What can I do to help you Cal. Please let me know.

George

I do have some major issues with point 1. I rarely if ever do specific tests for depth anymore. This is probably a good thing for people who are new and still feeling their way as a hypnotist, but once you’ve done it a while you don’t need to do specific tests. If you’re good and you observe, you’ll know from the way the client responds (everything from body movements to voice to breathing) if they’re in trance. If you are doing convincers, those also signify to you how the person is responding.

Finally, let’s define DEPTH OF TRANCE. Many hypnotists still look for the level of relaxation as depth. The truth is that depth really is referring to the suggestibility of a client. You can have a client who is very suggestible in trance but the body is not particularly relaxed, or you can have someone who is completely relaxed but is not open to the suggestions. The first one is “deep” in trance, while the second is very relaxed but would not really be “deep” in terms of the mental levels (somnabulism and beyond) needed for trance work to be at its best.

OH – one more thing – a true Hypno-Wimp is someone who goes along with a group dynamic even when they KNOW it is not correct or not the best way…and who do not challenge those thoughts and ideas. It may turn out the group was right, but if you don’t challenge you won’t learn or advance others’ learning.

I suppose we have to be a bit like the magicians and keep some or our techniques secret, like convincers, and so on. This blog is mainly designed to teach and motivate hypnosis professional, and I find that most or our clients don’t read this sort of thing.

Your are right about the fact that there is no way that we can ensure that the graduates of our Certification courses are actually doing 5-PATH(R). But this is true of just about every educational program. I have a BS and MA in psychology from the University of North Dakota, and I can put those degrees on my website, etc. but UND can not be assured, or could the public be assured that I will use anything that I learned there. In fact, I don’t use most of what they taught me.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments,
Cal Banyan
http://www.Hypnosis.ORG

On a similar note but more 5-PATH specific, just because a hypnotist markets themselves as a 5-PATHer, how is a client supposed to know if they are really doing 5-PATH? With the hypnotists in your center, you can do quality control by reviewing sessions, but I could imagine that external hypnotists might have gone thru training and gotten the neat certificate, but for whatever reasons are not actually using the techniques. Then clients and the public could end up thinking that 5-PATH was all about “imagine going to a nice happy place” or “you are getting very very relaxed”. Conundrums are fun.

Celeste Hackett, CH