I have to say …I LOVE Coaching!
It’s a tool I’ve used for many years in my work life and and my home life! It’s a fantastic way of connecting with people, helping them get specific about the issue, clarifying the real problem and then expanding the options, rather than feeling trapped in a hamster wheel of circular thinking.
I find that in a coaching framework, my clients and my colleagues are able to gain insights into how they are thinking which helps them move forward.
BUT
There was still a but for me….Not just for my clients, but also for me! Yes , I could get the insights but it was from a conscious, logical perspective. So that started me thinking about things I should be feeling, or I should be thinking or what I should be doing. Then I just felt guilty! I couldn’t access the emotion that helped me do it. My clients were the same. That’s when I discovered hypnosis.
I researched it and started to explore hypnosis as a way to embed the insights. Most problems exist at the unconscious level and are not logical. Hypnosis delves into that non-conscious conditioning which is where we have our emotions, beliefs, values, memory, habits and our general operating system. Hypnosis bypasses the logical, critical analysis. The place where we make up stories to understand the world.
I discovered Milton Erikson – an American psychiatrist and psychologist who specialised in medical hypnosis and family therapy.
He dedicated his professional career to the advancement of the use of hypnosis in the context of medicine. He was committed to scientific methodology and a staunch advocate of the regulated professional training for practitioners. I liked this. The fact that there was science behind it [and there are thousands of scientific studies on the subject – just go to Google Scholar and type in hypnosis] and that it was regulated. So I embarked on a Government Accredited Diploma in Clinical Hypnotherapy & Strategic Psychotherapy.
The modern hypnosis I use which was developed by Milton Erikson doesn’t rely on one size fits all. There are no scripts with every session being unique and delivered specifically for the individual.
Entranced
Have you done any kind of focusing work, relaxation work, imagery work? If you said “No”, then I would challenge that.
You have!
You’ve become absorbed in a great book and not heard someone walk into the room. Or become so focused on a movie you’re actually there! Or you’ve been listening to something on the radio while driving and forgotten to make a turn. These are all hypnotic trances. You have become entranced by something. That is hypnosis.
It’s a very interesting way for you to get absorbed in a different style of thought about what’s going on for you. While you are deeply relaxed and aware of everything that’s going on, I just talk about some different ideas, different possibilities. There really isn’t anything that you have to do but what I hope will happen is that as you’re listening to me, you start to get more absorbed in the things that I’m taking about, that it’ll start to open some different possibilities for you, different ways of responding because as it’s not the world that’s going to change. It’s going to be your internal experience, how you respond to these things.
Why not give it a try? Life. It’s all in the mind.
