It is raining here as I write this. It is properly raining. Not just a pleasant Summer shower that the garden duly needed following days of endless sunshine and heat, but rain that seems incessant, is non-stop and resembles the dull greyness of a Winter month, not the Summer. I love writing and being productive in my office when it rains though. A bit like when you are in front of the fire place on a cold Winter’s night or in a chalet in the Alps on a skiing trip watching the snowfall outside….

This blog entry is a bit of a stream of consciousness that I hope will reveal some insight about why I think people fall in love with the hypnotherapy field so readily.

I was back in the office for a couple of days last week, did a bit of catching up and then I was away again. This time I was staked out at my beach hut with my family to watch the Bournemouth air festival. It is an amazing spectacle. My wife and I have been going together every year since we got married, why wouldn’t we? We get to sit at the beach of our home town, in our beach hut and watch entertaining displays and incredible flying feats in the skies.

I marched my wife and kids down to the sea front of the first day while it rained non-stop – the entire schedule of flights was cancelled that day. I was informed by my family that it was a worse and more miserable experience than the time I forced them all to come on a family walk in the countryside and we got lost and everyone got very tired, cried and hated it. I had to buy back their love by taking them out for pizza and ice cream and all was well in the world again. My son and daughter set up our playroom as the beach and used toy planes to stage their own air show when we got home, so that made up for it.

Day two, three and four of the airshow were quite different though. The sun shone and it was incredibly hot and gloriously sunny throughout. The Red Arrows were as brilliant as they always are; flying upside down, roaring over our heads, painting pictures of coloured smoke in the sky and causing my children to whoop, applaud and scream with delight.

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There was so much more too; the other highlights for me were seeing the two final display flights of the AVRO Vulcan XH558. It is such a big plane, I simply cannot understand how it stays in the sky, it defies belief to me. The Vulcan is an incredibly well-loved aeroplane that has fans all over the world, and the beach was filled with people stood up, applauding and cheering this real character as it seemed to hover in the air and fill it with such an intense noise.

We had a lovely time. Lots of friends came to hang out with us. We paddled in the sea and I spent an unhealthy amount of time building a castle with a moat at the water’s edge as I usually do, and got protective over it when children wanted to play on or around it. We ate picnic food and drank beer in the sun, we shared lots of laughs, and we arrived in our beds at night with glowing cheeks, fully exhausted and ready for our slumber.

It was so lovely to spend the time with my children that I have done throughout the month of August. They have so much energy; far from exhausting me, they continue to energise and inspire me to be just as energetic and live life with as much vigour as they do. We have a Bank Holiday coming up this weekend and we’ll be spending more time getting up to shenanigans then too.

Gradually though, as this month draws to a close, so my focus starts to sharpen on the fact that the new academic year is nearly upon us. The second half of this year’s intensive hypnotherapy diploma course is in a few weeks time, and it is just 6 weeks until our next monthly hypnotherapy diploma course starts. We are also finalising the schedule of courses for 2016 and we’ll be announcing a number of new courses for 2016 (unlike anything we have offered to date) as well as venues and dates for our regular seminars and events.

It is an exciting time for me, filled with anticipation. I look forward to establishing relationships with new students, meeting other hypnotherapists at our CPD events, lecturing on my favourite subjects, sharing updated course material (every year I add new breakthrough strategies based upon that year’s studies and research) and sharing my love of the field I work in with people keen to understand it and discover it too.

The Attraction Of Hypnotherapy For Practitioners

One of the things I have found throughout the years is that people really do fall in love with this field and I have attempted to decipher the reasons why as more and more students and course delegates have passed through the (albeit metaphorical) halls of this training college. In my opinion, the reasons people fall in love with the field of hypnosis and hypnotherapy are as follows:

1. Hypnotherapy is a fringe subject.

Hypnotherapy is fringe psychology at best currently, in some places it appears to be almost cult-like.

When on the fringe of mainstream, we sometimes have to defend our subject matter, we sometimes take a stand to support it and we sometimes have to defend it against dissenting perspectives.

Hypnotherapists and students of hypnosis seem to plant a flag in the ground and become a small guerrilla force in the vast expanse of the therapeutic world and conventional psychology. It becomes a cause that we fight for, it becomes part of our identity, and it becomes something that we stand for and promote.

2. The people this field seems to attract have a will to do good in the world.

I wrote about purpose in my previous article here, and I alluded to how my work helped fulfill a sense of purpose for me. What a wonderful way to earn a living – by helping other people to be well, happy, healthy and to overcome adversity and fulfill their dreams. It is easy to love a field that permits you to do that. I’ll expand on this later because it is very important.

3. The field of hypnosis gets people intrigued, curious and wanting more….

Discussion of hypnosis turns dinner party guests into an attentive audience. They want to know more and they often want you to do it there and then! It is an engaging subject matter. One of the perverse benefits of there being so much myth and misconception about this field is that people consider it to be powerful and want to understand it. It is an interesting, eye-opening, exciting and challenging subject to share with others.

We fall in love with that.

4. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are largely misunderstood, so therapists are keen to educate others about it.

This builds upon the former point. Films, newspapers, books and all sorts of other places that portray hypnosis tend to give inaccurate accounts. I even have a section in my Hypnosis Weekly podcast that highlights the ways the media portray hypnosis and I have written about it greatly in the past.

In particular with this college, The Anglo-European College of Therapeutic Hypnosis we place much value on adherence to evidence-base and even less people are aware of the evidence base that the field of hypnotherapy has to support it. In fact, the vast majority of hypnotherapists actually seem unaware of most of the evidence too. One of the major hypnotherapy organisations in the UK this week sent out a weekly email to it’s members shouting and singing about one of it’s members being one of just six people with a masters degree in the UK – whilst I think this is wonderful, they seemed to completely overlook the vast swathe of academics, authors, scientists, and psychologists who hold a Phd that has researched this field of hypnosis and made major contributions to this field.

I loved telling you that! We fall in love with this field when we get to celebrate it and educate others about how impressive it really is; beyond cheap and misleading media representations.

5. It is a brief therapy that can create impressive, lasting change.

Hypnotherapy is considered a brief therapy. That is, long-lasting change can happen quickly. Often much more quickly than a number of other more conventional psychotherapeutic interventions or approaches. Of course there are occasions when issues require time and consideration to deal with, but in general it is a brief therapy that is considered by many to be dynamic.

When you see change happen rapidly in clients, how can you not fall in love with the field. It is so rewarding to see that sort of change happening in people you are helping.

Even more than that too…. Hypnotherapists usually also teach individuals self-hypnosis skills, so self-hypnosis becomes a life skill that can be applied and used in life and equips the client with lifelong skills. I love that.

6. We get to become scientists AND artists.

There is an ongoing debate that happens in some corners of this field. Some believe hypnosis is an art form that relies upon the skills of the professional. Others believe that hypnosis is a science that can be standardised and applied accordingly without the need for being an artist. The reality is that we get to be BOTH!

We get to create. We get to express ourselves. Any form of work can become art when you attempt to be the very best you can be at it. When you apply yourself and take responsibility for a project – such as a therapy client. Likewise, we get to benefit from the science that supports this field, we get to apply what science has shown us and thus can make reliable predictions and decisions.

When they stop bickering about it, the hypnotherapists who see this, fall in love with the field even more.

As an aside, I would say, the debates that go on in forums about this field are further evidence of how passionate people are about this field.

7. We get kudos and get to do cool stuff!

Have you seen my Adam Eason Hypnosis YouTube channel? As well as the therapeutic applications of hypnosis, I regularly have people’s hands stuck to tables, have their arms unable to bend, have pins put through people’s arms without any pain or bleeding, have full body catalepsy, have them forget their own name and much more besides.

I think that stuff is cool. I love that stuff. I consider that to be cool stuff, even if by saying it is cool makes it uncool.

These are the initial reasons I think people fall in love with the field of hypnotherapy, but there is so much more. Every time I go online I see more incredible and impressive things that other hypnotherapists are doing out there in the world, that it has me loving the field even more…..

In the past year alone, I have watched in awe as graduates of my college have flourished at Business Awards, have become published authors, have presented to large audiences, have used their skills to build a career in completely different fields, have featured in mainstream media with their success stories, have developed businesses of varying kinds, have pioneered treatments dealing with a wide variety of complex issues and disorders faced by the public. There are so many impressive applications of hypnotherapy that our graduates have used, it is mind boggling – setting up pain clinics in hospitals, lessening the symptoms of debilitating tinnitus, dealing with super morbidly obese people that you usually only see on television documentaries, working with professional sports teams and individuals – these things are all being done by our graduates; go and google Mark Chappell, Lindsay Shepherd, Debbie Sims, Glenn Goudie and examine other graduates from here who have offered up testimonials in our college prospectus to see what they are doing in this field.

Most importantly, hypnotherapists continue to connect with a wide variety of other human beings. They have helped them therapeutically and on many other levels. As I write this, the connectivity we have with the world is like at no other time in history. We have access to billions of other people. Yet so few people actually properly connect. They do not truly make a difference in a way that matters to those they connect with. Hypnotherapists get to connect like no other profession I know of. Hypnosis is intimate, it involves sharing and engaging with one another, it requires skills of trust building and professionalism, as well as being able to be credible and safe and effective and caring.

the field of hypnotherapy requires therapists to have such a fine mix of knowledge and skill, as well as being able to connect with the people that seek our help, inspire them to change and help support them through a major element of their life.

We get to be that. We get to do that. I think this is why so many people fall in love with this field when they explore it and study it.

The field of hypnotherapy is effervescent right now. It is buzzing and fizzing because it is becoming more accepted, it has a better and more public profile, it features in the media more regularly, it has more evidence to support it, the collective force of those in the field is driving it in a forward direction.

This is one of the reasons many people come to train with my college. It is apparent that I love this field and want it to develop. Not just for my own gain and my own benefit, but for the good of the field itself – and the way it can impact so greatly for the good of the world at large.

The people that join my classes and courses are often keen to engage with me because they see this.

I often make very good friendships with many of those who attend my courses, some of my closest friends today are people who have been students on my courses, I was even Best Man at Steve Baxter’s wedding who I first met because of my work. He is an incredibly skilled hypnotherapist, and maybe that is another reason I love this field, because of the people I have met and developed friendships with.

Many people who don’t know of my love of this field or who only know me through reputation or through what someone may have heard from another might not be fully convinced that Bournemouth is worth traveling to in order to train in hypnotherapy….

bournemouth-seafront_intro
I mean, why would people actually travel to Bournemouth, one of the most southern places in the UK when they are based in Scotland, Ireland, the North of England, Europe, or beyond – I use these examples because our students come from all those places and more. The cost of travel and accommodation to one of the most spectacularly beautiful places in the world is easily worthwhile when you consider how the right training effects your career in the long-run. That aside, I’d like to offer up a couple of additional points that show our love for the field of hypnotherapy, and how we go about helping others love this field as much as us, because I think that if you love it truly, you’ll thrive….

What do we do for hypnotherapists?

– We train you to a standard that is incredibly high, that goes beyond that of the vast majority of learning institutions; we are regularly advised and given reports that the work submitted by our students to external assessors is well above the standard of other training organisations and we are incredibly proud of this. We are regularly told by the many hypnotherapists that attend our events and courses that the level of education they receive here surpasses that of anything else anywhere else they have trained; and that includes universities and larger, corporate colleges.

– We offer ongoing professional development. We offer all our diploma students free additional workshops about how to set-up, market and develop a business in this field. I personally offer up all my years of experience in this field and explain in detail all the successful strategies I have employed throughout the years as well as all the mistakes I have made and that you should avoid. We show you how to develop a career in this field. Our platinum area now also includes many hours of business development material that is there for you to use and apply.

– We give you a supportive and nurturing community and environment. We offer all our students and graduates ongoing peer support events, additional CPD lectures to attend, ongoing supervision when working with clients, geek dinners for discussing our field in a social setting and we host a Summer and Christmas party each year. We have online forums and networks to ask questions, share, discuss, debate and be supported.

– We give you vast resources unlike anywhere else. Our online Platinum members area has so many supplementary learning materials and hundreds of hours of video footage of all our courses to advance your classroom hours and help you to revise key concepts after class and make sense of complex material in your own time.

– We offer up a fun-filled and professional environment to do it all in. I think having fun and laughing means you’ll learn better. What’s more, I can’t do anything in life for a sustained period of time if I don’t have a lot of fun and laughter while doing it.

We do all these things because we love this field. I believe all the above things I written about help people fall in love with hypnotherapy. I recognise the way others fall in love with hypnotherapy so readily because they are all my own loves too. My own mission has been to reach as many people as possible and help them to attain their dreams, derive more joy from life, overcome issues and problems and be the fullest possible expression of themselves that makes life such a beautiful, magnificent experience.

Helping another person to be that way using hypnotherapy – to me, that is being alive. That is some way to live.

When I teach, I teach knowing that more and more people will be directly influenced by those that graduate from this college. That fills me with joy.

For me, it is not just an intelligent choice of work where I create a living that enables me to live a life that I love; having time to spend with my darling family, training for and run marathons, research, write, explore the human condition and meet amazing people.

It is not just a job, it is a love.
It is not just a career, it is a powerful choice and a creation.
It is not just a regular payday, it is getting to make a difference.

I think that’s why so many people I encounter in this field love it so much.

Visit The Anglo-European College of Therapeutic Hypnosis website for more information on our hypnotherapy training courses, hypnotherapist CPD courses and other events.