious effort. This has the negative affect of training the brain to devalue the role of the unconscious and often reinforces the severity of the symptoms by giving them more conscious attention. Many patients seem divided by doubts about their ability to get better. This is usually caused by previous failure, either with their specific problem or from a general lack of confidence caused by past experiences of failure. Patients sometimes say things like “There’s a part of me that wants to change and there’s another part which says I can’t”. The patient’s chance of success is very low while they have such doubts. Patient motivation is the pre-requisite to the acceptance of your therapeutic interventions and is the key to
really successful therapy, so it’s very important that you deal with the part that says “I can’t”. I believe that you can do anything you want to if the goal is realistic. If you want to accomplish something within a reasonable time frame, and you have the resources and the skill to do so, then I think that there is every reason to believe that it is possible. I often tell this to patients and give examples from my own history. In therapy we are dealing with the realm of the possible. So when people p eople come to see me, I try and access whether they have the resources and time to achieve what they want. If they want something reasonable I will deal with any doubts and go for it immediately. If what they want is unreasonable, either in terms of time, context or resources I will try and get them to re-evaluate their goals so they are reasonable and attainable. Then I go for it. The whole process is to get them motivated by convincing them that realistic change is possible. This is an integral part of the therapy process. When you have a patient with a habit, compulsion, or phobia then I think it’s quite reasonable to believe that they can overcome it, e ven if they say “I want, but I can’t”. Sometimes, when looking for the cause or a reason why a problem has not been resolved, re solved, you might have to look further than the patient. Often there are other people, maybe at home, socially or at work that make it difficult for the patient to ove rcome their problem. In which case, if you really want the patient to achieve what they want, you also have to work on those other people as well, and you can do so in many ways. You can either work on them directly by asking them to attend a therapy session, or indirectly through the patient, by giving the patient tasks that involve the third party outside of the therapy sessions. Usually if a problem is self-contained, that is, other people or contexts are not reinforcing it, you can work on it relatively easily. e asily. Ideally, successful therapy is based upon the patient having a good level of motivation where the patient can work without contamination from others or external influences. We need energy to keep ourselves motivated, both physical and mental energy, and that’s how we keep going. We thrive on energy and we try and direct it into the different areas of our lives. If you d irect all of your energy into negative things then life will be negative, if you direct it into positive things then it will be positive. It sounds very simplistic but it is true. This is why patient motivation is so important. We have to have them on our side, working for the same outcomes. I believe that people are like sponges that soak up whatever comes along and that we are habitually drawn towards soaking up what is familiar, even if it is not good. I remember when I was young I caught my hand in a door. This wasn’t enough to make me obsessive. It wasn’t even enough to make me cautious, because I did it a second time. But when I’d done it a third time however, I had h ad the beginnings of a potential phobia, which my mind could
have nurtured if it had wanted to screw up the rest of my life, because that’s often how phobias start, but luckily for me, I just decided it was just something that happened and to not give it any importance. But what about the person who is so worried about repeating a mistake that they go out of their way to avoid it happening. The way people usually try to get over their problems is to avoid them. If they’re agoraphobic, they stay indoors but this actually makes the problem worse. If you stay in, you become a confirmed agoraphobic because you never learn to face your fear. So if you get your hand caught in a door, you run the risk of developing a minor obsession if you deliberately start avoiding doors. The crazy thing is that it is human nature to avoid what hurts rather than confronting it. This is why I believe that most patients are victims of their own habitual thinking. If you walk past the door and you say to yourself “I must not catch my hand in the door this time”, then you are reinforcing your fear. A woman came to see me about a chocolate compulsion and I asked her how often it occurred. “She said “every afternoon”. She said “I went to a hypnotherapist, but it was no good, it got worse”. He had taught her self-hypnosis and then instructed her to practice at the start of every afternoon and repeat to herself that she shouldn’t eat chocolate.” From then on all she could think about each afternoon was that she shouldn’t eat chocolate, which she desired even more by thinking about it continually. The consequence was that her need became even greater because she felt so guilty about her increased desire to eat, so she comforted herself by giving in and eating the chocolate. Patients either avoid their problems by consciously telling themselves not to have them or they try and resolve them through repeated failed attempts, and then they wonder why the problem is still there. The way to avoid thinking about the things you don’t want, is to think about something else instead. As discussed earlier, many patients spend a lot of time ne gating their own healing potential. “I can’t”, “maybe”, “yes but”. This effort takes up a lot of energy. If you help the patient change the “yes but” to “yes and”, then everything they say will be positive. Everything said after a “yes but” is negative, the tonality what is being said is even negative ne gative – it goes down at the end of the sentence. Say “yes and” instead, and everything is positive, even the tonality – it goes towards the end of the sentence. Try it for yourself. John Grinder, co-developer of NLP taught me that trick, and it is a very important observation. People often run their lives on whether they think “yes but” or “yes “ yes and”. Guess who has the happiest life. If you go through life as the kind of “yes but” sponge that gets your hand trapped in the door and says “Done it again”, just realize what you are doing to yourself. The implication is that it happens a lot and it’s going to happen another time. “I’ve done it again, can’t believe it” or “life has done it to me again and I wonder what will happen next”. That’s no way to
live your life. You must know patients like that? They start to look out for things to go wrong in order to avoid them, and by looking out for them they keep finding them, bang, bang, bang (there goes that door again) and they have an awful life. They have a negative life because they spend all their time putting energy into avoiding things that they don’t want to happen. And people who are accident-prone tend to do that. They’re not born accidentprone, they teach themselves to be accident-prone. They keep looking for things to go wrong, and sure enough they find them. the m. So often, people maintain their problems by trying to solve them. Because “trying” occurs at a conscious level the patient usually only has his conscious resources available for problem solving, the root of most problems are at an unconscious level, if they were purely conscious it would be easy for people to solve them themselves and they wouldn’t need a therapist. So it’s necessary to help patients gain access to their unconscious resources for problem solving. The word “try” implies difficulty; so the harder they try to solve the problem p roblem the more difficult it becomes. This is because they’re using only limited conscious resources. A patient may try to lose weight by telling themselves not to eat a particular food. However the very thought of not eating the food requires them to think of the food before deciding not to eat it. By doing this they’re reinforcing the thought of that particular food in their mind. We tend to gravitate towards what is uppermost in our minds. So if a person is constantly thinking, “I don’t want this anxiety state” or “I don’t want to smoke” or “I don’t want this phobia” etc. the thought will be reinforcing it. If you say “I mustn’t forget this” then you are giving yourself a direct suggestion to forget it, the thought that should be uppermost in your mind should be, “I must remember this”. Think about what you want rather than what you don‘t want. I know a lady who when she was young had a father who in the process of doing amateur radio repairs on the kitchen table would cause chaos in the hou se. She swore to herself repeatedly that she would never marry a radio engineer, and, yes you‘ve guessed it, she did. It’s only natural for patients to try and make themselves better, but they are usually unaware that the act of trying reinforces the problem. It’s not always a good idea to tell the patients they are doing this. You will get better results if you introduce the idea indirectly in the form of metaphor or with analogies, mainly because patients sometimes defend themselves if you confront them with the reality of the situation. When people start to defend their actions it usually results in them becoming even more fixed in their views as they search for more evidence to prove p rove they are right. Often patients will get themselves into situations, which leave no room for success. They will put themselves into double binds whereby any decision will bring about a negative outcome. In the same way that if you lose your keys you may return to the same place many times to look for them rather than looking somewhere totally new. Patients will often try to
solve a problem the same way over and over again even if it fails because the problem takes all of their attention and they’re unable to step back and look at it objectively. This saturation of subjective experience tends to severely limit their awareness. Often, when patients realize how they have been trapping themselves through their limited awareness, they find it funny. Sometimes this realization can be very enlightening and even therapeutic, but it isn‘t usually enough for them to change for good, because they still need to learn new ways of behaving and interacting with the new world around. They don’t yet know how to behave and interact in a different way, so you need to help them create the alternatives. These alternatives can be offered in the form of tasks or new strategies. Alternatively you can suggest indirectly that changes occur by using hypnosis and indirect suggestion. Ok that is a brief overview of the th e basic stages of an indirect hypnotherapy session, with some other tips thrown in to keep you motivated in your study of hypnotherapy. We no w need to look at the best way for you to learn hypnotherapy and ho w to focus your enquiring mind on the task of exploring and pulling apart the hypnotherapeutic process as it occurs.
The Meta Components of an Indirect Hypnotherapy Session This section is about how to learn indirect hypnosis. It is not about indirect indirect hypnosis but about the best way to study the subject. I am going to share with you information about the set of perceptual filters that I teach my students to use when they watch me teach indirect hypnosis or watch me do a live demonstration with a patient. There are now enough DVDs of me working available for you watch that you should easily be able to apply these perceptual filters to my sessions. This will give you a real advantage when learning hypnotherapy, especially when learning the Ericksonian approach. If you have these filters, it will help you to home-in more specifically on what will make a difference for you in your application of indirect hypnosis, especially if you ever get to see me work live or on DVD.
Ap pr o ac h , Te ch n iq ue , S tr at e gy a nd S ki l l s There are four components that make up the way I work. They are Approach, Technique, Strategy and Skills. At a deeper level there is a set of principles that govern where, when, how and which of these components are used in conjunction with each other at any time in a therapy session. The concept of principles would require more space than we have available in this book at present so we will concentrate of the components of approach, technique, strategy and skill for now, as these will help you analyse what is happening as a hypnotherapy session progresses.
Ap pr o ac h • Approaches – are philosophies and and interpretations. • Approaches are based on beliefs about how and why people have problem s and how they
can be resolved. • Approach is broken down into its l inguistic application and its behavioural application. • Linguistic: General tonality, vocabulary and speech patterns. • Behavioural: Demeanour and general manner.
Are you familiar with the stone sculptures made by the British artist Barbara Hepworth? I first saw her sculptures in the 1970’s. I didn't realise it was her work at the time. I saw several pieces in different locations and didn’t realise they were by the same artist but I was drawn to them for some reason. When I found out they were all by Barbara Hepworth I realised that I obviously had a feeling about this woman's work. Recently there was a programme about her on TV. The programme had archive footage of her working with a huge block of limestone and a simple chisel and a hammer. Basically what she had there were the same tools that Neolithic homo sapiens would have had 3,000 years ago during the Bronze age, just a bronze tool and a rock, nothing sophisticated. In the programme she was shown just chipping away, chipping away, chipping away for 14 hours a day, almost every day of her life. When she started creating a sculpture she had a solid block of rough stone and when she had finished she had created this sensual spherical shape in smooth stone. It had movement and it followed the natural forms that you also see in nature. She discovered that she could put a hole through the middle of a sculpture to give it another dimension, and that she could put two sculptures together and let sunlight shine through one hole and into the other hole. h ole. She created a communication between the two sculptures. What is fascinating is that she started with a huge solid block of rough stone and when she finished she had something of unbelievable u nbelievable beauty that had a sensual quality that you felt compelled to touch. Researchers did some research on how people feel compelled to play with spherical objects. They secretly filmed people standing at an office reception desk on which they had deliberately left a soft rubber ball. The receptionist would say "I'll go and check your paperwork", then go into the backroom and the person waiting would be waiting there at the desk being filmed secretly. After a minute or o r so, everyone being filmed picked up the ball, played with it and quickly put it back when the receptionist returned. Everybody did this without exception. Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures are like that. You feel that you want to touch them, they are very sensual and tactile. You want to touch them. I think that this instinct is hard wired into us from birth and is something to do with our locating our mother’s breast. At home I have some Neolithic bangles, prehistoric bangles from Thailand and France discovered at gravesite excavations. I have one bangle, which is absolutely beautiful and made of serpentine, and it is an absolutely perfectly circular bangle. It is about half an inch across and about a quarter of an inch thick. These days we are so used to seeing factory made bangles that we take their manufacture for granted. But when you realise that this pre-historic bangle was originally a solid block of serpentine rock, and that somebody had to hollow out that bangle from a block of rock by hand 3,000 years ago with only a basic primitive tool it is quite breath taking. The chance of it splitting or cracking must have been so high and to actually chip away until you've got this very, very fine bangle made of serpentine must have required a lot of patience and love. Just imagine the commitment that
person must have had to create something so beautiful. This is the attitude you must have in your relationship to therapy with your patients. Patients come in as a rough piece rock and you have to help shape their lives, and do so with commitment and care. If you do this, it will communicate through the way you speak and interact with your patients, friends and family, and the results will be so beautiful that it will strike a chord in everyone who knows you. Therapy isn’t just about fixing things, it is about transforming lives, and this can only happen if you make that commitment to give no less than 100% of yourself to that th at process. So the first component here is approach. Every therapy has its own approach. Erickson had an approach, which in fact is very different from the approach that Ericksonian therapists have today. During Erickson's peak, which was in the 50s, his approach was based on maintaining the American dream. Everybody had to get married by a certain age, and they had to settle down and have x number of children and look after their grandparents, it was that kind of pattern, in America. If you look at Erickson's case studies you will see that a lot of his work was based on getting people pe ople to conform to what society said was the American ideal. This is not the case now. Ericksonian psychotherapists do not follow that approach any more. If you look at the b igger frame, his approach was based on a model of the perfect society. Within that was embedded another approach, which was based on his belief that everybody could help themselves and had access to the resources to do so. Maybe his belief came from his commitment to overcoming disability, as he taught himself to walk again after being paralysed with polio. Your view of what patients should do, why they should do it and how it relates to their personal goals within their home, social and work enviornments is called your “approach”. When students watch one of my demonstrations, or when they listen to my lectures, I often ask them to get a filter, call it an approach filter, and place it over everything they hear me say and do and then to only pick up those elements of what I do that fit into the category that we call approach. If you meet with other therapists for supervision or practice sessions you can do the same thing with your partners in exercises. What is their approach? What is it they are doing? Where are they coming from? Place an approach filter over what they do, to separate their approach from everything else they are doing. These four components have their linguistic application and their behavioural application. With approach we have first got the linguistic application which is the tonality, the vocabulary and the language patterns. You communicate the linguistic application of your approach with the words you use and by the way you use these words. That's the linguistic
side. The behavioural application of the approach is how you sit, how you move, your body movements, even the way you use your eyes, everything that is non-verbal. Have you ever just sat in silence and looked at a patient in a particular way and they have burst into tears? That's an example of a behavioural application of an approach. You haven't said anything, you have just been present. Your approach in this e xample was probably one of compassion and acceptance.
So once again: • Approaches – are philosophies and and interpretations of how therapy therapy should be done. • Approaches are based on beliefs about how and why people have problems and how they
can be resolved. • Approach is broken down into its linguistic application and its behavioural application • Linguistic: General tonality, vocabulary and speech patterns. • Behavioural: Demeanour and general manner.
Technique • Techniques – are sets of instructions and templates. • Techniques are utilise the strategies and skills of a given approach. • Technique is broken down into its linguistic application and its behavioural application. • Linguistic: The things that you say to guide your patient across your therapeutic map. • Behavioural: The gestures and use of non-verbal communication.
Techniques are embedded into the approach and strategies and skills are the building blocks of techniques. I rarely design techniques before I meet a patient. I create techniques as I go on, and at the end of a session I have usually created several new techniques most of which I discard at the end of the session as they were only designed de signed for that particular patient. Techniques are a great way to learn. But once you have created them just let them go. Techniques are created to help patients navigate across their own personal territory, and are custom designed for that particular patient at that particular moment. So there is no need to hang on to them, just let them go and create new techniques for each new patient
you see. This way you are honouring and respecting the individual needs of each patient as a unique person. Again, when I am demonstrating, I teach my students to use the “technique” filter so that they can identify when I am developing or using a technique. Techniques can also become templates. A template replicates a process and can be used again and be adapted to the needs of future patients. Techniques that do not evolve into templates are just techniques that worked for that particular patient at that particular time. As with approach, technique has its linguistic component, which is basically the instructions (the things you say to guide the person across the map you are using) and its behavioural component (the gestures and other non-verbal components which help illustrate the technique). For example, if I wanted a hypnotic subject to p roject memories onto the palms of my hands (using my own hands gives me control over their experience), I might put one hand to the patient’s left and another to the patient’s right and say, "see one memory projected onto that hand, and see another memory projected onto this hand." The verbal suggestions would make up the linguistic component and the positioning of the hands would be the behavioural component.
So once again: • Techniques – are sets of instructions and templates. • Techniques are utilise the strategies and skills of a given approach. • Technique is broken down into its linguistic application and its behavioural application. • Linguistic: The things that you say to guide your patient across your therapeutic map. • Behavioural: The gestures and u se of non-verbal communication
Strategies • Strategies are cognitive processes. • Strategies are based on ways of thinking within a given approach and are defined by the
rigidity or flexibility of that approach. • Strategy is broken down into its linguistic application and its behavioural application. • Linguistic: Your internal dialo gue and the unconscious messages you receive while doing
therapy.
• Behavioural: What you feel as a response to the internal dialogue d ialogue and unconscious
messages (visualisations etc). Embedded inside of techniques are strategies and skills. Strategies are cognitive processes – the way you think through things. They are a series of steps based on what to do first, next and last. You can't see them because they are purely cognitive, so you can't see somebody's strategy (although NLP claims you can identify individual strategies through eye accessing and predicate identification). I never go into a session thinking I am going to use this or that strategy because every session is unpredictable. I have to be just there at that moment and decide what to do, based on what the patient gives me. The strategy comes out of my interactions with the patient during the session, I don’t create it before-hand. Strategies are harder to break down into linguistic and behavioural components but they are still distinct. Strategies are invisible and internal, so they can’t be seen but they are there never-the-less. When I am working with a patient I am constantly receiving unconscious internal dialogue and images from my own unconscious. It's as though I have someone there in the control tower giving me advice all the time and telling me what to do. I can’t clearly hear a voice in my head, but I hear and I see messages which give me instructions on what to do next. I call these unconscious messages. I then make decisions on what advice to follow if the message is combined with an intuitive feeling of some kind. The feeling is the behavioural component of the strategy. It is what you feel kinaesthetically.
So once again: • Strategies are cognitive processes. • Strategies a re based on ways of thinking within a given approach and are defined by the
rigidity or flexibility of that approach. • Strategy is broken down into its linguistic application and its behavioural application. • Linguistic: Your internal dialogue and the un conscious messages you receive while doing
therapy. • Behavioural: What you feel as a response to the internal dialogue d ialogue and unconscious
messages (visualisations etc).
Skills • Skills – are behaviours and actions.
• Skills are the behaviours of a therapi st working within a given approach and are defined by
the rigidity or flexibility of that approach. • Skill is broken down into its linguistic application and its behavioural application. • Linguistic: The language patterns you use. • Behavioural: The no n-verbal application of the skill.
When you use words they have a sentence structure and your ability to apply a sentence structure that most effectively conveys the message within the words is known as your linguistic skill. When you use a particular tonality, lift your eyes, raise your eyebrow and put your hand out, you are communicating non-verbally. Your ability to convey a message effectively nonverbally is known as you behavioural skill. Linguistic skills are made up of words (language patterns) that you can hear, and behavioural skills, including tonality, are made up of non-verbal communications that you can observe. Insertive Eye Contact, a skill I developed for communicating indirectly with the unconscious mind, utilises both of these skills in a very ve ry precise way. It utilises hypnotic language patterns combined with a shift in focus, from one eye to another, to place emphasis on either the conscious, or unconscious part of the communication (this can occur midway through a sentence so precision is important). The use of appropriate hypnotic language patterns is the linguistic skill, and deciding when to emphasise the words aimed at the unconscious (by shifting the gaze from one eye to another) is the behavioural skill.
So once again: • Skills – are behaviours and actions. • Skills are the behaviours of a therapist working within a given approach and are defined by
the rigidity or flexibility of that approach. • Skill is broken down into its linguistic application and its behavioural application. • Linguistic: The language patterns you use. • Behavioural: The no n-verbal application of the skill.
So when you watch me do a demonstration you need to notice the approach, the technique, the strategy and the skills and you need a different filter for each, so that you can separate them out for study. You should break down you r learning into these 4 components. Imagine that you have four different pairs of glasses, use on e for looking at approaches, one for techniques, one for strategies and one for skills. This will give you an in-depth understanding of each component as they happen moment by moment during a therapy session. This will make it a lot easier to then understand the therapeutic process when each of these components are combined. It will allow you to see, what others believe to be, “magical” demonstrations of psychotherapy, as a series of logical, clinical processes that evolve during sessions and result in success for the patient.
Reinforce Your Learning If you want to consciously remind yourself of what you are learning in this book, please go over it again several times. The repetition will h elp you break down what I am doing, rather than just trusting your unconscious and being a sponge, trying to absorb it all first time around. If you are a sponge and just absorb it all unconsciously, you will put down this book with a lot of hope and not a lot of knowledge. You can go to a concert and watch a fantastic pianist and wish you could play the piano as well, but unless you sit down on your own and practice the scales you’re not going to learn how to play. If possible practice as much as possible with other students before inflicting yourself on patients.
Overlapping Although, for the purpose of teaching, I have listed these components sequentially, they are all happening simultaneously. You have approaches, and then within approaches you have techniques – technique 1 and technique 2 for example, and within them you have strategy, and skill, and within all of these you have got the linguistic and the behavioural aspect for each of these. That's how they are embedded within each other. That's the big frame, smaller frame, smaller still, and they all happen simultaneously. When I'm working I don't pay p ay attention to this structure, because I know it well and I do n't need to pay attention to it anymore, but I am able to stand back and see it in operation, almost as if I were someone else observing, and this should be your goal too – to observe what you are doing when doing effective therapy but without getting in the way. While learning this you should be mindful of it. These components are sieves. Use a big sieve when you want to look at approach and smaller sieves to get the detailed stuff. So there are a series of sieves, or a series of filters that you use for examining what I do and then what you yourself do. It is unlikely you will be able to do all of this simultaneously
consciously. When you do therapy you do them all simultaneously unconsciously, but initially, to study someone else, it will probably p robably be very difficult for you to see them all simultaneously. You cannot keep your mind focused clearly on each of these filters simultaneously (well I can’t anyway), so you will have to move from one to the other. You can say "Right, for 5 minutes I'm going to pay attention to the approach, for 5 minutes just the technique, 5 minutes to the strategy and then the skill”. You move your focus of attention from one to another and then they will b ecome more distinct. You will then be able to recognise the approach, without you even thinking about it, because yo u have trained yourself to do it. The same applies to your understanding of the other components. You will be conditioning yourself to think along these lines. It's a bit like training yourself to tie a shoelace. Initially it has to be conscious. When you play the scales on a piano for the first time it is conscious, even if you’re playing p laying is a little bit wooden. But then after a few times it become unconscious, you don't have to think about it. It is the same with learning to see the components of indirect hypnosis. This will be invaluable in your work as a therapist, because if you apply the same observational model to your patients you will see patterns in the way that they communicate with you. They have an approach too. They come to you with their problem, they have the big frame - how they approach life and how they approach problems. They have their own techniques for either trying to resolve the problem or trying to maintain the problem, and within that they will have strategies, cognitive processes, and they will have behaviours which assist them in maintaining their problem and they will communicate all of this linguistically and behaviourally. This model can be applied to all interactions, all communication. Once you learn this model it will be an integral part of your work as a therapist, and when you look at your patients you will no longer think "What do I do next?", because you will have so much more information about them. It's a model, which will enable you to get a deeper u nderstanding of another person. The more you practise it and the more mindful you are of using this when you are watching people and talking to people, the quicker it will become an unconscious process, and then your intuition will kick in and you will start to have feelings about people and how you can help them. You won't have to pay attention any more to each of the components, because you will just have the sense of knowing what to do. This is when you can just be present with your patient, with no need to be inside your own head trying to think what you should do to help them. You will be able to home straight-in on to the source of their problem and know intuitively what you need to do. It’s not magic, but it may seem like it to others. Like all disciplines, this requires careful dedicated study. Read this book again and again until you can recall it easily. It is worth the time and effort to get this right if you are serious about learning indirect hypnosis and helping your patients. The next step is to attend one of
the BHRTI courses and watch videos of my work. Read, get good training, understand the principles, and then practice.
PART TWO
Example of a Live Tutorial The Utilization of Ideo-motor Response in Accessing Unconscious Information, Memories and Resources as a Primary Treatment Modality in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy.
Introduction
This is an edited transcript of an Ericksonian hypnotherapy session demonstrating the use of ideo-motor signaling. The session is taken from a course I was teaching for the British Hypnosis Research & Training Institute at St Anne’s Psychiatric Hospital in London in the early 1990’s. Many years later in 2012 the session was transcribed and I edited the transcript to simplify the text. The demonstration is in front of a group of seventy doctors, psychologists and other health professionals and as will be seen from the transcript I teach the class what I am doing as the session progresses. The demonstration subject is Elizabeth, who is one of the students and she has volunteered to be a demonstration subject for the therapy demonstration. In Ericksonian hypnotherapy, ideo-motor signaling is the name given to a technique whereby a movement of the patient’s finger is used to signal an unconscious communication – typically a yes or no response. I often use ideo-motor signaling with my patients in therapy, just as Milton Erickson did. I find it invaluable in uncovering the source of e arly learning experiences that have contributed to problems and the patterns that have maintained them. I frequently do therapy using only ideo-motor response as a communication tool, because in this way the patient has no conscious realization of what therapy is occurring. It's a confidential therapeutic encounter between the patient's unconscious and the therapist. The patient just gets better without without knowing how they did it. The technique is quite simple but does require some skill at observation and timing. Once in hypnosis, the therapist asks the patient’s unconscious mind to lift one finger for a “yes" answer, and another for a "no" answer. Sometimes the therapist will indicate on which hands the yes and no fingers will be, I prefer to leave it to the patient’s unconscious to decide. The responses can either be on the same hand or on different hands. It is most common to use both hands – maybe a yes ye s response from a finger on the left hand and a no response from a finger on the right hand (as happens in this demonstration). It is usually easy to tell when a patient is faking, because an unconscious finger signal is slow with minimal movement and at first a little shaky. A conscious response is a direct, conscious more or less immediate lifting of the finger. Ideally there should be no conscious participation on the part of the patient so you get a true honest unconscious response. When genuine, patients are often unaware of the finger movements as they happen.
Ideo-motor movement can also be an unconscious movement of the he ad, foot or other part of the body and sometimes when a patient has been asked to allow their unconscious mind to move their finger, they also nod or shake their head without realizing it. Because head nodding and shaking is a part of our everyday non-verbal behavior it can happen quite naturally and unconsciously. In hypnosis the unconscious head nods are different from conscious everyday head nods. In trance they are usually very slow and barely noticeable. If a patient nods their head in a very enthusiastic and conscious way then the response is consciously generated and should not be relied upon, it is just the patient answering consciously and the responses are based on the patient’s usual conscious understanding. Sometimes there may be an unconscious movement of the foot or hand as well, or a twitch in a face muscle. These are usually unconscious. It is rare for these to be consciously generated as most people do not deliberately use these other parts of the body to communicate consciously. There is usually quite a delay between the therapist’s question and the patient lifting the finger, especially at the start. This is because the patient has to process the question unconsciously, search for an answer unconsciously, and then move the finger unconsciously. This process gets faster as the patient answers more questions and the process becomes more familiar. The therapist can encourage the finger to lift with indirect suggestions and notice the initial slight twitch of the muscles in the back of the hand that usually happen prior to a finger actually lifting. With some patients you may only see a twitching of the muscles in the back of the h and or a finger shifting from side to side and a full f ull lift may not happen or take much longer to happen. This is of no concern. The twitch in the muscle is hard to fake and so is a very good indicator of a genuine unconscious response. It can be used as an alternative to a full finger lift. I often will only need that small twitch as a response as this saves time in therapy when one has a lot of questions. However beware, sometimes a movement may occur in one place during one session and during another session occur in another part of the hand. So you need to develop your observation skills to notice these subtle minimal movements. The whole purpose of using Ideo-motor responses is to communicate with the part of the patient that knows more about the problem than they do. By communicating directly with the unconscious mind the therapist is able to call upon the patient’s unconscious resources for problem solving. A certain amount of negotiation can be done between the therapist and the patient's unconscious mind in this way although the answers are limited to ye s and no. The patient need not have any conscious awareness of the communication as it is happening and he will often forget that it d id happen. Usually patients can remember that the fingers moved but can’t remember all of the answers. There are however limitations when using finger signaling. Any attempt at evoking direct answers, especially detailed answers via finger signaling, is severely limited because the fingers can only answer "yes" or "no". Often keeping track of the answers obtained with ideo-motor responses can be challenging for the therapist. So when getting answers with finger signaling the therapist should write down both the questions and answers on a sheet of paper. Sometimes the responses can be quite confusing and contradictory contradictory because the
unconscious mind has its own sense of logic and a written record of the session will help sort out this often contradictory unconscious logic. There is also the issue of unconscious u nconscious confidentiality to consider. Keeping a clear written record of the responses as the session progresses will definitely help you to keep track of the unconscious communication, but it may not be advisable to show the patient the written record afterwards, as it will often contain confidential information shared about the patient by his/her unconscious, and the patient’s unconscious mind may not wish it to be shared with the patient’s conscious mind. Strange as it may seem, the unconscious mind often holds back information from the patient, especially if that information is of a traumatic nature.
Brooks: OK, do you know anything about deep trance work? Elizabeth: A little, I used to d o it sometimes, but it’s rather hit and miss. Brooks: Tell me a little bit about how you use it. Elizabeth: Well when I’m inducing hypnosis people sometimes... they go into a deep trance, and sometimes they seem to sort of...
(Elizabeth pauses and starts to go into trance while moving both arms left and right simulating a wave movement) Brooks: Do you know what you do differently when you work with people in deep trance? Elizabeth: What I do differently?...
(Pauses for a several moments) ... you mean am I getting?... (Pauses for longer as she goes deeper into trance) I think I am... just responding to that person more completely, probably... Brooks: Umm... Elizabeth: (Smiles) Brooks: Umm. Are you aware that you also go into a trance when you hypnotise your patients? Elizabeth: (Smiles and nods her head) Oh yes, yes, yes.
Brooks: How did I know that you do that? Elizabeth: (Laughs) I was going into a trance just then. Brooks: Yes, we were accessing the state you go into when you’re helping patients. Elizabeth: (Smiles) Yes, yes, yes, yes. Brooks: Umm yes. (Talks to the students) OK let me explain a little about deep trance work and the role of indirect and direct suggestion in deep trance work.
You’ve been learning a lot about indirect suggestion on this course and we often use indirect suggestion to help people overcome any fears they may have about going into hypnosis. When a person is actually in a deep trance, or already going into a deep trance, there is less of a need to use u se indirect suggestion, because they are already in hypnosis. You can still use indirect suggestion when doing therapy in hypnosis, if you want to only address the unconscious mind, and don’t wish the conscious mind to eavesdrop, but when you just want to deepen trance, or evoke hypnotic phenomena, you can be quite direct if you want, once the patient is in hypnosis. Milton Erickson was often very direct once his subject was in trance. My video called “Training In Indirect Hypnosis”, which was about inducing and deep ening trance while evoking hypnotic phenomena using only indirect suggestion, was based on the sole use of hypnotic implication. There was very little direct suggestion in that session, because I wanted to demonstrate how powerful indirect suggestion is on its own. But you don’t have to do it that way every e very time you work with a patient, although admittedly, that is my personal preference. You can be direct as well, once the patient is in trance. So at this point in your training I’m going to encourage you to utilize direct suggestion as well as indirect suggestion, but not until your hypnotic subject is actually in a trance. Don’t use the direct approach as a way of putting the person into hypnosis, use the indirect approach for the first part of the session. We don’t want you sounding like a stage hypnotist. We’re here to help the patient p atient feel that the hypnotic experience, and their ability to heal, comes from within them, not that it is being done to them by someone who claims to have some kind of hypnotic power over them. We want to empower our patients, not dis-empower them. So use indirect suggestion for the induction and then use caring and encouraging direct suggestion for the trance deepening and therapy. I will demonstrate how you can do this using ideo-motor signaling. You will ne ed to watch closely to see the indirect induction as a lot of it will be non-verbal. The direct suggestions will be obvious. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) So what I’d like to do, is ask you to think about how you feel at this moment? Elizabeth: (Closes her eyes)
Brooks: How secure do you f eel at this moment? (security was something the patient had mentioned previously) Elizabeth: Fairly, not completely. Brooks: Umm, how do your hands feel right now? How secure do your hands feel at this moment? Elizabeth: Umm... fairly all right. Brooks: Fairly all right? Please tell me what position you would have to put p ut your hands in for them to not feel so secure? Elizabeth: (Elizabeth tightens her hands) hands) They feel sort of... (Elizabeth tightens her hands again) Brooks: Yes OK. Can you do that even more? Can you make your hands feel even less secure? That’s it! Elizabeth: (Smiles) Brooks: And how does it feel when you make your hands fell less secure like that? Elizabeth: Tight all the way across my shoulders and my legs. Brooks: Not very comfortable? Elizabeth: No. Brooks: So does that mean... (pause) if I lift your arm like this (Brooks lifts Elizabeth’s arm as part of the hypnotic induction), and then I ask you to relax it... just to relax your fingers, that’s it... just relax them nice and comfortably like that, so they fee l the opposite of how they felt... that’s it... the opposite from how they were ... (a series of implied questions)
And then you relax that one... (Brooks lifts her other hand) Does that then feel more secure? Elizabeth: Yes Brooks: (Brooks gives a short analogy) I realized something some time ago. I was stuck somewhere, I can’t remember where it was now, but b ut I needed something to eat but there wasn’t anything to eat. I knew I had to wait a long time to eat and I felt very hungry. But as time passed I started to appreciate the waiting and the hungry fe eling. I realized how important it is to feel hungry in order to enjoy food. And the more I looked forward to eating, the more I knew I would enjoy the food when it came.
Now you know, that when you wake up in the morning, there’s usually daylight, and when you go to sleep at night it’s dark. But with hypnosis you can go to sleep any time, (Whispers) if you wish... and you know that I can use the word sleep yet don’t mean sleep. When I use the word sleep it can mean something entirely different. But you don’t need to know what it means consciously. Brooks: (Talks to the students) I’m going to ask Elizabeth some questions here... questions about what she feels like, and about what is happening for her.
There are three ways to deepen dee pen trance initially. One way is to suggest it, the other way is to wait and let her go deeper, this means, you don’t say anything, and the other way is to utilize the physiological and psychological changes that occur and the hypnotic phenomena that develops, to deepen trance. So I will use a combination of all three. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) OK Elizabeth, I just noticed that you moved your hands just then. How do they feel right now? Elizabeth: They feel OK. Brooks: OK? and how do your fingers feel? Elizabeth: Tingly. Brooks: Tingly?... which hand feels the most tingly? Elizabeth: The left. Brooks: The left hand feels more tingly than the right... OK, and how do your eyelids feel right now? Elizabeth: Heavy. Brooks: Heavy? Do you think that you can still open them? Elizabeth: (Elizabeth opens her eyes) Brooks: So they are not that heavy, not yet.
OK, what would you have to do in order to make them so heavy h eavy that you couldn’t open them? Elizabeth: Just let myself breath deeply and slip deeper into... (Elizabeth goes into hypnosis) Brooks: Umm, that’s right, that’s it.
Now I can ask you questions, but of course you don’t have to answer verbally.
You know that there are many ways you can communicate. Just allow that tingling to develop in your hand as that heaviness develops in your eyelids e yelids as you breathe. Just going as deep as you need to go in order o rder to accomplish what we’re going to do here today. I’d like your unconscious mind to let you go even deeper into a hypnotic state. You can think, you can hear, you can see in your minds eye. You can feel. Every thought that you have can help you go deeper into hypnosis. Every image can help you go deeper into a hypnotic state. Every sound can help you go deeper and deeper into trance. Every feeling can help you go deeper and deeper into hypnosis. Now I wonder what’s happening to the thumb on your left hand. That’s right. How is the feeling in that thumb different from the felling in th e thumb on your right hand? I’m going to talk about your fingers and thumb’s because we can all be fingers and thumbs. I wonder what it would feel like to not know how to pick up something with those fingers. Almost as if that hand isn’t yours. Yet somehow unconsciously your hand can move to pick things up but without you knowing how it’s happening. Now your hand knows how to hold ho ld a pencil or a pen, o r a knife and fork. But you don’t have to think about how to hold a knife and fork. Because your unconscious mind knows how to hold things without you having to think about it. Now you can go into a deep deep hypnotic state as you breath. Going deeper with every time you exhale, or maybe your unconscious mind would prefer you to go deeper as you inhale. You can be curious about that. Maybe you’ve spoken on the telephone and written something down without knowing what you were writing. Maybe you were doodling and didn’t d idn’t notice what you were doodling until afterwards.
You know how to wave at someone in the street. You don’t have to think about how to move your hand, it waves all by itself. A friend comes towards you with their arm outstretched and they raise their hand to shake your hand, and your hand lifts all by itself. You don’t have to think about how to do that. I’d like you to go deeper and deeper into hypnosis now. Deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. Notice what it’s like to go deeper deep er and deeper. Experience it in your body, as you breath and as I talk to you. Going deeper and deeper each time you breath. That’s right, deeper and deeper. I’d like you to count numbers to yourself as you go deeper. I don’t know if your unconscious will ask you to count yourself into hypnosis h ypnosis by counting forwards or by counting backwards. Wait for a moment to find out... Then just count to yourself and let each number fade into the distance as you go deeper and deeper. Just deeper and deeper, each number fading into the distance. Each number as you count, as you go deeper and deeper. Deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. As you go deeper and deeper, so you start to alter the sensations in your body, how are you doing that? You really don’t know, do you? That’s right, going deeper and deeper and deeper. Starting to recall the experience of being somewhere very comfortable. Deeper and deeper. Starting to recall the experience of being somewhere very comfortable. That heaviness in your eyelids. Heaviness in your eyelids getting more and more heavy. As if those muscles are so tired in those eyelids. eye lids. So tired, so relaxed. So tired in those eyelids now. In those eyelids, so relaxed. That’s right. And you feel a gentle touch on your shoulder. (Brooks touches her gently on the shoulder) Now I want you to go deeper and deeper. Heaviness in those eyelids now. That’s right, deeper and d eeper all the way down. That’s right, now deeper and deeper and you can be aware of the heaviness in your eyelids. Even as you breath, have you almost lost the sensation of some part of your body? Is there
some part of your body you can’t feel? Where in you body is that? (Elizabeth nods) That’s right, you can’t feel that part of your body... you can’t feel that part of your body. Heaviness in your eyelids, so heavy as you go deeper now. All the way down. Now that’s right, that’s it. You can’t feel that part of your body. Really can’t feel it. You can wonder where it is but you can’t feel that part of your body. It’s such an interesting learning experience as you go deeper and deeper, as you continue to count. Remember to continue to count as you go deeper de eper and deeper. Just deeper and deeper. You really can’t feel that part of your body. As your eyelids are so heavy he avy now, all the way down. Deeper and deeper, now just deeper and deeper and deeper. And your unconscious mind can listen to every single word that I say. Every suggestion, your unconscious mind can hear, every single suggestion, every word and implication. Your unconscious mind can tune into my voice and hear every word and suggestion as you go deeper and deeper. And you conscious mind can hear the sound of my voice, the sound, only the sound. Now going deeper now, that’s right, all the way down as you experience the sensation of a gentle touch on your shoulder. I am touching you on your shoulder. As you breath, as you exhale, feel my gentle touch on your shoulder. Just feel that slight pressure on your shoulder, that slight pressure. Deeper and deeper now. In that very comfortable place, that very comfortable place. And what can you see in this comfortable place? What can you hear? What can you feel in this comfortable place? In this comfortable place you can look around this comfortable place, hear the sounds and the feelings of being in this comfortable place. Just enjoy the experience of being in this comfortable place. What can you see, hear and feel? What experiences. Have those experiences now. Have those experiences. Have those experiences in every way now. Have those experiences. Have those experiences and when I ask you to talk, you can reply. When I ask you to talk, you can speak to me. You can allow yo ur mouth to move, your lips to move, and you can talk to me. Easily comfortably and stay in that relaxing place.
Going deeper and deeper now. All the way down, deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper now. When I ask you any questions qu estions you can talk to me. Deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. Eyelids getting heavier and heavy, heavier and heavier as you go deeper and deeper and experience being in this place. Experience being in this comfortable place. Experience it fully now, experience it in every way, every way experience it. Now Elizabeth, now I want you to answer some questions for me. What is this place you’re in, where is this special place? Tell me where this place is? Elizabeth: An orchard Brooks: An orchard, are there trees in this orchard with fruit on? Elizabeth: All sorts... a plum tree. Brooks: Do you like plums? Elizabeth: Umm. Brooks: Are you going to pick one? Which one are you going to pick? Can you see one that you would like to pick? Which one are you going to pick? A big one or small one? Pick that plum now. Can you reach and get that plum? Pick that plum.
(Elizabeth nods) OK put it to your mouth and bite into it. Taste that plum. Taste the texture of the skin on the plum, the fruit inside. The taste is so nice, sort of firm but sweet. You can taste the fruit f ruit around the stone, the stone inside the plum. Taste the dryness of the stone. Spit that out or take it out. (Elizabeth spits out the hallucinated plum stone) Umm that salvia flows, as you taste that plum. Maybe it’s the best plum you’ve ever tasted or maybe the next one will be the best plum you’ve ever eve r tasted. On a scale of one to ten how do you rate the taste of this plum? Elizabeth: About eight.
Brooks: About eight, pick another one now. Pick a number ten. Pick a number ten plum. There are some more plums up there. the re.
Which one do you think is a number ten plum? Have you seen one yet? Do you want to feel it, to test how soft it is? Just test it to see how soft it is. Can you feel it? Elizabeth: Umm. Brooks: Do you think that’s going to be a number ten plum? Elizabeth: (Nods her head) Brooks: Taste that plum, put that to your mouth and bite into that plum. Bite into that plum now. Bite into it, taste that one. Taste that lovely taste. It’s probably the best plum you’ve ever tasted. The best plum you’ve ever tasted. Just so perfect, perfect. Nothing wrong with that. Exactly, exactly as you like it to be. Perfect, perfect.
How do you rate this one on the scale of one to ten? Elizabeth: (Mumbles the word ten)
When I touch you gently on the shoulder you can go all the way into a nice deep hypnotic trance. Go now deeper and deeper, deeper deep and deeper, all the way down. Just deeper and deeper, deeper. Anytime I touch you on the shoulder like that you can go deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. That’s it just allow allow your head to get very very very heavy. Head gets very very heavy as you go deeper and deeper. Deeper and deeper. Notice how your hands feel at this moment (lifts her hands). Now I’m just going to bend your fingers slightly just to loosen them up. They became a little bit stiff didn’t they (her hand became spontaneously cataleptic). Just loosening those fingers up a little bit. Now I’d like your unconscious mind to allow you to go deeper and deeper. Allow your unconscious mind to let movements and feelings return to your fingers but only to the extent that they can move to answer my questions. Only to the extent that they can move to answer my questions. Deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. Allow your fingers to move to answer my questions. Deeper and deeper. So your conscious mind can go anywhere it chooses. It doesn’t have to pay any attention. Just your unconscious mind to answer questions. Now I’d like your unconscious mind to show me what a “yes” is like. To allow one finger on one hand to lift as a “yes” signal from your unconscious mind.
One finger to be a “yes” signal and another finger to be a “no” signal. So first of all I’d like your unconscious mind to allow one finger to move. Will it be on your left hand or right hand? I don’t really re ally know. Show me what a “yes” is like... I’d like the unconscious mind to show me what a “yes” is like. Elizabeth: (Slowly lifts a finger on her left hand) Brooks: And continue to let that “yes” signal happen so I can see it clearly (her finger lifts higher on her left hand).
That’s right, and let that finger return to normal. Let that finger rest back where it was. Elizabeth: (lowers the finger on her left hand) Brooks: Now I’d like your unconscious mind to show me what a “no” signal is like. What a “no” signal is like.
That’s right allow that signal to continue in that way, in it’s own way. Umm more and more, let that “no” signal continue. Elizabeth: (lifts a finger on her right hand) Brooks: Now just let that finger return to normal (Brooks helps move her “no” finger back to normal as it is slow in returning)
Now I’m just going to ask some questions que stions of your unconscious mind. Just go deeper and deeper and deeper (Brooks places his hand gently on her shoulder) deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper deep. (Brooks starts talking to Elizabeth’s unconscious by referring to it while talking to Elizabeth) Is your unconscious mind willing to communicate with me, with these ideo-motor signals? Elizabeth: (Lifts the finger on her left hand as a “yes” response) Brooks: Thank you, Just let that finger return to normal, return to normal. That’s right, thank you very much. Just allow yourself to go deeper and deeper and deeper. That’s it all the way down. All the way down. All the way down.
Does your unconscious mind want you to come out of a trance in a minute? Elizabeth: (Lifts the finger on her right hand as a “no” response) Brooks: Just let that signal develop even more, even more. Even more.
That’s it, now let it return to normal. That’s it all the way down deeper, that’s it. Even
deeper and deeper than before. I’d like you to count, continue to count to go deeper. Only listen to the sound of those numbers in your head. As you count those numbers, I’m going to talk to your unconscious mind and whatever I say to your unconscious mind is only for your unconscious mind. Just give your conscious attention to the counting of those numbers. And if you miss a number you can continue counting, but remember what numbers you have missed, and make a list of all of those numbers you missed while you continue to count. And each number that you count, you go deep er and deeper, deeper and deeper and deeper as I talk to your unconscious mind. Continue to count as I talk to your unconscious mind. Just allow your unconscious mind to hear me, your unconscious mind to hear me and respond without you having to listen. And deeper and deeper and deeper d eeper now. I’m talking to your unconscious mind now. Ke ep going deeper and deeper in your own way... in your own time. (Brooks talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) I’m going to talk “about” Elizabeth. I’m going to talk about her and what she can achieve for herself today. I would like to talk about Elizabeth and how we can help her achieve things for herself. Has Elizabeth got a particular problem that she wants to work on, at an unconscious level? Elizabeth: (Lifts the finger on her left hand as a “yes” response) Brooks: (Brooks talks to Elizabeth) Keep counting and go deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper.
Thank you, just allow that movement to return to normal. That’s it thank you very much, thank you very much. Now you keep going deeper as I talk to the students. Just keep on going deeper. Brooks: (talking to the students) Let me tell you what’s been happening so far. Now we’ve got our ideo-motor responses here, and it will be very interesting to pay attention to the answers that we get from her unconscious, it might also seem quite confusing, because you might discover that the unconscious has its own sense of logic.
So if you want to keep a note of the questions I’m asking and then the answers we get, it will be very interesting when we look back and analyze what we’ve got. I’m going to do this as a content free therapy session because I don’t know what her actual problem is. I have deliberately structured the session in this way so we are limited to only on ly the yes and no signals as a therapeutic tool, because with ideo-motor signaling you are limited to only yes and no signals. So I’m showing you exactly what you can and can’t do with ideo-motor signaling.
Let’s suppose that someone comes in to therapy and they have a problem where they feel anxious but can’t define why they feel anxious. In o ther words, there would be a symptom without any consciously identifiable cause. We would be in the same situation we are in now. We would have a lack of information. But we would have a communication channel to the unconscious part of the person that knows about the cause. So first of all, we have to ask if that part of her unconscious is willing to help her resolve the problem by allowing us access to the cause. Why do we need this willingness to help? Because the unconscious has so far kept this cause out of the patient’s conscious awareness, usually as a protective measure, and having a therapist digging around may jeopardize that protection. protection. So this is very much a matter of building trust trust between the therapist and the patient’s unconscious. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) Now are you willing to help me help Elizabeth with this problem? If you are willing to help me help Elizabeth with this problem your unconscious can give me a yes signal. If your unconscious is not willing it can give me a no signal. Elizabeth: (Moves the finger on her left hand as a yes response) Brooks: Thank you, thank you. Now let that finger relax back to where it was. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now let me tell you what’s been happening so far with regards to setting up the ideo-motor signaling itself.
Notice that I gave her a task of counting numbers to herself. Then I gave her the task again but to also keep track of any numbers she had left out. This is a difficult task at the best of times, so it ties up her conscious attention nicely. And I told her that she needn’t pay attention to me, she only has to count. By giving her the task of counting, I make it ve ry difficult for her to pay attention to me consciously and respond consciously, because she has to keep track of her counting. This allows me to get through to the unconscious and get a more reliable ideo-motor signal. Now earlier, her initial ideo-motor signal was genuine, but it happened too quick for my liking. Which means that there was a percentage of conscious communication there as well. I still feel it was an unconscious response but it was a kind of compromise. In other words I feel that she was consciously assisting her unconscious and we don’t need that, we need an honest purely unconscious response. Now we are getting much more reliable unconscious communication because because there is a definite delay in the response. Did you notice that? The movement doesn’t seem so conscious, it’s more like it’s happening all by itself, it’s not consciously controlled. (Brooks shows the students how her fingers have now been moving) And that’s the communication we want to get. It has to be as unconscious as possible to be genuine. You can have a signal which is a combination of the two (conscious and unconscious
responses) and you can still work that way, but I prefer to work on a totally unconscious level. I don’t like to h ave the patient in the room with me, only her unconscious mind. Let’s find how much Elizabeth knows consciously about the cause of her problem. Brooks: (Brooks talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Does Elizabeth know the cause of this problem at a conscious level? Elizabeth: (Moves the finger on her left hand as a yes response and moves the finger on her right hand as a no response) Brooks: (talks to the students) You see! there is the strange sense of logic that I was talking about, we get a “yes” and a “no”. So now we know that she knows part of the cause consciously but is unaware of another part of the cause. Brooks: (Brooks talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind through Elizabeth) Now does your unconscious mind have a full knowledge or awareness of that cause at this moment? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand as a yes response) Brooks: Thank you. (Talks to the students) Right so the unconscious knows what the cause is. It has full awareness of what the cause is. Let’s find out if it’s willing to share it with her. Because obviously sometimes the unconscious mind protects the person by holding stuff back. Lets find out if it’s willing to share, and if it is, how much it’s willing to share. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Are you willing to share with Elizabeth the cause of the problem? Elizabeth: (Moves the finger on her left hand as a “yes” response and also the finger on her right hand as a “no” response). Brooks: OK OK, thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So now we have h ave a “yes” and a “no” signal again from her unconscious. It’s willing to share, and yet it’s also not willing to share!
So does this mean that it’s willing to share a part but not all? Or does it mean that it’s willing to share all but only under certain conditions. These are the two ways of looking at her response, and we have to check both of these out. I’m going to suggest this to her in a very specific way. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind through Elizabeth) I’m going to ask your unconscious a question and I’d like you to answer yes or no but I don’t want you to answer until I give you the signal.
(Talks to Elizabeth) So go deeper and deeper, keep on counting deeper and deeper and deeper. Deeper and deeper.
(Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind through Elizabeth) I don’t want you to answer the question until I tell you that you can answer. Now there are two alternatives as I see them here - two ways that your unconscious may be willing to share with Elizabeth. Number one, is that you’re unconscious is willing to share part of the cause but hold another part back? Number two is it that your unconscious is willing to share all of the information about the cause, but only in a way where Elizabeth won’t recognize consciously what the unconscious is sharing. (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) If it’s number one answer yes. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand as a yes response) Brooks: OK OK , thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) As she has answered “yes” to choice number one, we shouldn’t assume that she would have answered “no” to choice number two, she might answer yes to both questions. So let’s find out. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) If you’re willing to share all of it, but in a way that she won’t be aware of, please let me know by giving a yes response. Elizabeth: (Moves the finger on her left hand as a yes response and also the finger on her right hand to indicate no) Brooks: Thank you, thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now isn’t this fascinating. Lets think of how she could be answering this question. So she has already agreed to share a part but also hold part back. So is she now willing to share all of it but in a way that won’t be recognized by Elizabeth consciously?
Is she going to share the part that she was going to share, in a way that’s not going be recognized? And is she going to share the part that she wasn’t going to share in a way that’s not going to be recognized? Can you see how complex ideo-motor responses can become. Our conscious limited ways of understanding are really challenged when we enter into a conversation with the unconscious. Of course I am deliberately phrasing my questions so as to evoke these kind of unconscious responses for the purposes of the demonstration. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Just go deeper and deeper. Keep on counting as you go deeper, that’s it. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Because we are talking about how this sharing will occur she may even get some conscious recognition now. In other words, by talking about the
possibility of sharing, we may have initiated the sharing. Elizabeth: (Elizabeth has a slight smile on her face) Brooks: (Talks to the students) See the smile? her smile is her recognition of our recognition that sharing has been initiated. It’s not an unconscious smile, it is a conscious response to our comments on what she is possibly experiencing consciously.
If we get deeper and deeper into this kind of questioning we’ll p robably get very confused, but let’s continue. I’m not writing down her answers, but you need to in order to understand. For now I am going to keep her answers up here (Pointing to his head). he ad). Let’s see what happens if we ask Elizabeth’s unconscious mind a direct question. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Do you want to keep something back from Elizabeth? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand slightly as a yes response and also her finger on her right hand to indicate no) Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now we’ve got a no here but we also got a tiny little yes movement at the beginning. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now I’m confused about the signals I’ve just seen now. I saw a little yes then, I saw a no then I saw a yes again. So I’m going to ask for her to give me a clearer response. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Do you want to keep something back from Elizabeth? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand as a yes response and also her finger on her right hand to indicate no) Brooks: (Talks to the students) Yes and no. We’ve got a yes and no OK. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Just relax that’s fine, fine. Continue to count Elizabeth. Elizabeth: (Smiles) Brooks: (Talks to the students and to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Now she is smiling and I want to know what the smile is about, because I am not inside her head. I want to find out if she is smiling because she is having a wonderful trance. Is she smiling because she is amused by what her fingers are doing or is she smiling because she is getting ge tting some of the recognition from her unconscious. I’m very curious to find out.
Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) We will number these different responses one, two and three.
Number one is because Elizabeth is having a good trance. Number two is because she is amused by her fingers. Number three is because she is getting some recognition re cognition of the cause. If it’s number one answer yes. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response but then moves her finger down). Brooks: (Talks to the students) It’s going down quickly, so although the question may be relevant, after all she is having a good trance, it may not be the main reason re ason for her smile. The fact that she doesn’t respond completely with a ye s to this first question doesn't mean that she’s not having a good trance of course. It simply means that it is not the main reason for her smile. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) OK is it number two, because you’re amused? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand as a yes response) Brooks: Yes, OK thank you, thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So the smile is coming as a response of the sense of amusement, recognizing what her fingers are doing. I will now ask number three. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Is it also because you’re developing some awareness of what the cause of the problem is? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on right hand as a no response) Brooks: No, OK. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So her smile is because she is amused by how her fingers are responding all by themselves. Not because she is understanding things about her problem.
Now let’s summarize. We know that the unconscious is holding something back, we know that she needs to have access to this to overcome her problem and we know that her unconscious is unwilling to share it with her directly. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Will Elizabeth be able to overcome her problem if you share with her the th e information that you are currently holding back?
Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: Thank you, Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So the unconscious confirms that the information needs to be shared but that it is not willing to share it directly. In other words, it does not want her to experience a sudden realization of what the cause is. So we must create a context where it can share what is needed in a way that will not be harmful to the patient. So our next step is to get it to share it with her indirectly.
Now I’m interested to find out how her unconscious mind is going to give her this information. It could be in a dream, it could be as pictures, sounds, feelings, it could be now or could be later. Now the best way to do this is to say that I’d like the unconscious mind to decide how it’s going to give it to her, and to let us know when it’s made the decision. Another way would be to say, will it be in a dream? Will it be in everyday waking life? Will it be when you expect it? Will it be when you least expect it? Will it be now? Will it be tomorrow? In other words, giving the unconscious multiple choice questions. But that would take up a lot of time when using only ideo-motor signaling as a communication channel. So we need to integrate these two approaches. So the best way is to ask the unconscious mind to make the decision when and how while reminding it of the options and choices available. So le ts ask the unconscious mind to do this. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) I’d like you to look at the information you are going to share with Elizabeth from every angle and decide in what way Elizabeth can most benefit from the sharing of this information, and how you can share this information with her in a way that is healing and empowering.
To look at sharing this information gently and indirectly with her in h er everyday waking life or when she’s asleep or when she’s expecting it to happen or when she’s not e xpecting it to happen. To find the best and most therapeutic way of sharing this information. Consider all the different possibilities and ways of sharing this information with Elizabeth so she can help herself overcome her problem. Look at it in every detail, every aspect, from every perspective. Look at it thoroughly and then give me a yes signal when you have decided how you’re going to give Elizabeth that information. Give me a yes signal when you have decided. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now we are going to wait for this internal unconscious sorting process to occur, and then when her unconscious mind gives me the yes signal I will see if I can find out o ut how long it will be before b efore she receives the information. It could be a part today, or part tomorrow, part next week. It could all come at once, I don’t know. We will see if we can find that out as well.
So let’s look at this as if Elizabeth were a patient in your office. First of all there is the rapport, then the conscious questioning and general information gathering, then the induction of hypnosis and then the ideo-motor signaling session. Now if this were the first or second session of hypnosis with a patient and we were now at this point of having established communication with the unconscious, and had also obtained agreement to communicate something therapeutic, I would probably suggest amnesia to avoid any unpicking of the session and then, at the end of the session, send the patient away with instructions to wait and see what happens between sessions. Then on the following session I would spend time asking the patient about what insights, thoughts and changes had happened since the previous session... I’ll tell you a story about that at the end of this session. I’ll give you an example when we finish. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Thank you, Thank you Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) That’s right, that’s it. Deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Your doing very very well, very very well. Deeper and deeper that’s it all the way down, deeper and deeper.
(Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) Now you can either give this information to Elizabeth all at once in one go or you can give it to her a piece at a time. If you’re going to give it to her all in one go give me a “yes” signal. If your not going to give it to her all in one go please give me a “no” signal. he r unconscious here for a clear yes or no Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now I have asked her signal, I shouldn’t just ask for a yes. If I just ask for a yes signal and she doesn’t lift her finger, would that mean a no, or would it mean that her unconscious is still processing the question? We have to get either a clear yes or no. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on right hand as a no response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) There we are, we have a no, but we would not have gotten that if we had just asked for a yes response and assumed that a “no movement” was a negative response. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) See, her unconscious doesn’t want to give her the information all at once. Maybe the information is too sensitive and so would be overwhelming to her consciously for her to receive it all at once. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious mind) If you’re going to give the information to Elizabeth at a piece at a time, give me a yes signal. If your not, give me a no signal.
Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) You see, you have a yes signal coming up here and I’m waiting to see if we will get a no with it because previously we had a yes and a no. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand again for a yes response as if agreeing with Brooks or confirming her yes response) Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) What would happen if we h ad a yes and no there? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on right hand for fo r a no response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) There you are, there is the no response as well. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) How can we interpret these answers? Are you keeping up with me because the unconscious works in very strange ways. It seems to contradict itself sometimes if you try and understand it from the point of view of conscious logic. We have to interpret what it says in terms of unconscious logic.
The combined yes and no signal probably means that’s it’s going to share a piece at a time but that there are some pieces it’s not going to share directly or in a way that can be understood or even sabotaged consciously. Lets summarize so far. We know that the unconscious is going to share some information. Not all, but some information, and we know that this information can be enough to help her get over her problem. It is going to share this information a piece at a time but it may hold back some of the information that it has agreed to share a piece at a time. So how can it simultaneously hold back information and also share it? From my experience I would say that her unconscious may give her a piece of the information without the conscious recognition that she’s received it. In other words, she can receive information that was previously unconscious in a disguised form so that she can use it to resolve her problems without knowing the true nature of the information. So I’m going to run with that as it is a pattern that I have seen before when the unconscious wants to protect the patient but at the same time wants to he lp the patient by sharing information. Lets find out now over what kind of time scale this will happen. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) I’m going to give you three choices.
Number one, your unconscious mind can share that information with you over this wee kend or...
Number two, it can share it with you over the next two weeks or... Number three, it can share it with you over a period longer than two weeks. If the answer is number one give me a yes signal, if it’s not, give me a no signal. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve got a yes finger coming up here.
Now we have to be very specific with our questioning. You know when I just said, “if it’s going to share it with you this weekend”, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to say “all of the pieces” or “all of the information” this weekend. Because if her unconscious wants to share it over two weeks, it has to start sometime, sometime, right? and it could start this weekend, in other words this weekend could be the start of that process. But we wouldn’t know that, because my question wasn’t specific enough. So we have to clarify, is she going to share all of the pieces this weekend, or is this only the beginning of the sharing process. That was my mistake so I need to check again and rephrase my question, because the unconscious responds to literally to questions. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) She gave me a yes there. So what was she answering yes to? I was not addressing her unconscious while talking to the class just then, but he r unconscious may have thought I was. Or maybe it is getting impatient with me! Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) I’ll ask that question again. If your unconscious mind is going to share all of that information with Elizabeth over the course of this weekend, give me a yes, if not give me a no. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left and right hand for a yes and also a no response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) See we’ve got both a “yes” and “no” here h ere again. So this suggests that her unconscious will share a part of it directly with Elizabeth this weekend and will share the other part of it indirectly. But before we accept that answer let’s check out the other options and see if this sharing will continuing beyond this weekend. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, Thank you.
(Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) Is your u nconscious mind going to share all of that information over the next two weeks. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left and right hand for a yes and also a no response)
Brooks: (Talks to the students) See we have h ave a yes and a no here. So it seems to suggest it could take longer. Lets find out, always ask the question, don’t assume. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, Brooks: (Talks to the students) We will go for number three now and see what it says. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Deeper and deeper.
(Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) Is your unconscious mind going to share all of that information over a period longer than two weeks? If it’s a yes give me a yes, if it’s no give me a no. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand as a yes signal) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We have a yes over here. So we now know that this sharing will take longer than two weeks, will start this weekend, and that some of this information will be shared directly to her conscious mind, and the other information will shared in a disguised form, maybe as a metaphor in a dream d ream for example. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) Will this sharing be enough to help Elizabeth help herself get over her problem? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left and right hand for a yes and also a no response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve got a yes and no. So the sharing is going to help her but not completely. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So her unconscious mind is saying that the sharing will he lp her but she also needs additional resources to fully overcome her problem. So where do we get these resources from?
It could be the that these come from the therapist, or her circumstances, environment, or more likely from her own unconscious mind. But if her unconscious mind already has these resources why hasn’t it applied these to helping her already? Well no one asked it to. And that is our job as therapists - to negotiate with the unconscious mind and get it fully involved in the healing process. I’m now going to ask her unconscious if it has the resources to give her. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) Does your unconscious mind have the resources to give to Elizabeth, at the appropriate time so that she can get over this problem?
Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand as a yes signal) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve got a yes over here. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) We have a definite yes. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) Does your unconscious mind know how to use those resources to help he lp Elizabeth help her get over her he r problem? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left and right hand for a yes and also a no response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve got a yes and no. So she knows partially how to use those resources and partially not know how to use them. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Ok we are coming towards the end of the therapy now.
So lets find our way o ut. Let’s find out if Elizabeth has the means to find out how her unconscious can use these resources. Is there anything she can do, people to talk to, things to read, things to learn or work to do on herself. Is there personal pe rsonal work she can do, tasks she can accomplish or a therapist she can see etc. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) So are there other things that Elizabeth can do that will teach her ways of discovering how h er unconscious mind can use all of these resources to help herself. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve got a yes. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So there are things she “can” do. But before we all pack up and go home, we need to get a contract established. We have got a good initial commitment by asking what she “can” do. That was my way of getting her unconscious agreement, I now need to to get a firm commitment that she “will” do what is required of her. “Can” and “will” have different meanings.
So I’m going to find out if her unconscious mind is willing to commit to letting her do these things, because that is where her motivation will come from. We need to establish that the unconscious will motivate her to “do” the things she nee ds to do. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) Are you willing to let Elizabeth do these things? If
you are willing to let Elizabeth do these things you can give me a yes signal. If you are not willing, give me a no signal. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve the yes signal over here. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now there is something you need to be aware of when using ideo-motor signaling, and this is to not “will” the patient’s unconscious response. When I first started practicing as a hypnotherapist in the 1970’s I found myself “willing” the patient to answer yes to this or that questions because I wanted the session to go well. But by willing the response you are indirectly suggesting the response to your patient, so you are not getting a genuine unconscious response. Be aware of that temptation.
If you are mindful of the power of implication in influencing the unconscious mind you do of course use this in therapy. And here in this demonstration my outcome is twofold, to help the patient, and to teach the class by demonstrating the complexity of ideo-motor signaling, so I am using questions that can generate ambiguous responses, but this is mainly for teaching purposes. So let’s summarize again, Elizabeth’s unconscious knows that there are things that she can do and it is willing to let her do these things. So now I’m going to ask her unconscious mind if it’s important for Elizabeth to actually know what these things are going to be . Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) Is it important for Elizabeth to know consciously, what these things are going to be? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left and right hand for a yes and also a no response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) Great, we have the yes ye s and no here. Which suggests that some things are important for her to know and some things can be kept back. She’ll just do them anyway. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you. That’s it, thank you. Deeper, that’s it deeper relaxed. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So we now know the unconscious mind is willing to let her do these things. But it’s not important for her to know what all of them are. But it’s important for her to know what some of them are. So lets find out if it’s willing to share with her the ones that are important. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) Are you willing to share with Elizabeth the things that are important? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left and right hand for a yes and also a no response)
Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Isn’t this interesting? Her unconscious mind is saying that it is important for her to know some of those things in order to do them. Yet it’s saying that it’s not willing to share some of those things. Here we have a double bind, her unconscious has put her in a double bind. Now this could be the reason why she can’t get over her problem, you see.
Her unconscious mind is preventing her from learning about the important things that she has to do in order to be able to have the resources to go with the information that she’s going to be given to get over her problem. So it’s not willing to share. So now we have to negotiate with her unconscious mind because we know it’s important for her to know. But also we know that the unconscious is not willing to share. So we have to do a deal here, we have to do a deal with her unconscious mind. Because if it’s important for her to know and he r unconscious is not willing to share, we’re not going to get any further. So we have to get her unconscious to agree to share information about the important things she has to do, but to do so in a way that protects her. Maybe Elizabeth doesn’t need to know what important things she has to do, but can just have th e motivation to do them, without knowing consciously why or from where that motivation came from. So how do we do this? Well we are taking here about “doing” things. In other words “tasks”. So Maybe we can get her unconscious mind to give her tasks that have covertly embedded within them the important tasks that she needs to achieve in order to have the resources to combine with the information her unconscious mind is going to share with her ove r time that will then allow her to overcome her problem. She has to be motivated to carry out the tasks, so they have to feel important in some way, just enough for her to carry carry them out, and at at the same time without without awareness of the embedded covert task that actually is important for her therapy. Lets look at what other possibilities there could be. How can we get her to know that something is important, without knowing that it’s important? Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) And I am sure you’ve had the experience of feeling compelled to do something without quite knowing why. And then maybe later you’ve discovered why you felt so compelled. In the same way you may have had someone’s name on o n the tip of your tongue without knowing that person’s name. Or maybe you felt it was very important to do something, check something, write something or ring someone. Yet you couldn’t remember quite why you had to do it, but you knew it was very ve ry important. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) Is your unconscious mind willing to let Elizabeth know what is important for her to do in order to gain access to the resources to help herself but without her knowing why it’s important.
Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve a yes here. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) So is your unconscious mind willing to allow Elizabeth to do thoese important things. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve a yes here. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you. Brooks: (Talks to the students) OK so lets just summarize, where are we? First of all her unconscious mind is going to share with her some information that will help her get over her problem, and it will share it a piece pie ce at a time over time. Secondly, it’s going to allow her to do certain things which are important to help her gain access to the resources that she needs in addition to the knowledge that she gets from her unconscious. One more question now, just to round it off, OK. This is the big one, the question that tells whether we can now close the session or not. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) I would like you to consider if Elizabeth needs anything else to help herself in addition to what you have promised. And if she n ow has everything she needs, give me a yes signal. And if she doesn't yet have everything she needs, give me a no signal.
(Elizabeth takes her time to respond) Brooks: (Talks to the students) This is a big decision, a b ig question isn’t it? So it takes time for the unconscious mind to organize itself while the conscious mind is passive, maybe just as an observer or maybe completely unaware of the unconscious decision making process. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Just allow that movement to become more obvious. Brooks: (Talks to the students) Now this is fascinating because we have a yes there on her finger, plus other affirmative signals that we’ve noticed as well (Her slow head movements). Brooks: So it looks like a yes, but I’m going to ask the fingers to relax and ask again to be double check. We want to be certain that we’ve covered everything. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank you, relax.
Brooks: (Talks to the students) I’m going to ask the same question again because it’s not enough for me. I’ve seen it but I want confirmation. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious) So now will Elizabeth have everything that she needs in order to help herself get over this problem? If the answer is yes, I would like a yes movement to occur in an obvious way, and if it’s a no response I would like a “no” movement to occur in an obvious way. Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on her h er left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank You. Brooks: (Talks to the students) OK. So let’s assume that you have come to the end of the session with your patient but you wish to continue with the ideo-motor signaling on the next session, maybe a week later. How do you set that up? You could start all over again when you next see yo ur patient, but given that you are using a very time consuming therapy technique, you may want to save time on the actual hypnotic induction by setting up a posthypnotic cue at the end of this session.
OK so let’s put this into the context of a therapy session in your office. You have got this far, but time is running out, and let’s say that you have not managed to finish the ideo-motor session within the one hour you had available. What do you do? Well you really have no choice but to continue with the ideo-motor signaling during the next session a wee k later. So you need to establish and test a post-hypnotic cue for the patient to re-enter trance the next time you see her. In this demonstration I have already established a post-hypnotic cue earlier with the post-hypnotic anchor on her shoulder. So now I need to reinforce it and test it. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Every time you feel me touch you on the shoulder, like this. (Brooks touches her shoulder) You can go into a deep deep hypnotic state. Every time you feel this hand on your shoulder, your head will just fall forward and go into a deep, that’s it, hypnotic state. Every time and anytime, anytime you feel just me, only me, put my hand on your shoulder. Anytime I put my hand on your shoulder like that and when I say the word now, you can go into a deep deep hypnotic trance. Back to the same hypnotic state. Back to the same hypnotic state, and when you go back to the same hypnotic state I can talk to your unconscious mind in the way I have been. And you can respond in that way.
Whenever you feel me touch you on the shoulder with my hand h and you can go deep into hypnotic trance immediately. Your eyes can close immediately and you can return to this same relaxed way of breathing. The same relaxed way of breathing. (Talks to Elizabeth’s unconscious through Elizabeth) Does your unconscious mind agree to respond in this way so that I can help you? Elizabeth: (Moves her finger on left hand for a yes response) Brooks: (Talks to the students) We’ve got a yes response over here.
I’m just checking out if the unconscious mind agrees for me to do this. If the unconscious had said no, there would be no point in me trying to get her into trance again with this reinduction technique. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Thank You, thank You. Thank You. Brooks: (Talks to the students) So I’ve set up my post hypnotic cue. So the next time your patient comes back into the office you can carry on working by putting her back into the same trance just by touching her on the shoulder. This saves time as ideo-motor signaling is time consuming.
Now if it gets to the point where you can’t get any more information from the unconscious by using yes and no responses, you then need to introduce automatic writing. This can initially take longer to set up because you h ave to teach the person first to hold the pencil. Then teach them to write a “Y” for fo r yes and a “N” for no, then to write the word yes then to write the word no. Then to start writing their name, then start writing sentences. And that can take maybe one hour or it can take five hours depending on who you’re working with. But if you’re working at this kind of depth, five hours spent setting up the communication channel is time well spent, especially if you want content from the unconscious instead of just yes and no responses. responses. So I’m now going to get her to come out of trance by clicking my fingers. I generally don’t do this when I work with patients, but as this is a demonstration, I want to create a clear signal for her to come out of trance for her own education and to demonstrate how patients can shift dramatically between the waking state and a trance state. Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Now Elizabeth in a few moments I’m going to click my fingers it will sound like this. (Brooks clicks his fingers) And when you hear that sound you can immediately come out of hypnosis.
(Brooks clicks his fingers). Elizabeth: (Immediately smiles and comes out of trance) Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth) Ah, how about that. Hi how are you? Elizabeth: OK. Brooks: What do your hands feel like at this moment? Elizabeth: Very heavy. (Elizabeth has a slurred speech) Brooks: Which one feels the heaviest? Elizabeth: The left one.
(Just as Elizabeth responds Brooks puts her back into trance my touching her on her shoulder again) Brooks: Now now all the way down, just deeper and deeper, deepe r, deeper. That’s right.
(Brooks clicks his fingers and Elizabeth instantly comes out of trance, blinks her eyes a few times with a smile on her face) Brooks: Now, are you sure it’s the left one or has it changed to the right one?
(As Elizabeth thinks about the question Brooks places his hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder for her to go back in to trance. She smiles and giggles) Brooks: Now, that’s it, all the way down. Just deeper and deeper and deeper, de eper, and deeper. And deeper and deeper and deeper. d eeper. That’s it you’re doing very, very well. You’re doing very well.
(Brooks places his hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder to deepen her trance) (Brooks clicks his finger for her to come out of trance) OK hi… (Elizabeth opens her eyes and smiles) Brooks: Is that OK? Right OK is there anything you want to share with us? Elizabeth: Well I’m still sort of half way there. (Meaning that she is still coming out of trance) Brooks: Can you stand up?
(Elizabeth rolls her eyes and thinks about it) Elizabeth: I don’t know. (Laughing as she puts on her glasses) Brooks: You can, yes you can.
(Elizabeth stands up and then takes a seat with the others students in the class) Brooks: Thank you very much Elizabeth, thank you, thank you ve ry much. Brooks: (Talks to the students) OK now, it will take time for her to come back. She’s had quite a deep experience.
So let’s just summarize what we did. I did a vague indirect induction to start with by homing in on physiological changes and developing phenomena and how she felt as she went into trance. This utilized non-verbal induction approaches too by lifting her hands and arms. I then gave her a simple counting induction and trance deepener where she counted to
herself, this was a way of tying up her conscious mind. I then moved her fingers so that they were looser, because they were a bit cataleptic. They were actually a little bit ridged, which would have meant that it would have been difficult for her to respond with the ideo-motor responses. The first ideo-motor signals where a mixture of conscious and unconscious responses, but they became more and more unconscious as we went along. I’m one hundred percent confident that the latter part of the session was totally unconscious. This was recognizable when she smiled the first time. She said she found her unconscious finger movements amusing. I believe that she was genuinely surprised at how her fingers were answering all by themselves. Brooks: (Asks Elizabeth to confirm this) Is that true?
(Elizabeth nods and confirms this). Brooks: (Talks to Elizabeth in the class) Yes you seemed to be genuinely surprised at how your fingers were responding. Is that because they were saying things that you didn’t expect them to? Or because they were just responding…? Elizabeth: My fingers were just moving all on their own. Brooks: Doing it by themselves, OK. Brooks: (Talks to the students) We had a good example of the complexities of ideo-motor signaling, and some insight into the sense of logic used by the unconscious mind, which can often appear confusing if you try and understand it using conscious reasoning.
To understand it you have to think of how the unconscious mind processes information, and how it perceives and makes sense of reality. It exists in various dissociated forms. And it can communicate on many different levels. So under normal circumstances the patient would come back and you would carry on your work with ideo-motor signaling, or you would teach automatic writing. The period between the sessions is when the real therapy happens because that is when the patient receives information from the unconscious. They may start to have dreams, or maybe just thoughts. Maybe something happens to trigger a thought and they come back to the therapist and say, it’s funny I’ve had a strange week. I suddenly remembered this person I used to know, or I remembered this, or this happened, and I normally don’t behave like that, it’s very strange. I promised you that I’d give you an example, so this is one of my case studies. I girl came to see me, she was one of the patients I had in Basildon some years ago. She came to see me and she was generally anxious but didn’t know why she was anxious. But she did know that her relationship with her mother, father and sister was very uncomfortable. And she couldn’t stand to be with her mother and father especially for very
long when she visited them. Being with her sister was not so bad but she had h ad a lot of problems communicating with her mother and father and there was no affection between members of the family. This woman was married, but I don’t think she had any children. She was married and was about twenty eight or thirty years old. On the first session she said she didn’t have a clue about what the cause of her problem was, and even after questioning her I too couldn’t identify the cause of her increasing anxiety when around her family. So I decided to use ideo-motor signaling. After establishing a good trance and reliable ideo-motor communication with the unconscious, it agreed to give the patient a little bit of information about the cause of the problem, a week at a time. So she returned for sessions over a period of a few months and each time would bring in a little bit more information about the cause of her problem. At no time was she overwhelmed or traumatized by what her unconscious told her. It all unfolded slowly and in a way that she could deal with comfortably. All information came to her in the form of dreams. One of the many things she came back b ack with was a forgotten memory of working with her grandfather (who was no longer alive) on a greengrocers barrow in Romford market. She had forgotten all about this. And she had forgotten how she had been close to her grandfather. Another time her forgotten memory was something to do with her mother being scared of her grandfather. These forgotten memories would surface between sessions in the form of dreams and she would recount them in each therapy session. No further therapeutic intervention was attempted, and no attempt at any kind of interpretation, only encouragement that the unconscious should continue sharing these memories with her. This continued over a number of sessions. After one particular session she said she wanted to talk to he r parents, even though she didn’t know why she wanted to do this. So she went back and she told her parents that she was in therapy with me and her parents were very defensive, incredibly defensive about her coming to see me for therapy. This patient must have had about six or eight sessions with me by then. During the next session she said, “it’s something to do with my mother but it’s not about my mother. I don’t know what it is. It’s something to do with my mother and something to do with a man but it’s not my father. I don’t understand but my mother has something to do with it.” During the penultimate session she came in, not to have therapy, but to tell me that she was going to confront her mother directly. I tried to stop her as I thought it too early, e arly, but she had decided to go ahead as she now believed she had been b een sexually abused by her grandfather as this information had come to her a piece at a time in her dreams between the therapy sessions.
At the end of all of it, she did confront her mother and it turned out that she had been sexually abused by her grandfather, when she was a child. Her mother had known it was going on but had felt unable to stop it because the mother had also been abused as a child by her father, the same man. This man had abused his daughter and then had gone on to abuse his granddaughters. The sister then came forward and said it had happened to her too. All three were victims. This confrontation towards the end of her therapy was a major turning point for the entire family. Everyone was crying, hugging and ho lding each other in a way they had never dared before. This family had never touched each other physically or lovingly the whole of their lives. But this coming together in their shared grief and pain healed them and brought the three women together physically and emotionally. When the patient returned for her final session she was radiant and very relaxed. She told me everything that had happened. Of course she hadn’t come for more therapy but only to share with me how good she felt and what she had accomplished. I’ll never forget how good that made me feel too. This healing would never have happened, if I had just treated her with basic hypnosis or NLP. The ideo-motor signaling enabled me to talk directly with her unconscious mind and encourage it to release these forgotten memories to her conscious mind in a gentle and safe way. So although we may call this great therapy, the therapist doesn’t actually offer guidance or reflect back his observations to the patient. The therapist’s job is only that of ob server and facilitator. All I did was to set up the communication channels. Neither of us knew what the outcome would be. I had the map, the patient took the journey, and her unconscious mind chose the destination, that is how we reached the goal. And regarding today’s therapy demonstration, neither of us knows how Elizabeth will utilize the learnings she has made from this session. And maybe this is one of the most important points about Ericksonian hypnotherapy; how we achieve the outcome is less important than actually achieving it. It’s all about trust, trust between therapist, patient and the unconscious mind and creating a common purpose, to help the patient heal themselves.
Live Liv e Audio Course Cou rse Link to a live therapy session with subtitled commentary The live audio session was recorded at Roehampton University in London. The author demonstrates direct and indirect approaches to hypnotic induction utilizing hypnotic phenomena such as arm levitation and arm catalepsy. A running commentary has been added as subtitles so that students can listen to the session and read a description of the process in real time. To access the live therapy audio course on the internet please click here
Five Eminent French Doctors talk about the work of Stephen Brooks In 2005, after an absence of many years, Stephen Brooks again taught in Paris. The course was attended by many doctors and other health professionals. Brooks has taught in France many times over the years and he still maintains a strong following. So at the request of the British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute, French psychotherapist and NLP Trainer Michelle-Jeanne Noel interviewed several well known Doctors specialising in hypnosis and asked them to share their experiences of Brooks and his work. The text has been translated by Deborah Bacon-Dilts and Lucie Nerot.
Michelle-Jeanne Noel: How would you describe your experience of working with Stephen
Brooks? Dr Nicolas Geng : First of all he has a striking presence. He has simplicity, a great sense of
humour and, amongst other important things, he puts the patient at ease and gives him value. His teaching is special because he finds it easy to empower the patient and you can see it immediately through the patient’s response. And what’s really nice with Brooks, is that he does it so naturally, easily, with such spontaneity that it becomes a part of therapy. You’re not quite sure whether it’s him or the therapy, if it’s therapy or an exchange outside therapy. It is really part of his character. It’s fantastic. fantastic. Dr Charlene Walter : Exceptional! His teaching is special because it is an intelligent teaching,
which allows us to approach human beings as a whole, with all the qualities necessary to relate to others. He has all the qualities of a humanist: he has intuition, intelligence, a lot of humour, the art of transmitting knowledge and an ability to recreate a true and real relationship; it is art in the noble sense of the word. Dr Andre Bernard: Love, generosity, respect, tolerance, flexibility, capacity to adapt, these
are the first words that come to mind. What makes his teaching special is that he puts a lot of love, a lot of humanity in what he does, and he demystifies de mystifies it, allowing anyone to learn. He offers very powerful tools that are very easy to use. Dr Gerald Urbach: I think his qualities are love, generosity gene rosity and relaxation. He does his work
in a very natural, and simple yet very deep way. Dr Andre Walter: As you were just saying, Brooks’ work I think is really great art. Which
means, it has class, subtlety, finesse, and incredible professionalism. In everything he has shown us, he himself gives a demonstration, which includes demonstrations demonstrations of therapy. And he is amazingly professional, he knows exactly what he’s talking about. He comes through
really well. Everything flows, everything is natural, it’s very comfortable and then there’s one thing I’ll never forget, and that’s his smile. His smile alone already helps to heal people, pe ople, to open them up to something. He is a really wonderful person. Brooks has influenced the way we work with the unconscious of course, because we see patients essentially in the context of pain, that’s my speciality, dealing with pain, and with the integration of the unconscious, we will be able to make our patients aware of what the unconscious could do to help them; the unconscious always has solutions. And I think it’s a huge asset in the way we deal with patients, in how we approach pain therapy and therapy in general. Dr Bernard Costes: Brooks is exceptional in the way he teaches and in the way he heals
people; he is exceptional in the love he spreads in all his classes, to all his students, that’s what I like. His teaching is clearly organised, and for e ach item, there is a demonstration, an explanation and experimenting, which means that every hour and half there is something happening for us, or for a patient, we understand everything and we experiment.
Michelle-Jeanne Noel: Can you describe any therapy sessions that impressed you and
explain why? Dr Andre Walter: We saw many demonstrations (of therapy). I think I would like to share a
very personal experience about a couple therapy demonstration he did with my wife and I, with a problem of curing vertigo. Everyone knows it, all the doctors, all the ear specialists know it, vertigo really is a horrible problem, and everyone sends their patients to the next specialist, and it usually ends with therapies and medication that is not very good. And what Brooks did was a spectacular demonstration, highly effective, as my wife is now totally cured from her vertigo through very simple means, and thanks to his professionalism once again. I thank him*. Dr Bernard Costes: This week, Brooks gave a demonstration with treating eczema, and what
moved me most, is the way he h e takes people’s words, turns them into something positive and feeds them back, all of that with heart, it’s moving. Dr Gerald Urbach: What I choose is his very fast demonstration of therapy, that can be done
in 7-8 minutes and is very interesting: the treatment to stop smoking, an induction in only 4 simple steps. Dr Charlene Walter: The demonstration I have found most impressive was the cellular
healing technique, with the notion of the immune system, of the importance of the immune system, and therefore it’s real scientific value; I learned a lot about it. Dr Andre Walter: All his therapies are striking and it’s not easy to choose one because he
combines them. He uses all the tools he needs. A particularly striking therapy was what he
calls Waterheart ( Non Attachment Therapy**), where he transforms symptoms into love into love. Dr Nicolas Geng: In terms of therapy the most striking therapy for me was one that I can use
personally, and it’s the glove therapy. It’s a therapy that allows anaesthesia of the hand first, and then allows a transfer of the anaesthesia to any part of the body in order to eliminate pain. First it seems extremely easy to do and it enables us to start anaesthesia with a part of the body that is not the one we’re working on, which can be helpful in some cases.
Michelle-Jeanne Noel: How do you think Brooks has influenced the way you work? Dr Nicolas Geng: He has influenced me on many levels. First in his rapport with patients,
because the way he establishes rapport is very different f rom what is usually done in my profession. And then there is the influence of the techniques he gives us, which will undoubtedly change the way we work. Dr Charlene Walter: of how important it is to be connected to the patient, to pace, to feed
back in order to have effective information, and second, to trust my intuition and then I think that with good intention and love, everything can happen. Dr Andre Walter: I studied medicine in order to approach human beings as a whole, and
during my studies, medicine had specialities, it was medicine with drawers and I lost the notion of human beings in their wholeness. I wanted to become a psychologist and a psychiatrist, that’s why I started studying medicine. But psychology was an optional o ptional module at the end of my studies and I was unable to do it because they took people in alphabetical order, and then the notion of human beings as a whole faded away during those 10 years of studying. And I rediscovered human beings as a whole through this new (Brooks) approach, in this wholeness and through getting back to the essence of things, and I was able to reintegrate everything I learnt in this wholeness. Dr Gerard Urbach: I must say that the contribution of Ericksonian hypnosis, especially as
explained by Brooks, is extremely profitable, because it reduces the stress of the patient and therefore our own stress, which makes it possible to do twice as much work in one session, and to get the agreement of patients for more complex work that they can face without fear. And dentistry doesn’t just consist in making holes in the patient’s teeth; it is a full approach to the patient, a holistic cure, and with hypnosis you can do much better work. Dr Bernard Costes: Stephen Brooks will continue to influence the way I work, because I will
stop caring about only myself, I will start caring about what people say, reformulating it and feeding it back to them, after positive reframing, with my heart and with all the power I can find.
Michelle-Jeanne Noel: Finally, how do you think he will be viewed in the future? Dr Nicolas Geng: I have a lot of hope that Brooks will be as recognised in France as he is
internationally, because in a lot of areas in France, we would need therapies like his to spread or retrieve a role they have lost. Dr Charlene Walter: In the future, I think that more and more people should get to know
him through his teaching, and that more and more people will be able to use his teaching and spread it, which will be good for f or the patients because they will get powerful and efficient treatment. Dr Gerard Urbach: In the future, he will be considered as the renovator of Ericksonian
hypnosis in France and in our medical profession, because he brings such momentum, such new qualities, that it can only spread and it is now up to his students to spread the good word everywhere. Dr Andre Walter: People always refer to Stephen Brooks and to Erickson, and I think it’s
very important that you were able to bring him to France and it will be a starting point for many clinics and hospitals, and in pain therapy, where he will have brought back something that has been around for a while but b ut had become obsolete in France. Dr Bernard Costes: Stephen Brooks will in the future be perceived as one of Milton
Erickson’s students who moved beyond the master and included that in his life e xperience, with his heart and with the inner bettering he is himself working on, and that can only lead him to the top. * The Vertigo therapy session lasted less than 20 minutes and appeared to all present to consist of nothing more than Brooks asking the husband and wife to change the sides of the bed on which they slept. The wife was totally cured of her vertigo. ve rtigo. Obviously something much deeper was happening but this is a typical example of how Brooks works indirectly and in a profound way while appearing to offer only simple interventions. The patients gave him a present of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and a rare bottle of Bordeau as a thank you. In the past, Brooks has made it clear that if his patients insist on giving him presents then he has a weakness for good wine – apparently he now has quite a good cellar! ** Non Attachment Therapy is the focus of Brooks current work. It is the accumulation of 30 years research on the way that people perceive p erceive reality. Deceptively simple but highly effective, it is based on a few f ew very simple therapeutic strategies. Brooks is currently dividing his time between writing and teaching. The above interviews were transcribed from video interviews o riginally published as extras on the DVD Training In Indirect Hypnosis. Hypnosis .
Dr K Axon Interviews hypnotherapist Stephen Brooks Dr K Axon interviews hypnotherapist Stephen Brooks at the University of East London about his early life, his decision to give up his western lifestyle to study Buddhism in northern Thailand and his current work with hypnotherapy training and Non Attachment Therapy. Stephen Brooks is recognised as the founder of Indirect Hypnosis with a lifetimes’ commitment to the field of innovative hypnotherapy. I trained with him at St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital London in the 1980’s and have followed his work closely ever since. I retired from practice two years ago and established a resource that makes available transcripts of Brooks’ work as well as audio and video recordings. In the mid 1990’s, Brooks mysteriously disappeared from the UK and all efforts to find him were fruitless. At the height of his career he had dropped everything and emigrated to South-east Asia. Although still living there, he is now working again with the British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute and has been very busy writing and recording the comprehensive academic training programme that forms the online component of the BHRTI Post Graduate Diploma in Ericksonisn Hypnotherapy and NLP. He also runs an annual Master Class Retreat each year from his home in Chiang Mai in Thailand. Ironically, he is now so busy that it is still just as hard to contact him for interviews. He is still living in the mountain jungles of northern Thailand where has led a reclusive life for the past fifteen years. In this interview I wanted to find out something about the early days with the British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute and learn more about why he became a recluse living a simple life living in the jungle. I had chance to watch him working with patients in P aris recently and I didn’t know what to expect. My overwhelming feeling was that somehow he had managed to rise to yet another level. This is incredible, as anyone who has trained with him will know, he was far ahead of anyone else back in the 1980’s and yet he has somehow gone beyond even himself. I wanted to find out how he had h ad managed to do this. He has developed his skills in excess of what we thought were possible, so what has he h e been doing to achieve this? Tell me about your early days of teaching and why you decided to become a recluse fifteen years ago?
I founded the BHRTI in 1979 and by 1990 it was the major hypnotherapy training organisation in the UK – the courses were everywhere and I was the senior trainer so I was very busy. I seemed to spend most of my time travelling from hospital to hospital and in between trying to avoid being in the office. I was also responsible for the staff, and there
were about five full time admin staff, a dozen or so trainers and supervisors. It was very hard work and all I wanted to do d o really was hone my skills and do therapy. My courses were very intensive and I was teaching in many different hospitals all over the UK and it required a real commitment on my part. The first full blown Diploma Course was at St George’s Hospital in Tooting and I can remember that course more vividly than any other, although I wrote the skeleton of that course while teaching at the East West Centre in Old Street. Many years later, around 1994, the pressure was getting to me and I felt that I needed to take a break from teaching, or even get away altogether. So I taught less and less but kept an eye on the organisation to make sure things were OK while other trainers taught instead. Eventually the business of running and teaching courses became too stressful and I decided not to compete anymore. It became more about organisations making money than transforming lives. I think it is still that way in the UK and it goes against my purpose for teaching therapy. Back then, I too had been caught up in that whole money making process and it became too much of a game. I wanted to rise above any need to compete in the material world and the only way I could do that was to go somewhere where I could live a happy stress free life without having to compete on a material level, and that place was the mountains of northern Thailand. I had to change my lifestyle dramatically to make that happen and it was not easy financially. I had been teaching courses for BHR in the UK continuously for 15 years so I decided to give it up, even though I was at the height of my success. I kind of became a recluse and had to change cultures, lifestyle and beliefs about what was important. It was not easy but I can recommend it! Once I had left the UK I didn’t really want to talk to anyone for ten years and I chose to do this for my personal and spiritual development. I did a lot of meditation and writing and basically worked on my own personal development for ten years. I felt that I could be an even better therapist and teacher if I actually walked my talk and lived a life that mirrored the way I do therapy. I still live like this, slowly chipping away at the non-essentials in life to reveal the core of what makes me effective as a therapist and as a person. So that is how I found myself living in the jungles of northern n orthern Thailand. It has transformed the way I think and I now enjoy teaching again and sharing what I have discovered, but I will never live in the UK again, it is not possible, I don’t fit in anymore. I have a different perception of reality. I was asked to teach hypnosis in Paris and it felt really weird being back in a western culture. I was on the metro and smiling at people and everyone looked terrified, I couldn’t live in a world like that anymore. I am used to giving and receiving love wherever I go and I don’t think that would be possible if I lived back in the west. So I am happy to teach on the online
component of the Post Graduate course and run my Master Class Retreat in Thailand each year. So what did you do in the mountains for 15 years?
To answer that I have to go back 40 years or so. I met the Dalai Lama in the early 70’s and he cemented my interest in Buddhist psychology as a form of p sychotherapy. We met again in 1993, just as I was thinking about leaving the UK. He was instrumental in that, and in my commitment to develop myself further. Since then I have spent a lot of time with various spiritual teachers and healers in Thailand and this has influenced my approach to therapy and living. This is no t to say that I teach Buddhism, not at all. Although many people practice Buddhism as a religion, that is not how I see it, live it or use it in my work. I see it as a psychotherapy that has real practical application in the west. So although it influences how I live, it’s only the psychology of Buddhism that influences my work as a therapist. I knew that I could get to a much higher level of competence as a therapist if I took time out to develop myself further, and I needed ne eded to let go of any attachment to the material world and come at it from a different angle to achieve that. I mean, I was the therapist who had homes in Knightsbridge, the South of France and drove a Porche! All of that had to go if I was to really learn to do therapy unconditionally and from the heart. Letting all of that go was the best thing I ever eve r did. When I finally settled in Thailand I was penniless. I had given everything away, and I started as a blank slate. My life now is blissfully simple, in fact it is even simpler than it was when I first arrived in Thailand as I am no longer trying to come to terms with living on a shoestring shoe string in a new culture. Now I know how to do d o it without the hardship of wishing it was different. I have accepted that we only need a handful of essentials to survive and be happy. I don’t own anything, I don’t drive, I have very ve ry few possessions, I don’t even own the home that I live in. I have no need to compete. I believe that true wealth is being content with having little and this is so true. Instead of accumulating possessions and wealth, I recommend that people reduce and par down to the essence of what is truly necessary. This is how I live and I am continually looking for ways to reduce further, looking into the essence of things and eliminating the non-essentials and compressing the essentials. My head has taken a permanent back seat and my heart reigns, and I believe that this is a great place from which to communicate as a therapist and teacher. What is your current focus of interest?
My focus of interest is in how I can live a life that will empower me to be a better therapist. In a word, living minimally! I live minimally and I work minimally. I believe that therapists should intervene as little as possible. Just create the context for change. There is a real art in working minimally, it is not about saying nothing, it is about saying what is only essential. It
is about paring away the non-essentials of therapy and leaving the essence of what works. It is an art, and my experience with indirect hypnosis has taught me to work minimally, because indirect hypnosis is all about implication and this has allowed me to go to the next level. I work almost entirely now through implication, which means that I don’t actually say or do anything that is direct, it’s all implied and it is like working in a new language, a language that only the non-conscious mind can understand. What is the non-conscious mind, is that the same as the sub-conscious or unconscious?
The term “non-conscious mind” can be used as an alternative to the sub-conscious or unconscious but it is not exactly the same. I have always bee n a bit uncomfortable with the term unconscious, partly because of the different interpretations, although I have used it a lot in my teaching. I can think of at least four different interpretations; the Freudian unconscious, the unconscious as used by Erickson, the unconscious as used by Jung and as used in the medical field and by most members of the public as meaning “knocked out”. It has so many meanings. The term Sub-conscious is better but this still implies “secondary”, “part of” or “under or beneath”. The whole concept of the unconscious is also based on mind and I don’t view it that way. I feel that the term non-conscious is more accurate as it includes other processes than the mind, for example genes. The term non-conscious is unambiguous, and as such is closer to the essence of what is not the conscious mind, so it is a more minimal term, because it has less interpretation attached to it. And I am all for simplifying things. You are very generous regarding people having free access to your work. How do you feel about people pirating your training materials?
Many years ago, at an NLP Conference in London, a newly qualified hypnotherapist came up to me and told me that she had just finished training with an organisation that were using videos of my therapy sessions as part of their course. This was news to me; I had never heard of the organisation and certainly didn’t know that they were b asing their course on my work. I didn’t mind, I felt flattered and felt that as long as therapists were being empowered to help their patients more effectively, then it was OK. Obviously the training organisation were charging for people to train with them and I was never offered any money, or even asked permission, but I was OK about it because people’s lives were being changed by it, so it was OK. There are people now who sell pirated versions of my work over ove r the internet without my permission and for their own personal gain. I am not interested in stopping them because hopefully the people who purchase these training resources will study them and consequently help many patients that I will never meet, and the sellers who pirate my work get an income from it, so they are also being empowered in some way too, as long as this does not encourage them to take from other people . My way of dealing with dishonest people pirating my materials is to give it away for free; eventually no one on e will want to buy
pirated copies when they can get the originals for free. It will eventually find its own level and balance out. Obviously if a product costs money to produce, like CD’s DVD’s and actual books, that money has to be recouped. How has your work evolved since you first started?
When I first started, I did too much. I would say too much to the patient and did not give the patient credit for helping themselves. I then learnt to trust that the p atient could do the work themselves if I created the context in which that could happen. So now I focus on creating that context and then ease the patient into that context. Usually they don’t realise that I am doing this, they just discover themselves with the resources they didn’t know they had. This is much better than trying to control the session and having the patient give the therapist credit for the change. The patient makes the change happen and the therapist creates the context in which they can make it happen. It’s a good partnership. Tell me more about the British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute courses.
The BHRTI runs a Post Graduate Diploma course in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and NLP each year. I designed the course and I teach on the online component through my videos and demonstrations. The course runs at weekends over one year at Birkbeck College in London and in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Sydney and Melbourne (details here) here). Is this a similar format to the BHRTI courses that you taught in the 1980’s and 90’s?
Yes but with more academic content, so it is better. It is the most comprehensive hypnosis training available, and the huge online component pulls it all together. So is it essential for people to attend both the weekend and online onli ne classes?
It’s essential. Students need to practice what they are studying and have everything explained to them by b y watching demonstrations, and then having those demonstrations broken down. This way they see it happening in front of their eyes and are taught how it is done. Although the online course has streaming video and audio of me giving lectures and demonstrating therapy, you still need a real live tutor in front of you, guiding the students. I believe that the combination of regular academic study combined with hands on training is by far the best way to learn and it is how I have always done it. So are you demonstrating therapy live like you used to?
Yes of course. I do so on my annual Master Class Retreat in Thailand each year. It’s a kind of holiday and training combined – a chance for people to get away and spend time with me personally. Demonstrating therapy in front of an audience can be daunting for some trainers, but it is essential. You need to be super confident in your abilities as a trainer to teach in this way and sadly many trainers can talk a lo t about therapy but do not have the skill or confidence to actually demonstrate therapy with patients in front of an audience. I’m
past caring if I mess it up, so I take risks and work live with the problems that most therapists shy away from. Sometimes I wish that it would go wrong, so that my students can see how I deal with that situation too, as there are valuable lessons to be learnt in those situations, but most of the time I get very positive results right there in the session. When my students see this they see the real potential of indirect hypnosis as they see it live, in the here and now. That makes it exciting and it inspires confidence and gives students the feeling that they will be able to do the same. This is not n ot passive learning; this is doing therapy from the heart – transforming lives, making a difference and teaching others how they can replicate that for themselves. What I love about the online training format combined with live weekend tutorials is that the learning happens slowly over the period of a year and on a weekly basis. In this way students can assimilate knowledge easily and comfortably at home and also be involved in discussion groups online as well. Learning is both conscious and non-conscious. It takes time to really understand something as important as hypnosis and NLP and this is the pe rfect way to do it. All the current hype about accelerated courses where students are told that their unconscious will learn everything in a few days is pure exploitation of the current desire to get a qualification in short a time as possible. These organisations are simply trying to make as much money as possible for the least le ast effort and the people who eventually suffer are the patients who go and see the therapists who attend these courses. If you want to be a concert pianist, you don’t just go to a concert believing that your unconscious will learn how to play the piano, you have to sit at home and practice the scales. Why do pe ople believe that they can be therapists after just a few days listening to someone tell stories about themselves. People hide the truth from themselves, they don’t want to face the fact that everything worthwhile achieving needs commitment and hard work, both consciously and unconsciously. Do you have any other personal or work wo rk related projects planned for the future?
I hope to spend more time learning how to do less, in other words, further developing my skills at working minimally. I am actively involved in making Non Attachment Therapy available to everyone within the health sector as it is such a simple and effective approach. Do you have any regrets about anything?
No. When you look back you can see missed opportunities and different paths that you could have chosen, but generally no, I have no regrets. I guess I would like to have loved more, that is, to have started off from where I am now. But that is not possible. p ossible. Any favourite book, music or art, what turns you on?
I read the classics. They are timeless works of art that have influenced great writers and thinkers. They are hard work to read, but that’s the whole point, they are not meant to be easy, if they were, you would never learn anything. I used to read only text books, but that was stuff for the head, I now I also read stuff for the heart. I love music, I am a musician and I write music so I appreciate good music. Do you have a favourite book, piece pi ece of music, what about art?
I have a favourite song, and that is “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd, but that is a personal thing. I grew up in Cambridge so I have several connections with the group, Richard Wright was a personal friend, and I was in the studio at Abbey Road when they recorded that song so I have fond memories of that time. As for art, I love lo ve Minimal Art – Donald Judd, Carl Andre etc, again that is a sixties thing although we are only now seeing it used in design and architecture, and I am the o nly therapist that I know of that is applying the principles of Minimal Art to therapy. My home in Thailand is very minimal – I don’t mean empty, I mean minimal, there is a difference, and I have it this way to avoid having clutter in my life so that I can concentrate on what is essential for me as a therapist. I am a fan of the architect John Pawson, we both love Le Thoronet Abbey in Provence. Pawson has the ability to look into the essence of things and draw that out, very much as I do d o with people. I have actually learnt a lot from him indirectly by applying his observations about living in spaces to how I live and work as a therapist. For me, when he talks about architecture, I can relate it to pe ople and living. I learnt about Henry David Thoreau from him – Thoreau was the 1 9th century transcendentalist writer of “Walden”. I have Thoreau’s journals and am slowly ploughing through them. Thoreau uses nature as his guide to living, and I use it as my guide in therapy. Did growing up in the 1960’s influence the way you now work in any way?
Cambridge in the 1960’s was a very creative place to be, everyone was experimenting with art, music - you name it. We were pushing back the boundaries of creativity and consciousness. Cambridge was full of quantum physicists on LSD, musicians, artists and writers and we all met at the Eagle pub in Benet Street. There were crazy things going on, anything was possible. My very first experience with hypnosis was at a lecture at Trinity College, the lecturer told a student that he would not be able to pick up a text book and the guy struggled to lift it but couldn’t, I thought “I want to do that!” and that cemented my interest in hypnosis. There were so many new things happening then. Lennon was there with Yoko Ono in 1969. I was with them when they recorded their first f irst album together and it was very avant garde, lots of screaming and guitar feedback. That experience changed the way I thought about music. After that I studied Stockhausen, Berio and John Cage at the South Bank Electronic Music
studios. It was a time of growth for me and it undoubtedly provided the creative foundation for my work as a therapist later, and I am still fascinated by all of that stuff. Do you have any advice for budding therapists?
Trust yourself, make a commitment to make a difference and work at it as if your life depended on it, because one day, when you look back at how many people you have helped with your skills you will have no regrets.
The Unconscious Mind of a Master Therapist Introduction - An interview with Stephen Brooks under hypnosis In June 2003 Brooks visited England for a few days to participate in a research project at Roehampton University. Brooks was hypnotised and interviewed to discover how he is able to work so effectively. What happened in this interview was much more than a therapist giving his opinions about the techniques of successful therapy. It was a deeply moving account of a committed therapist’s pain, compassion and insightful approach to healing the world given directly from the unconscious mind of a Master Therapist. It was so moving for the research participants that it had a profound effect on their lives thereafter. The interviewer is Kerin Webb, a British Psychotherapist based in Bournemouth. Webb hypnotised Brooks and addressed selected questions to him. The questions were created by the research participants who were also present at the experiment. Brooks’ answers were recorded on audio tape and also written on b lackboards around the room by one of the participants. As a way of introduction, one participant Jill Spencer, a British Psychotherapist, gave her account of what happened: “I began to notice the stillness in the room almost as if everyone was holding their breath and then the whole room was filled with pure unconditional love. Light was all around and the love grew stronger and stronger. The words that came out of Brooks' mouth were not answers about techniques of therapy but spiritual messages for all of us. The light and love grew stronger and felt as if it was boring straight into my heart chakra, tearing down any walls of defence that I had put there. I could not escape from that vibration. I then felt Buddha's pain, the distress almost as powerful as the love and his words to the Interviewer, ' Why cannot you love each other?' That was his pain. To see the cruelties, the hungers, the terrors, the indifference, the greed, the selfishness. I had to leave the room because by then I was in floods of tears with love and pain pouring into me. On returning to the room when I had managed to compose myself I couldn’t look at the board where the answers had been written because they were in brilliant light to bright to look at. It was an intense spiritual experience for me and changed something inside at a very deep level.”
Jill Spencer
Hypnotic Interview Transcript The interviewer is Kerin Webb, a British Psychotherapist and author of “The Language Pattern Bible”. Webb hypnotised Brooks and addressed selected questions to him. The questions were created by a small group of health professionals prior to the session who were also present at the research experiment. The session took place in June 2003 at Roehampton University London England. The session starts after Webb has put Brooks into a profound hypnotic trance. Interviewer: Do you prepare your mind in any way before the session starts? Brooks: (nods his head and then pauses) p auses) Interviewer: And can you tell us Stephen in ways we can understand? Brooks: I go and have a shit. Interviewer: That’s letting go isn’t it? Brooks: (pause) Interviewer: And how does that help you prepare? Brooks: Gives me time on my own… And it makes my body feel clean… and receptive. Interviewer: And is there anything else about that? Brooks: (pause) Clears my head… Interviewer: It clears your head… And how exactly is that useful? Brooks: My head is empty e mpty and receptive… not blocked… not distracted… Interviewer: And what else is there about that ‘not blocked’ and ‘not distracted’… that
receptiveness? Brooks: I’m free from my body… Don’t have to think about my body… Not distracted by
bodily function… Interviewer: Is there anything else about that you’d like to share with us? Brooks: It gives me time alone for a few minutes… Interviewer: ‘Time alone’… thank you. Brooks: (pause) But I don’t think about the session. Interviewer: Right. ‘Time alone’ – ‘don’t think about the session’. Thank you.
Interviewer: What is the reason you do therapy? Brooks: Because I’m asked to do… Interviewer: Because you’re ‘asked to do’… and… what is the reason… that you… trained
yourself to become skilled to be able to do what people asked you to do? Brooks: I didn’t know I was doing it. Interviewer: Right. Brooks: (pause) Interviewer: And what else is there about not knowing that helps you to do it? Brooks: (long pause) Interviewer: That’s it. You do therapy because you’re asked to do it. When you’re asked to
do it what is it about being asked to do it… (long pause) that’s relevant to this modelling learning… sharing… Brooks: I just do it. Interviewer: Thank you. Interviewer: What is the first thing you become aware of when working with a patient? Brooks: Their eyes… Interviewer: And what is it about ‘their eyes’ that’s important that you notice? Brooks: How much… how much love… Interviewer: ‘How much love’. Interviewer: And as you sense that you’re noticing ‘how much love’, how does that help you
as you continue the process of helping them? Brooks: (pause) Interviewer: That’s it. In their eyes, ’how much love’… Brooks: I just… I just want them… to love more… Interviewer: You just ‘want them to love more’…. Brooks: (long pause)
Interviewer: And as you notice ‘how much love’… and that you ‘just want them to love
more’… what do you sense that you do next when you sense that you want them to ‘love more’? Brooks: Help them understand that somehow… be part of that for them… Interviewer: When you meet someone with little love, when you meet a cynic, how do you
cope with that situation? How do you feel? Brooks: I love them more… Interviewer: What’s the most useful belief you have about yourself as a therapist? Brooks: (pause) I’m impermanent… Interviewer: And how is that belief useful? Brooks: (long pause) Everything’s possible… everything’s possible because nothing…
nothing… nothing’s real, nothing seems real. Interviewer: ‘Everything is possible’ and ‘nothing seems real’… Interviewer: I’m wondering when you do d o hypnotherapy, when you put people into
relaxation, is it the relaxation state that’s healing them or the words? Brooks: Neither. Their honesty. Their acceptance…
Interviewer: What kind of ‘acceptance’ is that acceptance? Brooks: Acceptance of themselves, and who they are, and what they can give and be and...
what they can give and be. Interviewer: ‘What they can give and be’… be ’… Interviewer: How do you know how much time to give to your patient to go inside and heal
themselves? Brooks: I don’t know… I don’t d on’t know how much time. There’s never enough time… Interviewer: When you’re working with a patient, how do you know the strategy… or
approach to use at any given moment? Brooks: (long pause) I watch. And I say something and I watch. And I may say something
different, and I watch. And… sometimes I go back… and say something again… and I watch. I just watch… and speak. speak. Interviewer: And what do you d o that helps you remember to do the things that you’ve
done at each stage?
Brooks: I don’t have to remember…. Interviewer: You ‘don’t have to remember’…. Brooks: I don’t have to try… Interviewer: Right. You ‘don’t have to try’... (pause) And where do the metaphors come
from? Brooks: Life experience… Interviewer: ‘Life experience’… Brooks: Many… many… many life experiences. Interviewer: ‘Many life experiences’…
Interviewer: What do you do that makes your therapy so effective? Brooks: Trust myself and trust him/her... and… I talk without saying anything… Interviewer: You ‘talk without saying anything’, how do you do that? Brooks: Just know… Interviewer: You ‘just know’… Brooks: I just know the words over... to him/her. Interviewer: And if we wanted to ‘just know the words over’ to him or her, how would we
do that? Brooks: You trust, trust yourself. Interviewer: Who are you when you do therapy? Brooks: I don’t know. I’d like to be him all the time… Interviewer: And what is it about him that you’d like to be ‘all the time’? Brooks: Honest… unconditional… Interviewer: ‘Unconditional’… Brooks: Nobody… Interviewer: When the session has already begun, how ho w do you go into the most effective
state of mind to deal with the situation? Brooks: I give myself to it, him or her. I don’t like not giving myself to him or her…
Interviewer: And how do you ‘give yourself’ to him, it or her? Brooks: I just know myself over… Interviewer: And what kind of knowing is that knowing? Brooks: It has no edges… Interviewer: ‘It has no edges’. And what kind of experience is a ‘has no edges’ experience? Brooks: It is better than sex… which can be pretty good. Interviewer: And in which way or which ways would a person who wanted to have ‘no
edges’ go about having no edges too? Brooks: Accept… Interviewer: ‘Accept’… Brooks: Accept… that they are all they have and no more. Nothing else… to be achieved…
to… (the sentence trails off and ends) Interviewer: ‘Accept all they have… and no more… nothing else to be achieved too’… okay… Interviewer: What do you do to access the information you need to work with? Brooks: It’s there. It’s there. The person tells me things, does things, looks like something.
And then what I do is there… th ere… there… and I do it. It comes from nowhere. It feels like the best place. Interviewer: How do you establish the rapport from the instant you meet the person you’re
treating? Brooks: (pause) I watch… and accept… Interviewer: ‘You watch and accept’… Brooks: Watch, I watch… accept and wait… and play. Watch, accept and wait and play… Interviewer: When you ‘accept’…and you’re waiting, what are you waiting for? Brooks: Waiting for some magic… Interviewer: ‘Some magic’. Where does the magic come from? Brooks: It’s there in him, in her, in them. And I just wait to play with it… with the magic. And
sometimes they are very foolish and they’re very funny. It’s fun. I enjoy playing with… playing with foolishness. Behind the foolishness there is wisdom… and magic… It’s a shame
when the fool… when the fool gets carried away and… thinks it’s more important than the person. Interviewer: And how is it Stephen that you tune into your patient? Brooks: Just be there and nowhere else, and kind of be them and not be them. And… love
them without any emotion… and wish they were you and you were them, and send your knowing over there. Interviewer: And how do you know when to elicit… start to elicit resources within the
patient? Brooks: They tell me… Interviewer: They tell you… how do they tell you? Brooks: Glimpses… glimpses through their foolishness… Interviewer: So they tell you by ‘glimpses’… Brooks: Sometimes they go around in circles… and you can see the door, but they can’t’ see
it… and it’s obvious, and sometimes there is more than one door. Often there are many doors… Interviewer: And how do you help them to see that door or those doors? Brooks: (pause) I don’t know. They see it. I… I use words that bounce them around, until
they see the glimpse through their foolishness, maybe something very small sometimes something big. It doesn’t matter. They lose part of their foolishness for a second… that’s usually enough. Interviewer: Does your Buddhism influence the way you create your therapy? Brooks: I never thought it did, but yes… Interviewer: And how does it do that? Brooks: It hasn’t told me yet… (long pause) Interviewer: Have you asked it? Brooks: (pause) Yes, I try. It needs nee ds a lot more from me before be fore it’s willing to share I think. Interviewer: What do you believe about yourself when you’re doing therapy? Brooks: I don’t know… I do n’t know… I don’t know who I am. I do therapy. I have nothing to
compare myself to. Interviewer: And how could that be useful u seful to us?
Brooks: Just don’t be there… You’ve nothing to gain… Interviewer: How did you reach the place of love that allows you to see it in others? Brooks: I’m still learning… I’m only in the kindergarten... Interviewer: And what do you le arn in kindergarten? Brooks: I told you. I don’t know…I don’t know what’s ahead… And I don’t care either. Interviewer: How do you turn your life’s experience into therapeutic tools? Brooks: I enjoy paradox. And… paradox… I love paradox. If I had some I’d put them all over
the place. I’d put them on the windowsill… as reminders. That you never know… you can’t ever be… what you think you are or what you… what you want to be… or what… and I like extremes. I like to have sweet and soft, and l eat salt with sugar. Inteviewer: Is it the extremes that allow you to be so (?)… Brooks: It means I can go right to the edge… and back again... it’s just more life… much more
life... and… it doesn’t matter… it’s not real anyway… it doesn’t matter… it doesn’t matter… you can go wherever you want… within reason… Interviewer: Stephen, can you describe to us your most powerful and memorable session? Brooks: I don’t know... I don’t remember any one session being that way. But I enjoyed… I
enjoyed a clap of thunder once. Where… halfway through a session. Regent’s College, London. In a big hall there and there were… I don’t know… 500 or so people that I’d invited free of charge. I’d invited the first 100 free of charge, then when person p erson 101 booked I said to the office just let them all come. Then half way through a session with a woman, I said her unconscious would give her a very special experience that would enlighten her in some way… and she went down in trance and we waited and waited for a long time… and nothing had happened. Then just as she was about to lift her head and say something there was an enormous thunderclap. And I lifted my arms up into the air as if to say thank you – and everybody fell about laughing… and a year ye ar or two later she saw me and gave me a certificate to say that she had paid and put something in her will for a tree to be planted every year in my name… (long pause) Interviewer: It can be a wonderful experience to know that you’ve done something that’s
made such a positive impression… on a person. Brooks: (pause) I didn’t do it. Interviewer: Who did it Stephen? Brooks: (long pause crying)
Interviewer: Where was the magic? Interviewer: Stephen is there anything more you want to tell us? Brooks: Ask me later… in a few hundred years. Brooks: (silence) Interviewer: Would you like to be gin to return to consciousness or would you like to
continue? Brooks: It’s up to you. Interviewer: Let’s return to consciousness….
Brooks returns and the session ends.
Contributors Igor Ledochowski is the founder of Conversational Hypnosis and author of the book “The
Deep Trance Training Manual”. He originally trained with Stephen Brooks at Roehampton University London in 2003. Deborah Bacon-Dilts is a trainer at the NLP University in California together with husband
Robert Dilts. She has translated the transcript for Brooks’s DVD and book “Training In Indirect Hypnosis” and has worked as his personal interpreter internationally. Dr Gerald Urbach is a dentist practicing in France. He first trained with Stephen Brooks in
the 1990’s in Paris. Michelle-Jeanne Noel is a highly respected international NLP Trainer, therapist and author
based in Paris. She originally trained with Brooks in France in 1994. Dr Andre Walter is a medical doctor practicing in France. He first trained with Stephen
Brooks in the 1990’s in Paris. Dr Charlene Walter is a medical doctor practicing in France. He first trained with Stephen
Brooks in the 1990’s in Paris. Lucie Nerot is a highly respected translator and founder of the children’s not-for-profit
organisation Dancing Across Borders. She has also worked as Brooks’ personal interpreter internationally. Dr Nicolas Geng is a medical doctor practicing in France. He first trained with Stephen
Brooks in the 1990’s in Paris. Dr K Axon trained with Stephen Brooks at St Anne’s Psychiatric Hospital in the late 1980’s
and was responsible for transcribing many of his therapy sessions and teaching demonstrations. Dr Andre Bernard is a medical doctor practicing in France. He first trained with Stephen
Brooks in the 1990’s in Paris. Kerin Webb is the author of a book about hypnotic language patterns “The Language
Pattern Bible”. He originally trained with Stephen Brooks in 2003 at Roehampton University, London.
Stephen Brooks Brooks has a lifetime’s experience of using indirect hypnosis with severe problems and difficult patients. Inspired and encouraged by top American Psychiatrist Milton H Erickson, he was the first person to introduce Ericksonian Hypnosis into the UK in the mid 1970's. Since then, his own innovative indirect therapy techniques have had a major influence on the health professions both in the UK and Europe and have changed forever the perception of hypnosis and how it should be used u sed within therapy. He was founder of British Hypnosis Research (1979) and the British Society of Clinical and Medical Ericksonian Hypnosis (1995), both major training bodies for the caring professions. His two-year Diploma courses became the standard training for thousands of health professionals and over a period of 15 years he taught indirect hypnosis courses in over 27 major British hospitals. His Diploma courses also became the standard training for hypnotherapy associations and organisations in France, Belgium, Spain and Ireland. In 1991 he was awarded special acclaim when archive recordings of his work were preserved in the British National Sound Archives. He specialised in innovative approaches to Indirect Hypnosis with an emphasis on demonstrations with real patients during his training courses, something that many trainers are still afraid to do. A common thread in Brooks’ work is his humour, compassion and creative approach to therapy and his deep respect for the unique needs of the patient. He treats problems by spontaneously doing what is often most unexpected but always most appropriate for the patient at the time, quickly tailoring each therapy session to the patient. His enthusiasm is highly contagious and he has the great quality of being able to teach his complex refined skills in a dynamic and simple to learn form. In the mid 1990’s, at the height of his UK career, he decided de cided to retire and settle in the mountain rainforests of Northern Thailand where he studied trance healing with monks and shamans for several years. He is now responsible for the design of the British Hypnosis Research and Training Institute Post Graduate Diploma in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and NLP, for which he is the senior online trainer and he runs an annual Master Class Retreat in Thailand. For details of current BHRTI courses please click here here..
