Faqs

Q: What are some of the uses of hypnotherapy?
A: Hypnotherapy has major applications in the following areas:
• Psychological and emotional problems
• Physical health and as an adjunct to various medical treatments
• Sports and athletic performance
• Professional coaching
• Business enterprises
• Arts
• Education
• Stress management

Q: Is there a single or primary official regulatory body for hypnotherapy?
A: There is no legislation from the UK government that regulates the standard of hypnotherapy training courses. The search for competent teaching needs to be very thorough to avoid spending time and money on incompetent training. There is no official regulatory body or mandatory academic standards for hypnotherapy in the UK, only various competing organizations with official-sounding names and a variety of claims about setting and maintaining standards. Terms such as “accredited”, “certified”, “qualified”, “registered” or “recognised” may be used to suggest an official recognition for a hypnotherapist or hypnotherapy organization which is not the case. “Accreditation” or “Certification” programmes are sometimes advertised promising therapeutic competence after trainings of as little as 40 or 50 hours of hypnotherapy content. It is not uncommon for trainers have far less than the desirable length and depth of clinical experience to be an effective teacher. This means they are teaching from rhetoric or book knowledge

Trainees sometimes undertake a short course which may provide them with a series of letters after their names solely relevant to that training course but without a solid foundation for therapeutic practice. It is important, therefore, to seek association with the best organisations and the best standards in this field that one can find. Training with the Hypnotherapy Training Institute of Britain is a route to membership of the British Society of Hypnotherapists (1950), the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners, the International Council of Hypnotherapy Examiners and the Institute for Complementary Medicine's “British Register of Complementary Practitioners”. These are long-standing, reputable organizations, with credibility and that have standards which are among the very highest in the profession of hypnotherapy and which far exceed most in the field.

Q: Why are you in the forefront of this field?
Our training is both comprehensive and in-depth with highly experienced and proven teaching. Our serious approach to training is also reflected in the 200 hours of intensive training in core hypnotherapy methods. We have both yours and your clients’ long-term interests in mind by asking you to make this commitment of time. From experience we believe that this time is necessary for all you need to learn so that it becomes natural to you and effective with your clients, a seamless blending of your own personality and your new skills. The results our graduates can achieve with clients often motivates hypnotherapists previously trained in a different school to undertake training with us. We teach all major applications of hypnotherapy in our course with powerful practical methods to address emotional and behavioural problems, psychosomatic and pain problems, performance enhancement in many fields and for self-understanding and personal development. We particularly emphasise the use of in-depth analytical hypnotherapy and advanced medical hypnotherapy in our training. Our therapeutic approach is designed to get to the heart of problems and change emotionally-based negative scripts and beliefs that limit the client and that in many cases cannot be adequately changed by intellectually-based conscious thinking methods. These features and other aspects of our training clearly demonstrate hypnotherapy as extremely different from the very basic forms of suggestion therapy or other much less effective amalgamations of elementary techniques sometimes classified as hypnotherapy.

Q: Is hypnotherapy acceptable to major religions? Hypnosis is accepted by all major religions. It is seen by many religious and spiritual groups as a natural state and gift to mankind. No major religious writings argue against hypnosis or hypnotic procedures and the Catholic church among various religions is favourable to its use by properly trained individuals. There are Biblical warnings against certain occult practices but these practices have absolutely no relationship to hypnotherapy procedures.

Q: Why has hypnosis exerted such a fascination among the public over such a long time?
It shows the inherent power and the great potential in the human mind. Some academic theoreticians have sought to explain it away in terms of everyday processes of role-taking and cognitive processes while other academics and researchers have rejected this socio-cognitive paradigm as only a partial and inadequate explanation of hypnosis. The power of hypnosis as evidenced by the results it produces has been the reason for its staying power among the public. More recently there has been a resurgence of interest in hypnosis in the medical and scientific community with much new research supporting the idea that hypnosis can produce psychological and neurological changes not predicted by a socio-cognitive model. We believe that hypnotherapy, properly used, is the most powerful method yet discovered to draw upon the great subconscious resources of every person to enable them to live fuller, happier, more successful lives.

Q: When was the first documented use of hypnotherapy?
Probably around 1500BC – the Ebers papyrus in ancient Egypt. In the West, Mesmerism or Animal Magnetism, the forerunner of modern hypnotherapy was first fully outlined as a therapeutic system in 1779

Q: Where did it originate?
In the West modern hypnotherapy had its origins in the work of Franz Mesmer, a Viennese physician practicing in the 18th century. Mesmer’s methods were known as Animal Magnetism or Mesmerism.

Q: When was the first documented use of hypnosurgery?
In the West, although there were some earlier references to its use, the first major written report was that of a mastectomy by the surgeon, Jules Cloquet, in 1829.

Q: Has hypnosurgery been used to avoid anaesthetic completely?
Yes! In the 19th Century it was used by some doctors prior to the introduction of chemical anaesthetics. In the last 50 years there have been instances of invasive surgeries where it was used to replace chemical anaesthetics completely. In the case of John Butler, the course instructor, he has used it in this way on various occasions, including by means of self-hypnosis, and in a live TV broadcast of a Hypnosurgery performed on a patient in April 2006.