Recommended Reading
Students often ask me my favorite books. So, I am collecting them all in one place so you can check them out. (Note: I am an Amazon affiliate so I get a kickback for sending you to these great products. These are all products I use personally and recommend enthusiastically, kickback or not!)
I will include below Hypnotherapy books I think are useful, self development and spiritual books that have inspired me in my work as well as marketing books that have given me great ideas and helped me move forward in my business.
Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis
It is actually pretty rare that I recommend Hypnotherapy books or authors. I find most if the material outdated or too focused on generic scripts. Roy hunter is a rare exception. I went on a Roy Hunter binge once at a conference and bought all of his books, even got them signed. I dragged them all home in my suitcase-- and it was well worth the extra luggage cost I had to pay. Roy does client centered work, provides useful techniques with great instructions and case studies to support your understanding
Another great read from Roy Hunter (yes--you are going to get the contents of my suitcase, here). This time Hunter goes deep into how to do effective regression to cause and past life sessions. Again, taking a client centered approach and giving you lots of case studies for illustration.
I really recommend that if you don't already own this book, that you buy a copy! It is a MUST HAVE for hypnotherapists!
There is a correlation between what happens in our physical body and what happens in our emotional/psychological worlds.
For example, I often see bladder and yeast infections in women with sexual trauma or jaw clenching with people who were taught that their opinions don't matter.
Louise Hay did extensive research into these correlations and presents them where you can look up the body part or the illness and see the emotional or phycological issue that may have contributed.
A classic.
Personal and spiritual growth
If you work with weight loss clients, this is a must read! Geneen Roth really changed the way I look at food personally and gave me a whole new approach to working with clients.
As a hypnotherapist I know that often there is much more going on beneath the surface of a person's habits or behaviors then initially seen. This book illustrates that beautifully.
Roth suggests that our relationship to food mirrors our feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and God. By examining our relationship to food, we learn so much about how we relate to other things as well. How we do one thing is how we do everything. Get this book to better understand what your client's relationship to food could really be about. There might even be some insights in there for you personally. I know there were for me!
Gabor Mate is brilliant and this book will be a great resource for both you and your clients.
The mind and body are connected. They used to be thought of as separate things--but we now know better. And what happens in the mind (emotions, stress, beliefs) can impact on the body.
In this book, Mate explores the correlation between mind and body when it comes to the creation of diseases such as arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, IBS and multiple sclerosis. He highlights the types of personalities that are vulnerable to having certain physical conditions and even discusses what we can do to prevent these illnesses and heal from them.
Another great book by Gabor Mate, this time focusing on addiction. Gabor Mate has worked in the downtown East side of Vancouver, known for it's homeless and addicted population. Through his work with addicts, Mate has answered the questions: What is addiction? What is the nature of the addiction prone personality? What happens physiologically in the brains of addicted people? How do we approach the healing of addicts?
if you work with addiction, this book will provide insight, ideas and food for thought and will be a great reference that you use often.
I got this book, wrote in it, highlighted passages, folded over corners-- then lost the book! So, I went out and bought it again cus it's just THAT good.
Although written for people struggling with PTSD, this is an invaluable resource for any Hypnotherapist who wants to help people with trauma.
It is full of exercises and interventions for affect management, regulating arousal, relaxation, breathing retraining, managing anger, managing u=intrusions-- and that us just the first section!
There are also interventions for resolving guilt, grieving losses, using healing imagery, processing dreams, cognitive restructuring, finding meaning and purpose and just so much more.
This book is so thorough and so useable that it was a textbook I required students to read when they took my trauma training course.
This is another of those books that I have referred to so much that it is showing wear and tear. it is even puffy from reading it in the tub so many times!
The Courage to heal is written for women who have survived childhood sexual abuse but is an invaluable resource for any Hypnotherapist who wants to help women recover.
Aside from the case studies and personal stories shared by the two authors, This book also provides exercises that could be used in hypnosis for even more benefit. The authors deal with issues such as the inner child, forgiveness, anger, grieving, healthy intimacy and sexuality.
A great book that has deeply inspired my work with traumatized women.
I recommend this book to every group of students I teach!
This book came to me through a client who had read it and wanted me to read it as well so we could create a treatment plan for her based on the ideas in the book. After reading it, I was totally on board.
Amen is a neuroscientist, psychiatrist and brain imaging expert who shows though the use of brain imaging the impact of trauma to the brain (through a variety of causes).
The book is structured so that you can fill out questionnaires to see how the different areas of your brain are functioning. If an area is weak, he offers "prescriptions" to help heal that portion of the brain. But the prescriptions are not medical ones-- rather interventions that can be done in hypnosis!
I have often fantasized about using this book as the basis for my practice to help identify what is going on for a clients as well as treat it. A great read full of useful tips and interventions!
Marketing
One of the best ways to find clients is by putting out great content that helps the client to get to know you and provides them something useful . it is all about providing information and forming relationship. I am a HUGE fan of this book and have a dog eared copy of it on my shelf.
This book walks you through how to create great content that is informative, authentic and engaging whether it is for a podcast, YouTube channel, webinar, e-book etc. If you get stuck trying to figure out who you are and what you want to say, this book will be a huge help!