Hypnotherapy is much more than putting someone into hypnosis and giving them positive suggestions.
The more you understand about how beliefs, associations, emotional responses, and patterns are formed, the easier it becomes to understand why people sometimes continue thinking, feeling, or behaving in ways that no longer make logical sense.
I created this Learning Center to give you a place to explore those ideas.
Here you'll find free classes, short lessons, real hypnotherapy case studies, guided hypnosis experiences, and excerpts from my professional hypnotherapy training. Whether you're curious about hypnosis for yourself or considering learning hypnotherapy professionally, you can start wherever your curiosity takes you.
Start by understanding why we do what we do.
Why We Do What We Do
Why do we procrastinate, people-please, overeat, avoid things we know we need to do, or repeat patterns even when we consciously want something different?
In this class, I introduce four places I look when trying to understand where a pattern may have come from: Messaging, Modeling, Association, and Protection.
It's one of the foundational ideas behind the way I approach hypnotherapy: instead of beginning with How do we make this symptom stop?, we begin by asking a different question:
Why might this response make sense based on what this person has learned or experienced?
Understanding that can change what we do next.
What Actually Happens in Hypnotherapy?
If you've never experienced hypnotherapy, you may have some interesting ideas about what happens once someone closes their eyes.
Fortunately, pocket watches are optional. 😄
Hypnotherapy isn't about taking control away from someone or making their conscious mind disappear. In my approach, the work begins before hypnosis even starts.
The consultation gives us an opportunity to look at the history of the problem, when it began, what was happening at the time, and what beliefs or associations may be connected to it. That information helps determine what we actually do once the client is in hypnosis.
A hypnotherapy session is much more than an induction followed by a collection of positive suggestions.
In this video, I'll walk you through the process from the initial consultation through hypnosis and the end of the session. You'll learn what hypnosis may feel like, why I don't rely on generic scripts, what I'm paying attention to while someone is hypnotized, and how a client's own history and language become part of the work.
Most importantly, you'll see why understanding the person comes before choosing the intervention.
Experience Hypnosis for Yourself
You can read about hypnosis all day, but eventually there's a much better way to understand it:
Experience it.
One of the biggest misconceptions about hypnosis is that you're supposed to become unconscious, lose control, stop thinking, or reach some extraordinarily deep state before anything useful can happen.
That's not how I approach hypnosis.
You can remain aware of what's happening. You can think. You can evaluate what you're hearing. And you can actively participate in the process.
This guided session was created specifically for people who are new to hypnosis. Rather than simply hypnotizing you, I'll teach you how to work with the experience as we go.
During this session, you'll have an opportunity to discover what hypnosis feels like for you.
You'll learn why deeper hypnosis isn't necessarily better, how to recognize some of the different sensations and experiences that can occur, and how to use your own inner voice during hypnosis rather than trying to switch it off.
You'll also learn something that is central to Whole Brain Hypnotherapy: your conscious mind doesn't have to be the enemy of hypnosis. It can participate in the work.
Find a comfortable place where you can safely close your eyes without needing to pay attention to anything else, and give yourself about 30 uninterrupted minutes.
See Hypnotherapy in Action
Understanding the theory is one thing.
Seeing how it applies to an actual person with an actual problem is another.
One of the things I teach my students is not to jump too quickly from a client's symptom to an intervention.
Two people can walk into your office with what appears to be the same problem and need completely different approaches.
The question I'm continually asking is:
Why might this particular response make sense for this particular person?
These two cases show what can happen when we follow that question.
Belly Button Phobia Gone in 3 Sessions
A fear of belly buttons might sound unusual, but this client's reaction had become intense enough that leaving her house was difficult.
In this case study, I explain how we explored the experiences and associations connected to the fear without assuming its cause or leading the client toward a particular answer.
Once we understood the information behind the response, something that had seemed completely irrational began to make sense.
You'll also hear how I used a hypnotic argument—a personalized, factual case for why an old response may no longer be necessary.
This case describes one client's experience and outcome. Individual experiences and results vary.
She Forgot How to Turn On Her Computer. What Was Her Subconscious Doing?
A client working on her PhD dissertation suddenly couldn't remember how to turn on her computer.
It would have been easy to treat the problem as one of memory, focus, motivation, or procrastination.
Instead, I asked a different question:
Why might stopping her from working make sense?
This case demonstrates one of the most important principles I teach: the presenting symptom doesn't necessarily tell you what the intervention should be.
When we become curious about what a response may be accomplishing, we can stop fighting the symptom long enough to understand it.
The symptom is where the conversation starts—not necessarily where the answer is.
Learning to investigate the history, beliefs, associations, and possible protective purpose behind a client's response is an important part of learning to think like a hypnotherapist.
Think Like a Hypnotherapist
Knowing hypnosis techniques is useful.
Knowing when to use them, why you're using them, and what you're actually trying to change is something else entirely.
One of the biggest differences between learning a collection of hypnosis scripts and learning to practice hypnotherapy is developing the ability to think through a client's presenting concern.
If a client says, “I can't sleep,” it's tempting to immediately reach for suggestions about sleeping deeply and waking refreshed.
But what if some part of that person has learned that staying alert at night is important?
Now we have a very different problem to solve.
Why Most Hypnosis Fails (And How to Fix It)
During hypnosis, the client doesn't stop thinking.
If I'm telling someone something that directly contradicts what they believe or experience, their conscious response may be, No, that's not true.
That's one reason I don't begin by asking, “What suggestions should I give this person?”
I want to know more first.
What was happening when the problem began? What does the client believe about it? What associations have formed around it? Could the response have served a protective purpose? What does the client understand now that they didn't understand when the pattern began?
Once we have that information, we can begin building an intervention around the actual person sitting in front of us rather than around the name of their symptom.
The goal isn't to become better at finding the right script.
It's to become better at understanding the client.
Learn the Framework
FROM THE PRACTITIONER TRAINING
If you're considering becoming a hypnotherapist—or you're already practicing and want to deepen your understanding—here's an opportunity to step inside my classroom.
Techniques are important, but before we decide what to do with a client, we need a framework for understanding why people continue repeating patterns they consciously want to change.
That's one of the foundations of my Practitioner Training.
The Model of the Mind: Why You Keep Repeating the Same Patterns
This lesson comes directly from my hypnotherapy curriculum.
We'll explore a model for understanding the relationship between conscious intentions and subconscious learning, and why simply knowing better doesn't always result in doing, feeling, or responding differently.
It's part of the foundation students learn before we move into interventions, because good hypnotherapy isn't simply about knowing how to hypnotize someone.
It's about understanding what you're trying to accomplish once they're there.
Curious About Learning Hypnotherapy?
You don't have to decide from a sales page whether my approach to hypnotherapy is right for you.
You can actually start learning.
I've made the first two units of my self-paced Practitioner Training available as a free trial, so you can experience the training, explore the material, and get a feel for the way I teach before deciding whether you'd like to continue.
No credit card required.